Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

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msfreeh
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Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

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https://ratical.org/co-globalize/narcoDollars.html


Catherine Austin Fitts Guide to Narco-Dollars by Narco News, 2001 - Ratical.org
Ratical.org › co-globalize › narcoDollars
That's when I decided that I would have to learn how the money works on the drug trade. Here is what I ... Who is going to have a bigger stock market portfolio with a large investment house, Sam or Dave? Who is going to ...


msfreeh
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Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

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http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/03/31/ru ... more-13773



Russian Oligarch in Election Probe Linked to Drug Cartel
Posted on March 31, 2017 by Daniel Hopsicker
New evidence indicates that Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire who paid $10 million a year to Paul Manafort between 2004 and 2009, has been in business since 2004 in Guyana with a politically powerful crime family involved in international drug trafficking whose most famous member is a drug pilot who had also been the chief pilot of the owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that taught Mohamed Atta to fly.


our-man-in-guyanaMichael Francis Brassington is a professional pilot with a sordid criminal career in international drug trafficking.

In July 2000, he was the co-pilot on the ill-starred flight of a luxury Learjet (N351WB) that was busted by DEA Agents on a runway of Orlando Executive Airport carrying 43 lbs. of heroin.

The plane belonged to Wally Hilliard, the owner of Huffman Aviation, the flight school where Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi began flight training on July 3, 2000. When Hilliard’s Learjet was busted on July 22, Atta was not even a month into his lessons.

Hilliard-Mug-Shot-226x300According to DEA affidavits and court testimony, Brassington flew co-pilot on 39 weekly round trips on Wally Hilliard’s Learjet in the year 2000 before getting busted. Each time the Learjet flew from Florida to Venezuela and back, before heading north to end at Teterboro Airport outside New York. The connection has never been mentioned in the mainstream media.

(SEE “The Brassington Files,” for a dozen stories about Brassington which have appeared on this site as part of an investigation of the 9/11 terrorist’s time in Florida.(“Welcome to TerrorLand” is available on this site.)



Mother Russia

It’s a worldwide phenomena. When gangsters get really hugely, big-ly rich, they aren’t called gangsters anymore.

They’re called philanthropists.

And so it is with Oleg Deripaska. He has helped finance construction for Russia’s Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, made headlines when he stepped in to fix the city’s stray dog problem after the Games began, and more.

Still, and apparently not tongue in cheek, a Toronto Globe and Mail profile in 2011 reports that Deripaska is not eager to publicize his numerous charities. He does still allows himself the occasional humble brag, however, as when he told reporters he’d contributed some $250 million between 2000-09, “largely to education projects. ”

He bankrolled major projects like the refurbishment of the Bolshoi Theater, and plowed money into the restoration of Russia’s neglected Orthodox churches. He wasn’t eager to tout those philanthropic acts either.

Except, maybe, on his own website, which claims he’s donated the equivalent of about $185 million. Anyone spreading around $185 million dollars can be indulged if he wants to speak a few heartfelt words of wisdom to those of us rocking the cheap seats.

Deripaska writes, but not memorably, on his website, “Motivated and active people create something to be proud of for generations and are changing our world and our lives for the better.”

Maybe someone should have just introduced him to Bono.



NEXT: Michael Francis Brassington and Oleg Deripaska share a few things in common. Example: Both have often received fawning press coverage.

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msfreeh
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Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

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http://powderburns.org/about.html


Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War
by Celerino Castillo

The truth about the remaining dark secret of the Iran-Contra scandal- the United States government's collaboration with drug smugglers. Powderburns is the story of Celerino Castillo III who spent 12 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration. During that time, he built cases against organized drug rings in Manhattan, raided jungle cocaine labs in the Amazon, conducted ae ...more




http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_bibl.html




A CIA Reading List
Since the CIA and its activities are highly controversial (as all state-sponsored terrorism is, because of state denial) books about the CIA are written from diverse viewpoints. Some attempt to expose the nefarious activities of the CIA, some aim at an objective historical record of events and an assessment of the CIA's role and some are attempts to whitewash the Agency. Most of the books below deal primarily with the CIA but some are concerned mainly with other topics and only partly concern the CIA (such as its Operation Phoenix assassination program in Vietnam).

The Agency's Family Jewels

Of the numerous skeletons in the CIA's closet, few are more closely guarded than information about the many books the Agency covertly helped to publish during the first three decades of the cold war. The Church Committee of the Senate, among its many other revelations, disclosed in 1976 that "well over a thousand books" had been produced, subsidized or sponsored by the CIA by 1967, with about 250 more from then to 1976. Many of the books were sold in the United States as well as abroad. Like many other researchers, I have filed Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the names of these books, but to no avail. At one point the Agency sent me 84 pages of material, which did not contain the name of a single book. I appealed this and just last month, after more than two years, I received a reply, which stated in part:
"The Agency is unable to conduct a search for the records requested because we are unable to identify an Agency record system where records responsive to your request could reasonably be expected to be located."

If I understand the English, they're saying that they couldn't find the records I asked for because they didn't know where to look. Hmmm. Well, they might begin with the name of one of their frequently used publishers, Praeger (formerly F. A. Praeger), which put out half of the books in the following list of CIA-backed titles which have been revealed in one place or another over the years:

"The Dynamics of Soviet Society" by Walt Rostow; "The New Class" by Milovan Djilas; "Concise History of the Communist Party" by Robert A. Burton; "The Foreign Aid Programs of the Soviet Bloc and Communist China" by Kurt Muller; "In Pursuit of World Order" by Richard N. Gardner; "Peking and People's Wars" by Major General Sam Griffith; "The Yenan Way" by Eudocio Ravines; "Life and Death in Soviet Russia" by Valentin Gonzalez; "The Anthill" by Suzanne Labin; "The Politics of Struggle: The Communist Front and Political Warfare" by James D. Atkinson; "From Colonialism to Communism" by Hoang Van Chi; "Why Viet Nam?" by Frank Trager; and "Terror in Vietnam" by Jay Mallin.

Another family jewel is Operation Gladio, the astounding terrorist campaign in Western Europe run by the CIA, NATO, and several European intelligence agencies for decades following World War II, which I've written about in my books. What promises to be the bible on the subject has just appeared — "Operation Gladio: NATO's Top Secret Stay-Behind Armies and Terrorism in Western Europe", in English from Frank Cass Publishers (London) and Amazon, and upcoming in Italian from Fazi Editore (Rome). The Swiss author, Daniele Ganser, is uniquely suited for the task, being a fluent reader of Italian, German, French and English, all the key languages of the Gladio documentation.

— The Anti-Empire Report, No. 17, January 20, 2005, by William Blum


A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Author(s): Adams, James
Title: Sell Out: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA
Publication date: 1995
ISBN:
Publisher: Penguin Books USA, New York
Author(s): Adams, Samuel
Title: War of Numbers: An Intelligence Memoir
Publication date: 1994
ISBN:
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Author(s): Adamson, B. C.
Title: Diana, The Queen of Hearts & The CIA, Prince of Darkness
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Agee, Philip
Title: Inside the Company
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Agee, Philip
Title: On the Run
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Andrew, C.
Title: For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush
Publication date: 1995
ISBN:
Publisher: HarperCollins, New York
Author(s): Avirgan, Tony & Honey Avirgan
Title:La Pença: On Trial in Costa Rica
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Avirgan, Tony & Honey Avirgan
Title: La Pença: Report of an Investigation
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Bain, Donald
Title: The Control of Candy Jones
Publication date: 1976
ISBN:
Publisher: Playboy Press (Distributed by Simon & Schuster, Inc. New York)
Author(s): Blaufarb, D. S.
Title: The Counterinsurgency Era
Publication date: 1977
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Blum, William
Title: Killing Hope: U.S Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Common Courage Press, P.O. Box 702, Monroe, Maine 04951, USA
Author(s): Blum, William
Title: The CIA: A Forgotten History
Publication date: 1986
ISBN:
Publisher: Zed Books, London, England
Author(s): Blum, William
Title: Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
Publication date: 2000 (with a new foreword in 2002)
ISBN: 1-56751-194-5
Publisher: Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine
Author(s): Borosage, R.L. & Marks, J. (eds.)
Title: The CIA File
Publication date: 1976
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Brewton, Pete
Title: Mafia, CIA and George Bush
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Canning, Peter
Title: American Dreamers — The Wallaces and Reader's Digest: An Insider's Story
Publication date: 1996
ISBN: 0684809281
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Author(s): Castillo, Celerino
Title: Powder Burns
Publication date: 1992
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): CATO Institute
Title: The Crisis in Drug Prohibition
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: CATO Institute
Author(s): Chomsky, Noam
Title: Deterring Democracy
Publication date: 1991
ISBN: 0-374-52349-5
Publisher: Hill and Wang (Farrar, Staus and Giroux), New York
Author(s): Chomsky, Noam
Title: The Culture of Terrorism
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: South End Press
Author(s): Chomsky, Noam
Title: What Uncle Sam Really Wants
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Cline, Ray
Title: The CIA: Reality vs. Myth
Publication date: 1982
ISBN:
Publisher: Acropolis Books, Washington D.C.

Author(s): Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair
Title: Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Available online: CounterPunch Bookshop
Author(s): Cockburn, Leslie
Title: Out of Control
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Atlantic Press
Author(s): Colby, William E.
Title: Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
Publication date: 1978
ISBN:
Publisher: Acropolis Books, Washington
Author(s): Colby, W.
Title: Lost Victory
Publication date: 1989
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Collins, Anne
Title: In The Sleep Room
Publication date: 1988
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
Title: The IndoChina Story: A Fully Documented Account
Publication date: 1970
ISBN:
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Author(s): Constantine, Alex
Title: CIA Mind Control Operations in America
Publication date: 1997
ISBN:
Publisher: Loompanics Unlimited (P.O.Box 1197, Port Townsend, WA 98368)
Author(s): Corn, D.
Title: Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades
Publication date: 1994
ISBN:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Author(s): Cram, Cleveland C.
Title: History of the Counterintelligence Staff 1954-1974 (unpublished CIA study, 1981)
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Dinges, John
Title: Our Man in Panama
Publication date: 1991
ISBN:
Publisher: Random House
Author(s): Emerson, Steven
Title: Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era
Publication date: 1988
ISBN: 0-399-13360-7
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York
Author(s): Epstein, Edward J.
Title: Deception: The Invisible War between the KGB and the CIA
Publication date: 1989
ISBN:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Author(s): Frazier, H. (ed.)
Title: Uncloaking the CIA
Publication date: 1978
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Frost, Mike and Gratton, Michael
Title: Spyworld: Inside the American and Canadian Intelligence Establishments
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Doubleday (Canada)
Author(s): Glick, Brian
Title: War at Home
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: South End Press
Author(s): Goddard, Donald & Lester Coleman
Title: New Terrorism: How U.S Collusion with Drug Dealers and Terrorist Brought Down Pan Am 103 and Brought Terror to America
Publication date: 1997-05
ISBN: 188220610X
Publisher: Barricade Books, 150 5th Ave., suite 700, New York City, NY 10011
Author(s): Gross, Peter
Title: Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles
Publication date: 1994
ISBN:
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Author(s): Gup, Ted
Title: The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Hackel, Joy & Siegel Hackel
Title: In Contempt of Congress
Publication date: 1987
ISBN:
Publisher: Institute for Policy Studies
Author(s): Heidenry, John
Title: Theirs was the Kingdom: Lila and Dewitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: W. W. Norton, New York, USA
Author(s): Herman, Edward S.
Title: The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda
Publication date: 1982
ISBN: 0-89608-134-6
Publisher: South End Press, Boston
Author(s): Hinckle, Warren, and William Turner
Title: Deadly Secrets: The CIA & Mafia War against Castro and the Assassination of JFK
Publication date: 1982
ISBN:
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, USA

Author(s): Hopsicker, Daniel
Title: Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Howard, E. L.
Title: Safe House: The Compelling Memoirs of the Only CIA Spy to Seek Asylum in Russia
Publication date: 1995
ISBN:
Publisher: National Press Books, Bethesda, MD
Author(s): Jackson, Wayne G.
Title: Allan Welsh Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence 26 February 1953 - 29 November 1961, Volume III, Covert Activities
Publication date: declassified 1994-06-22
ISBN:
Publisher: Central Intelligence Agency
Author(s): Jackson, Wayne G.
Title: Allan Welsh Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence 26 February 1953 - 29 November 1961, Volume V, Intelligence Support of Policy
Publication date: declassified 1994-06-22
ISBN:
Publisher: Central Intelligence Agency
Author(s): Johnson, Loch
Title: A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation
Publication date: 1985
ISBN:
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Author(s): Johnson, Paul
Title: Modern Times
Publication date: rev. ed, 1991
ISBN:
Publisher: Harper, New York
Author(s): Karalekas, Anne
Title: History of the Central Intelligence Agency, Book IV of the Final Report of the Church Committee
Publication date: 1976
ISBN:
Publisher: U.S. Government Printing Office
Author(s): Karnow, Stanley
Title: In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines
Publication date: 1989
ISBN:
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Author(s): Kruger, Henrik
Title: The Great Heroin Coup
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: South End Press
Author(s): Kwitny, Jonathan
Title: The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA
Publication date: 1987
ISBN: 0-671-66637-1
Publisher: Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster.
Author(s): Lee, Martin A. and Bruce Shlain
Title: Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties Rebellion
Publication date: 1985
ISBN:
Publisher: Grove Press, New York
Author(s): Leveritt, Mara
Title: The Boys on the Tracks
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Levine, Michael
Title: Deep Cover
Publication date: 1990
ISBN:
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Author(s): Levine, Michael, with Laura Kavenau-Levine
Title: The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation that Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War
Publication date: 1993
ISBN: 1-56025-084-4
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press (distributed by Publishers Group West, 4065 Hollis St., Emeryville, CA 94608, (800) 788-3123
Author(s): Lohbeck, Kurt
Title: Holy War, Unholy Victory: Eyewitness to the CIA's Secret War in Afghanistan
Publication date: 1993
ISBN:
Publisher: Regnery Gateway, Washington, D.C.
Author(s): Mangold, Tom
Title: Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's Master Spy Hunter
Publication date: 1991
ISBN:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Author(s): Manning, R. (ed.)
Title: War in the Shadows: the Vietnam Experience
Publication date: 1988
ISBN:
Publisher: Boston Publishing Company, Boston, MA
Author(s): Marchetti, Victor and John D. Marks
Title: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
Publication date: 1974
ISBN:
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Author(s): Marks, John
Title: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate
Publication date: 1979
ISBN: 0-8129-0773-6
Publisher: Times Books
Author(s): Marshall Scott and Hunter
Title: The Iran-Contra Connection
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: South End Press
Author(s): Martin, David
Title: Wilderness of Mirrors
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Matrisciana, Patrick (ed.)
Title: The Clinton Chronicles, 3rd ed.
Publication date: 1994
ISBN: 1-878993-63-1
Publisher: Jeremiah Books, P. O. Box 1800, Hemet, CA 92546

Author(s): McCoy, Alfred W.
Title: The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Harper & Row
Author(s): McCoy, Alfred W.
Title: Backfire: The CIA's Secret War in Laos and its Link to the War in Vietnam
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Harper & Row
Author(s): McCoy, Alfred W.
Title: A Question of Torture
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): McCoy, Alfred W.
Title: The Politics of Heroin, CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
Publication date: 1991
ISBN:
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
Author(s): McGehee, Ralph
Title: Deadly Deceits
Publication date: 1983
ISBN: 1-876175-19-2
Publisher: Sheridan Square Press (Republished 1999, Ocean Press, Melbourne and New York.)
Author(s): Meyer, Cord
Title: Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA
Publication date: 1980
ISBN:
Publisher: Harper & Row, New York
Author(s): Miller, N.
Title: Spying for America
Publication date: 1989
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Mills, James
Title: The Underground Empire — Where Crime and Governments Embrace
Publication date: 1986
ISBN:
Publisher: Doubleday, New York
Author(s): Mills, James
Title: The Underground Empire — Where Crime and Governments Embrace
Publication date: 1987-11
ISBN: 0-283-99454-1 (hb), 0-283-99735-4 (pb)
Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson, London
Author(s): Minnick, W.
Title: Spies and Provacateurs: A Worldwide Encyclopedia of Persons Conducting Espionage and Covert Action
Publication date: 1992
ISBN:
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., North Carolina
Author(s): Moore, Alan & Bill Sienkiewicz
Title: Brought to Light
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Eclipse Books
Author(s): O'Brien, Cathy and Mark Phillips
Title: TRANCE Formation of America Through Mind Control
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: Available from Reality Marketing, Inc., 5300 W Sahara #101, Las Vegas, Nevada 89102. Visa/MC orders call 1-800-656-3597.
Author(s): O'Toole, G. J. A.
Title: Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage and Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA
Publication date: 1991
ISBN:
Publisher: The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York
Author(s): Piper, M. C.
Title: The Final Judgment
Publication date: 1994 (reissued in paperback 2000)
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Powers, T.
Title: The Man Who Kept the Secret
Publication date: 1979
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Prados, J.
Title: Presidents' Secret Wars
Publication date: 1986
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Prouty, L. Fletcher
Title: The Secret Team
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Ranelagh, John
Title: The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA
Publication date: 1986
ISBN:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, New York
Author(s): Reed, Terry
Title: Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Rice, Berkeley
Title: Trafficking: The Boom and Bust of the Air America Cocaine Ring
Publication date: 1989
ISBN: 0-684-19024-9
Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
Author(s): Richelson, Jeffrey
Title: The U.S. Intelligence Community
Publication date: 1985
ISBN:
Publisher: Ballinger, Cambridge, Mass.
Author(s): Robbins, Christopher
Title: Air America
Publication date: 1979, 2nd ed. 1988 (1985?)
ISBN:
Publisher: Avon Books
Author(s): Scott, Peter Dale
Title: Crime and Cover-up; The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection
Publication date: 1993
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Scott, Peter Dale
Title: Drugs, Oil and War
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Scott, Peter Dale, and Jonathan Marshall
Title: Cocaine Politics — Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America
Publication date: 1991
ISBN: 0-520-07781-4 (ppb.)
Publisher: University of California Press
Author(s): Seagrave, Peggy and Sterling
Title: Gold Warriors: America's Secret Recovery of Yamashita's Gold
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Shannon, Elaine
Title: Desperados — Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen and the War America Can't Win
Publication date: 1988
ISBN: 0-451-82207-2
Publisher: Penguin Books
Author(s): Sheehan, N.
Title: A Bright Shining Lie
Publication date: 1988
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Shulsky, Abram N.
Title: Silent Warfare — Understanding the World of Intelligence
Publication date: 1993
ISBN: 0-02-881025-2 (cloth)
Publisher: Brassey's (US) (Maxwell Macmillan)
Author(s): Stein, J.
Title: A Murder in Wartime
Publication date: 1992
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Stich, Rodney
Title: Defrauding America: Dirty Secrets of the CIA and other Government Operations
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Stich, Rodney & T. Conan Russell
Title: Disavow: A CIA Saga of Betrayal
Publication date: 1995
ISBN:
Publisher: Diablo Western Press
Author(s): Tarpley, Webster and Anton Chaiken
Title: The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Thomas, Gordon
Title: Journey into Madness: Medical Torture and the Mind Controllers
Publication date: 1988
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Toohey, B. & Pinwill, W.
Title: Oyster: The Story of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service
Publication date: 1990
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Troy, Thomas F.
Title: Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency
Publication date: 1981
ISBN:
Publisher: CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence
Author(s): Turner, Stansfield
Title: Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition
Publication date: 1985
ISBN:
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Author(s): Valentine, D.
Title: The Phoenix Program
Publication date: 1990
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Volkman, E. & Baggett, B.
Title: Secret Intelligence
Publication date: 1989
ISBN:
Publisher:
Author(s): Warner, Michael
Title: The CIA Under Harry Truman: CIA Cold War Records
Publication date:
ISBN:
Publisher: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
Author(s): Weinstein, Harvey
Title: Father, Son and CIA
Publication date: 1988, 1990 (paperback)
ISBN: 0-88-780-159-5 (paper)
Publisher: Formac Publishing Co. Ltd., Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Author(s): Wise, David
Title: The Spy Who Got Away: The Inside Story of Edward Lee Howard
Publication date: 1988
ISBN:
Publisher: Random House, New York
Author(s): Wise, David
Title: Molehunt — The Secret Search for Traitors that Shattered the CIA
Publication date: 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58514-3
Publisher: Random House, New York
Author(s): Yousaf, Mohammad, and Adkin, M.
Title: The Beartrap: Afghanistan's Untold Story
Publication date: 1992
ISBN:
Publisher: Leo Cooper, London, England
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

U.S. Congressional Committee Reports

Title: Final Report [of the Church Committee]
Committee: Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities
Publication date: 1976
Publisher: U.S. Govt. Printing Office
Title: Project MKULTRA, The CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification
Committee: Joint Hearing Before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources
Publication date: 1977
Publisher: U.S. Govt. Printing Office
Title: Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy
Committee: Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations
Publication date: 1989
Publisher: U.S. Govt. Printing Office
Title: An Assessment of the the Aldrich Ames Espionage Case and its Implications for U.S. Intelligence
Committee: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Publication date: 1994-11-01
Publisher:
Title: Report of Investigation: The Aldrich Ames Case
Committee: Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. House of Representatives
Publication date: 1994-11-30
Publisher:
A copy of the entire Serendipity website is available on CD-ROM. Details here.
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A Drug War Reading List Serendipity Home Page

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

Reporter Gary Webb was one of the first reporters to document
the police working with rhe CIA to bring heroin and cocaine
into our cities.


http://www.narconews.com/nntv/video.php?vid=64

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.blacklistednews.com/North_Ko ... 8/Y/M.html



NORTH KOREA IS A MAJOR OPIUM PRODUCER, MAKING IT A PRIME TARGET FOR THE CIA

Published: May 8, 2017







MINNEAPOLIS– (Analysis) When the U.S. overthrew the Taliban in the wake of 9/11 as part of its newly launched “war on terror,” it set the stage for the explosive growth of Afghanistan’s dying opium industry. A few short months before the invasion took place, the Taliban made headlines for having “dramatically ended the country’s massive opium trade” after the leader of the fundamentalist group had declared the substance to be un-Islamic. At the time, Afghanistan’s opium was used to produce 75 percent of the world’s heroin.

But despite being squashed by the Taliban, the opium market made a dramatic comeback immediately following the U.S. invasion in October 2001. Not only was the opium trade restored, it surged drastically – rising from a production level of 185 tons under the Taliban (before the production ban) to 3,400 tons in 2002.

Over a decade later, the amount of opium harvested annually continues to rise. Afghanistan’s opium is now used to produce 90 percent of the world’s heroin. This increase has been directly overseen by U.S. forces, who openly guard Afghanistan’s poppy fields. Indeed, during that same time, the U.S. government claims to have spent $8.4 billion on counternarcotic programs within Afghanistan.

The dramatic increase in opium production in post-invasion Afghanistan has sparked speculation regarding the motives behind the aggressive action that the U.S. has recently taken towards North Korea, which is also a major opium producer.

While government-sanctioned opium production took a hit after Kim Jong-un assumed power in 2011, things have changed drastically in recent months, largely due to Chinese sanctions that were announced in mid-February. The sanctions, created in response to a North Korean ballistic missile test, led China to refuse imports of North Korean coal. Coal represents 40 percent of North Korea’s exports to China.

That drastic hit to the North Korean economy has apparently forced Kim Jong-un’s hand, as opium production has once again picked up. Kang Cheol-hwan, a North Korean defector and president of the North Korea Strategy Center, told the Yonhap News Agency that “the North is cultivating poppy fields again for drug smuggling as a way to secure funds to manage its regime.”

While North Korea’s opium production is small compared to that of post-invasion Afghanistan, it is still significant. North Korea, according to the Chosun Ilbo, produces around 40 tons of opium annually — comparable to Pakistan’s opium industry. Most of its opium is smuggled into and sold in China and cannot be targeted by sanctions, since it is hard to trace on the black market.

Some have speculated that North Korea’s return to opium production has caught the attention of the CIA, as the intelligence agency has a history of involving itself in opium trade and drug-running in general, as evidenced by its well-documented habit of managing drug supplies from Latin America to Asia.

In addition, opioid addiction – in the form of both legal opiate painkillers and illegal drugs – is growing out of control in the U.S., with more opium being consumed within America than ever before. The onset of this epidemic coincided with the U.S.’ occupation of Afghanistan as, between 2002 and 2013, U.S. heroin use jumped by 63 percent, reaching a 20-year high. Heroin overdoses quadrupled in the U.S. within that same timeframe.

The U.S. government’s actions also suggest that it seeks to protect opium production, as has been made clear in its occupation of Afghanistan. For instance, the U.S. vehemently opposes opium legalization efforts and the State Department refuses to acknowledge eradicating opium as a primary goal, despite the billions that have been spent on counternarcotic programs.

With tension increasing on the Korean Peninsula, the U.S. has put “all options on the table” in order to prevent further missile tests and “provocations” from the Kim Jong-un regime, including warnings that the U.S. may soon find itself in a “major, major conflict” with North Korea.

