Friday, November 30, 2007

Can you solve this US drug trafficking puzzle?

newsviewsnolose@yahoogroups.com

Can you solve this US drug trafficking puzzle?
copyright 28 Nov 2007)
--------------
Gen. Manual Antonio Noriega
In December 20, 1989, twenty thousand American soldiers invaded Panama. Some of them were from my former unit, 3d Bde (-), 7th Inf Div (L). During the US attack on Panama, there were 23 Americans soldiers killed and 322 wounded and three to five thousand Panamanian civilians were killed and wounded and 25,000 left homeless. Following U.S. bombardment, the US Army, had prohibited the press and the Red Cross from entering the heavily bombed areas for three days, while soldiers incinerated and buried casualties.[1] page 177.

The stated goal by Pres Bush Sr. of this invasion was to arrest Gen. Manual Antonio Noriega and shut down his drug trafficking and money laundering operations. Noriega was using the banks in Panama to launderer billion of dollars for the Columbian drug cartels and allowed drug traffickers to refuel their drug airplanes in Panama.

The real reason Pres. Bush Sr. invaded Panama are the following:

1. In June 12, 1986, Noriega became a symbol of corruption, drug trafficking and money laundering due to a New York Time front-page article. In early September 1989, a major government-media blitz was launched by the President Reagan. If you looked at television, every news program had a big section on how drugs were destroying our society, becoming the greatest threat to our existence, etc. After the media blitz, concern over the budget was way down and drugs had soared to about 40% to 45%, which is highly unusual for an open question (where no specific answers are suggested). [2]

2. Pres. Bush Sr. suffered from an image problem, the "wimp factor".

3. Noriega adamantly refused to consider a fifteen-year extension for the U.S. School of the Americas.

4. Noriega consider one of his most important project as the new leader of Panama, a plan to finance and construct a new canal with the help of the Japanese. Pres. Bush Sr. feared this would mean a U.S. construction firm, Bechtel would lose billions of dollars to Japanese firms. This project would force the U.S. to live up to the terms of the Canal Treat. [1] page 174-176.
Yet in Dec 98, Noriega appealed his 40-year prison sentence. In March of 1999, Noriega's jail sentence was slashed from 40 years to 10 years, making him eligible for parole in less than a year. During this appeal, Donald Winters, a former CIA Chief of Station in Panama testified that Noriega should be given a break. Also Former US Ambassador to Panama, Arthur Davis testified on Noriega's behave.

As Senator Carl Levin summarizes the record: "Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillionannually. It is estimated that half of that money comes to the United States".

1. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.
2. Norman Chomsky http://deoxy.org/usdrugs.htm
of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts
For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega
facilitated "guns-for-drugs" flights for the contras, providing protection and pilots, as well as safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials,
including then-ClA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellin Cartel patrons). The U.S. government only turned against Noriega, invading
Panama in December 1989 and kidnapping the general, once they discovered he was providing intelligence and services to the Cubans and Sandinistas. Ironically drug trafficking through Panama increased after the US invasion.
(Source: John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, Random House, 1991; National Security Archive Documentation Packet The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations.) [3]

President Bush's replacement for Noriega, Guillermo Endara, was a director and secretary of Banco Interoceánico, targeted by both the FBI and DEA as a major money laundry for both the Cali and Medellín cocaine cartels. Just before the December 1989 Panama invasion, Endara's business partner, Carlos Eleta, was arrested in Georgia for conspiring to import a half-ton of cocaine per month. The charges were dropped as soon as Bush installed Endara as Panamanian president and Eleta became an "asset."
http://www.drugwar.com/active%20army.shtm

