The History of the present King … is a history of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid world.

- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

For this is a year of choice - a year when we choose not simply who will lead us, but where we wish to be led; the country we want for ourselves, and the kind we want for our children. If this year of choice we fashion new polices out of old illusions, we ensure ourselves nothing but crisis for the future, and we bequeath to our children the bitter harvest of those crisis.

- Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968

It is 3AM in the morning and the phone rings at the White House who should the American public entrust to answer the phone. A man whose ties to the Reverend Wright make his views radical and out of touch with reality or a talented Senator from New York who already has 8 years experience in the White House. Listening to the media coverage since the evolution of the Wright issues, the public is led to believe; this is a simple question of Right from Wrong? But the sudden rise of Reverend Wright as a decisive political issue deserves more investigation especially considering that his recent speaking engagement at the National Press Club was arranged and sponsored by an ardent Hilary supporter.

The media has focused its criticism of Reverend Wright on two main ideas he presented:

1) The 9/11 tragedy was caused in part by past US government policies

2) the AIDS virus came from US government labs and is part of a larger conspiracy to keep Black America in chains

Reverend Wright is neither the first nor the last US citizens to come to these conclusions. The corporate media has once again failed the public by ignoring the historical basis of these comments, preferring to paint Reverend Wright and therefore Senator Obama as anti-American and a believer in the radical conspiracy theories of the far left, the Anti-War movement, and what Wayne Madsen has aptly termed the Internet irregulars.

The good Reverend Wright unfortunately is behind the times. He does not understand the cause of the 9/11 tragedy or its connection to the most important problem facing Black Americans for the last 40 years, the illegal drug trade.  There is no single issue more important for improving the lives of Black Americans or the inner city poor than the drug issue. With the number of US citizens in prison and jail approaching 3 million at an estimated cost of over $300 billion a year by conservative estimates, the drug problem has crippled the chance of the recovery of the inner city. There is no chance for its recovery with out the full disclosure of the role that the US government played in this problem. The US government has been actively involved in importing narcotics into the United States since the death of John F. Kennedy.

The single most important debate that has not even touched the lips of the corporate media is that both Bill and Hilary Clinton were involved in the importation of cocaine into the Untied States during the Iran Contra Affair. If Hilary were to get the Democratic nomination and be elected President, we can be assured of the fact that like Presidents Clinton and Bush before her she will do nothing to address the biggest scandal in US history: US government involvement in the narcotics trade. A complete investigation into this problem is the start of any program to rebuild the inner city. The final recovery of the money generated by the illegal drug trade is the funding solution for rebuilding inner city life.

And while Hilary and Bill cannot be singled out in this regard if Bill had not been involved in the trade during his tenure as Governor of Arkansas, the shape of the current political landscape would be vastly different both politically and economically. The rebuilding of America inner cities is going to be a multi trillion-dollar project; the cash that can be recovered from the drug trade will provide a good start for this project. But the first step in solving this problem is putting someone in the White House who was not part of the problem.

The History: Vietnam: A bag of heroin a day keeps the Democrats at bay

No other political movement has profited more from the sale of illegal drugs than the Central Intelligence Agency.  I say political movement because it has been clear from the start that the use of the sale of illegal drugs has been a major fundraising practice for individuals with corrupt political agendas. This began in earnest when the CIA and FBI established its kiss and don’t tell policy with Organized Crime. This relationship has been responsible for the creation of more havoc in US cities over the last 5 decades than any external enemy that we have previously faced or ever will face.  The amount of money that has been obtained illegally through these activities is greater than our national debt. The recovery of the profits from these illegal actively would more than stabilize Social Security and it might even balance the budget. Our duty as concerned citizens is to recover these ill gotten gains and to restore American Faith in this Republic.

CIA’s involvement in the drug trade has been more than just a little help for a close friend. In 1971 former Green Beret, Sgt. Paul Withers testified at “The Winter Soldier Hearings” in Boston, about his job description while he was on loan to the CIA in 1966.

