[1] 2000, PBS Frontline, 'Interview: Robert DuPont' (pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/dupont.html): "DuPont worked with heroin addicts and methadone treatment in Washington D.C. during the early 1970's. His work impressed Bud Krogh, White House Deputy Ass't for Domestic Affairs under President Nixon. Krogh appointed DuPont the Director of the Narcotics Treatment Administration, 1970-73, in order to set up methadone maintenance programs in Washington, D.C. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted in 2000. ...

[Interview:]

Nixon had really made a big deal about crime in general, and crime in Washington in particular. He had said he was going to make things better. And when he came to office, he had a lot of other things he was interested in, and this was not important to him at all. And so he just ignored it. It was a group of local citizens--Edward Bennett Williams and Katherine Graham [of the Washington Post] were very important--who went down to Nixon personally, and said, "We're going to hold a press conference every week and quote what you said you were going to do, and show what's really happening, and we're going to embarrass you until you wake up."

It was at that point that Nixon said, "I committed myself to do this. What I said is very public I have to do it." And he turned to Bud Krogh and said, "Make it happen. I don't know how." There weren't a lot of alternatives. The most visible was putting police on the streets, and they did that. ...

We started NTA on February 18, 1970, and we had a goal of treating all the addicts in the city, with the goal of having an impact on heroin addiction and crime and life in the city. And the most remarkable fact about it is that we did it. The crime rate was cut in half, and heroin overdoses almost ended in the city. We couldn't find addicts to get into treatment by 1973. It was an experiment that worked, and it worked to a very high level, way beyond anything anyone could have imagined. It went on to have a profound effect on national policy. That's the good news.

The bad news, and something that I struggled with, is how it was lost. What happened in the city was just gone. It became an orphan in the city government. Nobody cared. And the rates then went back up again, the crime rates and the addiction rates and the people who are there don't even remember that. It's like it never happened. I think the saddest thing to think about is how when you're successful in dealing with the drug problem, you go back to where you were before, and then it's not an issue. ...

Nixon was tremendously unpopular, especially toward the end, especially with the human services. The kind of environment in which we live was full of people who had animosity toward Nixon. The fact that we were associated--that methadone and its expansion was associated with Nixon--that was a tremendous problem. And then there was the racial aspect of it, which was very difficult for me to deal with. Ninety percent of the patients were black. The city was seventy-one percent black, and I was obviously white. There was a charge that this was racist, that this was a form of enslaving the black, young men in the nation's cities. That was, I think, the most vicious of the anti-methadone kind of arguments. ..."

[2] 2000, PBS Frontline, 'Interview: Peter Bourne' (pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/bourne.html): "Bourne was in charge of the nation's drug problem under President Jimmy Carter. His official title was Special Assistant to the President for Health Issues. Bourne resigned in 1978 after being caught writing a fraudulent prescription for a staff member and after rumors spread that he used cocaine at a NORML Christmas party he had attended. This is the edited transcript of an interview conducted in 2000. ...

[Interview:]

I had been hired by President Carter [a Trilateral Commission favorite], who was then the governor of Georgia, to set up a statewide drug treatment program. ... One of my longtime friends and college classmates, Robert DuPont [BA Emory University 1958; MD in psychology Harvard 1963; involved in carrying out the first methadone test treatments in 1969, which eventually helped cut the crime rate in half; White House drug czar under Nixon and Ford 1973-1977] , was already running the drug treatment program in Washington, D.C. Governor Carter said that he wanted me to set that up in all the major cities in Georgia. So I agreed. A group of half-dozen of us was running programs, mainly methadone maintenance programs, in major cities around the country. ...

We had already made the decision that he would run. We had a small group, just four or five people, working with Carter in 1972, actually beginning before McGovern's defeat. We were preparing a plan for the four-year strategy for Carter to run for president. When Bud Krogh came and invited me to come to Washington, I talked to Carter about whether or not I should take the job. He said, "You take it, and as soon as they are ready to formally announce that I'm running for president, you can leave there and set up the Washington campiagn office in the presidential race," which is in fact what I did. ...

When Carter came in, I was appointed to that position. So I was essentially the first drug czar with a total responsibility for foreign police, law enforcement, treatment. We also involved the CIA, the Coast Guard, Treasury, and anybody else in the federal government--all coordinated together in one policymaking group, and under one office. ...

The policy that we enunciated was that this was a public health problem, that each drug needed to be dealt with separately because of the different strategy of approach was required for each drug. Heroin was the major public health problem. ...

We did not view marijuana as a significant health problem... marijuana smoking, in fact if one wants to be honest, is a source of pleasure and amusement to countless millions of people in America... Where a drug posed a serious health threat, there was an intensive focus to provide a treatment program. ...

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, NORML, had had a steep decline in its membership after Carter came in office, and talked about decriminalization as a more rational approach towards marijuana smoking. ...

I guess it was the [1977] annual meeting of NORML or something--where Keith Stroup invited me to come and speak about the administration's policy, which I did. And I could see when I was speaking that there were people in the back of the hall smoking joints. I did tell Keith at that point that that just created a big problem for me, because I couldn't be there. I couldn't be in charge of drug policy and have people visibly breaking the law in my presence. There was another annual meeting which may be the one you are referring to, which I either couldn't go to or didn't want to go to because of the previous event. And he said, "I understand that, but tonight we're having a party at the home of William Paley," who was the son of the owner of CBS television. And he said, "Please come by, because people are very upset that you didn't come and speak at our former sessions, and it would be nice if you came to my party." So I went to that party, where again, people were using drugs. And I didn't stay there terribly long and I left. That was the last I heard of that party until many months later. ...

Then Keith [Stroup] said [during the media frenzy about me having prescribed a dozen regular sedatives for someone], "Six months ago, he was at this party given by William Paley, and there was coke being used there, and I'm sure he was one of the people who used coke," which again was not true. But there was no doubt coke was being used at that party. ...

I think [the tide on marijuana decriminalization changing in 1978] probably had to do with the ebbing support for President Carter. He was in serious trouble because of the economy [and] Conservative hard-liner... were attacking him from the right, saying to increase defense spending. ...

I only came to realize later the extent to which bureaucratic wars in Washington often transcend the pursuit of policy, and that one of the objectives in DEA always was to increase the budget and its influence in Washington. One way of doing that was to always say that the drug problem is getting worse... If you're winning the war against heroin, and the person in the White House says we have reduced overdose deaths to the lowest levels in the last 30 years, everybody in DEA says, "They're going to cut our budget. They're going to reduce our agents. Some of us are going to be laid off." ...

I still believe that [cocaine is not dangerous]. Cocaine itself, powdered cocaine, poses a fairly minimal health risk. It's been widely used for thousands of years. ... It's an exciting euphoria-producing recreational drug. Most people who get into difficulty with it do so because they have preexisting emotional problems, and they use the cocaine as a way of trying to self-medicate those problems, and become increasingly dependent on it. I'm not saying there aren't people who don't get into serious difficulty with cocaine. But there are people who kill themselves skiing because they run into trees. That is the nature of the risk that you take on if you enjoy that experience. ...

In 1978, seven people in the US died from the effects of cocaine. Two of them were people who were smuggling. ... If you compare it to 400,000 dying every year in the US from the effects of cigarettes, it's absurd to look at cocaine as a health problem. ... Ten percent of the US is alcoholic--has a problem that seriously impairs their functioning due to the use of alcohol. ...

There was a dramatic change when the Reagan administration came in, because they essentially abandoned completely the public health approach to the problem of drug abuse. They equated on moral grounds the use of any of these drugs as being equal to each other... You had a sort of insane policy of "Just Say No," which is like telling someone who's depressed, "Have a Nice Day." And essentially it's an abdication of any responsibility for dealing with the problem, and an effort really just to exploit it politically. And that's what happened. Build more prisons, arrest more people. .. You hadin certain respects the use of cocaine, crack cocaine, and the laws against it, as a way of sort of ethnically cleansing young African-American men from the inner cities of America. ... When Reagan first came in, I would call the National Institute on Drug Abuse every month to get the overdose figures. And from the moment Reagan came in, the number of people dying from drugs went up week by week by week, because they were abandoning all the treatment programs... Eventually they refused to give me overdose death figures anymore. ... The [only] objective was, can you appeal to suburban voters who have this rational or irrational fear about their children smoking marijuana? And that is what you want to appeal to."

[3] Ibid.: "I only came to realize later the extent to which bureaucratic wars in Washington often transcend the pursuit of policy, and that one of the objectives in DEA always was to increase the budget and its influence in Washington. One way of doing that was to always say that the drug problem is getting worse... If you're winning the war against heroin, and the person in the White House says we have reduced overdose deaths to the lowest levels in the last 30 years, everybody in DEA says, "They're going to cut our budget. They're going to reduce our agents. Some of us are going to be laid off."

[4] 2005, Joseph J. Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', pp. 99-106: "One of George Bush's most significant accomplishments in his year as CIA Director was to switch the Agency's reliance, for regional intelligence, from Israel to Saudi Arabia [in total contrast to Angleton]. …

Although Bush has been given much of the responsibility for the shift, in reality he had always been a strong supporter of Israel, despite ties to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that went back to his father and grandfather. During George Bush's Zapata-Offshore years, he had met most of the Gulf region's royals and had developed close personal relationships with several of them. …

The most important friendship Bush had was with a quiet, dignified man named Sheikh Kamal Adham, Director of Saudi Intelligence, whom Bush had met through his father. Bush has told reporters, "I never met Kamal Adham personally." But according to lawyers for the late Saudi Intelligence head and several officials at the CIA who served under Bush, there were several official meetings inside and outside the United States, both before and after Bush was the DCI. "Bush and Kamal were old friends. I was present when they met in New York when Bush was still United Nations Ambassador," Sarkis Soghanalian said. Bush and Adham shared a fascination with intelligence.

Bush also took a deep interest in the Sheikh's American-educated nephew, HRH Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud. Prince Turki had been the subject of CIA interest ever since his father had sent him to prep school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Agency talent spotters on the faculty at Georgetown University kept close track of Turki until he got out of Georgetown to return home at the outbreak of the 1967 war with Israel. And later completing his education in England, Turki again returned home to prepare himself to eventually succeed his uncle Kamal Adham as Director of Saudi Intelligence. "On his visits here," Robert Crowley recalled, "Agency management made Turki welcome, knowing full well that at some point Saudi Arabia's General Intelligence Department [GID] would fall under his control."

