The CIA & Drugs: Narco-colonialism in the 20th Century (3/3)
Rich Winkel
In the 1980s to early 199Os, the CIA worked to keep the corupt Haitian
military and political leadership in power. As usual, the CIA turned a
blind eye to their clients' drug trafficking. In 1986, the Agency added
some more names to its payroll by creating a new Haitian organization,
the National Intelligence Service (SIN). SIN was purportedly created to
fight the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in the
trafficking, a trade aided and abetted by some of the Haitian military
and political leaders.
"We had problems in Haiti, where friends of ours -- that is,
intelligence sources in the Haitian military -- had turned their
facilities, their ranches and their farms over to drug traffickers.
Instead of putting pressure on that rotten leadership of the
Haitian military, we defended them. We held our noses, we looked
the other way, and they and their criminal friends distributed,
through a variety of networks, cocaine in the United States -- in
Miami, in Philadelphia, New York and parts of Pennsylvania." -
(Jack Blum in testimony before Congress)
The Honduran military:
"Honduras was another country that was key for the Contras.
Honduras was the base of contra operations. Most of the contra
supplies came through Honduras. We wanted to do nothing to
embarrass the Honduran military. Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a member
of a gang that was involved in the Camarena murder, went to
Honduras and found refuge there. He was walking the streets of
Tegulcigalpa openly and publicly. The response of the United States
government was to close the DEA office in Honduras and move the
agent stationed there to Guatemala. We took testimony from that DEA
agent. He said it made no sense. The drug trafficking was going on
in Honduras, and the Honduran military were at the center of it.
When the war ended, almost the minute the war ended, to our credit,
the administration arranged the midnight extradition of Mr. Matta
Ballesteros, who is currently serving a life term in American
prisons. The response of the Honduran military was to allow a mob
to burn down a portion of the U.S. facilities in Tegulcigalpa.
But we sat by, as long as they were helping us, and allowed them to
carry on their illegal business." (Jack Blum in testimony before
Sen. Arlen Specter)
Analyses:
This author's overview of modern narco-colonialism.
Another analysis concludes that the cumulative effect of
protecting the Bolivian and Contra cocaine pipelines essentially
kick-started the crack-cocaine epidemic of the early 1980's.
Jack Blum was the lead investigator into the Iran-Contra affair;
he delved substantially into the bizarre quagmire of covert
operations during the 1980's investigations. In 1996, Mr. Blum
provided a prepared statement as well as testified before a Senate
subcomittee investigating CIA complicity with Contra drug
trafficking. Both transcripts are quite revealing for what they do
say and what they don't say.
During the Vietnam War, Alfred McCoy went right were the action
was, into the midst of a covert war where controlling the opium
fields was part of the CIA's covert war strategy.
Patterns of complicity:
The pattern of U.S. narco-colonial complicity and/or protection of
drug running rackets went beyond the CIA and included the
Department of Justice. The patterns also continue, with notable
examples from Burma, Peru and Venezuela, in addition to a
continuation of playing underground games in Colombia and Central
America.
Burma (Myanmar): The CIA leaves tell-tale signs of its activities.
MOGE is a joint oil drilling venture of the narco-militarist regime
and Unocal. There are allegations that MOGE is being used by the
fascist regime to launder their narco-profits. This has resulted in
a major share-holder's lawsuit to unveil the truth.
In the fall of 1995 and later, in 1996, Richard Horn, a DEA agent,
filed two separate lawsuits against top former State Dept. and CIA
officers based in Burma, contending that they acted to thwart his
antidrug mission in the Southeast Asian nation.
In addition to his evidence that the CIA had thwarted DEA anti-drug
efforts in Burma, Horn alleges that he was lied to, electronically
surveilled, and finally kicked out of Burma - not by the
narco-fascist Burmese government but by U.S. officials who
explained that his anti-drug campaign should be sacrificed in in
favor of other diplomatic objectives. (see also
http://www.TheNation.com/issue/961216/1216bern.htm)
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadurgs/burma01.html
"...But for reasons that remain unclear, the Central
Intelligence Agency and the State Department had other ideas.
D.E.A. Sensitive e-mails state that former C.I.A. chief of station
Arthur Brown "destroyed this project in one swift move." According
to the e-mails, Brown delivered an early version of the Wa proposal
-- signed by Lu -- to SLORC military intelligence officer Col. Kyaw
Thein. When Thein threatened to pick up Lu once more and teach him
a lesson in respect, Horn was able to intervene temporarily. In
Horn's view, the C.I.A. destroyed a unique opportunity for a
dramatic drug eradication program in the poppy fields of the
world's biggest heroin producer. (Horn, now a D.E.A. group
supervisor in New Orleans, is suing the C.I.A., claiming it
illegally surveilled his residence in Rangoon to gain information
about his plans, which the C.I.A. went on to foil.) ... In
September 1993, Horn was forced out of the country by the State
Department under pressure from the C.I.A..."
