This is about the book, not the film. The film sells the book out and is essentially worthless melodrama
Jeremy Scahill’s “Dirty Wars” is investigative journalism better described as a counter-intelligence opus; revealing the nature of a fascist state that is growing like a mushroom in the dark. I have only one criticism of the book, that is the apparent acceptance of the official 9/11 narrative overlooking un-refutable evidence we have not been provided anything close to an accurate picture of 11 September 2001. Setting aside this single aspect, ‘Dirty Wars’ is a treasure trove of information the Obama administration never wanted you to know.
The most compelling aspect of Scahill’s work is what too many (to count) intelligence professionals (includes your’s truly) have been saying for years. The war on terror generates the very terror it purports to fight. One of Scahill’s intelligence informants compares the war on terror to “a self-licking ice cream cone” in a circumstance where those who lead the so-called ‘war on terror’ are those who most profit from it, whether corporate mercenaries harvesting the money involved, or criminals reaping fear-mongering political capital to be promoted within the military power structures or the halls of Washington DC.
If the so-called ‘war on terror’ as a self generating phenomena is the most compelling aspect, perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the strong indicators of a ‘war on Islam’ in the integrated story of how Anwar al-Awlaki was driven by the USA’s security services, via years of apparent baseless and extreme harassment, from a moderate Muslim preacher who’d condemned the 9/11 attacks, into a radicalized Imam preaching against the USA. The only evidence we have of why his 16 years old son, a natural born American citizen, was killed in a separate drone strike appears to be because of who his father was. This aspect of ‘Dirty Wars’ raises the specter of literally ‘crusading’ ideologue elements integrated to the American apparatus of state security at the highest levels. Scahill does not name the ‘war on terror’ as a ‘war on Islam’ but the story has all of the elements. In this aspect, information developed separately by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, when juxtaposed to the information developed in ‘Dirty Wars’ supports the idea of a ‘war on Islam’ as a de facto reality, despite any assurances by Obama he has set out to repair relations with the Islamic world. This BS needs met head on by any and all of those who would see the value in preventing the USA’s aggressions devolving into a war of civilizations.
A followup point developed is, how easily and completely Obama lies to the American people (and the world) about his out of control murder (color of law targeted killings) program engineered by what one must conclude can only be psychopath killers (Obama favorite Admiral William McRaven, example given.) The result? Our constitution and rule of law trashed and immense damage to the American reputation both generally and particularly in relation to international law.
Al-Jazeera TV had been the bedrock of trusted news for over a decade (since its founding) in the Arab world, until its independence touched too close to home, i.e. the Arab ‘Gulf States.’ At the point of honest reporting on Qatar’s involvement in the overthrow of Gaddafi, Qatar’s rulers asserted control over Al-Jazeera and the honeymoon with truth was over.
“Qatar and the United States coordinate closely on Middle Eastern regional diplomatic initiatives”
I would point out the phrase ‘diplomatic initiatives’ in the western democracies definition includes political ‘arm twisting’ (Blackmail), threats of violence, following up with violence, out and out lies (Propaganda) and of course, the employ of information operations to make oneself out an angel and your target the devil. In this brief ‘The Arab Spring for Dummies’ (Syria edition) I set out my case for honest reporting on dishonest behaviors, or better said, expose the rank criminality of our political leaders in a state of ‘democracy’ where political lies are protected free speech.
In this interview from over a year ago, it is clear that Qatar would not have armed the so called ‘rebels’ (Blackwater trained mercenaries) without a green light from the USA.
In this Business Insider article, the tepid reporting of the neo-liberal New York Times is clarified by a writer obviously familiar with what has actually been going on, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had armed Al Qaida to the teeth with USA approval (aforementioned green light) with the UBER-RETARDED philosophy ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’
Meanwhile, Syria’s Assad has recovered the initiative and the USA, having started and now faced with supporting a losing endeavor, promises all hell will break loose and American NATO franchise muppets Britain and France strong-arm open the door to pouring weapons into the conflict (in vast amounts on top of vast amounts poured in already) and via Stooge TV the western democracies scream bloody murder at Russia for matching them tit-for-tat, claiming it threatens Israel, who has bombed Syria three times already in the present conflict, and Netanyahu, who pulls the trigger as easily as a child with a toy gun, is willing to bomb some more (the USA & ‘allies’ relationship to Netanyahu appears to be that of Eric Cartman’s mom’s parenting model; Netanyahu throws a tantrum and gets what he wants)
Finally, a Stooge TV personality, a Sunni cleric (must be sort of like a Rick Warren evangelical show) keeps the USA’s promise of all hell breaking loose by calling out to his 60,000,000 (sixty million) potential viewers to pile on Syria (and don’t worry about bringing along weapons, we’ve got plenty in the pipeline) inviting a regional sectarian war (already spilling over into Lebanon and Iraq)
Now, what do you suppose all of this might have to do with virulent Islam hater (and Blackwater founder) Erik Prince setting up a private army in Abu Dhabi? Sort of like ‘Christian Taliban’ General Patraeus setting up sectarian civil war in Iraq by training and arming Shia death squads and then training and arming Sunni ‘Awakening Councils’ that were supposed to counter Al Qaida (but that was ultimately a fairy tale)
The outcome? Let’s try calling it “It’s amazing what Uncle Sam can do in the process of biting himself in the balls” (also known as we are all going to pay for this insanity)
The authors of the study “Gorilla Conservation & Guerilla Warfare”, while reviewing millions upon millions of missing USAID funds, pose a question; what is the Pentagon doing auditing the books of the Dian Fossey Foundation?
“Investigations in Eastern Congo reported by these authors over the past six months indicate that USAID “conservation” funds—millions of taxpayer’s dollars—have been misappropriated, misdirected and disappeared. Evidence suggests that ongoing guerrilla warfare in Central Africa is receiving clandestine financial support in AID-for-ARMS type financial transfers.
““Our efforts are focused on conserving and protecting the habitat of these magnificentanimals,” said Claudia A. McMurray, U.S. Assistant Secretary for State Oceans, Environment, and Science. “The survival of the mountain gorillas of Virunga is severely threatened by the tragic events in the region, and we will continue to devote whatever resources we can to protect the gorillas and other threatened species there.”
