CIA Narco-Colonialism

The CIA & Drugs

Narco-colonialism in the 20th Century
http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/indexwhite.html

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central American allies ... have been documented by DEA as supplying ... at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply ... came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican CIA) ... [and] other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega." (Ex-DEA agent Michael Levine: The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic)

"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.

Former Congressional Investigator Jack Blum, on the structure of CIA narco-colonialism:
"For criminal organizations, participating in covert operations offers much more than money. They may get a voice in selecting the new government. They may get a government that owes them for help in coming to power. They may be able to use their connections with the United States government to enhance their political power at home and towave off the efforts of the American law enforcement community." (Prepared October 1996 statement of Jack Blum (former special counsel to the 1987 "Kerry" Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations) for the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter)

Taken alone, one CIA drug ring, that of Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (two Contra supporters based in Guadalajara, Mexico) were known by DEA to be smuggling four tons A MONTH into the U.S. during the early Contra war. Other operations including Manuel Noriega (a CIA asset, strongman leader of Panama), John Hull (ranch owner and CIA asset, Costa Rica), Felix Rodriguez (Contra supporter, El Salvador), Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros (Honduran Military, Contra supporter, Honduras) along with other elements of the Guatemalan and Honduran military. Cumulatively, the aforementioned CIA assets were concurrently trafficking close to two hundred tons a year or close to 70% of total U.S. consumption. All of these CIA assets have been ascertained as being connected to CIA via public documentation and testimony. -- "From the outline section of this web site:
(http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/outline.html)

"The CIA functionally gains influence and control in governments corrupted by criminal narco-trafficking. Politically, the CIA exerts influence by leveraging narco-militarists and corrupted politicians ... This is really NEO-narco-colonialism, whereby local criminal proxies do the bidding of the patron government seeking expanded influence. But because of the quid-pro-quo of protecting the criminal proxies' illicit pipelines, the result is still a functional narco-colonialism, involving a narcotics commodity in the actual practical execution of policy, but with the very different twist of covert action." -- from the analysis section of this web site:

"Here's my problem. I think that if people in the government of the United States make a secret decision to sacrifice some portion of the American population in the form of ... deliberately exposing them to drugs, that is a terrible decision that should never be made in secret." (- Jack Blum, speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter).

Introduction: The purpose of this web site.

One of the more astounding revelations of the recent investigations was that the Dept. of Justice and the CIA had a secret 1981 agreement that specifically released the CIA from the requirement that CIA report any drug-related activities by its operatives to DoJ.
A group of U.S. Congressmen submitted this documentary history of CIA collusion with drug traffickers into the Congressional Record.
Volume 2 of the CIA Inspector General's Report on Contra drug smuggling and CIA complicity was released late last fall (Fall '98), and is additionally available here with additional commentary here. The CIA's own Inspector General shows that from the very start of the US-backed war on Nicaragua the CIA knew the Contras were planning to traffic in cocaine into the US. It did nothing to stop the traffic and, when other government agencies began to probe, the CIA impeded their investigations. When Contra money raisers were arrested the Agency came to their aid and retrieved their drug money from the police. So, was the Agency complicit in drug trafficking into Los Angeles and other cities? It is impossible to read Hitz's report and not conclude that this was the case.
The IG's report stands as the official CIA admission of its collusion with narcotics traffickers allied with the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. The Contra drug-running was part of the vast Iran-Contra affair that mushroomed during the Reagan administration, whereby various Contra supporters (known CIA assets and Contra leaders) were found to have heavy ties to drug couriers, middlemen and the major cartels.
Taken alone, one Contra drug ring, that of Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (two Contra supporters based in Guadalajara, Mexico) were known by DEA to be smuggling four tons A MONTH into the U.S. during the early Contra war. Other operations including Manuel Noriega (a CIA asset, strongman leader of Panama), John Hull (ranch owner and CIA asset, Costa Rica), Felix Rodriguez (Contra supporter, El Salvador), Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros (Honduran Military, Contra supporter, Honduras) along with other elements of the Guatemalan and Honduran military. Cumulatively, the aforementioned CIA assets were concurrently trafficking close to two hundred tons a year or close to 70% of total U.S. consumption. All of these CIA assets have been ascertained as being connected to CIA via public documentation and testimony.
The IG's 300 page report holds many revelations; however, it is was originally a 600 page document. Robert Parry (http://www.consortiumnews.com/) did a story in the Fall of 1998 regarding the omitted sections of the report, particulary concerning a second CIA drug ring (distinct from the one examined in Dark Alliance) in South Central Los Angeles that existed between 1988 and 1991. And according to Parry, there was yet another drug ring in L.A. that remains classified, because it was run by a CIA agent who had participated in the Contra war. It remains classified because of an ongoing CIA investigation into the matter, leaving one to speculate whether the CIA will utter another word about this case.

Evidence: Three DEA agents and their first-hand experiences:

Bradley Ayers & traces of drugs found on CIA-related airplanes in Miami, Florida.

In 1985 and 1986, Ayers surveilled airplanes (parked at Miami International Airport) belonging to two CIA-related airlines ("formerly owned" by the CIA) under contract with the Dept. of Defense to transport materiel for the Contras.

He repeatedly found traces of cocaine and marijuana inside the planes.

Ayers' findings became court evidence in a lawsuit by the airlines against a Miami TV station, and was found to be truthful and accepted as evidence.

Cellerino Castillo's surveillance of CIA/NSC airplanes in Panama.

Castillo gathered evidence during 1984 and 1985 that known traffickers, with multiple DEA files, piloted CIA- and NSC-owned airplanes, using two CIA and NSC hangars at an airbase in Central America.

These CIA-paid pilots obtained U.S. visas, despite their drug trafficking dossiers being in U.S. Gov't databases.

Some of the pilots were quite bold about their smuggling of drugs: Once stateside, some would use their CIA credentials to ward off U.S. Customs and DEA agents. Other pilots, Castillo noted, were more discrete.

"Hundreds of flights each week [through Ilopango] delivered cocaine to the buyers and returned with money headed for ... Panama."

"From Panama, the money was wired to a Costa Rican bank account held by the Contras" (Castillo, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras, and the Drug War [Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1994], 138-39)

"There is no doubt that they were running large quantities of cocaine into the U.S. to support the [Nicaraguan] Contras."

"We saw the cocaine and we saw boxes full of money. We're talking about very large quantities of cocaine and millions of dollars."

"...my reports contain not only the names of traffickers, but their destinations, flight paths, tail numbers, and the date and time of each flight." (1994 interview (How the Contras Invaded the United States, by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight, (c) 1996)

Micheal Levine, Latin American DEA operations

In Bolivia, Levine witnessed an Argentine-lead 'Cocaine Coup,' co-sponsored by the CIA. Along with help from the Argentinian military, the drug lords installed a narco-militarist regime, replacing the democratically elected moderate-socialist government. This spawned the cocaine boom of the 1980's, with the Bolivian-based "La Corporacion," the General Motors of cocaine, having total freedom to run Bolivia as a narco-colonial serf state.

Levine's infiltration into the Bolivian network of coca plantation kingpins was subverted by the CIA and his complaints were ignored by the DEA upper echelon.

He complained in a letter to NewsWeek magazine. For such a brazen act, he was suffered bureaucratic and procedural backlash, and was thereafter removed from his Bolivian assignment.

Later, Levine infiltrated a major Mexican drug ring. Levine was targeting highly-placed Mexican officials, only to find that his cover had been blown by U.S. Department of Justice (under Reagan's then-Attorney General, Edwin Meese). Levine was lucky: a fellow DEA agent, "Chi Chi" Camerena, was found tortured and executed by Mexican drug lords, his identity revealed as a result of the DoJ's indiscretion.

