Outrage

by Preston Peet
(first published Dec. 1998 in the New York Waste)

Saturday, October 10th, anyone watching CNN that morning might have caught a brief mention of the release of the second half of the ClA's "Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations Between CIA and Contras in Trafficking Cocaine into the United States". CNN went on to state that the CIA acknowledged that it knew of at least 58 people involved in bringing cocaine into this country, and selling cocaine to US citizens, to help fund the Contra war in Nicaragua, and that many of these people were working for the CIA in some capacity at that time. That was it, the whole story. Nothing else was mentioned by CNN, and by evening the story was gone.

Then on Friday, October 23, again on CNN, it was announced that an historic peace agreement was reached between Israel and the Palestinians. Briefly mentioned was that part about how the organization responsible for making sure that each side sticks to their part of the bargain and to keep each party honest would be...the CIA.

What in the hell is going on here? While the politicians on the Hill vote to hold impeachment hearings over Clintons lying about Monica, no one seems to care one whit about CIA director John Deutch lying to both citizens and to the couple of politicians who do care and have made inquiries into this issue, about whether or not, and how much, the CIA knew, and knows, about drug running and sales.

On March 16, 1998, Fred Hitz, Inspector General of the CIA, told US Representatives at a congressional hearing that the CIA had worked with both companies, and different individuals that it knew were involved in the drug trade. His office had previously released the first half of it's report on these allegations on Jan. 29, '98, and he was on the Hill to give testimony about it. He went on to say that the CIA knew that drugs were coming into the USA along the same supply routes used for the Contras, and that the Agency did not sever it's relationship with Contra supporters who were also alleged traffickers.

This of course gives the lie to director Deutch's denials to fifteen hundred constituents from South Central Los Angeles, whom he'd flown out to speak to personally at a town meeting called by Los Angeles Representative Maxine Waters, on November 14, 1996, where he said that the CIA is fighting against drugs, that the CIA must deal with criminals to stop criminals, and that as of that day, the Agency had no evidence of a conspiracy by the CIA to engage in encouraging drug traffickers in Nicaragua or anywhere else in Latin America.

Hitz went on to reveal in his testimony that in 1982 the CIA signed a "memorandum of understanding" with William F. Smith, Reagan's Attorney General, that allowed the Agency to forgo reporting any drug trafficking involving "non-employees", such as pilots who flew weapons and supplies to the Contras, as well as the Contras themselves. This agreement was in effect for thirteen years, until officially ending in 1995.

This is the Inspector General of the CIA saying this, in person to US Representatives under oath. Probably some of the very same Representatives who voted for the impeachment hearings over Clinton's affair. How in the hell can Clintons lying about an affair be of more concern to these guys than the fact that our own intelligence agency, not another country's, but our own spies were allowing a veritable flood of drugs into this country for years? Remember that this is Fred Hitz, the I. G. of the CIA admitting this in sworn testimony on Capital Hill, not just some random loop job gibbering on the sidewalk saying this.

After having gone through years of drug addiction, coincidentally almost precisely the same years covered by the "memorandum of understanding", I have no understanding. How could this happen in this country? I take this news quite personally. But of course rather than becoming news, this issue is shuffled off into the" wild conspiracy theory" corner while the mainstream, corporate news media continues to titter over Monica and the cigar.

What bunk. What crap.

I personally started smoking crack in '87, going on to suffer addiction to it for a number of years, and to finally kick that habit I turned to a more invasive method of getting high, and began shooting speedballs all day every day for a few more years. I lost all friends practically, all belongings, got jailed, not once, not twice, but many, many times. I still have health problems due to my using, and still have cravings that can nearly overwhelm me at times, and this after just over two years off of drugs. I've even done a week on Rikers for possession of baking soda because a cop assumed it was cocaine, so I had to sit a week in jail waiting for a lab report to exonerate me. And now it turns out that the CIA, the ones who are supposed to protect me and the rest of us from this kind of thing, had a hand in getting me the drugs I thought I needed for so long.

So what can be done about this? There is an over-abundance of evidence in the public record implicating our CIA of at least being aware of trafficking, as well as assisting in the transport of drugs. Laos, Cambodia, S. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Honduras, Nicaragua, all of these counties had, or have, armies armed by the CIA, and that were principally funded by the production and sales of drugs. And those sales seem to be primarily to US citizens. At the one end there's these people making millions and billions of dollars selling drugs for the sake of "democracy", while at the other end there's the poor sap in the street getting busted buying a ten dollar bag of dope.

Makes me want to puke.

Do we keep locking up our own citizens for drug offenses when our own spies, and hence our own government, brings them in for us? There is enough proof. I've even read that Admiral Poindexter, General Secord, and Oliver North, of the Iran-Contra scandal, are all under indictment in Costa Rico for drug trafficking. Should we expect the Cost-Rican army to come barreling in here to arrest them, as our forces did in Panama to George Bush's CIA employee Manuel Noriega?

I find myself trembling and shaking with rage and frustration each time I try to discuss this issue with anyone. My thoughts keep going round, trying to come up with some way to do something about this. Can I start some kind of class action suit against the CIA? How about against Ollie North and the Contras? Are these evil men going to simply walk away from this? It is wrong to treat this as something that doesn't effect all of us. One way or another, directly or indirectly, the actions of these shadowy, behind the scenes characters have definitely affected me, and everyone who knows me.

It's insane to hand any sort of serious responsibility to this Agency at this time, until this issue has been dealt with, seriously and forcefully-, by someone or some governing body who can and will get to the bottom of this. These spooks were caught completely by surprise apparently by Pakistan and India blowing up A-bombs, they helped build the camp we just missled in Afghanistan, and have implicated themselves in drug running. This year the ClA's budget comes to 26.7 billion dollars. And there are still certain TV stations that air nothing but "crises in the White House" stories. The priorities are all screwed up it seems, and they're getting screwier all the time.

Wake up folks. This is not a joke.

There are people running around today who have made a mockery of the system we're all supposed to be so proud of, and have managed to use the system to protect themselves, while buggering the rest of us. These men are not patriots, they're traitors, and murderers, and thieves, not to mention hypocrites. Someone needs to make these people pay, whoever and where ever they might be. And if there is anything I can do to help bring these people down, I want to know.

Needless to say, this is a subject that I'm quite interested in, and have therefore been doing as much reading on the subject as I can. Last month I received a check from my brother for my birthday, and used it to buy the book, "Whiteout- The CIA, Drugs and the Press", by Alexander Cockbum and Jeffrey St. Clair. This book is one of the more disturbing books I've come across. Cockburn, a regular contributor to the NYPress, and St. Clair, who along with Cockburn puts out the bi-monthly journal," Counter Punch", cover a lot of ground, telling a long involved tale of intrigue, subterfuge, and dirty dealings by the CIA from it's beginnings at the end ofW.W.II, right up through 1998. They have meticulously documented their sources at the end of each chapter, which include Congressional testimony and documents, newspaper articles, interviews with the people involved, and the ClA's own reports. This book is an eye opener if your eyes aren't already open, and if they are already, maybe it will help piss you off as it did me.

So to wrap this up, let me reiterate:

Something is wrong in this country at the moment. When such a larger proportion of our citizens are locked up than any other western country's, and when we still have a major proportion of our citizens without health care, and an organization that implicates itself in drug trafficking can still get a budget OK'd for 2 billion dollars, something is seriously wrong. When our elected officials would rather investigate, to the tune of millions of tax dollars used to pay for said investigation, whether or not Clinton did or didn't shag Monica than find out who's responsible for the admitted infractions committed that were, and are, against the official drug policies of this country, something is way seriously wrong. And those responsible seem to be getting away scott free.

I would like to acknowledge my using the book " Whiteout- the CIA, Drugs, and the Press", for the dates mentioned in this article. I also got some of the idea for this article from reading the books, "Cocaine Politics", by Peter Dale Scott, and Jonathan Marshall, and the one that really opened my eyes to this issue," The Politics of Heroin: The Complicity of the CIA in the Global Drug Trade", by Alfred McCoy. There are also many sites on the internet, including the ClA's own web site, where one can find an overwhelming amount of information, and substantiation on this topic.

Let the anger flow.