FTW October 24, 2000 - The success of Bush Vice Presidential running mate Richard Cheney at leading Halliburton, Inc. to a five year $3.8 billion "pig-out" on federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans is only a partial indicator of what may happen if the Bush ticket wins in two weeks. A closer look at available research, including an August 2, 2000 report by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) at www.public-i.org, suggests that drug money has played a role in the successes achieved by Halliburton under Cheney's tenure as CEO from 1995 to 2000. This is especially true for Halliburton's most famous subsidiary, heavy construction and oil giant, Brown and Root. A deeper look into history reveals that Brown and Root's past as well as the past of Dick Cheney himself, connect to the international drug trade on more than one occasion and in more than one way. This June the lead Washington, D.C. attorney for a major Russian oil company connected in law enforcement reports to heroin smuggling and also a beneficiary of US backed loans to pay for Brown and Root contracts in Russia, held a $2.2 million fund raiser to fill the already bulging coffers of presidential candidate George W. Bush. This is not the first time that Brown and Root has been connected to drugs and the fact is that this "poster child" of American industry may also be a key player in Wall Street's efforts to maintain domination of the half trillion dollar a year global drug trade and its profits. And Dick Cheney, who has also come closer to drugs than most suspect, and who is also Halliburton's largest individual shareholder ($45.5 million), has a vested interest in seeing to it that Brown and Root's successes continue.
Of all American companies dealing directly with the U.S. military and providing cover for CIA operations few firms can match the global presence of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries. Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown and Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells, construct and operate everything from harbors to pipelines to highways to nuclear reactors. It can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and house armies. One key beacon of Brown and Root's overwhelming appeal to agencies like the CIA is that, from its own corporate web page, it proudly announces that it has received the contract to dismantle aging Russian nuclear tipped ICBMs in their silos.
Furthermore, the relationships between key institutions, players and the Bushes themselves suggest that under a George "W" administration the Bush family and its allies may well be able, using Brown and Root as the operational interface, to control the drug trade all the way from Medellin to Moscow.
Originally formed as a heavy construction company to build dams, Brown and Root grew its operations via shrewd political contributions to Senate candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of oil platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear facilities, harbors and tunnels, Brown and Root virtually underwrote LBJ's political career. It prospered as a result, making billions on U.S. Government contracts during the Vietnam War. The "Austin Chronicle" in an August 28 Op-ed piece entitled "The Candidate From Brown and Root" labels Republican Cheney as the political dispenser of Brown and Root's largesse. According to political campaign records, during Cheney's five year tenure at Halliburton the company's political contributions more than doubled to $1.2 million. Not surprisingly, most of that money went to Republican candidates.
Independent news service "newsmakingnews.com," also describes how in 1998, with Cheney as Chairman, Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser Industries. This made Halliburton a corporation that will have a presence in almost any future oil drilling operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought back into the family fold the company that had once sent a plane - also in 1948 - to fetch the new Yale Graduate George H.W. Bush, to begin his career in the Texas oil business. Bush the elder's father, Prescott, served as a Managing Director for the firm that once owned Dresser, Brown Bothers Harriman.
It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles.
Dramatic expansion of Brown and Root's operations in Colombia also suggest Bush preparations for a war inspired feeding frenzy as a part of "Plan Colombia." This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady to open a joint Colombian-American investment partnership called Corfinsura for the financing of major construction projects with the Colombian Antioquia Syndicate, headquartered in Medellin. (See FTW June, 00). And expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain why, in a 2000 SEC filing, Brown and Root reported that in addition to owning more than 800,000 square feet of warehouse space in Colombia, they also lease another 122,000 square feet. According to the filing of the Brown and Root Energy Services Group, the only other places where the company maintains warehouse space are in Mexico (525,000 sq. feet), and the U.S. (38,000) square feet.
According to the web site of Colombia's Foreign Investment Promotion Agency Brown and Root had no presence in the country until 1997. What does Brown and Root, which, according to the AP has made more than $2 billion supporting and supplying U.S. troops, know about Colombia that the U.S. public does not? Why the need for almost a million square feet of warehouse space that can be transferred from one Brown and Root operation (energy) to another (military support) with the stroke of a pen?
DRUGS
As described by the Associated Press, during "Iran-Contra" Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's 1994 unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995.
As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.
In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership, turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.
A confidential source with intelligence experience in the region subsequently told me that the Kurds "got some payback against the folks that used to help them move their drugs." He openly acknowledged that Brown and Root and Vinnell both routinely provided NOC or non-official cover for CIA officers. But I already knew that.
From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans where, according to "The Christian Science Monitor" and "Jane's Intelligence Review," the Kosovo Liberation Army controls 70 per cent of the heroin entering Western Europe, Cheney's Brown and Root made billions of dollars supplying U.S. troops from vast facilities in the region. Brown and Root support operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia to this day.
Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs than one might suspect. The August Center for Public Integrity report brought them even closer. It would be factually correct to say that there is a direct linkage of Brown and Root facilities - often in remote and hazardous regions - between every drug producing region and every drug consuming region in the world. These coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove complicity in the trade. Other facts, however, lead inescapably in that direction.
A DIRECT DRUG LINK
The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough" written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton, largely through subsidiary Brown and Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph McGehee's "CIA Base ©" both institutions are heavily infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers. One of those loans to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies contained $292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company. The Alfa Group completed its 51% acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian government report claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe." These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand. After describing how organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story, using official reports from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts then established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin. In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen from a rail container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or "poisoned." The CPI story also stated, "The FSB report said that within days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising documentation.' "Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels. "The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies. "É He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering ofÉ Latin American drug cartels." It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign." The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in Laos where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and thence by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration and Brown and Root has operations all along this route. This long, expensive and tortured path was hastily established, as described by FTW in previous issues, after President George Bush's personal envoy Richard Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had traveled to the former Soviet Union to assist it with its "economic development" in 1989. The obstacle then to a more direct, profitable and efficient route from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe was a cohesive Yugoslavian/Serbian government controlling the Balkans and continuing instability in the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Also, there was no other way, using heroin from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand), to deal with China and India but to go around them. It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think tank, and also in the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Just last November, in what may be a portent of things to come, Armitage, played the role of Secretary of Defense in an practical exercise at the Council on Foreign Relations where he and Cheney are also both members. Speculation that the scandal plagued Armitage, who resigned under a cloud as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, is W's first choice for Secretary of Defense next year is widespread. The Clinton Administration took care of all that wasted travel for heroin with the 1998 destruction of Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the KLA as a regional power. That opened a direct line from Afghanistan to Western Europe and Brown and Root was right in the middle of that too. The Clinton skill at streamlining drug operations was described in detail in the May issue of FTW in a story entitled "The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline." That article has since been reprinted in three countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was that by growing opium in Colombia and by smuggling both cocaine and heroin from Colombia to New York City through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes could be shortened or even eliminated. This reduced both risk and cost, increased profits and eliminated competition. FTW suspects the hand of Medellin co-founder Carlos Lehder in this process and it is interesting to note that Lehder, released from prison under Clinton in 1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South America. Lehder was known during the eighties as "The genius of transportation." I can well imagine a Dick Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring of the global drug trade in the last eight years, going to George W and saying, "Look, I know how we can make it even better." One thing is for certain. As quoted in the CPI article, one Halliburton Vice President noted that if the Bush-Cheney ticket was elected, "the company's government contracts would obviously go through the roof."
THE DARK PAST In July of 1977 this writer, then a Los Angeles Police officer struggled to make sense of a world gone haywire. In a last ditch effort to salvage a relationship with my fiancŽe, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay (Teddy), a CIA contract agent, I had traveled to find her in New Orleans. On a hastily arranged vacation, secured with the blessing of my Commanding Officer, Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on my own, unofficially, to avoid the scrutiny of LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID). Starting in the late spring of 1976 Teddy had wanted me to join her operations from within the ranks of LAPD. I had refused to get involved with drugs in any way and everything she mentioned seemed to involve either heroin or cocaine along with guns that she was always moving out of the country. The Director of the CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush. Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at the time, I had been unofficially loaned to OCID since January when Teddy, announcing the start of a new operation planned in the fall of 1976 had suddenly disappeared. She left many people, including me, baffled and twisting in the breeze. The OCID detectives had been pressuring me hard for information about her and what I knew of her activities. It was information I could not give them. Hoping against hope that I would find some way to understand her involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran, the Mafia and drugs I set out alone into eight days of Dantean revelations that have determined the course of my life from that day to this. Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices and working from sealed communiquŽs delivered by naval and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly ugly. She was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At the same time she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large quantities of heroin into the city. The boats arrived at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA personnel. The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root. The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown and Root. And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days. Once, while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off. Disgusted and heart broken at witnessing my fiancŽe and my government smuggling drugs, I ended the relationship. Returning home to LA I made a clean breast and reported all the activity I had seen, including the connections to Brown and Root, to LAPD intelligence officers. They promptly told me that I was crazy. Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at the end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and to the LA office of the FBI under the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson. I and my attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of Justice, the CIA and contacted the L.A. Times. The FBI and the LAPD said that I was crazy. According to a 1981 two-part news story in the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner" it was revealed that The FBI had taken Teddy into custody and then released her before classifying their investigation without further action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron Cohen told reporter Randall Sullivan that he found my description of events perfectly plausible after his thirty years of studying Louisiana's organized crime operations. To this day a CIA report prepared as a result of my complaint remains classified and exempt from release pursuant to Executive Order of the President in the interests of national security and because it would reveal the identities of CIA agents. On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, I reported on what I had seen in New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate Craig Fuller. Craig Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff to Vice President Bush from 1981 to 1985. In 1982, then UCLA political science professor Paul Jabber, filled in many of the pieces in my quest to understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He was qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and State Department consultant to the Carter administration. Paul explained that, after a 1975 treaty between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein the Shah had cut off all overt military support for Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam from the north of Iraq. In exchange the Shah had gained access to the Shat al-Arab waterway so that he could multiply his oil exports and income. Not wanting to lose a long-term valuable asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used Brown and Root, which operated in both countries and maintained port facilities in the Persian Gulf and near Shat al-Arab to rearm the Kurds. The whole operation had been financed with heroin. Paul was matter-of-fact about it. In 1983 Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice President of Banker's Trust and Chairman of the Middle East Department of the Council on Foreign Relations. ---------- If one is courageous enough to seek an "operating system" that theoretically explains what FTW has just described for you, one need look no further than a fabulous two-part article in "Le Monde Diplomatique" in April of this year. The brilliant stories, focusing heavily on drug capital are titled "Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise." The brilliant and penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and Jean de Maillard do a better job of explaining the actual world economic and political situation than anything that I have ever read. De Brie writes, "By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the world to the other, globalization and abandon of sovereignty have together fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial marketÉ "It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism and based on an association of three partners: governments, transnational corporations and mafias. Business is business: financial crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and demand. "Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that large-scale organized crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions, increase their profits, withstand and crush the competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and finance their illicit operations. Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning." After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world television on November 15, 1996 I was interviewed by the staffs of both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. I prepared written testimony for Senate Intelligence which I submitted although I was never called to testify. In every one of those interviews and in my written testimony and in every lecture since that time I have told the story of Brown and Root. I will tell it again at the USC School of International Relations on December the 8th, 2000 - regardless of who wins the election. Michael C. Ruppert http://www.copvcia.com/
Of all American companies dealing directly with the U.S. military and providing cover for CIA operations few firms can match the global presence of this giant construction powerhouse which employs 20,000 people in more than 100 countries. Through its sister companies or joint ventures, Brown and Root can build offshore oil rigs, drill wells, construct and operate everything from harbors to pipelines to highways to nuclear reactors. It can train and arm security forces and it can now also feed, supply and house armies. One key beacon of Brown and Root's overwhelming appeal to agencies like the CIA is that, from its own corporate web page, it proudly announces that it has received the contract to dismantle aging Russian nuclear tipped ICBMs in their silos.