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central American allies ... have been documented by DEA as supplying us with at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply for the American habit came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (Mexican CIA), the Shan United Army in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia, or any of a score of other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega." (The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic, 1993)

"I personally hit the top of the drug world, dealt with the top traffickers in the world posing as a criminal ... and in every case found these traffickers in bed with our Central Intelligence Agency. Exactly as Senator Al D'Amato said, 'We're in bed with these guys.' ... We still are. But its worse than that."(From a 1995 radio interview)

Other DEA agents:


Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit: "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." -- 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.
Celerino Castillo stated that together with 3 other ex-DEA agents, they were willing to testify in Congress regarding their direct knowledge of CIA involvement in international drug trafficking. Castillo estimates that approximately 75%(!) of narcotics entered the U.S. with the acquiescence or direct participation of U.S. and foreign CIA agents. (August 13, 1996 San Diego Union-Tribune, regarding Rep. Robert Toricelli's proposed subcommittee on the intelligence community and human rights violations in Guatemala and Central America).
Declassified DEA Report of Investigation (February 13, 1990, Page 4 of 7) File Title: REDACTED `"23. [Redacted] had learned that the reporter from Vera Cruz (FNU) Velasco before his death (1985) was allegedly developing information that, using the DFS as cover, the CIA established and maintained clandestine airfields to refuel aircraft loaded with weapons which were destined for Honduras and Nicaragua.` `24. Pilots of these aircraft would allegedly load up with cocaine in Barranquilla Colombia and in route to Miami, Florida, refuel in Mexico at Narcotic trafficker-operated and CIA-maintained airstrips."`
This is from a 1987 DEA report, regarding the LA drug ring covered by the Dark Alliance series and book. In 1987, the DEA sent undercover informants inside this drug operation, and they interviewed one of the principals of this organization, namely Ivan Torres. And this is what he said. He told the informant: "The CIA wants to know about drug trafficking, but only for their own purposes, and not necessarily for the use of law enforcement agencies. Torres told DEA Confidential Informant 1 that CIA representatives are aware of his drug-related activities, and that they don't mind. He said they had gone so far as to encourage cocaine trafficking by members of the contras, because they know it's a good source of income. Some of this money has gone into numbered accounts in Europe and Panama, as does the money that goes to Managua from cocaine trafficking. Torres told the informant about receiving counterintelligence training from the CIA, and had avowed that the CIA looks the other way and in essence allows them to engage in narcotics trafficking." This is a DEA report that was written in 1987, when the contra operations were still on going. Another member of this organization affiliated with a San Francisco connection, said in 1985 to the CIA: `"Cabezas claimed that the contra cocaine operated with the knowledge of, and under the supervision of, the CIA. Cabezas claimed that this drug enterprise was run with the knowledge of CIA agent Ivan Gómez."`

Congressional testimony and documents.

"Kerry Report,"

synopsis

(former Chief Counsel to John Kerry's Subcommittee on Narcotics and Terrorism in 1996 Senate Hearings)

prepared statement

testified


`"We don't need to investigate [the CIA's role in Contra drug trafficking]. We already know. The evidence is there."` Jack Blum, former Chief Counsel to John Kerry's Subcommittee on Narcotics and Terrorism in 1996 Senate Hearings
"If you ask: In the process of fighting a war against the Sandinistas, did people connected with the US government open channels which allowed drug traffickers to move drugs to the United States, did they know the drug traffickers were doing it, and did they protect them from law enforcement? The answer to all those questions is yes." (Jack Blum, chief investigator for the Kerry Senate subcommittee, after years of investigation and access to classified information.)
`"For criminal organizations, participating in covert operations offers much more than money. They may get a voice in selecting the new government. They may get a government that owes them for help in coming to power, They may be able to use their connections with the United States government to enhance their political power at home and to wave off the efforts of the American law enforcement community."` (Blum has said something quite significant here. The CIA functionally gains control of governments corrupted by criminal narco-trafficking, and can exert influence by leveraging narco-militarists and corrupted politicians. It's fascinating that Blum basically described the Opium Wars of the 19th century. What Blum is saying is that narco-colonialism is alive and well and residing centrally at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.)
"I think that among the other things you should be looking at is a review of the relationship in general between covert operations and criminal organizations. The two go together like love and marriage. And it's a problem which really has to be understood by this committee. Criminal organizations are perfect allies in a covert operation. If you sent me out of the country to risk my life for the government to do something as a spy in a foreign land, I would think criminals would be my best ally. They stay out of reach of the law, they know who the corrupt government officials are, and they have them on the payroll. They'll do anything I want for money. It's a terrific working partnership. The problem is that they then get empowered by the fact that they work with us."(Jack Blum)
`"Here's my problem. I think that if people in the government of the United States make a secret decision to sacrifice some portion of the American population in the form of exposing them, let's say, deliberately exposing them to drugs, that is a terrible decision that should never be made in secret."` (Jack Blum)
`"When people who are engaged in an operation say, 'We're going to look the other way; we're not going to do anything,' interfere in the law enforcement process to protect people who are running the operationand, in that process of interference, permit drugs to flow in, you have an extraordinarily serious problem."` (Jack Blum)
"There was a judgment call here, and that judgment call erred so far on the wrong side of where judgment should have been that we wound up with a terrible problem. And that terrible problem was a de facto result that I was describing, that is, where many people did suffer as a consequence. And I started to say, when DEA allows a controlled delivery of drugs, there is a furious debate. Those controlled deliveries are monitored because DEA says our job is to prevent it from coming in, and if it escapes on the street, for any reason, we've blown it. `And that kind of standard is really the kind of standard that should have, I think, been applied here. And maybe you can give me and maybe we would both agree that there is some dreadful circumstance where this should have occurred and been allowed to occur and so on, and I probably could be convinced in the right set of circumstances. But the problem was that that issue wasn't put that way, and the sensitivity to what was going on was simply missing."` (Jack Blum)
`"I do think it [was] a terrible mistake to say that 'We're going to allow drug trafficking to destroy American citizens' as a consequence of believing that the contra effort was a higher priority."` - Sen. Robert Kerrey (D-NE)

Evidence: Senate Iran-Contra & Dark Alliance Hearings:

The Contras (

A quick review of Iran-Contra

Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated and protected drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the Contras.

In response to the most recent allegations about CIA and Contra drug-running, the CIA has suddenly developed amnesia, feigning ignorance of widespread Contra drug running. CIA defenders continue the lie by claiming it was a few rogue Contra supporters operating outside of the knowledge and the employ of the CIA. Here the CIA and their media defenders caught in a CONTRAdiction:

two Contra supporters based in Guadalajara, Mexico

four tons A MONTH

(Panama)

(Costa Rica)

(El Salvador)

(Honduras)

two hundred tons a year

70% of total U.S. consumption.

connected to CIA via public documentation and testimony.

CIA origin of the Contras:
The CIA and NSC tried to publicly distance themselves from the corrupt contra leadership, but the Contras were little more than a CIA-run proxy army from the onset. Oliver North's contra liaison, Robert Owen, described contra leader Adolfo Calero as "..a creation of the USG [U.S. Government] and so he is the horse we chose to ride.."

"Without the Honduran military there would have been no Contras." - Lt. Col. Oliver North. (North later intervened to get an absurdly lenient sentence for General Jose Bueso-Rosa, a Honduran general who had been convicted of smuggling tons of cocaine into the U.S. as part of a plot to finance an assassination of the Honduran president.)

Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating: "There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region. ... U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua. ... 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. ... Senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." ("Kerry Report": Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, 1989, pp. 2, 36, 41)

Iran-Contra insiders:
Jesus Garcia, who worked with Lt. Col. Oliver North's operations, said, "It is common knowledge here in Miami that this whole Contra operation was paid for with cocaine. ... I actually saw the cocaine and the weapons together under one roof, weapons that I (later) helped ship to Costa Rica." (December 1986 interview with Robert Knight and Dennis Bernstein, Contragate/Undercurrents) (How the Contras Invaded the United States, by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight, 1996, Part One: Wars go better with coke)

How widespread was the trafficking?
A Senate committee memorandum clearly stated "a number of individuals who supported the Contras and who participated in contra activity in Texas, Louisiana, California and Florida, as well as in Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, have suggested that cocaine is being smuggled in the U.S. through the same infrastructure which is procuring, storing and transporting weapons, explosives, ammunition and military equipment for the Contras from the United States." (Robert Knight and Dennis Bernstein , Contragate/Undercurrents, Newsday, March 31, 1987: re: Eight-page June 25, 1986, Select House Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control) (How the Contras Invaded the United States, by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight, 1996, Part One: Wars go better with coke)

CIA knowledge (admitted acquiescence) of Contra drug running:
"With respect to (drug trafficking by) the Resistance Forces ... it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people."(Iran-Contra testimony of Central American Task Force Chief, Alan Fiers, in sworn deposition to the Congressional Iran-Contra committees, August 5, 1987, 100-11, pp. 182-183.)