As a young Saudi bureaucrat, Prince Turki was cultivated by various CIA operatives, including Shackley, Clines, and Terpil. In the early 1970s, when Terpil and Wilson first started operations in Libya, Terpil set Wilson up with a Geneva lawyer named Robert Turrettini, who also handled banking matters for Turki. Terpil told Wilson that he went back years with Turki through Turki's personal assistant. When Wilson needed financial backing for several large-scale operations, Prince Turki put up the cash. In 1992, Wilson said he shared millions of dollars with Turki in a Swiss bank account from an old operation.

Both Prince Turki and Kamal Adham would play enormous roles in servicing a spy network designed to replace the official CIA while it was under Congressional scrutiny between the time of Watergate and the end of the Carter administration. … "Clark Clifford approached Kamal Adham and asked that the Saudis consider setting up an informal intelligence network outside the United States during the investigations," Robert Crowley said. Crowley, in his role as the CIA's liaison to the corporate world, was privy to the plan, in which worldwide covert operations for the Agency were funded through a host of Saudi banking and charity enterprises. Several top U.S. military and intelligence officials directed the operations from positions they held overseas, notably former CIA Director Richard Helms, at this time Ambassador to Iran. Ed Wilson and his associates supported the network. According to Wilson, Prince Turki was used to finance several of his intelligence operations during this time period. According to Wilson, the amounts were in the millions of dollars. According to Tom Clines, the relationship between the Saudis and the private U.S. intelligence network grew out of the activities of Clines and his colleagues was "vital… these operations were so sensitive, they could not be revealed." Mike Pilgrims, who also played a role in the operations of the private network during the 1980s, said, "It got to the point where we were used to support GID operations when the CIA could not." According to those involved, there was no line drawn between what was official and what became personal business. …

[Prince Turki's admission at Georgetown that he helped set up the Safari Club in 1976] … Turki's "secret" was that the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States. It was during this time period that the Saudis opened up a series of covert accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington. Starting in the mid-1970s, bank investigators say, these accounts show that tens of millions of dollars were being transferred between CIA operational accounts and accounts controlled by Saudi companies and the Saudi embassy itself. Turki worked directly with agency operatives like Sarkis Soghanalian and Ed Wilson. "If I needed money for an operation, Prince Turki made it available," Wilson said. … Their [the Saudi's] interests included keeping the shah in charge in Teheran and keeping an eye out on increasingly militant Libya. …

Sarkis Soghanalian was close to Sheikh Kamal Adham during this period. Adham frequently asked Soghanalian "about what kind of shape the shah was in. He complained the CIA was not giving him the full picture of how the shah was losing control." Adham believed that binding Saudi Arabia with the United States would increase the House of Saud's chances of surviving an Islamic resurgence. "Believe me," Soghanalian said, "Kamal did not do these things out of charity, but survival."

Adham worked closely with George Bush on the plan to provide covert banking services for CIA operations. … In 1976, when the CIA needed an influx of cash for operations, Adham agreed to allow Nugan Hand Bank's Bernie Houghton to open a branch in Saudi Arabia. … Adham understood that creating a single worldwide clandestine bank was not enough to assure the kind of resources necessary to stave off the coming Islamic revolutions that threatened Saudi Arabia and the entire region. The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations. With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world in order to create the biggest clandestine money network in history. Bush had an account with the BCCI established at the time he was at the CIA. The account was set up at the Paris branch of the bank. [black network reports] … What no one reported at the time was that the bank was being used by the United States and Saudi Arabia as an intelligence front. There had never been anything like it. Paul Helliwell may have made the mold, but Adham and BCCI founder Sheikh Agha Hasan Abedi smashed it. They contrived, with Bush and other intelligence service heads, a plan that seemed too good to be true. The bank would solicit the business of every major terrorist, rebel, and underground organization in the world. The invaluable intelligence thus gained would be discreetly distributed to "friends" of BCCI. … Adham and Abedi believed the United States needed monitoring. … Adham did not rely simply on money to carry out the plan. Adham and Abedi understood that they would also need muscle. They tapped into the CIA's stockpile of misfits and malcontents to help man a 1,500-strong group of assassins and enforcers. Time magazine called the group a "black network.""

[5] 2005, Joseph Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', pp. 17-18, 53, 131: "Most of Robert Crowley's work in managing the CIA's connections with business was with huge corporations like International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) and Ford. But, he explained, "sometimes we would suggest someone go off on their own. Sometimes the Agency needed more control. It was much easier to simply set someone up in business like Bush and let him take orders." ...

Sherwood confirmed that Bush's specific role was "to provide cover to allow our people to set up training facilities and invasion launch points against Cuba in the 1960-61 period. ... We had to pay off politicians in Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and elsewhere. Bush's company was used as a conduit for these funds under the guise of oil business contracts. We used his company to find Cuban refugees jobs. Bush wasn't even told what the money was for, although he damn well knew what we were up to."

John Sherwood went to great pains to point out that Bush's role was not covert. "He never did any spying, he simply helped his government arrange to place people with oil companies he did business with. ... The major breakthrough was when we were able, through Bush, to place people in PEMEX--the big Mexican national oil operation."

PEMEX, with a long history of corruption, was also a longtime target for CIA infiltration. It was Bush's bizarre involvement with a Mexican national and longtime CIA asset, Jorge Diaz Serrano, that left the only Bush-CIA paper trail. Serrano would eventually rise through the Mexican oil business to assume command of PEMEX [1976-1982], only to be later convicted of stealing tens of millions of dollars. ...

According to William Corson, the CIA had recruited Diaz Serrano to assist in logistics involving the anti-Castro efforts. ... Bush's relationship with Diaz Serrano began [through] Edwin Pawley [note: who was part of the CIA ring that started the Burma / Myanmar / Golden Triangle opium smuggling ring in the early 1950s] ... [In the early 1970s] Wilson reactivated another one of his agents from the 1960s, Ricardo Chavez... Wilson used him for one of his most successful operations: penetrating the Mexican political hierarchy. As Wilson put it, Chavez's wife's family "was very well connected with the President of Mexico, and through her family we recruited the top people in PEMEX and the Mexican government. ... We operated right out of the President's office and home. ...

[Rafael "Chi Chi"] Quintero and Chavez were virtually taking over a CIA/Army Intelligence operation. They planned to use three different companies: API, Fijamex, and a new Bermuda-based company, International Research and Trade (IRT), that would prove to be very important to Shackley, Secord, Clines, and von Marbod. API would submit a bid to Fijamex for a contract offered by PEMEX. [whole scheme is explained]"

[6] March 17, 2016, Observer, 'The Troubling Friendship of Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush: Both families have circumvented what democracy is supposed to prevent': "Despite the Bush family being Republican and the Clinton family being Democrats—especially as the polarity between parties is arguably broader than it ever has been in the past few decades—the two political dynasties have maintained a surprisingly close relationship. In a 2014, George W. Bush called Bill Clinton his "brother from another mother" on Instagram, in response to a tweet from Mr. Clinton about Mr. Bush's latest book. That same year, in an interview with Real Clear Politics, Mr. Bush said of Mr. Clinton, "He's got a good spirit about him. We're the only baby-boomer presidents. We were both Southern governors, and we both like each other. He's fun to be around. I hope he would say I'm fun to be around. And we're both grandfathers." In a separate interview with CNN, Mr. Bush described Ms. Clinton as his "sister-in-law."

The 2016 presidential election marked the possibility of having another Clinton or Bush as President. ...

Since the 18th century revolutions have been fueled by the abuse and corruption rampant in monarchies and family dynasties. When democracy took place, the people were heard and represented. The Bush and Clinton families have since circumvented what democracy, in theory, is supposed to accomplish: Although they were elected, their rise to power was ensured by the influence of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Each presidency built the foundation for another Bush and another Clinton to reach the White House.

Their closeness exhibits the façade and pseudo-dramas both political parties engage. Aside from a few differences in opinion on certain issues, both the Bush and Clinton families share moderate political stances, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush also shared many of the same wealthy donors—more than 60 of whom contributed to both campaigns, according to The Daily Beast. Given Ms. Clinton's lead in the Democratic Primaries, she may revert back to her friendship with the Bush family and embrace past stances that are more in line with moderate liberalism and conservatism. ...

In the most recent Democratic town hall on MSNBC, Ms. Clinton told Chris Matthews her vote for the Iraq War—a manifestation of the Bush administration—was born from her agreement with George W. Bush to secure $20 billion toward rebuilding New York City after 9/11.

"I'm sitting there in the Oval Office, and Bush says to me, 'What do you need?' And I said, 'I need $20 billion to rebuild, you know, New York,' and he said, 'You got it.' And he was good to his word," Ms. Clinton said. "Literally, that same day, I get back to the Capitol, and the Republicans are trying to take that money away. We kept calling the White House, Bush kept saying, 'I gave them my word, I'm going to stick with it.' So, you know, I had a different set of experiences."

Ms. Clinton's response was a tangent in defense of her vote for the Iraq War, which Senator Bernie Sanders—who voted against the war—often cites to highlight her poor judgment in foreign policy affairs."

[7] November 16, 2014, Daily Mail, ''He's my brother from another mother': George W Bush gushes about unlikely pal Bill Clinton who ousted his father from the Oval Office': "George W Bush has described Bill Clinton as a 'brother from another mother' in a gushing interview about their surprising friendship. He added that his own father 'serves as a father figure' to Clinton, who pushed the elder Bush out of office in 1992."

