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THE BUSH HARD DRUG EMPIRE EVIDENCE II

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THE BUSH HARD DRUG EMPIRE EVIDENCE II

With Bush senior addressing the US while his son was on the way to the hospital to address the injured, Bush used as a justification for relaxing the clamps on Intelligence Agency invasion of privacy, and asking people to give up some of their democratic and sovereign right, by giving the example of Col. Noriega, whom in this expose, and by numerous others (including Vietnam decorated war hero Colonel Bo Gritz, who took Bush to court and won), indicates that had Noriega´s voice been heard, he may have burnt Bush into some holy smokes, by advancing evidence of their drug relations. With such information as follows not having been viewed by the public at large, how can this be used as a justification. We do require to be cautioned to utilise utmost discrimination herein, before swallowing down any silver spoon fed info. This information is thus being passed on solely for independent inquiry, which is not being circulated by the media´s we rely on, at least not yet...

 

Here is some of the material that was to be presented by European media networks. Whilst we do not necessarily subscribe to all of its contents, the documentation in many places is as objective as it can be. Since is information is for some reason not coming to the average citizen, it is imperative that this information is circulated and considered and further verified or denied. The contents are far too alarming to be suppressed. If the Bush family and others mentioned involved, some of whom are also directly involved in this war, are innocent to the information herein, then what can there be to fear in bringing this information to the public for all to consider and so that it is cleared up objectively. Perhaps your passing on to responsible researchers and journalists, this material, may aid in this clarified outcome, coherently.

Had this along with the other data apparently showing Bush´s use of hard drug money in "winning" the election been presented to the European and world public, just perhaps there may not have been any war. Perhaps it is still not too late.

We also resonate with Michael Ruppert´s suggestion for a solution at the end of part two, in terms of changing the drug legislations, along with the "cure for addiction" with the Shamanic Affrican root Ibogaine, which has 90% success rate, and prevents toxic withdrawal symptoms in exchange for psychological neurological processing of the addictive pattern. Also it prevents the addictive drug to work for several months. Solutions not wars, and "Just say KNOW".

-Ananda, GNN, September 16th 2001

 

This section will include:

Evidence linking George Bush, the National Security Council and the White House directly to Contra era drug trafficking is abundant and irrefutable.

CONTENTS:

1. WALL STREET THE CIA AND HARD DRUGS
2. Item #01 Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.
3. Items #10 & 11 - CIA Drugs and the Impeachment (video or audio)
4. Item #13 - The Salon at Fraser Court (5/99)
5. Item #14 - The CIA Drug Economy and the Way Out (9/99)
6. Don't Blink! All Promises Broken - Volume II Hearings Held Without Notice - Behind Closed Doors You Might Miss What's Next by Michael C. Ruppert
7. NOTES ON THE HERALD EXAMINER STORIES
8. INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE Surprise hearings in House Intelligence Committee Backfire on CIA
9. A Witness List for House Hearings on Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's Report on CIA Drug Trafficking
10. Expect Closed Door Hearings in June or July, 1998
11. Can the Government Handle The Truth?
12. CIA - Drugs and Campaign Fundraising
13. The Dominicans, The Democrats and New York
14. Joe vs. The Volcano and The Avalanche and The Steamroller and The Machine and City Hall and the CIA
15. CIA - Drugs and Campaign Fundraising
16.  Part Two - The Dominicans, The CIA, Pennsylvania, New York and Al Gore
17. "Sparky" -  A Case Study in Heroism and Perseverance when CIA Documents Surface and CIA Intentions Reveal an Intelligence Community, a White House, an Economy and a Nation Out of Control
18. CIA-Drug Report Now A Part of the Impeachment Battle, by Michael Ruppert (Receiving Death Threats)
19. How Strange Does It Have to Get? Why It Is Time To Decriminalize Drug Use

WALL STREET THE CIA AND HARD DRUGS

Item #01 Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.

Items #10 & 11 - CIA Drugs and the Impeachment (video or audio)

Item #13 - The Salon at Fraser Court (5/99)

Item #14 - The CIA Drug Economy and the Way Out (9/99)

 

NOTE: At the time this story was written it looked like the House Intelligence Committee was going to get away with closing out the CIA drug investigations. But thanks to the efforts of From The Wilderness that resulted in class action suits being filed against the CIA in Los Angeles and Oakland and other publicity we have generated Volume II has not been closed out. They can't because too many people are watching. On October 12, 1999, investigators from House Intelligence came to Los Angeles and copied 6,000 pages of our records for review. Going into 2000, Volume II is still very much an open investigation and FTW is proof that something can be done. - MCR

 

Don't Blink!

 All Promises Broken - Volume II Hearings Held Without Notice - Behind Closed Doors

 You Might Miss What's Next

 

by Michael C. Ruppert

 

Posted June 29, 1999 - © Copyright 1999 From The Wilderness, Michael C. Ruppert. All Rights Reserved

 

On May 25, just four days after we published our last issue, under the totally misleading heading of "CIA and Drugs in Los Angeles" the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) held a closed door hearing. It took us until June 22 to determine that the Committee heard testimony that day from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Bromwich, who had not appeared before the Committee since the release of his report last year. And it also heard from current CIA Inspector General Britt Snider, who discussed Volume II of retired CIA IG Fred Hitz's report on the whole Contra war - not Los Angeles.  Los Angeles was Volume I.

 

That's right - They have had the hearing on Volume II. They did it in secret. The press did not cover it. And it remains unclear, at this moment, as to whether HPSCI's final report will even be declassified or made available to the public in any form at all. This is not only a breach of every promise made to us in 1996 by both Houses; it is, in my opinion, a complete breach of trust between the government and the people.

 

In a June 22 conversation with HPSCI Deputy Staff Director, Tim Sample, I was told that the Committee "would like to wrap this up this summer." I was also told that the protocol for closing the investigation out had not been finalized. It is "not known" whether there will be another hearing. It is "not known" whether or if the Committee's final report will be declassified or ever released. It is "not known" if any additional witnesses will be called. I and retired DEA Agent Cele Castillo and presumably the other major figures in the investigation have all received letters asking us to submit whatever other evidence "we are aware of" before the Committee closes its work.

 

This is a sign of true desperation as the Republican controlled Committee must absolutely close the issue - to protect George W. Bush - before the 2000 Presidential campaign begins in earnest in October. It must also protect the biggest secret of all from the American people: The entire economy, and the entire political system itself, is currently hooked and dependent upon  - drug money.

 

I have been saying for years that you could show a video of George Bush ordering drug runs, CIA agents laundering money and flying airplanes full of drugs and no one in power would do anything about it. They would not be able to. In this issue I will tell you, and the House, about something almost as damning - a partially authenticated letter, written on CIA letterhead and stamped "Top Secret", ostensibly written and signed by CIA Director William J. Casey in late 1986, that admits to direct participation in the drug trade [SEE STORY THIS ISSUE].  I have been aware of the existence of this letter for approximately five months. I have had it read to me in its entirety. It was not until I was given this last chance by HPSCI to present "all of the information of which you are aware on the allegations" that I was able to obtain an "On the Record" statement about the letter from Attorney Ray Kohlman. The letter will be admitted into evidence in a new trial motion for former Green Beret William Tyree in the near future. When that happens, From The Wilderness will publish the letter, both on the Internet and in the newsletter.

 

 Now that the House has indicated its intent to close the matter for good and all it is time to bring the letter forward - for good and all. I will also see to it that the letter is widely distributed enough so that any of the major news organizations will be able to follow up on it. The information in this issue is enough for the House Intelligence Committee to go to the CIA and compel it to confirm or deny the letter's authenticity.

 

Reading The Right Map

 If nothing happens with further hearings, or with the letter, I will tell you in advance exactly why.

 

Contributing Editor Catherine Austin Fitts, who was a Managing Director at Dillon Read before becoming Assistant Secretary of Housing under George Bush and who holds an MBA from Wharton makes things very simple. She points out that the four largest states for the importation of drugs are New York, Florida, Texas and California. She then points out that the top four money laundering states in the U.S. (good for between 100 and 260 billion per year) are New York, Florida, Texas and California. No surprise there. Then she rips the breath from your lungs by pointing out that 80 per cent of all Presidential campaign funds come from - New York, Florida, Texas and California.

 

Civics test: Who are the current governors of Texas and Florida?

 

From The Wilderness has been working on a story for an upcoming issue that will show conclusively, using testimony of law enforcement officers and U.S. Government records, that Dominican drug gangs, who dominate the trade in the northeast United States - especially New York and Pennsylvania - have been making regular campaign donations to the Clinton-Gore-Democratic camp since the early 90s. California drug sales are currently split between Democratically allied crime factions and entrenched hard core Republican strongholds from the Reagan era. People who shudder at the thought of the Chinese buying into presidential politics would choke if they knew how much drug money was involved.

 

Why? Again, the answer is simpler than you might think. While the Department of Justice estimates that $100 billion in drug funds are laundered in the U.S. each year, other research, including research material from the Andean Commission of Jurists cited by author Dan Russell in his soon to be published book Drug War place the figure at around $250 billion per year. Catherine Austin Fitts places the figure at $250 to $300 billion. Given the fact that the UN estimated that in the early 1990s world retail volume in the illegal drugs was $440 billion, $250 billion seems about right. Fitts, using her Wall Street experience as an investment banker is then quick to point out that the multiplier effect (x6) of  $250 billion laundered would result in $1.5 trillion dollars per year in U.S. cash transactions resulting from the drug trade. How many jobs does $1.5 trillion represent? Why do President's get re-elected?  As Bill Clinton's staff recognized in 1992, "It's the economy -Stupid!"

 

During the Contra years, when the CIA and Bill Clinton were swimming in cocaine, and Arkansas became the only state in the Union to ever issue bearer bonds (laundry certificates), employment in Arkansas rose to an all time high because there was so much money floating around. So what if they don't count all the dead bodies like  two young boys Kevin Ives and Don Henry, shot, bludgeoned and dismembered on a railroad track after witnessing CIA drug drops. "It's the economy - Stupid!"

 

The Pop

Corporations trading on Wall Street, including many implicated in money laundering schemes where products are sold with questionable bookkeeping throughout drug producing regions, all have stock values that are based upon annual net profits. Known as "price to earnings" or "The Pop" the multiplier effect in stock values is sometimes as much as a factor of thirty. Thus, for a firm like GE or Piper Aircraft to have an additional $10 million in net profits based upon the drug trade, the net increase in these companies' stock value could be as much as $300,000,000. Did GE make a $10 million net profit on consumer products in Latin America last year? Easily. And since GE owns NBC is there a chance that accurate reporting on the drug trade and CIA's involvement therein might hurt their stock?

 

Disney owns ABC and has a huge retail, resort and entertainment empire that benefits from the "drug multiplier." Would ABC consider hurting its parent's stock value? Ronald Reagan's CIA Director, William Casey had been Chief Counsel to Cap Cities Broadcasting until 1981. His old law firm represented Cap Cities when it bought the ABC network in 1985. ABC's Peter Jennings, by the way, had been doing a series of investigative reports on the CIA drug bank (and successor to the Nugan Hand bank) Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong when the buyout was initiated. Cap Cities (not surprisingly) secured SEC approval in record time and effectively and immediately silenced Peter Jennings who had previously refused to back down from Casey's threats. Thereafter ABC was referred to as "The CIA network."

 

I have no doubt that the ABC "object lesson" was front and center for CNN founder Ted Turner and Time-Warner when Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and (CIA vet) John Singlaub put the pressure on in the wake of April Oliver's 1998 "dead bang accurate" Sarin gas stories connecting CIA to the killing of American defectors.

 

Every major media corporation in the country trades on Wall Street.  There are no "independents" left and the American people are left with the increasing cognitive dissonance of recognizing that they are being fed useless bullshit. I wonder how they would respond to real a news corporation if they saw or heard one.

 

It's Legal to be Bad

It is also perfectly legal for a Wall Street brokerage or investment bank to go "offshore" and borrow once laundered drug money to finance a corporate merger or leveraged buyout (LBO). Why do this? If you were a major multi-national corporation in a cutthroat competition to buy a company with a hundred million in sales (which might boost your stock value $3 billion) you would be willing to pay a seemingly outrageous price. [How much would you be willing to spend to make $3 billion? - 2.9?]. All an LBO is is an acquisition financed on borrowed money. If you are Goldman-Sachs, arranging the deal, and you can borrow laundered drug money at five per cent or a bank's money at ten per cent where are you going to go? Remember that since the cost of capital is lower using laundered drug money you are now able to outbid all the other competitors because your total payback stays the same. Does this actually happen? In 1998 the Russians asked for only $18 billion to save their entire economy. With $440 billion a year moving around how could it not happen?

 

And a major drug dealer, like a Carlos Lehder, a Pablo Escobar, an Amado Fuentes, a Matta Ballesteros or a Hank Rohn, sitting around with ten billion dollars of useless illegal money, is more than happy to loan it at five percent because his money is now legal and liquid. And, if one goes to prison or dies, there is always another dealer to fill the void so that the supply is not interrupted. The drug trade now has power because it is underwriting the investments of the largest corporations in the world. It underwrites politicians. It has hooked the gringos on Wall Street whose own children sometimes die from its drugs. Wall Street cannot afford to let the drug barons fall. Congress cannot afford to let the drug barons fall. Presidents and their campaign finances cannot afford to let the drug barons fall. Why? Because our top down economy, controlled by one per cent, cannot take the risk of letting competition (business or political) have the edge of using drug money. The third world has its revenge for European colonialism but Wall Street still calls the shots. And for every million dollars of increased sales or increased revenues from a buyout, the stock equity of the one per cent who control Wall Street, increases twenty to thirty times.

 

Remember - The National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA, was written by Wall Street lawyer and banker Clark Clifford. Clark Clifford is the man who brought the CIA backed drug bank BCCI into the United States. Allen Dulles who virtually designed the CIA and served as its Director, and his brother John Foster who was Eisenhower's Secretary of State, were Wall Street lawyers from the firm Sullivan and Cromwell. Dwight Eisenhower's personal liaison with the CIA was none other than Nelson Rockefeller. William Casey was Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Richard Nixon. Former CIA Directors from William Raborn to William Webster to Robert Gates to James Woolsey to John Deutch all sit or have sat on the Boards of the largest, richest and most powerful companies in America.

 

As we near the millenium one thing is clear to anyone who sees the economic system clearly. The system is on the verge of implosion.  Privately owned and operated prison companies trade on Wall Street. One of those, Wackenhut, is a virtual CIA proprietary. We have entered, at the end of the industrial age, a phase of growth where we must incarcerate an ever expanding number of people to sustain the growth of all the companies profiting from law enforcement, crime, imprisonment and war.  And the overheated stock market must grow or collapse. The reason this nation spends five dollars on prisons for every one dollar on higher education - even after seven straight years of falling crime rates - is because there is more profit in it in the current economic model. Hell, we have turned police departments into profit making entities through asset forfeiture. This is insane!