“However, as reported by these authors, millions of dollars in USAID funds given to Virunga Park through the Central African Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE) over the past ten years have virtually disappeared. Wildlife conservation in eastern Congo is a shambles, and “rebel”armies fighting in the region are receiving massive military support from unknown sources”
I will add, how is this related to militias & genocide in Uganda, Rwanda and Congo? And of course there is much more:
To read Gorilla Conservation & Guerilla Warfare click HERE
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Relevant to this, Alain Denault, a world leading authority on multinational corporations and globalization, points out how mining corporations as partners in military conflicts in Congo is a means to an end; rebels and governments in desperate circumstance for cash to fight their wars, sell mining concessions at rock bottom prices, boosting the value of the buyer’s stock:
“Barrick Gold and other mining companies are accused of making mining agreements in 2002 with two eastern DRC militias that had control of the mines. Both militias were also in the midst of murdering hundreds of civilians. In return for the gold mines, the militias were given housing and trucks, among other appeasements. Incredibly, as highlighted by independent journalist and Congo-expert Keith Harmon Snow, Barrick’s current and past advisors and directors include former US president George H.W. Bush, former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney, Vernon Jordan, a close friend to Bill Clinton, and one-time Tennessee senator Howard Baker. Snow says Barrick and one its partners, Anglo-Ashanti, even sent in lawyers to help represent leaders of the militias after some were apprehended by the DRC government”
As recently as the beginning of 2013, when ‘rebels’ had overthrown the government of the Central African Republic, one of the first things mentioned had been the previous governments mining concessions made to China would be ‘reviewed.’ I’ll make an educated guess Barrick Gold & friends don’t appreciate the competition, in which case there are always USAID taxpayer funds to subsidize any necessary militia keeping the corporate bottom line (stock value) healthy and the shareholder happy. With former CIA Director George H.W. Bush (Salvadore-Allende-overthrow-to-October-Surprise-to-Iran-Contra-to-Commander-in-Chief-to-American-Deep-State-Godfather) facilitating matters, that could explain some things. You think?
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Meanwhile, we have Understanding Land Investment Deals in Africa, revealing (among other things) the United States Department of State egregiously lies in reports to many organizations (not only to the UN) on rights abuses associated with multinational corporate land investments in Africa. Here is the investigative conclusion:
“Southern Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley is one of the most culturally and biologically diverse areas in the world, yet the Ethiopian government is transforming more than 375,000 hectares (1450 sq. miles) of the region into industrial-scale plantations for sugar and other monocrops. A vast resettlement scheme for the local ethnic groups is accompanying these plans, as 260,000 local people from 17 ethnic groups who live in the Lower Omo and around Lake Turkana—whose waters will be taken for plantation irrigation—are being evicted from their farmland and restricted from using the natural resources they have been relying on for their livelihoods.
“The plantations are being installed and ethnic and pastoral communities are being forcibly resettled with the help of the Ethiopian military, which has become a central player in the implementation of the Ethiopian government’s development plans. Forced evictions, denial of access to subsistence land, beatings, killings, rapes, imprisonment, intimidation, political coercion, and the denial of government assistance are all being used as tools of forced resettlement. Meanwhile, international donors have been accused of supporting the programs connected with the resettlement sites.
“In response to these criticisms, a group from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) conducted a joint field investigation in the Lower Omo in January 2012. Although this group heard many credible accounts of abuses connected to the resettlement or “villagisation” program, the official stance of the United Kingdom government has since been to repeatedly insist that the “the Department for International Development was not able to substantiate the allegations of human rights violation it received during its visit to South Omo in January 2012.” Similarly, the US State Department’s Ethiopia 2012 Human Rights Report released in April 2013 indicates that donors’ visits “did not find evidence to support this claim [of human right violations] during visits.” DFID and USAID also reported this unsubstantiation of allegations of human rights abuses to the Development Assistance Group (DAG), which is made up of 26 of the major aid agencies that donate to Ethiopia including the UNDP, IMF, and the World Bank.
“This report provides unique insight into the investigation conducted by the donor agencies in January 2012. In stark contrast with the official discourse, testimony from the affected communities shows that egregious human rights violations have taken place. The author accompanied the assessment team as its translator and has audio recordings of the interviews conducted in several Lower Omo communities. Transcripts of these recordings, made public with this report, leave no room for doubt that the donor agencies were given highly credible first-hand accounts of serious human rights violations during their field investigation and they have chosen to steadfastly ignore these accounts.” -Oakland Institute report summary
The United States criminal policies in Africa could perhaps best be described using the metaphor ‘poisoned by Susan Rice syndrome‘
A former Special Forces Sergeant of Operations and Intelligence, Ronald Thomas West is a retired paralegal/investigator (living in exile) whose work focus had been anti-corruption and human rights. Ronald is published in International Law as a layman (The Mueller-Wilson Report, co-authored with Dr Mark D Cole) and has been adjunct professor of American Constitutional Law at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany (for English credit, summer semester 2008.) Ronald’s formal educational background is primarily social psychology. His therapeutic device is satire –
His mentor getting him to the Supreme Court was Ed Meese, Meese is worshipped as a god within the Federalist Society
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Darla
While running a murder ring in government as vice president, her top lawyer was Shannen Coffin, Coffin is a close friend of Alfalfa
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Alfalfa
A Federalist Society steering committee member, Alfalfa was a professional associate of Spanky, Darla and Sidney under Reagan and George H.W. Bush
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Buckwheat
Advisor to George H.W. Bush, Buckwheat ran his own kidnap, torture & murder ring under George W Bush
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Sidney
An assistant to Federalist Society god Ed Meese, when Meese was implicated in the Iran Contra & WedTech scandals under Reagan
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Spanky a.k.a Antonin Scalia
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Darla a.k.a. Dick Cheney
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Alfalfa a.k. John Roberts
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Buckwheat a.k.a. Condoleezza
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Sidney a.k.a. Samuel Alito
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In the American republic that was intended to be, the Federalist Society would be broken up with the use of ‘Criminal RICO’ law and these ‘Family’ individuals prosecuted for [death penalty eligible] treason on account of conspiracy to undermine and overthrow the Constitutional authority of the United States of America. Perhaps Roberts, Scalia and Alito should find the death penalty unconstitutional on the outside chance the rule of law will be restored and it will catch up with them 😉
CIA veteran Melvin Goodman on David Ignatius: “The mainstream media’s apologist for the Central Intelligence Agency”
Glenn Greenwald on David Ignatius: “The CIA’s spokesman at The Washington Post”
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Body of Lies
I’d been perusing titles at ‘Books in Berlin’ (an English language bookstore) somewhat absent-mindedly, but noticing quite a few titles dedicated to international intrigue. I suppose that should come as no surprise, there are many CIA and other English fluent ‘spooks’ in town, as well they must have quite a few local acquaintances and it is reasonable to assume they’d be interested in ‘shop-craft’ reading.
I had no particular interest in the fiction side of the game, it is difficult enough to sort through the propaganda and disinformation rife in non-fiction titles, but then a book I happened to glance inside the front cover caught my eye.
