Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb

777man

(374 posts)

1. Here is some background on the upcoming film OCT 10,2014

Sun Mar 24, 2013, 05:21 AM

Mar 2013

Last edited Sun Nov 15, 2015, 01:27 AM - Edit history (40)

THE LATEST:

How a Dogged L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena
The "Elliot Ness" of The DEA, Hector Berrellez speaks out about the Camarena Murder
By Jason McGahan Wednesday, July 1, 2015
http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-a-dogged-la-dea-agent-unraveled-the-cias-alleged-role-in-the-murder-of-kiki-camarena-5750278

Here is some background information on the upcoming movie
http://www.facebook.com/KillTheMessengerMovie
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/
http://www.killthemessengerthefilm.com

Watch KTM movie trailer

Kill the Messenger Official Trailer #1 (2014) - Jeremy Renner Crime Movie HD
MOVIECLIPS Trailers

The producers promise it will do Gary Webb's story Justice.....

http://www.scribd.com/doc/129856371/Jeremy-Renner-will-star-in-2013-film-about-journalist-Gary-Webb

"There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, on the payroll of, and carrying the credentials of,the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while involved in support of the contras."—Senator John Kerry, The Washington Post (1996)

"It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras...We can produce specific law-enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been called off drug-trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security."

--Senator John Kerry at a closed door Senate Committee hearing

“Because of Webb’s work the CIA launched an Inspector General investigation that named dozens of troubling connections to drug runners. That wouldn’t have happened if Gary Webb hadn’t been willing to stand up and risk it all.”
Senator John Kerry (LA Weekly, May 30, 2013)

“On the basis of the evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.”

--Senator John Kerry’s Committee Report Executive Summary April 13, 1989.

NARCO-COLONIALISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY - EX DEA AGENTS SPEAK

https://web.archive.org/web/20120208083401/http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/

---------------

Dark ALLIANCE timeline-
http://www.scribd.com/doc/130518873/Dark-Alliance-Investigation-Timeline-1996-to-2000

------------------------

US CONGRESSWOMAN Maxine Waters Investigation

Quite unexpectedly, on April 30, 1998, I obtained a secret 1982 Memorandum of Understanding between the CIA and the Department of Justice, that allowed drug trafficking by CIA assets, agents, and contractors to go unreported to federal law enforcement agencies. I also received correspondence between then Attorney General William French Smith and the head of the CIA, William Casey, that spelled out their intent to protect drug traffickers on the CIA payroll from being reported to federal law enforcement.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/17/world/cia-says-it-used-nicaraguan-rebels-accused-of-drug-tie.html
Then on July 17, 1998 the New York Times ran this amazing front page CIA admission: "CIA Says It Used Nicaraguan Rebels Accused of Drug Tie." "The Central Intelligence Agency continued to work with about two dozen Nicaraguan rebels and their supporters during the 1980s despite allegations that they were trafficking in drugs.... The agency's decision to keep those paid agents, or to continue dealing with them in some less formal relationship, was made by top [CIA] officials at headquarters in Langley, Va.". (emphasis added)
.........The CIA had always vehemently denied any connection to drug traffickers and the massive global drug trade, despite over ten years of documented reports. But in a shocking reversal, the CIA finally admitted that it was CIA policy to keep Contra drug traffickers on the CIA payroll. The Facts speak for themselves. Maxine Waters, Member of Congress, September 19, 1998

The 1982 MOU that exempted the reporting requirement for drug trafficking was no oversight or misstatement. A remarkable series of letters between the Attorney General and the Director of Central Intelligence show how conscious and deliberate this exemption was.

On February 11, 1982 Attorney General William French Smith wrote to Director of Central Intelligence William Casey that, "I have been advised that a question arose regarding the need to add narcotics violations to the list of reportable non-employee crimes ... No formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these procedures."

On March 2, 1982 Casey responded happily, "I am pleased that these procedures, which I believe strike the proper balance between enforcement of the law and protection of intelligence sources and methods..."

Simply stated, the Attorney General consciously exempted reporting requirements for narcotics violations by CIA agents, assets, and contractors. And the Director of Central Intelligence was pleased because intelligence sources and methods involved in narcotics trafficking could be protected from law enforcement. The 1982 MOU agreement clearly violated the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949. It also raised the possibility that certain individuals who testified in front of Congressional investigating committees perjured themselves.
....... Many questions remain unanswered. However, one thing is clear - the CIA and the Attorney General successfully engineered legal protection for the drug trafficking activities of any of its agents or assets. Maxine Waters, Member of Congress, September 19, 1998

“Several informed sources have told me that an appendix to this Report was removed at the instruction of the Department of Justice at the last minute. This appendix is reported to have information about a CIA officer, not agent or asset, but officer, based in the Los Angeles Station, who was in charge of Contra related activities.According to these sources, this individual was associated with running drugs to South Central Los Angeles,around 1988. Let me repeat that amazing omission. The recently released CIA Report Volume II contained an appendix, which was pulled by the Department of Justice, that reported a CIA officer in the LA Station was hooked into drug running in South Central Los Angeles.”

--U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters – October 13. 1998, speaking on the floor of the US House of Representatives.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/117070568/US-Congresswoman-Maxine-Waters-Investigation-of-CIA-Contras-involvement-in-drug-sales-1996-2000

Exhibit 1
:
U.S. Attorney General William French Smith replies to a still classified letter from DCI William Casey requesting exemption from reporting drug crimes by CIA assets.

Source: cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/01.gif

Exhibit 2:

DCI William Casey happily agrees with William French Smith and signs the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) exempting his agency from reporting drug crimes. This agreement covered both the Latin American conflicts and Afghanistan war. It remained in effect until August, 1995 when it was quietly rescinded by Janet Reno after Gary Webb began making inquiries for his series. The 1995 revision of the DoJ-CIA MOU specifically includes narcotics violations among the lists of potential offenses by non-employees that must be reported to DOJ.

Source: cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/13.gif

Exhibit 3:

On February 8, 1985, Deputy Chief of DoJ's Office of Intelligence Policy andReview (OIPR) from 1979 to 1991, A. R. Cinquegrana signed off on this letter approving the MOU. Mark M. Richard, Deputy Assistant Attorney General with responsibility for General Litigation and International Law Enforcement in 1982, states that he was unableto explain why narcotics violations were not on the list of reportable crimes except thatthe MOU had "other deficiencies, not just drugs."
Source: cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/14.gif

MOTHER JONES COVERAGE of "A TAINTED DEAL" - Analysis of The secret agreement (above) allowed drugs into the USA
https://web.archive.org/web/20050420101319/http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1998/06/cia.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20050405214411/http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/total_coverage/coke.html

SEE ALSO:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/128584423/Law-Enforcement-Award-Named-After-a-Drug-Trafficker

================
IMPORTANT!!

HPSCI Investigation closed out CONTRA CRACK INVESTIGATION JUNE, 2000
From LOYAL OPPOSITION: In Plain Sight: The CIA Keeps Getting Away With It
By David Corn June 5, 2000
http://www.alternet.org/story/9268/

============

JUNE 8, 2000 Journalist Robert Parry report on CLOSE OUT OF HPSCI hearings

CIA Admits Tolerating Contra- Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s

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

“In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” CIA Inspector General Britt Snider said in classified testimony on May 25, 1999. He conceded that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html

READ ROBERT PARRY's COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CONTRA CRACK - THIS IS ESSENTIAL READING
PARRY NAMES THE NAMES OF REAGAN ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COVER-UP. PLEASE READ AND DISTRIBUTE.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html

ROBERT PARRY BROKE THE CONTRA CRACK STORY IN 1986, TEN YEARS BEFORE GARY WEBB
ENDING HIS CAREER AT ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) and NEWSWEEK.

----------------------
How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal
Monday, Oct 25, 2004 7:04 PM UTC
Derided by the mainstream press and taking on Reagan at the height of his popularity, the freshman senator battled to reveal one of America's ugliest foreign policy secrets.
Robert Parry
http://www.salon.com/2004/10/25/contra/
WRITTEN EXACTLY TEN YEARS AGO, THIS IS A MUST READ.

--------------------------------
Ex-DEA officials: CIA operatives involved in 'Kiki' Camarena murder
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times Posted: 10/19/2013

Former local DEA officials Phil Jordan and Hector Berrellez are alleging that CIA operatives killed the late DEA Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena.

This week's bombshell and widely publicized allegation, which come two months after Mexico's release of kingpin Rafael Caro Quintero from prison, set off a firestorm. Caro Quintero and two other high-level drug-traffickers had been sentenced to 40 years for their roles in Camarena's kidnapping, torture and murder.

Former CIA contract pilot Tosh Plumlee joined Jordan and Berrellez in making the allegations. Celestino Castillo III, another former DEA agent and author of "Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War," said Jordan, Berrellez and Plumlee "are right on the money.
Jordan and Berrellez said they've learned that the real reason Camarena was targeted was because Camarena's investigation had discovered that U.S. intelligence operatives were involved in drug-trafficking.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24343140/ex-dea-officials-make-bombshell-allegations-about-kiki
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2013/10/assassinated-dea-agent-kiki-camarena-fell-cia-operation-gone-awry-say-l
http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpasotimes.com%2Fnews%2Fci_25244835%2Fchapo-guzman-had-role-kiki-camarena-affair
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/frontera-list/

How a Dogged L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena
The "Elliot Ness" of The DEA, Hector Berrellez speaks out about the Camarena Murder
By Jason McGahan
Wednesday, July 1, 2015

http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-a-dogged-la-dea-agent-unraveled-the-cias-alleged-role-in-the-murder-of-kiki-camarena-5750278

Blood On The Corn
In 1985, a murky alliance of drug lords and government officials tortured and killed a DEA agent named Enrique Camarena. In a three-part series, legendary journalist Charles Bowden finally digs into the terrible mystery behind a hero’s murder.

By Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy
Illustrations by Matt Rota
https://medium.com/matter/blood-on-the-corn-52ac13f7e643

==================

Essays by retired DEA agent Mike Levine

http://www.scribd.com/doc/123124540/Collection-of-Essays-by-Retired-DEA-Agent-Mike-Levine

In 1972, I was assigned to assist in a major international drug case involving top Panamanian government officials who were using diplomatic passports to smuggle large quantities of heroin and other drugs into the US. The name Manuel Noriega surfaced prominently in the investigation. Surfacing right behind Noriega was the CIA to protect him from US law enforcement. As head of the CIA, Bush authorized a salary for Manuel Noriega as a CIA asset, while the dictator was listed in as many as 40 DEA computer files as a drug dealer. (pp. 166, 167)--Retired DEA Agent Michael Levine

http://www.scribd.com/doc/128180246/Mike-Levine-DEA-retired-CIA-Interference-in-Drug-Cases

http://www.scribd.com/doc/129916338/Mike-Levine-Press-Release-Bolivian-President-Bans-DEA-From-Bolivia

Dark Alliance Book
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117076273/Dark-Alliance-Gary-Webb-full-867-page-book-Please-Distribute

Powderburns Book
http://www.scribd.com/doc/111246977/Powderburns-COCAINE-CONTRAS-AND-THE-DRUG-WAR
After downloading, please make a suggested donation of $25 Via PAYPAL. (any amount is appreciated- press the DONATE button) http://powderburns.org/store.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117693611/Powderburns-2012-with-photos

The Pariah- Interview with 2 retired DEA agents
Hector Berrellez and Mike Holm (DEA-Ret)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117078597/The-Pariah-by-Charles-Bowden
http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=163286
LA sheriff investigation 1996
http://www.scribd.com/doc/111254696/Los-Angeles-County-Sheriff’s-Department-Investigation

Head of the DEA says CIA smuggled drugs (see the video)
When this case broke, EX DEA Mike Levine spoke with his former colleague in DEA, Annabelle Grimm. She stated that "27 Tons, Minimum" had been smuggled into the U.S.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/131231070/60-MINUTES-Head-of-DEA-Robert-Bonner-Says-CIA-Smuggled-Drugs

The original 1996 Dark Alliance 3 day series in the SJMN is now back online at
http://narconews.com/darkalliance/
Thank you to Bill Conroy and Al Giordino for hosting the series and continuing on with the drug war coverage

National Security Archives declassified records on Oliver North - North' diary submitted to congressional investigators contained hundreds of references to drug trafficking, even after North was given time to expurgate sensitive information from it before handing the diary oiver to investigators.

"went and talked to [contra leader Frederico] Vaughn, who wanted to go to Bolivia to pick up paste, wanted aircraft to pick up 1,500 kilos."
--Oliver North's July 9, 1984, Diary entry

"$14 million to finance [arms] came from drugs."
-- --Oliver North's July 12, 1985, Diary entry
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/

---------------------------

Testimony of Peter Kornbluh, Senior Analyst, National Security Archive October 19, 1996 (Includes declassified documents)
“..I can and will address the central premise of the story: that the U.S. government tolerated the trafficking of narcotics into this country by individuals involved in the contra war. To summarize: there is concrete evidence that U.S. officials-- White House, NSC
and CIA--not only knew about and condoned drug smuggling in and around the contra war, but in some cases collaborated with, protected, and even paid known drug smugglers”

“..Mr. North called a press conference where he was joined by Duane Clarridge, the CIA official who ran the contra operations from 1981 through mid 1984, and the former attorney general of the United States, Edwin Meese III. Mr. North called it a "cheap political trick...to even suggest that I or anyone in the Reagan administration, in any way, shape or form, ever tolerated the trafficking of illegal substances."

Mr. Clarridge claimed that it was a "moral outrage" to suggest that a Reagan Administration official "would have countenanced" drug trafficking. And Mr. Meese stated that no "Reagan administration official would have ever looked the other way at such activity."

The documentation, in which Mr. North, Mr. Clarridge and Mr. Meese all appear, suggests the opposite. Let me review it here briefly:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/pktstmny.htm

=============================

Lawrence Victor Harrison Testimony in DEA agent Enrique Camarena Case Ties Contras and Drugs
DEA: CIA Trained Guerrillas At Ranch Owned By Drug Lord July 5, 1990 |Los Angeles Times
http://www.scribd.com/doc/129497281/Lawrence-Victor-Harrison-Testimony-in-DEA-agent-Enrique-Camarena-Case-Ties-Contras-and-Drugs

PBS Frontline Special on Drugs. #613 Original Air Date: May 17, 1988 Produced and Written by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn. Includes an interview with legendary Intelligence officer Tony (“Tony Poe”) Poshepny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Poshepny

(Poshepny was a legendary covert operations officer who had supervised the CIA’s secret war in Northern Laos during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the interview, Poshepny stated that the CIA had supplied air transport for the heroin shipments of their local ally, General Vang Pao, the only such on-the-record confirmation by a former CIA officer concerning agency involvement in the narcotics trade.)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/gunsdrugscia.html

The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations — Documentation of Official U.S. Knowledge of Drug Trafficking and the Contras

This electronic briefing book is compiled from declassified documents obtained by the National Security Archive, including the notebooks kept by NSC aide and Iran-contra figure Oliver North, electronic mail messages written by high-ranking Reagan administration officials, memos detailing the contra war effort, and FBI and DEA reports. The documents demonstrate official knowledge of drug operations, and collaboration with and protection of known drug traffickers. Court and hearing transcripts are also included. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm

NYT --CIA Inspector General admits that Agency kept working with drug smugglers-/ Had an agreement to not report smuggling
New York Times 1998
http://www.scribd.com/doc/128181161/NYT-CIA-Inspector-General-admits-that-Agency-kept-working-with-drug-smugglers-Had-an-agreement-to-not-report-smuggling

“When CIA Inspector General Fred P. Hitz testified before the House Intelligence Committee in March 1998, he admitted a secret government interagency agreement. `Let me be frank about what we are finding,’ Hitz said. `There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.’

“The lawmakers fidgeted uneasily. `Did any of these allegations involved trafficking in the United States?’ asked Congressman Norman Dicks of Washington. `Yes,’ Hitz answered. Dicks flushed.”

“And what, Hitz was asked, had been the CIA’s legal responsibility when it learned of this? That issue, Hitz replied haltingly, had `a rather odd history…the period of 1982 to 1995 was one in which there was no official requirement to report on allegations of drug trafficking with respect to non-employees of the agency, and they were defined to include agents, assets, non-staff employees.’ There had been a secret agreement to that effect `hammered out between the CIA and U.S. Attorney General William French Smith in 1982,’ he testified.”

Hitz concluded his testimony by stating “This is the grist for more work, if anyone wants to do it.”

In 1998, Fredrick Hitz, CIA Inspector General (IG) and Michael Bromwich DOJ Inspector General released reports admitting to the existence of an agreement which exempted the Intelligence agencies of the USA from reporting drug crimes. The legislative body chosen to hear the allegations was the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) chaired by Porter Goss, a former CIA officer (1960-71) who would later serve as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) (2004 to 2006) under George W. Bush. The committee hearings were held behind closed doors from 1998 to 2000 and a final classified report was released in June, 2000. The report has never been released to the public.

https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/findings.html#top

--------------------------------

FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN MEDIA COVERAGE OF CONTRA CRACK
http://web.archive.org/web/20121025005853/http://www.fair.org/issues-news/contra-crack.html
Gary Webb Explains how the media caved in
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/taking-a-dive-on-contra-crack/
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/exposed-the-contra-crack-connection/

-------------------------

CIA’S BIN LADEN CT UNIT RUN BY CARTEL HITMAN SUSPECTED IN 7 MURDERS

CIA Thugs, Drugs and Terrorism with True Crime Author Evan Wright -watch the video--

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2166312/Top-CIA-spy-Enrique-Ricky-Prado-accused-HITMAN-Miami-mobsters.html#ixzz1z9uGlEfj

Journalist Evan Wright discovers ties between drug cartels and CIA outsourcing of assassinations and intelligence to private contractors. When Wright interviewed a drug trafficker named Jon Roberts, he disclosed participation in a murder with a hitman who would later join the CIA and rise to the top level of the agency. Meyer Lansky’s stepson Richard Schwartz was killed on October 12, 1977, allegedly by the man who would eventually run the unit hunting for terrorist Osama Bin Laden. Ric Prado joined the CIA in 1982. By the time of the 9/11 attacks, he was the chief of counterterrorist operations with the rank of SIS-2. He would later leave the CIA to become a Vice-President at Blackwater from 2004 to 2008. The evidence against Ric Prado was so compelling that one investigator from the case described him as “technically, a serial killer.” Mike Fisten, a former Miami-Dade detective who served on the federal task force stated “The CIA fought us tooth and nail, and basically told us to go fuck ourselves.” Evan Wright interviewed more than a dozen law enforcement officials for this story. He was told “You can’t indict people like Prado. It doesn’t work that way.”

The Terrifying Background of the Man Who Ran a CIA Assassination Unit

By Conor Friedersdorf (July27, 2012)

A federal investigation alleged Enrique Prado’s involvement in seven murders, yet he was in charge when America outsourced covert killing to a private company.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-terrifying-background-of-the-man-who-ran-a-cia-assassination-unit/259856/

Miami Dade Homicide detective Mike Fisten was part of the FBI/DEA task force CENTAC who tried to capture drug lord Alberto San Pedro and his bodyguard hitman Ric Prado. Implicated in more than 7 murders, Prado was a CIA officer who later moved a privatized assassination program to the private sector firm Blackwater with the help of Cofer Black

Did a CIA Agent Work for the Mob?

Thursday, June 28, 2012, 1:57am (PDT) By Evan Wright

http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/did-a-cia-agent-work-for-the-mob-1721447.story

How to Get Away with Murder in America

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/cia/
-----------------------------------------

2011 hack of 2007 Stratfor email: “CIA and White House told DEA to back off investigation” of Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the President, Hamid Karzai. AWK was named as a major trafficker and on US payroll since 2001.

http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/5522439_re-humint-afghanistan-karzai-strictly-protect-confidential-.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/hacked-stratfor-emails-dea-told-to-back-off-from-the-brother-of-afghan-president-hamid-karzai-2012-9#ixzz26t3ZkYiE

Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www&_r=0

2013-- HAMID KARZAI HIMSELF LATER ADMITTED TO BEING PAID BY CIA FOR TEN YEARS
Afghan Leader Confirms Cash Deliveries by C.I.A. - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/asia/karzai-acknowledges-cash-deliveries-by-cia.html
https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/29/cia-bribes-karzai-millions-ghost-money-paid-afghanistan-president-new-york-times_n_3176956.html
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/afghanistans-hamid-karzai-confirms-cia-cash-paymen/

Apr 30, 2013 · April 29 (Reuters) - Tens of millions of U.S. dollars in cash were delivered by the CIA in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags to the office of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for more than a decade, the New York Times says, citing current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

--------------------

Cables Depict Afghan Graft, Starting at Top

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/world/asia/03wikileaks-corruption.html?pagewanted=

19 October 2009 Classified Embassy Cable: Afghan Vice-President Ahmad Zia Masood was stopped by DEA with $52 million he was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money’s origin or destination

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/02/wikileaks-elite-afghans-millions-cash

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/230265

***************

The Head of the UN Drug commission said that 352 billion in drug cash infused into the banking system is what saved the banks from collapsing

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims

***********

Sun Mar 31, 2013, 08:31 PM

Mar 2013

Last edited Mon Apr 28, 2014, 01:29 AM - Edit history (1)

Freeway Ricky Ross Film announced
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Freeway%22_Rick_Ross
http://www.freewayrick.com/
In 2013, The Huffington Post reported that journalist and author Cathy Scott was co-writing Ross's autobiography with him, scheduled for release in 2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ross_%28drug_trafficker%29
https://www.facebook.com/FreewayRickyRoss
https://www.youtube.com/user/FreewayRickRossVEVO

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nick-cannon-play-freeway-rick-425942

Nick Cannon to Play 'Freeway' Rick Ross in Biopic
3:20 PM PST 3/4/2013 by Emily Zemler
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Freeway Rick Ross Nick Cannon Split - H 2013
Patrick Bastien; Getty Images
UPDATED: The notorious drug kingpin and the "America's Got Talent" host announced the collaboration in a YouTube video.

Nick Cannon will portray former drug kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross in an upcoming film.
our editor recommends

Cannon appeared alongside Ross in a YouTube video posted to Ross’ Facebook page Monday to announce the movie. Nick Cassavetes (Alpha Dog, Blow) wrote the script and will direct.

“I've been wanting him to play my role since '96,” Ross said of Cannon in the video. “We got hooked up, I met him … I loved his personality.”

STORY: Nick Cannon Inks First-Look Deal With NBC

Added Cannon: “This is history in the making right here. We family now. We gonna get this thing right however long it take. The story gotta be told: the real Rick Ross.”

The brief video offers little other information regarding the planned film but does note in a caption that the script will be penned by the “writer of Blow” (Cassavetes did indeed co-write the screenplay for the 2001 Johnny Depp starrer) and includes the following description: “This is more than a movie it’s a movement. This is the story of the real Scarface.”

It's unclear whether the biopic has secured financing. Cannon will also serve as executive producer.

STORY: Nick Cassavetes' New Film Imperiled By Lawsuit

Ross, who has clashed with Maybach Music head and Miami rapper Rick Ross (real name: William L. Roberts) over use of the moniker for numerous years, gained notoriety as a cocaine trafficker in Los Angeles in the 1980s. He has been interviewed on several programs and documentaries including BET's American Gangster series.

Cannon, whose acting credits include Up All Night, Drumline and Bobby, hosts America's Got Talent. He also creator TV's Wild 'N Out, Short Circuitz and The Nick Cannon Show.

Twitter: @THR

http://allhiphop.com/2013/03/04/exclusive-freeway-rick-ross-speaks-on-his-biopic-documentary-and-nick-cannon/

EXCLUSIVE: “Freeway” Rick Ross Speaks On His Biopic, Documentary and Nick Cannon
by Keith Nelson Jr (@JusAire) March 4th, 2013 @ 9:00pm

http://www.examiner.com/article/exclusive-freeway-rick-ross-talks-music-film-and-being-him-advance-look

EXCLUSIVE: 'Freeway' Rick Ross Talks Music, Film and Being Him (Advance Look) (Photos)

Freeway Rick Ross
March 26, 2013
By: Jerry Doby
Subscribe

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/tv-film/1550597/nick-cannon-to-play-freeway-rick-ross-in-biopic

http://thehypemagazine.blogspot.ch/2013/03/freeway-rick-ross-talks-music-film-and.html
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2660743/

villager

(26,001 posts)

10. Alternate means of distribution always good...

Reply to 777man (Reply #9)

Tue Apr 2, 2013, 12:35 PM

Apr 2013

... as ever, though, one wonders how long the corporations that are coalescing such channels into smaller ownership groups will let truly "damaging" content persist...

777man

(374 posts)

11. Taking a Dive on Contra Crack ----- How the Mercury News caved in to the media establishment

Reply to 777man (Reply #1)

Thu Apr 4, 2013, 06:57 PM

Apr 2013

Last edited Sun Aug 10, 2014, 12:48 AM - Edit history (2)

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/taking-a-dive-on-contra-crack/

Mar 01 2005
Taking a Dive on Contra Crack
How the Mercury News caved in to the media establishment
By Gary Webb

Gary Webb left the Mercury News shortly after being exiled to the paper’s Cupertino bureau. Unable to get another job at a major newspaper, he died on December 10, 2004, an apparent suicide. This article is excerpted from his 1998 book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.
Extra! March/April 2005

_____________________________--

expired link--repaired

FAIR COMPLETE COVERAGE

http://web.archive.org/web/20121025005853/http://www.fair.org/issues-news/contra-crack.html

Contra-Crack
See also FAIR's resources on Covert Operations, Drugs and Latin America.

Extra! articles:

Snow Job: The Establishment's Papers Do Damage Control for the CIA, by Norman Solomon (1-2/97)
Exposed: The Contra-Crack Connection (10/96)
Time Suppresses Contra Drug Story (11-12/91)
Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica (10-11/89)
Nicaragua's Drug Connection Exposed as Hoax (7-8/88)
Media Censor CIA Ties With Medellin Drug Cartel (3-4/88)
Washington's Worst Kept Secret: The Contra Drug Connection (6/87)

CounterSpin broadcasts:

Jeff Cohen on Gary Webb (12/17/04)
Jeffrey St. Clair on the CIA (7/31/98)
Contra/Crack Special (Part II) (1/3/97)
Contra/Crack Special (Part I) (12/27/96)
The CIA's complicity with drug lords (10/25/96)
Crack and the CIA (9/13/96)

Links:

The Consortium's Contra Crack Series
We The People CIA-drugs web site
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, by Gary Webb
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom, by Robert Parry
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http://web.archive.org/web/20110704003934/http://www.fair.org/extra/8707/contra-secret.html

EXTRA! June 1987
Washington's Worst Kept Secret: The Contra Drug Connection

Since 1985 reports linking contra arms suppliers to cocaine smuggling have run in progressive publications and a few mainstream outlets. But CBS West 57th's well-documented segment on the CIA-contra-drug connection (April 6) was the first serious network probe.

The segment featured interviews with CIA contract employees who flew weapons shipments to the contras in Honduras and back-loaded cocaine and marijuana. Mike Tolliver, convicted drug smuggler and part-time CIA pilot, told of flying 25,000 pounds of pot to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.

The Contragate plot thickened in Newsday (April 17) with an expose on Manzer al-Kassar, a Syrian drug smuggler who ran guns for Lt. Col. Oliver Norths's supply network, Achille Lauro hijacker Abu Abass, and for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The Newsday piece was picked up a few big dailies, but not by the New York Times, Washington Post or the three networks. At the Times, former editor Abe Rosenthal ruminated on the op-ed page(March 15) about how it's time for America to step up the war against drug abuse: "The cheapest and most efficient method of stopping foreign drugs flowing into the country is at the source, not at our borders," says Rosenthal.

Hard to do when the CIA has been supporting dope peddlers for decades. Abe's former colleague, C.L. Sulzberger, knew it. Sulzberger became indignant when poet Allen Ginsberg accused the CIA of smuggling heroin during the Vietnam War. April 11, 1978, Sulzberger wrote: "I fear I owe you an apology. I have been reading a succession of pieced about CIA involvement in the dope trade in Southeast Asia and I remember when you first suggested I look into this I though you were full of beans. Indeed you were right."

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http://web.archive.org/web/20120717192128/http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1190
Extra! March/April 1988

Media Censor CIA Ties With Medellin Drug Cartel

A key money-launderer for the Medellin cocaine cartel told Congress in February that he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, but this information was not reported by the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the three major networks, even though all covered the hearings.

In testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations, Ramon Milian Rodriguez acknowledged that he laundered more than $3 million for the CIA after his indictment on drug charges in 1983. New York Times correspondent Elaine Sciolino failed to mention this in her coverage of Rodriguez's testimony, which was broadcast live on CNN (2/11/88).

Sciolino's page 6 article ("Accountant Says Noriega Laundered Billions," 2-12-88) did not contain the letters CIA or the words "Central Intelligence Agency," even though Rodriguez had described his participation in CIA anti-Castro operations. He said he was trained in money laundering by men whose names he never learned, and later he delivered cash to the families of Watergate burglars. This did not interest The Times, which focused primarily on Rodriguez's account of Noriega's dealings with the Medellin cartel.

As chief accountant for the Colombian drug cartel, Rodriguez laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine profits through US banks in Panama. Although Sciolino noted that the cartel had $11 billion in assets in the US in 1983, she did not mention Rodriguez's testimony about meeting secretly with people who worked for US banks but were not on the official employment roll. Rodriguez named Citicorp and the Bank of America as two banks he dealt with this way.

Buried in the middle of Sciolino's article was Rodriguez's admission that he transferred money to the Nicaraguan contras through a Costa Rican "shrimp processing" Warehouse. This company was among the hundreds of dummy corporations Rodriguez claimed he set up to funnel the cartel's cocaine profits. But The Times and most other media (the Boston Globe is an exception) neglected to mention that Rodriguez's shrimp processing firm, Frigorificos de Puntarenas, received $237,000 from the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Organization (NHAO). During the hearings Senator John Kerry (D-MA) noted the company's receipt of NHAO funds. NHAO was supposed to deliver $27 million in so-called humanitarian assistance to the contras in 1985, but a subsequent congressional audit could not account for $17 million of the money. (Sciolino did not return five phone calls from Extra!)

While the contra drug link was tucked away on page 6, the same edition of The Times featured a front page above-the-fold article by James LeMoyne ("Military Officers in Honduras are Linked to the Drug Trade," 2-12-88) which quoted unnamed "American officials" claiming that the Medellin drug cartel "has close ties with Fidel Castro . . . and to some Sandinista officials in Nicaragua." No evidence to support this allegation was provided by LeMoyne who wrote: "American officials said they fear that Honduran Army officers profiting from drugs might be willing to make a deal to end or limit Honduran support for the American-backed contras in Nicaragua." Make a deal with whom? Why would Honduran military officers cease aiding the contra when their support for the contras virtually assured that US drug enforcement agents would keep their distance? If anything, the Senate hearings on narco-terrorism indicate that the contras have been the meal ticket for drug traffickers.

The Washington Post (2/12/88) included this politically delicate aspect of Rodriguez's testimony in its headline: "Drug Money Alleged to Go to Contras." But Joe Pichirallo's page 30 article tiptoed around CIA involvement with Rodriguez. The Post also failed to mention Rodriguez's assertion that he worked with US banks, and it did not include his statement about laundering moneyfor the CIA after his drug indictment. This omission was egregious in view of the fact that Senator Kerry questioned Rodriguez in detail about an accounting sheet which a federal prosecutor submitted as evidence at his trail:

Senator Kerry: What does your accounting show with respect to the CIA?

Ramon Rodriguez: It shows that I received a shipment of three million and change sometime in the middle of the month.

At the end of the hearing the Post's Pichirallo asked chief counsel Jack Blum why the CIA would use Rodriguez to funnel money after he'd been indicted. Blum responded that such a time would be ideal, since US government investigators cannot approach a defendant after he has been indicted. Extra! later asked Pichirallo why Rodriguez's testimony about moving dirty money for the CIA was excluded from the Post, but he was not forthcoming: "It is my policy never to discuss anything I do."

To its credit Newsday (2/12/88) reported the CIA's money shipment through Rodriguez and the cartel's $10 million gift to the contras, the elementary facts of the story which were not printed in the "newspaper of record."

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http://web.archive.org/web/20110704003926/http://www.fair.org/extra/8807/nicaragua-drug.html

EXTRA!, July/August 1988
Nicaragua's Drug Connection Exposed as Hoax

On July 28 the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, chaired by Congressman William Hughes (D-NJ), held the first of a series of hearings into whether Reagan administration officials condoned drug smuggling and other criminal activities to further its Central America policy. Among other things, the panel sought to determine if top leaders of the Colombian cocaine cartel escaped arrest because the much ballyhooed "war on drugs" took a back seat to a covert operation designed to discredit the Nicaraguan government-this at a time when the administration was seeking additional aid to the contras.

CBS Evening News (7-28-88), the only major network to cover the proceedings, reported on the testimony of DEA agent Ernest Jacobsen, who said that White House officials undermined a DEA probe of the Colombian cocaine kingpins by blowing an undercover informant's cover when they leaked information in an attempt to link Nicaragua to the drug trade.

The case against the cartel had been engineered by Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who worked closely with Vice President George Bush's anti-drug task force in Washington.

But the 1984 investigation got derailed when Seal told his handlers that cocaine was being trans-shipped through Nicaragua with the permission of high-level government officials. In an effort to frame the Sandinistas, the CIA installed a hidden camera in Seal's C-130 cargo plane(the same plane, incidentally, that later crashed in Nicaragua leading to the capture of Eugene Hasenfus in October 1986). Seal took a blurry snapshot which purported to show himself with a high-level Nicaraguan official named Federico Vaughn, and a Colombian drug czar unloading bags ofcocaine at an airstrip in Nicaragua.

CBS obtained pages from Col. Oliver North's diary revealing that the former National Security Council aid communicatedfrequently with the CIA about the sting operation in the weeksbefore the photo was leaked to the press despite objections fromthe DEA. The Nicaragua drug story first appeared in the WashingtonTimes (7-17-84) and was immediately given big play by all the majorpapers, wire services and TV networks. President Reagan displayed Seal's photo in a nationally televised speech in March 1986.

But the media showed much less interest when subcommittee chairman Hughes recently disclosed he had new evidence that the entire Sandinista connection was a US intelligence fabrication. Particularly suspicious is the role of Federico Vaughn, the supposed Sandinista official, who appears to have been a US spy all along. An AP dispatch (Omaha World-Herald, 7-29-88) disclosed that subcommittee staffers called Vaughn's phone number in Managua and spoke to a "domestic employee" who said the house had been "continuously rented" by a US embassy official since 1981.

The unnamed embassy official, according to Hughes, was among the group of US officials recently expelled by the Nicaraguan governement after a violent political demonstrations in July. No word of the Hughes hearings appeared in the Washington Post or the New York Times. Instead the Times ran a brief item in its Sunday national edition (7-31-88) quoting President Reagan's weekly radio broadcast about how Sandinista officials are still involved in drug trafficking.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20120509201530/http://www.fair.org/extra/8910/north-banned.html

EXTRA! October/November 1989
Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica

Few individuals fascinate the US media like Ollie North. Few subjects grab more media attention than drugs. Few democracies win more media praise than Costa Rica. Put these three into a single scandal and it spells Front Page News, right? Wrong. What it spells is C-E-N-S-O-R-S-H-I-P.

In July, North and other major contragate figures were barred from Costa Rica. The order was issued by none other than Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. President Arias was acting on recommendations from a Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking.

The commission concluded that the contra re-supply network in Costa Rica which North coordinated from the White House doubled as a drug smuggling operation.

The narcotics commission started probing the contra network centered around the northern Costa Rican ranch of US-born John Hull because of "the quantity and frequency of the shipment of drugsthat passed through the zone." North's personal notebook mentioned" the necessity of giving Mr. Hull protection." (San Juan Star,Puerto Rico, 7/22/89).

Investigators held North responsible for Gen. Manuel Noriega's participation in the contra supply network, which opened thedoor to at least seven pilots who trafficked in drugs whilesupplying arms to the contras. "These requests for contra help were initiated by Colonel North to General Noriega," the commission reported. "They opened a gate so their henchmen could utilize [Costa Rican] territory for trafficking in arms and drugs." (Tico Times, Costa Rica, 7/28/89).

Barred from Costa Rica along with North were Maj. Gen. Richard Secord, former National Security Advisor John Poindexter, former US Ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, and former CIA station chief in Costa Rica, Joseph Fernandez. This winter Costa Rica's congress will vote on the permanent implementation of the bannings. In an interview with Extra!, Costa Rican Minister of Information, Jorge Urbina, stated: "I can assure you that the recommendations will pass nearly unanimously."

The Costa Rican government inquiry confirmed information aboutcontra/drug links developed by independent journalists, lawyers,and a US Senate subcommittee. Ollie North's notebooks contain dozens of references to contra-related drug trafficking, includinga July 12, 1985 entry: "$14 million to finance [arms] came from drugs." When high-ranking officials of the "Just Say No"administration are banned-due to drug links-from the country US editorial writers hail as Central America's leading democracy, one might have expected major coverage. One would have been wrong. Although a lengthy Associated Press wire report (7/22/89) carried the story into virtually every newsroom in the US, major media largely ignored the story or, like the Washington Post and Miami Herald, relegated it to "in Brief" sections. The New York Time sand the three major TV networks failed to mention it at all.

During a period when drug coverage reached hysterical proportions, when Oliver North made news by lecturing campus audiences on the evils of drugs and pledging to do anti-drug work in serving out his criminal sentence of 1500 hours of community service, most media could not find space to mention the Costa Rica bannings. Even when President Bush, 17 other heads of state, and many dozens of US reporters journeyed to Costa Rica in October to celebrate "100 years of democracy," the story failed to attractinterest.

It wasn't for lack of knowledge; FAIR provided information about developments in the case to many national media (who'd already received the original AP story). FAIR's Steve Rendall later contacted the three TV networks, New York Times, and Washington Post to ask why the story had been buried or ignored. Journalists offered no real answers.

Typical was the response from Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, who stated, "Just because a congressional commission in Costa Rica says something, doesn't mean it's true." Ironically, through all the years that wildly false statements by US officials on Central America have received prominent uncritical coverage, these same media have responded to FAIR's complaints thusly: "When leaders of a democracy make statements, it's news and we have tocover it. We aren't ruling on whether it's true or not."

If, as a media consumer, you would like your own explanations as to why the following national media have buried the story, you could contact their foreign desks. You might also ask your local media. (Final action on the bannings by Costa Rica's congress is expected in February.)

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http://web.archive.org/web/20110704003917/http://www.fair.org/extra/9111/time-contra.html
Extra!, November/December 1991
Time Suppresses Contra Drug Story

As Time magazine's resident expert on narcotics trafficking, Elaine Shannon was a predictable choice for the New York Time Book Review (7/28/91) to critique the book, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall. Predictably, she slammed the book, whose central thesis is that the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contras "trafficked extensively in cocaine while the CIA, National Security Council, and Justice Department ignored the evidence."

In her review, the Time magazine correspondent poked fun at Scott and Marshall for believing that media timidity had helped the CIA's alliance with drug dealers: "[The authors] believe that the 'establishment media' have not pursued the story strenuously enough because their practitioners are 'reluctant to find themselves at odds with the government."

A farfetched notion on the part of conspiracy-minded authors? Consider how Time handled the contra/cocaine story. In the fall of 1987, Time assigned a staff reporter to assemble any evidence that the Oliver North network supplying guns to the contras was also bringing cocaine into the U.S. The reporter found serious evidence, and wrote it up. As the former Time reporter explained to Extra!, after the article was written and rewritten, finally, a senior editor told the reporter to give up on the story. "The senior editor leveled with me," the reporter told Extra! "His words were: Time is institutionally behind the contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you'd have no trouble getting it in the magazine.'"

======================

http://web.archive.org/web/20110704003909/http://www.fair.org/extra/9610/contra.html

EXTRA!Update, October 1996
Exposed: The Contra-Crack Connection

The wave of crack addiction that crippled inner-city neighborhoods across the country in the '80s had its roots in the CIA's efforts to fund the secret contra war against Nicaragua, according to an investigative report by the San Jose Mercury News' Gary Webb (8/18-20/96).

The story of the year? Not according to the New York Times, which has so far ignored the Mercury News' well-documented revelations. The major TV networks gave it no coverage. A few dailies prominently reprinted Webb's work (like the Seattle Times, 8/22/96), or ran an Associated Press account summarizing his findings (e.g., Chicago Tribune, 8/21/96). But there is little sign that the expose has prompted much digging from other reporters--or much outrage on the nation's editorial pages.

Webb's evidence is as persuasive as his conclusions are disturbing. (You can read the stories themselves at http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/start.htm.) Exhibit A is Oscar Danilo Blandon, a cocaine trafficker and federal informant who told a federal courtroom that " whatever we were running in L.A., the profit was going to the contra revolution." Blandon's claim is backed up by an L.A. Sheriff's Department affidavit, a federal parole report, an FBI memo and other official documents.

Webb connects Blandon and Norwin Meneses, his boss in the operation, to top contra leaders like Enrique Bermudez and Adolfo Calero "There is a saying that the ends justify the means," Blandon testified. "And that's what Mr. Bermudez told us in Honduras, OK?"

Law enforcement agents told the Mercury News (8/18/96) that the CIA squelched investigations against the Meneses/Blandon operation in the name of "national security." Federal prosecutors who used the trafficker as an informant obtained a court order preventing defense attorneys from inquiring about Blandon's ties to the CIA.

But even more startling are the revelations about Blandon's distributor, "Freeway" Ricky Donnell Ross. Ross was no minor drug pusher, but the main supplier of crack for the Crips and Bloods gangs in L.A. "If there was a criminal mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick," the L.A. Times reported two years ago (12/20/94).

Ross became the dominant supplier in L.A.--and much of the country--because of his ability to undersell other dealers. "Whathe had, and they didn't," Webb reported (8/19/96), "was Danilo Blandon, a friend with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of high-grade cocaine."

Would there have been an explosion of crack addiction in urban ghettos if the CIA's war against Nicaragua hadn't provided Ross with an"inexhaustible supply" of cocaine? Would it have assumed the same epidemic proportions? In the wake of the Mercury News series, these are open questions--questions that reporters at every major news outlet ought to be trying to answer.

But most major news outlets seem prepared to let the new evidence get thrown away with yesterday's newspapers--the same approach they have taken to past revelations of the contras' involvement in cocaine trafficking. The contra/cocaine connection was exposed by the Associated Press' Robert Parry and Brian Barger as early as 1985 (12/20/85); further substantiation appeared in such disparate outlets as the San Francisco Examiner (3/16/86,6/23/86), In These Times (12/10/86) and CBS's West 57th (4/6/87,7/11/87). The New York Times, the most powerful paper in the U.S.and one that can be counted on to protect what it sees as the establishment, did worse than ignore these reports: It went out of its way to discredit them, with a series of articles that appeared in July 1987 (7/13/87, 7/16/87, 7/20/87). The message of these articles was direct, and dishonest: "Investigators, including reporters from major news outlets, have tried without success to find proof of . . . allegations that military supplies may have been paid for with profits from drug smuggling," the Times' Keith Schneider reported on July 20, 1987.

The "reporters from major news outlets" couldn't have been trying very hard: The Reagan State Department itself acknowledged a year earlier that at least one contra leader had received money and warplanes from a Columbian drug trafficker. But in a 1987 interview, the Times' Schneider revealed that he had more on his mind than journalism when he wrote two of the dismissive stories.

"This story can shatter a republic," Schneider told In These Times (8/5/87). "I think it is so damaging, the implications are so extraordinary, that for us to run the story, it had better be based on the most solid evidence we can amass." Gary Webb's Mercury News reporting has provided solid evidence that the contras were not just involved with the cocaine trade, they were major players in it. But the New York Times still seems to be more worried about shattering republicsthan reporting the truth.

If you'd like to ask the New York Times why it hasn't followed up on the latest contra/cocaine evidence, the address is 229 W.43rd St., New York, NY 10036 (phone: 212-556-7356; fax:212-556-3690; online: http://www.nytimes.com).

Postscript: Since the publication of this Extra!Update report, the NewYork Times has briefly mentioned the Mercury Newsfindings. The Los Angeles Times and the WashingtonPost have published long articles critical of the Mercury Newsseries. The Mercury has refuted some of the other papers' allegations on their website.

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http://web.archive.org/web/20120911075028/http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1374

Extra! January/February 1997

Snow Job
The Establishment's Papers Do Damage Control for the CIA

By Norman Solomon

The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies--all this is indispensably necessary.

--George Orwell, 1984

For several weeks after a series last August in the San Jose Mercury News (8/18-20/96) linked the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras with the importation of cocaine into poor black areas of Los Angeles, major news outlets did scant reporting on the story. But in early autumn, near silence gave way to a roar from the country's three most influential urban dailies--the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times--which is still reverberating in the national media's echo chamber.

The first New York Times article on the subject (9/21/96) foreshadowed much that was to follow. Headlined "Inquiry Is Ordered Into Reports of Contra Cocaine Sales in U.S.," the news story focused on assurances from Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch and unnamed "former senior CIA officials" that the Mercury News assertions were groundless. "I regard these allegations with the utmost seriousness," Deutch said. "They go to the heart and integrity of the CIA enterprise."

Not only did Deutch contend that "the agency never had any relationship" with Nicaraguan drug traffickers Oscar Danilo Blandon and Norvin Meneses--the Times also reported the reassuring news that "former senior CIA officials involved in the contra operations said this week that they had never heard of" Blandon or Meneses. None of the article's dozen paragraphs included any suggestion that the CIA might be a dubious touchstone for veracity. The notion that the CIA's internal probe held a key to unlocking the story's mysteries was to be oft-repeated.

Yet the uproar over the Mercury News series, written by reporter Gary Webb, continued to grow. Denials from the CIA carried little weight with much of the public, particularly African-Americans outraged by the series. Protests mounted in cities from Los Angeles to Washington, and members of the Black Congressional Caucus demanded federal investigations.

October brought a fierce counterattack from the Washington Post, the New York Times and L.A. Times, all of which published lengthy news articles blasting the Mercury News series. In the process, a number of recurrent debunking themes quickly gained the status of media truisms.

"Last month," Newsweek reported in November (11/11/96), "the Merc started getting trashed -- by its peers. In turn, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Times poked holes in the story, exhaustively and mercilessly."

In his role as the Post's in-house media critic, Howard Kurtz took numerous swipes at Webb that grew increasingly dismissive; one item(10/28/96), headed "A Webb of Conspiracy," ended with the smug one-liner, "Oliver Stone, check your voice mail." Liberal columnist Mary McGrory, based at the Post, echoed what she was hearing all around her in an Oct. 27 piece:
"The San Jose story has been discredited by major publications, including the Post."

By November, a clear orthodoxy had taken hold. Certain de rigueur phrases began appearing in news articles: "Many of the series' conclusions have been widely challenged" (Washington Post, 11/6/96); "media critics and other newspapers have questioned the Mercury News' findings" (AP in New York Times, 11/7/96).

Under the headline "CIA Chief Denies Crack Conspiracy," the New York Times (11/16/96) indicated that reputable media outlets--and reputable spooks--had rejected the Mercury News series: "Agency officials said they had no evidence of any such plot. Other news organizations were not able to confirm the plot. Still, the rumor mill continued to grind, seemingly unstoppable."

The next day, Times columnist Maureen Dowd took the company line: "Mr. Deutch and investigators for several major newspapers have found no evidence to support the conspiracy theory that grew out of a series in the San Jose Mercury News suggesting a CIA role in the spread of crack in America's inner cities."

Suspect Sources

But what exactly in the San Jose Mercury News stories was refuted by these "major newspapers"? To a notable degree, the establishment papers relied for their debunking of the Mercury News on the CIA's own obligatory denials. As journalist Marc Cooper pointed out in the weekly New Times Los Angeles (10/31/96), "Regarding the all-important question of how much responsibility the CIA had, we are being asked to take the word of sources who in a more objective account would be considered suspects."

In the New York Times' full-page magnum opus on the controversy (10/21/96), reporter Tim Golden drew extensively on interviews with nameless sources such as "government officials with access to intelligence reports," not to mention "more than two dozen current and former [contra] rebels, CIA officials and narcotics agents, as well as other law-enforcement officials and experts on the drug trade."

The Times seemed eager to take at face value the statements at CIA headquarters that the agency didn't know Blandon from Adam: "Although he claimed to have supplied several thousand pounds of cocaine to one of the biggest crack dealers in Southern California, officials said the CIA had no record of Mr. Blandon before he appeared as a central figure in the series in the Mercury News." As in the earlier Times report(9/21/96) featuring the same CIA disclaimers, there was not the slightest hint that such denials might be self-serving.

The Los Angeles Times was on the same track in its lengthy three-day series. "CIA officials insist they knew nothing about Meneses' and Blandon's tainted contributions to [Adolfo] Calero or other contra leaders," the newspaper reported (10/21/96). One of the officials quoted in support of the claim that the CIA had drug-free hands was Vincent Cannistraro--identified by the newspaper only as a "former CIA official."

In fact--though the L.A. Times could spare none of the article's several thousand words to let readers know--Cannistraro was in charge of the CIA's contra activities during the early 1980s. After moving to the National Security Council in 1984, he became a supervisor of covert aid to Afghanistan's mujahedeen guerrillas, whose involvement in the opium trade made Afghanistan and Pakistan two of the world's main suppliers of heroin
(The Nation, 11/14/88).

If the L.A. Times had been willing to share such relevant details, it would have provided readers with a much better basis for evaluating Cannistraro's testimonial to CIA integrity: "There's no tendency to turn a blind eye to drug trafficking. It's too sensitive. It's not a fine line. It's not a shaded area where you can turn away from the rules."

The L.A. Times was following in the footsteps of less august media outlets that used a deceptively identified Cannistraro to attack the Mercury News series. The right-wing Washington Times (9/12/96) quoted him as saying that the series "doesn't have any elements of authenticity."

And former Washington Times reporter Michael Hedges wrote a Scripps-Howard News Service article (Memphis Commercial Appeal, 9/29/96) that called Cannistraro a "retired CIA counterterrorism and Latin America expert" and quoted him as declaring: "I have personal knowledge that the CIA knew nothing about these guys [Blandon and Meneses]. These charges are completely illogical."

Besides self-serving denials, journalistic critics of the Mercury News offered little to rebut the paper's specific pieces of evidence--including Blandon's own testimony and law enforcement documents and comments (8/18/96)--indicating that Meneses and Blandon may have been protected by federal agents.

Whose Army?

Judging the Mercury News series invalid, the preeminent denouncers frequently berated the newspaper for failing to prove what Webb never claimed. The Washington Post, for instance, devoted paragraph after paragraph of its Oct. 4 barrage to illuminating what Webb had already acknowledged in his articles--that while he proves contra links to major cocaine importation, he can't identify specific CIA officials who knew of or condoned the trafficking.

Many critics took issue with Webb's references to the contras as "the CIA's army." The Washington Post's Kurtz, for example, complained (10/2/96) that "Webb's repeated use of the phrase 'the CIA's army'...clearly suggests that the agency was involved." In fact, referring to the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) as the CIA's army is solid journalism, highlighting a relationship that is fundamentally relevant to the story. The army was formed at the instigation of the CIA, its leaders were selected by and received salaries from the agency, and CIA officers controlled day-to-day battlefield strategies. One former contra leader, Edgar Chamorro, has said that the FDN's leaders were "nothing more than the executioners of the CIA's orders" (Nicaragua: The Price of Intervention, Peter Kornbluh; see also Extra! interview with Chamorro, 10-11/87).

Yet the newsroom culture of denial grew so strong that one Washington Post article, by Marc Fisher (11/7/96), seemed to dispute that the CIA and the contras had any ties at all: "On WRC, [talkshow host] Joe Madison droned on as he has for weeks about the supposed CIA-contra connection."

In its big blast at the Mercury News series, the New York Times (10/21/96) tried a semantic maneuver to distance the CIA's army from the CIA. The newspaper acknowledged that Meneses and Blandon "traveled once to Honduras to see the FDN's military commander, Enrique Bermudez." But the Times quickly added: "Although Mr. Bermudez, like other contra leaders, was often paid by the CIA, he was not a CIA agent."

It was classic sleight-of-hand at the keyboard, as columnist Murray Kempton pointed out (Newsday, 10/23/96): "The maintenance of such distinctions without any essential difference is one of the more cunning of the infinite devices the agency employs on obfuscation. The CIA identifies highly placed foreign hirelings not as 'agents' but as 'assets.'" Just such obfuscation helped many journalists to assert that the Mercury News series had been debunked and that the CIA was unfairly implicated.

Dubious Debunkings

The most potentially damaging charge made by the establishment papers is that Webb greatly exaggerated the amount of crack profits going to the contras, which he reported as being "millions" of dollars. "According to law enforcement officials, Blandon sold $30,000 to $60,000 worth of cocaine in two transactions and delivered the money to Meneses for shipment to the contras," the Washington Post reported (10/4/96). "Meneses was indeed a financial contributor to the contras," the L.A. Times reported (10/21/96), "but his donations to the rebel cause amounted to no more than $50,000, according to two men who knew him at the time." These estimates quickly became enshrined as journalistic fact. They were even given credence by an editorial in The Nation (11/18/96): Blandon and Meneses' contributions to the contra cause "may have been $50,000," David Corn wrote.

Yet the Mercury News' higher estimates are better sourced than the debunkers' low numbers. In contrast to the Mercury News--which had drawn on sworn grand jury and court testimony to calculate that millions of crack dollars flowed to the contras--the Post and L.A. Times attributed their much smaller estimates to unnamed sources, variously described as "law enforcement officials" (Washington Post, 10/4/96), "a contra supporter and a business partner who sold drugs with Blandon" (L.A. Times, 10/20/96) and "associates in drug trafficking in Los Angeles" (L.A. Times, 10/21/96).

Nor do the claims by the Washington Post (10/4/96) and New York Times (10/21/96) stand up that the funneling of crack money to the contras ended early in the 1980s. Pete Carey, a reporter assigned by the Mercury News to do a reassessment of the paper's own reporting (10/13/96), presented fuller documentation: "A 1986 Los Angeles County sheriff's affidavit for searches of the homes and business of Blandon and members of his drug ring shows that the contra connection lasted into the mid-1980s. In the 1986 affidavit, three confidential informants said that Blandon was still sending money to the contras."

The establishment papers' orthodoxy also insists that "Freeway" Ricky Ross, the contact who distributed Blandon's cocaine in the form of crack, was not a key player in the drug's proliferation. The Washington Post declared that Ross' activities were incidental to the spread of crack; using identical language in a pair of news articles (10/4/96, 10/12/96), the Post insisted that available data "point to the rise of crack as a broad-based phenomenon driven in numerous places by players of different nationalities." The New York Times (10/21/96) concluded rather cryptically that "several experts on the drug trade said that although Mr. Ross was indeed a crack kingpin, he was one of many."

But two years ago--before the public learned that much of his cocaine was supplied by smugglers connected to the contras--the same man was the subject of a 2,400-word Los Angeles Times news article (12/20/94) that portrayed him as central to the spread of crack cocaine. "If there was an eye to the storm," the article began, "if there was a criminal mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick." The headline? "Deposed King of Crack; Now Free After 5 Years in Prison, This Master Marketer Was Key to the Drug's Spread in L.A."

The article reported that as far as crack went, "Ross did more than anyone else to democratize it, boosting volume, slashing prices and spreading disease on a scale never before conceived." He became "South-Central's first millionaire crack lord," the newspaper reported. "While most other dealers toiled at the bottom rungs of the market, his coast-to-coast conglomerate was selling more than 500,000 rocks a day, a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars."

In a remarkable display of subservience to prevailing orthodoxy, the same reporter who wrote those words, Jesse Katz, went on to write a front-page article for the L.A. Times(10/20/96) that reads like a show-trial recantation. Ross now was one of many "interchangeable characters," who was "dwarfed" by other dealers. "How the crack epidemic reached that extreme, on some level, had nothing to do with Ross," Katz reported. The L.A. Times reporter did not explain how his reporting on Ross two years earlier could have been so inaccurate.

Evidence Ignored

While the Mercury News series could arguably be faulted for occasional overstatement, the elite media's attacks on the series were clearly driven by a need to defend their shoddy record on the contra-cocaine story--involving a decade-long suppression of evidence (Extra!, 6/87, 3-4/88). The Washington Post was typical. "When Brian Barger and I wrote the first story about contra-cocaine smuggling for the Associated Press in December 1985 (12/20/85)," Robert Parry recalls, "the Post waited a week, added some fresh denials and then stuck the story near the back of the national news section."

In 1987, the House Narcotics Committee, chaired by Rep. Charles Rangel (D.-N.Y.), investigated contra-drug allegations and found a "need for further congressional investigation." The Washington Post (7/22/87)distorted reality with the headline "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling"--and then refused to publish Rangel's letter correcting the record (Extra!, 10-11/87).

Later that year, Time magazine staff writer Laurence Zuckerman was assigned to work with an investigative reporter on contra-cocaine allegations. They found serious evidence of the link, but the story Zuckerman wrote was obstructed by higher-ups (Extra! , 11-12/91). A senior editor acknowledged to Zuckerman: "Time is institutionally behind the contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you'd have no trouble getting it in the magazine."

Two years later, the Senate subcommittee chaired by John Kerry released a scathing condemnation of U.S. government complicity with drug trafficking by the contras. "When this important report was issued in April 1989, the Post [4/14/89] buried the information in a scant 700-word article on page A20," Parry remembers (The Consortium, 10/28/96). "And most of that story, by Michael Isikoff, was devoted to Republican criticisms of Kerry, rather than to the serious evidence of contra wrongdoing. Other establishment publications took the cue that it was safe to mock Kerry. Newsweek [8/5/91] dubbed him a 'randy conspiracy buff.'"

In July 1989, White House operative Oliver North, National Security Adviser John Poindexter, U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica Lewis Tambs, CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez and other contragate figures were barred from Costa Rica--on orders of that country's president, Oscar Arias, who acted on recommendations from a Costa Rican congressional commission investigating drug trafficking. The commission concluded that the contra resupply network in Costa Rica, which North coordinated from the White House, doubled as a drug smuggling operation.

A big story? Not at all. Although AP sent out a dispatch (7/22/89), the New York Times and the three major TV networks failed to mention it; the Washington Post ran the news as a short back page item. When FAIR's Steve Rendall called the Post to find out why, reporter Walter Pincus--who later co-wrote the Post's 1996 attack on the San Jose Mercury News-made no apologies. "Just because a congressional commission in Costa Rica says something, doesn't mean it's true," Pincus said (Extra!, 10-11/89).

In late 1996, one of the basic pretensions threading through much of the coverage by the Washington Post, New York Times and L.A. Times was the notion that contra participation in drug trafficking is old news--a particularly ironic claim coming from newspapers that went out of their way to ignore or disparage key information during the 1980s. The Post's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser, was on target (11/10/96) when she re-raised the question of the U.S. government's relationship to drug smuggling and noted that the three newspapers "showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws in San Jose's answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves."

Citing "strong previous evidence that the CIA at least chose to overlook contra involvement in the drug trade," Overholser found "misdirected zeal" in the Post's response to the Mercury News series: "Would that we had welcomed the surge of public interest as an occasion to return to a subject the Post and the public had given short shrift. Alas, dismissing someone else's story as old news comes more naturally."

A more pointed observation came from Robert Parry: The irony of the Post's big Oct. 4 story "was that the newspaper was finally accepting the reality of contra cocaine trafficking, albeit in a backhanded way." The Post "had long pooh-poohed earlier allegations that the contras were implicated in drug shipments."

A Dirty, Dangerous World

What explains these elite media outlets' shameful record of suppressing evidence that the CIA's contra army was involved in the drug trade--and attacking those who dared to report the story? In the case of the New York Times and the Washington Post, part of the explanation is that the papers had lent their editorial prestige to the contra cause. By the late 1980s, both papers had endorsed military aid to the contras--though sometimes grudgingly. In February 1988, a pair of pro-contra aid Post editorials (2/3/88, 2/5/88) bracketed a crucial vote in Congress; the pre-vote editorial observed approvingly that "a carrot-and-stick combination has moved the Sandinistas." There was no discernible concern that the military "stick" was being used to take the lives of civilian peasants in the Nicaraguan countryside.

At all three papers, the attitudes of owners and top management set the tone and impose the constraints within which journalists work. Dennis McDougal, a former L.A. Times staffer, described the paper's editor, Shelby Coffey III, this way (New Times Los Angeles, 9/19/96): "He is the dictionary definition of someone who wants to protect the status quo. He weighs whether or not an investigative piece will have repercussions among the ruling elite, and if it will, the chances of seeing it in print in the L.A. Times decrease accordingly."

The New York Times and Washington Post have an even closer relationship to the nation's elites, with connections to the CIA that go back nearly to the agency's founding. In a piece on the CIA and news media written for Rolling Stone two decades ago (10/20/77), Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein wrote that "the agency's relationship with the [New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. From 1950 to 1966, about 10 CIA employees were provided Times cover under arrangements approved by the newspaper's late publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The cover arrangements were part of a general Times policy--set by Sulzberger--to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible."

Bernstein's former employer, the Washington Post, was also useful to the CIA; Bernstein quoted a CIA official as saying of the Post's late owner and publisher, "It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from."

Descendants of these publishers still run their respective papers, and the attitude that they have an obligation to provide covert help to the CIA persists to the present era. In 1988, Post owner Katharine Graham, Phil's widow, gave a speech at the CIA's Langley, Va. headquarters. "We live in a dirty and dangerous world," Graham told agency leaders (Regardie's Magazine,1/90). "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

Readers, in turn, can decide how much faith to put in news outlets whose owners embrace such a philosophy.

Research Assistance: Steve Rendall

Response to 777man (Reply #1)

777man This message was self-deleted by its author.

SamKnause

(12,877 posts)

77. Thank you 777man

Reply to 777man (Reply #1)

Wed Apr 2, 2014, 06:16 AM

Apr 2014

for the time consuming and hard work you put into all of these posts !!!!

777man

(374 posts)

79. YOU're WELCOME! The most up - to -date fake drug war info on the web is here at DU

Reply to SamKnause (Reply #77)

Fri Apr 4, 2014, 06:44 AM

Apr 2014

Let us make sure to make the film opening a big one!

777man

(374 posts)

12. 3 great interviews with former DEA agent Celerino Castillo III - a True American Hero and Patriot

(374 posts)

20. July 13-2013 Barry Pepper Joins Jeremy Renner Pic ‘Kill The Messenger’

Reply to 777man (Reply #19)

Sat Jul 13, 2013, 10:50 PM

Jul 2013

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/barry-pepper-joins-jeremy-renner-pic-kill-messenger-025942845.html

Barry Pepper Joins Jeremy Renner Pic ‘Kill The Messenger’
By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Deadline.com – 23 hours ago

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Barry Pepper Joins Jeremy Renner Pic ‘Kill The Messenger’View Photo

Barry Pepper Joins Jeremy Renner Pic ‘Kill The Messenger’

Fresh off roles in The Lone Ranger and Snitch, Barry Pepper has signed for Michael Cuesta’s fact-based pic about a CIA smear campaign that led to a Pulitzer-winning journalist’s downfall. In Kill The Messenger, Pepper will play federal prosecutor Russell Dodson, who is tasked with keeping a lid on the agency’s connection to the massive influx of cocaine into the U.S. by Nicaraguan contras. He tries to prevent investigative reporter Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) from running a series of newspaper articles about the case. Focus Features picked up worldwide rights to the pic ahead of Berlin. Production starts Monday in Atlanta. Pepper, whose credits range from Saving Private Ryan to playing Dale Earnhardt in a TV biopic to True Grit, is repped by the Kohner Agency and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.
Related stories
UPDATE: Jeremy Renner’s ‘Kill The Messenger’ Acquired By Focus Features For WW Distribution On Journo Gary Webb Saga
Rosemarie DeWitt To Star Opposite Jeremy Renner In ‘Kill The Messenger’
TOLDJA! Focus Features Lands ‘The Place Beyond The Pines’

777man

(374 posts)

21. 'Moonrise Kingdom's' Lucas Hedges to Play Jeremy Renner's Son in 'Kill the Messenger'

Reply to 777man (Reply #20)

Sat Jul 13, 2013, 10:59 PM

Jul 2013

'Moonrise Kingdom's' Lucas Hedges to Play Jeremy Renner's Son in 'Kill the Messenger' (Exclusive)
Michael Cuesta is directing Focus' thriller, which co-stars Rosemarie DeWitt and Paz Vega

Published: July 09, 2013 @ 2:40 pm
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By Jeff Sneider

After playing one of the young scouts in Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom," Lucas Hedges has been cast as Jeremy Renner and Rosemarie DeWitt's son in Focus Features' thriller "Kill the Messenger."

"Messenger" tells the true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb (Renner), whose reporting exposed the CIA's involvement in helping Nicaragua's Contra rebels import cocaine into California during the 1980s. Webb was found shot to death in 2004 in what the coroner determined to be a suicide, but foul play has long been suspected.

Also read: 'Boardwalk Empire' Star Michael K. Williams May Play 'Freeway' Rick Ross in Jeremy Renner Movie (Exclusive)

Hedges will play Ian Webb, who looks up to his truth-seeking father and stands by him when Gary needs him the most.

Paz Vega will co-star in the film, while Michael K. Williams is in negotiations to play "Freeway" Rick Ross, though his "Boardwalk Empire" schedule may prevent him from taking on the brief-yet-key role.

Michael Cuesta ("Homeland&quot

is directing from a script by Peter Landesman, who adapted Nick Schou's book. Scott Stuber is producing through his Bluegrass Films banner along with The Combine's Renner and Don Handfield, as well as Naomi Despres. Landesman will executive produce the film, which starts production in the coming weeks in Atlanta.

Hedges is the son of director Peter Hedges, who cast Lucas in the 2007 dramedy "Dan in Real Life." Focus produced that movie and also distributed "Moonrise Kingdom," so Hedges is no stranger to the company.

The rising young actor, who recently appeared alongside Colin Firth and Emily Blunt in "Arthur Newman," will soon be seen in Jason Reitman's "Labor Day" and Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem." He also played a young Ewan McGregor in Noah Baumbach's HBO pilot "The Corrections," which is not going forward at the cable network.

Hedges is repped by Abrams Artists Agency and Anonymous Content.

http://www.projectcasting.com/casting/kill-the-messenger-starring-jeremy-renner-casting-call-information/

777man

(374 posts)

22. 'Boardwalk Empire' Star Michael K. Williams May Play 'Freeway' Rick Ross in Jeremy Renner Movie

(374 posts)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/frontera-list/F-NgP8JU5OY/XNcTfpZsp9gJ

Molly Molloy
4 nov

As far as I can tell from a quick search on google news, there has been no real followup in the US press on the FOX news story from mid-October quoting retired DEA agents Jordan and Berellez saying that the CIA was involved in the kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Camarena in 1984 in Mexico. The best single account in English is this by Bill Conroy in Narco News posted here last week:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2013/10/assassinated-dea-agent-kiki-camarena-fell-cia-operation-gone-awry-say-l

The Mexican newsmagazine Proceso has published several articles, including this latest. Last week, the DEA Museum in Washington held a conference for the purpose of debunking the revelations from Jordan, Berellez and former CIA operative Tosh Plumlee. I have seen no account of this event in the English-language press. The article below from Proceso gives the play by play. It also cites another retired DEA agent, Mike Holm, as supporting the claims of CIA involvement in Camarena's death. For readers who think this is a novel claim, I recommend this 1998 article by Charles Bowden, http://www.esquire.com/features/pariah-gary-webb-0998

The main point of the "new" revelations is that the CIA was taking advantage of Mexican cartels smuggling cocaine into the US to earn $$$ that was then funneled illegally into the CIA support for the Nicaraguan contras. Camarena knew about this and his knowledge was considered dangerous. So Mexican cartel criminals led by Rafael Caro Quintero were enlisted by the CIA to kidnap Camarena and find out what he really knew. Camarena died while being tortured. Eyewitnesses say that CIA operatives were in the room during Camarena's torture. Caro Quintero has recently been released from Mexican prison and his whereabouts are unknown.

The CIA has also been implicated in the assassination of Mexican journalist Manuel Buendia who was also killed in 1984 after publishing several columns revealing the links between the CIA and the Nicaraguan Contras. It is interesting that these links that have now been substantiated in reams of US government documents over the years, in Congressional hearings in 1987, in the criminal indictments of Oliver North and others working in the Reagan administration to supply illegal money and arms to the Contras... well, these links were fairly well known in Central America as early as 1984. I happened to be living in Managua from 1984-1986. Oliver North's name frequently appeared in the Nicaraguan press. I remember being surprised at the shock surrounding the revelations in 1987 when North and his henchmen were forced to testify in the US Congress...

But the story was also known in 1984 in Mexico, thanks to the revelations of Manuel Buendia. He was killed. Camarena was killed. Twelve years later, in 1996, California reporter Gary Webb revealed these links in the San Jose Mercury News and the backlash against him cost him his job. He wrote a great book, DARK ALLIANCE, that filled in many of the details of the story. But he never recovered from the media and CIA campaign to smear him. He committed suicide in 2004.

What is interesting is that the true story is coming out now, nearly 30 years after the murders of Buendia and Camarena.
Will Proceso and Narco News Bulletin be the only media to expose the hypocrisy of the CIA? molly molloy

PROCESO 1931
2 DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2013
http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=357021
*******
Caso Camarena Contra la CIA, más evidencias
J. JESÚS ESQUIVEL
2013-11-02 17:56:39 · COMENTARIOS DESACTIVADOS
NARCOTRÁFICO

Mientras la DEA se aferra en descalificar a sus exagentes Héctor Berrellez y Phil Jordan, otro más, Mike Holm, los defiende. Los dos primeros revelaron los entretelones del caso Camarena: la participación de la CIA y de la misma Casa Blanca en tiempos de Ronald Reagan. Holm, quien fue jefe de Berrellez cuando se instrumentó la Operación Leyenda, proporciona más datos novedosos: cuando se negociaba el Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte, la DEA ordenó que no se reportaran los actos de corrupción por narcotráfico de ningún alto funcionario mexicano.

WASHINGTON.– En su intento por deslindar a la CIA del secuestro, tortura y asesinato de su agente Enrique Kiki Camarena, la Administración Federal Antidrogas (DEA, por sus siglas en inglés) abona nuevas evidencias de que el gobierno de Estados Unidos tiene más información sobre el caso, que cambió el rumbo de la lucha contra el narcotráfico en México.

Para hablar del asunto y “aclarar” las revelaciones de sus exagentes Hector Berrellez y Phil Jordan, quienes acusan a la CIA de haber dispuesto el homicidio de Kiki Camarena, ocurrido en 1985 (Proceso 1928, 1929), la agencia organizó un foro público.

El acto se realizó el 29 de octubre en el Museo de la DEA bajo el título “Llevados ante la justicia: Operación Leyenda”. Participaron Jack Lawn, administrador de la agencia entre 1985 y 1990; el exagente Jack Taylor, supervisor de la Operación Leyenda en los primeros dos años y medio de esta iniciativa, y la periodista Elaine Shannon, autora del libro Desperados, en el cual narra la historia del secuestro, tortura y asesinato de Camarena.

Los primeros 100 minutos se centraron en un recuento histórico del caso Camarena. Los panelistas insistieron en que el responsable de su ejecución fue Caro Quintero, quien contó con la colaboración de agentes corruptos de la desaparecida Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS).

En esa parte de la narración, al hablar de cómo las autoridades mexicanas trataron de manipular las pruebas, Lawn soltó las nuevas evidencias en torno al involucramiento indirecto de la CIA.

“Nos enteramos por parte de nuestros amigos de la comunidad de inteligencia (la CIA) que el interrogatorio al que fue sometido Camarena estaba grabado”, comentó Lawn, quien estaba al frente de la DEA el 7 de febrero de 1985, cuando el agente antinarcóticos fue secuestrado en Guadalajara, Jalisco.

Y detalló: “Los individuos que interrogaron a Kiki Camarena lo grabaron, ya que era una práctica normal (en México). Pero había también algo más: el número de gente que estaba en la nómina de pagos del narcotráfico en la Ciudad de México y en Guadalajara. (Los torturadores) querían saber qué sabía la DEA de sus actividades”.

Los exagentes de esta agencia que hicieron las declaraciones “desafortunadas” respecto del presunto involucramiento de la CIA en el homicidio de Camarena son Berrellez, quien reemplazó a Taylor como supervisor de la Operación Leyenda, y Jordan, exsubadministrador de la DEA y exdirector del Centro de Inteligencia El Paso (EPIC), en Texas.

Ellos revelaron que el exagente de la CIA de origen cubano Félix Ismael Rodríguez, El Gato, interrogó a Camarena cuando fue secuestrado por la gente de Caro Quintero. Él estaba a cargo de centros de entrenamiento de integrantes de la Contra nicaragüense en Sinaloa y Veracruz.

Berrellez y Jordan sostienen que, con base en las investigaciones y conclusiones, después del paso de Taylor y del propio Lawn en la DEA se conoció la relación de la CIA con el homicidio de Camarena (Proceso 1928 y 1929).

De acuerdo con la versión de los exagentes, en México la CIA colaboraba con Caro Quintero en el tráfico de drogas hacia Estados Unidos por medio de las operaciones dirigidas por Rodríguez. Asimismo, según ellos, las ganancias obtenidas por este negocio ilícito eran usadas por la CIA para comprar armas, que enviaba a los contras a Nicaragua desde México en aviones que contrataba a la empresa SETCO, propiedad del narcotraficante hondureño Juan Matta Ballesteros.

En resumen, Jordan y Berrellez sostienen que en sus investigaciones descubrieron que Camarena se dio cuenta de la relación de la CIA con Caro Quintero. Eso, dijeron, pudo ser el motivo real de su secuestro, tortura y asesinato.

En el caso de algunas personas “sería mejor que no hablaran”, pues sus afirmaciones “se pueden investigar e inclusive usar potencialmente en su contra si difieren de lo que dijeron hace 28 años”, sentenció Sean Fearns, director del Museo de la DEA y moderador del evento.

La versión del exagente Holm

Mike Holm estuvo 27 años al servicio de la DEA hasta que se retiró en 1996. Tuvo puestos importantes en la institución; incluso fue el jefe directo de Berrellez cuando éste fungió como supervisor de la Operación Leyenda.

“La relación de la CIA y el narcotráfico mexicano era algo que se mencionaba constantemente dentro de la DEA en esos años”, afirma Holm a Proceso en entrevista telefónica.

En 1989, Holm trabajó en varias ciudades de Estados Unidos, Asia y Medio Oriente. Estaba a cargo de la oficina de la DEA en Los Ángeles, California, por lo que era responsable de la Operación Leyenda y, por ende, de Berrellez.

Los años previos, 1987 y 1988, trabajó en Detroit, Michigan, en una investigación en la que salió a la luz la relación entre la CIA y el narcotráfico.

Se explaya: “En Detroit estábamos realizando una investigación que involucraba a un piloto que llevaba cargamentos de armas a Honduras. Lo que hicimos con él es lo que llamamos ‘entrega controlada’. Volamos 17 toneladas de mariguana y 600 kilos cocaína a una parte de la zona norte de Detroit. Nos hicimos pasar como narcotraficantes para, cuando entregáramos la mercancía a los destinatarios, los detuviéramos.

“Ese avión en el que se transportó la droga era utilizado para llevar armas a la Contra de Nicaragua. Yo hice un chiste, diciendo que era uno de los aviones de Oliver North y que no tenía sentido que un avión regresara vacío de un viaje.

“Estructuramos un plan junto con el FBI, bajo el acuerdo de que se trataría de una investigación clasificada. Pero el jefe del FBI en Detroit filtró a la prensa una fotografía del avión con las drogas y provocó un escándalo. Era un secreto a voces que la CIA traficaba cocaína para venderla y, con las ganancias, apoyar a la Contra”.

En el foro organizado por la DEA para aclarar las “declaraciones desafortunadas” de Berrellez y Jordan –según la administración “desvirtúan la historia oficial del caso Camarena”– la mención de la CIA surgió durante la sesión de preguntas y respuestas.

Cuando el moderador Fearns preguntó si había alguna pregunta enviada por internet, una de sus asistentes aclaró que había llegado un comentario enviado por David Wilson, exagente de la DEA.

Y lo leyó: Recientemente se ha dicho en la prensa que la CIA tiene alguna responsabilidad en el asesinato de Camarena y que de alguna manera está ligada al escándalo Irán-Contras. Estas acusaciones provienen de exagentes especiales de la DEA, quienes afirman que tuvieron un papel de liderazgo en la investigación del homicidio.

Fearns le pidió entonces a Lawn comentar al respecto. El exadministrador de la DEA fue parco: “No vale la pena hacer comentarios. Cualquiera que sepa quiénes somos, sabe sobre esta investigación y debería saber que cuando se trata de lo que descubrimos fue precisamente porque la CIA nos informó sobre las grabaciones del interrogatorio (a Camarena)”.

Lawn hizo una pausa y después enfatizó: “Es desafortunado que dos de nuestros exagentes hayan llegado a esta conclusión que no tiene fundamentos”.

Taylor, el primer supervisor de la Operación Leyenda, también respondió de manera escueta: “Durante mi labor de investigación en torno a este caso, hubo cero evidencias de involucramiento o complicidad de la CIA en la muerte de Camarena”.

Las preguntas de Elaine

Después de la alocución de Taylor, Elaine Shannon pidió la palabra. “Si me permiten, la CIA tenía una relación con la DFS. Esa relación podría haber incluido el que la CIA hubiese obtenido información adelantada de que alguien quería secuestrar y matar a un agente de la DEA. ¿Qué piensas, Jack?”, dijo la autora de Desperados.

“No creo que la CIA haya tenido conocimiento de esto porque su personal también está en peligro en distintos países. Pero Elaine está absolutamente en lo correcto sobre la relación de la CIA y la DFS”, contestó Lawn.

En la entrevista con Holm, realizada el lunes 28, antes del foro de la DEA, el corresponsal le preguntó sobre los desmentidos que en la prensa estadunidense están haciendo algunos exagentes de la DEA, como David Wilson.

Antes de responder, Holm explicó que la Operación Leyenda fue una investigación secreta bajo la cual Berrellez se reportaba primero a Washington con la Oficina de Responsabilidad Profesional (ORP) de la DEA y después lo hacía con él.

Luego se explayó: “Conozco muy bien a Jordan. Es un gran profesional que goza de la admiración de muchas personas dentro del sistema judicial de Estados Unidos; incluso llegó a ser subadministrador de la DEA.

“Berrellez, por su parte, fue uno de los agentes de la DEA más condecorados por el Departamento de Justicia. Fue acreedor de dos premios que otorga la dirigencia de la DEA a lo más destacado de su personal. En mi caso, cada año yo le daba la mejor calificación como supervisor de operaciones como Leyenda.”

–¿Esto quiere decir que la CIA sí estuvo involucrada en el secuestro de Kiki Camarena?

–Primero que nada, no estoy diciendo que la CIA estuvo involucrada en el secuestro. Lo que estoy diciendo es que nosotros sabíamos… Bueno, existen tres grabaciones del interrogatorio al que fue sometido Camarena. La CIA nos dio dos de esas grabaciones.

“Y yo digo: es obvio que la CIA tenía a alguien dentro de la casa de Lope de Vega (donde se interrogó y torturó a Camarena). Si no, ¿cómo diablos las obtuvieron?

“Tenían a algún infiltrado, o a alguien en esa casa o en el cuarto donde se interrogó a Camarena; si no, ¿de dónde sacaron las grabaciones? No sé si se las dio la DFS, o un informante o un miembro del cártel (de Caro Quintero). Existe algún tipo de conexión, pero no estoy diciendo que la CIA estuvo involucrada en el secuestro y asesinato de Camarena.

“Lo que digo es que la CIA debió haber tenido a algún infiltrado. Pero es lógico que (la CIA) jamás entregará a nadie de su gente; jamás aceptará nada ni explicará cómo obtuvo las grabaciones. Si la CIA estaba traficando drogas para comprar armas para los Contras fue porque no quería que el Congreso lo supiera.”

–Dice Berrellez que en Washington le prohibieron investigar la conexión de la CIA con el narcotráfico en México…

–Es correcto. Le dijeron que sólo investigara lo referente al homicidio de Camarena.

A diferencia de lo señalado indirectamente en el Museo de la DEA sobre las declaraciones de Berrellez y Jordan respecto a la relación de la CIA con Caro Quintero –y con el caso Camarena–, Holm insiste en que los dos exagentes de la DEA no mienten.

Según él, están contando únicamente lo que descubrieron en la investigación; lo que ocurrió fue posterior al asesinato de Camarena.

Holm hace un apunte para poner sobre contexto las posibles razones por las que el Departamento de Justicia le pidió a Berrellez que no investigara el presunto involucramiento de la CIA en el homicidio de Camarena:

“Años después del asesinato, en 1992 o 1993, cuando el gobierno de México negociaba con Estados Unidos el Tratado de Libre Comercio, en la DEA se nos dio una orden: no reportar la corrupción por narcotráfico de ningún funcionario mexicano de alto nivel. Si lo hacíamos, se enteraría el Congreso (estadunidense) y bloquearía el proceso de aprobación del acuerdo comercial.”

Horas después del foro de la DEA, Proceso llamó por teléfono a Berrellez para obtener su opinión sobre el asunto.

“Lawn y Taylor no saben lo que están diciendo –sostiene–, porque la conexión de la CIA con el caso Camarena la conseguimos en 1992, con las declaraciones de dos testigos que estuvieron en la casa de Lope de Vega. Para entonces Lawn y Taylor ya no estaban en la DEA ni podían tener acceso a la información que se entregó a la ORP, que se encargaba de clasificarla.”

http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=357021

Ex agente DEA Phil Jordan acusa a Felix Ismael Rodriguez de ...

16 Oct 2013 ... América TeVé, Sevcec a Fondo 8pm. Más en americateve.com Suscríbete ahora para recibir más videos, aquí: http://bit.ly/TImLl3 Mira los todos ...

777man

(374 posts)

42. David Sabow, the brother of Col. Jim Sabow comments on Camarena articles

Reply to 777man (Reply #37)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 05:06 PM

Dec 2013

David Sabow: Reagan Administration with CIA / Cuban Exile Contras Complicit in Torture & Murder of DEA Field Officer Agent
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2013/12/david-sabow/

DEC 7, 2013

Tosh,

You are my hero! You have supported me of over twenty years. You are making it happen. You are as important to our country as any person in our history. You have discovered the treatment that can cure the cancer in our country.

My brother Jimmy and I are alive and well, each in our unique ways. Together we will expose the cancer and demand the irradiation of the primary tumor as well as the metastasis that is prevalent within the DC Beltway.

Daily I am in awe of the courage you have shown as well as the courage of a small group who have openly supported both your’s and my efforts. However, I am appalled by the cowardice that I have personally witnessed by the dozens in and out of the Beltway who are well aware of the cancer but lack the courage to stand up and be counted.

David

*************

OCT 23, 2013

David Sabow: White House/Pentagon/CIA Iran Contra Drug Running — and Destruction of Senator Gary Hart to Stop Investigation

http://www.phibetaiota.net/2013/10/david-sabow-cia-iran-control-drug-running-and-cia-destruction-of-senator-gary-hart-to-stop-investigation/

Read about Col. Sabow

http://www.col-james-sabow-usmc-murder.com/

777man

(374 posts)

38. New Evidence of Contra-Cocaine Scandal

Reply to villager (Original post)

Tue Dec 17, 2013, 05:20 AM

Dec 2013

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/12/09/new-evidence-of-contra-cocaine-scandal/

New Evidence of Contra-Cocaine Scandal
December 9, 2013

Special Report: Since journalist Gary Webb died in 2004, the story that destroyed his life has slowly come into clearer focus, revealing how President Reagan’s beloved Contras really were enmeshed in cocaine trafficking. On this ninth anniversary of Webb’s suicide, new corroboration has emerged, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Nearly a decade before Gary Webb published his investigative series on cocaine trafficking by Nicaraguan Contra rebels, U.S. law enforcement received a detailed account of top Contra leader Adolfo Calero casually associating with Norwin Meneses, called “a well-reputed drug dealer” in a “secret” document that I recently found at the National Archives.

Meneses was near the center of Webb’s 1996 articles for the San Jose Mercury-News, a series that came under fierce attack from U.S. government officials as well as major news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The controversy cost Webb his career, left him nearly penniless and ultimately contributed to his suicide on Dec. 9, 2004.
Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.

Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.

But the bitter irony of Webb’s demise, which will be the subject of a 2014 movie starring Jeremy Renner as Webb, is that Webb’s much-maligned “Dark Alliance” series forced major admissions from the CIA, the Justice Department and other government agencies revealing an even-deeper relationship between President Ronald Reagan’s beloved Contras and drug cartels than Webb ever alleged.

Typical of the evidence that the Reagan administration chose to ignore was information provided by Dennis Ainsworth, a blue-blood Republican from San Francisco who volunteered to help the Contra cause in 1984-85. That put him in position to witness the strange behind-the-scenes activities of Contra leaders hobnobbing with drug traffickers and negotiating arms deals with White House emissaries.

Ainsworth also was a source of mine in fall 1985 when I was investigating the mysterious sources of funding for the Contras after Congress shut off CIA support in 1984 amid widespread reports of Contra atrocities inflicted on Nicaraguan civilians, including rapes, executions and torture.

Ainsworth’s first-hand knowledge of the Contra dealings dovetailed with information that I already had, such as the central role of National Security Council aide Oliver North in aiding the Contras and his use of “courier” Rob Owen as an off-the-books White House intermediary to the Contras. I later developed confirmation of some other details that Ainsworth described, such as his overhearing Owen and Calero working together on an arms deal as Ainsworth drove them through the streets of San Francisco.

As for Ainsworth’s knowledge about the Contra-cocaine connection, he said he sponsored a June 1984 cocktail party at which Calero spoke to about 60 people. Meneses, a notorious drug kingpin in the Nicaraguan community, showed up uninvited and clearly had a personal relationship with Calero, who was then the political leader of the Contra’s chief fighting force, the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Democratic Force (or FDN).

“At the end of the cocktail party, Meneses and Calero went off together,” Ainsworth told U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello, according to a “secret” Jan. 6, 1987 cable submitted by Russoniello to an FBI investigation code-named “Front Door,” a probe into corruption by the Reagan administration.

After Calero’s speech, Ainsworth said Meneses accompanied Calero and about 20 people to dinner and picked up the entire tab, according to a more detailed debriefing of Ainsworth by the FBI. Concerned about this relationship, Ainsworth said he was told by Renato Pena, an FDN leader in the San Francisco area, that “the FDN is involved in drug smuggling with the aid of Norwin Meneses who also buys arms for Enrique Bermudez, a leader of the FDN.” Bermudez was then the top Contra military commander.

Corroborating Account

Pena, who himself was convicted on federal drug charges in 1984, gave a similar account to the Drug Enforcement Administration. According to a 1998 report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Bromwich, “When debriefed by the DEA in the early 1980s, Pena said that the CIA was allowing the Contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them, and keep the proceeds. …

“Pena stated that he was present on many occasions when Meneses telephoned Bermudez in Honduras. Meneses told Pena of Bermudez’s requests for such things as gun silencers (which Pena said Meneses obtained in Los Angeles), cross bows, and other military equipment for the Contras. Pena believed that Meneses would sometimes transport certain of these items himself to Central America, and other times would have contacts in Los Angeles and Miami send cargo to Honduras, where the authorities were cooperating with the Contras. Pena believed Meneses had contact with Bermudez from about 1981 or 1982 through the mid-1980s.”

Bromwich’s report then added, “Pena said he was one of the couriers Meneses used to deliver drug money to a Colombian known as ‘Carlos’ in Los Angeles and return to San Francisco with cocaine. Pena made six to eight trips, with anywhere from $600,000 to nearly $1 million, and brought back six to eight kilos of cocaine each time. Pena said Meneses was moving hundreds of kilos a week. ‘Carlos’ once told Pena, ‘We’re helping your cause with this drug thing … we are helping your organization a lot.”

Ainsworth also said he tried to alert Oliver North in 1985 about the troubling connections between the Contra movement and cocaine traffickers but that North turned a deaf ear. “In the spring some friends of mine and I went back to the White House staff but we were put off by Ollie North and others on the staff who really don’t want to know all what’s going on,” Ainsworth told Russoniello.

When I first spoke with Ainsworth in September 1985 at a coffee shop in San Francisco, he asked for confidentiality which I granted. However, since the documents released by the National Archives include him describing his conversations with me, that confidentiality no longer applies. Ainsworth also spoke with Webb for his 1996 San Jose Mercury-News series under the pseudonym “David Morrison.”

Though I found Ainsworth to be generally reliable, some of his depictions of our conversations contained mild exaggerations or confusion over details, such as his claim that I called him from Costa Rica in January 1986 and told him that the Contra-cocaine story that I had been working on with my AP colleague Brian Barger “never hit the papers because it was suppressed by the Associated Press due to political pressure primarily from the CIA.”

In reality, Barger and I returned from Costa Rica in fall 1985, wrote our story about the Contras’ involvement in cocaine smuggling, and pushed it onto the AP wire in December though in a reduced form because of resistance from some senior AP news executives who were supportive of President Reagan’s foreign policies. The CIA, the White House and other agencies of the Reagan administration did seek to discredit our story, but they did not prevent its publication.

An Overriding Hostility

The Reagan administration’s neglect of Ainsworth’s insights reflected the overriding hostility toward any information – even from Republican activists – that put the Contras in a negative light. In early 1987, when Ainsworth spoke with U.S. Attorney Russoniello and the FBI, the Reagan administration was in full damage-control mode, trying to tamp down the Iran-Contra disclosures about Oliver North diverting profits from secret arms sales to Iran to the Contra war.

Fears that the Iran-Contra scandal could lead to Reagan’s impeachment made it even less likely that the Justice Department would pursue an investigation into drug ties implicating the Contra leadership. Ainsworth’s information was simply passed on to Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh whose inquiry was already overwhelmed by the task of sorting out the convoluted Iran transactions.

Publicly, the Reagan team continued dumping on the Contra-cocaine allegations and playing the find-any-possible-reason-to-reject-a-witness game. The major news media went along, leading to much mainstream ridicule of a 1989 investigative report by Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, who uncovered more drug connections implicating the Contras and the Reagan administration.

Only occasionally, such as when the George H.W. Bush administration needed witnesses to convict Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega did the Contra-cocaine evidence pop onto Official Washington’s radar screens.

During Noriega’s drug-trafficking trial in 1991, U.S. prosecutors called as a witness Colombian Medellín cartel kingpin Carlos Lehder, who — along with implicating Noriega — testified that the cartel had given $10 million to the Contras, an allegation first unearthed by Sen. Kerry. “The Kerry hearings didn’t get the attention they deserved at the time,” a Washington Post editorial on Nov. 27, 1991, acknowledged. “The Noriega trial brings this sordid aspect of the Nicaraguan engagement to fresh public attention.”

But the Post offered its readers no explanation for why Kerry’s hearings had been largely ignored, with the Post itself a leading culprit in this journalistic misfeasance. Nor did the Post and the other leading newspapers use the opening created by the Noriega trial to do anything to rectify their past neglect.

Everything quickly returned to the status quo in which the desired perception of the noble Contras trumped the clear reality of their criminal activities. Instead of recognizing the skewed moral compass of the Reagan administration, Congress was soon falling over itself to attach Reagan’s name to as many public buildings and facilities as possible, including Washington’s National Airport.

Meanwhile, those of us in journalism who had exposed the national security crimes of the 1980s saw our careers mostly sink or go sideways. We were regarded as “pariahs” in our profession.

As for me, shortly after the Iran-Contra scandal broke wide open in fall 1986, I accepted a job at Newsweek, one of the many mainstream news outlets that had long ignored Contra-connected scandals and briefly thought it needed to bolster its coverage. But I soon discovered that senior editors remained hostile toward the Iran-Contra story and related spinoff scandals, including the Contra-cocaine mess.

After losing battle after battle with my Newsweek editors, I departed the magazine in June 1990 to write a book (called Fooling America) about the decline of the Washington press corps and the parallel rise of a new generation of government propagandists.

I was also hired by PBS Frontline to investigate whether there had been a prequel to the Iran-Contra scandal — whether those arms-for-hostage deals in the mid-1980s had been preceded by contacts between Reagan’s 1980 campaign staff and Iran, which was then holding 52 Americans hostage and essentially destroying Jimmy Carter’s reelection hopes. [For more on that topic, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege and America’s Stolen Narrative.]

Finding New Ways

In 1995, frustrated by the growing triviality of American journalism — and acting on the advice of and with the assistance of my oldest son Sam — I turned to a new medium and launched the Internet’s first investigative news magazine, known as Consortiumnews.com. The Web site became a way for me to put out well-reported stories that my former mainstream colleagues ignored or mock.

So, when Gary Webb called me in 1996 to talk about the Contra-cocaine story, I explained some of this tortured history and urged him to make sure that his editors were firmly behind him. He sounded perplexed at my advice and assured me that he had the solid support of his editors.

When Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series finally appeared in late August 1996, it initially drew little attention. The major national news outlets applied their usual studied indifference to a topic that they had already judged unworthy of serious attention.

But Webb’s story proved hard to ignore. First, unlike the work that Barger and I did for AP in the mid-1980s, Webb’s series wasn’t just a story about drug traffickers in Central America and their protectors in Washington. It was about the on-the-ground consequences, inside the United States, of that drug trafficking, how the lives of Americans were blighted and destroyed as the collateral damage of a U.S. foreign policy initiative.

In other words, there were real-life American victims, and they were concentrated in African-American communities. That meant the ever-sensitive issue of race had been injected into the controversy. Anger from black communities spread quickly to the Congressional Black Caucus, which started demanding answers.

Secondly, the San Jose Mercury News, which was the local newspaper for Silicon Valley, had posted documents and audio on its state-of-the-art Internet site. That way, readers could examine much of the documentary support for the series.

It also meant that the traditional “gatekeeper” role of the major newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times — was under assault. If a regional paper like the Mercury News could finance a major journalistic investigation like this one, and circumvent the judgments of the editorial boards at the Big Three, then there might be a tectonic shift in the power relations of the U.S. news media. There could be a breakdown of the established order.

This combination of factors led to the next phase of the Contra-cocaine battle: the “get-Gary-Webb” counterattack. Soon, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times were lining up like some tag-team wrestlers taking turns pummeling Webb and his story.

On Oct. 4, 1996, the Washington Post published a front-page article knocking down Webb’s series, although acknowledging that some Contra operatives did help the cocaine cartels. The Post’s approach fit with the Big Media’s cognitive dissonance on the topic: first, the Post called the Contra-cocaine allegations old news — “even CIA personnel testified to Congress they knew that those covert operations involved drug traffickers,” the Post said — and second, the Post minimized the importance of the one Contra smuggling channel that Webb had highlighted in his series, saying it had not “played a major role in the emergence of crack.”

To add to the smug hoo-hah treatment that was enveloping Webb and his story, a Post published a sidebar story dismissing African-Americans as prone to “conspiracy fears.”

Next, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times weighed in with lengthy articles castigating Webb and “Dark Alliance.” The big newspapers made much of the CIA’s internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 — almost a decade earlier — that supposedly had cleared the spy agency of any role in Contra-cocaine smuggling.

But the first ominous sign for the CIA’s cover-up emerged on Oct. 24, 1996, when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the first CIA probe had lasted only12 days, and the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review.

Mocking Webb

But Webb had already crossed over from being treated as a serious journalist to becoming a target of ridicule. Influential Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz mocked Webb for saying in a book proposal that he would explore the possibility that the Contra war was primarily a business to its participants. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” Kurtz smirked.

Yet, Webb’s suspicion was no conspiracy theory. Indeed, Oliver North’s chief Contra emissary, Rob Owen, had made the same point in a March 17, 1986, message about the Contra leadership. “Few of the so-called leaders of the movement . . . really care about the boys in the field,” Owen wrote. “THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.” [Emphasis in original.]

Ainsworth and other pro-Contra activists were reaching the same conclusion, that the Contra leadership was skimming money from the supply lines and padding their personal wealth with proceeds from the drug trade. According to a Jan. 21, 1987 interview report by the FBI, Ainsworth said he had “made inquiries in the local San Francisco Nicaraguan community and wondered among his acquaintances what Adolfo Calero and the other people in the FDN movement were doing and the word that he received back is that they were probably engaged in cocaine smuggling.”

