Christopher England <...> said:

Quoting a previous Neil Gates contribution:-

On August 18th 1989 the officials on the landward claimed that the
station(Radio 819) was a front for drug smuggling. Do you believe them
and do you think their drug profits were financing the communicator?

Well, well, well. Very interesting. I don't think I've spoken of this
in public before, but very definitely yes on the 'something' smuggling,
which I'd assume was drugs. They would spend ages adjacent certain
buoys pulling up ropes, loading packages and then letting them back down
again. I remember a conversation with one of them explaining to me
exactly how they would 'weight' their packages to stop them from
floating, and witnessing such a drop, but being very careful not to ask
exactly what was inside. Those they didn't feel confident with would be
locked below so they couldn't witness what was going on. Some would be
given bunks to sleep on and asked not to come up until they were told it
was safe to do so. I'm sure a few Caroline people will have told you
about this procedure at the time.

I didn't see anything myself but I have it on 'hearsay' at the time that
the Communicator was being used to store and repackage some stuff as
well.

Having said all that, it may not have been everybody behind the scenes
of Radio 819 that was involved, maybe just one or two, you probably know
who I mean. And certainly most of the guys organising the programming
wouldn't have known fully what was going on, but they probably knew
something even if today they deny it.
--
* Christopher England just said that *

 I was told the story of the packages down below the bouys by a senior member of Caroline's staff many months before the raid as he had witnessed the scenes you have just described it didn't take either him or me long to work out what they had down there!