• Aslan Adam, a Pakistani convicted of importing $1.5 million worth of heroin

The American public was treated to endless howling about the Rich and Vignali pardons by the so-called “liberal media,” but we heard not one peep about the Bush pardons. Indeed, according to FAIR, while Vignali’s commutation received heavy coverage — 66 mentions in the New York Times, L.A. Times and Washington Post, and another 13 reports on the nightly network news — Adam's clemency got exactly one story in any of these outlets at the time (Washington Post, 1/22/93), and that report failed to mention how much heroin he had brought in.

In addition to Adam, Bush also pardoned…

• A terrorist accused of blowing up a civilian airliner, killing 73
• Five men linked to Iran-Contra. These included:
  • Clair George, No. 3 man at the CIA
  • Elliot Abrams
  • Casper Weinberger

In the case of Weinberger and the other Iran-Contra figures, had they been threatened with time in the dog pound, they might have decided to shorten their sentences by implicating none other than… George H.W. Bush.

1977 was the year that Jimmy Carter pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders.

1975 was the year that Ford pardoned Nixon.

When Carter pardoned the Vietnam War draft evaders, we were treated to a similar outcry, but that same press refused to condemn Ford’s pardon of Nixon. When Clinton ran for president, he was repeatedly referred to as a “draft dodger,” but we heard little from the “liberal media” about similar draft deferments given to Trent Lott, Tom Delay, Newt Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Pat Buchanan, Dick Cheney, et al.

Indeed. George W. Bush was given entry into the National Guard just 12 days before his student deferment would have expired. And his service records seem to have been filed in the same place as those associated with JFK’s assassination, for so many of them are missing.

Do you think that “liberal media” might not really be that liberal? Naw… couldn’t be… could it?

<< Heel!

The Ladder of Justice

• Alex Ashcroft.  John Ashcroft’s nephew got probation after a major pot bust: Although his arrest for growing 60 plants could have landed him in federal prison, Alex Ashcroft was tried in state court and avoided jail — despite his uncle’s crusade for tougher federal drug laws and mandatory prison sentences.
• Claude Shelby.  This son of Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was caught in 1998 bringing 13.8 grams of hashish into Atlanta’s airport on a flight from London. Somehow he was able to pay a $500 fine, which he paid on the spot.
• Dan Burton, Jr.  Dan Burton Jr., the son of U.S. Representative Dan Burton (R-IN), was arrested in Louisiana for transporting nearly eight pounds of marijuana in the trunk of his car. Six months later, Burton was arrested again in Indianapolis, where police found thirty marijuana plants and a shotgun with ammunition in his apartment. Federal prosecutors declined to prosecute the case.
• Todd Cunningham.  Congressman Randy Cunningham from California has been an anti-drug crusader during most of his political life, even pushing for the death penalty for so-called “drug kingpins.” When his own son, Todd, was charged with smuggling marijuana with intent to distribute (does 400 pounds of it make him a ‘kingpin’?), Congressman Cunningham persuaded the judge to ignore the mandatory minimum sentence of five years, and gave him a 2 1⁄2 year sentence. Todd Cunningham would have gotten an even smaller sentence, except he kept testing positive for cocaine while on bail. However, the father vouched for the son, saying “He has a good heart. He works hard.”
• Noele Bush.  According to federal law, those staying in publicly funded housing can be ousted from their homes if family members or acquantances who are drug users so much as visit. Even if they don’t use drugs on the premises. With the arrest of Noele Bush (daughter of Florida Governor Jeb Bush) on drug charges, if America’s drug laws were applied consistently, Jeb Bush and his family would be evicted from their publicly-funded digs.

CIA on Drugs

• A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International Trafficking
• The CIA and Cocaine: Truth and Disinformation
• Dark Alliance: Gary Webb’s classic series for the San Jose Mercury News on the links between the crack cocaine explosion and CIA support for the Contras
• De-Central Intelligence Agency: This site deals with heroin trafficking and the murder of 9 Buddhists at Wat Promkunaram Temple, Aug. 10, 1991, Phoenix, AZ
• Drugwar.com
• Sidney Gottlieb: The CIA’s Doctor Frankenstein
• Iran-Contra Cocaine: DEA’s finest details corruption
• MKULTRA: The CIA’s notorious mind control experiments, using LSD and other drugs
• The Politics of Heroin: CIA complicity in the global drug trade – An interview with Alfred McCoy

