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The Roster

A 1990 counterterrorism firm's roster, preserved in Danny Casolaro's papers, lists BCCI's defense coordinator, a Wackenhut vice president and a former CIA counterterrorism chief, two years before that coordinator ran the House October Surprise inquiry.

On August 1, 1988, CounterTerrorism Consultants, L.P. was filed as a limited partnership in Delaware. The next day Carter Cornick, recently retired from the FBI's terrorism section, and the former federal prosecutor Eugene Propper announced Counter Terrorism Consultants, Inc., seeded with about $500,000 from investors they declined to name. E. Lawrence Barcella, who had worked with both men on the Letelier and Edwin Wilson cases, was to advise on extradition.12

Shortly after the October 1988 indictment of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in Tampa, Barcella was brought in to coordinate the bank's defense.3

On September 18, 1989, the partnership registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Its one foreign principal was the Government of Jamaica, from which it reported $25,000 received before registration. Its short-form registrants were Cornick, Propper and Gerald S. Walker.4

On June 20, 1990, a twelve-page resume packet on the partnership's letterhead went out by fax. Besides Cornick, Propper and Barcella, it lists James B. Motley, vice president for national security studies at Wackenhut Advanced Technologies Corporation since September 1987; Francis J. McNeil, ambassador to Costa Rica from 1980 to 1983; and an unnamed former CIA chief of counterterrorism, a Navy aviator who had run the agency's air and maritime elements from 1974 to 1977 and retired in 1987. A copy of the packet is among the papers of Danny Casolaro, filed between a Brunswick assault-weapon data package and a sales sheet of the Chilean arms maker Industrias Cardoen. Casolaro was found dead in Martinsburg, West Virginia, on August 10, 1991.5

In March 1992 the House October Surprise Task Force hired Barcella as its chief counsel. The biography printed in its January 1993 report describes him as "presently a partner in the Washington office of Katten, Muchin, Zavis and Dombroff." The report found "no credible evidence" of a deal.6

Sources

  1. Delaware Division of Corporations file 2168210, as mirrored by OpenCorporates; District of Columbia Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection, entity record 058088 (foreign limited partnership formed in Delaware, filed August 5, 1988). ↩
  2. "A group of top former FBI agents and federal...," United Press International, August 2, 1988, https://www.upi.com/Archives/1988/08/02/A-group-of-top-former-FBI-agents-and-federal/9684730900658/. ↩
  3. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, The BCCI Affair, S. Prt. 102-140, December 1992. ↩
  4. Report of the Attorney General to the Congress on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, 1988 to 1991, vol. 1, p. 599, registration 4294, https://www.justice.gov/media/910066/dl?inline. ↩
  5. CounterTerrorism Consultants, L.P., "Proudly Presents The Resumes of its Associates," fax copy headed "JUN 20 '90," Danny Casolaro papers, folder "Promotional Material," item PM-05, https://archive.org/details/casolaro-notebooks. ↩
  6. Joint Report of the Task Force to Investigate Certain Allegations Concerning the Holding of American Hostages by Iran in 1980, H. Rept. 102-1102, January 3, 1993. ↩