The Reagan Legacy

[struggle4progress]

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Reagan created something called Project Truth run by a CIA agent named Walter Raymond. The purpose of Project Truth was to influence the large foundations, think tanks, political publications and human rights organizations to move in a rightward direction. The success of this particular operation can be seen in the fact that the New Republic magazine went from a liberal to a conservative publication. Ronald Reagan also created the Office of Public Diplomacy headed by Cuban exile Otto Reich. Otto Reich traveled all over the United States and browbeat editors and journalists of major newspapers if they made any remarks critical of US operations in Central America. Robert Parry maintains that this constant intimidation of journalists, criticism of dissenting viewpoints and massive government propaganda made the Watergate press corps of the 1970s into the Monica Lewinsky press corps of the 1990s.

President Reagan started funding the Contra army to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and greatly increased military aid to the repressive, fascist governments in El Salvador and Guatemala. American military advisors were sent to El Salvador and the death squads were organized in Guatemala by the CIA with the help of the Argentine butchers who were responsible for disappearing over 30,000 leftists in Argentina. These same mass murderers and torture experts from Argentina were also used to train the Contras and advise the Honduran military. Robert Parry was one of the first journalists to discover the torture manual produced for the Contras by the CIA. Also, he interviewed two American mercenaries fighting for the Contras, Jack Terrell and Steven Carr, who revealed all sorts of corruption and disgusting activities by the Contras, including drug smuggling. This was before the Iran-Contra scandal, the Kerry Committee findings and the Gary Webb investigation for the San Jose Mercury News also implicated the Contras in cocaine smuggling. A smoking gun indicating that the Reagan administration anticipated that the Contras and the CIA would be involved in cocaine trafficking is the fact that Reagan's Attorney General William French Smith issued an exemption to the CIA in 1982 from reporting drug smuggling to any other government agency such as the DEA. Another example of the priorities of the Reagan administration is the Frogman case in 1983. Frogmen operating for the Contras were caught in San Francisco bringing ashore 430 lbs of cocaine. Then, a call to the authorities in San Francisco came in from a Contra leader in Costa Rica demanding money seized in the raid to be returned. The CIA put pressure on the Justice Department and $36,800 dollars were given back to the Contras.

Jack Terrell was a witness to several mass killings of civilians by the Contras, and he described a particularly savage practice by the Contras of slitting throats and then pulling the tongue out through the resulting hole. It was called the "Colombian necktie." Remember these Contras are the same people Ronald Reagan was calling "freedom fighters" and "the equivalent of our founding fathers."

The situation was just as grim in Guatemala. Rios Montt came to power and conducted a scorched earth policy against the Mayans in the central highlands. Several hundred Mayan villages were destroyed. Many Mayans were tortured and killed for being guerrilla suspects. Ronald Reagan traveled to Guatemala and praised Rios Montt's repression and said Rios Montt was getting a "bum rap" from the human rights organizations.
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http://chile.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/20378.php

[donhakman]

1. thank you

Once the CIA has Diebold deeply embedded in the election process they will have finally destroyed the Democracy that they were originally sworn to protect.