In one of the most mysterious events in the case, BCCI bank records from Panama City relating to Noriega "disappeared" in transit to Washington while under guard by the Drug Enforcement Administration. After an internal investigation, the DEA said it had no idea what had happened to the documents.
http://www.stewwebb.com/Money%20Laundering%20B.C.C.I.%20The%"20Dirtiest%20Bank%20of%20All.html
FBI Director Robert Mueller, was the top honcho of the Justice Department's, Criminal Division, during the Pres. Bush Sr's administration and was instrumental in suppressing and/or destroying evidence and scaring off and covering up about witnesses to protect the Bush Family connections with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.(Source: New York Times, July 6, 2001, in a story by Neil A. Lewis).
Senate Special Counsel Jack A. Blum who had extensive experience investigating the BCCI on Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the subcommittee. Frustrated with the lack of response from Justice, Blum took his evidence to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau, who met with further resistance. Says Morganthau: ``We have had no cooperation from theJustice Department. . . . In fact, they are impeding our investigation, andJustice Department representatives are asking witnesses not to cooperate with us.''

William von Raab, a Republican, was customs commissioner from 1982 to 1989. He criticized the Justice Department's handling of the B.C.C.I. drug money-laundering case in Tampa, Fla., which ended in January 1990 with a plea bargain described by von Raab as a ``shameless agreement.'' The deal resulted in a $15-million fine against the bank, but the penalty ``less than the bank had made from its money-laundering activities,'' Von Raab said.