In other words, Webb was right about the suspicion that the Contra movement had become less a cause than a business to many of its participants. Even Oliver North’s emissary reported that many Contra leaders treated the conflict as “a business.” But accuracy had ceased to be relevant in the media’s hazing of Gary Webb.

In another double standard, while Webb was held to the strictest standards of journalism, it was entirely all right for Kurtz — the supposed arbiter of journalistic integrity who was a longtime fixture on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” — to make judgments based on ignorance. Kurtz would face no repercussions for mocking a fellow journalist who was factually correct.

The Big Three’s assault — combined with their disparaging tone — had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury News. As it turned out, Webb’s confidence in his editors had been misplaced. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos, who had his own corporate career to worry about, was in retreat.

On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series “fell short of my standards.” He criticized the stories because they “strongly implied CIA knowledge” of Contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack cocaine. “We did not have enough proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship,” Ceppos wrote.

Ceppos was wrong about the proof, of course. At AP, before we published our first Contra-cocaine article in 1985, Barger and I had known that the CIA and Reagan’s White House were aware of the Contra-cocaine problem at senior levels.

However, Ceppos recognized that he and his newspaper were facing a credibility crisis brought on by the harsh consensus delivered by the Big Three, a judgment that had quickly solidified into conventional wisdom throughout the major news media and inside Knight-Ridder, Inc., which owned the Mercury News. The only career-saving move – career-saving for Ceppos even if career-destroying for Webb – was to jettison Webb and the Contra-cocaine investigative project.

A ‘Vindication’

The big newspapers and the Contras’ defenders celebrated Ceppos’s retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the Contra-cocaine stories. In particular, Kurtz seemed proud that his demeaning of Webb now had the endorsement of Webb’s editor. Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury News’ continuing Contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, California, far from his family. Webb resigned from the paper in disgrace.

For undercutting Webb and other Mercury News reporters working on the Contra-cocaine project – some of whom were facing personal danger in Central America – Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and received the 1997 national Ethics in Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.

While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up. Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan administration had conducted the Contra war.

The CIA published the first part of Inspector General Hitz’s findings on Jan. 29, 1998. Though the CIA’s press release for the report criticized Webb and defended the CIA, Hitz’s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb’s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the Contra-drug crimes and the CIA’s knowledge of them.

Hitz conceded that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco–based drug ring with suspected ties to the Contras, the so-called “Frogman Case.”

After Volume One was released, I called Webb (whom I had spent some time with since his series was published). I chided him for indeed getting the story “wrong.” He had understated how serious the problem of Contra-cocaine trafficking had been.

It was a form of gallows humor for the two of us, since nothing had changed in the way the major newspapers treated the Contra-cocaine issue. They focused only on the press release that continued to attack Webb, while ignoring the incriminating information that could be found in the full report. All I could do was highlight those admissions at Consortiumnews.com, which sadly had a much, much smaller readership than the Big Three.

The major U.S. news media also looked the other way on other startling disclosures.

On May 7, 1998, for instance, Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982 letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department. The letter, which had been requested by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan mujahedeen.

In other words, early in those two covert wars, the CIA leadership wanted to make sure that its geopolitical objectives would not be complicated by a legal requirement to turn in its client forces for drug trafficking.

Justice Denied

The next break in the long-running Contra-cocaine cover-up was a report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Bromwich. Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb’s series, Bromwich’s report also opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA’s Volume One, the contents revealed new details about serious government wrongdoing.

According to evidence cited by Bromwich, the Reagan administration knew almost from the outset of the Contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the crimes. Bromwich’s report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.

The report showed that the Contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb’s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about Contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the Contras.

As well as depicting a more widespread Contra-drug operation than Webb had understood, the Justice Department report provided some important corroboration about Nicaraguan drug smuggler Norwin Meneses, a key figure in Gary Webb’s series and Adolfo Calero’s friend as described by Dennis Ainsworth.

Bromwich cited U.S. government informants who supplied detailed information about Meneses’s drug operation and his financial assistance to the Contras. For instance, Renato Pena, the money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the early 1980s the CIA allowed the Contras to fly drugs into the United States, sell them, and keep the proceeds. Pena, the FDN’s northern California representative, said the drug trafficking was forced on the Contras by the inadequate levels of U.S. government assistance.

The Justice Department report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging DEA investigations, including one into Contra-cocaine shipments moving through the international airport in El Salvador. Bromwich said secrecy trumped all. “We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport,” he wrote.

Bromwich also described the curious case of how a DEA pilot helped a CIA asset escape from Costa Rican authorities in 1989 after the man, American farmer John Hull, had been charged in connection with Contra-cocaine trafficking. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “John Hull’s Great Escape.”]

Hull’s ranch in northern Costa Rica had been the site of Contra camps for attacking Nicaragua from the south. For years, Contra-connected witnesses also said Hull’s property was used for the transshipment of cocaine en route to the United States, but those accounts were brushed aside by the Reagan administration and disparaged in major U.S. newspapers.

Yet, according to Bromwich’s report, the DEA took the accounts seriously enough to prepare a research report on the evidence in November 1986. One informant described Colombian cocaine off-loaded at an airstrip on Hull’s ranch.

The drugs were then concealed in a shipment of frozen shrimp and transported to the United States. The alleged Costa Rican shipper was Frigorificos de Puntarenas, a firm controlled by Cuban-American Luis Rodriguez. Like Hull, however, Frigorificos had friends in high places. In 1985-86, the State Department had selected the shrimp company to handle $261,937 in non-lethal assistance earmarked for the Contras.

Hull also remained a man with powerful protectors. Even after Costa Rican authorities brought drug charges against him, influential Americans, including Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, demanded that Hull be let out of jail pending trial. Then, in July 1989 with the help of a DEA pilot – and possibly a DEA agent – Hull managed to fly out of Costa Rica to Haiti and then to the United States.

Despite these startling new disclosures, the big newspapers still showed no inclination to read beyond the criticism of Webb in the press release.

Major Disclosures

By fall 1998, Washington was obsessed with President Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning Contra-cocaine disclosures in the CIA’s Volume Two, published on Oct. 8, 1998.

In the report, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s.

According to Volume Two, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its Contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. The earliest Contra force, called the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen “to stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre,” according to a June 1981 draft of a CIA field report.

According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981. ADREN’s leaders included Enrique Bermúdez and other early Contras who would later direct the major Contra army, the CIA-organized FDN which was based in Honduras, along Nicaragua’s northern border.

Throughout the war, Bermúdez remained the top Contra military commander. The CIA later corroborated the allegations about ADREN’s cocaine trafficking, but insisted that Bermúdez had opposed the drug shipments to the United States that went ahead nonetheless.

The truth about Bermúdez’s supposed objections to drug trafficking, however, was less clear. According to Hitz’s Volume One, Bermúdez enlisted Norwin Meneses – the Nicaraguan cocaine smuggler, the friend of Adolfo Calero, and a key figure in Webb’s series – to raise money and buy supplies for the Contras.

Volume One had quoted another Nicaraguan trafficker, Danilo Blandón, a Meneses associate (and another lead character in Webb’s series), as telling Hitz’s investigators that he (Blandón) and Meneses flew to Honduras to meet with Bermúdez in 1982. At the time, Meneses’s criminal activities were well-known in the Nicaraguan exile community, but Bermúdez told the cocaine smugglers that “the ends justify the means” in raising money for the Contras.

After the Bermúdez meeting, Meneses and Blandón were briefly arrested by Honduran police who confiscated $100,000 that the police suspected was to be a payment for a drug transaction. The Contras intervened, gained freedom for the two traffickers and got them their money back by saying the cash, which indeed was for a cocaine purchase in Bolivia, belonged to the Contras.

There were other indications of Bermúdez’s drug-smuggling complicity. In February 1988, another Nicaraguan exile linked to the drug trade accused Bermúdez of participation in narcotics trafficking, according to Hitz’s report. After the Contra war ended, Bermúdez returned to Managua, Nicaragua, where he was shot to death on Feb. 16, 1991. The murder has never been solved.

The Southern Front

Along the Southern Front, the Contras’ military operations in Costa Rica on Nicaragua’s southern border, the CIA’s drug evidence centered on the forces of Edén Pastora, another top Contra commander. But Hitz discovered that the U.S. government may have made the drug situation worse, not better.

Hitz revealed that the CIA put an admitted drug operative — known by his CIA pseudonym “Ivan Gomez” — in a supervisory position over Pastora. Hitz reported that the CIA discovered Gomez’s drug history in 1987 when Gomez failed a security review on drug-trafficking questions.

In internal CIA interviews, Gomez admitted that in March or April 1982, he helped family members who were engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering. In one case, Gomez said he assisted his brother and brother-in-law transporting cash from New York City to Miami. He admitted he “knew this act was illegal.”

Later, Gomez expanded on his admission, describing how his family members had fallen $2 million into debt and had gone to Miami to run a money-laundering center for drug traffickers. Gomez said “his brother had many visitors whom [Gomez] assumed to be in the drug trafficking business.” Gomez’s brother was arrested on drug charges in June 1982. Three months later, in September 1982, Gomez started his CIA assignment in Costa Rica.

Years later, convicted drug trafficker Carlos Cabezas alleged that in the early 1980s, Ivan Gomez was the CIA agent in Costa Rica who was overseeing drug-money donations to the Contras. Gomez “was to make sure the money was given to the right people [the Contras] and nobody was taking . . . profit they weren’t supposed to,” Cabezas stated publicly.

But the CIA sought to discredit Cabezas at the time because he had trouble identifying Gomez’s picture and put Gomez at one meeting in early 1982 before Gomez started his CIA assignment. While the CIA was able to fend off Cabezas’s allegations by pointing to these discrepancies, Hitz’s report revealed that the CIA was nevertheless aware of Gomez’s direct role in drug-money laundering, a fact the agency hid from Sen. Kerry in his investigation during the late 1980s.

There was also more to know about Gomez. In November 1985, the FBI learned from an informant that Gomez’s two brothers had been large-scale cocaine importers, with one brother arranging shipments from Bolivia’s infamous drug kingpin Roberto Suarez.

Suarez already was known as a financier of right-wing causes. In 1980, with the support of Argentina’s hard-line anticommunist military regime, Suarez bankrolled a coup in Bolivia that ousted the elected left-of-center government. The violent putsch became known as the Cocaine Coup because it made Bolivia the region’s first narco-state.

By protecting cocaine shipments headed north, Bolivia’s government helped transform Colombia’s Medellín cartel from a struggling local operation into a giant corporate-style business for delivering vast quantities of cocaine to the U.S. market.

Flush with cash in the early 1980s, Suarez invested more than $30 million in various right-wing paramilitary operations, including the Contra forces in Central America, according to U.S. Senate testimony by an Argentine intelligence officer, Leonardo Sanchez-Reisse.

In 1987, Sanchez-Reisse said the Suarez drug money was laundered through front companies in Miami before going to Central America. There, other Argentine intelligence officers — veterans of the Bolivian coup — trained the Contras in the early 1980s, even before the CIA arrived to first assist with the training and later take over the Contra operation from the Argentines.

Inspector General Hitz added another piece to the mystery of the Bolivian-Contra connection. One Contra fund-raiser, Jose Orlando Bolanos, boasted that the Argentine government was supporting his Contra activities, according to a May 1982 cable to CIA headquarters. Bolanos made the statement during a meeting with undercover DEA agents in Florida. He even offered to introduce them to his Bolivian cocaine supplier.

Despite all this suspicious drug activity centered around Ivan Gomez and the Contras, the CIA insisted that it did not unmask Gomez until 1987, when he failed a security check and confessed his role in his family’s drug business. The CIA official who interviewed Gomez concluded that “Gomez directly participated in illegal drug transactions, concealed participation in illegal drug transactions, and concealed information about involvement in illegal drug activity,” Hitz wrote.

But senior CIA officials still protected Gomez. They refused to refer the Gomez case to the Justice Department, citing the 1982 agreement that spared the CIA from a legal obligation to report narcotics crimes by people collaborating with the CIA who were not formal agency employees. Gomez was an independent contractor who worked for the CIA but was not officially on staff. The CIA eased Gomez out of the agency in February 1988, without alerting law enforcement or the congressional oversight committees.

When questioned about the case nearly a decade later, one senior CIA official who had supported the gentle treatment of Gomez had second thoughts. “It is a striking commentary on me and everyone that this guy’s involvement in narcotics didn’t weigh more heavily on me or the system,” the official told Hitz’s investigators.

Drug Path to the White House

A Medellín drug connection arose in another section of Hitz’s report, when he revealed evidence suggesting that some Contra trafficking may have been sanctioned by Reagan’s National Security Council. The protagonist for this part of the Contra-cocaine mystery was Moises Nunez, a Cuban-American who worked for Oliver North’s NSC Contra-support operation and for two drug-connected seafood importers, Ocean Hunter in Miami and Frigorificos De Puntarenas in Costa Rica.

Frigorificos De Puntarenas was created in the early 1980s as a cover for drug-money laundering, according to sworn testimony by two of the firm’s principals — Carlos Soto and Medellín cartel accountant Ramon Milian Rodriguez. (It was also the company implicated by a DEA informant in moving cocaine from John Hull’s ranch to the United States.)

Drug allegations were swirling around Moises Nunez by the mid-1980s. Indeed, his operation was one of the targets of my and Barger’s AP investigation in 1985. Finally reacting to the suspicions, the CIA questioned Nunez about his alleged cocaine trafficking on March 25, 1987. He responded by pointing the finger at his NSC superiors.

“Nunez revealed that since 1985, he had engaged in a clandestine relationship with the National Security Council,” Hitz reported, adding: “Nunez refused to elaborate on the nature of these actions, but indicated it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC. Nunez refused to identify the NSC officials with whom he had been involved.”

After this first round of questioning, CIA headquarters authorized an additional session, but then senior CIA officials reversed the decision. There would be no further efforts at “debriefing Nunez.”

Hitz noted that “the cable [from headquarters] offered no explanation for the decision” to stop the Nunez interrogation. But the CIA’s Central American Task Force chief Alan Fiers Jr. said the Nunez-NSC drug lead was not pursued “because of the NSC connection and the possibility that this could be somehow connected to the Private Benefactor program [the Contra money handled by the NSC’s Oliver North] a decision was made not to pursue this matter.”

Joseph Fernandez, who had been the CIA’s station chief in Costa Rica, confirmed to congressional Iran-Contra investigators that Nunez “was involved in a very sensitive operation” for North’s “Enterprise.” The exact nature of that NSC-authorized activity has never been divulged.

At the time of the Nunez-NSC drug admissions and his truncated interrogation, the CIA’s acting director was Robert Gates, who nearly two decades later became President George W. Bush’s second secretary of defense, a position he retained under President Barack Obama.

Drug Record

The CIA also worked directly with other drug-connected Cuban-Americans on the Contra project, Hitz found. One of Nunez’s Cuban-American associates, Felipe Vidal, had a criminal record as a narcotics trafficker in the 1970s. But the CIA still hired him to serve as a logistics coordinator for the Contras, Hitz reported.

The CIA also learned that Vidal’s drug connections were not only in the past. A December 1984 cable to CIA headquarters revealed Vidal’s ties to Rene Corvo, another Cuban-American suspected of drug trafficking. Corvo was working with Cuban anticommunist Frank Castro, who was viewed as a Medellín cartel representative within the Contra movement.

There were other narcotics links to Vidal. In January 1986, the DEA in Miami seized 414 pounds of cocaine concealed in a shipment of yucca that was going from a Contra operative in Costa Rica to Ocean Hunter, the company where Vidal (and Moises Nunez) worked. Despite the evidence, Vidal remained a CIA employee as he collaborated with Frank Castro’s assistant, Rene Corvo, in raising money for the Contras, according to a CIA memo in June 1986.

By fall 1986, Sen. Kerry had heard enough rumors about Vidal to demand information about him as part of his congressional inquiry into Contra drugs. But the CIA withheld the derogatory information in its files. On Oct. 15, 1986, Kerry received a briefing from the CIA’s Alan Fiers, who didn’t mention Vidal’s drug arrests and conviction in the 1970s.

But Vidal was not yet in the clear. In 1987, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami began investigating Vidal, Ocean Hunter, and other Contra-connected entities. This prosecutorial attention worried the CIA. The CIA’s Latin American division felt it was time for a security review of Vidal. But on Aug. 5, 1987, the CIA’s security office blocked the review for fear that the Vidal drug information “could be exposed during any future litigation.”

As expected, the U.S. Attorney’s Office did request documents about “Contra-related activities” by Vidal, Ocean Hunter, and 16 other entities. The CIA advised the prosecutor that “no information had been found regarding Ocean Hunter,” a statement that was clearly false. The CIA continued Vidal’s employment as an adviser to the Contra movement until 1990, virtually the end of the Contra war.

Hitz also revealed that drugs tainted the highest levels of the Honduran-based FDN, the largest Contra army. Hitz found that Juan Rivas, a Contra commander who rose to be chief of staff, admitted that he had been a cocaine trafficker in Colombia before the war.

The CIA asked Rivas, known as El Quiche, about his background after the DEA began suspecting that Rivas might be an escaped convict from a Colombian prison. In interviews with CIA officers, Rivas acknowledged that he had been arrested and convicted of packaging and transporting cocaine for the drug trade in Barranquilla, Colombia. After several months in prison, Rivas said, he escaped and moved to Central America, where he joined the Contras.

Defending Rivas, CIA officials insisted that there was no evidence that Rivas engaged in trafficking while with the Contras. But one CIA cable noted that he lived an expensive lifestyle, even keeping a $100,000 Thoroughbred horse at the Contra camp. Contra military commander Bermúdez later attributed Rivas’s wealth to his ex-girlfriend’s rich family. But a CIA cable in March 1989 added that “some in the FDN may have suspected at the time that the father-in-law was engaged in drug trafficking.”

Still, the CIA moved quickly to protect Rivas from exposure and possible extradition to Colombia. In February 1989, CIA headquarters asked that the DEA take no action “in view of the serious political damage to the U.S. Government that could occur should the information about Rivas become public.” Rivas was eased out of the Contra leadership with an explanation of poor health. With U.S. government help, he was allowed to resettle in Miami. Colombia was not informed about his fugitive status.

Another senior FDN official implicated in the drug trade was its chief spokesman in Honduras, Arnoldo Jose “Frank” Arana. The drug allegations against Arana dated back to 1983 when a federal narcotics task force put him under criminal investigation because of plans “to smuggle 100 kilograms of cocaine into the United States from South America.” On Jan. 23, 1986, the FBI reported that Arana and his brothers were involved in a drug-smuggling enterprise, although Arana was not charged.

Arana sought to clear up another set of drug suspicions in 1989 by visiting the DEA in Honduras with a business associate, Jose Perez. Arana’s association with Perez, however, only raised new alarms. If “Arana is mixed up with the Perez brothers, he is probably dirty,” the DEA said.

Drug Airlines

Through their ownership of an air services company called SETCO, the Perez brothers were associated with Juan Matta-Ballesteros, a major cocaine kingpin connected to the 1985 torture-murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, according to reports by the DEA and U.S. Customs. Hitz reported that someone at the CIA scribbled a note on a DEA cable about Arana stating: “Arnold Arana . . . still active and working, we [CIA] may have a problem.”

Despite its drug ties to Matta-Ballesteros, SETCO emerged as the principal company for ferrying supplies to the Contras in Honduras. During congressional Iran-Contra hearings, FDN political leader Adolfo Calero testified that SETCO was paid from bank accounts controlled by Oliver North. SETCO also received $185,924 from the State Department for ferrying supplies to the Contras in 1986. Furthermore, Hitz found that other air transport companies used by the Contras were implicated in the cocaine trade as well.

Even FDN leaders suspected that they were shipping supplies to Central America aboard planes that might be returning with drugs. Mario Calero, Adolfo Calero’s brother and the chief of Contra logistics, grew so uneasy about one air freight company that he notified U.S. law enforcement that the FDN only chartered the planes for the flights south, not the return flights north.

Hitz found that some drug pilots simply rotated from one sector of the Contra operation to another. Donaldo Frixone, who had a drug record in the Dominican Republic, was hired by the CIA to fly Contra missions from 1983 to 1985. In September 1986, however, Frixone was implicated in smuggling 19,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States. In late 1986 or early 1987, he went to work for Vortex, another U.S.-paid Contra supply company linked to the drug trade.

By the time that Hitz’s Volume Two was published in fall 1998, the CIA’s defense against Webb’s series had shrunk to a fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the Contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the Contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of Contra crimes from the Justice Department, Congress, and even the CIA’s own analytical division.

Besides tracing the evidence of Contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long Contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the Contra-drug problem but didn’t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

According to Hitz, the CIA had “one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. . . . [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the Contra program.” One CIA field officer explained, “The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.”

Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the Contras hid evidence of Contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA’s analysts.

Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that “only a handful of Contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.” That false assessment was passed on to Congress and to major news organizations — serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his “Dark Alliance” series in 1996.

CIA Admission

Although Hitz’s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it went almost unnoticed by the big American newspapers.

On Oct. 10, 1998, two days after Hitz’s Volume Two was posted on the CIA’s Web site, the New York Times published a brief article that continued to deride Webb but acknowledged the Contra-drug problem may have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times never published a story on the release of Hitz’s Volume Two.

In 2000, the House Intelligence Committee grudgingly acknowledged that the stories about Reagan’s CIA protecting Contra drug traffickers were true. The committee released a report citing classified testimony from CIA Inspector General Britt Snider (Hitz’s successor) admitting that the spy agency had turned a blind eye to evidence of Contra-drug smuggling and generally treated drug smuggling through Central America as a low priority.

“In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” Snider said, adding that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”

The House committee — then controlled by Republicans — still downplayed the significance of the Contra-cocaine scandal, but the panel acknowledged, deep inside its report, that in some cases, “CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.”

Like the release of Hitz’s report in 1998, the admissions by Snider and the House committee drew virtually no media attention in 2000 — except for a few articles on the Internet, including one at Consortiumnews.com.

Because of this journalistic misconduct by the Big Three newspapers — choosing to conceal their own neglect of the Contra-cocaine scandal and to protect the Reagan administration’s image — Webb’s reputation was never rehabilitated.

After his original “Dark Alliance” series was published in 1996, Webb had been inundated with attractive book offers from major publishing houses, but once the vilification began, the interest evaporated. Webb’s agent contacted an independent publishing house, Seven Stories Press, which had a reputation for publishing books that had been censored, and it took on the project.

After Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion was published in 1998, I joined Webb in a few speaking appearances on the West Coast, including one packed book talk at the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica, California. For a time, Webb was treated as a celebrity on the American Left, but that gradually faded.

In our interactions during these joint appearances, I found Webb to be a regular guy who seemed to be holding up fairly well under the terrible pressure. He had landed an investigative job with a California state legislative committee. He also felt some measure of vindication when CIA Inspector General Hitz’s reports came out.

But Webb never could overcome the pain caused by his betrayal at the hands of his journalistic colleagues, his peers. In the years that followed, Webb was unable to find decent-paying work in his profession — the conventional wisdom remained that he had somehow been exposed as a journalistic fraud. His state job ended; his marriage fell apart; he struggled to pay bills; and he was faced with a move out of a modest rental house near Sacramento, California.

On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Webb typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; laid out a certificate for his cremation; and taped a note on the door telling movers — who were coming the next morning — to instead call 911. Webb then took out his father’s pistol and shot himself in the head. The first shot was not lethal, so he fired once more.

Even with Webb’s death, the big newspapers that had played key roles in his destruction couldn’t bring themselves to show Webb any mercy. After Webb’s body was found, I received a call from a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who knew that I was one of Webb’s few journalistic colleagues who had defended him and his work.

I told the reporter that American history owed a great debt to Gary Webb because he had forced out important facts about Reagan-era crimes. But I added that the Los Angeles Times would be hard-pressed to write an honest obituary because the newspaper had not published a single word on the contents of Hitz’s final report, which had largely vindicated Webb.

To my disappointment but not my surprise, I was correct. The Los Angeles Times ran a mean-spirited obituary that made no mention of either my defense of Webb, nor the CIA’s admissions in 1998. The obituary was republished in other newspapers, including the Washington Post.

In effect, Webb’s suicide enabled senior editors at the Big Three newspapers to breathe a little easier — one of the few people who understood the ugly story of the Reagan administration’s cover-up of the Contra-cocaine scandal and the U.S. media’s complicity was now silenced.

To this day, none of the journalists or media critics who participated in the destruction of Gary Webb has paid a price. None has faced the sort of humiliation that Webb had to endure. None had to experience that special pain of standing up for what is best in the profession of journalism — taking on a difficult story that seeks to hold powerful people accountable for serious crimes — and then being vilified by your own colleagues, the people that you expected to understand and appreciate what you had done.

On the contrary, many were rewarded with professional advancement and lucrative careers. For instance, for years, Howard Kurtz got to host the CNN program, “Reliable Sources,” which lectured journalists on professional standards. He was described in the program’s bio as “the nation’s premier media critic.” (His show has since moved to Fox News, renamed “MediaBuzz.”)

The rehabilitation of Webb’s reputation and possibly even the correction of this dark chapter of American history now rests on how accurately – and how bravely – Hollywood presents Webb’s story in the film, “Kill the Messenger,” starring Jeremy Renner and scheduled for release next year. [For more on the Contra-cocaine story, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon an

777man

(374 posts)

39. 12/16/13 Veterans today -- CIA Connection TO DEA Agent’s Murder “TOO HOT FOR FOX NEWS”

Reply to villager (Original post)

Tue Dec 17, 2013, 02:13 PM

Dec 2013

3 articles---

CIA Connection TO DEA Agent’s Murder “TOO HOT FOR FOX NEWS” DECEMBER 16, 2013
DEA Agent Camarena

DEA Agent Kiki Camarena
by Robert O’Dowd

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/12/16/cia-connection-to-dea-agents-murder-too-hot-for-fox-news/

Part 1 of 2

Reagan administration, CIA complicit in DEA agent’s murder, say former insiders

Posted: Friday, December 06, 2013 - By John McPhaul

Former DEA El Paso boss: Agent Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation.
http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/Reagan-administration-CIA-complicit-in-DEA-agent-s-murder-say-former-insiders_Friday-December-06-2013

Part 2 of 2

27 years later, CIA pilot tells of using secret Costa Rican airstrip to traffic guns, cocaine
Posted: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 - By John McPhaul
They seemed like isolated events unfolding in the chaos of Central America in the 1980s. But now, the pieces of the puzzle are fitting together.
Nicaragua Contra war 1
The Tico Times

Former CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee says he trafficked cocaine and weapons in and out of a secret airstrip in northern Costa Rica in the 1980s to arm the Nicaraguan Contras. The cocaine came from Colombia and was shipped to consumers in the U.S.

Second in a series.
http://www.ticotimes.net/More-news/News-Briefs/27-years-later-CIA-pilot-tells-of-using-secret-Costa-Rican-airstrip-to-traffic-guns-cocaine-_Tuesday-December-10-2013

777man

(374 posts)

40. Test screenings Comments KTM

Reply to 777man (Reply #39)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 01:31 AM

Dec 2013

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/board/nest/222503252?ref_=tt_bd_2

flickfan29
» Fri Nov 22 2013 17:44:07
Last night I was a guest at a Neilsen preview screening in Santa Monica. We were the first audience to see Kill the Messenger and participated as a focus group to give feedback. Get excited movie fans, this is a good one!! It's a true story that needs to be told. Kudos to Jeremy Renner and all the actors.

henrik-sjoman
» Sat Nov 23 2013 03:53:53
Sounds Great! I´m curious of Oliver Platt´s (Jerry Ceppos) and Richard Schiff´s(Walter Pincus) parts. Good Screentime? Good Characters?

flickfan29
» 4 days ago (Sun Dec 15 2013 23:18:48)
No, not a lot of screen time for Platt and Schiff. The newspaper's editor gets most attention.

colettaberx
» Sat Nov 23 2013 05:26:22
Sat Nov 23 2013 07:02:29
I'm so jealous!! Great that you got to see this, I'm so looking forward to this movie! It is a great story and what an awesome cast !!! Cuesta and Renner have worked together before, I'm sure this is going to be great !

Thanks so much for sharing this !

Re: Great Movie!
Red_Rusty
» Sat Nov 23 2013 16:23:36 Fl
Thanks so much for sharing! I know you can't share details. Can you share if Cuesta or any of the actors were there? Also, did the movie have a music track? Did they give you any crew info, like who edited or did the score - that info is missing from the site.

Sounds like you enjoyed the movie, there are some great actors in some very memorable roles. Did anyone stand out? Let us know if you get invited to another screening.

Thanks again!

flickfan29
» 4 days ago (Sun Dec 15 2013 23:27:09)
Sun Dec 15 2013 23:30:32
No actors nor directors attended. There were some movie big wigs reviewing our feedback. They seemed most concerned to make sure that we understood the story and what the article was about. The soundtrack was still rough so didn't pay much attention, other than music from that time period.

The ensemble is good. Beyond Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Michael Sheen and Paz Vega are memorable.

You will like it!

KTM Movie poster

.html

777man

(374 posts)

41. 12/19/13 Proceso article -- Todo el poder de la DEA contra dos exagentes

Reply to villager (Original post)

Sat Dec 21, 2013, 01:42 AM

Dec 2013

Not a peep in the U.S. Media.....

Todo el poder de la DEA contra dos exagentes
J. Jesús Esquivel
19 de diciembre de 2013
Reportaje Especial
http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=360786

Héctor Berrellez, exagente de la DEA. Foto: Jesús Esquivel
Héctor Berrellez, exagente de la DEA.
Foto: Jesús Esquivel

Para tratar de frenar el escándalo que ha provocado la revelación de que la CIA intervino en el asesinato de Enrique Camarena Salazar y ha tenido nexos con el narcotráfico mexicano, la DEA desplegó una auténtica “guerra sucia” contra dos de sus exagentes, Phil Jordan y Héctor Berrellez. Ambos han denunciado reiteradamente desde Proceso las operaciones negras de la agencia estadunidense de inteligencia. La maniobra más reciente: un foro en el cual, luego de desacreditarlos, se les lanzó una amenaza nada velada.

WASHINGTON (Proceso).- La administración antidrogas de Estados Unidos (DEA) desarrolla una guerra sucia para ocultar las evidencias de la participación de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) en el secuestro, tortura y asesinato –en México, en febrero de 1985– de Enrique Kiki Camarena, denuncian dos exagentes antinarcóticos.

“La DEA y la CIA no soportarían que se sepa toda la verdad sobre el caso Camarena. Saldrían muy afectadas”, dice en entrevista telefónica con Proceso Phil Jordan, exagente de la DEA y exdirector del Centro de Inteligencia de El Paso (EPIC).

Desde el pasado octubre, cuando Jordan y Héctor Berrellez, otro exagente de la DEA, revelaron a Proceso (edición 1928) que la CIA fue cómplice del narcotraficante mexicano Rafael Caro Quintero en el secuestro, tortura y asesinato de Camarena, ambos se convirtieron en “enemigos del Departamento de Justicia” de Estados Unidos, que antes había hecho múltiples reconocimientos a su trabajo.

“La DEA y la CIA, a través de varios de mis excolegas, están buscando desacreditarnos por decir la verdad sobre el caso Camarena. Pero no lo van a lograr. Tenemos muchas pruebas para fundamentar lo que denunciamos”, apunta Jordan, quien fue también subadministrador antidrogas.

Oficialmente, comenta Berrellez en conversación telefónica con el corresponsal, la campaña de desacreditación de la DEA arrancó el pasado 29 de octubre con un acto bautizado “Llevados ante la justicia: Operación Leyenda”, un foro donde se hizo un recuento oficial del caso Camarena (Proceso 1931).

Efectuado en el Museo de la DEA, en el foro participaron como oradores su exdirector Jack Lawn, el exagente Jack Taylor –primero a cargo de la Operación Leyenda, dedicada a investigar el homicidio de Camarena– y la periodista Elaine Shannon, autora del libro Desperados.

“Ese acto fue una clara demostración de que la CIA y la DEA tienen mucho miedo de que se conozca toda la verdad del caso Camarena, y están dispuestos a todo para callarnos a Jordan y a mí”, apunta Berrellez, quien reemplazó a Taylor al frente de la Operación Leyenda y asegura haber descubierto la intervención indirecta de la CIA en el homicidio.

En el foro, primero en voz del director del Museo de la DEA, Sean Fearns, y después por boca de Lawn y Taylor, se desmintió lo dicho por Berrellez y Jordan respecto de la CIA y el caso Camarena. Fearns incluso lanzó una amenaza a los exagentes: “Sería mejor que no hablaran”, pues sus declaraciones podrían ser investigadas e “inclusive usadas potencialmente en su contra si difieren de lo que dijeron hace 28 años”.

La advertencia desató la furia de Jordan y Berrellez.

Misiva secuestrada

En una carta dirigida a Dave Wilson, presidente de la Asociación de Exagentes Federales Antinarcóticos (AFFNA), y a todos sus miembros, Jordan y Berrellez exponen la guerra sucia en su contra que lleva a cabo la dependencia federal a la cual dedicaron varias décadas de su vida.

“Al anunciar la realización del acto (en el Museo de la DEA), Dave Wilson, presidente de la AFFNA, informó que el panel aclararía todas las falsas ideas, mitos y mentiras sobre la investigación del asesinato que dos exagentes especiales habían elegido fabricar alrededor de este trágico evento”, especifica el documento, enviado unos días después de concluido el foro en la DEA y copia de la cual pudo consultar Proceso.

En la misiva de dos páginas firmada por Jordan y Berrellez, ambos resumen el embrollo del caso Camarena y la participación de la CIA, así como la cortina de humo tendida por la DEA para ocultar la verdad.

En su texto, dicen entender “que es muy seria la imputación de involucrar a contratistas de la CIA en el asesinato de Camarena”, pero, puntualizan, “los hechos son los hechos”.

Jordan cuenta que tres días antes de enviar su queja al presidente de la AFFNA, lo llamó por teléfono para aclarar la situación.

“En primer lugar Wilson no me conoce ni yo lo conozco”, explica el exdirector del EPIC, quien luego hace esta recreación de la plática telefónica con el presidente de la AFFNA:

“–¿Dave Wilson?

“–Sí. ¿Quién habla?

“–Phil Jordan, el exagente a quien junto con Berrellez estás desacreditando con ese foro en el Museo de la DEA.

“–¿En qué puedo servirte?

“–Primero te voy a hacer esta pregunta: ¿acaso eres un agente de la CIA infiltrado en la DEA, cumpliendo órdenes para llamarme mentiroso?

“–No. No soy agente de la CIA. Yo a ti no te conozco.

“–¿A quién buscas proteger con tus afirmaciones si no me conoces, ni mucho menos conoces ni sabes quién es Berrellez?

“–A nadie.

“–Qué bueno que lo digas, porque te voy a mandar una carta dirigida a todos los miembros de la AFFNA; te pido por favor que hagas lo correcto y la distribuyas.

“–¡Sí, claro! Envía la carta por favor.”

Según Jordan el texto fue enviado a la oficina de Wilson tres días después de esta conversación, que tuvo lugar en la segunda semana de noviembre.

Hasta la fecha la carta no ha sido distribuida por Wilson a los miembros de la AFFNA y éste no ha explicado por qué no lo ha hecho. “Hablé con su asistente y ella me confirmó que la carta no ha salido, que sigue en el escritorio de Wilson en su oficina en el estado de Washington”, comenta Jordan al corresponsal.

El exagente de la DEA sostiene que de “muy buena fuente” sabe que Wilson está muy avergonzado por haberse prestado a participar en la guerra sucia de la DEA.

Respecto a lo que piensen sus colegas de la AFNNA, del vuelco que dio el caso Camarena con sus declaraciones y las de Berrellez en cuanto al involucramiento de la CIA, Jordan dice: “No me preocupa porque me conocen y conocen a Berrellez, y saben que tenemos las pruebas”.

Aunque no se atreve a desacreditar a Lawn –por respeto a quienes fueron su jefes–, el exdirector del EPIC dice estar decepcionado de lo que el exjefe de la DEA declaró en el museo.

“Porque sabe que todo lo dicho por nosotros está documentado como parte de la investigación Operación Leyenda, y sobre todo porque él, como los miembros de la AFFNA, sabe que Berrellez es uno de los exagentes con más reconocimientos del Departamento de Justicia precisamente por su trabajo en el caso Camarena.”

Berrellez y Jordan sospechan que, más que la DEA, es la CIA la encargada de la campaña para desacreditarlos y hacer lo necesario para ocultar la verdad sobre el caso Camarena.

“Hay que tener mucho cuidado con esto. La historia de la CIA es muy tenebrosa. No sólo ha mandado matar a sus propios agentes cuando denuncian casos internos de corrupción; también ha eliminado a mensajeros que lo hacen público”, advierte Berrellez.

La carta que Wilson tiene secuestrada en su oficina destaca precisamente que Kiki Camarena no fue asesinado por su buen trabajo como agente de la DEA en México, sino porque descubrió la sombra de la CIA en el negocio del narcotráfico mexicano.

“Para de verdad hacerle honor al sacrificio de Kiki y al de su familia debemos garantizar que se conozca la verdad de por qué fue asesinado. Para ello, y para evitar que otros agentes federales estadunidenses paguen con su vida por cumplir con sus obligaciones, debemos prevenir que se conviertan en un daño colateral”, remata la misiva firmada por Jordan y Berrellez.

****************
getting rid of the witnesses...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/frontera-list/TL7DnrK4QTM

Former Mexican drug czar convicted of aiding cartel dies at 79
12/19/2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_Jes%C3%BAs_Guti%C3%A9rrez_Rebollo
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-mexico-drug-czar-cartel-dies-20131219,0,4927799.story#axzz2o4q9SolO
http://news.yahoo.com/disgraced-ex-mexican-drug-czar-dies-age-79-022303054.html

777man

(374 posts)

43. 12/29/13 'Caro Quintero is Protected by the White House': Former CIA pilot

Reply to villager (Original post)

Mon Dec 30, 2013, 07:42 AM

Dec 2013

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december292013/tosh-rundown-plc.php

Dec-29-2013 14:05printcomments
'Caro Quintero is Protected by the White House': Former CIA pilot
Luis Chaparro

If it were not for these few documents that I managed to get, some still classified until 2020, the statements of three former agents might seem to be more of a conspiracy theory.
Former CIA pilot Robert
Former CIA pilot Robert "Tosh" Plumlee is a Salem-News.com writer making major headlines for his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

(SAN JUAN, Coast Rica Vice) - This article was sent to Salem-News.com from a source in El Salvador. We understand it is part of a four part series to be released during the 2nd week in Jan., 2014 by Proceso Magazine, MX, Tico Times in Costa Rico, and El Salvador media. This is a semi-rough English translation, the Spanish version link is included below so the reader can go to the source and research the original piece. The Vice logo below will also take you it.

Hours after Rafael Caro Quintero, alleged murderer of DEA agent Enrique Camarena Kiki, was released on 9 August, the governments of Mexico and the United States announced a manhunt. But in reality it is a fake show. Caro Quintero did not murder Kiki Camarena, and it is possible that the Mexican drug don is now living under a new identity as a protected secret agenda of the White House.

Tosh Plumlee today, Salem-News.com
photo by Tim King

In interviews, three former U.S. intelligence agents: Hector Berrellez, DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), Robert Tosh Plumlee, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and Phil Jordan, EPIC (Intelligence Center El Paso) - I was putting together a version of the complete opposite to the line that now dominates the agenda for both governments' drug case. A reality that we fail to see and where it is envisioned that the enemies of the U.S. are rather its proteges.

I had access to documents that prove what happened during the famous 1980's Drug War murder and the role of the CIA and current Secretary of State, John Kerry, who was aware of this since 1991.

If it were not for these few documents that I managed to get, some still classified until 2020, the statements of three former agents might seem to be more of a conspiracy theory.

But the documents are here. The first is signed by Gary Hart, former Democratic senator, dated February 14, 1991 and sent to Senator John Kerry, then chairman of the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications of the upper house of U.S. Congress letter. This letter is one of the few documents that were not burned by Oliver North [former lieutenant colonel in the Marines, serving Ronald Regan] in the basement of the Pentagon.

The paper's concern is noted Kerry after learning about the Iran- Contra affair that smuggled cocaine into the U.S. from South America through Mexico and the sale sponsored weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras.

The letter refers to a meeting of former CIA pilot outsourced, Plumlee, with Bill Holen, Senate office in Denver, Colorado then headed Gary Hart. And that drops a bombshell: "In addition [Robert Plumlee] noted that these operations were not CIA but were under the direction of the White House, the Pentagon and staff National Security Council [NSC]."

In this operation Rafael Caro Quintero was the key person. The Reagan plan saw planes flying from the U.S. to Nicaragua and several South American countries. Plumlee and a dozen colleagues landed at Mexican ranches owned by Caro Quintero, specifically in Veracruz.

Berrellez said the first snitch was Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni, one of the main commanders of the Federal Judicial Police (PJF) in the eighties. After collaborating with the Juarez Cartel, he fled to the United States in 1993, became DEA informant and was then shot dead in McCallen, Texas in 2003.

Berrellez was asked to get Calderoni of Mexico in 1993. I said Calderoni called from a consulate in Mexico asking to help him because otherwise "they would raise and murder."

"I helped him, sent a Jet and brought to California. Here, as protected by the DEA became an informant and was very helpful to us. The Mexican government wanted to extradite him, but I did what I could to make it not because I knew they would kill him there. Then he was accused of corruption and influence peddling and stuff, but I say it's not true, " he explained to Berrellez on his last trip to Texas to meet in person.

"What he told me about what Camarena was 'Hector, skip that item because they will fuck. It is involved in the CIA Kiki is very dangerous to walk in it.' He gave me names and details and everything, but when my boss retired I got wind of the investigation and sent me to Washington DC."

A Calderoni was murdered with a shot to the head in 2003, ten years after arriving in the United States. He had left the office of his lawyer in an avenue of McCallen, Texas when a man shot him from a car.

When I interviewed Plumlee, the fifth visit I made to his home in New Mexico, after ten hours in total talking on the phone, I asked for documents that would support his version, and see how they fit with that of Berrellez and Jordan.

That gave me the letter. He also had photographs, his pilot license and more.

After drinking a Corona drink to release the tensions of the first interview, (He met me with a .9 mm tucked into his pants) Tosh showed me pictures of him allegedly at the ranch Caro Quintero and another where it appears in one of the planes that flew to EU. But he also gave me a series of research papers on which he put the FBI still marked secret, to confirm their participation in covert CIA operations. The researchers concluded that "alias X is another likely alias Plumlee." Asking this perhaps was rude of me, but Plumlee could be any well aware of the business of the CIA and the Contras and Caro Quintero. To believe these accusations he had to prove his identity, and of course, then check that version out.

Later I found more interesting evidence. Copies of a series of maps delivered to the U.S. government and classified until 2020, which delineated by Plumlee routes where weapons and cocaine were transported. The training of members of the Nicaraguan Contras at Caro Quintero ranches are also detailed. These maps eventually convinced me that Plumlee was indeed the pilot; the man who entered the United States carrying more than 40 tons of cocaine to the CIA, in a period of one year and, in 1985, brought the country Caro Quintero.

Contact on the Pacific coast, just outside of Cabo San Lucas . This is one of the points of contact between the path and desert of Central Arizona and California during 1983-1986.

April. Rafael Caro Quintero, San Felipe, Mex. [phone number] Gacha, M. Colombo, Penonome, Panama, 1986. The note on the map contains a phone number in San Felipe that Plumlee says Quintero is the number of Delgado's ranch. This note refers to a drug deal between Gacha and Caro Quintero in 1986 "probably related to the Contras, because I was involved."

May. L 12 degrees, 84 degrees... Long, NGA Bluefield, Escualito River. Bluefields is a port on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, one of the three landing areas mined by the CIA in 1984.

6. Luis Ochoa, Penonome, Panama, in the village by the river. Previously owned by Vesco and Rojas 09/06/83. Plumlee says Jorge Luis Ochoa, a member of the Medellin cartel, sometimes stayed at the villa from Rio Hato and Penonome when sending cargo to Panama.

Tosh on the Mexican border, 2011

This same man explains to me how the CIA indirectly had Enrique Kiki Camarena killed, the DEA agent investigating Caro Quintero. "Kiki was no fool. He knew that the drug was not everything he wanted, then began to follow the money and found loaded with drugs openly flying to America," said Plumlee from his chair at his home in New Mexico.

"I found out about this because the CIA asked to investigate who had opened his mouth. That was Kiki and then specifically asked Oliver North was kidnapped and interrogated."

For this they hired Nicaraguan drug trafficker Juan Matta Ballesteros, who also owned SETCO, the aircraft company Plumlee worked for, under the CIA. They explained the situation and Matta Ballesteros. Caro Quintero did tell an undercover agent had found his buffalo ranch in Chihuahua, I visited a few months ago, the largest marijuana ranch in Mexico's history. "And Caro ran his hand, but in presence of two CIA agents who were also infiltrated and did nothing," Plumlee says.

"I report that Caro Quintero is alive and safe. Now living under a new identity under a special program, a step before the witness protection program," he explained. "These so far are rumors of my sources, there is nothing that can be proven as a fact, but time will tell if it was true or just rumors."

Tosh during his CIA days

Plumlee offered me his confidence, so did Hector Berrellez and Phil Jordan. Both told the same version from their research. These two, as I understand, seek one thing: justice for the legacy of Kiki Camarena. I am told that is the only personal agenda that has led them to talk now that they are finally retired agents, and not force them to keep secrets. They were good friends.

The agents also confessed that I have evidence of what they have heard of "military and intelligence sources" in the United States and Mexico, which suggests that Caro Quintero entered a special protection program from Washington monitored by the CIA and U.S. State Department.

Phil Jordan says this idea does not seem far-fetched, in fact you think there is a very strong probability. In a strange seedy motel in El Paso, Texas, he explained that the U.S. government is very concerned of what Rafael Caro Quintero can say about the operation of Iran-Contra: he bought drugs in South America to sell in the United States and money to buy weapons to give to the Nicaraguan Contras. All operations by Caro Quintero in Mexico.

For Jordan, Quintero should be protected the same as at any time can become their main enemy. Jordan goes further: the CIA may be giving protection to the boss of bosses, for now, but anytime you can get rid of it.

"Nobody in Mexico is interested in Caro Quintero because neither the PRI nor anyone going to do anything, he has always been protected. But there is a U.S. intelligence agency from which to look, did you know what ? ... the CIA. "

I sent a series of questions to the headquarters of the CIA. I responded to a template of the information they have on their website and sent to all journalists who ask about it.

In the more than 12 pages I got a reply, the CIA is specifically about the aviation company SETCO , Matta Ballesteros, and through which drugs from south to north and weapons flew north to south .

"According to the official records of the United States, referred to in the report of Senator Kerry , SETCO was established by Matta Ballesteros, Class 1 criminal. Besides the Kerry Report states that these records indicate that Matta was a leading figure in the Colombian cartel and was involved in the murder of Enrique Camarena , "says the CIA.

However, participation of the intelligence agency in SETCO flights and knowledge regarding drug trafficking is denied.

"Not found information indicating that said the CIA received allegations that some aircraft SETCO they were involved in drug trafficking during the Contra. [ ... ] Not found files or shared information with other government agencies . No information was found indicating that the CIA played a role in selecting SETCO to deliver humanitarian aid and assistance to the Contras."

Newest published by the CIA regarding the Southern Front and Iran -Contra , was this:

"The intelligence community has no independent DEA information on this case. The DEA will provide additional information as it becomes available. "

Since then the DEA offered nothing . But last October the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration met to refute Jordan , Plumlee and Berrellez .

From Washington, in a press conference said the following : " Many of you are aware that there are two former DEA special agents who have recently been interviewed by various media about this research , for reasons that are unclear, the two former agents have chosen to invent stories about his involvement in the case and causes the murder of Kiki Camarena . His version of events could not be further from the truth. The stories of them are hurting the DEA effort to ensure that we bring to justice the real culprits . "

In an interview , another former DEA agent told me wary of what the three agents have been saying. Gilbert Gonzalez, who was infiltrated into the Guadalajara Cartel in the nineties and who now trains agents active in infiltration techniques , said " all you are doing [ these three agents ] is to make people remove your finger from the line " .

" Jordan is a great friend , he did have first-hand information , but do not know why you are saying these things. Plumlee do not know who is, but Berrellez was in charge of investigating the murder of Kiki from here, he never traveled to Mexico , do not know how things are " , I said smiling .

" I do not say they are doing it consciously, but we are distracted from the main goal: to bring justice to American Rafael Caro Quintero Camarena's murder ."

By Robert Plumlee has now confessed to me that he is afraid. More than a dozen of his friends, the other pilots who flew cocaine for Uncle Sam , have been killed or are behind bars . He is an old man and do not want to end his life under these circumstances. So you've decided to protect a very paradoxical way , making public everything he knows about the operation for which he was hired .

One of his friends was Celestino Castillo III , a former DEA agent who served his sentence in prison for trafficking weapons during this operation .

Castillo himself has written in his book Powderburns how the U.S. government imprisoned for leaking information of Iran -Contra .

"I'm still trying to clear my name. And I know what these men are saying [ Tosh, Jordan and Berrellez ] is true. I served at the forefront of Latin America for six years when all this was happening, "he told me in a brief phone interview .

The other friend , the one who has more crying , was Barry Seal, a U.S. pilot involved in various covert operations outsourced by the CIA who was killed when he was very close to talk.

According to an internal FBI investigation , was killed when Seal , agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided their personal items Police forensic lab in Louisiana , where he was fatally shot . Among the documents seized by the FBI was your staff George Bush.

Furthermore, once the murderers were found told lawyers that were ordered by an official identified as Oliver North .

" I do not care about politics or money or who is president and who is not, I want to save my ass ," he replied when he finally confessed that he suspected she could have to reveal this hidden agendas.

To be fair to anyone but politicians care policy . But to say that the CIA was behind an illegal operation that also took the life of a DEA agent goes beyond being Democrat or Republican , PRI or PAN or PRD.

So we know how things move : on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico City , Ciudad Juarez , El Paso, New Mexico , California , there are drug dealers , drug dealers and where there is the most likely DEA and CIA protecting .

Ronald Reagan was a president who trafficked drugs to his own people and weapons to annihilate your enemies. But what the hell , raise your hand the president has not done so.

http://www.vice.com/es_mx/read/caro-quintero-es-protegido-por-la-casa-blanca-ex-piloto-de-la-cia

King and Plumlee in Colorado, 2013
This article was translated from the original Spanish version published in Costa Rica, by Salem-News.com's Tim King, using Google Translator. If readers catch distinct discrepancies and inconsistencies in the copy translation we apologize and will correct accordingly. Special thanks to Tosh Plumlee and to Vice for bringing this long-buried story to life.

This article, like so many before it, proves once again that the United States government has been directly involved in drug running for decades. Keep watching the Central and South American media for more reports because these crimes took place on their soil and the negative impacts last to this day. Reagan and North soiled the soul of the United States and there are no statutes of limitations on Murder and Treason. I'm just saying...

________________________________________

777man

(374 posts)

44. ‘Caro Quintero es protegido por la Casa Blanca’: ex piloto de la CIA

Reply to 777man (Reply #43)

Mon Dec 30, 2013, 07:44 AM

Dec 2013

‘Caro Quintero es protegido por la Casa Blanca’: ex piloto de la CIA
http://www.vice.com/es_mx/read/caro-quintero-es-protegido-por-la-casa-blanca-ex-piloto-de-la-cia
Por Luis Chaparro
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El ex piloto de la CIA, Robert Tosh Plumlee.

Horas después de que Rafael Caro Quintero, supuesto asesino del agente de la DEA, Enrique Kiki Camarena, fuera liberado el 9 de agosto pasado, los gobiernos de México y Estados Unidos anunciaron una cacería en su contra. Pero en realidad se trata de un falso espectáculo. Caro Quintero no asesinó a Kiki Camarena, y es posible que el don del narcotráfico mexicano viva bajo una nueva identidad como protegido de un programa secreto de la Casa Blanca.

En entrevistas, tres ex agentes de inteligencia de EU —Héctor Berrellez, de la DEA (Agencia Antidrogas), Robert Tosh Plumlee, de la CIA (Agencia Central de Inteligencia) y Phil Jordan, de EPIC (Centro de Inteligencia de El Paso)— me fueron armando una versión del caso totalmente opuesta a la línea que ahora domina la agenda antidrogas de ambos gobiernos. Una realidad que no alcanzamos a ver y donde se vislumbra que los enemigos de EU son más bien sus protegidos.

Tuve acceso a documentos que prueban que detrás del asesinato más simbólico de la Guerra contra las drogas de los ochenta estuvo la misma CIA y que el actual Secretario de Estado estadounidense, John Kerry, estuvo enterado de esto desde 1991.

Si no fuera por estos escasos documentos que logré obtener —algunos aún clasificados hasta el 2020— las declaraciones de estos tres ex agentes me parecerían una teoría de conspiración de tres ancianos macabros.

Pero los documentos están aquí. El primero es una carta firmada por Gary Hart, ex senador demócrata, fechada el 14 de febrero de 1991 y enviada al senador John Kerry, entonces presidente del Subcomité para el Terrorismo, Narcóticos y Comunicaciones Internacionales de la cámara alta del congreso de EU. Esta carta es uno de los pocos documentos que no fueron quemados por Oliver North [ex teniente coronel de los marines, al servicio de Ronald Regan] en los sótanos del Pentágono.

En el documento se nota la preocupación de Kerry tras enterarse de la operación Irán-Contra, que traficaba cocaína a Estados Unidos desde Sudamérica, mediante México y cuya venta patrocinó con armas a la Contra nicaragüense.

En la carta se habla de una reunión del ex piloto subcontratado de la CIA, Plumlee, con Bill Holen, de la oficina del senado en Denver, Colorado que entonces encabezaba Gary Hart. Y ahí suelta una bomba: “Además [Robert Plumlee] destacó que estas operaciones no eran de la CIA sino que estaban bajo la dirección de la Casa Blanca, el Pentágono y personal del consejo de Seguridad Nacional [NSC]”.

Fue justo esta operación en la que Rafael Caro Quintero fue la persona clave. El plan de Reagan y amigos llevaba armas de norte a sur, desde Estados Unidos hasta Nicaragua y varios países en Sudamérica. Las avionetas que conducía Plumlee y una decena de sus colegas, aterrizaban en México, en los ranchos de Caro Quintero, específicamente en Veracruz. Pero además ahí mismo se entrenaba a la contraguerrilla.

Y Berrellez me apunta hacia el primer soplón: Guillermo González Calderoni, uno de los principales comandantes de la Policía Judicial Federal (PJF) en los años ochenta que, luego de colaborar con el Cártel de Juárez huyó a Estados Unidos en 1993, se convirtió en informante de la DEA y luego fue asesinado de un tiro en McCallen, Texas en 2003.

Berrellez fue el encargado de sacar a Calderoni de México en 1993. Me dice que Calderoni lo llamó desde un consulado en México pidiéndole que lo ayudara porque sino “lo iban a levantar y a asesinar”.

“Yo lo ayudé, mandé un Jet y lo traje a California. Acá, ya protegido por la DEA se volvió un informante y nos fue de mucha ayuda. El gobierno mexicano lo quería extraditar, pero yo hice lo que pude para que no fuera así porque yo sabía que lo iban a matar allá. Luego fue acusado de corrupción y tráfico de influencias y esas cosas, pero te digo que no es cierto”, me explicó Berrellez en su último viaje a Texas para conocernos en persona.

“Lo que me dijo respecto a lo de Camarena fue: ‘Héctor, salte de ese tema porque te van a chingar. Está involucrada la CIA en lo de Kiki, es muy peligroso que andes en eso’. Me dio nombres y detalles y todo, pero cuando mis jefes se enteraron me retiraron de la investigación y me enviaron a Washington DC”.

A Calderoni lo asesinaron de un tiro en la cabeza en 2003, a diez años de haber llegado a Estados Unidos. Salía de la oficina de su abogado en una avenida de McCallen, Texas cuando un hombre le disparó desde un auto.

Cuando entrevisté a Plumlee, en la quinta visita que hice a su casa en Nuevo México, tras unas diez horas en total de hablar por teléfono, le pedí documentos que sustentaran su versión, y ver cómo cuadraba con la de Berrellez y Jordan.

Ahí me entregó la carta. Le pedí además fotografías, licencias de aviador y más.

Luego de bebernos una Corona para liberar las tensiones de la primera entrevista (me recibió con una .9 mm fajada en el pantalón), me mostró fotografías de él presuntamente en el rancho de Caro Quintero y otra donde aparece en una de las avionetas que voló a EU. Pero además me entregó una serie de documentos sobre una investigación a la que lo sometió el FBI aún marcada como secreta, para confirmar su participación en operaciones encubiertas de la CIA. Los investigadores concluyeron que “alias X muy probablemente es otro alias de Plumlee”. Pedirle todo esto tal vez fue rudo de mi parte, pero Plumlee podía ser cualquier persona bien enterada de los negocios de la CIA con la Contra y con Caro Quintero. Para creer esas acusaciones tenía que comprobar su identidad, y desde luego, después comprobar su versión.

Plumlee mostrándome sus credenciales.

Más tarde encontré otra evidencia interesante. Las copias de una serie de mapas entregados al gobierno estadounidense y clasificados hasta el 2020, delineados por Plumlee donde se detallan sus rutas por donde transportó armas, cocaína y miembros de la Contra nicaragüense que además entrenaban en los ranchos de Caro Quintero. Estos mapas terminaron por convencerme de que Plumlee efectivamente era ese piloto. El hombre que introdujo a Estados Unidos más de 40 toneladas de cocaína para la CIA, en un periodo de un año y que, en 1985, sacó a Caro Quintero del país.

2. Contacto en la costa del Pacífico, justo fuera de Cabo San Lucas. Este es uno de los puntos de contacto entre la ruta de Centroamérica y el desierto de Arizona y California durante 1983-1986.

4. Rafael Caro Quintero, San Felipe, Mex. [número telefónico], Gacha, M. Colombo, Penonome, Panamá, 1986. La nota en el mapa contiene un número de teléfono en San Felipe que Plumlee dice es el número de Quintero en el rancho de Delgado. Esta nota hace referencia a un trato de drogas entre Gacha y Caro Quintero en 1986 "relacionado a los Contras seguramente, porque estuve involucrado".

5. 12 grados L, 84 grados Long..., Bluefield NGA, River Escualito. Bluefields es un puerto en la costa Caribe de Nicaragua, uno de los tres zonas de aterrizaje minados por la CIA en 1984.

6. Luis Ochoa, Penonome, Panamá, en la villa junto al río. Anteriormente propiedad de Vesco y Rojas 6-9-83. Plumlee dice que Jorge Luis Ochoa, miembro del Cártel de Medellín, a veces se quedaba en la villa entre Río Hato y Penonome cuando enviaba cargamento a Panamá.

Este mismo hombre me explica cómo la CIA indirectamente asesinó a Enrique Kiki Camarena, el agente de la DEA que investigaba a Caro Quintero. “Kiki no era tonto. Sabía que la droga no era todo lo que buscaba, entonces comenzó a seguir el dinero y se encontró con aviones cargados de droga volando abiertamente a Estados Unidos”, me cuenta Plumlee desde su sillón en su casa de Nuevo México.

“Yo me enteré de esto porque la CIA pidió investigar quién había abierto la boca. Ese fue Kiki y entonces específicamente Oliver North pidió que fuera secuestrado e interrogado”.

Para esto contrataron al narcotraficante nicaragüense Juan Matta Ballesteros, quien además era dueño de SETCO, la compañía de aviones para la que trabajaba Plumlee, bajo la CIA. Le explicaron la situación y a Matta Ballesteros se le ocurrió decirle a Caro Quintero que un agente infiltrado había encontrado su rancho Búfalo, en Chihuahua, que visité hace unos meses, el rancho de mariguana más grande en la historia de México. “Y a Caro se le pasó la mano, pero en presencia de dos agentes de la CIA que también estaban infiltrados y no hicieron nada”, dice Plumlee.

“Me reportan que Caro Quintero está vivo y a salvo. Ahora vive bajo una nueva identidad y bajo un programa especial, un paso antes del programa de testigos protegidos”, me explicó. “Estos, hasta ahora son rumores de mis fuentes, no hay nada que se pueda comprobar como un hecho, pero el tiempo se encargará de decir si es verdad o sólo fueron rumores”.

Así como Plumlee me ofreció su confianza, también lo hicieron Héctor Berrellez y Phil Jordan. Ambos me contaron la misma versión desde sus investigaciones. Ellos dos, según entiendo, buscan una sola cosa: justicia para el legado de Kiki Camarena. Según me dicen, ésa es la única agenda personal que los ha motivado a hablar ahora que finalmente son agentes retirados, y no los obligan a guardar secretos. Eran buenos amigos.

Los agentes además me confesaron que tienen indicios de lo que han escuchado de “fuentes militares y de inteligencia” tanto en Estados Unidos como en México, que apuntan a que Caro Quintero puede bajo un programa de protección especial de Washington monitoreado por la CIA y el Departamento de Estado de EU.

A Phil Jordan esta idea no le parece descabellada, de hecho le parece que es una probabilidad muy fuerte. En un extraño motel de mala muerte en El Paso, Texas, me explicó que el gobierno estadounidense está muy preocupado de lo que Rafael Caro Quintero pueda decir sobre la operación de Irán-Contra: que compraba droga en Sudamérica para venderla en Estados Unidos y con el dinero comprar armas para regalar a la Contra nicaragüense. Todo mediante las operaciones de Caro Quintero en México.

Para Jordan, Quintero debe estar protegido por los mismos que en cualquier momento se pueden convertir en su principal enemigo. Jordan va más allá: la CIA puede que esté dando protección al capo de capos, por ahora, pero en cualquier momento se puede deshacer de él.

“A nadie en México le interesa matar a Caro Quintero porque ni el PRI ni nadie va a hacer nada, siempre ha estado protegido. Pero sí hay una agencia de inteligencia estadounidense de la que se debe cuidar, ¿ya sabes cuál?... la CIA”.

Envié una serie de preguntas a las oficinas centrales de la CIA. Me respondieron un machote de la información que tienen en su página web y que envían a todos los periodistas que preguntan sobre el tema.

En las más de 12 páginas que obtuve de respuesta, la CIA habla específicamente de la empresa de aviación SETCO, de Matta Ballesteros, y mediante la cual se volaban las drogas de sur a norte y las armas de norte a sur.

“De acuerdo a los archivos oficiales de Estados Unidos, citados en el reporte del Senador Kerry, SETCO fue establecida por Matta Ballesteros, un criminal Clase 1. Además el Reporte Kerry afirma que estos registros indican que Matta fue una figura principal en el cártel colombiano y estuvo involucrado en el asesinato de Enrique Camarena”, dice la CIA.

Sin embargo se niega la participación de la agencia de inteligencia en los vuelos de SETCO y su conocimiento respecto al tráfico de drogas.

“No se ha encontrado información que indique que la CIA recibió dichas acusaciones de que algunos aviones de SETCO estuvieran envueltos en narcotráfico durante la Contra. [...] No se han encontrado archivos o información compartida con otras agencias de gobierno. No se ha encontrado información que indique que la CIA jugó algún rol en la selección de SETCO para entregar ayuda humanitaria y asistencia a la Contra”.

Lo último publicado por la CIA respecto al Frente Sur o Irán-Contra, fue lo siguiente:

“La comunidad de inteligencia no tiene información independiente de la DEA sobre este caso. La DEA ofrecerá información adicional tan pronto como esté disponible”.

Desde luego la DEA no ofreció nada. Pero el pasado octubre las oficinas centrales de la Agencia Antidrogas se reunió para desmentir a Jordan, Plumlee y Berrellez.

Desde Washington, en conferencia de prensa dijeron lo siguiente: “Muchos de ustedes están conscientes de que hay dos ex agentes especiales de la DEA que recientemente han sido entrevistados por varios medios de comunicación sobre esta investigación, por razones que no están claras, los dos ex agentes han escogido por inventar historias sobre su implicación en el caso y las causas del asesinato de Kiki Camarena. Sus versiones de los hechos no podrían estar más lejos de la verdad. Las historias de ellos están perjudicando los esfuerzo de la DEA para asegurarnos de que podamos llevar ante la justicia a los verdaderos responsables”.

En una entrevista, otro ex agente de la DEA me dijo desconfiar de lo que los tres agentes han estado diciendo. Gilbert González, quien fue infiltrado en el Cártel de Guadalajara en los años noventa y quien ahora entrena a agentes en activo en técnicas de infiltración, dijo que “lo único que están haciendo [estos tres agentes] es hacer que la gente quite el dedo del renglón”.

“Jordan es un gran amigo, él sí tuvo información de primera mano, pero no sé por qué esté diciendo estas cosas. Plumlee no sé quien es, pero Berrellez estuvo a cargo de la investigación del asesinato de Kiki desde acá, él nunca viajó a México, no sabe cómo son las cosas”, me explicó sonriente.

“Yo no digo que lo estén haciendo conscientemente, pero nos están distrayendo en el objetivo principal: traer a la justicia norteamericana a Rafael Caro Quintero por el asesinato de Camarena”.

Por ahora Robert Plumlee me ha confesado que tiene miedo. A más de una decena de sus amigos, los otros pilotos que volaron cocaína para el Tío Sam, han sido asesinados o están tras las rejas. Él es ya un anciano y no quiere terminar su vida bajo esas circunstancias. Así que ha decidido protegerse de una manera muy paradójica, haciendo público todo lo que sabe sobre el operativo para el que fue contratado.

Uno de sus amigos fue Celestino Castillo III, un ex agente de la DEA quien cumplió su sentencia en prisión por traficar armas durante esta misma operación.

El mismo Castillo ha escrito en su libro Powderburns cómo el gobierno estadounidense lo encarceló por filtrar información del Irán-Contra.

“Aún estoy intentando limpiar mi nombre. Y yo sé que lo que estos hombres están diciendo [Tosh, Jordan y Berrellez] es verdad. Yo serví en la avanzada de Latinoamérica por seis años cuando todo esto estaba sucediendo”, me contó en una breve entrevista por teléfono.

El otro amigo, uno de los que más ha llorado, fue Barry Seal, un piloto estadounidense involucrado en distintas operaciones encubiertas subcontratado por la CIA que fue asesinado cuando estuvo muy cerca de hablar.

De acuerdo a una investigación interna del FBI, cuando Seal fue asesinado, los agentes del Buró Federal de Investigaciones allanaron sus artículos personales del laboratorio forense de la Policía de Louisiana, donde murió de un tiro. Entre los documentos que decomisó el FBI estaba el teléfono personal de George Bush.

Además, una vez que los asesinos fueron localizados dijeron a sus abogados que recibieron órdenes de un oficial identificado como Oliver North.

“A mí no me importa la política ni el dinero o quién es presidente y quién no, yo quiero salvar mi trasero”, me respondió cuando finalmente le confesé que sospechaba de que pudiera tener agendas ocultas al revelarme todo esto.

Para ser sinceros a nadie más que a los políticos les importa la política. Pero decir que la CIA estuvo detrás de un operativo ilegal que además terminó con la vida de un agente de la DEA va más allá de ser demócrata o republicano; PRI o PAN o PRD.

Así sabemos cómo se mueven las cosas: en las calles de Guadalajara, de la Ciudad de México, de Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, Nuevo México, California, hay narcos, y donde hay narcos está la DEA y muy probablemente la CIA protegiéndolos.

Ronald Reagan fue un presidente que traficó drogas a su propia gente y armas para aniquilar a sus enemigos. Pero qué chingados, que levante la mano el presidente que no lo ha hecho.

@LuisKuryaki

777man

(374 posts)

45. U.S. Treasury Tracks Secret Bank Accounts of Top Mexican Kingpin

Reply to 777man (Reply #44)

Mon Dec 30, 2013, 07:57 AM

Dec 2013

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Caro_Quintero

http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2013/12/05/mexican-fugitive-kingpin-caro-quintero-stashed-billions-in-secret-overseas-accounts-former-dea-agent-claims/

U.S. Treasury Tracks Secret Bank Accounts of Top Mexican Kingpin

Mexican drug dealer arrested by the DEA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero ordered the kidnapping, torture and assassination of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in 1985, he was the leader of a billion dollar criminal empire, according to a former DEA agent. “Caro Quintero had billions of dollars stashed in secret bank accounts in Luxembourg and in Switzerland,” former DEA agent Hector Berrellez told me in a telephone interview. “The one in Luxembourg had $4 billion and the other one had even more.”

Berrellez claimed that he saw with his own eyes those accounts in electronic statements in 1995 while investigating the Mexican trafficker at the DEA headquarters. Berrellez retired in 1996. The U.S. government, he explained, was unable to seize the accounts because of the banking secrecy laws in those countries. He said the accounts were listed under the alien name that Caro Quintero, a major drug trafficker and fugitive from U.S. justice, used to do business with Mexican banks. “To my knowledge they were never confiscated,” Berrellez said.
Was Mexican Fugitive Caro Quintero The First Billionaire Drug Lord? Dolia Estevez Dolia Estevez Contributor
World's Most Powerful Drug Dealer Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Makes A Mockery Of U.S. Law Enforcement Dolia Estevez Dolia Estevez Contributor

DEA spokesperson Dawn Dearden could not confirm or deny reports about the alleged Luxembourg and Switzerland accounts.

In the past six months, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has taken an aggressive approach toward Caro Quintero’s criminal empire by blacklisting a total of 19 individuals and 35 companies linked to the former leader of the powerful Guadalajara Cartel. OFAC said that from prison, Caro Quintero directed family members and associates to invest his fortune into ostensibly legitimate companies and real estate projects in Guadalajara. Under U.S. law, all U.S. entities and individuals are banned from doing business with the blacklisted network.

John Sullivan, OFAC’s spokesperson, said he could not comment on foreign assets that Treasury may be tracking, but added that tracking bank accounts outside Mexico, “is part of our strategy for going after [Caro Quintero’s] financial support network.”

Sullivan declined to assess Caro Quintero’s wealth, saying that Treasury is not in the business of making estimates. “It’s fair to say that through all these companies and through all these connections, he has made a very significant pile of money. Different businesses are making so much money here and there, there are amounts of money floating in and out,” Sullivan explained.

Is he a billionaire? Replied Sullivan: “I would not call you and ask you for a correction if you printed that.”

Caro Quintero continued his activities from behind the prison walls where at one point he lived like a king. In 1989, The Washington Post reported that Caro Quintero and a fellow kingpin had taken over two entire cellblocks designed for 250 inmates and remodeled them, installing kitchens, living and dining rooms, offices, marble bathrooms and, for Caro Quintero, a carpeted master bedroom with satin sheets and closets full of silk shirts, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. The kingpins had guns, cell phones, fax machines and other communications gear. According to U.S. law enforcement Caro Quintero never lost control of his drug business.

Caro Quintero was sentenced in 1989 to serve 40 years in a Mexican prison for the murder of Camarena. The Mexican government failed to seize his drug assets which were taken over by his former wife and children. After spending 28 years in jail, the 61 year-old kingpin was released on a legal technicality in August. Caro Quintero’s early release outraged Washington. The Obama Administration asked Mexico to re-apprehend and extradite him, and offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest. But, according to the Mexican government, he has disappeared. Powerful drug lords in México are notorious for buying their freedom by bribing corrupt government officials.
Seal of the United States Department of the Tr...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This week, Caro Quintero was back in the news. He sent a letter to President Enrique Peña Nieto urging him to resist U.S. pressure to extradite him and put an end to his family’s harassment. He told the president that he had “already paid his debt to society” and that the only thing the U.S. is trying to do, “is make me feel the weight of revenge, using my family and discrediting Mexico and its laws, and to subjugate our sovereignty [Mexico's] with only the desire of feeling superior.” The Mexican government acknowledged receiving the letter. DEA thinks it is authentic.

Twitter: @DoliaEstevez

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24800208/drug-kingpin-makes-interpols-most-wanted-list

777man

(374 posts)

46. Robert plumlee's original article "I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam" (1990) - years before Gary Webb

Reply to 777man (Reply #44)

Thu Jan 2, 2014, 06:41 PM

Jan 2014

Last edited Sun Jan 5, 2014, 03:45 AM - Edit history (3)

"I RAN DRUGS FOR UNCLE SAM" by Neal Matthews
The San Diego Reader
April, 1990

Interview with pilot Robert "Tosh" Plumlee complete with Maps , etc.

http://www.nealmatthews.com/Documents/Tosh.pdf

mirrored here incase it gets removed
http://www.scribd.com/doc/195702860/Tosh-pdf

FOIA request and docs on Tosh Plumlee
from Kennedy and Cuba on to Iran-Contra
http://www.scribd.com/doc/80605727/FBI-DEA-CIA-Files-on-William-Robert-Tosh-Plumlee
DEA report on Caro Quintero
http://www.scribd.com/doc/180778600/Tosh-Plumlee-DEA-files

I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam--William "Tosh" Plumlee parts 1-5....
EXPERT WITNESS RADIO SHOW 1999 - MICHAEL LEVINE (DEA-Ret) http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/

http://www.michaellevinebooks.com/

Tosh Plumlee's FACEBOOK:

https://www.facebook.com/roberttoshplumlee

Robert Tosh Plumlee shared a link.
December 3, 2013
The original article I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam can be found on Neal Matthews website. This article has the military map with all the flyways into the United States from Central and South America, and Mexico.

www.nealmatthews.com

(go to Dangerous waters section... then scroll down to San Diego Reader article... "I ran Drugs..

__________________

Other links

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5793

Other links:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKplumlee.htm
http://jfkmurdersolved.com/toshfiles.htm
http://toshplumlee.info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Robert_Plumlee

Alex jones
9/24/13

777man

(374 posts)

47. Proceso articles Camarena murder Hector Berrellez, Tosh Plumlee, Phil Jordan, Mike Holm

Reply to 777man (Reply #46)

Sat Jan 4, 2014, 10:32 PM

Jan 2014

(full color with photos)

Mike Holm was the supervisor of Hector Berrellez at DEA and was famous for the world's largest drug seizure in Sylmar, California (Los Angeles) 21,700 Kilos of cocaine. Amazingly, the price of drugs was not affected at all and remained at record low prices.
read about him here:
http://varropress.com/police/swat-team-development-deployment/

Hector Berrellez lead the murder investigation - Operation Leyenda into the death of DEA agent Enrique "KIKI" Camarena.
He was transferred to a Washington DC desk job when he discovered US intelligence involvement in the drug trade and ordered a criminal investigation of the CIA. Berrellez was known as the "Elliot Ness of the DEA"
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3171195/

Phil Jordan was the head of DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) and the subject of the book "Down by the River" (soon to be a movie) by Charles Bowden. He also appears in the excellent article "the killer across the river" about the drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes
http://www.scribd.com/doc/129922529/Amado-Carrillo-Fuentes-the-Killer-Across-the-River-by-Charles-Bowden

Proceso Magazine (issue #1929) article October 20, 2013 “La Historia Secreta”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/183270365/1929
Proceso (issue 1931) November 3, 2013 Caso Camarena: Contra CIA mas evidencias
http://www.scribd.com/doc/181937687/prc-c-1931
Proceso (issue 1932) Nov 10, 2013 Caso Caro Quintero: La SCJN se congracia con Estados Unidos
La versión del piloto Plumlee: La Casa Blanca protegió a Caro Quintero (2 articles)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/184829101/Proceso-1932
Proceso (issue 1928) October 13, 2013 “A Camarena lo ejecutó la CIA, no Caro Quintero”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/176117957/Proceso-1928

777man

(374 posts)

48. Celerino Castillo III Video Interview Parts 1 to 7 (2009) Drug Trafficking- Central America

Reply to 777man (Reply #46)

Sun Jan 5, 2014, 03:14 PM

Jan 2014

Celerino Castillo III Video Interview Parts 1 to 7 (2009)

Interviewer - Alex Jones
Topics- George Bush, Col James Steele, El Salvador, Iraq, Covert operations, drug trafficking, CONTRAS.

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=1

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=2

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=3

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=4

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=5

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=6

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=7

Last edited Thu Feb 27, 2014, 11:59 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/02/phil-jordan-chapo-funded-epns-campaign.html

Phil Jordan: Chapo funded EPN's Campaign
Saturday, February 22, 2014

Phil Jordan was the administrator of DEA's El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC)

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/02/operation-gargoyle-persuit-capture-and.html#more

Operation Gargoyle: Pursuit, capture and confessions of El Chapo
Wednesday, February 26, 2014 | Borderland Beat Reporter un vato

Noticieros Televisa (2-24-2014) By Carlos Loret de Mola Fuente
Respectful, using no bad language, and in an even voice, Chapo
confessed to having killed between 2,000 and 3,000 persons

777man

(374 posts)

61. 3/1/14 Ex DEA Hector Berrellez: Narco-Villain “El Chapo’s” Arrest Packaged for Media Consumption

Reply to 777man (Reply #60)

Sun Mar 2, 2014, 04:35 PM

Mar 2014

Narco-Villain “El Chapo’s” Arrest Packaged for Media Consumption
Posted by Bill Conroy - March 1, 2014 at 4:25 pm

Former DEA Supervisor Contends Guzman’s Capture Was An “Arranged” Event
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2014/03/narco-villain-el-chapo-s-arrest-packaged-media-consumption

The recent capture of the notorious Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, longtime leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa narco-trafficking organization, was not what it appeared to be, according to a former DEA supervisory agent who still has a deep network of contacts in Mexico.

Guzman’s takedown, despite the media script portraying it as a daring predawn raid, was, in fact, an “arranged thing,” claims the retired DEA agent, Hector Berrellez, who led the investigation into the 1985 torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena. That cross-border investigation ran for several years and eventually led to the capture and conviction in Mexico of Rafael Caro Quintero, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo — considered the leaders of Mexico’s then-dominate drug organization, The Guadalajara Cartel.

“Chapo [Guzman] was protected by Mexican federal agents and military, by the Mexican government,” Berrellez told Narco News. “He was making [Mexican President Enrique] Peña Nieto look bad, and so the government decided to withdraw his security detail. Chapo was told he could either surrender, or he would be killed.”

Berrellez, who retired from the DEA in 1996, stresses that he is not speaking on behalf of the US government, but rather as an individual who has decades of law enforcement experience, including serving as DEA’s lead investigator in Mexico.

“This information comes from my sources, that I am still in contact with,” Berrellez adds. “I developed a large informant network in Mexico, including sources in the Mexican Attorney General’s office, Mexican generals and others. These people are still in contact with me.”

Berrellez says his version of what happened is further evidenced by the fact that Guzman was apprehended early Saturday morning, Feb. 22, in an unremarkable condominium tower in the Pacific resort town of Mazatlan, Mexico, without a shot being fired and no security detail present to offer a fight.

“This guy [Guzman] was bigger than Pablo Escobar [the infamous Colombian narco-trafficker whom law enforcers killed in 1993 in a rooftop shootout in Medellin],” Berrellez says. “He [Guzman] ran around with a several-hundred man security detail that included Mexican military and federal agents, yet, in the end, he is arrested like a rat in a hole. My sources are telling me it was an arranged thing.”

Finding Chapo

As remarkable as Berrellez claims may sound to some, there is evidence indicating that law enforcement authorities have known for years where to find Guzman, who has led the Sinaloa organization since at least 2001, when he "escaped" from prison. Still, law enforcers mysteriously failed to capture him — until last week.

Among the reasons for Guzman’s long run from the law, several law enforcers and intelligence sources told Narco News, was not due to the fact that he could not be found, but rather because Guzman’s security team was formidable and any move against him would have led to a bloodbath — not an attractive political or law-enforcement option.

An email penned by the head of the Texas-based private intelligence firm Strafor, obtained and made public in 2012 by WikiLeaks, echoes that analysis:

Chapo commands the support of a large network of informers and has security circles of up to 300 men that make launching capture operations difficult.

Once the security-detail obstacle was removed, Guzman became a sitting duck. One law enforcer with experience working in Latin America put it this way:

It seems Chapo put his life in the hands of the people he paid off [the Mexican government, if Berrellez is right, and the military and federal cops attached to his security detail]. But whenever the government wants to get you, they can get you. Look at Escobar, Fonseca, Gallardo, Quintero. They were all considered untouchable. Then, one day, it was in the interest of the government to get them.

Retired DEA agent Phil Jordan, who once led DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center, told Narco News that he was surprised that Guzman was captured under a PRI government. (President Peña Nieto is part of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI in its Spanish initials.)

“Chapo contributed a lot of money to the PRI,” Jordan says. “The PRI historically has been an ally of the cartels, and Chapo Guzman has contributed millions to their campaigns. All of that is documented [in intelligence reports] I have seen.”

After Jordan made similar comments to the Spanish-language TV station Univision recently, the DEA issued the following statement to the media.

Remarks made by retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Phil Jordan and those of other retired DEA agents do not reflect the views of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera was a significant achievement for Mexico and a major step forward in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking. …

The fact that DEA felt compelled to issue such a statement indicates that Jordan’s comments about the PRI’s complicity with narco-trafficking organizations must have hit a nerve in Washington, one DEA source told Narco News. Jordan’s allegations, if on the mark, also support Berrellez’ contention — and those of his sources — that Guzman was receiving protection from the Mexican government — including under the administration of President Peña Nieto. If we accept that, the question then becomes: Why was that support withdrawn?

Berrellez says his sources indicated to him that Guzman had become more of a liability than an asset for the Mexican government. The reform agenda being pursued by the Peña Nieto regime hinges, in part, on creating a perception that Mexico is winning the drug war and reducing the violence, so that it appears a safer bet for the billions of dollars in foreign investment (particularly in the oil-and-gas and tourism sectors) that Mexico is seeking to attract.

A free Guzman was deemed a bigger threat to that agenda than a defanged Guzman, and his capture, conversely, would provide the Peña Nieto administration with a big image boost, and so Guzman had to go.

“It was political,” Berrellez says.

And it’s clear the arrest of Guzman did give Peña Nieto’s administration a major image bounce on the global stage — given the avalanche of positive press that followed "El Chapo's" capture. And it comes at a time when Peña Nieto is seeking to promote reforms that position Mexico as a land of enchantment for speculators, investors and tourists.

A 14-page advertorial section that ran in TIME magazine in late December of last year, about two months prior to Guzman’s capture — which was paid for, in part, by the Mexican government — spells out the Peña Nieto plan for “progress.”

Osorio Chong says the series of market reforms means 2014 is the ideal time to invest in Mexico and that foreign investors are welcome to bring their money, knowledge and skills to any of the nation’s industrial, commercial and manufacturing sectors. [Miguel Angel Osorio Chong is Peña Nieto’s Interior Minister, the top post in his administration.]

… A former energy minister, Luis Téllez-Kuenzler, who is now president of one of the country’s most important financial institutions, the Mexican Stock Exchange, adds:

“Mexico is very investor-friendly. Anyone wishing to invest from any other country just needs to go to their bank or stock brokerage house and invest. It’s transparent, efficient and very easy to do.”

Berrellez is not the lone veteran law enforcer who does not buy into the conventional-media script manufactured for Guzman’s capture. Another former DEA agent, Mike Levine, a veteran of deep undercover missions, such as Operation Trifecta — which played out in Mexico in the late 1980s when the PRI Party also was in power in Mexico — describes the arrest of Sinaloa organization top-capo Guzman as “yet another drug war rip-off.”

Levine relayed to Narco News the following via email:

Here’s why it [Guzman’s arrest] perpetuates the drug-war shill game run by media: Two decades ago, I was part of an international undercover operation [called] “Operation Trifecta.”

On hidden video, our undercover “Mafia” [a ruse organization set up to sting Mexican narco-traffickers and corrupt government officials] was able to arrange a 15-ton cocaine deal directly with the Mexican military and representatives of the Mexican government, at least one of whom was tied directly to the incoming president of Mexico. As I detailed in NY Times Best Seller “Deep Cover,” CIA, State and the Department of Justice immediately moved to destroy “Operation Trifecta.” As is revealed in the book, the then-Attorney General of the United States actually blew the cover of our undercover team.

Due to a couple of hard-headed DEA and Customs agents, they were not entirely successful. Point is, what gave Chapo Guzman and ALL like him the power to become billionaire drug kingpins was the covert involvement of his own government in maintaining the flow of money and drugs through Mexico into the US.

… Understand that NOTHING has changed since this was shown and that while the covert involvement and support of the drug economy by the Mexican government — and those elements of the US government lending covert support to same — continues, there will be a continued flow of CHAPO GUZMANS ….

This link to a Youtube [video]

actually captures the undercover deal [that was carried out as part of Operation Trifecta]. The video was sent by overnight courier to the Attorney General of the US, who then blew our cover by warning the AG of Mexico of the impending arrests.…

Stay tuned….

see also--
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/08/us-government-informant-helped-sinaloa-narco-s-stay-out-jail

777man

(374 posts)

62. 2/28/14 Ex DEA Hector Berrellez& Phil Jordan: 'Chapo' Guzman had role in the 'Kiki' Camarena case

Reply to 777man (Reply #61)

Mon Mar 3, 2014, 11:43 PM

Mar 2014

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_25244835/chapo-guzman-had-role-kiki-camarena-affair-1985

http://latinotimes.com/latinos/1235959-el-chapo-guzman-had-role-in-the-kiki-camarena-conspiracy-ex-dea-says.html

Ex DEA agents Hector Berrellez and Phil Jordan:

'Chapo' Guzman had role in the 'Kiki' Camarena conspiracy, ex-DEA official says
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 02/28/2014 09:27:07 AM MST

Hector Berrellez, a former DEA supervisor who led the multi-year investigation into DEA Special Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena's abduction, torture and slaying at the hands of drug-traffickers in 1985, wants the U.S. government to extradite Joaquín "Chapo" Guzmán because of his alleged role in the Camarena affair.

Berrellez, who retired from the DEA in 1996, said that one of his witnesses during the investigation alleged that Guzmán was present during the torture-interrogation session of Camarena, and was ordered by a drug cartel leader to pick up Camarena's pilot, Alfredo Zavala, who was also tortured and killed.

"We have people in the U.S. witness protection program who say they are willing to give additional statements under oath to a federal agent or federal prosecutor concerning these details," Berrellez said Wednesday
"Back then, and this is already documented, Guzmán was an errand man, 'gatillero' (hit man) and understudy of the Guadalajara drug cartel that was led by Rafael Caro-Quintero, Miguel Felix Gallardo and Ernest Fonseca Carrillo," Berrellez said. "It was Fonseca who ordered a backup crew of 'gatilleros' for Zavala's kidnapping, and Guzmán was one of the members of the backup crew. He was also in the room when Camarena was being beaten because the cartel wanted to know how far the DEA had infiltrated their organization."

The investigation led by Berrellez lasted several years and cost millions of dollars. Numerous people were indicted and tried, some in Mexico and others in the United States. The big capos — Caro Quintero, Felix Gallardo and Fonseca Carrillo — were tried in Mexico and sentenced to 40 years in prison for their roles in the Camarena murder. Caro Quintero was released from prison last year on a technicality.

A spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department, Peter Carr, said Wednesday, "We'll decline to comment beyond the following: The decision whether to pursue extradition will be the subject of further discussion between the United States and Mexico."

Carr noted that seven federal judicial districts have cases filed against Guzmán: the Western District of Texas has a drug conspiracy and RICO (Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charges; Southern District of California, drug conspiracy; Eastern District of New York, money laundering; Northern District of Illinois, drug conspiracy; Southern District of Florida, drug conspiracy; New Hampshire, drug conspiracy; and the Southern District of New York, drug conspiracy.

Berrellez has joined with El Pasoan Phil Jordan, former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center and DEA special agent, in bringing out aspects of the Camarena investigation that were not made public in the past.

"We've been attacked for this, and our credibility has been questioned," Jordan said," by people who were not involved in the investigation and had no first-hand knowledge of what took place then or what is happening now."

While with the DEA, Jordan served as deputy chief of the cocaine section, and deputy chief of European operations. He also served as director of EPIC.

The DEA issued a single statement about Guzmán's capture and statements by Jordan and others:

"Remarks made by retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Phil Jordan and those of other retired DEA agents do not reflect the views of the Drug Enforcement Administration," the DEA statement said.

"The arrest of Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera was a significant achievement for Mexico and a major step forward in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking," the DEA said. "We congratulate the Mexican people and their government on the capture of the alleged head of the Sinaloa Cartel. The DEA and Mexico have a strong partnership and we will continue to support Mexico in its efforts to improve security for its citizens and continue to work together to respond to the evolving threats posed by transnational criminal organizations."

Berrellez said, "I would be a total nut case if I were to fabricate any of this. I am not an active federal agent, so I can't take the allegations into an indictment process, but interested agents and prosecutors can do this. We're waiting."

Berrellez said that during Camarena's 1985 torture session, Camarena's interrogators asked the abducted agent about money that Caro Quintero allegedly paid Camarena to leave his drug operations alone.

"It was something on the order of $4 million dollars that Caro Quintero had paid in bribes," Berrellez said. "But Kiki told the truth when they were beating him, that he didn't know anything about the money. What happened, we learned through the investigation, is that the police commanders that Caro Quintero gave the money to, which was supposed to be for Camarena, kept the money for themselves and lied about it to Caro Quintero.

"We found out that another DEA agent working in Mexico was dirty and did accept bribes from the Guadalajara drug cartel," Berrellez said. "Supposedly, the agency was going to deal with him and other aspects of the case later. The higher-ups wanted me to stay focused on the big drug lords involved in Kiki's murder."

Jordan said the alleged corrupt DEA agent "was holed up in a hotel with a 13-year-old girl when Kiki was kidnapped in Guadalajara. We were all very embarrassed about this."

In an interview Tuesday with Mexican TV network Televisa, Mexico's federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said that it is unlikely that Guzmán will be extradited anytime soon to the United States. Murillo said that investigators in Mexico are at the beginning of what is expected to be a lengthy investigation into Guzmán's operations.

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at 546-6140.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/frontera-list/join

777man

(374 posts)

63. 3/5/14 KILL THE MESSENGER RELEASE DATE - OCTOBER 10 2014 - PLEASE DISTRIBUTE

Reply to 777man (Reply #62)

Thu Mar 6, 2014, 02:26 AM

Mar 2014

Kill the Messenger, Starring Jeremy Renner, is Coming in October
Source: Focus Features
March 5, 2014
Tweet22 0

Focus Features announced today that Kill the Messenger, starring Jeremy Renner (Marvel's The Avengers, The Bourne Legacy), will be released on October 10, 2014 in limited theaters. The movie will then expand on October 17 and again on October 24.

The dramatic thriller is based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb (Renner) stumbles onto a story which leads to allegations that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications – and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.

Josh Close, Rosemarie DeWitt, Andy Garcia, Lucas Hedges, Tim Blake Nelson, Robert Patrick, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Michael Kenneth Wiliams and Mary Elizabeth Winstead co-star in the Michael Cuesta-directed film.

Read more: Kill the Messenger, Starring Jeremy Renner, is Coming in October - ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=115609&utm_medium=%20twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed#

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/board/thread/223590625?p=1

777man

(374 posts)

64. Premature Oscar Predictions: The 2015 Best Actor Contenders

Reply to 777man (Reply #63)

Mon Mar 10, 2014, 11:11 PM

Mar 2014

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/premature-oscar-predictions-the-2015-best-actor-contenders-20140310?page=2#blogPostHeaderPanel

Jeremy Renner ("Kill The Messenger&quot

As the only principle cast member of "American Hustle" not to get an Oscar nomination (and having given a performance at least as good as his colleagues'), Jeremy Renner must be feeling a little hard done by from the Academy this year. But the two-time nominee (Best Actor for "The Hurt Locker," and Best Supporting Actor for "The Town&quot

probably won't be licking his wounds for too long, as he's got a true-life story coming up that seems like it has a lot of potential to return him to the Dolby Theater. Renner has the lead in Michael Cuesta's "Kill The Messenger," playing investigative journalist Gary Webb, who uncovered CIA links to cocaine smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras backed by the Agency. Webb's reporting, which took many years, was initially discredited, but later proved to be pretty much on the money, but his career was left in tatters, and he later took his own life. It's a sort of "All The President's Men" vibe but with a more tragic ending, it seems, and with a promising director (Cuesta's best known on the big screen for "L.I.E," but has reinvented himself after helming the "Homeland" pilot) and cast, you can see why Focus have high hopes for it -- they just set it for the same October slot that helped them take "Dallas Buyers Club" to Oscar glory. It'll be execution dependent (the script is from Peter Landesman, who wrote the dire "Parkland&quot

, but if it comes off, Renner will certainly be a contender.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/jeremy-renners-kill-the-messenger-set-for-oct-10-release-1201125790/

Jeremy Renner’s ‘Kill the Messenger’ Set for Oct. 10 Release

777man

(374 posts)

66. Famous Quotes by Ex DEA

Reply to 777man (Reply #64)

Thu Mar 13, 2014, 11:34 AM

Mar 2014

Last edited Sun Jun 21, 2015, 02:43 PM - Edit history (15)

"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA."

--Dennis Dayle, former chief of DEA CENTAC.(Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies,and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. x-xi.)

"There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, on the payroll of, and carrying the credentials of,the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while involved in support of the contras."

—Senator John Kerry, The Washington Post (1996).

"our covert agencies have converted themselves to channels for drugs."
--Senator John Kerry, 1988

"It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras...We can produce specific law-enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been called off drug-trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security."

--Senator John Kerry at a closed door Senate Committee hearing

"...officials in the Justice Department sought to undermine attempts by Senator Kerry to have hearings held on the [Contra drug] allegations."
-Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee

“On the basis of the evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.”

Executive Summary, John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee Report. April 13, 1989.

We live in a dirty and dangerous world ... There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.

--1988 speech by Washington Post owner Katharine Graham at CIA Headquarters

"We were complicit as a country, in narcotics traffic at the same time as we're spending countless dollars in this country as we try to get rid of this problem. It's mind-boggling.
I don't know if we got the worst intelligence system in the world, i don't know if we have the best and they knew it all, and just overlooked it.
But no matter how you look at it, something's wrong. Something is really wrong out there."
-- Senator John Kerry, Iran Contra Hearings, 1987

"it is common knowledge here in Miami that this whole Contra operation was paid for with cocaine... I actually saw the cocaine and the weapons together under one roof, weapons that I [later] helped ship to Costa Rica." --Oliver North employee Jesus Garcia December, 1986

"I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years with less evidence for conspiracy than is available against Ollie North and CIA people...I personally was involved in a deep-cover case that went to the top of the drug world in three countries. The CIA killed it."
-
Former DEA Agent Michael Levine - CNBC-TV, October 8, 1996

"When this whole business of drug trafficking came out in the open in the Contras, the CIA gave a document to Cesar, Popo Chamorro and Marcos Aguado, too...""..They said this is a document holding them harmless, without any responsibility, for having worked in U.S.security..."

--Eden Pastora, Former ARDE Contra leader - November 26, 1996, speaking before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s

"I believe that elements working for the CIA were involved in bringing drugs into the country," "I know specifically that some of the CIA contract workers, meaning some of the pilots, in fact were bringing drugs into the U.S. and landing some of these drugs in government air bases. And I know so because I was told by someo f these pilots that in fact they had done that."

– Retired DEA agent Hector Berrellez on PBS Frontline. Berrellez was a supervisory agent on the Enrique Camarena murder investigation
.

"I do think it a terrible mistake to say that
'We're going to allow drug trafficking to destroy American citizens'
as a consequence of believing that the contra effort was a higher priority."
-
Senator Robert Kerrey (D-NE)

A Sept. 26, 1984, Miami police intelligence report noted that money supporting contras being illegally trained inFlorida "comes from narcotics transactions." Every page of the report is stamped: "Record furnished toGeorge Kosinsky, FBI." Is Mr. Kosinsky's number missing from (Janet) Reno's rolodex?

– Robert Knight and Dennis Bernstein, 1996 . Janet Reno was at that time (1984), the Florida State prosecutor.----on Sept. 13, 1996, the nation's highest law enforcement official, Attorney General Janet Reno, stated flatly that there's "no evidence" at this time to support the charges. And a week earlier, on Sept. 7, director of Central Intelligence, John Deutch, stated his belief that there's "no substance" to allegations of CIA involvement.