If North Korea finds itself targeted for regime change, history suggests that the U.S. military may end up guarding its poppy fields as well.

msfreeh
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Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.madcowprod.com/2016/12/05/wh ... more-13336


But no. Trenchcoat Guy was genius in action. Mr. Nonchalant. And what he said was unexpected:

“Hey. Everybody already knows about this. It’s old news. Everybody knows the government smuggles drugs. Its no big deal. Hey, I’ve loaded drugs onto planes. I was just down in Costa Rica, and they were loading drugs onto planes while I was there.”

He might have been looking deeply into my eyes over his glasses. Or maybe I just imagined it. But there was no mistaking what he said next.

He said, “What do you want?”

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by Silver »

msfreeh wrote: May 10th, 2017, 9:16 am http://www.madcowprod.com/2016/12/05/wh ... more-13336


But no. Trenchcoat Guy was genius in action. Mr. Nonchalant. And what he said was unexpected:

“Hey. Everybody already knows about this. It’s old news. Everybody knows the government smuggles drugs. Its no big deal. Hey, I’ve loaded drugs onto planes. I was just down in Costa Rica, and they were loading drugs onto planes while I was there.”

He might have been looking deeply into my eyes over his glasses. Or maybe I just imagined it. But there was no mistaking what he said next.

He said, “What do you want?”
Wow, fascinating. The comments below the article immediately take one down a bizarre rabbit hole.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/p ... -1.3205653





Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega dead at 83
BY STEPHEN REX BROWN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Tuesday, May 30, 2017, 1:44 AM

Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator and drug kingpin whose decision to turn his back on U.S. benefactors resulted in a quick, one-sided war, died Monday. He was 83.

The former military strongman died in the Santo Tomas Hospital in Panama City.

He’d been in failing health following a surgery in early March to remove a benign brain tumor

Noriega’s daughter, Sandra Noriega, hinted at the ousted dictator’s dwindling health earlier Monday, writing on Instagram that, “God is in control.”

President Juan Varela acknowledged Noriega’s death as a bookend to the nation’s tumultuous history.

“His daughters and their families deserve a burial in peace,” Varela tweeted.


Manuel Noriega poses with Miss USA, Christy Fichtner, left, and Miss Panama, Gilda Garcia Lopez, right. (JIM ELLIS/AP)
Noriega was a flamboyant general who took advantage of American opposition to communist-leaning governments and revolutionaries in Latin America while simultaneously serving as an intermediary for Colombian drug traffickers sending supplies north.

At the peak of his power in the 1980s, Noriega had "El M.A.N." posted on photos of himself. He owned three yachts named Macho I, II and III. The crooked, cowardly leader — who was nicknamed “Pineapple Face” for his awful complexion — had mountain retreats and villas throughout the country he ruthlessly exploited.

Noriega even doctored a photo so his head would top the body of a beefy bodybuilder. One of his daughters went on a $50,000 shopping spree in a single day in New York
From the 1960s to the 1980s Noriega was one of the U.S. government’s hand picked opponents of Communist revolutionaries and drug traffickers. He received as much as $200,000 to, in theory, serve as an ally in the war on drugs. The career military man gradually climbed the ranks and by 1983, he was the de facto ruler of Panama.

But his extravagant lifestyle came to a halt when Noriega was outed as an ally of drug traffickers — including the Medellin Cartel and Pablo Escobar — who had nonetheless been enlisted by the U.S. in the Iran-Contra affair.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

someone changed my link below


google these titles





Steven Greer September 03 2017 - Hidden Truth Forbidden Knowledge - Dr Steven Greer 2017 - YouTube
YouTube › watch
Video for steven greer forbidden truth youtube
Duration: 58:31
Posted: Sep 3, 2017
Steven Greer September 03 2017 - Hidden Truth ...
Steven Greer Hidden Truth Forbidden Knowledge - YouTube
YouTube › watch
Video for steven greer forbidden truth youtube
Duration: 2:00:15
Posted: Jul 16, 2017
32:20 · Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge: It Is Time ...
Dr. Steven Greer : Hidden Truth Forbidden Knowledge - (April 11th, 2007) - YouTube
YouTube › watch
Video for steven greer forbidden truth youtube
Duration: 58:31
Posted: Feb 6, 2013
Please visit: http://siriusdisclosure.com/ Steven Greer's ...
Hidden Truth - Forbidden Knowledge - X-CONFERENCE - Steven Greer, MD - YouTube



video just released today






I have been trying to contact Greer for over 1 year

this man is the real deal

US government dealing heroin and cocaine
is about 1/4 of the way in 25 minutes or so

google title if link is changed

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PeITXfEh5bQ


title

steven greer ufo truth forbidden knowledge july 21 2017
Last edited by msfreeh on January 28th, 2018, 2:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.michaellevinebooks.com/art/ollie-north.html


I Volunteer to Kidnap Oliver North
by
Michael Levine

Undercover DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured to death slowly by professionals. Every known maximum-pain technique, from electric shocks to his testicles to white hot rods inserted in his rectum, was applied. A doctor stood by to keep him alive. The heart of the thirty-seven year old father of two boys refused to quit for more than twenty-four hours. His cries, along with the soft-spoken, calm voices of the men who were slowly and meticulously savaging his body, were tape-recorded.
Kiki, one of only three hundred of us in the world (DEA agents on foreign assignment), had been kidnapped in broad daylight from in front of the U.S. Consular office in Guadalajara, Mexico by Mexican cops working for drug traffickers and, apparently, high level Mexican government people whose identities we would never know. They would be protected by people in our own government to whom Kiki's life meant less than nothing.

When teams of DEA agents were sent to Mexico, first, to find the missing Kiki, then to hunt for his murderers, they were met by a the stone wall of a corrupt Mexican government that refused to cooperate. To the horror and disgust of many of us, our government backed down from the Mexicans; other interests, like NAFTA, banking agreements and the covert support of Ollie North's Contras, were more important than the life of an American undercover agent. DEA agents were ordered by the Justice Department, to keep our mouths shut about Mexico; an order that was backed up by threats from the office of Attorney General Edwin Meese himself. Instead of tightening restrictions on the Mexican debt, our Treasury Department moved to loosen them as if to reward them for their filthy deed. As an added insult Mexico was granted cooperating nation in the drug war status, giving them access to additional millions in American drug war funds and loans.

Somehow a CIA—unaware that their own chief of Soviet counter intelligence, Aldrich Ames, was selling all America's biggest secrets to the KGB for fourteen years with all the finesse of a Jersey City garage sale—was able to obtain the tape-recordings of Kiki's torture death. No one in media or government had the courage to publicly ask them explain how they were able to obtain the tapes, yet know nothing of the murder as it was happening; no one had the courage to ask them to explain the testimony of a reliable government informant, (during a California trial related to Camarena's murder), that Kiki's murderers believed they were protected by the CIA. Nor did our elected leaders have the courage to investigate numerous other reports linking the CIA directly to the murderers.

Our government's sellout of Kiki Camarena, of all DEA agents, of the war on drugs, was such that United States Congressman, Larry Smith, stated, on the floor of Congress:

"I personally am convinced that the Justice Department is against the best interests of the United States in terms of stopping drugs... What has a DEA agent who puts his life on the line got to look forward to? The U.S. Government is not going to back him up. I find that intolerable."

What does Oliver North have to do with this?

A lot of us, Kiki's fellow agents, believe that the Mexican government never would have dared take the action they did, had they not believed the US government to be as hypocritical and corrupt as they were and still are. And if there was ever a figure in our history that was the paradigm of that corruption it is the man President Reagan called "an American hero"; the same man Nancy Reagan later called a liar: Oliver North.

No one person in our government's history more embodied what Senator John Kerry referred to when he called the US protection of the drug smuggling Contras a "betrayal of the American people."

Few Americans, thanks to what one time CIA chief William Colby referred to as the news media's "misplaced sense of patriotism," are aware that the Nobel prize winning President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias—as a result of an in-depth investigation by the Costa Rican Congressional Commission on Narcotics that found "virtually all [Ollie North supported] Contra factions were involved in drug trafficking"—banned Oliver North, U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter, Presidential Advisor Richard Secord and C.I.A. station chief José Fernandez, by Executive order, from ever entering Costa Rica— for their roles in utilizing Costa Rican territory for cocaine trafficking.

In fact, when Costa Rica began its investigation into the drug trafficking allegations against North and naively thought that the U.S. would gladly lend a hand in efforts to fight drugs, they received a rude awakening about the realities of America's war on drugs as opposed to its "this-scourge-will-end" rhetoric.

After five witnesses testified before the U.S. Senate, confirming that John Hull—a C.I.A. operative and the lynch-pin of North's contra re supply operation—had been actively running drugs from Costa Rica to the U.S. "under the direction of the C.I.A.," Costa Rican authorities arrested him. Hull then quickly jumped bail and fled to the U.S.—according to my sources—with the help of DEA, putting the drug fighting agency in the schizoid business of both kidnapping accused drug dealers and helping them escape; although the Supreme Court has not legalized the latter . . . yet.

The then-President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias was stunned when he received letters from nineteen U.S. Congressman—including Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democrat who headed the Iran-contra committee—warning him "to avoid situations . . . that could adversely affect our relations." Arias, who won the Nobel prize for ending the contra war, stated that he was shocked that "relations between [the United States] and my country could deteriorate because [the Costa Rican] legal system is fighting against drug trafficking."

In my twenty-five years experience with DEA which includes running some of their highest level international drug trafficking investigations, I have never seen an instance of comparable allegations where DEA did not set up a multi-agency task force size operation to conduct an in-depth conspiracy investigation. Yet in the case of Colonel North and the other American officials, no investigation whatsoever has been initiated by DEA or any other investigative agency.

The total "public" investigation into the drug allegations by the Senate was falsely summed up in the statement of a staffer, on the House select committee, Robert A. Bermingham who notified Chairman Hamilton on July 23, 1987, that after interviewing "hundreds" of people his investigation had not developed any corroboration of "media-exploited allegations that the U.S. government condoned drug trafficking by contra leaders . . . or that Contra leaders or organizations did in fact take part in such activity." Every government official accused of aiding and covering up for the contra drug connection, Colonel Ollie included, then hung his hat on this statement, claiming they had been "cleared."

The only trouble was that investigative journalists, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn—after interviewing many of the chief witnesses whose testimony implicated North and the contras in drug trafficking, including several whose testimony was later found credible enough to be used to convict Manuel Noriega—could find not one who had been interviewed by Bermingham or his staff. In fact, the two journalists seem to have caught Bermingham red-handed in what can only be described, at best, as a gross misrepresentation of fact, when he (Bermingham) quoted the chief counsel of a House Judiciary subcommittee, Hayden Gregory as dismissing the drug evidence and calling it "street talk." Gregory told the Cockburns that the "street talk" comment was taken out of context; that he had not even met Bermingham until July 22 (two days before Bermingham wrote the report) and that he had in fact told Bermingham that there were "serious allegations against almost every contra leader."

When President Bush said, "All those who look the other way are as guilty as the drug dealers," he was not only talking about a moral guilt, but a legal one as well. Thus, if any U.S. official knew of North and the contra's drug activities and did not take proper action, or covered up for it, he is "guilty" of a whole series of crimes that you to go to jail for; crimes that carry a minimum jail term; crimes like Aiding and Abetting, Conspiracy, Misprision of a Felony, Perjury, and about a dozen other violations of law related to misuse and malfeasance of public office. I'm not talking about some sort of shadow conspiracy here. As a veteran, criminal investigator I don't deal in speculation. I document facts and evidence and then work like hell to corroborate my claims so that I can send people to jail.

What I am talking about is "Probable Cause"—a legal principle that every junior agent and cop is taught before he hits the street. It mandates that an arrest and/or criminal indictment must occur when there exists evidence that would give any "reasonable person" grounds to believe, that anyone— U.S. government officials included—had violated or conspired to violate federal narcotic laws. Any U.S. government law enforcement officer or elected official who fails to take appropriate action when such Probable Cause exists, is in violation of his oath as well as federal law; and under that law it takes surprisingly little evidence for a Conspiracy conviction.

As an example, early in my career I arrested a man named John Clements, a twenty-two year old, baby-faced guitar player, who happened to be present at the transfer of three kilos of heroin—an amount that doesn't measure up to a tiny percentage of the many tons of cocaine, (as much as one half the U.S. cocaine consumption), that North and his Contras have been accused of pouring onto our streets. Clements was a silent observer in a trailer parked in the middle of a Gainesville, Florida swamp, while a smuggler—whom I had arrested hours earlier in New York City and "flipped" (convinced to work as an informer for me)— turned the heroin over to the financier of the operation. Poor John Clements, a friend of both men, a "gofer" as he would later be described, was just unlucky enough to be there.

The twenty-two year old guitar player couldn't claim "national security," when asked to explain his presence, nor could he implicate a President of the United States in his criminal activities as Colonel North did. John Clements wrote no self-incriminating computer notes that indicated his deep involvement in drug trafficking, as North did; he didn't have hundreds of pages of diary notes in his own handwriting also reflecting narcotics trafficking. John Clements did not shred incriminating documents and lie to congress as North did; nor was he responsible for millions in unaccounted for U.S. government funds as North was. Clements did not have enough cash hidden in a closet slush fund to pay $14,000 cash for a car, as North did while earning the salary of a Lieutenant Colonel. John Clements only had about $3 and change in his pocket.

Nor did John Clements campaign for the release from jail of a drug smuggling, murderer whose case was described by the Justice Department as the worst case of narco terrorism in our history, as North did. Poor young John wouldn't have dreamed of making deals with drug dealer Manny Noriega to aid in the support of the drug smuggling Contras, as North did. No, John Clements was certainly not in Ollie North's league, he couldn't have done a millionth of the damage North and his protectors have been accused of doing to the American people, even if he wanted to.

But John Clements did do something Ollie North never did and probably never will do—he went to jail. A jury of his peers in Gainseville Florida found more than enough evidence to convict him of Conspiracy to violate the federal drug laws. The judge sentenced him to thirty years in a Federal prison. Ollie North on the other hand was only charged with lying to a Congress so mistrusted and disrespected by the American people that he was virtually applauded for the crime.

Criminality in drug trafficking cases is lot easier than proving whether or not someone lied to Congress and is certainly a lot less "heroic." Statements like "I don't remember," "I didn't know," and "No one told me," or "I sought approval from my superiors for every one of my actions," are only accepted as valid defenses by Congressmen and Senators with difficulties balancing check books—not American jurors trying drug cases. And when you're found guilty you got to jail—you don't run for a seat on the Senate.

And why would I volunteer to kidnap Ollie? For three reasons: first, kidnapping is now legal; second, I have experience kidnapping; and third, it is the only way those tens of millions of Americans who have suffered the betrayal of their own government will ever see even a glimmer of justice.

Several years after Kiki's last tape-recorded cries were shoved well under a government rug, a maverick group of DEA agents decided to take the law into their own hands. Working without the knowledge or approval of most of the top DEA bosses, whom they mistrusted, the agents arranged to have Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Mexican citizen alleged to have participated in Kiki's murder, abducted at gun point in Guadalajara Mexico and brought to Los Angeles to stand trial.

On June 16, 1992, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Machain Decision that the actions of those agents was "legal." The ruling said in no uncertain terms that U.S. law enforcement authorities could literally and figuratively kidnap violators of American drug law in whatever country they found them and drag them physically and against their will to the U.S. to stand trial. Immediately thereafter the Ayatollahs declared that they too could rove the world and kidnap violators of Islamic law and drag them back to Iran to stand trial. Kidnapping, therefore, has now become an accepted tool of law enforcement throughout the world.

Resorting to all sorts of wild extremes to bring drug traffickers to justice is nothing new for the U.S. government. At various times during my career as a DEA agent I was assigned to some pretty unorthodox operations—nothing quite as radical as invading Panama and killing a thousand innocents to capture long-time CIA asset Manny Noriega—but I was once, (long before the Machain Decision), assigned to a group of undercover agents on a kidnapping mission. Posing as a soccer team, we landed in Argentina in a chartered jet during the wee hours of the morning, where the Argentine Federal Police had three international drug dealers—two of whom had never in their lives set foot in the United States—waiting for us trussed up in straight-jackets with horse feed-bags over their heads, each beaten to a pulpy, toothless mess. In those years we used to call it a "controlled expulsion." I think I like the honesty of kidnapping a little better.

By now you're probably saying, "Get real Levine you live in a nation whose politicians ripped their own people off for half a trillion dollars in a savings and loan scam, a nation whose Attorney General ordered the FBI to attack a house full of innocent babies, and this is the decade of Ruby Ridge, Waco and Whitewater-gate; your own people sent Kiki Camarena to Mexico to be murdered and then gave aid and comfort to those who murdered him—how can you expect justice?"

If you aren't saying these things you should be. And you'd be right. Under the current two-party, rip-off system of American politics with their complete control of main stream media, I expect Ollie North to have a bright future in politics, while hundreds of thousands of Americans like John rot in jail. Ollie North, after all, is the perfect candidate. But there is one faint glimmer of hope remaining, and it isn't in America.

Since the democratic and staunchly anti-drug Costa Rica is, thus far, the only nation with the courage to have publicly accused Oliver North, a US Ambassador and a CIA station chief of running drugs from their sovereignty to the United States, I find myself, duty-bound to make them, or any other nation that would have the courage to make similar charges, the following offer:

I, Michael Levine, twenty-five year veteran undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, given the mandate of the Supreme Court's Machain Decision and in fulfillment of my oath to the U.S. government and its taxpayers to arrest and seize all those individuals who would smuggle or cause illegal drugs to be smuggled into the United States or who would aid and abet drug smugglers, do hereby volunteer my services to any sovereign, democratic nation who files legal Drug Trafficking charges against Colonel Oliver North and any of his cohorts; to do everything in my power including kidnapping him, seizing his paper shredder, reading him his constitutional rights and dragging his butt to wherever that sovereignty might be, (with or without horse feed-bag); to once-and-for-all stand trial for the horrific damages caused to my country, my fellow law enforcement officers, and to my family!

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

https://www.thenation.com/article/growi ... g-brother/


Best advice is to click on link and read entire story detailing
evidence for the CIA dealing heroin in our cities

Growing Up With Big Brother
A historian tracks half a century of evolving state surveillance.
By Alfred McCoy


August 24 2017


In the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington pursued its elusive enemies across the landscapes of Asia and Africa, thanks in part to a massive expansion of its intelligence infrastructure, particularly of the emerging technologies for digital surveillance, agile drones, and biometric identification. In 2010, almost a decade into this secret war with its voracious appetite for information, The Washington Post reported that the national-security state had swelled into a “fourth branch” of the federal government—with 854,000 vetted officials, 263 security organizations, and over 3,000 intelligence units, issuing 50,000 special reports every year.

Though stunning, these statistics only skimmed the visible surface of what had become history’s largest and most lethal clandestine apparatus. According to classified documents that Edward Snowden leaked in 2013, the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies alone had 107,035 employees and a combined “black budget” of $52.6 billion, the equivalent of 10 percent of the vast defense budget.

By sweeping the skies and probing the World Wide Web’s undersea cables, the National Security Agency (NSA) could surgically penetrate the confidential communications of just about any leader on the planet, while simultaneously sweeping up billions of ordinary messages. For its classified missions, the CIA had access to the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command, with 69,000 elite troops (Rangers, SEALs, Air Commandos) and their agile arsenal. In addition to this formidable paramilitary capacity, the CIA operated 30 Predator and Reaper drones responsible for more than 3,000 deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.

While Americans practiced a collective form of duck-and-cover as the Department of Homeland Security’s colored alerts pulsed nervously from yellow to red, few paused to ask the hard question: Was all this security really directed solely at enemies beyond our borders? After half a century of domestic security abuses—from the “red scare” of the 1920s through the FBI’s illegal harassment of anti-war protesters in the 1960s and ’70s—could we really be confident that there wasn’t a hidden cost to all these secret measures right here at home? Maybe, just maybe, all this security wasn’t really so benign, when it came to us.

From my own personal experience over the past half-century, and my family’s history over three generations, I’ve found out in the most personal way possible that there’s a real cost to entrusting our civil liberties to the discretion of secret agencies. Let me share just a few of my own “war” stories to explain how I’ve been forced to keep learning and relearning this uncomfortable lesson the hard way.

ON THE HEROIN TRAIL
After finishing college in the late 1960s, I decided to pursue a PhD in Japanese history and was pleasantly surprised when Yale Graduate School admitted me with a full fellowship. But the Ivy League in those days was no ivory tower. During my first year at Yale, the Justice Department indicted Black Panther leader Bobby Seale for a local murder and the May Day protests that filled the New Haven green also shut the campus for a week. Almost simultaneously, President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia and student protests closed hundreds of campuses across America for the rest of the semester.

In the midst of all this tumult, the focus of my studies shifted from Japan to Southeast Asia, and from the past to the war in Vietnam. Yes, that war. So what did I do about the draft? During my first semester at Yale, on December 1, 1969, to be precise, the Selective Service cut up the calendar for a lottery. The first 100 birthdays picked were certain to be drafted, but any dates above 200 were likely exempt. My birthday, June 8, was the very last date drawn, not number 365 but 366 (don’t forget leap year)—the only lottery I have ever won, except a high-school raffle for a Sunbeam electric frying pan. Through a convoluted moral calculus typical of the 1960s, I decided that my draft exemption, although acquired by sheer luck, demanded that I devote myself, above all else, to thinking about, writing about, and working to end the Vietnam War.




During those campus protests over Cambodia in the spring of 1970, our small group of graduate students in Southeast Asian history at Yale realized that the US strategic predicament in Indochina would soon require an invasion of Laos to cut the flow of enemy supplies into South Vietnam. So, while protests over Cambodia swept campuses nationwide, we were huddled inside the library, preparing for the next invasion by editing a book of essays on Laos for the publisher Harper & Row. A few months after that book appeared, one of the company’s junior editors, Elizabeth Jakab, intrigued by an account we had included about that country’s opium crop, telephoned from New York to ask if I could research and write a “quickie” paperback about the history behind the heroin epidemic then infecting the US Army in Vietnam.

I promptly started the research at my student carrel in the Gothic tower that is Yale’s Sterling Library, tracking old colonial reports about the Southeast Asian opium trade that ended suddenly in the 1950s, just as the story got interesting. So, quite tentatively at first, I stepped outside the library to do a few interviews and soon found myself following an investigative trail that circled the globe. First, I traveled across America for meetings with retired CIA operatives. Then I crossed the Pacific to Hong Kong to study drug syndicates, courtesy of that colony’s police drug squad. Next, I went south to Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, to investigate the heroin traffic that was targeting the GIs, and on into the mountains of Laos to observe CIA alliances with opium warlords and the hill-tribe militias that grew the opium poppy. Finally, I flew from Singapore to Paris for interviews with retired French intelligence officers about their opium trafficking during the first Indochina War of the 1950s.

The drug traffic that supplied heroin for the US troops fighting in South Vietnam was not, I discovered, exclusively the work of criminals. Once the opium left tribal poppy fields in Laos, the traffic required official complicity at every level. The helicopters of Air America, the airline the CIA then ran, carried raw opium out of the villages of its hill-tribe allies. The commander of the Royal Lao Army, a close American collaborator, operated the world’s largest heroin lab and was so oblivious to the implications of the traffic that he opened his opium ledgers for my inspection. Several of Saigon’s top generals were complicit in the drug’s distribution to US soldiers. By 1971, this web of collusion ensured that heroin, according to a later White House survey of a thousand veterans, would be “commonly used” by 34 percent of American troops in South Vietnam.

None of this had been covered in my college history seminars. I had no models for researching an uncharted netherworld of crime and covert operations. After stepping off the plane in Saigon, body slammed by the tropical heat, I found myself in a sprawling foreign city of 4 million, lost in a swarm of snarling motorcycles and a maze of nameless streets, without contacts or a clue about how to probe these secrets. Every day on the heroin trail confronted me with new challenges—where to look, what to look for, and, above all, how to ask hard questions.

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Reading all that history had, however, taught me something I didn’t know I knew. Instead of confronting my sources with questions about sensitive current events, I started with the French colonial past when the opium trade was still legal, gradually uncovering the underlying, unchanging logistics of drug production. As I followed this historical trail into the present, when the traffic became illegal and dangerously controversial, I began to use pieces from this past to assemble the present puzzle, until the names of contemporary dealers fell into place. In short, I had crafted a historical method that would prove, over the next 40 years of my career, surprisingly useful in analyzing a diverse array of foreign-policy controversies—CIA alliances with drug lords, the agency’s propagation of psychological torture, and our spreading state surveillance.

THE CIA MAKES ITS ENTRANCE IN MY LIFE
Those months on the road, meeting gangsters and warlords in isolated places, offered only one bit of real danger. While hiking in the mountains of Laos, interviewing Hmong farmers about their opium shipments on CIA helicopters, I was descending a steep slope when a burst of bullets ripped the ground at my feet. I had walked into an ambush by agency mercenaries.


While the five Hmong militia escorts whom the local village headman had prudently provided laid down a covering fire, my Australian photographer John Everingham and I flattened ourselves in the elephant grass and crawled through the mud to safety. Without those armed escorts, my research would have been at an end and so would I. After that ambush failed, a CIA paramilitary officer summoned me to a mountaintop meeting where he threatened to murder my Lao interpreter unless I ended my research. After winning assurances from the US embassy that my interpreter would not be harmed, I decided to ignore that warning and keep going.

