No US Government conspiracies, huh? Is ANYONE Apologizing to Gary Webb?

[Octafish]

This was written, oh, six years before Webb shot himself. Twice.



The author, Michael Levine, is an honest ex-DEA fellow:

IS ANYONE APOLOGIZING TO GARY WEBB?

by Michael Levine
July, 1998

Gary Webb, just in case you've already forgotten him, was the journalist who, in a well researched, understated article entitled "The Dark Alliance," linked the CIA supported Contras to cocaine and weapons being sold to a California street gang and ended up literally being hounded out of journalism by every mainstream news peddling organization in the Yellow Pages. Even his own employer The San Jose Mercury piled on for the kill.

And guess what? The CIA finally admitted, yesterday, in the New York Times no less, that they, in fact, did "work with" the Nicaraguan Contras while they had information that they were involved in cocaine trafficking to the United States. An action known to us court qualified experts and federal agents as Conspiracy to Import and Distribute Cocaine—a federal felony punishable by up to life in prison.

To illustrate how us regular walking around, non CIA types are treated when we violate this law, while I was serving as a DEA supervisor in New York City, I put two New York City police officers in a federal prison for Conspiracy to distribute Cocaine when they looked the other way at their friend's drug dealing. We could not prove they earned a nickel nor that they helped their friend in any way, they merely did not do their duty by reporting him. They were sentenced to 10 and 12 years respectively, and one of them, I was recently told, had committed suicide.

I have spent three decades as a court qualified expert and federal agent and am not aware of any class of American Citizen having special permission to violate the law that we have been taxed over $1 trillion in the past two decades to enforce; the law that every politician, bureaucrat and media pundit keeps telling us protects us against the most serious danger to American security in our history.

CONTINUED...

America! Wake up.

EDIT: tippo.

[lala_rawraw]

1. Yeah, just said this damn it!!!!!!!!!!!!

good post, kick

[blm]

5. I just mentioned Webb yesterday myself.

Truth be told. I think often about how BushInc destroyed Webb - a journalist hounded out of his job with his reputation destroyed BECAUSE he did his job HONESTLY.

[Octafish]

19. "Integrity is for paupers." -- Tim Russert.

Remember when the "top" journalists actually believed in what they were doing? It's been going on 42 years now.



That's why every time I hear someone say what a swell guy Russert is or whatever I remind them:

CHOCOLATES AND NYLONS, SIR?

By David Podvin

In 1992, shortly after being named moderator of Meet The Press, Tim Russert was having lunch with a broadcast executive. The mealtime conversation was about the pros and cons of working for General Electric’s NBC subsidiary. Russert expounded on how being employed by GE had brought him to the realization that things functioned better when Republicans were in charge.

“You know, Tim, you used to be such a rabid Democrat when you worked for Pat Moynihan,” said the executive. “But now that you’ve gotten a glimpse of who’s handing out the money in this business, you’ve become quite the Jaycee. Were you wrong about everything you used to believe so strongly?”

“I still believe,” Russert said, leaning across the table. “I believe in everything I ever did. But I also know that I never would have become moderator on Meet The Press if my employers were uncomfortable with me. And, given the amount of money at stake, millions of dollars, I don’t blame them. This is business.”

The executive agreed. “But are you concerned about losing yourself? You know, selling out?”

Russert pounded the table. “Integrity is for paupers!”

CONTINUED...

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/podvin/media/020109_Russert.htm

Thanks for giving a damn about the Constitution and everything, too, blm.

[blm]

20. I'm in it for the long haul, partner.

.

[AuntiBush]

23. Watch Me Never Watch Russet Ever Again! Here that Russet!

Integrity... How about all the millions of lives, and trillions of dollars -- all lost over the years thanks to the likes of Halliburton, Bechtel, and GE's war-time investments. Now I'm seeing the real transparency the political pig-holes keep taunting about. No wonder war is big news and propaganda is the latest bullshit rage these days.

Come to think of it, no wonder they aren't sinking faster than the Titanic (respectfully to those lost on her) with all new low ratings. They're profits are due to war.

How do they live with themselves, all our troops and allies loosing their lives everyday in Iraq and anywhere else on the globe worthy of big money stakes!?!

Meet Reality, Russet! Paupers, a.k.a. "the meek" will inherit this world, and you can't take all those millions of dollars and investment payola's with you when you go.

Sickening!

Edited: Cause I can't spell tonight from my outrage!

[berni_mccoy]

31. Russert is a typical republican

Greedy Son of a Bitch. Sure you have your 'righteous' bible-thumping republicans and your gun-toting republicans (it is a BIG tent after all), but the majority of republicans are the ones who serve the all-mighty dollar.

Everything this administration has done is rooted in money (just check the graph in my sig).

It's very apparent where the saying "greed is the root of all evil" came from... they had republicans back then too.

[Octafish]

12. Thanks, lala_rawraw! Remember Esquire's profile?

Hector

Gary Webb, 1955-2004

EXCERPT...

