US drugs official accuses Chavez

Source: BBC

A top US anti-drugs official has accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of being a "major facilitator" of the trade in cocaine.

The official, John Walters, said Venezuela had become "a haven" for shipments of cocaine manufactured in neighbouring Colombia.

Venezuela rejects the charges, saying it is the victim of traffickers.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7198768.stm

By Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — White House drug czar John Walters made at least 20 trips at taxpayer expense to appear with Republicans congressional candidates before the 2006 elections, according to memos and e-mails released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the committee, said the documents show the White House had encouraged such travel by Walters and several Cabinet secretaries for years. He said his committee is investigating whether the trips violated a ban on using government resources for politics.

The trips are outlined in a memo sent by former White House political director Sara Taylor to the drug czar's office last year. None of the trips included Democrats.

"Non-partisan officials like the drug czar should not be enlisted to help Republican candidates," Waxman said. "There is growing evidence that the Bush administration has crossed the line."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-07-17-drugczar_N.htm?csp=34

and what have you done, oh yeah a verbal outrage that seems to work for ya. NOT

Mr Walters' declaration served two purposes, says the BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Colombia.

The first is to support Colombia's President Uribe, a key regional ally.

Colombia's relations with Venezuela have all but disintegrated amid fears that Mr Chavez may start actively supporting Marxist guerrillas who are trying to overthrow the Colombian state.

The second is to berate Mr Chavez publicly for not co-operating with Washington's region-wide drug strategy.

Relations between Venezuela and the US are now so poor that US drug enforcement agents can hardly operate in the country, our correspondent says.


.... the US/bushies are afraid of more "leftist" socialist regimes that they can not manipulate. I can't help but wonder if the CIA feels their cocaine operations are in jeopardy as well.

Like Dyncorp? Who, btw, have been implicated in drug running themselves.

DynCorp's Drug Problem

By Jason Vest, The Nation. Posted July 10, 2001.

Is the U.S.'s $1.3 billion stake in Plan Columbia actually funding drug running? Perhaps, if the State Department's antidrug contractors are running a business on the side.

Could the State Department's antidrug contractors in South America possibly be dabbling in narcotics trafficking? A key part of the U.S.'s $1.3 billion contribution to Plan Colombia -- the scheme that will supposedly expedite the end of Colombia's civil war -- calls for the use of private contractors (as opposed to actual U.S. military assets) to fly airborne missions against both the fields that grow coca and poppy and the labs that process them. While some contractors, like Aviation Development Corporation of Montgomery, Alabama, fly surveillance missions for the CIA, those that fly on retainer for other U.S. government agencies are a bit more expansive in their missions.

http://www.alternet.org/story/11162

<snip>

Yet the existence of a document that The Nation recently obtained (under the Freedom of Information Act) from the Drug Enforcement Administration -- combined with the unwillingness of virtually any U.S. or Colombian government agency to elaborate on the document -- has some in Washington and elsewhere wondering if, like virtually every other entity charged with fighting the drug war, DynCorp might have a bad apple or two in its barrel. According to a monthly DEA intelligence report from last year, officers of Colombia's National Police force intercepted and opened, on May 12, 2000, a U.S.-bound Federal Express package at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport. The parcel "contained two (2) small bottles of a thick liquid" that "had the same consistency as motor oil." The communiqué goes on to report that the liquid substance "tested positive for heroin" and that the "alleged heroin laced liquid weighed approximately 250 grams." (Freebase heroin, it bears noting, is soluble in motor oil, and can therefore be extracted without much trouble.)

But perhaps the most intriguing piece of information in the DEA document is the individual to whom it reports that the package belonged: an unnamed employee of DynCorp, who was sending the parcel to the company's Andean operations headquarters at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. More interesting still is the reluctance of DynCorp and the government to provide substantial details in support of their contention that this situation isn't really what it seems.



.....fucking pot calling the kettle black.

Walters id guilty, guilty, guilty, and we need to get this out there. There is a continuum of US involvement in illegal activities in Latin America, including support of political death squads. Any liberal-leaning government will be subjected to this kind of harassment as well as covert---and not so covert---attempts to overthrow them.

Vernon Walters was involved in past Reagan/Bush administration crimes the current Bush Junta is trying to cover-up!

------------------------
FROM the following threads:

George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

Italy: Judge issues 140 arrest warrants in "Plan Condor" case. Bush NOT YET indicted.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2528536
------------------------

General Walters, under director Bush, was fully informed of the "international activities" of Condor

According to Washington's ambassador to Paraguay, the heads of these agencies kept "in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America." This allowed them to "co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries." Just this month, Pinochet's security chief General Manuel Contreras, who is serving a 240-year prison term in Chile for a wide-range of human rights violations, gave a TV interview in which he confirmed that the CIA's then-Deputy Director, General Vernon Walters (who served under director George H.W. Bush), was fully informed of the "international activities" of Condor.

