According to Thomas Burdick, Meyers says that Bush talked to him about how the vice
president's staff was monitoring the Aronow investigation. Bush lamented that he did not
have grounds to get federal agencies involved. "I just wish," said Bush to Meyers, "that
there was some federal aspect to the murder. If the killers crossed state lines. Then I
could get the FBI involved." [fn 11] The form of the argument is reminiscent of the views
expressed by Bush and Tony Lapham during the Letelier case.
In May or June of 1987, several months after Aronow had been killed, Mike Brittain,
who owned a company called Aluminum Marine Products, located on "Thunderboat
Alley" in the northern part of Miami (the same street where Aronow had worked), was
approached by two FBI special agents, Joseph Usher and John Donovan, both of the
Miami FBI field office. They were accompanied by a third FBI man, whom they
presented as a member of George Bush's staff at the National Drug Task Force in
Washington DC. The third agent, reportedly named William Temple, had, according to
the other two, come to Miami on a special mission ordered by the Vice President of the
United States.
As Brittain told his story to Burdick, Special Agent Temple "didn't ask about the murder
or anything like that. All he wanted to know about was the merger." [fn 12] The merger
in question was the assumption of control over Aronow's company, USA Racing, by the
Kramers' Super Chief South, which meant that a key contract in the Bush "war on drugs"
had been awarded to a company controlled by persons who would later be convicted for
marijuana smuggling and money laundering. Many of the FBI questions focussed on this
connection between Aronow and Kramer. Later, after Bush's victory in the 1988
presidential election, the FBI again questioned Brittain, and again the central issue was
the Aronow-Kramer connection, plus additional questions of whether Brittain had
divulged any of his knowledge of these matters to other persons. A possible conclusion
was that a damage control operation in favor of Bush was in progress.
Tommy Teagle, an ex-convict interviewed by Burdick, said he feared that George Bush
would have him killed because information in his possession would implicate Jeb Bush in
cocaine smuggling. Teagle's story was that Aronow and Jeb Bush had been partners in
cocaine trafficking and were $2.5 million in debt to their Columbian suppliers. Dr. Robert
Magoon, a friend of Aronow, is quoted in the same location as having heard a similar
report. But Teagle rapidly changed his story. [fn 3] Ultimately, an imprisoned convict
was indicted for the murder of Aronow.
But the circumstances of the murder remain highly suspect. Starting in 1985, and with
special intensity during 1987-88, more than two dozen persons involved in various
aspects of the Iran-contra gun-running and drug-running operation met their deaths. At
the same time, other persons knowledgeable about Iran-contra, but one or more steps
removed from eyewitness knowledge of these operations, have been subjected to
campaigns of discrediting and slander, often associated with indictments on a variety of
charges, charges which often stemmed from the Iran-contra operations themselves.
Above and beyond the details of each particular case, the overall pattern of these deaths
strongly suggests that they are coherent with a damage control operation by the networks