Int'l Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers'
Unions Update: Burma/USA: Unocal Shareholder Can Go Ahead With Call
For Drug Laundering Investigation, SEC Says
See also:
A history of the CIA's activities in the golden triangle
The CIA in Laos: Vietnam-era collusion with a drug trafficking army
See also these metacrawler queries, which will deliver a rich set
of further links:
burma + CIA + DEA + lawsuit
burma+opium+MOGE+Unocal
Unocal+MOGE+SEC+Union
Geopolitical+Drugwatch+Paris
Venezuela and 22 tons of cocaine: The CIA bungles an ostensibly
legitimate anti-drug operation.
From 1987 to 1991, a team of CIA agents officially collaborated
with a Venezuelan general to import nearly 22 tons (20,000 kilo's)
of cocaine, over the objections of the DEA! Nearly all of the
cocaine made its way onto the streets without interdiction. This
incident was, at the time, officially dismissed as an "aberration"
resulting from poor decision making by a CIA agent. AAt the same
time a CIA director was issuing blanket denials of CIA involvement
in cocaine trafficking, this story was making breaking 1996
headlines as a Miami Grand Jury was hearing evidence in the case.
The CIA and Venezuelan military had placed a spy in the ranks of a
Colombian drug cartel and had attempted winning the confidence of
drug lords by handling shipments ultimately totaling 22 tons.
All this was done under the aegis of the CIA's Venezuelan
counter-narcotics force. Whether the debacle had in its basis a
legitimate anti-narcotics purpose, it does reveal a great deal in
the way the Agency typically applies its craft. There's a very
telling comment in the New York Times article: "..[s]uch programs
fall under the banner of 'liaison relationships' with foreign
intelligence agencies, and rarely if ever does the C.I.A. willingly
report on these relationships to Congress."
see:
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela01.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela02.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela03.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela04.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela05.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela06.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/venezuela07.html
Peru's Cocaine "Rasputin:"
Peru has become a classic Latin "Narcocracy." The CIA, as usual, is
plying the local political terrain for whatever leverage it can
acquire, leading to the CIA keeping a known narco-militarist on the
CIA payroll. Here we see Clinton's DEA chief (Drug Enforcement
Agency within the U.S. Dept. of Justice) turning a blind eye
towards the drug-running activities of a CIA asset:
The whole story:
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/peru01.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/peru02.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/peru03.html
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/peru04.html
[Peru's 115,300 hectares of coca estimated by the USG annual crop
survey in 1995 is nearly 60 percent of the world total, and
provides raw material for about 80 percent of all cocaine consumed
in the U.S. This is an increase of 6% over the 1994 coca
cultivation estimate. (UNITED STATES STATE DEPARTMENT NARCOTICS
REPORT)
Peru has been mainly an exporter of semifinished raw material
(cocaine base) for processing in Colombia, but in 1995 there was
evidence of more processing of cocaine hydrochloride in Peru for
export to Mexico or other destinations, bypassing the historical
Colombia connection.]
Guatamala:
Guatamala's emergence as a CIA-protected narcocracy pales in
comparison to its long history of state violence and slow genocide
of AmerIndian peasants. For the entirety of the 20th century,
murderous regimes have been installed and supported by the U.S.A.
Early in the 20th century, the U.S. Army made regular visits to
Guatamala to put down populist rebellions. In the 1950's the U.S.
Army invaded Guatamala to render a plantation state suitable for
United Fruit Corp. While no U.S. invasion has ocurred since then,
the US Army and CIA have been very active in training and
supporting the narco-fascist military.
Guatamalan death-squad leader on CIA payroll also trafficking
But more fundamental to the problem is the structural dependence of
Guatamala's economy upon narco-dollars, without which the small
republic would find itself destabilized and a poor environment for
foriegn corporations to operate their agricultural plantations.
Guatamala's Coca-dollars & Government-sponsored death squads
The CIA in Laos: Vietnam-era collusion with an opium-growing tribal
army:
The CIA has a history of owning up to its collusion with drug
traffickers. This synopsis explains the contents of a 1972 CIA
Inspector General's report. The report defended the CIA's
acquiescence to the opium trafficking of the CIA-backed Hmong
irregular army. Prof. Alfred McCoy went where the action was, and
documented the CIA's role in heroin smuggling first hand.
Most notable is the fact that the CIA's Vietnam-era proprietary
airline "Air America" was used to actually transport raw opium.
Yes, the CIA actually smuggled drugs. The CIA wasn't transporting
the finished product (heroin), rather the CIA operatives were
moving raw opium as part of supporting the Hmong irregular army. In
order for the Hmong to continue to fight, the CIA saw to it that
their raw opium arrived at the next trans-shipment point.
