Wednesday, May 30, 2007


Benefit Car Wash


For the men of CMR's Housing Programs:
Chase Partnership House
Jefferson House

When: Saturday, June 2, 2007 (Rain Date Saturday, June 23, 2007)

Where: Community Ministries of Rockville
Next to Rockville United Methodist Church
114 West Montgomery Ave.
Rockville, MD 20850
Rear parking lot.
Detailing is available by appointment. Call 301-315-1098 to schedule


Map: http://maps.google.com/maps


Simple Wash $ 5 (vans / SUVs $8)

Wash / Wax $10 (vans / SUVs $15)

Detailing $25 / $35 -- by appointment only.
Call CMR, 301-315-1098 to schedule

MasterCard and Visa accepted
see http://www.cmrocks.org for additional information

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publicly viewable at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddh9xk76_43cwhbsq


Monday, May 28, 2007

document is publicly viewable at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddh9xk76_42fxpdvg

CIA, Cocaine, and the Contras
A Bibliography

Last updated: May 29, 2007
Copyright 2007, Licensed under Creative Commons License 3.0



http://www.amazon.com/Powderburns-Cocaine-Contras-Drug-War/dp/0889625786/ref=sr_1_1/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-1
Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War
by Celerino, III Castillo (Author), Dave Harmon (Author)

There were a number of semi-suppressed stories during the Iran-contra scandal concerning the link between the contras and cocaine. Celerino Castillo knows about it first-hand. An all-American true believer, Castillo fought in Vietnam from 1971-1972, where he saw the effects of drugs on U.S. troops. By 1975 he was a Texas cop, later a detective working drug cases. In 1980 he joined the Drug Enforcement Administration and worked the streets of New York. Then it was off to Peru in 1984-1985, and Guatemala from 1985-1990. While stationed in Guatemala, Castillo was the DEA agent in charge of anti- drug operations in El Salvador from 1985-1987. This is when he discovered that Oliver North's contras were running cocaine from the Ilopango airport.

He did his best to bust them, but they were protected by the CIA. "By the end of 1988," he writes, "I realized how hopelessly tangled DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind" (page 208). His life was in danger, and he got out in a hurry in 1990. DEA, meanwhile, was increasing the pressure with an internal investigation of Castillo. His career was over and he resigned. Lawrence Walsh's office extensively debriefed Castillo, but when Walsh released his massive report in 1993, the narcotics connection was nowhere to be found. End of story -- until this book was published.
ISBN 0-88962-578-6 ( http://www.namebase.org/sources/WS.html )

Related account of Castillo's work:
http://www.drugwar.com/castillo.shtm


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http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/TATUM/tatum.html
The Chip Tatum Chronicles: Testimony of Government Drug Running
By D.G. "Chip" Tatum

I'm afraid I find this account credible. I doubt I would have found it credible if I hadn't already read all the Mena-Contra-Cocaine material I've been reading lately. It paints a particularly damning portrait of Oliver North. There are a couple of parallels with P's account as it involves North, though. In both, North clearly knew of drugs being smuggled back into the US, but did not inform his subordinates up-front. North didn't admit to the drugs until confronted. In both cases, North responded to the confrontation with a lie that excused his own and the subordinates' role. In P's case, the lie was that the drugs were all Clinton's fault, and Clinton had the whole CIA over a barrel. In Tatum's case, North's lie was that the cocaine was "evidence" to be used to prove in court that the Sandinistas were dealing in cocaine.

Again, Dan Lasater is named by an independent source as being the man in Mena who handed the cocaine off to US drug lords and laundered the money.
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http://www.amazon.com/Whiteout-Drugs-Press-Alexander-Cockburn/dp/1859842585/ref=sr_1_14/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-14
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press
by Alexander Cockburn (Author), Jeffrey St. Clair (Author)
Excerpt:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/c/cockburn-white.html
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http://www.amazon.com/Lost-History-Contras-Cocaine-Project/dp/1893517004/ref=sr_1_2/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-2
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
by Robert Parry (Author)
A fairly long discussion by Parry on this subject:
Gary Webb R.I.P.
http://alternet.org/election04/20742/

