1600's: Domestic production of hemp encouraged.
"American production of hemp was encouraged by the government in the 17th century for the production of rope, sails, and clothing. (Marijuana is the mixture of dried, shredded flowers and leaves that comes from the hemp plant.) In 1619 the Virginia Assembly passed legislation requiring every farmer to grow hemp. Hemp was allowed to be exchanged as legal tender in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland." 1

1700's: The Founding Fathers and Cannabis.
George Washington grew hemp (Cannabis) at Mount Vernon as one of his three primary crops. Several other founders are known to have grown / appreciate the plant, including Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. It's expected that all drafts and copies of the founding documents (Declaration of Independence, Constitution & Bill of Rights) were written on hemp aper, although the key 'museum versions' are written on parchment (animal skin).

1800's: Cannabis
As early as 1853, recreational cannabis was listed as a "fashionable narcotic". By the 1880s, oriental-style hashish parlors were flourishing alongside opium dens, to the point that one could be found in every major city on the east coast. It was estimated there were around 500 such establishments in New York City alone. An article in Harper’s Magazine (1883), attributed to Harry Hubbell Kane, describes a hashish-house in New York frequented by a large clientele, including males and females of "the better classes," and further talks about parlors in Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. Hemp cigarettes were reported to be used by Mexican soldiers early as 1874. Around the same time, efforts to regulate the sale of pharmaceuticals began, and laws were introduced on a state-to-state basis that created penalties for mislabeling drugs, adulterating them with undisclosed narcotics, and improper sale of those considered "poisons". Poison laws generally either required labels on the packaging indicating the harmful effects of the drugs or prohibited sale outside of licensed pharmacies and without a doctor's prescription. Those that required labeling often required the word "poison" if the drug was not issued by a pharmacy. Other regulations were prohibitions on the sale to minors, as well as restrictions on refills. Some pharmaceutical laws specifically enumerated the drugs that came under the effect of the regulations, while others did not—leaving the matter to medical experts. Those that did generally included references to cannabis, either under the category of "cannabis and its preparations" or "hemp and its preparations." The use of hemp for rope and fabric later became ubiquitous throughout the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States. Medicinal preparations of cannabis became available in American pharmacies in the 1850s following an introduction to its use in Western medicine by William O'Shaughnessy a decade earlier in 1839. 1

1800's: FDR's family struck it rich slinging opium to China via black market.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather Warren Delano. "In 1823 a 24-year-old Yankee, Warren Delano, sailed to Canton, where he did so well that within seven years he was a senior partner in Russell & Company. Imports soared, and nearly every American company followed suit, acquiring ''black dirt'' in Turkey or as agents for Indian producers. Writing home, Delano said he could not pretend to justify the opium trade on moral grounds, ''but as a merchant I insist it has been . . . fair, honorable and legitimate,'' and no more objectionable than the importation of wines and spirits to the U.S." "In 1830 he was a senior partner of Russell & Company. It was their merchant fleet which carried Sassoon's opium to China and returned with tea." 1 "Yet as addiction became epidemic, and as the Chinese began paying with precious silver for the drug, their Emperor finally in 1839 named an Imperial Commissioner to end the trade. Warren Delano returned to America rich, and in 1851 settled in Newburgh, N.Y. There he eventually gave his daughter Sara in marriage to a well-born neighbor, James Roosevelt, the father of Franklin Roosevelt. The old China trader was close-mouthed about opium, as were his partners in Russell & Company. It is not clear how much F.D.R. knew about this source of his grandfather's wealth. But the President's recent biographer Geoffrey Ward rejects efforts by the Delano family to minimize Warren's involvement. 1

1839-1842: First Opium War.
"China had much to sell but declined to buy. The Manchu emperors believed that the Middle Kingdom already possessed everything worth having, and hence needed no barbarian manufactures. The British struck upon an ingenious way to reduce a huge trade deficit. Their merchants bribed Chinese officials to allow entry of chests of opium from British-ruled India, though its importation had long been banned by imperial decree. To most Chinese, a century of humiliation began with this war, in which Westerners sought to force a deadly drug on an Asian people, and then imposed an unequal treaty that pried open their country and annexed the island that became Hong Kong." 1 The British had just over 500 casualties, while they slaughtered some 18,000. 1

1856-1860: Second Opium War.
The British Empire wanted yet more domination of China so they triggered another Opium War via an impossible to accept treaty proposal. This time they brought in France, Russia and the United States to help. The US initially was involved in aggression, but then signed a non-aggression treaty with China. France and Russia did their parts to directl assist in the overall campaign. Despite the U.S. government's promise of neutrality, the USS San Jacinto aided the Anglo-French alliance in the bombardment of the Taku Forts in 1859. In June 1858, the first part of the war ended with the four Treaties of Tientsin, to which Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. were parties. The major points of the treaty were: 1. Britain, France, Russia, and the U.S. would have the right to establish diplomatic legations (small embassies) in Peking (a closed city at the time). 2. Ten more Chinese ports would be opened for foreign trade, including Niuzhuang, Tamsui, Hankou, and Nanjing. 3. The right of all foreign vessels including commercial ships to navigate freely on the Yangtze River. 4. The right of foreigners to travel in the internal regions of China, which had been formerly banned. 5. China was to pay an indemnity of four million taels of silver to Britain and two million to France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Opium_War Approximately 2,900 Western troops were killed or wounded, while China had 12,000 to 30,000 killed or wounded. 1

1840: New Englanders bring 24,000 pounds of opium into the United States.
This catches the attention of U.S. Customs which promptly puts a duty fee on the import.

1800's: Weatlhy class universities are epicenters of US opium trade, culture.
"Opium once pervaded campus life at Harvard: Throughout the 1800s, its black smoke kept the university’s veins flowing with green and its faculty and students perpetually dazed. Many of Harvard’s 19th-century heroes and villains were inextricably linked to the drug. From Harvard, the opium trade spread throughout New England. According to Bradley, Yale University’s infamous Skull and Bone society was funded by the Russels, the most successful family of opium dealers in America. Columbia’s Low Memorial Library was also named after a key member of the family. Even Princeton’s first large benefactor, John Green, funded his contribution through the opium trade. Even undergraduates were eager to deal themselves into the lucrative opium trade. In “The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control, David F. Musto” reports that student-run opium “joints” began opening from Boston to New York. In 1888, Harvard freshman Frank Mills told the Boston Daily Globe that “Life at Harvard would not be complete until [he] had experienced some of the effects of opium.” The interview marked the perfect zenith of opium’s reign on Harvard’s campus. Then, the opium trade boiled over. Almost immediately after Mill’s interview, he overdosed on the drug. His death became public news, and public sentiment began to shift." 1

1800's: John Kerry's grandfather was an opium kingpin.
John Kerry's maternal grandfather, James Grant Forbes, was born in Shanghai, China, where the Forbes family of China and Boston accumulated a fortune in the opium and China trade. Forbes married Margaret Tyndal Winthrop, who came from a family with deep roots in New England history. Through her, John Kerry is related to four Presidents, including, ironically, George W. Bush (9th cousin, twice removed). 1

1843: Dr. Alexander Wood of Edinburgh discovers a new technique of administering morphine, injection with a syringe.
He finds the effects of morphine on his patients instantaneous and three times more potent.

1850: Coca tinctures used in throat surgery.

1852: The British arrive in lower Burma, importing large quantities of opium from India and selling it through a government-controlled opium monopoly.
The area was then called Indochina, today its Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and the region is also known as the Golden Triangle for its native opium production.

1855: Cocaine first extracted from Coca leaves.

1858-1893: France conquers southern Vietnam, acquires Cambodia from Thailand, then wins northen Vietnam & Laos via war.

1878: Britain passes the Opium Act with hopes of reducing opium consumption.
Under the new regulation, the selling of opium is restricted to registered Chinese opium smokers and Indian opium eaters while the Burmese are strictly prohibited from smoking opium.

1886: The British acquire Burma's northeast region, the Shan state.
Production and smuggling of opium along the lower region of Burma thrives despite British efforts to maintain a strict monopoly on the opium trade.

1886: Merck produces 158,352 pounds of Cocaine.

1886: Coca-Cola is first introduced by John Pemberton, containing cocaine laced syrup and caffeine.

1890: U.S. Congress, in its earliest law-enforcement legislation on narcotics, imposes a tax on opium and morphine.
Tabloids owned by William Randolph Hearst publish stories of white women being seduced by Chinese men and their opium to invoke fear of the 'Yellow Peril', disguised as an "anti-drug" campaign.

1895: Heinrich Dreser working for The Bayer Company of Elberfeld, Germany, invents heroin.
Bayer begins production of diacetylmorphine and coins the name "heroin." Heroin would not be introduced commercially for another three years.

1899: US interests in Cuba.
"Following the Spanish-American War, American military takes over control of Cuba as a “protectorate” and will rule the island until 1902, and return again 1906-09. The first military governor is General John R. Brooke. The American empire expands into the Pacific and Caribbean in the former Spanish colonies. General Leonard Wood, the new US military governor in Cuba, drafts a constitution that includes an amendment by US Senator Orville Platt that guaranteed America’s right to intervene in Cuban domestic affairs. It also forced Cuba to lease in perpetuity to the USA a naval base at Guantanamo Bay and required the Cuban government to: "maintain a low public debt; refrain from signing any treaty impairing its obligation to the United States; to grant to the United States the right of intervention to protect life, liberty, and property; validate the acts of the military government; and, if requested, provide long-term naval leases. Platt would later write “Cubans are incapable of stable self-government. In many respects, they are like children." Cubans were so antagonized by the proposed amendment that they sent a delegation from the constitutional convention to Washington to oppose it, only to find that McKinley had already signed the bill into law. The US government puts Jose Miguel Gomez, the National Liberal leader, in power and Magoon steps down." 1

1900-1920's: Mexican immigrants introduce recreational use of marijuana leaf.
"After the Mexican Revolution of 1910, Mexican immigrants flooded into the U.S., introducing to American culture the recreational use of marijuana. The drug became associated with the immigrants, and the fear and prejudice about the Spanish-speaking newcomers became associated with marijuana. Anti-drug campaigners warned against the encroaching "Marijuana Menace," and terrible crimes were attributed to marijuana and the Mexicans who used it." 1

1901: Coca-Cola removed Coca from their formula.

1905: Snorting cocaine becomes popular.

1905-1910: After heroin addiction rises to alarming rates, U.S. Congress bans opium. China and England finally enact a treaty restricting the Sino-Indian opium trade.
The first federal drug prohibition passes in the U.S. outlawing the imporation of opium. It was passed in preparation for the Shanghai Conference, at which the US presses for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China.After 150 years of failed attempts to rid the country of opium, the Chinese are finally successful in convincing the British to dismantle the India-China opium trade. 1


1912: U.S. government reports 5,000 Cocaine related fatalities in one year.

1914: Cocaine banned in United States.

1920's: Cuba is by now already a well oiled illicit drug trade port.

January 1920: Start of National Alcohol Prohibition.

1920-1933: Alcohol Prohibition creates National Criminal Gangsterism Crisis & helps fuel a lasting era of infamously networked Italian Mafioso organizations.
Organized crime received a major boost from Prohibition. Mafia groups limited their activities to prostitution, gambling, and theft until 1920, when organized bootlegging emerged in response to Prohibition. A profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Prohibition provided a financial basis for organized crime to flourish. In a study of more than 30 major U.S. cities during the Prohibition years of 1920 and 1921, the number of crimes increased by 24%. Additionally, theft and burglaries increased by 9%, homicides by 12.7%, assaults and battery rose by 13%, drug addiction by 44.6%, and police department costs rose by 11.4%. This was largely the result of "black-market violence" and the diversion of law enforcement resources elsewhere. Despite the Prohibition movement's hope that outlawing alcohol would reduce crime, the reality was that the Volstead Act led to higher crime rates than were experienced prior to Prohibition and the establishment of a black market dominated by criminal organizations. The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre produced seven deaths, considered one of the deadliest days of mob history". en.wikipedia.org...
Prohibition in the United States led to much smuggling of liquor from Cuba. However, seeking to avoid Yankee blaming, Sáenz Rovner clarifies that smuggling had been practiced out of Cuba since the sixteenth century. The Prohibition era was unique in that a trickle of illegal drugs piggybacked on the rum, a phenomenon tracked by the FBN. Prohibition, which coincided with new commercial air and ferry travel, also sent waves of U.S. tourists to Havana where they could imbibe alcohol and pack bootlegged booze to smuggle home. Cuban government officials encouraged this tourism, hopeful it might prove a steadier source of funds than the island’s sugar trade with the United States. 1

1923: Cuba happenings.
The Communist Party of Cuba is formed. In May, General Gerardo Machado Morales is elected on a platform of nationalism, but is soon exposed as a friend of American business interests. US interests controlled over one-half of the sugar produced in Cuba by 1925 (89% of all exports).

1930: Creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).
Harry J. Anslinger was the first Commissioner of the FBN and remained in that post until 1962.

1930's: Prohibition 2.0: Fear of Marijuana.
"During the Great Depression, massive unemployment increased public resentment and fear of Mexican immigrants, escalating public and governmental concern about the problem of marijuana. This instigated a flurry of research which linked the use of marijuana with violence, crime and other socially deviant behaviors, primarily committed by "racially inferior" or underclass communities. By 1931, 29 states had outlawed marijuana." 1
The word "Marijuana" was effectively a racist buzzword invention by Anslinger to help his cannabis demonization campaign. 1

1933: General Machado Morales, president since 1925 and supported by the USA, faced a general strike and a revolt of his own military.
He ended his notoriously brutal rule by fleeing to the USA with his fortune. He left the country leaderless. With the support of US Ambassador Sumner Welles, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes is appointed provisional president.

1933-1940: Drug trafficking picked up after Prohibition.
"More as a result of factors in Cuba than factors in the United States. In these tumultuous years, the Revolution of 1933 remained essentially unresolved, as presidents cycled in and out of office, political violence prevailed, the economy staggered, and top officials used state funds for personal enrichment rather than public welfare. Narcotics were imported into Cuba from Europe and Turkey; marijuana arrived from Mexico. Some of these drugs were consumed in Cuba but most were reexported to the United States." 1

1934: US-backed and recently self-appointed Colonel, Fulgencio Batista overthrows the liberal Grau after 120 days in office.
Batista was president for 32 hours, before putting Carlos Mendieta in the presidency. The US immediately recognized his government. Batista remained the army chief while appointing five new presidents until 1940. Batista offers Meyer Lansky and the Mafia control of Havana’s racetracks and casinos in exchange for kickbacks.

1936: "Reefer Madness".
This propaganda film, revolving around the melodramatic events that ensue when high school students are lured by pushers to try marijuana—from a hit and run accident, to manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, hallucinations, and descent into madness due to marijuana addiction, was used to demonize cannabis. Several other films in this vein emerged as well during this period.

1937: Marijuana Tax Act.
After a lurid national propaganda campaign against the "evil weed," Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. The statute effectively criminalized marijuana, restricting possession of the drug to individuals who paid an excise tax for certain authorized medical and industrial uses. 1

1937: Formation of the "French Connection".
Illegal heroin labs were first discovered near Marseille, France, in 1937. These labs were run by Corsican gang leader Paul Carbone. For years, the Corsican underworld had been involved in the manufacturing and trafficking of heroin, primarily to the United States. It was this heroin network that eventually became known as "the French Connection". Historically, the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States came from Indochina, then Turkey. Turkish farmers were licensed to grow opium poppies for sale to legal drug companies, but many sold their excess to the underworld market, where it was manufactured into heroin and transported to the United States. The morphine paste was refined in Corsican laboratories in Marseille, one of the busiest ports in the western Mediterranean Sea. The Marseille heroin was reputed for its quality. The convenience of the port at Marseille and the frequent arrival of ships from opium-producing countries made it easy to smuggle the morphine base to Marseille from the Far East or the Near East. The French underground would then ship large quantities of heroin from Marseille to New York City. 1

1940: Indochina Independence.
"June, 1940, the French government surrenders to the Nazis, and in the French colony of Indochina, the Vietnamese independence movement begins, led by Ho Chi Minh. French Indochina, comprised of the modern nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, were heavily populated by French businesses and French families. The independence movement began a war of terror against this French population, killing an estimated 150 thousand civilians. Local French authorities, lacking support from a home country now under German occupation, began working with criminal elements, most notably gangsters from the French Island of Corsica, to fight back. Fighting back required money, and selling Opium was the quickest way to get funds for buying weapons and hiring mercenaries on the international black market. There was a long history of the French selling Opium in Indochina. On the eve of WW2, the Opium tax accounted for 15% of total tax revenue. There were 2,500 legal opium dens in Indochina, and in fact, the Vietnamese nationalists attacked the Opium business as the ultimate example of French exploitation." 1


1940's: "Hemp for Victory".
"During World War II, imports of hemp and other materials crucial for producing marine cordage, parachutes, and other military necessities became scarce. In response the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched its "Hemp for Victory" program, encouraging farmers to plant hemp by giving out seeds and granting draft deferments to those who would stay home and grow hemp. By 1943 American farmers registered in the program harvested 375,000 acres of hemp."

1940's-1950's: During World War II, Cuba became central to the transshipment of drugs to the United States.
The war slowed European and Asian supplies, and Latin American countries stepped in to fill the vacuum. Increased legitimate trade between Latin America and the United States--the result of U.S. imperatives of hemispheric defense--also facilitated this shift. Further, drug traffickers continued to find Cuba’s climate of corruption useful during Fulgencio Batista’s presidency, from 1940 to 1944, and the Aútentico presidencies from 1944 to 1952. Narcotics traffickers continued to bribe high- and low-level officials alike while a new centralized office for drug control prosecuted users and dealers of marijuana and opium, disproportionately affecting poor Afro-Cubans or Chinese Cubans. By the early 1950s, the charge that leaders were cozy with drug traffickers was one among many launched by the emerging revolutionary movement. Sáenz Rovner gives credence to long-circulating rumors that President Carlos Prío Socarrás himself was “a habitual cocaine user”.

1941: Batista joins the US in declaring war on the Axis, and allows US ships to refuel in Cuban ports.
In return, the US bought the entire Cuban sugar output at 2.65¢ a pound. Cuban production, stimulated by such high prices, rose to 5 million tons. Urged by US President Franklin Roosevelt through Meyer Lansky to retire, Batista takes his fortune and moves to Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1944.

1943: CIA precursor OSS works with Sicilian Mafia during WW2.
"The Sicilian Mafia was decimated by the start of World War II. Mussolini’s repression left it clinging to strongholds in Sicily. The Allied occupation reversed this decline. The CIA’s precursor, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), teamed with organized crime during the July 1943 invasion of Sicily. That was when the US Army appointed Don Calogero Vizzini, a local Mafia boss, mayor of Villalba. He was certain his US ties gave him impunity, so he murdered the local intrusive police chief. The US installed mayors like Vizzini throughout western Sicily, as the US-Mafia partnership persisted." www.alternet.org...
As World War II took hold in Europe, Italian fascists began to stamp out the trade. It soon recovered, and there are those—like Noam Chomsky—who believe the CIA was involved in supporting the Corsican mafia to restart their business in exchange for breaking up French strikes and helping Allied troops. After the war, the Corsicans were joined by gangs from Armenia and Algeria, as well as Chinese-Vietnamese networks. They were all moving heroin and various other forms of contraband across the Atlantic to New York, Montreal, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. The Armenian gangs proved themselves particularly adept at negotiating with the major wholesalers of opium and morphine base who were located in Istanbul and Gaziantep. 1 After the war drug use in America was at an all-time low, due to disruptions in the supply chain during the war and the economic downturn of the Depression. Cocaine, morphine, and heroin use had all declined drastically from their peak in the 1920’s, and only a small segment of America’s population is indulging in drugs. So in the late 40’s the U.S. government had a real opportunity to possibly eliminate hard drugs as an American social problem. Instead, the U.S. government helped, Asian, European, and American gangsters build an extremely sophisticated and global industry for heroin that is still going strong today, 70 years later. 1

1945-1954: Post-WW2 Indochina.
American President Roosevelt and General Stilwell privately made it adamantly clear that the French were not to reacquire French Indochina after the war was over. Roosevelt asked China's Chiang Kai-shek if he wanted Indochina, to which Chiang Kai-shek replied: "Under no circumstances!" After the war, 200,000 Chinese troops under General Lu Han sent by Chiang Kai-shek invaded northern Indochina north of the 16th parallel to accept the surrender of Japanese occupying forces, and remained there until 1946. 1 After Japan's WW2 occupation, where Japan had taken it from the French via brutal conquest, the Vietminh (a coalition of Communists, Catholics, Buddhists, small-business operators and farmers who led the resistance in Vietnam) formed an administration and began to celebrate their independence. Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi. "In September 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence, telling a crowd in Hanoi: “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”And just as Jefferson’s Declaration listed the abuses committed by King George III against his American subjects, Ho similarly outlined the grievances of the Vietnamese against France, their colonial master. And like Jefferson, he ended with a pledge: “The entire Vietnamese people are determined … to sacrifice their lives and property in order to safeguard their independence and liberty.”" 1 "Less than a month after the Saigon celebrations, a company of French infantry and 1400 Ghurkhas under British command were airlifted Saigon from Burma. After re-arming the surrendered Japanese soldiers they forced the Vietminh to withdraw from the city. For the French, this war lasted until 1954. The French attempt to re-establish control of Vietnam was strong on colonial ambition, but it was weak on financial and military support. To combat these deficiencies, the French intelligence organisation, Service de Documentation Exterieure et du Contre-Espionage (SDECE) recruited mercenaries from hill tribes in the north and criminal gangs in the south financed by profits of the opium trade. The northern force of predominantly Hmong tribes that were recruited was 40,000 strong by 1954. It was their opium that the SDECE bought and then transported in French military DC-3 planes to the airbase at Cap Saint Jaques near Saigon. From here it was processed by the Saigon mercenaries who were recruited from a criminal gang known as the Binh Xuyen." 1 "After Roosevelt’s death, America’s diplomatic policy changed sharply. Only a few months after Ho’s declaration of independence, the American State Department’s Far Eastern Bureau declared that the United States would respect French sovereignty in Indochina. Roosevelt’s anti-colonialism was displaced by the Cold War’s demands for an anti-Communist foreign policy. By 1946 all official American references to Ho in Washington were prefixed with the word “Communist.” Dean Acheson, the Acting Secretary of State, branded Ho Chi Minh an “agent of international communism.” Though the American OSS officers in Hanoi had liked and trusted Ho, even joining him in celebrating his Vietnamese “Fourth of July,” by the end of the decade Ho had been transformed into a Communist enemy." 1


1945-1950: US-China-Indochina Relations.
"In the wake of Japan’s defeat, Communists led by Mao ZaeDong took power in China. The American government backed the remnants of the anti-communists led by General Chiang-Kai Shek. The Communists quickly shut down opium and heroin production in China and brutally cracked down on organized crime, causing the entire Shanghai criminal underworld to relocate to the British colony of Hong Kong, taking their opium contacts and heroin production expertise with them. In December of 1949, American ally Chiang-Kai Shek and his KMT army were forced to flee mainland China for Taiwan, and the Chinese communist victory was complete. As we get into the early 1950’s and really settle into the cold war, the U.S. government feels that the weak point in the Southeast Asian defense against Communist China is Burma, so the U.S. begins arming the anti-communist Chinese KMT army remnants in the so-called Shan state, a very mountainous heavily, jungled area, very remote and cut off from the rest of the world that sits between the borders of China, Burma, Laos, and Thailand. The Shan state was also one of the largest opium growing regions in the world. While the Chinese Communists totally stopped opium and heroin production in the areas they controlled, the American backed KMT Army of Chiang Kai-Shek instituted an opium tax on the local tribesman, requiring farmers to produce opium and turn it over them. In 1950 the CIA purchased a bankrupt airline and used the fleet of planes to run weapons to the KMT in Shan province.  The planes returned to Bangkok filled with opium; this operation became known as “Air America”. The KMT’s main opium customer in Bangkok was a man named General Phao. Phao was the commander of the Thai national police force. He was also the CIA’s man in Thailand." 1
In January 1950, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, based in Hanoi, as the legitimate government of Vietnam. The following month the United States and Great Britain recognized the French-backed State of Vietnam in Saigon, led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, as the legitimate Vietnamese government. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Soviet Union.In January 1950, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, based in Hanoi, as the legitimate government of Vietnam. The following month the United States and Great Britain recognized the French-backed State of Vietnam in Saigon, led by former Emperor Bảo Đại, as the legitimate Vietnamese government. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 convinced many Washington policymakers that the war in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Soviet Union.

1946: The US Army School of the Americas (SOA) is founded.
"From 1961 was assigned the specific goal of teaching "anti-communist counterinsurgency training," a role which it would fulfill for the rest of the Cold War. In this period, it educated several Latin American dictators, generations of their military and, during the 1980s, included the uses of torture in its curriculum. In 2000/2001, the institute was renamed to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC)." en.wikipedia.org... [Amongst many controveries, some students would go on to form Columbian paramilitary rebel groups, which would eventually influence the rise of AUC.]

December 22, 1946: The Mafia Havana Conference is held in Havana, Cuba.
Considered to have been the most important mob summit since the Atlantic City Conference of 1929. Decisions made in Havana resonated throughout US crime families during the ensuing decades. At that time, Lanza was one of the Mafia bosses who controlled Manhattan's Fulton Fish Market, its workers, and the docks in Lower Manhattan. Lansky had broader power in cities along the Atlantic Seaboard. Military intelligence was worried about possible Nazi sabotage of docks and other shipping facilities in New York and other East Coast ports. The government told Luciano that if his family was able to protect East Coast ports from sabotage, he would be pardoned at the end of the war and deported to Italy as a free man. Luciano agreed to the proposal and assisted the government. After the war ended, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey agreed to Luciano's pardon on the condition that he never be allowed back into the U.S. In early fall 1946, Luciano received a sealed envelope from a recently deported U.S. mafioso, which contained three words, "December-Hotel Nacional." In late September, Luciano obtained two Italian passports issued in his real name, Salvatore Lucania, with visas for Mexico, Cuba, and several South American nations. Luciano was now able to visit the Western Hemisphere and meet with criminal associates from the U.S. In late October, Luciano traveled from Italy to Caracas, Venezuela, Mexico City, and finally Havana. Lansky greeted his old friend on his arrival in Cuba. Following Luciano's orders, Lansky had organized a conference in Havana the week of December 22 of crime bosses from all over the United States. Lansky quickly suggested that Luciano purchase a $150,000 interest in the Hotel Nacional, a plush casino and hotel owned by Lansky and his silent partner, Cuban president Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar. Luciano agreed and the Havana Conference was set. The most pressing items on the conference agenda were the leadership and authority within the New York mafia, the mob-controlled Havana casino interests, the narcotics operations, and the West Coast operations of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

1947: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is formed from the OSS.

1947: CIA backs Li Mi (Kuomintang Party, China).
"Its first allies included members of Chiang Kai-Shek’s Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang, or KMT) Party, which Mao kicked out of mainland China in 1949. KMT members were already seasoned drug smugglers, having brought opium and heroin into the US in the 1920s. Among the KMT’s key North American contacts were Chinese residents of Mexico. The DEA’s predecessor, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, observed in 1946 that “in a recent Kuomintang Convention in Mexico City a wide solicitation of funds for the future operation of the opium trade was noted.” This future apparently was secured, as KMT opium continued entering the US from Mexico in 1947. ...CIA-employed pilots carried Li Mi’s opium from Burma to Police General Phao Sriyanond in Bangkok, who later funneled weapons to Li Mi to aid a planned invasion of southern China. This elite Thai cop appointed himself head of the police department in the aftermath of a 1947 military coup. He then fortified his organization to the point where it rivaled the military by late 1950. The CIA played a crucial role in this transformation. In August 1950, an agency team traveled to Bangkok where—with approval from the US State and Defense Departments—it worked out a deal to equip and train a Thai paramilitary force. 1

1947-1951: CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party.
"The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks — ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille’s first heroin laboratones were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront." 1 The first significant post-World War II seizure was made in New York on February 5, 1947, when seven pounds (3 kg) of heroin were seized from a Corsican sailor disembarking from a vessel that had just arrived from France. It soon became clear that the French underground was increasing not only its participation in the illegal trade of opium, but also its expertise and efficiency in heroin trafficking. On March 17, 1947, 28 pounds (13 kg) of heroin were found on the French liner, St. Tropez. On January 7, 1949, more than 50 pounds (22.75 kg) of opium and heroin were seized on the French ship, Batista. 1

1949: CIA, heroin, and the Korean War.
""CIA ties to international drug trafficking date to the Korean War. In 1949, two of Chiang Kai-shek's defeated generals, Li Wen Huan and Tuan Shi Wen, marched their Third and Fifth Route armies, with families and livestock, across the mountains to northern Burma. Once installed, the peasant soldiers began cultivating the crop they knew best, the opium poppy. When China entered the Korean War, the CIA had a desperate need for intelligence on that nation. The agency turned to the warlord generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China. In return, the agency offered arms. Officially, the arms were intended to equip the warlords for a return to China. In fact, the Chinese wanted them to repel any attack by the Burmese. Soon intelligence began to flow to Washington from the area, which became known as the Golden Triangle. So, too, did heroin, en route to Southeast Asia and often to the United States. If the agency never condoned the traffic, it never tried to stop it, either. The CIA did, however, lobby the Eisenhower administration to prevent the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the DEA's predecessor, from establishing monitoring posts in the area to study the traffic. Today, the Golden Triangle accounts for about half the heroin in circulation in the world." www.nytimes.com...

1950-1952: Cuba-US politics concerning the Korean War.
"Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations provides critical support for the administration of President Harry Truman in the Security Council vote on taking action in Korea. But when Cuban President Prío offered to send troops to the war, Cubans organized a successful campaign to prevent involvement. Their slogan was “No cannon fodder for Yankee imperialists.” Batista puts his name forward to run for president, but polls show him running in last place. Meyer Lansky gives elected Cuban President Carlos Prio Socarras a bribe of $250,000 to step down so Batista can return to power. Batista, instead decides to simply take over. He is unopposed in his almost bloodless coup. Immediately after US President Eisenhower recognizes the new Cuban government, Batista suspends Cuba’s constitution, and cancels upcoming elections." 1

July 26, 1953: The birth of Castro's "July 26 Movement" is the attack on Batista's Moncada Army Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba.

1953: Santos Trafficante Jr. is sent by his father to take control of several mob casinos in Havana.

1953: CIA backed Iranian coup d'état (Operation AJAX).
Was the overthrow of the Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in favour of strengthening the monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on 19 August 1953, orchestrated by the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot") and the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project, or Operation Ajax). Mossadegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP) and to limit the company's control over Iranian petroleum reserves. Upon the refusal of the AIOC to co-operate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country. Following the coup in 1953, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran (Persian for an Iranian king), to rule more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power. Operation Ajax's formal leader was senior CIA officer Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., while career agent Donald Wilber was the operational leader, planner, and executor of the deposition of Mosaddegh. According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots on 19 August. Other CIA-paid men were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks, and took over the streets of the city. 200-300 people were killed because of the conflict. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Other Mosaddegh supporters were imprisoned, and several received the death penalty. After the coup, the Shah continued his rule as monarch for the next 26 years until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.  1
1953-1967: CIA's Project MKUltra becomes well known for administering drugs in its human experiments on US & Canadian Citizens.
"MKUltra used numerous methodologies to manipulate people's mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture. ...The experiments were exported to Canada when the CIA recruited Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, creator of the "psychic driving" concept, which the CIA found particularly interesting... In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs as well as electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postpartum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions. His treatments resulted in victims' incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents...During this era Cameron became known worldwide as the first chairman of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. Cameron had also been a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal in 1946–47...". en.wikipedia.org...
The CIA eventually ordered 10 kg of LSD (100,000,000 doses) from Sandoz in 1953, which was at the time the only producer of the drug, to have complete control over the world's entire LSD supply. [Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare by Armin Krishnan (2016)] Notable people whom were part of the testing progam includes "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski and Ken Kesey. Ken Kesey goes on to author "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", and helped campaign the onset of the LSD Revolution, while Kaczynski's personality type plus testing experience resulted in im authoring "Industrial Society and it's Future" (AKA The Unabomber Manifesto). 1 2

1954: US Vice President Richard Nixon visits Havana to congratulate Batista on winning presidential “elections” in which he was the only candidate.
Nixon is photographed with Batista and Mafia allies at a lavish party. Santos Trafficante Jr. takes over his father’s gang when his father dies of cancer.


1954: Guatemalan coup d'état (Operation PBSUCCESS).
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation carried out by the CIA that deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and ended the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–1954. Code-named Operation PBSUCCESS, it installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala. By 1950, the United Fruit Company's annual profits were 65 million U.S. dollars, twice as large as the revenue of the government of Guatemala. The company also virtually owned Puerto Barrios, Guatemala's only port to the Atlantic Ocean, allowing it to make profits from the flow of goods through the port. Due to its long association with Ubico's government, Guatemalan revolutionaries saw the UFC as an impediment to progress after 1944. The largely free elections of 1950 were won by the popular Árbenz, and represented the first transfer of power between democratically elected leaders in Guatemala. Decree 900: The focus of the law was on transferring uncultivated land from large landowners to poor laborers, who would then be able to begin viable farms of their own. It expropriated all uncultivated land from landholdings that were larger than 673 acres (272 ha). If the estates were between 224 acres (91 ha) and 672 acres (272 ha), uncultivated land was to be expropriated only if less than two-thirds of it was in use. The owners were compensated with government bonds, the value of which was equal to that of the land expropriated. The value of the land itself was what the owners had declared it to be in their tax returns in 1952. Of the nearly 350,000 private landholdings, only 1,710 were affected by expropriation. By June 1954, 1,400,000 acres (570,000 ha) of land had been expropriated and distributed. Approximately 500,000 individuals, or one-sixth of the population, had received land by this point. Contrary to the predictions made by detractors, the law resulted in a slight increase in Guatemalan agricultural productivity, and in an increase in cultivated area. Purchases of farm machinery also increased. Overall, the law resulted in a significant improvement in living standards for many thousands of peasant families, the majority of whom were indigenous people. The UFC responded by intensively lobbying the U.S. government; several Congressmen criticized the Guatemalan government for not protecting the interests of the company. The Guatemalan government replied that the company was the main obstacle to progress in the country. American historians observed that "[to] the Guatemalans it appeared that their country was being mercilessly exploited by foreign interests which took huge profits without making any contributions to the nation's welfare". In 1953, 200,000 acres (81,000 ha) of uncultivated land was expropriated by the government, which offered the company compensation at the rate of twice what the company had paid when it bought the property. More expropriation occurred soon after, bringing the total to over 400,000 acres (160,000 ha); the government offered compensation to the company at the rate at which the UFC had valued its own property for tax purposes. Since this was a major undervaluation, the company was unhappy with its compensation, resulting in further lobbying in Washington, particularly through U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had close ties to the company. The UFC also began a public relations campaign to discredit the Guatemalan government; it hired Edward Bernays, who mounted a concerted misinformation campaign for several years which portrayed the company as the victim of a communist Guatemalan government. Working in an atmosphere of increasing McCarthyism in government circles, Eisenhower was more willing than Truman to use the CIA to depose governments the U.S. disliked. Several figures in Eisenhower's administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother CIA Director Allen Dulles, had close ties to the United Fruit Company. While preparations for Operation PBSUCCESS were underway, Washington issued a series of statements denouncing the Guatemalan government, alleging that it had been infiltrated by communists. The U.S. had stopped selling arms to Guatemala in 1951 while signing bilateral defense agreements and increasing arms shipments to neighboring Honduras and Nicaragua. The U.S. promised the Guatemalan military that it too could obtain arms—if Árbenz were deposed. By 1954 Árbenz had become desperate for weapons, and decided to acquire them secretly from Czechoslovakia, which would have been the first time that a Soviet bloc country shipped weapons to the Americas, an action seen as establishing a communist beachhead in the Americas. The U.S. failed to intercept the shipment despite imposing an illegal naval quarantine on Guatemala. The CIA portrayed the shipment of these weapons as Soviet interference in the United States' backyard; it was the final spur for the CIA to launch its coup. U.S. rhetoric abroad also had an effect on the Guatemalan military. The military had always been anti-communist. In January 1954, the Guatemalan government published documents leaked to it by a member of Castillo Armas' team who had turned against him. The coup took place in June 1954. Backed by a US-supplied air force, Castillo Armas led 480 CIA-trained soldiers into Guatemala. Despite initial setbacks, US support to the rebels made the Guatemalan army reluctant to fight, and Árbenz resigned on 27 June. A series of military juntas briefly held power during negotiations that ended with Castillo Armas assuming the presidency on 7 July. Castillo Armas consolidated his power in an October 1954 election, in which he was the only candidate; his MNL was the only party allowed to contest congressional elections. Árbenz's popular agricultural reform was largely rolled back, with land confiscated from small farmers and returned to large landowners. Castillo Armas cracked down on unions and peasant organizations, arresting and killing thousands. He created a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, which investigated over 70,000 people and added 10% of the population to a list of suspected communists. Historians have estimated that more than 3,000 people were arrested following the coup, and that approximately 1,000 agricultural workers were killed by Castillo Armas's troops in the province of Tiquisate. Over the next few years, the committee investigated nearly 70,000 people. Many were imprisoned, executed, or "disappeared", frequently without trial. In August, the government passed Decree 59, which permitted the security forces to detain anybody on the blacklist of the CDNCC for six months without trial. The eventual list of suspected communists compiled by the CDNCC included one in every ten adults in the country. All political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations were outlawed.

1954: France defeated, CIA PSYOP's in Vietnam.
By 1954, the United States had supplied 300,000 small arms and spent US$1 billion in support of the French military effort, shouldering 80 percent of the cost of the war.  U.S. carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin, and reconnaissance flights over Điện Biên Phủ were conducted during the negotiations. According to U.S. Vice-President Richard Nixon, the plan involved the Joint Chiefs of Staff drawing up plans to use three small tactical nuclear weapons in support of the French. Nixon, a so-called "hawk" on Vietnam, suggested that the United States might have to "put American boys in".[80] U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American participation contingent on British support, but they were opposed to such a venture. In the end, convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits, Eisenhower decided against the intervention. Eisenhower was a five-star general. He was wary of getting the United States involved in a land war in Asia. The Viet Minh received crucial support from the Soviet Union and PRC. PRC support in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed supplies to come from the PRC into Vietnam. Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence estimates remained skeptical of French chances of success. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French involvement in Indochina. Giap's Viet Minh forces handed the French a stunning military defeat, and on 7 May 1954, the French Union garrison surrendered. At the Geneva Conference, the French negotiated a ceasefire agreement with the Viet Minh, and independence was granted to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. 1

1954-1955: Vietnam transition.
Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel, and under the terms of the Geneva Accords, civilians were to be given the opportunity to move freely between the two provisional states for a 300-day period. Elections throughout the country were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government. Around one million northerners, mainly minority Catholics, fled south, fearing persecution by the communists. This followed an American psychological warfare campaign, designed by Edward Lansdale for the CIA, which exaggerated anti-Catholic sentiment among the Viet Minh and which falsely claimed the US was about to drop atomic bombs on Hanoi. The exodus was coordinated by a U.S.-funded $93 million relocation program, which included the use of the Seventh Fleet to ferry refugees. As many as two million more would have left had they not been stopped by the Viet Minh. The North Vietnamese government instituted various agrarian reforms, including "rent reduction" and "land reform", which resulted in significant political oppression. During the land reform, testimony from North Vietnamese witnesses suggested a ratio of one execution for every 160 village residents, which extrapolated nationwide would indicate nearly 100,000 executions. Because the campaign was concentrated mainly in the Red River Delta area, a lower estimate of 50,000 executions became widely accepted by scholars at the time. However, declassified documents from the Vietnamese and Hungarian archives indicate that the number of executions was much lower than reported at the time, although likely greater than 13,500. In the south, from April to June 1955, Diệm eliminated any political opposition in the south by launching military operations against two religious groups: the Cao Đài and Hòa Hảo of Ba Cụt. The campaign also focused on the Bình Xuyên organized crime group which was allied with members of the communist party secret police and had some military elements. As broad-based opposition to his harsh tactics mounted, Diệm increasingly sought to blame the communists. 1
 
1955: CIA director Allen Dulles visits Havana and helps Batista open an intelligence bureau, funded and supervised by the CIA.
"The CIA administration has heavy ties with the United Fruit Company. Dulles’ brother, John, was US Secretary of State and legal counsel for the United Fruit Company. Dulles’ predecessor as CIA head, Walter Bedell Smith, was appointed president of the United Fruit Company when he left the CIA." 1

1956: Mayer Lansky opens his Hotel Riviera in Havana.
This 212-story, 383-room hotel is a $14 million project mostly paid for by the Cuban government.

