Afghan Opium & "International Terrorism"

[reprehensor]

"The American people have been seriously misled about the origins of the al Qaeda movement blamed for the 9/11 attacks, just as they have been seriously misled about the reasons for America’s invasion of Iraq.

The truth is that for at least two decades the United States has engaged in energetic covert programs to secure U.S. control over the Persian Gulf, and also to open up Central Asia for development by U.S. oil companies. Americans were eager to gain access to the petroleum reserves of the Caspian Basin, which at that time were still estimated to be “the largest known reserves of unexploited fuel in the planet.”

To this end, time after time, U.S. covert operations in the region have used so-called “Arab Afghan” warriors as assets, the jihadis whom we loosely link with the name and leadership of al Qaeda. In country after country these “Arab Afghans” have been involved in trafficking Afghan heroin." - Peter Dale Scott, 2005

"Al Qaeda both produces and profits from mayhem. After the organization's creation in Afghanistan, Mr. bin Laden recognized that global unrest presented it with opportunities to expand its influence, as well as pump its financial machine.

Years of bloodletting in Bosnia, for example, allowed Al Qaeda to establish a beachhead in central Europe, government officials said. When the United States guided three rival Balkan states to a peace accord at a meeting in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995, the stage was set for Al Qaeda and other militant groups. "Various very militant groups who were mujahedeen-connected were involved in the Bosnia campaign and took advantage of the Dayton peace accords to set up shop" in the Balkans, one former intelligence official said. "They found a very hospitable environment" when a portion of Bosnia was placed in the hands of Muslims...

Militants linked to Al Qaeda also established connections with Bosnian organized crime figures. The officials said Al Qaeda and the Taliban found a route for the trafficking of heroin from Afghanistan into Europe through the Balkans." - New York Times, 2001

"Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavoury “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.

After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.

In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”" - Norm Dixon, 2001

"In other words, the CIA knew that al-Qaeda was involved in heroin-trafficking, but (as is so often the case with big-time drug-traffickers) was not widely sharing it. Why is this? Le Monde in particular has charged that bin Laden's network now uses the drug connections which bin Laden developed with his friend, the former CIA protege Gulbuddin Hekmatyar." - Scott, 2001

"Another farmer, while announcing his resolve to grow poppy this year onwards, says "It is banned in Islam but we don't use it, just grow it. We will only stop growing once they (the Westerners) stop using it."

The Afghan government also claims that Al Qaeda operatives are helping the drug cartels to traffic heroin to the West.

"It is an unholy alliance," says Mr.Rasoolzai, head of Eastern Afghanistan's antinarcotics department. "Al Qaeda is using drugs as a weapon against America and other Western countries. The weapon of drugs does not make a noise. The victim does not bleed and leaves no trace of the killer." ...

"Obviously I will grow poppy ... We brothers have decided to buy a land cruiser next year and five new kalashnikovs." - Christian Science Monitor, 2003

"U.S. forces hot on the trail of Osama bin Laden and the leaders of the Taliban in late 2001 didn't worry much about elderly, pious-looking men like Haji Juma Khan. A towering tribesman from the Baluchistan desert near Pakistan, Khan was picked up that December near Kandahar and taken into U.S. custody. Though known to U.S. and Afghan officials as a drug trafficker, he seemed an insignificant catch. "At the time, the Americans were only interested in catching bin Laden and Mullah Omar," says a European counterterrorism expert in Kabul. "Juma Khan walked."

That decision has come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan. Western intelligence agencies believe that Khan has become the kingpin of a heroin-trafficking enterprise that is a principal source of funding for the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists. According to a Western antinarcotics official, since slipping out of Afghanistan after U.S. forces released him, Khan has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe, and in turn is using the drug revenues to purchase weapons and explosives. A Western law-enforcement official in Kabul who is tracking Khan says that after a tip-off in May, agents in Pakistan and Afghanistan turned up evidence that Khan is employing a fleet of cargo ships to move Afghan heroin out of the Pakistani port of Karachi. The official says that on return trips from the Middle East, at least three vessels brought back arms, such as plastic explosives and antitank mines, which were secretly unloaded in Karachi and shipped overland to al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Khan is now a marked man. "He's obviously very tightly tied to the Taliban," says Robert Charles, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. Mirwais Yasini, head of the Afghan government's Counter-Narcotics Directorate, says, "There are central linkages among Khan, Mullah Omar and bin Laden." ...

