Maksim Bakiyev: A Groomed Puppet Who Never Came to Be King

Kyrgyzstan’s Wanted Fugitive: Maksim Bakiyev. The story is more or less the same – the one that has been repeating itself for many decades.  The one based on a script written by the very same conductors who wrote the ones before, and who will probably be writing the ones to come (yes, they’re blessed with longevity; a curse for the rest of us). The location – always a resource rich country or one strategically crucial to resource rich countries. A viable candidate (sometimes candidates) chosen based on the exact same set of criteria – such as degree of corruptibility, and degree of atrocity or criminal tendencies. The grooming and training locations also are the same: the United States of America or the proxy brother, The United Kingdom. The supporting actors are a combination of old timers, think World Bank or IMF, and newer ones with even fancier names, such as XYZ Democratization and Development Fund, posing as well-intentioned NGOs. Okay, enough with the details, since we are very familiar with this repeating script and its consistent execution – collectively known and referred to as United States Foreign Policy.

The Bakiyev ‘Groom & Plant’ script, like almost all its predecessors, contains the same good ole classical elements: strategically important Central Asian nation, vital US fuel supply artery to keep the war machines humming and destroying in Afghanistan, major artery for transportation of heroin, puppet NATO partnership & the same-o-same-o big bad Russians to compete with, dozens of US NGO’s planted to serve you-know-who’s interests (here is a hint: not the people of Kyrgyzstan nor the American people), a staged and orchestrated revolution by our State Department – named after a innocently beautiful flower – to overthrow the guy who was closer to China & Russia, planting a new corrupt despot clan all carrying the same last name-Bakiyev. Then taking the son, the prince, Maksim Bakiyev, under ‘the mighty’ wings and starting his grooming and training here in the United States, helping the new groomed prince set up companies to corrupt & embezzle, and actually having our CIA operator(s) and politicians partner up with him in these enterprises – allocating  US financial experts, politicians,  and operators to execute a massive embezzlement scheme by the ‘groomed & planted’ prince, later to become a wanted fugitive ‘groomed but no longer planted’ prince with at least $70 million to be rescued and brought under protection…

Basically, with the Bakiyev story we have another all too familiar foreign policy and practices abroad scenario repeating itself. Before I get into that way too familiar story I want to revisit a couple of old ‘groom & plant’ examples I have covered here at Boiling Frogs post, starting with a ‘groomed & planted, and later protected’ Former Prime Minister of Turkey, Ms. Tansu Ciller as a perfect example of a Middle Eastern leader who was selected, declared ‘viable,’ supported, promoted, installed, and protected by our foreign policy script writers:

1. Ms. Ciller completed her advanced degrees in the United States – M.S. from the University of New Hampshire and PhD from the University of Connecticut. During this extended period while she resided in the US we had ample time and opportunity to train and mold her for the leadership position in Turkey.

2. Ms. Ciller was granted citizenship in the United States. In order to keep this fact from tarnishing her image during her candidacy campaign in Turkey and afterwards, we designated her US citizenship status ‘Classified and Top Secret’ on the grounds of Sensitive Diplomatic Relations. To this date, despite all attempts, Turkish authorities have been unable to have these files opened.

3. Ms. Ciller and her husband Ozer Ciller were closely involved with certain CIA operations prior to and after her return to Turkey, and their intimate relationship continued throughout her tenure as Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey. In fact, the CIA’s Roger Tamraz (see BCCI) was their partner in two front companies: ‘Emperyal’, which acquired and operated six (6) Casinos in Turkmenistan, and, ‘Lapis,’ involved with the oil pipeline project.

4. Ms. Ciller and her husband, before being considered ‘viable’ by us, already had an established shady financial past, including involvement in an embezzlement scandal connected to the collapse of ‘Istanbul Bankasi’, one of Turkey’s largest private banks. This along with involvements fortified Ms. Ciller’s qualification criteria when compared to competing applicants.

5. Ms. Ciller understood and participated in Turkey’s important strategic and operational role in the supply and transportation of heroin. She skillfully and very aggressively combined and furthered the marriage between the state military-police-intelligence and the underground heroin industry. Her notoriety even reached the German Courts, where she was accused of supporting and protecting the drug mafia – active not only in Turkey but elsewhere, including Europe and Central Asia.

6. Ms. Ciller played a direct role in scandals involving corruption, embezzlement, and state sponsored terrorism and narcotics operations. The best known scandal, one of her masterpieces, is known as ‘Susurluk’. Ciller and her husband – who is known for his mafia links and dealings, were directly implicated in Susurluk. The high profile kept by Ms. And Mr. Ciller during these scandals and their handling of them afterwards significantly bolstered their ‘value’ and ‘viability’ for us.

7. Ms. Ciller’s ‘known’ wealth is confirmed to be over $50 million, all of which was gained after she became a ‘’viable’ candidate supported directly by the US. A large portion of her investments and accounts are in the United States.

And here is our second example with the almost exact same script, a ‘groomed & planted, and many times rescued’ puppet(s) in Pakistan. I am making that ‘puppet’ plural since the same script happens to extend to the spouse who currently rules, kinda! And here is the list for the Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Ms. Benazir Bhutto:

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1. Ms. Bhutto obtained her bachelor degree in the United States – BA from Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Later she attended Oxford University in the UK where she pursued International Law and Diplomacy. She spent a total of eight years in the US and UK – 1969-1977. Again, this time spent ‘abroad’ was ideal for the satisfactory grooming of Ms. Bhutto for ‘installment.’

2. Ms. Bhutto was granted British Citizenship and maintained her dual citizenship throughout her career as a candidate and later as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her husband, the current President of Pakistan, also received British citizenship and has maintained his dual citizenship to date. The perceived conflict of interest back in her home country did not prove to be an obstacle for ‘us’ or the Bhuttos, thanks to our PR and global image projection activities.

3. Ms. Bhutto and her husband maintained intimate relationships with the underground economy and high level players of the heroin pipeline. Ms. Bhutto was a close ally, protector, and intimate friend of convicted Pakistani Drug Baron and Former Parliamentarian, Ayub Afridi, who like Bhutto, was given protection and safe haven in Dubai, one of our closest allies. These relationships and direct connections, some of which were directly inherited from her father, significantly bolstered Ms. Bhutto’s value for us and our British counterparts.

4. Ms. Bhutto and her husband proved to be desirably ambitious and admirably skilled in using their power, position, and connections, together with our protection, to misuse their proceeds of corruption and embezzlements to accumulate great wealth. Today her husband, who inherited this wealth, is the fifth richest man in Pakistan with a net worth of nearly $2 billion. As confirmation of their successful accumulation of wealth, in the 90s Ms. Bhutto and her husband purchased a 20-bedroom mansion in Surrey, England. They were known for their proficiency in receiving ‘kickbacks.’ Just the kickbacks they received from Swiss Cargo Inspection Companies alone were worth $12 million, which they stashed wisely in offshore companies in Swiss bank accounts.

5. Ms. Bhutto’s Bill of Mental Health was not of much interest. However, she was permitted to transfer credits from her husband, Mr. Ali Asif Zardari. His is a far more interesting mental health record, made all the more interesting since she pledged to place him in an official position of power. He and his ‘mental health’ conditions proved to be extremely useful in ‘necessary’ operations involving murder, drug smuggling, corruption, and embezzlement, thus our making an exception for Ms. Bhutto was justified in this particular case.

6. Ms. Bhutto exhibited great skills in ‘Multiple Image Projection’. With our direct backing and promotion she quickly sold her image as a needed progressive, democratic, and pro humanitarian leader for Pakistan. Just as quickly, at home in Pakistan, she was able to establishherself as equal to if not better than her dictatorial predecessors by sanctioning and carrying out extrajudicial killings, torture, persecution of religious minorities, and arbitrary detention. She also determinedly took extraordinary measures to muzzle the independent media. These skills were also applied to her utilization and exploitation of feministic support. At the same time she was portraying herself as a progressive and feminist example for ‘that’ part of the world, she was making deals and establishing close ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, notorious for their abuse of women…

Maksim Bakiyev: A Brief & MSM-Preferred Case Background

Let’s start with the commonly known, easily retrievable Wikipedia and mainstream media based background on Maksim Bakiyev and related recent news.

Who is Maksim Bakiyev? He is the 33 year old, fugitive, Kyrgyz businessman, the younger son of Kyrgyzstan’s former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev. Maksim currently lives in the United Kingdom – where he’s been granted residency and provided with protection (including for his embezzled millions). He studied legal law in Kyrgyzstan. According to his Wikipedia bio:

He received additional education on legal issues in Britain and the US. As a student, Maksim worked in a consultation firm, specializing in investment into emerging markets in Central Asia and the Middle East. Maksim was widely believed to be the richest man in Kyrgyzstan.