Six months and 30,000 miles later, I returned to New Haven. My investigation of CIA alliances with drug lords had taught me more than I could have imagined about the covert aspects of US global power. Settling into my attic apartment for an academic year of writing, I was confident that I knew more than enough for a book on this unconventional topic. But my education, it turned out, was just beginning.

Within weeks, a massive, middle-aged guy in a suit interrupted my scholarly isolation. He appeared at my front door and identified himself as Tom Tripodi, senior agent for the Bureau of Narcotics, which later became the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). His agency, he confessed during a second visit, was worried about my writing and he had been sent to investigate. He needed something to tell his superiors. Tom was a guy you could trust. So I showed him a few draft pages of my book. He disappeared into the living room for a while and came back saying, “Pretty good stuff. You got your ducks in a row.” But there were some things, he added, that weren’t quite right, some things he could help me fix.

Tom was my first reader. Later, I would hand him whole chapters and he would sit in a rocking chair, shirt sleeves rolled up, revolver in his shoulder holster, sipping coffee, scribbling corrections in the margins, and telling fabulous stories—like the time Jersey Mafia boss “Bayonne Joe” Zicarelli tried to buy a thousand rifles from a local gun store to overthrow Fidel Castro. Or when some CIA covert warrior came home for a vacation and had to be escorted everywhere so he didn’t kill somebody in a supermarket aisle.

Best of all, there was the one about how the Bureau of Narcotics caught French intelligence protecting the Corsican syndicates smuggling heroin into New York City. Some of his stories, usually unacknowledged, would appear in my book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. These conversations with an undercover operative, who had trained Cuban exiles for the CIA in Florida and later investigated Mafia heroin syndicates for the DEA in Sicily, were akin to an advanced seminar, a master class in covert operations.

In the summer of 1972, with the book at press, I went to Washington to testify before Congress. As I was making the rounds of congressional offices on Capitol Hill, my editor rang unexpectedly and summoned me to New York for a meeting with the president and vice president of Harper & Row, my book’s publisher. Ushered into a plush suite of offices overlooking the spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I listened to those executives tell me that Cord Meyer Jr., the CIA’s deputy director for covert operations, had called on their company’s president emeritus, Cass Canfield Sr. The visit was no accident, for Canfield, according to an authoritative history, “enjoyed prolific links to the world of intelligence, both as a former psychological warfare officer and as a close personal friend of Allen Dulles,” the ex-head of the CIA. Meyer denounced my book as a threat to national security. He asked Canfield, also an old friend, to quietly suppress it.

I was in serious trouble. Not only was Meyer a senior CIA official, but he also had impeccable social connections and covert assets in every corner of American intellectual life. After graduating from Yale in 1942, he served with the marines in the Pacific, writing eloquent war dispatches published in The Atlantic Monthly. He later worked with the US delegation drafting the UN charter. Personally recruited by spymaster Allen Dulles, Meyer joined the CIA in 1951 and was soon running its International Organizations Division, which, in the words of that same history, “constituted the greatest single concentration of covert political and propaganda activities of the by now octopus-like CIA,” including “Operation Mockingbird,” which planted disinformation in major US newspapers meant to aid agency operations. Informed sources told me that the CIA still had assets inside every major New York publisher and it already had every page of my manuscript.

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As the child of a wealthy New York family, Cord Meyer moved in elite social circles, meeting and marrying Mary Pinchot, the niece of Gifford Pinchot, founder of the US Forestry Service and a former governor of Pennsylvania. Pinchot was a breathtaking beauty who later became President Kennedy’s mistress, making dozens of secret visits to the White House. When she was found shot dead along the banks of a canal in Washington in 1964, the head of CIA counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton, another Yale alumnus, broke into her home in an unsuccessful attempt to secure her diary. Mary’s sister Toni and her husband, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, later found the diary and gave it to Angleton for destruction by the agency. To this day, her unsolved murder remains a subject of mystery and controversy.

Cord Meyer was also in the Social Register of New York’s fine families along with my publisher, Cass Canfield, which added a dash of social cachet to the pressure to suppress my book. By the time he walked into Harper & Row’s office in that summer of 1972, two decades of CIA service had changed Meyer (according to that same authoritative history) from a liberal idealist into “a relentless, implacable advocate for his own ideas,” driven by “a paranoiac distrust of everyone who didn’t agree with him” and a manner that was “histrionic and even bellicose.” An unpublished 26-year-old graduate student versus the master of CIA media manipulation. It was hardly a fair fight. I began to fear my book would never appear.

To his credit, Canfield refused Meyer’s request to suppress the book. But he did allow the agency a chance to review the manuscript prior to publication. Instead of waiting quietly for the CIA’s critique, I contacted Seymour Hersh, then an investigative reporter for The New York Times. The same day the CIA courier arrived from Langley to collect my manuscript, Hersh swept through Harper & Row’s offices like a tropical storm, pelting hapless executives with incessant, unsettling questions. The next day, his exposé of the CIA’s attempt at censorship appeared on the paper’s front page. Other national media organizations followed his lead. Faced with a barrage of negative coverage, the CIA gave Harper & Row a critique full of unconvincing denials. The book was published unaltered.

MY LIFE AS AN OPEN BOOK FOR THE AGENCY
I had learned another important lesson: The Constitution’s protection of press freedom could check even the world’s most powerful espionage agency. Cord Meyer reportedly learned the same lesson. According to his obituary in The Washington Post, “It was assumed that Mr. Meyer would eventually advance” to head CIA covert operations, “but the public disclosure about the book deal…apparently dampened his prospects.” He was instead exiled to London and eased into early retirement.

Meyer and his colleagues were not, however, used to losing. Defeated in the public arena, the CIA retreated to the shadows and retaliated by tugging at every thread in the threadbare life of a graduate student. Over the next few months, federal officials from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare turned up at Yale to investigate my graduate fellowship. The Internal Revenue Service audited my poverty-level income. The FBI tapped my New Haven telephone (something I learned years later from a class-action lawsuit).

In August 1972, at the height of the controversy over the book, FBI agents told the bureau’s director that they had “conducted [an] investigation concerning McCoy,” searching the files they had compiled on me for the past two years and interviewing numerous “sources whose identities are concealed [who] have furnished reliable information in the past”—thereby producing an 11-page report detailing my birth, education, and campus anti-war activities.

A college classmate I hadn’t seen in four years, who served in military intelligence, magically appeared at my side in the book section of the Yale Co-op, seemingly eager to resume our relationship. The same week that a laudatory review of my book appeared on the front page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review section, an extraordinary achievement for any historian, Yale’s History Department placed me on academic probation. Unless I could somehow do a year’s worth of overdue work in a single semester, I faced dismissal.

In those days, the ties between the CIA and Yale were wide and deep. The campus residential colleges screened students, including future CIA Director Porter Goss, for possible careers in espionage. Alumni like Cord Meyer and James Angleton held senior slots at the agency. Had I not had a faculty adviser visiting from Germany, the distinguished scholar Bernhard Dahm who was a stranger to this covert nexus, that probation would likely have become expulsion, ending my academic career and destroying my credibility.

During those difficult days, New York Congressman Ogden Reid, a ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, telephoned to say that he was sending staff investigators to Laos to look into the opium situation. Amid this controversy, a CIA helicopter landed near the village where I had escaped that ambush and flew the Hmong headman who had helped my research to an agency airstrip. There, a CIA interrogator made it clear that he had better deny what he had said to me about the opium. Fearing, as he later told my photographer, that “they will send a helicopter to arrest me, or…soldiers to shoot me,” the Hmong headman did just that.

At a personal level, I was discovering just how deep the country’s intelligence agencies could reach, even in a democracy, leaving no part of my life untouched: my publisher, my university, my sources, my taxes, my phone, and even my friends.

Although I had won the first battle of this war with a media blitz, the CIA was winning the longer bureaucratic struggle. By silencing my sources and denying any culpability, its officials convinced Congress that it was innocent of any direct complicity in the Indochina drug trade. During Senate hearings into CIA assassinations by the famed Church Committee three years later, Congress accepted the agency’s assurance that none of its operatives had been directly involved in heroin trafficking (an allegation I had never actually made). The committee’s report did confirm the core of my critique, however, finding that “the CIA is particularly vulnerable to criticism” over indigenous assets in Laos “of considerable importance to the Agency,” including “people who either were known to be, or were suspected of being, involved in narcotics trafficking.” But the senators did not press the CIA for any resolution or reform of what its own inspector general had called the “particular dilemma” posed by those alliances with drug lords—the key aspect, in my view, of its complicity in the traffic.

During the mid-1970s, as the flow of drugs into the United States slowed and the number of addicts declined, the heroin problem receded into the inner cities and the media moved on to new sensations. Unfortunately, Congress had forfeited an opportunity to check the CIA and correct its way of waging covert wars. In less than 10 years, the problem of the CIA’s tactical alliances with drug traffickers to support its far-flung covert wars was back with a vengeance.

During the 1980s, as the crack-cocaine epidemic swept America’s cities, the agency, as its own inspector general later reported, allied itself with the largest drug smuggler in the Caribbean, using his port facilities to ship arms to the Contra guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua and protecting him from any prosecution for five years. Simultaneously on the other side of the planet in Afghanistan, mujahedeen guerrillas imposed an opium tax on farmers to fund their fight against the Soviet occupation and, with the CIA’s tacit consent, operated heroin labs along the Pakistani border to supply international markets. By the mid-1980s, Afghanistan’s opium harvest had grown tenfold and was providing 60 percent of the heroin for America’s addicts and as much as 90 percent in New York City.

Almost by accident, I had launched my academic career by doing something a bit different. Embedded within that study of drug trafficking was an analytical approach that would take me, almost unwittingly, on a lifelong exploration of US global hegemony in its many manifestations, including diplomatic alliances, CIA interventions, developing military technology, recourse to torture, and global surveillance. Step by step, topic by topic, decade after decade, I would slowly accumulate sufficient understanding of the parts to try to assemble the whole. In writing my new book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power, I drew on this research to assess the overall character of US global power and the forces that might contribute to its perpetuation or decline.

In the process, I slowly came to see a striking continuity and coherence in Washington’s century-long rise to global dominion. CIA torture techniques emerged at the start of the Cold War in the 1950s; much of its futuristic robotic aerospace technology had its first trial in the Vietnam War of the 1960s; and, above all, Washington’s reliance on surveillance first appeared in the colonial Philippines around 1900 and soon became an essential though essentially illegal tool for the FBI’s repression of domestic dissent that continued through the 1970s.

SURVEILLANCE TODAY
In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, I dusted off that historical method, and used it to explore the origins and character of domestic surveillance inside the United States.

After occupying the Philippines in 1898, the US Army, facing a difficult pacification campaign in a restive land, discovered the power of systematic surveillance to crush the resistance of the country’s political elite. Then, during World War I, the Army’s “father of military intelligence,” the dour General Ralph Van Deman, who had learned his trade in the Philippines, drew upon his years pacifying those islands to mobilize a legion of 1,700 soldiers and 350,000 citizen-vigilantes for an intense surveillance program against suspected enemy spies among German-Americans, including my own grandfather. In studying Military Intelligence files at the National Archives, I found “suspicious” letters purloined from my grandfather’s army locker. In fact, his mother had been writing him in her native German about such subversive subjects as knitting him socks for guard duty.

In the 1950s, Hoover’s FBI agents tapped thousands of phones without warrants and kept suspected subversives under close surveillance, including my mother’s cousin Gerard Piel, an anti-nuclear activist and the publisher of Scientific American magazine. During the Vietnam War, the bureau expanded its activities with an amazing array of spiteful, often illegal, intrigues in a bid to cripple the anti-war movement with pervasive surveillance of the sort seen in my own FBI file.

Memory of the FBI’s illegal surveillance programs was largely washed away after the Vietnam War thanks to Congressional reforms that required judicial warrants for all government wiretaps. The terror attacks of September 2001, however, gave the National Security Agency the leeway to launch renewed surveillance on a previously unimaginable scale. Writing for TomDispatch in 2009, I observed that coercive methods first tested in the Middle East were being repatriated and might lay the groundwork for “a domestic surveillance state.” Sophisticated biometric and cyber techniques forged in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq had made a “digital surveillance state a reality” and so were fundamentally changing the character of American democracy.

Four years later, Edward Snowden’s leak of secret NSA documents revealed that, after a century-long gestation period, a US digital surveillance state had finally arrived. In the age of the Internet, the NSA could monitor tens of millions of private lives worldwide, including American ones, via a few hundred computerized probes into the global grid of fiber-optic cables.

And then, as if to remind me in the most personal way possible of our new reality, four years ago, I found myself the target yet again of an IRS audit, of TSA body searches at national airports, and—as I discovered when the line went dead—a tap on my office telephone at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Why? Maybe it was my current writing on sensitive topics like CIA torture and NSA surveillance, or maybe my name popped up from some old database of suspected subversives left over from the 1970s. Whatever the explanation, it was a reasonable reminder that, if my own family’s experience across three generations is in any way representative, state surveillance has been an integral part of American political life far longer than we might imagine.

At the cost of personal privacy, Washington’s worldwide web of surveillance has now become a weapon of exceptional power in a bid to extend US global hegemony deeper into the 21st century. Yet it’s worth remembering that sooner or later what we do overseas always seems to come home to haunt us, just as the CIA and crew have haunted me this last half-century. When we learn to love Big Brother, the world becomes a more, not less, dangerous place.

This piece has been adapted and expanded from the introduction to Alfred W. McCoy’s new book, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power.

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Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

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https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/07/russ- ... re-stooge/



RUSS BAKER ON TRUMP LAWYER MICHAEL COHEN: CONSIGLIERE OR STOOGE?


In the original “Godfather” movie, Tom Hagen, the consigliere to the Corleone family, responds to a movie executive who has never heard of his law practice by saying “I have a special practice. I handle one client.” Vito Corleone reminds Hagen early on that “a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”

In many ways Michael Cohen has served that role for Donald Trump. An undistinguished lawyer, his Russian and Ukrainian links from the earliest days of his career make him the perfect lawyer for Trump. He became a kind of Trump groupie, admiring and fawning over Trump’s ghostwritten book, and buying more condos in Trump properties than almost anyone else. Unblushingly, he referred to Trump as his “patriarch.”

As a central figure in the Trump/Russia story, Cohen is among a cast of characters involved in Trump’s murky Russian dealings: Felix Sater, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and a number of Russians with names worthy of a Dostoevsky novel.

Last week, in WhoWhatWhy, Russ Baker delivered an 8,000-word deep dive into Cohen and his activities. In this week’s podcast, Russ talks to Jeff Schechtman about Cohen, Russia, Ukraine and where all of this might be headed.



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As a service to our readers, we provide transcripts with our podcasts. We try to ensure that these transcripts do not include errors. However, due to resource constraints, we are not always able to proofread them as closely as we would like, and we hope that you will excuse any errors that slipped through.

Jeff Schechtman: Welcome to Radio WhoWhatWhy. I’m Jeff Schechtman.
Saturday morning a story appeared on how Congress needed to get its act together regarding its investigation of the president’s Russia connection as it relates to Michael Flynn and counterintelligence issues. The reason is that to many it’s becoming clear that Mueller’s investigation is focused entirely on the money; that Mueller and his team are following screenwriter William Goldman’s advice to follow the money. Tax crime, money laundering, offshore funds, and illegal real estate transactions seem to be the fuel powering the Mueller investigation. In that story, Felix Sater and Michael Cohen may be the bookends holding up a complete superstructure of financial crimes.
Several months ago, WhoWhatWhy ran what’s come to be considered the definitive story on Felix Sater. This week, Michael Cohen, the president’s one-time consigliere, is in the spotlight. In an 8,000-word story, Russ Baker makes the case that could almost be a follow-the-dots picture for Mueller and his team. To talk about this, I’m joined by the editor and publisher of WhoWhatWhy and the author of the story, Russ Baker.
Russ, thanks so much for doing this.
Russ Baker: Always my pleasure, Jeff.
Jeff Schechtman: Well, it’s good to talk about this. It is getting murkier and murkier. At the same time, it is getting clearer in so many respects. It’s pretty remarkable. I want to talk first of all about just the Russian connection in general. When you look at Sater, Michael Cohen that you write about this week, Manafort, Kushner’s dealing with Russian banks, Trump Jr. saying that they get a lot of their money from Russia, all of this coming back to the same set of Russia connections. Talk about it first in a general sense.
Russ Baker: I mean it is striking. It’s interesting how Trump has been able to sort of make the argument at least to his base that he has no interests in Russia and that sort of famous saying he says, “I’ve got no investments there,” I’ve got no this, I’ve got no that. It’s quite interesting when you go from there, which I assume some percentage of Americans accept at face value to what we find, which is almost kind of all Russia all the time in every respect of this man’s life going back many, many years.
Jeff Schechtman: Talk about who Michael Cohen is, how he came to be involved with Trump and the Trump organization.
Russ Baker: Sure. Well, as you mentioned, we profiled Michael Cohen recently and found him very, very interesting and neglected in the narrative about Trump and these many, many different Russia strands. Let me just pause to say that I understand and commiserate with everybody on how confusing these stories are, because there are so many names. There are so many strands and the pace has quickened and so there seem to be stories coming out not just by the day but even almost by the hour on these kinds of things and so it’s very hard to sort of decide where to focus. We did focus very early on Felix Sater because we found him extremely compelling. This was a fellow who had a background and association with some criminal acts and some organized crime figures who ended up in Trump Tower and ended up being a business associate and essentially kind of partnering with Trump on some very big real estate deals, including the Trump SoHo Hotel and Towers as well as projects all over the world. So we understood that Felix Sater was very important. We needed to know a lot more about him and that relationship.
Then we gradually also began paying attention to Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen was Trump’s in-house counsel. He was a vice president and the top lawyer inside the Trump organization for quite a number of years coming in there about a decade ago. He became sort of famous as Trump’s sort of Rottweiler, this fellow who would stand everybody down from people who were trying to collect payment from Trump to people who are writing things about him that he didn’t like. Very interesting and colorful, controversial figure. He became more interesting to us when we began seeing that Michael Cohen himself had his own connections to Russia, to the former Soviet Union, to Ukraine predating by quite a number of years when he first came to work for Trump. So we thought, “Well, that’s interesting.” There’s all this Russia stuff. There’s all this talk about Russia trying to get its cause into Trump trying to influence him, trying to help him become president.
We know that Trump has been sort of strikingly kind to Russia and to Vladimir Putin taking a very soft line on Russia and kind of the tables were turned, because traditionally the Republicans were always very aggressive toward first of all the Soviet Union and later a resurging Russia. The Democrats typically were more let’s say diplomacy-minded and then of course this began to shift with Hillary Clinton taking a hard line on Putin. Then we see Donald Trump downplaying, minimizing or even denying some of the actions by Russia that are seen as being most aggressive and most problematical. So when we find out that Trump brings in as his in-house lawyer a sort of fearsome fellow, someone who himself had these ties to the former Soviet Union predating his coming in to Trump, we say, “Well, what is going on here?” You got Felix Sater who comes from Russia. He enters Trump’s orbit circa 2000, 2001. Then we find Michael Cohen who enters later on and around 2007 you got both Cohen and Sater as basically sort of intimates of Donald Trump.
So we begin looking more closely at Cohen and we discover all kinds of interesting things. One of the things we discovered is that he starts buying all these units in Trump buildings all over the place. He and his relatives are buying just an extraordinary number of these very expensive units in New York City, in Florida and so forth, all Trump starting again around 2000 the same timeframe that we see all this increasing kind of Russia-related activity around Donald Trump. So we find that very interesting. Then we learn that Michael Cohen is married to a Ukrainian-born woman; that his brother also married into a Ukrainian family; that the brother’s father-in-law is a man who came out of the former Soviet Union Ukraine, seemingly modest resources and then somehow gets into this big business with grain from Ukraine. He becomes very, very wealthy and then he starts partnering with all these oligarchs. They seemed to have – according to the FBI – organized crime connections back to the former Soviet Union. So as you can imagine, my eyes are widening and widening as I’m looking at this.
We dig and so we’ve been looking at all of that for months. What I’ve told you is really just the tip of the iceberg.
Jeff Schechtman: You mentioned Michael Cohen being married to a Ukrainian woman and his brother also married to a Ukrainian woman. In fact, some of Michael Cohen’s early investments in New York before he even got involved in buying all these Trump properties involve the taxicab business and being involved with Russians and Ukrainians yet again.
Russ Baker: That’s right. In fact, as we look at Michael Cohen and I don’t want to judge this, I mean, he may… Perhaps his family was independently wealthy. I found no signs of that. He grew up I believe middle class on Long Island. He becomes a lawyer, goes to a frankly very low rank law school, little known law school of no particular distinguishing characteristics. He then becomes a personal injury lawyer, a particular kind of law. Again, nothing really stands out at all, any particularly notable successes. I don’t think he gets anywhere near higher levels of that field where I guess you can make quite a lot of money. Then suddenly we see him just spending money like a drunken sailor on all of these businesses. They’re all, whether with his family or as you say with his taxi business, another with the casino boat — all of these people, all of the money seems to have originated back in the former Soviet Union.
That’s so important because it is well-known — I am not saying there’s a connection here because there may be none — but it is well-known that the moneys in the former Soviet Union massively transferred to a small number of so-called oligarchs as well as figures involved with organized crime there, and that of course it became a priority on everyone’s part to get that money out of there to move it west. The United States has always been seen as a sort of a safe haven, a great place to put your money. Of course, if that money is ill-gotten or they just don’t want to pay taxes on it, it then gets laundered. Of course, real estate is just about I guess number one in terms of the most popular vehicles for laundering money.
Jeff Schechtman: You mentioned all these apartments and Trump properties that Cohen was buying. He was even spending bigger than that in buying whole buildings in New York, 50, 60, 70 million dollars. It is completely unclear as you mentioned earlier where any of this money came from.
Russ Baker: That’s right, I mean, even if you take the top lawyers and top lawyers make quite a bit of money. They can make five million or 10 million dollars a year something like that. Even those people would not have the resources to make those kinds of purchases and so it is a legitimate question. Now I do want to emphasize that we reached out to Michael Cohen and had some communication with him. We asked him that question: what was the source of the moneys for all of these purchases? He declined to answer.
Jeff Schechtman: What is the connection and when did Felix Sater and Cohen come together?
Russ Baker: It turns out that they knew each other growing up on Long Island. There are different accounts of that. It has been confirmed that they knew each other. Whether they were friends or you want to say acquaintances or “ran in the same circle”, they definitely knew each other way back when. We actually see importantly the two of them coming together in a particularly striking affair let’s call it, which got a lot of attention very briefly and then sort of vanished from the news. Back in January of this year, there was a meeting at a luxury hotel in New York with a Ukrainian politician and businessman who came supposedly bearing a peace proposal. This was an attempt, we are led to believe, to find a way to settle the dispute between the Ukraine and Russia with the goal of getting the crippling sanctions imposed upon Russia for its incursions into Ukraine to getting those lifted. This politician who turns out to have his own connections to these people was at this meeting with Felix Sater and Michael Cohen.
That’s very, very interesting because, of course, Felix Sater, this was intended to pass a message to Donald Trump. It’s quite interesting, of course, this sort of highly unconventional and unusual sort of diplomacy if that’s what it was. We’re not sure that was the real purpose of the meeting but that’s what we are told was the purpose of the meeting that this Ukrainian brought this portfolio of papers that they wanted delivered to the White House. It’s interesting, of course, that Michael Cohen is a lawyer. I don’t know how that all works or whether they can claim any kind of confidentiality and privilege by passing something through a lawyer. It’s also striking that Michael Cohen doesn’t work for the Trump administration. He was an employee of the Trump organization. It’s unclear to us what his status is at the moment. He had said various things. He had said that he expected to have a job in the Trump administration. They did not give him a job there. He has also said that he is now Trump’s personal lawyer.
We’re not sure exactly what that means, because we see other personal lawyers very much in the news and sort of spokespersons for Trump on questions about his refusing to release his income tax as about conflicts of interest, about other things and, of course, about the current investigation by Mueller. So we don’t know exactly what Michael Cohen does, but we’ve been struck by the fact that he seems to have virtually vanished from public view around the time of this meeting with this Ukrainian on the so-called peace deal. We are certainly wondering whether that turned him into a particular liability for Trump and that he had to distance himself from him just as he has done with Paul Manafort, just as he has done with you can name them the three or four other people. The National Security Adviser Flynn he had to get rid of and there are others as well that he sort of pushed overboard. That’s all very striking because Trump is known for being loyal to those who are loyal to him. He kept on for a very long time some extremely controversial and I would say fairly unpopular figures around him in the White House. He took a really long time to get rid of those people, but seems to have moved much more quickly with anybody who could tie him to Russia.