 

This economic model is patently no more sustainable than a snake eating its own tail can be considered nourishment. Organized crime has become the government and it seeks to make all citizens become subliminally guilty participants, fearing for their own livelihoods, believing that the system will collapse if someone really tackles the issues facing us - as surely as the iceberg faced the Titanic.

 

The system will collapse anyway - unless the economic model is turned upside down - unless a way is found or offered which will make it more profitable than all other ways - to do the right thing. The only thing that will sustain the current economic system, and its dependence on drug capital, is a police state. New enforcement programs involving HUD and the Department of Justice such as Project "Safe Streets" and "Weed and Seed" - along with their corresponding butchery of the Constitution - show an emerging police state already. The conduct of Congress and the White House in the CIA drug investigations further demonstrate the arrogance, the fear and the ever-increasing sloppiness of a system out of control.

 

The veneer, the illusion that we live under the rule of law cracks before our eyes, grows thinner and ever more difficult to sell with each passing minute. All at once the fears of the right of a New World Order and the fears of the left, of new concentration camps and genocide suddenly become one and the same thing. Dogma matters little to the oppressed. Pain tastes the same whether you call it Fascism or Communism. Carlos Enrique Lehder Rivas, co-founder of the Medellin Cartel, who was given a life sentence in 1990, now enjoys the sunshine at his home in the Bahamas. He frolics regularly with gaming magnate and owner of the Atlantis Hotel Sol Kerzner. His guests at parties include Kevin Costner who played (I am sorry to say) both Elliot Ness and Jim Garrison. Manuel Noriega will probably be out of prison before Bill Clinton leaves office. The Kosovo Liberation Army has been funded with drug money and has trained with Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden. The son of a documented drug trafficker, who very few people in this country even know anything about, is "scheduled" to become our next President, simply because he has the most money and he and his backers control most of  "The Pop."

 

How much time can this government have? How much time does it deserve? Bill Clinton's Farewell Address should probably be, "Apres moi, le deluge."

 

Mike Ruppert

you want to know MORE about this subject, recommend the following:

Item #01 Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.

Items #10 & 11 - CIA Drugs and the Impeachment (video or audio)

Item #13 - The Salon at Fraser Court (5/99)

Item #14 - The CIA Drug Economy and the Way Out (9/99)

 

Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413 * (818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847 *

mruppert@copvcia.com © COPYRIGHT 1998, 1999, 2000, MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

 

Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847

mruppert@copvcia.com

 

© COPYRIGHT 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

NOTES ON THE HERALD EXAMINER STORIES

As you read these stories ask yourself a question. If you were standing on the sidewalk and a man came running up to you and said that a house was on fire and people were trapped inside, would you insist on having the man psychoanalyzed before checking the house? If you did, who would be the crazy one?

 

Seventeen years ago, then already three years into trying to expose CIA drug dealing, the climate was even less friendly than it is now. Nonetheless, and in spite of 43 factual errors, Randall Sullivan basically got the story right.

 

You will find my allegations stated almost accurately in the middle column of the next to the last page of the story. Do not be afraid to read it. Be afraid only to not read it and thereby condemn someone else to walk the same ground.

 

Mike Ruppert 5/20/98

INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

In October of 1981 I sat in the basement of the West Wing of the White House and said, "The CIA is complicit in bringing drugs into this country and it is wrong." I made that statement to Craig L. Fuller, then Assistant to President Ronald Reagan for Cabinet Affairs.

 

Craig had been my closest friend through four years at UCLA. He had been chosen to intern for Governor Reagan at the same time that I was chosen to intern for LAPD Chief Ed Davis. We had lost touch over the years but I reconnected with Craig after the L.A. Times announced he had been appointed to a high position within the new Reagan Presidency. The letter, which follows, was what he wrote to me - I think before he knew what I had been doing for the last three years.

 

What did Craig say when I made the statement? Nothing. He didn't move. He didn't seem to breathe until I changed the subject. The only thing I noticed after my visit was that George Bush asked Craig to serve as his Chief of Staff during the second Reagan term - the years of Ian-Contra. What I said to myself as I left the White House was, "Where do I go now?"

 

The original of this letter was burglarized from my residence less than a month after I confronted John Deutch, coincidentally on the same day that an investigator from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called and asked if I had it. The LAPD burglary case is still open and they found fingerprints, other than my own, on the binder which held the letter. To date they have not run a match through the fingerprint supercomputer. I wonder why?

 

March 16, 1998

NEWS

By Michael C. Ruppert

Surprise hearings in House Intelligence Committee Backfire on CIA

 

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

Maxine Waters not alone in criticizing Agency

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

 

More hearings certain

 

In a move which caught many by surprise, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a surprise hearing on Monday March 16, to officially receive and review Volume One of the long awaited report by CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz investigating allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking. Volume One of the report, which examines allegations of CIA drug ties during the Contra era, focuses specifically on Southern California connections while the uncompleted Volume Two will look at the broader involvement of CIA during the eighties. The announcement of the hearing was so sudden that key House members who have been leaders on the issue, such as Maxine Waters, were not present in the Committee chamber as the hearing began. The suddenness of the rare public hearing, however, did not prevent Waters, (D) California, and Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, from arriving with a sling full of arrows which she promptly shot through the heart of the C.I.A. report.

 

Committee Chairman, Porter Goss, (R), FL, himself retired from C.I.A., announced that the hearing was prompted in part by the imminent retirement of Hitz who is scheduled to teach at Princeton. Hitz was charged in 1996 by then CIA Director John Deutch with thoroughly investigating charges that CIA had been involved in cocaine trafficking to support Contra rebels in the 1980s. As the hearing unfolded it became apparent that what started out to be a fete for the departing Hitz was going to be a major embarrassment for the Agency. The suddenness of the hearing precluded coverage by any electronic media organizations other than C-SPAN, which covered the hearing from gavel to gavel.

 

In remark after remark from Democratic members of the Committee, opinions ranging from mild skepticism to outright disbelief of the hundred plus page Volume One were expressed. Julian Dixon (D) California, while stating that, "no matter how thorough any investigation may be, there will be skeptics who will challenge any conclusions which are reached" added, "This is only one step in our investigation".

 

Other members such as Nancy Pelosi, (D), Ca, whose bay area district has demonstrated a long and deep felt concern over the issue and Norman Dicks (D), WA. who is the ranking member of the Committee were far more open in their skepticism. The bay area of California was the focal point of one 1983 aspect of the investigation known as the Frogman case, which turned up direct links to C.I.A. after a massive cocaine seizure. Dicks represents an area north of Seattle which has felt a dramatic and painful incursion of L.A. based street gangs in recent years. All members of the Committee who spoke, including California gubernatorial candidate Jane Harman, (D) Torrance; Ike Skelton, (D) Mo.; David Skaggs (D), Co.; and Jim Gibbons (R), Nev., were clear in their statements that Congressional examination of C.I.A. involvement in drug dealing was far from over.

 

After opening remarks from Committee members present, almost all of whom were democrats, Goss took testimony from the two L.A. area Congresswomen, not Committee members, who had been outspoken on the issue.

 

California Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald, (D) Ca, who had sponsored two town hall meetings on the subject from her Compton area district, delivered a mildly rebuking statement about the C.I.A.'s effort by raising questions as to the Agency's ability to investigate itself and questioning the timing of the hearings. "C.I.A. turned a blind eye at best to drug connections," she said. "I look forward to subsequent hearings."

 

Having arrived with an aide, several large stacks of documents, photographs, charts and former San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb in tow Maxine Waters testified next and turned a ten minute allotment from the Chairman into a thirty plus minute evisceration of the C.I.A. report. "I am here to talk about the failure of the C.I.A. to conduct a serious and thorough investigation into allegations of C.I.A. drug trafficking," she said in her opening sentence.

 

"The Inspector General's report lacks credibility. It is fraught," she continued, "with contradictions and illogical conclusions. The report's sweeping denial of the CIA's knowledge of drug trafficking defies the evidence and the logic that the CIA should have known." Waters continued on a point by point basis to refute Hitz's own conclusions in the report and his methodology by using both evidence which CIA had included in the report and which she had produced during her own investigations. She criticized the Agency for not interviewing key witnesses and for not disclosing the names of the people they had interviewed. She listed meetings and relationships, which the Agency had previously documented, to show concrete relationships between CIA assets and drug traffickers. In a particularly angry portion of her statement she referred to the 1986-7 Senate hearings Chaired by John Kerry and the eleven hundred page report which clearly documented CIA's ties to drug traffickers.

 

"How can this report include these incriminating findings by elected officials including Senators Kerry, Brock and Moynihan while simultaneously dismissing any CIA knowledge or involvement in Contra drug trafficking in the U.S.," she said to an attentive panel. " This is a damning contradiction."

 

Goss interrupted Waters once as she was fifteen minutes over her allotted time and asked her to conclude her remarks. He acquiesced as Waters continued for another five minutes stating that it was simply not possible for her to present all the evidence in ten minutes. Waters concluded her remarks by stating that as a public servant, neither she nor the Committee could rest until the American people were given what they deserved, a fair but honest investigation of this long festering and improperly addressed scandal.

 

Several surprises followed. In one of the strongest statements made, Norman Dicks promised that as ranking member of the Committee he would see that credible hearings would take place. He then dropped a bomb by pointing out that Oliver North had never been questioned about drugs in the previous Iran-Contra investigations. After having that fact conformed by Hitz he added, "Well we won't be doing our job unless we hear from him, will we?"

 

Hitz, in a stunning revelation, which occurred during his testimony, foreshadowed the contents of Volume Two of his report, by disclosing the existence of a secret agreement between CIA and then Reagan Attorney General William French-Smith. The agreement stated that the Agency was absolved from reporting drug-related activities of its assets or agents during the Contra years to the Justice Department.

 

Porter Goss, who holds the power to determine the course of future hearings announced that there would be a continuing investigation and that the matter was not concluded with this hearing. He acknowledged a great many unresolved questions and contradictory facts. He did not state whether future hearings would be open or closed and he did not give a date certain for those hearings. Volume Two of the Inspector General's report is due sometime in May.

 

A Witness List for House Hearings on Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's Report on CIA Drug Trafficking

Expect Closed Door Hearings in June or July, 1998

Can the Government Handle The Truth?

Is Your Name Here?

 

© Copyright 1999,  Michael C. Ruppert. & From The Wilderness Publications at www.copvcia.com . All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint  for non-commercial purposes only if the preceding appears.

 

 

[This list of witnesses originally appeared in the February issue of From The Wilderness for subscribers only. It has caused quite a stir and, since the surprise (May, 25) closed door hearings on CIA drug trafficking in Los Angeles in the wake of our May cover story, it is a yardstick against which the coming cover up can be graded. Does the government even care to be credible any more?]

 

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

 

Unlike a court of law, which relies on specific charges, Congress, whose only mandate is to serve the people, may take any issue and go forwards or backwards in time. It may go sideways and change directions.  It may call any witnesses it chooses in its efforts to decide what laws to write for the benefit of those it serves, The People.

 

 

Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's report took Congress to the CIA's house. It showed the dead body of its admissions regarding drug trafficking lying bloody in the open doorway. If Congress serves the people it will now enter the house and look around. It will press charges and it will see that criminals are punished for their crimes. It will pass laws designed to make sure that these crimes never happen again.

 

 

Use these 143 names as a report card to see what Congress' will really is and who it really serves. Volume II is not closed until the House Intelligence Committee holds hearings. Your calls, letters and e-mails to make those hearings complete and well covered are having a serious impact. Let's see what you can do with this.

 

 

"Bo" Abbot  - Former CIA/Air America pilot who has openly admitted to having flown drugs for the Agency on CIA aircraft. Now resides is Southwest U.S.

 

Elliot Abrams - Former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs. Oversaw Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office for Oliver North and delivered subsidies to firms like Setco and Frigorificos de Puntarenas which CIA Volume II admits were dealing drugs. Worked with Albert Carone who was North's, Casey's and Bush's paymaster and bagman with the Mafia.

 

Lt. Col. Albert Adame - Deputy Commander Mil(itary Advisory) Group El Salvador. Discussed CIA drug ops with DEA Agent Cele Castillo.

 

Richard Armitage - Assistant Secretary of Defense, East Asia (1981-83), Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (1983-1988). CIA operator dating back to Vietnam where he assisted in the drug trade under Ted Shackley. Oversaw key DoD Contra support operations during the Reagan Administration for CIA, Shackley and Bush. Labeled, "My white son" by Colin Powell in 1995.

 

Brad Ayers - Former CIA and DEA agent, found cocaine residue in military, CIA and Contra connected aircraft in Florida. Hounded into hiding and nearly killed for reporting same.

 

Randy Beasley - Former DEA agent. Made a futile attempt to arrest Barry Seal in 1983. The case was shut down by the government

 

Gary Betzner - Former drug pilot for Jorge Morales who began using Ilopnago and Ft. Lauderdale Executive airport for drug and gun runs after being approached by John Hull.

 

Oscar Danilo Blandon - The primary California dealer from the Gary Webb stories. Still operating as informant for US Gov't. to this day. Had documented CIA & government connections, some still classified.  Ricky Ross' primary supplier.

 

Jack Blum - Former Chief investigator for the Kerry Subcommittee which examined the Contra drug connections in the 1980s. Testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) in late 1996 and stated, "We don't have to investigate. We already know."

 

William R. Bode - Special Assistant to Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance (Schneider), Science and Technology who allegedly used his office to recruit contractors (including Gene Wheaton) for air support and other operations on behalf of the CIA and NSC. These included air contractors who flew drugs. According to Bo Gritz had heavy Arkansas connections

 

Richard Brenneke - Portland arms dealer and CIA asset who worked with Israeli Mossad agents and Manuel Noriega to run a guns/drugs pipeline. Met with Geo. Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg.

 

Jose Bueso-Rosa - Honduran General and rabid contra supporter.  A major drug trafficker on whose behalf Oliver North interceded to protect "National Security" information.

 

George Bush - As Vice President, was placed in control of all national security operations by Reagan National Security Decision Directives 2 & 3. Received special briefings from CIA on drug trafficking by Contra operators. Had staff members including Donald Gregg and Col. Douglas Menarchik turn up heavily in connection with drug investigations and  trafficking by CIA assets and agents.

 

Randy Capister - CIA covert operations chief for Central America. Worked under Alan Fiers, Clair George and "Dewey" Clarridge.

 

Floyd Carlton - Panamanian drug trafficker who used CIA contractor DIACSA as a cover. Ran drugs while receiving State Department subsidies. Witness against Manuel Noriega.

 

Frank Carlucci - Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) 1978-1981. Deputy Secretary of Defense 1981-2. Reagan National Security Adviser 1987-1989.

 

Rafael Caro-Quintero - Cartel level trafficker in Guadalajara Mexico. Ran Contra training camp in Vera Cruz. Involved in the 1985 murder of DEA agent "Kiki" Camarena.

 

Carlos Cabezas - Drug dealer/money launderer mentioned by Gary Webb and Cele Castillo. Can deliver names dates, places of cash deliveries to Contras from Meneses organization. Operated as FBI informant while dealing drugs at least through 1991.