Hmmmmmm. What are the major information points missing here? What the heck did he really study in the US and Britain? Which universities? Was it Langley Campus? Where did he reside? McLean, Virginia? What was the name of this mysterious consulting firm specializing in investment into emerging markets in Central Asia & the Middle East? Was it one of James Baker’s firms? Or was it Henry Kissinger’s? Or, was it Carlyle? And, how did he become the richest man in Kyrgyzstan, from having nothing, in less than 5 years?

After skipping over all these important ‘missing links,’ we are fast forwarded to the latest presented by the media and here at Wikipedia:

Maksim was in charge of delivering fuel to the Manas International Airport, which also hosts a US airbase,^[2] through Mina Corp. Maksim was appointed the head of Central Agency for Development in October of 2009. Since the 2010 overthrow he has been charged with embezzlement and abuse of power by the interim government. It is suspected that transferred about $35 million of a $300 million loan from Russia into his private bank accounts.^[3] Prosecutors also allege that companies he owned almost $80 million in taxes on aviation fuel.

And finally, his latest and current status has been summed up below:

When the 2010 uprising took place, Bakiyev was headed to the US for a series of meetings in Washington.^[5] However, he never showed up, and it is believed he spent his time in Latvia. In May Interpol posted Maxim Bakiyev as wanted on its website.

On June 13, 2010 Maksim was arrested in the UK when he landed at Farnborough Airport in Hampshire in a privately hired jet.^[6] He is seeking asylum there, but the interim Kyrgyz government is demanding his extradition. A senior Kyrgyz official warned that the interim government would consider shutting down the Manas US airbase if Britain refuses to hand him over. ^[7] However, this was later denounced by president of Kyrgyzstan, Otunbaeva.

On June 18, 2010, it was reported that Bakiyev was granted temporary asylum in the UK, but this was later refuted by the UK Border Agency. ^[8] He does however have permission to stay pending consideration of request for asylum.

As you can see above, I highlighted another important missing link – a major point that has been so far glossed-over: This fugitive was initially headed to the US for a series of meetings in Washington. And these meetings were set up during and after the scandals involving him coming into the surface. Okay, at The State Department, CIA, and of course the not-so-visible agenda-setters at their companies, think tanks, and front NGOs? Then what happened? I guess  it was decided that he was too hot of a potato in too hot of an environment, so our State Department put a request to their counterparts in Britain to kindly ‘receive and harbor’ their ‘groomed & planted’ Kyrgyz prince…and they did.

So the above information is the sketch, the general story line on the ‘Bakiyev Story.’ Then, there are some additional juicy details and tidbits provided by a few, although still highly sanitized and consciously refrained from posing ‘the real’ questions. Let’s take a look at these and pose logical questions as we go.

Maksim Bakiyev & ‘Foreign’ Facilitated Embezzlement Schemes

So how did Maksim Bakiyev’s meager personal business grow into a major empire encompassing banking, oil, and telecommunication industries? We don’t have the complete answer to this question; not yet. Not with so much information still buried and ‘protected,’ and with only little sketchy details here and there. Read more ?

Today marks Boiling Frogs Post’s fifth month of operation, and the last day of our fundraising campaign. On behalf of our team members I want to thank all of you for your support, with a special thanks to 658 of you who donated to our cause. We may not have reached our benchmark for our desired objectives and planned expansion, but we have you and a good start, so we’ll continue as best as we can, and work toward those objectives.

I am thrilled to announce the addition of a new team member, Luke Ryland, a good friend and a partner whom I have known and worked with since 2006; please welcome Luke and here is his bio:

Luke Ryland is an independent political analyst and online journalist based in Australia. He has been an expert commentator on the Sibel Edmonds case and nuclear black market cases for various progressive radio shows and online publications. Mr. Ryland’s work focuses on the nuclear black market, the Turkish lobby in the US, the energy and geopolitical wars in Central Asia, and the corruption of US Congress. Mr. Ryland has an MBA and a Bachelors degree in Commerce from the University of Melbourne. Visit Luke Ryland’s website.

We recently published Luke Ryland’s expose on FBI documents confirming major criminal investigations of Turkish operatives and their US official friends in Chicago. And here is a link to a recent interview with Mr. Ryland conducted by Scott Horton of AntiWar.Org: Click here.

Starting this coming Wednesday I’ll be on the road for a few weeks, traveling for work and personal matters. I won’t be out of touch. We have three Boiling Frogs interviews, one of which will be posted every other week: Professor Francis Boyle, Naomi Wolf, and Peter Phillips. Meanwhile, Peter B Collins and I will find ways to overcome significant time zone differences and connection difficulties, and continue to conduct additional interviews. We will also have articles and analyses by our contributors, and of course Paul Jamiol’s great editorial cartoons.

Here is my list of noteworthy articles and links from this past week:

Let’s start with our President, since we’ve been keeping tabs on his changes on his promised changes. The following piece is also related to the Obama White House’s 180 degree turn on protection for national security whistleblowers, which we’ve been covering for over a week.

A little secret about Obama’s transparency
Andrew Malcolm, LA Times

The current administration, challenged by the president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did.

The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.

Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on his first full day in office, he dispatched a much-publicized memo saying: “All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
One of the exemptions allowed to deny Freedom of Information requests has been used by the Obama administration 70,779 times in its first year; the same exemption was used 47,395 times in Bush’s final budget year.

An Associated Press examination of 17 major agencies’ handling of FOIA requests found denials 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50% from the 2008 fiscal year under Bush.
…

We’ve been keeping tabs, and our list of ‘Bush-Like’ and ‘Worse-Than-Bush’ points has been expanding continuously. Mr. Obama’s love and usage of State Secrets Privilege, his position against government whistleblowers, his support for illegal domestic wiretapping, his passion for wars and drones, his kind-heartedness towards torturers & other criminals…During his first few months in office, a few of his previously duped supporters were too generous and maybe a bit too naïve to label him ‘Bush-Lite.’ How about now? Is it time to call the President ‘Bush-Dark’? You be the judge; what say you?

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 Karzai talks peace with militant group linked to Taliban
Deb Riechmann, AP

President Hamid Karzai held an unprecedented meeting yesterday with representatives of a major Taliban-linked militant group, boosting his outreach to insurgency leaders to end the eight-year war.

Less certain is whether the talks with the weakened Hizb-i-Islami faction represent a game-changer in the conflict, given its demand to rewrite the Afghan constitution and force a quick exit of foreign forces.

It is the first time that high-ranking representatives of the group, led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have traveled to Kabul to discuss peace. The reconciliation offer from Hekmatyar contrasts with his reputation as a ruthless extremist.

Hekmatyar, who is in his 60s, was a major recipient of US military aid during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s but fell out of favor with Washington because of his role in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. The US government declared Hekmatyar a “global terrorist’’ in February 2003, saying he participated in and supported terror acts committed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Unless that tag is removed, the designation could complicate any move by the United States to sign off on a deal, even though in recent years Hekmatyar has expressed a willingness to negotiate with the Karzai government. A spokesman for Hekmatyar said the delegation had lunch with Karzai at the presidential palace and planned to meet with him again.

…

Last January our team member duo, Liz Gould and Paul Fitzgerald, wrote an excellent piece on this opium dealing terrorist, who happened to get his grooming from our very own CIA. If you haven’t read the Gould-Fitzgerald piece titled ‘Apocalypse of the American Mind’, click here. Was he ever off the CIA list of ‘operators’? I for one would certainly doubt it.

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NATO rejects Russia’s demand to destroy Afghan poppy fields
Deutsche Press-Agentur

 Brussels – NATO and Russia clashed on Wednesday over how to tackle the drug problem in Afghanistan, where Western nations have been fighting a Taliban-led insurgency for eight years.

The country is the world’s largest producer of poppy seeds, a key ingredient in the manufacture of heroin. Russia is keen to pursue an aggressive eradication strategy, while Western allies fear that such an approach risks antagonizing the local population, who rely on selling poppy crops to survive.

The different points of view came to a head at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council attended by the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Agency (FSKN), Victor Ivanov and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

‘Afghan opiates led to the death of 1 million people by overdose in the last 10 years, and that is United Nations data. Is that not a threat to world peace and security?’ Ivanov asked journalists after the meeting.

…

Russians know very well what this is about. After all, they used to be a major player in ‘this’ particular field, and now a bit grumpy because…their share of this pie has been significantly reduced? Certainly it’s not about a million+ deaths caused by ‘overdose;’ of that much I can assure you. So maybe our guys will let their guys have a bit more; like this maybe: Read more ?