Von Raab was dismissed from his duties because his superiors considered him ``overzealous'' and wanted him ``cut out'' of the B.C.C.I. investigation, he said.
Attorney General Richard Thornburgh squashed an investigation into First American Bankshares (whose major shareholder was Jackson Stephens), secretly controlled by BCCI, in October 1990; and William von Raab, former U.S. customs official, was fired by Treasury Secretary James Brady for delving too deeply into BCCI.
"http://www.viking1.com/spy/air3.htm
JANUARY 1988
Deciding that he has outlived his usefulness to the Contra cause, the Reagan Administration approves an indictment of Noriega on drug charges. By this time, U.S. Senate investigators had found that `the United States had received substantial information about criminal involvement of top Panamanian officials for nearly twenty years and done little to respond.'
· Operation Watch Tower - Operation Watch Tower consists of secret radio beacons stationed at remote locations between Columbia and Panama. The beacons help CIA drug pilots fly from Central America to Panama at near-sea-level without being detected by high flying U.S. drug interdiction aircraft. Pilots of the drug flights home in on the low frequency signals emitted by the beacons to reach their destination at Albrook Army Airfield in Panama. http://www.wethepeople.la/drugs1.htm
-----------
The secret Bahamian cable recalled a similar, though far more extensive document, classified TOP SECRET, which had earlier detailed corruption among officials in the Cayman Islands. That bound report included not only evidence of extensive involvement of government officials with traffickers, but photographs of specific banks and individuals. Though a later CIA report went on to call the Cayman Islands "the supermarket of money-laundering centers," the effect of both reports on the American government had evidently been minimal for, as one agent pointed out, "They're still going strong."
DEA's Operation Cashflow agent traveled to Panama. A few South Florida bankers had been indicted for accepting huge amounts of so-called suitcase cash without filing legally required reports, and traffickers had returned to moving the currency out of the United States physically... But paper is heavy -- the proceeds of a heroin or cocaine sale generally weigh five times more than the drugs themselves. The traffickers' biggest problem had become the sheer bulk of their profits. Moving the money was harder than moving the drugs, and a cottage industry of currency relocation specialists had emerged to handle the problem.
One of these, a sharp-witted young entrepreneur named Ramon Rodriguez (no relation to Gilberto Rodriguez) bought a Learjet and regularly flew from Fort Lauderdale to Panama with half-ton loads of currency. Identified by DEA's man in Panama City, Rodriguez was allowed to import several multimillion-dollar shipments so he could be followed around the streets of Panama City delivering bushels of cash to various banks. An agent familiar with the case told me, "What happened to the money, that's what I want to know. Was it wire-transferred to Colombia? Did it go on to Switzerland? Did it just stay in Panama? Where is it going? What happens after?" One thing the agent knew for sure -- he'd never find out from the Panamanians.
Rodriguez was eventually arrested in Fort Lauderdale with $5.4 million in cash. His accounts, computerized on floppy disks, showed he had flown nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to Panama in the previous twelve months. He said he was only one of a crowd, that there were several other airborne money-freight operators he knew of and no doubt some he didn't. To government analysts he looked like the tip of an underground multibillion-dollar "Air Cash" service industry.
Whether chasing money or drugs, DEA had never found Panama an easy country to work in. General Manuel Antonio Noriega, who had ended up as chief of the National Guard (later renamed the Defense Forces) and hence of Panama itself following General Omar Torrijos's death in a plane crash, appeared to be as deeply involved in the drug traffic as Torrijos had been. DEA targets had a way of vanishing to safety shortly after investigative reports, requested by Noriega's officers, had been handed over.
"Noriega's man contacts our man," an agent told me, "and wants to know about the case. Well, you know, there's nothing we can do but to tell him, basically. And they pledge the utmost in cooperation and then when the time comes the bad guy just disappears. This has just been going on and on and on. It's been going on forever."
It's been going on so long that Senate investigators visiting Panama in late 1982 reported it had become "common knowledge" that Noriega's National Guard "has ties to and income from various traffickers in drugs, arms, and other contraband, as well as fugitives...." Furthermore, the Guard "provides warehousing for narcotics on their way north, assures the release, for bribes received, of drug traffickers arrested, guarantees the no narrest of offenders wanted elsewhere who have paid a kind of local 'safe conduct' fee, supervises the air transport of gold, arms, spies bound to and from North America, Cuba, and Central America."
The investigators predicted that "in ten years much of the European and Western world's criminal money will reside in Panama."
Panama's role as the world's cocaine banker is particularly troubling, for though not a Communist nation itself it forms with its friends Cuba and Nicaragua (Communist countries publicly exposed as participants in the cocaine traffic) a troika of narco-nations whose intentions may be not only enrichment but the undermining of American values and will. If Communist insurgents now active in Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru gain power, this alliance will enlarge to a de facto Communist-controlled Latin Cocaine Pact, and all hope of controlling the traffic will vanish.
In Panama as elsewhere, the CIA remains determined to protect its intelligence assets regardless of their involvement in the narcotics traffic, weapons smuggling, protection of fugitives, and other crimes. When the DEA boss in Panama City suggested an SFIP (Special Field Intelligence Program) to unravel the shadowy background of billions of dollars of Panama-stashed drug money, he sought necessary approval from the CIA station chief. The station chief agreed, but with an interesting reservation. If the SFIP developed any information involving Panamanian government officials, that particular aspect of the investigation must be immediately dropped.
General Noriega himself, anxious for Panama to avoid a drug-banking reputation that might scare off legitimate business, sent his attorney general to Washington with a proposal. Anytime DEA could give Panama hard evidence of drug money in a Panamanian bank, Panama would give DEA the account records. Confident that hard evidence could be presented only rarely, Noriega thus achieved the aboveground appearance of cooperation without significantly diminishing his country's underground reputation as (in the words of a DEA agent) "the drug-money haven of choice."
When Noriega later visited Washington, the CIA tried to prevent his meeting with DEA Administrator Francis Mullen. As Panama's former chief of military intelligence, Noriega's ties to the CIA were long-standing. The CIA finally agreed to the meeting, to be held at DEA headquarters, but Noriega failed to show up. One of his aides telephoned to say that Noriega had suddenly been summoned to the White House. When a DEA official called the White House to arrange a later meeting, he discovered that Noriega wasn't there. After further inquiries it appeared that Noriega had been spirited off to CIA headquarters in Langley. Evidently the CIA did not want Panama's boss establishing direct relations with the leadership of DEA.
"Why not?" I asked an agent familiar with Noriega's visit.
"Because the CIA takes the position that 'We have the total picture. We see things you don't see. You don't know it all.'"
In 1991 trial testimony, the CIA and U.S. Army admitted paying Noriega $322,336 since 1955. This is a very low estimate. Others report that then-CIA director George Bush Sr. started paying Noriega $100,000 a year in 1976. During the '80s, Noriega deposited at least $33 million at the Panama City branch of the BCCI bank. Some of these funds were being laundered for the contras, others were Noriega's payoffs for the operations passing through his territory.[1]