Torture: Torture is the animating spirit of this triad, the unholiest of this unholy trinity. In Chile, Pinochet's henchmen killed or disappeared thousands -- but they tortured tens of thousands. In Uruguay and Brazil, the state only disappeared a few hundred, but fear of torture and rape became a way of life, particularly for the politically engaged. Torture, even more than the disappearances, was meant not so much to get one person to talk as to get everybody else to shut up.

At this point, Washington can no longer deny that its agents in Latin America facilitated, condoned, and practiced torture. Defectors from death squads have described the instruction given by their U.S. tutors, and survivors have testified to the presence of Americans in their torture sessions. One Pentagon "torture manual" distributed in at least five Latin American countries described at length "coercive" procedures designed to "destroy capacity to resist."

As Naomi Klein and Alfred McCoy have documented in their recent books, these field manuals were compiled using information gathered from CIA-commissioned mind control and electric-shock experiments ......

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174873/greg_grandin_on_the_torturable_and_the_untorturable

------

General Vernon Walters (1917-2002) was one of the main collaborators of U.S. Presidents
http://www.terrorfileonline.org/en/index.php/Vernon_Walters

In a terrifying piece of testimony, given to the Chilean journalist Lilan Olivares and published on September 20, 2000 (sic) in the newspaper La Segunda, General Manuel Contreras, head of DINA (National Intelligence Directorate of Chile), related:

In August 1975, the President (Pinochet) sent me to the U.S. again because we were about to be thrown out of the UN. For two days, together with the military attaché and mission chief, we met with Senator (Frank) Church, the man who had destroyed the CIA and who wanted to throw Chile out of the United Nations. We finally convinced him that the information that he had received from the Vicaria de la Solidaridad (Chilean human rights organization) and the Chilean Marxist parties was false. We delivered to him our own information and he promised not to keep on insisting that Chile be expelled from the UN. (The intermediary was) Vernon Walters, second head of the CIA. Vernon Walters proposed that we take on a U.S. senatorial lobby so that international harassment of Chile would cease. He literally told me: Uruguay finished with her international problem in two years. (…) Five senators were paid two million dollars a year and they acted in favour of Chile.

Later (Walters) asked me again, openly, that DINA become a branch of the CIA, because the CIA had been destroyed. (…) Walters asked me to go and see Venezuela at the DISIP (Venezuelan Department of Intelligence and Prevention Services). I went there. (…) It was to see how DISIP worked with them, with the <[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA. I went over there and I realized that the seven DISIP heads were Cuban CIA agents. They themselves told me this. And now something very important, and I’d like it to be very clear: DINA maintained a service relationship with 37 intelligence services in the world; one of these was the CIA. (…) Vernon Walters secretly saw to it that in ¨75 the first two thousand LAW missiles were delivered to Chile and this meant that there was a payment, what I mean, is that Walters was paying Chile.” [br />

Venezuela Criticizes DEA As 'New Cartel'

By FABIOLA SANCHEZ

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venezuela on Monday said it will not allow U.S. agents to carry out counter-drug operations in the country, accusing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of being a "new cartel" that aids traffickers.

Justice Minister Pedro Carreno said the South American nation suspended cooperation with the agency in 2005 after determining that "they were moving a large amount of drugs." President Hugo Chavez at the time also accused the DEA of spying.

"The United States with its DEA monopolizes the shipping of drugs like a cartel," Carreno told reporters. "We determined that we were evidently in the presence of a new cartel." He did not elaborate.
(snip)

Carreno was responding to comments by John Walters, the U.S. director of National Drug Control Policy, who told the Colombian magazine Semana in an interview published last week: "Chavez has refused to cooperate. It's a shame. Venezuela is gaining in importance for the drug traffickers."

Carreno said Venezuela is making important strides in fighting drug trafficking.

"The Venezuelan government doesn't accept blackmail," Carreno said. Security agencies are willing to follow up on any information provided to track down traffickers, he added, but "what we will not permit them to do is carry out operations in our territory."
(snip/)

http://qwstnevrythg.blog-city.com/venezuela_criticizes_dea_as_new_cartel.htm

:grr:

CIA are traitors and killers. They don't give a shit about "democracy" so long as they hold the reigns. They kill anybody that stands in THEIR way. They want to control cocaine.

When this asshat drug czar makes his statement is their anymore proof than what was presented at the UN by Powell. I mean come on, at least draw pictures of planes full of cocain.

wonder what Ollie North is up to these days?

when will you be making an announcement about the UK (and therefore also the US) involvement in facilitating the drug trade by aiding and protecting drug lords in Karzai's government in Afghanistan?

We have been lied to constantly and outrageously for decades about drugs and the so called war on drugs. Why does anyone take anything this government says seriously about anything? Hell, the Bushies dont even believe in science.

