WAR ON DRUGS or is it a WAR ON US???

[roots69]

THE WAR ON DRUGS, THE MEDIA, AND RACE

But as the White House covert war went about poisoning Americans with drugs, the burden of addiction belonged to a relatively small number of Americans, and the media reported the melodrama of a war waged by politicians and policemen - not by scientists and doctors. All too frequently the rhetoric of the war against drugs played to the prejudices and fears of a society beset by racial frictions.
One need not look far to see the pattern of miscasting the focus of the war on drugs on African-Americans. Almost every time one opens up one of the major weekly magazines, or watches network news, the story of the war on drugs is supplemented with pictures of African-Americans being arrested by the police. At times, the script of the war on drugs is insidious, as in a Dec. 3, 1990 TIME Magazine article on the war on drugs: "Recognizing that the war on drugs has singled out the poor, Bennett has urged state and federal authorities to come down harder on middle-class users. He considers 'casual' drug users 'carriers' who are even more infectious than addicts because they suggest to young people 'that you can do drugs and be O.K.'" (pg. 48)

In this article, the assumption is made that middle-class users are "casual" users and the poor are the "addicts." While Bennett admits to bias against the inner-city poor, immediately adjacent to this paragraph is a photograph of a downcast black woman in handcuffs with the caption "... the myth is that drug use is primarily a ghetto habit." Every photograph in the article is of African-Americans — dead, imprisoned, or injecting drugs. Nowhere in the article are to be found photographs of white drug users. On pages 46 and 47 of the TIME article, the charts show that as crack-cocaine prices decreased during the 1980's arrests increased — again making the association with more affordable drugs and crime.

However, no charts are to be seen indicating the decrease in overall drug use throughout the decade. But again, on page 46, TIME makes the association between "hard-core addiction," poverty, and race: "While the U.S. has made significant progress in curbing casual drug use, it has made far less headway on the problems that most trouble the public, hard-core addiction and drug-related violence. Last year the National Institute on Drug Abuse estimated that the number of current users of illegal drugs had fallen to 14.5 million from 23 million in 1985. But while there was a dramatic decrease in the number of occasional users, the number of people who used drugs weekly or daily (292,000 in 1988 vs. 246,000 in 1985) had escalated as addiction to crack soared in some mainly poor and minority areas.

Now in examining these statistics, the article does mention that in the period 1985 — 1990 there were 8,500,000 fewer users of illegal drugs, but between 1985 and 1988, there were 46,000 more daily and weekly users of drugs, which TIME, again, attributes to crack. The TIME article attributes the upward trend, which differs from the downward trend by 2 orders of magnitude. to "crack ... in some mainly poor and minority areas."

The bias of the TIME article is clear: Even though the increase in frequent users is a mere 0.5% of the overall decline in drug use, TIME blurs the distinctions between kinds of illegal drugs and the difference between drug use and drug abuse. Without even backing up these claims with any statistics, TIME exaggerates the increase in frequent drug use and portrays minorities and ever-cheaper crack cocaine as the source of the presumed drug scourge. The TIME article admits that whites account for 69% of cocaine users. but buries that important little factoid in the middle of the article and doesn't even delve into cocaine use by whites. Might drug consumption be the same for both whites and blacks of the same socio-economic groups? One study indicated that drug use is higher among white high school students, for the very simple reason that the white teenagers have more money to spend on drugs than black teenagers. It is disturbing that the media consistently break down drug use and abuse statistics into racial groups rather than economic groups. Black community leaders have decried the apparent media bias in over-reporting "drug-related" crimes in black communities and under-reporting the illicit drug trade in white communities. They note that when the economics of the illegal drug trade is analyzed it is readily apparent that black communities could not possibly be the locus of America's drug trade, for the very simple reason that these communities do not have the kind of disposable income required to support America's illicit drug habit.

According to a 1989 National Bureau of Economic Research survey, two-thirds of all inner city male youth, both black and white, believe that they can make more money from crime than from legitimate work — double the percentage of a survey conducted 10 years earlier. But since young minority males have been disproportionately targeted by the war on drugs, they are the ones serving increasingly long prison sentences for drug offenses.

Minority leaders understand all too well that casting their communities as major centers of the drug trade perpetuates the notion that minority neighborhoods are plagued by poor welfare-dependant rabble who waste public assistance on instant gratification rather than attempting to better themselves. In media over-emphasis upon inner-city drug problems, people in minority neighborhoods are disproportionately portrayed as threats and dangers to society. Taxpayer anger and resentment, already expressed in disastrous cuts in social and education programs, is further inflamed and aggravated by media images of minorities engaged in violence and self-destructive behaviors.



DISMANTLING THE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT RACE

Even though the association between crime and poverty have been long established, the media report crime rates and social problems as though the white majority and racial minorities are on an equal socio-economic playing field. Reporting these statistics according to race, the media represents by default that crime and other social problems are correlated with race. But if the media were really interested in a fair and unbiased presentation of crime in America the media would ask whether a significant difference exists between the crime rates and public assistance incidences of both impoverished minorities and poverty-stricken whites. It may be more revealing to compare economic groups rather than racial groups, since the comparison would reveal a stronger relationship between social problems and economic strata as opposed to social problems and race. One would think it incumbent upon the media to inquire as to whether whites living in poverty behave any differently than their minority counterparts who find themselves in equal economic straits.

The media persist in reporting the relatively higher public assistance and incarceration rates of the minority populace beleaguered by poverty as though economics has nothing to do with social problems, leaving the audience to assume that the overriding contributing factor to crime and dependence upon public assistance is race. When one takes into account the acknowledged fact that a vastly greater proportion of minorities than whites live in poverty, a lower crime rate will be attributed to the total white populace since poor, middle class and wealthy whites are lumped into the wealthier white majority. The adverse effects of poverty (i.e. crime, drug abuse, etc.) will be more pronounced for minorities as a whole, when statistics are broken down strictly by race, failing to factor in economic status. So by token of their relative wealth, whites are portrayed by the media as somehow more virtuous than minorities even though the media never addresses the obvious question as to whether economically disadvantaged whites are as likely as to be welfare mothers, pregnant teens, drug dealers or absentee fathers. While there is no doubt that serious problems afflict minority communities, and these problems are not to be downplayed for the sake of opposing government policy, the question remains whether it is accurate or fair to emphasize race when so many other conspicuous variables are involved.

In the sensationalism of the war on drugs, if one cannot "just say no" then one is lacking in moral capacity, and, since the venal media declares that all inner-city crimes have become drug-related crimes, premature death is then the inevitable result of the idleness and hedonism of the darker races. The perception that welfare dependence fosters idleness, drug use, and violence in turn leads to the conclusion that welfare recipients are taking advantage of other citizens and offering nothing in return, which of course absolves the middle-class of obligations in the form of taxes and concern for fellow citizens. Those who wish they didn't feel pangs of conscience about the socioeconomic distances between the inner city and the suburbs can be comforted by media double-think about race — believing that the segments of society most plagued by violent crime, poor health, shortened life span, and poor education are the most deserving of such circumstances. Indeed, poor whites exhibit greater high school drop-out rates than do poor blacks.

In letting misconceptions about race justify repudiation of responsibility for the barriers and poverty experienced by minorities, responsibility is ultimately relegated to minority children who had no say about the world into which they were born. How often have we heard the sentiment expressed that "they have more children than they can afford?" In the rhetorical manipulation of resentment against "welfare mothers," their children are bestowed a heritage as society's "excess baggage," despite the fact that single women (and men) are denied access to federal welfare, and the reason federal welfare is grudgingly disbursed is to give succor to the children in poverty who are blameless for the circumstances into which they were born. But despite glaring inaccuracies in their rhetoric conservative politicians (most notably Ronald Reagan) exploited an existing substrate of prejudice by using anecdotal rhetorical ploys like "welfare mothers," a hot-button image that became a metaphor for the oft-depicted absentee fathers, pregnant teens, high drop-out rates, crime, vagrant hedonism, etc. — phenomena that in the minds of the middle class become indistinguishable from race.

The media is complicit in promulgating this image, neglecting to mention that the majority of welfare recipients are white, failing to examine the incidence of the same social problems amongst white counterparts of poor minorities, and conveniently forgetting the effects of America's historic racial legacy that impacts minority communities to this day. The media reinforce the assumption middle class "news consumers" harbor that the disproportionate burden of poverty upon minorities is an artifact of some imagined lack of industry on the part of an ethnic minority.

Federal assistance in the form of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, by the way, is capriciously withdrawn if the woman tries to budget costs by cohabiting with a man who may or may not be the children's father, or who may or may not even be the woman's lover. In a country with a 50% divorce rate, when presented the choice between her children's well being and a potential male partner whose presence entails forfeiture of AFDC (provided he cannot stay one step ahead of welfare investigators) the woman is compelled to choose against marriage and for the children if his income is less than the monthly AFDC check.

Barely maintaining some modicum of objectivity, the mass media have obsequiously followed the government's script of the war on drugs. Having saturated the public with images of African-Americans indulging in drug use or being arrested by the police, the media still neglect to even mention that the majority of illegal drug consumers are white or that the majority of the illicit drug trade occurs in white communities. If media intent is to be judged by its actions, I am inclined to think the media expect the "news consumer" to infer that the overriding factors contributing to violence in the inner city are drugs and race, that the worsening appearance of the inner city is a result of an indigenous idleness and amoral hedonism rewarded and reinforced by what is in fact paltry federal assistance to poor families.

But even though the children in impoverished minority neighborhoods are future citizens and are blameless for their parent's econoinic situation, it is anticipated they will ultimately repeat the cycle of welfare dependency, which in effect justifies denying them, their parents, and their communities desperately needed funds. This self-fulfilling prophecy relegates America's children to a category where nothing is owed to them in the form of education, health care or respect, since conventional wisdom expects them to be another generation of social parasites.

 

[roots69]

THE WAR ON DRUGS AND POLITICIANS

While the media can be accused of complicity in the exaggerations and myths of the war on drugs by failing to report actual drug-use trends, many politicians are guilty of outright malfeasance in cynically manipulating war on drugs rhetoric. Boston University President John Silber in response to questions on why he didn't announce his crime-control plans in a mostly black Boston neighborhood said "Well, I will tell you something about that area. There is no point in my making a speech on crime control to a bunch of addicts." His comment was in reference to the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Roxbury, Mass. He later recanted his remark after a widespread outcry ensued.
President Bush in his September 1989 televised speech to the nation, attempted to escalate the rhetoric of the war on drugs by holding up a bag of cocaine purchased from a Washington, D.C. resident in Lafayette Park — just across the street from the White House. It was a stage prop to signify how the scourge of drugs had pervaded society, and that the plague of drug dealers had finally washed up upon the innocent shore of the White House lawn. This was exposed for the fraud it was when it leaked out that DEA agents had to lure the drug dealer to Lafayette Park in order to have the arrest occur across the street from the White House. When George Bush was caught by reporters in his little cocaine-bag trick, his response was, "I don't understand — I mean, has somebody got some advocates here for this drug guy?" Bush's little cocaine-bag trick was analogous to the larger intrigue apparently perpetrated by the CIA and the media: the most easily scapegoated elements of society were fair game in an attempt to justify prolonging the military-industrial complex and expanding the scope of America's internal security apparatus. This media image confirms the worst that can be imagined by the middle class about the neighborhoods populated by racial groups whose plight would otherwise demand more state charity — as opposed to an escalation of the war on drugs which will further enrich the coffers of the military and police agencies.

He thought he was playing to a willing audience, very much in the same manner Ronald Reagan demonstrated gutter-level ethics by using cryptoracist rhetorical ploys like "welfare mothers." In the supply-side logic of Reaganomics, the poor should be motivated by the unremitting spur of their poverty and the wealthy should be motivated by the opportunity to acquire yet more wealth. The media have conveyed, for mass consumption, the Calvinist fallacy that drug-use and poverty are the products of laziness and immorality and the appointments and comforts of the consumer life-style are symbols of American virtue.



THE WAR ON DRUGS AND LAW AND ORDER

Naturally, the cities of America, which witnessed prohibition-related violence in the 1920's and 30's, bear the costs of similar violence today, as poverty continues to take its toll on a growing underclass. The conditions of chronic poverty (remember, 20 million people in America suffer from hunger) only aggravates the human desires for escapist self-intoxication, and intensifies criminal greed modeled after and justified by Donald Trump, Samuel Pierce, Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, Oliver North, or corrupt military contractors. The rule of law breaks down slowly in a spiral that starts from the top.
In states like Florida, tougher anti-drug legislation has resulted in astonishing numbers of first-time drug offenders serving increasingly longer mandatory sentences, thereby pressing the early release of inmates convicted of violent crimes. The statistics are breathtaking in that they demonstrate how obviously misguided the current drug strategy has become.

