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A Reinvigorated Bush Narco-regime?

B. Ehkstruh - The dirtiest of all Bush secrets? Why do analysts say Bush’s appointment of Porter Goss to head the CIA heralds a worsening Bush narco regime—under which narcotics moneys are quietly and murderously funneled into black budget programs to avoid elected oversight? Read the following:

In the words of Al Martin, ret. Navy Lt. Commander (who worked directly with Bush Sr.’s men on Iran Contra and who testified for Kerry’s Iran Contra hearings):

“Since (Bush-appointed Richard) Armitage is currently the Under Secretary of State, he is in charge of the Foreign Narcotics Control Office of the State Department, which is supposed to control cocaine and heroin…. The famous quote by Kerry Committee senior panel member Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii (D-Hawaii) should be noted. When Armitage was put under oath, he kept calling him (Armitate) "Mr. Cocaine" instead of "Mr. Secretary…."

Armitage was also a member of the restricted access group known as RAG-1 (Restricted Access Group One) along with Elliott Abrams, Clair George, Attorney General Ed Meese, David Margolis, Chief of Domestic Criminal Operations of the Department of Justice, and Mark Richards, Chief of the International Criminal Division of the Department of Justice… The purpose of RAG-1 was first to develop and then to coordinate the CIA’s policy of trafficking in narcotics on a large-scale basis, in order to produce ongoing covert revenue streams pursuant to the aid and sustenance of illegal operations of state.

Richard Armitage coordinated CIA heroin trafficking principally out of Cambodia and Laos, and he was a close confederate of General Huang Soong, the CIA’s principal (narcotics) trafficker in Cambodia…. (Note: Bush certainly knew about Armitage’s sordid history when he appointed him. In fact, Bush may have done so to further his own, personally frustrated reach within the black budget community.)

The State Department’s Foreign Narcotic Control Office essentially fronts for the Central Intelligence Agency…. What happens is the State Department effectively becomes a front for the CIA, which is actually trafficking the narcotics…. This department is specifically staffed by CIA personnel…. The State Department tolerates this because it’s part of its function, through the FNCO -- to aid the CIA in narcotics trafficking to produce covert revenue.

(Armitage) tried to claim publicly before the Kerry Committee hearings that he had been a U.S. Marine Corps officer. He wasn’t…. Armitage acted as head of the FNCO, both then and now, to control narcotics-producing areas. Now it’s in Afghanistan, and there’s a direct relationship, which you can point to. Every time the State Department’s FNCO controls an area or moves in to control a region of the world that produces narcotics or produces the materials that wind up being narcotics after they’re refined, you will quickly see thereafter a noticeable increase in drug trafficking in the United States in that particular drug.

“Armitage said it is the responsibility of the FNCO of the State Department to put all other large drug dealers out of business…. What a lot of people didn’t understand is that they’re putting them out of business to take over that business.

“What Ollie (North) said was absolutely true. He said, “Our cost equation is such that net delivered, that we are trading for every one kilogram of refined 90-proof--he used to call it ‘proof.’ I like the way he used to say it. He used to call it ‘proof.’ Ollie would say, for every one-kilogram of 90-proof coke, we are trading one factory-fresh M16 rifle with a full field kit and a thousand rounds of ammunition that cost us $650.

“Fred C. Ikle (a Reagan DIA man in ’86) had outlined this tremendous expansion in cocaine imports that was going to take place. This was the establishment of the infamous sea routes out of Swan Island, Honduras. And Ollie had said to me, “We’re going to be able to ship it in 50,000 kilograms at a time… Anyway the 50,000 kilos a month only existed for about 6 months in 1986 because Iran-Contra, as you know, fell apart. This was when there was so much coke stacked up in freighters that there was no place to put it. Ollie, towards the very end, was trying to figure out a place of where to put these beat-out old freighters full of Agency coke….

“It should be noted that Armitage has never changed hats. All these years he’s performed exactly the same function for Bushonian regimes or the Republican Right in general in terms of the FNCO (shepherding narcotics $ into crony hands).”

“It was the Bush faction that controlled the two key components of the Agency (CIA) in the ‘80’s. And this is what (Porter) Goss has done again. They controlled Department Four. It was the first thing they sought to control… DWO, Department Four, Domestic Wet Operations (assassinations in the US)…. Bushonian control was centered around Clair George. They wanted to control CIA narcotics distribution efforts.”

*Why? To gain control of the grand prize in conservative government: the billions of dollars reaped from intelligence trafficking of narcotics, to be used to pay off US officials and to fund cronies’ black budget projects (like the MAJIC program and more).