1956-1971: COINTELPRO.
"COINTELPRO was the FBI's secret program to undermine the popular upsurge which swept the country during the 1960s.....The FBI set out to eliminate "radical" political opposition inside the US. When traditional modes of repression (exposure, blatant harassment, and prosecution for political crimes) failed to counter the growing insurgency, and even helped to fuel it, the Bureau took the law into its own hands and secretly used fraud and force to sabotage constitutionally- protected political activity. Its methods ranged far beyond surveillance, and amounted to a domestic version of the covert action for which the CIA has become infamous throughout the world."--Brian Glick.
COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. FBI records show that COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed subversive, including anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists of the Civil Rights Movement or Black Power movement (e.g., Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Black Panther Party), feminist organizations, independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left. The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971. COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day, and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination. The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order." FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise Neutralize" the activities of these movements and especially their leaders. Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs. Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of Martin Luther King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. 1
Pressure through employers, landlords, etc.: COINTELPRO documents reveal frequent overt contacts and covert manipulation (false rumors, anonymous letters and telephone calls) to generate pressure on activists from their parents, landlords, employers, college administrators, church superiors, welfare agencies, credit bureaus, licensing authorities, and the like. Agents' reports indicate that such intervention denied Sixties' activists any number of foundation grants and public speaking engagements. It also cost underground newspapers most of their advertising revenues, when major record companies were persuaded to take their business elsewhere. It may underlie recent steps by insurance companies to cancel policies held by churches giving sanctuary to refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. Burglary: Former operatives have confessed to thousands of "black bag jobs" in which FBI agents broke into movement offices to steal, copy or destroy valuable papers, wreck equipment, or plant drugs. 1

1956-1992: Operation GLADIO.
Operation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine North NATO-CIA "stay-behind" operation in Italy during the Cold War. Its purpose was to prepare for, and implement, armed resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion and conquest. The name Gladio is the Italian form of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and some neutral countries. The existence of these clandestine NATO units remained a closely guarded secret throughout the Cold War until 1990, when the first branch of the international network was discovered in Italy. While the press said that the NATO stay-behind units were 'the best-kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II', the Italian government, amidst sharp public criticism, promised to close down the secret army. Italy insisted identical clandestine units had also existed in all other countries of Western Europe. This allegation proved correct and subsequent research found that in Belgium, the secret NATO unit was code-named SDRA8, in Denmark Absalon, in Germany TD BDJ, in Greece LOK, in Luxemburg Stay-Behind, in the Netherlands I&O, in Norway ROC, in Portugal Aginter Press, in Spain Red Quantum, in Switzerland P26, in Turkey Özel Harp Dairesi, In Sweden AGAG (Aktions Gruppen Arla Gryning), in France 'Plan Bleu', and in Austria OWSGV; however, the code name of the stay-behind unit in Finland remains unknown. 1
European officials familiar with the paramilitary network have come forward in the past several days and described stockpiles of weapons and explosives hidden in Western European countries since the start of Cold War, news services have reported. The investigation revealed that the explosives used in a 1972 car-bombing came from one of the 139 secret weapons depots kept for the use of Gladio forces. The bomb, which killed three policemen near the town of Gorizia in northeast Italy, was placed by neo-fascist activist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. Meanwhile, details have emerged of the role played by civilians in the secret operation. One of them, Verona businessman Roberto Cavallaro, told the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso that he was recruited after taking part in anti-Soviet demonstrations. In the event of a Communist takeover, his task would have been to cause as much civil unrest as possible, Cavallaro said. Cavallaro described how he was paid 700,000 lire (now worth $635) each month, which was handed to him in a yellow envelope by one of the two intelligence officials who had recruited him. He left the organization in 1973, he said, after he heard of a plot to murder two former Communists, one male and one female. The plan was later abandoned. 1
This disturbing exposé describes a secret alliance forged at the close of World War II by the CIA, the Sicilian and US mafias, and the Vatican to thwart the possibility of a Communist invasion of Europe. Journalist Paul L. Williams presents evidence suggesting the existence of “stay-behind” units in many European countries consisting of five thousand to fifteen thousand military operatives. According to the author’s research, the initial funding for these guerilla armies came from the sale of large stocks of SS morphine that had been smuggled out of Germany and Italy and of bogus British bank notes that had been produced in concentration camps by skilled counterfeiters. As the Cold War intensified, the units were used not only to ward off possible invaders, but also to thwart the rise of left-wing movements in South America and NATO-based countries by terror attacks. Williams argues that Operation Gladio soon gave rise to the toppling of governments, wholesale genocide, the formation of death squads, financial scandals on a grand scale, the creation of the mujahideen, an international narcotics network, and, most recently, the ascendancy of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a Jesuit cleric with strong ties to Operation Condor (an outgrowth of Gladio in Argentina) as Pope Francis I. 1
The story started as early as 1942 with the formation of the Vatican Bank. The same year ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) recruited Lucky Luciano, a pre-eminent drug lord. The Swiss director of the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Allen Dulles came to the conclusion, “We’re fighting the wrong enemy.” Schutzstaffel (SS) sent Dulles a message through the Vatican that the Nazi government wanted to establish a separate peace with the United States; they wanted to fight the Soviets. Dulles met Prince Max von Hohenlohe in Bern. Hohenlohe found Dulles in agreement with him. Later, Dulles also met other Nazi officials to forge the new alliance. Chief of Special Intelligence for the OSS in China Col. Paul E Helliwell thought of another unholy alliance between the US intelligence community and organized crime groups. Consequently, the US intelligence agencies got drug lord Lucky Luciano released from jail, allowed him to build his narcotic empire, and simply watched the flow of drugs into the largely black ghettos of New York and Washington. The unholy alliance of the American spies and criminals was replicated everywhere, from Laos and Burma to Marseilles and Panama. After Richard Nixon became president in 1969, the strategy of tension gained more impetus.  National Adviser Henry Kissinger issued orders to Licio Gelli to carry out terror attacks and coup attempts. The United States and the Vatican channeled millions of dollars for these operations. Most of the money was raised in questionable ways. The first major attack in Europe took place on December 12, 1969 when a bomb went off in the lobby of Banca Nazionale Dell’ Agricoltura in Milan, Italy. Seventeen people died in the explosion. Within an hour, three bombs exploded in Rome. According to official figures, 14,591 acts of violence with a political motivation took place between January 1, 1969 and December 31, 1987. In these terror attacks, 491 people died and 1,181 were injured. A large number of terror attacks took place in other European countries from 1965 to 1981. After a series of assassination attempts to kill French President De Gaulle failed, he denounced “the secret warfare of the Pentagon” and expelled the European headquarters of NATO.1

1957: CIA becoming the Indochina Connection.
"From Bangkok the Thai National Police loaded the raw opium onto boats and from there it was escorted by the maritime police to rendezvous with large freighters bound for Singapore or Hong Kong to be processed into finished heroin and sent to the United States, usually via smuggling rings controlled by the same Corsican gangsters that were helping fight the Viet Minh Communists in Indochina. The volume of this CIA facilitated Thai heroin industry was gigantic. In 1957 a Thai military leader named Sarit Thanarat seized control of the country in a CIA backed coup; his cousin was the staunchly anti-communist King of Laos. When Field Marshal Sarit died in 1963 he had amassed over $150 million dollars, making him more than a billionaire in today’s money. There’s no question the CIA knew what their Chinese and Thai allies were up to in the heroin business and so did the media- in 1952 The New York Times and other newspapers published detailed accounts of the KMT’s role in the Opium trade. But there’s another component to this. The movement of the drugs into America and selling them on the streets, and this is where the American Mafia comes in…yet another CIA ally." 1

1957: US Senator John Kennedy visits Havana as the guest of Mafia kingpin Santo (“Sam”) Trafficante.
"Trafficante provides three prostitutes to entertain the senator one night, while observing the action through a two-way mirror in the hotel. The US Ambassador to Cuba, Arthur Gardener, recommends US President Eisenhower have the rebel Fidel Castro assassinated. In February, US journalist Herbert Matthews meets with Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra and his sympathetic reports are published in the New York Times. US President Eisenhower’s representative, Arthur Gardner, recommends the CIA assassinate Castro."
 
1958: US interests controlled 80% of Cuba’s railroads and 90% of its electrical and telephone services.

January 1, 1959-1965: Castro's Cuban Revolution succeeds, replacing his government with a revolutionary socialist state.
"When Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, the United States did not initially view Cuba as a security threat. The Library of Congress actually holds the papers of Philip Bonsal, who was U.S. ambassador to Cuba during the first two years of Castro’s rule. In Bonsal’s correspondence from his time in Havana you can see that he and other U.S. officials were struggling to figure out just what Castro intended to with his newfound power. Pretty quickly, it became clear that the reforms that the Cuban revolutionaries were determined to undertake would harm U.S. business interests on the island. A series of escalating confrontations drove the U.S. and Cuban governments apart, and Castro turned instead to the United States’ greatest rival and enemy, the Soviet Union, for support." 1 The 26th of July Movement only later reformed along communist lines, becoming the Communist Party in October 1965.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) had a list of forty-one U.S. mobsters it wanted the new revolutionary government to deport.
"The revolutionary government pledged full cooperation to the FBN, and did deport many top U.S. mafia figures on its aforementioned list. But this accordance was short-lived, a casualty of the rapid deterioration of U.S.-Cuban relations in the early 1960s. Inter-American meetings on drug control became yet another venue for the two states to vilify one another. U.S. authorities and press launched baseless accusations that Cuba, led by the cocaine-addicted Castro, was aiding and abetting drug trafficking into the United States as part of a global Communist conspiracy to weaken Americans’ wills. Meanwhile, as the trade embargo was imposed, opportunities for illegal trade were closed." 1
Batista flees to the Dominican Republic (later to Miami then Spain) with his fortune.
Castro arrives in Havana with his army to cheering crowds but a looted treasury and a bankrupt nation. Before he leaves Cuba, gangster boss Santos Trafficante meets with Jack Ruby in Havana. Trafficante is briefly jailed in Cuba, but is deported in June. 1

December 11, 1959: Operation 40 formed.
Operation 40 was the code name for a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed of Cuban exiles. The group was formed to seize control of the Cuban government after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Operation 40 was not only involved in sabotage operations. One member, Frank Sturgis, allegedly told author Mike Canfield: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents...We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time." The group sought to incite civil war in Cuba against the government of prime minister Fidel Castro. "In October 1960, they realize that this project has failed, and that is when Brigade 2506" was created, a CIA-sponsored group made up of 1,511 Cuban exiles who fought in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. 1

March 1960: US President Eisenhower tells CIA head Dulles to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of Cuba
"and endorses a plan to overthrow Castro in favour of a regime “more acceptable to the US... in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of US intervention.” The plan called for a “massive propaganda offensive,” including radio broadcasts. That summer, the CIA formed the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the first of many Cuban exile political front groups. The group launched several propaganda projects with CIA funds." 1

June 1960: The first major French Connection case.
An informant told a drug agent in Lebanon that Mauricio Rosal, the Guatemalan Ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, was smuggling morphine base from Beirut, Lebanon to Marseille. Narcotics agents had been seizing about 200 pounds (90 kg) of heroin in a typical year, but intelligence showed that the Corsican traffickers were smuggling in 200 pounds (90 kg) every other week. Rosal alone, in one year, had used his diplomatic status to bring in about 440 pounds (200 kg). The Federal Bureau of Narcotics's 1960 annual report estimated that from 2,600 to 5,000 pounds (1,200 to 2,300 kg) of heroin were coming into the United States annually from France. The French traffickers continued to exploit the demand for their illegal product, and by 1969, they were supplying the United States with 80 to 90 percent of its heroin. 1

August 1960: The CIA recruits Tampa mob boss Santos Trafficante to assassinate Fidel Castro.
"CIA officer, Richard Bissell, approached the CIA's Office of Security to establish whether it had "assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro". The dossier continues: "Because of its extreme sensitivity, only a small group was made privy to the project. The DCI (Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles) was briefed and gave his approval." Following the meeting with the Office of Security, Bissell employed a go-between, Robert Maheu, and asked him to make contact with "gangster elements". Maheu subsequently reported an approach to Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas. Roselli is described as "a high-ranking member of the 'syndicate' (who) controlled all the ice-making machines on the (Las Vegas) Strip and (who) undoubtedly had connections leading into the Cuban gambling interests". Roselli in turn led the CIA to a friend, known as Sam Gold. In September 1960, Maheu was introduced to Gold and his associate, known as Joe. In a development that appears to underscore the amateurishness of the whole operation, Maheu subsequently accidentally spotted photographs of "Sam and Joe" in Parade magazine. Gold was in fact Momo Salvatore Giancana, "the chieftain of Cosa Nostra (the mafia) and the successor to Al Capone". Joe was actually Santos Trafficante, Cosa Nostra boss of Cuban operations." 1

October 1960: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo to the CIA’s chief of covert operations, Richard Bissell, indicating that Hoover was aware of Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana’s involvement with the CIA in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

1960's: Drugs Become Mainstream In US Society.
"As drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion, social upheaval, and political dissent, the government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy." www.drugpolicy.org...

1960's: CIA helps Laos tribesman traffick opium & heroin: "Air America".
"During the Vietnam War, operations in Laos were largely a CIA responsibility. The agency's surrogate there was a Laotian general, Vang Pao, who commanded Military Region 2 in northern Laos. He enlisted 30,000 Hmong tribesmen in the service of the CIA. These tribesmen continued to grow, as they had for generations, the opium poppy. Before long, someone - there were unproven allegations that it was a Mafia family from Florida - had established a heroin refining lab in Region Two. The lab's production was soon being ferried out on the planes of the CIA's front airline, Air America." www.nytimes.com...
Those parts of the movie were actually correct, and it seems that the CIA-operated airline was in fact used to smuggle drugs. In Southeast Asia (SEA), during the Vietnam War, the CIA worked alongside Laotian general Vang Pao in an effort to help make Laos the world’s largest exporter of heroin. The CIA then flew drugs all over SEA, allowing the Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand, and Laos) to become the world hub for heroin. Agents from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs managed to seize an Air America aircraft that contained large amounts of heroin, but the CIA ordered the agents to release the plane and halt any further investigations. The CIA wasn’t just involved with the transportation of the drugs, however. The heroin was refined in a laboratory built at the CIA headquarters in Northern Laos. After about a decade of U.S. military intervention, SEA represented 70% of the world’s opium supplier. Unfortunately, many of the operatives became addicted to the heroin themselves. At the same time, SEA also became the main supplier of raw materials for the U.S. heroin industry. Though Air America apparently stopped operations in 1976, the CIA’s involvement in the opium and heroin industries continued in other parts of the world. 1

1961: Johnny Roselli persuaded for Havana mob boss Santos Trafficante to join the conspiracy between the CIA and American mafia to murder Castro.
Meyer Lansky also became involved in this plot and was reportedly offering a million-dollar reward for the Cuban leader's murder.

January 17, 1961: President Dwight Eisenhower (former General) warns of the "Military–Industrial Complex" ruling DC politics, in his Farewell Speech.
www.youtube.com...
"The military–industrial complex (MIC) is an informal alliance between a nation's military and the defense industry which supplies it, seen together as a vested interest which influences public policy. ...n a U.S. context, the trope is sometimes extended to military–industrial–congressional complex (MICC), adding the U.S. Congress to form a three-sided relationship termed an iron triangle.[9] These relationships include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry; or more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as corporations and institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, the Congress and executive branch."
en.wikipedia.org...

1961-1963: Kennedy NAM.
Kennedy's policy toward South Vietnam rested on the assumption that Diệm and his forces had to ultimately defeat the guerrillas on their own. He was against the deployment of American combat troops and observed that "to introduce U.S. forces in large numbers there today, while it might have an initially favorable military impact, would almost certainly lead to adverse political and, in the long run, adverse military consequences." The quality of the South Vietnamese military, however, remained poor. Poor leadership, corruption, and political promotions all played a part in weakening the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). Discontent with Diệm's policies exploded following the Huế Phật Đản shootings of nine majority Buddhists who were protesting against the ban on the Buddhist flag on Vesak, the Buddha's birthday. This resulted in mass protests against discriminatory policies that gave privileges to the Catholic Church and its adherents. Diệm's elder brother Ngô Đình Thục was the Archbishop of Huế and aggressively blurred the separation between church and state. Thuc's anniversary celebrations shortly before Vesak had been bankrolled by the government, and Vatican flags were displayed prominently. There had also been reports of Buddhist pagodas being demolished by Catholic paramilitaries throughout Diệm's rule. Diệm refused to make concessions to the Buddhist majority or take responsibility for the deaths. 1
The Buddhist demonstrations continued throughout spring and summer and culminated in June when a Buddhist monk publicly lit himself on fire. The photograph of the event made news around the world. JFK was deeply impacted by that event.
U.S. officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change during the middle of 1963. The United States Department of State was generally in favor of encouraging a coup, while the Defense Department favored Diệm. The CIA was in contact with generals planning to remove Diệm. They were told that the United States would not oppose such a move nor punish the generals by cutting off aid. President Diệm was overthrown and executed, along with his brother, on 2 November 1963. Following the coup, chaos ensued. Hanoi took advantage of the situation and increased its support for the guerrillas. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability, as one military government toppled another in quick succession. Increasingly, each new regime was viewed by the communists as a puppet of the Americans; whatever the failings of Diệm, his credentials as a nationalist (as Robert McNamara later reflected) had been impeccable. 1
JFK’s Vietnam Withdrawal Plan Is a Fact, Not Speculation Training would end. Support for South Vietnam would continue. They had an army of over 200,000. The end of the war was not in sight. After the end of 1965, even under the withdrawal plan, 1,500 US troops were slated to remain, for supply purposes. But the war would then be Vietnamese only, with no possibility of it becoming an American war on Kennedy's watch.

March 1961: The CIA forms a new exile coalition, the Cuban Revolutionary Council.
"To serve as cover the upcoming invasion and the psych-war/propaganda measures that will accompany it. US President John Kennedy approves an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs – 1,400-1,500 Cuban exiles landed from their US-funded and supplied training camps in Nicaragua. Before the invasion, US-based terrorists burned thousands of acres of Cuban sugar cane, blew up a Belgian ship in Havana harbour and at least 8 American B-26 bombers bombed airfields, killing hundreds of Cuban civilians (“Operation Puma”)." 1


April 17–20, 1961: Bay of Pigs Invasion.
The CIA sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506, a counter-revolutionary military group (made up of mostly Cuban exiles who traveled to the United States after Castro's takeover, but also of some US military personnel), fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow the increasingly communist government of Fidel Castro. Launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua, the invading force was defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, under the direct command of Castro. Over 1,400 paramilitaries, divided into five infantry battalions and one paratrooper battalion, assembled in Guatemala before setting out for Cuba by boat on 13 April 1961. Two days later, on 15 April, eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers attacked Cuban airfields and then returned to the US. On the night of 16 April, the main invasion landed at a beach named Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs. It initially overwhelmed a local revolutionary militia. The Cuban Army's counter-offensive was led by José Ramón Fernández, before Castro decided to take personal control of the operation. As the US involvement became apparent to the world, and with the initiative turning against the invasion, Kennedy decided against providing further air cover. As a result, the operation only had half the forces the CIA had deemed necessary. The original plan devised during Eisenhower's presidency had required both air and naval support. On 20 April, the invaders surrendered after only three days, with the majority being publicly interrogated and put into Cuban prisons.

1962: Operation NORTHWOODS.
Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba. The plans detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The proposals were rejected by the Kennedy administration. 1

1963: US President Kennedy prohibits travel to Cuba, and makes financial and commercial transactions with Cuba illegal.
He authorizes the CIA to renew support for exiles’ attacks on selected Cuban targets and all Cuban-owned assets in the USA are frozen.


Early 1960's: Bay of Pigs Cuban exiles form "The Corporation".
"A former policeman in Fulgencio Batista's Cuba, José Miguel Battle, Sr. assisted the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s in training Cuban exiles and personally volunteering as a soldier in the Cuban liberation effort of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961." en.wikipedia.org... "But this campaign failed—as did the well-known Mafia-aided attempt to murder Castro. Cuban exiles therefore had to adapt to life in the US. Battle and his associates formed La Compañía—the Corporation—basing it in Miami, but operating in California, Nevada, New Jersey New York and elsewhere in the US. The gang imported cocaine, heroin and marijuana en route to becoming a $45-million-a-year illicit gambling collective." www.alternet.org...

February 8-10, 1963: CIA backed Iraq coup d'état.
"As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958." www.nytimes.com...

November 22, 1963: Kennedy is assassinated.
White House papers declassified in 2003 showed Kennedy was planning a secret meeting with Fidel Castro to negotiate normalization of Cuban-American relations. Castro attempted to restart the talks with Lyndon Johnson, but was rebuffed because Johnson didn't want to appear "soft" on Communism. Recent literature and declassified material ties anti-Castro exiles, the Mafia and the CIA together as conspirators in Kennedy's assassination.

November 22, 1963: Johnson's Vietnam escalation.
At the time Lyndon B. Johnson took over the presidency after the death of Kennedy, he had not been heavily involved with policy toward Vietnam, Presidential aide Jack Valenti recalls, "Vietnam at the time was no bigger than a man's fist on the horizon. We hardly discussed it because it was not worth discussing." Upon becoming president, however, Johnson immediately had to focus on Vietnam: on 24 November 1963, he said, "the battle against communism ... must be joined ... with strength and determination." 1

November 24, 1963: Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald.
In 1977 Santo Trafficante, the Florida Mafia boss, was forced by subpoena to testify on oath before the Assassinations Committee. The questions put to him included the following: Did you ever discuss with any individual plans to assassinate President Kennedy? Prior to November 22, 1963, did you know Jack Ruby? While you were in prison in Cuba, were you visited by Jack Ruby? In response to all three questions, Trafficante responded, “I respectfully refuse to answer pursuant to my constitutional rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments.” “Pleading the Fifth” invokes the constitutional principle that no one can be forced to give evidence that may be self-incriminating. 1

August 2, 1964:  Gulf of Tonkin False Flag Incident
President LBJ claimed that North Vietnamese forces had twice attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. It was originally claimed by the National Security Agency that a Second Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead evidence was found of "Tonkin ghosts" (false radar images) and not actual North Vietnamese torpedo boats. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, the former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara admitted that the August 2 USS Maddox attack happened with no Defense Department response, but the August 4 Gulf of Tonkin attack never happened. In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese Navy on August 2, but that there were no North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident of August 4. The report stated, regarding the first incident on August 2, that "at 1500G, Captain Herrick ordered Ogier's gun crews to open fire if the boats approached within ten thousand yards. At about 1505G, Maddox fired three rounds to warn off the communist boats. This initial action was never reported by the Johnson administration, which insisted that the Vietnamese boats fired first." Evidence was still being sought on the night of August 4 when Johnson gave his address to the American public on the incident. Messages recorded that day indicate that neither President Johnson nor Secretary McNamara was certain of an attack. Various news sources, including Time, Life and Newsweek, ran articles throughout August on the Tonkin Gulf incident. Time reported: "Through the darkness, from the West and south...intruders boldly sped...at least six of them... they opened fire on the destroyers with automatic weapons, this time from as close as 2,000 yards." Time stated that there was "no doubt in Sharp's mind that the US would now have to answer this attack", and that there was no debate or confusion within the administration regarding the incident. The use of the set of incidents as a pretext for escalation of U.S. involvement follows the issuance of public threats against North Vietnam, as well as calls from American politicians in favor of escalating the war. The outcome of these two incidents was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

1965: In Laos, the US becomes Imperial France.
"The tiny Kingdom of Laos became the center of America’s secret war on Communism in East Asia. Despite the fact that Laos was declared a neutral country under the same Geneva peace accords of 1954 that divided Vietnam into a Communist north and non-communist south, President Eisenhower supplied the Laotian military with cash and weapons and the CIA conducted intelligence operations from inside Laos. The Hmong were a small ethnic group, living in the remote areas of Laos where the North Vietnamese were moving troops and equipment into attack South Vietnam. The Hmong were really turned into the CIA’s private army in Laos and the Hmong’s main source of income was growing opium. In 1965, the new Laos government kicked the all the Corsicans out of the country, and the Corsicans had been the ones purchasing the opium grown in Laos and shipping it out to be processed into heroin. 1965 was also the year that the United States sent actual American soldiers to fight in Vietnam, and the war starts heating up, so the Hmong tribe now becomes very important to the war effort. With the Corsican pilots shut down, the CIA stepped in and provided transport for the Hmong opium crop and the Hmong military leader, Vang Pao, actually starts manufacturing heroin himself, and the Chief of Staff of the Laotian army itself was suspected of operating the largest heroin refinery in the world." 1

Late 1960's: Manuel Noriega recruited & trained by CIA.
"Noriega was recruited as a CIA informant while studying at a military academy in Peru. He received intelligence and counterintelligence training at the School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama, in 1967, as well as a course in psychological operations at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He was to remain on the CIA payroll until February 1988. After a military coup in 1968, Noriega quickly rose through the ranks and became head of Panama's military intelligence and a key figure under General Omar Torrijos, the military ruler who signed a treaty with the US to restore the Panama canal zone to Panamanian sovereignty in 1977." www.theguardian.com...

1967-1974: Operation CHAOS.
Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for an American domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1967 to 1974, established by President Johnson and expanded under President Nixon, whose mission was to uncover possible foreign influence on domestic race, anti-war and other protest movements. When President Nixon came to office in 1969, existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS. Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers. In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups. Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement. In 1973, amid the uproar of the Watergate break-in, involving two former CIA officers, Operation CHAOS was closed. 1
"Of course, the CIA's Operation Chaos and MKUltra worked with the FBI, while Operations such as “Merrimac” embraced various forms of domestic spying. The New York Times archived government documents describing Operation Chaos as the parent operation to Merrimac that targeted antiWar activists. Ron Stark's activities exemplified the continuation of CIA MKUltra's operations in a widening global arena." 1
The CIA prepared for defense against American youth unrest in 1965, the same year as Camelot and Politica. With full knowledge of their illegal activities, they joined forces with the CIA and the Army. By August 1967, Special Operations group went after the youth. By July, 1968, Operation Chaos, identical to Chilean "Chaos," went after the "Restless Youth." This wasn't a study. It was an attack. Mid-summer of 1969, one month before the Manson Family massacres, Operation Chaos went into the most tight security of any assignment ever accomplished inside the CIA. From 1956-63, they had perfected enough LSD to cause every violent act or symptom associated with the violence in Los Angeles or at Altamont.  It was identical to giving poison candy at Halloween. LSD was the moving force, the cause for the Sharon Tate-La Bianca slaughters. It was fed at the Spahn ranch for a steady diet.  LSD was the moving force behind Altamont killing and violence Dec. 6, 1969. Thousands of tablets were distributed to the Hell's Angels, who then went totally berserk and started cracking skulls. By 1969, the SSS, Special Services Staff of the FBI, combined with the Justice Department, and with CIA's Operation Chaos. August, 1969, was the Sharon Tate-La Bianca slaughter. December 6, 1969, was the Altamont concert of the Rolling Stones. 1
The F.B.I. and C.I.A. came together in Operation Chaos; it was an inter-agency program that drew upon the entire intelligence apparatus of the U.S. government. As I say, it was the largest covert project in American history. ...The C.I.A. and the Mafia coordinated activities because the Mafia wanted a piece of the music business and the C.I.A. wanted to do away with politics in popular music — so they had an incentive to join forces. 1
"Gather information on their immorality. Show them as scurrilous and depraved. Call attention to their habits and living conditions. Explore every possible embarrassment. Send in women and sex, break up marriages. Have members arrested on marijuana charges. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them. Send articles to the newspapers showing their depravity. Use narcotics and free sex to entrap. Use misinformation to confuse and disrupt. Get records of their bank accounts. Obtain specimens of handwriting. Provoke target groups into rivalries that may result in death."------Intelligence Activities and Rights of Americans. Book II, April 26, 1976, Senate Committee Study with Respect to Intelligence


1968-1989: Operation CONDOR.
Operation Condor was a campaign of political repression and state terror involving intelligence operations and assassination of opponents, which started in 1968 and was officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program was nominally intended to eradicate communist or Soviet influence and ideas, and to suppress active or potential opposition movements against the participating governments' neoliberal economic policies, which sought to reverse the economic policies of the previous era. Condor's key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The United States government provided technical support and supplied military aid to the participants during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. Such support was frequently routed through the CIA. Ecuador and Peru later joined the operation in more peripheral roles. These efforts, such as Operation Charly, supported the local juntas in their anti-communist repression. According to American historian Patrice McSherry, based on formerly secret CIA documents from 1976, in the 1960s and early 1970s plans were developed among international security officials at the US Army School of the Americas and the Conference of American Armies to deal with perceived threats in South America from political dissidents. A declassified CIA document dated 23 June 1976, explains that "in early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia met in Buenos Aires to prepare coordinated actions against subversive targets." Condor was an operation similar to Operation Gladio, the strategy of tension used in Italy in the 1970s, of which Licio Gelli was a member. The program was developed following a series of government coups d'états by military groups, primarily in the 1970s: General Alfredo Stroessner took control of Paraguay in 1954; The Brazilian military overthrew the president João Goulart in 1964; General Hugo Banzer took power in Bolivia in 1971 through a series of coups; A civic-military dictatorship seized power in Uruguay on 27 June 1973; Forces loyal to General Augusto Pinochet bombed the presidential palace in Chile (La Moneda) on 11 September 1973; Overthrowing democratically elected president Salvador Allende; A military junta headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla seized power in Argentina on 24 March 1976; The "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia in 1980. 1
But there is far more to the story of Klaus Barbie and cocaine than just that. Amazingly, he was also a vital part of America's fight against communism and was an important agent for the US spy organisation the CIA, which used cocaine as a weapon in the Fifties. When the war ended Barbie had fled back to Germany where he was quickly recruited by the British along with many other top Nazis. But in April 1947 he was spotted by the Americans who were impressed by his abilities at organisation and interrogation. One officer who recruited him described him as: "An honest man, both intellectually and personally, absolutely without nerves or fear. He is strongly anti-communist and a Nazi idealist who believes that his beliefs were betrayed by the Nazis in power." Indeed, the Americans were keen to use his talents and willing to overlook his brutal record in the Gestapo. It was said that he was responsible for the torture and deaths of more than 26,000 people. And he personally tortured leading French Resistance leader Jean Moulin. He carried this out with much relish and was decorated by Hitler himself for his merciless efforts. But none of this appeared to daunt the Americans. His ardent anticommunist stance was what they were interested in and on March 22, 1951, he was smuggled from Germany, through Austria to Italy by the Americans. From there he was shipped to Argentina, ending up in Bolivia. During the Fifties he was sentenced to death in absentia by the French but he continued to enjoy the protection of the US intelligence community and by 1957 had obtained Bolivian citizenship, using the alias Klaus Altmann. At this time the Americans were in a state of near hysteria about the spread of communism in South America. With many Left-leaning regimes virtually on their doorstep, the US was willing to spend billions of dollars in secret deals and covert operations that would support more Right-wing governments. The huge cocaine industry was an integral part of these measures and Klaus Barbie proved to be useful in American operations. In the mid-Sixties he started the company which, apart from selling bark and coca paste, also marketed assault weapons to Right-wingers in other South American countries. Barbie was one of a criminal cabal of former Nazi officers who had fled to South America at the war's end and many were funded by the newly formed CIA for their Right-wing efforts. Barbie was also involved with the establishment of a major shipping company which generated millions of dollars in profits from the cocaine business. Following a coup in Bolivia in 1970 Barbie stayed with the new dictatorship running the country and was paid $2,000 a month for his "consulting services". A year later French agents positively identified him as the Butcher of Lyon but the Bolivian government refused to extradite him on the grounds that he was now a citizen of that country. Barbie was also involved in such CIA operations as Operation Condor, part of the US fight against communism. And he was one of the principal figures in the "Bolivian Cocaine Coup" of 1980. 1
In the Latin America, the CIA and the Vatican launched Operation Condor as the Latin American version of the Operation Gladio. The label was applied very liberally by the US intelligence agencies that “any government risked being so labeled if it advocated nationalization of private industry (particularly foreign-owned corporations), radical land reform, autarkic trade policies, acceptance of soviet aid, or an anti-American foreign policy.” The CIA and the Vatican started Operation Condor in the early 1970s when Opus Dei elicited support from Chilean bishops for the overthrow of the government of President Allende. The Catholic group was closely working with the CIA-funded organizations such as the Fatherland and Liberty, which was later turned into the dreaded Chilean secret police. “In 1971, the CIA began shelling out millions to the Chilean Institute for General Studies (IGS), an Opus Dei think tank, for the planning of the revolution.” Many members of the IGS joined the government after the coup. Hernan Cubillos became the foreign minister. He was the founder of Que Pasa, an OPUS Dei magazine, and publisher of El Mercurio, the largest newspaper in Santiago which was subsidized by the CIA. 1

1968: The FBN was reconstructed in the Department of Justice as the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD).

1960's-1970's: The CIA's Castle Bank & Trust.
Castle Bank & Trust was a Bahamian bank that was involved in tax evasion, as well as covertly funneling funds for the Central Intelligence Agency. The bank was founded in the 1960s by Paul Helliwell, a former member of the Office of Strategic Services, and Burton Kanter, a tax lawyer. The bank was used by the CIA to funnel money for covert military operations, including those at Andros Island (Bahamas), a staging area for anti-Castro activities. The bank had many clients, including celebrities, organized crime figures and wealthy business owners. In the early 1970s, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service started an investigation into the tax avoidance schemes used by the bank. The investigation was called Operation Tradewinds. The IRS was able to secretly photograph a list of the bank's clients, while a bank executive was dining in Miami with an IRS informant. As a result of this information, the IRS planned to initiate a new investigation, called Project Haven, into the tax affairs of the people on the client list. A prosecution of one of those clients eventually reached the United States Supreme Court as United States v. Payner. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Jim Drinkhall, the case was later dropped because of pressure from the CIA, which had been using the bank as a front to fund covert operations. 1


1970: "Operation 40" Bay of Pigs Cuban exiles veterans involved in high level drug smuggling operations.
BNDD agents immediately felt the impact of the CIA’s 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 organization in Florida. Of the dozens of traffickers arrested in June, many were found to be members of Operation 40, a CIA terror organization active in the U.S., the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico. The revelation that CIA drug smuggling assets were operating within the U.S. led to the assignment of CIA officers as counterparts to mid-level BNDD enforcement officials, including Latin American division chief Jerry Strickler. Like Van Marks in France, these CIA officers served to protect CIA assets from exposure, while facilitating their recruitment as informants for the BNDD. Many Cuban exiles arrested in Operation Eagle were indeed hired by the BNDD and sent throughout Latin America. They got “fantastic intelligence,” Strickler noted. But many were secretly serving the CIA and playing a double game. Meanwhile, to protect its global network of drug trafficking assets, the CIA began infiltrating the BNDD and commandeering its internal security, intelligence, and foreign operations branches. This massive reorganization 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 the U.S. Ambassador to France’s assistant on narcotics. From this vantage point, Van Marx ensured that BNDD conspiracy cases against European traffickers did not compromise CIA operations and assets. Van Marx also vetted potential BNDD assets to make sure they were not enemy spies. BNDD agents immediately felt the impact of the CIA’s 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 organization in Florida. Of the dozens of traffickers arrested in June, many were found to be members of Operation 40, a CIA terror organization active in the U.S., the Caribbean, Central and South America, and Mexico. The revelation that CIA drug smuggling assets were operating within the U.S. led to the assignment of CIA officers as counterparts to mid-level BNDD enforcement officials, including Latin American division chief Jerry Strickler. Like Van Marks in France, these CIA officers served to protect CIA assets from exposure, while facilitating their recruitment as informants for the BNDD. Many Cuban exiles arrested in Operation Eagle were indeed hired by the BNDD and sent throughout Latin America. They got “fantastic intelligence,” Strickler noted. But many were secretly serving the CIA and playing a double game. 1

1970's: The dismantling of the French Connection.
Following five subsequent years of concessions, combined with international cooperation, the Turkish government finally agreed in 1971 to a complete ban on the growing of Turkish opium, effective June 29, 1971. During these protracted negotiations, law enforcement personnel went into action. Drug arrests in France skyrocketed from 57 in 1970 to 3,016 in 1972. Also broken up as part of this investigation was the crew of Vincent Papa, whose members included Anthony Loria Sr. and Virgil Alessi. The well-organized gang was responsible for distributing close to a million dollars worth of heroin up and down the East Coast of the United States during the early 1970s, which in turn led to a major New York Police Department (NYPD) corruption scheme. The scope and depth of this scheme are still not known, but officials suspect it involved corrupt NYPD officers who allowed Papa, Alessi, and Loria access to the NYPD property/evidence storage room, where hundreds of kilograms of heroin lay seized from the now-infamous French Connection bust, and from which the men would help themselves and replace missing heroin with flour and cornstarch to avoid detection. The substitution was discovered only when officers noticed insects eating all the bags of "heroin". By that point an estimated street value of approximately $70 million worth of heroin had already been taken. The racket was brought to light and arrests were made. Certain plotters received jail sentences, including Papa, who was later murdered in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia. Ultimately, the Guérini clan was exterminated during internecine wars within the French underworld. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Connection The operation moved from outlaw infamy to unwanted Hollywood fame in 1971 with the release of the film The French Connection, starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider. Adapted from journalist Robin Moore's book, it tells a lightly fictionalized version of the painstaking surveillance operation carried out by two New York police officers in the lead up to the arrest of French television personality Jacques Angelvin, who had arrived in America with a 1960 Buick Invicta that had 112 pounds of heroin secreted inside it. 1


June  17, 1971: President Nixon declared the “War On Drugs".
In 1994, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, unlocked for me one of the great mysteries of modern American history: How did the United States entangle itself in a policy of drug prohibition that has yielded so much misery and so few good results? Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco’s anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman’s boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first “war on drugs” and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. I’d tracked Ehrlichman, who had been Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, to an engineering firm in Atlanta, where he was working on minority recruitment. At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” Nixon’s invention of the war on drugs as a political tool was cynical, but every president since — Democrat and Republican alike — has found it equally useful for one reason or another. Meanwhile, the growing cost of the drug war is now impossible to ignore: billions of dollars wasted, bloodshed in Latin America and on the streets of our own cities, and millions of lives destroyed by draconian punishment that doesn’t end at the prison gate; one of every eight black men has been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. 1


June 17, 1972: Watergate Scandal perps are Bay of Pigs Cuban exiles.
The story of the Bay of Pigs invasion is well known to most Americans. What has not become public knowledge are the activities of certain members of the Bay of Pigs team after the failure of the invasion. Although the invasion team ceased to operate formally as a unit, it remained alive for ten years through personal friendships, business ventures, and continued plots and raids against Cuba. In 1971, under White House supervision, these old relationships bore fruit in a series of operations in Latin America and the U.S., including the Watergate break-in. Let us see how these ties were built up and led to the events of 1971-72. After the Bay of Pigs invasion, a number of the participants (including some of the Watergate team) received training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina in 1963, and became members of the organization Ex-Combatientes Cubanos de Ft. Jackson. This organization and its members engaged in direct actions to combat leftist causes in the U.S. and eventually collaborated in the Watergate break-in (see below). The liaison between this organization and the CIA was James McCord, who had also been involved in the Bay of Pigs. The gusano team was also held together by certain key individuals, such as Manuel Artime. Artime had been the CIA-designated chief civilian commander for the Bay of Pigs  and "golden boy of the CIA." After the Bay of Pigs failed, Artime masterminded a second invasion which also failed and became involved in several subsequent anti-Cuba plots based in Central America. He remained a central figure in the Miami Cuban community, developing business ties with Nixon's friends Bebe Rebozo. Artime was very grateful to Watergate burglar Bernard Barker for having smuggled him out of Cuba in 1960; in return, one source maintains, Artime promised in 1961 to make Barker sports czar of the "liberated" Cuba. 1

1972: The CIA was made officially aware of Manuel Antonio Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking.
Noriega was chief of intelligence of the Panama National Guard, and a promising CIA asset. The BNDD found evidence that Mr. Noriega was taking payoffs for allowing heroin to flow from Spain, through Panama City airport, and on to the United States. That information was part of a lengthy file on Mr. Noriega compiled by Jack Ingersoll, then chief of the BNDD. Mr. Ingersoll was aware of Mr. Noriega's ties to the CIA, as was President Richard Nixon. When Mr. Nixon ordered Mr. Ingersoll to Panama to warn the country's military dictator, General Omar Torrijos, about the activities of Mr. Noriega and General Torrijos's brother Moises, Mr. Ingersoll hoped that law enforcement was finally "beginning to get the upper hand in its ongoing struggle with the CIA." He was wrong. The Watergate break-in occurred shortly after his visit. Mr. Nixon needed CIA support; his enthusiasm for the drug war evaporated. Mr. Ingersoll's successors at the newly formed DEA - Peter Bensinger, Francis Mullen and John Lawn - all told me they never saw his file, although they had asked to see everything the DEA had on Mr. Noriega. The material has disappeared. Shortly after General Torrijos's death in a mysterious airplane crash, Mr. Noriega, with CIA assistance, took command of the Panama National Guard. 1


1971: Russia opens naval base in Syria.