George Bush's current Drug Czar, Bob Martinez, during his 1986 - 1990 tenure as Florida's governor managed to push through tough legislation that entailed mandatory one-year to three-year prison terms for persons convicted of selling drugs near college campuses, public parks, or using, buying, or selling drugs near or in housing projects.

But while the number of inmates convicted of drug offenses for the period 1985 - 1990 jumped 580% for simple possession and 700% for low-level drug activity (i.e. purchase/sale), the number of high-level drug traffickers (i.e. drug kingpins) remained constant in the 5-year period at 1,000 inmates. According to two FSU researchers, the majority of current arrestees have no prior criminal record. Despite Martinez's accomplishment of building more prisons in his 4-year tenure than were built in the previous two decades, Florida prison populations surged with first-time drug offenders serving mandatory sentences. The resulting overcrowding was eased via a variety of sentence- reductions and early-release programs, resulting in the duration of murder sentences dropping by 40%, robbery sentences dropping by 42 percent, and overall prison sentences dropping by 38%. Florida, with all of its new laws and new prisons, now has its convicts serving the lowest percentage of their prison sentences in the country — 32.5%. (Mother Jones, July/August 1991) It seems that not only is the war on drugs biased and duplicitous, but is also stupid and lost.

But in examining the relative performance of our system, the U.S. currently has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, exceeding South Africa's and the Soviet Union's. Indeed there are more American black males in prison than there are in college. In 1990, a Minnesota drug-enforcement law was found racially biased and unconstitutional by the Minnesota Supreme Court, because it imposed harsher penalties upon illicit users of crack cocaine (predominantly African-Americans) than consumers of more-expensive powdered cocaine (mostly caucasians). And note that crack cocaine is essentially the same as freebasing powdered cocaine — a practice popular among caucasian cocaine users. A similar existing Federal law imposes harsher sentences on crack-cocaine convictions than powdered-cocaine convictions.

Looking back at the past decade, we find that the number of Americans in prison doubled from 500,000 to 1 million. that the majority of convicts are imprisoned for drug offenses (not violent crimes), and while 80% of drug users are white, and as of 1990, the majority of prisoners are black. More disturbing yet, 1 in 4 black males in their twenties are incarcerated or on parole or probation. but 1 of 5 black males between the ages of 16 - 34 are in prison, or on parole or probation, which indicates that the broader age range finds young black males staying out of the criminal justice system, and that black males who came of age in the Reagan era were those most targeted by the war on drugs. Between 1985 and 1988, prosecutions of white juvenile drug offenders dropped 15 percent while jumping 88% for their minority counterparts. When assembled, these statistics have prompted many to call the government's war on drugs a "race war," never mind the long-acknowledged lopsided trend of minorities receiving harsher prison sentences than white counterparts convicted of equal crimes.

With astonishing numbers of young minority males convicted of drug offenses paroled from crowded jails, the effect is not to jail them, but to bar them from voting and to further incumber them in finding employment or advancing themselves economically as a result of the stigma of their criminal records. But while drug treatment programs are eminently more humane and more economical (1/4th the cost of prisons), and realize vastly lower recitivism rates (1/4th the recidivism of prisons), the emphasis is not upon bettering the lives of citizens who run afoul of our drug laws, but to create a criminal justice debacle that will take years to rectify.

But the racial aspects of the war on drugs are accompanied by an equally insidious specter: the steady erosion of our civil liberties. Under federal drug laws, agents can — without a formal court indictment — confiscate your home, car, and the funds with which you would retain an attorney so to defend yourself! And the government is not obliged to return that property if you are acquitted. Your lawyer may be subpoenaed to testify against you, so lawyer-client privilege is no longer inviolate.

The Reagan and Bush era Supreme Court has upheld police powers to detain and interrogate travelers who bear a resemblance to "drug couriers," to engage in surveillance, including secretly taping conversations and sifting through garbage. An anonymous tip is now sufficient grounds for a search warrant, meaning the police no longer have to verify that their source is reliable. New anti-crime legislation entails granting the police the power to submit as admissible evidence any property gained as a result of entering your home without a warrant. The new legislation also includes extending mandatory death sentences to include drug convictions which do not involve a homicide, and to limit federal death sentence appeals thereby speeding executions. The U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled that a mandatory life sentence for a first-time drug offender acting as a drug courier is not cruel and unusual punishment. But apart from the violence of the drug trade, the number of deaths attributed directly to illegal drugs in 1985 was 3,562, whereas 520,000 people die each year strictly from the health effects of our legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

Even when the violence of the drug trade is taken into account, the figure surges up towards 15,000 deaths per year, which still pales in comparison to the violence and premature deaths attributed to alcohol. But even though no drug is as renowned for its association with violence and premature death as alcohol, surely Americans want to retain their freedoms to use and abuse alcohol. Indeed, given the well- known physically addictive nature of both cigarettes and alcohol, it is interesting to note that marijuana is not addictive. Strictly by virtue of marijuana's illegal status, it serves as a vertical marketing tool for other illicit — and addictive — drugs. One need to look no further for a finer example of the hypocrisy of our government's policies regarding substance abuse and addiction, than the unseemly spectre of our government's subsidies of the tobacco-growing industry. The cigarette manufacturers however, expect healthy profits, since the remaining market of addicted cigarette smokers will easily bear cigarettes manufacturers' price hikes.

Indeed, in the face of a declining market of cigarette smokers in the U.S., our cigarette manufacturers are seeking new markets. So, in the course of recent trade negotiations with Thailand the U.S. government, apparently looking after the interests of U.S. tobacco growers, recently threatened to impose stiff trade penalties if the Thai government didn't ease its prohibition of tobacco use in that southeast Asian country.



THE WAR ON DRUGS AND FREEDOM

The current wave of drug testing via urine specimens by corporations will not detect occasional cocaine use but will detect occasional marijuana use - marijuana being the drug-of-choice for what the right wing considers political heretics. These are of course, the same liberal heretics, according to arch-conservatives like Jesse Helms, who want to give jobs away to blacks, who were unpatriotic spoiled brats who protested against the Vietnam War and used drugs, who allowed an epidemic of abortions, and who are responsible for the general decline of morality and patriotism in the country. And the drug testing ostensibly required to qualify for employment may be a cover for corporations and insurance companies to winnow out employees who are pregnant, have diabetes, etc., while providing no guarantee that the results of the tests will be applied equitably or fairly.
And despite the obvious drug scandal lurking behind Iran-Contra, no one in their right mind dare openly oppose the war on drugs for risk of being suspect as a heretic, liberal, or worse, a DRUG USER. In this political atmosphere reasoned debate about drugs is stifled and open dissent casts suspicion on anyone opposed to a governmental drive to acquire enhanced powers of repression and control. Too embarrassed to even utter a squeak of opposition to an obviously cynical abuse of our rights, the population is cowed into accepting the goverment's fear campaign and grows to regard the complaints of civil rights advocates as somehow either naive, liberal, fringe, militant, or radical.

The scope of this impingement upon civil rights has extended to the criminalization of millennia-old American Indian ritual use of hallucinogenic peyote cactus buds in religious practice. The ritual use of hallucinogenic plants in the Native American Clourch was legal until recently, but now that religious freedom has been abrogated by the war on drugs.



FREEDOM AND SECURITY
The devastating violence of the Prohibition era finally prompted nullifying the Prohibition amendment; the rum-running gangster violence was far more devastating than the social costs associated with legal alcohol. The question is, what is it that is so different about other addictive drugs? If one were to compare the escalation of inner city violence associated with the illicit trade of highly addictive drugs, and the alternative of legalizing the drugs so that payment schedules would no longer be enforced with hand guns, it seems the choice would be for legalizing the drugs. While there would be some increase in drug use and addiction as a result of legalization, the destructive violence associated with the drug trade would be eliminated. In communities afflicted with drug abuse and paralyzed by poverty and violence, eliminating the violence is paramount. If the alternative of legalization entails a marginal increase in drug addiction and a decrease in drug-related violence, then it seems the truly rational alternative is to accept a few more addicts in return for fewer deaths.
But in lieu of a rational discussion about the pro's and con's of legalization, we have been treated to a barrage of rhetoric and demagoguery. Rather than try to clarify the issue, rather than attempt to answer to the desperation of communities besieged by poverty and violence, our policitians lambast anyone who calls into question the failed policies that have lead to this awful situation. Repeatedly, I have observed politicians cloud the issue with rhetoric and polemics, refusing to discuss the benefits and trade-offs of legalization, annointing themselves sole purveyors of canonical truth. In the interest of the status quo (i.e., minimal taxes for the rich and upper middle class in fortress suburbia), our politicians have scape-goated minorities so to justify denial of their plight or the need to spend the money required to extract them from the mire of inadequate education and health care. In the portrayal of the poor as deserving of their plight and undeserving of the assistance of society, the polity has been infected with the deadly pale cast of theocracy, thereby leaving us the lurid spectre of an increasingly violent society.

It seems that the greatest threats to freedom in America are the habits of liberty, citizen responsibility and tolerance falling into disuse. If one turns on the T.V., the media promote (he perception that T.V.'s. stereos, CD players. VCR's, fast food, microwave entrees, cars and expressways expand the scope of freedom that one may enjoy, while the same media has portrayed as threats to these freedoms tax-hungry liberals and welfare- dependent neighborhoods riddled with drug dealers. As the average American adult watches 30 hours per week of T.V., he is increasingly isolated from civic life and perceives his world via a one-way conversation with the sensationalist mass-media. In that one's Constitutional freedoms and social-contract obligations are replaced by consumer pseudo-freedoms, one's status as a consumer supplants one's status as a citizen. Political expression of anything other than what has been espoused by "experts" falls in the realm of the imprudent, and aspirations or opinions that counter the "conventional wisdom" are oddball, selfish, misguided, or misinformed. If not regarded as "normal," "bipartisan," "acceptable," "efficient," "strong," or "tough," other ideas become regarded as anomalous. The labels "liberal," "weak," "anti-family," etc., pre-empt any doubts or criticism of what the ivory tower technocrats and policy analyst priesthood has determined to be the final shining ultimate truth. And if confronted with evidence that casts doubt upon the wisdom or efficacy of current policy, the status quo is defended by either clouding the issue with some tangential matter or avoiding an honest response or concession with a reliable thought terminating cliche. Our politicians conduct opinion polls, much in the manner that marketing research is done for our clothes and our cars, to parade that ephemeral mandate of the people missing when 50% of the electorate didn't bother to vote (a viable well-funded organized third party could easily take advantage of such a large proportion of non-voters if they were convinced that voting would be in their best interest). In election time, emotional rhetorical "hot buttons" (i.e. drugs, flag desecration, Willie Horton. ACLU membership, reverse discrimination) are determined via marketing research to determine which voting blocks can be motivated to vote and which voting blocks can be alienated and dis-motivated into not voting.

With costly media contests necessarily funded on both sides by monied interests, the republic comes to resemble an oligarchy, with each party becoming increasingly interchangable, offering safe opinions in return for the largesse of well-to-do political donors.

The Democrats, nominal party of opposition in the past decade and presumably friends of civil liberties, have become timid and as a result Congress has abdicated more and more of its power to the executive branch, a capitulation with profound ramifications. The myriad voices that are necessary to democratic rule are homogenized into the incomprehensible circuitous babble of politicians who listen not to the electorate, but rather select the voters meeting the criteria of the political marketing surveys.

But if the mass media were to offer its "consumers" an honest examination of what the war on drugs has so far entailed, how long would popular support last for an unjustifiable war on our civil rights? Under the pretense of fighting drugs and violence, the government has acquired enhanced police powers. A September 1989 Washington Post opinion poll showed more than half the respondents were willing to "give up some freedoms" in order to fight the war on drugs — including informing on family members, universal mandatory drug testing, military involvement, etc. The cynicism of the war on drugs might have passed as a lesson in how absurd the rancor and rhetoric of democracy can get at times, but foremost it stands as an ominous milestone. When one accounts for the steady erosion of our civil rights, the Iran-Contra affair, the CIA-Contra intrigues, the widespread media complicity in promoting war on drugs rhetoric while ignoring the CIA-Contra involvement in the drug trade, the war on drugs has been immediately damaging to the habits of liberty and has sought to make the most basic tenets of our Constitution null and void.

As the U.S. Government has been deprived of the USSR as an enemy, our leaders must conjure up new threats so that we may require their leadership. The war on drugs ostensibly attacked drug use and abuse, but in the end it sought to acquire as much as possible the sum total of our civil rights. In selecting the most easily scapegoated elements of society and the poorly understood illness of drug addiction, the government rallies one group of people against another by offering protection from a government- proclaimed epidemic that would supposedly spread, if left unchecked, to the innocent realms beyond the inner cities.

