A HISTORY OF CIA DRUG TRAFFICKING: HOW DRUG CARTELS AND DRUG-DEALING DEATH SQUADS HAVE BEEN THE CIA’S BEST FRIENDS FOR MANY DECADES
By: Joel van der Reijden | Date: August 27, 2016
Contents
1.
Intro: four dozen CIA drug trafficking cases
2.
“Liberal CIA”-backed “New Left” media our best friend?
3.
Key names behind the CIA drug trade
4.
The “rogue” CIA myth
5.
CIA drug trafficking timeline: 1940s – 21st century
6.
Mike Ruppert and those less reliable CIA drug trafficking cases
7.
Notes
Intro: four dozen CIA drug trafficking cases
In this article about four dozen historical cases of CIA drug trafficking are summarized, complete with sources. These summaries and sources should make it much easier to understand the intricacies of CIA drug trafficking allegations, see how various cases fit together, leap over some of the less reliable ones, and form a relatively clear opinion as to whether or not this subject is credible. A timeline of the more important and credible historical cases is as follows:
1940s: the Cosa Nostra, Triads, Black Dragon terrorists and Yakuza;
1950s: the role of CAT and SEA Supply in setting up the “Golden Triangle” opium trafficking network;
1960s-: later “Golden Triangle” drug lords as Khun Sa and Vang Pao;
1960s-1970s: South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu;
1970s: the Nugan Hand Bank and BBRDW collapses;
1970s-: Bolivia’s coca suppliers, starting under dictator Hugo Banzer, with European fascists Klaus Barbie and Stefano Della Chiaie as chief aids;
1970s-1980s: the Medellin Cartel and Cali Cartel in Colombia;
1978: the Honduran cocaine coup of drug trafficker Felix Gallardo and dictator General Policarpo Paz García;
1980: the Bolivian cocaine coup of General Luis Garcia Meza Tajada, once again with Klaus Barbie and Stefano Della Chiaie;
1973-1990: Augusto Pinochet in Chile;
1980-1989: Manuel Noriega and his Mossad henchman Micha Harari in Panama;
1980s: Mexico’s Guadalajara Cartel and its government bosses in the DFS and cabinet, in part also revealed through DEA agent Mike Levine;
1982-1985: the pro-Contra BLACK EAGLE operation, ran from George H. W. Bush’s office;
1982-1986: the subsequent CIA crack-cocaine affair, Mena affair, John Hull ranch and Ilopango Airport drug smuggling accusations, and finally Iran-Contra, all in relation to these Contra wars;
1980s: Afghanistan and the BCCI in the 1980s;
1998-: the Afghan heroin-linked KBR Halliburton-Far West partnership and the U.S.-tied Alfa Group in Ukraine and Russia;
1999-2001: the drug trafficking accusations and convictions of the flight school owners who trained the primary 9/11 hijackers;
2001-: the Afghanistan heroin production surge post-9/11;
2006-2011: Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Operation Fast and Furious.
Then there are a number of more well-known but far less reliable CIA drug trafficking accusations that have been perpetuated in conspiracy circles. These have been included in a separate list. Because of their prominence and partially or largely correct information (minus a few code names and details), they remain important to discuss. We’re talking about:
1984-1988: Daniel Sheehan’s CIA-Contra investigations through the “liberal CIA”-backed Christic Institute;
1991: Richard Brenneke’s claims about Mena and the Strategy of Tension;
“1980”: the Colonel Edward Cutolo affidavit;
1996: the Colonel Robert Wilson affidavit;
1990s: the Dee Ferdinand-Carone testimony;
1990s: the claims of Gene Tatum;
1996: the rise to prominence of Mike Ruppert immediately after the Gary Webb “Dark Alliance” exposes.
In addition, for now I prefer to label a case mentioned in Daniel Casolaro’s private journal as “less reliable”, because the same source he used for this case appears to have been feeding him disinformation on other occasions.
The reader should know that certainly not all sources used in the “reliable” section actually are fully reliable. Colonel Bo Gritz, Rodney Stich, or Joseph Trento all have their peculiarities. I only used them when left with no other choice or as one of a number of sources. Furthermore, I can only pray that Mike Levine’s claims are genuine. I have little reason to doubt him, except that I wonder how he ever made it to the New York Times best-sellers list. Most likely that has been due to the influence of “liberal CIA” in the aftermath of the Contra affair; let’s hope that’s all there is to it.
The conspiracy business is the ultimate minefield and CIA drug trafficking is hardly different. Despite that, I’m quite sure that the vast majority of cases listed in the “reliable” section are very accurate. But ultimately readers will have to check the sources for themselves and make up their own minds.
“Liberal CIA”-backed “New Left” media our best friend?
As I found out while putting together this oversight, accusing the CIA of drug trafficking certainly isn’t contained to conspiracy authors. “Liberal CIA” media outlets have been doing it since at least the Contra affair of the mid 1980s. Articles used as source material here include those from PBS, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Alternet and Consortium News, as well as the National Security Archive and the surprisingly detailed and rather unique 1998 book Whiteout of Alexander Cockburn (ever since UCLA establishmentarian Peter Dale Scott came out as a Pentagon-no-planer, I’m even more hesitant to cite his somewhat similar book Cocaine Politics). A broadcast of Pacifica Radio’s WBAI station has also been used.
I was somewhat surprised by all this, because these same alternative “liberal CIA” media outlets – all of them funded by big foundations as Rockefeller, Ford, Soros, MacArthur and others – will scream bloody murder when similarly rational questions are asked about the JFK assassination or 9/11 – which, as far as I can see, largely implicate the same set of characters.