"We knew that everybody around [Contra leader Eden] Pastora was involved in cocaine ... His staff and friends (redacted), they were drug smugglers or involved in drug smuggling."(Iran-Contra deposition of Central American Task Force Chief Alan Fiers, Appendix B, Vol. 3 pp. 1121 - 1230. Also North Diary page Q1704, March 26, 1984, 'Pastora revealed as drug dealer.')

CIA complicity in protection of drug runners:
"When this whole business of drug trafficking came out in the open in the Contras, the CIA gave a document to Cesar, Popo Chamorro and Marcos Aguado, too..."

"..They said this is a document holding them harmless, without any responsibility, for having worked in U.S. security..." (Former ARDE Contra leader Eden Pastora, Nov. 26, 1996, speaking before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter)

CIA continued protection of, and collaboration with, the same drug runners:
"..Pastora noted that the trio has been able to cross U.S. borders freely since then but are barred from entering Costa Rica. Records show the Costa Rican government accused them of cocaine trafficking for the Contras." (Gary Webb & Thomas Farragher, San Jose Mercury News/Mercury News Washington Bureau, "Ex-Contras: We saw no CIA link to drugs; One acknowledges payment from dealer," Published: Nov. 27, 1996)

In July 1989, Oliver North and other major contragate figures were barred from Costa Rica.
The order was issued by none other than Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. Then-President Arias was acting on recommendations from a Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking. The commission concluded that the contra re-supply network in Costa Rica which North coordinated from the White House doubled as a drug smuggling operation.

The narcotics commission started probing the contra network centered around the northern Costa Rican ranch of US-born John Hull because of "the quantity and frequency of the shipment of drugs that passed through the zone." North's personal notebook mentioned "the necessity of giving Mr. Hull protection." (San Juan Star, Puerto Rico, 7/22/89).

In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a DEA-hired plane clandestinely and illegally exfiltrated the CIA operative to Miami, via Haiti. The US repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull back to Costa Rica to stand trial. (Martha Honey and David Myers, "U.S. Probing Drug Agent's Activities in Costa Rica," San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 1991. )

Investigators held North responsible for Gen. Manuel Noriega's participation in the contra supply network, which opened the door to at least seven pilots who trafficked in drugs while supplying arms to the contras. "These requests for contra help were initiated by Colonel North to General Noriega," the commission reported. "They opened a gate so their henchmen could utilize [Costa Rican] territory for trafficking in arms and drugs." (Tico Times, Costa Rica, 7/28/89).

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. The Costa Rican congress later ratified the permanent implementation of the bannings.

In Costa Rica, which served as the "Southern Front" for the contras (Honduras being the Northern Front), there were several different CIA-contra networks involved in drug trafficking. In addition to those servicing the Meneses-Blandon operation detailed by the Mercury News, and Noriega's operation, there was CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica's border with Nicaragua were the main staging area for the contras.

Hull and other CIA-connected contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million in cash and several planes to contra leaders. (Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.)

Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Americans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the contras. Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking. They used contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shrimp company, which laundered money for the CIA, to move cocaine to the U.S. (Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s, Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.)

The Miami Police Department investigations revealed:
A City of Miami Police Intelligence Report dated September 26, 1984, states that money to support Contras being illegally trained in Florida "comes from narcotics transactions." Every page of that document is stamped: "Record furnished to George Kosinsky, FBI." Justice Department head Janet Reno, then Florida's chief prosecutor, apparently saw no reason to investigate further.

Immense Contra Drug ring in Los Angeles:

According to a year-long investigation by the SAN JOSE (California) MERCURY NEWS based on court records, recently declassified documents, undercover audio tapes, and files retrieved via the Freedom of Information Act, the FDN solved its financial problem by opening the first pipeline from the Colombian cocaine cartels to black gangs --the Crips and the Bloods --on the streets of Los Angeles.

Federal and local drug-enforcement agencies investigated this Contra drug ring. An Oct. 23, 1986, affidavit (Thomas Gordon, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's narcotics detective) identifies Contra supporter and former Nicaraguan Samoza government official Danilo Blandon as "the highest-ranking member of this organization" and describes an immense drug network involving more than 100 Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers who were selling cocaine "mainly to blacks living in the South-Central Los Angeles area."

The affidavit indicates that DEA and FBI informants were inside Blandon's drug ring for several years before the sheriff department performed a sweep of raids on the drug trafficking empire Oct. 27, 1986.(San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 3, 1996 Affidavit: Cops knew of drug ring Document sheds light on Contra-cocaine link By Gary Webb and Pamela Kramer)

Other police documents indicated that the total volume of cocaine moved by Danilo Blandon's operations was 100 kilos (220 lbs.) per week or nearly SIX TONS PER YEAR. This is an astonishing volume when considering the fact that the total illicit cocaine volume in the 1980's averaged out to 50 tons per year (based upon a U.S. 1980's total of 500 tons for the decade, where the trend was upward throughout the decade). That's 12% of the total illicit cocaine traffic in the U.S., which corresponds with the testimony of several key figures in the L.A. drug ring.

Other narcotics reports suggest the volume was upwards to 200 kilos per week!

A great deal of this increasingly cheap high-volume cocaine was converted into ultra-addictive ready-made freebase 'crack' cocaine, kick-starting and fueling the crack cocaine epidemic in L.A.

The San Jose Mercury Dark Alliance series specifically cites Blandon and his associates Edwin Meneses and Freeway Rick as the tripartite Typhoid Mary of crack cocaine.

When Blandon was finally arrested in October 1986, after Congress resumed funding for the Contras, and he admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the Justice Department turned him loose on unsupervised probation after only 28 months behind bars and has paid him more than $166,000 since.

According to a legal motion filed in a 1990 police corruption trial: In the 1986 raid on Blandon's money-launderer, the police carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the U.S. government to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering on behalf of the Contras. CIA personnel appeared at the sheriff's department within 48 hours of the raid and removed the seized files from the evidence room. This motion drew media coverage in 1990 but, at the request of the Justice Department, a federal judge issued a gag order barring any discussion of the matter.

Blandon subsequently became a full-time informant for the DEA. When he testified in 1996 as a prosecution witness, the federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into Blandon's ties to the CIA.

Though Meneses is listed in the DEA's computers as a major international drug smuggler and was implicated in 45 separate federal investigations since 1974, he lived openly and conspicuously in California until 1989 and never spent a day in a U.S. prison. The DEA, U.S. Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement have complained that a number of the probes of Meneses were stymied by the CIA or unnamed "national security" interests.

Gary Webb, "'Crack' Plague's Roots Are in Nicaragua War; Colombia- Bay Area Drug Pipeline Helped CIA-Backed Contras '80s Efforts to Assist Guerillas Left Legacy of Drugs, Gangs in Black L.A.," SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS August 18, 1996, pg. 1A;

Gary Webb, "Testimony Links U.S. to Drugs-Guns Trade; Dealers Got 'Their Own Little Arsenal,'" SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS August 18, 1996, pg. 17A.

Gary Webb, "Odd Trio Created Mass Market for 'Crack'; L.A. Dealer Might Get Life; Officials Quiet About Role of Nicaraguans," SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS August 19, 1996, pg. 1A.

A Senate investigator found:
In the spring of 1986, John Mattes, a former Miami-based Federal Public Defender, began working with Senator John Kerry's office to investigate the contra drug connection. "What we investigated and uncovered," Mattes recalls, "was the very infrastructure of the network that had the veil of national security protecting it, so that people could load cannons in broad daylight, in public airports, on flights going to Ilopango Airport, where in fact the very same people were bringing narcotics back into the U.S., unimpeded."