In offering protection from a social problem better addressed by doctors and education, the same government which promised to get big government off our backs has succeeded in expanding its available powers of repression and control and has scapegoated and marginalized a racial minority. If one were to watch the evening news in recent years, one might have drawn the conclusion that the greatest threat to our internal security was an epidemic of drug abuse and related violence, and the villains responsible for this awful plague were Narco-militarists in Central and South America, and the darker races in America's inner-cities. This widely broadcast notion set the precedent for further incursions upon privacy and civil rights in the future. But just as the Reagan administration was found to have violated its own declared policy of combating terrorism and terrorist attacks by dealing arms to declared terrorists, a deeper look into the war on drugs reveals a government partnership with drug traffickers while presumably fighting drugs.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky has noted: "If the media proceed to expose the probable U.S. government complicity in the international drug racket, that will (cause the administration serious problems) given the effort to exploit the drug problem as an additional device to mobilize the public and bring it to accept the strengthening of state power and the attack on civil liberties that is yet another platform of the conservative agenda." (Culture of Terrorism, p. 186) President Dwight Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961: "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." But monied interests who buy the mass media have convinced many voters that taxes are being wasted on social programs presumably rewarding poverty and encouraging minority idleness leading to drug dependency and violence. It's the same monied interests benefiting from increased spending on the corrupt military-industrial complex at the expense of social programs, childhood nutrition, and education.

In light of the Iran-Contra intrigues and the psychological warfare schemes of the war on drugs, it can be argued that Eisenhower's greatest fear has come true. We must heed the 1961 omen and take care that we do not submit to a demagogue offering security in exchange for freedom, for we will find ourselves in a situation where we are neither secure nor free. Democracy only works if all the groups collectively welcome each other and accept each other's interests in addition to their own. Otherwise, the polity evolves into something other than democratic, and the buffer against turmoil that the habit of compromise provides is diminished.

The only viable long-term alternative for the U.S. is to treat all of its people as though they are indeed citizens. The dangers of a selfish oligarchy using smoke and mirrors tactics is that the resulting mass alienation of the public from the democratic process leaves the republic vulnerable to the increasing incidence of demagoguery. It must be widely recognized that all Americans' destinies are intertwined and all are inexorably linked and responsible for one another. The alternative is reaping a crop of tragedy from the iniquities that have been sown, and that prospect could come sooner than we think.

 

[roots69]

Interesting stuff!!


THE CHRONOLOGY

1820 — Rothschilds established as the leading bank in Europe. Bankers who allied themselves with the Rothschilds, and those who supported the Masonic order, found themselves well off. Those who didn't had a rough way to go.

1840 — During an attempt at alcohol prohibition, then-attorney Abraham Lincoln states: "Prohibition makes a crime out of things that are not crimes ... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

1842 — Cannabis makes up about half of all medicines sold in America. No one reports serious problems with use.

1850 — Cannabis prescribed as the prime medicine for more than 100 separate illnesses or diseases in U.S. Pharmacopoeia.

1865 — Northern Industrialists win War Between the States. Now have power base over agricultural South, influences westward expansion of U.S, location of railroads. Mary Todd Lincoln prescribed Cannabis for the nervous breakdown she suffered following husband (President) Lincoln's assassination.

1875 — California, in a blatant act of racism, bans Opium smoking by Chinese. Large, well-run opium houses ran out of business, replaced by smaller, less reputable houses. Usage increases.

1876 — Turkish Hashish exhibition at Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition was most popular. Fairgoers encouraged to return again and again to "enhance" their enjoyment of the fair.

1883 — First Federal law against drugs. Congress heavily taxed smoking Opium. First time taxation was used to legislate morality, instead of raise revenues. Controlled by Treasury Department

1884 — Supreme Court decision making corporations artificial persons. Gives corporations 14th amendment protections.

1888 — Using 1883 Opium taxation law as precedent, Federal government banned certain types of Opium from being imported, and banned Chinese from importing Opium at all. Government now surrenders revenue raising in favor of controlling "morality."

1890 — Standard Oil of Ohio is refining 90% of America's oil, thanks to Rothschild financing.

1894 — Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report released to British. Study done in India. Judged the physical, mental, moral effects of smoking Cannabis, urges against any prohibition based on "no appreciable physical injury of any kind, ... no injurious effects on the mind, ... (and) no moral injury whatever."

1895 — Rothschilds begin to finance American business.They do so primarily through the Warburgs of Germany who were partners of Kuhn, Loeb and Company of New York. Both Warburgs and Kuhn/Loeb would be principals of Federal Reserve Board. Rothschilds would finance Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and the Harriman Railroad system.

1896 — McKinley elected president. Marcus Alonzo Hannah from Standard Oil of Ohio raised 16 Million dollars for campaign, otherwise unheard of until 1960's.

1898 — Spanish American war starts, with William Randolph Hearst's "Yellow Journalism" fueling the fires. Hearst begins his long campaign of racism against Hispanics, Orientals, and Africans, and the things they do in their cultures.

1900 — Mellon bank, 6th largest in America, finances very successful oil "gusher" in Spindletop, Texas. Eli Lilly and Parke Davis, in a joint venture, develops strain of Cannabis called Cannabis Americana." Strain is a very potent Cannabis Indica, to be used in their medicines.

1906 Pure Food and Drug Act (Wiley Act) passed. Opens door for government intervention into food and medicine production.

1911 — Standard Oil of New Jersey found in violation of Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Forced to diversify, though all companies they split into, John D. Rockefeller had at least 25% of stock. Therefore, spirit of Sherman Anti-Trust violated.

1912 — Wiley Act amended, giving government right to determine if a substance is "harmful."

1913 — Formation of Federal Reserve Board, a private organization, which began the practice of dictating monetary policy to government (in direct violation of U.S. Constitution). Federal Reserve Act was also called the Aldrich bill, after its prime sponsor Nelson Aldrich, the maternal grandfather of Nelson and David Rockefeller. One of the provisions for passage of the act was the identities of the class A stockholders of the Fed not be revealed. According to R.E. McMaster, publisher of a financial newsletter "The Reaper," the top eight stock-holders are the Rothschild banks of London and Berlin, Lazard Brothers banks of Paris, Israel Moses Seif Banks of Italy, Warburg Bank of Hamburg and Amsterdam, Lehman Brothers Bank of New York, Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York, Chase Manhattan of New York, and Goldman, Sachs Bank of New York. These banks own the Fed through about 300 stock-holders, with a lot of interlocking directorships and intermarriages. Aldrich Act voted down, but the same bill, with some slight modifications, was reintroduced just before Christmas, when many congressmen would have already left Washington. The Owens-Glass Bill passed into law on December 23rd. Act is unconstitutional Acceptance of Income Tax act by government (never legally voted into law). National Association of Manufacturers was exposed, through a series of articles in the New York World, as being involved in bribery of congressmen, other corruptions including union busting and violence against workers. Known to be Fascist. Mellon bank buys out Gulf Oil, opens first drive up gas station in Pittsburgh. Pancho Villa, Mexican freedom fighter, recovers 800,000 acres of Sonora, Mexico timberland bought for pennies on the dollar of value by William Randolph Hearst. Villa and his men are great smokers of "Canamo" (Cannabis). Hearst, in retaliation, starts slur campaign against Cannabis, using Mexican slang word "Marihuana," and claiming it causes Mexicans to be lazy and thieving. By 1920 Hearst applied Cannabis to Blacks, claiming that after smoking it, Black men were insolent and wanted to rape white women.

1914 — Passage of Harrison Anti-Narcotics act, requiring taxation and permits to sell "narcotics." Initial enforcement involved arresting doctors who still prescribed Opiates. Six months later, "American Medicine" magazine editorializes that since passage, narcotics use has risen with sinister consequences resulting from the character of places addicts needed to go to procure drugs, and the people they had to associate with. The news media of the day continues to mis-report drug issues. The New York Times says Cannabis has "Practically the same effect as morphine and cocaine." WWI starts in Europe, with assassi-nation of Arch-duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo.

1916 USDA issues bulletin 404, urging the use of Hemp paper. Department issues a dire warning about the dangers of using wood pulp paper: "Our forests are being cut three times as fast as they grow ... it is advisable to investigate the paper-making value of the more promising plant materials before a critical situation arises." Since Hemp produces over four times more paper per acre than trees, without the need for hazardous chemicals such as sulfuric acid and dioxins, USDA urges more use of Hemp for paper.

1917 — America enters WWI, duPont supplies 40% of gunpowder. Bolshevik revolution in Russia creates "communist state." U.S. Military is used for the first time to suppress anti-war dissidents by using overt police-type actions, and covert surveillance of dissidents. This led to the establishment of the Military Intelligence Division (MID). The Military saw two missions: 1. Prevent troop disaffection, and 2. protect national resources and morale that might affect military actions afield. MID became involved with strike breaking and "slacker" raids." Slackers were those whose loyalty was questioned, or who found excuses not to join the military. "Disloyalty" eventually became "subversion." With the Bolsheviks gaining strength in preparation for the Russian revolution, the military intelligence community was born. It continued after the war to ensure the Communists did not take over this country. It also created an attitude of paranoia, fueled by an also growing fascist outlook of strict adherence to what has become known as the "National Party Line." Military intelligence joins forces for the first time with private sector detective agencies against German infiltration and,later, against Bolshevism. Many groups such as Pinkerton's, Burns, Wackenhut, and "service" organizations such as the American Legion, etc., share information with government agencies about Communist organizations, labor movement groups, and other dissidents. Industrial "defense" programs and seminars for weeding out radicals and other "undesirables" such as labor organizers were set up by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in conjunction with the FBI and the army. The American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) provided "security" guidance for its members in addition to countersubversive propaganda.

1918 — Formation of Thule Society, the beginning of the Nazi party. Alcohol prohibition starts. It's likely that certain interests like duPont, Standard Oil, and others created alcohol bans to prevent production of non-petroleum fuels for the burgeoning automobile industry. duPont begins production of rayon, continues research into synthetics. Treaty of Versailles ends WWI. Austro-Hungarian empire splits up, causes Vatican to lose its buffer between Prussia and Orthodox Russia. Disaster for Vatican,

politically. Secretary of Treasury reports underground drug trafficking flourishing, "dope peddlers" had established a nation-wide organization, smuggling was rampant, and use of forbidden substances was increasing.

1919 — Tea Pot Dome Oil Scandal, involving banker and soon-to-be Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, Who knew of illegal oil lease sales. Henry Ford makes anti-Semitic views known. American Legion formed in Paris to discourage WWI veterans from demanding their rights. Sterling Drug buys Bayer Aspirin, a German firm. Catholic Priest Eugenio Pacelli, who later becomes Pope Pius XII is terrorized by Bolsheviks. Leaves indelible anti-Communist prejudice. Alcohol prohibition begins, just as Ethanol is about to compete with petroleum. Hemp is most efficient of the biomass fuels. Mellon has a hand in it. Attorney General A. Mitchel Palmer convinces Congress more money is needed to fight Bolshevik radicals. Claimed radicals had picked July 4, 1919 as the day of revolution here. William J. Flynn launches new anti-radical program in August. Orders "a vigorous and comprehensive investigation of anarchistic and similar classes, Bolshevism and kindred agitations ... " 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover put in charge of General Intelligence division of F.B.I. Mass raids held simultaneously in 12 American cities to round up and deport alien radicals; hundreds of Union of Russian Workers arrested. Only 43 of them could be deported. 200 others were added, deported in December. Bureau's main surveillance target was I.W.W., but it achieved its greatest success in the steel strike of 1919. Bureau consistently exaggerates the radical views of strike leaders and treats strikes as part of a planned revolutionary takeover.

1920 — Warren G. Harding elected president-Andrew Mellon appointed secretary of treasury. American companies such as Ford, GM, American I.G. (I.G. Farben), AT&T, ITT, duPont, General Aniline & film, others start trade agreements with Nazis (in 20's), including conspiracy to rearm Germany in violation of Versailles and Geneva Disarmament agreements, with the help of Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce. Nazi's 26-point plan for world domination accepted by party. Bayer Co. is re-linked to Germany, violating Versailles Treaty. Mellon pushes Oil Depletion Allowance Act through Congress. by Feb. Hoover has dossiers on over 70 thousand individuals including prominent liberals Jane Addams, and Fiorello LaGuardia. Newspapers, magazines, other publications scrutinized. Special projects set up for the Negro Press and the I.W.W. Another series of radical raids held in January. Up to 10,000 suspected radicals were arrested on blank warrants, held incommunicado, many subjected to extreme brutality. Hundreds held for long periods of time with no arrest warrants. Warrantless searches were common. Eventually all arrested were released. Hoover, Bureau and Justice department widely criticized for improper conduct, though nothing really became of it. J. Edgar Hoover claims in congressional committee testimony that 50% of all labor strikes are communist inspired ... a conclusion wholly unsupported by evidence. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) formed to fight rights violations. Bert Walker of W.A. Harriman & Co. arranged the credits needed for Harriman to take over the Hamburg-Amerika Line, central to Germany's transportation industry.