To earn his pay, Noriega carried out all kinds of dirty activities for his U.S. masters. He supplied pilots, bases and funds to the contra supply operations.[1] Noriega's close confidant Floyd Carlton Caceres negotiated personally with the top Colombian cocaine smugglers Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria for the use of Panamanian air bases. Noriega's fees for such services were $200,000 per trip. Floyd Carlton later testified in a U.S. courtroom that their operation flew U.S. guns to the contras in Nicaragua and brought cocaine into the United States on the return flight.[1]
In 1987, Operation Trifecta: DEA managed to penetrate to the top of the drug trafficking world, in Bolivia, Panama, and Mexico. DEA Agent, Michael Levine, made a payment of $5 million in cash to Romberto Rodriquez, chief money launderer for the Bolivian and Colombian Cartels. Rodriquez's money laundering operation was protected by CIA asset, Manuel Noriega. Levine went to Rodriquez's headquarters in Panama City with part of the cash.
The CIA became aware of DEA undercover operation and top drug dealers, the Panama based money laundering operation and high-ranking corrupt Mexican government officials were protected from prosecution. (Souce: Deep Cover by retired DEA agent, Micheal Levine)
Ramon Milian Rodriguez, an accountant for the Medellin drugs cartel, testified before the U.S. Senate Narcotics and Terrorism Subcommittee that he paid Manuel Noriega $4-10 million per month for protection of drug and money shipments from Colombia. From 1979 to 1983, the payments to Noriega totaled $320 to $350 million. http://www.wakeupmag.co.uk/articles/ciadrugslaunder.htm
In June 1987, a top Panamanian Defence Force officer, Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, publicly denounced the abuses of the Noriega regime. The dramatic accusations triggered massive demonstrations by thousands of Noriega's opponents and spurred the formation of an opposition coalition, the National Civic Crusade. The military used repressive measures in crushing the protests, but the prospect of future political turmoil in Panama, and the fear of a left-wing party taking control of Panama, finally prompted Washington's campaign to oust Noriega from power.


The U.S. tried many ways to achieve this, firstly threatening Noriega with indictment on drug trafficking charges. Negotiations were held in which the U.S. government agreed to dismiss the indictment if Noriega would step down from power. Noriega refused. *1

The Unknown Watergate cover-up
Plumbers were called into existence by Kissinger, they were funded through a mechanism set up by Kissinger clone George Bush. A salient fact about the White House Special Investigations Unit (or Plumbers) of 1971-72 is that the money used to finance it was provided by George Bush's business partner and lifelong intimate friend, Bill Liedtke, the president of Pennzoil.
Bill Liedtke was a regional finance chairman for the Nixon campaigns of 1968 and 1972, In 1972, Bill Liedtke raised $700,000 in anonymous contributions, including what appears to have been a single contribution of $100,000 that was laundered through a bank account in Mexico. According to Harry Hurt, part of this money came from Bush's bosom crony Robert Mosbacher, now Secretary of Commerce. According to one account, "two days before a new law was scheduled to begin making anonymous donations illegal, the $700,000 in cash, checks, and securities was loaded into a briefcase at Pennzoil headquarters and picked up by a company vice president, who boarded a Washington- bound Pennzoil jet and delivered the funds to the Committee to Re- elect the President at ten o'clock that night."
Source: George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography Chapter -XII- Chairman George in Watergate --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin http://www.tarpley.net/bush12.htm
JACKSON STEPHENS, SR. is a billionair from Arkansas. A top donor to the Reagan and GEORGE H.W. BUSH campaigns. He brought BCCI to US shores in 1979 and helped to launder cocaine profits from CIA drug smuggling in Mena, Arkansas and elsewhere. Jackson Stephens took over First American Bank in Washington, D.C.


Jackson Stephens' principal motive in bringing BCCI to America was apparently to connect up his own financial institutions to the global drug money laundry--not only First American, but those in Little Rock also.

