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maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #1 |
http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mfe_webb_1.html
[Esquire magazine, September 1998]
VETERAN DRUG AGENTS BACKED WEBB STORY
Contributor's profile:
Two weeks after Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996, contributing editor Charles Bowden found himself in a bar, having a few drinks with some narcs (his idea of a good night). "For some reason, Webb's piece came up, and I asked the guys, 'So, what do you think? Is what Webb wrote about the CIA true?'" recalls Bowden, the author of fifteen books, including Blood Orchid and Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future. "And they all turned to me and said, "Of course it is.' That's when I knew that somebody
would have to do this story, and I figured it might as well be me." "The Pariah," Bowden's story on Webb -- a man he describes as "real smart, real straight, lives on a cul-de-sac, family man, all that crap" -- begins on page 150.
Editor's letter [excerpt]:
....The world Charles Bowden leads us into in his story, "The Pariah" (page 150), is, on the other hand, a place few would willingly visit. Reporter Gary Webb chose to enter the alternate universe where the CIA sponsors armies and sometimes finds itself allied with drug dealers who sell their wares in the United States. Webb wrote a newspaper series that documented how the Nicaraguan contras of the 1980s were in part financed by just such an arrangement -- and he was then professionally destroyed for it. Bowden, in the course of reporting this story over the last six months, found considerable evidence that parallels and supports Webb's articles -- including revelations from one of the DEA's most decorated agents, who speaks for the first time about the CIA's complicity in the drug trade. It was not, however, the agency's ties to drug traffickers that Bowden found most disturbing. It was that a man can lose his livelihood, his calling, his reputation, for telling the truth....
--David Granger
------------------------------------------
THE PARIAH
Two years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that said some bad things about the CIA and drug traffickers. The CIA denied the charges, and every major newspaper in the country took the agency's word for it. Gary Webb was ruined. Which is a shame, because he was right.
By Brad Wilson Charles Bowden | Sep 01 '98
HE TELLS ME I'VE GOT TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT WHEN THE BIG DOG GETS OFF THE PORCH, and I'm getting confused here. He is talking to me from a fishing camp up near the Canadian border, and as he tries to tell me about the Big Dog, I can only imagine a wall of green and deep blue lakes with northern pike. But he is very patient with me. Mike Holm did his hard stints in the Middle East, the Miami station, and Los Angeles, all for the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, and he is determined that I face the reality he knows. So he starts again. He repeats, "When the Big Dog gets off the porch, watch out." And by the Big Dog, he means the full might of the United States government. At that moment, he continues, you play by
Big Boy rules, and that means, he explains, that there are no rules but to complete the mission. We've gotten into all this schooling because I asked him about reports that he received when he was stationed in Miami that Southern Air Transport, a CIA-contracted airline, was landing planeloads of cocaine at Homestead Air Force Base nearby. Back in the eighties, Holm's informants kept telling him about these flights, and then he was told by his superiors to "stand down because of national security." And so he did. He is an honorable man who believes in his government, and he didn't ask why the flights were taking place; he simply obeyed. Because he has seen the Big Dog get off the porch, and he has tasted Big Boy rules. Besides, he tells me, these things are done right, and if you look into the matter, you'll find contract employees or guys associated with the CIA, but you won't find a CIA case officer on a loading dock tossing kilos of coke around. Any more than Mike Holm ever saw a plane loaded top to bottom with kilos of coke. He didn't have to. He believed his informants. And he believed in the skill and power of the CIA. And he believed in the sheer might and will of the Big Dog when he finally decides to get off the porch.
As his words hang in the air, I remember a convict who says he once worked with the United States government and who also tasted Big Boy rules. This man has not gone fishing. This convict insisted that I hold the map up to the thick prison glass as he jabbed his finger into the mountains. There, he said, that's the place, and his eyes gleamed as his words accelerated. There, in the mountains, they have a colony of two thousand Colombians out of Medellin, guarded by the Mexican army. I craned my neck to see where his finger was rubbing against the map, and made an x with my pen. That's when the guard burst into the convict's small cubicle and ordered him to sit down.
The convict is a man of little credibility in the greater world. He is a Mexican national, highly intelligent and exact in his speech. He is a man electric with the memory of his days working as a DEA informant in Mexico, huddling in his little apartment with his clandestine radio. He said I must check his DEA file; he gave the names of his case officers; he noted that he delivered to them the exact locations of thirteen airfields operated jointly by the drug cartels and the CIA. The man's eyes bugged out as his excitement shredded the tedium of doing time and he returned to his former life of secret transmissions, cutouts, drinks with pilots ferrying dope, bullshitting his way through army checkpoints.
He said, "I'll be out in six months or one year, depending on the hearing. We can go. I'll take you up there." I have always steered clear of the secret world, because it is very hard to penetrate, and because if you discover anything about it, you are not believed. And because I remember what happened to one reporter who wrote about that world, about the Big Dog getting off the porch, about the Big Boy rules. So I thought about the convict's information and did nothing with it.
But this reporter who went ahead and wrote while I stopped, I kept thinking about him. When I mention him, and what happened to him, to Mike Holm, he says, "Ah, he must have drawn blood." Holm is very impressed with the CIA, and he wants me to slow down, think, and understand something: "The CIA's mission is to break laws and be ruthless. And they are dangerous."
I had been thinking about looking into the claim that during the civil war in Nicaragua in the eighties, the CIA helped move dope to the United States to buy guns for the contras, who were mounting an insurrection against the leftist Sandinistas. So I called up Hector Berrellez, a guy who worked under Mike Holm in Los Angeles, a guy known within the DEA as its Eliot Ness, and he said, "Look, the CIA is the best in the world. You're not going to beat them; you're never going to get a smoking gun. The best you're going to get is a little story from me."
What Berrellez meant by a smoking gun is this: proof that the United States government has, through the Central Intelligence Agency and its ties to criminals, facilitated the international traffic in narcotics. That's the trail the reporter was on when his career in newspapers went to rack and ruin. So I decided to look him up.
His name is Gary Webb.
GARY WEBB LOVES THE STACKS OF THE STATE LIBRARY ACROSS from the capitol in Sacramento, the old classical building framed with aromatic camphor trees. He enters the lobby and becomes part of a circling mural called War Through the Ages, an after-flash of World War I painted by Frank Van Sloun in 1929. The panels start with the ax and club, then wade through gore to doughboys marching off to the War to End All Wars. THIS HOUSE OF PEACE, the inscription on the west wall admonishes, SHALL STAND WHILE MEN FEAR NOT TO DIE IN ITS DEFENSE.
He was here in the summer of 1995 because of a call from a woman named Coral Marie Talavera Baca. She told him her drug-dealer boyfriend was in jail and one of the witnesses against him was "a guy who used to work with the CIA selling drugs. Tons of it." Webb was brought up short: In eighteen years of reporting, every person who'd ever called him about the CIA had turned out to be a flake. Webb started to back away on the phone, and the woman sensed it and exploded: "How dare you treat me like an idiot!" She said she had lots of documents and invited him to a court date that month. And so he went.
Coral's boyfriend turned out to be a big-time trafficker. She brought Webb a pile of DEA and FBI reports about, and federal grand-jury testimony by, a guy named Oscar Danilo Blandon. Webb was intrigued by government files that told of Nicaraguans selling dope in California and giving dope money to the contras. During a break in the hearing, he headed for the restroom and ran into the U.S. attorney, David Hall. Webb told him he was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and Hall asked why he was at a piddling hearing. "Actually, I've been reading," Webb answered, "and I was curious to know what you made of Blandon's testimony about selling drugs for the
contras in L.A. Did you believe him?" "Well, yeah," Hall answered, "but I don't know how you could absolutely confirm it. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. The CIA won't tell me anything."
Webb followed a trail of crumbs: some San Francisco newspaper clips, some court records in San Diego, where this strange figure, Blandon, had been indicted for selling coke in 1992 and, according to the documents, had been at it for years and sold tons. He and his wife had been held without bail because the federal prosecutor, L.J. O'Neale, said his minimum mandatory punishment would be life plus a $4 million fine. Blandon's defense attorney had argued that his client was being smeared because he'd been active in helping the contras in the early eighties.
The file told Webb that Blandon wound up doing about two years, and that he was now out. The file recorded that at O'Neale's request, the government had twice quietly cut Blandon's sentence and that he was now working as a paid undercover informant for the DEA.
After about six weeks of this kind of foraging, Webb went to the state library. For six days in September, he sat at a microfiche with rolls of dimes and read an eleven-hundred-page report from 1989 compiled by a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a subcommittee chaired by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts that dealt with the contras and cocaine.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/kerry/index.htm
Buried in the federal document was evidence of direct links between drug dealers and the contras; evidence, dated four years before the American invasion of Panama, that Manuel Noriega was in the dope business; drug dealers saying under oath that they gave money to the contras (and passing polygraphs); pilots talking of flying guns down and dope back and landing with their cargoes at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.
Suddenly, Coral's phone call didn't seem so crazy. Webb called up Jack Blum, the Washington, D.C., lawyer who led the Kerry inquiry and said, "Maybe I'm crazy, but this seems like a huge story to me." "Well, it's nice to hear someone finally say that, even if it is ten years later," Blum allowed, and then he proceeded to tell Webb almost exactly what he told me recently when I made a similar innocent phone call to him. "What happened was, our credibility was questioned, and we were personally trashed. The [Reagan] administration and some people in Congress tried to make us look like crazies, and to some degree it worked. I remember having conversations with reporters in which they would say, 'Well, the administration says this is all wrong.' And I'd say, 'Look, why don't you cover the fucking hearing instead of coming to me with what the administration says?' And they'd say, 'Well, the witness is a drug dealer. Why should I do that?' And I used to say this regularly: 'Look, the minute I find a Lutheran minister or a priest who was on the scene when they delivered six hundred kilos of cocaine at some air base in contra land, I'll put him on the stand, but until then, you take what you can get.' The big papers stayed as far away from this issue as they could. It was like they didn't want to know."
Webb was entering contra land, and when you enter that country, you run into the CIA, since the contras were functionally a CIA army. (The agency hired them, picked their leaders, plotted their strategy, and sometimes, because of contra incompetence, executed raids for them.) This is hardly odd, since the agency was created in 1947 for precisely such toils and has over the decades sponsored armies around the world, whether to land at the Bay of Pigs or kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan. After a year of research, in August 1996, Webb published a three-day, fifteen-thousand-word series in the Mercury News called "Dark Alliance." It is a story almost impossible to recapitulate in detail but simple in outline: Drug dealers working with the contras brought tons of cocaine into California in the 1980s and sold a lot of it to one dealer, a legend called Freeway Ricky Ross, who had connections with the L.A. street gangs and through this happenstance helped launch the national love of crack. That's it, a thesis that mixes the realpolitik of the-ends-justify-the-means with dollops of shit-happens.
The series set off a firestorm in black communities, where many suspected they had been deliberately targeted with the dope as an act of genocide (there is no evidence of that), and provoked repudiations of the story by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. The knockdowns of Webb's story questioned the importance of Nicaraguan dealers like Blandon, the significance of Ricky Ross, how much money, if any, reached the contras, and how crucial any of this was to the crack explosion in the eighties, and brushed aside
any evidence of CIA involvement. But while raising questions about Webb's work, none of these papers or any other paper in the country undertook a serious investigation of Webb's evidence. A Los Angeles Times staff member who was present at a meeting called to plan the Times's response has told me that one motive for the paper's harsh appraisal was simply pride: The Times wasn't going to let an out-of-town paper win a Pulitzer in its backyard.
Later, when it was all over, Webb spelled out exactly what he meant and exactly what he thought of the CIA's skills: The series "focused on the relationship between the contras and the crack king. It mentioned the CIA's role in passing, noting that some of the money had gone to a CIA-run army and that there were federal law-enforcement reports suggesting that the CIA knew about it. I never believed, and never wrote, that there was a grand CIA conspiracy behind the crack plague. Indeed, the more I learned about the agency, the more certain of that I became. The CIA couldn't even mine a harbor without getting its trench coat stuck in its fly."
After a while, the San Jose Mercury News series disappeared except on a few byways of the Internet, Gary Webb was ruined, and things went back to normal. Things like Oliver North's diary entry linking dope and guns for the contras, like Carlos Lehder, a big Colombian drug dealer, testifying as a prosecution witness in federal court during the Noriega trial about the Medellin cartel's $10 million donation to the contras, like the entire history of unseemly connections between the international drug world and the CIA -- all this went away, as it has time and time again in the past. A kind of orthodoxy settled over the American press that assumed that Webb's work had been thoroughly refuted. He became the Discredited Gary Webb.
And so in June 1997, Webb wound up going to a motel room he hated. The Mercury News's editors were supposed to fix him up with an apartment, but they never figured he'd show up for his dead-end transfer from investigative reporter to pretty much a nothing. So they made no arrangements, just shunted him to the paper's Cupertino bureau on the south end of Silicon Valley, his family 150 miles away in Sacramento. After a few days of the motel, he found himself in a tiny apartment. He was in his early forties, and his life and his life's work were over. He endlessly watched a tape of Caddyshack and tried to forget about missing his wife, Sue, his three kids, his dog, his work. He was an ordinary guy, by his lights, with the suburban home, an aquarium in the study, two games a week in an amateur hockey league. Now, during the day, he visited the bureau, and the guys there treated him okay, because they were all in the same boat, people who had pissed off their newspaper and been shipped to its internal Siberia, where they were paid to retool the press releases of the computer and software companies. Webb was fighting the paper through arbitration with the Newspaper Guild, and so while his case dragged on, he refused to let his byline run. But he did his assignments. After all, they were paying him a solid mid-five-figure wage; he was their star investigative reporter, the guy they had brought in from The Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1987 to do, in their words, "kick-ass journalism." Within two years, he'd helped them bring home a Pulitzer with a team of Mercury News reporters who jumped on the San Francisco earthquake. Then he blew the lid off civil forfeiture in
California -- law enforcement's practice of seizing property from alleged crooks and then forgetting to ever convict, try, or even charge them. That series got the law changed. He was hot. He was good. He kicked ass.
Now Caddyshack flickered against his eyes hour after hour. His thirteen-year-old son asked, "Why don't you get another job?" And Gary Webb told him, "That's what they think I'll do. But they're wrong. I'm gonna fight."
But fight how? He was one fucking disgrace. Oliver North described his work as "absolute garbage." Webb was stretched thin. The week the series ran, he and his wife closed on a new house and moved in. Payments. So each morning, he went to the Cupertino bureau, and there were assignments from the city desk. Seems a police horse died, and he was supposed to nail down this equine death. So he did. He investigated the hell out of it and wrote it up, and, by God, the thing was good. Went on page one, of course, without his name on it. The horse died from a medical problem, constipation. The horse was full of shit.
HECTOR BERRELLEZ STUMBLED ONTO GARY WEBB'S STORY YEARS before Gary Webb knew a thing about it. His journey into that world happened this way: Hector was not fond of cops. He remembered them slapping him around when he was a kid. He was a barrio boy from South Tucson, a square mile of poverty embedded in the booming Sun Belt city. His father was a Mexican immigrant. After being drafted into the Army in the late sixties, Berrellez couldn't find a job in the copper mines, so he hooked up as a temporary with the small South Tucson police force to finance his way through college. And it was then that Hector Berrellez accidentally discovered his jones: He loved working the streets with a badge. The state police force hired him, and Hector, still green, managed to do a one-kilo heroin deal in the early seventies, a major score for the time. The DEA snapped him up, and suddenly the kid who had wanted to flee the barrio and become a lawyer was a federal narc. He loved the life. In the DEA, there are the administrators, who usually have little street experience, the suits. And then there are the street guys like Hector, and they call themselves something else. Gunslingers. His hobbies were jogging, weight lifting, guitar playing. And firearms. A Glock? Never. "Only girls carry Glocks," he snaps. "They're a sissy gun. Plastic. You can't hit anyone over the head with a Glock."
In September 1986, Sergeant Tom Gordon of the Los Angeles sheriff's narcotics strike force pieced together intelligence about a big-time drug ring in town run by Danilo Blandon. A month later, on October 23, Gordon went before a judge with a twenty-page detailed statement documenting that "monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported to Florida and laundered....The monies are filtered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua." He got a search warrant for the organization's stash houses. On Friday, October 24, there was a briefing of more than a hundred law-enforcement guys from the sheriff's office, the DEA, the FBI. That was the same day that President Ronald Reagan, after months of hassle, signed a $100 million aid bill that reactivated a licit cash flow to the beleaguered contras. And on Monday, October 27, at daybreak, the strike force simultaneously hit fourteen L.A.-area stash houses connected with Blandon.
That's where just another day in the life of Hector Berrellez got weird. Generally, at that early hour, good dopers are out cold; the work tends toward long nights and sleeping. As Berrellez remembers, "We were expecting to come up with a lot of coke." Instead, they got coffee and sometimes doughnuts. The house he hit had the lights on, and everyone, two men and a woman, was up. The guy who answered the door said, "Good morning; we've been expecting you. Come on in." The house was tidy, the beds were already made, and the damn coffee was on. The
three residents were polite, even congenial. "It was obvious," says Berrellez, "that they were told." The place was clean; all fourteen houses were clean. The only thing Berrellez and the other guys found in the house was a professional scale.
But there was a safe, and Berrellez got one of the residents to open it reluctantly. Inside, he found records of kilos matched with amounts of money, an obvious dope ledger, a photograph of a guy in flight dress in front of what looked to be a military jet, and photographs of some guys in combat. Hector asked the guy who the hell the people in the photographs were, and the guy said, "Oh, they are freedom fighters." What the hell is this? Berrellez wondered. He left and went to a couple of the other houses that had been hit, and Jesus, they were clean, the coffee was on, sometimes there were doughnuts for the cops, and the same kind of documents showed up. But no dope, not a damn thing.
For a holy warrior, October 27, 1986, was a bad day. At the debriefing after the raid, Berrellez remembers one of the cops saying that the houses had been tipped to the raid by "elements of the CIA." And he thought, What? "I was shocked," he says now. "I was in a state of belief." He was supposed to believe that his own government was helping dopers? No way. "I didn't want to believe," he says And so he didn't. He was that rock-solid first-generation citizen, and he believed in America. He remembers having this ongoing argument with his dad about whether there was corruption in the U.S. like the old man had tasted in Mexico. His father would ask, Do you really think things are so clean here? And Hector would have none of it; damn right they're clean here. And he was clean, and he was in a good outfit (a position he is still passionate about -- his absolute love for the troops he served with in the DEA), and he was in a holy war against a tide of poison.
In 1987, he was transferred to Mazatlan in Sinaloa, Mexico, to run the DEA station. Sinaloa was the drug center for Mexico; in the history of the Mexican drug cartels, all but one leader has been Sinaloan born and bred. He took the wife, got a beach house in the coastal city, and ran with the job. Two months into the assignment, narcotrafficantes chased his wife and two-year-old daughter from the beach back to the house, and they had to be evacuated to the States.
In October 1988, Hector and some Mexican federal police hit a small hamlet that housed a ton of coke and twenty tons of marijuana. The firefight lasted three hours, with thousands of rounds exchanged. When three federales were mowed down on the field of fire, Hector managed to pull them to safety with another agent. He commandeered a cab to take the wounded to a hospital, then returned to the shoot-out. For this combat, Hector and two other agents at the scene were brought to the White House and given a medal by Attorney General Edwin Meese. He was on a roll that would eventually earn him twelve consecutive superior-performance awards.
(photo)
Hector Berrellez, twenty-four years in the DEA, known as the agency's Eliot Ness. As he read about Gary Webb, he thought, This shit is true.
In Mexico, Hector was running two hundred to three hundred informants, and he was bringing in a torrent of information on the drug world and its links to the Mexican government. But something else happened down there in Sinaloa that stuck in his mind. His army of informants was constantly reporting strange fortified bases scattered around Mexico, but they were not Mexican military bases, and, his informants told him, the planes were shipping drugs. Camps in Durango, Sinaloa, Baja, Veracruz, all over Mexico. Hector wrote up these camps and the information he was getting on big drug shipments. And each month, he would go to Mexico City to meet with his DEA superiors and American-embassy staff, and he started mentioning these reports. He was told, Stay away from those bases; they're our training camps, special operations. He thought, What the hell is this? I'm here to enforce the drug laws, and I'm being told to do nothing.
THE EMPTY ROOM SAGS WITH FATIGUE AS THE SPORTS TELEVISIONS quietly float in the corner. California's ban on smoking has emptied the watering holes. The hotel squats by a four-lane highway amid bland suburbs that blanket Sacramento's eastern flank against the Sierra Nevada. Everything is normal here; this is the visual bedrock of Ronald Reagan's America.
Gary Webb orders Maker's Mark on the rocks. He is a man of average height, with brown hair, a trim mustache, an easy smile, and laconic, laid-back speech, the basic language of Middle America. He moves easily, a kind of amble through life. His father was a marine, and his childhood meant moving a lot before finally coming to ground in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio. He's married to his high school sweetheart; they have three kids and live on a tree-lined cul-de-sac with a pool in back, a television in the family room, his Toyota with 150,000 miles in the drive, Sue's minivan, and on the cement the chalk outline of a hopscotch game. He looks white-collar, maybe sells insurance.
All he has ever wanted to be is a reporter. He started out as a kid, writing up sports results for a weekly at a nickel an inch. The Gary Webb who suddenly loomed up nationally with this bad talk about the CIA and drugs was a long time coming, and he came from the dull center of the country, and he came from an essay entitled, "What America Means to Me," for which he was runner-up in the fifth-grade essay contest, and he came from the smell of ink, the crackle of a little weekly where he nailed cold the week's tumult in the Little League.
Webb is not a drinker, probably because his marine father was, but now in the empty hotel bar, he is drinking. He is not used to talking about himself, because he is a reporter, and a reporter is not the story, but now he is talking about himself. When Gary Webb talks, he sometimes leans back, but often as not, he leans forward, and when he is really into what he is saying, he grabs his left wrist with his right hand as if he were taking his own pulse, and then his voice gets even flatter, and the words are very evenly spaced, and he never goes too fast, hardly any hint of
rat-a-tat-tat -- he is always measured and unexcited. But when he grabs that wrist, you can tell now that the words really matter. Because he believes. In facts. In publishing facts. In the fact that publishing facts makes a difference in how people look at things. Believes, without reason or question, believes absolutely. As for coincidence, it doesn't fit in with his mission. He also has no tolerance for conspiracy theories. By God, if he finds a conspiracy, it is not a theory, it is a fucking conspiracy, because it is grounded in facts.
When he was twenty-three, he was kind of drifting, living in the basement of Sue's house with her parents. He was writing rock 'n' roll stuff for a weekly, still grinding away at college and about three units shy of a degree. His father walked out on the marriage, leaving his mother, a housewife, and his younger brother without a check. So Webb quit college to support them. A teacher in his journalism department told him that the strange guy who ran the Post in Lexington, Kentucky, set aside one day a week for walk-ins. Webb walked in and said, "I need a job."
The editor said, "Go do two pieces and bring them back in a week."
One was on the barmaids and strippers of Newport, Kentucky, the sin town across the river from Cincinnati. The editor tossed it aside and said, "Thrice-told tale." The other was on a guy who carved gravestones; that one the editor kind of liked. He said, "Bring me two more." Webb was shaken, went home and sat in the backyard, and then he thought, Fuck, I can do this. This goes on for weeks. A kid calls the paper about the dog he's found run over in the street. He's taken it to the Humane Society; they want to put it to sleep, and the kid is very upset. Webb is sent out to see if he can do anything fit for a newspaper. He talks to the vet, who says it is hopeless, that the dog will never walk again, whether he operates or not. When Webb reports back to the editor, he says, "Get that guy on the phone," and after a few blunt words from the editor, by God, the vet is going to operate. And it works. The damn dog is leaping in the air. Finally, the dog goes home to the kid who found him, a kid in a wheelchair who seemed to identify with an injured mutt and was horrified at the idea that a cripple should be done away with. Story and photograph on the front page. Webb is hired. Years later, the old editor would tell him, "If that dog hadn't walked, you'd have never been hired."
There is a guy in the newsroom who is kind of burned out, a city editor. He watches the new hire for a few weeks. He tells him he will teach him the ropes, how to ferret out facts, how to find out damn near anything, how to be an investigative reporter. On one condition. He says Webb has to swear never to become a fucking editor. Webb agrees. His first series was seventeen parts on organized crime in the coal industry. Then he moved up to a good job on The Cleveland Plain Dealer and was in heaven: Ohio was the mother lode of corruption in government. He got an offer from the Mercury News in 1987. After a brief bidding war, he moved the family west, great place to raise kids, and besides, during his father's wanderings as a marine, Webb happened to be born in California. Everything was fine. He was in the Sacramento bureau and so hardly ever in the newsroom, much less around editors. In a big story for the paper, he took on one of the area's major employers. After the first day of the story, the company bought a full-page ad refuting it. After the next installment, the company bought a two-page ad. Webb looked around and noticed that nothing happened to him. The paper backed him up.
GARY WEBB'S "DARK ALLIANCE" BROKE AN OLD STORY. THE HISTORY of the CIA's relationship with international drug dealers has been documented and published, yet it is almost completely unknown to most citizens and reporters. Webb himself had only a dim notion of this record. And so he reacted with horror when the implications of his research first began to become clear to him: that while much of the federal government fought narcotics as a plague, the CIA, in pursuing its foreign-policy goals, sometimes facilitated the work of drug traffickers. "Dark Alliance" is surrounded by a public record that bristles with similar instances of CIA connections with drug people:
-- Alan Fiers, who headed the CIA Central American Task Force, testified during the Iran-contra hearings in August 1987, "With respect to [drug trafficking by] the resistance forces...it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people."
-- In 1983, fifty people, many of them Nicaraguans, were caught unloading a big coke shipment in San Francisco. A couple of them claimed involvement with the CIA, and after a meeting between CIA officials and the U.S. attorney handling the case, $36,000 found in a bedside table was returned because it "belonged to the contras." This spring, when the CIA published its censored report on involvement of the agency with drug traffickers in the contra war (a report that exists solely because a firestorm erupted in Congress after Webb's series), this incident was explained thusly: "Based upon the information available to them at the time, CIA personnel reached the erroneous conclusion that one of the two individuals...was a former CIA asset." Logically, an admission that CIA "assets" can sometimes be drug dealers.