Exposes of Contra drug trafficking or even U.S. government support of dictators and death squads during the Cold War aren’t even contained to these alternative outlets. There are a number of quite revealing articles on this in the New York Times and Washington Post, as well as the somewhat less establishment Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly. It must be said though that voicing suspicions that the CIA and top cabinet officials have been involved in drug trafficking is really where establishment publications as the New York Times have been drawing the line. We clearly saw that in late 1996 when Gary Webb reported in the San Jose Mercury News about CIA-sanctioned Contra cocaine trafficking. While some of the “new left” publications – which actually receive financing from interests equally linked to the New York Times and Washington Post – never wavered in their support of Webb, he was harshly and irrationally attacked by (official) establishment publications, to the point he lost his job and eventually committed suicide.
Still, it’s good to see that the “new left” media, however controlled it is, has been reporting on CIA drug trafficking, because it makes the subject much easier to discuss. They might not have the authority of the New York Times or Washington Post, but they cannot simply be dismissed either. Far from it. Take the National Security Archive alone. Apart from all the unique government documents it has published, it has numerous establishment individuals involved with it, including Seymour Hersh, Morton Halperin, Walter Slocombe and the occasional high-level Soros employee.
Cocaine and heroin legalization?
What is also very nice to see is that this “new left” “liberal CIA” network is actively working to make not just marijuana legal, but also psychedelics as mushrooms, ibogaine, ayahuasca and MDMA. All of these psychedelics have shown tremendous potential for unparalleled psychological introspection, release of trauma, and the breaking up of addiction patterns. Ibogaine, in particular, can successfully treat all kinds of addictions, from cigarettes to heroin. George Soros’ Drug Policy Alliance and the Rockefeller-tied Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and Heffter Research Institute are leading the way in this.
A lot of these same people used to be advocates of the methadone programs of the 1970s, which cut crime in half in the 1970-1973 period. Reluctantly introduced by Nixon under pressure of the Washington Post and other liberal establishment interests [1], these programs were shelved under the Reagan-Bush administration with its “Just Say No” policy, which, according to Carter’s drug czar Dr. Peter Bourne was akin to“telling someone who’s depressed, “Have a Nice Day.”” [2] At the same time, the Reagan administration secretly re-introduced U.S. government cooperation with drug cartels and drug dealing military commanders and dictators. Indeed, Christian Conservatives never cease to amaze.
Personally, I would also advocate for the legalization of cocaine and heroin, be it in a very controlled matter in which anyone can buy them for the lowest possible price in specialized government drug stores. The only alternative, especially with regard to heroin, is forced treatment with ibogaine. This aspect is discussed in ISGP’s solutions oversight.
It would be very interesting to see – as a temporary experiment – what would happen if a cocaine and heroin legalization program is implemented. It should destroy the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels overnight and end the half-century old “War on Drugs”. The Mexican economy should take off, stopping the illegal and legal emigration flows toward the United States. But will it ever come this far? After all, similar to the much newer “War on Terror”, there’s a military and national security establishment that needs enemies to protect us from. If the drug or terrorism problem gets solved, defense budgets are going to be slashed and a lot of powerful people will lose their jobs, prestige and influence. It will also make it much harder to argue in favor of invasive domestic espionage plans. Terrorism in the most crucial enemy, but the drug cartels and domestic crime groups are a good second. Dr. Bourne is among a number of high officials who have publicly discussed this problem. [3]
In any case, pushing for full drug legalization and regulation is as viable a route as trying to educate people about CIA-sanctioned drug trafficking and how the CIA built up the French Connection, the Golden Triangle opium lords, the Afghan heroin market, and the Colombian cocaine cartels.
Key names behind the CIA drug trade
Key CIA names of the Agency’s drug trade of the 1950s in Burma/Myanmar – and with that established the infamous Golden Triangle – include Frank Wisner, Paul Helliwell, Claire Chennault, William Pawley and Tommy Corcoran. Their primary tools to facilitate arms-for-opium trafficking operations in the region were Chiang Kai-shek on Taiwan and the airliners Civil Air Transport (CAT; later Air America) and SEA Supply Corporation. Together these elements built up anti-communist guerrilla armies in the Burmese backlands, as well as the Thai national police force.
William Colby came to the Golden Triangle in 1959 as CIA station chief of South Vietnam, working with Ngo Dinh Diem in forcing the population to resist the communist North. Diem reportedly was involved in the trafficking of Burmese opium and so was South Vietnam’s president from 1965 to 1975, Nguyen Van Thieu, with whom Colby also worked closely, first as chief of the CIA’s Far East Division from 1962 to 1967, and then as head of the Phoenix Program from 1968 to 1971. When the notorious Ted Shackley, widely accused of similar opium trafficking practices, became station chief of Laos in 1966, Colby was his immediate supervisor.
After Vietnam, Shackley continued his activities as chief of the Western Hemisphere Division from 1972 to 1976 and as George H. W. Bush’s deputy director of covert operations. After being forced out of the CIA by Carter’s CIA director, Admiral Stansfield Turner, in 1979, he became deeply involved with his mentor Richard Helms, George H. W. Bush, Frank Carlucci and a number of others in managing a private CIA network through groups as the Safari Club [4] and Le Cercle. His name features in numerous of the most sensitive and appalling CIA scandals, from the JFK assassination to Gladio terrorism, even after he was officially removed from the Agency.
Another of these Shackley-tied scandals is the 1980 collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank amidst accusations that the bank was laundering Golden Triangle heroin profits, almost a decade after the end of the Vietnam War. Shackley, who around the same time was also fingered as a CIA drug trafficker by Burmese opium kingpin Khun Sa, was reported to be involved in the bank. Colby, as the lawyer to one of the founders, certainly was. In addition to Shackley and Colby, CIA officers and key CIA assets Paul Helliwell, General Richard Secord, Rafael Quintero, Thomas Clines all were named in a 1983 study of the Australian government into the Nugan Hand Bank as having been close to the bank’s co-founder Michael Hand.