Furthermore, the relationships between key institutions, players and the Bushes themselves suggest that under a George "W" administration the Bush family and its allies may well be able, using Brown and Root as the operational interface, to control the drug trade all the way from Medellin to Moscow.
Originally formed as a heavy construction company to build dams, Brown and Root grew its operations via shrewd political contributions to Senate candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1948. Expanding into the building of oil platforms, military bases, ports, nuclear facilities, harbors and tunnels, Brown and Root virtually underwrote LBJ's political career. It prospered as a result, making billions on U.S. Government contracts during the Vietnam War. The "Austin Chronicle" in an August 28 Op-ed piece entitled "The Candidate From Brown and Root" labels Republican Cheney as the political dispenser of Brown and Root's largesse. According to political campaign records, during Cheney's five year tenure at Halliburton the company's political contributions more than doubled to $1.2 million. Not surprisingly, most of that money went to Republican candidates.
Independent news service "newsmakingnews.com," also describes how in 1998, with Cheney as Chairman, Halliburton spent $8.1 billion to purchase oil industry equipment and drilling supplier Dresser Industries. This made Halliburton a corporation that will have a presence in almost any future oil drilling operation anywhere in the world. And it also brought back into the family fold the company that had once sent a plane - also in 1948 - to fetch the new Yale Graduate George H.W. Bush, to begin his career in the Texas oil business. Bush the elder's father, Prescott, served as a Managing Director for the firm that once owned Dresser, Brown Bothers Harriman.
It is clear that everywhere there is oil there is Brown and Root. But increasingly, everywhere there is war or insurrection there is Brown and Root also. From Bosnia and Kosovo, to Chechnya, to Rwanda, to Burma, to Pakistan, to Laos, to Vietnam, to Indonesia, to Iran to Libya to Mexico to Colombia, Brown and Root's traditional operations have expanded from heavy construction to include the provision of logistical support for the U.S. military. Now, instead of U.S. Army quartermasters, the world is likely to see Brown and Root warehouses storing and managing everything from uniforms to rations to vehicles.
Dramatic expansion of Brown and Root's operations in Colombia also suggest Bush preparations for a war inspired feeding frenzy as a part of "Plan Colombia." This is consistent with moves by former Bush Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady to open a joint Colombian-American investment partnership called Corfinsura for the financing of major construction projects with the Colombian Antioquia Syndicate, headquartered in Medellin. (See FTW June, 00). And expectations of a ground war in Colombia may explain why, in a 2000 SEC filing, Brown and Root reported that in addition to owning more than 800,000 square feet of warehouse space in Colombia, they also lease another 122,000 square feet. According to the filing of the Brown and Root Energy Services Group, the only other places where the company maintains warehouse space are in Mexico (525,000 sq. feet), and the U.S. (38,000) square feet.
According to the web site of Colombia's Foreign Investment Promotion Agency Brown and Root had no presence in the country until 1997. What does Brown and Root, which, according to the AP has made more than $2 billion supporting and supplying U.S. troops, know about Colombia that the U.S. public does not? Why the need for almost a million square feet of warehouse space that can be transferred from one Brown and Root operation (energy) to another (military support) with the stroke of a pen?
DRUGS
As described by the Associated Press, during "Iran-Contra" Congressman Dick Cheney of the House Intelligence Committee was a rabid supporter of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North. This was in spite of the fact that North had lied to Cheney in a private 1986 White House briefing. Oliver North's own diaries and subsequent investigations by the CIA Inspector General have irrevocably tied him directly to cocaine smuggling during the 1980s and the opening of bank accounts for one firm moving four tons of cocaine a month. This, however, did not stop Cheney from actively supporting North's 1994 unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia just a year before he took over the reins at Brown and Root's parent company, Dallas based Halliburton Inc. in 1995.
As the Bush Secretary of Defense during Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-91), Cheney also directed special operations involving Kurdish rebels in northern Iran. The Kurds' primary source of income for more than fifty years has been heroin smuggling from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Having had some personal experience with Brown and Root I noted carefully when the Los Angeles Times observed that on March 22, 1991 that a group of gunmen burst into the Ankara, Turkey offices of the joint venture, Vinnell, Brown and Root and assassinated retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant John Gandy.
In March of 1991, tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees, long-time assets of the CIA, were being massacred by Saddam Hussein in the wake of the Gulf War. Saddam, seeking to destroy any hopes of a successful Kurdish revolt, found it easy to kill thousands of the unwanted Kurds who had fled to the Turkish border seeking sanctuary. There, Turkish security forces, trained in part by the Vinnell, Brown and Root partnership, turned thousands of Kurds back into certain death. Today, the Vinnell Corporation (a TRW Company) is, along with the firms MPRI and DynCorp (FTW June, 00) one of the three pre-eminent private mercenary corporations in the world. It is also the dominant entity for the training of security forces throughout the Middle East. Not surprisingly the Turkish border regions in question were the primary transhipment points for heroin, grown in Afghanistan and Pakistan and destined for the markets of Europe.
A confidential source with intelligence experience in the region subsequently told me that the Kurds "got some payback against the folks that used to help them move their drugs." He openly acknowledged that Brown and Root and Vinnell both routinely provided NOC or non-official cover for CIA officers. But I already knew that.
From 1994 to 1999, during US military intervention in the Balkans where, according to "The Christian Science Monitor" and "Jane's Intelligence Review," the Kosovo Liberation Army controls 70 per cent of the heroin entering Western Europe, Cheney's Brown and Root made billions of dollars supplying U.S. troops from vast facilities in the region. Brown and Root support operations continue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia to this day.
Dick Cheney's footprints have come closer to drugs than one might suspect. The August Center for Public Integrity report brought them even closer. It would be factually correct to say that there is a direct linkage of Brown and Root facilities - often in remote and hazardous regions - between every drug producing region and every drug consuming region in the world. These coincidences, in and of themselves, do not prove complicity in the trade. Other facts, however, lead inescapably in that direction.