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http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/crimes_of_mena.html
The Crimes of Mena: The Suppressed Article
By Sally Denton and Roger Morris
This is the article which had been scheduled to appear in the Washington Post. After having cleared the legal department for all possible questions of inaccurate statements, the article was scheduled for publication when just as the presses were set to roll, Washington Post Managing Editor Bob Kaiser (Like George Bush, a member of the infamous "Skull & Bones Fraternity), killed the article without explanation.
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http://www.serendipity.li/wod/heartb.html
The Train Deaths: Don Henry and Kevin Ives
This is the most coherent narrative I've come across to explain and describe exactly what happened in the murder of these two high school boys, why, and who is responsible. Jean Duffey and Russell Welch appear to be the only two major officials in the whole controversy who have displayed consistent, courageous integrity. I take comfort that they've kept their lives. I'm appalled that their careers have been devastated.

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http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/witness_list.html

A Witness List for House Hearings on Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's Report on CIA Drug Trafficking
An exhaustive list of names with thumbnail sketches of the prominent characters in CIA drug dealings.

___________________________________________


http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780520214491&pwb=1&z=y
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America
by Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall
Table of Contents:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780520214491&displayonly=TOC&z=y#TOC

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http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Alliance-Contras-Cocaine-Explosion/dp/1888363932/ref=sr_1_4/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-4
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
(Paperback)
by Gary Webb (Author)
Portions as published in the San Jose Mercury News:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddh9xk76_38dd326m

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http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Messenger-Crack-Cocaine-Controversy-Journalist/dp/1560259302/ref=sr_1_6/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-6
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Paperback)
by Nick Schou (Author), Charles Bowden (Preface)
Excerpt: ( http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0641,schou,74552,10.html )
"Dark Alliance" was the first major news expose to be published simultaneously in print and on the Internet. Ignored by the mainstream media at first, the story nonetheless spread like wildfire through cyberspace and talk radio. It sparked angry protests around the country by African-Americans who had long suspected the government had allowed drugs into their communities. Their anger was fueled by the fact that "Dark Alliance" didn't just show that the contras had supplied a major crack dealer with cocaine, or that the cash had been used to fund the CIA's army in Central America—but also strongly implied that this activity had been critical to the nationwide explosion of crack cocaine that had taken place in America during the 1980s.

It was an explosive charge, although a careful reading of the story showed that Webb had never actually stated that the CIA had intentionally started the crack epidemic. In fact, Webb never believed the CIA had conspired to addict anybody to drugs. Rather, he believed that the agency had known that the contras were dealing cocaine, and hadn't lifted a finger to stop them. He was right, and the controversy over "Dark Alliance"—which many consider to be the biggest media scandal of the 1990s—would ultimately force the CIA to admit it had lied for years about what it knew and when it knew it.
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http://www.amazon.com/Cocaine-Politics-Central-America-Updated/dp/0520214498/ref=sr_1_5/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-5
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America
by Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall
Excerpt here:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Drug_War/Cocaine_Politics.html
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http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38a4fbde5657.htm
Prologue to Boy Clinton
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Regnery Publishing Inc.
Washington D.C.


Excerpt:
But during this, his most recent flight, what Brown, a seasoned narcotics investigator, was to learn troubled him deeply. Seal was bringing drugs and money back in the duffel bags. Consequently, as soon as Brown returned to Little Rock he approached Clinton and asked, "Do you know what they're bringing back on those planes?" Clinton froze. "They're bringing back coke," Brown told him. In fact "they" were trafficking in cocaine, money, and arms, Clinton's response was blase. He told Brown not to worry, adding "That's Lasater's deal. That's Lasater's deal."(2) At the time Dan Lasater, an Arkansas "bond daddy" known for his wide-open parties, was a major Clinton supporter. Clinton's occasional attendance at Lasater's parties had presented his bodyguard, Brown, with problems; in addition to young girls, the parties also included plenty of cocaine.

Comment: This seems astonishing to me. If anyone was responsible for the massive, CIA-approved drug-running going on at Mena, it was Lasater. During the Contra re-supply operations, he was running business dealings that would rank well up in the Fortune 500. But his drug convictions were for giving away cocaine, and you have to scour the internet to find his name associated with the trafficking. How did such massive dealing leave such a tiny footprint of documentation? Well, it's actually pretty clear: there were vigorous efforts at both Federal and State levels to quash any and all investigations.