-- In 1986, Wanda Palacio parted company with the Medellin cartel and started talking to Senator John Kerry's subcommittee, which was looking into the byways of the contra war and dope. Palacio said she'd witnessed two flights of coke out of Barranquilla, Colombia, on planes belonging to the CIA-contracted Southern Air Transport. She also had the dates and had seen the pilot. She also said Jorge Ochoa, another drug boss, said the flights were part of a "drugs for guns" deal. On September 26, 1986, Kerry took her eleven-page statement to William Weld, who was then the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division of the Justice Department. Weld allowed that he was not surprised to find claims of "bum agents, former and current CIA agents" dabbling in dope deals with the Colombian cartels. On October 3, Weld's office rejected Palacio's statement and offer to be a witness because of what it saw as contradictions in her testimony. On October 5, 1986, the Sandinistas shot a CIA plane out of the sky and captured one of Oliver North's patriots, one Eugene Hasenfus. Palacio was sitting in Kerry's office when a photograph of Hasenfus's dead pilot flashed across the television screen. She whooped that the pilot was the same guy she'd seen in Colombia loading coke on the Southern Air Transport flight in early October 1985. An Associated Press reporter, Robert Parry, investigated the crash and obtained the pilot's logs, which showed that on October 2, 4, and 6, 1985, the pilot had taken a Southern Air Transport plane to Barranquilla, Colombia. Palacio took a polygraph on the matter and passed.
-- Through much of the contra war, SETCO Air, an airline run by Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros out of Honduras, was the principal airline used to transport supplies and personnel for the contras. Hector Berrellez later sent Ballesteros to Marion Federal Prison in Illinois to serve a couple of life sentences for dope peddling.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME GARY WEBB WAS MAKING HIS BONES AT The Cleveland Plain Dealer and winning part of a Pulitzer at the Mercury News, Hector Berrellez was becoming a legend. After two years of living at ground zero in Sinaloa, he was brought home to Los Angeles in 1989 to take over the most significant investigation in DEA history, that of the murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. Camarena had been bagged in broad daylight from in front of the American consulate in Guadalajara in February 1986. His tortured body was found a month later. The investigation had stalled, so the DEA tossed it in Hector's lap. He ran with the new power, the raft of agents under his command, the huge budget for buying informants in Mexico. The case was a core matter for the DEA: The murder of Camarena was the event that gave the ragtag agency its martyr. The investigation was called Operation Leyenda, "Operation Legend."
During Operation Leyenda, a major drug guy in Sinaloa called Cochi Loco, "the Crazy Pig," put a contract on Hector's head. In the drug world, there are so many possible reasons for murder that a simple one is seldom clear. Whatever the immediate cause, in the early nineties a hit team was sent north to kill Hector.
One day in 1991, in the underground garage of the building in Los Angeles where the DEA and a bunch of federal agencies rent office space, someone walked up to a guy sitting in a car and clipped him in the head with a .22. The man died instantly and fell forward into the steering wheel, and the sound of a car horn wailed through the garage. Hector remembers that they found him with the motor running, and neatly placed on the floorboard of the car was the gun, in a Mexican-tooled holster, and the two latex surgical gloves that had been worn by the hit man. Someone wanted a clear message delivered.
The dead man was a guy from the General Services Administration who happened to work in the same building as the DEA. He had been in some kind of a hurry and had pulled into a DEA parking space. The guy was a ringer for Hector's partner. Three days after the hit, Hector picked up the phone in his office and heard the voice of Chichon Rico Urrea, a significant drug figure who was doing a stint in a prison in Guadalajara. Chichon told Hector, "You see what happened to your guy in the garage? That's going to happen to more of your guys."
Hector told the guy to go fuck himself, said he could kill all the fucking GSA guys he wanted. But Hector was questioning his faith. The faith was the war on drugs. The faith was that he was a righteous soldier in this war. The faith was that he was risking his life for the forces of light against the forces of darkness. And he was Eliot Ness, goddammit; he was the most decorated guy anyone could remember in the DEA, the man running its key investigation, the guy who had killed people, the guy bloodied in the world of Mexican corruption. All of that Hector could handle -- none of that could ever touch the faith. But other things could. Things he saw and learned in Mexico. And things he saw in the United States. He began to doubt that there was a real commitment to win this war on drugs. He saw his government winking at too many narcotics connections. He took Kiki Camarena's murder personally, because as agents they were mirror images -- gung-ho, committed drugbusters. And impediments to his investigation pissed Hector off. So in 1992, four years before Gary Webb sprang "Dark Alliance" on the world, Hector Berrellez sat down in his federal office in Los Angeles and picked up the phone and recommended action to the DEA. Things had come to his attention, and he thought, Somebody's gotta investigate this crap. In fact, he hoped to be that investigator.
Hector Berrellez wanted a criminal investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency. His $3 million snitch budget had brought in an unseemly harvest, report after report from informants that in the eighties CIA-leased aircraft were flying cocaine into places like the air-force base in Homestead, Florida, and the airfield north of Tucson long believed to be a CIA base. And that these planes were flying guns south. One of his witnesses in the Camarena case told him about flying in a U.S. military plane loaded with drugs from Guadalajara to Homestead. Other informants told him that major drug figures, including Rafael Caro Quintero, the man finally imprisoned for the Camarena murder, were getting guns delivered through CIA connections. Everywhere he turned, he ran into dope guys who had CIA connections, and to a narc this didn't look right. "I can't believe," he told his superiors, "that the CIA is handling all this shit and doesn't know what these pilots are doing." His superiors asked if he had hard evidence of actual CIA case officers moving dope, and he said no, just lots of people they employed. All intelligence services use the fabled “cutouts” to separate themselves from their grubby work.
The DEA in Washington asked for a memo, so Hector fired off a summary of his telephone request. Agents were assigned, and Hector shipped every snippet of new information to this team. Nothing came of the investigation. The DEA team came out and debriefed him and some of his agents. And then, silence.
Hector's Camarena work had burrowed deep, very deep, inside the Mexican government and found endless rot. With the vote on NAFTA in the air in the fall of 1993, his investigation started to get pressure, then his budget was cut. By 1994, after Justice Department officials had been in Mexico City, he was told, "Don't report that crap anymore." It was clear to Hector that the Mexican government wanted this Camarena investigation reined in. In early 1995, he learned of his future in a curious way. One of Hector's informants in Mexico City called another one of his informants in Los Angeles and said, Hector's getting transferred to Washington. The guy in Los Angeles said, No, no Hector's still here. Two months later, in April 1995, Berrellez was transferred to Washington, D.C. Over the years, Hector had become used to a certain amount of duplicity in the DEA. Some of his fellow agents, he had come to believe, were actually members of the CIA. The DEA had been penetrated.
At headquarters, Hector sat in an office with nothing to do. "There ain't no fucking drug war," he says now. "I was even called un-American. Nobody cares about this shit." He started going a little crazy. Each day, he checked into a blank schedule. So he caught a lot of double features.
In September 1996, he retired. He had had enough. The most decorated soldier in the war on drugs kind of faded out at the movies.
IN THE NEWS BUSINESS, IF YOU HANG AROUND LONG enough, you get a chance to find out who you are. Gary Webb was determined not to find out he was something ugly.
"I became convinced," he remembers, "that we're going to look back on the whole war on drugs fifty years from now like we look back on the McCarthy era and say, How did we ever let this stuff get so out of hand? How come nobody ever stood up and said, This is bullshit? I thought I had an obligation because I had the power at that point to tell people, Don't believe what you're being told about this war on drugs, because it is a lie. Very few people were in the position I was in, where I was able to write shit and get it in the newspapers. It was a very rare privilege. The editors at the Mercury gave me a lot of freedom because I produced. Then I got into this thing."
In December 1995, Webb wrote out his project memo, and suddenly, "I realized what we were saying here. I'm sitting at home, and this e-mail comes from a friend at the Los Angeles Times. And I had told him vaguely about this interesting story I was working on. I told him that he had no idea what his fucking government is capable of "And I was depressed because this was so horrible. It was like some guy told me that he had gone through the looking glass and was in this nether world that 99 percent of the American public would never believe existed. That's where I felt I was. When I sat down and wrote the project memo and said, Here's what we're going to say, and we're going to be accusing the government of bringing drugs into the country, essentially, and we've spent billions of dollars and locked up Americans for selling shit that the government helps to come into the country -- is just...If you believe in democracy and you believe in justice, it's fucking awful."
(Continued)
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #2 |
(CONTINUED)
For six weeks after his series came out, Webb waited in a kind of honeymoon. His e-mail was exploding, he recalls, "from ordinary people who said, 'This has restored my faith in newspapers.' It was from college students, housewives that heard me on the radio; it was really remarkable to think that journalism could have this kind of effect on people, that people were out marching in the streets because of something that had been hidden from us all these years. The thing that surprised me was that there was no response from the press, from the government. It was total silence."
Finally, in early October, The Washington Post ran a story by Robert Suro and Walter Pincus headlined, THE CIA AND CRACK: EVIDENCE IS LACKING OF ALLEGED PLOT. The story focused in part on the fact that Webb had given a defense attorney questions to ask Oscar Danilo Blandon about his CIA connections. It also quoted experts who denied that the crack epidemic originated in Los Angeles, disputed that Freeway Rick Ross and Blandon were significant national players in the cocaine trade of the eighties (pegging Blandon's coke business at five tons over the decade, whereas Webb had evidence that it was more like two to five tons per year). And, the article continued, there was no evidence that the black community had been deliberately targeted (the "plot" referred to in the headline and a claim never made by Webb), that the CIA knew about Blandon's drug deals (also a claim never made by Webb, who in the series merely connected Blandon to CIA agents), or that Blandon had ever kicked in more than $60,000 to the contra cause (the Post based this number on unnamed law-enforcement officials;
Webb based his estimate of millions of dollars to the contras from dope sales on grand-jury testimony and court documents). Perhaps the best summary of the Post's retort to Webb came from the paper's own ombudsman, Geneva Overholser, some weeks later: "The Post...showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws in San Jose's answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves. They were stronger on how much less money was contributed to the contras by the Mercury News's villains that their series claimed, how much less cocaine was introduced into L.A., than on how significant it is that any of these assertions are true."
In late October, the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times weighed in on consecutive days. The Los Angeles Times had two years before described Freeway Rick Ross vividly: "If there was an eye to the storm, if there was a criminal mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick....Ross did more than anyone else to democratize it, boosting volume, slashing prices, and spreading disease on a scale never
before conceived....While most other dealers toiled at the bottom rungs of the market, his coast-to-coast conglomerate was selling more than five hundred thousand rocks a day, a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars." In the 1996 response to Webb's series, the Los Angeles Times described Ross as one of many "interchangeable characters" and stated, "How the crack epidemic reached that extreme, on some level, had nothing to do with Ross." Both stories were written by the same reporter, Jesse Katz, and the 1996 story failed to mention his earlier characterization. The long New York Times piece the following day quoted unnamed government officials, CIA personnel, drug agents, and contras, and noted that "officials said the CIA had no record of Mr. Blandon before he appeared as a central figure in the series in the Mercury News."
A common chord rang through the responses of all three papers: It never really happened, and if it did happen, it was on a small scale, and anyway it was old news, because both the Kerry report and a few wire stories in the eighties had touched on the contra-cocaine connection. What is missing from the press responses, despite their length, is a sense that anyone spent as much energy investigating Webb's case as attempting to refute it. The "Dark Alliance" series was passionate, not clinical. The headlines were tabloid, not restrained. But whatever sins were committed in the presentation of the series, they cannot honestly be used to dismiss its content. It is puzzling that The New York Times felt it could discredit the story by quoting anonymous intelligence officials (a tack hardly followed in publishing the Pentagon Papers). In contrast, what is striking in Webb's series is the copius citation of documents. (In the Mercury News's Web-site version-cgi.sjmercury.com/drugs/postscriptfeatures.htm -- are the hyperlinked facsimiles of documents that tug one into the dark world of drugs and agents.) But when Jerry Ceppos, the executive editor of the Mercury News, wrote a letter in response to the Post's knockdown, the paper refused to print it because a defense of Webb's work would have resulted in spreading more "misinformation."
Despite Ceppos's initial defense of the series, the Mercury News seemed to choke on these attacks, and Webb could sense a sea change, But he kept on working, building a a bigger base of facts, following its implications deeper into the government. When the Mercury News forced him to choose between a $600,000 movie offer and book deals and staying on the story, Webb picked the story. He kept discovering people who had flown suitcases full of money to Miami from dope sales for the contras. He documented Blandon's contra dope sales from '82 through '86. Gary Webb was on a tear; he was going to advance the story. Almost none of this was published by the Mercury News; the paper grudgingly ran (and buried) one last story on New Year's Eve 1996.
The paper had printed the story of the decade, the one with Pulitzer prize written all over it, and now was unmistakably backing off it. Webb entered a kind of Orwellian world where no one said anything, but there was this thing in the air. The Mercury News assigned one of its own reporters to review the series, using the stories of the L.A. Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post as the benchmark for what was fact.
Webb wouldn't admit it to himself, but he had become a dead man walking.
WHEN HECTOR BERRELLEZ SPENT HIS YEAR GOING TO MOVIES IN Washington, he knew he was finished in the DEA. One day in October 1996, a month after he retired, Hector Berrellez picked up a newspaper and read this big story about a guy named Gary Webb. Hector had lived in shadows, and talking to reporters had not been his style. "As I read, I thought, This shit is true," he says now. He hadn't a doubt about what Webb was saying. He saw the reporter as doomed. Webb hit a sensitive area, and for it he would be attacked and disbelieved.
Hector knew all about the Big Dog and the Big Boy rules.
Hector's body aches from the weight of secrets. When we meet, he is in a white sport shirt, slacks, a blue blazer with brass buttons, and a shoulder-holstered 9mm with fifteen rounds in the clip and two more clips strapped under his right arm. He may be a little over-armed for his Los Angeles private-investigation agency (the Mayo Group, which handles the woes of figures in the entertainment industry -- that pesky stalker, that missing money -- for a fat fee up front and two hundred dollars an hour), but not for his history. For the rest of his life, Hector Berrellez will be sitting in nice hotels like this one with a cup of coffee in his hand, a 9mm under his jacket, and very quick eyes.
He saw a lot of things and remembers almost all of them. He wrote volumes of reports. In 1997, he was interviewed by Justice Department officials about those unseemly drug ledgers and contra materials he saw during the raid on the fourteen Blandon stash houses back in 1986. His interviewers wanted particularly to know whether anyone besides Hector had seen them. They then told Hector that they couldn't find the seized material anymore.
Before he retired, Hector was summoned to Washington to brief Attorney General Janet Reno on Mexican corruption. He talked to her at length about how the very officials she was dealing with in Mexico had direct links to drug cartels. He remembers that she asked very few questions. Now he sits in the nice lounge of the nice hotel, and he believes the CIA is in the dope business; he believes the agency ran camps in Mexico for the contras, with big planes flying in and out full of dope. He now knows in his bones what the hell he really saw on October 27, 1986, when he hit the door of that house in the Los Angeles area and was greeted with politeness and fresh coffee.
But he doesn't carry a smoking gun around. The photos, the ledgers, all the stuff the cops found that morning as they hit fourteen stash houses where all the occupants seemed to be expecting company, all that material went to Washington and seems to have vanished. All those reports he wrote for years while in Mexico and then later running the Camarena case, those detailed reports of how he kept stumbling into dope deals done by CIA assets, never produced any results or even a substantive response.
Hector Berrellez is a kind of freak. He is decorated; he is an official hero with a smiling Ed Meese standing next to him in an official White House photograph. He pulled twenty-four years and retired with honors. He is, at least for the moment, neither discredited nor smeared. Probably because until this moment, he's kept silent.
And Hector Berrellez thinks that if the blacks and the browns and the poor whites who are zombies on dope ever get a drift of what he found out, well, there is going to be blood in the streets, he figures -- there is going to be hell to pay. He tells me a story that kind of sums up the place he finally landed in, the place that Gary Webb finally landed in. The place where you wonder if you are kind of nuts, since no one else seems to think anything is wrong. An agent he knows was deep in therapy, kind of cracking up from the undercover life. And the agent's shrink decided the guy was delusional, was living in some nutcase world of weird fantasies. So the doctor talked to Hector about his patient, about whether all the bullshit this guy was claiming was true, about dead men and women and children, strange crap like that. And he made a list of his patient's delusions, and he ticked them off to Hector. And Hector listened to them one by one and said, "Oh, that one, that's true. This one, yeah, that happened also." It went on like that. And finally, Hector could tell the shrink wondered just who was nuts -- Hector, his patient, or himself.
ON SUNDAY, MAY 11, 1997, GARY WEBB WAS hanging wallpaper in his kitchen when the San Jose Mercury News published a column by executive editor Jerry Ceppos that was widely read as a repudiation of Webb's series. It was an odd composition that retracted nothing but apologized for everything. Ceppos wrote, "Although the members of the drug ring met with contra leaders paid by the CIA and Webb believes the relationship was a tight one, I feel we did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship." Fair enough, except that Webb never wrote that top CIA officials knew of the contra-cocaine connection. The national press wrote front-page stories saying that the San Jose Mercury News was backing off its notorious series about crack. The world had been restored to its proper order. Webb fell silent. He had to deal with his own nature. He is not good at being polite. "I'm just fucking stubborn," he says, "and that's all there was to it, because I knew this was a good story, and I knew it wasn't over yet, and I really had no idea of what else to do. What else was I going to do?"
What he did was have the Newspaper Guild represent him in arbitration with the Mercury News over the decision to ship him to the wasteland of Cupertino. "I'm going to go through arbitration, and I'm going to win the arbitration, and I'm going to go to work," he says. "I was just going to fight it out. This was what I did, this was me, I was a reporter. This was a calling; it was not something you do eight to five. People were not exactly
beating down my door, saying, Well, okay, come work for us. I was...unreliable." So he went to Cupertino, and he wrote stories about constipated horses and refused to let his byline be printed. And then he went to his
apartment and missed his wife and family and watched Caddyshack endlessly. He was a creature living a ghostly life. The only thing he didn't figure on was himself. Webb slid into depression. Every week, the 150-mile drive between his family in Sacramento and his job in Cupertino became harder. Every day, it was harder to get out of bed and go to work.
And he was very angry most of the time. He says, "I was going to live in my own house and see my own kids. At some point, I figured something was going to give." Finally, he couldn't make it to work and took vacation time. When that was used up in early August, he started calling in sick. After that, he went on medical leave. A doctor examined him and said, "You are under a great deal of stress," and diagnosed him as having severe depression. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't do much of anything. He decided to write a book about "Dark Alliance," but this time no one wanted it. His agent was turned down by twenty-five publishers before finding a small press, Seven Stories, that operates as a kind of New York court of last resort.
A job offer came from the California state legislature to conduct investigations for the government-oversight committee at about the same money he made for the Mercury News. His wife said, Take the job. Why hang around in this limbo? Webb thought about her words and told himself, What do I win even if I do win in arbitration? I get to go back to my office and get bullshitted the rest of my life. He watered his lawn, worked on the house, read more and more contra stuff. Drifted in a sea of depression. "I didn't know what to do if I couldn't be a reporter," he says. "So all of a sudden, I was standing there on the edge of the cliff, and I don't have what I was doing for the last twenty years -- I don't have that to do anymore. I felt it was like I was neutered. I called up the Guild and said, 'Let's see if they want to settle this case.' They sent me a letter of resignation that I had to sign."
Webb carried the letter with him from November 19 to December 10 of last year. Every day, he got up to sign the letter and mail it. Every night, he went to bed with the letter unsigned. His wife would ask, Have you signed it? Somebody from the Mercury kept calling the Guild and asking, Has he signed it yet? "I mean," he says softly, "writing my name on that thing meant the end of my career. I saw it as a sort of surrender. It was like signing," and here he hesitates for several seconds, "my death certificate."
But finally he signed, and now he is functionally banned from the business. He's the guy nobody wants, the one who fucked up, the one who said bad things. Officially, he is dead, the guy who wrote the discredited series, the one who questioned the moral authority of the United States government.
If Gary Webb could have talked to a Hector Berrellez in the fall of 1996, when his stories were being erased by the media, Hector would have been like a savior to him. "Because he would have shown what I was reporting was not an aberration," Webb says now, "that this was part of a pattern of CIA involvement with drugs. And he would have been believed." But Webb was not that lucky, and the Hectors of the world were not that ready to talk then. So Webb was left out there alone, one guy with a bunch of interviews and documents. One guy who answered a question no one wanted asked.
I CAN HEAR HECTOR BERRELLEZ TELLING ME that I will never find a smoking gun. I can hear the critics of Gary Webb explaining that all he has is circumstantial evidence. Like anyone who dips into the world of the CIA, I find myself questioning the plain facts I read and asking myself, Does this really mean what I think it means?
-- In 1982, the head of the CIA got a special exemption from the federal requirement to report dealings with drug traffickers. Why did the CIA need such an exemption?
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/13.gif http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/14.gif http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/ex1.html
http://www.house.gov/waters/ciareportwww.htm
http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/cia.html
-- Courthouse documents attest to the fact that the Blandon drug organization moved tons of dope for years with impunity, shipped millions to be laundered in Florida, and then bought arms for the contras. Why are Gary Webb's detractors not looking at these documents and others instead of bashing Webb over the head?
-- The internal CIA report of contra cocaine activity has never been released. The Justice Department investigation of Webb's charges has never been released. The CIA has released a censored report on only one volume of Webb's charges. The contra war is over, yet this material is kept secret. Why aren't the major newspapers filing Freedom of Information [Act] requests for these studies?
-- The fifty-year history of CIA involvement with heroin traffickers and other drug connections is restricted to academic studies and fringe publications. Those journalists who find themselves covering the war on drugs should read Alfred McCoy's massive study, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, or Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall's Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America.
-- Following the release of "Dark Alliance," Senator John Kerry told The Washington Post, "There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, on the payroll of, and carrying the credentials of, the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while involved in support of the contras." Why has the massive Kerry report been ignored to this day?
http://www.thememoryhole.org/kerry/index.htm
-- On March 16, 1998, the CIA inspector general, Frederick P. Hitz, testified before the House Intelligence Committee. "Let me be frank," he said. "There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations."
Representative Norman Dicks of Washington then asked, "Did any of these allegations involve trafficking in the United States?"
"Yes," Hitz answered.
The question is why a mountain of evidence about the CIA and drugs is ignored and why the legitimate field of inquiry opened by Webb remains unpursued and has become journalistic taboo.
Maybe the CIA is great for America. But if it is, surely it can roll up its sleeves and show us its veins.
WEBB AND HIS WIFE, SUE, ARE STANDING IN the driveway with me after a Thai dinner in Sacramento. The night is fresh; spring is in the air. A frog croaks from the backyard on the quiet and safe suburban street. Sue has just finished rattling off details from one facet of the contra war, the CIA drug-airline operation run out of Ilopango airfield in El Salvador. She seems to have absorbed a library of material over the last three years of her husband's obsession. Before, he always worked like hell, she knows, but on this one he brought it home. He could not keep it separated from his wife and family and his weekly hockey games. So Sue, with her winning smile and cheerful ways, has become an authority on America's dark pages. And we stand there in the fine evening air, the rush of spring surging through the trees and grass and shrubs, talking about the endless details of this buried episode in the secret history.
And I wonder how Webb deals with it, with all the hard work done, with all the facts and documents devoured, and with all this diligent toil resulting in his personal ruin, depriving him of the only kind of work he has ever wanted in his life.
And I remember what he said earlier that day while he sat in his study, leaning toward me, his right hand gripping his left wrist: "The trail is littered with bodies. You go down the last ten years, and there is a skeleton here and a skeleton there of somebody that found out about it and wrote about it. I thought that this is the truth, and what can they do to you if you tell the truth? What can they do to you if you write the truth?"
(c)1998 by Hearst Communications, Inc. Printed in the USA.
Copyright © 1997-2004 by the Hearst Corporation.