This is the psyops/disinformation part.

"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

He says we need to get rid of any remaining "checks and balances" in our own government (such as they are - i.e., that fusty ol' Congress), so the U.S. can "act swiftly" in support of "friends and allies" in South America (i.e., fascist thugs planning coups)--that is, direct U.S. military intervention to restore fascist dictatorship on this continent (where leftist governments have been elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Nicaragua, over the last half decade, with Paraguay a likely addition this year). He virtually declares war on Venezuela (where a lot of the oil that he lusts after is), and (though he doesn't name them) is also targeting Ecuador (leftist government; lots of oil), Bolivia (leftist government; lots of gas and other resources), and probably their ally Argentina (evidence of black ops to drive a wedge between Argentina and Venezuela, so far unsuccessful). Colombia (fully U.S. militarized, via the phony, corrupt Bush-U.S. "war on drugs") is the launching pad for this new theater for the Corporate Oil War. It is a hotbed of rightwing military and paramilitary, and also U.S. military/DEA and Blackwater mercenary, activity--funded by billions of our tax dollars.

See this Amnesty International report on the horrendous violence by Colombian security forces and associated paramilitaries against union organizers (2007):
http://www.amnesty.org/en/alfresco_asset/26e626d7-a2c0-11dc-8d74-6f45f39984e5/amr230012007en.html

The Bush Junta is in bed with the worst government in South America--no surprise there, I guess. But we need to be very alert to some of the subtler psyops techniques that are pervasive in our war profiteering corporate news monopolies--along with blatant lies and disinformation, such as this crap from the Bushite "drug czar." I put some effort into deconstruction of a recent bit of creative writing in the Houston Chronicle, of the subtler psyops variety. See my comment at
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3148221

The leftist governments in South America are doing everything they can to prevent U.S. Oil War II, and they are a powerful collective force. However, the Bushites are quite desperate to reassert U.S./global corporate predator control of the region (possibly in a bargain to keep their on-going immunity from war crimes prosecution), and I think it quite likely that they are planning military intervention before Bush leaves office, and that the context for the November election may be a "hot" war in South America (possibly first in Bolivia). The Bushites will lose any such war, but when did that ever stop NeoCons? (And you thought Donald Rumsfeld had "retired"!)

the oil that they can't.

I hate it when they mirror things. They are accusing someone else of something they are guilty of or MORE. They do this alot - the axis of evil thing - calling someone else terrorists. I think it's in the Rovian Darth Monkey playbook.

better than projection Yeah, makes my blood boil literally when they do that.

Yet it's ok to sell drug, weapons, and nuclear secrets to foreign entities and then issue gag orders on officials (Sibel Edmonds) brave enough to try to expose the corruption. This government will do and say anything to start wars around the globe but when it comes to doing what is right, here in the US, fugetaboutit.

1. The "suitcase full of cash."

A very rich Miami resident with duel citizenship (in Venezuela) was stopped by Argentinian customs officials, coming from Venezuela on a plane into Argentina, carrying a suitcase full of $800,000 in U.S. currency. They confiscated the money, because they weren't sure what it was for, and allowed him to return to Miami. There was a bit of news about this in the (virulent rightwing) corporate press in South America, spreading a rumor that the cash was being sent from the Venezuelan government to the campaign of Christina Fernandez de Kirchner (a Chavez ally), who was running for president of Argentina. (Note: Fernandez easily won the presidential election in Argentina - she didn't need the money.) But this wasn't enough publicity for the stunt, from the Bush Junta's point of view, so, a short time later, the Miami-Venezuelan citizen turns up as an "informer" in a prosecution announced by the U.S. Attorney in Miami, a couple of weeks ago. The U.S. Attorney claimed that two other Venezuelans and a Uruguayan had pressured his "informer" to cover up the Venezuelan's government's attempt to aid Fernandez's campaign, and filed charges against the the three, for...get this...failing to register with the U.S. Attorney General as "agents of a foreign government."

Problem for Bushite psyops: How do you get an entirely South American affair--a seeming bit of corruption between two South American governments--to come under the U.S. Attorney's jurisdiction in Miami--and thus expand the psyops cache into the U.S. and worldwide press? Answer: File silly charges based on your original OPERATIVE's word and on leading conversations between him and these other patsies, that were all set up to be taped (or were tapped). The U.S. Attorney claims to have "tapes," but, whatever he has on the tapes, the "agents of a foreign government" charge is so thin as to be a ridiculous waste taxpayer's money. And what is he going to do about the counter-charge (if it emerges) that HIS "informer" was an "agent of a foreign government"--the U.S.--in Venezuela and Argentina? The thing is a CIA rat's nest. (Note: The "informer" has posh properties in Miami and owns two porsches - and smells of Miami anti-Castro "mafia," as well as of typical fascist Venezuelan coup plotters who hate a government that builds schools and provides medical care for the poor, when they could have THREE porsches.)