“The mission in Laos was to make friends with the Meo people and organize and train them to fight the Pathet Lao. One of the main tasks was to buy up the entire local opium crop. About twice a week an Air American plane would arrive with supplies and kilo bags of gold dust.  Paul gave the gold to the Meo in return for their bags of opium which were loaded on the plane.”[i]

As Richard Nixon prepared his run for the White House, he proposed that American’s not only seek to destroy the communists in Vietnam, but also asked Americans to band together in an all out War on Drugs. As it turned out, Nixon’s War on Drugs had two prime objectives. The first was to put the international heroin trade and its tremendous cash flow in the hands of his political allies. Secondly, by blaming the anti-war movement for the drug problem, he intended to give the public the idea that the peace movement was set on destroying the American way of Life. This was the prefect fuel for Nixon’s law and order domestic agenda.

Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, believes the details of this strategy were planned shortly after Nixon’s reelection in 1968. He states:

“Involved in one way or another in the planning, the execution, or both, were: President Nixon and part of the White House staff; Meyer Lansky’s corporate gangsters syndicate - in particular its Cuban exile wing run by Florida capo Santo Trafficante, Jr.; The Cuba/China lobby; ultra reactionary forces in Southeast Asia, primarily the Kuomintang Chinese on Taiwan, and in the Golden Triangle; and intelligence and law enforcement factions of the CIA and BNDD/DEA.”[ii]

Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, convincingly outlines the results of US government complicity in the drug trade.

“From 1934 to 1970, the slow pressure of League drug diplomacy had forced a reduction in global opium production from 7,600 tons to only 1,000. In the following 20 years, however, the failure of the DEA’s suppression efforts combined with the CIA complicity in the global traffic allowed world opium production to multiply fourfold to 4,200 pounds by 1989. Significantly, some 3000 tons, or 73 percent of the 1989 total, came from Southeast Asia, where CIA had worked with the region’s drug lords for twenty-four years.”[iii]

During both the Vietnam era, and the 1980’s the Republicans road the drug issue into office. America was being consumed by liberal culture according to them, and it was leading to the downfall of the American Youth, and destruction of the American way of life. And here is the smoking gun, while using the media and research institutions to back up their political ideology; they simultaneously flooded the American Streets with heroin in the case of the Vietnam War, and Cocaine during the conflicts in Central America.

The Carter Years

The first goal of Jimmy Carter was to stop CIA covert action abroad. If his policy to stop human right policies aboard was to succeed, he knew the U.S. must set a good example. The first step he took to accomplish this step was to fire George Bush as head of the CIA. Unfortunately Carter did not realize that the CIA had sufficient funding to run covert actions with the profits from the drug trade.

On March 18, 1978 an article in the Boston Globe proclaimed:  “Senate Investigation into drug trading should begin at home.

“But of all government and government agencies complicit in heroin traffic none should be of more interest to the Senate Intelligence Committee than the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The extent of the intelligence community’s complicity in drug trafficking will only be known with a complete release of all documents in this area. But what we do know from empirical science is that prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there were approximately 50,000 addicts, and 10 years later at the height of the Vietnam War, there were closer to 1,000,000 addicts. What role the FBI and CIA had in this heroin epidemic will only be known by the release of still secret documents from this era. One thing that we know for sure is that the amount of money generated from the trading of illegal drugs skyrocketed after Kennedy’s assassination. In 1960 the total heroin consumption for a group of 50,000 addicts amounted to about $1.8 Billion per year. By the end of the decade, with a 1,000,000 addicts the cash flow would amount to $36 Billion or about $69 million per day. Once you understand that the heroin trade was the pay off for the Kennedy Assassination understanding how the history of the 70’s unfolded is much easier.

As presidential election season grew near, the Republicans began to mold their political machine much in the fashion that Nixon had during the Watergate Era. This new effort to control public opinion through disinformation would come into a new era during 1978 and 1979. Bill Weinberg, “George Bush, The Superspy, Drug-dealing President”, writes:

Bill Casey, the CIA man who was an old friend of Bush’s dad, was appointed Reagan campaign manager, and would be rewarded with the post of CIA director after the Reagan victory. Casey had a vision of a “private CIA” which would not be funded by - or answerable to - Congress. Honneger says that Casey and Bush launched this spy network during the 1980 campaign. She quotes an aid to Representative John Conyers: “William Casey set up a mammoth intelligence operation, including past and present members of the military and intelligence communities, to spy on Carter’s negotiations with Iran.”[iv]

This new privately funded “Secret Team” was already hard at work planning to expand its drug distribution network. This, of course, is the same secret team that has been involved in the illegal torture and debriefing of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, now famous for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. This secret team had perfected technique for torturing prisoners, and as we will learn American citizens for more than 50 years. This secret team played a major role in defeating Jimmy Carter in 1980, much as they played the same role in Florida for George Bush Light during the 2000 presidential race. Now with control of the White House, they unleashed their new political weapon that seemed like it had unlimited potential, Cocaine.