1921 — Tobacco cigarettes are banned in 14 states.

1922 — Benito Mussolini takes power in Italy, furthers Fascism. Pope Pius XI takes over. Tries more middle of the road approach to dealing with Soviet Union, but hopes for collapse of revolution so Vatican can regain power in Eastern Europe. Federal Narcotics Control Board formed. Military intelligence targets organizations like the International Workers, (IWW), World War Veterans, Communist Party, American Federation of Labor, and others for anti-subversion surveillance and action. Efforts are possibly influenced by the National Association of Manufacturers, a known fascist anti-labor organization. W. Avrell Harriman of the firm W.A. Harriman & Co. meets with Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist to discuss setting up a bank for Thyssen in America. By Personal agreement between Harriman and Thyssen, the plan for Union Banking Corp. Was agreed to. Sometime before 1924 a Thyssen representative, H.J. Kouwehnoven came to the United States for talks with Harriman. By 1924, Union Banking was a quiet part of W.A. Harriman & Co., who would be joint owner and manager of Thyssen's banking business outside of Germany.

1923 — Hitler told Chicago Tribune he wanted to send shock troops to help Ford run for President. German industry starts paying Hitler. Hitler receives first major money contribution from Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist. Hoover asked to consult with State Department on recognition of Soviet Union. Hoover said recognition should not be given because Soviets want change through violence. No recognition given to Russia. Albert Bailin, a former Justice dept. operative, former Burns Detective agency investigator, connected with a number of other agencies engaged in political and labor surveillance claimed Burns' agency was involved in provocations, thefts, and forgeries, including the purchase of a secret file of the Bureau's former boss, William Flynn. Bailin's story denounced by Burns as an attempt to frame him, and accused Bailin of being a Soviet agent. Burns had permitted the Bureau to engage in a variety of squalid practices, including using agents to frame critics of the Harding administration. The Bureau, under Burns, also acted as a secret police force for the corrupt Department of Justice. When Attorney General Harry Daughterty was forced to resign because of these charges. He blamed a "red plot" to hound him out of office.

1924 — Hitler on trial, testimony that Ford gave Hitler money. Heroin importation or manufacture was banned, despite its pain killing qualities that are superior to Morphine. Nevertheless, illegal use increases. William J. Burns (of Burns Detective agency), now Bureau Director, in appropriations committee testimony claims "the proof is very conclusive ... overwhelming that in all strikes in the United States, this radical propaganda enters into the situation. These radicals ... take advantage of the ordinary strikes that occur throughout the country, intensify them and create a great deal of trouble and disorder." Racial unrest was consistently, according to Burns, ascribed to alien agitators. Black "social activities," according to Burns, was considered a matter of "a general intelligence nature," along with radical and anarchistic activities. Bureau considered calls for labor organization among unskilled Blacks as especially sinister. Bureau finally reined in from intelligence gathering. New Attorney General Harlan F. Stone voiced fear that "a secret police may become a menace to free government and free institutions because it carries with it the possibility of abuses of power which are not always quickly apprehended or understood." Further says the Bureau is no longer interested in politics or other opinions of individuals, concerned only with their conduct and then only if that conduct violates the law. Hoover, Burns have to go along. Even with Bureau out of radical hunting picture, local and state and private groups take over, keeping "red scare" alive.

1926 — Herbert Hoover sets up Chemical Advisory Committees with Fraternity member. Irenee duPont speaks publicly about creating a race of supermen with drugs. The German Steel Trust is established by W.A. Harriman & Co. During WWII, the Trust, under the guidance of Thyssen, Prescott Bush and the Harriman's, produced 50.8% of Germany's pig iron, 35% of their explosives, as well as other steel products and materials used in the war. Dillon Read, a Wall Street banker and close friend of Prescott Bush's father Sam during WWI organized the Trust. Thyssen gave Reed at least two seats on the board of the Trust.

1927 — Ford issues "International Jew" book slamming Jews; Hitler admires book, has pile of them on his office table in Munich, Picture of Ford hanging in office. Enforcement of Wiley act moved from Bureau of Chemistry (USDA) to its own bureau, "Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration." Given further powers to ban "harmful additives." No real criteria established as to how to make a legitimate determination of what is harmful and what is not. Government has responsibility to prove substance is harmful.

1928 — duPont contributed major money to get Herbert Hoover elected president. duPont and Anaconda Copper subsidized campaign of Catholic liberal Al Smith.

1929 — "Great Depression" causes hundreds of suicides over financial losses. Andrew Mellon still with Treasury. Mellon meets with Montague Norman, head of bank of England before crash. American I.G. established, from I.G. Farben. Lateran treaty signed between Pope and Mussolini. Gives permanent recognition of state for Vatican, with Pope as head of state. Pius XI says: "No Catholic could be a genuine, convinced Fascist." Lateran treaty recognized Vatican as supra-national world morals organization. Ford Motor Company works on biomass fuels project, finding Hemp is most efficient. Plans to build car from plant material, especially Hemp. Military intelligence becomes entrenched as a counterrevolutionary force to fight "The menace" of Communism. Unrest during the depression caused a broadening of domestic intelligence gathering, especially in connection with the veterans march of 1932

1930 — Edsel Ford on board of American I.G. and General Aniline. Bank of International Settlements founded in Switzerland. Used as a money laundry, especially by Nazis. Board eventually controlled by Nazis. American banker Thomas Harrington McKittrick is President of B.I.S. Pope Pius XI gives up on Soviet Union collapsing,launches anti-Communist campaign. Bureau persuades Congress to authorize a special committee (Fish Committee) to investigate "Communist propaganda." Hoover read his pre-1924 intelligence reports, implying they were current. Also played on the racial unrest and prejudice theme. Hoover pressed for legislation to punish advocacy of the violent overthrow of the government, claiming words alone were grounds for punishment. Establishment considered propaganda dangerous and past protections of the First Amendment. Spoken word and written word thus became the new targets of domestic surveillance. Harry Anslinger, the nephew-in-law of Andrew Mellon, is appointed head of the newly-formed Bureau of Narcotics. Thyssen arranges credit for the Nazi party through Bank Voor Handel en Scheepvaart (BHS) which was the Dutch Brown Brothers Harriman affiliate.

1931 — Siler Commission report on soldier's use of Cannabis in Panama released. Indicates alcohol, not Cannabis causes problems. "Use of the drug (sic) is not widespread and ... its effects on military efficiency and upon discipline are not great. There appears to be no reason for renewing the penalties formerly exacted." Anslinger attends the first international narcotics conference, strikes up friendship with Baron Von Rheinbaben, head of the German delegation. Von Rheinbaben would become Hitler's head of German International Intelligence in Lisbon, Portugal during the war. Anslinger kept in touch with him saying Von Rheinbaben " ... Helped us out in several very delicate matters." W.A. Harriman & Co. Merges with Brown Brothers, the British-American investments house to become Brown Brothers Harriman. Bank of England Governor Montague Norman was a former Brown Brother's partner. Norman was known as perhaps Britain's greatest supporter of Hitler. Bush's partner in BBH was Thatcher Brown, a close friend of Norman's.

1932 — Bosses of GM poured $30 million in I.G. Farben plants. Reconstruction Finance Corporation created. Hitler forms Fraternity group to guarantee financing for the Gestapo. Hamburg-Amerika Line fosters anti-German government propaganda in favor of Hitler's Nazi Party. They oppose the government's attempt to disband Nazi private army. Founding Director of Union Banking and American Ship and Commerce Corp, and Executive Committee Chairman of Remington Arms works with Prescott Bush's firms in banking and trans-Atlantic shipping. Most of Nazi's weapons are produced in America. Weapons are transshipped in the Scheltdt to river barges before the vessels arrive in Antwerp, Belgium, then carried through Holland with no police inspection World War I veterans march on Washington, demanding their promised cash bonuses from the government. Military intelligence springs to action, trying to undermine the veterans' demands. G-2,(government intelligence agency) and a new organization, the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) become involved in internal security and maintained surveillance on "radicals," peace activists, labor officials and others. A hotel room in Chicago occupied by Eleanor Roosevelt was bugged, as were the rooms of other notables. These kinds of activities continue through the present. Third International Congress on Eugenics held in New York. Dealt with persistence of African-Americans and other "inferior" and "socially inadequate" groups in reproducing, expanding their numbers and "amalgamating" with others. Group determined that these "dangers" to the "Better ethnic groups and to the Well-born" could be dealt with through sterilization or "Cutting off the bad stock of the unfit." Italy's fascist government under Mussolini sent as its representative Mary Harriman, sister of Avrell Harriman. The proceedings were dedicated to Harriman's mother who had paid for the founding of the race-science movement in America in 1910 and building The Eugenics Record Office as a branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London. Avrell Harriman personally arranged for transportation of Dr. Ernst Rudin, a psychiatrist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography in Berlin. The Rockefeller family paid for an entire floor at the institute for Dr. Rudin to do his eugenics research. Rudin was unanimously elected President of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies. Rudin was now the official leader of the world eugenics movement. The movement included groups dedicated to the sterilization of mental patients (mental hygiene societies), execution of the insane, criminals and the terminally ill (euthanasia societies) and eugenical race-purification by prevention of births to parents of what they considered inferior blood stock (birth control societies). These groups openly called for elimination of the "Unfit" by any means, including violence. Rudin authored German law " ... For the prevention of Hereditary Diseases in Posterity" based on U.S. statutes in the state of Virginia and other states.

1933 — duPont's foreign relations director Wendell R. Swint meets with Hermann Schmitz and Carl Krauch of Farben in Berlin. Discover that I.G. Farben and Krupp industries had arranged for nazi industry to contribute one half percent of its entire wage and salary roll to the duPonts begin to finance native fascist groups in America. Despite being Jewish, duPonts smeared Jewish organizations. GM President William S. Knudsen says Germany is "the miracle of the twentieth century." Munitions Committee obtained information that duPont sold guns to Germany inspite of law. Felix duPont signed treaty with Hitler agent Giera, who was actually int'l spy Peter Brenner. Giera was appointed agent for Germany and Holland. Contract said military purchases of propellants and military explosives, to be smuggled through Holland. duPonts sent Giera to Japan to work for them. Giera had been a spy against the U.S. during WWI. Japan invades Manchuria. American I.T.&T makes transatlantic communications agreement with Hitler. Pope Pius XI signs Concordat with Hitler; declares political left wing and the Communist Party as the worst of two evils with Nazis. Pacelli (now Cardinal Pacelli) instrumental in drawing up Concordat with Hitler. American Ship and Commerce, controlled by Prescott Bush, notifies Max Warburg that he was to be the corporation's designated representative to Hamburg-Amerika. Warburg assures Hamburg-Amerika that Hitler is good for Germany, but that they are suffering because of the anti-Hitler propaganda. Two days later, Warburg's son Erich cables his cousin Frederick Warburg, a director of the Harriman railroad system asking him to "Use all your influence" to stop all anti-Nazi activity in America." Two days after, the "American-Jewish Committee," controlled by the Warburgs, and the "B'nai Brith"" which was heavily influenced by the Sulzbergers (who run the New York Times) issues a formal statement "That no American boycott against Germany be encouraged."This policy continued all through the 30's Hamburg-Amerika and North German Lloyd Company board meets jointly, merges. Christian J. Beck, a longtime Harriman executive, is installed as North American manager of freight and operations. In the joint Nazi Shipping Line. An agreement was reached in Berlin to coordinate all Nazi commerce in the U.S. through the "Harriman International Co." led by Avrell Harriman's cousin Oliver to head a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals to conduct "all exports from Hitler's Germany to the U.S." Arrangement negotiated by John Foster Dulles, who represented dozens of Nazi businesses, with the counsel of Max Warburg and Kurt Von Schroeder. Hitler identifies his "NEW ORDER" John D. Rockefeller Jr. appoints William S. Farish Chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey. Farish spends a lot of time with Hermann Schmitz, I.G. Farben Chairman. Farish hires Nazi German crews for Standard Oil tanker ships.