Stephens Inc. one of the largest clearing firm for banks in the U.S. and the nation's largest investment bank off Wall Street. It clears the brokerage trades for around 200 banks--banks like Wells Fargo and First Interstate Bancorp, which recently merged in California. In 1994, Stephens Inc. was listed as one of the biggest institutional shareholders in 30 large multinationals including the Arkansas based firms Tyson Food (# 10), Wal-Mart (# 113) and Alltel (# 12).

(Sources; Professor John Metzger of Michigan State University and


In 1987, Jackson Stephens (an Arkansas billionaire and shareholder of First American bank) made arrangements with Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) to provide $25 million to Harken Energy in return for a stock interest in that company. As part of the deal, Sheikh Abdullah Bakhsh, a Saudi real estate billionaire, joined Harken Energy's board as a major investor. Union Bank of Switzerland, which ordinarily didn't invest in small U.S. firms, would make an exception, giving Harken $25 million in exchange for a stock interest. At the time, UBS was a joint-venture partner with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International -(BCCI) a Geneva-based bank.
Stephens was owner of a Little Rock brokerage firm which underwrote Harken Energy's $25 million stock offering. Stephens Incorporated placed the Harken Energy stock offering with the Nugan Hand Bank* and the London subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland. During the next decade the Union Bank of Switzerland assisted BCCI in avoiding taxes by moving cash from its bank in Noriega's Panama to other locations throughout the world. http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book4Ch.3.html
Comment: Yes, the Harken Energy business deal that made Bush Jr rich. * Nugan Hand Bank was involved in money laundering of drug profits from Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war.
"Documentary evidence surfaced after Marcos was ousted by a revolution in March 1986. As Marcos's fall neared, Reagan arranged for the dictator to be flown to Hawaii. Marcos's opponents then ransacked government files and found a Feb. 17, 1986, letter signed by a senior Marcos aide, Victor Nituda."
In the letter, according to Parry, Nituda warned Marcos that Reagan's emissary, Senator Paul Laxalt demanded that "sensitive files, including ones listing the 1980 transactions, be turned over to the US before Marcos could go to Hawaii." Nituda's letter specifically cited accounts set up for Reagan and his 1980 campaign manager (and later CIA Director) William Casey, and that Laxalt demanded "all documents check-listed during his last visit or the deal for a Hawaiian exile is off." Laxalt also demanded files regarding bank loans and donations made to General John Singlaub, who was raising money for the Nicaraguan contra rebels.
During his Hawaiian exile, Marcos declared that he had given Reagan $4 million in 1980 and $8 million in 1984.
(Source: "Lost History: Marcos, Money & Treason," investigative reporter Robert Parry)
According to U.S. intelligence insiders, then-Vice President Bush authorized a Boeing 747 with a special "carriage" to airlift several tons of gold bars from Clark Air Force base in the Philippines to LaGuardia Airport in New York.
Five Star trust has been connected by these informed sources to have originated in 1983, when deposed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi, and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush were allegedly looking for a repository for an estimated $3 billion in looted Philippine gold and gems. Marcos and Khashoggi set about to create Five Star Trust (a bank) in 1983 as a means to create a vehicle to use the Philippine wealth to create and funnel fungible assets.
In 1989, Five Star Trust was officially established in the Isle of Man by a Houston-based attorney who was a close friend of the Bush family. Since that time, Five Star's accounts are said to funnel more funds from Saudi Arabia as well as cash reserves hidden away in offshore artificial shells by Enron before it collapsed.
The gold bars were then transported to the International Diamond Exchange Vaults near Rockefeller Center. A CIA proprietary firm called Oceaneering International of Houston was reportedly involved in airlifting some of the gold from the Philippines, in addition to sealifting the remainder to Oregon. After George W. Bush's victory in 2000, the last of the gold in New York was moved to Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) Bank in Zurich.