Find this article at: /pubs/Esquire/1998/09/01/170764
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #3 |
The National Security Archives: (Awesome site!) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
Ollie North’s diary entries, memos, email (2/26/04) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm
Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance Home Page http://home.comcast.net/~gary.webb/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html
Congressional Testimony of Celerino Castillo: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/contra1.html
Photographs and additional notes from Castillo’s career: http://www.drugwar.com/castillo.shtm
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/DEA.35.html
U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters’ website: http://www.house.gov/waters/ (see press releases 1996-2000)
http://www.house.gov/waters/ciareportwww.htm and http://www.house.gov/waters/volii.press1198.htm
A Chronology From Mother Jones Magazine: http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/coke.html
http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/cia.html
Actual copy of the CIA agreement allowing drugs: http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/13.gif and http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/14.gif and http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/ex1.html
FAIR covers media cover-up http://www.fair.org/issues-news/contra-crack.html
California State University Northridge (CSUN) Professor of Communications Ben Attias’
Cocaine Import Agency website: http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/
Retired Federal Agent Michael Levine: http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/essays/e1.htm
Former Associated Press & Newsweek writer Bob Parry: http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html
Knight and Bernstein CIA-drug allegations 1987-1997 http://www.flashpoints.net/ArticleArchiveIndex.html
Interview with Professor Alfred McCoy: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/heroin/mccoy1.htm
Former law enforcement agents comment on drug war: http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/
Website of Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D., a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America. http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/index.html
The Media Cover-Up: (excellent article) http://www.copi.com/articles/darker.html
The Kerry Commission’s report online: http://www.webcom.com/pinknoiz/covert/contracoke.html
http://www.thememoryhole.com/kerry/
Testimony of Lt. Col. James “Bo” Gritz http://www.aiipowmia.com/ssc/gritz.html and http://www.decentria.com/trimmer.html
http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/gritz/index.htm and http://www.serendipity.li/cia/gritz1.htm
A Tainted Deal
Commentary: From 1982 to 1995 the CIA did not to have to report if they suspected any of their agents of dealing drugs. Why? Plus: History 101: The CIA & Drugs. The CIA has a long and sordid history with drug traffickers. And it's all in the Congressional Record. By Eric Umansky June 16, 1998
It's the kind of government exchange you assume never actually takes place. But it did. And it went something like this: CIA Chief: Dear Attorney General, Do you mind if CIA agents or informants are dealing drugs? I mean, we don't have to tell on them, do we? Attorney General: Of course not! Well, you did. But I just changed the law. Don't worry about it. CIA Chief: Gee, thanks! This may sound absurd, but according to a series of recently declassified documents obtained by the MoJo Wire, it's just what happened in the spring of 1982. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey's request to then-Attorney General William French Smith isn't in the public domain. But two letters, one from Smith thanking Casey for his request, and a follow-up by Casey, are both available. They were released as part of a internal CIA report that explored allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. (The most comprehensive allegations were reported by Gary Webb in a series of San Jose Mercury News reports and a book entitled "Dark Alliance.") In the first document, Smith thanks Casey for his letter (the one that isn't public) and says: "...in view of the fine cooperation the Drug Enforcement Administration has received from CIA, no formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these procedures." --William French Smith
Attorney General [See the full document] Casey in return thanks the Attorney General for his understanding: "I am pleased that these procedures, which I believe strike the proper balance between enforcement of the law and protection of intelligence sources and methods, will now be forwarded to other agencies..." --William J. Casey
Director, Central Intelligence Agency [See the full document] The two men then codified their agreement in a Memorandum of Understanding. According to the agreement, intelligence agencies would not have to report if any of their agents were involved in drug running. (By agents, the agreement meant CIA sources and informants. Full-time employees still couldn't deal drugs.) That understanding remained in effect until August of 1995, when current Attorney General Janet Reno rescinded the agreement. It's reasonable that the CIA be allowed to keep its mouth shut if it knows that some of its agents are involved in minor illegal affairs. Presumably some of the value of informants comes from the fact that they keep company with shady characters who engage in unlawful activities. But why would the CIA ask to be exempt specifically from drug enforcement laws? According to Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who is calling for full disclosure of the facts, "The CIA knew that the Contras were dealing drugs. They made this deal with the Attorney General to protect themselves from having to report it." Some of the remaining questions may still be answered. The Department of Justice and the CIA have finished separate investigations into possible CIA involvement in drug smuggling. But neither report has been made available to the public; the Justice department cites an "ongoing investigation" while the CIA says their report is an internal document and therefore classified. Says Congresswoman Waters: "What is it they don't want Americans to see? If the CIA was involved in drug trafficking, they should be brought to justice. Not covered up."
SEE THE ACTUAL DOCUMENTS ON THE CIA'S WEBSITE:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/13.gif http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/14.gif http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/ex1.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/total_coverage/coke.html
Total Coverage: The CIA, Contras, and Drugs News: The CIA-coke connection was detailed long before Dark Alliance -- and the evidence keeps coming By Eric Umansky August 25, 1998 You may have seen the headline last month on the front page of the NEW YORK TIMES. (Then again, you may not have, since it ran in a small box on the bottom-left corner.) It announced, "CIA Says It Used Nicaraguan Rebels Accused of Drug Tie." The beginning of that story read: "The CIA continued to work with about two dozen Nicaraguan rebels and their supporters during the 1980s despite allegations they were trafficking in drugs.... [T]he agency's decision to keep those paid agents, or to continue dealing with them in some less formal relationship, was made by top officials at headquarters in Langley, Va." In other words, top officials at the CIA knew the agency was working with Contra drug traffickers and didn't do anything about it. But the story, even with that shocking headline, quickly disappeared. None of the other major papers, news magazines, or TV networks reported the NEW YORK TIMES' findings.  How did it come to this? The paper of record running a story, perhaps leaked purposely by the CIA itself, that admits what many have charged for years...and then the story disappears as quickly as it came.
A look at the twisted history of the CIA/Contra/cocaine story: If you've heard about the CIA/Contra/crack allegations, it's probably because of Gary Webb, who in August 1996 authored several stories for the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS. Titled "Dark Alliance," the series linked drug smuggling by CIA-trained Contras to the crack epidemic that has ravaged America. It never actually said the CIA knew about the drugs, but it did strongly imply it (the logo for the series -- yes, it had a logo -- showed a person smoking crack, superimposed over the CIA seal.) The series ignited a firestorm of controversy. And the major papers, specifically the NEW YORK TIMES, LOS ANGELES TIMES, and WASHINGTON POST, all ran lengthy pieces questioning the accuracy of Webb's reporting. (These stories were themselves criticized for being hell-bent on proving Gary Webb wrong, rather than attempting to follow up on his stories.) Even Webb's own editor retreated from the story's conclusions. But the story of the CIA-funded Contras trafficking coke isn't new. And neither is the surprising lack of media interest in getting to the bottom of it: Contra supporters dealing cocaine to fund their army was actually first reported in 1985, in an article by Robert Parry and Brian Barger of the ASSOCIATED PRESS. After interviewing DEA, Customs, and FBI officials, the article said there was evidence the Contras were importing drugs into the U.S. to support their war effort. No other newspapers followed up on the story. As would be the case in the future, though the press ignored the allegations, the Reagan administration didn't. The Justice Department contacted the editors at the AP and politely asked them to remove references in that story that connected Contra drug-smuggling to John Hull, a CIA "asset" in Costa Rica. But information on Contra/drug connections kept coming. In 1987, the allegations eventually led to a Senate investigation (anybody remember that one?) led by John Kerry (D-Mass.). Among the juicier moments: Senator KERRY: What did you do with those drugs?
Mr. MORALES: Sell them.
Senator KERRY: What did you do with the money?
Mr. MORALES: Give it to the Contras.
Senator KERRY: All right.
But did the Kerry committee report find that the U.S. knew about Contra coke-dealing? Here's an excerpt from the executive summary: [I]t is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. What was the response when the Kerry Committee report was released? According to a Lexis-Nexis search, only four major papers reported the committee's findings -- none on the front page. The NEW YORK TIMES' story, tucked away on Page 8, did mention one of the committee's more interesting findings: "The State Department paid $806,401 between January and August 1986 to four companies that distributed humanitarian aid to the contras but 'were owned and operated by narcotics traffickers.'" But if the media weren't biting, the Reagan administration was keenly interested in the committee findings. Jack Blum, the lead investigator for the committee, complained that the administration obstructed the investigation. The report itself complains of pressure from the executive branch: "...officials in the Justice Department sought to undermine attempts by Senator Kerry to have hearings held on the [Contra drug] allegations." Oliver North's diary contained at least two extraordinary entries: From a July 12, 1985, meeting with Richard Secord, North's boss in the Reagan administration: "$14M to finance came from drugs." This entry, which was given in part to the Kerry Committee, was first reported in NEWSWEEK. North claimed he did nothing wrong and said the Kerry Committee was "just playing politics and dragging out wild charges." And this entry on Aug. 9, 1985, which was submitted as part of the Iran-Contra special prosecutor report: "Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S." North claimed he told the DEA about this plane. In 1994, the WASHINGTON POST decided to verify North's claim. The POST interviewed top law officials, from the DEA, Customs, State Department, CIA, and White House, including some who had meetings with North at the time of the diary entry. Each one said that North did not pass the information on to them. North's diaries weren't the only evidence of Contra drug involvement that came out as a result of the Iran-Contra hearings. CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan Fiers testified during the hearings: "With respect to [drug trafficking by] the Resistance Forces...it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people." In 1991, the University of California Press published "Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America." The book, written by Peter Dale Scott, an English professor, and Jonathan Marshall, then the economics editor for the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, contained what is still the most detailed and extensive evidence of Contra drug dealing and potential connections to the CIA. The book, mostly based on testimony from the Kerry Committee and other publicly available sources, got nice write-ups in the book review sections of many papers. No major news organizations followed up on the reporting in the book. E-mail the Expert:
From: Gary Webb
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 1998 22:22:06 EDT
To: umansky@motherjones.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Subject: Re: CIA/coke NYT article
>Do you feel vindicated?
The second CIA report not only vindicates me, but all the other reporters and activists who have been trying to bring this to the public's attention for the last 13 years. It also proves that, once again, the CIA lied to the American public and was assisted in this effort by our national news media, which denigrated anyone who challenged the official denials.
| The "Dark Alliance" Controversy The story mostly stayed out of the media for the next five years. Then Gary Webb and the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS released "Dark Alliance." In many ways, the series didn't advance the CIA/Contras/drugs story. But it did make one stunning allegation: The Contras' drug-smuggling operation bore major responsibility for a public-health epidemic in America. "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America..." The other papers skewered Webb for, among other things, suggesting that CIA headquarters knew of the Contras' drug dealings. His own paper backed away from that suggestion too. Jerry Ceppos, executive editor of the SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, wrote in an editor's note that "[T]he story was right on many important points." But, he said, the story was wrong to imply CIA knowledge of Contra drug-dealing. (Yes, that's the very knowledge the CIA just admitted to the NEW YORK TIMES last month.) Ironically, it was the title and graphic of the story -- "Dark Alliance" and a picture of a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA logo -- that most strongly implied a direct CIA connection to drug dealing. And titles and graphics are rarely the responsibility of the author. The best wrap-up of both Webb's story and the big papers' responses to it appeared in the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, in an article by Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at the National Security Archive. He agreed with the major papers' assertions that Webb's feature contained hyperbole and overstatement. But he also pointed out that the major papers' rebuttals had similar problems. He concluded that, by attacking Webb's story rather than following leads, "The mainstream press shirked its larger duty; thus it bears the larger burden." The New Evidence Both the Justice Department and the CIA launched investigations as a result of the "Dark Alliance" series. The results, so far, have dislodged new evidence that gives credence to Webb's account, some of it shocking: The CIA decided to separate its findings into two reports. The first, with the snappy title "Volume I: The California Story," mostly vindicated the CIA, with one interesting exception: The CIA acknowledged that it had contacted the U.S. Attorney General's office in San Francisco and asked if money seized in a drug bust -- the largest bust in California history at the time -- could please be returned to the defendant. The money, the CIA said, wasn't part of a drug operation; it belonged to the Contras. According to CIA cables released as part of the report, "[T]he United States Attorney was most deferential to our interests." The Justice Department report, meanwhile, delayed for months because of an "ongoing investigation," was finally released in July. Its scope was limited to finding out whether any Justice Department investigations or prosecutions were affected by the supposed connections between the CIA, the Contras, and drugs. It agreed with the CIA: The intelligence agency had intervened in a drug case in the U.S. on behalf of the Contras. But the most shocking new revelation doesn't appear in any report. Rather, it came up during CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz's presentation to Congress of the first CIA volume. During his testimony, Hitz revealed for the first time a very special agreement that the CIA had with the Justice Department: The CIA did not have to report if its non-employee agents, paid or unpaid, were dealing drugs. The secret agreement, which remained in place from 1982 to 1995 (when Janet Reno rescinded it), was not mentioned in the CIA report, nor was a copy made public; Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) later obtained a copy of the agreement and provided it to the MoJo Wire (see "A Tainted Deal"). In other words, it wasn't just incompetence or lack of interest that led the CIA to ignore the fact that their operatives were dealing drugs: It was policy. Almost no major media reported the existence of this agreement. The only exception was the WASHINGTON POST, which mentioned the agreement on Page A12, in the sixth paragraph of a five-hundred-word story. The second volume of the CIA report is still classified, and according to the CIA, there are no plans to release it. But that doesn't mean we can't get a peek. Remember that NEW YORK TIMES article mentioned at the very start of this story? The article, written by James Risen, relies on an unnamed source for information about the second CIA report; it is unclear whether Risen saw the report himself. When the MoJo Wire called Risen to ask whether he saw the report or relied on a source to describe it to him, Risen said he'd "rather not say." The story summarizes the report by saying, "no clear guidelines [were] given to field officers about how extensively they should investigate [drug] allegations." What the story never mentions, inexplicably, is the one set of clear guidelines that have been reported: The agreement between the CIA and the Justice Department that said the CIA didn't have to report its operatives, even when it knew they were guilty of drug-running.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #4 |
IF YOU COPPERS WANT SOMETHING TO INVESTIGATE, WHY NOT GO AFTER THE BIG FISH? HERE ARE ALL THE FILE NUMBERS:
GO GET EM'!!!
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/contra1.html
As late as 1991, the Washington D.C. DEA office opened a general drug case file (GFGD-91-9139) on Oliver North, “smuggling weapons to the Philippines with known drug traffickers.” RETIRED DEA AGENT CELERINO CASTILLO III
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/961120.castillo.html
Huge quantities of drugs and guns were being smuggled through
Ilopango by mercenary pilots hired by North, Castillo wrote.
"Now, all these contract pilots were documented [in DEA files]
traffickers, Class I cocaine violators that were being hired by
the CIA and the Contras," the memo stated. "And the U.S. embassy
in El Salvador was giving visas to these people even though they
were documented in our computers as being narcotics traffickers."
Among those Castillo identified was Carlos Alberto Amador, "a
Nicaraguan pilot mentioned in six (6) DEA files....The DEA was
advised by a source at the U.S. embassy in San Salvador that
personnel from the CIA had allegedly obtained a U.S. visa for
Amador." Amador, Castillo discovered, kept four planes at
Ilopango, and a frequent companion of his was was Jorge Zarcovick
who "is mentioned in twelve (12) DEA files," and "was arrested in
the U.S. for smuggling large quantities of cocaine."
Walter 'Wally' Grasheim was another smuggler tagged by Castillo.
"He is mentioned in seven (7) DEA files," Castillo wrote. "He is
documented as a cocaine and arms smuggler from South America to
the U.S. via Ilopango airport. He utilized hangars 4 and 5.
Grasheim is also known to carry DEA, FBI, and CIA credentials to
smuggle cocaine." "Wally Grasheim," Castillo said, "was an
American working hand-in-hand with Colonel Oliver North."
Strategic Investment Newsletter - Sept. 1995: "The Latin American drug cartels have stretched their tentacles much deeper into our lives than most people believe. It's possible they are calling the shots at all levels of government." Dennis Dayle, former head of DEA's Centac, was asked the following question: "Enormously powerful criminal organizations are controlling many countries, and to a certain degree controlling the world, and controlling our lives. Your own U.S. government to some extent supports them, and is concealing this fact from you." Dennis Dayle's answer: "I know that to be true. That is not conjecture. Experience, over the better part of my adult life, tells me that that is so. And there is a great deal of persuasive evidence. "I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for less evidence for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people...I personally was involved in a deep-cover case that went to the top of the drug world in three countries. The CIA killed it." - Former DEA Agent Michael Levine - CNBC-TV, Oct. 8, 1996 "The connections piled up quickly. Contra planes flew north to the U.S., loaded with cocaine, then returned laden with cash. All under the protective umbrella of the United States Government. My informants were perfectly placed: one worked with the Contra pilots at their base, while another moved easily among the Salvadoran military officials who protected the resupply operation. They fed me the names of Contra pilots. Again and again, those names showed up in the DEA database as documented drug traffickers. When I pursued the case, my superiors quietly and firmly advised me to move on to other investigations." - Former DEA Agent Celerino Castillo - Powder Burns, 1992 "I really take great exception to the fact that 1,000 kilos came in, funded by U.S. taxpayer money." - DEA official Anabelle Grimm - CBS-TV "60 minutes" Former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson Statement: "He (Former Congressman Bill Alexander - D. Ark.) made me privy to the depositions he took from three of the most credible witnesses in that project, which left absolutely no doubt in my mind that the government of the United States was an active participant in one of the largest dope operations in the world.." Eduardo Valle, former advisor, Attorney General in Mexico: "Drug trafficking has permeated all political structures and has corrupted federal, state, and local officials. It has deformed the economy. It is a cancer that has generated financial and political dependence, which instead of producing goods, has created serious problems ultimately affecting honest businessmen. The Attorney General's office is unable to eradicate drug trafficking because government structures at all levels are corrupted."
From LOYAL OPPOSITION: In Plain Sight: The CIA Keeps Getting Away With It By David Corn June 5, 2000 http://www.alternet.org A few weeks ago, the House intelligence committee released a 44-page report that declared the CIA had nothing to do with the rise of crack in Los Angeles in the 1980s. Why did the Agency need to be exonerated of such malfeasance? Because a controversial 1996 San Jose Mercury News series by reporter Gary Webb exposed a group of California-based Nicaraguan drug-dealers who in the 1980s had supported the Nicaraguan contra rebels battling the leftist Sandinista regime. The contras, of course, had been a pet project of President Ronald Reagan and the covert cowboys he put in charge at the CIA. The headlines on the Mercury News pieces suggested that this particular band of contra backers shared responsibility for triggering the crack wave that wreaked havoc on inner-city communities across the nation. "America's crack plague has roots in Nicaragua war," read the day-one headline. "Shadowy origins of 'crack' epidemic," read the next day's. "Role of CIA-linked agents a well-protected secret until now." Thousands rushed to read the stories on the newspaper's website. The phonelines at black radio talk shows lit up. Members of Congress, particularly those in the Congressional Black Caucus, demanded answers from the CIA. (Even today, the CIA says that its recruitment of African-Americans suffers because of these stories.) The CIA director at the time, John Deutch, felt obligated to attend a town meeting in Watts to deny the charges. And what passes for investigation in Washington began. The CIA's inspector general examined the allegations of the "Dark Alliance" series. The Justice Department did the same. Not surprisingly, the CIA's own gumshoes -- and those of Justice -- pronounced the CIA not guilty of complicity in the crack explosion. Webb's series had its problems. He had unearthed a good tale of contra drug involvement, but he had not uncovered a definite link between the Agency and these dealers, and his suggestion that this one drug outfit was instrumental to the birth of crack epidemic was far-fetched. Now, the House intelligence committee, nearly four years later, has seconded the verdicts of the CIA and the Justice Department: "The committee found no evidence to support the allegations that CIA agents or assets associated with the contra movement were involved in the supply or sale of drugs in the Los Angeles area." But the case is not closed -- that is, it should not be closed. The spies' overseers in the House -- the people who keep an eye on the CIA for the rest of us -- also confirmed, in a quiet fashion, the real dirty secret of the CIA: that during the contra war, the Agency worked hand-in-cloak with persons it had reason to believe were smuggling drugs. In a report released in late 1998, the CIA inspector general acknowledged that the Agency, obsessed with its contra mission, had on a number of occasions collaborated with suspected drug-runners. This should have been a scandal in itself. The report provided the details of several examples. It also noted that the "CIA did not inform Congress of all allegations or information it received indicating that Contra-related organizations or individuals were involved in drug trafficking." Put more bluntly: the CIA had covered up the contra-drug connection. A CIA official who served in Central America told the inspector general, "Yes there [was] derogatory stuff [on the contras] ... but we were going to play with these guys." Webb had gotten near this truth. In the middle of the just-say-no Reagan years, a federal agency had indeed struck a "dark alliance" -- not the one Webb had depicted, but one as disturbing. This revelation, though, received scant media attention; most news coverage echoed the CIA's self-exoneration regarding the crack charges. The House intelligence committee investigation repeats the pattern. The bulk of the report is directed at disputing the crack allegations. But toward the end there is understated recognition that scandalous CIA activity did happen: "As described in Volume II of the CIA IG report, under various circumstances, the CIA made use of or maintained relationships with a number of individuals associated with the Contras or the Contra-supply effort about whom the CIA had knowledge of information or allegations indicating the individuals had been involved in drug trafficking." Now why does the House intelligence committee have nothing else to say on this front? It preferred flogging Webb one more time to examining the real skulduggery. Moreover, the committee interviewed several senior CIA managers, and these people insisted they could only recall only one single report of contra-related drug-dealing. But with the CIA inspector general having determined there had been many such instances, it's plausible (make that, likely) that these CIA officials did not speak truthfully to the committee. Did the committee's report address this contradiction and the possibility CIA officials had once again withheld information from Congress? Not at all. And the House's report registered barely a blip in the national news media. When the CIA released the IG report that acknowledged the contra program had been tainted by drugs, Frederick Hitz, then the inspector general, said the study was merely a start: "This is grist for more work, if anyone wants to do it." A year and a half has passed since then, and it is clear that no one in government has the desire to pursue this topic. The House intelligence committee is positioned to do so. But it is more concerned with bolstering the CIA than in providing an independent and thorough look at this ugly piece of recent history. Al Gore could raise the issue -- as a reminder of what happened the last time Republicans controlled the CIA -- but then he would have to explain why his administration has shown no inclination to hold the Agency accountable. George W. Bush is hardly able to complain about lackadaisical oversight of the CIA. When the spies were hobnobbing with suspected drug runners, they were doing so to implement the pro-contra policies of the Reagan-Bush White House. (And the CIA headquarters is now named after George the Elder, who was a CIA director in the 1970s.) It's in no one's interest in Washington to make a stink. The CIA is permitted to slither off. This is not a cover-up; it's a look-away. Reagan and Bush's CIA made common cause with suspected drug thugs and ... no big deal. Nevertheless, it will be worth keeping this nasty episode in mind, for when the ailing Reagan expires, the media hoopla will overflow with praise of the Old Man. Yet nothing that happened in Bill Clinton's Oval Office was as untoward as what went on in Reagan's CIA. http://www.alternet.org/story/9268/
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #5 |
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THE SAN DIEGO UNION
(Page G-3 )
America fights phony "War on Drugs"
ROBERTO RODRIGUEZ and PATRISIA GONZALES
(C) Chronicle Features | RODRIGUEZ and GONZALES are co-authors of "Latino Spectrum," a syndicated column focusing on Latinos and Latin American affairs.
13-Aug-1995 Sunday
In April, ex-Drug Enforcement Agency agent Celerino Castillo made a
pilgrimage to the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington, D.C., where he left
his boots next to the name of a friend killed in the war. The Pharr, Texas,
native also left his Bronze Star, which he earned for his covert actions in
Southeast Asia in 1972, and a letter to the president:
"Dear President Clinton,
"In the 1980s, I spent six years in Central America as a special agent with
the DEA. On January 14, 1986, I forewarned then Vice President George Bush
of the U.S. government involvement in narcotics-trafficking (Oliver North)
. . . but to no avail . . .
"In display of my disappointment of my government, I am returning my Bronze
Star, along with my last pair of jungle boots that I used in the jungles of
Vietnam, Peru, Colombia, El Salvador and finally Guatemala."
Drug connection is exposed
While stationed in Central America, Castillo exposed the U.S. government's
drug connection. He personally kept records on planes used in the
U.S.-Contra resupply operation at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador --
arriving with guns and departing to the United States with cocaine from
Colombia.
"Every single pilot involved in the operation was a documented drug
trafficker, who appeared in DEA files," he says.
Castillo not only turned over his files to his superiors, but also
confronted Bush with the information in Guatemala City -- several months
before American Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua, an incident
which first exposed the Iran-Contra affair.
Had Castillo testified at the Iran-Contra hearings, he says North would
have gone to jail and both Bush and President Reagan would have been
impeached. "But nobody ever subpoenaed me," he says, and notes that the DEA
claimed no files ever existed.
"It was Bush's operation. In fact, it was impossible for President Reagan
not to have known about it," says Castillo.
In the 1980s, the same allegations of government-sanctioned
drug-trafficking were continually leveled by wild-eyed "radicals" and
Central American peace activists. However, because of his position as
special agent, Castillo's charges cannot easily be dismissed.
Amazingly, the drug operation at Ilopango was not a secret among U.S. and
Salvadoran officials, he says. The Salvadoran military was perplexed as to
why the drug connection was illegal. They thought it was simply part of the
effort to topple the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
When Castillo started with the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1978, he was
ready to fight against a scourge that had claimed many of his friends in
Southeast Asia, only to find that U.S. intelligence agencies themselves
were involved in drug-trafficking and the training of death squads.
Recent revelations by Congressman Robert Torricelli of the CIA involvement
in the deaths of an American and a revolutionary in Guatemala barely
scratch the surface. The real tragedy is that for decades, thousands of
Guatemalans have disappeared yearly, says Castillo. Torricelli is expected
to call for hearings this fall to investigate human-rights abuses against
U.S. citizens in Guatemala.
"I'm ready to testify, and so are three other agents," says Castillo,
hoping that the role of the intelligence services in the drug trade, death
squads and "disappearances" will finally be exposed.
Because Castillo's findings went unheeded, he recently left the DEA and
wrote a book, "Powderburns" (Mosaic Press), which documents his charges.
Drug traffic has increased
Castillo says that on the basis of his work, he is convinced that drug
money is what finances U.S. covert operations worldwide. He believes that
despite the "War on Drugs," there are more drugs coming into the United
States today than 15 years ago and estimates that at least 75 percent of
all narcotics enter the country with the acquiescence of or direct
participation by U.S. and foreign intelligence services.
It is they who must be held accountable for the flood of drugs on our
streets today, he says.
Similarly, the policy of turning a blind eye to drugs has created
narco-democracies (governments tainted and funded by drug money) in Central
and South America. That was the price of the U.S. war against communism,
says Castillo.
Today, Castillo spends his time painting. One haunting image is of a Mayan
warrior with an American flag in one hand, an M-16 in the other and a DEA
helicopter with a skull insignia hovering overhead. The Mayan's face is
that of his friend, a dead DEA agent felled in the drug war in Peru.
The image conjures up his plea to Clinton not to perpetuate this false
"war": "Please do not do what Mr. Robert McNamara did regarding the Vietnam
War."
Copyright Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | Scaledog4
Registered: 08/25/04
Posts: 25
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Reply with quote | #6 |
The government has been involved in drugs many many years ago.....Its all about money......How many federal people, citizens , pilots , ships/boaters , informants , politicians have made tons of money in the early sixties and during the Vietnam war.....Its all about money and it will never stop |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #7 |
http://www.wethepeople.la/ciadrugs.htm
Burma Druglord Khun Sa names current Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage and CIA Chief in Laos, Theodore Shackley as major heroin traffickers during Vietnam era. For those of you who dont know, presidential candidate Ross Perot and Lt Col Bo Gritz were threatened by Reagan and Bush NSC for bringing this letter out while searching for POW-MIA missing from the Vietnam war. Bo Gritz and fellow POW hunter Stephen Weekly were later prosecuted on false charges as a result.