[8] June 16, 1998, Mother Jones, 'History 101: The CIA & Drugs The CIA has a long and sordid history with drug traffickers. And it's all in the Congressional Record.': "World War II: The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the CIA's parent and sister organizations, cultivate relations with the leaders of the Italian Mafia, recruiting heavily from the New York and Chicago underworlds, whose members, including Charles 'Lucky' Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello, help the agencies keep in touch with Sicilian Mafia leaders exiled by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Domestically, the aim is to prevent sabotage on East Coast ports, while in Italy the goal is to gain intelligence on Sicily prior to the allied invasions and to suppress the burgeoning Italian Communist Party. Imprisoned in New York, Luciano earns a pardon for his wartime service and is deported to Italy, where he proceeds to build his heroin empire, first by diverting supplies from the legal market, before developing connections in Lebanon and Turkey that supply morphine base to labs in Sicily. The OSS and ONI also work closely with Chinese gangsters who control vast supplies of opium, morphine and heroin, helping to establish the third pillar of the post-world War II heroin trade in the Golden Triangle, the border region of Thailand, Burma, Laos and China's Yunnan Province.

1947: In its first year of existence, the CIA continues U.S. intelligence community's anti-communist drive. Agency operatives help the Mafia seize total power in Sicily and it sends money to heroin-smuggling Corsican mobsters in Marseille to assist in their battle with Communist unions for control of the city's docks. By 1951, Luciano and the Corsicans have pooled their resources, giving rise to the notorious 'French Connection' which would dominate the world heroin trade until the early 1970s. The CIA also recruits members of organized crime gangs in Japan to help ensure that the country stays in the non-communist world. Several years later, the Japanese Yakuza emerges as a major source of methamphetamine in Hawaii."

*) October 14, 2014, Alternet, 'Meet the CIA's 10 Favorite Drug Traffickers': "The 1940s: Don Calogero Vizzini (Sicilian Mafia): The Sicilian Mafia was decimated by the start of World War II. Mussolini's repression left it clinging to strongholds in Sicily.

The Allied occupation reversed this decline. The CIA's precursor, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), teamed with organized crime during the July 1943 invasion of Sicily. That was when the US Army appointed Don Calogero Vizzini, a local Mafia boss, mayor of Villalba. He was certain his US ties gave him impunity, so he murdered the local intrusive police chief. The US installed mayors like Vizzini throughout western Sicily, as the US-Mafia partnership persisted.

Italy's Communist Party was gaining power as the war ended, and social reforms would have eroded Mafia power. Both Washington and the crime bosses intended to crush the Italian left.

In 1946, while the Mafia was rebuilding, the US freed top gangster Lucky Luciano from his New York prison, deporting him to Italy. He contacted his friend Vizzini upon arrival, and the two helped construct an enormous drug trafficking network. Law enforcement did not interfere with the project. Morphine base arrived from the Middle East and was made into heroin at a Palermo laboratory Vizzini ran—which fronted as a candy factory—then shipped to the US.

The number of addicts there was near 20,000 at the war's conclusion. In 1952, two years before Vizzini died, it was 60,000. Heroin dependence plagued 150,000 US citizens by 1965."

[9] *) Ibid.

*) 2013, David M. Fahey and Jon S. Miller, 'Alcohol and Drugs in North America: A Historical Encyclopedia', p. 271: "In the 1930s, Paul Carbonne and Francois Spirito, two eminent figures of the Milieu, created a network to supply opium to the American underground market. After World War II, new godfathers, the brothers Andre and Barthelemy Guerini, took control of the Milieu, taking advantage of their political protection. They had fought the Nazi occupiers within the Resistance alongside Gaston Deferre, the new socialist mayor of Marseilles, elected in 1945. Thereafter, the municipality recruited many body guards and bill posters from the Milieu. It also received financial support from the CIA. In the context of the Cold War and the big 1947 strikes, the CIA wanted to create "free" trade unions against the communist ones, to control the wharves. Lucky Luciano, godfather of the Italian American mafia in New York City, decided to make the Marseilles mafia his main provider in heroin. So, conditions combined for Marseilles to become a huge platform for drug trafficking. From 1951, the growing number of laboratories dismantled by the French police showed the system was becoming increasingly sophisticated.

The French Connection was not a single monolithic organization, but a cluster of networks in permanent reconfiguration. The Corsican mafia, in spite of a cultural similarity with the Sicilian or the Italian American mafias (hierarchy founded on authority and honor, organization in families), is less structured, divided into autonomous, competing groups. The heroin production was controlled by four families: the clans Marignani, Spirito, Aranci, and Patrizzi, identified in 1961 by American and French police. ...

The SAC (Service d'Action Civique), a private police composed mostly of Corsican gangsters, was used by the Gaullist Party (Union pour la Nouvelle Republique or UNR), and often executed dirty work for the French Secret Services [SDECE]. At the time, numerous members of SAC (Serge Constant, Ange Simonpierri) had been arrested for heroin smuggling...

Meanwhile, in the United States, drug abuse was becoming a huge problem."

[12] *) 1973, Alfred McCoy, 'The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia', p. 8: "And once again American foreign policy played a role in creating these favorable conditions. During the early 1950s the CIA had backed the formation of a Nationalist Chinese guerrilla army in Burma, which still controls almost a third of the world's illicit opium supply, and in Laos the CIA created a Meo mercenary army whose commander manufactured heroin for sale to Americans GIs in South Vietnam. The State Department provided unconditionalsupport for corrupt governments openly engaged in the drug traffic. In late 1969 new heroin laboratories sprang up inthe tri-border area where Burma, Thailand, and Laos converge, and unprecedented quantities of heroin started floodinginto the United States. Fueled by these seemingly limitless supplies of heroin, America's total number of addictsskyrocketed."

*) 1984, William M. Leary, 'Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia', pp. 67-72 (very official; ignores the opium trafficking): "[In 1949] CAT's president went on to paint a bleak picture of events in China. ... Chennault envisioned "a ring of Red bases," stretching from "Siberia to Saigon." With its eastern flank secured by Chinese subordinates, the Soviet Union would be in position to threaten the United States with destruction. ...

Publication of Way of a Fighter marked the start of Chennault's effort to mobilize American support for a plan to stop communism on the periphery of China. Assisted by Corcoran, Washington lobbyist par excellence, Chennault mounted a full-scale publicity campaign. ...

In his testimony before the committee and elsewhere, CAT's president advanced the "Chennault Plan" to preserve this area from Communist rule and contain Mao's forces. The United States, he said, should send a military mission to China, charged with procurement and distribution of supplies to regional armies in this "sanitary zone." ... CAT and other civilian airlines would provide essentional logistical support. The scheme, he estimated, should cost about $150 to $200 million a year. ...

Chennault took his plan to a skeptical State Department. Secretary Dean Acheson, an "Atlanticist," considered Europe to be most vital to American interests. When he did look across the Pacific, the corruption and venality of the [Chinese] Nationalists [on Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan] filled him with disgust. ...

According to the public record, which has been maintained for more than three decades, Washington's interest in the Chennault Plan died when Acheson dismissed the proposal. But the public record is not complete. Chennault found another organization in Washington more sympathetic toward his ideas... the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

In early May [1949] Corcoran had arranged a meeting between Chennault and Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, director of the CIA. Their discussions proved inconclusive, but Chennault's views sparked the interest of Paul L. E. Helliwell, a CIA official and former chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Intelligence Division in Kunming. Helliwell had worked closely with Chennault during the war, and he had a higher opinion of him than did Rusk. Helliwell recommended to Frank G. Wisner, head of the Office of Policy Coordination (an intentionally vague designation that masked the government's covert action arm) that contact be established with Chennault, looking toward the possible use of his airline for clandestine operations in China. Thus was set in motion a train of events that would have far-reaching consequences for CAT. ...

Acting on Helliwell's recommendation, Wisner and several associates (including Franklin A. Lindsey, Carmel Offie, and Joseph A. FRank) met with Chennault at the Hotel Washington on May 9. The general outlined his plan to contain communism in Asia, emphasizing CAT's role in providing essential logistical support. Wisner came away impressed... Wisner asked Helliwell to consider means of direct or indirect subsidy to CAT in order "to preserve its operations, facilities and personnel for ultimate OPC use in China." Helliwell had a "preliminary and unofficial" discussion with Corcoran on June 27 [to discuss CAT's financial problems]..."

*) 2003, John Prados, 'Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby', pp. 171-172: "From 1951 the CIA's busines in Thailand revolved around help to the national police. Starting with a Miami-based CIA proprietary called the Overseas Southeast Asia Supply Company, set up by Paul Helliwell. a former OSS colonel and lawyer who had been one of that agency's leaders for its mission to Indochina at the end of World War II, the CIA funneled $35 million to start up the Thai police. Many agency officers -- Bill Lair is one example -- went to Thailand with Overseas Supply cover. Thomas Lobe, a scholar who systematically studied these programs, calculates that as many as 200 CIA people entered the country under Sea Supply cover during the first two years of the initiative, while seventy-six more police advisers went to Thailand with overtly acknowledged purpose. ... providing extraterritorial bases for U.S. operations in Laos and North Vietnam, as well as manpower for the CIA secret. The Thai police steadily gathered power. Aside from the Bangkok force and a large provincial force, there were several elite units. Bill Lair's assignment to the Police Aerial Recovery Unit (PARU) occurred early in the life of that entity, which by 1954 already numbered more than 300 men. In 1960, by which time the CIA-Thai alliance had put ninety-nine PARU troopers with the Hmong secret army in Laos, the PARU was building toward a strength of 550. The Border Patrol Police (BPP) formed in 1955 and, with a size of 4,500, had responsibility for security along all Thai frontiers to a depth of twenty-five miles. Then there was the Central Investigative Division, or Special Branch, a Thai security service. The police steadily gathered power until 1956 when they challenged the military for control and were suppressed, with Sarit triumphing instead the following year. The CIA's clients never regained their former political power, but they became stronger in sheer numbers, while the agency, led by Red Jantzen, built links directly to the Thai pontentates."

*) 2009, Joseph Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', p. 25: "The CIA created a pair of front companies to supply and finance the twelve thousand surviving KMT soldiers. The first was Civil Air Transport (CAT), a Taiwan-based airline, and the second was Sea Supply Corporation, a shipping concern in Bangkok that Helliwell founded. Through Sea Supply, Helliwell imported large amounts of arms for the KMT soldiers to keep the Burmese military from throwing them out of the country. The arms were ferried into Burma on CAT airplanes. CAT then used the "empty" planes to fly drugs from Burma to Taiwan, Bangkok, and Saigon. There the drugs were processed for the benefit of the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek's corrupt government on Taiwan.