1934 — Coup d'etat attempt (?) by JP Morgan, duPonts, GM people, American Legion reps, Turned to Smedley Butler, former Marine Commandant who allegedly turned over information to Roosevelt. Was forced to resign as Commandant after he called Mussolini a Dictator. Fortune Magazine, a Henry Luce publication, praises Italy's Mussolini. McCormick-Dickstein hearings into coup attempt confirmed it, but the report was not immediately released. Gold Reserve act passed. Made private ownership of gold bullion illegal, made gold notes redeemable for paper money only in America, but could still be redeemed for gold from overseas. Multinational corps could take in notes, cash in from overseas subsidiaries. Teagle starts at Standard Oil, starts drilling for oil in Hungary. United States Chamber of Commerce issues report "Combating Subversive Activities in the United States," that blueprinted a legislative and intelligence program against the political left that would last through the 1950's, maybe beyond. Report demanded passage of anti-subversive legislation, including a sedition law and demanded an agency within the Justice Dept. be created to deal with subversive activities. A supervisor from the "Nazi Labor Front" rides with every shipment of the Harriman-Bush line. Further, employees of the New York offices were directly organized into the Nazi Labor Front organization. Hamburg-Amerika provides free passage to those going to Germany for propaganda purposes. The Line also subsidizes pro-Nazi newspapers.

1935 — Firearms tax act, legal precedent for Marijuana Tax Act. Avoided constitutional clash over regulating personal possession of something the government claimed was bad. Hemp decorticator developed, reenabling industry to run. Hitler publishes "Mein Kampf," his plan for world domination.

1936 Meetings between duPont and Treasury department. Formulating plans for making Hemp illegal. Dr. Heinrich Albert leaves law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell that represented Nazi interests in America becomes Ford's chairman in Germany. Sullivan and Cromwell was associated with Allen and John Foster Dulles. Irenee duPont used GM money to finance the notorious Black Legion, which tried to prevent autoworkers from unionizing with brutal methods, especially against black workers. Liberty league getting $500,000. a year from duPont. Whipped up hatred against blacks and Jews, love of Hitler and loathing of the Roosevelts. Spanish civil war starts, Franco brings Fascism. Communist agent Gen. Turkul sold the idea of NTS (people's labor alliance) to Japan. Japanese thought NTS was a good way to keep and eye on the Communists. Hoover meets with FDR to explore a proposed investigation of domestic communism and fascism. Hoover spent most of his time with FDR tearing down Communism; very little time spent on the rapidly growing Fascist movement in America. Hoover tells FDR that communists are in a position to paralyze vital areas of the economy because of their infiltration and control of key labor unions. FDR swallows it. Hoover suggests using a 1916 statute authorizing expenditures for investigation of matters referred to the Bureau by the Secretary of State. Why not have State request such an investigation? Bureau would then have authority to detect "propaganda." Hoover, FDR, Secretary of State Cordell Hull meet, map out plan, FDR telling Hull that the ends of crippling Communism was worth the means of a sneaky move. In other words, Hoover, Hull and more importantly, FDR conspired to deceive Congress. Further, Hoover betrayed his own 1924 pledge to Stone. The 1916 measure intended closed-ended, limited investigations related to foreign affairs, not the extended, domestic political probe apparently Hoover, FDR, and Hull had in mind. Hoover publicly stated his understanding of the President's position was "a broad picture of the general movement and its activities as they may affect the economic and political life of the country as a whole Roosevelt era of intelligence gathering. Hoover essentially picked up where he left off in 1924, set up a broad informer program, and resumed collecting files.

1937 — Marijuana Tax Act passed Congress, providing for required permits, rarely given out, to grow Hemp. "The World's Most Profitable and Desirable Crop" article in Mechanical Engineering magazine published reporting a resurgence of Hemp industry, alas too late. Nylon and sulfuric acid paper process both patented by duPont, after Marijuana Tax Act in place. Ford continues, in spite of law, to grow Hemp for fuel, plastics, etc. Franco sends emissary to London to arrange financing of the fascist rebellion. Working agreement reached to merge Hitler's Germany and America. Hitler sends two representatives, America sends seven, including at least one congressman as well as business and political leaders.

1938 — McCormick-Dickstein hearings finally released, though on a limited basis. SEC hearings into Nazi ownership of American I.G. Teagle joins with American I.G. to work with Standard, duPont, and GM to get Tetraethyl lead fuel to Nazis (needed for combat aircraft) also supplied Japan. Teagle, through Farrish, staffed Standard Oil tankers with Nazi crews; registered the tankers through Panama. Carried oil to Tenerife in the Canary Islands where it was transferred to German tankers. "Billion Dollar Crop" article printed in "Popular Mechanics" magazine about the benefits of Hemp, published after Marijuana tax act of 1937. Japanese are funding NTS network. NTS couriers carry Japanese diplomatic passports, issued from Japanese controlled Manchuria. Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic act passed. Shifted burden of proof of safety to manufacturer of a substance. Hoover, addressing American Legion audience, states "Fascism has always grown in the slimy wastes of Communism. Our democratic institutions cannot exist half American and half alien in spirit ... " Hoover also urges a continuation, even an expansion, of what he called "counter-espionage activities" cut the requested Bureau intelligence appropriation by half, and adopted Hoover's suggestion of continuing use of the State Department to circumvent congressional obstacles.

1939 — Hitler starts WWII in Europe. George Mooney, GM's man at Opel meets with Emil Puhl (BIS and Reichsbank) and Goring assistant Helmuth Wohlthat and agrees to secure American gold for the Nazis. Contacts Ambassador Joseph Kennedy who agrees to try and get gold. Roosevelt refused. I.G. Farben now supplies 90% of Germany's foreign exchange, 95% of imports, & 85% of military and commercial goods. American I.G. (who owned General Aniline, Agfa, Ansco photographic film manufacturers,) convinces the American military to use their films and processing when they took pictures of bases. They copied photographs of our secret installations and sent them to Berlin. Just before his death, Pope Pius XI prepared cyclical strongly denouncing Fascism. He died before he could deliver it. Pacelli voted in as Pope Pius XII. Claimed he was anti-Nazi, but statements in that regard all but absent. Two points of view about Pius XII's silence about Nazi viciousness: Had he spoke up against Nazis, Church might have been destroyed by Nazis. Since he didn't, though, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions more lives might have been lost. Hudal holds Golden Nazi Party membership badge. He had been known as pro-Nazi since 1930. He had also held Vatican office since then, including working with the Vatican's Holy Office, which censored books and educational material. In spite of his public pro-Nazi stance, Hudal was promoted from Priest to Titular Bishop in 1933, an extremely rare honor for a rector of a teaching college. Hudal, despite official denial, was apparently close to Pope Pius XII, their relationship going back to 1924. Hitler announces Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. Kurt Jahnke, Ribbentrop's security chief who also worked with the British, trying to establish German/British alliance against the Soviet Union. Plans to remove Hitler after pact. Vatican stands by to pass information should hostilities break out. Pius XII asked to be intermediary between Germans and British. A group of conspirators formed to overthrow Hitler is known as "The Black Orchestra" and is headed by Jahnke and Admiral Canaris. Catholic lawyer Dr. Joseph Muller joins as a courier to the Vatican. In November, Muller reports Pope is ready to help. Presidential directive (in September) gave FBI and J. Edgar Hoover an open-ended intelligence mission unrelated to law enforce-ment. Attorney General Frank Murphy urged FDR to concentrate " ... all espionage, counter-espionage, and sabotage matters" must be concentrated in the FBI and army and navy intelligence. Bureau's primacy over other domestic agencies stressed by reason of its investigative capacity, plus its file holdings. FDR goes along with it. Bureau assumes it has a carte blanche power, even though it was never authorized. In June, FDR issues statement asking all police officers, sheriffs, other law enforcement agents to turn over to the FBI any evidence of sabotage, subversive activity, and violations of neutrality laws. Hoover sees nothing wrong with Nazism, he maintains contacts with top German officials even after Hitler came to power, exchanging information with them. Hoover, during the war, made a few Nazi spy arrests, mostly falsely. Most of Nazi agents either volunteered information, were defectors, or were based on investigations done by other agencies. Bureau suppressed these facts for the greater glory of the Bureau. Postwar Rosenberg case, Rudolph Abel case developed in same way, though publicized by Bureau of Counterintelligence. Hoover institutes "Custodial Detention Program" for detention of individuals with "strong Communist (or Nazi) tendencies, whose presence at liberty in the country in time of war or national emergency, would constitute a menace to the public peace and safety of the United States Government." Criteria for listing were interpreted to include those who distribute printed material favorable to foreign interests and hostile to "The American Way of Life," as well as agitators of "internal strife" and "hatreds." To keep program secret, Hoover instructed agents to work under the cover of the "Foreign Agents Registration Act." Standard Oil of New Jersey agents Emil Helfferich and Karl Lindemann are authorized to write checks to Hitler's SS chief Heinrich Himmler on a special Standard Oil account. The account is managed by German-British-American banker Kurt Von Schroeder. This continues until 1944.

1940 — LaFolette report issued. British blockade runs the length of the Americas, to stop goods being sent to Germany. British stop a French tanker, loaded with 16,000 tons of Standard Oil. Cordel Hull orders British to let it go; they do. Farrish fuels airlines that supply Germany, with Tetraeythllead being a regular cargo. Farrish changes Standard's ships to Panamanian registry, granted immunity from search and seizure by Under Secretary of the Navy, James V. Forrestall, who was also a vice president of GAF (see 1939). Farrish is also shipping oil to Russia, where it is loaded on to trains and taken to Germany. Hull is forced to apply export controls on Standard, but are never implemented. Farrish supplies LATI and Condor (Nazi airlines) with fuel from Standard Oil of Brazil, even after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. When Brazil joined on the side of the U.S., that government stopped the practice. Westrick meets with Edsel and Henry Ford to arrange a restriction on Ford-built Rolls Royce engines, used in British aircraft, and convinced Ford to increase production of 5-ton trucks, favorite of the Nazis. Ford also arranged shipments of tires to Germany, in spite of shortages here in America. The Ford plant in Poissy, France, in the occupied sector, makes aircraft engines for the Nazis. Has Edsel Ford's approval. SS finds out about Japanese spy ring with connections to the Vatican. Vatican information is passed to Japanese journalist, then on to British. Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act) passed. Allows government to prosecute a foreign national (or an American) who advocates overthrow of government, or is a member of a group that does. No less than 39 anti-alien bills pending, many of them aimed at West Coast labor leader Harry Bridges. Professor Zechariah Chafee Jr., the nation's foremost authority on free speech law characterized act as "the most drastic restriction on free speech ever enacted in the United States during peace." Justice dept. did not testify, military were "permitted" to speak in favor of the bill. Only Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins opposed the alien registration requirements of the bill. Richard Nixon goes to Cuba to "explore the possibilities of establishing law or business connections in Havana." Went back in 1952 with ex-FBI agent Richard Danner. In the late '60's Danner is employed by Howard Hughes, and was the courier who delivered $100,000 from Hughes to Bebe Rebozo. Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.G. Farben of Germany opens the slave labor camp Auschwitz to develop artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. Hitler's government supplied Jews and political dissidents for the laborers, who were worked to near death and then murdered. Perhaps the forerunner of the plan to imprison peaceful Marijuana smokers as American prison labor? (Author's question)

1941 — Teagle and Farrish, who had set up oil fields in Romania for Standard Oil, paid $11 million in oil bonds (the oil came from Standard). A report was made that refueling stations for German ships had been set up in Mexico, Central and South America. Standard Oil of New Jersey and Standard Oil of California are among the operators. Standard Oil subsidiaries in Managua, Nicaragua are found to be distributing Nazi literature, meanwhile, Standard Oil's Nelson Rockefeller is made coordinator of Inter American Affairs to Latin America. It was reported that Standard Oil is shipping 20% of its Dutch West Indies output to Tenerife, selling it to the Nazis. Hull asks Treasury's Foley if Standard could sell to Germany. Foley says Executive order 8389 allowed that with the approval of the Secretary of State. Roosevelt appoints Farrish's right hand man, Thornburgh as Foreign Petroleum Coordinator. Farrish and Collier appointed to the board. Germany contracts I.T. & T. for switchboards and other communications (50 thousand per month by 1944). RCA, who owned NBC radio network, I.T.& T., British Cable and Wireless set up a network in Argentina for Nazi information. GAF agrees to ship drugs, other patents to South America for shipment to the Nazis. Lindbergh still backs Hitler, even after Pearl Harbor. Ford puts Lindbergh on his executive staff. America enters the war on December 8th. Japanese and Soviets sign a neutrality pact. Germany, Japan also sign a non-aggression pact. Japan would not attack the Soviets, but to help the Axis cause, would attack America's Pearl Harbor. Popular Mechanics issue of December reports Ford Motor Company has a car built mainly of Hemp, wheat straw, and Sisal fibers. More durable than steel, lighter weight, and furthers Ford's belief that he can "grow automobiles from the soil." Dusko Popov, a Yugoslav, was a double agent for Nazis, British (was model for Ian Fleming's "James Bond") was code named "Tricycle." Germans sent him to U.S. to reorganize and run an intelligence network. Opportunity to deceive Germans, providing Hoover would go along. Hoover was turned off by Popov's playboy lifestyle, regardless of it being the perfect cover. Hoover rejected British pleas to help by feeding false information to the Germans. Tricycle had discovered Japanese interest in Pearl Harbor's fortifications and defenses. Hoover was given this information 4 months before Pearl Harbor was attacked. Hoover buried informa-tion because he had "no way to evaluate it," and it drew no publicity for himself or the Bureau. Popov gave Hoover information about the Nazi "Microdot" communications device. Hoover did nothing with it until, under his byline in "Reader's Digest" magazine ( a known Fascist publication) he revealed it. Hoover, moreover, claimed he had obtained it directly from a captured Nazi spy. The article contained an illustration that threatened to blow the cover of Popov's source, a Brazilian diplomat. Popov threatened to expose Hoover's plagiarism. Hoover agreed to get publication of South American "Reader's Digest" edition stopped. Of course he did. Prescott Bush and associates advertise for a "Young, malleable candidate" to run for Congress. Richard Nixon applied and won the job, beginning a long history of political ties with the Bush family. Nixon, an attorney, became the mouthpiece for the Bush group.

