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|| * -- SPECIAL -- * June 3, 1998 * -- EDITION -- * ||
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* SPECIAL EDITION *
The Truth is that police must "serve and protect;" Reality
is Black youth is shown no respect. The Truth is government
has a "war against drugs;" Reality is government is ruled by
thugs. -- KRS One, R.E.A.L.I.T.Y.
* * *
_________________________________________________________________
NEW REVELATIONS: THE CIA & DRUGS
_________________________________________________________________
* * *
AFIB EDITOR'S NOTE: The texts below from Robert Parry's bi-
weekly newsletter _The Consortium_, and former DEA agent
Celerino "Cele" Castillo's April 1998 testimony to the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, provide new
details of CIA and US government complicity with narco-
fascism during the 1980s. Faced by the growing power of
leftist insurgency in today's Colombia, the Clinton
administration is expanding military and logistical support
for that country's drug-tainted terror state. Often in
league with narco-capitalists and right-wing paramilitary
death squads, Colombia's military elite (and the Clinton
administration) are selling increased military "aid" as a
necessary component for expanding the so-called "war against
drugs." But as in Central America during the 1980s,
Washington is forging an unsavory alliance with brutal
killers and drug traffickers in an attempt to prop up a
corrupt authoritarian regime. Describing Washington's role
in Colombia, General Charles Wilhelm, the commander of US
military forces in Latin America told the New York Times:
"This is not a one-night stand. This is marriage for life."
Judging past Pentagon vows of fidelity to "democracy" this
is surely a marriage made in hell...
* * *
* THE CONSORTIUM *
For Independent Journalism
Web: http://www.delve.com/consort.html
Tel: (703) 920-1580
E-mail: rparry@ix.netcom.com
- Volume 3, No. 11 (Issue 63) - June 1, 1998 -
-----
_________________________________________________________________
CONTRA-COCAINE: EVIDENCE OF PREMEDITATION
_________________________________________________________________
By Robert Parry
* * *
New evidence, now in the public record, strongly suggests that
the Reagan administration's tolerance of drug trafficking by the
Nicaraguan contras and other clients in the 1980s was
premeditated.
With almost no notice in the national press, a 1982 letter
was introduced into the Congressional Record revealing how CIA
Director William J. Casey secretly engineered an exemption
sparing the CIA from a legal requirement to report on drug
smuggling by agency assets.
The exemption was granted by Attorney General William French
Smith on Feb. 11, 1982, only two months after President Reagan
authorized covert CIA support for the Nicaraguan contra army and
some eight months before the first known documentary evidence
revealing that the contras had started collaborating with drug
traffickers.
The exemption suggests that the CIA's tolerance of illicit
drug smuggling by its clients during the 1980s was official
policy anticipated from the outset, not just an unintended
consequence followed by an ad hoc cover-up.
Before the letter's release, the documentary evidence only
supported the allegation that Ronald Reagan's CIA concealed drug
trafficking by the contras and other intelligence assets in Latin
America. The CIA's inspector general Frederick P. Hitz confirmed
that long-held suspicion in an investigative report issued on
Jan. 29, 1998.
LAUNDRY LIST
But the newly released letter, placed into the Congressional
Record by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., on May 7, establishes
that Casey foresaw the legal dilemma which the CIA would
encounter should federal law require it to report on illicit
narcotics smuggling by its agents. The narcotics exemption is
especially noteworthy in contrast to the laundry list of crimes
which the CIA was required to disclose.
Under Justice Department regulations, "reportable offenses"
included assault, homicide, kidnapping, Neutrality Act
violations, communication of classified data, illegal
immigration, bribery, obstruction of justice, possession of
explosives, election contributions, possession of firearms,
illegal wiretapping, visa violations and perjury.
Yet, despite reporting requirements for many less serious
offenses, Casey fought a bureaucratic battle in early 1982 to
exempt the CIA from, as Smith wrote, "the need to add narcotics
violations to the list of reportable non-employee crimes."
In his letter, Smith noted that the law provides that "when
requested by the Attorney General, it shall be the duty of any
agency or instrumentality of the Federal Government to furnish
assistance to him for carrying out his functions under" the
Controlled Substances Act.
But Smith agreed that "in view of the fine cooperation the
Drug Enforcement Administration has received from CIA, no formal
requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has
been included in these procedures." [At the time of Smith's
letter, Kenneth Starr was a counselor in the attorney general's
office, although it is not clear whether Starr had any input into
the exemption.]
On March 2, 1982, Casey thanked Smith for the exemption. "I
am pleased that these procedures, which I believe strike the
proper balance between enforcement of the law and protection of
intelligence sources and methods, will now be forwarded to other
agencies covered by them for signing by the heads of the
agencies," Casey wrote.
In the years that followed, "protection of intelligence
sources and methods" apparently became the catch-all excuse for
the CIA's tolerance of South American cocaine smugglers using the
contra war as cover. Though precise volume estimates are
impossible, the contra-connected drug pipeline clearly pumped
tons of cocaine into the United States during the early-to-mid
1980s.
CONTRA UMBRELLA
Some contra defenders have argued that the anti-Sandinista
armies in Honduras and Costa Rica were not the primary
beneficiaries of the narcotics smuggling, that most of the
profits probably went to drug lords with few political interests.
Still, over the past 15 years, substantial evidence has surfaced
revealing that many drug smugglers scurried under the contra
umbrella. They presumably understood that the Reagan
administration would be loath to expose its pet covert action to
negative publicity and possibly even to criminal prosecution.
According to the accumulated evidence, Bolivia's "cocaine
coup" government of 1980-82 was the first in line filling the
contra drug pipeline. But other contra-connected drug operations
soon followed, including the Medellin cartel, the Panamanian
government, the Honduran military and Miami-based anti-Castro
Cubans. The contra-connected cocaine also moved through
transshipment points in Costa Rica and El Salvador. [For details,
see Robert Parry's Lost History; Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale
Scott and Jonathan Marshall; or Gary Webb's forthcoming book,
Dark Alliance.]
Less clear is exactly what the U.S. government knew about
the contra-connected drug trafficking and when. Reagan authorized
CIA support for the contra army in mid-December 1981. But the
first publicly known case of contra cocaine shipments appeared in
government files in an Oct. 22, 1982, cable from the CIA's
Directorate of Operations.
The cable passed on word that U.S. law enforcement agencies
were aware of "links between (a U.S. religious organization) and
two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups [which] involve an
exchange in (the United States) of narcotics for arms." The
material in parentheses was inserted by the CIA as part of its
declassification of the cable. The name of the religious group
remains secret.
Over the next several years, the CIA learned of other
suspected links between the contras and drug trafficking. In
1984, the CIA even intervened with the Justice Department to
block a criminal investigation into a suspected contra role in a
San Francisco-based drug ring, according to Hitz's report.
In December 1985, Brian Barger and I wrote the first news
article disclosing that virtually every Nicaraguan contra group
had links to drug trafficking. In that Associated Press dispatch,
we noted that the CIA knew of at least one case of cocaine
profits filtering into the contra war effort, but that DEA
officials in Washington claimed they had never been told of any
contra tie-in. The Casey exemption explains why that was
possible.
After the AP story ran, the Reagan administration attacked
it as unfounded and the article was largely ignored by the rest
of the Washington press corps. But it did help spark an
investigation by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who over the next two
years amassed substantial evidence of cocaine smuggling in and
around the contra war. Still, the Reagan and Bush administrations
continued to disparage Kerry's probe and its many witnesses.
Through the end of the decade, the mainstream Washington
media also denigrated the allegations. In April 1989, when Kerry
released a lengthy report detailing multiple examples of how the
contra war supplied cover for major drug trafficking operations,
the nation's most prestigious newspapers -- The New York Times,
The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times -- published only
brief, dismissive accounts.
With the end of the contra war in 1990, the controversy
faded further into the historical recesses. The Clinton
administration quietly rescinded Casey's narcotics exemption in
1995.
CRACK EPIDEMIC
The contra-cocaine issue arose again in 1996 with an
investigative series by Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury-News.
Those stories traced how one of the contra drug conduits helped
fuel the crack epidemic in Los Angeles.
In response, the major newspapers again rallied to the CIA's
defense. They denounced the series as overblown, although finally
acknowledging that the allegations raised during the 1980s were
true. Webb's series also prompted a new investigation by the
CIA's inspector general.
In the first volume of his investigative report, Hitz
admitted the CIA knew early on about contra drug trafficking and
covered it up. The report's second volume reportedly puts the CIA
in even a worse light.
The CIA press office acknowledges that the second volume has
been completed, but adds that there is no timetable for releasing
a declassified version. "They'll only let it out if they're
pressured," commented one U.S. official.
But the CIA apparently is counting on continued disinterest
by the national press as a sign that there is no need to revisit
the issue. That assessment was bolstered on May 7 when Waters
introduced the Casey-Smith letters into the Congressional Record
and drew very little media interest in the damaging admissions.
For her part, Waters stated that the Casey-Smith arrangement
"allowed some of the biggest drug lords in the world to operate
without fear that the CIA would be required to report their
activities to the DEA and other law enforcement agencies. ...
These damning memorandums ... are further evidence of a shocking
official policy that allowed the drug cartels to operate through
the CIA-led contra covert operations in Central America."
Though Waters's comments focused on the contra war, Casey's
narcotics exemption could have had other CIA covert operations in
mind. In the early 1980s, the CIA-backed Afghan mujahedeen also
were implicated as major heroin traffickers in the Near East.
But whatever the genesis of the drug exemption, the
Casey-Smith exchange of letters stands as important historical
evidence bolstering the long-denied allegations of CIA complicity
in drug trafficking. Worse yet, the documents are evidence of
premeditation.
Copyright (c) 1998
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This document resides at http://speech.csun.edu/ben/news/cia/980601.parry.html