9/11? It's the drugs, stupid! - Democratic Underground

Minstrel Boy

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Sat Sep-25-04 12:14 PM
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9/11? It's the drugs, stupid!

Edited on Sat Sep-25-04 12:20 PM by Minstrel Boy

Seeing today's headline "Afghan Opium Harvest Grows," makes me think it's time for a little overview.

Let's start with Sibel Edmonds, who needs to guard her words, but still manages to tell us much:

"There are certain points...where you have your drug-related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities."

"Intelligence is also gathered by certain semi-legitimate organizations -- to be used for their activities. It really does not boil down to countries anymore.... When you have activities involving a lot of money, you have people from different nations involved.... It can be categorized under organized crime, but in a very large scale...."

"...specific information implicating certain high level government and elected officials in criminal activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales."

"It's extremely sophisticated. And then you involve a significant amount of money into this equation. Then things start getting a lot of overlap-- money laundering, and drugs and terrorist activities and their support networks converging in several points. That's what I'm trying to convey without being too specific."

Former German Cabinet Minister Andreas von Bulow was saying something quite similar nearly three years earlier:

"Whoever wants to understand the CIA's methods, has to deal with its main tasks, covert operations: below the level of war, and outside international law, foreign states are to be influenced, by organizing insurrections, terrorist attacks, usually combined with drugs and weapons trade, and money laundering."

"When in doubt, it is always worthwhile to take a look at a map, where are raw materials resources, and the routes to them? Then lay a map of civil wars and conflicts on top of that -- they coincide. The same is the case with the third map: nodal points of the drug trade. Where this all comes together, the American intelligence services are not far away."

From an earlier post of mine, based on notes taken from my reading of Daniel Hopsicker's "Welcome to Terrorland" (his ongoing investigation into the Florida crime scene can be found here):

Less than three weeks after Atta and Marwan Al-Shehi began flying lessons at Huffman Aviation, a Lear jet owned by its financier, Wally Hilliard, carrying 43 pounds of heroin was seized by the DEA. Authorities called it the biggest seizure of heroin ever in central Florida.

The passengers, Venezuelan nationals, were arrested, but the pilot wasn’t charged, said a DEA spokesman, "because of lack of evidence." This, despite the fact the pilot, Diego Levine-Texar, ignored agents demands that he drop his cell phone, which had to be pried from his hand at gunpoint. Affidavit of the DEA agent: "Based on my experience I know that narcotics traffickers maintain frequent contact with one another while transporting narcotics… I believe Levine-Texar attempted to contact other accomplices as to the presence of agents and other law enforcement officials." Information about Levine-Texar is considered "sensitive." Paperwork showed the same plane had made approximately 30 weekly round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers, and they always paid cash.

Atta was already a licensed pilot when he arrived in the US. Licenses from many different countries. He had the privileges of an instructor while he was at Huffman Aviation, and may have helped pilot South American drug runs.

Atta, his stripper girlfriend Amanda Keller, a stripper named Linda and two Germans, Peter and Johan, partied for three days in Key West. Atta paid for everything. Rented three rooms, one just for the men’s luggage, which Keller says contained drugs. The men had a business meeting the women were not permitted to attend. Met with people, Keller says, who flew in just to meet Atta. Somber and quiet after meeting. (Key West Airport a known drug transit point. The Sheriff used to be under orders to keep the dope sniffing dogs off airplanes, and at one time even sent patrol cars to escort the drugs to Miami.)

The FBI timeline says Atta left Venice Florida in December 2000 after completing his flight training. But he didn’t. Dozens of locals say different – his landlord, neighbours, cab drivers, restaurant employees and his girlfriend, for a few instances – and have been told not to talk about it by federal authorities. The FBI publicly sought information regarding Atta’s time in various US locations, but not Venice Florida, where he spent most of his time in the US. Why the intentional misdirection?

The heroin trade figured in the Balkan War, as did Osama bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network acted in concert with American policy:

On May 4th, 1999, the Washington Times newspaper reported that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had been trained by Osama bin Laden's organization, al-Qaeda.

...

The poppies used to manufacture heroin are grown in Afghanistan. From there, the product travels to "an extensive organized crime network in Albania that smuggles heroin to buyers throughout Western Europe and the United States."

The KLA, trained by bin Laden, sells the drugs to purchase weapons. Over one-billion dollars in drug profits are "laundered annually by Kosovo smugglers through as many as 200 private banks."
http://www.shout.net/~bigred/kla

Going back a few years to "The Last Circle" by Carol Marshall (which picked up the trail of the Octopus left by the work of Danny Casolaro):

"Who's behind this ring?" I asked. Riconosciuto paused for a moment, then took a deep breath. "It's The Company. Arms get shipped to the Contras, the Afghanistan rebels, the Middle East. You know, to fight the Soviet influence. But the Contras and the Mujahaden don't have money to pay for arms, so they pay with drugs, cocaine or heroin. The Company handles the drug end of it in the U.S ..."

"What's The Company...?," I asked. Riconosciuto interrupted, "Wait a minute. It's a long story. You have to start at the beginning." Concerned that Riconosciuto might have to hang up, I hurriedly pushed for answers. "Arms for drugs, do you have proof?" "Oh, yeah. It's a self-supporting system, they don't have to go through Congress ..."

"Michael," I pressed, "who ships the arms?" Riconosciuto quieted for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "Let's start with Wackenhut. I didn't play ball with Wackenhut so they poisoned the well for me. I'm in jail because I worked for Wackenhut. The government has put together a very simple drug case against me ... as if that's what I'm about, just a druggie."

...