A DIRECT DRUG LINK
The CPI report entitled "Cheney Led Halliburton To Feast at Federal Trough" written by veteran journalists Knut Royce and Nathaniel Heller describes how, under five years of Cheney's leadership, Halliburton, largely through subsidiary Brown and Root, enjoyed $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer insured loans. The loans had been granted by the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). According to Ralph McGehee's "CIA Base ©" both institutions are heavily infiltrated by the CIA and routinely provide NOC to its officers. One of those loans to Russian financial/banking conglomerate The Alfa Group of Companies contained $292 million to pay for Brown and Root's contract to refurbish a Siberian oil field owned by the Russian Tyumen Oil Company. The Alfa Group completed its 51% acquisition of Tyumen Oil in what was allegedly a rigged bidding process in 1998. An official Russian government report claimed that the Alfa Group's top executives, oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven "allegedly participated in the transit of drugs from Southeast Asia through Russia and into Europe." These same executives, Fridman and Aven, who reportedly smuggled the heroin in connection with Russia's Solntsevo mob family were the same ones who applied for the EXIM loans that Halliburton's lobbying later safely secured. As a result Brown and Root's work in Alfa Tyumen oil fields could continue - and expand. After describing how organized criminal interests in the Alfa Group had allegedly stolen the oil field by fraud, the CPI story, using official reports from the FSB (the Russian equivalent of the FBI), oil companies such as BP-Amoco, former CIA and KGB officers and press accounts then established a solid link to Alfa Tyumen and the transportation of heroin. In 1995 sacks of heroin disguised as sugar were stolen from a rail container leased by Alfa Echo and sold in the Siberian town of Khabarovsk. A problem arose when many residents of the town became "intoxicated" or "poisoned." The CPI story also stated, "The FSB report said that within days of the incident, Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) agents conducted raids of Alfa Eko buildings and found 'drugs and other compromising documentation.' "Both reports claim that Alfa Bank has laundered drug funds from Russian and Colombian drug cartels. "The FSB document claims that at the end of 1993, a top Alfa official met with Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, the now imprisoned financial mastermind of Colombia's notorious Cali cartel, 'to conclude an agreement about the transfer of money into the Alfa Bank from offshore zones such as the Bahamas, Gibraltar and others. The plan was to insert it back into the Russian economy through the purchase of stock in Russian companies. "É He [the former KGB agent] reported that there was evidence 'regarding [Alfa Bank's] involvement with the money laundering ofÉ Latin American drug cartels." It then becomes harder for Cheney and Halliburton to assert mere coincidence in all of this as CPI reported that Tyumen's lead Washington attorney James C, Langdon, Jr. at the firm of Aikin Gump "helped coordinate a $2.2 million fund raiser for Bush this June. He then agreed to help recruit 100 lawyers and lobbyists in the capital to raise $25,000 each for W's campaign." The heroin mentioned in the CPI story, originated in Laos where longtime Bush allies and covert warriors Richard Armitage and retired CIA ADDO (Associate Deputy Director of Operations) Ted Shackley have been repeatedly linked to the drug trade. It then made its way across Southeast Asia to Vietnam, probably the port of Haiphong. Then the heroin sailed to Russia's Pacific port of Valdivostok from whence it subsequently bounced across Siberia by rail and thence by truck or rail to Europe, passing through the hands of Russian Mafia leaders in Chechnya and Azerbaijan. Chechnya and Azerbaijan are hotbeds of both armed conflict and oil exploration and Brown and Root has operations all along this route. This long, expensive and tortured path was hastily established, as described by FTW in previous issues, after President George Bush's personal envoy Richard Armitage, holding the rank of Ambassador, had traveled to the former Soviet Union to assist it with its "economic development" in 1989. The obstacle then to a more direct, profitable and efficient route from Afghanistan and Pakistan through Turkey into Europe was a cohesive Yugoslavian/Serbian government controlling the Balkans and continuing instability in the Golden Crescent of Pakistan/Afghanistan. Also, there was no other way, using heroin from the Golden Triangle (Burma, Laos and Thailand), to deal with China and India but to go around them. It is perhaps not by coincidence again that Cheney and Armitage share membership in the prestigious Aspen Institute, an exclusive bi-partisan research think tank, and also in the U.S. Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. Just last November, in what may be a portent of things to come, Armitage, played the role of Secretary of Defense in an practical exercise at the Council on Foreign Relations where he and Cheney are also both members. Speculation that the scandal plagued Armitage, who resigned under a cloud as Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, is W's first choice for Secretary of Defense next year is widespread. The Clinton Administration took care of all that wasted travel for heroin with the 1998 destruction of Serbia and Kosovo and the installation of the KLA as a regional power. That opened a direct line from Afghanistan to Western Europe and Brown and Root was right in the middle of that too. The Clinton skill at streamlining drug operations was described in detail in the May issue of FTW in a story entitled "The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline." That article has since been reprinted in three countries. The essence of the drug economic lesson was that by growing opium in Colombia and by smuggling both cocaine and heroin from Colombia to New York City through the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico (a virtual straight line), traditional smuggling routes could be shortened or even eliminated. This reduced both risk and cost, increased profits and eliminated competition. FTW suspects the hand of Medellin co-founder Carlos Lehder in this process and it is interesting to note that Lehder, released from prison under Clinton in 1995, is now active in both the Bahamas and South America. Lehder was known during the eighties as "The genius of transportation." I can well imagine a Dick Cheney, having witnessed the complete restructuring of the global drug trade in the last eight years, going to George W and saying, "Look, I know how we can make it even better." One thing is for certain. As quoted in the CPI article, one Halliburton Vice President noted that if the Bush-Cheney ticket was elected, "the company's government contracts would obviously go through the roof."
THE DARK PAST In July of 1977 this writer, then a Los Angeles Police officer struggled to make sense of a world gone haywire. In a last ditch effort to salvage a relationship with my fiancŽe, Nordica Theodora D'Orsay (Teddy), a CIA contract agent, I had traveled to find her in New Orleans. On a hastily arranged vacation, secured with the blessing of my Commanding Officer, Captain Jesse Brewer of LAPD, I had gone on my own, unofficially, to avoid the scrutiny of LAPD's Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID). Starting in the late spring of 1976 Teddy had wanted me to join her operations from within the ranks of LAPD. I had refused to get involved with drugs in any way and everything she mentioned seemed to involve either heroin or cocaine along with guns that she was always moving out of the country. The Director of the CIA then was George Herbert Walker Bush. Although officially on staff at the LAPD Academy at the time, I had been unofficially loaned to OCID since January when Teddy, announcing the start of a new operation planned in the fall of 1976 had suddenly disappeared. She left many people, including me, baffled and twisting in the breeze. The OCID detectives had been pressuring me hard for information about her and what I knew of her activities. It was information I could not give them. Hoping against hope that I would find some way to understand her involvement with CIA, LAPD, the royal family of Iran, the Mafia and drugs I set out alone into eight days of Dantean revelations that have determined the course of my life from that day to this. Arriving in New Orleans in early July, 1977 I found her living in an apartment across the river in Gretna. Equipped with scrambler phones, night vision devices and working from sealed communiquŽs delivered by naval and air force personnel from nearby Belle Chasse Naval Air Station, Teddy was involved in something truly ugly. She was arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran. At the same time she was working with Mafia associates of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello to coordinate the movement of service boats that were bringing large quantities of heroin into the city. The boats arrived at Marcello controlled docks, unmolested by even the New Orleans police she introduced me to, along with divers, military men, former Green Berets and CIA personnel. The service boats were retrieving the heroin from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oil rigs in international waters, oil rigs built and serviced by Brown and Root. The guns that Teddy monitored, apparently Vietnam era surplus AK 47s and M16s, were being loaded onto ships also owned or leased by Brown and Root. And more than once during the eight days I spent in New Orleans I met and ate at restaurants with Brown and Root employees who were boarding those ships and leaving for Iran within days. Once, while leaving a bar and apparently having asked the wrong question, I was shot at in an attempt to scare me off. Disgusted and heart broken at witnessing my fiancŽe and my government smuggling drugs, I ended the relationship. Returning home to LA I made a clean breast and reported all the activity I had seen, including the connections to Brown and Root, to LAPD intelligence officers. They promptly told me that I was crazy. Forced out of LAPD under threat of death at the end of 1978, I made complaints to LAPD's Internal Affairs Division and to the LA office of the FBI under the command of FBI SAC Ted Gunderson. I and my attorney wrote to the politicians, the Department of Justice, the CIA and contacted the L.A. Times. The FBI and the LAPD said that I was crazy. According to a 1981 two-part news story in the "Los Angeles Herald Examiner" it was revealed that The FBI had taken Teddy into custody and then released her before classifying their investigation without further action. Former New Orleans Crime Commissioner Aaron Cohen told reporter Randall Sullivan that he found my description of events perfectly plausible after his thirty years of studying Louisiana's organized crime operations. To this day a CIA report prepared as a result of my complaint remains classified and exempt from release pursuant to Executive Order of the President in the interests of national security and because it would reveal the identities of CIA agents. On October 26, 1981, in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, I reported on what I had seen in New Orleans to my friend and UCLA classmate Craig Fuller. Craig Fuller went on to become Chief of Staff to Vice President Bush from 1981 to 1985. In 1982, then UCLA political science professor Paul Jabber, filled in many of the pieces in my quest to understand what I had seen in New Orleans. He was qualified to do so because he had served as a CIA and State Department consultant to the Carter administration. Paul explained that, after a 1975 treaty between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein the Shah had cut off all overt military support for Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam from the north of Iraq. In exchange the Shah had gained access to the Shat al-Arab waterway so that he could multiply his oil exports and income. Not wanting to lose a long-term valuable asset in the Kurds, the CIA had then used Brown and Root, which operated in both countries and maintained port facilities in the Persian Gulf and near Shat al-Arab to rearm the Kurds. The whole operation had been financed with heroin. Paul was matter-of-fact about it. In 1983 Paul Jabber left UCLA to become a Vice President of Banker's Trust and Chairman of the Middle East Department of the Council on Foreign Relations. ---------- If one is courageous enough to seek an "operating system" that theoretically explains what FTW has just described for you, one need look no further than a fabulous two-part article in "Le Monde Diplomatique" in April of this year. The brilliant stories, focusing heavily on drug capital are titled "Crime, The World's Biggest Free Enterprise." The brilliant and penetrating words of authors Christian de Brie and Jean de Maillard do a better job of explaining the actual world economic and political situation than anything that I have ever read. De Brie writes, "By allowing capital to flow unchecked from one end of the world to the other, globalization and abandon of sovereignty have together fostered the explosive growth of an outlaw financial marketÉ "It is a coherent system closely linked to the expansion of modern capitalism and based on an association of three partners: governments, transnational corporations and mafias. Business is business: financial crime is first and foremost a market, thriving and structured, ruled by supply and demand. "Big business complicity and political laisser faire is the only way that large-scale organized crime can launder and recycle the fabulous proceeds of its activities. And the transnationals need the support of governments and the neutrality of regulatory authorities in order to consolidate their positions, increase their profits, withstand and crush the competition, pull off the "deal of the century" and finance their illicit operations. Politicians are directly involved and their ability to intervene depends on the backing and the funding that keep them in power. This collusion of interests is an essential part of the world economy, the oil that keeps the wheels of capitalism turning." After confronting CIA Director John Deutch on world television on November 15, 1996 I was interviewed by the staffs of both the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. I prepared written testimony for Senate Intelligence which I submitted although I was never called to testify. In every one of those interviews and in my written testimony and in every lecture since that time I have told the story of Brown and Root. I will tell it again at the USC School of International Relations on December the 8th, 2000 - regardless of who wins the election. Michael C. Ruppert http://www.copvcia.com/
C.I.A. & DRUGS Rep. McKinney of Georgia Blasts "Drug War" Lawsuit in Open Letter to Rob't Strauss. Read More... The Crimes of Mena Read More...Hostages Read More...HOSTAGES, Part I - Carlos Lehder Free? - AIG and Arkansas Read More...HOSTAGES, Part II Read More...Citibank and Asa Hutchinson Read More... Asa Hutchinson by Mara Leveritt Read More... New Buzz on Peru Shootdown Read More... ONLY THE GODFATHERCIA and Subsidiaries Exposed in Court Documents As Active Drug Smugglers Using Military Aircraft Washed Through Forest ServiceRead More...
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The Crimes of Citigroup Read More... The Bush Cheney Drug Empire Read More... Appeals Court Backs Claim of CIA/Contra Drugs Read More...Peter Dale Scott's plea to Congr. Pelosi Read More...Excerpts from Scott's Essay on CIA & Drugs Read More...Vol. II Closed by House, 4/00 Read More... Ed Wilson's Revenge Read More...Casey Letter Admits CIA Drugs Read More... "W" Bush in Barry Seal's PlaneRead More...CIA Vol. II - IG Confession Read More...Extract of Vol. II Report Read More...DEA Agent Cele Castillo Read More...Senate Intel. Written Testimony Read More... CIA, Drugs, and Wall Street Read More... The Herald Examiner Story Read More...The Fuller Letter Read More...N.Y. Times Admission Read More...VOL 1 Hearings Backfire! Read More...Iran-Contra Witness List Read More... Iran-Contra Era - CIA & Drugs FactsheetRead More... House Intelligence Jammed on Volume II Close-OutRead More... COULD DOWNING OF MISSIONARY PLANE IN PERU HAVE BEEN A PLAN COLOMBIA PUBLICITY STUNT GONE BAD? -- Plenty Wrong With The Story We've Been Told Read More...