1972: Criminal BCCI banking operation founded by Pakistani Agha Hasan Abedi.
en.wikipedia.org...

1972: Frank Matthews busted.
"An interesting side story here is that of a black heroin kingpin from Brooklyn, by way of North Carolina, named Frank Matthews. Matthews was possibly the single largest heroin dealer in the United States and, as we show in my documentary “The Frank Matthews Story” he was getting his drugs from Corsicans down in Venezuela. And, this is per the Federal prosecutor himself, elements of his supply chain in Venezuela were protected by the CIA when Matthews was indicted in 1972. Matthews himself was arrested, posted bond, and disappeared in 1973 with an estimated $90 million dollar fortune. Despite a massive manhunt by the DEA and US Marshals, Frank Matthews has never been found, dead or alive, and while I have no smoking gun proof of this, a disappearance this thorough has the hallmark of a CIA operation. The French Corsican Connection began falling apart in 1972, not coincidentally at the same exact time as American involvement in Vietnam began to wind down, and also the same time that Frank Matthews was finally arrested and then goes missing." 1

July 1, 1973: Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) formed.

September 11, 1973: 1973 Chilean coup d'état.
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event in both the history of Chile and the Cold War. Following an extended period of social unrest and political tension between the right-controlled Congress of Chile and the socialist President Salvador Allende, as well as economic warfare ordered by US President Richard Nixon, Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national police. The military deposed Allende's Popular Unity government and later established a junta that suspended all political activity in Chile and repressed left-wing movements, especially the communist and socialist parties and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Allende's appointed army chief, Augusto Pinochet, rose to supreme power within a year of the coup, formally assuming power in late 1974. The United States government, which had worked to create the conditions for the coup, promptly recognized the junta government and supported it in consolidating power.Before the coup, Chile had for decades been hailed as a beacon of democracy and political stability while the rest of South America had been plagued by military juntas and Caudillismo. The collapse of Chilean democracy ended a streak of democratic governments in Chile, which had held democratic elections since 1932. Historian Peter Winn characterized the 1973 coup as one of the most violent events in Chile's history. The report stated that the CIA "actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende but did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency." The U.S. Government's hostility to the election of Allende in Chile was substantiated in documents declassified during the Clinton administration, which show that CIA covert operatives were inserted in Chile in order to prevent a Marxist government from arising and for the purpose of spreading anti-Allende propaganda. As described in the Church Committee report, the CIA was involved in multiple plots designed to remove Allende and then let the Chileans vote in a new election where he would not be a candidate. The first, non-military, approach involved attempting a constitutional coup. This was known as the Track I approach, in which the CIA, with the approval of the 40 Committee, attempted to bribe the Chilean legislature, tried to influence public opinion against Allende, and provided funding to strikes designed to coerce him into resigning. It also attempted to get congress to confirm Jorge Alessandri as the winner of the presidential election. Alessandri, who was an accessory to the conspiracy, was ready to then resign and call for fresh elections. The other approach of the CIA, also known as the Track II approach, was an attempt to encourage a military coup by creating a climate of crisis across the country. False flag operatives contacted senior Chilean military officers and informed them that the U.S. would actively support a coup, but would revoke all military aid if such a coup did not happen. After a review of recordings of telephone conversations between Nixon and Henry Kissinger, Robert Dallek concluded that both of them used the CIA to actively destabilize the Allende government. In one particular conversation about the news of Allende's overthrow, Kissinger complains about the lack of recognition of the American role in the overthrow of a "communist" government, upon which Nixon remarked, "Well, we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one." 1
The Rettig Report concluded 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military dictatorship were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence, and approximately 31,947 tortured according to the later Valech Report, while 1,312 were exiled. The latter were chased all over the world by the intelligence agencies. In Latin America, this was made under the auspices of Operation Condor, a combined operation between the intelligence agencies of various South American countries, assisted by a United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) communication base in Panama. Pinochet justified these operations as being necessary in order to save the country from communism. 1
With Pinochet in control, the CIA turned its attention to helping him overcome the negative publicity that his violent coup had engendered around the world. One "secret" CIA memo, written in early 1974, described the success of "the Santiago Station's propaganda project." The memo said: "Prior to the coup the project's media outlets maintained a steady barrage of anti-government criticism, exploiting every possible point of friction between the government and the democratic opposition, and emphasizing the problems and conflicts that were developing between the government and the armed forces. Since the coup, these media outlets have supported the new military government. They have tried to present the Junta in the most positive light." 1
Prior to this period the top cocaine scientists int he world were located in Chile. Many of them fled to Columbia and hooked up with Medellin Cartel. This would trigger the cocaine explosion of the 70's.
Pinochet 'sold cocaine to Europe and US' Augusto Pinochet's $26m (£14m) fortune was amassed through cocaine sales to Europe and the US, the general's former top aide for intelligence has alleged. In testimony sent to Chilean Judge Claudio Pavez, Manuel Contreras alleges that Pinochet and his son Marco Antonio organised a massive production and distribution network, selling cocaine to Europe and the US in the mid-1980s. According to Contreras, once Pinochet's ally and now a bitter enemy, Pinochet ordered the army to build a clandestine cocaine laboratory in Talagante, a rural town 24 miles from Santiago. There he had chemists mix cocaine with other chemicals to produce what Contreras described as a "black cocaine" capable of being smuggled past drug agents in the US and Europe.
At the time of this alleged cocaine smuggling, Pinochet was a close ally of the Reagan administration, providing help on a variety of sensitive intelligence projects, including shipping military equipment to Nicaraguan contra rebels who also were implicated in the exploding cocaine trade to the United States. 1

1973-1980: The CIA's drug money laundering bank in Sydney, Australia.
"The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including fommer CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt. (See Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA, W.W. Norton & Co., 1987.)" 1

1975: Frank Lucus busted.
Lucas took over with an expanded agenda. The Vietnam War was raging and Lucas realized that soldiers not only gave him a vastly expanded potential consumer base, but that Southeast Asia could be a rich source for the product. He set up direct supply lines that enabled him to undersell the other giant of the heroin industry, the mob. Among his smuggling techniques was packing dope into the coffins of dead soldiers, and his network of accomplices stretched from CIA and local officials to Harlem cops. One moment he particularly savors, he says, was smuggling drugs on a flight that carried Secretary of State Henry Kissinger." 1 "Just as Frank Lucas wouldn't have been successful obtaining and transporting the heroin from southeast Asia without the support of corrupt military personnel, so too would he have been unable to sell the stuff on the streets of Harlem without dishonest cops. During the 1960s and 1970s, the New York Police Department's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) was hopelessly corrupt. It had city-wide jurisdiction and nearly unlimited authority. The unit had developed a cowboy-like mentality, breaking in and conducting warrantless searches of suspected drug dealers; creating illegal phone taps; using bribery; and controlling addicted informants with confiscated heroin. Several of the officers were "on the take" with local drug dealers to look the other way. At one point, Frank Lucas was caught by the head of the SIU, Bob Leuci, with several kilograms of heroin and cocaine in the trunk of his car. According to Lucas, he was taken to the police station, where he had to negotiate his release with an offer of $30,000 and two "keys" of heroin. This was a common practice, and made many New York police officers participants in the crimes they were supposed to be stopping. In time, the police corruption made national news, and the Justice Department wanted it stopped. In 1971, officials in Essex County, New Jersey, formed an investigative narcotics unit called the Special Narcotics Task Force (SNTF), headed by then-assistant prosecutor Richard "Richie" Roberts. Serving as a detective in Essex County since 1963, Roberts was a former U.S. Marine and recent law school graduate from Seaton Hall University. He was very street-smart, and was known as a cop who did what he had to do to get the job done. Unlike some of his counterparts in the New York Police Department, Roberts was incorruptible. On January 28, 1975, after a lengthy investigation by the SNTF, a DEA strike-force staged a surprise raid on Frank Lucas' house in the upscale neighborhood of Teaneck, New Jersey. In the panic, Lucas' wife, Julie, threw several suitcases stuffed with cash out the window. All total, $584,000 was recovered—what Lucas referred to as "street money." Also found were keys to several Cayman Island safe-deposit boxes, property deeds, and a ticket to a United Nations ball, compliments of the ambassador of Honduras." 1

January 30, 1976-January 20, 1977: George HW Bush is Director of CIA.
"As a Texas Congressman, National Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ambassador to the UN, and Special Envoy to China, George Bush had established a reputation as a strong leader with an impressive resume. Ford had even considered appointing Bush as his Vice-President, but instead offered him the job of DCI. ...Bush quietly left Washington and returned to Texas, where he built up support for his campaign to be the Republican nominee for President in 1980. ...These positions made Bush the only producer (as DCI) and consumer (as President) of intelligence in a single career. 1

September 1, 1976: CIA and Other Intelligence Agencies Use BCCI & "The Safari Club" to Control and Manipulate Criminals and Terrorists Worldwide.
“With the official blessing of George H. W. Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a world-wide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world to create the biggest clandestine money network in history.” www.historycommons.org... Later, The Safari Club "prefers to work with a private CIA made up of fired agents close to ex-CIA Director George Bush Sr. and Theodore Shackley, who Trento alleges is at the center of a “private, shadow spy organization within” the CIA until he is fired in 1979. The Safari Club and rogue CIA will play a major role in supporting the mujaheddin in Afghanistan." www.historycommons.org...

1976: Freebase cocaine first developed (probably in California). It woud soon be popularized by dealers and glamorized by Hollywood media. 1

1978: CIA Begins Covert Action in Afghanistan.
"The CIA begins covert action against the Communist government in Afghanistan, which is closely tied to the Soviet Union. Some time this year, the CIA begins training militants in Pakistan and beaming radio propaganda into Afghanistan. By April 1979, US officials are meeting with opponents of the Afghan government to determine their needs."


1978: George W Bush & Osama bin Laden’s brother, Salem bin Laden, founded Arbusto Energy, an oil company based in Texas. 1 2

May 1979: CIA Begins Working with Hekmatyar and Other Mujaheddin Leaders Chosen by ISI.

November 4, 1979-January 20, 1981: 52 American Hostages Captured in Tehran, Held for 444 Days.
The overthrown "Shah" was a US puppet dictator installed by the CIA after overthrowing their democratically elected government in 1954 for BP Oil access to their oil fields. [This revolution was effectively their "Independence Day" from the US.

December 8, 1979: Soviet Forces, Lured in by the CIA, Invade Afghanistan

1979-1989: Operation Cyclone.
Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the mujahideen, in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of its client, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Marxist-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan regime since before the Soviet intervention. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken;[2] funding began with $20–$30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987. Funding continued after 1989 as the mujahideen battled the forces of Mohammad Najibullah's PDPA during the civil war in Afghanistan (1989–1992).

1980: Afghan Fighters Begin Training in US.

Early 1980: Israel Proposes US Secret Arms Sales to Iran.

April 15-October 31, 1980: The Cuban "Muriel Boatlift" adds fuel to the fire to the Columbian cartel crime wave.
"The arrival of the refugees in the U.S. created political problems for U.S. president Jimmy Carter, first when his administration struggled to develop a consistent response to the immigrants and then when it was discovered that a number of the refugees had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between the two governments in late October 1980, after as many as 125,000 Cubans had reached Florida." en.wikipedia.org... "As Fidel Castro threatens to unleash another mass exodus of refugees, this city's dominant Cuban American population is pleading with federal authorities not to allow a repeat of the Mariel boatlift of 1980, which brought 125,000 Cubans -- and widespread crime and economic upheaval -- to South Florida." www.washingtonpost.com... [Not all "Marielitos" were criminals! This event is included as it will sort of repeat itself (similar to the Iran-Contra Scandal) in the modern age (but not with Cuban's)...]

1980: The "Cocaine Coup" of Bolivia.
Roberto Suárez Goméz also known as the King of Cocaine, depicted in Scarface as "Sosa", was a Bolivian drug lord and trafficker who played a major role in the expansion of cocaine trafficking in Bolivia. At his prime, Suárez made $400 million annually, was one of the major suppliers of the Medellin Cartel, the leader of the largest Bolivian drug empire and considered to be the biggest cocaine producer in the world. With aid from the Argentine military dictatorship, Suárez financed the military coup and bankrupted the government, which collapsed. The coup (part of Operation CONDOR) installed a dictatorship in 1980, in which Luis García Meza would be President and Suárez's cousin Luis Arce Gómez was Minister of the Interior, and so he received political protection for his enterprise Arce Gómez ordered the killings of many Bolivians, including union leaders and intellectuals such as Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz. According to some sources, the CIA knew about the coup in advance (Straitfeild). During the 1980s, Suárez' relationship with Escobar slowly deteriorated because of Escobar's murderous activities, which contrasted with Suárez using violence only as a last resort. 1 In The Big White Lie, Michael Levine, former DEA agent and bestselling author of Deep Cover, leads the reader through a decade of undercover work. Levine’s prose is fast-moving, highly readable, and hard-hitting. He tells how the beautiful South American "Queen of Cocaine" seduced the CIA into protecting her from prosecution as she sold drugs to Americans; how CIA-sponsored paramilitary ousted, tortured, and killed members of a pro-DEA Bolivian ruling party; and how the CIA created La Corporacion, the "General Motors of cocaine," which led directly to the current cocaine/crack epidemic. As a 25-year veteran agent for the DEA, Michael Levine worked deep-cover cases from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, and witnessed firsthand scandalous violations of drug laws by U.S. officials. 1 
One of those cases, dubbed Operation Hun, targeted major Bolivian and Colombian narco-traffickers, including Mejia. But Levine, author of a detailed and revelatory nonfiction drug-war book, The Big White Lie, insists that, due to CIA intervention and complicity in the drug trade, most of the targets of Operation Hun walked free, with a few exceptions. 1
Robert Parry, a former Associated Press reporter who played a key role in exposing the Iran/Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, in a story written in 1998, describes Bolivia’s Cocaine Coup (which, Parry claims, also was aided by the neo-fascist/US-supported Argentine government of that era, a government that launched a “Dirty War” against so-called “leftists,” which resulted in the “disappearing” and torture/murders of the thousands of Argentines in the late 1970s). He asserted the real activity of the companies was to transfer more than $30 million — much of it from drug lords — into various political and paramilitary operations in South and Central America. He claimed the operation was approved by the CIA, which maintained close ties to the Argentine generals. According to Sanchez-Reisse, the money operation's first major activity was funneling drug proceeds into a 1980 coup to overthrow an elected center-left government in Bolivia. That new government had offended Bolivia's powerful cocaine barons, including Roberto Suarez, then one of the biggest traffickers in the world. 1

Summer 1980: CIA Agent: Republicans Open Secret Channel to Iran in Preparation for ‘October Surprise,’ Arms Deals.

October 1980: Osama’s Oldest Brother Allegedly Involved in ‘October Surprise’.
Salem bin Laden, Osama’s oldest brother, described by a French secret intelligence report as one of two closest friends of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd who often performs important missions for Saudi Arabia, is involved in secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries this month, according to a French report."  1

1980-1988: Saddam Hussein invades Iran causing the Iran-Iraq War.
Hussein was a US puppet dictator at the time. Last great war to see open battlefield "Human Wave Attacks" (think WW1). US aided in using Mustard Gas & Sarin against Iran. 500,000+ dead. foreignpolicy.com...

1980-1989: $600 Million for Afghan War Passes through Bin Laden Charity Fronts.

1980-1989: CIA and British Train Mujaheddin in Afghanistan and Help Arm Bin Laden.

Early 1980: Osama Bin Laden, with Saudi Backing, Supports Afghan Rebels.

Early 1980 and After: Bin Laden Serves as Middleman between Saudi Intelligence and Afghan Warlords.

January 20, 1981: Ronald Reagan Inaugurated as POTUS. George HW Bush Inaugurated as Vice POTUS.
"The presidency of Ronald Reagan marked the start of a long period of skyrocketing rates of incarceration, largely thanks to his unprecedented expansion of the drug war. The number of people behind bars for nonviolent drug law offenses increased from 50,000 in 1980 to over 400,000 by 1997. Public concern about illicit drug use built throughout the 1980s, largely due to media portrayals of people addicted to the smokeable form of coc aine dubbed “crack.” Soon after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, his wife, Nancy Reagan, began a highly-publicized anti-drug campaign, coining the slogan "Just Say No."" www.drugpolicy.org...

1981-1983: NSC Gains a Clear Picture of BCCI’s Criminal Activities from CIA Reports.
"Norman Bailey, a member of the National Security Council (NSC) whose specialty is monitoring terrorism by tracking finances, will later reveal that in the early 1980s the NSC learns that BCCI is not just a bank but is engaged in widespread criminal activity. “We were aware that BCCI was involved in drug-money transactions,” he will later say. “We were also aware that BCCI was involved with terrorists, technology transfers—including the unapproved transfer of US technology to the Soviet bloc—weapons dealing, the manipulation of financial markets, and other activities.” The main source for the NSC about this are reports from the CIA. From 1981 on, the NSC learns of BCCI’s role in illegal technology deals for Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, and other countries. A clear picture has emerged by the start of 1984. But neither the CIA nor the NSC take any action against the bank." 1

1981 and After: US Advocacy Group Trains Fighters in Afghanistan; Alleged to Be CIA Front.
During the CIA's covert war in the 1980s, opium financed the mujahedeen or "freedom fighters" (as President Ronald Reagan called them). 1

1982: CIA, NSC Official Becomes Bush’s Foreign Policy Adviser.
"Vice President George H. W. Bush asks CIA agent and National Security Council official Donald Gregg to serve as his national security and foreign policy adviser. Gregg agrees, and retires from the CIA. Gregg will work closely with Bush and former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez to help put together a covert operation to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with arms, cash, and supplies."

1982-1989: US Turns Blind Eye to BCCI and Pakistani Government Involvement in Heroin Trade.
This was, however, a covert operation unlike any other in the Cold War years. First, the collision of CIA secret operations and Soviet conventional warfare led to the devastation of Afghanistan's fragile highland ecology, damaging its traditional agriculture beyond immediate recovery, and fostering a growing dependence on the international drug trade. Of equal import, instead of conducting this covert warfare on its own as it had in Laos in the Vietnam War years, the CIA outsourced much of the operation to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which soon became a powerful and ever more problematic ally. 1

1982-1991: Afghan Opium Production Skyrockets.

1983-1992: Bill Clinton returns as Governor of Arkansas (previously held 1979-1981).
Although never charged, he goes on to become infamously credited for directing CIA Iran-Contra coacine smuggling through Mena, Arkansas. en.wikipedia.org...

February 11, 1982: CIA Is Given Green Light to Take Part in Illegal Drug Trade in Afghanistan.
"CIA Director William Casey gets a legal exemption sparing the CIA for a requirement that they report on drug smuggling by CIA officers, agents, or assets. Attorney General William French Smith grants the exemption in a secret memorandum. On March 2, Casey thanks Smith for the exemption, saying it will help protect intelligence sources and methods." 1

December 1982: First Boland Amendment Restricts Government Support for Contras.

1982-1995: "CIA did not have to report the drug trafficking by its assets to the Justice Department."
www.angelfire.com...

1983: Israeli and US Companies Begin Supplying Iran with Arms.

1983: Pakistani Government Allows Drug Traffickers to Deposit Profits in BCCI Bank.

March 17, 1983: Bush’s Foreign Policy Adviser, Ex-CIA Agent Create Plan to Supply Nicaraguan Contras.

August 15, 1983: GeoMiliTech formed; Begins Selling Arms to Iran.

December 15, 1983: ’Operation Staunch’ Discourages Other Nations from Selling Weapons to Iran.

1983-1985: Juan Ramón Matta-Ballesteros' SETCO flies cocaine for CIA Contra operations.
According to the Kerry Committee report (an investigation into government involvement in drug trafficking, as a result of information that surfaced during the Iran-Contra affair): the Honduran airline SETCO was "the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for the [FDN (one of the earliest Contra groups)], carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms and other military supplies [for the Contras] . . . from 1983 to 1985." SETCO received funds for Contra supply operations from the Contra accounts established by Oliver North. In 1983, a U.S. Customs Investigative Report found that “SETCO stands for Services Ejecutivos Turistas Commander and is headed by Juan Ramon Matta-Ballestros, a class I DEA violator.” The same report states that according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, “SETCO aviation is a corporation formed by American businessmen who are dealing with Matta and are smuggling narcotics into the United States."[8] Matta had been identified by the DEA in 1985 as the most important member of a consortium moving a major share (perhaps a third, perhaps more than half) of all the coc aine from Colombia to the United States.[citation needed] The report went on to conclude that "the Colombian-Mexican relationship, developed by Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros, a Honduran with close ties to the Cali groups, led to an explosion of coc aine shipments through Mexico, with coc aine seizures in that country rising from 2.3 tons in 1985 to 9.3 tons in 1987." en.wikipedia.org...

1983-1989: Manuel Noriega's reign as "de facto leader" of Panama & GWHB's primo drug lord asset.
"After Torrijos's death in a mysterious plane crash in 1981, Noriega consolidated his power, becoming Panama's de facto ruler, promoting himself to full general in 1983. The US relied on Panama as a regional listening post and Noriega obliged with unfaltering support for the Contras in Nicaragua, and in the fight against the FMLN guerrillas in El Salvador. At the same time, he began to play an increasingly repressive role internally in Panama, especially after the assassination of Hugo Spadafora, a political opponent who was found beheaded in 1985. Noriega allegedly played a role in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra affair, which involved the smuggling of weapons and drugs to aid US undercover efforts to support the anti-government forces opposing the Sandinistas in Nicaragua." www.bbc.com...

1984: U.S. officials began receiving reports of Contra coc aine trafficking (Iran-Contra Scandal).
en.wikipedia.org... en.wikipedia.org... www3.uakron.edu...

1984: Reagan Announces End to Aid for Contras

1984: The "Frogman Case".
"In the late summer of 1984, the CIA faced what secret documents called the "potential for disaster." Congress was debating a full cutoff of funding for the Reagan administration's covert Contra war in Nicaragua. At that delicate political moment, legal proceedings in a major drug bust in San Francisco threatened to publicly link CIA-Contra operations with coc aine trafficking. The "Frogman Case" - so named because scuba divers were caught ferrying $100 million worth of coc aine from a Colombian freighter at San Francisco's pier 96 - was California's biggest drug bust in the early 1980s."
articles.baltimoresun.com...

1984: Contra General José Bueso Rosa.
"Reagan administration officials interceded on behalf of José Bueso Rosa, a Honduran general who was heavily involved with the CIA's contra operations and faced trial for his role in a massive drug shipment to the United States. In 1984 Bueso and co-conspirators hatched a plan to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Córdoba; the plot was to be financed with a $40 million coc aine shipment to the United States, which the FBI intercepted in Florida."

1984: Bin Laden Develops Ties with Pakistani ISI and Afghan Warlord. These ties will lead to formation of MAK.
www.historycommons.org...

1984: Bill Clinton's brother serves time for cocaine distribution.
Later, the Secret Service go on to give him the Codename: HEADACHE. mentalfloss.com...

January 20, 1984: State Department Designates Iran as Terrorism Sponsor.

May 1984: Secret Contra fund is created for Contras.
"In anticipation of the second Boland amendment, a slush fund for the contras had already been created. NSC aide Oliver North had set up secret bank accounts whose assets eventually totaled more than $30 million, which he and other administration officials solicited from foreign governments. Bush, according to the Iran-contra report, was kept informed of these fund-raising activities. In May 1984, Bush was the first person notified, after the president, about a $1-million-a-month contribution promised by Saudi Arabia. According to the report, on June 25th, Bush was briefed about the fund raising at a meeting of the National Security Planning Group, and on September 18th, Gregg prepared a memo about the fund raising – as requested by the vice-president." www.rollingstone.com...

May 1984: CIA Officer Introduces NSC’s Oliver North to Nicaraguan Contra Leaders.

October 1984: CIA Afghan Covert Operations Budget Increases.

October 10, 1984: Second Boland Amendment Outlaws CIA, Defense Department, or Third-Party Funding of Contras.

Late 1984: Bin Laden and His Mentor Azzam Set Up Precursor Organization to Al-Qaeda.

1984-1986: CIA Director Repeatedly Meets with Head of Criminal BCCI Bank, Funding of Afghan War Is Discussed.

1984-1986: CIA Reveals BCCI’s Drug and Terrorist Links to Other US Agencies, but No Action Taken.

1984-1986: Saudi's injects some $32 million into the Contra fund.
"Nevertheless, McFarlane, North, and others sought funds from other countries for the contras. McFarlane was able to get a total of $32 million from Saudi Arabia between 1984 and 1986; McFarlane maintained that he did not solicit the money but merely expressed that that funds for the contras would be appreciated. Later, North was able to secure two $1 million contributions to the contras from Taiwan." www.brown.edu...

1984-1994: CIA Funds Militant Textbooks for Afghanistan.

1984 and After: BCCI Dominates Supply Chain of CIA Supplies and Weapons Meant for Mujaheddin.

1984 and After: CIA Allegedly Funds Bin Laden’s Main Charity Front.

February 1985: Kiki Camarena executed by Mexican police on orders of the CIA?
" A story that sounds like it was taken from a complex espionage novel has just exploded on U.S. television.  Enrique Kiki Camarena, the DEA law enforcement officer murdered in Mexico in February, 1985, was apparently not the victim of the Mexican capo Rafael Caro Quintero, but rather,, of a dark member of the CIA. This individual was the one charged with silencing the anti-narcotics agent for one serious reason: he had discovered that Washington was associated with the drug trafficker and was using the profits from the drug trafficking to finance the activities of the counterrevolution." 1 "For the three former police officers -- interviewed separately by Proceso and identified for safety reasons as "Jose I", "Jose II" and "Jose III"-- there is no doubt: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), drug traffickers, the (Mexican) Army and the Mexican government planned the kidnapping of Kiki Camarena on February 7, 1985. These statements are consistent with those made to this journal (Editions No. 1928, 1929 and 1932) by three former U.S. federal agents -- Hector Berrellez, Phil Jordan and Robert Plumlee-- who insisted that the CIA was behind the murder of Camarena because the anti-narcotics agent had discovered a secret plan by the agency to arm the Nicaraguan contras with resources obtained from drug trafficking. Admitted into the protected witnesses program during the development of Operation Legend, charged with investigating Camarena's murder, the three former Mexican police officers gave Proceso a detailed account of the case, before and after the kidnapping, torture and murder of the DEA agent." 1

Mid-1980s: US Officials Allegedly Meet Directly with Bin Laden.

Mid-1980s: Pakistani ISI and CIA Gain from Drug Production.

Mid-1980s: Osama Bin Laden’s Brother Is Allegedly Involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.


March 1985: Reagan Sharply Increases Covert Support to Afghan Rebels.

April 1, 1985: Contra conspirator Robert Owen admits Contra's "now involved in drug running out of Panama."
nsarchive.gwu.edu...


July 12, 1985: Oliver North Acknowledges "Drugs".
nsarchive.gwu.edu...

August 9, 1985: Oliver North Describes a Contra Support Plne as "Probably Being Used to Run Drugs into US".
nsarchive.gwu.edu...

September 1985: White House Official Takes 23 Tons of Weapons to Iran.

December 12, 1985: Plane Crash in Canada Kills 256; Evidence Suggests Links to Iran-Contra and BCCI Covert Operations.

1985 or After: Islamic Jihad Receives CIA Money for Afghan Effort.

Late 1985 and After: State Department Official Joins NSC, CIA Officials in Funding Contras.

1985-1989: Precursor to Al-Qaeda Puts Down US Roots.

1985-1989: Bin Laden’s Mentor Azzam Recruits Fighters All Over World with Apparent CIA Support.

1985-1987: Iran-Contra Scandal: Shifted Guns & Money back and forth between Iran and Nicaragua. Drugs (mainly cocaine) are well known to ave come back on the return flights from Central America to the US.
en.wikipedia.org... nsarchive.gwu.edu...

Mid-1980’s: Freebase cocaine becomes popular. The crack epidemic batters inner cities.

Mid-1980's: What was Operation C-Chase?
In researching The Infiltrator true story, we learned that Operation C-Chase was an operation carried out by U.S. authorities in the mid-1980s to infiltrate a substantial money-laundering enterprise utilized by the drug cartels, including those run by Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega. The enterprise cleaned and moved hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The corrupt bank that was the focus of the investigation was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the seventh largest privately held financial institution in the world at the time, with assets totaling $20 billion. The bank, which had locations in the U.S., including Miami, was infiltrated by undercover U.S. Customs agents posing as big-time money launderers. One such agent was Robert Mazur (pictured in disguise below) -NBC News www.historyvshollywood.com...

1986: Bin Laden Works Indirectly with CIA.

1986: Anti-Drug Abuse Act - Mandatory Sentences.
"President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, instituting mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes. In conjunction with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the new law raised federal penalties for marijuana possession and dealing, basing the penalties on the amount of the drug involved. Possession of 100 marijuana plants received the same penalty as possession of 100 grams of heroin. A later amendment to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act established a "three strikes and you're out" policy, requiring life sentences for repeat drug offenders, and providing for the death penalty for "drug kingpins."" 1

February 10, 1986: More Contra Drug Running Documentated (Marijuana).
nsarchive.gwu.edu...

February 19, 1986: Barry Seal murdered.
Adler Berriman "Barry" Seal was a drug smuggler who, in the early 1980s, orchestrated the importation of thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana into the United States via a remote airstrip in rural west Arkansas. 1
Seal was a Medellín pilot who operated out of Mena, Arkansas, between 1976 and 1984, transporting cannabis, cocaine and later quaaludes from South America to the US. 1
But while working with the Ochoa Brothers from Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel, Seal was busted in Florida, in 1983. The Louisiana native soon went snitch and started working for the feds; the Philadelphia Inquirer later dubbed Seal "the most important witness in the history of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)." 1
If you happened to be traveling along a swampy, mosquito-infested route between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, La., back in the freewheeling 1980s, you may have witnessed an unusual occurrence: a half-dozen or so military duffle bags, each stuffed with 110 pounds of pure cocaine, plummeting from the sky. The man behind the drop was Barry Seal, who pushed them through a secret hatch in the floor of his airplane, installed there for precisely this purpose. One of the drug world’s most daring and ingenious smugglers, Seal was an action junkie who flew low and used Gulf of Mexico oil platforms to hide his presence. Associates, stationed below, retrieved the bags, each containing more than $1 million worth of product. Colombian drug kingpins knew the burly, middle-aged pilot as El Gordo: “The Fat Man.” American drug distributors valued him as their version of Fed Ex. DEA agents regarded Seal as a man who needed to be turned and used to fight the drug war. 1
The real-life Seal seems to have joined up with the CIA much earlier. The late investigative journalist Alexander Cockburn contended that Seal first came into contact with the CIA in the ’60s as a special forces helicopter pilot in Vietnam and maintained links with them throughout his TWA years. Other accounts suggest his links might have gone back as far as the Bay of Pigs. That last statement was quite the understatement. When you see the photos, you will understand why. 1
Seal was eventually arrested in connection with his drug smuggling activities. In a Florida federal court, he was indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. After his sentencing, Seal approached the DEA and offered to cooperate with the government as an informant. Federal officials agreed to use him as an informant and mentioned his cooperation during hearings in which Seal sought a reduction of his sentence. With an agreement reached, Seal began working as a federal informant in March 1984. Jacobsen told a House Judiciary Committee that Seal had flown to an airstrip in Nicaragua in an airplane that had cameras installed by the CIA. Seal took pictures during the Nicaragua sting operation that showed Pablo Escobar, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vásquez, and other members of the Medellín Cartel loading kilos of cocaine onto a C-123 transport plane. Federico Vaughan, whom Seal claimed was a top aide of Tomas Borge, the Sandinista Minister of the Interior, was also photographed with Sandinista soldiers helping load the plane. Seal was both a smuggler and a DEA informant/operative in this sting operation against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. In 1984, Seal flew from Nicaragua to Homestead Air Force Base in Florida with a shipment of cocaine that had been allegedly brokered through the Sandinista government. This cocaine was seized by the DEA and was never received by the cartel's distribution handlers in Florida, which in Medellín caused suspicion to fall upon Seal as the person responsible for this lost shipment. A report in the July 17, 1984 issue of the Washington Times by Edmond Jacoby linked officials in the Sandinista government to the Medellín cartel and discussed Seal's mission to Nicaragua. The public disclosures jeopardized Seal's life and quickly brought an end to the sting operation designed to capture the cartel's leaders. 1
In an interview with PBS, Oliver North refused to take blame for leaking the details of Seal’s work, which clashed with the work he was doing for the DEA. 1
President Reagan went on national TV with the photo Seal took.
Seal was sentenced to work in public service at the Salvation Army facility on Airline Highway (U.S. 61) in Baton Rouge, as a modification by the judge to Seal's original plea bargain. On February 19, 1986, Seal was shot to death in front of the site.

February 1986: The Contras' purchasing agent in New Orleans was Mario Calero, the brother of a senior Contra leader.
The CIA was told in February 1986 of allegations that Mario Calero was engaged in drug trafficking. But "no information has been found to indicate that CIA took any action in response", the report notes. 1 2

April 1986: "Guns Down, Drugs Up".
Many allegations concern the pilots who flew military supplies to the Contras. They were allegedly taking "guns down, drugs up" - filling their aircraft with cocaine on the return trip to the US. Carlos Amador, for instance, was flying supplies from Ilopango air base in El Salvador. A CIA cable in April 1986 reported that "a [Drugs Enforcement Administration] source stated that Amador was probably picking up cocaine in San Salvador to fly to Grand Caymen [sic] and then to South Florida". He warned that "[DEA] will request that San Salvador police investigate Amador and anyone associated with Hangar 4", part of the military facility used for supplying the Contras. The CIA response was direct: "Would appreciate Station advising [DEA] not to make any inquiries to anyone re Hangar no. 4 at Ilopango since only legitimate... supported operations were conducted from this facility." The operation at Hangar 4 was run by Lt-Col North, and his "Private Benefactors", who funded a secret war after the US Congress cut off funding for the Contras. There is evidence that Lt-Col North, too, knew of allegations that people working with his operation were involved in drug smuggling. In a diary note he recorded: "Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into US." 1

August 1986: Former DEA agent Celerino Castillo says in his book Powderburn that he became aware of drug smuggling through Ilopango.
He met Jack McCavett, "the mild-mannered CIA station chief in El Salvador", who said "we have nothing to do with that operation." Three days later, he called Mr Castillo over to his office, and pulled $45,000 from his desk drawer. "`I've got money left over from my budget," he said. `Take this for your anti-narcotics group. Go buy them some cars'."1

September 16, 1986: $10 Million Donation to Contras Cannot be Found.

September 19, 1986: Iranians Seek More US Arms, Take More Hostages.

October 5, 1986: Eugene H. Hasenfus, former "Air America" heroin pilot, shot down by Sandinistas over Nicaragua with plane full of guns.
Hasenfus was aboard a Fairchild C-123 cargo plane, N4410F, when it was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinista government. The plane had been flying weapons to the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels. After he was captured by the Nicaraguan government, he stated at a press conference that he had previously dropped supplies to CIA agents in South-east Asia, and that flights into Nicaragua were directly supervised by the CIA. His statement also included his recruitment by a friend in the CIA, an operation based in Ilopango airbase in El Salvador, supported by U.S. army colonel James J. Steele. The CIA and the U.S. government of Ronald Reagan denied any connection with the flight, though they said they supported any civilian effort to support the Contras. 1

October 9, 1986: Connections between CIA, US Government, and Contras Alleged.

October 10-15, 1986: State Department, CIA Officials Lie to Congress about Government Support for Contras.


November 13, 1986: Reagan Denies Iran Arms Deals in Address to Nation.

November 1986 : Two Lebanese newspapers break story of arms deal, Iran arms deal comes to an end.
www.brown.edu...

1986-1992: CIA and British Recruit and Train Militants Worldwide to Help Fight Afghan War.

1986-1993: The Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) aka Al-Kifah "Charity" Network Is Formed.
Branches open across the USA to fund the Afghan jihadi fighters. "The CIA has some murky connection to Al-Kifah that has yet to be fully explained. Newsweek will later say the Brooklyn office “doubled as a recruiting post for the CIA seeking to steer fresh troops to the mujaheddin” fighting in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Brooklyn office is where “veterans of [the Afghan war arrived] in the United States—many with passports arranged by the CIA.” Tey go on to not only have offices but actual terrorist training camps across the US. www.historycommons.org...

1987: Carlos Lehder busted.
Lehder started out as a stolen car dealer, a marijuana dealer, and a smuggler of stolen cars between the U.S. and Canada. While serving a sentence for car theft, he enlisted his prison bunkmate, former marijuana dealer George Jung, as a future partner. Jung had experience flying marijuana to the U.S. from Mexico in small aircraft, staying below radar level, and landing on dry lake beds. Inspired by the idea, Lehder decided to apply the principle to cocaine transport and formed a partnership with Jung. While in prison, Lehder set out to learn as much information as possible that could be useful to him in the cocaine business. He would sometimes even spend hours questioning fellow inmates about money laundering and smuggling. Jung allegedly said that Lehder kept countless files and constantly took notes. Lehder's ultimate scheme was to revolutionize the cocaine trade by transporting the drug to the United States, using small aircraft. In the late 1970s, the Lehder-Jung partnership began to diverge, due to some combination of Lehder's megalomania and his secret scheming to secure a personal Bahamian island as an all-purpose headquarters for his operations. That island was Norman's Cay, which at that point consisted of a marina, a yacht club, approximately 100 private homes, and an air strip. In 1978, Lehder began buying up property and harassing and threatening the island's residents; at one point, a yacht was found drifting off the coast with the corpse of one of its owners aboard. Lehder is estimated to have spent $4.5 million on the island in total. Having captured one of the Cartel's most powerful members, the U.S. government used him as a source of information about the details of the Cartel's secret empire, which later proved useful in assisting the Colombian government to dismantle the Cartel. In 1987, Lehder was extradited to the United States, where he was tried and sentenced to life without parole, plus an additional 135 years. Now all of the other cartel leaders knew what would happen if they were extradited, and soon afterward, the Medellín Cartel organizations split up. These smaller organizations, especially Escobar's, were later attacked by the Cali Cartel, the Colombian police/army, and soon by the U.S. government, as well. A violent war began as the Medellin Cartel leaders tried to protect themselves by fighting back. In 1992, in exchange for Lehder's agreement to testify against Manuel Noriega, his sentence was reduced to a total of 55 years. 1 During the drug-trafficking trial of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1991, U.S. prosecutors found themselves with no alternative but to call as a witness Colombian Medellín cartel kingpin Carlos Lehder, who — along with implicating Noriega — testified that the cartel had given $10 million to the Contras, an allegation first unearthed by Sen. Kerry. 1

1987-1991: KSM (9/11 mastermind) works in Afghanistan for Warlord Most Favored by CIA.

