DRUG WARRIORS - Government Officials

JONATHAN WINER

[What was the] situation going on in [Central America] in the mid-'80s that
allowed for all hell to break loose?

Governments, under the best of circumstances...have a hard time keeping
border controls working. Good governments have a hard time keeping drugs
[guns, illicit migrants, stolen cars, illicit money] from crossing the
border... Add in a civil war with paramilitaries and guerrillas and
intelligence agencies helping their side move stuff and move people
illicitly across the border, you wind up undermining the governments that
are supposed to be protecting their people and their laws.

One of the things that happened in the 1980s is essentially the governments
in Central America could not stop anyone or anything from crossing borders.
That was exploited by gunrunners. It was exploited by Contras and
guerrillas and left-wingers, right-wingers. It was exploited by drug
traffickers--no doubt about it. And American policy makers could not and
would not confront that.

Fred [Hitz] says there weren't regulations...in place. There was in fact a
letter that didn't mention narcotics. And there wasn't clear instruction
given to the troops in the field about what they should do if they ran into
somebody who was running drugs.

If it's your job to check out food at the supermarket counter...you're not
worrying about the person who's supposed to be stocking the shelves. It's
not your job. With the CIA or the State Department or any part of the US
government, you've got a particular mission to accomplish. If something's
in the parameters of your mission, you're focused on it. Protecting the
border, stopping drugs, was certainly not part of the mission.

Now, it was resisted being put as part of the mission because... it was
going to undermine or restrict your effectiveness in carrying out your
primary mission. Because you're always going to have drug traffickers, gun
runners, people who are alien smugglers, other people who are in other
businesses, as some of the kinds of people that you're going to be relying
on to carry out a covert war. And that's true of any government
anywhere--whether you're talking Afghanistan, Colombia, Southeast Asia,
[or] Burma. These things tend to go together. Your operatives tend to be
people who are involved in other illicit activities.

So there's a tension there. And if you're focused on winning an ideological
war, you're probably not focused at the same time on the law enforcement
consequences of what you're doing. And certainly, our government in the
1980s was not focused on that problem, [it] actively resisted being focused
on that problem.

In terms of Central America?

Absolutely--and I would say in terms of Southwest Asia--Pakistan and
Afghanistan as well.

In talking with Fred Hitz, his conclusion is there is no evidence that the
Central Intelligence Agency or any of its field officers were involved in
[or] promoted [narcotics trafficking] in any way.

Certainly as a matter of policy, the CIA has never promoted narcotics
trafficking that I'm aware of. Certainly there wouldn't be any documents
that would show that anyone was promoting drug trafficking. If you were
allowing it to happen because there were other higher objectives, you'd be
a fool to create a record showing that you were aware of it.

So when the Inspector General shows up ten years later and does his level
best to get to the truth, he's going to be looking at the documentary
record. Do you think that documentary record is going to say, "Today I
allowed in a ton of dope to come into the United States, being pushed by
such-and-such a guy, who's also an asset of mine because the guy is being
very, very effective against the Salvadoran guerrillas or against the
Nicaraguan Sandinistas"? You're not going to write that memo.

So what I think Fred Hitz was saying and what he wrote--what that report
says--is there's no evidence. There's no records. Well, of course there
aren't. But do I know for sure that US officials were working with people
who were engaged in drug trafficking in the United States in the 1980s?
Absolutely. There's no doubt about it. They were.

People, organizations, the infrastructure of all of these civil
wars--right-wing, left-wing, I don't care about the ideology--were being
fueled and funded in part by the drug trade. It's a very convenient [way]
to fund that kind of war. And the assets find it convenient to work for
governments because they're also engaged in criminal activity. If you're
working for governments, you may be able to use them.

I interviewed people who were drug traffickers, major drug traffickers, who
provided support for the Contras. There wasn't any doubt about it. I
interviewed bunches of them. They were, at the same time, working with US
government officials. Were they CIA employees? No. Did they get a check
from the US government? Absolutely not. Were they all assets of the US
government? Most of them weren't even assets. An asset is somebody who's
getting some kind of payment, even though they're not getting their Social
Security check and their retirement and so on. They were working alongside
the US government for common objectives. And they were helping fund US
government objectives in that period. Was the United States government the
only government doing this then? Absolutely not...Other governments have
done it...It is a recurrent theme of these, civil unrests, that drug
traffickers get involved in the funding of the wars.