____________________________________


http://www.serendipity.li/cia/larry1.html

Information Sources for Allegations Regarding Mena and
Other CIA-related Narcotics Trafficking Covert Operations
An exhaustive bibliography of mostly non-internet references

__________________________________

http://www.amazon.com/Denial-Deception-Insiders-Iran-Contra-Nation/dp/1560256494/ref=sr_1_13/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-13
Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11 (Nation Books)
by Melissa Boyle Mahle
This book has gotten mostly lukewarm reviews, and discusses little of the Contra affair.

_________________________________


http://www.amazon.com/Conspirators-Secrets-Iran-Contra-Insider/dp/097100420X/ref=sr_1_7/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-7
The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider
by Al Martin
The material here looks mostly like cheap sensationalism.
Excerpt:
When George Bush, Bill Casey and Oliver North initiated their plan of State-sanctioned fraud and drug smuggling, they envisioned using 500 men to raise $35 billion.

When Iran Contra finally fell apart, they had ended up using 5,000 operatives and making $350 billion.

....After Al Martin retired as a Lt. Commander from the US Naval Reserves, his life went into the fast lane as a black ops specialist in the Office of Naval Intelligence. His first assignment was in Peru, where he was tapped for a CIA-sanctioned operation, smuggling American Express cards into Argentina in 1979. After that, he met US Government-sponsored con man Lawrence Richard Hamil, a Department of Defense shadow player, who taught him the ropes of profitable covert operations. In 1984, Martin began marketing Hamil's "deals" through his Florida based Southeast Resources, Inc.

At a meeting with General Richard V. Secord and Hamil, Martin was briefed about Iran Contra operations and allowed to view voluminous CIA white papers concerning "Operation Black Eagle," the code-name for the Bush-Casey-North program involving US Government-sanctioned narcotics trafficking, illicit weapons deals and wholesale fraud.
____


Three interesting leads from amazon.com that seem to be currently unavailable:


http://www.amazon.com/Report-investigation-allegations-connections-trafficking/dp/B00010Y36Q/ref=sr_1_8/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-8
Report of investigation : allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in cocaine trafficking to the United States (SuDoc PREX 3.2:C 76/V.1-) (Unknown Binding)
by U.S. Postal Service (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/investigation-concerning-allegations-connections-trafficking/dp/B000112XB2/ref=sr_1_9/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-9
Overview, report of investigation concerning allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in cocaine trafficking to the United States (SuDoc PREX 3.2:2001042000)
by U.S. Postal Service (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/CIA-contra-crack-controversy-Departments-investigations-prosecutions/dp/B00010Y8CU/ref=sr_1_10/104-5985058-3871968?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1180293091&sr=1-10
The CIA-contra-crack cocaine controversy a review of the Justice Department's investigations and prosecutions (SuDoc J 1.2:99006533)
by U.S. Dept of Justice (Author)

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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813303710/theindepeende-20
Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua (Hardcover)
by Thomas W. Walker (Editor)
Excerpt: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=65710540


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http://www.converge.org.nz/pirm/cia.htm
THE CIA's ADDICTION TO DRUGS
Paul Beres
Excerpt:

Meanwhile, in Latin America, the CIA's proxy Contra army of "freedom fighters" was also supplementing its income. Smugglers working for the Colombian Medellin cartel would land on Contra air-strips for refuelling and either fly on to North America themselves or offload their cargoes to other smugglers on the North American run. In return for this service the Contras were able to fund their campaign to liberate Nicaragua from the Sandanisters.

The CIA often used the same cocaine smugglers to, in turn, fly military supplies back to the Contras from North America. The cost of these supplies and their transportation was partly paid for by the CIA and partly paid for by the Contra's services to the Medellin cartel. In some instances no exchange of money was necessary; weapons and cocaine were the only means of exchange. Like the commanders of the KMT, many of the Contras leaders became drug traffickers in their own right.

When the US Congress cut all aid to the Contras in 1984, the CIA began to operate landing strips of its own through John Hull who turned his Costa Rica ranch into a miniature airport. Support from other agencies was also forthcoming. Under National Security Council's Colonel Oliver North, two ex CIA operatives who served together in Laos, retired General Richard Secord and Thomas Clines, raised the necessary funds to buy more airplanes by illegally selling arms to Iran.

The CIA was now actively involved in smuggling cocaine. Before a Capital Hill hearing, Gary Bretzner, a former pilot working for the Colombian drug smuggler George Morales, gave testimony of John Hull's complicity.