What is almost hilarious is that Hand used to work for the CIA’s opium smuggling airline Air America in Laos during the Vietnam War, while General Secord played an important role in directing Air America operations and Shackley and Clines were running the Laotian CIA station in this same period. What might be of additional interest is that Admiral Felix B. Stump was chairman of Air America from 1959 to at least 1970. Why? Because Admiral Stump joined the the national strategy board of the ultraright, death squad-linked American Security Council, which over the years has seen its fair share of top-level CIA and Pentagon officers on the board, as well as three Wackenhut executives. James Angleton, Ray Cline, Iran Contra’s General John Singlaub, and Daniel Arnold – of Golden Triangle opium trafficking fame alongside Shackley – include some of these CIA and Pentagon officers. By the 1980s cocaine-trafficking Contras leaders were also very popular at American Security Council meetings.
Shackley’s good friend George H. W. Bush has been considered another key insider to the CIA drug trade. There’s quite a bit of evidence that Operation BLACK EAGLE – and certainly a similar operation if the name itself turns out to be incorrect – to support the Latin American Contras was ran from Bush’s vice presidential office on behalf of CIA director William Casey. There is more than a bit of evidence that these men allowed the Contras to smuggle cocaine into the United States, in order for them to pay for weapons and other supplies. Besides Casey and Bush, other names that continually surfaced in relation to BLACK EAGLE and overlapping operations as the ARMS SUPERMARKET and THE ENTERPRISE included Donald Gregg, Felix Rodriguez, General Richard Secord, and the famous Colonel Oliver North, who reportedly was Casey’s asset at the National Security Council.
Others particularly closely tied to the Contra arms and cocaine trafficking operations, mainly in the 1982-1986 period, include Costa Rica-based CIA asset John Hull, Contra leaders and American Security Council visitors Adolfo Calero and Enrique Bermudez, and Panama’s Manuel Noriega, together with his right-hand man Mike Harari, a top-level Mossad asset in Latin America. For the rest, clandestine partners of the U.S. government included well-known drug traffickers and dictators who had no particular name to uphold in the first place.
Bush’s name we also find in the CIA-linked BBRDW scandal of the early 1980s, although it must be said, maybe not through the most reliable source (the convicted chairman Ron Rewald through author Rodney Stich). Then there’s the Mena drug trafficking affair in which Medellin Cartel cocaine importer Barry Seal stood central. Who looks at this case will have to conclude that it is virtually certain that both Bush and Clinton, the latter as governor of Arkansas, were shielding Seal’s operations from law enforcement. On top of that, the Casey-Bush-North alliance destroyed the DEA’s operation aimed at bringing down the entire Medellin Cartel when they decided to leak the Contra sting operation of their asset Barry Seal to the media. This allowed Reagan to accuse the Sandinista government of drug trafficking and force Congress to end the ban on U.S. military aid to the Contras – who, of course, were the real drug traffickers. The scheme worked.
What might also be important to mention is that it almost certainly wasn’t an accident that Bush was appointed CIA director. As has been the case with various other CIA directors (William Casey, James Woolsey), there’s evidence that Bush maintained a decades-long affiliation with the CIA through the business world, in his case through the network of his Eastern Establishment father, Prescott Bush, and then through his oil firm Zapata Petroleum. The oil business not only made him a key CIA asset who later came in handy for overtures to the Saudis as part of the Safari Club network, but in the mid 1970s Bush reportedly also was extremely useful to CIA friends as Ted Shackley and CIA director Richard Helms in penetrating the Mexican government and its national oil company PEMEX. William Pawley, a CIA asset in starting up Golden Triangle CIA opium trafficking in the early 1950s and an American Security Council propagandist, is reported to have played a key intermediary role between Bush and the Mexican government. [5]
We all know what an extremely violent place Mexico has become since the late 1970s when the drug cartels reared their ugly heads. As it happens, various Mexican presidents and cabinet members have been accused of direct involvement in the cocaine trade. Names include defense minister Juan Arevalo and interior minister Manuel Bartlett, both of whom served the full six years (1982-1988) of the presidency of Miguel de la Madrid. Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) has been accused of direct involvement. Also mentioned have been (the convicted) Ruben Zuno Arce, a son-in-law to Mexican president Luis Echeverria Alvarez (1970-1976); and Colonel Jaime Carranza, a grandson of Venustiano Carranza, Mexico’s defacto leader from 1915 to 1917 and then president until 1920. Government control over the cartels, at least in the 1970s and 1980s, was maintained through the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), an internal security service which was trained by the CIA, answered to the interior minister and served as “the eyes and ears” of the cartels.
If we subsequently look at rather serious accusations that Felix Rodriguez – the front man for Bush and Gregg in Contra and seemingly drug trafficking affairs – in the 1980s attended parties in which top Guadalajara Cartel bosses, Mexican cabinet ministers, police chiefs and even national Interpol directors all mingled, and that Rodriguez reportedly played a key role in the torture-murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena, and we once again are more or less forced to conclude that Bush, Sr. most likely has been a major insider to CIA/White House-sanctioned drug trafficking. And more than that as well. Bush’s name already surfaced in a curious manner in the JFK assassination, while his son, Bush, Jr., was president of the United States on 9/11, another event that has left us with more questions than answers. So, maybe by figuring out who the key persons have been behind CIA drug trafficking, we most likely can also figure out who has been behind a whole range of other conspiracy affairs.