While Reagan took to the airwaves much like Nixon had 10 years before to initiate his own personal ‘War on Drugs’. Bush as head of the South Florida Task Force began to arrange a plan of action. A cocaine epidemic had gone from the planning stages to a plan of action. While the media highlighted a series of cocaine seizures, George Bush’s first move would be to close down Central America’s only DEA office in Honduras. [v] Within a few months the CIA was moving large quantities of Cocaine to the US through various places in Central America.

While DEA publications and efforts focused on the threat of drugs over the Mexican border, a new supply network was set up.

“Under North’s direction, Shackley and Clines recruited their old Operation Mongoose pals to run contra’s re-supply operation at El Salvador’s Eloping, formed shadow companies to build clandestine jungle airstrips-established the Contras as a link in the Medellin Cartel’s Andesto-Maimi cocaine trail.”[vi]

How successful would this new smuggling operation be? Between 1976 and 1988 the amount of cocaine entering the US had increased from 16 metric tons to 90 metric tons. Gang wars in city streets turned American political opinion more conservative assuring Republican victories at election time. The operation had gone as planned.

Appearing on the television show hosted by Geraldo Rivera, `Now It Can Be Told’, Richard Breneke described his first job for the illegal Contra Supply network. Southern Air Transport, a subsidiary of Air America famous for transporting heroin during the Vietnam War, had hired Breneke. Upon returning to an airstrip in Mena Arkansas from Central America, he discovered a large box had been placed in his plane for return shipment to the US. He opened the box and discovered it was filled with pure cocaine. He became enraged and called his supervisor, national security advisor, Donald Gregg, Vice President Bush’s National Security Advisor. Gregg told Breneke to mind his own business that his job was as a pilot not as a policy setter.[vii]

Reports also surfaced during the show that a prisoner was being held in prison in Washington State who had evidence of the use of 5 different US airstrips by the Contra Supply network to smuggle drug to fund Oliver North and his contra army.

Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA

The public…has the right to know about the CIA sponsoring candidates for U.S. Presidency and, thereby, compromising themselves and their values. We wrote this book because, otherwise, there would be no assurances that the truth would ever be told. [viii]

In 1994 Terry Reed and John Cummings wrote, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, that outlined a strategy where by the Bush family sought to compromise the Democrats by involving them in a scandal he had been part of since before the Vietnam War, cocaine trafficking. During the early 1980’s, Arkansas became a central hub not only for planes landing with shipment of Cocaine from Central America, but also for the laundering of the profits from the trade. Terry Reed had been recruited by Oliver North to help coordinate the trade of illegal weapons and cocaine with North’s partners in Central America. Central in this planning effort was the notorious Barry Seal.

Barry Seal had played a major role in CIA complicity in the drug trade for many years. He knew more about the inner workings of the DEA, CIA, FBI and other agencies that turned blind eye to US government involvement in drug trafficking than anyone. In a 1986 the Louisiana Attorney General wrote a letter to Edwin Messe stating that Barry Seale had been personally responsible for the importation of $3 to $5 billion worth of cocaine into the United States.

According to Reed, Seal’s planes were outfitted with sophisticated military style communication systems that received its flight plans from satellites allowing it to evade detection flying in and out of the United States. On one such flight Seal reveals to Reed how cocaine was being used to neutralize Bush’s potential political opponents.

“So you’ve got direct knowledge of the Republicans trying to neutralize some Democrats before they can nuke Bush with this?”

“Hell yeah. I’ve been part of it.  Remember in that meeting I told you I had a plan to blow the lid off the whole damn Mena deal and shut it down due to adverse publicity? Well, what I didn’t tell you was that project was already in effect, and the Republicans were already trying to neutralize some important people in Arkansas...namely the Clinton family.”

