The Secret Government, Drugs and Terrorism

February 18, 2014
U.S. military guarding poppy fields

U.S. military guarding poppy fields

It’s always been said that wherever the CIA goes, drugs come back. That may be a simplification. Evidence is mounting to suggest that the heroin trade has gone global, not just in its distribution, but in the ability of the players to stage world-changing events.
The Russian-centric website Strategic Culture.org has this report on Afghan opium production:

“For the third year in a row, NATO-occupied Afghanistan has grown a record number of opium poppies. According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium crops in Afghanistan occupied unprecedented areas of land in 2013, outstripping previous records. Despite the unfavourable weather conditions, particularly in western and southern parts of the country, opium plantations occupied a total of more than 209,000 hectares, exceeding the previous year’s figure by 36 percent.”

opium 3

The article goes on to name just about everyone in the Karzai family is involved in the trade, and suggests this:

“US researchers maintain that the opium trade in America is being controlled by the networks and cartels that were exposed during the Iran-Contra affair and that have not stopped their activities since the 1980s: «The pillars of the Karzai regime rely on support from the drugs trade, and for us they are untouchable. We have turned Afghanistan into the largest supplier of heroin, and this has happened under the control of the CIA», these researchers observe.”

Such research includes the exhaustive work of Alfred W. McCoy, in his valuable book “The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia”.
McCoy details how during World War Two, The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) began a partnership with the Mafia to protect east coast docks and shipping from sabotage. The project was known as “Operation Underworld” or “The Luciano Project”. The payoff was a restored Mafia run by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky and a green-light for drug distribution. U.S. Intelligence operations dovetailed with the Mafia through the Kennedy Assassination and beyond to this day.
Fast foward to the U.S. war in Vietnam. As the Nationalist Chinese fled from Communism in the guise of the Koumintang, their staging area became “The Golden Triangle”, between Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. Already a opium production region, The Golden Triangle came under the influence of warlords that fought secretly for the CIA in the region. McCoy explains that so many tribesmen were recruited to fight for the CIA that Air America had to provide rice drops to feed the villages. As expected, opium was needed as a cash crop to sustain those remote tribes, and the CIA was only too happy to help out, with organized crime back home to run Heroin distribution.
That business model was transferred to South America where Cocaine trafficking funded Reagan’s war against Nicaragua, flooding the streets of America with Crack Cocaine, and then to Afghanistan where a nice return of Hashish and Heroin could be expected.

opium 2

One might think that little bit of business is just how the CIA gets things done. After all, if Congress won’t allocate money for illegal wars, why not sell drugs? FBI director J. Edgar Hoover once said that drug users were expendable, because they were un-American.

But in this lengthy article by Professor Peter Dale Scott, we see that the international drug trade has expanded to influence world events, most importantly, international terrorism. The article is very deep, with lots of references to a large cast of characters involved. Professor Scott suggests that there now exists a “Meta Group” that is international in scale and not only uses drug trafficking to fund operations, but that to keep the trade alive it must have unstable governments in growing regions and trade routes. Here are a few excerpts:

The Global Drug Meta-Group:
Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11
By Peter Dale Scott (18,734 words) 10/29/05

(excerpts)
“Tajik authorities have claimed repeatedly that neither the US nor NATO exerts any pressure on the drug warlords inside Afghanistan. “There’s absolutely no threat to the labs inside Afghanistan,” said Avaz Yuldashov of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency. “Our intelligence shows there are 400 labs making heroin there, and 80 of them are situated right along our border … Drug trafficking from Afghanistan is the main source of support for international terrorism now,” Yuldashov pointed out last year.[1]”
*
“I. The Meta-Group, the Russian 9/11, and Kosovo

Violence and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic

In the last three decades, three important facts have emerged about the international drug traffic. The first is that it is both huge and growing.

