On May 25, just four days after we published our last issue, under the
totally misleading heading of "CIA and Drugs in Los Angeles" the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) held a closed door
hearing. It took us until June 22 to determine that the Committee heard
testimony that day from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael
Bromwich, who had not appeared before the Committee since the release of his
report last year. And it also heard from current CIA Inspector General Britt
Snider, who discussed Volume II of retired CIA IG Fred Hitz's report on the
whole Contra war - not Los Angeles. Los Angeles was Volume I.
That's right - They have had the hearing on Volume II. They did it in
secret. The press did not cover it. And it remains unclear, at this moment,
as to whether HPSCI's final report will even be declassified or made
available to the public in any form at all. This is not only a breach of
every promise made to us in 1996 by both Houses; it is, in my opinion, a
complete breach of trust between the government and the people.
In a June 22 conversation with HPSCI Deputy Staff Director, Tim Sample, I
was told that the Committee "would like to wrap this up this summer." I was
also told that the protocol for closing the investigation out had not been
finalized. It is "not known" whether there will be another hearing. It is
"not known" whether or if the Committee's final report will be declassified
or ever released. It is "not known" if any additional witnesses will be
called. I and retired DEA Agent Cele Castillo and presumably the other major
figures in the investigation have all received letters asking us to submit
whatever other evidence "we are aware of" before the Committee closes its
work.
This is a sign of true desperation as the Republican controlled Committee
must absolutely close the issue - to protect George W. Bush - before the
2000 Presidential campaign begins in earnest in October. It must also
protect the biggest secret of all from the American people: The entire
economy, and the entire political system itself, is currently hooked and
dependent upon - drug money.
I have been saying for years that you could show a video of George Bush
ordering drug runs, CIA agents laundering money and flying airplanes full of
drugs and no one in power would do anything about it. They would not be able
to. In this issue I will tell you, and the House, about something almost as
damning - a partially authenticated letter, written on CIA letterhead and
stamped "Top Secret", ostensibly written and signed by CIA Director William
J. Casey in late 1986, that admits to direct participation in the drug trade
[SEE STORY THIS ISSUE]. I have been aware of the existence of this letter
for approximately five months. I have had it read to me in its entirety. It
was not until I was given this last chance by HPSCI to present "all of the
information of which you are aware on the allegations" that I was able to
obtain an "On the Record" statement about the letter from Attorney Ray
Kohlman. The letter will be admitted into evidence in a new trial motion for
former Green Beret William Tyree in the near future. When that happens, From
The Wilderness will publish the letter, both on the Internet and in the
newsletter.
Now that the House has indicated its intent to close the matter for good and
all it is time to bring the letter forward - for good and all. I will also
see to it that the letter is widely distributed enough so that any of the
major news organizations will be able to follow up on it. The information in
this issue is enough for the House Intelligence Committee to go to the CIA
and compel it to confirm or deny the letter's authenticity.
Reading The Right Map
If nothing happens with further hearings, or with the letter, I will tell
you in advance exactly why.
Contributing Editor Catherine Austin Fitts, who was a Managing Director at
Dillon Read before becoming Assistant Secretary of Housing under George Bush
and who holds an MBA from Wharton makes things very simple. She points out
that the four largest states for the importation of drugs are New York,
Florida, Texas and California. She then points out that the top four money
laundering states in the U.S. (good for between 100 and 260 billion per
year) are New York, Florida, Texas and California. No surprise there. Then
she rips the breath from your lungs by pointing out that 80 per cent of all
Presidential campaign funds come from - New York, Florida, Texas and
California.
Civics test: Who are the current governors of Texas and
Florida?
From The Wilderness has been working on a story for an upcoming issue that
will show conclusively, using testimony of law enforcement officers and U.S.
Government records, that Dominican drug gangs, who dominate the trade in the
northeast United States - especially New York and Pennsylvania - have been
making regular campaign donations to the Clinton-Gore-Democratic camp since
the early 90s. California drug sales are currently split between
Democratically allied crime factions and entrenched hard core Republican
strongholds from the Reagan era. People who shudder at the thought of the
Chinese buying into presidential politics would choke if they knew how much
drug money was involved.
Why? Again, the answer is simpler than you might think. While the Department
of Justice estimates that $100 billion in drug funds are laundered in the
U.S. each year, other research, including research material from the Andean
Commission of Jurists cited by author Dan Russell in his soon to be
published book Drug War place the figure at around $250 billion per year.