"In July 1984 Betzner flew into Hull's ranch in a Cessna 402-B loaded with a cargo of weapons for the Contra southern front. Betzner was met at the airstrip by Hull and they watched the cargo of weapons being unloaded, and cocaine, packed in 17 duffel bags, and five or six two-foot square boxes being loaded into the now empty Cessna. With his cargo of cocaine, Betzner flew the Cessna north and landed at a field in Lakeland, Florida, without any search.".

The contribution which these efforts made in increasing the supply of Colombian cocaine to the US deserves special mention. In 1980 the amount of cocaine reaching the US doubled and by 1985 regular cocaine users already outnumbered heroin addicts by more than ten to one.

By 1986 cheap crack, cocaine converted from a powder to a granular base for smoking, had found its way into US schools, costing as little as $10 a tab. Not surprisingly cocaine use and profits now dwarf those of heroin.

Although North America and Europe are the premium export markets for cocaine and heroin, new markets have been cultivated closer to home in the developing world. Pakistan, for instance, had a virtually non-existent heroin addiction problem before the Afghanistan conflict, but now has one of the largest and fastest growing population of addicts in the world, while in Thailand heroin addition is more widely spread throughout society than ever before.

This brief history is by no means the full story, or even the end of the story. Despite this, the recurring trend of the drug trade becoming an 'end in itself' rather than a 'means to an end,' is clearly evident. This is more than just a recurring trend, however; it is a spiral with devastating consequences.

Successive US Presidents have declared war on drugs, but have failed to acknowledge the CIA's part in batting for the opposition. On the contrary, they have increased the CIA's powers; the very same powers that have enabled CIA operatives to become so deeply immersed in the politics of drugs.

Bibilography

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America by Peter Dale Scottand and Jonathan Marshall, University of California Press 1991.

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred W McCoy, Lawrence Hill Books 1991.

Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War in Nicaragua, edited by Thomas W. Walker, Westview Press, Boulder and London 1987.

Turning The Tide: US Intervention in Central America and the struggle for Peace by Noam Chomsky, published by Pluto Press 1985.
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document is publicly viewable at: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddh9xk76_42fxpdvg


Saturday, May 26, 2007


From: http://rwor.org/a/firstvol/crack.htm


How the CIA Created the Crack Epidemic

September 15, 1996

In the early 1980s, a new drug, crack cocaine, appeared on the streets--at a time when many youth in the inner city were being forced into the underground economy in order to survive. New burdens were being added onto the poor. In a situation of intolerable poverty, unemployment, lousy health care, falling apart schools and crumbling housing, the spread of crack cocaine brought intensified conflicts between street organizations and the painful desperation of people addicted to the pipe. The government launched brutal new invasions by the police--a so-called "war on drugs"-- using the spread of crack as an excuse.

This war on the people has resulted in an epidemic of police brutality and murder, the mass incarceration of Black and Latino youth, and the criminalization of a generation.It was widely believed that the sudden epidemic of crack cocaine into the oppressed communities--like the introduction of heroin in the Vietnam war era--could be traced to the authorities themselves.Now new facts are in, and it is revealed that this is precisely what has been going on.An exposé by reporter Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News reveals that agents working with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sold tons of cocaine in the United States during those years and shipped the profits to the CIA-run army of Nicaraguan Contras. Webb based his work on "recently declassified reports, federal court testimony, undercover tapes, court records here and abroad and hundreds of hours of interviews over the past 12 months." He was assisted by journalists Georg Hodel and Leonore Delgado.Webb's report uncovered the names of the Contra operatives who bought tons of cocaine from the Colombian drug cartels and passed it on to various drug-dealing networks within the U.S. It documents how Contra drug dealers met with a major CIA agent before starting their operation. It reveals how the Salvadoran government air force flew the cocaine into Texas airfields. It details how tons of cheap cocaine flowed like a river into ghetto streets--first in Los Angeles and then beyond. And finally, Webb's report documents the repeated U.S. government efforts to protect these operations.It has been a long struggle to break through the government coverup of this CIA cocaine traffic. During the congressional Iran-Contra hearings in the late 1980s, two people stood up in the audience and shouted "What about the cocaine!?" They were arrested and sentenced to over a year in prison.Long-time readers of our newspaper, the Revolutionary Workerwill remember many articles, especially in 1988 and 1989, exposing the CIA's use of cocaine to finance their secret war in Central America. Our reports were based on the work of many other people--including the Christic Institute, columnist Alexander Cockburn, journalists Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, filmmaker Barbara Trent (who created the film Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra-Affair), and Professor Peter Dale Scott (author of The Iran Contra Connection--Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era).