The Pariah

Two years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that said some bad things about the CIA. The CIA denied the charges, and every major paper in the country took the agency's word for it. Gary was ruined. Which is a shame, because he was right.

By Charles Bowden

HE TELLS ME I'VE GOT TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT WHEN THE BIG DOG GETS OFF THE PORCH, and I'm getting confused here. He is talking to me from a fishing camp up near the Canadian border, and as he tries to talk me about the Big Dog, I can only imagine a wall of green and deep blue lakes with northern pike. But he is very patient with me. Mike Holm did his hard stints in the Middle East, the Miami station, and Los Angeles, all for the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, and he is determined that I face the reality he knows. So he starts again. He repeats, "When the Big Dog gets off the porch, watch out." And by the Big Dog, he means the full might of the United States government. At that moment, he continues, you play by Big Boy rules, and that means, he explains, that there are no rules but to complete the mission. We've gotten, into all this schooling because I asked him about reports that he received when he was stationed in Miami that Southern Air Transport, a CIA-contracted airline, was landing planeloads of cocaine at Homestead Air Force Base nearby. Back in the eighties, Holm's informants kept telling him about these flights, and then he was told by his superiors to "stand down because of national security." And so he did. He is an honorable man who believes in his government, and he didn't ask why the flights were taking place; he simply obeyed. Because he has seen the Big Dog get off the porch, and he has tasted Big Boy rules. Besides, he tells me, these things are done right, and if you look into the matter, you'll find contract employees or guys associated with the CIA, but you won't find a CIA case officer on a loading dock tossing kilos of coke around. Any more than Mike Holm ever saw a plane loaded top to bottom with kilos of coke. He didn't have to. He believed his informants'. And he believed in the skill and power of the CIA. And he believed in the sheer might and will of the Big Dog when he finally decides to get off the porch.

SNIP...

HECTOR BERRELLEZ STUMBLED ONTO GARY WEBB'S STORY YEARS before Gary Webb knew a thing about it. His journey into that world happened this way: Hector was not fond of cops. He remembered them slapping him around when he was a kid. He was a barrio boy from South Tucson, a square mile of poverty embedded in the booming Sun Belt city. His father was a Mexican immigrant. After being drafted into the Army in the late sixties, Berrellez couldn't find a job in the copper mines, so he hooked up as a temporary with the small South Tucson police force to finance his way through college. And it was then that Hector Berrellez accidentally discovered his jones: He loved working the streets with a badge. The state police force hired him, and Hector, still green, managed to do a one-kilo heroin deal in the early seventies, a major score for the time. The DEA snapped him up, and suddenly the kid who had wanted to flee the barrio and become a lawyer was a federal narc. He loved the life.
In the DEA, there are the administrators, who usually have little street experience, the suits. And then there are the street guys like Hector, and they call themselves something else.

Gunslingers.

SNIP...

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

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

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

CONTNUED...

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mfe_webb_1.html

There are still plenty of good guys in government. We need spread the word among them so they don't feel so, um, isolated.

Thanks for giving a damn, lala_rawraw!

[moodforaday]

2. There are no conspiracies

There are no conspiracies! Except Operation Northwoods. And except Operation Gladio. And Reichstag fire. And JFK's magic bullet. And Gary Webb's story, which checks out after all. And the stories of Sibel Edmonds and Indira Singh. And http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4619377.stm">those 13 CIA agents arrested in Italy last month.

But other than that, there are no conspiracies, do you hear, y'all? Every conspiracy theorist is a crackpot case, everybody knows that!

Thank you for posting about Gary Webb, and sorry for my rant. I'm just getting sickened to the bone wherever my eyes turn. Five mintes ago I was reading David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor", where on p. 182 he quotes Giuliani, who says this on record:

"We were operating out of there (on edit: he means his command post in WTC 7) when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse, and it did collapse before we could get out of the building."

Except no-one knew the towers were going to collapse. Certainly the firemen didn't, as they were rushing up the stairs to rescue people. Yet here is Giuliani, clearly admitting he was told the towers were about to go poof. And no-one so much as asked him whether he tried to warn the rescuers. That would be fostering a conspiracy theory. Mustn't do that!

[hootinholler]

4. Um about the 13...

Your link is bad you need to remove the http part.

I'm pretty sure they were indicted, not arrested. I'll have to check out the Giulliani quote, that's a great one.

-Hoot

[Octafish]

13. Like the 'tude, marekjed! Here's something most don't know...

This is why George Herbert Walker Bush ("Mr. Conspiracy") doesn't remember where he was when President John F. Kennedy (the last life-long Liberal to occupy the Oval Office) was assassinated.

It turns out Poppy was in Dallas on 22 November 1963.

My source? The FBI:

Of course, a week later it wouldn't be the same fella who's got friends in the anti-Castro Cuban community in Miami that J Edgar Hoover quoted by name of "George Bush of the Central intelligence Agency," could it?