Jeff Schechtman: Of course, with Felix Sater, he denies even knowing and denies he can’t even recognize him in the room.
Russ Baker: Well, that was really… We had a good laugh about that, because if you go to our articles on WhoWhatWhy, you can see the image of the business card “Felix Sater”, whatever it is, special account adviser or something to Donald Trump, had an office close to Trump’s. He was in Trump’s office all the time, letterhead, special phone number there, so he obviously knew the fellow extremely well. We’ve also published a picture of the two of them standing next to each other.
Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit about how Cohen and Trump actually came together. There’s the official story where Cohen talks about he read Trump’s book Art of the Deal twice and he was just blown away by it and they had to get together. What do we know about how they really came together?
Russ Baker: Well, we don’t have that whole story yet. Our effort I think is a sort of seminal one in moving the ball forward on all of this, but we still have a lot of questions. What we’re interested in is this period where he began acquiring so many Trump properties, because we know that Trump — like I think most business people — likes to know his biggest customers. I can’t say for sure but I’ve seen no indication that there was anyone who was a bigger customer for Trump than Michael Cohen, I mean, 11, maybe even more properties. That’s a lot of properties to buy from one person. We know and we describe in our earlier article on Felix Sater how Trump would sit down personally with some of these people and close the deal himself. Maybe they sit there with the stack of cash for the down payment but, I mean, he would do this personally. So the likelihood that Cohen did not get on his radar around 2000 when he began buying all these properties seems to me very, very remote.
So what we’re wondering is why was he buying all these properties. Is it true that Trump ran with so much of a better investment than anything else? I mean, I think usually when you buy property you look at the inherent quality of the property, the location, the value. He seems to be one of the few people I could see that think that it’s a wise and careful investment to put so much of your money into stuff because it’s got one person’s name on it. It seems to me a very risky strategy. Anyway, at a minimum, Jeff, he got himself we believe he got Trump’s attention. What happened after that we don’t know. We do see that this man who was a personal injury attorney who seems to spend a lot of his time on non-legal matters including this casino boat and the taxicab medallions and so forth, he suddenly is in a relatively major New York law firm, Phillips Nizer. He shows up in there in the mid-2000s.
We found out that he and his brother both together joined that firm. The brother described it to us as a merger although they were this nothing firm and Phillips Nizer is a major firm with hundreds of attorneys. There was some reason, why did Phillips Nizer want these little known attorneys to come in and so-called merge with them? They wouldn’t tell us, but we do know that law firms like to bring people in who are able to secure business, to bring in valuable clients. It’s interesting to note that at that point he was we believe pretty thick with Trump already and Trump had a problem getting lawyers because we understand that there were issues about paying the bills with a lot of these firms and just like a lot of banks didn’t want to deal with him anymore. He may not have had that many options but there comes Michael Cohen already Trump’s perhaps biggest or one of his biggest customers in real estate. He moves into the Nizer firm. For some reason they wanted him. We wonder whether that was that he brought Trump in as a client and handled him.
Then he does that for a year or two and then he moves on to work with Trump himself. The other thing that’s very interesting is there’s the brother and the brother also goes into the firm at the same time. Then the brother leaves and goes into… are you ready dot, dot, dot, the real estate business where he joined one of the biggest real estate brokers in New York.
Jeff Schechtman: It’s also worth noting that Michael Cohen shows up in the Christopher Steele dossier.
Russ Baker: That’s right. Now that dossier is very controversial. That was the dossier prepared by the former MI6 British Intelligence Officer Christopher Steele who was supposedly doing some sort of research or perhaps opposition research on Trump and had worked in the former Soviet Union and went there to do this research. In that dossier, he includes Michael Cohen and that in his allegation that Michael Cohen traveled to the Czech Republic to try to massage some problems that Trump was having vis-a-vis Russia and want to point out that Cohen denies that he was in the Czech Republic in that period or that he did that or had that meeting. It’s hard to know what to make of that. The whole issue of whether he was in Czech Republic is complicated because he produced a passport showing that there were no stamps from the Czech Republic. Also, you don’t have to, thanks to the Schengen community of Europe. You’re able to pass across borders without getting your passport stamped. So we don’t know what to make of that but that’s certainly something else that I assume would be of interest to investigators.
Jeff Schechtman: Not to make this anymore complicated and you’ve already talked about how complicated this story is. Other characters that populate the story beyond Cohen and Sater, I mean, Manafort comes into the picture and a whole slew of kind of Russian gangsters, Russian mob guys that are all part of the equation at one point or another.
Russ Baker: That’s right, a very interesting bunch. I think those of us who enjoyed watching the movies or reading the books over the years about the La Cosa Nostra in the United States will find this cast every bit as colorful if not much more so. Particularly Semion Mogilevich, the so-called boss of bosses, considered by many law enforcements to be the most powerful gangster in the world. Born in the Ukraine, shows up throughout the story and in our Felix Sater piece you find quite a bit about him, about Mogilevich. He was a major target of the FBI when he began moving operations into the United States. His people were believed to be involved with, among other things, Wall Street and trying to get into many aspects of the financial trade. We also know that Mogilevich sent his deputy Ivankov to the United States. The FBI was trying to track this man down, because they had gotten a tip that he was here. Couldn’t find him, couldn’t find him, suddenly he shows up. Where is he? He is living in a luxury condo in, wait for it, Trump Tower.
Then as soon as they identified him there, I don’t know if he gets another tip or offer but he takes off and they don’t hear about him again for a little while until there’s another sighting of him. This time he is in New Jersey at, wait for it, a Trump casino. So this is all very, very interesting. Sater’s own original activity that landed him with a criminal conviction involved the Wall Street pump-and-dump scheme targeting the elderly and other people who were taken advantage of. It was Sater’s cutting a deal with the US Attorney’s Office that turned him into an FBI informant. He was essentially an FBI informant for years while in Trump Tower. Of course, we’re very, very interested in that and I would send listeners back to our first piece about Sater in Trump Tower. The question, which I think is very important here, which is what did the FBI know, because they were running Felix Sater when he was in there doing all this stuff with Donald Trump when Michael Cohen was buying all these apartments.
What was that all about, because now you’ve got former FBI Director Bob Mueller running the investigation. I mean, what does he know and what can he tell and will we ever be able to get to the bottom of all of this.
Jeff Schechtman: Talk a little bit, personally, as someone that has looked at this story, written about this story, perhaps dug deeper into all aspects of this story as it relates to the Russian money connection than almost anyone else, the fact that so much of this just can’t be coincidence.
Russ Baker: It seems like it can’t be coincidence. In our latest piece, the one about Michael Cohen, we do lay some of this out. I mean, I think it is a fact that the United States is important to other countries. I think it is a fact that the United States is very important to Russia. That the United States is very important to Putin and is both an entity to cooperate with but also an adversary and a competitor for all kinds of things, including resources around the world. There’s a lot there. All we have to do is look at Rex Tillerson to see when he was running ExxonMobil, now all the effort he made to go to Russia and cultivate Putin. So there’s all of this very intense sort of bilateral cooperation and competition.
Then, of course, there’s a whole issue of Ukraine. Ukraine becomes important as it begins moving more and more into the western orbit. This is a huge problem for Putin, because Ukraine was arguably the most important former Soviet Republic. It is considered the breadbasket of Europe. It has its own tremendous natural resources. It is also the place through which Russia runs its pipelines with its natural gas, which is tremendously important to the Russian economy. It runs through the Ukraine to major markets in Western Europe. For many, many different reasons Ukraine for its ports, locations that Russia needs for its navy and so forth. There are many, many reasons that the Ukraine is tremendously important to Russia. Russia knew that when Ukraine went independent, it went independent at a point where Russia could not stop it. Putin is not about to have what he perceives as an enemy on his doorstep. Any more than the United States would be okay with Mexico going in an unfavorable direction. These countries are tremendously important to major powers. So we’ve got to keep our eye on Ukraine.
So that I think is one of the big factors here that Putin was looking at with his relationship with the United States and I think they’re always. I think all intelligence services are studying these foreign leaders and figuring out what they’re up to. They’re trying to infiltrate their circles. They’re trying to ensure that they get as many advantages as they can and interacting with them. We do see what looks like some recognition by the Russians that Donald Trump is a person, way before he was elected president, who they could do business with. Trump had serious financial problems and by their own admissions the Trumps turned increasingly to projects related to the former Soviet Union, of people and moneys related to the former Soviet Union as major sources of funding during some tough years. So I think it makes sense that they were aware of Donald Trump at least as a major American figure, a famous person with a lot of influence.
Trump had made it known long before going all the way back to the 1980s that he was interested in politics, that he was interested in the presidency. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Russians realize that Donald Trump was somebody, a horse to bet on.
Jeff Schechtman: It is also hard to imagine with all of this money going back and forth, with all of these real estate transactions, with all of the banking transactions that somehow all of this is perfectly clean that in the course of this investigation that’s going on now we’re not going to find an awful lot of money that was laundered somehow or taxes that weren’t quite right. There’s just so much opportunity here for things to go wrong.
Russ Baker: Well, that’s right and, of course, these tremendous amounts of money pouring out of the former Soviet Union. You have to keep in mind that the vast majority of the people in those countries are struggling. Many of them are poor. I mean, former Soviet Union, a communist country where supposedly everybody had shelter and something to eat. I mean, people were certainly not rich but they weren’t in what you would call poverty that now 20% of the Russian population is said to live in poverty now. That’s I guess comparable to the United States, but we have a very different system than they had. So that means that even that the moneys are not going to them, they’re going somewhere else. They’re going to the so-called oligarchs and friends of Putin, and that money is coming out of the country. So yes, I mean, there is at least a 1% versus 99% factor there. I don’t think that you could say that all wealthy people are people that become wealthy in the former Soviet Union are problematical, but by the estimations of law enforcement a fairly significant share of that money is dirty, absolutely.
Jeff Schechtman: Of course, the political overlay to all of this that kind of brings it into a kind of contemporaneous aspect is the degree to which so many people in the Trump orbit have lied about their connections to Russia.
Russ Baker: That is staggering, Jeff. It is staggering how many have ties to Russia. It’s staggering what they’ve said about them. I mean, another figure we didn’t even mention is this Carter Page who is over there doing financial work and then became a foreign policy adviser to Trump. We didn’t talk about the fact that at the Republican convention they had meetings with Russians. They worked assiduously to soften the Republican platforms, criticism of Russia over Ukraine. Boy, I mean, they have had to reverse themselves individually and collectively again and again and on every front. It really is sort of jaw dropping. I have to say when you consider the scandals that people like say Hillary Clinton faced over having her emails on a private server and the White Water, all these kinds of scandals over the years that frankly I’m not sure anybody ever fully understood exactly what was wrong or exactly what the magnitude of the wrongdoing was or the harmful intent behind these things that, Benghazi. I mean, my gosh, you look at Fox News. They go on forever just venting about these things.
Yet if you were to interview the most avid of viewers and ask them what is this thing actually about, they kind of get irritated by the question because they don’t know. Here we know what’s going on. We can see it. It’s unprecedented, I think, in history, this notion that one country – a nemesis of another country – has sunk its claws into it to this extent. I have to say by the way I am not somebody who is in favor of beating up on Russia. Our website WhoWhatWhy was very, very careful. We took a long time in looking at this stuff. I mean, I, myself get invited on and appear from time to time on RT, a Russian news channel. So we’re not advocating the creation of a new cold war here. Business is business, but I think the American people deserve the truth and deserve to know what is going on and to understand the magnitude and the potential ramifications of what we’re seeing.
Jeff Schechtman: Russ Baker, his recent spotlight on Michael Cohen could be found at WhoWhatWhy.org as can many other stories about this including the story about Felix Sater. Russ, thanks so much for doing this.
Russ Baker: Jeff, thank you very much.
Hi, this is Russ Baker. If you like that podcast, please feel free to share it and help others find it by rating it and reviewing it on iTunes. Also, if you’d like to see us continue to do this kind of hard-hitting investigative journalism, we need your help. Please support our work. Go to WhoWhatWhy.org/donate.



Link du jour
https://www.theguardian.com/news/galler ... e-pictures

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserv ... ethod=Full

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/07/ea ... tion-bill/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/07/ph ... ptember-7/

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/06/de ... le-energy/






https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-how-much

Big Oil must pay for climate change. Now we can calculate how much
It is possible for scientific evidence to help apportion responsibility for climate damages among fossil fuel producers. Our paper shows how






http://southsidepride.com/mccarthyism-and-you/


McCarthyism and you



SEPTEMBER 7, 2017
“An enemy of the people!” What irony. Does Pres. Trump even know the reference he uses so freely actually attaches to an Ibsen play in which a doctor discovers the therapeutic springs that attract tourists actually cause disease? The dilemma is obvious but the good doctor makes the right choice and destroys his livelihood.

Now the springs are replaced by the media and, in a probably unconscious revival of McCarthyism, our leader stokes the fires of hysteria against our most important institution—the free press.

We can’t forget that McCarthy’s Svengali was attorney Roy Cohn—an intimate friend of Trump’s until his death, probably of AIDS. The linkage is both ironic and unavoidable, and Cohn was in furious denial of his sexual identity to the bitter end.

I know I’ve beaten this horse many times before, but, out of fear for the institution’s viability, I keep coming back to the same theme—a reminder of the critical importance of a free and independent press to our democracy.

Let’s not be naïve.

What is the role of the press?

Mainly to inform you. Are you fascinated by the fact that your neighbor pays her bills, is faithful to her husband and regularly attends services? Is that news?

Or would you be more intrigued by a salacious scandal?

Get real.

News mostly centers on things we’re curious about or that we need to know to function as citizens. News is essential to our lives as Americans. We hunger and thirst for information and treat it cavalierly because it is so plentiful. Thank God for it.

Over the course of about 60 years of public life I’ve had frequent contact with the press, across a broad spectrum from flattery to condemnation. I have found the press to be truly and totally devoted to delivering honest accounts. Our press is an adornment of our society and, in my view, its most important institution.

There are [according to Louis XIV] the nobility, the clergy and the peasants, but the most important pillar of the nation is The Fourth Estate.

Attempting to undermine the people’s belief in the integrity of our media is profoundly subversive. It is McCarthyism at its hottest. To indulge in unfounded attacks on the press is to assault the bonds of trust that unite us. It is your responsibility, and mine, to defend this institution. Trump’s denunciations strike me as incitements. The right of a people to be informed is a wispy concept—yet real. How can we function without the information necessary to inform our actions? We in the NYPD had a joke that an FBI agent was assigned to cut out items from the N Y Times and stamp them “Secret.” I wrote a book about secret police intelligence operations in 1967 but managed to escape being censored for it. Publishing the Ellsberg Pentagon Papers was a useful public service, and I am far from sure that notorious leakers do less than a very valuable public service.

Why wait for the Nazis to win and drive the rest of us to the tender mercies of censorship? I am profoundly shocked by the silence. Won’t anyone



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... d-pakistan

India army chief: we must prepare for simultaneous war with China and Pakistan
General says Himalayan standoff could become larger conflict with China, which Pakistan would then use to its advantage



http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/07/co ... s-country/


Colorado prison officials have banished 211 Crew leaders across U.S. But are they spreading white supremacist seeds?
Colorado prison officials, hoping to diminish the power of the white supremacist gang 211 Crew, have banished its leaders to prisons across the country, a Denver Post review has found. But prison gang experts question whether the moves could allow the gang to spread its influence nationwide.





http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/07/de ... s-tactics/

6.3 billion dead trees in 11 Western states put U.S. fire crews in deadly bind




https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -wildfires

The unprecedented drought that's crippling Montana and North Dakota
It came without warning, and without equivalent. Now a flash drought is fueling fires and hurting the lives of those who work the land







http://www.denverpost.com/2017/09/07/20 ... estern-us/

2017 wildfire season in U.S. West far worse than expected
A wet winter and spring in the Western U.S. brought predictions that the 2017 wildfire season would be mild. It was anything but. It ended up one of the worst in U.S. history in land burned.




https://robertscribbler.com/2017/09/07/ ... e-of-irma/

A Visibly Extreme Jet Stream in Advance of Irma
On Tuesday, I wrote this blog about how Jet Stream behavior and related severe weather during summer of 2017 jibed with the findings of recent climate science. About how human-forced polar warming appears to be impacting extreme summer weather patterns by altering the upper level winds — with a particular focus on impacts to North America.

Yesterday, I looked at the upper level wind patterns running over North America in advance of Irma’s approach and saw this:



(Classic ridge-trough pattern like that identified by Dr Jennifer Francis and Dr Michael Mann. One that, according to their related research, increases the likelihood of certain kinds of extreme weather patterns and events. One that these scientists associate with polar warming set off by human-caused climate change. Image capture from 1500 UTC on September 6. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

It’s a classic high amplitude wave form in the Jet Stream. One that shows an extremely deep trough digging all the way down to the Gulf Coast in the east and arching back up into a pointed ridge north of Alaska and into the Arctic Ocean in the west. This kind of high amplitude wave pattern is not typical. Or if such a pattern did appear in the past, it tended not to stick around for so long. But during this summer, such intense high amplitude ridges have been forming again and again over the west and such deep troughs have been forming again and again in the east.

New Precipitation and Temperature Extremes

The most apparent visible effect of this ridge-west — trough-east pattern has been to produce record heat, drought, and wildfires in the west and record rainfall in conjunction with an extremely stormy weather pattern in the south and east. You can plainly see this dipolar relationship in the precipitation and temperature anomaly maps provided by NOAA below:



These maps cover precipitation and temperature observations for the last 30 days compared to climatological averages. In the west we find that precipitation for large regions has been less than 10 percent of normal (less than 1/10th normal). Meanwhile temperatures in the west have ranged between 1 and 4 C above average. In the south and east, large regions have seen between 200 and 800 percent of typical precipitation amounts (2 to 8 times the norm). Temperatures, meanwhile have ranged between 1 and 3 C below average.

This is the very definition of heightened extremes. Looking at the prevalent upper level air pattern over the U.S. for the summer of 2017, it’s clear that south to north upper level winds pulling air up from the Equatorial zone toward the pole are facilitating one side of the extreme and that a countervailing upper level wind originating near the pole and running south toward the tropics is driving the opposite extreme.

Slowing Upper Level Winds in a North-South Orientation Weakens the Steering Currents

Unfortunately, prevalent and long lasting heat or heavy rainfall isn’t the only apparent impact of this new pattern. Another aspect of this extreme dipole is a weakening of the west to east steering currents that typically begin to pick up in a region between 25 and 30 degrees North Latitude and to intensify further beyond the 30 N line. This effect is due to the fact that upper level wind patterns are oriented more in a north-south (west) or south-north (east) direction and due to the fact that under such large Jet Stream meanders the upper level steering winds tend to slow down.


(It’s not just Harvey and Irma. Weak upper level steering currents are contributing to a long range potential that Jose might loop back to strike South Florida.)

For Hurricanes like Harvey and Irma, stronger west to east steering winds have had two protective effects for the United States. First, they have helped storms to keep moving — working to generally prevent the kind of long duration stall we saw that helped to produce such catastrophic flooding during Harvey. Second, they have tended to deflect storms away from the U.S. East Coast. And for Irma, what this means is that this storm is more likely to strike the U.S. East Coast if the upper level steering winds that would typically turn it to the east are weak.

This is a dynamic upstream aspect of human-forced polar warming. One that produces added extreme weather risks on top of those already generated by warming ocean waters — which increase peak potential storm intensity — and rising atmospheric water vapor — which helps to add latent heat, lift and related convective available potential energy that increases top limits for storm intensity and heavy rainfall.

And as we sit here hoping and praying that Irma will re-curve away from the U.S. east coast, we should consider how polar warming may be helping to make such a terrible strike more likely — increasing risks to so many people and to so much that we all hold dear.







http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/09/02/am ... -80s-romp/

"AMERICAN MADE" / AVIATION / BARRY SEAL / DRUG TRAFFICKING / NEWS / TOM CRUISE
‘American Made’ turns Seal story into “madcap ’80’s romp”
BY DANIEL HOPSICKER · PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2, 2017 · UPDATED SEPTEMBER 2, 2017




A new movie coming out in four weeks attempts to pull off a feat no other biopic from a major Hollywood studio ever has…





Called “American Made” and starring Tom Cruise as drug smuggler Barry Seal, the upcoming release has airbrushed out the very things that made its main character famous to begin with.

Does Barry Seal’s life look like a madcap romp to you? ‘Barry & ‘the boys‘ chap 38: ‘The Killing of Barry Seal’ (pdf) Or listen to the author read the chapter.

Silver
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 5247

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by Silver »

msfreeh wrote: September 8th, 2017, 1:42 am https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/09/07/russ- ... re-stooge/



RUSS BAKER ON TRUMP LAWYER MICHAEL COHEN: CONSIGLIERE OR STOOGE?


In the original “Godfather” movie, Tom Hagen, the consigliere to the Corleone family, responds to a movie executive who has never heard of his law practice by saying “I have a special practice. I handle one client.” Vito Corleone reminds Hagen early on that “a lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.”

Trump had made it known long before going all the way back to the 1980s that he was interested in politics, that he was interested in the presidency. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Russians realize that Donald Trump was somebody, a horse to bet on.

Jeff Schechtman: It is also hard to imagine with all of this money going back and forth, with all of these real estate transactions, with all of the banking transactions that somehow all of this is perfectly clean that in the course of this investigation that’s going on now we’re not going to find an awful lot of money that was laundered somehow or taxes that weren’t quite right. There’s just so much opportunity here for things to go wrong.
Thanks for sharing. It's just one more reason why I don't think Trump will finish his term. "For the good of the country..." he'll say as he exits the White House.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/florid ... ed-raping/



Florida Cop Arrested for Strapping Child to ‘Sex Swing’ and Raping Her Repeatedly
A Florida highway patrolman was accused of sexually abusing a little girl with sex toys and sex devices while she cowered in fear.


September 28, 2017




Forensics were done on the child at Lake-Sumter Children’s Advocacy Center to determine if the child had indeed been sexually molested and/or abused by someone. Following the investigation, Corriveau was arrested. And while the highway patrolman is innocent until proven guilty, the arrest comes amid the allegations of some of the worst forms of sexual abuse, an authority figure over a helpless child.

According to the arrest affidavit, the victim was shown pornography on the officer’s phone during Thanksgiving of 2016. From there, the sexual activity progressed to include sex swings (whereby she was vaginally penetrated), and sex toys (a vibrator). The juvenile was also digitally penetrated allegedly by the officer who was sworn to protect the child, not hurt her.

She indicated in the affidavit that she was afraid of Corriveau and that he was quick tempered, so she offered no resistance to the trooper’s advances. His own sexual needs, he claimed to the child, were not being met, so he attempted to gratify himself by engaging in Shades of Gray style fantasies with the juvenile.



READ MORE: Trump's New Sec of Labor Let "Lolita Express" Billionaire Off "With a Wrist Slap"
Corriveau’s superiors decided to arrest him and charge him with sexual battery under familial authority (domestic) and showing any obscene material to a minor (domestic).

The Highway Patrol issued a statement:


In Dallas, as TFTP reported, a school resource officer, Jacob Ryan Delgadillo, was given probation, even after he was accused of having sex with a middle school student. Not only did he not have to spend time in prison, he may be able to get his Texas law enforcement license back after he does his probation. Worse still, he will not have to register as a sex offender.

Vladamir Krull, an NYPD sergeant, was only given three years in prison for raping his stepdaughter. By contrast, a medical doctor from North Carolina was given 18 years in prison for being in possession of his mother’s and father’s medicines years after their passing.

The disparity in sentencing is appalling to many free thinkers who see the inequity when an officer of the law is sentenced for crimes against children and a doctor gets a sentence which is six times longer for hanging on to expired prescription drugs too long. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude cops are living up to a lower standard of behavior.





http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3531216

Police probe says no evidence of bias when rabbi was stopped


September 29, 2017, 7:26 PM




http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/sp ... -1.3531139

Vegas sheriff: No evidence bias in NFL player case

, September 29, 2017, 8:07 PM



http://www.nydailynews.com/newswires/ne ... -1.3531258

Government regulators remove AIG from tougher oversight


September 29, 2017, 5:57 PM






http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... -us-cities

Marches against racial injustice take to streets of DC
BY JOSH DELK - 09/30/17 02:44 PM EDT 10







http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bro ... -1.3431296



Bronx detective sued over a dozen times for allegedly intimidating teens and their moms during false arrests
BY ESHA RAY CATHERINA GIOINO JAMES FANELLI





http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyp ... -1.3531296

NYPD lieutenant sues after allegedly being called the N-word by U.S. Open parking attendant
BY VICTORIA BEKIEMPIS STEPHEN REX BROWN





https://www.theguardian.com/science/201 ... co-mystery

The curious case of the alien in the photoand the mystery that took years to solve



FBI Octopus
https://www.news-journal.com/news/2017/ ... -agent-as/


Marshall hires former Longview native, FBI agent as police chief
Longview News-
Marshall hires former Longview native, FBI agent as police chief ... has hired a Longview native and FBI supervisor as its new police chief.








http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.3532426


‘Cocaine Cowboys’ used drug profits to fund CIA-tied efforts to assassinate Castro
BY TERENCE CULLEN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Saturday, September 30, 2017, 1:27 PM



Link du jour


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion- ... story.html



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.3532130


President Trump slams San Juan mayor, other Puerto Rico leaders: 'They want everything to be done for them'
BY DAVID BOROFF JESSICA SCHLADEBECK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Updated: Saturday, September 30, 2017, 2:08 PM



http://www.occurrencesforeigndomestic.c ... iltration/

Syria has confirmed that the US led coalition whose very presence in Syria is illegal according to international law, has recently dropped white phosphorus munitions over a village in Deir ez-Zor.

Similar to the infamous napalm munitions the US used in the war on Vietnam, white phosphorus melts the skin off human bones, resulting in an excruciatingly torturous death.

SANA reports that thus far three civilians have been killed while another five have been seriously injured.