The post-9/11 world has seen the curious spike in production in Afghan opium that the United States, in contrast to the Taliban, just can’t seem to get under control.
The violence in Mexico also continued to increase in the post-9/11 world due to competing cocaine cartels. In fact, a lot of evidence has emerged that certainly in the 2006-2011 period, the Bush and Obama administrations were secretly aiding the Sinaloa Cartel against the Los Zetas in what has become known as the gun walking scandals.
As the timeline in this article demonstrates, all these problematic drug-producing hot spots – the French Connection, Golden Triangle, the Golden Crescent and Latin America – were created by the United States during the Cold War to finance (largely) illegal CIA operations. Has anything changed? Who really knows. Apart from the Bush family legacy to go by, we appear to have Bush’s vice president Dick Cheney and the CIA linked to Afghan opium trafficking through their (past) partnership with Far West Ltd., at least in the 1998 – early 2000s period.
There may also be ties between the Bush government’s brutal extraordinary rendition program (the torturing of terrorist subjects in Third World countries) and Sinaloa Cartel cocaine imports into the United States, much like CIA-backed anti-communist death squads that were partially financed through the drug trade during the Cold War.
We certainly also shouldn’t forget, of course, that 9/11 ring leader Mohammed Atta and some of his primary associates were trained as pilots in the United States by rather obvious CIA-tied drug importers: Wally Hilliard, Rudi Dekkers and Arne Kruithof.
These and a number of other latter-day scandals listed in the timeline below most certainly make one wonder if anything has changed since the end of the Cold War. In the end we have to conclude that we just don’t know, but with this article and the sources provided in it, at least we have some historical perspective to move forward from.
The “rogue” CIA myth
It’s important to understand that there’s little evidence that the CIA ever went “rogue”. Throughout the decades presidents, national security advisors and often also secretaries of state have authorized just about every CIA operation. This most certainly includes pro-big business coups that brought murderous “anti-communist” dictators to power. These coups have been documented rather well over the years by various parliamentary investigations, such as the Church Committee, the Hamilton and Inouye-led committees into Iran Contra and the closely-related Kerry Committee looking into Contra drug trafficking. A present-day elite-backed NGO as the National Security Archive actually has continued the work of these committees by filing FOIA requests and writing additional reports.
The only Cold War presidents who really did their best to not authorize such operations that involved replacing moderate governments with violent dictators and death squads have been John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, although both continually were under significant pressure by top cabinet members, advisors, and Eastern Establishment and Christian conservative pressure groups to sail more hardline routes. Kennedy was by far the most stubborn in this sense. Coincidence or not, we all know what happened to him and his brother.
Where do elites fit into CIA drug trafficking?
An interesting aspect of these “above-CIA” elements having authorized all CIA operations is that this brings “the elite” more into view, because elites have not exactly limited themselves to the CIA directorship, deputy directorship, and the top of the operations department. The positions of secretary of state, national security advisor and defense secretary are all held decade after decade by leading and trusted members of the superclass. There’s plenty of evidence to show that persons picked for these positions, have been fully aware that the CIA has been in the drug business. This most certainly goes for the most connected individuals that have occupied these positions: Rockefeller/Bechtel friends (which, as ISGP demonstrates in its intro article, have dominated U.S. politics since World War II) as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Shultz. CIA directors Allen Dulles, John McCone and Richard Helms fall into this same category of powerful Rockefeller friends.
More information on this Cold War Rockefeller network at the top of government can be found in ISGP’s Pilgrims Society article. What is particularly relevant here is that if we consider the idea that many of these top government officials have been in the know of CIA drug trafficking, then all of a sudden it starts to make sense that we can tie the very elite 1001 Club membership of Prince Bernhard to a number of high level money laundering and drug trafficking cases. We’re talking about such 1001 Club members (in bold) as:
David Rockefeller and the Bechtels, who, through their friendship with successive CIA directors Allen Dulles, John McCone and Richard Helms (David Rockefeller received full briefings from CIA division chiefs, with both he and Bechtel serving as CIA fronts), not to mention long-time 40 Committee chairman Henry Kissinger, should have been aware of CIA drug trafficking operations;
Robert Vesco, the alleged CIA-tied drug trafficker and money launderer;
Tibor Rosenbaum, the Mossad asset, Edmond de Rothschild (1001 Club) associate, and chairman of the International Credit Bank (ICB) of Geneva, which laundered billions in profits of the Jewish-American mafia;
BCCI founder Aga Hasan Abedi, a product of the Pakistani ISI and western elites;
top-level Rothschild banker Alfred Hartmann, who was deeply involved in the BCCI and other major scandals as Iraqgate, the Russian IMF money laundering scandal (as vice chair of the Bank of New York-Inter Maritime Bank in Geneva, headed by Mossad agent and William Casey associate Bruce Rappaport), the Savings and loan crisis, and seemingly even the Banco Ambrosiano collapse;
the Rothschilds themselves with their rather extensive ties (along with the Israelis) to Russian oligarchs in turn with top-level connections to the Solntsevskaya mafia and Uzbekistan crime boss Gafur Rakhimov, a reported major trafficker of Afghan heroin;
Edmond Safra, the Zionist banker close to the Rothschilds who was linked to the laundering of Iran Contra and Medellin Cartel proceeds, followed by similar accusations – alongside Solntsevskaya and Zionist Russian oligarchs – involving billions of dollars in IMF loans to Russia;
the Aga Khans, said to be involved in Afghan heroin with MI6 who are very close Rockefeller and Rothschild friends;
the royal house of Liechtenstein can be linked to accusions of laundering money for the Medellin Cartel, Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko (1001 Club), Ferdinand Marcos on the Philippines, and Germany’s leading CDU political party through Peter Frommelt, a relative of 1001 Club member Egmond Frommelt; and 1001 Club member Herbert Batliner, both close associates of Prince Bernhard, the Mossad’s Tibor Rosenbaum, and the house of Liechtenstein.