1987: CIA Funds Mujahedeen Leader Who Supports Bin Laden.

1987-1988: The CIA used Alan Hyde, a Honduran businessman, to transport guns by sea from mid-1987 to late 1988.
Mr Hyde had already been reported to be "making much money dealing in white gold, ie cocaine" and the US Coast Guard called him the "godfather" of criminal activity in the region. But, "There was a lot of pressure from [a senior CIA official] and DCI Casey to get the job done," a CIA officer recalled. In March 1993, a cable discouraged counter-narcotics efforts against Mr Hyde, because "his connection to [CIA] is well documented and could prove difficult in the prosecution stage". There is no evidence that the CIA told the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration or US Customs, that it was using Mr Hyde. 1

1988: ’Al-Qaeda’ Possibly the Name of a Computer Database.
"Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2003, will later say that “al-Qaeda” was originally the name of a database. In a 2005 article, Cook will write that bin Laden was “a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the ‘80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, literally ‘the database,’ was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujaheddin who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians".

1988-February 1992: US Support for Mujaheddin Declines; Funds from Saudi Donors Increase.


1988-Spring 1995: KSM’s Brother Works for Charity Allegedly Connected to CIA.
"Was used by the CIA to funnel money to Muslim militants fighting against US enemies in places such as Bosnia and Afghanistan". 1

Early 1988: Manuel Noriega says hopes Bush wins the elecation because he 'had him by the balls'.
"I've got Bush by the balls," Noriega boasted early this year, according to a former aide, Colonel Roberto Díaz Herrera, after the White House moved belatedly and unsuccessfully to oust Noriega. "Noriega has enough to sink Bush," Kozen says. Blandon adds, "This is why the Reagan administration is afraid of Noriega, because in this operation was involved Bush and his men." www.rollingstone.com...

April 1988: Soviet Union Announces It Will Withdraw All Troops from Afghanistan.

April 10, 1988: US Government Uninterested in Stopping Drug Trade in Afghanistan.
"The New York Times reports that “Afghanistan is one place where the drug issue has been subordinated to the [Reagan] administration’s policy of supporting anti-Communist insurgencies.” In interviews with The New York Times in 1986, dozens of Afghan rebel leaders admitted cultivating and selling opium poppies. US intelligence suspects that the same planes and trucks sending US aid to rebels in Afghanistan are returning to Pakistan with drugs. However, little is being done about this. One anonymous Reagan administration official tells the Times: “We’re not going to let a little thing like drugs get in the way of the political situation. And when the Soviets leave and there’s no money in the country, it’s not going to be a priority to disrupt the drug trade”."

August 11-20, 1988: Bin Laden Forms Al-Qaeda.



October 1988: State Department Envoy Warns Against Continued Support of Militant Islamists.

November 3, 1988: The Black Eagle aspect of the Contra Scandal Exposed.
"The ROLLING STONE investigation – based on congressional and court documents and more than fifty interviews with government diplomats, career military officers and intelligence agents, including key Black Eagle operatives – also found that General Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator indicted in the U.S. on drug charges early this year, played an important part in Black Eagle, making available his country's airfields and front companies to the American operatives. In exchange, Noriega appropriated Black Eagle's fleet of cargo planes to smuggle coc aine and marijuana into the U.S. on behalf of the notorious Medellín cartel of Colombia. Several of those involved with the operation contend that Bush and Gregg knew about Noriega's use of Black Eagle for drug running and that nothing was done to stop it."

November 8, 1988: Bush wins despite Iran-Contra Scandal, cocaine drugs.
National Media laregely to blame. en.wikipedia.org... See also: The CIA, Drug Trafficking and American Politics: The Political Economy of War www.youtube.com...

January 20, 1989: George HB Bush Inagurated as POTUS.

1989: Bush's War on Drugs.
President George Bush declares a new War on Drugs in a nationally televised speech.

February 15, 1989: Soviet Forces Withdraw from Afghanistan.

February 16, 1989-December 1990: CIA Continues to Work with ‘Blind Sheikh’ and Supports Mujaheddin Despite Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Fall 1989: CIA Assessments Finally Make Clear USSR Was In Trouble.
Now that the Military Industrial Complex based economy of the US was based on perpetual war, losing it "friend" of an enemy in the USSR would mean an "end" to the "need" for the CIA, its drug running, exuberant Pentagon budgets and much much more. Not unless its intelligence community could delver never ending broad and ubiquitous conflicts to engage in... www.cia.gov...

December 20, 1989: Panana invaded specifically to capture Manuel Noriega.
en.wikipedia.org... The Panama Deception: www.youtube.com...

1989 and After: CIA Supposedly Supports Muslim Charity Tied to Bin Laden.

Late 80's-Early 90's?: Pablo Escobar’s Son claims his dad “Worked for the CIA Selling Cocaine” — Media Silent
Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, son of notorious Medellín cartel drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, now says his father “worked for the CIA.” In a new book, “Pablo Escobar In Fraganti,” Escobar, who lives under the pseudonym, Juan Sebastián Marroquín, explains his “father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America.” “The drug business is very different than what we dreamed,” he continues. “What the CIA was doing was buying the controls to get the drug into their country and getting a wonderful deal.” “He did not make the money alone,” Marroquín elaborated in an interview, “but with US agencies that allowed him access to this money. He had direct relations with the CIA.” Notably, Marroquín added, “the person who sold the most drugs to the CIA was Pablo Escobar.” Where his first book primarily covered Escobar, the man as a father, Marroquín’s second — which has just been released in Argentina — delves into the kingpin’s “international ties of corruption in which my father had an active participation, among them with the American CIA,” he said in a recent interview. 1

1990: Contra Drug Smuggler Fabio Ernesto Carrasco Testifies.
"On October 31, 1996, the Washington Post ran a follow up story to the San Jose Mercury News series titled "CIA, Contras and Drugs: Questions on Links Linger." The story drew on court testimony in 1990 of Fabio Ernesto Carrasco, a pilot for a major Columbian drug smuggler named George Morales. As a witness in a drug trial, Carrasco testified that in 1984 and 1985, he piloted planes loaded with weapons for contras operating in Costa Rica. The weapons were offloaded, and then drugs stored in military bags were put on the planes which flew to the United States. "I participated in two [flights] which involved weapons and coc aine at the same time," he told the court." nsarchive.gwu.edu...

Late 1980s: Bin Laden, CIA, and ISI Train Core of Future Philippines Militant Group.

Late 1980s-Early 1990s: US Allows Radical Mujaheddin to Kill Thousands of Moderates in Afghanistan.

Late 1980s and After: CIA Blocks Investigations into Al-Qaeda’s ‘Operational Headquarters’ in US.

1990: Islamist Militants Set Up Operations in Bosnia.
"In 1991, Kherbane will set up a charity front in Croatia that is a branch of Maktab al-Khidamat/Al-Kifah, which is closely tied to al-Qaeda".

1990: US Customs intercepts 998lb. CIA cocaine shipment from Venezuela.
The incident, which was first made public in 1993, was part of a plan to assist an undercover agent to gain the confidence of a Colombian drug cartel. The plan involved the unsupervised shipment of hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Venezuela. The drug in the shipments was provided by the Venezuelan anti-drug unit which was working with the CIA, using cocaine seized in Venezuela. The shipments took place despite the objections of the U.S. DEA. When the failed plan came to light, the CIA officer in charge of the operation resigned, and his supervisor was transferred. In addition, the former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief General Ramon Guillen Davila and his chief civilian aide were both indicted in connection with the shipments. Because Venezuela does not extradite its citizens, Guillen was not tried in the U.S., but his civilian aide was arrested while in the United States and sentenced to 20 years. 123

1990: Donald "Trump argued in 1990 that the only way to win the War on Drugs was to legalize drugs and use the tax revenue to fund drug education programs.
As he put it, "You have to take the profit away from these drug czars." www.abovetopsecret.com...

May 1990: WaPo exposes CIA's Mujahadeen leader as heroin manufacturer: "U.S. DECLINES TO PROBE AFGHAN DRUG TRADE".
When the ISI proposed its Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as overall leader of the anti-Soviet resistance, Washington -- with few alternatives -- agreed. Over the next 10 years, the CIA supplied some $2 billion to Afghanistan's mujahedeen through the ISI, half to Hekmatyar, a violent fundamentalist infamous for throwing acid at unveiled women at Kabul University and, later, murdering rival resistance leaders. As the CIA operation was winding down in May 1990, the Washington Post published a front-page article charging that its key ally, Hekmatyar, was operating a chain of heroin laboratories inside Pakistan under the protection of the ISI. 1

November 27, 1990: US Intelligence Predicts Political Collapse and Civil War in Yugoslavia.

November 29, 1990: UN Resolution Leads to ‘Coalition’ of Nations Opposing Iraq Occupation of Kuwait.

1990-1993: DEA, CIA & US State Dept. backed "Los PEPES" paramilitary group formed to fight Pablo Escobar.
"Los Pepes, a name derived from the Spanish phrase "Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar" ("Persecuted by Pablo Escobar"), was a short-lived vigilante group composed of enemies of drug lord Pablo Escobar. ...There are reports that Los Pepes had ties to some members of the Colombian National Police, especially the Search Bloc (Bloque de Búsqueda), with whom they exchanged information in order to execute their activities against Escobar. According to documents released to the public by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2008, "Colombian National Police director general Miguel Antonio Gómez Padilla said 'that he had directed a senior CNP intelligence officer to maintain contact with Fidel Castaño, paramilitary leader of Los Pepes, for the purposes of intelligence collection'." en.wikipedia.org... "In 1993, Carlos Castaño, head of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC, in its Spanish acronym)—the main paramilitary entity—teamed with Colombian authorities and the CIA to topple Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar. Castaño estimated before his 2004 assassination that 70% of his funding derived from drug smuggling, and the DEA agreed. Its former deputy administrator, James Milford, cited Castaño’s links to the North Valle cartel and concluded that the paramilitary leader was a “major cocaine trafficker in his own right.” Another DEA official, Donnie Marshall, explained that the paramilitaries “raise funds through extortion, or by protecting laboratory operations in northern and central Colombia,” and that they “appear to be directly involved in processing cocaine. At least one of these paramilitary groups appears to be involved in exporting cocaine from Colombia.” www.alternet.org...
Gacha and other Colombian narcos, writes Ronderos, “learned quickly that if they aligned themselves with the anti-communist side of the [Colombian armed conflict], they’d face less obstacles” in conducting their business. The wisdom of those alliances would be borne out over the course of the following decades, as Washington poured ever more money, equipment, and training into a guerrilla counterinsurgency campaign that deployed paramilitary death squads as an extension of the Colombian military. The group that benefited most from this shadowy “para-state” nexus, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was made up, in large part, by disgruntled Medellin Cartel associates. After helping the DEA—and the Cali Cartel—eliminate Pablo Escobar, they picked right up where he had left off. 1

-1991: Other Cold War Era coups not covered directly herein:
1949 Syrian coup d'état 1949–1953 Albania 1951–56 Tibet 1956–57 Syria crisis 1957–58 Indonesian rebellion 1958 Lebanon crisis 1959 Cambodian "Bangkok Plot"  1959–2000 Cuba, assassination attempts on Fidel Castro 1960 Congo coup 1961 Cuba, Operation Mongoose 1961 Dominican Republic 1964 Bolivian coup d'état 1964 Brazilian coup d'état 1965 Dominican Republic 1966 Ghana coup d'état 1970 Cambodian coup  1971 Bolivian coup d'état 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor  1980–92 Angola, UNITA 1982 Chad 1983 Invasion of Grenada 1991 Haiti Foreign electoral intervention

1991: US Convinces Bosnian President to Renege on Agreement that would have prevented the breakup of Yugoslavia.

1991: Al-Qaeda Begins Infiltrating Balkans Region Through MAK Charity Front.

June 1991: Bosnian Muslims Begin Forming and Arming Private Army.

June 25, 1991: Croatia and Slovenia Declare Independence; War Between Croatia and Serbia Begins.

Mid-1991-1996: Bin Laden-Linked Charity Front Funnels Billions of Dollars to Bosnia for Weapons.

July 5, 1991: Criminal BCCI Bank Is Shut Down.

July 1991: Bin Laden Loses Money in BCCI; Begins Profiting from Drug Trade.

September 26, 1991: UN Imposes Arms Embargo on All Countries in Former Yugoslavia Region.

December 26, 1991: Soviet Union Dissolves. American Imperialism keeps finding new "enemies" to keep marhing on...

1991-1995: Rich Saudis Fund Bosnia Fighters through Alleged Bin Laden Charity Front.

1991-1995: German Intelligence Illegally Arms Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

1992-1995: Pentagon Helps Bring Islamic Militants to Fight with Bosnians Against Serbs.

1992: Bin Laden’s Main Charity Front in US Turns Focus to Supporting Bosnian War.

Early 1990s: Al-Kifah’s Bosnia War Branch Is Connected to Terrorist Attacks and Brooklyn Office.

1992-1995: KSM Fights and Fundraises in Bosnia.

1992-1999: The CIA's Afghanistan aftermath.
After investing $3 billion in Afghanistan's destruction, Washington just walked away in 1992, leaving behind a thoroughly ravaged country with over one million dead, five million refugees, 10-20 million landmines still in place, an infrastructure in ruins, an economy in tatters, and well-armed tribal warlords prepared to fight among themselves for control of the capital. Even when Washington finally cut its covert CIA funding at the end of 1991, however, Pakistan's ISI continued to back favored local warlords in pursuit of its long-term goal of installing a Pashtun client regime in Kabul. Throughout the 1990s, ruthless local warlords mixed guns and opium in a lethal brew as part of a brutal struggle for power.  It was almost as if the soil had been sown with those dragons' teeth of ancient myth that can suddenly sprout into an army of full-grown warriors, who leap from the earth with swords drawn for war.When northern resistance forces finally captured Kabul from the communist regime, which had outlasted the Soviet withdrawal by three years, Pakistan still backed its client Hekmatyar.  He, in turn, unleashed his artillery on the besieged capital.  The result: the deaths of an estimated 50,000 more Afghans. Even a slaughter of such monumental proportions, however, could not win power for this unpopular fundamentalist.  So the ISI armed a new force, the Taliban and in September 1996, it succeeded in capturing Kabul, only to fight the Northern Alliance for the next five years in the valleys to the north of the capital. During this seemingly unending civil war, rival factions leaned heavily on opium to finance the fighting, more than doubling the harvest to 4,600 tons by 1999. Throughout these two decades of warfare and a twenty-fold jump in drug production, Afghanistan itself was slowly transformed from a diverse agricultural ecosystem -- with herding, orchards, and over 60 food crops -- into the world's first economy dependent on the production of a single illicit drug. In the process, a fragile human ecology was brought to ruin in an unprecedented way. During these two decades of war, however, modern firepower devastated the herds, damaged snowmelt irrigation systems, and destroyed many of the orchards. While the Soviets simply blasted the landscape with firepower, the Taliban, with an unerring instinct for their society's economic jugular, violated the unwritten rules of traditional Afghan warfare by cutting down the orchards on the vast Shamali plain north of Kabul. All these strands of destruction knit themselves into a veritable Gordian knot of human suffering to which opium became the sole solution.  Like Alexander's legendary sword, it offered a straightforward way to cut through a complex conundrum. Without any aid to restock their herds, reseed their fields, or replant their orchards, Afghan farmers -- including some 3 million returning refugees -- found sustenance in opium, which had historically been but a small part of their agriculture. 1

January 21, 1992: US Ambassador Says US Is Trying to Break Up Yugoslavia. 1 2 3

February 23-March 18, 1992: US Discourages Bosnian Muslim Leader from Signing Agreement to Avoid War.

March 1, 1992: Bosnian War begins.

April 5, 1992: Siege of Sarajevo begins.

April 6, 1992: Bosnia Declares Independence; War between Bosnia and Serbia Begins.

After April 6, 1992: CIA Paramilitary Fights in Bosnia.

Shortly After April 6, 1992: Mujaheddin Begin Arriving in Bosnia to Fight against Serbs.

Autumn 1992: Al-Qaeda Builds Operations in Bosnia to Attack Europe and US.

September 1992: Charity Front Exposed as Illegal Weapons Pipeline, but No Action Taken Against It.

September 1992 and After: Al-Zawahiri Frequently Visits Bosnia, Works with Bosnian Muslim Politicians.

Mid-September 1992: Bosnia Muslims Stage Attack from Sarajevo Hospital to Discredit Serbians.

Late 1992-1995: US and Saudis Allegedly Collaborate on Illegal Weapons Deliveries to Bosnian Muslims.
The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports on western intelligence ever published. One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism". In the 1980s Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia. The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah. Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East. Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially hazardous operations. Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon's own secret service was the hidden force behind these operations. Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at Srebrenica. Both the CIA and British SIS had a more sophisticated perspective on the conflict than the Pentagon, insisting that no side had clean hands and arguing for caution. James Woolsey, director of the CIA until May 1995, had increasingly found himself out of step with the Clinton White House over his reluctance to develop close relations with the Islamists. 1

Late 1992-Early 1993: Bosnian Charity Front Funds Training Camp and Militant Bombers in US.

December 1992: US Army Allegedly Tries to Get Radical Militants in New York to Fight in Bosnia.

December 1992: Saudi Embassy Pays Radical Militants in US to Fight in Bosnia.

December 1992-June 1993: Ali Mohamed and Other Former US Soldiers Train Al-Qaeda Fighters in Bosnia.

December 8, 1992: UN and Senior Western Military Officials Claim Bosnian Muslims Are Attacking Their Own People to Gain International Sympathy.

December 1992-Early February 1993: Islamist Militants Learn to Fight at Pennsylvania Training Camp (For Balkan's Conflict).
"An FBI informant named Garrett Wilson helps lead the FBI to the camp, and the FBI monitors it for two days, January 16 and 17, but the monitoring team is mysteriously pulled away before the end of the second day". 1

1993: "The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War".
"In The Big White Lie, Michael Levine, former DEA agent...tells how the beautiful South American "Queen of Cocaine" seduced the CIA into protecting her from prosecution as she sold drugs to Americans; how CIA-sponsored paramilitary ousted, tortured, and killed members of a pro-DEA Bolivian ruling party; and how the CIA created La Corporacion, the "General Motors of cocaine," which led directly to the current cocaine/crack epidemic. As a 25-year veteran agent for the DEA, Michael Levine worked deep-cover cases from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, and witnessed firsthand scandalous violations of drug laws by U.S. officials." www.amazon.com...

1993: US-Based Charity Helps Send Nine Elite Al-Qaeda Trainers to Bosnia.

1993: US Government Turns Blind Eye to Illegal Weapons Pipeline to Muslim Bosnia.

1993: Albanian Drug Smuggling Profits Fund Muslim Arms Buildup in Balkans.

1993: US Begins Construction on Airfield Used for Bosnia Arms Pipeline.

1993: Bin Laden Visits Bosnia, Supports Muslim President Izetbegovic.

1993: Al-Zawahiri’s Brother Help Manage Mujaheddin in Bosnia Using Charity Cover; Bosnian President Izetbegovic Grants Bin Laden Passport as Gesture of Appreciation.

1993: DEA agent Richard Horn is shutdown in Burma by the CIA & State Dept. after making substantial progress in its drug law enforcement efforts.
“The CIA and State Department’s OIGs [Office of Inspector Generals] gave notice to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency and they also notified the appropriate [Congressional] committees about the corruption allegations raised in [former DEA agent] Horn’s litigation,” says the Congressional source, who asked not to be named. The source adds that an investigation is now underway by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and possibly additional committees, that is focused not only on the corruption charges that surfaced in Horn’s lawsuit, but also some “bigger issues.” 1 Documents Released by WikiLeaks Could Serve as Evidence In Ongoing Congressional Investigation Focused on State Department, CIA. The interception of Hom's conversation [in Burma] was accomplished through a concerted effort by the Department of State, the CIA, and the NSA [which is part of the Department of Defense]. When later stationed in New Orleans as a Group Supervisor for DEA, Special Agent Horn [who is now retired from the DEA] acquired reliable information that it was a pattern and practice of the three Defendant agencies to intercept conversations that DEA agents and others had either from their GLQ's [government-leased quarters] in foreign posts, or from DEA offices at American Embassies, and Consulates and other locations at foreign posts. This pattern and practice was not isolated to this one incident in Rangoon, Burma, nor was it isolated to Special Agent Horn, nor was it isolated to the country of Burma, but instead, it was a pattern and practice of the three Defendant agencies to conduct such activity in other foreign posts wherein DEA has offices. 1 “The CIA and State Department’s OIGs [Office of Inspector Generals] gave notice to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency and they also notified the appropriate [Congressional] committees about the corruption allegations raised in [former DEA agent] Horn’s litigation,” says the Congressional source, who asked not to be named. The source adds that an investigation is now underway by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and possibly additional committees, that is focused not only on the corruption charges that surfaced in Horn’s lawsuit, but also some “bigger issues.” 1

1993-1995: Former US Intelligence Agent and Arms Dealer Victor Bout Develop Town that Becomes Hub for Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 Plot.

January 20, 1993: Bill Clinton Inaugurated POTUS.
"A true paradox lies at the heart of the Clinton legacy. Both Hillary and Bill continue to enjoy enormous popularity among African Americans despite the devastating legacy of a presidency that resulted in the impoverishment and incarceration of hundreds of thousands of poor and working-class black people. Most shockingly, the total numbers of state and federal inmates grew more rapidly under Bill Clinton than under any other president, including the notorious Republican drug warriors Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush. This fact alone should at least make one pause before granting unquestioning fealty to Hillary, but of course there are many others, including her entry into electoral politics through the 1964 Goldwater campaign, resolute support for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, race-baiting tactics in the 2008 election, and close ties to lobbyists for the private prison industry. Nevertheless, until the encounter with BLM protestors in August 2015, few publicly called out the Clintons’ shared culpability for our contemporary prison nation that subjects a third of African American men to a form of correctional control in their lifetime." newrepublic.com...

February 26, 1993: WTC Bombing.
A prominent member of MAK is later convicted for a role in the attack. KSM involvment. "The New York Times later reports on Emad Salem, an undercover agent who will be the key government witness in the trial against Yousef. Salem testifies that the FBI knew about the attack beforehand and told him they would thwart it by substituting a harmless powder for the explosives. However, an FBI supervisor called off this plan, and the bombing was not stopped."


Spring 1993: Second Group of US Militants Linked to Al-Kifah Charity Front Fight in Bosnia.

Early April 1993: FBI Links Bombers in US to Bosnian Charity Front; But Bosnian Link Is Not Explored.

June 1993: Saudis Urge US to Lead in Military Assistance to Bosnian Muslims.

November 1993: Venezuelan National Guard Affair.
"The CIA, in spite of objections from the Drug Enforcement Administration, allowed at least one ton of nearly pure coc aine to be shipped into Miami International Airport. The CIA claimed to have done this as a way of gathering information about Colombian drug cartels, but the coc aine ended up being sold on the street. In November 1993, the former head of the DEA, Robert C. Bonner appeared on 60 Minutes and criticized the CIA for allowing several tons of pure coc aine to be smuggled into the U.S. via Venezuela without first notifying and securing the approval of the DEA." en.wikipedia.org...

December 2, 1993: Cocaine kingpin, head of Medellín Cartel, Pablo Escobar finally found and killed.
Los PEPES becomes "AUC" and goes on to take over portions of his drug network. "An estimated 700 emails from the computer of former AUC commander and drug lord Vicente Castaño revealed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and many top Colombian politicians may have been working with the paramilitary group. ...One of the messages revealed that Vicente’s brother Carlos, who founded the extreme right paramilitary group the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU) with Vicente, allegedly spoke with CIA agents to help American authorities capture the leaders of the Cali Cartel, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela and Jose Santacruz-Londoño." colombiareports.com...

December 3, 1993: "The CIA drug connection is as old as the Agency".
The Justice Department is investigating allegations that officers of a special Venezuelan anti-drug unit funded by the CIA smuggled more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States with the knowledge of CIA officials - despite protests by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the organization responsible for enforcing U.S. drug laws. www.nytimes.com...

Late 1993-1994: US Investigators Discover Links Between WTC Bombing and Mujaheddin Fighting in Bosnian War.

January 1, 1994: After being heavily promoted by Bill & Hillary Clinton, NAFTA signed into law.
During the first year of his administration, President Bill Clinton made free trade a top priority, pushing for the passage of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement. It wasn’t an easy task. Having helped Democrats take the White House for the first time in twelve years, organized labor was in no mood to see manufacturing jobs shipped to Mexico. The debate was difficult enough without having to talk about the sprawling Mexican drug trade and its attendant corruption. And how the agreement would also end up benefiting the cartels. So he ordered his people not to talk about it. “We were prohibited from discussing the effects of NAFTA as it related to narcotics trafficking, yes.” Phil Jordan, who had been one of the DEA’s leading authorities on Mexican drug organizations, told ABC News reporter Brian Ross four years after the deal had gone through. “For the godfathers of the drug trade in Colombia and Mexico, this was a deal made in narco heaven.” The agreement squeaked through Congress in late 1993 and went into effect January 1, 1994, the same day that the Zapatistas rose up in southeast Mexico. With its passage, more than two million trucks began flowing northward across the border annually. Only a small fraction of them were inspected for cocaine, heroin, or meth. The opening of the border came at an opportune time for Mexican drug runners, who had recently expanded their control of the cocaine trade and made major investments in large-scale meth production. The number of meth-related emergency-room visits in the United States doubled between 1991 and 1994. In San Diego, America’s meth capital, meth seizures climbed from 1,409 pounds in 1991 to 13,366 in 1994. 1
NAFTA also wrecked US industries, impoverished cities, while we all know poverty leads to crime & drugs along with infrastructural & environmental degradation. 1 2 3 4 5
 
1994: Clinton signed into law an omnibus crime bill in 1994 that included the federal "three strikes" provision, mandating life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes.
Bill Clinton overstated the effect of the crime bill he signed in 1994 when he said, “because of that bill we had a 25-year low in crime, a 33-year low in the murder rate.” Independent analyses have found that the bill had a modest effect on crime rates. The law at issue was the sweeping Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which provided funding for tens of thousands of community police officers and drug courts, banned certain assault weapons, and mandated life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes. The mandated life sentences were known as the “three-strikes” provision. A study by the Brennan Center for Justice in 2015 found that, “Incarceration has been declining in effectiveness as a crime control tactic since before 1980. Since 2000, the effect of increasing incarceration on the crime rate has been essentially zero.” The trend toward increased incarceration began in the early 1970s, and quadrupled in the ensuing four decades. A two-year study by the National Research Council concluded that the increase was historically unprecedented, that the U.S. far outpaced the incarceration rates elsewhere in the world, and that high incarceration rates have disproportionately affected Hispanic and black communities. The report cited policies enacted by officials at all levels that expanded the use of incarceration, largely in response to decades of rising crime. “In the 1970s, the numbers of arrests and court caseloads increased, and prosecutors and judges became harsher in their charging and sentencing,” the report states. “In the 1980s, convicted defendants became more likely to serve prison time.” Indeed, this trend continued with tough-on-crime policies through the 1990s as well, but to lay the blame for the incarceration trend entirely, or even mostly, at the feet of the 1994 crime bill ignores the historical trend. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t have any effect. Experts told us the law exacerbated the trend. And so Clinton’s defense that “90 percent of the people in prison too long are in state prisons and local jails,” rather than federal prisons, is a bit misleading. It suggests the law only affected federal prisons, and that’s not accurate. The bill included a federal “three-strikes” provision which required mandatory life imprisonment without possibility of parole for those who commit federal violent felonies if they had two or more previous convictions for violent felonies or drug trafficking crimes. In his mea culpa in August, Clinton said that while most people are in prison under state law, “the federal law set a trend.” The bill also had a more direct impact on state prison populations. It included $8.7 billion for prison construction to states that passed “truth-in-sentencing” laws requiring that people convicted of violent crimes serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The New York Times at the time noted that those convicted of violent crimes served “55 percent of their sentences,” citing Justice Department data. So while it may go too far to blame the 1994 crime bill for mass incarceration, it did create incentives for states to build prisons and increase sentences, and thereby contributed to increased incarceration. 1

March 13, 1994: Report: Violence, Drugs, and Militant Training Camps Are Rife in Afghanistan.

Shortly After April 9, 1994: Bin Laden Travels to Albania, Meets with Government Officials.

April 27, 1994: US Gives Bosnians Green Light To Smuggle Arms.

August 1994: Private Military Contractor MPRI Brought in by State Dept to Assist Bosnian Muslim Forces.

September 1994-1996: Al-Zawahiri Manages Bosnian Mujaheddin from Bulgarian Base.

Early September 1994: US Military Begins Advising and Assisting Bosnian Muslim Army.

October 1994: CIA and ISI Allegedly Give Help and Secret Cache of Weapons to Taliban.

November 1994: Bin Laden Seen Meeting with President of Muslim Bosnia.


1994: Bin Laden Seen Repeatedly Meeting with Bosnian Muslim President Izetbegovic.

1994: US Intelligence Known to be Aware of Bin Laden’s Terrorist Ties in Bosnia by This Time.

1994: DEA Agents Accused in Court Pleadings of Dealing Heroin As Part of 1990s Pakistan Connection.
A top gun with the DEA’s Special Operations Division, along with two fellow law enforcers, are not what they seem, if Gaetano (Guy) DiGirolamo Sr., a convicted heroin dealer, is to be believed. The trio are, in fact, drug dealers themselves, argues Yale law professor Steven B. Duke in court pleadings filed on behalf of his client, DiGirolamo. Documents recently provided to Narco News by DiGirolamo (uncovered years after his conviction), as well as revelations that have surfaced recently in the case of national security whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, seem to open the door to reasonable doubt in the government’s case against DiGirolamo. “In December 1999, (the federal judge) dismissed the entire case in one of the most bizarre opinions I have ever seen,” Duke says. “... Essentially, (the judge) said it didn’t matter if the DEA agents were corrupt smugglers.” DiGirolamo appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Last year, the appeals court ruled against DiGirolamo, not on the merits, but because he “did not file a timely notice of appeal.” As a result, the appeals court concluded, “we lack jurisdiction to consider the denial of his habeas petition.” 1

1994-1997: US Supports Taliban Rise to Power.

Late 1994-Late 1995: US Secretly Supplies Bosnian Muslims Through Remote Airport Controlled by Corrupt and Radical Militant Clan.

After 1994-1999: CIA and Bin Laden Train KLA in Albania.

1995: 9/11 Hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar Fight in Bosnia.

1995-1998: Alleged Ties Between Al-Qadi Charity and Terrorist Groups Are Uncovered; No Action Taken.

1995-2001: Persian Gulf Elite Go Hunting with Bin Laden and Mullah Omar in Afghanistan.

1995: "Dark Alliance" News Series is Published by Journalist Gary Webb.
"The lead of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of coc aine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's coc aine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The coc aine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."" en.wikipedia.org...


1995: Secret Guatemalan Military Unit, Linked to C.I.A., Dies and Is Born Again.
Officially, that new service will replace the disbanded, despotic unit known as "the Archivo," whose ranks have included the Guatemalan colonel and C.I.A. agent linked to the 1990 slaying of an American citizen. But the Archivo -- which for years spied on and sometimes murdered Guatemalans -- is still in business, though under a different name, foreign diplomats and a former Guatemalan Defense Minister say. And death-squad killings, torture and the arbitrary detention of peasants, students, academic figures and political leaders are still going on Guatemala, the United Nations mission there reported in March. The Clinton Administration suspended most of the covert aid flowing from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Guatemalan military last week, preserving only a counternarcotics program. But the deep and tangled connections between the C.I.A. and its "assets" in Guatemala continue to enhance the military's dominance as civilians try to secure control of the nation's politics.The question of who paid for the building seems to be a sensitive one. A construction company executive working on the project, Jesus Garcia, said it would be a Defense Ministry office. Asked where the money came from, he laughed nervously. Not the Defense Ministry, he said, but "another agency that I can't identify, exactly." A senior State Department official involved in Guatemala policy, asked if any American money went toward construction of the building, replied: "I don't think I can get into that. There shouldn't be." The State Department official said the question could only be answered by the Clinton Administration's sweeping investigation of C.I.A. involvement in Guatemala -- an elaborate search for facts that has proved so difficult that one senior White House official called it "a total nightmare." The C.I.A.'s direct financial support for Guatemala's military intelligence services totaled roughly $30 million during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton Administrations, according to United States intelligence officials. As the cold war wound down and Central America ceased to be a battlefield between the superpowers, it fell from a peak of about $4.5 million in 1989 to about $1 million this year. The same critics in Congress and the State Department who say the C.I.A has undermined human rights policy on Guatemala say the agency did good work when its focus shifted from the war on Communism to the war on drugs in the early 1990's. "The only reason to have a C.I.A. station down there is because of the war on drugs," said Thomas F. Stroock, the Ambassador to Guatemala from 1989 to 1992. "But if you're going to interdict drugs, you have to use the agency involved in the country. Unfortunately, in Guatemala, that's the army. The Guatemalan military has the power to stop United States drug operations any time it wishes. At least 10 current and former Guatemalan military officers have been identified by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies as suspects in cocaine trafficking. And "officers strongly suspected of trafficking in narcotics rarely face criminal prosecution," according to a recent State Department report. In one recent example, a lieutenant colonel in the Guatemalan Army, Carlos Ochoa Ruiz, was indicted in Florida on charges of shipping more than 1,000 pounds of Colombian cocaine through Guatemala. In March 1994, the highest-ranking justice in Guatemala, Epaminondas Gonzalez Dubon, president of the Constitutional Court, ruled in favor of Colonel Ochoa's extradition to the United States. A few days later, four men assassinated the justice.

Early 1995: Bosnian Leaders Admit They Are Using Anti-Serb Propaganda to Prompt Intervention.

January 17, 1995–December 21, 2000: George W Bush Serves as Governor of Texas.

February 1995: Albanian Narco-Terrorism Destabilizes the Balkans.

February-March 1995: Frequent Secret US Supported Flights Supplying Arms to Bosnian Muslims.

August 7, 1995: Clinton Sides with Interventionists on Yugoslavia During Cabinet Meeting.

August 27, 1995: CIA and Albanian Intelligence Recruit Knowledgeable Informer.

September 1995: Raid Does Not Stop Bosnian Charity Front Controlling Illegal Weapons Pipeline.

October 1, 1995: US Army Officer: Propaganda Machine Whipping Up Support for US Intervention in Bosnia.

October 20, 1995: KSM Possibly Helps with Revenge Bombing in Croatia.

December 14, 1995: Dayton Accords Brings End to Bosnian War.

December 14, 1995: Militant Leader’s Death Reveals Links between Bosnian Government and Al-Qaeda Leaders.

1996: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia Said to Make Secret Deals with Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

1996: Al-Qaeda Linked Financier Reportedly Gives Money to Bosnian Muslim President Izetbegovic.

January 1996-September 10, 2001: Canada Takes No Action Against Founding Al-Qaeda Leader, Despite Evidence Against Him.


November 15, 1996: LAPD Police Officer Michael Ruppert confronts CIA Directer on illegal drug activities in a town hall forum.
"On November 15, 1996, then Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch visited Los Angeles' Locke High School for a town hall meeting. At the meeting, Ruppert publicly confronted Deutch, saying that in his experience as an LAPD narcotics officer he had seen evidence of CIA complicity in drug dealing."

1996: "Freeway" Rick Ross busted.
With thousands of employees, Ross has said he operated drug sales not only in Los Angeles but in places across the country including St. Louis, New Orleans, Texas, Kansas City, Oklahoma, Indiana, Cincinnati, North Carolina, South Carolina, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Seattle. He has said that his most lucrative sales came from the Ohio area. He made similar claims in a 1996 PBS interview. According to the Oakland Tribune, "In the course of his rise, prosecutors estimate that Ross exported several tons of cocaine to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and made more than $600 million in the process." Adjusting for inflation using the Consumer Price Index, this becomes more than a billion dollars. Ross's capture was facilitated by his main source, drug lord Oscar Danilo Blandón, who set up Ross. Blandón had close ties with the Contras, and had met with Contra leader Enrique Bermúdez on several occasions. Blandón was the link between the CIA and Contras during the Iran-Contra affair. Gary Webb interviewed Ross several times before breaking the story in 1996. Ross claims that the reason he was unfairly tried initially was because of his involvement in the scandal. 1


1996: Medical Marijuana Use Legalized in California.
California voters passed Proposition 215 allowing for the sale and medical use of marijuana for patients with AIDS, cancer, and other serious and painful diseases. This law stands in tension with federal laws prohibiting possession of marijuana.

1996-1999: Albanian Mafia and KLA Take Control of Balkan Heroin Trafficking Route.

1996-2001: Moussaoui Recuits Muslims to Fight in Kosovo and Chechnya.

1996-September 11, 2001: FBI Directly Monitors Militants in Afganistan with Hi-Tech Phone Booth.

1996-September 11, 2001: Enron Gives Taliban Millions in Bribes in Effort to Get Afghan Pipeline Built.

1996 and After: Al-Qaeda Revives Bosnia Connections through Saudi Government Charity; US Fails to Shut Charity Down.

1996-2001: 1989 Speech by Milosevic Wildly Distorted by Western Media.
"Professor Gil White will point out in 2002 that Slobodan Milosevic’s 1989 speech in Kosovo in front of a huge crowd is consistently misrepresented as a call to ethnic war, when in fact it was the exact opposite—a call for racial tolerance and reconciliation." 1

January 1996: CIA Report Exposes Militant Charity Fronts in Bosnia; Ties to Saudi Arabia and Other Governments Discovered.

January 2, 1996: New Republic Editors Say Bosnian Intervention Aimed at Increasing US Influence in Middle East.

February 1996: The "Osama Bin Laden Unit" formed.

February 29, 1996: Siege of Sarajevo ends.

May 1996: US Seeks Stability in Afghanistan for Unocal Pipeline.

May 18, 1996: Sudan Expels Bin Laden; US Fails to Stop His Flight to Afghanistan; Quickly Alligns With the Taliban After Arrival in Afghanistan.

June 1996: Bin Laden Meets with Pakistani Military Leaders.

June 27, 1996: US Monitors Bin Laden Taking Credit for Khobar Towers Bombing.

Mid-1996-October 2001: Ariana Airlines Becomes Transport Arm of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
"In 1996, al-Qaeda assumes control of Ariana Airlines, Afghanistan’s national airline, for use in its illegal trade network. Passenger flights become few and erratic, as planes are used to fly drugs, weapons, gold, and personnel, primarily between Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Pakistan".

July 18, 1996: State Department Calls Afghanistan an ‘Ideal Haven’ for Bin Laden.

August 1996: Bin Laden Calls for Attack on Western Targets in Arabia.

August 1996: CIA Aware ISI Is Funding Radical Militant Group with Bin Laden and Taliban Links; No Action Taken.

September 27, 1996: Victorious Taliban Supported by Pakistan; Viewed by US, Unocal as Stabilizing Force.

September 30, 1996: CIA Reports Taliban Are Keeping Bin Laden’s Training Camps Open, Closing Some Other Camps.

September 1996-June 2000: Bosnian Intelligence Completely Penetrated by Al-Qaeda.