By 1960, the CIA realized that the KMT drug lords had grown so comfortable that there was little hope of getting the to fulfill their original role... So the CIA turned to a variety of Laotian opium chiefs and sought alliances with their large private armies of Meo tribesmen. ... One of the key Laotian chieftains was "General" Vang Pao. ... In return for joining with the CIA, Vang Pao's opium business was mechanized almost overnight. " p. 26": "In Vietnam, CIA-installed President Ngo Dinh Diem collected protection money for allowing the Hmong and Meo tribesmen in the highlands of Vietnam, along the Laotian border, to farm opium poppies. One of the great secrets of the Vietnam War was that the CIA's duo, President Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were involved in trafficking heroin."

[13] June 27, 2007, The Guardian, 'CIA conspired with mafia to kill Castro': "The CIA conspired with a Chicago gangster described as "the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone" in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba's communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency yesterday. The disclosure is contained in a 702-page CIA dossier known as the "Family Jewels" compiled at the behest of then agency director James Schlesinger in 1973. According to a memo written at the time, the purpose of the dossier was to identify all current and past CIA activities that "conflict with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947" - and were, in other words, illegal.

The dossier covers operations including domestic surveillance, kidnapping, infiltration of anti-war movements, and the bugging of leading journalists. ...

The documents released yesterday describe how a CIA officer, Richard Bissell, approached the CIA's Office of Security to establish whether it had "assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro".

The dossier continues: "Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles) was briefed and gave his approval."

Following the meeting with the Office of Security, Bissell employed a go-between, Robert Maheu, and asked him to make contact with "gangster elements". Maheu subsequently reported an approach to Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas. Roselli is described as "a high-ranking member of the [Las Vegas] 'syndicate' ..." ...

The CIA is careful to cover its tracks. According to the dossier, Maheu told Roselli that he (Maheu) has been retained by international businesses suffering "heavy financial losses in Cuba as a result of Castro's action. ...

Roselli in turn led the CIA to a friend, known as Sam Gold. In September 1960, Maheu was introduced to Gold and his associate, known as Joe. In a development that appears to underscore the amateurishness of the whole operation, Maheu subsequently accidentally spotted photographs of "Sam and Joe" in Parade magazine.

Gold was in fact Momo Salvatore Giancana, "the chieftain of Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and the successor to Al Capone". Joe was actually Santos Trafficante, Cosa Nostra boss of Cuban operations. ...

Another disaffected Cuban was recruited [by the mafia] to do the job, but he demanded money up front. In the event, the dossier relates, "the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode" (in April, 1961)."



[14] *) 1991, Colonel Bo Gritz (ISA and Delta Force commander), 'Called to Serve', p. 370. Summary: Khun Sa's interpreter, in the presence of all Khun Sa's top men, names Ted Shackley, Santos Trafficante (mafia boss), Richard Armitage, Daniel Arnold (CIA station chief in Thailand), and Jerry Daniels (CIA agent) as his former partners in the heroin trade. This is recorded on video and audio tape. Gritz went over there at the request of National Security Council staffer to the region to look for prisoners of war.

*) July 4, 1988, interview with Colonel Bo Gritz on the The Morton Downey Jr. Show, Bo Gritz: "We didn't go to see Khun Sa about drugs. We went in in cooperation whith the White House, Tom Harvey, a would-be Ollie North lookalike, was the NSC staffer who asked us to go. It was to find prisoners of war that reportedly Khan Sa was holding. When we got there, we found out that he had no prisoners, but we couldn't leave without asking him why he insisted on shipping this poison into the world. And Khun Sa said that the U.S. had been his best customer for more than 20 years. Well, I didn't believe it. This was in December of 1986. He said that he was willing to stop 900 tons in 1987 and then he said: "I will disclose every U.S. government official that I have dealt with in the last 20 years. We brought those videotapes back and got them to the White House. Four days later we got that response. Tom Hardy calls and goes: "Fantastic, you guys, you are the first Americans to ever go in and come out alive." And I said: "Tom, what about the deal to stop 900 tons? That's fantastic!" And he said: "Bo, we have no interest in doing that. We... [interrupted]..." ... Khun Sa has 8 million Shan people in an area of about one-third of the land mass of Burma that he is taking care of. The only crop that he is allowed to grow is poppies - we refine it into opium, morphine and heroin. He wants to legitimize the economy of those Shan lands, so he can become a true nation state. And he knows he can't do it if they are dependent on drugs."

*) July 4, 1988, interview with Bo Gritz on the The Morton Downey Jr. Show, Morton Downey Jr.: "I wanna show a tape that you made when you became the first American to enter the secret camp of heroin overlord Khun Sa. Now, if you don't mind, I've cut this tape up, so we'll take a look at part of it right now. And this will be the first time this has ever been seen on television. Will you roll that tape please and let the monitor out so that my audience can see it? [Clip shows Bo Gritz shaking hands with Khun Sa with many others around."

*) July 4, 1988, interview with Bo Gritz on the The Morton Downey Jr. Show, Gritz grabs a June 28, 1987 letter of Khun Sa to the Justice Department and reads the following lines: "During the period 1965 to 1975, CIA chief in Laos, Theodore Shackley, was in the drug business. Santos Trafficante acted as his buying and transporting agent, while Richard Armitage handled the financial section with the banks in Australia." Gritz continues in his own words: "Now, Armitage, as we speak, is the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under [Franl] Carlucci, who was a deputy director of CIA. And, of course, [George H. W.] Bush was a director of CIA."

*) March 1, 1988, The Fayetteville Observer, 'Gritz to publicize POW offer': "Gritz said Khun Sa is reputed to have 40,000 men, women and children under arms and will get out of the drug trade if the U.S. will aid his insurgency efforts. Gritz first met Khun Sa in Laos in December 1986. Gritz says he was sent there to find POWs by a man who works for the National Security Council. Gritz returned with video-taped conversations with Khun Sa, who said Amercian officials were involved in drug trafficking during the Vietnam War to finance unofficial wars against the communists in neutral Laos. Among those Khun Sa implicated, according to published reports, was Richard Armitage, currently assistant secretary of defense whose previous mission in Southeast Asia was to find American prisoners of war. U.S. officials told Gritz they didn't want to hear about drugs and suggested he forget the incident, Gritz claims. He said he was told if he persisted, he would serve 15 years as a felon for using a falsified passport. "I've used false passports many times, every time in pursuit of U.S. POWs," Gritz said, adding that U.S. officials knew about the practice. "Only James Bond goes overseas and uses his real name," Gritz said."

*) Unfortuntaly Bo Gritz has been a bit of a white supremicist, but this does not automatically deminish the accuracy of his message.

*) June 28, 1987, letter of Khun Sa to Attorney General Edwin Meese III (photocopies: page 1 and page 2): "

T.R.C. Thailand Revolutionary Council

Date: June 28, 1987

To: U.S. Justice Department Washington, D.C. U.S.A.

Subject: Important facts for the Drugs Eradication Program to be successful.



Sirs :



This letter to the US Justice Department is to make it clear about our deepest concern in wishing to help eradicate drugs and for all the American people as well as the world to know the truth that for the past (15) years they have been misled to look upon us as the main source of all the drug problems.



1. The refusal of the United States government to accept our "SIX YEARS DRUGS ERADICATION PLAN" presented at the Congressional Hearing by Congressman Mr. Lester Woff after his visit to Thailand in April 1977, was really a great disappointment for us. Even after this disappointment, we continued writing letters to President Carter and President Reagan forwarding our sincere wish to help and participate in eradicating drugs. We are really surprise and doubtful as to why the US government refuses our participation and help to make a success of the drugs eradication program.



Furthermore, why the world has been misled to accuse me as the main culprit for all the drug trades..... while in reality, we are most sincere and willing to help solve the drug problems in South East Asia. Through our own secret investigation, we found out that some high officials in the US government's drugs control and enforcement department and with the influence of corrupted persons objected to our active participation in the drugs eradication program of the US government so as to be able to retain their profitable self-interest from the continuation of the drug problems. Thus, the US government and the American people as well as the world have been hoodwinked.



2. During the period (1965 - 1975) CIA Chief in Laos, Theodore Shackly, was in the drug business, having contacts with the Opium Warlord Lor Sing Han and his followers. Santo Trafficano acted as his buying and transporting agent while Richard Armitage handled the financial section with the Banks in Australia. Even after the Vietnam War ended, when Richard Armitage was being posted to the US Embassy in Thailand, his dealings in the drug business continued as before. He was then acting as the US government official concerning with the drug problems in Southeast Asia. After 1979, Richard Armitage resigned from the US Embassy's posting and set up the "Far East Trading Company" as a front for his continuation in the drug trade and to bribe CIA agents in Laos and around the world. Soon after, Daniel Arnold was made to handle the drug business as well as the transportation of arms sales. Jerry Daniels then took over the drug trade from Richard Armitage. For over 10 years, Armitage supported his men in Laos and Thailand with the profits from his drug trade and most of the cash were deposited with the Banks in Australia which was to be used in buying his way for quicker promotions to higher positions.



Within the month of July, 1980, Thailand's english newspaper "Bangkok Post" included a news report that CIA agents were using Australia as a transit-base for their drug business and the banks in Australia for depositing, transferring the large sum of money involved.



Verifications of the news report can be made by the US Justice Department with Bangkok Post and in Australia.



Other facts given herewith have been drawn out from out Secret Reports files so as to present to you of the real facts as to why the drug problem is being prolonged till today.



3. Finally, we sincerely hope in the nearest future to be given the opportunity to actively take part in helping the US government, the Americans and people of the world in eradication and uprooting the drug problems.



I remain,



Yours Respectively,

Khun Sa



Vice Chairman,

Thailand Revolutionary Council

(T.R.C.) "

[15] *) November 22, 1990, The New York Review of Books, 'Heroin, Laos, & the CIA: William E. Colby, reply by Jonathan Mirsky': "From his conversation with me, at his request, in Washington in 1981, Colby knows that one of his ex-agents told me at length about the heroin trade in Laos. The agent, who had lived with Vang Pao for several years, told me that "the general" stored a great quantity of opium under his house, as "insurance" in case the CIA abandoned him, and that he, the ex-agent, had seen opium put on Air America planes. Within a few days, however, and at Colby's insistence, he added that the pilots did not know what they were carrying. Colby spoke highly of this ex-agent, and did not dispute what he had told me. He simply underlined that none of these activities were CIA policy. I accepted that there was probably no document likely to be seen by a Senate oversight committee which would stipulate CIA cooperation in the drug traffic."