Now an important new piece of the puzzle has fallen into place: Gary Webb documents that the CIA's agents did more than participate in the cocaine trade. He reveals in detail the role they played in creating the crack explosion that has caused so much suffering among the people.Here is a U.S. government that publicly preached "Just Say No!" and sent an army of police to attack the people in the name of a "war on drugs." And meanwhile, this same government had for years been at the nerve center of the operations that brought in the drugs!

Many people have suspected all along that the U.S. government was behind the crack explosion. Now here are the facts.In this article, we will pass on some of the information Gary Webb uncovered. And we will place it in the context of information documented by others about the role of the CIA and the Reagan/Bush White House in the cocaine trade.The full series by Gary Webb, called "Dark Alliance," appeared in the San Jose Mercury News on August 18, 19 and 20. It is available on the Internet at http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/.
The Nicaraguan Contras--
a Covert, Self-Financing
CIA Operation

In the U.S. in 1980, cocaine was a drug that only the rich could afford. Gary Webb writes, "One study of actual cocaine prices paid by DEA agents put it at $5,200 an ounce." After high-level decisions in the U.S. government, this changed.

On December 1, 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed a secret National Security Directive (NSD) approving the CIA efforts to secretly organize an army to wage war against Nicaragua.

The brutal pro-U.S. Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, had been overthrown in a 1979 revolution and replaced by the leftist Sandinista government. The U.S. ruling class feared that the Sandinistas would weaken U.S. control over Central America and provide the Soviet Union with a "foothold" in a region the U.S. considered its own "backyard."

In August 1981, Col. Enrique Bermúdez--who'd been Somoza's Washington liaison to the U.S. Pentagon--announced the formation of the Fuerza Democrática Nicaraguense (FDN--in English, the "Nicaraguan Democratic Force"). Webb documents that it was the CIA that pulled together the forces who became the FDN--mostly from remnants of Somoza's hated National Guard. Under the leadership of U.S. and Nicaraguan CIA agents, the FDN waged a brutal "low intensity war" of assassination and sabotage to destabilize Nicaragua. Webb reports that Bermúdez was one of those agents who "received regular CIA paychecks for a decade, payments that stopped shortly before his still-unsolved slaying in Managua in 1991."

Webb documents that Ronald Reagan's secret NSD directive permitted the CIA to spend $19.9 million of direct U.S. money on this project--enough to get the Contras started, but not enough to maintain the ongoing military force. It was not necessary to allocate more money: This covert operation was self-financed, so that its crimes could not be easily traced back to the U.S. government. At the moment Reagan signed his NSD, Contra operatives were already buying and selling massive amounts of cocaine.

Gary Webb's exposé focuses heavily on the career of Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes, the Contra operative directly in charge of selling cocaine in Los Angeles. Blandón testified about these operations in detail in March 1996--when he appeared as a star witness in the San Diego drug trial of his own protege "Freeway Rick" Ross. Webb writes that Blandón "who began working for the FDN's drug operation in late 1981, testified that the drug ring sold almost a ton of cocaine in the United States that year--$54 million worth at prevailing wholesale prices. It was not clear how much of the money found its way back to the CIA's army, but Blandón testified that `whatever we were running in L.A., the profit was going for the Contra revolution.' "
The Planning Meeting That Started the Cocaine Trade

Danilo Blandón, the son of a wealthy Nicaraguan slumlord, was sent to earn a masters degree in U.S.-style "marketing." At the time of the Sandinista revolution, Blandón was living a life of privilege as Nicaragua's director of wholesale markets--heading a $27 million U.S.-financed program for creating "an American-style agricultural system" in Nicaragua.

Webb reports that, when the Somoza dictatorship collapsed, the Blandón family lost their cattle ranches and their property in sprawling urban slums. Blandón left for the United States where, by 1981, he was involved in the formation of the Contras.

