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Allegations of CIA drug trafficking

Allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking

Allegations of CIA complicity in drug trafficking

Allegations of United States government involvement in drug trafficking

Allegations of United States government complicity in drug trafficking

Overview

According to Tim Weiner, the Central Intelligence Agency "has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with drug traffickers around the world in the name of anti-Communism" since its creation in 1947.

In the early 1970s, Alfred McCoy "accused American officials of condoning and even cooperating with corrupt elements in Southeast Asia's illegal drug trade out of political and military considerations" and stated that the CIA was knowingly involved in the production of heroin in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand, and Laos. The United States Department of State responded to the initial allegations stating that they were "unable to find any evidence to substantiate them, much less proof." Subsequent investigations by the Inspector General of the CIA, United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (i.e. the Church Committee) also found the charges to be unsubstantiated.

In the 1980s, American journalists Anthony Avirgan and Martha Honey claimed that the perpetrator of the La Penca bombing was linked to a drug-financed "Secret Team" of FDN Contras and CIA agents. The Christic Institute then filed a $24 million civil suit on behalf of Avirgan and Honey 30 charging defendants — including CIA officials — of illegally participating in assassinations, as well as arms and drug trafficking. A judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida found that the plaintiffs "made no showing of existence of genuine issues of material fact" and ordered the Christic Institute to pay over $1 million in attorneys fees and court costs. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the ruling, and the Supreme Court of the United States let the judgment stand by refusing to hear an additional appeal.

In August 1996, Gary Webb's three-part series of articles titled Dark Alliance was published by the San Jose Mercury News.[1] Webb's series raised allegations that U.S. government officials — including Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) employees — either ignored or protected drug dealers in Southern California who were associated with the Nicaraguan Contras.[2] Investigation by the United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General, and United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence rejected the main charges.

References

Alleged motivations

• 1996. "Since its inception in 1947, the C.I.A. has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with drug traffickers around the world in the name of anti-Communism."
• 1999. "First the French during their colonial rule of Southeast Asia and then the CIA during the Vietnam War supported the war lords in the area as allies and as a buffer against communist expansion in the region and turned a blind eye to their involvement in the cultivation and trafficking of the local opium crop."
• 2000. "After the legal opium trade was fully banned by 1961, the U.S. and U.N. then turned to eradication of illegal poppy cultivation and the pursuit of criminal traffickers. Simultaneously, however, covert agencies found urban criminals and upland warlords useful allies in the prosecution of the Cold War, providing de facto political protection for drug dealers in key source regions."McCoy
• 2002. "In an effort to contain the spread of Communism in Asia, the U.S. forms alliances with drug lords inhabiting the areas of the Golden Triangle (an expanse covering Laos, Thailand and Burma). To maintain this relationship, the U.S. and France supply the drug lords with weapons and air transport. This results in a significant spike in the illegal flow of heroin into the United States."
• 2007. "The US policy to fight communism through proxy armies inevitably led it to forge an alliance with drug traffickers."
• 2007. "Opium has long been used by insurgent groups to help finance civil war in the Golden Triangle, whether by Myanmar hill tribes fighting the central government or Hmong rebels allied with the Central Intelligence Agency during the 'secret war' in Laos against communist forces in the 1960s and 1970s." [This does not allege that the CIA was directly involved with drug trafficking.]

Background

• United States involvement in the Laotian Civil War.

The United States allies with the Hmong to keep the communist-aligned Pathet Lao in check. "The communist forces began to threaten the monarchy, and the. United States viewed the Laotian monarchy as a key barrier to the aggressive acts of the communists in the region. Even though the United States was unwilling to directly intervene militarily in Laos, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) looked for allies to protect the area. The Pathet Lao had been encroaching on the Plain of Jars, a traditional land of the Hmong. The CIA found General Vang Pao, the military leader of the Hmong."[3]

References

Corsican syndicates

Corsican Paul Carbone and Italian François Spirito, who together founded one of the first organized crime syndicates in Marseille, France, have been credited with also setting up during the 1930s the first global network for the manufacturing and trafficking of heroin. Turkish farmers who were licensed to cultivate and sell opium poppies to legal drug companies sold their excess crop to the criminal underworld where it was refined into heroin in illegal Corsican laboratories near Marseille. Working in conjunction with Lucky Luciano, the American Mafia, and the Cosa Nostra, the narcotics were then distributed primarily to the United States market. It was this heroin network, succeeded by brothers André and Barthélemy Guérini from Calenzana in the post-war period, that eventually became known as "the French Connection".

During the interwar period, Marseille's deputy mayor Simon Sabiani had openly proclaimed his solidarity with Carbone and Spirito whose men were used on the docks to organize the labor force and oppose - sometimes violently - a rising communist movement. Once the crisis subsided prior to World War II, the power given to the criminal networks was withdrawn and their role became more discreet. The post-war period from 1947 to 1950 in Marseille was marked by a resurgence of social instability and conflict, with most dock workers supporting the Communist Party, and the criminal networks again became a wall to the increasing power of the communist trade unions. The local government's alliance with the criminal groups was supported by American secret services, then again terminated as the new crisis subsided.

When Gaston Defferre became the mayor of Marseille, he "turned a blind eye" to the Guérini's activities and used their gang to help maintain order. In the early stages of the Cold War, the CIA financially supported mafia organizations - including the Corsicans - to oppose the Communist trade unions striking in 1947.

For two decades the Guérini family was the dominant producer of heroin in Marseille, but they faced competition from new criminal organizations and the rapid growth of heroin meant increased political scrutiny. The work of United States anti-narcotic authorities (as part of the US war on drugs), their counterparts in France, and numerous police operations resulted in the destruction of the heroin industry in Marseille and the apparent end of the French Connection by 1973. At the same time, US diplomats put pressure on Turkey and Prime Minister Nihat Erim to halt the production of opium. Upon receiving $35 billion in aid for compensation of the loss of the opium industry and for the development of alternative crops, Erim announced a ban on opium production in 1971. Leading up to the 1973 Turkish general election, the opium ban had become a major issue and when Bülent Ecevit took office in 1974 he reversed the ban over strong condemnation from the US.

• Mayors of Marseille: 1946 - Jean Cristofol - 1947 - Michel Carlini - 1953 - Gaston Defferre - 1986
• "Between 1948 and 1949 the CIA allied itself with the Corsican underworld in its struggle against the French Communist party for control over the Mediterranean port of Marseille."
• The CIA's first alliance with a group involved in drug trafficking was the Corsican syndicates who operated out of Marseille, France. The CIA gave the Corsican syndicates money and support to take on anti-Communists, but this allowed their smuggling to go unchecked.

• Alfred McCoy

• "The French Connection began life in the 1930s, when the Corsican gangsters Paul Carbone and François Spirito were looking for a way to connect the opium fields of Turkey and Lebanon with the hungry veins of America's junkies. Marseille, a busy port, provided the perfect staging ground. They would ship in morphine base, hire French chemists to process it for a couple of weeks at temporary labs in the suburbs, and then smuggle it back onboard ships bound for America. As World War II took hold in Europe, Italian fascists began to stamp out the trade. It soon recovered, and there are those—like Noam Chomsky—who believe the CIA was involved in supporting the Corsican mafia to restart their business in exchange for breaking up French strikes and helping Allied troops."
• Background[4]
• Organized Crime in the United States. G Robert Blakely
• [5]
• "The Union Corse's immense political influence in France stems from the Corsicans' work for the French underground during World War II—German collaborators in Marseille were regularly and efficiently dispatched—and for the French government in the postwar years. In 1948 Paris called upon the Union Corse to break a strike by Communist-controlled unions that threatened to close the port of Marseille. The Union Corse obliged by providing an army of strikebreaking longshoremen to unload the ships and a crew of assassins to gun down defiant union leaders. French government officials have not forgotten such favors."[6]

Segue

• "In a book called 'The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia,' Alfred McCoy, then a Yale student, charged in 1972 that Corsican and American syndicate gangsters had become involved in the heroin trade from Laos, Burma and Thailand. He also wrote that such information was well known to many officials of the Central Intelligence Agency and that they had done nothing to stop such activities. High officials of the Intelligence agency, including Mr. Colby and Cord Meyer, now the station chief in London, denied the allegation at the time. Mr. McCoy quoted Edward Lansdale, a high-level C.I.A. operative in Southeast Asia, as telling him in 1971 that he had met with Corsican mobsters and informed them he would take a hands-off attitude toward them. 'We had some kind of truce,' Mr. McCoy quoted Mr. Lansdale as saying." A number of past and present , C.I.A. agents told The Times in interviews shortly after Mr. McCoy's allegations were published that agency officials repeatedly looked the other way in the nineteen sixty's because the Southeast Asian drug trade was considered to be helpful to anti-Communist forces."[7][8][9]
• Segue to the Golden Triangle: "When the Syndicate later added Southeast Asia's 'Golden Triangle' to its heroin route, the CIA again was accommodating."[10][11]
• Seque
• Source. Douglas Valentine discusses Daniel Ellsberg, Alfred McCoy, Lucien Conein, and the Corsicans.

References

Southeast Asia and the Golden Triangle

Early reports

• August 30, 1963. Corsican Bonaventure Francisci managed a small fleet of light airplanes called Air Laos Commerciale that originally supplied Laotian troops [during which conflict?]. The fleet garnered the nickname "Air Opium" after they were used to smuggle opium. The LIFE article discusses René Enjalbal ("Babal"), a well known pilot who was caught by Thai authorities after a delivery. [The German Wikipedia has more on Air Laos Commerciale here. It cites the LIFE article as well as Alfred McCoy (who apparently cited an interview with Lucien Conein for information regarding Bonaventure Francisci.]
• November 27, 1966. Article refers to reports of corruption, including opium smuggling, among South Vietnamese officials: [12].
• 1966. Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the United States Senate Committee on Government Operations, chaired by Ernest Gruening. [Unable to locate a readable version of the official records alluded to in newspaper reports. Pointer to official records here and here. GoogleBooks version does not appear to note anything about opium, narcotics, or drugs.]

• February 28, 1968. According to UPI report, Gruening gave a prepared speech to the Sentate. He "said today U.S. investigators had uncovered a smuggling ring in Vietnam involving high Saigon officials of the Saigon regime." Gruening "said the alleged operation concentrated on illicit gold and opium imports. He said it was directed by Nguyen Van Loc, South Vietnam's director general of customs." He cited report by "American official in charge of the investigation."[13]

• February 29, 1968. Similar UPI report. "Senate investigators said yesterday that an opium smuggling ring had been uncovered in Saigon implicating South Vietnam's customs chief..." Nguyen Van Loc, South Vietnam's Director General of Customs (not premier Nguyễn Văn Lộc), had niece who was a stewardess for Royal Air Lao smuggle opium and other contraband out of Laos.[14] Slightly different version of same report: [15].
• March 6, 1968. Richard "Dick" Barnes of the Associated Press quoted reports submitted to the United States Agency for International Development from a "top US civilian adviser" who was "chief of 22-man team in Vietnam" that stated corruption was prevalent in all levels of government Vietnam; the reports appear to have been dated from November 1967 to January 1968; opium smuggling was an example provided. "Last week Gruening, after seeing copies of the the adviser's reports, told the Senate of a gold and opium smuggling operation which he said 'involved the highest South Vietnamese government officials.'"[16]
• March 7, 1968. A similar report from Barnes. Unnamed US adviser said Loc condoned the smuggling. "On the basis the adviser's reports, Gruening announced [on March 6] that his subcommittee would open a new investigation of corruption in the South Vietnamese government."[17]

Report that Nguyễn Cao Kỳ used CIA-sponsored sabotage operation, Operation Haylift, as a front for smuggling opium

• On April 18, 1968, Joseph Lippman, a staff member for the Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the United States Senate Committee on Government Operations, made the contents of a letter to Senator Ernest Gruening available to reporters. The letter claimed the CIA removed South Vietnam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky from command of Operation Haylift, an air operation that flew sabotage agents from Saigon to North Vietnam, because he had used it to smuggle opium. Lippman did not release the name of the letter's author, but said the subcommittee believed the source to be reliable. The press reported that the subcommittee was investigating the allegation. The Embassy of the United States, Saigon responded that there was "no truth in the story that Ky was removed from any position by any element of the United States government for opium smuggling or for any other reason" and denied that it had any information connecting Ky with opium smuggling. A spokesman for Ky acknowledged that Ky had participated in the flights over North Vietnam, but denied the smuggling allegations as "groundless".

• April 19, 1968. The Associated Press reported allegations that Nguyễn Cao Kỳ used CIA-sponsored sabotage operation as a front for smuggling opium. (Version of AP report in The New York Times. Version of AP report in the Spokane Daily Chronicle. Version of AP report in the St. Petersburg Times. Various versions of same material can be found in newspapers.com.) McCoy would later charge that Ky and his sister were involved.[18]

• April 20 to 22, 1968. A syndicated editorial by unknown author criticizing the anonymity of the account is published here and in other papers listed in newspapers.com.
• April 1968 (the week following the initial report). (Newsweek, Volume 71, 1968, p.37.)