*) April 5, 1970, New York Times, 'Air America's Civilian Facade Gives It Latitude in East Asia': "With its assorted fleet of 167 aircraft, Air America performs diverse missions across East Asia from Korea to Indonesia. It is believed to be a major link for the C.I.A.'s extensive activities throughout Asia. ... Air America has been essential to the development of the clandestine army, headed by Maj. Gen. Vang Pao and recruited, trained, supplied and advised by the C.I.A. Air America began supplying food and weapons to the Meo hill tribesmen even before the pro-Communist Pathet Lao resumed the war against the Government of Prince Souvanna Phouma in 1964. ... In November, 1967, Air America began flying services in Thailand similar to those in Laos. ... It was from Udon that Thai troops were flown into Laos by Air America a couple of weeks ago to reinforce General Vang Pao's troops, which had been pushed off the Plaine des Jarres by the North Vietnamese."

*) May 17, 1988, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn for PBS Frontline, 'Guns, Drugs, and the CIA': "NARRATOR: General Richard Secord is one of the many veterans of the CIA secret war in Laos. Because Laos was officially neutral, American troops could not be used. The CIA relied on massive air power and a tribal army to fight the local communists and the North Vietnamese. On the ground in Northern Laos, a handful of CIA officers directed as many as eighty-five thousand soldiers drawn from the mountain tribes. But American officials did more than just send their allies into battle. ...

NARRATOR The war isolated the Meo tribespeople in their remote villages. CIA-owned Air America planes became their only life line to the outside world. While Meo children came to believe that rice fell from the sky, Meo farmer witnesses could count on Air America to move their [opium] cash crop.

RON RICKENBACH [former USAID official]: It was then the presence of these air support services in and out of the areas in question where the product, where the opium was grown that greatly facilitated an increase in production and an ease of transhipment from the point of agriculture to the point of processing. ...

NARRATOR: The possibility that Air America flew drugs is still hotly disputed by many former senior officers.

RICHARD SECORD: You can question any number of people who were there, who actually were there, not people who claim that they had some knowledge of rumors, you can question any number of people and I venture to say they will all support what I'm saying, and that is that there was no commercial trade in opium going on. RON RICKENBACH: I was on the airstrip, that was my job, to move in and about and to go from place to place and my people were in charge of dispatching aircraft. I was in the areas where opium was transshipped, I personally was a witness to opium being placed on aircraft, American aircraft. I witnessed it being taken off smaller aircraft that were coming in from outlying sites.

NEIL HANSEN, Former Pilot, Air America: Yes I've seen the sticky bricks come on board and no one was challenging their right to carry it. It was their own property.

NARRATOR: Neil Hansen is a former senior Air America pilot, now serving a sentence for smuggling cocaine.

NEIL HANSEN: We were some sort of a freebie airline in some respects there, whoever the customer or the local representative put on the airplane we flew. Primarily it was transported on our smaller aircraft, the Helios, the Porters and the things like that would visit the little outlying villages. They would send their opium to market.

NARRATOR: From the villages, the planes carried their cargo over the mountains to Long Chien, CIA headquarters for the war. It was a secret city. Unmarked on any map and carefully hidden from outsiders, Long Chien became one of the busiest airports in the world, with hundreds of landings and takeoffs a day. ...

NARRATOR: To lead their Meo army, the CIA selected Vang Pao, a former lieutenant in the French colonial army in Laos. The agency made very effort to boost his reputation. ...

NARRATOR: Vang Pao, however, did more than just lead his people in war. According to observers he and his officers dominated the trade in the Meo farmers' [opium] cash crop. In 1968, one visitor got a first-hand look at this trade in the village called Long Pot.

JOHN EVERINGHAM, Photographer: I was given the guest bed in the village, in fact the district headman's house, and I ended up sharing it with a guy in military uniform who I later found out was an officer of the Vang Pao army and one morning I was awoken very early by this great confusion of people and noise at the bottom of the bed, just, literally people brushing against my feet with the packets of black sticky substance in bamboo tubes and wrapped up in leaves and bits and things and the military officer who was there was weighing it out and paying off a considerable amount of money to these people and this went on for most of the morning and it went on for several mornings he brought up a great deal of this substance which I then started to think about and asked and had it confirmed that this was in fact raw opium.

NARRATOR: War photographer John Everingham has lived in Southeast Asia for over twenty years. He was one of the very few outsiders who dared to look for and photograph the secret army for himself.

JOHN EVERINGHAM: They all wore American supplied uniforms and the villagers very innocently and very openly told me, "oh they took it to Long Chien," and I asked them how they took it and they said, "oh well they took it on the helicopters as everything else that went to and from Long Chien went by helicopter and so did the opium."

FRONTLINE: And whose helicopters were they?

JOHN EVERINGHAM: Well they were the Air America helicopters which were on contract to the CIA.

JOHN EVERINGHAM: I know as a fact soon after the army was formed the military officers soon got control of the opium trade. It helped not only make them a lot of money and become good loyal officers to the CIA but it helped the villagers. The villagers needed their opium carried out and carried over the land in a war situation that was much more dangerous and more difficult, and the officers were obviously paying a good price 'cos the villagers were very eager to sell to the military people.

HARRY ADERHOLT, U.S. General: That's hogwash. No way and as far as the agency ever, ever advocating that: do you think I would be in an organization where I've devoted my life to my country--involved in a operation like that without blowing the whistle?--absolutely not.

NARRATOR: For veterans like General Aderholt and General Secord the war in Laos is now commemorated at nostalgic reunions. Last fall they gathered at a Florida air base to talk over old times and current business. While Vang Pao does not attend such functions, he is well remembered by his old comrades. ...

FRONTLINE: Did you work with Vang Pao?

RICHARD SECORD: Sure, all the time.

FRONTLINE: What was your relationship?

RICHARD SECORD: I was his supplier of air, therefore he stayed in close contact with me.

FRONTLINE: Were you in charge of supplying Air America planes?

RICHARD SECORD: For the tactical air operations, yes.

NARRATOR: The movement of Air America planes say witnesses were influenced by Vang Pao's business requirements.

RON RICKENBACH: Vang Pao wanted control of the aircraft-- sure, he would do the work that needed to be done but it would give that much more freedom and that much more flexibility to use these aircraft to go out and pick up the opium that needed to be picked up at this site or that site and to bring it back to Long Chien, and there was quite a hassle and Vang Pao won. Not only did he get control of the aircraft, but there was also a question of the operational control of the airplanes that were leaving Long Chien to go south, even into Thailand, and there was an embarrassing situation where the Americans knew that this could be exposed and it would be a very compromising situation. The way they got around that was to concede, to create for Vang Pao his own local airline, and Xieng Kouang airlines came into reality as a direct result of this compromise that was worked out, and they brought in a C-47 from the states and they painted it up nice and put Xieng Kouang airlines on it and they gave it to Vang Pao, and that aircraft was largely used for the transshipment of opium from Long Chien to sites further south.

FRONTLINE: Air Opium?

RON RICKENBACH: Air opium.

HARRY ADERHOLT: Those airlines didn't really belong to General Vang Pao. FRONTLINE: They belonged to the agency.

HARRY ADERHOLT: They belonged to the agency. They were maintained by the United States government in the form of Air America or Continental, so they didn't really own anything. It wasn't something he could take away with him, it was something that we controlled every iota of that operation, lock, stock and barrel.

FRONTLINE: You know what the nickname for that airline was?

RICHARD SECORD: No.

FRONTLINE: Opium Air.

RICHARD SECORD: I've never heard that before. ...

TONY POE: I'm sure we all knew it, but we tried to monitor it, because we controlled most of the pilots you see. We're giving him freedom of navigation into Thailand, into the bases, and we don't want him to get involved in moving, you know, this illicit traffic--O.K., silver bars and gold, O.K., but not heroin. What they would do is, they weren't going into Thailand, they were flying it in a big wet wing airplane that could fly for thirteen hours, a DC-3, and all the wings were filled with gas. They fly down to Pakse, then they fly over to Da Nang, and then the number two guy to President Thieu would receive it.

NARRATOR: Nguyen Van Thieu was president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. Reports at the time accused president Thieu of financing his election through the heroin trade. Like Vang Pao, he always denied it, remaining America's honored and indispensable ally.

TONY POE: They were all in a contractual relationship: Some of this goes to me, some of this goes to thee. And you know just the bookkeeping--we deliver you on a certain day; they had coded messages and di-di-di. That means so and so as this much comes back and goes into our Swiss bank account. Oh, they had a wonderful relationship and every, maybe, six months they'd all come together, have a party somewhere and talk about their business: is it good or bad. It is like a mafia, yeah, a big organized mafia.

NARRATOR: By the end of 1970, there were thirty thousand Americans in Vietnam addicted to heroin. GI's were dying from overdoses at the rate of two a day. ... VICTOR MARCHETTI: Well, there may have been other funds generated by Vang Pao himself through his dope operations. After all, I mean they were poppy growers and opium smugglers, so I imagine there was money being earned that way that was Vang Pao's contribution to the war.

FRONTLINE: Is it conceivable that the CIA would fight a war with dope money?

VICTOR MARCHETTI: Well, yes, in the sense that they would not sell dope to earn money to support an operation. But they would look the other way if the people they were supporting were financing themselves by selling dope. ...

NARRATOR: As a former chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Narcotics, Joe Nellis did indeed have access to the records.

JOE NELLIS: Vang Pao had a heavy hand in the production of heroin in that area. ... [Iran Contra] was known at a very high level, it was known at all sorts of levels really--it's amazing that they could keep it secret as long as they did, and I guess that was the situation with Air America. People in CIA certainly knew it, and at that time Dick Helms I think was the head of the office, and I'm sure he must have reported it to Nixon.

NARRATOR: Former CIA Director Richard Helms told us: "I knew nothing of this. It certainly was not policy."