We also shouldn’t forget about drug trafficking charges involving South-East Asia heroin and Colombian cocaine against the Russian-Zionist Alfa Group of Mikhail Fridman and other oligarchs. These charges deserve to be mentioned separately from the Rothschild connections to Russia, in part because Fridman can be found on the global advisory panel of the Council on Foreign Relations, putting him direct contact with the Rockefeller clique of globalists.
Then there’s the earlier-mentioned Far West Ltd. corporation, with its alleged involvement in Afghan heroin and South American cocaine trafficking. With prominent Saudis as Prince Turki al Faisal and Adnan Khashoggi and Americans as vice president Dick Cheney and former CIA director William Webster apparently involved in this partnership, this case also crosses the boundary from pure intelligence into the superclass.
With all these strange connections of high society and the historical CIA ties of the Rockefeller clique in particular within the Eastern Establishment, it is very interesting to see that the “liberal CIA” network of the past few decades, which still largely revolves around foundations as Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie, has become so supportive of a small clique of authors, publications and whistleblowers bringing attention to historical CIA trafficking. To this day I myself cannot tell if this has to do with managing dissent or if it represents a genuine desire for change. All I can do is hope it’s the latter.
CIA drug trafficking timeline: 1940s – 21st century
1942 – 1970s: During World War II the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the OSS build up relations with leaders of the American-Sicilian mafia – Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello – in order to prevent sabotage in East Coast ports and gather intelligence on Mussolini’s Italy before the Allied invasion.
After the war, the emerging CIA uses the Sicilian Cosa Nostra to help keep the communists from power. [8]
Late 1940s – 1970s: The CIA and SDECE are protecting the Marseille-based Corsican mafia, which the equally CIA-protected Lucky Luciano has picked as his main provider of heroin to the United States. Called the “French Connection“, this heroin trafficking network remains in place until the 1970s, with the Corsican mob aiding the security services in suppressing communist union activity in the harbor of Marseille, located on the Mediterranean coast.
In addition, the ultraright SAC militia, which carried out much of the dirty work for President Charles De Gaulle and even beyond, largely consisted of Corsican gangsters, some of them involved in the heroin trade. [9] ISGP readers might remember that Cercle participant Charles Pasqua was a co-founder of the SAC and that Le Cercle has been dominated by the international security services, as well as Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta.
1942 on: During World War II and also immediately after, ONI, the OSS (and then the CIA) establish relations with the Chinese anti-communist Triads who are also deeply involved in the opium, morphine and heroin trade. [10]
Late 1940s: Connections are also established with the Japanese Yakuza [11], with its own fair share of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine dealings. The Yakuza, as well as Japan’s extremely dominant Liberal Democratic Party, actually was controlled for the most part by notorious “Black Dragon” war criminals Riochy Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama, who were recruited by General Douglas MacArthur immediately after the end of the war to squash communist influences. There’s every indication that the CIA took over these ties, with Sasakawa in particular becoming a billionaire with close ties to men as David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Jimmy Carter. This story is described in quite some detail in ISGP’s American Security Council article.
Early 1950s – early 1960s: The CIA, through Civil Air Transport (later Air America) and the Sea Supply Corporation, is covertly supporting a Chiang Kai-shek-loyal anti-communist Chinese guerrilla force in the Burmese backlands (the KMT) in order to distract Mao’s communist forces from the Korean front and also to prevent it from invading Taiwan. Unmarked CAT and SSC planes are flying in military supplies and guerrillas from Taiwan, with similar unmarked planes flying out opium to Thailand, where CIA asset General Phao Sriyanond of the CIA-financed Thai national police makes sure the drugs end up in Bangkok night life.
Yale-educated historian Alfred W. McCoy first exposed these operations to the U.S. senate in 1972, immediately followed by his book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which appeared later that year.
As for U.S. persons involved in the Burma campaign, OSS/OPC/CIA leaders Paul Helliwell and Frank Wisner were instrumental in setting up the Sea Supply Corporation, with CAT president Claire Chennault, an old OSS friend of Helliwell, proposing the initial plan to contain communist China with the use of forces loyal to General Chiang Kai-shek. Tommy Corcoran, as a Washington lobbyist, served as an important liaison between Chennault and the CIA. [12]
1960 – 1961: CIA director Allen Dulles and his operations chief Richard Bissell provide their agent Robert Maheu with the task of recruiting organized crime members into their anti-Castro operations. Like many big businesses, the mafia was also thrown out of Cuba when Fidel Castro came to power and would benefit greatly from his overthrow. Maheu approaches Las Vegas mobster Johnny Roselli, who in turn puts him in contact with Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana and Florida/Cuban mafia boss Santo Trafficante – with Meyer Lansky being another important insider. Together they devise several plots to kill Castro, but these fail and supposedly before the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 the partnership has already come to an end. [13]
Despite the fact that this early CIA-mafia cooperation has been described as unprofessional, limited and very short-lasting, we find these same mafia elements, including Louisiana crime boss Carlos Marcello, as a background story to Lee Harvey and Jack Ruby in the 1963 JFK assassination. Parallel to this, we know that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was pretending that organized crime, including these mafia bosses, didn’t exist until forced to admit to it by attorney general Robert Kennedy.