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central Americanallies ... have been documented by DEA as supplying ... at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply ... came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican CIA) ... other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega."

-- Michael Levine, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic

"To my great regret, the bureau (FBI) has told me that some of the people I identified as being involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelligence Agency."

--Wanda Palacio’s 1987 sworn testimony before U.S. Sen. John Kerry's Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics and International Terrorism.

“I sat gape-mouthed as I heard the CIA Inspector General, testify that there has existed a secret agreement between CIA and the Justice Department, wherein "during the years 1982 to 1995, CIA did not have to report the drug trafficking its assets did to the Justice Department. To a trained DEA agent this literally means that the CIA had been granted a license to obstruct justice in our so-called war on drugs; a license that lasted - so CIA claims -from 1982 to 1995, a time during which Americans paid almost $150 billion in taxes to "fight" drugs.God, with friends like these, who needs enemies?”

- Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, March 23, 1998.

CIA ADMITS TO DEAL WITH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE.“The CIA finally admitted, yesterday, in the New York Times no less, that they, in fact, did "work with" the Nicaraguan Contras while they had information that they were involved in cocaine trafficking to the United States. An action known to us court qualified experts and federal agents as Conspiracy to Import and Distribute Cocaine—a federal felony punishable by up to life in prison. To illustrate how us regular walking around, non CIA types are treated when we violate this law, while I was serving as a DEA supervisor in New York City, I put two New York City police officers in a federal prison for Conspiracy to distribute Cocaine when they looked the other way at their friend's drug dealing. We could not prove they earned a nickel nor that they helped their friend in any way, they merely did not do their duty by reporting him. They were sentenced to 10and 12 years respectively, and one of them, I was recently told, had committed suicide.”

- Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, September, 1998 from the article “IS ANYONE APOLOGIZING TO GARY WEBB?”

“After five witnesses testified before the U.S. Senate, confirming that John Hull—a C.I.A. operative and the lynch-pin of North's contra resupply operation—had been actively running drugs from Costa Rica to the U.S."under the direction of the C.I.A.," Costa Rican authorities arrested him. Hull then quickly jumped bail and fled to the U.S.—according to my sources—with the help of DEA, putting the drug fighting agency in the schizoid business of both kidnapping accused drug dealers and helping them escape…. The then-President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias was stunned when he received letters from nineteen U.S. Congressman—including Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democrat who headed the Iran-contra committee—warning him "to avoid situations . . .that could adversely affect our relations."

-Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, September, 1998 from the article “I Volunteer to Kidnap Oliver North”

"Drug trafficking has permeated all political structures and has corrupted federal, state, and local officials. It has deformed the economy. It is a cancer that has generated financial and political dependence, which instead of producing goods, has created serious problems ultimately affecting honest businessmen. The Attorney General's office is unable to eradicate drug trafficking because government structures at all levels are corrupted."

-- Eduardo Valle, former adviser, Attorney General in Mexico

Dennis Dayle, former head of DEA's Centac, was asked the following question: "Enormously powerful criminal organizations are controlling many countries, and to a certain degree controlling the world, and controlling our lives.Your own U.S. government to some extent supports them, and is concealing this fact from you."Dennis Dayle's answer:
"I know that to be true. That is not conjecture. Experience, over the better part of my adult life, tells me that that is so. And there is a great deal of persuasive evidence.

"He (Former Congressman Bill Alexander - D. Ark.) made me privy to the depositions he took from three of the most credible witnesses in that project, which left absolutely
no doubt in my mind that the government of the United States was an active participant in one of the largest dope operations in the world.."

--
Former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson

“
The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads”

--Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987

“… he was making millions, 'cos he had his own source of,… avenue for his own,..heroin.I'm sure we all knew it, but we tried to monitor it, because we controlled most of the pilots you see. We're giving him freedom of navigation into Thailand, into the bases, and we don't want him to get involved in moving, you know, this illicit traffic--O.K., silver bars and gold, O.K., but not heroin. What they would do is, they weren't going into Thailand, they were flying it in a big wet wing airplane that could fly for thirteen hours, a DC-3, and all the wings were filled with gas. They fly down to Pakse, then they fly over to Da Nang, and then the number two guy to President Thieu would receive it.”

–CIA Officer Anthony (“Tony Poe”) Poshepny May 17, 1988 PBS Frontline episode “Guns, Drugs, and the CIA”

(Poshepny was a legendary covert operations officer who had supervised the CIA’s secret war in Northern Laos during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the interview, Poshepny stated that the CIA had supplied air transport for the heroin shipments of their local ally, General Vang Pao, the only such on-the-record confirmation by a former CIA officer concerning agency involvement in the narcotics trade.)

"It is … believed by the FBI, SF, that Norwin Meneses was and still may be, an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency."
--CIA OIG report on Contra involvement in drug trafficking (ChIII, Pt2).
(Norwin Meneses was issued a visa and moved freely about the United States despite being listed in more than40 drug investigations over the two previous decades and being listed in an active indictment for narcotics. He has never been prosecuted in this country.)

“There is secret communication between CIA and members of the Congressional staff - one must keep in mind that Porter Goss, the chairman, is an ex CIA official- indicating that the whole hearing is just a smoke and mirror show so that the American people - particularly the Black community - can "blow off some steam"without doing any damage to CIA. The CIA has been assured that nothing real will be done, other than some embarrassing questions being asked.”

- Former DEA Agent Michael Levine, March 23, 1998. CIA ADMITS TO DEAL WITH JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE.

"If you ask: In the process of fighting a war against the Sandinistas, did people connected with the US government open channels which allowed drug traffickers to move drugs to the United States, did they know the drug traffickers were doing it, and did they protect them from law enforcement? The answer to all those questions is yes.""We don't need to investigate . We already know. The evidence is there."--
Jack Blum, former Chief Counsel to John Kerry's Subcommittee on Narcotics and Terrorism in 1996 Senate Hearings

“Several informed sources have told me that an appendix to this Report was removed at the instruction of the Department of Justice at the last minute. This appendix is reported to have information about a CIA officer, not agent or asset, but officer, based in the Los Angeles Station, who was in charge of Contra related activities.According to these sources, this individual was associated with running drugs to South Central Los Angeles,around 1988. Let me repeat that amazing omission. The recently released CIA Report Volume II contained an appendix, which was pulled by the Department of Justice, that reported a CIA officer in the LA Station was hooked into drug running in South Central Los Angeles.”

--U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters – October 13. 1998, speaking on the floor of the US House of Representatives.

“My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in Uzbekistan. I … watched the Jeeps … bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe. I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.” --Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray,2007

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469983/Britain-protecting-biggest-heroin-crop-time.html

This war with China … really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot any thing be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men’s minds to the dreadful guilt we are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the government of China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay in the pride of our supposed superiority. — Thomas Arnold to W. W. Hull, March 18, 1840

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/opiumwars1.html

"We also became aware of deep connections between the law-enforcement community and the intelligence community. I, personally, repeatedly heard from prosecutors and people in the law-enforcement world that CIA agents were required to sit in on the debriefing of various people who were being questioned about the drug trade. They were required to be present when witnesses were being prepped for certain drug trials. At various times the intelligence community inserted itself in that legal process. I believe that that was an impropriety; that that should not have occurred."

--Jack Blum, speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter.

"The CIA wants to know about drug trafficking, but only for their own purposes, and not necessarily for the use of law enforcement agencies. Torres told DEA Confidential Informant 1 that CIA representatives are aware of his drug-related activities, and that they don't mind. He said they had gone so far as to encourage cocaine trafficking by members of the contras, because they know it's a good source of income. Some of this money has gone into numbered accounts in Europe and Panama, as does the money that goes to Managua from cocaine trafficking. Torres told the informant about receiving counterintelligence training from the CIA, and had avowed that the CIA looks the other way and in essence allows them to engage in narcotics trafficking."

--1987 DEA REPORT

&quot US ATTORNEY WILLIAM) Weld claims he followed up with an investigation. But there is, however, no record that while Weld was the chief prosecutor for the U.S., that so much as one Contra-related narcotics trafficker was brought to justice."
--John Mattes, special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics.

(When the FBI was notified) "in fact they didn't want to look at the contras. They wanted to look at us and try to deter us from our investigation. We were threatened on countless occasions by FBI agents who told us that we'd gone too far in our investigation of the contras."
--John Mattes, special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics.

"There would appear to be substance to the allegations," "potential official involvement in...gunrunning and narcotics trafficking between Florida and Central and South America." "that the Justice Department either attempted to slow down or abort one of the ongoing criminal investigations."
---House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime chairman William Hughes (D-N.J.) 1987 press conference

"Cabezas claimed that the contra cocaine operated with the knowledge of, and under the supervision of, the CIA. Cabezas claimed that this drug enterprise was run with the knowledge of CIA agent Ivan Gómez."
--1987 DEA REPORT QUOTING A 1985 CIA REPORT

"what we investigated, which is on the record as part of the Kerry committee report, is evidence that narcotics traffickers associated with the Contra leaders were allowed to smuggle over a ton of cocaine into the United States. Those same Contra leaders admitted under oath their association and affiliation with the CIA."
--John Mattes, attorney, former federal public defender, counsel to John Kerry's senate committee

"we knew everybody around [Contra leader Eden] Pastora was involved in cocaine... His staff and friends... were drug smugglers or involved in drug smuggling."
--CIA Officer Alan Fiers

(At Ilopango) "the CIA owned one hangar, and the National Security Council ran the other."
"There is no doubt that they [agents from the U.S. government] were running large quantities of cocaine into the U.S. to support the Contras," "We saw the cocaine and we saw boxes full of money. We're talking about very large quantities of cocaine and millions of dollars."
"my reports contain not only the names of traffickers, but their destinations, flight paths, tail numbers, and the date and time of each flight."
--DEA Agent Celerino Castillo III said he detailed Contra drug activities in Official DEA reports, each signed by DEA Country attache Bob Stia.

an eight-page June 25, 1986, staff memorandum clearly stated that "a number of individuals who supported the Contras and who participated in Contra activity in Texas, Louisiana, California and Florida, as well as in Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, have suggested that cocaine is being smuggled in the U.S. through the same infrastructure which is procuring, storing and transporting weapons, explosives, ammunition and military equipment for the Contras from the United States."
----March 31, 1987 Newsday article

"What we investigated and uncovered, was the very infrastructure of the network that had the veil of national security protecting it, so that people could load cannons in broad daylight, in public airports, on flights going to Ilopango Airport, where in fact the very same people were bringing narcotics back into the U.S., unimpeded."
--John Mattes, attorney, former federal public defender, special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics.

"Imagine this, here you have Oliver North, a high-level official in the National Security Council running a covert action in collaboration with a drug cartel,"

"That's what I call treason [and] we'll never know how many kids died because these so-called patriots were so hot to support the contras that they risked several generations of our young people to do it."
--MICHEAL LEVINE, (DEA RETIRED)

"As a key member of the joint committees, he (HENRY HYDE) certainly played a major role in keeping the American people blindfolded about this story," Levine said. "There was plenty of hard evidence. … The totality of the whole picture is very compelling. This is very damning evidence. ...
--MICHEAL LEVINE, (DEA RETIRED)

(FBI Agent Mike Foster) "Foster said it (CONTRA DRUG TRAFFICKING) would be a great story, like a grand slam, if they could put it together. He asked the DEA for the reports, who told him there were no such reports. Yet when I showed him the copies of the reports that I had, he was shocked. I never heard from him again."

---Celerino Castillo III describes his meeting with FBI agent Mike Foster, who was assigned to Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh.

"My god," "when I was serving as a DEA agent, you gave me a page from someone in the
Pentagon with notes like that, I would've been on his back investigating everything he did from the minute his eyes opened, every diary notebook, every phone would have been tapped, every trip he made."

--Michael Levine (DEA retired) read Oliver North's diary entries, finding hundreds of drug references. Former Drug Enforcement Administration head John Lawn testified that Mr. North himself had prematurely leaked a DEA undercover operation, jeopardizing agents’ lives, for political advantage in an upcoming Congressional vote on aid to the contras (p.121).

"In my book, Big White Lie, I [wrote] that the CIA stopped us from indicting the Bolivian government at the same time contra assets were going down there to pick up drugs. When you put it all together, you have much more evidence to convict Ollie North, [former senior CIA official] Dewey Clarridge and all the way up the line, than they had in any John Gotti [Mafia] case." _MIKE LEVINE, (DEA RETIRED)

"With respect to [drug trafficking by] the Resistance Forces...it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people."
--CIA Central American Task Force Chief Alan Fiers, Testimony at Iran Contra hearings

"The government made a secret decision to sacrifice a part of the American population for the contra effort,"

-- Washington attorney Jack Blum before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1996. Blum had been special counsel to Sen. John Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on terrorism and narcotics.

(Reagan administration officials were) "quietly undercutting law enforcement and human-rights agencies that might have caused them difficulty," "Policy makers absolutely closed their eyes to the criminal behavior of the contras."
-- Washington attorney Jack Blum before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1996.

"For some reason, Webb's piece came up, and I asked the guys (Undercover narcs), 'So, what do you think? Is what Webb wrote about the CIA true?'" "And they all turned to me and said," Of course it is.'
--Writer Charles Bowden describes the reaction of drug agents during an interview, September, 1998

"Here's my problem. I think that if people in the government of the United States make a secret decision to sacrifice some portion of the American population in the form of ... deliberately exposing them to drugs, that is a terrible decision that should never be made in secret."

--Jack Blum, speaking before the October 1996 Senate Select Intelligence Committee on alleged CIA drug trafficking to fund Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980s, Chaired by Senator Arlen Specter.

---------

"The other thing that John found out over time -- and the seeds of that were so very early -- was the drug traffickers were moving dope to the United States under cover of the Contra war, and that the Contra movement, the infrastructure supporting the Contras, was infested by drug traffickers.

In fact, later on, we found one of the drug traffickers who Oliver North and the NSC [National Security Council] was working with to provide support to the Contras -- and we even got money ultimately from the State Department to support the Contras -- was moving marijuana by the ton into the state of Massachusetts, into New Bedford. It wasn't the only place he was moving dope. But it was one of the places.

So the disorder caused by the war was bringing dope into this country. Now, 10 years later, the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general investigated all of this, and found that the particular allegations and things that Kerry had looked at -- there was substantial evidence for every one of them. There was a huge amount of drugs relating to that Contra infrastructure. …"

-Jonathan Winer, former chief counsel to the Kerry committee (1985-1994), former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html
-------------------------

I remember Dick Cheney attacking John Kerry in 1986 for things John Kerry was saying about the Contras and the NSC and Oliver North. Every single thing John Kerry said was true. The attacks were aggressive, and were based on hopes, wishes, and politics -- partisan politics, not reality. John Kerry's reality was proven -- and it was proven -- when the plane went down in Nicaragua, and it turned out that that was tied to the National Security Council, and money out of Saudi Arabia, and money from the Iranians, and ultimately, as we showed, related in part to narcotics money, at least in other elements of the Contra infrastructure.

There were a lot of people who were mad at John Kerry for having been right. The Reagan administration was, of course, furious. They didn't want him anywhere near the Iran-Contra investigation, because he knew too much and he was too effective. That's what I believe it was about.
-Jonathan Winer, former chief counsel to the Kerry committee (1985-1994), former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html

"What we didn't know was, [at] the time that John Kerry made the decision not to go after Oliver North and to go after the other violations of law that we saw, that Oliver North was going after John Kerry. If you look at Oliver North's diaries, North had people calling him up, and giving him detailed information on every aspect of our investigation. Week after week, month after month, in 1986, Oliver North's diaries have references to John Kerry. North understood that the Kerry investigation was a real risk to his ability to continue to engage in the illegal activity he was engaging in."
-Jonathan Winer, former chief counsel to the Kerry committee (1985-1994), former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html

-----------------------
2013-2014 EX-DEA SUPERVISORS BLAME CIA FOR DEATH OF DEA AGENT ENRIQUE "KIKI" CAMARENA

“It was I who directed the investigation into the death of Camarena” “During this investigation, we discovered that some members of a U.S. intelligence agency, who had infiltrated the DFS (the Mexican Federal Security Directorate), also participated in the kidnapping of Camarena. Two witnesses identified Felix Ismael Rodriguez. They (witnesses) were with the DFS and they told us that, in addition, he (Rodriguez) had identified himself s “U.S. intelligence.”

--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013. Berrellez lead the murder inestigation "Operation Leyenda"" into the death of DEA agent ENRIQUE "KIKI" CAMARENA

“Caro Quintero had billions of dollars stashed in secret bank accounts in Luxembourg and in Switzerland,” “The one in Luxembourg had $4 billion and the other one had even more.”
“To my knowledge they were never confiscated,”
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ, Forbes Magazine December 5, 2013

“In [Camarena’s] interrogation room, I was told by Mexican authorities, that CIA operatives were in there. Actually conducting the interrogation. Actually taping Kiki.”
--Phil Jordan (DEA-RET.), former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) October, 2013

"The CIA was the source. They gave them to us," "Obviously, they were there. Or at least some of their contract workers were there."
-EX-DEA Agent Hector Berrellez (COPIES of the audio taped torture session were provided to DEA within a week)

“The CIA ordered the kidnapping and torture of ‘Kiki’ Camarena, and when they killed him, they made us believe it was Caro Quintero in order to cover up all the illegal things they were doing (with drug trafficking) in Mexico” “The DEA is the only (federal agency) with the authority to authorize drug trafficking into the United States as part of an undercover operation”.

“The business with El Bufalo (RAFAEL CARO QUINTERO's RANCH) was nothing compared with the money from the cocaine that was being sold to buy weapons for the CIA”.
--Phil Jordan (DEA-RET.), former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) October, 2013

"I know and from what I have been told by a former head of the Mexican federal police, Comandante (Guillermo Gonzales) Calderoni, the CIA was involved in the movement of drugs from South America to Mexico and to the U.S.,"
--Phil Jordan (DEA-RET.), former director of the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC) October, 2013

He (Mexican Judicial Police Officer Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni) told me: ‘Hector, get out of this business because they’re going to fuck you over. The CIA is involved in that business about ‘Kiki’. It’s very dangerous for you to be in this.’ He gave me names, among them that of Felix, and details and everything, but when my bosses found out, they took me out of the investigation and sent me to Washington.
"He told me, 'Your government did it,' "
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013. Calderoni was killed in in McAllen Texas in 2003. His murder remains unsolved.

"Back in the middle 1980's, the DFS, their main role was to protect the drug lords,"
"Upon arrival we were confronted by over 50 DFS agents pointing machine guns and shotguns at us--the DEA. They told us we were not going to take Caro Quintero," "Well, Caro Quintero came up to the plane door waved a bottle of champagne at the DEA agents and said, 'My children, next time, bring more guns.' And laughed at us."
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013. (Caro Quintero allegedly carried DFS credentials during the escape flight piloted by a CIA Contractor.)

"Our intelligence agencies were working under the cover of DFS. And as I said it before, unfortunately, DFS agents at that time were also in charge of protecting the drug lords and their monies,"
"After the murder of Camarena, (Mexico's) investigation pointed that the DFS had been complicit along with American intelligence in the kidnap and torture of Kiki. That's when they decided to disband the DFS."
--EX DEA AGENT HECTOR BERRELLEZ October, 2013

"I know what these men are saying is true, that the Contras were trafficking in drugs while the CIA looked the other way, because I served in the trenches of Latin America for six years when this was going on,"
--EX DEA agent Celerino Castillo III, October, 2013.

“I don’t know of any DEA administrator that I worked for who would have sanctioned cocaine smuggling into the United States in the name of national security, when we are out there risking our lives,”
--Phil Jordan

“Kiki said, ‘That’s horseshit. You’re lining your pockets,’” “He could not believe that the U.S. government could be running drugs into the United States.”
-Phil Jordan

"the use of a drug dealer’s property by the CIA for the purpose of helping the Contras didn’t sit well with the DEA agents."
“That’s the way we’re brought up, so to speak,” he said. “When we see someone running drugs, we want to bust them, not work with them.”
--Phil Jordan

“The Contras were running drugs from Central America and the Contras were providing drugs to street gangs in Los Angeles. That’s your connection.”
--Hector Berrellez

"We've been attacked for this, and our credibility has been questioned, by people who were not involved in the investigation and had no first-hand knowledge of what took place then or what is happening now."
-Phil Jordan

“We’re not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena,” Jordan said. But the “consensual relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that included drug trafficking” contributed to Camarena’s death, he added.
“I don’t have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the national security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity that leads to the murder of one our agents,”
--Phil Jordan

"We have people in the U.S. witness protection program who say they are willing to give additional statements under oath to a federal agent or federal prosecutor concerning these details," ....I am not an active federal agent, so I can't take the allegations into an indictment process, but interested agents and prosecutors can do this. We're waiting."
-Hector Berrellez

--------------From "The Pariah" by Charles Bowden, Esquire Magazine, September, 1998

"When the Big Dog gets off the porch, watch out."
"The CIA's mission is to break laws and be ruthless. And they are dangerous."

--EX DEA Agent Mike Holm, September, 1998, Esquire Magazine article "The Pariah" by Charles Bowden

"stand down because of national security."

--DEA agent Mike Holm (Holm's superiors at DEA's reaction to reports that Southern Air Transport, a CIA-contracted airline, was landing planeloads of cocaine at Homestead Air Force)

"There ain't no fucking drug war," he says now. "I was even called un-American. Nobody cares about this shit.
"As I read (about Gary Webb), I thought, This shit is true,"

--Hector Berrellez checked into a blank schedule for one year after being transferred to Washington DC desk job. He had ordered a criminal investigation of the CIA and drug trafficking. His informants were "reporting strange fortified bases scattered around Mexico, ...and, his informants told him, the planes were shipping drugs." Berrellez went to Mexico City to meet with his DEA superiors and American-embassy staff, mentioned the reports and was told, Stay away from those bases; they're our training camps, special operations"

"Remarks made by retired Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Phil Jordan and those of other retired DEA agents do not reflect the views of the Drug Enforcement Administration,"
-- DEA statement, 2014

777man

(374 posts)

67. VIDEOS- Gary Webb- Kerry Committee- Iran CONTRA

Reply to 777man (Reply #66)

Tue Mar 18, 2014, 09:58 AM

Mar 2014

Website established July, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Kerry Committee II Day 1: Manuel Noriega, the CIA, and Drug Trafficking (1988)
The subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations led by Senator John Kerry began hearings to assess international narcotics control programs for Panama. Witnesses included Robert M. Morgenthau (district attorney, New York County, NY), Paul Gorman (retired U.S. Army General), a pilot for Eastern Air Lines (witness to drug trafficking in Panama and Miami, FL), and a drug trafficker serving a 30-year sentence for drug-related offences.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/08/kerry-committee-ii-day-1-manuel-noriega.html

Pete Brewton on the Mafia, CIA and George Bush (1992)
Former reporter for the Houston Chronicle, Pete Brewton told of one of the most momentous stories of the past 50 years and how it was suppressed by the establishment media and the U.S. Congress. Brewton's book The Mafia, CIA and George Bush shows the incredible complexity of the relationships in the operation of the destruction of hundreds of Savings and Loans at the hands of the CIA and the Mafia, stealing many billions of dollars in the process, and leaving the taxpayers to bailout the banks. Big names at the state and national levels of power were involved, including Lloyd Bentsen, the Bush family, and power brokers in Houston. People such as Kenneth Keating and Don Dixon, mentioned prominently in the press in connection with the S & L debacle, were merely front men or "cutouts" for the main movers. Keating and his ilk only took millions; the CIA and the Mafia looted billions.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/08/pete-brewton-on-mafia-cia-and-george.html

CIA and Drugs: Cocaine Sales - Drug Trafficking Allegations (1996)
Members of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence heard testimony from two former Contra leaders (Adolfo Calero and Eden Pastora) about allegations that the CIA sold drugs in the U.S. to help finance covert operations against the Sandanista regime in Nicaragua. They denied any knowledge of the CIA either aiding or allowing drug sales to be used to fund the struggle against the Sandinista regime. Participants were questioned by Senator Arlen Specter and Rep. Maxine Waters was invited to participate in the questioning. At one point, the hearing was interrupted for several minutes while several members of the audience shouted accusations at the committee and the witnesses. Mr. Pastora's remarks were through an interpreter. The last segment of this hearing is missing audio on the original tape and is not included here.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/08/cia-and-drugs-cocaine-sales-drug.html
Sunday, September 26, 2010
CIA Drug Trafficking: Town Hall with Director of Central Intelligence John M. Deutch (1996)
CIA Director Deutch spoke to central Los Angeles residents at a town hall meeting about allegations that the CIA sold drugs in Los Angeles in order to finance covert operations in Central America. Rep. Millender-McDonald, who represented California's 37th congressional district, sponsored the meeting. The director stated that he had seen no proof of such allegations but that he would continue to pursue the matter if more people brought new evidence to the investigation. Many of the questioners were very confrontational. The allegations were originally raised in the San Jose Mercury-News
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/09/cia-drug-trafficking-town-hall-with.html

Friday, August 6, 2010
CIA Drug Trafficking Allegations Involving the Sale of Cocaine in Los Angeles (1998)
House Committee Select Intelligence members heard testimony concerning allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated the introduction and spread of crack cocaine in U.S. urban areas in order to fund Contra activities in Nicaragua. Representative Millender-McDonald testified that the report by the CIA Inspector-General was incorrect and that the committee must pursue its own investigation of the matter to uncover those responsible for this activity. Inspector-General Hitz outlined his office's report, which found no evidence of any links between the CIA and drug traffickers in Central America.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/08/cia-drug-trafficking-allegations.html

Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press - Lecture by Alexander Cockburn (1998)
Alexander Cockburn, co-author of Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, gave this talk in 1998 regarding the CIA, the international illegal drug trade, and the media's treatment of this issue. The impetus for Whiteout came after journalist Gary Webb faced evisceration in the mainstream media for his series on the CIA and drugs originally published in the San Jose Mercury News. In this wide-ranging speech, Cockburn covers numerous topics including the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling, the Mafia, assassination, Nazis, mind control, and its role in U.S. foreign policy.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/07/whiteout-cia-drugs-and-press-lecture-by.html

Gary Webb on Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (1998)
Gary Webb is the author of Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. He discussed his book, headline news and responded to audience telephone calls, faxes, and electronic mail. Topics included Bill Clinton, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Contras, the crack cocaine epidemic, CIA blowback, CIA drug trafficking, and drug smuggling.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/09/gary-webb-on-dark-alliance-cia-contras.html

Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Iran-Contra Hearings Day 1: Richard Secord Testimony (1987)
The proceedings began with opening statements from Senate and House committee members, including chairmen Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN). After two hours, testimony began with General Richard Secord, who testified voluntarily and without legal immunity. Secord described the network of private companies, known as the "Enterprise," that was used to sell arms to Iran and channel money and supplies to the Contras. Secord answered questions concerning the profits generated by the arms sales, the money that actually went to the contra supply effort, and money that remained in Swiss bank accounts.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/08/iran-contra-hearings-day-1-richard.html
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsecordR.htm

Iran-Contra Hearings Day 3: Richard Secord Testimony (1987)
Richard Secord was questioned on the profit-making aspects of the Contra supply operation. Secord maintained that he had no direct financial interest or motive.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/10/iran-contra-hearings-day-3-richard.html

Iran-Contra Hearings Day 7: Robert McFarlane Testimony (1987)
Robert McFarlane was questioned about President Reagan's knowledge of Oliver North's activities. McFarlane testified that North seemed to be in regular contact with CIA director Casey concerning contra support strategy. McFarlane answered questions from committee members on topics including the Boland amendment.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/12/iran-contra-hearings-day-7-robert.html

Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Iran-Contra Hearings Day 12: Felix Rodriguez Testimony (1987)
Felix Rodriguez worked with the Contra supply network that worked out of El Salvador. He testified that he became disillusioned with the Contra supply operation and expressed his dissatisfaction in meetings with members of Vice President Bush's staff. Rodriguez also testified that, during a meeting with Oliver North, North said that Congress wanted to get him but "they can't touch me because the old man loves my ass."
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/10/iran-contra-hearings-day-12-felix.html

Iran-Contra Hearings Day 18: Fawn Hall Testimony (1987)
Oliver North's secretary at the National Security Council testified concerning documents she changed, destroyed, or removed at North's request.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/09/iran-contra-hearings-day-18-fawn-hall.html

Ronald Reagan Testimony at the Iran-Contra Affair / Poindexter Trial (1990)
President Reagan testified in the trial of John Poindexter on charges related to the Iran-Contra scandal.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/10/ronald-reagan-testimony-at-iran-contra.html

OFF -TOPIC

MISC VIDEO (This site has great classic, hard to find movies)

United States Senate Watergate Hearings (1973)
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/09/united-states-senate-watergate-hearings.html

Secret Wars of the CIA: John Stockwell Lecture (1989)
John Stockwell talked about the inner workings of the CIA. Topics included CIA destabilizing governments in Angola and other countries and setting up drug cartels as part of covert operations in certain countries. After his presentation he responded to audience members' questions.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/09/secret-wars-of-cia-john-stockwell.html

Monday, September 6, 2010
The Secret War in Laos (1970)
This film is a CBS exploration of the history of the "secret" war in Laos, the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the war, and U.S foreign policy toward the country.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/09/secret-war-in-laos-1970.html

Alexander Cockburn on Journalism in the United States and How Americans Receive World News (1987)
Alexander Cockburn, a correspondent for The Nation, was interviewed to talk about his book Corruptions of Empire. The book is part biography and part a collection of Mr. Cockburn's writing. Mr. Cockburn was viewed as a radical journalist at the time and a self-proclaimed "socialist."
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/12/alexander-cockburn-on-journalism-in.html

Alexander Cockburn and Steve Forbes on Events in the News (1992)
Steve Forbes and Alexander Cockburn discussed the presidential election and the Republican National Convention. They also discussed their own political beliefs and opinions on the presidential candidates and responded to viewer telephone calls.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/12/alexander-cockburn-and-steve-forbes-on.html

Reefer Madness (1938)
Considered the archetypal sensationalized anti-drug movie, but it's really an exploitation film made to capitalize on the hot taboo subject of marijuana use. Like many exploitation films of the time, Reefer Madness tried to make a quick buck off of a forbidden subject while skirting the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930. The Code forbade the portrayal of immoral acts like drug use. ("The illegal drug traffic must not be portrayed in such a way as to stimulate curiosity concerning the use of, or traffic in, such drugs; nor shall scenes be approved which show the use of illegal drugs, or their effects, in detail.&quot

The film toured around the country for many years - often being re-edited and re-titled (Tell Your Children, Dope Addict, Doped Youth, Love Madness, The Burning Question). It was re-discovered in the early 1970s by NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and screened again as an example of the government's demonization of marijuana. NORML may have been confused about the film's sponsorship since one of the film's distributors, Dwain Esper, testified to the Arizona Supreme Court that Reefer Madness was not a trashy exploitation film but was actually sponsored by the U.S. government - a convincing lie, but a lie nonetheless.

That being said, the film is still quite enjoyable since it dramatizes the "violent narcotic's ... soul destroying" effects on unwary teens, and their hedonistic exploits enroute to the bottom.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/11/reefer-madness-1938.html

The Roswell Interviews: Glenn Dennis, Mortician, Roswell Army Air Field (1990)
This video recording contains an interview with mortician W. Glenn Davis, alleged firsthand witness to events at Roswell Army Air Force Hospital concerning recovered alien bodies.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/10/roswell-interviews-glenn-dennis.html

Nazi Concentration Camp Footage (1945)
U.S. Army film directed by George Stevens. As the Allies reached Germany, General Eisenhower ordered George Stevens to film the concentration camps. The camps were filmed and survivors were interviewed. This film was used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials.
http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2010/10/nazi-concentration-camp-footage-1945.html

http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.se/2011/07/vietnam-war-raw-footage-arvn-airborne.html

777man

(374 posts)

68. 3/19/14 IRAN CONTRA Independant Council Lawrence Walsh Dies at Age 102

Reply to 777man (Reply #67)

Mon Mar 24, 2014, 10:47 PM

Mar 2014

Last edited Sun Mar 30, 2014, 08:56 AM - Edit history (1)

Firewall: Inside the Iran-Contra Cover-up
March 21, 2014

From the Archive: The death of Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh on Wednesday at the age of 102 marked the passing of what is now rare in the American Establishment, a person who courageously fought for a truthful historical record, as Robert Parry explained in this 1997 review of Walsh’s memoir, Firewall.

By Robert Parry (First published in 1997)
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/21/firewall-inside-the-iran-contra-cover-up/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/politics/lawrence-e-walsh-iran-contra-prosecutor-dies-at-102.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/lawrence-e-walsh-iran-contra-special-prosecutor-dies-at-102/2014/03/20/bf505f74-b04a-11e3-95e8-39bef8e9a48b_story.html

http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-lawrence-walsh-20140321,0,445001.story

-------------------

December 18, 2012
The One Armed Bandit Goes to His Grave
The Contras, Crack and Senator Inouye
by THOMAS MOUNTAIN

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/18/the-contras-crack-and-senator-inouye/

777man

(374 posts)

69. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko

Reply to 777man (Reply #68)

Wed Mar 26, 2014, 12:12 AM

Mar 2014

Last edited Wed Apr 2, 2014, 02:57 AM - Edit history (2)

CIA reportedly employed several operatives, warlords and militant leaders deeply involved in Afghan opium trade
http://wtfrly.com/2014/03/21/cia-reportedly-employed-several-operatives-warlords-and-militant-leaders-deeply-involved-in-afghan-opium-trade/

SOURCE:
US funding ghost workers across Afghanistan: Report

US funding ghost workers across Afghanistan: Report
(PHOTO) US marines patrol through a poppy field in Helmand province.

Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:36PM GMT

A senior western audit officer has raised fresh concerns that US funds meant to help pay Afghan police salaries may instead be going to "ghost workers".

"I am writing to express my concern that the US may be unwittingly helping to pay the salaries of non-existent members of the Afghan National Police," John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction wrote in recent letter to top US-led NATO generals.

The revelation comes as the US and Afghan officials have blamed each other for embezzlement and corruption.

Afghan officials accuse the US of channeling funds to the Taliban militant group.

Afghan lawmakers say American helicopters have recently delivered several shipments of small arms and heavy weapons to the militants in southern provinces.

Senior officials in Kabul have also demanded an explanation from Washington over its aid to the Taliban.

Senior Afghan officials say the US military aid to the Taliban and its covert talks with the militants have raised serious doubts regarding the Washington’s goals in the war-torn country.

In addition to that, the Afghan counter-narcotics officials say foreign troops are also earning money from drug production in Afghanistan.

Reports say US-led NATO forces are taxing the production of opium in the regions under their control.

Drug production in the war-ravaged country has increased dramatically since the US-led invasion more than twelve years ago.

CIA has reportedly employed several operatives, warlords and militant leaders who are deeply involved in the opium trade.

The opium trade is the major source of Taliban financing. Afghanistan is the world's biggest supplier of opium.

Latest developments come as senior US officials say Washington has no plan to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan even after the 2014 pullout deadline.

JR/AB

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/19/355369/us-funding-ghost-workers-in-afghanistan/

___________________--
Opium Poppy Growth Booming In Afghanistan
January 19, 2014 8:00 AM
The U.S. has sent billions of dollars to Afghanistan for drug eradication, but to little effect. NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, who testified on the hill Wednesday about the future of counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.
JOHN SOPKO: They're growing more poppy now and introducing more opium than ever before
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/19/263921185/opium-poppy-growth-booming-in-afghanistan

Afghan opium production on the rise despite U.S. troops, inspector says
Wednesday Jan 15, 2014 12:11 PM (excerpt)

Citing the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Sopkp said the cultivation of poppy plants — used to make opium and its derivative drugs such as heroin — is greater today than in 2001 when the United States invaded Afghanistan.

Indeed, he said it’s the highest in modern history.

In 2012, Afghanistan produced 3,700 tons of opium, he said in his prepared remarks. In 2013, opium production was up almost 50 percent, with 5,500 tons produced.

Last year the amount of land used to cultivate opium poppies reached a record high of 209,000 hectares (about 516,000 acres) — up from 74,000 hectares (183,000 acres) in 2002, he said.

Sopko said the uptick in opium production and poppy cultivation are signs that the Afghan National Security Forces may be encouraging production.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/15/22316414-afghan-opium-production-on-the-rise-despite-us-troops-inspector-says

------------------------

March 20, 2014
Afghanistan Reconstruction

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko provided an update on the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and addressed future operations in the region and the upcoming elections.?He focused on the problem of corruption and said that if corruption continued unabated in Afghanistan it would likely jeopardize all the gains made in the country in the past twelve years.?He responded to questions from members of the audienc

http://www.c-span.org/video/?318383-1/ig-john-sopko-afghanistan-reconstruction
http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/alerts/SIGAR_14-4-SP.pdf

---------------------------
Afghanistan's Opium Trade Tripled After US Spends $10 Billion
Image: Afghanistan's Opium Trade Tripled After US Spends $10 Billion
Thursday, 16 Jan 2014 11:27 AM
By Courtney Coren
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Afghanistan-drugs-US-10billion/2014/01/16/id/547454/

UN: Afghan Opium Production Hits Record High
Image: UN: Afghan Opium Production Hits Record High
Wednesday, 13 Nov 2013 03:30 AM
http://www.newsmaxworld.com/GlobalTalk/afghanistan-opium-record-high/2013/11/13/

---------------------
The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade
Washington's Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade January, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-spoils-of-war-afghanistan-s-multibillion-dollar-heroin-trade/91

-----------------------------------------

Washington Supports the Multibillion Dollar Trade in Heroin? UN Report: Afghanistan Opium Production Up 49 Per Cent
By Global Research News
Global Research, February 23, 2014
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 13 November 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-supports-the-multibillion-dollar-trade-in-heroin-un-report-afghanistan-opium-production-up-49-per-cent/5368846
http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghan_report_Summary_Findings_2013.pdf

-----------------

Israel and the Iran-Contra Scandal: How Neocons Messed Up the Mideast
By Robert Parry
Global Research, February 15, 2013
http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-the-iran-contra-scandal-how-neocons-messed-up-the-mideast/5323076

_________________________

Afghan drug trade thrives with help, and neglect, of officials

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy NewspapersMay 10, 2009 '

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67723/afghan-drug-trade-thrives-with.html

Karzai's brother threatened McClatchy writer reporting Afghan drug story

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy NewspapersMay 10, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67823/karzais-brother-threatened-mcclatchy.html

Only small-time Afghan drug dealers serve time

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy NewspapersMay 10, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67721/only-small-time-afghan-drug-dealers.html#storylink=relast

West looked the other way as Afghan drug trade exploded

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy Newspapers May 10, 2009

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67722/west-looked-the-other-way-as-afghan.html#storylink=relast

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Thriving Afghan drug trade has friends in high places
By Tom Lasseter, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Sun May 10, 6:00 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When it's harvest time in the poppy fields of Kandahar , dust-covered Taliban fighters pull up on their motorbikes to collect a 10 percent tax on the crop. Afghan police arrive in Ford Ranger pickups — bought with U.S. aid money — and demand their cut of the cash in exchange for promises to skip the farms during annual eradication.

Then, usually late one afternoon, a drug trafficker will roll up in his Toyota Land Cruiser with black-tinted windows and send a footman to pay the farmers in cash. The farmers never see the boss, but they suspect that he's a local powerbroker who has ties to the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Everyone wants a piece of the action, said farmer Abdul Satar , a thin man with rough hands who tends about half an acre of poppy just south of Kandahar . "There is no one to complain to," he said, sitting in the shade of an orange tree. "Most of the government officials are involved."

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which was worth some $3.4 billion to Afghan exporters last year. For a cut of that, Afghan officials open their highways to opium and heroin trafficking, allow public land to be used for growing opium poppies and protect drug dealers.

The drug trade funnels hundreds of millions of dollars each year to drug barons and the resurgent Taliban , the militant Islamist group that's killed an estimated 450 American troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and seeks to overthrow the fledgling democracy here.

What's more, Afghan officials' involvement in the drug trade suggests that American tax dollars are supporting the corrupt officials who protect the Taliban's efforts to raise money from the drug trade, money the militants use to buy weapons that kill U.S. soldiers.

Islam forbids the use of opium and heroin — the Taliban outlawed poppy growing in 2000 — but the militants now justify the drug production by saying it's not for domestic consumption but rather to sell abroad as part of a holy war against the West. Under the Taliban regime, the biggest Afghan opium crop was roughly 4,500 tons in 1999, far below the record 8,200 tons in 2007.

The booming drug trade threatens the stability of the Afghan government, and with it America's efforts to defeat the Taliban and al Qaida in Afghanistan . The threat has grown not only because of the cozy relationships among drug lords, militants and corrupt officials, but also because of apathy by Western powers.

From the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks until last year, the United States and other NATO countries did little to address the problem, according to a Western counter-narcotics official in Afghanistan .

"We all realized that it will take a long time to win this war, but we can lose it in a couple years if we don't take this (drug) problem by the horns," said the official, who asked for anonymity so that he could speak more freely.

To unravel the ties among militants, opium and the government, McClatchy interviewed more than two dozen current and past Afghan officials, poppy farmers and others familiar with the drug trade. Seven former Afghan governors and security commanders said they had firsthand knowledge of local or national officials who were transporting or selling drugs or protecting those who did.

Most of the sources feared retribution. One man was killed a week after he spoke to McClatchy . Another called back a week after the interview and said he hadn't left his home in days, fearful that McClatchy's calls to verify his story would bring trouble. A third met on the condition that a reporter promised not to tell anyone that he still lives in Kabul .

"In this country, if someone really tells the truth he will have no place to live," said Agha Saqeb, who served as the provincial police chief in Kandahar , in the heart of Afghanistan's opium belt, from 2007 to 2008. Naming Afghan officials who profit from drugs, he said, would get him killed: "They are still in power and they could harm me."

The embassies of the U.S., Britain and Canada — the countries principally behind counter-narcotics in Afghanistan — declined to comment. A State Department report issued earlier this year flatly noted that: "Many Afghan government officials are believed to profit from the drug trade."

It also said: "Regrettably, no major drug trafficker has been arrested or convicted in Afghanistan since 2006."

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials in Kabul also refused to comment. Afghan and Western observers said the DEA had been hampered by inadequate staffing and by the difficulty of cracking down on drug trafficking in a country where local officials were implicated in it.

The corruption allegedly reaches the highest levels of Afghanistan's political elite. According to multiple Afghan former officials, Ahmed Wali Karzai , the brother of President Hamid Karzai and the head of the provincial council in Kandahar , routinely manipulates judicial and police officials to facilitate shipments of opium and heroin.

Ahmed Wali Karzai and his defenders retort that the U.S. government never has formally accused him of any wrongdoing.

In Kabul , President Karzai's office said no one could prove that his brother had anything to do with opium and heroin. The Afghan Attorney General's Office has received no complaints or evidence against Ahmed Wali Karzai , according to an official there who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations has officially charged him with involvement in drugs, and a former DEA chief of operations, Michael Braun , said the agency had "basically struck out" in trying to prove the allegations.

Ahmed Wali Karzai himself is defensive, saying that the accusations are part of a political conspiracy against his brother, the president. When he was asked recently about the allegations linking him to drugs and crime, he threatened to assault a visiting McClatchy reporter.

THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST AHMED WALI KARZAI
The narcotics trade in Afghanistan would be impossible without government officials and the Taliban on the payroll, said the man in the brown turban. "The link between them is a natural one."

The man should know. He's a drug dealer in Kandahar who provides money to purchase opium culled from poppy on local farms and arranges for it to be shipped to markets near the city.

The owner of several shoe and electronics shops in Kandahar , he sat in a plastic chair in a small office tucked away on the second floor of a bare concrete building. As he described the inner workings of the opium trade, he spat tobacco from under the fold of his cheek into a silken floral print handkerchief.

"The drug smuggler tells a police commander to transport a certain amount of drugs, for example, from the city to Maiwand District " — on the northwest edge of Kandahar province — "and pays him 100,000 Pakistani rupees," about $1,200 , said the dealer, who asked that his name not be used for fear of running afoul of local warlords or officials. "And then from Maiwand, he pays the Taliban another 100,000 rupees to take it farther," to heroin labs in the southern province of Helmand and on to Pakistan or Iran .

The dealer offered introductions to the Taliban or to the provincial governor, but there was one man he didn't wish to discuss: Ahmed Wali Karzai .

According to several Afghan former officials in the region, however, the major drug traffickers in southern Afghanistan don't worry much about getting caught because they're working under the protection of Karzai and other powerful government officials.

For example, a former top Afghan intelligence official recounted an incident from about five years ago, when, he said, his men arrested a Taliban commander who was involved with drugs at a key narcotics-trafficking point between Helmand and the Pakistani border.

Late on the evening of the arrest, a local prosecutor dropped by and said that Ahmed Wali Karzai wanted the militant released, according to Dad Mohammed Khan, who was the national intelligence directorate chief of Helmand province for about three years before he became a member of the national parliament.

Khan said he released the Taliban commander, a man known as Haji Abdul Rahim, because he didn't want to tangle with the president's brother.

A week after his conversation with McClatchy , Khan — a large man with a bushy black beard who had a reputation for dealing with enemies ruthlessly — was killed by a roadside bomb that most attribute to the Taliban .

Khan, however, isn't the only one to accuse Ahmed Wali Karzai of ties to drug trafficking.

In 2004, an Afghan Defense Ministry brigade reportedly had a similar run-in with Karzai. The brigade pulled over a truck in Kandahar and found heroin hidden under sacks of concrete, according to the corps commander who oversaw the unit, Brig. Gen. Khan Mohammed.

Shortly afterward, the brigade leader, a man named Habibullah Jan , got a phone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai demanding that he release the truck, Mohammed said. That call was followed by one from a member of President Karzai's staff, Mohammed said.

Jan later became a parliament member and publicly accused Ahmed Wali Karzai of being a criminal. Jan was killed last year in a sophisticated ambush in Kandahar under circumstances that remain unclear. The Taliban haven't taken responsibility for the attack.

" Ahmed Wali Karzai has very close links with the drug smugglers," said Mohammed, who was sipping tea as he sat on a cushion at his home in Kabul . "The house that he's living in in Kandahar right now is owned by a very big drug smuggler."

People who accuse Ahmed Wali Karzai of ties to the drug trade often don't stay around very long. Many Afghans were shocked last year when a TV station that broadcasts to several cities around the country aired a roundtable discussion in which one of the guests said he knew that Karzai was involved with drugs.

Although he isn't a current government official — he had part ownership in an Internet technology institute — Abdullah Kandahari is from Karzai's Popalzai tribe and has known the president's family for years. He also was an intelligence official for two years during the regime of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani , a political opponent of the Karzais.

Speaking by phone from Pakistan , Kandahari said he was forced to move his family out of the country and sell his business interests in the aftermath of the show; Ahmed Wali Karzai sent gunmen looking for him four times in two locations, Kandahari said.

Another guest on the show, a parliament member from Kandahar named Shakiba Hashimi , said that Karzai called her husband the morning after it aired.

" Ahmed Wali said that after appearing on that program, I would not have the courage to return to Kandahar ," Hashimi said. It was a gloating sort of threat, and Hashimi took it seriously: She said she hadn't been back to the province since.

Asked for comment about Dad Mohammed Khan's allegation and others during an interview at his palatial Kandahar home, which is protected by guard shacks, perimeter walls and sand-filled roadblocks, Ahmed Wali Karzai said he had nothing to do with drugs.

A few minutes later, he yelled, "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)" at a reporter.

Asked about Ahmed Wali Karzai , the president's spokesman said there was no proof that the president's brother was involved with the drug trade.

President Karzai has told the U.S. and British governments that "if they have any evidence against his brothers or close associates, they should come forward," said Humayun Hamidzada , the spokesman. To date, he said, there's been no response.

PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI : A PASSIVE ROLE?
President Karzai hasn't been accused of any connection to drug trafficking, but he appears to be powerless to halt some of his own officials' ties to it. The issue allegedly extends far beyond his brother.

A man named Syed Jan traveled through Afghanistan in 2005 with documents saying that he worked for a drug task force in Helmand province. The deputy interior minister for counter-narcotics, Col. Gen. Mohammed Daoud , had signed the paperwork. When Jan's car was stopped at a checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan , it was carrying about 425 pounds of heroin. That amount was worth about $580,000 on the Afghan wholesale market in 2005 and more than $5.4 million wholesale in Britain — which gets most of its heroin from Afghanistan — during 2006, according to figures from the United Nations .

Daoud told McClatchy the documents were genuine, but that Jan "was introduced to my office by President Karzai's office."

Appearing before a special narcotics court in Kabul , Jan was sentenced to 16 years. An appeals court then declared him innocent and released him.

Sareer Ahmad Barmak, a spokesman for a central narcotics-prosecution task force in Kabul , said that Jan had confessed to being a drug trafficker. "I don't know what he did, how much money he offered to the judges to get acquitted," Barmak said.

At the urging of Afghanistan's attorney general, President Karzai directed the appeals court to reconsider. While the case was pending, however, the Justice Ministry ordered that Jan be transferred from Kabul to a jail in his home province of Helmand, a move that Barmak said was illegal.

On the drive from the Helmand airport to the jail, gunmen ambushed the police convoy and Jan escaped.

It was obvious from the details that Barmak gave that the gunmen knew about the transfer in advance. A Justice Ministry official told McClatchy that Jan had simply slipped out of custody. The last anyone heard, he was living in Dubai or Pakistan .

Asked for comment, Hamidzada, President Karzai's spokesman, said, "I'm not aware of these little details, of one particular person carrying letters, (of) these little people doing little things."

Several former security officers in southern Afghanistan said that the story of Syed Jan was nothing unusual.

Mohammed Hussein Andewal, a former police chief of Helmand province, said that in 2007 his men caught an opium dealer red-handed with a large stash of drugs on his way to the bordering province of Farah.

Andewal said he was called first by a regional Interior Ministry commander and then by a senior official from the ministry in Kabul telling him to let the man go.

"I know very high government officials who have heroin storerooms in their own houses," he said.

Andewal said that if he had a map in front of him, he could sketch the bases and the movements of a drug-dealing ring of Afghan leaders in five provinces who pushed heroin through Nimruz province into Iran .

"If anyone could guarantee my security, I could give the names and draw the map," he said with a grin and then a shrug. "But I would get killed."

A former senior Afghan official who's worked in high positions in southern Afghanistan and the national government said he could list the bases and movements of Ahmed Wali Karzai's drug network as well as the names, home districts and jobs of the dealers in Afghanistan and Pakistan . However, the former official said he wouldn't want those facts or his identity made public, because he had the same worries as Andewal: a bullet to the head or a bomb on the road.

http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2009/may/may102009.html#4
VID and TRANSCRIPT

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3688

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Inside the Afghan drug trade

In a northern province, four law-enforcement officials describe life built around trafficking.

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / June 13, 2006 at 12:06 pm EDT
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

The Afghan police chief doesn't realize his voice is being taped. So pardon him if he brags about his life as a drug trafficker.

In a friendly conversation recorded in his home last summer, he tells of his quarrels with another drug-dealing police commander in the country's northern Takhar Province; about driving through a rival's police checkpoint with 500 kilos of heroin in his car; and his adventures in rescuing three heroin-smuggling friends from the clutches of Tajik policemen. It's just another part of the job, he says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/2006/0613/p01s04-wosc.html

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Afghan Officials In Drug Trade Cut Deals Across Enemy Lines

Afghan Officials In Drug Trade Cut Deals Across Enemy Lines March 21st, 2009

Toronto Globe and Mail
March 21, 2009
Corrupt politicians are safeguarding traffickers who then help the Taliban, Globe investigation finds
By Graeme Smith
KABUL — In the shadow of the craggy mountains overlooking the road between Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, a specially trained unit of police conducted a nearly perfect ambush of a drug dealer.
Officers surrounded Sayyed Jan's vehicle so quickly that his two bodyguards never had a chance to fire their weapons, and he was caught moving at least 183 kilograms of pure heroin.
But the Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan realized they had a problem when they discovered that Mr. Jan's powerful friends included their own boss. The drug dealer was carrying a signed letter of protection from General Mohammed Daud Daud, the deputy minister of interior responsible for counternarcotics, widely considered Afghanistan's most powerful anti-drug czar.
That along with other papers and interviews with well-placed sources, show that Gen. Daud has safeguarded shipments of illegal opiates even as he commands thousands of officers sworn to fight the trade. Some accuse the deputy minister of taking a major cut of dealers' profits, ranking him among the biggest players in Afghanistan's $3-billion (U.S.) drug industry.
Reached by telephone this week, Gen. Daud angrily denied involvement in drug corruption. "Your information is completely defective and deficient, and shameful for the prestige of journalism," he said.
The Globe and Mail's investigation of Gen. Daud highlights the wider implications of drug cartels operating inside the Kabul administration. It's a toxic triangle of alliances, as corrupt officials work with drug traffickers who, in turn, help the Taliban.
Some international officials still say the corruption is limited to isolated bureaucrats who supplement their meagre salaries with graft. But a growing number of informed observers now agree with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent description of Afghanistan as a "narco-state," saying they are concerned about networks of corrupt officials taking over parts of government — in effect, running branches of the state for illegal gain.
This is a problem for Canada and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, not only because Afghanistan supplies most of the heroin on their own streets, officials say, and not only because such large-scale corruption wastes the money and lives spent in support of the Kabul government.
More importantly, the routes used to export heroin also bring guns and ammunition into the country, giving firepower to those killing Canadian soldiers. The drug barons inside the Afghan administration are believed to be cutting deals across enemy lines, supplying cash and weapons to the rising insurgency.
The wolf as shepherd
One of the most notorious departments in Kabul is the anti-drug section of the Ministry of Interior, the Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan.
Gen. Daud has been responsible for the CNPA since his presidential appointment as deputy minister for Counternarcotics in 2004, and the force has grown to an estimated 3,000 drug officers across the country. But the and case studies gathered by The Globe and Mail paint a disturbing portrait of his role in the industry.
"You have chosen a wolf as your shepherd," said an Afghan police officer who worked with Gen. Daud.
The officer spoke on condition of anonymity, as did all other Western and Afghan officials who provided details about drug corruption.
Talking about narcotics can be dangerous in Kabul; in December, an outspoken judge who handled drug cases was dragged out of his house by masked men and executed with a gunshot to the head.
One of the few people who has discussed Gen. Daud's dealings on the record is Lieutenant Nyamatullah Nyamat, then serving as head of the counternarcotics police in Kunduz province. He gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times accusing Gen. Daud of running a drug business in northern Afghanistan and protecting other dealers; shortly after the article was published in 2005, Lt. Nyamat disappeared. Two sources familiar with the incident said British advisers to the CNPA scrambled to ensure the lieutenant's safety, holding a meeting in which Gen. Daud admitted ordering his arrest. (Gen. Daud now denies this.) The lieutenant was eventually released unharmed, and reassigned to a less active post in central Afghanistan.
The Kabul government has often emphasized the lack of firm evidence against its top members; Ms. Clinton's "narco-state" reference was angrily rejected by government officials earlier this year. Gen. Daud's boss, Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, specifically defended the counternarcotics force during an interview last month at his elegant offices in Kabul. When asked whether he still has confidence in the CNPA, Mr. Atmar nodded vigorously.
"Absolutely, absolutely," he said. "That's not to say some people may not be honest in their jobs, but this is an ongoing battle in every country, every nation, with every police force. By and large they are actually doing the right job with honesty and integrity."
Mr. Atmar's appointment to the Interior Ministry last fall was greeted with optimism among foreign diplomats, who hoped the well-regarded administrator would clean up corruption among the police. The minister says he has attempted to purge the senior ranks, removing 10 police generals and charging some of them with drug corruption in the few months since he took office.
Powerful figures in the ministry such as Gen. Daud remain untouched, but the minister said he can only take action with proof of wrongdoing.
"One unfortunate thing is that much of this is based on speculation," Mr. Atmar said. "Give me the evidence, and hold me accountable for action on that evidence."
The drug runner
The strongest paper trail connecting Gen. Daud with drug dealing comes from the arrest of Sayyed Jan, the infamous trafficker, on June 19, 2005.
Officials disagree about how much heroin Mr. Jan was carrying: one source said 183 kilograms, another said 192, and Gen. Daud himself said it was 250.
Sources also disagree about whether the dealer was wearing a CNPA uniform when arrested, but either way it appears he was operating with Gen. Daud's blessings until he was undeniably caught smuggling. A letter from Gen. Daud to the governor of Helmand province, dated March 15, 2005, introduces Mr. Jan as a "respected Haji," meaning a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and urges the provincial administration to assist Mr. Jan. The letter was signed with a flourish by Gen. Daud. The governor seems to have obeyed the counternarcotics chief, as investigators found two other letters written the same month, one from the governor telling the police chief to allow safe passage for Mr. Jan and another from the police chief repeating the instruction to his men.
A relative of Mr. Jan described him as a hard-working young trafficker from the southern province of Helmand who got started as a teenager during the Taliban regime, guarding small caches of opium in the desert. Mr. Jan founded his own drug business in 2001, his relative said, and the operation thrived under the new government as he bought protection for his refineries and transportation routes.
One of the dealer's biggest protectors was Gen. Daud, his relative said, describing a conversation in which Mr. Jan confided that he paid the deputy minister $50,000 (U.S.) for permission to run a single convoy through his zone of control. When speaking about the counternarcotics chief, the trafficker used a Pashto word that means "boss."
Another source confirmed that Gen. Daud received payments from Mr. Jan, but suggested they were based on 50 per cent commission on his drug profits.
That relationship seems to have broken down when a CNPA unit, apparently acting without Gen. Daud's knowledge, caught the trafficker with a vehicle full of heroin. Gen. Daud initially attempted to set Mr. Jan free from prison, but then reversed himself and declared his support for the prosecution.
In a complicated series of legal manoeuvrings, however, the young trafficker was transferred to a prison in Helmand where sources say a local official accepted a bribe of 1.8 million Pakistani rupees, worth about $28,000Ö Canadian dollars, to set him free. The dealer is now believed to be continuing his work outside of Afghanistan.
When confronted with this information, Gen. Daud said he cannot be held responsible for Mr. Jan escaping prosecution because it falls outside his jurisdiction. He denied taking money from Mr. Jan or any other dealer.
"Sayyed Jan fled from jail, but God willing we are chasing him to arrest him again and put him back in jail," the counternarcotics chief said.
Another arrest caught Gen. Daud by surprise in the summer of 2005. His own men, again apparently working without the direct supervision of the counternarcotics chief, captured a fuel tanker packed with an estimated 700 kilograms of raw opium on the outskirts of Kabul. The driver, Noor Mohammed, asked for permission to make a phone call; he dialled a number, and shortly afterward Gen. Daud's personal bodyguards rushed to the scene, brandishing their weapons and demanding the CNPA officers leave.
A tense standoff followed, then confusion as the CNPA bodyguards realized they were pointing their guns at fellow CNPA officers. Two Afghan officials who described the scene said they eventually settled the dispute by agreeing to take the tanker back to CNPA headquarters, and it's not known what eventually happened to the drugs. But those involved saw the incident as a clear example of Gen. Daud trying to protect some shipments.
"This is nonsense," Gen. Daud said, suggesting that drug dealers spread unfounded rumours to undermine his work.
Such anecdotes have spread widely, in fact, in Kabul's community of Western officials. But some take a sanguine view of reported corruption, especially when the reports concern a figure so prominent as Gen. Daud.
The former warlord
Born in 1969 to a family from the northern province of Takhar, Gen. Daud joined the anti-Soviet resistance as a teenager and became part of the famed militia of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the so-called Lion of the Panjshir.
After the assassination of Massoud no honorific needed in 2001, Gen. Daud worked with U.S. forces overthrowing the Taliban regime and was rewarded with control over a broad territory in the north.
As the country held its first presidential elections in 2004, however, Western officials became increasingly concerned that warlords such as Gen. Daud and their private armies would not fit into their plans for a heavily centralized government. Like other warlords, Gen. Daud was invited to accept a senior appointment in Kabul in hopes that he could be drawn away from his regional power base and integrated into the new regime.
This strategy worked, in some respects; officials say Gen. Daud no longer ranks among the country's biggest militia commanders, though he could still mobilize 4,000 to 6,000 armed men within 48 hours if necessary. He remains popular in his home province, where Western officials have been amused to hear villagers reciting poems in his honour.
Gen. Daud's supporters point out that many senior figures in the Kabul administration are implicated in drug corruption, and pushing them out of their jobs won't solve the problem. They emphasize that Gen. Daud appears to be reducing his involvement in the drug trade as he reaches middle age; his second wife is a U.S. citizen, and some speculate that he might try to clean up his business and eventually settle in the United States.
"Dealing with these characters is a slow process," a senior Western official said. "You can't judge them based on the past. You have to think about what they can do for this country in the future."
Others disagree, seeing the problem of corruption in more urgent terms.
"Fighting corruption and official involvement in drug trafficking in Afghanistan is as critical a challenge to rebuilding the country as defeating the Taliban," veteran ABC news correspondent Gretchen Peters writes in her forthcoming book Seeds of Terror, based on five years of field research along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The need for such reform becomes clearer as drug investigators find traffickers involved with another kind of contraband: weapons.
Two Western officials closely monitoring the problem said about 50 to 70 per cent of weapons that supply the insurgency arrive in the country by road, facilitated by corrupt figures in the Afghan government — a statistic that shatters the image of Taliban hauling shipments of guns and ammunition through snowy mountain passes, as usually portrayed by NATO leaders; instead, many insurgents apparently find it more convenient to buy supplies from corrupt authorities.
The profits are huge: a Kalashnikov rifle purchased for $100 or $150 in Tajikistan can be smuggled to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan and sold for $400. The fact that the same rifle might be used to kill a Canadian soldier — or the corrupt Afghan official who sold it — has not diminished the trade.
"This government is not working for us," said the relative of Mr. Jan, the trafficker, expressing his disgust with the business. "We hate the drugs. But this government is addicted to money."

http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/93291:the-afghan-war-spreading-democracy-and-heroin

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AFGHANISTAN: A HARVEST OF DESPAIR
The Lure of Opium Wealth Is a Potent Force in Afghanistan
Western officials warn of a nascent narco state as drug traffickers act with impunity, some allegedly with the support of top officials

By Paul Watson Times Staff Writer

May 29, 2005
Kunduz, Afghanistan

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-drugs29may29,0,415054,full.story

Afghanistan: Halbbruder des Präsidenten ein Drogenbaron?
KABUL. Eine Woche vor der Präsidentenwahl verschärft ein Drogenskandal im Umfeld von Präsident Hamid Karzai die ohnehin komplizierte und gefährliche politische Situation Afghanistans.
http://www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/politik/aussenpolitik/Afghanistan-Halbbruder-des-Praesidenten-ein-Drogenbaron;art391,240680

777man

(374 posts)

70. Congress Woman Maxine Waters' testimony before HSPCI (CSPAN VIDEO)

Reply to 777man (Reply #69)

Sat Mar 29, 2014, 04:54 AM

Mar 2014

The trials of Rep. Maxine Waters: Ethics or payback?
August 20, 2010 by Joseph Debro
http://sfbayview.com/2010/the-trials-of-rep-maxine-waters-ethics-or-payback/
(Videos from the above article)

When the Nicaraguan Contras began to covertly fund their war against the Sandanistas by selling drugs and guns to California street gangs, the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye. While Black neighborhoods were being ravaged by the crack cocaine plague, CIA operatives actively participated in this devastating drug explosion, protected from prosecution by a secret agreement between the Department of Justice and the CIA. – Video: http://www.prisonplanet.com/

Rep. Maxine Waters on CIA Drug Trafficking Part 1 of 4 (CSPAN testimony in front of HPSCI)
CitizenInvestigator

On March 16, 1998, the House Intelligence Committee heard testimony concerning a report on CIA involvement in drug trafficking. The testimony of Congresswoman Maxine Waters is recorded in these four videos.

Rep. Maxine Waters on CIA Drug Trafficking Part 2 of 4

Rep. Maxine Waters on CIA Drug Trafficking Part 3 of 4

&feature=player_embedded

Rep. Maxine Waters on CIA Drug Trafficking Part 4 of 4

777man

(374 posts)

71. EX DEA AGENT MIKE LEVINE'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL - (VIDEOS)

Reply to 777man (Reply #70)

Sat Mar 29, 2014, 04:56 AM

Mar 2014

Last edited Fri Apr 4, 2014, 07:09 AM - Edit history (1)

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MIKE LEVINE VIDEOS – EX DEA AGENT on YOUTUBE michaellevine53
http://www.youtube.com/user/michaellevine53

Mike Levine & Gary Webb - The Big White Lie + Dark Alliance= CIA drug cartel (Posted by EX DEA Mike Levine) Montel Williams show

Mike Levine at Mike Savage's "Savage Nation" Exposes "The Big White Lie" CIA sabotage of DEA
Mike Levine, one of DEA's most decorated undercover agents reveals the inside story of Operation Hun, the dream undercover assignment turned nightmare that blew the lid off CIA sabotage of the drug war. to Mike Savage's Paul Revere Society, an audience of 5000 at the Marin County Civic Auditorium.

Inside the DEA Sting that blew the lid off CIA drug trafficking
The Big White Lie, by NY Times best selling author Michael Levine, is an insider's look at Operation Hun, the top-secret deep cover operation that rips the lid off CIA sabotage of the war on drugs. Levine, interviewed here on Good Morning America, tells of his undercover role posing as the lover and drug dealing partner of Sonia Atala, the woman Pablo Escobar named "The Queen of Cocaine."

Caught on Camera - 1990 - 1st time in history Drug War called fraud by DEA insider (fixed audio)
The publication of Deep Cover was kept as undercover as the life of the man who wrote it.
In March 1990, on the Phil Donahue Show, Michael Levine was the first high level DEA insider to call the entire drug war a fraud on national television. Captured here only on Youtube is an important part of its true history available nowhere else.

Mike Levine comments March 2014
Sean:
Wrote two books describing how DEA undercover teams that did the unthinkable by penetrating to the very top of the drug world only to find themselves fighting for their own lives; we were threatening CIA assets who happened to be the biggest drug dealers on earth. : "Deep Cover" and "The Big White Lie, were written to prove this." The two have been optioned by everyone from Robert DeNiro to HBO Pictures, but never made into a movie. . . not yet anyway

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Exclusive: On Camera DEA deep cover sting of Mexican Government--15 ton coke deal from-"Deep Cover"
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Undercover DEA Agent, Mike Levine, exposes Mexican Drug War Fraud with Bill O'Reilly on Inside Edition. Real undercover video footage. This was the undercover sting operation whose cover was blown by the the US Attorney General; as covered in NY Times Best-seller "DEEP COVER." ON camera is Colonel Jaime Carranza, grandson of Mexican President who wrote the Mexican Constitution and a bodyguard for the then incoming president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Chapter "Waiting for Trial" outs those US governmentofficials who acted to protect the murderers of DEA Agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, while mainstream media and congress look the other way.

Mike Levine comments:

michaellevine53 2 years ago
In 1997, on my radio show ( see archives of Expert Witness Radio show), 4 agents with a combined 100 years experience in CIA, DEA and FBI predicted 9-11 and more terrorist acts and trafficking by DEA Informants and CIA agents to come; all due to the massive ineptitude and criminality that, due to the ease of media manipulation, was and continues to be hidden from America. Nothing has changed. Of course the drugs are still pouring in, the names of operations are unimportant.

michaellevine53 4 years ago
I retired in 1990. In answer to your second question: I wrote three books—DEEP COVER, THE BIG WHITE LIE and FIGHT BACK—that combined, in the opnion of many, indicate that not only can it not be won, but that it is only the American taxpayer who is conned into believing that it can be won. How? Read MAINSTREAM MEDIA THE DRUG WAR SHILLS.
michaellevine53 2 years ago
Absolutely! That IS the story of NY Times Bestseller Deep Cover... It, for example, exposes that Edwin Meece, the US AG blew the cover of Operation Trifecta a 15 ton cocaine deal which included top Mexican government military and political figures.. Reason: NAFTA was before the US congress, and there were many members of congress against it; can you imagine what would have happened if the events in DEEP COVER were public at that time? You can buy it for a buck or two on Amazon...

"CIA are drug smugglers." - Federal Judge Bonner, head of DEA- You don't get better proof than this (POSTED BY EX DEA MIKE LEVINE)
60 Minutes presses for the truth, and Robert C. Bonner, former federal judge and head of the DEA, calls the CIA "drug smugglers." This video is dedicated to all those lives lost in the War on Drugs, while the CIA betrayed us.

the full transcript is here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/131231070/60-MINUTES-Head-of-DEA-Robert-Bonner-Says-CIA-Smuggled-Drugs
Mike Levine Comments— michaellevine53 1 year ago
in reply to Ben Dover
my friend. Judge Bonner is still alive, so am I and so are the other DEA agents who appeared in the original 60 minute piece as witnesses detailing the case. the CIA agent who "masterminded" the smuggling of as much as 27 tons of cocaine into the US,(worse than Pablo Escobar) was named, and at the time was the CIA station chief of Venezuela. no one was prosecuted The reason i Posted it here is that , thanks to the use of taxpayer funds to manipulate media, few are aware of this scandal.
michaellevine53 2 years ago
The fact is that Bonner didn't take a bullet, he was just ignored. CIA director (then) Woolsey toured mainstream media making the false claim that the drug smuggling resulted from "a joint DEA CIA operation gone wrong." The fact is that DEA had no part in the operations which was, as the judge said,"CIA drug smuggling." 60 Minutes was the ONLY member of mainstream media to tell the truth.. The rest did their customary penguin walk. What a shame.
michaellevine53 1 year ago in reply to TheUnknownGrower
The whole investigation conducted by DEA, revealed that they were only caught for one ton, after they had gotten away with 26 tons over the previous year. Check out some of our radio shows. Bottom line is they smuggled more dope than the Medellin Cartel
michaellevine53 2 years ago
You've got to remember that during operation Trifecta (the deep cover operation in the book), Carlos Salinas de Gortari's bodyguard, on hidden video, promised me a wide open border to traffic drugs from Mexico into the US, if we completed the 15 ton drug deal we were in the midst of...NAFTA was then on the table before Congress... Ergo a lot of powerful people in our government that wanted the operation to fail before the American people became aware of it..That IS the real story in Deep Cover
michaellevine53 1 year ago in reply to Katie Nelson
Katie: My first lesson in this came, as I documented in THE BIG WHITE, when CIA betrayed both the American people and the Bolivian government that trusted us, by supporting the drug traffickers in the takeover of Bolivia in the now infamous Cocaine Coup. It was the bloodiest revolution in that poor country;s history and the beginning of the crack/cocaine epidemic in ours.
michaellevine53 2 years ago
I did my own investigation including interviews with DEA people involved, before I went public on my radio show - the Expert Witness Show in NYC. The investigation revealed that as much as 27 tons of cocaine were shipped into the US by CIA before they were finally caught by US Customs. The CIA chief who ran it was named by 60 Minutes. No one was either prosecuted or lost their jobs, except for the DEA people who blew the whistle. With "protectors" like this who needs enemies?
michaellevine53 2 years ago
The problem with answering your question is that it's the wrong question. It should by what logical reason would CIA have to be in bed with drug traffickers? First, is called "the junkie tax." CIA assets and black operations not funded by congress become self-funded via "licenses" to smuggle to the US. Two: There is no oversight of the CIA whatsoever, thus any "enterprising" officer can cut himself in on his asset's drug profits. If he get's caught, as in the 60 Minute piece, he's promoted.
michaellevine53 2 years ago
Where was congress? Great question. The book DEEP COVER was voted one of the most censored by the media books of the year, by BILL MOYERS "Project Censored." Off camera, Mr. Moyers told me it was "the best read and least talked about book between the beltways. (Wash. DC)." It was almost funny. Meaning Congress wanted badly to ignore the book and its charges... If we had a responsible Congress, there would be no CIA supported drug traffickers, and Mexico would not be in the fix its in now.
michaellevine53 1 year ago
Let's start by demanding indictments in THIS case; we have solid evidence and credible DEA witnesses including a federal judge. Why go off on a conspiratorial tangent if we can't get an indictment in a case of CIA getting caught actually smuggling massive amounts of cocaine into the nation they're supposed to protect? When I was boxing on a USAF boxing team my coach said "if you open a cut keep hitting it till they stop they fight or the guy bleeds all over you." I'm giving you the cut.

michaellevine53 2 years ago
In DEEP COVER, when you come to the part where the attorney general EDWIN MEECE, blows the cover of our undercover operation with a telephone call to the AG of Mexico (one of our targets) , WHILE the team was undercover in Bolivia, Panama and Mexico. Underline that passage, because the special interests have not changed.. Remember the book was a NEW YORK TIMES bestseller, and the charge would be libelous as hell were it not true. Then ask yourself why mainstream media ignored the claim.
michaellevine53 2 years ago
My friend, this video is only a short excerpt of an extensive investigation conducted by 6"60 minutes", which in turn was based on a joint secret investigation conducted by CIA and DEA internal security. Which resulted in Judge Bonner, the head of DEA making this statement... What more do you need? I suggest you read THE BIG WHITE LIE And DEEP COVER for even more detailed proof
michaellevine53 1 year ago in reply to Paul Rael
Mr. P: I may have a problem posting the entire show on youtube, but we have used the soundtrack on radio shows that you can find on the web site for The Expert Witness Radio show.. During these shows we discussed the findings that CIA, in fact, was caught smuggling lge quantities of cocaine that the people named in this brilliant investigative piece "should" have been indicted. If this is not enough I will have my producer and co-host digitize the 60 Minute piece and put it up on that site
michaellevine53 2 years ago
I wrote about Noriega in "Deep Cover"-- A DEA and Customs undercover team was dealing with his people in Panama while he was still a CIA asset and protected by CIA. I don't think you will believe what happened unless you read the book and understand that every event was documented by secretly recorded audio and video. The book was a NY Times bestseller and Congress just pretended it didn't exist. Sadly, nothing has changed.

UNODC Sees Afghan Drug Cartels Emerging – With One Eye Closed
Author: Thomas Ruttig Date: 5 September 2009
U.N. Sees Afghan Drug Cartels Emerging’, reads a headline in the 2 September issue of the New York Times. Now the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) got it. Or did it?
http://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/unodc-sees-afghan-drug-cartels-emerging-with-one-eye-closed
Former Afghan interior minister and almost-Karzai-challenger Ali Ahmad Jalali had rang alarm bells already in fall 2005 when, while declaring his resignation, he said that his ministry had a list of 100 top officials who were being watched for evidence of drug trafficking and he would make them public soon. But he never did. Jalali’s words were echoed by Vice President Ahmad Zia Massud two years later: ‘We should admit that some top-ranking government officials are unfortunately linked to the smuggling of drugs.’ (Pajhwok Afghan News 27 September 2007).

Thomas Schweich, until June 2008 the state department’s co-ordinator for counter-narcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan, adds in an article for the New York Times Magazine (27 July 2008, ‘Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?’): ‘Karzai had Taleban enemies who profited from drugs but he had even more supporters who did’.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/magazine/27AFGHAN-t.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Top U.S. Government Officials Admit that Our Government Has Repeatedly Protected Drug Smugglers (9 Videos)
Posted on May 27, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/has-the-u-s-government-ever-protected-drug-smugglers.html

________________________-

CELE CASTILLO'S VIDEOS (14 videos)
http://powderburns.org/archives.html#date

View Dateline NBC's story about CIA Drug Trafficking into the United States, especially South Central Los Angeles. The piece shows the participation of the CIA funded Contras using Cia planes and flying the cocaine into Arkansas and Texas. Dateline interviews the late Gary Webb, Cele Castillo, Ricky Ross and John Kerry.

777man

(374 posts)

72. ARCHIVED LINKS ----- Kevin Warren's site www.wethepeople.la , FAIR, COMPLETE KERRY REPORT ONLINE

Reply to 777man (Reply #71)

Mon Mar 31, 2014, 04:26 PM

Mar 2014

Attorney Kevin Warren's site in Los Angeles has been down

here is the link to the archived version in archive.org

WE THE PEOPLE
https://web.archive.org/web/20100210185054/http://www.wethepeople.la/ciadrugs.htm

_________________-
NARCO-COLONIALISM IN THE 20TH CENTURY - EX DEA AGENTS SPEAK

https://web.archive.org/web/20120208083401/http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/

FAIRNESS AND ACCURACY IN MEDIA COVERAGE OF CONTRA CRACK
http://web.archive.org/web/20121025005853/http://www.fair.org/issues-news/contra-crack.html
Gary Webb Explains how the media caved in
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/taking-a-dive-on-contra-crack/
http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/exposed-the-contra-crack-connection/
------------------------------------------------

RUSS KICK's THE MEMORY HOLE -- THE KERRY REPORT ONLINE! (3 parts)

"Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy"
a/k/a the Kerry Report Transcripts

https://web.archive.org/web/20070104000306/http://www.thememoryhole.com/kerry/

Part One

Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Communications and International Economic Policy, Trade, Oceans and Environment of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, First Session, May 27, July 15, and October 30, 1987

Part Two: Panama

Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Communications of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, Second Session, February 8, 9, 10, and 11, 1988

entire volume in one Acrobat file [27 meg]

Part Three: The Cartel, Haiti and Central America

Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Communications of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundredth Congress, Second Session, April 4, 5, 6, and 7, 1988

entire volume in one Acrobat file [22 meg]

KERRY REPORT
Background

>>> In 1987/8, two subcommittees of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held three 14 days of hearings on drug trafficking. Headed by Sen. John F. Kerry (D - Mass.), the panel heard evidence of official corruption in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. The next year, the government published the transcripts in a 4-volume set that has remained a touchstone for anyone interested in narco-corruption, particularly as it involves US intelligence agencies.

The trouble is, this 1,800-page goldmine of information has been incredibly hard to find. The Memory Hole's copy was given to me by a friend of the family—Lorenzo Hagerty—who told me an interesting story. As soon as the Kerry Report was published, Lorenzo ordered a set of the transcripts from the Government Printing Office. When it arrived, he began reading it and realized how important it was. He immediately called the GPO to order another set. He was told that the set was already out of print and would not be published again. It had been available to the public for one single week.

Small portions of the Kerry Report transcripts have been published online, but they are only a fraction of the entire four volumes. The Memory Hole is planning to scan and post the entire thing. The first volume has been posted as HTML, and the second two have gone up as Acrobat files. The front page and the email updates will contain notifications when the final volume is posted.

The one-volume final report based on these hearings—also very rare—has been scanned and posted by the National Security Archive. It's available here [PDF format]

More info about the hearings is here.

SOME FINDINGS:

"The Subcommittee found that the Contra drug links included:

Involvement in narcotics trafficking by individuals associated with the Contra movement.

Participation of narcotics traffickers in Contra supply operations through business relationships with Contra organizations.

Provision of assistance to the Contras by narcotics traffickers, including cash, weapons, planes, pilots, air supply services and other materials, on a voluntary basis by the traffickers.

Payments to drug traffickers by the US State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies."

Senate Committee Report on Drugs,
Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy
chaired by Senator John F. Kerry

-------------------
______________________________

MOTHER JONES COVERAGE of "A TAINTED DEAL"
https://web.archive.org/web/20050420101319/http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1998/06/cia.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20050405214411/http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/total_coverage/coke.html

PETER DALE SCOTT SITE

http://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html

PROFESSOR BeN ATTIA's siite- CAL STATE Northridge

https://web.archive.org/web/20080304020543/http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/

GARY WEBB SPEECH on PARASCOPE-

https://web.archive.org/web/20001119011800/http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/garywebb/garyWebbSpeaks.htm

______________________________________________________-----

For the paranoid, you can read the internal investigation on a 3rd party site

ALLEGATIONS OF CONNECTIONS BETWEEN CIA
AND THE CONTRAS IN COCAINE TRAFFICKING
TO THE UNITED STATES (1)
(96-0143-IG)

Volume II: The Contra Story
http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MENA/CIAREPORT/contents.html

777man

(374 posts)

73. 3/31/2014 Nathan Johnson Scoring ‘Kill the Messenger’

Reply to 777man (Reply #72)

Mon Mar 31, 2014, 05:09 PM

Mar 2014

Nathan Johnson Scoring ‘Kill the Messenger’
Posted: March 31, 2014 by film music reporter in Film Scoring Assignments
Tags: Kill the Messenger, Michael Cuesta, Nathan Johnson
http://filmmusicreporter.com/2014/03/31/nathan-johnson-scoring-kill-th e-messenger/

kill-the-messengerNathan Johnson is composing the score for the upcoming dramatic thriller Kill the Messenger. The film is directed by Michael Cuesta (Homeland,Â 12 and Holding)Â and stars Jeremy Renner as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rosemarie DeWitt, Andy Garcia, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Josh Close, Lucas Hedges, Tim Blake Nelson, Robert Patrick, Barry Pepper and Michael Kenneth Wiliams are co-starring. The movie follows Webb as he stumbles onto a story which leads to allegations that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S. and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Peter Landesman (Parkland) has written the screenplay. Scott Stuber (Ted, Safe House, Role Models) is producing the Bluegrass Films production with Renner and Naomi Despres. Kill the Messenger is set to be releasd on October 10, 2014 by Focus Features.

Johnson is best known for his music for Rian Johnson’s Looper, Brick and The Brothers Bloom. He also scored last year’s Don Jon directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as well as Jake Paltrow’s Young Ones starring Michael Shannon, Elle Fanning & Nicholas Hoult, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is currently awaiting a release date.

777man

(374 posts)

74. 4/1/2014 Writer/Producer Peter Landesman Drops a Line

Reply to 777man (Reply #72)

Wed Apr 2, 2014, 02:22 AM

Apr 2014

Peter Landesman Drops a Line

by
princessleia223
» 1 day ago (Mon Mar 31 2014 18:36:38) Flag ▼ | Reply |
IMDb member since March 2007

- Away from Parkland, you have penned the screenplay for Kill The Messenger. Can you tell me a little about that project?

Great film. It really is one of the great stories of our time. It is also a very personal one to me because it is about an investigative journalist, as I was, who inadvertently stumbled upon the CIA’s massive complictety in cocaine trafficking into the United States in the eighties, to support the war in Nicaragua. It was a terrible story because the cocaine that arrived in the United States inadvertently helped trigger the crack epidemic.

This reporter, who is working for a small paper, found this monster story, uncovers it, and writes it. At first, he is elevated and then destroyed: destroyed to the point where he killed himself because his life had been completely decimated for it. It is a story that resonates to me, because investigative journalism is an endangered species today.

Jeremy Renner plays the role of Gary Webb. It will be coming out in the Fall with Focus, and it will be interesting to see if it resonates with people, and if people care. It is just a terrific story in general.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/board/thread/227821762?d=227821762#227821762

__________________________________________________________

First Look: Jeremy Renner Blows the Whistle on a Sprawling Conspiracy in 'Kill The Messenger'

5 March 2014 1:30 PM, PST | Thompson on Hollywood | See recent Thompson on Hollywood news »

Focus Features has set a release date for "Homeland" executive producer and director Michael Cuesta's upcoming conspiracy thriller "Kill The Messenger," starring Jeremy Renner. Based on the true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, the film will hit select cities on October 10 before expanding on October 17, and again on the 24th. In the mid-1990s, Webb stumbled upon a massive coverup involving the CIA, which was allegedly using profits from the international drug trade to arm rebel fighters in Nicaragua. Webb kept digging the hole, ultimately unearthing a conspiracy that could only be described as "sprawling" -- a word on all our minds after last Sunday's conspiracy-loaded "True Detective." In "Kill The Messenger," directed by Cuesta from a screenplay by Peter Landesman, Renner stars as Webb, who was a San Jose Mercury-News scribe, opposite Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Sheen, Robert Patrick, Michael K. Williams and Ray Liotta. It's a juicy cast, »

- Ryan Lattanzio

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/news?ref_=tt_nwr_1#ni56891456

(374 posts)

84. 4/23/14 Mary Elizabeth talked a little about KTM with Crave Online:

Reply to 777man (Reply #83)

Thu Apr 24, 2014, 01:34 AM

Apr 2014

Mary Elizabeth talked a little about KTM with Crave Online:

And what do you get to play in Kill the Messenger?

I get to play the editor to Jeremy Renner’s character. We sort of together come up with this story and decide to print it. It’s a true story and it’s quite a crazy, crazy one. Basically Jeremy Renner plays this journalist Gary Webb who sort of discovers this link between the government and the crack epidemic in Los Angeles and did this big expose on it, but it was for the San Jose Mercury News which was a small paper.

They realized quickly that they were in way over their head because it was a story that was way beyond them, so eventually everyone was kind of forced to recant the story or to say they got things wrong, even though the story was true and Gary Webb ultimately, well, bad things happened. I don’t want to give too much away for people who don’t know the story but it’s an incredible story and Jeremy Renner’s amazing in it. I’m really excited to be a part of it.

Is the role of the editor a big part?

It’s definitely Jeremy Renner’s movie. He’s the star and there’s a big supporting cast, so it’s a supporting role but it’s a great one. She’s his boss and he really had a young female editor boss that he had to run everything by. She did end up making some minor mistakes which is part of their downfall in the end. It’s kind of a sad story about the two of them having this huge story that could potentially make their careers and it ends up crushing them in a lot of ways.

She had made changes to the story that were inaccurate?

Yeah, some minor things that they didn’t quite get right but then that leads to the whole story being considered false. So people turn on them and then she ends up having to turn on him because she wants to keep her job, even though she believes him and believes that what he reported was right. It’s a sad but really interesting story of our history which I think a lot of people don’t know or have forgotten about, so I’m excited for that to be brought back out.

http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/679705-tribeca-2014-mary-eliz abeth-winstead-on-alex-of-venice-die-hard-6

777man

(374 posts)

85. How Crack Funded a CIA War: Gary Webb cnn Interview on the Contras and Ronald Reagan (1996)

Reply to 777man (Reply #84)

Sat Apr 26, 2014, 06:41 PM

Apr 2014

Last edited Mon Apr 28, 2014, 12:03 AM - Edit history (1)

How Crack Funded a CIA War: Gary Webb Interview on the Contras and Ronald Reagan (1996)
The Film Archives The Film Archives·993 videos

1996 Senate hearings- Maxine waters and Arlen Spector question Contra leaders about drug trafficking

3/17/98 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) CIA DRUG hearing

Secret CIA Operations: Felix Rodriguez, the Bay of Pigs, the Death of Che Guevara & Vietnam (1989)
The Film Archives The Film Archives·993 videos

&list=TLoU_d_yUT05GPZgdrHWQUPqYlp_-aM9P5

Maxine Waters Fought To Investigate Crack Cocaine, Money Laundering; Porter Goss Covered It Up
August 7, 2010 • 10:01AM
http://larouchepac.com/node/15433

Dark alliance movie plans announced in 1996........
The CIA-Crack-Disney Connection

by Jeff B. Copeland
http://uk.eonline.com/news/33684/the-cia-crack-disney-connection

777man

(374 posts)

86. AUSA ROBERT MERKLE ADMITS Medellin Cartel Leader allowed to keep his fortune - probably freed

Reply to 777man (Reply #85)

Mon Apr 28, 2014, 12:21 AM

Apr 2014

After testifying against Noriega, John Hull and others....Lehder (a man who murdered thousands and imported hundreds of tons of drugs) probably walked free after less than ten years and kept hundreds of millions (possibly billions) in cash...He negotiated his cooperation directly with George Bush, cutting Merkle out of the loop. His prosecutor-- BOB Merkle (Assistant US Attorney) wrote this article out of frustration.....
READ AND LEARN:

Carlos Lehder Rivas, b. 1950,
Drug Trafficker
By ROBERT MERKLE
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 28, 1999
http://www.sptimes.com/News/112899/Floridian/Carlos_Lehder_Rivas__.shtml

------------------------------

Protected Witness
A Six-Part Series by Bill Moushey
(c) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 26-31, 1996
http://www.fear.org/carlos1.html

--------------------------

Florida's controversial drug prosecutor. `Mad Dog' Merkle takes on Colombian dealer, state governor

By Marshall Ingwerson, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / February 20, 1987
http://www.csmonitor.com/1987/0220/apros.html

777man

(374 posts)

87. The CIA, the Contras and Crack Cocaine by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight

Reply to 777man (Reply #86)

Sat May 3, 2014, 02:42 AM

May 2014

Last edited Sat May 17, 2014, 01:55 AM - Edit history (3)

The CIA, the Contras and Crack Cocaine
by Dennis Bernstein and Robert Knight

One day in the early 1980s, Wanda Palacio watched a Hercules cargo plane roll to a stop on the tarmac of Barranquilla International Airport, located in the Andean foothills just off the azure waters of Colombia's northern coast. According to Palacio, the aircraft bore the markings of Southern Air Transport, a private airline formerly run by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency.

Palacio was in Barranquilla that day with her host, Jorge Luis Ochoa, to arrange a cocaine deal. At the time, Ochoa was known as Colombia's most ambitious drug lord.

As Palacio watched men in green uniforms remove two green military trunks out of the plane and onto a truck -- she would describe this scene later in an 11-page sworn statement to Congress -- her host explained his operation: The plane was a CIA plane, Ochoa told her, and he was "exchanging guns for drugs." The crew, he said, were CIA agents, and "these shipments came each Thursday from the CIA, landing at dusk. Sometimes they brought guns, sometimes they brought U.S. products such as washing machines, gourmet food, fancy furniture or other items for the traffickers which they could not get in Colombia." And each time, Ochoa told Palacio, "they took back drugs."

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9612a/ciacontra.html

--------------------

http://intelligent-designs.biz/wbai/Earthwatch/www/crackwatch.html#pubs

A genuine "dark" operation
But our eyes are not closed to the CIA "company" presence. In fact, Robert Knight and Dennis Bernstein were among the very first to report original details with participants and eyewitnesses of the NSC-CIA-contra-cocaine connection. It was exactly ten years ago that we launched the award-winning "Undercurrents" investigative news program which aired on more than a hundred radio stations nationwide. We also wrote of the contra "guns-for-drugs" phenomenon in major mainstream newspapers and magazines.

On March 31, 1987, we published original details in a nationally syndicated Newsday article,

Why is the Contra-Cocaine Connection Being Ignored?

In September, 1996, we revisited the story in the Baltimore Sun and Lexington Herald-Leader:

Why is the Contra-Cocaine Connection STILL Being Ignored?

On October 4, 1996 we published a widely-distributed article for the Pacific News Service and Philadelphia Tribune,

DEA Agent's Decade Long Battle to Expose CIA-Contra-Crack Story

Our most recent effort is currently apperaing in weekly newspapaers across the country:

How the Contras Invaded the United States

Our work was also selected for inclusion in the October 8, 1996 SALON "Newsreal" page,

Right hand, Left hand

--------------------------------

The CIA & Drugs
Narco-colonialism in the 20th Century

http://www.angelfire.com/id/ciadrugs/indexwhite.html

http://www3.uakron.edu/worldciv/pascher/narco.html
------------------------------
BOOK REVIEW OF KTM BOOK

'Kill the Messenger'

The rest of the story: 'Kill the Messenger' does what the U.S. press wouldn't do—ask hard questions about the campaign against Gary Webb.

When First We Practice To Deceive

A new book reveals how the media's campaign against Mercury News reporter Gary Webb may have driven him to suicide, and suggests he took the fall for the paper's failures on an explosive series of articles
http://www.metcruz.com/metro/12.06.06/gary-webb-0649.html
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

https://archive.org/details/DSE030614

WDFP Radio - The Denise Simon Experience

Hosted by DENISE SIMON

This week's Guests: Retired DEA agent, Hector Berrellez and Retired DEA agent Phil Jordan, who once led DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center

Topic: The Corruption within the DEA, ATF and DOJ

Official Site: www.WDFP.us

Official Site: www.StandUpAmericaUS.org

777man

(374 posts)

88. KILL THE MESSENGER MOVIE POSTER RELEASED MAY 28, 2014

Reply to 777man (Reply #87)

Thu May 29, 2014, 12:32 AM

May 2014

KILL THE MESSENGER MOVIE POSTER RELEASED MAY 28, 2014

HI-RES IMAGE

The Poster for Kill the Messenger, Starring Jeremy Renner
Source: Focus Features
May 28, 2014

Focus Features has released the poster for director Michael Cuesta's thriller, Kill the Messenger, starring Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Andy Garcia. Check it out below and stay tuned for the trailer tomorrow.

The October 10 release is based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb stumbles onto a story which leads to allegations that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications – and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=118813

ON IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm424464128/tt1216491?ref_=ttmd_md_fs

777man

(374 posts)

89. OPIUM WARS - THE ORIGINAL NARCO-COLONIALISM

Reply to 777man (Reply #88)

Sat May 31, 2014, 11:56 AM

May 2014

THE ORIGINAL STATE SPONSORED DRUG TRAFFIC….
AFRICAN AMERICANS WERE NOT THE FIRST VICTIMS OF STATE SPONSORED DRUG DEALING, JUST THE LATEST. THE OPIUM WARS ARE WELL DOCUMENTED AND ARE PART OF THE REASON BRITISH EMPIRE GOT A HOLD OF TERRITORIES SUCH AS HONG KONG. NARCO COLONIALISM CONTINUES ON. :

1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Opium_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War

2
This war with China . . . really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot any thing be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men's minds to the dreadful guilt we are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the government of China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay in the pride of our supposed superiority. — Thomas Arnold to W. W. Hull, March 18, 1840
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/empire/opiumwars/opiumwars1.html

3
http://www.sacu.org/opium.html
http://www.sacu.org/opium2.html

**************************

4
Article on opium trade in 1920s Shanghai
http://streetsofshanghai.pbworks.com/w/page/18638691/Opium
**********************
5
'Opium financed British rule in India'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7460682.stm

777man

(374 posts)

90. Your Government Dealing Drugs By Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell

Reply to 777man (Reply #89)

Sat May 31, 2014, 12:52 PM

May 2014

Last edited Sun Jun 1, 2014, 02:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Your Government Dealing Drugs
By Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell

Drugs, Guns, and Government

The heroin epidemic that ravaged our cities during the 50s and 60s basically originated with the CIA out of Southeast Asia. Almost from the moment of their founding in 1947, the CIA was giving covert support to organized drug traffickers in Europe and the Far East, and eventually the Middle East and Latin America. During the Vietnam War—hold onto your hats!—heroin was being smuggled into this country in the bodies of soldiers being flown home, coded ahead of time so they could be identified at various Air Force bases and the drugs removed.

Condensed and excerpted from American Conspiracies
by Jesse Ventura with Dick Russell,
with permission of Skyhorse
Publishing, Inc., New York, NY

Toward the end of American involvement over there in 1975, a former Green Beret named Michael Hand arranged a 500-pound shipment of heroin from Southeast Asia's "Golden Triangle" to the U.S. by way of Australia. That's where Hand had set up shop as vice chair of the Nugan Hand Bank, which was linked by the Australian Narcotics Bureau to a drug smuggling network that "exported some $3 billion [Aust.] worth of heroin from Bangkok prior to June 1976." Several CIA guys who later came up in the Iran-Contra affair (Ted Shackley, Ray Clines and Edwin Wilson) used the Nugan Hand bank to channel funds for covert operations. By 1979, the bank had 22 branches in 13 countries and $1 billion in annual business. The next year, chairman Frank Nugan was found shot dead in his Mercedes, a hundred miles from Sydney, and the bank soon collapsed. Two official investigations by Australia uncovered its financing of major drug dealers and the laundering of their profits, while collecting an impressive list of "ex"CIA officers.
Drugs Funding Reagan's War in Nicaragua
http://www.naderlibrary.com/lit.crimesofpatriots.toc.htm
THE CRIMES OF PATRIOTS -- A TRUE TALE OF DOPE, DIRTY MONEY, AND THE CIA BY JOHNATHAN KWITNY 1987

After the CIA's involvement with the Southeast Asian drug trade had been partly disclosed in the mid-1970s, and the U.S. left Vietnam to its fate, the Agency started distancing itself from its "assets." But that only left the door open to go elsewhere. Which the Reagan Administration did big-time, to fund its secret war in Nicaragua. The 1979 Sandinista revolution that overthrew Anastasio Somoza, one of our favorite Latin dictators, was not looked upon fondly by Ronnie and his friends. He called the counterrevolutionary Contras "freedom fighters," and compared them to America's founding fathers. In his attempt to get Congress to approve aid for the Contras, Reagan accused the Sandinista government of drug trafficking. Of course, Nancy Reagan had launched her "Just say no" campaign at the time, but I guess she hadn't given the word to her husband. After his administration tried to mine the Nicaraguan harbors and got a hand slap from Congress, it turned to secretly selling missiles to Iran and using the payments—along with profits from running drugs—to keep right on funding the Contras. Fifty thousand lost lives later, the World Court would order the U.S. to "cease and to refrain" from unlawful use of force against Nicaragua and pay reparations. (We refused to comply.)