CIA control:
The CIA had control over almost all aspect of the illicit Contra resupply operation."CIA officers in Central America were charged with obtaining clearances for these flights from the Honduran military. As a result, CIA officers in Central America began learning about the contractors who were making NHAO's deliveries.." (Chapter 21 "CIA Subject #1," Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions, Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Counsel, pg. 299 - http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/index.html)


In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating:"There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region.... U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua.... 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.... Senior U S policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." (Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, 1989)

White House Protection of in-coming drug flights by freezing Customs: `"We ran into another procedure which was extremely troubling. There was a system for stopping Customs inspections of inbound and outbound aircraft from Miami and from other airports in Florida. People would call the Customs office and say, 'Stand down. Flights are going out. Flights are coming in.'` `We tried to find out more about that and were privately told, again by Customs people who said "Please don't say anything," that the whole thing was terribly informal and there was no real way of determining the legitimacy of the request to stand down, or the legitimacy of what was on the plane and going out to people in the field. That I found to be terribly troubling, and it's a matter that you all should be looking at very carefully."` (taken from Jack Blum's testimony before Congress)

Lt. Col. Oliver North's Notebooks and other funny things about Ollie North's out-of-control "Enterprise." Note that a good deal of evidence regarding White House knowledge of CIA and Contra drug running probably was destroyed. As Col. North (currently an MSN commentator!) readily admitted in Senate testimony, he destroyed all manner of incriminating evidence by shredding documents while Congressional Iran-Contra investigators reviewed documents in an adjacent room. His notebooks have been released in two forms, with different redactions and declassifications. What Lt. Col. North left us to pick through are hints as to the scope of corruption in Lt. Col. North's "Enterprise:"

Notes of Col. Oliver North, July 12, 1985:
--mtg. tonight w/Dick/Rafael/Tom w/Romero FDN Log Chief
--[CIA Subject #1] discussions re Supermarket
--HO [Honduran] Army plans to seize all mat'l when supermarket
comes to bad end
--$14M to finance came from drugs
--[Subject #1] expects HOAF [Honduran Air force] to seize the
supermarket's assets when the supermarket folds.
--[Subject #1] likes light A/C [aircraft] ASAP
--Doesn't like goons [slang term for C-47]
--Should get CASA 212's
(CIA Subject #1: of Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions, Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Counsel - http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/index.html)
Note: "Dick = Richard Secord; Rafael = Rafael Quintero, ex-CIA, old associate of Secord; Tom = Thomas Clines, ex-CIA, old associate of Secord; CIA Subject #1 = senior field officer, Cent. Amer., served with Clines and Secord in covert operations in Laos. The supermarket assets at the time were $17 million." - pp's. 298 & 299, Chapter 21 )

On Aug. 9, 1985, North was informed that one of the resupply planes being used by Mario Calero, the brother of Adolfo Calero, leader of the FDN (the largest Contra group), was being used for drug runs into the U.S. Mario Calero was part owner of a drug-trafficking airline, Hondu Carib. Hondu Carib's first owner was a Contra pilot (Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 57-58; cf. Celerino Castillo, 175).

A subsequent August 9, 1985 memo to Robert Owens, North notes that a "DC-6 which is being used for runs [to supply the Contras] out of New Orleans is probably used for drug runs into the US."

On Feb. 10, 1986, Owen informed North that a plane being used to run materials to the Contras was previously used to run drugs, and that the CIA had chosen a company whose officials had a criminal record. The company, Vortex Aviation, was run by Michael Palmer, one of the biggest marijuana smugglers in U.S. history, who was under indictment for 10 years of trafficking in Detroit at the same time he was receiving more than $300,000 in U.S. funds from a State Department contract to ferry "humanitarian" aid to the Contras.

In 1985, Lt. Col. Oliver North suggested that $1.5 million in drug money, generated in a joint NSC/CIA/DEA sting of Medellin cartel and Sandinista leaders, be provided to the Contras. The sting, targeting Medellin drug lord Jorge Luis Ochoa and Sandinista official Federico Vaughn, was orchestrated by the White House using trafficker-turned-DEA informant Barry Seal. North's suggestion was rejected by the DEA, but it emphasizes a peculiar presumption that Seal's drug profits from the sting would be used to fund North's illegal operations. (DEA Testimony before House Subcommittee on Crime, July 28, 1988) (SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, "Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy", December 1988: A Report on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Drug Trafficking)

DIACSA: The Contras laundered Oliver North's Enterprise money using a cocaine trafficker:
During 1984 and 1986, the Contras and the U.S. Department of State chose DIACSA, a Miami-based company that was already documented in on-line U.S. Government databases as a center of operations for it's drug trafficking owners. DIACSA's owners would ultimately be indicted and convicted for cocaine trafficking.

Through DIACSA, the Contras laundered bank deposits arranged by Lt. Col. Oliver North. The Contras used DIACSA for "intra-account transfers" in order to conceal the fact that some funds were through deposits arranged by Oliver North. (Iran-Contra testimony of Adolfo Calero, Appendix B Volume 3, p. 176)

DIACSA's president, Alfredo Caballero, was a business associate of Floyd Carlton -- a pilot who flew cocaine for Panama's drug-trafficking General Manuel Noriega. Carlton testified against Noriega in Noriega's trial. (See also section on Noriega)

Despite readily available federal data on DIACSA's drug-trafficking activities, the State Department selected DIACSA for aircraft parts supply to the Contras. Despite repeated warnings from Senator John Kerry and the inevitable indictments of DIACSA's principles for drug trafficking and money laundering, the State Department continued to make payments to DIACSA, totaling $41,120.90. (GAO Analysis, NHAO Accounts, provided to Subcommittee September, 1988: Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy chaired by Senator John F. Kerry)

The 1986 case of Honduran General Jose Bueso Rosa:

The White House and CIA protected a Honduran narco-militarist who planned to use his drug profits to finance the assassination of the president of Honduras (Honduras was the main Contra and CIA base of operations for the covert war against Sandinista-led Nicaragua; evidently Honduran President Roberto Suazo Cordova was not being sufficiently cooperative to suit the CIA and the Contras).

Bueso was involved in a conspiracy to import 345 kilos of cocaine into Florida -- with a street value of $40 million. But because he had been a key Contra liaison in Honduras for the CIA and the Pentagon, North, Clarridge, and others in the Reagan administration brought considerable pressure into the trial to reduce Bueso's sentence (As Francis J. McNeil, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research noted, in 1986, eight top officials, led by North, persuaded a federal judge to grant a lenient sentence to Honduran Gen. Jose Bueso-Rosa).

In an e-mail and later declassified memo, Lt. Col. Oliver North said that U.S. officials would "cabal quietly to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence." The objective was to seek leniency for the general in order to keep "Bueso from spilling the beans," otherwise Gen. Bueso might start "singing songs nobody wants to hear" about the Contras. In the end, Bueso served less than five years in a white-collar "Club Fed" prison in Florida.

The San Francisco Frogmen: A Nicaraguan Contra drug ring smuggles cocaine from ships via SCUBA gear. The U.S. Department of Justice, at the request of the CIA, returns monetary proceeds from drug running to the Contra smugglers.


"This case gets it nickname from swimmers who brought cocaine ashore on the West Coast from a Colombian vessel in 1982-1983. It focused on a major Colombian cocaine smuggler, Alvaro Carvajal-Minota, who supplied a number of West Coast smugglers. It was alleged, but never confirmed, that Nicaraguan citizen Horacio Pereira, an associate of Carvajal, had helped the Nicaraguan resistance. Pereira was subsequently convicted on drug charges in Costa Rica and sentenced to twelve years imprisonment. Two other Nicaraguans, Carlos Cabezas and Julio Zavala, who were among the jailed West Coast traffickers convicted of receiving drugs from Carvajal, claimed long after their conviction that they had delivered large sums of money to resistance groups in Costa Rica and that Pereira, who was not charged in the case, has said the profits from the drug sale would finance resistance activities." [State Department Document #5136c, July 26, 1986]
"We knew about the connection between the West Coast cocaine trade and the Contras. There was an astonishing case called the "Frogman (sp) Case." In that case -- I believe it was in that case -- the United States attorney for San Francisco, a man by the name of Russonello (sp), returned $35,000 of cocaine proceeds, voluntarily, to the Contras, when it had been seized as the proceeds of drug trafficking. And we found that absolutely astonishing. I know of no other situation where the Justice Department was so forthcoming in returning seized property."(from Jack Blum's testimony before Senator Arlen Specter's investigative committee)
`"After the trial, the U.S. government returned $36,020 seized as drug money to one of the defendants, Zavala, after he submitted letters from Contra leaders claiming the funds were really their property. The money that was returned had been seized by the FBI after being found in cash in a drawer at Zavala's home with drug transaction letters, an M-1 carbine, a grenade, and a quantity of Cocaine."`[San Francisco Examiner, March 16, 1986.]
The Subcommittee found that the Frogman arrest involved cocaine from a Colombian source, Carvajal-Minota. In addition, Zavala and Cabezas had as a second source of supply, Nicaraguans living in Costa Rica associated with the Contras. FBI documents from the Frogman case identify the Nicaraguans as Horacio Pereira, Troilo Sanchez and Fernando Sanchez.Pereira was convicted on cocaine charges in Costa Rica in 1985 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. An important member of the Pereira organization was Sebastian "Huachan" Gonzalez, who also was associated with ARDE in Southern Front Contra operations. Robert Owen advised North in February 1985, that Gonzalez was trafficking in cocaine. Jose Blandon testified that Eden Pastora knew that Gonzalez was involved in drug trafficking while he was working with ARDE. Gonzalez later left the Contra movement and fled from Costa Rica to Panama, where he went to work for General Noriega. [November 8, 1982, FBI teletype from San Francisco to Director, U.S. v. Zavala, et al., CBS Evening News, June 2, 1986., Iran/Contra Testimony of Robert Owen, May 14, 1987, Exhibit RWO 7, p. 801., Blandon, Part 2, pp. 132-133.]