A recent World Bank report calculates that more than half of the country's (Afghanistan) economy is tied up in drugs. The combined income of farmers and in-country traffickers reached $2.23 billion last year�up from $1.3 billion in 2002. Heroin trafficking has long been the main source of funds for many local warlords' private armies, which continue to thwart Karzai's attempts to expand his authority beyond Kabul. But the drug trade is becoming even more dangerous: U.S. and British counterterrorism experts say al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies are increasingly financing operations with opium sales. Antidrug officials in Afghanistan have no hard figures on how much al-Qaeda and the Taliban are earning from drugs, but conservative estimates run into tens of millions of dollars.

Al-Qaeda's foray into drugs dates from the days when the Taliban ruled the country. Though most devout Muslims consider narcotics taboo, bin Laden never directly condemned drug sales. A Western antinarcotics official says that in early 2001 al-Qaeda's financial experts joined forces with Khan and other alleged top Afghan drug traffickers to persuade Taliban leader Omar to ban opium cultivation. The ban was self-serving: it drove up opium prices from $30 per kilogram to nearly $650. That meant huge profits for the Taliban and their trafficker friends who were sitting on large stockpiles when prices soared." - TIME, 2004

"Tajik authorities have claimed repeatedly that neither the US nor NATO exerts any pressure on the drug warlords inside Afghanistan. "There's absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan," said Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. "Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border ... Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now..." - Asia Times Online, 2005

"This year's record harvest of 6,100 tons of opium will generate more than $3 billion in illicit revenue - equivalent to almost half of Afghanistan's GDP. Profits for drug traffickers downstream will be almost 20 times that amount.

Opium money is corrupting Afghan society from top to bottom. High-level collusion enables thousands of tons of chemical precursors, needed to produce heroin, to be trucked into the country. Armed convoys transport raw opium around the country unhindered. Sometimes even army and police vehicles are involved. Guns and bribes ensure that the trucks are waved through checkpoints. Opiates flow freely across borders into Iran, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries.

The opium fields of wealthy landowners are untouched, because local officials are paid off. Major traffickers never come to trial because judges are bribed or intimidated. Senior government officials take their cut of opium revenues or bribes in return for keeping quiet. Perversely, some provincial governors and government officials are themselves major players in the drug trade.

As a result, the Afghan state is at risk of takeover by a malign coalition of extremists, criminals, and opportunists. Opium is choking Afghan society." - Antonio Maria Costa, 2006

"The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion...

Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." ...

Afghanistan and Colombia are the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.

The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics." - Michel Chossudovsky, 2006

"Afghanistan`s heroin-producing poppies will not be sprayed with herbicide this year despite a record crop in 2006 and U.S. pressure for President Hamid Karzai to allow the drug-fighting tactic, a spokesman said Thursday...

Fueled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and the need for a profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in Afghanistan last year rose 49 percent to 6,700 tons - enough to make about 670 tons of heroin. That`s more than 90 percent of the world`s supply and more than the world`s addicts consume in a year." - Pakistan Tribune, 2007

"WASHINGTON: According to a government report, Afghan heroin's share of the market in this country doubled from 7 percent in 2001 to 14 percent in 2004, the latest year studied. Meanwhile, heroin-related deaths are also on the rise, along with more seizures and more overdoses.

The amount of high-quality heroin throughout America is surging because of an increasing supply from Afghanistan -- and with it the fear that record-breaking poppy harvests after the U.S. invasion are fueling more addictions and overdose deaths back home...

Not only is more heroin being produced from Afghan poppies coming into the United States, it is also is the purest in the world, according to the DEA's National Drug Intelligence Center." - Pakistan Tribune, 2007

"Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar claimed in a television interview broadcast Thursday that his fighters helped Osama bin Laden escape intense U.S. bombardment in the Tora Bora mountains five years ago.

Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister and leader of the Hezb-e-Islami militant group, told Pakistan's private Geo TV network that when the United States began its assault on the rugged Afghan mountains in late 2001, some of his fighters moved bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and other associates to "a safe place" where he met them later.

He did not say where they found shelter. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are suspected to be still hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border after the heavy U.S. pounding failed to kill them or lead to their capture.