“Body of Lies is fiction but reads like fact. CIA officers admire [author David] Ignatius because more than any other writer he understands the nuances of their trade – fascinating” -George Tenent, former CIA director.
‘Well then, why not’ was my thought and I purchased the used paperback Body of Lies.
If George Tenent was accurate in his assessment of the book, and there is no reason to expect otherwise, he’d have done the agency a favor to have kept his mouth shut.
But first, the author. It has been a very long time since quality fiction has been appreciated, and David Ignatius adds to the thought. Though not as cheesy as, say, The Da Vinci Code (a profound disappointment) the quality is far short of classic American literature. It is not so much a phenomena of dearth of quality writers in modern American literature, so much as it seems there is a dearth of readers who can appreciate quality, which sadly is no longer seen in best selling works, we have not seen a Washington Irving in quite some time. David Ignatius is no Washington Irving and Body of Lies is no ‘Astoria’ .. but is better (not by much) than Dan Brown’s cheese that passes for literature.
If Body of Lies accurately depicts CIA covert operatives and actions, as Tenent claims, I should recommend the book as a lesson in why CIA is about as useful to my nation as the folk proverb ‘tits on a boar.’ Other than revealing his taste for crass literary shallowness, Tenent also should have kept his mouth shut because what he authenticates has endorsed:
1) Cowboy culture and mentality. Throughout, there is a hackneyed and simplistic theme of ‘if we kill first, they won’t kill us’ coupled with the idea ‘what the politicians don’t know (breaking laws, committing murders), won’t hurt them (or us)’ leading to:
2) CIA operations officers who are culturally so self-centered, narcissistic and vain, there is no qualm felt whatsoever at sending repentant jihadists, even innocents into intrigues, as pawns in circumstance that more often than not gets them killed, to further any objective, no matter how minimal or trivial the gain; attended by the thinking 2 wrongs or 10 wrongs or 100 wrongs can add up to make something ‘right’ for the American people (by a virtually lawless CIA.)
One gets a sense the author/book deliberately cheats certain social realities to promote a fantasy ideology, and one gets this is how a ‘body of lies’ so to speak, is fed to the agency’s fans who worship this author.
The simplistic protagonist is a CIA officer with a ‘conscience’ who falls for the books heroine who does charity work in refugee camps, with plot set in the radicalized Islamic world of the ‘war on terror.’ She works on his head with a principled demand he cannot be CIA and have a future with her because someone has to be the ‘good American face’ with a demonstrable commitment to social justice for the Palestinians. But this aspect of the plot altogether fails to convince because the author hammers on a theme of ‘they all want to kill us’ [Americans] without any delving AT ALL into the WHY.
There is zero honest history presented (zero history in fact, as though it were too embarrassing to present to the reader) of the long time habit of the CIA and other western intelligence agencies manipulation and exploitation of the Islamic world on behalf of western economic models (corporate boards) with deceits, corruption and violence.
In this novel, Murder Inc (CIA) happily runs amok murdering with patriotic spin, while going after Murder Inc Jr (Al Qaida) with no end in sight and no honest attending story line of how we had arrived in this circumstance.
Our CIA operational officer protagonist dutifully follows orders he knows will get people killed without cause, rhyme or reason, repeatedly, and demonstrates little conscience in this regard, if only it might lead to one more ‘tip’ and in fact it is obvious he (or the author) only is capable of caring when it comes to the woman he thinks he wants to fuck, a portrait in actuality of a sociopath (at odds with any suggestion the man has real feelings.) Her character is developed almost entirely on chauvinist habit of perception, what a great lay she should be, and no aspect of her ‘caring’ in the purported Palestinian social cause is developed, bringing across the idea the author (and his fans) are in fact incapable of any depth in this regard.
The sympathy for Islam set in the book is mainly based in admiration for duplicity, and emphasizes the idea Islamic culture is based on a principle of ‘dissembling’, and there is no ‘ordinary’ Muslim character developed in any depth or sense of a sympathetic human understanding (other than admired as a fellow killer in the trade.) In fact the books ‘happily ever after’ ending strongly sends the message there is none, and cannot ever be, any American with Muslim heritage accepted as a patriot or trusted to work honestly for CIA.
Body of Lies would be excellent reading for the ideologically driven intelligence agent who wished to keep his or her head in the sand and promote killing without conscience, all the while maintaining the self-deceit a worthwhile action and patriotic goal is pursuit of western economic domination (modern corporate board colonialism.)
In fact the novel, Body of Lies, is at its heart Islamophobic. It is small wonder the neo-conservative criminal George Tenent has endorsed what amounts to a shallow and ignorant work serving as a propaganda tool as much as anything, if there were to be any useful description of this novel, subsequently made into a movie. The book appeals to a visceral chauvinism, excusing every criminal excess in a guise of patriotism. That David Ignatius is considered to be a responsible reporter on intelligence issues generally, and CIA particularly, points to how widespread ‘information operations’ have been turned loose on the American public, essentially proselytizing naked aggression far beyond buying reporters, as well proselytizing agency personnel:
“The emails also show that the CIA asked the Post‘s Ignatius to speak at a May 2012 off-the-record conference, “Political Islam’s Future: Challenges, Choices, and Uncertainties,” for U.S. government intelligence analysts and policymakers. The invitation was extended in an email from the press office, which said that the conference organizers “would like you to draw upon the insight from your field experience, reporting, and broad network of contacts during the lead up to the Arab Spring to share how journalists sense that major political, social, or religious changes are in the making.””
The tripe Ignatius writes for CIA is clearly ‘institutional’ propaganda-
1 October 2019 update: the first study by a major university engineering department is in and the result makes the official government position on 9/11 look like the phony ‘conspiracy theory’
“The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building”
The first university (4 years in the making) study concluding a “global failure” with the characteristic of “near-simultaneous failure” of every structural column in World Trade Center Building 7 points to one conclusion: A controlled demolition because the only earthquake in New York City on 9/11 was the lie of who did it and how it happened. Read about the preliminary conclusions for yourself:
If you can wrap your head around the fact over 2,200 certified architects & engineers have directly disputed the official report on 9/11, that’s a good start. Now, consider what happened to a 47 story steel & concrete modern structure on the afternoon of 9/11.
No plane hit Building 7, only minor debris.
Building 7 is the only modern steel structure in the world purportedly brought down by minor fire, compared to other steel structures surviving much larger & more intense fires.
The 1,500 professionally trained architects & engineers who dispute the government’s WTC Building 7 collapse explanation (above video) has grown to 2,200 professionally trained architects & engineers who dispute the government’s WTC Building 7 collapse explanation (below video)
And an entirely independent BYU scientist draws identical conclusion:
And the highest ranking former intelligence officer yet to speak out on what’s wrong with the 9/11 picture, Major General Stubblebine:
Then, a five minute explanation of about 10% of what’s wrong with the ‘official’ 9/11 account:
If that gets your interest, at Asia Times there is an exclusive investigative report on 9/11 related ‘put options’ or “insider trading” based on advance knowledge of the attack.