Last week, Ky, who has toned down his flamboyant style in recent months, found himself the center of yet another embarrassing flap— this time he was accused of having once used a CIA-sponsored sabotage operation as a front for smuggling opium. Haylift: The disclosure came in a report released by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures, headed by Alaska's dovish Sen. Ernest Gruening. Specifically, the report contended that Ky was the commanding officer of a 1963-64 operation—called Operation Haylift—which used Vietnamese air crews to drop saboteurs in North Vietnam. According to the document, the CIA replaced Ky and his men with Nationalist Chinese pilots when it suddenly discovered that he “took advantage of this situation to fly opium from Laos to Saigon." n Saigon, the U.S. Embassy promptly issued a statement charging that the Gruening report contained “no truth” whatsoever. nd that was quickly followed by another terse statement—this one issued in Ky's name—which shrugged off the whole affair. “It is not necessary to make any comments," it said, “because we have so many other problems which are more important.” Nonetheless, whether the charges are true or false, the very fact that they were circulated by a member of the U.S. Congress could hardly enhance the already shaky reputation of the Saigon government. And this was all the more true because Ky, as Vice President of that government, has been among those active in recent efforts to weed out corrupt officials.

• June 15, 1968 issue of Ramparts, "The CIA's flourishing opium trade" discussed the earlier report and added "...and when CIA pilots bring in ammunition [to Meo villagers], they sometimes takeout opium."
• 2009. "In April 1968 the New York Times obtained leaked information from a Senate subcommittee on foreign expenditures that Nguyen Cao Ky, vice president of the Republic of South Vietnam, had been caught smuggling opium in 1964 while serving on a secret CIA operation that flew agents into North Vietnam from Laos for the purpose of sabatoge". (Jeremy Kuzmarov, 2009.)

• In the March 22, 1971 issue of the column Washington Merry-Go-Round, Jack Anderson wrote that Allen Ginsberg had come to his office "in pursuit of evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency is supporting the opium racket in Laos." Anderson stated that he gave Ginsberg a photostat copy of a letter from "a former CIA employee named S.M. Mustard" to Gruening that had "disappeared from the files of a Senate government operations subcommittee." According to the Anderson, the letter "charges that South Vietnam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky once flew opium out of Laos." Anderson said that Les Whitten verified details in the letter but could find nothing to substantiate the allegations and that Ky had also denied the charge. [Same article in New Orleans States-Item here: [19]}

• May 1971: "The New Opium War" in Ramparts by Frank Browning and Banning Garrett. Touches on April 1968 allegations regarding Nguyen Cao Ky. Notes researchers as Michael Aldrich, Adam Bennion and Joan Medlin and gives credit to Peter Dale Scott.

• May 4, 1971: Republished in the Stanford Daily[20]

• In the May 5, 1971 issue of the Washington Merry-Go-Round, Anderson referred to the earlier column and stated a congressional investigation by Representatives Robert H. Steele and Morgan F. Murphy "has confirmed our earlier allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency is involved in Laotian heroin operations." He wrote that Steele was preparing a report for committee chairman Thomas E. Morgan "that will allege CIA 'Air America' aircraft have been used to transport [heroin] from northern Laos into the capital city of Vientiane." Anderson said the report indicated that there was no evidence that there was a CIA policy permitting this and that the Agency had "cracked down on the practice." According to Anderson, the draft of the report implicated Ouan Rathikoun, Boun Oum, and Trần Thiện Khiêm. He said a future column would detail how American deserters and ex-GIs were aided by corrupt Thai officials to move heroin into the United States. [Same article in San Francisco Chronicle here and Ogdensburg Journal here.]

• An undated, unattributed internal(?) CIA memo discusses Anderson's report and denies the allegations: [21][22]

• 1971. Alfred McCoy identifies source as "S.M. Mustard".
• 1998. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair identify source as "Sam Mustard". (Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, 1998.)

• July 1, 1971. Journal of Drug Issues, Vol 1, Issue 3, 1971

• July 18, 1971. "President Nguyen Van Thieu today described as shocking and slanderous a National Broadcasting Company report alleging that he was using funds from the illegal drug market to finance his campaign for reelection." "The N.B.C. broadcast by Phil Brady charged that both Mr. Thieu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky were profiting from the drug traffic, that the Vietnamese.national police were pushing drugs and that “the biggest pusher is said to bo Lieut. Gen. Dang Van Quang,” one of the President Thieu's closest advisers and his special assistant for military and intelligence affair." [23]

• November 14, 1975. Ky denies charges in lecture to students.page 1, page 2
• 1984. President's Commission on Organized Crime accepts Ny's denial.[24] (Need to find report; check here. Newspaper articles indicate that more allegations were leveled at Ny.)

Sources about HAYLIFT [lack of discussion relevant to the topic means that these will not necessarily be used in the article]

• Thomas Ahern, The Way We Do Things, 2005. (Frequently cites Conboy and Andradé.)
• Ken Conboy and Dale Andradé, Spies and Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam, 2000.
• Curtis Peebles, Twilight Warriors: Covert Air Operations Against the USSR, 2005. (Cites McCoy.)

Other early reports

• May 14, 1968. Ray Cromley reports "Opium Sales Pay for War", but he was referring to North Vietnam and China.[25]
• In the February 1970 issue of Ramparts, Peter Dale Scott wrote an article discussing Air America's involvement in Laos supplying Meo tribesman. Without further elaboration, Scott charged: "Air America's planes also serve to transport the Meos' main cash crop, opium." (The article states that there is a second part to appear in the next issue, but the CIA noted that it did not appear in any of the following issues. Other versions of the article can be found here and here. I have a note indicating that this is Volume 8, Issue 8; however, I cannot find confirmation of the volume number.)
• April 26, 1970: USAF Major Delbert Fleener convicted of drug smuggling.[26][27][28]

• contact sheet showing the smuggled opium
• US v Fleener
• Medals for Soldiers and Airmen: Awards and Decorations of the United States Army and Air Force

• March 22, 1970: "The C.I.A. had enlisted the help of General Phao Sriyanod, the police chief of Thailand — and a leading narcotics dealer. The Nationalists, with the planes and gold furnished them by the agents, went into the opium business."[29] Peter Michelmore, Sydney Morning Herald
• April 29, 1971: John M. Maury, legislative counsel for Richard Helms, brief George McGovern on the CIA's response to heroin trafficking allegations. Helms drafted a letter to McGovern that was not sent: [30].
• May 27, 1971: the Murphy-Steele report is released. Morgan F. Murphy Robert H. Steele "The world heroin problem; report of special study mission, composed of Morgan F. Murphy [and] Robert H. Steele pursuant to H. Res. 109 authorizing the Committee on Foreign Affairs to conduct thorough studies and investigations of all matters coming within the jurisdiction of the Committee." (Is this the same as H. Rept. 92-298?) Page 20 states that military and ex-military personnel are involved in smuggling, and that drugs are smuggled aboard commercial and military aircraft. No mention of CIA or Air America. Also: "There have also been reports that Vice President Ky is implicated in the current heroin traffic. The study mission was unable to find any evidence to support this allegation."

• May 27, 1971. A report prepared by Steele for the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that many high-ranking Laotian, Thai, and South Vietnamese officials were involved in smuggling opium and heroin aboard primarily aboard aircraft belonging to the Laotian and South Vietnamese Air Force, but to a lesser extent also aboard the CIA-financed Air America. The report advised that Nixon withdraw all United States troops until the trafficking was halted due to the large number of American troops affected.
• July 10, 1971: Steele, reported to have worked for the CIA, states US citizens are recruited to smuggled drugs on commercial and military aircraft.[31]

• June 3, 1971. AP reported that John E. Ingersoll, Director of the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) from 1968 until 1973, told House Select Committee on Crime that Air America as well as Air Vietnam, Air Laos, and TWA have unwittingly been used in the transport of opium.[32]
• June 6, 1971: "United States intelligence agents have identified at least 21 opium refineries in the tri-border area of Burma, laos, and Thailand that provide a constant flow of heroin to American troops in South Vietnam."[33][34]
• July 14, 1971: "The CIA, which has prime responsibility for the Laotian war, long denied any knowledge of the drug traffic. Now it has provided Congress, through the Bureau of Narcotics, with a report naming the sites of heroin refineries in Burma, Thailand and 'Laos."[35][36] (Flora Lewis, The Washington Post)
• July 21, 1971: Air America is reported to have been used to fly to fly in the raiding parties who broke up a heroin ring in Thailand and South Vietnam.[37]

• July 28, 1971: Similar report.[38]

August 12, 1971. AP report by Peter Arnett and Bernard Gavzer quotes an unnamed "American involved in drug suppression in Vientiane" as stating "...the CIA ordered Air America to assist the loyal Meo tribesman by flying their opium crops to Lao collecting points".[39]

• September 14, 1971: Columnist John P. Roche reported the account of Lee Mond, said to be someone who served as a staff officer in Thailand with the 101sr Airborne in Vietnam, who gave a speech at the National Student Association congress. "He added that the C.I.A. 'actively encouraged the growing of (opium) poppies by Montagnard tribesmen' and that the opium is often flown in the C.I.A.'s private airline, Air America." According to Roche, Mond said he had "never personally witnesses such (opium) shipments" but said he had talked with pilots and other military personnel who he believed had first hand knowledge.
• October 11, 1971: Someone reported to be "Paul Withers" claims at an anti-war rally that he was a former Green Beret turned CIA operative who purchased opium from Laotian tribesman for the CIA.[40] [Probably BS, but Jeremy Kuzmarov and various sources critical of CIA accept the comments as truth. Mention or not?]
• January 4, 1972. Refers to French report in 1967-68 that implicated the CIA and Air America in trafficking.[41]
• March 1972: "Heroin Traffic" by Peter Dale Scott in Earth.[42][43]

• Later part of War Conspiracy?
• "CIA Dope Calypso" by Allen Ginsberg first published here. (See Allen Ginsberg#CIA drug trafficking.)[44]

• May 17, 1972. Hans J. Spielmann states in The New York Times: "United States Special Forces, or Green Berets, and the C.I.A. were at one time up to here in the traffic for, to be sure, political reasons. Green Berets were ordered to buy certain supplies of opium in order to make and maintain stanch allies among the growers cum guerrillas."[45]
• September 9, 1972. Anderson cites unnamed report as "evidence" that Air America is being used in the opium trade.[46] (Another article notes Russell Baker as the author.[47])
• November 14, 1972. AP report touches on McCoy.
• November 20, 1972: The American Heroin Empire: Power, Profits, and Politics by Richard Kunnes is published by Dodd, Mead and Company.[48][49]
• December 26, 1972: Jack Anderson reports GAO report indicates US effort to support South Vietnamese air force assists opium smugglers.[50]
• Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage

  November 26, 1971. New York Times

  February 9, 1973. "Libelous rumors that the French intelligence agency, S.D.E.C.E., was financing operations from drug sales have virtually ceased since S.D.E.C.E. was quietly cleaned up by a new director, Count Alexander de Marenches."The New York Times [Similar to allegations against the CIA.]

• March 21, 1973: Murphy and Steele release The World Narcotics Problem.
• 1974. Eric M. Freedman. "The agency [i.e. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs] did admit, however, that the purchase had been made with million provided by the United States. Jack Anderson, the columnist who first made the allegations, cited C.I.A. intelligence reports as the source of his information."
• November 27, 1975: Robert Sam Anson (later editor of Los Angeles magazine) claimed that the mob flew opium out of SE Asia in CIA aircraft.[[51]]

• Puttaporn Khramkhruan

• October 3, 1977. Anderson and Whitten report: "Secret House documents accuse the Central Intelligence Agency of helping an Asian opium ring smuggle drugs into the United States and then lying to Congress about it."[52]
• 1978 National Security Secret and the Administration of Justice; Report of the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence Subcommittee on Secrecy and Disclosure; p. 13

Alfred W. McCoy

As a Ph.D candidate in Southeast Asian history at Yale, Alfred McCoy testified before the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee on June 2, 1972 and "accused American officials of condoning and even cooperating with corrupt elements in Southeast Asia's illegal drug trade out of political and military considerations." One of his major charges was that South Vietnam's President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, and Prime Minister Trần Thiện Khiêm led a narcotics ring with ties to the Corsican mafia, the Trafficante crime family in Florida, and other high level military officials in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Those implicated by McCoy included Laotian Generals Ouane Rattikone and Vang Pao and South Vietnamese Generals Đăng Văn Quang and Ngô Dzu. He told the subcommittee that these military officials facilitated the distribution of heroin to American troops in Vietnam and addicts in the United States. According to McCoy, the Central Intelligence Agency chartered Air America aircraft and helicopters in northern Laos to transport opium harvested by their "tribal mercenaries". He also accused United States Ambassador to Laos G. McMurtrie Godley of blocking the assignment of Bureau of Narcotics officials to Laos in order to maintain the Laotian government's cooperation in military and political matters. A spokesman for the United States Department of State responded to the allegations: "We are aware of these charges but we have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate them, much less proof."

McCoy reiterated similar charges in his 1972 book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia published by Harper and Row. He stated that the Central Intelligence Agency was knowingly involved in the production of heroin in the Golden Triangle of Burma, Thailand, and Laos.

