American Corruption
The Arizona Project, Senator Montoya and Myles Ambrose by Frederick Venables
On 2 June 1976, Don Bolles, a veteran reporter for the Arizona Republic, anxiously awaited the arrival of his informant inside the Clarendon House hotel, Phoenix. John Adamson contacted Bolles six days prior claiming he held information regarding a series of land fraud schemes involving regional business and political figures. However, at the last minute, Adamson called off the arrangement. Unsettled, Bolles returned to his Datsun car. Although diligent in his profession (Bolles was known to tape his bonnet as a way of signalling interference with the engine), he did not notice the six sticks of dynamite underneath the chassis. As Bolles reversed out of his parking spot, the explosive device was detonated leaving him heavily wounded. He died from injuries sustained in the attack eleven days later.
Don Bolles, Arizona Republic reporter
Don Bolles’s car after the explosion
In response to the assassination, the Arizona Project was created. Supported by the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc), journalists from various newspapers descended on Arizona and worked together in what was one of the first major attempts at collaborative journalism. Whilst the culprits behind the murder were looked into, the project primarily sought to highlight the broader level of corruption present across the state. What transpired was a 23-part series covering a range of issues with Barry Goldwater, former Senator from Arizona and 1964 Presidential Candidate, often at the centre of attention. However, the series was not without controversy. Critics accused those involved guilty of a form of “vengeance journalism”. Such accusations played their part in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times all refusing to publish the findings. Even the Arizona Republic, Bolles’ own paper, did not print the series after pulling out on the eve of its release.
The Journalist
One such journalist involved in the project was Alex Drehsler. He went on to have a fascinating career hunting down stories throughout Latin America. Working for the San Diego Union, he exposed an illicit financial arrangement between a Californian gas company and a businessman from Tijuana called Alfonso Bustamante who was connected to both governors in California and Baja California. Drehsler also reported on the corruptive and torturous practices conducted by the head of the Federal Judicial Police in northern Mexico, Carlos Augilar-Garza, and uncovered how officials and police in Tijuana were in possession of stolen U.S. vehicles. Inevitably, Drehsler received numerous death threats for such investigations. Even the U.S. Consulate General in Tijuana, Robert Kent, sent a telegram to Mexico City cryptically stating that Drehsler was “getting close to some bad characters” and that an attempt to “physically put him out of way” should not be discounted. Drehsler later resigned from the Union to pursue his interest reporting on the Civil War in El Salvador. Here, he helped produce ‘In the Name of the People’ (1984), a hard-hitting Oscar nominated film documenting the absorbing journey of an FMLN unit as they marched on San Salvador.
(Alex Drehsler (right) during a visit to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, 1979).
However, before all of this, Drehsler made a name for himself working on the Arizona Project during which he came across an extraordinary episode implicating the Senator from New Mexico, Joseph Manuel Montoya. In December 1976, Drehsler met a contact in Nogales who relayed information regarding an incident five years prior given to them by a DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) snitch working from Sinaloa. Allegedly, the agent told the contact that a plane transporting heroin was going to land at Tucson International Airport. They added that the aircraft had no marked serial numbers on it and those onboard were coming back from a meeting with two notorious Mexican traffickers, Antonio Guzman (Cruz Vazquez – the mentor to El Mayo) and Eduardo “Lalo” Fernández.
Joseph Manuel Montoya (1915-1978) was a moderate Democratic Senator of New Mexico from 1964-1977. He served on the Senate Watergate Committee. However, facing allegations of financial misconduct, he lost his relatively comfortable seat in 1976 to Republican, Harrison Schmitt, despite national Democratic success.
The Report
The contact provided Drehsler with the name of a U.S. Customs officer who knew more about the incident. The officer did not work in Tucson when the event occurred but claimed to have come across a report (he suspected the document had since been destroyed when talking to Drehsler) about the event after his arrival in May 1971. The document outlined that a plane, identical to the one described by the contact in Nogales, arrived with Montoya onboard. Customs agents sought to search the plane, but Montoya refused. The Senator then contacted Washington appealing to the Commissioner of Customs and President Nixon’s chief advisor on anti-drug enforcement, Myles Ambrose. Allegedly, Ambrose told agents to not search the plane and not to provide an obstacle for Montoya.
