US COMPLICIT Y IN THE WORLD DRUG TRADE

Eric S. Margolis, an awardwinning columnist whose articles have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, has written, “I’ve said ever since 9/11 that the danger and size of al Qaeda has been vastly exaggerated—as an explosive report this week [September 10, 2010] by the London's esteemed International Institute for Strategic Studies has just confirmed. Al-Qaeda, dedicated to fighting the Afghan communists, never had more than 300 members at its peak. Today, according to [former] CIA Chief Leon Panetta, there are no more than 50 al Qaeda men in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 120,000 because of what to calls the al Qaeda threat. What is going on?”

What's going on in Afghanistan may well have to do with the drug trade. The current War on Drugs has been going on for so long that most people have forgotten when it began. Most authorities trace this failed but ongoing war to President Richard Nixon who, in 1970, established the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse as a response to concerns over “hippies” smoking weed.

According to the commission's report, Marijuana, A Signal of Misunderstanding, “Soon after funds became available on March 22, 1971, we commissioned more than fifty projects, ranging from a study of the effects of marijuana on man to a field survey of enforcement of the marijuana laws in six metropolitan jurisdictions. Of particular importance in our fact-finding effort were the opinions and attitudes of all groups in our society.”

In other words, this was a genuine, objective report. Its conclusions?

After dismissing public approval of recreational drug use as counter to the benefit of society, the commission likewise opposed the option of using criminal penalties to eliminate drug use, stating, “Marijuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it.”

Commission members pointed out that “even during Prohibition, when many people were concerned about the evils associated with excessive use of alcohol, possession for personal use was never outlawed federally and was made illegal in only five States.” The commission concluded that criminal sanctions on marijuana was counterproductive, stating, “We recommend to the public and its policy-makers a social control policy seeking to discourage marijuana use, while concentrating primarily on the prevention of heavy and very heavy use.”

But Nixon, who has been connected to men with organized crime connections, disagreed with this finding, thereupon launching what then came to be an ineffective and indeed counterproductive drug war.

By 2010, the number of US prison inmates held on drug charges is about half a million, greater than the entire jail population of Western Europe. And most of these are persons of color who lived below the poverty line.

Another possible explanation for the never-ending War on Drugs came when Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, documented in 2001 how more than $300 billion in drug money moves yearly through the US banking system. Levin's estimate, based on a staff investigation lasting more than a year, was augmented by the Brookings Institution in 2001. Brookings spokesman Raymond Baker reported that despite the strictest money-laundering laws in the world, US banks still held an estimated $500 billion a year in money from drug dealers and terrorists.

In one sting operation by US Customs, $7.7 million was deposited in the Citibank account of a Cayman Islands bank. When the money was transferred to a firm called M. A. Bank, it turned out to be a shell company without any physical office.

In December 2009, the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime chief, Antonio Maria Costa, credited billions of dollars in drug money with keeping the global financial system afloat at the height of the financial crisis. Costa said illegal drug profits were the “only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse in 2008–9 and that a majority of this estimated $352 billion was absorbed into the economic system.

In the more naive times of the early 1970s, no one foresaw the advent of synthetic cocaine, adulterated hash, rock cocaine, PCP and the recent designer drugs such as Ecstasy. Then, the greatest drug bugaboo was heroin, the drug that placed a “monkey on your back.” Interestingly enough, heroin use in the 1970s was reported at about 2 percent of the drug-taking population, a percentage that has remained remarkably stable up to this day. But the heroin business accounts for a higher percentage of the profits in the world's illicit drug trade.

Everyone knowledgeable of the world drug trade knows that the two primary sources of poppies, the flower from which heroin is made, are the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan.

The modern Afghan drug trade began with US involvement in Afghanistan in 1979, a provocation that led to the Soviet invasion, as recounted by Alfred McCoy, author of the respected The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia: “CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahedeen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistani Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests. US officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies ‘because US narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.’

“In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. ‘Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade, I don't think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout…. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.’” The Taliban were not so lenient on the opium trade.