 

Celerino Castillo - Senior DEA field agent for El Salvador and Honduras. Documented CIA and NSC flights at Ilopango airfield in El Salvador and reported same directly to Ambassador Edwin Corr and Vice President George Bush. Was told by Corr, "Leave it alone. It's a White House operation."

 

CEO, Evergreen Air - the mother of all CIA proprietary airlines and air operations since the demise of Air America.

 

Duane "Dewey" Clarridge - Chief of CIA Contra support operations from 1982 to 1984. Met regularly with Noriega, Morales and other traffickers. Convicted of seven counts of perjury during Iran-Contra trials and later pardoned by George Bush.

 

Tom Clines - Retired CIA Deputy under former Laos and Saigon Station Chief Ted Shackley. Convicted during Iran-Contra of tax evasion in connection with various schemes involving Shackley, Richard Secord and Carl Jenkins. Part of Contra supply network linked to CIA drug trafficking as far back as 1965 and through the CIA/Panamanian Watchtower missions in 1975-7.

 

Hillary Rodham Clinton - Senior partner in Rose law firm which negotiated many secret CIA contracts at the Mena airport for various tenants including members of the Hubbell family.

 

Roger Clinton - Brother of William Jefferson Clinton. Recovering cocaine addict. Involved with sales of cocaine.

 

William Jefferson Clinton - Governor of Arkansas during heavy and admitted CIA covert ops during Contra war. Received numerous reports of drug trafficking at Mena airport and was allegedly involved.

 

Edwin Corr - Ambassador to El Salvador during the Contra war. Received many reports of CIA drug trafficking. Told Cele Castillo it was a White House operation. Reportedly now teaching at the University of Oklahoma.

 

Rene Corvo - Miami Cuban, CIA asset dating back to the Bay of Pigs. Involved in Contra weapons shipments, drugs bombings, assassinations and many other all-American activities.

 

Sam Dalton - New Orleans attorney who subpoenaed the CIA regarding Barry Seal.

 

Doc Delaughter - Investigator for Arkansas Organized Crime Drug Task Force aimed at Dan Lasater that was shut down when they started getting close to Governor Bill Clinton.

 

John Deutch - Former CIA Director who promised a full, complete and open investigation.

 

Bill Duncan - IRS investigator who was the first to start investigations of Mena airport. Uncovered links to Arkansas banking and financial executives including Dan Lasater, Bill Clinton and the CIA. Ruthlessly suppressed.

 

John Duffy - Former San Diego Co. Sheriff and Reagan supporter of the Contra war effort. Mentioned by several sources as protecting CIA criminal operations in San Diego County.

 

Gary Eitel - Vietnam Vet, former CIA pilot, attorney and whistleblower. Aware of CIA drug ops in Mena dating back to 1972 and massive CIA movement of military aircraft into the drug trade. Special Independent Counsel in CIA C-130 case still pending.

 

Janice Elmore - Political (CIA) Officer, U.S. Embassy El Salvador. Routinely met with Salvadoran military and political leaders and allegedly used sexual liaisons to gather intelligence and protect drug operations.

 

Joe Neville Evans - One of Barry Seal's boys operating out of Mena.

 

Jeffrey Feldman - Ass't. U.S. Attorney in South Florida. Allegedly helped quash investigations leading to George Bush, Rene Corvo and John Hull.

 

Dee Ferdinand - Daughter of Col. Albert Vincent Carone. CIA bagman and paymaster for Ollie North, George Bush, Bill Casey. Possesses bank records and hard documents including a tape recording leading to George Bush.

 

Joseph Fernandez - CIA station Chief in Costa Rica. Debriefed one trafficker, Moises Nunez and cabled headquarters that Nunez was working for North.

 

Alan Fiers - Head of CIA's Central American Task Force during the Reagan years.

 

Bob Fletcher - Had his private toy company stolen by North/Casey associates Gary Best, Heinie Aderholt and John Singlaub. Witness in Cristic suit. Turned investigator and has since unearthed major documents incriminating Oliver North and others.

 

John Ford III - Long time CIA attorney connected to covert and proprietary air operations. Heavy in court documents linking CIA to embezzled C-130 aircraft. Active during Contra years and allegedly 100 per cent knowledgeable about CIA drug operations. Now a senior attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco in the same building as former U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello. Also connected to large numbers of C-130s moved by the CIA into the drug trade referenced in U.S. vs. Roy Reagan (1998).

 

Vaughn Forrest - Aide to Congressman Bill McCollum, travelling companion to Oliver North aide Rob Owen, friend of Oliver North (mentioned in his diaries) and was present in John Hull's home the day of the La Penca bombing targeting Eden Pastora.

 

Daryl Francis Gates - Retired LAPD Chief. Knows of CIA connections to LAPD and other law enforcement agencies through various links including the Narcotics Intelligence Network. (Boy would I like to question this one!)

 

Robert Gates - CIA intelligence executive under Bill Casey. Later served as Director of Central Intelligence for President George Bush.

 

Clair George - CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) 1984-88,

 

J. Porter Goss - Republican Congressman from So. Florida. Chair of the House Intelligence committee (HPSCI) charged with conducting hearings on Volume II. Retired CIA case officer who worked in South Florida with Shackley, Clines and Wilson. (Can you say "Conflict of Interest?")

 

Lee Grasheim - CIA contract operative, part-time spook associate - military hardware salesman, alleged drug and weapons trafficker in El Salvador. Connected to Contra supply efforts by Judge Lawrence Walsh.  Investigated by DEA, arrested and had his house raided. Connected to a plane crash involving drugs in Florida. Mentioned in Ollie North's diaries.

 

Donald P. Gregg - National Security Adviser to Vice President George Bush. Mentioned ubiquitously in every published work on Contra drug trafficking.

 

Lt. Col. James "Bo"Gritz - POW activist returned from Southeast Asia with a videotape of opium warlord Khun Sa implicating Shackley, Armitage, Clines and other CIA personnel in the drug trade.

 

Ramon Guillen-Davilla - Venezuelan General indicted just days after CIA Director John Deutch left Los Angeles in 1996 for smuggling 22 tons of cocaine into the U.S. Guillen is an acknowledged CIA asset/agent and was storing the cocaine in a CIA warehouse.

 

Woody Grantham - Longtime associate with CIA air contract and proprietary operations. Connected to last service of Barry Seal's C 123 Fat Lady, which was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986. Current owner of T&G airfreight (Arizona) which has received C-130s laundered by CIA through the Forest Service. One, leased/sold by Grantham caught with millions of dollars worth of coke on board in Mexico City in 1995.

 

Chico Guirola - DEA listed trafficker/smuggler connected to CIA and Contra operations by DEA agent Cele Castillo.

 

Mike Harrari - Israeli Mossad agent closely connected to CIA drug operations in Panama dating back to Watchtower in 1976. Security adviser to Manuel Noriega. Mentioned in Ollie North's diaries. Associate of North, Casey and Bush. Alleged to have died from heart attack in 1998 - not confirmed.

 

Frederick P. Hitz - CIA Inspector General who directed the investigations in Volumes I & II after the Gary Webb stories of 1996.

 

Ed Heath - Former DEA Supervisory Special Agent who monitored CIA drug related operations during the Contra years and later served as head of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) which handles all intelligence for drug related matters.

 

Martha Honey - Along with husband Tony Avirgan (wounded in the La Penca bombing) was an original plaintiff in the Cristic suit. Investigative reporter and now at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

 

Rick Horn - Senior DEA field agent. Now leading a class action suit against CIA for interference in recent drug investigations in Burma.

 

Web Hubbell - Lawyer, partner in Rose law firm, former Assistant Attorney General for President Clinton. Negotiated CIA contract for multiple tenants at Mena airport including the firm Park-On-Meter, directly tied to illegal weapons manufacturing for the Contras.

 

John Hull - One of the biggest CIA/NSC players during the Contra war. Indicted by Coast Rica for drug smuggling and

 

Neutrality Act violations Hull escaped on a DEA plane. Close to North, Bush, Quayle and Rob Owen. Reportedly used his ranch in Nicaragua and surrounding areas for drug flights into the U.S.

 

Admiral Bobby Ray Inman - Retired head of National Security Agency. Deputy Director of Central Intelligence 1981-2. Member of the Board of Directors of the Fluor Corporation where "retired CIA Deputy Director Bill Nelson met with Ron Lister who was connected to the Blandon drug organization, the CIA and North.

 

Carl Jenkins - Retired CIA Deputy Director of Operations. Among other things attempted to recruit retired Army CID Agent Gene Wheaton to help set up dummy airlines which would later be used for drug and weapons smuggling.

 

Leon Kellner - U.S. Attorney for South Florida. Jeff Feldman's boss. Went out of his way, in concert with William Weld to crush investigations leading to North, Bush and the White House.

 

Joseph Kelso - Freelance investigator/informant who revealed DEA corruption in Costa Rica which connected to CIA. Gave a 3 volume deposition in Avirgan v. Hull in So. Florida.  Yet also turns up connected to CIA laundering of C-130 aircraft through the Forest Service (see Dec. issue).

 

Senator John Kerry - Chaired Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations in 1986-8 (The Kerry Committee), produced voluminous evidence of CIA complicity in drug trafficking.

 

Peter Kornbluh - Administrator, National Security Archives where many important documents, including Ollie's diaries, CIA & DEA reports are stored. Has written and conducted extensive research on Iran-Contra.

 

Dan Lasater - Arkansas crony of Bill Clinton who allegedly called the CIA coke "Lasater's thing."  Junk bond king from Little Rock reported to have laundered millions in cocaine profits for the Clinton's and others.

 

Michael Ledeen - NSC staffer close to North and Bud McFarlane.

 

Carlos Lehder-Rivas - Co-founder of the Medellin cartel which gave money to the Contras and assisted North and Bush. Imprisoned in 1988 and recently released. One of the Chief witnesses against Manuel Noriega. Now residing in the Bahamas and reportedly back in business.

 

Mike Levine - Retired DEA. Former Country Attaché in Argentina. Witnessed CIA sponsored cocaine coup in Bolivia. Author, radio host, expert witness.

 

Ron Lister - Former Laguna Beach police officer who worked with Danillo Blandon and the Ricky Ross organization. Delivered guns to gangs and also met with retired CIA DDO Bill Nelson at the Fluor Corporation.

 

Eric von Marbod - Lifelong associate of Armitage, Shackley, Clines, et al. Vietnam hand connected to CIA/Laotian heroin. Protégé of Henry Kissinger. Ran Defense Security Assistance Agency for the Pentagon in the Reagan years, which provided cover for a multitude of covert ops connected to the Contras and other activities. Linked by Bo Gritz to drug trafficking and abandonment of POWs.

 

Dave MacMichael- Retired CIA case officer. Founder of Association of National Security Alumni. Lecturer/writer. Outspoken critic of CIA covert operations.

 

John Mattes - Former Federal Public defender who represented Jesus Garcia on weapons charges connected to the Contras. Uncovered links to George Bush's aide Col. Douglas Menarchik.

 

Traveled to Central America on investigations and suffered repercussions. Later served as an attorney for the Kerry Committee.

 

Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros - Honduran cartel level trafficker connected to the Contras. Moved four tons of cocaine per month into the U.S. through CIA connected firms like Setco, which he owned. Imprisoned in 1989 as CIA shifted allegiances from the Medellin to the Cali cartel. Now in prison in Colorado.

 

Col. Douglas Menarchik - National Security aide to George Bush whose private phone number turned up in the possession of a Contra gun runner connected to drugs.

 

Norwin Meneses - Supplier of Danillo Blandon. Long time CIA asset. Major Nicaraguan political heavyweight who always escaped US prosecution and arrest. Now serving time in a resort country club prison in Central America where he still exerts great influence.

 

Jack McCavett - CIA station chief El Salvador.

 

Rep. Bill McCollum (FL) - Longtime CIA friend associated with Bill Casey. Connected to the recruitment of Gene Wheaton to set up dummy airlines for gun/drug smuggling. Also connected to the Knights of Malta, a secret order used to launder money during the era. McCollum's aide Vaughn Forrest was with John Hull in Costa Rica the day of the La Penca bombing.

 

Prof. Alfred W. McCoy (University of Wisconsin, Madison) - Author: The Politics of Heroin. World recognized expert, professor and author who has been researching CIA complicity in the global drug trade since the early 1970's.

 

John McMahon - Retired CIA Deputy Director bypassed by the likes of Dewey Clarridge and North. A so-called "moderate" who Bill Casey ignored in his conduct of illegal drug and guns operations during the era.

 

Robert "Bud" McFarlane - National Security Adviser to President Reagan. Oliver North's boss. Indicted over Iran-Contra issues not related to drugs.

 

Ralph McGehee - Retired CIA case officer, outspoken CIA critic and publisher of CIA-Base. Created a publicly available database of CIA dirty tricks including drug running.

 

Ed Meese - Reagan's second Attorney general who handled the Iran-Contra affair. Covered up evidence of CIA drug trafficking and other crimes.

 

Rick Messick - Former aide to Senator Richard Lugar who reportedly leaked sensitive documents from the Kerry Committee to Oliver North and other Reagan officials.

 

Ramon Milian-Rodriguez - Accountant for the Medellin cartel who testified to administering $10 million plus in "donations" for the Contras.

 

Jorge Morales - Convicted Colombian drug smuggler, Florida playboy connected to Geo. Bush who testified to shipping guns to Contras in exchange for drugs and protection from American law enforcement investigations.

 

Frank Moss - American pilot. Partner with Matta in Setco

 

Mario Murga - DEA and CIA informant for Celerino Castillo. Identified aircraft with black crosses on their tails as being CIA drug and weapons flights.

 

Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega - Long time CIA asset and colleague of George Bush before his ouster in Operation Just Cause in 1989. Former dictator of Panama, the money laundering capital for the drug trade and prime transshipment point for a variety of CIA cargoes. Allied with the Medellin cartel. Now serving a prison sentence.

 

Oliver North - There aren't enough words and I couldn't print them all anyway!

 

Rob Owen - Preppie aide to Ollie North and courier/messenger who traveled throughout Central and Latin America. Hand picked from the staff of Indiana Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana which is also the home state of John Hull.

 

Michael Palmer - Pilot and drug smuggling operator of CIA contractor Vortex, heavily referenced in Volume II.

 

Col. Nestor Pino - U.S. Army Special Warfare expert connected to Bo Gritz, William Bode, Richard Armitage and Erich Von Marbod. Involved in Contra supply drug operations reportedly connected to drugs.

 

Ross Perot - Texas billionaire and longtime POW activist known to have heavy intelligence and political contacts. Reportedly backed Richard Armitage into a corner over Armitage's alleged connections to drug trafficking, gambling and POW abandonment in 1986.

 

Adm. John Poindexter - National Security Adviser to President Reagan. Oliver North's boss when Iran-Contra broke.

 

Tom Posey - Founded Civilian Military Assistance, a cutout Contra support operation. Connected to Hull, Calero, Frank Chanes, North, Owen and the attempts to silence Jack Terrell and murder Eden Pastora.

