Hel­lo Mr. Emory. I was attempt­ing to post some book quotes to the com­ments sec­tion of your bril­liant FTR #1107 & #1108 broad­cast and I keep get­ting a mes­sage stat­ing 412 Pre­con­di­tion Failed, which would indi­cate some­thing is wrong with my infor­ma­tion of I am being blocked for some rea­son. The fol­low­ing is all I want­ed to post in the com­ments sec­tion: “...I just got done with lis­ten­ing to “FTR #1107 Deep Pol­i­tics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Pol­i­tics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2” and I have to say it was an anti-fas­cist tour de force spec­ta­cle, tra­vers­ing time and space and filled with fun­da­men­tal hor­rors, much like a good episode of the Out­er Lim­its or Twi­light Zone. Thank you, Mr. Emory for your efforts.

I thought some print ded­i­cat­ed, for the sake of Mr. Emory’s lis­ten­ing audi­ence, to one of CIA Maj. Gen. Edward Geary Lansdale’s dis­ci­ples and a key play­er in the events described in FTR #1107 and FTR #1108: Lt. Col. Lucien Emile Conein AKA “Black Lui­gi”.

The first is from a book authored by Mr. H. P. Albarel­li Jr. enti­tled, “A Ter­ri­ble Mis­take: The Mur­der Of Frank Olson And The CIA’s Cold War Exper­i­ments” The sec­tion of the book I am quot­ing, in its entire­ty, is called, “Book II- From Brain­wash­ing To LSD, Chap­ter 8: Assas­si­na­tions, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein And Assas­si­na­tion” and can be found on pages 335–338:

QUOTE— “… After QJ/WIN and Boris Pash, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein may be ranked as anoth­er of the more intrigu­ing peo­ple involved in the prac­tice of state-spon­sored mur­der. Conein, accord­ing to CIA and FBI files, was “a for­mer mem­ber of the Cor­si­can Broth­er­hood,” a shad­owy, secret group of unknown mem­ber­ship that finances its oper­a­tions thru drug traf­fick­ing and con­tract assas­si­na­tions, and which report­ed­ly still oper­ates world­wide today. Peo­ple famil­iar with the Cor­si­can Broth­er­hood say that it “makes the Mafia look the Kiwa­nis Club” and that “the entire con­cept and prac­tice of ‘omer­ta’ orig­i­nat­ed with the Cor­si­cans.” Said Conein of the Cor­si­cans:

When the Sicil­ians put out a con­tract, it’s usu­al­ly lim­it­ed to the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States, or maybe Cana­da or Mex­i­co. But with the Cor­si­cans, it’s inter­na­tion­al. They’ll go any­where. There’s an old Cor­si­can proverb: ‘If you want revenge and you act in twen­ty years, you’re act­ing in haste.’

Born in Paris, France, Conein was sent to the Unit­ed States by his moth­er when he was only five years old. He was raised in Kansas City by his French aunt, a World War I bride. His aunt assured that he retained his French cit­i­zen­ship, and in 1939, when World War II began, Conein hitch­hiked to Chica­go and went to the French con­sulate where he enlist­ed in the French army. “I didn’t have hard­ly any mon­ey,” he lat­er explained, “but I want­ed to see France and Europe and kill Nazis in the process.” Fol­low­ing the Ger­man takeover of France, Conein helped deliv­er weapons to the French Resis­tance forces and trained civil­ian fight­ers in the arts of sab­o­tage and killing. While in France, Conein gained the nick­name “Black Lui­gi.”

After the war, Conein returned to Chica­go, where he joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to the OSS because of his flu­en­cy in French. (It is pos­si­ble that around this time, he met fel­low OSS recruit, E. Howard Hunt.) Lat­er, the OSS trans­ferred Conein to the Pacif­ic the­atre of oper­a­tions where he led com­man­do raids against Japan­ese-held bases in North Viet­nam.

In 1947, Conein joined the CIA at the rank of Lieu­tenant Colonel, which allowed him to use his mil­i­tary stand­ing to con­ceal his Agency employ­ment. In his ear­ly Agency years, he worked in at least five coun­tries in both Europe and South­east Asia pre­form­ing “sen­si­tive tasks,” accord­ing to CIA files on Conein, which large­ly remain closed to pub­lic access. In 1951, the chief of espi­onage in West Ger­many recruit­ed Conein to estab­lish a base of oper­a­tions in Nurem­burg. The cen­tral pur­pose of the base was to recruit and dis­patch covert agents into War­saw Pact coun­tries to iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate trou­ble­some East Ger­man and Sovi­et agents. The oper­a­tion was mild­ly suc­cess­ful but lost a large num­ber of per­son­nel, who were mur­dered, impris­oned, or sim­ply van­ished. About eigh­teen months into his Nurem­burg assign­ment, Conein was trans­ferred to work for William King Har­vey, chief of the CIA’s Berlin sta­tion. His duties in Berlin are most­ly unknown, but for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cers say that he “served as a link between Har­vey and the mil­i­tary, which was oper­at­ing a num­ber of safe hous­es through­out West Ger­many. Said one for­mer offi­cial:

Lucien [Conein] helped with cer­tain human exports out of Ger­many to the U.S., and served as liai­son fre­quent­ly to del­e­ga­tions from [Camp] Det­rick and Edge­wood [Arse­nal] that arrived to do inter­views of assess­ments on any prospec­tive Ger­man sci­en­tists that some­body back home thought would be worth­while to ship back.
Did he come into con­tact with Frank Olson or oth­ers from Spe­cial Oper­a­tions? It’s pret­ty like­ly, but that con­tact would not have been sig­nif­i­cant in any way. Olson wasn’t high enough up on the lad­der; he was a foot sol­dier, so to speak, and Lucien most­ly played with the big boys.

In 1954, Conein was dis­patched to work with Gen­er­al Edward Lans­dale in South­east Asia. His work pri­mar­i­ly entailed mount­ing covert oper­a­tions against the gov­ern­ment of Ho Chi Minh in North Viet­nam. By 1959, Conein was work­ing close­ly with future DCI William Col­by, CIA sta­tion chief in Saigon. In 1967, Col­by would launch per­haps the largest assas­si­na­tion pro­gram ever con­duct­ed by the CIA, the Phoenix Pro­gram, which sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mur­dered, kid­napped, and tor­tured hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of Viet­namese peo­ple. Many, if not all, of the extreme inter­ro­ga­tion and tor­ture meth­ods, such as water-board­ing, used by the Army and CIA today orig­i­nat­ed with or were refined by the Phoenix Pro­gram.

Conein, under Col­by in Viet­nam, worked close­ly with local tribes­men, the Mon­tag­nards, and ran com­man­do raids into Laos and North Viet­nam. Conein was also close­ly involved in the vio­lent over­throw and assas­si­na­tion of Ngo Dinh Diem, pres­i­dent of South Viet­nam.

Conein’s name first sur­faces pub­licly after he had left Viet­nam for the Unit­ed States – he was said to have played a role in the assas­si­na­tion of John F. Kennedy. Sev­er­al cred­i­ble writ­ers have advanced the argu­ment that Conein was close­ly linked to for­mer OSS offi­cers, E. Howard Hunt and Mitch Wer­bell, III, two men also strong­ly sus­pect­ed of play­ing roles in Kennedy’s death.

Around the same time, Conein was joined in the Unit­ed States by a char­ac­ter intro­duced ear­li­er and about whom read­ers will soon learn far more, Jean-Pierre Lafitte. Conein had known Lafitte since his wartime days in France, and had lat­er used Lafitte for at least one sen­si­tive mis­sion in Viet­nam. The two men shared in com­mon not only their French her­itage, but also a mys­te­ri­ous con­nec­tion to the Cor­si­can Broth­er­hood. Lafitte has years ear­li­er been award­ed a spe­cial Cor­si­can Broth­er­hood medal­lion bear­ing the Brotherhood’s coat-of-arms and the Napoleon­ic Impe­r­i­al Eagle. Lafitte would lat­er claim that Conein had been award­ed the same hon­or at about the same time. Also like Conein, Lafitte was flu­ent in French and Viet­namese. Pierre Lafitte — a pseu­do­nym he used in the Unit­ed States for at least twen­ty years pri­or to 1960 — was expert in many so-called black-oper­a­tions, includ­ing break­ing-and-enter­ing, covert sur­veil­lance, dis­guis­es, and imper­son­ation. Accord­ing to Ger­ald Patrick Hem­ming, a for­mer sol­dier-of-for­tune and CIA con­trac­tor who knew Conein well, “Lafitte, who we jok­ing­ly called ‘Pow­er­ful Pierre’ after some car­toon char­ac­ter, was a mas­ter at all, except killing.” Explained Hem­ming, “he was French, or at least I think he was, and didn’t care much for blood. Fine food, wine, and mon­ey were his things. Maybe not in that order, but that’s what he enjoyed most in life.” Accord­ing to Conein, Lafitte had been in Viet­nam at the time of Diem’s death and had “assist­ed in impor­tant ways, but nev­er in any­way relat­ed to actu­al mur­der.” In 1962, Conein would put CIA offi­cer William King Har­vey in touch with Lafitte, who was at that time involved with a num­ber of shady busi­ness enter­pris­es and shut­tling back and forth between Ger­many, Lux­em­bourg, South Africa, and the Unit­ed States.

In Novem­ber 1973, Conein was asked to work for the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion (report­ed­ly, he was approached by E. Howard Hunt, then a ‘spe­cial employ­ee’ in the Nixon White House). Conein nat­u­ral­ly thought of his friend, Lafitte, who had worked extreme­ly close with George Hunter White, Charles Sir­a­gusa, Vance New­man, and oth­er FBN agents in New York, Boston, Hous­ton, Chica­go, Cal­i­for­nia and over­seas. Lafitte, who knew vir­tu­al­ly every major drug-traf­fick­er in the world, includ­ing the entire cast of the infa­mous French Con­nec­tion case, now gave his friend Conein a crash course in the machi­na­tions of inter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing.

