Tracking The CIA Through Snowdrifts Of Drugs
Filed 6/28/2000

'The FARC guerrillas in Colombia are receiving their arms from the Russians, and they're paying for it all with cocaine. And guess what? The Russians are laundering their drug money back through the Bank of New York!' - Mike Ruppert

EUGENE, OR-"Economically, America is much more hooked on drug money than it is on drugs," said the former LAPD narcotics officer. The never-ending, all-American War on Some Drugs, he stressed, "affects everything in our current economic picture."

There were nine different speakers who addressed the disparate audience at the historic "CIA-Drugs Symposium" here at the Lane County Fairgrounds in Eugene last weekend. All presented searing accounts and first-hand testimony demonstrating that yes indeed, the CIA and top levels of the US Government have been aware of political drug trafficking for years, and complicit in it.

First, Daniel Hopsicker's shocking, eye-opening film on drug-running and corruption in the US government's security services, THE SECRET HEARTBEAT OF AMERICA, set the tone of the event. Organizer Kris Millegan welcomed the audience to the Wheeler Pavilion: "I'm just really tired of the situation we've got here, and I don't want my children to have to deal with it.... I am intent on bursting the media bubble of silence surrounding this issue." Millegan presented a documented historical review of political drug trafficking by many governments throughout history, focusing on China and the Opium Wars, which Britain forced on it in the 1800s. Millegan also discussed Yale's secret Skull and Bones crypto-plutocratic society, initially set up there by American opium traffickers.

from left: CIA Drug Busters Dedon Kamathi, Cele Castillo,
Tim Barker, Kris Milligan, and Mike Ruppert (squatting)
photo by Preston Peet

'The Best Enemies Money Can Buy'

Mike Ruppert, who publishes the seminal FROM THE WILDERNESS newsletter dealing with CIA-US Government-Drugs issues, gave a very moving presentation of his own history as a former LAPD narcotics officer, and his first-hand experience in the 1980s of CIA drug-running, and the horrid conclusions he has drawn. "The model of the CIA dealing drugs is exactly like a model wherein a family has a father who is molesting the youngest daughter, and everyone else in the family conspires to keep silent, to keep the family together, to scapegoat one member of the family 'so Daddy won't pick on me.' For that we must all share the blame, and we must all share in the responsibility. Arguing for the lesser of two evils is still arguing for evil. There's no other way."

Mike Ruppert - photo by Preston Peet

Ruppert ran down the particulars of why the US War on Some Drugs perpetually continues, using the forthcoming US incursion into the 50-year-old civil war in Colombia as an urgent economic example: "I have information that the FARC guerrillas in Colombia are receiving their arms from the Russians, and they're paying for it all with cocaine," related Ruppert. "The cocaine is then sold in Russia, but guess what? The Russians are laundering their money back through the Bank of New York on Wall Street. Isn't that amazing?" US financial interests, he diagnosed, "protect, create, and arm both sides of the conflict so they can profit from both sides. We have the best enemies that money can buy."

Ironically, the same multi-billion Congressional appropriation to fight the "Drug War" in Colombia also contains millions to support US troops in Kosovo: "We make money by destroying things, as in Kosovo," Ruppert noted." We destroyed all the oil refineries in a 500-mile radius there. They all have to be rebuilt. American companies will rebuild them. We have a search-and-destroy economy."

Who Benefits From Crack? The Jailers!

"When you think Crack, don't think Black, think CIA," admonished Dedon Kamathi, a producer with Motown Records (Conscious Rap as opposed to Gangsta Rap) and co-chair of the California-based Crack the CIA Coalition. Kamathi spoke to the US Government's strategic targeting of minority and poor communities, reviewing the FBI's various generations-long suppression operations against groups and individuals such as the Black Panther Party, RAMPARTS magazine, Stokely Carmichael and others from the 1960s. Then in the 1980s, crack cocaine inundated poor and minority neighborhoods throughout America when, charges Kamathi, "a conscious decision was made to attack conscious rappers, to destroy African-American strugglers, and music promoting gangsterism began to be promoted by the music industry."

Dedon Kamathi- photo by Preston Peet

FBI guiding angel J. Edgar Hoover, Kamathi noted, "made his name and reputation busting Marcus Garvey, yet denied the existence of the Mafia almost his entire life and career. We have been programmed in this country to think 'Crime' equals 'Black.'"

Kamathi enumerated the aims of the Crack the CIA Coalition, whose "mission statement stresses that we demand full disclosure and prosecution of all CIA officers and assets complicit in drug trafficking; dismantle the CIA, halt all covert wars and operations, all their dastardly deeds; divert CIA funds to domestic programs that benefit all the people, demand reparations, racial sentencing disparities, and ALL drug sentences--and end the cover-up of CIA drug-trafficking complicity!"

Speaking of dope-infested L.A. neighborhoods, Kamathi pointed out that "before crack cocaine was introduced to Compton, Goodyear and Firestone were the two biggest employers of African-Americans in the area. Then the US Government enticed the companies to move operations to Indonesia, leaving thousands unemployed in California. At the exact same time these companies left, crack was introduced as an alternative source of income."

Not at all coincidentally, he noted, "The most powerful lobbyist group in California now is the California Corrections Officers Union. Every jailed prisoner generates $35,000 a year. Money is being taken right out of education and put into the prison-industrial complex. Profits over people, over spirituality, over Mother Earth and the environment."

Freed From The Rule Of Law

Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner under President George Bush from 1989 to 1990, agrees. Fitts was fired for her outspoken attempts to cut official corruption costing massive amounts of taxpayer money. In Eugene, Fitts spoke of how international drug lords use Wall Street and investment banks to launder massive amounts of drug proceeds. "Who will control our neighborhoods, organized crime or the locals?" Fitts asked. "Whatever system we are living under, it is not a democracy, and we are not protected by the rule of law."

Catherine Austin Fitts and Kris Milligan-
photo by Preston Peet


There was a presentation of another of Hopsicker's films, titled IN SEARCH OF THE AMERICAN DRUG LORDS. about Barry Seal, the infamous CIA dope pilot who flew drugs for the US government from the Bay of Pigs to the heyday of the Nicaraguan contras, before his 1986 assassination.

Dan Hopsicker and Mike Ruppert in Deep Discussion
photo by Preston Peet

After a quick presentation regarding the class-action lawsuits against the CIA and others filed in California, Celerino Castillo, a 12-year veteran of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, gave a presentation of his career, which culminated in his assignment as Special Agent in Central America from 1985 to 1990. Castillo's 1994 book, POWDERBURNS: COCAINE, CONTRAS AND THE DRUG WAR, exposed CIA drug-running out of El Salvador in support of the Nicaraguan contras.

Castillo told the audience, "I hope that when you leave here today you will have a better understanding of what really happened with our government, and the deals they cut with criminals and drug traffickers. I was there and I saw it. I kept journals. I took pictures of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I have them. I found out we were the Bad Guys." Castillo described some of his close calls and misadventures while in service of the DEA, and explained why more officers do not come forward with accounts of their own eyewitness of corruption: "They're not about to report anything as they have a wife, kids, house, mortgage, and don't want to do anything to jeopardize their pensions."

Celerino Castilo- photo by Preston Peet

Castillo also stressed that the War on Some Drugs is essentially political, because "if the Drug War ended now, our whole banking system would collapse." He was not overly optimistic. "There is no way the US Government is ever going to legalize drugs," he counseled. "There is too much money being made now. It is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, but we know who did this to us."

Rodney Stich, who began his attempts to expose US government corruption 40 years ago while an FAA flight-accident investigator, described his ever-continuing fight to expose official crimes. Author of the books DRUGGING AMERICA (1994) and DEFRAUDING AMERICA (1999), Stich has collected case after case of official drugrunning and corruption, detailed by government insiders and participants. "There are way more agencies and departments involved than just the CIA," said Stich, "a lot more government insiders and participants."

Rodney Stich- photo by Preston Peet

Ruppert came back out and played a video clip of former CIA Director John Deutch at a nationally televised town-hall meeting in August of 1996 with South Central Los Angeles residents who were demanding answers to CIA drug-running allegations. The clip showed Ruppert telling Deutch that he, Ruppert, had information to supply on the topic. After the clip, Ruppert gave a very warm welcome to Peter Dale Scott, the prolific author of COCAINE POLITICS (1991, with Jonathan Marshall), and DEEP POLITICS AND THE DEATH OF JFK (1993). Scott first wrote of US- government-sanctioned drug trafficking in 1970, in his rare book on Vietnam, THE WAR CONSPIRACY.

The Latest Crock Of Lies

Peter Dale Scot6t- photo by Preston Peet

Scott, a former Canadian diplomat, UC Berkeley English professor, and co-founder in the 1970s of the Coalition on Political Assassination, was the keynote speaker of the evening. He drew special attention to the report issued on May 11 by the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence, which asserted that the committee had "found no evidence" that employees or assets associated with any US security service, including the CIA, have ever been complicit in running drugs into the US, or in covering up for those who had.

"The May 11th report basically says there is nothing to worry about," asserted Scott. "This report is full of lies, flat-out lies, in terms of what they've already admitted to in other reports." Scott proceeded to rip the Committee's findings apart, point by eloquent point, illustrating vividly how many of the US Government's own previously released reports refute the farcical conclusion that there is "no evidence" to connect both the CIA and the US Government to drug trafficking.

In a letter offering support for the Symposium and its aim to shine a light on officially sanctioned drugrunning and other corruption, Representative Peter DeFazio, (D-OR) wrote, "I have fought for years to lift the dark veil of secrecy shrouding the US Intelligence bureaucracy. Unfortunately, the intelligence establishment is given vast deference by many of my colleagues, which has led to little accountability and virtually toothless oversight by Congress."

The massive secret computer spy system Echelon was brought to public attention not by Congressional oversight, but by independent journalists and researchers, DeFazio noted, bemoaning the ability of the CIA to "slap the label of national security on something as innocuous as a budget number." DeFazio concluded his letter, "Given the low likelihood that enough elected officials will rise to challenge the intelligence bureaucracy, it is up to concerned citizens such as yourselves to reveal possible misconduct. Good luck with your symposium.