SOURCE for both above:

http://www.internetpirate.com/bush.htm

No. There are no conspiracies. It's just plain old Treason.

[Ian David]

3. Of course there are US conspiracies. It's just that SOME aren't true

To defend pet theories by saying that people disbelieve all conspiracy theories out of hand is to create an unfair strawman argument.

This isn't to say that I'm accusing you personally of anything, since I have no idea what other theories you have that you feel have been treated unfairly.

I'm not sure either way about Gary Webb.

I haven't looked into it.

I'll read and get back to you on it if you wish.

[seemslikeadream]

6. Maybe this could help you out with Octafish's thoughts

These are my top 13 favorites


If Bush thinks NAZI thing is bad, wait till JFK stuff goes public
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=550847

Know your BFEE: Homeland Czar & Petro-Turd Bernie Kerik
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2788428

Averell Harriman -- Founding Turd of the BFEE
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2933358

Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315

Bush Crime Family S.O.P. — Use a Patsy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=273176

James R Bath, SuperTurd of the BFEE
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2053861

bin Laden's money flow leads back to Midland, Texas
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=610051

JEB Bush - - BFEE Kingmaker & Big-Time Crook
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1647117

LIHOP/MIHOP Don’t Matter: Bush is still RESPONSIBLE for 9/11
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1453480

Hey DU! The BFEE wants to SHUT you UP!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1329353

Haiti: Drugs, Thugs, the CIA, and the Deterrence of Democracy
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1257891

A Short History of Saddam-Bush-Noriega Business
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1213525

Bush REALLY Did It This Time!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1168600

[Ian David]

7. I'm afraid to ask, but what is BFEE? n/t

[seemslikeadream]

8. Bush Family Evil Empire

OK now I understand. Some great reading there.

:hi:

[Ian David]

9. Oh! I thought it had something to do with Mad Cow Disease! n/t

[Octafish]

25. Thanks, seemslikeadream! Thirteen colonies...

...Thirteen stars.



One seemslikeadream.

Sibel Edmonds will run ads naming NAMES if Congress doesn't act

If Congress does not take action, Edmonds said, the coalition is prepared to run newspaper ads publicizing the names and salaries of individual managers who are alleged to have committed wrongdoing.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0405/042705c1.htm

National Security Whistleblowers Coalition:

Congress, Whistleblower Protection & Accountability
An unprecedented group of national security whistleblowers have formed a united front as the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC). They will collectively attend two bipartisan congressional meetings today to demand that Congress act to end government retaliation against those who expose national security blunders, that Congress hold hearings into the federal government’s actions against whistleblowers, and that Congress act to require ‘individual accountability’ for retaliation against whistleblowers. The congressional meetings will be followed by a press conference featuring speakers from the NSWBC and guest speakers.

Speakers: Sibel Edmonds, Former Language Specialist, FBI
Coleen Rowley, Retired Agent and former division counsel, FBI
John Vincent, Veteran Special Agent, FBI
Mike German, Veteran Special Agent, FBI
Russ Tice, Senior Intelligence Analyst & Action Officer, NSA
Jesselyn Radack, Former Counsel, DOJ
Guest Speakers: Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA)
Mark Zaid, attorney, Krieger Zaid LLC
Professor William Weaver, University of Texas
Danielle Brian, Director, Project on Government Oversight (POGO)
Tom Devine, Legal Director, Government Accountability Project (GAP)
Dan Ellsberg, Founder, Truth Telling Project
Date: Thursday, April 28
Time: 1:30 PM- 3:00PM
Location: 122 Cannon House Office Building, SE, Washington, DC

more

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0504/S00408.htm

SOURCE:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3561783

There are a million more posts that are worth reading, keeping and remembering, thanks to seemslikeadream. They contain a multiverse of knowledge and information. They all remind met here's only one seemslikeadream.

[moodforaday]

17. Yes, and the reverse is also true:

That it is unfair to dismiss a hypothesis solely because it looks like a "conspiracy" to someone.

As for Gary Webb's suicide, we won't find out one way or another. Suicide doesn't look improbable after what we was put through. His story, however, stands.

[Octafish]

26. Want to know about Gary Webb's work?

I don't know if the government killed him, physically. I do know that the government applied all the pressure it could to destroy him professionally as a reporter and psychologically as a human being. And to think the guy won a Pulitzer....

For truth, try ConsortiumNews.com:

CIA Admits Tolerating Contra- Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s

By Robert Parry

In secret congressional testimony, senior CIA officials admitted that the spy agency turned a blind eye to evidence of cocaine trafficking by U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s and generally did not treat drug smuggling through Central America as a high priority during the Reagan administration.

 “In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” CIA Inspector General Britt Snider said in classified testimony on May 25, 1999. He conceded that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”

Still, Snider and other officials sought to minimize the seriousness of the CIA’s misconduct – a position echoed by a House Intelligence Committee report released in May and by press coverage it received. In particular, CIA officials insisted that CIA personnel did not order the contras to engage in drug trafficking and did not directly join in the smuggling.