RICHARD SECORD: It's patently impossible. There are thousands of people involved in the intelligence community in the United States who read the reports, who are intimately familiar with details of field activities, and no such operation could ever be kept secret from the authorities in Washington, and would never be tolerated, never, not for a minute.

FRONTLINE: How many people knew what was going on [in the U.S. government]?

JOE NELLIS: Oh I don't think it was very many at all... A handful, maybe a hundred.

RON RICKENBACH: I personally did not complain, not at the time. I certainly complained after the fact, but that came as a result of my own awakening as to the rather horrible implications of what we were doing and I left working for the government rather abortively because I just could not tolerate myself-what was going on.

NARRATOR: His disgust was not only at the drug trade, but at the human cost of a war in which the recruits were as young as eight years old.

RON RICKENBACH: These people were absolutely decimated. The war itself took its own toll. Thousands and thousands of these people were either maimed or killed or died of disease or malnutrition secondary to the effects of the war. Many were bombed, many were blown away by conflict and combat. What was left after the war was the exodus to the south or to the west. These people have had their whole life destroyed for helping out in our war. For helping out in our war."

*) September 10, 2015, Consortium News, 'CIA and the Drug Business': "In 1966, [Federal Bureau of Narcotics] Agent John Evans was assigned as an assistant to [FBN] enforcement chief John Enright. "And that's when I got to see what the CIA was doing," Evans said. "I saw a report on the Kuomintang saying they were the biggest drug dealers in the world, and that the CIA was underwriting them. Air America was transporting tons of Kuomintang opium." Evans bristled. "I took the report to Enright. He said, 'Leave it here. Forget about it.' "Other things came to my attention," Evans added, "that proved that the CIA contributed to drug use in America. We were in constant conflict with the CIA because it was hiding its budget in ours, and because CIA people were smuggling drugs into the U.S. We weren't allowed to tell, and that fostered corruption in the Bureau.""

[16] *) May 17, 1988, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn for PBS Frontline, 'Guns, Drugs, and the CIA' (ibid.): "TONY POE: ... What [General Vang Pao and the CIA's Air America] would do is, they weren't going into Thailand, they were flying it in a big wet wing airplane that could fly for thirteen hours, a DC-3, and all the wings were filled with gas. They fly down to Pakse, then they fly over to Da Nang, and then the number two guy to President Thieu would receive it.

NARRATOR: Nguyen Van Thieu was president of South Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. Reports at the time accused president Thieu of financing his election through the heroin trade. Like Vang Pao, he always denied it, remaining America's honored and indispensable ally.

TONY POE: They were all in a contractual relationship: Some of this goes to me, some of this goes to thee. And you know just the bookkeeping--we deliver you on a certain day; they had coded messages and di-di-di. That means so and so as this much comes back and goes into our Swiss bank account. Oh, they had a wonderful relationship and every, maybe, six months they'd all come together, have a party somewhere and talk about their business: is it good or bad. It is like a mafia, yeah, a big organized mafia.

NARRATOR: By the end of 1970, there were thirty thousand Americans in Vietnam addicted to heroin. GI's were dying from overdoses at the rate of two a day. ..."

*) 2005, Joseph J. Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', pp. 44-47: "All the weaknesses Shackley had shown in his earlier assignments quickly resurfaced in Vietnam. He demanded voluminous intelligence reports that forced case officers to concentrate on numbers rather than quality. When case officers tried to question him, his cold responses earned him the nickname "Ice Man". Shackley turned to old associates from Berlin and Miami to help him run what was then the largest CIA station in the world. Among them were his loyal cadre of Cuban refugees, like the legendary Felix Rodriguez [ran drug-related CIA counterinsurgency program in El Salvador and surrounding countries in the 1980s] , who followed him first to Laos and then to Vietnam...

Back in Miami, former Cuban employees of Shackley's were showing up with embarrassing frequency in drug busts. When the old Bureau of Narcotics and Drugs (BNDD) launched Operation Eagle in 1968, it found itself arresting scores of CIA employees. ... many of these men were working directly for Santos Trafficante, who, the BNDD learned, now controlled significant heroin traffic in the United States. But although it arrested several of Trafficante's deputies, the BNDD could not get the Nixon administration to go after Trafficante directly. By this time, Trafficante was taking a serious interest in Vietnam. Not long after Shackley moved to Saigon Station, Trafficante made a tour of the Far East...

Meanwhile, it was an open secret in Saigon Station that President Nguyen Van Thieu, who had replaced Ngo Dinh Diem after the 1963 coup, and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky were participants in the heroin trade. Ky, one of [future CIA director William] Colby's most frequently cited intelligence sources, had been removed from Operation Haylift, which was flying commando units into Laos, when U.S. officers caught him loading opium onto his plane. Another frequently cited CIA asset and Shackley source, General Dang Van Quang, Thieu's security advisor, was a frequent point of friction between the CIA station and the U.S. military command. The military believed Quang was a major distributor of heroin to U.S. troops, according to Peter Kapusta, former CIA case officer to Saigon Police Chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. ... Shackley even interfered with the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in its probe of Ky 's top aide, General Ngo Dzu, who the Army investigators charged with being a major purveyor of heroin in Vietnam. ...

By 1971, Congress was getting so many complaints about GIs returning home addicted that the BNDD began to investigate. It, too, immediately ran into problems with CIA cooperation. ... When the CIA ostensibly began cooperating, this cooperation took the form of lending some of its officers to the BNDD as "investigators". These, of course, were many of the same men who had assisted in setting up the Laotians and Thais in the heroin business in the first place. ...

In Vietnam Shackley assigned Rodriguez and many of the other Cubans to Rudy Enders, who had also worked for Shackley at JM/WAVE [CIA station in Miami]. According to William Corson and others who served in Vietnam during this period Enders ran what were politely called Provincial Reconnaisance Units. These were units, engaged in, among other tasks, assassination. Enders's immediate boss was Donald Gregg, the CIA Base Chief for Region Three - Bien Hoa. Gregg would later play a key role as George Bush's contact man with America's private intelligence network after Bush became vice president.

David Morales, a Yaqui Indian who had worked for Shackley ever since Berlin in the 1950s and who had been his deputy in Laos, also moved with him to Vietnam. Morales was loyal to Shackley to a fault. He took on any assignment Shackley gave him, from blowing up buildings to ferrying money to drug lords.

Shackley's Cubans also included Frank Fiorini --who later changed his name to Frank Sturgis... and Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero. The Cubans' roles in Laos and, later, Vietnam under Morales and others were what they had always been: as CIA killers. Quintero and some of the others later played an major role in the private intelligence network. These men worked under the aegis of Civil Operations and Rural Development Support (CORDS). CORDS was supposed to reward Vietnamese who turned in their Viet Cong neighbors through Project Phoenix. Project Phoenix turned into a massive interrogation and assassination program. To receive their rewards, the South Vietnamese smoked out alleged Viet Cong cadres, captured them, and turned them in to be interrogated. More and more, the interrogators gave way to torture and assassination. ...

Under Shackley, Saigon Station spied on its own people as well as its enemies [it spied on William Colby and General Creighton Abrams, who had secret Vietnamese girlfriends, and later George Bush]. ... If pressed on an undesirable topic by a colleague, Shackley would warn him off by mentioning any personal entanglements."

[17] November 11, 1991, interview with Mike Levine on WBAI's Undercurrents radio program (WBAI is part of the "liberal CIA" Pacifica Radio): "The first time I ran into CIA and other U.S. influences in this War on Drugs , was an undercover case I did into Bangkok, Thailand in 1971. I successfully conned the hell out of Chinese drug dealers who were also the source of an investigation on a case titled the William Henry Jackson Organization. In essence, a bunch of GI's from Vietnam were buying heroin in Thailand and putting the heroin in dead bodies of GI's killed in Vietnam. They were using the bodies of 19 year old Americans killed in that other holy war as conduits for heroin.

The Chinese drug dealers, who really bought my act, wanted to invite me to a laboratory in Chiang Mai, where they were producing hundreds of kilos. This was a time when the biggest heroin seizure was the French Connection, 65 or 67 kilos of heroin.

Here are people inviting me to a factory that produces hundreds of kilos of heroin a week and mysteriously I was instructed not to go and the case was ended with the Chinese dealers in Bangkok. I was told that there are a lot of things I didn't understand, there were other priorities, and of course I accepted that because I was the good soldier. What I point out with Alfred McCoy's book is that even if I'd had his book in my hand in 1971 and 72 - a book that clearly pointed out why I was not allowed to go to Changmai - what an incredible thing that is to accept - that my own government could protect people who were using the dead GI's as heroin conduits! How could I accept that? If I'd had McCoy's book in my hand I would have considered it an un-American thing to read. That's why I can understand what happens to young men who are in law enforcement, why they refuse to look at the reality of the situation. It's just too much for Americans to accept, it's too much for young narcotics agents. You don't take a j ob like this for Civil Service security, you take it because you believe in it and most of these guys do believe. When events happen, and they are told that there are priorities they don't understand, and when they see around them things like Oliver North, who had 500 pages on drug trafficking in his notebooks, they don't want to accept this because to accept it is to realize that your career is a lie."

October 9, 1996, Mike Levine on the Montel Williams Show with Gary Webb and AIM's Joe Goulden representing the official side: "I was a deep cover agent. I lived with Chinese drug dealers in Bangkok, Thailand, during the Vietnam War. ... I was in the Hot Narcotics Smuggling Unit of Customs. And the case that I was living with, these Chinese drug dealers, led me right to Chiang Mai. It was the first case that was killed by Central Intelligence. Ironically, it was a case that involved the smuggling of heroin into the U.S. in the dead bodies of GIs. And this was my first instance that I was brought into the embassy in the middle of the night. I was being forced by my government, mysteriously, suddenly, to lie to the drug dealers. All logistical support was withdrawn."

[18] December 6, 1981, New York Times, 'Former intelligence aides profiting from old ties': "Many former American intelligence agents have entered into profitable business arrangements based on the extraordinary secret access to foreign officials and to sensitive information they gained in Government service. ... One case involves Daniel C. Arnold, the former [CIA] chief in Thailand. After leaving the agency in 1979, officials said, he went to work representing companies seeking to do business in Thailand. American officials involved in Thai affairs said they were concerned about Mr. Arnold's continued dealings with top-level Thai officials. Mr. Arnold apparently lives in the Washington area, but he does not have a listed telephone and could not be located."