Timeline

• June 2, 1972. Alfred W. McCoy testifies before United States Senate Committee on Appropriations. (primary source) (AP report)

• Also called the Proxmire Committee.[53] - William Proxmire

• "Researcher claims CIA is involved in Indochina heroin traffic WASHINGTON (UPI) -- A Yale graduate student who has spent the last 18 months researching International drug traffic contended today that the CIA is involved in Southeast Asian heroin traffic. In testimony prepared for -the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on foreign aid, Alfred W. McCoy said that aircraft chartered in Laps by the Central Intelligence Agency and Agency for International Development "have been transporting opium harvested by the agency's tribal mercenaries on a regular basis." In Thailand, he said, "The CIA has worked closely with Nationalist Chinese paramilitary units which control 80 to 90 per cent of northern Burma's vast opium exports and manufacture high grade heroin for export to the American market." McCoy, who is publishing the findings of his investigation in a book this summer, said heroin traffic into the United States .increasingly can be traced to Southeast Asia. He said the Mafia has been involved since 1965 in the movement of large quantities of pure heroin from Southeast Asia through France and Latin America Into the American market. "Beginning in 1965, members of the Florida-based Trafficante family of American organized crime began appearing in Southeast'Asia," McCoy said. "Santo Trafficante Jr., heir to the international criminal syndicate established by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, traveled to Saigon and Hong Kong himself In 1968. U.S. embassy sources state that Trafficante met with prominent members of Saigon's Corsican syndicates. These syndicates have been regularly supplying the International narcotics markets since the First Indochina War," he said. He said Gen. Ouane Kattikone, former chief-of-staff of the Royal Loatian Army, admitted in a three-hour interview with him "that he controlled the opium traffic in northwestern Laos since 1962. General Ouane also controlled the largest heroin laboratory in Laos." McCoy also told how 'a "silent partner" in a Peps! Cola bottling plant in Vientiane, Laos, and the sister of Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam worked together in shipping heroin. The Pepsi Cola partner, a Chinese racketeer named Huu Lim Heng, used the bottling plant operation "as a cover to import acetic anhydride, a chemical necessary for the manufacture of heroin." McCoy said the question the United States must now decide is "which is more Important to our country--propping up corrupt governments in Southeast Asia or getting heroin out of our high schools.""[54]

• June 3, 1972. United States Department of State responds. (This may be incorrect with the letter noted below.)

• June 8, 1972. Nelson G. Gross responds to charges in a letter to William Proxmire.[55]

• July 12, 1972: Gross "concedes that Air America, the airline supported by the CIA, unknowingly may have carried some clandestine shipments of narcotics."[56]
• July 14, 1972. UPI report states that Gross said Air America may have unknowingly carried narcotics. Mentions McCoy's allegations. Mentions Hans J. Spielmann's allegations published in May 17, 1972 issue of NYT.[57]
• Air America appears to have issued a denial [58], but when and where was this denial made? [59][60]?

• June 19, 1972. Article by Miriam Ottenberg in the Washington Star quotes John Warner, "chief of the Buureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs' strategic intelligence office", as denying/refuting McCoy's allegations about G. McMurtrie Godley and Ky.[61] (This is part 2 of a two part series. Part 1 is also noted in the link but does not contain material directly relevant to McCoy or related allegations.)

• June 29, 1972. Same article?[62]

• July 1972. Excerpt "Flowers of Evil" from The Politics of Heroin is printed in Harper's.[63][64][65]
• June 29, 1972. Representative Charles Gubser makes statement defending CIA and submits copy of Richard Helm's letter to Les Aspin to Congressional record: [66]{https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CRECB-1972-pt18/pdf/GPO-CRECB-1972-pt18-4-3.pdf p. 23816]
• June 29, 1972. An article by Judith Randal in The Washington Star states: "Reporters have been hearing for more than a year that the agency has been supporting the heroin traffic in the Golden Triangle region of Laos, Thailand and Burma, and that this opium byproduct has been one of the most important cargoes carried by Air America, an airline operating in Southeast Asia whose charter business is almost exclusively with the CIA." Randal then cites McCoy and refers to his piece in Harper's and book.[67]

• July 5, 1972. CIA response from William Colby in The Washington Star also refers to Ottenberg's article.[68]

• July 20, 1972. McCoy responds to Colby in The Washington Star and states Gen. Ouane Rattikone, Gen. Theo Ma, and Ger Su Yang told him Air America was involved.[69] According to "U.S. Heroin Problem and Southeast Asia; Report of a Staff Survey Team of the Committee on Foreign Affairs" noted below, "All denied to the Survey Team that they had ever made such statements."
• July 20, 1972. Trần Văn Khiêm(?) also responds to Colby in The Washington Star stating that his "security agents...firmly confirm that a few CIA agents in Indochina are involved in opium trafficking."[70]

• July 10, 1972. Paul C. Velte, Jr. of Air America responds in The Washington Star stating: "Air America, in denying similar charges made by Alfred McCoy to the Senate Foreign Relations Operations Subcommittee on June 2, 1972, stated that 'if Mr. McCoy or any other individual can provide proof that any Air America employee has been connected in any manner with the drug traffic, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken and the matter referred to the proper authorities.' To date, no such proof has been forthcoming and we now extend the same invitation to Miss Randal and The Star."[71]

• July 5, 1972. Letter from McCoy to Les Aspin.[72]
• July 14, 1971. Flora Lewis, The Washington Post, "Facts Surface on the Heroin War"[73]
• July 22, 1972. Seymour Hersh, The New York Times, "CIA Aides Assail Asian Drug Charge".

• July 24, 1972. Hersh refers to own report stating "The New York Times reported...".[74]

• July 31, 1972. "Harper to Show CIA Proofs of New Book on Asian Drug Traffic" in Publishers Weekly. [75]
• August 2, 1972. Writing for The Real Paper, Jim Morrell said, "James Barr Ames, a directors for Air America Inc.,] is also one of the biggest opium shippers in the world." Said McCoy and Cathy read were members of Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. Morrell appears to be reiterating McCoy's work.[76]
• August 2, 1972. The Washington Post mentions McCoy.[77]
• August 2, 1971. John Chamberlain (journalist)'s column touches on McCoy.[78]
• August 4, 1972. (editorial)
• August 24, 1972. Nat Hentoff in Village Voice discusses Harper & Row's actions in a very lengthy article.[79]
• August 28, 1972. Newsweek mentions McCoy.[80]
• August 1972. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia 1st edition is published (ISBN 0060129018; 464 pp.).[81] (At least one other source states September 1972.) (review) (review[82]) FULL BOOK PDF

• September 1973. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Rev. 1st edition is published (ISBN 0060903287; 472 pp.). review

• July 1991. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (review)

• 2003. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, 2nd rev. ed. [83] (review [84])

• August 15, 1972: Harper & Row advertisement appears in The New York Times with statement from Winthrop Knowlton, President of Harper & Row.

• September 19-20, 1972. Thomas Braden writes column defending CIA.[85][86][87]
• October 1972. McCoy responds (to what?) in Harpers.[88]
• November 1972. "Heroin and the CIA" by Flora Lewis printed in Atlantic.[89]
• November 5, 1972. Jim Morrell (later authored an unrelated report for Institute for International Policy)[90]
• February 6, 1973. It was reported that Richard Brooks was working on a film adaptation based on McCoy's book.[91][92]
• March 27, 1973. Michael Castleman refers to McCoy's book in a review of a different book.[93]
• August 1973. Bob Wiedrich's series in the Chicago Tribune touches on drug trafficking in Laos

• August 21, 1973, Ouan Rathikoun
• August 23, 1973, "But because the CIA's role in Indochina is more toward national security and intelligence gathering, it's efforts against the drug trade are often diluted."
• August 24, 1973, independent smugglers
• August 25, 1973, American "mules"

• March 10, 1975. Hersh reports McCoy quoting Edward Lansdale and CIA-MIA connection.[94][95][96]
• June 20, 1975. U.S. Representative Morgan F. Murphy of Pike Committee(?) called for an investigation of reports that CIA forced federal prosecutors in Chicago to drop charges against a CIA operative, Puttaporn Khramkhruan, charged with smuggling narcotics.

CIA Inspector General's Report, "Investigation of the Drug Situation in Southeast Asia"

• Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General
• September 1972. [Unable to find original report.]

• Later quoted in the Church Committee's report in which the IG report concluded that there was "no evidence that the Agency, or any senior officer of the Agency, has ever sanctioned or supported drug trafficking as a matter of policy. Also, we found not the slightest suspicion, much less evidence, that any Agency officer, staff or contract, has ever been involved in the drug business. With respect to Air America, we found that it has always forbidden, as a matter of policy, the transportation of contraband goods aboard its aircraft. We believe that its Security Inspection Service, which is used by the cooperating air transport company as well, is now serving as an added deter rent to drug traffickers."[97]

United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. Heroin Problem and Southeast Asia

• January 11, 1973. "U.S. Heroin Problem and Southeast Asia; Report of a Staff Survey Team of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; House of Representatives."[98][99]

• "In the past year there have been several public allegations to the effect that the Central Intelligence Agency has been involved, directly or indirectly, in narcotics traffic in Southeast Asia. During the course of its investigations the Staff Survey Team investigated these charges carefully, both in Southeast Asia and in Washington. The Staff Survey Team found no evidence to support these allegations."[100]
• "Prior to the establishment of SIS it is probable that unknown quantities of opium were body carried on Air America aircraft. Gen Su Yang and Gen. Ouan Rathikoun cited instances of opium addicts carrying opium being transported on Air America aircraft. It was, and is, customary for Air America to furnish transportation to any individual if there is room as a good will gesture. There is no evidence available to suggest that carrying opium was ever condoned by Air America and the present SIS program now prevents passengers from even carrying personal opium supplies and smoking equipment on the aircraft."[101]
• "Executive branch officials representing the White House, State Department, Customs, BNDD, and CIA told the Survey Team that there is no 'hard evidence' which would implicate either President Thieu, Prime Minister Khiem, former Vice President Ky, or any of their close supporters, in the narcotics traffic. In Saigon, the Survey Team was also informed by IT.S. officials that there is no available evidence which would incriminate the GVN's leadership."[102]
• "(2) In Southeast Asia, where most of the world's illicit opiates are produced, all U.S. Mission components have been mobilized in the fight to suppress the narcotics traffic. Coordination both within the missions and between the missions and most host governments has improved over the past several months. There is no evidence that any U.S. Government agency is implicated in the narcotics traffic in Southeast Asia."[103]

• Newspaper coverage of the report:

• January 29, 1973. Morton Kondracke in Chicago Sun-Times [104]
• February 2, 1973. The Age reported: "The investigators could find no evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA-run airline Air America, or the CIA-financed secret army of Meo tribesman in Laos was involved in drug traffic as has been alleged."[105]

Church Committee

• United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, also known as the Church Committee, dated April 26, 1976.[106] (Also found here and here.)

• "Questions have arisen about whether Agency policy included using these entities to engage in illegal activities to make profits which could be used to fund clandestine operations. Most notably, the latter charges have involved allegations that the Agency's air proprietaries were involved in drug trafficking." "The Committee found no substance to these charges."[107]

• "Allegation of Drug Trafficking. — Persistent questions have been raised whether Agency policy has included using proprietaries to engage in illegal activities or to make profits which could be used to fund operations. Most notably, these charges included allegations that the CIA used air proprietaries to engage in drug trafficking. The Committee investigated this area to determine whether there is any evidence to substantiate these charges. On the basis of its examination, the Committee has concluded that the CIA air proprietaries did not participate in illicit drug trafficking."[108]
• "Air America"[109]

Hearings: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94intelligence_activities_V.pdf

Post-Church Committee allegations related to McCoy and/or Air America

• Air America (airline)
• Air America (book) / Christopher Robbins
• Air America (film)

• December 14, 1989. Reuters review states: "Unable to secure funding from Congress, Air America became involved in drug smuggling..."[110]
• December 16, 1989. Denis D. Gray review referring to "CIA's helping hand in the marketing of opium".[111]
• 1999-2000. William M. Leary discusses how Air America was portrayed by the film Air America.
• February 24, 2003. Air America veteran states that crews never knowingly carried opium.[112]
• August 14, 2006. Editorial describes drug trafficking by Air America pilots as a myth.[113]

• James Grady (author) cited McCoy as an influence for Six Days of the Condor (1974)
• May 20, 1976. "When the Syndicate later added Southeast Asia's 'Golden Triangle' to its heroin route, the CIA again was accommodating. To fight communism the agency shipped cash and munitions to Laotian mercenaries, who happened to be opium growers employed in the Syndicate's heroin trade. CIA planes were used to provide safe passage for the first leg of the heroin's long journey to U.S. ghettos." (THE HUGHES-NIXON-LANSKY CONNECTION: The Secret Alliances of the CIA by Howard Kohn in the May 20, 1976 issue of Rolling Stone.)
• January 12-14, 1979. McCoy discusses heroin in Australia.[114][115](not relevant to this article)

  August 16, 1979. McCoy discusses related topic at National Cannabis Conference in Adelaide, Australia; charges police with corruption.[116] (not relevant to this article)

• July 17, 1980. Material regarding book about narcotics and Australia.[117]

• August 16, 1979. Police tell McCoy to "put up or shut up".[118] (not relevant to this article)
• September 28, 1980. McCoy quoted regarding heroin in Australia.[119] (not relevant to this article)

• February 21, 1982. McCoy's book is referenced in a review about a documentary making allegations. Also states US had $25,000 bounty on Khun Sa.[120]
• February 18, 1984: Penny Lernoux write "The Miami Connection" in The Nation and cites McCoy.
• September 20, 1990. Alexander Cockburn article regarding Air America film.[121]

Claims of Neil Hanson, who is also mentioned in 1988 Frontline piece.