With this evidence, people should look more closely at what had happened on 9/11:
And a big question has remained swept under the rug; how is it several of the supposed ‘hijackers’ subsequently appear to have turned up alive?
“Of the 19 identities assigned by the FBI to the alleged suicide hijackers of the four commandeered jetliners, at least six have been disputed”
Did stolen passports provide their identity? We now know this has been an Israeli method, since a blown operation in Dubai:
“Six more innocent Britons were thrust into the international murder plot of a Hamas leader after it emerged yesterday that their identities had also been stolen. The revelation means at least 12 British identities were cloned to carry out the audacious hit on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Dubai police yesterday identified 15 new suspects over the attack at a luxury hotel, bringing the total number to 26. The assassination, which bears all the hallmarks of a spy novel, is widely believed to be the work of Israel’s feared secret service Mossad”
Perhaps the preceding article is too friendly to MOSSAD with ‘suspected’, it could be stated with some clarity we know most certainly a fake passport scheme was utilized by MOSSAD, on account of a case in Germany:
“The man, using the name Uri Brodsky, is suspected of working for Mossad in Germany and helping to issue a fake German passport to a member of the Mossad operation that allegedly killed Hamas agent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, a spokesman for the German federal prosecutor’s office told The Associated Press”
In fact, with intelligence agencies using stolen or fraudulently acquired passports for operations, and with strong circumstantial evidence of 9/11 accused hijackers turning up alive, evidence swept under the carpet rather than thoroughly investigated, the identity of every alleged hijacker can be said to be in doubt. And then we have:
“They [FBI] feel the higher echelons torpedoed the investigation into the Israeli New Jersey cell. Leads were not fully investigated”. Among those lost leads was the figure of Dominik Suter, whom the U.S. authorities apparently never attempted to contact. Intelligence expert and author James Bamford told me there was similar frustration within the CIA: “People I’ve talked to at the CIA were outraged at what was going on. They thought it was outrageous that there hadn’t been a real investigation, that the facts were hanging out there without any conclusion”
And:
“What is perhaps most damning is that the Israelis’ [MOSSAD] celebration on the New Jersey waterfront occurred in the first sixteen minutes after the initial crash, when no one was aware this was a terrorist attack. In other words, from the time the first plane hit the north tower, at 8:46 a.m., to the time the second plane hit the south tower, at 9:02 a.m., the overwhelming assumption of news outlets and government officials was that the plane’s impact was simply a terrible accident. It was only after the second plane hit that suspicions were aroused. Yet if the men were cheering for political reasons, as they reportedly told the FBI, they obviously believed they were witnessing a terrorist act, and not an accident”
With just these few preceding tidbits of verifiable information, the official explanation for 9/11 suddenly seems more far-fetched than those claims of some so-called ‘conspiracy’ theorists:
‘War by Deception’
On top of inaccurate identities, the accepting what appears to be a government claim WTC Building 7 died of fright, and uninvestigated [by law enforcement] insider trading of ‘put options’ demanding 9/11 be pulled off as presently written into the record to make a profit, what more is needed to understand the 9/11 Commission engaged in a whitewash?
Fear, nothing more, prevents solving the mystery of Building 7. Every western industrialized national leader who sits silent on Building 7 intelligence reports contributes to a culture of deceit & cowardice
Heroin, Bags of Cash & the CIA
CIA Narcotics Trafficking, Vietnam to Afghanistan
It had been reported in the New York Times the CIA has been handing off many millions of dollars to individuals in the Afghan government to buy influence. Using open source analysis, I will propose a case for these many millions being heroin trafficking ‘hush money.’ But first, a bit of history:
In 1970, serving in Vietnam, I had transferred from the 199th Light Infantry Brigade based at Long Binh, for extended tour of duty with the 330th Transportation Company located at Vung Tau. The US Army Airfield at Vung Tau was an advanced aircraft maintenance location, primarily, with a runway that could handle freight aircraft up to a C-130. By far, however, it was mainly a service center for helicopters needing advanced repairs, engine overhauls, rotor replacements, et cetera. Among other tasks, I worked airfield perimeter and flight line security. We had fully armed Cobra gun ships for airfield protection that needed secured from possible sapper attack, particularly, as well as the more typical security needs. The period was from October of 1970 to November of 1971.
As an E-5, I had responsibility for men on the perimeter at times, at other times on the flight line. Perimeter duty in my sector was parallel to the landing and take off (main) runway. This was Vietnam approaching late stage conflict. Heroin addiction was estimated by myself and other non-commissioned officers to be about 30% of the US Forces enlisted men on this airfield. Our own company and it’s platoons were about this average level of addicts as was our understanding this being the similar case of the other Army units located there.
Again and again, over this 13 month period, heroin ran out. It could not be missed when nearly a third our soldiers at Vung Tau, a few hundreds of men, went into physical and mental symptom of withdrawal. It was not pretty. This was not the weak, comparatively speaking, heroin someone would needle. It was STRONG. It was smoked or ‘snorted’ up the nose. Intravenous use of this drug would have been almost instantly fatal. Tremendous quantity of the drug was consumed by these horrifically addicted men.
Vung Tau could not be easily supplied with heroin on demand, without some serious interruptions, in the large quantities required to maintain the habits of hundreds of badly addicted soldiers by Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents. The location was separated from the mainland by bracken marsh, accessed by a single causeway secured in multiple sectors with tightly controlled traffic having to pass American and Australian security checks. By sea would have been more likely, but here it is also problematic for the un-interrupted enemy supply of our soldiers with drugs. Vung Tau was highly secured by sea with armed patrol boats because of the high military value of its mission. It is a small area of land with essentially little coastline to secure. Security was tight. Interdiction would have been a near certainty, at least once in a while. It didn’t happen.
The Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents of course did not have air access to us. The CIA did.
It was nowhere near rocket science to note the CIA airline Air America flight that parked 1/4 mile away from every other aircraft, never came in to parking area. Typically, 3 people, armed, stayed with the aircraft, command staff car picked up 2 others. Luggage (nearly modern steamer trunks filled with not only heroin but also high grade marijuana) for at least 10 (TEN) people was picked up by a 3/4 ton truck, with 2 persons riding with the baggage, 1 left guarding the aircraft. All airfield personnel were strictly instructed NEVER to approach the Air America flights. They never stayed more than several hours. Bingo, heroin flush by that evening. Again and again. Every time the soldier’s suppliers had run out of heroin, there was an Air America flight landed. Problem solved, the addicted soldiers were functional again.