Mena, Arkansas: Barry Seal, Bill Clinton and George Bush

• The Crimes of Mena by Sally Denton and Roger Morris
• A Mena Bibliography
• British Media Exposes CIA-Cocaine Links By Norman Solomon

Money Laundering & the Drug Trade

• Narco-Dollars For Dummies: How The Money Works In The Illicit Drug Trade by Catherine Austin Fitts

Other Links

• Battlefield Conversions: Three ex-warriors who now fight against the War on Drugs
• National Drug Strategy Network
• November Coalition
• Poppy Season Opens in Afghanistan by the BBC

Further Reading

• Castillo, Cele I. and Harmon, Dan (1994) Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 240 pp.
• Gritz, James (Bo) (1991) Called to Serve. Sand Valley, NV: Lazarus Publishing Company, 647 pp.
• Hopsicker, Daniel (2001) Barry & the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History. Noti, OR: Mad Cow Press, 518 pp.
• Kruger, Henrik. (1980) The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism. Boston: South End Press, 1980. 240 pages. (Originally published in Denmark as Smukke Serge og Heroinen in 1976.)
• Kwitny, Jonathan (1987) The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. New York: W.W. Norton, 424 pp.
• Lee, M.A. and Shlain, B. (1985) Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties and Beyond. New York: Grove Press, 345 pp.
• Leveritt, Mara (1999) The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial and a Mother’s Crusade to Bring her Son’s Killers to Justice. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 370 pp.
• Levine, Michael and Kavanau-Levine, Laura (1993) The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 472 pp.
• Marks, John (1979) The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control. New York: Times Books, 1st edition, 242 pp.
• Marshall, Jonathan, Scott, Peter Dale et al. (1987) The Iran-Contra Connection: Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era. Boston: South End Press, 313 pp., including 70 pp. of notes.
• Martin, Al (2001) The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider. Pray, MT: National Liberty Press, 2002, 2nd Edition, 374 pp.
• McCoy, Alfred (1972) The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York: Harper & Row, 464 pp.
• McWilliams, Peter (1993) Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Society. Los Angeles: Prelude Press, 815 pp.
• Miller, Richard Lawrence (1996) Drug Warriors and their Prey: From Police Power to Police State. Westport, CT: Praeger, 255 pp.
• Parry, Robert (1999) Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’. Arlington, VA: The Media Consortium, 304 pp.
• Reed, Terry and Cummings, John (1994) Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA. New York: S.P.I. Books (Shapolsky Publishers), 556 pp.
• Scott, Peter Dale and Marshall, Jonathan (1991) Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 279 pp.
• Stich, Rodney (1999) Drugging America: A Trojan Horse. Alamo, CA: Diablo Western Press, 519 pp.
• Webb, Gary (1998) Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. New York, Seven Stories Press, 548 pp.

<< Heel!

By 1992, Ross Perot is so steamed at government inaction on both MIA’s and CIA drug trafficking that he decides to run for president against the man he holds responsible, George Bush. Deep down he probably knows he can’t win, but at least he can knock Bush back into retirement.

For the power cabal, this spells real trouble. Perot’s so rich he can’t be bought, and on the Democratic side, John Kerry, the former leader of the Vietnam Vets Against the War is also making a bid to be top dog. Kerry is certainly not a pal of the spooks. By god he actually had the audacity to hold Senate hearings on Iran-Contra drug trafficking!

What to do? The power brokers engage in a furious session of head scratching. Perot will take votes from Bush, they need a man on the other side. How about… yes… Bill Clinton, he could run. Perfect! Not only was he recruited by the CIA to spy on Vietnam War protesters in England when he was a Rhodes Scholar, but after becoming governor of Arkansas, the Agency ran an important Iran-Contra operation with Barry Seal at Mena while he looked the other way. Brilliant!

And so it was. With Perot killing Bush’s election chances, Clinton is elected by default. But that’s not enough. Still too many people wanna dig up Iran-Contra. Just to make sure, Janet Reno is put in charge at Justice. Why? Because, like Bill, she is one of the cabal. This ex-State Attorney General for Florida’s Dade County was instrumental in keeping a lid on Iran-Contra drug trafficking through the Sunshine State.

But what have we here? Whitewater. A piddling scam by any stretch, but still it must be controlled because — lordy help us — anyone who looks seriously at Whitewater ends up in Mena and Mena leads straight to Bush. What to do? Americans, poor little puritan Americans, we don’t blink at the destruction of Cambodia, nor the murder of our president and his brother by the CIA, but we cannot have our president fornicating in the White House and lying about it. Enter Monicagate and Ken Starr. Outrage! Throw Clinton out is the call. While Whitewater is quietly forgotten…

And now to Bush 2, whose first act after stealing the election is to lock up the presidential papers of Reagan and Bush 1. The second act is to bring back the full Iran-Contra gang (Richard Armitage, John Poindexter, etc.). As the topper, Asa Hutchinson, former US attorney for the Mena District in Arkansas, under whose watchful gaze Barry Seal operated, is made head of the DEA.