• November 1, 1996. Jack A. Blum, now with the Center for International Policy, touches on McCoy's allegations.[122]
• November 3, 2003. Merle Pribbenow[123] refers to "discredited claims made in Alfred McCoy's book" in review of a book on Colby. [124] (not WP:RS)
• June 11, 2007. Allegations that Vang Pao was involved.[125] (Were McCoy's allegations made in the early 1970s or later?)
• October 31, 2007. [126]
• 2013-2014. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy [127]

• Joe F. Leeker. Air America alleged to have been involved since 1964.[128]"

• November 11, 2009. Drugs, Corruption, and Justice in Vietnam and Afghanistan: A Cautionary Tale by Merle Pribbenow, retired CIA officer
• McCoy linked Nguyễn Ngọc Loan to the purchase of opium in Laos.[129]
• Ted Shackley denied allegations that CIA was smuggling drugs for profit as "fantasy".[130]
• L. Michael Kandt, Chaplain and General Secretary of Air America, Inc. wrote: "The continued myths of customer/Air America participation in drug trafficking are still being found and published by unknowing and uncaring writers. The silly ‘Air America’ movie advanced this agenda by those who seek to savage the reputation of this great country, our customers, and our fellow workers."

References

Nugan Hand Bank

Nugan Hand Bank (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Frank Nugan (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Michael Hand (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Australian banking scandal that linked the CIA, specifically William Colby, to the Nugan Hand Bank. The bank was viewed by some as a front company for the CIA.

After Frank Nugan committed suicide, William Colby's business card was found in his pocket raising speculation about the possibility that the Nugan Hand Bank was involved with the CIA.

Regarding the CIA, "...three exhaustive investigations into Nugan Hand by the Australian government, including the Stewart Royal Commission, which spent two years on the case and produced 11,900 pages of testimony from 267 witnesses under oath, all concluded there was no involvement." "Although on the surface the involvement of the former senior U.S. officials as officers of Nugan Hand seems to imply some direct or indirect official Washington involvement, in actuality that seems improbable. More likely, it was simply a case of Nugan and Hand seeking to provide a respectable front for their crooked organization in order to attract large investors, and of a group of greedy, easily conned generals and former spooks anxious to sell their dusty stars, former titles and contacts to the highest bidder with few questions asked."

According to Jeff Stein of Newsweek, "Nugan Hand had a roster of top ex-military officials and CIA figures that attracted suspicion that it was deeply involved in unsavory activities."

"In 1982, the CIA, rattled by media reports tying it to his bank personnel's alleged drug-running and attempts to undermine Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, issued an unusual rebuttal. 'The CIA,' a spokesman said, 'has not engaged in operations against the Australian government, has no ties with Nugan Hand and does not involve itself in drug trafficking.'"[131]

• September 26, 1980. Maxine Cheshire reported that Frank Nugan and Earl P. Yates met President Carter via a connection through Hamilton Jordan. "The firm no longer exists except in the mountainous files of law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia, where there are investigations of allegations of murder, mysterious disappearance, misappropriations of millions of dollars, drug trafficking and suspected ties to the CIA."

• August 24, 1982. Jonathan Kwitny's article is published in The Wall Street Journal.

• 1987. Kwitny's book, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Story of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA, is published. Part of story is published in the August-September 1987 issue of Mother Jones.[132]

• September 6, 1987. Howard Blum reviews the book in The New York Times.
• September 1, 1987. Reviewed by Publishers Weekly.
• September 13, 1987. John Prados reviews the book in the Los Angeles'.
• September 18, 1987. Leonard Bushkoff reviews the book for Christian Science Monitor.[133]
• October 18, 1987. In a review for The Washington Post, James Bamford said Kwitny's book attempts to prove that the circumstances around scandal involved an elaborate CIA plot.
• October 25, 1987. Orlando Sentinel. [134]
• November 1987. Reed Irvine reviews various claims of Kwitny in Accuracy in Media.[135] (probably not WP-reliable)
• November 14, 1987. Reviewed by The Harvard Crimson.[136]
• July 1988. William D. Hartung, accepting of Kwitny's premises, reviews the book for Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists[137]
• November 19, 1996. Wired.[138]

• August 27, 1982. Citing a report by Attorney General of New South Wales Frank Walker, Australian Penthouse claimed "Colby sent a message immediately after his appointment to various agents in the field, instructing them to use the Nugan Hand group for CIA secret arms deals."[139]
• March 1983. Allegations in the March-May 1983 issue of CounterSpy[140]

• November 12, 1982: "Australian detectives are expected to visit the United States and Southeast Asia in the next few weeks as they attempt to determine whether the failed Sydney-based Nugan Hand Merchant Bank was involved in trafficking in heroin and covert activities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency."[141]
• Colby was legal advisor[142]
• Bill Hayden: "'There can be no doubt that Nugan Hand was involved with the CIA and in arms dealing,' he said. 'There have been firm United States denials about CIA involvement with Nugan Hand.'"[143]
• The Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Activities of the Nugan Hand Group: "While the Commission's final report concludes that there is no evidence to support the allegations involving drugs, arms dealing and CIA involvement, it did find considerable evidence of breaches of State laws (principally provisions of the Crimes Act and company laws) and of Commonwealth laws in respect of taxation, the foreign exchange as they then applied and the Royal Commissions Act."[144] (1985?)

• [145]

• November 1982. Accuracy in Media[146]
• April 1984. Penny Lernoux in Penthouse.[147] [She wrote something a few months earlier, too.]
• December 26, 1984. Jack Anderson's syndicated column (easily verified as being published in other newspapers) publishes Ron Rewald's claim that he was a CIA agent who was asked to take part in a "CIA-sponsored drug-smuggling operation". After comparing Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong to the Nugan Hand Bank, Anderson wrote: "In fact, several sources close to the Rewald case have suggested that his Honolulu investment company was being specifically groomed to take over Nugan Hand's role in CIA operations throughout the Pacific basin."

• December 26, 1984. The CIA's Director of Public Affairs, George V. Lauder (not same person), wrote Anderson a letter requesting that he provide more information to substantiate his allegations (i.e. put up or shut up).[148]

• January 21, 1985. In his column, Anderson described the letter as a "cryptic note" "demanding that I turn over my sources". Anderson deflected saying that he responded by saying that he would turn over his sources if the CIA turned over theirs. Taking Rewald at this word, he further suggested that the CIA was interfering with his investigation.[149] "Using a “Ponzi” scheme, Rewald had defrauded over 400 investors out of $22 million"[150]

• November 2015. Peter Butt's Merchants of Menace: The True Story of the Nugan Hand Bank Scandal. Butt quoted Walker as stating: "I think it is a very pertinent question as to why nothing was done about it. I think the reason nothing was done about it was the nature of the people on the board of the Nugan Hand bank. They were very senior military officials of United States of America and they certainly weren't going to be investigated by the American government."

• "'The coroner said Frank Nugan took his own life but there were a lot of different opinions from people close to the case — even the police and the police prosecutor disagreed,' says Peter Butt..."
• Sydney Morning Herald
• Raymond Bonner for the Pacific Standard reiterates much of The Sydney Morning Herald
• The Saturday Paper
• abc.net.au

• [151]
• Butt claimed: "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.[152] Fuller denied that he had done anything wrong.[153] "Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Marshal Service told the Journal on Monday that they weren’t aware of any warrants for either Michael Hand or Michael Jon Fuller."[154]

• Rumor faked death.[155]

• September 11, 1988. In The Washington Post, Mark Hosenball outlines the Christic Institute's "secret team" conspiracy theory and briefly makes the connection to the Nugan Hand scandal. "Serving first as the CIA's East Asia operations chief and later as assistant deputy director of clandestine operations, Shackley (with his trusty aide Clines) supposedly stole tons of U.S. weapons from South Vietnam and stashed them in Thailand. Later, Sheehan claims, Shackley, Clines, Secord and a member of the 'shooter team' named Rafael 'Chi-Chi' Quintero siphoned off millions of dollars in Southeast Asia opium profits and laundered them through the mysterious Nugan Hand bank of Australia."

Royal Commission of Inquiry into the activities of the Nugan Hand Group

• In March 1983, Royal Commissioner Donald Stewart, also chairman of the National Crime Authority, was commissioned by the federal government and the government of New South Wales to investigate the Nugan Hand Bank group of companies. On November 27, 1985, Stewart delivered to the Parliament of Australia and the Parliament of New South Wales his final report on the Nugan Hand Bank that looked into whether or not the group of 29 companies had violated any laws related to arms, drugs, and exchange controls. Stewart concluded that the group was not involved in drug and arms trafficking and had not worked with the Central Intelligence Agency. While noting that two of the companies in the Nugan Hand group accepted money that came from drug transactions, Stewart accepted the conclusions of the Woodward Royal Commission that rejected widespread allegations that the group participated in drug trafficking. He acknowledged that former CIA Director William Colby had provided legal advice to Nugan Hand after he had left the Agency to join a law firm, but dismissed claims that the group was used by the CIA.

References

Central America and the Contras

Avirgan and Honey

• May 30, 1984. La Penca bombing; Anthony Avirgan is present.

• Christic used L. Fletcher Prouty's analysis and the title Secret Team as a slogan[156]
• Christic used material the originated 1) from Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby and its newspaper The Spotlight as well as 2) the Lyndon LaRouche network.[157] Chip Berlet describes the right-to-left cross-over of conspiracy theories and "scapegoating".

• August 1985 to April 1987. Anthony Avirgan and Martha Honey publicize "publicized their version of the La Penca incident and of a drug-financed CIA-Contra 'Secret Team'" based on information from Carlos Rojas Chinchilla.
• 1985. Avirgan and Honey publish La Penca: Report of Investigation.
• October 1985. "The Carlos File" is published in The Nation.[158][159]
• December 20, 1985. An Associated Press report by Brian Barger and Robert Parry (journalist) is credited as being the first report linking the Contras with drug smuggling.(Primary source; still need secondary source for "first report".)
• Related:

• http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/01/world/turnover-nicaragua-costa-rica-asking-us-extradite-rancher-tied-84-bombing-that.html
• http://www.ticotimes.net/2012/09/13/war-and-peace-remembrances-of-a-reporter-covering-costa-rica-in-the-tumultuous-1980s (Tico Times also published unreliable information about Marita Lorenz)

• Gene Wheaton/Eugene Wheaton and Carl Jenkins
• William Stevenson and Monika Jensen

United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations

• Early 1986 to April 1986: John Kerry begins staff investigation of allegations that Contras involved in drug trafficking, then goes to Richard Lugar.
• United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (aka Kerry Committee)

• Kerry Committee report: Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy (full 1169 report with appendixes; dated December 1988 and released on April 13, 1989)

• Link to hearings

• "Kerry issued a report in 1986 that documented illegal administration involvement in Nicaragua and human rights violations by the U.S.-backed Contras."[160] (This is not the "Kerry Committee report" referred to above.)
• Summary, according to PBS: "A congressional subcommittee on Narcotics, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, chaired by Senator John Kerry (D-MA), finds that U.S. efforts to combat drug trafficking were undermined by the Reagan administration's fear of jeopardizing its objectives in the Nicaraguan civil war. The report concludes that the administration ignored evidence of drug trafficking by the Contras and continued to provide them with aid."[161]

• Richard J. Brenneke[162]

• After claims in The New York Times: "Some months later Brenneke began to assert, publicly that he had participated in a guns for drug arrangement in Central America which was officially sanctioned by the U.S. government. As part of this arrangement he said he had smuggled drugs into the United States and arranged weapons purchases for the Contras in Eastern Europe."[Kerry Report, p. 130]
• April 23, 1988 - Deposed in Portland, Oregon because of his claims. "Brenneke said that he had worked closely with a number of Israeli agents active in the Central American weapons project who were running drugs into the United States."[Kerry Report, p. 130]
• May 16, 1988 - "Richard J. Brenneke, a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, was quoted as saying that Donald T. Gregg, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, had been the Washington contact for supplying arms to the rebels, and that drug smugglers had helped finance the operation."[163]
• May 17, 1988 - "Oregon arms dealer Richard Brenneke told Newsweek he once contacted Donald Gregg, Bush's chief aide, to warn him that White House officials were brokering gun sales to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels from an arms dealership tied to drug traffic."[164]
• May 20, 1988 - "Brenneke recently told congressional investigators that he phoned Gregg on Nov. 3, 1983, to seek authorization for the scheme involving CIA-connected gun dealers and the Israeli Mossad. He told Congress that he called Gregg two years later to warn him of drug dealing in the network. Gregg has repeatedly denied ever communicating with Brenneke and says he was unaware of the narcotics allegations until Brenneke told his story to reporters."[165]

Christic Institute

Christic Institute (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Daniel Sheehan (attorney) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Fall 1985. Brian Barger introduces Sheehan to Avirgan and Honey.
• February 1986. Sheehan meets Gene Wheaton and is influenced to develop his Secret Team theory.
• Early 1986?. Sheehan meets Edwin P. Wilson in prison.
• May 29, 1986. Sheehan files the suit, Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, Plaintiffs vs. John Hull, et al., Defendants.
• September 1986. Suit is tossed out.
• October 1986. Amended suit is refiled.
• December 12, 1986. Original affidavit filed.