After Vietnam I served with 19th Special Forces Group as (11F40) Sergeant for Operations and Intelligence, working together with some of the best in the field, a position that eventually pointed to my later career as an investigator. In conversation with special forces veterans of CIA liaised Indochina operations, it became clear CIA narcotics trafficking in Vietnam was not a ‘one off’ by some isolated or small rogue element. I continued to follow the CIA in the available sources and have made some assessments, drawn some conclusions.
The covert, operational or ‘black ops’ sector itself of the CIA has been the source of major narco-trafficking or, there has been a large and well organized rogue element within this sector where oversight is problematic. These people are in major international drug trafficking and their worldwide tracks are beginning to emerge over time, with overwhelming circumstantial evidence.
It had been established by the 1970s and reported on in media that the CIA had bought the loyalties of tribes in the so called ‘Golden Triangle’ opium producing region with cash for their crop, the most likely or closest proximity, raw base or source of the heroin in Vietnam. War zones with covert logistics for intelligence services are perfect opportunities to commercially process on large scale with no effective police oversight. Again and again, reliable CIA narcotics trafficking accounts have surfaced only to be quashed, noting in the linked affidavit, the Iran-Contra’s Robert Gates associated Richard Secord, and George W Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (at time of invasion of Afghanistan.)
After Vietnam, and the loss of direct military backing in force for our covert agency and no longer in control of the necessary areas in the region, heroin waned and cocaine became big. One only has to look at the tracks of the graduates of the School of the Americas, and connect the dots. This is the CIA associated initial source of the leadership training that has today’s Mexican Federal Police sometimes overwhelmed in pitched battles with drug lord militiamen that are now days professional commandos. Move south from there and you had Noriega in Panama, same source of training and a CIA asset, became a major international narco-trafficker.
South farther again and you have Uribe associated with cartels, right wing militias and associated death squads, CIA, School of the Americas training, all in the mix of Colombia, and drug trade and coca production is up there, eradication a farce. In 2005 you find Gulf Stream jets used in the CIA renditions are passing through the hands of known CIA assets, to Uribe family linked cartel, one had crashed in Mexico carrying 4 tons of Cocaine as noted in the narco-sphere news:
“the Gulfstream II was purchased less than two weeks before it crashed in Mexico by a duo that included a U.S. government operative who allegedly had done past contract work for a variety of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, according to a known CIA asset (Baruch Vega) who is identified as such in public court records. The four tons of cocaine onboard of the Gulfstream II at the time of its crash landing, according Vega, was purchased in Colombia via a syndicate that included a Colombian narco-trafficker named Nelson Urrego, who, according to Panamanian press reports and Vega, is a U.S. government (CIA) asset”
And now Mexico is severing its relationship with the CIA having anything to do with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and it is a smart move (when considering the Pentagon has enlisted Blackwater as a contractor in the business.) Meanwhile the ‘war on drugs’ discovers the Rick Perry administration in the George W Bush home state of Texas moves very quickly to shut down investigators who’d discovered high powered American judges, politicians and law enforcement at parties thrown by drug cartels. Couple this to a joint Blackwater/CIA covert assassination program that had been run by known cartel killer Enrique Prado, coupled to Erik Prince’s known religious extremism with ties to and funding of the American religious right, one may more than speculate international narcotics trafficking is funding Rick Perry’s Islamophobic Tea Party.
And Bush appointed Robert Mueller’s FBI? NOT INTERESTED, Small wonder with Mueller having been at the center of damage control and cover-up of the Iran-Contra linked BCCI terror and narcotics money laundering scandal. This is reinforced when Attorney General Eric Holder had concealed religious-right big shot Carl Lindner‘s contributions to the Uribe linked AUC death squads in Colombia.
The CIA trafficking in Latin America is the most well documented, on account of the Iran-Contra affair having spilled into the open. And it is here we come up with the Bush family criminal syndicate who’s who of international narcotics traffickers .. oh and that ties into George H.W. Bush’s close buddy Bill Clinton, the business is a bi-partisan bag of maggots.
A Robert Gates linked Iran-Contra player, Duane Clarridge, had a ‘private’ CIA operating in Afghanistan, run by an Air Force contractor named Michael Furlong The New York Times had reported. Some 40 days after this story broke, we see this:
By waiting 40 days since this had spilled, Robert Gates had given damage control in this affair ample time to meet, plan, erase tracks, create false leads, and destroy evidence. Throughout his series, the New York Times reporter neglects to mention Robert Gates is also an Iran-Contra figure with a history of cover-up, investigated by prosecutor Lawrence Walsh who stated:
“By October, when Gates claimed he first remembered hearing of the diversion, Casey ordered an inquiry and later made a report to Poindexter; but, by then, the Hasenfus aircraft had been shot down and Casey and Gates were beginning to cover.”
The now known operation coordinated by Furlong employed International Media Ventures, run by veterans of General McChrystal’s Special Operations forces, American International Security, run by a former Green Beret, and most interestingly, as we have seen, a company belonging to Duane ‘Dewey’ Clarridge, a former top CIA official with close ties to Robert Gates and Iran-Contra, as well utilized by the FBI in Afghanistan. Gates waited well over a month to “open an inquiry” to see whether “rules were violated” (notice contract murder is suddenly a mere ‘rules violation.’) With reports across the globe shouting bloody murder at the trouble he was in, Furlong appears never to have been prosecuted. Where had the Furlong/Clarridge operation been based and run out of? Almost certainly from the government protected Afghan drug lord (and presidential brother) Walid Karzai’s CIA rented compound outside Kandahar. The Clarridge operation is most certainly a cover for heroin trafficking.
Now the clincher. More than 90% of this years Heroin supplied to the world (90% TO THE WORLD) will come from poppies grown in Afghanistan. This is not just the Taliban folks, it is the CIA. Cleaning up the problem or cornering the market? It would very much seem any ‘drug eradication program is window dressing the problem while in actuality cornering the market. This thought is buttressed by the Russian experience with attempting cooperation in cleaning up the hundreds of heroin labs in Afghanistan, with the American military commanders at the top blocking any efforts:
After, (video, above) the Russians’ high visibility whistle-blowing, there is grudging (and minimal) actions by the USA, busting just a few labs out of hundreds and ONLY those labs it would seem are not under the CIA’s protection. The southwest of Afghanistan is the poppy region where the USA military had taken a ‘hands off’ attitude and done little to nothing to address the problem. Any drug interdiction program efforts had been initiated against only THOSE OPUIM FARMERS WHO DO BUSINESS WITH THE TALIBAN, or 15% of the labs and traffickers. The Taliban’s 15% control of 93% of the world market for opium & heroin is still nearly 14% the world supply, this is no small business in the matter of funding their insurgency, not to mention their product is likely laundered through the CIA for export. As the USA winds down the American military involvement, it is clear the problem had never been honestly addressed.