...In recent polls 72% of African Americans believe that the CIA introduced
crack into their community. And many other people outside of the African
American community have taken it as common knowledge that the CIA is
"involved in drug trafficking."

To say the CIA introduced crack into any part of the United States is
obscene. It is so grossly wrong. It is so unfair. It is so untrue.

Rather, when you have governments engaged in covert activity, they wind up
weakening the infrastructure of other governments--the capability of
governments to stop crime from taking place. And they also simultaneously
empower some of the criminals with whom they will inevitably come into
contact. They feel a little looser, a little easier, about moving the dope
in the United States.

They're strengthening the criminals' infrastructure and weakening the
governmental infrastructure--not because they want drugs to come to the
United States. It's an invisible, hidden artifact. They're not even seeing
it. So it has never been an intention, as far as I'm concerned, of anybody
in the CIA or anybody in any other US government agency to facilitate
movement of dope in the United States. Nor is it fair to suggest that they
did it. They didn't. Rather, other foreign policy objectives had the
unfortunate byproduct...of making it a bit easier, strengthening some of
those forces.

Now, it's always temporary and short term, because the people who play in
this dope game wind up getting killed. They wind up getting indicted. They
wind up in bad shape most of the time. So eventually it all plays out
anyway, and they get caught in the grind of intelligence, law enforcement,
fratricidal drug trafficking, rivalries and wars.

But according to Fred Hitz, when an agent in the field wants to hire, let's
say, an airline in Honduras--

That's right.

- --they have to notify Washington--

Today.

- --and then Washington vets that relationship by allegedly running the names
of the individuals involved and the company through indices here in Washington.

Yes. Since when? Did he tell you since when?

No. This was in operation then.

I was in the Congressional branch then. I wasn't in the Executive branch.
All I can tell you is I pulled indictments of drug traffickers from US
Customs, from court records, from State Department records, a variety of
other sources--showing these people to be indicted drug traffickers or
under investigation for having moved massive amounts of dope--who had
contracts with the US government. I proved they had contacts with the US
government. There's no question about the fact that they did.

Now [there are] three possibilities. They did the check poorly,
incompetently, and didn't find it. They did the check and found it and lied
about it. Or, they didn't do the check.

I personally find the second possibility--they did the check and lied about
it--very, very unlikely, because that creates risk and danger. So if it was
done, it was done poorly.

The question comes down to, as Fred would put it, knowledge. Did [CIA]
Washington headquarters have knowledge that they were dealing with drug
traffickers in order to support the Contra war?

When and where and who? The CIA never knows anything. The State Department
never knows anything. The White House never knows anything. Individual
people in particular locations know things at particular times. So you'd
have to go down from that broad generality to look at the facts of
particular cases. In particular cases evidence came up and typically when
that happened, as Fred Hitz documents in his report, the system would then
not really deal with the information very well. They'd say, "Well, it's not
proven. Go back and get more information." And then nothing much would
happen one way or the other.

Sometimes there were people, about whom there were allegations of drug
trafficking, working with the US government for years after those
allegations first surfaced. In other cases, there were people about whom
there were allegations of drug trafficking, whose relationship was severed
with the United States after it came up.

You can't say that anything systematically happened yes or happened no. It
was very ad hoc. There wasn't a clear policy until much later in the
1980s--1988, '89--when the CIA absolutely tightened up its control a lot.
And you saw real pressure being put to bear--"We don't want drug
traffickers." And that absolutely happened by about 1988, '89, maybe a
little bit earlier.

So you're agreeing that the CIA was not in the business of trafficking. Its
agents weren't fostering trafficking directly. Is that correct?

The CIA was certainly not in the business of trafficking. As to agents--

Was it just looking the other way?

It not a matter of looking the other way. It's what you're looking at...CIA
was looking at other things at that time. It wasn't that it was looking the
other way from dope. It didn't see the dope. It was looking at the problem
of national security threatened by guerrillas, threatened by Communism.
That was its focus. That was its mission...Dope [was] not on the radar
screen. It got politicized later. And it got politicized later partly
during Iran-Contra and right afterwards. And then there was a focus...

Now, were individuals seeing it in particular occasions? Yes. Did they
systematically work to correct it when they saw it? No. Did they sometimes
work to correct it when they saw it? Yes. Did they sometimes ignore it?
Yes. Ad hoc.

...Everybody says that [their greatest] fear [was] somebody they were doing
business with getting busted while they were working on the Contra
war...That's why they wouldn't play with dope dealers.