Newly Released FBI Documents Support Explosive Claims by Former FBI Translator Sibel Edmonds

Recently released FBI documents prove the existence of highly sensitive National Security and criminal investigations of “Turkish Activities” in Chicago prior to September 11, 2001. These documents add further support to many of the allegations that former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has claimed, in public and in Congress, since 2002. The documents were released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request into an organization called the Turkish American Cultural Alliance (TACA), an organization repeatedly named by Ms. Edmonds as being complicit in the crimes that she became aware of when she was a translator at the FBI.

The documents released under FOIA are almost completely redacted, but they do support many of Edmonds’ claims, including:
 

There were a number of very serious FBI investigations into “Turkish activity in Chicago” involving a number of targets, including TACA

These investigations were related to “National Security” among other things.

These investigations were regarded as so sensitive that no files were to be uploaded to FBI’s computer system.

Congressional corruption was involved.

The FBI repeatedly conducted actual “physical surveillance” against Turkish and American targets.

Some of these investigations were shut down in 2001.

The documents comprise primarily of internal FBI ECs (Electronic Communications) between FBI offices. Most of the ECs are titled “Turkish American Cultural Association” although one  from Feb 2000 is titled “Turkish Investigations in Chicago” which indicates that there were at least seven different pending investigations into Turkish activity in Chicago, and another later document from July 2001 indicates that there were at least ten investigations into TACA alone.

The earliest document is a November 1999 EC from the FBI’s National Security Division (NS-2D) to FBI field offices in Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles and New York (although there is a reference to a September 1999 EC from NSD.) The timing is significant. In an article in The American Conservative by Phil Giraldi, Ms. Edmonds notes that although there were investigations into Turkish activity dating back to 1996, most of that activity was being monitored by Counter-Intelligence based on FISA warrants because the main targets were foreigners, however in 1999 investigations were opened into ‘US Persons‘ and “they wiretapped the congressmen directly.”

The FBI was obviously concerned about ‘campaign donations’ being paid to Congressional Representatives by these groups. Ms. Edmonds has repeatedly referred to certain groups making “different kinds of campaign contributions – legal and illegal, declared and undeclared” to various congressional members. Two days after an EC from the National Security Division, Chicago reviewed the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) database which contains details of donations to congressional campaigns. Chicago was apparently interested in donations made by “three individuals who attended the meeting at TACA.”

The FBI was also interested in the leadership of TACA. One EC notes that TACA held elections in 2000 and provides a list of all the newly elected officials. The EC states “Most pertinent to the above investigations was the fact that REDACTED had been REDACTED.” We know that Mehmet Celebi was elected President of TACA at that meeting. Ms. Edmonds has previously referred to Celebi as a key player in the Turkish mafia in the US, noting that the Celebi family is involved in arms and heroin trafficking. Celebi was also Vice-President of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations (ATAA), another organization named by Ms. Edmonds and others as being involved in various criminal activities.

In 2008, Celebi briefly received some attention when he was key fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, and was nominated as one of Clinton’s Chicago delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He was eventually kicked out of the Clinton campaign because of the scrutiny.

At the time, Ms. Edmonds said:

“In 2005, Vanity Fair reported that Dennis Hastert had been bribed by Turkish interests. If people want to investigate this further they should FOIA the FBI’s Chicago Field Office for information regarding Mehmet Celebi going back to 1997. If the FBI is honest, there will be boxes and boxes of files responsive to these FOIA requests.“

Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg once said that “Sibel says that suitcases of cash have been delivered to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, at his home, near Chicago, from Turkish sources, knowing that a lot of that is drug money.”

The aforementioned Vanity Fair article, apparently trying to dodge some potential legal liability, suggested that “the reported content of the Chicago wiretaps may well have been sheer bravado, and there is no evidence that any payment was ever made to Hastert,” however a July 2001 EC regarding the “Statistical Accomplishments” of the TACA case notes that there were thirteen separate instances of actual ‘Physical Surveillance’ in the TACA case alone, suggesting that the FBI may very well have first-hand evidence of some of these crimes.

One fascinating feature of many of these documents is that many of them ominously warn about the sensitivity of the investigation. A typical warning reads:

“Extreme caution must be exercised in the handling of sensitive information contained within. No material pertaining to this investigation is to be computer uploaded. Information concerning this REDACTED investigation is not to be shared with CID (Criminal Investigation Division) absent FBIHQ/DOJ concurrence.“

Ms. Edmonds has often stated that these investigations into illegal Turkish activity were shut down by the White House and State Department in 2001 and 2002, but that the FBI Chicago Office fought to keep them open. Two of the ten cases related to TACA were officially closed by Chicago in July 2001, however even the documents relating to these ‘closed’ cases still warned that the information required ‘extreme caution’ and were not to be uploaded or shared with CID.

Asked to comment on these new documents, Ms. Edmonds replied:

“Finally! I’ve been saying this for years, and now we finally have documented proof from the FBI of this Turkish criminal activity based in Chicago.

This is fantastic, but even this is only the tip of the iceberg. The main question is this: Why has the White House and the State Dept been so determined to shut these investigations down? They shut down these investigations at the FBI, they shut me down with the State Secrets Privilege.

What are they hiding? Chicago was the center of it all, Chicago was the center of the foreign espionage activity, and the center for money laundering, and also a major heroin distribution center. Celebi was a key player, but Dennis Hastert, Mayor Daley, Robert Creamer and other US officials also helped facilitate these activities. When will we see some accountability?“

That is the ultimate question. We now have even more evidence of these crimes – but there is still no sign of any accountability. What will it take?

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US Media & The Perpetual Flip-Flopping on Drug-Related Stories

When I read Mizgin’s recent great post about Richard Armitage and his involvement in the Golden Triangle, I rolled my eyes.  “Some Daily Kos reader out there,” I thought, “is, at this very moment, shouting ‘conspiracy theory’ at their computer.” The “conspiracy theory” accusation comes up any time a journalist or a whistleblower points out that U.S. officials and agencies have been complicit in the global drug trade.  In fact, it has been an effective tool to try and silence truth tellers at least since Alfred McCoy was viciously attacked for writing the Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia.  Never mind the fact that allegations against the Central Intelligence Agency or the State Department have often been vindicated with the passage of time.  It just can’t be true that America would support drug lords, can it?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is a resounding YES, IT CAN.  American agencies, including the C.I.A. and the State Department, have given aid and comfort to international drug lords in the past and apparently continue to do so.  Just read what the New York Times reported on October 28^th about Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a known drug dealer, being on the C.I.A. payroll:

The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power [Emphasis Added] to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

Gee, do ya think? Any enterprising individual of reasonable intelligence, using a minimum of Google research skills, could have determined that the drug trade out of Afghanistan has skyrocketed since late 2001, shortly after the U.S. removed the Taliban from power and installed Hamid Karzai as its puppet.   If the Times had been a little bit bolder, they might have written something like this:

The C.I.A is complicit in the illegal drug trade in Afghanistan, but this should surprise no one, as a peek at the historical record demonstrates drug complicity has become routine.  Just look at these facts:

1950s, Southeast Asia: The C.I.A. supports the Kuomanting (KMT) drug running in Burma.

1960s-1970s, Vietnam-Laos: Richard Armitage, Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines finance a portion of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam through the Southeast Asian heroin trade.

1980s, Southwest Asia: The C.I.A. supports Afghan rebels, many of whom, along with the Pakistani ISI, are known to be deeply involved in opium and heroin trade.

1980s, Latin America: The U.S. backs Contras, even though cocaine turns out to be a key source of their funding, and Panama dictator Manuel Noriega, also tied to the drug trade. Also in this time period, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Agent Michael Levine claims Attorney General Edwin Meese blew the cover of a DEA team investigating drug corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

1990s, Burma: DEA Agent Richard Horn, whose case was recently settled with the Justice Department, is spied on by the State Department and C.I.A., apparently because Horn was being too aggressive in trying to shut down the opium trade from Burma.

1996-2002: Sibel Edmonds testifies that criminal elements in Turkey tied to the drug trade, with knowledge and acquiescence of the State Department, bring drugs into the U.S. and Europe.

None of these past Agency misdeeds were mentioned by the Times to give its story context. The reason for these omissions is obvious: the Times or someone in the American government had an axe to grind either with the C.I.A. or the Karzai government itself, and the story was only trotted out because it was convenient for the moment.  A few months from now, if some really enterprising journalists accuse the U.S. government of aiding the Afghan opium trade, the major newspapers will likely ignore them, or, worse, accuse them of being conspiracy mongers.  This is exactly how our trusted mainstream press has treated C.I.A. drug stories in the past:  When it is convenient to promote one of their pet agendas, the establishment media admit the shocking facts.  Then, when it is no longer serving its purposes, the same press turns around and marginalizes anyone repeating the same.  Take the example of Oliver North, Gary Webb, and the Washington Post.