Meanwhile, a British ambassador had been sent packing for investigating the problem from neighboring Uzbekistan and subsequently pens an article “Britain is Protecting the Biggest Heroin Crop of All Time.” It is interesting to note his linking a murdered former Russian anti-corruption investigator, Alexander Letvnenko working for MI6, had uncovered the Afghan heroin pipeline to St Petersburg… a crime blamed in popular media on Russia with little mention whatsoever of his connections in this regard. Litvenenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to concurrently cooperate with Spanish authorities on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipelines. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 now also having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking. In the end, it come down to western complicity in the Afghan heroin trade is old news.
And in a 2009 interview with Phillip Giraldi, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has the following to say:
EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.
There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.
GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?
EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.
GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?
EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.
As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.
The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.
Criminals do not voluntarily surrender their business models. Cleaning up the problem is not going to happen until the CIA covert operations is brought under control. The CIA, or a rogue element within the organization has been, personally enriching themselves for decades as international narco-traffickers, my assessment. All the while using our nation’s ‘Security’ together with all of the power of the apparatus the term implies, to cover a rogue and criminal club within our ranks. And so, another example of how it is the pursuit of violence through wars corrupts and/or attracts corrupt people. C’est la vie.
Additional Notes
An interesting aside, General Patraeus figures into the Latin America/Iran-Contra era, when he supervised his friend and professional associate from the CIA ‘Dirty Wars’ days, death squad veteran James Steele, when running covert torture centers in Iraq.
These following stories from the AP WIRE [4 years ago] point to, among other things, CIA having wiretapped DEA to prevent DEA stumbling on CIA international narco-trafficking and continued efforts by our Justice Department to cover-up crime with the state secrets doctrine:
Sep 11th, 2009 | WASHINGTON — A federal judge says the CIA is hiding behind dubious national security arguments to shield itself from a potentially embarrassing lawsuit U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who earlier ruled that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent accused in the suit, has rejected an emergency request to put the case on hold while the government appeals.
The CIA has argued that allowing the case to proceed would divulge classified information, but, in an opinion made public on Friday, Lamberth said there was no good reason to delay.
In the suit, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent claims the CIA illegally wiretapped his home when stationed in Rangoon, Burma in 1993. The agent, Richard Horn, said he became suspicious when he returned from a trip to find his government-issued rectangular coffee table had been replaced with a round one.
The case has been a test of the Obama administration’s use of the so-called state secrets privilege, when the government seeks to block legal action by saying the details that would be revealed would harm national security.
Administration officials have pledged to review all state secrets claims made by the previous Bush administration, but in many cases the government is still asserting the need to prevent disclosures that it says would harm national security.
In the DEA case, Lamberth has previously rejected the state secrets claim. Government lawyers are attempting to reassert the privilege but on different grounds, but the judge isn’t buying it.
“Having lost on their assertion of the state secrets privilege, the government’s new refrain is heads you lose, tails we win,” the judge wrote.
The court case is rooted in an old squabble between the DEA and CIA operating overseas.
Horn claims Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him relocated because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country’s drug trade.
The CIA has not said in court filings whether or not it monitored Horn, but Horn claims he was monitored without lawful authority and in violation of his constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The CIA buys off the DEA
10 Nov 09-
WASHINGTON — The government has agreed to pay $3 million to a former agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration who sued CIA officers for illegal eavesdropping
The proposed settlement followed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in July that CIA officials committed fraud to protect a former covert agent against the eavesdropping allegations.
The lawsuit was brought by former DEA agent Richard Horn, who says his home in Rangoon, Burma, was illegally wiretapped by the CIA in 1993. He says Arthur Brown, the former CIA station chief in Burma, and Franklin Huddle Jr., the chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma, were trying to get him transferred because they disagreed with his work with Burmese officials on the country’s drug trade.
Horn sued Brown and Huddle in 1994, seeking monetary damages for violating his civil rights. The CIA itself was a defendant in the lawsuit until early this year…..
Then-CIA Director George Tenet filed an affidavit asking that the case against Brown be dismissed because he was a covert agent whose identity was a state secret that must not be revealed in open court. Lamberth granted the CIA’s request and threw out the case against Brown in 2004.
Lamberth found out last year that Brown’s cover had been lifted in 2002, even though the CIA continued to file legal documents saying his status was covert. The judge found that the CIA intentionally misled the court and he reinstated the case against Brown.
The agreement in the case was revealed in court papers filed Tuesday night, and Lamberth will now consider whether to dismiss the suit. Under the proposed settlement, the government makes no admission as to whether the allegations in the lawsuit are true
And:
WASHINGTON — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president of Afghanistan, gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The newspaper said that according to current and former American officials, the CIA pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around Kandahar.
The CIA’s ties to Karzai, who is a suspected player in the country’s illegal opium trade, have created deep divisions within the Obama administration, the Times said
Allegations that Karzai is involved in the drug trade have circulated in Kabul for months. He denies them.
Critics say the ties with Karzai complicate the United States’ increasingly tense relationship with his older brother, President Hamid Karzai. The CIA’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
Some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, a central figure in the south of the country where the Taliban is dominant, undermines the U.S. push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.
“If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves,” Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan, was quoted by the Times in an article published on its Web site.
Ahmed Wali Karzai told the Times that he cooperates with American civilian and military officials but does not engage in the drug trade and does not receive payments from the CIA.
Karzai helps the CIA operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists, according to several American officials. Karzai also is paid for allowing the CIA and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city, which also is the base of the Kandahar Strike Force, the Times said.
Karzai also helps the CIA communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban, the newspaper reported.
CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the report.
Followed by this AP story:
“Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan where a large chunk of the new U.S. forces will be deployed, cited corruption — which Karzai has pledged to fight — as the worst problem facing his nation. “The biggest problem is corruption in the Afghan government, police and military but also in some of the companies coming from the United States, Canada and England and Germany,” Hamidi said. “There is corruption and drug dealing by the people who are in power, within the police and the military.”Hamidi said just last month he was told that Taliban were sleeping in the police barracks.”The police are taking money from both sides — the government and the Taliban,” he said. “When we have this kind of police and military, the Afghan problem won’t be solved in 20 years.””
What Hamidi had pointed directly to, is military subcontractors in the employ of CIA, the military and the police, all in bed with both narcotics trafficking and the Taliban.