I think it was Venezuela's VP who established the absurdity of this whole affair, when he said that, if Chavez had wanted to send $800,000 in cash to candidate Fernandez, he would have taken it on his own plane the next day, with diplomatic immunity--and would not have sent it on a private plane to be caught at the border! (Chavez visited Argentina the next day.) The Bushite purpose was to embarrass both governments, and especially to drive a wedge between them. Cristina Fernandez put the kabosh on that right away. She said that this Bushite dirty trick makes Argentina's alliance with Venezuela all the more solid, and she blasted the Bushites for these nefarious activities.

(Note: One of the many reasons the Bush Junta has, for wanting to break up this alliance, is Venezuela's friendly loans to Argentina, to get them out of World Bank debt and back on their feet, as a healthy trading partner for Venezuela, Brazil and other countries. This was the seed of the Bank of the South, a new regional institution, aimed at local self-determination and independence, also at social justice, which is quickly evicting the U.S.-dominated World Bank loan sharks from the region. Chavez and Venezuela are using their oil profits not just to bootstrap the poor in Venezuela, but also to help other countries and to pull the region together as a potential economic powerhouse of locally controlled resources, finances, manufacturing and trade. Argentina-Venezuela is a core alliance in this movement, which many other leaders support as well, since it provides an alternative to brutal, exploitative U.S. policies, such as "free trade" and the "war on drugs." With economic justice, you don't need billions in military aid to subdue the rebellious poor.)


2. Chavez and FARC (leftist guerrillas in Colombia) were lying that FARC had custody of the child Emmanuel, and that FARC intended to release him, as the result of hostage negotiations.

This, too, is a tangled affair. But if you figure it this way, it starts to make sense: The Bush Junta (Rumsfeld?) decided to set Chavez up, by having their tool Uribe invite Chavez to try to get some FARC hostages released (where all others have failed). Uribe issued the invitation to Chavez. (Rumsfeld omits this fact from his op-ed.) Chavez began negotiations and was making good progress. He was able to get a promise of "proof of life" (first item in any hostage negotiation). At this point, Uribe shuts him down--suddenly announces the end of negotiations--using the lame excuse that Chavez broke some protocol by making a phone call to the Colombian military. (Smart Chavez!) (This was circa 12/1/07, Rumsfeld's op-ed publication.) The Bush Junta's (Rumsfeld's?) real intent was to entrap Chavez, even to kill him, in a confused crossfire situation. (There may have been a rehearsal of this some months earlier, when unidentified shooters stalked a FARC camp and open fired, targeting and killing another group of hostages.) At the least, they hoped to gravely embarrass and discredit Chavez by getting some hostages killed, or creating some kind of chaos. Chavez got on to it (his call to the military?), and, since the thing was hugely backfiring (Chavez was succeeding at the negotiation!), they called it off. THEN Uribe ARRESTED the 3 FARC negotiators who were in transit to Caracas with the "proof of life" documentation--a serious act of bad faith--and, at first, tried to claim the credit for obtaining "proof of life"--but were quickly contradicted by the hostages' families, the president of France, and others, who credited Chavez.

So the Bushites now had a P.R. disaster on their hands. How could they salvage anything from it? My guess: The "proof of life" documentation possibly contained info on the child Emmanuel's location. The child's mother is a hostage; his father is a member of FARC. (I don't know if it was consensual.) FARC had placed the child (whom I think is about 5 years old by now) in a foster care home in Bogota, for his safety and welfare (he was not safe in jungle guerrilla camps that are always on the move, and vulnerable to attack), probably under an assumed name. Uribe (or Bush Cartel operatives?) found out where he was, by this (the "proof of life") or other means, and announced that FARC (and Chavez!) were LYING when they said that FARC had custody of the child and would release him.

Lying! But, of course, why would they tell such a lie to the international community--a lie that would imminently be exposed? It makes no sense whatsoever--neither from FARC's nor Chavez's point of view.

I think that this narrative that I've laid out above--comprised of the facts, and of my guesses--is more or less what really happened. What alerted me to a possible Bushite "black op" (and Rumsfeld involvement) in the initial Uribe invitation to Chavez, was an odd grammatical error in Rumsfeld's first paragraph, indicating hasty, last-minute re-writing, as these events unfolded. Rumsfeld writes, of Chavez, that "He has repeatedly threatened its neighbors." He may have first written that "Venezuela has repeatedly threatened its neighbors," but something caused him to change that to "he." Another big point in that paragraph is that Chavez's hostage negotiation efforts were "unwelcome" in Colombia (something that was only true for a few days--then Uribe changed his mind again, under terrific international pressure, and Chavez got the 2 women released). (Also, meanwhile, on 12/2/07, Venezuelans voted down Chavez's latest socialist reforms--by a very narrow margin. Did Rumsfeld change "Venezuela" to "he" so as not to offend Venezuelan voters?). The upshot is that Rumsfeld was watching events in Venezuela and Colombia very closely - and leaping at any opportunity to say something bad about Chavez.