According to a 1998 book Whiteout by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, in order to torpedo Oliver North’s 1994 Virginia Senate candidacy, the Post published a hard-hitting article on October 22, 1994, entitled “North Didn’t Relay Drug Tips”.  The gist of the story (written by Lorraine Adams) was that while he was running the illegal Contra War from his post on the National Security Council, North failed to forward to the Drug Enforcement Agency the evidence that several members of the FDN (the main Contra organization) were involved in the cocaine business. North had claimed to have “turned over to the DEA all evidence of Contra drug running” during his Congressional testimony.  The Post found the story useful at the time, given the newspaper’s opposition to North’s candidacy.  However, two years later, when journalist Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury News tied the Contras to a large crack cocaine ring in Los Angeles, the Post apparently forgot its own reporting, and (along with the New York Times and Los Angeles Times) ripped Webb’s career apart.  Cockburn and St. Clair wrote:

Friday, October 4 [1996] the Washington Post went to town on Webb and on the Mercury News. The onslaught carried no less than 5,000 words in five articles. The front page featured a lead article by Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus, headlined, “CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking of Contra-Tied Plot.”

The rest is history.  Webb was destroyed, which ultimately led to his suicide years later.  In the meantime, the U.S. Congress did nothing, which is something it is accustomed to doing in cases involving accusations of Executive Branch malfeasance.  Two years after Webb’s Dark Alliance series, the C.I.A. Inspector General actually released a report admitting aspects Contra drug running, but this report was barely covered by the same newspapers that had eviscerated the story in the first place.

The press gets away with their perpetual flip-flopping on drug-related issues for a simple reason: The “C.I.A. drug trade complicity” tale is not the kind of story the average citizen wants to believe.  This topic is a taboo because the public has been trained to have a visceral reaction to drugs.  Ever since propaganda films like Reefer Madness were released at the beginning of the 20^th Century, drug dealers have been made out to be public enemy number one and are hated perhaps even more than terrorists.  Recreational drugs are often portrayed as a weapon of mass destruction on America’s youth.  It just can’t be possible that our trusted officials — like Orrin Hatch, to cite one example, — would rail against drugs, claiming they endanger our children on the one hand, while moving in Congress to quash any attempt to hold federal agencies accountable for working with the pimps and pushers on the other. 

Wake up, America.  Our government’s acquiescence in the global drug trade is not just possible; it is an important part of our nation’s post-World War II history.  Obama’s surge in Afghanistan is doomed to failure, in part because our intelligence agencies are fostering the same poppy trade that helps finance our enemies, the Taliban.  We know it is doomed because all of the other C.I.A. drug operations have ended in similar catastrophes.  Of course, the one “success” the U.S. government could point to, if it were willing to admit the facts of its drug alliances, is the defeat of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan.  However, given what happened over a decade later on September 11, 2001, that “success” looks like an awful “short-sightedness” and “long-term failure”.  

It is sad to think how many of our young men and women are dying, or are permanently scarred, mentally or physically, in the false belief that they are engaged in some higher moral battle to bring democracy and an end to the heroin trade in Afghanistan.  Until the public realizes the truth about the dark history of U.S. intelligence agencies and drugs, such illusions about the morality of America’s endless wars will continue.

 

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The Boiling Frogs Presents Mizgin Yilmaz

Mizgin Yilmaz provides us with an overview and background on the Kurdish Issue in Turkey, the origin of the conflict involving the Kurdish minority and Turkey’s central government, and the status and latest developments on the ‘Kurdish Initiative.’ She describes the depth and reach of the influential Turkish lobby in the United States, which is now ranked as the number one foreign group in spending on lobby activities here. She talks about the Turkish Deep State, Gladio, Grey Wolves and the assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II, Turkey’s status as the top heroin trafficking nation worldwide, Fethullah Gulen’s Islamic movement and its headquarters here in the United States, and more!

Mizgin Yilmaz is an analyst and activist who’s been covering the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, including events of concern to the the Human Rights Association (İnsan Hakları Derneği–İHD) in Turkey, the pro-Kurdish DTP (Democratic Society Party/Demokratik Toplum Partisi), and the PKK (Partiya Karkên Kurdistan/Kurdistan Worker’s Party). She is fluent in Turkish, has a BA in history, and since 2005 has maintained a blog focusing on Kurdish issues, the Turkish Deep State, Turkey’s lobby in the US, and related developments and activities in Central Asia.

Here is our guest Mizgin Yilmaz unplugged!

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The Mighty Agency on it’s Knees in a Legal Battle

After 15 years of legal battles the CIA agrees to pay $3 million to a former DEA agent who accused a former CIA official of illegally eavesdropping on him as part of a joint CIA and State Department effort to thwart DEA’s anti-narcotics mission in Burma in the early 1990s.

Richard Horn was stationed in Burma in the early 1990s as the DEA country attaché to Burma, a nation that is ranked as one of the top opium poppy producing countries in the world. He was in charge of overseeing DEA’s mission in Burma involving eradication of the opium poppy, which is used to produce heroin.

Bill Conroy of Narco News covers the latest on State Secrets Privilege recipient Richard Horn. As always Conroy dares to dig and cover this significant story when the rest of the media stenographers are avoiding it like the plague and as they are told by their mighty government sources above.

“The CIA’s efforts to undermine Horn’s work in Burma in getting that nation’s government to stem the flow of heroin to the United States should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with the “Agency’s” history. It seems the CIA, over the decades, has often found itself in the corner of narco-traffickers and thugs who support the Agency’s covert objectives in areas deemed critical to U.S. special interests – whether that be in Southeast Asia, Central Asia or Latin America.”

The CIA list of hotshots involved in the case includes former CIA Director George Tenet and recently retired Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo. Tenet and Rizzo played major roles in setting up the legal basis to justify the CIA’s use of torture. Here is Mr. Rizzo in action during the agency’s cover up operation on torture:

Conroy sums up the latest status of the case and the potential deserved sanctions that may be brought against Tenet, Rizzo, and other current and former CIA culprits:

And now, as part of the Horn case filed in a Washington D.C. federal court, we find a U.S. District judge, former FISA court member Royce Lamberth, opening the door for sanctions to be brought (as a result of the fraud, or lie, perpetrated on the court) against Tenet and Rizzo — as well as several other current and former CIA officials, among whom is Robert Eatinger, the current Acting Deputy General Counsel for Operations in the CIA’s Office of General Counsel (OGC).

If Lamberth’s judicial opinions in the Horn case are allowed to remain in the court record — to be recalled and cited going forward by other lawyers, judges and academics — then untold damage could be done to the reputation of the CIA and its leadership. Those judicial opinions memorializing the CIA’s fraud on the court also would serve as a permanent reminder of the occasionally dubious credibility of the Agency’s pronouncements invoking national security and the state-secrets privilege.

As part of this article Conroy provides a complete timeline and background on Horn’s case, involved CIA culprits, and of course, the mind-boggling and nauseating conclusions and implications. I highly encourage you to read Bill Conroy’s A+ piece: Click Here. Afterwards we will have plenty to discuss over here, and plenty to show those who write off CIA’s long past and still present involvement in global Narco-Trafficking as fiction or conspiracy!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

**Updated November 22

U.S. backed-drug gangs fight Taliban’s traffickers in endless turf battle

The revelation1 that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother Wali is on the Central Intelligence Agency payroll and is a known drug lord has complicated President Obama’s already torturous internal debate on Afghanistan and dredged up questions about long-standing ties between the C.I.A. and illegal drugs.

Though controversial, there is evidence that from Laos2 to Nicaragua3 to Afghanistan, and many places in between, the C.I.A has a long history of links to illegal drugs as a means to buy allies and fund off-the-books missions.  

The C.I.A first backed Afghan drug lords in 1979, according to David Musto and Joyce Lowinson, members of the White House’s Strategic Council on Drug Abuse, who wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed on May 22, 1980:

“We worry about the growing of opium in Afghanistan or Pakistan by rebel tribesmen who apparently are the chief adversaries of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Are we erring in befriending these tribes as we did in Laos when Air America (chartered by the Central Intelligence Agency) helped transport crude opium from certain tribal areas?”4

Drug Enforcement Agency reports in 1980 showed Afghan rebel movements were “determined in part by opium planting and harvest seasons.”5 

One U.S.-backed drug lord was Yunas Khalis. “He spent most of his time fighting, but the wars were not primarily with the Soviets,” writes Alexander Cockburn and Jeffery St. Clair.6 “Instead, Khalis battled other Afghan rebel groups, the object of the conflicts being control of poppy fields and the roads and trails from them to his seven heroin labs near his headquarters in the town of Ribat al Ali. Sixty percent of Afghanistan’s opium crop was cultivated in the Helmand Valley, with an irrigation infrastructure underwritten by USAID.”