Transcription:
http://www.wethepeople.la/sa.htm
actual copy:
http://www.wethepeople.la/sa1.gif
http://www.wethepeople.la/sa2.gif
T.R.C. Thailand Revolutionary Council
Date. June 28, 1987
To:
U.S. Justice Department
Washington, D.C.
U.S.A.
Subject Important facts for the Drugs Eradication Program
to be successful.
Sirs:
This letter to the US Justice Department is to make it clear about our deepest concern in wishing to help eradicate drugs and for all the American people as well as the world to know the truth that for the past (15) years they have been misled to look upon us as the main source of all the drug problems.
1. The refusal of the United States government to accept our "SIX YEARS DRUGS ERADICATION PLAN" presented at the Congressional Hearing by Congressman Mr. Lester Woff after his visit to Thailand in April 1977, was really a great disappointment for us. Even after this disappointment, we continued writing letters to President Carter and President Reagan forwarding our sincere wish to help and participate in eradicating drugs. We are really surprise and doubtful as to why the US government refuses our participation and help to make a success of the drugs eradication program.
Furthermore, why the world has been misled to accuse me as the main culprit for all the drug trades..... while in reality, we are most sincere and willing to help solve the drug problems in South East Asia. Through our own secret investigation, we found out that some high officials in the US government's drugs control and enforcement department and with the influence of corrupted persons objected to our active participation in the drugs eradication program of the US government so as to be able to retain their profitable self-interest from the continuation of the drug problems. Thus, the US government and the American people as well as the world have been hoodwinked.
2. During the period (1965 - 1975) CIA Chief in Laos, Theodore Shackly, was in the drug business, having contacts with the Opium Warlord Lor Sing Han and his followers. Santo Trafficano acted as his buying and transporting agent while Richard Armitage handled the financial section with the Banks in Australia. Even after the Vietnam War ended, when Richard Armitage was being posted to the US Embassy in Thailand, his dealings in the drug business continued as before. He was then acting as the US government official concerning with the drug problems in Southeast Asia. After 1979, Richard Armitage resigned from the US Embassy's posting and set up the "Far East Trading Company" as a front for his continuation in the drug trade and to bribe CIA agents in Laos and around the world. Soon after, Daniel Arnold was made to handle the drug business as well as the transportation of arms sales. Jerry Daniels then took over the drug trade from Richard Armitage. For over 10 years, Armitage supported his men in Laos and Thailand with the profits from his drug trade and most of the cash were deposited with the Banks in Australia which was to be used in buying his way for quicker promotions to higher positions.
Within the month of July, 1980, Thailand's english newspaper "Bangkok Post" included a news report that CIA agents were using Australia as a transit-base for their drug business and the banks in Australia for depositing, transferring the large sum of money involved.
Verifications of the news report can be made by the US Justice Department with Bangkok Post and in Australia.
Other facts given herewith have been drawn out from out Secret Reports files so as to present to you of the real facts as to why the drug problem is being prolonged till today.
3. Finally, we sincerely hope in the nearest future to be given the opportunity to actively take part in helping the US government, the Americans and people of the world in eradication and uprooting the drug problems.
I remain,
Yours Respectively
Khun Sa
Vice Chairman
Thailand Revolutionary Council
(T.R.C.)
http://www.decentria.com/trimmer.html
September 17, 1987
Mr. Edwin Meese, III
Attorney General
Main Justice Building
10th & Constitution Avenue Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20530
Re: Citizen Complaint of Wrongdoing by Federal Officers
Dear Mr. Meese:
I am writing to you to register my complaints about certain actions that have
been carried out against me and my associates. I believe these actions
constitute violations of our civil rights as well as violations of the
criminal law in some instances. These actions are all the more reprehensible
in that they are politically motivated. I take this means to request that you
investigate these matters and, where appropriate, reprimand the individuals
involved and file criminal charges.
Let me explain my situation to you. I am a veteran of the United States Army.
I served with the Special Forces in the Vietnam War for more than two years
between 1964 and 1970. I consider myself to be a patriot and am proud of my
service to this country. Since the end of the Vietnam War, I have been
actively involved in seeking to locate and free American POW's and MIA's left
behind in Southeast Asia. I have been associated in these activities with Lt.
Col. James "Bo" Gritz and others, including Scott Weekly. I believe our
efforts have been carried out with the tacit ) if not always, overt ) approval
of certain elements within our government. These government and military
officials share our goal of freeing these forgotten Americans.
In the fall of 1986 Col. Gritz and Mr. Weekly went to Burma. They had
received intelligence from the "Basement of the White House", which led them
to believe certain Burmese had information about American POW's. These leads
proved to be unfounded. However, on that trip Col Gritz learned about illegal
drug trafficking directed by U.S. government-related operatives. These drug
dealing activities were on such a scale that they were used to fund covert,
para-military operations in Southeast Asia and in other parts of the world.
In May of 1987 I went to Burma with Col. Gritz and others. We brought back
startling evidence directly linking American officials with illegal drug
trafficking. A report on this Burma trip is attached hereto as Exhibit "A."
Over the years it has baffled me why the U.S. Government would not actively
and vigorously pursue the release of our POW's and MIA's. Now, the answer is
clear. Any renewed American activity in Southeast Asia, on a scale necessary
to the release of the abandoned POW's and MIA's, would attract unwanted
attention to covert activities in the are. Government-sponsored drug
trafficking is an explosive subject. Obviously, many government elements want
the story left untold.
Scott Weekly was charged with illegal transportation of explosives. He was
made promises by ATF Agent Thomas Hahn which induced him to plead guilty to
the charges. It is, of course, highly improper for law enforcement officials
to make promises, especially false promises, to criminal defendants to
persuade them to plead to criminal charges. This was done in Mr. Weekly's
case. Pages were extracted from his pre-sentence report which would, very
likely have mitigated his sentence. This action would have to have been known
about and approved by the Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Korotash. In
Montana, Mr. Korotash's activities would have violated the Canons of
Professional Ethics, which hold:
``"a public prosecutor or other government lawyer in criminal litigation shall
make timely disclosure to counsel for the defendant, or to the defendant if he
has no counsel, of the existence of evidence, known to the prosecutor or other
government lawyer, that tends to negate the guilt of the accused, mitigate the
degree of the offense, or reduce the punishment." DR 7*103(b)^E^
``"A lawyer shall not suppress any evidence that he or his client has a legal
obligation to reveal or produce." DR 7)109(A)^E^
I believe Agent Hahn and Attorney Korotash conspired to violate \Mr. Weekly's
rights by persuading him not to retain effective counsel and to plead guilty.
Thereafter, Col. Gritz was charged with a passport violation and has
registered his own complaint, a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit
"B." Col. Gritz recently informed me that U.S. government representatives
offered him government employment and dismissal of the charges against him if
he would cease activities relative to the POW's and stay out of Southeast
Asia. In other words, if Col. Gritz would shut up and cease his activities in
Southeast Asia everything would be all right ) for him. As usual no thought
was given to the POW's and MIA's nor their families and loved ones.
Following my return from Burma on June 1, 1987, Col. Gritz was charged. I set
out to investigate facts relative to the passport violation charge as well as
the Scott Weekly situation. During the course of my short investigation there
were several incidents which took place that were certainly blatant violations
of my rights as a U.S. citizen. Itt is my opinion that the reason these
violations took place is because I had in my possession reports, documents
and tapes which accuse and support accusations that U.S. Government officials
deal in drugs and certain government employees have lied and obstructed
justice in order to convict perfectly innocent persons of criminal
wrongdoings.
I believe they have been motivated by a desire to silence myself and my
associates to keep the lid on the drug trafficking evidence we have uncovered.
Short of that, they seek to discredit us and the information we've obtained.
I traveled to Seattle, Washington, on June 27, 1987, to interview a U.S.
Customs Agent named James Foley. Mr. Foley's telephone number is (206)
442)1974. His address is 1580 South 156th Street, Seattle.
I spoke with Inspector Foley and told him I needed to locate the customs agent
who passed Col. Gritz used, which was stamped at SEA)TAC Airport by Agent
1099. Attached hereto as Exhibit "C" is a copy of the passport. I told him
that Col. Gritz had had several passports with him and the agent had taken him
to an interrogation room. There he told Col. Gritz he hoped he had a
telephone number they could call. Col. Gritz gave them a number and one of
the customs men left. Returning a few minutes later, he said "Okay Col.
Gritz, you're free to go". Inspector Foley told me he may know hwo the
customs agent was that finally cleared Col. Gritz through. He said that the
number stamped in the passport may or may not mean anything but he may
possibly recognize the handwriting.
The next day, June 27th, I contacted Inspector Foley at his home. He told me
he had spoken with another Inspector named Arthur Henning. He said he had
asked Henning if he could remmeber an incident about five years ago when a
Green Beret Colonel came through customs with several passports. Inspector
Foley told me Inspector Henning immediately told him, "James `Bo` Gritz."
Henning said he remembered the incident because of the publicity Col. Gritz
received on the POW issue shortly thereafter. Henning said he had taken Col.
Gritz to an interview room along with another customs agent, John Hood. Col.
Gritz had given them a telephone number whihc Henning said was to the State
Department. Henning told Foley he handled the incident. He said Agent Hood
may have written down the telephone number Gritz had given them a telephone
number which Henning said was to the State Department. Henning told Foley he
handled the incident. He said Agent Hood may have written down the telephone
number Gritz gave them in his notes and could still possibly have it. He told
Foley the call to the State Department would have been made by a supervisor,
possibly Lynne Robson, who is now dead. Henning told Foley he remembered Col.
Gritz was carrying at least three passports. He, also, said there would be a
"Negative Search Report" on the incident. I sought this information because
we had been led by U.S. Attorney Wulfson that this type evidence should have
been sufficient to result in the dismissal of the charges against Col. Gritz
regarding the fraudulent passport. After receiving this information from
me, Col. Gritz's attorney, Lamond Mills, contacted Wulfson. Wulfson told
Mills he had already talked to Customs Inspector Henning about the incident,
but that he wasn't dropping any charges, despite what he had said earlier.
About that same time I was contacted by an investigative reporter named Tony
Kimerey from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Kimerey told me he was in the office of
the Assistant U.S. Attorney, Stephen Korotash. Jerry Bohnen, a KTOK news
reporter, was there too. Kimerey can be reached at telephone number (404)
525-6780. Jerry Bohnen can be reached at (405) 840)1948. Also present in the
office was Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms Agent Tom Hahn. Kimerey said that ATF
Agent Tom Hahn told him, in the presence of Korotash and Bohnen, that he
(Hahn) had removed 9 pages from the documents that went before Federal Judge
Alley, before the sentencing of Scott Weekly. The pages that Hahn removed
were letters from several different Government agencies corroborating the
story that Scott Weekly was involved in the Afghan traiing program which was
sanctioned by the U.S. Government. If it were so, that the program was
sanctioned by the government, then no laws would have been broken in shipping
the C)4 by commercial air carrier. Kimerey also said that a U.S. Government
investigator, who has done investigations for the U.S. Attorney's Office in
Oklahoma City, told him he could not understand why ATF Agent Hahn and U.S.
Attorney Korotash were being so malicious in prosecuting and railroading Scott
Weekly.
On July 18th, I traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia to find a man named
Ahmad Rashid and his wife, Margaret. Ahmad was Scott Weekly and Col. Gritz's
government contact in the Afghan training program. A meeting with Ahmad,
Scott Weekly and Col. Gritz was set up in August 1986 by William Bode, then
Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Korotash and ATF Agent Hahn have been saying all along
that there was no Afghan traiing. They claim Weekly and Col. Gritz were
selling explosives ot the Iranians. This is utterly ridiculous. I had
thought at one time that maybe they really didn't know about the Afghan
training. Maybe they were being lied to by persons in the government. But
now I find that Agent Hahn has been in contact with William Bode since the
early days, even before Weekly was arrested in December of 1986. Hahn was
given a training schedule of the Afghan training by William Bode. Bode
admitted this to Col. Gritz.
Upon my arrival in Vancouver, British Columbia, I contacted Margaret Rashid,
wife of Ahmad. Margaret had assisted her husband in the briefing of Col.
Gritz and Scott Weekly. Margaret and Ahmad were to have given Gritz and
Weekly all of their knowledge on the Mujahadeen Afghan Freedom Fighters so
that they could use this knowledge in training several different factions of
Mujahadeen in hopes of unifying them. I was lucky to have reached Margaret
when I did because she was getting ready to leave Vancouver within a few days
to join her husband in\j\Montreal. Ahmad was in Montreal looking for a place
for them to live.
Margaret and I talked about her role in giving the information to Weekly and
Gritz about the Mujahadeen in August of 1986. Margaret told me that she and
Ahmad were in constant contact with William Bode. She said that Bode was
their U.S. Government contact. As a matter of fact Bode was the one that gave
her and Ahmad the money to move to Montreal. This evidence would provce that
this was a government)sponsored program. That being the case, Weekly should
not have been convicted of the crime he was charged with. Bode and his
associates were trying to get the Rashids out of Vancouver before Col. Gritz
or anyone tried to contact them. Margaret said she also knew of Gritz and
Weekly's problem. She knew Weekly was in jail but she did not exactly know
why. She said she had a three way telephone conversation with Bode and
another man from the U.S. Government some time ago. The man from the U.S.
Government was the one who suggested they move to Montreal away from
Vancouver. He was also the one who suggested that Bode give them the money to
move on so that we could not find them. Margaret could not remember the name
of the U.S. Government official they had the conversation with, but I found
out later it was ATF Agent Tom Hahn.
William Bode had called Col. Gritz about the same time I was visiting
MArgaret. He had no idea I had been talking to her. He told Col. Gritz he
had just heard of Weekly`s being in jail. He told Col. Gritz he was no longer
working in Afghan studies or in the State Department. He told Gritz that he
hadn't been there since last February. He said that if someone had contacted
him before he would have at least given ATF a copy of the Afghan training
schedule to prove Weekly was working under the auspices of the Government.
A few days later, when Bode had found out I had talked to Margaret Rashid, he
again called Col. Gritz. He asked Col. Gritz who Lance Trimmer was. He told
Col. Gritz he had tried helping all he could. He said he had given Agent Hahn
a copy of the training schedule. In the prior converstaion he had said he may
have given him a copy. He also stated then that ATF Agent Hahn was the third
person on the three way telephone conversation with him and the Rashids.
The above information are all lies told by Government employees ATF Agent Hahn
and Assistant U.S. Attorney Korotash have lied from the beginning and they
continue to lie. My attorney in Oklahoma City, Frank Miskovski, who is a very
prominent attorney in that area, told me that he has not once talked to ATF
Agent Hahn that Hahn had not lied to him.
Hahn admitted to two reporters that he omitted several pages of documents to
be presented to a U.S. Federal Judge in recommending a long jail term for
Scott Weekly. This was a clear violation of Weekly's rights. Hahn was
instrumental in trying to hide\j\witnesses that could prove Scott Weekly's
innocence. Those witnesses could have proven that Weekly was involved in a
legitimate, U.S. Governemnt)approved, training program of Mujahadeen Afghan
Freedom Fighters. It seems very clear to me that Assistant U.S. Attorney
Korotash was also involved in the hiding of these documents.
I have continuously tried to determine why ATF Agent Hahn and U.S. Attorney
Korotash would want so badly to put Col. Gritz and Scott Weekly in jail. The
only conclusion that I have is that some persons or people higher up in the
Government are pressuring them to muzzle Col. Gritz. Col. Gritz is a proven
American hero, whose only goal in life is to bring home American Prisoners of
War left behind in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. The government wants
to stop him from giving to the Americna people documents and evidence that
show U.S. Government officials are now, and have been, dealing in drugs.
These are acts of governmental agents involving the obstruction of justice and
illegal suppression of evidence, which would show the charges against both
Weekly and Gritz to be ill)founded.
Now, let me address the acts which have carried out against me.
I was arrested at the U.S./Canadian Point of Entry, Blaine, Washinton, on
August 13, 1987, by U.S. Customs officials. I was arrested on a warrant,
issued out of the federal district court of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. There
were no charges. I was wanted as a material witness to testify before the
grand jury in Oklahoma.
Immediately following my arrest, I was searched and placed in a holding cell.
I was told by a Customs Agent that they were going to look in my car. Much
later, three agents came to my cell. One of them, who appeared to be in
charge, introduced himself as Jim Williams. He read me my rights and asked me
a couple of questions. I would not answer his questions but told him I was
sure he had read a report that was in my bag that would answer all the
questions he had. He insinuated that what he had read was interesting. One
of the agents with him asked me if I had a number that he could call. What he
meant was, he wanted to know if I was working for some government agency. I
told him I had none. I don't believe he would have asked that had he not read
papers in my briefcase. I was then chained up with leg irons, belts and
handcuffs and taken to Whatcom County Jail where I was booked in,
finger)printed and mugged. I was told that ATF Agents would pick me up in the
morning and take me before a magistrate in Seattle.
The next day two ATF Agents, Norm Prins and Jane Heffner, picked me up for
transfer to the Seattle U.S. Marshall's Office. Agent Prins handcuffed me
with my hands behind my back, put me in leg irons and escorted me to his
vehicle for the 1 1/2 hour drive to Seattle. He told me he had two of my bags
in their trunk. He also said that he had been to the Canadian Border where
they had picked up my bags from Customs. I asked where the other two were and
was told he knew nothing about them. Obviously, they had searched my car and
seized and searched my personal property.
On the way in Agent Prins said he'd like me to answer some personal questions
he had. He said they had nothing to do with my case because he knew nothing
about it. He said his questions had to do with POW's. If he knew nothing
about my case, he would not have known to ask me about POW's. I assume he had
read the papers in my briefcase and clothes bag. We talked about POW's and
also about my Burma Report.
When we arrived at the U.S. Marshall's Office, where I had to appear before
the Magistrate, my hands and arms were asleep from having to sit handcuffed
with my arms behind my back. The marks and bruises were still on my hands
from the cuffs four days later. Agent Prins got my two bags out of the trunk
of his car. I noticed the center section of my clothes bag was still zipped
open. I never was allowed to look in my bags. They said they had brought
them to turn over to the U.S. Marshall's Office, but the Marshall's Office
refused to accept them. They obviously argued over them for some time until
the ATF agents said they would take them and hold them in their office. I
asked again about my briefcase and clothes bag but was told that Customs had
kept them. I asked why and was told that they were "doing something" with
them. I asked what, and was told just "something, but I shouldn't worry about
it." I said abviously they are making copies of my diary and reports. They
said they didn't know but admitted it was possible.
Before appearing before the Magistrate one of the U.S. Marshalls called the
Customs Agent Williams and asked about my briefcase and camera case. I could
not hear what Agent Williams was saying but when he hung up the Marshall told
me that Williams would have my bags sent to whatever address I wanted. I told
him I wanted my bags brought to me because they also contained my credit cards
and identification which the agents had kept when they took my wallet, also I
told them they had no reason to keep them. The Marshall then told me they
were "doing something with them." When I asked "what," he said he had no idea.
I was then taken to the Magistrate where I was admitted to a $10,000 bail. I
told them I could make bail immediately if I could make a phone call. This
was approximately 4:30 p.m. The Marshalls then took me from the courtroom
back up the elevator to their office. When we passed a phone I asked if I
could make that call. They said I could when I got to the office. When we
reached the office, they had me go into their little holding room and then
fooled around preparing this and that. I asked again about a call and was
told, "in a minute." It was obvious they were stalling for time since it was
close to 5:00 p.m. When I was finally allowed to call it was too late for
anything to be done. This meant I was stuck in jail for the weekend.\j\
I was then allowed to call Custons Agent Williams. I asked him about my
briefcase and camera bag. He said he would send them somewhere for me. I
told him I had to have them in my hands. I needed my identification and
credit cards to bail out of jail. He said there was no way to get them to me
now that the weekend was there. I told him someone could surely drop them at
the ATF Office with my other bags. He said they couldn't do that until
Monday. I asked if it was going to take that long to make copies of my
personal diary and papers. He said they weren't doing that. I said what
about the phone numbers. He said we are just "doing something" with the bag.
I said I would like them right away. He said it was impossible and I would
get them on Monday or maybe Tuesday. They would be through with them then.
He stated he would not be there
personally himself next week but someone else would handle it. That was the
best he could do. I was then taken to Kent, Washington, to the Kent
Corrections Center. I was taken there in handcuffs and chains. I was
fingerprinted and mugged for the third time.
While in the Kent Corrections Center I made four written requests. The first
one was made on August 15. I requested they return my briefcase and personal
belongings being held by Customs immediately. This included my credit cards
and other identification. I was told they could do nothing. They said I must
contact the agency that had them, although those agencies wouldn't accept a
collect call. I wrote another request on August 16 and was told the same
thing. Copies of all four requests are attached as Exhibit "D." On August 17
they would not answer my request and on August 18 I was not allowed to make a
phone call. They did finally tell me that a U.S. Marshall had brought my
identification cards from Customs on that day after I had told them I would
not leave the jail without my identification even if I was bailed out, because
it was clear they could arrest me for vagrancy.
While in the jail there were two phone calls I made which were very important
regarding my bail. On one occasion, I was right at the point of learning a
phone number that I needed to call to have bail brought immediately, when the
conversation was cut off by whoever was monitoring the call. Several persons
called the jail with messages for me, with regard to bailing me out, but the
messages were never given to me. Finally on Tuesday afternoon, August 18, I
was allowed to bail out on a $10,000 cash bond. The attorney who was
instrumental in bailing me out had to drive me to the Canadian Border at
Blaine, Washington, which was more than 125 miles away in order for me to get
my briefcase and camera bag.
All of the contents in those bags obviously had been removed. My notes and
papers were thrown back in completely out of order and it looked as though
several typewritten notes were missing. The Customs Agent, Joe Rydell, stated
that I either had to sign an inventory list they had made up or he would not
return my belongings. There was no way I could tell if every piece of paper
was there. I was never given an inventory list of what they took from me.
They kept my personal diary, papers, pictures, and identifications cards,
including credit cards, for six days and refused to return them. They told me
they were "doing something" with them. It was clearly an illegal search and
seizure. I was only arrested as a material witness. I have been a law
enforcement officer and understand what the term "probable cause" means.
There was no probable cause to seize my property and search it. There was no
reason to treat me like a criminal. I can understand being jailed on a
warrant. I cannot understand being handcuffed, chained, mugged and
fingerprinted on numerous occasions, being denied access to my property, and
being denied the opportunity to arrange bail. All of this was a serious
violation of my civil rights.
After I finally got released on bail I had to travel more that 200 miles to
retrieve my personal belongings. They forced me to personally go out of the
way which took another day. It was then too late to travel to my home in
Montana. I had to go to California to secure my automobile and then travel to
Oklahoma City where I was to appear before a Grand Jury on the Subpoena the
government had issued me upon my arrival. I called the U.S. Attorney's
Office and checked in as I was supposed to do. The man that I talked to about
transportation to Oklahoma City told me that I should pay my own way and turn
in a voucher on the day I appeared before the Grand Jury. I then left for
Oklahoma City. I needed to find a lawyer for my appearance.
When I appeared at the U.S. Attorney's Office with my attorney, Frank
Miskovski in Oklahoma City, we were met by ATF Agent Tom Hahn. Tom Hahn
stated that U.S. Attorney Korotash was out of town. I asked if he was also on
vacation and Hahn replied he didn't know. He told me Korotash was out of town
and could not be reached. Hahn said he had been trying to contact me for the
past ten days. I called him a liar. He said he was not lying. I told him I
called in twice to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Hahn stated that I only called
in once. I told him I called on Monday August 24 and checked in with a woman
secretary. I also called in on August 26 and told a male I would be coming to
Oklahoma City and wanted to know about travel arrangements. Hahn said he only
heard of one time I called. He said that he had called my attorney several
times in Washington. I called Mike Jordan, my attorney in Washington, on
August 30 from Oklahoma City. He told me that Hahn had called him on Friday
trying to contact me to tell me they postponed the Grand Jury Hearing.
On September 1st, the day of my scheduled appearance, Hahn gave me a new
subpoena for September 14. I asked if my bail would now be returned. He said
he didn't see why not. He would check. I waited for some time before Hahn
returned and told my attorney that they were going to hold my cash bail of
$10,000 until I appeared on September 14.
I left to make a phone call and then returned with my attorney and asked for
Agent Hahn. I was told he was no longer around. My attorney asked to speak
with the U.S. Attorney Price. He was not around. This was at 11:30 a.m. We
asked to speak with any U.S. Attorney who could make a decision. We were
taken to a Chief U.S. Attorney whom I told I wanted my bail returned or to be
put back in jail. I told him the bail I received was promised to be sent back
to the person it came from on September 1 and I had appeared as promised.
This U.S. Attorney called Agent Hahn who, just a few minutes earlier, could
not be found, and had Hahn come to his office. He told Hahn I was there to be
put in jail so my bail would be returned.
Hahn immediately made many calls. A long time later he came out ant told my
attorney that they would either return my bail and place me in jail, return my
bail and release me on my own recognizance or schedule the hearing in the
morning. He was to call my attorney at his office. Later in the afternoon,
my attorney contacted me about 4:30 p.m. and said that Hahn was obviously a
habitual liar. He had finally talked to Hahn after 4:00 p.m. and Hahn told
him he called 4 or 5 times but couldn't reach him. My attorney's secretary
said that Hahn had called once. My attorney was not in and Hahn did not call
back. My attorney called Hahn back twice but could not find him. He finally
reached Hahn about 4:10 p.m. and Hahn told him they reset the Grand Jury
Hearing for the following morning, September 2. I appeared at 9;00 a.m. on
September 2nd before the Grand Jury. I talked about U.S. Officials dealing in
drugs., about General Khun Sa of Burma, about a statement I made of a
complaint being filed regarding charges oif wrongdoing by AFT Agent Hahn.
Halfway through the U>S> Attorney's questions, they stopped the hearing and
tol;d me there would be no more questions. It was approximately 11:00 a.m. I
was told that I was free to go and would have to return on Oct. 5. I believe
that is less than coincidental that Col. Gritz passport violation case is
scheduled for trial in Las Vegas, Nevada, on the very same date.