And given what I think about Rumsfeld--whom I believe was the key Bushite player responsible for 9/11--once I saw his close interest in this matter, the pieces started falling into place. The rest of his op-ed lays out Oil War II: South America (though he never mentions oil). This is his "retirement" project, to destroy democracy in South America, and put Occidental Petroleum and Exxon Mobile and the World Bank/IMF back in power there. It is also a boffo corporate war profiteer boondoggle, given that they apparently can't invade Iran. (China and Russia have stopped that, I think.) Their final looting of our treasury will likely be for war on South America, with all these excuses they have been trying to create out of thin air: Chavez, the tyrant; Chavez, the "terrorist" (for negotiating with FARC); Chavez, the threatener of "its" neighbors; Chavez, of the dirty campaign money; Chavez, the cocaine lord. This crap is meant to put us to sleep while it happens.

(Bolivia, however, is the more vulnerable of the targeted countries, and may be their first foray. There is major trouble brewing there--no doubt Rumsfeld-instigated--with the rich rural landowners (where the gas and oil are) wanting to split off from the central government and its first indigenous president, socialist Evo Morales, a Chavez ally).

was elected. He started mumbling about Morales well in advance of that election because they were all very aware he was extremely respected and approved by the vast majority of the massive poor population of Bolivia.

They even got their little fascist pal Jose Maria Aznar to offer his grimey two cents on it, too:

In an interview covered today in the Bolivian daily La Razon, the former conservative president of Spain, José María Aznar, warned against the rising "populist tide" in Latin America. Specifically citing Bolivia, Aznar warned:

"I hope that this populist tide can be stopped. Someone has to stop it. Someone has to say that this isn't the way."

Earlier this month in Washington, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said virtually the same thing in a speech before the National Press Club:

"We've seen some populist leadership appealing to masses of people in those countries. And elections like Evo Morales in Bolivia take place that clearly are worrisome."

http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/archives/2006_02_01_democracyctr_archive.html

~snip~
For the Bush administration, however, Bolivia is all about subversion, not poverty and powerlessness.
When U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Paraguay this past August, he told reporters that, "There certainly is evidence that both Cuba and Venezuela have been involved in the situation in Bolivia in unhelpful ways."

A Rumsfeld aide told the press that Cuba was involved in the unrest, a charge that even one of Bolivia's ousted presidents, Carlos Mesa, denies.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/19/6222/5410/90/172810

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
...Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia in December 2005..."You have a revolution going on in Bolivia,” said an advisor to Donald Rumsfeld, exhibiting the same keen strategic intelligence that was brought to bear on Iraq, “a revolution that potentially could have consequences as far reaching as the Cuban revolution of 1959. Che Guevara...is back.”

http://www.dailyreckoning.co.uk/article/170320063.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The answer is that Morales is more important for what he represents than for the position he holds, and he knows it. He is the leader of Bolivia's "Movement to Socialism," and could be the future of Latin American leftism. He has expressed admiration for Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, who, along with Morales, have been dubbed by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the "Latin American Axis of Evil."

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/149520985.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How many people recall that Rumsfeld went behind Evo Morales' back and got some people to remove anti-aircraft missiles from Bolivia's stock in the time immediately after Evo Morales won the Presidential election? Obviously they did that because they wanted to weaken his defenses, and knew there was no other way to do it. Sleazy, isn't it?

US Denies Removal of Bolivian Missiles Was Secret

The United States denied Thursday that it removed anti-aircraft missiles from Bolivia without the knowledge of top officials in La Paz. The State Department says the operation was at the request of Bolivian authorities and in line with an Organization of American States resolution.

Officials here acknowledge that the United States removed a small number of MANPADS, man-portable air defense system, from Bolivia earlier this year as part of a broader effort to keep the shoulder launch missiles out of the hands of terrorists.

But they are denying charges from Bolivia, which figured in that country's presidential election campaign, that the operation was conducted without the knowledge of senior Bolivian officials.

Bolivian President-elect Evo Morales, the victor in last Sunday's election, has alleged that the 28 Chinese-made missiles were spirited out of the country in June in an operation he described as international intervention.

He says he will press for an investigation of the affair and is quoted as saying he would punish those responsible and evict U.S. military advisers from the country.

Questioned about the issue here, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. officials had worked with the Bolivian government on the removal of a small quantity of missiles he said were in a deteriorating condition.