The fact is, with most of the cocaine that flooded the country in the 80s, almost every major drug network was using the Contra operation in some fashion. Colombia's Medellin cartel began quietly collaborating with the Contras soon after Reagan took office.

Then, in 1982, CIA Director Casey negotiated a little Memorandum of Understanding with the attorney general, William French Smith. Basically what this did was give the CIA legal clearance to work with known drug traffickers without being required to report it, so long as they weren't official employees but only "assets." This didn't come out until 1998, when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz issued a report that implicated more than 50 Contra and related entities in the drug trade. And the CIA knew all about it. The trafficking and money laundering tracked right into the National Security Council, where Oliver North was overseeing the Contras' war.

Here's what was going on behind the scenes: In the mid-1980s, North got together with four companies that were owned and operated by drug dealers, and arranged payments from the State Department for shipping supplies to the Contras. Michael Levine, an undercover agent for the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), later said that "running a covert operation in collaboration with a drug cartel . . . [is] what I call treason." The top DEA agent in El Salvador, Celerino Castillo III, said he saw "very large quantities of cocaine and millions of dollars" being run out of hangars at Ilopango air base, which was controlled by North and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez (he'd been placed in El Salvador by Vice President Bush's office, as a direct overseer of North's operations). The cocaine was being transshipped from Costa Rica through El Salvador and on into the U.S. But when Castillo tried to raise this with his superiors, he ran into nothing but obstacles.

Iran-Contra Affair: Drugs, Arms and Hostages

Early in 1985, two Associated Press reporters started hearing from officials in D.C. about all this. A year later, after a lot of stonewalling by the editors, the AP did run Robert Parry and Brian Barger's story on an FBI probe into cocaine trafficking by the Contras. This led the Reagan Administration to put out a three-page report admitting that there'd been some such shenanigans when the Contras were "particularly hard pressed for financial support" after Congress voted to cut off American aid. There was "evidence of a limited number of incidents." Uh-huh. It would be awhile yet before an Oliver North note surfaced from July 12, 1985, about a Contra arms warehouse in Honduras: "Fourteen million to finance came from drugs."

Contra rebels (MAI/Landov)

Also in 1986, an FBI informant inside the Medellin cartel, Wanda Palacio, testified that she'd seen the organization run by Jorge Ochoa loading cocaine onto aircraft that belonged to Southern Air Transport, a company that used to be owned by the CIA and was flying supplies to the Contras. There was strong corroboration for her story, but somehow the Justice Department rejected it as inconclusive. Senator John Kerry started looking into all this and said at one closed-door committee meeting: "It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras...We can produce specific law-enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been called off drug-trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security."

What became known as the Iran-Contra affair came to light in November 1986. We were selling arms to Iran, breaking an arms embargo in order to fund the contras. Fourteen Reagan Administration officials got charged with crimes and eleven were convicted, including Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Of course, Poppa Bush pardoned them all after he got elected president. And do you think a word about drug-running came up in the televised House committee hearings that made Ollie North a household name? Fuhgedaboutit. [Watch Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura on truTV.]

The thousand-page report issued by Senator Kerry about his committee's findings did discuss how the State Department had paid more than $800,000 to known traffickers to take "humanitarian assistance" to the Contras. The New York Times then set out to trash Kerry in a three-part series, including belittling him for relying on the testimony of imprisoned (drug-running) pilots. The Washington Post published a short article heavy on criticisms against Kerry by the Republicans. Newsweek called him "a randy conspiracy buff." (Wonder what they were snorting.)

But are we surprised? In 1987, the House Narcotics Committee had concluded there should be more investigation into the Contra drug allegations. What was the Washington Post's headline? "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling." The paper wouldn't even run Chairman Charles Rangel's letter of correction! That same year, a Time correspondent had an article on this subject blocked and a senior editor privately tell him: "Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you'd have no trouble getting it in the magazine."

Drugs, Panama and Beyond

The list of government skullduggery goes on, and it's mind-boggling. Remember when Poppa Bush ordered our military to invade Panama back in 1990? The stated reason was that its leader, Colonel Manuel Noriega, had been violating our laws by permitting drugs to be run through his country. In fact, Noriega had been "one of ours" for a long time. After Noriega was brought to the U.S. and convicted by a federal jury in Miami and sentenced to 40 years, filmmaker Oliver Stone went to see him in prison. There Noriega talked freely about having spied on Castro for the U.S., giving covert aid to the Contras and visiting with Oliver North. Noriega and Bush Sr. went way back, to when Bush headed the CIA in 1976.

The brief prepared by Noriega's defense team was heavily censored, but it did reveal significant contact with Bush over a 15-year period. In fact, Bush had headed up a special anti-drug effort as vice president called the South Florida Task Force, which happened to coincide with when quite a few cargoes of cocaine and marijuana came through Florida as part of the Contra support network. So why did we finally go after Noriega? Some said it's because he knew too much and was demanding too big a cut for his role in the Agency's drug dealing.

It's a proven fact that the CIA's into drugs; we even know why. It's because they can get money to operate with, and not have to account to Congress for what they're doing. All this is justified because of the "big picture." But doesn't it really beg for a massive investigation and trials and a whole lot of people going to jail? This includes the big banks that allow the dirty money to be laundered through them.

Go back to Chicago and Prohibition, when Al Capone became more powerful than the government because we'd outlawed the selling of liquor. Legalize marijuana and you put the cartels out of business! Instead, we're going to further militarize our border and go shoot it out with them? And if a few thousand poor Mexicans get killed in the crossfire, too bad. I don't get that mentality. I don't understand how this is the proper way, the adult answer, when they could do it another way. Eventually, after thousands more people get killed, they'll probably arrive at the same answer: legalization. Because there's nothing else that will work. [Watch Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura on truTV]

And legalization would go a long way toward giving us a more legitimate government, too—a government that doesn't have to shield drug dealers who happen to be doing its dirty work. There are clearly people in government making money off drugs. Far more people, statistically, die from prescription drugs than illegal drugs. But the powers that be don't want you to be able to use a drug that you don't have to pay for, such as marijuana. Thirteen states now have voted to allow use of medical marijuana. Thank goodness Barack Obama just came out with a new policy stating that the feds are not going to interfere as long as people are following state law. That's a great step toward legalization.

'You can't legislate stupidity' is an old saying I used in governing. Just because you make something illegal doesn't mean it's going away; it just means it'll now be run by criminals. But is using an illegal drug a criminal offense or a medical one? I tend to believe medical, because that's customarily how addictions are treated; we don't throw you in jail for them. In a free society, that's an oxymoron—going to jail for committing a crime against yourself.

The government is telling people what's good for them and what's not, but that should be a choice made by us, not those in power. Look at the consequences when it's the other way around.

-----------------

HUFFINGTON POST COLUMN BY Jesse Ventura

Author, American Conspiracies
Posted: February 26, 2010 12:33 PM

Obama Continues Bush-Era "Drug War" Hypocrisy

http://www.trutv.com/conspiracy/government-lies/government-drug-dealer/cia-trafficking.html
https://secure.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-ventura/obama-continues-bush-era_b_478339.html

777man

(374 posts)

91. 5/29/2014 - KILL THE MESSENGER MOVIE TRAILER -- PLEASE DISTRIBUTE

Reply to 777man (Reply #90)

Sat May 31, 2014, 01:31 PM

May 2014

Last edited Thu Jun 5, 2014, 12:33 AM - Edit history (1)

5/29/2014 -- KTM MOVIE TRAILER ON YOUTUBE

KTM OCTOBER 10, 2014 release date (AMC THEATERS ANOUNCEMENT)

Kill The Messenger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_%282014_film%29
www.killthemessengerthefilm.com

by Jeremy Renner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Renner
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0719637/

KILL THE MESSENGER FILM ON FACEBOOK
www.facebook.com/KillTheMessengerMovie

Trailer For ‘Kill the Messenger’ With Jeremy Renner, Ray Liotta, and More
Written by Leonard Pearce, on May 29, 2014 at 1:15 pm
Share178 Tweet110 0 Reddit0 Tumblr2 Email2

kill_the_messenger_header_1

After directing such television as Dexter, Six Feet Under and, most recently, Homeland, helmer Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.) is back with a new drama and today we have the first trailer. Led by Jeremy Renner, Kill the Messenger follows the true story of a journalist, Gary Webb, who, in 1996, asserted the C.I.A was involved in crack cocaine importation to California.

Sadly, (and spoilers, we suppose) he then went on to commit suicide in 2004 after a smear campaign by the CIA ruined his professional career. This first trailer hints at those darker elements towards the end, but mostly showcases an entertaining drama with a strong central performance. Check out the trailer and poster below for the film starring Rosemarie DeWitt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Andy Garcia.

You need to have the Adobe Flash Player to view this content.
Please click here to continue.

kill_the_messenger_poster

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”) leads an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb stumbles onto a story which leads to the shady origins of the men who started the crack epidemic on the nation’s streets…and further alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Despite warnings from drug kingpins and CIA operatives to stop his investigation, Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications. His journey takes him from the prisons of California to the villages of Nicaragua to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C. – and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.

Kill the Messenger opens on October 10th, 2014.
http://thefilmstage.com/trailer/trailer-for-kill-the-messenger-with-jeremy-renner-ray-liotta-and-more/

------------------------

Watch Jeremy Renner, Michael K. Williams in ‘Kill The Messenger’ trailer
0 comments

Posted by wilsonmorales on May 29, 2014 | 0 comments

Watch Jeremy Renner, Michael K. Williams in ‘Kill The Messenger’ trailer
Posted by Wilson Morales

May 29, 2014

Kill the Messenger posterFocus Features has released the trailer to upcoming film, ‘Kill The Messenger,’ which opens in theaters on October 10, 2014.

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”) leads an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb.

Directed by Michael Cuesta (“Homeland”), the cast includes Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Paz Vega, Michael Kenneth Williams, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Andy Garcia.

Webb stumbles onto a story which leads to the shady origins of the men who started the crack epidemic on the nation’s streets…and further alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Despite warnings from drug kingpins and CIA operatives to stop his investigation, Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications. His journey takes him from the prisons of California to the villages of Nicaragua to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C. – and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.

Kill the Messenger 2

Kill the Messenger 1

http://www.blackfilm.com/read/2014/05/watch-jeremy-renner-michael-k-williams-in-kill-the-messenger-trailer/

MOTHER JONES COVERAGE of "A TAINTED DEAL"
https://web.archive.org/web/20050420101319/http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/1998/06/cia.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20050405214411/http://www.motherjones.com/news/special_reports/total_coverage/coke.html

(374 posts)

95. 6/11/14-CIA’s 1980's Cocaine-Miami-Dade PD Det. Mike Fisten- Enrique Prado

Reply to 777man (Reply #94)

Thu Jun 12, 2014, 10:55 PM

Jun 2014

Last edited Sat Sep 27, 2014, 04:20 PM - Edit history (7)

CIAcocaine
Web Documentary Explores CIA’s Cocaine Connections In The Eighties
June 11, 2014/0 Comments/in LIFE & CULTURE /by ServingDope.com Staff

Miami Dade Homicide detective Mike Fisten was part of the FBI/DEA task force CENTAC who tried to capture drug lord Alberto San Pedro and his bodyguard hitman Ric Prado. Implicated in more than 7 murders, Prado was a CIA officer who later moved a privatized assassination program to the private sector firm Blackwater with the help of Cofer Black

Back in the Eighties, Garfield Baker was supplying the soundtrack to Miami’s Cocaine Cowboys era. The Carol City native is one of the founders of Freestyle, a type of dance music that blends hip-hop beats with actual singing. He wrote and produced hits like “Don’t Stop the Rock,” “It’s Automatic,” “Lookout Weekend,” “When I Hear Music,” and “I’ll Be All You Ever Need” by Freestyle, Debbie Deb, and Trinere. The songs fit the uninhibited, flashy lifestyle fueled by never-ending bags of nose candy.

These days, Baker is looking to get financing to finish Power, Powder and Presidents, a documentary that digs deeper into the darker side of Miami’s coke trade and its role in the Cold War. Baker filmed the last on camera interviews with Jon Roberts, one of the stars of the seminal film about Miami’s halcyon yeyo days, Cocaine Cowboys. Serving Dope recently caught the remix, Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded on Netflix. It’s definitely a must see.

Roberts died in 2011, but not before finishing an autobiography with Rolling Stone scribe Evan Wright. Robert’s allegations that he and his partners in the Medellin Cartel were running drugs with the consent of the U.S. government forms the basis of Baker’s movie.

Not too long ago, Baker sat down with Serving Dope to talk about Power, Powder and Presidents.

SD: What’s your movie about?

Power, Powder and Presidents is the deathbed confession of a cocaine cowboy and the continuing story of what may be the ultimate abuse of power and the greatest miscarriage of justice. It illustrates the direct link between murderers and drug dealers with the highest office in the land. See, the war on drugs was precipitated by the Iran Contra scandal, both of which were waged by the Ronald Reagan administration. Our movie exposes a clandestine game of chess featuring Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Oliver North and other covert operatives arrayed as the power pieces. The civil servants, law enforcement and even foreign heads of state manipulated to be the unwitting pawns.

Where did the bad guys figure into all this?

The drug cartels, street hustlers and assassins served as both the convenient enemy and more often than not the collateral damage. As always the media fed the masses their daily news that was in turn spoon fed to them by the players that controlled the figureheads of international political, financial and military power while the world was distracted by the gory yet romantic entertainment.

What is in the movie?

We have 20 hours of exclusive bone chilling first person accounts, delivered as the death bed confessions of Jon Roberts all corroborated by interviews with former FBI/DEA agent Mike Fistin, shot in Red HD. Additionally, we have thousands of pages of exclusive FBI documents and hundreds of never before seen photographs punctuated by clips from the news networks that covered these events.

What’s your next move?

Given the phenomenal financial and critical success of the Cocaine Cowboys documentaries, the attendant non-fiction books by Evan Wright and Jon Roberts “memoir,” and current global appetite for the ongoing saga, we are looking to secure a wraparound production and distribution deal that will include all ancillary and derivative products, licenses and trademarks unto perpetuity. We are willing to remain as production consultants or co-producers on the project until delivery and will expect to share producer’s credit with collaborating production entity.

But didn’t Roberts tell the whole story to Rakontur, the company that made Cocaine Cowboys?

They own the exclusive rights and trademarks to the name “Cocaine Cowboys.” They do not own or control any of the rights to the twenty hours of footage of stories told to us directly by Jon Roberts. We own the exclusive rights and trademarks to the intellectual property of “Power, Powder and Presidents”. These rights were assigned and conferred to us directly by Jon Roberts. Cocaine Cowboys 1 & 2 in essence highlighted the fabulous life of the glamour and often romantic danger of the drug trade. The first person accounts given to us by Jon Roberts in “Power, Powder and Presidents” over the final two years of his life, gives a never before heard voice to secrets which have never been told. e.g., the gory details identifying the perpetrators and circumstances surrounding the beheading of a federal agent and the involvement of Enrique Prado in murders, collections, and arson for the drug cartels. Prado went on to serve as Ronald Reagan’s bodyguard, third in command at the CIA, and Vice President of Black Water. Not to mention the complicity of the White House, then Vice President Bush and Oliver North in the 1980’s drug trade.

http://servingdope.com/web-documentary-explores-cias-cocaine-connections-in-the-eighties/

------------------

Read about Miami Dade Homicide Detective Mike Fisten here:
http://www.bluelinepi.com/about-us/
--------------------]

read about cocaine cowboy Jon Roberts here:
"That story is absolutely true," "I pursued the CIA agent, but I was unable to get him."
-Detective Mike Fisten

Desperado at twilight
Last testament of Fort Lauderdale's Jon Roberts
December 29, 2011|By Chauncey Mabe, Correspondent

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-12-29/news/fl-jon-roberts-american-desperado-20111227_1_american-desperado-evan-wright-miami-dade

---------------
Read about Ric Prado here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/07/the-terrifying-background-of-the-man-who-ran-a-cia-assassination-unit/259856/

http://www.wired.com/2012/06/cia/

http://powerwall.msnbc.msn.com/politics/did-a-cia-agent-work-for-the-mob-1721447.story

see the full interview with Evan Wright- Ric Prado
CIA Thugs, Drugs and Terrorism with True Crime Author Evan Wright

___________________

Read more about Erik Prince, Cofer Black and Ric Prado at Blackwater and other companies

By Jeremy Scahill
http://www.thenation.com/article/154739/blackwaters-black-ops
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_blackwater15.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/making-sense-of-the-blackwater-connection/
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2010/6/17/part_ii_jeremy_scahill_on_blackwater_owner_erik_princes_rumored_move_to_uae_and_obama_admins_expansion_of_special_forces_operations_abroad
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/blackwater-any-other-name-is-still-blackwater
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/us/before-shooting-in-iraq-warning-on-blackwater.html
--------------

buy the book about Enrique "RIC" Prado here:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Get-Away-Murder-America-ebook/dp/B008EJL43Q

Book Description
Publication Date: June 24, 2012
This is a story that the CIA will not want you to read. It will likely shake your faith in the highest levels of America’s national security establishment. And it will leave you feeling as if you are living not in the United States but in a seedy banana republic where there is no line between the good guys and the bad guys.

In “How to Get Away with Murder in America,” the celebrated journalist Evan Wright reveals the extraordinary story of Enrique “Ricky” Prado, an alleged killer for a major Miami drug trafficker who was recruited into the CIA. Despite a grand jury subpoena and a mountain of evidence unearthed by a federal task force, Prado was promoted into the agency’s highest echelons and charged with implementing some of the country’s most sensitive post-9/11 counterterrorist operations, including the agency’s secret “targeted assassination unit.” All while staying in close touch with his cocaine-trafficking boss and, evidence suggests, taking part in additional killings for him.

After Prado retired in 2004 at the rank of SIS-2—the CIA equivalent of a two-star general—he moved to a senior position at Blackwater, the private military contractor, where he continued to run the same, now-outsourced “death squad.” Contrary to government assurances that it was never actually activated, Wright reveals explosive testimony from one of the Blackwater assassins that Prado’s unit was indeed carrying out assigned killings. As a former military intelligence officer told Wright in 2011, “Private contractors are whacking people like crazy over in Afghanistan for the CIA.”

In “How to Get Away with Murder in America,” Wright discloses never-before-seen federal investigation files and lays out a mind-boggling and ultimately damning indictment of Ricky Prado and the intelligence community that embraced and empowered him. It is the deeply disturbing story of a criminal case abandoned because of CIA intervention, political maneuvering, and possibly corruption. Its cast includes Mafia capos, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, former CNN host Rick Sanchez, and Prado’s longtime boss at the CIA and then Blackwater, J. Cofer Black, who is now a “special adviser” to presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Wright also delivers a stunning portrait of Prado’s childhood friend Albert San Pedro, a.k.a. “the Maniac,” the drug lord whom he served for years as loyal bodyguard and enforcer, as well as their longtime nemesis Mike Fisten, the detective who began pursuing them more than two decades ago and still hopes to put them both in prison for murder.

There are many conspiracies in Wright’s story, all of them unsettling. Did the CIA knowingly hire a suspected murderer with strong ties to drug traffickers? Or was the agency a stooge, infiltrated by an underworld hood described by one investigator as “technically, a serial killer”?

“How to Get Away with Murder in America” is likely to have serious repercussions for the U.S. national security establishment. And it will shake to the core your conceptions of government and justice in America.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Wright is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards and the author of the bestselling “Generation Kill,” “Hella Nation,” and “American Desperado,” which he co-wrote with Jon Roberts. His reporting has also been included in “The Best American Crime Writing.” He co-wrote the HBO series “Generation Kill,” based on his book.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

FULL MOVIe-- COCAINe cOWBOyS --JON ROBERTS INTERVIEW

Cocaine cowboys part2

-------------------------

off topic

http://wikileaks.com.br/NoPlaceToHide4Fr33.pdf

FREE BOOK BY GLENN GREENWALD

NO PLACE TO HIDE (June 22, 2014)
EDWARD SNOWDEN, THE NSA AND THE SURVEILLANCE STATE

GET YOUR FREE COPY HERE:
http://wikileaks.com.br/NoPlaceToHide4Fr33.pdf

777man

(374 posts)

96. John Kerry and the BCCI Investigation

Reply to 777man (Reply #95)

Sat Jun 21, 2014, 12:47 PM

Jun 2014

Last edited Sun Sep 28, 2014, 12:17 PM - Edit history (3)

THIS IS ESSENTIAL READING

BCCI BANK SCANDAL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International

this story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 6/20/2003.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml
Time magazine{ The dirtiest bank of all
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalbanking118.htm

----------------------------------------
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/winer.html
see also:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/winer.html

There was a phone call from Jackie Kennedy to the senator's (John Kerry) office, correct? Do you remember that incident?

I remember John talking to us after it happened. He felt badly. He thought the world of Jackie Kennedy, thought she was a wonderful human being. He admired her. He had affection and respect for her, and all those all those things. To have her say, "Why are you doing this to my friend Clark Clifford?" was painful. You know, he shook his head. It wasn't a location he particularly wanted to be in.

But he didn't tell us to stop. He said, "You do what you have to do." The hearings continued, and the investigations continued until we'd found out as much as we possibly could. That's what happened.

--Jonathan Winer was U.S. Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State for International Narcotics Matters 1994-1999. He previously worked as counsel to Sen John Kerry (D-MA) advising on foreign policy issues 1983 to 1997
------------------------------------

this story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 6/20/2003.
http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/062003.shtml

Kerry's investigation, launched in 1988, helped to close the bank three years later, but not without upsetting some in Washington's Democratic establishment. Prominent BCCI friends included former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, former President Jimmy Carter, and his budget director, Bert Lance. When news broke that Clifford's Washington bank was a shell for BCCI -- and how the silver-haired Democrat had handsomely profited in the scheme -- some of Kerry's Senate colleagues grew icy.

"What are you doing to my friend Clark Clifford?" more than one Democratic senator asked Kerry. Kerry's aides recall how Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Pamela Harriman, a prominent party fund-raiser, called on the senator, urging him to not to pursue Clifford.
------------------------

FACTS--

--BCCI operated in Washington DC without a bank regulator

--Cartels, dictators, CIA and terrorists all used BCCI

--BCCI was able to operate and escape any real scrutiny due to official protection from both political parties. There has never been a full and proper investigation of BCCI

--Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy called Senator Kerry to dissuade him from investigating Clark Clifford (a senior democratic party member, straw owner of BCCI) Other senior democratic party members including Pamela Harriman, Bert Lance were involved in BCCI or tried to block investigation of the bank.

--Robert Morgenthau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Morgenthau
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Credit_and_Commerce_International
Prosecuted BCCI owners on the state level because the U.S. Government DOJ refused to prosecute on the federal level.

--Chief counsel Jack Blum returned from meeting with Morgenthau to find that his job with the Kerry Committee had been eliminated. Blum later said that Kerry and his staff were under attack from both parties.

--Congressional aides accompanying Kerry to meetings said that he endured considerable pressure from fellow senators (in the hallways) telling him to leave Clark Clifford and BCCI alone. Kerry told his aide "You should hear what they say to me in the cloakroom"

===========
The Case That Kerry Cracked
http://www.alternet.org/story/20268/the_case_that_kerry_cracked

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/may/17/files-close-bcci-banking-scandal

--------------------------------------------=======++++++++++++++

====================

When John Kerry Was a Lone Hero in Congress

—By David Corn
| Thu Jan. 24, 2013 12:20 PM ES

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/when-john-kerry-secretary-of-state-1980s-hero

==================
Read the full report here:
The BCCI Affair
A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate
by
Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown
December 1992
102d Congress 2d Session Senate Print 102
-
140
https://info.publicintelligence.net/The-BCCI-Affair.pdf

==========

Offtopic

http://wikileaks.com.br/NoPlaceToHide4Fr33.pdf

FREE BOOK BY GLENN GREENWALD

NO PLACE TO HIDE (June 22, 2014)
EDWARD SNOWDEN, THE NSA AND THE SURVEILLANCE STATE
Penguin Books

GET YOUR FREE COPY HERE:
http://wikileaks.com.br/NoPlaceToHide4Fr33.pdf

777man

(374 posts)

97. 7.4.14 FREEWAY RICKY ROSS RELEASES AUTO BIOGRAPHY

Reply to 777man (Reply #96)

Sat Jul 5, 2014, 01:32 AM

Jul 2014

Last edited Mon Jul 21, 2014, 03:06 AM - Edit history (2)

The central figure in Gary Webb's book, DARK ALLIANCE HAS A NEW BOOK OUT:

Freeway Rick Ross The Untold Autobiography by Cathy Scott
Product Details

Paperback: 298 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1st edition (June 11, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1499651538
ISBN-13: 978-1499651539
Product Dimensions: 0.6 x 5.9 x 8.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
http://www.amazon.com/Freeway-Rick-Ross-Untold-Autobiography/dp/1499651538
http://www.rickrossthebook.com/

RICK ROSS website
http://www.freewayrick.com/
------------
From Drug Kingpin to Community Leader Freeway Rick Ross in RVA
Jul 4, 2014 By Miss Community Clovia
http://kissrichmond.com/2726187/from-drug-kingpin-to-community-leader-freeway-rick-ross-in-rva/
====================

The Story of a Reformed Drug Kingpin - 'Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography'
Posted: 19/06/2014 11:09
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ruth-jacobs/the-story-of-a-reformed-d_b_5509487.html

L.A.'s Notorious Drug Dealer, 'Freeway' Rick Ross, is Moving On
by Erin Aubry Kaplan
June 6, 2014 10:05 AM

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/cakewalk/freeway-rick-ross-moves-on.html
=================
Twitter Freeway Ricky Ross and let him know what you think:
https://twitter.com/FreewayRicky
https://www.facebook.com/FreewayRickyRoss
http://www.biography.com/people/ricky-ross-481828#recent-projects&
---------------------------------

-----------------------------

The Untold Story Behind Why I Am a Narco News Journalist
Posted by Bill Conroy - July 1, 2014 at 10:11 pm

"Authenticity Is Not the Easiest Path ... But It's The Only Path That Leads Forward" — Al Giordano

Narco News on July 9 will celebrate its fourteenth anniversary at a bash in the Big Apple. For me, it also will be a tenth anniversary fiesta. I started reporting and writing for Narco News in 2004.

Until now, though, I have never been able to tell fully the story of why I hooked up with Al Giordano and Narco News in the first place, because I was employed by a company that I felt would not appreciate the story being told in real time, as it really happened.........

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2014/07/untold-story-behind-why-i-am-narco-news-journalist

-------
--------
As Mike Levine once pointed out, a movie has been made about the government giving preferential treatment to one cartel in exchange for information about its rivals. The movie is called CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109444/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_Present_Danger_%28film%29

"
Cortez brokers a deal with Cutter. Cortez will assassinate Escobedo and take over the cartel, then reduce drug shipments to the U.S. and allow American law enforcement to arrest some of his workers at regular intervals so as to make it appear as if the U.S. is winning the drug war. In exchange, Cutter will shut down all operations in Colombia and allow Cortez to capture and kill Clark's soldiers."

Life imitates art.

US Court Documents Claim Sinaloa “Cartel” Is Protected by US Government
Posted by Bill Conroy - July 31, 2011 at 5:07 pm

Deal Allegedly Gave Sinaloa Bosses Immunity in Exchange for Providing Info on Rival Drug Organizations
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/07/us-court-documents-claim-sinaloa-cartel-protected-us-government

The mainstream media has now acknowledged this arrangement-- 3 years after Narconews Bill Conroy Broke the story,

related:
7.1.14
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/01/u-s-visas-helped-fuel-the-juarez-drug-wars.html
Cutting Deals with informants for US visas
Friday, July 18, 2014
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/07/cutting-deals-with-informants-for-us.html

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2012/04/true-story-of-los-zetas-power.html
---------

Off topic:
Informant gets a free pass to cross the border:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/informant-gets-free-border-pass-675432

(374 posts)

103. VIDEO-TOP CIA OFFICIAL WAS A CARTEL HITMAN CONNECTED TO 7 MURDERS

Reply to 777man (Reply #100)

Sat Jul 19, 2014, 12:57 AM

Jul 2014

Last edited Tue Jul 22, 2014, 06:26 PM - Edit history (3)

CIA Thugs, Drugs and Terrorism with True Crime Author Evan Wright
52 minute interview with the author

Published on Jul 24, 2012

The connection between the mafia, CIA, and the war on terror are discussed with Evan Wright, the author of Generation Kill and How To Get Away With Murder in America. Detailing shadow-soldier Ricky Prado's life's work, we learn how a suspected murderer and compulsive weightlifter rose to run the anti-terrorism unit of the CIA and bonded the government with the mafia. An incredible talk hosted by Walter Kirn for TheLipTV.

GUEST BIO:
Evan Wright has gone from working as a critic for Hustler magazine, to being one of the most celebrated immersive journalists in the country. His series of reports with the US military in Iraq for Rolling Stone was subsequently made into the landmark series, Generation Kill.

Additionally, he has written the true-crime books, "How to Get Away With Murder in America," "American Desperado," and "Hella Nation," in addition to penning the screenplay for the adaptation of "Cocaine Cowboys" to a scripted feature film.

ADD'L LINKS:
http://www.vanityfair.com/contributor...
http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Author/...
http://byliner.com/evan-wright/storie...
http://www.hbo.com/generation-kill/in...

EPISODE BREAKDOWN:
00:01 Welcome to Byliner with Walter Kirn.
00:30 Introducing Evan Wright.
01:12 Ricky Prado and the background of a CIA-Mafia connection.
02:26 The early days of cocaine in Florida--the mafia and Cuba.
08:14 Cocaine begins flooding Miami and the country.
09:13 Ricky and Albert Sanpedro form a bond and 'fraternity' over violence and drug dealing.
13:17 Ricky Prado becomes a hitman.
17:29 A C.I.A. recruit turns to the drug trade.
26:51 Ricky Prado goes to work for the CIA.
28:47 The rise and fall of Ricky Prado in the CIA.
32:29 Ricky Prado looks to cooperate with the Federal Investigators as the CIA stonewalls them.
36:17 Prado rises to the senior ranks of the CIA--Targeted Assassinations.
39:46 Cofer Black and Ricky Prado move to Blackwater and get dirty work done.
44:00 Still out there, and working for shadowy private firms.
45:40 Why does the CIA exist? To break laws.
48:28 Response to the book--from Prado himself.

http://thelip.tv
http://byliner.com/
http://www.facebook.com/byliner
http://twitter.com/TheByliner/

http://walterkirn.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/walter.kirn
http://twitter.com/walterkirn/

-----------------

http://palmbeachartspaper.com/index.php/1785-journalist-wright-tells-miami-hit-mans-story-on-byliner-site.html

Journalist Wright tells Miami hit man’s story on Byliner site

Written by Chauncey Mabe on 25 July 2012.

(photo)

Evan Wright.

Even though he uncovered the story, journalist Evan Wright never expected to write a full account of the drug cartel hit man from Miami who ― allegedly, as they say ― became a top CIA officer and a leading figure in the clandestine war against terror.

On the contrary, Wright thought this story, which resembles The Departed, but on a bigger, more important stage, would be picked up and developed by other journalists after the publication of his latest book, American Desperado.

An as-told-to autobiography of the infamous cocaine cowboy Jon Roberts, American Desperado includes a vivid anecdote about Enrique Prado, the hit man-turned-CIA honcho. In 1977, according to Roberts, Prado was the triggerman in the murder of Meyer Lansky’s stepson, Richard Schwartz, in Miami Beach.

“I sort of thought the Prado stuff would have been picked up by another reporter,” says Wright from his home in Los Angeles. “I’d worked on [the Roberts book] for three years. I didn’t want to do anything else with it.”

But American Desperado made less of a splash than Wright’s publisher expected – inexplicably, because it may be the best book of its kind since Nicholas Pileggi’s Wise Guys. No one picked up the thread of the potentially explosive Prado story.

Why has the story of a gangster-turned-top spy, protected from police investigations by the CIA, been ignored? “The answer is in the question,” Wright says. “When you say ‘CIA hit man,’ a lot of people think you are a raving conspiracy nut.”

So Wright, who is perhaps best known as the author of Generation Kill, developed the story himself. His investigation into the life and career of Enrique “Ricky” Prado appeared recently as How to Get Away with Murder in America, at Byliner Originals, the online site devoted to long-form journalism.

“We feel as journalists that this is the kind of story we live for,” says Mark Bryant, Byliner’s co-founder and editor-in-chief. “Evan is an exceptional journalist and an excellent writer, and he’s been burrowing into this story for a long time. His sources are sound. It’s an important story to tell.”

American Desperado (2011), by Jon Roberts and Evan Wright. When Roberts told Wright in 2008 that he had taken part in an “infamous” 1977 hit with a man who later become a top CIA officer, the journalist was skeptical. According to Roberts, Prado was an enforcer for Alberto San Pedro, a powerful, politically connected and violent Miami cocaine kingpin.

But as Wright fact-checked Roberts’ account of his life, he found virtually all the most outlandish stories were true. Shortly after hearing Roberts’ story about Prado, for example, Wright learned that a high-ranking CIA officer named Enrique Prado did exist. Entering the agency in 1982, Prado took part in the CIA’s work in Central America, served as station chief in South Korea, helped devise and coordinate counterterrorism efforts following 9-11, and ran a “targeted assassination unit” – first at the agency, then at Blackwater, where he served as vice president from 2004 to 2008.

Perhaps the single most unbelievable thing, assuming the CIA’s “Ricky Prado” is the same person Roberts knew, is the idea that Prado continued to work for San Pedro even after he joined the agency.

Early on, when he began to uncover documents about Prado’s criminal past, Wright decided the story was separate from the Roberts book. Chief among these: “[L]ong-suppressed files from a 1991 federal RICO and murder investigation” by an organized crime task force.

“Jon ceases to be a factor” in the Prado story, Wright says of Roberts, who died last December of cancer, within days of the publication of American Desperado. “Jon was an entry point.”

One of the task force officers, former Miami Beach homicide detective Mike Fisten, told Wright that the CIA “fought us tooth and nail,” despite evidence linking Prado not only to the Schwartz murder but to several others as well.

“It’s a miscarriage of justice,” says Fisten, now a senior partner at a private investigations firm in Davie. “Ricky and Albert are guilty of murder and need to go to jail for it.”

For a portion of How to Get Away with Murder in America, Fisten looks something like a protagonist, fighting the good fight against the CIA, Prado, and sometimes his own superiors. Prado’s lawyer succeeded in tainting Fisten and his work, branding him “Detective Fiction,” and stunting his career, even though an internal affairs investigation exonerated the detective. “My reputation was shot,” Fisten told Wright. “I wound up in uniform. My partner killed himself.”

“Mike Fisten is an interesting character,” Wright says. “In some ways he drove the case, in some ways he didn’t. He became the centerpiece of the article for that reason. But it’s not the story of one cop going after this guy. He was part of a federal team.”

Generation Kill (2004), by Evan Wright. As the narrative gains momentum – How to Get Away with Murder in America is 107 pages of muscular journalism and breakneck prose – everything falls away except for Wright’s investigation into Prado’s dual career, “gangster and CIA officer.” Even as the pace quickens, the story grows thicker with information – fact and fact-checking, interviews and old-fashioned reporting.

Wright knew he had to dig especially deep to offset the inherent skepticism raised by the idea of a hit man who became a CIA officer. “That’s the reason the piece is so dense with information,” he says. “It’s sort of like an episode of ‘Dragnet.’ I just wanted to lay out the case as it presented itself to me, summarizing as little as possible. It is such fantastical material. It’s easily dismissed.”

As Wright probed for information about Prado, calling investigators, attempting to obtain comment from the CIA, something occurred that had never happened to him as a reporter before. Another task force investigator, still active in Florida law enforcement, warned Wright in an email that Prado “is bad news and dangerous. Be careful.”

In a subsequent telephone conversation, the source was even more direct. He had talked to a friend in the CIA, who advised him to tell Wright to leave Prado alone. “You are going to get whacked,” he told Wright.

“I really debated about putting the warning” into the piece, Wright says. “I hope I contextualized it. I really don’t believe in the reporter as hero, but I realized this is a different kind of story. I don’t get warnings like that ― one government official warning you about another.”

Despite Prado’s alleged bloody background, Wright was able to shrug off the warning and continue developing the story ― in part because of his general insecurities as a writer and reporter.

“I have so much anxiety about everything I write, getting facts wrong, or names, or boring people,” Wright says. “It just joined the ambient anxiety.”

Wright is pleased with the treatment Bryant gave the story, which is just about perfect for the Byliner model – narrative nonfiction that’s too long for a magazine article, too short for a book. Wright likes the inclusion of additional material ― a list of “Key Figures,” a list of acronyms, sourcing ― that a magazine would not have room for.

“You can do it like a book,” Wright says. “The reader gets a much more complete package. “

Bryant was happy to get the piece for Byliner, which has grown apace since its debut a year ago, showing one possible business model that might allow serious journalism to thrive into the digital age. Many Byliner publications – sold on Kindle, iTunes and elsewhere – have been best sellers. As of July 22, How to Get Away with Murder in America was No. 1 in the True Crime category at the Amazon Kindle Store.

“When Evan contacted me last fall with an early draft, I realized he was on to something extraordinary,” Bryant says. “That’s why we’re doing it – not just to tell great stories, but to have an impact. When it’s appropriate, it’s great to see someone kick the hornets’ nest.”

Wright calls Byliner “the wave of the future,” and says he’s happy with the experience of publishing with it for the first time. He’s grateful the Prado story did not get lost because of the in-between length of his manuscript.

“I wanted this piece done because none of this had been aired,” Wright says. “It should have been done properly in the justice system. I hope the situation is examined by the proper authorities.”

To download How to Get Away with Murder in America for $2.99, or to read a free except, visiti Byliner Originals at http://byliner.com/originals/how-to-get-away-with-murder-in-america.

read the review:

http://chamberfour.com/2012/07/27/review-how-to-get-away-with-murder-in-america/

777man

(374 posts)

104. 2014 UNODC World Drug Report-Afgahn OPIUM up 36%

Reply to 777man (Reply #103)

Sat Jul 19, 2014, 07:11 PM

Jul 2014

https://publicintelligence.net/unodc-world-drug-report-2014/

UNODC World Drug Report 2014
July 14, 2014

UNODC-WorldDrugReport-2014
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

128 pages
June 2014
6.99 MB

Download your copy here
http://info.publicintelligence.net/UNODC-WorldDrugReport-2014.pdf

" The main increase was observed in Afghanistan, where the area of opium poppy cultivation increased 36 per cent, from 154,000 ha in 2012 to 209,000 ha in 2013. "

-The finished product--Heroin-- is being exported at record levels as opposed to raw opium in past years.

777man

(374 posts)

105. 5.30.14- 3 Ex-DEA agents+CIA pilot interviewed RE: CAMARENA MURDER - CONTRA DRUGS

Reply to 777man (Reply #104)

Mon Jul 21, 2014, 06:40 AM

Jul 2014

Last edited Thu Jul 24, 2014, 04:37 PM - Edit history (2)

5.30.2014
Steven Kelley Show guests TOSH Plumlee (former CIA Contract Pilot), Hector Berrellez (EX-DEA, LEAD INVESTIGATOR-CAMARENA MURDER), Celerino Castillo III (EX-DEA, Lead agent El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras in the 1980's) and Phil JORDAN (EX-DEA, DIRECTOR OF DEA EL PASO INTELLIGENCE CENTER)
Revolution Talk Radio

Published on May 30, 2014
duration 1 hour 44 minutes

The Steven D. Kelley Show has guests William (Tosh) Plumlee, Hector Berrellez, Celerino Castillo III and Phil for CIA - The Running of Guns and Drugs Part 2. In the first hour of the show the guests give a brief description of their involvement with government agencies and detail some of the operations which they were involved with. In the second half of the show Steven and the guests explain in greater depth the nature of their work with government agencies in the smuggling of drugs and weapons from foreign nations into North America and vice versa.
-Un-edited Archives at www.revolutionradioarchives.com

---------------------

Related:

5.22.2014

The Steven D Kelley Show guest William (Tosh) Plumlee 2014 05 22
Revolution Talk Radio

Published on May 23, 2014

The guest for the Steven D. Kelley show is William (Tosh) Plumlee on to talk about the his work with governmental agencies and many other engaging topics regarding the C.I.A., NSC and others. At the start of the first hour William discusses his former operational involvement with the Central Intelligence Agency which consisted of gun running to foreign nations and various organizations globally. Also in the first hour Steven asks William to give more information on the specifics involved with the movement of arms and drugs through various contracts. In the second hour of the show Steven and William talk about many other situations which involve people and places that center around the topic of international crime. Also the listeners join in to show their appreciation and ask questions to Willaim.

William (Tosh) Plumlee : http://jfkmurdersolved.com/toshfiles.htm

Steven D. Kelley : http://www.facebook.com/steven.d.kelley

--------

6.5.2014

The Steven D Kelley Show guest William (Tosh) Plumlee 2014 06 05

Published on Jun 6, 2014

Please SUBSCRIBE!
REVOLUTION RADIO
The Steven D. Kelley Show hosts guest William (Tosh) Plumlee for a return program geared toward exposing more of Tosh's involvement with government agencies in the transportation of guns and drugs. In the first hour Steven and the Tosh go into the fine details of the type of cargo being moved and the intelligence that was also being gathered through these activities. In the second hour of the show Steven and Tosh discuss deep secrets about the operations that were run throughout the years also callers join in to ask some questions.

-----------------

Phil Jordan and Hector Berrellez interview March 6, 2014
https://archive.org/details/DSE030614

WDFP Radio - The Denise Simon Experience - March 6, 2014 - Topic: DEA Corruption (March 6, 2014)

WDFP Radio - The Denise Simon Experience

Hosted by DENISE SIMON

This week's Guests: Retired DEA agent, Hector Berrellez and Retired DEA agent Phil Jordan, who once led DEA’s El Paso Intelligence Center

Topic: The Corruption within the DEA, ATF and DOJ

Official Site: www.WDFP.us

Official Site: www.StandUpAmericaUS.org

---------------------------
VICE - CELE CASTILLO INTERVIEW -2012 (8 minutes)-

Going Undercover as a Mexican Drug Lord
4,820,046
1,720,047

?list=PLE34DA9B408A0ECEF

(374 posts)

109. 8.9.14 Freeway Rick Ross on Fox Business news

Reply to 777man (Reply #108)

Sun Aug 10, 2014, 01:29 AM

Aug 2014

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=688322391237241&set=vb.100001784583009&type=3

https://www.facebook.com/FreewayRickyRoss

777man

(374 posts)

110. 9.9.14 Updated Dark Alliance and KTM Books available from Amazon

Reply to 777man (Reply #109)

Mon Aug 11, 2014, 01:09 PM

Aug 2014

Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Cocaine Explosion Paperback – September 16, 2014
by Gary Webb (Author), Maxine Waters (Foreword)

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Alliance-Contras-Cocaine-Explosion/dp/1609806212/

Paperback
$17.21

Major Motion Picture based on Dark Alliance and starring Jeremy Renner, "Kill the Messenger," to be be released in Fall 2014

In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled “Dark Alliance,” revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.

Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities.

Webb’s own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the media—not because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the story—had been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the “Dark Alliance” story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of the Mercury News and gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.

Product Details

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press (September 16, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1609806212
ISBN-13: 978-1609806217

=================================================

=============================

Kill the Messenger (Movie Tie-In Edition): How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb Paperback – September 9, 2014
by Nick Schou (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Messenger-Movie-Tie-In-Edition/dp/1568584717/

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeremy Renner

Kill the Messenger tells the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 "Dark Alliance" series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's stories.

Drawing on exhaustive research and highly personal interviews with Webb's family, colleagues, supporters and critics, this book argues convincingly that Webb's editors betrayed him, despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Kill the Messenger examines the "Dark Alliance" controversy, what it says about the current state of journalism in America, and how it led Webb to ultimately take his own life.

Webb's widow, Sue Bell Stokes, remains an ardent defender of her ex-husband. By combining her story with a probing examination of the one of the most important media scandals in recent memory, this book provides a gripping view of one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of investigative journalism

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Nation Books; Revised Edition edition (September 9, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1568584717
ISBN-13: 978-1568584713

777man

(374 posts)

111. 8.15.14 5 new photos from KTM Movie

Reply to 777man (Reply #110)

Sat Aug 16, 2014, 03:28 PM

Aug 2014

http://collider.com/the-theory-of-everything-kill-the-messenger-images/

New Images from KILL THE MESSENGER and THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
by Perri Nemiroff Posted 16 hours ago

eddie-redmayne-jeremy-renner-slice

It’s been quite a while since that first trailer for Michael Cuesta’s Kill the Messenger dropped, but with the summer season coming to a close, Focus Features opted to unveil some brand new stills from select films on their fall lineup. We’ve got five new Kill the Messenger images and then two from James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything to go along with them.

Hit the jump to check them all out. Killer the Messenger stars Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Pepper, Oliver Platt and Michael Sheen, and will get a limited release on October 12th and hit additional cities thereafter. The Theory of Everything stars Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones, Charlie Cox, Emily Watson and David Thewlis, and will arrive in select theaters beginning November 7th.

Here’s the official synopsis for Kill the Messenger:

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”) leads an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb stumbles onto a story which leads to the shady origins of the men who started the crack epidemic on the nation’s streets…and further alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Despite warnings from drug kingpins and CIA operatives to stop his investigation, Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications. His journey takes him from the prisons of California to the villages of Nicaragua to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C. – and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.

kill-the-messenger-jeremy-renner

kill-the-messenger-image-jeremy-renner-mary-elizabeth-winstead

kill-the-messenger-image-jeremy-renner-michael-k-williams

kill-the-messenger-image-jeremy-renner

kill-the-messenger-jeremy-renner-2

Source:

colettaberx
» 11 hours ago (Sat Aug 16 2014 00:58:49)
http://t.co/9gOPczdpJs

777man

(374 posts)

112. 8.23.14 EX DEA HECTOR BERRELLEZ and CELE CASTILLO INTERVIEW (SPANISH)

Reply to 777man (Reply #111)

Sat Aug 30, 2014, 11:12 PM

Aug 2014

Last edited Sun Sep 7, 2014, 02:28 AM - Edit history (1)

OPERATION LEYENDA

Published on Aug 23, 2014

The murder of Kiki Camarena by CIA Agent Felix Rodriguez (aka Sam Gomez). Interviews with Hector Berrellez and Cele Castillo III (both are former DEA Agents). Narco-Trafficking between the US and Mexico. Also, Caro Quinterro is discussed.

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Behind the scenes photos of KTM

http://m.focusfeatures.com/slideshow/kill_the_messenger

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Ex agente DEA Phil Jordan acusa a Felix Ismael Rodriguez de matar a Camaerena - América TeVé

777man

(374 posts)

113. 8.25.14 Jeremy Renner and Rose Marie Dewitt Interviews about KTM

Reply to 777man (Reply #112)

Wed Sep 3, 2014, 11:35 PM

Sep 2014

Another Renner interview with Extra TV = This interview was uploaded by CASS!!!

Excellent 4 minutes hitflix

I think he almost slipped on the letter question

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Jeremy Renner KTM interview Aug 25, 2014 15 .8 minutes

Rosemarie Dewitt 22 mins (Plays Gary Webb's wife Sue in KTM Movie)

Rosemarie Dewitt 9:53 mins

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Charles Bowden has died, but his voice is louder than ever
Posted by Bill Conroy - September 2, 2014 at 9:48 pm

As one of the original authentic journalists, he trailblazed a path for others to follow

When I heard that he had passed, my eyes welled with tears. I’m of stoic Irish stock, so I don’t shed tears easily, but the news of Charles Bowden’s death (1945-2014) was not an easy thing to bear. He had been a mentor and a friend to me for a decade, and his leaving hurts.

He died peacefully, in his bed at his home in Las Cruces, N.M., after complaining of persistent flu-like symptoms that started in early August, according to his long-time companion and colleague Molly Molloy, a Latin American researcher, writer and librarian at New Mexico State University. A recent EKG also showed he had an irregular heartbeat, and he had an appointment scheduled with a cardiologist, she said.

But he never made that appointment. Molly found him at 5:15 p.m. after returning from work this past Saturday, Aug. 30, his life energy gone from his body.

“He was in bed and seemed sleeping, but I could not wake him.,” Molloy recounted in an email sent on Sunday informing Chuck’s friends and colleagues of his death. “I called 911 and did CPR until the police got here. There was nothing we could do.”

But in my mind and heart, Chuck can’t die, not in the eternal world of ideas. He accomplished what every writer dreams of, even if they are too humble, as he was in this sense, to admit it. His words, his reporting, his truth-telling, lives on, rippling through time on the pages of history. His name belongs among the ranks of the great American writers, certainly those yet to be christened in the 21st Century.

Bowden, 69 at the time of his death, was the author of dozens of books and essays, among them seminal works focused on the drug war, such as “Down by the River,” as well as more experimental projects like the graphic nonfiction “Dreamland: The Way out of Juarez.” To those who knew him, he was a genuine human being, who was loyal to those he trusted and open-hearted to those who demonstrated the same inclination.

For me, that meant he was there when I walked away from my mainstream editor’s job after 20 years when changes in management threatened my integrity. Chuck offered his services as a reference and previously wrote a letter of recommendation when I applied for a journalism fellowship. And he was a supporter of the Narco News project, and a regular reader who behind the scenes helped to inform a number of the stories published by the online newspaper about the drug war. He didn’t have to do that. He was extremely busy with his own projects, and there was no money in it for him. But that’s just the way Chuck was when he believed in something, or someone.

Chuck wielded a fierce weapon against the enemies of justice: The unflinching ability to tell the truth in unadorned, piercing prose. He used words like paint mixed on a master’s brush and no scene was beyond his reach. That talent, coupled with his keen reporting sense, made him a force to be reckoned with in the halls of power and a voice that commanded respect among his journalistic colleagues.

My first introduction to Chuck is marked with irony. I interviewed him by phone 10 years ago in reporting a story about the death of another journalism Bigfoot, Gary Webb (1953-2004). Chuck wrote a story for Esquire magazine in 1998 that supported the findings of Webb’s 1996 San Jose Mercury News exposé on the CIA/Nicaraguan Contra crack-cocaine connection. Chuck was one of the few journalists in Gary’s corner when he was assaulted by a media smear campaign in the wake of his investigative series — a feeding frenzy that ultimately led to Webb being blackballed by the mainstream media and arguably was a contributing factor in his decision to exit this world.

“In a daily newspaper sense, Gary was the best investigative reporter in the country," Bowden said during our phone interview at the time. "And he was unemployable.

"That tells me all I need to know about this business I’m in. You can get a paycheck every two weeks, as long as you don’t draw blood."

Gary Webb’s story will be told in the major motion picture, Killing the Messenger, played by Jeremy Renner, coming to theaters this October.

Chuck and I stayed in contact ever since that interview for the story on Webb via frequent email conversations centered on journalism and the drug war. Chuck would occasionally send me links to news articles, story leads or source contacts, saying I should “save them for my files.” I would return the favor when I could, but his reservoir was far deeper than mine. The best I can do now is to continue to follow the paths he pointed out to me.

Unfortunately, like Webb — a supporter of Narco News who also was a mentor to me — I never got the chance to meet Chuck in person, despite several attempts. Our schedules just didn’t line up when I was in his neck of the woods along the border. He was often on the move, chasing the story.

I will miss Chuck greatly. He’s not replaceable in my world, or the world at large. And I will always owe a great debt to him for what he taught me about journalism and life. In that sense, the best tribute I can make to Chuck is to let him speak one more time to you, to tell his truth.

Following are some excerpts from the many emails Chuck has sent me over the past 10 years. For those who know his work, you’ll recognize many of the themes, but his words are still to be cherished and lessons learned from them.

There are many things I can’t share now, because those stories are yet to be finished. Like I said, Chuck lives on in that sense and others.

But for now, take in what can be savored. Chuck would expect nothing less.

The Drug War

One last bit of worthless advice from me: Things in Mexico … make more sense if you realize no one can wear a white hat and survive.

***

Frankly I wish Mrs. Clinton and her fucking squeeze had inhaled. I suppose my anger comes from thirty thousand new corpses in Mexico but listening to this policy jargon bullshit is more than I can or will tolerate. Our policies are a death machine in Mexico, period.

***

Every time in a speech I explain that border security is a system for recruiting small town Americans and corrupting them by placing them in a hopeless situation where tidal waves of money wash over their lives, I am met with blank faces.

***

One of the realities of Mexico is that there a very few facts one can believe, except maybe one’s own death. Juarez now is well past seven hundred dead on the year [2008], and the pace is not slackening. 146 murdered in July, and a torrent of death so far this August….

***

You are right about shifting cards, etc., in the drug world. The Federation thing is an invention of DEA. We have a need for our enemies to be like us and so we create charts on the border….

In the case of Mexico, the structure is affinity groups constantly joining on deals and then shifting into other arrangements. … Actually, the structure DEA imagines was never that solid, but since the death of [“Juarez Cartel” leader] Amado Carrillo Fuentes, it has been a lot looser, just as the destruction of the Cali and Medellin cartels in Colombia led to sowing dragon's teeth as many smaller outfits were able then to emerge.

… At any given moment, things happen based on internal shifts that are not readily apparent. The House of Death I think is best seen as a window into a criminal culture where cops, lawyers and members of the Juarez Cartel come into view and then vanish, but at any given moment in the house it is not clear whose deal is going down and for what reason. … So I guess I'm saying here is what I learned from listening to DEA: The organization of life in the drug world is never as clean and tidy as DEA thinks, and the people in the drug world are never as dumb as DEA imagines. I think the largest failure of DEA is racism — they could not imagine any ignorant brown guy ever being as sharp as Amado Carrillo. And this weakness persists to this day. When I was hanging around EPIC [the El Paso Intelligence Center] and looking at their giant computer, I told [then-DEA supervisory agent] Phil Jordan, "You know, none of this can see a thirteen-year-old boy crossing a K-Mart parking lot with a gun."

***

I think I must smell the roses or something before I go toxic on my government. I was charmed to hear Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton use the word insurgency today in discussing Mexico. This is like lighting a match in a powder room. I can hear the boys in the Pentagon planning their new playground for a war game.

***

Mexican history is corruption (see Paul J. Vanderwoods work, especially “Disorder and Progress”) and US history is intervention in Mexico. What matters now I think is we are at a boiling point in Mexico. NAFTA failed. Shipping surplus humans to the US has hit a wall. And drugs keep creating and owning more of the infrastructure of the economy and of the state. Last weekend, I watched La Ley de Herodes on YouTube. It’s there in thirteen parts with subtitles. It was a massive hit in Mexico in ’99, and I think captures the mindset that is still Mexico.

***

Bill, I am not sure. I have a hunch there is no machine at the moment but many competing machines. As for price, well, the drug flow to the US by all reports (see yet one more story in the LA Times this morning) has not been impeded, nor is production under control. In short, no real cartel function is apparent. But I agree it is a new day in Mexico. It was about three years ago that [Mexican photographer] Julian Cardona told me what had changed: There was no one to call and there always had been. And he did not mean the mayor. I think everyone should back off from explaining the violence and first look at a few missing facts. We don’t know who is dying. We don’t know how many are dying. And we will never know because it is clear that Mexican agencies putting out the numbers keep no records, zero. What we do know is that each day the federal government controls less of the country.

***

I am weary of people confusing the income flow of a drug organization with the idea that it is organized like a US corporation. It is a kind of set of affinity cells … and his point about the poor (meaning independents rushing in to make money) I think is in part behind the rise in US home invasions and the violence in Juarez (and also the forbidden subject: the massive increase in Mexican consumption of drugs). The independents lack the reputation and muscle to insure payment and so must make a show of force. Of course, home invasions will always be part of the business since you cannot go to court for recovery.

***

Thanks for the kind words about “Down by the River,” but we both know it describes a kind of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Mexico, one that now looks safe and sound compared to the present…. The very idea that the Mexican Army was a clean element thrust into the drug war was foolish, but I think now in a bid to centralize power and establish his dominance [Mexican President] Felipe Calderon has functionally decentralized power. The army becomes a set of regional gangs, the cartels continue to splinter (a fact that began with Carrillo's death in July 1997) and violence grows.

But I have a hunch there no longer is an army in the old sense. It was always run as a set of baronies, but now I think the barons are rising. And also the units under their command are doing more and more freelancing.

***

I think it is in “Siren's of Titan” [a Kurt Vonnegut novel] that much of human history results from a broken spaceship sending messages home and using the Earth as blank paper — think Great Wall of China, for example. ...Sometimes, late at night, I think I am trying to understand a charade. Ah, well, the sun is out. And the day promises to get warm.

Ciudad Juarez

The email-conversation excerpts in this section took place, for the most part, around 2007 and 2008, just as the killings in Juarez were ramping up, the Mexican military then sent in, and as the US mainstream media was suddenly discovering the city.

You have wonder about a cartel war that does not kill cartel people, or about a war between the army and the cartel in which neither cartel people or army people die. If you go over the dead this year in Juarez, they are almost all nobodies. Clearly this is a war for drugs. ...

***

I understand the problem and I share it, and I think it is this: What we are seeing in Juarez does not fit our old models (for one example, the model of cartels in “Down by the River”). It is something new and what makes us blind to it and what makes us terrified of it is simply that no one is really in control. Think Baghdad where all sides flounder in explaining the killing, including Al Qaeda with its vision of restoring an older world.

***

In the case of Juarez, one has to be struck by what the press says is a cartel war and yet one that does not touch federal and state police, one that kills hundreds in a few months and yet leaves the army unscathed while city cops die and flee.

***

One of the fantasies of Juarez is that the killings come and go. I don't think they do. Bodies in public come and go. The death houses … operate all the time. But I did go over the dead list up to about 180, and it was striking who most of these people were…. They were local folk, guys with corner and little stores. The government estimates sixty percent of this killing spree is narco related. I don't know, but there are a helluva lot of head-shot executions and the like.

But somehow I think something has changed, that the feel of the city under an Amado Carrillo is gone and that a new kind of order, one without a center, is emerging — a place where government pretends to govern at the same time it erodes. And what is emerging is ignored since it fails to sustain early notions of power and structure.

The gangs, the corners, all that, well hell, that is in New Orleans right now, and many other places. But something is changing in Juarez and thinking about the cartels is almost a barrier to seeing this change. And I don't see how or why this uptick in violence will end. It seems a condition of a drug market without a real center. You know a recent study estimated 20,000 retail outlets in Tijuana for drugs. Juarez I think has more.

I was looking at murders in poor barrios where all the people were Maquila workers, and there were guys selling coke all around. Heroin, according the Azteca [gang member] I had a long lunch with, is now twenty-five pesos a hit.

Here is what I decided in February: If you had an explanation for what I was seeing, then you were likely to blind yourself to events and facts that did not fit that explanation, because none of the explanations seemed to cover a lot of the territory. But the reality is of violence woven into the fabric of a city. It is a comfort to think someone is in control, however evil they might be. But I lack the confidence to believe that at the moment.

Look into the schoolteacher woman wacked the other day. She is easy to explain away given her family (a couple killed in the last year or two, in executions) but somehow that explanation does not solve the questions in my head. As I understand here, her husband was taken from the car and children survived with these new memories.

Well, I am tired. Keep the faith. The New York Times does not seem to, or the El Paso Times and on and on.

***

Just as it is essential for major media for drug lords, etc., to be controlling this violence, the notion that the violence can come from many groups and have no real on-and-off button is, well, not conceivable to them. But it is to me. And what no one seems to talk about is the domestic drug consumption in Mexico. It is now large and worth a lot, and it hardly concerns major players since whoever sells on the corner is buying their product anyway. And the Mexican Army has been terrorizing cops in Juarez — they were in court I think two weeks ago asking the judge to stop the army from torturing them. But in the end, I don't think the violence in Juarez can be understood unless it is seen as two-pronged — a battle for market share, and at least on the army's part, it is also a demo, a piece of theater for the US in order to get that billion and a half of Plan Mexico.

But I don't think any of it is about ending the drug business nor is it a threat to the cartels. As for cartels fighting for turf, I'm sure that happens, but it is difficult to go down the lists of dead in Juarez since January one and see much indication of such a battle. After all, when the Arellano Felix brother [from the Tijuana Cartel] was released this winter and crossed the bridge, he did not seem to be worried about a cartel war.

***

Does anyone go to Juarez? I doubt we will ever know the reason for the murders. We will get statements from people who claim they have secret materials they will not share and be expected to repeat agency claims.

***

I am stunned by how every time a body falls in Juarez all the authorities (including US academics) know who killed the person and why. There are so many ways to die in Juarez and so many groups willing to do the work.

***

Lately in Juarez, over the past several months, two things have become obvious: The Mexican Army is a killing machine as it fights for its share of the spoils, and the crimes increasingly have an economic color as the city breaks down into robbers of gas stations, cars, banks, everything, including Maquilas and their workers being robbed. Also, murder has moved into the light of day as the need for death houses declines in the general chaos.

The CIA

DEA, for example, has a need to demonize opponents. Also, they loathe the CIA because intelligence work means having useful relationships with criminals.

***

I do know that DEA agents have talked to me about the CIA penetration and control of their agency. …Basically, the drug industry is too connected to American foreign policy needs for it to be left to the cowboys of DEA. So they are often overruled. And all of the DEA agents seem to have stories of busts that were erased because of intervention by fellow DEA agents who were really CIA people.

***

I am roasting a chicken on a 9/11 afternoon. But keep it alive. We both know [Sinaloa drug-organization leader] Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla is hitting a real nerve with his statements, and we both know he had a relationship with the CIA. And we both know they will win and he will lose. There have been few in our government who do not bend over when the sacred words “national security” are mentioned.

***

I remember when this case [the murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985] began because it prompted [then-DEA supervisory agent] Phil Jordan to explain to me that DEA had been penetrated by the CIA and such agents watched people like him. For example, he told me of a DEA agent in … Texas who had a habit of disappearing cases and so was avoided by other agents. He said everyone knew the guy was really CIA.

***

Of course, I am the convinced reader since I neither think the CIA can be reformed nor that it has ever been functional. Tim Weiner’s “Legacy of Ashes” gives for me the opposite conclusion than the one he reaches. He thinks the agency must be reformed and saved from politics. I think the agency has always tailored intelligence for the executive branch and always will.

…But I also have a sense of the one ability of the CIA — cover-ups. I agree with the guy quoted, that they fuck up covert operations. That's why [investigative journalist] Gary Webb had his series [on the CIA’s connection to the drug trade]. But they did do a fine job on destroying Gary.

***

One factor I think never seems to make the press — the fear many former players have of the CIA. They will talk, but only up to a point, and often then they refuse to go public. I have had this experience ever since I did the piece on Gary Webb, and with some of them this game has been going on now for ten years. So you get frustrated. And frankly, if you are a freelancer such as myself, you eventually get starved off the story. Also, there is the fact your reputation is attacked. I will always remember the putdown by [the media] of [then-US Sen.] John Kerry and his committee. If you have ever been around those guys you see on cable news giving opinions, and I have, you realize they think they are part of the government, and sometimes I have felt in a dark way that they are. …Actually, my advice to Obama would be to simply close the CIA since I find their intelligence track record abysmal and vastly overrated. They have been politicized since genesis. Weiner's book “Legacy of Ashes” wants to reform the agency when it is clear from his own research that since the late forties the agency has always doctored intelligence to fit presidential agendas.

***

I have been chewing on the most recent installment of Narco News’ Mayan Jaguar series, and I like the idea of one of your informants that it all may be about nothing more than gathering intel for intel for intel, with no end game beyond perpetuating the bureaucracy — an idea worthy of Kurt Vonnegut. I think it helps to look at Fast and Furious with the same understanding.

The Media

I don't really know how to explain US media. I simply hold them in contempt….

***

I know that after Esquire ran the story [on Gary Webb], the editors there had qualms because they were getting dissed in the media bars of Gotham. They told me this. I failed to express the proper sympathy.

***

I have been appalled at the reaction of the US press to [NSA whistleblower] Edward Snowden. I expect my government to be staffed by traitors, but I held out some faint hope that some of the press would realize Snowden — and [US Army Private] Bradley Manning — were doing what the press failed to do. One of my hopes is they share a joint Nobel Peace Prize. It will be chance for the Scandinavians to cleanse themselves of having given one to Henry Kissinger.

***

The collusion between the press and the authorities is nothing new. What is stunning now is that it continues without the excuse of The Cold War…. I am always heartened by things like Yo Soy 132 [a Mexican social movement organized in 2012, in part, against the mainstream media] since the emperor never has clothes, and this needs to be pointed out.

But here, [in the US] I have less hope. Twice in the last year I have spoken at communication schools, the new name for journalism schools. The real frightening thing was not the students, but the ignorance of the faculty. At one school, the guy sitting next to me at lunch told me he taught social media. Turns out he was paid to teach journalism students how to use Facebook and Twitter. I told him when I was their age such feats were restricted to washroom walls, and no one taught us. He never spoke to me again during the two days I was there.

***

I am off to Patagonia, AZ, to scribble, look at birds and somehow shut down the noise. I glanced this morning at a piece Molly Molloy and I wrote and noticed almost every comment was from a troll and almost every comment had nothing to do with the piece we wrote or the argument we made — which was rather simple, that what we are seeing in Mexico is state terrorism. That’s what I mean by the noise.

On the other hand, I was walking the river here late yesterday and saw ibis, a green heron, two orchard orioles, great egrets and blue grosbeak, which puts me way ahead of the paid liars….

***

As for the New York Times and other major media, they use templates, and the template is cartels/drug lords, etc., and this mindset is not open to new information….

***

Don Henry Ford sent me your interview on, I think, Canadian Broadcasting. It was very nice, though I was struck by how the interviewer almost instantly misstated your numbers. I guess I noticed this because I have had it happen to me constantly over the years. I have also decided to kill the next interviewer who uses the word “narrative” in my presence. It seems to me a way to evade reality, as if the murders in Mexico were a narrative, a kind of tale with many choices open to the writer.

***

I am constantly instructed by people who cite the motives of cartels and do not speak to cartel members, but repeat what both governments say about cartels, two nations who have accomplished nothing in their war against cartels but are taken as wizards on the cartels. But I was happy to see Narco News cited by the mainstream press. Who knows, maybe they will eventually leave the office and report.

***

The advertorial world has been growing for years. What strikes me is how people in the business so often deny it. Neither Esquire nor GQ has had a cover story in twenty years that was not controlled by the celebrity featured. They will say this does not matter. I remember mentioning to [Editor] David Granger at Esquire,“If it does not matter, why not print that fact with the cover story?” He was not amused.

***

Of course the Internet has gutted the market for serious stuff by destroying the advertising base. This is simply a reality. And blogging is not the answer. …What I would like is some kind of group buy on the Internet, so that I could plunk down my bucks and have access to a lot of newspapers. …Anyway, take a walk and enjoy the sunshine.

Life

I am at heart an optimist. Aleksandr Soltzenitzen wrote books that outlasted the empire trying to kill him.

***

I don't know what to say beyond the obvious: This thing is broken. The migration is unstoppable and so is the reaction to it. The ground is beaten. And the drug industry hums along and bodies show up each morning. And no one seems to say hardly a word. In a week, I pray, I will flee here with my sleeping bag and clear my head in the desert.

***

I am sitting by a creek in Arizona and trying to imagine birds are the center of the universe.

***

I had lunch a month or so ago with a guy in Juarez who has probably executed two or three dozen, and I gotta tell you he was not an especially warm human being. I suppose this is where one rolls out the word psychopath, but I’m not clinically equipped. But he was barely human. He also ate about thirty dollars worth of carnitas.

***

As for discussions: Yes, for me, all good things sharpen questions rather than deliver pat answers.

***

You know life is odd. He asked me to get something nice for his wife, perfume, in Europe, because since he left the killing ground in Mexico he has never been able to buy her anything nice. So I brought back a hundred-euro bottle of Chanel from Venice. I don’t know what that means, but I liked him asking me for it for his wife.

***

I am in Patagonia, AZ, at the moment working on last years taxes — yes, I am a bit late, my apologies to the war machine. But the birds are everywhere and there is a soft rain on the land feeding the last green throbs of summer.

***

It is a charming piece and obviously having heard my blather on that radio station he knows I am grateful for it. Tell him he made my day, and he had heavy competition since I finally paid off my credit card.

***

Well, such is fame. But real life is the fact I've been sitting in a loaned house near the border since April 30th writing a book. I think in a week I'll finish the draft.

***

I am now, for my mental health, reading a two-volume collection of George Orwell's essays (Harcourt, 2008, compiled by George Packer) and it is a tonic. Like so many other writers, I find Orwell a touchstone because of his sometimes cranky but always endearing effort to clear out the brush and get to the reality of things.

***

Ah, well, back to my prep work. I’m kind of making up the recipe based off dining at tiny osterias on the back lanes in Venice. The city is actually noted for mediocre food but its saving grace are dishes prepared from fresh fish and shrimp, etc., taken directly from the lagoon. …I intend now to make a sauce with small shrimp; scallops; fresh, tiny tomatoes; a little white wine and a dash of clam juice, and toss with pasta.

***

When I was twenty-one and on the beach at Mazatlan, I had a similar experience. I was swept out to sea at night by the undertow and dragged along the bottom. It took me an hour to regain the shore, and I still remember coming onto the beach in the dark, falling to my knees and vomiting. No one in my party noticed I had been gone.

***

I've been living a kind of blur. The guy I wrote about in my last book had his son die suddenly in October and that ate up a chunk of my life and continues to consume some part of me. I knew the son, a healthy, strapping lad of twenty-four suddenly mowed down by meningitis. Then I had to hit the road, and then well, it simply continued. I have finally come to rest for a spell — well, got a funeral Saturday, but that is part of living a life.

***

There are fifteen bird feeders up here and lots of flowers. I am puzzled by people who dread the future and cannot smell the roses in their face.

***

It is eighty and very nice and all the flowers are blooming. This matters.

***

Now, as it happens, I just got an email from my cop about his dead son, so I go back to that terrain. And I agree with you. I don't think you can live a full and happy life until you realize it is a tragedy. And then have that glass of wine and smile at the baby in the woman's arms.

…. Charles Bowden, ¡Presente!

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2014/09/charles-bowden-has-died-his-voice-louder-ever

777man

(374 posts)

(374 posts)

120. 9.22.14 NY Times Film Club Screening and Interview w/Jeremy Renner

Reply to 777man (Reply #119)

Tue Sep 23, 2014, 11:16 PM

Sep 2014

19:54 mins

Published on Sep 23, 2014

The New York Times Film Club post screening Q&A for the upcoming movie Kill the Messenger with Jeremy Renner at Sunshine Cinemas in NYC on 9/22/14. Warning for plot spoilers, adult language and a jet lagged Jeremy.

Apologies for the wonky video but the person in front of me kept moving his giant head. I believe the movie will be released in October in the US.

777man

(374 posts)

121. 9.25.14 Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The Messenger will vindicate Sacr

Reply to 777man (Reply #120)

Fri Sep 26, 2014, 12:04 AM

Sep 2014

Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The Messenger will vindicate Sacramento investigative journalist Gary Webb
Nearly two decades after the reporter exposed a connection between the CIA and crack cocaine in America, Hollywood chimes in with a major movie

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/return-of-the-messenger-how/content?oid=15041198#

By Melinda Welsh

Read 1 reader submitted comment

This article was published on 09.25.14.

Journalist Gary Webb, who worked at SN&R in the four months before his death, gained both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series “Dark Alliance.”
PHOTO BY LARRY DALTON
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This one has all the ingredients of a dreamed-up Hollywood blockbuster: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist uncovers a big story involving drugs, the CIA and a guerrilla army. Despite threats and intimidation, he writes an explosive exposé and catches national attention. But the fates shift. Our reporter's story is torn apart by the country's leading media; he is betrayed by his own newspaper. Though the big story turns out to be true, the writer commits suicide and becomes a cautionary tale.

Hold on, though. The above is not fiction.

Kill the Messenger, an actual film coming soon to a theater near you, is the true story of Sacramento-based investigative reporter Gary Webb, who earned both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series that revealed the CIA had turned a blind eye to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras trafficking crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere in urban America in the 1980s. One of the first-ever newspaper investigations to be published on the Internet, Webb's story gained a massive readership and stirred up a firestorm of controversy and repudiation.

After being deemed a pariah by media giants like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and being disowned by his own paper, Webb eventually came to work in August 2004 at SN&R. Four months later, he committed suicide at age 49. He left behind a grieving family—and some trenchant questions:

Why did the media giants attack him so aggressively, thereby protecting the government secrets he revealed? Why did he decide to end his own life? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Gary Webb?

Like others working at our newsweekly in the brief time he was here, I knew Webb as a colleague and was terribly saddened by his death. Those of us who attended his unhappy memorial service at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento a week after he died thought that day surely marked a conclusion to the tragic tale of Gary Webb.

But no.

Because here comes Kill the Messenger, a Hollywood film starring Jeremy Renner as Webb; Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb’s then wife, Sue Bell (now Stokes); Oliver Platt as Webb’s top editor, Jerry Ceppos; and a litany of other distinguished actors, including Michael K. Williams, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and Robert Patrick. Directed by Michael Cuesta (executive producer of the TV series Homeland), the film opens in a “soft launch” across the country and in Sacramento on October 10.

Members of Webb’s immediate family—including his son Eric, who lives near Sacramento State and plans a career in journalism—expect to feel a measure of solace upon the release of Kill the Messenger.

“The movie is going to vindicate my dad,” he said.

For Renner—who grew up in Modesto and is best known for his roles in The Bourne Legacy, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Avengers and The Hurt Locker—the film was a chance to explore a part unlike any he’d played before. During a break in filming Mission Impossible 5, he spoke to SN&R about his choice to star in and co-produce Kill the Messenger.

“The story is important,” said Renner. “It resonated with me. It has a David and Goliath aspect.

“He was brave, he was flawed. … I fell in love with Gary Webb.”

‘The first big Internet-age journalism exposé'

There's a scene in Kill the Messenger that will make every investigative journalist in America break into an insider’s grin. It’s the one where—after a year of tough investigative slogging that had taken him from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., to a moldering jail in Central America to the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles—Renner as Webb begins to actually write the big story. In an absorbing film montage, Renner is at the keyboard as it all comes together—the facts, the settings, the sources. The truth. The Clash provides the soundtrack, with Joe Strummer howling: Know your rights / these are your rights … You have the right to free speech / as long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.

It took the real Gary Webb a long time to get to this point in his career.
Jeremy Renner, who starred in films such as The Bourne Legacy and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, was the driving force in bringing Kill The Messenger to the big screen. He plays Gary Webb in the soon-to-be-released film.
PHOTO BY KYLE MONK

His father, a U.S. Marine, moved Webb around a lot in his youth, from California to Indiana to Kentucky to Ohio. He wound up marrying his high-school sweetheart, Sue Bell, with whom he had three children. Inspired by the reporting that uncovered Watergate and in need of income, he left college three units shy of a degree and went to work at The Kentucky Post, then The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, where he rose quickly through the ranks of grunt reporters. Dogged in his pursuit of stories, Webb landed a job at the Mercury News in 1988 and became part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for reporting on the Loma Prieta earthquake.

It was the summer of 1996 when the lone-wolf journalist handed his editors a draft of what would become the three-part, 20,000-word exposé “Dark Alliance.” The series was exhaustive and complex. But its nugget put human faces on how CIA operatives had been aware that the Contras (who had been recruited and trained by the CIA to topple the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua) had smuggled cocaine into the United States and, through drug dealers, fueled an inner-city crack-cocaine epidemic.

When “Dark Alliance” was published on August 18 of that year, it was as if a bomb had exploded at the Mercury News. That’s because it was one of the first stories to go globally viral online on the paper’s then state-of-the-art website. It was 1996; the series attracted an unprecedented 1.3 million hits per day. Webb and his editors were flooded with letters and emails. Requests for appearances piled in from national TV news shows.

“Gary’s story was the first Internet-age big journalism exposé,” said Nich Schou, who wrote the book Kill the Messenger, on which the movie is partially based, along with Webb’s own book version of the series, Dark Alliance. “If the series had happened a year earlier it, ’Dark Alliance’ just would have come and gone,” said Schou.

As word of the story spread, black communities across America—especially in South Central—grew outraged and demanded answers. At the time, crack cocaine was swallowing up neighborhoods whole, fueling an epidemic of addiction and crime. Rocked by the revelations, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, congresswoman for Los Angeles’ urban core to this day, used her bully pulpit to call for official investigations.

But after a six-week honeymoon period for Webb and his editors, the winds shifted. The attacks began.

On October 4, The Washington Post stunned the Mercury News by publishing five articles assaulting the veracity of Webb’s story, leading the package from page one. A few weeks later, The New York Times joined with similar intent.

The ultimate injury came when the L.A. Times unleashed a veritable army of 17 journalists (known internally as the “Get Gary Webb Team”) on the case, writing a three-part series demolishing “Dark Alliance.” The L.A. paper—which appeared to onlookers to have missed a giant story in its own backyard—was exhaustive in its deconstruction, claiming the series “was vague” and overreached. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” summed Post media columnist Howard Kurtz.

Now, even some of Webb’s supporters admitted that his series could have benefited from more judicious editing. But why were the “big three” so intent on tearing down Webb’s work rather than attempting to further the story, as competing papers had done back in the day when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal?

Some say it was the long arm of former President Ronald Reagan and his team’s ability to manipulate the gatekeepers of old media to its purposes. (Reagan had, after all, publicly compared the Contras to “our Founding Fathers” and supported the CIA-led attempt to topple the Sandinista government.)

Others say that editors at the “big three” were simply affronted to have a midsize paper like the Mercury News beat them on such a big story. An article in the Columbia Journalism Review claimed some L.A. Times reporters bragged in the office about denying Webb a Pulitzer.

One of their big criticisms was that the story didn’t include a comment from the CIA. When reporters at the big three asked the agency if Webb’s story was true, they were told no. The denial was printed in the mainstream media as if it were golden truth.

Other issues fueled controversy around Webb’s story. For example: It was falsely reported in some media outlets—and proclaimed by many activists in the black community—that Webb had proven the CIA was directly involved in drug trafficking that targeted blacks. He simply did not make this claim.

In some ways, Webb became the first reporter ever to benefit from, and then become the victim of, a story that went viral online.

After triumphing in the early success of the series, Webb’s editors at the Mercury News became unnerved and eventually backed down under the pressure. Jerry Ceppos, the paper’s executive editor, published an unprecedented column on May 11, 1997, that was widely considered an apology for the series, saying it “fell short” in editing and execution.

When contacted by SN&R, Ceppos, now dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, said he was only barely aware of the film coming out and wasn’t familiar with the acting career of Oliver Platt, who plays him in the movie. “I’m the wrong person to ask about popular culture,” he said.

Asked if he would do anything differently today regarding Gary Webb’s series, Ceppos, whose apologia did partially defend the series, responded with an unambiguous “no.”
Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb in Kill The Messenger.

“It seems to me, 18 years later, that everything still holds up. … Everything is not black and white. If you portrayed it that way, then you need to set the record straight.

“I’m very proud that we were willing to do that.”

Some find irony in the fact that Ceppos, in the wake of the controversy, was given the 1997 Ethics in Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Webb, once heralded as a groundbreaking investigative reporter, was soon banished to the paper’s Cupertino bureau, a spot he considered “the newspaper’s version of Siberia.” In 1997, after additional run-ins with his editors, including their refusal to run his follow-up reporting on the “Dark Alliance” series, he quit the paper altogether.

But a year later, he was redeemed when CIA’s inspector general, Frederick Hitz, released his 1998 report admitting that the CIA had known all along that the Contras had been trafficking cocaine. Reporter Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press, called the report “an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA.” But the revelation fell on deaf ears. It went basically unnoticed by the newspapers that had attacked Webb’s series. A later internal investigation by the Justice Department echoed the CIA report.

But no apology was forthcoming to Webb, despite the fact that the central finding of his series had been proven correct after all.

‘I never really gave up hope'

Earlier this month, Webb's son Eric, 26, opened the door to his Sacramento rental home with a swift grab for the collar of his affable pit-bull mix, Thomas. Eric—lanky at 6 feet 4 inches, with his father's shaggy brown hair and easy expression—attended college at American River College and hopes to become a journalist someday. He was happy to sit down and discuss the upcoming film.

To Eric, the idea that a movie was being made about his dad was nothing new. He’d heard it all at least a dozen times before. Paramount Pictures had owned the rights to Dark Alliance for a while before Universal Studios took it on.

“I stopped expecting it,” said Eric.

Webb’s ex-wife, Stokes, now remarried and still living in Sacramento, had heard it all before, too.

“I’d get discouraged,” she said, “but I never really gave up hope.”
Back in 1997, SN&R brought the controversy about Gary Webb to readers with “Secrets and Lies,” a cover story about why the mainstream media attacked his Mercury News series. In 2004, four months before his suicide, Webb came to work at SN&R.

Things finally took off almost eight years ago, when screenwriter Peter Landesman called author Schou, now managing editor at the OC Weekly, about his not-yet-published book about Webb. Landesman was hot to write a screenplay about Webb’s story, said Schou.

It was years later when Landesman showed the screenplay to Renner, whose own production company, The Combine, decided to co-produce it. Focus Features, which is owned by Universal, now has worldwide rights to the movie Kill the Messenger.

“When Jeremy Renner got involved,” said Schou, “everything started rolling.”

It was the summer of 2013 when Stokes and Webb’s children—Eric, his older brother Ian and younger sister Christine—flew to Atlanta for three days on the film company’s dime to see a scene being shot.

“The first thing [Renner] did when he saw us was come up and give us hugs and introduce himself,” said Eric. “He called us ’bud’ and ’kiddo’ like my dad used to. … He even had the tucked-in shirt with no belt, like my dad used to wear. And I was like, ’Man, you nailed that.’”

The scene the family watched being filmed, according to Stokes, was the one where Webb’s Mercury News editors tell him “they were gonna back down from the story.”

“I was sitting there watching and thinking back to the morning before that meeting,” said Stokes. “Gary was getting nervous [that day]. He said, ’I guess I should wear a tie and jacket’ to this one. He was nervous but hopeful that they would let him move forward with the story.”

Of course, they did not.

After a pause, Stokes said: “It was hard watching that scene and remembering the emotions of that day.”

Just a few months ago, in June, Webb’s family flew to Santa Monica to see the film’s “final cut” at the Focus Features studio. All were thoroughly impressed with the film and the acting. “Jeremy Renner watched our home videos,” said Eric. “He studied. All these little words and gestures that my dad used to do—he did them. I felt like I was watching my dad.”

When asked how playing the role of Gary Webb compared to his usual action-adventure parts (such as in The Bourne Legacy), Renner said it was like “apples and oranges” to compare the two, but then admitted, “I can say this one was more emotionally challenging.”

Renner laughed when asked about the impressive cast he’d managed to round up for a comparatively low-budget movie and how he was “going to be washing a whole lot of people’s cars and doing their laundry.”

Stokes has no regrets about the film.

“Seeing a chapter of your life, with its highs and lows, depicted on the big screen is something you never think is going to happen to you,” she said. “It was all very emotional.

“But I loved the movie. And the kids were very happy with how it vindicated their father.”

Said Renner, “If [the family gets] closure or anything like that … that’s amazing.”

‘I've shot that gun so I know'

It was an otherwise routine Friday morning in December 2004 when Eric Webb was called out of class at Rio Americano High School. The then 16-year-old was put on the phone with his mother, who told him he needed to leave campus immediately and go straight to his grandmother's house.

“I told her, ’I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened,’” said Eric. So she told him about his dad.

“He killed himself,” she said.

Eric had the family BMW that day, so he floored it over to his father’s Carmichael home—the one his dad had been scheduled to clear out of that very day. Webb had just sold it with the alleged plan of saving money by moving into his mother’s home nearby.
Eric Webb, 26 and living in Sacramento, says he feels Kill the Messenger is a clear vindication of his father Gary Webb’s life and career. “The movie is going to vindicate him,” said Eric, seen here with his father’s old typewriter. “If people see the movie, they’re going to know he was right.”
PHOTO BY LISA BAETZ

“I needed a visual confirmation for myself,” said Eric. He pulled up to the house and saw a note in his dad’s handwriting on the door. It read, “Do not enter, please call the police.” Eric went inside and saw the blood, “but his body had already been taken,” he said.

For his children and Stokes, nothing was ever the same. And almost 10 years later, questions still reverberate around Gary Webb’s death.

It’s clear from all who knew him well that he suffered from severe depression. Some—like Stokes—believe in retrospect that Webb was also likely ill with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Still, why did he do it? What makes a man feel despair enough to take his own life?

After leaving the Mercury News in ’97, Webb couldn’t get hired at a daily. After writing his book, he eventually found a position working for the California Legislature’s task force on government oversight. When he lost that job in February 2004, a depression he’d fought off for a long while settled in, said Stokes.

Though divorced in 2000, the couple remained friendly. On the day that would have been their 25th anniversary, he turned to her, utterly distraught, after hearing he’d lost the job.

“He was crying, ’I lost my job, what am I gonna do?’” she said. He knew the development would make it tough to stay in Sacramento near his children. She urged him to regroup and apply again at daily newspapers. Surely, she thought, the controversy over his series would have waned by now.

But when Webb applied, not even interviews were offered.

“Nobody would hire him,” she said. “He got more and more depressed. He was on antidepressants, but he stopped taking them in the spring,” said Stokes. “They weren’t making him feel any better.”

It was August when Webb finally got work as a reporter at SN&R. Though he hadn’t set out to work in the world of weekly journalism, with its lesser pay and more hit-and-miss prestige, he was a productive member of the staff until near the end. During his short time with SN&R, he wrote a few searing cover stories, including “The Killing Game,” about the U.S. Army using first-person shooter video games as a recruitment tool.

In fact, Eric edited a book in 2011 for Seven Stories Press, The Killing Game, that included 11 stories his father had written for various publications, including SN&R. “I was always happy to see his covers,” said Eric, attending high school at the time. “We got SN&R on our campus, and I would be like, “Hey, my dad’s on the front page. That’s awesome.’”

It was the morning of December 10 when SN&R’s editorial assistant Kel Munger entered editor Tom Walsh’s office with word that Gary’s son had just called saying, “Somebody needs to tell the boss that my dad killed himself.”

Within a few hours, SN&R was fielding press calls from all around the country, said Munger. A week later, it was she who had the thankless job of cleaning out Webb’s work cubicle so as to pass his belongings on to his ex-wife and kids. “There was bundled-up research material, a bunch of Detroit hockey paraphernalia, photos of his kids. … I remember he had a 2004 Investigative Reporter’s Handbook with Post-it notes throughout.”

“I was having a hard time keeping it together,” said Munger. “Like everyone else, I’d been looking forward to getting to know him.”

In the days following his death, the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office came out with a preliminary finding that was meant to cease the flood of calls to his office. The report “found no sign of forced entry or struggle” and stated the cause of death as “self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head.”

But it was too late to stop the conspiracy theorists. The CIA wanted Webb dead, they hypothesized, so the agency must have put a “hit” out on him. To this day, the Internet is full of claims that Webb was murdered. The fact that Webb had fired two shots into his own head didn’t dampen the conjectures.

Said Eric, “The funny part is, never once has anybody from the conspiracy side ever contacted us and said, ’Do you think your dad was murdered?’”

The family knew what Webb had been through; they knew he had been fighting acute depression. They learned he’d purchased cremation services and put his bank account in his ex-wife’s name. They knew that the day before his suicide he had mailed letters, sent to his brother Kurt in San Jose, that contained personal messages to each family member.

Receiving the letters “was actually a big relief for us,” said Eric. “We knew it was him. They were typed by him and in his voice. It was so apparent. The things he knew, nobody else would know. … He even recommended books for me to read.”

According to Eric, the “two gunshots” issue is “very explainable,” because the revolver Webb had fired into his head, a .38 Special police addition his Marine father had owned, has double action that doesn’t require a shooter to re-cock to take a second shot. “I’ve shot that gun so I know,” said Eric, who said his father taught him to shoot on a camping trip. “Once you cock the trigger, it goes ’bang’ real easily. … You could just keep on squeezing and it would keep on shooting.”

In Kill the Messenger, Webb’s death goes unmentioned until after the final scene, when closing words roll onto the screen. Renner said he felt it would have been a disservice to the viewer to “weigh in too heavy” with details of the death. Including Webb’s demise would have “raised a lot of questions and taken away from his legacy,” he said.

‘Stand up and risk it all'

It was eight days after Webb's death when a few hundred of us gathered in Sacramento Doubletree Hotel's downstairs conference room for an afternoon memorial service. Photo collages of Webb were posted on tables as mourners filed into the room. There he was on his prized red, white and blue motorcycle. There he was camping with his children. There he was featured in an Esquire magazine article recounting his saga. Family members and friends, longtime colleagues and SN&R staffers packed into the room.

My own distress at Webb’s passing wasn’t fully realized until my eyes lit on his Pulitzer Prize propped on a table just inside the entryway. It was the first one I’d ever seen. I wondered how many more exceptional stories he could have produced if things had gone differently.

“He wanted to write for one of the big three,” said Webb’s brother Kurt. “Unfortunately, the big three turned [on him].”

Praise for the absent journalist—his smarts, guts and tenacity—flowed from friends, colleagues and VIPs at the event. A statement from now U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, then a senator, had been emailed to SN&R: “Because of [Webb]’s work, the CIA launched an Inspector General’s investigation that found dozens of troubling connections to drug-runners. That wouldn’t have happened if Gary Webb hadn’t been willing to stand up and risk it all.”

And Rep. Waters, who spent two years following up on Webb’s findings, wrote a statement calling him “one of the finest investigative journalists our country has ever seen.”

When Hollywood weighs in soon on the Webb saga, the storm that surrounded him in life will probably be recycled in the media and rebooted on the Internet, with old and new media journalists, scholars and conspiracy theorists weighing in from all sides.

But the film itself is an utter vindication of Webb’s work.

Renner was hesitant to say if those who watch Kill the Messenger will leave with any particular take-home lesson. “I want the audience to walk away and debate and argue about it all,” he said of his David and Goliath tale. And then, “I do believe [the film] might help create some awareness and accountability in government and newspapers.”

And what would the real live protagonist of Kill the Messenger have thought of it all? It’s at least certain he’d have been unrepentant. In the goodbye letter his ex-wife received on the day of his suicide, Gary Webb told her:

“Tell them I never regretted anything I wrote.”

-------

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Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The Messenger will vindicate Sacramento investigative journalist Gary Webb
Nearly two decades after the reporter exposed a connection between the CIA and crack cocaine in America, Hollywood chimes in with a major movie

By Melinda Welsh
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This article was published on 09.25.14.

Journalist Gary Webb, who worked at SN&R in the four months before his death, gained both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series “Dark Alliance.”
PHOTO BY LARRY DALTON
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This one has all the ingredients of a dreamed-up Hollywood blockbuster: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist uncovers a big story involving drugs, the CIA and a guerrilla army. Despite threats and intimidation, he writes an explosive exposé and catches national attention. But the fates shift. Our reporter's story is torn apart by the country's leading media; he is betrayed by his own newspaper. Though the big story turns out to be true, the writer commits suicide and becomes a cautionary tale.

Hold on, though. The above is not fiction.

Kill the Messenger, an actual film coming soon to a theater near you, is the true story of Sacramento-based investigative reporter Gary Webb, who earned both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series that revealed the CIA had turned a blind eye to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras trafficking crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere in urban America in the 1980s. One of the first-ever newspaper investigations to be published on the Internet, Webb's story gained a massive readership and stirred up a firestorm of controversy and repudiation.

After being deemed a pariah by media giants like The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, and being disowned by his own paper, Webb eventually came to work in August 2004 at SN&R. Four months later, he committed suicide at age 49. He left behind a grieving family—and some trenchant questions:

Why did the media giants attack him so aggressively, thereby protecting the government secrets he revealed? Why did he decide to end his own life? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Gary Webb?

Like others working at our newsweekly in the brief time he was here, I knew Webb as a colleague and was terribly saddened by his death. Those of us who attended his unhappy memorial service at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento a week after he died thought that day surely marked a conclusion to the tragic tale of Gary Webb.

But no.

Because here comes Kill the Messenger, a Hollywood film starring Jeremy Renner as Webb; Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb’s then wife, Sue Bell (now Stokes); Oliver Platt as Webb’s top editor, Jerry Ceppos; and a litany of other distinguished actors, including Michael K. Williams, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and Robert Patrick. Directed by Michael Cuesta (executive producer of the TV series Homeland), the film opens in a “soft launch” across the country and in Sacramento on October 10.

Members of Webb’s immediate family—including his son Eric, who lives near Sacramento State and plans a career in journalism—expect to feel a measure of solace upon the release of Kill the Messenger.

“The movie is going to vindicate my dad,” he said.

For Renner—who grew up in Modesto and is best known for his roles in The Bourne Legacy, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, The Avengers and The Hurt Locker—the film was a chance to explore a part unlike any he’d played before. During a break in filming Mission Impossible 5, he spoke to SN&R about his choice to star in and co-produce Kill the Messenger.

“The story is important,” said Renner. “It resonated with me. It has a David and Goliath aspect.

“He was brave, he was flawed. … I fell in love with Gary Webb.”

‘The first big Internet-age journalism exposé'

There's a scene in Kill the Messenger that will make every investigative journalist in America break into an insider’s grin. It’s the one where—after a year of tough investigative slogging that had taken him from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., to a moldering jail in Central America to the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles—Renner as Webb begins to actually write the big story. In an absorbing film montage, Renner is at the keyboard as it all comes together—the facts, the settings, the sources. The truth. The Clash provides the soundtrack, with Joe Strummer howling: Know your rights / these are your rights … You have the right to free speech / as long as you’re not dumb enough to actually try it.

It took the real Gary Webb a long time to get to this point in his career.
Jeremy Renner, who starred in films such as The Bourne Legacy and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, was the driving force in bringing Kill The Messenger to the big screen. He plays Gary Webb in the soon-to-be-released film.
PHOTO BY KYLE MONK

His father, a U.S. Marine, moved Webb around a lot in his youth, from California to Indiana to Kentucky to Ohio. He wound up marrying his high-school sweetheart, Sue Bell, with whom he had three children. Inspired by the reporting that uncovered Watergate and in need of income, he left college three units shy of a degree and went to work at The Kentucky Post, then The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, where he rose quickly through the ranks of grunt reporters. Dogged in his pursuit of stories, Webb landed a job at the Mercury News in 1988 and became part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for reporting on the Loma Prieta earthquake.

It was the summer of 1996 when the lone-wolf journalist handed his editors a draft of what would become the three-part, 20,000-word exposé “Dark Alliance.” The series was exhaustive and complex. But its nugget put human faces on how CIA operatives had been aware that the Contras (who had been recruited and trained by the CIA to topple the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua) had smuggled cocaine into the United States and, through drug dealers, fueled an inner-city crack-cocaine epidemic.

When “Dark Alliance” was published on August 18 of that year, it was as if a bomb had exploded at the Mercury News. That’s because it was one of the first stories to go globally viral online on the paper’s then state-of-the-art website. It was 1996; the series attracted an unprecedented 1.3 million hits per day. Webb and his editors were flooded with letters and emails. Requests for appearances piled in from national TV news shows.

“Gary’s story was the first Internet-age big journalism exposé,” said Nich Schou, who wrote the book Kill the Messenger, on which the movie is partially based, along with Webb’s own book version of the series, Dark Alliance. “If the series had happened a year earlier it, ’Dark Alliance’ just would have come and gone,” said Schou.

As word of the story spread, black communities across America—especially in South Central—grew outraged and demanded answers. At the time, crack cocaine was swallowing up neighborhoods whole, fueling an epidemic of addiction and crime. Rocked by the revelations, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, congresswoman for Los Angeles’ urban core to this day, used her bully pulpit to call for official investigations.

But after a six-week honeymoon period for Webb and his editors, the winds shifted. The attacks began.

