Reply #3: Hey, didya hear about the Four C's?

[Octafish]

The CIA, the Contras and Crack Cocaine

The CIA planes brought guns, washing machines, gourmet food, and fancy furniture intto Colombia and took drugs back to the U.S.

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."

"Some of the people involved in drug smuggling are present or past agents of the Central Intelligence Agency."

CONTINUED...

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9612a/ciacontra.html

Thanks for the kick, artemisia1! A most hearty welcome to DU!