HOW THE US DRUG WAR PLAYS IN THE EUROPEAN MEDIA

A WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS SUPPLEMENT

[This report is produced by the Weekly News Update on the
Americas, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012; 2126749499;
email (wnu@igc.apc.org). Please feel free to reproduce any of
this material if proper credit is given.]

In August 1996 the San Jose Mercury News of San Jose, California,
ran a series detailing how a group of rightwing Nicaraguans
supplied cocaine to one of Los Angeles' leading crack
distributors in the 1980s and sent at least some of the profits
to support the Nicaraguan contras, a rebel army set up and
largely directed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Larger mainstream US media such as the Los Angeles Times, the New
York Times and the Washington Post launched a campaign to
discredit the welldocumented Mercury News series. The Mercury
Newsa respected regional newspaper with a popular Web site
finally printed a partial retraction in May 1997, and the series'
author, Gary Webb, was reassigned to the paper's suburban bureau.

The implication of the media campaign against Webb and the
Mercury News was that no reputable journalist or publication
would ever suggest that the US governmentwhich claims to be
leading the fight against the world drug trademight have
tolerated drug trafficking by its own employees.

The European media took a different view of the story. In
December 1996, at the height of the antiWebb campaign, Great
Britain's ITV television network broadcast a program presenting
charges by a procontra Nicaraguan pilot that the CIAfar from
just tolerating drug running by the contrasactually encouraged
and directed the operation. The ITV story was given favorable
coverage by The Independent, a reputable leftofcenter British
daily [see Update #359].

* Alibi for Intervention?
In fact, over the last two years several stories have appeared in
Europe's mainstream media that make the Mercury News charges
appear quite tame.

This April France's very Establishment Le Monde Diplomatique ran
two articles on the drug war. The first by Mariano Aguirre,
director of Madrid's Center of Investigation for Peacewas
entitled "Militarization of the Struggle Against Drugs,
Washington's Alibi." "The war on drugs seems to have replaced the
'counterinsurgency doctrine' applied by Washington during the
1980s," Aguirre writes. "It allows for a new American
'interventionism,' especially of a military type." After
detailing US military involvement in antidrug operations in
Latin America, Aguirre asks: "Could the US use this
infrastructure to carry out interventions of an imperialist
character, as in the past? ...[I]t is clear that by accumulating
information and keeping an important military support structure
in place, Washington has means at its disposal that could prove
to be quite useful for controlling one or another Latin American
country." An accompanying graphic parodies the US dollar bill,
showing George Washington with dark glasses and a thick moustache
in the style of the late Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar
Gaviria.

A second article, by Maurice Lemoine, deals with the activities
of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Bolivia.
Lemoine states as a matter of fact that after "narcogeneral"
Luis Garcia Meza seized power on July 17, 1980, "the CIA had its
hands free to finance its Central American operations thanks to
cocaine produced in a secret workshop in Huanchaca, located 700
km from Santa Cruz and 550 km from Trinidad." In 1986 the DEA was
accused of "cocaine trafficking, encubrimiento (receipt of stolen
goods), [and] financing Nicaragua's contras with the money from
the drugs produced at that location...since [the DEA] knew about
the drug factory and said nothing about it." A Congress member
from the Revolutionary Front of the Left (FRI), Edmundo Salazar,
was about to demand the expulsion of the DEA's agents from the
country; he was assassinated in Santa Cruz on Oct. 10, 1986,
shortly after making his charges.

"On Aug. 20, 1992, the government of Jaime Paz Zamora approved
decree 23239," Lemoine continues, "for the purpose of regulating
the activities of foreign agents authorized to operate in
Bolivia. The government's intention was never carried out. Paz
Zamora was later accusedand with him his party, the
Revolutionary Movement of the Left (MIR)of having links to drug
trafficking. Thanks to information cleverly leaked by...the DEA"
[ellipses in original]. The drug war has had "real effects" on
the drug cartels, Lemoine concludes. "But alsoby chance?on
governments that don't have the good fortune to please
Washington: the government of Manuel [Antonio] Noriega in 1989 in
Panama, the one in Bolivia that the MIR participated in, and now
the government of Colombian president Ernesto Samper Pizano
often defined as a social democrat. The very neoliberal Ernesto
Zedillo [Ponce de Leon], president of Mexico, just like his
predecessor, Carlos Salinas [de Gortari], gets off easy." (Le
Monde Diplomatique April 1997)

* The DEA Follows the Money
Possibly the most explosive accusations come from a 1995 series
in the Spanish weekly Cambio16 Espana, by Carlos Enrique Bayo in
Washington. More material appeared in 1996; all this was
reprinted in the magazine's Colombian edition. The series,
"Confessions of an Agent," is said to come from interviews with
an active but disillusioned DEA "superagent," identified as
"Juan." The agent says he is a Latin American who has worked for
the DEA in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica and
the US; Cambio16 writes that his accounts "have been verified as
far as possible during a broad independent investigation by this
magazine."