09/22/06TONS OF COCAINE: CARACAS TO WASHINGTON- by Peter Dale Scott, PhD. Read Summary HereSubscribers Read Full Story Here
6/7/05Celerino Castillo on Luis Posada CarrilesRead Now
11/16/03Cynthia McKinney: "We Need Narco News, and It Needs Us"A Letter from Georgia's Congresswoman-Elect on the Need for Authentic MediaRead Now
12/11/03AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION DOUBLES Ever wonder why the markets are doing so well? As FTW has documented for years, with almost $600 billion in drug money being laundered through Wall Street and US banks, the markets should be improving. According to CNN, opium production in Afghanistan is 36 times higher than at the end of Taliban rule. Not every US policy overseas is a failure. Hamid Karzai controls a few square blocks of Kabul. But CIA-controlled warlords control the real estate that really matters. Read Now
3/1/03Afghanistan Displaces Myanmar as Top Heroin Producer It's not about controlling drug profits...or is it? Read Now
6/19/02"Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do" A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING?Bin Laden Met with the CIA in July and Walked AwayExpanded and Revised June 19, 2002 - Evidence of Bush Administration Foreknowledge and complicity is now overwhelming. 16 New Items Since Our Last Revision! Read Now
2/11/02GNN's short documentary "Crack the CIA" wins at Sundance. Features Cele Castillo, Peter Dale Scott and Mike Ruppert Read Now
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6/7/05Celerino Castillo on Luis Posada CarrilesRead Now
11/16/03Cynthia McKinney: "We Need Narco News, and It Needs Us"A Letter from Georgia's Congresswoman-Elect on the Need for Authentic MediaRead Now
12/11/03AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION DOUBLES Ever wonder why the markets are doing so well? As FTW has documented for years, with almost $600 billion in drug money being laundered through Wall Street and US banks, the markets should be improving. According to CNN, opium production in Afghanistan is 36 times higher than at the end of Taliban rule. Not every US policy overseas is a failure. Hamid Karzai controls a few square blocks of Kabul. But CIA-controlled warlords control the real estate that really matters. Read Now
3/1/03Afghanistan Displaces Myanmar as Top Heroin Producer It's not about controlling drug profits...or is it? Read Now
6/19/02"Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do" A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN'T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING?Bin Laden Met with the CIA in July and Walked AwayExpanded and Revised June 19, 2002 - Evidence of Bush Administration Foreknowledge and complicity is now overwhelming. 16 New Items Since Our Last Revision! Read Now
2/11/02GNN's short documentary "Crack the CIA" wins at Sundance. Features Cele Castillo, Peter Dale Scott and Mike Ruppert Read Now
10/10/01The Lies About Taliban Heroin. A replay of CIA's Vietnam era drug dealing. FTW revises its economic map. Read Now
Bush Pardons 6 in Iran Affair, Aborting a Weinberger Trial; Prosecutor Assails 'Cover-Up'
Six years after the arms-for-hostages scandal began to cast a shadow that would darken two Administrations, President Bush today granted full pardons to six former officials in Ronald Reagan's Administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.
Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger's private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush's endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.
In one remaining facet of the inquiry, the independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush. Mr. Walsh has characterized the President's failure to turn over the diary until now as misconduct.
Decapitated Walsh Efforts
But in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh's effort, which began in 1986. Mr. Bush's decision was announced by the White House in a printed statement after the President left for Camp David, where he will spend the Christmas holiday.
Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President's action, charging that "the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."
Mr. Walsh directed his heaviest fire at Mr. Bush over the pardon of Mr. Weinberger, whose trial would have given the prosecutor a last chance to explore the role in the affair of senior Reagan officials, including Mr. Bush's actions as Vice President.
'Evidence of Conspiracy'
Mr. Walsh hinted that Mr. Bush's pardon of Mr. Weinberger and the President's own role in the affair could be related. For the first time, he
charged that Mr. Weinberger's notes about the secret decision to sell arms to Iran, a central piece of evidence in the case against the former Pentagon chief, included "evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public."
The prosecutor charged that Mr. Weinberger's efforts to hide his notes may have "forestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan" and formed part of a pattern of "deception and obstruction." On Dec. 11, Mr. Walsh said he discovered "misconduct" in Mr. Bush's failure to turn over what the prosecutor said were the President's own "highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents."
The notes, in the form of a campaign diary that Mr. Bush compiled after the elections in November 1986, are in the process of being turned over to Mr. Walsh, who said, "In light of President Bush's own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations."
In an interview on the "McNeil-Lehrer Newshour" tonight, Mr. Walsh said for the first time that Mr. Bush was a subject of his investigation. The term "subject," as it has been used by Mr. Walsh's prosecutors, is broadly defined as someone involved in events under scrutiny, but who falls short of being a target, or a person likely to be charged with a crime. In the inquiry into the entire Iran-contra affair, a number of Government officials have been identified as subjects who were never charged with wrongdoing.
What Charges Are Unlikely
The prosecutor said he would take appropriate action in Mr. Bush's case, implying he might contemplate future legal action against the President for withholding relevant documents. But prosecutors have said in the past that charging a President or former President with wrongdoing would be highly unlikely without overwhelming evidence of a serious crime.
C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel, said today that Mr. Bush had voluntarily supplied the disputed material to Mr. Walsh, asserting that the notes contained no new information about the affair. Mr. Gray said Mr. Bush wanted make the notes public, but did not say when.
President-elect Bill Clinton, at a news conference in Little Rock, Ark., to announce his remaining Cabinet selections, said he wanted to learn more about the pardons, adding, "I am concerned by any action that sends a signal that if you work for the Government, you're beyond the law, or that not telling the truth to Congress under oath is somehow less serious than not telling the truth to some other body under oath."
Mr. Bush, in a statement accompanying the pardon, seemed to anticipate his critics, acknowledging that his decision might be interpreted as an effort to "prevent full disclosure of some new key fact to the American people." He said, "That is not true."
Asserting that "no impartial person has seriously suggested that my own role in this matter is legally questionable," the President sought to position himself on the side of greater openness. Mr. Bush said he had asked Mr. Walsh to provide him with a copy of his testimony to the prosecutor, which he would make public.
Lobbying by Ex-Reagan Aides
Today's action followed intensive lobbying by former Reagan aides to pardon Mr. Weinberger and a series of meetings in recent days at the White House, culminating with the President's decision this morning. Republicans, long angered by the prosecution, were incensed by the new indictment of Mr. Weinberger four days before the election. The indictment said Mr. Weinberger's notes contradicted Mr. Bush's assertions that he had only a fragmentary knowledge of the arms secretly sold to Iran in 1985 and 1986 in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon.
Mr. Weinberger was also charged with testifying falsely to Congress that he did not recall whether Saudi Arabia had ever contributed to the contras. Prosecutors said his notes showed that he had known of the Saudi contributions.
Records made public over the years included no evidence that Mr. Bush knew about he secret efforts to arm the Nicaraguan rebels, but they did suggest he knew of Iran operation almost from its inception in 1985 and took part in crucial meetings where the arms sales were openly discussed as an arms-for-hostages swap. The Reagan Administration's public policy was never to bargain for the freedom of hostages.
Mr. Bush said today that the Walsh prosecution reflected "a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences."
Question of Politics
He added: "These differences should have been addressed in the political arena without the Damocles sword of criminality hanging over the heads of some of the combatants. The proper target is the President, not his subordinates; the proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom."
In his comments, Mr. Bush said he was trying to "put bitterness behind us," asserting that each of the men he was pardoning had a long record of public service and had already paid a heavy price for their involvement in the affair in damaged careers, hurt families and depleted savings.
The Iran-contra affair, the worst scandal of Mr. Reagan's Presidency, came into the open in the fall of 1986 with the disclosure of two intertwined secret operations: the arms sales to Teheran, and the diversion of profits from those sales to help finance a covert weapons supply network to the contras, set up in 1985, after Congress barred direct aid to the rebels.
Besides Mr. Weinberger, the President pardoned Robert C. McFarlane, the former national security adviser, and Elliott Abrams, the former assistant Secretary of State for Central America. Both officials had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about support for the contras.
Others Who Are Pardoned
The President also pardoned Clair E. George, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine services, who was convicted earlier this month, at his second trial, of two felony charges of perjury and misleading Congress about both the contras and the Iran initiative -- crimes for which he faced up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Two other intelligence officials were granted clemency, Duane R. Clarridge, the former head of the C.I.A.'s European division, who was awaiting trial on charges that he misled Congressional investigators about a missile shipment to Iran in 1985.
The other was Alan D. Fiers Jr., once a rising star with the agency, who had pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information about the contras from Congress and who later decided to cooperate with the prosecution, becoming Mr. George's chief accuser at both his trials.
Mr. Bush described Mr. Weinberger as a "true American patriot" and he said clemency was granted both to spare him torment and cost of lengthy legal proceedings as well as out of a concern for the health of Mr. Weinberger, who is 75 year old.
Mr. Weinberger, who was asked at a news conference today whether his notes contained any entries that might be embarrassing to Mr. Bush, replied: "No, certainly not. There's nothing in those notes that in any way contradicts what President Bush said, or what President Reagan said."
But not since President Gerald R. Ford granted clemency to former President Richard M. Nixon for possible crimes in Watergate has a Presidential pardon so pointedly raised the issue of whether the President was trying to shield officials for political purposes. Mr. Walsh invoked Watergate tonight in an interview on the ABC News program "Nightline," likening today's pardons to President Richard M. Nixon's dismissal of the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, in 1973. Mr. Walsh said Mr. Bush had "succeeded in a sort of Saturday Night Massacre."
Democratic lawmakers assailed the decision. Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the Democratic leader, called the action a mistake. "It is not as the President stated today a matter of criminalizing policy differences," he said. "If members of the executive branch lie to the Congress, obstruct justice and otherwise break the law, how can policy differences be fairly and legally resolved in a democracy."