It was reliably reported that zealous Muslims within the Taliban government had banned the growth of poppies and had succeeded in destroying nearly 95 percent of the crop by the spring of 2001. Britain's Financial Times reported in 2002, “The Taliban's ban on opium poppy two years ago was ‘enormously effective’ in reducing poppy crops almost entirely in areas under the regime's control. The US estimates that Afghanistan produced 74 tons of opium last year, compared to 3,656 tons the previous year.” Anti-Taliban hard-liners in the United States believed this reduction of the poppy crop was merely a “business decision” designed to drive prices up and ensure higher profits to the Taliban. More knowledgeable drug experts have pointed out that the Taliban are not peddling heroin on the streets of LA or New York and that powerful drug distributors must have viewed the poppy loss as a business disaster.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, despite spending $5 million of taxpayer money on drug eradication programs there, opium production began to soar. Under the Taliban no more than 185 tons of opium was produced annually. By the end of 2002, that figure had risen to an estimated 3,400 tons, according to BBC’s Central Asian analyst Pam O’Toole. By 2005, U.S. News & World Report noted that almost 500,000 acres of poppies were under cultivation.

In fact, following the American occupation of Afghanistan, opium production grew so vast that a government study in 2004 stated that nation was “on the verge of becoming a narcotics state.” This White House report was sent to Congress by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on behalf of President Bush.

In 2005, despite being occupied by thousands of US and allied troops, Afghanistan earned $2.7 billion from opium exports, amounting to 52 percent of the country's $5.2 billion gross domestic product. In 2007, US Ambassador William Wood announced that Afghan farmers harvested 457,135 acres of poppies that year, setting a new poppy-growing record. In 2006, Afghan farmers cultivated 407,715 acres.

Although the War on Drugs continued unabated, in 2010, with officials of US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) claiming total Afghan acreage in poppy cultivation had dropped to slightly under 400,000 acres, there appeared little help from the military occupation authorities. Western military commanders have resisted local pleas to intervene in the Afghan drug trafficking, arguing that they don't have the resources to broaden their mission. “Our primary mission is a combat mission,” said Col. Jim Yonts, a spokesman for the US forces in Afghanistan. “We stay focused on our role of defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda.”

This hands-off-drugs policy continued into 2009 with Anne Gearan of the Associated Press writing, “Convinced that razing the cash crop grown by dirt-poor Afghan farmers is costing badly needed friends along the front lines of the fight against Taliban-led insurgents, US authorities say they are all but abandoning the Bush-era policy of destroying drug crops.” It is unclear on where these officials got the idea that Bush-era policies were to decimate drug crops as credible statistics show poppy cultivation reach new heights following the Bush-ordered invasion of Afghanistan. This announcement of backing off the anti-drug war came following the completion of the 2009 harvest.

Just in case the Afghan farmers need help with their crops, according to Gearan, the Obama administration plans to send “dozens of agronomists and irrigation specialists to Afghanistan…as part of what it says is the new, less militarized look of the Afghan mission.”

The drug issue continued into well into 2010, when the New York Times reported that NATO troops in Afghanistan were under orders not to eradicate some poppy crops. The decision not to destroy the drug crops was based on concern for the hearts and minds of the farmers. “We don't trample the livelihood of those we're trying to win over,” said Comdr. Jeffrey Eggers, a member of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's chief advisory group.

Such leniency went against the grain with some Afghan authorities. Zulmai Afzali, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics, complained, “How can we allow the world to see lawful forces in charge of Marja [in Afghanistan's Helmand Province] next to fields full of opium, which one way or another will be harvested and turned into a poison that kills people all over the world? The Taliban are the ones who profit from opium, so you are letting your enemy get financed by this so he can turn around and kill you back.”

The post-invasion growth of poppies means that Afghanistan has reverted back to late-1990s levels, when the country produced 70 percent of the world's illicit opium. To fully explain the politics of drugs would require a separate book, but it must be understood that drugs—particularly opium-based drugs such as heroin—have been thebasis for both social control and wealth for centuries. In more recent times, Samuel Russell, second cousin of General William Huntington Russell, founder of the Skull and Bones Order at Yale, founded Russell and Company in 1823 with the intent of smuggling opium to China. He later acquired Perkins and Company, another opium smuggling operation controlled by some of Boston's finest blue-blood families. These families were enriched first by the slave trade, and then by opium smuggling in the nineteenth century. Other Boston families integrated Russell's firm into an opium syndicate that include the Cabots, Lowells, Higginsons, Forbeses, Cushings, and Sturgises. An early investor was Joseph Coolidge whose grandson, Archibald, was a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Thus, it may come as less than a surprise to learn that—ever since the Vietnam War—it has been charged that the CIA, initially founded as a “good old boy” network of Eastern preppies, has imported drugs to support its clandestine operations. Mounds of court papers and news stories attest to this criminal activity yet no one in high authority seems capable of doing anything about it. One former British commando who operated in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation has stated that both American and British military officers tolerated opium smuggling by the Mujahideen as the profits were used to support their actions against the Russians. Tom Carew said after debriefing sessions in both London and Washington, he quickly became aware that both British and American authorities turned a blind eye to the Mujahideen drug smuggling.