November 1996-Late August 1998: The NSA Begins Monitors Bin Laden Himself On His Satellite Phone; Refused To Share Any Info With Other US Intelligence Agencies.
Had they, the US military could have easily captured Bin Laden, or better yet bombed him by targetting the phone via it's built in Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS). They go on to record him for over 2000 hours through late 1998. [If they wouldn't share any info were they just monitoring him for mere entertainment purposes?] www.abovetopsecret.com...

December 1996-June 1999: US Military Fails to Help CIA Plan Operations Against Bin Laden.

Late 1996: Bin Laden Becomes Active in Opium Trade. 1

Late 1996: Pakistan ISI Returns Afghanistan Training Camps to Bin Laden and Subsidizes Their Costs.

1997: Operation GLADIO/B (Al Qaeda).
'Operation Gladio B' is an FBI codename used since 1997 for ongoing relations between US intelligence, the Pentagon and Al Qaeda. This was revealed by whistleblower Sibel Edmonds (whose information, Daniel Ellsberg says is "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"). The original Operation Gladio was the European network of fascist "stay-behind" cells that NATO/CIA/MI6 trained to carry out bombings and assassinations in the event of a Soviet invasion. Gladio B substituted Muslims for fascists, and continues to carry out false flag attacks, especially in Europe.  Sibel Edmonds revealed that senior US intelligence agents were regularly meeting Ayman al-Zawahiri (then leader of Al Qaeda) at the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan and Baku, starting in 1997 and continuing right up to the 9/11 attacks. They were also meeting members of the bin Laden family (including Osama Bin Laden) and other mujahideen who were transported by NATO aircraft to Central Asia and the Balkans to participate in false flag "destabilization operations". Other people were also flown, on US Intelligence orders, to Turkey, a major base of the operations where agents were trained and prepared to participate in these operations. Edmonds specifically reported that some of the 9/11 hijackers were being trained there. This fits with Michael Springmann's testimony that his visa denials to the majority of the 19 hijackers were regularly overruled by the US State Department.1

1990's-Present Day: Operation GLADIO/B (Gülen Band).
Islamic group is CIA front, ex-Turkish intel chief says A memoir by a top former Turkish intelligence official claims that a worldwide moderate Islamic movement based in Pennsylvania has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s. The memoir, roughly rendered in English as “Witness to Revolution and Near Anarchy,” by retired Turkish intelligence official Osman Nuri Gundes, says the religious-tolerance movement, led by an influential former Turkish imam by the name of Fethullah Gulen, has 600 schools and 4 million followers around the world. In the 1990s, Gundes alleges, the movement "sheltered 130 CIA agents" at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone, according to a report on his memoir Wednesday by the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter.The book has caused a sensation in Turkey since it was published last month.
Turkish Intel Chief Exposes CIA Operations via Islamic Group in Central Asia Yesterday Washington Post’s Jeff Stein published a very interesting but incomplete story regarding a recently published memoir by former Turkish Intelligence Chief Osman Nuri Gundes. There is no mention of Gulen’s decade-long ‘wanted’ status in Turkey (until recently), no mention of the ban on Gulen and his Madrasas in several Central Asian countries, no mention of various investigations of Gulen by other western countries, no mention of the unknown sources of his billions of dollars…As we all know except for a very few, and by that I mean a number in 100s if that, no one in this country has ever heard of this guy with his billions, with his castle in Pennsylvania, his hundreds of Madrasas, now hundreds of US charter schools, his dubious businesses….Yet, for an article as serious as this (Madrasas and mosques as CIA operation centers in Central Asia), the central figure in the story has been given one sentence; no history, no relevant facts…
The Deep State Gülen has cultivated some powerful friends in the United States. When U.S. officials were trying to expel him to face criminal charges in Turkey, he was able to call on Graham Fuller, a former senior official in the C.I.A., to help him remain. When he applied for permanent residency, Morton Abramowitz, another former Ambassador to Turkey, wrote a letter on his behalf. Fuller’s relationship with Gülen, in particular, has prompted conspiracy theories in Turkey about the C.I.A.’s involvement in Gülen’s rise.
Exclusive: Gulen Movement Funded by Heroin Via the CIA?  Court records and the testimony of former government officials show that Fethullah Gulen, who presently resides in Pennsylvania, has amassed more than $25 billion in assets from the heroin route which runs from Afghanistan to Turkey. Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, testified that the drug money has been channeled into Gulen’s coffers by the CIA. “A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes,” Ms. Edmonds said. “After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the US via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago, and Paterson, New Jersey.” Ms. Edmonds further said that Turkish diplomats, who would never be searched by airport officials, have come into the country “with suitcases of heroin.”
Gülen Band Owns $60 billion, Runs Heroin Network The daily Turkish newspaper, Akşam, interviewed the FBI consultant Paul L. Williams who, as a specialist on radical Islam and terrorism, has studied the Islamist cleric Fethullah Gülen and his gang for years. He even made it into Gülen’s enormous mansion in Pennsylvania and had a look at the shady community behind the scenes. He claimed that the Gülen Band holds a great amount of property all around the world, approximating at $5 billion, and takes its real strength from drug dealing. According to Williams, Fethullah Gülen and his band initially worked for the USA’s interests over the middle-east region.
WikiLeaked: 5 Things to Know About the Islamist Empire Trying to Take Down Erdogan  The Gulen movement frequently claims it is not a political organization, but it’s generally acknowledged that Gulen’s followers are disproportionately represented in Turkey’s National Police. One U.S. embassy cable from 2009 states that "the assertion that the [Turkish National Police, TNP] is controlled by Gulenists is impossible to confirm but we have found no one who disputes it, and we have heard accounts that TNP applicants who stay at Gulenist pensions are provided the answers in advance to the TNP entrance exam." In 2005, two years into Erdogan’s term and during an early spate of Gulenist disillusionment with the AKP, a TNP corruption investigation began honing in on AKP officials. The Erdogan government intervened, transferring the head of the TNP’s organized crime office to a regional outpost — and off the case. According to a June 2005 U.S. embassy cable, the transfer was arranged by Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu, whose "Kurdish favoritism, reported ties to the heroin trade, well-known predilection for teenage girls, and his son’s open Mafia links make him a weak link in the cabinet."
Clinton Foundation pay-to-play behind wanted imam's asylum The Clinton Foundation was engaged in a pay-to-play scheme to obtain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support for giving asylum to the Turkish Muslim preacher the Erdogan government holds responsible for the attempted coup, Fethullah Gulen, according to sources close to the Turkish government and emails released by WikiLeaks and Judicial Watch. Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin sent several emails that suggest she was the intermediary between Gulen’s organization in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, in the Pocono Mountains and the Clinton Foundation. Sources close to the Turkish government have explained to WND on the condition of anonymity their concern that a Clinton Foundation pay-to-play scheme is behind the Obama administration refusal to extradite Gulen, the radical Turkish imam the Turkish government considers the mastermind behind the failed July 15 coup. One of Gulen’s two lieutenants in the United States, Gokhan Ozkok, sent Abedin an email on May 22, 2009, praising Clinton and requesting a renewal of contact.

1997: CIA re-opens Afghanistan Operations.

1997: KLA Surfaces to Resist Serbian Persecution of Albanians.

1997: Albanian Government Falls, Al-Qaeda and Other Criminal Groups Loot Armories.

1997-May 29, 1998: US Creates Plan to Capture Bin Laden, but CIA Director Tenet Cancels It.

Early 1997: CIA Unit Determines Bin Laden Is Serious Threat, But Cooperation Is Poor.

Early 1997-Late 1998: Hijazi Turns Informant for Boston FBI Investigation on Heroin from Afghanistan.

May 25-28, 1997: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and UAE Officially Recognize Taliban Government.


August 13, 1997: US Aware Taliban Are Paying Pakistani Government with Drugs.

October 1997: Brzezinski Highlights the Importance of Central Asia to Achieving World Domination.
"Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publishes a book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, in which he portrays the Eurasian landmass as the key to world power, and Central Asia with its vast oil reserves as the key to domination of Eurasia. He states that for the US to maintain its global primacy, it must prevent any possible adversary from controlling that region. He notes: “The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.” He predicts that because of popular resistance to US military expansionism, his ambitious Central Asian strategy can not be implemented, “except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat”."

November 1997: Enron and Bin Laden Family Team Up for Project.

December 1997: Unocal Establishes Pipeline Training Facility Near Bin Laden’s Compound.

December 4, 1997: Taliban Representatives Visit Unocal in Texas.

1998: CIA Suspects Persian Gulf Royals and Arms Dealer Victor Bout Are Flying Heroin Out of Afghanistan.

January 1998: CIA Aware of Al-Qaeda Meeting Planning Future Attacks.

February 1998: State Department Removes KLA from Terrorism List.

1998: KLA Receives Arms and Training from US and NATO.

February 22, 1998: Bin Laden Expands Religious Edict against US and Allies.

February 23, 1998: American Special Envoy to Bosnia Says KLA Is a Terrorist Organization.

Between March and August 1998: Al-Qaeda Explosives Trainer Visits Kosovo.

April 17, 1998: US Official Meets with Taliban; Promote Afghan Pipeline.
"Bill Richardson, the US Ambassador to the UN, meets Taliban officials in Kabul. (All such meetings are illegal, because the US still officially recognizes the government the Taliban ousted as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.) US officials at the time call the oil and gas pipeline project a “fabulous opportunity” and are especially motivated by the “prospect of circumventing Iran, which offers another route for the pipeline.” [Google: Caspain Sea Reserves]

May 1998-May 1999: Ten Opportunities to Strike Bin Laden in One Year.

May 7, 1998: Al-Qaeda Leader Visits Bosnia; US Charity Is Funding Al-Qaeda There.

May 26, 1998: Bin Laden Promises to Bring Jihad to US.

Summer 1998: CIA Breaks up Islamic Jihad Cell in Albania for Planning to Blow Up US Embassy.

Mid-August 1998: President Clinton Aware of Links between Taliban, Pakistani ISI, and Al-Qaeda.

September 11, 1998: PNAC Calls on Clinton To Take ‘Decisive Action’ Against Milosevic.

Late 1990's: Clinton contnues bombing Iraq. Imposes sanctions that see upwards of 500,000 children die.
en.wikipedia.org...

Autumn 1998: US Intelligence Aware of ‘Unholy Alliance’ between ISI, Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.
"One senior Clinton administration official will later state that it was “assumed that those ISI individuals were perhaps profiteering, engaged in the drug running, the arms running.”

October 1998: Islamic Conference Calls KLA Struggle ‘Jihad’.

October 1998: Military Analyst Finds Sensitive Information on Terrorism in Afghanistan, but US Authorities Confiscate Data.
"Traveling undercover, she meets with Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. She sees a terrorist training center in Taliban-controlled territory. Sirrs will later claim: “The Taliban’s brutal regime was being kept in power significantly by bin Laden’s money, plus the narcotics trade, while [Massoud’s] resistance was surviving on a shoestring."

1998: Alaska, Oregon & Washington legalize Medical Marijuana.

March 1999: The US Drug Enforcement Agency office in Rome tells the Philadelphia Inquirer that the KLA is" “financing [its] war through drug trafficking activities, weapons trafficking, and the trafficking of other illegal goods, as well as contributions of their countrymen working abroad.” 1

1999: US and British Special Forces Train KLA Operatives in Albania.

1999: Al Taqwa Figure Connects to Militants in Algeria, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

1999: FBI Headquarters Delays Check on Terrorist Trainer for 9 Months, Tries to Block Warning for National Guard.

1999: Oliver North made co-host of MSNBC show "Equal Time".
en.wikipedia.org...

1999: US Government Ignores ‘Who’s Who’ Book of Al-Qaeda Figures

1999: Saudi Prince busted with 2 tons of coke.
Saudi Prince Nayef bin Sultan bin Fawwaz al-Shaalan allegedly smuggled two tons of cocaine from Venezuela to France. Now believed to be living under legal shelter in Saudi Arabia, Prince Nayef was accused by France of using his diplomatic status to sneak the drugs onto a jet belonging to the Saudi royal family. He managed to escape his sentencing and was convicted in absentia in 2007. The United States also indicted him with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. 1


1999: Al-Qaeda Linked Philippine Militants Involved in Drug Trade.

Early 1999: Europol Ties KLA to International Drug Gangs.

Early February 1999: $8 Billion Weapons Deal Allegedly Influences US Decision Not to Strike at Bin Laden.

January 1999: Indicted War Criminal Takes Over Command of the KLA with US Approval.


January 17, 1999: Large Number of Mujaheddin Entering Albania.

March 24, 1999: NATO Begins Bombing Serbia in Dispute Over Kosovo.

Spring 1999: Bin Laden Linked to Afghanistan Drug Trade and Russian and Chechen Mafias.

April 1999: Kosovo Militants Being Funded by Al-Qaeda and Drugs from Afghanistan.

April 2, 1999: Bosnian Muslim Army Caught Smuggling Weapons to KLA in Kosovo.

April 27, 1999: Sen. Lieberman Says US and KLA ‘Stand for the Same Human Values and Principles’.

Late April 1999: CIA Secretly Works with KLA During Kosovo War.

June 9, 1999: Serbia Capitulates, Ending NATO Bombing Campaign Over Kosovo.

July-August 1999: Taliban Leaders Visit US.
"About a dozen Afghan leaders visit the US. They are militia commanders, mostly Taliban, and some with ties to al-Qaeda. A few are opponents of the Taliban. Their exact names and titles remain classified. For five weeks, they visit numerous locales in the US, including Mt. Rushmore. All their expenses are paid by the US government and the University of Nebraska. Thomas Gouttierre, an academic heading an Afghanistan program at the University of Nebraska, hosts their visit. Gouttierre is working as a consultant to Unocal at the time, and some Taliban visits to the US are paid for by Unocal, such as a visit two years earlier."

November 29, 1999: UN Says ISI Makes Billions from Drugs.

Late 1990's: Bill "Wag the Dog" Clinton has numerous sex scandals unfold. The stories dominate the national media.
en.wikipedia.org... [In hindsight, the perfect perpetual distraction from issues that actually mattered.]

2000's: Following tightening EU nation intergration, and increasingly open internal and external immigration policies, the EU's Muslim immigrant population begins to spike.
In the following decade it will become ever more clear that assimilation into thir new socieeties isn't going so well...]


January 2000: KLA are the "Herion Heroes".
"The United States propped up the KLA in the Kosovo conflict. With Milosevic gone, and no one in control, the former freedom fighters are now transforming the province into a major conduit for global drug trafficking. ...A fleet of Mercedes sedans without license plates lined the streets of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and young men with hooded eyes and bulky suits checked into the top floors of showcase hotels... It was time for criminal elements with close ties to America's newest ally to reopen the traditional Balkan Road -- one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking." www.motherjones.com...

February 2, 2000: CIA Director Tells Public that Bin Laden Is Planning ‘Further Blows Against America’.
"He points out ties between drug traffickers and the Taliban and says, “There is ample evidence that Islamic extremists such as Osama bin Laden use profits from the drug trade to support their terror campaign."

March 16, 2000: British documentary substantiates US-KLA collusion in provoking war with Serbia. Related Sunday Times article alleges CIA role.
Britain's BBC2 television channel ran a documentary by Alan Little entitled "Moral Combat: NATO At War". The program contained damning evidence of how the Clinton administration set out to create a pretext for declaring war against the Milosevic regime in Serbia by sponsoring the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), then pressed this decision on its European allies. The revelations in the documentary were reinforced by an accompanying article in the Sunday Times. Little conducted frank interviews with leading players in the Kosovo conflict, the most pertinent being those with US Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Assistant Secretary of State James Rubin, US Envoy Richard Holbrooke, William Walker, head of the UN Verification Mission, and KLA leader Hashim Thaci. These were supplemented by many others. Ever since the Bosnian war of 1995, the KLA, seeking to capitalise on popular resentment among Kosovan Albanians against the regime in Belgrade, had pursued a strategy of destabilising the Serbian province of Kosovo by acts of terrorism, in the hope that the US and NATO would intervene. They ambushed Serb patrols and killed policemen. "Any armed action we undertook would bring retaliation against civilians," KLA leader Thaci explained. "We knew we were endangering a great number of civilian lives." The benefits of this strategy were made plain by Dug Gorani, a Kosovo Albanian negotiator not tied to the KLA: "The more civilians were killed, the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realised that. There was this foreign diplomat who once told me, 'Look, unless you pass the quota of five thousand deaths you'll never have anybody permanently present in Kosovo from foreign diplomacy.'" Albright was receptive to the KLA's strategy because the US was anxious to stage a military conflict with Serbia. Her series of interviews began chillingly with the words: "I believed in the ultimate power, the goodness of the power of the allies and led by the United States." The KLA's campaign of provocations was seized upon as the vehicle through which the use of this power could be sanctioned. A March 5, 1998 attack by the Serbian army on the home in Prekaz of a leading KLA commander, Adem Jashari, in which 53 people died, became the occasion for a meeting of the Contact group of NATO powers four days later. Albright pushed for a tough anti-Serbian response. "I thought it behoved me to say to my colleagues that we could not repeat the kinds of mistakes that had happened over Bosnia, where there was a lot of talk and no action," she told Little. NATO threatened Belgrade with a military response for the first time. "The ambitions of the KLA, and the intentions of the NATO allies, were converging," Little commented.1 2 3 4 5
 
April 1, 2000: Raid Reveals Al-Qaeda Safe House in Kosovo, but US Takes No Action against Al-Qaeda Figure Linked to House.

May 2000: CIA Details Al-Qaeda Using Honey Trade to Move Drugs and Weapons, but No Action Taken Until After 9/11.


July 2000: Taliban Bans Poppy Growing, but Benefits from Resulting Price Rise.


September 2000: PNAC and the ”New Pearl Harbor”.
"This video clip describes Paul Wolfowitz's involvement in shaping the U.S. Neoconservative foreign policy implemented after the attacks of September 11, 2001, including his role in the creation of the PNAC document ”Rebuilding America's Defenses” during the year 2000 which suggested a need for a ”catastrophic and catalyzing event— like a new Pearl Harbor.”" www.newsofinterest.tv...
[The PNAC top roster is a who's who of Bush's and former Iran-Contra conspirators.] en.wikipedia.org...

September 2000: ISI and Al-Qaeda Heavily Assist Taliban Military Offensive.

September 7-October 2000: Predator Flights over Afghanistan Are Initiated Then Halted.

September 10, 2000: It is Reported That Former Barry Seal Drug Running Airplane has been in Use as Government Airplane by Texas Officials for 10 Years.
"State officials have flown aboard N6308F, an 18-year-old twin turboprop that seats up to 10, on official business since Texas bought the plane in 1990. The Beech King Air is one of 53 in the state's fleet. Gov. George W. Bush took office five years after the plane became Texas property and was unaware of its history. "We're glad to hear that the plane is on the straight and narrow and has landed on the right side of the law," Bush spokeswoman Linda Edwards said." www.mapinc.org... "Three months into an exhaustive investigation of persistent reports dating to 1995 that there exists an incriminating videotape of current Republican Presidential front-runner Bush caught in a hastily-aborted DEA coc aine sting, the central allegation remains unproven. But some startling details have been confirmed, amid a raft of new suspicions emerging from conflicting FAA records. Those records, along with other irrefutable documents, point to the existence of far more than mere happenstance or dark "conspiracy theorist speculations" in the matter of how George W. Bush came to be flying the friendly Texas skies in an airplane that was a crown jewel in the drug smuggling fleet of the notorious Barry Seal." www.fromthewilderness.com... [Flimsy, but interesting no less. How many times did Dubya get off on flying in it? Did he fly it?!]

September 21, 2000: Al-Qaeda Leaders Vow to ‘Spill Blood’ to Free ‘Blind Sheikh’.

September 26, 2000: US Sees Pakistani Support for Taliban Is ‘Unprecedented’ and Increasing.

2000-2012: "CONFIRMED: The DEA Struck A Deal With Mexico's Most Notorious Drug Cartel".
"An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels. Sinaloa, led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S." www.businessinsider.com...
El Chapo Guzman News: DEA Offered Sinaloa Cartel Members Immunity In Exchange For Information On Rivals In a report published last week, El Universal confirmed long-standing rumors that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has met and negotiated with members of Mexico’s feared Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.  Between 2000 and 2012, the paper writes, DEA agents met more than 50 times with cartel members on Mexican territory, without the knowledge of Mexican authorities, to obtain information on rival drug gangs.  In exchange for that information – as long as it turned out to be true -- the DEA offered an array of future benefits, including dropping charges pending against Sinaloa members.  That strategy was authorized by David Gaddis, then the DEA director of operations for the region.
A Mexican drug cartel's rise to dominance  What is the Sinaloa cartel? The Mexican crime syndicate is the world's most powerful drug trafficking organization, and the biggest supplier of illegal narcotics in the U.S. About half of the estimated $65 billion worth of cocaine, heroin, and other illegal drugs that American users buy each year enters the U.S. via Mexico. Sinaloa — which is named after its home state in western Mexico — controls more than half of that cross-border trade, from which it earns at least $3 billion a year. U.S. law enforcement officials say the group has a presence in all major American cities, and a near monopoly on the wholesale distribution of heroin and cocaine in Chicago. The city's Crime Commission has branded Sinaloa's elusive leader, Joaquín Guzmán, also known as El Chapo (or Shorty), Public Enemy No. 1 — a title last held by Al Capone. "What Al Capone was to beer and whiskey," said commission member Arthur Bilek, "Guzmán is to narcotics."  How did the cartel get started? Mexican smugglers have long trafficked homegrown heroin and marijuana to the U.S. But in the 1980s, Mexico also became the primary route for Colombian cocaine bound for the U.S. At the time, U.S. law enforcement was cracking down on the Colombian drug producers' attempts to ship the lucrative drug into Florida by boats and planes. So the Colombians hired Mexico's Guadalajara cartel to smuggle drugs across the border, and paid them in cocaine, which allowed the Mexicans to build their own drug networks in the U.S. Before long, the Mexicans were the senior partners in the relationship. When Guadalajara's leader was arrested in 1989, the group's remaining capos, including a young Guzmán, divided up its trafficking routes, creating the Sinaloa, Juárez, and Tijuana cartels. These gangs soon became locked in a series of turf wars that have killed more than 60,000 people. But throughout the bloodshed, El Chapo's organization has continued to grow.
How escaped drug lord Guzman has poisoned the streets of Chicago Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman may be far from the streets of Chicago, but he has run them for a long time. As much as 80% of the illegal narcotics in America's third-largest city come from Guzman's Sinaloa cartel.
Why Chicago?
It's the transportation hub of America. The city is located within a day's drive of 70 percent of the nation's population, and is crisscrossed by major interstate highways and railway lines. Chicago is also a huge drug market in its own right. Some 86 percent of people arrested in Cook County in 2012 tested positive for at least one illegal narcotic — the highest percentage of any big U.S. city. With his monopoly in the city, Guzmán doubled wholesale heroin prices, thus cutting profit margins for street dealers. That fueled greater competition for turf and exacerbated Chicago's epidemic of gang violence. "It used to be honor among thieves," said Harold Ward, a former gang member turned anti-violence campaigner. "Now, it's by any means necessary." 1


Early 2001: Bin Laden Warns of Massive Attack on US in Training Camp Speech.

Early 2001-September 11, 2001: Bush Administration Loses Interest in Apprehending Taliban-Linked Arms Dealer Victor Bout.

January 2001: French Intel Report Describes an al-Qaeda Plot to Hijack Aircraft and Attack to US.

January 20, 2001: Bill Clinton's "Pardongate".
Bill Clinton's exit pardon list draws intense controvery. In addition to FALN & Weathermen terrorists, Bill pardon's numerous high level drug traffickers. He also pardoned his brother Roger (Codename: HEADACHE) for his previous Cocaine conviction, meanwhile Roger added to the controversy for arranging bribes for pardons. en.wikipedia.org... www.justice.gov... "For Clinton investigators, Roger is the gift that keeps on giving. Last week, the House Government Reform Committee wrote him asking about his role in clemency pleas made by six convicted felons, including Rosario Gambino, a jailed New Jersey restauranteur reputed to be a soldier in the Gambino crime family. Committee documents show that Rosario Gambino's daughter wrote a $50,000 check to one of Roger Clinton's companies in September, 1999, some months after Roger sought leniency from the U.S. Parole Commission for Rosario, who is serving a 45-year sentence for heroin trafficking." content.time.com...

January 20, 2001: George W Bush Inagurated as POTUS. His administration is a who's who list of both Iran-Contra & PNAC conspirators.
nsarchive.gwu.edu... en.wikipedia.org...
He "arrived in the White House as the drug war was running out of steam – yet he allocated more money than ever to it. His drug czar, John Walters, zealously focused on marijuana and launched a major campaign to promote student drug testing. While rates of illicit drug use remained constant, overdose fatalities rose rapidly. The era of George W. Bush also witnessed the rapid escalation of the militarization of domestic drug law enforcement. By the end of Bush's term, there were about 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids on Americans every year – mostly for nonviolent drug law offenses, often misdemeanors." www.drugpolicy.org...

January-September 10, 2001: Bush Administration Slow to Develop New Policy Regarding Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Al-Qaeda.

January-September 10, 2001: Numerous Other Warnings Preceding 9/11 Come in From All Around.
Too many to list here. [All are Ignored or worse.] Many plans considered in attacking Bin laden / Al Qaeda. None are executed. Too many to list here.

March 1, 2001: Britain Finally Bans Al-Qaeda.

March 11, 2001: 'CIA's bastard army ran riot in Balkans' backed extremists'.
The United States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian extremists now behind insurgencies in Macedonia and southern Serbia. The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior European officers who served with the international peace-keeping force in Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian and US sources. The accusations have led to tension in K-For between the European and US military missions. European officers are furious that the Ameri cans have allowed guerrilla armies in its sector to train, smuggle arms and launch attacks across two international borders. One European K-For battalion commander told The Observer yesterday: 'The CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. Now he's gone the US State Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard army.' He added: 'Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with US support for the radical Albanians. US policy was and still is out of step with the other Nato allies.' The claim was backed by senior Macedonian officials in the capital, Skopje. 'What has been happening with the National Liberation Army [which has been responsible for a series of attacks on Macedonia's borders in recent weeks] and the UCPMB [its sister organisation in southern Serbia] is very similar to what happened when the KLA was launched in 1995-96,' said one. 'I will say only this: the US intelligence agencies have not been honest here.' 1

April 2001: Hekmatyar Predicts US Will Soon Attack Afghanistan and Overthrow Taliban.

April 30, 2001: Annual US State Department Terrorism Report Says Focusing on Bin Laden Is Mistake; Pakistan and Taliban Are Criticized But Not Punished.

May 1, 2001: Harsh New Federal Penalties for Ecstasy Take Effect.
Leading Scientists Warn Penalties Will Do More Harm Than Good. The U.S. Sentencing Commission, as instructed by Congress, will adopt an emergency amendment to increase federal penalties for Ecstasy-related offenses. The new penalties will treat Ecstasy harsher than cocaine and almost as severely as heroin. In March the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) issued a bristling statement in opposition to the proposed increases, concluding that that there is "no justification, either pharmacologically or in policy terms" for increased Ecstasy penalties. Fourteen leading neuroscientists and drug policy experts signed the FAS statement, including Dr. Charles Schuster, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse under Reagan, and Dr. Jerome Jaffe, "drug czar" under Nixon. Many in the scientific community fear that the increased penalties will lead to the production of more counterfeit substances being sold as Ecstasy (so sellers can meet the demand for Ecstasy without risking harsher sentences.) Most of the problems attributed to Ecstasy stem not from the drug itself, but from the effects of counterfeit drugs sold to unsuspecting buyers as Ecstasy. For instance DXM, often fraudulently sold as Ecstasy, inhibits sweating and when coupled with dehydrating activity, such as dancing, can cause heatstroke. PMA, another Ecstasy substitute, has been implicated in the deaths of a dozen young people. The increased penalties will result in more young, non-violent Americans being sent to prison for long periods of time. The U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that over one-third of the federal offenders sentenced for Ecstasy offenses in 2000 were between the ages of 21 and 25. The average age of all federal ecstasy offenders is 27. Over 85 percent of these offenders are "Category I" offenders, the lowest category of offenders - having little or no criminal history. Sixty percent of all federal prisoners are currently imprisoned on drug charges. 1

May 2001: US Military Drafts Scenario for Afghan Operation.

May 2001: ABC Fails to Report al-Qaeda Plan to Hijack Plane, after Pressure from Unknown Intelligence Agency.

May 17, 2001: US Gives Taliban Millions for Poppy Ban.
"Secretary of State Powell announces that the US is granting $43 million in aid to the Taliban government, purportedly to assist hungry farmers who are starving since the destruction of their opium crop occurred in January on orders of the Taliban. ...there were allegations that the drug ban was merely a means for the Taliban to drive up prices (see July 2000). In fact, according to a March 2001 State Department report, “Prospects for progress on drug-control efforts in Afghanistan remain dim as long as the country remains at war. Nothing indicates that either the Taliban or the Northern Alliance intend to take serious action to destroy heroin or morphine base laboratories, or stop drug trafficking.”

June 2001: KLA Begins an Offensive in Macedonia.

Late June-Early July 2001: KLA Forces Are Rescued by US in Macedonia.

Early July 2001: NATO Pressures Macedonia to Accommodate the KLA.

June 12, 2001: Sting Operation Exposes Al-Qaeda, ISI, and Drug Connections; Investigators Face Obstacles to Learn More.

June 12, 2001: KLA and Drugs: The `New Colombia of Europe' Grows in Balkans.
A large black spot, like ink on a piece of blotting paper, is spreading across the map of Europe. At this very moment, Kosovo, Albania, and a large part of the Balkans have been swallowed up, and tentacles are stretching out across the Black Sea, through the Caucasus, to merge with another such spot centered around Afghanistan. The "spot" does not respect national borders or ideological, ethnic, or religious differences, it just keeps spreading, bringing misery and destruction—on which it thrives. The "spot" is what was, until recently, labelled as the "black economy," or "illegal economy," or organized crime. In fact, it is a much more pervasive and totalitarian phenomenon. It represents the creation of a new perverse form of society: a modern form of feudal anarchy. Of course, this kind of phenomenon is not new in history. It was widespread, for example, in Europe during the Thirty Years War, or earlier, during the collapse of the Roman Empire. The emergence of the nation-state rolled back feudal anarchy. The difference in its resurgence today, is that it is not spontaneous, but rather, it is sponsored and protected. In Afghanistan, the production of opium under the present Taliban regime has continued to expand, and, as we shall see, presently the main axis controlling more than 80% of the heroin market in Europe (plus a growing slice of the heroin market in other areas, including the United States) is the Afghanistan-Kosovo axis. Or better, a Taliban-Kosovo Liberation Army axis. On March 18, while his country was in the middle of fending off a ferocious and well-organized assault by the Kosovo Liberation Army aimed at provoking a bloody ethnic confrontation between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians, Macedonia's Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski launched a dramatic appeal to the nation. "It is obvious that the international community cannot run away from the fact that this time we are dealing with the creation of a new Taliban by the Western democracies within Europe," he said. In a moment of existential danger for his country, the Prime Minister put his finger in the wound. He indicated in clear terms what was behind the well-armed, well-trained, and well-financed gangs that had invaded his country, using as their base a Kosovo province solidly under the control of NATO's Kosovo Forces (KFOR). 1

July 13, 2001: Bush Administration Again Denies CIA Expanded Authority to Assassinate Bin Laden.

July 15, 2001: KLA Begins Ethnic Cleansing of Tetovo-Kosovo Corridor in Macedonia.

July 21, 2001: US Official Threatens Possible Military Action Against Taliban by October if Gas Pipeline Is Not Pursued.

Summer 2001: Saudi and Taliban Leaders Reportedly Discuss Bin Laden.
"An Asia Times article published just prior to 9/11 claims that Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, makes a clandestine visit to Pakistan around this time. After meeting with senior army officials, he visits Afghanistan with ISI Director Mahmood. They meet Taliban leader Mullah Omar and try to convince him that the US is likely to launch an attack on Afghanistan. They insist bin Laden be sent to Saudi Arabia, where he would be held in custody and not handed over to any third country. If bin Laden were to be tried in Saudi Arabia, Abdullah would help make sure he is acquitted. Mullah Omar apparently rejects the proposal. The article suggests that Abdullah is secretly a supporter of bin Laden and is trying to protect him from harm." 1

Before September 11, 2001: Drug Smuggler Possibly Smuggles Two 9/11 Hijackers into US.

September 9, 2001: Northern Alliance Leader Massoud Is Assassinated in Anticipation of 9/11 Attack.

September 9, 2001: CIA Director Tenet Meets ISI Director in DC, ISI Refuses to Help Get Bin Laden.

September 10, 2001: NSA Intercepts: ‘The Match Begins Tomorrow’ and ‘Tomorrow Is Zero Hour’.

September 10, 2001: Northern Alliance Blames ISI and Al-Qaeda for Assassination of Massoud.

September 11, 2001: George HW Bush at business meeting with Osama Bin Laden's brother in DC.
One day before the 9/11 attacks, the dad of the sitting President of the United States of America, George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting none other than Shafig bin Laden, the brother of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. It was a routine business meeting on September 10-11, no conflict of interest, no relationship to the 9/11 attacks which allegedly were carried out on the orders of Shafiq’s brother Osama. Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group including Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and Dubya’s dad former President George H. W. Bush met in the plush surroundings of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 10-11, 2001. Their business encounter under the auspices of the Carlyle Group was unfortunately interrupted on September 11 by the 9/11 attacks. It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003). 1


September 11, 2001: 9/11.
Al Qaeda soley blamed for the 9/11 attacks.


September 11, 2001: PNAC Member / CIA Director James Woolsey thumbs Iraq just 2 hours after 9/11 attacks.
www.abovetopsecret.com... Note: He was appointed by Clinton en.wikipedia.org...

September 11, 2001: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."-GWB
ww.cbsnews.com...

Shortly After September 11, 2001: US Decides Not to Bomb Drug-Related Targets in Afghanistan.

September 12-Late November 2001: US Intelligence Not Interested in Inside Information on Whereabouts of Mullah Omar and Al-Qaeda.

Shortly After September 11, 2001: Arms Dealer Victor Bout Allegedly Switches Sides, Works with US Against Taliban.

September 15, 2001-April 6, 2002: Bush Shifts Public Focus from Bin Laden to Iraq.

Mid-September 2001-October 7, 2001: US Fails to Strike at Bin Laden Despite Good Intelligence.

September 17, 2001: President Bush Signs Afghanistan War Plan, but Also Includes Order to Prepare for Iraq.

September 17-18 and 28, 2001: Taliban Refuses to Extradite Bin Laden; ISI Director Urges Taliban to Fight US.

September 18-October 7, 2001: US Begins Using Predator Drone over Afghanistan.

September 19, 2001: Pakistani President Musharraf Tells His Country He Still Supports the Taliban, Refuses to Condemn Al-Qaeda.

September 20, 2001:

September 23, 2001: Gingrich Wants Iraq War, Says ‘Bombing Some Caves Is Not Something that Counts’.

September 27, 2001: ISI Has Connections to Taliban, Drug Trade, CIA.

September 30, 2001: Fox News show "War Stories with Oliver North" debuts. It runs to this day.
www.foxnews.com...

October 2001: US Military Downplays Importance of Targeting Bin Laden.

October 7, 2001: US Begins Bombing in Afghanistan.

Early October-Mid-November, 2001: US Air Force Is Repeatedly Denied Permission to Bomb Top Al-Qaeda and Taliban Leaders.

October 29, 2001: Neoconservatives Say War with Afghanistan Must Spread Throughout Middle East.
Even US Allies Like Egypt and Saudi Arabia Not Safe from US Aggression.

Late October-Early November 2001: Al-Qaeda Fighters and Bin Laden Said to Move into Jalalabad without Hindrance.
"Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will later recall: “We knew from day one the likely places that bin Laden would flee to. There had been lots of work done before 9/11 on where did he hang out, statistical analysis even. We knew Tora Bora was the place where he would be likely to go. People in CIA knew that; people in the counterterrorism community knew about it. We knew that what you should have done was to insert special forces—Rangers, that sort of thing—up into that area as soon as possible.” ...‘It was obvious from at least early November that this area was to be the base for an exodus into Pakistan,’ said one intelligence official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. ‘All of this was known, and frankly we were amazed that nothing was done to prepare for it’."

November 29, 2001: US and Pakistan Return Convicted Drug Warlord to Afghanistan.

December 2001: Report: U.S. Government and NATO Worked with Bin Laden and His Top Lieutenant 3 Months AFTER 9/11
"BBC and Guardian investigative reporter – and New York Times bestselling author – Greg Palast, who is famous for obtaining original source documents from whistleblowers which tell the real story, says that the U.S. squashed real investigations into 9/11 and the Boston bombings to cover up the fact that we supported terrorism in Chechnya aimed at Russia. Edmonds told us: "I know the source of that ‘secret’ filed sent to [Palast], and what that investigation contained. This was the time-period when I began my reporting (whistleblowing) in the FBI. Both, the file and the source, were from the FBI Washington Field Office." What Palast doesn’t have: The file he refers to was only a small sub-file of a much larger investigation/operation under FBI counterintelligence. The larger file/operation which began in 1996, and was shut down completely in February 2002 contains key US persons directing CIA-NATO joint operations in Central Asia/Caucasus/Xinjiang in partnership with Zawahiri-Bin Ladin & Fethullah Gulen (The Turkish Imam who has built 350+ mosques and 100s of Madrasas in the region). "Palast has a very small chunk of a much bigger operation."

Late Fall-Early Winter 2001: Iranians Offer Assistance to US in War with Taliban.
They were turned down and labelled part of the "Axis of Evil" (To Be Invaded).

Mid-November 2001-Mid-December 2001: US-Allied Afghan Warlords Help Bin Laden Escape Tora Bora.

November 21, 2001: Opium Boom in Afghanistan.

December 2001 and After: Drug Kingpin Let Go by US; Then Rebuilds Drug Network for Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Late 2001: Taliban’s Top Drug Kingpin Arrested by US Then Let Go.

2002: Bush declares Syria as part of the post-9/11 "Axis of Evil".
news.bbc.co.uk...
Bush: "Truly not concerned about bin Laden".
www.youtube.com...

January 25, 2002: Suspect Bosnian Charities Not Shut Down.

February 2002: US Military Determined to Avoid Counter-Narcotics Operations in Afghanistan.

February 2002: Bush updates his National Drug Control Strategy.
Key targets are "Stopping drug use before it starts / Healing America's drug users / Disrupting the market" georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov...

March 2002: The "Golden Chain List (1989)" is captured. It lists Al-Qaeda Financiers (mostly all Saudi elite's).

March 1, 2002: ISI Maintains Huge Drug Economy.

April 1, 2002: Afghan Opium Crackdown Fails.


August 11, 2002: Afghans Directly Producing and Exporting Heroin in Broad Daylight.

September 20, 2002: Saudi Charity in Bosnia Linked to Al-Qaeda.

Mid-October 2002: British Administrator Fires Bosnian Official Vigorously Investigating Terrorism and Corruption.

March 14, 2003: Afghanistan Becomes Number One Heroin Producer.

March 20, 2003: Iraq invasion beings.
en.wikipedia.org... Based on lies. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer refers to it as "Operation Iraqi Liberation" (OIL).  https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030324-4.html

September-November 2003: CIA Informant Uncovers Bosnia Network Sending Al-Qaeda Fighters to Iraq.

November 2003: US Military Frustrated They Cannot Fight Drugs in Afghanistan.
"Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the nonprofit think tank the International Crisis Group, later says that during a trip to Afghanistan in November 2003, he is told by US military commanders and State Department officials that they are frustrated by rules preventing them from fighting Afghanistan’s booming illegal drug trade."

December 2003-March 2004: Arrests Point to Al-Qaeda Involvement in Drug Network.
"In December 2003, a US naval vessel stops a small fishing boat in the Arabian Sea. According to a Western anti-narcotics official, a search turns up “several al-Qaeda guys sitting on a bale of drugs.” Later that month, a raid on a drug runner’s house in Kabul, Afghanistan, leads to the discovery of a number of satellite phones. The CIA determines the phones had been used to call numbers linked to suspected al-Qaeda-linked operatives in Turkey, the Balkans, and Western Europe. One official describes this as part of “an incredibly sophisticated network.” In March 2004, US troops raiding a suspected al-Qaeda hideout in remote Afghanistan discover opium with a street value of $15 million."