The main supporters of the pardon were Vice President Quayle, the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole, and Mr. Gray, one senior Administration official said today. The decision, discussed in private, seemed to coalesce in the last three weeks although Mr. Bush was said to believe that Mr. Weinberger had been unfairly charged ever since the former Reagan Cabinet officer was first indicted in June.
Throughout the deliberations, Mr. Bush consulted with Attorney General William P. Barr and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, who had sat on a Presidential review panel that examined the affair in early 1987.
In lengthy Oval Office meetings in the last week, Mr. Bush and his advisers, none of whom offered a sharp dissent, discussed how to balance their desire to grant a pardon with their realization that such an act would almost certainly provoke hostility.
In the end, Mr. Bush's advisers decided he could surmount his critics by expressing, as did in his statement, his willingness to make public additional documents about the affair, like his statement to the prosecutors and Mr. Weinberger's notes.
Independent Counsel's Statement on the Pardons
By REUTERSFollowing is a statement by the independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, regarding pardons granted today by President Bush.
President Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office -- deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.
Weinberger, who faced four felony charges, deserved to be tried by a jury of citizens. Although it is the President's prerogative to grant pardons, it is every American's right that the criminal justice system be administered fairly, regardless of a person's rank and connections.
The Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed with the pardon of Caspar Weinberger. We will make a full report on our findings to Congress and the public describing the details and extent of this cover-up.
Weinberger's early and deliberate decision to conceal and withhold extensive contemporaneous notes of the Iran-contra matter radically altered the official investigations and possibly forestalled timely impeachment proceedings against President Reagan and other officials. Weinberger's notes contain evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public. Because the notes were withheld from investigators for years, many of the leads were impossible to follow, key witnesses had purportedly forgotten what was said and done, and statutes of limitation had expired.
Weinberger's concealment of notes is part of a disturbing pattern of deception and obstruction that permeated the highest levels of the Reagan and Bush Administrations. This office was informed only within the past two weeks, on December 11, 1992, that President Bush had failed to produce to investigators his own highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents. The production of these notes is still ongoing and will lead to appropriate action. In light of President Bush's own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations.
Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger's private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush's endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.
In one remaining facet of the inquiry, the independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush. Mr. Walsh has characterized the President's failure to turn over the diary until now as misconduct.
Decapitated Walsh Efforts
But in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh's effort, which began in 1986. Mr. Bush's decision was announced by the White House in a printed statement after the President left for Camp David, where he will spend the Christmas holiday.
Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President's action, charging that "the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."
Mr. Walsh directed his heaviest fire at Mr. Bush over the pardon of Mr. Weinberger, whose trial would have given the prosecutor a last chance to explore the role in the affair of senior Reagan officials, including Mr. Bush's actions as Vice President.
'Evidence of Conspiracy'
Mr. Walsh hinted that Mr. Bush's pardon of Mr. Weinberger and the President's own role in the affair could be related. For the first time, he
charged that Mr. Weinberger's notes about the secret decision to sell arms to Iran, a central piece of evidence in the case against the former Pentagon chief, included "evidence of a conspiracy among the highest ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public."
The prosecutor charged that Mr. Weinberger's efforts to hide his notes may have "forestalled impeachment proceedings against President Reagan" and formed part of a pattern of "deception and obstruction." On Dec. 11, Mr. Walsh said he discovered "misconduct" in Mr. Bush's failure to turn over what the prosecutor said were the President's own "highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents."
The notes, in the form of a campaign diary that Mr. Bush compiled after the elections in November 1986, are in the process of being turned over to Mr. Walsh, who said, "In light of President Bush's own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations."
In an interview on the "McNeil-Lehrer Newshour" tonight, Mr. Walsh said for the first time that Mr. Bush was a subject of his investigation. The term "subject," as it has been used by Mr. Walsh's prosecutors, is broadly defined as someone involved in events under scrutiny, but who falls short of being a target, or a person likely to be charged with a crime. In the inquiry into the entire Iran-contra affair, a number of Government officials have been identified as subjects who were never charged with wrongdoing.
What Charges Are Unlikely
The prosecutor said he would take appropriate action in Mr. Bush's case, implying he might contemplate future legal action against the President for withholding relevant documents. But prosecutors have said in the past that charging a President or former President with wrongdoing would be highly unlikely without overwhelming evidence of a serious crime.
C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel, said today that Mr. Bush had voluntarily supplied the disputed material to Mr. Walsh, asserting that the notes contained no new information about the affair. Mr. Gray said Mr. Bush wanted make the notes public, but did not say when.
President-elect Bill Clinton, at a news conference in Little Rock, Ark., to announce his remaining Cabinet selections, said he wanted to learn more about the pardons, adding, "I am concerned by any action that sends a signal that if you work for the Government, you're beyond the law, or that not telling the truth to Congress under oath is somehow less serious than not telling the truth to some other body under oath."
Mr. Bush, in a statement accompanying the pardon, seemed to anticipate his critics, acknowledging that his decision might be interpreted as an effort to "prevent full disclosure of some new key fact to the American people." He said, "That is not true."
Asserting that "no impartial person has seriously suggested that my own role in this matter is legally questionable," the President sought to position himself on the side of greater openness. Mr. Bush said he had asked Mr. Walsh to provide him with a copy of his testimony to the prosecutor, which he would make public.
Lobbying by Ex-Reagan Aides
Today's action followed intensive lobbying by former Reagan aides to pardon Mr. Weinberger and a series of meetings in recent days at the White House, culminating with the President's decision this morning. Republicans, long angered by the prosecution, were incensed by the new indictment of Mr. Weinberger four days before the election. The indictment said Mr. Weinberger's notes contradicted Mr. Bush's assertions that he had only a fragmentary knowledge of the arms secretly sold to Iran in 1985 and 1986 in exchange for American hostages in Lebanon.
Mr. Weinberger was also charged with testifying falsely to Congress that he did not recall whether Saudi Arabia had ever contributed to the contras. Prosecutors said his notes showed that he had known of the Saudi contributions.
Records made public over the years included no evidence that Mr. Bush knew about he secret efforts to arm the Nicaraguan rebels, but they did suggest he knew of Iran operation almost from its inception in 1985 and took part in crucial meetings where the arms sales were openly discussed as an arms-for-hostages swap. The Reagan Administration's public policy was never to bargain for the freedom of hostages.
Mr. Bush said today that the Walsh prosecution reflected "a profoundly troubling development in the political and legal climate of our country: the criminalization of policy differences."
Question of Politics
He added: "These differences should have been addressed in the political arena without the Damocles sword of criminality hanging over the heads of some of the combatants. The proper target is the President, not his subordinates; the proper forum is the voting booth, not the courtroom."
In his comments, Mr. Bush said he was trying to "put bitterness behind us," asserting that each of the men he was pardoning had a long record of public service and had already paid a heavy price for their involvement in the affair in damaged careers, hurt families and depleted savings.
The Iran-contra affair, the worst scandal of Mr. Reagan's Presidency, came into the open in the fall of 1986 with the disclosure of two intertwined secret operations: the arms sales to Teheran, and the diversion of profits from those sales to help finance a covert weapons supply network to the contras, set up in 1985, after Congress barred direct aid to the rebels.
Besides Mr. Weinberger, the President pardoned Robert C. McFarlane, the former national security adviser, and Elliott Abrams, the former assistant Secretary of State for Central America. Both officials had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of withholding information from Congress about support for the contras.
Others Who Are Pardoned
The President also pardoned Clair E. George, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine services, who was convicted earlier this month, at his second trial, of two felony charges of perjury and misleading Congress about both the contras and the Iran initiative -- crimes for which he faced up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Two other intelligence officials were granted clemency, Duane R. Clarridge, the former head of the C.I.A.'s European division, who was awaiting trial on charges that he misled Congressional investigators about a missile shipment to Iran in 1985.
The other was Alan D. Fiers Jr., once a rising star with the agency, who had pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information about the contras from Congress and who later decided to cooperate with the prosecution, becoming Mr. George's chief accuser at both his trials.
Mr. Bush described Mr. Weinberger as a "true American patriot" and he said clemency was granted both to spare him torment and cost of lengthy legal proceedings as well as out of a concern for the health of Mr. Weinberger, who is 75 year old.
Mr. Weinberger, who was asked at a news conference today whether his notes contained any entries that might be embarrassing to Mr. Bush, replied: "No, certainly not. There's nothing in those notes that in any way contradicts what President Bush said, or what President Reagan said."
But not since President Gerald R. Ford granted clemency to former President Richard M. Nixon for possible crimes in Watergate has a Presidential pardon so pointedly raised the issue of whether the President was trying to shield officials for political purposes. Mr. Walsh invoked Watergate tonight in an interview on the ABC News program "Nightline," likening today's pardons to President Richard M. Nixon's dismissal of the Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, in 1973. Mr. Walsh said Mr. Bush had "succeeded in a sort of Saturday Night Massacre."
Democratic lawmakers assailed the decision. Senator George J. Mitchell of Maine, the Democratic leader, called the action a mistake. "It is not as the President stated today a matter of criminalizing policy differences," he said. "If members of the executive branch lie to the Congress, obstruct justice and otherwise break the law, how can policy differences be fairly and legally resolved in a democracy."
The main supporters of the pardon were Vice President Quayle, the Senate Republican leader, Bob Dole, and Mr. Gray, one senior Administration official said today. The decision, discussed in private, seemed to coalesce in the last three weeks although Mr. Bush was said to believe that Mr. Weinberger had been unfairly charged ever since the former Reagan Cabinet officer was first indicted in June.
Throughout the deliberations, Mr. Bush consulted with Attorney General William P. Barr and Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, who had sat on a Presidential review panel that examined the affair in early 1987.
In lengthy Oval Office meetings in the last week, Mr. Bush and his advisers, none of whom offered a sharp dissent, discussed how to balance their desire to grant a pardon with their realization that such an act would almost certainly provoke hostility.
In the end, Mr. Bush's advisers decided he could surmount his critics by expressing, as did in his statement, his willingness to make public additional documents about the affair, like his statement to the prosecutors and Mr. Weinberger's notes.
Independent Counsel's Statement on the Pardons
By REUTERSFollowing is a statement by the independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, regarding pardons granted today by President Bush.