• January 31, 1987. Affidavit. "Filed on December 12, 1986 (Minor Revisions January 31, 1987)"[166]

• April 1, 1987. Affidavit. "Filed on December 12, 1986 (Minor Revisions April 1, 1987)"

• January 26, 1987. Newsweek publishes accounts of Gary Betzner and George Morales who states CIA and other US officials assisted Contras in running drugs out and running weapons into the country.[167]

• John Kerry has Betzner testify. Betzner states, among other things, that he landed at the ranch of John Hull.[168]

• July 13, 1987. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/13/world/the-contras-in-costa-rica-a-tangled-tale-is-told-in-lawsuit.html?mcubz=3
• July 20, 1987. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/20/us/washington-talk-investigations-liberal-group-makes-waves-with-its-contra-lawsuit.html?mcubz=3
• In August 1987, Carlos Rojas Chinchilla is arrested in Costa Rica. He states he fabricated the story and was paid for it.
• November 1987: A Christic Institute Special Report: The Contra-Drug Connection
• March 25, 1988: Declaration of Plaintiffs' Counsel, Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey v. John Hull, Rene Corbo, et al
• June 23, 1988. United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismisses the case and orders Christic Institute to pay $955,000 in attorneys fees and $79,500 in court costs.

• United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirms the ruling.
• Supreme Court of the United States refuses to hear the appeal.

• June 24, 1988. http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/us-judge-dismisses-suit-by-two-journalists-in-1984-nicaraguan-bombing.html?mcubz=3
• September 11, 1988. In The Washington Post, Mark Hosenball outlines the Christic Institute's "secret team" conspiracy theory. [Was Hosenball also a critic of the October Surprise allegations?]

• September 24, 1988. In The Washington Post, Daniel Sheehan responds to Hosenball.

• October 8, 1988. In The Washington Post, John K. Singlaub and Theodore Shackley respond to the Hosenball—Sheehan exchange.

• March 17, 1989. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/17/us/the-law-giving-law-teeth-and-using-them-on-lawyers.html?mcubz=3

• March 23, 1989. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/23/nyregion/c-corrections-186489.html?mcubz=3

• September 14, 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/14/us/law-courts-rethinking-rule-intended-to-slow-frivolous-lawsuits.html?mcubz=3

Allegations that Richard Armitage was involved

Richard Armitage (politician) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• "Perot joined forces in the mid-1980s with leftist conspiracy theorists who believed high U.S. officials profited from heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia. The allegation, which was contained in a lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Christic Institute, was dismissed as baseless in 1988 by U.S. District Judge James L. King of Miami. King fined the Christic Institute $1.2 million in defendants' court costs."
• "At the end of 1975, Armitage became a "special consultant" to the Pentagon on US servicemen missing in action in Southeast Asia, stationed at the US Embassy in Bangkok. But according to the lawsuit, Armitage did "not perfom the duties of his office," instead devoting most of his time to funneling the [Vang Pao] drug money to [Edwin Wilson] in Tehran and to an account in Australia on behalf of the [Theodore Shackley] group. The lawsuit says Armitage also devoted a portion of his time during this period to helping Hmong tribesmen who had fought on behalf of the CIA escape from Laos and Cambodia, and to supervising the removal of a Shackley weaponscache, pilfered from US weapons stocks and hidden in Thailand for use in the group's private activities."

• On January 11, 1987, The Boston Globe quoted unnamed sources as stating Ross Perot had asked Vice President George H. W. Bush to investigate allegations that Armitage had been involved in arms and drug trafficking in the early 1970s. The Globe stated that Armitage met with Perot after hearing about the complaints and denied the charges. In a response from Bush's office, spokesman Stephen Hart told the Associated Press that Perot had approached Bush with in October 1986 with what he considered to be "evidence of wrongdoing" on the part of Armitage, and that Bush advised Perot to take it up with the "appropriate authorities" if he believed he had evidence of wrongdoing. Perot denied making the allegations. A statement from the United States Department of Defense said: "That's an old allegation that was looked into years ago and found to be groundless."

• AP January 11, 1987 6:10 pm ET - initial report?
• AP January 12, 1987 11:58 am ET - updated report?

• Although not named as a defendant, the suit claimed Armitage 1) set-up a drug smuggling operation with Theodore Shackley at the end of the Vietnam War in order to destabilize the government of North Vietnam, 2) was sent to Iran in 1975 to run an assassination program targeting leaders of the developing opposition to the Shah, and 3) was moved to Bangkok to facilitate the flow of drug money to Shackley and Edwin Wilson in Iran.

• It appears as though the Armitage allegations started with the Christic Institute, were picked-up by Perot.[169][170][171] Gritz was associated with Christic.[172]

• Armitage was apparently cleared by an FBI inquiry.[173]
• Armitage discusses the allegations and his meeting with Perot in a July 1992 column by Jack Anderson.[174]

• In May 1987, Bo Gritz videotaped an interview with Burmese drug lord Khun Sa who claimed that officials of the Defense Department and CIA, including Richard Armitage (politician), operated a large scale drug trafficking network. A White House spokesman called the allegations "untrue"; "Armitage has angrily denied the allegation and members of Congress have thus far lent little credence to it." At the time Gritz traveled to Burma, he was being indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas on charges of traveling under a false passport. The Riverside Press-Enterprise revealed the existence of the videotape [how?] and his associates made copies for the Kerry Committee.[175] Gritz claimed to have conducted a probe into drug dealings in Burma on behalf of the United States.[176][177] Theodore Shackley also named, also denied.[178]

• Burmese Warlord Says U.S. Officials Trafficking in Drugs
• ADL connects Gritz to far-right conspiracitsts[179]
• Francis W. Belanger rehashed McCoy's work [180]

• May 4, 1987 article discussing Perot's allegations about Armitage.[181]

• "Lately, Perot and his investigators have been interviewing people who have also been questioned by the Christic Institute, a Washington public-interest law firm. Christic last year filed a suit in Miami against Clines, Shackley, Secord, Singlaub, Hakim and 24 others; Armitage is mentioned several times but is not a defendant. The suit charges that some of the defendants became involved in drug smuggling from Southeast Asia in the early 1960s and later in a series of shady weapons deals around the world, using the profits to finance covert anti-Communist activities. But the lawsuit's allegations, many of which are inaccurate or based on false assumptions, are a shaky foundation on which to base an investigation. Armitage calls the suit "malicious" and has a four-page list of factual refutations. For example, an affidavit filed by the Christic Institute's attorney claims that Armitage was in Bangkok setting up a company that allegedly served as a front for the movement of opium money during a period in the late 1970s; part of that time he was actually living in Washington and working as administrative assistant to Senator Robert Dole."

Other

• House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Hearings of July 30 and July 15, 1987, includes Gritz's statements

• Department of State to a question submitted in writing by the Task Force on International Narcotics Control: "Accusations such as this are typical of the types of disinformation tactics employed by major drug traffickers to distract the world from the real issues. The charges have been looked into, and found to be completely groundless. The Secretary of Defense retains full confidence in Mr. Armitage."p. 223

• 1989. Susan Huck: "She was later tapped by the CIA's former Deputy Director of Operations, Ted Shackley, to research a leftist group that launched an elaborate lawsuit against former CIA officers; a case eventually thrown out of federal court. Her book, Legal Terrorism: The Truth About the Christic Institute , is the published summary of that effort."[182] [I can find no coverage about her or her book.]

Sources

• July 20, 1987: WASHINGTON TALK: INVESTIGATIONS; A Liberal Group Makes Waves With Its Contra Lawsuit, "Federal agents, United States prosecutors and spokesmen for the C.I.A. have characterized the suit as a political fantasy. Other investigators, including reporters from major news organizations, have tried without success to find proof of aspects of the case, particularly the allegations that military supplies for the contras may have been paid for with profits from drug trafficking."
• July 22, 1987: HILL PANEL FINDS NO EVIDENCE LINKING CONTRAS TO DRUG SMUGGLING, "A House committee that has been investigating allegations that leaders of the Nicaraguan contras were involved in drug smuggling yesterday reported it has discovered no evidence to support the allegations. 'None of the witnesses gave any evidence that would show the contra leadership was involved in drug smuggling,' said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control.
• May 1988: Brock, David (May 1988). Tyrrell, R. Emmett (ed.). "Christic Mystics and Their Drug-Running Theories" (pdf). The American Spectator. Vol. 21, no. 5. pp. 22–26. Retrieved June 3, 2017.

• https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-6338040.html Article apparently notes Khun Sa's allegations; need someone with HighBeam account to view for me.
• http://www.unz.org/Pub/InTheseTimes-1991oct30-00016
• http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmSpectator-1988may-00022
• http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooz9.html

• http://www.publiceye.org/rightwoo/rwooz9-13.html#P286_102340

• http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/1989/03a.html (AIM has conservative slant)
• https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F2/932/932.F2d.1572.88-5720.89-5515.89-5143.89-5232.html
• http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/691/1357/1814124/
• http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/05/opinion/essay-orgy-of-memoirs.html\
• http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/26/us/the-1992-campaign-candidate-s-record-perot-shows-penchant-for-seeing-conspiracy.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/10/08/the-christic-mystics-contd-dealing-in-fantasy-not-fact/ba7e8485-2414-4bd2-8120-2e5e4377510c/
• https://books.google.com/books?id=6Yx1-sBC1VcC&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=christic+gritz&source=bl&ots=EykKzCsJJr&sig=HbOY5Tyel69FEAv_Mbm_WBTHdsE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAn-36raDJAhWNKogKHTX8BbkQ6AEIUDAI#v=onepage&q=christic%20gritz&f=false
• Honey, Martha (1994). Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s. University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0-8130-1249-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
• Sheehan, Daniel (13 December 2013). The People's Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America's Most Fearless Public Interest Lawyer. Counterpoint Press. ISBN 978-1-61902-253-9.
• LeoGrande, William M. (Fall 1997). "Did the Presitige Press Miss the Nicaragua Drug Story?" (PDF). The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 2 (4): 10–31. Retrieved May 8, 2017. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |laysource=, |layurl=, |dead-url=, and |nopp= (help) - excellent summary

Leslie Cockburn

• April 6, 1987. "West 57th Street".[183]

• Jane Wallace (journalist)[184]
• George Morales appears in the episode and later testifies.[185]

• Mentioned in 1998 CIA report.[186]

• Gary Betzner

• Mentioned in 1998 CIA report.{https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/other.html]

• April 7, 1987. CIA calls the report "a fairy tale"; DOJ said they "questioned the veracity of the three witnesses in the CBS report, noting they have been convicted on drug charges and has asked for immunity from prosecution in return for testimony." [187]

• 1987. Out of Control by Leslie Cockburn

• Review in The New York Times[188]
• Review in Mother Jones[189]

• May 17, 1988. Frontline airs Guns, Drugs, and the CIA.[190][191]

• Introduction by Judy Woodruff. Written by Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn. Reported by Leslie Cockburn.
• Richard Hansen,
• Richard Secord quoted, later sues. [Source.]
• Brigade 2506 mentioned.
• Ramon Milian Rodriguez claimed he was tied into Watergate
• Reviews in The New York Times[192] and the Los Angeles Times[193]

References

Ross Perot

Ross Perot (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• "[Bo Gritz] first came to prominence in the early 1980s for staging several unsuccessful commando-style forays into Southeast Asia to retrieve putative American POWs. Billionaire H. Ross Perot initially financed the effort, but Gritz's activities were eventually curbed after U.S. authorities charged him with using a passport under a false name. Gritz countered by charging CIA and Defense Department officials with heroin trafficking."[194]
• "Perot joined forces in the mid-1980s with leftist conspiracy theorists who believed high U.S. officials profited from heroin trafficking in Southeast Asia. The allegation, which was contained in a lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Christic Institute, was dismissed as baseless in 1988 by U.S. District Judge James L. King of Miami. King fined the Christic Institute $1.2 million in defendants' court costs."
• "Perot has suggested that his own investigation during the Reagan administration was blocked by U.S. government officials involved with arms and drug trafficking."[195]
• Scott T. Barnes is linked to Perot and Gritz has made various allegations.[196] Trafficking allegations in his books?
• July 5, 1992: Sidney Blumenthal recaps Ross Perot's acceptance of the Christic Institute's conspiracy theory tying Richard Armitage, "assistant secretary of defense in charge of the POW-MIA issue", to US cover-up of drug trafficking. Perot used claims of Ronald Rewald and Scott Barnes to bolster his theory, then badgered Armitage with accusations until he declined the nomination of Secretary of the Army. Buck Revell of the FBI stated to Blumenthal: There was a great deal of smoke. I didn’t want there to be any questions. We got to the bottom of everything we could get to the bottom of. We found nothing about drug smuggling and cover-up on MIAs."