2014 Clinton Foundation tax return. They took in $177 million, donated $5 million, spent $86 million doing it, and kept the $86 million change

http://www.thesullenbell.com/2017/09/29/net-assessment/



http://www.captainsjournal.com/2017/09/ ... titutions/






https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... ortion-ban

Thousands march in Dublin calling for end to Ireland's abortion ban
Appetite for change stirred after announcement of 2018 referendum on Ireland’s strict laws on terminations

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

see link for full story

http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/10/02/my ... ican-made/


MadCow
Investigative Reporting into Drug Trafficking, 9/11 & Terrorism
"AMERICAN MADE" / BARRY SEAL / DRUG TRAFFICKING / NEWS / TOM CRUISE
Mystery behind fatal plane crash dogs ‘American Made’
BY DANIEL HOPSICKER · PUBLISHED OCTOBER 2, 2017 · UPDATED OCTOBER 2, 2017

Share on Facebook24Tweet about this on TwitterShare on Reddit0


The word which best describes the new movie ‘American Made’ isn’t “boffo.” It’s “manslaughter.”



No one in the future will recall the opening numbers for ‘American Made, a movie that’s supposedly about Barry Seal. A typical industry headline:”Tom Cruise’s ‘American Made’ Flying Low With $17M Bow.”

None of the interesting dish on the new Tom Cruise vehicle ‘American Made’ is about the movie itself, which turns out to be a pink cotton-candy confection featuring Tom Cruise, his sunglasses, and his ever-widening grin. All of this is accompanied by intense levels of frenetic activity designed to make the ingredients seem important.

Everything about the deadly plane crash during production of ‘AMERICAN MADE’ vibes hinky. The people involved in the deadly accident are not who they seem.

Instead of a “madcap 80’s romp, the logline for ‘American Made’ should be “Two men died making a frivolous movie.”

One week before ‘American Made’ opened, news broke that the estates of the two dead pilots, Alan Purwin and Carlos Berl, were blaming, at least partially, Cruise and director Liman for the crash.

Asked whether he had a comment on the lawsuit, Doug Liman responded, “No. Just that I’m a pilot and Tom Cruise is a pilot. I don’t know anything specific about the accident, because it didn’t happen during the filming. They were just moving one of the airplanes. I was just going to say that it’s just a reminder — something all pilots know — which is that flying is really dangerous. Not in commercial planes, by the way.”

They were just “plane movers.” Seems we’ve heard that one before.



Ankling out of harm’s way

Flying back to the production’s base in Medellin didn’t happen during filming? Because cameras weren’t rolling when the plane flew into a mountain? Liman, a highly-competent director, might have made an even better lawyer. But the explanation is not likely to absolve the director from blame.

His star, Tom Cruise—who’s nowhere to be found—seems to have voted with his feet.

“Another big factor that has slowed American Made‘s turnstiles is that Cruise isn’t out there aggressively selling the movie in his standard globe-trotting style, “reported Deadline Hollywood.

“More specifically, there haven’t been any world premieres where Cruise is known to stroll the red carpet for two hours, speaking to fans and signing autographs.”

“Some industry journalists concluded Cruise is avoiding interviews due to the death of the two pilots during production, and the fact that their estates are suing the production.”



The deadly consequences of “Limania”

‘American Made’ isn’t about Barry Seal. It merely uses his name for publicity value. What the movie is really about is Tom Cruise, a happy-go-lucky adventurer with a big toothy grin.

His character should have been given a generic drug trafficker name, like “Bolivia Bob.”

Through the simple expedient of pretending Barry Seal’s drug trafficking career with the CIA never happened, Cruise and director Doug Liman concoct a weightless confection that adds nothing to American’s knowledge of government involvement in the blizzard of cocaine that defined the 1980’s.

It is a breathtakingly arrogant appropriation of American history.

Now that same arrogance—which film crews long ago dubbed “Limania”—has led to the loss of two lives. Working for him is the fact that, as he’s quick to mention, he’s got “ties” with the CIA.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/26/hon ... testimony/


Members of the Honduran Directorate for the Fight against Drug Trafficking (DLCN) and the Military Police take part in an operation to seize 32 real estate, 15 vehicles and nine commercial companies of six Honduran police officers charged in absentia in New York late last month, in Tegucigalpa on July 14, 2016.The police officers were indicted in a cocaine smuggling and weapons conspiracy linked to a son of the troubled country's former president. The six defendants, aged 39 to 46, were charged a month after Fabio Lobo, son of former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, pled guilty to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. US prosecutors say the officers agreed to give cocaine safe passage through Honduras in exchange for nearly $1 million in bribes from purported Mexican drug smugglers, who were in fact undercover US agents. / AFP / ORLANDO SIERRA (Photo credit should read ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)

22
TOP U.S.-BACKED HONDURAN SECURITY MINISTER IS RUNNING DRUGS, ACCORDING TO COURT TESTIMONY
Jake Johnston
November 26 2017, 8:29 a.m.
Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images
THE HONDURAN MINISTER of security, who was intimately involved in solidifying the 2009 coup, is tied up in drug trafficking, according to testimony from a Mexican drug-trafficker-turned-Drug-Enforcement-Agency-informant in U.S. court.

In November 2016, as the world’s attention was fixated on the surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, two nephews of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro were found guilty on drug trafficking charges. The conviction was another feather in the cap of U.S. prosecutors who have been targeting the Venezuelan government with corruption and drug trafficking investigations.

But in the South Florida courtroom, the testimony of José Santos Peña also implicated Julián Pacheco Tinoco, a former Honduran military official with long ties to the U.S. security apparatus.

A U.S. prosecutor asked the informant about a meeting in Honduras he had participated in a few years earlier. The purpose of the meeting with Honduras’s current security minister and then head of military intelligence Pacheco Tinoco was “so that he could give me help to receive shipments from Colombia to Honduras,” the informant told the court.

“What type of shipments?” the prosecutor asked.

“Cocaine,” the informant clarified.

According to the prosecution, one of the defendants in the case had deleted from his Samsung phone chat records and contact information bearing Pacheco’s name. But the allegation that the top security official of one of the United States’s closest regional allies was involved in drug trafficking was treated as a nonevent in Washington; not a single major media story mentioned the DEA informant’s testimony.

In March 2017, this time in a New York courtroom, Pacheco’s name would once again come up. More details of his and other Honduran government officials’ alleged involvement in drug trafficking were revealed.

Today, Pacheco remains the minister of security, in charge of the entire Honduran national police force. With hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. assistance pouring into Honduras’s security forces, Pacheco is one of the most important players in the country’s security and counternarcotics cooperation with the United States.

In an e-mailed statement, Tim Rieser, the foreign policy aide to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the senator is concerned with the allegations, but that more facts are needed. Leahy “believes the State Department should be looking at this carefully because the Security Minister needs to be someone of unimpeachable integrity,” Rieser wrote.

With future funding for Honduras threatened by some members of Congress — including Leahy — Pacheco was in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. It wasn’t the first time he had made a trip to protect the U.S.-Honduran relationship.

Authorities incinerate a load of cocaine seized to two Colombian nationals navigating along the Caribbean, in Tegucigalpa, on July 11, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / ORLANDO SIERRA (Photo credit should read ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)
Authorities incinerate a load of cocaine seized to two Colombian nationals navigating along the Caribbean, in Tegucigalpa, on July 11, 2017. Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images
PACHECO’S CONNECTION WITH the United States dates back decades. As a 21-year-old cadet, Pacheco traveled to the U.S. military’s School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. In September 1979, he graduated from a course on counterinsurgency tactics.

With the election of Ronald Reagan the following year, Honduras took on new prominence as a U.S. ally and as a staging ground for covert American support for the contra right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua. U.S. security aid to the country skyrocketed, as did allegations that the Honduran military was involved in drug trafficking and in dozens of disappearances of activists. U.S. diplomats largely looked the other way.

In the spring of 1986, at the height of the United States’s Cold War efforts in Central America, Pacheco was once again at the School of the Americas. This time, having been promoted to lieutenant, Pacheco graduated from a course in psychological operations.

After the Berlin Wall fell, the Pentagon changed tack in Central America and began focusing more on the “War on Drugs.”

In April 1988, the most notorious Honduran trafficker at the time, Juan Ramón Matta Ballesteros, was arrested and sent to the United States. As a key interlocutor between the Medellin Cartel in Colombia and Mexican traffickers, Ballesteros had compromised the highest levels of the Honduran military and government. He had also been a U.S. ally and owned a CIA-linked airline that had funneled weapons to the Nicaraguan contras – while sending drugs north.

Honduras’s constitution barred extradition, but working with rogue elements in the Honduran military, U.S. Marshal agents facilitated the capture of Matta Ballesteros. He was brought to the Dominican Republic, where he was officially turned over to U.S. authorities. The Honduran military officers who participated in the rendition were eventually criminally charged in their home country.

The following year, the United States invaded Panama, turning on another erstwhile ally involved in drug trafficking, Gen. Manuel Noriega. Noriega himself was head of military intelligence before becoming president and had been “our man in Panama,” receiving regular CIA payments for decades. Anyone – no matter their criminal record – could be a U.S. ally. That is, until they weren’t.

In Honduras, shifting U.S. priorities, a decrease in funding, and the arrest of Matta Ballesteros pushed the military into the background — at least for a little while. In June 2009, a military coup d’état ousted left-leaning elected president, Manuel Zelaya, who was dropped off in Costa Rica in his pajamas.

With relations tested, and the U.S. having temporarily suspending security assistance, then-Col. Pacheco Tinoco was sent to Washington, D.C., by the head of the Honduran armed forces. His mission was to convince the United States that the military acted properly, that there was no coup.

He met with senior State Department officials at the Old Ebbitt Grill near the White House and with congressional offices on Capitol Hill. He also met with a retired U.S. general who headed the Pentagon’s Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies and who allegedly helped facilitate meetings for Pacheco.

A continued relationship was a geostrategic interest of both militaries.

Later that summer, when Zelaya snuck back into Honduras and took refuge at the Brazilian embassy, U.S. diplomats intervened to ensure it was Pacheco who acted as “the key point of contact.”

Zelaya was not restored to office. In November of that year, the U.S. ended up backing controversial elections that were boycotted by opposition groups and considered illegitimate by most of the region’s governments. With the election, the coup was consolidated, as was the Honduran military’s return to political prominence. The declared winner of the election was Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo of the National Party, which had strong, historic ties to the nation’s military. Pacheco was named director of military intelligence.

The most prominent coup leaders from within the military were removed, and “in general,” wrote the U.S. ambassador, “respected officers have been promoted to positions of importance.” The shakeup would allow “the U.S. to begin to initiate a careful process of reengagement with the Honduran military,” the ambassador wrote to a host of intelligence agencies and other government agencies in Washington.

SINCE THEN, MORE and more evidence has emerged linking senior Honduran officials to drug trafficking. In 2015, Pepe Lobo’s son, Fabio, was arrested in Haiti and quickly sent to the United States. To take down Fabio, U.S. prosecutors again relied on the work of Santos Peña, the Mexican DEA informant. More importantly, in late 2013 Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, the infamous leader of the Honduran criminal organization the Cachiros, quietly reached out to the DEA and began cooperating.

In early March 2017, Maradiaga took the stand during Fabio’s ongoing trial. He told the court that he had given bribes to Pepe Lobo during his 2009 presidential campaign. He also described a meeting with Pepe, Fabio, and others at the president’s residence.

“[Pepe] said not to worry,” Maradiaga testified, “that if anything were to happen that we should talk to Juan Gómez, that Juan Gómez in turn would talk to [Fabio Lobo], and then [Fabio Lobo] would get in touch with General Pacheco Tinoco.”

Before his assassination in 2015, Gómez was governor of Colón, a rural Honduran department at the heart of the Cachiros’s drug trafficking enterprise. During the mid-2000s, when the enterprise began to boom, Pacheco led a military battalion stationed there. He and Gómez met nearly every week. The day of one of their meetings, Fabio called Pacheco from his father’s house and told him he would come by later that day, according to Maradiaga.

Maradiaga and Fabio became close. Maradiaga told prosecutors that he considered Fabio a member of the Cachiros. In the fall of 2013, just before beginning his cooperation with the DEA, Maradiaga told Fabio of an incoming shipment of more than 1,000 kilos of cocaine. “I knew that having him with me, everything would go well and I felt better supported if I was with the president’s son,” he testified. With his security detail of military police officers, Fabio drove to Tocoa, in Colón, to meet the shipment.

Maradiaga claims to have paid Fabio $50,000. “He asked me whether I could pay him a little bit more because he needed to give him — give more money to the boss, and I knew who that was,” Maradiaga testified. The boss was “General Pacheco,” he said.

In June 2014, Fabio and Maradiaga met at a body shop in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second city. A white Hummer was in the shop and Maradiaga suggested that this would be a perfect gift for one of their friends in the police. Fabio allegedly called Pacheco and sent him a photo of the car.

It was just weeks later when Fabio and the Mexican DEA informant visited Pacheco. The meeting was recorded. “We wanted to come here with something illegal. You know?” the informant began, after exchanging pleasantries, “Of course, we just want your, your authorization and consent.”

“What type of work?” Pacheco asked.

“Um, we want to come here with merchandise, with drugs.”

The minister of security, a licensed attorney, did not fall for the absurdly obvious ruse. “No, it’s not much,” Fabio tried to reassure him. Pacheco excused himself and exited the room.

Less than six months later, the recently elected Juan Orlando Hernández, also of the National Party, named Gen. Pacheco Security Minister. He was the first active-duty military officer to be named to the post. At the request of the U.S. Embassy, and following a strong outcry by human rights groups, Pacheco retired from the military.

Pacheco categorically rejected the “ill-intentioned” and “unfounded” allegations when Maradiaga’s testimony went public. The drug trafficker was attempting to secure favorable treatment from the United States and undermine the Honduran government’s efforts to crack down on criminal activity, Pacheco said.

In September, Fabio Lobo was sentenced to 24 years in prison. “I want to apologize to the government of the United States,” he said, “and especially to my father, who has nothing to do with this.” Now, it may be the current Honduran president, controversially standing for reelection November 26, whose family is in legal trouble.

Maradiaga has turned over to the DEA a recorded conversation he had with Honduran lawmaker Tony Hernández, the brother of President Juan Orlando Hernández. According to Maradiaga’s testimony, the two discussed funneling government monies to a Cachiro-controlled front company in return for bribes.

Last month, the allegations reached the president himself. The New York Times reported that Maradiaga had given U.S. authorities another recording from 2013 in which a drug trafficker said he “made a $250,000 payment intended for Juan Orlando Hernández.”A Hernández representative denied the charges to the Times, and in what was either an incredibly honest or naïve response to a local paper, the president’s chief of staff said:

If we’re going to look at how organized crime has permeated society in general and funneled money, placed deputies, placed judges, various offices, within the attorney general’s office and everywhere, hold on to your seats, because we’re talking about all colors here.

The takeover of the Honduran government hasn’t stopped the United States from continuing its support for Honduras. Earlier this year, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly referred to Hernández as a “great guy” and a “good friend.” Kelly was the head of the Pentagon’s Latin American subsidiary U.S. Southern Command under the Obama administration. Hernández told the press that relations were now “probably better than ever.”

Eager to try to improve its image internationally, the Honduran government has initiated a police reform process with financial support from the United States and other international donors. At least 14 drug trafficking suspects have recently been extradited to the United States.

But the Honduran government appears to be selective regarding which individuals involved in drug trafficking should be handed to U.S. authorities. Last month, it was reported that Ramon Matta Waldurraga had turned himself over to the DEA in August. He is the son of Ballesteros, the Honduran trafficker rendered to the US in 1988.

Pacheco told the press that the government had no arrest warrant or extradition request for Matta Waldurraga, though the United States later unsealed a 2014 indictment on money laundering and drug trafficking charges. Like his father before him, Waldurraga’s testimony threatens to implicate military and political actors across Honduras.

And so the Honduran government remains on the defensive.


ON MARCH 3, 2016, world-renowned environmental activist Berta Caceres was assassinated. A numbed of suspects have been arrested, including at least one U.S.-trained member of the Honduran military. But more than a year later, those who laid the groundwork for it remain free.

Caceres was the general coordinator of the National Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH. With Caceres at its head, COPINH had led the struggle against a large hydroelectric project in rural Honduras. The company, COPINH has argued, failed to consult with the local population as required by Honduran law.

The concession for the dam was awarded under the post-coup government in 2010. The company building the dam, DESA, counts some of Honduras’ richest and most powerful as investors.

Blocked from accessing the vast majority of the criminal file, and in the absence of an independent investigation, relatives of Caceres arranged for a group of international human rights lawyers to conduct their own. The report from the International Advisory Group of Experts (GAIPE) was released on October 31 in Tegucigalpa.

The team analyzed many gigabytes of data drawn from cell phones and computers of some of those involved, though it was still just a small portion of the full case file. Still, the report found WhatsApp messages suggesting a well-orchestrated conspiracy to assassinate Caceres that had lasted many months. The Honduran government had been sitting on the evidence for more than a year.

The authors of the report presented their findings to members of Congress in Washington, D.C., in early November.

“There is now little doubt about the identities of at least some of the intellectual authors who conceived of and paid for the assassination of Berta Caceres,” Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, noted in a statement submitted to the congressional record. Yet, he added, “the Public Ministry has failed to act on this evidence, perhaps because it implicates DESA executives with ties to officials in the Honduran Government.”

The lack of accountability and unwillingness of the Honduran government to properly investigate the crime has put continued U.S. assistance “in jeopardy,” he said.

At the time of the assassination, Pacheco was security sinister. Two weeks after the report was released, more recent WhatsApp messages were leaked. They are allegedly from Pacheco. (Pacheco didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Intercept.)

In the messages, Pacheco complained about protective measures that have been decreed for members of COPINH and the cost to the government, though the vast majority have yet to be implemented. Pacheco referred to those whose lives have been threatened as a “mountain of moochers that take shelter behind the human rights banner.”

“This undermines peace and tranquility,” he continued, “this undermines national and international investment.”

In the coming weeks, the State Department is expected to let congressional appropriators know whether it considers that Honduras has complied with certain anticorruption and drug trafficking obligations attached to the majority of U.S. assistance to the country.

But back in early November, before the WhatsApp messages — and at the same time as Caceres’ family was presenting its findings — Pacheco was also in Washington.

Police officers from the anti-drug squad in Tegucigalpa on October 7, 2010 look after a load of 500 kilos of cocaine seized from traffickers during a joint operation by the Honduran Police, the Army and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in Brus Laguna, Mosquitia, Honduras. AFP PHOTO/Orlando SIERRA (Photo credit should read ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images)
Police officers from the anti-drug squad in Tegucigalpa on Oct. 7, 2010 look after a load of 500 kilos of cocaine seized from traffickers during a joint operation by the Honduran Police, the Army and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in Brus Laguna, Mosquitia, Honduras. Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images
TOGETHER WITH MEMBERS of the police reform commission, Pacheco held high-level meetings with State Department staff and key congressional offices. On November 2, the delegation participated in a public event at the partially congressionally funded Woodrow Wilson Center, housed in the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington.

At the very end of the two-hour event, an attendee, Christiam Sánchez, confronted Pacheco over his alleged role in drug trafficking. Pacheco “should be presenting his resignation and making himself available to authorities that are part of the investigation,” Sánchez said to the packed room. “How can you continue to be a part of the police reform process?” he asked Pacheco.

“I was serving the son of the ex-president,” Pacheco said about meeting with the now-jailed Fabio and the Mexican DEA informant, “and if I had to, I would do that again.”

“If I were a ‘narco’ like Christiam is saying,” he told the crowd, “I would not be seated here.”

Top photo: Members of the Honduran Directorate for the Fight against Drug Trafficking (DLCN) and the Military Police take part in an operation to seize 32 real estate, 15 vehicles and nine commercial companies of six Honduran police officers charged in absentia in New York late last month, in Tegucigalpa on July 14, 2016. The police officers were indicted in a cocaine smuggling and weapons conspiracy linked to a son of the troubled country’s former president. The six defendants were charged a month after Fabio Lobo, son of former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, pled guilty to conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. U.S. prosecutors say the officers agreed to give cocaine safe passage through Honduras in exchange for nearly $1 million in bribes from purported Mexican drug smugglers, who were in fact undercover U.S. agents.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.sj-r.com/news/20171129/siu-r ... ized-tests


Herpes researcher conducted unauthorized tests

The State Journal-Register’s Dean Olsen received a copy of report from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s institutional review board that had some chilling conclusions: The report found a scientist “conducted unethical and potentially illegal testing of his experimental genital herpes vaccine on patients.”

Over a third of the report was blacked out pending law enforcement action, but the details included were still shocking. What’s perhaps equally shocking is all the old quotations Olsen dug up, praising the scientist for being “meticulous” and expressing confidence that all procedures were being followed.

The unauthorized tests came before Olsen did more human trials in St. Kitts. Read the full story, and the full documents that Olsen posted.



http://files.sj-r.com/media/news/DOlsen ... 272017.pdf


https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... up-arrest/


http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2017 ... -more.html


Monday, November 20, 2017
UN says Afghanistan produced 87% more opium than last year, for its biggest harvest ever. Expect a bigger supply and lower prices on the street.
In a report just issued (November 2017) by the United Nations Office on Drug Control, we learn that Afghanistan had a huge, bumper crop of opium in 2017. Its biggest ever. And if you read the details of the methods used to estimate the amount of opium produced, you will see that there is a large amount of guesswork, and the amount available for overseas distribution might be considerably greater than estimated.

https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-mo ... od_web.pdf

Pages 7, 8

"Key Findings:

Area under opium poppy cultivation increased by 63% since 2016, reaching a new record high...

Opium poppy cultivation expanded to new regions and intensified where there was cultivation before…

Total eradication of opium poppy increased by 395 hectares but remained very low...

Potential opium yield and production increased in 2017 Potential opium production was estimated at 9,000 tons in 2017, an increase of 87% from its 2016 level (4,800 tons). The increase in production is mainly a result of an increase in area under opium poppy cultivation, while an increase in opium yield per hectare also contributed. In 2017, the average opium yield amounted to 27.3 kilograms per hectare, which was 15% higher than in 2016…"

A graph of the area in hectares used to grow opium poppies in Afghanistan from 1994-present is on page 15 of the report. As I noted previously, a US CIA/military presence in Afghanistan has historically corresponded to increased opium production.

-----------------

Today, Nov 20, it was announced at a press conference that US and Afghan military forces have launched attacks on Taliban opium factories.

"U.S. Army General John Nicholson showed videos at a press conference of targeted aerial strikes against what he described as Taliban drug factories. “Last night we conducted strikes in northern Helmand to hit the Taliban where it hurts, in their narcotics financing,” said Nicholson, flanked by Afghan Army Lieutenant General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali…"
https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/ ... K1QU-OCATP





http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/12/0 ... 9529f84e39\

HPD reviewing policy on marijuana and guns
By Kristen Consillio
Posted on December 1, 2017 12:05 am
The Honolulu Police Department is reviewing a controversial policy that requires legal marijuana patients to turn in their firearms. Read More




https://apnews.com/ccdcca76672a4f35b200 ... n-sentence
Officer who shot, killed unarmed man set to learn sentence


https:/
COLUMBIA, S.C.

A former South Carolina police officer will soon learn how long he’ll spend in prison for the shooting death - captured on video by a witness - of an unarmed motorist.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin in Charleston on Monday for Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer in jail since pleading guilty in May to violating Scott’s civil rights. Scott was black. Slager is white.

The Scott family last year reached a $6.5 million settlement with the city of North Charleston. Slager, 36, pulled Scott over on April 4, 2015, for a broken brake light. The officer said he shot the 50-year-old black motorist in self-defense when Scott tried to grab his Taser.

But a bystander with a cellphone captured the shooting on video that contradicted Slager’s version of events. The video showed Scott getting about 17 feet from Slager before the officer fired eight times at his back. Scott then crumples to the ground, struck by five bullets as he ran away.

State prosecutors went after Slager on murder charges, but a panel of 11 white jurors and one black juror deadlocked last year after 22 hours of deliberations over four days. At one point, a juror sent a letter directly to the judge saying he could not “with good conscience approve a guilty verdict” and that he was unlikely to change his mind.

While that case was ongoing, federal authorities pursued a parallel investigation against Slager on civil rights charges. Solicitor Scarlett Wilson had planned to bring a second case against Slager later this year, but those charges were dropped as part of his federal plea deal.

In Slager’s federal sentencing, which could last several days, a judge will determine if Scott’s shooting was voluntary manslaughter or murder. Prosecutors have argued for the latter determination, which would make Slager eligible for a life sentence.

In court filings, Slager’s attorneys have argued the government has continued to pursue a murder case against their client “to accomplish their unreasonable goal to have Slager spend the remainder of his life in prison.” In their own filings, prosecutors said the shooting death did constitute murder, arguing that Slager had malicious intentions when he shot Scott.

From his law officer training, Slager knew he was prohibited from using lethal force against Scott because doing so “against an unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing subject was a gross-deviation from reasonable conduct,” thus satisfying the “malice” element of second-degree murder, prosecutors have said.

Slager’s attorneys also asked for a reduction in his possible sentence, saying that, due to the nature of his case, he had a “high susceptibility of prison abuse.” During the prosecution against him, Slager’s attorneys noted, the former officer’s home was set on fire, and his family since moved to another location.

Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the Scott family, said he felt Slager’s actions warranted a life sentence but that his clients would never truly get closure.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ob ... 1ed1921220

Les Whitten, investigative reporter arrested by FBI and spied on by CIA, dies at 89

As Anderson’s chief deputy — or “senior ferret,” as New York Times journalist Tom Buckley once dubbed him — Mr. Whitten was handed assignments that included spying on the private lives of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his top aide, Clyde Tolson. Another reporter was assigned to dig through Hoover’s trash.

Just as often, however, Mr. Whitten and Anderson were on the receiving end of spying efforts, targeted by the Nixon administration for their critical coverage of the White House and leaks of government documents. The duo were trailed by the CIA, and at one point, Nixon associates G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt plotted to assassinate Anderson using LSD or what Liddy later described as “Aspirin Roulette.”

The idea of placing poisoned aspirin in the Anderson family’s medicine cabinet was rejected, Liddy wrote in a memoir, because “it would gratuitously endanger innocent members of his family and might take months before it worked.” He and Hunt were soon assigned to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

Mr. Whitten was nearly the subject of a major First Amendment case in 1973, when he was arrested by a squad of FBI agents in downtown Washington as he helped a source load boxes of stolen government documents into his car.













http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/son ... -1.3672985

Ex-FDNY commissioner's son, who quit as EMT in disgrace over racist tweets, to become a firefighter

Updated: Saturday, December 2, 2017, 6:38 PM






https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2 ... 913532001/

A top black female cop's complaint
Cincinnati police union President Dan Hils disparaged a supervisor to her officers and bragged that he "kicked her a--" when he arrested her 25 years ago, an officer has alleged.

The Cincinnati Police Department is conducting an internal investigation, department officials confirmed.

Lt. Danita Pettis is the third-shift commander at District 4 in Avondale and was off this past Sunday night when Hils, the sergeant who leads the local Fraternal Order of Police, spoke at roll call. About 13 officers were present.

A top black female cop's complaint against union chief Dan Hils is investigated


6:32 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 2017
Cincinnati police union President Dan Hils disparaged a supervisor to her officers and bragged that he "kicked her a--" when he arrested her 25 years ago, an officer has alleged.

The Cincinnati Police Department is conducting an internal investigation, department officials confirmed.

Lt. Danita Pettis is the third-shift commander at District 4 in Avondale and was off this past Sunday night when Hils, the sergeant who leads the local Fraternal Order of Police, spoke at roll call. About 13 offic













http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/s ... -1.4415064


Canada's largest school board votes to end armed police presence in schools
TDSB trustees voted 18-3 to cancel the controversial school resource officer program, 1 didn't vote
By Shanifa Nasser, CBC News Posted: Nov 22, 2017 9:26 PM ET Last Updated: Nov 22, 2017 11:18 PM ET







https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/02/black ... ming-book/





Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors on government surveillance and her upcoming book






Next Story


In the last year, members of the government have accused the Black Lives Matter organization of being a terrorist organization, calling those associated with it “Black Identity Extremists.” An August FBI report, called “Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement Officers,” broadly categorized black activists as a threat to national security.

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, described it to TechCrunch as COINTELPRO 2.0. COINTELPRO was a federal surveillance program that targeted civil rights leaders like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and members of the Black Panther Party. In the present day, methods of government surveillance can entail anything from social media monitoring to the gathering of location data.

“We take this really seriously, but we’ve seen this before,” Cullors told me. “The unfortunate reality is black folks during the 50s, 60s, 70s didn’t have social media. They didn’t have the advantage to know the FBI and CIA are spying on them. We are realizing it in real time.”

While reports like that are”deeply disturbing,” Cullors said, Black Lives Matter is in a time where its movement is alive and well. For example, LA’s Black Lives Matter chapter is currently taking on the district attorney, who has yet to prosecute a single officer for the murder of black residents.

“Our DA has not prosecuted one cop,” Cullors said. “Black Lives Matter LA is really holding our district attorney’s feet to the fire.”

Over in Toronto, the Black Lives Matter chapter recently won its fight to get cops permanently out of schools in the city. The Toronto District School Board launched a School Resource Officer program in 2008, which brought police officers into schools. Following criticism and calls to remove the police officers from Black Lives Matter and other activists, the school board voted late last month to end the program.

“We are in this movement moment where over 40 chapters across the globe are engaged in campaign activities, winning new policies for black people,” Cullors said. “Our decentralized, localized leadership structure has really allowed for Black Lives Matter structures in their own communities to take on the state and take on some of the most egregious acts against black people.”

Cullors said she is also pleased with the response of some black government officials. Cullors pointed to how Representative Karen Bass grilled Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the FBI report on “black identity extremists” during an oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in November.

Next year, Cullors has plans to go on a book tour for her upcoming memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, co-authored with asha bandele. Her goal with the book is for it to sell at least 250,000 copies in the first year and “reach as many folks as possible,” she said.

“This book is for young black girls around the world,” Cullors said. “Those of us who have lived through state violence and over-policing — for black girls who have witnessed family members die because of the war on drugs and incarceration. It’s my offering to this generation to tell another story about black activists and









Link du jour

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainmen ... 59413.html



http://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/ ... egal-drugs

simpleton
captain of 1,000
Posts: 3074

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by simpleton »

And so it goes..... And I suppose most of us just look the other way as we do not want our way of life to be disrupted.... And probably also most of us don't even want to know or believe that these secret combinations have gotten above us... And I also think that to some degree or another they have infiltrated even into our church, as how can any multi billion dollar corporation escape the claws of that massive combination....

Quoted countless times, but, it's good to get refreshed again...
"And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations, to get power and gain, until they shall spread over the nation, behold, they shall be destroyed; for the Lord will not suffer that the blood of his saints, which shall be shed by them, shall always cry unto him from the ground for vengeance upon them and yet he avenge them not.

23 Wherefore, O ye Gentiles, it is wisdom in God that these things should be shown unto you, that thereby ye may repent of your sins, and suffer not that these murderous combinations shall get above you, which are built up to get power and gain—and the work, yea, even the work of destruction come upon you, yea, even the sword of the justice of the Eternal God shall fall upon you, to your overthrow and destruction if ye shall suffer these things to be.

24 Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation, because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or wo be unto it, because of the blood of them who have been slain; for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who built it up.

25 For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries; and it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the devil, who is the father of all lies; even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning; who hath hardened the hearts of men that they have murdered the prophets, and stoned them, and cast them out from the beginning.

26 Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved".....

The two ways... One, to be persuaded to do good continually, to forget oneself in the service of our fellow man, and two, to be persuaded by money, power, position, self aggrandizement to the service of self at the expense and murder of our fellow man.
What a complete opposite way of life, one leads to eternal life and the other leads to death and misery of the soul..
We are so caught up in the mad money race of Babylon that I suppose most of us do not even see the consequences of our daily business life transactions that IMO, make us candidates of that secret combination.
The survival of the fittest, that is the business motto, you better learn how to swim in Babylon, or you will financially sink on your own....

Hence if Christ was to come amoung us in our "great" financial empire that we have built up in America to get power and gain, as he did amoung the Jews, we would have Him arrested and jailed on conspiracy charges just like they did to Joseph. And then conspire to murder Him as His ways are in complete opposition to ours here in America under existing economic conditions...

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.dunwalke.com/resources/events.htm


Testimony of William Duncan Hearing before the Commerce, Consumer, and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Second Congress, First Session, July 24, 1991
Deposition of William Duncan Excerpts—What Really Happened at Mena (1991)
Boys on the Tracks by Mara Leveritt; also see Mara Leveritt's web site and Linda Ives' web site
Who was that Ex-President I Saw You With Last Night? by Sam Smith (Scoop Media, February 14, 2005)
The Clinton Scandals by Sam Smith (See Mena Section)
The Crimes of Mena by Roger Morris and Sally Denton and Arkansas Drug Expose Misses the Post by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (January 29, 1995)
Barry and the Boys: The CIA, the Mob & America's Secret History by Daniel Hopsicker

Laundering Money in Arkansas
The Mystery of the "Lost" Mena Report; Gray Money: the Continued Cover-Up by Mark Swaney (August 2001)
What Really Happened Mena is no Myth!

South Central LA


CIA Director John Deutch in South Central LA, November 1996
(Photo C-Span)

Memorandum of Understanding between Department of Justice and CIA From February 1982 to August 1995 (Congressional Record, May 7, 1998 [Page: H2970])
Dark Alliance - The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb, (Seven Stories Press, 1999) See also his August 1996 series of Dark Alliance articles published in the San Jose Mercury News
Transcript: Town Hall meeting between residents of South Central and other areas of Los Angeles and CIA Director John Deutch hosted by Rep. Juanita M. McDonald (D-California, 37th District) on Friday, November 15, 1996, at Locke High School in Los Angeles
Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey Sinclair
Watching Too Much Television - Tony Soprano HUD Fraud (Video/HBO) The Sopranos Episode 46 4th Season Disc 2 #7 - Brian lays out a way to use bogus real estate deals to con money out of the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ... reality or fiction?
Map of Properties with Defaulted HUD Mortgages—South Central LA A 1-page map created by Edgewood Technology Services using place-based software
Map of Properties with Defaulted HUD Mortgages—Washington A 1-page map created by Edgewood Technology Services using place-based software
Map of Properties with Defaulted HUD Mortgages—New Orleans A 1-page map created by Edgewood Technology Services using place-based software
Former Bush Assistant Secretary for HUD Reveals “Ethnic Cleansing” Connected to CIA Drug Dealing in Los Angeles Government Spends Millions in Campaign to Silence Former Wall Street Banker, Cover Up Connections to Dark Alliance Stories & CIA Inspector General Report on Drug Trafficking (From the Wilderness, May 1999)
Sporkin Hotseat - Internet Hotseat
CIA Inspector General Report on Dark Alliance Allegations Vol 1 / Vol 2
News: Surprise hearings in House Intelligence Committee Backfire on CIA; Maxine Waters not alone in criticizing Agency; More hearings certain by Mike Ruppert (From the Wilderness Publications, March 16, 1998)
A Witness List for House Hearings on Volume II of the CIA's Inspector General's Report on CIA Drug Trafficking by Michael C. Ruppert (From the Wilderness Publications, 1999)
Relevant Excerpts–Volume Two of the CIA Inspector General’s Report of Investigation into Contra Drug Trafficking (released Oct. 8, 1998) Edited with Notes by Michael C. Ruppert
Volume Two of CIA Inspector General's Drug Report Released??? A CIA Confession—Oliver North Exposed by Michael C. Ruppert (From the Wilderness, October 21, 1998)
See End of Article: Millis, Ruff and Dixon All Dead–Three Players in CIA Drug for Impeachment Deal by Michael C. Ruppert (From the Wilderness, May 6, 2002)
CIA Cover-Up Meister Rewarded with Princeton Job by Uri Dowbenko
Don’t Blink: All Promises Broken—Volume II Hearings Held Without Notice—Behind Closed Doors by Mike Ruppert
Warren & Doss vs CIA - US District Court, Central District of California (March 15, 1999)










http://www.sj-r.com/news/20171129/siu-r ... ized-tests


Herpes researcher conducted unauthorized tests

The State Journal-Register’s Dean Olsen received a copy of report from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s institutional review board that had some chilling conclusions: The report found a scientist “conducted unethical and potentially illegal testing of his experimental genital herpes vaccine on patients.”

Over a third of the report was blacked out pending law enforcement action, but the details included were still shocking. What’s perhaps equally shocking is all the old quotations Olsen dug up, praising the scientist for being “meticulous” and expressing confidence that all procedures were being followed.

The unauthorized tests came before Olsen did more human trials in St. Kitts. Read the full story, and the full documents that Olsen posted.



http://files.sj-r.com/media/news/DOlsen ... 272017.pdf


https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/ ... up-arrest/


http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2017 ... -more.html


Monday, November 20, 2017
UN says Afghanistan produced 87% more opium than last year, for its biggest harvest ever. Expect a bigger supply and lower prices on the street.
In a report just issued (November 2017) by the United Nations Office on Drug Control, we learn that Afghanistan had a huge, bumper crop of opium in 2017. Its biggest ever. And if you read the details of the methods used to estimate the amount of opium produced, you will see that there is a large amount of guesswork, and the amount available for overseas distribution might be considerably greater than estimated.

https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-mo ... od_web.pdf

Pages 7, 8

"Key Findings:

Area under opium poppy cultivation increased by 63% since 2016, reaching a new record high...

Opium poppy cultivation expanded to new regions and intensified where there was cultivation before…

Total eradication of opium poppy increased by 395 hectares but remained very low...

Potential opium yield and production increased in 2017 Potential opium production was estimated at 9,000 tons in 2017, an increase of 87% from its 2016 level (4,800 tons). The increase in production is mainly a result of an increase in area under opium poppy cultivation, while an increase in opium yield per hectare also contributed. In 2017, the average opium yield amounted to 27.3 kilograms per hectare, which was 15% higher than in 2016…"

A graph of the area in hectares used to grow opium poppies in Afghanistan from 1994-present is on page 15 of the report. As I noted previously, a US CIA/military presence in Afghanistan has historically corresponded to increased opium production.

-----------------

Today, Nov 20, it was announced at a press conference that US and Afghan military forces have launched attacks on Taliban opium factories.

"U.S. Army General John Nicholson showed videos at a press conference of targeted aerial strikes against what he described as Taliban drug factories. “Last night we conducted strikes in northern Helmand to hit the Taliban where it hurts, in their narcotics financing,” said Nicholson, flanked by Afghan Army Lieutenant General Mohammad Sharif Yaftali…"
https://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/ ... K1QU-OCATP





http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/12/0 ... 9529f84e39\

HPD reviewing policy on marijuana and guns
By Kristen Consillio
Posted on December 1, 2017 12:05 am
The Honolulu Police Department is reviewing a controversial policy that requires legal marijuana patients to turn in their firearms. Read More




https://apnews.com/ccdcca76672a4f35b200 ... n-sentence
Officer who shot, killed unarmed man set to learn sentence


https:/
COLUMBIA, S.C.

A former South Carolina police officer will soon learn how long he’ll spend in prison for the shooting death - captured on video by a witness - of an unarmed motorist.

A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin in Charleston on Monday for Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer in jail since pleading guilty in May to violating Scott’s civil rights. Scott was black. Slager is white.

The Scott family last year reached a $6.5 million settlement with the city of North Charleston. Slager, 36, pulled Scott over on April 4, 2015, for a broken brake light. The officer said he shot the 50-year-old black motorist in self-defense when Scott tried to grab his Taser.

But a bystander with a cellphone captured the shooting on video that contradicted Slager’s version of events. The video showed Scott getting about 17 feet from Slager before the officer fired eight times at his back. Scott then crumples to the ground, struck by five bullets as he ran away.

State prosecutors went after Slager on murder charges, but a panel of 11 white jurors and one black juror deadlocked last year after 22 hours of deliberations over four days. At one point, a juror sent a letter directly to the judge saying he could not “with good conscience approve a guilty verdict” and that he was unlikely to change his mind.

While that case was ongoing, federal authorities pursued a parallel investigation against Slager on civil rights charges. Solicitor Scarlett Wilson had planned to bring a second case against Slager later this year, but those charges were dropped as part of his federal plea deal.

In Slager’s federal sentencing, which could last several days, a judge will determine if Scott’s shooting was voluntary manslaughter or murder. Prosecutors have argued for the latter determination, which would make Slager eligible for a life sentence.

In court filings, Slager’s attorneys have argued the government has continued to pursue a murder case against their client “to accomplish their unreasonable goal to have Slager spend the remainder of his life in prison.” In their own filings, prosecutors said the shooting death did constitute murder, arguing that Slager had malicious intentions when he shot Scott.

From his law officer training, Slager knew he was prohibited from using lethal force against Scott because doing so “against an unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing subject was a gross-deviation from reasonable conduct,” thus satisfying the “malice” element of second-degree murder, prosecutors have said.

Slager’s attorneys also asked for a reduction in his possible sentence, saying that, due to the nature of his case, he had a “high susceptibility of prison abuse.” During the prosecution against him, Slager’s attorneys noted, the former officer’s home was set on fire, and his family since moved to another location.

Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the Scott family, said he felt Slager’s actions warranted a life sentence but that his clients would never truly get closure.





https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ob ... 1ed1921220

Les Whitten, investigative reporter arrested by FBI and spied on by CIA, dies at 89

As Anderson’s chief deputy — or “senior ferret,” as New York Times journalist Tom Buckley once dubbed him — Mr. Whitten was handed assignments that included spying on the private lives of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his top aide, Clyde Tolson. Another reporter was assigned to dig through Hoover’s trash.

Just as often, however, Mr. Whitten and Anderson were on the receiving end of spying efforts, targeted by the Nixon administration for their critical coverage of the White House and leaks of government documents. The duo were trailed by the CIA, and at one point, Nixon associates G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt plotted to assassinate Anderson using LSD or what Liddy later described as “Aspirin Roulette.”

The idea of placing poisoned aspirin in the Anderson family’s medicine cabinet was rejected, Liddy wrote in a memoir, because “it would gratuitously endanger innocent members of his family and might take months before it worked.” He and Hunt were soon assigned to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel.

Mr. Whitten was nearly the subject of a major First Amendment case in 1973, when he was arrested by a squad of FBI agents in downtown Washington as he helped a source load boxes of stolen government documents into his car.













http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/son ... -1.3672985

Ex-FDNY commissioner's son, who quit as EMT in disgrace over racist tweets, to become a firefighter

Updated: Saturday, December 2, 2017, 6:38 PM






https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2 ... 913532001/

A top black female cop's complaint
Cincinnati police union President Dan Hils disparaged a supervisor to her officers and bragged that he "kicked her a--" when he arrested her 25 years ago, an officer has alleged.

The Cincinnati Police Department is conducting an internal investigation, department officials confirmed.

Lt. Danita Pettis is the third-shift commander at District 4 in Avondale and was off this past Sunday night when Hils, the sergeant who leads the local Fraternal Order of Police, spoke at roll call. About 13 officers were present.

A top black female cop's complaint against union chief Dan Hils is investigated


6:32 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 2017
Cincinnati police union President Dan Hils disparaged a supervisor to her officers and bragged that he "kicked her a--" when he arrested her 25 years ago, an officer has alleged.

The Cincinnati Police Department is conducting an internal investigation, department officials confirmed.

Lt. Danita Pettis is the third-shift commander at District 4 in Avondale and was off this past Sunday night when Hils, the sergeant who leads the local Fraternal Order of Police, spoke at roll call. About 13 offic













http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/s ... -1.4415064


Canada's largest school board votes to end armed police presence in schools
TDSB trustees voted 18-3 to cancel the controversial school resource officer program, 1 didn't vote
By Shanifa Nasser, CBC News Posted: Nov 22, 2017 9:26 PM ET Last Updated: Nov 22, 2017 11:18 PM ET







https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/02/black ... ming-book/





Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors on government surveillance and her upcoming book






Next Story


In the last year, members of the government have accused the Black Lives Matter organization of being a terrorist organization, calling those associated with it “Black Identity Extremists.” An August FBI report, called “Black Identity Extremists Likely Motivated to Target Law Enforcement Officers,” broadly categorized black activists as a threat to national security.

Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, described it to TechCrunch as COINTELPRO 2.0. COINTELPRO was a federal surveillance program that targeted civil rights leaders like Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and members of the Black Panther Party. In the present day, methods of government surveillance can entail anything from social media monitoring to the gathering of location data.

“We take this really seriously, but we’ve seen this before,” Cullors told me. “The unfortunate reality is black folks during the 50s, 60s, 70s didn’t have social media. They didn’t have the advantage to know the FBI and CIA are spying on them. We are realizing it in real time.”

While reports like that are”deeply disturbing,” Cullors said, Black Lives Matter is in a time where its movement is alive and well. For example, LA’s Black Lives Matter chapter is currently taking on the district attorney, who has yet to prosecute a single officer for the murder of black residents.

“Our DA has not prosecuted one cop,” Cullors said. “Black Lives Matter LA is really holding our district attorney’s feet to the fire.”

Over in Toronto, the Black Lives Matter chapter recently won its fight to get cops permanently out of schools in the city. The Toronto District School Board launched a School Resource Officer program in 2008, which brought police officers into schools. Following criticism and calls to remove the police officers from Black Lives Matter and other activists, the school board voted late last month to end the program.

“We are in this movement moment where over 40 chapters across the globe are engaged in campaign activities, winning new policies for black people,” Cullors said. “Our decentralized, localized leadership structure has really allowed for Black Lives Matter structures in their own communities to take on the state and take on some of the most egregious acts against black people.”

Cullors said she is also pleased with the response of some black government officials. Cullors pointed to how Representative Karen Bass grilled Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the FBI report on “black identity extremists” during an oversight hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in November.

Next year, Cullors has plans to go on a book tour for her upcoming memoir, When They Call You a Terrorist, co-authored with asha bandele. Her goal with the book is for it to sell at least 250,000 copies in the first year and “reach as many folks as possible,” she said.

“This book is for young black girls around the world,” Cullors said. “Those of us who have lived through state violence and over-policing — for black girls who have witnessed family members die because of the war on drugs and incarceration. It’s my offering to this generation to tell another story about black activists and









Link du jour

http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainmen ... 59413.html



http://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/ ... egal-drugs
[/quote]

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

3 stories
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/26/hon ... testimony/


TOP U.S.-BACKED HONDURAN SECURITY MINISTER IS RUNNING DRUGS, ACCORDING TO COURT TESTIMONY
Jake Johnston
November 26 2017, 8:29 a.m.



also see

https://apnews.com/0cc4031c058545fb9247 ... -move-coke



Secret report: Honduras’ new top cop helped cartel move coke


MEXICO CITY
When Jose David Aguilar Moran took over as Honduras’ new national police chief last week, he promised to continue reforming a law enforcement agency stained by corruption and complicity with drug cartels.

But a confidential Honduran government security report obtained by the Associated Press says Aguilar himself helped a cartel leader pull off the delivery of nearly a ton of cocaine in 2013.

The clandestine haul of more than 1,700 pounds of cocaine was packed inside a tanker truck that, the report says, was being escorted by corrupt police officers to the home of Wilter Blanco, a drug trafficker recently convicted in Florida and now serving a 20-year sentence.


Aguilar, who at the time was serving as chief of intelligence for Honduras’ National Police, intervened after a police official safeguarding the drugs was busted by a lower-ranked officer who had seized the tanker, the report says. The handcuffed officer called Aguilar, who ordered that the officer and the tanker be set free, says the report which was prepared by the Honduran Security Ministry’s Inspector General.

The U.S. street value of the cocaine involved could have topped $20 million.

The incident raises questions about Honduras’ much-touted purge of corrupt police and the reliability of the administration of President Juan Orlando Hernandez, a key U.S. ally in the war on drugs.

On Friday, Omar Rivera, a member of the special commission that says it has purged more than 4,000 members of the National Police for reasons ranging from corruption to restructuring and voluntary retirement, held a press conference alongside a spokesman for the National Police.

They said the National Police did not have a document that corresponded to the number on the AP’s report, something police spokesman Jair Meza had told the AP on Jan. 15.

Government authorities have often had difficulties in recent years locating information in police archives. Members of the government commission, including Rivera, have said publicly since it started its work in 2016 that the Security Ministry archives were in disarray and that some police officers assigned to the archives have worked to disappear files or wipe them clean of incriminating details.

Rivera said the commission would again look at Aguilar, his deputy and the new police inspector general. “Starting today they will be subjected to a rigorous re-evaluation process to show their suitability for the positions they hold,” he said.


As Hernandez swore in his new police chief, local media reported that he said Aguilar was chosen “with the utmost confidence” and would lead “a National Police that becomes a role model for the region.”

“We are in a process of transforming the National Police, with a huge investment of financial resources,” the president said.

Aguilar, 54, vowed to instruct his officers “to follow the law and make sure the law is followed,” said local reports.

Asked about the incident, the Honduran government issued a lengthy statement saying that the investigative report is fake and doesn’t correspond to any “official communication from the Honduras Police.” The AP has not shared the document with the government due to security concerns but described its contents.

The statement also said the allegations against the police high command “lack veracity” and demanded that the news media verify information before creating “false scoops” that damage the institution and its employees.

But an ex-member of the National Police with knowledge of the investigation confirmed officials found that top officers conspired to cover up the incident, and that the handcuffed officer was later put on leave. Three other current and former high-ranking Honduran police officials confirmed elements of the report. All four spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of violent reprisals.

In addition to the report, the AP confirmed the story using other internal memos and a page from Aguilar’s personnel file summarizing his alleged participation.

Aguilar did not respond to requests from AP for comment. In public remarks Jan. 15, he said he would work to strengthen cooperation among his nation’s police and judicial agencies and make sure that officers serving under him would act with “respect for human rights.”

The inspector general’s office began its inquiry in early 2014, just as the United States was ramping up funding for collaborative anti-drug trafficking efforts in the region. The inspector general’s report blames Aguilar and other commanders for failing to discipline the officers involved and for failing to turn over the investigation to prosecutors and U.S. authorities.

The report alleges that Aguilar and other police officials sat on the case at Blanco’s request and never sent it to prosecutors or the American Embassy, “with the end goal of letting the case expire.”

Former and current U.S. law enforcement officers and a U.S. prosecutor reviewed the document for AP and said it appeared genuine.