Thanks to Lafitte, Conein quick­ly pro­gressed from con­sul­tant to direc­tor of the DEA’s new­ly formed Spe­cial Oper­a­tions and Field Sup­port Divi­sion. His respon­si­bil­i­ties were “to cre­ate world­wide intel­li­gence net­works, both inside and out­side the Unit­ed States, and to iden­ti­fy and ulti­mate­ly stop the work of the many sig­nif­i­cant drug traf­fick­ers.” Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post, some of Conein’s activ­i­ties were “so sen­si­tive that they required approval of [Sec­re­tary of State] Hen­ry Kissinger’s {For­eign Advi­so­ry} Com­mit­tee.” Accord­ing to hand­writ­ten notes by the CIA’s William King Har­vey — who was him­self deeply enmeshed in oper­at­ing Agency assas­si­na­tion projects at the time — Conein was assem­bling “hit-squads” com­posed of for­mer CIA con­trac­tors and vet­er­ans of the Bay of Pigs inva­sion to tar­get and assas­si­nate for­eign drug traf­fick­ers.

Accord­ing to author and inves­tiga­tive reporter Hen­rik Kruger, “DEA offi­cial told Wash­ing­ton Post reporter George Crile: ‘When you get right down to it, Conein was orga­niz­ing an assas­si­na­tion pro­gram.’”

In 1976, inves­ti­ga­tors of the Church Com­mit­tee, men­tioned ear­li­er, told news­pa­per reporters off-the-record that Conein “had recruit­ed twelve retired CIA men, not pre­vi­ous­ly known to Conein, to pre­form assas­si­na­tions and spe­cial inter­ro­ga­tions on drug traf­fick­ers.” A sub­se­quent Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle stat­ed that Conein, who died in 1998, “appears to have stretched so far the bound­aries of legal­i­ty that they were under­tak­en in total secre­cy…” —END QUOTE.

The sec­ond lit­er­ary entry CIA com­man­der Lt. Col. Lucien Emile Conein AKA “Black Lui­gi” is quite dev­as­tat­ing in terms of its para-polit­i­cal grav­i­ty, or what Pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott famous­ly termed “Deep Pol­i­tics”.

The book I will now be quot­ing is authored by Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Dou­glas Valen­tine and is enti­tled, “The CIA As Orga­nized Crime: How Ille­gal Oper­a­tions Cor­rupt Amer­i­ca And The World.” The sec­tion of the book I am quot­ing (just ele­ments of the book this time) is called, “Part II- How The CIA Co-Opt­ed And Man­ages The War On Drugs, Chap­ter 12: Cre­at­ing A Crime: How The CIA Com­man­deered The Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion” and can be found on pages 178–203:

QUOTE— “… Fed­er­al drug law enforcement’s rela­tion­ship with the espi­onage estab­lish­ment matured with the cre­ation of the Office Of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS). Pri­or to World War Two, the FBN was the gov­ern­ment agency most adept at con­duct­ing covert oper­a­tions at home and abroad. As a result, OSS chief William Dono­van asked his friend Har­ry Anslinger to pro­vide senior FBN agents to man­age agent net­works, engage in sab­o­tage and sub­ver­sion and work under­cov­er to avoid secu­ri­ty forces in hos­tile nations.

The rela­tion­ship grew dur­ing the war when FBN exec­u­tives and agents assist­ed OSS sci­en­tists in “truth drug” exper­i­ments involv­ing mar­i­jua­na. The “extra-legal” nature of the rela­tion­ship con­tin­ued after the war: when the CIA decid­ed to test LSD on unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, FBN agents were cho­sen to oper­ate the CIA safe hous­es where the exper­i­ments were con­duct­ed.

The rela­tion­ship for­mal­ized over­seas in 1951, when Agent Char­lie Sir­a­gusa opened an office in Rome and began to devel­op the FBN’s for­eign oper­a­tions. In the 1950s, FBN agents post­ed over­seas spent half their time doing “favors” for the CIA, such as inves­ti­gat­ing diver­sions of strate­gic mate­ri­als and Mar­shall Plan largess behind the Iron Cur­tain. A hand­ful of FBN agents were actu­al­ly recruit­ed into the CIA while main­tain­ing their FBN cre­den­tials as cov­er.

Offi­cial­ly, FBN agents set lim­its, Sir­a­gusa, for exam­ple, claimed to object when the CIA asked him to mount a “con­trolled deliv­ery” in the US as a way of iden­ti­fy­ing the Amer­i­can mem­bers of a smug­gling ring with Com­mu­nist affil­i­a­tions. In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Sir­a­gusa said, “The FBN could nev­er know­ing­ly allow two pounds of hero­in to be deliv­ered into the Unit­ed State and be pushed to Mafia cus­tomers in the New York City area, even if in the long run we could seize a much big­ger haul.”

In 1960 the CIA asked Sir­a­gusa to recruit assas­sins from his sta­ble of under­world con­tacts. Sir­a­gusa again claimed to have refused. But the Mafia drug traf­fick­ers, includ­ing most promi­nent­ly San­to Traf­fi­cante Jr., were soon par­tic­i­pat­ing in CIA attempts to assas­si­nate Fidel Cas­tro.
Sir­a­gusa did open a CIA safe house in 1960. FBN agents in New York main­tained the MKULTRA “pad” and used it to make cas­es and debrief infor­mants. When the CIA want­ed to use the pad, it would call the dis­trict super­vi­sor in New York City and tell him to keep the agents away for a few days.

FBN agent Arthur Fluhr served as New York Dis­trict Super­vi­sor George Belk’s admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant from 1963–1968. As Fluhr recalled, “Belk was giv­en a CIA con­tract. George said that he nev­er actu­al­ly met any­one form the CIA, but that Sir­a­gusa told him to coop­er­ate if and when he was con­tact­ed. Lat­er the CIA did call. They told Belk: You’ll have this check­ing account, but don’t write any checks oth­er than for rent and the main­te­nance of the 13th Street apart­ment.”

The CIA used Belk’s account — which at times held a mil­lion dol­lars and at oth­er times was emp­ty — as a slush fund for for­eign offi­cials on its pay­roll. “Some­times we were told to baby sit peo­ple for the CIA while they were in town,” Fluhr said. “One time it was a group of Burmese gen­er­als. They came for a few days and when they weren’t at the UN, they used to mon­ey in Belk’s account to go on a shop­ping spree. They went down to the elec­tron­ics shops on Canal Street and filled suit­cas­es full of stuff.”

The CIA chap­er­oned the vis­it­ing Burmese gen­er­als through Cus­toms with­out their bags being checked. One can imag­ine what they brought into New York City in those same suit­cas­es.

The CIA used the safe hous­es to con­duct all man­ner of ille­gal domes­tic oper­a­tions behind the FBI’s back. Indeed, in the course of inves­ti­gat­ing ille­gal FBI wire­taps in Jan­u­ary 1967, Sen­a­tor Edward Long learned that the FBN was man­ag­ing the CIA safe hous­es. No one in Con­gress knew about it. Trea­sury offi­cials held meet­ing with the CIA’s Assis­tant Deputy Direc­tor of Plans, Desmond FritzGer­ald, and MKULTRA boss Sid Got­tlieb. After a few days of dis­sem­bling, Got­tlieb admit­ted the CIA had used the pads to obtain infor­ma­tion “which was of obvi­ous inter­est to us in con­nec­tion with our inves­tiga­tive work.”

That par­tic­u­lar pad was shut down. “We gave the fur­ni­ture to the Sal­va­tion Army,” Fluhr recalled, “and took the drapes off the win­dows and put them up in our office.”

And FBN Agent Andrew Tartagli­no opened a more lux­u­ri­ous CIA safe house on Sut­ton Place.

As the dom­i­nate part­ner in the rela­tion­ship, the CIA exploit­ed it’s affin­i­ty with the FBN. “Like the CIA,” FBN Agent Robert DeFauw explained, “nar­cotics agents mount covert oper­a­tions. We pose as mem­bers of the nar­cotics trade. The big dif­fer­ence is that we’re in for­eign coun­tries legal­ly and through our police and intel­li­gence sources, we can check out just about any­one or any­thing. Not only that, we’re oper­a­tional. So the CIA jumped in our stir­rups.”

Jump­ing into the FBN’s stir­rups afford­ed the CIA deni­a­bil­i­ty. To fur­ther ensure that the CIA’s crim­i­nal activ­i­ties are not revealed to the pub­lic, nar­cotics agents are orga­nized mil­i­tar­i­ly with­in the sacred chain of com­mand. High­ly indoc­tri­nat­ed, they blind­ly obey on a “need to know” basis. This insti­tu­tion­al­ized igno­rance main­tains the illu­sion of Amer­i­can right­eous­ness, in the name of nation­al secu­ri­ty, upon which their moti­va­tion to com­mit all man­ner of crimes depends.

But, as FBN Agent Mar­tin Pera explained, “If you’re suc­cess­ful because you can lie, cheat, and steal, those things become tools you use in the bureau­cra­cy.”

Insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion orig­i­nat­ed at head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, where FBN exec­u­tives pro­vid­ed cov­er for CIA assets engaged in drug traf­fick­ing. In 1966, Agent John Evans was assigned as an assis­tant to FBN Enforce­ment Chief John Enright. “And that’s when I got to see what the CIA was doing,” Evans told me. “I saw a report on the Kuom­intang say­ing they were the biggest drug deal­ers in the world and that the CIA was under­writ­ing them. Air Amer­i­ca was trans­port­ing tons of Kuom­intang opi­um.” Evans bris­tled. “I took the report to Enright. He said, ‘Leave it here. For­get about it.’.

“Oth­er things came to my atten­tion,” Evans added, “that proved that the CIA con­tributed to drug use in Amer­i­ca. We were in con­stant con­flict with the CIA because it was hid­ing its bud­get in ours, and because CIA peo­ple were smug­gling drugs into the US. We weren’t allowed to tell and that fos­tered cor­rup­tion in the Bureau.”