2004: Pentagon: "The Goal Has Never Been to Get bin Laden".
transcripts.cnn.com...

2004: CIA Concludes Illegal Drug Profits Going to Islamic Militant Groups and Afghan Warlords.


2004: Afghan Poppy Farmers Harvest Record Opium Crop.

2004: Former ICE Informant Sues US Prosecutors, Federal Agents.
Litigation Claims US Officials Conspired To Silence The Informant And Cover-up Their Role In The House of Death Murders. 1

2004: KLA Gun Runner Filmed Laughing with Top Democrats at Kerry Campaign Fundraiser.
"Richard Holbrooke, now Kerry’s senior foreign policy advisor, and Wesley Clark are filmed laughing and conversing with KLA gun runner and fundraiser Florin Krasniqi at a fundraising event for the Kerry presidential campaign. Krasniqi is a registered campaign donor to the Kerry campaign. ...Krasniqi is an Albanian who illegally emigrated to the US in 1989. He now runs a construction business in Brooklyn and raises money and supplies weapons to the KLA."

January 2004: Air Strike on Afghan Drug Lab Is Exception to the Rule.
"A British special forces team in Afghanistan calls in a US air strike on a drug lab. The damage leads to a 15 percent spike in heroin prices. It is unclear if US commanders knew that the proposed target was a drug lab. However, this seems to be nearly the only such strike on drug-related targets since 9/11."

Spring 2004: UN Official: Conditions In Afghanistan Deteriorating.
"The situation “is reminiscent to what was witnessed after the establishment of the mujaheddin government in 1992.” ...They “continue to maintain their own private armies and… are reaping vast amounts of money from Afghanistan’s illegal opium trade…”

December 10, 2004: Gary Webb Journalist Who Exposed CIA Cocaine Sumuggling in the 1980's is Found Dead With 2 Gunshot Wounds to the Head - Ruled Suicide. en.wikipedia.org...

April 14, 2004: Spanish Government Says Madrid Bombings Funded by Drug Money.

August 14, 2004: Evidence Mounts Afghan Drug Profits Help Fund Al-Qaeda, but US Troops Do Nothing.


November 2004: Aggressive Afghan Counter-Narcotics Program Proposed and Ultimately Rejected.


2005:  US military & intelligence funding of anti-Syrian government forces begins about now.
This is an Act of War.  www.mintpressnews.com...

Early 2005: US Documents Implicate Afghan Leader’s Brother and Other Top Officials in Drug Trade.
Described as “Tier One Warlords” in a document, they include Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Chief of Staff of the army, and Gen. Mohammad Daud, the Interior Minister for Counternarcotics (see April 17, 2006). Further, Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is listed in a classified document as a “problem maker” who “receives money from drug lords as bribe[s] to facilitate their work and movement.” 1


March 3, 2005: State Department Says Afghanistan Is on Verge of Becoming a Narcotics State.

2005–present: Regime change in Syria. 1
Starting in 2005, the US government launched a policy of regime change against the Syrian government by funding Syrian opposition groups working to topple the Syrian government, attempting to block foreign direct investment in Syria, attempting to frustrate Syrian government efforts at economic reform and prosperity and thus legitimacy for the regime, and getting other governments diplomatically to isolate Syria.^[106] The Obama administration starting in 2009 continued such policies while taking steps toward diplomatic engagement with the Syrian government and denying that it was engaging in regime change. After the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the U.S. government called on Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to “step aside” and imposed an oil embargo against the Syrian government to bring it to its knees.^{[107][108][109]}

2006: 'ISIS' (ISIL) officially forms from what was known as 'Al Qaeda in Iraq'.
en.wikipedia.org...

April 10, 2006: Suspected CIA Plane Busted With 5.6 Tons of Cocaine.
Cocaine 1, so named because it was painted to impersonate a US government plane, was an aging DC-9 which was not fit to fly. On April 10, 2006, en route from from Venezuela to USA, this suffered an engine failure and made an emergency landing in Mexico, where its cargo of over 5 tonnes of coc aine was discovered. Michael Braun, Chief of Operations of the DEA testified in congress that 5.6 tonnes of coc aine were found aboard the plane. Arrests were made, but the pilot and the plane both "disappeared". wikispooks.com...

March 2006: Wanted War Criminal Becomes Ruler of Kosovo; Charges against Him Dropped.
"Agim Ceku is elected prime minister of Kosovo. Kosovo is still part of Serbia but is veering towards independence. Ceku was reportedly responsible for many atrocities while a Croatian general in 1993-1995 (see 1993-1995). He then became a top leader of the al-Qaeda-linked militant group, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Interpol removes Ceku from its list of wanted persons simply because of his new status as prime minister."

March 2006: Former US Security Officer Alleges that US Abandoned Counterterrorism Investigation because of Potential Connection to ISI.


April 5, 2006: Methamphetamine Added To PATRIOT Act Clause, is the only "Hardcore" (extremely addictive) drug that can be produced in mainland USA.
"Congress also included a measure to protect America from another enemy: the methamphetamine epidemic. The methamphetamine (meth) epidemic has rapidly engulfed America. This growing threat has spread throughout Minnesota where more residents now seek treatment for meth addiction than for any other illicit drug except marijuana. Meth labs can be found in our communities and meth addiction can be felt in our neighborhoods. We cannot afford to ignore this epidemic anymore." www.swcbulletin.com...

April 17, 2006: Afghan’s Anti-Drug Official Said to Be Drug Kingpin.

September 2, 2006: Afghanistan’s Opium Production Hits Record Levels Again.

September 21, 2006: NATO Commander Says Taliban and Al-Qaeda Increasing Profits from Drugs in Afghanistan.


2006-2011: ATF arming Mexican drug cartels.
""Gunwalking", or "letting guns walk", was a tactic of the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which ran a series of sting operations between 2006 and 2011 in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF "purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders and arrest them." These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States. The Jacob Chambers Case began in October 2009 and eventually became known in February 2010 as "Operation Fast and Furious" after agents discovered Chambers and the other suspects under investigation belonged to a car club." ATF Gunwalking Scandal
Tucson's Operation Wide Receiver: Gunrunners in the Bush years Although the news media has focused on the ATF’s Fast and Furious, another operation, Operation Wide Receiver, allowed guns to “walk” into Mexico during the Bush administration, 2006 -- 2007, according to a Tucson gun seller who kept a lengthy journal. During the Bush administration, the guns were allowed to "walk" across the border. Those guns were not intercepted and were not traced, according to Tucson gun seller Mike Detty, who kept a journal while being an ATF informant. Detty said he did not realize in the beginning that the US was allowing the weapons to “walk” to criminals in Mexico. Detty told CBS News, "My first day as an informant, if they had said, 'Here's our plan, Mike: We're going to let as many guns go across the border as they can haul, and we're just gonna look and see where they pop up,' I'd have said, 'No way. That's not a plan. That's idiocy.'" On the streets of Tucson, none of this is big news. It comes as no surprise here that the US government was supplying assault weapons to the drug cartels – assault weapons that have killed, and are still killing, innocent people in Mexico and the US. In Tucson, most people knew that the assault weapons had to be funneled south by the US government. The only surprise was that the US government got caught. Here, most people understand that there would be no drug war in Mexico without the demand for drugs in the United States. Here most people know about the US military’s black ops. Here, people know how the US trained Latin military officers to torture at the School of Americas, and how the US Army trained the special forces who later deserted and became the Zetas, the most notorious murderers in Mexico. The US Army even has its manual online stating that the United States furnishes guerrillas with funding and weapons, to destabilize governments and achieve other US agendas. Most people here remember that the airstrips around Marana and Tucson were used as airstrips when the US brought drugs in from Vietnam, smuggled in body bags during the Vietnam War, as exposed by former CIA agents. Back in Washington, Republican Congressmen had no idea that their probe, and demands for the truth about gunrunning to Mexico’s drug cartels would lead back to the Bush administration. The US Attorney General, appointed by Bush in Feb. 2005, was Alberto Gonzales. It was the murder of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December, south of Tucson, that propelled Republican Congressmen to use Fast and Furious as a political hammer. ICE Agent Jaime Zapata was also killed with one of those weapons in northern Mexico. As revealed in Wikileaks, the e-trace program for weapons had too many technical problems to be functional in Mexico. In Wikileaks, US diplomats state that the level of mistrust between agencies within Mexico, and the amount of corruption within law enforcement in Mexico, results in few weapons being traced through the e-trace program.

Decemeber 10, 2006: Augusto Pinochet's death.
Gen. Augusto Pinochet's death on Dec. 10 means the Bush Family can breathe a little bit easier, knowing that criminal proceedings against Chile's notorious dictator can no longer implicate his longtime friend and protector, former President George H.W. Bush. Although Chilean investigations against other defendants may continue, the cases against Pinochet end with his death of a heart attack at the age of 91. Pinochet's death from natural causes also marks a victory for world leaders, including George H.W. and George W. Bush, who shielded Pinochet from justice over the past three decades. The Bush Family's role in the Pinochet cover-up began in 1976 when then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush diverted investigators away from Pinochet's guilt in a car bombing in Washington that killed political rival Orlando Letelier and an American, Ronni Moffitt. The cover-up stretched into the presidency of George W. Bush when he sidetracked an FBI recommendation to indict Pinochet in the Letelier-Moffitt murders. Over those intervening 30 years, Pinochet allegedly engaged in a variety of illicit operations, including terrorism, torture, murder, drug trafficking, money-laundering and illicit arms shipments – sometimes with the official collusion of the U.S. government. In the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush was Vice President, Pinochet's regime helped funnel weapons to the Nicaraguan contra rebels and to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, an operation that also implicated then-CIA official Robert M. Gates, who will be the next U.S. Secretary of Defense. When Pinochet faced perhaps his greatest risk of prosecution – in 1998 when he was detained in London pending extradition to Spain on charges of murdering Spanish citizens – former President George H.W. Bush protested Pinochet's arrest, calling it "a travesty of justice" and joining in a successful appeal to the British courts to let Pinochet go home to Chile. Once Pinochet was returned to Chile, the wily ex-dictator employed a legal strategy of political obstruction and assertions of ill health to avert prosecution. Until his death, he retained influential friends in the Chilean power structure and in key foreign capitals, especially Washington.  1

2007: Israel bombs Syria.
www.theatlantic.com...

April 29, 2007: "The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liason with NATO occupation forces and the British military.
In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements." 1


September 24, 2007: CIA Jet Crashed With 4 Tons Of Cocaine On Board.
"A Gulfstream II jet, aircraft # N987SA, allegedly used to transport Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) rendition prisoners from Europe and America to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba crash-landed Sept. 24, 2007 in Mexico carrying a cargo of over four tons of coc aine. It is suspected the Gulfstream jet ran out of fuel as it traveled from Colombia to the United States." anonhq.com... aine-board/  The secrecy cloaking a corporate jet with a CIA-linked tail number that crash landed in Mexico in the fall of 2007 with a nearly four-ton load of cocaine onboard continues to unravel, one string at a time. The Gulfstream II cocaine jet was part of a suspected US intelligence operation wrapped in the garbs of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) undercover operation called Mayan Jaguar, law enforcement sources suspect. The newest revelations in the case pop up in court pleadings recently unearthed by Narco News and show the cocaine jet that ditched in Mexico’s Yucatan in September 2007 was part of a much larger web of cocaine planes sold to drug-traffickers with the assistance of at least two informants who continue to work for or own aviation brokerage companies. https://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2014/06/second-informant-surfaces-ice-s-mayan-jaguar-cocaine-plane-op
2008: "George W. Bush who signed the Status of Forces agreement...which planned for all American troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011."
www.npr.org...

February 2008: Ex-US Soldier from Bosnia War Emerges as Al-Qaeda Leader in Somalia.
"A militant in a video message released this month has an interesting background. The message supports Shabab, one of two radical Islamic groups fighting for power in war-torn Somalia. According to a US intelligence source, the militant in the video, Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, is an ex-US soldier who fought in Bosnia in the early 1990s. No US soldiers officially fought in the Bosnia war, but about a dozen Muslim ex-US Special Forces soldiers fought in Bosnia and trained al-Qaeda and other mujaheddin forces there around 1993. At the time, the US military and Saudi government apparently had an interest in sending Muslim ex-Special Forces there." 1

March 6, 2008: US Agents Arrest Al-Qaeda-Linked Arms Dealer Victor Bout in Thailand.
"A relatively new DEA task force is behind Bout’s arrest, even as news reports indicate Bout’s fleet of aircraft has been shipping supplies to the US military in Iraq in recent years. The DEA agents posed as arms dealers working for FARC but went after Bout because of evidence that he had been involved in drug smuggling as well. Bout faces up to 10 years in prison in Thailand for taking part in illegal weapons deals there. US officials are also seeking Bout’s extradition to the US so he can face more charges."

April 1, 2008: Afghan Heroin & the CIA.
The Hindu reported in 2008 that, “90 per cent of the heroin sold in Russia comes from Afghanistan,” and Putin was quoted as saying, “Unfortunately, they (NATO) are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit,” and that the coalition forces were “sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe.” The article then reported that, “according to unconfirmed reports the U.S. military transport aviation is used for the delivery of drugs from Afghanistan to the American airbases, Ganci in Kyrgyzstan and Incirlik in Turkey,” and that, “It has been reported earlier that the CIA is involved in Afghanistan’s opium production, or is at least protecting it.” One Russian journalist quoted anonymous Afghan officials as saying, “85 per cent of all drugs produced in southern and southeastern provinces are shipped abroad by U.S. aviation.” 1

June 6, 2008: U.S. Prison Population Hits All-Time High: 2.3 Million Incarcerated.
abcnews.go.com...

November 15, 2008: Obama vows to pardon war criminal George W Bush.
www.morningafterpost.com...


January 20, 2009: Barrack Hussein Obama Inaugurated as POTUS.

February 21, 2009: Drug cartels' new weaponry means war.
Reporting from Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and Mexico City -- It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city's police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades. The attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals. Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semiauto- matic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
Mexico: U.S. Must Stop Gun Trade At Border Mexico blames the U.S. for arming the world's most powerful drug cartels, a complaint supported on Friday by a U.S. government report that found nearly all of Mexico's escalating drug killings involved weapons from north of the border. "We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico," President Calderon told AP. "Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades." On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder promised to enforce a long-ignored ban on importing assault weapons, many of which are re-sold illegally and smuggled into Mexico to resupply the cartels.
More Than $1 billion In Private-Sector Weapons Exports Approved For Mexico Since 2004 Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling. The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of the border to the “drug cartels.” The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico. Narco News, in a report last December [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] also examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations. So where are these military-grade weapons really coming from? The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates. The U.S. State Department oversees a program that requires private companies in the United States to obtain an export license in order to sell defense hardware or services to foreign purchasers — which include both government units and private buyers in other countries. These arms deals are known as Direct Commercial Sales [DCS]. Each year, the State Department issues a report tallying the volume and dollar amount of DCS items approved for export. According to an analysis of the DCS reports, some $1 billion in defense hardware was approved for export to Mexico via private U.S. companies between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2007 — the most recent year for which data was available. Overall, during the same period, a total of some $3.7 billion in weapons and other military hardware was approved for export under the DCS program to all of Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to the military hardware exports approved for Mexico, some $3.8 billion in defense-related “services” [technical assistance and training via private U.S. contractors] also were approved for “export” to Mexico over the same four-year period, according to the DCS reports. Following is a sample of the types of arms shipments approved for export to Mexico through the DCS program during fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone: $3.3 million worth of ammunition and explosives, including ammunition-manufacturing equipment; 13,000 nonautomatic and semiautomatic firearms, pistols and revolvers at a total value of $11.6 million; 42 grenade launchers valued at $518,531; 3,578 explosive projectiles, including grenades, valued at $78,251; Various night-vision equipment valued at $963,201. [Clarification: The figures above are taken from the actual DCS reports, which list the “quantity” and total dollar “value” of various defense articles approved for export. It is possible that the quantity figure listed, in some cases, such as the grenade launchers, represents a unit (or group) composed of more than one weapon.]

March 21, 2009: US Special Forces Used by Afghan Drug Clan to Take out a Rival in Secret Raid, according to German Military.

April 16, 2009: Cocaine Highways: Post-NAFTA, Most Drugs Cross U.S. Borders in Trucks.
"Most of the drug shipments smuggled into the United States by the Mexican cartels are hidden in trucks that drive across U.S. border checkpoints in plain sight, with little fear of inspection, U.S. law enforcement officials tell ABC News." abcnews.go.com...


June 28, 2009: Obama / Clinton / CIA and the coup d’etat of a democratically elected president in Honduras.
In the last few years, the U.S. has been ramping up its military operations throughout Latin America in what the Associated Press called "the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War." The buildup has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $20 billion since 2002, for troops, ships, clandestine bases, radar, military and police training and other expenses. U.S. military expenditures for Honduras in particular have gone up every year since 2009, when a military coup deposed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. At $67.4 million, 2012 Defense Department contracts for Honduras are triple those of 10 years ago. The U.S. spent $25 million last year to make the U.S. barracks at the Soto Cano air base permanent, and $89 million to keep 600 U.S. troops based there. U.S. direct aid to the Honduran military and police continues to climb as well. But the Obama administration's escalating military commitment in Honduras only deepens its support for the corrupt and repressive Lobo government. State security forces still enjoy near-complete impunity for thousands of alleged human rights abuses and even murders since the 2009 coup. The government hasn't paid many of its teachers for at least six months, and the country is close to bankrupt. articles.latimes.com...
Wikileaks Honduras: State Dept. Busted on Support of Coup By July 24, 2009, the U.S. government was totally clear about the basic facts of what took place in Honduras on June 28, 2009. The U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a cable to Washington with subject: "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," asserting that "there is no doubt" that the events of June 28 "constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup." The Embassy listed arguments being made by supporters of the coup to claim its legality, and dismissed them thus: "none ... has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution." The Honduran military clearly had no legal authority to remove President Zelaya from office or from Honduras, the Embassy said, and their action - the Embassy described it as an "abduction" and "kidnapping" - was clearly unconstitutional. Yesterday there was an election in Haiti. This election was funded by the U.S., despite the fact that major parties were excluded from participation by the government's electoral council, a fact that Republican and Democratic Members of Congress, in addition to NGOs, complained about without result. The Washington Post reports that the election ended with "nearly all the major candidates calling for the results to be tossed out amid 'massive fraud.'": "12 of the 19 candidates on Sunday's ballot appeared together at a raucous afternoon news conference to accuse the government of President Rene Preval of trying to steal the election and install his chosen candidate, Jude Celestin."
Clinton Betrayed Democracy, Economic Justice, and Women and Children in Honduras Given information that has been revealed since 2009, we now know a lot more about the US support for the 2009 military coup. Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, didn't necessarily push the button that started it, but she was the Obama administration's most ardent advocate of keeping the military in power and preventing Zelaya from returning as a democratically elected leader. The repercussions to Honduras of Clinton siding with the military have led to it becoming one of the most corrupt and violence-ridden nations in the world. They also reveal the deep contradiction between Clinton's espousal of democracy and the rights of women and children, and her neoliberal realpolitik interest in protecting the markets and profits of US-based corporations.
Hillary Clinton’s Link to a Nasty Piece of Work in Honduras By supporting the June 28, 2009 coup d’état in Honduras when she was secretary of state, Clinton helped create the dire conditions that caused many of these children to flee. And the assassination of legendary Honduran human rights leader Berta Cáceres earlier this month can be traced indirectly to Clinton’s policies. Pine, who has worked for many years in Honduras, told Dennis Bernstein of KPFA radio in 2014 that the military forces that carried out the coup were trained at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly called the U.S. Army School of the Americas) in Fort Benning, Ga. Although the coup was supported by the United States, it was opposed by the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS). The U.N. and the OAS labeled President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster a military coup.
Hillary Clinton admits role in Honduran coup aftermath In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a review of Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order,” to lay out her vision for “sustaining America’s leadership in the world.” In the midst of numerous global crises, she called for return to a foreign policy with purpose, strategy and pragmatism. She also highlighted some of these policy choices in her memoir “Hard Choices” and how they contributed to the challenges that Barack Obama’s administration now faces.  The chapter on Latin America, particularly the section on Honduras, a major source of the child migrants currently pouring into the United States, has gone largely unnoticed. The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression, the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras’ police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence, Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity. First, the confession: Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Son Of The Former President Of Honduras Sentenced To 24 Years In Prison For Conspiring To Import Cocaine Into The United States Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced today that FABIO PORFIRIO LOBO was sentenced to 288 months in prison for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.  LOBO pled guilty on May 16, 2016, before U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield, who imposed today’s sentence.  LOBO’s father, Porfirio Lobo, served as president of Honduras between 2010 and 2014. Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said:  “By his own admission, Fabio Lobo conspired to import huge quantities of cocaine into the U.S.  To assist traffickers and enrich himself, Lobo used his father’s position and his own connections to bring drug traffickers together with corrupt police and government officials.  Now, Fabio Lobo has been sentenced to the substantial prison term his crimes merit.”
Top U.S.-Backed Honduran Security Minister Is Running Drugs, According to Court Testimony The Honduran minister of security, who was intimately involved in solidifying the 2009 coup, is tied up in drug trafficking, according to testimony from a Mexican drug-trafficker-turned-DEA-informant in U.S. court. In November 2016, as the world’s attention was fixated on the surprise election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, two nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro were found guilty on drug trafficking charges. The conviction was another feather in the cap of U.S. prosecutors who have been targeting the Venezuelan government with corruption and drug trafficking investigations. But in the South Florida courtroom, the testimony of José Santos Peña also implicated Julián Pacheco Tinoco, a former Honduran military official with long ties to the U.S. security apparatus.
Organized crime is not a separate activity but rather woven into the very fabric of Honduras’s kleptocracy The year 2014 was when bulk shipments to the United States of another commodity began, both from and through Honduras: unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America.³⁹¹ So lucrative is the trade that it is difficult to imagine well-established trafficking rings passing it up. Other obvious forms of contraband that may be smuggled through Honduras include sex workers, weapons, and counterfeit consumer goods. Further research is required to ascertain whether the networks organizing these varieties of trade overlap with drug-trafficking networks and/or key elements of Honduras’s kleptocracy.

I

November 15, 2009: CIA pays for support in Pakistan : It has spent millions funding the ISI spy agency, despite fears of corruption.
The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan's intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency's annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say. The payments have triggered intense debate within the U.S. government, officials said, because of long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda members in Pakistan. The CIA payments are a hidden stream in a much broader financial flow; the U.S. has given Pakistan more than $15 billion over the last eight years in military and civilian aid. 1

December 2009:  Hillary knows Saudi Arabia funding Al Qaeda, accepts millions in donations anyways.
A classified 2009 State Department memo signed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly admits that “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” www.salon.com...

2009-2017: Hezbollah Hooks Up With Mexican Drug Cartels.
Islamic terrorist groups are setting up shop in Mexico and forming alarming ties with the country's brutal drug cartels, according to a 2010 internal memo from the Tucson Police Department. The memo, leaked by the hacker group LulzSec as part of its Arizona Department of Public Safety hack, warns that Hezbollah has established operations — and a large arms stockpile — in Mexico. As evidence, it points to the 2010 Tijuana arrest of Hezbollah militant Jameel Nasr, who was allegedly tasked with establishing a Hezbollah network in Mexico and South America. The memo also recalls the April 2009 arrest of Jamal Yousef in New York, which exposed a huge cache of assault rifles, hand grenades, explosives and anti-tank munitions. According to Yousef, the weapons were stored in Mexico after being smuggled from Iraq by members of Hezbollah. The memo warns that consequences of partnerships between Hezbollah and Mexico's drug partnerships could be disastrous for Mexico's drug war, given Hezbollah's advanced weapons capabilities — specifically their expertise with improvised explosive devices (IEDs). It notes that some Mexican criminal organizations have started using small IEDs and car bombs, a marked change in tactics that indicates a relationship with Islamic militants. 1
The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook on cocacine trafficking.
How Hezbollah turned to trafficking coc aine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion. The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities. Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies. They followed coc aine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran. But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. Link to article
Hezbollah Smuggled Tons of Cocaine Into the U.S. During Obama Administration, Report Reveals Project Cassandra, a campaign launched by the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008, found that the Iran-backed military and political organization collected $1 billion a year from money laundering, criminal activities, and drug and weapons trade, according to Politico. Over the following eight years, the agency found that Hezbollah was involved in cocaine shipments from Latin America to West Africa, as well as through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. Because of the project's sudden end, it is hard to determine how much cocaine has come into the U.S. from Hezbollah-affiliated networks. But through Venezuela alone, Hezbollah sent thousands of tons to the United States in a matter of years. The Obama administration also did not move forward to extradite two Venezuelan citizens who were deeply involved between the South American country, Hezbollah, Iran and drug trafficking: businessman Walid Makled and former chief of intelligence Hugo Carvajal.

2010: First Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Summit.
In what is set to be a Pacific Ocean permtuation of NATFA.


2010: Cash Flow to Terrorists Evades U.S. Efforts
A classified memo sent by Mrs. Clinton last December made it clear that residents of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, all allies of the United States, are the chief financial supporters of many extremist activities. “It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,” the cable said, concluding that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” The dispatch and others offered similarly grim views about the United Arab Emirates (“a strategic gap” that terrorists can exploit), Qatar (“the worst in the region” on counterterrorism) and Kuwait (“a key transit point”). The cable stressed the need to “generate the political will necessary” to block money to terrorist networks — groups that she said were “threatening stability in Pakistan and Afghanistan and targeting coalition soldiers.”


February 13, 2010: After a year of cautious debate and costly deployments, President Obama finally launched his new Afghan war strategy.
In a remote market town called Marja in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province. As a wave of helicopters descended on Marja's outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of U.S. Marines dashed through fields sprouting opium poppies toward the town's mud-walled compounds. At a carefully staged meet-and-greet with some 200 villagers, however, the vice-president and provincial governor faced some unexpected, unscripted anger.  "If they come with tractors," one Afghani widow announced to a chorus of supportive shouts from her fellow farmers, "they will have to roll over me and kill me before they can kill my poppy." For these poppy growers and thousands more like them, the return of government control, however contested, brought with it a perilous threat: opium eradication. Throughout all the shooting and shouting, American commanders seemed strangely unaware that Marja might qualify as the world's heroin capital -- with hundreds of laboratories, reputedly hidden inside the area's mud-brick houses, regularly processing the local poppy crop into high-grade heroin.  After all, the surrounding fields of Helmand Province produce a remarkable 40% of the world's illicit opium supply, and much of this harvest has been traded in Marja. Rushing through those opium fields to attack the Taliban on day one of this offensive, the Marines missed their real enemy, the ultimate force behind the Taliban insurgency, as they pursued just the latest crop of peasant guerrillas whose guns and wages are funded by those poppy plants. "You can't win this war," said one U.S. Embassy official just back from inspecting these opium districts, "without taking on drug production in Helmand Province." Indeed, as Air Force One headed for Kabul Sunday, National Security Adviser James L. Jones assured reporters that President Obama would try to persuade Afghan President Hamid Karzai to prioritize "battling corruption, taking the fight to the narco-traffickers." The drug trade, he added, "provides a lot of the economic engine for the insurgents." Indeed, opium's influence is so pervasive that many Afghan officials, from village leaders to Kabul's police chief, the defense minister, and the president's brother, have been tainted by the traffic.  So cancerous and crippling is this corruption that, according to recent U.N. estimates, Afghans are forced to spend a stunning $2.5 billion in bribes. Not surprisingly, the government's repeated attempts at opium eradication have been thoroughly compromised by what the U.N. has called "corrupt deals between field owners, village elders, and eradication teams." 1

2010's: The Rise of Liberal Political Correctness
Liberal PC in both the US & EU takes on a new precedent were 'nothing' that might offend somebody for what group they are in is tolerable. This intolerance becomes the new method of bullying. Even merely criticizing Obama's policies gets people smeared as being "RACIST". Any and all criticisms of Islamic Extremism or anything else related to the dark side of Mainstream Global Islam gets shouted down as being "Islamophobic" "bigotry". Racial hypersensitivity becomes commonplace, yet nobdy seems to care abut the War On Drugs and its war tearing effects on the poor and minorities in this new environoment of supposed mass altruism. Full discussion here: www.abovetopsecret.com...


December 2010: The Arab Spring.
"...was a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both non-violent and violent), riots, and civil wars in the Arab world... Major insurgencies in Syria, Libya and Yemen resulted along with civil uprisings in Egypt and Bahrain, large street demonstrations in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Oman, and minor protests even in Saudi Arabia. ...The Arab Spring is widely believed to have been instigated by dissatisfaction with the rule of local governments, particularly by youth and unions, though some have speculated that wide gaps in income levels may have had a hand as well. Other analysts pointed to the fourth stage "Toppling the Regimes" of the Al Qaeda strategy for world domination, described in Fouad Hussein's book published in 2005. Numerous factors led to the protests, including issues such as dictatorship or absolute monarchy, human rights violations, political corruption (demonstrated by Wikileaks diplomatic cables), economic decline, unemployment, extreme poverty, and a number of demographic structural factors, such as a large percentage of educated but dissatisfied youth within the entire population." en.wikipedia.org... en.wikipedia.org...  CIA engineers the "Arab Spring". dissidentvoice.org... Syrian President Bashar Assad says that Western propaganda caused the uprising. www.mintpressnews.com...  Western media never seemed to report that protestors were firing on police before Assad's brutal (counter) attacks ever began. www.strategic-culture.org...

January 25, 2011: Egyptian Google engineer Wael Ghonim created the Facebook page which triggered the Arab Spring.
The story can be seen, along with all the back story of Syria & Libya, at about 2:06:48 in the documentary, HyperNormalisation. In 2011 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role. In a later interview, when responding to the children that died as a result, you can see him break down "crying" (although no tears came out maybe he has broken tear ducts):

2011: Clinton State Department approved U.S. weapons shipment to Libya despite ban.
"The State Department initially approved a weapons shipment from a California company to Libyans seeking to oust Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 even though a United Nations arms ban was in place, according to memos recovered from the burned-out compound in Benghazi." www.washingtontimes.com...
"Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi Debacle: Arming Jihadists in Libya . . . and Syria" www.nationalreview.com...

February 15, 2011: Libyan Civil War begins.
The formation of the NATO-backed National Transitional Council was announced in the city of Benghazi (yes, that Benghazi).  en.wikipedia.org...  en.wikipedia.org...

May 2, 2011: Osama Bin laden is finally "dead".
Al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden reported as killed by Navy Seal Team 6. His #2 man Ayman al-Zawahiri takes the reigns.  en.wikipedia.org...


May 4, 2011: Drug trafficking, kidnapping fund al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda Inc. might suffer some initial setbacks from Osama bin Laden's death, but so did Apple Inc. when shares dropped over rumors of Steve Jobs' illness. But it did not take long to realize that Jobs has established a highly functional corporation, and the shares bounced back. The same can be expected for al Qaeda Inc. The jihadist organization has changed since its establishment in Afghanistan in 1988 by bin Laden and Palestinian sheikh Abdallah Yusuf Azzam. Al Qaeda Central has developed several branches and inspired many other radical Islamic organizations, each with its own independent resources. Most rely heavily on a variety of illegal activities, ranging from drug trafficking to kidnapping for ransom, often in association with international criminal syndicates. The al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb terrorist group, for example, has sustained itself since 2003 primarily on revenues derived from the business of hostage taking, mostly Westerners. It also engages in drug trafficking and receives some donations. 1

2011: Patriot Act used to fight more drug dealers than terrorists.
Among the many changes since Sept. 11, 2001, the Patriot Act has been one of the most debated. Benjamin Wallace-Wells writes in the New York Magazine this week about how the act is doing, 10 years later, calling it the “kitchen sink approach to national security.” The act makes “it easier to wiretap American citizens suspected of cooperating with terrorism, to snoop through business records without notification, and to execute search warrants without immediately informing their targets (a so-called sneak-and-peek).” So how has the Patriot Act fared as a defense against terrorism? The act has been used in 1,618 drug cases and only 15 terrorism cases. 1

July 2011:  The combative Syrian Uprising begins by the Free Syrian Army vs. the sovereign Assad regime.

August 2011: Syrian National Council forms in Turkey (a US-NATO ally).
en.wikipedia.org...  It's membership includes Al-Nusra Front (which translates as "Al Qaeda in Syria"). en.wikipedia.org... and is formed with the help of ISIS.

August 2011: The US called for Assad’s resignation. 
web.stanford.edu...

September 11, 2011: Court Pleadings Point to CIA Role in Alleged “Cartel” Immunity Deal.
Mexican Narco-Trafficker’s Revelations in Criminal Case Force US Government to Invoke National Security Claims. The fingerprints of the CIA have surfaced in a controversial federal criminal case pending in Chicago against Jesus Vicente Zambada Niebla, an alleged kingpin in the Sinaloa “drug cartel.” US government prosecutors filed pleadings in the case late last week seeking to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA), a measure designed to assure national security information does not surface in public court proceedings. 1 2
 
October 20, 2011: Muammar Gaddafi captured and killed.
He was beaten, sodomized with a bayonet and shot multiple times. en.wikipedia.org...
Hillary Clinton says quote "We came, we saw, he died, hahaha!."  www.cbsnews.com...

December 2011:  US forces completely pulled from Iraq.
December 18, 2011: Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq concludes. ISIS begins. en.wikipedia.org...
Back then, in 2011, there was no ISIS. The group didn't exist under that name yet. There was just their predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, which had been at the forefront of the terrible insurgency in Iraq. But many thought it was licked. 1
Prior To Clinton's Tenure As Secretary Of State, There Was No ISIS And Its Precursor "Continued To Struggle To Maintain Relevance. web.stanford.edu...
Interventions In Libya, Turmoil In Syria, And U.S. Troop Withdrawals From Iraq Created Power Vacuums ISIS Was Able To Exploit. www.theatlantic.com...
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Blamed The Obama Administration For Making Poor Decisions That Fueled The Rise Of ISIS. Panetta Believes Had Obama Not Broken With The Bush Strategy, Iraq May Have Turned Out Differently. Panetta Says That Obama Leaving Iraq And His Inaction On Syria Helped Create ISIS. www.nbcnews.com...
Amid This Vacuum, Fanatical Islamists Have Flourish In Both Iraq And Syria Under The Banner Of Al Qaeda, As The Two Countries’ Conflicts Amplify Each Other And Foster Ever-Deeper Radicalism.  www.nytimes.com...
Moving To The Regional Level, The Power Vacuum Is Even More Obvious. foreignpolicy.com...
Bernie Sanders Blamed Hillary Clinton And Her Policies For The Vacuum In The Middle East. www.washingtonpost.com...
In The Fall Of 2011, Clinton Defended The Administration’s Decision Not To Leave A Residual Force In Iraq Despite Calls To Keep Troops In Country. When Asked If The Failure To Have A Residual Force Contributed To Iraq’s Deteriorating Security, Secretary Clinton Blamed The Bush Administration. www.youtube.com...
Multiple U.S. Military Commanders In Iraq Advocated For Keeping Troops In Iraq To Prevent Another Round Of Conflict. www.washingtontimes.com...
As The United States Prepares To Withdraw Its Troops From Iraq By Year’s End, Senior American And Iraqi Officials Are Expressing Concern That Al Qaeda’s Offshoot Here … Is Poised For A Deadly Resurgence.” Major General Jeffrey Buchanan: “I Cringe Whenever Anybody Makes A Pronouncement That Al Qaeda Is On Its Last Legs. www.nytimes.com... The Complete Withdrawal Decision “Increases The Risk That Painfully Won Security Gains In Iraq Will Come Undone; That Iran Will Be Handed A Crucial Strategic Advantage” And That The U.S.-Iraqi Alliance “Will Wither.” www.washingtonpost.com...
The Wall Street Journal Editorial: “There Are Serious Risks In This Complete Withdrawal.” online.wsj.com...
Lt. General Robert Caslen In 2011: With No Agreement To Keep U.S. Trainers In Iraq, There’s “A Significant Training Gap In The Iraqi Security Forces.” www.usatoday.com...
In 2008, Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qadr Said “In Regard To The Borders… Our Calculation Appears That We Are Not Going To Be Able To Answer To Any External Threats Until 2018 To 2020 www.nytimes.com...
Clinton On ISIS: “We Now Finally Are Where We Need To Be.” In December 2015, Clinton Said That Obama’s ISIS Strategy “Is Close To Mine.” In February 2015, Clinton Said Obama Is Making “The Right Moves” In The Effort Against ISIS.
Former Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates: Obama And His Advisors “Have Underestimated ISIS All Along.” www.youtube.com...
Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, The Advancement Of ISIS Came As A “Jolt” To The Obama Administration. After Hagel Described The Threat Of ISIS As “Beyond Anything We’ve Seen,” The Obama White House Was Not Happy And Criticized His Remarks. Hagel: The White House Tried To ‘Destroy’ Me. foreignpolicy.com... Full: www.donaldjtrump.com...


2012: John Kerry Admits the US Saw ISIS Growing and Chose to Do Nothing.
CNN originally had up some audio that had been leaked of John Kerry talking about using force in Syria. But there was part of the audio that was not made public. The entire audio has subsequently been taken down by CNN. The part that was never made public, however, has been leaked. In it, John Kerry admits that the United States saw ISIS growing, which he referred to as Daesh. But instead of doing anything about it, Kerry says the Obama Administration calculated that its growth would lead the Assad regime in Syria to the negotiating table. Instead, Kerry says, Assad turned to Vladimir Putin for help. Now, I have to tell you, anyone with half a brain would have realized the Assad regime would turn to Russia. The Assad family has always turned to Moscow for help. It is insane that our government was surprised by that. It is also highly irresponsible.

February 2012: “Al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria”: Clinton adviser.
Hillary Clinton’s former policy adviser told the presidential candidate that Al-Qaeda is on the side of the United States in Syria, Wikileaks revealed on Wednesday. “AQ is on our side in Syria,” former policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, told Hillary Clinton in an email dated February 12th, 2012. While Hillary Clinton failed to win the U.S. presidency in 2016, she was considered a major advocate for regime change in Syria.

February 2012:  US, Turkey & Jordan begin training Syrian rebels (Al Qaeda). 
www.wnd.com...  WaPo  www.huffingtonpost.co.uk...  fair.org...  McCain, Graham call for US to arm Syrian rebels. thehill.com...

April 2012: Qatar Paid $1 Million for Five Minutes With Bill Clinton while Hillary was Secretary of State.
www.reuters.com...  www.politifact.com...

June 2012: "CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition".
Operating from Turkey, by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
www.nytimes.com...  en.wikipedia.org...

Summer 2012:  By now Hillary Clinton had been openly intent on arming the Syrian rebels (Al Qaeda).
www.cbsnews.com... www.theguardian.com... www.thedailybeast.com... www.hillaryclinton.com...

July 24, 2012: Mexican official: CIA 'manages' drug trade.
"The US Central Intelligence Agency and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers", a spokesman for the Chihuahua state government in northern Mexico has told Al Jazeera, instead "they try to manage the drug trade". Allegations about official complicity in the drug business are nothing new when they come from activists, professors, campaigners or even former officials. However, an official spokesman for the authorities in one of Mexico's most violent states - one which directly borders Texas - going on the record with such accusations is unique." www.aljazeera.com...


August 2012:  Google partnered with Al Jazeera in trying to help Hillary overthrow Assad's regime. [email #12166]
www.dailymail.co.uk...  www.ibtimes.co.uk...  truthinmedia.com...