President Bush's pardon of Caspar Weinberger and other Iran-contra defendants undermines the principle that no man is above the law. It demonstrates that powerful people with powerful allies can commit serious crimes in high office -- deliberately abusing the public trust without consequence.
Weinberger, who faced four felony charges, deserved to be tried by a jury of citizens. Although it is the President's prerogative to grant pardons, it is every American's right that the criminal justice system be administered fairly, regardless of a person's rank and connections.
The Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed with the pardon of Caspar Weinberger. We will make a full report on our findings to Congress and the public describing the details and extent of this cover-up.
Weinberger's early and deliberate decision to conceal and withhold extensive contemporaneous notes of the Iran-contra matter radically altered the official investigations and possibly forestalled timely impeachment proceedings against President Reagan and other officials. Weinberger's notes contain evidence of a conspiracy among the highest-ranking Reagan Administration officials to lie to Congress and the American public. Because the notes were withheld from investigators for years, many of the leads were impossible to follow, key witnesses had purportedly forgotten what was said and done, and statutes of limitation had expired.
Weinberger's concealment of notes is part of a disturbing pattern of deception and obstruction that permeated the highest levels of the Reagan and Bush Administrations. This office was informed only within the past two weeks, on December 11, 1992, that President Bush had failed to produce to investigators his own highly relevant contemporaneous notes, despite repeated requests for such documents. The production of these notes is still ongoing and will lead to appropriate action. In light of President Bush's own misconduct, we are gravely concerned about his decision to pardon others who lied to Congress and obstructed official investigations.
The Criminal "High Cabal"The Reign of Lawlessness
The American "High Cabal" adopted criminality as their primary strategy when they seized control of the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century. 1
In 1922, Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall illegally leased out the rich Teapot Dome oilfields of Wyoming to Rockefeller's oil companies. President Warren G.Harding proclaimed Fall's innocence: "If Fall isn't an honest man, then I'm not fit to be President."
Prophetic words for Warren Gamaliel when Fall couldn't explain how he was able to spend $170,000 for improvements on his ranch in New Mexico when his annual salary was only $12,000. On June 30, 1924, a federal grand jury indicted Fall and two major oil company executives, Harry Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny. On November 1, 1929, five years later, Fall received a mild slap on the wrist: a one year sentence and a fine of $100,000 for taking bribes.
This ruling junta not only committed criminal acts in the United States but also throughout the world. In 1937, William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, warned America of what was happening:
"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy.
"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." 2
In an earlier article on war profiteering, we saw how on October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City that were being conducted by Prescott Bush, the father of former president George Herbert Walker Bush.
A large number of American companies directly supported Adolph Hittler in his buildup of a German war machine: 3
Chase National Bank (Rockefeller)
National City Bank (Rockefeller)
Standard Oil (Rockefeller)
Texas [Oil] Company
Davis Oil Company
SKF Industries
General Aniline and Film
Sterling Products
Radio Corporation of America (RCA)
Ford Motors
General Motors
International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT)
Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly
Hearst newspaper syndicate
Readers Digest magazine
Du Pont
The Saturday Evening Post
Sullivan and Cromwell law firm (Allen Dulles)
Following World War II, the "High Cabal" made sure that its puppets resided in the White House and that its hirelings such as Allen Dulles were in positions of power where they could control important events.
President Eisenhower proved less totally compliant than most and his parting speech warned against the military-industrial complex.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961
The CIA has engaged in criminal activities from its inception:
1948: The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to win the elections
1953: overthrow of democratically-elected Mosadek in Iran
1953: Operation MK-ULTRA -- Inspired by North Korea’s brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide.
1954: overthrow of democratically-elected Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala in a military coup -- Arbenz had threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owned stock. Arbenz was replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies killed over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.
1957-1973: Laos -- the CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos’ democratic elections
1959: Haiti -- the U.S. military helps "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti
1961: Dominican Republic -- the CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator Washington has supported since 1930
1961: Ecuador -- the CIA-backed military forces the democratically elected President Jose Velasco to resign
1961: Congo (Zaire) -- the CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba
1963: Dominican Republic -- the CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military coup, installing a repressive, right-wing junta
1964: Brazil -- a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart, replacing him with a bloodthirsty junta
1965: Indonesia -- the CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno with a military coup, resulting in the government killing of at least half a million people
1965: Congo (Zaire) -- a CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator
1967: Greece -- a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government two days before the elections
1967: Operation PHOENIX -- the CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages
1968: Operation CHAOS -- The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.
1970: Cambodia -- The CIA overthrows Prince Sahounek, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol.
1971: Bolivia -- After half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the leftist President Juan Torres. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed.
1973: democratically-elected Allende in Chile is assassinated
1981: Iran/Contra begins -- The CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua
1987: a cocaine cartel money launderer testifies before Congress that he sent $10 million to the contras through CIA operative Felix Rodriguez (Washington Post 6/30/87)
1989: Panama -- The U.S. invades Panama to overthrow a dictator of its own making, General Manuel Noriega.
1991: funding for the Haitian junta which overthrows democratically-elected President Aristide
2004: Bush II appoints a doctrinaire reactionary as head of CIA and Goss openly sends memo to CIA personnel telling them they must support the Bush junta!
With the Nixon presidency, criminality became standard operating procedure. Either by accident or design (see Cologny and Gettlen. Silent Coup), the criminal behavior of the entire Nixon administration was exposed and Nixon was forced to resign.
When President John F. Kennedy threatened the "High Cabal" by toppling their Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, firing Allen Dulles as head of the CIA, and making plans to take control of the Federal Reserve System, he was assassinated. The U.S. Secret Service, in violation of their own rules and procedures, in collusion with the ruling plutocrats, deliberately failed to protect President Kennedy. The Secret Service knowingly escorted him in an open car around a hairpin turn into the sights of paid assassins, who fired by military-style triangulation.
In the aftermath of the bloody assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, over 200 eyewitnesses and sources were themselves murdered, obliterating possible testimony, contrary to the falsified Warren Report.
JFK was assassinated because the "High Cabal" wanted to regain its stranglehold on the country.
The Kennedy "assassination has demonstrated that most of the major events of world significance are masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of enormously powerful people who are not of one nation, one ethnic grouping, or one overridingly important business group. They are a power unto themselves for whom those others work. Neither is this power elite of recent origin. Its roots go deep into the past.”
L. Fletcher Prouty. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy "It is Colonel Prouty--with his background both as military officer and international banker--who shows us concisely that Kennedy was removed not only for his skittish policy on Vietnam and Cuba but because he fundamentally was affecting the economic might of this nation-planet, U.S.A., Inc., and its New World Order. Kennedy undermined, as Prouty fascinatingly outlines, not only the Federal Reserve Board but the CIA and its thousand-headed Medusa of an economic system (CIA: 'Capitalism's Invisible Army'), but most dangerously and most expensively (ultimately some $6 trillion in Cold War money) the world-around economic lines of the 'High Cabal' and its military-industrial complex so ominously forecast by Eisenhower in his farewell address."
Oliver Stone's Introduction to L. Fletcher Prouty's book: JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and gravely wounded as he was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel after addressing a labor convention. Reagan was the man who stood in the way of Vice President George W. Bush becoming President. For the remainder of Reagan's term, Bush was the de facto president. The would-be assassin was John W. Hinckley Jr., who had strange ties to the Bush family. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21, 1982.
On November 13, 1986, the Reagan administration confirmed a flood of worldwide reports that it indeed had been sending Iran weapons--against both United States law and official policy--for some time. The arms deal was reportedly organized and carried out by a "crisis management" group within the 46-member National Security Council staff. In addition to Robert McFarlane, White House assistant, a prominent member of the team was marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a decorated Vietnam veteran and deputy director for political-military affairs at the Security Council.
After invoking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination for seven months, while conniving to get a grant of limited immunity, North finally testified before Senate and House investigating committees in July of 1987. "I assumed that the President was aware of what I was doing and had, through my superiors, approved," he stated. He claimed that he had sent five memoranda to the President through Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan's national security adviser, requesting permission to divert money from the Iranian arms sales to the contras, a Nicaraguan rebel group.
North's testimony left the impression that the late director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Casey, had masterminded the financing of the contras with profits from the Iranian arms sales. Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye, presiding over the hearings, said that the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages operation was a naked attempt to create a "secret government within our government." The Senate-House investigating committee concluded that "the common ingredients of the Iran and contra policies were secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law. . . . The ultimate responsibility for the events in the Iran-contra affair must rest with the President."
On May 4, 1989, Oliver North was convicted in federal court on three of twelve counts against him. He was fined $150,000 and given a three-year suspended sentence and ordered to perform 1,200 hours of community service. Lackeys of the ruling elite caught in criminal acts either spend a few months in a country club prison, receive a suspended sentence, receive an inconsequential fine, or are pardoned by the puppet president.
On September 16, 1991, a federal judge ordered all Iran-contra charges against Oliver North dropped. And on December 24, 1991, President George W. Bush pardoned six officials charged with or convicted of misleading Congress in the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair.
One of those pardoned was former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose trial might have revealed that Bush was not, contrary to his claim, "out of the loop" on the deal. Weinberger's notes concerning his actions as Defense Secretary under Bush I, demonstrated that Bush was definitely in the loop. Admiral John Poindexter claimed that he conferred directly with Bush about the Iran-Contra scheme. Also, Bush and his assistant Donald Gregg communicated regularly with Felix Rodriguez, the notorious ex-CIA agent at the heart of the Contra Supply operation [See Lawrence Walsh's Firewall, W.W. Norton & Co., 1997; pp. 271-272].
The Iran-contra affair was actually a gun-running, drug smuggling operation run out of Mena, Arkansas, under the direction of Vice President Bush. 4 Unless we can overturn a presidential decree by George W. Bush to make all previous presidential and vice presidential papers unavailable except through legal action, the elder George Bush's papers will be unavailable for review to see what criminal action was committed.
The actions of the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Contra scandal revealed "a pattern of conduct and a state of mind among important people in this administration which must be described as an American style of fascism. I would prefer to avoid that term, but it is the only one in the modern political vocabulary that adequately describes the situation."
William Pfaff, Chicago Tribune, March, 1987
During the one-term presidency of George H. W. Bush, lawlessness extended to the point of using military force to protect Bush's criminal behavior. As Director of the CIA, Bush had hired Manuel Noriega to be his man in Panama. When General Noriega threatened to expose Bush's complicity in gun running, drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes, 5 a Federal court indicted Noriega on drug smuggling charges on February 5, 1988.