Catherine Austin Fitts places the figure at $250 to $300 billion. Given the
fact that the UN estimated that in the early 1990s world retail volume in
the illegal drugs was $440 billion, $250 billion seems about right. Fitts,
using her Wall Street experience as an investment banker is then quick to
point out that the multiplier effect (x6) of $250 billion laundered would
result in $1.5 trillion dollars per year in U.S. cash transactions resulting
from the drug trade. How many jobs does $1.5 trillion represent? Why do
President's get re-elected? As Bill Clinton's staff recognized in 1992,
"It's the economy -Stupid!"
During the Contra years, when the CIA and Bill Clinton were swimming in
cocaine, and Arkansas became the only state in the Union to ever issue
bearer bonds (laundry certificates), employment in Arkansas rose to an all
time high because there was so much money floating around. So what if they
don't count all the dead bodies like two young boys Kevin Ives and Don
Henry, shot, bludgeoned and dismembered on a railroad track after witnessing
CIA drug drops. "It's the economy - Stupid!"
The Pop
Corporations trading on Wall Street, including many implicated in money
laundering schemes where products are sold with questionable bookkeeping
throughout drug producing regions, all have stock values that are based upon
annual net profits. Known as "price to earnings" or "The Pop" the multiplier
effect in stock values is sometimes as much as a factor of thirty. Thus, for
a firm like GE or Piper Aircraft to have an additional $10 million in net
profits based upon the drug trade, the net increase in these companies'
stock value could be as much as $300,000,000. Did GE make a $10 million net
profit on consumer products in Latin America last year? Easily. And since GE
owns NBC is there a chance that accurate reporting on the drug trade and
CIA's involvement therein might hurt their stock?
Disney owns ABC and has a huge retail, resort and entertainment empire that
benefits from the "drug multiplier." Would ABC consider hurting its parent's
stock value? Ronald Reagan's CIA Director, William Casey had been Chief
Counsel to Cap Cities Broadcasting until 1981. His old law firm represented
Cap Cities when it bought the ABC network in 1985. ABC's Peter Jennings, by
the way, had been doing a series of investigative reports on the CIA drug
bank (and successor to the Nugan Hand bank) Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald,
Dillingham and Wong when the buyout was initiated. Cap Cities (not
surprisingly) secured SEC approval in record time and effectively and
immediately silenced Peter Jennings who had previously refused to back down
from Casey's threats. Thereafter ABC was referred to as "The CIA network."
I have no doubt that the ABC "object lesson" was front and center for CNN
founder Ted Turner and Time-Warner when Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and
(CIA vet) John Singlaub put the pressure on in the wake of April Oliver's
1998 "dead bang accurate" Sarin gas stories connecting CIA to the killing of
American defectors.
Every major media corporation in the country trades on Wall Street. There
are no "independents" left and the American people are left with the
increasing cognitive dissonance of recognizing that they are being fed
useless bullshit. I wonder how they would respond to real a news corporation
if they saw or heard one.
It's Legal to be Bad
It is also perfectly legal for a Wall Street brokerage or investment bank to
go "offshore" and borrow once laundered drug money to finance a corporate
merger or leveraged buyout (LBO). Why do this? If you were a major
multi-national corporation in a cutthroat competition to buy a company with
a hundred million in sales (which might boost your stock value $3 billion)
you would be willing to pay a seemingly outrageous price. [How much would
you be willing to spend to make $3 billion? - 2.9?]. All an LBO is is an
acquisition financed on borrowed money. If you are Goldman-Sachs, arranging
the deal, and you can borrow laundered drug money at five per cent or a
bank's money at ten per cent where are you going to go? Remember that since
the cost of capital is lower using laundered drug money you are now able to
outbid all the other competitors because your total payback stays the same.
Does this actually happen? In 1998 the Russians asked for only $18 billion
to save their entire economy. With $440 billion a year moving around how
could it not happen?
And a major drug dealer, like a Carlos Lehder, a Pablo Escobar, an Amado
Fuentes, a Matta Ballesteros or a Hank Rohn, sitting around with ten billion
dollars of useless illegal money, is more than happy to loan it at five
percent because his money is now legal and liquid. And, if one goes to
prison or dies, there is always another dealer to fill the void so that the
supply is not interrupted. The drug trade now has power because it is
underwriting the investments of the largest corporations in the world. It
underwrites politicians. It has hooked the gringos on Wall Street whose own
children sometimes die from its drugs. Wall Street cannot afford to let the
drug barons fall. Congress cannot afford to let the drug barons fall.