Hekmatyar was a leader of the mujahedeen that fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s and was briefly Afghan prime minister during the civil war of the early 1990s that cost tens of thousands of lives." - CNN, 2007

"Meanwhile, the drug economy is booming. The weakness of the state and the lack of security for licit economic activity has encouraged this boom, and according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium poppy production in the country reached a record 6,100 metric tons last year, surpassing the 2005 total by 49 percent. This increase belies past claims of progress, made on the basis of a five percent cultivation decrease in 2005. Although the decrease was due almost entirely to the political persuasion of farmers by the government, the United States failed to deliver the alternative livelihoods the farmers expected and continued to pressure the Afghan government to engage in counterproductive crop eradication. The Taliban exploited the eradication policy to gain the support of poppy growers.

Counternarcotics efforts provide leverage for corrupt officials to extract enormous bribes from traffickers. Such corruption has attracted former militia commanders who joined the Ministry of the Interior after being demobilized. Police chief posts in poppy-growing districts are sold to the highest bidder: as much as $100,000 is paid for a six-month appointment to a position with a monthly salary of $60. And while the Taliban have protected small farmers against eradication efforts, not a single high-ranking government official has been prosecuted for drug-related corruption.

Drugs are only part of a massive cross-border smuggling network that has long provided a significant part of the livelihoods of the major ethnic groups on the border, the Pashtun and the Baluch. Al Qaeda, the Taliban, warlords, and corrupt officials of all ethnic groups profit by protecting and preying on this network. The massive illicit economy, which constitutes the tax base for insecurity, is booming, while the licit economy slows." - Foreign Affairs, 2007

"Hundreds of tribal elders gathered in Kandahar on the weekend, summoned to a cavernous hall with flickering electricity for what the government hoped would be a major step toward peace in this volatile region.

The idea sounded simple enough when described by Afghan President Hamid Karzai five months ago as he dined with his Pakistani counterpart, General Pervez Musharraf. They invoked the traditional concept of a peace jirga -- a tribal assembly of elders that takes decisions by consensus -- suggesting a group of respected people from both sides of the border should sit down to discuss ways of ending Taliban attacks...

Almost every public figure in Afghanistan believes Pakistan is fomenting the insurgency in their country. Despite the government staffers handing out glossy posters featuring white doves and symbols of cross-border friendship, the Kandahar peace jirga sounded, at times, like a council of war...

The crowd, sitting on plush chairs and carpets, included nearly every important figure in Kandahar: The governor, the mayor, the police chief, religious leaders, provincial councillors, army officers, wealthy merchants, drug barons, and two brothers of President Karzai." - Globe and Mail, 2007

To top things off, international drug networks are expanding, growing stronger, involving a host of countries, and utilizing Russian banks for the laundering of narco-dollars.

There is a reason why Sibel Edmonds is the most gagged woman in America. The same reason applies to Indira Singh.

The threads that tie drugs to terror to organized crime to governments across the globe are interwoven with global capital in a hideous symbiotic relationship that is worse than a parasitic relationship.

It's worse because even though drug money is not a source of taxable revenue, the money is still being laundered and flows right back into the economy, an intravenous drip of hard currency that can only please Federal-level agencies that influence whether or not the money trail is followed.

Turning a blind eye to these connections results in horrible foreign policy;

"Of the almost 900 million DM which reached Kosovo between 1996 and 1999, half was thought to be illegal drug money. Legitimate fundraising activities for Kosovo and the KLA could have been used to launder drug money. In 1998, the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization, indicating that it was financing its operations with money from the international heroin trade and loans from Islamic countries and individuals, among them allegedly Usama bin Laden. Another link to bin Laden is the fact that the brother of a leader in an Egyptian Djihad organization and also a military commander of Usama bin Laden, was leading an elite KLA unit during the Kosovo conflict. In 1998, the KLA was described as a key player in the drugs for arms business in 1998, "helping to transport 2 billion USD worth of drugs annually into Western Europe". The KLA and other Albanian groups seem to utilize a sophisticated network of accounts and companies to process funds. In 1998, Germany froze two bank accounts belonging to the "United Kosova" organization after it had been discovered that several hundred thousand dollars had been deposited into those accounts by a convicted Kosovar Albanian drug trafficker." - Ralf Mutschke, INTERPOL, House Testimony, December 13, 2000

"During the NATO campaign against the former Yugoslavia in the Spring of 1999, the Allies looked to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to assist in efforts to eject the Serbian army from Kosovo. What was largely hidden from public view was the fact that the KLA raise part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo lie at the heart of the "Balkan Route" that links the "Golden Crescent" of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This route is worth an estimated $400 billion a year and handles 80 percent of heroin destined for Europe." - Frank J. Cilluffo, House Testimony, December, 2000

Things need to change.