"Wackenhut provides security for the Nevada nuclear test site, the Alaskan pipeline, Lawrence Livermore Labs, you know, all the high security government facilities in the U.S. They have about fifty thousand armed security guards that work for minimum wage or slightly above.... On the other hand, on the Wackenhut board of directors, they have all the former heads of every government agency there ever was under Ronald Reagan and George Bush; FBI, CIA, NSA, Secret Service, etc."
http://www.american-buddha.com/last.circle.3.htm

And more about Casolaro's investigations, and BCCI:
"The next aspect of the investigation into the Inslaw affair is the connection to BCCI. Allegations have been repeated that monies raised through the illegal sales of PROMIS software were laundered through BCCI. It begs the question, 'How could BCCI be operating without the bank regulators doing anything about it when obviously there were flags going up and there was evidence going back seven, eight years that BCCI was involved in drug-running and in laundering of drug money, and in various nefarious schemes?'

The reason that the regulators and the Congressional hearings don't seem to want to touch upon it is that, very possibly and probably, BCCI had direct ties to the Justice Department and to the regulators who were supposed to be watching the store. In fact, the reason that BCCI was not investigated and not prosecuted a lot earlier for its activities was because it was providing necessary services -- a full service bank.
http://pdr.autono.net/promis.html

Back further, to the mid-80s, and a story recounted in Rodney Stich's "Defrauding America" (page 469):

FBI Agent "Darlene Novinger said to me that she discovered during an FBI investigation that George Bush and two of his sons were using drugs and prostitutes in a Florida hotel while Bush was vice president. She said that when she reported these findings to her FBI supervisors they warned her not to reveal what she had discovered. Novinger had been requested to infiltrate drug trafficking operations in South America and the United States. She was pressured to quit her FBI position; her husband was beaten to death; and four hours after she appeared on a July 1993 talkshow describing her findings (after she was warned not to appear), her father mysteriously died. A dead white canary was left on his grave as a warning to her. After receiving death threats she went into hiding, from where she occasionally appeared as guest on talk shows, and called me from undisclosed locations."

Later in the book, Stitch tells how Novinger had been an investigator with the Federal Crime Task Force, and then was recruited by the FBI to work in an undercover capacity. She worked on Operation Nimbus, investigating large-scale drug smuggling on the Eastern seaboard. The investigation revealed the narcotic operation of a powerful Lebanese family living in Miami and Jamaica, which was also tied to the Lebanese fascist Phalange. Family's name is Smatt, headed by William Smatt. And Novinger said the Smatt operation implicated VP Bush and son Jeb.

After submitting her report, orders came to cease the investigation and destroy all reports. She says someone in the FBI's Miami office leaked to the Smatt group that she had penetrated the operation.

Before Operation Nimbus was shut down, veteran US Customs investigator Joe Price filed corroborating reports implicating Bush. After he filed in Sept 1983, FBI agents arrested him on a narcotics trafficking charge.

Also interesting, "Why Does George W. Bush Fly in Drug Smuggler Barry Seal's Airplane?"
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/W_plane.html

And what is it about the mention of Iran/Contra drug smuggler and Poppy Bush asset Barry Seal - he was gunned down with VP Poppy's private number in his trunk - that makes 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste squirm so much?

From an interview with Sander Hicks:

SH: Let’s go back for a second and talk about what you just said about the INS forms of the terrorist hijackers. How there just seems to be a disconnect. How could these people — it was pointed out that a couple of these people were on the CIA’s list of terrorists, they had attended the terrorism conference and yet they were allowed to be in country. There was a gentleman you may know of, named Daniel Hopsicker? He’s a former producer of NBC and he wrote a book called, "Barry and the Boys." You are mentioned in it. It’s about a former client of yours who is now deceased, Mr. Barry Seal. Are you familiar with this book?

RB: No, I haven’t read the book but I did represent Barry Seal, who was convicted. He thereafter, on his own, became a government informant. He worked against the Sandinistas and that certainly is not the subject of this....

SH: That’s not the subject of ....

RB: We have quite a bit to do here in our Commission without going into all my private practice. I certainly wouldn’t want this to be an infomercial for Richard Ben-Veniste as a private attorney.

SH: Not at all. But the question was, Daniel Hopsicker is

RB: So, if you wouldn’t mind staying on our subject...

SH: Not at all.

RB: I’d appreciate it.

Now, some deep background from Alfred McCoy, in "The Politics of Heroin," page 479:

"Only two years after start of the Soviet Afghan war, the CIA’s covert apparatus that shipped arms to the mujaheddin had been inverted to serve a massive drug operation that moved opium from Afghanistan, through Pakistan’s heroin laboratories, and into international markets."

And former DEA Special Agent Michael Levine shares his experience in "Into the Buzzsaw":

"It was during (the Vietnam War) that we became aware that the CIA had gone well beyond simply protecting their drug-dealing assets. Agency-owned proprietary airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our 'allies.' CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money. The CIA was learning the drug business and learning it well." (page 265)

"For the entire duration of the Contra war, we in the DEA had documented the Contras…putting at least as much cocaine on American streets as the Medellin Cartel. We had also documented the Mujihadeen vying for first place as America’s source of heroin. Yet, not a single case of any significance was allowed to go forward to prosecution against either entity. All were effectively blocked by the CIA and the State Department." (page 264)

And here's a funny "Where are they now": Felix Rodriguez, aka Max Gomez - CIA assassin, Iran/Contra drug runner and life-long friend of Poppy Bush - is now a Florida elector for George W Bush. Here's what former DEA Special Agent Celerino Castillo says about him: "He's always been a terrorist, just like Osama bin Laden and all the terrorists we've made in the past."

Castillo recounts that in 1986 he met then-Vice President Bush at an ambassador's party in Guatemala. "I told him there was something funny going on.... And he just smiled and walked away."