Wali Karzai and Ghulam Haider Hamidi were both assassinated not long after, Wali Karzai because he was too ‘hot’ (his own CIA liaison killed him) and Ghulam Haider Hamidi because he was too clean ..
27 March 2014 update: Crimea sanctions is the excuse the Obama administration uses to cancel joint efforts with Russia to combat international narcotics trafficking. Read the facts at the Moscow Times
1 May 2014 update: “We are not scared from the government, because most of the officials have their share in the harvesting”Read the article at usnews.com
10 June 2014 update: New information comes to light on the CIA rendition jets subsequently moved over to narcotics traffickers, read the article at narconews.com
9 July 2015 update: Corresponding perfectly with the Department of Defense & CIA gaining control over the opium production in Afghanistan: “CDC health officials said that the US is in the grip of a heroin epidemic, with abuse of the drug doubling among 18-25 year olds, doubling for women, and rising among white people by 114 percent over a decade from 2002 to 2013.” Read the story at RT and see the facts posted at the Center for Disease Control.
29 August 2021 Update: Pepe Escobar to The GreyZone’s Ben Norton & Max Blumenthal on the Taliban pledge to wipe out opium production in, and opium export from, Afghanistan:
“This is all Northern Alliance warlords. Once again, there is no Pashtuns involved in this. This is a huge, serious issue, and I’m sure they’re going to fulfill it because this is another eternal clash between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban. This is a very, very important point for them in terms of public opinion everywhere, not only in Eurasia but in the rest of the world in terms of anti-drugs and a very good p.r. for them.”
Well, Pepe Escobar is full of shit or full of himself (which is about the same thing.) Opium and heroin production in Afghanistan was never a sole business of the Northern Alliance. Walid Karzai was a Pashtun and key player in the narcotics trade operating out of the Pashtun majority Kandahar Province, the single most productive region of opium in Afghanistan. No Pashtun opium farmers in Kandahar? I don’t think so. No Pashtuns involved in the production and export of opium and heroin causing problems in Russia and Iran? I don’t think so. And the hundreds of on location Afghanistan heroin processing labs are not so much as mentioned by Escobar. Let’s also not forget Kandahar Province is historically renown as a Taliban sympathetic territory where narcotics trafficking and related corruption was to a point the Taliban were sleeping in the USA supported Afghanistan government’s police barracks:
“Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of Kandahar … cited corruption … as the worst problem facing his nation. “The biggest problem is corruption in the Afghan government, police and military but also in some of the companies coming from the United States, Canada and England and Germany,” Hamidi said. “There is corruption and drug dealing by the people who are in power, within the police and the military.” Hamidi said just last month he was told that Taliban were sleeping in the police barracks. “The police are taking money from both sides — the government and the Taliban,” he said. “When we have this kind of police and military, the Afghan problem won’t be solved in 20 years””
The statement by Escobar relevant to the preceding is, in effect, such an egregious lie, it discredits the entire interview with Norton & Blumenthal.
Seal worked directly for Sonia Atala, the CIA protected drug baron (Michael … that the Sandinistas were directly involved in drug trafficking into the United States.
Hitz also investigated the claim that the CIA participated in drug trafficking in Central America in the 1980s. A declassified version of his report was released in …
CIA and the Nugan Hand Bank. … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on DrugTrafficking he recruited WerBell as a consultant because he “had extensive …
According to Daniel Sheehan, Hull was a CIA contract operative in Costa Rica where he managed 8,000 … Drug Trafficking by the US National Security Council …
A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror … Paul DeRienzo: What was the CIA’s role in heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia?
(2) David Corn, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine … the contra program who (were) alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking.
In 1971, Edwin P. Wilson left the CIA to run shipping companies for a secret Navy … In 1983 the Australian Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking released a report …
The two men told Sheehan about a group of former CIA agents and assets were … in a racketeering network involved in drug trafficking and arms smuggling.
He remained in prison for three years and according to one source the CIA paid … He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and …
In 1973 Frank Nugan, an Australian lawyer, and Michael Hand, a former CIA … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking he recruited WerBell as a …
In 1974 the Nugan Hand Bank got involved in helping the CIA to take part in … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking he recruited WerBell as a …
… in Defrauding America, when George Bush Sr. and CIA Director William Casey … on allegations of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with …
In 1974 the Nugan Hand Bank got involved in helping the CIA to take part in … Yates later told the Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking he recruited WerBell as a …
In 1961 Felix Rodriguez joined the CIA-backed Brigade 2506 and … blame oppressed people for drugs – but international drug trafficking requires fleets of cargo …
According to Alfred W. McCoy (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global … He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and …
Second, I was contacted two years ago by a former CIA agent (who worked in the … He had then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South …
The bank’s legal counsel was William Colby, a former director of the CIA. The Board … (Before releasing it to the public, the Joint Task Force on DrugTrafficking, …
Summers believes that some members of the CIA took part in this conspiracy. ….. He had then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South …
(1) Fabian Escalante, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, …… go to prison for 18 months for a drug trafficking charge,” answers the general.
Michael Townley was another CIA agent who was involved in organizing …. the CIA. He was later charged with money laundering, drugs & arms trafficking and …
According to David Corn (Blonde Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA Crusade) in 1985 …. jobs, and became obsessed with the covert world and drug–trafficking.
He had then been a leader of the Corsican drug trafficking network in South ….. the CIA, the military, Johnson’s crooked Texas cronies, and Texas Governor John …
… on subjects such as cross-border narcotics trafficking and monitoring violent …. is laid at the CIA’s feet, where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall.
spartacus-educational.com/JFKcaulfieldJ.htm
*
Related:
Profits of War (my book review) Renegade MOSSAD officer Ari Ben Menache writes about (among other things) MOSSAD cooperation with CIA in Iran-Contra linked cocaine trafficking. Buy the book at amazon
Even with the best of agents, when operations run on the edge go wrong, they will always look bad. When an undercover operative is killed rather than the target, it is as about as bad as things can get, because the dead undercover operative can possibly be traced by both the penetrated organization and law enforcement. This is the likely outcome of a blown operation in which I’d been the target. My experience is reconstructed nearly verbatim from notes I’d made shortly after the event.
Oct 14, 2007
At Neu Koln, Berlin, when catching the U-7 subway south towards Rudow, I was standing at the underground kiosk buying breath fresheners when the train arrived. I quickly tried to complete the transaction but figured I would likely have to catch the next train. I noticed a group of young Arabs holding the door to the train open, preventing it’s departure, all (4) of them watching me, clearly it appeared as though they either expected me to catch that train or they would not be on it themselves.
The train consequently waited for me and I sprinted to the door they were holding for me and jumped between them, onboard. They let the door close as I turned 180 degrees rather than taking a seat, making them a group of five.