[19] escapefromparadise.com/NewFiles/cia.html: 'Dan Arnold aka Daniel C. Arnold Ex-CIA Chief of Station in Thailand Lobbyist for Burma & Strange Bedfellow of S. P. and Hin Chew Chung': "We were able to track down only one photograph of Dan Arnold, which is reproduced in Escape from Paradise, under license from the Associated Press, but for print, only. The press service caption for that photograph reads, "Daniel Arnold, former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Bangkok, answers questions at a news conference in Bangkok on Thursday, January 25, 1996. Arnold and two other former U.S. government officials came to the defense of a Thai politician who has been denied a visa to the U.S. because he is suspected of drug trafficking." ... Dan Arnold is now a Board Member of Jefferson Waterman International, a Washington lobbying firm said to be paid by Burmese companies, which US officials say have business ties to the military regime. Dan Arnold has also been mentioned in conjunction with the arms and drug trade in Asia, and an alleged cocaine bust in northern California."

[20] *) June 6, 1997, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), 'New evidence links George Bush to Los Angeles drug operation' (PDF original) (PDF backup). Alternative, but here the Bill Nelson - Ronald Lister case is perfectly summarized and put in its full context.

*) October 26, 2001, OC Weekly, '31 Scariest People in OC': "22. BILL NELSON. When he retired as deputy director of operations for the CIA and moved to Orange County in 1976, Congress was grilling the agency over its secret forays into Laos, Cambodia, Chile and Angola. According to newspaper articles at the time, Nelson, who had worked for the CIA since its inception in 1948, was "troubled" over the CIA's involvement in those controversial--and often illegal --operations, which is why he decided to take a nice, quiet job as vice president of security with Irvine-based [top engineering firm] Fluor Corp. [Note: Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a director of ONI, NSA and SAIC and deputy director of the CIA, was a director Fluor construction firm 1985-December 2003, where he was replaced by Suzanne Woolsey, wife of former CIA director James Woolsey] .

Nelson's qualifications? In Vietnam, he helped carry out Operation Phoenix, the assassination and torture program that wiped out tens of thousands of Viet Cong--along with anyone unlucky enough to be branded a subversive. The specifics of Nelson's tenure at the CIA are still top secret, thanks to government censors, but his career at Fluor is no less shadowy.

According to FBI records recently obtained by the Weekly, Nelson maintained an eight-year friendship and business relationship with Ronald Lister, the convicted coke dealer of San Jose Mercury News "Dark Alliance" series of articles fame. Lister claimed he worked for the CIA, and his business dealings with Nelson apparently involved Central America, where his security company worked with the murderous Salvadoran Defense Ministry and Roberto D'Aubuisson, leader of that country's right-wing death squads [and a person involved in the American Security Council and Western Goald Foundation].

What kind of business relationship could Nelson, a former top CIA official working for an Orange County construction company, have with Lister, a drug and weapons dealer, and D'Aubuisson, a Hitler admirer who authorized the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero? There's no way to know: the FBI has withheld details of Nelson's relationship with Lister on the grounds that revealing them would violate U.S. national security.

MITIGATING FACTOR: Nelson died six years ago."

*) fas.org/irp/cia/product/cocaine/findings1.html (accessed: July 3, 2016): "On September 18, 1996, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California requested that the Agency determine whether CIA had any relationship with Ricky Donnell Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes, Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero, Ronald Jay Lister, or David Scott Weekly. All five of these individuals were mentioned in the August 1996 San Jose Mercury News articles that implied CIA was connected to the drug trafficking activities of Ross, Blandon and Meneses. ... The RVO's Declaration further certified that CIA records included no information of any kind concerning Ross. With respect to Blandon, Meneses, Lister, and Weekly, the Declaration explained that there was relevant information in CIA files, but no information in CIA records indicated there was any Agency relationship with these individuals."

[21] April 24, 1980, Washington Post, 'CIA Helped Quash Major Star-Studded Tax Evasion Case' (reprint of the Wall Street Journal). (PDF)

[22] *) April 5, 1976, Newsweek, 'A Slap for the Prince': "Rosenbaum founded the International Credit Bank of Geneva in 1959, and was introduced to Bernhard by Baron de Rothschild, who had placed millions in the ICB on behalf of the Israeli Government. In 1967, a Life magazine story charged that the ICB had served as a "laundry" for $7 billion to $8 billion of mob money skimmed from casinos in Las Vegas and the Caribbean. Even so, Rosenbaum and Bernhard remained friends."

*) March 1, 1976, Wall Street Journal, p. 12 (summary of the WSJ): "Article notes Lockheed Aircraft Corp's alleged $1 million payoff to Netherlands' Prince Bernhard was not only incident of Prince being used for business purposes and gains. Notes fugitive financier Robert Vesco and Tibor Rosenbaum, who was reptedly charged with fraud and embezzlement in '74, both sought Prince's favor as means of receiving financial backing from country's bankers. Describes encounters and unfavorable reception by bankers (M)."

*) 1998, Alan A. Block, 'Masters of paradise: organized crime and the Internal Revenue Service in The Bahamas', p. 83: "Rosenbaum worked with John Pullman in the International Credit Bank based in Geneva with a branch in The Bahamas. In the early 1960s, the mob's International Credit Bank became vitally important to Cornfeld's robust creation. It served as the Laundromat for smuggled funds, mostly from South American clients of I.O.S. [Investment Overseas Services]"

*) September 5, 2002, Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada), 'Casino Niagara the worst place to launder cash; Alleged terrorists drew attention': "Meyer Lansky, the legendary mobster who reputedly taught the Mafia how to hide its money. ... Possamai disputed Lansky's reputation as the godfather of money laundering. He said the real pioneer was a Canadian called John Pullman who moved to Switzerland and married a Swiss woman. Through his contacts with Swiss bankers, he set up the first offshore laundering schemes and washed money for a number of mobsters, including Lansky, before he retired from crime."

*) May 3, 2008, New York Times, 'A Last Vanishing Act for Robert Vesco, Fugitive': "[Robert Vesco] bought I.O.S. in 1970 for less than $5 million, gaining control of an estimated $400 million in funds. The accounting at the company had been so chaotic that Mr. Vesco, by adding a few subterfuges of his own, was able to plunder its holdings at will."

*) September 10, 2015, Consortium News, 'CIA and the Drug Business': "A deniable asset Conein used for parallel operations, Werbell had tried to sell several thousand silenced machine pistols to DEACON 1 [DEA Clandestine Operations Network] target Robert Vesco, then living in Costa Rica surrounded by drug trafficking Cuban exiles in the Trafficante organization. Trafficante was also, at the time, living in Costa Rica as a guest of President Figueres whose son had purchased weapons from Werbell and used them to arm a death squad he formed with DEACON 1 asset Carlos Rumbault, a notorious anti-Castro Cuban terrorist and fugitive drug smuggler."

*) See ISGP's 1001 Club article for more info Tibor Rosenbaum, Robert Vesco and associates as Prince Bernhard and the Rothschilds.

[23] *) March 8, 1987, New York Times, 'North's Aides Linked to Australia Study': "Several former military and intelligence officers who helped Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North ship weapons to Iran and Central America were closely associated with the co-founder of an Australian financial concern that collapsed in 1980, according to an Australian Government investigation.

The collapse of the financial concern came amid charges that it had laundered money earned from weapons and illicit drug sales.

Among those linked to the failed Sydney-based concern, Nugan Hand Bank, and its co-founder, Michael J. Hand, was Richard V. Secord, a retired Air Force major general who helped Colonel North conduct airlifts of weapons to the Middle East and Central America, according to the four-year-old Australian investigation.

The Australian study, parts of which are still secret, was conducted by the Commonwealth-New South Wales Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking and was completed in March 1983. ...

The Australian report, which has stirred Congressional interest, also concluded that several former Central Intelligence Agency officials and contract operatives, among them Theodore G. Shackley, Thomas G. Clines and Rafael Quintero, were involved in military and intelligence-related activities with Mr. Hand and other top officers of the Nugan Hand concern.

The Australian study does not demonstrate that Mr. Secord, Mr. Shackley, Mr. Clines or Mr. Quintero smuggled weapons or narcotics. It does, however, say that these men were close to Mr. Hand, a former Army Green Beret and military intelligence officer who served in Laos during the late 1960's with a C.I.A.-owned airline named Air America. It was the same period in which Mr. Secord played a large role in directing Air America's operations. Mr. Shackley and Mr. Clines were the two top officers of the C.I.A's Laotian station during this period as well, the report said. Mr. Hand, the report said, later worked with these men while he was directing his merchant bank, which he established in the early 1970's with Francis J. Nugan, an Australian."

*) August 17, 1983, Wall Street Journal, 'Bank's Links to Ex-CIA Men Detailed': "The Australian government report, prepared and released to Parliament in March by the Commonwealth-New South Wales Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking, cites Mr. [Ted] Shackley [of the CIA] as one of the leading characters whose "background is relevant to a proper understanding of the activities of the Nugan Hand group and people associated with that group...

The report refers to contacts between Mr. Shackley and Michael Hand, the currently missing former CIA operator who founded, owned and managed the Nugan Hand banking group. Mr. Hand's partner, Australian Frank Nugan, died of a gunshot wound in January, 1980, later ruled a suicide, and Nugan Hand failed a few months later.

Investigations following Mr. Nugan's death and the failure of the bank revealed widespread dealings by Nugan-Hand with international heroin syndicates, and evidence of massive fraud against U.S. and foreign citizens. Many retired high-ranking Pentagon and CIA officials were executives of or consultants to Nugan-Hand... Among the high-level Pentagon and CIA officials associated with Nugan Hand were former CIA director William Colby [Le Cercle], who was its attorney... "

*) More details can be found in Jonathan Kwitny's book The Crimes of Patriots.

