Replies to post #19051 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[easymoney101]

yeah I am a riot every day..

[easymoney101]

also I guess no drugs have caused american deaths..yeah yeah it takes a druggie to do drugs...

[easymoney101]

CONTRA-DICTIONS
Unjust Cause: Contra Drugs and Guns Connection Exposed--Again
The drugs/guns connection between the U.S. government, the Nicaraguan Contras and Los Angeles street gangs recently uncovered by a San Jose Mercury reporter, Gary Webb, is startling. Yet it is anything but news, and Webb's report barely scratches the surface of a much larger operation.
The articles reveal that a drug-dealing Contra leader, Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes, with U.S. government approval, supplied cheap cocaine in the 1980s to L.A.'s black street gangs. The rationale according to Blandon, was that "the ends justify the means." The end was funding the overthrow of the Sandinista government. In the process, tens of thousands of Nicaraguan civilians were killed and, as a byproduct, the lives of a generation of inner city and suburban American youths were also destroyed.

This was during the era of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign and the U.S. government's worldwide "war on drugs," in which the U.S. charged other governments with corruption and complicity in the drug trade.

As a result of the Mercury News articles, not only is the African American community demanding a full investigation, but so are major media outlets throughout the country.

Oddly, thorough investigations of this matter have already been conducted--awhile ago--and their conclusions indicate that the U.S./Contra, drugs/guns operation was much bigger than what Webb uncovered.

Ten years ago, the interreligious Christic Institute filed a lawsuit against 29 defendants on behalf of journalists Martha Honey and Tony Avirgan, who had almost been killed by a 1984 bomb blast intended for Nicaraguan Contra Comandante Zero. As a result of their investigation into the bombing, they uncovered a drugs/guns connection between CIA operatives and the Contras.

A few months later, when American Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua, investigations revealed that 10 of the defendants in the Honey/Avirgan lawsuit were connected with the Hasenfus/Oliver North gun-running operation.

The Hasenfus affair, of course, is what led to the Iran-Contra hearings--which inexplicably did not probe the drug connection.

The drug link did not go unnoticed by Sen. Bob Kerry (D-Neb), though. While the 1987 Kerry Report found a direct drug connection to the Contras, the findings were virtually ignored by the media.

That connection was once again exposed in 1994 by Celerino Castillo, an ex-DEA agent who was stationed in Central America during the time in question. That year, he authored a book, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & The Drug War. He says that he personally documented the drugs/guns Contra operation being run out of Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador, at which time he became aware of the complicity of the U.S. government.

In a column we wrote last year on this same subject, Castillo told us that only a small quantity of drugs come into the United States without the knowledge or complicity of U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies. He continues to stand by his statements: "I very strongly believe that."

Castillo says that the Contra/L.A. gangs connection was but "a small little branch of a massive operation" that also involved extensive drug networks in Texas, Florida, and virtually the entire United States. "The pilots [at Ilapongo] were leaving with planeloads of cocaine, not kilos," he says. The operation also involved U.S. complicity in human rights abuses, including assassinations, in Central America.

On the subject of bringing the guilty to justice, Castillo says, it was not the work of rogue agents, nor was it intelligence agencies acting on their own. Approval, either overt or tacit, had to be gotten somewhere. "You have to go straight to the top. To the White House," he says.

Months before the Hasenfus affair, Castillo says he personally exposed the drugs/guns operation to then Vice President George Bush. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Reagan knew. He was always advised."

The immoral actions of the U.S. government in fighting the Sandinistas--with drug money--says Castillo, "is now coming back to bite [former members of the Reagan/Bush Administrations] in their behinds."

Castillo maintains that many ex-Contra operatives were still dealing drugs in the 1990s, with government approval. This whole sordid episode seems to confirm the 'crazy' conspiracy theories that many people have always had about the drug trade: street gangs don't bring drugs into this country, and the distribution of billions of dollars of drugs--and the resultant money laundering--cannot occur without governmental complicity.

In 1989, the U.S. invaded Panama under the rubric "Operation Just Cause," and under the pretext that its government, led by dictator Manuel Noriega, was dealing in drugs. So, who should invade the United States?

(Copyright Chronicle Features, 1996)

* Powderburns can be obtained by calling Castillo directly at: 210-631-3818

** Rodriguez & Gonzales can be reached at PO Box 7905, Albq. NM 87194-7905 or 505-248-0092. They can also be reached at: XColumn.

http://a4a.mahost.org/contra.html

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