He said the removal came at the request of the Bolivian government consistent with an O.A.S. resolution last June and said suggestions to the contrary are untrue:

"As for who was told in Bolivia about the action, you'll have to talk to the Bolivian government about that. As for these other allegations, it's just not true. This was done at the request of the Bolivian government, and it was done in partnership and consistent I would note with an Organization of American States resolution on the matter," he said.

http://www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/74308?articleid=74308

http://www.madcowprod.com/01162008.html

January 16, 2008
by Daniel Hopsicker


Two American-registered drug planes busted in Mexico carrying four and 5.5 tons of cocaine are just the "tip of the iceberg" in a blockbuster aviation deal which sold 50 American-registered aircraft to the Sinaloa Cartel, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.

According to an indictment released over the holidays by Mexico’s Atty. General, Pedro Alfonso Alatorre, already indicted as the cartel’s chief financier, purchased the DC9 (N900SA) airliner, the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA), and 48 other planes not yet identified for Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel with laundered drug money, using a company he controls which owns currency exchanges at major airports in Mexico.

Now we know who bought the airplanes. The trickier question is: who sold them? The answer, normally, would be, "Their local counterparts in international organized crime."

But these aren't normal circumstances. Why? Because the U.S. doesn't even have any Drug Lords. Ask anybody at the DEA. Apparently, we don't even bother to field a team.


Elusive seldom-photographed American Drug Lords
News of a 50-plane fleet of drug smuggling aircraft being sold to a Mexican Cartel by mysteriously unnamed American owners confirms rumors of a mushrooming scandal, one which may eventually implicate top officials in the U.S., Mexico, and Colombia.

The reason was left unspoken in the Mexican Atty. General’s statement, because it lies on the American side of the equation, in the identity of the sellers of the planes...

The DC9 and the Gulfstream II, the two American jets now known to be part of a 50-plane sale, share interlocking ownership. The stock of two corporations which owned the planes was used in the massive recent Adnan Khashoggi-led stock fraud.

Khashoggi, currently a fugitive from justice in the case, engineered the biggest brokerage bankruptcy in America since the Great Depression, costing investors and taxpayers over $300 million.

With gas prices over $3 a gallon, you wouldn't think the Saudi billionaire needed the money. So, what did 'they' do with the money?


Upcoming Presidential elections, perhaps?

The operation was manned by “retired” CIA and military intelligence personnel, had close ties to major Bush backers and the national Republican Party, (Sen. Mel Martinez, until recently the Chairman of the GOP, flew free on Skyway’s Cocaine One DC9 during the crucial final two weeks of his campaign in Florida for the Senate.)

And with seeming impunity the operation engaged in multi-ton load drug trafficking, as well as massive financial fraud.

What began as a minor scandal without fanfare in April of 2006 with the bust of an American-registered DC-9 airliner carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula gathered momentum when a Gulfstream business jet flying out of the same airport was busted in the Yucatan 18 months later carrying 4 tons of cocaine.

The level of citizen outrage increased with the crash-landing of the second American plane. With the news that the number of American planes sold to Mexican drug traffickers was not just one or two planes—but 50—the scandal is now threatening to mushroom into something much larger.


Kingpin Airlines welcomes you aboard
The brazen fleet-sized sale of American planes to Mexican drug traffickers has huge implications.

"The extraordinary similarity,” to use the phrase used by Mexican newspaper Por Esto, between the DC9 airliner and the Gulfstream II...

The American owners of the drug planes have suffered no adverse consequences whatsoever to date.

If you own an airliner or business jet discovered hauling pure cocaine into the U.S., literally by the ton, authorities are sympathetic. They know the hazards unauthorized charter flights pose to innocent business owners, and the confusion that can result when you've inadvertently purchased an airplane from someone known to be involved with international organized crime.


"Our Story Thus Far"
As this amazing information begins to sink in—that owning a drug plane may have little downside and be a terrific hedge against coming hard times—a brief recap of "Our Story Thus Far" may be in order.

Two American-registered airplanes with clear ties to the U.S. Government—a DC9 airliner (N900SA) painted to resemble an airplane from the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security, and a Gulfstream business jet (N987SA) formerly used by the CIA for renditions—were busted in Mexico 18 months apart carrying multi-ton loads of cocaine .

Both planes flew from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport to Mexico, then on to Colombia, where they loaded the cocaine, before being caught on their return journey to (supposedly) Fort Lauderdale, stopping to refuel on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Just before both plane's ill-fated final flights, the “ownership” papers were shuffled around like peas being moved underneath shells on a card table in a billion dollar game of three-card monte by people known as “aircraft brokers.”


Bush Rangers, cardboard-thin cutouts

However, the MadCowMorningNews learned from an FAA official that neither of the two “aircraft brokers” bought or sold any other planes during the entire year.

They aren’t really “aircraft brokers.” Aircraft brokers buy and sell planes.

They’re “cut-outs,” a spy trade term for the layers of insulation relied on to provide plausible deniability. They play a critical role in the cover story, shielding the plane's true owners from scrutiny.