Webb writes that Blandón's involvement with cocaine fundraising started when he was asked to pick up another exile, Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero, at the Los Angeles Airport. Blandón testified in the Ross trial that he and Meneses flew to Honduras and met with the CIA's leading Nicaraguan agent, Col. Bermúdez. Afterward, he said they "started raising money for the Contra revolution." In his testimony, Blandón claimed that Bermúdez didn't know that their fundraising project would be cocaine. Webb writes that "the presence of the mysterious Mr. Meneses strongly suggests otherwise."

Webb reports that Meneses was widely known as a major drug trafficker. Extensive police records in the U.S. documented his activities, and in Nicaraguan newspapers he was called "Rey de la Droga" [the Drug King]. And yet, he was quickly welcomed both into the United States and then into the leading circles of the FDN. In July 1979, Meneses entered the U.S. and was soon granted a visa and work permit as a political refugee. Then in 1981, Meneses himself claims, Bermúdez put him in charge of "intelligence and security" for the newly organized FDN forces in California. Meneses bragged "Nobody would join the Contra forces down there without my knowledge and approval."

With the approval of the U.S. government and the blessing of the CIA agent Bermúdez, Meneses settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. From there, he supervised the importation of thousands of kilos of cocaine into California--while his agent Danilo Blandón worked in Los Angeles marketing that cocaine to networks of drug dealers.

Blandón testified, "There is a saying that the ends justify the means, and that's what Mr. Bermúdez told us in Honduras. OK?"

In June 1984, at the height of their drug operation, Meneses was photographed at a meeting with the political boss of the FDN, Adolfo Calero. Calero is a former Coca-Cola bottler and long-time CIA agent, who served as the public face of the Contras, so that the old cutthroats of Somoza's National Guard could keep to the shadows.

All this evidence suggests that, from its earliest stages, the Contra cocaine operation had CIA approval and support.

Evidence that emerged during the 1980s suggests how high up that approval may have gone. Reagan's specialist in covert operations, Col. Oliver North, denied that anyone in the White House knew that Contra leaders were running drugs. But an August 9, 1985 memo written by North to his agent Robert Owens discusses a DC-6 airplane used to supply the Contras and notes that it "is probably being used for drug runs into the U.S." In another memo, North writes, "$14 M[illion] to finance came from drugs." (RW, January 16, 1989)

Meanwhile, in the Senate's Kerry hearings, an Oregon businessman involved in secret arms and drug shipments named Richard Brenneke said that Donald Gregg, the national security aide to then-Vice President George Bush, was the Washington contact for Brenneke's operation. Brenneke says that he flew a drug shipment to Amarillo, Texas in mid-1985 and discussed it with Gregg who answered, "You do what you were assigned to do. Don't question the decision of your betters."
Blessed with Government-Protected Transportation

In the 1970s, cocaine production was increasing in Latin America and Colombian groups were emerging as major refiners and distributors of the drug. However, cocaine remained extremely expensive in the United States because no one had worked out reliable ways of transporting large amounts of the drug. This was what the Contra operative brought to the drug trade: they hooked up street-level U.S. drug networks directly with the Colombian drug cartels, using transportation networks developed by U.S. intelligence.

In the film Coverup, a long-time CIA specialist in covert war, John Stockwell, says: "You have CIA bases in Costa Rica and Honduras. You have airplanes flying back and forth continuously landing at bases in the United States where they don't have to go through regular customs, with the CIA escorting people in and out."

According to Webb, the Meneses/Blandón wing of the Contra operation also relied on yet another U.S.-sponsored network: the Salvadoran air force planes flying into a U.S. Air Force base in Texas. Webb reports that Meneses had close personal and business ties to a Salvadoran air force commander Marcos Aguada--and Webb adds that Aguada is also known to have been a CIA agent.