Honduras has been an ally of the United States for decades. The strategically positioned Soto Cano Air Base near Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa, served as a center for U.S. efforts to beat back pro-communist movements in Central America in the 1980s, and continues to support regional anti-drug efforts and host a U.S. military presence of about 600 troops.

U.S. aid to Honduras has grown since 2014, when the Obama administration determined that it was in U.S. interests to improve security and strengthen governance in Central America. Since then, Congress has appropriated more than $300 million for Honduras, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service.

Honduras, with a population of more than 9 million, is one of the poorest and most violent countries in Latin America. Much of the country is controlled by criminal gangs. It has endured widespread human rights abuses and impunity at the hands of the police and military for more than a decade. Critics argue that reform efforts backed by the U.S. and the Organization of American States have been ineffective. And in recent weeks, security forces have shot and killed demonstrators protesting a disputed presidential election that handed Hernandez a second term.

U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Hernandez’s re-election last month, and certified the country’s progress in protecting human rights and attacking corruption, clearing the way for Honduras to receive millions of dollars in U.S. funds. The U.S. Senate appropriations committee, however, has put a hold on some of that money.

“There is so much illegal drug money to be made and it is so easy to get away with it, especially if you are in the police force,” U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said earlier this month in reaction to Aguilar’s appointment. “Much more needs to be known about him given the history of the Honduran police and its connections to organized crime, before there can be confidence that he has the integrity to lead that institution.”

Aguilar, a 29-year police veteran, worked his way up, serving as a regional chief along the Caribbean coast and other regions and heading up a national inter-agency security force. At one point he led a police directorate overseeing planning and “continuous improvement.” Earlier this month, Omar Rivera, a member of the government commission responsible for purging corrupt cops, told La Prensa newspaper that Aguilar was a strong candidate because of his “merits and good performance.” But a page of Aguilar’s personnel file, obtained by the AP, includes a disciplinary record summarizing his participation in the 2013 incident, alleging complicity with organized crime and drug traffickers. There’s no indication any action was taken regarding the allegations against him.

The other key player in the inspector general’s report, Blanco, got into drug running as a fisherman, smuggling boat loads of cocaine from one coastal community to another, according to records in the U.S. criminal case against him.

The trafficking grew as Blanco and his armed guards collected shipments of Colombian cocaine on the Honduran shore and took it to his property before it was moved north through Guatemala and Mexico into the U.S., according to a U.S. criminal complaint. When Blanco knew the DEA was onto him, the complaint said, he tried to negotiate a surrender, communicating on text messages that included, as his profile picture on his BlackBerry, a small plane with kilos of cocaine stacked next to it.

Blanco was arrested in 2016 in Costa Rica and extradited to the U.S. He pleaded guilty to conspiring to move 4,000 pounds of cocaine from Colombia to Honduras during a two-month period. It was widely reported in Honduras that Blanco’s arrest had sparked investigations of dozens of police and other political and criminal justice officials, but nothing about any corruption probes relating to Blanco has been publicly revealed. His attorney Victor Rocha told AP that in repeated discussions his client never mentioned police collaborating with his drug smuggling operations.

“If Mr. Blanco-Ruiz is deported to his home nation, he may well be murdered shortly thereafter in retaliation for what the Honduran press has erroneously and recklessly alleged as his cooperation,” Rocha said in court documents, using his client’s formal last name.

Drug trafficking ties within Honduras’ law-enforcement and political circles are well documented.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced last week that Honduran lawmaker Fredy Renan Najera Montoya faces drug trafficking charges in a New York federal court and the U.S. would seek his extradition. American authorities claim Najera used his influence to secure safe passage for loads of cocaine flown from Colombia to Honduras and then on to the U.S.

High-ranking Honduran police officials have been accused of ordering assassinations, trafficking cocaine and leading criminal gangs. At least six former National Police officers now face U.S. criminal charges in a federal court in New York and the DEA says their investigations into Honduras police corruption are still active. The U.S. Embassy in Honduras declined to comment.

The inspector general’s report detailing the investigation into the tanker full of cocaine explains how Blanco held sway over police.

Sources in the La Ceiba police headquarters said that before and after the tanker incident, the regional police chief Jose Rolando Paz Murillo met with Blanco in Paz’s office along with other police officials. At the meetings Blanco handed out thousands of dollars in bribes to make sure police allowed airplanes stuffed with cocaine to land and then the drugs to be transported without interference, according to the investigative report.

Among those who attended such meetings, the report asserts, were Aguilar, as well as the new National Police inspector general, Orlin Javier Cerrato Cruz, and Orbin Alexis Galo Maldonado, the man recently named as Aguilar’s top deputy. In a brief phone conversation Galo denied any knowledge. Cerrato could not be reached for comment.

It was the local head of the tourism police, Grebil Cecilio Giron Miranda, who intercepted the drug-laden truck flanked by 11 police officers in four vehicles, according to the report. He was on patrol with two other officers when an informant in a rival cartel called to tell him about the tanker full of cocaine, investigators said.

The report says Giron and his patrol took the tanker back to the police station and that, soon after, Paz, the regional police chief, arrived and began threatening Giron and the other arresting officers, telling them he would make sure they lost their jobs. Giron pointed his gun at Paz, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him, according to the report. As the higher-ranking cop’s threats escalated, the report says, the officers allowed Paz to make a phone call. Paz called Aguilar and then passed the phone to Giron. According to the officers’ statements, Aguilar told them to immediately release Paz and the tanker full of drugs.

They obeyed and the load of drugs continued on its way to Blanco’s home, the report says.

The head of the National Police at the time ordered an investigation, according to the document, but it was scuttled until a new inspector general took over in early 2014. By the time the report was submitted in late February 2014, the four-month window for police leadership to take action against those involved had passed.

All the police officers named in the report and reached by the AP said they knew nothing about the allegations. The National Police did not make any of its officers available for comment.

According to the report, Paz told the arresting officer that then police director Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares and another top police official, Hector Ivan Mejia Velasquez, were aware of what was happening with the drugs and that they ordered his release. Bonilla told AP the documents were fake and Mejia said he didn’t know anything about the case.

Paz resigned from the police after his suspension and another assignment, a former National Police official said, and currently serves as a judge in Roatan. Paz did not return messages left at the court.

Former DEA agent Gary Hale reviewed a copy of the document and said it appears genuine.

“On the face of it, it looks authentic,” said Hale, now a drug policy and Mexico studies scholar at Rice University.

Opposition party politician Maria Luisa Borjas, who ran the National Police’s internal affairs division during her long career on the force, said she had seen the inspector general’s report and could confirm its authenticity.





also see

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/us/p ... drugs.html

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration misled the public, Congress and the Justice Department about a 2012 operation in which commando-style squads of American agents sent to Honduras to disrupt drug smuggling became involved in three deadly shootings, two inspectors general said Wednesday.

The D.E.A. said in response that it had shut down the program, the Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team.

Under the program, known as FAST, squads received military-style training to combat Taliban-linked opium traffickers in the Afghanistan war zone. It was expanded to Latin America in 2008 to help fight transnational drug smugglers, leading to the series of violent encounters in Honduras in 2012.

A scathing 424-page joint report from the inspectors general of the Justice and State Departments underscored the risk that Americans accompanying partner forces on missions in developing countries, ostensibly as trainers and advisers, sometimes drift into directly running dangerous operations with little oversight.

The report focused on the first shooting, on a river near the village of Ahuas on May 11, 2012. A boat collided with a disabled vessel carrying American and Honduran agents and seized cocaine. Gunfire erupted, and four people on the boat were killed.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency Expands War on Drugs NOV. 6, 2011

D.E.A.’s Agents Join Hondurans in Drug Firefights MAY 16, 2012
Anger Rises After U.S.-Honduras Drug SweepMAY 17, 2012
From Honduras, Conflicting Tales of a ShootoutMAY 18, 2012

Honduran Drug Raid Deaths Won’t Alter U.S. Policy MAY 31, 2012

The D.E.A. said at the time that the victims were drug traffickers who had attacked to try to retrieve the cocaine, but villagers said they were bystanders. The inspectors general found no evidence to support the agency’s version, disputing a claim that surveillance video showed evidence that the people on the boat had fired on the disabled vessel.

“Even as information became available to D.E.A. that conflicted with its initial reporting, including that the passenger boat may have been a water taxi carrying passengers on an overnight trip,” the report said, “D.E.A. officials remained steadfast — with little credible corroborating evidence — that any individuals shot by the Hondurans were drug traffickers who were attempting to retrieve the cocaine.”

The inspectors general also rejected the D.E.A.’s insistence at the time that the operation — as well as two others, in June and July 2012 — had been led by Honduran law enforcement officials. The review “concluded this was inaccurate” and said D.E.A. agents “maintained substantial control.”

In the shooting on the river, the report said, a Honduran police officer did fire a machine gun from a helicopter at the boat, but an American agent directed him to do so. In one of the later missions, American agents shot to death smugglers they said had refused to surrender who they feared might be reaching for weapon.

Indeed, the report said, only D.E.A. agents, not the Hondurans, had the necessary equipment to command the operation and had direct access to intelligence. Rather than taking orders from Honduran police, the agents gave “tactical commands” to the Hondurans during missions. Accounts of all three shootings, it said, showed that agency leaders “made the critical decisions and directed the actions taken during the mission.”

The D.E.A. refused to cooperate with the State Department as it sought to investigate what had happened in Ahuas. Michele M. Leonhart, then the agency’s administrator, told the inspector general she had approved that decision because subordinates told her there was no precedent for the State Department to investigate a D.E.A. shooting and it might compromise its investigations, the report said


But the agency’s own review was “little more than a paper exercise” in which a FAST supervisor conducted no interviews and merely collected written statements from agents who omitted material facts, the report said.

The D.E.A. accepted the report’s observations and recommendations.

“The loss of life and injuries which occurred between May and July of 2012 were tragic,” Mary B. Schaefer, the agency’s chief compliance officer, wrote in a response. “D.E.A. acknowledges that its pre-mission preparation was not as thorough as it should have been and that the subsequent investigation lacked the depth and scope necessary to fully assess what transpired that night.”

Ms. Schaefer emphasized that the agency’s leadership had turned over since 2012 and that it had already made “significant changes in this area over the last five years.”

In particular, she disclosed, the agency “has disbanded its FAST program.” It had its last deployment in 2015 and was subsequently renamed. In March, its remaining personnel were folded into a program that trains agents for law-enforcement operations on domestic soil.

“The regional response teams and any operational or enforcement function such as under previous iterations of FAST,” she wrote, “have been dissolved.”

The killings in Honduras, along with at least two episodes in 2012 in which partner countries shot down suspected smuggling planes after receiving intelligence from the United States about their flight paths, led to increased media and congressional scrutiny of the D.E.A. Within a few months, the agency was rethinking and scaling back its operations, including considering a requirement that FAST agents stay on helicopters rather than join their trainees in raids.

One of the lawmakers who raised critical questions about the FAST operations in Latin America after the Ahuas shooting, Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, called the new report “nothing less than a wholesale indictment of the D.E.A. and Honduran police.”

Calling for compensation to the families of the victims, he said the report unmasked “egregious events and conduct” and a subsequent cover-up that “demeaned the lives of the victims and the reputation of the United States.”

The end of the FAST program was the second time that the D.E.A. developed and then abandoned a military-style enforcement arm for use in the Western Hemisphere.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the D.E.A.’s Operation Snowcap put agents through military training for temporary assignments in which they joined with local forces in places like Peru and Bolivia to target airstrips used for smuggling and to destroy jungle labs. The Clinton administration shut it down after a plane crash in Peru in 1994 killed five agents.

During the Bush administration, the D.E.A. assigned Michael A. Braun, then the agency’s head of operations and a veteran of Snowcap, to develop a similar program for use in Afghanistan. Instead of being staffed with ordinary agents on temporary assignment, like Snowcap, FAST was intended to have a permanent role. It was overseen by a former Navy SEAL member, Richard Dobrich, and many of its agents were former military members. At one point it had five squads, each with 10 members.

As FAST expanded into Latin America, the State Department negotiated rules with host countries. Typically, American agents were permitted to accompany host-nation counterparts on operations and to fire their weapons in self-defense. Further blurring the lines between law-enforcement operations and warfare, the FAST squads and their partner forces were sometimes transported by American military helicopters on operations, assisted by surveillance aircraft

Patriot16
captain of 100
Posts: 209

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by Patriot16 »

I seriously doubt this. No one launders in stocks. They launder through businesses which have a heavy cash component like night clubs and pawn shops. You could also launder by buying real estate properties.

Patriot16

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

Best article on CIA/POLICE dealing Heroin Cocaine and other illegal drugs



https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/28/r ... rtiumnews/

Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews
January 28, 2018

Robert Parry, editor and publisher of Consortiumnews.com, died peacefully Saturday evening. In this tribute, his son Nat Parry describes Robert’s unwavering commitment to independent journalism.



Robert Parry, 1949-2018
By Nat Parry

It is with a heavy heart that we inform Consortiumnews readers that Editor Robert Parry has passed away. As regular readers know, Robert (or Bob, as he was known to friends and family) suffered a stroke in December, which – despite his own speculation that it may have been brought on by the stress of covering Washington politics – was the result of undiagnosed pancreatic cancer that he had been unknowingly living with for the past 4-5 years.

He unfortunately suffered two more debilitating strokes in recent weeks and after the last one, was moved to hospice care on Tuesday. He passed away peacefully Saturday evening. He was 68.

Those of us close to him wish to sincerely thank readers for the kind comments and words of support posted on recent articles regarding Bob’s health issues. We read aloud many of these comments to him during his final days to let him know how much his work has meant to so many people and how much concern there was for his well-being.

I am sure that these kindnesses meant a lot to him. They also mean a lot to us as family members, as we all know how devoted he was to the mission of independent journalism and this website which has been publishing articles since the earliest days of the internet, launching all the way back in 1995.

With my dad, professional work has always been deeply personal, and his career as a journalist was thoroughly intertwined with his family life. I can recall kitchen table conversations in my early childhood that focused on the U.S.-backed wars in Central America and complaints about how his editors at The Associated Press were too timid to run articles of his that – no matter how well-documented – cast the Reagan administration in a bad light.

One of my earliest memories in fact was of my dad about to leave on assignment in the early 1980s to the war zones of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and the heartfelt good-bye that he wished to me and my siblings. He warned us that he was going to a very dangerous place and that there was a possibility that he might not come back.

I remember asking him why he had to go, why he couldn’t just stay at home with us. He replied that it was important to go to these places and tell the truth about what was happening there. He mentioned that children my age were being killed in these wars and that somebody had to tell their stories. I remember asking, “Kids like me?” He replied, “Yes, kids just like you.”

Bob was deeply impacted by the dirty wars of Central America in the 1980s and in many ways these conflicts – and the U.S. involvement in them – came to define the rest of his life and career. With grisly stories emerging from Nicaragua (thanks partly to journalists like him), Congress passed the Boland Amendments from 1982 to 1984, which placed limits on U.S. military assistance to the contras who were attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government through a variety of terrorist tactics.

The Reagan administration immediately began exploring ways to circumvent those legal restrictions, which led to a scheme to send secret arms shipments to the revolutionary and vehemently anti-American government of Iran and divert the profits to the contras. In 1985, Bob wrote the first stories describing this operation, which later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.

Contra-Cocaine and October Surprise


Poster by street artist and friend of Bob, Robbie Conal
Parallel to the illegal arms shipments to Iran during those days was a cocaine trafficking operation by the Nicaraguan contras and a willingness by the Reagan administration and the CIA to turn a blind eye to these activities. This, despite the fact that cocaine was flooding into the United States while Ronald Reagan was proclaiming a “war on drugs,” and a crack cocaine epidemic was devastating communities across the country.

Bob and his colleague Brian Barger were the first journalists to report on this story in late 1985, which became known as the contra-cocaine scandal, and became the subject of a congressional investigation led by then-Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) in 1986.

Continuing to pursue leads relating to Iran-Contra during a period in the late 80s when most of Washington was moving on from the scandal, Bob discovered that there was more to the story than commonly understood. He learned that the roots of the illegal arm shipments to Iran stretched back further than previously known – all the way back to the 1980 presidential campaign.

That electoral contest between incumbent Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan had come to be largely dominated by the hostage crisis in Iran, with 52 Americans being held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The Iranian hostage crisis, along with the ailing economy, came to define a perception of an America in decline, with former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan promising a new start for the country, a restoration of its status as a “shining city on a hill.”

The hostages were released in Tehran moments after Reagan was sworn in as president in Washington on January 20, 1981. Despite suspicions for years that there had been some sort of quid pro quo between the Reagan campaign and the Iranians, it wasn’t until Bob uncovered a trove of documents in a House office building basement in 1994 that the evidence became overwhelming that the Reagan campaign had interfered with the Carter administration’s efforts to free the hostages prior to the 1980 election. Their release sooner – what Carter hoped would be his “October Surprise” – could have given him the boost needed to win.

Examining these documents and being already well-versed on this story – having previously travelled three continents pursuing the investigation for a PBS Frontline documentary – Bob became increasingly convinced that the Reagan campaign had in fact sabotaged Carter’s hostage negotiations, possibly committing an act of treason in an effort to make sure that 52 American citizens continued to be held in a harrowing hostage situation until after Reagan secured the election.

Needless to say, this was an inconvenient story at a time – in the mid-1990s – when the national media had long since moved on from the Reagan scandals and were obsessing over new scandals, mostly related to President Bill Clinton’s sex life and failed real estate deals. Washington also wasn’t particularly interested in challenging the Reagan legacy, which at that time was beginning to solidify into a kind of mythology, with campaigns underway to name buildings and airports after the former president.

At times, Bob had doubts about his career decisions and the stories he was pursuing. As he wrote in Trick or Treason, a book outlining his investigation into the October Surprise Mystery, this search for historical truth can be painful and seemingly thankless.

“Many times,” he wrote, “I had regretted accepting Frontline’s assignment in 1990. I faulted myself for risking my future in mainstream journalism. After all, that is where the decent-paying jobs are. I had jeopardized my ability to support my four children out of an old-fashioned sense of duty, a regard for an unwritten code that expects reporters to take almost any assignment.”

Nevertheless, Bob continued his efforts to tell the full story behind both the Iran-Contra scandal and the origins of the Reagan-Bush era, ultimately leading to two things: him being pushed out of the mainstream media, and the launching of Consortiumnews.com.

I remember when he started the website, together with my older brother Sam, back in 1995. At the time, in spite of talk we were all hearing about something called “the information superhighway” and “electronic mail,” I had never visited a website and didn’t even know how to get “on line.” My dad called me in Richmond, where I was a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University, and told me I should check out this new “Internet site” he and Sam had just launched.

He explained over the phone how to open a browser and instructed me how to type in the URL, starting, he said, with “http,” then a colon and two forward slashes, then “www,” then “dot,” then this long address with one or two more forward slashes if I recall. (It wasn’t until years later that the website got its own domain and a simpler address.)

I went to the computer lab at the university and asked for some assistance on how to get online, dutifully typed in the URL, and opened this website – the first one I had ever visited. It was interesting, but a bit hard to read on the computer screen, so I printed out some articles to read back in my dorm room.

I quickly became a fan of “The Consortium,” as it was called back then, and continued reading articles on the October Surprise Mystery as Bob and Sam posted them on this new and exciting tool called “the Internet.” Sam had to learn HTML coding from scratch to launch this online news service, billed as “the Internet’s First Investigative ‘Zine.” For his efforts, Sam was honored with the Consortium for Independent Journalism’s first Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award in 2015.

X-Files and Contra-Crack

At some point along the way, Bob decided that in addition to the website, where he was not only posting original articles but also providing the source documents that he had uncovered in the House office building basement, he would also take a stab at traditional publishing. He compiled the “October Surprise X-Files” into a booklet and self-published it in January 1996.


Original Consortium merchandise from 1996.
He was also publishing a newsletter to complement the website, knowing that at that time, there were still plenty of people who didn’t know how to turn a computer on, much less navigate the World Wide Web. I transferred from Virginia Commonwealth University to George Mason University in the DC suburbs and started working part-time with my dad and Sam on the newsletter and website.

We worked together on the content, editing and laying it out with graphics often culled from books at our local library. We built a subscriber base through networking and purchasing mailing lists from progressive magazines. Every two weeks we would get a thousand copies printed from Sir Speedy and would spend Friday evening collating these newsletters and sending them out to our subscribers.

The launching of the website and newsletter, and later an even-more ambitious project called I.F. Magazine, happened to coincide with the publication in 1996 of Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series at the San Jose Mercury-News. Webb’s series reopened the contra-cocaine controversy with a detailed examination of the drug trafficking networks in Nicaragua and Los Angeles that had helped to spread highly addictive crack cocaine across the United States.

The African-American community, in particular, was rightly outraged over this story, which offered confirmation of many long-standing suspicions that the government was complicit in the drug trade devastating their communities. African Americans had been deeply and disproportionately affected by the crack epidemic, both in terms of the direct impact of the drug and the draconian drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences that came to define the government’s approach to “the war on drugs.”

For a moment in the summer of 1996, it appeared that the renewed interest in the contra-cocaine story might offer an opportunity to revisit the crimes and misdeeds of the Reagan-Bush era, but those hopes were dashed when the “the Big Media” decided to double down on its earlier failures to cover this story properly.

Big Papers Pile On

The Los Angeles Times launched the attack on Gary Webb and his reporting at the San Jose Mercury-News, followed by equally dismissive stories at the Washington Post and New York Times. The piling on from these newspapers eventually led Mercury-News editor Jerry Ceppos to denounce Webb’s reporting and offer a mea culpa for publishing the articles.

The onslaught of hostile reporting from the big papers failed to address the basic premises of Webb’s series and did not debunk the underlying allegations of contra-cocaine smuggling or the fact that much of this cocaine ended up on American streets in the form of crack. Instead, it raised doubts by poking holes in certain details and casting the story as a “conspiracy theory.” Some of the reporting attempted to debunk claims that Webb never actually made – such as the idea that the contra-cocaine trafficking was part of a government plot to intentionally decimate the African-American community.


Gary Webb holds up a copy of the San Jose Mercury-News with his front-page story.
Gary Webb and Bob were in close contact during those days. Bob offered him professional and personal support, having spent his time also on the receiving end of attacks by journalistic colleagues and editors who rejected certain stories – no matter how factual – as fanciful conspiracy theories. Articles at The Consortium website and newsletter, as well as I.F. Magazine, offered details on the historical context for the “Dark Alliance” series and pushed back against the mainstream media’s onslaught of hostile and disingenuous reporting.

Bob also published the book Lost History which provided extensive details on the background for the “Dark Alliance” series, explaining that far from a baseless “conspiracy theory,” the facts and evidence strongly supported the conclusion that the Reagan-Bush administrations had colluded with drug traffickers to fund their illegal war against Nicaragua.

But sadly, the damage to Gary Webb was done. With his professional and personal life in tatters because of his courageous reporting on the contra-cocaine story, he committed suicide in 2004 at the age of 49. Speaking about this suicide later on Democracy Now, Bob noted how painful it is to be ridiculed and unfairly criticized by colleagues, as his friend had experienced.

“There’s a special pain when your colleagues in your profession turn on you, especially when you’ve done something that they should admire and should understand,” he said. “To do all that work and then have the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times attack you and try to destroy your life, there’s a special pain in that.”

In consultation with his family, Bob and the Board of Directors for the Consortium for Independent Journalism launched the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award in 2015.

The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush

The presidency of George W. Bush was surreal for many of us, and no one more so than my dad.

In covering Washington politics for decades, Bob had traced many stories to “Dubya’s” father, George H.W. Bush, who had been implicated in a variety of questionable activities, including the October Surprise Mystery and Iran-Contra. He had also launched a war against Iraq in 1991 that seemed to be motivated, at least in part, to help kick “the Vietnam Syndrome,” i.e. the reluctance that the American people had felt since the Vietnam War to support military action abroad.

As Bob noted in his 1992 book Fooling America, after U.S. forces routed the Iraqi military in 1991, President Bush’s first public comment about the victory expressed his delight that it would finally put to rest the American reflex against committing troops to far-off conflicts. “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all,” he exulted.

The fact that Bush-41’s son could run for president largely on name recognition confirmed to Bob the failure of the mainstream media to cover important stories properly and the need to continue building an independent media infrastructure. This conviction solidified through Campaign 2000 and the election’s ultimate outcome, when Bush assumed the White House as the first popular-vote loser in more than a century.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court had halted the counting of votes in Florida, thus preventing an accurate determination of the rightful winner, most of the national media moved on from the story after Bush was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001. Consortiumnews.com continued to examine the documentary record, however, and ultimately concluded that Al Gore would have been declared the winner of that election if all the legally cast ballots were counted.

At Consortiumnews, there was an unwritten editorial policy that the title “President” should never precede George W. Bush’s name, based on our view that he was not legitimately elected. But beyond those editorial decisions, we also understood the gravity of the fact that had Election 2000 been allowed to play out with all votes counted, many of the disasters of the Bush years – notably the 9/11 tragedy and the Iraq War, as well as decisions to withdraw from international agreements on arms control and climate change – might have been averted.

As all of us who lived through the post-9/11 era will recall, it was a challenging time all around, especially if you were someone critical of George W. Bush. The atmosphere in that period did not allow for much dissent. Those who stood up against the juggernaut for war – such as Phil Donahue at MSNBC, Chris Hedges at the New York Times, or even the Dixie Chicks – had their careers damaged and found themselves on the receiving end of death threats and hate mail.