United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs

United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs

Sources

• https://books.google.com/books?id=YNknAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA340&lpg=PA340&dq=Perot+trafficking+POW&source=bl&ots=D_TZIn6SWU&sig=5TdHMBtSlhxp9k7-BKIHNWfL4zk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEmYnI6KXJAhVO9GMKHdd6A-M4FBDoAQgxMAQ#v=onepage&q=Perot%20trafficking%20POW&f=false
• http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/28/us/1992-campaign-candidate-s-record-perot-pursued-charges-against-official-for.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=1
• http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/27/us/1992-campaign-investigation-officials-say-perot-charges-led-fbi-try-sting-bush.html?mcubz=1
• http://www.deseretnews.com/article/10922/AGENCIES-DENY-MANS-CHARGES-OF-POWS-CHEMICAL-ARMS-MURDER-IN-SOUTHEAST-ASIA.html Barnes

References

Mena, Arkansas +/- link to Whitewater controversy

• Barry Seal
• Mena, Arkansas
• Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport

Pre-Clinton reports and allegations

• Allegations included drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and money laundering.
• "A joint investigation by the FBI, Arkansas State Police and IRS revealed that Barry Seal used the Mena airport for “smuggling activity” from late 1980 until March, 1984, according to the documents released last week."[197]
• 1982. Barry Seal moved his operations back to Arkansas.
• "This [i.e. interest in Mena] has happened repeatedly since 1982, when Louisiana police notified officials in Arkansas that one of the country’s most wanted drug runners was moving his headquarters to Mena."
• Early 1980s. "...investigator Russell Welch. He helped amass a 34-volume investigative file on cocaine smuggling at the airport in the early 1980s."[198]
• "A 1983 entry in the recently released documents referred to a telephone conversation between the FBI and Polk County Sheriff A.L. Hadaway. According to the document, Hadaway said an informant told him a “narcotic smuggling operation” was headquartered out of the Mena airport and that a man named Barry from Baton Rouge was in charge of it."[199]
• February 1984. "The FBI in Little Rock began investigating Seal’s operation at the Mena airport in February 1984, according to the recently released FBI document."
• 1984. Seal became a DEA informant. "But the investigators working the case in Arkansas — Russell Welch for the Arkansas State Police and William Duncan for the IRS — were never notified of that."
• "Russell Welch believes rumors of Seal's involvement with the CIA at Mena began to circulate in 1984 when Fred Hampton started a whispering campaign that he and Seal had been working for the CIA. The evidence of this is found in the petition filed in Hampton's federal suit. Hampton alleges that Barry Seal told him he was working for the CIA. As Welch sees it, the CIA story was circulated by Hampton to save face locally and to downplay his culpability in the money laundering and drug smuggling operations of Barry Seal. It is also likely that Seal himself greatly exaggerated the extent of his associations with the CIA. Such hype would be typical of Barry Seal." -Del Hahn
• February 19, 1986. Barry Seal shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
• November 1986. First reports of the Iran–Contra affair.
• "The plot thickened in 1986, when discovery of the Iran-Contra affair also revealed shadowy connections between Oliver North’s gun-running operation to the Nicaraguan Contras and what appeared to be government-protected drug activity taking place at Mena."
• Per Del Hahn: The activities of Barry Seal and Fred Hampton at the Mena Airport became public in March 1989.
• 1988. "Former Internal Revenue Service investigator William Duncan worked with Welch on the Seal investigation. Duncan left the IRS in 1988, charging that IRS lawyers advised him to lie to Congress about a top Justice Department official being bribed to derail a federal investigation of Seal’s activities in Mena."[200]

• July 1989. "In July 1989, Alexander, D-Ark., accused the IRS of having blocked congressional and police efforts to investigate an alleged drugs-for-arms operation linking Mena and Central America."[201]

• February 28, 1989. "Legacy of a Slain Drug Informer" by Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta in the Washinton Post.[202]
• March 1, 1989. Jack Anderson (columnist) and Dale Van Atta publish an article alluding to "strange goings on" at Mena. They wrote that police attempting to determine if the airstrip is still used for smuggling claimed their efforts had been "stonewalled" by the DoJ, DEA, FBI, and IRS, and that suspects claim they work for the CIA. According to Anderson and Van Atta, an unnamed "congressional investigator" told Jim Lynch (writer) that covert support operations suspected of financing private military aid by running drugs were moved from highly visible locations in southern Florida to remote locations [implying Mena]. The article also said Arkansas Representative Bill Alexander asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the possibility of government involvement in drug and arms trafficking to Central America, including any possible link to Mena. The said that the National Security Council instructed other government agencies not to cooperate with the General Accounting Office's investigation.[203]
• December 22, 1990. Alexander is quoted in the Arkansas Gazette: "Basically what you have here is a massive cover-up". Del Hahn stated Alexander believed that there was cover-up but offered no credible evidence.[204]
• July 24, 1991. "On July 24, 1991, Duncan testified before a House subcomittee probing the extent of unethical practices within the IRS. He said evidence he had collected in the last 18 months indicated that the Mena airport ″was an important hub-waypoint for trans-shipment of drugs, weapons and Central American Contra and Panamanian Defense Force personnel between 1984 and 1986,″ when Congress barred the CIA from supplying the Contras with military assistance. The Contras were fighting against the leftist Sandinista government at the time." By this time, the "Christic Foundation" was involved. [205]

Post-Clinton reports and allegations

• February 1994. Terry Reed and John Cummings release Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA was released.
• June 29, 1994. Micah Morrison's article, "Mysterious Mena", is published in the Wall Street Journal. Morrison wrote: "There is no reliable evidence linking these events to Bill Clinton, except that he was governor of Arkansas when state and federal investigations of Mena were frustrated." Also: "Following pressure from then-Arkansas Rep. Bill Alexander, the General Accounting Office opened a probe in April 1988; within four months, the inquiry was shut down by the National Security Council. Several congressional subcommittee inquiries sputtered into dead ends." Prior to a short discussion of the claims of Reed and Cummings, Morrison added: "A small conspiracy-theory industry has grown up around the mysteries of Mena." Also: "In 1991, Arkansas Attorney General Winston Bryant presented Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh with what Mr. Bryant called 'credible evidence of gunrunning, illegal drug smuggling, money laundering and the governmental coverup and possibly a criminal conspiracy in connection with the Mena Airport.' Seventeen months later, Mr. Walsh sent Mr. Bryant a letter saying without explanation that he had closed his investigation."

• June 30 1994. CIA internal response to Micah Morrison's article states: "The book mentioned in the article "Compromised: Clinton, Bush and The CIA" claims a conspiracy that only exists in the minds of its authors.".[206].

• July 21, 1994. According to Howard Schneider in The Washington Post, Mena, Arkansas was the backdrop of a "CIA-backed gun, drug and money-laundering conspiracy" during the 1980s. Schneider discusses Reed, Cummings, and their book.
• July 1995. Emmett Tyrrell's article is published in the August 1995 issue of The American Spectator. Allegations of LD Brown noted.

• July 19, 1995. CIA takes note of the article stating: "This is the latest repackaging of allegations previously made by the Wall Street Journal."[207]

• August 25, 1995. "A lawsuit filed against two former members of the Arkansas State Police by former North Little Rock businessman Terry Reed, who alleges his own close involvement in events at Mena, is scheduled for federal court in Little Rock in September." "It’s expected that when Terry Reed’s civil lawsuit reaches federal court, he will present evidence in support of his claim that he worked with CIA operatives in Mena and Central America on missions that he later learned involved the import of cocaine to the U.S. Reed has made this claim in court before and the government has failed to present evidence refuting it, claiming that to do so would jeopardize national security. As a result, Reed won his earlier case." -Mara Leveritt[208]
• August 25, 1995. ""And in an article published this month in The American Spectator magazine, L.D. Brown, a former member of Clinton’s Arkansas State Police security detail, claims that in 1984 he participated in two secret flights from Mena, on which M-16 rifles were traded to Nicaraguan Contra rebels in exchange for cocaine. Brown further claims that Clinton knew of the activity. That announcement spurred Fort Smith lawyer Asa Hutchinson, chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, to request a yet another congressional inquiry into long-standing allegations of money-laundering at Mena."-Mara Leveritt[209]

• November 2001. Byron York's article discussing The American Spectator is published in the November 2001 issue of The Atlantic. In the context of the Arkansas Project, a section titled "Mena" discusses the August 1995 article. Byron states that Christopher Caldwell wrote a memo to Wladyslaw Pleszczynski "taking Tyrrell's draft apart allegation by allegation", but that Tyrrell (as editor) did not back down. Byron also stated that more people were aware of the internal conflict had more impact than the article.

• February 1996. Jim Leach, a member of the United States House of Representatives from Iowa on the United States House Committee on Financial Services, requested an investigation in February 1996 as part of their investigation of the Whitewater controversy.

• "One of the allegations, that Clinton protected an Arkansas-based cocaine-smuggling operation when he was governor of that state, spread from local talk radio shows to propaganda videos to the mainstream media, and eventually prompted an exhaustive, multimillion-dollar investigation by the House Banking Committee in 1994. The investigation concluded Clinton had nothing to do with the drug operation."Murray Waas, Salon, March 11, 1998
• "Finding nothing there [i.e. with Whitewater], he proceeded to abuse his House Banking Committee chairmanship to open a bogus probe of the Mena airport cocaine-smuggling hoax, as Murray Waas reported in Salon. He did so at Gingrich's behest, with the connivance of unsavory figures from Richard Mellon Scaife's Arkansas Project. Despite heavy-breathing press leaks designed to smear Bill Clinton, Leach and his staff spent three years (and many thousands of staff hours in the House and other agencies, including the CIA) without producing a hearing or even a final written report."Salon, September 16, 2002

CIA internal investigation

• "On February 8, 1996, the Chairman of the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, House of Representatives ("Banking Committee"), wrote to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and requested that the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) conduct an investigation regarding longstanding allegations of money laundering and other illegal or improper activities at or around the airport at Mena, Arkansas and any Agency contacts with certain individuals and organizations of interest to the Banking Committee. The DCI agreed to the Banking Committee's request and, on March 13, 1996, formally requested that OIG conduct an investigation."[210]
• CIA Director John Deutch ordered an internal investigation in the Spring of 1996.
• On November 6, 1996, the CIA released a six-page report. The CIA IG Frederick Hitz stated that there was "no evidence has been found to indicate that CIA or anyone acting on its behalf participated in, or otherwise had knowledge of, any illegal or improper activities in Mena, Ark., or the area north of Mena known as Nella, Ark."[211]
• Frederick Hitz's two-part investigation looked into the allegations by Gary Webb as well as those about drug involvement in the Contra operation. His investigation found no evidence of institutional CIA involvement or CIA case officer involvement in either.
• Discussion of Hitz report.[212] Why 2011?

Aftermath

• "The Mena story is one of several dark fantasies put forth in the nineties by The American Spectator, an archconservative magazine. According to Patterson, Mercer read the publication at the time. David Brock, a former Spectator writer who is now a liberal activist, told me that the alleged Mena conspiracy was based on a single dubious source, and was easily disproved by flight records. “It’s extremely telling that Mercer would believe that,” Brock said. “It says something about his conspiratorial frame of mind, and the fringe circle he was in. We at the Spectator called them Clinton Crazies.”"(Nick Patterson (scientist), Robert Mercer, David Brock) -Jane Mayer[213]
• August 2017. Tom Cruise as Barry Seal in American Made (film)

Other

• Conspiracy theory per Howard Schneider[214], Peter Knight[215], entertainment writer[216][217][218], P. J. O'Rourke[219][220], David Plotz[221], Rough Guide[222], Joshua Green (journalist)[223], Jack Bratich[224][225], Ann Coulter[226], Martin Walker (reporter)[227], Jonathan Vankin[228], David Brock[229], John Kenneth Muir[230], Rob Boston[231], David Ray Carter[232], Chip Berlet[233]
• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: "This is how it became the site of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories of the late..."[234]
• Arkansas Project > Richard Mellon Scaife > Rex Armistead > The American Spectator
• Larry Nichols
• Clinton Body Count
• Killing of Don Henry and Kevin Ives. The mother of one of the victims started a website that espouses that their deaths were connected to the Mena conspiracy theory.

• Patrick Matrisciana > Jeremiah Films > The Clinton Chronicles[235][236]

References

Conspiracy theory involving the death of Col. James Sabow

• January 22, 1991. Col. James Sadow commits suicide.

• 1991. "Two successive 1991 Navy Judge Advocate General Manual (JAGMAN) investigations also reached the conclusion that Sabow committed suicide."

• April 1994. "In April 1994, the Sabow family filed a claim against the military at the Orange County Federal Courthouse. Assigned to the case was U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler, who promptly dismissed it because, she declared, families of servicemen have no right to sue the military. At that point, the case looked lost. The Sabows' first attorney refused to appeal but mentioned in passing a case that eerily paralleled their own. Dr. Sabow would soon discover the lawyer was speaking about the now-defunct, Washington, D.C.-based Christic Institute and referring to Daniel Sheehan, the group's founder and former guiding light. Dr. Sabow was intrigued; he offered the case to Sheehan, who agreed to handle the appeal. A panel of federal judges in Sacramento heard Sheehan's appeal and upheld the lawsuit, sending the Sabow case back to Stotler for trial."

• January 1996. "Five years later, the Marine Corps' Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted a separate investigation that the Sabow family had requested. It, too, found that Sabow killed himself."

• August 29, 1996. "In a decision that criticized the military's investigation as 'unprofessional,' the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 to reinstate a portion of a lawsuit filed by the family of Col. James E. Sabow."[237]
• 1996. "This meeting—and that phrase—eventually produced a lawsuit filed by the Sabow family in an Orange County federal court in 1996."
• January 2000. "Three weeks ago, the suit was thrown out of court by U.S. District Judge Alicemarie Stotler. According to the lawsuit, Sabow was murdered because he threatened to expose an illegal covert operation at El Toro involving Sabow's fellow officers, CIA-sponsored airlifts to Central and South America, black cargo planes landing in the middle of the night and drugs."