My attorney and I asked that my bail be returned along with my passport. AFT
Agent Hahn said he saw no problem with that. He said he would clear it with
U.S. Attorney Blair Watson. We waited about 45 minutes. Hahn came later and
said he would have it taken care of after lunch. My Attorney called him after
lunch but, as usual, he was not around then. He talked to the U.S. Attorney
Watson who said he didn't know about the bail and it would have to stay
whereever it was. He believed it was being held in Washington State where it
was posted. My attorney called the U.S. Attorney`s office in Seattle,
Waashington and was tiold it had been sent to Oklahoma. My attorney talked
with the U.S. Attorney in Seattle later and was told Hahn had told them that
because it took so long for them to find me he didn't think they should
release my bail. There was never andy agreement to release my bail until
Sept. 14th. At this writing I still don't have it back. Since recovering my
property I have discovered that several items are missing, including typed
notes and a tape\j\of conversations with Margaret Rashid and Tony Kimerey. I
spent more than ten years of my life serving my country as a soldier. I
risked my life in combat in support of our government. I worked as a court
officer a police officer and as an investigator for a prperiod of 15 years. I
have a college degree in criminal justice. I believe in our system and have
proven my commitment by my service. I cannot tolerate nor abide the
perversion and subvertion of our system, especially by those)like me)who have
taken an oath to defend it.
This complaint deals with high)level government policy makers who have
sacrificed our POW'S and MIA's, and alot more, to cover)up illigal and
reprehensible drug trafficking activies. It deals with federal Justice
Department officials who have lied, silenced witnesses, discredited genuine
patriots and heroes, obstructed justice and used their power to harass and
intimidate honorable citizens. I've heard of the alleged illigal drug
trafficking, supported by the CIA, in Central America. Until my recent
experience I wouldn't have believed it. You are the top law enforcement
officer in the United States. You have a duty to investigate, vigorously, the
charges raised in this complaint. Today is the 200 anniversary of our
constitution. The greatest threat to that sacred document is being mounted
today by the lairs, obstructors of justice and other slime who believe the
ends justify the means and "plausible deniability" is a defensible standard of
conduct in an open, democratic system. The people and activites, complained
of herein, threatenour very system of laws. Do yourself proud. Deal with
these complaints vigorously.. The issue of illegal drug trafficking is now
before the publis.
When it becomes apparent to the public that our POW's and MIA's have been
abandoned and our youth have been exposed to drugs to protect such an
activity, the wrath of the people will be incredible. It no longer works to
try to hide this activity, too many know of it. The tactics that have been
used to produce the silence of people like me oon this issue, are
unjustifiable. Restore my faith in my government. Do your duty, as I have
sought to do mine. And as those POW's and MIA's abandoned in Southeast Asia,
have done theirs.
Sincerely,
Lance Trimmer
Suite 316, 600 Central Plaza
Great FAlls, Montana 59401
Subscribed and Sworn to before me this day of Sept. 1987
(Linda Cooper) Notary Public for the State of Montana
My commision expires : 4/1/89
cc:
ATF, Washington,
D.C ATF, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
U.S. Attorney William Price, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
U.S. Customs Service, Washington, D.C.
U.S. Customs Service, Blaine, Washington, D.C.
U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C.
DEA, Washington, D.C.
Members of the United States Congress
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/gritz1.htm
| Bo Gritz Letter to George Bush | 1 February 1988, Sandy Valley, NV
| Honorable George Bush, Vice President, United States of America, Washington, D.C. Sir: Why does it seem that you are saying "YES" to illegal narcotics in America? I turned over video tapes to your NSC staff assistant, Tom Harvey, January 1987, wherein General KHUN SA, overlord of Asia's "Golden Triangle", offered to stop 900 tons of heroin/opium from entering the free world in 1987. Harvey told me, "...there is no interest here in doing that." General Khun Sa also offered to identify U.S. Government officials who, he says, have been trafficking in heroin for more than 20 years. November 1986, Scott Weekly and I went into Burma in coordination and cooperation with The White House. Tom Harvey told me you received a letter from Arthur Suchesk, Orange County, CA, dated 29 August 1986. Dr. Suchesk said that Gen Khun Sa had access to U.S. POWs. Harvey said the letter had received "highest attention". He gave me a copy along with other case documents. I was asked if it was possible to verify the information. According to Harvey, the CIA said Khun Sa had been assassinated some months before. Harvey supplied Scott and myself with language under White House and NSC letterhead that would help us gain access to Khun Sa. It worked. Unfortunately, Khun Sa knew nothing about US POWs. He did, however, offer to trade his nation's poppy dependence for a legitimate economy. Instead of receiving an "Atta Boy" for bringing back video tape showing Khun Sa`s offer to stop 900 tons of illegal narcotics and expose dirty USG officials, Scott was jailed and I was threatened. I was told that if I didn't "erase and forget" all that we had discovered, I would, "hurt the government". Further, I was promised a prison sentence of "15 years". I returned to Burma with two other American witnesses, Lance Trimmer, a private detective from San Francisco, and Barry Flynn from Boston. Gen Khun Sa identified some of those in government service he says were dealing in heroin and arms sales. We video taped this second interview and I turned copies over in June 1987, to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence; Chairman of the House on Foreign Affairs Task Force on Narcotics Control; Co-Chairman, Senate Narcotics Committee; Senator Harry Reid, NV; Representative James Bilbray, NV; and other Congressional members. Mister Richard Armitage, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, is one of those USG officials implicated by Khun Sa. Nothing was done with this evidence that indicated that anyone of authority, including yourself, had intended to do anything more than protect Mr. Armitage. I was charged with "Misuse of Passport". Seems that it is alright for Oliver North and Robert MacFarlane to go into Iran on Irish Passports to negotiate an illegal arms deal that neither you nor anyone else admits condoning, but I can't use a passport that brings back drug information against your friends. Lance Trimmer and I submitted a "Citizen Complaint of Wrongdoing by Federal Officers" to Attorney General Edwin Meese, III on 17 September 1987. Continuous private and Legislative inquiries to date indicate that the Attorney General's Office has "lost" the document. Congressional requests to the Government Accounting Office have resulted in additional government snares and stalls. January 20, 1988, I talked before your Breakfast Club in Houston, Texas. A distinguished group of approximately 125 associates of yours, including the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, expressed assurance that you are a righteous man. Almost all of them raised their hand when I asked how many of them know you personally. If you are a man with good intent, I pray you will do more than respond to this letter. I ask that you seriously look into the possibility that political appointees close to you are guilty of by passing our Constitutional process, and for purposes of promoting illegal covert operations, conspired in the trafficking of narcotics and arms. Please answer why a respected American Citizen like Mister H. Ross Perot can bring you a pile of evidence of wrongdoing by Armitage and others, and you, according to TIME magazine (May 4, page 18), not only offer him no support, but have your Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci tell Mr. Perot to "stop pursuing Mr. Armitage". Why Sir, will you not look into affidavits gathered by The Christic Institute (Washington, D.C.), which testify that Armitage not only trafficked in heroin, but did so under the guise of an officer charged with bringing home our POWs. If the charges are true, Armitage, who is still responsible for POW recovery as your Assistant Secretary of Defense ISA, has every reason not to want these heros returned to us alive. Clearly, follow on investigations would illuminate the collective crimes of Armitage and others. Several years ago a secretary working for Armitage asked me "Why would he have us expunge his official record of all reference to past POW/MIA assignments and activities?" Not knowing, I ventured a guess that maybe he was considering running for public office and didn't feel the POW -Vietnam association would be a plus in his resume. It was about the same time a CIA agent named by Khun Sa turned up dead in Bangkok under "mysterious circumstances". Also about this time, as an agent of NSC's Intelligence Support Activity, I was told by ISA Chief Jerry King, "...there are still too many bureaucrats in Washington who don't want to see POWs returned alive". I failed to realize the fullness of his meaning, or these other events, until in May 1987, Gen Khun Sa, in his jungle headquarters, named Richard Armitage as a key connection in a ring of heroin trafficking mobsters and USG officials. A U.S. agent I have known for many years stopped by my home last month enroute to his next overseas assignment. He remarked that he had worked for those CIA chiefs named by Khun Sa, and that by his own personal knowledge, he knew what Khun Sa said was true. He was surprised it had taken so long to surface. I am a registered Republican. I voted for you twice. I will not do so again. If you have any love or loyalty in your heart for this nation; if you have not completely sold out, then do something positive to determine the truth of these most serious allegations. You were Director of the CIA in 1975, during a time Khun Sa says Armitage and CIA officials were trafficking in heroin. As Director of Intelligence you were responsible to the American people for the activities of your assistant - even as you should know what some of these same people are doing who are close to you now as our Vice President because I feel these "parallel government" types will only be promoted by you, giving them more reason to bury our POWs. I am enclosing some documentation that supports the charges made. Chief is a letter from Khun Sa to the U.S. Justice Department dated 28 June 1987, wherein Richard Armitage is named along with Theodore Shackley (your former Deputy Director CIA from Covert Operations) and others. Please also note William Stevenson's article, "Bank of Intrigue-Circles of Power". You, Armitage, and General Richard Secord are prominently mentioned. Stevenson, you might remember, authored A MAN CALLED INTREPID. Also Tom Fitzpatrick's article, "From Burma to Bush, a Heroin Highway", should interest you. Both of these men are prize winning journalists. The book, CRIMES of PATRIOTS, "A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA", by Jonathan Kwitny, reporter for the Wall Street Journal, details for you the bank connections that Khun Sa mentions. Finally, the basic primer that spells out exactly how this dope for covert operations gambit began, is Alfred McCoy's THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. All of these should be required reading for the man appointed chief cop by our President to safeguard America from illegal narcotics. These are just a sampling of many works now available that chronical disgraceful conduct by those sworn to protect and defend our Constitution. Parting shot Mr. Vice President: On 28 January 1988, General Khun Sa tendered an offer to turn over to me one metric ton (2,200 pounds) of heroin. He says this is a good faith gesture to the American people that he is serious about stopping all drugs coming from the infamous Golden Triangle. I, you and Nancy Reagan are really serious about saying "NO" to drugs, why not test Gen Khun Sa? I challenge you to allow me in the company of agents of your choice to arrange to receive this token offer worth over $4 billion on the streets of New York City. It will represent the largest "legal" seizure of heroin on record. You can personally torch it, dump it in the ocean, or turn it into legal medication; as I understand there is a great shortage of legal opiates available to our doctors. I think Gen Khun Sa's offer is most interesting. If you say "YES" then the ever increasing flow of heroin from Southeast Asia (600-- tons-- '86, 900 tons-- '87, 1200-- tons'88) may dry up--not good for business in the parallel government and super CIA circles Oliver North mentioned. If you say "NO" to Khun Sa, you are showing colors not fit for a man who would be President. What is your decision? I challenge you to demonstrate exactly where you stand with respect to big-business-drugs, parallel government, misuse of U.S. tax-payer dollars in foreign drug supression programs that don't work, no interest in dialogue that will stem the flow of illegal narcotics, return of POWs while they are still alive? I for one am not for a "USA, Inc." with you or anyone else as Chairman of the Board. Respecting Your Office, James "Bo" Gritz,
Concerned American,
Box 472 HCR-31
Sandy Valley, NV 89019,
Tel: (702) 723-5266
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
|
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Reply with quote | #8 |
DEA informant Bradley E. Ayers AFFIDAVIT that he found drug residue aboard Southern Air Transport (SAT) planes working in Latin America for the CIA. A CIA report later concluded, years later that indeed, SAT was smuggling drugs.
details:
http://www.wethepeople.la/ayers.htm
transcription:
http://www.wethepeople.la/ayers2.htm
actual copy:
http://www.wethepeople.la/ayers1.gif
CIA admits it was aware of drugs:
Since WeThePeople originally published the results of Bradely Earl Ayers investigation of CIA proprietary Southern Air Transport, the CIA itself has confirmed the results of his investigation in Volume II of its Inspector General's report. Yet more proof, if any were needed, that what the small army of former DEA, CIA, and FBI agents and whistlblowers has been saying is true: The CIA has been up to its neck in the drug trade for decades.
Verbatim from Volume II of the CIA's IG Report:
800. Background. Southern Air Transport (SAT) carried a variety of equipment, supplies and humanitarian aid for the FDN during the 1980s.
801. Allegations of Drug Trafficking. A January 21, 1987 memorandum from ADCI Robert Gates to Morton Abramowitz, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, stated that the U.S. Customs Service had advised CIA that the Customs office in New Orleans was investigating an allegation of drug trafficking by SAT crew members. The Gates memorandum noted that the source of the allegation was a senior FDN official. The memorandum indicated that the FDN official was concerned that "scandal emanating from Southern Air Transport could redound badly on FDN interests, including humanitarian aid from the United States."
802 .A February 23, 1991 DEA cable to CIA linked SAT to drug trafficking. The cable reported that SAT was "of record" in DEA's database from January 1985-September 1990 for alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking. An August 1990 entry in DEA's database reportedly alleged that $2 million was delivered to the firm's business sites, and several of the firm's pilots and executives were suspected of smuggling "narcotics currency."
803. Information Sharing with Other U.S. Government Entities. As previously noted, a January 21, 1987 memorandum from ADCI Robert Gates to Morton Abramowitz, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, reported that U.S. Customs had informed CIA that the Customs office in New Orleans was investigating an allegation of drug trafficking by SAT crew members.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
|
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Reply with quote | #9 |
Former Federal Agent Mike Levine comments on the finding of a Memorandom of Understanding (MOU) which exempted the CIA from reporting the drug crimes of its assets (1982-1996). The MOU was quietly rescinded in 1995 by Attorney General Janet Reno when Gary Webb's series about the drug trade was published.
In a more recent PBS special on drugs, a former federal agent named Bobby Nieves went through great legnths to try to minimize the significance of the memorandom and Gary Webb's series "Dark Alliance". The PBS producers failed to note that Nieves now works for Oliver North's company, Guardian Technologies.
(http://www.customscorruption.com/drug_war.htm
"After his 1995 retirement, Nieves went to work for body armor manufacturer Guardian Technologies - owned by Oliver North and Contra-era Costa Rica CIA station chief Joe Fernandez, both barred from Costa Rica for dealing in multiton loads of cocaine. With leadership like that, the pipeline is open.)
Nieves was the federal agent who tipped off Celerino Castillo about drug smuggling at El Salvador's Ilopango airport in the first place, during the 1980's.
Castillo stated that two rookie agents were assigned to look into his reports of CIA drug smuggling out of the illopango air base. Instead, the agents admonished him for his spelling errors and ordered him to use the word "alleged" when referring to CIA involvement in his reports. Castillo replied, "Why do I have to use the word alleged when I am seeing this with my own eyes?"
http://www.wethepeople.la/levine1.htm
CIA ADMITS TO DEAL WITH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE.
Michael Levine & Laura Kavanau-Levine
THE EXPERT WITNESS radio show
March 24, 1998
As an ex DEA agent I found the complete lack of coverage by mainstream media of what I saw last night during the congressional hearings into CIA Drug
Trafficking, on CNN both depressing and frightening.
I sat gape-mouthed as I heard the CIA Inspector General, testify that there has existed a secret agreement
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/13.gif http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/14.gif http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/ex1.html
http://www.house.gov/waters/ciareportwww.htm
http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/cia.html
between CIA and the Justice Department, wherein
"during the years 1982 to 1995, CIA did not have to report the drug trafficking its assets did to the Justice Department." (This is the agreement, by the way, that lead directly to events described in our non-fiction books, The Big White Lie and Deep Cover. Those many who have read the books will know instantly what I am talking about).
To a trained DEA agent this literally means that the CIA had been granted a license to obstruct justice in our so-called war on drugs; a license that
lasted-so CIA claims-from 1982 to 1995, a time during which Americans paid almost $150 billion in taxes to "fight" drugs. Of course the evidence
indicates that they did not stop obstructing justice in 1995 either, but that I suppose is going to be another congressional hearing. As far as the current
hearings go this Catch 22 "revelation" means that all the present hearings are for nothing; that-if they are caught violating the drug laws-they had been
given "secret" license to do so by our Justice Department. This might also explain Janet Reno's recent and unprecedented move in blocking the release of
a Justice Department investigation into CIA drug trafficking.
God, with friends like these, who needs enemies? It is now clear that this agreement began with the events described in THE BIG WHITE LIE; that the top drug traffickers in Bolivia, then supplying virtually all the world's cocaine-including Sonia Atala-were CIA assets that had to be protected from our deep cover probe.
Laura and I still have the proof of this that we used to back up the publication THE BIG WHITE LIE. The same proof was later incorporated into
other data backing up the publications of DEEP COVER and TRIANGLE OF DEATH.
Our evidence-which congress has been craning its neck not to see- for instance, shows clearly that during Operation Hun (the story in The Big White
Lie), secret meetings were held with CIA and Justice Department wherein all indictments of top government officials in Bolivia were blocked. We now
believe this agreement began because of Operation Hun. CIA had to hide the fact that they were supporting the people manufacturing virtually all the
cocaine being produced in the world, at that time.
In Deep Cover we showed that, during Operation Trifecta-a highly successful deep cover probe into the top of the drug world in three countries (Panama,
Bolivia and Mexico) -Attorney General of the US Ed Meece found it necessary to warn the Attorney General of Mexico about DEA's case. We, (undercover DEA
agents and Customs agents), found links between top US government officials and the people who murdered DEA agent Kiki Camarena, that to this day go
unexamined by our congress or anyone else.
In "TRIANGLE OF DEATH, a work of "faction" we showed CIA's real-life involvement in the protection and creation of one of the most murderous
criminal organizations to ever plague America, an organization created by escaped Nazi fugitives under CIA protection-events occurring long before this
alleged CIA Justice agreement.
And so the dance continues.
If anyone watched the CNN show you cannot have helped but notice the snickering on the part of Congressional chairman Porter Goss (an ex CIA
officer), as congresswoman Maxine Waters spoke. Now here's the reason why: Sources of mine, who speak to me from inside this veil of secrecy out of
conscience and because I am cheaper and more reliable than a psychiatrist,
have already told me the following:
1. There is secret communication between CIA and members of the Congressional staff-one must keep in mind that Porter Goss, the chairman, is an ex CIA
official- indicating that the whole hearing is just a smoke and mirror show so that the American people-particularly the Black community- can "blow off some
steam" without doing any damage to CIA. The CIA has been assured that nothing real will be done, other than some embarrassing questions being asked.
2. That the hearings will result in the CIA receiving even a larger budget than the current $26 billion that they admit to. One of the most distressing things for me, a 25 year veteran of this business, to listen to was when Congresswoman Waters said that the hearings were not about CIA officers being indicted and going to jail. "That is not going to happen," she said. Almost in the same breath she spoke of a recent case in Miami wherein a Venezuelan National Guard general was caught by Customs agents smuggling more than a ton of cocaine into the US. Despite named CIA officers being involved in the plot, as Congresswoman Waters stated, the Justice Department will not tell her anything about the case because of "secrecy laws." No wonder chairman Goss was snickering. She could not have played more
neatly into CIA hands than to surrender before the battle was engaged.
For the entire existence of CIA they have gotten away with doing more damage to the American people than all our traditional enemies combined,
precisely because no one was ever prosecuted. From the CIA protection of Nazi criminals from war crimes prosecution as they set up criminal
organizations that preyed on America (Triangle of Death), to their lies to President Kennedy that dragged us into Bay of Pigs, to their lies to President
Johnson that dragged us into the Vietnam War, to their creation of a pan Arab army of American hating, drug trafficking terrorists during the Afghan War,
to the Church Commission hearings, to MK-Ultra, to the Bolivian Cocaine Coup ("The Big White Lie"), to their protection of the world's top cocaine
traffickers as they laid waste to American streets (Deep cover) , the CIA has acted exactly as Senator Frank Church once described them: "a runaway rogue
elephant...completely unresponsive to Congress...they (the CIA) have not only been unproductive, they have been contraproductive..they have brought great
shame on America."
And the dance continues.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #10 |
Retired fed agent Mike Levine comments on drug case
http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/essays/e6.htm
(excerpt)
CIA Drug Smuggling —The Venezuelan National Guard Case
What would be the appropriate action of a truly independent, mainstream media if say, the Central Intelligence Agency was caught red-handed actually smuggling as much cocaine into the US as the Medellin Cartel, in direct violation of federal law and with no political excuse?
Well, precisely that did happen.
Read the 60 minutes transcripts here:
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/ven/davila.script.html
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/ven/60m.html
up to 20,000 kilos alleged:
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/ven/980327.html
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/961122.venez.html
Sometime in 1990, US customs intercepted a ton of cocaine being smuggled through Miami International Airport. An investigation by Customs and DEA quickly revealed that the smugglers were the Venezuelan National Guard headed by General Guillen a CIA “asset” who claimed that he had been operating under CIA orders and protection. A fact that was soon, albeit very reluctantly, admitted by CIA. Once again, as in the Noriega case, it seemed that the gang that can’t spy straight had failed to notify DEA and Customs of what they were up to. That would turn out not to be the case. If CIA is good at anything it is the complete control of American media. So secure are they in their ability to manipulate media that they even brag about in their own in-house memos.
CIA pimps and shills by far outnumber and outclass the Drug War Monty variety, but in this case both con games—CIA Monty and Drug War Monty—were at grave risk.
The CIA Public Information Office, referred to by CIA insiders as “The Mighty Wurlitzer,” flew into action. Result: The story appeared nowhere in media for the next three years.
Example: The New York Times actually had the story almost immediately in 1990 and did not print it until 1993. It finally became news that was “fit to print” when the Times learned that 60 Minutes also had the story and was actually going to run it.[1] The Times ran the story on Saturday, one day before the 60 Minutes piece aired. There were, however, serious differences between the Times report and the one aired by 60 Minutes.
The Times piece said:
“No criminal charges have been brought in the matter, which the officials said appeared to have been a serious accident rather than an intentional conspiracy. (Emphasis mine) But officials say the cocaine wound up being sold on the streets in the United States.”
The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when Federal Judge Robert Bonner tells Mike Wallace:
“There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It’s illegal...” (emphasis mine).
Judge Bonner further revealed that his assertion came as a result of a secret joint investigation conducted by DEA and CIA’s internal affairs divisions. As if that weren’t enough, Annabella Grimm, the DEA agent Country attaché in Venezuela when the incident occurred was interviewed on camera. She too said that the CIA had simply smuggled drugs in violation of lots of US laws.
You don’t have to be a police detective to note that there are some serious differences in the two reports, or to suspect media shilling in the first degree. The Expert Witness once again flew into action. I did what I thought a real journalist should do—investigate the story.
Accompanied by my life’s partner, wife and co-writer, Laura Kavanau, I flew out to the coast to meet with Annabella Grimm, an ex colleague of mine whose work and forthrightness I had always admired. After speaking with Annabella we spoke with another DEA officer who was directly involved with the incident.
The sum total of my investigation was that the CIA had not only been smuggling a lot more cocaine—around 27 tons--than the one ton they were caught with, but had been warned by DEA not to do it, that what they were proposing as an “intelligence gathering operation” was not only a “whacko idea,” but it was a felony violation of US law punishable by up to life in prison.
The identities of at least two, top level CIA personnel who had chosen to ignore DEA’s warning and had gone ahead with the massive smuggling operation had been turned over to the DEA for indictment but instead of focusing on these criminals, the investigation had turned on Ms Grimm and others.
As I investigated the incident I noticed that James Woolsey, the then head of CIA, was appearing on every mainstream media television and radio “news” show that would have him, (including NPR Radio) broadcasting the claim that no criminal act had taken place and that the event had all been a “snafu....a joint investigation between CIA and DEA that had gone awry.”
Woolsey’s public statement directly contradicted that of federal judge Bonner. The overwhelming evidence, my DEA sources assured me, showed that Woolsey, an attorney, was lying and that mainstream media was shilling for him. Any real journalist could have done what I was doing, but none—other than 60 Minutes—dared. Was there ever a news story more important than one that should have read something like: “CIA BETRAYS NATION - CAUGHT RED-HANDED SMUGGLING MORE DRUGS ONTO US STREETS THAN THE MEDELLIN CARTEL” or “ DRUG WAR A $TRILLION FRAUD”?