Hero­in smug­gled by “CIA peo­ple” in the US was chan­neled by Mafia dis­trib­u­tors pri­mar­i­ly to African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties. Local nar­cotics agents then tar­get­ed dis­en­fran­chised blacks as an easy way of sub­du­ing or crim­i­nal­iz­ing them, reduc­ing their com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing and vot­ing pow­er, and there­by pre­serv­ing the white rul­ing class’s priv­i­leges…”

We didn’t need a search war­rant,” explained for­mer New Orleans nar­cotics chief Clarence Gia­rus­so. “It allowed us to meet our quo­ta, and it was ongo­ing. If I find dope on a black man, I can put him in jail for a few days. He’s got no mon­ey for a lawyer and the courts are ready to con­vict. There’s no expec­ta­tion on the jury’s part that we have to make a case. So rather than go cold turkey, the addict becomes an infor­mant, which means I can make more cas­es in the neigh­bor­hood, which is all we’re inter­est­ed in. We don’t care about Car­los Mar­cel­lo or the Mafia. City cops have no inter­est in who brings dope in. That’s the job of the fed­er­al agents.”

The Establishment’s race and class priv­i­leges have always been equat­ed with nation­al secu­ri­ty, and FBN exec­u­tives pre­served the social order. Not until 1968 were black FBN agents allowed to become group super­vi­sors and man­age white agents.

The war on drugs is a pro­jec­tion of two con­di­tions pecu­liar to Amer­i­ca. First is the insti­tu­tion­al­ized white suprema­cy that has defined it since slave own­er Thomas Jef­fer­son declared “All men are cre­at­ed equal.” Sec­ond is the pol­i­cy of allow­ing anti-com­mu­nist allies to traf­fic in nar­cotics. These deni­able but offi­cial poli­cies rein­force the beliefs among CIA and drug law enforce­ment offi­cials that the Bill of Rights is an obsta­cle to nation­al secu­ri­ty.

Blan­ket immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion for bureau­crats who trans­late these poli­cies into prac­tice fos­ters cor­rup­tion in oth­er forms. The FBN’s pre­mier “case-mak­ing” agents, for exam­ple, rou­tine­ly “cre­at­ed a crime” by break­ing and enter­ing, plant­i­ng evi­dence, using ille­gal wire­taps and fal­si­fy­ing reports. They tam­pered with hero­in, trans­ferred it to infor­mants for sale, and even mur­dered “straight” agents who threat­ened to expose them.

All of this was known at the high­est lev­el of gov­ern­ment and in 1965 the Trea­sury Depart­ment launched a cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion of the FBN. Head­ed by Andrew Tartagli­no, the inves­ti­ga­tion end­ed in 1968with the res­ig­na­tion of 32 agents and the indict­ment of five. That same year the FBN was recon­struct­ed in the Depart­ment Of Jus­tice as the Bureau of Nar­cotics and Dan­ger­ous Drugs (BNDD).

But, as Tartagli­no said to me, deject­ed­ly, “The job was only half done.”

The First Infes­ta­tion

Richard Nixon was elect­ed pres­i­dent based on a vow to restore “law and order” to Amer­i­ca. To prove, sym­bol­i­cal­ly, that it intend­ed to keep that promise, the White House launched Oper­a­tion Inter­cept along the Mex­i­can bor­der in ear­ly 1969. There were, how­ev­er, unin­tend­ed con­se­quences; the mas­sive “stop and search” oper­a­tion so bad­ly dam­aged rela­tions with Mex­i­co that Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor Hen­ry Kissinger formed the Ad Hoc Com­mit­tee on Nar­cotics (aka the Hero­in Com­mit­tee) to coor­di­nate drug pol­i­cy and pre­vent fur­ther diplo­mat­ic dis­as­ters.

The Hero­in Com­mit­tee was com­posed of cab­i­net mem­bers rep­re­sent­ed by their deputies. James Lud­lum rep­re­sent­ed CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms. A mem­ber of the CIA’s Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence staff, report­ing direct­ly to James Angle­ton, Lud­lum had been the CIA’s liai­son offi­cer to the FBN since 1962.

“When Kissinger set up the Hero­in Com­mit­tee,” Lud­lum recalled, “the CIA cer­tain­ly didn’t take it seri­ous­ly, because drug con­trol wasn’t part of their mis­sion.”

As John Evans not­ed above, and as select mem­bers of Con­gress were aware, the CIA for years had sanc­tioned the hero­in traf­fic from the Gold­en Tri­an­gle region of Bur­ma, Thai­land and Laos into South Viet­nam as a way of reward­ing top offi­cials for advanc­ing US poli­cies. This real­i­ty pre­sent­ed the White House with a dilem­ma; either cur­tail the CIA and risk los­ing the war, or allow tons of hero­in to be smug­gled into the US for use by rebel­lious mid­dle-class white kids dab­bling in cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion.

Nixon’s com­pro­mise solu­tion was to make drug law enforce­ment part of the CIA’s mis­sion. This deci­sion forced the CIA to tar­get it’s clients in South Viet­nam. Although reluc­tant to do so, CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms told Lud­lum: “We’re going to break their rice bowls.”

This betray­al occurred incre­men­tal­ly. Fred Dick, the BNDD agent assigned to Saigon, passed the names of com­plic­it South Viet­namese mil­i­tary offi­cers and politi­cians to the Hero­in Com­mit­tee. But, as Agent Dick recalled, “Ambas­sador [Ellsworth] Bunker called a meet­ing in Saigon at which CIA Sta­tion Chief Ted Shack­ley appeared and explained that there was ‘a del­i­cate bal­ance.’ What he said, in effect, was that no one was will­ing to do any­thing.”

Mean­while, to pro­tect its glob­al net­work of drug traf­fick­ing assets, the CIA began infil­trat­ing the BNDD and com­man­deer­ing its exec­u­tive man­age­ment, inter­nal secu­ri­ty, intel­li­gence and for­eign oper­a­tions branch­es. This act of bureau­crat­ic pira­cy required the place­ment of CIA offi­cers in influ­en­tial posi­tions in every fed­er­al agency con­cerned with drug law enforce­ment.

CIA Offi­cer Paul Van Marx, for exam­ple, was assigned as an assis­tant on nar­cotics con­trol to the US Ambas­sador in France. Van Marx there­after ensured that BNDD con­spir­a­cy cas­es against Euro­pean traf­fick­ers did not com­pro­mise CIA oper­a­tions and assets. He also vet­ted poten­tial BNDD assets to make sure they were not ene­my spies.

The FBN had nev­er had more than 16 agents sta­tioned over­seas, but Nixon dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased fund­ing for the BNDD with the result that hun­dreds of agents were soon post­ed abroad. The suc­cess of these over­seas agents depend­ed entire­ly on CIA intel­li­gence and coop­er­a­tion, as BNDD Direc­tor John Inger­soll under­stood.

BNDD agents soon felt the sting of CIA involve­ment in drug law enforce­ment oper­a­tions with­in the Unit­ed States. Oper­a­tion Eagle was the flash­point. Launched in 1970, Eagle tar­get­ed anti-Cas­tro Cubans smug­gling cocaine from Latin Amer­i­ca to the Traf­fi­cante crime fam­i­ly in Flori­da. Of the dozens of Cuban traf­fick­ers arrest­ed in June, many were found to be mem­bers of Oper­a­tion 40, a CIA ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion active in the US, the Caribbean, Mex­i­co, and Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca.

Oper­a­tion 40 was one of sev­er­al nar­co-ter­ror­ist groups cre­at­ed, fund­ed and direct­ed by the CIA.

The rev­e­la­tion that CIA nar­co-ter­ror­ists were oper­at­ing with­in the US led to the assign­ment of CIA offi­cers as “advi­sors” to mid-lev­el BNDD enforce­ment offi­cials, includ­ing Latin Amer­i­can Divi­sion chief Jer­ry Strick­ler. CIA offi­cers tasked to work with the enforce­ment divi­sion served as polit­i­cal cadre; their job was not to make cas­es, but to pro­tect CIA drug traf­fick­ing assets from expo­sure and pros­e­cu­tion, while facil­i­tat­ing the recruit­ment of these assets as infor­mants for the BNDD.

Many of the anti-Cas­tro Cuban exiles arrest­ed in Oper­a­tion Eagle were indeed hired by the BNDD and sent through­out Latin Amer­i­ca to expand its oper­a­tions. They got “fan­tas­tic infor­ma­tion,” Strick­ler not­ed. But many were play­ing a dou­ble game…”

The Sec­ond Infes­ta­tion

By 1969, Ingersoll’s inspec­tions staff had gath­ered enough evi­dence to war­rant the inves­ti­ga­tion of sev­er­al cor­rupt FBN agents who had risen to man­age­ment posi­tions in the BNDD. But Inger­soll could not inves­ti­gate his top man­agers with­out sub­vert­ing the organization’s drug inves­ti­ga­tions. So he asked CIA Direc­tor Helms for help build­ing a “coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence” capac­i­ty with­in the BNDD.

The result was Oper­a­tion Twofold, in which 19 CIA offi­cers were infil­trat­ed into the BNDD to spy on cor­rupt BNDD offi­cials. Accord­ing to Chief Inspec­tor Patrick Fuller, “A cor­po­ra­tion engaged in law enforce­ment hired three CIA offi­cers pos­ing as pri­vate busi­ness­men to do con­tact and inter­view work.”

CIA Offi­cer Jer­ry Soul, a for­mer Oper­a­tion 40 case offi­cer, was the pri­ma­ry recruiter. In select­ing CIA offi­cers for Twofold, Soul chose junior offi­cers whose careers had stalled due to the reduc­tion of forces in South­east Asia. Those hired were put through the BNDD’s train­ing course and were assigned to spy on the BNDD’s 16 region­al direc­tors. No records were kept and some par­tic­i­pants have nev­er been iden­ti­fied.

Chuck Guten­sohn was one of sev­er­al Twofold “tor­pe­does” inter­viewed. Pri­or to his recruit­ment into the BNDD, Guten­sohn had spent two years at the CIA’s base in Pakse, a major hero­in tran­sit point between Laos and South Viet­nam. “Fuller said that when we com­mu­ni­cat­ed, I was to be known as Leo Adams for Los Ange­les,” Guten­sohn said. “He was to be Wal­ter DeCar­lo, for Wash­ing­ton, DC.”

Gutensohn’s cov­er, how­ev­er, was blown before he got to Los Ange­les. “Some­one at head­quar­ters was talk­ing and every­one knew,” he recalled. “About a month after I arrived, one of the agents said to me, ‘I heard Pat Fuller signed your cre­den­tials’.”