On October 4, The Washington Post stunned the Mercury News by publishing five articles assaulting the veracity of Webb’s story, leading the package from page one. A few weeks later, The New York Times joined with similar intent.

The ultimate injury came when the L.A. Times unleashed a veritable army of 17 journalists (known internally as the “Get Gary Webb Team”) on the case, writing a three-part series demolishing “Dark Alliance.” The L.A. paper—which appeared to onlookers to have missed a giant story in its own backyard—was exhaustive in its deconstruction, claiming the series “was vague” and overreached. “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail,” summed Post media columnist Howard Kurtz.

Now, even some of Webb’s supporters admitted that his series could have benefited from more judicious editing. But why were the “big three” so intent on tearing down Webb’s work rather than attempting to further the story, as competing papers had done back in the day when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal?

Some say it was the long arm of former President Ronald Reagan and his team’s ability to manipulate the gatekeepers of old media to its purposes. (Reagan had, after all, publicly compared the Contras to “our Founding Fathers” and supported the CIA-led attempt to topple the Sandinista government.)

Others say that editors at the “big three” were simply affronted to have a midsize paper like the Mercury News beat them on such a big story. An article in the Columbia Journalism Review claimed some L.A. Times reporters bragged in the office about denying Webb a Pulitzer.

One of their big criticisms was that the story didn’t include a comment from the CIA. When reporters at the big three asked the agency if Webb’s story was true, they were told no. The denial was printed in the mainstream media as if it were golden truth.

Other issues fueled controversy around Webb’s story. For example: It was falsely reported in some media outlets—and proclaimed by many activists in the black community—that Webb had proven the CIA was directly involved in drug trafficking that targeted blacks. He simply did not make this claim.

In some ways, Webb became the first reporter ever to benefit from, and then become the victim of, a story that went viral online.

After triumphing in the early success of the series, Webb’s editors at the Mercury News became unnerved and eventually backed down under the pressure. Jerry Ceppos, the paper’s executive editor, published an unprecedented column on May 11, 1997, that was widely considered an apology for the series, saying it “fell short” in editing and execution.

When contacted by SN&R, Ceppos, now dean of the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University, said he was only barely aware of the film coming out and wasn’t familiar with the acting career of Oliver Platt, who plays him in the movie. “I’m the wrong person to ask about popular culture,” he said.

Asked if he would do anything differently today regarding Gary Webb’s series, Ceppos, whose apologia did partially defend the series, responded with an unambiguous “no.”
Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb in Kill The Messenger.

“It seems to me, 18 years later, that everything still holds up. … Everything is not black and white. If you portrayed it that way, then you need to set the record straight.

“I’m very proud that we were willing to do that.”

Some find irony in the fact that Ceppos, in the wake of the controversy, was given the 1997 Ethics in Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Webb, once heralded as a groundbreaking investigative reporter, was soon banished to the paper’s Cupertino bureau, a spot he considered “the newspaper’s version of Siberia.” In 1997, after additional run-ins with his editors, including their refusal to run his follow-up reporting on the “Dark Alliance” series, he quit the paper altogether.

But a year later, he was redeemed when CIA’s inspector general, Frederick Hitz, released his 1998 report admitting that the CIA had known all along that the Contras had been trafficking cocaine. Reporter Robert Parry, who covered the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press, called the report “an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA.” But the revelation fell on deaf ears. It went basically unnoticed by the newspapers that had attacked Webb’s series. A later internal investigation by the Justice Department echoed the CIA report.

But no apology was forthcoming to Webb, despite the fact that the central finding of his series had been proven correct after all.

‘I never really gave up hope'

Earlier this month, Webb's son Eric, 26, opened the door to his Sacramento rental home with a swift grab for the collar of his affable pit-bull mix, Thomas. Eric—lanky at 6 feet 4 inches, with his father's shaggy brown hair and easy expression—attended college at American River College and hopes to become a journalist someday. He was happy to sit down and discuss the upcoming film.

To Eric, the idea that a movie was being made about his dad was nothing new. He’d heard it all at least a dozen times before. Paramount Pictures had owned the rights to Dark Alliance for a while before Universal Studios took it on.

“I stopped expecting it,” said Eric.

Webb’s ex-wife, Stokes, now remarried and still living in Sacramento, had heard it all before, too.

“I’d get discouraged,” she said, “but I never really gave up hope.”
Back in 1997, SN&R brought the controversy about Gary Webb to readers with “Secrets and Lies,” a cover story about why the mainstream media attacked his Mercury News series. In 2004, four months before his suicide, Webb came to work at SN&R.

Things finally took off almost eight years ago, when screenwriter Peter Landesman called author Schou, now managing editor at the OC Weekly, about his not-yet-published book about Webb. Landesman was hot to write a screenplay about Webb’s story, said Schou.

It was years later when Landesman showed the screenplay to Renner, whose own production company, The Combine, decided to co-produce it. Focus Features, which is owned by Universal, now has worldwide rights to the movie Kill the Messenger.

“When Jeremy Renner got involved,” said Schou, “everything started rolling.”

It was the summer of 2013 when Stokes and Webb’s children—Eric, his older brother Ian and younger sister Christine—flew to Atlanta for three days on the film company’s dime to see a scene being shot.

“The first thing [Renner] did when he saw us was come up and give us hugs and introduce himself,” said Eric. “He called us ’bud’ and ’kiddo’ like my dad used to. … He even had the tucked-in shirt with no belt, like my dad used to wear. And I was like, ’Man, you nailed that.’”

The scene the family watched being filmed, according to Stokes, was the one where Webb’s Mercury News editors tell him “they were gonna back down from the story.”

“I was sitting there watching and thinking back to the morning before that meeting,” said Stokes. “Gary was getting nervous [that day]. He said, ’I guess I should wear a tie and jacket’ to this one. He was nervous but hopeful that they would let him move forward with the story.”

Of course, they did not.

After a pause, Stokes said: “It was hard watching that scene and remembering the emotions of that day.”

Just a few months ago, in June, Webb’s family flew to Santa Monica to see the film’s “final cut” at the Focus Features studio. All were thoroughly impressed with the film and the acting. “Jeremy Renner watched our home videos,” said Eric. “He studied. All these little words and gestures that my dad used to do—he did them. I felt like I was watching my dad.”

When asked how playing the role of Gary Webb compared to his usual action-adventure parts (such as in The Bourne Legacy), Renner said it was like “apples and oranges” to compare the two, but then admitted, “I can say this one was more emotionally challenging.”

Renner laughed when asked about the impressive cast he’d managed to round up for a comparatively low-budget movie and how he was “going to be washing a whole lot of people’s cars and doing their laundry.”

Stokes has no regrets about the film.

“Seeing a chapter of your life, with its highs and lows, depicted on the big screen is something you never think is going to happen to you,” she said. “It was all very emotional.

“But I loved the movie. And the kids were very happy with how it vindicated their father.”

Said Renner, “If [the family gets] closure or anything like that … that’s amazing.”

‘I've shot that gun so I know'

It was an otherwise routine Friday morning in December 2004 when Eric Webb was called out of class at Rio Americano High School. The then 16-year-old was put on the phone with his mother, who told him he needed to leave campus immediately and go straight to his grandmother's house.

“I told her, ’I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened,’” said Eric. So she told him about his dad.

“He killed himself,” she said.

Eric had the family BMW that day, so he floored it over to his father’s Carmichael home—the one his dad had been scheduled to clear out of that very day. Webb had just sold it with the alleged plan of saving money by moving into his mother’s home nearby.
Eric Webb, 26 and living in Sacramento, says he feels Kill the Messenger is a clear vindication of his father Gary Webb’s life and career. “The movie is going to vindicate him,” said Eric, seen here with his father’s old typewriter. “If people see the movie, they’re going to know he was right.”
PHOTO BY LISA BAETZ

“I needed a visual confirmation for myself,” said Eric. He pulled up to the house and saw a note in his dad’s handwriting on the door. It read, “Do not enter, please call the police.” Eric went inside and saw the blood, “but his body had already been taken,” he said.

For his children and Stokes, nothing was ever the same. And almost 10 years later, questions still reverberate around Gary Webb’s death.

It’s clear from all who knew him well that he suffered from severe depression. Some—like Stokes—believe in retrospect that Webb was also likely ill with undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Still, why did he do it? What makes a man feel despair enough to take his own life?

After leaving the Mercury News in ’97, Webb couldn’t get hired at a daily. After writing his book, he eventually found a position working for the California Legislature’s task force on government oversight. When he lost that job in February 2004, a depression he’d fought off for a long while settled in, said Stokes.

Though divorced in 2000, the couple remained friendly. On the day that would have been their 25th anniversary, he turned to her, utterly distraught, after hearing he’d lost the job.

“He was crying, ’I lost my job, what am I gonna do?’” she said. He knew the development would make it tough to stay in Sacramento near his children. She urged him to regroup and apply again at daily newspapers. Surely, she thought, the controversy over his series would have waned by now.

But when Webb applied, not even interviews were offered.

“Nobody would hire him,” she said. “He got more and more depressed. He was on antidepressants, but he stopped taking them in the spring,” said Stokes. “They weren’t making him feel any better.”

It was August when Webb finally got work as a reporter at SN&R. Though he hadn’t set out to work in the world of weekly journalism, with its lesser pay and more hit-and-miss prestige, he was a productive member of the staff until near the end. During his short time with SN&R, he wrote a few searing cover stories, including “The Killing Game,” about the U.S. Army using first-person shooter video games as a recruitment tool.

In fact, Eric edited a book in 2011 for Seven Stories Press, The Killing Game, that included 11 stories his father had written for various publications, including SN&R. “I was always happy to see his covers,” said Eric, attending high school at the time. “We got SN&R on our campus, and I would be like, “Hey, my dad’s on the front page. That’s awesome.’”

It was the morning of December 10 when SN&R’s editorial assistant Kel Munger entered editor Tom Walsh’s office with word that Gary’s son had just called saying, “Somebody needs to tell the boss that my dad killed himself.”

Within a few hours, SN&R was fielding press calls from all around the country, said Munger. A week later, it was she who had the thankless job of cleaning out Webb’s work cubicle so as to pass his belongings on to his ex-wife and kids. “There was bundled-up research material, a bunch of Detroit hockey paraphernalia, photos of his kids. … I remember he had a 2004 Investigative Reporter’s Handbook with Post-it notes throughout.”

“I was having a hard time keeping it together,” said Munger. “Like everyone else, I’d been looking forward to getting to know him.”

In the days following his death, the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office came out with a preliminary finding that was meant to cease the flood of calls to his office. The report “found no sign of forced entry or struggle” and stated the cause of death as “self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head.”

But it was too late to stop the conspiracy theorists. The CIA wanted Webb dead, they hypothesized, so the agency must have put a “hit” out on him. To this day, the Internet is full of claims that Webb was murdered. The fact that Webb had fired two shots into his own head didn’t dampen the conjectures.

Said Eric, “The funny part is, never once has anybody from the conspiracy side ever contacted us and said, ’Do you think your dad was murdered?’”

The family knew what Webb had been through; they knew he had been fighting acute depression. They learned he’d purchased cremation services and put his bank account in his ex-wife’s name. They knew that the day before his suicide he had mailed letters, sent to his brother Kurt in San Jose, that contained personal messages to each family member.

Receiving the letters “was actually a big relief for us,” said Eric. “We knew it was him. They were typed by him and in his voice. It was so apparent. The things he knew, nobody else would know. … He even recommended books for me to read.”

According to Eric, the “two gunshots” issue is “very explainable,” because the revolver Webb had fired into his head, a .38 Special police addition his Marine father had owned, has double action that doesn’t require a shooter to re-cock to take a second shot. “I’ve shot that gun so I know,” said Eric, who said his father taught him to shoot on a camping trip. “Once you cock the trigger, it goes ’bang’ real easily. … You could just keep on squeezing and it would keep on shooting.”

In Kill the Messenger, Webb’s death goes unmentioned until after the final scene, when closing words roll onto the screen. Renner said he felt it would have been a disservice to the viewer to “weigh in too heavy” with details of the death. Including Webb’s demise would have “raised a lot of questions and taken away from his legacy,” he said.

‘Stand up and risk it all'

It was eight days after Webb's death when a few hundred of us gathered in Sacramento Doubletree Hotel's downstairs conference room for an afternoon memorial service. Photo collages of Webb were posted on tables as mourners filed into the room. There he was on his prized red, white and blue motorcycle. There he was camping with his children. There he was featured in an Esquire magazine article recounting his saga. Family members and friends, longtime colleagues and SN&R staffers packed into the room.

My own distress at Webb’s passing wasn’t fully realized until my eyes lit on his Pulitzer Prize propped on a table just inside the entryway. It was the first one I’d ever seen. I wondered how many more exceptional stories he could have produced if things had gone differently.

“He wanted to write for one of the big three,” said Webb’s brother Kurt. “Unfortunately, the big three turned [on him].”

Praise for the absent journalist—his smarts, guts and tenacity—flowed from friends, colleagues and VIPs at the event. A statement from now U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, then a senator, had been emailed to SN&R: “Because of [Webb]’s work, the CIA launched an Inspector General’s investigation that found dozens of troubling connections to drug-runners. That wouldn’t have happened if Gary Webb hadn’t been willing to stand up and risk it all.”

And Rep. Waters, who spent two years following up on Webb’s findings, wrote a statement calling him “one of the finest investigative journalists our country has ever seen.”

When Hollywood weighs in soon on the Webb saga, the storm that surrounded him in life will probably be recycled in the media and rebooted on the Internet, with old and new media journalists, scholars and conspiracy theorists weighing in from all sides.

But the film itself is an utter vindication of Webb’s work.

Renner was hesitant to say if those who watch Kill the Messenger will leave with any particular take-home lesson. “I want the audience to walk away and debate and argue about it all,” he said of his David and Goliath tale. And then, “I do believe [the film] might help create some awareness and accountability in government and newspapers.”

And what would the real live protagonist of Kill the Messenger have thought of it all? It’s at least certain he’d have been unrepentant. In the goodbye letter his ex-wife received on the day of his suicide, Gary Webb told her:

“Tell them I never regretted anything I wrote.”

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Displaying 1 comments.

Posted 09/25/2014 9:55AM by Suewebb1
I really enjoyed the Return of the Messenger story by Melinda Welsh. Not only did she focus on the movie Kill the Messenger and the series Dark Alliance, but she dug deeper into Dark Alliance’s aftermath. Melissa even got a few quotes from Jerry Ceppos, the Mercury News editor at the time that the story broke that, “is barely aware of the film coming out…..” Really Jerry?? And “you are proud” that you were willing to take a dive on the story through a letter to the readers? Yes,it was the course of least resistance as was proven by the national media’s reaction. I like this quote from Gary in a 2003 interview when he was discussing Dark Alliance’s presence on the internet because it simplifies the outcome of the series. “We did this on purpose, to make it very hard to knock down,to make it very difficult for people to say that this didn’t happen,but they said it didn’t happen anyway.” Thoroughly enjoyed this story Melissa. Sue Stokes

777man

(374 posts)

122. 9.24.14 Gary Webb: Vindicated ------- by Bill Conroy at narconews.com

Reply to 777man (Reply #121)

Fri Sep 26, 2014, 12:27 AM

Sep 2014

Last edited Fri Sep 26, 2014, 01:12 AM - Edit history (1)

Gary Webb: Vindicated
Family Members of the Intrepid Investigative Journalist — Soon To Be Immortalized By An Upcoming Hollywood Movie — Share Their Story With The World

http://narconews.com/Issue67/article4763.html

By Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

September 24, 2014

Sometimes, they kill the messenger, and the message takes flight, only to return later, with its truth self-evident to a new generation. And then, the messenger is resurrected.

Framed copy of Gary Webb’s Pulitzer Prize in Journalism, which he shared with five other reporters at the San Jose Mercury News for their coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. DR 2014 Webb family photo collection
Investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories in 1996 for the San Jose Mercury News that documented the US-government-backed Contra insurgents’ drug pipeline into Los Angeles. More importantly, Webb’s reporting revealed that CIA assets were involved in the sale of millions of dollars worth of cocaine in South Central LA to raise funds for the Contras, who in the 1980s, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, were seeking to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The cocaine — transformed into cheap, addictive crack rocks at the street level — hit Los Angeles and spread like the plague. The proceeds from the drug running by the “CIA’s army” were then used to buy weapons for the Contras, fueling more misery and bloodshed in Nicaragua.

The series was pioneering in that the stories and all the documentation also were posted on the Internet, and quickly went viral without the help of the establishment media, creating a national sensation that threatened to buckle the CIA’s pretense. A media smear campaign against Webb, seeded by the CIA, followed on the heels of that threat, a campaign that attacked Webb personally while sidestepping the facts he had uncovered. The major agenda-setting media — including the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times — were unrelenting in their assault, with the Los Angeles Times putting some 17 reporters on the assignment to destroy Webb, the messenger.

The Mercury News’ top editor, Jerry Ceppos, ultimately buckled, threw Webb to the wolves and penned a letter of apology to the readers for the Dark Alliance series. Webb was subsequently banished to a small Mercury News bureau in Cupertino, Calif., south of San Francisco — and some 125 miles from his home and family in Sacramento. He was forced to write stories normally assigned to cub reporters. His career was effectively destroyed, and he would never again get a job with a daily newspaper. He took his own life on Dec. 9, 2004.

“Gary saw the writing on the wall. It took him a long time to sign a resignation letter, and I don’t blame him,” recalls Sue Bell Stokes, Webb’s widow, ex-wife and enduring friend — since they began dating in high school. “Then he finally signed it, on December 10, and that was the day he was found dead, on December 10, seven years later.”

But in Webb’s case, his message did not die. And it has now returned, in the vessel of a major Hollywood movie set to hit theaters nationwide on Oct. 10, starring box-office sensation Jeremy Renner. And that means Webb’s legacy, and his Dark Alliance investigate series, are about to push back hard against the lies and petty self-interests that worked to destroy his life — though they could never vanquish his spirit. You see, you can’t kill the truth, because it survives even death.

“Gary was sure that people had forgotten about him, and a lot of people had,” Bell Stokes says. “... I suggested he start looking at other newspapers. And he said, “No one is ever going to hire me after Dark Alliance.’

“Yeah, his resume was incredible,” says Webb’s oldest son, Ian, now 30. “All these awards [including a Pulitzer Prize].”

“Christine helped him send out all the resumes and clips,” Bell Stokes adds, referring to Webb’s daughter, now 24.

“’I talked to people, no one’s calling me back,’” Bell Stokes recalls Gary telling her. “And he got just more and more depressed.

“And then he thought the movie would never be made. He said, ‘No one will ever do this movie.’ I said, ‘One day you’re going to be vindicated.’ I really believed that.

“And he said, ‘No, it’s never going to happen.’ He thought it was crazy that I thought he one day would be vindicated, but I always did, that one day it would happen. I knew what he wrote was good, and it was right, and I just thought this is going to come out.”

Gary Webb on the job. DR 2014 Webb family photo collection
Recently, Narco News sat down with members of Gary Webb’s family — Sue, Ian and Christine — in Sacramento to talk with them about the upcoming major motion picture based on Gary Webb’s life, “Kill the Messenger.” They also talked about Gary’s life, his journalism and his Dark Alliance series. We gathered in the backyard of Sue Bell Stokes’ home in a Sacramento suburb, on the patio, as the sun was still shining down on the Earth from bright blue skies above, and while a wildfire raged some 30 miles down the road, being fought by a force of several thousand firefighters.

But that fire was no danger to us at the time. The fire set off by Gary Webb and his Dark Alliance series, though, is a different matter for those who sought to contain it. With the release of the movie “Kill the Messenger,” the messenger is about to be resurrected from the ashes, along with his message, and that truth won’t be extinguished easily — even by an army of first-responder propagandists from the CIA and national media.

The Big Picture

The most important thing about the movie, for her, Sue Bell Stokes says, is that her children liked it.

“I was so worried about that,” she says.

In July, the producers with Focus Features, which is releasing the movie, flew the family down to Santa Monica, Calif., setting up a special screening for them at the movie center there.

“And we went into the screening room by ourselves, just the four of us [including Eric, 26, Gary’s other son], and I was so glad we were alone because it was so emotional,” Sue recalls. “I felt good because I could tell by them watching the movie that the kids all liked it and enjoyed it. I felt so much better after that.”

Ian says there “was just a good vibe” to it all.

“One of my dad’s favorite movies, besides The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was The Big Lebowski, and right on the outside of the screening room they had every characters’ life-size poster from “The Big Lebowski” just lined up,” Ian recalls. “Out of all the movies they could put in there.”

“On the same wall as the “Kill the Messenger” poster,” Christine chimes in.

Sue says the road to that screening room to watch the initial cut of Kill the Messenger was long, with a lot of setbacks along the way, though.

“There were a couple other times that there were movie options going on,” she says. “… I mean this has been going on for years. The movie was going to be made at one point by Universal. Then the recession hit and Universal went up for sale, and they backed away from it.

Christine adds: “They didn’t want to do any depressing movies, only happy movies.”

Sue stresses, though, that screenwriter Peter Landesman never gave up hope. “He said, ‘We’re going to make this movie someday,’ Sue adds. “Peter and I kept plugging away, and then all of a sudden Jeremy Renner got interested. I mean there were other actors that read the script.”

Ian says Tom Cruise was close, and Brad Pitt, “but it was just talk, too.”

Finally, once Renner signed on, everything began to click.

“The movie went into production about a year and half after he showed interest,” Sue says. “He stuck with it. Jeremy Renner wanted to make this movie so bad.”

Ian says as soon as Renner “attached to the movie, it was just day after day of stories. It was wildfire all of a sudden.”

The Webb family says they all have been impressed with the effort the movie’s producers have put into making it as realistic and believable as possible, from the script, to the actors and down to the smallest details.

“When we were in Atlanta watching a scene, they had do pick-up shot. So they redressed the set to look like the interior of our house,” Ian says. “In that scene, my character walks downstairs and asks what’s going on. Jeremy Renner turns to him [the stand-in] and says, ‘Ian, why don’t you go back upstairs.’

“Jeremy even looked in my direction, and I actually thought he meant me, because we had just gone down stairs to watch this scene. That’s when it really hit me. It kind of comes in these waves of realism.”

The art department for the film went to great lengths to incorporate things from Gary’s life into the scenes, including reproducing a pair of Gary’s reading glasses; using posters from Ian’s bedroom at the time; recreating the jerseys worn by the kids’ hockey team, the Rebels; and even assuring that a motorcycle used in the film was the same color, make and model as the one owned by Gary.

“No one else would give a shit. They don’t know what color bike he had or what poster I had in my room, or what he had on his desk,” Ian says. “The music too, like the moment where there’s a Mott the Hoople song — it meant so much for me to hear that song.”

Also important to the family is the fact that the people involved in making the movie are invested in the project, and care about the events portrayed in the movie. It wasn’t just a money grab for them, the family says.

“When we were at the filming in Atlanta, they were talking about how the actors and actresses, and everyone involved in the movie, were doing it because they care about it, not just for the money,” Christine says. “Someone said we’re basically calling up actors and actresses on family vacation asking them if they want to come to hot, humid Atlanta for $8 to film a movie.”

“They’re not getting paid much,” Sue adds, “and Oliver Platt cancelled his vacation to do the part because he really wanted to play [Mercury News Executive Editor] Jerry Ceppos so much.”

She says it was clear to her that Jeremy Renner also has put his heart into the project. “He spent so much time with us in Atlanta [where the film was shot], had lunch with us, warmed up to us, gave us hugs, and he was so excited about it, and moved by it too,” she says.

Sue is particularly impressed with another aspect of Kill the Messenger: The fact that it gets the story right.

“We’re just so happy Gary’s going to be vindicated, and he is in the movie. The core of the movie is right. The truth is there.

“I think Gary would have liked it. I think he would have really liked the movie, and been so excited about it,” Sue adds.

“It just feels right,” Ian says. “It makes everybody who was bad look bad, and everyone who was good look good. It just serves everyone a little bit of justice.”

The Media Assault

Kill the Messenger may offer up some sweet vindication for Gary Webb, but the real story behind the movie is a tale of anguish for the family. The big media that teamed up and piled on in the smear campaign against Webb not only ruined the career of a great journalist, but also helped to tear apart a family’s future.

Gary Webb was an avid motorcycle rider, a pastime he also taught his children to enjoy as well. DR 2014 Webb family photo collection
“If they [the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times] hadn’t written what they did, then Gary would have been able to continue on with his story like he was supposed to do,” Sue insists. “A lot more would have come out. Gary wouldn’t have had to quit the paper to write the book [Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion], and he would have continued on as a newspaper reporter.”

She says the newspapers attacking him went to great lengths to “criticize him, looking into his personal life.”

“It was was just stupid,” she adds

Sue recalls the day Gary went to San Jose to meet with the editors about Dark Alliance, after the media assault was in full swing. “He was so nervous that morning about going, because he didn’t know what was going to happen,” she recalls. “He knew it wasn’t going to be good, but he never expected them to write that letter [to readers apologizing for the series].

“Gary was like, ‘I guess I better put on a jacket’ and everything, and he was dreading the meeting. He knew they probably would not let him write more stories, but he didn’t think that [letter] was going to happen. He called me and told me.”

The letter to the readers went through five or six drafts, back and forth between Gary and the Mercury News editors, Sue says.

“Gary was saying, ‘You can’t write this,’ and they had his name all in there and that he agreed with it. I said, ‘You can’t let them put that in the paper. It makes it sound like you agree there were problems with the story.’

“Then they were really upset with him because he would not go along with it. He never signed anything, but they just finally put the letter out there.”

Gary was “baffled about why the media attacked him,” Sue recalls. She adds that he assumed the pressure was too much for the Mercury News, and they finally cracked.

“I think there was more to it than [the other newspapers just being embarrassed],” Sue says, however. “I think the LA Times was embarrassed, because [Dark Alliance] was right in their backyard. Gary really, truly believed [that].

“… But honestly, back at that point [when Gary was being attacked], I thought someone had gotten to them [Ceppos and the Mercury News], someone in the government, at the CIA.

“It was so odd to me that Jerry Ceppos was so protective of Gary and stood behind him and was really angry about what everyone was writing, and then all of a sudden it started changing. And I think maybe it came from above him [Ceppos]: ‘Maybe you guys need to back away from this story.’”

Banished

As the smear campaign orchestrated by the big mainstream newspapers against Gary and Dark Alliance continued, Gary’s editors at the Mercury News began to stonewall his efforts to pursue the story, ultimately pressuring him to resign. For his family, it was a very difficult ordeal, one that his kids really didn’t understand at the time.

“Gary did the follow-up stories [on the original Dark Alliance series after the media attack started], and he wasn’t getting calls back [from the Mercury News editors in San Jose],” Sue says. “He sent those stories [from Sacramento] to the editors [in San Jose] and he said, ‘I don’t know what they’re doing. There not not working on them.’

“Then Jerry Ceppos started denying Gary even had stories, saying they were just notes he sent,” Sue adds. “And Gary’s like, “Those were not notes; they were stories I sent them.’ It was just weird stuff.”

But Gary went to great lengths to keep the turmoil he was experiencing away from this children. “He did such a good job of not showing that anger to us about his work,” Ian recalls.

When Gary was relocated to the Mercury News bureau in Cupertino, a penalty for doing his job too well, Sue says he was very upset. Cupertino is located some two-and-a-half hours by car from the California state capitol of Sacramento, where Gary was based as an investigative reporter for the newspaper.

“I remember Gary’s mother was there the day he left, and he started crying,” Sue says. “The whole reality of what was happening was so overwhelming to him. ‘They’re making me go to Cupertino, leave my family and kids. What am I going to do?’

“Then he went to Cupertino and had to write stories, like the one about a horse dying of constipation. He was doing stories he did when he first started as a reporter, and he would not let them use his byline.”

Ian says, “It just sucked. It didn’t make any sense to us, at that age especially.

“At that time, too, I just didn’t realize the … pride of your work,” Ian adds. “Until you get a little older, and start doing something you like, you don’t get that. For all I knew, my dad would be good at anything. I just knew he loved to write.

“But when you’re looking at your dad, especially as a kid, he’s invincible. He can do anything. So yeah it’s been this realization ever since he passed away, and I’ve gotten a little older and started doing something I love, yeah, if someone told me I couldn’t do that ever again, it would kill me, it would ruin me. So I can understand now.”

One of the deepest blows for Gary, Sue says, is when the Mercury News took Dark Alliance off the Internet. She says Gary worked with the newspaper’s Mercury Center to assure his story and documentation were made available online, a novel approach at the time.

“Gary felt it was important to have his documentation out there so he went to them [the Mercury Center],” Sue says. “‘This is really important,’ he said, ‘because there’s a large unbelievability factor here, so we can put all this stuff online.’ And he was very proud of that too.”

“I remember when they took it off the Internet,” she adds. “They just kept sticking it to him, over and over, and now they’ve taken the series off the Internet. He was really, really hurt by all of it, by the way they treated him.”

Sue adds that she appreciates greatly that Narco News has the Dark Alliance series on its website, and has “kept it alive for so many years. That’s great, because it’s nowhere else.”

Ian adds: “Yeah it’s perfect. I use that because a lot people don’t realize who my dad is, and they just go straight to that site [at Narco News].

“I remember my dad told me about the school [the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, held annually, which Gary Webb helped to launch in 2003], and he showed me a couple pictures when he returned [from the school in Mexico],” Ian says. “I knew he liked it, and it was something he was excited about doing.”

Unmasking The Dark Alliance

At the time Dark Alliance broke on the national scene, Ian says he was 12. But even at that age, he says he knew it was a big deal.

“We went down to South Central LA to a rally in a high school auditorium, the whole family,” Ian says. “I remember seeing how big of an impact it was having and how many people had shown up.”

Sue says he was doing a lot radio interviews in the house. “Things were more exciting then,” she adds, “and we had just moved into this house when he wrote Dark Alliance.

“The house needed remodeling, and we had just gone on vacation, and Gary was off working on the story and doing interviews. It was just a chaotic time.”

Ian says he doesn’t know how his dad made the time to do everything he did while chasing down huge investigative stories like Dark Alliance. He says Gary coached their hockey team, even taking the time to write a newsletter every week, called the Rebel Yell.

“And he passed it out to all the parents every week,” Ian says. “He’d have all the stats, all the passes. I just didn’t realize how detail oriented he was with those kind of things.”

Sue recalls the day when Gary finally connected the dots that led to the Dark Alliance series. He was ecstatic. Sue, however, admits to having a sense of dread.

“I came home one day and he said: ‘You’re not going to believe what I figured out today. You’re not going to believe it. I figured out where these drugs are going and being sold.’

“He said he had traced it to South Central Los Angeles. And he was so excited about that because he found that connection. I remember that day so clearly,” Sue says, “because it made me nervous. I just felt uncomfortable about it.

“But those are the kind of stories Gary did. If he thought it was a good story, he was going to write it. He didn’t think about the consequences of it, what might happen. He thought if you told the truth, it doesn’t matter. If you lay it out there, it really doesn’t matter. And then he learned the hard way.”

The Man

What the establishment media did in their assault on Gary Webb, in its effect, went far beyond killing an important story. They also ruined a good man. Gary wasn’t a heel in a suit, like so many of those who, out of jealousy or fear for career, chose to attack him.

He was a family man, a loving father who instilled working-class values in his children, and who above all else strived to be fair and to tell the truth. Gary Webb was one of us.

L to R: Gary’s daughter, Christine; his longtime companion and mother of his children, Sue Bell Stokes; and Ian, Gary’s oldest son. Gary’s other son, Eric, is now 26. DR 2014 Bill Conroy
“My dad had a don’t-take-crap-from-somebody kind of attitude,” Ian says. “He was really good at defending himself and making sure if he was arguing about something that he had all the facts to present his argument.”

Christine says her dad “always told us to stick up for ourselves, and he was extremely reasonable if I had any issues, and I was talking to him about it.

“He would look at it from both sides and have a reasonable response, and he would never baby us. ‘You need to be fair about everything,’ he said. And he always told us not to put up with crap from our friends, people we were dating, ourselves. Always expect the best.”

Sue stresses that he also was young at heart and “always liked to have fun” with his children.

“Yeah, he hated people who were too serious about stuff,” Ian recalls.

Ian says his father “loved being a kid and never wanted to grow out of that stage, and he made sure we had fun with him while doing some of those activities.”

“I don’t understand how he found so much time to have fun with us, when he was such a serious busy guy in this other life,” Ian adds.

And Gary did work hard. He was passionate about his work.

Sue says he would stay up late writing, a lot.

“When he got really into a story, that’s all he did. He would just stay up and write and write, and get just a couple hours of sleep,” she recalls. “He just threw himself into it and just wanted to get the story done. He was that kind of writer.”

“Yeah,” Ian adds, “looking over his shoulder while he was writing, forget about it. He was like, ‘You need something?’

“I understand that now. When I’m editing [video] and someone’s trying to talk with me… I respect that now.”

Christine says her dad “had so much in his head. He knew everything about everything.”

He was a huge Jeopardy fan. Sue says he would watch the TV quiz show and answer all the questions, “and I said, ‘You need to go on the show. How do you know this?’”

Ian recalls that his girlfriend got upset at him once because he was telling her something about a car, about the mechanics.

“She said, ‘Where did you hear that?”

And I said, “My dad.” And she said, “He doesn’t know everything, OK.”

And I said, “Well, so far he’s been pretty right on about everything.”

Christine adds that one of the last times she saw her father, “he offered to read [Dr. Seuss’] Green Eggs and Ham to me at the doctor’s office.”

“And I was like 13,” she adds. “I was like, ‘No dad, you’re not reading me Green Eggs and Ham. … He was a smartass, and he was a brat.”

Ian adds: “He trusted you. It was important to have that trust.”

“It was big to tell the truth,” Christine says. “Always tell the truth.”

==============================

Jeremy Renner's stance on drugs
The star of new political thriller 'Kill the Messenger,' Jeremy Renner, talks about his respect for investigative journalism and why he believes the war on drugs has no end in sight. (Sept. 25) AP
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/life/people/2014/09/25/16206659/

777man

(374 posts)

123. 9.26.14 Variety:Jeremy Renner gives his best performance since 'The Hurt Locker' in this assiduous,

Reply to 777man (Reply #122)

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 01:15 AM

Sep 2014

Film Review: ‘Kill the Messenger’

http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-kill-the-messenger-1201314058/

Kill the Messenger
September 26, 2014 | 09:00AM PT
Jeremy Renner gives his best performance since 'The Hurt Locker' in this assiduous, engrossing drama about the late investigative reporter Gary Webb.
Andrew Barker
Senior Features Writer @barkerrant

Though he has four theatrical features under his belt, director Michael Cuesta is perhaps best known for his work on TV series “Homeland” and “Six Feet Under,” and perhaps the worst one can say about his new feature, “Kill the Messenger,” is that it sometimes plays like a condensed version of a first-rate cable miniseries. Based on the life of investigative reporter Gary Webb, who sparked firestorms with his writing on links between the CIA, Nicaraguan Contras and the American crack-cocaine trade only to have his career destroyed in the media blowback, the film taps into far deeper, richer veins of material than it has the time to properly mine. It’s nonetheless a flinty, brainy, continually engrossing work that straddles the lines between biopic, political thriller and journalistic cautionary tale, driven by Jeremy Renner’s most complete performance since “The Hurt Locker.” Specialty box office should be healthy; post-screening debates and Google sessions should be fierce.

Unlike Russell Crowe, whose turn as an ink-stained wretch in “State of Play” saw him tamp down his leading-man charm to an almost penitential degree, Renner plays Webb as a dashing, naturally impatient sort of everyman. (Imagine Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward as a beer-drinking, motorcycle-riding father of three who’s probably been to his fair share of Pearl Jam concerts.) Working for the San Jose Mercury News in the mid-1990s, Webb publishes a piece on seizures of suspected drug dealers’ property by the DEA, only to find a spate of messages from a flirtatious drug trafficker’s moll (Paz Vega) waiting for him at his desk the next day.

Meeting up with her, Webb gets hold of a confidential file on Danilo Blandon (Yul Vazquez), a former Nicaraguan trafficker with ties to the Contras, enlisted by the DEA to help bring down notorious kingpin “Freeway” Ricky Ross (Michael K. Williams). The document quickly leads Webb down a rabbit hole that sees him travel to Central America, Washington, D.C., South Central L.A.’s crack killing fields, and Ross’ prison cell. When he emerges, he pens the Mercury News’ three-part 1996 expose “Dark Alliance,” which alleges that Nicaraguan Contras (trained and supported by the CIA to fight the country’s socialist government) were funded by the traffickers directly responsible for the explosion of crack cocaine in America’s inner cities.

This swashbuckling investigation sequence flits by rapidly, at times a bit too rapidly to fully grasp the significance of each new player or parcel of information. But the scenes are enlivened by Cuesta’s cast of topnotch actors recruited for what are essentially one-scene roles. Williams supplies a memorable few minutes as Ross, reminiscing about the crack business’s inversion of the laws of economics: “I couldn’t sell it fast enough to keep up with the supply.” Michael Sheen shows up as a squirrely D.C. insider with some of the most memorably awful hair this side of “American Hustle.” And best of all, Andy Garcia brings a serpentine serenity to his role as jailed Nicaraguan majordomo Norwin Meneses, a gentleman-criminal held in such high esteem that his fellow inmates instinctively clear the prison yard to allow him to practice his golf swing.

Webb receives hints that there might be repercussions for pursuing the story (as one government official notes in a not-at-all-reassuring promise, “we would never hurt your family.”) Yet the real trouble comes from much closer to home. Incensed about being scooped by a small paper on a hometown story, Los Angeles Times editors assign no fewer than 17 reporters to the Gary Webb beat. Other papers find plenty of anonymous Agency sources to refute the piece. And as the article spreads far and wide on the Internet — “Dark Alliance” was arguably one of the first viral news stories — Webb finds himself consistently being asked to defend allegations that he never actually made, his work attracting just as much misinterpretation as condemnation.

If ever there were a film that could benefit from extensive onscreen footnotes, “Kill the Messenger” is one, yet Cuesta never dwells on the particular strengths and flaws of Webb’s journalism. Indeed, the director seems a little too desperate to keep the film from devolving into “spinach cinema” infotainment, keeping the pacing brisk and intimate, shooting with handheld cameras from tight angles that suggest a Paul Greengrass spy tale as much as a process-heavy procedural. Gradually, the pic shifts its focus to the strain this scrutiny causes on Webb’s personal life. Increasingly marginalized at work, he’s transferred to the paper’s sleepy Cupertino bureau, and dalliances from his past drive wedges between Webb and wife Sue (Rosemarie DeWitt) as well as his eldest son (Lucas Hedges).

As the film’s title grows ever more prophetic — Webb committed suicide in 2004 — the strengths of Renner’s performance start to come to the fore. Without making him a martyr for J-school do-gooders, Renner finds in Webb a querulous, ultimately heartbreaking example of a natural troublemaker who found in journalism what he believed to be a safe, righteous outlet for his anti-authoritarian impulses. Early scenes see him bouncing around his office listening to the Clash as he bashes out his pieces; later on, his head droops further and further downward as his professional protectors fall away one by one, finally delivering a valedictory speech that functions as a eulogy.

Written by Peter Landesman (adapted from Nick Schou’s “Kill the Messenger” and Webb’s own “Dark Alliance”), the film is immensely sympathetic to Webb while still allowing the character his share of personal flaws. Yet by never delving deep into the specific criticisms of his work — whose greatest sins were probably overstatement and presumption — the film may ultimately do him a disservice. In a post-Julian Assange era, when an organization like TMZ can bring the biggest professional sports league in the country into disrepute, the idea that a flawed yet well-intentioned journalist should suffer so mightily for calling attention to such an explosive subject feels even more inexplicable and tragic. Acknowledgement of his failings would do little to change that.

(Full disclosure: Leo Wolinsky, a former Los Angeles Times editor portrayed by Dan Futterman in the film, was an editor of Daily Variety between 2009-10. I worked under him during that time.)
Film Review: 'Kill the Messenger'
Reviewed at Real D screening room, Beverly Hills, Sept. 24, 2014. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 112 MIN.
Production
A Focus Features release and presentation of a Bluegrass Film production. Produced by Scott Stuber, Naomi Despres, Jeremy Renner. Executive producers, Peter Landesman, Pamela Abdy, Don Handfield, Michael Bederman.
Crew
Directed by Michael Cuesta. Screenplay, Peter Landesman, based on the books “Dark Alliance” by Gary Webb and “Kill the Messenger” by Nick Schou. Camera (color), Sean Bobbitt; editor, Brian A. Kates; music, Nathan Johnson; music supervisor, Jim Black; production designer, John Paino; art director, Scott Anderson; set decorator, Nicole LeBlanc; costume designer, Kimberly Adams; sound, Aron Siegel; supervising sound editor/re-recording mixer, Paul Hsu; assistant director, Luke Crawford; casting, Avy Kaufman.
With
Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lucas Hedges, Michael K. Williams, Tim Blake Nelson, Paz Vega, Michael Sheen, Oliver Platt, Andy Garcia, Yul Vazquez, Dan Futterman, Richard Schiff, Ray Liotta
Filed Under:

Jeremy Renner
Kill the Messenger
Michael Cuesta

777man

(374 posts)

124. 9.22.14 CAPITAL FILE--Jeremy Renner Talks 'Kill the Messenger' Movie, Marriage, and Fatherhood

Reply to 777man (Reply #123)

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 01:21 AM

Sep 2014

Last edited Mon Oct 6, 2014, 01:05 AM - Edit history (1)

http://capitolfile-magazine.com/personalities/articles/jeremy-renner-confirms-hes-married-and-talks-about-kill-the-messenger-movie
http://capitolfile-magazine.com/digital-edition

Jeremy Renner Talks 'Kill the Messenger' Movie, Marriage, and Fatherhood

BY ELIZABETH E. THORP
PHOTOgRAPHY BY sARAH dunn

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner takes on the CIA in his new drama, Kill the Messenger.
------------
(PHOTO)
Chris Matthews, Michael Cuesta, Senator Chris Dodd, and Jeremy Renner

Capitol File and the Motion Picture Association of America hosted a private screening of Kill the Messenger with actor Jeremy Renner and director Michael Cuesta on September 23, 2014 at the MPAA theater. Following the screening, Jeremy Renner and Michael Cuesta sat down for a Q+A with MSNBC Hardball's Chris Matthews. Read our cover story featuring Jeremy Renner here >>

http://capitolfile-magazine.com/galleries/kill-the-messenger-screening-with-special-guest-jeremy-renner

Full Gallery of MPAA/Capital File Screening:
http://www.gettyimages.de/editorial/jeremy-renner-pictures

------------------------

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/kill-messenger-film-review-735836
'Kill the Messenger': Film Review
9:00 AM PDT 9/26/2014 by Todd McCarthy
Jeremy Renner stars in Michael Cuesta's fact-based drama about a reporter who exposed the CIA's role in the Central American cocaine business

---------------------

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/review-kill-the-messenger-starring-jeremy-renner-mary-elizabeth-winstead-rosemarie-dewitt-20140926

Review: ‘Kill The Messenger’ Starring Jeremy Renner, Mary Elizabeth Winstead & Rosemarie DeWitt
By Rodrigo Perez | The Playlist September 26, 2014 at 12:00PM

---------------

777man

(374 posts)

125. 9.25.14 Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb By Ryan Deverea

Reply to 777man (Reply #124)

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 01:46 AM

Sep 2014

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/

Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb
By Ryan Devereaux
@rdevro

Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.

The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.

These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.

On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.

(Dujmovic’s name was redacted in the released version of the CIA document, but was included in a footnote in a 2010 article in the Journal of Intelligence. Dujmovic confirmed his authorship to The Intercept.)
Kill the Messenger Jeremy Renner

Actor Jeremy Renner stars as investigative journalist Gary Webb in the upcoming film “Kill the Messenger.”

Webb’s troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News, published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title “Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion,” Webb’s series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated California’s most vulnerable African American neighborhoods.

Derided by some as conspiracy theory and heralded by others as investigative reporting at its finest, Webb’s series spread through extensive talk radio coverage and global availability via the internet, which at the time was still a novel way to promote national news.

Though “Dark Alliance” would eventually morph into a personal crisis for Webb, it was initially a PR disaster for the CIA. In “Managing a Nightmare,” Dujmovic minced no words in describing the potentially devastating effect of the series on the agency’s image:

The charges could hardly be worse. A widely read newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in America’s cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk radio and the internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIA–reminiscent of the 1970s–abound. Investigations are demanded and initiated. The Congress gets involved.

Dujmovic acknowledged that Webb “did not state outright that CIA ran the drug trade or even knew about it.” In fact, the agency’s central complaint, according to the document, was over the graphics that accompanied the series, which suggested a link between the CIA and the crack scare, and Webb’s description of the Contras as “the CIA’s army” (despite the fact that the Contras were quite literally an armed, militant group not-so-secretly supported by the U.S., at war with the government of Nicaragua).

Dujmovic complained that Webb’s series “appeared with no warning,” remarking that, for all his journalistic credentials, “he apparently could not come up with a widely available and well-known telephone number for CIA Public Affairs.” This was probably because Webb “was uninterested in anything the Agency might have to say that would diminish the impact of his series,” he wrote. (Webb later said that he did contact the CIA but that the agency would not return his calls; efforts to obtain CIA comment were not mentioned in the “Dark Alliance” series).

Dujmovic also pointed out that much of what was reported in “Dark Alliance” was not new. Indeed, in 1985, more than a decade before the series was published, Associated Press journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger found that Contra groups had “engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.” In a move that foreshadowed Webb’s experience, the Reagan White House launched “a concerted behind-the-scenes campaign to besmirch the professionalism of Parry and Barger and to discredit all reporting on the contras and drugs,” according to a 1997 article by Peter Kornbluh for the Columbia Journalism Review. “Whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.”

Neverthess, a special senate subcommittee, chaired by then-senator John Kerry, investigated the AP’s findings and, in 1989, released a 1,166-page report on covert U.S. operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It found “considerable evidence” that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns — and that the U.S. government knew about it.
Nicaragua Contras 1983

1983, Anti-Sandinista Contra forces move down the San Juan River which separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica.

From the subcommittee report:

On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.

The chief of the CIA’s Central America Task Force was also quoted as saying, “With respect to (drug trafficking) by the Resistance Forces…it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people.”

Despite such damning assessments, the subcommittee report received scant attention from the country’s major newspapers. Seven years later, Webb would be the one to pick up the story. His articles distinguished themselves from the AP’s reporting in part by connecting an issue that seemed distant to many U.S. readers — drug trafficking in Central America — to a deeply-felt domestic story, the impact of crack cocaine in California’s urban, African American communities.

“Dark Alliance” focused on the lives of three men involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.: Ricky “Freeway” Ross, a legendary L.A. drug dealer; Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes, considered by the U.S. government to be Nicaragua’s biggest cocaine dealer living in the United States; and Meneses Cantarero, a powerful Nicaraguan player who had allegedly recruited Blandón to sell drugs in support of the counter-revolution. The series examined the relationship between the men, their impact on the drug market in California and elsewhere, and the disproportionate sentencing of African Americans under crack cocaine laws.

And while its content was not all new, the series marked the beginning of something that was: an in-depth investigation published outside the traditional mainstream media outlets and successfully promoted on the internet. More than a decade before Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, Webb showcased the power and reach of online journalism. Key documents were hosted on the San Jose Mercury News website, with hyperlinks, wiretap recordings and follow-up stories. The series was widely discussed on African American talk radio stations; on some days attracting more than one million readers to the newspaper’s website. As Webb later remarked, “you don’t have be The New York Times or The Washington Post to bust a national story anymore.”

But newspapers like the Times and the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webb’s reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the “get Gary Webb team.” Another said at the time, “We’re going to take away that guy’s Pulitzer,” according to Kornbluh’s CJR piece. Within two months of the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the L.A. Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitor’s breakout hit than comprised the series itself.

The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” and Dujmovic in “Managing a Nightmare” cites the CIA’s success in discouraging “one major news affiliate” from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. “For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual — which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.”

The document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moved in favor of the CIA, a trend that began about a month and a half after the series was published. “That third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story,” Dujmovic wrote, citing “[r]espected columnists, including prominent blacks,” along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, The Weekly Standard and the Washington Post. The agency supplied the press, “as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media,” with “these more balanced stories,” Dujmovic wrote. The Washington Post proved particularly useful. “Because of the Post‘s national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a ‘firestorm of reaction’ against the San Jose Mercury News.” Over the month that followed, critical media coverage of the series (“balanced reporting”) far outnumbered supportive stories, a trend the CIA credited to the Post, The New York Times, “and especially the Los Angeles Times.” Webb’s editors began to distance themselves from their reporter.

By the end of October, two months after “Dark Alliance” was published, “the tone of the entire CIA-drug story had changed,” Dujmovic was pleased to report. “Most press coverage included, as a routine matter, the now-widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.”

“This success has to be in relative terms,” Dujmovic wrote, summing up the episode. “In the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success.”
dark_alliance_540

Artwork that accompanied the original Dark Alliance series published in the San Jose Mercury News.

There’s no question that “Dark Alliance” included flaws, which the CIA was able to exploit.

In his CJR piece, Kornbluh said the series was “problematically sourced” and criticized it for “repeatedly promised evidence that, on close reading, it did not deliver.” It failed to definitively connect the story’s key players to the CIA, he noted, and there were inconsistencies in Webb’s timeline of events.

But Kornbluh also uncovered problems with the retaliatory reports described as “balanced” by the CIA. In the case of the L.A. Times, he wrote, the paper “stumbled into some of the same problems of hyperbole, selectivity, and credibility that it was attempting to expose” while ignoring declassified evidence (also neglected by the New York Times and the Washington Post) that lent credibility to Webb’s thesis. “Clearly, there was room to advance the contra/drug/CIA story rather than simply denounce it,” Kornbluh wrote.

The Mercury News was partially responsible “for the sometimes distorted public furor the stories generated,” Kornbluh said, but also achieved “something that neither the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, nor The New York Times had been willing or able to do — revisit a significant story that had been inexplicably abandoned by the mainstream press, report a new dimension to it, and thus put it back on the national agenda where it belongs.”

In October, the story of Gary Webb will reach a national moviegoing audience, likely reviving old questions about his reporting and the outrage it ignited. Director Michael Cuesta’s film, Kill the Messenger, stars Jeremy Renner as the hard-charging investigative reporter and borrows its title from a 2006 biography written by award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou, who worked as a consultant on the script.

Discussing the newly disclosed “Managing a Nightmare” document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA “didn’t really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb’s credibility,” Schou told The Intercept. “They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.”

“They must have been delighted over at Langley, the way this all unfolded,” Schou added.

At least one journalist who helped lead the campaign to discredit Webb, feels remorse for what he did. As Schou reported for L.A. Weekly, in a 2013 radio interview L.A. Times reporter Jesse Katz recalled the episode, saying, “As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope. And we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.”

Schou, too, readily concedes there were problems with Webb’s reporting, but maintains that the most important components of his investigation stood up to scrutiny, only to be buried under the attacks from the nation’s biggest papers.

“I think it’s fair to take a look at the story objectively and say that it could have been better edited, it could have been packaged better, it would have been less inflammatory. And sure, maybe Gary could have, like, actually put in the story somewhere ‘I called the CIA X-amount of times and they didn’t respond.’ That wasn’t in there,” he said. “But these are all kind of minor things compared to the bigger picture, which is that he documented for the first time in the history of U.S. media how CIA complicity with Central American drug traffickers had actually impacted the sale of drugs north of the border in a very detailed, accurate story. And that’s, I think, the take-away here.”

As for Webb’s tragic death, Schou is certain it was a direct consequence of the smear campaign against him.

“As much as it’s true that he suffered from a clinical depression for years and years — and even before ‘Dark Alliance’ to a certain extent — it’s impossible to view what happened to him without understanding the death of his career as a result of this story,” he explained. “It was really the central defining event of his career and of his life.”

“Once you take away a journalist’s credibility, that’s all they have,” Schou says. “He was never able to recover from that.”

Kill the Messenger, a thriller based on Webb’s story, will be released October 10.

In “Managing a Nightmare,” Dujmovic attributed the initial outcry over the “Dark Alliance” series to “societal shortcomings” that are not present in the spy agency.

“As a personal post-script, I would submit that ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium that [sic] it does about either the CIA or the media,” he wrote. “We live in somewhat coarse and emotional times–when large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community.”

Webb obviously saw things differently. He reflected on his fall from grace in the 2002 book, Into the Buzzsaw. Prior to “Dark Alliance,” Webb said, “I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests.”

“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,” Webb wrote. “The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn’t written anything important enough to suppress.”

Photo: Webb: Bob Berg/Getty Images; Kill the Messenger: Chuck Zlotnick/Focus Features; Contras: Bill Gentile/Corbis

Email the author: [email protected]

777man

(374 posts)

126. 9.26.14 The CIA/MSM Contra-Cocaine Cover-up by Robert Parry

Reply to 777man (Reply #125)

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 02:14 AM

Sep 2014

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/26/the-ciamsm-contra-cocaine-cover-up/

The CIA/MSM Contra-Cocaine Cover-up
September 26, 2014

Exclusive: With Hollywood set to release a movie about the Contra-cocaine scandal and the destruction of journalist Gary Webb, an internal CIA report has surfaced showing how the spy agency manipulated the mainstream media’s coverage to disparage Webb and contain the scandal, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

In 1996 – as major U.S. news outlets disparaged the Nicaraguan Contra-cocaine story and destroyed the career of investigative reporter Gary Webb for reviving it – the CIA marveled at the success of its public-relations team guiding the mainstream media’s hostility toward both the story and Webb, according to a newly released internal report.

Entitled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story,” the six-page report describes the CIA’s damage control after Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series was published in the San Jose Mercury-News in August 1996. Webb had resurrected disclosures from the 1980s about the CIA-backed Contras collaborating with cocaine traffickers as the Reagan administration worked to conceal the crimes.
Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.

Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.

Although the CIA’s inspector general later corroborated the truth about the Contra-cocaine connection and the Reagan administration’s cover-up, the mainstream media’s counterattack in defense of the CIA in late summer and fall of 1996 proved so effective that the subsequent CIA confession made little dent in the conventional wisdom regarding either the Contra-cocaine scandal or Gary Webb.

In fall 1998, when the CIA inspector general’s extraordinary findings were released, the major U.S. news media largely ignored them, leaving Webb a “disgraced” journalist who – unable to find a decent-paying job in his profession – committed suicide in 2004, a dark tale that will be revisited in a new movie, “Kill the Messenger,” starring Jeremy Renner and scheduled to reach theaters on Oct. 10.

The “Managing a Nightmare” report offers something of the CIA’s back story for how the spy agency’s PR team exploited relationships with mainstream journalists who then essentially did the CIA’s work for it, mounting a devastating counterattack against Webb that marginalized him and painted the Contra-cocaine trafficking story as some baseless conspiracy theory.

Crucial to that success, the report credits “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists and an effective response by the Director of Central Intelligence’s Public Affairs Staff [that] helped prevent this story from becoming an unmitigated disaster.

“This success has to be viewed in relative terms. In the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success. … By anyone’s definition, the emergence of this story posed a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency.” [As approved for release by the CIA last July 29, the report’s author was redacted as classified, however, Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept identified the writer as former Directorate of Intelligence staffer Nicholas Dujmovic.]

According to the CIA report, the public affairs staff convinced some journalists who followed up Webb’s exposé by calling the CIA that “this series represented no real news, in that similar charges were made in the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance. Reporters were encouraged to read the ‘Dark Alliance’ series closely and with a critical eye to what allegations could actually be backed with evidence. Early in the life of this story, one major news affiliate, after speaking with a CIA media spokesman, decided not to run the story.”

Of course, the CIA’s assertion that the Contra-cocaine charges had been disproved in the 1980s was false. In fact, after Brian Barger and I wrote the first article about the Contra-cocaine scandal for the Associated Press in December 1985, a Senate investigation headed by Sen. John Kerry confirmed that many of the Contra forces were linked to cocaine traffickers and that the Reagan administration had even contracted with drug-connected airlines to fly supplies to the Contras who were fighting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

However, in the late 1980s, the Reagan administration and the CIA had considerable success steering the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major news outlets away from the politically devastating reality that President Ronald Reagan’s beloved Contras were tied up with cocaine traffickers. Kerry’s groundbreaking report – when issued in 1989 – was largely ignored or mocked by the mainstream media.

That earlier media response left the CIA’s PR office free to cite the established “group think” – rather than the truth — when beating back Webb’s resurfacing of the scandal in 1996.

A ‘Firestorm’ of Attacks

The initial attacks on Webb’s series came from the right-wing media, such as the Washington Times and the Weekly Standard, but the CIA’s report identified the key turning point as coming when the Washington Post pummeled Webb in two influential articles.

The CIA’s PR experts quickly exploited that opening. The CIA’s internal report said: “Public Affairs made sure that reporters and news directors calling for information – as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media – received copies of these more balanced stories. Because of the Post’s national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a ‘firestorm of reaction’ against the San Jose Mercury-News.”

The CIA’s report then noted the happy news that Webb’s editors at the Mercury-News began scurrying for cover, “conceding the paper might have done some things differently.” The retreat soon became a rout with some mainstream journalists essentially begging the CIA for forgiveness for ever doubting its innocence.

“One reporter of a major regional newspaper told [CIA] Public Affairs that, because it had reprinted the Mercury-News stories in their entirety, his paper now had ‘egg on its face,’ in light of what other newspapers were saying,” the CIA’s report noted, as its PR team kept track of the successful counterattack.

“By the end of September [1996], the number of observed stories in the print media that indicated skepticism of the Mercury-News series surpassed that of the negative coverage, which had already peaked,” the report said. “The observed number of skeptical treatments of the alleged CIA connection grew until it more than tripled the coverage that gave credibility to that connection. The growth in balanced reporting was largely due to the criticisms of the San Jose Mercury-News by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and especially The Los Angeles Times.”

The overall tone of the CIA’s internal assessment is one of almost amazement at how its PR team could, with a deft touch, help convince mainstream U.S. journalists to trash a fellow reporter on a story that put the CIA in a negative light.

“What CIA media spokesmen can do, as this case demonstrates, is to work with journalists who are already disposed toward writing a balanced story,” the report said. “What gives this limited influence a ‘multiplier effect’ is something that surprised me about the media: that the journalistic profession has the will and the ability to hold its own members to certain standards.”

The report then praises the neoconservative American Journalism Review for largely sealing Webb’s fate with a harsh critique entitled “The Web That Gary Spun,” with AJR’s editor adding that the Mercury-News “deserved all the heat leveled at it for ‘Dark Alliance.’”

The report also cites with some pleasure the judgment of the Washington Post’s media critic Howard Kurtz who reacted to Webb’s observation that the war was a business to some Contra leaders with the snide comment: “Oliver Stone, check your voice mail.”

Neither Kurtz nor the CIA writer apparently was aware of the disclosure — among Iran-Contra documents — of a March 17, 1986 message about the Contra leadership from White House aide Oliver North’s emissary to the Contras, Robert Owen, who complained to North: “Few of the so-called leaders of the movement . . . really care about the boys in the field. … THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.” [Emphasis in original.]

Misguided Group Think

Yet, faced with this mainstream “group think” – as misguided as it was – Webb’s Mercury-News editors surrendered to the pressure, apologizing for the series, shutting down the newspaper’s continuing investigation into the Contra-cocaine scandal and forcing Webb to resign in disgrace.

But Webb’s painful experience provided an important gift to American history, at least for those who aren’t enamored of superficial “conventional wisdom.” CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz ultimately produced a fairly honest and comprehensive report that not only confirmed many of the longstanding allegations about Contra-cocaine trafficking but revealed that the CIA and the Reagan administration knew much more about the criminal activity than any of us outsiders did.

Hitz completed his investigation in mid-1998 and the second volume of his two-volume investigation was published on Oct. 8, 1998. In the report, Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s.

According to Volume Two, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its Contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. The earliest Contra force, called the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen “to stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre,” according to a June 1981 draft of a CIA field report.

According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981. ADREN’s leaders included Enrique Bermúdez and other early Contras who would later direct the major Contra army, the CIA-organized FDN. Throughout the war, Bermúdez remained the top Contra military commander.

The CIA corroborated the allegations about ADREN’s cocaine trafficking, but insisted that Bermúdez had opposed the drug shipments to the United States that went ahead nonetheless. The truth about Bermúdez’s supposed objections to drug trafficking, however, was less clear.

According to Hitz’s Volume One, Bermúdez enlisted Norwin Meneses, a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine smuggler and a key figure in Webb’s series, to raise money and buy supplies for the Contras. Volume One had quoted a Meneses associate, another Nicaraguan trafficker named Danilo Blandón, who told Hitz’s investigators that he and Meneses flew to Honduras to meet with Bermúdez in 1982. At the time, Meneses’s criminal activities were well-known in the Nicaraguan exile community. But Bermúdez told these cocaine smugglers that “the ends justify the means” in raising money for the Contras.

After the Bermúdez meeting, Contra soldiers helped Meneses and Blandón get past Honduran police who briefly arrested them on drug-trafficking suspicions. After their release, Blandón and Meneses traveled on to Bolivia to complete a cocaine transaction.

There were other indications of Bermúdez’s drug-smuggling tolerance. In February 1988, another Nicaraguan exile linked to the drug trade accused Bermúdez of participation in narcotics trafficking, according to Hitz’s report. After the Contra war ended, Bermúdez returned to Managua, Nicaragua, where he was shot to death on Feb. 16, 1991. The murder has never been solved. [For more details on Hitz’s report and the Contra-cocaine scandal, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.]

Shrinking Fig Leaf

By the time that Hitz’s Volume Two was published in fall 1998, the CIA’s defense against Webb’s series had shrunk to a fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the Contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the Contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of Contra crimes from the Justice Department, Congress and even the CIA’s own analytical division.

Besides tracing the evidence of Contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long Contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the Contra-drug problem but didn’t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.

According to Hitz, the CIA had “one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. . . . [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the Contra program.” One CIA field officer explained, “The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.”

Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the Contras hid evidence of Contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA’s analysts.

Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that “only a handful of Contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.” That false assessment was passed on to Congress and to major news organizations — serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his “Dark Alliance” series in 1996.

Although Hitz’s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it went almost unnoticed by major U.S. news outlets. By fall 1998, the U.S. mainstream media was obsessed with President Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. So, few readers of major U.S. newspapers saw much about the CIA’s inspector general admitting that America’s premier spy agency had collaborated with and protected cocaine traffickers.

On Oct. 10, 1998, two days after Hitz’s Volume Two was posted on the CIA’s Web site, the New York Times published a brief article that continued to deride Webb but acknowledged the Contra-drug problem may have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times, which had assigned a huge team of 17 reporters to tear down Webb’s work, never published a story on the release of Hitz’s Volume Two.

In 2000, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee grudgingly acknowledged that the stories about Reagan’s CIA protecting Contra drug traffickers were true. The committee released a report citing classified testimony from CIA Inspector General Britt Snider (Hitz’s successor) admitting that the spy agency had turned a blind eye to evidence of Contra-drug smuggling and generally treated drug smuggling through Central America as a low priority.

“In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” Snider said, adding that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”

The House committee still downplayed the significance of the Contra-cocaine scandal, but the panel acknowledged, deep inside its report, that in some cases, “CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.”

Like the release of Hitz’s report in 1998, the admissions by Snider and the House committee drew virtually no media attention in 2000 — except for a few articles on the Internet, including one at Consortiumnews.com.

Killing the Messenger

Because of this abuse of power by the Big Three newspapers — choosing to conceal their own journalistic negligence on the Contra-cocaine scandal and to protect the Reagan administration’s image — Webb’s reputation was never rehabilitated.

After his original “Dark Alliance” series was published in 1996, Webb had been inundated with attractive book offers from major publishing houses, but once the vilification began, the interest evaporated. Webb’s agent contacted an independent publishing house, Seven Stories Press, which had a reputation for publishing books that had been censored, and it took on the project.

After Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion was published in 1998, I joined Webb in a few speaking appearances on the West Coast, including one packed book talk at the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica, California. For a time, Webb was treated as a celebrity on the American Left, but that gradually faded.

In our interactions during these joint appearances, I found Webb to be a regular guy who seemed to be holding up fairly well under the terrible pressure. He had landed an investigative job with a California state legislative committee. He also felt some measure of vindication when CIA Inspector General Hitz’s reports came out.

However, Webb never could overcome the pain caused by his betrayal at the hands of his journalistic colleagues, his peers. In the years that followed, Webb was unable to find decent-paying work in his profession — the conventional wisdom remained that he had somehow been exposed as a journalistic fraud. His state job ended; his marriage fell apart; he struggled to pay bills; and he was faced with a forced move out of a just-sold house near Sacramento, California, and in with his mother.

On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Webb typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; laid out a certificate for his cremation; and taped a note on the door telling movers — who were coming the next morning — to instead call 911. Webb then took out his father’s pistol and shot himself in the head. The first shot was not lethal, so he fired once more.

Even with Webb’s death, the big newspapers that had played key roles in his destruction couldn’t bring themselves to show Webb any mercy. After Webb’s body was found, I received a call from a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who knew that I was one of Webb’s few journalistic colleagues who had defended him and his work.

I told the reporter that American history owed a great debt to Gary Webb because he had forced out important facts about Reagan-era crimes. But I added that the Los Angeles Times would be hard-pressed to write an honest obituary because the newspaper had not published a single word on the contents of Hitz’s final report, which had largely vindicated Webb.

To my disappointment but not my surprise, I was correct. The Los Angeles Times ran a mean-spirited obituary that made no mention of either my defense of Webb or the CIA’s admissions in 1998. The obituary – more fitting for a deceased mob boss than a fellow journalist – was republished in other newspapers, including the Washington Post.

In effect, Webb’s suicide enabled senior editors at the Big Three newspapers to breathe a little easier — one of the few people who understood the ugly story of the Reagan administration’s cover-up of the Contra-cocaine scandal and the U.S. media’s complicity was now silenced.

No Accountability

To this day, none of the journalists or media critics who participated in the destruction of Gary Webb has paid a price for their actions. None has faced the sort of humiliation that Webb had to endure. None had to experience that special pain of standing up for what is best in the profession of journalism — taking on a difficult story that seeks to hold powerful people accountable for serious crimes — and then being vilified by your own colleagues, the people that you expected to understand and appreciate what you had done.

In May 2013, one of the Los Angeles Times reporters who had joined in the orchestrated destruction of Webb’s career acknowledged that the newspaper’s assault was a “tawdry exercise” amounting to “overkill,” which later contributed to Webb’s suicide. This limited apology by former Los Angeles Times reporter Jesse Katz was made during a radio interview and came as filming was about to start on “Kill the Messenger,” based on a book by the same name by Nick Schou.

On KPCC-FM 89.3?s AirTalk With Larry Mantle, Katz was pressed by callers to address his role in the destruction of Webb. Katz offered what could be viewed as a limited apology.

“As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope,” Katz said. “And we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.”

Katz added, “We really didn’t do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of a tawdry exercise. … And it ruined that reporter’s career.”

Now, with the imminent release of a major Hollywood movie about Webb’s ordeal, the next question is whether the major newspapers will finally admit their longstanding complicity in the Contra-cocaine cover-up or whether they will simply join the CIA’s press office in another counterattack.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

777man

(374 posts)

127. 9.26.14 Reviews:

Reply to 777man (Reply #126)

Sat Sep 27, 2014, 02:32 PM

Sep 2014

Last edited Sat Sep 27, 2014, 05:26 PM - Edit history (1)

by
colettaberx
» 10 hours ago (Sat Sep 27 2014 00:22:15) Flag ▼ | Reply |
IMDb member since July 2013
Have been reading reviews! There are a lot of them so I'm still reading !

Reviews from Variety & Cinemablend are glowing!
The Guardian review is good, stating that the story has holes but Renner's performance is great!

It’s nonetheless a flinty, brainy, continually engrossing work that straddles the lines between biopic, political thriller and journalistic cautionary tale, driven by Jeremy Renner’s most complete performance since “The Hurt Locker.”

http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-kill-the-messenger-1201314058/

Jeremy Renner is electrifying as Webb. He shrugs off the sardonic charms he's made famous as Hawkeye, and wallows in barely repressed outrage for much of Kill The Messenger's runtime. Much like he was in The Hurt Locker, Renner is playing a cowboy variant, someone who fights for society, while being an outsider. Though a family man and a seeker of truth, Webb is not an out-and-out good guy. But Kill The Messenger dares us to not be distracted by his faults, while not daring to hide them. What you think of the man--the film suggests--is secondary to what you make of his story.

This marks Renner's first producing effort, and it seems he's made a shrewd move picking a script that plays well to his entrancing intensity. He also brought together an incredible cast that's full of strong performers. Rosemarie DeWitt gives some welcomed depth to his onscreen wife, a role that could have come off as purely stereotypical nag in the hands of a lesser actress. Lucas Hedges, who recently impressed in The Zero Theorem, steals a scene as Gary's heartbroken eldest son. Paz Vega adds danger and sex appeal as a flirtatious informant. Michael Sheen brings a hangdog longing to the role of a wary politician. Ray Liotta pops up for a small but riveting turn where he's barely lit, yet mesmerizing. Really, every part of this sprawling cast is worthy of praise, nailing the drama's steely tone and resolve.

http://www.cinemablend.com/m/reviews/Kill-Messenger-66330.html

In the court of public opinion, everyone deserves a chance to defend themselves and have their side of the story told. For the late Gary Webb, Michael Cuesta's Kill the Messenger represents that opportunity. While many will argue that Webb's monumental reporting was reckless and lacked professionalism, Jeremy Renner's towering performance convinces modern day audiences of just the opposite. Renner, whose latest work begs for awards season recognition, does an exceptional job in the lead role and single-handedly carries Cuesta's film from start to finish.

http://moviecriticdave.blogspot.com/2014/09/kill-messenger.html?m=1

-------------------------------
Kill The Messenger: the Gary Webb story has holes but Renner's performance still sticks

by Jordan Hoffman Friday 26 September 2014 18.28 BST

He has a sturdy build, a clear moral compass, wears cool sunglasses and rides a vintage motorcycle. Everything about Jeremy Renner’s portrayal of journalist Gary Webb in Kill the Messenger readies a conditioned moviegoer to expect him to kick ass in the name of justice. But this is a movie for grownups, so The Avengers’ Hawkeye puts down the bow and arrow and picks up his pen – or more specifically his mid-90s desktop mouse – and uses his brain instead of his brawn.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/sep/26/kill-the-messenger-gary-webb-review

=============

From Gary Webb's hometown paper...

Friday, September 26, 2014
Movie Trailer: Investigative Journalist Gary Webb From "Kill The Messenger" Was Plain Dealer Reporter
Posted By Sam Allard on Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 8:33 AM
click to enlarge Webb.jpg

Gary Webb, the investigative journalist best known for his massive "Dark Alliance" series, which ran in three parts in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996, was a former statehouse correspondent for the Plain Dealer.
http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2014/09/26/movie-trailer-investigative-journalist-gary-webb-from-kill-the-messenger-was-plain-dealer-reporter?mode=print

9/2/14
Jeremy Renner on 'Avengers' success paving way for 'Kill the Messenger'

&feature=youtu.be

777man

(374 posts)

Michael Cuesta, Scripps CEO Rich Boehne, and Sue Bell-Stokes take part in a panel discussion lead by President Mearns after an NKU screening of 'Kill the Messenger'.

Q&A: NKU ‘Kill the Messenger’ premiere panel discussion

Carrie Crotzer, Sports Editor
October 6, 2014
Filed under News

After a special NKU screening of ‘Kill the Messenger’ on Thursday Oct. 2, President Mearns lead a discussion panel with Michael Cuesta, director of the film, Sue Bell-Stokes, Gary Webb’s ex-wife, and Scripps CEO Rich Boehne.

Mearns focused the discussion on a feedback of the movie from the three different perspectives that each panelist hold.

Mearns: Sue a question for you, do you think this film has vindicated Gary Webb’s reputations? And if so, did you think this day would ever come?

Bell-Stokes: I did think this day would come, I always thought that he would be vindicated. I talked to Gary about it, probably the last time in 2003, and we had a conversation about it, and he really truly thought that there had been movie deals that we had discussed, or had been in the works, and had some fall thru. And I said ‘I think one day a movie will be made, and you’ll be vindicated.’ And he said ‘No, it’s not going to ever happen, no one cares, and it’ll be an old story and no ones going to pay attention to it.’ And I said, ‘I think it will.’ … Maybe because it was so wrong what happened to him, and I knew he was right, and I knew it was a great story, and he was a great reporter.

Mearns: So what was it like, you supported Michael and others in the production of the film, what is it like after that work is done, to see your family and yourself portrayed in film?

Bell-Stokes: It means a lot to me, and I found it comfortable with the producers, and Focus Features, and with Michael, and Jeremy playing Gary, I felt comfortable with it. My family and I had discussions before we signed to Focus, you know … Peter Landesmen had written a wonderful script, I trusted him, I trusted Michael, I trusted Jeremy Renner, I felt comfortable where I trusted Focus. I knew they would to the movie the way we it needed to be done to vindicated Gary, and to tell the truth, what really happened. So you have to tell that story in two hours, so obviously things have been changed a little bit and certain things didn’t happen in that time frame, but once again you have to tell the story in two hours, so you have to condense things a little bit. But I think they did a great job.

Mearns: Michael, so a question for you. You’ve had extraordinary experience, extraordinary success in both film, directing and producing, as well as some very accomplished television dramas. Taking off on what Sue said, what challenge of taking a very complex story, a story that was complex at many levels, personal, professional, political, and telling that story in a two hour time frame?

Cuesta: That was the hardest thing about making the film for me. When Peter Landesman did the patient he got what’s in the film is the script and basic structure, as far as the investigation, the turning point, going out of Gary’s point of view, and seeing the machine build up and see how it out of control, and then seeing it on the defensive to clarify what he really wrote and to see him sticking to the story as the … I focused on that, that was the structure, and from him the character, from Gary Webb, it’s more subjective, and I had to get on his shoulders emotionally, and at the beginning of the film which is very much a procedure … It’s sort of a heroes journey as far as your dramatic structure.

Mearns: So Rich, let me ask you a question. The movie portrays a newspaper, and on the one hand there’s this very constructive relationship, the partnership between a reporter, an editor, and management, and then as it starts to fall apart, that partnership becomes adversarial. Was that an accurate portrayal in your extensive experience?

Boehne: Yeah, it was. I could hardly sit, I thought it was intense, I thought it was realistic, the tensions in the newsrooms, you’ve got to get it right, you’ve got to get sources. I thought it was just very hard to watch, as we talked about earlier, the scene in the awards program and how you told that story was just really difficult to watch. I thought you [Cuesta] really got it right as to how the newsroom works.

Mearns: Where is the future of investigative journalism? Where is it going?

Boehne: Well, it’s under duress. If you think about a market like Cincinnati today, when I was at the post, there were several hundred reporters who were on the streets, today I don’t know how many reporters there are, but it’s probably a third of what it was. But the economics are difficult, and the papers, many of them have disappeared, including the post. And investigative reporting, there’s just not near enough of it. I think this is an opportunity for us to look in the mirror and say, ‘We need to step up.’

Mearns: Michael, you were talking about the film was really based upon a character, how does that change the dynamic of you, a director, of working with the leading actor, Jeremy Renner, does it change your relationship?

Cuesta: Jeremy didn’t do a lot of research. I know the family sent me a bunch of videos, and I mean Gary wasn’t in a lot of it, but I watched them, and I just wanted to submerse myself in it. Jeremy didn’t watch a lot of it. I think he trusted me, and he just wanted to know emotionally where the character was, and then he says the words, that’s how a lot of actors work.

Mearns: So Sue, some of the most moving scenes for me, where the scenes where Gary interacts with your oldest son, so how does he feel about it, because that relationship between a father and a son is so important?

Bell-Stokes: Ian has seen the movie twice, all the kids have, and they love it. And I was relieved that they loved it … they were moved by it. The relationship they show, Ian wasn’t that old at the time, they made his character older, and Peter Landesman did that because you’re trying to show this father-son relationship, and that’s easier to do with an older son. And they have that relationship with the bikes, and that was after Ian was 16, and that was a very important part of their relationship. So Peter would take parts of Gary’s timeline and move them around, so I think it was important.

Mearns: So Rich, as I mentioned earlier, you knew Gary as a young reporter, at that time were you able to anticipate the trajectory of Gary’s career?

Boehne: At that time we were freshman and sophomore’s falling asleep in class, so … I mean he jumped in quick, and was very passionate about what he did. I pulled some of Gary’s files at Scripps which we still have, and I was reading a lot of the stories that we he wrote, and I enjoyed reading some of the comments back and forth, between Gary and his editors, and there was this one great line, ‘Hey look, I didn’t become a newspaper man to make friends.’ And it’s just a classic journalism line.

Mearns: Michael, what are you hoping to accomplish as you think about the film, beyond just it’s artistic complex, is there something that you hope this film will accomplish?

Cuesta: I didn’t make the film to accomplish anything, but you know it’s funny, a filmmaker doesn’t realize their movie until you’re very close to finishing it at the end. So what I found in the end was that, with the story that we told, that he made a sacrifice, and the film goes off like that, and he kept going and kept going to keep this thing alive, and it’s not as satisfactory in the end, because I like to think that there’s some power in vindication, but he got people talking. He got the CIA director to that town hall meeting, and he got the CIA to release two reports on what happened. So I see that as a thing of. ‘See it does work, and don’t give up, and we need guys like this.’

777man

(374 posts)

144. 10.5.14-The New York Times’s Belated Admission on the Contra-Cocaine Scandal by Robert Parry

Reply to 777man (Reply #143)

Mon Oct 6, 2014, 02:08 AM

Oct 2014

The New York Times’s Belated Admission on the Contra-Cocaine Scandal
The Times' review of “Kill the Messenger,” the tragic tale of journalist Gary Webb
By Robert Parry
October 05, 2014
Consortium News

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/04/nyts-belated-admission-on-contra-cocaine/

Since the Contra-cocaine scandal surfaced in 1985, major U.S. news outlets have disparaged it, most notably when the big newspapers destroyed Gary Webb for reviving it in 1996. But a New York Times review of a movie on Webb finally admits the reality, writes Robert Parry.

Nearly three decades since the stories of Nicaraguan Contra-cocaine trafficking first appeared in 1985, the New York Times has finally, forthrightly admitted the allegations were true, although this belated acknowledgement comes in a movie review buried deep inside Sunday’s paper.

The review addresses a new film, “Kill the Messenger,” that revives the Contra-cocaine charges in the context of telling the tragic tale of journalist Gary Webb who himself revived the allegations in 1996 only to have the New York Times and other major newspapers wage a vendetta against him that destroyed his career and ultimately drove him to suicide.

Ronald Reagan statue at National Airport, which was renamed in his honor as his scandals were excused and suppressed.

Ronald Reagan’s statue at Washington’s National Airport, which was renamed in his honor after his scandals were excused and suppressed.

The Times’ movie review by David Carr begins with a straightforward recognition of the long-denied truth to which now even the CIA has confessed: “If someone told you today that there was strong evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency once turned a blind eye to accusations of drug dealing by operatives it worked with, it might ring some distant, skeptical bell. Did that really happen? That really happened.”

Although the Times’ review still quibbles with aspects of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury-News, the Times appears to have finally thrown in the towel when it comes to the broader question of whether Webb was telling important truths.

The Times’ resistance to accepting the reality of this major national security scandal under President Ronald Reagan even predated its tag-team destruction of Webb in the mid-1990s, when he was alternately pummeled by the Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The same Big Three newspapers also either missed or dismissed the Contra-cocaine scandal when Brian Barger and I first disclosed it in 1985 for the Associated Press — and even when an investigation led by Sen. John Kerry provided more proof in 1989.

Indeed, the New York Times took a leading role in putting down the story in the mid-1980s just as it did in the mid-1990s. That only began to change in 1998 when CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz conducted the spy agency’s first comprehensive internal inquiry into the allegations and found substantial evidence to support suspicions of Contra-cocaine smuggling and the CIA’s complicity in the scandal.

Though the Times gave short-shrift to the CIA’s institutional confession in 1998, it did at least make a cursory acknowledgement of the historic admissions. The Times’ co-collaborators in the mugging of Gary Webb did even less. After waiting several weeks, the Washington Post produced an inside-the-paper story that missed the point. The Los Angeles Times, which had assigned 17 journalists to the task of destroying Webb’s reputation, ignored the CIA’s final report altogether.

So, it is perhaps nice that the Times stated quite frankly that the long-denied scandal “really happened” – even though this admission is tucked into a movie review placed on page AR-14 of the New York edition. And the Times’ reviewer still can’t quite face up to the fact that his newspaper was part of a gang assault on an honest journalist who actually got the story right.

Still Bashing Webb

Thus, the review is peppered with old claims that Webb hyped his material when, in fact, he understated the seriousness of the scandal, as did Barger and I in the 1980s. The extent of Contra cocaine trafficking and the CIA’s awareness – and protection – of the criminal behavior were much greater than any of us knew.

The Times’ review sums up the Webb story (and the movie plot) this way: “‘Kill the Messenger,’ a movie starring Jeremy Renner due Oct. 10, examines how much of the story [Webb] told was true and what happened after he wrote it. ‘Kill the Messenger’ decidedly remains in Mr. Webb’s corner, perhaps because most of the rest of the world was against him while he was alive.

“Rival newspapers blew holes in his story, government officials derided him as a nut case and his own newspaper, after initially basking in the scoop, threw him under a bus. Mr. Webb was open to attack in part because of the lurid presentation of the story and his willingness to draw causality based on very thin sourcing and evidence. He wrote past what he knew, but the movie suggests that he told a truth others were unwilling to. Sometimes, when David takes on Goliath, David is the one who ends up getting defeated. …

“Big news organization like The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post tore the arms and legs off his work. Despite suggestions that their zeal was driven by professional jealousy, some of the journalists who re-reported the story said they had little choice, given the deep flaws.

“Tim Golden in The New York Times and others wrote that Mr. Webb overestimated his subjects’ ties to the contras as well as the amount of drugs sold and money that actually went to finance the war in Nicaragua.”

The reviewer gives Golden another chance to take a shot at Webb and defend what the Big Papers did. “Webb made some big allegations that he didn’t back up, and then the story just exploded, especially in California,” Golden said in an email. “You can find some fault with the follow-up stories, but mostly what they did was to show what Webb got wrong.”

But Golden continues to be wrong himself. While it may be true that no journalistic story is perfect and that no reporter knows everything about his subject, Webb was if anything too constrained in his chief conclusions, particularly the CIA’s role in shielding the Contra drug traffickers. The reality was much worse, with CIA officials intervening in criminal cases, such as the so-called Frogman Case in San Francisco, that threatened to expose the Contra-related trafficking.

The CIA Inspector General’s report also admitted that the CIA withheld evidence of Contra drug trafficking from federal investigators, Congress and even the CIA’s own analytical division. The I.G. report was clear, too, on the CIA’s motivation.

The inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the Contra-drug problem but didn’t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. According to Inspector General Hitz, the CIA had “one overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. . . . [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the Contra program.” One CIA field officer explained, “The focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.”

In 2000, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee grudgingly acknowledged that the stories about Reagan’s CIA protecting Contra drug traffickers were true. The committee released a report citing classified testimony from CIA Inspector General Britt Snider (Hitz’s successor) admitting that the spy agency had turned a blind eye to evidence of Contra-drug smuggling and generally treated drug smuggling through Central America as a low priority.

“In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” Snider said, adding that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”

The House committee still downplayed the significance of the Contra-cocaine scandal, but the panel acknowledged, deep inside its report, that in some cases, “CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.”

Yet, like the Hitz report in 1998, the admissions by Snider and the House committee drew virtually no media attention in 2000 — except for a few articles on the Internet, including one at Consortiumnews.com.

Space for Ceppos

The Times’ review also gives space to Webb’s San Jose Mercury-News editor Jerry Ceppos, who caved after the Big Media attacks, shut down Webb’s ongoing investigation and rushed to apologize for supposed flaws in the series.

In the Times’ review, Ceppos is self-congratulatory about his actions, saying good news organizations should hold themselves accountable. “We couldn’t support some of the statements that had been made,” Ceppos said. “I would do exactly the same thing 18 years later that I did then, and that is to say that I think we overreached.”

Despite acknowledging the truth of the Contra-cocaine scandal, the review was short on interviews with knowledgeable people willing to speak up strongly for Webb. I was one of Webb’s few journalistic colleagues who defended his work when he was under assault in 1996-97 and – every year on the anniversary of Webb’s death – have published articles about the shameful behavior of the mainstream media and Ceppos in destroying Webb’s life.

I was e-mailed by an assistant to the Times’ reviewer who asked me to call to be interviewed about Webb. However, when I called back, the assistant said she was busy and would have to talk to me later. I gave her my cell phone number but never heard back from her.

But the review does note that “Webb had many supporters who suggested that he was right in the main. In retrospect, his broader suggestion that the C.I.A. knew or should have known that some of its allies were accused of being in the drug business remains unchallenged. The government’s casting of a blind eye while also fighting a war on drugs remains a shadowy part of American history.”

The review also notes that when the Kerry report was issued, “major news outlets gave scant attention to the report” and that: “Mr. Webb was not the first journalist to come across what seemed more like an airport thriller novel. Way back in December 1985, The Associated Press reported that three contra groups had ‘engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.’ In 1986, The San Francisco Examiner ran a large exposé covering similar terrain.

“Again, major news outlets mostly gave the issue a pass. It was only when Mr. Webb, writing 10 years later, tried to tie cocaine imports from people connected to the contras to the domestic crisis of crack cocaine in large cities, particularly Los Angeles, that the story took off.”

Despite recognizing the seriousness of the Contra-cocaine crimes that Webb helped expose, the review returns to various old saws about Webb’s alleged exaggerations.

“The headline, graphic and summary language of ‘Dark Alliance’ was lurid and overheated, showing a photo of a crack-pipe smoker embedded in the seal of the C.I.A,” the review said. However, in retrospect, the graphic seems apt. The CIA was knowingly protecting a proxy force that was smuggling cocaine to criminal networks that were producing crack.

Yet, despite this hemming and hawing – perhaps a reflexive attempt to not make the New York Times look too bad – the review ends on a strong note, concluding: “However dark or extensive, the alliance Mr. Webb wrote about was a real one.”

[To learn more about the Contra-cocaine scandal and how you can hear a December 1996 joint appearance at which Robert Parry and Gary Webb discuss their reporting, click here.]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative

777man

(374 posts)

http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/filters/guests/11841

https://www.facebook.com/FallonTonight

This was a great show- classic Fallon. Joe perry from Aerosmith played with the house band.

Jeremy Renner and Jimmy Fallon Talked about Gary Webb and Contra Crack sales in LA on National TV!
See the pics
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2784527/Jeremy-Renner-shares-bizarre-Twitter-photos-The-Tonight-Show.html

http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show/segments/13136

777man

(374 posts)

151. 10.7.14 Huff Post-Why Jeremy Renner's Kill the Messenger Role Is Like Rock Music by Nell Minow

Reply to 777man (Reply #150)

Wed Oct 8, 2014, 01:18 AM

Oct 2014

Nell Minow

Movie critic, corporate governance analyst

Why Jeremy Renner's Kill the Messenger Role Is Like Rock Music
Posted: 10/07/2014 6:17 pm EDT Updated: 10/07/2014 6:59 pm EDT

Jeremy Renner co-produced and stars in Kill the Messenger, based on the story of real-life investigative reporter Gary Webb, whose articles exposed the "dark alliance" between the CIA, sales of cocaine and crack in the United States, and financing the Contras in Nicaragua.

In an interview, Renner and director Michael Cuesta spoke about bringing Webb's story to the screen. Renner explained what he most admired about Webb, and how he found a key to the character in the similarity between reporters and actors in seeking the truth in a story.

It's not an easy thing to live by, it's a code. It's either you are born with it or not. But he was tenacious, he persevered. I had to start out very small, trying to figure out who he was as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a journalist. A lot of us are defined by what we do. And for Gary, he did fall into that category. He defined himself by what he did and his job was his life. And so I had to then figure out what his job was like and that was a very foreign thing to me - journalism, life as a reporter. So I had my work cut out for me and it was a fun road. But also when you play a guy that exists or existed, you have a roadmap kind of spelled out for you. There are challenges that come with that because you are playing a guy that people know about or can research about so you can't veer too far off of that. So there is a responsibility of being truthful as the job of journalism is or should be.

Cuesta spoke of trying to convey Webb's "rock star quality," and why an early scene showing Webb walking to his office was especially important to him.

One of my favorite moments in the movie is the beginning where he walks through the Sacramento bureaus, past all of the other papers, to get to his very small office. In the script, the way Peter [Landesman] wrote it is like one sentence. But I knew that sets it up. It was like the outsider but he was cocky in a good way. He was tough, rock 'n roll and very much a cop, a kind of Serpico quality. Jeremy nailed so well, the physicality, the energy, just that walk.

Later you can see his transformation in the movie, just physically even in the scene when he is in bed when the Ray Liotta character talks to him. He is so vulnerable and physically he is wounded at that moment.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film is when, after congratulating and rewarding Webb for the stories, his bosses at the San Jose Mercury News start to back away. They buckle under pressure from the powerful people whose activities were disclosed in the stories and from rival journalists more committed to discrediting the competition than finding out what really happened. Cuesta said that originally there was a lot of dialogue in that scene, but Renner's expression conveyed his reaction so compellingly they let him improvise a few words and left it at that.

He explained that he broke the film down into three different movies.

The first was the All the President's Men, part of it. The optimistic part; Gary always had a spring in his step and he was very much in control. He is running into different things, he is running up the steps. He is moving. Then, when he is in Nicaragua was the first time he was a little bit of a fish out of water, but he is still in control until the parking garage scene. That was always one of my favorite little bits. That was the first moment of possibly understanding that maybe what he is doing can be dangerous. But we broke it up as that. The first part was very much procedural like guy on the beat, guy on the case, like a cop movie almost.

And then there was sort of that whole moment when he writes the story which is sort of rock 'n roll which is like -- how do you visualize that? So that to me was just collage.

And then the turning point was the machine, it's the only part in the movie where you are out of his point of view. I saw that as sort of this machine that is rolling, the snowball getting bigger. Gary goes on the defensive and he slowly starts to separate from everyone. He goes out on the boat. The boat moment was sort of a poetic version of that separation from everyone. He starts to get further and further away. I had to reference the paranoia classic The Parallax View.

Renner and Cuesta talked about the challenge of getting audiences in 2014 to pay attention to an expose in 1995 of CIA activities that took place in the 1980s. Renner said:

I don't know if it ever really got told. It never really got figured out. We didn't really have the support to really kind of keep digging. And we're also talking about 10-year-old news back in 1995. So who's listening? He's not even alive, who is really listening? I will tell you, we need to have people like Gary Webb to make sure we do listen.

Follow Nell Minow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/nminow
More:
Movies Jeremy Renner Kill the Messenger Jeremy Renner Interview Jeremy Renner Kill the Messenger Gary Webb San Jose Mercury News Michael Cuesta

777man

(374 posts)

152. 10.7.14 Roger's Review-- Kill the Messenger – Jeremy Renner & Michael Cuesta by Dean Rogers

Reply to 777man (Reply #151)

Wed Oct 8, 2014, 01:22 AM

Oct 2014

http://therogersrevue.com/jeremy-renner-and-michael-cuesta/

Kill the Messenger – Jeremy Renner & Michael Cuesta
4 mins ago Dean Rogers Interviews

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Michael Cuesta & Jeremy Renner

On this edition of INTERVUE, Dean talks to actor Jeremy Renner and director Michael Cuesta about their new movie, Kill the Messenger, which opens in theaters this Friday. Kill the Messenger is based on the true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper journalist Gary Webb, who in the 1990s who documented CIA involvement in importing cocaine in the 1980s, to help fund the Contras in Nicaragua and paid the ultimate price.

How much you knew about the story before you came on to the project?

Jeremy Renner: I knew nothing of it. My only recollection or experience of it was downstream part of the story, which is when they start doing the PSAs on the war on drugs. I auditioned for it as an actor like in 1992. I didn’t get it but I remember I was sitting in this room and they asked me to sort of tear it apart. It was this thing of “This is your brain on drugs.” I didn’t know what I was doing or what was this for. I remember the war on drugs stuff. Mind you, I am from the area where the story first broke. I am seventy miles from Modesto, California and knew nothing of it. The writing, the story, the dark alliance knew nothing about. I was blind to it and it was the main emphasis to really want to know and explore it some more.

Michael Cuesta: I came to project pretty late after Jeremy’s production company was setting up the script. When I read the script, you know I quickly red the books “Kill the Messenger” and quickly dug into Gary Webb’s book “Dark Alliance”. I did remember the story from the 90’s but I just remember the story “What? The CIA has the complexity of spreading crack in South Central and America.” I did know about him being discredited as he was and that he made a great sacrifice and what happened after that. I think it was the in-fighting, paper versus paper that I found was really the important story to get out there. I find it quite relevant to what’s going on now. That’s where really where I was just sort of the injustice of that is I became passionate and then of course, Jeremy playing Gary. As I am reading the script and reading the book, I am imagining Jeremy in the role knowing this is going to work because I worked with him before. I knew that he was going to be incredibly honest and nuanced with this character and no overly archetype.

While doing the research for the role, what’s the one thing that struck out for you?

JR: I mean all of it, it all brand new to me. I felt like everything that I’d learned, this has to go to the movie. All this stuff I have to observe is human behavior. With that you have to become masterful and laser-like. Everything that Gary Webb and what he represented, I have to take in because how he dress or what music he listens to, all that tells how he reported in. He wasn’t in a tight button suit reporting a perfect story. He was sloppy and his writing’s a little sloppy. Everything I do with Gary have to match somehow, someway. I felt that everything informs something else and it’s just as important as the shoes he wore.

MC: I saw a picture of Gary in one of the books that Sue, his wife had sent us, of him in a t-shirt that said “Police State”. So, that said so much and he looked like a cop because he had the mustache. He looked like the guy who represented the proletariat – the people. He like hockey and was into motorcycles. He lived a simple life. He didn’t come from the upper West side. This was so informative of how he did his reporting and how he walked. He had a moral code. I think he did se the bad guys and the good guys very early as what he saw in the possibility of the story. He was dogged about identifying who those are and breaking that out. He was criticized a lot for that. It’s not that he’s black and white but he definitely came from that. He was known in high school for calling Bull**** very quickly. He just loves to do that. Obviously, when you’re going after the biggest establishment in the world, it was going to be a world of trouble

What’s the overall message you both hope that audiences will take away from this film?

JR: I am not hoping for a message or the means, I am curious to know what people talk about; I want them to talk about it. I want them to take away something they didn’t feel or something they didn’t think about before they paid those eleven dollars to see the movie. It’s a cinema experience that I want repeated- it’s an amazing. If it’s an argument or a debate, feel angry or something, then that means we did our job. What the actual takeaway is, it’s going to be different and hopefully a subjective opinion to each audience member because we’d opened a wide can of worms here. No matter where you’re at in this, some of the journalists maybe people who don’t know anything about it or don’t care about it. There’s going to be something, hopefully that if I want audience to take away from is something to be emotional or something cognitive.

MC: Yeah, it’s to get people talking. There’s a lot in the movie and we keep saying that there’s a whole another part of this. There are victims here. Gary did his writing and the silver lining was that there was some vindication here. He did get people asking questions since the CIA director never went down to South Central. So, that was a great thing that came out of it. Plus they admitted to a lot of his allegations ultimately. I would say that the importance of guys like this and the truth is pretty nuanced and we need people to dig into that because when its nuanced ok, then get the nuanced out there but that’s a lot of work. It takes a guy like Webb who was so dogged with his getting details and research that they need to be supported.

And that takes a lot of courage because some reporters don’t want to piss off that person. They want to keep their jobs but they are those brave few who see the wrong and want to put it out there.

MC: Yeah and he made the sacrifice.