But the CIA testimony to the House Intelligence Committee and the body of the House report confirmed long-standing allegations – dating back to the mid-1980s – that drug traffickers pervaded the contra operation and used it as a cover for smuggling substantial volumes of cocaine into the United States.

Deep in the report, the House committee noted that in some cases, “CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.”

Former CIA officer Duane Clarridge, who oversaw covert CIA support for the contras in the early years of their war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government, said “counter-narcotics programs in Central America were not a priority of CIA personnel in the early 1980s,” according to the House report.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html

Gee. I don't remember seeing too much about that on the evening news? Ya think Bush might've wanted to seal all those presidential papers because there's something in them about drugs and his Poppy? Nah. That wouldn't be logical.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

10. Strangest case of suicide I ever heard of........ Thank you for posting! n

[Octafish]

32. America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb

From a real reporter:

America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb

by Robert Parry
13 December 2004

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration's protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan Contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb's marriage broke up.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

Whatever the details of Webb's death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb's Contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of Contra units and Contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.

Failed Media

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.doublestandards.org/parry1.html

Original Source:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html

Thanks for giving a damn, OmmmSweetOmmm.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

36. Thanks for this article Octafish. I listened to a 3 hour show about

Gary Webb and his death. Alex Jones hosted having 3 people (the names escape me now) who knew Gary, and knew that there was no way he would have taken his life. In fact, one of them, knew for certain that Gary had lurkers around his home just prior to his "suicide".

OK...just did a search for an article about that interview and came up with something very interesting. It seems that Mike Ruppert was very upset with Alex Jones and this interview. Here is Alex Jone's rebuttal... Also, it seems that the shot gun claim might be wrong, and that Gary used a handgun.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/201204jonesrebuttal.htm

[Al-CIAda]

11. Gary Webb - In his own words (video)

Gary Webb - In his own words
A tribute to the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the CIA's involvement in the importation of cocaine into the US.
Webb died in December 2004 from self-inflicted gunshots to the head
 
quicktime player-
http://www.guerrillanews.com/videos/viewer.php?id=30&spd=hi


NBC Dateline - CIA drug trafficking - Contra connection
News special that examines the connections between the CIA and the Contras. Features Ricky Ross, Cele Castillo, John Kerry and Gary Webb

quicktime player-
http://www.americandrugwar.com/media/source/news/ricky_ross.mov
=====

Site link (The Dossier UK)
http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_CIA.htm

[EVDebs]

22. Don't forget Alfred McCoy's seminal Politics of Heroin

and its updated version's subtitle

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

BTW, see the excellent reviews at the amazon.com website for the book. You can't keep good information (the truth) down !

[Octafish]

28. Thanks, Al-CIAda. DEA Celerino Castillo agrees: Poppy + CIA = Dope Inc

Thanks for the links to the video. Going by the coverage I see and try to avoid every day, I didn't know anyone at ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutwork had even tried to cover the issue of Uncle Sam drugging their own people -- at a profit, of couse.

DEA Agent Celerino Castillo confirmed Webb's reporting.

“Ollie’s Contra-band”

by Celerino Castillo
March 8, 2003
posted at DrugWar.com
March 21, 2003

For several years, I fought in the trenches of the front lines of the Reagan-Bush’s drug war. I was trying to stamp out what I had considered American’s greatest foreign threat. While our government shouted, “Just Say No”, entire Central and South American nations fell into what was known as “Cocaine Democracies”.

The man that brought us this epidemic is none other than former Lt. Col. Oliver North. Recently, I read an advertisement in the Monitor where an invitation was extended to Oliver North to speak at the annual meeting of the McAllen/Hidalgo County Salvation Army. The fundraiser is to be held on April 5, 2003 at the McAllen High School.

Oliver L. North, a Marine lieutenant colonel, was assigned to the National Security Council staff beginning in 1981 until he was fired on November 25, 1986. He was the White House official most directly involved in secretly aiding the Contras by selling arms to Iran. It was best known as; “the Iran-for-Hostages” weapons deal. The allegation was that he diverted Iran arms sales proceeds to the Contras' accounts. However, it was later determined that the diversion was not to the Contras but from the Contras to our governments' agents own Swiss bank accounts. It was also clear that North’s job at the NSC was to implement two of the President’s (Reagan) most important policy goals: the sustenance of the Contras despite the Boland prohibition on U.S. aid, and the release of American hostages being held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Beirut. It was clear that North worked tirelessly in pursuit of these goals.

During the Contra operation, Vice-President George H. Bush designated North and CIA Director William Casey, to coordinate the re-supply operation out of Ilopango airport in El Salvador. This he did, using assets already in place around General Richard Secord’s airlift operation at Ilopango. Former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, and Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles ran the operations out of hangars 4 and 5. In October 1976, after an explosion sent a Cuban jetliner plummeting into the sea off Barbados, it was revealed that the mastermind behind the bombing was no other then Luis Posada. In late 2000, Luis Posada was arrested in a plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro.

At the height of the Contra war, I was stationed in El Salvador for 5 years as the only DEA agent. It was there that I came face to face with the contradictions of my assignments. I started to record intelligence on how known drug traffickers, with multiple DEA files, utilized hangars 4 and 5 to transport monies and drugs. The Contra supply operations utilized the most readily available capabilities: drug-smugglers, who had the planes and pilots to conduct clandestine flights from South and Central America to all parts of the United States. “Guns down, drugs back,” was the formula.

CONTINUED...

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

[LibertyorDeath]

14. Sometimes the Ba Ba-ing gets so loud

you can't hear yourself think,
but I don't mind wading thru the sheep SHIT
to get to your posts.

Cheers

[Octafish]

27. Hey! LibertyorDeath! Here are the official CIA docs...

... granting immunity to officers involved in Dope Inc.





Thanks for the kind words, LibertyorDeath. You have no idea how much they mean to me.

Oh, yeah: Love your jester.

[LibertyorDeath]

30. Your posts are a treasure trove of fascinating info

I'm sure I'm not alone in that thought.

Been doing a lot of reading here

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NSA112A.html

& here

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB15/press.html

[redqueen]

15. I hope this doesn't sink...

Too many just don't want to know...

[moodforaday]

16. It was 1998

when this article was published and CIA admitted to the cocaine racket. So I guess there's your answer.

[redqueen]

18. What was the question?

:shrug:

[Octafish]

29. Hi, redqueen! What's "CIA" stand for? Cocaine Import Agency

Many people say the same thing. Too bad the people who control what Americans read, hear and see don't want them to read, hear or see it. Here's one website that does want people to know the Truth (trust me, it's Link City):

Cocaine Import Agency

In August of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published a three-part investigation by Gary Webb into the U.S. government's links to the trade in crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles. Webb's investigation uncovered links between the Central Intelligence Agency's covert war against Nicaragua and convicted Los Angeles drug dealer "Freeway" Ricky Ross, whom the Los Angeles Times in 1994 had dubbed the "one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine." (20 December 1994 p. A20)

The (admittedly sensationalized, but basically accurate) story generated much controversy, and heated denials from the mainstream media (in particular the local paper of record, whose editor Shelby Coffey III couldn't bear the thought of someone else beating his paper out on a major story in his own backyard). This vehement denegation, however, is largely inconsistent with the historical record (some of which has been, and continues to be, reported in these same papers).

This web site is part of a long-standing research project of mine. As a scholar working at the interstices of speech communication and cultural studies, I have been investigating the public discourse surrounding the "war on drugs" as an exercise in disciplinary social control. This site is a database of information, evidence, and other resources that have helped guide me in this research project, and will hopefully help others working along the same lines.

The 1997 CIA budget was 26.6 billion dollars. This year (1998) their budget is $26.7 billion. What the hell do we get for our money?

CONTINUED w You Would Not Believe the Links...

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

Thanks, redqueen, for giving a damn! Knowledge is the first step in getting them.

[Octafish]

35. Don't forget Oliver NORTH.

Thanks to Peter Kornbluh and the National Security Archives, scholars can see how Ollie the Traitor's notebooks contain LOTS of references to drugs -- the off-the-shelf cash cow:

The Oliver North File:
His Diaries, E-Mail, and Memos on
the Kerry Report, Contras and Drugs

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 113

February 26, 2004

Washington D.C., 26 February 2004 - Diaries, e-mail, and memos of Iran-contra figure Oliver North, posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive, directly contradict his criticisms yesterday of Sen. John Kerry's 1988 Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee report on the ways that covert support for the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s undermined the U.S. war on drugs.

Mr. North claimed to talk show hosts Hannity & Colmes that the Kerry report was "wrong," that Sen. Kerry "makes this stuff up and then he can't justify it," and that "The fact is nobody in the government of the United States, going all the way back to the earliest days of this under Jimmy Carter, ever had anything to do with running drugs to support the Nicaraguan resistance. Nobody in the government of the United States. I will stand on that to my grave."

The Kerry subcommittee did not report that U.S. government officials ran drugs, but rather, that Mr. North, then on the National Security Council staff at the White House, and other senior officials created a privatized contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the contras. The report cited former Drug Enforcement Administration head John Lawn testifying that Mr. North himself had prematurely leaked a DEA undercover operation, jeopardizing agents' lives, for political advantage in an upcoming Congressional vote on aid to the contras (p.121).

Among the documents posted today are:

* Mr. North's diary entries, from the reporter's notebooks he kept in those years, noting multiple reports of drug smuggling among the contras. A Washington Post investigation published on 22 October 1994 found no evidence he had relayed these reports to the DEA or other law enforcement authorities.