“Let’s don’t call it cocaine. Let’s just call it neutralizin’ powder. Least that’s the way the Bush family saw it. This is just one family warrin’ against another. Just like the Mob.”[ix]

In 1996 Michael Ruppert, prepared a statement for the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating allegations of US government involvement in drug trafficking. Ruppert had dedicated his life to stopping US government involvement in drug trafficking since discovering as a Los Angles police officer that the enforcement community was turning a blind eye to the importation of drugs into the Untied States. He documented efforts by the CIA in operation Pegasus, and Watchtower to install radar beacons that allowed planes flying out of Columbia to evade radar as they headed for Manuel Noriega’s Panama. He states: The missions are Iran-Contra era operations and directly link to admitted Agency operations at Mena, Arkansas where tons of cocaine were smuggled by Agency personnel into this country. That smuggling took place under direct orders from the highest levels of this government.

The investigative material, contrary to denials, is overwhelming, irrefutable and shows a direct link between then Governor Bill Clinton and CIA operations.[x]

Like many before them Reed and Seal suffered the consequences of eating from the hand of the beast. Reed survived, Seal did not. Reed was framed in an insurance fraud scheme. During the discovery phase of his trail, he obtained a 1987 document proving what he had known all along that the FBI was warning the DEA and the CIA that the operation in Mena Arkansas was about to be exposed by the media. The documents also confirmed that Seal was a CIA operative.[xi]

Barry Seal a year before being sentenced on drug trafficking charges, traveled to Washington DC to testify before the Presidents Commission on Organized Crime. He stated that he was moving drugs for the cartel with direct support of the US government. He described how he had used Department of Defense navigation and communication equipment designed for nuclear war to avoid being detected by military radar while making gun and drug shipments.[xii] Shortly after accepting a plea bargain from the US Attorney in Louisiana, Seal died in a hail of gun fire from members of the Medellin cartel on February 18, 1987. The media characterized the assassination as a successful attempt by the Medellin Cartel to silence a potential witness against them. Those who understand history know this was the killing of a man who could connect many powerful government officials with a coordinated effort to raise money for illegal political activities at home and abroad.

In 1997 article titled, “CIA Linked to Seal’s Assassination”, Daniel Hopsicker interviews two New Orleans attorneys who provide important details about Barry Seal. Sam Dalton, representing the Seal’s Columbian assassins, questioned the CIA about its involvement in Seals death during the penalty phase of their trail. During discovery Dalton gained access to the contents of Seal’s trunk. It was apparent that the FBI had done a good job removing any incriminating evident before they handed over the contents of the truck, but they missed the “smoking gun”. Dalton states: “But they had missed a few things that indicated just how valuable that trunk was. Because that’s where that phone number was. That’s where we found George Bush’s private phone number. They were regularly talking to each other very seriously over what was probably a secure phone. Barry Seal was in direct contact with George Bush.”[xiii]

Lewis Unglesby who represented Barry Seal in 1986 recalled the first time he became aware of how high Barry Seal’s connections in the Untied States government were. He states: “I sat him down one time, and said: I cannot represent you effectively unless I know what is going on. Barry smiled, and gave me a number, and told me to call it, and identify myself as him (Seal.)

I dialed the number, a little dubiously, and a pleasant female voice answered: ‘Office of the Vice President.’”

“This is Barry Seal,” Unglesby said into the phone.

“Just a moment, sir,” the secretary replied. “Then a man’s voice came on the line, identifying himself as Admiral somebody, and said to me, ‘Barry, where have you been?’”

“Excuse me, Sir,” Unglesby replied, “but my name is Lewis Unglesby and I am Barry Seal’s attorney.”

There was a click, Unglesby relates. The phone went dead. “Seal just smiled when I looked over at him in shock, and then went back to treating me on a need-to-know basis.”[xiv]

In 1997 Celerino “Cele” Costillo III, a retired member of the DEA and author of the book “POWDERBURNS, Cocaine, Contras & The Drug War outlines the history of crack cocaine epidemic in the Untied States for the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence.

Facts of my investigation on CIA-Contras drug trafficking in El Salvador:

The key to understanding the “crack cocaine” epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money.

As my friend and colleague Michael Ruppert has pointed out through his own experience in the 1970s, CIA has often bypassed congressional intent by resorting to the drug trade (Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc).