Presidents and their campaign finances cannot afford to let the drug barons
fall. Why? Because our top down economy, controlled by one per cent, cannot
take the risk of letting competition (business or political) have the edge
of using drug money. The third world has its revenge for European
colonialism but Wall Street still calls the shots. And for every million
dollars of increased sales or increased revenues from a buyout, the stock
equity of the one per cent who control Wall Street, increases twenty to
thirty times.
Remember - The National Security Act of 1947, which created the CIA, was
written by Wall Street lawyer and banker Clark Clifford. Clark Clifford is
the man who brought the CIA backed drug bank BCCI into the United States.
Allen Dulles who virtually designed the CIA and served as its Director, and
his brother John Foster who was Eisenhower's Secretary of State, were Wall
Street lawyers from the firm Sullivan and Cromwell. Dwight Eisenhower's
personal liaison with the CIA was none other than Nelson Rockefeller.
William Casey was Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under
Richard Nixon. Former CIA Directors from William Raborn to William Webster
to Robert Gates to James Woolsey to John Deutch all sit or have sat on the
Boards of the largest, richest and most powerful companies in America.
As we near the millenium one thing is clear to anyone who sees the economic
system clearly. The system is on the verge of implosion. Privately owned and
operated prison companies trade on Wall Street. One of those, Wackenhut, is
a virtual CIA proprietary. We have entered, at the end of the industrial
age, a phase of growth where we must incarcerate an ever expanding number of
people to sustain the growth of all the companies profiting from law
enforcement, crime, imprisonment and war. And the overheated stock market
must grow or collapse. The reason this nation spends five dollars on prisons
for every one dollar on higher education - even after seven straight years
of falling crime rates - is because there is more profit in it in the
current economic model. Hell, we have turned police departments into profit
making entities through asset forfeiture. This is insane!
This economic model is patently no more sustainable than a snake eating its
own tail can be considered nourishment. Organized crime has become the
government and it seeks to make all citizens become subliminally guilty
participants, fearing for their own livelihoods, believing that the system
will collapse if someone really tackles the issues facing us - as surely as
the iceberg faced the Titanic.
The system will collapse anyway - unless the economic model is turned upside
down - unless a way is found or offered which will make it more profitable
than all other ways - to do the right thing. The only thing that will
sustain the current economic system, and its dependence on drug capital, is
a police state. New enforcement programs involving HUD and the Department of
Justice such as Project "Safe Streets" and "Weed and Seed" - along with
their corresponding butchery of the Constitution - show an emerging police
state already. The conduct of Congress and the White House in the CIA drug
investigations further demonstrate the arrogance, the fear and the
ever-increasing sloppiness of a system out of control.
The veneer, the illusion that we live under the rule of law cracks before
our eyes, grows thinner and ever more difficult to sell with each passing
minute. All at once the fears of the right of a New World Order and the
fears of the left, of new concentration camps and genocide suddenly become
one and the same thing. Dogma matters little to the oppressed. Pain tastes
the same whether you call it Fascism or Communism. Carlos Enrique Lehder
Rivas, co-founder of the Medellin Cartel, who was given a life sentence in
1990, now enjoys the sunshine at his home in the Bahamas. He frolics
regularly with gaming magnate and owner of the Atlantis Hotel Sol Kerzner.
His guests at parties include Kevin Costner who played (I am sorry to say)
both Elliot Ness and Jim Garrison. Manuel Noriega will probably be out of
prison before Bill Clinton leaves office. The Kosovo Liberation Army has
been funded with drug money and has trained with Islamic terrorist Osama bin
Laden. The son of a documented drug trafficker, who very few people in this
country even know anything about, is "scheduled" to become our next
President, simply because he has the most money and he and his backers
control most of "The Pop."
How much time can this government have? How much time does it deserve? Bill
Clinton's Farewell Address should probably be, "Apres moi, le deluge."
Operation
Indigo Sky - Massive CIA heroin smuggling operation based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Heroin is grown and processed in Nigeria, then shipped for packaging to
Amsterdam, Netherlands. From there the heroin is shipped to Europe and
various points in the U.S., including bonded warehouses on the East Coast
and Boeing Field in Seattle.