1942 — Truman Committee gets Arnold report about Standard Oil's complicity with Nazis. Nevertheless, Roosevelt suspends any further anti-trust action against Standard for the duration of the war. Roosevelt defends Farrish to Ickes. Patent committee says Standard interfered with American production, favoring Nazi Germany. Meanwhile, Standard is authorized to continue oil sales to Germany from Romania through Switzerland. Farrish is publicly accused of lying to the U.S. government about his Nazi involvement. Stress causes Farrish to have a heart attack and dies. Farrish's son, serving in the Army Air Corps dies shortly after during a training accident. Farrish's fortune reverts to grandson William Stamps Farrish III, who would become future President George Bush's confidante. A memo from Yingling to Asst. Secretary of State Breckinridge Long about I.T. & T. handling communication for the Nazis. Nothing is done. Roosevelt directs Nelson Rockefeller to see that I.T. & T. stops handling communications traffic with Nazis. Rockefeller turns it over to I.T.& T.'s Garnett. Nothing is done. David Sarnoff of RCA knows about Transradio's connections to Berlin. American I.G. sold to Hermann Schmitz, making it an American company. Sterling Drugs refuses to release Atabine (Quinine) to American military. Nothing is done about it. State department refuses to help German-Jewish refugees. Ford plant in Poissy, France, bombed by British, but no reference made in media about plant being owned by Ford. Vichy government promises reparations. A Ford plant is set up in North Africa to outfit Nazi commander Ervin Rommel. Ford's plant in France is rebuilt in four, undisclosed locations. GM's Mooney is appointed Assistant of Defense Liaison Work in Detroit, in spite of F.B.I. reports of Nazism. Representatives of duPont meet with representatives of Hermann Goring about duPont's money in occupied France being protected. First Ford's, now GM's and duPont's assets are protected from seizure by Nazis. U.S. embassy in Panama files report on GM collaboration with Germany. Report is ignored. GM's Adam/Opel plant in Germany is manufacturing Junkers JU 88 propulsion systems used in Junkers bombers, the best the Nazis have. Nazis occupy the Ukraine. Hitler applies pressure to Pope Pius XII: Embrace the Nazis or he'll destroy the Church. Ukrainian-Nazi collaborators kill hundreds of thousands of Jews, Catholics, and other Christians to collaborate with them. Pope agrees to open negotiations in the Ukraine, in hopes of unifying churches in that region. Vatican became "neutral" in favor of Germany, in exchange for easing religious persecution in the Ukraine. U.S. government orders Nazi banking interests seized from Prescott Bush's Union Banking Corp. The shares of Nazi stock were all owned by Bush, E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, three Nazi executives, and others. On October 26, the government seized two Nazi front organizations run by Bush-Harriman-The "Holland-American Trading Corporation" and the "Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation" In November, the government stated it was only taking the Nazi share of the money, leaving the rest in Bush's coffers. Prescott Bush and associates had already financed Germany's war effort. Alien Property Custodian Leo T. Crowley signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing Bush's property under the "Trading With the Enemy Act. Note #4 in the order stated that Union Banking Corp. Was run for the "Thyssen family" of "Germany and/or Hungary ... Nationals ... of a designated enemy country." Government also seized all properties of the Hamburg-Amerika Line and North German Lloyd.

1943 — I.T.& T. sends communications equipment to Denmark to automate the telephone system (Germany's northern European operation benefits the most). South American governments stop most communications to Germany in spite of RCA, I.T.&T., Transradio. 13% of I.T.& T.'s business now comes from Nazi Germany. SKF (Swedish ball bearing manufacturer with facilities in America) executive goes to Batt complaining that SKF's ball bearing "shortage" was hurting war effort. Executive was dismissed. SKF accused of favoring Nazis. Meanwhile, American SKF is sending ball bearings to Germany via Panama. SKF controls 80% of all ball bearing production in Europe. Sven Winquist is Chairman, and good friend of Hermann Goring and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Prominent partner in Jacob Wallenberg's Stockholm Enskilda, the largest private bank in Sweden ... a correspondent bank of Hitler's Reichsbank. Raoul Wallenberg, a relative of Jacob, was rescuing Jews in Hungary. Jacob was the Nazi's most important banker. When U.S. Ambassador to Sweden demanded an embargo on SKF bearings being sold to the Nazi's, the Swedish Foreign Minister threatened to publish a list showing trade between Sweden and Germany based on contracts known by the Allies and based on agreements with them. British Minister of Economic Warfare, Lord Selbourne, begged American's not to put SKF on embargo blacklist and outbid the Nazi's for SKF ball bearings. British used Jacob Wallenberg as a go-between with Nazis. Raoul Wallenberg was captured by Soviets, tortured him for several weeks before they realized they had the wrong Wallenberg. They killed him to cover up their British connection. SKF's American lawyer was Allen Dulles. Allen, with brother John Foster Dulles, had represented most of the Nazi banks prior to war.German bankers, along with French correspondents, transferred 9 Billion gold francs via BIS to Algiers. Collaborationists boosted their holding from 350 to 525 Million dollars. Another collaborator in the scheme was one of the Vatican's espionage group who leaked the secret to members of Hitler's high command. From a banker's point of view, peace negotiations between the Vatican and Nazis were a good cover to continue business as usual. This makes the Vatican's role in the "Black Orchestra even stranger. American 8th air force bombs SKF plant in Schweinfert. 60 U.S. planes are shot down. Analysis is that Nazis were tipped off about raid. America's General Motors (GM) builds the engine for Germany's ME 262 ... the world's first jet airplane, giving Germany potential air superiority. Both Ford and GM are found to be repairing German military vehicles in Switzerland. Nazi General Walter Dornburger urges Hitler to proceed with V-2 rocket. Slave labor used; 20 thousand die through starvation, over work, disease. British and American officials decide nothing should be done about Holocaust, lest Nazis dump all the Jews on the West. Not a single Allied nation wanted the Jews. Jews were considered expendable in the war effort. The Vatican's policy was in accord with Allies on this point. When the British government found out Pope Pius XII was going to approach the Hungarian Catholics about helping get Jews out of there, they sent Franklin Gowen, their ambassador to the Vatican to urge the Pope not to because of "Political repercussions." In spite of not supporting Hungarian Jews, Pius did get Mussolini's forces to purposely bungle shipment of Italian Jews to death camps. Also was responsible for saving 28 thousand Jews in Berlin by saying Jews who married Catholics would be protected by Church. Same tactic worked for awhile in the Balkans. Pius was not as evil as his detractors claim, not as righteous as his supporters claim. Churchill, Roosevelt, spoke up, but did nothing. Pius remained silent, but did something. Meanwhile, Hudal meets with Walter Rauff, the developer of the "Mobile Gas Vans" used against the Jews. Nazi superiors sent Rauff to Italy without specific assignment. His contacts with Hudal apparently led to setting up escape network. Attorney General Tom Clark orders Hoover to end Custodial Detention Program because it lacks statutory authority. Hoover, nevertheless, continues program. Agents ordered to strict secrecy about it.

1944 — SKF Schweinfurt plant rebuilt, working at 93% capacity, while the Philadelphia (America) plant puts out less than 38% The Treasury Department lets SKF pose as an American company. Dean Acheson refuses to censure SKF. Nazi General Reinhardt Gehlen plans his surrender to Americans. Albert Hartl, former Catholic Priest turned SS officer, tells U.S. intelligence that Vatican planned to establish a Catholic buffer zone in Central Europe after the war. It would exclude the U.S., and would try and turn the Western powers against Soviet Union and towards Nazis. Archbishops Tardini, Montini, Bishops Hudal and Bishops of Gorizia and of Ljubljana. Also supported by Alcide de Gasperi, eventually post-war leader of Italian Christian Democrat party, and Monsignor Giovanni. Montini was Pope's Undersecretary of State for Ordinary Affairs. Montini could not have formulated policy without Pius's knowledge and consent. Vatican Information Service formed. U.S. Army intelligence noticed suspicious activities. Service ostensibly had been formed to handle welfare messages by radio to and from prisoners of war in North Africa. Americans believed some kind of clandestine activity was going on, and forbade expansion of service. Later reports indicate that service did expand into a major intelligence force after the war. Cardinal Maglione dies. He had been Vatican's Secretary of State, a post reassumed by Pope Pius XII. Monsignor's Tardini and Montini then worked directly for the Pope in determining Vatican foreign policy. This allowed Hudal to implement his escape network plans. Evidence exists that Montini gave Hudal every opportunity to set up network. In December, the Vatican asked the Allies permission to visit German P.O.W.'s. Hudal was sent. A senior U.S. diplomat who knew Hudal's views, allowed him to visit the P.O.W.'s anyway. Hudal essentially took news of the escape network directly to the P.O.W.'s, advising them to hide among legitimate refugees in camps. New York Mayor LaGuardia issues his report on Cannabis smoking. "does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration, does not develop addiction or tolerance ... and is not a direct causal factor in sexual or criminal misconduct." Kim Philby, already working for Soviet intelligence, as well as British, is promoted to new anti-Soviet section of SIS. In November, a German officer named Karl Marcus, an emissary of Kurt Jahnke, delivers a message that Jahnke wants to re-open the "Black Orchestra" peace negotiations through the Vatican. Walter Schellenberg, SS intelligence leader, had joined Black Orchestra, was ready to help. Gen. William J. Donovan proposes formation of a permanent intelligence gathering apparatus which would replace Bureau's secret intelligence system. Hoover obtains memorandum, leaks it to the Chicago Tribune. (memorandum was classified TOP SECRET) Hoover accuses OSS of being infiltrated by communists and that the proposed Central Intelligence Agency would become an American Gestapo. He instructed FBI agents to destroy their files rather than turn them over to a rival agency.