See reports about MAJIC, plus allegations about Bush Sr.’s prime role in Operation Watchtower—an early 1970’s erection of aviation beacons running from Columbia toward islands leading to the US. These became part of the early basis for cocaine trafficking, which was another CIA financial boon, i.e. during Iran Contra (and beyond). See also: reports about Nixon’s ties to mob money and Meyer Lansky, plus the Mena, AR story.

Martin says Armitage’s FNCO (State Dep’t narcotics office) controls northwest Afghanistan’s Peshawar Valley area of mountains, the best opium growing area, and says when such areas came under Armitage’s FNCO control, the result was a big boost in narcotics production, for obvious reasons. Martin suggests that Richard Armitage’s resignation from Bush’s Undersecretary of State job in October 2004 is being allowed because the new CIA chief, Porter Goss, will now consolidate Armitage’s FNCO narcotics operations in Afghanistan under CIA control. Martin further suggests that Goss served on a Bush Sr. commission to help stop further interception of CIA authorized narcotics shipments. Ironically, Martin says Armitage is now setting up an import/export business in Kabul, Afghanistan (center of the heroin trade) with Richard Secord, Bush family favorite Donald Gregg, and Elliott Abrams as partners. Typical Bush men.

Michael Moore, among others, wonders how Porter Goss could have amassed his $53 million fortune by legal means. Daniel Hopsicker’s website, Mad Cow Morning News has posted a 1960’s photo taken in a Mexico City nightclub in which then-CIA man Porter Goss sits happily at a table with Barry Seal, allegedly the biggest narcotics trafficker in US history. Goss also worked under Gen. Ed Lansdale, the man named by Col. Fletcher Prouty (see Prouty website photos and story) for arranging the JFK assassination. Prouty and his Pentagon colleagues say they’re certain Lansdale is seen in photos (on the website) walking across Dealey Plaza right after the JFK, hit, an assassination op that was Lansdale’s CIA specialty.

Further quotes: “In May 1987, Gen Khun Sa, in his jungle headquarters, named Richard Armitage as a key connection in a ring of heroin trafficking mobsters and USG officials. A U.S. agent I have known for many years stopped by my home last month en route to his next overseas assignment. He remarked that he had worked for those CIA chiefs named by Khun Sa, and that by his own personal knowledge, he knew what Khun Sa said was true.” “Bo” Gritz: note to Geo. Bush Sr. during his presidency.

Richard Armitage, the same man identified by Danny Sheehan of the Christic Institute in his suit and by General Khun Sa as the bagman in the dope deals through the years. … the man who has been protecting him over the years is another former CIA man, Mr. Carlucci” (Carlucci later became head of Bush Sr.’s employer, the Carlyle Group) Tom Fitzpatrick, New Times (11/11/87)

“Khun Sa thought by revealing the names of the major drug traffickers, to Col. Bo Gritz, that he could get his nation both recognized and subsidized. So the General opened his log book which held the records of the major traffickers in South East Asia. The record revealed that the number one buyer of Heroin was CIA operative Richard Armitage.” Anthony J. Hilder, Pink Elephants (website)

According to Daniel Sheehan, Ross Perot, Bo Greitz and numerous others (including a CIA agent I interviewed), during the 1970’s Armitage headed the Far East company, which laundered Golden Triangle heroin in Thailand toward the end of the CIA’s heroin doings during the Vietnam war.

“Armitage was nominated, in February 1989, by a grateful President George Bush (Senior) to be Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. The move was blocked and Armitage was, instead, nominated for the post of Secretary of the Army. Behind the scenes a virtual war was in progress as the Department of Justice and the FBI sought to indict Armitage for his narcotics and other criminal activities.” William Guyatt, The CIA’s Secret Drug Wars.

More disturbing are the allegations of Dr. Steven Greer, head of CSETI, which investigates black budget programs that have been essentially privatized, using narcotics monies to research government-obtained technologies, which are then ceded private parties secretly. According to Greer, “A senior SAIC executive (Space Applications International Corporation—i.e. Star Wars and beyond) told me of this and how there was an army of 8000 men who did nothing but import drugs under the cover of classified, need-to-know operatives. He stated that of the 8000 men involved (as of 1997 when we spoke of this) that 2000 of them had been killed for sometimes minor infractions of security. He assured me that this was a major covert funding source and that it was destroying our country, but nobody is willing to take on such a lethal and powerful group to stop it.” (My note: from the inside, that is. Many are now working to expose the group, including many CSETI whistleblowers, some of whom were ranking defense and intelligence officials. Bush Sr. seems to think himself for having worked with the Carlyle Group, which manages at least a few black budget projects of the sort. Payback for his narco cover for decades running?) Quote from Disclosure, by Steven M. Greer M.D.