The classic case of Panamanian general Manuel Noriega.

For a period spanning three decades, Manuel Noriega was known to be involved in drug trafficking. And for more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering.

"Noriega facilitated "guns-for-drugs" flights for the Contras, providing protection and pilots, as well as safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-ClA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellin Cartel patrons). The U.S. government only turned against Noriega, invading Panama in December 1989 and kidnapping the general once they discovered he was providing intelligence and services to the Cubans and Sandinistas. Ironically drug trafficking through Panama increased after the US invasion." (John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, Random House, 1991; National Security Archive Documentation Packet The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations.)

"The second man who turned up on our screen very big time was General Noriega. And as you'll recall -- press accounts have said it, the government has made this public -- so I'm not saying anything that's classified, Noriega was on our payroll. The accounts we heard were that he was getting paid some $200,000 a year by the United States government. At the time that was going on, virtually everybody who dealt with him knew he was in the drug business. It was an open secret. In fact, it was so open, it appeared on the front page of the New York Times in June of 1986. I testified about it in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee in 1986.

We have, as the absolute low point of the contra war, Ollie North having a meeting with General Noriega, and he recorded that meeting in great detail in his notebooks, in which he's bargaining with Noriega. Noriega says to him, I've got this terrible public relations problem over drugs, what can you do to help me? Here's what I'll do to help you; I'll assassinate the entire Sandinista leadership, I'll blow up buildings in Managua. Ollie doesn't call the cops; what Ollie does is he goes back to Poindexter, and Poindexter says, "Gee, that's a little bit extreme. Can't you get him to tone it down? Go back and meet with him again." Which Ollie does.

When our committee asked the General Accounting Office to do a step-by-step analysis of just who in our government knew that General Noriega was dealing drugs and when they knew it and what they did to act on that knowledge, the administration told every agency of the government not to cooperate with GAO, labeled it a national security matter, and swept it into the White House and cloaked it in executive privilege. That investigation never went forward, should have gone forward. I was very much dismayed. Our committee subpoenaed Ollie North's notebooks, and the history of those notebooks is quite astonishing. Not many people realize this, but the Senate never got a clean copy of those notebooks. North's lawyers were permitted to expurgate sections of the notebooks based on, quote, "relevance." Our committee subpoenaed those notebooks and we engaged in a 10-month battle to get them, and ultimately, the investigation ended, the subcommittee's mandate ended, we never got them." (from Jack Blum's testimony before Senator Arlen Specter's investigative committee)

CIA alliances in Haiti. 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 subcommittee 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 CIA narco-colonial complicity and/or protection of drug running rackets continues, with notable examples from Burma, Peru, Guatemala and Venezuela, in addition to a continuation of playing underground games in Colombia and Mexico.


Burma (Myanmar): 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 See: 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 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
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 known narco-militarists on CIA payroll. Try these links: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9968/gorriti_article.html http://www.wbaifree.org/letemtalk/peru1.html http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/latcarib.int43 http://www.tao.ca/ainfos/A-Infos96/8/0205.html http://www.msc.cornell.edu/~weeds/LawPages/wola_25_Nov_96.html http://www.worldmedia.com/caq/articles/fujimori_svengali.html http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9968/gorriti_article.html http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol2/v2n50per.html
Latin Am Economics of Narco (guatemala!), Guatemala & WoD lies
Venez 22 kilos (quote blum)
Colombia
Mexico (Meese blew cover on Levine's Mex Sting. Later Salinas exposed, deposed. Recent Mex scandals) DoJ protected Hondo Carib, etc., DoJ knew about drugs, Dept. of State paid them, NHAO got money from them?

Links:

Gary Webb's Dark Alliance website:
http://www.shineon.org/garywebb/
Cocaine Importation Agency (exhaustive):
http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/cia/main.html
We The People:
http://www.anaserve.com/~wethepeople/
Crack the CIA Coalition:
http://www.radio4all.org/crackcia/
Michael Levine's home page:
http://www.radio4all.org/expert
Michael Rupert's home page:
http://www.copvcia.com/
http://www.copvcia.com/
Consortium News:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
http://www.consortiumnews.com/
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
Defrauding America:
http://www.copi.com/defrauding_america/default.htm
http://www.copi.com/defrauding_america/chp_18.htm
Drugs & the CIA:
http://www.netti.fi/~makako/mind/cia_drug.txt
Chapter 5 of Book: Intelligence Operations since World War II
The CIA: Cocaine Importing Agency
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/BOOK3Ch5.html
Terry Pascher's homepage:
http://gozips.uakron.edu/~pascher/
Other links:
Pink Noise Studios
Common Sense Almanac
READING LIST ON INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES & POLITICAL REPRESSION: http://noel.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf2/reading_list.html
Government Manipulation and Distortion of History, Part II, Louis Wolf: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/Wolf_Distortion_02.html
HTML_docs/Texts/Scholarly/Wolf_Distortion_02.html

The African American Center For Social Justice
3870 Crenshaw Blvd.,
Suite 370 Los Angeles, CA 90008

CIA protection
of drug pipelines
-
Narco-colonialism
in the 20th Century

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. -- George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950

Years ago, the "beat poet" Allen Ginsberg had access to unfiltered Associated Press news feeds. Ginsberg had a habit of collecting the most interesting printouts from the teletype machines, when access to wire feeds was rare. Of the teletypes that Ginsberg collected, the ones that drew a straight line of CIA involvement in running opium for Vang Pao and the Hmong in Laos during the Vietnam war are the most memorable; they are the most memorable, not for their scant information, but for helping researchers like Alfred McCoy investigate the matter more deeply. Ginsberg, quite the tireless radical, had a habit of telling people the truth as he knew it, especially those in the establishment press. One particular newspaper man, New York Times columnist C.L. Sulzberger, didn't believe Ginsberg's portrayal of the CIA. Sulzberger became indignant when poet Allen Ginsberg accused the CIA of involvement in smuggling opium during the Vietnam War. But years later, on April 11, 1978, Sulzberger wrote:

"I fear I owe you an apology... I have been reading a succession of pieces about CIA involvement in the dope trade in Southeast Asia and I remember when you first suggested I look into this, I thought you were full of beans. Indeed you were right."