1945 — War ends. Nazi war crimes trials are set up. U.S. Army and Navy set up "Operation Overcast" to bring Nazi intelligence experts into American intelligence community. Up to 350 specialists approved by U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. David Sarnoff states national security dependent on scientific knowledge over the Soviets, urges Nazi scientists be brought to America. Nazi General Gehlen released from prison, starts anti-Soviet espionage unit with his former Nazi aides; assigned to Camp King where they were designated as a "Historical Study Group." Prior to surrender to Americans, Gehlen buries microfilmed Soviet intelligence in Austrian Alps. Retrieves after capture, turns over to interrogation center. Gens. Siebert, Smith, OSS leader Alan Dulles, seeks control of Gehlen and his documents for their units. Gehlen, 3 assistants sent to Washington for debriefing. Siebert given go ahead on using Nazis for counter intelli-gence, but "under his own authority." Reasonable to suspect Truman at least knew about arrangement and did nothing. U.S. spends $200 million between 1945-1955 employing four thousand people to revive Gehlen's Nazi spy organization. CIA director Alan Dulles says "He's on our side and that's all that matters." Central Registry of War Crimes and Security suspects (CROWCASS) formed to track down war crimes suspects. CIC enlists Gestapo's Klaus Barbie to help track down Communist intrigue. Pope Pius XII reversed his policy and started anti-Soviet campaign. Vatican started circulating propaganda about Soviet atrocities against Berliners in Soviet-occupied zone. Vatican reports similar atrocities (torture, rape, mass destruction) in all Soviet held areas. British intelligence reports Soviet anti-Catholic links with Nazis and other Fascists. Cardinal Tisserant, the Vatican's Soviet expert, claimed Soviets would start a new war and was in a favorable position to overrun Europe. According to British intelligence, Soviets viewed Vatican as reactionary, and a supporter and protector of Hitler and the Nazis. Vatican forms first of the "Ratlines" to evacuate millions of "displaced persons" from all parts of Europe. Among the innocent victims of the war were hidden Nazis, trying to escape prosecution. Some Priests knew who the Nazis were, and actively sought them out. Franz Stangl, Commander of the Treblinka gas chambers was captured by Americans and held near Salzburg, Austria. He was transferred to Glasenbach for two years, when he was turned over to the Austrian government. He "escaped" in May, 1948 when he made his way to Rome to find Bishop Hudal. Hudal's name had been circulated among Nazi prisoners of war as a means of escape. Hudal obtained an International Red Cross passport for Stangl, paid his passage to Syria and had a job waiting for him in a mill. Stangl reported a large network formed by the Vatican to rescue Nazis. Famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who recaptured Stangl in 1967 believes a sophisticated Vatican network was involved in getting Stangl out of Europe. Further, Stangl told a West German war crimes trial that Nazis had advance notice of Vatican's network. Other war criminals also reported knowing that if they wanted freedom, get to Rome and look up Hudal. Wiesenthal is convinced that Hudal was responsible for smuggling out Adolph Eichmann, Nazi head of "Jewish Affairs" who assured that Jews were killed at peak efficiency. Eichmann was given new identity, hidden in Genoa, in a Monastery under the protection of Archbishop Siris before being smuggled to South America. The Catholic relief organization Caritas paid all of Eichmann's travel expenses to South America. Wiesenthal says he found "many" war criminals living in Monasteries, equipped with new I.D. supplied by Hudal. Rauff captured by Americans in Italy. His release was obtained by Monsignor Don Guiseppe Bicchierai, Secretary to Milan's Cardinal Schuster. Bicchierai was one of Vatican intermediaries in the secret surrender negotiations. He sheltered Rauff and arranged for him to stay in Convents. It is possible that Rauff's release was obtained by the Italian Communist Party in exchange for Rauff's list of Fascist Party members. Rauff was officially released to the "S Force Verona," an OSS unit working with British/American Special Counter Intelligence team in Italy, headed by James Jesus Angleton. Rauff, meanwhile, boasted of his connections with Allied agents Hussman and Alan Dulles in Switzerland. Rauff made contact with Archbishop Siri and immediately sent to work at the Vatican on establishing a Nazi-smuggling system (Ratlines). He linked up with Frederico Schwendt, former SS officer, considered by many to be one of the greatest money counterfeiters in history, having forged millions of dollars in bank notes in Germany. Schwendt laundered counterfeit money through various banks, converting it to legitimate Western bank notes. This was the seed money for the first Nazi escape network. The Vatican has never opened its books on refugee assistance. Dossiers on Schwendt and money laundering in U.S. archives remain highly classified. Meanwhile, the International Red Cross set up to supply identity documents to refugees from the war. Many of the documents were forged or obtained falsely. I.R.C. knew many were false, but did nothing about it. The documents were easily forged, and could even be purchased on the black market. The Vatican apparently was aware of how the Ratlines were funded, and they asked the American government not to delve too deeply into it. The Ustashi, an emigre group, contacts the Vatican for help in forming either another independent Croatian state or a "Danube-Adriatic Union in which ... Croatia would have its possibility for development; Ustashi met with Papal mission in Salzburg in June to recruit Vatican's help. Stalin sends British message accusing them of making a deal with the Nazis behind his back, causing the Germans to ease up on western front, concentrate on Russians. Churchill later admits giving orders to Lord Montgomery to be careful in collecting German arms, and to keep them so they could easily be given back to the Germans. England had prepared for war with the Soviets, planning to use the defeated German army as an ally. Soviets were, by now, using the Vaticans ratlines, sometimes running the ratlines with double agents. Kim Philby heavily involved.According to British records, a German named Mengele was interrogated in connection with Chemical weapons. Not clear if it was Joseph or his brother Karl. All Germans with expertise in chemical and biological weapons were turned over to the British. British, according to some circumstantial evidence, made a deal with Mengele for his nerve gas records. Despite his war criminal record, Mengele was allowed to go into the Soviet zone to bring back a truckful of records he buried before war's end. Shortly afterwards, Mengele's brother, father and an associate were released from custody and allowed to resume civilian employment. Mengele went to Italy for emigration to Argentina. According to Omrcanin, Dragonovic processed "thousands" of Nazi scientists for emigration. When the Americans realized how far Soviets had gotten on chemical weapons, they hired German experts of their own. Mengele had been working on the nerve gases Sarin, Tabun, and Soman, later called the G-series by NATO. Same formulae still used by both Soviets and West. During 1970's, U.S. codebreakers found evidence West German companies were selling Sarin secret formulae to several Arab nations. During 1960's, reports indicated that West Germany was behind proliferation of nuclear weapons. West Germany was afraid NATO might pull out of Europe, leaving West Germany without nuclear defense. According to a former Argentine diplomat, a West German-Argentine Trade Treaty during the '60's was struck, allowing development of Nuclear weapons by using large emigre communities of German scientists in Argentina and South Africa. U.S. Treasury Dept. accused Allen Dulles of laundering funds from the Nazi bank of Hungary into Switzerland. Similar charges leveled against Hans Bernd Giesevius, who had worked for Dulles at OSS, while he was an agent at the Reichsbank. State Dept. took over Treasury's allegations. Investigation dropped. World Commerce Corporaton formed just after the war, designed to rebuild German-South American trade networks. One of the attorneys is Allen Dulles, whose assistant, Frank Wisner, was State dept. deputy for currency and economic reform in the American zone in West Germany. William Casey, a Navy Lieutenant assigned to the OSS was ordered by mentor Gen. William "Wild Bill" Donovan to set up a spy network inside of Germany, prior to war's end. Casey found Americans didn't work well inside of Germany, so he recruited anti-Nazi Prisoners of War. This is a violation of the Geneva Convention. Casey blew it off, looking at it as a necessity of getting his spying job done.

1946 — Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) requests one thousand Nazi specialists. Truman accepts idea. JIOA alters records on recruited Nazis to ease security clearance under "Operation Paperclip." Circumvents prohibition on active Nazis ... recruiting continues unimpeded for decade. Gehlen promises not to hire SS, SD, or Gestapo agents, but of his first 50 officers, at least six are. Earliest SS recruits have false papers. Gen. Siebert had to know and did nothing. Gehlen arranged financing of Vlasov army, other Nazi supporters in Eastern Europe. Intemarium operational. Vatican's Father Draganovich instrumental in the network. Vast majority of Intemarium leaders were ex-Fascist leaders who worked for either British or French secret services with a fair sprinkling of Soviet agents. Vatican officials also active. San Gerolamo's Executive Committee in June appointed a "special delegation" to attend a personal audience with Pope Pius. Dragonovic was a senior member of the committee. Two friends, Dr. Ivo Omrcanin and Professor Nikolic, the Ustashi propagandist were at the meeting. Many Ustashi emigres were hiding in San Girolamos. Italian authorities had complained to Western powers about Omrcanin's activities. U.S. intelligence had determined that Omrcanin had worked closely with Dragonovic. Kim Philby had merged Nazi networks like Intermarium and Prometheus into the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). The Vatican was unaware that the Soviets, not the British, were controlling ABN. A large number of KGB, other agents, were posing as fugitive Nazi war criminals, and being smuggled to the West through the ratlines, under an impregnable cover. Soviets more than happy to be rid of the original Nazis, and helped Vatican get them out of their way by running rat-lines. Alan Dulles had spies working for OSS-they changed to various names, including Strategic Services Unit, War Dept. Detachment and Document Disposal Unit. There were, in effect, two CIA's working in Germany: One politically liberal, (Dept. of Army Detachment) the other (Dulles's) was extreme right wing. Dulles joins Thomas Dewey's election staff, hoping Dewey (right winger) would win 1948 U.S. election. James Jesus Angleton makes solid connections with Vatican, enlists help of Montini. Angleton, in conjunction with Montini, convinces Pope Pius XII that Communists are behind propaganda campaign against Italian Christian Democrats. Angleton's first major assignment in Italy was to see to it that the Communists did not win the 1946 elections. Coalition government formed. Ferruccio Parri, resistance leader, backed by Dulles had been forced to resign as designated Prime Minister. Alcide deGasperi, backed by Angleton, had been installed as Parri's replacement. Angleton and others said to have fed substantial sums of money into the June referendum. deGasperi was Montini's close associate in Vatican political initiatives, ran guns to the Kriazri and had personally protected fugitive Fascist Ferenc Vajta.