Invade or bomb Iran? Nah, this President should get serious about the Afghanistan opium problem if he is serious about "International Terrorism". This should also be the focus for the Democratic Party if there is to be an intelligent, earnest approach to dismantling the infrastructure of terror.

---------------------------

On a historical note, there is an important Australian production that has recently been made available on the internet called "An Unholy Alliance". It provides a good introduction to the history of the Afghan drug trade through the 80s and 90s (to approx. 1994) and also examines the CIA's role in Southeast Asia in drug trafficking in earlier decades.

You can read more about it here, and here.

Download a podcast or AVI of the film here.

[Octafish]

1. DEA Agents Agree CIA means ''Cocaine Importation Agency''

Drugs from Afghanistan are SOP.

1. Big money maker for off-the-shelf Ops.
2. Keeps America doped-up and under the influence, so they are more likely to get away with their treasons.
3. Big money for retirement in Switzerland.

Celerino Castillo is a most important eyewitness to treason, head of the DEA in Honduras where he witnessed Ollie North's crew -- incouding Luis Posada Carriles -- dropping off loads of guns and loading up on cocaine for the trip north. So, yes, Ted Koppel, there’s enough evidence to bust George Herbert Walker Bush and the rest of his right-wing stooges under the RICO Act.

http://www.ricoact.com /

So, let’s hear what the brave agents of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) have to say.

Celerino “Cele” Castillo III

Celerino "Cele" Castillo, 3rd
Ex-DEA Agent

May 17, 2005

© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com . All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

For over a century, our government has made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that we have done to other people in third world countries, especially in Latin America. With the creation of the School of the Americas, a breeding ground for assassins, and the death squads, we have become the greatest human rights violators in the world.

We have become the most hated country in the world, not because we practice democracy or value our freedom. We are hated because our government denies these basic principles to these people. The hate has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism, and as they say, once again, "the chickens have come home to roost" with our own homegrown American made terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles.

When I was posted in Central America as a DEA agent I saw Luis Posada and Felix Rodriguez, another American terrorist, at Illopango airport base in El Salvador. Joining them was a CIA asset Venezuelan advisor Victor Rivera. They had become part of what was known as a CIA apparatus that did not have to answer to anyone. They were involved in everything from drug trafficking to kidnapping to the training of the death squads. It was at the height of the Iran-Contra investigation that I had documented these atrocities to my government. I could not understand how our government had assisted in having Posada escape from a Venezuelan prison, and then placed him at Illopango airport as a CIA asset under the new name of Ramon Medina. He was now working hand in hand with then U. S. Lt. Col. Oliver North.

When I asked about Posada's presence at Illopango, I was once again told that it was a covert operation being run by the White House. I started to learn real fast that just about every time I questioned illegal action, I would be told that it was "a covert operation being run by the White House." And as we found out later, my allegations were facts; that became especially clear when, in 1990, President Bush Sr. pardoned another American-made terrorist, Posada's partner in crime: Orlando Bosch. To the degree that the "war on terror" is a response to actual terrorism, that terrorism is retaliation: the U.S. has exported death and violence to the four corners of the Earth with individuals like Posada and Bosch.

Posada admitted to a New York Times reporter that he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist and injured others. However, he is best known as the prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban Airlines flight in Barbados in October 1976. All 73 crewmembers and passengers including teenaged members of Cuba's national fencing team were killed.

CONTINUED…

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/contra1.html

Additional resources:

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9612a/ciacontra.html

http://www.drugwar.com/castillonorthmay1104.shtm

www.powderburns.org

Well. Here’s to “Conspiracies In Action.”

Here’s what Michael Levine, DEA had to say about the organization started by Allen Dulles has brought tons of cocaine into the United States of America. Don’t worry, Mr. Conservative. It was at a profit.

Speaking of Capitalism’s Invisible Army:

Michael Levine Interview

by Paul DeRienzo

from THE SH@DOW - box 20298 - NY, NY 10009

Michael Levine is a veteran of 26 years of undercover work for four federal agencies. He is the recipient of many Justice and Treasury Department awards for hi s work undercover, including the International Narcotics Enforcement Officer Association's Octavio Gonzales Award. He is also the subject of Donald Goddard's book Undercover: The Secret Lives of a Federal Agent (Dell, 1990).