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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|
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Reply with quote | #11 |
Senator John Kerry questions billionaire drug trafficker George Morales on why he was able to unload his planes in broad daylight on a Major Florida airport runway while under surveillance and indictment in other drug cases:
(this is totally hilarious!)
http://www.wethepeople.la/morales.htm
Actual copy of the entire report is here:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/kerry/
Senator Kerry discusses his committee findings on NBC news (with photos)
http://www.idfiles.com/nbcnn.htm
THE TESTIMONY OF GEORGE MORALES
Before the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism
Senator John Kerry questioning. (The witness having been previously sworn) Senator KERRY. Let me do this, because my colleague is also under some pressure. I want to ask you a few questions about one area, and then we'll come back. But I do want the record to go through this detail. I know it's tedious, but it's very important. In 1984, you said your shipments began to change. Is that correct? Mr. MORALES. Yes, they did. Senator KERRY. Is that the point in time in which you were approached by people you knew to be part of the Contra organization? Mr. MORALES. Yes. Senator KERRY. Can you describe specifically when that took place and what took place? Mr. MORALES. That was right after my indictment. Senator KERRY. When was your indictment? Mr. MORALES. March 3, March 3 or March 6, 1984. Right after that, few weeks, maybe a month, I was introduced by the Contra leaders in South Florida. Senator KERRY. Who were you introduced to? Mr. MORALES. I was introduced by Popo Chammoro, Octaviano Cesar, and -- Senator KERRY. Popo Chommoro. Mr. MORALES. Yes. Senator KERRY. Octaviano Cesar. Mr. MORALES. Yes, and Marcos Aguado. Senator KERRY. And Marco Aguado. Mr. MORALES. Which they represent themselves as being leaders of the Contras and also represent themselves as CIA agents. Senator KERRY. Now when you say they “represented themselves,” did you know of them at that time? Mr. MORALES. I heard about they being CIA agents. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. When you say “their being,” who was a CIA agent? Mr. MORALES. Marcos Aguado and Cesar Octaviano. Senator KERRY. How do you know that? Mr. MORALES. It's being very well known through many people for a long time around Central America and south Florida. Senator KERRY. You knew that at the time? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. Did they have to tell you that for you to know that? Mr. MORALES. Not whatsoever. Senator KERRY. And what happened at that point in time? Mr. MORALES. I was asked for help, financial help, any type of help that they were looking to have, because they had to be in this problem, they didn't have enough money, whatever. And also for exchange of taking care of my legal problems at the moment. Senator KERRY. I just want to understand this very clearly. You're saying that they asked you for help? Mr. MORALES. Yes, they did. Senator KERRY. Were they specific about the kind of help they asked you for? Mr. MORALES. Yes, they did. Senator KERRY. All right. Who specifically asked you for what help? Mr. MORALES. Octaviano Cesar was the one doing most of the talking in my office. Senator KERRY. What did he say to you? Mr. MORALES. He said that I[he] was looking for airplanes, money, training, weapons, explosives, any type, any kind of help. Senator KERRY. Did you agree to help? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. What did you agree to do? Mr. MORALES. I agreed to give him some planes, money, and to help him, to help him out. Senator KERRY. When he asked you for explosives, and guns, and other weapons, did you agree to get those weapons? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. Did you know where to get those weapons at that time? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. How did you know where to get them? Mr. MORALES. I used to buy the weapons in south Florida, in a gun shop, before that meeting. It was very obvious that I can buy more guns after I have the meeting with these particular fellows. Senator Kerry. How many times did you meet with these leaders to discuss your help? Mr. MORALES. Many times, Senator. Many times. Senator KERRY. In what year? Mr. MORALES. Since 198 the first time that I saw him, not met him, but I saw him, was in 1983, around this time, July or so. And then I was introduced formally to them, and the people, the person who was going to introduce me, told me who they were. And I became to be introduced formally with them in 1984. Consequently to that meeting, I have several, several meetings. Senator KELLY. Now you agreed to give the Contras a plane? Mr. MORALES. I agreed to give the Contras quite a few planes. Senator KERRY. How many planes did you give them? Mr. MORALES. The first time I agreed to give them a DC 4, a DC 3, a helicopter, a Piper Navajo. Senator KERRY. You just gave them? You gave them away? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. What was in it for you? Why did you give away these planes? Mr. MORALES. Well, Senator, like I told you before, I was arrested long before that time, and I was facing one of the most critical charges because of my indictment. So, they promised me that they would take care of the legal activities, the legal activities that I was charged for. Senator KERRY. Who promised you that? Mr.MORALES. Cesar and Popo. Senator KELLY. He said he could take care of your legal problems? Mr. MORALES. Yes, yes. Senator KELLY. Specifically? Mr. MORALES. Yes. Senator KELLY. Was he more specific about that? Mr. MORALES. Yes. Senator KERRY. How? Mr. MORALES. Many times I talked to him and he told me that he had plenty of friends, being him, the CIA, can advise the superiors about my financial support and airplane and training, and, therefore, they will finally, eventually will take care of my problem, which they did. To an extent, they did. As a matter of fact, they did. Senator KERRY. We'll come back to that in a little while. If you'd make a note on that, we'll come back to that in a while. I want to just run through this so Senator McConnell can have his round. Mr. MORALES. Excuse, me one second. [Pause.] Senator KERRY. Was the plane that you gave the Contras used by them? Mr. MORALES. Yes, it was. Senator KERRY. And you know that for a fact? Mr. MORALES. For a fact, sir. Senator KERRY. At this point in time, did you make some agreement about running guns down to various locations and bringing drugs back? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. That was part of the agreement. Senator KELLY. When you say “that was part,” can you be more specific? Precisely how did that discussion come about? Mr. MORALES. I was supposed to give him financial support, also buying guns for them, supplies, safety houses for them, in south Florida, buying equipment, different type of equipment, boats, engines, boots, uniforms, whatever it was they need for them to have. Senator KERRY. How were you supposed to buy this? Did they give you money? Mr. MORALES. No. I was the one who was going to buy, from my own money. Senator KERRY. Where was the money coming from? Mr. MORALES. Drugs. Senator KERRY. Did they know that? Mr. MORALES. Of course they know that. Senator KERRY. Why do you say “of course they know that”? How do you know they know that? Mr. MORALES. Because we discussed, as a matter of fact, we discussed to bring drugs that did not belong to me. They were their own drugs. Senator KERRY. Whose drugs? Mr. MORALES. The Contras drugs. Senator KERRY. How do you know they were Contra drugs? Mr. MORALES. They told me. Senator KERRY. What? Mr. MORALES. They told me. As a matter of fact Senator KERRY. What did they tell you? Did they say here's drugs, these are Contra drugs? Mr. MORALES. No, no, no. They say, there was a few trips that I was supposed to do for them in drugs. I did not ever ask him where the drugs come from other than that they were the drugs. Senator KERRY. Did you do those trips? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. When you say you did, did you personally fly them? Mr. MORALES. No. I instruct my pilot to fly them. I was waiting on the runway for some of them, and I saw the drugs. Senator KERRY. Now, in 1984, did you personally load weapons into an airplane in Fort Lauderdale? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I did. Senator KERRY. Did you see those weapons? Mr. MORALES. I bought them. Senator KERRY. Where did you buy them? Mr. MORALES. I bought them, some of them I bought them in the gun shop in south Miami. Senator KERRY. What kind of weapons were they? Mr. MORALES. Machineguns, automatic rifles, high powered rifles, pistols, explosives. Senator KERRY. Were these fully automatic machineguns? Mr. MORALES. Oh, yes. They were. Senator KERRY. Did you buy fully automatic machineguns on the open market in Florida? Mr. MORALES. I did. Senator KERRY. In what quantity did you buy them? Mr. MORALES. We sent many planes full of weapons down there. I really don't recall specifically the amount of items, but it was very considerable. Senator KERRY. Did you load these weapons onto the airplane in daytime or nighttime? Mr. MORALES. I did load them in the daytime, 12 noon in the daytime. Senator KERRY. Right in the full view of people? Mr. MORALES. Yes. Many times. Senator KERRY. And were you at the airport when the planes came back? Mr. MORALES. Yes, I was. Senator KERRY. What did you unload from those planes when they came back? Mr. MORALES. I was in the beginning of the runway. The plane lands and unloads the drugs into the end of the runway. Senator KERRY. How did you know they were drugs? Mr. MORALES. I saw them. Senator KERRY. What did you do with those drugs? Mr. MORALES. Sell them. Senator KERRY. What did you do with the money? Mr. MORALES. Give it to the Contras. Senator KERRY. All right. I'm going to come back to this because there's obviously considerably more detail that needs to be filled in. Mr. MORALES. Let me make myself clear, Senator. Senator KERRY. Please. Mr. MORALES. I gave them back to the same people because the Contras means a lot to a lot of people. I gave them back to Mr. Octaviano Cesar, who works for, used to work for the CIA, and Mr. Popo Chammoro, and Marcos Aguado...
*** Senator KERRY. How much money did you peronally direct toward -- strike that. How much -- can you estimate the amount of narcotics in dollars that you shipped back as part of this scheme for transfer of weapons down there? Mr. MORALES. How much was the money? Senator KERRY. How much money in narcotics value was brought back in as part of this linkage in 1984 and 1985? Mr. MORALES. Many, many, many millions of dollars. Many millions of dollars. Many. Senator KERRY. Can you give us an estimate of the kilos of cocaine? Mr. MORALES. In 1984, the kilos of cocaine in July were going around $32,000, $34,000, $35,000 a kilo. That is $35 million right there, in July. Senator KERRY. It’s $35 million? Mr. MORALES. In July. Senator KERRY. In July. Mr. MORALES. July, yes...
*** Senator KERRY. Now, when the drugs flew back in, did they come in the daytime or nighttime? Mr. MORALES. They come in in nighttime. A few of them in daylight. But a few of them. In the United States, they came twice at night. The rest of them came daylight. Senator KERRY. Now here you are. You have been indicted before. You have a known reputation in the region as a narcotics trafficker. You are leading a pretty flashy lifestyle. You have helicopters, planes at your disposal, you are racing fast boats, with a lot of money moving around. And you’re telling us that at this airport, with all of this knowledge about you, you were still able to move around without any fear? Mr. MORALES. I was very, very surprised myself.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #12 |
Congressman William Alexander questions CIA pilot at hearings to determine extent of US involvement in drug trade. An interesting side case developed as a result of this deposition: National security advisor Donald Gregg faced indictment for lying to congress. As part of his testimony, Brenneke admits to being a pilot who flew a group of not-yet-elected Reagan administration officials (Bush, William Casey) to Paris so that they could negotiate a DELAY in the release of americans being held as Iranian Hostages, hoping to seal victory for Reagan. This incident would later become known as "The October Surprise" and proponents of this theory include former president Carter's cabinet members.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_cr/h920205-october-clips.htm
When Donald Gregg was asked where he was on the fateful day the Paris negotiations were to have happened, he produced a vacation photo of himself on a sunny Massachussets beach. Brenneke's attorny had hired a weather expert who testified that the entire east coast was enveloped in overcast skies on the day of the Hostage negotiations. Facing prosecution, Gregg allegedly lashed out at the media threatening to invoke Martial law.
Upon his retirement, the head of the French secret service admitted in a Tell-All book that he indeed provided security for the Casey/Bush meeting with the Iranians in 1980. The president of Iran, Bani Sadr also wrote a book after his retirement and admitted that the meeting did indeed take place.
JOINT INVESTIGATION BY ARKANSAS STATE ATTORNEY
GENERAL’S OFFICE AND THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS
THE ORAL DEPOSITION OF RICHARD J. BRENNEKE
http://www.wethepeople.la/brenneke.htm
(excerpt)
. And go back in your mind to the first trip you took and describe to me the disposition of the cargo; that is, the cocaine, once it returned to Arkansas, once it was delivered to Arkansas? And I am especially I am particularly interested in the identification of persons other than Freddie Hampton. You've talked about Freddie Hampton. You've identified him. Can you identify other people who might have received this cocaine?
A. Yes. I can identify people who in fact received the cocaine, not “might have.” And --
Q. Can you tell us who they were?
A. I can tell you that they were members of John Gotti's family in New York. One of them was an individual known to me by the name of Sal Reale.
Q. Could you spell that name for us?
A. R E A L E.
Q. Sal Reale?
A. Salvatore Reale.
Q. Salvatore Reale?
A. Correct.
Q. And how did you know Mr. Reale?
A. Mr. Reale at that time was the Director of -- I believe it was that time, was the Director of Security for Kennedy International Airport in New York City.
Q. In New York City. Speak to the subject of your knowledge of Mr. Reale and his activities as the head of security at Kennedy? Tell us what you know about him and what he did?
A. Okay. Mr. Reale was a -- was one of Mr. Gotti's lieutenants. I watched the two of them interact. Mr. Gotti would provide directions, Mr. Reale would carry them out. It was his job to make sure that cargo being shipped through Kennedy was not lost, but properly located, and in some cases avoiding customs -- avoided the customs procedures.
Q. Are you saying that you saw Mr. John Gotti, the famous bead of the organized crime syndicate, in New York together with Mr. Reale?
A. Yes, sir, I did.
Q. Where did you see them?
A. That was in New York City.
Q, In New York City. What was the occasion that permitted you to see them together, do you recall?
A. I don't recall the nature of it. I do recall that it was a private club that I was taken to, and I had an opportunity to meet with them at that time.
Q. And so -- okay. Do you remember when it was you saw them together?
A. It was either late '84 or early 1985. But in that three or four month time span, it would have had to have been one or the other.
Q. Was your notice of Mr. Gotti and Mr. Reale in any way connected with your contractual job with the Central Intelligence Agency?
A. Yes. As far back as 1968 and early '69, we had begun to launder money from organized crime families in New York. At that time Mr. Gotti was an up and coming member of one of the families. I got to know them at that time. We used to wash their money out overseas and put it in Switzerland in nice, safe places for them.
Q. So you worked for Mr. Gotti as well as for the CIA?
A. Actually the CIA told me to do that on his behalf.
Q. So the CIA was in, would you say, partnership or association with Mr. Gotti?
A. Yes, sir. I would say a partnership.
Q. And can you describe the nature of that partnership?
A. Sure. The organized crime members had a need for two things; they needed drugs brought into the country on a reliable, safe basis, they needed people taken out of the country or people brought into the country without alerting customs or INS to the fact that they were being brought into the country, they also needed their money taken offshore so that it would not be subject to United States tax where they might have to declare its source. And so we performed these kinds of functions for them.
Q. Mr. Brenneke, are you saying that the CIA was in the business of bringing drugs into the United States?
A. Yes, sir. That's exactly what I'm saying.
Q. And that they were in partnership with John Gotti in this operation?
A. I would say that they worked with Mr. Gotti and his organization very closely. Whether it was a formal partnership, I don't know. But there certainly was a close alliance between the two.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #13 |
Mr. Duncan was a criminal investigator for the treasury department.
His testimony describes cover-up which reached the highest levels of government.
JOINT INVESTIGATION BY THE
ARKANSAS STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE
AND THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS
THE ORAL DEPOSITION
OF WILLIAM C. DUNCAN
http://www.wethepeople.la/duncan.htm
(excerpt)
Q. There were no indictments?
A. Never any indictments.
Q. There were no prosecutions?
A. None.
Q. In effect, the evidence that you gathered has not been
acted on by the U. S. Attorney's Office?
A. Not to my knowledge.
Q. Did you complain to your superior?
A. Yes.
Q. What was his name?
A. Paul Whitmore, Chief of Criminal Investigation. I also
complained to my group managers, Tim Lee, Charles Huckaby and
Max Gray.
Q. And what did they -- what was their response?
A. They were very frustrated, also. Mr. Whitmore, in fact,
made several trips to Fort Smith, Arkansas to complain to the
U. S. Attorney's Office.
Q. Did he relate to you the conversation he had had with the
U. S. Attorney?
A. On several occasions, and also related to me that the U.S.
Attorney wrote him a letter telling him not to come to his
office anymore complaining, that that was unprofessional
behavior.
Q. What was the conclusion of Mr. Whitmore concerning your
investigation and the manner in which it was handled by the U. S.
Attorney in Arkansas?
A. That there was a coverup.
Q. Are you saying -- do you agree with his-with Mr.
Whitmore's conclusion?
A. Absolutely.
Q. Are you stating now under oath that you believe that the
investigation in and around the Mena Airport of money laundering
was covered up by the U. S. Attorney in Arkansas?
A. It was covered up,
Q. Would you state that succinctly for the record in your own
words, so that we might -- to have the benefit of how you would
state your opinion and conclusions as a result of your
activities as a special investigator -- as to this
investigation?
A. I was involved from April of 1983, really to this date, in
gathering information, gathering evidence, until 1987-1988. I,
on a perpetual basis, furnished all the evidence, all the
information to the U. S. Attorney's Office. In January of 1986,
a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney from Miami, I believe, who was
a money laundering specialist, came to Fort Smith, met with then
U. S. Attorney Fitzhugh and myself and drafted a series of
indictments. I think there were 29 indictments, charging the
aforementioned individuals and Barry Seal, as I recall, as an
unindicted co-conspirator in the money laundering scheme. At
that point in time I had every indication that the cases would
go to the Grand Jury, that the evidence would be presented to a
grand jury. We experienced a variety of frustrations, mid '85
on, not able to obtain subpoenas for witnesses we felt were
necessary. I had some direct interference by Mr. Fitzhugh in
the investigative process. Specifically he would call me and
interrupt interviews, tell me not to interview people that he
had previously told me were necessary to be interviewed.
Q. Did you have any interferences or interruptions from anyone
within the U. S. Treasury Department that would interfere with
your investigation?
A. They interfered with my testimony before the House
Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime.
Q. Would you tell us about that?
A. In late December of 1987, I was contacted by Chief Counsel
for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Hayden Gregory,
who told me that they were looking into the reason why no one
was indicted in connection with the Mena investigations. The
Internal Revenue service assigned to me disclosure litigation
attorneys, which gave me instructions which would have caused me
to withhold information from Congress during my testimony and to
also perjure myself.
Duncan's testimony also implicates current DEA head ASA HUTCHINSON in cover up:
Q. (BY MR. ALEXANDER) Mr. Duncan, prior to your resignation
from the Department of Treasury, do you recall any other
conversations you may have had with your superiors concerning
the investigation of Mena?
A. With respect to what?
Q. With respect to the manner in which the case was attempting
to be covered up?
A. We had continuing discussions because none of us, my
managers nor myself, had ever experienced anything remotely akin
to this type of interference. I had a very good working
relationship with all the Assistant United States Attorneys and
the U.S. Attorney's Office, Western Judicial District, never any
problems. The office was open to me, and I visited with them
everytime I was in Fort Smith. And we couldn't understand why
there was this different attitude. I had found Asa Hutchinson
to be a very aggressive U.S. Attorney in connection with my
cases, then all of a sudden, with respect to Mena, it was just
like the information was going in but nothing was happening over
a long period of time. Mr. Hutchinson did not directly
interfere as did Mr. Fitzhugh. But just like with the 20
witnesses and the complaint, I didn't know what to make of
that. Alarms were going off. And as soon as Mr. Fitzhugh got
involved, he was more aggressive in not allowing the subpoenas
and in interfering in the investigative process. He was
reluctant to have the State Police around, even though they were
an integral part of the investigation.
For instance, when the money laundering specialist was up
from Miami, Mr. Fitzhugh left Mr. Welch in the hall all day
until late in the afternoon and refused to allow him to come in.
We were astonished that we couldn't get subpoenas. We were
astonished that Barry Seal was never brought to the grand jury,
because be was on the subpoena list for a long time. And there
were just a lot of investigative developments that made no sense
to us.
One of the most revealing things, I suppose, was that we
had discussed specifically with Asa Hutchinson the rumors about
National Security involvement in the Mena operations. And Mr.
Hutchinson told me personally that he had checked with a variety
of law enforcement agencies and people In Miami, and that Barry
Seal would be prosecuted for any crimes in Arkansas. So we were
comfortable that there was not going to be National Security
interference.
Q. Did you discuss the Mena investigation with anyone in
Washington?
A. I discussed the Mena investigation with people in the
national office.
Q. And with whom did you discuss it?
A. With Joe Pagani, who was the Deputy Assistant Commissioner
for Criminal Investigation, with a variety of other of his
staff. Now, this was at the point of interference by the
disclosure litigation attorneys.
Q. Anyone else in the, say, the Commissioner's Office that you
discussed this with?
A. Peter Filpi.
Q. Peter Filpi?
A. Who was Mary Ann Curtin's supervisor.
Q. Now, did you discuss it with Mary Ann Curtin?
A. She was the briefing attorney. She was the one that I was
-- was supposed to be involved in preventing disclosure of tax .
return information and grand jury information.
Q. Can you think of anyone else that you talked with up in
Washington? Did you receive any orders from any of the
higher-ups in Washington concerning this investigation?
A. None.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #14 |
Deposition of RUSSELL FRANKLIN WELCH before the alexander committee
Welch was an Arkansas stste police investigator, Criminal investigative Division.
http://www.idfiles.com/rwdepo1.htm
http://www.idfiles.com/rwdepo2.htm
http://prorev.com/wwduncan.htm
(excerpt)
7 Q. So actually no one was ever indicted, were they?
8 A. No.
9 Q. And how would you describe the cooperation of other federal
10 agencies?
11 A. Mixed. The Drug Enforcement Administration in Florida,
12 absolutely zero. They're just as useless to us as tits on a
13 boar hog. We had no use for them at all. I mean, they had
14 just from what they gave us, there were almost to the point of
15 rudeness. We did not get anything out of them. I went to an
16 agent conference in Savannah, Georgia during that time period,
17 which this group, Group 6 or Group 7, whatever it is, did not
18 show up. But there were other Customs agents there and other
19 DEA groups represented, and they were all pretty open that they
20 were surprised that this group from Miami DEA didn't show up.
21 They stated that they were unable to get any use out of them as
22 far as sharing information or working cases. It was just a
23 problem for everybody. And we all rationalized that they had a
24 major problem there, and probably don't have time to mess with
25 us. The amount of drugs that we would get excited about, they
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1 wouldn't even go into court with. Rationalized to keep things
2 going smooth.
3 The two DEA officers in Baton Rouge were very helpful, Mike
4 Long and another one, I can't remember his name, They had been
5 investigating Barry Seal for some time, and they were extremely
6 helpful and gave us information for a while that we would never
7 have got from any other source. And they gave us a witness who
8 was in -- at that time was in a safehouse or was being kept in
9 an isolated area because he was about to or had testified
10 against Barry Seal, and they gave us this witness. Which just
11 amazed us. And they gave us a couple of others, a guy named
12 LeBlanc and some others that we had no idea how to get ahold of.
13 The DEA in Arkansas, they were pleasant, easy to get along, but
14 they had no interest in the Barry Seal case at all.
15 As we observed Barry Seal fly into Mena one cold December
16 night, a young pilot by the name of Earl, Billy Earl, I
17 believe. WE had the airport under surveillance. We had
18 received word that either a smuggling operation was going to be
19 consummated there, or was -- something was about to happen
20 concerning Barry Seal. And this was from the operation Coin
21 Roll investigation out of the task force in New Orleans. We set
22 up, we had the FBI, DEA, State Police, and probably about any
23 other investigative agency you can think of, we were all out
24 there in force. I think Arkansas Game and Fish was represented.
25 And the plane did come in. And we observed what later was
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1 described as changing of a bladder tank. It was snowing that
2 night. and the DEA wasn't on the airport. They never pulled a
3 surveillance mission. One of the FBI agents commented to me
4 that his partner had stated to him later on, he said, "This is
5 the last time I go on surveillance for an air smuggling mission
6 that the DEA stays in the motel while the rest of us are out in
7 the snow," and he said, "that's got to be a clue." so we didn't
8 get a lot of support from the Arkansas Drug Enforcement
9 Administration.
10 And from other areas it was mixed. We dealt with a lot of
11 agents and agencies who were burned out on investigating Barry
12 Seal, because it had ended in -- all of their efforts had just
13 ended in futility and frustration, sometimes lawsuits. And when
14 they felt like they had cases, things just fell out from under
15 them, and they just wouldn't investigate him and didn't want to
16 hear about it, and certainly didn't want to hear about him from
17 us.
18 One Customs agent told me that, after I was trying to get
19 some help from him, he said "look, we've been told not to touch
20anything that has Barry Seal's name on it, just to let it go."
21 And he said, "That's fine. We've got plenty of other work to
22 do." I could go on and on.
23 Q. So basically would it be a fair summary to say that in your
24 professional opinion Barry Seal moved his entire drug smuggling
25 operation to Mena, Arkansas in the early 1980's and operated
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1 there for how long, until his death?
2 A. Oh, yeah.
3 Q. Until 1986?
4 A. Yeah, past 1984 there was obvious government involvement
5 with him.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #15 |
A 1991 deposition from a top IRS criminal investigator
http://prorev.com/wwduncan.htm
One of the great myths of the Clinton scandals is that Mena -- the major Contra training, supply, and drug running headquarters -- was a myth. One of those with solid evidence to the contrary is William Duncan, the former Special Operations Coordinator for the Southeast Region of the Criminal Investigation Division, Internal Revenue Service. In 1991, Duncan (who had lost his job trying to get to the bottom of the Mena story) gave a deposition to a joint investigation conducted by Rep. William Alexander and the Arkansas attorney general's office, represented by Winston Bryant. Here are some excerpts from the deposition -- giving a vivid snapshot of what was going on and what honest investigators such as Duncan and Arkansas state trooper Russell Welch were up against. Q. Would you state your name, age, and address, please?
A. William C. Duncan, age forty-four, 513 Pine Bluff Street, Malvern, Arkansas. * * * * * Q. You were a criminal investigator for the U.S. Treasury Department?
A. Yes, perpetually from December of '73 through June 16, 1989. Q. And as a criminal investigator for the Treasury Department, did you have occasion to investigate matters surrounding activities in Mena, Arkansas?
A. Yes, I did. * * * * * Q. Would you describe the nature of your instructions and the manner in which you carried out those instructions as they relate to activities surrounding the Mena Airport matter?
A. I was assigned to investigate allegations of money laundering in connection with the Barry Seal organization, which was based at the Mena, Arkansas airport. Q. And can you -- how long a duration were you involved in this investigation?
A. I received the first information about Mena and illegal activities at the Mena Airport in April of 1983, in a meeting in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Fort Smith, Arkansas. Asa Hutchinson was the U.S. Attorney then. Also present at that meeting was Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Jim Stepp, S-T-E-P-P. Q. Did you discover what you believed to be money laundering?
A. Yes, I did. Q. Who was the object of your investigation, and what institution?
A. Rich Mountain Aviation, Incorporated based at the Mena Airport. Barry Seal was not actually a target. We had targeted the employees and cohorts of his which operated out of the Mena Airport. * * * * * Q. What did you do with the evidence of money laundering that you gathered from your investigation?
A. Presented it to the United States Attorney's Office, Western Judicial District, Fort Smith, Arkansas. Q. And what were your recommendations to the U.S. Attorney?
A. That those individuals and corporation -- the corporation be prosecuted for violations of the money laundering statutes, also there were some perjury recommendations and some conspiracy recommendations. Q. Did you present to the U. S. Attorney a list of prospective witnesses to be called?
A. Yes, I did. Q. For a grand jury?
A. Yes. Q. And do you have the names of those witnesses?
A. There were a variety of witnesses. There were some 20 witnesses. He called three witnesses. The witnesses including -- included the law enforcement personnel who had participated in the investigations, Barry Seal, members of his organization, people who were involved in the money laundering, and various financial institution officers who had knowledge. Q. Mr. Duncan, the money laundering to which you refer, did that arise out of an alleged drug trafficking operation managed from the Mena, Arkansas airport?
A. It did. Q. And it has been alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency had some role in that operation. Is that the same operation that you investigated?
A. Yes. Q. And when you submitted the witnesses, the names of the prospective witnesses to the U. S. Attorney in Arkansas, are you referring to Mr. -- what was the name of the U. S. Attorney?
A. Asa Hutchinson. Q. Asa Hutchinson. And what was his reaction to your recommendations?
A. It had been my experience, from my history of working with Mr. Hutchinson, that all I had to do is ask for subpoenas for any witness and he would provide the subpoenas and subpoena them to a grand jury. His reaction in this case was to subpoena only three of the 20 to the grand jury. Q. Now, of the three witnesses, who were -- what was the nature of the evidence that would have been elicited from those witnesses?