Thank you Jeremy Renner and director Michael Cuesta! Check out Kill the Messenger from Focus Features, coming to theaters THIS FRIDAY, October 10th

777man

(374 posts)

153. 10.6.14 DEMOCRACY NOW-Inside the Dark Alliance:Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras,&the Crack Cocaine

Reply to 777man (Reply #152)

Wed Oct 8, 2014, 01:31 AM

Oct 2014

COMPLETE COVERAGE FROM DEMOCRACY NOW

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/10/6/inside_the_dark_alliance_gary_webb

Inside the Dark Alliance: Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

Image Credit: San Jose Mercury News

With the opening of the new Hollywood film "Kill the Messenger" this week, we look back at Democracy Now! interviews with Gary Webb, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter the film is based on.

In 1996, Webb published an explosive series in the San Jose Mercury News titled, "Dark Alliance." The articles began:

"For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the 'crack' capital of the world."

The investigative series sparked protests in African-American and congressional probes. It also provoked a fierce reaction from the media establishment, which denounced the series. The Los Angeles Times alone assigned 17 reporters to probe Webb’s report and his personal life. Recently declassified CIA files show the agency used a "a ground base of already productive relations with journalists [at other newspapers]" to counter what it called "a genuine public relations crisis."

Following the controversy, the San Jose Mercury News demoted Webb. He then resigned and pushed his investigation even further in his book, "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion."

The CIA’s inspector general later corroborated Webb’s key findings, but, by then, his career was wrecked. The newspapers that denounced Webb largely ignored the CIA’s own report — it was released in 1998 amid the scandal over President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Webb appeared on Democracy Now! several times to discuss his reporting and the media backlash.

777man

(374 posts)

154. 10.7.14-REUTERS- For Jeremy Renner, 'Kill the Messenger' is a story that had to be told

Reply to 777man (Reply #153)

777man

(374 posts)

164. 10.9.14- BUFFALO NEWS-Film depicts reporter’s efforts to break CIA-Contra affair by Jeff Simon

Reply to 777man (Reply #163)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 01:32 AM

Oct 2014

http://www.buffalonews.com/gusto/movie-reviews/all-the-presidents-men-werent-necessary-to-kill-the-messenger-20141009

All the President’s Men weren’t necessary to ‘Kill the Messenger’

Film depicts reporter’s efforts to break CIA-Contra affair
By Jeff Simon

on October 9, 2014 - 12:01 AM

“Kill the Messenger” is a superb film about the other side of investigative journalism – the side that doesn’t end with all the president’s men failing to stop it from knocking a corrupt president out of office.

This is the story of Gary Webb, the reporter for the San Jose Mercury Register who broke the bone-chilling tale of the CIA enthusiastically using drug money to fund the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

This is the man who all but connected the dots between the crack that was polluting inner cities in the ’90s and the way the CIA was underwriting the war in Central America. Courtesy of Oliver North, you’ll recall, the U.S. government was, in a sense, every bit as much in the drug business as the pusher on the street corner near a distressed urban high school.

The story is being told on film by director Michael Cuesta, perhaps the man most responsible as executive producer for the extraordinary success of “Homeland’s” first two seasons on Showtime. It was sharply and knowingly written by Peter Landesman, who previously wrote “Parkland” but, most importantly, is an ex-journalist for, among other forums, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly.

This, in so many hair-raising ways, is the tale of what happens when an investigative reporter is too good at what he does for too small a paper – and when the principal target for his journalism is the CIA, a government agency fabled for being capable of shadowy malice few of us are even capable of imagining.

Webb discovered something huge. But what Cuesta and Landesman are telling us is that as the investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, he thereby became a target for all those huge papers that didn’t break such an earth-moving story, most notably the Los Angles Times and the Washington Post. They were out to fact-check every dot and comma and investigate Webb, who knew very well, “you can turn anyone’s life into a circus side show.”

And with the CIA having so crucial an interest in discrediting everything they possibly could about Webb and his work, he was hopelessly overmatched.

And that is the essence of this nightmare: that as good as Webb’s newspaper colleagues in San Jose might have wanted to be, they were out of their league. They couldn’t protect him from what one frighteningly savvy intelligence world onlooker (played by the great Michael Sheen) unerringly predicts is the process of making Webb the story.

Such is the apparently bottomless moral gorge of the post-Woodstein media era: Tiny smudges on one’s history and character can be made to look like giant murals of solid black. And when one’s opponent is the CIA, the world’s most virtuosic government agency in the art of tricks, dirty and otherwise, god help the best investigative reporter in the world, let alone an eminently human one like Webb.

It’s the envious malice of his vastly more powerful journalistic peers that is the most nightmarish thing about “Kill the Messenger.” One might assume the CIA’s willingness to do almost anything to keep from being caught in the crack business for putatively acceptable political ends – even if the fellow doing the catching didn’t begin to have the journalistic clout behind him that Woodward and Bernstein had.

But the brilliant tale that director Cuesta and writer Landesman tell here is about a journalistic establishment closing ranks against the dogged and immensely resourceful investigative reporter. This is not a movie that’s going to make anyone love the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post or Dan Rather during the Reagan administration.

It all begins so innocently in the movie. A woman hoping to help her indicted drug-dealing boyfriend calls Webb with the mind-boggling information she has in her possession: grand jury testimony that was accidentally delivered to her as part of the legal discovery process.

That small screw-up reveals a gargantuan government screw-up within – that the government’s confidential informant against a lot of minor players is probably the biggest crack dealer in the country. And, upon further Webb investigation and legal defense tactics, he is revealed to be making so much money that he’s cheerfully diverting it to the CIA’s favorite Nicaraguan “freedom” fighters, the Contras.

As you might expect from the man so responsible for those first two amazing seasons of “Homeland,” both the writing and the performance level are sky-high.

Jeremy Renner may be the most plausible-looking journalist I have ever seen in a movie. And he’s a terrific actor, able to deal brilliantly with the exaltation, the furious anger and humiliated despair he goes through. Landesman’s script is brilliant on both the macro and micro level. That is, it tells the story with devastating clarity and swiftness. And, line by line, it gleams with razor-stropped wit.

777man

(374 posts)

165. 10.2.14 KCRW SOUNDCLOUD-THE CIA CRACK SCANDAL

Reply to 777man (Reply #164)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 01:40 AM

Oct 2014

https://soundcloud.com/kcrw/kill-the-messenger-the-cia-crack-cocaine-and-a-scandal-in-journalism

777man

(374 posts)

166. 10.9.14 PHOTO---Jeremy Renner and Micahel Cuesta with the Webb Family

Reply to 777man (Reply #165)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 01:49 AM

Oct 2014

?oh=282af5591e8adfda0643ba5a881c7ed2&oe=54C5949A

?oh=0ae0e960e27ad8967c758bb17535ae72&oe=54B6A697

?oh=6efa16a0537377eeac2f8b2c8b19f5c9&oe=54BD2420&__gda__=1421529193_5be639aa845fb324747f43f1353b6c4c

777man

(374 posts)

167. 10.9.14 NARCONEWS-Distribute this Exciting Flyer and Become a Narco News Messenger

Reply to 777man (Reply #166)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 02:02 AM

Oct 2014

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/5055/distribute-exciting-flyer-and-become-narco-news-messenger

The original Dark Alliance series is here:
http://narconews.com/darkalliance

Distribute this Exciting Flyer and Become a Narco News Messenger
Posted by Al Giordano - October 8, 2014 at 12:09 pm
By Al Giordano
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/userfiles/70/gary.pdf

In the next 48 hours the tables are going to turn, once again, against the corrupted industry of journalism and in favor of the grassroots movement of authentic journalism.

Our late friend and colleague Gary Webb (1955-2004) and his investigative reporting will hit the silver screen in the premier of “Kill the Messenger,” coming to cinemas throughout the US and Canada on Friday and in some places Thursday night. In the coming weeks and months it will go international. Gary was a cofounder and professor of the School of Authentic Journalism and an editor of Narco News before his death. Actor and producer Jeremy Renner portrays Gary’s work in 1996 when his Dark Alliance series exposed US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) complicity with cocaine trafficking from Central America to the streets of the United States. The movie recalls how the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post maliciously and unfairly attacked Gary for doing what journalists are supposed to do: tell the truth.

At Narco News and the School of Authentic Journalism we have been looking for a way to involve our readers and colleagues more in this important work. Hundreds of journalists and communicators have attended our school, thousands have applied to it, and we remain a low budget project supported only by volunteer contributions to the Fund for Authentic Journalism.

Before Gary Webb died, he asked Narco News to publish his Dark Alliance series that the San Jose Mercury News had censored from the Internet. And since some months after his passing, for the past nine years, that work has been preserved on our site. Suddenly and thanks to this major motion picture coming out, there is more interest than ever in reading Gary’s groundbreaking and obviously historic work. Without the economic resources to purchase enough advertising to make sure moviegoers and people everywhere will finally read the Dark Alliance series, we turn to you – what the corporations call “human resources,” and we call friends – to make this happen.

See the flyer above? Below you’ll find links to download it in .pdf form and print it out. There is a black and white version and a color version. We’re asking that when you go to see “Kill the Messenger” you print out enough copies and distribute these to people as they are entering or exiting the cinema. If you can, organize some friends to do it with you and form a local “Narco News Messengers” group with them.

We have developed a few guidelines below to make sure this is done in a way that is respectful of Gary’s legacy and helpful, never harmful, to the cause of authentic journalism.

Three Guidelines for Narco News Messengers Groups

1. Narco News Messengers groups are formed in local communities, by journalists and non-journalists together, to build a grassroots movement that replaces corporate media with new and better ways for news to be reported. A group can consist of two people, six, ten, twenty or more, any size will do. More than one group can exist in any town or city. Part of the mission is to have fun doing good work with people you like and trust. And because each group agrees to these three guidelines, no group ever has to worry about what another group is doing or not doing. The first mission of Narco News Messengers groups will be to promote Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series at this moment when the movie “Kill the Messenger” is bringing unprecedented interest to it. And from time to time we’ll let the Messengers groups know of other important projects we can all organize around at the grassroots level.

2. Narco News Messengers groups are a project of Narco News and the School of Authentic Journalism and do not affiliate with or endorse any other project, candidate, political party or media organization. We invite each group, once two or more people form it, to email us at [email protected] with a contact email for the local group and news of your activities so we can promote your efforts to readers in your area. Once you indicate your agreement with these three guidelines, we’ll be glad to promote and add your chapter to the list of Narco News Messengers groups so that others can find you.

3. Each local Narco News Messengers group agrees that its actions will always be joyful, nonviolent, non-threatening, respectful of and pleasant toward every person it encounters, including law enforcement officers, corporate journalists and public officials even when they are adversarial to our goals, will not vandalize property and will not be aggressive toward or otherwise hostile to anyone who might disagree with any of our shared goals. We fervently believe that public opinion is important, that it can be enticed but can never be bullied. Any individual or group that does not follow those guidelines will, by definition, no longer be called a Narco News Messengers group. After all, if a group (or individual) harms the efforts of all, it should not be using the name, and we won’t be shy about disassociating from it. Nor will we be shy about widely promoting and seeking to work more closely with those who do this work well. Within adherence to these three guidelines, each local Narco News Messengers group is autonomous to determine how to best promote the work of authentic journalism in accordance with its organizing needs and the character of its local population.

To download the black and white version of the flyer, click here.

To download the color version (good for posting on community bulletin boards), click here.

In New York City, some of us have formed a “Meet Up” group to see the premier of “Kill the Messenger” together, and a Facebook group toward the same end. About 30 of us will meet before the movie’s premier tomorrow night and go view it together. If you agree with the three guidelines above, feel free to use Meet Up, Facebook and other social networks to organize similar efforts in your own town or city. And of course even more effective than online attempts to reach others is to simply go visit or make a phone call to the people you already know to get such a local project moving.

Finally, we know you are busy with your own work, projects, families and missions, and if you don’t have enough time to form or join a local Messengers group, please consider donating to the work of The Fund for Authentic Journalism, which supports our work. We’d like to purchase more online ads for people searching for Dark Alliance and Gary Webb’s work on the Internet, but are so far limited to a $5-a-day budget! You could make an immediate difference by clicking this link and donating.

This is an exciting moment for the work of authentic journalism and we’d like to share it with you and bring you in to be part of it. Above are some suggestions for how to do that. You may also have ideas of your own and feel free to contact me by email at [email protected] to share them, and, of course use the same email address to keep us posted on your local organizing efforts around the excellent opportunity the release of this movie provides to inform and involve the greater public in the work of authentic journalism. Let us know, most of all, how we can be helpful to your local organizing efforts.

777man

(374 posts)

168. 10.8.14 - HOUSTON CHRONCILE-“Kill the Messenger” — A Journalism Saga

Reply to 777man (Reply #167)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 02:44 AM

Oct 2014

“Kill the Messenger” — A Journalism Saga
By Mick LaSalle | October 8, 2014
http://www.chron.com/movies/article/Kill-the-Messenger-A-Journalism-Saga-5810700.php

It’s hard to know what to think about “Kill the Messenger,” and this makes it frustrating to watch. It tells the real-life story of Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury News reporter whose series on a “dark alliance” between the CIA and drug dealers made him seem on track to win the Pulitzer Prize. Then he came under attack by other newspapers, for supposedly sloppy reporting, and his own newspaper refused to support him.

The movie has a point of view, which is that Webb was a great reporter, that the big newspapers went after him only because he scooped them, and that his own bosses were spineless individuals, with no right to call themselves journalists. Perhaps some of this is true. Perhaps all of this is true. Who knows? Still, one gets the sense, while watching, that there had to be another side to this story.

Here’s a case of a movie that could have been better and more satisfying as a documentary. As a narrative feature, “Kill the Messenger” has no choice but to live up to the demands of drama. But what do you do when you have a story that must be told, that deserves to be told, but that’s not very good as a story. Alas, true stories are confined to the facts, and the facts here make for the death of drama — a movie that begins as “All the President’s Men” re-visited then shifts into the story of a besieged fellow and his relationship with his family.

At first things look promising, for Webb and for the movie. As a reporter in the Sacramento bureau, Webb is put on to the story of CIA involvement in drug trafficking by a mystery woman (Paz Vega) and soon finds that everyone he asks about it becomes terrified, clams up, practically runs for the hills. So he knows he is on to something.

With the backing of his newspaper, he goes down to Nicaragua, where he interviews an exuberant drug lord (Andy Garcia), who gives him jaw-dropping details, while practicing his golf swing in the prison yard: The CIA raised money to back the Nicaraguan contras by selling cocaine and crack in American cities. This is staggering news, but then he says something else. In that knowing, pleased-with-himself Andy Garcia way, he tells Webb that he faces the hardest choice of his life, whether to report the story or sit on it. That is, either pass up the scoop of a lifetime or go up against the entire government.

If you’ve ever seen a movie about your own line of work, you know that movies almost always get even the most obvious details wrong. But “Kill the Messenger” is pretty accurate, not only in the mechanics of how newspaper stories are generated, but in showing the dynamic between reporters and editors. Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt are convincing as a pair of bosses, more concerned about pleasing their own bosses than with the fate of American journalism.

Yet something doesn’t quite feel right. The quickness with which his colleagues are willing to abandon Webb is downright weird. He seems to command virtually no loyalty at all. Perhaps everything happened exactly as presented here, but one comes away with the sense of details being left out. There’s one scene that seems to come out of nowhere: Webb shows up at one bosses’ doorstep, at six in the morning, raving almost incoherently. If Webb was really prone to that kind of behavior, that might explain things.

In his performance, Jeremy Renner hints at something dark stirring beneath Webb’s surface, but it never quite comes out, and we’re left with something more on the order of a rough-hewn saint. “Kill the Messenger” tells an interesting tale, but it’s caught in an odd zone between too-Hollywood and not Hollywood enough. If only screenwriters got to choreograph real life.

Mick LaSalle is The Chronicle’s movie critic. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @MickLaSalle.

Kill the Messenger

ALERT VIEWER

Drama: Starring Jeremy Renner, Oliver Platt and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Directed by Michael Cuesta. (R. 112 minutes.)

777man

(374 posts)

169. 10.2.14-NY TIMES-Resurrecting a Disgraced Reporter ‘Kill the Messenger’ Recalls a Reporter Wrongly D

Reply to 777man (Reply #168)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 02:48 AM

Oct 2014

Resurrecting a Disgraced Reporter
‘Kill the Messenger’ Recalls a Reporter Wrongly Disgraced

By DAVID CARR OCT. 2, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/movies/kill-the-messenger-recalls-a-reporter-wrongly-disgraced.html?ref=movies&_r=1
Photo
Jeremy Renner as the San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb in “Kill the Messenger.” Credit Chuck Zlotnick/Focus Features

If someone told you today that there was strong evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency once turned a blind eye to accusations of drug dealing by operatives it worked with, it might ring some distant, skeptical bell. Did that really happen?

That really happened. As part of their insurgency against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, some of the C.I.A.-backed contras made money through drug smuggling, transgressions noted in a little-noticed 1988 Senate subcommittee report.

Gary Webb, a journalist at The San Jose Mercury News, thought it was a far-fetched story to begin with, but in 1995 and 1996, he dug in and produced a deeply reported and deeply flawed three-part series called “Dark Alliance.”

That groundbreaking series was among the first to blow up on the nascent web, and he was initially celebrated, then investigated and finally discredited. Pushed out of journalism in disgrace, he committed suicide in 2004. “Kill the Messenger,” a movie starring Jeremy Renner due Oct. 10, examines how much of the story he told was true and what happened after he wrote it. “Kill the Messenger” decidedly remains in Mr. Webb’s corner, perhaps because most of the rest of the world was against him while he was alive. Rival newspapers blew holes in his story, government officials derided him as a nut case and his own newspaper, after initially basking in the scoop, threw him under a bus. Mr. Webb was open to attack in part because of the lurid presentation of the story and his willingness to draw causality based on very thin sourcing and evidence. He wrote past what he knew, but the movie suggests that he told a truth others were unwilling to. Sometimes, when David takes on Goliath, David is the one who ends up getting defeated.
Photo
The real Gary Webb in 1997. He committed suicide in 2004. Credit Randy Pench

“There were flaws in his writing and flaws in his life,” Mr. Renner, who plays Webb in the film, said in a phone interview. “But that doesn’t mean he was wrong, and it certainly doesn’t mean he deserved what he got.”

The film argues that the same reflexes in the newspaper business that hold others to account can become just as merciless when the guns are pointed inside the corral. Big news organization like The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post tore the arms and legs off his work. Despite suggestions that their zeal was driven by professional jealousy, some of the journalists who re-reported the story said they had little choice, given the deep flaws. Tim Golden in The New York Times and others wrote that Mr. Webb overestimated his subjects’ ties to the contras as well as the amount of drugs sold and money that actually went to finance the war in Nicaragua.

But Mr. Webb had many supporters who suggested that he was right in the main. In retrospect, his broader suggestion that the C.I.A. knew or should have known that some of its allies were accused of being in the drug business remains unchallenged. The government’s casting of a blind eye while also fighting a war on drugs remains a shadowy part of American history.
Continue reading the main story

Mr. Webb eventually wrote his own book, “Dark Alliance: The C.I.A., The Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion,” and Nick Schou, a journalist who covered significant parts of Webb’s downfall, wrote “Kill the Messenger: How the C.I.A.’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb.” Both books deeply inform the movie, making the argument that journalism more or less ate itself while the government mostly skipped away with its secret doings intact.

Mr. Webb was a talented investigative reporter who concentrated on local corruption when he worked at The Cleveland Plain Dealer and then The San Jose Mercury News. When he was first approached about C.I.A. duplicity, he was deeply skeptical. But when the tipster, the girlfriend of a drug dealer on trial, said her boyfriend had ties to the C.I.A., she had enough evidence to convince him to read that 1988 report from a special Senate subcommittee documenting instances in which drug dealing by crucial allies, including some in Nicaragua, was tolerated in the name of national security. Major news outlets gave scant attention to the report.

Mr. Webb was not the first journalist to come across what seemed more like an airport thriller novel. Way back in December 1985, The Associated Press reported that three contra groups had “engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.” In 1986, The San Francisco Examiner ran a large exposé covering similar terrain. Again, major news outlets mostly gave the issue a pass.

It was only when Mr. Webb, writing 10 years later, tried to tie cocaine imports from people connected to the contras to the domestic crisis of crack cocaine in large cities, particularly Los Angeles, that the story took off. Mr. Webb zeroed in on “Freeway” Ricky Ross, a gang-affiliated drug boss in Los Angeles, who flooded streets with crack. He then drew a line from Mr. Ross to the C.I.A.-backed contras, writing, “The cash Ross paid for the cocaine, court records show, was then used to buy weapons and equipment for a guerrilla army named the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense,” or the FDN, one of several contra groups.

The headline, graphic and summary language of “Dark Alliance” was lurid and overheated, showing a photo of a crack-pipe smoker embedded in the seal of the C.I.A. The three-part series would, the summary promised, reveal, among other things, how “a drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the ‘crack’ capital of the world.”

But if the series was oversold, it certainly delivered on the promise of what the web could do for journalism. A pioneering effort in transparency, the report was accompanied by a digital library of source documents, a timeline of events and a list of characters, among other web-only features that have now become commonplace. It was, by most accounts, the first newspaper series to go viral before there were even words to describe the phenomenon.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

At first, major news outlets shrugged. But leaders of the drug-ridden communities did not, drawing a line that Mr. Webb had not by suggesting that the C.I.A. had deliberately set out to addict urban black populations.

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, led protests by the Congressional Black Caucus, and the comedian Dick Gregory was arrested after trying to put crime tape at the entrance to the C.I.A. headquarters.
Continue reading the main story

But Mr. Webb’s victory lap was short lived, as other news organizations responded with significant stories, and his editors at The Mercury News backed away slowly, then all at once. The paper walked back the findings in a 1997 letter to readers signed by the executive editor at the time, Jerry Ceppos. “I feel that we did not have proof that top C.I.A. officials knew of the relationship” between members of a drug ring and contra leaders paid by the C.I.A., he wrote, adding that the series “erroneously implied” that the connection between Mr. Ross and Nicaraguan traffickers “was the pivotal force in the crack epidemic in the United States.”

In a phone call, Mr. Ceppos said good news organizations should hold themselves accountable to the same degree they do others.

“We re-reported the series, and I don’t know of too many publications that have done that,” he said. “We couldn’t support some of the statements that had been made. It was our re-reporting that influenced me the most.”

He added that he had no regrets about that open letter to Mercury readers.

“I would do exactly the same thing 18 years later that I did then, and that is to say that I think we overreached,” he said.

Peter Landesman, an investigative journalist who wrote the screenplay, was struck by the reflex to go after Mr. Webb.

“Planeloads of weapons were sent south from the U.S., and everyone knows that those planes didn’t come back empty, but the C.I.A. made sure that they never knew for sure what was in those planes,” he said. “But instead of going after that, they went after Webb, who didn’t really know what he had gotten into or where he was. The most surprising thing in doing the work to write this movie is how easy it was to destroy Gary Webb.”

Even at the time, some thought the backlash against Mr. Webb was misplaced.

Geneva Overholser, then the ombudsman of The Washington Post, wrote that the newspaper “showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws in San Jose’s answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves.”

Mr. Golden, who had an extensive background covering the C.I.A. and Central America, said the hand that struck Mr. Webb was mostly his own.

“Webb made some big allegations that he didn’t back up, and then the story just exploded, especially in California,” he said in an email. “You can find some fault with the follow-up stories, but mostly what they did was to show what Webb got wrong.”

The director of “Kill the Messenger,” Michael Cuesta, has also directed several episodes of “Homeland” and knows the C.I.A. has many faces. He said he worked to shrink a sprawling story with global dimensions by showing how it landed on one man.

“There were many things that went wrong,” he added, “the packaging of the story, how it was received and grew, the fact that he was not backed up by his editors. But I was struck by the fact that journalism, which had been the source of his purpose, his bliss, turned on him. It’s tragic.”

While Mr. Webb died alone, after two self-inflicted gunshots, he lived long enough to know that he did not make the whole thing up.

In 1998, Frederick P. Hitz, the C.I.A. inspector general, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that after looking into the matter at length, he believed the C.I.A. was a bystander — or worse — in the war on drugs.

“Let me be frank about what we are finding,” he said. “There are instances where C.I.A. did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations.”

However dark or extensive, the alliance Mr. Webb wrote about was a real one.

Mikaela Lefrak contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on October 5, 2014, on page AR14 of the New York

777man

(374 posts)

170. 10.9.14 RED EYE --'Kill the Messenger' asks some good questions

Reply to 777man (Reply #169)

Thu Oct 9, 2014, 03:08 AM

Oct 2014

'Kill the Messenger' asks some good questions
Matt Pais movie review: 'Kill the Messenger'

http://www.redeyechicago.com/entertainment/movies/redeye-kill-the-messenger-asks-some-good-questions-20141006,0,6268960.column

'Kill the Messenger'

'Kill the Messenger' (October 6, 2014)
Matt Pais, @mattpais RedEye movie critic

12:00 a.m. CDT, October 9, 2014

*** (out of four)

The real-life-based investigative journalism tale “Kill the Messenger” is no “All the President’s Men,” but it’s got quite a story: In the late ‘90s, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb (a well-cast Jeremy Renner) uncovered a shocking link between drug dealers in America, the CIA and war in Nicaragua in the ‘80s. His story blows the minds of his editor (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and her boss (Oliver Platt) and earns him national attention. That includes resentment from papers like the Los Angeles Times that were scooped.

But there’s a lot more to it. Helmed by Michael Cuesta (who also directed the great, little-seen “12 and Holding,” also starring Renner) and adapted by Peter Landesman from Nick Shou’s book of the same name and Webb’s “Dark Alliance,” “Kill the Messenger” is about how easily a big story can break a journalist and turn a reporter into the news. Suddenly Webb goes from hero to target as sources change their story and he’s transferred to a rinky-dink operation where he reports on a constipated police horse. To an extent, the movie seems to cloud the issue that Webb’s story, at least as depicted here, does seem to have been compiled largely from claims by people in jail without corroborating evidence to cross the necessary Ts. (He tries to get a CIA source, but isn’t surprised that he can’t.)

Or maybe it allows this engrossing drama to show how pulling a string can unravel the world. No journalist would say that it’s legitimate to print an incomplete investigation, poking a giant and hoping it falls down. But “Kill the Messenger” demonstrates how misinformation and limited public memory impact the news cycle no matter the facts.

Frequently typecast as a drug dealer, Michael K. Williams (“The Wire”) gets a laugh when he tells Webb, “I gave him $6 million a week ... allegedly,” and, as a California prosecutor, Barry Pepper makes a good sleaze. The movie accurately depicts daily paper operations, talking about the work in a non-glamorous way. Fully reported or not, Webb’s story reflects a willingness to sniff a fresh trail and stay with it.

With so many people’s instinct to run when things get hard—this also appears in Webb’s personal life, regarding he and his wife’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) decision to move from Ohio to California—having the guts to walk into the storm has to count for something.

Watch Matt review the week's big new movies Fridays at 11:30 a.m. on NBC.

[email protected]

777man

(374 posts)

171. 10.9.14-JON STEWART'S The Daily Show 11PM Jeremy Renner

(374 posts)

191. 10.10.14-Live with Kelly and Michael- Jeremy Renner Interview (full episode)

(374 posts)

197. 10.10.14 Jeremy Renner Was So Invested In 'Kill The Messenger,' He Created A Company To Make It

Reply to 777man (Reply #196)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 03:42 AM

Oct 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/10/jeremy-renner-kill-the-messenger_n_5955244.html

Lauren Duca [email protected]

Jeremy Renner Was So Invested In 'Kill The Messenger,' He Created A Company To Make It
Posted: 10/10/2014 10:49 am EDT

777man

(374 posts)

198. 10.10.14- ‘The New York Times’ Wants Gary Webb to Stay Dead

Reply to 777man (Reply #197)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 03:53 AM

Oct 2014

http://www.thenation.com/blog/181940/new-york-times-wants-gary-webb-stay-dead

‘The New York Times’ Wants Gary Webb to Stay Dead
Greg Grandin on October 10, 2014 - 10:45 AM ET

The New York Times building

(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Kill the Messenger, a movie starring Jeremy Renner, just opened, about the life and death of Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Gary Webb, who committed suicide in 2004. Webb came late to the Iran/Contra scandal, long after most of the mainstream media had moved on. In 1996, he wrote a three-part series for the San Jose Mercury News, “Dark Alliance,” that exposed the distribution network, which included the Nicaraguan Contras, responsible for supplying the cocaine that helped kick off South Central Los Angeles’s crack epidemic.

The allegations were not new. Earlier, in the 1980s, Robert Parry and Brian Barger reported on the story for AP, which was picked up by then freshman Senator John Kerry, who in 1988 released an extensively documented committee report showing the ways the Contras, backed by Ronald Reagan’s White House, were turning Central America into a transshipment point for Colombian cocaine, using the drug revenue to fund their war on the Sandinistas. Webb’s report specifically looked at what happened to cocaine once it entered the United States.

Rather than follow up on Webb’s findings—and on Kerry’s and Parry’s earlier investigation—The New York Times, The Washington Post and, especially, the Los Angeles Times went after Webb, destroying his reputation and driving him out of the profession and into a suicidal depression.

I haven’t seen Kill the Messenger yet, but there’s no doubt that it sides with Webb. That seems to have unsettled David Carr, the media critic for The New York Times. Last week, in an anguished, deeply ambivalent assessment of Webb’s legacy, Carr admitted that the thrust of what Webb wrote about “really happened,” making passing reference to Kerry’s “little-noticed 1988 Senate subcommittee report.” Carr tentatively suggests that perhaps journalists should have better spent their energy reporting the larger story, rather than relentlessly fact-checking Webb. At the same time, though, he presented the campaign that ultimately drove Webb to his death as a “he-said-she-said-who-can-ultimately-say?” matter of interpretation, given ample space to Webb’s tormentors, like Tim Golden, who wielded the hatchet for The New York Times, and the odious Jerry Ceppos, the executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News who, faced with unrelenting pressure from the big boys in NY, LA and Washington, betrayed Webb.

Such is the state of media criticism that Carr could make notice of Kerry’s “little-noticed” Senate report without pointing out the obvious: it was “little-noticed” because newspapers, like his, little noticed it. Alexander Cockburn, Carr isn’t. Maybe he was trying for understated irony. As many of Webb’s defenders have noted, if journalists had put half the passion into following up the implications of that report that they put to discrediting Webb, we’d know a lot more about the darkest side of America’s national security state. Peter Kornbluh: “If the major media had devoted the same energy and ink to investigating the contra drug scandal in the 1980s as they did attacking the Mercury News in 1996, Gary Webb might never have had his scoop.”

Carr’s worst offense against Webb—other than not mentioning that Webb had won a Pulitzer Prize, for his work with a team of reporters investigation the 1989 San Francisco earthquake—is that he blames Webb himself for his downfall: “Mr. Webb was open to attack in part because of the lurid presentation of the story and his willingness to draw causality based on very thin sourcing and evidence. He wrote past what he knew.”

No. Webb was open to attack because the Los Angeles Times alone assigned seventeen reporters to leverage the inherent mysteries of the national security state to cast doubt on Webb. As Nick Schou, author of the book, Kill the Messenger, on which the movie is based, writes, “Much of the [Los Angeles] Times’ attack was clever misdirection, but it ruined Webb’s reputation: In particular, the L.A. Times attacked a claim that Webb never made: that the CIA had intentionally addicted African-Americans to crack.”

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Webb won’t be vindicated by the movie Kill the Messenger because he has already been vindicated by serious nonfiction reporters, like Schou and others. And by history itself. Webb was documenting one aspect of the blowback that we all have been living with from Iran/Contra, which is really just shorthand for Reagan’s broader set of Central American policies. Central America was the place the national security state got its groove back after Vietnam, and the repercussions are ongoing: among them, the rise of Salvadoran and Honduran transnational gangs, the drug war, which has turned the Colombian-Central American-Mexican corridor into a war zone, the 2009 Honduran coup, and this summer’s exodus of Central American child refugees.

Did Webb write “past what he knew”? Of course he did. He was writing about the covert activities of the rogue National Security Council and CIA and their shadowy relations with drug runners! As John Kerry complained in 1998, after being allowed to read a classified CIA investigation, launched as a result of Webb’s reporting: “Some of us in Congress at the time, in 1985, 1986, were calling for a serious investigation of the charges, and C.I.A. officials did not join in that effort…. There was a significant amount of stonewalling. I’m afraid that what I read in the report documents the degree to which there was a lack of interest in making sure the laws were being upheld.” “Scant proof,” sniffed Golden, in his New York Times take-down of Webb.

Webb provides a fascinating account of his “hours-long conversations with editors that bordered on the surreal” in an essay titled “The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On,” in which they relentlessly presented him with unprovable hypotheticals: “’How do we know for sure that these drug dealers were the first big ring to start selling crack in South Central?’ editor Jonathan Krim pressed me during one such confab…. ‘Isn’t it possible there might have been someone else and they never got caught and no one ever knew about them? In that case, your story would be wrong.’ I had to take a deep breath to keep from shouting. ‘If you’re asking me whether I accounted for people who might never have existed, the answer is no,’ I said.”

Schou writes that because “Webb shot himself in the head twice—the first bullet simply went through his cheek—many falsely believe the CIA killed him.” Webb was apparently depressed that he couldn’t get a job that paid enough to let him keep his house.

But staring too long into the abyss that is Iran/Contra is bad for one’s mental health. The artist Mark Lombardi drew constellation-like renderings of the paramilitary and para-financial scandals, scandals that have increased in frequency with the spread of neoliberalism. These include Iran/Contra, BCCI and Harken Energy, Savings and Loan, many of them involving the Bush family. Lombardi too killed himself, in 2000.

It is easy to fall down the rabbit hole, or into a James Ellroy novel, trying to draw the connections. Iran/Contra is like the Da Vinci Code of the national security state, and reading any one paragraph of the Kerry Committee Report can send minds reeling:

In a June 26, 1987 closed session of the Subcommittee, Milian Rodriguez testified that in a meeting arranged by Miami private detective Raoul Diaz with Felix Rodriguez, he (Milian) offered to provide drug money to the Contras. Milian Rodriguez stated that Felix accepted the offer and $10 million in such assistance was subsequently provided the Contras through a system of secret couriers.

Félix Rodríguez is, of course, the Cuban exile CIA agent who hunted down Che Guevara in Bolivia. The relationship of narcotics and covert ops goes back at least to the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, but a key moment in the Cold War history of that relationship took place with the 1959 Cuban Revolution, which broadcast the Cuban drug mafia throughout all of the Americas, allying their interests with anti-Castro counterrevolutionaries and CIA spooks. That alliance mutated and metastasized, infecting different places at different times, including Colombia, Bolivia, Panama, Honduras and South Central Los Angeles.

Inevitably, the reporting of Webb and the art of Lombardi raise the specter of conspiracy. But conspiracy theorists, in their worst, most compulsive form, are obsessed with proving the detail, establishing the single link, after which everything will make sense. Webb and Lombardi, in contrast, stepped back to see the bigger picture and consider the moral meaning of the connections they were making.

?oh=7214ce3714cfa5b2f43c93b5f72db51b&oe=54F87BAE

777man

(374 posts)

199. Jeremy Renner, Michael Cuesta Spotlight Gary Webb’s Story and Family at ‘Kill the Messenger’ Premier

Reply to 777man (Reply #198)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 04:00 AM

Oct 2014

http://variety.com/2014/scene/vpage/jeremy-renner-michael-cuesta-spotlight-gary-webbs-story-and-family-at-kill-the-messenger-premiere-1201327100/

Jeremy Renner, Michael Cuesta Spotlight Gary Webb’s Story and Family at ‘Kill the Messenger’ Premiere

Jeremy Renner and Michael Cuesta at
Dave Allocca/StarTraks Photo
October 10, 2014 | 05:28PM PT
Steve Macfarlane

Jeremy Renner and director Michael Cuesta braved the red carpet on Thursday night for the premiere of their gritty new docudrama “Kill the Messenger,” based on the life of late San Jose Mercury News journalist Gary Webb.

Webb’s stories exposed connections between South Central crack cartels, and CIA-funded paramilitaries in Nicaragua and solicited a shaming campaign from other papers (and, by some reports, government intimidation) before he took his own life in 2004.

“The thing is, Gary actually wasn’t a whistleblower,” said “Homeland” veteran Cuesta. “He was a journalist. He was just doing his f—ing job. Before the script came to my attention, I didn’t know the grind that he went through, the discreditation campaign, the price that he paid; so that really made me want to make this movie. There’s a sense of knowing that this thing he’s tapped into is way bigger, but he doesn’t stop. So, I admired that courage and I think we need those people.”

“I think that it has suspense elements to it, but at its heart, it’s a drama,” said producer Naomi Despres. The script, written by former journalist Peter Landesman — who was unable to make the premiere, as he’s currently directing a drama about concussions in the NFL — was initially developed for Universal. First Renner was attached, as star and producer; after Cuesta signed on, Despres reapproached the studio, who then put it in turnaround at the studio’s indie-friendlier arm, Focus. “It’s not like doors were flying open to make this movie, for us, ultimately, the scope of the movie, in terms of the larger story it tells, is so compelling that there were a lot of fans around town.”

“With Jeremy’s involvement, we actually had offers to finance it independently; once we put the movie together, with him — and to his credit, he came onboard when there was no financing in place — we felt confident we would get it made. He dove in and committed himself.”

“There was no pitch process; we already had a great script, and that was our road map, and then it was just aggregating the right team, and an amazing cast,” Renner said. “Some producing partners to support the creatives, it all just sort of happened. I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it happened in the right way.”

Lucas Hedges, who plays Gary’s son Ian, described himself as attracted to the project both for the hard-hitting subject matter and also a chance to work with cinematographer Sean Bobbitt: “I’m very, very obsessed with IMDB, so I knew who a lot of the people onboard were. I loved the story, I loved the relationship with Ian and his dad, I loved Jeremy, I love ‘Homeland,’ and Sean Bobbitt is, I think, the best DP alive right now.”

Hedges was then called to meet his real-life counterpart, and exchange hugs and handshakes with the rest of the real-life Webb clan on the red carpet as well.

Rosemarie DeWitt, who plays Sue Webb in the film, spent some time with the journalist’s real-life widow in preproduction. “The movie is about Gary, essentially, and about what happened to him. They wrote Sue kind of, very crassly, to give her some oomph, and she and I had lunch, and she was like: ‘They have me cursing like a sailor! What’s going on?’ And once we had met, and I saw that she wasn’t all about the bravado, I was able to work on that, and get some of that out of there.”

“And she shared some home movies with us,” DeWitt said, one of which appears at the end of Cuesta’s film, “and it actually informed a lot of the essence of what we did, which is just, everything was about her love for her kids, and her love for her husband. So, no big arias for her in the movie.”

How did Sue Webb respond to the movie? “Talking with Sue earlier, I think she feels like Gary was vindicated, in a way,” DeWitt shared.

In prepping to inhabit Gary’s role, Renner was taciturn about stepping on toes. “The stuff with the Webbs, that was more with Peter (Landesman) and Nick Schou, who wrote the original book. I came in when all that was done, and I avoided dealing with the Webb family to find out who Gary was, because I didn’t want to be digging up hard questions that they maybe didn’t want to talk about. But they were very involved and generous with the information we needed.”

“Once cameras were rolling, I had to just focus on Gary. And playing the part. At the end of the day, I could go worry about, you know, working behind the scenes. So it’s back-and-forth, throughout, but I really liked the challenge.”

Attendees including Renner, DeWitt and costars Paz Vega, Michael K. Williams and Ray Liotta, plus the original Ricky “Freeway” Ross (one of Webb’s key interviewees) and “Exodus” star Joel Edgerton, chowed down on miniaturized pizzas and Korean-style fried chicken at the afterparty at Michael’s on 55th Street.

Filed Under:

Jeremy Renner
Kill the Messenger
Michael Cuesta
Rosemarie Dewitt

777man

(374 posts)

200. 10.11.14 KTM REVIEWS-HUFFINGTON POST/ROLLINGSTONE/OREGONIAN

Reply to 777man (Reply #199)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 01:10 PM

Oct 2014

Last edited Sun Oct 12, 2014, 08:50 PM - Edit history (1)

colettaberx
» 47 minutes ago (Sat Oct 11 2014 08:40:35)
IMDb member since July 2013
http://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/kill-the-messenger-review

And Renner, who hasn’t been this electric to watch since The Hurt Locker, turns in a powerhouse performance. When Webb is chasing down leads and digging to bring secrets to life, Renner gives him a playful swagger, a big-man-on-campus charm, but when his story’s subject bites back, Renner’s performance grows sadder and darker. Renner’s committed performance dares you to look away, knowing you won’t, as the actor depicts Webb being brought to his knees by the painful realization that the road to his own personal Hell, paved with good intentions though it was, is a one-way street he’s already traveled too far down to turn back. Watching his optimism bend and then break is nothing short of devastating.

Jeremy Renner is a force of nature in this taut, thrilling and completely devastating tale of a journalist under fire. Kill the Messenger will enthrall you, horrify you and, most importantly, it will light your fire.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/kill-the-messenger-20141009

Kill the Messenger flies high on the power of Jeremy Renner’s all-stops-out performance as journalist Gary Webb.

http://t.co/KkS4bT3dlO The Oregonian :

Jeremy Renner shines in the true story of a journalistic martyr,”

http://moviefinatic.com/articles/kill-the-messenger-review-one-of-the- year-s-best-most-important-films

Jeremy Renner is incredible as Gary Webb, who's important story finally makes it's way to the big screen

=================
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/movie-review-kill-there-m_b_5945390.html
Read the full review:
http://hollywoodandfine.com/kill-the-messenger-get-the-message-out/

‘Kill the Messenger’: Get the message out
October 7, 2014

killmessenger It’s the rare journalism movie that gets it right when it comes to depicting the day-to-day on a daily newspaper. And, given the terminal condition of American print, journalism movies themselves are going to become an endangered species – sort of like newspapers.

So it’s nice to see a movie like “Kill the Messenger” get it right. In telling this true story, director Michael Cuesta and writer Peter Landesman not only recount a scandal and an injustice; they also capture a cusp moment, just before the Internet tsunami roared in, changing the news-gathering landscape forever.

It’s 1996 and Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) is an investigative reporter – remember those? – at the San Jose Mercury News. One day he gets a tip that leads him to the loose thread of what could be a major story – and then he pulls it.

What he unravels is a conspiracy from 10 years earlier, when the Reagan administration was trading arms for hostages in Iran and looking for ways to circumvent a congressional edict against supporting the Contras in Nicaragua. Webb uncovers stories from participants that the CIA had sanctioned the importing of cocaine to America, the profits of which went to buy weapons for the Contras. His digging takes him across the country and even to Nicaragua, where he talks to the drug smugglers who were on the CIA radar, but were given a pass.

His story earns him a bunch of awards – and intense pushback from the CIA. Which is the real story here: how professional jealousy and government manipulation turned Webb into a target.

Suddenly his story – and his professional credibility – are called into question. Even his own bosses begin to doubt him. If this story comes as news, we’ll, that’s how the CIA – and particularly alumni of the Reagan era – would prefer it.

Webb turns out to be part of that dying breed – an idealist who actually believes that the truth is a coat of armor that will protect him. Against slings and arrows? Perhaps. Against the full force of the mainstream press, as manipulated by a government agency? Not so much.

There are fewer and fewer cases like this, of course, because this kind of journalism is vanishing, the victim of media’s vulnerability to market forces and bottom lines. Even worse, it has led to the diminution of a readership that wants to be informed by something other than the daily roll call of infotainment and media-fueled scandals. So the tragedy of this story is still being played out.

Cuesta has made a spare but compelling film that pulls you along with the insistence of hounds after the fox. And he has the no-nonsense Jeremy Renner to drive this vehicle, playing Webb as affable but driven, a straight-shooting truth-teller who is just sneaky enough – and naive enough – to get himself in trouble.

A list of famous faces – including Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Michael Sheen and Michael K. Williams – pop up in featured roles, adding flavor to the stew. It’s grounded by Rosemarie DeWitt (as Webb’s wife) and Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt as his editors.

“Kill the Messenger” is both chilling and thoughtful. It offers an important story – and a glimpse of what our media world would soon become.

--------------

http://www.cultfilmfreaks.com/2014/10/jeremy-renner-in-kill-messenger.html

10/12/2014
JEREMY RENNER IN KILL THE MESSENGER
2014 rating: **
Jeremy Renner is the kind of actor who takes his job seriously, playing each character with gusto. And in the role of real life reporter Gary Webb, he’s downright shot out of a cannon. In fact you’d think he was a bulletproof paratrooper who just happened to write for a living…

What movie's about is loaded up front, and this particular “Deep Throat” gives Webb the lead of a lifetime about five minutes in. A possible scoop that, during the 1980’s, the Reagan-Era CIA funded weapons in Nicaragua by having drug dealers sell crack cocaine in downtown Los Angeles.

Unlike ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, we don’t learn things slowly and meticulously. Instead, after everything’s been served up on a silver hot plate, there’s a collection of scenes where Webb gets loads of useful information from drug dealers, ex CIA agents and politicians, collaborating what we’ve already learned – deleting any worthy suspense or intrigue along the way.

There is an attempt for mainstream movie thrills when shadowy forms begin stalking Webb at his home and work. Not surprisingly, that’s when Renner seems the most comfortable: with bulging eyes, flexed muscles, a speedy motorcycle and the countenance of a feisty badger, he's not gonna take it anymore!

The first half, although somewhat well-crafted, is too slanted and, for a story about a reporter, downright easy. It would have made Webb’s journey more engrossing had he come up against people not itching to spill the beans so quickly, and clearly. His brand of journalism is hardly investigative. Thus the last act falls apart at the seams…

When his bosses scold him for not having his informants go “on the record” instead of private conversations, it's as if they were suggesting he wait around for a better end to his story. Ironically, the movie needed one too.
Presented by James M. Tate at 1:38 PM

777man

(374 posts)

201. 10.10.14 Jeremy Renner Plays Hero in an Engaging and Enraging True Story

Reply to 777man (Reply #200)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 04:37 PM

Oct 2014

http://filmschoolrejects.com/reviews/kill-the-messenger.php

‘Kill the Messenger’ Review: Jeremy Renner Plays Hero in an Engaging and Enraging True Story
Movie Reviews By Rob Hunter on October 10, 2014

--------------------------

http://www.clotureclub.com/2014/10/interview-jeremy-renner-michael-cuesta-kill-messenger/
Our Interview With Jeremy Renner And Michael Cuesta For “Kill The Messenger”

by Lauren Bradshaw Cloture Club
October 8, 2014

===================================

CIA Caught Drug Dealing: 'Kill The Messenger' Sneak Peek
TheAlexJonesChannel
TheAlexJonesChannel

Published on Oct 9, 2014

The Infowars crew rates and reviews the new film, 'Kill The Messenger,' chronicling the true story of journalist Gary Webb exposing the CIA's direct connection with smuggling cocaine into US streets while using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

777man

(374 posts)

202. 10.10.14 FAIR'S JEFF COHEN -GARY WEBB Gets the Last Word in Kill the Messenger

Reply to 777man (Reply #201)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 04:42 PM

Oct 2014

Journalist Gary Webb Gets the Last Word in Kill the Messenger

Published on Oct 10, 2014

Jeff Cohen from Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College says Webb exposed how the CIA supported the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua by trafficking cocaine, leading to an epidemic of crack use in major US cities

777man

(374 posts)

203. 10.12.14CNN(VID)Interview with Jeremy Renner& Michael Cuesta 11am "Reliable Sources" Show

Reply to 777man (Reply #202)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 04:47 PM

Oct 2014

Last edited Sun Oct 12, 2014, 08:21 PM - Edit history (1)

Watch the Video!

http://ht.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big//bestoftv/2014/10/12/rs-jeremy-renners-role-as-pulitzer-winning-reporter.cnn_173110_768x432_1300k.mp4

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv/tv-guy/os-bill-oreilly-jeremy-renner-sunday-guests-20141011-post.html

CNN SUNDAY 10.12.14 11am

Actor Jeremy Renner and director Michael Cuesta discuss the movie "Kill the Messenger" on CNN's "Reliable Sources" at 11 a.m.

777man

(374 posts)

204. 10.9.14 LARRY KING INTERVIEW W/JEREMY RENNER

Reply to 777man (Reply #203)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 05:00 PM

Oct 2014

http://www.ora.tv/larrykingnow/jeremy-renner-0_1l1kka7n27yi
http://www.ora.tv/larrykingnow/jeremy-renner---sneak-peek-0_69anucri7n97

About This Episode
Jeremy Renner — one of Hollywood’s most talented — gives Larry a crash course on landing multiple blockbuster movie roles, details his interests outside of acting, & even unveils a recent splurge in a revealing game of If You Only Knew.

777man

(374 posts)

205. 10.10.14(VIDEO)ROBERT PARRY Speaks on Gary Webb and CONTRA COCAINE SCANDAL

Reply to 777man (Reply #204)

Sat Oct 11, 2014, 05:16 PM

Oct 2014

10/10/14

Former Newsweek and Associated Press reporter ROBERT PARRY INTERVIEW ABOUT GARY WEBB CONTRA COCAINE SCANDAL (13 minutes)

The True story of "Kill the Messenger"
NextNewsNetwork

Published on Oct 10, 2014

About 30 years ago, an Associated Press journalist broke a shocking story about the CIA. Ten years later, Gary Webb was working at the San Jose Mercury News when he uncovered the story, tucked away inside of a Senate subcommittee report from a few years before. The report showed that the CIA was very closely tied to illegal cocaine smuggling in 1985. Webb started out skeptical, but eventually published a series called “Dark Alliance.” Then, Webb’s life fell apart. One by one, news agencies started to pick him apart, trying their best to discredit his story. Eventually, his own employer piled on, and pushed him out. Webb went on to kill himself in 2004. Now, the Contra-Cocaine scandal is being retold in a new movie, called, “Kill The Messenger,” starring Jeremy Renner.

Webb is gone, but the AP reporter who first broke the story is still alive. Today, he’s joining us to talk about the Lost History of the Cocaine Controversy. He’s Robert Parry, editor of Consortium News. His site is http://consortiumnews.com/

Parry's Complete coverage of CONTRA CRACK is here:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html

Please consider a donation to Consortium News for their exceptional news coverage.

777man

(374 posts)

(374 posts)

214. 10.10.14KCL(VID) Jeremy Renner and Actress Rosemarie DeWitt

Reply to 777man (Reply #213)

Sun Oct 12, 2014, 09:16 PM

Oct 2014

http://www.kshb.com/entertainment/kcl/entertainment-kcl/jeremy-renner-and-rosemarie-dewitt-on-kill-the-messenger#KCL%20-%20Jeremy%20Renner%20and%20Rosemaire%20Dewitt%20on%20%27Kill%20The%20Messenger%27

The stars of the highly anticipated film, "Kill The Messenger" sit down for a one-on-one chat with Michelle Davidson.

Actor Jeremy Renner and Actress Rosemarie DeWitt give the scoop on their new film,"Kill The Messenger", based on the relentless reporter Gary Webb and the importance of thorough journalism.

For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/KilltheMessengermovie .

777man

(374 posts)

215. 10.12.14 Jeremy Renner,Michael K.Williams, Michael Cuesta Attend ‘Kill The Messenger’ Screening

Reply to 777man (Reply #214)

Sun Oct 12, 2014, 11:12 PM

Oct 2014

Jeremy Renner, Michael Kenneth Williams, Michael Cuesta Attend ‘Kill The Messenger’ Screening
4 hours ago
http://thesource.com/2014/10/12/jeremy-renner-michael-kenneth-williams-michael-cuesta-attend-kill-the-messenger-screening/

On September 27, the new film “Kill the Messenger” was screened for members of the Los Angeles community who experienced the crack epidemic firsthand in the 1980’s. This film explores the effects that the crack epidemic had on African Americans during that time. It also talks about the government’s role within this whole situation. After the film was screened, the attendees were interveiwed to get their initial reaction on the film as well as asked about their experiences during this time. Many of them said that this was a troubled time within the African American community and some even said that they are still feeling the after effects of the time period to this day. The main thing that these viewers had to say was that this movie was truthful and extremely successful in capturing the events of that time as well as them being proud that there is finally someone telling a story that many people do not know about. This is a story that they felt needed to be told. Watch the featurette below:

================
Producer & Star Jeremy Renner Talks New Film ‘Kill The Messenger’
October 5, 2014
http://thesource.com/2014/10/05/producer-star-jeremy-renner-talks-new-film-kill-the-messenger/

+++++++++++++++++++++++

Michael K. Williams Talks Playing ‘Freeway’ Ricky Ross In ‘Kill The Messenger’
September 29, 2014
http://thesource.com/2014/09/29/michael-k-williams-talks-playing-freeway-ricky-ross-in-kill-the-messenger/

====================
Film Review: ‘Kill The Messenger’ Starring Jeremy Renner
October 10, 2014
http://thesource.com/2014/10/10/film-review-kill-the-messenger-starring-jeremy-renner/

(374 posts)

240. 10.17.14 LA TIMES-Local editor has a stake in new movie 'Kill the Messenger'

Reply to 777man (Reply #239)

Fri Oct 17, 2014, 04:50 AM

Oct 2014

Local editor has a stake in new movie 'Kill the Messenger'
http://www.latimes.com/tn-dpt-et-1017-checking-in-with-nick-schou-20141016-story.html

OC Weekly editor Nick Schou's book "Kill the Messenger" is being made into a film. (SCOTT SMELTZER, Daily Pilot)
By Michael Miller
JournalismMoviesCentral Intelligence AgencyJeremy RennerThe King's Speech (movie)Argo (movie)WikiLeaks

Eighteen years ago, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published one of the most contested stories in modern journalism: "Dark Alliance," which alleged that a California drug ring had sold crack cocaine to gang members and funneled the profits to a CIA-backed army in Nicaragua.

Soon, the claims in Webb's series came under attack by other journalists, and the Pulitzer-winning reporter's career ended in disarray before he committed suicide in 2004. But Webb was never without defenders — including Nick Schou, the managing editor of OC Weekly, who wrote the 2006 book "Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb."
lRelated

Now, that message is reaching a whole new audience. Michael Cuesta's movie version of "Kill the Messenger," which stars Jeremy Renner as Webb, came out this fall from Focus Features, and reviews have been generally positive (as of last week, the film had a 70% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the New Yorker's David Denby, who praised its "steady flow of tension," among the fans).

Earlier this year in his Costa Mesa office — where Webb's work occupies a prominent spot on the bookcase — Schou spoke with the Daily Pilot about the fallen reporter's legacy and his own journey from newsroom to screen. The following are excerpts from the conversation:

*

I noticed at the beginning of your book, you have this little "Dramatis Personae" section with all the characters. When you were writing the book, did you have any aspirations of a movie version someday?
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Yeah. I mean, I knew that Hollywood had been interested in Gary's story, and I kind of felt like it was a story that should be told on film, but I just, at that point when I wrote the book, felt lucky to be able to write about Gary because I'd never written a book before, and it was not easy getting that story accepted by a publisher. I couldn't even find an agent, actually, to represent me for that purpose. And so it got rejected by several different agents and publishers before Nation Books agreed to publish it. So I was just so relieved that I was able to pull that off, that as far as where it would go from there wasn't anything I was even capable of thinking about at that point.

There's a line in your book where you call "Dark Alliance" "the most explosive journalistic expose since the end of the Cold War." Do you think there's been anything in the almost 20 years since "Dark Alliance" that's been that big?

Well, I mean, there's been a lot of major revelations lately, as far as WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden and, you know, big sort of revelatory works of journalism that have come out as a result of that type of event — by which I mean leaks, basically. So that's pretty common nowadays, and those can be very explosive as well.

What I really meant by what I said about "Dark Alliance" was that it was pretty much the first big, major journalistic expose in the Internet age. It came out right at the advent of the Internet and was the first big journalistic product to get that widespread of an audience, and it wasn't the result of anything being leaked per se. I mean, Gary Webb was given leads by sources, for sure, but he spent a year investigating this story and worked passionately and diligently to get it out. It wasn't just something that was handed to him on a plate.

There was that piece in the American Journalism Review just a few months after Webb died — the piece by Susan Paterno — and the headline was "The Sad Saga of Gary Webb." Do you think there's a lesson to be taken from Webb's story?

The way I posited it in the book was that his story is kind of a cautionary tale for journalism itself. I mean, he had his reputation destroyed over a very complicated story, and it was a story that almost every reporter that had tried to write about this previously had kind of lived to regret having done. And he was warned by people that had covered Iran-Contra that this was just a toxic, radioactive story, and it really gauged how strong his relationship was with his editors. And so what I charted out in the book was how the story sort of broke down.

Gary Webb made mistakes in his reporting, I think, and his editors also made mistakes. He was a very courageous reporter, but he also demanded a very kind of tenacious editor that could check the claims that were being made. Somehow in the process of the editing of this story, I think, certain exaggerations weighed in on the story that helped it achieve the impact that it had but which weren't necessary, and I think that the story would have been very compelling and very important had it not reached as far as it did.

And so that's pretty much what I tried to uncover, and I think it's certainly a terrible personal tragedy what happened to him, but it's also really an important journalism story just as far as how this story kind of ruined a particular person's career. And I pointed out at the end that he was the only person that paid any price for this at all. All the other editors that were involved in it got promoted, and their careers progressed untarnished.

About the movie — you're an extra in one scene. Is that correct?

Correct, yes.

Which scene are you an extra in?

There's a scene where Gary's story has just been published, and he's appearing on talk shows and talking about it. I think he's given a $50 check by the editor of the newspaper, and there's a big round of applause for the work. So it shows a bunch of middle-aged-looking editors watching that through the conference room glass, and I'm one of the people that you see in a brief flash. But if you blink, you'll miss it.

Is there any art to being a good extra?

You know, for just half a second of screen time, you spend two days sort of standing around, so it just takes a lot of patience. But for me, obviously, it was really exciting just to be there, and to be a part of the making of the movie was a real treat for me, to actually see it unfold. And just even playing a tiny role in it was kind of a dream of a lifetime, I guess.

How about Jeremy Renner? Does he do a good impression of Webb?

Yeah. I mean, he really captures, I think, Webb's personality when he was enthusiastically chasing down a story, and then the changes that happened after that. It's an exciting film.

Usually, when a movie comes out that's based on real life, whether it's "Argo" or "Captain Phillips" or "The King's Speech" or one of those, you have this sort of Greek chorus of people coming out and saying, "No, it didn't happen exactly that way" or "Here's how they shifted the timeline" or something like that. From what you've seen of "Kill the Messenger," do you feel like it is pretty much true to life?

I mean, it's a mixture of what really happened and what inevitably happens when you make a movie about what really happened. It's a compressed biopic, so certain characters are composite and certain scenes are dramatized in a way to please audiences, I think, for lack of a better word. But you know, there's an art to making movies that I can't really fathom. It's certainly a very real story.
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times

777man

(374 posts)

(374 posts)

251. 10.17.14 WSWS.ORG-Kill the Messenger: Shedding light on CIA criminality and conspiracy

Reply to 777man (Reply #250)

Sat Oct 18, 2014, 05:58 PM

Oct 2014

The Gary Webb story in Kill the Messenger: Shedding light on CIA criminality and conspiracy
By Joanne Laurier
17 October 2014

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/17/kill-o17.html

------------------------------------
CIA document details cover-up of drug trafficking by Contras
By Thomas Gaist
2 October 2014
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/02/cont-o02.html

777man

(374 posts)

252. 10.17.14 INFOWARS-The Truth Behind The Film Kill The Messenger And Gary Webb

Reply to 777man (Reply #251)

Sat Oct 18, 2014, 06:01 PM

Oct 2014

The Truth Behind The Film Kill The Messenger And Gary Webb
TheAlexJonesChannel

Published on Oct 17, 2014

Alex Jones reviews the latest film 'Kill The Messenger' and explains his real life interactions with Gary Webb whom the film is based on. How the producers and director told the truth about how the CIA and our government suppressed the real story of their misdeeds and corruption in the sixties, seventies and still Today.

777man

(374 posts)

253. 10.18.14ROBERT PARRY-WASHINGTON Post’s Slimy Assault on Gary Webb

Reply to 777man (Reply #252)

Sat Oct 18, 2014, 06:14 PM

Oct 2014

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/18/wposts-slimy-assault-on-gary-webb/

WPost’s Slimy Assault on Gary Webb
October 18, 2014

Exclusive: The movie, “Kill the Messenger,” portrays the mainstream U.S. news media as craven for destroying Gary Webb rather than expanding on his investigation of the Contra-cocaine scandal. So, now one of those “journalists” is renewing the character assassination of Webb, notes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Jeff Leen, the Washington Post’s assistant managing editor for investigations, begins his
renewed attack on the late Gary Webb’s Contra-cocaine reporting with a falsehood.

Leen insists that there is a journalism dictum that “an extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof.” But Leen must know that it is not true. Many extraordinary claims, such as assertions in 2002-03 that Iraq was hiding arsenals of WMDs, were published as flat-fact without “extraordinary proof” or any real evidence at all, including by Leen’s colleagues at the Washington Post.
Journalist Gary Webb

Journalist Gary Webb

A different rule actually governs American journalism – that journalists need “extraordinary proof” if a story puts the U.S. government or an “ally” in a negative light but pretty much anything goes when criticizing an “enemy.”

If, for instance, the Post wanted to accuse the Syrian government of killing civilians with Sarin gas or blame Russian-backed rebels for the shoot-down of a civilian airliner over Ukraine, any scraps of proof – no matter how dubious – would be good enough (as was the actual case in 2013 and 2014, respectively).

However, if new evidence undercut those suspicions and shifted the blame to people on “the U.S. side” – say, the Syrian rebels and the Ukrainian government – then the standards of proof suddenly skyrocket beyond reach. So what you get is not “responsible” journalism – as Leen tries to suggest – but hypocrisy and propaganda. One set of rules for the goose and another set for the gander.

The Contra-Cocaine Case

Or to go back to the Contra-cocaine scandal that Brian Barger and I first exposed for the Associated Press in 1985: If we were writing that the leftist Nicaraguan Sandinista government – the then U.S. “enemy” – was shipping cocaine to the United States, any flimsy claim would have sufficed. But the standard of proof ratcheted up when the subject of our story was cocaine smuggling by President Ronald Reagan’s beloved Contras.

In other words, the real dictum is that there are two standards, double standards, something that a careerist like Leen knows in his gut but doesn’t want you to know. All the better to suggest that Gary Webb was guilty of violating some noble principle of journalism.

But Leen is wrong in another way – because there was “extraordinary proof” establishing that the Contras were implicated in drug trafficking and that the Reagan administration was looking the other way.

When Barger and I wrote the first story about Contra-cocaine trafficking almost three decades ago, we already had “extraordinary proof,” including documents from Costa Rica, statements by Contras and Contra backers, and admissions from officials in the Drug Enforcement Administration and Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff.

However, Leen seems to dismiss our work as nothing but getting “tips” about Contra-cocaine trafficking as if Barger and I were like the hacks at the Washington Post and the New York Times who wait around for authorized handouts from the U.S. government.

Following the Money

Barger and I actually were looking for something different when we encountered the evidence on Contra-cocaine trafficking. We were trying to figure out how the Contras were sustaining themselves in the field after Congress cut off the CIA’s financing for their war.

We were, in the old-fashioned journalistic parlance, “following the money.” The problem was the money led, in part, to the reality that all the major Contra organizations were collaborating with drug traffickers.

Besides our work in the mid-1980s, Sen. John Kerry’s follow-on Contra-cocaine investigation added substantially more evidence. Yet Leen and his cohorts apparently felt no need to pursue the case any further or even give respectful attention to Kerry’s official findings.

Indeed, when Kerry’s report was issued in April 1989, the Washington Post ran a dismissive story by Michael Isikoff buried deep inside the paper. Newsweek dubbed Kerry “a randy conspiracy buff.” In his new article attacking Gary Webb, Leen just says:

“After an exhaustive three-year investigation, the committee’s report concluded that CIA officials were aware of the smuggling activities of some of their charges who supported the contras, but it stopped short of implicating the agency directly in drug dealing. That seemed to be the final word on the matter.”

But why was it the “final word”? Why didn’t Leen and others who had missed the scandal as it was unfolding earlier in the decade at least try to build on Kerry’s findings. After all, these were now official U.S. government records. Wasn’t that “extraordinary” enough?

In this context, Leen paints himself as the true investigative journalist who knew the inside story of the Contra-cocaine tale from the beginning. He wrote: “As an investigative reporter covering the drug trade for the Miami Herald, … I wrote about the explosion of cocaine in America in the 1980s and 1990s, and the role of Colombia’s Medellin Cartel in fueling it.

“Beginning in 1985, journalists started pursuing tips about the CIA’s role in the drug trade. Was the agency allowing cocaine to flow into the United States as a means to fund its secret war supporting the contra rebels in Nicaragua? Many journalists, including me, chased that story from different angles, but the extraordinary proof was always lacking.”

Again, what Leen says is not true. Leen makes no reference to the groundbreaking AP story in 1985 or other disclosures in the ensuing years. He just insists that “the extraordinary proof” was lacking — which it may have been for him given his lackluster abilities. He then calls the final report of Kerry’s investigation the “final word.”

But Leen doesn’t explain why he and his fellow mainstream journalists were so incurious about this major scandal that they would remain passive even in the wake of a Senate investigation. It’s also not true that Kerry’s report was the “final word” prior to Webb reviving the scandal in 1996.

Government Witnesses

In 1991, during the narcotics trafficking trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, the U.S. government itself presented witnesses who connected the Contras to the Medellin cartel.

Indeed, after testimony by Medellin cartel kingpin Carlos Lehder about his $10 million contribution to the Contras, the Washington Post wrote in a Nov. 27, 1991 editorial that “The Kerry hearings didn’t get the attention they deserved at the time” and that “The Noriega trial brings this sordid aspect of the Nicaraguan engagement to fresh public attention.”

But the Post offered its readers no explanation for why Kerry’s hearings had been largely ignored, with the Post itself a leading culprit in this journalistic misfeasance. Nor did the Post and the other leading newspapers use the opening created by the Noriega trial to do anything to rectify their past neglect.

In other words, it didn’t seem to matter how much “extraordinary proof” the Washington Post or Jeff Leen had. Nothing would be sufficient to report seriously on the Contra-cocaine scandal, not even when the U.S. government vouched for the evidence.

So, Leen is trying to fool you when he presents himself as a “responsible journalist” weighing the difficult evidentiary choices. He’s just the latest hack to go after Gary Webb, which has become urgent again for the mainstream media in the face of “Kill the Messenger,” a new movie about Webb’s ordeal.

What Leen won’t face up to is that the tag-team destruction of Gary Webb in 1996-97 – by the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times – represented one of the most shameful episodes in the history of American journalism.

The Big Papers tore down an honest journalist to cover up their own cowardly failure to investigate and expose a grave national security crime, the Reagan administration’s tolerance for and protection of drug trafficking into the United States by the CIA’s client Contra army.

This journalistic failure occurred even though the Associated Press – far from a radical news outlet – and a Senate investigation (not to mention the Noriega trial) had charted the way.

Leen’s Assault

Contrary to Leen’s column, “Kill the Messenger” is actually a fairly honest portrayal of what happened when Webb exposed the consequences of the Contra cocaine smuggling after the drugs reached the United States. One channel fed into an important Los Angeles supply chain that produced crack.

But Leen tells you that “The Hollywood version of [Webb's] story — a truth-teller persecuted by the cowardly and craven mainstream media — is pure fiction.”

He then lauds the collaboration of the Big Three newspapers in destroying Webb and creating such enormous pressure on Webb’s newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, that the executive editor Jerry Ceppos threw his own reporter under the bus. To Leen, this disgraceful behavior represented the best of American journalism.

Leen wrote: “The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, in a rare show of unanimity, all wrote major pieces knocking the story down for its overblown claims and undernourished reporting.

“Gradually, the Mercury News backed away from Webb’s scoop. The paper transferred him to its Cupertino bureau and did an internal review of his facts and his methods. Jerry Ceppos, the Mercury News’s executive editor, wrote a piece concluding that the story did not meet the newspaper’s standards — a courageous stance, I thought.”

“Courageous”? What an astounding characterization of Ceppos’s act of career cowardice.

But Leen continues by explaining his role in the Webb takedown. After all, Leen was then the drug expert at the Miami Herald, which like the San Jose Mercury News was a Knight Ridder newspaper. Leen says his editors sought his opinion about Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series.

Though acknowledging that he was “envious” of Webb’s story when it appeared in 1996, Leen writes that he examined it and found it wanting, supposedly because of alleged overstatements. He proudly asserts that because of his critical analysis, the Miami Herald never published Webb’s series.

But Leen goes further. He falsely characterizes the U.S. government’s later admissions contained in inspector general reports by the CIA and Justice Department. If Leen had bothered to read the reports thoroughly, he would have realized that the reports actually establish that Webb – and indeed Kerry, Barger and I – grossly understated the seriousness of the Contra-cocaine problem which began at the start of the Contra movement in the early 1980s and lasted through the decade until the end of the war.

Leen apparently assumes that few Americans will take the trouble to study and understand what the reports said. That is why I published a lengthy account of the U.S. government’s admissions – both after the reports were published in 1998 and as “Kill the Messenger” was hitting the theaters in October. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga.”]

Playing It Safe

Instead of diving into the reeds of the CIA and DOJ reports, Leen does what he and his mainstream colleagues have done for the past three decades, try to minimize the seriousness of the Reagan administration tolerating cocaine trafficking by its Contra clients and even obstructing official investigations that threatened to expose this crime of state.

Instead, to Leen, the only important issue is whether Gary Webb’s story was perfect. But no journalistic product is perfect. There are always more details that a reporter would like to have, not to mention compromises with editors over how a story is presented. And, on a complex story, there are always some nuances that could have been explained better. That is simply the reality of journalism, the so-called first draft of history.

But Leen pretends that it is the righteous thing to destroy a reporter who is not perfect in his execution of a difficult story – and that Gary Webb thus deserved to be banished from his profession for life, a cruel punishment that impoverished Webb and ultimately drove him to suicide in 2004.

But if Leen is correct – that a reporter who takes on a very tough story and doesn’t get every detail precisely correct should be ruined and disgraced – what does he tell his Washington Post colleague Bob Woodward, whose heroic Watergate reporting included an error about whether a claim regarding who controlled the White House slush fund was made before a grand jury.

While Woodward and his colleague Carl Bernstein were right about the substance, they were wrong about its presentation to a grand jury. Does Leen really believe that Woodward and Bernstein should have been drummed out of journalism for that mistake? Instead, they were lionized as heroes of investigative journalism despite the error – as they should have been.

Yet, when Webb exposed what was arguably an even worse crime of state – the Reagan administration turning a blind eye to the importation of tons of cocaine into the United States – Leen thinks any abuse of Webb is justified because his story wasn’t perfect.

Those two divergent judgments – on how Woodward’s mistake was understandably excused and how Webb’s imperfections were never forgiven – speak volumes about what has happened to the modern profession of journalism at least in the mainstream U.S. media. In reality, Leen’s insistence on perfection and “extraordinary proof” is just a dodge to rationalize letting well-connected criminals and their powerful accomplices off the hook.

In the old days, the journalistic goal was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” but the new rule appears to be: “any standard of proof works when condemning the weak or the despised but you need unachievable ‘extraordinary evidence’ if you’re writing about the strong and the politically popular.”

Who Is Unfit?

Leen adds a personal reflection on Webb as somehow not having the proper temperament to be an investigative reporter. Leen wrote:

“After Webb was transferred to Cupertino [in disgrace], I debated him at a conference of the Investigative Reporters and Editors organization in Phoenix in June 1997. He was preternaturally calm. While investigative journalists are usually bundles of insecurities and questions and skepticism, he brushed off any criticism and admitted no error. When asked how I felt about it all, I said I felt sorry for him. I still feel that way.”

It’s interesting – and sadly typical – that while Leen chastises Webb for not admitting error, Leen offers no self-criticism of himself for missing what even the CIA has now admitted, that the Contras were tied up in the cocaine trade. Doesn’t an institutional confession by the CIA’s inspector general constitute “extraordinary evidence”?

Also, since the CIA’s inspector general’s report included substantial evidence of Contra-cocaine trafficking running through Miami, shouldn’t Leen offer some mea culpa about missing these serious crimes that were going on right under his nose – in his city and on his beat? What sort of reporter is “preternaturally calm” about failing to do his job right and letting the public suffer as Leen did?

Perhaps all one needs to know about the sorry state of today’s mainstream journalism is that Jeff Leen is the Washington Post’s assistant managing editor for investigations and Gary Webb is no longer with us.

[To learn how you can hear a December 1996 joint appearance at which Robert Parry and Gary Webb discuss their reporting, click here.]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

777man

(374 posts)

254. 10.17.14-(VID)HUFFPOST-Ryan Grimm-How The Media Destroyed Gary Webb

Reply to 777man (Reply #253)

Sat Oct 18, 2014, 07:35 PM

Oct 2014

(374 posts)

(374 posts)

(374 posts)

310. 11.15.14 DAILY KOS-Snowden and Webb: A Tale of Two Films by Dan Falcone

Reply to 777man (Reply #309)

Sat Nov 15, 2014, 02:41 PM

Nov 2014

Sat Nov 15, 2014 at 08:43 AM PST
Snowden and Webb: A Tale of Two Films

by Dan Falcone for Dan Falcone

Citizenfour is about the actions of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and his aftermath as well as the collective work of reporters, and whistleblowers: Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Jeremy Scahill, and William Binney.

Laura Poitras produced My Country, My Country in 2006. In that film she explained life for Iraqis under American occupation. In 2010 she produced a film entitled The Oath which covered two Yemeni’s relation to Gitmo and the War on Terror. Poitras also produced The Program, which discusses the domestic surveillance enterprise in Bluffdale, Utah. As a result of this work, Poitras undergoes monitoring by the United States Government, and is harassed routinely by border patrol agents.

-----------------------

The film, "Kill the Messenger," based on a true story, recounts a California reporter named Gary Webb. It discussed his real life effort to link the CIA with the 1980s crack epidemic and funding of the Contras. Webb implied that drug smuggling by Nicaraguans into American cities was intentionally overlooked by the CIA and a Reagan Administration weapons program, in order to supply right wing anti-democratic fighters in Nicaragua. Webb maintained that the CIA knew of the drug trafficking operation. Reagan needed this to happen since Congress would not help fund any Contra oriented operation with the passage of the Boland Amendment.

A possible defense for President Obama is that he inherited a dog’s dinner from the Bush Administration in the way of American Foreign Policy. A recent argument by Aaron David Miller, an elite liberal propagandist, follows this trajectory. He was left to maintain or heighten all provisions and engaged in a dangerous, perhaps unlawful, search for Osama bin Laden on sovereign Pakistani soil. President Obama pledged to take boots off the ground and vowed to only apply “smart power” to conflict zones and flash-points. He tried, and has succeeded, in making high tech protection a populist position accepted by the mainstream electorate. This is not a compliment.

President Obama helped to save us from a depression and improved health care in moving the country at least to the center. The problem is that the President also doubled down on Bush’s surveillance policies and enhanced them dramatically in forming his strange interdependent political platform. The President relentlessly tries to suppress the image at home that his foreign policy is disliked by of the world. This effort is the main reason for the surveillance and hence the whistle-blowing. I will defend President Obama from the lily white Tea-Party and GOP at large, but that shouldn’t be everyone’s limit.

--------------------------

The movie essentially shows how Webb took on the world while no one else listened. The San Jose Mercury News decided to let him run his “Dark Alliance” series in 1996 and the story brought Webb notoriety. Other larger newspapers such as the LA Times, New York Times and Washington Post coalesced to marginalize the Mercury’s editors and Webb, claiming that the story lacked credibility. They argued this was justified since Webb never nailed down a completely verifiable CIA source. They thought the story was plausible and interesting, but too circumstantial in proportion to the magnitude of its accusations and assertions. There is however, now evidence, based on the work of Robert Parry, that the CIA used its connections with the major print news publications to undermine Webb's work. Webb put himself out there and the mainstream news media (as well as his own publication) left him hanging out to dry.

A small news outfit like the Mercury was trying to enhance its reputation and the overly enthusiastic journalist Webb launched his efforts forward, based on probability and reliable secondary sources of evidence. The larger newspapers were beaten to the punch and had to be publicly skeptical of the story, based on the fact that they didn’t report it first.

The CIA neglecting a drug cartel set up to distract and cripple marginalized concentrations of African-American people at home, while funding illegal and deadly activities abroad, is a troubling matter. It is disturbing and consistent with the overt nature of neo-liberal and ultra-conservative resentment of the civil rights movement. Recall the subtext of Reagan rhetoric’s in the 1970s regarding “welfare” and “food stamps.” Speculation of the CIA based on probability is understandable. Maxine Waters did important work for citizens when she raised awareness and demanded an inquiry into the matters as an elected official. It was a very serious issue.
Tags

777man

(374 posts)

311. 11.15.14-AN OPEN LETTER TO JEFF LEEN /WASHINGTON POST RE:GARY WEBB

Reply to 777man (Reply #310)

Sat Nov 15, 2014, 02:54 PM

Nov 2014

Last edited Sat Dec 13, 2014, 09:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Ben Harper on November 13, 2014 at 3:05 am said:

An open Letter to Jeff Leen at THE WASHINGTON POST:

Jeff, I want to write you a quick note about your recent (10/17/14) attack on Gary Webb.

(Gary Webb was no journalism hero, despite what ‘Kill the Messenger’ says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gary-webb-was-no-journalism-hero-despite-what-kill-the-messenger-says/2014/10/17/026b7560-53c9-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html )

I simply cannot understand what would motivate you to write such a thing other than envy pure and simple, given the large body of evidence now supporting Mr. Webb.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/10/world/cia-reportedly-ignored-charges-of-contra-drug-dealing-in-80-s.html
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/17/world/cia-says-it-used-nicaraguan-rebels-accused-of-drug-tie.html
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/CIA-Knew-of-Contra-Plan-to-Sell-Drugs-in-U-S-2980491.php

Given the sheer size and power of the Washington Post you have arrogantly assumed that the people would take this lying down, but this time you are wrong.
Gary Webb did get the last word on CONTRA COCAINE. Generations of people will be watching the movie KILL THE MESSENGER.

I will be there and I will remind them what the owner of your newspaper Katharine Graham once said at a 1988 speech at CIA Headquarters:
“We live in a dirty and dangerous world … There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

Its therefore no surprise that a culture of ignorance has grown at the Post to the point that it could Ignore the CIA’s front page admission of GUILT.

In 1998 Congresswoman Maxine Waters wrote:
Quite unexpectedly, on April 30, 1998, I obtained a secret 1982 Memorandum of Understanding between the CIA and the Department of Justice, that allowed drug trafficking by CIA assets, agents, and contractors to go unreported to federal law enforcement agencies. I also received correspondence between then Attorney General William French Smith and the head of the CIA, William Casey, that spelled out their intent to protect drug traffickers on the CIA payroll from being reported to federal law enforcement.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/17/world/cia-says-it-used-nicaraguan-rebels-accused-of-drug-tie.html
Then on July 17, 1998 the New York Times ran this amazing front page CIA admission: “CIA Says It Used Nicaraguan Rebels Accused of Drug Tie.” “The Central Intelligence Agency continued to work with about two dozen Nicaraguan rebels and their supporters during the 1980s despite allegations that they were trafficking in drugs…. The agency’s decision to keep those paid agents, or to continue dealing with them in some less formal relationship, was made by top officials at headquarters in Langley, Va.”. (emphasis added)
………The CIA had always vehemently denied any connection to drug traffickers and the massive global drug trade, despite over ten years of documented reports. But in a shocking reversal, the CIA finally admitted that it was CIA policy to keep Contra drug traffickers on the CIA payroll. The Facts speak for themselves. Maxine Waters, Member of Congress, September 19, 1998

Mr. Leen, I would also remind you that Congresswoman Waters also found CIA EMPLOYEES DIRECTLY INVOLVED IN THE SMUGGLING:
“Several informed sources have told me that an appendix to this Report was removed at the instruction of the Department of Justice at the last minute. This appendix is reported to have information about a CIA officer, not agent or asset, but officer, based in the Los Angeles Station, who was in charge of Contra related activities.According to these sources, this individual was associated with running drugs to South Central Los Angeles,around 1988. Let me repeat that amazing omission. The recently released CIA Report Volume II contained an appendix, which was pulled by the Department of Justice, that reported a CIA officer in the LA Station was hooked into drug running in South Central Los Angeles.”

(Excerpt from the Dark Alliance Book)
“When CIA Inspector General Fred P. Hitz testified before the House Intelligence Committee in March 1998, he admitted a secret government interagency agreement. `Let me be frank about what we are finding,’ Hitz said. `There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity.’

“The lawmakers fidgeted uneasily. `Did any of these allegations involved trafficking in the United States?’ asked Congressman Norman Dicks of Washington. `Yes,’ Hitz answered. Dicks flushed.”

“And what, Hitz was asked, had been the CIA’s legal responsibility when it learned of this? That issue, Hitz replied haltingly, had `a rather odd history…the period of 1982 to 1995 was one in which there was no official requirement to report on allegations of drug trafficking with respect to non-employees of the agency, and they were defined to include agents, assets, non-staff employees.’ There had been a secret agreement to that effect `hammered out between the CIA and U.S. Attorney General William French Smith in 1982,’ he testified.”

Hitz concluded his testimony by stating “This is the grist for more work, if anyone wants to do it.”

Mr Leen, I will also leave you with a copy of the agreement which exempted intelligence agencies from reporting drugs:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/117070568/US-Congresswoman-Maxine-Waters-Investigation-of-CIA-Contras-involvement-in-drug-sales-1996-2000

Exhibit 1 U.S. Attorney General William French Smith replies to a still classified letter from DCI William Casey requesting exemption from reporting drug crimes by CIA agents, assets and contractors.
Source: cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/01.gif

Exhibit 2: DCI William Casey happily agrees with William French Smith and signs the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) exempting his agency from reporting drug crimes. This agreement covered both the Latin American conflicts and Afghanistan war. It remained in effect until August, 1995 when it was quietly rescinded by Janet Reno after Gary Webb began making inquiries for his series. The 1995 revision of the DoJ-CIA MOU specifically includes narcotics violations among the lists of potential offenses by non-employees that must be reported to DOJ.
Source: cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/13.gif

Exhibit 3: On February 8, 1985, Deputy Chief of DoJ’s Office of Intelligence Policy andReview (OIPR) from 1979 to 1991, A. R. Cinquegrana signed off on this letter approving the MOU. Mark M. Richard, Deputy Assistant Attorney General with responsibility for General Litigation and International Law Enforcement in 1982, states that he was unableto explain why narcotics violations were not on the list of reportable crimes except thatthe MOU had “other deficiencies, not just drugs.”
Source: cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/14.gif

AND Finally, Mr. Leen, if that is not enough, I would remind you of what Senator Kerry found after interviewing dozens of witnesses:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070104000306/http://www.thememoryhole.com/kerry/
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm

“There is no question in my mind that people affiliated with, on the payroll of, and carrying the credentials of,the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while involved in support of the contras.”—Senator John Kerry, The Washington Post (1996)

“It is clear that there is a network of drug trafficking through the Contras…We can produce specific law-enforcement officials who will tell you that they have been called off drug-trafficking investigations because the CIA is involved or because it would threaten national security.”
–Senator John Kerry at a closed door Senate Committee hearing

“Because of Webb’s work the CIA launched an Inspector General investigation that named dozens of troubling connections to drug runners. That wouldn’t have happened if Gary Webb hadn’t been willing to stand up and risk it all.”
Senator John Kerry (LA Weekly, May 30, 2013)

“The Contras moved drugs not by the pound, not by the bags, but by the tons, by the cargo planeloads.”
–Jack Blum, investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee, testimony under oath on Feb. 11, 1987

“We were complicit as a country, in narcotics traffic at the same time as we’re spending countless dollars in this country as we try to get rid of this problem. It’s mind-boggling.
I don’t know if we got the worst intelligence system in the world, i don’t know if we have the best and they knew it all, and just overlooked it.
But no matter how you look at it, something’s wrong. Something is really wrong out there.”
– Senator John Kerry, Iran Contra Hearings, 1987

Any further questions Jeff Leen?

The Head of the DEA ROBERT BONNER (NOW a federal Judge)says The CIA smuggled drugs (see the video)
When this case broke, EX DEA Mike Levine spoke with his former colleague in DEA, Annabelle Grimm. She stated that "27 Tons, Minimum" had been smuggled into the U.S.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/131231070/60-MINUTES-Head-of-DEA-Robert-Bonner-Says-CIA-Smuggled-Drugs

---------

This letter was originally published at Robert Parry's Consortium News, a GREAT WEBSITE
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/02/gary-webb-and-media-manipulation/

Please consider a donation to Robert Parry, who broke the Contra Cocaine story ten years before Gary Webb and was the basis for his story Dark Alliance

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/05/we-came-up-4500-short/

–You can make a donation to our tax-exempt non-profit. You can use a credit card online (we accept Visa, Mastercard or Discover) or you can mail a check to Consortium for Independent Journalism (CIJ); 2200 Wilson Blvd., Suite 102-231; Arlington VA 22201. For readers wanting to use PayPal, you can address contributions to our account, which is named after our e-mail address: “consortnew @ aol.com”. (Since we are a 501-c-3 non-profit, donations by American taxpayers may be tax-deductible.)

For donations of $100 or more, we are offering special thank-you gifts. If you want one of the gifts, just send us an e-mail at [email protected] including your mailing address and saying whether you would like either:

777man

(374 posts)

312. 11.14.14-TRUTHOUT-"Kill the Messenger" Kills a Chance to Comment on Real Reagan Atrocities

Reply to 777man (Reply #311)

Sat Nov 15, 2014, 03:15 PM

Nov 2014

http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/27462-kill-the-messenger-kills-a-chance-to-comment-on-real-reagan-atrocities

"Kill the Messenger" Kills a Chance to Comment on Real Reagan Atrocities
Friday, 14 November 2014 13:27 By Dan Falcone, SpeakOut | Op-Ed

777man

(374 posts)

313. 11.14.14 Kill the Messenger: Truth cloaked by shades of grey

Reply to 777man (Reply #312)

Sat Nov 15, 2014, 03:20 PM

Nov 2014

http://www.guelphmercury.com/whatson-story/5028203-kill-the-messenger-truth-cloaked-by-shades-of-grey/

Nov 14, 2014
Kill the Messenger: Truth cloaked by shades of grey

Guelph Mercury
By Peter Howell

The villains may seem obvious in "Kill the Messenger," a fact-based drama about a crusading journalist who slipped beneath the waves of his big story.

The only thing obvious is how this drama is really a tragedy.

Starring Jeremy Renner as the dogged scribbler, this unsettling but uneven film by Michael Cuesta looks and feels like a 1970s drama of one man uncovering government corruption — and it runs bone deep here, with CIA complicity in America's crack epidemic and the drug cash used to fund Nicaraguan rebels approved by Uncle Sam.

But the really shocking story of "Kill the Messenger" isn't the betrayal of the public trust by its supposed protectors or the coverup of perfidy, which we've all come to cynically expect of the politicians and bureaucrats in the post-Watergate world.

Rather it's how Big Media went out of it way to discredit the published revelations by Gary Webb, investigative reporter for the small-market San Jose Mercury News. The New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post and other major-market outlets resented being scooped — admittedly a common media reaction — and their approach was to discredit both the story and the reporter rather than to help smoke out the truth.

Set in 1996, the film begins with archival footage and a roll call of presidents — Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan — who made the "war on drugs" a top priority.

In the course of reporting on a major crack dealer, Webb became aware of the CIA's involvement in smuggling the drug into the U.S., to illicitly obtain cash for funding Nicaraguan Contras that Congress was otherwise disinclined to provide. Webb set out to prove the links and succeeded beyond his wildest expectations.

Renner's Webb is a completely believable version of the prototypical news sleuth, although he's a bit of a '70s throwback. He sports facial hair, drives a motorcycle and also a British sports car that you wonder if he can really afford. He lives in a modest Sacramento bungalow with his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) and children.

He seems like a family man, but to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife, he's driven to expose scams and get at the truth, even at risk to the safety of himself and his loved ones.

Somebody asks Webb why so many of his sources seem sketchy and he replies "bad guys are usually more honest than good guys."

There's truth to spare in that statement. Halfway through the film, after his CIA/crack/Contras scoop headlined "Dark Alliance" has explosively hit not only print, but also the Internet (an early example of online reporting), the intrigue turns inward.

A full-court press by Big Media to blunt the scoop, which is causing major unrest in African-American neighbourhoods of L.A., uncovers a few small holes in Webb's story. He finds himself "controversialized" (there's a Watergate-style term) rather than lauded for his work.

His editors (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Oliver Platt) start to lose faith in him, and Webb's instinct is to lash out rather than to shore up his defences, a reaction fatal to his story, his career, his family life and ultimately to himself. Webb took his own life in 2004.

Although he would eventually be exonerated and his exposé proven in the main, Webb was abandoned by the very people he expected to support him.

Had he worked for a bigger paper like the Washington Post, which had to face the slings and arrows of jealous rivals for its Watergate coverage, the outcome might have been entirely different.

Stronger direction would have helped "Kill the Messenger." Cuesta hails from TV (including episodes of "Homeland&quot

and he's no Alan J. Pakula or Sydney Pollack.

The script by Peter Landesman is well-written and researched, but it often meanders where it should sprint. It doesn't make the best use of a cast that includes a wealth of character actors: among them Michael Sheen, Barry Pepper, Tim Blake Nelson, Paz Vega, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and Michael Kenneth Williams.

The picture rests on the sturdy shoulders of Renner, who believed enough in it to also take a producing credit. He delivers the most telling line in "Kill the Messenger," when a corporate lawyer warns Webb that his story has "shades of grey" that his newspaper now wants to distance itself from.

"I didn't realize," Webb says, staring the lawyer down, "that truth is a shade of grey."

News services

777man

(374 posts)

314. 11.17.14 SALON-Reagan’s hip-hop nightmare: How an ugly cocaine controversy reignited 30 years later

Reply to 777man (Reply #313)

Wed Nov 19, 2014, 03:10 AM

Nov 2014

Ronald Reagan’s hip-hop nightmare: How an ugly cocaine controversy reignited 30 years later
The hip-hop community is convinced Reagan oversaw a vast trafficking network during the crack epidemic. Is it true?
Matthew Pulver

Ronald Reagan's hip-hop nightmare: How an ugly cocaine controversy reignited 30 years laterJay-Z, Ronald Reagan, Kanye West (Credit: AP/Reuters/Benoit Tessier/Danny Moloshok/Photo montage by Salon)

Two recent films are reigniting a debate that was never really settled, not for everyone: Did President Ronald Reagan permit (or even facilitate) the sale of tons of cocaine into the American inner city during the height of the crack crisis? It’s likely that audiences of “Kill the Messenger” and “Freeway: Crack in the System” will be shocked to hear the allegations. The reverence shown Reagan, much of it bipartisan, shields the late president’s legacy from the Iran-Contra affair’s web of gun-running, terror support and narcotrafficking. Reagan, so grandfatherly, so esteemed, couldn’t have possibly presided over such criminality, right?

Right?

There’s a good chance your favorite rapper indicted Reagan long before these new films. That Reagan permitted or actively facilitated a massive influx of cocaine during the 1980s is not even an allegation in the hip-hop community — it’s accepted fact, political bedrock. And it’s not underground agitprop artists no one’s ever heard of making the claims; it’s household names, legends, global superstars.

Jay-Z has made the allegation multiple times, both on records and in print. On 2007’s “Blue Magic,” Hova, a former crack dealer, raps:

Blame Reagan for making me into a monster

Blame Oliver North and Iran-Contra

I ran contraband that they sponsored

Before this rhymin stuff we was in concert

Jay even flirts with American sacrilege and makes a faint equation with Osama bin Laden on his 2003 remix of Punjabi MC’s “Beware of the Boys”:

It’s international Hov, been having a flow

Before Bin Laden got Manhattan to blow

Before Ronald Reagan got Manhattan the blow

Long before al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center, Hov says, Reagan had already decimated the city (or parts of the city) with his “blow.” The parallel construction of the lines likens the two figures in a way. Jay repeats the accusation in his 2010 autobiography “Decoded,” in which he expands the indictment to involve Reagan’s simultaneous escalation and racialization of the “War on Drugs.” Platinum-selling artist Pusha T, signed to Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music, echoes Jay-Z’s dual indictment in his music, considering both the alleged narcotrafficking and the concurrent drug war. Pusha also delivers nice wordplay on “Along in Vegas,” with the line “Reagan era I ran contraband,” which embeds the phrase “Iran Contra” in the lyric about Pusha’s former life as a dealer.

Kanye West, arguably the heir to Jay-Z’s throne, makes the claim as well on his 2005 “Crack Music”:

How we stop the Black Panthers?

Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer

Kanye nudges the allegation into conspiracy theory territory, as many do, suggesting that the trafficking was expressly intended to quell black radicalism brewing in the increasingly desperate inner city during the 1970s and ’80s. 2Pac offered a similar theory on his much-beloved “Changes”:

First ship ‘em dope and let ‘em deal to brothers

Give ‘em guns, step back, watch ‘em kill each other

No evidence exists to support these claims, and the overblown propositions potentially distract from the ample available evidence pointing to criminality on all three fronts of Iran-Contra: arms sales to Iran, support for Contra guerillas, and the bringing of Contra-based cocaine into the country. The single surviving memo from Colonel Oliver North’s infamous “shredding party” reveals the administration’s arms sales to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism according to the Reagan State Department. The 1989 Kerry Committee report found that “t is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking” and that “n each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.” The report goes on to detail how U.S. officials “failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua.”

So while a sturdy case can be made for willful negligence on the part of the Reagan White House to stem the flow of cocaine, the less defensible cocaine-as-social-control theory remains a popular one. Yasiin Bey (BKA actor/rapper Mos Def) offered his version on his 1999 classic “Mathematics”:

Nearly half of America’s largest cities is one-quarter black

That’s why they gave Ricky Ross all the crack

Bey refers to “Freeway” Ricky Ross, the subject of “Freeway: Crack in the System,” allegedly the primary conduit through which the Contras’ cocaine flowed into the American inner city. Two rappers, former Jay-Z labelmate Freeway and superstar Rick Ross, both derive their stage names from the Los Angeles kingpin. At its height, Ross’ coast-to-coast coke empire was selling half a million crack rocks per day. The LA Times reported on the infamous crime boss in 1996, finding that “if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles’ streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was ‘Freeway’ Rick.” Ross himself claims that his connection was a CIA agent, and the CIA itself admitted to turning a blind eye to Contra cocaine traffickers in the 1998 report from the agency’s Inspector General, but theories based on a master plan to chemically subdue black Americans are too outlandish to be considered.

Before Jay, Kanye and Yasiin Bey were Golden Era icon KRS-One and Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, whose 1998 “CIA (Criminals In Action)” took aim at the intelligence agency’s involvement in the affair. Forming a trio with The Last Emperor, the rappers offer a critique in the vein of Kanye and Yasiin Bey’s, but both broadened and more substantive than the latter’s accusatory couplets. The song weaves together postcolonial theory and critiques of neoliberalism, imperialism and the surveillance state to situate alleged government narcotrafficking in a wider web of power. KRS and de la Rocha exchange lines in the song’s hook:

You claim I’m sellin crack, but you be doin’ that!

You know the cops, they got a network for the toxic rock!

“CIA (Criminals In Action)” was perhaps the first substantial accusation of Washington’s narcotrafficking. Nearly 15 years later, the most recent lyrical assault of note, Atlanta rapper Killer Mike’s 2012 “Reagan,” echoes the song’s expansive critique and demonstrates that the anger felt toward Reagan has both intensified and spread in the intervening years. The song interrogates the national security apparatus, the prison industrial complex and racism from Reagan to the present, which, by including President Obama in the indictment, presents persistent Reaganism as the real danger.

“Reagan” is a fan favorite from Mike’s album “R.A.P. Music,” a collaboration with Brooklyn producer El-P that made the rapper the new darling of Pitchfork and other indie tastemakers. On Rap Genius, the song’s lyrics have been viewed nearly twice as often the next-most-popular song on the album. While the early anti-Reagan songs communicated the message among the rap underground and traditional hip-hop audiences, Killer Mike’s angry anthem is a favorite to a largely white listenership. In live performances, Killer Mike often recites the song a capella, despite the track’s bombastic production, in an attempt to drive the lyrics home to white, middle-class audiences. Mike concludes the song in concert by rousing the audience to join him in repeating the song’s last line: “I’m glad Reagan dead!” The crowd, a sea of raised middle fingers during the explosive coda, screams in unison this American heresy. Something is changing.