Joining the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) after discovering his brother's heroin addiction which eventually killed his brother, Levine was the most successful agent in DEA history. By 1977, he had made 3,000 drug arrests going undercover to set up buy and bust operations against New York City heroin and cocaine dealers. This led to his assignment as DEA station chief in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

By 1989, after having several of his operations stopped by higher ups who allowed his targets to get away, Levine quit the DEA in disgust. Levine then wrote the book Deep Cover (1990, Delacorte Press), describing his experiences that led to his leaving the DEA, exposing the government's phony "War on Drugs".

Levine tells a chilling story of treachery by members of his own agency, and the CIA, men Levine calls the ":suits" who he says use the War on Drugs as a cynical cover for covert foreign policy adventures. Levine says that since he began speaking out against the War on Drugs he has been threatened by high level DEA agents and has been the target of campaigns meant to discredit him.

CONTINUED…

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/institutional_analys...

Additional resources:

http://www.serendipity.li/wod/levine.html

http://www.physicaldream.com/Eyeonsam/Is%20Anyone%20Apo...

So. There we have it. No evidence of conspiracy, as importing cocaine is a matter of national policy.



Well. Hector Berrellez would arrest you if he caught you. He’s another good guy.

Gary Webb

(1955-2005)

EXCERPT…

I had been thinking about looking into the claim that during the civil war in Nicaragua in the eighties, the CIA helped move dope to the United States to buy guns for the contras, who were mounting an insurrection against the leftist Sandinistas. So I called up Hector Berrellez, a guy who worked under Mike Holm in Los Angeles, a guy known within the DEA as its Eliot Ness, and he said, "Look, the CIA is the best in the world. You're not going to beat them; you're never going to get a smoking gun. The best you're going to get is a little story from me."

SNIP…

After a while, the San Jose Mercury News series disappeared except on a few byways of the Internet, Gary Webb was ruined, and things went back to normal. Things like Oliver North's diary entry linking dope and guns for the contras, like Carlos Lehder, a big Colombian drug dealer, testifying as a prosecution witness in federal court during the Noriega trial about the Medellín cartel's $10 million donation to the contras, like the entire history of unseemly connections between the international drug world and the CIA--all this went away, as it has time and time again in the past. A kind of orthodoxy settled over the American press that assumed Webb's work had been thoroughly refuted. He became the Discredited Gary Webb.

SNIP…

HECTOR BERRELLEZ STUMBLED ONTO GARY WEBB'S STORY YEARS before Gary Webb knew a thing about it. ….

In September 1986, Sergeant Tom Gordon of the Los Angeles sheriff's narcotics strike force pieced together intelligence about a big-time drug ring in town run by Danilo Blandón. A month later, on October 23, Gordon went before a judge with a twenty-page detailed statement documenting that "monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported m Florida and laundered.,.. The monies are filtered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua." He got a search warrant for the organization's stash houses. On Friday, October 24, there was a briefing of more than a hundred law-enforcement guys from the sheriff's office, the DEA, the FBI. That was the same day that President Ronald Reagan, after months of hassle, signed a $100 million aid bill that reactivated a licit cash flow to the beleaguered contras. And on Monday, October 27, at daybreak, the strike force simultaneously hit fourteen L. A. area stash houses connected with Blandón.

That's where just another day in the life of Hector Berrellez got weird. Generally, at that early hour, good dopers are out cold; the work tends toward long nights and sleeping in. As Berrellez remembers, "We were expecting to end up with a lot of coke." Instead, they got coffee and sometimes doughnuts. The house he hit had the lights on, and everyone, two men and a woman, was up. The guy who answered the door said, "Good morning; we've been expecting you. Come on in." The house was tidy, the beds were already made, and the damn coffee was on. The three residents were polite, even congenial. "It was obvious," says Berrellez, "that they were told." The place was clean; all fourteen houses were clean. The only thing Berrellez and the other guys found in the house was a professional scale.

But there was a safe, and Berrellez got one of the residents to open it reluctantly. Inside, he found records of kilos matched with amounts of money, an obvious dope ledger, a photograph of a guy in flight dress in front of what looked to be a military jet, and photographs of some guys in combat. Hector asked the guy who the hell the people in the photographs were, and the guy said, "Oh, they are freedom fighters."