August 12, 2012: 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”.
Judicial Watch published a selection of formerly classified documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense and State Department through a federal lawsuit. While initial mainstream media reporting is focused on the White House’s handling of the Benghazi consulate attack, a much “bigger picture” admission and confirmation is contained in one of the Defense Intelligence Agency documents circulated in 2012: that an ‘Islamic State’ is desired in Eastern Syria to effect the West’s policies in the region. Astoundingly, the newly declassified report states that for “THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”. The DIA report, formerly classified “SECRET//NOFORN” and dated August 12, 2012, was circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State Dept., and many others. The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset. While a number of analysts and journalists have documented long ago the role of western intelligence agencies in the formation and training of the armed opposition in Syria, this is the highest level internal U.S. intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see ISIS as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The document matter-of-factly states just that scenario. 12


September 1, 2012: Mexico Shooting Exposes Secret CIA Involvement in the Drug War.
"The failed ambush that took place last week on two CIA agents in Mexico continues to raise questions by both people in Mexico and in the U.S. The Mayor of Mexico City is asking the federal government to clarify what the exact role of the CIA is in the so-called drug war. In the United States, some Republicans are beginning to ask the Obama Administrations for answers about this recent incident, which parallels the shooting of ICE Agent Jaime Zapata when he was ambushed and killed by Los Zetas almost two years ago." deadlinelive.info...

September 2012: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday announced $45 million in additional aid for Syrian opposition activists.
www.mcclatchydc.com...

September 2012: It's later exposed that the Benghazi CIA station was involved in buying guns from Libyan warlords to ship to rebels in Syria.
townhall.com...

Hillary's top aide, Huma Abedin, credits Hillary for inspiring global rioting on September 11, teh same day as the Benghazi attack.
www.abovetopsecret.com...  www.abovetopsecret.com...  www.youtube.com...

September 2012: The 'Arab Autumn' (Banghazi & the Film Protests).
This story gets weird. Huma's memo (from one of the big email WikiLeaks) congradulates credits "H" "inspiring the "peaceful protests". What's crazy is the backsotory of the film, and then the versin that 'mysteriously' came about and culmninated as a protest crisis across the Midele East leading right in to the Benghazi "embassy" (CIA arms gathering hub) attack by Al Qaeda (which was a planned attack). The film literally became the perfect media coverage "patsy" for all of the other strange phenomena surrounding the entire issue set. Weirder and weirder the story gets as you look at it, especially considering Al Qaeda groups were major organizers of the attack.  www.abovetopsecret.com...
August 2011: "“Sam Bacile” was also the alias Nakoula used when he recruited some 130 struggling actors and extras in 2011 to star in a film called Desert Warrior—a slapstick blood-and-gore drama with a terrible script. From what the actors could tell, it was set in “ancient Arabia,” with a weird mix of foreign and modern-sounding names (“George,” “Helen,” “Abdo el Mutlab.”)" www.thedailybeast.com...
June 23, 2012: A feature-length cut of the movie, retitled The Innocence of Bin Laden, was shown exactly once, to an audience of fewer than 10 people, at the Vine Cinema, on Hollywood Boulevard. www.vanityfair.com...
The words “Muhammad” and “Islam” never appeared in the screenplay—but they were dubbed in, front and center, in a feature-length cut of the movie, retitled The Innocence of Bin Laden www.thedailybeast.com...
July: “Muhammad Movie Trailer” (English) to uploaded to youtube. "The clip attracted no significant attention until the beginning of September, when an Arabic-language version of the trailer appeared on YouTube." www.vanityfair.com...
September 4: “Muhammad Movie Trailer” (Arabic) to uploaded to youtube. 'Whatever his name is' (the insane filmaker) claims he has no clue who made that print.
September 8: “Muhammad Movie Trailer” "was all over Egyptian religious television—with its crude sexual jokes about Muhammad being gay and interested in “dominant or submissive” coitus with little girls and prostitutes—and bedlam erupted in the Middle East, with as many as 50 deaths recorded." www.thedailybeast.com...
Between 9/8-9/11: Muslim Brotherhood calls for protests. " The liberal Democratic Front Party called on Morsi to postpone his visit to the United States, scheduled for later this month, in protest of the video." www.thenation.com...
Protests / riots raged on past 9/11 (Tuesday). "Several al Qaeda-linked jihadists helped incite the protest outside the US embassy in Cairo on Sept. 11. The jihadists include senior members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), a group that merged with al Qaeda, and a senior Gamaa Islamiyya (IG) leader who has longstanding ties to al Qaeda’s senior leadership. ...Mohammed al Zawahiri (brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman al Zawahiri) admittedly helped stage the Cairo protest." www.longwarjournal.org... September 10: Ambassador "Stevens arrived in Libya on Sept. 10, he had no idea how bad things were regarding the state of security." conservativetribune.com...
September 11 (9:40PM): Benghazi "Embassy" attack begins. "These notifications were quickly transmitted from the Department of State to the Department of Defense (3:40 PM EST). DS headquarters maintained open phone lines with the DS personnel throughout the attack." fas.org...
September 11 (10:04): Six security personnel and a translator left the Annex en route to the facility. Stevens presumed dead by now (and left for dead).
September 12 (evening): Support platoon arrives; Banghazi Crisis ends.
September 13: The ""peaceful" protests" still ongoing.
September 14 (6:53AM): Huma emails "H" to give credit for "inspiring the "peaceful" protests".
February 2014: Retired 4-star admiral: Benghazi was an Obama false flag that went wrong "In an interview with Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Network., Adm. Lyons says that Barack Obama intentionally conspired with America’s enemies to stage a bogus attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, and the bogus kidnapping of Ambassador Chris Stevens. According to the plan, Obama would successfully “negotiate” for Stevens’ release in a prisoner exchange, which would bolster the POS’s then-mediocre approval ratings just prior to the 2012 election. In Lyons’ words, “The attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi . . . was the result of a bungled abduction attempt . . . the first stage of an international prisoner exchange . . . that would have ensured the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, the ‘Blind Sheik’.”"
2016: The memo by Huma Abedin is leaked.

November 2012:  Confirmed US-NATO arming the "moderate rebels" (Al Qaeda) in Syria.
ijr.com... www.globalresearch.ca...


December 11, 2012: New Army Manual Orders Soldiers Not To Criticize Taliban.
www.judicialwatch.org...
"Here is a strong indicator that the Obama Administration’s crusade to appease Islam has gone too far; a new U.S. military handbook for troops deployed to the Middle East orders soldiers not to make derogatory comments about the Taliban or criticize pedophilia, among other outrageous things. ...It gets better; the new manual, which is around 75 pages, suggests that Western ignorance of Afghan culture— not Taliban infiltration—is responsible for the increase in deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against the coalition forces. ...The draft leaked to the newspaper offers a list of “taboo conversation topics” that soldiers should avoid, including “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “advocating women’s rights,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” “directing any criticism towards Afghans,” “mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct” or “anything related to Islam.”"

December 13, 2012: Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke.
"If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me. Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank." www.rollingstone.com...
A report compiled for the committee detailed how HSBC's subsidiaries transported billions of dollars of cash in armoured vehicles, cleared suspicious travellers' cheques worth billions, and allowed Mexican drug lords buy to planes with money laundered through Cayman Islands accounts. Other subsidiaries moved money from Iran, Syria and other countries on US sanctions lists, and helped a Saudi bank linked to al-Qaida to shift money to the US. www.theguardian.com...

March 2013: Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With aid from CIA.
www.nytimes.com...  newrepublic.com...


July 2013: Ex-Border Patrol Agents Warn: Politicians Helping Cartels in U.S.
“Transnational criminal enterprises have annually invested millions of dollars to create and staff international drug and human smuggling networks inside the United States; thus it is no surprise that they continue to accelerate their efforts to get trusted representatives in place as a means to guarantee continued success,” the Border Patrol agents wrote. “Sanctuary cities established throughout the United States discourage even the most basic law enforcement initiatives within their boundaries against these predatory criminals,” they wrote. “Encouraged by Congress and a disinterested mainstream news media, these havens deny the American public their constitutional right to national security and public safety while providing relative safety for dangerous foreign criminals.” 1

July 2013: Texas: Smugglers With Less Than 150lbs Are Set Free
Each year the Border Patrol checkpoint seizes hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana. "We have 'em put it in spare tires and gas tanks," said a Border Patrol agent, whose voice and identity has been disguised because the agent feared of being fired for telling us what happens next - that up to 60 smugglers a month are being let go. "We catch 'em, but then because our hands are tied, they end up walking and being released," said the agent. As for what the biggest load of marijuana he's seen where someone was still let go, he said: "The biggest load that I've seen is right around 140 pounds." Police here say federal authorities generally won't prosecute traffickers moving less than 150 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $120,000. So they leave those cases and the costs to local district attorneys, including Carlos Garcia of Brooks County. "If we were to accept them, we're accepting them with all those financial responsibilities as well, and right now we're just not at a point where we can do that," Garcia said, adding that they just can't afford it. 1


August 20, 2013: Obama DOJ Asks Court to Grant Immunity to George W. Bush For Iraq War.
warisacrime.org...


August 21, 2013: An Apparent Chemical Attack Strikes Damascus Just After UN Inspectors Arrive.
A YouTube playlist compiled by British blogger and investigator Eliot Higgins was posted online early this morning, documenting the aftermath of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ghouta region of East Damascus, Syria. A child in a Ninja Turtles t-shirt screamed and covered his mouth with a damp cloth as others around him shouted and covered their faces next to a bombed-out caravan. The attack comes just days after UN weapons inspectors landed in Damascus to begin a probe into the alleged use of chemical weapons. The investigation had previously been delayed for months due largely to President Bashar Assad's reluctance for a broader investigation, despite his originally asking the UN to carry out investigations into rebel use of chemical weapons in an alleged attack outside the city of Aleppo. 1 Among a series of important findings, the ISTEAMS report notes that even though the attacks are said to have killed up to 1400 people, mostly children appear in the videos and several corpses are shown in different videos said to have been shot in various locations. While this report seriously challenges the assertion that the Syrian government was behind the attacks, it was not covered by the Western mainstream media, toeing the imperial line and parroting Washington’s claims, which still lack evidence and credibility. In addition, some controversy arose pertaining to allegations that the rebels were responsible for the attacks and used chemical weapons provided by Saudi intelligence. Dale Gavlak, the co-author of an article containing these allegations, now wants to dissociate herself from the article and is facing threats. 1 The staged scenes dont seem to be mentioned in Wikipedia: 1



August 31, 2013: Wikileak Memo: Obama Refused DEA Permission to Assassinate Chapo.
If one high-ranking employee with the global intelligence firm Stratfor is to be believed, not only did the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) once know the whereabouts of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán - the Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin and fugitive from justice in Mexico - but the agency even asked the White House to go into Mexico to kill him. Among the 5 million "Stratfor memos" published by WikiLeaks in 2012 are several messages from Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence and top expert on Mexican drug cartels for Stratfor, describing classified interactions from 2007 to 2011 between Mexican and US intelligence and even President Barack Obama's response to the 2010 DEA query. Guzmán, one of the most powerful of Mexico's cartel capos, was sentenced to over 20 years in prison in 1993 on drug trafficking charges but escaped by bribing a prison guard. He remains a fugitive from justice.

September 06, 2013: Iran-Contra Redux? Prince Bandar Heads Secret Saudi-CIA Effort to Aid Syrian Rebels, Topple Assad.
"The Wall Street Journal recently revealed new details about how Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud — Saudi’s former ambassador to the United States — is leading the effort to prop up the Syrian rebels. Intelligence agents from Saudi Arabia, the United States, Jordan and other allied states are working at a secret joint operations center in Jordan to train and arm hand-picked Syrian rebels. The Journal also reports Prince Bandar has been jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime. "Really what he’s doing is he’s reprising a role that he played in the 1980s when he worked with the Reagan administration to arrange money and arms for mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and also worked with the CIA in Nicaragua to support the Contras," says Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Entous. "So in many ways this is a very familiar position for Prince Bandar, and it’s amazing to see the extent to which veterans of the CIA were excited to see him come back because, in the words of a diplomat who knows Bandar, he brings the Arabic term wasta, which means under-the-table clout. You know his checks are not going to bounce and that he’ll be able to deliver the money from the Saudis." 1

October 2013: Hillary says “the Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on earth over the course of the last 30 years.”
www.salon.com...

2013: The Gulf of Guinea: The New(ish) and (not so) Improved MENA Drug Route.
Readers of Stateless Homesteading will recall that back in November of 2015, we published an article detailing the significant uptick in heroin and cocaine trafficking coming from West Africa – an old route once used by CIA front-men Meyer Lansky and “Lucky” Luciano and their Operation Gladio partners in Lebanon, refined opium would make its way from the Middle East to New York via an airport in Accra, Ghana. With the explosion of Nicaraguan cocaine stemming from Iran-Contra and the boom in Afghan opium that followed, West Africa’s place in Intelligence-backed drug-running has received far less attention in the modern era; that is, until reports began surfacing in 2013 regarding Accra’s Kotoka Airport once again being used for the smuggling of cocaine and heroin. West Africa, after a decades-long hiatus, finds itself in a position of prominence in the international drug trade – ensnared not by the grip of Operation “Gladio A” and the CIA mob syndicate that supported them, but Operation “Gladio B” and the CIA-backed Salafist boogeymen known as “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (AQIM):
Unsurprisingly, the “refreshed” heroin and coke-smuggling syndicate in Ghana includes at least some amount of sponsorship from officialdom, as the former President of Ghana, John Atta Mills, voiced public concerns that elements of his own administration were involved in the trade. He is now deceased. His predecessor, President John Kufor (2000-2008) shared similar concerns, with cables suggesting “suspicions of widespread corruption, including instances where airport security was suspected of tipping off smugglers.” 1

November 13, 2013: Docs Reveal CIA-Guadalajara Cartel Link.
"The story connecting Mexico's infamous Guadalajara Cartel to the United States' top spy agency in the 1980s is not fiction, even if the assertion that the agency helped kill a US drug agent probably is. A look at the publicly available documents shows that the US worked closely with at least one member of the cartel, but that it was not the infamous Mexican intellectual author of the murder." www.insightcrime.org...

2013: "Black Lives Matter".
On its surface one would surmise that clearly BLM is all about protecting black folks from police brutality and the like. Given that its shocking that in mid-2016 the phrase "War On Drugs" was only mentioned 3 times total in their official website, out of at least 570 pages (that Google shows as indexed). Instead we find the real emphasis on the full spectrum of divisive "Social Justice" political ideology:
Now whatever ones positions on all of that may be is mostly irrelevent in terms of the War of Drugs, as divisive partisan politics keeps all of our people from "loving engagement" and the ability of coming together to unite in stopping this brutal War of Drugs policy / agenda that is scorching the "diversity" of the earth. Indeed, we already have "globalism" in the form of the CIA's international drug trafficking networks. Black families are the the bottom of that totem pole "intergenerationally" now. In this "unapologetically black" practice we've seen a widespread trend of anti-white hate crimes, open calls even from academia for "white genocide", mass murder, and so on. So much for "collective value when this predictable trend has triggered a resurgeence of white supremacism, which was effectively extinct for over a decde before all this. The founders of the movement have been virtually mute on the subject of the widescale rioting and atrocities they triggered, as has the official website. It having an official website is interesting given that it claims to be a decentralized movement, thus dodging the blame for the predictable results of the social chaos its design has unleashed, which is even more confounding of posture given that in 2016 alone it managed to secure $100,000,000 in donations from robberbarron foundations. Where that money goes who knows, but it sure hasn't been about stopping the War on Drugs. And its a shame too, they had Obama in there they could have "Occupied" the White House for 2 years and forced his hand. Instead they screamed for dead cops and they got them.
Moving on, when you start locking people up for doing drugs, and they are inevitably socialized into criminality, eventually they get out and then socialize those around them: Socialization... is a term used by sociologists, social psychologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and educationalists to refer to the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating norms, customs, values and ideologies, providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for participating within their own society. Socialization is thus "the means by which social and cultural continuity are attained".
Perhaps if they were truly concerned about saving the black community they'd be all marching against the social engineering agenda's MTV, BET and the Controlled Music Model (MTV, the radio stations, the "Single Release Model" the industry uses to control who gets on the radio/TV)The agenda being to target them with Bling Bling Culture, which the vast majority of black folks can generally only get thru a life of crime, while it conditions them to impulsively blow all of their cash on flashy road to nowhere material goods instead of say paying off a house and passing it down to their children.
Note that the same handful of megaconglomerate media corporations that run the music industry are the same ones running the news networks, save Clear Channel which is the same animal no less. But the MSM news networks that front as if they have the black community's back, in prompting them to be "unapologetically black" only has the followers of this social craze further marginalizing themselves in various ways while not addressing critical behavioral trends that are too common such general criminality, impulsiveness, violence, womanizing, and so on all of which the music the mainstream corporate music bombards the black community with. While of course the idea of criticizing the lies and distortions of the MSM itself is to be scoffed at by followers of this ideology. Therefore, the "Social Justice" crowd ought to be trashing the bling bling musicians for being involved in perpetuating this cycle of syndemic repression, the MSM for not being the real deal, their parent companies for runnignt his game for decades, and so on. Instead, all of the energy has been directed at white people, and cops, while not pointing the fingers at the White House, the Republican's and the Democrat's for running this "War of Drugs" agenda against the lot of US. So what we have is a positive-feedback-loop ensuring the criminal culture will only rise creating more prisoners, to create more criminals, to create more prisoners, ad infinitum. But instead of focus the energy on that, a goal that could be achieved, BLM would apparently rather have a mass scale breakdown of inter-group civility (empathy). Meaning so as long as everybody keeps finger pointing and blaming other social groups, instead of the insitutitions behind all of this, we'll all just keep eating our tails in this tangled mess. Now Trump's in and even if he secretly intends to dissolve the War on Drugs given the decades of antidrug social engineering of the conservative base he wont be able to roll that agenda out until after re-election.

2014: Obama admin knew gang members were part of illegal immigrant surge: Whistleblower
The Obama administration knowingly let in at least 16 admitted MS-13 gang members who arrived at the U.S. as illegal immigrant teenagers in 2014, a top senator said Wednesday, citing internal documents that showed the teens were shipped to juvenile homes throughout the country. Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said a whistleblower turned over Customs and Border Protection documents from 2014 detailing the 16 people who were caught crossing the border. “CBP apprehended them, knew they were MS-13 gang members, and they processed and disbursed them into our communities,” Mr. Johnson, Wisconsin Republican, said. The gang members were part of the surge of UAC, or “unaccompanied alien children,” as the government labels them, who overwhelmed the Obama administration in 2014, leaving Homeland Security struggling to staunch the flow from Central America. Officials at the time said the children should be treated as refugees fleeing horrific conditions back home — though security analysts said the children were prime recruiting territory for gangs already in the U.S.


January 4, 2014: DEA Case Threatens to Expose US Government-Sanctioned Drug-Running.
Federal agents this past November raided the offices of an aircraft brokerage and leasing company called World Jet Inc., based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The raid, spearheaded by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, was launched on the heels of a DEA affidavit for a search warrant, which was filed in late October last year in federal court in Colorado as part of a case that is now sealed. The search-warrant affidavit was made available on the Internet after being obtained by a reporter for the Durango Herald newspaper. 1

January 2014: Embedded with Al-Qaeda in Syria: ISIS and al-Nusra
www.youtube.com..

February 2014: Al Qaeda cuts all ties with ISIL (or so the story goes).
www.youtube.com...

April 2, 2014: New Pew Poll Confirms Americans Ready to End War on Drugs.
www.drugpolicy.org...

May 2014:  Many Syrian rebel arms are US paid but Russian made.
www.pbs.org...

June 2014: ISIS declares itself a Caliphate (imperial nation) and pushes at becoming a proper regional imperial power.
Explodes onto international scene. Routinely seen driving US vehicles and sporting US weapons.  www.nbcnews.com...  www.motherjones.com...  www.theguardian.com...  www.mintpressnews.com...  reverbpress.com...


June 2014:  Obama Proposes $500 Million to Aid Syrian Rebels.
www.wsj.com...  en.wikipedia.org...

August 2014:  Hillary Clinton admits "the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia...are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."
[WikiLeaks Podesta email #3774] 

August 21, 2014: Former CIA Officer Says ISIS and Mexican Drug Cartels Communicate.
"A former CIA officer, now a security consultant who regularly appears on Fox News, told the Laura Ingraham Show Thursday ISIS and Mexican drug cartels communicate with each other." www.infowars.com...

2014: A new drug of choice in the Gulf: "Captagon" the "Jihad Drug".
The pills flooding into Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states sometimes have a fenethylline base. But many are simply ‘uppers’, or amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). The market is huge. According to the UN’s latest World Drugs Report, in 2015 the Saudi authorities seized more than 11 tonnes of ATS, excluding Ecstasy. That was lower than the figure for 2014, but still almost a third as much as in America, with a population ten times greater. Elsewhere in the region, demand appears to be soaring. In March the director-general of the UAE’s Anti-Narcotics Department, Colonel Saeed al-Suwaidi, said seizures of Captagon, real and fake, and crystal meth, had almost quadrupled last year. Identifying the origin of synthetic drugs is difficult: unlike plant-based ones, they seldom have unique properties. And pseudo-Captagon often travels to the Gulf by tortuous routes: French customs officials who this year seized 750,000 pills smuggled from Lebanon found they were to have been shipped to Saudi Arabia via the Czech Republic and Turkey. Fake Captagon is known to be produced in south-eastern Europe. War-torn Syria has also become a source. Rival combatants have profited from “taxing” manufacturers and traffickers. But an investigation by the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University concluded in 2015 that the only faction systematically involved in producing the drug was Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese militia. Rogue members of the Assad regime and the Free Syrian Army were also manufacturing it, but neither of the most extreme jihadist factions, Islamic State (IS) or Jabhat al-Nusrah (now Jabhat Fatah al-Sham), was found to be profiting from Captagon. Indeed, IS has executed alleged drug traffickers and destroyed narcotics-manufacturing plants. Still, one of the reputed effects of genuine Captagon is to reduce compassion and there has been recurrent speculation that IS feeds it to its militants. A captured teenage IS fighter told CNN in 2014 he had been given pills “that would make you go to battle not caring if you live or die”. 1

September 2014: Congress approves mission to train, arm Syrian rebels.
www.foxnews.com...

October 2014: The Pentagon announces "Operation Inherent Resolve" (OIR) for the overt military intervention against the ISIS in Iraq & Syria. Al Qaeda isn't laid out as a priority target. By early 2015 coalition airstrikes become routine.
en.wikipedia.org...  www.globalsecurity.org...  www.centcom.mil...

October 2014: Vice President Joe Biden admitted in a speech at Harvard University that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and United Arab Emirates were supplying the money and weapons to Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups in Syria that led to the rise of ISIS.
www.thedailybeast.com... www.counterpunch.org...  www.theguardian.com...

October 29, 2014: Controversial Patriot Act power now overwhelmingly used in drug investigations.
"Out of the 3,970 total requests from October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010, 3,034 were for narcotics cases and only 37 for terrorism cases (about .9%). Since then, the numbers get worse. The 2011 report reveals a total of 6,775 requests. 5,093 were used for drugs, while only 31 (or .5%) were used for terrorism cases. The 2012 report follows a similar pattern: Only .6%, or 58 requests, dealt with terrorism cases. The 2013 report confirms the incredibly low numbers. Out of 11,129 reports only 51, or .5%, of requests were used for terrorism. The majority of requests were overwhelmingly for narcotics cases, which tapped out at 9,401 requests." www.washingtonpost.com...

October 2014: Isis apparently takes control of US weapons airdrop intended for Kurds.

November 2014:  ISIS known to be smuggling Iraqi & Syrian oil out through Jordan & Turkey.
www.newsweek.com...

November 17, 2014: Convicted Israeli trainer of Colombia paramilitaries claims CIA ties.
"Israeli mercenary Yair Klein, convicted in Colombia of training paramilitary forces, has claimed he was contracted by the CIA to train Colombians for a coup d’etat in Panama, according the El Espectador newspaper. Klein, who was tried in absentia in 2001 and sentenced to ten years for providing military training to paramilitary group AUC, claims that the CIA hired him to train Colombians on the Caribbean island of Antigua in the 1980s to overthrow the Panamanian government. The operation, Klein says, was canceled one week before it was supposed to occur, and the US military invaded Panama less than a year later and deposed then-President Manuel Noriega." colombiareports.com...

2014:  The Clinton Foundation accepts millions of dollars from Al Qaeda / ISIS funding states like United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.
www.wsj.com...

December 24, 2014: "Being a Real Man in Islam: Drugs, Criminality and The Problem of Masculinity".
"The latest Home office statistics make grim reading for the Muslim community: Muslim prisoners have doubled in the last decade to reach a total of between 4000-4500—amounting to 9% of the total prison population... One in eleven prisoners is Muslim. This surge in Muslim crime is not being discussed openly within the community, most probably out of a sense of shame. But in reality, we should be feel ashamed precisely because we are not discussing these problems openly and confronting them. ...So what sort of crime is being committed and who is doing it? ...Maqsood Ahmed, the Muslim Advisor to the Prison Service appointed by the government in 1999, says that currently (as of June 2000) 1005 out of the 4003 Muslim inmates have committed crimes related to drug pushing or drug use. So one in four of British Muslim prisoners have been convicted for drug-related offences. ...We need to face facts: Muslim involvement in hard drugs is not confined to Muslims in the West. Of the traditional ‘natural’ drugs, Muslims
are heavily involved with the planting, harvesting, refinement, smuggling, and distribution to Europe of heroin and cannabis." masud.co.uk...

2014-2017: 350 diplomatic flights carry weapons for terrorists.
At least 350 diplomatic Silk Way Airlines (an Azerbaijani state-run company) flights transported weapons for war conflicts across the world over the last 3 years. The state aircrafts of Azerbaijan carried on-board tens of tons of heavy weapons and ammunition headed to terrorists under the cover of diplomatic flights. trud.bg... This week we deliver another LIVE broadcast, this time from Britain’s former naval stronghold in Plymouth, England, as SUNDAY WIRE host Patrick Henningsen along with UK Column Editor Mike Robinson break down the biggest stories at home and internationally. In the first hour, we’ll connect with Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva to discuss her recent in-depth investigation into NATO’s secret weapons trafficking operation which has been delivering arms to terrorists in Syria by using diplomatic cover for charter flights. In the second hour, we’ll connect with Adam Garrie, a UK-based writer and editor of The Duran to discuss the recent meeting between Putin and Trump at the G20 and what it means for East-West relations and prospects for Syria. In third hour we’ll try to connect with our roving report, Miles Elliott, on the ground at Grenfell Tower in West London for updates there. 21stcenturywire.com...


January 27, 2015: Obama defends Saudi relationship: 'Sometimes we have to balance'.
"But even as the U.S. works closely with the Saudis on common strategic goals like counterterrorism, Obama said he and his administration continue to apply "steady, consistent pressure" on issues like human rights. Obama is headed to Saudi Arabia to meet the new King Salman and pay his respects following the death of King Abdullah last week. "Sometimes we have to balance our need to speak to them about human rights issues with immediate concerns that we have in terms of countering terrorism or dealing with regional stability," Obama said". www.cnn.com...

February 2015: Bush Family Ties to Terror Suspects Re-opened by the 9/11 Classified “28 Pages”.
As pressure builds to make public 28 pages of a joint congressional inquiry on 9/11 which was classified by President George W. Bush, the Bush family’s well-documented relationships to Saudi and other foreign terror suspects are again coming to the fore. North Carolina Republican Congressman Walter Jones told the New Yorker last September,  of the what is now commonly known as the “28 Pages”: “There’s nothing in it about national security…It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Prominent in the rise of the political fortunes of both the 41st and 43rd presidents is the support of figures listed by the US government as terrorist financiers, as well as some connected to the now closed, Saudi-controlled criminal enterprise known as BCCI. Two major investors in the 43rd president’s early business ventures, Arbusto Energy and Harken Energy, were Salem bin Laden, Osama’s older brother, and Khalid bin Mahfouz, a 20% stakeholder in BCCI, who was himself accused and investigated for financing terrorism. Mahfouz, who died in 2009, was known as the personal banker of the Saudi royal family. In 1992 then-Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Senator Hank Brown, Republican of Colorado, in a widely-lauded Senate Foreign Policy Committee investigation of BCCI, found that BCCI’s “criminality” included: “support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; its management of prostitution; its commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; its illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers.” The Committee found that BCCI had been instrumental in financing the A.Q. Khan nuclear program in Pakistan. BCCI was also found to have played a key role in the terrorist operations of the notorious Abu Nidal.  The Saudi-controlled BCCI played a central role in acting as a conduit for renegade CIA operations run by Lt. Col. Oliver North and General Richard Secord, with the elder Bush overseeing the operations from his position as vice president to Ronald Reagan and as a former director of the CIA. The elder Bush himself had an account at BCCI established while director of the CIA, discovered when French customs raids the Paris BCCI branch. Trento writes that BCCI tapped into: “the CIA’s stockpile of misfits and malcontents to help man a 1,500-strong group of assassins and enforcers.” In 1987 a BCCI-connected bank, Intermaritime Bank of Geneva and New York, rescued Bush the Younger’s Harken Energy with a $25 million loan, at a time that the company’s fortunes were in serious decline. Trento says that the rise of BCCI, in the Seventies followed the establishment of the Safari Club, a secret cabal of intelligence agencies which decided it needed a network of banks to finance activities which were to be kept off the books, i.e., illegal and away from congressional oversight. Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi Intelligence from 1977 to 2001, was a defendant in a lawsuit by 9/11 families who charge that he financed terrorism, when he met with Mullah Omar in 1998. Shortly after the meetings, the Saudis reportedly shipped the Taliban 400 new pickup trucks. According to the London Observer, al-Faisal “arranged for donations to be made directly to al-Qaeda and bin Laden by a group of wealthy Saudi businessmen.” Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi banker and investor in the younger Bush’s Harken Energy, is founder the Muwaffaq (“blessed relief”) Foundation, which has been listed by the US Department of Treasury as an Al Qaeda front. The charity is run by Yasin al-Qadi, who, although he has had his terrorist designation overturned in several international jurisdictions, remains a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” under U.S. law. The George W. Bush administration has been accused, by government whistleblowers, of strenuously blocking investigations of attacks on American citizens and interests which trace to shadowy figures among America’s allies. 1

February 16, 2015: Sen. Sessions Releases Lengthy Timeline Of Obama Administration’s Dismantling Of Immigration Law.
Massive timeline: www.breitbart.com...

May 2015: Israel Fuels The Syrian Crisis With Aid To Al-Qaida Rebels.
www.mintpressnews.com...  www.timesofisrael.com...

May 25, 2015: The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade.
"In 2014 the Afghan opium cultivation has once again hit a record high, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2014 Afghan Opium Survey." www.globalresearch.ca...

June 2015: U.S. Shoots Itself In the Foot By Accidentally Arming ISIS.


July 1, 2015: How a Dogged L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena.
www.laweekly.com...

July 9, 2015: FBI data backs up Trump claims on illegals and crime.
"According to the FBI, criminal gangs – in some regions comprised significantly of illegal aliens – are wreaking havoc in the U.S., with 65 jurisdictions nationwide reporting gang-related offenses committed with firearms account for at least 95 percent of crime in those areas. The FBI further documented gangs in Southwestern border regions consisting of up to 80 percent illegal aliens were committing a multitude of crimes in America, “including drug-related crimes, weapons trafficking, alien smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, extortion, robbery, auto theft, assault, homicide, racketeering, and money laundering.” The information was contained in the FBI’s 79-page National Gang Report published in 2013". www.wnd.com...

July 2015: Israeli commando's on the ground in Syria helping rebels (Al Qaeda) a routine sight.
www.dailymail.co.uk... www.globalresearch.ca...

August 01, 2016: DOJ Rewards Law-Breaking Sanctuary Cities, States with $342 Mil in “Grants”.
www.judicialwatch.org...

August 6, 2015: Former DIA Chief Michael Flynn Says Rise of Islamic State was “a willful decision” and Defends Accuracy of 2012 Memo.
levantreport.com... /

August 15, 2015: Jeb Bush Exposed a Former Covert CIA Operative, Linked to Drug Cartels and Money Laundering?
While there is no smoking gun, many indications point to Jeb Bush being a reliable covert CIA asset from 1977 until his initial run for Governor of Florida in 1994. thefreethoughtproject.com...

August 19, 2015: "U.S. Government and Top Mexican Drug Cartel Exposed as Partners!"
"This atrocious news about the involvement of U.S Government in drug trafficking affairs with leading Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa took to streets as soon as it was testified by a chief Mexican newspaper earlier this week. U.S government has been involved in this affair since a decade now no matter is it is Bush Rule or Obama rule. Leading Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa can operate its drug business within whole U.S with full immunity from U.S Government and in turn U.S Government is wiping off the drug cartels other than Sinaloa and providing him competition free market. There are many other leaks out there which clearly indicate the involvement of U.S Government in flourishing Sinaloa’s drug trade." 1


August 29, 2015: Want To Reduce Illegal Immigration? End The Drug War.
"The one way of stemming illegal immigration that Republicans aren’t talking about." www.huffingtonpost.com... "Because the U.S. demand is huge, Mexican drug cartels can easily recruit Mexicans and Central Americans seeking better lives in the United States to carry the contraband north when they attempt to enter the United States. When these people succeed in crossing the border, they may choose either to continue to transport drugs for the cartel or to remain in the United States illegally. ...Because the federal government estimates that only 10-20 percent of all illegal immigrants are apprehended, as many as 4 million undocumented immigrants may enter the country undetected every year. Federal officials have also estimated that nearly 80-90 percent of illegal drugs entering the United States come from Mexico. Most of these drugs are smuggled in by illegal immigrants. ...In 2005, federal law-enforcement seizure counts for coc aine and marijuana alone were astounding. The government stated that 1.13 million pounds of coc aine and 6.9 million pounds of marijuana with a total estimated street value of more than $80 billion dollars was seized. Additionally, federal law-enforcement officials estimated that only 20 percent of the drugs coming into the country is seized." immigrationtounitedstates.org...


September 2015: Russia officially involved in pro-Assad military operations.
web.stanford.edu...

September 2015: U.S.-trained Syrian rebels gave equipment to Nusra: U.S. military.
www.reuters.com...

October 01, 2015: Putin and Obama’s UN Showdown Helps Expose How Washington Supports and Protects The Islamic State (ISIS).
www.globalresearch.ca...

October 6, 2015: The Mystery of ISIS’ Toyota Army Solved.
"The mystery of how hundreds of identical, brand-new ISIS-owned Toyota trucks have made it into Syria is solved. Not only has the US and British government admitted in the past to supplying them, their military forces and intelligence agencies ply the borders of Turkey, Jordan, and even Iraq where these fleets of trucks must have surely passed on their way to Syria – even if other regional actors supplied them." journal-neo.org...

October 2015: Why is Washington Against Russia Bombing ISIS and Al-Qaeda?
www.ronpaulinstitute.org...


October 2015:  Obama abandoned the DOD's Congress approved $500,000,000 project to train & arm Syrian rebels.
Partners include Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia & Turkey. Most now confirmed to have gone on joining ISIS & Al Qaeda.
www.nytimes.com... www.theguardian.com... www.almasdarnews.com... cv4a.org... The Telegraph jcpa.org...

October 10, 2015: "Probably 60 to 80 percent of the arms that America shoveled in have gone to al-Qaida and its affiliates,"
said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. bigstory.ap.org...:

October 10, 2015: Saudi Arabia executes people over drugs while its princes are caught with tons of drugs at the airport.
The Saudi monarchy executes someone over drugs every four days while princes smuggle tons and hold decadent parties. Saudi prince Abdel Mohsen bin Walid bin Abdulaziz was caught in an airport in Lebanon on Monday with over two tons of drugs. Lebanese security found 40 suitcases full of more than 4,000 pounds of amphetamine pills and cocaine on the prince's private plane, which was on its way to Saudi capital city Riyadh. A security source told AFP that this was the largest smuggling operation ever foiled by Beirut International Airport security. 1

November 2015:  Inside the Battle: Al Nusra-Al Qaeda in Syria.
www.youtube.com...

November 2015: Inside the Battle: Al Nusra-Al Qaeda in Syria.
www.youtube.com...

December 9, 2015: Amnesty report: ISIS armed with U.S. weapons
www.cnn.com...

December 22, 2015: ISIS 'refines heroin in Turkish labs before it's sold on UK streets to fund terrorism'.
www.mirror.co.uk...

December 23, 2015: CIA agent reveals Hillary and Obama armed ISIS.
"The Obama administration pursued a policy in Libya back in 2011 that ultimately allowed guns to walk into the hands of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda (AQ) in Syria, according to a former CIA officer who co-authored a report on behalf of the Citizen’s Commission on Benghazi (CCB), detailing the gun running scheme." www.intellihub.com...

2015: In Alliance with Al Qaeda, Israel Is Stealing Syria’s Oil: Afek, an Israeli subsidiary of the US firm Genie Energy, has undertaken exploratory drilling in the Golan.
Afek believes there is a vast reservoir of oil under Syria’s Golan that could supply all of Israel’s energy needs. ...The members of the strategic advisory board of Afek’s parent company include Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and Larry Summers, the former secretary of the US treasury.
www.globalresearch.ca...  oilprice.com...  www.latimes.com...  thefreethoughtproject.com...

2016: Realities of the EU's internal and external open borders policies becoming clear.
The "United Nations itself, which reports that 75% of the migrants are “young, fit males.” I believe it was Mark Steyn who wryly noted, “That’s not the demographics of a civilian population displaced by war, that’s the demographics of an army". For the needed context to understand what we are experiencing, I would recommend Robert Spencer’s excellent article from September 4, 2015, THE HIJRAH INTO EUROPE – “Refugees” colonize a continent, which he begins as follows: “Approximately 104,460 asylum seekers arrived in Germany during the month of August, setting a new record. That makes 413,535 registered refugees and migrants coming to Germany in 2015 so far. The country expects a total of around 800,000 people to seek asylum in Germany this year. And that’s just Germany. The entire continent of Europe is being inundated with refugees at a rate unprecedented in world history. This is no longer just a ‘refugee crisis’. This is a hijrah"." www.jihadwatch.org...
Poll after poll & stat after stat shows the recent era of Muslim immigrants to not hardly be assimilating into their new socities, but instead more working to establish Sharia Law centers: www.abovetopsecret.com...


January 2016:  U.S. Relies Heavily on Saudi Money to Support Syrian Rebels.
www.nytimes.com...

February 4, 2016: Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) signed by Obama.


February 6, 2016: Obama’s war against medical marijuana is the biggest of any president, which is the exact opposite of what he had promised. danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com... "Back when he was running for president in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that medical marijuana was an issue best left to state and local governments. "I'm not going to be using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue," he vowed, promising an end to the Bush administration's high-profile raids on providers of medical pot, which is legal in 16 states and the District of Columbia. But over the past year, the Obama administration has quietly unleashed a multi­agency crackdown on medical cannabis that goes far beyond anything undertaken by George W. Bush. The feds are busting growers who operate in full compliance with state laws, vowing to seize the property of anyone who dares to even rent to legal pot dispensaries, and threatening to imprison state employees responsible for regulating medical marijuana." www.rollingstone.com... "The president is spending money that Congress has explicitly told him he can’t spend." www.slate.com... "Obama’s New Tactic Against Medical Marijuana Patients: Suspend Free Speech" blog.mpp.org... Feds Slap 70% Tax on Legal Marijuana Businesses www.thedailybeast.com... DEA Rejects Attempt To Loosen Federal Restrictions On Marijuana www.npr.org...

March 8, 2016: Make No Mistake: Hillary Clinton is a Drug Warrior.
"Hillary Clinton’s record on the War on Drugs sets her apart from other the other candidates – and not in a good way. From her criminal justice agenda as First Lady to her foreign policies as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has proven herself to be one of the greatest drug warriors of our generation. At a time when two-thirds of Americans support ending the War on Drugs, it’s crucial for her record on the issue to be brought to light. ...Over the course of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, the Mexican Drug War spiraled into chaos, killing over 160,000 people and displacing millions of others. ...While Hillary Clinton is willing to speak vaguely against the War on Drugs, she refuses to embrace meaningful reforms to current drug policies. While most Americans agree that marijuana should be legal, Clinton supports rescheduling it to Schedule II, the same category as coc aine and methamphetamine. This proposal would do little to end the War on Drugs, but would facilitate research on medical marijuana and allow pharmaceutical companies to sell cannabinoid drugs." marijuanapolitics.com...


