Overview

BETRAYAL is a thrilling and informative nonfiction account of murder, cocaine trafficking and toxic chemicals at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California. BETRAYAL stands with the best works of Norman Mailer (The Executioner's Song) and Truman Capote (In Cold Blood). Buy it, read it, and take action, as authors Bob O'Dowd and Tim King have, to ensure American military members are protected from unnecessary harm while serving in uniform, and that they receive the care they so deserve from a government that buries its missteps too soon and too often. The murder, cocaine narcotrafficking and exposure to deadly contaminants at El Toro show the government's willingness to disregard the law, to murder those who threatened to blow the whistle on an illegal covert operation, to ignore the risks of injuries and deaths on one of the most environmentally toxic sites in the country, and to hide its misdeeds from the public. The Reagan and Bush administrations used profits from the sales of cocaine to fund the Contra War, ignoring the Congressional Boland Amendments, which prevented the use of appropriated funds to support the Contras in their fight in Nicaragua. The influx of cocaine fueled the crack cocaine epidemic, killing thousands of Americans, especially impacting the Black communities hard in major urban centers. In the 1980s and early 1990s, CIA proprietary Lockheed C-130s used El Toro to ship weapons to Central and South America and return to the U.S. with cocaine. The cocaine flights into El Toro were shut down in January 1991 but not before Marine Colonel James E. Sabow, third in command at the base was murdered in his quarters. Other Marines who knew about the flights met violent deaths, too. Congressional testimony from a former CIA pilot and other witnesses reported that El Toro was used by unmarked C-130s to fly weapons to Central and South America and cocaine into the U. S. These were not Marine Corps aircraft and the planes were not flown by Marines. Robert Tosh Plumlee, CIA contract pilot, kept a map with names, including the names of future Iran-Contra players like Robert Owens. Owens worked for Dan Quayle and it was Owens who introduced Oliver North to Robert Hull who was from Indiana. Indiana is where Dan Quayle is from and it was Robert Hull who ran the 8,000 acre ranch in Costa Rica used for staging weapons and drug shipments. The allegation is that George H. W. Bush chose Dan Quayle as his running mate to implicate Quayle in the Iran-Contra dealings in the event that he ever came up for impeachment. This is where the phrase Quayle is Bush's impeachment insurance came from alleged to have been coined by Barbara Honegger. Thousands of Marines at El Toro were exposed to organic solvents and other toxins in the well water, air and through dermal contact in the course of their duties. Nothing was done to alert El Toro Marines to the inherent dangers of exposures to carcinogens, even after El Toro was placed on the EPA Superfund database among the most environmentally toxic sites in the country. The injuries and deaths of those exposed to toxic chemicals at El Toro could have been mitigated though timely notification but this would have meant accepting responsibility and no government official was willing to do that. Veteran Service Organizations may have willingly to spread the dangers of toxic exposures to Marine veterans, if only asked to do so. El Toro was closed in July 1999 and the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing relocated to Miramar. By then, the internet was capable of posting information on the health effects of exposure to the contaminants at El Toro. The government did nothing to alert Veterans and their dependents to the risks of toxic exposure.

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9781502340009

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Robert O'Dowd is a Marine veteran of Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, CA. He served 52 months on active duty with the 1st, 3rd and 4th Marine Aircraft Wings in 1960s. At Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, Robert was assigned to Marine Wing Services Group 37 (MWSG-37), the most environmentally contaminated air group on the base with 11 contaminated sites in its 200 acres. At El Toro for 20 months, he worked and slept on duty watch in a Radium 226 contaminated work space in Hangar 296. Hangar 296 was a source of a major TCE plume cutting a path through the base wells and spreading several miles off base into Orange County. After honorable discharge from the Marine Corps and graduation from Temple University, Robert worked in a series of accounting and financial management positions with the federal government, including the EPA Office of Inspector General and the Defense Logistics Agency. In 2008, he teamed up with Tim King of Salem-News.com to write about the environmental contamination at El Toro and Camp Lejeune. You can write Robert O'Dowd at rodowd@live.com. Tim King, a Marine veteran of MWSG-37, MCAS El Toro in the 1980s, launched Salem-News.com during the summer of 2004 when he was a photojournalist/reporter for KATU Channel-2 News, the ABC affiliate in Portland, Oregon. Tim has more than twenty years of experience on the West Coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Tim is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008.

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