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tortured people Next, that person might do some research into the matter The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Interview with Alfred McCoy, professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciaheron.htmlAn Interview with Alfred McCoy by David Barsamian Conducted at University of Wisconsin-Madison, February 17,1990 Part One ... It's only in Southeast Asia that the colonial governments paid for their very dynamic development, massive infrastructural projects, irrigation that transformed the landscape, massive road networks, rail networks, very dynamic colonial development - all of this was paid for by direct taxes upon Indochinese consumers. Taxes on alcohol, salt and particularly opium. In British Malaya, 40% of colonial taxes came from opium. In Thailand it was running about 15%. (Thailand was an independent state but they followed the colonial model.) In French Indochina it ranged about 15% from the period of the 1870s up through the 1950s when, as a result of UN pressure, all of these governments abolished the opium trade. Thailand was the second last to do it. Thailand didn't abolish its state opium monopoly - rather like an alcoholic beverage control that a lot of states have. They didn't abolish this until 1957 and Laos didn't abolish theirs until 1961 ... http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciah1.htmlPart Two ... When the Americans moved into Indochina after the French departed in 1955, we picked up the same tribes, the Hmong, the same politics of narcotics, the politics of heroin, that the French had established. By the 1960s we were operating, particularly the CIA, in collusion with the major traffickers exporting from the mountains not only to meet the consumption needs of Southeast Asia itself, but in the first instance America's combat forces fighting in Vietnam and ultimately the world market. Southeast Asia today, by the way, is the number one source of American heroin. That's our major source. So it's those very mountains of Burma, those very fields that were cleared and put to the poppy as a result of this Nationalist Chinese-CIA counterinsurgency intervention policy - that army that the CIA maintained there - that's supplying America's addicts today with illicit heroin ... http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciah2.htmlPart Three ... First of all, I think the Laos parallel is very strong in the Iran-contra operation. Just in the formal outlines of the policy - you know, you've got the contras on the border of Nicaragua, they're a mercenary army, they're supported through a humanitarian operation, they're given U.S. logistic support, they're given U.S. equipment and they're given U.S. air power backup to deliver the equipment and the logistic support. All the personnel that are involved in that operation are Laos veterans. Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, Oliver North, Richard Secord - they all served in Laos during thirteen-year war. They are all part of that policy of integrating narcotics and being complicitous in the narcotics trade in the furtherance of covert action ... http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciah3.htmlPart Four ... Panama is a little tiny country that was formerly a province of Colombia before the United States separated them and built the canal. For Colombians, Panama is just like next door. It's the old province. And yet it's not a part of Colombia any more. So if you're a Panamanian cocaine merchant, if you're the Medellin cartel or the Cali cartel, where do you do your banking? You don't do it in Bogota, you do it in Panama City and you do it through these big Panamanian banks. If you've ever noticed the photographs of the financial district of Panama City, it looks like a mini-Wall Street or a mini-downtown Los Angeles. Why? Why in this poor economy do you have this elaborate banking structure? It's built from money laundering and the Endara government, as individuals - and of his vice presidents, several of his cabinet ministers - are an the boards of banks which have been big in the money laundering industry. Moreover, one of Endara's key cabinet people was actually a lawyer for one of the big drug lords of Colombia. So what you're looking at is we replaced Manuel Noriega who is supposedly this evil drug dealer who moved a million dollars of drugs and made $4 million from the Medellin cartel - we replace this guy with people who represent the Panamanian money- laundering industry which was moving the money from the United States to Colombia. We got rid of some petty thug, some tough guy on the street who's stealing hubcaps, and we put the Mafia in power ... http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciah4.htmlNational Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 2 The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations ... Documentation of Official U.S. Knowledge of Drug Trafficking and the Contras The National Security Archive obtained the hand-written notebooks of Oliver North, the National Security Council aide who helped run the contra war and other Reagan administration covert operations, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 1989. The notebooks, as well as declassified memos sent to North, record that North was repeatedly informed of contra ties to drug trafficking. In his entry for August 9, 1985, North summarizes a meeting with Robert Owen ("Rob"), his liaison with the contras. They discuss a plane used by Mario Calero, brother of Adolfo Calero, head of the FDN, to transport supplies from New Orleans to contras in Honduras. North writes: "Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S." As Lorraine Adams reported in the October 22, 1994 Washington Post, there are no records that corroborate North's later assertion that he passed this intelligence on drug trafficking to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In a July 12, 1985 entry, North noted a call from retired Air Force general Richard Secord in which the two discussed a Honduran arms warehouse from which the contras planned to purchase weapons. (The contras did eventually buy the arms, using money the Reagan administration secretly raised from Saudi Arabia.) According to the notebook, Secord told North that "14 M to finance came from drugs."
An April 1, 1985 memo from Robert Owen (code-name: "T.C." for "The Courier") to Oliver North (code-name: "The Hammer") describes contra operations on the Southern Front. Owen tells North that FDN leader Adolfo Calero (code-name: "Sparkplug") has picked a new Southern Front commander, one of the former captains to Eden Pastora who has been paid to defect to the FDN. Owen reports that the officials in the new Southern Front FDN units include "people who are questionable because of past indiscretions," such as José Robelo, who is believed to have "potential involvement with drug running" and Sebastian Gonzalez, who is "now involved in drug running out of Panama" ...
<much more at link:> http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
Oh, dear! It looks like the whole thing only goes downhill from there |
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