Union Bank of Switzerland (Udid have other connections; it was a joint-venture partner with the notorious BCCI in a Geneva-based bank, and was involved in a scandal surrounding the Nugan Hand Bank, a CIA operation in Australia whose executives were advised by William Quasha, the father of Harken's chairman (Alan Quasha.) Union Bank was also involved in scandals surrounding Panamanian money laundering by BCCI, and Ferdinand Marcos' movement of 325 tons of gold out of the Phillipines.
Background history:
To cover a fraction of the cost of the massive covert operations, Paul L.E. Helliwell , an active leader in the Florida Republican Party, and a friend of Nixon's friend Bebe Rebozo established and directed a string of drug money-laundering banks for the CIA. Helliwwell had set up a Bangkok trading company Sea Supply, which provided cover for CIA officers advising the drug-smuggling Thai border police.
In Panama the World Commerce Corporation, the commercially oriented espionage net was formed by William Donovan and British spymaster William Stephenson. In Honduras, Richard Greenlee, a member of Donovan's law firm and a former OSS officer in Bangkok, set up Vangard Services in 1962 as a front for yet another batch of CIA-financed, drug related anti-Castro operations. There were dozens of CIA proprietary (front) companies operating world wide in similar fashion. The head of FNB, Harry Anslinger, stated that the CIA and Hoover subverted a grand jury that had been convened in Miami to probe the financial affairs of dozens of top mobsters. (pgs. 260- 261)
Following the loss of his gambling and vice concessions in Cuba, mafia boss, Meyer Lansky, re-established his gambling business with, among others, Louis A. Chesler and Wallace Groves. Chesler, a Canadian millionaire and a former rumrunner, formed the Grand Bahama Development Company in 1961 with Groves. With the help of Helliwell, Donovan, and other CIA officers, large amounts of Thai, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese drug trafficking profits were allegedly invested (money laundered) in Castle Bank and Florida real estate deals through Chesler`s General Development Company. The CIA hired Groves to suborn the top government officials in the Bahamas. The Bahamas quickly became a major transit point for Latin American drug smugglers. (p. 261)
Lansky's financial aide, John Pullman, incorporated the Bank of World Commerce in the Bahamas to handle the skim from several Las Vages casinos. The CIA was fully aware of these money laundering Banks. The US Treasury Department was aware of the shift in drug money to South America, and that in July 1966, John Pullman was in Bogota, Columbia, negotiating a lucrative mine deal which was an elaborate organized crime network of businesses that permitted enormous flexibility in moving and laundering funds as subsidiaries that were placed in the U.S., Europe, and the Caribbean. It was known that Lansky invested $10 million in Italian real estate through Banque de Credit International(BCI) in Geneva. The problem was that Tibor Rosenbaum, a Mossad agent, owned the bank. Rosenbaum was close to the Italian royal family and James Angelton and Rosenbaum's institution laundered money for the Latin American client of Investors Overseas Service (IOS) . IOS was most likely a CIA front company and was an international mutual fund for anonymous investors in among other things, Vietnamese and Israeli bonds. (p. 373)
Rosenbaum's activities and connections underscore the Mossad's involvement in international narcotics trafficking. Bank Leumi, the Israeli banking giant, served as a major laundering vehicle for drug money. (p. 373)
President Kennedy wanted to expel Air America, the CIA's drug smuggling front company airline from Laos. In 1962, Bobby Kennedy indicted Sea Supply's manager for having bribed a U.S. official in Laos. This prosecution was blocked by JFK's ultra right-wing, political enemies and Air America kept its contract in Laos. (The Strength of the Wolf, p. 262)
Cover up of Turkey's drug trafficking --
President Clinton was promoting Turkey, one of the world's top drug transit points, as a model for Muslim-Western cooperation and a country necessary to reshape the Middle East. A grand design to reshape Central Asia and the Middle East with Turkey and Israel as pivot points was being pushed by the Clinton administration as a matter of national policy.
The historical record shows that the US "War on Drugs" and the nascent "War on Terror" kept colliding with not only within the US intelligence, policy and business apparatus, but also with European strategic and business interests. Turkey continues its push for entry into the European Union and the USA wants that to happen as the current meeting of NATO, and Bush's attendance under dangerous circumstances, in Turkey demonstrates. Turkey is one of the USA's and Europe's top arms buyers and is located near what could be some of the biggest oil and natural gas fields in the world.