CONTINUED…

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mf...

Additional resources:

http://www.ckln.fm/~asadismi/whiteout.html

http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia /

And these guys knew Gary Webb, DUers may remember the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter who was lauded for his groundbreaking series detailing how Contra-connected dealers got the inside track on the dope that eventually created the crack cocaine epidemic. Too bad what the government chose to “crack” down on was honest journalism, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Then it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Establishment press corpse piled on. Interesting expression: Kill a few birds with one stone.

Is that something? Three DEA agents who never knew of one another’s existence while they worked together in the federal government. There were united by something else, though. Each, after reporting drug dealing by Contras and other “protected organizations,” were left out to hang.

That’s un-American. Drug dealing to fund illegal wars? Gee. That’s Treason.

We know the names of more than a few involved: George Herbert Walker Bush, John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, John Negroponte, Ted Shackley. Gee. A lot of past and current government officials, there, wot? What's needed is a Grand Jury to investigate the actions of these drug-dealing, warmongering conspirators, for starters.

Thank you for bringing up all these narco moneymakers, reprehensor. Maybe Congress will investigate all this, once the treasonous warmongers are safely imprisoned.

[reprehensor]

2. My concern is that nobody is talking about it.

Look out! Here they come again! It's that same old bunch of guys that live in the old joke. It's you, and two billion of your closest friends, standing in shit up to your chins, chanting, "Don't make a wave!" - Frank Zappa.

Right now, I don't see a politician who even has this on the radar, although I'm sure there are several that would prefer status quo, rather than "make a wave".

Whatever "al Qaeda" is, it is at the least a convenient pool of patsies, and nobody seems interested in draining the pool.

When I asked my buddy in the National Guard if they were burning down the opium fields, he told me that it wasn't on their agenda at all. That was the job of the British.

Afghanistan is producing more opium than ever. I guess they ran out of matches.

Ignoring the drug traffic has allowed it to grow by leaps and bounds, the traffickers are already laundering in Russia. The Russian network is growing incredibly powerful, and is morphing into a self-sustaining Invisible Government in its own right;

"It seems clear that the meta-group, with its influential connections on at least three continents, was powerful enough to effect changes, through the Russian 9/11, in Russian history. The question arises whether they could similarly effect changes in American history as well.

As we have seen Russian sources claim that the U.S. Government has had access to the meta-group, for such especially sensitive projects as the assassination of Abu al Walid al-Hamadi. They claim the meta-group's involvement in a number of U.S.-sponsored regime changes in eastern Europe, from the overthrow of Ceausescu in Romania to the recent deposition of Shevardnadze in Georgia. The Wall Street Journal attributed the latter to the work of "a raft of non-governmental organizations . . . supported by American and other Western foundations." One of these was the Albert Einstein Institution, funded by both the NED and the Soros foundations, which helped to create the dissident youth movement Kmara in Georgia. Audrius Butkevicius, the meta-group member now resident in Georgia, is said to be closely connected with the Albert Einstein Institution.

To this we should possibly add the so-called tulip revolution in March 2005 that ousted long-time leader Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan, (It was after this event that Far West opened its office in Kyrgyzstan.) Nagorny claims that the coup was organized by British intelligence and Chechens in Istanbul, with the "technical assistance" of Americans. Since then the heroin traffic through Kyrgyzstan has allegedly almost trebled.

Returning to a question raised earlier, it also seems possible that the U.S. government might contemplate using Hizb ut-Tahrir and the meta-group for political changes in Russia itself, even while combating the Islamism of al-Qaeda elsewhere. This would be far from the first time that the U.S. Government had used drug-trafficking proxies as assets, and would do a lot to explain the role of the U.S. in 2001 in restoring major drug traffickers to power in Afghanistan. Dubious figures like Nukhaev, Khodorkovskii, and Khashoggi have already shown their interest in such initiatives; and western business interests have shown their eagerness to work with these allies of the meta-group." - link.

It's very strange. It's almost like a part of the unconscious that will not see the light of day. Like the reality of the JFK assassination. Like the big lie; the metanarrative of 9/11.

Right now, there's not even a conversation on this topic as there should be, and without it, things are only going to get worse with a President whose covert agenda differs radically with his or her publicly stated agenda.

With the issue off the table, how do we know where any candidate stands?