As Tea Party canonization brightens the aura around the late president for the right, Killer Mike’s “Reagan” reveals a contrapuntal, inverse reaction on the left and among many youth. In the age of Occupy and the Tea Party, diverging attitudes toward Reagan represent a widening gulf between political poles, between generations, between holders of privilege and those without. The anger of those left behind during the Reagan era is perhaps now an anger shared by younger Americans whose futures feel sacrificed to the prerogatives of those with their hands on the levers of power, whether in legislative houses or boardrooms.

The sea change may not be apparent to some observers of Washington politics. While Reagan’s legacy suffers rot and corrosion among black Americans and an increasing number of white youth, he remains unchallengeable in Washington. Even President Obama, the socialist bogeyman to conservatives, cites Reagan to justify policy propositions and endear himself to conservative audiences. Obama acknowledges that Reagan altered the course of history in a way that no one since Lyndon Johnson has matched. Some critics contend that the change promised with the election of Obama has done little to sway the general direction charted by Reagan.

Ultimately, as anti-Reaganism solidifies and spreads, the argument is not only about whether cocaine was allowed to be dumped into black neighborhoods; it is about who gets sacrificed in the service of power. To some degree, and we’ll likely never know the extent, black Americans were seen as expendable in the mad dash to illegally fund pro-capitalist guerrillas in Central America. The documented arm sales to Iran to fund the Contras made expendable an unknown number of Iraqis during the two nations’ bloody eight-year war. Reagan is not, in hip-hop parlance, merely a “dead president,” but a national metonym for power, privilege and a particularly brutal means of its defense. “They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor,” raps Killer Mike in “Reagan,” a song that ultimately aligns a global myriad of the relatively powerless against the elite, symbolized by Reagan.

-------------------

Say Hello to Rick Ross
1980: Crack was just turning up in the United States. The contras were seeking funds to support their civil war in Nicaragua. And an L. A. kid was looking for an opportunity. The combination would change America.

By Mike Sager on September 25, 2013

http://www.esquire.com/features/rick-ross-drug-dealer-interview-1013

777man

(374 posts)

315. Support Gary Webb and Re-Release Kill the Messenger in Theaters

Reply to 777man (Reply #314)

Wed Nov 26, 2014, 03:13 AM

Nov 2014

https://www.change.org/p/universal-pictures-support-gary-webb-and-re-release-kill-the-messenger-in-theaters

Support Gary Webb and Re-Release Kill the Messenger in Theaters
Kill the Messenger Film Advocate
Соединенные Штаты

Eighteen years ago, investigative reporter Gary Webb uncovered C.I.A. involvement in the origin of the 1980’s crack cocaine epidemic. His discovery, one of the most important outings of U.S. government conspiracy and horrifying injustice to the Black community, did not lead to mass public outrage and call to action. Rather, Gary was destroyed, discredited and disowned by fellow journalists and his own editors, some of which were quietly spurred by members of the C.I.A.

While Gary continued to fight for vindication, his career never fully recovered from his decision to tell the truth. In December 2004, Gary passed away from two gunshot wounds to the head, ruled suicide.

On October 10th, 2014, Focus Features released a film based on Gary’s story, entitled Kill the Messenger, starring Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker, The Avengers). Despite positive reviews, a stellar cast, and early buzz, Focus released the film quietly and with little to no marketing efforts. Due to this, Kill the Messenger was mostly noticed only after it had already been pulled from local theaters, even at its highest expansion. As of November 15th, Focus has run several weekly nation-wide commercials for the film, yet has removed it from all but 18 theaters.

On November 2nd, representatives of Focus Features inexplicably failed to attend a fully-packed private award screening hosted specifically for Kill the Messenger and the Writers Guild of America. In doing so, Focus deprived a theater full of viewers and awards voters any access to the film.

As of November 24th, Kill the Messenger has been in limited theaters for about six weeks. The film has inspired an assortment of responses from Gary's prior persecutors, including open remorse, reluctant apologies, and continued outrage. While it has been labeled one of the most important movies of the year and a “final vindication” for Gary Webb, it has yet to be made noticeable and accessible to the majority of the population.

The behavior exhibited by Focus Features in this film is unprofessional, uncharacteristic of any film distributor keen on turning a profit, and not unlike the method of suppression and distancing used by Gary’s peers and colleagues. Fully acknowledging that Focus Features is emphasizing their Stephen Hawking-biopic over the next few months, we are asking that they at least make Kill the Messenger available again in theaters to the eager audience adamant on seeing it, as well as any open film awards group.

This movie ultimately starts the conversation that everyone should be having, and could not be more relevant and critical to our current society.

Please help petition Focus Features to notably expand or re-release Kill the Messenger in nation-wide theaters this fall and/or winter. After a career characterized by suppression of truth, Gary’s story deserves to be heard.

“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.” --Gary Webb

------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Film:

Kill the Messenger is directed by Michael Cuesta and stars Jeremy Renner, Robert Patrick, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Oliver Platt, Rosemarie Dewitt, Paz Vega, Barry Pepper, Michael Sheen, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Kenneth Williams, Andy Garcia, and Ray Liotta.

“Every part of this sprawling cast is worthy of praise, nailing the drama's steely tone and resolve.” –Cinemablend

“Jeremy Renner gives his best performance since 'The Hurt Locker' in this assiduous, engrossing drama.” –Variety

“[Kill the Messenger] is a brilliantly staged and acted powder keg of a thriller, one that illuminates a true American horror story and clamors for a closer examination of the government’s relationship with the press. In the age of whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, we cannot forget Gary Webb…The moral outrage [Kill the Messenger] provokes remains intensely relevant.” –We Got This Covered

“With this career-best performance, Renner should at least be in the discussion for another Academy nod.” –David Kaplan

“A cautionary tale about what might easily transpire whenever the Fourth Estate is willing to serve as the Fifth Column rather than as a government watchdog.”—Kam Williams

“Kill the Messenger flies high on Jeremy Renner's all-stops-out performance as 1990s-era journalist Gary Webb…The film inspires a moral outrage that feels disconcertingly timely.” –Rolling Stone

“Kill the Messenger is a vital reminder that a free press must be free to press the powerful for answers.” –St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The entire cast is perfect…Kill the Messenger is an extremely powerful film—and one that is so important historically” – Jeanne Kaplan

Kill the Messenger is Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes at 77%: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kill_the_messenger_2015/

Kill the Messenger IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/

The articles that started it all: http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/start.htm

Featurettes featuring Jeremy Renner, director Michael Cuesta, Michaek K. Williams, Freeway Ricky Ross, producers, & more:

Kill the Messenger Movie Featurette - Crack in America

Kill the Messenger Movie Featurette - An Eyewitness Account

Unofficial Twitter: @killthemess2014
Направлено:
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
Support Gary Webb and Re-Release Kill the Messenger in Theaters!
Последние обновления
250 подписчиков
26 нояб. 2014 'г'.
Обновление петиции
Day One Update
25 нояб. 2014 'г'. — Incredible. With your help, we have amassed more than 200 signatures in the course of a day! Thank you for your amazing support. Thus far, we have seen the petition spread via Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and change.org, all of which are tremendous! We greatly appreciate every effort, big or small, and really hope to continue the trend. Feel free to add @FocusFeatures while posting or tweeting about the petition as well in order to ensure that our voice is heard.

Gary Webb's Dark Alliance remains incredibly relevant to our society today. Each signature gets us that much closer to ensuring that everyone will have the chance to see, hear, and understand why.

Thank you again!Далее

777man

(374 posts)

316. 11.20.14-INTHESETIMES-The Reporter Who Paid a High Price for ‘Contra Crack’

Reply to 777man (Reply #315)

Thu Nov 27, 2014, 02:54 AM

Nov 2014

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17354/kill_the_messenger_shows_the_high_price_of_contra_crack

November 20, 2014
The Reporter Who Paid a High Price for ‘Contra Crack’

A new film, Kill the Messenger, shows how the CIA, the Washington Post and the LA Times conspired to discredit a journalist, and destroyed a life.
BY Jim Naureckas

Webb’s scoop of a lifetime was drawing a connection between two major 1980s news stories so successfully that it’s almost hard now not to think of them together, 'contra crack' tripping off the tongue like 'French bread' or 'English muffins.'

In Kill the Messenger, Gary Webb, the investigative journalist who exposed the contra-crack connection, is portrayed by Jeremy Renner—most familiar to a mass audience as Hawkeye in The Avengers, but known to film buffs for appearing in gritty, based-on-real-life films like The Hurt Locker and American Hustle. Kill the Messenger, which Renner also co-produced, is in that docudrama genre. More specifically, it recalls films like the 2010 Valerie Plame biopic Fair Game, where the story is not only true, but one that corporate news media would rather you not know. Kill the Messenger is a story about the story that the San Jose Mercury News reporter gave up his career to get out.

The movie opens with historical footage of the war on drugs: presidents from Nixon to Reagan declaring it, Nancy Reagan urging us to just say no, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America comparing our drugged brains to breakfast, news outlets reporting the crack epidemic. A later montage shows footage of the other “war” of the time: speeches about the Cold War, along with shots of the contra war in Central America, in which rebels organized by the CIA attempted to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua. (In These Times was one of the few outlets to cover the story while the war was still ongoing; for most in corporate media, the cognitive dissonance was too much to handle.)

As most people who go to see the film will know, Webb’s scoop of a lifetime was drawing a connection between these two major 1980s news stories, so successfully that it’s almost hard now not to think of them together, “contra crack” tripping off the tongue like “French bread” or “English muffins.”

The montages succeed in recalling how weird—and shocking—it originally was that Ronald Reagan’s favorite foreign policy endeavor would be intimately connected with a product so universally demonized.

Having established the real-life context, the film moves on to its fictional depiction of Webb. One of the big questions you want a biopic of Webb to answer is how he nailed a story so many others missed. Renner plays him, naturally, as an old-school muckraker unable to let go of a story once he’s got his teeth into it.

But he’s also portrayed as a guy with a deep well of anger and the ability to focus it at the right targets. (“What about this doesn’t piss you off?” he asks, surveying crack’s devastating impact on an urban neighborhood.) He’s a character who’s willing to break rules—bribing his way into a Nicaraguan prison—and, when he’s frustrated, to break windows. This portrait seems plausible—Webb’s personal recklessness goes a long way toward explaining why he was the one journalist willing to go out on a limb.

His colleagues, especially Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos, played by a perfectly cast Oliver Platt, live in a world of cost/benefit analysis: They want to get out as much truth as they can afford to. Webb does not, cannot, make that calculation. He will get the story even if it destroys him, which is why he gets the story and why he is destroyed.

Halfway through the picture, the hunter becomes the hunted: The triumphant publication of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the Mercury News—which established that a key player in the spread of the crack epidemic was getting his raw material from contra-linked drug-runners—provokes a backlash from both journalistic and intelligence establishments.

Here, the film jumps away from Webb’s point of view to show the editorial discussions at two media giants scooped by a paper they would disdain to call a rival. While both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post bought into a CIA public affairs campaign to discredit Webb, the Los Angeles Times is portrayed as particularly motivated by stung pride. The paper dedicates a team to gutting the reporter who scored a big story on their turf, devoting more journalistic energy to bringing down Webb than they ever gave to investigating the origins of the cocaine that flooded South Central Los Angeles.

The Post comes across as more of a cat’s paw for the CIA, with one staffer—clearly modeled on longtime Post CIA correspondent Walter Pincus, who worked for the agency’s precursor early in his career—relaying to attentive editors the CIA’s views on how the story should be spun: that Webb was a conspiracy theorist, a fabricator, not to be trusted.

Lest you think this is Hollywood conspiracy-mongering, the CIA’s in house journal published an article, only recently declassified, citing the Post’s Webb takedowns as an example of how to “work with journalists who are already disposed toward writing a balanced story.” CIA public affairs gave out Pincus’ Post articles to other reporters, “helping to create what the Associated Press called a ‘firestorm of reaction’ against the San Jose Mercury News,” in the agency’s words.

Webb’s life did not have the shape of a traditional movie. The forces he antagonized were successful in driving him out of journalism and into a downward spiral that culminated, in 2004, in an apparent suicide. It’s hard to turn that into a feel-good ending.

Instead, the film ends as it begins, with real footage—home movies of Webb horsing around with his kids. It brings home that the life you’ve just seen destroyed was that of a real person—and a real hero.
Jim Naureckas

Jim Naureckas is the editor of Extra!, the magazine of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).

777man

(374 posts)

(374 posts)

323. 12.14.14-RadioWHO Ep3: CIA Crack Kingpin Ricky Ross

Reply to 777man (Reply #322)

Thu Dec 18, 2014, 02:42 AM

Dec 2014

http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/12/14/radiowho-episode-3-cia-crack-kingpin-ricky-ross/

RadioWHO Episode 3: CIA Crack Kingpin Ricky Ross

Dec 14, 2014 by Guillermo Jimenez

http://traffic.libsyn.com/whowhatwhy/RadioWHO_Podcast_-_Episode_03_-_Rick_Ross.mp3

777man

(374 posts)

324. 10.17.14 LASD Deputy ROBERTO JUAREZ Interview

Reply to 777man (Reply #323)

Sun Jan 4, 2015, 07:08 PM

Jan 2015

Last edited Mon Jan 5, 2015, 02:03 AM - Edit history (1)

THE LASD Deputy ROBERTO JUAREZ Majors II Interview
Freeway Ricky Ross drug money theft case

Crooked Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy breaks silence
Eyewitness News has uncovered the tale of an L.A. County sheriff's deputy tempted by money, greed and power who's pulling back the curtain on corrupt cops.
KABC
By Jory Rand
Friday, October 17, 2014
http://abc7.com/news/crooked-los-angeles-county-sheriffs-deputy-breaks-silence/354150/
http://crackinthesystem.com/roberto-juarez
https:// m.youtube.com/watch?feature= share&v=stHSw7-5Ll4

The Blog of Deputy Roberto Juarez (LASD Ret)
http://robertojuarez.wordpress.com/tag/deputy-juarez/

Los Angeles Sheriff Sherman Block's Investigation into Contra-Crack
https://www.scribd.com/doc/117079476/Los-Angeles-Sheriff-s-Department-Investigation-CIA-Contra-Drug-Sales-in-LA

Deputies' Downfall Began With a Videotaped Sting : Crime: Officers were jailed. Drug dealers went free. Credibility was shaken. And the probe is not yet over.
BREACH OF TRUST: Inside the Sheriff's Department money-skimming scandal. * Last in a series
December 03, 1993|VICTOR MERINA | TIMES STAFF WRITER
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-03/news/mn-63503_1_drug-dealer

=========================
OPERATION BIG SPENDER
http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/oig/c4rpt/ch02p2.htm

COLUMN ONE : The Slide From Cop to Criminal : They were once the elite of the war on drugs. They busted bad guys, won awards and seized millions in illicit money. But along the way they succumbed to greed and lawlessness.
December 1, 1993
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-01/news/mn-62842_1_drug-money

6 Deputies Guilty in Corruption Case : Narcotics: Members of elite team convicted of conspiring to steal cash from traffickers, money launderers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars involved.
December 11, 1990
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-12-11/news/mn-6313_1_money-launderer

Deputies Described as Corrupt : Trial: The prosecutor says seven law enforcement officers turned the drug war into their own personal piggy banks.
November 28, 1990
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-11-28/local/me-5040_1_piggy-banks

Indicted Deputies Linked by a Hard-Driving Sergeant
February 23, 1990
U.S. Indicts 10 Sheriff Deputies : Narcotics: The L.A. County officers are accused of stealing more than $1.4 million seized in drug arrests. They deny all 27 grand jury charges.
February 23, 1990
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-02-23/news/mn-1155_1_grand-jury

777man

(374 posts)

325. KTM DVD Release date Feb 10, 2015 amazon.com

Reply to 777man (Reply #324)

Sat Jan 24, 2015, 08:34 PM

Jan 2015

http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Messenger-Jeremy-Renner/dp/B00P6VLL0G/

Kill the Messenger
Jeremy Renner (Actor), Robert Patrick (Actor), Michael Cuesta (Director) Rated: R Format: DVD
5 customer reviews

777man

(374 posts)

326. GOFUNDME Campaign for EX DEA Celerino Castillo III

Reply to 777man (Reply #325)

Sat Feb 7, 2015, 10:00 PM

Feb 2015

Last edited Sat Feb 7, 2015, 11:10 PM - Edit history (1)

gofund.me/lvidf0

Funds to be used for future speaking dates and living expenses for Retired DEA agent Celerino Castillo III.
http://powderburns.org/testimony.html

Celerino Castillo is a proud American who served in Vietnam before becoming a police officer and a federal agent.

But one day he saw something that HE COULD NOT IGNORE. Involvement of the U.S. government in Drugs.

Cele Castillo received a reduced retirement pension from the government after blowing the whistle on Oliver North
www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/
www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
and the Contras smuggling cocaine through hangers 4 and 5 at ilopango, El Salvador. He has struggled mightily to bring forth his story ever since and has faced retaliation and the loss of his family. He faces daily hardship for his attempt to end corruption.

****************
An official investigation later found:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/17/world/cia-says-it-used-nicaraguan-rebels-accused-of-drug-tie.html
"CIA Says It Used Nicaraguan Rebels Accused of Drug Tie." "The Central Intelligence Agency continued to work with about two dozen Nicaraguan rebels and their supporters during the 1980s despite allegations that they were trafficking in drugs.... The agency's decision to keep those paid agents, or to continue dealing with them in some less formal relationship, was made by top officials at headquarters in Langley, Va.". (emphasis added)
**********************

The policy of Covert action going hand in hand with narcotics repeats itself in Afghanistan where top government leaders are heroin traffickers enjoying government protection.

http://powderburns.org/archives.html

&list=PL879389BB225BC59E&index=1

Every one of Cele's reports was signed by the DEA Country attache Bob Stia and the US ambassador of the country of El Salvador.

HELP CELE GET HIS STORY OUT!

Please take a moment and thank Cele, Help him out with a couple dollars

777man

(374 posts)

327. Politico--DEA agents had ‘sex parties’ with prostitutes hired by drug cartels

Reply to 777man (Reply #326)

Sun Mar 29, 2015, 05:05 PM

Mar 2015

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/dea-sex-parties-colombia-report-116413.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/report-dea-agents-had-sex-parties-with-prostitutes-hired-by-drug-cartels/2015/03/26/adb2d53e-d3bd-11e4-8fce-3941fc548f1c_story.html

http://rt.com/usa/244417-dea-agents-sex-parties-prostitutes/

http://www.businessinsider.com/dea-agents-allegedly-had-sex-parties-with-prostitutes-hired-by-drug-cartels-2015-3

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3013166/Drug-Enforcement-Administration-agents-Secret-clearances-sex-parties-prostitutes-hired-Colombian-drug-cartels-says-inspector-general-report.html

See the report here:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/2015/e1504.pdf

https://www.scribd.com/doc/260027539/e1504

777man

(374 posts)

329. Robert Parry's December 20, 1985 Article About the Contras:

Reply to 777man (Reply #327)

Sun Jun 21, 2015, 02:39 PM

Jun 2015

Robert Parry's December 20, 1985 Article About the Contras:
https://archive.org/details/AP-CIA-Contras-Cocaine-1985

https://ia902503.us.archive.org/7/items/AP-CIA-Contras-Cocaine-1985/Parry-CIA-Contras-1985.pdf

-------------------

AFGHANISTAN'S NARCO WAR:

BREAKING THE LINK BETWEEN

DRUG TRAFFICKERS AND INSURGENTS

__________

A REPORT

TO THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

One Hundred Eleventh Congress

First Session

August 10, 2009

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-111SPRT51521/html/CPRT-111SPRT51521.htm

777man

(374 posts)

330. Senior DEA Officials Met with El Chapo Guzman In Prison

Reply to 777man (Reply #329)

Sun Jul 26, 2015, 06:28 AM

Jul 2015

Last edited Sun Aug 2, 2015, 05:02 PM - Edit history (3)

DEA Chief of Intelligence in Mexico, Larry Villalobos, and the former Operations Supervisor for the agency, Joe Bond were summoned by Guzman.

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2014/03/during-first-incarceration-el-chapo.html

\

D.E.A. in Disguise: Who Really Arrested El Chapo Back in 2014?
Ryan Devereaux
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/23/dea-in-disguise-who-really-arrested-el-chapo/
2015-07-23T18:19:27+00:00

Zambada Niebla’s Plea Deal, Chapo Guzman’s Capture May Be Key To An Unfolding Mexican Purge
Posted by Bill Conroy - April 12, 2014 at 6:55 pm

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2014/04/zambada-niebla-s-plea-deal-chapo-guzman-s-capture-may-be-key-unfolding-

Background:
Court Pleadings Point to CIA Role in Alleged “Cartel” Immunity Deal
Posted by Bill Conroy - September 11, 2011 at 12:22 pm

Mexican Narco-Trafficker’s Revelations in Criminal Case Force US Government to Invoke National Security Claims
US government prosecutors filed pleadings in the case late last week seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not surface in public court proceedings.

“The government hereby requests that the Court conduct a pretrial conference … pursuant to CIPA … at which time, the government will be prepared to report to the Court and defendant [Zambada Niebla] regarding the approximate size of the universe of classified material that may possibly be implicated in the discovery and trial of this case,” states a motion filed on Friday, Sept. 9, by US prosecutors in the Zambada Niebla case
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/09/court-pleadings-point-cia-role-alleged-cartel-immunity-deal

Zambada Niebla Case Exposes US Drug War Quid Pro Quo
Posted by Bill Conroy - December 10, 2011 at 3:16 pm

Prosecutor, DEA Agent Confirm Intel From Sinaloa Mafia Used to Undermine Juarez, Beltran Leyva Drug Organizations
Mr. Zambada Niebla is alleged in the indictment to be a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa cartel. We believe that the information [the US government is seeking to cloak under national security] is material to the defense in that it may … contain information pertaining to agreements between agents of the United States government and the leaders of the Sinaloa cartel as well as policy arrangements between the United States government and the Mexican government pertaining to special treatment that was to be afforded to high-ranking members of the Sinaloa Cartel. Thus, Mr. Zambada Niebla’s counsel should be granted high-level security clearances to review the sensitive information.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/12/zambada-niebla-case-exposes-us-drug-war-quid-pro-quo

April 10, 2014
A Billion-Dollar “Narco Junior” Cuts a Deal
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Zambada’s lawyers declared that he could not be prosecuted by the United States, because, they claimed, he had been secretly working as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, even as he smuggled tons of cocaine across the border. In fact, according to his counsel, Zambada had been assured by his contacts at the D.E.A. that, in exchange for providing them with intelligence about the drug trade in Mexico, he would be guaranteed immunity against prosecution for his own role in the business.
http://www.justice.gov/dea/divisions/chi/2014/041014.pdf
Earlier this year, the newspaper El Universal released a report, drawing on court documents, which claimed that the D.E.A. had knowingly allowed Zambada to smuggle “billions of dollars” of narcotics into the U.S. The newspaper contended that the conspiracy ran even deeper, alleging that the governments of both the United States and Mexico had, in effect, played favorites among the rival trafficking organizations, secretly colluding with the Sinaloa cartel in order to wipe out its rivals.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/a-billion-dollar-narco-junior-cuts-a-deal

‘There's No Real Fight Against Drugs’

Discussing El Chapo’s escape with an ex-cartel operative, a Mexican intelligence official, and an American counternarcotics agent
A Mexican soldier crouches inside a drug-smuggling tunnel under the Mexico-U.S. border in Tijuana. Jorge Duenes / Reuters

Ginger Thompson Jul 20, 2015
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/chapo-mexico-drug-war/398927/

This is a case of Life imitating Art

Clear and Present Danger (Full Movie)Harrison Ford Willem Dafoe (1994) English

You get the idea
The cartel meets with the United States Government and promises to feed it arrests by turning in rivals and lowering the level of violence.
The cartel flourishes because the competition is arrested.
The U.S. Government is happy because it appears to be "fighting " drugs.
Everyone gets rich, and money buys guns

Read more:
Clear and Present Danger (film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_Present_Danger_%28film%29
Clear and Present Danger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109444/

777man

(374 posts)

331. 7/1/15 L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena

Reply to 777man (Reply #330)

Fri Jul 31, 2015, 03:02 AM

Jul 2015

Last edited Sun Aug 2, 2015, 05:13 PM - Edit history (3)

How a Dogged L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena
The "Elliot Ness" of The DEA, Hector Berrellez speaks out about the Camarena Murder
By Jason McGahan
Wednesday, July 1, 2015

http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-a-dogged-la-dea-agent-unraveled-the-cias-alleged-role-in-the-murder-of-kiki-camarena-5750278

Blood On The Corn
In 1985, a murky alliance of drug lords and government officials tortured and killed a DEA agent named Enrique Camarena. In a three-part series, legendary journalist Charles Bowden finally digs into the terrible mystery behind a hero’s murder.

By Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy
Illustrations by Matt Rota
https://medium.com/matter/blood-on-the-corn-52ac13f7e643

Part II
EPISODE TWO
The murder of young DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985 became an international incident — and an obsession for his agency (See: Part I). Hector Berrellez spearheads the hunt for those responsible, called Operation Leyenda. What his sources tell him changes everything.
https://medium.com/matter/blood-on-the-corn-52ac13f7e643

Part III
The investigation of a murdered DEA hero has taken agent Hector Berrellez deep into the murky world of drug traffickers, corrupt Mexican officials, and possibly the CIA (see: parts I and II). His final witnesses take him into the killing room — and threaten not just the case, but his life.
https://medium.com/matter/blood-on-the-corn-part-iii-b13f100cbf32

Chuck Bowden’s Final Story Took 16 Years to Write
The unsolved murder of a DEA agent haunted the celebrated reporter for decades—and he finally completed his investigation in August, just before he died. His co-author talks about why it took so long and meant so much.
https://medium.com/matter/chuck-bowdens-final-story-took-16-years-to-write-9940cb2b4887

*

Ex-DEA officials: CIA operatives involved in 'Kiki' Camarena murder
By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 10/19/2013 09:50:26 AM MDT
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_24343140/ex-dea-officials-make-bombshell-allegations-about-kiki

Sep 12, 2013 @ 10:00 AM
The Pariah
17 years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that said some bad things about the CIA and drug traffickers. The CIA denied the charges, and every major newspaper in the country took the agency's word for it. Gary Webb was ruined. Which is a shame, because — as Charles Bowden revealed in this 1998 Esquire story — he was right.

DEA Agent Mike Holm was responsible for the largest drug bust in history. 21 Tons of drugs confiscated in a warehouse in Sylmar, California.
DEA Agent Hector Berrellez was one of the highest decorated DEA Agents in history and headed OPERATION LEYENDA, the murder investigation of fellow agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena'

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23704/pariah-gary-webb-0998/

----
To get an Idea of what happens.....

Clear and Present Danger (Full Movie)Harrison Ford Willem Dafoe (1994) English

You get the idea
The cartel meets with the United States Government and promises to feed it arrests by turning in rivals and lower the level of violence.
The cartel flourishes becase competition is arrested
The U.S. Government is happy because it appears to be "fighting " drugs.

Read more:
Clear and Present Danger (film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_Present_Danger_%28film%29
Clear and Present Danger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109444/

Sound familiar?

777man

(374 posts)

332. 4.17.15 Tucson Sentinal "Why Chuck Bowden's final story took 16 years to write"

Reply to 777man (Reply #331)

Sun Aug 2, 2015, 04:08 PM

Aug 2015

Why Chuck Bowden's final story took 16 years to write
Posted Apr 7, 2015, 12:34 pm

Molly Molloy first published by Matter

Charles Bowden wrote this story for 16 years.

In 1996, he read Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series for the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA-drug trafficking partnership to finance an illegal war in Nicaragua. When mainstream media and Webb's own paper attacked the story, Bowden wrote a profile of the discredited reporter for Esquire in 1998, aptly titled "The Pariah." http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23704/pariah-gary-webb-0998/

Chuck re-examined Webb's sources and found new ones — including retired DEA agent Hector Berrellez. Hector told him of his own discovery of the CIA-drug world links during his investigation of the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena and that Webb had written the truth. Bowden independently verified everything in Webb's series, and he came to admire the reporter's hard-nosed dedication to writing the truth even when it cost him his reputation and career.
http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-a-dogged-la-dea-agent-unraveled-the-cias-alleged-role-in-the-murder-of-kiki-camarena-5750278

When Chuck and I met a few years later, he learned I had spent time in Nicaragua during the contra war, and I learned of his connection to Gary Webb. In 1996, journalism on the internet, where Webb's story really took off, was brand new. But the story of drug sales to support the Nicaraguan contras wasn't new at all. I had worked at a newspaper in Managua in the 1980s that reported on Oliver North and the CIA-supplied mercenary contra army that killed thousands of Nicaraguan civilians. Webb's series "broke an old story," as Chuck wrote, but it was one that most Americans had never heard.

The media backlash around Webb's reporting destroyed his career. Depression swallowed him up and Webb shot himself in December 2004. Chuck wrote to me when he heard:

"i can't deal with e mails at the moment. … i just learned gary webb killed himself friday night. i don't want to talk or communicate with anyone on earth right now. i am beyond pain and into some other country."

He was heartbroken and angry and that wound never healed. He could have written more. He knew more as far back as 1998 that would have backed up Webb's allegations about the CIA and contras and drugs, but his government sources would not go on the record.

Then in 2006, it seemed they might. Chuck wrote to me on December 21, 2006:

Like what you're reading? Support high-quality local journalism and help underwrite independent news without the spin.

"i gotta decide whether to return one more time to the drug world.
yeah, i know. but i've got my dead to consider."

Chuck did go into that world again and talked to Berrellez and to a shadowy CIA operative named Lawrence Harrison, the White Tower. Still, no one would go on the record about the CIA-contra connections with the Mexican traffickers of the Guadalajara cartel. In 2009, Lawrence Harrison wrote, "I felt so bad about Gary Webb because … after his firing he begged me to tell him something that would help him out…"

It was not until late in 2013, when the Mexican government prematurely released trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero—a main figure in Camarena's torture and murder — that Berrellez decided to speak out. Berrellez provided access to eyewitnesses, corrupt Mexican cops, who saw and heard a Cuban CIA operative interrogating the dying agent.

But who would believe these witnesses — men who were involved in torturing and killing Americans on orders from their druglord bosses? Chuck and I traveled to California this year to hear their stories. We saw the stress in their faces and bodies as they went back into those rooms where they knew their own lives could be forfeit. They knew when they took the chance to testify in an American courtroom that if they lied they would be sent back. And that in Mexico they would be killed.

Caro Quintero is now free. Rumor has it that Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, another trafficker involved in the murder, may soon be released as well.

Enrique Camarena is dead now 29 years. Gary Webb is dead 10 years. Charles Bowden died August 30, 2014 — a few days after finishing the first draft of this story. He said in a video shot in 2005:

"Look you have a gift. Life is precious, and eventually you die. All you are going to have to show for it is your work, and whether you did a good job or not."

"I know when something's done…When I finish, my hands get cold, I think I'm dying…there's nothing left."

On that day, August 30, I left for work. I held his hands in mine and they were like ice.

The story begun in 1998 was finally over. From now on, he was going to write about birds … and the river.

“Blood on the Corn” was first published by Matter, and is republished with kind permission.

TucsonSentinel.com's original reporting and curation of border and immigration news is generously supported in part by a grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

Part 1 Bowden: How the CIA may have tortured one of America's own April 7, 2015

Charles Bowden & Molly Molloy first published by Matter, illustrations by Matt Rota
In 1985, a murky alliance of Mexican drug lords and government officials tortured and killed a DEA agent named Enrique Camarena. In a three-part series, Blood on the Corn, legendary journalist Charles Bowden finally digs into the terrible mystery behind a hero’s murder — his final story.

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/040715_blood_on_the_corn1/bowden-how-cia-may-have-tortured-one-americas-own/

PART2 Mexico murder of DEA agent becomes int'l obsession April 7, 2015

The murder of young DEA agent Kiki Camarena in 1985 became an international incident — and an obsession for his agency. Hector Berrellez spearheads the hunt for those responsible, called Operation Leyenda. What his sources tell him changes everything. In a three-part series, Blood on the Corn, legendary journalist Charles Bowden finally digs into the terrible mystery behind a hero's murder.

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/040715_blood_on_the_corn2/mexico-murder-dea-agent-becomes-intl-obsession/

PART 3 Into the killing room: Murder of a DEA agent April 7, 2015

The final installment
The investigation of a murdered DEA agent has taken agent Hector Berrellez deep into the murky world of drug traffickers, corrupt Mexican officials, and possibly the CIA. His final witnesses take him into the killing room — and threaten not just the case, but his life. In a three-part series, Blood on the Corn, legendary journalist Charles Bowden finally digs into the terrible mystery behind a hero's murder.

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/040715_blood_on_the_corn3/into-killing-room-murder-dea-agent/

Border chronicler Charles Bowden dead at 69 August 30, 2014
September 1, 2014
http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/083114_bowden/border-chronicler-charles-bowden-dead-69/

Charles Bowden
December 7, 2012
http://whatiwannaknow.com/2012/12/charles-bowden/

in Spanish:

http://www.imagen.com.mx/operacion-leyenda-documental-kiki-camarena

http://www.proceso.com.mx/?p=409885
Presentan documental sobre el homicidio de Enrique Camarena
COLUMBA VÉRTIZ DE LA FUENTE
6 DE JULIO DE 2015
CULTURA Y ESPECTÁCULOS

http://www.telemundo51.com/noticias/Revelan-secretos-de-muerte-de-Enrique-Camarena-Operacion-Leyenda-CIA-DEA-Mexico-Estados-Unidos-Policia-Narcotrafico-Caro-Quintero-cartel-de-guadalajara-312274341.html
Acusan a la CIA de muerte de Enrique Camarena

Las personas que participaron en el documental dicen temer por sus vidas pero quieren justicia para resarcir el homicidio del agente.

http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/seguridad/2015/07/7/ligan-bartlett-con-sobornos-de-cartel

Ligan a Bartlett con sobornos de cártel
En documental, agente retirado de la DEA dice que recibió 4 mmdd para su campaña presidencial
Según el agente retirado de la DEA Héctor Berrellez el ahora senador Manuel Bartlett recibió sobornos del Cártel de Guadalajara para su campaña presidencial. Foto: ARCHIVO EL UNIVERSAL
07/07/2015
Doris Gómora

http://www.sinembargo.mx/07-07-2015/1405899

Additional information:

‘There's No Real Fight Against Drugs’

Discussing El Chapo’s escape with an ex-cartel operative, a Mexican intelligence official, and an American counternarcotics agent
A Mexican soldier crouches inside a drug-smuggling tunnel under the Mexico-U.S. border in Tijuana. Jorge Duenes / Reuters

Ginger Thompson
Jul 20, 2015

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/07/chapo-mexico-drug-war/398927/

777man

(374 posts)

333. 8/29/15 HBO plays Kill the Messenger Movie

Reply to 777man (Reply #332)

Sat Sep 12, 2015, 04:41 PM

Sep 2015

https://www.hbo.com/movies/kill-the-messenger/synopsis.html

More information:
http://www.focusfeatures.com/kill_the_messenger/overview

777man

(374 posts)

334. 7/28/15-German documentary-'butcher of Lyon' Klaus Barbie became a fixer for drug lords

Reply to 777man (Reply #333)

Fri Sep 25, 2015, 02:27 AM

Sep 2015

Last edited Sat Nov 14, 2015, 02:51 PM - Edit history (1)

The second life of a Nazi war criminal: German documentary reveals how 'butcher of Lyon' Klaus Barbie became a fixer for drug lords when he went on the run in South America

Barbie became known as Klaus Altmann when he went on the run in 1945
He worked as a druglord fixer in Latin America and met with Pablo Escobar
General Luis García Meza was helped into power in Bolivia by drug money
Barbie tortured top French resistance operatives and is estimated to have been directly involved in the deaths of 14,000 people

By Allan Hall In Berlin For The Daily Mail

Published: 09:59 EST, 28 July 2015 | Updated: 02:41 EST, 29 July 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3177385/The-second-life-Nazi-war-criminal-German-documentary-reveals-butcher-Lyon-Klaus-Barbie-fixer-drug-lords-went-run-South-America.html

https://consortiumnews.com/2013/06/06/hitlers-shadow-reaches-toward-today/
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-hrsp/legacy/2011/02/04/08-02-83barbie-rpt.pdf
http://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/when-the-king-of-cocaine-built-the-general-motors-of-drug-trafficking/trafficking-drug-kingpin-roberto-suarez/c1s10252/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/08/1282812/-The-Butcher-of-Lyon
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11087225

http://www.lalkar.org/article/849/klaus-barbie-nazi-butcher-and-cia-agent

http://www.asadismi.ws/whiteout.html

------------------------

DEA agents kept jobs despite serious misconduct
Brad Heath and Meghan Hoyer, USA TODAY 3:15 p.m. EDT September 27, 2015

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed its employees to stay on the job despite internal investigations that found they had distributed drugs, lied to the authorities or committed other serious misconduct, newly disclosed records show.

Lawmakers expressed dismay this year that the drug agency had not fired agents who investigators found attended “sex parties” with prostitutes paid with drug cartel money while they were on assignment in Colombia. The Justice Department also opened an inquiry into whether the DEA is able to adequately detect and punish wrongdoing by its agents.

Records from the DEA’s disciplinary files show that was hardly the only instance in which the DEA opted not to fire employees despite apparently serious misconduct.

Of the 50 employees the DEA's Board of Professional Conduct recommended be fired following misconduct investigations opened since 2010, only 13 were actually terminated, the records show. And the drug agency was forced to take some of them back after a federal appeals board intervened.

In one case listed on an internal log, the review board recommended that an employee be fired for “distribution of drugs,” but a human resources official in charge of meting out discipline imposed a 14-day suspension instead. The log shows officials also opted not to fire employees who falsified official records, had an “improper association with a criminal element” or misused government vehicles, sometimes after drinking.

“If we conducted an investigation, and an employee actually got terminated, I was surprised,” said Carl Pike, a former DEA internal affairs investigator. “I was truly, truly surprised. Like, wow, the system actually got this guy.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/09/27/few-dea-agents-fired-misconduct/72805622/

++++++++++++++++++++==============================================9999999999
MOVIE REVIEW: ART IMITATES LIFE.

SICARIO (2015) The U.S. Government would rather put the Medellin Cartel back in power to deal with a single entity and put a semblance of order in the drug world.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397884/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario_%282015_film%29
https://www.facebook.com/SicarioMovie/

Plot

During an FBI raid of suspected kidnappers in Chandler, Arizona, idealistic agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), her partner Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya), and their team discovers dozens of corpses hidden within the walls of the house. While the team investigates the crime scene, an improvised explosive device in the backyard shed explodes, killing two officers. Afterwards, Kate's boss, Dave Jennings (Victor Garber), recommends her to Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), a CIA Special Activities Division undercover officer and Department of Defense adviser leading a team of SFOD-D operators who are searching for the men responsible, one of them being cartel boss Manuel Díaz. Kate volunteers to join the team.

On the plane to El Paso, Texas, Kate meets Matt's partner, Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro), and learns that they are going to Juárez, Mexico, where they will extradite one of Diaz' top men, Guillermo, and his brother. While crossing back into the United States over the Bridge of the Americas, Matt, Alejandro, and their team realize that cartel thugs are attempting to intercept them in a traffic jam, and the team kills the cartel men when they attempt to capture Guillermo. After interrogating and torturing Guillermo, Matt and Alejandro learn the location of Díaz's hideout.

While Alejandro and Matt question a group of Mexican migrants for information, Kate calls Reggie to join her. With the help of several migrants who know the border well, they tell Alejandro and Matt the whereabouts of a tunnel that the cartel uses to get its drugs into the United States. Matt tells them that their goal is to cause such a disruption in Díaz's drug operations that he will be called back to Mexico to meet with his boss, drug lord Fausto Alarcón (Julio Cedillo). Matt follows Díaz's money launderers to a bank, where they deposit his money and are arrested. Díaz's accounts are then frozen. Kate, believing they can arrest Díaz with this information, gets records of the transactions, but Matt forbids her from going forward, telling her that they are working toward a greater goal than simply arresting Díaz.

Later at a bar, Reggie introduces Kate to one of his colleagues, a local cop named Ted (Jon Bernthal). After a night of drinking and dancing, they end up back at her apartment, where she discovers a rubber wristband in his possession—the same type used to bundle Díaz's laundered money. Sensing that she knows he is corrupt, Ted struggles to subdue her and nearly chokes her to death. Alerted by the noise, Alejandro stops him at gunpoint and beats him up. After Alejandro and Matt threaten the lives of Ted and his family, he reveals the names of other local corrupt cops working for Díaz.

The next morning, Matt and his team prepare to follow Díaz, who has been called back to Alarcón. Their raid on the tunnel serves as a distraction so that Alejandro can sneak through to the Mexican side. Once there, he kidnaps one of Díaz's mules, a corrupt Mexican police officer named Silvio (Maximiliano Hernández). Kate follows and attempts to arrest Alejandro, who shoots her in her bulletproof vest and tells her to return to the United States. Threatening Silvio at gunpoint, Alejandro forces him to pursue Díaz in his Mexican police car. Meanwhile, Kate demands answers from Matt, who explains that their goal is to restore power to the Colombian Medellín Cartel. Returning control of the drug trade to a single cartel will restore some semblance of order.

Alejandro with Silvio driving catches up with Díaz's Mercedes, upon which Alejandro kills Silvio and wounds Díaz. Díaz then drives Alejandro to Alarcón's estate, where Alejandro kills Díaz and Alarcón's guards before finding Alarcón and his family. Alarcón, who murdered Alejandro's wife and daughter when Alejandro was a prosecutor in Juárez, mocks Alejandro, who shoots Alarcón's wife and two sons to death in front of him, then kills the drug lord. The next morning, Alejandro sneaks back into Kate's apartment and gives her a waiver to sign stating that everything they did together was "by the book". Kate relents when Alejandro puts a gun to her head. After he leaves, Kate goes to her balcony, points her gun at him and hesitates, and then watches him walk away. Sometime later at a football field in Mexico, Silvio's widow watches her son's soccer game, which is briefly interrupted by gunfire in the distance.

777man

(374 posts)

336. 11/14/15 CIA-NUGAN HAND BANKER FOUND ALIVE 35 YEARS LATER - John Michael Hand Found in Idaho

Reply to 777man (Reply #334)

Sun Nov 15, 2015, 12:48 AM

Nov 2015

https://www.propublica.org/article/after-disappearing-from-australia-a-cia-linked-fugitive-found-in-idaho

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/10/found-after-35-years-cia-s-fugitive-banker.html

Decades After Disappearing From Australia, a CIA-Linked Fugitive is Found in Idaho

Michael Jon Hand was at the center of a decades-old mystery, an Australian bank called Nugan Hand with ties to American military and intelligence officials that defrauded depositors and investors and then collapsed.

by Raymond Bonner, special to ProPublica, Nov. 10, 2015, 1 a.m.

This story was co-published with the Daily Beast.

It was one of the greatest disappearing acts of modern times. Amidst a swirl of allegations and rumors that the Nugan Hand bank was involved in arms smuggling, drug-running, and covert operations for the CIA, the institution’s American founder vanished from Australia. Thirty-five years later, that man, Michael Jon Hand, was tracked to a small town in Idaho where he has been living under the name of Michael Jon Fuller.

Hand was found by an Australian writer, Peter Butt, whose just-released book, “Merchants of Menace,” discloses Hand’s whereabouts after decades of mystery.

If finding Hand, now 73, solves one mystery, it raises another. How could he have lived in the United States so long without being detected? He changed his name only slightly, from Hand to Fuller, and did not get a new social security number, according to Butt.

Hand’s company, G.M.I. Manufacturing, is registered with the Idaho Secretary of State. The company “now manufactures tactical weapons for US Special Forces, special operations groups and hunters,’’ Butt wrote. Has Hand/Fuller been brazen, foolish, or, as Butt asks, does he belong “to a protected species, most likely of the intelligence kind?”

Two years after fleeing Australia, in 1982, when the CIA was involved in a covert operation to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista Government in Nicaragua, Hand was working as a military adviser in the region where the anti-Sandinista “contras” were based, according to an Australian intelligence document, which was declassified earlier this year.

The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The CIA has previously denied that it had any links to Hand.

Hand had been a Green Beret in Vietnam and a CIA operative in Laos, before moving to Australia, where he and Frank Nugan, a wealthy playboy, established the Nugan Hand Bank in 1973, with $80. Hand fled Australia seven years later after Nugan was found dead inside his Mercedes Benz, his left hand holding the barrel of a .30-calibre rifle a few inches from his head, his right hand near the trigger.

During an inquest into Nugan’s death, Hand testified that the bank was insolvent, owing investors (large and small) some $50 million. The inquest ruled Nugan’s death a suicide, a finding that many Australians found dubious.

With depositors and law enforcement authorities in pursuit, Hand, with assistance from a former CIA officer, secured a forged Australian passport, donned a false mustache and beard, and fled Australia in June of 1980. He flew to Fiji, then on to Canada, from which he could cross into the United States without a visa.

The Sydney Morning Herald first reported on Butt’s findings on Monday. In a segment that aired Sunday night, Australia’s “60 Minutes” filmed Hand/Fuller emerging from a pharmacy at a shopping mall in Idaho Falls. He has a full beard, neck brace, and was wearing sunglasses and a blue checked shirt. He refused to answer any questions, or speak any words, when confronted by “60 Minutes” reporter Ross Coulthart.

Suspicions about the bank’s links to the CIA arose almost immediately after Nugan was found dead. His wallet contained the business card of William E. Colby, who had been director of the CIA from 1973 to 1976.

Colby was forced to resign when it was reported that the agency had been engaged in illegal spying on American citizens. He became a legal adviser to Nugan Hand, and on the back of his business card were handwritten dates when someone, presumably Colby, would be in Hong Kong and Singapore.

As reporters began digging into Nugan Hand, they found that Colby wasn’t the only individual with an intelligence or military background involved with the bank.

“Nugan Hand had enough generals, admirals, and spooks to run a small war,” Jonathan Kwitny, an investigative reporter at the Wall Streeet Journal wrote in the definitive book about the bank, “The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA.”

The president was a retired Navy Admiral; the head of the Manila branch, a retired Air Force general; the head of the Washington office, a retired Army general; another retired army general ran the office in Hawaii.

In a review of Kwitny’s book in the New York Times, Howard Blum asks: “Why were so many honorable men working for such a blatantly corrupt organization?”

Several former CIA operatives also had links to the bank of one kind or another, including Frank Terpil and Edwin Wilson, who were indicted for selling explosives to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. (Terpil fled to Cuba, where he still lives. Wilson, who was convicted and sentenced to prison, died in 2012).

In Australia, the collapse of Nugan Hand was the subject of several high-level investigations in the 1980s. They found, generally, that the bank was engaged in money laundering, tax evasion, and violation of Australian banking laws. One investigation found links between Hand and the CIA, while another did not. At the time, Australian investigators complained about the lack of help from the FBI

Hand, who was raised in the Bronx, studied forestry for a year before enlisting in the Army in 1963. He was sent to Vietnam, where he was awarded a Purple Heart, Silver Star and the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest combat medal. At some point, he became a contractor operative for the CIA, and did work with Air America, the agency’s front airline, according to one of the Australian investigations.

He visited Sydney on “R & R,” — “rest and recuperation,” the once-yearly out for American soldiers in Vietnam and eventually emigrated. He hung out at the Bourbon and Beefsteak Bar, in King’s Cross, Sydney’s seedy vice district (then and now), where he met Frank Nugan. They began selling real estate, primarily to American servicemen in Southeast Asia, then trading in silver bullion, before opening the bank.

Nugan wrote the bank a check for $980,000, then covered it by writing a bank check to himself for the same amount. “Through this elementary accounting fraud, Nugan could claim that the company’s paid-up capital was a million dollars,” Alfred W. McCoy writes in “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”

From those humble and corrupt beginnings, grew a global goliath that attracted investors with promises of 16 percent interest on deposits, in off-shore accounts. By 1979, Nugan Hand had 13 branches around the world, and many of its depositors were drug traffickers, according to Australian investigators.

Hand told colleagues that it was his ambition that the bank “become a banker for the CIA,” according to the findings of one of the Australian investigations.

Efforts to reach Hand were unsuccessful.

Off-Topic---

National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States of America 2016
Page Count: 20 pages
Date: November 2015
Restriction: None
Originating Organization: National Counterintelligence and Security Center
File Type: pdf
https://publicintelligence.net/us-counterintelligence-strategy-2016/
https://info.publicintelligence.net/NCSC-CounterintelligenceStrategy2016.pdf

Off-Topic

(U//LES) Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: Tor IP Addresses Increasingly Linked to Cybercrime
November 1, 2015

The following document was obtained from the website of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Tor Darknet IP Addresses: Increasing Link to Cybercrime Against Financial Institutions
Page Count: 3 pages
Date: December 2, 2014
Restriction: Law Enforcement Sensitive
https://publicintelligence.net/fincen-tor-cybercrime/

777man

(374 posts)

337. Nugan Hand bank mystery: Michael Hand found living in the United States

Reply to 777man (Reply #336)

Sun Nov 15, 2015, 01:03 AM

Nov 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/nugan-hand-bank-mystery-michael-hand-found-living-in-the-united-states-20151107-gkthas.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jon_Hand

Nugan Hand bank mystery: Michael Hand found living in the United States

Date November 9, 2015

Damien Murphy

Nugan Hand fugitive found living in the US

Fugitive Michael Hand, the co-founder of the failed merchant bank Nugan Hand, is found living a new life in small-town America.

A decorated Green Beret with pie in sky schemes

One of Australia's most wanted fugitives, Michael Hand, the co-founder of the Sydney-based international merchant bank Nugan Hand, has been found alive and well and living in small-town America.

He vanished in 1980 amid rumours of CIA and organised crime involvement in the bank as the United States attempted to back anti-communist governments and anti-communist insurgents at the height of the Cold War.
Michael Hand, the disappeared part owner of Nugan Hand bank.

Michael Hand, the disappeared part owner of Nugan Hand bank.

Photo: Supplied

Sydney author Peter Butt found Hand. In his new book, Merchants of Menace, Butt reveals that Hand, 73, is living under the name Michael Jon Fuller and resides in the small town of Idaho Falls.

Hand manufactures tactical weapons for US Special Forces, special operations groups and hunters.

Hand disappeared in June 1980 after his partner, Griffith-born lawyer Frank Nugan, then 37, was found dead beside a .30-calibre rifle in his Mercedes-Benz outside Lithgow and as corporate and police investigators, ASIO and the FBI started investigating the Nugan Hand bank. A coroner founded Nugan had killed himself.
A composite photo of the old and new Michael Hand.

A composite photo of the old and new Michael Hand. Photo: Supplied

The bank collapsed with debts in excess of $50 million and a subsequent royal commission found evidence of money-laundering, illegal tax avoidance schemes and widespread violations of banking laws.

Over the years, the two words Nugan Hand became shorthand for drug-dealing, gun-running, organised crime and clandestine intelligence activities.

But nobody has been convicted. Governments, security and espionage agencies ran dead or appeared to look the other way. Many men associated with the bank's affairs in Australia, the US and Asia have died early or in mysterious circumstances.
Michael Hand disappeared in 1980 after the his partner, Frank Nugan (pictured), was found dead.

Michael Hand disappeared in 1980 after the his partner, Frank Nugan (pictured), was found dead. Photo: Supplied

The most problematic death was William Colby's. Director of the CIA between 1972 and 1976 as the US wound down its involvement in Vietnam, Colby became a legal adviser to the Nugan Hand bank. He was found face-down in the water after leaving his Maryland home on a solo canoe trip in 1996.

Butt thought Hand had been protected since fleeing Australia in June 1980.

"It turns out that the FBI could have dealt with Michael Hand long ago. A simple background check reveals Fuller's social security number is identical to the one allocated to Michael Hand in New York in 1960," he said.

"The fact that Hand has been allowed to live the free life in the United States suggests that he belongs to a protected species, most likely of the intelligence kind. Indeed, an intelligence document I found places Michael Hand back working for the CIA in Central America 18 months after his disappearance."

Butt's previous "big reveal" was in 2006 when his well-watched and Logie award-winning ABC documentary, Who Killed Dr Bogle and Mrs Chandler?, claimed their unsolved deaths on New Year's Day 1963 may have been caused by accidental hydrogen sulphide poisoning from industrial waste that had concentrated in the bottom mud of the Lane Cove River.

While Australian and American authorities failed to find Hand after he disappeared in 1980, Butt hit upon the idea of using the former US Green Beret's most formative experience to track him down.

In 1965, Hand was in a small contingent of Special Forces troops dispatched to Dong Xoai on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In June, Hand's outpost came under fierce Viet Cong attack. This was free-fire warfare without constraint. Only six of the 19 Americans survived. Hand saved four of them. He was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, America's second-highest bravery award. His chutzpah brought him to the attention of the CIA – out of bullets, Hand ended up in a hand-to-hand combat, during which he killed a killed a number of attackers with a Ka-Bar combat knife.

"Hand now manufactures tactical weapons for US Special Forces, special operations groups and hunters. Many of his weapons are designed to work in the unforgiving conditions of combat and hark back to that Technicolor Kodak moment in the battle of Doing Xoai when Hand used his Ka-Bar knife to rip through the sternum of a Viet Cong attacker before removing the man's head from his body with his bare hands," he said.

"It appears that Hand has spent the last 17 years alchemising that critical, existential moment in his life when a blade honed and sharpened to a micrometre represented the line between life and eternity.

"He now produces tens of thousands of such weapons a year, many of which he exports to countries around the world, including Australia."

On Sunday night, the Nine Network program 60 Minutes, using information provided by Butt, filmed Hand emerging from a pharmacy in his local shopping mall.

Michael Hand has been presumed dead for 35 years. That is, until #60Mins caught him in his tracks. https://t.co/qDiIDMktU6
— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) November 8, 2015

Shocked and befuddled, Hand said nothing but drove home and locked himself behind closed doors refusing a request for an interview.

Butt said he would inform the Australian Federal Police and the NSW Police of Hand's new identity and whereabouts.

He said he would also provide authorities with details unearthed during years of research about Hand's criminal deeds, including money-laundering for drug traffickers, tax evasion schemes, gun-running, foreign exchange fraud, false evidence to a royal commission, fabrication of a false passport and false declarations to customs.

“Somebody has helped Michael Hand disappear… I’d say he is a protected species in the United States,” Peter Butt. #60Mins
— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) November 8, 2015

"Australians who lost their life savings in the Nugan Hand debacle may wish to see Hand face his day in court, but it would be naive to believe this would come to pass," he said.

"Extradition from the US would require a serious measure of political will. It would also demand answers of our American friends as to why Hand, who had become an Australian citizen, was allowed to settle back into the United States when the Australian police and Interpol were desperately trying to track him down."

READ THE FULL BOOK HERE:
-------------------------------------------

THE CRIMES OF PATRIOTS — A TRUE TALE OF DOPE, DIRTY MONEY, AND THE CIA by Jonathan Kwitny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Kwitny

Some background on Nugan Hand Bank:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nugan_Hand_Bank

The Complete book is online here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/131256455/THE-CRIMES-OF-PATRIOTS-A-TRUE-TALE-OF-DOPE-DIRTY-MONEY-AND-THE-CIA-BY-JOHNATHAN-KWITNY-1987
http://www.naderlibrary.com/lit.crimesofpatriots.toc.htm

THE CRIMES OF PATRIOTS -- A TRUE TALE OF DOPE, DIRTY MONEY, AND THE CIA BY JOHNATHAN KWITNY 1987
COMPLETE BOOK--

"There is a secret government in America. It operates with the explicit and implied authority of the highest officials, and in the name of America's interests it has inflicted great damage on the unsuspecting peoples of other countries and on our own fundamental principles.... I wish everyone would read The Crimes of Patriots. Perhaps then the current hearings on the Iran-Contra affair -- for Ronald Reagan is the latest to wield this secret weapon and to perish by it -- will be the last. An informed people might become an outraged people and finally put a stop to our own self-destruction. If so, we will owe much to Jonathan Kwitny's reporting."
-- Bill Moyers

777man

(374 posts)

338. 11/14/15 Nugan Hand Bank fugitive found in US

Reply to 777man (Reply #337)

Sun Nov 15, 2015, 02:37 AM

Nov 2015

Last edited Mon Dec 14, 2015, 02:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Nov 14, 2015
Nugan Hand Bank fugitive found in US
Martin McKenzie-Murray
The true story of Sydney's shadowy Nugan Hand Bank, and its connections in the 1970s to the CIA, arms dealing and the Asian drug trade, may be closer with the discovery of Michael Jon Hand alive and well in Idaho.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/law-crime/2015/11/14/nugan-hand-bank-fugitive-found-us/14474196002625

======================

I'm not to blame for bank collapse: Hand
November 11, 2015 6:45am
AAP
http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/news/world/im-not-to-blame-for-bank-collapse-hand/news-story
MICHAEL Hand, the fugitive US banker who vanished from Australia 35 years ago, says he is not to blame for the collapse of the infamous Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank.

THE 73-year-old also rejects claims he's been in hiding in the US, but says he left Australia because of "numerous" death threats he and his wife received.

===================

OFF-Topic::

DEA Assessment of U.S. Areas of Influence of Major Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations
November 27, 2015
United States: Areas of Influence of Major Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations
Page Count: 4 pages
Date: July 2015
https://publicintelligence.net/dea-mexican-cartels-us/
=================================

DEA Assessment of Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations’ Areas of Dominant Control
November 27, 2015
Mexico: Updated Assessment of the Major Drug Trafficking Organizations’ Areas of Dominant Control
Page Count: 2 pages
Date: July 2015
https://publicintelligence.net/dea-mexican-cartel-control/

========================

Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Counterterrorism Center
(U//FOUO) DHS-FBI-NCTC Bulletin: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Used in November 2015 Paris Attacks
December 14, 2015
Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Used in the 13 November 2015 Paris Attacks
Page Count: 9 pages
Date: November 23, 2015
Restriction: For Official Use Only
Originating Organization: Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Counterterrorism Center
File Type: pdf
File Size: 154,237 bytes

https://publicintelligence.net/dhs-fbi-nctc-paris-attacks/

========================

The Dangers of Traveling Overseas to Fight Against the Islamic State
October 5, 2015
https://publicintelligence.net/its-dangerous-fighting-isis/

====================

United Nations, Libya
UN Report on ISIL, Ansar al Charia, al-Qaeda Threat in Libya November 2015
December 7, 2015

The following report was released by the U.N. on December 1, 2015.
Report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team submitted pursuant to paragraph 13 of Security Council resolution 2214 (2015) concerning the terrorism threat in Libya posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Ansar al Charia, and all other Al-Qaida associates
Page Count: 24 pages
Date: November 19, 2015
https://publicintelligence.net/un-isil-libya/

777man

(374 posts)

339. 11/6/15 VIDEO- Michael Hand vanished in 1980 amid rumors of CIA and organized crime involvement deal

Reply to 777man (Reply #338)

Sun Nov 15, 2015, 03:01 AM

Nov 2015

Last edited Sat Nov 21, 2015, 02:18 PM - Edit history (1)

NOTORIOUS AUSTRALIAN FUGITIVE FOUND LIVING IN THE US AFTER DECADES ON THE RUN. NEW

-----------------

Australian fugitive found in Idaho Falls
http://www.ktvb.com/story/news/2015/11/09/aussie-fugitive/75490008/

------------

One of Australia's most wanted fugitives, Michael Hand, is 'tracked down in the U.S.' after 35 years on the run following the collapse of the infamous Nugan Hand Bank and apparent suicide of its co-founder

Michael Hand disappeared after collapse of the infamous Nugan Hand Bank
Fellow co-founder of bank, Frank Nugan, found shot dead shortly after
Hand has been tracked down after 35 years on run in U.S. town Idaho Falls
Reporters approached a man who they claimed was Hand outside chemist

By Jenny Awford For Daily Mail Australia

Published: 13:06 GMT, 8 November 2015 | Updated: 15:20 GMT, 8 November 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3309110/Michael-Hand-tracked-35-years-collapse-Nugan-Hand-Bank.html

------------------------------

http://www.news.com.au/national/crime/minutes-track-down-fugitive-michael-hand-living-in-united-states/story-fns0kb1g-1227600904866

Spartacus Educational Background on Nugan Hand
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKnuganbank.htm

Off-topic-

How Riverside County became America's drug pipeline

The biggest narcotics hub in the United States has been built on a web of highways, suburbia and empty desert.

Brett Kelman, The Desert Sun, and Brad Heath, USA TODAY
http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2015/11/11/riverside-county-drug-trafficking/75232146/

777man

(374 posts)

340. The Ghosts of Nugan Hand: A New Chapter in a Long-Running CIA Bank Mystery

Reply to 777man (Reply #339)

Thu Nov 19, 2015, 02:59 AM

Nov 2015

Last edited Thu Nov 19, 2015, 09:44 PM - Edit history (1)

The Ghosts of Nugan Hand: A New Chapter in a Long-Running CIA Bank Mystery
By Jeff Stein 11/12/15 at 3:00 PM
http://www.newsweek.com/michael-hand-cia-heroin-nugan-hand-australia-393576

============
Published on Nov 10, 2015

Local News 8 interviews Ross Coulthart about his 60 Minutes Australia piece on Michael Jon Hand

===========

William Colby -Board Member at Nugan Hand Bank
WHO MURDERED THE CIA CHIEF?
William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death
By Zalin Grant

This was Saturday, April 27, 1996. William Colby, a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was alone at his weekend house across from Cobb Island, Maryland, 60 miles south of Washington, D.C. Colby, who was 76 years old, had worked all day on his sailboat at a nearby marina, putting it in shape for the coming summer.
http://www.pythiapress.com/wartales/colby.htm

=================
Off-Topic

UNODC Briefing Paper Endorsing Decriminalization of Drug Use and Possession for Personal Consumption
October 26, 2015

Briefing paper: Decriminalisation of Drug Use and Possession for Personal Consumption
Page Count: 2 pages
Date: October 2015
Restriction: None
Originating Organization: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
https://publicintelligence.net/unodc-drug-decriminalization/

777man

(374 posts)

341. Freeway Ricky Ross Arrested With $100K In Cash Of Suspected Drug Money

Reply to 777man (Reply #340)

Mon Nov 23, 2015, 05:46 AM

Nov 2015

Last edited Sat Dec 19, 2015, 05:28 PM - Edit history (4)

A Conversation with Freeway Ricky Ross on His Latest Run-in with Police and Race Relations in America
Posted: 11/05/2015 5:43 pm EST Updated: 11/05/2015 5:59 pm EST

Seth Ferranti
2015-11-02-1446490892-5044753-IMG_4787.JPG
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seth-ferranti/a-conversation-with-freew_b_8454314.html

=================

Freeway Ricky Ross Arrested With $100K In Cash Of Suspected Drug Money
pologod
October 26, 2015
http://thesource.com/2015/10/26/freeway-ricky-ross-arrested-with-100k-in-cash-of-suspected-drug-money/

Freeway Ricky Ross, Former LA Crack Kingpin, Busted in Northern California
By Nick Schou Fri., Oct. 23 2015 at 2:46 PM
Comments ()
Categories: Bong Blotter
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/10/freeway_ricky_ross_former_la_crack_kingpin_busted_in_northern_cali.php

"Freeway" Ricky Ross Claims "Case Closed," But Cops Disagree
By Dennis Romero
Tuesday, October 27, 2015 | 27 days ago
http://www.laweekly.com/news/freeway-ricky-ross-claims-case-closed-but-cops-disagree-6211560

---------------------

Rick Ross on TMZ discusses worth over 600 Million talks his Biopic Movie by Writer of "Blow"
Jerome Washburn
Jerome Washburn

Published on Jan 20, 2013

Rick Ross worth 600 Million TMZ Fox Interview www.FreewayRick.com - According to the Oakland Tribune" In the course of his rise, prosecutors estimate that Ross exported several tons of cocaine to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and made more than $600 million in the process." Oakland Tribune Counting inflation its 3 billion dollars comparing 1986 to 2010.

OFF-Topic

DEA-DOJ 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary
https://www.hsdl.org/blog/newpost/view/2015-national-drug-threat-assessment-summary

Get a copy here:

http://www.dea.gov/docs/2015%20NDTA%20Report.pdf
http://www.dea.gov/divisions/hq/2015/hq110415.shtml

Or if you are paranoid, go here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/290193769/2015-National-Drug-Threat-Assessment-Summary

Off-topic

DEA Informant Who Helped Defeat Medellín Cartel Sues Feds For Back Pay
Carlos Toro spent decades serving and sacrificing for the DEA, but he says they gave him almost nothing in return.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/carlos-toro-dea-informant-lawsuit_55e606f2e4b0c818f619825a

Off-Topic:

Devils, Deals and the DEA
Why Chapo Guzman was the biggest winner in the DEA's longest running drug cartel case
by David Epstein, ProPublica
December 17, 2015
This story was co-published with the Atlantic.

https://www.propublica.org/article/devils-deals-and-the-dea

Ask This Former DEA Agent Anything About Fighting Drug Cartels In Mexico
by Terry Parris Jr.
ProPublica, Dec. 16, 2015, 4:43 pm
https://www.propublica.org/getinvolved/item/ask-this-former-dea-agent-anything-about-fighting-drug-cartels-in-mexico

777man

(374 posts)

342. 12/17/15-ProPublica,David Epstein, Devils, Deals and the DEA Why Chapo Guzman was the biggest winner

Reply to 777man (Reply #341)

Sat Dec 19, 2015, 05:58 PM

Dec 2015

Devils, Deals and the DEA
Why Chapo Guzman was the biggest winner in the DEA's longest running drug cartel case
by David Epstein, ProPublica
December 17, 2015
This story was co-published with the Atlantic.

For 14 months, the first thing Dave Herrod, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, did every morning was boot up his laptop and begin tracking a 43-foot yacht with Dock Holiday painted on the stern.

In the summer of 2005, the DEA had intercepted a conversation in which members of a Mexican drug cartel known as the Arellano Félix Organization discussed buying a yacht in California. Herrod and his colleagues studied the classified ads in yacht magazines and determined that the Dock Holiday was the boat the AFO members wanted. DEA agents then managed to get on board and install tracking devices before the sale went through. That’s when Herrod started watching the boat on his laptop.
Join the Discussion

Join ProPublica reporter David Epstein and former DEA agent Jack Robertson on Thursday at 2 p.m. EST for our live discussion on Reddit.

Since the early 1990s, the Arellano brothers — the inspiration for the Obregón brothers in the movie Traffic — had controlled the flow of drugs through what was perhaps the single most important point for illicit commerce in the world: the border crossing from Tijuana to San Diego. Much of the AFO’s success derived from its predilection for innovative violence. The cartel employed a crew of “baseballistas” who would hang victims from rafters, like piñatas, and beat them to death with bats. Pozole, the Spanish word for a traditional Mexican stew, was the AFO’s euphemism for a method of hiding high-profile victims: Stuff them headfirst into a barrel of hot lye or acid and stir for 24 hours until only their teeth were left, then pour them down the drain.

Dismantling the AFO had been an official project of the U.S. government since 1992, and an obsession of Herrod’s since the year before that, when he’d started chasing the cartel as a rookie agent stationed near San Diego. A former athlete, he spent years guzzling Pepsi and Mountain Dew to power through long workdays. His health, like everything else, took a backseat to the AFO case.

After the sale of the Dock Holiday, the trackers showed the vessel hugging the coast of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, rounding the tip of Cabo San Lucas, and heading north into the Gulf of California to La Paz. Once in a while, it sailed to Rancho Leonero, where Javier Arellano Félix, the head of the AFO at the time, had a beach house. Herrod knew that Javier loved deep-sea fishing, and he was convinced that the cartel’s chief executive was using the boat. So the DEA launched Operation Shadow Game. The plan: Watch the Dock Holiday to find out if Javier would be on it, then intercept the boat should it stray beyond Mexico’s territorial waters.

For six weeks, the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Monsoon stood sentinel off Baja California, waiting for the yacht to venture more than 12 nautical miles off the coast and into international waters. But it never did. On August 12, 2006, Operation Shadow Game came to an end. The Monsoon set off for other duties, and Herrod left his laptop dark for the first time since the previous summer.

Two days later, he got a call at 8 a.m. from the Florida-based Joint Interagency Task Force South, which was still monitoring the tracking devices. The Dock Holiday had left Mexican sovereignty south of Cabo San Lucas. The men on the boat were chasing marlin, zigzagging in and out of international waters: out to 19 miles, back to 10 miles, then out to 15, then back to 12. The task force wanted to know whether the Coast Guard should board the Dock Holiday if the opportunity arose.

Herrod had only a hunch as to who was on the boat. The DEA had deemed the operation an expensive failure and pulled its on-the-ground surveillance weeks earlier. Agents who had worked on the AFO case for years were being reassigned entirely. Herrod figured he’d never have another chance to catch Javier outside of Mexico. Without asking his supervisors, he gave the order: Send the Monsoon back.

At 1 p.m., 13.1 nautical miles off Mexico, the Coast Guard intercepted the Dock Holiday. Herrod waited at the office in San Diego, pacing back and forth, as the Coast Guard collected identification from those on board. Agents shuffled past his cubicle asking for updates, like restless children on a road trip. After two hours, he got a message from the Monsoon: eight men and three boys on board. At 4 p.m., photographs started coming through by e-mail. The first two faces, those of the captain and a crewman, were unfamiliar. So were the next two. Could he have been wrong? Then came the fifth picture, and it took Herrod’s breath away: a mustachioed man in a pale-yellow Lacoste shirt, reclining on white-leather seats. This was “El Nalgón,” or “Big Ass”: Manuel Arturo Villarreal Heredia, the 30-year-old chief enforcer for the AFO. According to agents, he was known for his facility with knife-based torture.

Herrod had never seen the young man in the sixth photo, though he had the Arellano family’s heavy eyebrows. Next came pictures of the three children and another unfamiliar man. In the final photo, staring wide-eyed into the camera, was a compact, square-jawed man wearing a thin gold chain that disappeared under the collar of his salmon-colored T-shirt. His pursed lips were framed by stubble and his eyebrows arched in subtle confusion. Herrod and an agent sitting beside him shot out of their chairs. The man was Javier.
Javier Arellano Félix, the head of the AFO drug cartel, was on his yacht when it was intercepted by the Coast Guard after it strayed beyond Mexican waters. Javier was the AFO’s Michael Corleone: he left Tijuana, but was called back to the family business, and showed his talent for calculated violence.

The youngest of the Arellano brothers, he was the AFO’s Michael Corleone. He hadn’t asked to be in the family business — had left Tijuana and gone to business school, only to be called back — but, like Corleone in The Godfather, the young overlord had displayed a talent for organized crime and calculated violence. As the head of the AFO, he had directed hundreds of killings and kidnappings in Mexico and the U.S.

Javier’s arrest would be hailed by officials in the States as a decisive victory in what may have been the longest active case in the DEA’s history — a rare triumph in the War on Drugs. “We feel like we’ve taken the head off the snake,” the agency’s chief of operations announced. I can’t believe it actually fucking worked, Herrod recalls thinking.

But did it? Herrod is 50 years old now and nearing the end of his career with the DEA. In the time he spent hunting the Arellanos, his hair and goatee went from black to salt-and-pepper to finally just plain salt. He’s proud of the audacity and perseverance it took to bring down the cartel, and he knows he helped prevent murders and kidnappings. But when he looks back, he doesn’t see the clear-cut triumph portrayed in press releases. Instead, he and other agents who worked the case say the experience left them disillusioned. And far from stopping the flow of drugs, taking out the AFO only cleared territory for Joaquín Guzmán Loera — aka “El Chapo” — and his now nearly unstoppable Sinaloa cartel. Guzmán even lent the DEA a hand.

This is the story of the investigation as the agents saw it, including accounts of alleged crimes that were never adjudicated in court. “Drug enforcement as we know it,” Herrod told me, “is not working.”

Dave Herrod came to the DEA in 1991 from the U.S. Customs Service, looking for work with more gravity. He was 26, just two months out of the academy, when he got his first tip: Two vans, one tan and one blue, parked near a liquor store at Third and Main in Chula Vista, had recently crossed into the U.S. with one ton of cocaine. The tip came from a man named Joe Palacios, a Mexican who would have been a DEA agent had he been born a few miles north. Instead he earned his living as a DEA adjunct, gathering intelligence in exchange for payment. Agents called him “Eye in the Sky,” because they operated him like a satellite: Direct him to a target, and he would send back information. The tip sounded preposterous. A ton of cocaine, parked in the open in Chula Vista? But sure enough, there, at Third and Main, was a tan van with the windows blacked out. Agents followed it to a house, where they found the blue van.

Inside the two vans, they discovered 1.8 tons of cocaine bricks where the seats should have been. The DEA is going to be easy!, Herrod thought. He had no idea that the drugs belonged to the AFO, and that he’d just stumbled into the investigation that would haunt him for the next 20 years. But he got a hint that this was not an isolated bust when agents discovered that the vans had been let through the Tijuana crossing by a corrupt U.S. border inspector named John Salazar. After flunking a polygraph, Salazar came clean: He had been taking bribes from smugglers.
DEA Special Agent David Herrod spent most of his career chasing the AFO, but now he feels disillusioned. (Joe Pugliese, special to ProPublica)

A few months later, Jack Robertson — another special agent, only slightly less green than Herrod — officially opened the DEA’s case targeting the Arellano brothers. Robertson was as idealistic as investigators come: empathetic and devoutly Christian, with a knack for getting young gang members to open up. He was also ambitious, and he’d been hearing about the AFO, which had just begun to dominate the Tijuana corridor. One informant was afraid to even utter the Arellano name.

Robertson says his boss, Michele Leonhart — who would go on to become the head of the DEA — thought they could wrap the case in six months. But six months in, the case was just getting under way. The Arellano brothers kept themselves insulated from their street dealers and low-level thugs — hit men had to pass requests for permission to murder through a dispatcher, who would relay a coded answer back. So agents had to start by pressuring arrested smugglers to give up information about their superiors, and then work toward identifying the key lieutenants in Tijuana and Mexicali. These were the men who took orders directly from the brothers.

Following on the success of the vans’ seizure, the DEA began working with the Customs Service on Operation Bus Stop. The idea was to follow Sultana Express tour buses, which were thought to be smuggling drugs across the border. Palacios would tail the buses once they entered Mexico to see where they were getting loaded up with drugs. On his first attempt, he slid in behind a bus as it passed into Tijuana but was immediately pulled over at gunpoint by Mexican police demanding to know why he was following the bus. Palacios talked his way out of trouble — What bus? — but suddenly the case felt bigger.

U.S. agents were disappointed that Palacios had lost the bus so quickly. But that night, he did a complete grid search of Tijuana, scouring the city one street at a time. At 6 a.m., he called Herrod from the beach community of Playas de Tijuana, where he read the plate off a Sultana Express bus. “I just could not believe he pulled that off,” Herrod told me. He marveled at Palacios’s tirelessness, and his courage.

For months, Palacios followed buses to an AFO warehouse, where they were fitted with secret compartments and loaded with cocaine. Based on his surveillance, U.S. authorities made more than 50 arrests north of the border over the course of nine months and intercepted drugs, guns, and grenades.

The agents and their bosses were ecstatic, but Palacios was nervous. He’d noticed the AFO stepping up its countersurveillance. He spoke with Herrod about ensuring that his family would be taken care of should something happen to him. His wife had just had a baby, their fifth. Herrod tried to reassure him. “We’re doing some great things,” he said, “but if you’re getting a funny feeling, just bail. It’s not worth anybody’s life.”

Palacios was paid a few thousand dollars a month, Herrod told me, some of which he spent on gas and on hiring people to help him keep watch. Herrod urged the higher-ups on the investigation from both Customs and the DEA to rent Palacios a new car each week, so that his brown van wouldn’t be recognized. After repeated requests, Herrod said, the government finally bought Palacios a used Volkswagen Rabbit that barely ran. He didn’t end up driving it.

One Monday afternoon in March 1992, Palacios didn’t respond when Herrod paged him “911,” their code to drop everything and call immediately. Herrod called Palacios’s wife. She couldn’t reach him either. That night, Palacios’s number popped up on Herrod’s phone, but the caller quickly hung up. Desperate, Herrod and a colleague asked a Mexican police commander to search for him. “He said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re right on it,’?” Herrod told me.

Late that Friday, just as Herrod was arriving home for the weekend, his phone rang. It was the resident agent in charge, his boss’s boss, telling him that Palacios had been found. “Great!,” Herrod exclaimed. “Where the fuck has that guy been?”

“You don’t understand,” the agent in charge told him.

An AFO enforcer had caught Palacios in his van with binoculars, a laptop, and a bedpan. He was executed, his body tossed on a hillside in Rosarito Beach, a coastal town 10 miles south of the border. Herrod went to Mexico to identify the body; it was the first corpse he’d ever seen. Palacios’s lips were swollen. His chest and arms were purple from blunt trauma. His throat had been slit from beneath one earlobe to beneath the other.

Herrod vowed to bring Palacios’s killers to justice. But they weren’t the only ones he blamed. An American agent never would have been expected to operate with so little support, he told me.

“We abused him,” Herrod said, “telling him to stay on stuff for weeks on end. Imagine doing surveillance 24/7 for 10, 12, 14 straight days. He was going to die eventually. You can’t do what he was doing, against the people he was doing it against, for that long a time and survive.”

The U.S. government gave Palacios’s family $350,000. But Herrod couldn’t stop thinking about Eye in the Sky, and the contrast between his fate and that of John Salazar, the corrupt border agent Palacios had helped catch. Salazar was sentenced to 30 years, but had to serve only five because he provided information that helped law enforcement intercept marijuana shipments. According to Office of Personnel Management records, he was allowed to keep his government pension.

That Jack Robertson’s boss thought the Arellano brothers could be caught in six months shows just how little American law enforcement knew about the drug leviathan to the south.

For the first 20 years of the War on Drugs, started by President Nixon in 1971, Mexican traffickers were a footnote, little more than border smugglers for Pablo Escobar, the Colombian billionaire drug trafficker. But in 1989, in an attempt to kill a Colombian presidential candidate, Escobar orchestrated the suitcase bombing of a commercial airliner that happened to have two Americans on board. That put Escobar in the crosshairs of the U.S. military. Four years later, he was gunned down after a massive manhunt.

As Ioan Grillo observed in his 2011 book, El Narco, “Typical of drug enforcement, solving one problem had created another bigger one.” The U.S. Navy blocked smuggling routes to Florida, and trafficking spidered along the Mexican border. Into the post-Escobar vacuum strode a cadre of ambitious Mexican criminals, including Benjamín Arellano Félix. The second-oldest of seven brothers — he was 37 when Escobar blew up the plane — Benjamín became the first head of the AFO. By the early 1990s, the cartel was smuggling in 40 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.

Months before Joe Palacios was killed, Benjamín threw a first-birthday party for his daughter at his ranch outside Tijuana. A home video shows the cartel family in its prime: the brothers dressed in garishly patterned short-sleeved button-downs, their wives in pendulous earrings and large sunglasses. Beneath a sprawling white tent, guests sipped from brown bottles of beer and red cans of Coke. Alongside an inflatable bouncy castle was a veritable menagerie — not just miniature horses and llamas, but also zebras, reindeer, and ostriches.

Less obvious, but no less exotic, were the cars: the bulletproof blue Toyota 4Runner given to a top AFO enforcer, and next to it the bulletproof white Dodge Shadow that belonged to Eduardo Arellano Félix, the saturnine brother known as El Doctor because he had once been a practicing doctor. Ramón Arellano Félix’s armored Grand Marquis was something out of a video game, wired to deliver an electric shock to any stranger who touched it; in the event of a chase, a button inside would release a trail of oil.
Benjamín Arellano Félix threw a first-birthday party for his daughter at his ranch outside Tijuana. A home video captures the cartel family in its prime, plus a veritable menagerie, including miniature horses, llamas, reindeer and even zebras.

Ramón, the fifth of the seven brothers, was building a reputation as the most ruthless killer in Mexico. Carne asada — “grilled beef” — was the term he used to describe the practice of throwing a body on a bonfire of car tires to incinerate it. Rumor had it that Ramón would sit calmly and barbecue his own dinner in the flames. He wore ruby-, sapphire-, and emerald-encrusted watches and a skeleton belt buckle with diamonds for eyes. He once shot a bouncer at a bar because the man had asked him to pour his beer from a bottle into a cup.

As brutal as the brothers were, their first line of defense was not their own men but Mexico’s law enforcement. Mexican officials’ corruption “wasn’t a matter of if, but when,” Herrod told me. The head of Mexico’s equivalent of an attorney general’s office received $500,000 a month from the cartel, a former AFO lieutenant told investigators. Certain military generals made $250,000 a month. Prosecutors were paid à la carte. The system was so effective that AFO prisoners would occasionally escape torture houses only to be returned to the cartel by the very police into whose arms they had fled.

So when Jack Robertson met Jose “Pepe” Patino Moreno, an incorruptible Mexican investigator, he quickly grew to admire the man. Robertson appreciated Patino’s humility, and respected his willingness to stand up to colleagues he knew were working for the other side. “He was one of the most decent men I ever met,” Robertson told me. “I always had a sense of trust in him that I didn’t have in anybody.” In that way, he was to Robertson what Palacios was to Herrod. In another way as well: Patino was captured by AFO members, who reportedly crushed his head in a pneumatic press and smashed his bones with baseball bats. His body, a Los Angeles Times article reported, was as broken as a bag of ice cubes.

Through the 1980s, Mexican drug traffickers had worked in relative harmony to move Escobar’s product. To impoverished Mexicans, narcos represented brave resistance to a corrupt government and imperious American law enforcement. Popular folk ballads known as narcocorridos lionized drug lords. There was enough turf and money and inventory to accommodate every criminal appetite, and the Arellano brothers and Chapo Guzmán not only tolerated each other; they worked together when it suited them.

That began to change in 1989, when Ramón murdered a man who had assaulted one of his sisters years earlier; the man happened to be one of Guzmán’s closest friends. Ramón also killed several of the man’s family members for good measure. Soon thereafter, the Arellanos declared all of Baja California their territory. “No one needed to be greedy,” Robertson told me. “But the Arellanos were like, ‘No, this is ours. Come here, and we’ll kill you.’ That did not sit well with Chapo.” Guzmán started digging the Sinaloa cartel’s first known drug-smuggling tunnel under AFO turf (a primitive one compared with the engineering marvel through which he escaped from prison last summer) and made plans to kill the brothers.

In November 1992, Ramón and Javier Arellano were at the Christine discotheque in Puerto Vallarta when 40 assassins posing as policemen burst in shooting. They’d been sent by El Chapo. One of Ramón’s bodyguards, a preternaturally poised man named David Barron Corona, shot and killed a gunman, then picked up the man’s AK-47 and held off the attackers while shoving Ramón and a top lieutenant into a bathroom. From there, he pushed them through a window and onto the roof — an arduous task, because Ramón was obese. The men clambered down a tree. On the ground, an assassin was waiting with a machine gun, but Barron killed him with his last bullet and all three escaped. Javier got away too, via a different route.

Barron hailed from a rugged neighborhood of San Diego called Logan Heights. He wore a downturned mustache and was built like a mailbox, his short arms hanging away from his body as if he’d just finished lifting weights. Skull tattoos decorated his torso, each said to represent a victim. He’d gone to prison at age 16, for killing a cross-dressing man who’d reprimanded him for urinating on a parked car.

After Barron’s performance at the discotheque, Benjamín Arellano recognized him as a fearless warrior. He bestowed upon Barron the code name “Charlie,” as in Charles Bronson, the actor famed for playing relentless vigilantes, and gave him a mission: Assemble a team of assassins who could vanquish Guzmán. Barron returned to Logan Heights to conscript about 30 enforcers from Mexican immigrant families. He offered $500 a week, plus kill bonuses. Taking out El Chapo would be rewarded with $1 million and a ranch.

Barron hired trainers — Mexican police officers and a Middle Eastern man whom recruits knew as “The Terrorist.” He equipped his men as though they were soldiers, with bulletproof vests, hand grenades, AK‑47s, and night-vision goggles. “He never asked his employees to do anything he wouldn’t do himself,” a former AFO lieutenant who worked closely with Barron told me. He ordered his men to keep their mustaches neatly trimmed and to dress in Dockers and polo shirts. This would be a refined gang of assassins. They would kill for drugs, but never use them. The AFO built detox holding cells where any enforcer caught using would be stashed for a month. The sentence for a second offense was 60 days. A third meant death.
Top AFO enforcer David Barron trained his assassins like soldiers. DEA agents found caches of weapons in an underground training facility.

In May 1993, Ramón summoned Barron and a dozen of his men to accompany him to Guadalajara to kill Chapo Guzmán. They searched the city but found no sign of Guzmán, and after a week they prepared to return to Tijuana. While Ramón passed through security for his flight home, five carloads of his soldiers, including Barron, sat in an airport parking lot. Suddenly, at about 3:30 p.m., an AFO lookout spotted Guzmán, right there at the airport. He and his bodyguards were getting out of a green Buick near the main entrance.

Barron grabbed a rifle. Guzmán’s bodyguards saw him. A firefight began. The AFO hit squad fired its AK‑47s indiscriminately. Bullets flew toward the terminal and struck a woman and her nephew while they were crossing the street. Barron and two other AFO shooters poured bullets into a white Grand Marquis — they knew Guzmán owned one — killing the driver and a passenger. Guzmán himself commandeered a taxi and sped away.

When the shooting ended, several AFO members tossed their guns in garbage cans and ran for Aeromexico Flight 110 to Tijuana. It was being held because of the commotion outside. Nonetheless, a group of anxious, sweaty men were allowed to board. Ramón was already in first class, spitting on the floor — a nervous tic. When the flight took off, seven people — five bystanders and two of Guzmán’s bodyguards — lay dead or dying in the parking lot.

In the passenger seat of the white Grand Marquis, a plump man dressed in black slumped to his side, a cross dangling from his chest. He had been hit 14 times. He was Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, the second-highest-ranking official in Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church. The brothers knew right away that the cartel had made an Escobar-size mistake. “The AFO instantly went from folk heroes to villains,” a former lieutenant in the cartel told me.

Guzmán fled to Guatemala, where he was arrested two weeks later. He was sent to the Puente Grande maximum-security prison in Mexico, where everyone from guards to cooks ended up on his payroll. He occupied himself with chess, basketball, sappy movies, and the bands he brought in to perform — not to mention enough women that he needed regular Viagra shipments. And, of course, he continued to run his business.

The Arellano brothers managed to avoid arrest by sending $10 million and two gang members willing to give false confessions to the director of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, according to a former cartel member. In return, the police bought the brothers time by raiding houses that the cartel had already abandoned. Meanwhile, the AFO scattered. David Barron headed south, to Rosarito, Mexico, while his men went home to California. Benjamín Arellano also retreated deeper into Mexico. Eduardo stayed in Tijuana, but disappeared from sight. Ramón and Javier escaped to Los Angeles. They landed in tony, seaside Santa Monica, far from their hard-won turf.
(Tim McDonagh, special to ProPublica)

The cardinal’s murder made the AFO case a U.S. priority. Jack Robertson helped create an AFO task force consisting of agents from the DEA and the FBI as well as Customs, Immigration, the IRS, the U.S. Marshals, and the Justice Department. The task force arrested some of Barron’s men as they fled Mexico and interrogated them. Slowly, it gained a keyhole view into the cartel. Then one day in 1995, a clean-cut young man with no criminal history walked through the door of the DEA office in San Diego and widened the keyhole into a porthole.

Beaten down by stress, the young man, an American whom agents dubbed “Joe Camel” for his prolific smoking, was ready to spill AFO secrets. Pickup trucks with false beds were being delivered to his father-in-law’s home in La Jolla, each loaded with a ton of cocaine. Trucks were parked in the garage, in front of the house, and around the block. He had, he confessed, been driving cocaine across America. The cartel used his father-in-law, a man in his 70s whom agents nicknamed “Grandpa,” to ferry drugs through border checkpoints, because he seemed harmless and was never searched. Grandpa explained how cartel smuggling worked and put names with faces and job descriptions. He also gave agents a piece of information that had eluded them: the identity of the Arellano brothers’ top lieutenant in Tijuana, Arturo “Kitty” Páez Martínez.

Agents were confused when they tried to check Grandpa’s criminal background, until he revealed that he had been living under an assumed identity provided by the U.S. government. Thirty-four years earlier, he had been caught participating in a heroin-smuggling ring — part of the events later fictionalized in the movie The French Connection. He then became an informant and entered witness protection, only to leave the program and return to drug trafficking. Now, for the second time, Grandpa would become a government source, allowing the DEA to mount surveillance equipment at his home. And again his crimes would pay off. He and his son-in-law were paid $100,000 for their cooperation.

The new prominence of the AFO case meant not merely increased manpower but millions of extra dollars for operations and paid informants. One AFO operative in California signed on as an informant just a day before cartel members riddled him with bullets. The man survived, and acquired the nickname “Swiss Cheese.” After the shooting, he started collecting workers’ compensation — criminal informants who are injured in the line of duty can qualify — in addition to his informant’s pay. He also received $1.5 million from the State Department for information that helped the DEA apprehend an AFO lieutenant.

Steve Duncan, a San Diego–based special agent in the California Department of Justice, says that after he and other agents made arrests, federal prosecutors would cut deals and let enforcers and traffickers go free in single-minded pursuit of the cartel’s top leaders. “The prosecutors never wanted to go sideways or down [the cartel hierarchy], just up,” Duncan told me. “So a lot of gang members who murdered people, they never got prosecuted. Some guys would give us what they wanted to give us and get off.”
Steve Duncan, a special agent with the California Department of Justice, keeps a file labelled “Unfinished Business” that contains testimony against AFO hitmen who were never punished. (Joe Pugliese, special to ProPublica)

None of the agents liked watching criminals walk away free — and in some cases flush with cash. But they could live with that bargain if it meant the task force would eventually work its way to the top. Bringing the Arellano brothers to justice would make it all worthwhile.

After the killing of Cardinal Posadas, Ramón Arellano had to lie low. In his absence, the rank and file got sloppy. From California, Ramón sent David Barron to kill a man in Playas de Tijuana named Ronnie Svoboda, who had had the temerity to hang out with a woman Ramón was involved with. When Svoboda’s sisters, Ivonne and Luz, told the police, Ramón sent a crew to San Diego to kill them, too.

One of the hit men, who went by the name Martín Corona, watched the sisters get into their car. Ivonne was tall and lithe and exceptionally beautiful. She had spent the previous year in Paris as a model. Corona approached the driver-side window and saw her lock the door. His first bullet shattered the window. Three hit Ivonne in the head. One hit Luz, who was pregnant. As Ivonne tipped to her side, Luz’s 9-year-old daughter — who would see Corona again a month later when he and Barron arrived at her house to bludgeon her father to death — started screaming in the backseat. Corona ran, and both women survived. Sloppy.

One bungle followed another. The AFO somehow managed to procure a six-foot-long military-grade bomb for $150,000 in San Diego. In 1994, two low-level enforcers drove it to the El Camino Real Hotel, in Guadalajara, where they were supposed to use it to vaporize the building, and several of El Chapo’s associates along with it. But the bomb detonated prematurely, killing the AFO enforcers instead.

The next year, the cartel landed a commercial jet loaded with about 10 tons of cocaine on a makeshift airstrip in the desert near La Paz, Mexico. When the plane hit the sand, it sank in and got stuck. AFO workmen unloaded the coke into trucks, then tried to blow up the plane. That didn’t work, and a couple of men died. So they brought in construction equipment and tried to bury the plane in the sand instead. They managed to cover only part of it before drawing the attention of the Mexican military.
The AFO landed a commercial airliner with 10 tons of coke in the desert, but the plane hit the sand and got stuck. AFO operatives attempted to blow up the plane, and then to bury it.

All this time, Ramón was hiding out in L.A., growing his belly and his hair — now shoulder-length and dyed blond. One day in Hollywood, while hanging out in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater, wearing a Nike cap, sunglasses, and a Michael Jordan jersey, he was approached by Rupert Jee, a New York City deli owner and a regular on the Late Show With David Letterman, who was taping a man-on-the-street segment. “No entiendo,” Ramón said, as he tried to shoo Jee away. In the segment, Jee draws attention to Ramón by yelling, “Hey, everybody, it’s Michael Jordan! Look!” to the great delight of the studio audience. Slung over Ramón’s shoulder was a black satchel in which he typically concealed a gun.

In September 1997, Ramón was added to the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list. He fled back to Mexico, and the Arellano brothers reassembled. They were still dominant in Tijuana, but the Sinaloa cartel was gaining strength. And they could no longer operate as openly as they once had. Their unhinged violence, in fact, began to backfire.

Two months after Ramón made the most-wanted list, he sent Barron to kill a Tijuana journalist named Jesús Blancornelas, who had dedicated his life to exposing the AFO and other cartels. Among the articles that had drawn the Arellanos’ ire, his magazine, Zeta, had published an open letter to Ramón written by a woman whose two sons “served you in a time of need” and had then, she maintained, been murdered. The letter fingered AFO figures by name.

Barron’s hit squad intercepted the journalist’s car en route to his office in Tijuana and unleashed a fusillade. Blancornelas’s bodyguard was killed, and Blancornelas himself was hit four times. As Barron approached for the coup de grâce, he suddenly dropped. A fellow assassin’s bullet had flown clear of the car, struck a metal post, and ricocheted through Barron’s eye, killing him instantly. Police found him on the sidewalk, a bright-red stream oozing from his eye socket, his body collapsed on his shotgun stock, which propped him up as if he had decided to take a nap mid-killing. Blancornelas survived.
Barron assembled a hit squad meant to take out El Chapo. But the group killed a Roman Catholic cardinal instead.

Months later, an informant told the FBI and the DEA the location of Eduardo Arellano’s new house in Tijuana. A corrupt Mexican police chief tipped Eduardo off and he fled with his wife, Sonia, and their two children to a safe house that wasn’t quite ready to be lived in. Sonia had to use a propane tank for cooking.

One morning, Sonia came downstairs to make breakfast. The tank had been left open all night by accident, dribbling gas into the house. As soon as she struck a match, the house exploded. The baby in her arms went flying and was critically injured. Sonia’s patrician face melted into a welter of raw flesh and blisters.

Eduardo sent Sonia and the baby north for treatment, to the burn center at the University of California at San Diego. Eduardo himself didn’t risk crossing the border. He was right to stay behind: At the burn center, Sonia met Dr. Dave Harrison, who happened to be Dave Herrod in disguise, hoping to glean information about Eduardo through small talk with his wife. By now Herrod felt like he knew the Arellanos. It was surreal, after all this time, to actually talk with one of them.

Officially, only John Hansbrough, the head of the burn center, and two other senior hospital staff members knew that Herrod was posing as Dr. Harrison. But Herrod suspects the nurses noticed that his arrival coincided with that of the special guests from Tijuana — and that he knew shockingly little about burn physiology. He occasionally followed Hansbrough into surgery but mostly stayed out of the way, and he had to offer excuses every time he was called to cover a night shift. On Christmas Eve 1998, Herrod had the bizarre experience of wheeling Eduardo’s wife out of the hospital and watching her drive away with her parents and a lawyer.

The baby, Eduardo Jr., later died, and Sonia blamed her husband for the accident. According to witnesses, she wished death upon the children of his assistant, because he hadn’t gotten a stove ready. Eduardo’s brothers were incensed by her behavior and feared she might go to the police. In October 2000, Benjamín ordered Sonia killed. Javier gave instructions for the murder. Sonia was strangled with a tourniquet and her body was dissolved into pozole. Benjamín told Javier that, should Eduardo ever ask what happened to Sonia, he was to be told that she had fled to the U.S. But Eduardo never asked.

For a group that counted family as perhaps its lone object of loyalty, the murder of one brother’s wife was an act of supreme desperation. The Arellanos couldn’t bribe their way out of everything anymore — they could only kill their way out. When Sonia’s mother and sister began asking questions, Benjamín ordered them killed too. The women were pulled from their car at a busy intersection and never seen again.