Twofold exist­ed at least until 1974 and was deemed by the Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion to have “vio­lat­ed the 1947 Act which pro­hibits the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in law enforce­ment activ­i­ties.” It also, as shall be dis­cussed lat­er, served as a cov­er for clan­des­tine CIA oper­a­tions.

The Third Infes­ta­tion

The Nixon White House blamed the BNDD’s fail­ure to stop inter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing on its fee­ble intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties, a con­di­tion that opened the door to fur­ther CIA infil­tra­tion. In late 1970, CIA Direc­tor Helms arranged for his recent­ly retired Chief of Con­tin­u­ing Intel­li­gence, E. Drex­el God­frey, to review BNDD intel­li­gence pro­ce­dures. Among oth­er things, God­frey rec­om­mend­ed that the BNDD cre­ate Region­al Intel­li­gence Units (RIUs) and a Strate­gic Intel­li­gence Office (SIO).

The RIUs were up and run­ning by 1971, with recy­cled CIA offi­cers assigned as ana­lysts, prompt­ing reg­u­lar BNDD agents to view the RIUs with sus­pi­cion, as repos­i­to­ries for Twofold tor­pe­does.

The SIO was hard­er to imple­ment, giv­en its arcane func­tion as a tool to help senior BNDD man­agers for­mu­late plans and strate­gies “in the polit­i­cal sphere.” As SIO Direc­tor John Warn­er explained, “We need­ed to under­stand the polit­i­cal cli­mate in Thai­land in order to address the prob­lem. We need­ed to know what kind of pro­tec­tion the Thai police were afford­ing traf­fick­ers. We were look­ing for an intel­li­gence office that could deal with those sort of issues, on the ground, over­seas.”

Orga­niz­ing the SIO fell to CIA offi­cers Adri­an Swain and Tom Tripo­di, both of whom were infil­trat­ed into the BNDD. In April 1971, Swain and Tripo­di accom­pa­nied Inger­soll to Saigon, where they were briefed by Sta­tion Chief Ted Shack­ley. Swain had worked in Laos and Viet­nam, and through for­mer CIA con­tacts, he sur­rep­ti­tious­ly obtained maps of CIA-pro­tect­ed drug smug­gling routes in South­east Asia.

Upon their return to the US, Swain and Tripo­di expressed frus­tra­tion that the CIA had access to peo­ple capa­ble of pro­vid­ing the BNDD with addi­tion­al intel­li­gence, but these peo­ple “were involved in nar­cotics traf­fick­ing and the CIA did not want to iden­ti­fy them.”

Seek­ing a way to finesse the sit­u­a­tion, Swain and Tripo­di rec­om­mend­ed the cre­ation of a “spe­cial oper­a­tions of strate­gic oper­a­tions staff” that would func­tion as the BNDD’s own CIA “using a back­door approach to gath­er intel­li­gence in sup­port of oper­a­tions.” Those oper­a­tions would rely on “longer range, deep pen­e­tra­tion, clan­des­tine assets, who remain under­cov­er, do not appear dur­ing the course of any tri­al and are recruit­ed and direct­ed by the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions agents on a covert basis.”

The White House approved the plan in May 1971, along with a $120 mil­lion dol­lar pro­pos­al for drug con­trol, of which $50 mil­lion was ear­marked for BNDD spe­cial oper­a­tions. Three weeks lat­er Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” at which point Con­gress respond­ed with fund­ing for the SIO and autho­riza­tion for the extra-legal oper­a­tions Swain and Tripo­di envi­sioned.

Direc­tor John Warn­er was giv­en a seat on the US Intel­li­gence Board so the SIO could obtain raw intel­li­gence from the CIA. But, in return, the SIO was com­pelled to adopt CIA secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures; a CIA secu­ri­ty offi­cer assigned to estab­lish the SIO’s file room and com­put­er sys­tem; safes and steel doors were installed; and wit­ting agents had to obtain CIA clear­ances.

Three active-duty CIA offi­cers were assigned to the SIO as desk offi­cers for Europe and the Mid­dle East, the Far East, and Latin Amer­i­ca. Tripo­di was assigned as the SIO’s chief of oper­a­tions. Tripo­di, notably, had spent the pre­vi­ous six years in Flori­da with the CIA’s Secu­ri­ty Research Ser­vices, where his duties includ­ed the pen­e­tra­tion of peace groups, as well as set­ting up “notion­al” pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tion firms to con­duct black bag jobs. It is of his­tor­i­cal impor­tance that White House “Plumber” E. Howard Hunt inher­it­ed Tripodi’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions unit, which includ­ed sev­er­al of the Water­gate bur­glars.

SIO ops chief Tripo­di liaised with the CIA on mat­ters of mutu­al inter­est, includ­ing the covert col­lec­tion of intel­li­gence out­side of rou­tine BNDD chan­nels. As part of his oper­a­tional plan, code-named Medusa, Tripo­di pro­posed that SIO agents hire for­eign nation­als to blow up con­tra­ban­dista planes while they were refu­el­ing at clan­des­tine air strips. Anoth­er pro­pos­al called for ambush­ing traf­fick­ers in Amer­i­ca, and tak­ing their drugs and mon­ey — which, as I’ve report­ed else­where and in my books on the sub­ject, case-mak­ing agents had been doing for decades, albeit unof­fi­cial­ly.

Enter Lucien Conein

The cre­ation of the SIO coin­cid­ed with the assign­ment of CIA offi­cer Lucien Conein to the BNDD. As a mem­ber of the OSS, Conein had para­chut­ed into France to form resis­tance cells that includ­ed Cor­si­can smug­glers. As a CIA offi­cer, Conein in 1954 was assigned to Viet­nam to orga­nize anti-Com­mu­nist forces in the North, and in 1963 he achieved infamy as the inter­me­di­ary between the Kennedy White House and the cabal of gen­er­als that mur­dered Pres­i­dent Diem and his broth­er Nhu.

In The Pol­i­tics of Hero­in In South­east Asia, his­to­ri­an Alfred McCoy alleged that in 1965, Conein arranged a truce between the CIA and drug traf­fick­ing Cor­si­cans in Saigon. Conein appar­ent­ly knew some of these gang­sters from his work with the French resis­tance. The truce, accord­ing to McCoy, allowed the Cor­si­cans to traf­fic in nar­cotics as long as they served as con­tact men for the CIA. The truce also endowed the Cor­si­cans with “free pas­sage” at a time when Mar­seilles’ hero­in labs were turn­ing from Turk­ish to South­east Asian mor­phine base.

In a let­ter to McCoy’s pub­lish­er, Conein denied McCoy’ alle­ga­tion and insist­ed that his meet­ing with the Cor­si­cans was sole­ly to resolve a prob­lem caused by Daniel Ellsberg’s “pec­ca­dil­loes with the mis­tress of a Cor­si­can.”

It is impos­si­ble to find out who is telling the truth. Ells­berg denies that his CIA friends were involved in drug traf­fick­ing; McCoy and all the evi­dence indi­cate that they were. What is def­i­nite­ly known is that in July 1971, on Howard Hunt’s rec­om­men­da­tion, the White House hired Conein as an expert on Cor­si­can traf­fick­ers in South­east Asia. Conein was assigned as a con­sul­tant to the SIO’s Far East Asia desk, then under CIA offi­cer Wal­ter Mack­em, a vet­er­an of Viet­nam. Conein’s activ­i­ties will be dis­cussed in greater detail…”

The Par­al­lel Mech­a­nism

In Sep­tem­ber 1971, the Hero­in Com­mit­tee was reor­ga­nized as the Cab­i­net Com­mit­tee for Inter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Con­trol (CCINC) under Sec­re­tary of State William Rogers. CCINC’s man­date was to “set poli­cies which relate inter­na­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions to domes­tic con­sid­er­a­tions.” By 1975, its bud­get amount­ed to $875 mil­lion, and the war on drugs had become a most prof­itable indus­try.

Con­cur­rent­ly, the CIA formed a uni­lat­er­al drug unit in its oper­a­tions divi­sion under Sey­mour Bolten. Known as the Spe­cial Assis­tant to the Direc­tor for the Coor­di­na­tion of Nar­cotics, Bolten direct­ed CIA divi­sion and sta­tion chiefs in uni­lat­er­al drug con­trol oper­a­tions. In doing this, Bolten worked close­ly with Ted Shack­ley, who in 1972 was appoint­ed head of the CIA’s West­ern Hemi­sphere Divi­sion. Bolten and Shack­ley had worked togeth­er in post-war Ger­many, as well as in anti-Cas­tro Cubans oper­a­tions in the ear­ly 1960s. Their col­lab­o­ra­tion would grease fed­er­al drug law enforcement’s skid into obliv­ion.

“Bolten screwed us,” BNDD’s Latin Amer­i­can divi­sion chief Jer­ry Strick­ler said emphat­i­cal­ly. “And so did Shack­ley.”

Bolten “screwed” the BNDD, and the Amer­i­can judi­cial sys­tem, by set­ting up a “par­al­lel mech­a­nism” based on a com­put­er­ized reg­is­ter of inter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ers and a CIA-staffed com­mu­ni­ca­tions crew that inter­cept­ed calls from drug traf­fick­ers inside the U.S. to their accom­plices around the world. The Inter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Infor­ma­tion Net­work (INIS) was mod­eled on a com­put­er­ized man­age­ment infor­ma­tion sys­tem Shack­ley had used to ter­ror­ize the under­ground resis­tance in South Viet­nam.

Bolten’s staff also “re-tooled” dozens of CIA offi­cers and slipped them into the BNDD. Sev­er­al went to Lou Conein at the SIO for clan­des­tine, high­ly ille­gal oper­a­tions.

Fac­tions with­in the CIA and mil­i­tary were opposed to Bolten’s par­al­lel mech­a­nism, but CIA Exec­u­tive Direc­tor William Col­by sup­port­ed Bolten’s plan to pre­empt the BNDD and use its agents and infor­mants for uni­lat­er­al CIA pur­pos­es. The White House also sup­port­ed the plan for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es relat­ed to Water­gate. Top BNDD offi­cials who resist­ed were expunged; those who coop­er­at­ed were reward­ed.