 

Gen. Colin Powell - Senior Pentagon official who oversaw much of the weapons transfers to Iran and out of Pentagon into private hands. Calls Richard Armitage his "white son."

 

Rafael "Chi-Chi" Quintero - Cuban born assassin and long time CIA operative known to have worked for Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and Ed Wilson. Heavily involved in Contra support operations including, according to Contra pilot Michael Tolliver, the coordination of drug flights. Known associate of Casey, Bush, North bagman and drug money launderer, Albert Carone.

 

CEO, The RAND Corporation - On acquisition and sharing of data from UCLA's NPI and other sources with the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

Roy Reagan - Aircraft broker, longtime CIA associate convicted in 1998 of defrauding the government in a scheme to steal C-130's from the Forest Service, move them through CIA proprietary Evergreen Air facilities and into the drug trade. Some C-130's moved through Mena, AK. Most turned up overseas doing anything but fighting fires.

 

Terry Reed - CIA contract pilot trained and handled by Barry Seal and Oliver North. Exposed direct CIA drug connections at Mena airport and connections between George Bush and Governor Bill Clinton. Framed for insurance fraud when he refused to go along with drug smuggling ops.

 

Oliver "Buck" Revell - Former Assistant Director of the FBI. Part of Terrorist Incident Working Groups (TIWGs) in the NSC under Bush. Very close to Ollie North. Responsible for harassment of Contra drug witnesses and the cover-up of criminal conduct leading into the White House.

 

Win Richardson - Former analyst and mid manager of E-Systems near Dallas. Documented cocaine flights on E Systems aircraft. E-Systems is a major defense contractor with former CIA Director William Raborn on the Board.

 

Mike Riconosciouto - CIA computer expert tied to various illegal CIA covert ops including reprogramming of PROMIS software and drug trafficking through Mena Arkansas.

 

Glenn Robinette - Security officer for North and Secord's Enterprise.  DC Private investigator and retired CIA operative used by Oliver North to harass and intimidate key witnesses including Jack Terrell and the Cristic Institute.

 

Felix Rodriguez - (a.k.a. Max Gomez) Longtime CIA hand from the Bay of Pigs era. Connected to drug running and covert military operations. A major CIA player who ran operations at Ilopnago Hangars 4 & 5 where DEA agent Cele Castillo documented drug flights. Involved in 1998 delivery of U.S. helicopters to Mexico to "fight" the drug war.

 

Ricky Ross - Celebrated dealer of the Dark Alliance series. Labeled the king of crack cocaine by the L.A. Times. Started the crack cocaine epidemic receiving CIA protected shipments of cocaine. Now serving an undetermined sentence after life sentence overturned.

 

Don Richardson - Political Officer (CIA) U.S. Embassy El Salvador. Knew of drug operations sanctioned/protected by the Agency and ordered by the White House.

 

Jimmy Rothstein - Retired NYPD Detective. Knew Al Carone. Has openly detailed CIA drug involvement through NYPD for decades as well as the targeting of African Americans for CIA heroin shipped via the French Connection and the Prince of the City cases. Has hard documents linking CIA to rental of facilities for drug dealers connected to the Agency.

 

Mike Ruppert - former LAPD narcotics investigator from CIA connected family. Eyewitness to a CIA agent arranging drug shipments in 1976-7. Writer, lecturer and expert witness on the subject of CIA drug trafficking.

 

Joseph Russoniello - Former Assistant US Attorney in San Francisco, labeled by CIA as "most deferential" to their interests. Quashed the "Frogman" investigations connected to Norwin Meneses. Represented defendants in CIA's embezzlement of C-130 aircraft in U.S. v. Reagan. Now occupies offices in the same building as John Ford in the headquarters building of PG&E in San Francisco.

 

Dr. David Sabow, MD - Brother of Marine Col. Jim Sabow who was murdered after discovering C-130s with Forest Service markings flying cocaine onto El Toro Marine Air Station in 1991. Col. Sabow's death was ruled a suicide in spite of forensic evidence proving murder. Sabow, who was hounded by the Marines, can offer additional information relevant to CIA drug trafficking.

 

George Schultz - Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan

 

Peter Dale Scott - Professor, UC Berkeley, author of Cocaine Politics.  Recognized expert on CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking.

 

Richard Secord - Retired AF General tied to CIA drug operations from the Vietnam era. Longtime associate of Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Ed Wilson and Richard Armitage. Caught embezzling funds from government contracts through EATSCO. Heavily involved in Contra supply operations with Oliver North.

 

Ted Shackley - Retired Associate Deputy Director of Operations at CIA. Hired by CIA in 1951 and rose to power in anti-Castro efforts Mongoose and JM-WAVE in So. Florida in the early 1960s. Perhaps the strongest continuous thread in the history of CIA drug dealing. Former Station Chief in Laos and Saigon. ADDO under CIA Director George Bush in 1976 and heavily involved in Iran-Contra. Still active in the intelligence community.

 

Ronald Siegel, PhD - Pioneer researcher on crack cocaine at UCLA's Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI). Traveled to South America several times in late 70-early 80s. Expert on the addictiveness of the drug and UCLA connections to RAND and the CIA.

 

John Singlaub - Retired Army general and rabid anti-Communist. Heavily involved in illegal weapons supplies for the Contras, many of which were purchased with drug monies. An essential part of The Enterprise and front man for Contra support activities.

 

Stanley Sporkin - retired General Counsel for the CIA during the Casey years. Now a sitting United Stated District Court Judge in

 

 Washington, D.C. (The e-mails used to read "To Stanley from Ollie.")

 

Kenneth Starr - Former special assistant to Reagan Attorney General William French-Smith who knew about, and helped author the infamous memorandum removing CIA's responsibility for reporting drug trafficking by its agents and contract employees.

 

Col. James Steel - Commander Mil Group El Salvador. Principal liaison between the military and Felix Rodriguez and Oliver North for operations at Ilopango airfield and throughout El Salvador.

 

John H. Stein - CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) from July 1981 - June 1984.

 

James Robert Strauss - Bagman and laundry man for cocaine profits through organized crime to support a variety of missions including POW rescue efforts. Partner of Col. Albert Carone whose daughter, Dee Ferdinand, has a tape of Strauss acknowledging that the CIA operations known as Amadeus were run by George Bush. Travel records indicate heavy international travel to launder cocaine funds for the Agency, Bill Casey and the NSC.

 

Lewis Tambs - U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica. Planned victim of alleged assassination attempt by John Hull, CIA and Ollie North. Opposed transfer of C-130s from Australia to South America for use in the drug trade.

 

Dois G. "Chip" Tatum - CIA operative and pilot who participated in CIA covert operations, assassinations and drug missions. Claims direct connections and meeting with George Bush and Bill Clinton during the Contra era. Claims to possess hard documents, tape recordings and other evidence connecting to Israeli Mossad officials and CIA executives including Ted Shackley and William Casey. Whereabouts unknown.

 

George Tenet - Current Director of Central Intelligence who supervised the declassification of Volume II of Inspector General Fred Hitz's 1997 investigation.

 

Jack Terrell - Self-styled mercenary who became the chief witness in the Cristic lawsuit. Began working for Tom Posey's CMA and became exposed to drug operations at Ilopnago in El Salvador and John Hull's ranch in Costa Rica. Became an obsession of North, Hull, Robinette and Owen. Prosecuted and hounded on trumped up weapons charges.

 

Bill Tyree - Former U.S. Army Special Forces troop involved in CIA drug operations in Panama (Watchtower) dating back to 1976-7 under the Directorship of George Bush. Eyewitness and participant to drug exchanges involving CIA and Manuel Noriega. Wrongly framed and convicted for the murder of his own wife in 1979, Tyree is now plaintiff in a $63 million suit against the CIA, George Bush and Bill Clinton. An invaluable source.

 

Vang Pao - Southeast Asian Hmong opium warlord who commanded a CIA Army in Laos for Ted Shackley and the CIA. Heavily involved in the opium trade. Relocated to Montana after the Vietnam War where there are currently numerous allegations of CIA drug smuggling.

 

Director, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) - On relationships and connections with the RAND Corporation, CIA and research into addictive qualities of crack cocaine and other drugs.

 

Frederico Vaughan- Nicaraguan Sandinista official involved in alleged drug sting manufactured by Oliver North.

 

Lupita Vega - The only Salvadoran national working for the Mil Group with above Top Secret clearances in El Salvador. Handled coded traffic and communications regarding drug flights.

 

Judge Lawrence Walsh - Special Independent Counsel for Iran-Contra. Received voluminous information about drug trafficking and decided it was not within his mandate to do anything about it. As a private attorney in the early 80s obtained End User Certificates for Richard Secord's Eatsco airfreight company.

 

Gary Webb - The Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author of Dark Alliance who got us into all this mess again. (Thank God!)

 

Judge William Webster - Former FBI Director. Appointed CIA Director after Bill Casey's death in 1987. Presided over the cover-up at CIA.

 

Scott Weekly - Annapolis classmate of Oliver North. Friend of Bo Gritz. Covert operations specialist and weapons expert. Described heavily in Gary Webb's Dark Alliance. Linked to drug and weapons trafficking in Southern California through Ron Lister.

 

Casper Weinberger - Reagan Secretary of Defense. Responsible when large numbers of military personnel, especially Green Beret's, were used on drug connected missions. Also oversaw diversion of military aircraft, personnel and resources into drug missions run by the CIA.

 

Russel Welch - Arkansas State Investigator who was one of the first to uncover CIA drug smuggling at the Mena airport and connections to Bill Clinton. Ruthlessly suppressed.

 

William Weld - Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division under Reagan. Stalled or aborted every criminal investigation into drug trafficking connected to the CIA and the NSC.

 

David Westrate - High ranking DEA official who handled sensitive intelligence liaison between CIA, DEA and Congress dating back to the mid-70s. Rose to become Assistant Administrator.

 

Gene Wheaton - Retired Army CID, Air Force OSI investigator. Arguably the deepest witness to ever come from inside covert operations and publicly oppose CIA drug trafficking. Investigator for the Cristic Institute, the Sabow family, one of the first at Mena and deeply involved in the C-130 investigations involving CIA and the Forest Service.

 

James Woolsey - First CIA Director under Bill Clinton prior to the appointment of John Deutch.

the following:

Item #01 - Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.

 

Item #02 - The Carone Report

 

Item #03 - The Tyree Papers

 

Item #-05 - The UCLA Oral History

 

 

 

 

Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847

mruppert@copvcia.com

 

© COPYRIGHT 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

 Part One     

CIA - Drugs and Campaign Fundraising

The Dominicans, The Democrats and New York

Joe vs. The Volcano and The Avalanche and The Steamroller and The Machine and City Hall and the CIA

 

by Michael C. Ruppert

 

According to a "law enforcement sensitive" 1997 DEA report entitled "The Dominican Threat - A Strategic Assessment of Dominican Drug Trafficking," Dominican Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) are responsible for as much as one-third of all the cocaine entering the Continental United States. In the same report, DEA estimates total annual U.S. cocaine consumption at close to 500 metric tons (1,100,000 lbs.). The same report also states that, "The only reason the Dominicans do not dominate the U.S. heroin market as well is that South American production is unable to meet U.S. demand." The Dominicans are buying less expensive [than Asian] Colombian heroin and totally control heroin distribution throughout the northeast. [See related story on Colombia this issue]. Piecing together various sections of the report prepared by DEA's National Drug Intelligence Center, it is safe to estimate that 20-25% of all cocaine and heroin revenues inside the U.S. are controlled by Dominicans. The smuggling is centered around New York City,  Philadelphia and, to a lesser extent, Boston.

 

Last month FTW documented how approximately two hundred and fifty billion dollars a year in drug money is laundered inside the U.S. It is therefore safe to assume that DTOs  launder, conservatively, $30 billion a year through the United States. [Figures are not available on Dominican control of marijuana sales in the northeast but credible estimates range as high as fifty per cent].  Using a standard cash multiplier of six, this means that approximately $180 billion in cash transactions take place each year as a result of Dominican drug trafficking in the northeast.  How many jobs does $180 billion represent? Remember that in the summer of 1998 The Russian Federation begged for only $18 billion to save its entire national economy.

 

Eighty per cent of all U.S. Presidential campaign donations come from New York, California, Texas and Florida. The Bush family governs Texas and Florida. Hillary Clinton is going all out to become a Senator from New York. Against all of this, as it was developing ten years ago, came a single intrepid and incorruptible INS agent Named Joe Occhipinti. In his twenty-two years

 

 he had earned 78 commendations and awards. He had solved the murders of two NYPD officers and, in 1989,  he thought he had found a way to weaken the grasp of Dominican drug lords in the Washington Heights section of New York City.

 

 

The Snake Pit

Like all really great plans, Project Bodega was very simple. Senior INS agent Joe Occhipinti knew that most of the drug trafficking and money-laundering by Dominicans in New York City relied upon an ecosystem centered around tiny family owned markets, known as bodegas. Throughout the Washington Heights section of New York, bodegas were everywhere, seemingly too many to be sustained in a normal environment where they sold cigarettes, bread, beer and toilet paper.  Joe knew that the bodegas were being used to launder drug profits, as stash pads for drugs, as under-the-counter gun stores and as neighborhood pawn shops. Joe knew that many of the bodega owners had borrowed heavily to open these family run markets and were making heavy cash payments to "irregular" lenders to stay afloat.

 

Joe also knew that Dominican political and business organizations which had donated heavily to the campaign of Mayor David Dinkins were connected to the bodegas. But what he didn't know as he began the simple and straight forward process of approaching bodega owners and asking for consent to search their premises, was that he had taken on the Democratic political machine of New York City, the Dominican drug cartel, the Dominican Revolutionary Party and the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

Project Bodega was hugely successful. In one bust alone Occhipinti and crew came across a duffel bag containing more than $130,000 earmarked for a mysterious legal loan sharking operation out of Greenwich Connecticut called Sea Crest trading. Sea Crest has since been linked by a number of law enforcement sources, to the Central Intelligence Agency. In an additional head-scratching irony, other bodegas connected both to Sea Crest and Islamic terrorists were suspected of raising money to build bombs through fraudulent food coupon schemes. One of those bombs blew up at the World Trade Center in 1993. Sea Crest, according to published reports, has accepted food coupons as interest payments on its loans. Working closely with special prosecutors, including Assistant DA John F. Kennedy, Jr., Occhipinti began to make a real dent in some well established business operations in New York City.

 

When, after more than forty arrests and the seizure of more than a million dollars in drug cash, Project Bodega threatened the cash stability of the Dominican cartels and their relationships in the ecostructure of the northeast, a Dominican front group of businessmen (many with DEA documented links to the cartel) turned  on the heat with Mayor Dinkins. In April, 1990 Dinkins, who had benefited from Dominican largesse, started accusing Occhipinti of engaging in a Republican backed conspiracy to interfere with the voter registration and civil rights of Dominicans.  Federal Civil Rights complaints followed, along with investigations by the U.S. Attorney's office. By March of 1991, after tremendous pressure and harassment, Occhipinti was indicted on 25 counts of violating the civil rights of 12 plaintiffs.