The comic movie, "Air America" documents this, with information
used from the first edition of the book by the same name (later
editions of the book are missing the documentary evidence,
including the testimony of former Air America pilots).
A few of the principals prosecuted in the Iran-Contra affair,
notably John Singlaub and Richard Secord, were also involved in the
CIA's covert war in Laos. Secord was a commander in Air America.
See also:
A history of the CIA's activities in the golden triangle
Mexico: Follow the Money & the Mexican Trade Surplus
Again, going beyond simple corruption is a structural dependance
upon narco-profits. Mexico's oligarchy, military and secret
services are all corrupted by narco-profits, creating a situation
whereby Mexico is both doomed to suffer the fate of a narcocracy as
well as a kleptocracy.
The CIA maintains the largest overseas station outside the United
States in Mexico City, as does the FBI and DEA. The drug smuggling
Mexican army, police, and high level politicians have been on the
CIA payroll for more than 30 years. More than 90 percent of all
illegal drugs transit though Mexico to the United States. The DEA
estimates that illegal drugs amount to a $30 billion dollar trade
surplus to Mexico with the United States.
Mexico's external debt of more than $150 billion dollars, owed
mostly to huge US money center banks such as Citibank, requires
approximately $14 billion dollars a year to service the interest.
In 1998, Citibank was found guilty of failing to report
suspiciously large transactions, laundering millions of dollars for
the Salinas brothers and Mexican cartels.
The Mexican flow of narco-dollars only deferred the ultimate fate
that Mexico's external debt would rapidly go into default and the
nation functionally became insolvent. After the passage of NAFTA,
Mexico essentially defaulted, its currency worthless and its
treasury looted by PRI politicans. Under Pres. Bill Clinton's
direction, the U.S. Treasury bolstered Mexico's currency to the
tune of $130 billion dollars.
As usual, there are narco-facilitators who, unsurprisingly, find
friends in the CIA. Attempts by Mexican journalists to unravel the
Mexican oligarchy's structural dependence upon narco-colonial
tactics and functional basis as a narcocracy, in addition to the
usual web of government corruption and collusion with drug
traffickers, have met with tragedy. Just like DEA agents who have
penetrated into the higher government ranks of the narco-profits
food-chain, journalists who start publicly exposing this perverted
and corrupt system are murdered.
A group of U.S. Congressmen submitted this documentary history of
CIA collusion with drug traffickers into the Congressional Record.
Links:
Gary Webb's Dark Alliance
website: [Image]
http://www.shineon.org/garywebb/
http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/garywebb/garyWebbSpeaks.htm
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Cocaine Importation Agency (exhaustive):
http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/cia/main.html
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We The People:
http://www.wtp.org/
http://www.anaserve.com/~wethepeople/
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Crack the CIA Coalition:
http://www.radio4all.org/crackcia/
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Michael Levine's pages:
http://www.radio4all.org/expert
http://www.shineon.org/levine/index.html
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Michael Rupert's home page:
http://www.copvcia.com
http://www.copvcia.com/Links.htm
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Consortium News:
http://www.consortiumnews.com
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html
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The Duplicity of the War on Drugs:
http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/wod/dupl_con.html
Serendipity CIA-Drugs Home Page:
http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/cia.html
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Defrauding America:
http://www.copi.com/defrauding_america/default.htm
http://www.copi.com/defrauding_america/chp_18.htm
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Drugs & the CIA:
http://www.netti.fi/~makako/mind/cia_drug.txt
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Chapter 5 of Book: Intelligence Operations since World War II
The CIA: Cocaine Importing Agency
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/BOOK3Ch5.html
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Other links:
Pink Noise Studios
Common Sense Almanac
Terry Pascher's homepage:
http://gozips.uakron.edu/~pascher/
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READING LIST ON INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES & POLITICAL REPRESSION:
http://noel.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf2/reading_list.html
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Government Manipulation and Distortion of History, Part II, Louis
Wolf: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/
HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/Wolf_Distortion_02.html
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The African American Center For Social Justice
3870 Crenshaw Blvd.,
Suite 370 Los Angeles, CA 90008
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Parascope's page on CIA-Drugs
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COINTELPRO: Internal Pogroms & psy-war tactics used against the
U.S. populace by its own government
Recommended Books:
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, by
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall (1991);
The Politics of Heroin (originally published in 1972 as The
Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, and reissued in greatly
revised and expanded format in 1991) -- by Alfred McCoy ;
The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic, by
former top DEA agent Michael Levine (1993);
Powderburns - Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War, by former DEA
agent Celerino "Cele" Castillo III ;
The Great Heroin Coup - Drugs, Intelligence, & International
Fascism, Henrik Krueger, translated from the original German by
Jerry Meldon, foreword by Peter Dale Scott, South End Press, Box 68
Astor Station, Boston MA 02123, Copyright (c) 1980 ;
The CIA, a forgotten history, by William Blum, Zed Books Ltd,
London, Copyright (c) 1986 ;
Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence,
and Subterfuge Lost Us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War, by
former top DEA agent Michael Levine, New York: Delacorte Press,
1990.