In another interesting note, from 1957 to 1970, Robert Maheu was the chief representative of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, whose Hughes Aircraft in this same period was the primary defense-related CIA contractor, receiving billions upon billions in contracts. Ironically, starting in 1966, Howard Hughes used a blueprint of the late attorney general Robert Kennedy to wipe Las Vegas clean of mafia influence and make it a suitable place for mainstream investment.
1960s – 1970s: Ted Shackley and various other CIA officers, through the CIA-controlled and American Security Council-linked airliner Air America, are involved in the opium/heroin trade during the Vietnam War with Florida mafia boss Santo Trafficante, Burmese warlord Khun Sa [14] and the Laotian Hmong general Vang Pao [15], as well as Nguyen Van Thieu, president of South Vietnam from 1965 to 1975; and his prime minister from 1965 to 1967, Nguyen Cao Ky. [16] Shackley’s CIA group is reported to have remained in the drug trade after the end of the Vietnam War.
1971 – 1972: Retired DEA deep cover agent Mike Levine claims that in this period he was stationed in Bangkok, Thailand, where he infiltrated Chinese drug traffickers who were placing heroin in the bodies and caskets of dead GIs being shipped home. When, according to Levine, these Chinese drug traffickers wanted him to see a major heroin production plant of theirs in Chiang Mai, all of a sudden he was instructed by his supervisors to not go. Only later on did Levine realize that this almost certainly was due to CIA pressure. [17]
1960s – 2000s: Daniel Arnold, the CIA station chief of Thailand in the 1970s who was implicated by Khun Sa of being involved in the heroin trafficking business alongside Ted Shackley, kept his ties to high-level Thai officials [18] and in subsequent years reportedly has been tied to drug trafficking in both Thailand and California. [19] After 9/11 he joined the international security firm Jefferson Waterman International, which ISGP has been linking to the events on 9/11, drug trafficking in the Balkans and the to-be-discussed Far West firm. In addition, in the 1980s Daniel Arnold could be found on the strategy board of the notorious American Security Council, with its ties to Air America, the CIA crack cocaine affair, and Iran Contra drug trafficking.
1960s – today: William “Bill” Nelson, the CIA deputy director of operations under DCI William Colby from 1973 to 1976, ended up deeply involved in a network of Iran-Contra drug traffickers, among them Ronald Lister, who played a key role in initiating the CIA crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. [20]
1960 – 1977: Existence of the Castle Bank & Trust Ltd. in the Bahamas, founded by Paul Helliwell, the same high-level CIA officer involved in Golden Triangle opium trafficking in the 1950s, as well as the Nugan Hand Bank. By 1973 the IRS was investigating the bank for tax evasion, but were warned off by the CIA through the Justice Department. It was said that various accounts in the bank were used by the CIA to finance covert operations against Cuba and other countries. While it hasn’t been proved that these accounts were used to launder opium profits, it is suspected that the sudden expansion of the CIA’s Nugan Hand Bank in 1977-1978 was directly related to the collapse of Castle Bank.
Mobsters Moe Dalitz, Morris Kleinman and Samuel A. Tucker held accounts at the bank, as did the (soon-to-be) billionaire Pritzker family, Hugh Hefner of Playboy, members of Creedence Clearwater Revival and actor Tony Curtis. [21]
1959 – 1967: In 1959 Mossad agent Tibor Rosenbaum sets up the International Credit Bank (ICB) of Geneva. Like his friends Baron Edmond de Rothschild and Prince Bernhard, Rosenbaum is a member of the elite 1001 Club. In addition, Rosenbaum has been head of the Swiss Jewish Agency, treasurer to the World Jewish Congress, chairman of the World Zionist Organization’s Finance Committee and executive of the Mizrachi Movement and the Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv.
In 1967 it is revealed that Rosenbaum’s Geneva-based International Credit Bank has been laundering $7 to $8 billion dollars for the Jewish-American crime boss Meyer Lansky (a major Zionist himself) through Lansky’s money laundering expert John Pullman. Investors Overseas Services (IOS), eventually taken over by notorious drug trafficker, money launderer and suspected CIA asset Robert Vesco, was closely tied to the ICB money laundering scheme. [22] And coincidentally, until controversy arose around him, Vesco was another member of the 1001 Club, along with Prince Bernhard, Europe’s royal families, Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, BCCI money launderers, and the Aga Khans (suspected of heroin trafficking), Rockefellers and Rothschilds.
1973 – 1980: Top CIA officers and key CIA assets as Paul Helliwell, William Colby, Ted Shackley, General Richard Secord, Rafael Quintero and Thomas Clines appear in the Australian Nugan Hand Bank affair, a CIA heroin money laundering scheme that began during the Vietnam War.
Almost hilariously, this entire gang had set up and operated what became Air America, the opium smuggling, CIA airliner of the Vietnam War. Then, in the 1980s, we find some of the same names emerging in arms for drug shipments to the Contras. [23]
1978 – July 1983: Existence of the investment firm Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong (BBRDW) in the Pacific region, including Hawaii. While mainstream media reports acknowledged the CIA ties of the firm’s founder Ron Rewald, the suggestion they aroused is that they were exaggerated for Rewald’s personal gain and that it were primarily his con games that affected the savings of a number of high level military and CIA officials. The only source to (later on) really dig into the firm has been author Rodney Stich. He interviewed Rewald after he got out of jail in 1995 and from him received a batch of secret bank documents that reportedly revealed that vice president George H. W. Bush, CIA director William Casey, CIA/DOD employee Richard Armitage and Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos maintained secret accounts at the bank. [24]
The picture additionally painted by Stich is that BBRDW, under the tutelage of the CIA’s Hawaii station, not only was into the laundering of drug money, but also facilitated arms deals, informed on business partners, engaged in industrial espionage (against friendly countries as Japan) and paid for clandestine CIA operations. Some of the most sensitive alleged CIA operations, such as the 1980 assassination of two anti-Marcos lawyers, Rewald apparently never was informed about. Rewald also kept quiet about the (very extensive) CIA ties of his firm for some time after his arrest, but reversed course when the CIA, under the leadership of William Casey and also vice president George H. W. Bush, hung him out to dry. Attempting to go public apparently cost a CIA friend of his his life, with Rewald escaping at least one assassination attempt himself. These details are discussed in Stich’s 2006 books Those Ugly Americans and Explosive Secrets of Covert CIA Companies.