During a 1992 court testimony, Enrique Miranda testified that he was an intelligence operative in Somoza's government and that, after the Sandinista revolution, he worked as Meneses' emissary to the cocaine cartel of Bogotá, Colombia. "He [Norwin Meneses] and his brother Luis Enrique had financed the Contra revolution with the benefits of the cocaine they sold," Miranda testified. "This operation, as Norwin told me, was executed with the collaboration of high-ranking Salvadoran military personnel. They met with officials of the Salvadoran air force, who flew [planes] to Colombia and then left for the U.S., bound for an Air Force base in Texas, as he told me." During the 1980s, the Salvadoran military was engaged in counterinsurgency against guerrilla forces and was closely supervised by CIA and U.S. military advisors. Webb writes, "U.S. General Accounting Office records confirm that El Salvador's air force was supplying the CIA's Nicaraguan guerrillas with aircraft and flight support services throughout the mid-1980s."
Bottom Line Arithmetic of the Crack Explosion

Blandón testified that after the 1981 meeting with Bermúdez, Meneses took him back to San Francisco for two days of schooling in the cocaine trade. Then, Blandón said, Meneses gave him two kilograms of cocaine, the names of two customers, and a one-way ticket to Los Angeles.

Meneses funneled the cocaine to California from its various entry points. Webb writes, "It arrived in all kinds of containers: false-bottomed shoes, Colombian freighters, cars with hidden compartments, luggage from Miami. Once here, it disappeared into a series of houses and nondescript storefront businesses scattered from Hayward to San Jose, Pacifica to Burlingame, Daly City to Oakland."

"Danilo Blandón is in charge of a sophisticated cocaine smuggling and distribution organization operating in Southern California," L.A. County Sheriff's Sgt. Tom Gordon said in a 1986 affidavit. "The monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported to Florida and laundered through Orlando Murillo, who is a high-ranking officer of a chain of banks in Florida named Government Securities Corporation. From this bank the monies are filtered to the Contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua."

Webb reveals that Blandón deliberately targeted the Black communities of L.A.with his massive drug import operation--selling "the world's most expensive street drug in some of California's poorest neighborhoods."

According to Webb, Blandón recruited a small-time South-Central drug dealer named Ricky Donnell Ross. Ross sold the cocaine for Blandón in South Central L.A.and Compton, using contacts in various Crips street organizations and later among the Bloods. Ross swore he had no idea where Blandón got the drugs, and only knew that Blandón was "plugged" into powerful forces.

Quickly, within a year, Blandón and Ross had taken over much of drug traffic of Los Angeles. The reason for their success was simple: price. With cheap transportation and government protection--the Contras were able to deliver huge quantities of extremely cheap cocaine. When they started, a kilo of cocaine reportedly cost L.A. drug dealers about $30,000 or $50,000. But the Contra operatives were able to sell at $12,000 and still gather millions in profits for the CIA's covert war.

Webb says Blandón and Ross helped decide which drug organizations grew strong: Drug dealers either bought cocaine from "Freeway Rick" Ross, the frontman for the Contras, or else they went out of business. Ross said, "It was unreal. We were just wiping out everybody." Webb quotes Blandón, from a 1990 DEA tape, saying that he had sold between two and four tons of cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s.
A Blizzard
Hits the Ghetto

Not only was this Contra cocaine cheap enough to become a street drug for the first time, it was also cheap enough for the mass production of its recently invented, crystallized, smokeable form--crack. Crack delivers an explosive high--10 times more powerful than snorted powder cocaine.

Webb describes Blandón as "the Johnny Appleseed of crack." By late 1983, his cocaine operation became a massive crack operation. Rick Ross estimates his networks were sometimes distributing $2 million or $3 million worth of crack in one day. In their crack-manufacturing cookhouses, huge vats of bubbling cocaine had to be stirred with canoe paddles.

As everyone knows, the effect of the crack explosion--in oppressed communities, in the schools, and in the projects--has been devastating. Crack is extremely addictive. And thanks to the CIA's protection, it was also extremely cheap.

The legacy of this CIA operation is thousands of crack addicts, often homeless, living and dying in abandoned buildings, driven to desperate acts to feed their pipes. The violent capitalist competition of the drug trade, unleashed by U.S. government agents, has intensified deadly conflicts among the people.

And then, in the ultimate hypocrisy, this same government called for a war on drugs starting in the late 1980s--and sent its armed enforcers into oppressed communities, creating a new level of harassment and brutality. The authorities set legal penalties for possessing and selling crack cocaine many times higher than penalties for comparable amounts of powder cocaine--which has been more popular among the more affluent. As a result of this discrimination, tens of thousands of Black youth are serving hard time for possessing or selling small amounts of crack cocaine. A 1993 study showed that 88.3 percent of those convicted on federal crack offenses were Black. They have seized thousands of young men for imprisonment--for the crime of selling rocks that were introduced into oppressed communities by the CIA itself!
Protection and
Continuing Coverup

Webb reports that U.S. drug agencies investigated Meneses throughout the 1980s: "Agents from four organizations--the DEA, U.S. Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement--have complained that investigations were hampered by the CIA or unnamed `national security' interests."