Read more ?

Mizgin’s Desk Reports

As mentioned earlier, Brent Scowcroft will be ending his nine-year reign as chairman of the American Turkish Council (ATC) and will be succeeded by former Bush administration Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage.

Armitage may be best remembered for leaking information to Robert Novak that exposed Valerie Plame as a covert CIA agent in a political scandal that became known as the Plame Affair. Selective amnesia on the part of the servile US mainstream media has repeatedly obscured Armitage’s curriculum vitae, which goes back decades and begins during the Vietnam conflict.

Graduating from the US Naval Academy in 1967, Armitage served four tours of duty in Vietnam before leaving the military in 1973, when he joined the Defense Attache in Saigon. It was at this time that Armitage’s association with the CIA began:

Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines financed a highly intensified phase of the Phoenix Program, in 1974 and 1975, by causing an intense flow of Vang Pao opium money to be secretly brought into Vietnam for this purpose. This Vang Pao opium money was administered for Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines by a US Navy official based in Saigon’s US office of Naval Operations by the name of Richard Armitage. However, because Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage knew that their secret anti-communist extermination program was going to be shut down in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand in the very near future, they, in 1973, began a highly secret non-CIA authorized program. Thus, from late 1973 until April of 1975, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage disbursed, from the secret, Laotian-based, Vang Pao opium fund, vastly more money than was required to finance even the highly intensified Phoenix Project in Vietnam. Read more ?

Now Accepting Applications

The State Department seeks a ‘viable’ Iranian political candidate to lead and channel the current dissenter factions in Iran to topple the current Anti-US regime and replace it with one certified and approved by the United States Government and US ‘special’ business interests. The latest developments in Iran have presented our ‘real’ policy makers with a golden opportunity to execute their plan for Iran and to at long last achieve their objectives. The previous administration’s bold and hawkish methodology and their overly used and exhausted ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and ‘evilization’ rhetoric failed to achieve these objectives, which are shared by those who actually ‘matter’ in our country. Today we have a new administration brought to power by brilliantly and masterfully utilizing the rhetoric of ‘change.’ This new slogan of ‘change’ includes a new style and methodology in addressing long-sought Iran objectives. This opportunity is mutual, where the Iranian candidate of our choice will enjoy not only the symbolic power position supported and protected by US intelligence and military services, but enormous monetary benefits he or she will be able and allowed to parasitically extract from the resources and people of Iran. This may be your opportunity.

Listed below are the candidate qualification criteria and ‘some’ of the unclassified major benefits we are committed to providing the chosen ‘viable’ candidate. Also attached are two appendixes to provide you with examples of ‘real life’ candidates we have successfully installed and supported. In order to make them even more relevant we chose examples from your neighboring countries. Once you submit your application you will receive an initial package containing additional examples, similar to those listed in these two appendices, in much greater detail.

Candidate Qualifications

• Applicants must hold an Advanced Degree obtained in the United States or the United Kingdom, during which time extracurricular activities will have occurred and relationships formed. Candidates with degrees obtained elsewhere may be considered on a case by case basis with evidence of exceptional qualifications in other criteria.
• Applicants must provide evidence of previous covert or overt relationship(s) with the US intelligence apparatus, preferably the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or its UK counterpart, MI6.
• Applicants should have previous formal or informal connections with ‘key’ nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) and or think tanks involved in ‘development’ and/or ‘endowing democracy’, supported by US Government agencies and/or congressionally designated funding.
• Applicants are favored who possess an appealing criminal record. Record may include, but not necessarily be limited to: successful executions of fraud and embezzlement schemes, money laundering, bribery – as either recipient or donor, weapons smuggling, and/or mid to high level international narcotics trafficking. Candidates will be credited with their spouses’ criminal records.
• Applicants will be screened for an Interesting Bill of Mental Health, with the following preferred conditions: Pathological Lying Tendencies; Narcissism; Sadistic Mindset; Non-debilitating Psychotic Behavior. Those inflicted with moral, ethical, or conscientious predispositions need not apply.
• Applicants preferred with immediate family members connected to established mafia and/ or similar underground criminal groups and/or their related financial institutions, whether in Iran or elsewhere.
• Applicants should be exceptionally experienced in the art of ‘Multiple Image Projection’, with ability to smoothly but rapidly switch from a pious image satisfactory to the mullah sector, to a modern and progressive image to pacify the youth segment, to a pragmatic business-minded image to please the business (Bazaar) sector, to a patriotic nationalist image to garner support from the military.
• Applicants will be required to successfully complete our ‘BS detector’ exam, designed to test a candidate’s ability to deliver an expansive repertoire of ‘BS’ promises and messages undetected by the general population. This is not to be confused with an ordinary ‘polygraph test’, which is used for criminal suspects and lower level public servants. This sophisticated measuring system is solely designed to measure a political candidate’s ability to deliver ‘BS’. Further, the requirement to take this test is not ‘discriminatory’ to Middle Eastern political candidates. US presidential candidates are also required to pass this test before they are selected and declared ‘viable’ by our establishment and the media. For further analysis see our ‘BS’ record breaking 2008 presidential candidate.
• Applicants must evidence willingness and make a commitment to take the ‘US Ally Pledge’ – ‘thou shall always put US strategic and resources interests above the irrelevant public interest in Iran.’ This pledge is also known as the ‘Mi Casa, Su Casa Pledge,’ meaning, you consider your country, its resources, its strategic location, ours.

Benefits Provided

• You will be provided with necessary logistical support to enable you to build a positive international image in order to garner domestic and international support for your candidacy and post election rule. A quick look at our record in this area will evidence our successful dominance in national and international PR.
• You will be provided with direct and indirect military, educational and development aid worth billions of dollars. We will leave the allocation and consumption of this monetary assistance completely up to you. You may do as you wish, as you please.
• We will ensure that you secure additional external and international aid for the duration of your presidency. In addition to direct military aid and indirect ‘democratization & development’ aid, you will be granted a considerable allotment from IMF, and as indicated above, you will have complete freedom to consume, disseminate, waste, misdirect, and/or embezzle as you wish. No questions will be asked.
• You and your regime will benefit from our direct and indirect participation in your security and protection. You will have at your disposal the intelligence we collect on your dissenters and those in opposition factions. We will train your security and intelligence forces with our state of the art technology and methodology. This will include our intense and enhanced interrogation techniques and associated video capture and photography. During the initial training period, until you accumulate your own prisoners and detainees, we will provide you with subjects selected from among our own detainees globally. In addition, we will designate up to two of our special Gulfstream jets to exclusively assist you in your extraordinary renditions – reserved for your special and high profile dissenters.
• You and your immediate family will be granted US and/or UK citizenship status in case of any unlikely future regime failure. This will be supplemented with safe financial havens for you to deposit any and all funds you gather prior to and throughout your presidency. No questions will be asked regarding the sources of these funds, and any external attempts to question and or investigate them will be tactfully quashed.
• You will be guaranteed immunity from any international charges and or prosecution throughout your presidency and afterwards. Similarly, you will be retroactively immunized from any and all charges and or prosecutions that may deal with your deeds prior to your candidacy.
• You will not be subjected to prohibitions regarding acquiring weapons of mass destruction. In fact we may indirectly assist you in obtaining and developing such weapons. Our record should be a sufficient indicative of this pledge (please refer to Pakistan & AQ Khan, also Pre- 1988 Iraq and Saddam Hussein).
• You will be given a permanent ‘pass’ for any of your direct participation in previous and future Human Rights violations. All our chosen and installed third world leaders carry similar passes. Any international and/or organizational attempt to bring charges will be successfully quashed.

Appendix A

Turkey and Former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller

Former Prime Minister of Turkey, Ms. Tansu Ciller is a perfect example of a Middle Eastern leader who was selected, declared ‘viable,’ supported, promoted, installed, and protected by the United States. As can be seen Ms. Ciller met many if not all of the qualifications criteria listed above:

1. Ms. Ciller completed her advanced degrees in the United States – M.S. from the University of New Hampshire and PhD from the University of Connecticut. During this extended period while she resided in the US we had ample time and opportunity to train and mold her for the leadership position in Turkey.

2. Ms. Ciller was granted citizenship in the United States. In order to keep this fact from tarnishing her image during her candidacy campaign in Turkey and afterwards, we designated her US citizenship status ‘Classified and Top Secret’ on the grounds of Sensitive Diplomatic Relations. To this date, despite all attempts, Turkish authorities have been unable to have these files opened.

