cia involvement in drug traffickingcia involvement in drug trafficking

According to the report, "Twelve American, Nicaraguan and Cuban-American rebel backers interviewed by The Associated Press said they had been questioned over the past several months [about contra cocaine trafficking] by the FBI. (See Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA, W.W. Norton & Co., 1 987. Before the creation of the CIA in 1947, Allen Dulles assembled the Flying Tigers, an inner clique within the Office of Strategic Services . It concluded, however, that these problems were "a far cry from the type of broad manipulation and corruption of the federal criminal justice system suggested by the original allegations. (John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, Random House, 1991; National Security Archive Documentation Packet The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations.). He told the Examiner, "I just wanted to get the Communists out of my country." The Subcommittee's final report, issued in 1989, said that Contra drug links included: According to the report, the U.S. State Department paid over $806,000 to "four companies owned and operated by narcotics traffickers" to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras.[1]. A two-year investigation produced a 1,166-page report in 1989 analyzing the involvement of Contra groups and supporters in drug trafficking, and the role of United States government officials in these activities. The incident, which was first made public in 1993, was part of a plan to assist an undercover agent to gain the confidence of a Colombian drug cartel. Spadafora was later found murdered. In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said: "I think the critics have been far too harsh. Let me be frank about what we are finding. In the interviews, some covering several days and being conducted in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Colorado and California, several of the Contra backers told AP of firsthand knowledge of cocaine trafficking. After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. Theonline news sourceThe Huffington Postpublished an article titledRon Paul Had Accurate Conspiracy Theory: CIA Was Tied To Drug Traffickershighlights what the former Libertarian Presidential nominee Dr. Ron Paul said on the involvement of the CIA in the drug trade which was not aConspiracy Theorybut a fact when taking into consideration the Iran-Contra Scandal: Drug trafficking is a gold mine for people who want to raise money in the underground government in order to finance projects that they cant get legitimately. [35], In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. They were operated by narcotics traffickers who provided weapons for the Contras. [35], The Post response came from the paper's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser. The investigation was conducted by the Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, chaired by Senator John Kerry, so its final 1989 report was known as the Kerry Committee report. At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received US government contracts to carry non-lethal supplies to the contras. [13] Later in the same region, while the CIA was sponsoring a "Secret War" in Laos from 1961 to 1975, it was openly accused of trafficking heroin in the Golden Triangle area. He concluded: "How did these shortcomings occur? Additionally, the Medellin Cartels Miami accountant, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, testified that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan contras through long-time CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was based at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador. Blandn and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. 2023 We Are Change | Website by Dave Cahill, er Ronald Reagan, began funding and arming groups of rebels opposed to the Sandanistas known as the Counterrevolutionaries, or Contras. the Church Committee)[6] also found the charges to be unsubstantiated. Carey ultimately decided that there were problems with several parts of the story and wrote a draft article incorporating his findings.[39]. [29] The Post ultimately refused to print his letter. Operation Eagle was the flashpoint. According to a Pravda report in 2015 by William Edstrom titledHeroin Dealer in Chief. [33], The Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros was the owner of SETCO, an airline which the Nicaraguan Contras used to covertly transport military supplies and personnel in the early 1980s. The show explores long-simmering accusations of the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking, including that the agency may have sponsored Rick Ross and scar Danilo Blandn, the Los Angeles wholesaler and his Nicaraguan supplier who helped spark the crack epidemic in the 1980s. One of the businesses that relocated there was Rich Mountain Aviation Inc.that did illegal modifications to the planes which allowed Seal to fly weapons to Nicaragua and transport cocaine back into the United States. The CIA has a long history of being involved in global drug trade in all parts of the world under the control of the US or where it has considerable influence. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had intormation regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. Bush lost patience with his brutal, drug . It is portrayed in the movie Air America. According to an NBC affiliatereported that state officials were set to declare a public health emergency in New Haven, Connecticut over the rise of heroin use which has resulted in two deaths: Officials in New Haven on Friday were set to address a public health emergency declaration brought on by a rash of heroin overdoses in the city beginning Thursday. The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. In the beginning, CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party. [46] Ahmed Wali Karzai denied the allegations stating that he had provided intelligence to the United States but was not compensated. In 1979 the Sandanistas overthrew Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Debayle. One of the Americans said "that in one ongoing operation, the cocaine is unloaded from planes at rebel airstrips and taken to an Atlantic coast port where it is concealed on shrimp boats that are later unloaded in the Miami area. "[52], The report also stated that former DEA agent Celerino Castillo III alleged that during the 1980s, Ilopango Airport in El Salvador was used by Contras for drug smuggling flights, and "his attempts to investigate Contra drug smuggling were stymied by DEA management, the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador, and the CIA". Juarez, Mexico - The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers", a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in . Launched in 1970, Eagle targeted anti-Castro Cubans smuggling cocaine from Latin America to the Trafficante organization in Florida. Asking why crack became so prevalent in the black community of Los Angeles, the article credited Blandn, referring to him as the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California.It also found disparities in the treatment of black and white traffickers in the justice system, contrasting the treatment of Blandn and Ross after their arrests for drug trafficking. [36] The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America. Washington claims that Mexico is the source of the heroin that is flooding U.S. streetswith 10,500 hectares under poppy cultivation in 2012while Afghanistan had224,000 hectaresaccording to theUnited Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC) in a 2014 report but the numbers tell a different story. The article suggested this was in retribution for Ross testimony in the corruption case. The third article, by Mitchell and Fulwood, covered the effects of crack on African Americans and how it affected their reaction to some of the rumors that arose after the Dark Alliance series. BNDD agents immediately felt the impact of the CIA's involvement in drug law enforcement operations within the United States. Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Americans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the contras. [23] Former CIA Operations Officer in Vietnam and CIA historian Thomas Ahern wrote, drawing from his own recollection, that local tribesmen being trained by the CIA were prohibited from carrying opium on U.S. chartered flights. [45] The President demanded clear evidence before taking action, which the US and UK did not have. The second article described Blandns background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. Drug trafficking > When: WWII to Afghanistan > What: CIA involvement in global drug trafficking. "[59] It also found no evidence to support Webb's suggestion that several other drug smugglers mentioned in the series were associated with the CIA, or that anyone associated with the CIA or other intelligence agencies was involved in supplying or selling drugs in Los Angeles. [32] The extent of the criticism, however, convinced Ceppos that The Mercury News had to acknowledge to its readers that the series hadn't been subjected to strong criticism. Books and investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor and diplomat Peter Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. "[30] Webb later published a book based on the series, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. One of those groups is The Finders, which Gunderson said is operated by the CIA. This article first appeared onPoliticalJunkieNewsMedia.com and was authored by Joe Bowman. During the Korean War, the first allegations of CIA drug trafficking surfaced after 1949, stemming from a deal whereby arms were supplied to Chiang Kai-shek's defeated generals in exchange for intelligence. On October 3, 1996, LA County Sheriff Sherman Block ordered a fourth investigation into Webb's claims that a 1986 raid on Blandn's drug organization by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department had produced evidence of CIA ties to drug smuggling and that this was later suppressed. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. 1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series." One described the series' evidence as "thin";[19] the second, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government. A number of writers have alleged that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the Nicaraguan Contras' cocaine trafficking operations during the 1980s Nicaraguan civil war. It is very clear that the CIA has been very much involved with drug dealings, Paul said. A 1986 investigation by a sub-committee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (the Kerry Committee), found that "the Contra drug links included", among other connections, "[] payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. 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. The Report concluded that "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. The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. Surname1 CIA involvement in Drug Trafficking Name Professor Course Date The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) The Clinton family have been heavily involved in the trafficking of drugs, both inside and outside of the United States. They identified the Cuban-Americans as members of Brigade 2506, an anti-Castro group that participated in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Having no way to transport their opium, the Hmong were faced with economic ruin. [6], In 1984, U.S. officials began receiving reports of Contra cocaine trafficking. The US repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull back to Costa Rica to stand trial. To support these claims, the series focused on three men: Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandn, and Norwin Meneses. U.S. cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and New York City experienced a rise in crime and disease. 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