Sulzberger wasn't unreasonable in telling Ginsberg he was full of beans, the onus was on Ginsberg to provide some evidence. The most difficult aspect of performing this kind of analysis is the admittedly thorny issue of extrapolating from what is known.
This isn't necessarily an effort to make the CIA out as the absolute source of all the evil in the world. But, in what has been termed a 'unipolar world,' the CIA should certainly takes its fair share of the credit. And in counterpoint, it could be argued that regardless of who is vying for influence in a region, if control over territory necessitates forging military alliances with those who control the coca plantations or the poppy fields, then the strategic end justifies the means.
Covert war is still war, and covert warriors make logical military choices; the USA has a habit of expanding its influence with whatever means are most convenient. And so it appears a most enduring strategy has become pulling economies along by their most easily-leveraged commodity. Wars are functionally the result of economic questions being answered with violence. Covert action and warfare march to the same tune.
Perhaps the objective is to not so much blame the CIA as blame U.S. politicians. The CIA is an instrument of the American two party system, whereby the Democrats play innocent and the Republicans play ignorant. Let's be direct: The American two-party system sets policy. The CIA is in the business of executing those policies. If U.S. policy entails expanding the realm of U.S. influence, and it has to be done covertly, then the CIA readily opts to forge alliances with regional criminal enterprises. That's the way of covert action and warfare.
But for the CIA to gain any level of influence, a quid-pro-quo arrangement is required. In exchange for that criminal enterprise working for the CIA in some capacity, the CIA has to somehow protect or promote a criminal enterprises' interests.
Since the market for illicit narcotics is international, and the interests of the CIA is international, then the relationship is inevitable.
Place the blame where you will.
PIPELINES:
Enter the protected narcotics pipeline. U.S. government protection can mean any number of things. But the documentary history shows that invoking the rubric of 'national security,' lifting customs barriers, granting immunity and nullifying criminal prosecutions in U.S. courts, have all been tactics employed by the U.S. intelligence community. These tactics functionally protect a drug pipeline; the protection may not be indefinite or grant unlimited impunity, but so long as a CIA alliance with a particular trafficker holds, the trafficker's pipelines become protected.
Skirting and flouting the rule of law is normal protocol - understandably so, from the perspective of a covert warrior - except for many years, the CIA was generally proscribed from various operations within the borders of the U.S.A. (well, that law was skirted and flouted, too). Underscoring this assertion is a public admission by the CIA it had reached a secret agreement with the Department of Justice so its agents, contract agents and assets could deal drugs without fear of prosecution.
These days, evidence presents itself in abundance. In October 1996, Jack Blum (former special counsel to the 1987 "Kerry" Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations) gave both a prepared statement and verbal testimony before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter. In his testimony, Mr. Blum said:

"For criminal organizations, participating in covert operations offers much more than money. They may get a voice in selecting the new government. They may get a government that owes them for help in coming to power, They may be able to use their connections with the United States government to enhance their political power at home and to wave off the efforts of the American law enforcement community. "

Blum has said something quite significant here. The CIA functionally gains influence and control in governments corrupted by criminal narco-trafficking. Politically, the CIA exerts influence by leveraging narco-militarists and corrupted politicians. It's fascinating that Blum's description wouldn't be out of place in describing the Opium Wars of the 19th century. From what Blum describes, it seems that narco-colonialism is alive and well and residing centrally at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.
Well, that's one hell of accusation, isn't it?
Mind you, when when we term this "narco-colonialism," it's not the same narco-colonialism of the 19th century British Empire and East India Tea Company forcing opium down the throats of Chinese. This is really NEO-narco-colonialism, whereby local criminal proxies do the bidding of the patron government seeking expanded influence. But because of the quid-pro-quo of protecting the criminal proxies' illicit pipelines, the result is still a functional narco-colonialism, involving a narcotics commodity in the actual practical execution of policy, with the very different twist of covert action.
Neo-Colonialism. Chile and Angola:
But to really understand the importance of the CIA expanding its realm of influence through covert actions, we need to look at two particular cases that didn't involve narcotics pipelines or narco-militarists, Chile and Angola, and a particular coup that did, Bolivia. The cases of Chile and Angola are illustrative because they frame the CIA's motivations as purely Machiavellian, with the use of local military proxies, while Bolivia illustrates the narco-colonial technique directly.
In the early 1970's, the CIA backed the military take-over of Chile (orchestrated by Pres. Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger). After the socialist Salvador Allende won a popular election and began making overtures towards a socialization of the Chilean division of ITT, ITT asked for intervention from the U.S. Before the final brutal military take-over by General Pinochet, Nixon and Kissinger had brought various forces to bear, including currency manipulation designed to "make their economy scream" with hyper-inflation. In the ensuing years, the Chilean fascist military murdered tens of thousands of "dissidents" who were simply asking for a return to Chilean democracy. Kissinger's comment at the time was brazen: "I don't see why we should stand by and watch a country become socialist." Never mind the popular will of the Chilean people, nor the differences between Fabian Socialism (as practiced in Sweden, France, and Austria) and Marxist Socialism, any kind of socialism was bad if ITT was going to loose a piece of itself to a foreign government's buy-out.
In the case of Angola, the recounting of the CIA's involvement there is revealing. Former CIA-agent John Stockwell served as a CIA operative during the bloody Angolan civil war in the 1970's. After he resigned the agency, as a matter of conscience, he revealed that the CIA backed the insurgency of UNITA, lead by Marxist Jonas Savimbe (as revealed in ex-CIA agent John Stockwell's book, "In Search of Enemies"). The CIA backed UNITA, obviously not because of Savimbe's communist ideology, but because Angola's government (also Marxist, allied with Cuba) harbored a large base of ANC rebels. The CIA's general strategy was to destabilize Angola for the benefit of the racist colonialist regime in South Africa. The UNITA insurgents were convenient proxies in achieving the CIA's goals in that region; the cold war dialectic of "communism vs. capitalism" did not present itself conveniently in Angola, so the CIA simply exploited what convenient resource it could use.
Narco-Colonialism. Bolivia:
But there's one last CIA intervention that did involve drug lords and narco-militarists, and that was in Bolivia (this particular page in history was documented in the book "The Great White Lie," by ex-DEA agent Michael Levine).
The CIA already had a history of intervening in Bolivia against socialists and Catholic church workers with reformist leanings during the 1960's and 1970's. In 1980, the DEA uncovered CIA and Argentine collusion with a coup d'tat by the cocaine barons. In what came to be known as the Bolivian "Cocaine Coup", the CIA and Argentinian government backed the cocaine barons in their 1980 overthrow of the Bolivian government. (Note that the rationale for CIA support of this coup de tat was similar to the CIA's intervention in Chile eight years earlier)
In 1980, we had a Socialist Bolivian government which, having strong anti-drug policies, was a natural enemy of the cocaine barons. The Bolivian cocaine underworld would be a certain foe to any government that enforced any anti-narcotics law, making the Bolivian drug lords the ideal proxies to support in a Bolivian coup d'tat.
As the drug barons wanted to further expand their cartel, and the CIA and Argentinian government wanted to suppress socialism in South America, an alliance was formed against the legitimate Bolivan government. At that point, the fall of the Bolivan government to narco-fascism was inevitable: Allied with the Argentinian military the Bolivian cocaine barons were able to muster logistical support and organize a coup d'tat that brought Bolivia under their control.
The result: A narco-fascist government.
With the Bolivian government in the hands of the cocaine barons, the drug lords organized a plantation-and-refinement cartel that came to be known as La Corporacion (described by Micheal Levine as the General Motors of Cocaine).
Moreover, in the same time frame, the Argentines were organizing the Nicaraguan Contras - not long before the CIA took over supervising the Contra operations.
Functionally, the dots were all lined up, and it was a simple matter of bringing all the various interests together into establishing a pipeline from "Point A" to "Point Z". "Point Z" might not have worked so well, were it not for the fact that the CIA-backed Contras offered such a wonderous mechanism to access the end market in the inner cities of the United States: A protected narcotics pipeline.
Whether or not you feel this was more than mere coincidence, the subsequent rise to power of the Bolivian-based La Corporacion cocaine cartel was contemporaneous with the incipient CIA-backed Contra war in Nicaragua. Everything fell together all-too well to ascribe these matters to the realm of mere coincidence.
With backing from the Argentinean military and the CIA, and the Bolivian government belonging to the drug lords, the volume of cocaine coming out of Bolivia sky-rocketed. Pipe-lined through the newly-formed Contra connection, the cocaine cascaded across South and Central America into the neighborhoods of the USA.
Narco-Colonialism. A giant sucking sound:
The problem is, there's a fall-out from covert protection of narcotics pipelines. A narcotics pipeline, once protected, no matter how brief nor justifiable, can create a mechanism that serves as a nexus for increased narcotics traffic. Why is this?
Laos:
Let's look at the CIA's experience in Laos, during the Vietnam war. The CIA backed the opium warlord Vang Pao, because opium helped the Laotian tribes people alliance with the CIA. Not to over-emphasize the particulars of which opium lord the CIA favored, the point was to support the Hmong opium production in Laos, funding the warfare, thereby enhancing control over Laotian territory.
The tactical upshot from gaining control in Laos meant the CIA had to support Vang Pao; to make the efforts of the CIA worthwhile, he needed to out-class all the other opium warlords in Laos. All that was required of the CIA was to run the opium via Air America aircraft to the next transshipment point, which functionally protected the pipeline & let the warlord run the tribal people. In this particular case, the Hmong tribes were in a difficult spot because of the demands of the war on their agrarian economy, and in a sense, the CIA was helping them out of a tight spot. But the CIA was also after its own interests, and Vang Pao lead the proxy CIA Hmong army.
So, although it created an opium monster, controlling Laos justified the inevitable escalation in heroin supply. As a a result of this 'radical pragmatism,' the volume of heroin coming out Laos tripled, and U.S. troops found themselves awash in heroin. And it is important to emphasize that the CIA ran the opium to the next transshipment node, facilitating the production of heroin.
Latin America:
In Latin America, many indigenous farmers are Amerindian and speak little or no spanish. (They don't care about Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx, they only care about the last time the government kicked them off their land, or who's holding a gun to their head, or how much cash they get for their crop if they aren't growing food for their families.)
This is the pattern we see from the simple economic reality that wars have some economic basis (control of commodity production, as is the case with illicit narcotics), and it is beneficial in the course of warfare to gain influence and control in Latin America through coca production. The very same formula employed in Laos is being employed generally in the Latin American coca production and transshipment system.
The Contras:
Although we see similar pattern with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contras and the Honduran military, the involvement of the CIA in this alliance was just as intimate, but for different reasons. Military U.S. aid to the Contras was prohibited by the Boland Amendment (early 1980's), so the intelligence community flouted Congressional rule, and went ahead in aiding and coordinating the Contras. But they had to do it off-the-books, with hidden money sources. In the course of brazenly breaking the law, the NSC staff (Oliver North, etc.) abandoned all principles and elected to go with the narco-militarist covert war mechanism. The Contras, originally organized by the Argentinean fascist military, was largely overseen and supported by the CIA and the Honduran narco-military.
Once the Contras and Honduran military became the protected conduit for cocaine trafficking with established critical relationships with the Colombian cartels and narco-militarists like Manuel Noriega, the Contra and Honduran military drug pipeline offered guaranteed delivery to market, something that no other smuggling operation could assure. The absurdity of the denials and claims of new-found purity from ex-Contras was amusing: It wasn't as though they were going to readily abandon the political and strategic advantages gained through the alliances with the cartels, not when there was so much to be gained from the alliance, in terms of both power and money (The CIA didn't depose the head of the Honduran military until much later in the game).
At first, this probably worked well for the cartels and the Contras, but demand for illegal narcotics only rises so fast and so far in the face of increased supply. The result is falling prices, which in turn fosters an increase in use. During the heyday of the Contra-cocaine pipeline (the early 1980's), there was a period when cocaine was being sold below cost, such that cocaine prices met the classic economics lesson. Except that with a highly addictive substance like cheap, smokable cocaine, consumer demand is tends to be more rigid than consumption for typical commodity goods.
Columbia:
Years ago (in 1990), I recall watching a reporter on CBS's 60 Minutes news program asked the CIA station chief in Bogota why the CIA had overlooked the existence of the Cali Cartel. The station chief denied the Cali cartel even existed, and then tried to redirect the reporter's questions to the Medellin Cartel. If it wasn't so serious, it would have comical: CIA underworld alliances show themselves in some form of protection, even in the form of obvious and pathetic denials.
Currently, in Colombia (as in Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala), we see similar patterns arise. Colombia is undergoing a internal "dirty" civil war. More than half of Colombia's principalities are controlled by indigenous rebel forces (FARC, ELN) who partially fund themselves through taxation of coca, opium and marijuana production. Paramilitary forces allied with the government, renown for slaughtering entire villages, are themselves allied with illicit drug traffickers who find opportunities in acquiring land through theft and murder (most of the non-combatant casualties are from paramilitary death squads, and most paramilitary violence is committed in areas where the regular army has a strong presence). The U.S. officially sends money to fight narcotics production under the aegis of the War on Drugs; however, that money is used extensively by the Colombian military to fight the rebels, not the actual elements of Colombia's illicit drug economy.
Elsewhere:
After the contra war, the CIA continued to ally itself with narco-militarists in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico and Panama. Many of these alliances have shifted, but the practice apparently continues, even in Myanmar (Burma) in a continuation of CIA machinations in the Golden Triangle (with an added twist of an international oil venture involving Unocal).
The quiet side of gun-boat diplomacy (or how to win and influence peoples)
Nearly a century ago, King Leopold of Belgium ran a murderous regime in the Belgian Congo. The horror of the time was that his armies killed off half of a population of 20 million (a large African republic which was up until recently named Zaire). The other governments of Europe saw the horror of his bloody rule as such a destabilizing threat to colonialism, that they literally took possession of the Congo from Leopold under a pan-European administration.
Joseph Conrad wrote about the Congo in the novella "Heart of Darkness." In Heart of Darkness, Conrad's protagonist commented about the excuses that cloak the true nature of colonialism, namely "Christianizing the savages." The willingness of governments to disguise the real basis of their foreign policies and actions abroad hasn't changed: modern euphemisms, such as "making the world safe for democracy," serve the same purpose: to short circuit public skepticism of the real world of Machiavellian state-craft (now broadcast daily through the ultimate of propaganda machines).
The U.S. has always, and at any cost, maintained US hegemony in the Caribbean, Central and South America. For instance, early in this century, Panama was set up by U.S.-backed bandits, stealing the isthmus from Colombia with the backing of the U.S. military. The objective was to build the canal as property of the U.S.A. Then, as now, we used proxies to do our dirty work; hence, neo-colonialism.