"C.I.A.: Cocaine In America?" by Former CIA agent -- by Ken Bucchi,
Shapolsky Publishers ;
The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, & International
Fascism, by Danish journalist Henrik Kruger (1980);
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the
CIA, by former Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny
(1987);
Inside The Shadow Government, by The Christic Institute, The
Christic Institute, Washington D.C., Copyright (c) 1988 ;
Out Of Control - The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret
War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug
Connection, by Leslie Cockburn, Atlantic Monthley Press, New York,
Copyright (c) 1987 ( So far this book has only been published this
one time. This story is the result of Cockburn's investigations
for CBS news and parts also show up in her Public Broadcast System
special: "Drugs, Guns, and the CIA") ;
"The Culture of Terrorism." Noam Chomsky, 1978, South End Press.
A
brilliant polemic which argues that behind Iran-Contragate is a
relentless drive for world power by the U.S. government.
"Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation." Edgar
Chamorro,
1987, Institute for Media Analysis. ($5.00 +1.00 S/H to 145 W. 4th
St.,
N.Y., N.Y. 10012) A former Contra leader reveals how the CIA
created the
image of the Contras as the "democratic alternative."
"Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black
Panther
Party and the American Indian Movement." Ward Churchill & Jim
Vander
Wall, 1988, South End Press. A chilling account of the murderous
tactics used aginst non-white political activists. 500 pages and an
extensive index and footnotes.
"COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against
Dissent in the United States." Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall,
1989,
South End Press. Actual FBI documents and commentary make a strong
case
for convincing skeptics. Replaces the "Counter-intelligence" book
previously issued by the NLG.
"COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom." Nelson
Blackstock, 1976, Vintage Books. The FBI's campaign to infiltrate
and
disrupt the Socialist Workers Party; good overview of the other
Bureau
investigations of additional left organizations.
October Surprise, by Barbara Honegger, Tudor Publishing Co., New
York and Los Angeles
Copyright (c) 1989
"In Search of Enemies." John Stockwell, 1978, W.W. Norton. The
former
head of the CIA's Angolan Task Force criticizes the Agency's role
in the
country.
"Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of
Nazis,
and its Disastrous Effect on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy."
Christopher Simpson, 1988, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The title says
it
all.
"Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Reagan Administration: The Role
of
Domestic Fascist Networks in the Republican Party and their Effect
on
U.S. Cold War Politics." Russ Bellant, 1988, Political Research
Associates. What the Blowback crowd did with their spare time
after the
OSS/CIA recruited them to the U.S. $6.50 from Political Research
Associates, Suite 205, 678 Mass. Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139.
"Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis,
and
Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World
Anti-Communist
League." Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, 1986, Dodd, Mead.
Traces
role of anti-Semites and neo-Nazis sheltered by CIA in private
covert
action and propaganda wars around the world and how they network
through
WACL.
"Labyrinth" Taylor Branch and Eugene M. Propper, 1983, Penguin.
The
story of the search for the assassins of Orlando Letelier.
"Secret Agenda, Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA." Jim Hougan,
1984,
Random House. One of many books exploring the CIA's role in
Watergate.
"Search for the Manchurian Candidate." John P. Marks, 1979,
Quadrangle
Press. The history of the CIA's drug and behavior control
programs.
"Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion." Martin Lee
and
Bruce Shlain, 1985, Grove Press. The CIA thought LSD would
revolutionize the spy trade...nobody's perfect.
"The Mind Manipulators." Alan W. Scheflin and Edward M. Opton,
Jr.,
1978, Paddington Press, distributed by Grosset & Dunlap. Reviews
behavior modification experiments by the CIA and the Army.
"In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" Peter Matthiessen, 1983, Viking
Press.
The story of how the FBI targeted the American Indian Movement.
"Voices from Wounded Knee." Told by the participants and residents
of
Wounded Knee. 1976, Akwesasne Notes (a Native American newspaper
published from the Mohawk Nation, Rooseveltown, New York 13683).
An
account of the occupation at Wounded Knee, with some details on FBI
presence on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
"It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in
America."
Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, 1989, University of California Press.
With their own words, victims of political repression in the U.S.
discuss their lives and their battles. A powerful indictment of
the
myth of equal justice under law in the U.S.
"Liberty Under Siege: American Politics 1976-1988" Walter Karp,
1988,
Henry Holt & Co. Reviewing this book, Bill Moyers quipped it was
"like
a cold shower on the morning after. Here, finally, is a reveille
for
reality, a call to stop this long intoxication with illusion and
look at
what has been happening to our republic."