Narcotics are estimated to be worth between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year, an amount, according to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in remarks to a United Nations General Assembly session in June 2003, that is greater than the global oil and gas industry, and twice as large as the overall automobile industry.[2]
The second is that it is both worldwide and above all “highly integrated.”[3] At global drug summits such as the one in Armenia in 1993, representatives of the Sicilian Mafia, the Brighton Beach Organizatsiya, and Colombian drug lords, have worked out a common modus operandi, with the laundering of dirty money entrusted chiefly to the lawless Russian banks.[4]

The third important fact, undeniable since the 1980 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, is that governments with global pretensions will avail themselves, in pursuit of their own political ends, of the resources, both financial and political, of the drug traffic. It was striking in the 1980s that the CIA, in its choice of Afghan mujahedin leaders to back against the Soviet Union, passed over those with indigenous support in favor of those, notably Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who dominated the heroin trade. The result was to enhance Hekmatyar’s power until he became a leading heroin trafficker, not just in Afghanistan but in the world.[5]

Three more important features of the global drug traffic have been less noticed; thus although I regard them as facts I shall refer to them not as facts but as propositions to be tested against evidence. The first proposition is that the highly integrated drug traffic industry, in addition to serving the political ends of world powers, has its own political as well as economic objectives. It requires that in major growing areas there must be limited state control, a condition most easily reached by fostering regional rebellion and warfare, often fought by its own private armies. This is the on-going situation of designed violence in every major growing area, from Lebanon to Myanmar, Colombia to Afghanistan.

Once the local power of drug armies was enough in itself to neutralize the imposition of state authority. But today there are increasing signs that those at the highest level of the drug traffic will plot with the leaders of major states to ensure, or even to stage, violence that serves the power of the state and the industry alike.

Thanks to extensive research in Russia, we now have initial evidence of a second and even more significant proposition: There exists on the global level a drug meta-group, able to manipulate the resources of the drug traffic for its own political and business ends, without being at risk for actual trafficking. These ends include the creation of designed violence to serve the purposes of cabals in political power – most conspicuously in the case of the Yeltsin “family” in the Kremlin, but allegedly, according to Russian sources, also for those currently in power in the United States.”
*
“There is a powerful military organized crime community which from 1992 through to the present has controlled substantial drug flows from Afghanistan to Russia and Europe and is also involved in laundering “dirty” money and is actively involved in Russia’s political life. The community is controlled by former intelligence officers, Afghan war veterans, and now drugs barons Vova Filin and Lesha Pribalt. The former lives in Switzerland, the latter in London. Both make quite frequent trips to Moscow, Dushanbe, Nazran, and Khankala….
Filin and Pribalt literally flooded Russia with heroin. The Kremlin could not tolerate this abomination any longer and ordered a mighty “Chekist raid” [i.e., ordered the FSB to shut down the operation] against the narcobarons. However, it is rumored that the raid has ended up with the agreement that the latter would 1) share their profits; 2) help in the facilitating the peaceful referendum on the constitution in Chechnya; 3) bring some order to the drug market by liquidating the leaders of ethnic criminal groups.”[77]”
*
“Recently Filin gave Pravda.info some details about Far West’s work, and revealed that the firm had been co-founded by “a sub-division of a well-known American corporation.” He said that the company’s new contract is

connected with the secured transport of commercial shipments from Afghanistan, where we have an office, to ports on the Black Sea. In Afghanistan there is a well-known U.S. air base in Bagram. It is connected by an aerial bridge with a number of other US air bases. For example, with the largest base in Frankfurt-on-Main, that’s in Germany, with an intermediary landing in Chkalovsk, in the Moscow area. But the most commercially attractive route seems to be that from Bagram to the US air base in Magas, in Kyrgyzstan. By the way, it is quite near the Russian air base in Kant. A significant flow of shipments passes through Magas, there is a niche there for commercial shipments too. This is very profitable. It is much more profitable than routing commercial shipments from Afghanistan through Tajikistan. Therefore last year we completely withdrew from all shipping through Tajikistan and closed our office in that country.
Who are your partners?