"I helped make Honduras "right" for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street.... I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. "
"..Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
- Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler, New York Times August 21, 1931, in "Morrow Book of Quotations in American History"

Indeed, and the OSS (the CIA's predecessor) took some lessons from Lucky Luciano, Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky.
Covert war, cash crops and protected pipelines:
The unquiet way to go about this business is through open warfare. But the quiet way to gain influence and control in Latin America is through manipulation of the illicit cash crop of Latin America: Coca. Enter the alliance with the criminal enterprise and the requisite quid-pro-quo. The U.S. has a unique ability to influence a foreign government's militaries and politicians (especially the corrupt ones), as well as allying with criminal proxies (which serve the same end), so it's short order to protect a narcotics pipeline.
As any criminal knows, it's important to have corrupt government officials available in order to help protect the racket. However, in the case of the CIA, it's less a function of ordinary greed and more a function of drug-money-for-guns and acquisition of control of coca economies.
But protecting a particular narco-pipeline leads results in increased volume and increased cash flows towards that pipeline. The CIA and its proxies (like General Manuel Noriega) offer what only government facilitators can offer: a government-protected pipeline to the end-market. A CIA-protected pipeline provides privileged access to the market.
In the 1980's this meant cocaine producers routed their product through the privileged CIA-protected La Corporacion-Cali-Noriega-Contra coke pipeline, with a commensurate increase in volume and drop in prices (more on that below). This was a monetary pipeline as well, with the producer economies receiving infusions of hard American currency. In that sense one commodity, cocaine, flowed north while another kind of commodity flowed south: hard currency. The power of hard currency cannot be underestimated, and one of the most powerful weapons at the U.S.'s disposal is a Federal Reserve Note.
Consider what happens when the CIA allies itself with drug smugglers to gain control of Latin economies: Rather than let independent politicians have more money, power or control, the CIA's underworld proxies infiltrate the legitimate political system.
With that statement in mind, consider these quotes from ex-DEA agents like Michael Levine and Cellerino Castillo:

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central American allies ... have been documented by DEA as supplying ... at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply ... came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican CIA) ... [and] other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega." (Ex-DEA agent Michael Levine: The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic)
"Castillo stated that together with 3 other ex-DEA agents, they were willing to testify in Congress regarding their direct knowledge of CIA involvement in international drug trafficking. Castillo estimates that approximately 75% of narcotics entered the U.S. with the acquiescence or direct participation of U.S. and foreign CIA agents." (August 13, 1996 San Diego Union-Tribune, regarding Rep. Robert Toricelli's proposed subcommittee on the intelligence community and human rights violations in Guatemala and Central America).
"We also became aware of deep connections between the law- enforcement community and the intelligence community. I, personally, repeatedly heard from prosecutors and people in the law-enforcement world that CIA agents were required to sit in on the debriefing of various people who were being questioned about the drug trade. They were required to be present when witnesses were being prepped for certain drug trials. At various times the intelligence community inserted itself in that legal process. I believe that that was an impropriety; that that should not have occurred."
"...We ran into another procedure which was extremely troubling. There was a system for stopping Customs inspections of inbound and outbound aircraft from Miami and from other airports in Florida. People would call the Customs office and say, "Stand down. Flights are going out. Flights are coming in."
(Jack Blum,speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter).