What becomes clear in all this is that anyone desiring to profit from the drug trade and its billions that circulate through the banking system, would be opposed to the destruction of the poppy crop. The facts also call into question the sincerity of US government officials and their dedication to the War on Drugs. More recent allegations of US involvement with the illicit drug trade reach all the way to the top. Indeed, at least five books and many websites have connected both President George W. Bush and his father with the drug trade.

Perhaps the most revealing—and shocking—episode involves the celebrity NFL football hero Pat Tillman, who made national headlines when he quit professional football to serve in the Army in Afghanistan. In April 2004, it was announced by the Pentagon that Tillman had died bravely in battle with the Taliban. However, after more facts came to light, his death was changed due to “friendly fire.” The truth may have been even worse than that. According to Tillman's military autopsy report, “no evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene. No one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.” Instead, three bullet holes were described within a half-dollar diameter in Tillman's forehead raising the possibility that the football star was murdered to keep him quiet. But quiet about what?

Anthony Orlando, a close friend to Tillman, told mourners at his funeral, “For those who do not know, Tillman was questioning why he should guard opium fields while there [Afghanistan] to make America safe. He wrote letters about this and sent them home.” According to journalist and author Pat Shannan, Tillman was shot “execution style” from only 10 yards away while yelling out his name. His uniform and body armor were burned, destroying essential evidence, and journals he kept detailing his experiences in Afghanistan were never found.

OpEdNews reporter Richard Clark posed the questions, “Was Pat Tillman assassinated to prevent him from coming home to expose the fact that our troops have been ordered to guard, and even help produce and store the opium of Afghan warlords? Was it also because he had been corresponding with Noam Chomsky and was planning on returning to the US to help reinvigorate the anti-war movement?”

After reviewing the questionable circumstances of Tillman's death, Clark concluded, “I think Tillman had been asking too many questions and wanted to know why we were doing nothing (except protecting) the many vast fields planted with opium poppies in Afghanistan. And he got murdered for it. The US Army and other organizations continue to cover up the real story behind Ranger Pat Tillman's murder.”

Another prominent anecdote closer to home involves a colorful assassinated drug dealer and DEA informant named Barry Seal. Daniel Hopsicker, formerly executive producer of a business news television show aired on NBC, published a book on Seal in 2001 entitled Barry & ‘the boys’: The CIA, The Mob and America's Secret History.

In this book, Hopsicker details how Seal, who was at the same time one of America's most successful drug smugglers and a CIA agent, became angry at George H. W. Bush when he was Reagan's vice president. Seal felt Bush had betrayed him by not getting him out of legal problems concerning drugs. Seal had been implicated in the CIA drug smuggling connected to the airport at Mena, Arkansas. These covert operations were in turn linked to Bill Clinton during his tenure as that state's governor, when at least one Arkansas lawman publicly stated that it was then-Governor Clinton who squashed a state investigation into the drug smuggling activities at Mena.

In retaliation for the apparent betrayal by Bush, Seal reportedly arranged for a DEA “sting” at a Florida airport in 1985. But instead of nabbing ordinary drug dealers, the operation caught Bush's sons, Jeb and George W., accepting a shipment of cocaine. Both were already prominent political leaders at that time. According to Hopsicker, “Seal then stepped in and ‘took care’ of things. The Bushes were now supposedly in his debt. Plus he hung on to the videotape shot of the sting for insurance.”

