Chris Moore was a former reserve Laguna Beach police officer who served as office manager for [[Ronald Lister]]'s [[Pyramid International Security Consultants]] and witnessed the company's operations in [[El Salvador]] firsthand.[^1] Moore met Lister in 1979 and was hired in 1982 while working his way through law school. ### Role at Pyramid International "I think I was actually an officer in Pyramid International. Ron put my name down as treasurer or director or something because he needed to have some directors for the incorporation papers," Moore confirmed. He said Lister had extensive business dealings in [[Central America]], specifically in El Salvador. Lister explained his travels there to Moore as involving gun running and "helping the [[Contras]], supposedly on behalf of the [U.S.] government. I remember the longest conversations with him — 'I'm protected. You're working for the government. Don't worry about anything. I'm protected, I'm protected.' I don't know if that was true or not, but I do know that we stopped worrying about domestic security jobs and started concentrating on foreign ones."[^1] ### El Salvador Trip In June of 1982 Lister asked Moore to fly down to El Salvador and "babysit" a government contract for a few days while Lister returned to the [[United States]]. Accompanying Moore on the eleven-day excursion was a man who introduced himself as the Salvadoran consul in [[Los Angeles]]. Since Moore spoke little Spanish, the man served as guide and interpreter. "They flew me down to this airbase that the French were building, and I had to take pictures of it," Moore said; it was his impression that Pyramid was bidding on a contract to provide security for the base.[^1] In [[San Salvador]], Moore attended a series of meetings with [[Roberto D'Aubuisson]], the Salvadoran death squad commander: "There I was, a reserve police officer who'd only been in the country for a couple days, and I was sitting in this office in downtown San Salvador across the desk from the man who ran the death squads. He had a gun lying on the top of his desk and had these filing cabinets pushed up against the windows of the office so nobody could shoot through them." At another meeting, Moore and D'Aubuisson were joined by Ray Prendes, the newly elected head of the Salvadoran Assembly.[^1] Moore was unsure if Lister's company ever got the security contract for the airbase, but he thought not. He left Lister's employ in 1983, soon after his boss began dealing in heavy weapons: "Ron was an arms dealer and was buying these semiautomatics, the ones the bad guys use, called MAC-10s. He also had semiautomatic Uzis, and he had gotten involved in selling something called RAW, which was a rifle-fired hand grenade. He was into a lot of things."[^1] ### CIA Contact Claims Moore, who regarded Lister's claims of CIA connections with some skepticism, said Lister told him he had a "big CIA contact" at an Orange County company. "I can't remember his name, but Ron was always was running off to meetings with him supposedly. Ron said the guy was the former Deputy Director of Operations or something, real high up there. All I know is that this supposed contact of his was working at the [[Fluor Corporation]] [an international construction management company based in Orange County] because I had to call Ron out there a couple times."[^1] Moore later became an attorney in Los Angeles.[^1] ### Mundy Security Group Moore was also named as a director and officer of the [[Mundy Security Group]], the Laguna Beach company Ronald Lister incorporated in mid-1983. Moore described the company's offices as alarming: director Maurice Green was a self-proclaimed legal genius with a severe drug and alcohol problem who had a hollow wall built behind his desk for emergency escape. Moore found Green "sitting at his desk looking down the barrel of a gun" on one occasion; when he told Lister, Lister laughed. The company's primary business aside from burglar alarms was marketing a laser sighting device for AR-15 assault rifles designed by Lister's partner [[William Downing]]. Moore identified Lister's "big CIA contact" at Fluor Corporation as [[William Nelson]], the CIA's former deputy director of operations.[^2] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty" [^2]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"