When the Boland Amendment(s) cut the Contras off from a continued U.S. government subsidy, George Bush, his national security adviser Don Gregg, and Ollie North, turned to certain foreign governments, and to private contributions, to replace government dollars. Criminal sources of contributions were not excluded. By the end of 1981, through a series of Executive Orders and National Security Decision Directives, many of which have been declassified, Vice President Bush was placed in charge of all Reagan administration intelligence operations. All of the covert operations carried out by officers of the CIA, the Pentagon, and every other federal agency, along with a rogue army of former intelligence Operatives and foreign agents were commanded by George Bush.”[xv]

Since their arrival on the national scene in 1992, Hilary has always insisted that she and Bill are a two for one package. Many of Hilary’s supporters claim that it is unfair to tie her to the sins of her husband much like supports of our current president insisted that he not be linked with the crimes against humanity by his father. But in reality Bill and Hilary are linked by the political forces that empower them knowing that an independent Justice Department Investigation into these activities will destroy the political ambitions of the people involved.

In an article originally appearing in Penthouse magazine in 1995, and later mysterious dropped by the Washington Post after accepting it for publication, “The Crimes of Mena”, Sally Denton and Roger Morris: “The tons of drugs that Seal and his associates brought into the country, officials agree, affected tens of thousands of lives at the least, and exacted an incalculable toll on American society. And for the three presidents, the enduring questions of political scandal are once again apt: What did they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why didn’t they do anything to stop it … The crimes of Mena were real. That much is now documented beyond doubt. The only remaining issues are how far they extended, and who was responsible.”[xvi]

The Clintons’ involvement in this scandal has done more to harm the Democratic Party over the last 20 years than any other single issue. The illegal drug trade has provided the money and political muscle to mislead the public on the issue of Homeland Security. The current War of Terrorism is a carbon copy of the PSY-OPS program used by the Nixon administration when they launched the War on Drugs. With an understanding of this history in place, we can now proceed to dissect Reverend’s Wright allegation that 9/11 was caused in part by past US government policies. For the seeds for 9/11 where buried deep in the politics of the international drug and arms trade.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, John S. Phillips, has spent 30 years investigating Government Involvement in the Narcotics Trade. A 1995 graduate of Harvard College, he has been involved in researching the issue of drug treatment for over 30 years. His website is: wbpnet.org. Click here to contact Mr. Phillips.

[i] Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, Southeast Asia: The Opium Trail, Boston, 1972, p.62

[ii] H. Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, Boston: South End Press, 1980 p.122

[iii] A. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, New York: Lawrence Books, 1991. p.19 This book was originally published in 1972 under the title, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. When it was re-released in 1991 it was almost impossible to find on bookstore shelves and reports surfaced that the Central Intelligence Agency was buying up as many copies as it could.

[iv] Bill Weinberg, High Times, November 1992.

[v] P.D. Scott, Cocaine Politics, 1991. Scott outlines the details of the strategy used to set up the movement of Cocaine through Honduras and Costa Rica.

[vi] B. Weinberg, Ibid., p.58

[vii] For more information see: THE ORAL DEPOSITION OF RICHARD J. BRENNEKE, a witness produced at the request of the Attorney General’s Office, taken in the above-styled and numbered cause 21st day of June, 1991, before Jeff Bennett, C.C.R., Certificate of BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC., Notary and for White County, Arkansas at the Office of the Attorney 323 Center Street, Little Rock, Arkansas at 10:10 a.m.

[viii] Terry Reed and John Cummings, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, p9-10, S.P.I. Books, New York, New York, 1994.

[ix] Ibid., p. 213

[x] Michael Ruppert prepared for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, November 15, 1996.

[xi] Compromised, p 198

[xii] Ibid., p. 221

[xiii] Daniel Hopsicker, CIA Linked to Seal’s Assassination, George Bush’s Personal Phone Number Found in Seals’ Trunk, The Washington Weekly, Aug. 18, 1997

[xiv] Ibid., p. 2

[xv] Written Statement of Celerino Castillo III, For the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, April 27, 1998.

[xvi] Sally Denton and Roger Morris, “The Crimes of Mena”, Penthouse Magazine, February 1995.