Who our partners are is a commercial secret. I can say that they are four private firms from three countries, Turkey, Russia, and the USA,which engage among other things in shipping. One of these firms is a sub-division of a well-known American corporation. This firm is a co-founder of our agency.[81]”
*
“The chief narco-baron of the group is said to be Vladimir Filin, who is also the head of Far West. Here is a relevant interview Filin afforded to his colleague Alexander Nagorny at Filin’s own alternate organization, Pravda.info:

There have been reports in mass media about the involvement of the U.S. military in Afghanistan in drug trafficking. I asked the well-known political scientist and specialist on organized crime Vladimir Filin to comment on this.
-Vladimir Ilyich, is it true that Americans are involved in drug business?
-Yes, they are in ideal situation for this. They control the Bagram airfield from where the Air Force transport planes fly to a U.S. military base in Germany. In the last two years this base became the largest transit hub for moving Afghan heroin to other US bases and installations in Europe. Much of it goes to Kosovo in the former Yugoslavia. From there the Kosovo Albanian mafia moves heroin back to Germany and other EU countries.
-Why such a complex arrangement?
Drug traffickers enjoy relative safety in military bases. There is no serious control there. German police cannot work there. However, outside of military bases German law-enforcement is in effect. True, any police can be bought. But the level of corruption in Germany is not as high as, say, in Russia. This is why it is more convenient for Americans to establish distribution centers in other places. I believe that, in time, such centers will move to their military installations in Poznan, Poland, and also in Romania and Bulgaria. Poland is already a EU member. Romania and Bulgaria are expected to be in 2007. Corruption in these countries is almost as high as in Russia.
-How big is American drug traffic to Europe and who is behind it?
-About 15-20 tons of heroin a year. When Poznan become open, I think it could rise to 50, even 70 tons. Behind this business are the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). Actually, this is what they did already in Indochina in the 1960s-70s and in Central America in the 1980s.[96]”
*
“U.S. Geostrategic Goals and Chechnya
In the 1980s CIA Director William Casey used narcotics to achieve two goals, the immediate goal of weakening the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, and the long-term goal of financing Islamist resistance to break up the Soviet Union.[106] According to the partisan but well-informed observer Yossef Bodansky, Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the U.S. still pursues the goal of weakening destabilizing Russia.

As if reliving the “good ol’ days” of Afghanistan of the 1980s, Washington is once again seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces. The US crossed the line in mid-December 1999, when US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type which did the Clinton Administration’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the Spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.
Washington’s motivation is oil pipeline politics and the economy. Essentially, Washington is determined to deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism, the political fallout of media accusations of Russian war crimes. In the calculations of the Clinton Administration, a US-assisted escalation and expansion of the war in Chechnya should deliver the desired debilitation of Russia.
The Clinton Administration believes that the spiraling violence in the Caucasus will scare Western investors and oil buyers from making deals with Russia. Meanwhile, with the sudden US attempted rapprochement with Iran, the Clinton Administration is heralding the Azerbaijani southern route (with a little detour in Iran) as seemingly feasible. And so, in the Summer of 2000, the Clinton Administration keeps fanning the flames of the Islamist jihad in the Caucasus through covert assistance, tacit encouragement of allies to actively support the mujahedin, as well as the orchestrating of an intense media campaign against Russia and its conduct in Chechnya.[107]”
—————————————————–

You get the picture: Drugs fund covert operations and systematically destabilize chosen populations. In order to keep the cashflow going, tribal areas must be lawless, ungoverned and at war.
So who’s at the top of the food chain in this scenario?

Well here’s one hint: During the 2008 global bank crash, one thing kept certain banks afloat – laundered drug money. From The Guardian UK:

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
Rajeev Syal
The Observer, Saturday 12 December 2009

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

“That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was,” he said.

The IMF estimated that large US and European banks lost more than $1tn on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 and more than 200 mortgage lenders went bankrupt. Many major institutions either failed, were acquired under duress, or were subject to government takeover.

Gangs are now believed to make most of their profits from the drugs trade and are estimated to be worth £352bn, the UN says. They have traditionally kept proceeds in cash or moved it offshore to hide it from the authorities. It is understood that evidence that drug money has flowed into banks came from officials in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and the US.

British bankers would want to see any evidence that Costa has to back his claims. A British Bankers’ Association spokesman said: “We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind. There was clearly a lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks.”
————————————–

Now we have a more complete picture: there has emerged a new global super-entity, which Professor Scott refers to as “The Mega-Group”. They are borderless, nation-less, wealthy enough and motivated enough to game the world.

Please refer to Peter Dale Scott’s article at this link for more information.

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One Response to The Secret Government, Drugs and Terrorism

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