April 2016: The "Panana Papers" leaks goes public.
"The Panama Papers is one of the biggest leaks in history. Substantially larger than WikiLeaks’ 2010 release of U.S. diplomatic cables or Edward Snowden’s 2013 release of NSA files, the leak consists of 11.5m documents from the world’s fourth-largest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. At a massive 2.6 terabytes in size, the Panama Papers reveal information about 214,000 companies. ...Among those implicated in the scandal are arms traders, human traffickers, drug dealers, con artists and 143 politicians — a veritable Who’s Who of global leaders, including 12 current or former heads of state, along with their families and friends. ...King Salman of Saudi Arabia and Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine, both of whom are close Western allies, are directly implicated in the corruption." www.salon.com...
"The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes." panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de...
"Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt’s former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. In the UK, six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to British political parties have had offshore assets." www.theguardian.com...
"Jurgen Mossack’s family landed here in the 1960s. During World War II, his father had served in the Nazi Party’s Waffen-SS, according to U.S. Army intelligence files obtained by the ICIJ. Once in Panama, the elder Mossack offered to spy on communists in Cuba for the CIA." www.zerohedge.com...



March 2016:  LA Times reports "In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA".
www.latimes.com...

April 14, 2016: Hillary Clinton Has No Regrets About Libya.
"If Democrats prefer to tie the chaos in today’s Middle East, specifically the rise of the Islamic State, to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, the Republican history of the Middle East seems to start with the inauguration of President Barack Obama and the confirmation of Hillary Clinton as his first secretary of state in January 2009. For the GOP, it was Clinton who let chaos and Islamic militants spread across the region because of her active support for the Libya intervention – and as the general election approaches, Republicans are making Libya’s fallout a cornerstone of their attacks the Democratic frontrunner. But, in speaking with Clinton’s closest aides and advisors, it’s "clear that she has already formulated a detailed defense." foreignpolicy.com...

April 2016:  US has plan to arm Syrian rebels with stronger weapons in case cease-fire fails.
www.foxnews.com...  www.wsj.com...

May 3, 2016: "US Contra Programs"??

May 20, 2016: ISIS propaganda videos say if Trump plans to stop Syrian refugees go thru it will lead to more terrorism. The implication being that is we stop deliberately importing masses of them (where surely ISIS operatives & drug traffickers will be able to slip through), then they'll attack us for it. www.politifact.com... Following Sept. 2016 NYC / NJ, Hillary blames Trump while citing the videos, despite Trump having no hand whatsoever in ISIS or her history as a War On Drugs Warrior. www.dailywire.com...


June 4, 2016: Putin Accuses Obama Of ‘Fake War’ Against ISIS.
yournewswire.com...

June 2016: Russia's foreign minister said Washington has asked Moscow not to target the al-Qaida's branch in Syria.
The Nusra Front, but the U.S. insisted Friday that it only wants Russia to carefully select it targets to avoid hitting civilians and legitimate opposition groups.
bigstory.ap.org...

June 2016: CIA & Saudi (via Jordan) supplied arms reportedly on the black market, being used to kill Amricans.
www.nytimes.com...

June 13, 2016: Why President Obama Won't Use the Term 'Radical Islam'.
"While Obama has labeled the weekend attack, which killed at least 49 people, an “act of terror and an act of hate,” a look at his past comments surrounding terrorism indicates that he avoids the term “radical Islamic terrorism” and isn’t likely to change course because of Trump’s demand." abcnews.go.com...

June 13, 2016: Trump & Clinton both support legalizing Medical Marijuana.
“I think what the states are doing right now needs to be supported,” she told Jimmy Kimmel in March. “I absolutely support all the states that are moving toward medical marijuana, moving toward.” In the past, Trump also has supported legalizing pot for recreational use, but more recently he’s limited his position to legalizing medicinal cannabis state by state. “Marijuana is such a big thing. I think medical should happen — right? Don’t we agree?” Trump told the Washington Post last October. “And then I really believe we should leave it up to the states.” 1
Note Clinton wanted to make it Schedule II, which would put it int he hands of the FDA whom coudl turn the entire industry into pure Big Pharm corporate while empowering them to conduct raids on all the little guys. The DEA was supposedly going to hand it to them around this same time but then let the year pass without making any moves.

June 13, 2016: Trump demands Clinton Foundation return $25 million from Saudis.
"Donald Trump on Monday demanded that Hillary Clinton return $25 million the Clinton Foundation reportedly received from Saudi Arabia. “Crooked Hillary says we must call on Saudi Arabia and other countries to stop funding hate,” Trump posted to Facebook. “I am calling on her to immediately return the $25 million plus she got from them for the Clinton Foundation!”" www.politico.com... "DNC sought to hide details of Clinton funding deal. Leaked emails show officials tried to obscure fact that Clinton allowed states to keep only a tiny fraction of proceeds from joint fundraising." www.politico.com...

June 20, 2016: War on Drugs: how much support has it really got?
www.denverijournal.com...


July 2016: Pentagon Stops Reporting Counter-Narcotics Program in Afghanistan
The U.S. has spent more than $8 billion with little effect over 15 years to counter the flourishing poppy trade that has made Afghanistan the No. 1 supplier of heroin to the world. The Defense Department no longer includes a section on counter-narcotics in its semi-annual report to Congress on Afghanistan. It was absent from the report on “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan” submitted last month and also omitted in the previous submission. After nearly 15 years in Afghanistan, it has reached the  point where U.S. military officials can now occasionally see an upside to the poppy harvest — it gives a breather to the struggling Afghan army. In a May briefing to the Pentagon from Kabul, Army Brig. Gen. Charles Cleveland, a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and the NATO Resolute Support mission, said the Taliban would be too busy with the poppy harvest to press the fight against the 215th Division of the Afghan National Defense Security Forces in southwestern Helmand province, the country’s biggest opium-producing region. “The poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban,” Cleveland said, and the insurgents were keen to rake in the profits from “this very good poppy crop that they had this year.

July 15, 2016: The 9/11 Saudi Pages Declassified.
28 pages in the original 9/11 COmmission Report had been "Classified" from the public. The pages "revealed a web of interconnections linking Saudi government officials, members of the Saudi royal family, suspected Saudi intelligence operatives and 9/11 hijackers." 28pages.org...

July 31, 2016: Julian Assange: Hacked Emails Include Info On Hillary’s Arming of Jihadists, Including ISIS, in Syria.
wearechange.org...

August 3, 2016: Bill Clinton Got Millions From World’s Biggest Sharia Law Education Firm.
"Former President Bill Clinton collected $5.6 million in fees from GEMS Education, a Dubai-based company that teaches Sharia Law through its network of more than 100 schools in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. The company’s finances strictly adhere to “Sharia Finance,” which includes giving “zakat,” a religious tax of which one-eighth of the proceeds is dedicated to funding Islamic jihad. The company also contributed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. The former president served as honorary chairman for GEMS Education from 2011 to 2014." dailycaller.com...
August 2016: Al-Nusra rebranding: New name, same aim?
www.cnn.com...  Rebranded Nusra Front Uniting Syria's Rebels. news.sky.com... Is Al Qaeda Gone From Syria Or Just Rebranding? www.pbs.org... Pentagon will strike rebranded Nusra Front after split from al Qaeda. thehill.com...

August 17, 2016: George Soros Funded Sharia Lobby’s Attacks on American Critics of Islam.
"A non-profit group controlled by billionaire financier George Soros set out to conduct opposition research on a handful of critics of radical Islam, a newly released internal memo shows. The 2011 document, entitled “Extreme Polarization and Breakdown in Civil Discourse,” is one of more than 2,500 files stolen from Soros’ Open Society Foundations and published online on Saturday. It names prominent critics of radical Islam, such as Pamela Geller, Frank Gaffney, and Robert Spencer as targets for opposition researchers working on a project operated by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank that has received millions of dollars in grants from Soros’ groups." creepingsharia.wordpress.com...

August 18, 2016: Feds End Use of Private Prisons, but Questions Remain.
"About 22,000 of 193,000 federal prisoners are held in such facilities, adding up to 11 percent of the population. Though meaningful as a gesture of the government’s commitment to reducing the number of people in prison, the move will have limited impact on the 2.2 million people in federal and state custody. The decision also leaves important open-ended questions about potential unintended consequences." www.theatlantic.com...

August 22, 2016: Hillary Clinton's top aid Huma Abedin worked at a 'Radical Muslim Journal'.
New York Post account reports Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin edited a 'radical Muslim publication' that opposed women’s rights and blamed the US for 9/11."http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/22/huma-abedin-muslim-journal/ "“A conjugal family established through a marriage contract between a man and a woman, and extended through procreation is the only definition of family a Muslim can accept,” the author, a Saudi official with the Muslim World League, asserted, while warning of “the dangers of alternative lifestyles. (Abedin’s journal was founded and funded by the former head of the Muslim World League.)" nypost.com...
Since 1962, the Muslim World League has been *funded by the Saudi government*. ...the Muslim World League, a group formed and funded by the Kingdom to spread Islam throughout the world. www.abovetopsecret.com...

August 28, 2016: 10,000th Syrian reaches US this week in resettlement program.
The U.S. will reach its target this week of taking in 10,000 Syrian war refugees in a year-old resettlement program, the U.S. ambassador to Jordan said Sunday, after meeting families headed to California and Virginia. The resettlement program has emerged as an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign, with Republican nominee Donald Trump alleging displaced Syrians pose a potential security threat. bigstory.ap.org...
"When I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which a person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted … that’s shameful…", Obama said. www.nationalreview.com..."
Clinton Refugee Plan Could Bring In 620,000 Refugees In First Term At Lifetime Cost Of Over $400 Billion www.sessions.senate.gov...


September 2016: Obama's DEA Bans the Natural Drug Kratom; Only Thing OTC Market That Truly Helps Opiate Addicts Cope With Withdrawal.
“"Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” reads the petition. “This is not true for Kratom, it has been shown numerous times in reports from users to help recovering Opiate addicts, treat pain, combat depression and anxiety, and much more." The plea also contends that a kratom ban enacted in Alabama earlier this year led to an increase in opioid overdose deaths, a claim that appears too early to confirm.” www.huffingtonpost.com...


September 12, 2016: Obama & Saudi Royals lobby Congress to prevent families of 9/11 victims from filing lawsuits against the kingdom.
28pages.org...

September 13, 2016: Obama to veto bill letting 9/11 families sue Saudi Arabia, White House confirms.

September 2016:  U.S. Caves To Russia On Syria — Won’t Continue Protecting Al Qaeda.
www.strategic-culture.org...

September 2016: 'Americans are on our side' Terror commander says US are arming jihadists in Syria.
www.express.co.uk...

September 19, 2016: George HW Bush to vote for Hillary Clinton, along with much of the rest of the Status Quo Political Establishment.
www.politico.com... "Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being".” www.nytimes.com... "Campaign contributions from 'bipartisan' debate commissioners given exclusively to Clinton" www.lifezette.com... "An independent can’t be President; here’s the real reason why" thehill.com...

2016: After years of decline, Mexico's murder rate is heading back to peak drug war levels.

October 2016: Hillary wouldn't return $25M donation after leak reveals she knew Saudi Arabia was funding ISIS & Al Qaeda.
www.politifact.com...

October 2016:   US Ponders Whether to Go to War with Russia to Salvage Al Qaeda in Syria.
www.globalresearch.ca...

October 2016: Al Qaeda-founded rebel group's growth underscores U.S. challenges in Syria
www.latimes.com...

October 2016: Hillary Destroys Syria, Blames Russia.
www.infowars.com...

October 2016: Hillary blames Russia for her own WikiLeaks emails.
www.youtube.com...

October 2016: Arms dealer says Clinton and Obama accidentally gave guns to ISIS, Al Qaeda and Benghazi attackers - then tried to scapegoat him for their screw-up with failed $10m felony case.


November 2016: Hillary loses election to Donald Trump.
Her, Obama, the MSM, the CIA, the DNC, her supporters, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, etc all blame Russia for the WikiLeaks; insisted ignoring the contents of those emails. They then combined that drama with alleged Russian state propaganda for costing her the election. All of that rapidly gets bundled under the banner of "FAKE NEWS", and then a huge list of independent news sites (primarily critical of US foreign policy) gets released as being Russian state propaganda sponsors that need to be blacklisted from social media via Silicon Valley AI automation, and even investigated by the FBI. Congress (including Republican's) moves to pass legislation in this sudden mass Internet censorship campaign of news sources critical of the US supporting Al Qaeda / ISIS as paid mercenaries (AKA "moderate rebels") in the Middle East with Russia getting 100% of the blame for the bloodbath that Hillary, Obama, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, the CIA, the Pentagon & NATO created in Syria.
www.wsj.com...  Washington Post www.rollingstone.com... www.abovetopsecret.com... www.abovetopsecret.com... www.cnn.com... www.reuters.com... thefreethoughtproject.com...
In the final hours before the Christmas holiday weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday quietly signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law—and buried within the $619 billion military budget (pdf) is a controversial provision that establishes a national anti-propaganda center that critics warn could be dangerous for press freedoms. The Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, introduced by Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, establishes the Global Engagement Center under the State Department which coordinates efforts to "recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United Sates national security interests." Further, the law authorizes grants to non-governmental agencies to help "collect and store examples in print, online, and social media, disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda" directed at the U.S. and its allies, as well as "counter efforts by foreign entities to use disinformation, misinformation, and propaganda to influence the policies and social and political stability" of the U.S. and allied nations. 1 2 3 4 5
  
December 2016: Congresswoman Says US Is Arming ISIS & Al Qaeda, Introduces Bill To Stop It.
www.zerohedge.com...  www.npr.org...  www.congress.gov...

December 2016: WikiLeaks email cache proves Turkish oil minister’s links to ISIS oil trade.
www.independent.co.uk... https://wikileaks.org/berats-box/article

December 2016: Obama Pins Blame for ‘Atrocities’ in Aleppo on Assad, Russia.
www.bloomberg.com...

December 2016: A Non-Western Perspective of Syria:
 
December 31, 2016: Report: Homeland Security Officials Took Millions in Bribes to 'Look the Other Way' on Drug Cartels.
Hundreds of DHS employees have "looked the other way" as drugs crossed the border because cartels have made them offers they can't refuse. Other employees have sold green cards and other documents illegally. More from The New York Times: It was not an isolated case. A review by The New York Times of thousands of court records and internal agency documents showed that over the last 10 years almost 200 employees and contract workers of the Department of Homeland Security have taken nearly $15 million in bribes while being paid to protect the nation’s borders and enforce immigration laws.

January 19, 2017: Border Patrol Alters Stats to Hide Release of Criminal Aliens
The distressing details of this crucial agency’s crafty record-keeping practices are outlined in a scathing report issued this month by the investigative arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The probe focuses on a Border Patrol system developed to address a smuggling crisis along the southwest border. It’s officially known as Consequence Delivery System (CDS) and is used to identify the most effective and efficient consequences to deter illegal cross border activity in each of the agency’s sectors. For the system to work, the Border Patrol must report accurate information involving illegal aliens who are apprehended. Instead, it appears that federal agents on the ground are being ordered to fudge the numbers as part of a broader Obama administration effort to protect illegal immigrants and falsely portray the Mexican border as safe. The GAO report suggests that Border Patrol headquarters directed agents to misclassify criminal illegal aliens, presumably to hide the fact that they were being released instead of prosecuted. Officials interviewed as part of the probe “said that agents received oral direction from headquarters to reclassify criminal aliens who cannot be given a consequence of federal prosecution, and that written data integrity guidance to sectors did not include activities for checking the accuracy of alien classifications,” the GAO report states. 1

January 2017: Why El Chapo’s Extradition from Mexico Surprised U.S. Officials
The man known as the godfather of the illegal drug world and who twice escaped Mexican prisons had a court date Friday before a judge in Brooklyn to face a raft of federal charges. Justice Department officials had scrambled to respond to Mexico's last-minute action in sending El Chapo to the United States for trial. 1

January 29, 2017: Al Qaeda Funded by Royal Sauds, U.S. Gov’t. Documents Reveal.
The chief source of funds to Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups is Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Documentation comes from testimony of the captured top Al Qaeda financial operative to a U.S. Court; and from testimony cited in the ‘missing 28 pages’ of the congressional investigation into 9/11; and from private communications of a U.S. Secretary of State. These documents cover Al Qaeda’s finances, not only pre-9/11, but up through at least 2014, and they consistently indicate that — throughout at least this lengthy period — the royal Saud family provided the essential funds that enabled Al Qaeda’s global operations, including the 9/11 attacks.  Al Qaeda isn’t merely an extension of the Sauds’ Sunni-fundamentalist Wahhabist-Salafist jihadist beliefs, but every one of Al Qaeda’s members also receives a “salary” and is therefore a mercenary who is fighting for a cause that he not only believes in, but also receives his livelihood from. Unlike many court cases, where some of the reliable evidence conflicts with other of the reliable evidence, all of the reliable evidence in this case is consistent: that the royal family of Saudi Arabia, the Saud family, have been the indispensable financial backers for Al Qaeda, and that Al Qaeda could not have succeeded as it has, without this money. 1

March 2017: Deadly turf war for control of El Chapo's empire erupts in Mexico
MEXICO CITY— Gangland-style murders are a daily event in Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa state, where businesses close early, schools suspend classes and residents must take precautions to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. The extradition of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to the United States in January was supposed to curb the violent drug wars raging south of the border. Instead, rival factions of Guzmán’s organization have ignited a new deadly turf war for control of the drug lord’s rudderless empire. The violence in Sinaloa, a mountainous region dubbed “the cradle” of Mexico’s drug trade, contributed to 2,152 homicides nationwide in January, the most in the country in the last 20 years, according to government statistics. They were the latest casualties in a drug war that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since former Mexican president Felipe Calderón announced a federal crackdown on the cartels in 2007. Almost 21,000 murders occurred last year — a 20% increase from 2015. 1


April 1, 2017: Trump team shifts focus away from Assad in Syrian war.
Washington signaled a new strategy on Syria and Assad on Friday, with White House spokesman Sean Spicer hinting at accepting "reality" in the war-torn country. The US would focus on beating back the "Islamic State" (IS) terror militia and not on ousting Assad, Spicer told reporters. Other US officials also publicly backed away from what was a long-held position of the Obama administration. Details on the new approach remain scarce. However, in March, the US had quietly deployed hundreds of marines to Syrian soil to aid the anti-IS offensive, suggesting that the new White House leadership is willing to commit more ground troops to the years-long civil war. "The top priority of the Trump administration for Syria is the military defeat of [the 'Islamic State']," State Department veteran and one of the top US experts on Syria, Fred Hof, told DW. Hof, who worked as a special adviser to ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, claims that this goal was shared by the previous administration. "The only difference is that President Trump wants to accelerate the process," Hof added. "To this end he is putting more American 'boots on the ground' and giving more operational latitude to US commanders." 1


April 2017: Exclusive Footage: White Helmets Fabricate Pretext For New U.S. Strikes
We’ve obtained an exclusive raw footage of White Helmets operating in unidentified location in Syria where allegedly the Syrian government forces had used CW or other banned weapons against civilians. The source who had provided us with these videos speaking on condition of anonymity said they had been captured during a specop against Hayat Tahrir al Sham group (also known as Nusra Front) in Aleppo-Idlib frontier zone. A group of militants had been eliminated and the footage was found on their laptops, cameras and mobile phones which were in their baggage. A number of noncompliances can be seen at the very first view, and it becomes clear the footage was staged and not ready to be released yet. For example, the same persons play ‘savior’ and ‘victim’ parts in the videos. They also change places, postures, adjust clothes etc. The decorations are another issue to analyse. There is smoke (possibly, of a smoke grenade) in one video, but there is no smoke in another. And notice a roomy body of the ambulance which the same ‘saviors’ load with the same ‘victims’. Also there are unsuspecting women and children strolling along the ‘contaminated area’ and observing the happenings. The final edition of the film was supposedly to become the ‘compulsive evidence’ of the atrocities committed by Damascus which the U.S. State Department was talking about in late June. At that time Washington warned the Syrian authorities on its readiness to attack the Syrian army again. But, there had been no evidence to become new casus belli. Also the White House could have decided to hold off till the meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at G20 summit. 1

April 5, 2017: Trump’s View of Syria and Assad Altered After ‘Unacceptable’ Chemical Attack.
President Trump warned on Wednesday that he would not tolerate the “heinous” chemical weapons attack in Syria, opening the door to a greater American role in protecting the population in a vicious civil war that he has always said the United States should avoid. The president declined to offer any details about potential action. But he said his horror at the images of “innocent children, innocent babies” choked by poison gas in a rebel-held area of Syria had caused him to reassess his approach. Only days after the White House declared it would be “silly” to persist in trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mr. Trump said, “My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.” 1
 Trump Reverses Policy on Syrian Airstrikes After Years of Tweeting Disapproval 1
 Top Republicans Who Opposed Syria Attack Under Obama Now Praising Trump’s Strike 1

April 6, 2017: Trump Orders Syria Airstrikes After 'Assad Choked Out The Lives' Of Civilians.
President Trump has launched airstrikes in Syria in response to deadly chemical attacks allegedly ordered by the country's president, Bashar Assad, against his own people. 1

April 8, 2017: How Jeff Sessions wants to bring back the war on drugs.
Law enforcement officials say that Sessions and Cook are preparing a plan to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences. The two men are eager to bring back the national crime strategy of the 1980s and ’90s from the peak of the drug war, an approach that had fallen out of favor in recent years as minority communities grappled with the effects of mass incarceration. Crime is near historic lows in the United States, but Sessions says that the spike in homicides in several cities, including Chicago, is a harbinger of a “dangerous new trend” in America that requires a tough response. “Our nation needs to say clearly once again that using drugs is bad,” Sessions said to law enforcement officials in a speech in Richmond last month. “It will destroy your life.” Advocates of criminal justice reform argue that Sessions and Cook are going in the wrong direction — back to a strategy that tore apart families and sent low-level drug offenders, disproportionately minority citizens, to prison for long sentences. “They are throwing decades of improved techniques and technologies out the window in favor of a failed approach,” said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). 1

April 12, 2017: NYTimes: Why Is Trump Fighting ISIS in Syria?
The Trump foreign policy team has been all over the map on what to do next in Syria — topple the regime, intensify aid to rebels, respond to any new attacks on innocent civilians. But when pressed, there is one idea everyone on the team seems to agree on: “The defeat of ISIS,” as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson put it. Well, let me add to their confusion by asking just one question: Why? Why should our goal right now be to defeat the Islamic State in Syria? Of course, ISIS is detestable and needs to be eradicated. But is it really in our interest to be focusing solely on defeating ISIS in Syria right now? 1

April 16, 2017: ISIS and al-Qaeda are little more than glorified drug cartels, and their motivation is money not religion.
Purported faith is just an excuse for terrorist organisations to take over the territory they need to monopolise the illegal drugs trade. The black flags of Isis have become the latest symbols of Islamic extremism. Their savagery has come to represent what we believe to be a vulgar distortion of an Abrahamic faith. We’ve grown exhausted in our infuriation at the commitment of these people to sadistic interpretations of scripture, supposedly leading them through beheadings and slaughter, all the way to paradise. But what if I told you that their fury has nothing to do with faith? Terror is very big business. And I mean that in the literal sense. Groups such as Isis and al-Qaeda succeeded in gaining a degree of legitimacy for their cause, by dressing it as a twisted heavenly mission. They are now viewed globally as Muslim fanatics rather than the hardened criminals, money launderers and drug lords that they are. 1

May 6, 2017: Trump indicated where he stands on medical marijuana for the first time since he took office.
Trump on Friday signed a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that will keep the federal government funded through September 30. The congressionally approved bill includes a rider — the Rohrabacher - Blumenauer Amendment — that disallows the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Agency from using federal funds to prosecute medical marijuana businesses in states where medical marijuana is legal. Marijuana is illegal at the federal level, though 29 states have varying degrees of medical marijuana legalization on the books. The amendment doesn't extend to recreational marijuana, which is legal in eight states. Trump, who has stayed mum on the topic of marijuana since the election, finally gave an indication as to where he stands on the issue in his statement after he signed the bill: "Division B, section 537 provides that the Department of Justice may not use any funds to prevent implementation of medical marijuana laws by various States and territories. I will treat this provision consistently with my constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." A federal court — the 9th circuit, which has blocked two of Trump's high-profile executive actions — ruled last year that the amendment protects patients and providers acting in accordance with state medical marijuana laws, despite the Justice Department insisting the opposite, notes Angell. Michael Collins, the deputy director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in an email that Trump continues to send "mixed messages" on marijuana. "After stating during the campaign that he was '100%' in support of medical marijuana, he now issues a signing statement casting doubt on whether his Administration will adhere to a congressional rider that stops DOJ from going after medical marijuana programs," Collins said.

May 2017: Jeff Sessions isn't bringing back the War on Drugs. IT NEVER ENDED.
In a memo circulated in May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed federal prosecutors to seek the maximum penalty possible in every case. He didn’t single out any particular crimes for harsh sentencing, indicating that all offenses—including simple drug possession—should be punished in the harshest allowable manner. Sessions later defended the decision in a Washington Post opinion piece, arguing that a decline in drug prosecutions under the Obama administration had led to an uptick in violent crime. Backlash to Sessions’ announcement was swift. Leaders on both sides of the aisle slammed his decision to revoke discretion in drug sentencing. Thirty current and former prosecutors responded with a scathing open letter expressing deep concern about the new directive. “Instead of providing people who commit low-level drug offenses or who are struggling with mental illness with treatment, support and rehabilitation programs, the policy will subject them to decades of incarceration,” they wrote. “In essence, the Attorney General has reinvigorated the failed ‘war on drugs.’” The truth is that the war on drugs never died. Someone is arrested for drug possession every 25 seconds in the U.S. A black person is two-and-a-half times more likely than a white person to be arrested for carrying drugs. This disparity persists in major cities that have committed to marijuana decriminalization or outright legalization, including New York City and Washington, D.C. Sessions argues that such arrests are necessary to curb drug trafficking, but most possession arrests involve people who are using drugs, not selling them. These arrests wouldn’t occur if prosecutors at every level weren’t prioritizing drug cases. Some district attorneys have promised to pivot away from the tough-on-crime posturing that characterized drug enforcement in the 1990s and swelled prison populations. But those who pledge reform are the exception, not the rule. District attorneys consistently support mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes. The National District Attorneys Association, which acts on behalf of roughly 2,500 local and state prosecutors, vowed to follow Sessions’ order. The National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys also backed the attorney general’s decision and has actively lobbied for harsher sentencing. 1

July 2017: Mexico's bloody drug war is killing more people than ever
Drug war bloodshed in Mexico has spiked to record levels, with more homicides recorded in June than in any month in at least two decades. Prosecutors opened 2,234 homicide investigations last month, according to government statistics released Friday. That’s an increase of 40% over June of last year and 80% over June of 2015. Rising demand for heroin in the United States and a bloody power struggle inside one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels have put the country on track to record more killings in 2017 than in any year since the government began releasing crime data in 1997. The 12,155 homicide cases opened from January to June make 2017 the deadliest first half of a year. Though violence used to be concentrated in a handful of states, it is now rising nationwide, with 27 of Mexico’s 32 states recording an uptick in homicides compared with last year. That includes states that are home to formerly tranquil tourist destinations including Cancun and Cabo San Lucas, which have each been the site of deadly shootouts. 1

July 19, 2016: Trump Stopped funding Syrian terrorists after seeing beheading video.
President Donald Trump was shown a disturbing video of Syrian rebels beheading a child near the city of Aleppo. It had caused a minor stir in the press as the fighters belonged to the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, a group that had been supported by the CIA as part of its rebel aid program. The footage is haunting. Five bearded men smirk as they surround a boy in the back of a pickup truck. One of them holds the boy’s head with a tight grip on his hair while another mockingly slaps his face. Then, one of them uses a knife to saw the child’s head off and holds it up in the air like a trophy. It is a scene reminiscent of the Islamic State’s snuff videos, except this wasn’t the work of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s men. The murderers were supposed to be the good guys: our allies. Trump wanted to know why the United States had backed Zenki if its members are extremists. The issue was discussed at length with senior intelligence officials, and no good answers were forthcoming, according to people familiar with the conversations. After learning more worrisome details about the CIA’s ghost war in Syria—including that U.S.-backed rebels had often fought alongside extremists, among them al Qaeda’s arm in the country—the president decided to end the program altogether. www.weeklystandard.com...

August 1, 2017: Drug Cartels Fuming at New U.S. Policy Screening 100% of Mexican Cargo Trucks.
In a major shift from lax Obama-era regulations, the Trump administration is finally allowing customs officers to screen all cargo trucks entering the U.S. from Mexico and sources on both sides of the border tell Judicial Watch Mexican drug cartels are fuming. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is using X-ray technology and other non-intrusive tools to screen 100% of cargo trucks crossing the southern border after eight years of sporadic or random screening permitted under the Obama administration. “We felt like we were the welcoming committee and not like we were guarding our borders,” said veteran U.S. Customs agent Patricia Cramer, who also serves as president of the Arizona chapter of the agency’s employee union. “The order was to facilitate traffic, not to stop any illegal drugs from entering the country,” Cramer added. “We want to enforce the law. That’s what we signed up for.” Cramer, a canine handler stationed at the Nogales port of entry in Arizona, said illicit drugs are pouring in through the southern border, especially massive quantities of fentanyl, an opioid painkiller that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says is more potent than morphine. Approximately 471,000 trucks pass through the U.S-Mexico border monthly, according to figures published by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The busiest port of entry is in Laredo, Texas where 167,553 trucks enter the U.S. from Mexico monthly, followed by Otay Mesa in California (76,953), El Paso, Texas (58,913), Hidalgo, Texas (45,355) and Nogales with 29,439. Other busy ports include East Calexico, California (29,173), Brownsville, Texas (16,140) and Eagle Pass, Texas (12,952). Trucks bring in everything from auto parts to appliances, produce and livestock. In fact, a veteran Homeland Security official told Judicial Watch that cattle trucks passed without inspection during the Obama administration because Mexican farmers complained that the security screenings frightened their cows. “Our guys were livid that we were not allowed to check cattle,” the federal official said. www.judicialwatch.org...

October 2017: Under Trump and Sessions, federal prosecutors are ramping up the war on drugs.
US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has traveled around the country this year invoking fears of violent crime — and particularly the criminal group MS-13 — to justify a new “tough on crime” crackdown under the Trump administration. On the ground, however, Sessions’s anti-crime efforts look more like the old war on drugs than a new push against violent crime. Earl Rinehart reported for the Columbus Dispatch that US Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio Benjamin Glassman “is costing taxpayers more money” by prosecuting more people, even minor players in drug trafficking, “and he’s OK with that.” Rinehart went on: The increase in the prosecution of violent crimes and drug cases such as these, especially amid the opioid crisis, had the U.S District Court for Southern Ohio looking for extra jail space to keep a record 483 defendants whose cases were pending as of Oct. 7. “That’s a lot for us,” said Chief U.S. District Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr. Of the total defendants, 223 were up on drug charges, 43 for violent crimes and 38 for child pornography. Based on these figures, nearly half of the new cases are for drug charges, and less than 10 percent are for violent crime. Despite Sessions’s rhetoric about violent crime, it sure looks like drugs are still his office’s main focus. On Twitter, Glassman pushed back on the Dispatch’s report. He wrote, “I disagree that we are now charging minor players who, in years past, would not have been charged at all. To the contrary, as the article also notes, we're pushing our investigations and prosecutions farther and wider than ever before. If anything, as our scope and reach continue to grow, defendants who looked like leaders in years past now seem more like minor players. But we are absolutely not looking to prosecute low-level folks. Just the opposite.” In a statement, Glassman also questioned the Dispatch’s methodology and sources. He said that, by his count, “roughly a third of our case load involves violent crime and another third involves drugs or organized crime related to drugs, like money laundering.” Still, the federal government is unique in that about half the people it locks up are in for drug offenses. At the state level, where nearly nine in 10 prisoners in the US are held, most are in prison for violent offenses. Sessions seems determined to continue that federal trend. One of his first moves in the Justice Department was to instruct federal prosecutors to bring punitive charges that can trigger harsh mandatory minimum prison sentences against even low-level drug offenders, rescinding an Obama administration memo that told federal officials to pull back on these kinds of prosecutions. 1

November 20, 2017: The U.S. begins bombing Taliban drug labs as Trump’s Afghanistan strategy takes hold.
U.S. and Afghan forces have launched a series of attacks on narcotics laboratories in southern Afghanistan, marking the start of what could become a long, expanded air war there under President Trump. The initial strikes, which began Sunday and were ongoing Monday, represent the first significant use of new legal authorities granted by the Trump administration in August that enable the Pentagon to target Taliban revenue streams, said Army Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Previously, the U.S. military conducted strikes only when facing imminent threat or working directly with the Afghans. The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates there are 400 to 500 opium laboratories across Afghanistan, he said, and about 10 of them have been bombed so far. Until now, though, those U.S. efforts have only occasionally involved the military. During the early post-Taliban years, the Pentagon focused exclusively on pursuing al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents and expressly avoided diverting efforts toward curbing the drug trade. In some cases, this was because of U.S. alliances with warlords or regional strongmen who were involved in drugs. 1


November 24, 2017: How Jeff Sessions Plans to End Medical Marijuana Before the Year Is Over.
New York is one of 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have legalized medical marijuana––a trend that 94 percent of Americans support, according to an August Quinnipiac poll. But on December 8, all of that could begin to change. Congress has until that day to decide whether to include the Rohrabacher-Farr Act (also known as Rohrabacher-Blumenauer) in a bill that will fund the government through the next fiscal year. Right now, that law, made up of just 85 words, blocks the Department of Justice from using any money to prosecute medical marijuana in states where it's legal.
In May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushed back against the bill when he sent a strongly worded letter to Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, asking them to oppose protections for legal weed and allow him to prosecute medical marijuana. “I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime," Sessions wrote in his letter. The bill's 2014 passage, with 170 Democrats and 49 Republicans in favor, was the first time Congress passed legislation that protected medical marijuana users and businesses. It meant that an attorney general could no longer send Drug Enforcement Administration agents (or use other government resources) to bust medical marijuana in states where it was legal. It was in line with the Obama administration's 2013 "Cole Memo," in which Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the Justice Department would refrain from prosecuting medical marijuana businesses and users in states where it was legal, and that it would prioritize more serious marijuana offenses, like drug cartels and sales to minors. The policy marked a change for the Obama administration, where medical marijuana busts were once rampant. With his letter, Sessions pushed Congress to end these protections. In a statement on Friday, Sessions announced that the Justice Department would halt the practice of guidance memos, and review Obama administration guidance memos on legal pot to see if they went too far. More recently, he said at a speech in March in Richmond, "I am astonished to hear people suggest that we can solve our heroin crisis by legalizing marijuana—so people can trade one life-wrecking dependency for another that’s only slightly less awful.”

December 2017:  Trump's Wall.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began physically testing southwestern border wall prototypes this week, according to a spokesman for the department.  The start of the testing period was Nov. 27, and physical tests began Monday, said Carlos Diaz, CBP's public affairs branch chief for the southwestern border. Construction of eight wall prototypes in the San Diego sector were completed on Oct. 26. Six companies were chosen to build eight sample walls — four made of concrete and four of other materials. The prototypes are the first steps in CBP’s efforts to build a wall, although administration officials have acknowledged that a future wall is unlikely to stretch from sea to shining sea, despite Trump's promise to cover the entire border. Officials say that the current barriers need to be modernized. Over the past three years, the existing infrastructure in San Diego has been breached nearly 2,000 times, according to Roy Villareal, the deputy chief patrol agent of the San Diego sector. He said that’s a “testament” to the need for new wall structures. “If you go back to the late '80s, the border was completely overrun. There were daily robberies, rapes, assaults, vehicle thefts, high-speed pursuits, people getting killed along the border in staggering numbers,” Villareal told ABC News in front of the prototypes. “That has all curtailed as a result of investment in border security. That has curtailed as a result of what you see here today.” However, critics and Democratic lawmakers say the wall is a waste of time and money. “Let me be clear: Trump’s border wall is a waste of money and I will block funding for it,” said Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., in a July tweet. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., tweeted in March, "Trump's wall is a waste of money and an insult to our values," with the hashtags "#NoBanNoWall" and "#JointSession." 1
What Ever Happened to Donald Trump's Wall? It's in Pieces, in the Desert No funding has been appropriated by Congress to advance the project beyond the testing phase. There’s no final design. And despite Trump’s rallying cry that Mexico would pay for the barrier, that country hasn’t contributed a peso. The wall, an emotional centerpiece of Trump’s populist candidacy, is resurfacing as Washington turns from tax legislation to a fight over government spending for the rest of the fiscal year. A spending package Congress plans to debate in January will test whether his promise can ever be fulfilled. Tensions over immigration are returning to center stage as Democrats seek to use the January spending measure to restore legal protections against deportation to hundreds of thousands of people brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Trump has said he would like an agreement to fund the wall in return, and he resumed pressing for the wall even as he celebrated Republicans’ tax overhaul.

December 26, 2017: No Trump windfall for private prisons yet, but some bet on gains.
(Reuters) - Investors who bet on private prison operators as big winners from Donald Trump’s tough line on crime and illegal immigration are looking back at a bruising year of high hopes and disappointment. Some, however, say the stocks still offer good value even though an anticipated windfall under the Trump administration so far has failed to materialize. They say the two listed operators - Geo Group Inc (GEO.N) and CoreCivic Inc (CXW.N) - stand to win contracts from states struggling with prison overcrowding, such as Kansas and Oklahoma, and have plenty of room to accommodate new demand. The administration’s proposals to bolster the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency could help in the future though it is still unclear how much new money it will bring. “People are focusing on ICE and ignoring the state level opportunities,” said Jordan Hymowitz managing partner Philadelphia Financial Management in San Francisco. Geo and CoreCivic shares soared after Trump won the White House, partly on expectations that detention centers they run for ICE would fill up thanks to an anticipated surge in arrests along the Mexican border. Yet the opposite happened - arrests declined for months after Trump's inauguration because fewer people attempted to cross the border and shares in CoreCivic and Geo reversed course after peaking in February and April respectively.
The private-prison industry is now a highly profitable, yet still niche, part of our massive prison-industrial complex. The US government now spends $80 billion annually on corrections, 18 states spend more on incarceration than on higher education, and one study found that the total cost of incarceration, including social costs, adds up to $1 trillion. One point seven million children in the United States have a parent in prison, more than 70 million Americans (about one in three) have a criminal record, and those enormous impacts are suffered unequally: While African Americans are about 13 percent of the US population, they make up 37 percent of the male prison population . Today there are nearly 200 for-profit prisons locking up about 126,000 inmates across the country, and since Trump took office the industry has become both a bull market (only weeks after Trump’s election, CoreCivic’s stock had jumped 57 percent) and a flash point in the debate about carceral politics. The book makes the point that neither the for-profit prison industry nor the vast prison-industrial complex single-handedly drove the growth of mass incarceration. But we can’t ignore the influence the private-prison industry has had on the carceral landscape. Our prison-industrial complex today relies on a vast infrastructure of financial incentives that create significant hurdles when it comes to dismantling a mass-incarceration system on which the nation has come to rely. There are innumerable opportunities to profit from the incarcerated in the US, and private prisons are just one part of this multibillion-dollar business. But these private prisons are important to understand and discuss because, while only about 8 percent of the current state prison population is housed in for-profit facilities, about 18 percent of those behind bars in the federal system are in these prisons, and over 60 percent of immigration-detention beds are operated by these corporations. What’s more, while mass incarceration would exist with or without private prisons, their very existence has helped to perpetuate today’s enormous prison populations because of their history of lobbying state and federal legislators, and their incentives to turn a profit off of those behind bars. 1