Suddenly war again. Invade Afghanistan, try a coup in Venezuela, Get Saddam redux. And meanwhile in Florida, Brother Jeb, whose daughter is now a drug addict, runs for re-election against none other than Janet Reno. You see, no matter who wins, the cabal wins. And that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, they like it, uh huh, uh huh…

Postscript:  As Bob Dole is said to have remarked to one man at Reagan’s 1984 inauguration, “America: Land of the naïve, home of the provincial. Thank god.”

<< Heel!

Jimmy Carter

The 39th President of the United States entered office on a wave of popular discontent with government, the likes of which have yet to be repeated. Vietnam, Watergate, the Church hearings on CIA and FBI abuses – all of these events had finally convinced a healthy percentage of the American body politic that their government was badly broken. This gave Carter a mandate to clean house, which he proceeded to do, infusing fresh blood into government.

No clearer picture of what Carter represented exists than from the CIA, where droves of agents quit in disgust. Remember, this was the agency that had invented the Soviet threat and Vietnam War out of whole cloth, the agency whose agents had murdered a sitting president (JFK) and then his brother (RFK). But through careful control of the media, these stories never really gained full momentum. Ask an American if they believed their was a conspiracy to murder JFK and RFK and they answered yes. But few citizens could bring themselves to take the next logical step – to consider that the forces that removed the Kennedys had staged a coup d’etat and still controlled the reins of power.

Carter charted a path for America that was at odds with much of what had come before. He stated clearly that the US would no longer blindly support regimes based on their stand on communism, but would also consider the manner in which they treated their own people. This human-rights first policy meant the potential end to the Cold War and thus to the huge black budgets that had allowed the CIA and other intelligence agencies to become a de facto government puppetmaster. Their very existence was threatened.

Their answer was not long in coming. A poor economy caused rising dissent and when the CIA persuaded Carter to allow the Shah to seek medical treatment in the US, he took the bait. So enraged were the Persians, who had suffered greatly under the CIA-installed Shah, that they seized the US embassy in Teheran. This became the defining moment of Carter’s presidency, and his every attempt to free them was sabotaged by the shadow government. A secret deal between the Reagan campaign (re: William Casey and George H.W. Bush, both with CIA backgrounds) and the Persians resulted in the hostages being held until the moment of Reagan’s inauguration.

But rather than being embittered by the treasonous actions of his political enemies, Carter showed the world the true measure of his character. Unlike both his predecessors (Nixon, Ford) and those who followed (Reagan, Bush, Clinton), Jimmy Carter did not attempt to enrich himself, but instead, led by example. In 2002, he was paid the ultimate tribute, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Carter’s prize is not a phony token (a la that given to Kissinger), but one representing a lifetime of working towards peace and the betterment of humans around the world. Jimmy Carter is an example of what a true leader can do, and is one of the finest presidents the US has ever had.

Celerino Castillo III

Castillo grew up in Edinburg, Texas, and served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. After he returned from Vietnam, he was a police officer in Edinburg from 1973 until 1979. While a police officer, he earned a degree in criminal justice from Pan-American University in 1975. In 1979, he joined the DEA as a special agent. Castillo’s first DEA assignment was in New York City, where he remained until 1984, when he was transferred to Peru.

DEA records confirm that in October 1985, Castillo was transferred from Peru to the DEA’s office in Guatemala City. The Guatemala office was responsible for four countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, and Honduras. Castillo had primary responsibility for El Salvador. Castillo remained in Guatemala from August 1986 until 1990, when he was transferred to the San Diego DEA office and then to the San Francisco DEA office. In 1992, he resigned from the DEA and accused the US government of the following:

• The covert United States operation that supplied the Contras also smuggled drugs to help finance the war
• Pilots working for the Contras did their own trafficking on the side and could smuggle with impunity because they flew on “the same airline as Oliver North” and were helping the Contras
• Castillo met with a “wall of resistance” from the CIA, the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, and the DEA when he attempted to investigate drug smuggling at Ilopango Airport
• Castillo documented drug flights out of Ilopango – listing pilot names, tail numbers, dates and flight plans – and sent them to DEA Headquarters, but no action was taken
• A CIA employee told Castillo that the only way for the Contras to receive money was through the sale of drugs and the CIA employee asked Castillo to discontinue his investigation at Ilopango
• The DEA retaliated against Castillo for looking into the CIA-Contra connection by launching internal investigations of him.
• Written statement of Celerino Castillo for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
• Narco-Terror and the National Security State
• Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War by Celerino Castillo