It's worth noting that the one of the FBI's tasks is to counter industrial espionage and to engage in it. Where big arms sales pit the US against its European competitors—as is the case in Turkey (particularly starting in 1998)—the FBI is busy making sure the US gets the edge over its competition.
In 1998, the US Department of State (DOS) was finally forced to admit that Turkey was a major refining and transit point for the flow of heroin from Southwest Asia to Western Europe, with small quantities of the stuff finding its way to the streets of the USA. In that same year, Kendal Nezan, writing for Le Monde Diplomatique, reported that MIT and the Turkish National Police force were actively supporting the trade in illicit drugs not only for fun and profit, but out of desperation.
According to the daily Hürriyet, Turkey's heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996 . . . Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organize trafficking on such a scale. Drug barons have stated publicly, on Turkish television and in the West, that they have been working under the protection of the Turkish government and to its financial benefit. The traffickers themselves travel on diplomatic passports. The drugs are even transported by military helicopter from the Iranian border."
Nowhere is the pain of Turkey's role in the heroin trade felt more horribly than in the United Kingdom.
Both the DOS and the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) described in detail the transit routes and countries involved in getting the goods to Turkey. Intelligence organizations here and abroad must have sanctioned the role that they, and Turkey and Afghanistan, played in the process. "Afghanistan is the original source of most of the opiates reaching Turkey. Afghan opiates, and also hashish, are stockpiled at storage and staging areas in Pakistan, from where a ton or larger quantities are smuggled by overland vehicles to Turkey via Iran. Multi-ton quantities of opiates and hashish also are moved to coastal areas of Pakistan and Iran, where the drugs are loaded on ships waiting off-shore, which then smuggle the contraband to points in Turkey along the Mediterranean, Aegean, and/or Marmara seas. Opiates and hashish also are smuggled overland from Afghanistan via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to Turkey.
During the 27-month period from July 1, 1999, to September 30, 2001, over 56 metric tons of illicit acetic anhydride were seized in or destined for Turkey." Acetic anhydride is a precursor chemical which is used in the production of heroin.
The Ankara Pact
The Middle East Report concluded in 1998 that probably the greatest strategic move in the Clinton post-Cold War years is what could be called "The Ankara Pact"—an alliance between the US, Turkey, and Israel that essentially circumvents and bottles up the Arab countries. Earlier in 1997, Turkish Prime Minister Yilmaz visited with Bill Clinton to ensure him that Turkey would attempt to improve its human rights record by slaughtering fewer Kurds, but also mentioned that if the US pushed too hard on that subject or if the US Congress adopted an Armenian Genocide Resolution, Turkey might award a billion dollar contract for attack helicopters to the Europeans or maybe even Russia.
During this timeframe, and with approval from the USA, Turkey began to let contracts to Israel to upgrade its F-4, F-5 and F-16 aircraft. Pemra Hazbay, writing in the May 2004 issue of Peace Watch, reported that total Israeli arms sales to Turkey had exceeded $1 billion since 2000. "In December 1996, Israel won a deal worth $630 million to upgrade Turkey's fleet of fifty-four F-4 Phantom fighter jets. In 1998, Turkey awarded a $75 million contract to upgrade its fleet of 48 F-5 fighter jets to Israel Aircraft Industries' Lahav division, beating out strong French competition. In 2002, Turkey ratified its largest military deal with Israel, a $700 million contract for the renovation of Turkish tanks." But that pales in comparison to the $20 billion in US arms exports and military aid dealt to Turkey over the last 24 years.
The head of the Foreign Office's Turkey Department told an English journalist that the heroin trade was more important than billions of pounds worth off trade capacity and weapons selling. When he was also working for the Turkish Foreign Ministry. he said "50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing, it is two lorry loads of heroin . . . '"
.

No comments: