The
Start of the Colombian War
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What Happens in Congress May Not Be As Important As What
Happens With CIA, The Military and The Private Contractors Leading
Us To War in Colombia
When the Children of the Bull Market Begin To Die
By
Michael C. Ruppert
[Bill Clinton arrives in Cartagena
Colombia on August 30, 2000 on the heels of three unpublicized massacres
by right wing paramilitaries designed to inflame FARC guerillas. The
real shooting and the American publicity machine churning out war fever
will start on the same day. This was the lead story in the June issue
of "From The Wilderness."]
While attention is being increasingly focused
on a billion dollar military aid package for Colombia that is nearing
Bill Clinton's desk for signature, experience - especially that taken
so painfully from Vietnam - tells us that the real determinants of how
deeply involved we will become in Colombia are not in Washington, but
already down there stirring the pot. As in Vietnam, and unlike the Contra
War, Congress may just be playing "catch-up" with events created
by various interests serving more than one master. And experts are becoming
increasingly persuaded that our current Colombian experience is more
like Vietnam than anything since. The likelihood of direct involvement
of U.S. forces in a dense hostile terrain, controlled by experienced,
organized, well-armed, indigenous forces, toughened by three decades
of civil war is growing daily. And indicators of the imminence of conflict
are not to be found in whether the Senate or the House chops or adds
a few dollars or helicopters which can all be restored without fanfare
to the Foreign Aid Bill in Conference Committee at the last minute.
They are to be found in the movements and actions of money, the
U.S. military and some CIA/DoD connected corporations, possibly using
"sheep-dipped" CIA and military personnel disguised as employees
of private companies in roles that can only expand the conflict.
The money flow in and around Colombia, both
as connected to the drug trade, to vast oil reserves and to the
other abundant resources accessible through the "back door"
to the Amazon, only hints at the financial and economic power accumulated
in the country. As FTW observed a year ago, the wealth accumulated
by the FARC guerrillas, largely through the "taxation" of
the drug trade, was sufficient to induce Richard Grasso, Chairman of
the New York Stock Exchange, to travel to Colombia seeking investment
funds for Wall Street. That same wealth has made it possible, according
to MS-NBC, for FARC to purchase enormous quantities of weapons from
the Russian Federation and have them delivered to Colombia in huge Il-76
transport planes. The rebel forces (both FARC and ELN), now controlling
a third of the countryside, are paying for the weapons with cocaine
which is then flown back, under the control of the Russian Mafia for
sale in Europe, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. The model
is not substantially different from that employed by CIA protected assets
and operations during the Contra War of the 1980s except that there
is no ideological mask. And, as documented heavily by FTW (10/99), the
proceeds of Russian organized crime are increasingly finding their way
into profitable investments in U.S. banks like the Bank of New York
or into Wall Street where history is again affirmed that the real power
always profits from both sides of a war.
To understand the significance of this trade
it must be noted that, in spite of the continuing expansion of violence
between the three dominant factions (government, right wing paramilitaries
and rebels), all of which deal prodigiously in drugs, Colombia has been
able to steadily expand its drug production every year for the past
ten years. Now the largest drug producing nation in the world, according
to DEA and DoJ sources, Colombia produces almost all of the world's
cocaine and almost two thirds of all the heroin entering the United
States. If one imagines three rivals locked in a raging gun battle,
one wonders how or why they could all simultaneously increase drug production
at rates that would make major corporations jealous. Clearly something
else is operating here and that is the hand guiding the huge accumulation
of wealth resulting from decades narco-expansion. That hand, we believe,
is the CIA. That accumulated drug wealth is what is attracting the likes
of major World Trade Organization advocates like former Bush Treasury
Secretary Nicholas Brady and his Darby Investments and multi-national
giants like Philip-Morris, which, at press time, has announced plans
to purchase Nabisco with some of the excess cash it has derived from
laundering drug money [See related stories this issue]. The other key
to understanding the motive for a full regional conflict in and around
Colombia comes when one grasps fully that the accumulated equity of
decades of drug trafficking, possibly several trillion dollars, would
be enough, if properly focused in a unified national economy to threaten
United States economic dominance in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps
the world. Better to have the country divided into warring factions
and incapable of focusing a unified national will or acting as
a regional lynchpin to lead other South American nations in opposition
to the re-colonization of the region .
The
Private Contractors
As noted by highly credible writers such
as Peter Dale Scott, Col. Fletcher Prouty and even the legendary "retired"
CIA executive Ted Shackley in his book The Third Option, the use of
private corporations, whether directly owned by CIA as "proprietaries"
or not, is a common practice for the extension of U.S. military and
diplomatic power. Examples of the former in Vietnam include Civil Air
Transport or Air America while examples of the later include large multi-nationals
such as Bechtel, Brown and Root, AT&T or any of the major oil companies.