1970s – November 1981: Former Belgian prime minister and defense minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, a notorious Opus Dei-affiliated figure accused of involvement in horrendous child torture networks who helped set up Belgium’s National Bureau for Drugs in the 1973-1975 with help from the CIA, in November 1981 was publicly implicated in a scheme in which his company Boucheries Ghysels was smuggling hash and cocaine in frozen meat from Spain to Belgium. It appears information was available that the trafficking had been going on for at least three years at that at point. Several co-founders and heads of the Gendarmerie’s National Bureau for Drugs were also accused of involvement in child abuse networks, along with accusations of domestic spying on leftist groups on behalf of the CIA.
The two chief investigators of the affair, Major Guy Goffinon and BOB adjutant Herman Vernaillen, each narrowly survived an assassination attempt, carried out by individuals with close ties to the Americans, underground Nazi militias used in the CIA’s Strategy of Tension, Paul Vanden Boeynants himself and, once again, elite child abuse networks. Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, a friend of Vanden Boeynants accused of similar sadistic child torture practices, was said to be involved in the cover-up. [25] De Bonvoisin was maintaining a fascist CIA- and P2-linked underground and at the very least knew Ted Shackley through the notorious and super-secretive Cercle group. Vanden Boeynants and De Bonvoisin also maintained ties to the Israelis in their sordid business.
1970 – 1980s: Plenty of questions have been asked about a company called First Intercontinental Development Corporation (FIDCO). Carol Marshall in her book ‘The Last Circle’: “Again I asked myself, why was an international arms dealer on the board of F.I.D.C.O … a CIA-NSC front corporation, which offered three billion dollars to rebuild Beirut to President Amin Gamayel of Lebanon, whose chief of finances (Sami el Khouri) was shipping tons of heroin [from Turkey and through Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley] to Sicily for reexport to America, want to invest in “a method for induction and activation of cytotoxic T-Lymphocytes?”” [26] There have been suspicions that Khouri was protected by the CIA, but this is not proven. [27]
A key person in FIDCO was CIA and/or National Security Council asset Robert Booth Nichols, who entered in CIA-backed arms deals with Contra forces, along with Wackenhut. This included a 1981 negotiation with General Eden Pastora, who within a year was briefly put in charge of the Contra forces in Costa Rica, forming a southern front against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Interestingly, Pastora was only briefly supported by the CIA due to his opposition to getting involved in the drug trade and working with ultraright reactionaries. Nevertheless, Pastora was paid through CIA asset and Medellin Cartel partner Manuel Noriega of Panama. [28] Similarly, Nichols, who was groomed by the Yakuza in Hawaii, since the 1970s has been suspected by law enforcement of involvement in “the illegal transportation of narcotics through the “Golden Triangle.”” [29]
Some of the drug trafficking appears to have involved his Meridian International Logistics partner Eugene F. Giaquinto, who, according to FBI transcripts was “associated with John Gotti, boss of the Gambino LCN [La Cosa Nostra] family and Edward Sciandra, underboss of the Buffalino LCN family [and] described Robert Booth Nichols as his “government man” … higher than the CIA.” [30] Giaquinto was a president at MCA, controlled by 1001 Club member and Hollywood kingpin Lew Wasserman, who maintained his own ties to Jewish and Italian organized crime members, as well as the Bronfmans and the Reagan administration.
FIDCO and the who Robert Booth Nichols network involves an enormous cesspit of CIA covert operations of the most questionable kind. FBI special agent Ted Gunderson, a major conspiracy disinformation asset who was close friends with Nichols (and the Murchisons of FIDCO and the 1001 Club), is just one aspect of this. Other aspects have included the life and death of Danny Casolaro, Wackenhut, ethnic bioweapons, the Howard Hughes corporate empire and organized crime.
1979 – 1989: Throughout the Soviet-Afghanistan War from 1979 to 1989 there was the CIA-Saudi intelligence-ISI-Mudjahedin-BCCI connection that was involved in laundering heroin money for arms shipments and training. [31]
This CIA-Saudi aspect of this network is based on the Safari Club network that was founded in the late 1970s and maintained by George H. W. Bush, Ted Shackley, Richard Helms and Frank Carlucci, with key Saudis involving intelligence chief Kamal Adham, his protege Prince Turki al Faisal and Bandar Bush. The CIA money laundering bank, the Nugan Hand, was also linked into the BCCI network since 1976. [32] The 1972 founder of the BCCI, Aga Hasan Abedi, is also known to have met with CIA director William Casey on a regular basis at the Madison Hotel in Washington, D.C. and over a period of three years. [33]
Speaking of Abedi, it might be important to note this BCCI founder and ISI asset was a member of Prince Bernhard’s 1001 Club, together with BCCI/BNL/Inter Maritime Bank/Mossad/Rothschild money launderer Dr. Alfred Hartmann (with allegedly more ties to the P2 Lodge and Banco Ambrosiano), the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Congolese dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and representatives of CIA-backed regimes as those of the Shah of Iran and Suharto in Indonesia.
