Word: hulling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lately there has been trouble in John Hull's paradise. The threat of assassination has prompted the 66-year-old rancher to ship his two children to the U.S. Barricades have been installed along the perimeter of his main estate. The ranch-house roof has been reinforced to resist mortar attack; large mesh screens cover the windows to repel grenades. Until recently as many as five bodyguards, paid a total of $800 a month, watched over Hull and his wife. This protection, says Hull, was provided by his stateside patron...
...Hull, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Costa Rica, says the U.S. intelligence community once counted him among its most valuable assets along Nicaragua's southern border. When Congress was constraining the Reagan Administration from supporting the contras' war against Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, Hull was a leader of the network that helped sustain the rebels' "southern front." His airstrips were used by planes that supplied U.S. weapons, food and clothes to the contras, his ranch house was the site of delicate negotiations among contra factions, and he was a conduit for money used to support rebel activities. Directly...
...support evaporated when the Iran-contra scandal broke last year, says Hull, and now el Patron is the target of major investigations and a controversial lawsuit in the U.S. "In the news media and absolutely nowhere else, I have been accused of being a CIA agent, a drug smuggler and an assassin," declared Hull in a statement he says he made last summer to the office of Iran-contra Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. "I can assure you that if the assassination charge were true, there are people walking the streets today that would have long since been six feet under...
...latest inquiry into Hull's activities began two weeks ago, when the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Affairs opened hearings in Washington to probe U.S. Government loans to Hull and examine charges that contra suppliers operating from Hull's ranches had been flying shipments of cocaine and marijuana into the U.S. Said Subcommittee Special Counsel Jack Blum: "We will continue hearings into the question of how the ((contras')) war was used as a cover for narcotics operations...
...Hull admits the CIA warned him that certain contra leaders were involved in the drug trade but maintains he knew nothing about his land being used for narcotics trafficking. He angrily disputes allegations by Senate investigators that his motive for helping the contras was to make a profit. If the Sandinistas are not overthrown, he wrote in a position paper forWalsh that he provided to TIME, "Central America will be lost and North America will cease to be a world power and eventually fall under the yoke of Communism." To Hull, Senate Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry and his colleagues...