Bureau of Nar­cotics Covert Intel­li­gence Net­work

In Sep­tem­ber 1972, DCI Helms (then immersed in Water­gate intrigues), told BNDD Direc­tor Inger­soll that the CIA had pre­pared files on spe­cif­ic drug traf­fick­ers in Mia­mi, the Flori­da Keys, and the Caribbean. Helms said the CIA would pro­vide Inger­soll with assets to pur­sue the traf­fick­ers and devel­op infor­ma­tion on tar­gets of oppor­tu­ni­ty. The CIA would also pro­vide oper­a­tional, tech­ni­cal, and finan­cial sup­port.

The result was the Bureau of Nar­cotics Covert Intel­li­gence Net­work (BUNCIN) whose method­ol­o­gy reflect­ed Tripodi’s Medusa Plan and includ­ed “provo­ca­tions, induce­ment to deser­tion, cre­at­ing con­fu­sion and appre­hen­sion.”

Some BUNCIN intel­li­gence activ­i­ties were direct­ed against “senior for­eign gov­ern­ment offi­cials” and were “blamed on oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies or even on the intel­li­gence ser­vices of oth­er nations.” Oth­er BUNCIN activ­i­ties were direct­ed against Amer­i­can civic and polit­i­cal groups.

BNDD offi­cials man­aged BUNCIN’s legal activ­i­ties, while Conein at the SIO man­aged its polit­i­cal and CIA aspects. Accord­ing to Conein’s admin­is­tra­tive deputy, Rich Kobakoff, “BUNCIN was an exper­i­ment in how to finesse the law. The end prod­uct was intel­li­gence, not seizures or arrests.”

CIA offi­cers Robert Medell and William Logay were select­ed to man­age BUNCIN.

A Bay of Pigs vet­er­an born in Cuba, Medell was ini­tial­ly assigned to the Twofold pro­gram. Medell was BUNCIN’s “covert” agent and recruit­ed its prin­ci­pal agents. All of his assets had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for the CIA, and all believed they were work­ing for it again.

Medell start­ed run­ning agents in March 1973 with the stat­ed goal of pen­e­trat­ing the Traf­fi­cante orga­ni­za­tion. To this end the BNDD’s Enforce­ment Chief, Andy Tartagli­no, intro­duced Medell to Sal Cane­ba, a retired Mafioso who had been in busi­ness with Traf­fi­cante in the 1950s. Cane­ba in one day iden­ti­fied the head of the Cuban side of the Traf­fi­cante fam­i­ly, as well as its orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture.

But the CIA refused to allow the BNDD to pur­sue the inves­ti­ga­tion, because it had employed Traf­fi­cante in its assas­si­na­tion attempts against Fidel Cas­tro, and because Trafficante’s Oper­a­tion 40 asso­ciates were per­form­ing sim­i­lar func­tions for the CIA around the world.

Medell’s Prin­ci­pal Agent was Bay of Pigs vet­er­an Guiller­mo Tabraue, whom the CIA paid $1,400 a week. While receiv­ing this prince­ly sum, Tabraue par­tic­i­pat­ed in the “Alvarez-Cruz” drug smug­gling ring.

Medell also recruit­ed agents from Manuel Artime’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban orga­ni­za­tion. For­mer CIA offi­cer and White House “Plumber” Howard Hunt, notably, had been Artime’s case offi­cer for years, and many mem­bers of Artime’s orga­ni­za­tion had worked for Ted Shack­ley while Shack­ley was the CIA’s sta­tion chief in Mia­mi.

Bill Logay was the “overt” agent assigned to the BUNCIN office in Mia­mi. Logay had been Shackley’s body­guard in Saigon in 1969. From 1970–1971, Logay had served as a spe­cial police liai­son and drug coor­di­na­tor in Saigon’s Precinct 5. Logay was also asked to join Twofold, but claims to have refused.

Medell and Logay’s reports were hand deliv­ered to BNDD head­quar­ters via the Defense Department’s clas­si­fied couri­er ser­vice. The Defense Depart­ment was in charge of emer­gency plan­ning and pro­vid­ed BUNCIN agents with spe­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment. The CIA sup­plied BUNCIN’s assets with forged IDs that enabled them to work for for­eign gov­ern­ments, includ­ing Pana­ma, Venezuela and Cos­ta Rica.

Like Twofold, BUNCIN had two agen­das. One, accord­ing to Chief Inspec­tor Fuller, “was told” and had a nar­cotics mis­sion. The oth­er pro­vid­ed cov­er for the Plumbers. Orders for the domes­tic polit­i­cal facet emanat­ed from the White House and passed through Conein to “Plumber” Gor­don Lid­dy and his “Oper­a­tion Gem­stone” squad of exile Cuban ter­ror­ists from the Artime orga­ni­za­tion...”

Enforce­ment chief Tartagli­no was unhap­py with the arrange­ment and gave Agent Ralph Frias the job of screen­ing anti-Cas­tro Cubans sent by the White House to the BNDD. Frias was assigned to Inter­na­tion­al Affairs chief George Belk. When Nixon’s White House chief of staff H.R. “Bob” Halde­man sent over three Cubans, Frias inter­viewed them and real­ized they were “plants.” Those three were not hired, but, Frias lament­ed, many oth­ers were suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed inside the BNDD and oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies.

Under BUNCIN cov­er, CIA anti-Cas­tro assets report­ed­ly kid­napped and assas­si­nat­ed peo­ple in Colom­bia and Mex­i­co. BUNCIN’s White House spon­sors also sent CIA anti-Cas­tro Cuban assets to gath­er dirt on Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians in Key West. With BUNCIN, fed­er­al drug law enforce­ment sank to new lows of polit­i­cal repres­sion and cor­rup­tion.

Novo Yard­ley

The Nixon White House intro­duced the “oper­a­tions by com­mit­tee” man­age­ment method to ensure con­trol over its ille­gal drug oper­a­tions. But as agen­cies involved in drug law enforce­ment pooled resources, the BNDD’s mis­sion was dilut­ed and dimin­ished.

And, as the pre­em­i­nent agency in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the CIA not only sep­a­rat­ed itself from the BNDD as part of Bolten’s par­al­lel mech­a­nism, it rode off into the sun­set on the BNDD’s horse. For exam­ple, at their intro­duc­to­ry meet­ing in Mex­i­co City in 1972, Ted Shack­ley told Latin Amer­i­can divi­sion chief Strick­ler to hand over all BNDD files, infor­mant lists, and cable traf­fic.

Accord­ing to Strick­ler, “Bad things hap­pened.” The worst abuse was that the CIA allowed drug ship­ments into the U.S. with­out telling the BNDD.

“Indi­vid­ual sta­tions allowed this,” SIO Direc­tor John Warn­er con­firmed.

In so far as evi­dence acquired by CIA elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance is inad­mis­si­ble in court, the CIA was able to pro­tect its con­trolled deliv­er­ies into the U.S. mere­ly by mon­i­tor­ing them. Numer­ous inves­ti­ga­tions had to be ter­mi­nat­ed as a result. Like­wise, dozens of pros­e­cu­tions were dis­missed on nation­al secu­ri­ty grounds due to the par­tic­i­pa­tion of CIA assets oper­at­ing around the world.

Strick­ler knew which CIA peo­ple were guilty of sab­o­tag­ing cas­es in Latin Amer­i­ca, and want­ed to indict them. And so, at Bolten’s insis­tence, Strick­ler was reas­signed. Mean­while, CIA assets from Bolten’s uni­lat­er­al drug unit were kid­nap­ping and assas­si­nat­ing traf­fick­ers as part of Oper­a­tion Twofold.

BNDD Direc­tor Inger­soll con­firmed the exis­tence of this covert facet of Twofold. Its pur­pose, he said, was to put peo­ple in deep cov­er in the U.S. to devel­op intel­li­gence on drug traf­fick­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly from South Amer­i­ca. The region­al direc­tors weren’t aware of it. Inger­soll said he got approval from Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Mitchell and passed the oper­a­tion on to John Bar­tels, the first admin­is­tra­tor of the DEA. He said the unit did not oper­ate inside the U.S., which is why he thought it was legal.

Inger­soll added that he was sur­prised that no one from the Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion asked him about it.

Joseph DiGennaro’s entry into the covert facet of Oper­a­tion Twofold began when a fam­i­ly friend, who knew CIA offi­cer Jim Lud­lum, sug­gest­ed that he apply for a job with the BNDD. Then work­ing as a stock­bro­ker in New York, DiGen­naro met Fuller in August 1971 in Wash­ing­ton. Fuller gave DiGen­naro the code name Novo Yard­ley, based on his post­ing in New York, and as a play on the name of the famous code­break­er.

After DiGen­naro obtained the required clear­ances, he was told that he and sev­er­al oth­er recruits were being “spun-off” from Twofold into the CIA’s “oper­a­tional” unit. The back­ground check took 14 months, dur­ing which time he received inten­sive com­bat and trade-craft train­ing.

In Octo­ber 1972 he was sent to New York City and assigned to an enforce­ment group as a cov­er. His pay­checks came from BNDD funds, but the pro­gram was reim­bursed by the CIA through the Bureau of Mines. The pro­gram was autho­rized by the “appro­pri­ate” Con­gres­sion­al com­mit­tee.

DiGennaro’s unit was man­aged by the CIA’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Divi­sion in con­junc­tion with the mil­i­tary, which pro­vid­ed assets with­in for­eign mil­i­tary ser­vices to keep ex-fil­tra­tion routes (air cor­ri­dors and roads) open. The mil­i­tary cleared air space when cap­tured sus­pects were brought into the U.S. DiGen­naro spent most of his time in South Amer­i­ca, but the unit oper­at­ed world­wide. The CIA unit num­bered about 40 men, includ­ing experts in print­ing, forgery, mar­itime oper­a­tions, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.

DiGen­naro would check with Fuller and take sick time or annu­al leave to go on mis­sions. There were lots of mis­sions. As his BNDD group super­vi­sor in New York said, “Joey was nev­er in the office.”

The job was track­ing down, kid­nap­ping, and, if they resist­ed, killing drug traf­fick­ers. Kid­napped tar­gets were inca­pac­i­tat­ed by drugs and dumped in the U.S. As DEA Agent Ger­ry Carey recalled, “We’d get a call that there was ‘a present’ wait­ing for us on the cor­ner of 116th Street and Sixth Avenue. We’d go there and find some guy, who’d been indict­ed in the East­ern Dis­trict of New York, hand­cuffed to a tele­phone pole. We’d take him to a safe house for ques­tion­ing and, if pos­si­ble, turn him into an informer. Some­times we’d have him in cus­tody for months. But what did he know?”

If you’re a Cor­si­can drug deal­er in Argenti­na, and men with police cre­den­tials arrest you, how do you know it’s a CIA oper­a­tion? DiGennaro’s last oper­a­tion in 1977 involved the recov­ery of a satel­lite that had fall­en into a drug dealer’s hands. Such was the extent of the CIA’s “par­al­lel mech­a­nism.”

The Dirty Dozen

With the for­ma­tion of the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion in July 1973, BUNCIN was renamed the DEA Clan­des­tine Oper­a­tions Net­work (DEACON 1). A num­ber of addi­tion­al DEA­CONs were devel­oped through Spe­cial Field Intel­li­gence Pro­grams (SFIP). As an exten­sion of BUNCIN, DEACON 1 devel­oped intel­li­gence on traf­fick­ers in Cos­ta Rica, Ohio and New Jer­sey; politi­cians in Flori­da; ter­ror­ists and gun run­ners; the sale of boats and heli­copters to Cuba; and the Traf­fi­cante orga­ni­za­tion.

Under DEA chief John Bar­tels, admin­is­tra­tive con­trol fell under Enforce­ment Chief George Belk and his Spe­cial Projects assis­tant Philip Smith. Through Belk and Smith, the Office of Spe­cial Projects had become a major facet of Bolten’s par­al­lel mech­a­nism. It housed the DEA’s air wing (staffed large­ly by CIA offi­cers), con­duct­ed “research pro­grams” with the CIA, pro­vid­ed tech­ni­cal aids and doc­u­men­ta­tion to agents, and han­dled fugi­tive search­es.

As part of DEACON 1, Smith sent covert agent Bob Medell “to Cara­cas or Bogo­ta to devel­op a net­work of agents.” As Smith not­ed in a mem­o­ran­dum, reim­burse­ment for Medell “is being made in backchan­nel fash­ion to CIA under pay­ments to oth­er agen­cies and is not count­ed as a posi­tion against us.”

Thor­ough­ly sub­orned by Bolten and the CIA, DEA Admin­is­tra­tor Bar­tels estab­lished a pri­or­i­ty on for­eign clan­des­tine nar­cotics col­lec­tion. And when Belk pro­posed a spe­cial oper­a­tions group in intel­li­gence, Bar­tels imme­di­ate­ly approved it. In March 1974, Belk assigned the group to Lou Conein.

As chief of the Intel­li­gence Group/Operations (IGO), Conein admin­is­tered the DEA Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Group (DEASOG), SFIP and Nation­al Intel­li­gence Offi­cers (NIO) pro­grams. The chain of com­mand, how­ev­er, was “unclear” and while Medell report­ed admin­is­tra­tive­ly to Smith, Conein man­aged oper­a­tions through a sep­a­rate chain of com­mand reach­ing to William Col­by, who had risen to the rank of CIA Direc­tor con­cur­rent with the for­ma­tion of the DEA.

Conein had worked for Col­by for many years in Viet­nam, for through Col­by he hired a “dirty dozen” CIA offi­cers to staff DEASOG. As NIOs (not reg­u­lar gun-tot­ing DEA agents), the DEASOG offi­cers did not buy nar­cotics or appear in court, but instead used stan­dard CIA oper­at­ing pro­ce­dures to recruit assets and set up agent net­works for the long-range col­lec­tion of intel­li­gence on traf­fick­ing groups. They had no con­nec­tion to the DEA and were housed in a safe house out­side head­quar­ters in down­town Wash­ing­ton, DC.

The first DEASOG recruits were CIA offi­cers Elias P. Chavez and Nicholas Zap­a­ta. Both had para­mil­i­tary and drug con­trol expe­ri­ence in Laos. Colby’s per­son­nel assis­tant Jack Math­ews had been Chavez’s case offi­cer at the Long Thien base, where Gen­er­al Vang Pao ran his secret drug-smug­gling army under Ted Shackley’s aus­pices from 1966–1968.

A group of eight CIA offi­cers fol­lowed: Wes­ley Dyck­man, a Chi­nese lin­guist with ser­vice in Viet­nam, was assigned to San Fran­cis­co. Louis J. Davis, a vet­er­an of Viet­nam and Laos, was assigned to the Chica­go Region­al Intel­li­gence Unit. Christo­pher Thomp­son from the CIA’s Phoenix Pro­gram in Viet­nam went to San Anto­nio. Hugh E. Mur­ray, vet­er­an of Pakse and Bolivia (where he par­tic­i­pat­ed in the cap­ture of Che Gue­vara), was sent to Tuc­son. Thomas D. McPhaul had worked with Conein in Viet­nam, and was sent to Dal­las. Thomas L. Brig­gs, a vet­er­an of Laos and a friend of Shackley’s, went to Mex­i­co. Ver­non J. Goertz, a Shack­ley friend who had par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Allende coup, went to Venezuela. David A. Scher­man, a Conein friend and for­mer man­ag­er of the CIA’s inter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter in Da Nang, was sent to sun­ny San Diego.

Gary Mat­tocks, who ran CIA counter-ter­ror teams in Vietnam’s Delta, and inter­roga­tor Robert Simon were the eleventh and twelfth mem­bers. Ter­ry Bald­win, Bar­ry Carew and Joseph Lagat­tuta joined lat­er.

Accord­ing to Davis, Conein cre­at­ed DEASOG specif­i­cal­ly to do Phoenix pro­gram-style jobs over­seas: the type where a para­mil­i­tary offi­cer breaks into a trafficker’s house, takes his drugs, and slits his throat. The NIOs were to oper­ate over­seas where they would tar­get traf­fick­ers the police couldn’t reach, like a prime minister’s son or the police chief in Aca­pul­co if he was the local drug boss. If they couldn’t assas­si­nate the tar­get, they would bomb his labs or use psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare to make him look like he was a DEA infor­mant, so his own peo­ple would kill him.

The DEASOG peo­ple “would be break­ing the law,” Davis observed, “but they didn’t have arrest pow­ers over­seas any­way.”

Conein envi­sioned 50 NIOs oper­at­ing world­wide by 1977. But a slew of Water­gate-relat­ed scan­dals forced the DEA to cur­tail its NIO pro­gram and reor­ga­nize its covert oper­a­tions staff and func­tions in ways that have cor­rupt­ed fed­er­al drug law enforce­ment beyond repair.

Assas­si­na­tion Scan­dals

The first scan­dal focused on DEACON 3, which tar­get­ed the Aviles-Perez orga­ni­za­tion in Mex­i­co. Eli Chavez, Nick Zap­a­ta and Bar­ry Carew were the NIOs assigned.

A vet­er­an CIA offi­cer who spoke Span­ish, Carew had served as a spe­cial police advis­er in Saigon before join­ing the BNDD. Carew was assigned as Conein’s Latin Amer­i­can desk offi­cer and man­aged Chavez and Zap­a­ta (aka “the Mex­i­can Assas­sin”) in Mex­i­co. Accord­ing to Chavez, a White House Task Force under Howard Hunt had start­ed the DEACON 3 case. The Task force pro­vid­ed pho­tographs of the Aviles Perez com­pound in Mex­i­co, from whence truck­loads of mar­i­jua­na were shipped to the U.S.

Funds were allot­ted in Feb­ru­ary 1974, at which point Chavez and Zap­a­ta trav­eled to Mex­i­co City as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the North Amer­i­can Alarm and Fire Sys­tems Com­pa­ny. In Mazatlán, they met with Carew, who stayed at a fan­cy hotel and played ten­nis every day, while Chavez and Zap­a­ta, whom Conein referred to as “pep­per-bel­lies,” fumed in a flea-bag motel.

An infor­mant arranged for Chavez, pos­ing as a buy­er, to meet Perez. A deal was struck, but DEA chief John Bar­tels made the mis­take of instruct­ing Chavez to brief the DEA’s region­al direc­tor in Mex­i­co City before mak­ing “the buy.”

At this meet­ing, the DEACON 3 agents pre­sent­ed their oper­a­tional plan. But when the sub­ject of “neu­tral­iz­ing” Perez came up, ana­lyst Joan Ban­is­ter took this to mean assas­si­na­tion. Ban­nis­ter report­ed her sus­pi­cions to DEA head­quar­ters, where the anti-CIA fac­tion leaked her report to Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Jack Ander­son.

Anderson’s alle­ga­tion that the DEA was pro­vid­ing cov­er for a CIA assas­si­na­tion unit includ­ed rev­e­la­tions that the Sen­ate had inves­ti­gat­ed IGO chief Conein for shop­ping around for assas­si­na­tion devices, like explod­ing ash­trays and tele­phones. Conein man­aged to keep his job, but the trail led to his com­rade from the OSS, Mitch Wer­bell.

A deni­able asset Conein used for par­al­lel oper­a­tions, Wer­bell had tried to sell sev­er­al thou­sand silenced machine pis­tols to DEACON 1 tar­get Robert Vesco, then liv­ing in Cos­ta Rica sur­round­ed by drug traf­fick­ing Cuban exiles in the Traf­fi­cante orga­ni­za­tion. Traf­fi­cante was also, at the time, liv­ing in Cos­ta Rica as a guest of Pres­i­dent Figueres whose son had pur­chased weapons from Wer­bell and used them to arm a death squad he formed with DEACON 1 asset Car­los Rum­bault, a noto­ri­ous anti-Cas­tro Cuban ter­ror­ist and fugi­tive drug smug­gler.

Mean­while, in Feb­ru­ary 1974, DEA Agent Antho­ny Triponi, a for­mer Green Beret and mem­ber of Oper­a­tion Twofold, was admit­ted to St. Luke’s Hos­pi­tal in New York “suf­fer­ing from hyper­ten­sion.” DEA inspec­tors found Triponi in the psy­chi­atric ward, dis­traught because he had bro­ken his “cov­er” and now his “spe­cial code” would have to be changed.

Think­ing he was insane, the DEA inspec­tors called for­mer chief inspec­tor Patrick Fuller in Cal­i­for­nia, just to be sure. As it turned out, every­thing Triponi had said about Twofold was true! The incred­u­lous DEA inspec­tors called the CIA and were stunned when they were told: “If you release the sto­ry, we will destroy you.”

By 1975, Con­gress and the Jus­tice Depart­ment were inves­ti­gat­ing the DEA’s rela­tions with the CIA. In the process they stum­bled on, among oth­er things, plots to assas­si­nate Tor­ri­jos and Nor­ie­ga in Pana­ma, as well as Tripodi’s Medusa Pro­gram.

In a draft report, one DEA inspec­tor described Medusa as fol­lows: “Top­ics con­sid­ered as options includ­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal ter­ror tac­tics, sub­sti­tu­tion of place­bos to dis­cred­it traf­fick­ers, use of incen­di­aries to destroy con­ver­sion lab­o­ra­to­ries, and dis­in­for­ma­tion to cause inter­nal war­fare between drug traf­fick­ing orga­ni­za­tions; oth­er meth­ods under con­sid­er­a­tion involved black­mail, use of psy­chophar­ma­co­log­i­cal tech­niques, bribery and even ter­mi­nal sanc­tions.”

The Cov­er-Up

Despite the flur­ry of inves­ti­ga­tions, Nixon’s suc­ces­sor, Ger­ald Ford, recon­firmed the CIA’s nar­cot­ic intel­li­gence col­lec­tion arrange­ment with DEA, and the CIA con­tin­ued to have its way. Much of its suc­cess is attrib­uted to Sey­mour Bolten, whose staff han­dled “all requests for files from the Church Com­mit­tee,” which con­clud­ed that alle­ga­tions of drug smug­gling by CIA assets and pro­pri­etaries “lacked sub­stance.”

The Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion like­wise gave the CIA a clean bill of health, false­ly stat­ing that the Twofold inspec­tions project was ter­mi­nat­ed in 1973. The Com­mis­sion com­plete­ly cov­ered-up the exis­tence of the oper­a­tion unit hid­den with­in the inspec­tions pro­gram.

Ford did task the Jus­tice Depart­ment to inves­ti­gate “alle­ga­tions of fraud, irreg­u­lar­i­ty, and mis­con­duct” in the DEA. The so-called DeFeo inves­ti­ga­tion last­ed through July 1975, and includ­ed alle­ga­tions that DEA offi­cials had dis­cussed killing Omar Tor­ri­jos and Manuel Nor­ie­ga. In March 1976, Deputy Attor­ney Gen­er­al Richard Thorn­burgh announced there were no find­ings to war­rant crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions.

In 1976, Con­gress­woman Bel­la Abzug sub­mit­ted ques­tions to new Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence George H.W. Bush, about the CIA’s cen­tral role in inter­na­tion­al drug traf­fick­ing. Bush’s response was to cite a 1954 agree­ment with the Jus­tice Depart­ment gave the CIA the right to block pros­e­cu­tion or keep its crimes secret in the name of nation­al secu­ri­ty.

In its report, the Abzug Com­mit­tee said: “It was iron­ic that the CIA should be giv­en respon­si­bil­i­ty of nar­cot­ic intel­li­gence, par­tic­u­lar­ly since they are sup­port­ing the prime movers.”

The Mans­field Amend­ment of 1976 sought to cur­tail the DEA’s extra-legal activ­i­ties abroad by pro­hibit­ing agents from kid­nap­ping or con­duct­ing uni­lat­er­al actions with­out the con­sent of the host gov­ern­ment. The CIA, of course, was exempt and con­tin­ued to sab­o­tage DEA cas­es against its movers, while fur­ther tight­en­ing its stran­gle­hold on the DEA’s enforce­ment and intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties.

In 1977, the DEA’s Assis­tant Admin­is­tra­tor for Enforce­ment sent a memo, co-signed by the six enforce­ment divi­sion chiefs, to DEA chief Peter Bensinger. As the memo stat­ed, “All were unan­i­mous in their belief that present CIA pro­grams were like­ly to cause seri­ous future prob­lems for DEA, both for­eign and domes­tic.”

They specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed con­trolled deliv­er­ies enabled by CIA elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance and the fact that the CIA “will not respond pos­i­tive­ly to any dis­cov­ery motion.” They com­plained that “Many of the sub­jects who appear in these CIA- pro­mot­ed or con­trolled sur­veil­lances reg­u­lar­ly trav­el to the Unit­ed States in fur­ther­ance of their traf­fick­ing activ­i­ties.” The “de fac­to immu­ni­ty” from pros­e­cu­tion enabled the CIA assets to “oper­ate much more open­ly and effec­tive­ly.”

But then DEA chief Peter Bensinger suf­fered the CIA at the expense of America’s cit­i­zens and the DEA’s integri­ty. Under Bensinger the DEA cre­at­ed its CENTAC pro­gram to tar­get drug traf­fick­ing orga­ni­za­tion world­wide through the ear­ly 1980s. But the CIA sub­vert­ed the CENTAC: as its direc­tor Den­nis Dayle famous­ly said, “The major tar­gets of my inves­ti­ga­tions almost invari­ably turned out to be work­ing for the CIA.”

Mur­der and May­hem

DEACON 1 inher­it­ed BUNCIN’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban assets from Brigade 2506, which the CIA orga­nized to invade Cuba in 1960. Con­trolled by Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal police, these CIA assets, oper­at­ing under DEA cov­er, had par­al­lel assign­ments involv­ing “extrem­ist groups and ter­ror­ism, and infor­ma­tion of a polit­i­cal nature.”

Nor­ie­ga and Moi­ses Tor­ri­jos in Pana­ma were tar­gets, as was fugi­tive financier and Nixon cam­paign con­trib­u­tor Robert Vesco in Cos­ta Rica, who was sus­pect­ed of being a mid­dle man in drug and mon­ey-laun­der­ing oper­a­tions of val­ue to the CIA.

DEACON 1’s prob­lems began when overt agent Bill Logay charged that covert agent Bob Medell’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban assets had pen­e­trat­ed the DEA on behalf of the Traf­fi­cante orga­ni­za­tion. DEACON 1 sec­re­tary Cecelia Plicet fanned the flames by claim­ing that Conein and Medell were using Prin­ci­pal Agent Tabraue to cir­cum­vent the DEA.

In what amount­ed to an end­less suc­ces­sion of con­trolled deliv­er­ies, Tabraue was financ­ing loads of cocaine and using DEACON 1’s Cuban assets to smug­gle them into the U.S. Plicet said that Medell and Conein worked for “the oth­er side” and want­ed the DEA to fail. These accu­sa­tions prompt­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion, after which Logay was reas­signed to inspec­tions and Medell was reas­signed and replaced by Gary Mat­tocks, an NIO mem­ber of the Dirty Dozen.

Accord­ing to Mat­tocks, Shack­ley helped Col­by set up DEASOG and brought in “his” peo­ple, includ­ing Tom Clines, whom Shack­ley placed in charge of the CIA’s Caribbean oper­a­tions. Clines, like Shack­ley and Bolten, knew all the exile Cuban ter­ror­ists and traf­fick­ers on the DEASOG pay­roll. CIA offi­cer Ver­non Goertz worked for Clines in Cara­cas as part of the CIA’s par­al­lel mech­a­nism under DEASOG cov­er.

As cov­er for his DEACON 1 activ­i­ties, Mat­tocks set up a front com­pa­ny designed to improve rela­tions between Cuban and Amer­i­can busi­ness­men. Mean­while, through the CIA, he recruit­ed mem­bers of the Artime orga­ni­za­tion includ­ing Water­gate bur­glars Rolan­do Mar­tinez and Bernard Bark­er, as well as Che Guevara’s mur­der­er, Felix Rodriguez. These anti-Cas­tro ter­ror­ists were alleged­ly part of an Oper­a­tion 40 assas­si­na­tion squad that Shack­ley and Clines employed for pri­vate as well as pro­fes­sion­al pur­pos­es.

In late 1974, DEACON 1 crashed and burned when inter­roga­tor Robert Simon’s daugh­ter was mur­dered in a dri­ve-by shoot­ing by crazed anti-Cas­tro Cubans. Simon at the time was man­ag­ing the CIA’s drug data base and had linked the exile Cuban drug traf­fick­ers with “a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion.” As Mat­tocks explained, “It got bad after the Brigaders found out Simon was after them.”

None of the CIA’s ter­ror­ists, how­ev­er, were ever arrest­ed. Instead, Conein issued a direc­tive pro­hibit­ing DEACON 1 assets from report­ing on domes­tic polit­i­cal affairs or ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties and the tragedy was swept under the car­pet for rea­sons of nation­al secu­ri­ty.

DEACON 1 uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly end­ed in 1975 after Agent Fred Dick was assigned to head the DEA’s Caribbean Basin Group. In that capac­i­ty Dick vis­it­ed the DEACON 1 safe house and found, in his words, “a clan­des­tine CIA unit using mis­cre­ants from Bay of Pigs, guys who were blow­ing up planes.” Dick hit the ceil­ing and in August 1975 DEACON I was ter­mi­nat­ed.

No new DEA­CONs were ini­ti­at­ed and the oth­ers qui­et­ly ran their course. Unde­terred, the CIA rede­ployed its anti-Cas­tro Cuban mis­cre­ant assets, some of whom estab­lished the ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion CORU in 1977. Oth­ers would go to work for Marine Lt. Col. Oliv­er North, a key Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil aide under Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan in the Iran-Con­tra drug and ter­ror net­work.

Conein’s IGO was dis­band­ed in 1976 after a grand jury sought DEACON I intel­li­gence regard­ing sev­er­al drug busts. But CIA acquired intel­li­gence can­not be used in pros­e­cu­tions, and the CIA refused to iden­ti­fy its assets in court, with the result that 27 pros­e­cu­tions were dis­missed on nation­al secu­ri­ty grounds.

Gary Mat­tocks was there­after unwel­comed in the DEA. But his patron Ted Shack­ley had become DCI George Bush’s assis­tant deputy direc­tor for oper­a­tions and Shack­ley kind­ly rehired Mat­tocks into the CIA and assigned him to the CIA’s nar­cotics unit in Peru.

At the time, San­ti­a­go Ocam­po was pur­chas­ing cocaine in Peru and his part­ner Mat­ta Balles­teros was fly­ing it to the usu­al Cuban mis­cre­ants in Mia­mi. One of the receivers, Fran­cis­co Chanes, an erst­while DEACON asset, owned two seafood com­pa­nies that would soon alleged­ly come to serve as fronts in Oliv­er North’s Con­tra sup­ply net­work, receiv­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing tons of Con­tra cocaine.

Mat­tocks him­self soon joined the Con­tra sup­port oper­a­tion as Eden Pastrora’s case offi­cer. In that capac­i­ty Mat­tocks was present in 1984 when CIA offi­cers hand­ed pilot Bar­ry Seal a cam­era and told him to take pho­tographs of San­din­ista offi­cial Fed­eri­co Vaughn load­ing bags of cocaine onto Seal’s plane. A DEA “spe­cial employ­ee,” Seal was run­ning drugs for Jorge Ochoa Vasquez and pur­port­ed­ly using Nicaragua as a tran­sit point for his deliv­er­ies.

North asked DEA offi­cials to instruct Seal, who was return­ing to Ochoa with $1.5 mil­lion, to deliv­er the cash to the Con­tras. When the DEA offi­cials refused, North leaked a blur­ry pho­to, pur­port­ed­ly of Vaughn, to the right-wing Wash­ing­ton Times. For par­ti­san polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, on behalf of the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, Oliv­er North blew the DEA’s biggest case at the time, and the DEA did noth­ing about it, even though DEA Admin­is­tra­tor Jack Lawn said in 1988, in tes­ti­mo­ny before the Sub­com­mit­tee on Crime of the Com­mit­tee on the Judi­cia­ry, that leak­ing the pho­to “severe­ly jeop­ar­dized the lives” of agents.

The cir­cle was squared in 1989 when the CIA instruct­ed Gary Mat­tocks to tes­ti­fy as a defense wit­ness at the tri­al of DEACON 1 Prin­ci­pal Agent Gabriel Tabraue. Although Tabraue had earned $75 mil­lion from drug traf­fick­ing, while work­ing as a CIA and DEA asset, the judge declared a mis­tri­al based on Mattocks’s tes­ti­mo­ny. Tabraue was released. Some peo­ple inferred that Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush had per­son­al­ly ordered Mat­tocks to dyna­mite the case.

The CIA’s use of the DEA to employ ter­ror­ists would con­tin­ue apace. For exam­ple, in 1981, DEA Agent Dick Sal­mi recruit­ed Rober­to Cabril­lo, a drug smug­gling mem­ber of CORU, an orga­ni­za­tion of mur­der­ous Cuban exiles formed by drug smug­gler Frank Cas­tro and Luis Posa­da while George Bush was DCI.

The DEA arrest­ed Cas­tro in 1981, but the CIA engi­neered his release and hired him to estab­lish a Con­tra train­ing camp in the Flori­da Ever­glades. Posa­da report­ed­ly man­aged resup­ply and drug ship­ments for the Con­tras in El Sal­vador, in cahoots with Felix Rodriguez. Charged in Venezuela with blow­ing up a Cuban air­lin­er and killing 73 peo­ple in 1976, Posa­da was shield­ed from extra­di­tion by George W. Bush in the mid-2000s.

Hav­ing been polit­i­cal­ly cas­trat­ed by the CIA, DEA offi­cials mere­ly warned its CORU assets to stop bomb­ing peo­ple in the U.S. It could maim and kill peo­ple any­where else, just not here in the sacred home­land. By then, Sal­mi not­ed, the Jus­tice Depart­ment had a spe­cial “grey-mail sec­tion” to fix cas­es involv­ing CIA ter­ror­ists and drug deal­ers.

The Hoax

DCI William Web­ster formed the CIA’s Counter-Nar­cotics Cen­ter in 1988. Staffed by over 100 agents, it osten­si­bly became the spring­board for the covert pen­e­tra­tion of, and para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against, top traf­fick­ers pro­tect­ed by high-tech secu­ri­ty firms, lawyers and well-armed pri­vate armies.

The CNC brought togeth­er, under CIA con­trol, every fed­er­al agency involved in the drug wars. For­mer CIA offi­cer and erst­while Twofold mem­ber, Ter­ry Burke, then serv­ing as the DEA’s Deputy for Oper­a­tions, was allowed to send one liai­son offi­cer to the CNC.

The CNC quick­ly showed its true col­ors. In the late 1990, Cus­toms agents in Mia­mi seized a ton of pure cocaine from Venezuela. To their sur­prise, a Venezue­lan under­cov­er agent said the CIA had approved the deliv­ery. DEA Admin­is­tra­tor Robert Bon­ner ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion and dis­cov­ered that the CIA had, in fact, shipped the load from its ware­house in Venezuela.

The “con­trolled deliv­er­ies” were man­aged by CIA offi­cer Mark McFar­lin, a vet­er­an of Reagan’s ter­ror cam­paign in El Sal­vador. Bon­ner want­ed to indict McFar­lin, but was pre­vent­ed from doing so because Venezuela was in the process of fight­ing off a rebel­lion led by left­ist Hugo Chavez. This same sce­nario has been play­ing out in Afghanistan for the last 15 years, large­ly through the DEA’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Divi­sion (SOD), which pro­vides cov­er for CIA oper­a­tions world­wide. The ulti­mate and inevitable result of Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ism, the SOD job is not sim­ply to “cre­ate a crime,” as free­wheel­ing FBN agents did in the old days, but to “recre­ate a crime” so it is pros­e­cutable, despite what­ev­er extra-legal meth­ods were employed to obtain the evi­dence before it is passed along to law enforce­ment agen­cies so they can make arrests with­out reveal­ing what prompt­ed their sus­pi­cions.

Reuters report­ed in 2013,

“The unit of the DEA that dis­trib­utes the infor­ma­tion is called the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Divi­sion, or SOD. Two dozen part­ner agen­cies com­prise the unit, includ­ing the FBI, CIA, NSA, Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. It was cre­at­ed in 1994 to com­bat Latin Amer­i­can drug car­tels and has grown from sev­er­al dozen employ­ees to sev­er­al hun­dred.”

The uti­liza­tion of infor­ma­tion from the SOD, which oper­ates out of a secret loca­tion in Vir­ginia, “can­not be revealed or dis­cussed in any inves­tiga­tive func­tion,” accord­ing to an inter­nal doc­u­ment cit­ed by Reuters, which added that agents are specif­i­cal­ly direct­ed “to omit the SOD’s involve­ment from inves­tiga­tive reports, affi­davits, dis­cus­sions with pros­e­cu­tors and court­room tes­ti­mo­ny.”

Agents are told to use “par­al­lel con­struc­tion” to build their cas­es with­out ref­er­ence to SOD’s tips which may come from sen­si­tive “intel­li­gence inter­cepts, wire­taps, infor­mants and a mas­sive data­base of tele­phone records,” Reuters report­ed.

Cit­ing a for­mer fed­er­al agent, Reuters report­ed that SOD oper­a­tors would tell law enforce­ment offi­cials in the U.S. to be at a cer­tain place at a cer­tain time and to look for a cer­tain vehi­cle which would then be stopped and searched on some pre­text. “After an arrest was made, agents then pre­tend­ed that their inves­ti­ga­tion began with the traf­fic stop, not with the SOD tip, the for­mer agent said,” Reuters report­ed.

An anony­mous senior DEA offi­cial told Reuters that this “par­al­lel con­struc­tion” approach is “decades old, a bedrock con­cept” for law enforce­ment. The SOD’s approach fol­lows Twofold tech­niques and Bolten’s par­al­lel mech­a­nism from the ear­ly 1970s.

To put it sim­ply, lying to frame defen­dants, which has always been unstat­ed pol­i­cy, is now offi­cial pol­i­cy: no longer con­sid­ered cor­rup­tion, it is how your gov­ern­ment man­ages the judi­cial sys­tem on behalf of the rich polit­i­cal elite.

As out­lined in this arti­cle, the process tracks back to Nixon, the for­ma­tion of the BNDD, and the cre­ation of a secret polit­i­cal police force out of the White House. As Agent Bow­man Tay­lor caus­ti­cal­ly observed, “I used to think we were fight­ing the drug busi­ness, but after they formed the BNDD, I real­ized we were feed­ing it.”

The cor­rup­tion was first “col­lat­er­al” – as a func­tion of nation­al secu­ri­ty per­formed by the CIA in secret – but has now become “inte­gral,’ the essence of empire run amok...” —END QUOTE...”

“He noticed con­den­sa­tion on the win­dows, peered inside and saw Iris in the dri­ver’s seat **with her hands crossed** in her lap.”

Source: https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Historian-Iris-Chang-won-many-battles-The-war-2679354.php

I am not cer­tain of the physics involved here, but it seems unlike­ly at best, that after shoot­ing her­self, her hands would be “crossed in her lap.”

@The Gary Webb Expe­ri­ence–

Good catch! I over­looked that. If that detail is accu­rate, it sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­one else pulled the trig­ger.

The phys­i­cal evi­dence is indeed sus­pi­cious.

Thanks so much for this!

Best,

Dave

Here, here Dave. The Mind con­trol as nuclear weapon anal­o­gy is indeed an essen­tial con­cept to grasp. If you’re famil­iar with the work of Paul Vir­ilio and his idea of the three bombs:

1. Nuclear Bomb
2. Infor­ma­tion Bomb
3. Genet­ic Bomb

...we need to upgrade that for 2020, and take it a nec­es­sary step fur­ther to include

4. Religious/Spiritual Fanati­cism Bomb (includ­ing the New Age / Cor­po­rate Cult!)

5. The Mind Con­trol Bomb (Rev­o­lu­tion in Mil­i­tary Affairs)

6. The Climate/ Weath­er Warfare/ Geo­Engi­neer­ing Bomb

Cheers,

Jim