1970s – 1980s: It appears that both the Cali and Medellin cocaine cartels in Colombia were trained as as anti-communist death squads by Mossad colonel Yair Klein and British MI6/SAS soldiers. The ATLAS document in case of the Cali Cartel [34] and a leaked training video with regard to the Medellin Cartel [35] point in this direction.
Carlos Lehder, one of the leaders of the Medellin Cartel, would have made a particularly natural ally of the CIA. Half German, half Colombian, Lehder was a Hitler admirer and a co-founder of the Medellin Cartel-financed Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) militia that combated the Marxist M-19 and FARC guerrillas. According to Lehder, the Medellin Cartel donated roughly $20 million to the CIA-backed Contras during the 1980s. [36]
1970s – 1980s: General Manual Noriega, a CIA asset since the late 1950s, is the defacto and then the “official” dictator of of Panama. He allied himself with the Medellin Cartel, his country serving as an important transit point for cocaine towards the United States. The Reagan administration worked with Noriega in support of the Nicaraguan contras, but by 1989 the dictator was growing out of control and had become such a liability to the United States, that George H. W. Bush ordered an invasion of Panama to capture Noriega.
During his trial in the early 1990s, numerous witnesses/drug traffickers accused Noriega of drug trafficking, along with ties to George H. W. Bush, Colonel Oliver North and other CIA Contra figures. [37] As the torture-murder of Hugo Spadafora in particular revealed, Noriega also was an extreme human rights violator who, similarly to the drug cartels and the CIA, had no problem torturing his enemies to death. [38]
Bizarrely, in 1982 Bush, Sr. had been put in charge of the war on drugs. He failed miserably, with illegal drug imports rising 300 percent. [39] Also, under his watch, the Contra- and Noriega-linked CIA crack-cocaine affair emerged. It appears to be obvious that Bush, a close ally of the notorious Ted Shackley, had no intention of stopping the drug trade.
1973 – 1990: Rule of dictator Pinochet in Chile, who was widely supported in ultraright western circles surrounding the CIA and private groups as the WACL, Le Cercle and American Security Council. Recent evidence has shown that Pinochet was involved in large-scale cocaine trafficking to Europe and that by the 1980s this was sanctioned as long a portion of the profits went to the Reagan-backed Contra armies in Nicaragua. [40]
National security advisor and 40 committee chairman Henry Kissinger and CIA director Richard Helms supported the 1973 overthrow of the democratically-elected Allende that made room for Pinochet. These men were worried that U.S. corporate investments in Chile would be threatened and also that the socialist model might spread to other Latin American countries if tolerated in Chile. [41] Pinochet’s intelligence chief, General Contreras, was a paid CIA asset from 1975 until well after his involvement in domestic political assassinations became known. [42]
1971 – 1978: Rule of the dictator General Hugo Banzer in Bolivia. Banzer came to power in a military coup against socialist president Juan José Torres, who was forced into exile to Argentina where he was later kidnapped by an Operation Condor death squad supported by Videla, Banzar and the CIA. President Nixon, national security advisor Kissinger and CIA director Richard Helms had supported the coup of Banzer, with Banzer being one of many Latin American death squad leaders who graduated from the notorious School of the Americas. The second he came to power, Banzer banned all left-leaning parties, closed the universities, and ran a murder and torture program against dissidents. [43]
Parallel to these activities, Banzer cooperated with cocaine king Roberto Suarez and Nazi death squad leader Klaus Barbie in the creation of massive coca plantations that drove down the price of cocaine and fueled the emergence of Colombia’s Medellin and Cali cartels, to which this group, which became known as La Corporacion, exported their coca leaves. In time, La Corporacion also began to manufacture its own cocaine. [44]
August 1978 – January 1982: Rule of General Policarpo Paz García in Honduras through a “cocaine coup” that is financed by Honduran drug trafficker Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo of the Mexican Guadalajara Cartel and Pablo Escobar of the Colombian Medellin Cartel – all of whom receive their cocaine from La Corporacion, the earlier-mentioned drug-dealing, fascist clique in Bolivia. These individuals are working hand-in-glove with the CIA in supporting the Contra effort in Nicaragua, with the CIA, along with the Honduran military and landlords, supporting Paz Garcia’s coup as well.
General Policarpo Paz Garcia.
The airline company of Matta-Ballesteros, SETCO, is crucial to Colonel Oliver North and the CIA in the 1983-1985 period not only in supplying the Contras with arms, but also in the trafficking of cocaine on return trips to the United States. Predictably, Paz Garcia himself becomes deeply involved in the drug traffic, receiving his cut from the Medellin Cartel. [45]
Additional relevant information might be that we already provided evidence in this oversight that the Medellin Cartel received anti-communist death squad training from the the Mossad and what appears to have been MI6, meaning that the CIA is also automatically involved.
March – October 1984: On March 31, 1984, Honduran army chief General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez and his chief of staff General Jose Bueso Rosa are ousted by a group of generals under President Roberto Suazo Cordova. Alvarez moves to the United States to become a highly paid Pentagon consultant on “low-intensity conflict” while Bueso is demoted to the function of Honduran military attache in Pinochet’s Chile.
Roughly six months later, On November 1, the FBI arrests a group of men working with Bueso in a plot to assassinate Honduran president Roberto Suazo, who was less than enthusiastic about the CIA-backed Contra forces being maintained in his country [46], and reinstate Alvarez as head of the Army. The upcoming coup is financed with $40 million in cocaine shipments to Florida, which are intercepted by the FBI after being made aware of the plot by an informant the coup plotters tried to recruit in their scheme.
Interestingly, after the coup becomes public knowle