... I've worked with a lot of great people [in the CIA] who wouldn't want
to have their institution's reputation ever sullied. But there are also
people in the field who've got practical problems to solve everyday, and
they're not worried about what Washington thinks. So what's happening in
Washington and what's happening in the field are not always congruent. And
you have to remember ... in the 1980s... there was a privatization of
foreign policy which happened under Bill Casey. Casey set up operations
that were outside formal chains of command, outside the structure of the
government and funded by foreign government sometimes, among other sources.
It's what Iran-Contra was all about a long time ago now.

The result was that there were some people who were clearly working for the
US government, working for the NSC for example, who were drug traffickers.
They weren't working for the CIA.

Oliver North...categorically denies that anybody in his off-the-books
operation was trafficking in drugs.

He is either misinformed or lying. Oliver North's diaries are filled with
references to drug trafficking and people associated with his enterprise
drug trafficking--filled with it. He fought Senator Kerry in the Senate for
years when Kerry was trying to get that information declassified, so
everybody could see it. We were never able to get all of that information
unclassified. The information we finally got declassified--it took
years--shows dozens of references to drug trafficking by people associated
with his network.

I can tell you as a categorical fact that at least one person working
directly for the North Secord Enterprise was a significant dope dealer and
was working in business with significant dope dealers out of Miami.
Absolutely no doubt about it, absolute certainty from law enforcement
records that I got way back when I was investigating for the US Senate.

It happened. It's true. And he can deny it. People deny all kinds of
inconvenient things. Oliver North can say, "I never hired or worked with
any drug traffickers." His organization did. [Moses] Nunez, Louis
Rodriguez, Francisco [Charas] were part of a group called Ocean Hunter, [a]
seafood businesses, flash-frozen shrimp. It's been over ten years--hard to
remember the details.

They were in the CIA report.

Not only the CIA report. I had them drug trafficking up to New Bedford,
Massachusetts, my home state. The biggest marijuana shipment ever
intercepted in Massachusetts was their organization. They were working for
Ollie.

...Glen Robinette was the retired CIA guy working for the North Secord
Enterprise--was directing this guy. And you had the CIA at one point
interview Nunez I believe. That's in the Hitz report somewhere--though you
have to go back and check the report and see what's in it.

It's not true. He's either got a selective memory or he's not telling the
truth. I can't tell you which. He'd have to search his own conscience on that.

Well, just for the record, let me ask you about the MOU. It's a document
between Casey and William French Smith.

Right. That's early...[It's] very important to know how early that is. It
was not Reagan II. It's Reagan I, long before the drug wars had gotten
politicized, long before people had come to recognize that there might be a
connection between the infrastructure of civil war and the infrastructure
of dope trafficking.

...There's a follow-up, if you will, "cover your ass" letter in which
William French Smith says, "Oh, we left out narcotics. But we all know
that's not really going to be a problem because there's a fine relationship
between the DEA and the CIA."

Right. We had a guy, Michael Palmer, we put before the world during Senator
Kerry's hearings, who worked with the CIA and the State Department while he
was under investigation by two or three different offices of the DEA and
two or three different offices of Customs. And eventually he wound up doing
a sting operation, I think on behalf of Customs, while he was under
investigation by the DEA. And you had Customs and DEA firing shots at one
another on an airfield as he came in with a dope shipment.

What Palmer was doing is essentially ticket punching--in which he would get
as many US government agencies as he possibly could hiring him in order to
make it impossible for anybody to go after him. Now, the relationship with
the DEA and CIA was so good because the guy was working for the CIA while
he was under massive investigation by the DEA as one of the major pilots
involved in trafficking dope up from Colombia. That's how good the
relationship was. That's historic record. That's fact. That's Palmer's own
testimony before the US Senate in 1988.

Okay. So to you, this was in a sense a conscious loophole.

I wasn't there. I have no idea what was in Casey's mind or William French
Smith's mind. I think the facts speak for themselves...

PBS Frontline Series Follow Up by Tom O'Connell, Kevin Zeese, Doug McVay,
and Eric Sterling:
http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2000/ds00.n170.html#sec1

Campaign for the Restoration & Regulation of Hemp's HempTV website has the
full, two part, total of almost 4 hours of video of the PBS Frontline "Drug
Wars" available on the web for free video streaming using the Real Player 8.

To watch Part one of Drug Wars, go here:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_drugwars1.html

To see part 2, go here:

http://www.crrh.org/hemptv/docs_drugwars2.html

Click this link for an index to this series:
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1551.a01.html