*) November 13, 1982, New York Times, 'Austrialia suspects bank link to CIA': "Australian detectives are expected to visit the United States and Southeast Asia in the next few weeks as they attempt to determine whether the failed Sydney-based Nugan Hand Merchant Bank was involved in trafficking in heroin and covert activities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. … The police report said of Mr. Hand: ''His business activities in the late 1960's and the early 1970's with members of the C.I.A.- controlled airline, Air America, and C.I.A.-connected Continental Air Service, and Agency for International Development led to the strong inference that Hand's intelligence activity was with the C.I.A. ''There is some evidence to suggest that Hand retained his U.S. intelligence ties through the 1970's and probably into the 1980's. Houghton was associated with U.S. intelligence personnel in Southeast Asia and Australia, and had some type of association with personnel in the Australian security and intelligence organization.'' … The sections include ''The destruction of Nugan Hand records;'' his meetings in 1979 with a former C.I.A. operative, Edwin P. Wilson, who was recently arrested in the United States and charged with exporting explosives to Libya to help train terrorists, and one headed, ''Houghton and two Australian clients of Nugan Hand - a case of fraud?'' Colby Is Named The report included a list of Americans who worked for Nugan Hand. Among them were Rear Adm. Earl Yates, U.S.N., retired, the first president of Nugan Hand International; William E. Colby, Director of Central Intelligence from 1973 to 1976, who worked as legal adviser to Nugan Hand International after 1979; Walter McDonald, former economist and oil expert at the C.I.A., who joined Nugan Hand International in 1979 as a consultant; Brig. Gen. Edwin Black, U.S.A., retired, the bank's representative in Hawaii; Lieut. Gen. LeRoy Manor, U.S.A.F., retired, the Nugan Hand representative in Manila; Dr. Guy Pauker, a consultant to Nugan Hand International, and Dale Holmgren, the bank's Taiwan representative, who was an Army officer in Taiwan."

[24] 2006, Rodney Stich, 'Those Ugly Americans: 20th and 21st Centuries', pp. 342-343: "In March 1996, I acquired several boxes containing hundreds of CIA documents generated from the CIA's secret operation in Hawaii, and within these boxes I found highly sensitive material, including notes that Rewald had made while the titular head of BBRDW. Certain notes and information provided to me by Rewald divulged CIA drug related activities, including drug money laundering. As I gathered from looking over the material and by talking with Rewald, he was unaware of much of the CIA activities originating out of BBRDW... Deeply imbedded in these documents was an envelope labeled "Lawyer- Client information." The information was dynamite, divulging secret activities, including CIA drug trafficking, and CIA funding of secret overseas bank accounts for high U.S. officials. The information in this envelope included information from the "Green Book" that the CIA sought to get from Rewald while he was in the hospital recovering from the combination suicide and assassination attempt. The notes in the envelope listed high-level people with secret CIA-funded accounts. The names on the left side of the notes were the aliases Rewald used to identify the people on the right for which there were secret bank accounts opened and funded by the CIA through BBRDW....

- Irwin M. Peach [=] George Bush...

- Mr. Bramble [=] George Bush...

- Mr. Branch [=] Richard Armitage...

- Mr. Denile [=] William Casey...

Rewald's notes also indicated that fictitious names were used to hide money for B.K. Kim, Philippines' President Ferdinand, and Imelda Marcos, among others."

*) Ibid., p. 340: "In November 1984, CIA Director William Casey complained to the Federal Communication Commission about the ABC television network for having aired a show featuring CIA agent Scott Barnes. In the television presentation Barnes said he was asked by two CIA agents in Honolulu to kill Ronald Rewald. This airing had the danger of revealing the CIA role in BBRDW and could expose an endless number of other covert CIA proprietaries and operations..."

[25] 1990, Hugo Gijsels, 'De Bende & Co. - 20 jaar destabilizering in België' ('The Gang & Co. - 20 years of destabilization in Belgium'), pp. 36-37: "When the Gazet of Antwerpen in early November 1981 reported about the drug trafficking in frozen meat, the editorial office of the paper also received threatening phone calls. The trafficking which occurred is one of the most mysterious aspects of the Francois affair where Vernaillen and Goffinon [both survived assassination attempts] became embroiled with. The drugs - hash and cocaine - were smuggled in frozen meat in trucks of the company's Congel and Boucheries Ghysels from Spain, via the customs depot Mamer in Luxembourg to Belgium. Although the NDB already knew about this three years before the arrival of the tipster, the trucks kept passing the border unhindered. According to the tipster of the High Committee, commandant [general] Francois and his right hand Cammerman were always personally present when such a freezer truck was due to arrive. One detail catches the eye here: important shareholder and chairman of Boucheries Ghysels was Paul Vanden Boeynants. Congel, by the way, is a subsidiary of the Ghysels Group."

*) Ibid., pp. 144-150: "In the first interview Lekeu told journalist Gilbert Dupont that in the late 1970s he had become a member of Group G, a Nazi-inspired parallel secret organization within the gendarmerie. Group G was directed from outside of the gendarmerie by Francis Dossogne and Paul Latinus, the leaders of Front de la Jeunesse. As has been sufficiently proven in the mean time, both the Front de la Jeunesse as well as Dossogne and Latinus at the time were on the pay-list of baron de Bonvoisin, in turn the political handyman of Paul Vanden Boeynants. Group G would have stood for 'Groupe d'Action Politique'. Other sources speak about 'Groupe de la Gendarmerie', after the sister organization of the Group G in the Army, the Group M (Groupe Militaire). Next to these there also existed cells at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) - consisting of candidate gendarme officers who studied criminology at this university, the Royal Military School, the Mobile Legion, the Special Intervention Squadron (Diana Group), in the narcotics section of the Brussels BOB and different other brigades of the gendarmerie. According to detectives who anno 1989 tried to get an idea of the extent of this extreme-right infiltration, at least sixty personnel from the gendarmerie would be involved. The organizational structure of Group G consisted of different cells who knew nothing about each others existence and inner workings. It is also admitted then that the infiltration might well have been a lot more extensive than the estimated sixty personnel."

Martial Lekeu claimed to have been recruited by Didier Mievis, a BOB officer who worked at the Central Bureau for Intelligence and was described by Lekeu as the recruiting officer of the Front at the gendarmerie. Lekeu also regularly took part in informal gatherings at the Brussels 'Hotel de la Pompe' with commandant Francois [invited by the US Army's CID in 1969; educated by the DEA; received by President Nixon; secretary of the International Drug Enforcement Association; founded the gendarmerie's National Bureau for Drugs (NBD) in the 1972-1975 period with Paul "VdB" Vanden Boeynants and CIA support, and became the NBD's initial head; always present at the border when a new large shipment of marihuana and cocaine of VdB's company was smuggled into Belgium; leading member of the subversive and fascist Group G, together with DEA agent Frank Eaton; provided the CIA chief in Belgium with intelligence about leftists and other dissident groups; accused in 1990 by prostitute Maud Sarr of involvement in orgies with minors, together with Paul Vanden Boeynants and Jean Depretre (both accused by other sources as well); one of his successors at the NBD, general Beaurir was also accused of pedophilia and was also part of the CEPIC circle] of the NBD and Frank Eaton (his friend, pilot and DEA agent Jean-Francois Buslik, was tied with his friend Madani Bouhouche to a number of assassinations) of the DEA...

According to Lekeu, the Group G and Group M were working on a coup since 1975. This coup had to be the brought about through a whole series of terrorist actions and would hand the power to the Centre Politique des Independants et Cadres Chretiens, the CEPIC, the in 1981 dissolved extreme-right wing of the French-language christian-democratic party PSC. In that period, Paul Vanden Boeynants was defense secretary and chairman of the CEPIC. Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, aka the Black Baron, in that period was another member of the board of directors and the national treasurer of the CEPIC. Since the newspaper De Morgen published on May 19, 1981 the contents of a confidential nota of State Security, we know that the Front de la Jeunesse and Nouvel Europe Magazine in those years were financed by the CEPIC and de Bonvoisin.

Lekeu did make other revelations as well: so the the never solved theft of the fifteen Heckler und Koch machine guns in the night of December 31, 1981 from the Group Diana barracks would have been the work of Group G [tightly linked to Madani Bouhouche, so very much possible]... Also the failed assassinations on colonel Vernaillen and adjutant Goffinon should be written on the account of Group G, according to Lekeu. Lekeu stated he got out when the organization began to organize the terrorist attacks of the Gang [of Nijvel]."

[26] 1994, Carol Marshall, 'The Last Circle'.

[27] 1986, Covertaction Information Bulletin, issue 25-30, p. 9: "The Gemayel family's financial wizard, Sami el Khouri, was for many years the brain behind a major drug operation in Lebanon. He controlled the police, customs, two shipping lines, and the Middle Eastern Airlines. Among his proteges was Ahmed Yousef Wehbe. A U.S. Senate Subcommittee learned in 1955 that Sami el Khouri was Lebanon's most important drug trafficker. In the late 1950s, el Khouri was sent to jail. When he was released in 1963, the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs suggested that he become an informer. Whether he is, is unknown. In 1966, Sami el Khouri was sentenced to five years in jail. It is doubtful that he ever served any of that sentence, except maybe in house arrest. In 1970 he had a meeting with Meyer Lansky, the reputed Mafia drug trafficker with ties to the CIA, after which he claimed that he had retired from all business."

[28] *) 1994, Carol Marshall, 'The Last Circle', chapter 10: "The crux of the Wackenut involvement in arms development and shipments through various sources, including Peter Zokosky, Robert Booth Nichols, John Vanderwerker, and others, was tied irrevocably to the Reagan administration's efforts to aid the Nicaraguan Contras. ...

The Special Operations Intelligence Report entitled, "Nicaraguans and Earl Brian at Lake Cahuilla 9/10/81" described a meeting held between two groups, the Nicaraguans and Wackenhut/Cabazon officials, at a countyowned police firing range at Lake Cahuilla in Riverside County.

According to the surveillance report, the purpose of the meeting was "to test a new night vision device and weapons. All [the] weapons tested were semiautomatic. [A} new sniper rifle tested was a 50 caliber with a 308 bullet." The report went on to note that, "some automatic weapons were present, but all had necessary permits through Meridian Arms. Meridian Arms [is] owned by Michael Riconosciuto [and] Robert Booth Nichols ... Meeting and testing took about one hour, then all parties left."

Police officers had been placed around the surrounding area in a surveillance/protection type mode. Each of the six Indio police officers participating in the range surveillance were named individually in the report. The license plate numbers of each car that arrived o