Does anyone else miss *SPY* magazine?

INSIDE THE SHADOW CIA by John Connolly SPY Magazine - Sept 1992 - Volume 6

What? A big private company - one with a board of former CIA, FBI and Pentagon officials; one in charge of protecting Nuclear-Weapons facilities, nuclear reactors, the Alaskan oil pipeline and more than a dozen American embassies abroad; one with long-standing ties to a radical ring-wing organization; one with 30,000 men and women under arms - secretly helped IRAQ in its effort to obtain sophisticated weapons? And fueled unrest in Venezuela? This is all the plot of a new best-selling thriller, right? Or the ravings of some overheated conspiracy buff, right? Right?

WRONG.

In the WINTER OF 1990, David Ramirez, a 24 year-old member of the Special Investigations Division of the Wackenhut Corporation, was sent by his superiors on an unusual mission. Ramirez a former Marine Corps sergeant based in Miami, was told to fly immediately to San Antonio along with three other members of SID-a unit, known as founder and chairman George Wackenhut's "private FBI," that provided executive protection and conducted undercover investigations and sting operations. Once they arrived, they rented two gray Ford Tauruses and drove four hours to a desolate town on the Mexican border called Eagle Pass. There, just after dark, they met two truck drivers who had been flown in from Houston. Inside a nearby warehouse was an 18 -wheel tractor-trailer, which the two truck drivers and the four Wackenhut agents in their rented cars were supposed to transport to Chicago. "My instructions were very clear," Ramirez recalls. "Do not look into the trailer, secure it, and make sure it safely gets to Chicago." It went without saying that no one else was supposed to look in the trailer, either, which is why the Wackenhut men were armed with fully loaded Remington 870 pump-action shotguns.

The convoy drove for 30 hours straight, stopping only for gas and food. Even then, one of the Wackenhut agents had to stay with the truck, standing by one of the cars, its trunk open, shotgun within easy reach. "Whenever we stopped, I bought a shot glass with the name of the town on it," Ramirez recalls. "I have glasses from Oklahoma City, Kansas City, St. Louis."

A little before 5:00 on the morning of the third day, they delivered the trailer to a practically empty warehouse outside Chicago. A burly man who had been waiting for them on the loading dock told them to take off the locks and go home, and that was that. They were on a plane back to Miami that afternoon. Later Ramirez's superiors told him-as they told other SID agents about similar midnight runs-that the trucks contained $40 million worth of food stamps. After considering the secrecy, the way the team was assembled and the orders not to stop or open the truck, Ramirez decided he didn't believe that explanation.....