Standing facing them, holding a pole, all seemed surprised at my action. A shorter, darker one, then began to assail me in Arabic language as though I were expected to understand, this one initially took the lead and was most vehement and hostile, although a couple of the others were also saying quite angry things to me direct, also if expecting I would understand.
I simply looked at them all, eyes moving one to the other direct, and asked “Do you speak English?”
A tall member of the group, with light complexion on my right (all of them were facing me) and who did not become involved with the angry speech, indicated he did speak English with “Yes”
I asked “What country are you from?”
His indirect answer was to point to the most hostile one, the short grubby one who was wearing an Israeli Defense Force battle fatigue shirt as though it were a trophy, and stated “He is Palestinian.”
He made this a clear distinction. My guess was the one who’d made this statement and the 2 others (all taller, better dressed and lighter complexion than the ‘Palestinian’) were Hezbollah aligned Lebanese, there is a large Lebanese community in that area.
I said to the short hostile one, emphatically: “You’re Palestinian? I apologize to you for George Bush!”
That one statement changed everything. All of them went silent and the ‘Palestinian’ never said another word.
I then said: “There are many good people in my country who don’t like what is happening, it is a difficult situation.”
From this moment and comment, the now totally silent (and clear outsider) ‘Palestinian’ became the target of the Lebanese, while they checked out my reactions to their terrorizing the ‘Palestinian’, the focus of their hostility had shifted away from me.
What happened now was really interesting. One of the Lebanese is suddenly is getting on his cell phone and making a call… while the groups leader, the tall one to my right, looks at me while pointing to the ‘Palestinian’ who is suddenly looking very ill, and says “Maybe he is Israeli” while assessing my reaction.
I deliberately made myself look surprised and suspicious, raised one eyebrow at the ‘Palestinian’ and said “Israeli Arab?” as though I both: did not fully understand and did not like the idea or somehow found it disconcerting.
The train had made a brief stop and a fifth Arab (Lebanese) joined us with a cell phone and greeting the other Lebanese but not the ‘Palestinian’ who had simply become demoralized with a now clearly frightened look. The new arrival had some conversation in Arabic with the tall on my right, after a hand/fist greeting that, by gesture and look, was attempting to sort some things that needed sorting.
The new arrival is now on his phone while also talking to the tall one to my right, but interrupts his conversation with the tall Lebanese and asks me “Where are you from? England?” almost as to test my veracity, his English skills would know, and I clearly answered “USA.”
I was asked “Where do you stay?”
I stated as a matter of fact “Berlin”
Then I was asked: “Do you speak German” and I answered “Only a little” .. whereas the tall one to my right gave an absolutely evil look at the ‘Palestinian’ and said slowly, deliberately, “My German is VERY good.” [I’ve often wondered at the significance of that statement]
The new one and the tall one looked at each other, spoke again in Arabic and then the tall one suggested to me while rubbing the ‘Palestinians’ belly “Maybe he is a good boy for sex. What do you think?”
Now the ‘Palestinian’ had the absolute look of ‘I am going to die’ on his face as I answered emphatically, with the culturally correct “I am a good man!” and an offended look (I wore silver studs in my ears at that time and likely had been falsely profiled to MOSSAD as gay)
Suddenly the tall Lebanese, with my answer, made a violent stabbing motion with his right hand at the ‘Palestinian’ while shouting (nearly screaming) to the new arrival “The Israeli must be killed!!”
The Lebanese closed around the ‘Palestinian’ with looks of shock and rage on their faces, when the train stopped, they shoved him off the train together with stepping off themselves. I assure you all, the ‘Palestinian’ did not live long after this interrogation, at most a matter of hours.
Now, I noticed the Germans on the train, men looking straight ahead, no expression, several women had looks of absolute terror on their faces, it had been that intense.
The ‘Palestinian’ was clearly not one of the group in any sense of intimate acquaintance or typical association. He was dressed a bit shabbily, wearing the IDF olive drab fatigue jacket with a Hebrew lettered tag over the left pocket. The Lebanese were all clean, well dressed, of a better class, and obviously educated and intelligent. The ‘Palestinian’ had gone from initiator of the groups hostilities towards me, to the groups target in this course of events lasting about 10 minutes. I expected I could have died. Clearly, the posed as a ‘Palestinian’ MOSSAD agent had died instead.
This was a failed scheme (compromised operation) of using the ‘Palestinian’, almost certainly a Sephardic MOSSAD agent fluent in Arab language and culture, under false pretext to dupe Hezbollah aligned people into assisting with a hit in a difficult operational area (Arab neighborhood.) Between my survival skills (training) confronting the circumstance with dialogue, and Hezbollah’s obvious caution, the Israeli operative, in a sense, literally cut his own throat. He was not prepared for my direct engagement.
With the CIA or MOSSAD (your choice) having decided to leak the fact clandestine operations of the two agencies have established a certain degree of fusion, released as a psychological ploy (neither agency is particularly bright these days), it brought into perspective a phenomena I had puzzled over for some time; how it was I’d drawn the attempted lethal attention of both institutions in a matter of two weeks (in the Fall of 2007.) A case of leaked accountability to Newsweek magazine establishes the CIA & MOSSAD were initiating joint assassinations by February, 2008. In actuality, my case establishes they were already jointly pursuing targets four months previous to this, in October, 2007.
MOSSAD is bound to a code of conduct which requires avenging a loss. I would simply point out to the Israelis, at what price? What had happened in the aftermath of this failed operation had been MOSSAD coming after me with a vengeance. The question MOSSAD should have looked at is, did CIA and ‘associates’ calculatedly omit the fact of my exceptional training, as well the fact I had repeatedly surprised and neutralized or reversed previous operations mounted against myself prior to this event? By now MOSSAD should understand their several subsequent failures can be no accident. No one is that lucky.
People should learn to take responsibility for their mistakes as opposed to doubling-down with attempts based on a moral & tactical failure. As a matter of fact I do not celebrate the MOSSAD man’s death; nor do I regret it. After all, it was not myself initiated the deadly encounter.
A closing note: I would point out to the radicalized-nationalist Israelis, and MOSSAD is populated with these, with a gross history of policy failures, the nature of psychology is, when you have made a mistake, you must correct yourself, to stay a correct course of action. Otherwise, mistakes become complications and complications lead to making by far more serious mistakes:
New Sibel Edmonds interview on Boston bombing, CIA, media manipulation and ongoing Operation Gladio (II) .. a USA continuation of a centuries old aggression of the British empire historically known as ‘The Great Game.’ In this interview Sibel Edmonds demonstrates a mastery of the subject and lays out the facts behind the political lies
Ronald Thomas West 