On December 20, 1989, 24,000 U.S. troops attacked Panama to find Noriega and bring him back to the United States for trial. The military invasion operation, code-named "Just Cause," resulted in hundreds of innocent Panamanian civilians being killed.
The best way to understand this atrocity is the viewing of a courageous documentary video on Bush's terrorist attack against a foreign people titled "The Panama Deception," the 1993 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature.
Produced by the Empowerment Project and narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery, the documentary outlines in stark detail how Bush Sr. used the U.S. military to invade a foreign country without the American press, the American Congress, or the American people raising their voice in protest at such an atrocity.
On January 4, 1990, Noriega was charged in a U.S. court in Miami with drug trafficking and sentenced to 40 years. Before 9/11, Noriega was the only war criminal in an American prison.
The Phony Drug War
The "High Cabal" is directly involved in the $400-$600 billion international drug trafficking activity. To understand the so-called war on drugs we must realize that this is a war that is deliberately being lost. Why?
Internationally, "the war on drugs"
provides a cover for U.S. intervention in and control of other countries
adds to the military budget
increases foreign sales of U.S. weaponry
keeps the price of drugs up and the costs down
Domestically, the "drug war"
is not about decreasing drug use or drug supply
it is about
incarcerating millions of felons on the basis of mandatory minimum sentencing
providing profits for the privatized prison companies
providing funds to U.S. organizations and individuals through drug money-laundering
covert agencies who use it as a source of black funding
politicians and bankers who are hired to protect the drug revenues
politicians who receive drug money campaign contributions
inflating police spending and revenues (seizing assets)
increasing repression in the inner cities
masking the attack on civil liberties
The number of people in America using illegal drugs is said to be down appreciably from the high in 1979.
However, the phony "drug war" which the ruling junta has carried out is responsible for little of this decrease, except insofar as they have put millions of Americans in prison on drug charges. Crack cocaine use is down, for example, primarily because people were smart enough to see its devastating effect on crack addicts.
There are two major approaches to mind-altering drugs:
large-scale incarceration for drug users and military action to stop drug production internationally
decriminalization and treatment
The American criminal junta takes the first approach because of all the monetary benefits.
Sixty years ago we solved the alcohol prohibition problem. Crime was rampant. Drug gangs battled on our streets. Bootleggers sold their wares everywhere, even to schoolchildren. Police could do nothing. The vast profits of liquor smuggling fueled corruption and violence, and the drug scourge seemed poised to topple America. But on December 5th, 1933, we ended prohibition and made alcohol legal. We could do the same today with heroin, cocaine, and other hard drugs. But the "High Cabal" is making too much money from illegal drug trafficking; it doesn't want to stop the phony "war on drugs."
In South America, Coca is as safe as coffee. But it's illegal in the United States so we have cocaine smugglers, dealers, and sellers. Opium is safer than tobacco in the East. Since it's illegal in America we have heroin smugglers who bring in heroin a hundred times more powerful that that used in the East. In our prisons, real criminals are let loose, while pot smokers waste their lives behind bars. So the single largest marketplace for illegal drugs continues to be the United States.
Europe's approach is legalized, regulated markets in soft drugs, making drugs like opiates available to addicts through various treatment programs, and a more humane approach to substance abuse in general. Part of our struggle against the Bush tyranny must be to see that a reasonable drug policy is established and order restored to our neighborhoods destroyed by the "drug war" scam.
Other High Crimes of the "High Cabal"
One of the most devastating crimes that the "High Cabal" committed was the coup d'etat in the year 2000, with Florida state officials and the Supreme Court conspiring to foist an unelected George Bush on the American people. 6
Bush has done everything in his power to see that his corporate backers receive any and all assistance his administration can provide:
tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy
failure of governmental oversight for any and all regulations
non-prosecution for corporate crimes
appointment of insider foxes to guard the federal chicken coops:
Harvey Pitt as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who was responsible for the criminal accounting practices at Xerox
Vice President Cheney, who allowed Ken Lay and other corporate big-shots to create energy policies and appoint insiders to energy commissions
appointed the racist, sexist John Ashcroft to be attorney general and appointed other criminals to positions of power, such as John Negroponte as U.N. ambassador and Otto J. Reich as assistant secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere
These and other crimes of the "High Cabal" and their puppet president, George Bush, must be brought before the court of human reason and the people must rise up and demand that America once again becomes a nation of laws, not men.
"For more than two thousand years, since western men first began to think about the social order, the main preoccupation of political thinking has been to find a law which would be superior to arbitrary power. Men have sought it in custom, in the dictates of reason, in religious revelation, endeavoring always to set up some check upon the exercise of force. This is the meaning of the long debate about Natural Law. This is the meaning of a thousand years of struggle to bring the sovereign under a constitution, to establish for the individual and for voluntary associations of men rights which they can enforce against kings, barons, magnates, majorities, and mobs."
Walter Lippmann. The Good Society
The American "High Cabal" adopted criminality as their primary strategy when they seized control of the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century. 1
In 1922, Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall illegally leased out the rich Teapot Dome oilfields of Wyoming to Rockefeller's oil companies. President Warren G.Harding proclaimed Fall's innocence: "If Fall isn't an honest man, then I'm not fit to be President."
Prophetic words for Warren Gamaliel when Fall couldn't explain how he was able to spend $170,000 for improvements on his ranch in New Mexico when his annual salary was only $12,000. On June 30, 1924, a federal grand jury indicted Fall and two major oil company executives, Harry Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny. On November 1, 1929, five years later, Fall received a mild slap on the wrist: a one year sentence and a fine of $100,000 for taking bribes.
This ruling junta not only committed criminal acts in the United States but also throughout the world. In 1937, William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, warned America of what was happening:
"A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy.
"Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there." 2
In an earlier article on war profiteering, we saw how on October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City that were being conducted by Prescott Bush, the father of former president George Herbert Walker Bush.
A large number of American companies directly supported Adolph Hittler in his buildup of a German war machine: 3
Chase National Bank (Rockefeller)
National City Bank (Rockefeller)
Standard Oil (Rockefeller)
Texas [Oil] Company
Davis Oil Company
SKF Industries
General Aniline and Film
Sterling Products
Radio Corporation of America (RCA)
Ford Motors
General Motors
International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT)
Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly
Hearst newspaper syndicate
Readers Digest magazine
Du Pont
The Saturday Evening Post
Sullivan and Cromwell law firm (Allen Dulles)
Following World War II, the "High Cabal" made sure that its puppets resided in the White House and that its hirelings such as Allen Dulles were in positions of power where they could control important events.
President Eisenhower proved less totally compliant than most and his parting speech warned against the military-industrial complex.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 17, 1961
The CIA has engaged in criminal activities from its inception:
1948: The CIA corrupts democratic elections in Italy, where Italian communists threaten to win the elections
1953: overthrow of democratically-elected Mosadek in Iran
1953: Operation MK-ULTRA -- Inspired by North Korea’s brainwashing program, the CIA begins experiments on mind control. The most notorious part of this project involves giving LSD and other drugs to American subjects without their knowledge or against their will, causing several to commit suicide.
1954: overthrow of democratically-elected Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala in a military coup -- Arbenz had threatened to nationalize the Rockefeller-owned United Fruit Company, in which CIA Director Allen Dulles also owned stock. Arbenz was replaced with a series of right-wing dictators whose bloodthirsty policies killed over 100,000 Guatemalans in the next 40 years.
1957-1973: Laos -- the CIA carries out approximately one coup per year trying to nullify Laos’ democratic elections
1959: Haiti -- the U.S. military helps "Papa Doc" Duvalier become dictator of Haiti
1961: Dominican Republic -- the CIA assassinates Rafael Trujillo, a murderous dictator Washington has supported since 1930
1961: Ecuador -- the CIA-backed military forces the democratically elected President Jose Velasco to resign
1961: Congo (Zaire) -- the CIA assassinates the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba
1963: Dominican Republic -- the CIA overthrows the democratically elected Juan Bosch in a military coup, installing a repressive, right-wing junta
1964: Brazil -- a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart, replacing him with a bloodthirsty junta
1965: Indonesia -- the CIA overthrows the democratically elected Sukarno with a military coup, resulting in the government killing of at least half a million people
1965: Congo (Zaire) -- a CIA-backed military coup installs Mobutu Sese Seko as dictator
1967: Greece -- a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government two days before the elections
1967: Operation PHOENIX -- the CIA helps South Vietnamese agents identify and then murder alleged Viet Cong leaders operating in South Vietnamese villages
1968: Operation CHAOS -- The CIA has been illegally spying on American citizens since 1959, but with Operation CHAOS, President Johnson dramatically boosts the effort. CIA agents go undercover as student radicals to spy on and disrupt campus organizations protesting the Vietnam War. They are searching for Russian instigators, which they never find. CHAOS will eventually spy on 7,000 individuals and 1,000 organizations.
1970: Cambodia -- The CIA overthrows Prince Sahounek, who is highly popular among Cambodians for keeping them out of the Vietnam War. He is replaced by CIA puppet Lon Nol.
1971: Bolivia -- After half a decade of CIA-inspired political turmoil, a CIA-backed military coup overthrows the leftist President Juan Torres. In the next two years, dictator Hugo Banzer will have over 2,000 political opponents arrested without trial, then tortured, raped and executed.
1973: democratically-elected Allende in Chile is assassinated
1981: Iran/Contra begins -- The CIA begins selling arms to Iran at high prices, using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua
1987: a cocaine cartel money launderer testifies before Congress that he sent $10 million to the contras through CIA operative Felix Rodriguez (Washington Post 6/30/87)
1989: Panama -- The U.S. invades Panama to overthrow a dictator of its own making, General Manuel Noriega.
1991: funding for the Haitian junta which overthrows democratically-elected President Aristide
2004: Bush II appoints a doctrinaire reactionary as head of CIA and Goss openly sends memo to CIA personnel telling them they must support the Bush junta!
With the Nixon presidency, criminality became standard operating procedure. Either by accident or design (see Cologny and Gettlen. Silent Coup), the criminal behavior of the entire Nixon administration was exposed and Nixon was forced to resign.