 

Occhipinti's trial was a sham and the abuses of law were so egregious as to arouse widespread support for the beleaguered agent. Exclusionary rules were ignored. Defense witnesses were intimidated.  As Joe struggled to stop the eight hundred pound gorilla bashing him around the zoo, and friends came to help, one lawyer and one journalist were brutally murdered. Conflicts of interest were overlooked. Perjured affidavits were allowed and, after Occhipinti's lawyer suffered a mental breakdown, the judge publicly humiliated the attorney and refused to allow him to withdraw from the case. 

 

Joe was not without support from fellow law enforcement professionals. According to Joe, one staunch supporter who suffered was retired FBI Assistant Director Jim Fox, who ran the World Trade Center bombing investigation. According to Occhipinti, "Fox publicly stated that there was evidence of my innocence. When he refused to recant his public statement he was suspended two months before his retirement. He was a real stand-up guy!" But the result was a foregone conclusion. Joe was going to jail. Get out of the way.

 

What was interesting was that the civil rights violations alleged at trial did not include a single act of brutality, violence, corruption or dishonesty. The sentence was unheard of. In June of 1991, Occhipinti was sentenced to a 37 month prison term for civil rights violations and thrown into a prison housing many of the Dominican drug lords he had once investigated. Sleep tight.

 

As public pressure from political figures, mostly Republican, and journalists including Mike McAlary of the New York Post mounted, President George Bush commuted Occhipinti's sentence in January, 1993. Savaged by the ordeal, a graying law enforcement hero moved to New Jersey with his wife and three daughters and tried to clear his name.

 

The Truck That Hit Him

After reviewing more than two hundred pages of documents supplied by Occhipinti, conducting our own interviews and speaking with Joe directly several times it is apparent that Joe walked right into a buzz saw from which he had no real hopes of escape. In this writer's opinion the only thing that really let Joe get out of prison alive was the fact that, if he did not, the myth of the rule of law in this country would have been forever shattered. Every law enforcement officer in the country who heard Joe's story would have had no reason to go to work and, with good reason, probably would have refused to do so.

 

The way the drug ecosystem works is that Dominican immigrants, whether legal or not, using forged ID papers regularly enter the U.S. and congregate in communities like New York's Washington Heights. Those who can pass muster as legal residents are often encouraged to open local bodegas. The first problem they encounter is that they can obtain no credit. In steps one of the loan shark lenders like Sea Crest who charge rates of as high as fifty per cent a year on the loans necessary to get started. Payments too high? Not selling enough Bud to pay $2,000 a week interest? No problem. The Dominican drug lords can fix you up. All you have to do is launder money from drug sales and take your cut off the top. Sea Crest accepts payments in cash (or food stamps) and it can even transfer money back to the Dominican Republic.

 

If you don't want to launder drug money you can serve as a stash pad for drugs, or guns, and get paid for that. You can also become a contracted wire service outlet that sends money back home to your family and the drug lords there.

 

How much money is involved? Well, according to one DEA report, released under a Freedom of Information Act Request, Sea Crest has been the lion in the documented moving of as much as $500 million in bodega booty. Not bad for a few 7-11 stores. DEA is quite emphatic that this is only what they have documented. The DEA report [File GFCT-92-4001] also states quite clearly that Sea Crest, which has been targeted by a fistful of agencies then laments that investigations are routinely "hampered and legislatively fought by certain interest groups and not a single case has been initiated."

 

Every news story we reviewed, every interview reported and Joe Occhipinti himself says that the "interest group" is the CIA. That's largely because, no one else would have the clout to keep law enforcement away from Sea Crest's ongoing operations.

 

Dominican drug bosses hurt by Occhipinti's investigations were also no strangers to politics. One group, The Federation of Dominican Businessmen and Industrialists, was, on the one hand, full of documented drug traffickers and, on the other hand, giving generously to local Democratic politicians - including Dinkins. Any industry moving more than a half billion dollars through one borough of the city  has clout. And the Dominicans are no strangers to the ways of corruption. They vote too. But more importantly it is imperative to understand what happens to the hundreds of millions of dollars sent back to the impoverished island which the DR shares with Haiti.

 

A quick check with a couple of sources confirmed my suspicions. The Dominicans don't stuff the money in their mattresses, nor do they put it all in Swiss bank accounts. As FTW described last month, off shore banking washes drug money a second time before sending it right back into New York banking and investment operations where it buys even more power for Dominicans by giving them status as investors and board members.

 

What does the CIA get out of this? Lots of cash. Absolute economic and political control of a poor country close to home. They get a kind of sting operation that attracts all sorts of shady characters who know they can get away with schemes at the local bodega. (This was probably how CIA was tracking some of the Islamic terrorists it had helped to create). But there is yet another twist and that takes us back to HUD and ethnic cleansing in America.

 

In the May issue, From The Wilderness printed an exclusive article by Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of Housing under George Bush and previously a Managing Director of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read. In that article, Fitts described a pattern of home loan mortgage defaults which she connected to the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged Los Angeles in the 1980s. Then she made a strong case that the destruction of property values was an intended program of ethnic cleansing which made millions of dollars in profits for people who later came along and scooped up abandoned homes for pennies on the dollar.

 

A retired NYPD detective who has worked on several major narcotics and corruption cases, which later connected directly to the CIA, has told FTW that in the late seventies and early eighties he conducted investigations leading to real estate scams allegedly run by political allies and contributors to, that's right - David Dinkins. In those cases, pertaining to upper Manhattan and the Bronx, certain minority owned neighborhoods were specifically targeted for drugs and prostitution to drive down property values and force people to move so that speculators could buy the property, clean it up and make millions. The speculators would, of course, then "donate heavily to Dinkins' various campaigns." According to Occhipinti, "The illegal use of bodegas, travel agencies etc has expanded into the black community." Surprise, surprise.

 

Joe basically ticked off everybody there was to tick off. And when it came time to take him out, nobody objected. Remember who was President in 1989, 90, 91? It was George Bush, whose CIA was protecting the traffic.  Everybody had something to lose in New York if one dedicated and talented cop - with the big heart he has - was allowed to do his job. And there's a good reason why George Bush, leaving office in 1993 with the horrible stench of Iran-Contra cocaine would love to have a guy like Occhipinti in his debt. Joe's investigations led more closely to the Democratic machine of New York than the White House.  Regular readers of FTW will recall that Bill Clinton blackmailed his way out of the impeachment by blackmailing the Republicans with a finished document on their deeds in Iran-Contra. The concept is just like nuclear war and it's called Mutually Assured Destruction. I assure you that George Bush is familiar with it.

 

Both before and after Joe's sentence was commuted a number of state, local and national political figures went to bat for him.  Some, like Congressman Jim Trafficant (D), Ohio are still working on Joe's behalf today. They have had little success. "We have gotten nowhere with the current Administration," said Paul Marcone, Washington Chief of Staff to Traficant. Not only is Traficant's office continuing in its attempts to secure clemency for Occhipinti, it has sponsored legislation in the last three Congresses to enable the appointment of an Independent Counsel in cases of misconduct by U.S. attorneys. According to Marcone, "Reno sides with the career attorneys every time because if they admitted they were wrong, just once, the whole thing would come apart. The Occhipinti case is just the tip of the iceberg." Expressing frustration over the years of fruitless efforts on Occhipinti's behalf Marcone added, "The only thing Joe was guilty of was putting bad guys in jail. If it can happen to Joe it can happen to anyone. But even with all of the Congressman's work we have gotten nowhere. It just wears you down after a while."

 

 Hundreds of pages of DEA and other law enforcement files, including affidavits and investigative reports suppressed at trial were read into the Congressional Record by Traficant - including a statement suggesting that Traficant had ulterior motives in assisting Occhipinti. Resolutions were passed, local politicians signed on and a serious drive was underway to get Joe a new trial. Joe persisted in that effort, with heart, until 1995. But his lessons did not stop.

 

 As became apparent to him over time, not all who came to his aid with assistance and advice were purely altruistic.  Some sources have alleged that Trafficant, who was allegedly trying to escape from an indictment from Janet Reno's Justice Department, used the information gleaned from Joe's case to end the investigation. Marcone emphatically denied that assertion and pointed to a flawed prosecution by the FBI, which resulted in an easy acquittal on corruption charges stemming from Traficant's service as a

 

sheriff in Ohio. The source who made the allegations against Traficant is, however, directly related to an attorney in the Rose Law firm who was prosecuted by Ken Starr. No wonder Joe is tired.

 

A great irony of this story is that in a 1994 story on Joe, The New American reported on the relationship between Occhipinti and John F. Kennedy, Jr. "He [JFK, Jr.] knew and occasionally conversed with Occhipinti's wife Angela, and on one occasion sent a handwritten note to the children." The New American story added that Occhipinti was saddened because JFK, Jr. had not come forward to protest Joe's obvious innocence and how his legal team was considering issuing a subpoena if a new trial were granted. That issue was rendered moot, not by John-John's death but by Joe's own decision.

 

Joe told FTW, "Please realize that in 1995 I decided to discontinue my efforts to expose the drug cartel conspiracy after it became evident that there were very powerful special interest groups that were stonewalling our efforts for Congressional hearings and the designation of a Special Prosecutor." Asked if "special interests" meant CIA, Joe responded, "CIA and politicians at the highest level are the only ones who could have contained these investigations and where they might lead."

 

Joe has since founded the National Police Defense Foundation, supported by Traficant as Honorary Chairman, which is dedicated to protecting honest cops who find themselves in the similar predicaments. One of his first cases was that of a Pennsylvania State Attorney General narcotics investigator named "Sparky" who is every bit as tough as Joe. In next month's issue we will bring you John "Sparky" McGlaughlin's story which will take the Dominican Drug lords, an allegedly Communist Dominican political party, the CIA and lots of money directly to the doorstep of Al Gore and Bill Clinton. This time, CIA agents actually surfaced in attempt to kill investigations. They, showed ID, left memos, evidence and nearly destroyed the life of another dedicated cop who, to this day, refuses to give in.

 

 [For more information on the tax exempt National Police Defense Foundation contact Joe Occhipinti at 1-888-SAFECOP or e-mail him at npdf1@aol.com. I sure wish I had had someone like Joe around for me in 1977.]

 

Sources:  New York Post - Oct. 9,10,11, 1991       

 

 The Hartford Courant - 8/16 & 17/98

 

The New American - Feb. 21, 1994        

 

New York Daily News - 7/4/94

 

Gloucester County Times - 10/16/95      

 

New York Post - 4/26/95

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

 

Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847

mruppert@copvcia.com

CIA - Drugs and Campaign Fundraising 

Part Two - The Dominicans, The CIA, Pennsylvania, New York and Al Gore

"Sparky" -  A Case Study in Heroism and Perseverance when CIA Documents Surface and CIA Intentions Reveal an Intelligence Community, a White House, an Economy and a Nation Out of Control

 

by Michael C. Ruppert

 

According to a "law enforcement sensitive" 1997 DEA report entitled "The Dominican Threat - A Strategic Assessment of Dominican Drug Trafficking," Dominican Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) are responsible for as much as one-third of all the cocaine entering the Continental United States. In the same report, DEA estimates total annual U.S. cocaine consumption at close to 500 metric tons (1,100,000 lbs.). The same report also states that, "The only reason the Dominicans do not dominate the U.S. heroin market as well is that South American production is unable to meet U.S. demand." The Dominicans are buying less expensive [than Asian] Colombian heroin and totally control heroin distribution throughout the northeast. Piecing together various sections of the report prepared by DEA's National Drug Intelligence Center, it is safe to estimate that Dominicans control 20-25% of all cocaine and heroin revenues inside the U.S. The smuggling is centered around New York City, Philadelphia and, to a lesser extent, Boston. In reports released this summer the CIA indicated that the size of Colombia's coca crops increased by 28% in 1998 making Colombia by far the world's largest drug producing nation. DoJ sources report that opium poppy cultivation is also increasing rapidly. [See article "Hail Colombia" in this issue].

 

In June, FTW documented how approximately two hundred and fifty billion dollars a year in drug money is laundered inside the U.S. It is therefore safe to assume that DTOs launder, conservatively, $30 billion a year through the United States. [Figures are not available on Dominican control of marijuana sales in the northeast but credible estimates range as high as fifty per cent].  Using a standard cash multiplier of six, this means that approximately $180 billion in cash transactions take place each year as a result of Dominican drug trafficking in the northeast.  How many jobs does $180 billion represent? Remember that in the summer of 1998 The Russian Federation begged for only $18 billion to save its entire national economy.

 

Eighty per cent of all U.S. Presidential campaign donations come from New York, California, Texas and Florida. Those same four states are also where the vast majority of drugs are imported and drug monies laundered in this country. The Bush family governs Texas and Florida. Hillary Clinton is going all out to become a Senator from New York.

 

Last month we brought you the story of former INS agent Joe Occhipinti, a dedicated and incorruptible investigator who, in 1989, took on the seemingly invincible Dominican drug lords of New York and ran up against a meat grinder fueled by the CIA, the Democratic political machine, the Colombian cartels and a mysterious banking firm called Sea Crest Trading. Joe's investigations led directly into the heart of the Dominican power base in New York City. That base in New York is the center of Dominican financial power in the United States and that power, through the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) [The PRD is alternately referred to in source documents as the DRP] is governed by major drug traffickers closely tied to the CIA and the American Democratic Party.  What started off in 1989 as a hugely successful operation aimed at breaking the grip of Dominican traffickers wound up with Joe Occhipinti imprisoned in 1991, the sole target of manufactured civil rights charges which did not involve dishonesty, violence or wrongful imprisonment of anyone other than Joe. Investigative efforts by and for Occhipinti led directly to the Central Intelligence Agency. Pardoned in 1993 by outgoing President George Bush Occhipinti has struggled for years to clear his name - with only limited success. The rocky and painful ground traveled by Occhipinti six years earlier was unknown to another dedicated and aggressive narc in Pennsylvania named "Sparky".

 

 

 

"Sparky"

 

I guess I would jokingly call him the ringleader. His name is John R. McLaughlin. He is 44 years old. In 1977 he became a Pennsylvania Highway Patrolman and quickly distinguished himself as an investigator. In 1992, because of his tenacious investigative style, leadership and ability to produce results, he joined the staff of the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office (OAG/BNI) as a narcotics investigator. Joe, whose nickname is "Sparky", has been, and remarkably still is, what we in LAPD would have called a "hard charger." He is one of those guys (like I used to be) who would always work the overtime if it came to taking a bad guy off the street, who, when others would say, "Come on man, you've earned the paycheck, take it easy," would say - "No, I think there's just one more thing I gotta do first." "Sparky" is one of those cops who, if we had ten thousand of them in the right places, would actually put an end to serious organized crime and when the last bad guy was arrested, turn in his badge and gun, walk away from a job he loved and look for another career. That is the kind of thing honorable men do. That is what "Sparky" McLaughlin is.