In regions where overt commitment of U.S. military forces is impolitic
these private corporations, as they have evolved in the last few decades,
can accomplish a multitude of objectives essential to inflaming regional
conflicts to the point where U.S. military forces must be called in
to save the day. The use of these companies, which serve as actual profit
centers for their private investors, their intelligence agency owners,
or both, has evolved to the point where the corporations offer off-the-shelf
war making capabilities from infantry fighters, to aerial reconnaissance,
to general officers capable of setting up or commanding division sized
maneuvers in client countries. The survivability of these companies
is a priori tied to the creation of conflict and regional destabilization
with the blessings of CIA so that there will always be customers. Peace
becomes the enemy.
One such corporation, heavily involved in
both Colombia and in Kosovo is the Virginia based DynCorp. DynCorp,
according to Alex Cockburn and Jeff St. Clair, is the nation's twenty-second
largest defense contractor with 1998 U.S. Government contract revenues
of $475 million. DynCorp, which currently has between 300-600 contracted
employees in Colombia, is performing functions like crop eradication
(using defoliants - like Vietnam), to sophisticated aerial reconnaissance,
to combat advisory roles training military and possibly even paramilitary
forces. When the history of the Colombian War is written in may well
be noted that the first U.S. casualties were actually three DynCorp
employees killed when their reconnaissance aircraft crashed on a mountaintop
in the drug growing regions last summer. DynCorp employees have been
described as being arrogant and more than willing to get "wet"
by going out on combat missions and engaging in firefights. A British
source reminded us recently that DynCorp Chairman, Pug Winokur, begged
out of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's ill fated last flight in the Balkans.
The same Pug Winokur is on the board of Harvard Endowments which had
a behind the scenes hand in destroying the economic research conducted
by former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts in
1996. That research was beginning to illuminate how the drug trade generates
profits for Wall Street through the subsidized HUD housing market where
Harvard is a heavy investor.
The second major contracting firm active
in Colombia is Military Professional Resources, Inc (MPRI). MPRI has
pre-positioned itself well for contract work in Colombia and is very
optimistic about its prospects for contracts when the billion dollar
military aid package passes sometime this summer. It should be. It also
helped the Colombian government devise the three-phase action plan that
will be implemented when the aid package is funded.
MPRI is not shy about the fact that it is
a military company with many contacts. As indicated by stories in the
Dallas Morning News and in more detailed research by the Canadian based
International Network on Disarmament and Globalization, MPRI maintains
a database of 11,000 retired officers and enlisted personnel able to
work on temporary assignments in foreign countries. MPRI spokesman,
Lt. General Ed Soyster (U.S. Army, Ret.), is not shy in boasting of
his company's presence in Colombia or it's ability to provide
anything from a general officer to consult on organization or a tank
driver or SAM (surface to air) missile operator to provide training
in third world countries. And that is exactly what MPRI intends to do
when the aid package is approved.
Asked for his opinions about "outsourcing"
as the process of hiring military personnel through private companies
is called, Drug Czar and former head of U.S. Southern Command, Barry
McCaffrey said, "I am unabashedly an admirer of outsourcing…
There's very few things in life you can't outsource." This
sounds like a reasonable position for McCaffrey to take since he will
lose his job as Drug Czar next January and find himself on the open
market just as things in Colombia begin to respond to an increased U.S.
military presence. FTW is fairly confident that he has his resume in
with at least two firms already.
The problems with outsourcing are acute
and obvious. First there is the question of accountability. Reports
from within Colombia indicate that the American contractors are behaving
with impunity as if they were, as is widely believed, working for the
CIA anyway. What is to prevent these private employees from committing
acts of aggression that would cause an instant uproar if committed by
American troops? This is the classic case of deniability and, as documented
by Peter Dale Scott in his CIA suppressed 1970 book The War Conspiracy,
the history of Southeast Asia, especially in the period from 1959 to
1963 is fraught with instances where CIA proprietaries or contractors
engaged in actions that widened and inflamed local conflicts into
regional conflicts. What better position to be in than a position where,
virtually immune to congressional oversight, it would be possible to
create as much business as your company could handle. This of course
is advantageous for firms as large as DynCorp and MPRI which trade on
Wall Street and have board members "interlocked" with other
major defense contractors who stand to benefit from widened conflict.
A second problem with outsourcing is command and control. FTW has always
taken the position that the tail wags the dog on foreign policy - that
foreign policy is directed and created to serve corporate and financial
interests. Historically, the military has served, aside form being
the direct administrator of key aid, as a political entity in its own
right and a balance of sorts to corporate gluttony or, as Scott so eloquently
described in The War Conspiracy, another key player in "a floating
crap game" that all sides seek to protect while none are able to
control its eventual size or direction.
The
Military
Last October President Clinton issued pardons to a number of convicted
Puerto Rican FALN terrorists and sent them home. This was unusual because
the terrorists were bombers who had killed several people during the
1970s and were serving time in New York prisons. While criticism of
the pardons focused on Hillary Clinton's run for the U.S. Senate in
New York, FTW reported to you accurately (10/99) that the move was really
a bargain being struck between Clinton and Puerto Rican nationalists
to provide for the safety of U.S. military forces as they prepared for
direct U.S. involvement in Colombia. After the 1999 loss of permanent
bases in Panama the closest (and only) remaining U.S. facilities capable
of supporting a Colombian intervention are in Puerto Rico. In unpublicized
testimony before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control
on September 21, 1999, Southern Command Chief, Marine General Charles
Wilhelm stated that, "…U.S. Southern Command must compensate
for the loss of U.S. bases in Panama by creating an alternative theater
architecture that will support efficient, effective and flexible CD
[Counter Drug] operations into the 21st century. Puerto Rico has replaced
Panama as the focal point of our theater architecture. U.S. Army South
recently completed its relocation from Fort Clayton in Panama to Fort
Buchanan; Special operations command has displaced from its garrison
locations in Panama to its new home at Naval Station, Roosevelt Roads.
… Other forward deployed elements of SOUTHAF [U.S. Air Force, Southern
Command] have migrated from Howard Air Force Base to new locations in
Puerto Rico and Key West."
The Puerto Rican activists who are fighting to keep U.S. Naval operations
off of the tiny island of Vieques understand fully that they are slowing
preparations for war.
And signs abound that, like Vietnam, the coming war in Colombia will
not be confined to one country. In his testimony Gen. Wilhelm commented
at length on the effects of the Colombian narco-insurgency on surrounding
nations. He took special pains to lament the power vacuum in Panama
which, since the U.S. invasion in 1989 has had no standing army. This
is a great irony now for the country with the most accessible land border
with Colombia and which is reportedly providing "unpoliced"
safe havens for FARC and ELN guerillas to train, rest and equip without
fear of Colombian cross-border pursuit. This is EXACTLY the situation
the developed under CIA control in Cambodia and Laos from 1959 to 1975.
Just as the Vietnam War involved North and South Vietnam, Cambodia,
Thailand, Laos, Burma and China (not to mention the USSR) the coming
conflict in Colombia will involve Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Equador,
Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica and perhaps every nation in the hemisphere.
In his 1999 remarks Wilhelm took great pains to note the deployment
or military forces around Colombia by neighbors including Venezuela
which has, in a gesture of independence, refused to allow U.S. military
aircraft overflight privileges. That is not the case in Ecuador on Colombia's
western border where the Ecuadorian government is rushing to help the
USAF expand an air force base and debating whether or not to make the
U.S. dollar the country's official currency. Throughout all of this
the U.S. Military will assert its presence and it will take advantage
of a multitude of political and combat environments to perfect its operational
skills and effectively re-colonize and de-populate parts of the region.
On May 23, 2000, as far north as Guatemala, which borders Mexico, General
Wilhelm ordered 40 combat Marines into that country, equipped with Blackhawk
and Chinook helicopter gunships. Their purpose: to fight drugs.
And lastly, tried and true CIA-friendly politicians, are beginning
to lay the groundwork for direct intervention in Panama to guarantee
a Vietnam-like feeding frenzy. On June 9, while covering Congressional
hearings on the drug trade, Reuters reported that, "'The war in
neighboring Colombia against well-armed narco-terrorist forces, financed
through laundered drug profits through Panama's banks is escalating
and threatens to spread through the region', said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,
a California Republican. ' Panama does not have an army, navy or air
force. The Panamanian government and its national police force have
reputations for corruption and inefficiency.'"
Thanks to our long standing friendship with author and investigator
Jonn Christian, co-author of The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
and author of a forthcoming sequel to his original (1978) work Fatal
Connections: Linking the Kennedy and King Assassinations, we know something
more about Rohrabacher. And it fits all too well into the Vietnam mold.
FTW is in possession of LAPD reports and Sand Diego police intelligence
files indicating that the diminutive Rohrabacher, then just 20, was
intimately connected with armed radical right-wing CIA funded elements
that had been planning assassinations of both Martin Luther King and
Bobby Kennedy. In fact, Rohrabacher, then a young conservative Republican,
was at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968 the night that RFK was assassinated
and was interviewed by LAPD. That murder led to the eventual election
of Richard Nixon and the prolongation of the Vietnam War for another
seven painful, profitable years. The parallels between Colombia and
Vietnam are inescapable and unavoidable. After twenty-five years, the
passing of an entire generation, the forces that govern us behind the
scenes are poised to unleash another "floating crap game"
of profits, corporate expansion, re-colonization and even genocide.
The one glaring and hope-giving difference is that this time the war
will be justified on the basis of fighting not Communists, but drug
traffickers - and only one gang of drug traffickers at that. We will
see the American people's willingness to accept this ploy when the children
of the bull market begin to die.
CLICK
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Michael C. Ruppert
P.O. Box 6061-350, Sherman Oaks, CA 91413 * (818)788-8791 * fax(818)981-2847 *
mruppert@copvcia.com
© COPYRIGHT 1998, 1999, 2000, MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