Both busted airplanes give every indication of having been involved in a “protected” drug trafficking operation. Imagine the surprise and shock back in the Home Office. No wonder the cover story is, in many places, exceedingly thin.

A shameless plug:

Almost two weeks before the Mexico’s Atty. General’s announcement in early November that both planes had been used in the same drug smuggling operation, readers of the MadCowMorningNews already knew of connections between the two downed American drug planes, and their interlocking ownership.


The "W" Connection
Stephen Adams, a secretive Midwestern media baron and Republican fund-raiser, owned the Gulfstream II at the same time he was personally purchasing one million dollars of billboard advertising for George W. Bush during the 2000 Presidential Campaign.

Adams was also in business, in two separate companies, with Michael Farkas, the man who founded SkyWay Aircraft, which owned the DC9. Both men control companies used in Adnan Khashoggi’s $300 million stock fraud rip-off.

The multi-ton drug busts, as well as the numerous murders already surrounding the case, are part of a continuing "Mexican stand-off" between rival Mexican drug cartels allied with dueling factions contesting Mexico's unsettled political landscape.

The contest has so far resulted in more than 2500 murders in Mexico last year. Mexico’s internecine drug war is a hotter theater of operations than Iraq.



Bank robbers for Equal Justice Under Law
When a bank robber steals a few thousand dollars before holing up with a hostage, does the FBI take more than eighteen months before divulging the name of the suspect?

Certain cases involving politically-connected Americans suspected of involvement in drug smuggling, through ownership of drug smuggling aircraft, seem to be being treated, not as crimes, but as urgent matters of national security.

But the American owners of the two airplanes busted in Mexico do not look like innocent victims of mean and nasty Mexican drug traffickers, but their American counterparts... the elusive and almost never-photographed American Drug Lords.

The Gulfstream, for example, picked up its multi-load of cocaine at the international airport in Rio Negro, just outside of Medellin. Although the city became famous as Pablo Escobar’s hometown, today Medellin is known for being current Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s home turf…

So it wasn’t FARC dope.

And there is no way the shipment can be blamed on the guerrillas, which may yet prove inconvenient if—after all the pieces are fitted into the puzzle—government-to-government drug connections are visible between the U.S. and Colombian governments.


An official issue get-out-of-jail-free card

The first plane to go down was a DC9 airliner (N900SA) which left Colombia carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine

The DC9’s owner regularly engaged in illegal, and as yet unpunished, activity, as if he had an official issue get-out-of-jail-free card.

One example: Forgetting legal niceties--like "don't sell a plane you don't own, dude"-- the DC9 was passed from “Skyway Aircraft” to a company controlled by a company insider, “Royal Sons LLC.”

But the real owner of the plane at the time was the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Tampa. And they weren’t even told of the sale.

Maybe it helped their legal cause that Skyway's Chairman, Glenn Kovar, had been a U.S. Forest Service employee who boasted of long-standing ties to the CIA.

And several of the firm’s top executives, including its President, have backgrounds in U.S. military intelligence. That probably didn't hurt either.


Paint your car like a police car! Comes with own siren!
Skyway’s DC9 was painted with the distinctive blue-and-white with gold trim used by official U.S. Government planes, and an official-looking U.S. Seal, featuring the familiar Federal eagle clutching an olive brand, had been painted alongside the door.

If you look closely, however, the legend wrapping around the outer edge of the Seal says “SkyWay Aircraft: Protection of America’s Skies.”

Still, most who saw the DC9 sitting on the apron of the St-Petersburg Clearwater International Airport figured the aircraft belonged to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.

The DC9 was clearly impersonating an aircraft from the Dept of Homeland Security. Yet it sat unmolested by authorities at the St Pete-Clearwater Intl' Airport, parked less than a hundred yards from the US Coast Guard's major Caribbean Basin Air Facility.

Skyway’s SUV's, by contrast, were painted with a bogus U.S. Government Seal were pulled over by local police, and ordered to remove the seals.


Pretty lucky? Or pretty well-connected?
Another intriguing fact is that several years ago Skyway's listed address in plane ads was a hanger at Huffman Aviation at the Venice Fl. Airport. Huffman trained both pilots who took down the World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, to fly.

The Gulfstream II (N987SA)

The biggest clue to date to the true identity of the individuals or organization operating behind the scenes is in the name of the dummy front company which was the last registered owner of the Gulfstream business jet that crash-landed with 4 tons of cocaine may lie in the firm's initials.

"Donna Blue Aircraft" is "DBA," for "doing business as," the kind of clever nomenclature "the boys" are fond of.

When we visited the company’s listed address, it was in an empty office suite with a blank sign out front.


What This is Really All About

Mankind’s knowledge about who owns large commercial and business jets which get busted carrying narcotics appears severely limited for several reasons.

1. It is completely governed, like the movement of subatomic quarks, by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, with one teensy change.