Webb documents one police attempt to raid Blandón's operation in October 1986--after the Contras had snowed L.A.in cocaine for five years without interference. Agents of the FBI, IRS, LAPD and sheriffs fanned out to a dozen locations. Blandón and several of his agents were arrested. But nothing incriminating was found and no one was ever prosecuted. Webb writes, "Ron Spear, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block, said Blandón somehow knew that he was under police surveillance. Others thought so, too. `The cops always believed that investigation had been compromised by the CIA,' Los Angeles federal public defender Barbara O'Connor said in a recent interview."

Webb documents that since then it also came out that the L.A. County Sheriff's elite narcotics squad, including the secret task force assigned to capture Ross, had been involved in massive corruption, beating suspects, stealing drug money and planting evidence.

After the Contra-Sandinista war ended, the Meneses/Blandón ring went into operations for themselves, and in 1989 the U.S. government started efforts to dismantle their operations--in a way they hoped would avoid producing exposure or political waves. Ross, who knew nothing of the Contra-CIA connection, was busted and sent to jail. When he was released he was busted (in a DEA sting run by Blandón) and faces more prison.

Meanwhile, Meneses moved from San Francisco to a ranch in Costa Rica before Federal prosecutors finally charged him with conspiracy to distribute one kilo of cocaine. Webb reports that after Nicaraguan police arrested Meneses on drug charges in 1991, his judge expressed astonishment that this infamous drug dealer had never been busted in the U.S. During a pretrial hearing Judge Martha Quezada asked: "How do you explain the fact that Norwin Meneses, implicated since 1974 in the trafficking of drugs...has not been detained in the United States, a country in which he has lived, entered and departed many times since 1974?"

"Well, that question needs to be asked to the authorities of the United States," replied Roger Mayorga, then chief of Nicaragua's anti-drug agency.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government worked systematically to suppress any evidence of CIA involvement in the crack explosion. "The Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from getting access to people, records--finding anything out about it," recalled Jack Blum, former chief counsel to the Senate subcommittee that investigated allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking. "It was one of the most frustrating exercises that I can ever recall."

Webb writes that this year, shortly before Blandón took the stand in San Diego as a witness against Ross, "federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into his ties to the CIA." Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale argued that Blandón "will admit that he was a large-scale dealer in cocaine, and there is no additional benefit to any defendant to inquire as to the Central Intelligence Agency."

To provide for Blandón's cooperation, he was sprung from prison by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1994 and hired as a "full-time informant" for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Webb writes, "According to his Miami lawyer, Blandón spends most of his time shuttling between San Diego and Managua, trying to recover Nicaraguan properties he left behind in 1979..." With the return to power of a pro-U.S. government in Nicaragua, Blandón stands a good chance of returning to his family's traditional slumlord business--profiting from the desperation of Nicaragua's poor. Several people have alleged that Blandón continues to organize international cocaine smuggling.

Webb writes: "A Freedom of Information Act request filed with the CIA was denied on national security grounds. FOIA requests filed with the DEA were denied on privacy grounds. Requests filed months ago with the FBI, the State Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have produced nothing so far. None of the DEA officials known to have worked with the two men would talk to a reporter. Questions submitted to the DEA's public affairs office in Washington were never answered, despite repeated requests."

When Webb's exposé appeared in the Mercury News, Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale even demanded to know how the press had gotten its picture of Danilo Blandón's face--claiming that the publication of that picture violated a court order.

The fact that this government continues to suppress all kinds of information connected with the CIA-Contra crack operations is itself a confession of guilt.

It seems clear that the information that has now come out--devastating though it already is for the CIA--is still only the tip of the iceberg.

Many questions remain unanswered: Who approved this massive flood of cocaine to the U.S.? And who decided that it would start by specifically targeting the Black communities of Los Angeles? How deeply was the White House itself--Ronald Reagan and his vice president George Bush--involved in these decisions? Who ordered the coverup? And who continues to insist on the coverup today?

"Everybody's talking about crime; tell me who are the criminals."

Peter Tosh

Thursday, May 24, 2007

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