Myles Ambrose (1926-2014) was appointed Commissioner of U.S. Customs in 1969. In Autumn that year, he oversaw Operation Intercept which pressurised the administration of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz to contend with Mexican drug production. In January 1972, he became the director of ODALE (Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement), a controversial federal agency tasked with supporting local enforcement efforts. He was tasked with bringing together various agencies within the Treasury and Justice Departments that often came into conflict with each other. As a result, he played an important role setting up the DEA and was tipped to head the organisation but resigned from public duty in July 1973 amid suspicious circumstances.
According to this Customs official, one of the agents involved was transferred to work in Phoenix following the event. Drehsler tracked down this source, identified as ‘DS-38’, who corroborated the story and provided a more detailed account. Around mid-day on 9 April, the plane arrived and was immediately told to check in with U.S. Customs but refused and moved into one of the nearby hangers. DS-38 recalled that his superior was busy and so he was sent to deal with the situation. Montoya said he had just returned from a meeting with a governor in Mexico and that he was heading to Albuquerque as Congress was in session. DS-38 went to search the plane, but the senator refused and would not turn the engine off claiming it was faulty and would not restart if he did so. According to the agent, many inside the plane looked Mexican and that a colleague later discovered those onboard had met traffickers in Culiacan before transporting narcotics across the border on the plane. As DS-38 persisted in his attempts to search the aircraft, Montoya contacted two assistants working for Ambrose. They declared that Montoya headed the appropriations committee for U.S. Customs before warning DS-38 that if you continue to disobey, “Well, I’m sorry but I guess you won’t have a job anymore.”
DS-38 - “The people in Washington didn’t want to hear it.”
Background
Neither Montoya nor Ambrose possessed the most commendable of reputations. During his time in office, Montoya was investigated by the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) for money laundering and was accused of using his position to make extensive real estate investments. He was then implicated in the “Koreagate” scandal whereby he favourably influenced U.S. policy towards South Korea in return for bribes from lobbyist, Tongsun Park. Meanwhile, Ambrose faced criticism over his position as director of ODALE. The agency was dubbed the ‘American Gestapo’ for employing forceful tactics and conducting illegal raids, often on residents who were not even in possession of drugs. Additionally, his association with Richmond Harper, a banker and ranch-owner, who had a litany of criminal charges to his name and had just been indicted for masterminding an arms-drugs smuggling operation, attracted scrutiny. Despite apparent warnings about Harper from William Hughes, the heads of Customs in San Antonio, Ambrose visited Harper in Eagle Pass, Texas, for two days in December 1972.
An Unlikely Alliance – Murray Kessler, Richmond Harper, and Barry Seal
On 1 July 1972, Harper, was one of nine arrested after a DC-4 aircraft was seized at Shreveport airport containing vast quantities of armaments, ammunition, and explosives. Allegedly, the plane was destined to land in Veracruz, Mexico, for the purposes of an anti-Castro organisation looking to overthrow Cuba. The main co-conspirators were Maurice ‘Morris’ Kessler, an associate of the Gambino crime family (he worked alongside Carlo Gambino’s nephew, Manny, who was kidnapped and murdered only days before the incident), Marion Hagler, a former employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and TWA (Trans World Airlines) pilot Barry Seal, eventual drug-runner for the Medellín Cartel. Yet, the event is shrouded in mystery and subject to numerous conspiracy theories. The warehouse where the explosives were stored was owned by Herman K. Beebe, an associate of George H. W. Bush, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Meanwhile, Caesar Diosdado Nunez, the Customs agent who exposed the plot by pretending to be a drug trafficker under the pseudonym, “Carlos Diaz”, was linked to the CIA. It has also been alleged that the DC-4 plane was owned by James Boy, a known associate of the CIA. In June 1974, a mistrial was declared, all the defendants were released.
Implications
However, Drehsler’s findings were different. They not only showed that Montoya was supporting Sinaloan traffickers and their Mafia clientele north of the border, but they directly indicated that the operation was sanctioned by the architect of Nixon’s War on Drugs in Ambrose. As a result, the story threatened to dismantle the mythologies of honourable U.S. authorities combatting the corruptive practices of their Mexican counterparts that denied the existence of protection rackets north of the border, all of which underpinned attitudes and policy towards the drug trade. The story was never published, evidently too scandalous to run.