On January 18, 2001, Mexico’s highest court handed down a decision that gave the DEA new leverage: Mexican citizens could now be extradited to the United States to face drug charges. Chapo Guzmán escaped from maximum-security prison the next day, reportedly wheeled out of the facility in a laundry cart.

Kitty Páez, the AFO’s top lieutenant in Tijuana, had been arrested several years earlier and now had the honor of becoming the first Mexican drug trafficker extradited to the U.S. He was charged with engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, which carried a mandatory life sentence for cartel leaders. Páez was the highest-ranking AFO member authorities had ever captured, one rung down from the brothers.

Herrod had by now taken over for Jack Robertson as the lead AFO case agent. He met with U.S. prosecutors when Páez was first arrested in Mexico and says they swore that if they ever got their hands on Páez, they would offer a plea deal only if he agreed to provide information about the brothers. Once extradition occurred, however, Herrod says all that tough talk melted away. He claims that, faced with a potentially long and difficult prosecution, senior officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office began discussing a 30-year plea deal with no requirement to cooperate.

As far as Herrod was concerned, any deal that didn’t compel Páez to talk about the Arellano brothers would be a betrayal of the strategy that had driven the case. After all the small fry — the drivers and smugglers and enforcers — the task force had at last gotten someone who could confirm the brothers’ orders to kill and kidnap. Why wouldn’t prosecutors do everything they could to get information out of him?

Herrod told me that high-level officials from the DEA and the Justice Department met several times to discuss requiring Páez to cooperate or else face trial. He asked Laura Duffy, a federal prosecutor who spent a decade on the AFO case, to hold off on making a final decision until investigators and prosecutors could discuss the matter as a group one more time — but to no avail. Word came down that very same day: The U.S. Attorney’s Office had reached a plea agreement with Páez. He would serve 30 years and would not have to provide any information or even acknowledge his affiliation with the Arellanos. (Duffy told me that she was under no pressure to resolve the case quickly, and that she’d believed Páez would cooperate eventually.) Disgusted, Herrod and his fellow agents realized they would have to go after the brothers some other way.

In the summer of 2001, Herrod discovered that Ramón’s wife, Evangelina, was renting a house somewhere in the expensive Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. There was a brazenness about it that taunted him. Herrod felt a surge in his chest when he pulled up to a house that had a red Dodge Durango with Tijuana tags sitting outside. His team got a Durango skeleton key from Dodge, stole the car for a few hours while Evangelina was out, installed tracking devices, and then returned it to the same spot.

That fall, the agents learned that Ramón and Evangelina’s 12-year-old daughter, Paulina, was attending an elite private school known for educating the children of Hollywood celebrities. In a stroke of luck, a DEA employee happened to have a friend who worked at the school. Agents encouraged the friend to make small talk with Paulina, and learned that she would be ringing in 2002 at Lake Tahoe. The Arellanos always got together for holidays, and Herrod had heard that Ramón liked Tahoe. Of course he would travel from Tijuana to celebrate with his family.

The DEA rented cabins at Lake Tahoe, one just 50 feet from where the family would be staying, and sent tech specialists to set up cameras inside and outside the Arellanos’ rental. They finished and rushed out of the house moments before Evangelina arrived, sans Ramón. It was a few days before New Year’s, and a cadre of agents was on 24-hour surveillance. When Evangelina and Paulina went skiing, agents traced sinuous arcs down the mountain behind them.

By New Year’s Eve, there was still no sign of Ramón. But when the family emerged from the house that evening, Paulina was carrying a pillow and suitcase. She’s going to spend the night with her father, the agents thought. The family piled into the Durango — the one agents had equipped with trackers — and drove through the snow, a caravan of federal agents in their wake. On the hunch that the Arellanos would join the thousands of revelers at Caesars Tahoe, as they had in years past, agents were sent ahead to coordinate with security at the casino so that cameras could be used to track the family. Herrod recalls the adrenaline of the hunt. “It’s beyond belief how pumped we were. To follow a family in a crowd of 100,000 people is frickin’ nuts,” he told me. “It was the very best surveillance we’ve ever done.”
DEA agents watched as Ramón Arellano Félix’s wife picked up a phone at Caesar’s Tahoe on New Year’s. They hoped to catch Ramón, the most ruthless of the brothers, but he never showed.

The family walked to an empty restaurant in the back of the casino, away from the celebration, and sat. Not eating, barely talking, just waiting. The agents waited too, for one of the world’s most wanted men to come and scoop up his daughter with her pillow and suitcase. A raid team stood by with keys that could open any room in the hotel.

The family sat. And sat. The ball dropped in Times Square. Then midnight in Tahoe came and went. Agents who had been sitting bolt upright slumped in their seats. Around 1 a.m., Paulina, her grandparents, and her nanny got up and headed back to the cabin. Evangelina walked into the casino and picked up a phone. Agents watched on security cameras as she gesticulated in argument with someone on the other end. Ramón never showed.

The task force, however, was about to catch a massive break. On the morning of February 10, 2002, police in the vacation town of Mazatlán, Mexico, pulled over a white Volkswagen Beetle. Ramón was patrolling with two of his men, hoping to catch one of the Sinaloa cartel’s kingpins out in the open during Carnival. Ramón was carrying a high-ranking Mexican federal-law-enforcement credential that should have allowed him to talk his way out of any trouble with the police. But something went wrong.

A DEA informant later claimed that Ramón had been given false intelligence by a Sinaloa operative and lured to Mazatlán, where police friendly to Guzmán were waiting. But according to another informant, Ramón’s bodyguard simply misunderstood Ramón’s command to stay cool when they were pulled over. He got out of the car and started firing, and the traffic stop turned into a shoot-out. Ramón and a police officer ended up an arm’s length apart, guns drawn, shouting their law-enforcement credentials at each other.

Witnesses reported that the officer yelled for Ramón to get on his knees, and that Ramón began to comply. The precise details of what followed are unclear. But it seems that in an attempt to take the officer by surprise, Ramón fired while bending down. The officer returned fire. One point-blank bullet to the heart from Ramón’s gun killed the officer, and one point-blank bullet to the head from the officer’s gun killed Ramón. The picture in the local paper the next day showed two bodies on the ground, close enough to touch each other. Ramón had shaved his head, and because he’d had his stomach stapled he looked at least 50 pounds lighter than when he’d appeared on Letterman. It took a week for the DEA and the FBI to confirm that the dead man was indeed Ramón.

Ramón had often promised to kill the entire families of anyone who cooperated with the authorities. But now he was gone. Kitty Páez’s lawyer contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office. With Ramón out of the picture, Páez wanted to discuss cooperating in return for a reduction of his 30-year sentence. Soon, Herrod was spending eight to 10 hours a day talking with him. Páez was a veritable AFO search engine, ready with an answer to any question, from names of lieutenants to smuggling tricks to the structure of the cartel hierarchy.

Mexican authorities were emboldened as well. A month after Ramón’s death, the Mexican military arrested Benjamín Arellano, the 49-year-old cartel mastermind, in a house in Puebla, southeast of Mexico City. Javier — at 32, the youngest of the brothers — was left to lead the cartel.

As the AFO teetered, a new informant emerged: Chapo Guzmán’s attorney and confidante Humberto Loya Castro. He met with agents in restaurants and hotels in Mexico City and Tijuana. He wore elegant suits, carried Montblanc pens worth thousands, and wielded a politesse incongruous with the world of drug smuggling. Even more unusual, he came with the blessing of his boss. “I met with my compadre,” he might say, meaning Guzmán. “He sends his regards.” Herrod told me there were obvious downsides to working with Loya. But El Chapo’s attorney offered precious information. His tips, for example, led to the capture of the AFO’s “chef,” the man who had developed the recipe for pozole. He also saved the lives of several Mexican officials by alerting the DEA that they were going to be murdered.
(Tim McDonagh, special to ProPublica)

Loya was a fugitive, so agents needed special permission to speak with him. He claimed he was cooperating in the hope of having U.S. charges dismissed — he had been indicted in San Diego, along with Guzmán, back in 1995, for drug trafficking. But he continued to cooperate after the charges were dropped. By passing tips to DEA agents, he was able to undermine the AFO and therefore help his boss. As an agent who declined to be identified put it: “We dismantled a rival cartel because of information that [Guzmán, through Loya] was able to provide. It definitely helped Sinaloa stay in power.” At one point, agents heard through intermediaries that Guzmán himself was interested in becoming an informant, but top DEA officials wouldn’t grant the same special permission that had been extended for his attorney.

Meanwhile, the DEA had set up a hotline and put up posters at border crossings promising up to $5 million per brother for information that led to their arrests. Most of the tips were nonsense. But late on Christmas Eve in 2003, a call came from a man claiming to be part of the security detail for the AFO. Agents dubbed him “Boom Boom.” He wanted out of the cartel, and was willing to give up AFO radio frequencies. The DEA started listening, nearly around the clock. For the first time, they could overhear a drug cartel operating in real time. It took a while to get used to the coded language. A reference to an “X-35 with shorts, pantalones, and frijoles” meant an armored car with handguns, rifles, and bullets. The office of Zeta, the investigative magazine, was “X-24.” Cocaine was “varnish.” Mexican federal police officers were “Yolandas.” Over two years, the DEA recorded the AFO planning 1,500 kidnappings and killings, including those of at least a dozen Mexican police and government officials. Agents had to listen — in real time — to people being tortured; they were often helpless to do anything about it. “Cover his mouth,” one man said in Spanish, chortling, after a long scream. “Cover his mouth! Cover his mouth!”

Among the half million AFO radio transmissions that the DEA recorded was one that led them to intercept a phone conversation about the purchase of a 43-foot yacht. This was the information that gave rise to Operation Shadow Game and the 2006 capture of Javier Arellano on the high seas, as the Dock Holiday chased marlin into international waters. Once in port in San Diego, Javier was loaded into a bulletproof Suburban and driven five minutes through closed streets, under the gaze of government snipers, to a federal detention center. His arrest was the cartel’s death knell. Soon after, AFO lieutenants began defecting to rival cartels or splitting into their own factions.

In 2008, one of Eduardo’s confidantes gave him up — he was the last brother who was alive and free and had any experience leading the cartel. He was captured in his home in Tijuana. The eldest brother, Francisco, who’d helped get the cartel started but had been in prison during most of his brothers’ reign, was the last to meet his fate. He was at his 64th-birthday party in Cabo San Lucas in 2013 when a man dressed as a clown walked in, shot him dead, and walked out.

Two decades after Jack Robertson opened the case against them, every one of the Arellano brothers who had helped run the cartel was either dead or behind bars. Benjamín and Eduardo were extradited to the United States. It was a crowning achievement for the DEA, complete with promotions, political appointments, and chest-puffing press releases.
Retired DEA Special Agent Jack Robertson officially opened the DEA’s case against the AFO in 1992. His boss thought the investigation would last six months. (Joe Pugliese, special to ProPublica)

“It was an audacious goal to take this cartel down, and I’m extremely satisfied with the outcome,” Laura Duffy, the prosecutor, said in a press release after Eduardo was put behind bars. She urged “others who aspire to take their place to take note.” In 2010, Duffy was appointed by President Obama as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California.

Michele Leonhart, Robertson’s boss in San Diego when he opened the AFO case, became the head of the DEA in 2007. The next year she said that Eduardo’s arrest “closes the book on this once powerful and brutally violent criminal band of brothers … He will now face justice for the misery and destruction he caused.”

For Eduardo, facing justice meant accepting a plea deal: 15 years, with no cooperation.

“Fifteen years?,” Herrod says. “I worked on the case longer than that.” Assuming good behavior, Eduardo will be out less than six years from now. Kitty Páez, whom the government spent four years working to extradite, served nine years and is now free. Benjamín, who led the cartel in its heyday, agreed to a plea deal of 25 years and a $100 million fine, with no cooperation. “That’s nothing,” a former AFO lieutenant told me, pointing out that he was probably responsible for more deaths than the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks. “And $100 million isn’t a lot when you have a billion dollars buried somewhere.” To put Benjamín’s sentence into context, in 1991 the Supreme Court upheld a life sentence without parole for a Michigan man convicted of possession of one and a half pounds of cocaine. The Arellano brothers were shipping up to 40,000 pounds of cocaine each month to just one distributor in Los Angeles. In court, the federal judge who sentenced Benjamín lamented the constraints of the plea deal. “If I had it in my power,” he said, “I would impose a longer sentence.”

Duffy told me that the case strategy — piecing together a full portrait of the cartel, rather than just aiming to get the brothers for a specific recent act — created problems for the prosecution. “We wouldn’t repeat that going forward,” she said. By the time some witnesses were needed to testify, they had returned to crime, destroying their courtroom credibility. “Would it have been ideal to have captured Eduardo closer in time to when we developed the case against him? Yes,” she said. “I think he would’ve received a more severe sentence.” Duffy also pointed out that, considering Benjamín was 60 at the time of his sentencing, 25 years effectively amounted to life in prison. “I felt, of course, conflicted,” she said.

Only Javier faced the death penalty. Because he was picked up in international waters, the U.S. government didn’t have to bargain over capital punishment with Mexico, which has no death penalty. Javier admitted to committing one murder and ordering many others, including killings of government informants and law-enforcement officers. He took a plea deal and was sentenced to life in prison and had to forfeit $50 million. After his sentencing, Javier began to cooperate, and court records show that his sentence was recently reduced to 23.5 years. He will be a free man by age 60 at the latest.

Some of the others involved made out like, well, bandits. Ramón’s wife and other members of the family continued to live off the AFO’s drug money. According to Steve Duncan, David Barron’s brother-in-law — a man agents called “The Mailman” because he worked for the U.S. Postal Service — confessed to helping smuggle at least $200,000 back to the U.S. after Barron was killed. The Mailman went on to work for, of all places, U.S. Border Patrol. Boom Boom, the enforcer who had passed along the AFO radio frequencies, was paid $4 million. More than 100 people — AFO operatives and their family members — were relocated to the U.S. Some were paid for their cooperation and given housing, driver’s licenses, and work permits.

Herrod, Robertson, Duncan, and agents who spoke on the condition of anonymity say that payments and plea deals for informants are necessary evils in investigating organized crime, smaller sacrifices toward a greater good. But as one agent who spent years on the case told me, “There are more drugs coming across the border than ever.” While the cocaine trade has plunged in the United States in recent years, the heroin and methamphetamine markets have exploded. The amount of meth seized at the southwest border has more than quintupled since 2008, and the amount of heroin has more than tripled. Asked what could have been done better, the agent said, “I don’t know. I wish I’d gone to law school instead.” (The DEA’s press office did not answer specific questions for this article. A longtime senior DEA official told me: “We’re not policy makers, we’re cops. We leave the policies up to other people.”)

As the Sinaloa and other cartels have spread, they’ve brought killing in all directions. Moving south, according to a United Nations World Drug Report, they’ve partnered with organized-crime groups in Honduras, where homicides nearly tripled from 2005 to 2011. To the north, “just look at Chicago,” Herrod told me. That city’s homicide rate was up 20 percent in 2015 from the previous year, a trend that DEA officials attribute to the heroin trade, a burgeoning segment of the Sinaloa cartel’s entrepreneurial portfolio. In January, two Chicago brothers acting as wholesale distributors for billions of dollars’ worth of Sinaloa drugs were sent to federal prison. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the brothers were part of a network that shuttles drugs to a raft of cities that saw homicide spikes in 2015, including Washington, D.C., and Milwaukee, where the murder rates were up 58 percent and 70 percent, respectively, as of November.
Herrod and Duncan, who worked together on a task force pursuing the AFO cartel, are haunted by the investigation’s loose ends. (Joe Pugliese, special to ProPublica)

David Shirk, the director of the University of San Diego’s Justice in Mexico program, tracks violence in Tijuana — which has seen a recent increase in homicides, including beheadings — and has concluded that the killings ebb and flow without relation to law-enforcement efforts. “We’re all up here in a little boat,” he told me, “and we see the bodies floating up, and we see blood, but we have little idea of what’s happening below. We just know there are sharks.”

In 2011, a children’s-rights group in Mexico estimated that at least 1,000 minors had been killed in cartel violence over a four-year period; the actual number is likely higher. That same year, Michele Leonhart said: “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs.” The cartels, she added, “are like caged animals, attacking one another.” By that measure, the war may be going even better now. (Leonhart retired from the DEA last spring after agents were caught in a prostitution scandal. She could not be reached for comment.)

Herrod still follows reports of beheadings and shootings on the Internet. In September, a Web site called Borderland Beat posted pictures of banners going up bearing the initials C.A.F. — Cártel Arellano Félix — marking territory that, the banners declared, would be reclaimed with blood.

Steve Duncan takes solace in having put violent criminals behind bars. But he’s angry that prosecutors didn’t go after lower-level AFO enforcers he’s convinced they could have gotten on murder charges. Some of them went on to kill again. In a file labeled “Unfinished Business,” he keeps reams of testimony that the government assembled against AFO hit men who were never punished. “Frustration and outrage are two emotions that will haunt us (law enforcement) to our deaths,” he wrote in a memo.

Duncan even runs into some of the unpunished men in his own neighborhood. He lives near San Diego’s new central library, a landmark with a soaring steel dome. A few years ago, during the final stages of construction, he would pass by the building and see a man nicknamed “Roach” — a former AFO enforcer — wearing an orange vest and lounging in the shade, on his lunch break from helping to build the library. Duncan had gathered information implicating Roach in three murders and four attempted murders, none of which he was ever prosecuted for.

Martín Corona, who participated in the bludgeoning death of Ronnie Svoboda’s brother-in-law and shot Ronnie’s two sisters, confessed to Duncan his involvement in nine other murders or attempted murders. He was never charged for those crimes. Corona grew up in California, the stepson of a marine, and says there’s no excuse for what he did. “That one haunted me,” Corona told me, recalling how Ronnie Svoboda’s 9-year-old niece had watched while he shot her mother and aunt. He was convicted of one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and served 13 years. Herrod and Duncan say he’s the only former AFO member they’ve met who is truly remorseful. Today, Corona makes a living as an electrician.

Duncan has also kept in touch with a man named Jesús Zamora Salas, a member of David Barron’s Logan Heights crew. He was jailed in Mexico in the ’90s and then released; he later moved back to the U.S. and cut his ties with the cartel. In 1998, he wrote to Duncan asking him to act as a reference for a law-enforcement job in Georgia. Duncan explained that his criminal past would prohibit such work. He was surprised later that year to get a Christmas card in which Zamora described his new job as a guard in a Georgia prison. In 2001, Zamora called Duncan to let him know that he had moved up in the corrections world: He was now a guard at a federal prison. In 2012, Duncan got another update. “Some local law enforcement from around Vandenberg Air Force Base called me about him and told me he was working security there and had security clearance,” Duncan told me.

Jack Robertson, who launched the AFO investigation, went on to be a highly decorated agent — retired agents once voted him “agent of the year,” out of 5,000 at the DEA. But he was frustrated that his bosses and the U.S. Attorney’s Office stopped pursuing the last vestiges of the AFO. Among the suspects never pursued was a man who later became one of the top five figures in the Sinaloa cartel. Robertson was also angry that, in many cases, the punishment didn’t match the crime. He considered the sentence one nonviolent AFO messenger got — 20 years, more than Eduardo — so disproportionate that he referred the man’s case to the Medill Justice Project at Northwestern University, which investigates miscarriages of justice. “To me it’s like prosecuting the guy at Enron who delivers the mail while the top executives go free,” he told me. Robertson left the agency in 2011 to become the chief investigative officer at the World Anti-Doping Agency, where he helped expose Lance Armstrong’s elaborate use of performance-enhancing drugs.

As for Herrod, though he still works for the DEA, his clashes with prosecutors over plea deals eventually got him removed from the AFO case. He lives in a quiet neighborhood of San Diego speckled with eucalyptus trees. In a small upstairs bedroom, near a schedule for his daughter’s softball team, he keeps mementos: a cocktail napkin from the Dock Holiday, monogrammed with a blue sketch of the yacht. A picture of himself, smiling in jeans and a Michigan State sweatshirt, bending down in what looks like a cave. It could be any tourist’s vacation shot, until you see the cables running along the walls, and the pinpricks of light in the distance. It’s Herrod in 1993, crouching in the first of El Chapo’s smuggling tunnels ever discovered. In a closet, Herrod keeps a commendation from the Department of Homeland Security for the DEA’s work on Operation Shadow Game. The AFO case was the biggest the San Diego division had ever seen, and the commendation once hung proudly on the office wall, but eventually Herrod had to save it from the trash.
In 1993, Herrod got a close look at the first of El Chapo’s smuggling tunnels. (Courtesy of David Herrod)

Herrod’s bookshelves are packed with pristine hardbacks, because mixing in a paperback would spoil the clean look. He removes the dust jacket before reading a book, so as not to leave wrinkles, then replaces it when he is done. Herrod does not like loose ends. Every unfinished detail, every too-short sentence or wasted lead, keeps him awake. One recent afternoon, he gazed into the middle distance as he repeated aloud several times, clearly to himself, that he had told Eye in the Sky Joe Palacios that everything would be okay.

“At the end of the day,” Herrod said, “before you go to sleep, the big moral question I ask myself: ‘Everything you’ve done, was it really all worth it?’ And you never get an answer.”

Or maybe you do, and it’s just not the one you want to hear.

Production by Emily Martinez and Rob Weychert.
author photo

David Epstein covers sports science, including the use of performance-enhancing drugs. He is the author of the 2013 book “The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance” and a former senior writer at Sports Illustrated.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/01/drug-enforcement-agency-mexico-drug-cartel/419100/

---------------------------------------------

There’s a sinister theory for why the Mexican government can’t take down fugitive drug lord 'El Chapo' Guzmán

Christopher Woody

Dec. 21, 2015, 5:32 PM
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/mexican-government-sinaloa-cartel-cooperation-2015-12
http://www.businessinsider.com/mexican-government-sinaloa-cartel-cooperation

777man

(374 posts)

343. Danilo Blandon Smiled when asked if he had been tipped off about the 1986 raid - Mark Levin

Reply to 777man (Reply #342)

Fri Jan 1, 2016, 09:13 PM

Jan 2016

Last edited Sat Jan 2, 2016, 06:31 AM - Edit history (2)

Film Maker MARK LEVIN tracked down Danilo Blandon in Nicaragua Last year. BLANDON declined to speak on camera, He DID Smile when asked if he had been tipped off about the 1986 raid on his ring's 13 stash houses.

MARK LEVIN INTERVIEW
Fast forward to 4:40 in the video

============

'Freeway' Rick Ross: The Jim Norton Show (Part 1)

&list=PLaeeRO9KQQyB1-qnq2foJsrAHs7r6cN3R

Retired DEA Agent Mike Levin on the Montel Williams Show

The head of the DEA Robert Bonner, now a Federal Judge, said the CIA smuggled drugs. Thanks to Mike Levine (DEA Retired) for this video.

A Central Intelligence Agency anti-drug program in Venezuela shipped a ton of nearly pure cocaine to the United States in 1990, Government officials said today.
In the late 1990, Customs agents in Miami seized a ton of pure cocaine from Venezuela. To their surprise, a Venezuelan undercover agent said the CIA had approved the delivery. DEA Administrator Robert Bonner ordered an investigation and discovered that the CIA had, in fact, shipped the load from its warehouse in Venezuela.
The “controlled deliveries” were managed by CIA officer Mark McFarlin, a veteran of Reagan’s terror campaign in El Salvador.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/20/world/anti-drug-unit-of-cia-sent-ton-of-cocaine-to-us-in-1990.html
______________

Ron Paul August 26, 1988

https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fthefilmarchived.blogspot.com%2F2010%2F09%2Fron-paul-on-running-for-us-presid&redir_token=MtOio5HRUorvx9cX0dUr0c-27nl8MTQ1MTc4NDI5NEAxNDUxNjk3ODk0

www.thefilmarchive.org

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BROWN UNIVERSITY - UNDERSTANDING THE IRAN CONTRA AFFAIR WEBSITE
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/profiles.php
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/profile-fiers.php

777man

(374 posts)

344. Freeway: Crack in the System VIEW IT FREE ONLINE

Reply to 777man (Reply #343)

Fri Jan 1, 2016, 09:55 PM

Jan 2016

Last edited Sun Jan 3, 2016, 02:48 PM - Edit history (1)

Freeway: Crack in the System - 2 parts that aired on Al Jazeera
https://kat.cr/
After previewing this film, please purchase a copy at www.amazon.com

KTM SCRIPT
http://www.slideshare.net/maorgillerman1/kill-the-messenger-by-peter-landesman-for-educational-purposes

777man

(374 posts)

345. UNDERSTANDING THE IRAN CONTRA AFFAIR WEBSITE

Reply to 777man (Reply #344)

Sat Jan 2, 2016, 06:43 AM

Jan 2016

UNDERSTANDING THE IRAN CONTRA AFFAIR WEBSITE
https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/thehearings.php
About the Project

This project evolved from an applied ethics and public policy course at Brown University called Good Government. The course examines several concepts that have been promoted in the name of good government, including integrity, accountability, and transparency. The course also examines Watergate and subsequent political scandals.

How to cover the Iran-Contra Affairs has posed a serious challenge. The most comprehensive book on the matter is Theodore Draper’s A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs. But the book is 700 pages long and it is out of print. There is not a single website devoted exclusively to this subject like there is for Watergate. This website is intended to fill that gap and provide an educational resource with extensive materials about the issue.

We were fortunate that C-SPAN starting posting digitized video from the Iran-Contra hearings in the spring of 2010. We selected and have embedded over 100 clips from the hearings. We also gratefully acknowledge the National Security Archive and ProQuest LLC for permission to make a host of documents freely available on this site.

This project was supported by an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA) from the Dean of the College and by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. The project was supervised by Professor Ross Cheit. The students who conducted the research and created the content were: Sara Chimene-Weiss, Sol Eppel, Jeremy Feigenbaum, Seth Motel, and Ingrid Pangandoyon. The site was designed by Ingrid Pangandoyon.
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/index.html

----------------------------------------
The National Security Archive is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. On March 17, 2000, Long Island University named the National Security Archive as winner of a Special George Polk Award for 1999 for "piercing self-serving veils of government secrecy" and "serving as an essential journalistic resource."

National Security Archive, Suite 701, Gelman Library, The George Washington University, 2130 H Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 20037, Phone: 202/994-7000, Fax: 202/994-7005, [email protected]

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/

777man

(374 posts)

346. Creating a Crime: How the CIA Commandeered the DEA September 11, 2015 by Douglas Valentine

Reply to 777man (Reply #345)

Sat Jan 2, 2016, 06:56 AM

Jan 2016

Creating a Crime: How the CIA Commandeered the DEA
September 11, 2015 by Douglas Valentine
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/11/creating-a-crime-how-the-cia-commandeered-the-dea/

The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with American’s imperial Open Door policy and the belief that the government had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.

Civic institutions, like public education, were required to sanctify this policy, while “security” bureaucracies were established to ensure the citizenry conformed to the state ideology. Secret services, both public and private, were likewise established to promote the expansion of private American economic interests overseas.

It takes a book to explain the economic foundations of the war on drugs, and the reasons behind the regulation of the medical, pharmaceutical and drug manufacturers industries. Suffice it to say that by 1943, the nations of the “free world” were relying on America for their opium derivatives, under the guardianship of Harry Anslinger, the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

Narcotic drugs are a strategic resource, and when Anslinger learned that Peru had built a cocaine factory, he and the Board of Economic Warfare confiscated its product before it could be sold to Germany or Japan. In another instance, Anslinger and his counterpart at the State Department prevented a drug manufacturer in Argentina from selling drugs to Germany.

At the same time, according to Douglas Clark Kinder and William O. Walker III in their article, “Stable Force In a Storm: Harry J. Anslinger and United States Narcotic Policy, 1930-1962,” Anslinger permitted “an American company to ship drugs to Southeast Asia despite receiving intelligence reports that French authorities were permitting opiate smuggling into China and collaborating with Japanese drug traffickers.”

Federal drug law enforcement’s relationship with the espionage establishment matured with the creation of CIA’s predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. Prior to the Second World War, the FBN was the government agency most adept at conducting covert operations at home and abroad. As a result, OSS chief William Donovan asked Anslinger to provide seasoned FBN agents to help organize the OSS and train its agents to work undercover, avoid security forces in hostile nations, manage agent networks, and engage in sabotage and subversion.

The relationship expanded during the war, when FBN executives and agents worked with OSS scientists in domestic “truth drug” experiments involving marijuana. The “extra-legal” nature of the relationship continued after the war: when the CIA decided to test LSD on unsuspecting American citizens, FBN agents were chosen to operate the safehouses where the experiments were conducted.

The relationship was formalized overseas in 1951, when Agent Charlie Siragusa opened an office in Rome and began to develop the FBN’s foreign operations. In the 1950s, FBN agents posted overseas spent half their time doing “favors” for the CIA, such as investigating diversions of strategic materials behind the Iron Curtain. A handful of FBN agents were actually recruited into the CIA while maintaining their FBN credentials as cover.

Officially, FBN agents set limits. Siragusa, for example, claimed to object when the CIA asked him to mount a “controlled delivery” into the U.S. as a way of identifying the American members of a smuggling ring with Communist affiliations.

As Siragusa said, “The FBN could never knowingly allow two pounds of heroin to be delivered into the United States and be pushed to Mafia customers in the New York City area, even if in the long run we could seize a bigger haul.” [For citations to this and other quotations/interviews, as well as documents, please refer to the author’s books, The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs (Verso 2004) and The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics, and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA (TrineDay 2009). See also www.douglasvalentine.com]

And in 1960, when the CIA asked him to recruit assassins from his stable of underworld contacts, Siragusa again claimed to have refused. But drug traffickers, including, most prominently, Santo Trafficante Jr, were soon participating in CIA attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

As the dominant partner in the relationship, the CIA exploited its affinity with the FBN. “Like the CIA,” FBN Agent Robert DeFauw explained, “narcotic agents mount covert operations. We pose as members of the narcotics trade. The big difference is that we were in foreign countries legally, and through our police and intelligence sources, we could check out just about anyone or anything. Not only that, we were operational. So the CIA jumped in our stirrups.”

Jumping in the FBN’s stirrups afforded the CIA deniability, which is turn affords it impunity. To ensure that the CIA’s criminal activities are not revealed, narcotic agents are organized militarily within an inviolable chain of command. Highly indoctrinated, they blindly obey based on a “need to know.” This institutionalized ignorance sustains the illusion of righteousness, in the name of national security, upon which their motivation depends.

As FBN Agent Martin Pera explained, “Most FBN agents were corrupted by the lure of the underworld. They thought they could check their morality at the door – go out and lie, cheat, and steal – then come back and retrieve it. But you can’t. In fact, if you’re successful because you can lie, cheat, and steal, those things become tools you use in the bureaucracy.”

Institutionalized corruption began at headquarters, where FBN executives provided cover for CIA assets engaged in drug trafficking. In 1966, Agent John Evans was assigned as an assistant to enforcement chief John Enright.

“And that’s when I got to see what the CIA was doing,” Evans said. “I saw a report on the Kuomintang saying they were the biggest drug dealers in the world, and that the CIA was underwriting them. Air America was transporting tons of Kuomintang opium.” Evans bristled. “I took the report to Enright. He said, ‘Leave it here. Forget about it.’

“Other things came to my attention,” Evans added, “that proved that the CIA contributed to drug use in America. We were in constant conflict with the CIA because it was hiding its budget in ours, and because CIA people were smuggling drugs into the US. We weren’t allowed to tell, and that fostered corruption in the Bureau.”

Heroin smuggled by “CIA people” into the U.S. was channeled by Mafia distributors primarily to African-American communities. Local narcotic agents then targeted disenfranchised blacks as an easy way of preserving the white ruling class’s privileges.

“We didn’t need a search warrant,” explains New Orleans narcotics officer Clarence Giarusso. “It allowed us to meet our quota. And it was on-going. If I find dope on a black man, I can put him in jail for a few days. He’s got no money for a lawyer and the courts are ready to convict. There’s no expectation on the jury’s part that we have to make a case.

“So rather than go cold turkey, the addict becomes an informant, which means I can make more cases in the neighborhood, which is all we’re interested in. We don’t care about Carlos Marcello or the Mafia. City cops have no interest in who brings dope in. That’s the job of the federal agents.”

The Establishment’s race and class privileges have always been equated with national security, and FBN executives dutifully preserved the social order. Not until 1968, when Civil Rights reforms were imposed upon government bureaucracies, were black FBN agents allowed to become supervisors and manage white agents.

The war on drugs is largely a projection of two things: the racism that has defined America since its inception, and the government policy of allowing political allies to traffic in narcotics. These unstated but official policies reinforce the belief among CIA and drug law enforcement officials that the Bill of Rights is an obstacle to national security.

Blanket immunity from prosecution for turning these policies into practice engenders a belief among bureaucrats that they are above the law, which fosters corruption in other forms. FBN agents, for example, routinely “created a crime” by breaking and entering, planting evidence, using illegal wiretaps, and falsifying reports. They tampered with heroin, transferred it to informants for sale, and even murdered other agents who threatened to expose them.

All of this was secretly known at the highest level of government, and in 1965 the Treasury Department launched a corruption investigation of the FBN. Headed by Andrew Tartaglino, the investigation ended in 1968 with the resignation of 32 agents and the indictment of five. That same year the FBN was reconstructed in the Department of Justice as the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD).

But, as Tartaglino said dejectedly, “The job was only half done.”

First Infestation

Richard Nixon was elected president based on a vow to restore “law and order” to America. To prove that it intended to keep that promise, the White House in 1969 launched Operation Intercept along the Mexican border. This massive “stop and search” operation so badly damaged relations with Mexico, however, that National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger formed the Ad Hoc Committee on Narcotics (the Heroin Committee), to coordinate drug policy and prevent further diplomatic disasters.

The Heroin Committee was composed of cabinet members represented by their deputies. James Ludlum represented CIA Director Richard Helms. A member of the CIA’s Counter-Intelligence staff, Ludlum had been the CIA’s liaison officer to the FBN since 1962.

“When Kissinger set up the Heroin Committee,” Ludlum recalled, “the CIA certainly didn’t take it seriously, because drug control wasn’t part of their mission.”

Indeed, as John Evans noted above, and as the government was aware, the CIA for years had sanctioned the heroin traffic from the Golden Triangle region of Burma, Thailand and Laos into South Vietnam as a way of rewarding top foreign officials for advancing U.S. policies. This reality presented the Nixon White House with a dilemma, given that addiction among U.S. troops in Vietnam was soaring, and that massive amounts of Southeast Asian heroin were being smuggled into the U.S., for use by middle-class white kids on the verge of revolution.

Nixon’s response was to make drug law enforcement part of the CIA’s mission. Although reluctant to betray the CIA’s clients in South Vietnam, Helms told Ludlum: “We’re going to break their rice bowls.”

This betrayal occurred incrementally. Fred Dick, the BNDD agent assigned to Saigon, passed the names of the complicit military officers and politicians to the White House. But, as Dick recalled, “Ambassador [Ellsworth] Bunker called a meeting in Saigon at which CIA Station Chief Ted Shackley appeared and explained that there was ‘a delicate balance.’ What he said, in effect, was that no one was willing to do anything.”

Meanwhile, to protect its global network of drug trafficking assets, the CIA began infiltrating the BNDD and commandeering its internal security, intelligence, and foreign operations branches. This massive reorganization required the placement of CIA officers in influential positions in every federal agency concerned with drug law enforcement.

CIA Officer Paul Van Marx, for example, was assigned as the U.S. Ambassador to France’s assistant on narcotics. From this vantage point, Van Marx ensured that BNDD conspiracy cases against European traffickers did not compromise CIA operations and assets. Van Marx also vetted potential BNDD assets to make sure they were not enemy spies.

The FBN never had more than 16 agents stationed overseas, but Nixon dramatically increased funding for the BNDD and hundreds of agents were posted abroad. The success of these overseas agents soon came to depend on CIA intelligence, as BNDD Director John Ingersoll understood.

BNDD agents immediately felt the impact of the CIA’s involvement in drug law enforcement operations within the United States. Operation Eagle was the flashpoint. Launched in 1970, Eagle targeted anti-Castro Cubans smuggling cocaine from Latin America to the Trafficante organization in Florida. Of the dozens of traffickers arrested in June, many were found to be members of Operation 40, a CIA terror organization active in the U.S., the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico.

The revelation that CIA drug smuggling assets were operating within the U.S. led to the assignment of CIA officers as counterparts to mid-level BNDD enforcement officials, including Latin American division chief Jerry Strickler. Like Van Marks in France, these CIA officers served to protect CIA assets from exposure, while facilitating their recruitment as informants for the BNDD.

Many Cuban exiles arrested in Operation Eagle were indeed hired by the BNDD and sent throughout Latin America. They got “fantastic intelligence,” Strickler noted. But many were secretly serving the CIA and playing a double game.

nixonhelms

Nixon with CIA director Richard Helms.

Second Infestation

By 1970, BNDD Director Ingersoll’s inspections staff had gathered enough evidence to warrant the investigation of dozens of corrupt FBN agents who had risen to management positions in the BNDD. But Ingersoll could not investigate his top managers while simultaneously investigating drug traffickers. So he asked CIA Director Helms for help building a “counter-intelligence” capacity within the BNDD.

The result was Operation Twofold, in which 19 CIA officers were infiltrated into the BNDD, ostensibly to spy on corrupt BNDD officials. According to the BNDD’s Chief Inspector Patrick Fuller, “A corporation engaged in law enforcement hired three CIA officers posing as private businessmen to do the contact and interview work.”

CIA recruiter Jerry Soul, a former Operation 40 case officer, primarily selected officers whose careers had stalled due to the gradual reduction of forces in Southeast Asia. Those hired were put through the BNDD’s training course and assigned to spy on a particular regional director. No records were kept and some participants have never been identified.

Charles Gutensohn was a typical Twofold “torpedo.” Prior to his recruitment into the BNDD, Gutensohn had spent two years at the CIA’s base in Pakse, a major heroin transit point between Laos and South Vietnam. “Fuller said that when we communicated, I was to be known as Leo Adams for Los Angeles,” Gutensohn said. “He was to be Walter DeCarlo, for Washington, DC.”

Gutensohn’s cover, however, was blown before he got to Los Angeles. “Someone at headquarters was talking and everyone knew,” he recalled. “About a month after I arrived, one of the agents said to me, ‘I hear that Pat Fuller signed your credentials’.”

Twofold, which existed at least until 1974, was deemed by the Rockefeller Commission to have “violated the 1947 Act which prohibits the CIA’s participation in law enforcement activities.” It also, as shall be discussed later, served as a cover for clandestine CIA operations.

Third Infestation

The Nixon White House blamed the BNDD’s failure to stop international drug trafficking on its underdeveloped intelligence capabilities, a situation that opened the door to further CIA infiltration. In late 1970, CIA Director Helms arranged for his recently retired chief of continuing intelligence, E. Drexel Godfrey, to review BNDD intelligence procedures. Among other things, Godfrey recommended that the BNDD create regional intelligence units (RIUs) and an office of strategic intelligence (SI0).

The RIUs were up and running by 1971 with CIA officers often assigned as analysts, prompting BNDD agents to view the RIUs with suspicion, as repositories for Twofold torpedoes.

The SIO was harder to implement, given its arcane function as a tool to help top managers formulate plans and strategies “in the political sphere.” As SIO Director John Warner explained, “We needed to understand the political climate in Thailand in order to address the problem. We needed to know what kind of protection the Thai police were affording traffickers. We were looking for an intelligence office that could deal with those sorts of issues, on the ground, overseas.”

Organizing the SIO fell to CIA officers Adrian Swain and Tom Tripodi, both of whom were recruited into the BNDD. In April 1971 they accompanied Ingersoll to Saigon, where Station Chief Shackley briefed them. Through his CIA contacts, Swain obtained maps of drug-smuggling routes in Southeast Asia.

Upon their return to the U.S., Swain and Tripodi expressed frustration that the CIA had access to people capable of providing the BNDD with intelligence, but these people “were involved in narcotics trafficking and the CIA did not want to identify them.”

Seeking a way to circumvent the CIA, they recommended the creation of a “special operations or strategic operations staff” that would function as the BNDD’s own CIA “using a backdoor approach to gather intelligence in support of operations.” Those operations would rely on “longer range, deep penetration, clandestine assets, who remain undercover, do not appear during the course of any trial and are recruited and directed by the Special Operations agents on a covert basis.”

The White House approved the plan and in May 1971, Kissinger presented a $120 million drug control proposal, of which $50 million was earmarked for special operations. Three weeks later Nixon declared “war on drugs,” at which point Congress responded with funding for the SIO and authorization for the extra-legal operations Swain and Tripodi envisioned.

SIO Director Warner was given a seat on the U.S. Intelligence Board so the SIO could obtain raw intelligence from the CIA. But, in return, the SIO was compelled to adopt CIA security procedures. A CIA officer established the SIO’s file room and computer system; safes and steel doors were installed; and witting agents had to obtain CIA clearances.

Active-duty CIA officers were assigned to the SIO as desk officers for Europe and the Middle East, the Far East, and Latin America. Tripodi was assigned as chief of operations. Tripodi had spent the previous six years in the CIA’s Security Research Services, where his duties included the penetration of peace groups, as well as setting up firms to conduct black bag jobs. Notably, White House “Plumber” E. Howard Hunt inherited Tripodi’s Special Operations unit, which included several of the Watergate burglars.

Tripodi liaised with the CIA on matters of mutual interest and the covert collection of narcotics intelligence outside of routine BNDD channels. As part of his operational plan, code-named Medusa, Tripodi proposed that SIO agents hire foreign nationals to blow up contrabandista planes while they were refueling at clandestine air strips. Another proposal called for ambushing traffickers in America, and taking their drugs and money.

Enter Lucien Conein

The creation of the SIO coincided with the assignment of CIA officer Lucien Conein to the BNDD. As a member of the OSS, Conein had parachuted into France to form resistance cells that included Corsican gangsters. As a CIA officer, Conein in 1954 was assigned to Vietnam to organize anti-communist forces, and in 1963 achieved infamy as the intermediary between the Kennedy White House and the cabal of generals that murdered President Diem.

Historian Alfred McCoy has alleged that, in 1965, Conein arranged a truce between the CIA and drug trafficking Corsicans in Saigon. The truce, according to McCoy, allowed the Corsicans to traffic, as long as they served as contact men for the CIA. The truce also endowed the Corsicans with “free passage” at a time when Marseilles’ heroin labs were turning from Turkish to Southeast Asian morphine base.

Conein denied McCoy’s allegation and insisted that his meeting with the Corsicans was solely to resolve a problem caused by Daniel Ellsberg’s “peccadilloes with the mistress of a Corsican.”

It is impossible to know who is telling the truth. What is known is that in July 1971, on Howard Hunt’s recommendation, the White House hired Conein as an expert on Corsican drug traffickers in Southeast Asia. Conein was assigned as a consultant to the SIO’s Far East Asia desk. His activities will soon be discussed in greater detail.

The Parallel Mechanism

In September 1971, the Heroin Committee was reorganized as the Cabinet Committee for International Narcotics Control (CCINC) under Secretary of State William Rogers. CCINC’s mandate was to “set policies which relate international considerations to domestic considerations.” By 1975, its budget amounted to $875 million, and the war on drugs had become a most profitable industry.

Concurrently, the CIA formed a unilateral drug unit in its operations division under Seymour Bolten. Known as the Special Assistant to the Director for the Coordination of Narcotics, Bolten directed CIA division and station chiefs in unilateral drug control operations. In doing this, Bolten worked closely with Ted Shackley, who in 1972 was appointed head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. Bolten and Shackley had worked together in post-war Germany, as well as in anti-Castro Cubans operations in the early 1960s. Their collaboration would grease federal drug law enforcement’s skid into oblivion.

“Bolten screwed us,” BNDD’s Latin American division chief Jerry Strickler said emphatically. “And so did Shackley.”

Bolten “screwed” the BNDD, and the American judicial system, by setting up a “parallel mechanism” based on a computerized register of international drug traffickers and a CIA-staffed communications crew that intercepted calls from drug traffickers inside the U.S. to their accomplices around the world. The International Narcotics Information Network (INIS) was modeled on a computerized management information system Shackley had used to terrorize the underground resistance in South Vietnam.

Bolten’s staff also “re-tooled” dozens of CIA officers and slipped them into the BNDD. Several went to Lou Conein at the SIO for clandestine, highly illegal operations.

Factions within the CIA and military were opposed to Bolten’s parallel mechanism, but CIA Executive Director William Colby supported Bolten’s plan to preempt the BNDD and use its agents and informants for unilateral CIA purposes. The White House also supported the plan for political purposes related to Watergate. Top BNDD officials who resisted were expunged; those who cooperated were rewarded.

Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network

In September 1972, DCI Helms (then immersed in Watergate intrigues), told BNDD Director Ingersoll that the CIA had prepared files on specific drug traffickers in Miami, the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean. Helms said the CIA would provide Ingersoll with assets to pursue the traffickers and develop information on targets of opportunity. The CIA would also provide operational, technical, and financial support.

The result was the Bureau of Narcotics Covert Intelligence Network (BUNCIN) whose methodology reflected Tripodi’s Medusa Plan and included “provocations, inducement to desertion, creating confusion and apprehension.”

Some BUNCIN intelligence activities were directed against “senior foreign government officials” and were “blamed on other government agencies or even on the intelligence services of other nations.” Other BUNCIN activities were directed against American civic and political groups.

BNDD officials managed BUNCIN’s legal activities, while Conein at the SIO managed its political and CIA aspects. According to Conein’s administrative deputy, Rich Kobakoff, “BUNCIN was an experiment in how to finesse the law. The end product was intelligence, not seizures or arrests.”

CIA officers Robert Medell and William Logay were selected to manage BUNCIN.

A Bay of Pigs veteran born in Cuba, Medell was initially assigned to the Twofold program. Medell was BUNCIN’s “covert” agent and recruited its principal agents. All of his assets had previously worked for the CIA, and all believed they were working for it again.

Medell started running agents in March 1973 with the stated goal of penetrating the Trafficante organization. To this end the BNDD’s Enforcement Chief, Andy Tartaglino, introduced Medell to Sal Caneba, a retired Mafioso who had been in business with Trafficante in the 1950s. Caneba in one day identified the head of the Cuban side of the Trafficante family, as well as its organizational structure.

But the CIA refused to allow the BNDD to pursue the investigation, because it had employed Trafficante in its assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, and because Trafficante’s Operation 40 associates were performing similar functions for the CIA around the world.

Medell’s Principal Agent was Bay of Pigs veteran Guillermo Tabraue, whom the CIA paid $1,400 a week. While receiving this princely sum, Tabraue participated in the “Alvarez-Cruz” drug smuggling ring.

Medell also recruited agents from Manuel Artime’s anti-Castro Cuban organization. Former CIA officer and White House “Plumber” Howard Hunt, notably, had been Artime’s case officer for years, and many members of Artime’s organization had worked for Ted Shackley while Shackley was the CIA’s station chief in Miami.

Bill Logay was the “overt” agent assigned to the BUNCIN office in Miami. Logay had been Shackley’s bodyguard in Saigon in 1969. From 1970-1971, Logay had served as a special police liaison and drug coordinator in Saigon’s Precinct 5. Logay was also asked to join Twofold, but claims to have refused.

Medell and Logay’s reports were hand delivered to BNDD headquarters via the Defense Department’s classified courier service. The Defense Department was in charge of emergency planning and provided BUNCIN agents with special communications equipment. The CIA supplied BUNCIN’s assets with forged IDs that enabled them to work for foreign governments, including Panama, Venezuela and Costa Rica.

Like Twofold, BUNCIN had two agendas. One, according to Chief Inspector Fuller, “was told” and had a narcotics mission. The other provided cover for the Plumbers. Orders for the domestic political facet emanated from the White House and passed through Conein to “Plumber” Gordon Liddy and his “Operation Gemstone” squad of exile Cuban terrorists from the Artime organization.

Enforcement chief Tartaglino was unhappy with the arrangement and gave Agent Ralph Frias the job of screening anti-Castro Cubans sent by the White House to the BNDD. Frias was assigned to International Affairs chief George Belk. When Nixon’s White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman sent over three Cubans, Frias interviewed them and realized they were “plants.” Those three were not hired, but, Frias lamented, many others were successfully infiltrated inside the BNDD and other federal agencies.

Under BUNCIN cover, CIA anti-Castro assets reportedly kidnapped and assassinated people in Colombia and Mexico. BUNCIN’s White House sponsors also sent CIA anti-Castro Cuban assets to gather dirt on Democratic politicians in Key West. With BUNCIN, federal drug law enforcement sank to new lows of political repression and corruption.

Novo Yardley

The Nixon White House introduced the “operations by committee” management method to ensure control over its illegal drug operations. But as agencies involved in drug law enforcement pooled resources, the BNDD’s mission was diluted and diminished.

And, as the preeminent agency in the federal government, the CIA not only separated itself from the BNDD as part of Bolten’s parallel mechanism, it rode off into the sunset on the BNDD’s horse. For example, at their introductory meeting in Mexico City in 1972, Ted Shackley told Latin American division chief Strickler to hand over all BNDD files, informant lists, and cable traffic.

According to Strickler, “Bad things happened.” The worst abuse was that the CIA allowed drug shipments into the U.S. without telling the BNDD.

“Individual stations allowed this,” SIO Director John Warner confirmed.

In so far as evidence acquired by CIA electronic surveillance is inadmissible in court, the CIA was able to protect its controlled deliveries into the U.S. merely by monitoring them. Numerous investigations had to be terminated as a result. Likewise, dozens of prosecutions were dismissed on national security grounds due to the participation of CIA assets operating around the world.

Strickler knew which CIA people were guilty of sabotaging cases in Latin America, and wanted to indict them. And so, at Bolten’s insistence, Strickler was reassigned. Meanwhile, CIA assets from Bolten’s unilateral drug unit were kidnapping and assassinating traffickers as part of Operation Twofold.

BNDD Director Ingersoll confirmed the existence of this covert facet of Twofold. Its purpose, he said, was to put people in deep cover in the U.S. to develop intelligence on drug trafficking, particularly from South America. The regional directors weren’t aware of it. Ingersoll said he got approval from Attorney General John Mitchell and passed the operation on to John Bartels, the first administrator of the DEA. He said the unit did not operate inside the U.S., which is why he thought it was legal.

Ingersoll added that he was surprised that no one from the Rockefeller Commission asked him about it.

Joseph DiGennaro’s entry into the covert facet of Operation Twofold began when a family friend, who knew CIA officer Jim Ludlum, suggested that he apply for a job with the BNDD. Then working as a stockbroker in New York, DiGennaro met Fuller in August 1971 in Washington. Fuller gave DiGennaro the code name Novo Yardley, based on his posting in New York, and as a play on the name of the famous codebreaker.

After DiGennaro obtained the required clearances, he was told that he and several other recruits were being “spun-off” from Twofold into the CIA’s “operational” unit. The background check took 14 months, during which time he received intensive combat and trade-craft training.

In October 1972 he was sent to New York City and assigned to an enforcement group as a cover. His paychecks came from BNDD funds, but the program was reimbursed by the CIA through the Bureau of Mines. The program was authorized by the “appropriate” Congressional committee.

DiGennaro’s unit was managed by the CIA’s Special Operations Division in conjunction with the military, which provided assets within foreign military services to keep ex-filtration routes (air corridors and roads) open. The military cleared air space when captured suspects were brought into the U.S. DiGennaro spent most of his time in South America, but the unit operated worldwide. The CIA unit numbered about 40 men, including experts in printing, forgery, maritime operations, and telecommunications.

DiGennaro would check with Fuller and take sick time or annual leave to go on missions. There were lots of missions. As his BNDD group supervisor in New York said, “Joey was never in the office.”

The job was tracking down, kidnapping, and, if they resisted, killing drug traffickers. Kidnapped targets were incapacitated by drugs and dumped in the U.S. As DEA Agent Gerry Carey recalled, “We’d get a call that there was ‘a present’ waiting for us on the corner of 116th Street and Sixth Avenue. We’d go there and find some guy, who’d been indicted in the Eastern District of New York, handcuffed to a telephone pole. We’d take him to a safe house for questioning and, if possible, turn him into an informer. Sometimes we’d have him in custody for months. But what did he know?”

If you’re a Corsican drug dealer in Argentina, and men with police credentials arrest you, how do you know it’s a CIA operation? DiGennaro’s last operation in 1977 involved the recovery of a satellite that had fallen into a drug dealer’s hands. Such was the extent of the CIA’s “parallel mechanism.”

The Dirty Dozen

With the formation of the Drug Enforcement Administration in July 1973, BUNCIN was renamed the DEA Clandestine Operations Network (DEACON 1). A number of additional DEACONs were developed through Special Field Intelligence Programs (SFIP). As an extension of BUNCIN, DEACON 1 developed intelligence on traffickers in Costa Rica, Ohio and New Jersey; politicians in Florida; terrorists and gun runners; the sale of boats and helicopters to Cuba; and the Trafficante organization.

Under DEA chief John Bartels, administrative control fell under Enforcement Chief George Belk and his Special Projects assistant Philip Smith. Through Belk and Smith, the Office of Special Projects had become a major facet of Bolten’s parallel mechanism. It housed the DEA’s air wing (staffed largely by CIA officers), conducted “research programs” with the CIA, provided technical aids and documentation to agents, and handled fugitive searches.

As part of DEACON 1, Smith sent covert agent Bob Medell “to Caracas or Bogota to develop a network of agents.” As Smith noted in a memorandum, reimbursement for Medell “is being made in backchannel fashion to CIA under payments to other agencies and is not counted as a position against us.”

Thoroughly suborned by Bolten and the CIA, DEA Administrator Bartels established a priority on foreign clandestine narcotics collection. And when Belk proposed a special operations group in intelligence, Bartels immediately approved it. In March 1974, Belk assigned the group to Lou Conein.

As chief of the Intelligence Group/Operations (IGO), Conein administered the DEA Special Operations Group (DEASOG), SFIP and National Intelligence Officers (NIO) programs. The chain of command, however, was “unclear” and while Medell reported administratively to Smith, Conein managed operations through a separate chain of command reaching to William Colby, who had risen to the rank of CIA Director concurrent with the formation of the DEA.

Conein had worked for Colby for many years in Vietnam, for through Colby he hired a “dirty dozen” CIA officers to staff DEASOG. As NIOs (not regular gun-toting DEA agents), the DEASOG officers did not buy narcotics or appear in court, but instead used standard CIA operating procedures to recruit assets and set up agent networks for the long-range collection of intelligence on trafficking groups. They had no connection to the DEA and were housed in a safe house outside headquarters in downtown Washington, DC.

The first DEASOG recruits were CIA officers Elias P. Chavez and Nicholas Zapata. Both had paramilitary and drug control experience in Laos. Colby’s personnel assistant Jack Mathews had been Chavez’s case officer at the Long Thien base, where General Vang Pao ran his secret drug-smuggling army under Ted Shackley’s auspices from 1966-1968.

A group of eight CIA officers followed: Wesley Dyckman, a Chinese linguist with service in Vietnam, was assigned to San Francisco. Louis J. Davis, a veteran of Vietnam and Laos, was assigned to the Chicago Regional Intelligence Unit. Christopher Thompson from the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam went to San Antonio. Hugh E. Murray, veteran of Pakse and Bolivia (where he participated in the capture of Che Guevara), was sent to Tucson. Thomas D. McPhaul had worked with Conein in Vietnam, and was sent to Dallas. Thomas L. Briggs, a veteran of Laos and a friend of Shackley’s, went to Mexico. Vernon J. Goertz, a Shackley friend who had participated in the Allende coup, went to Venezuela. David A. Scherman, a Conein friend and former manager of the CIA’s interrogation center in Da Nang, was sent to sunny San Diego.

Gary Mattocks, who ran CIA counter-terror teams in Vietnam’s Delta, and interrogator Robert Simon were the eleventh and twelfth members. Terry Baldwin, Barry Carew and Joseph Lagattuta joined later.

According to Davis, Conein created DEASOG specifically to do Phoenix program-style jobs overseas: the type where a paramilitary officer breaks into a trafficker’s house, takes his drugs, and slits his throat. The NIOs were to operate overseas where they would target traffickers the police couldn’t reach, like a prime minister’s son or the police chief in Acapulco if he was the local drug boss. If they couldn’t assassinate the target, they would bomb his labs or use psychological warfare to make him look like he was a DEA informant, so his own people would kill him.

The DEASOG people “would be breaking the law,” Davis observed, “but they didn’t have arrest powers overseas anyway.”

Conein envisioned 50 NIOs operating worldwide by 1977. But a slew of Watergate-related scandals forced the DEA to curtail its NIO program and reorganize its covert operations staff and functions in ways that have corrupted federal drug law enforcement beyond repair.

Assassination Scandals

The first scandal focused on DEACON 3, which targeted the Aviles-Perez organization in Mexico. Eli Chavez, Nick Zapata and Barry Carew were the NIOs assigned.

A veteran CIA officer who spoke Spanish, Carew had served as a special police adviser in Saigon before joining the BNDD. Carew was assigned as Conein’s Latin American desk officer and managed Chavez and Zapata (aka “the Mexican Assassin”) in Mexico. According to Chavez, a White House Task Force under Howard Hunt had started the DEACON 3 case. The Task force provided photographs of the Aviles Perez compound in Mexico, from whence truckloads of marijuana were shipped to the U.S.

Funds were allotted in February 1974, at which point Chavez and Zapata traveled to Mexico City as representatives of the North American Alarm and Fire Systems Company. In Mazatlán, they met with Carew, who stayed at a fancy hotel and played tennis every day, while Chavez and Zapata, whom Conein referred to as “pepper-bellies,” fumed in a flea-bag motel.

An informant arranged for Chavez, posing as a buyer, to meet Perez. A deal was struck, but DEA chief John Bartels made the mistake of instructing Chavez to brief the DEA’s regional director in Mexico City before making “the buy.”

At this meeting, the DEACON 3 agents presented their operational plan. But when the subject of “neutralizing” Perez came up, analyst Joan Banister took this to mean assassination. Bannister reported her suspicions to DEA headquarters, where the anti-CIA faction leaked her report to Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson.

Anderson’s allegation that the DEA was providing cover for a CIA assassination unit included revelations that the Senate had investigated IGO chief Conein for shopping around for assassination devices, like exploding ashtrays and telephones. Conein managed to keep his job, but the trail led to his comrade from the OSS, Mitch Werbell.

A deniable asset Conein used for parallel operations, Werbell had tried to sell several thousand silenced machine pistols to DEACON 1 target Robert Vesco, then living in Costa Rica surrounded by drug trafficking Cuban exiles in the Trafficante organization. Trafficante was also, at the time, living in Costa Rica as a guest of President Figueres whose son had purchased weapons from Werbell and used them to arm a death squad he formed with DEACON 1 asset Carlos Rumbault, a notorious anti-Castro Cuban terrorist and fugitive drug smuggler.

Meanwhile, in February 1974, DEA Agent Anthony Triponi, a former Green Beret and member of Operation Twofold, was admitted to St. Luke’s Hospital in New York “suffering from hypertension.” DEA inspectors found Triponi in the psychiatric ward, distraught because he had broken his “cover” and now his “special code” would have to be changed.

Thinking he was insane, the DEA inspectors called former chief inspector Patrick Fuller in California, just to be sure. As it turned out, everything Triponi had said about Twofold was true! The incredulous DEA inspectors called the CIA and were stunned when they were told: “If you release the story, we will destroy you.”

By 1975, Congress and the Justice Department were investigating the DEA’s relations with the CIA. In the process they stumbled on, among other things, plots to assassinate Torrijos and Noriega in Panama, as well as Tripodi’s Medusa Program.

In a draft report, one DEA inspector described Medusa as follows: “Topics considered as options included psychological terror tactics, substitution of placebos to discredit traffickers, use of incendiaries to destroy conversion laboratories, and disinformation to cause internal warfare between drug trafficking organizations; other methods under consideration involved blackmail, use of psychopharmacological techniques, bribery and even terminal sanctions.”

The Cover-Up

Despite the flurry of investigations, Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, reconfirmed the CIA’s narcotic intelligence collection arrangement with DEA, and the CIA continued to have its way. Much of its success is attributed to Seymour Bolten, whose staff handled “all requests for files from the Church Committee,” which concluded that allegations of drug smuggling by CIA assets and proprietaries “lacked substance.”

The Rockefeller Commission likewise gave the CIA a clean bill of health, falsely stating that the Twofold inspections project was terminated in 1973. The Commission completely covered-up the existence of the operation unit hidden within the inspections program.

Ford did task the Justice Department to investigate “allegations of fraud, irregularity, and misconduct” in the DEA. The so-called DeFeo investigation lasted through July 1975, and included allegations that DEA officials had discussed killing Omar Torrijos and Manuel Noriega. In March 1976, Deputy Attorney General Richard Thornburgh announced there were no findings to warrant criminal prosecutions.

In 1976, Congresswoman Bella Abzug submitted questions to new Director of Central Intelligence George H.W. Bush, about the CIA’s central role in international drug trafficking. Bush’s response was to cite a 1954 agreement with the Justice Department gave the CIA the right to block prosecution or keep its crimes secret in the name of national security.

In its report, the Abzug Committee said: “It was ironic that the CIA should be given responsibility of narcotic intelligence, particularly since they are supporting the prime movers.”

The Mansfield Amendment of 1976 sought to curtail the DEA’s extra-legal activities abroad by prohibiting agents from kidnapping or conducting unilateral actions without the consent of the host government. The CIA, of course, was exempt and continued to sabotage DEA cases against its movers, while further tightening its stranglehold on the DEA’s enforcement and intelligence capabilities.

In 1977, the DEA’s Assistant Administrator for Enforcement sent a memo, co-signed by the six enforcement division chiefs, to DEA chief Peter Bensinger. As the memo stated, “All were unanimous in their belief that present CIA programs were likely to cause serious future problems for DEA, both foreign and domestic.”

They specifically cited controlled deliveries enabled by CIA electronic surveillance and the fact that the CIA “will not respond positively to any discovery motion.” They complained that “Many of the subjects who appear in these CIA- promoted or controlled surveillances regularly travel to the United States in furtherance of their trafficking activities.” The “de facto immunity” from prosecution enabled the CIA assets to “operate much more openly and effectively.”

But then DEA chief Peter Bensinger suffered the CIA at the expense of America’s citizens and the DEA’s integrity. Under Bensinger the DEA created its CENTAC program to target drug trafficking organization worldwide through the early 1980s. But the CIA subverted the CENTAC: as its director Dennis Dayle famously said, “The major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.”

Murder and Mayhem

DEACON 1 inherited BUNCIN’s anti-Castro Cuban assets from Brigade 2506, which the CIA organized to invade Cuba in 1960. Controlled by Nixon’s secret political police, these CIA assets, operating under DEA cover, had parallel assignments involving “extremist groups and terrorism, and information of a political nature.”

Noriega and Moises Torrijos in Panama were targets, as was fugitive financier and Nixon campaign contributor Robert Vesco in Costa Rica, who was suspected of being a middle man in drug and money-laundering operations of value to the CIA.

DEACON 1’s problems began when overt agent Bill Logay charged that covert agent Bob Medell’s anti-Castro Cuban assets had penetrated the DEA on behalf of the Trafficante organization. DEACON 1 secretary Cecelia Plicet fanned the flames by claiming that Conein and Medell were using Principal Agent Tabraue to circumvent the DEA.

In what amounted to an endless succession of controlled deliveries, Tabraue was financing loads of cocaine and using DEACON 1’s Cuban assets to smuggle them into the U.S. Plicet said that Medell and Conein worked for “the other side” and wanted the DEA to fail. These accusations prompted an investigation, after which Logay was reassigned to inspections and Medell was reassigned and replaced by Gary Mattocks, an NIO member of the Dirty Dozen.

According to Mattocks, Shackley helped Colby set up DEASOG and brought in “his” people, including Tom Clines, whom Shackley placed in charge of the CIA’s Caribbean operations. Clines, like Shackley and Bolten, knew all the exile Cuban terrorists and traffickers on the DEASOG payroll. CIA officer Vernon Goertz worked for Clines in Caracas as part of the CIA’s parallel mechanism under DEASOG cover.

As cover for his DEACON 1 activities, Mattocks set up a front company designed to improve relations between Cuban and American businessmen. Meanwhile, through the CIA, he recruited members of the Artime organization including Watergate burglars Rolando Martinez and Bernard Barker, as well as Che Guevara’s murderer, Felix Rodriguez. These anti-Castro terrorists were allegedly part of an Operation 40 assassination squad that Shackley and Clines employed for private as well as professional purposes.

In late 1974, DEACON 1 crashed and burned when interrogator Robert Simon’s daughter was murdered in a drive-by shooting by crazed anti-Castro Cubans. Simon at the time was managing the CIA’s drug data base and had linked the exile Cuban drug traffickers with “a foreign terrorist organization.” As Mattocks explained, “It got bad after the Brigaders found out Simon was after them.”

None of the CIA’s terrorists, however, were ever arrested. Instead, Conein issued a directive prohibiting DEACON 1 assets from reporting on domestic political affairs or terrorist activities and the tragedy was swept under the carpet for reasons of national security.

DEACON 1 unceremoniously ended in 1975 after Agent Fred Dick was assigned to head the DEA’s Caribbean Basin Group. In that capacity Dick visited the DEACON 1 safe house and found, in his words, “a clandestine CIA unit using miscreants from Bay of Pigs, guys who were blowing up planes.” Dick hit the ceiling and in August 1975 DEACON I was terminated.

No new DEACONs were initiated and the others quietly ran their course. Undeterred, the CIA redeployed its anti-Castro Cuban miscreant assets, some of whom established the terror organization CORU in 1977. Others would go to work for Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a key National Security Council aide under President Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra drug and terror network.

Conein’s IGO was disbanded in 1976 after a grand jury sought DEACON I intelligence regarding several drug busts. But CIA acquired intelligence cannot be used in prosecutions, and the CIA refused to identify its assets in court, with the result that 27 prosecutions were dismissed on national security grounds.

Gary Mattocks was thereafter unwelcomed in the DEA. But his patron Ted Shackley had become DCI George Bush’s assistant deputy director for operations and Shackley kindly rehired Mattocks into the CIA and assigned him to the CIA’s narcotics unit in Peru.

At the time, Santiago Ocampo was purchasing cocaine in Peru and his partner Matta Ballesteros was flying it to the usual Cuban miscreants in Miami. One of the receivers, Francisco Chanes, an erstwhile DEACON asset, owned two seafood companies that would soon allegedly come to serve as fronts in Oliver North’s Contra supply network, receiving and distributing tons of Contra cocaine.

Mattocks himself soon joined the Contra support operation as Eden Pastrora’s case officer. In that capacity Mattocks was present in 1984 when CIA officers handed pilot Barry Seal a camera and told him to take photographs of Sandinista official Federico Vaughn loading bags of cocaine onto Seal’s plane. A DEA “special employee,” Seal was running drugs for Jorge Ochoa Vasquez and purportedly using Nicaragua as a transit point for his deliveries.

North asked DEA officials to instruct Seal, who was returning to Ochoa with $1.5 million, to deliver the cash to the Contras. When the DEA officials refused, North leaked a blurry photo, purportedly of Vaughn, to the right-wing Washington Times. For partisan political purposes, on behalf of the Reagan administration, Oliver North blew the DEA’s biggest case at the time, and the DEA did nothing about it, even though DEA Administrator Jack Lawn said in 1988, in testimony before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, that leaking the photo “severely jeopardized the lives” of agents.

The circle was squared in 1989 when the CIA instructed Gary Mattocks to testify as a defense witness at the trial of DEACON 1 Principal Agent Gabriel Tabraue. Although Tabraue had earned $75 million from drug trafficking, while working as a CIA and DEA asset, the judge declared a mistrial based on Mattocks’s testimony. Tabraue was released. Some people inferred that President George H.W. Bush had personally ordered Mattocks to dynamite the case.

The CIA’s use of the DEA to employ terrorists would continue apace. For example, in 1981, DEA Agent Dick Salmi recruited Roberto Cabrillo, a drug smuggling member of CORU, an organization of murderous Cuban exiles formed by drug smuggler Frank Castro and Luis Posada while George Bush was DCI.

The DEA arrested Castro in 1981, but the CIA engineered his release and hired him to establish a Contra training camp in the Florida Everglades. Posada reportedly managed resupply and drug shipments for the Contras in El Salvador, in cahoots with Felix Rodriguez. Charged in Venezuela with blowing up a Cuban airliner and killing 73 people in 1976, Posada was shielded from extradition by George W. Bush in the mid-2000s.

Having been politically castrated by the CIA, DEA officials merely warned its CORU assets to stop bombing people in the U.S. It could maim and kill people anywhere else, just not here in the sacred homeland. By then, Salmi noted, the Justice Department had a special “grey-mail section” to fix cases involving CIA terrorists and drug dealers.

The Hoax

DCI William Webster formed the CIA’s Counter-Narcotics Center in 1988. Staffed by over 100 agents, it ostensibly became the springboard for the covert penetration of, and paramilitary operations against, top traffickers protected by high-tech security firms, lawyers and well-armed private armies.

The CNC brought together, under CIA control, every federal agency involved in the drug wars. Former CIA officer and erstwhile Twofold member, Terry Burke, then serving as the DEA’s Deputy for Operations, was allowed to send one liaison officer to the CNC.

The CNC quickly showed its true colors. In the late 1990, Customs agents in Miami seized a ton of pure cocaine from Venezuela. To their surprise, a Venezuelan undercover agent said the CIA had approved the delivery. DEA Administrator Robert Bonner ordered an investigation and discovered that the CIA had, in fact, shipped the load from its warehouse in Venezuela.

The “controlled deliveries” were managed by CIA officer Mark McFarlin, a veteran of Reagan’s terror campaign in El Salvador. Bonner wanted to indict McFarlin, but was prevented from doing so because Venezuela was in the process of fighting off a rebellion led by leftist Hugo Chavez. This same scenario has been playing out in Afghanistan for the last 15 years, largely through the DEA’s Special Operations Division (SOD), which provides cover for CIA operations worldwide.

The ultimate and inevitable result of American imperialism, the SOD job is not simply to “create a crime,” as freewheeling FBN agents did in the old days, but to “recreate a crime” so it is prosecutable, despite whatever extra-legal methods were employed to obtain the evidence before it is passed along to law enforcement agencies so they can make arrests without revealing what prompted their suspicions.

Reuters reported in 2013, “The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.”

The utilization of information from the SOD, which operates out of a secret location in Virginia, “cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,” according to an internal document cited by Reuters, which added that agents are specifically directed “to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony.”

Agents are told to use “parallel construction” to build their cases without reference to SOD’s tips which may come from sensitive “intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records,” Reuters reported.

Citing a former federal agent, Reuters reported that SOD operators would tell law enforcement officials in the U.S. to be at a certain place at a certain time and to look for a certain vehicle which would then be stopped and searched on some pretext. “After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said,” Reuters reported.

An anonymous senior DEA official told Reuters that this “parallel construction” approach is “decades old, a bedrock concept” for law enforcement. The SOD’s approach follows Twofold techniques and Bolten’s parallel mechanism from the early 1970s.

To put it simply, lying to frame defendants, which has always been unstated policy, is now official policy: no longer considered corruption, it is how your government manages the judicial system on behalf of the rich political elite.

As outlined in this article, the process tracks back to Nixon, the formation of the BNDD, and the creation of a secret political police force out of the White House. As Agent Bowman Taylor caustically observed, “I used to think we were fighting the drug business, but after they formed the BNDD, I realized we were feeding it.”

The corruption was first “collateral” – as a function of national security performed by the CIA in secret – but has now become “integral,’ the essence of empire run amok.

Douglas Valentine is the author of The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs, and The Strength of the Pack: The Personalities, Politics, and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA.
More articles by

ouglas Valentine

777man

(374 posts)

347. Bank Records Seized at Blandon's House Revealed U.S. Treasury/State Accounts with 9 Million Balance

Reply to 777man (Reply #346)

Sun Jan 3, 2016, 07:08 AM

Jan 2016

For anyone with doubts that Blandon/Meneses were running millions to the contras, here is the excerpt from the OIG report showing his bank records confiscated showing U.S. Treasury/State Accounts and Millions in funds..........

http://www.scribd.com/doc/117070568/US-Congresswoman-Maxine-Waters-Investigation-of-CIA-Contras-involvement-in-drug-sales-1996-2000

El Salvador
"The subsource was at a party of (Salvadoran air force) officers when the subject of General Bustillo's investigation came up. An officer had declared that the whole investigation was a ploy to throw the DEA off the trail while the Salvadoran Air Force and the CIA ran large shipments of cocaine through the air bases at La Union and San Miguel in El Salvador for the purpose of obtaining money for the Contras." (ChX, Pt3)

Contra Drug Money, 1980-86.

The DOJ Report documented the financial support that the Meneses-Blandon operation gave to the Contras. However, the money laundering part of the Meneses/Blandon/Ross drug trafficking network remains almost completely unexamined. Bank records and the paper trail associated with money laundering were not pursued by any of the official investigations. Evidence about the nature of the laundering operation came out nonetheless.

From Blandon's L.A. operation

:"Meneses told Blandon that he would give Blandon cocaine and teach Blandon how to sell it, and they would send the profits to the Contra revolution.&quot ChII, Pt1)&quot FBI agent) Aukland told the OIG that although LA CI-1 said he did not know how much Blandon had contributed to the FDN, he thought that Blandon had originally started dealing drugs so that he could support the Contras." (ChII, Pt1)

"Blandon told us that the initial profits he and Meneses made in drug trafficking went to the Contras." (ChIV, Pt2)

"A summary of one of (LA CI-1's) debriefings by the FBI stated that ARDE Contra leader Eden 'Pastora was seeking cocaine funds from Blandon to fund Contra operations.' " (ChIV, Pt2)

"Pastora came up in 1985 as he received cash from Danilo for the Contra causes of ARDE group in Costa Rica and L.A. They are purposely staying away from anyone who might be connected with the Agency, like Pastora. They would like me to tell them who they can't get because of a national security block. They are extremely afraid of a national security block." July 17, 1990 letter from Ronald Lister to Scott Weekly. (ChV, Pt2)

"Blandon continued to give some material support to the Contra cause. Blandon stated he gave Contra leader Eden Pastora $9000 intended for the Contras when Pastora came to Los Angeles in 1985 or 1986." (ChIV, Pt2)

&quot Prosecutor Suzanne Bryant-Deason) also said the officers brought a box of documents to the meeting, apparently bank documents...She remembered being struck by the amounts of money reflected in the bank documents and references to the US Treasury. These were most likely...the records seized from Blandon's house which appeared to be Contra bank records." (ChII, Pt3)

"Among the documents seized from Blandon's house were bank statements that appeared to be related to Contra financial activities. As we describe in more detail in Chapter IV below, Blandon told us that the documents were sent to him from his sister, Leysla Balladares, who lived in San Francisco.He said the documents were copies of bank accounts maintained by Contra leaders, and these records indicated that the Contra leaders were stealing money donated to the Contras and that these records did not relate to him or his drug trafficking. He said his sister had sent him the documents because she thought he would be interested in them." (ChII, PtE1a, p39)

(Description of bank records referenced above)"OIG reviewed the files seized by the LASD and copied by the FBI in the 1986 searches of Blandon's residences. Among the documents seized from Blandon's house were records that appeared to reflect deposits in seven bank accounts. The documents listed the check, endorser, location, amount,and balance. Some of these deposits were marked "U.S. Treasury/State" and totaled approximately $9,000,000,000. Other deposits were marked Cayman Islands and totaled about $883,000." (ChIV, Pt2, p154)

"Little Brother: These are the bank statements of the suppliers of the Contra. They have issued checks to different persons and companies, the same to the Cayman Islands..... Blessings, Leysla" (ChIV, Pt2, p154)

"Balladares [Blandon's sister] added that she was a member of the FDN." (ChIV, Pt2, p154)

"Blandon said 'we were fighting for something that is goodand they were making money for that'" (ChIV, Pt2, p155)

"The informant also reported that Blandon, his wife Chepita, Ronald Lister, Moreno, Moreno's wife Aurora Moreno, Carlos Rocha, Ivan Torres and others transported millions of dollars from Los Angeles to a townhouse in Miami that had been purchased for Blandon by Orlando Murillo. Murillo worked for the Government Security Bank in Coral Gables, Florida and allegedly acted as the money launderer for the Blandon organization." (ChII, PtB, p31)

"Blandon was angry when Rocha said that he had told the FBI about Orlando Murillo, Blandon's rich uncle in Miami." (ChII, PtE3b, p44)

777man

(374 posts)

348. KERRY REPORT Volume 1 in PDF - Download Here-

Reply to 777man (Reply #347)

Sun Jan 3, 2016, 02:33 PM

Jan 2016

Last edited Sun Jan 3, 2016, 03:08 PM - Edit history (1)

https://fowlchicago.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/1989-kerry-report-volume-i.pdf

Activists have taken the time to put the Kerry Report in PDF format.

=====================================
A Day When Journalism Died

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

13 December 15
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34020-focus-a-day-when-journalism-died

777man

(374 posts)

349. 11/01/2014 Government Drug Dealing: from "Kill the Messenger" to "Pinocchio"

Reply to 777man (Reply #348)

Sun Jan 3, 2016, 02:34 PM

Jan 2016

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/11/nathan-kleffman/cia-drug-dealing/

Government Drug Dealing: from "Kill the Messenger" to "Pinocchio"

By Nathan Kleffman

NathanKleffman.com

November 1, 2014
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Real Afghanistan Surge is in Heroin Production and Tripled Opium Cultivation since the US military arrived/ UN and US Government documents
Posted on September 13, 2015 by WashingtonsBlog

By Meryl Nass, M.D. Dr. Nass is a board-certified internist and a biological warfare epidemiologist and expert in anthrax. Nass publishes Anthrax Vaccine.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/09/the-real-afghanistan-surge-is-in-heroin-production-and-tripled-opium-cultivation-since-the-us-military-arrived-un-and-us-government-documents.html

========================================================================

Susan Bell: a shameful secret history
In 1996, the award-winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered CIA links to Los Angeles drug dealers. It was an amazing scoop - but one that would ruin his career and drive him to suicide. His widow, Susan Bell, looks back on a shameful secret history

By Robert Chalmers
Saturday 8 October 2005 23:00 BST

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/susan-bell-a-shameful-secret-history-317908.html

777man

(374 posts)

350. "It is ..believed by the FBI, SF, that Norwin Meneses was & still may be, an informant for the CIA

Reply to 777man (Reply #347)

Wed Jan 6, 2016, 01:26 AM

Jan 2016

Last edited Sat Jan 9, 2016, 01:56 PM - Edit history (2)

"It is … believed by the FBI, SF, that Norwin Meneses was and still may be, an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency." (ChIII, Pt2)

Fifteen of the Most Telling Facts in the DOJ Report
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117070568/US-Congresswoman-Maxine-Waters-Investigation-of-CIA-Contras-involvement-in-drug-sales-1996-2000

1. "According to (FBI agent) Aukland's report, LA CI-1 reported further that Blandon and Meneses were founding members of the FDN, a wing of the Contra movement headed by Calero and that Blandon and Meneses used their drug profits to help fund the FDN.&quot

ChII, Pt1)

2. "Even before the term Contra was being used, LA CI-1 reported that there were meetings of 'anti-Sandinistas' at Meneses' house which were attended by politicians, Somocistas and other exiles interested in starting a counter- revolutionary movement. Meneses told of meeting with Col.Enrique Bermudez... (ChIV, Pt2)

3. &quot

FBI agent) Hale said he had three informants willing to testify against Meneses...the informants had 'indicated that Meneses, a Nicaraguan, deals in cocaine with both the Sandinista and Contra political factions in Nicaragua." (ChII, Pt1)

4. "Meneses told Blandon that he would give Blandon cocaine and teach Blandon how to sell it, and they would send the profits to the Contrarevolution." (ChII, Pt1)

5. "Blandon told us that the initial profits he and Meneses made in drug trafficking went to the Contras." (ChIV, Pt2)

6. "Little Brother: These are the bank statements of the suppliers of the Contra. They have issued checks to different persons and companies, thesame to the Cayman Islands..... Blessings, Leysla" [Balladares] "Balladares [Blandon's sister] added that she was a member of the FDN." (ChIV, Pt2)

7. "Blandon said [to Balladares] 'we were fighting for something that is good and they were making money for that'" (ChIV, Pt2)

8. "[T]he DEA in San Francisco did note the following facts: a defendant arrested in a DEA investigation, Renato Pena, had listed his profession as a volunteer worker for the FDN and had asked a confidential informant to meet him at the FDN office on one occasion; a defendant in the Frogman case had made 51 telephone calls to the FDN office in San Francisco; and Norwin Meneses had offered to provide the DEA with information about Nicaraguans involved in cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles for the benefit of the Sandanista government." (ChI, PtE)

9. "Jairo Meneses allegedly told Pena that the drugs were being sold to raise money for the Contras...Pena stated that both Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon told him they were also raising money for the Contras through drug dealing and that Blandon stated that the Contras would not havebeen able to operate without drug proceeds. Norwin Meneses allegedly told Pena that Contra leader Enrique Bermudez was aware of the drugdealing." (ChIV, Pt2)

10. "When asked why Aureliano would appoint Pena to another position when he was suspected of drug trafficking, Pena attributed this to the fact thatMeneses was on such good terms with Bermudez, who Pena said was a 'CIA agent'...because Norwin Meneses kept in good contact with Bermudez,Pena "believes the CIA knows about all these things"...Pena stated his belief that the CIA decided to recruit Meneses so that drug sales could be used to support the Contras; Bermudez could not have recruited Meneses on his own, according to Pena, but would have had to 'follow orders." (ChIV, Pt2)

11. "According to Blandon, in 1982 he flew with Meneses to Central America to meet with drug dealers and purchase drugs. While in Honduras, theyalso met with Enrique Bermudez, the leader of the FDN, and discussed the FDN's financial problems. Bermudez said the Contras in Honduras had littlemoney and needed funds for supplies… Bermudez said to Blandon and Meneses during the conversation that "the end justifies the means." (ChII, PtA)

12. "According to Source 1, Cabezas and Zavala were helping the Contras with drug money. Horacio Pereira and Fernando Sanchez also claimed thatthey were taking the money to help the Contras...In order to get cocaine from Sanchez and a man named 'Rayo,' Zavala and Cabezas had to agree togive 50 percent of their profits to the Contras."...Fernando Sanchez "functioned as the representative for all Contras in Guatemala (and) said that hehad a direct CIA contact in Guatemala -- a man named Castelairo - and noted that his brother Aristides also had CIA links, some of whom Sanchez hadmet socially at Aristides' house in Miami." (ChIX, Pt1) The OIG reports that the source of this information, Source 1, "was a CIA asset prior to his workwith the FBI."

13. "On August 25, 1982, Francisco Zavala advised Source 1 of his belief that Adolfo Calero and the individual for whom Zavala was working in NewOrleans were in cocaine...Source 1 had previously reported on June 22, 1982 that "Adolfo Calero lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, and that he isdefinitely involved in cocaine traffic." (ChIX, Pt1)

14. "Aff. further reported that Wenig had placed Gordon in contact with an informant who said that Blandon was a Contra sympathizer and founder ofthe FDN and that "[t]he money and arms generated by this organization comes thru [sic] the sales of cocaine." This informant was said to haveprovided one hundred names of persons involved with the distribution of cocaine, all of whom were either Nicaraguan and/or sympathizers to theContra movement." (ChII, ptE1)

15. "On Feb. 3, 1987, the Los Angeles FBI received information from an informant that Lister had told an unidentified neighbor over drinks that heworked for Oliver North and Secord and had sent arms shipments to the Contras." (ChV, Pt1).

=======================

Friday, January 8, 2016
Images of the shootout and arrest of El Chapo Guzman (Strong Graphic Content)
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/01/images-of-arrest-of-el-chapo-guzman.html
=====================

Friday, January 8, 2016
"El Chapo" Recaptured in shootout that leaves 5 killed!
Lucio R.Borderland Beat
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/01/el-chapo-recaptured.html

========================

Friday, January 8, 2016
Backstory of El Cholo Ivan
Lucio R. Borderland Beat

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/01/reports-that-el-cholo-ivan-managed-to.html

=========================

Thursday, January 7, 2016
Film about escape of "El Chapo" arrives in Mexican movie theaters
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/01/film-about-escape-of-el-chapo-arrives.html

========================

Drug kingpin 'El Chapo' to return to prison he escaped from, Mexico says

By Faith Karimi and Rafael Romo, CNN

Updated 1209 GMT (2009 HKT) January 9, 2016

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/09/americas/el-chapo-captured-mexico/

(CNN)After six months on the run, Mexico is sending drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to the same maximum security prison from which he escaped, authorities said.

Guzman used an elaborate underground tunnel to break out of a federal prison in July.

He was recaptured Friday after the Mexican navy raided a home in the coastal city of Los Mochis.

Mexican forces transferred Guzman from an armored vehicle and into a helicopter late Friday night after his arrest in his native Sinaloa state.

Guzman's prison escape -- his second one in 14 years -- embarrassed the Mexican government and made him a symbol of ineptitude and corruption.

Chase through sewer tunnels

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman in custody 00:54

The home where he was captured Friday had been under surveillance for a month, Attorney General Arely Gomez said.

=================================

Watchdog: Feds paid Amtrak worker to spy on passengers
By Pete Kasperowicz (@PeteKDCNews) • 1/8/16 11:14 AM
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/watchdog-feds-paid-amtrak-worker-to-spy-on-passengers/article/2579951

https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/a1528.pdf
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration inappropriately paid an Amtrak employee more than $850,000 over 20 years to provide information on passengers who may be smuggling drugs, according a report from the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General.

The OIG also released a separate report saying the DEA arranged to pay a government airport screener to act as a confidential source. The screener, however, never provided information of any value to the DEA.

777man

(374 posts)

351. 1/9/16 Rolling Stone - SECRET El Chapo Interview with Sean Penn

Reply to 777man (Reply #350)

Sun Jan 10, 2016, 05:12 AM

Jan 2016

El Chapo Speaks
A secret visit with the most wanted man in the world
By Sean Penn January 9, 2016
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109

==================
Sean Penn Secretly Interviewed ‘El Chapo,’ Mexican Drug Lord

By RAVI SOMAIYAJAN. 9, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/world/americas/el-chapo-mexican-drug-lord-interview-with-sean-penn.html

Mexico: Drug lord located thanks to interview with Sean Penn
Jan. 10, 2016 1:57am
http://www.theblaze.com/the-wire/37688781/mexico-drug-lord-located-thanks-to-interview-with-sean-penn/

Friday, January 8, 2016
Images of the shootout and arrest of El Chapo Guzman (Strong Graphic Content)
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2016/01/images-of-arrest-of-el-chapo-guzman.html

777man

(374 posts)

352. 7/12/15 A DEA Agent at War with the War on Drugs Mike levine

Reply to 777man (Reply #351)

Sun Jan 17, 2016, 11:07 PM

Jan 2016

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/12/the-stacks-a-dea-agent-at-war-with-the-war-on-drugs.html

http://michaellevinebooks.com/

Out in the Cold 07.12.1512:01 AM ET
The Stacks: A DEA Agent at War with the War on Drugs
For most of the ’80s Michael Levine was a high-voltage player in America’s drug wars, until he became convinced that the government’s efforts were misguided and useless.

“There is no drug war. It’s a fraud. No other nation in the world has a drug war. The rest have addiction problems. We have war. Why? Because it’s a toy, a grab bag with a lot of big hands in it.”

To Levine, the real news—not the fingertip kind the media like—resides in the actions and motivations of secrecy fetishists, backroom rulers who despise limits, government employees who have begun to control their employers.

“The DEA,” he says, “they want more power, more people, more funding, more headlines and glory. The politicians, they want a platform easily sold to voters, something that the public can identify and think something’s being done, an illusion that they can throw millions of dollars at and show that they’re challenging the drug barons; the war is great theater for politicians.” The Pentagon and CIA: with the fade of communism, they are building a pretext for maintaining their budgets. Everybody wants a toy. All held together by a phrase: war on drugs. The black humor, the madness, is heartbreaking.

“God knows how many secret elements,” he says, “are out there working under the guise of the drug war. Oliver North was the latest example. His operation was hip deep in contra drug smuggling. He was banned from Costa Rica for his involvement with drug runners. The DEA documented 50 tons of contra coke that was being routed into the U.S. by a Honduran connection. An agent bought two kilos in Lubbock, Texas, and made the arrest. The CIA comes quickly to the rescue. A closed hearing is held. Case dismissed. In the meantime, an agent like my friend Ev Hatcher is murdered in New York over a couple of ounces, and there is the DEA wail of dying for ‘a just cause.’ A ghastly value is at work here.”

Congressional hearings and the media skirted North’s drug involvement; they burrowed for linkage to Bush and constitutional violations. North and his CIA cover skated free. “It was unbelievable,” says Levine. “But if the conduct of the drug war is ever investigated, Watergate and Irangate will look like midgets. One day it’ll happen. Like Peter Kelly, a federal judge in Kansas, said, eventually, in the public good some high people in the administration should be indicted for conspiracy.”

These later revelations only underscore the truths that Levine recognized as far back as 1980. In the U.S., Bario’s warning of “horror” was taking shape rapidly. Despite a previous decade in which drugs had become a visible issue, the stateside atmosphere was still one of complacency, from the White House down to the population, which had begun to view cocaine as a trendy indicator of personal success. Like other agencies, the DEA was arrogant and smug on the exterior, but had little or no grasp of its adversaries, their organizational capability, or their aim to mobilize giant, tentacled structures.

Posted to the embassy in Buenos Aires, Levine worked the boulevard cafés with informers, drug syndicators, and rip-off artists. The Argentine secret police were among the latter. They were fond of drug-world jewelry—not the drugs. The secret police (elements of which worked closely with the CIA) killed and tortured with an almost dull promiscuity; the bones of young ideologues filled the soil. “One of the cops,” says Levine, “pulled me aside and showed me his new invention, a little electric box. Grinning from ear to ear, he said he’d throw a dealer in the car and hook his balls to it.”

Marcelo Ibañez was different. The ex–minister of agriculture in Bolivia, he dressed like a banker going out of business. In undercover, it helps if you can adhere to a target, genuinely like him. Ibañez was a man of intellect and manners. As chief aide to Roberto Suarez, the padrone of Bolivia, he did not relish drug activity, but embraced it as a necessary act of patriotism. Posing as a Mafia prince, Levine said he wanted to expand his U.S. operations. The crucial topic in a drug sting is not the money. It is logistics, delivery, when each side is vulnerable. Ibañez said Suarez could guarantee a thousand kilos a month. Levine negotiated an initial deal for five hundred kilos, to establish trust.

Levine was amazed at the size of Suarez’s operation. What was going on here? He called the DEA and reported the prospect of a thousand kilos. “Come on, Levine,” an official said. “What kind of scam are you trying to run?” Mike says now, “The largest bust by the DEA had been two hundred kilos. And get this, the name of Roberto Suarez wasn’t even in the computer, despite our having five agents in Bolivia. “You don’t understand,” said Ibañez. “Don Roberto is a god there. He feeds our people. Politicians don’t. He does what he wants in my country.” Levine sighed. “That is precisely why I cannot go. I won’t be safe.” Ibañez smiled. “You are a smart man, my friend.”

A dramatically expanded American market tantalized, and Ibañez agreed to see Levine in Miami to explore further options. Levine was ready to play out the hit of his career, and one that stands as the most crucial turn in drug war history. He figured on having a big Hollywood setup for Ibañez’s arrival. He would be looking to see criminal royalty. “What I got,” says Levine, “was a twenty-five-hundred-dollar budget, a tract home, not a villa, a pool that looked like a duck pond, a dented green Lincoln instead of a fleet of cars. No Spanish-speaking agent or pilots to collect testimony once our beat-up plane landed in the Bolivian jungle.” With 40 hours left before Ibañez’s arrival, Levine and his agents rushed around town buying linen and family goods and renting a new Cadillac. Ibañez was all business when he turned up; no booze, no women. He poked through the house, looking in cabinets and closets. “Miguel,” he finally said, “this house is not lived in.”

Levine and his men agreed they would make the case in spite of the DEA; it was as if the agency had a motive for it to fail. He convinced Ibañez this house was temporary. To show good faith, he would send his wife (agent Frances Johnson) on the plane. Ibañez was happy again. But that night the head of the DEA in Miami contacted Levine. “You can’t send Frances,” the voice said. “She’s a woman.” Levine shouted, “She’s not a woman, she’s an agent!” He was in retreat again. He had to tell Ibañez that his wife had to stay, only she had the signature to get the money from the vault.

Ibañez was crushed, and Levine still doesn’t know what made him continue. Did he feel excessive pressure to please Suarez? “Suddenly,” says Levine, “he looked over to our agent Richie Fiano. He liked Richie. And he said, ‘I’ll take Richie. I will tell Roberto that he is your brother.’” Going to bed that night, Levine was wary. He looked at Johnson and said, “We’re husband and wife, you have to sleep with me.” Frances bundled up in pajamas, and sure enough, at 2 a.m., Ibañez burst through the door and switched on the lights. “Oh, please forgive! But I want to make sure we start early in the morning.”

Once the Bolivian pickup was made, two Suarez emissaries—Jose Roberto Gasser and Alfredo Gutierrez—met Levine at a Miami bank to collect their $9 million. They were arrested leaving the bank. Levine was astonished at the progress of events in the next few months. Gasser was released by the U.S. attorney. Gutierrez’s bail was lowered, and he jumped back to Bolivia. Angry, Levine kept asking himself, Why did the judge not only lower the bail but refuse to grant a hearing as to the source of the bail money? Why was Gutierrez not tailed while on bail? Why didn’t Gasser even reach the grand jury, a standard procedure? The execution of the case, once suspects were in custody, made a mockery of his operation.

Back in Argentina, he pieced together the why. With the expertise of Argentine factions, the CIA was whipping up a Suarez-backed revolution in Bolivia to deter what they perceived as encroaching communism; that was the priority. Suarez won, and the first thing he and his people did was destroy Bolivian drug-trafficking records. “It’s embarrassing,” an Argentine secret agent told Levine; even to these anti-drug fanatics, communism was more evil. Levine says now, “From that point, our drug war became a South American joke. The moment we turned Bolivia over to drug interests, it was the surrender of our drug effort. The mechanism for mass cocaine production was being protected by our own government. It was a ridiculous, self-inflicted wound. After 1980, drugs soared to a hundred-billion-dollar business. We could have dealt a hard blow to the future of drugs with our Suarez operation. But powerful alliances were born with the CIA and DEA help. They turned Suarez into the head of the drug world’s General Motors and the major supplier of coca base to the Medellín Cartel.”

While simmering in Argentina, Levine thought back to the death of his friend Sandy Bario. In 1978 Bario was arrested by DEA internal security in Texas and accused of dealing drugs. He was soon dead. He took a bite out of a peanut butter sandwich and keeled into convulsions. Early tests showed he’d been poisoned. Later tests revealed no trace of strychnine. And a final autopsy concluded he had “choked to death” on the sandwich. “That didn’t wash among agents,” says Levine. “Many believed he was killed by internal security or the CIA because he knew too much about the U.S. government’s involvement in drug trafficking. Sandy was on my mind when I wrote to a pair of Newsweek reporters, outlining what took place in the Suarez gambit. They either leaked my name to the DEA to curry favor or did it by accident. Afterward, my life was hell. A year and a half of investigations into the tiniest corners. They found only that I kept incomplete records and played my radio too loud in the embassy.” Settle down, a high official advised, ride it out. “The guy paused,” Levine recalls, “and then said, ‘Remember the peanut butter sandwich.’ ”

* * * * *

blm

(112,204 posts)

102. This is why official DC was dead set against a Kerry WH.

Reply to 777man (Reply #96)

Tue Jul 15, 2014, 02:45 PM

Jul 2014

And not JUST BushInc and GOP.

geojet707

(1 post)

328. Cocaine cowboys, arms to Central America and Eastern Airlines

Reply to 777man (Reply #95)

Fri Jun 5, 2015, 02:20 PM

Jun 2015

Has anyone mad or heard of any involvement Eastern Airlines may have had in the cocaine, arms to Central America and the reason for the airlines demise. I have come across evidence that Eastern did play a large part in the cocaine/arms trade and it was silenced with bankruptcy.