Catherine Austin Fitts

Catherine Austin Fitts is a former managing director and member of the board of directors of Dillon Read & Co, Inc. She served as Assistant secretary of Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner during the first Bush Administration, and is also formerly the head of Hamilton Securities Group Inc. She currently serves as President of Solari Inc., an investment advisory firm.

When Fitts left the Wall Street firm of Dillon Read and joined HUD in 1989 as Assistant Secretary of Housing, what she found was an agency awash in conflicts of interest and fraud that was subservient to the big-money people in the financial community.

Moreover, she discovered that HUD had never tracked its financial results on a location-specific basis, so each field office had no idea how the money worked in its jurisdiction. By putting together a crude place-based cash-flow map, she found that HUD’s business had been substantially distorted by the way the data had been presented. Her numbers proved that S&L and HUD fraud were perpetrated by the same networks, in the same places, and involved the same use of federal credit. Fitts was fired by the Bush administration in 1990 after only 18 months on the job. She was told the day after she left that the preparation of place-based financial accounting and statements had also been terminated.

• On the Money Trail: The dangerous world of Catherine Austin-Fitts
• Drug War: Covert Money, Power & Policy: The Solari Story

Dick Gregory

Dick Gregory was on the frontline in the sixties during the Civil Rights Era; today he continues to be a “drum major for justice and equality.”

Gregory (born, October 12, 1932, St. Louis, Mo.) is an African American comedian and civil rights activist whose social satire changed the way white Americans perceived African American comedians since he first performed in public. He entered the national comedy scene in 1961 when Chicago’s Playboy Club (as a direct request from publisher Hugh Hefner) booked him as a replacement for white comedian, “Professor” Irwin Corey.

Gregory’s activism continued into the 1990s. In response to published allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had supplied cocaine to predominantly African American areas in Los Angeles, thus spurring the crack epidemic, Gregory protested at CIA headquarters and was arrested. In 1992 he began a program called “Campaign for Human Dignity” to fight crime in St. Louis neighborhoods.

• Dick Gregory Global Watch

Michael Levine

Michael Levine is a veteran of 26 years of undercover work for four federal agencies. He is the recipient of many Justice and Treasury Department awards for his undercover work , including the International Narcotics Enforcement Officer Association’s Octavio Gonzales Award. He is also the subject of Donald Goddard’s book Undercover: The Secret Lives of a Federal Agent (Dell, 1990).

Joining the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) after discovering his brother’s heroin addiction (an eventual suicide victim), Levine was the most successful agent in DEA history. By 1977, he had made 3,000 drug arrests going undercover to set up buy and bust operations against New York City heroin and cocaine dealers. This led to his assignment as DEA station chief in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

By 1989, after having several of his operations stopped by higher ups who allowed his targets to get away, Levine quit the DEA in disgust. Levine then wrote the book Deep Cover (1990, Delacorte Press), describing his experiences that led to his leaving the DEA, exposing the government’s phony “War on Drugs.” In 1993, he published The Big White Lie, a chilling story of treachery by members of his own agency, and the CIA, men Levine calls the “suits” who he says use the War on Drugs as a cynical cover for covert foreign policy adventures. Levine says that since he began speaking out against the War on Drugs, he has been threatened by high-level DEA agents and has been the target of campaigns meant to discredit him.

Called “America’s top undercover cop for 25 years” by 60 Minutes, Levine today hosts The Expert Witness radio show, heard in New York City and Los Angeles. He was the technical advisor for the NBC television series Kingpin. He was also featured in a chapter of Kristina Borjesson’s Into the Buzzsaw.

• Curriculum Vitae of Michael Levine
• Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills by Michael Levine (from Into the Buzzsaw)
• Michael Levine Interview by Paul DeRienzo

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela was the first black president of South Africa and a legendary figure of the African National Congress, or ANC. From 1964 to 1990, Mandela was imprisoned for opposing South Africa’s white minority government and its policy of racial separation, known as apartheid. Instead of disappearing from view, Mandela became a martyr and worldwide symbol of resistance to racism. In 1993 Mandela and the president who released him, F.W. de Klerk, shared the Nobel Peace Prize. Mandela was elected the country’s president in 1994. He served until 1999, when he was succeeded by his deputy Thabo Mbeki.