While Bob’s magazine and newsletter projects had been discontinued, the website was still publishing articles, providing a home for dissenting voices that questioned the case for invading Iraq in late 2002 and early 2003. Around this time, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and some of his colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and a long-running relationship with Consortiumnews was established. Several former intelligence veterans began contributing to the website, motivated by the same independent spirit of truth-telling that compelled Bob to invest so much in this project.

At a time when almost the entire mainstream media was going along with the Bush administration’s dubious case for war, this and a few other like-minded websites pushed back with well-researched articles calling into question the rationale. Although at times it might have felt as though we were just voices in the wilderness, a major groundswell of opposition to war emerged in the country, with historic marches of hundreds of thousands taking place to reject Bush’s push for war.


Neck Deep was published by the Media Consortium in 2007.
Of course, these antiwar voices were ultimately vindicated by the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the fact that the war and occupation proved to be a far costlier and deadlier enterprise than we had been told that it would be. Earlier assurances that it would be a “cakewalk” proved as false as the WMD claims, but as had been so often the case in Washington, there was little to no accountability from the mainstream media, the think tanks or government officials for being so spectacularly wrong.

In an effort to document the true history of that era, Bob, Sam and I co-wrote the book Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, which was published in late 2007. The book traced the work of Consortiumnews, juxtaposing it against the backdrop of mainstream media coverage during the Bush era, in an effort to not only correct the record, but also demonstrate that not all of us got things so wrong.

We felt it was important to remind readers – as well as future historians – that some of us knew and reported in real time the mistakes that were being made on everything from withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol to invading Iraq to implementing a policy of torture to bungling the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama Era

By the Obama presidency, Consortiumnews.com had become a home to a growing number of writers who brought new perspectives to the website’s content. While for years, the writing staff had been limited primarily to Bob, Sam and me, suddenly, Consortiumnews was receiving contributions from journalists, activists and former intelligence analysts who offered a wide range of expertise – on international law, economics, human rights, foreign policy, national security, and even religion and philosophy.

One recurring theme of articles at the website during the Obama era was the enduring effect of unchallenged narratives, how they shaped national politics and dictated government policy. Bob observed that even a supposedly left-of-center president like Obama seemed beholden to the false narratives and national mythologies dating back to the Reagan era. He pointed out that this could be at least partially attributed to the failure to establish a strong foundation for independent journalism.

In a 2010 piece called “Obama’s Fear of the Reagan Narrative,” Bob noted that Obama had defended his deal with Republicans on tax cuts for the rich because there was such a strong lingering effect of Reagan’s messaging from 30 years earlier. “He felt handcuffed by the Right’s ability to rally Americans on behalf of Reagan’s ‘government-is-the-problem’ message,” Bob wrote.

He traced Obama’s complaints about his powerlessness in the face of this dynamic to the reluctance of American progressives to invest sufficiently in media and think tanks, as conservatives had been doing for decades in waging their “the war of ideas.” As he had been arguing since the early 1990s, Robert insisted that the limits that had been placed on Obama – whether real or perceived – continued to demonstrate the power of propaganda and the need for greater investment in alternative media.

He also observed that much of the nuttiness surrounding the so-called Tea Party movement resulted from fundamental misunderstandings of American history and constitutional principles. “Democrats and progressives should be under no illusion about the new flood of know-nothingism that is about to inundate the United States in the guise of a return to ‘first principles’ and a deep respect for the U.S. Constitution,” Bob warned.

He pointed out that despite the Tea Partiers’ claimed reverence for the Constitution, they actually had very little understanding of the document, as revealed by their ahistorical claims that federal taxes are unconstitutional. In fact, as Bob observed, the Constitution represented “a major power grab by the federal government, when compared to the loosely drawn Articles of Confederation, which lacked federal taxing authority and other national powers.”

Motivated by a desire to correct falsified historical narratives spanning more than two centuries, Bob published his sixth and final book, America’s Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to Obama, in 2012.

Along with revenues from book sales, growing donations from readers enabled Bob to not only pay writers but also to hire an assistant, Chelsea Gilmour, who began working for Consortiumnews in 2014. In addition to providing invaluable administrative support, Chelsea also performed duties including research, writing and fact-checking.

Political Realignment and the New McCarthyism

Although at the beginning of the Obama era – and indeed since the 1980s – the name Robert Parry had been closely associated with exposing wrongdoing by Republicans, and hence had a strong following among Democratic Party loyalists, by the end of Obama’s presidency there seemed to be a realignment taking place among some of Consortiumnews.com’s readership, which reflected more generally the shifting politics of the country.

In particular, the U.S. media’s approach to Russia and related issues, such as the violent ouster in 2014 of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, became “virtually 100 percent propaganda,” Bob said.

He noted that the full story was never told when it came to issues such as the Sergei Magnitsky case, which led to the first round of U.S. sanctions against Russia, nor the inconvenient facts related to the Euromaidan protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster – including the reality of strong neo-Nazi influence in those protests – nor the subsequent conflict in the Donbass region of Ukraine.

Bob’s stories on Ukraine were widely cited and disseminated, and he became an important voice in presenting a fuller picture of the conflict than was possible by reading and watching only mainstream news outlets. Bob was featured prominently in Oliver Stone’s 2016 documentary “Ukraine on Fire,” where he explained how U.S.-funded political NGOs and media companies have worked with the CIA and foreign policy establishment since the 1980s to promote the U.S. geopolitical agenda.

Bob regretted that, increasingly, “the American people and the West in general are carefully shielded from hearing the ‘other side of the story.’” Indeed, he said that to even suggest that there might be another side to the story is enough to get someone branded as an apologist for Vladimir Putin or a “Kremlin stooge.”


The PropOrNot logo
This culminated in late 2016 in the blacklisting of Consortiumnews.com on a dubious website called “PropOrNot,” which was claiming to serve as a watchdog against undue “Russian influence” in the United States. The PropOrNot blacklist, including Consortiumnews and about 200 other websites deemed “Russian propaganda,” was elevated by the Washington Post as a credible source, despite the fact that the neo-McCarthyites who published the list hid behind a cloak of anonymity.

“The Post’s article by Craig Timberg,” Bob wrote on Nov. 27, 2016, “described PropOrNot simply as ‘a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds [who] planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.’”

As Bob explained in an article called “Washington Post’s Fake News Guilt,” the paper granted PropOrNot anonymity “to smear journalists who don’t march in lockstep with official pronouncements from the State Department or some other impeccable fount of never-to-be-questioned truth.”

The Post even provided an unattributed quote from the head of the shadowy website. “The way that this propaganda apparatus supported [Donald] Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” the anonymous smear merchant said. The Post claimed that the PropOrNot “executive director” had spoken on the condition of anonymity “to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers.”

To be clear, neither Consortiumnews nor Robert Parry ever “supported Trump,” as the above anonymous quote claims. Something interesting, however, did seem to be happening in terms of Consortiumnews’ readership in the early days of the Trump presidency, as could be gleaned from some of the comments left on articles and social media activity.

It did appear for some time at least that a good number of Trump supporters were reading Consortiumnews, which could probably attributed to the fact that the website was one of the few outlets pushing back against both the “New Cold War” with Russia and the related story of “Russiagate,” which Bob didn’t even like referring to as a “scandal.” (As an editor, he preferred to use the word “controversy” on the website, because as far as he was concerned, the allegations against Trump and his supposed “collusion” with Russia did not rise to the level of actual scandals such as Watergate or Iran-Contra.)

In his view, the perhaps understandable hatred of Trump felt by many Americans – both inside and outside the Beltway – had led to an abandonment of old-fashioned rules of journalism and standards of fairness, which should be applied even to someone like Donald Trump.

“On a personal note, I faced harsh criticism even from friends of many years for refusing to enlist in the anti-Trump ‘Resistance,’” Bob wrote in his final article for Consortiumnews.

“The argument was that Trump was such a unique threat to America and the world that I should join in finding any justification for his ouster,” he said. “Some people saw my insistence on the same journalistic standards that I had always employed somehow a betrayal.”

He marveled that even senior editors in the mainstream media treated the unproven Russiagate allegations as flat fact.

“No skepticism was tolerated and mentioning the obvious bias among the never-Trumpers inside the FBI, Justice Department and intelligence community was decried as an attack on the integrity of the U.S. government’s institutions,” Bob wrote. “Anti-Trump ‘progressives’ were posturing as the true patriots because of their now unquestioning acceptance of the evidence-free proclamations of the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”

An Untimely End and the Future of Consortiumnews

My dad’s untimely passing has come as a shock to us all, especially since up until a month ago, there was no indication whatsoever that he was sick in any way. He took good care of himself, never smoked, got regular check-ups, exercised, and ate well. The unexpected health issues starting with a mild stroke Christmas Eve and culminating with his admission into hospice care several days ago offer a stark reminder that nothing should be taken for granted.

And as many Consortiumnews readers have eloquently pointed out in comments left on recent articles regarding Bob’s health, it also reminds us that his brand of journalism is needed today more than ever.

“We need free will thinkers like you who value the truth based on the evidence and look past the group think in Washington to report on the real reasons for our government’s and our media’s actions which attempt to deceive us all,” wrote, for example, “FreeThinker.”

“Common sense and integrity are the hallmarks of Robert Parry’s journalism. May you get better soon for you are needed more now then ever before,” wrote “T.J.”

“We need a new generation of reporters, journalists, writers, and someone always being tenacious to follow up on the story,” added “Tina.”

As someone who has been involved with this website since its inception – as a writer, an editor and a reader – I concur with these sentiments. Readers should rest assured that despite my dad’s death, every effort will be made to ensure that the website will continue going strong.

Indeed, I think that everyone involved with this project wants to uphold the same commitment to truth-telling without fear or favor that inspired Bob and his heroes like George Seldes, I.F. Stone, and Thomas Paine.

That commitment can be seen in my dad’s pursuit of stories such as those mentioned above, but also so many others – including his investigations into the financial relationship of the influential Washington Times with the Unification Church cult of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the truth behind the Nixon campaign’s alleged efforts to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson’s Paris peace talks with Vietnamese leaders in 1968, the reality of the chemical attack in Syria in 2013, and even detailed examinations of the evidence behind the so-called “Deflategate” controversy that he felt unfairly branded his favorite football team, the New England Patriots, as cheaters.

Reviewing these journalistic achievements, it becomes clear that there are few stories that have slipped under Consortiumnews.com’s radar, and that the historical record is far more complete thanks to this website and Bob’s old-fashioned approach to journalism.

But besides this deeply held commitment to independent journalism, it should also be recalled that, ultimately, Bob was motivated by a concern over the future of life on Earth. As someone who grew up at the height of the Cold War, he understood the dangers of allowing tensions and hysteria to spiral out of control, especially in a world such as ours with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on the planet many times over.

As the United States continues down the path of a New Cold War, my dad would be pleased to know that he has such committed contributors who will enable the site to remain the indispensable home for independent journalism that it has become, and continue to push back on false narratives that threaten our very survival.

Thank you all for your support.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

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By THOMAS TRACY

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
AUG 22, 2019 | 6:57 PM




I Volunteer to Kidnap Oliver North
by
Michael Levine

Undercover DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was tortured to death slowly by professionals. Every known maximum-pain technique, from electric shocks to his testicles to white hot rods inserted in his rectum, was applied. A doctor stood by to keep him alive. The heart of the thirty-seven year old father of two boys refused to quit for more than twenty-four hours. His cries, along with the soft-spoken, calm voices of the men who were slowly and meticulously savaging his body, were tape-recorded.
Kiki, one of only three hundred of us in the world (DEA agents on foreign assignment), had been kidnapped in broad daylight from in front of the U.S. Consular office in Guadalajara, Mexico by Mexican cops working for drug traffickers and, apparently, high level Mexican government people whose identities we would never know. They would be protected by people in our own government to whom Kiki's life meant less than nothing.

When teams of DEA agents were sent to Mexico, first, to find the missing Kiki, then to hunt for his murderers, they were met by a the stone wall of a corrupt Mexican government that refused to cooperate. To the horror and disgust of many of us, our government backed down from the Mexicans; other interests, like NAFTA, banking agreements and the covert support of Ollie North's Contras, were more important than the life of an American undercover agent. DEA agents were ordered by the Justice Department, to keep our mouths shut about Mexico; an order that was backed up by threats from the office of Attorney General Edwin Meese himself. Instead of tightening restrictions on the Mexican debt, our Treasury Department moved to loosen them as if to reward them for their filthy deed. As an added insult Mexico was granted cooperating nation in the drug war status, giving them access to additional millions in American drug war funds and loans.

Somehow a CIA—unaware that their own chief of Soviet counter intelligence, Aldrich Ames, was selling all America's biggest secrets to the KGB for fourteen years with all the finesse of a Jersey City garage sale—was able to obtain the tape-recordings of Kiki's torture death. No one in media or government had the courage to publicly ask them explain how they were able to obtain the tapes, yet know nothing of the murder as it was happening; no one had the courage to ask them to explain the testimony of a reliable government informant, (during a California trial related to Camarena's murder), that Kiki's murderers believed they were protected by the CIA. Nor did our elected leaders have the courage to investigate numerous other reports linking the CIA directly to the murderers.

Our government's sellout of Kiki Camarena, of all DEA agents, of the war on drugs, was such that United States Congressman, Larry Smith, stated, on the floor of Congress:

"I personally am convinced that the Justice Department is against the best interests of the United States in terms of stopping drugs... What has a DEA agent who puts his life on the line got to look forward to? The U.S. Government is not going to back him up. I find that intolerable."

What does Oliver North have to do with this?

A lot of us, Kiki's fellow agents, believe that the Mexican government never would have dared take the action they did, had they not believed the US government to be as hypocritical and corrupt as they were and still are. And if there was ever a figure in our history that was the paradigm of that corruption it is the man President Reagan called "an American hero"; the same man Nancy Reagan later called a liar: Oliver North.

No one person in our government's history more embodied what Senator John Kerry referred to when he called the US protection of the drug smuggling Contras a "betrayal of the American people."

Few Americans, thanks to what one time CIA chief William Colby referred to as the news media's "misplaced sense of patriotism," are aware that the Nobel prize winning President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias—as a result of an in-depth investigation by the Costa Rican Congressional Commission on Narcotics that found "virtually all [Ollie North supported] Contra factions were involved in drug trafficking"—banned Oliver North, U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, National Security Advisor Admiral John Poindexter, Presidential Advisor Richard Secord and C.I.A. station chief José Fernandez, by Executive order, from ever entering Costa Rica— for their roles in utilizing Costa Rican territory for cocaine trafficking.

In fact, when Costa Rica began its investigation into the drug trafficking allegations against North and naively thought that the U.S. would gladly lend a hand in efforts to fight drugs, they received a rude awakening about the realities of America's war on drugs as opposed to its "this-scourge-will-end" rhetoric.

After five witnesses testified before the U.S. Senate, confirming that John Hull—a C.I.A. operative and the lynch-pin of North's contra re supply operation—had been actively running drugs from Costa Rica to the U.S. "under the direction of the C.I.A.," Costa Rican authorities arrested him. Hull then quickly jumped bail and fled to the U.S.—according to my sources—with the help of DEA, putting the drug fighting agency in the schizoid business of both kidnapping accused drug dealers and helping them escape; although the Supreme Court has not legalized the latter . . . yet.

The then-President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias was stunned when he received letters from nineteen U.S. Congressman—including Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the Democrat who headed the Iran-contra committee—warning him "to avoid situations . . . that could adversely affect our relations." Arias, who won the Nobel prize for ending the contra war, stated that he was shocked that "relations between [the United States] and my country could deteriorate because [the Costa Rican] legal system is fighting against drug trafficking."

In my twenty-five years experience with DEA which includes running some of their highest level international drug trafficking investigations, I have never seen an instance of comparable allegations where DEA did not set up a multi-agency task force size operation to conduct an in-depth conspiracy investigation. Yet in the case of Colonel North and the other American officials, no investigation whatsoever has been initiated by DEA or any other investigative agency.

The total "public" investigation into the drug allegations by the Senate was falsely summed up in the statement of a staffer, on the House select committee, Robert A. Bermingham who notified Chairman Hamilton on July 23, 1987, that after interviewing "hundreds" of people his investigation had not developed any corroboration of "media-exploited allegations that the U.S. government condoned drug trafficking by contra leaders . . . or that Contra leaders or organizations did in fact take part in such activity." Every government official accused of aiding and covering up for the contra drug connection, Colonel Ollie included, then hung his hat on this statement, claiming they had been "cleared."

The only trouble was that investigative journalists, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn—after interviewing many of the chief witnesses whose testimony implicated North and the contras in drug trafficking, including several whose testimony was later found credible enough to be used to convict Manuel Noriega—could find not one who had been interviewed by Bermingham or his staff. In fact, the two journalists seem to have caught Bermingham red-handed in what can only be described, at best, as a gross misrepresentation of fact, when he (Bermingham) quoted the chief counsel of a House Judiciary subcommittee, Hayden Gregory as dismissing the drug evidence and calling it "street talk." Gregory told the Cockburns that the "street talk" comment was taken out of context; that he had not even met Bermingham until July 22 (two days before Bermingham wrote the report) and that he had in fact told Bermingham that there were "serious allegations against almost every contra leader."

When President Bush said, "All those who look the other way are as guilty as the drug dealers," he was not only talking about a moral guilt, but a legal one as well. Thus, if any U.S. official knew of North and the contra's drug activities and did not take proper action, or covered up for it, he is "guilty" of a whole series of crimes that you to go to jail for; crimes that carry a minimum jail term; crimes like Aiding and Abetting, Conspiracy, Misprision of a Felony, Perjury, and about a dozen other violations of law related to misuse and malfeasance of public office. I'm not talking about some sort of shadow conspiracy here. As a veteran, criminal investigator I don't deal in speculation. I document facts and evidence and then work like hell to corroborate my claims so that I can send people to jail.

What I am talking about is "Probable Cause"—a legal principle that every junior agent and cop is taught before he hits the street. It mandates that an arrest and/or criminal indictment must occur when there exists evidence that would give any "reasonable person" grounds to believe, that anyone— U.S. government officials included—had violated or conspired to violate federal narcotic laws. Any U.S. government law enforcement officer or elected official who fails to take appropriate action when such Probable Cause exists, is in violation of his oath as well as federal law; and under that law it takes surprisingly little evidence for a Conspiracy conviction.

As an example, early in my career I arrested a man named John Clements, a twenty-two year old, baby-faced guitar player, who happened to be present at the transfer of three kilos of heroin—an amount that doesn't measure up to a tiny percentage of the many tons of cocaine, (as much as one half the U.S. cocaine consumption), that North and his Contras have been accused of pouring onto our streets. Clements was a silent observer in a trailer parked in the middle of a Gainesville, Florida swamp, while a smuggler—whom I had arrested hours earlier in New York City and "flipped" (convinced to work as an informer for me)— turned the heroin over to the financier of the operation. Poor John Clements, a friend of both men, a "gofer" as he would later be described, was just unlucky enough to be there.

The twenty-two year old guitar player couldn't claim "national security," when asked to explain his presence, nor could he implicate a President of the United States in his criminal activities as Colonel North did. John Clements wrote no self-incriminating computer notes that indicated his deep involvement in drug trafficking, as North did; he didn't have hundreds of pages of diary notes in his own handwriting also reflecting narcotics trafficking. John Clements did not shred incriminating documents and lie to congress as North did; nor was he responsible for millions in unaccounted for U.S. government funds as North was. Clements did not have enough cash hidden in a closet slush fund to pay $14,000 cash for a car, as North did while earning the salary of a Lieutenant Colonel. John Clements only had about $3 and change in his pocket.

Nor did John Clements campaign for the release from jail of a drug smuggling, murderer whose case was described by the Justice Department as the worst case of narco terrorism in our history, as North did. Poor young John wouldn't have dreamed of making deals with drug dealer Manny Noriega to aid in the support of the drug smuggling Contras, as North did. No, John Clements was certainly not in Ollie North's league, he couldn't have done a millionth of the damage North and his protectors have been accused of doing to the American people, even if he wanted to.

But John Clements did do something Ollie North never did and probably never will do—he went to jail. A jury of his peers in Gainseville Florida found more than enough evidence to convict him of Conspiracy to violate the federal drug laws. The judge sentenced him to thirty years in a Federal prison. Ollie North on the other hand was only charged with lying to a Congress so mistrusted and disrespected by the American people that he was virtually applauded for the crime.

Criminality in drug trafficking cases is lot easier than proving whether or not someone lied to Congress and is certainly a lot less "heroic." Statements like "I don't remember," "I didn't know," and "No one told me," or "I sought approval from my superiors for every one of my actions," are only accepted as valid defenses by Congressmen and Senators with difficulties balancing check books—not American jurors trying drug cases. And when you're found guilty you got to jail—you don't run for a seat on the Senate.

And why would I volunteer to kidnap Ollie? For three reasons: first, kidnapping is now legal; second, I have experience kidnapping; and third, it is the only way those tens of millions of Americans who have suffered the betrayal of their own government will ever see even a glimmer of justice.

Several years after Kiki's last tape-recorded cries were shoved well under a government rug, a maverick group of DEA agents decided to take the law into their own hands. Working without the knowledge or approval of most of the top DEA bosses, whom they mistrusted, the agents arranged to have Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, a Mexican citizen alleged to have participated in Kiki's murder, abducted at gun point in Guadalajara Mexico and brought to Los Angeles to stand trial.

On June 16, 1992, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Machain Decision that the actions of those agents was "legal." The ruling said in no uncertain terms that U.S. law enforcement authorities could literally and figuratively kidnap violators of American drug law in whatever country they found them and drag them physically and against their will to the U.S. to stand trial. Immediately thereafter the Ayatollahs declared that they too could rove the world and kidnap violators of Islamic law and drag them back to Iran to stand trial. Kidnapping, therefore, has now become an accepted tool of law enforcement throughout the world.

Resorting to all sorts of wild extremes to bring drug traffickers to justice is nothing new for the U.S. government. At various times during my career as a DEA agent I was assigned to some pretty unorthodox operations—nothing quite as radical as invading Panama and killing a thousand innocents to capture long-time CIA asset Manny Noriega—but I was once, (long before the Machain Decision), assigned to a group of undercover agents on a kidnapping mission. Posing as a soccer team, we landed in Argentina in a chartered jet during the wee hours of the morning, where the Argentine Federal Police had three international drug dealers—two of whom had never in their lives set foot in the United States—waiting for us trussed up in straight-jackets with horse feed-bags over their heads, each beaten to a pulpy, toothless mess. In those years we used to call it a "controlled expulsion." I think I like the honesty of kidnapping a little better.

By now you're probably saying, "Get real Levine you live in a nation whose politicians ripped their own people off for half a trillion dollars in a savings and loan scam, a nation whose Attorney General ordered the FBI to attack a house full of innocent babies, and this is the decade of Ruby Ridge, Waco and Whitewater-gate; your own people sent Kiki Camarena to Mexico to be murdered and then gave aid and comfort to those who murdered him—how can you expect justice?"

If you aren't saying these things you should be. And you'd be right. Under the current two-party, rip-off system of American politics with their complete control of main stream media, I expect Ollie North to have a bright future in politics, while hundreds of thousands of Americans like John rot in jail. Ollie North, after all, is the perfect candidate. But there is one faint glimmer of hope remaining, and it isn't in America.

Since the democratic and staunchly anti-drug Costa Rica is, thus far, the only nation with the courage to have publicly accused Oliver North, a US Ambassador and a CIA station chief of running drugs from their sovereignty to the United States, I find myself, duty-bound to make them, or any other nation that would have the courage to make similar charges, the following offer:

I, Michael Levine, twenty-five year veteran undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration, given the mandate of the Supreme Court's Machain Decision and in fulfillment of my oath to the U.S. government and its taxpayers to arrest and seize all those individuals who would smuggle or cause illegal drugs to be smuggled into the United States or who would aid and abet drug smugglers, do hereby volunteer my services to any sovereign, democratic nation who files legal Drug Trafficking charges against Colonel Oliver North and any of his cohorts; to do everything in my power including kidnapping him, seizing his paper shredder, reading him his constitutional rights and dragging his butt to wherever that sovereignty might be, (with or without horse feed-bag); to once-and-for-all stand trial for the horrific damages caused to my country, my fellow law enforcement officers, and to my family.

msfreeh
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 7684

Re: Wall street stocks artificially propped up by CIA/Police laudering their drug money in stocks

Post by msfreeh »

http://www.powderburns.org/


Welcome to the official website of retired DEA Agent Celerino "Cele" Castillo III. Cele Castillo served for 12 years in the Drug Enforcement Administration where he built cases against organized drug rings in Manhattan, raided jungle cocaine labs in the amazon, conducted aerial eradication operations in Guatemala, and assembled and trained anti-narcotics units in several countries.

The eerie climax of agent Castillo's career with the DEA took place in El Salvador. One day, he received a cable from a fellow agent. He was told to investigate possible drug smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras operating from the Ilopango Air Force Base.

Castillo quickly discovered that the Contra pilots were, indeed, smuggling narcotics back into the United States - using the same pilots, planes and hangers that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, under the direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North, used to maintain their covert supply operation to the Contras.

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