3. Ms. Ciller and her husband Ozer Ciller were closely involved with certain CIA operations prior to and after her return to Turkey, and their intimate relationship continued throughout her tenure as Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey. In fact, the CIA’s Roger Tamraz (see BCCI) was their partner in two front companies: ‘Emperyal’, which acquired and operated six (6) Casinos in Turkmenistan, and, ‘Lapis,’ involved with the oil pipeline project.

4. Ms. Ciller and her husband, before being considered ‘viable’ by us, already had an established shady financial past, including involvement in an embezzlement scandal connected to the collapse of ‘Istanbul Bankasi’, one of Turkey’s largest private banks. This along with involvements fortified Ms. Ciller’s qualification criteria when compared to competing applicants.

5. Ms. Ciller understood and participated in Turkey’s important strategic and operational role in the supply and transportation of heroin. She skillfully and very aggressively combined and furthered the marriage between the state military-police-intelligence and the underground heroin industry. Her notoriety even reached the German Courts, where she was accused of supporting and protecting the drug mafia – active not only in Turkey but elsewhere, including Europe and Central Asia.

6. Ms. Ciller played a direct role in scandals involving corruption, embezzlement, and state sponsored terrorism and narcotics operations. The best known scandal, one of her masterpieces, is known as ‘Susurluk’. Ciller and her husband – who is known for his mafia links and dealings, were directly implicated in Susurluk. The high profile kept by Ms. And Mr. Ciller during these scandals and their handling of them afterwards significantly bolstered their ‘value’ and ‘viability’ for us.

7. Ms. Ciller’s ‘known’ wealth is confirmed to be over $50 million, all of which was gained after she became a ‘’viable’ candidate supported directly by the US. A large portion of her investments and accounts are in the United States. We will not list the exact amount at this point, however, the selected candidate will be given an opportunity to see the ‘real’ dollar amount, and even consult with Ms. Ciller directly.

We can list many other desirable qualities of former Prime Minister Ciller, however for this appendix the above points should suffice. Interested candidates can conduct their own research and compare their qualifications to Ms. Ciller to get a better understanding of our ‘viability’ criteria for those candidates we select, support, promote, install, and sustain in ‘that’ part of the world. As you can see, we helped Ms. Ciller weather all accusations, investigations, and official charges, whether in Turkey or internationally. We made sure she and her government continuously received our military aid, development funds, and of course IMF funds. How she chose to spend, divert, or ‘lose’ these funds were left completely up to her, with no questions asked. Today she enjoys her incredible, almost fairytale like lifestyle, made possible with the enormous wealth accumulated through her official position, gained and sustained by our backing. We are pleased to take full credit for this. We will guarantee similar benefits for our candidate of choice in Iran.

Appendix B

Pakistan & Former Prime Minister Bhutto

Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Ms. Benazir Bhutto provides another appropriate profile of our ‘ideal and desired’ leadership candidate for your part of the world. As can be seen there are remarkable similarities between Ms. Bhutto and Ms. Ciller:

1. Ms. Bhutto obtained her bachelor degree in the United States – BA from Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Later she attended Oxford University in the UK where she pursued International Law and Diplomacy. She spent a total of eight years in the US and UK – 1969-1977. Again, this time was ideal for the satisfactory grooming of Ms. Bhutto for ‘installment.’

2. Ms. Bhutto was granted British Citizenship and maintained her dual citizenship throughout her career as a candidate and later as the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her husband, the current President of Pakistan, also received British citizenship and has maintained his dual citizenship to date. The perceived conflict of interest back in her home country did not prove to be an obstacle for ‘us’ or the Bhuttos, thanks to our PR and global image projection activities.

3. Ms. Bhutto and her husband maintained intimate relationships with the underground economy and high level players of the heroin pipeline. Ms. Bhutto was a close ally, protector, and intimate friend of convicted Pakistani Drug Baron and Former Parliamentarian, Ayub Afridi, who like Bhutto, was given protection and safe haven in Dubai, one of our closest allies. These relationships and direct connections, some of which were directly inherited from her father, significantly bolstered Ms. Bhutto’s value for us and our British counterparts.

4. Ms. Bhutto and her husband proved to be desirably ambitious and admirably skilled in using their power, position, and connections, together with our protection, to misuse their proceeds of corruption and embezzlements to accumulate great wealth. Today her husband, who inherited this wealth, is the fifth richest man in Pakistan with a net worth of nearly $2 billion. As confirmation of their successful accumulation of wealth, in the 90s Ms. Bhutto and her husband purchased a 20-bedroom mansion in Surrey, England. They were known for their proficiency in receiving ‘kickbacks.’ Just the kickbacks they received from Swiss Cargo Inspection Companies alone were worth $12 million, which they stashed wisely in offshore companies in Swiss bank accounts. Ms. Bhutto’s record truly authenticates the future benefits of becoming our ‘ideal and viable’ candidate.

5. Ms. Bhutto’s Bill of Mental Health was not of much interest. However, she was permitted to transfer credits from her husband, Mr. Ali Asif Zardari. His is a far more interesting mental health record, made all the more interesting since she pledged to place him in an official position of power. He and his ‘mental health’ conditions proved to be extremely useful in ‘necessary’ operations involving murder, drug smuggling, corruption, and embezzlement, thus our making an exception for Ms. Bhutto was justified in this particular case.

6. Ms. Bhutto demonstrated tremendous talent in dealing with weapons of mass destruction from both sides of the issue. She successfully presented her image as a proponent of nuclear nonproliferation, while ambitiously pursuing proliferation domestically and internationally. Even AQ Khan had to admit who was the ‘real boss’ when it came to supplying Iran with centrifuge equipment and drawings from 1988 to 1990. Ms. Bhutto’s clever and original plot to use her family dentist in deals related to providing ‘rogue’ regimes with nuclear technology was awe inspiring even among the crustiest WMD dealers in leadership positions.

7. Ms. Bhutto exhibited great skills in ‘Multiple Image Projection’. With our direct backing and promotion she quickly sold her image as a needed progressive, democratic, and pro humanitarian leader for Pakistan. Just as quickly, at home in Pakistan, she was able to establishherself as equal to if not better than her dictatorial predecessors by sanctioning and carrying out extrajudicial killings, torture, persecution of religious minorities, and arbitrary detention. She also determinedly took extraordinary measures to muzzle the independent media. These skills were also applied to her utilization and exploitation of feministic support. At the same time she was portraying herself as a progressive and feminist example for ‘that’ part of the world, she was making deals and establishing close ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, notorious for their abuse of women…

As with ‘Exhibit A’ we can list many other desirable qualities of former Prime Minister Bhutto, but for this appendix the above points should suffice. We actively, directly and indirectly, selected, supported and protected Ms. Bhutto prior to, during, and after her position as PM. We provided her with billions of dollars in aid and billions of dollars in IMF loans. She in return was given complete discretion to use these funds to purchase our weapons, and of course to accumulate her and her family’s enormous wealth, during and after her position as PM. We shielded her despite serious charges and evidence of corruption and embezzlement brought against her and her husband, in Pakistan and worldwide, over nearly two decades. We continue this support and courting to date, after her assassination, through her husband, President Zardari. We will guarantee similar benefits for our candidate of choice in Iran.

*This satirical essay was neither created nor sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State, and the author has no direct knowledge that the Department has such a program currently in place for Iran.

Can’t Touch this…

On a beautiful sunny spring afternoon in 2006, I was sitting outside in the deck area of a neighborhood café in Alexandria with a friend who is a well-known journalist and an accomplished writer, for whom I happen to have the utmost respect. We were discussing the topical ‘Afghanistan & Terror Financing’ issue. Based on well-established trust between us my friend felt comfortable and open in sharing some ‘significant’ tidbits gathered from ‘credible’ sources within the CIA and DIA, and from British Intelligence officers. As I listened, the extent of credible information and documented incriminating evidence gathered excited me to the point where I had to stop this friend to ask:

‘When are you going to have this published?!’

The response was: ‘This was not the main topic I was investigating for my work. These ‘tidbits’ came to me as an ‘inevitable attachment’ due to relevancy…’

I had to stop the conversation again: ‘So? This is explosive. Even bigger than the main topic you’ve been chasing for the last year or so. No one has ever reported this, so you’ll be the first.’

My friend shook her/his head and said: ‘No one has done it because this topic is considered a ‘career ender.’ You know what happens to naïve reporters who actually try to get into this area, don’t you?’

Amazed by this line of reasoning and unable to really process it all I pressed harder: ‘What are you really afraid of?! Government interference? Classification?’
The answer that followed was even more amazing to me – due to my own naivety back then.

‘Government is the least of my worries. It’s the industry – the media. They go after anyone who dares touch this area – CIA, narcotics and terrorism. They will attack, label, and marginalize you, and before you know it your career as a reporter is over. For good.’