2. Ownership Uncertainty fluctuates with the level of influence the plane's owner is able to exert.

3. Prospects are especially poor of ever identifying the owners of planes associated with national Republican figures.

The whole business, suggested a story from the Associated Press, rather quickly moves beyond the realm of human ken.

“How the U.S.-registered Gulfstream ended up in the hands of suspected drug traffickers remains a mystery,” the AP reported.

And not by accident, either.
http://www.madcowprod.com/01162008.html

He may or may not have involvement, but WHERE IS THE PROOF....and how about the CIA's involvement in all this drug trafficking and corruption.

Honest to God, I am so sick of this government painting others with the brush of evil when there is no one who can hold a candle to us....US.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/12/19/64433/518

Posted on Wed Dec 19th, 2007 at 06:44:33 AM EST
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe had his own “mission accomplished” moment in September, when he triumphantly told the United Nations that in Colombia, “today there is no paramilitarism. There are guerrillas and drug traffickers.”


It has been the Colombian administration’s policy to completely deny the continued existence of right-wing, pro-government death squads. From 2004 to 2006, it presided over the gradual, bloc-by-bloc demobilization of the enormous paramilitary army known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC in its Spanish initials) that had committed the worst war crimes in América since the end of the Cold War.
But a report this week in a Venezuelan newspaper highlights the fact that not only has Colombia’s paramilitary nightmare not ended, but has beyond a doubt encroached onto its neighbor’s land and become a part of politics there as well. The northwestern Venezuelan border states of Zulia and Táchira have become an important base of operations for the so-called “emergent groups,” most famously the network known as the “Black Eagles.” They are demobilized paramilitaries who have picked up their weapons again, recruited new soldiers and have no intention of giving up their political and criminal empire.

On December 16, the Maracaibo, Zulia daily newspaper Panorama cited “sources trusted by both the Colombian and Venezuelan military” in a report claiming Maracaibo to be the “spearhead” for paramilitaries in the country. It speaks of a Black Eagles leader who goes by the nom de guerre “Salomón,” and who has inherited what remains of the feared warlord Jorge 40’s organization. Jorge 40, commander of the AUC’s Northern Bloc, was responsible for countless murders and massacres of campesinos, indigenous people and others along Colombia’s Atlantic coast.


An intelligence summary confirms that “the spearhead for paramilitarism in Venezuela is in Maracaibo, under the command of the former policeman and powerful drug trafficker Miguel Villarreal Arcila, alias “El Salomón,” who on occasion also calls himself ‘Gabriel’ or ‘El Flaco.’ This man is currently the owner of drug trafficking in Venezuela.”
“We have 25 trafficking routes identified, which begin in Colombia, cross through the neighboring country and end on its coasts, from where the cocaine heads overseas…”

Zulia, where much of Venezuela’s oil wealth is concentrated, is its most anti-Chávez state, and its governor was Chávez’ main opponent in the last elections.

A group of US soldiers arrested for alleged cocaine smuggling cannot be allowed to stand trial in Colombia, Washington's envoy to Bogota has said.

Colombian senators have been calling for the men, who were based in the country, to be extradited from the US.

But US ambassador William Wood said the soldiers are immune from prosecution.

More than 200 Colombian citizens have been extradited to the US to face trial for drug trafficking, under a bilateral deal between the two countries ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4420329.stm

... Florida based Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA crash landed on September 24, 2007 after it ran out of fuel over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula it had a cargo of several tons of Cocaine on board now documents have turned up on both sides of the Atlantic that link this Cocaine Smuggling Gulfstream II jet aircraft # N987SA that crashed in Mexico to the CIA who used it on at least 3 rendition flights from Europe and the USA to Guantanamo's infamous torture chambers between 2003 to 2005.

This particular Gulfstream II (tail number N987SA), was used between 2003 and 2005 by the CIA for at least three trips between the U.S. east coast and Guantanamo Bay — home to the infamous “terrorist” prison camp — according to a number of press reports. The suggestion that a “CIA plane” was flying a huge quantity of drugs toward the U.S. ensured that this incident would attract far more attention than the typical drug smuggling story.

The Gulfstream Jet was initially reported by the Mexican Press as carrying a huge cargo of more than 6 Tons of Cocaine as well as one ton of pure Heroin but a later press release courtesy of the Mexican Military had it dwindled down to only 4 tons of Cocaine with no Heroin whatsoever. By early October the Mexican press announced a 3rd reduction leaving only 3.7 Tons of cocaine followed a few days with 3.6 then later by a 5th and final report from the Mexican Authorities that gave the amount as just 3.3 tons of Cocaine. Draw your own conclusions about the missing 3 ton's of cocaine and the ton of heroin that was first reported ...

http://www.hightimes.com/ht/news/content.php?aid=24&bid=1516

today, tomorrow, or any time at all.