When President John F. Kennedy threatened the "High Cabal" by toppling their Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, firing Allen Dulles as head of the CIA, and making plans to take control of the Federal Reserve System, he was assassinated. The U.S. Secret Service, in violation of their own rules and procedures, in collusion with the ruling plutocrats, deliberately failed to protect President Kennedy. The Secret Service knowingly escorted him in an open car around a hairpin turn into the sights of paid assassins, who fired by military-style triangulation.
In the aftermath of the bloody assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, over 200 eyewitnesses and sources were themselves murdered, obliterating possible testimony, contrary to the falsified Warren Report.
JFK was assassinated because the "High Cabal" wanted to regain its stranglehold on the country.
The Kennedy "assassination has demonstrated that most of the major events of world significance are masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of enormously powerful people who are not of one nation, one ethnic grouping, or one overridingly important business group. They are a power unto themselves for whom those others work. Neither is this power elite of recent origin. Its roots go deep into the past.”
L. Fletcher Prouty. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy "It is Colonel Prouty--with his background both as military officer and international banker--who shows us concisely that Kennedy was removed not only for his skittish policy on Vietnam and Cuba but because he fundamentally was affecting the economic might of this nation-planet, U.S.A., Inc., and its New World Order. Kennedy undermined, as Prouty fascinatingly outlines, not only the Federal Reserve Board but the CIA and its thousand-headed Medusa of an economic system (CIA: 'Capitalism's Invisible Army'), but most dangerously and most expensively (ultimately some $6 trillion in Cold War money) the world-around economic lines of the 'High Cabal' and its military-industrial complex so ominously forecast by Eisenhower in his farewell address."
Oliver Stone's Introduction to L. Fletcher Prouty's book: JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and gravely wounded as he was leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel after addressing a labor convention. Reagan was the man who stood in the way of Vice President George W. Bush becoming President. For the remainder of Reagan's term, Bush was the de facto president. The would-be assassin was John W. Hinckley Jr., who had strange ties to the Bush family. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21, 1982.
On November 13, 1986, the Reagan administration confirmed a flood of worldwide reports that it indeed had been sending Iran weapons--against both United States law and official policy--for some time. The arms deal was reportedly organized and carried out by a "crisis management" group within the 46-member National Security Council staff. In addition to Robert McFarlane, White House assistant, a prominent member of the team was marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, a decorated Vietnam veteran and deputy director for political-military affairs at the Security Council.
After invoking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination for seven months, while conniving to get a grant of limited immunity, North finally testified before Senate and House investigating committees in July of 1987. "I assumed that the President was aware of what I was doing and had, through my superiors, approved," he stated. He claimed that he had sent five memoranda to the President through Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan's national security adviser, requesting permission to divert money from the Iranian arms sales to the contras, a Nicaraguan rebel group.
North's testimony left the impression that the late director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Casey, had masterminded the financing of the contras with profits from the Iranian arms sales. Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye, presiding over the hearings, said that the Iran-contra arms-for-hostages operation was a naked attempt to create a "secret government within our government." The Senate-House investigating committee concluded that "the common ingredients of the Iran and contra policies were secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law. . . . The ultimate responsibility for the events in the Iran-contra affair must rest with the President."
On May 4, 1989, Oliver North was convicted in federal court on three of twelve counts against him. He was fined $150,000 and given a three-year suspended sentence and ordered to perform 1,200 hours of community service. Lackeys of the ruling elite caught in criminal acts either spend a few months in a country club prison, receive a suspended sentence, receive an inconsequential fine, or are pardoned by the puppet president.
On September 16, 1991, a federal judge ordered all Iran-contra charges against Oliver North dropped. And on December 24, 1991, President George W. Bush pardoned six officials charged with or convicted of misleading Congress in the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair.
One of those pardoned was former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, whose trial might have revealed that Bush was not, contrary to his claim, "out of the loop" on the deal. Weinberger's notes concerning his actions as Defense Secretary under Bush I, demonstrated that Bush was definitely in the loop. Admiral John Poindexter claimed that he conferred directly with Bush about the Iran-Contra scheme. Also, Bush and his assistant Donald Gregg communicated regularly with Felix Rodriguez, the notorious ex-CIA agent at the heart of the Contra Supply operation [See Lawrence Walsh's Firewall, W.W. Norton & Co., 1997; pp. 271-272].
The Iran-contra affair was actually a gun-running, drug smuggling operation run out of Mena, Arkansas, under the direction of Vice President Bush. 4 Unless we can overturn a presidential decree by George W. Bush to make all previous presidential and vice presidential papers unavailable except through legal action, the elder George Bush's papers will be unavailable for review to see what criminal action was committed.
The actions of the Reagan Administration during the Iran-Contra scandal revealed "a pattern of conduct and a state of mind among important people in this administration which must be described as an American style of fascism. I would prefer to avoid that term, but it is the only one in the modern political vocabulary that adequately describes the situation."
William Pfaff, Chicago Tribune, March, 1987
During the one-term presidency of George H. W. Bush, lawlessness extended to the point of using military force to protect Bush's criminal behavior. As Director of the CIA, Bush had hired Manuel Noriega to be his man in Panama. When General Noriega threatened to expose Bush's complicity in gun running, drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes, 5 a Federal court indicted Noriega on drug smuggling charges on February 5, 1988.
On December 20, 1989, 24,000 U.S. troops attacked Panama to find Noriega and bring him back to the United States for trial. The military invasion operation, code-named "Just Cause," resulted in hundreds of innocent Panamanian civilians being killed.
The best way to understand this atrocity is the viewing of a courageous documentary video on Bush's terrorist attack against a foreign people titled "The Panama Deception," the 1993 Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature.
Produced by the Empowerment Project and narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery, the documentary outlines in stark detail how Bush Sr. used the U.S. military to invade a foreign country without the American press, the American Congress, or the American people raising their voice in protest at such an atrocity.
On January 4, 1990, Noriega was charged in a U.S. court in Miami with drug trafficking and sentenced to 40 years. Before 9/11, Noriega was the only war criminal in an American prison.
The Phony Drug War
The "High Cabal" is directly involved in the $400-$600 billion international drug trafficking activity. To understand the so-called war on drugs we must realize that this is a war that is deliberately being lost. Why?
Internationally, "the war on drugs"
provides a cover for U.S. intervention in and control of other countries
adds to the military budget
increases foreign sales of U.S. weaponry
keeps the price of drugs up and the costs down
Domestically, the "drug war"
is not about decreasing drug use or drug supply
it is about
incarcerating millions of felons on the basis of mandatory minimum sentencing
providing profits for the privatized prison companies
providing funds to U.S. organizations and individuals through drug money-laundering
covert agencies who use it as a source of black funding
politicians and bankers who are hired to protect the drug revenues
politicians who receive drug money campaign contributions
inflating police spending and revenues (seizing assets)
increasing repression in the inner cities
masking the attack on civil liberties
The number of people in America using illegal drugs is said to be down appreciably from the high in 1979.
However, the phony "drug war" which the ruling junta has carried out is responsible for little of this decrease, except insofar as they have put millions of Americans in prison on drug charges. Crack cocaine use is down, for example, primarily because people were smart enough to see its devastating effect on crack addicts.
There are two major approaches to mind-altering drugs:
large-scale incarceration for drug users and military action to stop drug production internationally
decriminalization and treatment
The American criminal junta takes the first approach because of all the monetary benefits.
Sixty years ago we solved the alcohol prohibition problem. Crime was rampant. Drug gangs battled on our streets. Bootleggers sold their wares everywhere, even to schoolchildren. Police could do nothing. The vast profits of liquor smuggling fueled corruption and violence, and the drug scourge seemed poised to topple America. But on December 5th, 1933, we ended prohibition and made alcohol legal. We could do the same today with heroin, cocaine, and other hard drugs. But the "High Cabal" is making too much money from illegal drug trafficking; it doesn't want to stop the phony "war on drugs."
In South America, Coca is as safe as coffee. But it's illegal in the United States so we have cocaine smugglers, dealers, and sellers. Opium is safer than tobacco in the East. Since it's illegal in America we have heroin smugglers who bring in heroin a hundred times more powerful that that used in the East. In our prisons, real criminals are let loose, while pot smokers waste their lives behind bars. So the single largest marketplace for illegal drugs continues to be the United States.
Europe's approach is legalized, regulated markets in soft drugs, making drugs like opiates available to addicts through various treatment programs, and a more humane approach to substance abuse in general. Part of our struggle against the Bush tyranny must be to see that a reasonable drug policy is established and order restored to our neighborhoods destroyed by the "drug war" scam.
Other High Crimes of the "High Cabal"
One of the most devastating crimes that the "High Cabal" committed was the coup d'etat in the year 2000, with Florida state officials and the Supreme Court conspiring to foist an unelected George Bush on the American people. 6
Bush has done everything in his power to see that his corporate backers receive any and all assistance his administration can provide:
tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy
failure of governmental oversight for any and all regulations
non-prosecution for corporate crimes
appointment of insider foxes to guard the federal chicken coops:
Harvey Pitt as head of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who was responsible for the criminal accounting practices at Xerox
Vice President Cheney, who allowed Ken Lay and other corporate big-shots to create energy policies and appoint insiders to energy commissions
appointed the racist, sexist John Ashcroft to be attorney general and appointed other criminals to positions of power, such as John Negroponte as U.N. ambassador and Otto J. Reich as assistant secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere
These and other crimes of the "High Cabal" and their puppet president, George Bush, must be brought before the court of human reason and the people must rise up and demand that America once again becomes a nation of laws, not men.
"For more than two thousand years, since western men first began to think about the social order, the main preoccupation of political thinking has been to find a law which would be superior to arbitrary power. Men have sought it in custom, in the dictates of reason, in religious revelation, endeavoring always to set up some check upon the exercise of force. This is the meaning of the long debate about Natural Law. This is the meaning of a thousand years of struggle to bring the sovereign under a constitution, to establish for the individual and for voluntary associations of men rights which they can enforce against kings, barons, magnates, majorities, and mobs."
Walter Lippmann. The Good Society
He is the thing that wouldn't die! As the Bush Mob's term was winding down last January, I felt strangely wistful. It terms of stupidity-as-entertainment, these knuckleheads were the gift that kept giving and giving and giving.
ReplyDeleteNot to worry. Dick Cheney will keep me rolling in the aisles for quite some time to come. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the GOP nominates the dirty old dingbat in 2012?
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY