-Caveat Lector-
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Our Embarrassing War Against Drugs
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1999 14:25:05 -0600 (CST)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy.
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INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999
(House of Representatives - May 07, 1998)
Congressional Record (07 May 1998)
Without even a passing glance from the mainstream press, new
confirmation of CIA involvement in drug trafficking was inserted into
the public record by Maxine Waters. Waters included with her testimony
an exchange of letters from 1982 between CIA Director William Casey and
Attorney General William French Smith which appears to demonstrate
Casey's knowledge of drug trafficking by CIA assets and his desire to
keep this knowledge away from legal scrutiny.
Congressional Record (07 May 1998) [Page: H2954]
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I want to take a few minutes to talk about
some of the things that aren't being talked about enough. The war on
drugs has come up several times today. I think there's some compelling
evidence to show how the culture of obsessive secrecy that is part of
covert action cultivates an actual and implied climate of impunity.
The CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz, undertook a massive study into
the CIA ties to drug traffickers. Upon completion of the first volume
of the 600 page report, Hitz declared that they found `no evidence . .
. of any conspiracy by the CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the
United States.' Then he announced that hardly any of his findings would
be publicly available, casting a long shadow of doubt as to the scope
and conclusions of the investigation. A second volume is still in the
works.
The CIA's credibility when it comes to investigating itself was further
brought into question when Hitz disclosed during recent testimony
before the House Intelligence Committee that in 1982, the CIA and
Attorney General William French Smith had an agreement that the CIA was
not required to report allegations of drug smuggling by non-employees.
Non-employees was explicitly interpreted to include unpaid and paid
assets of the CIA, such as pilots and informants. The memorandum, dated
February 11, 1982, states `no formal requirement regarding the
reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these
procedures', referring to the procedures relating to non-employee
crimes. I want to compliment the gentlelady from California, Ms.
Waters, for her hard work on this topic and for obtaining this and
other relevant memoranda. I ask you, though, is this the war on drugs
that President Reagan launched?
Nobody here who advocates cuts to the intelligence budget or reforming
this intelligence system gone haywire doubts for one second that the
U.S. needs reliable information about exports of Russian missile
technology or the trade in bacteriological warfare technology. I am a
veteran and I know how important intelligence is. But doesn't the above
information illustrate why the integrity of our intelligence system is
in doubt?
The historical record shows that this culture of secrecy too often
undermines our foreign and domestic interests.
In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and
International Communications, headed by Senator John Kerry, found that
`there was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zone
on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots,
mercenaries who worked with the Contra supporters throughout the
region.' Moreover, U.S. officials `failed to address the drug issue for
fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua.'
In other words, the drug war was subordinated to the cold war. This is
right in line with what we've learned about the memorandum of
understanding described above. I am inserting into the Record a list,
compiled by the Institute for Policy Studies, which goes through other
examples of the troubling history of our intelligence agencies.
Congressional Record (07 May 1998) [Page: H2962]
(Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, this debate is not what I would like, I say
to the floor managers and chairman and ranking member of the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, because in this 5 minutes back and
forth, usually we do not get answered.
Let us understand that the Central Intelligence Agency's relationship
with drug pushers has not even been mentioned here. It is as if we are
in a universe where nobody knows about this except we read it in the
paper or we get a GAO study every now and then, or somebody writes
about Los Angeles and the introduction of cocaine, which creates a
momentary flak. And then we come here to the annual ritual and what do
we have? We have people saying the Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence is one of the most respected bodies in the world system,
not the Congress. It is studied all over the world because these are
sensitive people, understand. They are very sensitive about this
subject. It is all secret. We do not know what is going on.
We do know that there was $26.7 billion appropriated. And then somebody
snuck into the emergency supplemental appropriation, fiscal year 1998,
an unknown amount of money.
[TIME: 1400]
Rumored, `Oh, never heard of that before.' Okay. Rumored, $260
million. Suspected a lot more. But nobody knows. And then this
discussion my colleagues have passed off as an open, fair debate on
this subject. Now, if I hear that the CIA is not perfect one more time,
I am going to excuse myself from these proceedings. Of course it is not
perfect. It is awful.
[Page: H2963]
Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. CONYERS. I will not yield to the gentleman from California. I will
excuse myself from the proceedings after the debate on this measure is
concluded.
But look, we know the CIA is not perfect. But that is not the
question. The question is, how bad are they? `Oh, wow, that is an
insult. We cannot talk like that.' They are not perfect. Why, any
amateur historian knows that we had perfect knowledge that the Japanese
were coming to Pearl Harbor. And a respected Member of this body gets
up and says, well, it was military intelligence, if it had been
stronger. Pearl Harbor is a perfect example of our intelligence system
at work.
Now, the intelligence community failed in Iraq. I mean, for anyone to
suggest that we won the war on intelligence, really they have not even
been listening to the military much less to anybody else.
This committee has done us a great disservice, and then to fight hard
to keep a 5 percent reduction from occurring. Let us really show them
by a two-to-one margin that the American people want to keep this
secret budget going full blast, whatever it is, and that the American
people are approving of this.
Well, I think this does the body a disservice. I do not think that we
should do it. I refer my colleagues to the GAO news release. `CIA kept
ties with alleged traffickers.' And then we come here and debate about
how they have got to do some more about drugs and we hear, `Let's give
them another chance.' Did I hear that last year, the last year, the
year before the year before, the year before, the year before? Of
course. `Let us give them one more chance.'
Well, I think this is not the way to debate. There is a tangled web of
the CIA's complicity in drug international trafficking that not one
member of the Select Committee on Intelligence has even alluded to in
debate, even referenced. It does not exist. We are here to get this
secret budget through and that is it.
Congressional Record (07 May 1998) [Page: H2955]
A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International
Trafficking
[Prepared by the Institute for Policy Studies and inserted into the
Congressional Record by Rep. Conyers.]
WORLD WAR II
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of Naval
Intelligence (ONI), the CIA's parent and sister organizations,
cultivate relations with the leaders of the Italian Mafia, recruiting
heavily from the New York and Chicago underworlds, whose members,
including Charles `Lucky' Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, and Frank
Costello, help the agencies keep in touch with Sicilian Mafia leaders
exiled by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Domestically, the aim is
to prevent sabotage on East Coast ports, while in Italy the goal is to
gain intelligence on Sicily prior to the allied invasions and to
suppress the burgeoning Italian Communist Party. Imprisoned in New
York, Luciano earns a pardon for his wartime service and is deported to
Italy, where he proceeds to build his heroin empire, first by diverting
supplies from the legal market, before developing connections in
Lebanon and Turkey that supply morphine base to labs in Sicily. The OSS
and ONI also work closely with Chinese gangsters who control vast
supplies of opium, morphine and heroin, helping to establish the third
pillar of the post-world War II heroin trade in the Golden Triangle,
the border region of Thailand, Burma, Laos and China's Yunnan
Province.
1947
In its first year of existence, the CIA continues U.S. intelligence
community's anti-communist drive. Agency operatives help the Mafia
seize total power in Sicily and it sends money to heroin- smuggling
Corsican mobsters in Marseille to assist in their battle with Communist
unions for control of the city's docks. By 1951, Luciano and the
Corsicans have pooled their resources, giving rise to the notorious
`French Connection' which would dominate the world heroin trade until
the early 1970s. The CIA also recruits members of organized crime gangs
in Japan to help ensure that the country stays in the non-communist
world. Several years later, the Japanese Yakuza emerges as a major
source of methamphetamine in Hawaii.
1949
Chinese Communist revolution causes collapse of drug empire allied with
U.S. intelligence community, but a new one quickly emerges under the
command of Nationalist (KMT) General Li Mi, who flees Yunnan into
eastern Burma. Seeking to rekindle anticommunist resistance in China,
the CIA provides arms, ammunition and other supplies to the KMT. After
being repelled from China with heavy losses, the KMT settles down with
local population and organizes and expands the opium trade from Burma
and Northern Thailand. By 1972, the KMT controls 80 percent of the
Golden Triangle's opium trade.
1950
The CIA launches Project Bluebird to determine whether certain drugs
might improve its interrogation methods. This eventually leads CIA head
Allen Dulles, in April 1953, to institute a program for `covert use of
biological and chemical materials' as part of the agency's continuing
efforts to control behavior. With benign names such as Project
Artichoke and Project Chatter, these projects continue through the
1960s, with hundreds of unwitting test subjects given various drugs,
including LSD.
1960
In support of the U.S. war in Vietnam, the CIA renews old and
cultivates new relations with Laotian, Burmese and Thai drug merchants,
as well as corrupt military and political leaders in Southeast Asia.
Despite the dramatic rise of heroin production, the agency's relations
with these figures attracts little attention until the early 1970s.
1967
Manuel Antonio Noriega goes on the CIA payroll. First recruited by the
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 1959, Noriega becomes an invaluable
asset for the CIA when he takes charge of Panama's intelligence service
after the 1968 military coup, providing services for U.S. covert
operations and facilitating the use of Panama as the center of U.S.
intelligence gathering in Latin America. In 1976, CIA Director George
Bush pays Noriega $110,000 for his services, even though as early as
1971 U.S. officials agents had evidence that he was deeply involved in
drug trafficking. Although the Carter administration suspends payments
to Noriega, he returns to the U.S. payroll when President Reagan takes
office in 1981. The general is rewarded handsomely for his services in
support of Contras forces in Nicaragua during the 1980s, collecting
$200,000 from the CIA in 1986 alone.
MAY 1970
A Christian Science Monitor correspondent reports that the CIA `is
cognizant of, if not party to, the extensive movement of opium out of
Laos,' quoting one charter pilot who claims that `opium shipments get
special CIA clearance and monitoring on their flights southward out of
the country.' At the time, some 30,000 U.S. service men in Vietnam are
addicted to heroin.
1972
The full story of how Cold War politics and U.S. covert operations
fueled a heroin boom in the Golden Triangle breaks when Yale University
doctoral student Alfred McCoy publishes his ground- breaking study, The
Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. The CIA attempts to quash the
book.
1973
Thai national Puttapron Khramkhruan is arrested in connection with the
seizure of 59 pounds of opium in Chicago. A CIA informant on narcotics
trafficking in northern Thailand, he claims that agency had full
knowledge of his actions. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the
CIA quashed the case because it may `prove embarrassing because of Mr.
Khramkhruans's involvement with CIA activities in Thailand, Burma, and
elsewhere.'
JUNE 1975
Mexican police, assisted by U.S. drug agents, arrest Alberto Sicilia
Falcon, whose Tijuana-based operation was reportedly generating $3.6
million a week from the sale of cocaine and marijuana in the United
States. The Cuban exile claims he was a CIA protege, trained as part of
the agency's anti-Castro efforts, and in exchange for his help in
moving weapons to certain groups in Central America, the CIA
facilitated his movement of drugs. In 1974, Sicilia's top aide, Jose
Egozi, a CIA-trained intelligence officer and Bay of Pigs veteran,
reportedly lined up agency support for a right-wing plot to overthrow
the Portuguese government. Among the top Mexican politicians, law
enforcement and intelligence officials from whom Sicilia enjoyed
support was Miguel Nazar Haro, head of the Direccion Federal de
Seguridad (DFS), who the CIA admits was its `most important source in
Mexico and Central America.' When Nazar was linked to a
multi-million-dollar stolen car ring several years later, the CIA
intervenes to prevent his indictment in the United States.
