Wall Street Journal:

November 22, 1996-

In an ongoing scandal ballooning by the day,  the Wall Street Journal
reported today that a CIA asset in Venezuela has been indicted by a
Miami federal grand jury on charges of smuggling more than 20,000 kilos
of pure cocaine into the United States.

So far one CIA agent was forced to resign, a second disciplined and the
careers of two Drug Enforcement Administration officers effectively
ended in the plot.

An internal investigation grew more complicated with the discovery that
the male CIA agent and the two Venezuelan men had sexual relationships
with the two female DEA agents. The case involves the same program under
which the agency created a Haitian intelligence service whose officers
became involved in drug trafficking and acts of political terror. Its
exposure comes amidst Justice Department and CIA investigations into
allegations the CIA helped finance the Contra war in the 1980s with
profits from cocaine smuggled into the United States by members of its
Contra army.

In the mid-1980's, under orders from President Ronald Reagan, the
agency began to set up anti-drug programs in the major cocaine-producing
and trafficking capitals of Central and South America. In Venezuela it
worked with the country's National Guard, a paramilitary force that
controls the highways and borders. Government officials said that the
joint CIA-Venezuelan force was headed by Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila who
was indicted today,  and that the ranking CIA officer was Mark McFarlin,
who had worked with anti-guerrilla forces in El Salvador in the 1980's.

Guillen worked for Venezuelan drug organizations, and he worked for
Colombian drug organizations a source said.  In late 1990, police
tipped the DEA that Guillen's men were guarding a cocaine shipment
instead of seizing it.  The DEA investigated and informed the CIA.  The
CIA allowed the cocaine deals to continue, CIA agent McFarlin said, in
order to keep information channels with Guillen open.

In an interview from his modest home in Caracas, Guillen told the Wall
Street Journal his Venezuelan National Guard anti-narcotics unit sent
about 4,100 pounds of cocaine to the United States with the knowledge of
the CIA and the DEA to help U.S. officials snare drug traffickers.
But law-enforcement officials familiar with the case told the newspaper
Guillen's unit shipped as much as 22 tons of cocaine into the United
States during the period when he headed it, between 1987 and 1991.

22 tons of cocaine, the equivalent of 20,000 kilos, would have a street
value in the United States of $4 billion dollars if sold in powder
form.  When formulated into crack cocaine the street value is estimated
at more than $7 billion dollars.