Big thanks for shooting Castillo out there. He's pretty much unknown.

Castillo is featured in this video;

"Crack the CIA"
http://www.gnn.tv/videos/video.php?id=1

[mdmc]

3. i don't understand

I would think that the drug war can only make us less safe from terrorists. Your assertion that we should "get serious" about the drug problem - isn't our craving for the drug the problem? Isn't the drug war and lack of regulation the problem?

[reprehensor]

5. Craving the drug is a problem.

However, the "drug war" has not been brokered honestly.

At the same time that honest elements within the DEA prosecute drug dealers, other elements are doing other things;

http://narconews.com/houseofdeath/

Regulation and legalization is another elephant in the room.

But what we have in Afghanistan is a smoke cloud of chaos and tacit facilitation of a major-growth industry, unparalleled in the region.

The majority of this opium and heroin flows to Europe, East and West, but is increasingly showing up here.

The elimination of the Afghan poppy industry must proceed apace with Truman-level investment to replace this cash-cow with something else. Right now, neither is happening.

Pursued in a forthright manner, the Afghan narco-dollars can be eliminated, the growth of the Russian, Albanian, and other drug networks can be curtailed, and something good could come of it.

"I would think that the drug war can only make us less safe from terrorists."

Not an honestly brokered and pursued "drug war" with a specific focus and intent. Striking at the vein of narco-dollars fueling "International Terrorism" is a necessary strategic target.

Apace with a diligent policy that strikes at the root, there must be an honest, open assessment of what "al Qaeda" is; and how it got to be that way.

Narco-dollars helped pave the way;

Ties With Terror: The Continuity of Western-Al-Qaeda Relations in the Post-Cold War Period

[mdmc]

8. i disagree

people use what they got. Pakastan paid for thier nukes with heroin.

I will check out the links you provided. Thanks and peace.

[rman]

4. k, r

and bookmarked

[starroute]

6. The US invented this racket

During World War II, the OSS was operating in China, using opium sales to bring in weapons to support the local Chinese resistance to Japan. That's what set the pattern for everything that's happened since.

In the late 40's and early 50's, the CIA both maintained existing connections with the Chinese druglords -- who'd been kicked out by the Communists and set up shop in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia -- and forged new ones in Vietnam after the French were forced to withdraw in 1954. Gradually, the wartime system of arms-for-drugs was recreated in the name of fighting Communism, supported by a network of proprietary airlines (heirs to the wartime Flying Tigers.)

Even in the 50's, the flow of heroin through Marseilles and Cuba was sufficient to fuel what was considered to be an epidemic of drug use in the US. But the system really went into overdrive on three subsequent occasions: first during the Vietnam War with southeast Asian heroin, then in the late 70's and early 80's with South American cocaine (which became the dominating factor in the supposed Contra support operations), and finally with the enormous CIA buildup in Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout the 80's.

However, by then something funny was happening -- the whole system was getting privatized. First, it was a matter of rogue CIA agents, like Ted Shackley and Tom Clines and their associates in the "Enterprise." (Or rogue Mossad agents like Mike Harari, who was also deeply involved in the Contra-related cocaine trade.) Then -- perhaps because national control was weakening -- crime groups like the cocaine cartels or the Russian Mafia started playing a more dominant role. And at the same time, terrorist groups who had originally been the passive beneficiaries of CIA-mediated drug trafficking started carrying it on themselves.

Since the 1990's, these trends have only intensified and consolidated. In some places, it's no longer possible to tell the drug lords apart from the terrorists -- for example, in Chechnya. Or in the case of the "Indian Mafia," which seems to consist of Moslem criminals/terrorists who find safe harbor in Pakistan whenever they make things too hot for themselves in India. Some of the smaller and more precarious nation-states appear to be nothing more than false fronts for drugs-and-arms traffickers, while even a few of the more substantial ones (like Turkey or, by some accounts, Israel) are heavily penetrated by the operations of a criminal "deep state."

It may be that we are at one of those recurring historial nexuses where the power of central governments to maintain peace and the rule of law breaks down and we find ourselves at the mercy of private armies at best and criminal gangs at worst. (The usual label for such periods in the history books is "Dark Ages.") In the long run, periods like that may be a necessary corrective to an excess of state despotism -- but they can't be fun to live through.

[arikara]

7. K&R

Thanks for all your work, Reprehensor.