* Memos from North aide Robert Owen to Mr. North recounting drug-running "indiscretions" among the contras, warning that a known drug-smuggling airplane was delivering taxpayer-funded "humanitarian aid" overseen by Mr. North.

* Mr. North's White House e-mails recounting his efforts to spring from prison a Honduran general who could "spill the beans" on the secret contra war, even though the Justice Department termed the Honduran a "narcoterrorist" for his involvement in cocaine smuggling and an assassination plot.

* Mr. North's White House e-mails and diary entries on his personal meeting on 22 September 1986 with Noriega, following up Noriega's offer to "take care of" the Sandinista leadership if the White House would help "clean up his image."

* The text of the Kerry subcommittee report. Pages 145-146 directly quote 15 North notebook entries related to drug trafficking.

Also in the posting is Peter Kornbluh's detailed critique - the January/February 1997 cover story in the Columbia Journalism Review - of news coverage of the contra-drug allegations, including the controversial San Jose Mercury News series.

SOURCE w/links to US Government Documents chronicling the above:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/

And, as he swore to Congress and the Federal Courts, everything he did had the approval of his superiors.

[BrotherBuzz]

21. Gary Webb....In his own words

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-12-16/feature.asp
<snip>
So, for the record, let me just say this right now. I do not believe--and I have never believed--that the crack-cocaine explosion was a conscious CIA conspiracy, or anybody’s conspiracy, to decimate black America. I’ve never believed that South Central Los Angeles was targeted by the U.S. government to become the crack capital of the world. But that isn’t to say that the CIA’s hands or the U.S. government’s hands are clean in this matter. Actually, far from it. After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government’s responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.

But it’s important to differentiate between malign intent and gross negligence. And that’s an important distinction, because it’s what makes premeditated murder different from manslaughter. That said, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got a body on the floor, and that’s what I want to talk about tonight, the body.....
<more>

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-12-16/feature.asp

[Octafish]

33. Thanks, BrotherBuzz. Gary Webb never blamed the institution...

...But that didn't stop his detractors from coast-to-coast from saying he did.

From Kobe Bryant to Uncle Sam

Why They Hated Gary Webb

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
December 18 / 19, 2004

EXCERPT...

In 1998 Jeffrey St Clair and I published our book, Whiteout, about the relationships between the CIA, drugs and the press since the Agency's founding. We also examined the Webb affair in detail. On a lesser scale, at lower volume it elicited the same sort of abuse Webb drew. It was a long book stuffed with well-documented facts, over which the critics lightly vaulted to charge us, as they did Webb, with "conspiracy-mongering" though, sometimes in the same sentence, of recycling "old news". Jeffrey and I came to the conclusion that what really affronted the critics, some of them nominally left-wing, was that our book portrayed Uncle Sam's true face. Not a "rogue" Agency but one always following the dictates of government, murdering, torturing, poisoning, drugging its own subjects, approving acts of monstrous cruelty, following methods devised and tested by Hitler's men, themselves transported to America after the Second World War.

One of the CIA's favored modes of self-protection is the "uncover-up".The Agency first denies with passion, then later concedes in muffled tones, the charges leveled against it. Such charges have included the Agency's recruitment of Nazi scientists and SS officers; experiments on unwitting American citizens; efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro; alliances with opium lords in Burma, Thailand and Laos; an assassination program in Vietnam; complicity in the toppling of Salvador Allende in Chile; the arming of opium traffickers and religious fanatics in Afghanistan; the training of murderous police in Guatemala and El Salvador; and involvement in drugs-and-arms shuttles between Latin America and the US.

True to form, after Webb's series raised a storm, particularly on black radio, the CIA issued categorical denials. Then came the solemn pledges of an intense and far-reaching investigation by the CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz. On December 18, 1997, stories in the Washington Post by Walter Pincus and in the New York Times by Tim Weiner appeared simultaneously, both saying the same thing: Inspector General Hitz had finished his investigation. He had found "no direct or indirect" links between the CIA and the cocaine traffickers. As both Pincus and Weiner admitted in their stories, neither of the two journalists had actually seen the report.

The actual report itself, so loudly heralded, received almost no examination. But those who took the time to examine the 149-page document - the first of two volumes--found Inspector General Hitz making one damning admission after another including an account of a meeting between a pilot who was making drug/arms runs between San Francisco and Costa Rica with two Contra leaders who were also partners with the San Francisco-based Contra/drug smuggler Norwin Meneses. Present at this encounter in Costa Rica was a curly-haired man who said his name was Ivan Gomez, identified by one of the Contras as CIA's "man in Costa Rica." The pilot told Hitz that Gomez said he was there to "ensure that the profits from the cocaine went to the Contras and not into someone's pocket ." The second volume of CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz's investigation released in the fall of 1998 buttressed Webb's case even more tightly, as James Risen conceded in a story in the New York Times on October 120 of that year.