That day and in the days that followed I spent hours upon hours researching the topic; this ‘forbidden zone.’ I studied several cases where reporting on government-narcotics relationships, even though obtained and reported based on thoroughly documented credible sources and witnesses, had proven to be ‘career suicide.’ I met with several veteran DEA agents who presented me with even more cases and unreported criminal deeds, buried in the same journalistic ‘forbidden zone’ in the U.S. press. In the months and years that followed I paid much closer attention to reporting on current topics that skirt upon this forbidden area, and in my own time I analyzed and dissected these reports based on my own research and on information received from intelligence sources who are friends and members of my organization. And since I’ve been covering the U.S. MSM topic in ‘Dissecting the Mainstream Media’ series, I am going to present you with a few cases, reports, and analyses, and have your thoughts and views on this ‘Forbidden Apple of the U.S. Press.’

***

Gary Webb

In Part 3 of my ‘Dissecting the MSM’ series I discussed Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series and its consequences in detail, so I won’t repeat the details here. If you haven’t read it I strongly encourage you to go back and do so. In 1996, after publishing his three-part investigative series, “Dark Alliance,” a thoroughly documented and diligently sourced story, he was attacked, ostracized, and pushed out of the media circle by his colleagues in the mainstream media. Despite the damning information contained in the content of the CIA IG Report, the corroborating findings of the DOJ IG Report, various congressional hearings and investigations filled with direct or indirect admissions, the MSM never eased up on its attacks and criticism of Webb’s report, until they successfully ended his career.

In a well-executed piece written by Barbara Osborn she sites the following exchange which took place between Post Dark Alliance Gary Webb and his supportive colleague Robert Parry:

“…Gary Webb didn’t know what was at risk. When he first spoke with Bob Parry–the Associated Press reporter who, along with Brian Barger, broke the Contragate and Contra/drug stories–Webb thought Parry was being “overly cautious.” “I thought he was being kind of foolish,” Webb recalled, when Parry asked him: “Are you sure you want to ruin your career?”

Unfortunately Parry proved to be the ‘realist.’ He was proven right. After all, he had gone through a rough journey of his own during and after his solid reporting on Iran Contra – for taking a bite off the ‘forbidden apple’ of the U.S. mainstream media.

***

Robert Parry

More or less a decade earlier another major case involving a direct government and narcotics relationship had emerged. In 1985, Robert Parry as an AP reporter teamed up with Brian Berger and broke the Iran Contra Affair. He later exposed Oliver North’s involvement in the scandal while reporting for Newsweek. For his impeccable investigative journalism he won a Polk Award, and became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

You would think a reporter with Parry’s credentials and solid track record would be revered and fought over by publishers in the U.S. mainstream media, no? Not so fast. First, this is what happened at the Associated Press where Parry broke the Contra scandal:

In late 1985, Parry teamed up with another reporter to report on a detailed and documented expose of drug-trafficking involving the Nicaraguan Contras. However, the AP editors blocked the story. Later Parry found out that his boss was regularly in touch with Oliver North and that he was conferring with him on a regular basis. Parry left the Associated Press.

And let’s read Parry’s own words gathered from an interview he gave on what took place at Newsweek:

,“As for my hiring at Newsweek, I think it resulted from how poorly the magazine had done on the scandal to that point. That said, Newsweek never liked the story and wanted it put to rest as soon as possible. Editor Maynard Parker was very sympathetic to the neoconservatives and became my nemesis. Evan felt that my presence so angered Parker that I had become an obstacle for Evan’s plans for the Washington bureau.”

Here is more:

“Though my finished article contained new information about the CIA’s relationship with Manuel Contreras, Chile’s intelligence chief and a key Letelier murder suspect, Maynard Parker and other Newsweek editors killed the story. I was told that Parker made some disparaging comment about me being “out to get” Bush.”

Of course, once again putting integrity in journalism first, Parry left Newsweek in 1990.

The Contra Scandal, especially the related Government-Narcotics relationship, was treated as an absolute ‘Forbidden Apple’ by the MSM. Webb and Parry were not the only ones; there were others. Here is another example involving reporter Ray Bonner and the New York Times – cited by Parry during an interview:

,“There were a number of journalists in the field in Central America, who were doing courageous work, people like Ray Bonner of the New York Times, who had been digging into the human rights problems in El Salvador, in particular. And he was—his career was very badly damaged, and he was made a sort of an example of what happens to you if you go into these areas too aggressively. Some reporters said that they were warned off from going after the North story, because that was seen as a career-ender.”

And of course Time Magazine as always, as an inseparable member of the MSM gang, followed the same trend:

“In the fall of 1987, Time assigned a staff reporter to assemble any evidence that the Oliver North network supplying guns to the Contras was also bringing cocaine into the U.S. The reporter found serious evidence, and wrote it up. As the former Time reporter explained to Extra!, after the article was written and rewritten, finally, a senior editor told the reporter to give up on the story. “The senior editor leveled with me,” the reporter told Extra!. “His words were: Time is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.’”

Here is a punchy and so very factual quote from Robert Parry:

“It used to be that you were admired if you took on a tough story. Now you’re portrayed as a nut.”

That’s right. Thanks to the U.S. MSM even today many don’t know the facts involving the Contra Affair. Despite numerous reports, congressional investigations and statements, and tons of proven evidence, some people still consider the Iran Contra scandal a conspiracy theory or mere allegations, and those who had dared to touch it as ‘nuts.’ They owe their ignorance to the mainstream media.

The Walsh Report, the Independent Counsel for the Iran Contra Scandal, began it’s conclusion with this paragraph:

“The underlying facts of Iran/contra are that, regardless of criminality, President Reagan, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the director of central intelligence and their necessary assistants committed themselves, however reluctantly, to two programs contrary to congressional policy and contrary to national policy. They skirted the law, some of them broke the law, and almost all of them tried to cover up the President’s willful activities.”

The establishment did not have to concern itself with reports such as the Walsh Report or others produced by various IGs and Congress. These reports, the surfacing of facts exposing our Government’s direct hand in narcotics and illegal arms trade, did not matter a bit. Neither did they have to pay much attention to a handful of true investigative journalists who were determined and capable of informing the masses with their reporting. Of course not. Their extension, the United States Press, made certain that any concerns would be taken care of, thus the ‘real’ stories were quashed and blacked out, and those who dared to touch them were quickly attacked, labeled, marginalized, and ‘taken out.’

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KLA, Narcotics, and the U.S. MSM

Remember our military intervention in Kosovo during 1998-1999 in order to stop what was referred to as ‘ethnic cleansing’? Our main ally, partner, over there was the Kosovo Liberation Army, a Kosovar Albanian guerilla group which sought the independence of Kosovo from Yugoslavia in the 90s. Up until 1998 the U.S. regarded the KLA as a terrorist group. Then, before the actual NATO-U.S. military intervention, while preparing for that ‘intervention,’ as U.S. Intelligence started establishing its intimate relationship with the KLA in the background, KLA’a terrorist label came off the U.S. government list. In effect our government ‘de-terroristed’ the KLA and cultivated ‘mutually beneficial’ diplomatic relations with KLA leaders.

Here are some excerpts from one of the very few articles printed by the U.S. MSM mentioning this, and ironically it is from the Washington Times, in May 1999:

“Last year, while State Department officials labeled the KLA a terrorist organization, saying it bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like bin Laden, the department listed the group as an “insurgency” organization in its official reports. The officials charged that the KLA used terrorist tactics to assault Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in a campaign to achieve independence.”

James Bissett, Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, wrote the following:

“…as early as 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency assisted by the British Special Armed Services were arming and training Kosovo Liberation Army members in Albania to foment armed rebellion in Kosovo. The hope was that with Kosovo in flames NATO could intervene …”

Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, published extensively sourced and documented analyses of KLA as a gangster and terrorist entity, and its close ties to the CIA. The following except refers to what followed the State Department’s ‘de-terrorization’ of KLA:

“While KLA leaders were shaking hands with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was “preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs.”

Chossudovsky provides report after report from the DEA and Europol, Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency and reports from Belgrade, establishing KLA as a high profile global narcotics and money laundering cartel:

“The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti-aircraft and anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA “funneled through a so-called “Government of Kosovo” based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its Washington office employs the public-relations firm of Ruder Finn–notorious for its slanders of the Belgrade government”.”

“75% of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe.” A recent intelligence report by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: “Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries.”

He then provides an excellent overview for this entire picture:

“Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where “freedom fighters” were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.”

