Celerino Castillo III

Who is Celerino Castillo III?

Celerino Castillo is a former agent for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.

His father was a decorated veteran of World War II, who had been shot six times by the Japanese. In 1970, Castillo was told by his father that he was expected to fight in the Vietnam War, even though as an only son, he was not required to. As a loyal and dutiful son, Castillo followed the orders of his father and distinguished himself in the jungles of Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Castillo witnessed firsthand the effects of drug abuse on his soldiers. He vowed to return to U.S. so that he could fight against drugs. Subsequently, in 1979, he joined the DEA as an enforcement agent fighting in the front-line trenches of America's so called "'War on Drugs'", and is best known for blowing the whistle on the CIA-backed arms-for-drugs trade that was used to prop up the 1980s Contra counter-insurgency in Nicaragua, and for the book that he published on that subject, entitled "'Powder Burns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War'".

In 2008 Castillo made the revelation to reporter Bill Conroy that ATF agents were participating in the smuggling of high powered weapons into Mexico. According to Castillo the source of that information was a government informer who was later murdered.