So why did the top-tier press savage Webb, and parrot the CIA's denials. It comes back to this matter of Uncle Sam's true face. Another New York Times reporter, Keith Schneider was asked by In These Times back in 1987 why he had devoted a three-part series in the New York Times to attacks on the Contra hearings chaired by Senator John Kerry. Schneider said such a story could "shatter the Republic. I think it is so damaging, the implications are so extraordinary, that for us to run the story, it had better be based on the most solid evidence we could amass." Kerry did uncover mountains of evidence. So did Webb. But neither of them got the only thing that would have satisfied Schneider, Pincus and all the other critics: a signed confession of CIA complicity by the DCI himself. Short of that, I'm afraid we're left with "innuendo", "conspiracy mongering" and "old stories". We're also left with the memory of some great work by a very fine journalist who deserved a lot better than he got from the profession he loved.

SOURCE:

http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn12182004.html

Usually I'll write after quoting Comrade A Cockburn: "I agree with about two-thirds of what he says." Here's it's: "I agree with everything he said."

Thanks for the links to the important resources, BrotherBuzz. Working together, it's easier to grab these BFEE killers by the nose and kick 'em in the pants.

[AuntiBush]

24. How Sad! I'm with you. WAKE-UP, AMERICA!!!!!!!!!

Wake the hell-up, please. Gary Webb has more integrity then all of them!

[Octafish]

34. Thank you, AuntiBush! Remember Mark LOMBARDI?

He's the NYC artist whose works helped, literally, draw the connections between the various criminal elements that Bartcop and others call the BFEE? He was a "suicide," too, in early 2000. Odd how his career was just taking off at that time. Below is a detail of his work, illustrating the connections between James R Bath, George Bush Jr and the bin Laden family. Neat work. Prescient, too.

The Recent Drawings: An Overview

(Artist Statement)

In 1994 I began a series of drawings I refer to as "narrative structures." Most were executed in graphite or pen and ink on paper. Some are quite large, measuring up to 5 x 12 feet.

I call them "narrative structures" because each consists of a network of lines and notations which are meant to convey a story, typically about a recent event of interest to me, like the collapse of a large international bank, trading company, or investment house. One of my goals is to explore the interaction of political, social and economic forces in contemporary affairs. Thus far I have exhibited drawings on BCCI, Lincoln Savings, World Finance of Miami, the Vatican Bank, Silverado Savings, Castle Bank and Trust of the Bahamas, Nugan Hand Limited of Sydney, Australia, and many more.

Working from syndicated news items and other published accounts, I begin each drawing by compiling large amounts of information about a specific bank, financial group or set of individuals. After a careful review of the literature I then condense the essential points into an assortment of notations and other brief statements of fact, out of which an image begins to emerge.

My purpose throughout is to interpret the material by juxtaposing and assembling the notations into a unified, coherent whole. In some cases I use a set of stacked, parallel lines to establish a time frame. Hierarchical relationships, the flow of money and other key details are then indicated by a system of radiating arrows, broken lines and so forth. Some of the drawings consist of two different layers of information—one denoted in black, the other, red. Black represents the essential elements of the story while the major lawsuits, criminal indictments or other legal actions taken against the parties are shown in red. Every statement of fact and connection depicted in the work is true and based on information culled entirely from the public record.

—Mark Lombardi, c.1997/8

SOURCE:

http://www.pierogi2000.com/flatfile/lombardidrawingshow.html

Village Voice printed an "objective" essay:

Of Friendsters and Foes

The conspiracy art of Mark Lombardi: Crime-fighting tool—or 'just here to help'?

By Lawrence Rinder

Only connect: a detail from one of Lombardi's creations
image: Courtesy the Drawing CenterMuch is being made lately of the FBI's phone call to the Whitney Museum in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks requesting access to Mark Lombardi's drawing BCCI, ICIC & FAB (1996-2000). This piece, the last work the artist made before he was found dead in his studio in March 2000, an apparent suicide at age 49, represents the tangled web of power and influence that comprised the largest banking scandal in history—in which an impenetrable network of holding companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, and banks-within-banks laundered billions of dollars while supporting terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, and prostitution. The names of Saddam Hussein and George H.W. Bush, among many other high- and low-profile world figures, are connected by a network of delicate, yet potently insinuating, pencil lines. The FBI agent who called was informed that the work was on view in the museum's galleries, where he was welcome to see it during it during regular museum hours. A visit to the current Mark Lombardi exhibition at the Drawing Center (35 Wooster Street, through December 18) by an affiliate of the Homeland Security Agency has also raised eyebrows in the art world.

The typical response to these incidents has been one of startled indignation: We don't want Big Brother snooping around our museums, galleries, and studios. Yet wafting about these protestations is a hint of relief and even pride. Attention from the feds accomplishes, for some, what so many of us have had trouble doing. It proves that art really matters . . . even to national security! Surrounded by constant reminders of our vulnerability, some may feel, albeit unconsciously, the need for art to do its part and so imagine that Lombardi has arrived just in time to secure the place of the fine arts in the emerging national paradigm of surveillance, paranoia, and control. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the claims being made for Lombardi's relevance to the war on terror are rather overblown. No one knows if the FBI ever made it to the Whitney, and the Homeland Security guy was not on active duty. In fact, Lombardi's drawings don't reveal that much. According to his own iconographic code, a line with an arrow, for example, simply signifies "influence." So, a series of arrows leading across the BCCI, ICIC & FAB drawing from Bush to Saddam does not necessarily mean that the two were in cahoots, as conspiracy theorists might wish to deduce.