APRIL 1978
Soviet-backed coup in Afghanistan sets stage for explosive growth in
Southwest Asian heroin trade. New Marxist regime undertakes vigorous
anti-narcotics campaign aimed at suppressing poppy production,
triggering a revolt by semi-autonomous tribal groups that traditionally
raised opium for export. The CIA-supported rebel Mujahedeen begins
expanding production to finance their insurgency. Between 1982 and
1989, during which time the CIA ships billions of dollars in weapons
and other aid to guerrilla forces, annual opium production in
Afghanistan increases to about 800 tons from 250 tons. By 1986, the
State Department admits that Afghanistan is `probably the world's
largest producer of opium for export' and `the poppy source for a
majority of the Southwest Asian heroin found in the United States.'
U.S. officials, however, fail to take action to curb production. Their
silence not only serves to maintain public support for the Mujahedeen,
it also smooths relations with Pakistan, whose leaders, deeply
implicated in the heroin trade, help channel CIA support to the Afghan
rebels.
[Page: H2956]
JUNE 1980
Despite advance knowledge, the CIA fails to halt members of the
Bolivian militaries, aide by the Argentine counterparts, from staging
the so-called `Cocaine Coup,' according to former DEA agent Michael
Levine. In fact, the 25-year DEA veteran maintains the agency actively
abetted cocaine trafficking in Bolivia, where government official who
sought to combat traffickers faced `torture and death at the hands of
CIA-sponsored paramilitary terrorists under the command of fugitive
Nazi war criminal (also protected by the CIA) Klaus Barbie.
FEBRUARY 1985
DEA agent Enrique `Kiki' Camerena is kidnapped and murder in Mexico.
DEA, FBI and U.S. Customs Service investigators accuse the CIA of
stonewalling during their investigation. U.S. authorities claim the CIA
is more interested in protecting its assets, including top drug
trafficker and kidnapping principal Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. (In
1982, the DEA learned that Felix Gallardo was moving $20 million a
month through a single Bank of America account, but it could not get
the CIA to cooperate with its investigation.) Felix Gallardo's main
partner is Honduran drug lord Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, who began
amassing his $2-billion fortune as a cocaine supplier to Alberto
Sicilia Falcon. (see June 1985) Matta's air transport firm, SETCO,
receives $186,000 from the U.S. State Department to fly `humanitarian
supplies' to the Nicaraguan Contras from 1983 to 1985. Accusations that
the CIA protected some of Mexico's leading drug traffickers in exchange
for their financial support of the Contras are leveled by government
witnesses at the trials of Camarena's accused killers.
JANUARY 1988
Deciding that he has outlived his usefulness to the Contra cause, the
Reagan Administration approves an indictment of Noriega on drug
charges. By this time, U.S. Senate investigators had found that `the
United States had received substantial information about criminal
involvement of top Panamanian officials for nearly twenty years and
done little to respond.'
APRIL 1989
The Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International
Communications, headed by Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, issues its
1,166-page report on drug corruption in Central America and the
Caribbean. The subcommittee found that `there was substantial evidence
of drug smuggling through the war zone on the part of individuals
Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with
the Contras supporters throughout the region.' U.S. officials, the
subcommittee said, `failed to address the drug issue for fear of
jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua.' The investigation also
reveals that some `senior policy makers' believed that the use of drug
money was `a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems.'
JANUARY 1993
Honduran businessman Eugenio Molina Osorio is arrested in Lubbock Texas
for supplying $90,000 worth of cocaine to DEA agents. Molina told judge
he is working for CIA to whom he provides political intelligence.
Shortly after, a letter from CIA headquarters is sent to the judge, and
the case is dismissed. `I guess we're all aware that they [the CIA] do
business in a different way than everybody else,' the judge notes.
Molina later admits his drug involvement was not a CIA operation,
explaining that the agency protected him because of his value as a
source for political intelligence in Honduras.
NOVEMBER 1996
Former head of the Venezuelan National Guard and CIA operative Gen.
Ramon Gullien Davila is indicted in Miami on charges of smuggling as
much as 22 tons of cocaine into the United States. More than a ton of
cocaine was shipped into the country with the CIA's approval as part of
an undercover program aimed at catching drug smugglers, an operation
kept secret from other U.S. agencies.
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