Word: lebanons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Task Force 160 may have actually attempted but failed to free the hostages," says Wheaton. He points out that North had precise intelligence on the hostages' location. Five of the six Americans were being held in Building No. 18 in the Sheik Abdullah barracks in the Baalbek region of Lebanon. "Very possibly," adds Wheaton, "North ordered the raid after irate Iranian officials threatened to retaliate for a shipment of the wrong Hawk missiles." In fact, three days before the Gander crash, North revealed both his determination to continue the Iranian arms shipments and his concern for the hostages' safety...
...assigned to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). But his hulking physique didn't fit such a low- profile diplomatic post. Friends there remember him as a "walking arsenal" of guns and knives. His real assignment reportedly was to work with the CIA in reconnoitering the American hostages in Lebanon and then, if feasible, to lead a daring raid that would rescue them...
...through al-Kassar's efforts, or so he claimed, that two French hostages were released from Lebanon in 1986 in exchange for an arms shipment to Iran. The deal caught the eye of a freewheeling CIA unit code-named COREA, based in Wiesbaden, Germany. This special unit was reported to be trafficking in drugs and arms in order to gain access to terrorist groups...
According to Aviv, agents in COREA's Wiesbaden headquarters allowed al- Kassar to continue running his smuggling routes to American cities in exchange for help in obtaining the release of the American hostages being held in Lebanon. At about the same time, al-Kassar's drug-smuggling enterprise was being used by the U.S.'s DEA in a sting operation. The DEA was monitoring heroin shipments from Lebanon to Detroit, Los Angeles and Houston, which have large Arab populations, in an attempt to nail the U.S. dealers...
Raised in Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia, Coleman, now 48, was recruited by the dia and assigned to the still classified humint (Human Intelligence) MC-10 operation in the Middle East. In early 1987 he was transferred from Lebanon to Cyprus, where he began his work for the DEA. However, he says he was instructed not to inform the DEA there of his role as a DIA undercover agent. By this time even the DIA suspected that the freewheeling narcotics sting operation was getting out of hand...