What Lombardi's works tell us is not the specifics of the connections between people, but simply that such connections exist. His drawings play across the surface of scandal and intrigue. This is not the sort of thing America's spies really need. Indeed, as far as tools for unraveling the networks of evil are concerned, they may already have the biggest and best at hand. Under the guidance of John Poindexter, of Iran-Contra fame, the Defense Department developed the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program last year, a vast computerized database that, according to the official TIA website, utilizes "topsight"—a term coined by tech guru David Gelertner—to enable users "to see the whole thing." (TIA's funding was stopped by Congress in September.) What is the "whole thing?" It's the same territory explored by Lombardi: the network of individuals, organizations, deals, transfers, and transactions that constitute the de facto architecture of global power. Unlike Lombardi's beautiful but superficial diagrams, TIA goes wide and deep, providing big-picture scenarios while simultaneously zeroing in on individual players and their possible motives in the emerging global-terror drama.

Lombardi's drawings lack the specificity and attention to pattern needed to be useful as true investigative tools. On the contrary, it is in their very aimlessness, their sprawling attention to surface incident, that the works' purpose unfolds. In a recent article published by Clear Cut Press (clearcutpress.com), the Office for Soft Architecture, based in Vancouver, explores the Pacific Northwest's invasive alien plant species the Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) as a figure by which to understand the attraction of surface as opposed to deep structure. "The limitless modification of the skin is different from modernization," they write. "(S)urface morphologies, as Rubus shows, include decay, blanketing and smothering, dissolution and penetration, and pendulous swagging and draping as well as proliferative growth, all in contexts of environmental disturbance and contingency rather than fantasized balance." They go on to say, apropos of architecture itself, "Superficies, whether woven, pigmented, glazed, plastered, or carved, receive and are formed from contingent gesture. Skins express gorgeous corporeal transience. Ornament is the decoration of mortality." In Mark Lombardi's work we have just such an expression of the smothering abundance of ornamental information.

CONTINUED...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0350,essay,49315,1.html

[The Doctor.]

37. Quote from Ma Eldritch upon hearing of the Plame case...

"Most conspiracy theories prove to be false."

God it's hard being on the side of the truth.

[blm]

38. My answer to that would be - "Name two."

.

[The Doctor.]

39. LOL!

I did...

She said, "Pearl Harbor" and "the Kennedy Assasination".

whatdoyoudo?

[Octafish]

40. Here's a handy list of the Bush Crime Line of Treason

Some DUers (and family members of DUers) don't believe there's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or even a Bush Family Evil Empire.

Hey, I'm a Democrat and respect other's opinions and views.

But I do believe in the VRWC and BFEE, perhaps more accurately termed the Bush Transnational Criminal Enterprise. Here's why:

Bush Crime Line

• Vietnam
• Bay of Pigs
• Chile
• Watergate
• October Surprise
• El Salvador
• Reagan Survives Hinckley and Bush
• NAZI Ethnics for Reagan-Bush
• Voodoo Economics
• INSLAW/Promis
• Haiti
• Iraq-gate / Banca Nazionale del Lavoro arms to Saddam
• BCCI International Money Laundering for Terrorists & Intelligence Community arming Dr AQ Khan
• Savings & Loan scandal in general and Silverado in particular
• Iran-contra Guns/Drugs/Martial Law
• Gulf War I Glaspie Gives Go-Ahead
• Selection 2000 Shreds US Constitution
• Tax Cuts for UltraRich
• Criminal Justice Department
• Suicidal Environmental Policy
• ENRON Energy Policy
• 9-11 Criminal Negligence, at best; Treason, most likely
• Illegal Iraq Invasion
• Paperless Selection 2004

It’s interesting in reviewing the above list, just how much ultra-right, conservative Republican leadership has really been. More than a listing of criminality, the list demonstrates there have been many treasonous activites against “We the People” through “business opportunities” in the finance, energy, and defense industries.

There is one FAMILY name that runs through all the history, the four decades since the JFK administration. Since the very hour of President Kennedy’s death, and through the list of sinister events and unrelenting criminality noted above — a record of infamy stretching back 41 years today — appears the name George Herbert Walker Bush, a tradition continued by his son, George Walker Bush, beard of the BFEE.

SOURCE w/LINKS for all the above

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315

PS: Sorry I left out the Valerie Plame Affair. It was November and my head was still filled with rage about Ohio and Diebold, Sequoia, etc. When it comes to the Bush Crime Family, it's all treason, all the time.