• June 5, 1996. Review of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service Investigation into the Death of Colonel James Emery Sabow, United States Marine Corps by Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Defense

• Q: Is it Tosh Plumlee's name that is redacted?[238]

• Discussion in Los Angeles or Orange County newspapers:

• February 17, 2000. Nick Schou, OC Weekly, Who Killed Col. James Sabow?.
• September 4, 2003. Nick Schou, OC Weekly, Cold Case at the Marine base.
• December 13, 2005. Christine Hanley, Los Angeles Times, "Man on Quest to Unearth Clues to Brother's Death; El Toro Marine Col. James Sabow was not a victim of suicide, but of a drug plot, sibling says."

• November 8, 2004. Jon J. Nordby of Final Analysis Forensics provides report to John Awtrey, Director of the Office of Law Enforcement Policy & Support with a finding of suicide. Nordby notes that he was retained by Awtrey due to Dr. Sabow's persistence with the case.
• ADL suggests these articles may have been read by John Patrick Bedell.
• March 4, 2010. 2010 Pentagon shooting. John Patrick Bedell, believer in the conspiracy theory, is killed.[239][240][241][242]

Sources

• United States Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel/United States Senate Committee on Armed Services, The Practices and Procedures of the Investigating Services of the Deparment of Defense and the Military Departments Concerning the Investigations Into the Deaths of Military Personnel Which May Have Resulted from Self-Inflicted Causes, pp. 18-25, pp. 43-70, pp. 221-246
• http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1120896.html
• https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1915&dat=19960910&id=LxkiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=xHYFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2943,2215051&hl=en
• https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19930617&id=UsIfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ONgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4179,2041908&hl=en
• Bryan Burnett's various reports
• Burnett claims photographs doctored in this 2016 report (graphic) Note: now he is an expert in photography.
• Burnett claims homicide in this 2017 report (graphic)

References

Counter-narcotics program with Venezuela

• In 1993, it was revealed that cocaine was shipped from Venezuela to the United States in 1990 as part of an "uncontrolled shipment" in order to gather intelligence on drug gangs/Colombian drug artels.[243]

• The DEA objected
• https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1906&dat=19931123&id=b_kfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OQIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6946,3723225
• In The New York Times, author Larry Collins described the incident as "smuggling".[244]
• In 1996, Ramon Guillen Davila was indicted. "The case of the Venezuelan cocaine is the only known instance in which the agency has acknowledged that its actions led to drugs being imported into the United States."[245]

References

Central America and the Contras (Gary Webb)

"Webb’s 1996 series in the Mercury News alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold tons of crack cocaine in Los Angeles and funneled millions of dollars in profits to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980s. The articles did not accuse the CIA of directly aiding drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but they implied that the agency was aware of the activity. Major parts of Webb’s reporting were later discredited by other newspaper investigations. An investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department found no evidence of a connection between the CIA and the drug traffickers. In 1997, then-Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos backed away from the series, saying “we fell short at every step of our process."[246]

• "Allegations that major Bay Area drug rings were helping to finance the right-wing contra rebels in Nicaragua were first reported 10 years ago [i.e. 1986] by The Examiner in a series of copyrighted front-page articles."[247]
• "The Frogman Case" at Pier 96 in San Francisco on January 17, 1983. Nicaraguans Julio Cesar Zavala-Moreno and Carlos Augusto Cabezas-Ramirez are among those arrested.
  • Seth Rosenfeld reports on "The Frogman Case" in the San Francisco Examiner on March 16, 1986.
• December 1985: The AP first reported alleged ties "in an article that quoted U.S. investigators, Contra backers and a Costa Rican indictment on the involvement of several rebel groups in cocaine trafficking from bases in northern Costa Rica."[248]
• April 16, 1986: Reagan administration responds to allegations of rebel involvement in drug trafficking by releasing a three page report stating that between 1984 and 1985 "[s]ome individual Nicaraguan Contras may have engaged in activity with drug traffickers, but there is no evidence that leaders of the rebels were involved".[249] (Quote is from AP, not the report.)

[10 years later...]

• Gary Webb's Dark Alliance series, August 18-20, 1996
  • Part one, August 18, 1996
  • Part two, August 19, 1996
    • Frogman case
  • Part three, August 20, 1996
    • Crack epidemic
• Gary Webb's Dark Alliance book published in two editions
  • 1st edition June 1998 (published after release of CIA OIG report part I) (review + first two chapters)
  • revised 2nd edition 1999 (month unknown, 30+ pages longer than 1st ed., incorporates material from DOJ OIG report and CIA OIG report part II)

[Insert into timeline of allegations. Individuals: Donald Barrios, Enrique Bermúdez, Oscar Danilo Blandón, Ronald Lister, "Freeway" Rick Ross, Norwin Meneses. Groups: Nicaraguan Democratic Force.]

• September 20, 1996. "Two Government agencies have opened investigations into a newspaper's reports that the contra rebels supported by the C.I.A. had sold drugs in Los Angeles in the 1980's and used the profits in their war against Nicaragua's Communist Government."[250]

Response of various newspapers

• The Los Angeles Times (Jesse Katz)

• Jesse Katz

• October 20, 1996. "Tracking the Genesis of the Crack Trade"

• Shelby Coffey III
• Leo Wolinsky, metro editor/managing editor
• Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief

• The New York Times

• Tim Golden (journalist)

• The Washington Post

• Jeff Lean, assistant managing editor for investigations, was with Miami Herald at the time

• October 17, 2014. Gary Webb was no journalism hero, despite what ‘Kill the Messenger’ says

• San Jose Mercury News

• Jerry Ceppos, excutive editor, on May 11, 1997
• Pete Carey
• David Yarnold, Managing Editor

Response of government

• Interest in the Dark Alliance claims was fueled by letters from California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and California Representative Maxine Waters. On August 29, 1996, Boxer sent a letter to Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch demanding an explanation for possible CIA involvement asking that he investigate the allegations. Feinstein sent a similar letter to Attorney General Janet Reno, then Waters sent one to Deutch, Reno, and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Henry Hyde. "Investigations were begun by the C.I.A., the Justice Department and the House Intelligence Committee."

• August 29, 1996. Letter from Boxer to Deutch, probably written August 28, 1996.
• August 30, 1996. Letter from Feinstein to Reno.
• August 30, 1996. Letter from Waters to Reno.
• August 30, 1996. Letter from Waters to Hyde.
• September 1, 1996. Letter from Deutch to Boxer.

• September 6, 1996. Deutch says a review he ordered "supports the conclusion that the agency neither participated in nor condoned drug trafficking by contra forces" but that he has ordered the OIG to conduct an investigateion.[251][252]

• On Wednesday, September 18, 1996, Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch ordered an investigation into the charges and asked Frederick Hitz, the Inspector General of the CIA, to complete his investigation within 60 days.

• On Friday, September 20, 1996, Michael Bromwich, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice, announced that he had "opened an investigation into allegations that federal agencies helped funnel drug profits to rebels in Nicaragua, known as the contras, in the 1980s". Bromwich stated that Attorney General Janet Reno passed the matter to him after she received letters from Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Maxine Waters.

• [253], [254]
• [255]

• In 1996, Representative Juanita Millender-McDonald, a member on the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, hosted two town hall meeting in the Los Angeles area as part of an inquiry into allegations that the CIA was working with cocaine traffickers to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

• October 19, 1996 at Compton Community College with Committee members Representative Jerry Lewis and Representative Julian C. Dixon in attendance. The meeting was titled Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade.
• November 15, 1996 at Alain Locke High School with Committee members Representative Julian C. Dixon and Representative Jane Harman in attendance, as well as DCI John Deutch.
• Michael Ruppert attends both meetings. At the first, he provides 'several thousand pages of documentary materials' to HPSCI. At the second, he addressed Deutch. [Are his claims address in the HPSCI report?]

• 2003. Jerry Lembcke discusses Ruppert's allegations.[256]

Proceedings for H.R. 3694, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999

• May 7, 1998. During proceedings/debate/discussion in the United States House of Representatives on May 7, 1998, Juanita Millender-McDonald expressed her support for H.R. 3694, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999, but stated "...my support is not without serious reservations, for I remain deeply concerned about allegations that have been raised regarding CIA involvement in drug trafficking in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere. While I applaud Chairman PORTER GOSS , Ranking Member NORM DICKS , and the rest of the House Permanent Select Committee for convening a public hearing following release of Volume One of the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General’s report in response to the San Jose Mercury News’ series ‘‘Dark Alliance’’, I have made my views about the shortcomings in this report known to the Committee and to the Agency. I am aware that Volume Two of the Inspector General’s report, which deals with the more substantive issues regarding the extent of the relationship between the intelligence community and the Nicaraguan Contra resistance, has been provided to the Select Committee in classified form. I understand that it is being reviewed by the Central Intelligence Agency to determine whether any or all of it may be declassified. And, we are still awaiting release of Inspector General Michael Bromwich’s report on the allegations of wrongdoing that may have occurred within branches of the U.S. Department of Justice." John Conyers said: " I am inserting into the RECORD a list, compiled by the Institute for Policy Studies, which goes through other examples of the troubling history of our intelligence agencies." The list was titled A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International Trafficking. (Official link; p. H2955, Unofficial link, Unofficial link) [Look for source stating that the list was compiled by Martha Honey when she worked for the Institute for Policy Studies.]

United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General

United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. December 1997.

• December 17, 1997. The is signed by Michael Bromwich.

• Addresses Gary Webb's claims
• Touches on Christic Institute's suit in Chapter I E
• Addresses Michael Ruppert's claims in Chapter IV
• Addresses Celerino Castillo's claims in Chapter X

• January 23, 1998. Janet Reno blocks release of the report.[257]
• July 14, 1998. Reno permits the report to be released.
• July 22, 1998. The report is released with an epilogue by Bromwich stating the reasons for the delay of its release.
• May 25, 1999. Bromwich appears before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to provide a statement and answer questions about the report.

Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General

Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Vol. Overview. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, Investigations Staff. January 29, 1998.
• Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Vol. Volume I: The California Story. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, Investigations Staff. January 29, 1998. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
• Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Vol. Volume II: The Contra Story. Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, Investigations Staff. January 29, 1998. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)

• CIA OIG report was issued in two parts[258] Overview - dead link I - dead link II dead link
  • Part one "The California Story", classified version published December 17, 1997, unclassified version published January 29, 1998.[259]
    • Addresses Frogman Case (Seth Rosenfeld, San Francisco Examiner, March 16, 1986)
    • Addresses Danilo Blandon, Norwin Meneses, Ricky Ross (Gary Webb, DA series and book)
    • Addresses Michael Ruppert's claims. "No information to be found..." regarding five separate allegations.[260]
  • Part two "The Contra Story", classified version published April 27, 1998, unclassified version published October 8, 1998.[261]
    • Addresses events in (El Salvador and Guatemala (Celerino Castillo III, Powderburns, 1994 boook)
    • Addresses Christic Institute's claims [262]
    • Addresses Celerino Castillo's claims
• http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/DOC_0001372115.pdf
• December 19, 1997. C.I.A. Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade - Tim Weiner
• July 17, 1998, C.I.A. Says It Used Nicaraguan Rebels Accused of Drug Tie: "The inspector general's report, which has not yet been publicly released, also concludes that there is no evidence that any C.I.A. officials were involved in drug trafficking with contra figures."

[263][264]

United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• 1997: Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate (1997). "Hearings Before the Select Committee on Intelligence of the United States Senate" (pdf). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. ISBN 0160551307. Retrieved September 18, 2017.

United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

• The Committee was chaired by Florida Representative Porter Goss, later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
• February 2000: Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, United States House of Representatives (February 2000). "Report on the Central Intelligence Agency's Alleged Involvement in Crack Cocaine Trafficking in the Los Angeles Area" (pdf). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. ISBN 0160604265. Retrieved September 18, 2017. <- only 47 of 217+ pages

• May 11, 2000. Press release announcing findings.[265]

• Secondary source coverage)

Finding One: The Committee found no evidence to support the Mercury News allegationsthat CIA agents or assets associatedwith the Contra movement were involved in the supply or sale of drugs in the Los Angeles area.

Finding Two: The Committee found no evidence to support the allegations that Norwin Meneses, Danilo Blandon or Ricky Ross were CIA agents or assets whose drug trafficking was intended to further the cause of the Contras. Although Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon were sympathetic to the Contras, and were trafficking in narcotics, they were not associated with the CIA. Further, Meneses' and Blandon's support of the local FDN organization in San Francisco was not directed by anyone within the Contra movement who had an association with the CIA. Finally, there is no evidence to support the claims of Gary Webb that drug traffickers such as Ronald Lister, Carlos Cabezas, and Julio Zavala were associated with the CIA.

Finding Three: The Committee found no evidence to support alle-gations that employees of the CIA engaged in narcotics trafficking in the Los Angeles area.

Finding Four: The Committee found no evidence that any other U.S. intelligence agency or agency employee was involved in the illegal supply or sale of drugs in the Los Angeles area.

Finding Five: One Contra faction, the Southern Front, did receive support from individuals who were engaged in drug trafficking from Central America to the United States. Certain Southern Front organizations apparently accepted support from drug traffickers knowingly, particularly when their support from the CIA ended.