Very simply: Oliver North and the CIA were running the biggest facilitator racket in the hemisphere, ensuring that the CIA held the economic strings on two hemispheres' cocaine economies.
As the size of the Peru/Bolivia-to-Miami/L.A. pipelines increased, their entire coca economies were drawn into that pipeline. There was a giant sucking sound of this big operation's intake valve pulling everything in its direction, economically and otherwise.
The CIA gained tremendous power from this: the CIA proxies (The chosen narco traffickers - Cali cartel, Noriega, etc.) who benefited from the protection owed their fealty to the U.S. government. They returned the favor by channeling their product through the Contra operation, as well as infiltrating their respective economies, so that the CIA increased its influence and control via these underworld proxies.

But in the process of establishing itself and its proxy allies as top dog, the CIA protected these trafficking pipelines. In so doing, the protected pipelines produced increased volume and lower prices.
The consequences of protected drug pipelines are well known: The CIA's use of opium warlords in fight the war in Laos resulted in wildly escalated addictions in the U.S. Moreover, by allowing the Latin cartels to transform into sophisticated international business organizations (La Corporacion in Peru), nearly every republic in the region has become intractably enmeshed in a narcotics economy. By manipulating drug transshipment nodes, narco-militarists and narco-profits, the CIA has gained incredible amounts of influence, and even control, in the region. Good narco-facilitators gain more power and wealth. Narco-facilitators who act in defiance of U.S. interests, like Gen. Hueso-Rosa of Honduras, ex-President Salinas of Mexico or Gen. Manuel Noriega, ultimately find themselves suddenly exposed, deposed and either exiled or rotting in prison.
Hegemony:
Historically, any attempt at local independence in Latin America is contrary to the hegemony of the U.S.A. (Recall the Monroe Doctrine that established that the U.S.A. was the sole player in the Carribean basin and that European powers were to stay out). Contemplate the end game: Were a Latin American confederacy or superstate to emerge from the divided (and conquered) crazy quilt of republics, it would constitute a 'threat' - a challenge - to U.S. 'interests' - hegemony.
The Latin republics would no longer be subservient to U.S. interests (neo-colonial exploitation by proxy). Latin America could assert its own objectives over U.S. objections. Chile, Bolivia, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua all have endured a sad history of their misfortunate inhabitants suffering at the blood-thirsty hands of U.S.-backed despots.
Enter the War on Drugs:
The most disturbing aspect about this whole rotten mess, is that the U.S. National Security operatives planning and implementing these operations could not have possibly been unaware of the long-term consequences of their actions. To suggest that the CIA's black-ops specialists would be naive as to the outcome of their actions is to engage in a gross act of denial (especially after their well-documented heroin-related machinations in Laos and the resultant soaring drug addiction problem amongst G.I.'s). It doesn't take a genius to tell you that if specific drug pipelines are protected from interdiction, the resulting increase in drug volume will see a commensurate increase in drug addiction in the U.S.
History repeats
The narco-colonial trade-off for enhanced control in the Americas is increased coca volumes. But is it a 'trade-off' or is it a 'benefit?' The European colonial opium trade relied upon a simple formula to expand it's business: the targeted market focused upon concentrations of poverty, facilitated by the ease with which the impoverished could make a living through opium distribution. A supply of unsuspecting, undereducated or desperate people easily duped into addiction always helped.
With the protected pipelines from the Bolivian cocaine coup and the Contra war, came increased cocaine volumes and lower prices. The ultra-cheap cocaine inevitably landed in the inner cities, as it necessarily would, the crack cocaine plague affecting inner-city minorities first. And, although the typical crack user is white, inconvenient facts haven't stopped the media from scapegoating blacks as the locus of the drug scourge. (Remember, during Prohibition, the inner-city Italian mobsters paid in blood, Canadian and Irish rum-runners and producers got rich. So did folks like the Kennedys. )
Scapegoats always help
If you look beyond the day-to-day nonsense of the two-party system, it should be obvious that political control of the entire hemisphere extends into ultra-covert internal pogroms against minority groups as well (COINTELPRO was only partially revealed, and there's evidence that similar programs continue to this day).
It has been pointed out that, when black communities were saturated with drugs, old objectives at racial oppression were renewed. Neighborhoods were destabilized, men were killed off, incarcerated and marginalized, whites were alienated from blacks via the War-on-Drugs propaganda machine. Throughout the world, governments and their defenders find that propaganda helps to mollify their populations into cooperating with dubious policies.
After all, what's the difference between a black radical in an U.S. urban ghetto and a Guatemalan AmerIndian guerrilla in a mountain village? They are equally troublesome to the expansion of the power of multinational corporations or the rule of oligarchies, and their possible followers are equally expendable.
A war of attrition clearly has its place: Eradicating mountain villages to eliminate 'leftist sympathizers' or bombing South Vietnamese villages so to deprive the Viet Cong of a population or bombing U.S. cities with drugs are equally useful strategies on a continuum of tactical considerations.
Historically, minority groups that have been disinclined to fall in line with these objectives find themselves somehow 'contained,' hence the centuries-old war on Amerindian and African-American civil rights, the overt and covert assaults on the left wing (COINTELPRO), the use of CIA assets to contain the left wing, and the deployment of agent provocateurs against activists (Black Panthers, Ms. Qadala Shabazz, Earth First!, amongst others).
The personal observation of the author is this: There is no depth this government won't go to infiltrate, scapegoat dissident groups, and manipulate the polity.
The New World's order is much more subtle than black helicopters and blue helmets
The War on Drugs turns our economy into an enforcement economy. There is big money to be dispersed, fealty to be acquired and developed, and control to be used, and civil rights to be rescinded, via the War on Drugs. Money, control, hegemony, whatever, it's an old story with a new sinister and disturbing spin.
For those of you in the right-wing who think that the blame should befall New World Order crypto-communists (the 'New World Order' isn't so new: If you look at a U.S. $1 Federal Reserve Note, 'Novus Ordo Seclorum' means "a New Order for All" ), you might want to look into the reality that President George Bush was formerly a CIA director and that the CIA protected contra drug smuggling at the hands of the Reagan White House under the guidance of then-Vice President George Bush and his NSC staff and Jim Casey's CIA. While Sen. Jesse Helms may be against a New World Order, President George Bush (former CIA director, former Drug Czar) wasn't.
And, for those of you in the left wing who think that right-wing crypto-fascists are to strictly to blame, perhaps you should re-evaluate the ostensible left-wing of the U.S. While the superficial ideological cover for the Democrats is liberalism, which appeals to many (including the rank-and-file press), the Democrats, as Jerry Brown observed from his first-hand experience, is a huge cover story for the "wholesale buying and selling of raw power." The CIA's misadventure in Laos fell under the auspices of two different U.S. presidencies, one Democratic the other Republican. Frankly, the Republican party is only a little more brazen and less hypocritical than the Democrats in their pursuit of power.
The CIA and the 2-party system of the Democrats and Republicans hold a close alliance - a veritable cartel. The 2-party system has had winner-take-all control over U.S. politics for the past century, ever since splinter parties were suppressed via anti-fusion laws. While the CIA is directly culpable for covert narco-colonialism, it has done it to expand the influence and maintain the political and economic hegemony of the U.S., both internally and abroad.
When you look at the real underpinnings of what the CIA does and why, and the way U.S. politicians turned CIA narco-colonialism abroad into an internal psy-war under the guise of a War on Drugs, the blame for covert narco-colonialism belongs at the feet of the American 2-party system.

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