Here is an explosive article exposing the relationship between the CIA and the KLA before the NATO bombing. Not only that, the article exposes a very familiar figure: William Walker, the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to monitor the ceasefire in Kosovo in 1998-1999. Walker was nominated by Madeleine Albright, American Secretary of State. Guess what? A decade earlier, in 1988, Mr. Walker was the American Ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there suppress leftist rebels, ‘while supporting the contra guerrillas’ against the government in Nicaragua. Coincidence? Not. This is the same Walker who served as Elliott Abrams’ Deputy Assistant Secretary for ‘Central American Affairs’ and accompanied him to all those Contra related meetings. During the investigation of the Iran-Contra Affair several felony charges were brought against Abrams by the special prosecutor, but he was not indicted because he entered into a plea agreement, had a conviction without imprisonment, and eventually was pardoned by President Bush.

Now back to the article for a few excerpts:

“AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia . The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. Central Intelligence Agency officers were ceasefire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.”

And this on William Walker:

“Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade… Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, concluded from Walker ’s background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American “diplomatic observers” from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.”

“Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes.”

And here is the real punch line on this entire article: This article, this news, was not published in the U.S. MSM. This was reported by the Sunday Times in March 2000. These facts, revelations, and scandalous ties were never truly touched by the U.S. MSM. There was an ‘action alert’ issued by FAIR in 1999 on Time Magazine’s censorship of the established facts and evidence on the ‘Real’ KLA, under the title ‘Time Magazine Ignores KLA Drug Charges’ and subtitle ‘Are editors following Contra tradition?’:

“Time magazine’s May 17 issue ran a feature on the funding of the Kosovo Liberation Army, titled “A Fighting Chance,” suggesting that the KLA is sustained by donations from ethnic Albanians outside of Kosovo. The article reports that the Republic of Kosova Fund holds “more than $33 million” in a bank in Albania, yet in a graphic titled “How the KLA Gets Its Money,” Time cheerfully reports that the KLA gets its money from “fund raisers, mailings and other sources.” What “other sources”? Bake sales? Time doesn’t say.”

“Fortunately, there has been some investigation into the question. The London Times on March 24 cited an intelligence report that indicated as much as half of the funding for the KLA’s guerrilla war comes from drug proceeds. And the San Francisco Chronicle on May 5 reported that European and U.S. law enforcement groups see officers of the KLA as “a major force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of narcotics through an underworld network that reaches into the heart of Europe.””

Here is how FAIR appropriately questioned Time’s motives and drew an even more appropriate parallel to show the ‘real’ reason:

“Why didn’t Time mention the ongoing international investigations of the KLA’s suspected role in the heroin trade? A look back at Time’s Iran-Contra coverage sheds some light.”

“In a 1987 investigation into allegations of drug-smuggling by the Nicaraguan Contras, Time staff writer Laurence Zuckerman found serious evidence of Contra-cocaine links, but his story was never run. Why not? A senior editor acknowledged to Zuckerman: “Time is institutionally behind the contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine.””

Pretty hard-hitting piece, right? Can anyone question its validity? I certainly can’t see how. One more time the U.S. MSM showed it’s claws when it came to their ‘forbidden apple,’ – CIA and its narcotics and laundering deeds…

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Afghanistan & Heroin: The journey from Freedom Fighters to Fanatic Villains

I invite anyone who is interested in understanding the axis of U.S. Government, mainstream media, and our foreign policy involving unholy alliances to look at the last three decades of U.S. media coverage of Afghanistan’s Taliban-Al Qaeda, previously known and promoted as ‘Afghan Freedom Fighters’ and the Mujahidin.
In the 1980s the U.S. government supported the Afghan resistance forces, the Mujahidin, today known as Taliban and Al Qaeda, in the fight against the Soviet occupation. The CIA worked through Pakistan military intelligence (ISS) and worked with these guerilla groups who were close to the ISS.

In his well-researched book, The Politics of Heroin, Professor Alfred McCoy documents the parallel increase in Heroin production in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s when the U.S. Government collaborated and supported the Mujahidin directly and indirectly. While in 1979 Pakistan had a small and local opium trade and produced no heroin, by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan emerged as the world’s leading supplier of heroin, became the supplier of nearly 60% of U.S. heroin supply, and took over major sections of the market in Europe.

“Who were the manufacturers? They were all either military factions connected with Pakistan intelligence, CIA allies, or Afghan resistance groups connected with the CIA and Pakistan intelligence. In May of 1990, ten years after this began, the Washington Post finally ran a front page story saying high U.S. officials admit that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [leader of the Hezbi-i Islami guerilla group], and other leaders of the Afghan resistance are leading heroin manufacturers. This had been known for years, reported in the Pakistan press, indeed in 1980 reported in McClean’s magazine. In fact in 1980 a White House narcotics advisor, Dr. David Musto of Yale University, went on the record demanding that we not ally with Afghan guerilla groups that were involved in narcotics.”

McCoy also documents interesting phenomena involving the DEA operations and actions (or inaction) in Afghanistan during the 80s:

“During the 1980’s from the time that heroin trade started, there were 17 DEA agents based in Pakistan. They neither made nor participated in any major seizures or arrests. At a time when other police forces, particularly Scandinavian forces, made some major seizures and brought down a very major syndicate connected with former president Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan.”

In an excellent article published by FAIR David Gibbs provides the following documented facts and analyses:

“Despite CIA denials of any direct Agency support for Bin Laden’s activities, a considerable body of circumstantial evidence suggests the contrary. During the 1980s, Bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan closely paralleled those of the CIA. Bin Laden held accounts in the Bank for Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), the bank the CIA used to finance its own covert actions (London Daily Telegraph, 9/27/01). Bin Laden worked especially closely with Hekmatyar–the CIA’s favored Mujahiddin commander (The Economist, 9/15/01). In 1989, the U.S. shipped high-powered sniper rifles to a Mujahiddin faction that included bin Laden, according to a former bin Laden aide (AP, 10/16/01).”

Now let’s go back and search U.S. press coverage of Afghanistan’s ‘Freedom Fighters’ during the 80s and try to find any coverage related to these U.S. backed and supported operations’ intersection with the global narcotics trade. Are there any? I’m afraid we know the answer to this question. Here is further coverage based on the report by FAIR:

“The press coverage of this era was overwhelmingly positive, even glowing, with regard to the guerrillas’ conduct in Afghanistan. Their unsavory features were downplayed or omitted altogether. While some newspapers favored some restraint in the degree of U.S. military support for the Mujahiddin (notably the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post) and others (like the Wall Street Journal) favored a more open-ended policy, these differences were only matters of degree. Virtually all papers favored some amount of U.S. military support; and there was near unanimous agreement that the guerrillas were “heroic,” “courageous” and above all “freedom fighters.””

“According to the L.A. Times (6/23/86): “The Afghan guerrillas have earned the admiration of the American people for their courageous struggle…. The rebels deserve unstinting American political support and, within the limits of prudence, military hardware.””

And here the axis of U.S. Government-U.S. Press- and the information spin or black-out:

“Another problem was direct manipulation of reporting by the U.S. government, which was supporting the Mujahiddin guerrillas during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. (Indeed, we now know that U.S. aid to the Mujahiddin was secretly begun in July 1979, six months before the Soviets invaded–International Politics, 6/00.) This press manipulation began early in the conflict. In January 1980, the New York Times (1/26/80) reported that the State Department had “relaxed” its accuracy code for reporting information on Afghanistan. As a result, the Carter administration generated “accounts suggesting Soviet actions for which the administration itself has no solid foundation.””

I am tempted to continue, keep going, and cover this same trend in a more current context, but I’ll limit myself to only highlights since this piece is already longer than what I intended it to be.

Afghanistan’s $40-50 billion worth of poppy production today is a gigantic leap from it’s approximately $5-10 billion before our invasion after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Similar to cases shown above our media’s selective coverage has been limiting it’s reporting to a few hundred million dollars of this industry which directly involves the Afghan farmers and warlords. Yet, uniformly missing from the coverage is the remaining $40+ billion! Based on numerous reports publicized by Europol, UN, and even our own State Department, over 90% of this industry is operated, managed and carried out by ‘others.’ These ‘others’ happen to include Turkey, Pakistan, and Albania; currently none of them on our ‘terrorist’ or ‘axis of evil’ list, thus the censored coverage.

As we can see, the U.S. press censorship trend when it comes to Government-Narcotics relationships has been replicated over and over: Contra-Cocaine, Cold War era Afghanistan-Heroin, KLA-Heroin, Post 911 Afghanistan-Heroin. This trend goes above and beyond the usual censorship and/or spins regularly exercised by our media. They seem to have collectively designated U.S. Government-Narcotics-Terrorist relations and operations as a ‘Forbidden Apple.’ Moreover, they seem to have been successful in ensuring the marginalization and downfall of any of their colleagues who have been bold and brave enough to take a bite of it. As stated by my good journalist friend ‘…can’t touch this.’