A. Direct evidence in the money laundering. Q. And did those witnesses testify for the grand jury?
A. yes, they did. Q. Were you present at the time of the grand jury?
A. No, I was not. Q. You were not?
A. I was in the witness room, but I was not in the grand jury. Q. I see. What was the result of the testimony given by the three witnesses to the grand jury?
A. As two of the witnesses exited, one was a secretary who had received instructions ~~~ and I think on some occasions had discussed with Barry Seal, the methodology. She was furious when she exited the grand jury, was very upset, indicated to me that she had not been allowed to furnish her evidence to the grand jury. ~~~ She was the secretary for Rich Mountain Aviation, who participated in the money laundering operation upon the instructions of Hampton, Evans. * * * * *
Q. And what did she say about the evidence that she was allowed to give the grand jury as it might have been different from the evidence that you wanted her to give to the grand jury?
A. She basically said that "she was allowed to give her name, address, position, and not much else. * * * * * Q. And there were two other witnesses, I believe you made reference to, did you talk with them?
A. I talked to another one, his name was Jim Nugent, who was a Vice-president at Union Bank of Mena, who had conducted a search of their records and provided a significant amount of evidence relating to the money laundering transactions. He was also furious that he was not allowed to provide the evidence that he wanted to provide to the grand jury. Q. And was there a third witness?
A. There was a third witness, I don't recall her name off-hand. She was an officer at one of the financial institutions in Mena, and she did not complain to me. * * * * * Q. What was the result of the grand jury inquiry into the money laundering investigation which you had conducted?
A. There were never any money laundering indictments. Q. There was no indictment?
A. No. Q. Did you have occasion to talk to any of the jurors that were impaneled on the grand jury that heard the evidence?
A. At a later date, I came in contact with the deputy foreman of the grand jury, who had previously given testimony to an investigator for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, concerning her frustrations as the deputy foreman of the grand jury. * * * * * Q. And could you relate to us any other conversation you might have had with her concerning her appearance before the grand jury?
A. Well, she was perpetually involved in the grand jury as it heard evidence concerning the Barry Seal matter, and she related to me the frustrations of herself and the entire grand jury because they were not allowed to hear of money laundering evidence. Q. Do you recall any statements that she made to you concerning that grand jury, her service on the grand jury?
A. .She stated to me that they specifically asked to hear the money laundering evidence, specifically asked that I be subpoenaed, and they were not allowed to have me subpoenaed. * * * * * Q. Mr. Duncan, are you saying that the grand jury that was impaneled to hear your investigation, hear evidence of the investigation that you had conducted for the U.S. Treasury as a special investigator, was compromised?
A. The evidence was never presented to the grand jury. The evidence gathered during that investigation was never presented to the grand jury. * * * * * Q. There were no indictments?
A. Never any indictments. Q. There were no prosecutions?
A. None. Q. In effect, the evidence that you gathered has not been acted on by the U. S. Attorney's Office?
A. Not to my knowledge. Q. Did you complain to your superior?
A. Yes. Q. What was his name?
A. Paul Whitmore, Chief of Criminal Investigation. I also complained to my group managers, Tim Lee, Charles Huckaby and Max Gray. Q. And what did they -- what was their response?
A. They were very frustrated, also. Mr. Whitmore, in fact, made several trips to Fort Smith, Arkansas to complain to the U. S. Attorney's Office. Q. Did he relate to you the conversation he had had with the U. S. Attorney?
A. On several occasions, and also related to me that the U.S. Attorney wrote him a letter telling him not to come to his office anymore complaining, that that was unprofessional behavior. Q. What was the conclusion of Mr. Whitmore concerning your investigation and the manner in which it was handled by the U. S. Attorney in Arkansas?
A. That there was a coverup. Q. Are you saying -- do you agree with his-with Mr. Whitmore's conclusion?
A. Absolutely. Q. Are you stating now under oath that you believe that the investigation in and around the Mena Airport of money laundering was covered up by the U. S. Attorney in Arkansas?
A. It was covered up, Q. Would you state that succinctly for the record in your own words, so that we might -- to have the benefit of how you would state your opinion and conclusions as a result of your activities as a special investigator -- as to this investigation?
A. I was involved from April of 1933, really to this date, in gathering information, gathering evidence, until 1987-1988. I, on a perpetual basis, furnished all the evidence, all the information to the U. S. Attorney's Office. In January of 1986, a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney from Miami, I believe, who was a money laundering specialist, came to Fort Smith, met with then U. S. Attorney Fitzhugh and myself and drafted a series of indictments. I think there were 29 indictments, charging the aforementioned individuals and Barry Seal, as I recall, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the money laundering scheme. At that point in time I had every indication that the cases would go to the Grand Jury, that the evidence would be presented to a grand jury. We experienced a variety of frustrations, mid '85 on, not able to obtain subpoenas for witnesses we felt were necessary. I had some direct interference by Mr. Fitzhugh in the investigative process. Specifically he would call me and interrupt interviews, tell me not to interview people that he had previously told me were necessary to be interviewed. Q. Did you have any interferences or interruptions from anyone within the U. S. Treasury Department that would interfere with your investigation?
A. They interfered with my testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Q. Would you tell us about that?
A. In late December of 1987, I was contacted by Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Hayden Gregory, who told me that they were looking into the reason why no one was indicted in connection with the Mena investigations. The Internal Revenue service assigned to me disclosure litigation attorneys, which gave me instructions which would have caused me to withhold information from Congress during my testimony and to also perjure myself. Q. And how did you respond to the Treasury Department?
A. Well, I exhibited to them that I was going to tell the truth in my testimony. And the perjury, subornation of perjury resulted in an -- resulted because of an allegation that I had received, that Attorney General Edwin Meese received a several hundred thousand dollar bribe from Barry Seal directly. And they told me to tell the Subcommitte on Crime that I had no information about that. Q. What is this about Meese? Where did you get that information?
A. I received that from Russell Welch, the State Police investigator. * * * * * Q. (BY MR. ALEXANDER) Mr. Duncan, prior to your resignation from the Department of Treasury, do you recall any other conversations you may have had with your superiors concerning the investigation of Mena?
A. With respect to what? Q. With respect to the manner in which the case was attempting to be covered up?
A. We had continuing discussions because none of us, my managers nor myself, had ever experienced anything remotely akin to this type of interference. I had a very good working relationship with all the Assistant United States Attorneys and the U.S. Attorney's Office, Western Judicial District, never any problems. The office was open to me, and I visited with them every time I was in Fort Smith. And we couldn't understand why there was this different attitude. I had found Asa Hutchinson to be a very aggressive U.S. Attorney in connection with my cases, then all of a sudden, with respect to Mena, it was just like the information was going in but nothing was happening over a long period of time. Mr. Hutchinson did not directly interfere as did Mr. Fitzhugh. But just like with the 20 witnesses and the complaint, I didn't know what to make of that. Alarms were going off. And as soon as Mr. Fitzhugh got involved, he was more aggressive in not allowing the subpoenas and in interfering in the investigative process. He was reluctant to have the State Police around, even though they were an integral part of the investigation. For instance, when the money laundering specialist was up from Miami, Mr. Fitzhugh left Mr. Welch in the hall all day until late in the afternoon and refused to allow him to come in. We were astonished that we couldn't get subpoenas. We were astonished that Barry Seal was never brought to the grand jury, because be was on the subpoena list for a long time. And there were just a lot of investigative developments that made no sense to us. One of the most revealing things, I suppose, was that we had discussed specifically with Asa Hutchinson the rumors about National Security involvement in the Mena operations. And Mr. Hutchinson told me personally that he had checked with a variety of law enforcement agencies and people In Miami, and that Barry Seal would be prosecuted for any crimes in Arkansas. So we were comfortable that there was not going to be National Security interference. * * * * * Q. Did you ever talk to a Mary Ann Curtin?
A. Yes, I did. Q. What was her job?
A. She was the disclosure litigation attorney in Washington assigned to counsel me, provide legal advice with respect to my testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Q. What was her advice to you?
A. Told me not to offer any opinions, even if specifically asked for my opinion by the Subcommitte on Crime. Told me not to volunteer any information. Basically did not want me saying anything that would reflect badly on the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Western Judicial District of Arkansas. Q. What was your conclusion from her instructions to you?
A. It made no sence for me not to give full and complete testimony to the subcommittee on Crime. Q. Mr. Duncan, do you get the impression that she was ordering you to cover up the investigation?
A. Absolutely. Q. If you were asked to state that in your own words, what would you say?
A. I would say that we had conducted textbook investigations of all the individuals at Mena, there were a variety of legal issues involved, which I had always had them in loop on. We had proceeded very soundly. There was nothing for us to be ashamed of. The investigations were thorough, to the extent that we could conduct the investigation without subpoenas. And I would have thought that the Internal Revenue Service would have wanted a complete disclosure to Congress about the problems that we encountered, but quite the opposite was true. They obviously did not want any negative testimony coming from me concerning the U.S. Attorney's Office. At one point when we were arguing about the Meese allegation, she told me that she had discussed my frustrations with the personal assistant to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who was Larry Gibbs at the time, and the personal assistant's name was Bryan Sloan. And that Bryan Sloan told her, "Bill is just going to have to get the big picture." * * * * FURTHER EXAMINATION BY MR. BRYANT: Q. Bill, let me ask you a few questions. I want to take you back to your investigation at the Mena Airport. How many federal agencies were involved in that investigation at the time you first went there?
A. I was aware that U.S. Customs Service was involved..I was aware that the FBI was involved, the Drug Enforcement Administration. Those were federal agencies. The Arkansas State Police was involved. The Polk County Sheriffs Office was involved and also the Louisiana State Police was involved in investigating a link between Louisiana and Arkansas. Q. In your opinion, were those agencies actively involved in the investigation of the Mena operation and specifically Barry Seal at that time?
A. Actively involved since at least 1982. Q. And when did you first go to Mena?
A. In May of 1983. Q. And after you were involved in the investigation, when did you make your presentation to the U.S. Attorney for the grand jury laundering allegation that you had prepared?
A. The reports, the prosecutorial reports went to Mr. Fitzhugh in December of 1985. Q. At that particular time were all federal agencies still actively involved in investigating the Barry Seal matter or had they--had their interest cooled, or how would you describe it?
A. It was a very strange thing, because we were dealing with allegations of narcotics smuggling, massive amounts of money laundering. And it was my perception that the Drug Enforcement Administration would have been very actively involved at that stage, especially along with the Arkansas State Police. But DEA was conspicuously absent during most of that time. The FBI appeared on the scene intermittently. Usually when Russell and I were going to conduct some credible interviews, Tom Ross, from the Hot Springs FBI Office, would suddenly appear on the scene. He would make some trips to Baton Rouge with us. U.S. Customs was conspicuously absent, also. It was primarily just Russell Welch and myself. Q. Regarding the allegations of drug running and weapons running and any other things that you might have heard, what information do you have to, number one, substantiate that there might have been drugs brought to the Mena Airport?
A. We were receiving information from a variety of sources that Barry was doing some work for the United States Government, but that be was smuggling on the return trips for himself. We knew from his modus operandi in Louisiana that he many times dropped the rugs in remote areas and retrieved them with helicopters. He had helicopters in the hangers at Mena and a variety of aircraft, smuggling type aircraft on the ground in Mena. And we heard, you know, all the time that he was making on return trips -- Terry Capeheart, a Deputy at Polk County Sheriff's Department, had received information from an informant on the inside at Rich Mountain Aviation that drugs were actually brought into Rich Mountain Aviation, and on one occasion guarded with armed guards around the aircraft. * * * * * Q. What specific physical evidence did you observe at the Mena Airport that would indicate to you, that in your professional opinion, drugs were brought to Mena or that Mena was being used as a base for drug smuggling?
A. primarily I was reviewing evidence gathered by the law enforcement agencies, surveillance logs, their representations to me. I was focusing on the money laundering and financial analysis end of it, and did not conduct a lot of physical surveillance myself. But we had a lot of intelligence reports and surveillance reports of various airplanes in there being refueled, leaving in the middle of the night, N numbers being changed, typical modus operandi of a smuggling. We also had testimony that his aircraft had been plumbed with longer range tanks and bladders, that illegal cargo doors had been installed in the aircraft. And there was a lot of evidence of that. And I was seeing on some of the cashier's checks, Barry Seal's name on cashier's checks. The secretary ~~~ stated that when Barry would come in in his airplanes, the next morning many times there would be stacks of cash to be taken to the bank and laundered. Q. In connection with your investigation into the laundering activities, what -- how much money was laundered in your opinion through the Mena bank?
A. At the time we couldn't proceed any further because of the lack of subpoenas. I would have to review the records, which the Internal Revenue Service has now. But it seems like there was a quarter of a million dollars, $300,000, something like that that we had documented, that had been laundered through the Mena banks, just the Mena banks. Q. And when you say "laundered," what specifically do you mean; what happened?
A. They were obtaining cashier's checks in amounts of $10,000 or less at a variety of financial institutions in Mena and some further north from Mena or sometimes different tellers in the same banks to avoid preparation of the Currency Transaction Report. Kathy Corrigan testified that her instructions ~~~ were, that they were to do this to avoid the Internal Revenue Service knowing about the money and to avoid payment of taxes on the money. Q. Now, are you saying the' someone from Rich Mountain Aviation would appear at a local bank with $10,000 or less in cash, and then give that to the bank in exchange for a cashier's check, was that the typical arrangement, or what was the typical arrangement?
A. They would go with, say, $9,500, or they might go with $30,000, but they would break it up in increments of $10,000 or less. And on one occasion Freddie Hampton personally took a suitcase full of money, I think it was seventy some thousand dollars, into this bank officer, and the testimony of the tellers revealed that the bank officer went down the teller lines handing out the stacks of $10,000 bills and got the cashier's checks. Those cashier's checks, in that instance, went to Aero House of Houston for the building of Barry Seal's hanger. This, as I recall, was November of '82. Q. Do you have any doubt in your mind that Mena was used as a base for drug operation. headed by Barry Seal?
A. Do I have any personal doubt? Q. Do you have any personal doubt in your mind that that is not the case -- that that was not the case?
A. I very much believe that was the case. Q. You had an occasion to interview Mr. Seal yourself, did you not?
A. That's correct. Q. Now, when was this?
A. This was December of '85. Q. Was this prior to the laundering grand jury or after?
A. After. Q. After. Was there any particular reason why Barry Seal was not called to testify at the grand jury?
A. I never received an explanation from the U.S. Attorney's Office as to why he was not called. Because we were given assurances that he would be called to the grand jury. He was on the witness list, and I issued him a subpoena at the time I interviewed him for appearance at the grand jury. You've already stated you, as a law enforcement official did not testify?
A. That's correct. Q. Did any law enforcement official testify before the grand jury, to your knowledge?
A. It's my understanding that Larry Carver with DEA testified before the grand jury sometime maybe in '87 or '88. Russell Welch testified before the grand jury, and also Terry Capaheart testified before the grand jury. * * * * * Q. In your professional opinion as a law enforcement official with extensive experience, is that -- wouldn't it be highly unusual in extreme cases where law enforcement officials who investigated the case would not be called to testify?
A. Every grand jury case that was ever presented where I conducted the investigation, I was the law enforcement officer who summarized the evidence before the grand jury. I find it highly unusual. Q. And isn't it highly unusual that Barry Seal was not called to testify in view that he was - - in view of the fact that he was the principal involved in the investigation?
A. We found it highly unusual. Q. You had an opportunity to interview Mr. Seal. Did Mr. Seal make any admissions regarding drug operations that he headed?
A. I would have to review a copy of that transcript. he basically admitted that he had been a smuggler, that he had smuggled drugs. he told -- he said that he told the people at Rich Mountain Aviation that they were guilty of money laundering and should be prepared to plead guilty to it. That he provided instructions to them that resulted in them getting involved in money laundering. "Not to put his business on the street," I think is the way he put it. * * * * Q. Mr. Duncan, we've talked about -- you have testified that a one Barry Seal, in your judgment, laundered money from -- that was derived from the sale of drugs --
A. Yes. Q. -- in several banks in and around Mena, Arkansas. He had to get those drugs -- "he," Barry Seal, , had to get those drugs from somewhere. Do you know the source of those drugs?
A. The specific drugs in the Mena operation? Q. Well, Barry Seal got drugs that he sold for money. Are those the drugs that came to Mena from Central America?
A. I don't have direct evidence of that. Q. Do you have any evidence as to where Barry Seal might have gotten the drugs that he sold for money that was laundered at Mena?
A. I believe that he testified that he had a history of smuggling narcotics, marijuana and cocaine, from Central America. Q. Did Barry Seal have a connection with the so-called Mena operation, drug smuggling operation?
A. The evidence that we have indicates that his entire base of operation moved from Baton Rouge to the Mena Airport in approximately 1982, late 1982. Q. Mr. Richard Brennecke testified earlier today that he was a former contract employee with the CIA, and that as a pilot he transported guns and munitions from Mena, Arkansas to Panama. And that on the same airplane returned with a cargo of drugs, mostly cocaine but some marijuana, that was brought back to Mena and delivered to one Hampton, Freddie Hampton, and to representatives of the Gotti New York crime syndicate operation, the Mafia from New York. Do you know whether or not any of those drugs that were described by Mr. Brenneke went to Mr. Seal as well and were sold in the United States in exchange for the money that he laundered at Mena?
A. I have no personal knowledge of that. FURTHER RE-EXAMINATION BY MR. BRYANT: Q. Even though, while you do not have personal knowledge of that, Bill, would Mr. Brenneke's scenario, based on what you personally know happened at Mena, be consistent?
A. What Mr. Brenneke has related concerning the Mena operation would be consistent with testimony from a variety of individuals and additional information that we received concerning the method of operation at Rich Mountain Aviation. For instance, Kathy Corrigan related that on numerous occasions they would be forced to stay inside their offices because airplanes would land and strange faces would be around, Central American or Mexican, Spanish origin folks would be around that they had not seen before. But on those occasions they were given instructions by Hampton and/or Joe Evans to stay in the office and make no contact with those individuals. Airplanes landing in the middle of the night, hanger doors opening, the airplanes going in, then leaving out before daylight, numerous, dozens and dozens of accounts like that. Great secrecy surrounding the entire operation at Rich Mountain Aviation. Q. So if everything that Mr. Brenneke stated regarding his relationship with the Mena operation were true, it would fit into the overall picture as you understand the situation at Mena, would it not?
A. Yes, It would. With respect to the training at Nella, we had numerous reports of automatic weapons fire, of people in camouflage in the middle of night, low intensity landing lights around the Nella Airport, twin-engine airplane traffic in and about the Nella Airport. Reports as far as 30 something miles away of non-American type of troops in camos moving quietly through streams with automatic weapons, numerous reports like that from a variety of law enforcement sources. Also, reports that -- from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission people that they found vast quantities of ammunition hulls secreted in shacks around the Nela Airport. On one occasion the Game and Fish officer was warned away from the Nella Airport by someone who purported to be an FBI agent and exhibited a badge, On and on and on. Q. Regarding the Nella Airport, have you been there personally?
A. Yes, I have. Q. And so there is another airport not far from the Mena Airport?
A. Yes, there is, approximately ten miles north. Q. And would there be any other reason for the Nella Airport other than clandestine activities, paramilitary training, use by planes to bring in drugs, illegal contraband and so forth?
A. Not to my knowledge. There are no hangers out there. The type of reports that we had from individuals living around the airport would indicate that type of an operation. Some of those people said that there were frequent visits by people from Rich Mountain Aviation basically asking what they were seeing and hearing. There was a large expenditure of money in preparation of the strip by Freddie Lee Hampton. The type of expenditure that you wouldn't make just for an out-of-the-way little country airport.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #16 |
Mike levine Comments on banning from Costa Rica of Ollie North and associates for drug trafficking:
http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/ml-kiki-north.html
After five witnesses testified before the U.S. Senate, confirming that John Hull—a C.I.A. operative and the lynch-pin of North's contra re supply operation—had been actively running drugs from Costa Rica to the U.S. "under the direction of the C.I.A.," Costa Rican authorities arrested him. Hull then quickly jumped bail and fled to the U.S.—according to my sources—with the help of DEA, putting the drug fighting agency in the schizoid business of both kidnapping accused drug dealers and helping them escape; although the Supreme Court has not legalized the latter . . . yet.
The then-President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias was stunned when he received letters from nineteen U.S. Congressman—including Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democrat who headed the Iran-contra committee—warning him "to avoid situations . . . that could adversely affect our relations." Arias, who won the Nobel prize for ending the contra war, stated that he was shocked that "relations between [the United States] and my country could deteriorate because [the Costa Rican] legal system is fighting against drug trafficking."
In my twenty-five years experience with DEA which includes running some of their highest level international drug trafficking investigations, I have never seen an instance of comparable allegations where DEA did not set up a multi-agency task force size operation to conduct an in-depth conspiracy investigation. Yet in the case of Colonel North and the other American officials, no investigation whatsoever has been initiated by DEA or any other investigative agency.
FAIR mentions lack of media coverage of North banning from Costa Rica for drugs.
http://www.fair.org/extra/8910/north-banned.html
Barred from Costa Rica along with North were Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, former US Ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, and former CIA station chief in Costa Rica, Joseph Fernandez. This winter Costa Rica's congress will vote on the permanent implementation of the bannings. In an interview with Extra!, Costa Rican Minister of Information, Jorge Urbina, stated: "I can assure you that the recommendations will pass nearly unanimously."
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #17 |
The US govt utilized the services of Peru intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos despite the fact that he was a documented drug trafficker. he was on the CIA payroll as an agent of the US government between 1990 and 2000. His pay was $1 million dollars a year.
He was later apprehended at a large Venezualen estate surrounded by 140 bodyguards.
He is currently on trial with 1600 other defendants and had $277 million dollars seized from his bank accounts. More than $1.5 billion is still being sought. He is accused of drugtrafficking, protecting drug shipments, accepting payoffs and arming the FARC guerillas in colombia AND right-wing death squads at the same time.
President Alberto Fujimori is currently living in exile in Japan which will not extradite him. He is listed on INTERPOLS "most wanted list"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB37/
(EXCERPT)
Document 5: DEA Report of Investigation, Corrupt Officials, Sensitive, August 27, 1996, 1 p.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB37/04-01.htm
The Drug Enforcement Agency begins investigations into accusations by drug trafficker Demetrio Chavez-Penaherra (aka “VaticanoE that Montesinos accepted $50,000 a month in bribes. This document notes that Montesinos was a well-known defense lawyer for narco-traffickers before becoming Fujimori’s advisor. This document not only reveals that the DEA was investigating Montesinos for these specific charges, but that they also had a previous file on him prior to this investigation.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2001/030401a.html
Consider, for example, the case of Vladimiro Montesinos, a shadowy figure rarely seen in public, who for many years was the CIA's principal point man in Peru and a lynchpin in the U.S. government's $17.7 billion war on drugs. Trained as a cadet at the School of the Americas, a notorious breeding ground for assassins, Montesinos became head of the Peruvian intelligence service, SIN, in the early 1990s.
During the decade that his leadership of Peru's spy agency won U.S. praise and support, Montesinos built a billion-dollar criminal empire based on drug trafficking, arms dealing, and judicial and political corruption, according to Peruvian parliamentary investigators.
Several recently captured cocaine barons claimed they had been paying Montesinos a monthly fee to let them operate. "The groups that reached an agreement with Montesinos's men could be sure that their competitors would be eliminated," explained Roger Rumrill, an expert on the Peruvian drug trade.
What's more, according to Peruvian prosecutors, Montesinos used drug profits to finance death squads, which were responsible for torture, extra-judicial executions, and the disappearance of 4,000 government opponents. By choosing Montesinos as its main ally in Peru, the CIA turned a blind eye to human rights abuses as well as his involvement in the drug trade.
Eventually, his CIA handlers wised up and realized that Montesinos had been taking them for a ride. They cut him loose in August 2000 after disclosures that the Peruvian spymaster had betrayed his patrons in Langley, Virginia, by selling arms to leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia.
Montesinos is currently a fugitive from justice, and the so-called war on drugs continues to provide a thinly veiled cover for U.S.-backed counterinsurgency in Colombia.
Washington's fraudulent anti-narcotics agenda is underscored by the CIA's unwillingness to target far-right paramilitary groups responsible for anti-guerrilla attacks and civilian massacres, even though these same paramilitary groups are directly involved in cocaine production and trafficking.
If the Montesinos affair and the Colombia fiasco tell us anything, it's that U.S. intelligence officials will dutifully ignore evidence of dope smuggling when they deem it expeditious to do so.
Harry Recon, the spy pigeon, may twitter about flying high on intelligence, not on drugs, but there's no escaping the grim fact that large amounts of cocaine entering the United States are collateral damage generated by CIA activities in Latin America.
"Drugs and covert operations go together like fleas on a dog," explained David MacMichael, a former CIA analyst. Scratch the surface of the narcotics trade and once again it seems that certain drug pushers are OK by the CIA as long as they keep snorting the anticommunist line.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #18 |
Latest essay by Mike levine- Long but worth reading....
Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
by Michael Levine
(unedited draft of essay now published in
INTO THE BUZZSAW, Prometheus Press, edited by Kristina Borjesson)
Everything you need to know about mainstream media’s vital role in perpetuating our nation’s three—decade, trillion dollar War on Drugs despite overwhelming evidence that it is a fraud you can learn by watching a Three Card Monty Operation
http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/essays/e6.htm
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #19 |
how the contras invaded the united states
http://www.flashpoints.net/howTheContras.html
Palacio was in Baranquilla that day to arrange a cocaine deal with her host, Jorge Luis Ochoa, at the time Columbia's most ambitious drug lord. As she watched two men in green uniforms remove two green military trunks out of the plane and on to a truck, her host explained his operation: "Ochoa told me that the plane was a CIA plane and that he was exchanging guns for drugs."
The crew, he said, were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from the CIA, landing at dusk. Some-times they brought guns, sometimes they took U.S. products such as washing ma-chines, gourmet food, fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers which they could not get in Colombia. Each time, Ochoa said, they took back drugs." In her 1987 sworn testimony before Senator John Kerry's Senate Subcom-mittee on Narcotics and International Terrorism, Palacio acknowledged that she could not confirm the operation was being conducted by the CIA. But, she added, "Obviously, what I saw raised many questions about the source of the U.S. weapons which I know Ochoa has obtained."