Finding Six: The CIA as an institution did not approve of connections between Contras and drug traffickers, and, indeed, Contras were discouragedfrom involvement with traffickers. Also, CIA officers, on occasion, notified law enforcement entities when they became aware of allegations concerning the identities or activities of drug traffickers.

Finding Seven: In the case most relevant to the "Dark Alliance" series, it appears that the support Blandon and Meneses gave the FDN chapter in San Francisco was financed from illegal drug proceeds since this was their main source of income. Nevertheless, their support was limited (reportedly between $30,000 and $50,000) and was not sufficient to finance the organization. The support to the Contras provided by Meneses and Blandon did not consist of "millions" to the Contras, as alleged in the Mercury News. As noted earlier, the Committee finds no evidence that the CIA or the Intelligence Community was aware of these individuals' support of the Contras.

Criticism of CIA report

[Or should this be "Rebuttal to the official finds" or "Criticism of the official findings"?]

• Dark Alliance (Webb, 1998-1999 book)
• Whiteout (Cockburn and St. Clair, 1998 book)
• The Consortium (Robert Parry website, frequently cited by other critics)

Perception of Webb

[Vindicated or not?]

• http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a18813/gary-webb-cia-drug-running-story-061813/
• LeoGrande, William M. (Fall 1997). "Did the Presitige Press Miss the Nicaragua Drug Story?" (PDF). The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. 2 (4): 10–31. Retrieved May 8, 2017. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |laydate=, |laysource=, |layurl=, |dead-url=, and |nopp= (help)

• Kill the Messenger (2014 film)[266][267][268]

• September 24, 2014. Article by Ryan Devereaux in The Intercept.[269]

• October 25, 2014. Article by Nick Schou in Al Jazeera America.[270] (Echo chamber: Schou states that The Intercept was founded by Glenn Greenwald.)

• October 2, 2014. Article by David Carr (journalist) in The New York Times.[271] "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." [Various reports emphasize that Webb did not claim certain things.]
• October 17, 2014. Jeff Leen, https://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

References

Others (whose work or views on the topic has been discussed by secondary sources)

• Philip Agee[272]
• Kenneth C. Bucchi
• Alexander Cockburn/Jeffrey St. Clair [273][274][275]

• Review of Dark Alliance and Whiteout by James Adams[276]

• Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn: Guns, Drugs, and the CIA - PBS, YouTube
• Grover Furr "The CIA helped pro-US landlords smuggle opium out of Laos for the heroin trade during the Vietnam War (Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, 1973). It now aids the anti-Soviet Afghan tribesmen in their opium trade (Hoag Levins, “The Kabul Connection,” PhiladelphiaMagazine, August 1980). The same Corsican Mafiosi who beat up pro-communist French workers in the 1940's continue to work with the CIA today, still smuggling heroin (Hendrik Krüger, The Great Heroin Coup, 1980). This CIA-abetted trade kills tens of thousands of workers worldwide, many of them in the US, each year."[277]
• Bo Gritz
• Lyndon LaRouche "embraces a number of causes on the far right and is noted for espousing bizarre conspiracy theories, such as one linking Queen Elizabeth II and Henry A. Kissinger to drug traffickers." [278] LaRouche said Kissinger and the ADL led the US branch of a drug cartel, and the George H. W. Bush kept LaRouche in prison to avoid revealing what he knew about the federal complicity of the government in the drug trade.[279][280][281]
• Jonathan Mirsky reviews Orrin DeForest's and William Colby's books.[282]

• November 8, 1990. DeForest responds to Mirsky's review of his book.[283]
• November 22, 1990. Colby responds to a Mirsky's review and denies Air America/CIA profited from the opium trade. Colby rejects view that "... the CIA and Air America were using drug money to finance the war in Southeast Asia and condoning the refining and exportation of heroin both to G.I.’s in that part of the world and to the American public."[284] Mirsky cites McCoy.

• Robert Parry (journalist)
• Peter Dale Scott

• Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (1991) with Jonathan Marshall [285][286][287][288][289][290]
• American War Machine: Deep Politics, The CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (2010) [291]
• Variant
• http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940DEFDB1330F935A1575BC0A96E948260&mcubz=3

• Robert David Steele and American Drug War: The Last White Hope

• International Center for Development Policy - allegations that offices were broken into and documents pertaining to CIA were stolen
• Institute for Policy Studies
• The CIA Drug ConnectionIs as Old as the Agency by Larry Collins

• Jack Terrell.[292][293]
• Joshua Kurlantzick's A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA (January 2017). A review in The Economist states: "Mr Kurlantzick looks into allegations that the CIA sold heroin and opium. He finds no evidence of this, although the agency was happy to look the other way when the Hmong sold drugs."[294] A review in The New York Times states: "Drug trafficking and corruption tainted American allies in Laos, as it has more recently in Afghanistan."[295]

Other discussion

• "Crack Cocaine Conspiracy Theory"
• "Drugs" in Conspiracy Theories in American History

Possible sources

Other

• CIA FOIA - "Alfred W. McCoy"
• CIA FOIA - "Alfred McCoy"
• CIA FOIA - "Peter Dale Scott"

• http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/C%20Disk/CIA%20Southeast%20Asia/Item%2044.pdf
• https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90B01370R000500780029-1.pdf
• https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter99-00/art7.html
• http://www.scribd.com/doc/98505128/Encyclopedia-of-War-on-Drugs#scribd
• https://pdfcoffee.com/cia-and-the-narcotics-trade-pdf-free.html
• https://www.utdallas.edu/library/specialcollections/hac/cataam/notebooks/
• https://www.unz.org/Pub/AmSpectator-1989dec-00037
• https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1906&dat=19931123&id=b_kfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=OQIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6946,3723225
• http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1998/06/history-101-cia-drugs/
• https://books.google.com/books?id=53I3FN4BTvoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
• https://books.google.com/books?id=z3xKAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

• 2000. Bertil Lintner and Chiang Mai. The Golden Triangle Opium Trade: An Overview

• Narco News library
• New York Times library

• http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20653.htm - not reliable
• Review of Dark Alliance and Whiteout

Books

Date	Author(s)	Book	Link
1972	Alfred McCoy	The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
1973	Martin E. Goldstein	American Policy Toward Laos	One brief, neutral mention in a section discussing Air America's role in Laos: "Air America airlifts supplies to the Meos, transports them into battle, and according to some reports flies out the Meo opium crop to buyers in the cities."(p. 198) The citation is to Peter Dale Scott's article, "Air America: Flying the U.S. into Laos", in the February 1970 issue of Ramparts. Later, appears to reiterate McCoy stating that the CIA either "averts its eyes" or facilitates the transport of opium to market for the Meos.(p. 325)
1978	Christopher Robbins	Air America
1982	Joseph Westermeyer	Poppies, Pipes, and People: Opium and Its Use in Laos	“Sentiment against the war in Vietnam linked American presence and opium commerce. Sensationalism and faulty logic characterized reports. Several American writers made brief visits to Laos, obtained second- and third-hand reports, then reached the conclusion that the real evil in Southeast Asiawas ‘American governmental support of opium production and trade.’ Some writers were academics without training in field research or experience in Laos. Their writings include ‘a scattering of facts, a good deal of false information, considerable innuendo, and some very faulty logic.’ The popularity of their works was ‘a sign of the times.’ Careful work by reputable researchers was denounced as ‘as mere effluvia by the Central Intelligence Agency.’ ‘It was a time when trash was glorified as enlightenment and excellent work having humanitarian import was denounced as treason.”[296]
1982	James P. Harrison	The Endless War: Vietnam's Struggle for Independence	Gives a fair amount of coverage to McCoy's claims.(pp. 244-245)
1987	Leslie Cockburn	Out of Control: The Story of the Reagan Administration's Secret War in Nicaragua, the Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connection
1987	Jonathan Kwitny	The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA	Discusses Nugan Hand Bank scandal.[297]
1988	Mark Hertsgaard	On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency	Mentioned in the DOJ/OIG report as stating it mentions the "issue of drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras".[298] Also reiterates the October Surprise conspiracy theory.[299]
1988	William J. Chambliss in Marcus G. Raskin and Chester Hartman	"Dealing with America's Drug Problem" in Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the 1990s	"In the United States, the CIA has been either a partner in or organizer of international drug trafficking" (p.230) Reiterates McCoy's allegations regarding Southeast Asia and the Christic Institute's allegations regarding Central America. Raskin and Hartman are affiliated with Institute for Policy Studies.
1991	Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall	Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America	Mentioned in the DOJ/OIG report as stating it mentions the "issue of drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras".[300]
1992	William J. Chambliss in Harold Traver and Mark S. Gaylord	"The Consequences of Prohibition: Crime, Corruption, and International Narcotics Control" in Drugs, Law, and the State	Various claims from McCoy through Nugan Hand Bank.(pp. 19-22)
1993	William J. Chambliss in William J. Chambliss and Marjorie Sue Zatz	"The Political Economy of Opium and Heroin" in Making Law: The State, the Law, and Structural Contradictions	Reiterates previous claims: "Thus, America's Central Intelligence Agency became a major trafficker in the international narcotics industry."(p. 73))
1996	Martin Booth	Opium: A History	Reiterates allegations from WWII to McCoy to the Mujahideen[301]
2000	John Jacob Nutter	The CIA's Black Ops: Covert Action, Foreign Policy, and Democracy	Chapter 8 is filled with all sort of claims.[302]
2001	Herbert S. Parmet	George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee	Appears to be a reliable source. Mentions Noreiga in various places. Also: "Perot, the hero and POW/MIA crusader, searched for conspiracies that kept the truth about missing servicemen from the public. Bush, as former CIA director, Perot theorized, was being pressured to keep his silence about their existence by heroin traffickers and money launderers." (p. 320)
2002	Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen	Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug Trade
2002	Paul Young	L.A. Exposed: Strange Myths and Curious Legends in the City of Angels	Support Gary Webb.
2002	James Minahan	Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations: D-K	One brief, neutral statement: "According to some reports, the Central Intelligence Agency encouraged the Hmongs to continue opium production as a source of income."[303]
2003	William Blum	Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II	Various claims: Nugan Hand Bank[304], Afghanistan[305], Haiti[306]). Cites other questionable sources.[307])
2004	Shane Blackman	Chilling Out: The Cultural Politics of Substance Consumption, Youth and Drug Policy	Reiterates and cites McCoy.[308]
2007	Cornelius Friesendorf	US Foreign Policy and the War on Drugs: Displacing the Cocaine and Heroin Industry.	Reiterates and cites McCoy.
2008	Martin Stuart-Fox	Historical Dictionary of Laos	"As part of their support for the predominantly Hmong "secret army", the Central Intelligence Agency was also involved in transporting Lao opium."[309]
2009	Jeremy Kuzmarov	The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs	In depth coverage of McCoy's allegations and others.
2010	Mai Elliott	RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era	Neutrally addresses the CIA/Air America allegations.[310]
2011	Richard M Gibson with Wenhua Chen	The Secret Army: Chiang Kai-shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden Triangle
2011	Joshua Kurlantzick	The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War	"And when the Corsicans were forced out of the country—Lao leaders wanted a larger share of the drug business—CIA pilots, to accommodate Vang Pao, flew the opium themselves out of the Hmong regions to markets in the Lao capital and other cities."[311]
2013	Peter Iadicola and Anson Shupe	Violence, Inequality, and Human Freedom	Asserts that CIA engaged in quid pro quo with organized crime syndicate to allow heroin production in Marseilles. Appears to quote Piers Beirne and James W. Messerschmidt (Criminology, 1991) stating that they referred to similar deal between CIA and Meo tribespeople: "In return for fighting the Pathet Lao opposition forces, the Meo tribespeople of the area were compensated by the CIA's own airline—Air America—which helped transport heroin to opium laboratories, and ultimately into the arms of of GIs in Vietnam and users in the U.S."[312] (Note that Beirne and Messerschmidt adapted their material from McCoy.[313] Also, Iadicola and Shupe cite the Church Committee's CIA-Castro findings, but not the Church Committee's CIA drug trafficking findings.)
2015	Ron Chepesiuk	The War on Drugs: An International Encyclopedia	"First the French during their colonial rule of Southeast Asia and then the CIA during the Vietnam War supported the war lords in the area as allies and as a buffer against communist expansion in the region and turned a blind eye to their involvement in the cultivation and trafficking of the local opium crop."
2015	Jan Goldman in Jan Goldman Ph.D.	The Central Intelligence Agency: An Encyclopedia of Covert Ops, Intelligence Gathering, and Spies	Goldman's entry on "Dark Alliance Series (1996- ) cites Cockburn & Sinclair, Shou, and Webb.[314] (Seems neutral to me.)
2015	Pierre Arnaud Chouvy in Jan Goldman Ph.D.	The Central Intelligence Agency: An Encyclopedia of Covert Ops, Intelligence Gathering, and Spies	Chouvy's "Drug Trafficking" entry cites himself, McCoy, and Meyer & Parssinen.[315] Asserts that the CIA condoned the Mafia's drug trafficking activities to counter communist influence in France and Italy. Asserts that the CIA condoned trafficking by Hmong, KMT, and mujahideen in Southeast Asia. Other assertions, including: "In Europe and in Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Cold War saw many drug related covert operations and secret wars in which the CIA clearly and deliberately ignored evidence of drug production and trafficking by its allies."

See also

• Brought to Light
• Civil Air Transport

References

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