Finally, readers are encouraged to read Daniel Hopsicker’s book, Welcome to Terrorland, which is the first to expose a deep web of narcotics trafficking at the very Venice, FL airport where Mohammed Atta and other 911 attackers studied to be pilots. 43 pounds of heroin were seized in the private jet of the owner of the airport school where Atta and cohorts studied--at the time. In a separate article, Hopsicker writes:

“Cabbie Simpson described several occasions when he drove Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi from Venice on one-way trips to the Orlando Executive Airport.

“This places the two terrorists at the same airport where DEA agents brandishing submachine guns seized a Lear jet belonging to the owner of the flight school where Atta and Al-shehhi were taking lessons (lessons in what is anybody’s guess) at that very moment...

“The agents found 43 pounds of heroin aboard the Lear jet of Huffman Aviation’s secretive financier Wallace J. Hilliard. The Orlando Sentinel called the bust “the largest seizure in Central Florida’s history.”

“After we’d learned the whole story we discovered the bust had been an accident, carried out by low-level DEA operatives not clued-in to the protected nature of the trade. Nor was this the only time Hilliard’s name came up in connection with narcotics trafficking.“I flew Wally’s Turbo-Commander, a 698, twin turbo prop, till I got stopped one time in Haiti,” a former pilot of Hilliard’s told us….

““U.S. Customs and the DEA wanted to know the nature of my business. I was detained for 5-and-a-halfhours. They told me, ‘We stopped you and detained you because this airplane is known for running drugs in and out of the country.’”

“Nor are we alone in our discovery of the officially-protected drug trafficking network.

“FBI whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds, in the months after the attack, bumped into the arms for drugs deals, she said in a recent interview with BreackForNews. Edmonds alleged that the US State Department blocked investigations showing links between criminal drug trafficking networks and the terror attacks on 9/11.

"Certain investigations were being quashed, let's say per State Department's request, because it would have affected certain foreign relations [or] affected certain business relations with foreign organizations," she stated.

“In Venice, drug activity was conducted in 2000 and 2001 by “deep bellied Cessna,” Venice local Simpson told us. “One was even found abandoned at Huffman with traces of both cocaine and heroin.”

According to Mohammed Atta’s girlfriend in Venice, FL, where he studied, Atta and cohorts weren’t strict fundamentalists. Instead, some of them drank heavily and did cocaine, plus frequented strip clubs. Hopsicker interviewed numerous witnesses in the area who knew Atta but were threatened by the FBI to not talk about what they knew. The question is, why not?

Hopsicker shows that US intelligence clearly knew both who and where Atta was, at the time. Worse yet, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Miami Herald reported that as many as seven of the hijackers did special training at guarded US military sites. Mohammed Atta’s name is listed as a graduate of the US International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and Abdulaziz Alomari as a graduate of the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, said the Post.

The former wife of a CIA pilot, a woman who works on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, told Hopsicker: “I have a girlfriend who recognized Mohamed Atta. She met him at a party at the Officer’s Club,” she said. “The reason she swears it was him is because she didn’t just meet him and say hello. After she met him she went around and introduced him to the people that were with her. So she knows it was him.” (p. 141, Welcome to Terrorland) It helps to know that Atta had a habit of telling people in the US that he was a Saudi prince, hence his bodyguard and nice clothes, plus excess money.

Stranger still, one New York Times reporter told another Venice, FL witness to Atta’s presence there to shut up and not tell anyone about what she knew. Why, we must wonder?

In short, Hopsicker shows that US intelligence certainly knew that Atta and co-conspirators were in the US for training, if not training under Saudi Air Force auspices, in part. But, for some secret reason, Bush officials have repeatedly threatened press, witnesses, officials, and more to shut up about their stay in Venice, Florida—site of massive drug trafficking. The fact that Bin Laden controlled Afghanistan, location of Bush/Armitage-prized opium fields, suggests that Bin Laden may have been given special protection to do opium dealing with the Bushies’ cronies, in exchange for possible arms and more. This was before 9-11, of course, when opium and natural gas appear to have been the biggest dollar value items on the Bush/Armitage agenda regarding Afghanistan.

So, why so much direct Bush implication in narcotics dealings? Because narcotics is the most valued, most secretive cash crop on the planet, because the money can be used to buy people off, to shut others up, to fund secret programs and grease the palm of deep operatives whose support is necessary to get in on cash cows like Carlyle, BCCI, Saudi Arabia, Noriega, Lansky, Columbia, Haiti, the MAJIC program, offshore finance, and much more. Perhaps most of all, such power can be used to literally terrorize those who might object to the private use of government for criminal purposes, in the first place---something more along the lines of Kitty Kelly’s remark about the Bush’s resembling the Sopranos than Ozzie and Harriet.