This same story was echoed in a book by former air force intelligence officer and CIA asset Terry Reed, along with former Newsday prize-winning investigative reporter John Cummings. In Compromised, Reed asserts that Seal told him, “It seems some of George Bush's kids just can't say no ta drugs, ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, ya can imagine how valuable information like that would be, can't ya? That could get you out of almost any jam, it's like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I even got surveillance videos catchin’ the Bush boys red handed. I consider this stuff my insurance policy.”

Seal's “insurance policy” lapsed quickly. He was machine-gunned in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on February 19, 1986, less than a year later and whatever tapes he may have had disappeared.

His death inspired a lengthy letter to then-Attorney General Ed Meese from the Louisiana attorney general, William J. Guste Jr., stating, “I, for one, was shocked when I learned of his death. In October, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Narcotics and Drug Interdiction of the President's Commission on Organized Crime, I had presided over a seminar at which Barry Seal had testified. His purpose there was to inform the commission and top United States officials of the methods and equipment used by drug smugglers.”

According to investigator Hopsicker, three boxes of documents, including audio/videotapes, which Seal had kept with him at all times, were taken from the scene of his murder by an FBI special agent from the Baton Rouge office. The agent arrived at the crime scene less than ten minutes after the shooting.

Was Barry Seal's murder just another drug-related street shooting or did someone not want him to reveal what he knew? Hopsicker did discover that the very plane Seal claimed was used to fly cocaine to the 1985 sting ended up as the property of George W. Bush sometime after Seal's death. The writer also found in tracing the ownership of the turboprop King Air 200 that the trail led to several persons connected to either the Iran-Contra or the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s. Hopsicker also found FAA records that showed that Seal had flown aircraft connected through a Phoenix firm to Southern Air Transport, a known CIA proprietary company.

Voters might recall that the younger Bush never actually denied using cocaine when the issue came up in his 2000 campaign for president. He simply brushed the allegation aside with a claim of youthful foolishness. Some of the thousands still serving prison sentences for possession of cocaine must wish their convictions could be overturned and excused as the foolishness of youth.

Cheney also has had questions raised about drug running through Halliburton's subsidiary KBR as well as the firm's connection to a suspect Russian oil company. At least one of the fat loans given by the US Export-Import Bank in 2000 after being lobbied by Halliburton was to the Tyumen Oil Co., controlled by the Alfa Group conglomerate. The loan was approved in April 2002. A Center for Public Integrity investigative report stated, “It guaranteed $489 million in credits to a Russian oil company whose roots are embedded in a legacy of KGB and Communist Party corruption, as well as drug trafficking and organized crime funds, according to Russian and US sources and documents.”

In 1997, the Russian equivalent of our FBI presented Russia's lower House of Parliament a report alleging both organized crime and drug running involving Tyumen's parent company, the Alfa Group. The report stated that two Alfa entities, Alfa Bank and the trading company Alfa Eko, in the early 1990s were deeply involved in laundering both Russian and Colombian drug money and in importing drugs from the Far East into Europe. A former KGB officer said Alfa Bank was founded with Communist Party and KGB funds and utilized former government agents who had served in anti-organized crime units under the communist regime. He said heroin was often disguised as flour and sugar shipments bound for Germany.

Russian reports showed that in 1995 a Siberian railroad worker stole a sack of sugar from a rail car leased to Alfa Eko and that shortly afterward many people in his town became “poisoned” after eating the heroin-laced sugar. This incident prompted official raids on Alfa Eko that turned up “drugs and other compromising documentation.” Even Alfa Group's 1998 takeover of Tyumen Oil prompted allegations of impropriety and connections to Moscow's Solntsevo crime family. Despite all this evidence of drug smuggling, Cheney's Halliburton prevailed and US taxpayers supported the loans.

More heavy political pressure may have come from Tyumen's lead attorney, James C. Langdon Jr., a managing partner of the worldwide law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Langdon was one of George W. Bush's “Pioneers,” a group of fund-raisers that gathered at least $100,000 each for the 2000 campaign. Another helpful person was Halliburton's top lobbyist, Dave Gribbin, who served as Cheney's chief of staff when he headed the Pentagon under the elder Bush.

Drugs, oil, politics, intelligence agencies, and shady and complicated business dealings all found a focal point in 2001. It was in the form of a wayward son from a prominent Saudi family named Osama bin Laden.