As an FBI operative, Palacio would later realize the extent of the damage done to the United States Government by the guns-for-drugs exchanges that permeated the hemisphere during the early-to-mid-1980s. "To my great regret," she testified, "the Bureau has told me that some of the people I identified as being involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelligence Agency." And, according to Palacio's deposi-tion, it was not only the CIA that was involved with drug smugglers. Palacio told Senator Kerry that she spoke to the FBI about many individuals with the U.S. government that were involved in illegal drug operations. "We have extensively discussed drug-related corruption in the United States, including a regional director of U.S. customs, a federal judge, air traffic controllers in the FAA, a regional director of immigration, and other government officials."
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #20 |
more cover up......
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/031699mexico-drugs.html
March 16, 1999
COLD PURSUIT: A SPECIAL REPORT Top Mexican Off-Limits to U.S. Drug Agents By TIM GOLDEN  ASHINGTON -- Early last year, as undercover U.S. Customs agents neared the end of the biggest investigation ever conducted into the illegal movement of drug money, bankers working with Mexico's most powerful cocaine cartel approached them with a stunning offer.
The agents, posing as money launderers from Colombia, had insinuated themselves deeply into the Mexican underworld, helping the traffickers hide more than $60 million. Now, money men working with the cartel said they had clients who needed to launder $1.15 billion more. The most important of those clients, they said, was Mexico's powerful defense minister. The customs agents didn't know whether the money really existed or if any of it belonged to the minister, Gen. Enrique Cervantes, officials said. But having heard about American intelligence reports pointing to corruption at high levels of the Mexican military, the agents were mystified by what happened next. Rather than continue the undercover operation to pursue the deal, Clinton administration officials ordered that they shut it down on schedule several weeks later. No further effort was ever made to investigate the offer, and officials said prosecutors have not even raised the matter with the suspects in the case, who have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the authorities. "Why are we sitting on this kind of information?" asked the former senior customs agent who led the undercover probe, William F. Gately. "It's either because we're lazy, we're stupid, or the political will doesn't exist to engage in the kind of investigation where our law-enforcement efforts might damage our foreign policy." Senior administration officials denied that foreign policy influenced their decision to end the operation, saying they were moved primarily by concerns for its security. They also emphasized that the agents were unable to verify the Mexican traffickers' claims. Other officials of the administration, which has based much of its Mexican drug strategy on collaboration with Cervantes, said they are confident that he is above reproach. A spokesman for the Mexican Defense Ministry, Lt. Col. Francisco Aguilar Hernandez, dismissed the traffickers' proposal as self-serving lies.
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| The Hunters and Their Prey: Characters in a Complex Drama of Deception
The Targets
AMADO CARRILLO FUENTES
Former head of the so-called Juarez cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug smuggling operation. Bribed senior military and police officials to protect his operations. Died after plastic surgery in July, 1997. JUAN JOSE CASTELLANOS ALVAREZ TOSTADO
Juarez cartel lieutenant responsible for money laundering activities; negotiated deals with undercover Customs team. Protected in Mexico by men identified as federal police agents. Now a fugitive, thought to be living in Mexico. VICTOR ALCALA NAVARRO
Juarez cartel operative who worked closly with the Customs team, arranging pickups of drug money in the United States and introductions to corrupt Mexican bankers. Jailed in Los Angeles.
The Undercover Operation
"JAVIER RAMÍREZ"
Pseudonym of Colombian source who worked with undercover Customs agents. Posed as the head of a money laundering operation run out of a dummy front company in a Los Angeles suburb. Made more than $2 million for his undercover work. WILLIAM F. GATELY
Former senior Customs investigator in Los Angeles, developed and led Operation Casablanca. Battled with senior officials skeptical of the plan. Recently retired after being called back to Washington and given a desk job. JOHN HENSLEY
Customs chief in Los Angeles. Officials said he accused Gately of stealing money and other abuses that were investigated and found baseless. Received $20,000 Presidential award for Casablanca and other cases.
The Administration
JAMES E. JOHNSON
Undersecretary of the Treasury for Enforcement, helped oversee Casablanca as an Assistant Secretary. Said to have warned officials involved in the case not to mention the name of the Mexican Defense Minister unless they could prove his involvement. RAYMOND W. KELLY
Former New York City Police chief, now Customs Commissioner. Was the Treasury Undersecretary overseeing Customs during Casablanca. Said he did not extend the investigation to pursue the purported $1.15 billion deal because there was no hard evidence that it was real. ROBERT E. RUBIN
Treasury Secretary who, despite concerns about political fallout, ordered the undercover operation to go forward without informing officials at the State Department, the National Security Council or the Mexican Government. | But a detailed account of the case -- based on confidential government documents, court records and dozens of interviews -- suggests that U.S. officials walked away from an extraordinary opportunity to examine allegations of the official corruption that is considered the main obstacle to anti-drug efforts in Mexico. For nearly a decade, American officials have been haunted by the spectacle of Mexican officials being linked to illicit activities soon after they are embraced in Washington. And just weeks before the customs investigation, known as Operation Casablanca, ended last year, administration officials received intelligence reports indicating that the Mexican military's ties to the drug trade were more serious than had been previously thought. But when faced with the possibility that one of Washington's critical Mexican allies might be linked to the traffickers, the officials gave the matter little consideration. They said they opted for a sure thing, arresting mid-level traffickers and their financial associates and at least disrupting the money laundering system that drug gangs had set up. To reach for a general, they said, would have added to their risks with no certainty of success. "Obviously it was a significant allegation," Customs Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in an interview. But he added: "There was skepticism about it. Was it puffing? It just was not seen as being -- I won't use the word credible -- but it wasn't verified." Taking Stock: Arrests, Indictments and Drug Money When senior administration officials announced the sting last May 18, they took a triumphant inventory: the indictments of three big Mexican banks and bankers from a dozen foreign banks; the arrests of 142 suspects; the confiscation of $35 million in drug profits and the freezing of accounts holding $66 million more. The officials claimed the success as the result of a longstanding administration fight against money laundering. But Gately, who retired from the Customs Service on Dec. 31, said his investigation ran a gantlet of resistance from the start. The Justice Department, uncomfortable with cases in which undercover agents laundered more money for drug traffickers than they ultimately seized, were imposing new limits on the time that such operations could run and the money they could launder, officials said. And though the restrictions did not apply to Customs, a branch of the Treasury, Justice Department officials continued to play strong, skeptical roles in supervising cases throughout the government. One federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, admitted that he initially dismissed Gately's plan as a nonstarter. "You're out of your mind," the official remembered saying. Several colleagues said it was the sort of response that Gately, 49, tended to see as a challenge. A decorated former Marine who enlisted for service in Vietnam at the age of 17, he had already been at the center of several cases that mixed internal struggle and public success. Friends and critics described him in similar terms: driven, sometimes abrasive and unusually creative. After leading an investigation that revealed ties between the Italian mafia and Colombian cocaine cartels, Gately co-wrote a 1994 book about the case, "Dead Ringer," that cast him as a lonely crusader surrounded by small-minded bureaucrats. "It is the story of one man who refused to succumb to corruption," the prologue reads, "who believed in his oath and mission, and the consequences he paid for believing in what he was doing." As the senior customs drug investigator in Los Angeles, Gately said, he first heard from an informant in 1993 about an important shift in the way that Mexican and Colombian drug traffickers were converting their cash into funds that could be freely spent. The informant said traffickers were depositing their money with corrupt Mexican bankers, who sent it back to them in almost untraceable cashier's checks drawn on the American accounts that the Mexican banks used to do business in the United States. Gately hoped his informant could infiltrate that system -- collecting illicit cash from drug wholesalers in the United States and then wiring it to corrupt bankers in Mexico. The bankers would issue drafts for the money, and customs would develop evidence against suspects on both ends of the transaction. Many customs officials, however, were skeptical that the ruse would work. Drug-enforcement agents wanted to use the informant in another case. One federal prosecutor opposed using him at all because he had a criminal past and threatened to indict him in a 10-year-old case. Even when Gately was eventually able to recruit another informant, a Colombian known by the pseudonym "Javier Ramirez," a senior Justice Department official, Mary Lee Warren, pressed him to limit the operation's scope, Gately and others said. "What she wanted to know was, when was this going to be over?" he recalled. "What was our endgame?" Getting Involved: U.S. Operatives Meet a Kingpin In November 1995, Colombian drug contacts introduced the undercover agents to Victor Alcala Navarro, a representative of Mexico's biggest drug mafia, the so-called Juarez cartel. The customs agents, posing as money launderers from a dummy company called Emerald Empire Corp., began picking up the Mexican's profits and laundering them as planned. In February 1997, at meetings in Mexico, Ramirez was introduced to Alcala's boss. A few months later, the customs informant found himself chatting by phone with the head of the cartel, Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Over scores of meetings and million-dollar deals, the traffickers grew more open about the official protection they enjoyed in Mexico, law-enforcement officials and government documents indicate. At one meeting in Mexico City on May 16, 1997, the traffickers brought along 16 federal police agents as bodyguards. At another meeting, a man who identified himself as an official of the Mexican attorney general's office picked up $1.7 million in cash, including $415,000 that the undercover agents had brought for the cartel boss himself. During a later meeting in New York, Alcala told the agents that like Mexico's drug-enforcement chief, who had been arrested for collaborating with the Juarez cartel, the defense minister, Cervantes, was in league with the competing Tijuana cartel. Customs officials said they remained skeptical of what the agents heard, including the traffickers' claim that Carrillo Fuentes had actually faked his own death in 1997. But in December 1997, Ramirez invited Alcala to Colombia for an elaborately staged meeting that seemed to raise their partnership to a new level. At a heavily guarded hacienda overlooking Bogota, an informant acting as Ramirez's Colombian boss, Carlos, said he and his partners had $500 million of their own to launder. They wanted to know whether the Mexican bankers used by Alcala's boss, Juan Jose Castellanos Alvarez-Tostado, could help. "Alvarez called us right back," Gately recalled. "He said, 'Let me send you my very best people, and we will get it done.' " On March 6, 1998, Alcala arrived with several businessmen at the tastefully furnished offices of Emerald Empire in an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. This time the businessmen brought a big deal of their own. One of the men, David Loera, said he knew "a general" who had $150 million in Mexico City to invest. Would Ramirez -- who had told the traffickers he owned part of a Nevada casino used to launder money -- care to help? Over the next six weeks, according to government documents and the accounts of Gately and several officials, the deal was discussed in three more meetings and three telephone conversations between Ramirez, the undercover agents and the traffickers. All of the contacts were secretly tape-recorded and transcribed, officials said. In one call, two senior investment managers at Mexico's second-largest bank told the customs operatives that the money belonged not just to "a general" but to the minister of defense. Later, the two Mexicans advised Ramirez that the minister was sending "his daughter" (a woman later said to be a friend) to meet with them, along with an army colonel and a third person. However, the investment managers said, the amount to be laundered was much more than they had discussed: the minister had $500 million in cash in New York and another $500 million in the Netherlands, in addition to the $150 million in Mexico City. Customs officials said they queried the CIA, which works closely with the Mexican military on drug-control and other programs. The CIA responded tersely that they had no such information about Cervantes, an assessment that other officials have since reiterated. But while Cervantes has not been a focus of suspicion, Mexican and American officials said several senior generals close to him have been under scrutiny by investigators from both the Mexican attorney general's office and a special military intelligence unit. On Feb. 6, analysts at the Drug Enforcement Administration briefed Attorney General Janet Reno on intelligence indicating that senior Mexican generals might indeed be cooperating with Carrillo Fuentes' organization, officials said. And in a separate customs case in Houston, undercover agents had been approached about laundering millions of dollars for an unnamed Mexican army general, officials said. On April 9, Alcala visited Emerald Empire with a cousin, who had just returned from Mexico with a message. "He was very nervous about the deal," Gately said. "He said it could be very dangerous if it got screwed up, because the money belonged to 'all of them, including the president,' " Ernesto Zedillo. (A spokesman for Zedillo, David Najera, dismissed the claim as baseless.) Later that month, Gately went to Washington to brief officials including Kelly -- who was then about to take over the Customs Service after overseeing it as the Treasury Undersecretary for Enforcement. "Kelly said, 'How do we know it's really him?' " Gately recalled, referring to Cervantes. "I told him, 'We don't know,' " Gately said. " 'We can't substantiate it. But we have no reason to believe they're telling us anything other than what they know.' "They weren't trying to impress us, they were trying to make deals with us," Gately added. "So whoever had this money, I thought it was worth pursuing -- whether it was the defense minister of Mexico or somebody we'd never heard of." People familiar with the discussions said they did not go much further. The general's supposed emissaries were to meet Ramirez in Las Vegas on April 22. They did not arrive, and the traffickers reported that they had gotten nervous. Kelly acknowledged that he had been pressing for months to wrap up the investigation; he said he had grown increasingly concerned that information about it might leak out, endangering the undercover agents. The final sting had already been postponed twice because federal prosecutors were still preparing indictments. James E. Johnson, who succeeded Kelly as undersecretary and has closely supervised Treasury's relationship with Mexico on enforcement issues, added a cautionary note that several officials said seemed to underscore his concern for the political stakes. Unless the agents had proof of Cervantes' role, several officials quoted him as warning, they should not bandy his name about in connection with the case. "We need to be very careful about how we talk about this sort of thing," a senior law-enforcement official, who would not speak for attribution, quoted him as saying. "If we don't have the goods, it makes us look like we're overreaching." Avoiding Pitfalls: U.S. Agents Begin Fretting Over Leaks The operation had already navigated a series of sizable obstacles. Gately and some other agents were worried that their boss in Los Angeles, John Hensley, had leaked information about the secret operation to congressional aides and others; Hensley had also pressed hard to bring the operation to an end, officials said. For his part, officials said Hensley had accused his strong-willed subordinate of transgressions ranging from traveling without authorization to stealing millions of dollars. Kelly acknowledged that the charges were investigated and found baseless; Hensley declined any comment. As discussions about the supposed $1.15 billion were going on, the undercover operation also suffered a serious setback with the capture of a key Juarez operative in Chicago. The arrest brought money deliveries to a halt while the cartel hunted for a mole. On Saturday, May 16, more than two dozen Mexican traffickers, bankers and other operatives who had been invited to the United States by the undercover team were rounded up in San Diego and at the Casablanca Casino Resort in Mesquite, Nev. And officials said whatever thoughts they had that the allegations about Cervantes might be pursued were dropped in the diplomatic backlash that followed. While the Mexican authorities were asked to arrest about 20 suspects indicted in the case, they initially located only six. One was the partner of Loera, the fugitive businessman who first proposed the deal with "the general." The partner was found dead in a Mexican jail from injuries that the police described as self-inflicted. Alvarez-Tostado has never been found; his deputy, Alcala, awaits trial in Los Angeles. Soon after the operation, American officials said, they showed the Mexican government some of their information on apparent corruption in the case. They said they kept silent about more explosive evidence to avoid exacerbating the furor that had broken out over their decision not to warn Mexico about the operation. Still, the officials said that none of the information was ever pursued, and the Mexican attorney general, Jorge Madrazo Cuellar, obliquely dismissed the allegations in a little noticed statement issued last July. Madrazo said in an interview that the Americans told him only about unnamed federal agents and a money laundering scheme involving "a general who had a daughter." He said the name of Cervantes, who has no daughter, was never mentioned. "With the information that they gave me, what could I possibly have done?" Madrazo asked. "Gone and looked for a general with a daughter?"
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #21 |
Professor Alfred McCoy interview
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/heroin/mccoy1.htm
PD: How did you come to write The Politics of Heroin; CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade?
AM: In 1971 I was a graduate student doing Southeast Asian History at Yale University. An editor at Harper & Row, Elisabeth Jakab, read some articles in a volume I had edited about Laos, which made some general references to the opium trade in Laos.
I went to Paris and interviewed retired general Maurice Belleux, the former head of the French equivalent of the CIA, an organization called SDECE [Service de Documentation Exterieure et du Contre-Espionage]. In an amazing interview he told me that French military intelligence had financed all their covert operations from the control of the Indochina drug trade. [The French protected opium trafficking in Laos and northern Vietnam during the colonial war that raged from 1946 to the French defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.]
The French paratroopers fighting with hill tribes collected the opium and French aircraft would fly the opium down to Saigon and the Sino-Vietnamese mafia that was the instrument of French intelligence would then distribute the opium. The central bank accounts, the sharing of the profits, was all controlled by French military intelligence.
He concluded the interview by telling me that it was his information that the CIA had taken over the French assets and were pursuing something of the same policy.
So I went to Southeast Asia to follow up on that lead and that's what took me into doing this whole book. It was basically pulling a thread and keep tugging at it and a veil masking the reality began to unravel.
PD: What was the CIA's role in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia?
AM: During the 40 years of the cold war, from the late 1940's to this year, the CIA pursued a policy that I call radical pragmatism . Their mission was to stop communism and in pursuit of that mission they would ally with anyone and do anything to fight communism.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #22 |
here is a article about some of the banks and methods used to facilitate the trade.
http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/ciadrugslaunder.htm
Down bY The River
i also wanted to mention that in Charles Bowden's recent book "Down By The River" Bowden interviews the head of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) Phil Jordan. the book details the rise of the cartels, links to the intelligence community and political corruption from the president on down.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684853434/002-6668459-0280845?v=glance
Jordan details capturing a man at a texas airport based on profiling. the man is found to be carrying $28.8 million in cash and is found to be working for BCCI, a notorious money laundering bank.
Jordan then receives a telephone call "from a high level DOJ employee" who orders that the man be allowed to continue on his was AND he was to be given his money back!
Jordan did as he was ordered and didnt ask why. (makes me wonder why)
the book was published in November, 2002. i highly recommend it. Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In January 1995, Lionel Bruno Jordan was shot dead in the parking lot of an El Paso, Tex., K-Mart. A police investigation concluded that it was a botched carjacking; a 13-year-old Mexican was charged and convicted. Bruno's brother Phil, a rising DEA official, suspected the murder had to do with his drug- busting work, but his attempts to get the agency to investigate were blocked at every turn. Exploring this mystery, prize-winning author Bowden weaves an intricate tale of treachery, deceit, corruption and death on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican government was implicated in the drug trade all the way up to the office of then-president Carlos Salinas, and Bowden talks with former Mexican officials who fled to the U.S. to avoid being killed off. Phil Jordan was drawn into a life of casino gambling in a vain attempt to raise enough money to pay off Mexican officials and get them to talk. Bowden also tracks the exploits of Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo, based right across the border from El Paso in Ju rez, who more than likely ordered a hit on Bruno. Bowden maintains an intense noirish tension throughout, though some may find his use of interior monologue irritating at times (particularly when he puts the reader inside the mind of the dead man, Bruno). Still, that doesn't mar a dramatic detective story and a biting critique of the U.S. war on drugs.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
 The Real Deal!, March 7, 2003
Reviewer: A reader
You want the true story about the "War On Drugs"? Then don't wait and buy this book NOW. Bowden takes you right inside what's going on with this so called war, and the people who get hurt by it. Once you pick up this book you won't be able to put it down. Charles Bowden is one of this country's great reporters/writers.
Jay Marvin
WLS Radio
Chicago, IL
Shocking slice of reality, February 7, 2003
As a former participant in the drug war (on the wrong end), I will assure you this is an accurate portrayal. Participants on both sides of the issue are decimated, and people prefer to bury their heads and hide from this reality, a reality that may be the most critical problem facing our nation. This book is extremely well written. My hat is off to Mr. Bowden.
Former contra wins review of U.S. drug ties. By Bob Egelko OF THE EXAMINER STAFF July 27, 2000 Fights deportation to Nicaragua, says CIA knew of cocaine deals The former Northern California spokesman for the Nicaraguan contras, facing deportation for cocaine trafficking in the 1980s, will apparently get the chance to convince a federal judge that he was assured the drug deals had U.S. government approval. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that a judge should hear and evaluate Renato Pena's claim that a federal prosecutor in San Francisco had told him after his arrest in 1984 that he was at no risk of deportation for having carried cocaine and cash to Los Angeles about a dozen times. In court papers opposing Pena's challenge to his current deportation order, the U.S. attorney's office said no such assurance was given. Pena's case recalls the controversy over allegations of CIA- backed drug dealing by the contras, the U.S.-supported guerrillas fighting Nicaragua's leftist government in the 1980s. Accused in a San Jose Mercury News series of connections to the early crack cocaine trade in Southern California, the CIA hotly denied having anything to do with Los Angeles drug traffickers who claimed contra connections. Pena said he had been told by Norwin Meneses, a major drug trafficker with ties to the contras, that CIA-connected contra commanders were aware of the drug operation in which Pena took part. The CIA has denied any relationship with Meneses. The appeals court stopped well short of finding that the government condoned Pena's activity as a drug courier. But the court said Pena's claims about the government's attitude were relevant to his attempt to overturn his 1985 drug conviction, the basis of the current attempt to deport him. "Pena and his allies supporting the contras became involved in selling cocaine in order to circumvent the congressional ban on non-humanitarian aid to the contras," the three-judge panel said. "Pena states that he was told that leading contra military commanders, with ties to the CIA, knew about the drug dealing. Pena believed that the sole purpose of these drug transactions was to help the contras, and he believed the United States government would not seek to prosecute. "The circumstances surrounding Pena's case, including his belief that his activity was supported by the U.S. government and his alleged reliance on the assurances of the assistant U.S. attorney regarding his immigration status, raise important questions about public confidence in the administration of justice." The court said a federal judge should hear testimony from Pena and others about what assurances he had been given before pleading guilty in 1985, and about whether his court-appointed attorney had acted incompetently by failing to tell him he risked deportation. The judge would then decide whether to set aside the guilty plea. Pena's suit, seeking to overturn the guilty plea, had been dismissed by U.S. District Judge Fern Smith in 1997. The hearing ordered Wednesday would be held before another judge, because Smith now heads the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. "He's a credible person," said Pena's current attorney, Stephen Shaiken. "He was good enough for the U.S. government when he was spokesperson for the opposition and when he was an informant (against others in the drug ring). He was telling the truth then, and he's telling it now." He said Pena, now a San Francisco city employee, was not speaking to reporters about the case. The U.S. attorney's office, which represented immigration officials who want Pena deported, declined comment on the ruling. Pena was a member of the security force of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, who was overthrown by the leftist Sandinistas in 1979. Pena came to the United States in 1980 and became the chief of public relations in Northern California for the FDN, the contras' political arm. He applied for political asylum in August 1984 but was arrested three months later on charges of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute it. Pena said he had been asked by Norwin Meneses' nephew, Jairo Meneses, to travel to Los Angeles with money that would be used to buy cocaine and finance contras, whose U.S. military aid had been cut off by Congress. He was paid about $6,000 for carrying money and drugs to Los Angeles between March and November 1984, the court said. Pena said he had agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence and been told by a federal prosecutor that he would be taken care of and had nothing to fear about his immigration status. He said he never would have pleaded guilty if he had known he could be deported to Nicaragua, then governed by the Sandinistas. He also said his court-appointed attorney had never spoken to him about the possibility of deportation. After serving a year in a halfway house and testifying against another Meneses relative in the drug case, Pena was granted asylum in 1987, the court said. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service revoked his asylum in 1996 and moved to deport him to Nicaragua because of his drug conviction. In court papers, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Yeargin said Pena's asylum had been withdrawn because he had failed to disclose his conviction on his asylum application. Yeargin also said the original prosecutor in the case, Rodolfo Orjales, had discussed drug smuggling to Pena but made no promises to him. Orjales, now a Justice Department employee in Washington, D.C., was out of his office Wednesday and unavailable for comment. (c)2000 San Francisco Examiner
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #23 |
Feb 11, 2003
Agents John McLaughlin and Charles Micewski win lawsuit after their careers were ruined when they started investigating CIA ties to drug money
http://kyw.com/siteSearch/local_story_042221441.html
Agents Win Lawsuit Against Pa. Attorney General
Feb 11, 2003 10:13 pm US/Eastern
PHILADELPHIA (AP) A jury has sided with two narcotics agents who claimed their boss -- the Pennsylvania attorney general -- retaliated against them because they uncovered a drug-trafficking ring that diverted profits to a CIA-backed Dominican presidential candidate.
Agents John McLaughlin and Charles Micewski filed a lawsuit claiming their forcible transfer from the Philadelphia office of the state Bureau of Narcotics Investigation violated their civil rights.
A federal jury in northeastern Pennsylvania agreed, awarding $1.5 million to McLaughlin and Micewski on Friday after a one-week trial. The verdict capped more than five years of litigation.
"They won their lives and their reputations back," Don Bailey, attorney for the plaintiffs, said Tuesday. "These people were just destroyed, devastated."
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #24 |
Former agents discuss drug trafficking:
http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/
(excerpt)
"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA." --Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit. FROM: Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley: U. of CA Press, 1991, pp. x-xi.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
| | maynard
Registered: 08/24/04
Posts: 546
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Reply with quote | #25 |
ollie and drugs
http://www.flashpoints.net/plentyOfLeads.html
In the fall of 1984, according to Carrasco's detailed account, contra leaders ordered Morales to land cocaine-filled airplanes at public airports in south Florida where the flights would be "protected." Carrasco himself was on a flight to bustling Opa-locka airport in North Miami, then under heavy surveillance by federal authorities because of its proximity to South America.
The flight taxied to a hangar controlled by Morales, already under federal indictment for using that hangar for smuggling activities. There, Carrasco said, over 400 kilos of cocaine packed in military-style duffel bags were unloaded in plain view.
Carrasco's sworn statements were part of wide-ranging disclosures about drug-smuggling activities. The CIA connection did not come to light until he was cross-examined by Abello's defense attorneys.
In one exchange, Carrasco answered "Yes, that's right," when asked if, at the time he was working for Morales, he knew that Morales claimed to have connections to the CIA and as a result had protection to bring drugs into the United States.
__________________
Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
America is not a young land: it is old and dirty and evil before the settlers, before the Indians. The evil is there waiting.-William S. Burroughs
“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987 |
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