According to "Juan," the US government is chiefly concerned with
getting political and economic advantages from the drug tradea
$50 billion a year business in the US, by his estimate. "The DEA
acts only to prevent the flight from the US of hard currency from
drug trafficking," the agent claims, "and has 'minimum' limits
for the money it will get so that an operation will be
profitable, guiding itself principally by this criterion of
profitability." "The North American authorities know that most of
the drugs enter the US in little consignments transported by
modest 'mules' [carriers]. But they don't do anything to slow
down this trafficking, which they could stop, because it isn't
'profitable' to take measures against these 'ants.'" But the US
interest isn't just economic, "Juan" says: "Washington uses the
DEA to pressure other countries politically." At times, the US
permits drug trafficking so that it can get information to use to
"blackmail foreign governments."

"Juan" says that the US agents he has worked with "are, for the
most part, very honest; professionals who know their work and try
to do it as best they can... The real corruption isn't in the
middle ranks of the struggle against drug trafficking but in the
dark heights of a system that only seeks its own benefit." As for
this "system," the alleged agent says that it "doesn't want to
finish off the trafficking in and consumption of drugs; at times
it even encourages [trafficking], despite being totally aware
that [the drug trade] causes tens of thousands of deaths in the
US, because [the system] is turning it into an instrument of
power." (Cambio16 Colombia, 7/10/95)

Like Lemoine, "Juan" insists that the US has ulterior motives for
pressing charges that Colombian president Samper took payoffs
from the drug cartels during his 1994 election campaignalthough
the agent says that the charges are true. But "Juan" would deny
that the US objects to Samper as too social democratic. "[T]he
United States wants to get rid of Samper because he isn't capable
of forcing the Senate to change the Constitution," which
prohibits the extradition of Colombian citizens to other
countries, "Juan" says.

"Why is there so much interest in taking the Cali cartel leaders
to the US?" Cambio16 asks. "Because with the information that
Pallomari has provided""Juan" answers, referring to cartel
accountant Guillermo Pallomari, who turned himself in to the US
in 1995"the billions of dollars in [drug] fortunes have already
been located, and to be able to confiscate them legally it is
much less costly and timeconsuming, legally, if the Rodriguez
Orejuela brothers [leaders of the Cali Cartel] and the others of
the Cali cartel are in US territory. If they make a deal in the
US, plead guilty and cut a deal with the prosecutors in exchange
for reduction of sentences and other benefits, the confiscation
of all those assets and properties is automatic. Otherwise, a
judicial proceeding could take five, ten or even twenty years.

"In addition," continues "Juan," "in the exchange they will have
to reveal all the details of the drug trafficking and money
laundering networks that they control in the US, and that will
bring the Treasury many more billions. Immense quantities are at
stake, comparable to the public deficit of the US."

* The Santacruz Londono Case
There is no way to verify "Juan's" claims either of being a DEA
agent or of having inside information on the US government's
motives. His charge that Mexican president Zedillo's 1994
campaign took money from the Cali cartel led to threats of legal
action from Mexico, forcing Cambio16 to "reevaluate," as the
magazine describes it.

But one of the supposed agent's charges seems to have received
striking confirmation. The Cali cartel's number three person,
Jose Santacruz Londono, escaped the high security prison in
Bogota known as La Picota on Jan. 11, 1996. At the end of the
month, "Juan" contacted Cambio16 to say that the CIA had
organized the escape and that they had now located Santacruz. Two
US infiltrators reportedly arranged the escape, and were trying
to convince Santacruz to leave for Panama or Costa Rica,
countries where the DEA would immediately capture him and
transport him to the US. "If Santacruz insists on leaving for
another country, where the CIA could lose his trail, or on
remaining in Colombia, from which it will be impossible to
extradite him, he is a dead man... The pertinent instructions
have already been given," "Juan" said in January 1996.

Santacruz was shot dead by police agents in Medellin on Mar. 6,
1996 in what authorities called a shootout. Santacruz had eight
bullet wounds in his chest; no police agents were wounded, there
were no bullet holes in the police agents' cars, and journalists
didn't find any bullet casings near the body. According to the
daily La Prensa, forensic pathologists who examined the body
found signs on the wrists that the cartel chief was handcuffed
before he died [see Update #325]. (Cambio16 Colombia, 4/15/96)

Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY
339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 2126749499 fax: 2126749139
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * wnu@igc.apc.org