 

On October 20, 1995 John McLaughlin and his team of investigators knew that the Dominican drug gangs were dominant in and around Philadelphia where they were concentrating their enforcement efforts. He certainly knew that Dominicans controlled the flow of heroin and cocaine onto Philadelphia streets. Being a guy who always liked to go to the top, "Sparky" had a habit of digging when tantalizing leads came his way.  So, on October 20, 1995, when he and his crew, which came to include fellow investigators Charles Micewski, Dennis J. McKeefery and Edward Eggles, interrogated Dominican national drug suspects and found campaign literature leading to the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and the presidential campaign of Jose Francisco Pena-Gomez, they were intrigued. By October 23, 1995 an IG Regional Director had gotten involved and an Intelligence Analyst for the State made a call to the CIA to discuss what they had found. Apparently the CIA was interested.

 

According to records and affidavits filed as part of a 1998 civil suit filed by "Sparky" and his colleagues against employees of the CIA, the State Department and the State of Pennsylvania, CIA Agent David Lawrence was interested enough to travel to the BNI offices that day to discuss the case and find out what information "Sparky" had turned up. Hindsight being 20/20 I'll bet "Sparky" now rues the day that first contact with CIA was ever made.

 

While the bureaucrats, or the "suits", as they are known, did what they do, "Sparky" and Co. did what they do. Sparky quickly developed informants inside the (PRD) and by November 13, 1995 had learned that if the PRD candidate, Jose Francisco Pena-Gomez, won the upcoming presidential election in May, 1996 that "narcotics would flow much easier into the U.S." from Dominican and PRD sources. On December 7th (another bad omen for "Sparky" & Co.) the CIA contacted BNI intelligence analysts and advised that the CIA station in the Dominican Republic was very interested and that the CIA would send a field representative to BNI's office on Dec. 11th. CIA Agent Victoria Naylor advised BNI that she would henceforth only talk over a secure phone.

 

On December 11th 1995 Naylor visited BNI and opened up a liaison on the case with McLaughlin's superiors. Meanwhile, McLaughlin Company were digging deeper into the leadership of the PRD and starting to make large seizures of heroin, cocaine and cash. McLaughlin, now working with regional DEA officials, penetrated the PRD leadership leading to Worcester, Massachusetts and back into the heart of Dominican power in the New York City area. By January 17th of 1996, just five months before the Dominican Presidential election and ten and a half months before the U.S. presidential election, McLaughlin's investigation was attracting notice in many quarters.

 

On January 17, 1996 the CIA advised BNI that it was sending an official from the Caribbean desk to brief BNI on the Dominican Revolutionary Party. The CIA did a background check on everyone who would attend. The CIA also provided a confidential memorandum for the CIA Chief of Station Larry Leightly, which read in part that Pena and the PRD were widely seen as the U.S. Embassy's candidates of choice in the 1994 elections. Over time it was revealed by the CIA, through various memoranda and conversations that Pena, even though he was both an avowed Marxist and a major drug trafficker, enjoyed the support of both Bill Clinton's State Department and Bill Clinton's Central Intelligence Agency. The Leightly memo also explained that Assistant Secretary of State Alex Watson was "in Santo Domingo on 11 December 1994 and had a lengthy meeting with Pena." Although Pena-Gomez has a long history of Marxist and anti-American activism "Pena-Gomez and the [PRD] are considered main stream in the political spectrum. He and his ideology pose no specific problems for U.S. foreign policy."

 

Meanwhile, back on the streets, "Sparky" was still doing police work. He was cultivating two undercover informants, one of whom was able to report on activities at the highest levels of the PRD. By January 23, "Sparky's" informants were relaying information that the mainstream candidate favored by the Clinton White House was demanding huge cash payoffs, condoning and supporting drug smuggling but warning party members not to get caught with drugs before the election. Party leaders also relayed a promise that if Pena-Gomez won the election he would "greatly facilitate the flow of drugs into the US" and the flow of money into PRD pockets.

 

By March 25, "Sparky's" main informant had worked his way into the national PRD leadership in New York City, the same turf where Joe Occhipinti had been bludgeoned six years earlier. From just one informant McLaughlin had been able to document a single stream (out of many streams) of drug money into Pena's coffers totaling more than $2 million. Federal investiagtions were raging everywhere and even the Treasury Department's FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) was tracking the dollar volume of drug money involved.

 

 

 

OOPS!

On March 27, 1996 CIA Agent Dave Lawrence came to BNI and met directly with "Sparky" McLaughlin and his regional director, John Sunderhauf. According to court documents filed in McGlaughlin's civil suit "CIA Agent Lawrence stated that he wanted the memo that he gave this agency on January 31, 1996 back as BNI shouldn't have received it. CIA Agent Lawrence went on to state that he wanted the identification of the C/I [Confidential Informant] and what province he came from in the Dominican Republic, CIA Agent Lawrence was adamant about getting this information and he was agitated when BNI personnel refused his

 

 request. Agts. McGlaughlin and Micewski feared for the life of the informant and his family if this information was revealed because if the informant disappeared there would be no problem for the Clinton Administration. 

 

"CIA Agent Victoria Naylor had come to BNI between January 31st and March 27th with a third Memo from Larry Leightley that confirmed all of BNI's findings but BNI was not permitted to retain a copy. Unlike the other two memos this memo was extremely difficult to read as all the sentences ran together without punctuation, which was done on purpose as this was a highly classified document for "EYES ONLY."

 

That same day the plans of BNI and DEA agents to surveil Francisco Pena-Gomez personally as he arrived in New York City were thwarted by the fact that he arrived with an unexpected heavy bodyguard of NYPD detectives which made any surveillance impossible. McLaughlin and his DEA allies were told that Pena had received several sudden death threats. He was now going to be driven around on his cash pick-ups by NYPD!

 

Over the course of many issues FTW has documented how the CIA routinely infiltrates local police departments. FTW has written extensively about retired NYPD Detective Al Carone, who was a lifelong friend of both CIA Director Bill Casey and Mafia figures like Pauley Castellano and Vito Genovese. Carone served as a cocaine bagman during the Contra years for both George Bush and Oliver North. Later, on the night of Pena's arrival, an attempt to insert two undercover agents offering $250,000 in cash on behalf of cartel connected dealers into a PRD party meeting for Pena was mysteriously rebuffed.  That did not stop Pena, however, from collecting more than a half million dollars in drug money from other PRD leaders. The worm had begun to turn on the progress of "Sparky" McGlaughlin's once in a lifetime investigation.

 

 

From God's Eye

It is not surprising that every PRD official present that night had a DEA NADDIS (Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Information System) number. NADDIS numbers are issued to drug trafficking and money laundering suspects when open investigations are started by DEA or the FBI.

 

To depart from FTW's usual methodical, chronological, painstaking case building, we will now flash forward to Coogan's Pub in the Dominican-controlled Washington Heights section of New York in September 1996. This would be two months after Pena-Gomez was narrowly defeated in run-off Dominican elections and had already announced his intentions to run again. It was less than two months before the 1996 U.S. Presidential election. It was just weeks after the Gary Webb stories broke in the San Jose Mercury News. It was also just weeks after former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts, then a HUD consultant revealed maps of defaulted HUD mortgages in various cities, including Los Angeles that showed a dramatic connection between CIA protected drug trafficking and patterns of ethnic cleansing. On a night in September, 1996, if you had zoomed in on a close up, from God's eye, into Coogan's Pub in Washington Heights, you would have seen PRD leaders Simon A. Diaz, PRD Executive Commission Vice President (NADDIS #3164850 - Money Launderer) and Pablo Espinal, PRD Executive Commission and Zone President (NADDIS #1289859 File # ZL-79-0017 - Money Launderer) hold a fund raiser for Vice President Al Gore who was only too happy to attend in person. Many of those attending that night had been present back in March for Pena's fundraiser. Several of them had convictions for sales of pounds of cocaine, weapons violations and the laundering of millions of dollars in drug money. FTW did not have the resources to check Federal Election Commission records to determine how much money Gore raised but several sources have indicated that it was probably several hundred thousand dollars at least.

 

OK readers, ask yourself one question: Is it possible that Vice President Al Gore's Secret Service detail did not know that most of the people in Coogan's Pub had NADDIS numbers and many had a history of violence? Is it possible the FBI did not know? Is it possible that DEA wouldn't tell the Secret Service? For the record, it is mandatory for the Secret Service to run background checks on everyone arranging a function with the President or the Vice President or any member of their families. They search just about every database there is.

 

 

 

Systematic, Ugly and Mean

Less than two weeks after "Sparky" McLaughlin and crew refused to turn over the name of the confidential informant who was rapidly pulling the covers off the PRD and the Clinton White House, "Sparky's" life and the lives of his partners began to unravel - big time!  A whole book could be written on the systematic, ugly and mean things that were done to compel submission and, as the CIA so loves to do, make an object lesson for others. First, all of McLaughlin's pending cases in state and local court were either thrown out or declared nolle prosse (not prosecutable) by the Philadelphia DA. News stories began appearing in print and in TV indicating that McLaughlin's unit was under investigation for massive corruption and linked to an ongoing major corruption probe of the Philadelphia PD's 39th Precinct. Attorney General staffers were caught using office fax machines to send the planted news stories to media outlets outside of the region in attempts to fan the flames of gossip and innuendo. Superiors, including an Assistant Attorney General, ordered McLaughlin and crew, to not defend themselves in the press. McLaughlin's home phone number and home address were leaked to the press. An internal affairs investigation was started over an inconsequential grammatical error in a search warrant affidavit written by McLaughlin. DEA agents in Pennsylvania and New York were told that they could no longer cooperate with "Sparky" or his team. The Philadelphia DA released all of McLaughlin's arrestees and attorneys were encouraged to file appeals on all of McLaughlin's prior convictions.

 

On top of all this every piece of paper, every phone call, every venture outside BNI offices in a police vehicle has been scrutinized. Even "Sparky's" restroom breaks are monitored. New supervisors have come into BNI and openly derided him as being crooked and/or stupid. One of them appeared to have been promoted and assigned with the sole purpose of "getting" McLaughlin. On one occasion "Sparky" was deliberately held till the last minute then forced to leave the building at a run on a corridor that was slick and freshly washed. "Sparky" went down and hurt his back. Implications have regularly been made that "Sparky" and crew are guilty of perjury and theft. Still the orders come to "Sparky" to remain silent and not defend. Even now he and his attorney, former Pennsylvania Congressman Don Bailey, are under a gag order and not allowed to talk about their lawsuit or the multitude of pending administrative and civil proceedings coming from both sides.

 

The FBI came to BNI and took most of the folders connected to "Sparky's" cases. The psychological message was clear, - "We're looking for another comma out of place so that we can file federal charges." Eventually, according to "Sparky's" confidential informant, who is as loyal to "Sparky" as "Sparky" is to him, lawyers with political connections were coming to PRD meetings and instructing PRD members to accuse McLaughlin and Co. of money skimming.

 

How bad did it get? Well, Pennsylvania has its own particular style. The political pressure got so bad, and the state Democrats were so threatened that Democratic State Senator Vince Fuomo urged a convicted drug dealer to seek vengeance against McLaughlin, (for what is unclear because he was never officially charged with anything).  From the open Senate floor in May 1996 Fuomo screamed, "I say sue them [McLaughlin's team]. Hammer them to death! That's the only time they're going to get the message Bankrupt them, take their houses from them. They deserve that kind of treatment"

 

As I read the more than seventy pages of McLaughlin's diary, filed as a part of his suit, I was literally amazed that the BNI and the Philly DA, at the CIA's direction, pulled every two bit, mean-spirited, third grade, nasty trick conceivable to break and punish John McLaughlin for his integrity. And, as I read it, they also did the one and only thing that would really hurt a guy like "Sparky" - they took him off the street. They forbade him and his partners from assisting on search warrants and even from leaving the building when fellow officers were in danger close-by and requesting assistance. That is the one way to really hurt a street cop. Not only have they done everything possible to break this crew, they have done everything to provoke them. Some of the crew have retired, some have filed for disability, but not one has ever been prosecuted for any criminal offense after years of investigations and ruthless torment. Not one has ever been disciplined for anything more serious than a manufactured "rules" violation. Even though "Sparky's" team has been ordered to "count paper clips," "Sparky" has fought back by the book and he has shown up for work every day. They haven't broken him and if anyone deserves the nickname, he does.

 

 

A Momentary Respite then

An examination of the trials of "Sparky" and Co. shows very little respite over the course of four years. As "Sparky" has fought back the pressure has stayed on - with one notable exception. Between the time of the appearance of the Gary Webb stories in the San Jose Mercury News (August 1996) and the 1996 Presidential election in November, interest was shown by various Washington interests including the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter and the legendary Jack Blum, former chief investigator for the Kerry hearings into CIA-Contra drugs. In spite of efforts to stall and delay on the part of Pennsylvania officials, McLaughlin was allowed to present evidence to SSCI in closed session in 1997. [Coincidentally - McLaughlin was interviewed by the same two investigators, Al Cumming and Melvin Dubee, who were sent to interview me after my confrontation with DCI John Deutch on November 15, 1996 in Los Angeles]. This attention from the "other side of the aisle" eventually forced an admission out of Pennsylvania AG officials that there was absolutely no evidence at that time that "Sparky" and Co. had committed any crime whatsoever. Then, after the 1996 election had safely passed the heat picked up again. John McLaughlin now drives a 300 mile round trip, every day, to keep going to work at a new assignment, "counting paper clips" far away from his home. In the words of an official spokesman who requested anonymity for fear of being accused of breaking the gag order,  "Not one of these men ever did anything wrong. Period. To this day, not one single person, on either side of the law or either side of the aisle has produced one single piece of evidence of any criminal or administrative misconduct on the part of John McLuaghlin or the other plaintiffs in this case. This was all about retaliation and ruthless suppression of evidence showing corruption at the highest levels of the American government."

 

There are two stories here. One is the really naked story of how drug money has corrupted the Democratic Party machine the same way it has corrupted the Republican Party machines in other states and nationally. The other story is of the incredible courage and tenacity of a man who has literally taken everything that was thrown at him and is still standing. Without digressing into my own twenty years against the system let me just say that I stand in awe of John McLuaghlin. Barring major changes in the national environment (which I consider imminent) John's civil suit will likely be settled sometime after January 2001, when William Jefferson Clinton is safely out of office. "Sparky" and Co. will receive a nice settlement and a nice pension because the defendants will know that if the case ever gets before a jury no amount of money would rise to the severity of the wrongs committed. The cynicism of the system, as I have found it to operate, is such that it routinely steals the best years out of good people's lives and callously figures that if they survive a little money will make them go away quietly. "Sparky" McLaughlin and his partners deserve better than that and America needs to prove that it is worthy of them.

 

"Whatever happened to Pena-Gomez?" you ask. He died (suddenly) of pancreatic cancer last year. Know what FTW thinks? We think that Bill Clinton played rope a dope with a drug dealer, taking his money and making many promises and then using the CIA to make sure that the PRD lost the election. That, according to those like his former bodyguard L.D. Brown, is classic Clinton style; promising jobs to many, taking their money and then hanging them out to dry. After all, Bill Clinton has other drug interests to protect.

 

A Closing Pitch from The New York Times

I thank the New York Times for writing the closing section to this article on May 10, 1998.

 

''The narcotics traffickers don't like to have all their eggs in one basket,'' a senior Dominican Government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. ''And so they donate to all the parties. But the biggest problem is in the P.R.D. We don't like to say that publicly, however, because then people think we are acting from political motives.''

 

In the United States, Federal drug agents and local law enforcement officials have also been looking closely at the party's branches and leaders throughout the Northeastern United States. The drug enforcement agency's documents identify the party's New England headquarters in Worcester, Mass., as a major drug distribution center. They say that local party officials in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, some of whom have previous drug convictions, are also involved in such activities.

 

          Even if the drug traffickers' candidates are defeated, the rings will offer no respite, warned Mr. Velez, the Colombian businessman who is in custody here. The Colombian cartels, having established an enormously lucrative foothold in the Dominican Republic, will stop at nothing to expand it, he said, even if that means ''killing judges, lawyers, cops and reporters,'' as well as ordinary citizens who stand in their way.

 

          ''In whatever country they establish themselves,'' Mr. Velez said, ''the cartels get involved in politics and the economy, buying up properties and infiltrating all aspects of public and private activity. That's what's coming here, and this country isn't prepared and doesn't know how to stand up to it.

 

         " - It's going to be a catastrophe.''

 

FTW wonders what country Mr. Velez is worrying about. If the United States goes to war in Colombia it will be to weaken the power of the cartels, just like in 1989 when we invaded Panama. Only the stakes will be higher.

 

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Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847

mruppert@copvcia.com

 

UPDATE MARCH 11, 1999

THE TIMELINE TELLS THE STORY OF HOW THE CIA-DRUG CONTROVERSY WAS CLINTON'S HOLE CARD IN THE IMPEACHMENT!

 

1982 - Ken Starr, part of French-Smith special staff which negotiates the smoking gun memorandum letting CIA off the hook for reporting narcotics violations. Anonymous source in Justice tells me that Starr actually wrote the memo. Starr's own confIrmation hearings as Independent Council confirm that he worked directly for Smith. MSNBC last week ran footage of Starr walking and joking with Casey. The CIA report says that the MOU was negotiated with Smith's special staff.

 

Late 1994 - Ken Starr appointed IC to investigate Clinton.

 

Summer 1995 - Coral Baca contacts Gary Webb with nearly impossible to get Fed. Grand Jury transcripts given to her by a US Attorney from Texas reportedly connected to contra era drug shipments. He got a reprimand for giving her the material. It's in Gary's great book. Coral Baca is irrefutably connected romantically in an ongoing relationship with Carlos Lehder, co-founder of the Medellin cartel, imprisoned by Bush Admin in 1988 or so and later forced to testify against Noriega - a Medellin ally. I have law enforcement records, recently unsealed from a court case, in which the IRS believes that Baca has a child with Lehder.

 

Lehder is now out of prison, living in the Bahamas and hates Geo. Bush.

 

As Starr investigations nail people like Hubbel and McDougal the Webb stories break to resounding public attention which baffles the doo doo out of people like me who have been out here for nearly twenty years trying to garner a sideways glance. This is especially true after what we knew from the Kerry report eleven years ago. The single loudest screaming out about CIA and drugs is Maxine Waters who, for whatever reason, has still said more publicly than any member of Congress. Even John Kerry. But, as of now, to no avail.

 

The CIA visit to So. Central, the IG investigation by Fred Hitz, the March release of the Starr memo via mail to Maxine (showing Republican premeditation) and the declassification of the utterly damning Volume II all take place at the hands of Clinton appointees, Fred Hitz and George Tenet who take their orders from no one else.

 

Maxine Waters becomes Bill Clinton's irrationally exuberant cheerleader.

 

March 1998 - About a week after the surprise hearing on Vol. I on March 16, Maxine gets the smoking letter implicating Starr in the mail She's surprised that she got it. But it came from another Clinton appointee either George Tenet or Fred Hitz - I'm not clear which. At the same time she does a walking tour of South Central LA with the Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan. Shortly thereafter her district receives several hundred million dollars in investment credits.

 

The declassified version of Volume II is released to the public on Oct. 8th by George Tenet, one hour after Henry Hyde's committee votes to begin an impeachment inquiry. (No doubt at the President's direction here). I know this because I was talking to Mike Schmitz in Maxine's office less than an hour after it happened.

 

Maxine turns really quiet after the revelations in Volume II. She has issued only one press release and sponsored one small event in LA at which Gary and I both spoke. Gary was the featured speaker but community activists raised a stink and got me time after Maxine's aide said he didn't want me on the program. She has refused to attend two events sponsored by the Crack The CIA Coalition since the release of Volume II and she has done nothing to turn out the tens of thousands she did at town hall meetings when Gary's stories first broke. She has withheld her support from other events around Vol. II in South Central.

 

Mike Levine who crystallized it for me when I heard him talking about how the Dems were so angry because they had let the Republicans off when the Kerry Committee had them by the cojones eleven years ago and could have impeached or jailed the whole Reagan-Bush administration.

 

Feb 11, 1999 - The day before the Senate caved in on the impeachment vote (Feb. 11) my web page and the published story on Volume II and the impeachment had four visits from the US Senate. Subscribers to my newsletter, From The Wilderness, have seen the proof of this. The Senate had no other business on Feb. 11 other than the impeachment.

 

March 1999 - Manuel Noriega's sentence is reduced allowing him to walk a free man within the next three years. It will probably be sooner.

 

If I am right then Maxine will continue to be silent about Volume II. If I am wrong then she'll turn her energies back to the unbelievable revelations therein contained. My guess, sadly, is that since the deal had been made and Clinton saved his job, the House Intell. Committee under retired CIA officer Porter Goss may never hold hearings at all. But that works to our advantage because Volume II is still on the table and the House must dispose of it.

 

I have e-mailed back and forth with Gary Webb on this. He was very skeptical that he had been used. But we all feel that way when it happens the first time. This is exactly what the Central Intelligence Agency does. It is their business. They plant stories in countries overseas to engineer political events and crises. Anybody who thinks the CIA just gathers intelligence and sells drugs is a big fool. This is right out of their manual.

 

Bill Clinton basically said that if he was going anyway it wouldn't have mattered what came out about Mena. So he was going to take everyone else down with him.

 

He won.

 

But another round begins as leaks surface about Israeli moles in the White House, Chinese Intelligence penetration of the White House and Los Alamos and missile technology sold to the Chinese.

 

Stay tuned because Vol. II, by design, can be played again, and again and again... Our job is to heat things up so that the next time it gets played the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

 

Mike Ruppert

 

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OLDER UPDATES ARE BELOW

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ALERT! 1-1-99

CIA-Drug Report Now A Part of the Impeachment Battle

 

 By Michael Ruppert (Receiving Death Threats)

 

© Copyright 1999, From The Wilderness and Michael C. Ruppert at www.copvcia.com.

All rights reserved.

 This document may be re-posted or reprinted without restriction only if the above copyright information appears.

 

There is now no doubt that Volume II of the CIA Inspector General's investigation of Contra Drug trafficking is a part of the impeachment calculus. Various sources are reporting on the net that Bill Clinton is threatening to bring down the entire government with Volume II hearings which are supposed to occur within the next three weeks. As described in the October and November issues of my newsletter From The Wilderness,  Volume II, released October 8th is a virtual confession by the CIA that it criminally conspired, with premeditation, to traffic in cocaine during the Contra war.

 

Long time Clinton critic, Larry Nichols, released a newsletter yesterday in which he acknowledged this scenario and attempted to cut the issue off from reaching former president George Bush. In that newsletter he stated that although Oliver North and John Poindexter (both implicated by Vol. II) were guilty of dealing drugs, they were, "rogue elements who were not a part of the 'racquet club'." This is a patently false and absurd statement intended to separate George Bush (hence his sons) from guilt in CIA's fifty years of drug dealing. Nichols is reportedly aligned politically with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell who are both supporting George W. Bush for president in the year 2000.

Evidence linking George Bush, the National Security Council and the White House directly to Contra era drug trafficking is abundant and irrefutable. It includes (just to list a few items):

 

I.                 Executive Order 12333 and National Security Decision Directives 2&3 which placed Bush directly in control of all national security operations including drug interdiction and the contra war.

 

II.               The fact that Special Forces personnel including Bill Tyree were ordered to participate in CIA drug mission during the 1970s when George Bush was Director of Central Intelligence. Direct evidence of this is contained in a 1998 $63 million federal lawsuit filed in Boston, Tyree v. CIA, Bush et al. This suit can be referenced at www.copvcia.com by using the search engine and entering "Tyree".

 

III.             The fact that George Bush was Director of Central Intelligence when I was first exposed to CIA drug trafficking and CIA attempted to recruit me through my (then) fiancee who was a CIA agent.

 

IV.            Direct links to George Bush's staff arising from investigations into Barry Seal.

 

V.              The investigation by former Federal Public defender John Mattes which located the phone number of Bush aide Col. Menarchik in the possession of an alleged gun runner, Jesus Garcia, connected to drugs.

 

VI.            Gary Webb's magnificent book, Dark Alliance.

 

VII.          Terry Reed's book Compromised and his witness statements to the effect that Bill Casey (i.e. George Bush) had anointed Clinton to become president if he behaved himself.

 

VIII.        The written testimony of Celerino Castillo (DEA retired) in which Cele was told by U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr that CIA drug dealing out of Ilopango airfield in El Salvador was a "White House operation."

 

IX.            The written testimony of Michael C. Ruppert in which I was told by a former NSC staffer that decisions to deal drugs were made at the NSC (White House) level.

 

X.              The investigation of Col. Albert Vincent Carone which shows that Oliver North's and George Bush's chief bagman had direct links to both Geo. Bush and Bill Casey.

 

XI.            The written record of Senator John Kerrey's investigation into CIA drug trafficking of eleven years ago which produced mountains of evidence linking directly to Donald P. Gregg, Geo, Bush's national security adviser.

 

 

Even the CIA report itself describes special briefings for then Vice President Bush which indicate his culpability.

 

CIA drug dealing is not an isolated or rogue event. In the U.S. v. Roy Reagan, Tucson (1998) former CIA pilot and special independent counsel Gary Eitel testified that CIA was flying drugs into Mena, AK as far back as 1972-5.

 

In my opinion Bill Clinton is threatening to scorch the earth and to bring down the entire government. This becomes even more likely as Rep Chris Cox's House Committee looking into technology transfers to China raises the specter of treason in connection to the Clinton administration. It should be remembered that many of these transfers began under Geo. Bush and that the Bush family has extensive business investments in China.

 

 

Note that Volume II of the CIA's Inspector general report www.odci.gov was released just one hour after the House Judiciary Committee voted to begin the impeachment inquiry. It was released by George Tenet, the CIA Director who is a Clinton appointee. I believe that Bill Clinton picked up the phone and ordered Tenet to release the more revealing of two versions of the report in a clear message which said, "OK, I can play that game too." The major media has ignored Volume II because it has been told to.

 

 

In reviewing the events of the past four years, since Gary Webb's magnificent stories in The San Jose Mercury News, I notice a pattern which indicates that the Webb stories may well have been planted, without his knowledge, in preparation for just the scenario we see being played out now. Ken Starr, who authored a memorandum between Reagan Attorney General William French-Smith and Bill Casey showing premeditation on the part of CIA and the administration to deal drugs, was appointed Independent Counsel in late 1994. In the summer of 1995 source Coral Baca showed up at Gary Webb's doorstep with documents which started his whole CIA investigation. Coral Baca is now married to the infamous drug dealer Carlos Lehder who was at one time the number three man in the Medellin cartel and who was imprisoned by Geo. Bush and later used as the chief witness against Manuel Noriega.

 

 

George Bush overthrew the Medellin cartel in favor of the Cali cartel at the end of the Contra war. That is a motive for revenge against Bush.

 

 

For the record, I will restate my belief that William Jefferson Clinton is guilty of a great many crimes including drug smuggling at Mena, illegal fundraising and the illegal and treasonous transfer of technology to China. But Bill Clinton did not begin this treason and his removal will not end it. Bill Clinton is a side of the same coin as George Bush and although they may be feuding with each other they must both go down, in measure for their crimes, if the truth is to win out and the American people are to be served.

 

 

For the record, if I had my choice as to which one of the two represented the greater evil, I would say George Bush - without the blink of an eye. I'll give you just two reasons for that: George W. and Jeb.

 

DEATH THREATS

I have made a number of radio appearances in which I have discussed parts of the above and my support for Maxine Waters who has been the single most significant Congressional voice on the issue of CIA drug dealing. It is possible for me to support her without saying that I endorse Bill Clinton. On Dec. 30, I was a guest for three hours on the Sightings radio program of host Jeff Rense in 35 cities nationwide. Several of my writings have been posted at various places on the web. As a result I have received a number of death threats and other intimidating messages calling me a "nigger lover", "traitor to my race" etc. and stating, "We have ways of dealing with your kind".

 

For the record I am proud to have received the endorsement of a number of African-American groups including the Baptist Ministerial Conference of Southern California, The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Kwanzaa, The Mount Zigurat Baptist Church, Maddads, 1800 Unite-Us, yes, and even the Panther Vanguard Movement. I will be proud to die, if necessary, claiming them as advocates of the truth. We have been pitted against each other by race, sex, political affiliation, geographic location for too long. Just as evil knows no color, neither does virtue.

 

When someone shows me a more outspoken leader in Congress on the issue of CIA and drugs than Maxine Waters then I will support them.

 

What I need now is money and support: money to get to Washington for hearings and cover the thousands I am spending on mailings and the web page, and support to distribute this message.

 

In a subsequent message I will tell you of a meeting on January 12 at 46th and Main which will begin the process of organizing a protest March at the intersection of Florence and Normandie on April 29, 1999, solely on the issue of CIA and drugs. We expect 10,000. This March will include all races, sexes and political viewpoints and it will demonstrate that the American public does have a voice and is capable of using it.

 

 Mike Ruppert

1-1-99

If you want to know MORE about this subjeItem #01 Extracts and Commentary from Vol. II of the CIA Inspector General's Report.

 

Items #10 & 11 - CIA Drugs and the Impeachment (video or audio)

 

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Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847

mruppert@copvcia.com

How Strange Does It Have to Get?

Why It Is Time To Decriminalize Drug Use

 

by Michael C. Ruppert

 

 

 

 One of the things that has made From The Wilderness successful has been our ability to take bizarre and seemingly inexplicable events and, through our analysis, make sense out of them. FTW is a giver of "Ahas!" A good example was our explanation of exactly how and why the Impeachment of President Clinton proved to be such a tragicomic debacle. By laying out a timeline we demonstrated clearly how Bill Clinton blackmailed his way out of the Impeachment with a CIA report incriminating George Bush and the Reagan Administration in cocaine trafficking. By revealing connections between Ken Starr and secret 1982 negotiations that made it easier for the CIA and its agents to move drugs, we produced many (still reverberating) "Ahas!". [We will be publishing our first book on that subject next year.]

 

FTW provides you with what we like to call a "map" of the political and economic geography in which we live and move and have our being. The result, we hope, especially in times of crisis or rapid change, is an empowering guide for clear-eyed, intelligent action based upon truly informed choices rather than frightened reaction or resignation and denial. We firmly agree with Thomas Jefferson that a well informed public will almost invariably come to the right conclusion. You and I both know what the problem with that equation is.

 

Let's consider some examples about how well - by design - you have NOT been informed:

 

Did you know that in August the Drug Enforcement Administration seized 40,000 pounds of sterile Canadian hemp seeds as they were being imported for use as birdseed? The seeds (for more than a hundred years a principal ingredient in all bird seed) contained less than 13 parts per million of THC, the ingredient in marijuana that causes intoxication. Hemp and marijuana differ in that hemp is not intoxicating. The seeds were incapable of sprouting if planted. Using the same ratio, a non-alcoholic beer has four times more alcohol than these seeds have THC. Is the DEA afraid that the seeds would be a "gateway" drug to lead parakeets on to crack cocaine? In November, after stunning humiliations, the DEA, which had undoubtedly been acting on orders of the Justice Department and the White House, through Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey, relented in its seizure order. But it still has not released the load. Why?

 

Did you know that of all the plants on the earth there are none that have more commercial uses than hemp, from clothing to food, to medicine, to energy, to building materials? Did you know that commercial hemp production would threaten the incomes of pharmaceutical companies, synthetic textile makers, timber companies, chemical companies and paper mills? For a real eye opener I suggest that you read Jack Herer's well documented and very "fun" book The Emperor Wears No Clothes, now in its twelfth printing. He has a standing $50,000 cash offer to prove him wrong.

 

Did you know that 7 states and the District of Columbia have voted overwhelmingly in favor of medical marijuana?

 

Did you know that, regardless of state laws, doctors and nurses routinely provide marijuana to cancer and terminally ill patients in hospitals and hospices?

 

Did you know that Members of Congress, led by Bob Barr of Georgia, actually attempted to throw out and invalidate a vote by the people of the District of Colombia (61%) in favor of allowing medical marijuana? Brother Barr is still working on that particular butchery of the democratic process.

 

Did you know that, as reported by The Sentencing Project this November, women are the fastest growing component of our prison population and that almost all of them are non-violent drug offenders? Two thirds of them have children under the age of eighteen. In 1986 the number of women in state prison for drug offenses was 2,400. In 1996 it was 23,7000 - a tenfold increase in ten years. 

 

Did you know that in 1986 there were 34,000 men in state prisons for drug crimes and in 1996, ten years later, there were 213,900? Most of the men there now are non-violent drug offenders.

 

Do you know that privately held corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut (with a long and well documented history of CIA financial and management connections) house many of these prisoners under contract to all levels of government and that their stocks trade on Wall Street? The stock prices rise and fall based upon the number of inmates housed and provided as "slave" labor to the government and major corporations

 

Did you know that the naturally occurring byproducts of the opium poppy and coca leaf are relatively non-addicting substances that have been in the general pharmacopoeia of mankind for thousands of years with comparable (usually lower) addiction rates than alcohol - especially distilled spirits?  Did you know that it is only the manmade chemically refined versions of these drugs that are overwhelmingly physically addictive for certain people?

 

Did you know that if these drugs were not illegal their retail values would probably be hundreds of times less than what prevails on the streets today? To paraphrase my friend, author Dan Russell whose new book Drug War is a must read, "Go out on the street and buy some cocaine. Easy. Now, go out and try and buy a coca leaf. Impossible. Try the same thing with heroin. Easy. Now try to score a little opium ball. Impossible." Learn what has become obvious in the Netherlands and Britain and Switzerland and Belgium and many other countries: An addict who does not have to burglarize a house to get his drug will not burglarize a house. He or she will go to the clinic or to the doctor for a dose.  A functional addict will go to work, get a paycheck and pay for his or her drugs. How many alcoholics are hard working and never miss a day of work yet, stupefy themselves nightly to the great loss of their families and friends?

 

Do you know that two governors (New Mexico and Minnesota), many church leaders, a former U.S. ambassador, university professors and deans, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, current and former heads of state of many western hemisphere nations, the former Vice Chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, two former and one sitting U.S. district court judges  and several state supreme court justices have called for an end to The War on Drugs? They call it, quite correctly, a total failure.

 

Did you know that on October 25, as Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey was calling for $1.5 billion dollars worth of military aid for Colombia, ten million - TEN MILLION - protestors took to the streets in that ravaged country of out-of-control warlords, maniacs and people defending themselves from U.S. inspired carnage? They pleaded, begged for peace. Two million marched in Bogota alone. Like Kosovo, Colombia is a home to the two most precious commodities of the Twentieth Century - oil and drugs. It is only in these nations, like Vietnam, that the U.S. selectively intervenes and turns local conflicts into inflamed, infected, pustulated and bloody profit centers where U.S. made arms, equipment and consumer goods disappear into black holes of devastation.

 

Did you know that drug related asset forfeiture, without due process of law or a conviction, is now a major component of law enforcement budgets nationally and that the total amount of money and property seized from Americans, without a trial, is in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually? Did you know that in 1992  L.A. County Sheriffs deputies murdered  Donald Scott, in a bogus drug raid, in another (Ventura) county, just so they could seize his ranch? Coincidentally, it was a ranch that Scott, on a number of occasions, had refused to sell to the National Park Service. The search by deputies, following Scott's murder, revealed no drugs anywhere on the property, not even a sterile hemp seed or an intoxicated canary. Nor did Scott have any criminal record. Scott's case is no different from thousands of cases each year - just bigger.

 

Did you know that the Senate, this November, in a long overdue response to the unjustifiable discrepancy in mandatory sentences between crack and powder cocaine (100 to 1), took steps to resolve the conflict? Instead of voting to reduce mandatory crack sentences to compare with those for powdered cocaine they voted to raise the mandatory minimum sentences for powder. They voted for more prison beds and labor for Wackenhut and CCA rather than taxpayer benefit.

 

According to former San Jose Chief of Police Joseph MacNamara, now a fellow at the Hoover Institute, when Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs in 1972, the Federal law enforcement budget allocation was $101 million. Today, in FY 2000, it is $17 billion at the Federal level and, according to FTW Contributing Editor Catherine Austin Fitts, it is $73 billion if you include state and local expenditures and prison construction. $73 billion is more than the annual budget of three quarters of the nations on earth. Did you know that today drugs are more plentiful and comparatively less expensive than they were in 1972?

 

Did you know that in 1999, also according to Chief McNamara, there are 60,000 active case investigations of police corruption in the United States involving one or more police officers?

 

 

Let's Get Personal

It is time to draw a line in the bullshit.

 

Did you know that Renée Boje, a 30 year old California commercial artist who was helping two AIDS patients grow marijuana for medicinal use (after California's Proposition 215 legalized it) was arrested for her efforts? When she realized that she, who had no criminal record, was facing a Federal sentence of ten years to life in prison, she fled to Canada. She realized that the Federal Government has made her a pawn in its war against all seven states which have legalized medical marijuana. Just over half a millenium since the burning of Joan of Arc, the United States is attempting to fry a new kind of heretic. And the attractive Bojee is not a regular drug user and the plants were not hers.  Like Jean D'Arc - as the French call her - Boje is becoming a messenger telling us about cowardice and greed.

 

Her friends, two AIDS patients Peter McWilliams and Todd McCormick, were arrested on Federal (not state) charges, and told by the U.S. district court judge that, if tried, they would not be allowed to tell the jury of their need for medical marijuana or of the California law permitting it. They have both agreed to a plea bargain to avoid serving minimum ten year (death) sentences in a federal penitentiary. Boje is now fighting extradition on the grounds that she is a political refugee and would be a political prisoner in the U.S. Does this woman sound as though she deserves ten years to life?. Do two young men near death from AIDS deserve the wrath of the U.S. law enforcement establishment? I have filed an affidavit in support of Renée's application for political refugee status in Canada. [To read more about Renée's case pick up the December 1999 issue of Glamour Magazine or visit her web site at www.thecompassionclub.org/renee .

 

Is all of this strange enough for you?

 

I am going to explain to you why the government of the United States of America must go to any length to defeat and imprison a 30 year old woman who was trying to assist her sick friends. When I became a policeman I expected and wanted to face dangerous and violent criminals, people who hurt society and their fellow man. I'll be damned if I can see any kind of a threat in these three. I see more danger and harm in those who would persecute them.

 

 

 

Changing The Map Instead of Reading It

Before I take a stand on any particular issue, and before I even try to analyze a problem for my readers I try to remove any personal bias. Before I spout off further let me tell you where I am coming from.  When I was a Los Angeles police officer, specializing in narcotics, I bought the drug program, propaganda and campaign hook, line and sinker. It was easy to see that heroin addicts committed crimes. It was happening all around me in South Central L.A. I made more than 500  arrests of "hypes" who were committing burglaries, stealing cars, selling drugs, forging checks etc. Then I caught the CIA dealing drugs and saw them have not only complete immunity but the assistance of local law enforcement managers and intelligence officers as well. In 1976 I attended a two week DEA training school at which I was told the official policy of the United States Government: "Cocaine hydrochloride is less harmful than  marijuana." I am angry about that piece of propaganda even today.

 

I have also written more than thirty articles on the subject of substance abuse for The U.S. Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence. I was its West Coast Correspondent from 1983 to 1986. I also wrote stories on crack cocaine for L.A. papers when the epidemic was just starting. I served on the Board of Directors of the National Council on Alcoholism of the San Fernando Valley for two and a half years.

 

I am also a recovering addict myself. My drug of choice was alcohol. And, thanks to a 12 step recovery program, I have not used a mind altering substance of any kind - not even a beer or a joint - in what will be seventeen years come January of 2000. I have worked with and "sponsored" a great many addicts in recovery from their addictions to all kinds of substances from alcohol to crack cocaine to heroin. So I have some experience on the subject and arguably no particular axe to grind.

 

So how do we explain this strange - no, this BIZARRE - behavior by our government and elected representatives? The only way to explain this behavior is to see clearly that the United States needs for illegal drugs, especially marijuana, to remain illegal. Why? Because legalization of marijuana would remove the need for billions of dollars in law enforcement and prison budgets. Legalization would drastically reduce the price and the huge profits would no longer be laundered through the big banks. Remember that $200 billion in illegal drug profits is laundered each year through American banks. As FTW has documented so thoroughly in the past, that $200 billion supports Wall Street and many powerful special interests there. Empires would fall.

 

Hell, people could grow it in their back yards. When was the last time you saw somebody getting arrested for growing celery, or tea, or tomatoes? What would that do to the stock values and price to earnings ratios of drug companies who make a zillion chemicals to help people eat after "chemo" or relieve glaucoma or ease menstrual cramps?  No, if marijuana were legalized then the drug war would collapse, because if one great lie is revealed then the rest of the basic assumptions become suspect. And in order to keep marijuana illegal it must first be demonized. If it has any redeeming value whatsoever then the argument that it is "devil weed" falls apart. Admit that, when smoked, it has unique medicinal value and the whole structure of lies upon which the drug war is based falls apart.  No one has made this argument more compellingly than China Syndrome author Mike Gray in his devastating 1998 book Drug Crazy.

 

Did you know that in the early 1930s, before Harry Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics demonized marijuana and hemp with a propaganda campaign akin to what Hitler used against the Jews, hemp was close to being a billion dollar commercial crop and a major farm staple in the U.S.? Did you know that both Washington and Jefferson grew it?  Did you know that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper that would be illegal today?

 

Then there's the question of the hard drugs. Not the ones God created in plant form like opium or coca, but the ones that are hundreds or thousands of times more potent and addictive that man created from the plants, or, like speed, from chemicals directly. What do we do with them? Well, after twenty-seven years, billions of dollars, millions of ruined lives and murdered cops, after horrible addictions and millions of crimes committed to secure expensive illegal drugs, what successes do we have to show for the War on Drugs?

 

The myth that by decriminalizing drugs we will have eight year olds standing on street corners injecting heroin is just that - a myth. In countries where use has been decriminalized or where medical doctors, churches, families, tribes and cultures respond to addictions with treatment, the success rates are much higher - and crime is much lower than in the U.S. There is a lot more money available for things like Catherine Austin Fitts' "Popsicle Index." And, as I well know from my experience in the trenches of recovery, there are many people who can and do smoke the occasional joint, chew the occasional coca leaf (or drink the tea) in South America and smoke an occasional pipe of opium from the middle East to the Far East. There are even some who occasionally inject heroin without developing cravings or physical addiction.

 

These behaviors are exactly the same as for people who drink an occasional cocktail, have an occasional beer, or a glass of wine and then are able to walk away leaving part of it unconsumed. Now I have written extensively on the scientifically proven addictiveness of drugs like crack cocaine or smoked methamphetamine. I have detailed in FTW articles how the CIA studied the fact that cocaine smokers in South America were sometimes lobotomized  (unsuccessfully) to treat their addictions. But the CIA and the Rand Corporation (CIA funded) and UCLA scientists also knew that not everyone who smoked cocaine became addicted. What they found was that Crack cocaine was, however, the most effective "addictor" out there. According to some estimates it hooks almost half of the people who smoke it more than twice. Thinking like the CIA does, or like Wall Street does, what a perfect business venture it is that instantly secures a permanent market (via addiction) of ten to twenty per cent of first time users and fifty per cent of third time users.

 

No, the "problem": medically, genetically, spiritually socially, is in the addict not in the substance. To say otherwise is to say that because some people are alcoholics then beer and wine should be banned. from the universe. We tried that and we got Al Capone, the Bronfmans,  Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz and Meyer Lansky and there was booze everywhere.

 

The time has come to decriminalize all drug use in this country, to regulate it and tax it and thus to take away the power from the drug warmongers.  Within that policy, to give hungry farmers access to a crop that was a U.S. farm staple for 250 years, all bans on the personal cultivation of marijuana and commercial hemp should be immediately removed.  FTW's map says that this is not only a sane and a rational step - it is also inevitable. Not only will it result in more humane and less repressive responses to social problems, it will cut the very legs from underneath the financial criminal plutocracy that now controls our government, our media and our society. From my perspective, there's a case up in Canada involving a 30 year old woman that may prove to be another "shot heard round the world.." This case may not be that shot, but there will be some other Renée Boje, Peter McWilliams or Todd McCormick that will. And that case will compel us all to make a choice as to whether we favor timid conformity with oppression or sanity, compassion and change. I, for one, hope that case is right here, right now, in Canada. Because to prolong these confrontations only increases the numbers of people who must suffer in the meantime.

 

To quote Sam Smith of the Progressive Review (www.prorev.com), action on these principles and on issues like WTO in Seattle allows people "of all stripes to come together and discover that they have more in common with each other than they do with their leaders." And the outcome of this one case may well determine whether the most precious commodities of the new century will be technology, intelligence, information and the human spirit - or the ability to control  and censor them.

 

 

Michael C. Ruppert

Publisher/Editor

 

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Michael C. Ruppert

P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413

(818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847

mruppert@copvcia.com