• Nelson Mandela Biography
• Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
• Cheney and Mandela: Reconciling The Truth about Cheney’s Vote by Farai Chideya
• US threatens world peace, says Mandela by the BBC, 11 Sept., 2002

Mike Ruppert

Mike Ruppert, 51, is the Publisher/Editor of From the Wilderness or FTW, a newsletter he founded in March 1998 by mailing out 68 copies to friends and researchers. Today FTW is now read by more than 4,000 subscribers in 32 countries including 20 members of the US Congress and professors at 15 universities in the US and Canada. Through the newsletter and his website at www.copvcia.com, Mike has pioneered innovative analysis and groundbreaking original stories on the impact of $5-600 billion per year in drug money moving through the US economy and the illegal covert operations which maintain control of that cash flow for US economic interests.

An Honors graduate of UCLA in Political Science, he comes from a family rooted in intelligence and the military. As an undergraduate he interned for LA Police Chief Ed Davis and worked at 5 LAPD Divisions before graduating and becoming an officer in 1973. During Mike’s five plus years of active service he received thirteen citations and four commendations. Twice the CIA attempted to recruit Mike: the first time just before he graduated and again after he was a highly praised field officer and budding narcotics investigator.

In 1977 he discovered CIA bringing drugs into the U.S. through New Orleans in an operation supervised by his then fiancé, a CIA agent. He began to speak out and was forced out of LAPD in 1978 after being shot at and threatened. He has been speaking out publicly ever since.

In 1992, after speaking with Ross Perot during the course of his investigations, Mike served as the LA County Press Spokesman for the Perot Presidential Campaign. Mike’s highly publicized confrontation with CIA Director John Deutch on 11/15/96 resulted in his being interviewed by the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress.

Ruppert has just finished (Oct. 2004) work on a book, Crossing the Rubicon, which will cover the Delmart “Mike” Vreeland story.

• Michael Ruppert: An Interview
• What the CIA Doesn’t Want You to Know by Michael C. Ruppert

Gary Webb

In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series documented how the CIA helped Nicaragua’s contras sell crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles.  The contras used the drug money to finance their war against Nicaragua’s leftist government.

To most readers, the credibility of Webb’s investigation was beyond dispute. The articles spurred congressional hearings and reports from departments such as the federal customs Office corroborating Webb’s allegations, even though many government agencies tried to withhold information from investigators. The northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists named Webb journalist of the year for the “Dark Alliance” series.

But the mainstream news media – most prominently the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times – scrambled to discredit his findings. Either they were embarrassed they got scooped or they refused to believe their high-placed government friends were responsible for the nation’s devastating crack boom.

Then the Mercury publicly disowned the story – without ever giving Webb or readers a convincing reason why. The paper’s editors had encouraged Webb in his research, but in the firestorm that followed “Dark Alliance’’s publication they retracted their support for the series.  After the controversy, the Merc, which is owned by media giant Knight-Ridder, exiled Webb from its Sacramento bureau to the police beat in Cupertino.

Webb left the paper and expanded “Dark Alliance” into a book of the same name. Later, reflecting on his experience in the book, Into the Buzzsaw, Webb writes:

If we had met five years ago, you wouldn’t have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me… I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn’t work, that it was steered by powerful special interests and corporations, and existed to protect the power elite? And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I’d enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn’t been, as I’d assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job… The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn’t written anything important enough to suppress.

• Crack and the Contras
• Dark Alliance: Gary Webb’s classic series for the San Jose Mercury News on the links between the crack cocaine explosion and CIA support for the Contras
• Dark Alliance: The book
• Gary Webb Speaks

<< Heel!

And the Bible’s New Testament is just as bad. Today, just how many Christians are willing to quote these verses?

Women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but should be submissive, as the law also says.

1 Corinthians 14:34

Slaves are to be submissive to their masters in everything, and to be well-pleasing, not talking back.

Titus 2:9

Indeed, you can find just about whatever you want in the Bible. Here’s a few don’ts and dos that modern Christians are today reluctant to cite:

Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear material woven of two kinds of material.

Leviticus 19:19

It is an abomination to eat pork

Leviticus 11:7

It is an abomination to eat lobster and shrimp

Leviticus 11:10

If your brother dies, you are commanded to take his wife as your own

Deuteronomy 25:5–10

<< Heel!