1947 — Gehlen mostly restores his old Nazi line of command, including Franz Six and Emil Ausburg, SS veterans instrumental in extermination of Jews. Protected from prosecution by Gehlen. Organization files false intelligence reports indicating Soviets massing troops to attack Western Europe. Gehlen's influence affects foreign policy decisions, starts American interest in "cold war." CIC agent Gene Bramel says we used Nazis because they know the Eastern European/Soviet territory, hated communists and were used by America, Britain, France and USSR. CIC offers immunity from prosecution to ex-Nazis for cooperation. Nazi Gen. Walter Dornburger secretly brought to U.S. to work on classified rocketry program at Wright Field. Truman claims communists are backing civil war in Greece, steps in with multi-million dollar aid package. Holy Bond of Greek Officers (pro-Nazi) receives millions of those dollars. U.S. intelligence bungles coup attempt in Romania. CIC agents who have been overseeing Klaus Barbie and Emil Ausburg, now handle Mykola Lebed. Lebed was Ukranian police minister, and collaborated with Nazis during war. Offered his file on Soviet and Ukranian matters to U.S. in exchange for U.S. protection. U.S. State Department reports the Catholic Church is the "Largest single organization involved in the illegal move-ment of emigrants." Because of influence of the Church in Latin America, those countries almost favor taking in Nazis. U.S. intelligence gets reports of Vatican involvement in clandestine anti-Communist operations. While it was believed the Vatican wasn't as involved as thought, it is known they were involved in recruiting ex-Nazis as anti-Communist agents to regain control of Central and Eastern Europe. Some of the agents were notorious War Criminals. Some Church officials were laundering stolen Nazi treasure to finance their "Freedom fighters. "American intelligence agents burglarized the Vatican's smuggling center, bugging its code room and recruiting its own operatives. It wasn't until much later it was discovered that Communist agents had infiltrated the command structure from top to bottom. In other words, the Vatican's "Anti-Communist" networks were being secretly manipulated by Moscow. Some of the Vatican's "Nazis" were really Soviet double agents. Bishop Hudal, who had worked on Vatican's response to anticipated Allied victory, now was to rescue as many Nazis from what was seen as Allied vengeance. U.S. State Department informed that the Vatican did know how the Ratlines were funded. A series of articles in the Italian press questioned the motives of Pope Pius XII who was referred to as "the German Pope." Milan newspaper, "Milano Sera" was very critical of the Vatican. Pressure was applied to Hudal, however it took the Vatican four years to replace him. The Ratlines, however, did not stop, being run by more low key Priests, especially Croatian Fascists. The Vatican was willing to smuggle Nazis of every stripe, including those collaborators. U.S. special agent William Cowen tried to catch emigres, but couldn't. He suspected Intermarium involvement. American officers figured Vatican was the largest illegal emigre organization. Because of Vatican influence in Catholic countries in the west such as Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, etc. foreign missions have favorable attitude towards emigres. Gowen discovers Vatican's denial of involvement not fully backed by evidence. Neither was claim that entire Holy See is involved. Emigres are operating on the Vatican's fringes, getting money from a small group inside the Vatican, part of the Intermarium. This is a group formed in the early 1920's by White Russians after the revolution. It covered all peoples displaced by Bolshevik take over, mainly Catholic-oriented nations. Ferenc Vajta, a Hungarian, was a key organizer of the post-war Intemarium. Gowen tracked him to a Rome monastery where he had been staying. He had been the Hungarian General Counsel at war's end, and had been sent to organize the evacuation of Hungarian industry and refugees. He was one of the few who could get at Hungarian industrial wealth. This helped France revive the Intemarium. DeGaulle wanted to gain sympathies of Eastern Europeans to regain what he called "France's Rightful Role" in European affairs. He helped the emigre's revive the Intemarium. He also wanted to work with the Vatican, because he knew France wasn't strong enough to do the job by itself. DeGaulle approached French Cardinal Tisserant to set up secret collaborations to "save European heritage." DeGaulle wanted the Pope to unite Europe's Catholics to roll back Soviet influence. Vajta severed most of his ties to France when that government wanted his rights to a Hungarian Bauxite mine in return for financial and political support. Churchill and England also wanted influence in Europe. His aim was to create a confederation of Central European nations under British influence. British recruited Eastern European emigres to do the job. By July Gowen was advocating American intelligence take over the Intemarium. British Major Stephen Clissold assigned to Genoa to arrest suspect Ustashia war criminals. Got word that a group would be sailing on the SS Phillipa. The wanted men were sponsored by the "Pontifical Commissions de Assistenza," and being looked after by Father Petranovic, a collaborator with Dragonovic. Captured former Yugoslav Air Force officer Gen. Vladimir Kren had organized notable defections to the Germans, and was reportedly on board. Criminals captured. This is one of the few times the Western Powers triumphed over the Ratlines. Sections of Allied authorities were, in fact, cooperating with the Vatican and Argentina to smuggle war criminals. Both Washington and London had entered into agreements with the Vatican. The Vatican was being used as a cover for the West's own criminal conduct. Dragonovic's colleagues organized network because of fanatical Croatian nationalism, hatred of Serbs. Justification for Christians shielding mass murderers from justice? Dragonovic, in a memo to the American ambassador to Italy in May stated that since the Communists in Yugoslavia have no justice, and argued that the most culpable should not be classed as war criminals by distinguishing between those who had personally done the deeds, and the political leaders of Pavelic's government. "To be a state official, even with a high function or member of Ustashia, doesn't need signify that the persons in question are war criminals." Dragonovic only classified those who did the killing as criminals, not those who gave the orders. Sinic states that "You can almost talk about interlocking directorships between western intelligence and the Vatican of this period." If this is true, Pius XII is implicated in a greater conspiracy than just Dragonovic's Ratline. The Vatican has gone to great lengths to spoil Western credibility when Western reports implicate the church. Yet, British and Italians confirm America's information. Two key witnesses inside the church confirm Vatican's involvement. Monsignor Milan Sinic and Father Vilim Cicelja, both confidants of Father Dragonovic were certain Senior Vatican officials knew about Dragonovic's work and approved of it. Simcic testified that Dr. Dragonovic and Montini were together very many times. Simcic said Montini utilized Ratlines himself to smuggle various people. Since Montini and Pius met daily, it's inconceivable that Pius didn't know. (Montini was eventually elected Pope Paul VI. Father Cecelja went even farther than Simcic, claiming Dragonovic was the Holy See's official representative for the emigration of all Nazi groups, not just the Croatians. U.S. intelligence identifies Dragonovic as the Vatican's DP resettlement chief as they were using his ratlines to smuggle their own agents out of Europe. Vatican is heavily involved with San Girolamos finances. Father Dominic Mandic controlled them. He was treasurer of official Croatian section of Pope's Assistance Commission for Refugees. Its principle task was "to arrange the placing against Italian currency of the gold, jewelry and foreign exchange deposited by high ranking Ustas officials."In reality, they were the valuables of Pavelic's murdered victims, stolen by fleeing Ustashi's. Father Mandic was the senior Franciscan official who placed the order's printing presses at San Girolamos' disposal so false identity cards could be provided to fugitives. Mandic was also treasurer of Dragonovic's smuggling operation. Britain's SIS had not helped the Vatican for nothing. They wanted agents to infiltrate Communist Yugoslavia to gather intelligence and conduct terrorist strikes on strategic targets and communist personel, especially the secret police. Krizari, former Pavelic officers, fund their operations partly from treasure stolen from Croatia. British used part of it to finance Croat resistance in Yugoslavia. American Cardinal Spellman receives a petition from 5,000 Ukrainians held as collaborators to not be sent to the Soviet Union for punishment (execution, most likely). Spellman sends petition to the National Catholic Welfare Conference, who passes it on to the State Department. Meanwhile, the British had just finished their first efforts to protect Ukrainian "Freedom Fighters," (collaborators). Little screening was done prior to their release. U.S., Britain, issued top secret document FAN 757. They agreed all screening of Nazi collaborators be done by a Joint Review Committee. In reality, it was meant to disguise the Vatican's smuggling of collaborators. Nazis were rushed through the Vatican's ratlines before they could be officially identified. The pool of ex-Nazis was growing. Washington, London, Vatican responsible for following Cold War disasters, Nazi's gaining foothold in foreign policy organizations that have affected policy through the 1990's. Vatican promised U.S. help in 1948 elections. Despite CIA objections, money sent to Vatican from Angleton's friends in the State Depts. Special Projects Division. Vatican links its ratlines, other anti-communist activities with America because America backed its plans with money. Truman demanded to know who was smuggling Nazis to America. Dulles had to shelve plans to send his Nazis to U.S. until Dewey won 1948 elections. Dulles used Vatican ratlines to move his Nazis to South America. Disguised Nazis as Soviet defectors. CIC agents Italy stop hunting Nazis, starts recruiting them for use against Soviets. Evita Peron, wife of Argentina's strongman General Juan Peron, under the guise of a diplomatic mission to the heads of various European leaders, helps to coordinate the escape of Nazi leaders to Argentina. Gen. Peron made available some 1,000 blank passports to Nazi collaborators looking to flee Europe. Ludwig Freude, the managing director of the Banco Aleman Transatlantico in Buenos Aires, acted as trustee for hundreds of millions of German Reichmarks that Hitler's top aides sent to Argentina at the end of the war. Freude's son, Rodolfo, one of Juan Peron's private secretaries and chief of Argentina's internal security apparatus, guided the fleeing Nazis into Argentinian life. Apparently Nazi cash helped Peron win Argentina's Presidency. Evita Peron met with Spain's Generalissmo Francisco Franco, a "Neutral" Fascist during WWII. Franco allowed many of the fleeing Nazis hide in Spain while arrangements were made for more permanent homes.Otto Skorenzy, the purported leader of the clandestine organization coordinating the ratlines, used millions of dollars looted from the Reichsbank to smuggle Nazis to Argentina. Skorzeny set up the legendary ODESSA organization to help ex-Nazis export themelves ... and Fascism ... to South America. An American State Department report from May had termed the Vatican "The largest single organization involved in the illegal movement of emigrants." Evita Peron visited Pope Pius to clear up some lose ends with the Vatican in moving the Nazis to Argentina. documents that wouldn't see light until the 90's from Argentina's Central Bank showed that during the war, the Swiss Central Bankand a dozen Swiss private banks maintained suspicious gold accounts in Argentina. Peron's ambassador to Switzerland, Benito Llambi, had undertaken a secret mission to create a veritable emmigration service to coordinate the escape of the Nazis, particularly those with scientific skills. Bern, Switzerland police intelligence files show the secret Nazi emmigration office was located in downtown Bern. It was staffed by three Argentines ... Carlos Fuldner, Herbert Helfferich and Dr. Georg weiss. A Swiss police report termed them "110% Nazis."Fuldner had come to Germany to study in 1931. He joined the SS and later was recruited into German foreign intelligence. According to a U.S. State Department report, Fuldner fled to Madrid at the end of the war with a planeload of stolent art. He then moved to Bern where he posed as a representative of the Argentinian Civil Air Transport Authority. His job was to help the first wave of Nazi emigres. Among the first of the Nazis to reach Buenos Aires by the ratlines was Erich Priebke, an SS officer who had been accused of a mass execution of Italian civilians. Along with him was Croat Ustashi leader Ante Pavelic, concentration camp commander Joseph Schwamberger, and Auschwitz doctor, Joseph Mengele. In 1951, Holocaust archetect Adolf Eichmann arrived in Argentina where he posed as a technician. Fuldner found Eichmann a job at the Argentina plant of Mercedes-Benz. Eichamann was later discovered, taken to Israel where he was convicted and hanged for mass murder in 1962. Documents also reveal that the head of the Swiss Federal Police, Heinrich Rothmund and a former Swiss intelligence officer, Paul Schaufelberger both helped in the illegal Argentinian emigration soffice in Bern. a 1948 memo instructs safe passage for 16 "Refugees" who, the memo says, have Swiss ID cards and return Visas. Argentina's new Nazis paid for their freedom by designing Argentina's first combat jet..the "Pulque," built in Argentina by German aircraft designer Kurt Tank of the Focke-Wulfe company. He and his engineers were in Argentina thanks to the ratlines that ran through Bern. Ignacio Klich, the spokesman for an independent commission looking into the Nazi-Argentine collaboration, said he believes the wartime business between Nazi Germany and Argentina was conducted routinely by Swiss fiduciaries.One of the subjects of investigation is Johann Wehrli, a private Zurich banker. One of his sons opened a branch office in Buenos Aires. Investigators suspect is was used to handle transactions between Nazis and Argentina. The assets apparently included gold taken from Jews and other Nazi victims. The Union Bank of Switzerland later absorbed the Wehrli bank. Supposedly, German Nationals paid Swiss officials as much as 200,000 Swiss francs for temporary residence documents needed to board flights out of Switzerland.

1948 — Truman approves a National Security Council proposal to fund and arm "underground resistance" against Communist countries. Czech government falls because U.S. fails to support as promised. Communist party takes over with help of Red Army. General Stephen Chamberlin states that U.S. public won't support increased defense spending without sufficient alarm about Russia. Gehlen's studies of Red Army during WWII used as "facts" to convince superiors of Red threat. Clay sends strongly worded telegram warning of Soviet threat, based on Gehlen's information. Telegrams leaked to press. Washington policymakers convinced. "U.S. News and World Report" claims Soviet Union is #1 military power. Truman stops military spending cuts, steps up construction of atomic weapons, dumps millions of dollars into Gehlen's organization for more information. Nazis start being used for strategic instead of tactical purposes. Operation Bloodstone formed-used Nazi leaders (cream of the crop). Frank Lindsay (pro-nazi) put in charge of Policy coordination (Pres. Nixon [1968] appoints him to a secret task force on CIA reorganization). Communists expected to win Italian election; Catholic church (Vatican) and Alan Dulles, William Colby, Frank Wisner, James Angleton, others put together crash program of propaganda, sabotage and secret funding of Christian Democrat party. U.S. government spends $350 million dollars in civil and military spending. Francis Cardinal Spellman was go-between for Vatican, CIA. Spellman tells Secretary of State Marshall that money came from captured Nazi funds. Joint Chiefs of Staff amplify Bloodstone, Gehlen organization is linked. National Security Council Resolution 10/2 is created, authorizing clandestine, propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, anti-sabotage demolition and evacuation measures. Hides U.S. government involvement and expanded CIA role. Intelligence analysis was handled by Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of future ambassador to UN, Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Comprehensive list of Nazis unavailable because Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) "lost the file." Nazi-like propaganda issued over Radio Free Europe reported a document supposedly a translation of a soviet campaign of "general terror" against citizens of Iron Curtain countries. Document proven fake, nevertheless used until 1956. A full-scale post-nuclear attack guerilla war planned against Soviets using former Vlaslov and Waffen SS troops in a major war. Pentagon assigns five wings of B-29 bombers to the emigre army. By now there are so many Ukranians in England, that they form their own political conventions. Father Josephat Jean, representing the Uniate Catholics at the Ukranian Union, along with Cardinal Griffin. Convention reports they anticipate " ... a large increase in membership in the near future when the men of the SS 'galizien'(sic) who have hitherto been prisoners of war become free workmen." Head of Union, Garelon, in a memo to British Foreign Office official William Wilkinson, said Galician SS members had to sign an application form stating they "voluntarily applied to serve." This made them, legally, ineligible for refugee status. Garelon defended this by saying the Galicians's service to the Nazis wasn't very important, and the British had bent the rules before. He planned, though, to move the Galician's elsewhere. The British, meanwhile, wanted to merge all the Galician's and other Ukranians into a massive anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. British government cables all Commonwealth countries to stop all investigations of Nazi war criminals. Possibly sent by Lord Shawcross. British intelligence was recruiting war criminals for covert projects like Intermarium, Prometheus, and NTS. British sheltered Pavelic, smuggled Ustashi gold, and arranged mass escapes of suspected war criminals and/or collaborators. British asked Vatican for help in resettling "Grey" Nazis, and asked America to sabotage screening process. To date, British are the only Western nation who refuses to open their intelligence files on the period. According to authors Aarons and Loftus, the only things the British did well was cover up. National Security Agency (NSA) is formed to monitor all international cables. Subjects of their surveillance, though, are not limited to foreign nationals. Surveillance continues through 1973, under Operations Minaret and Shamrock. NSA ended Minaret because of violation of statutes prohibiting domestic surveillance. They try justifying operations claiming that domestic dissidents want to destroy the American government, making them "natural allies of the foreign enemies of the U.S." As far as the record shows, NSA'S efforts were no more successful than any other domestic intelligence pursuits of the Vietnam era by either Johnson or Nixon administrations. Internal Revenue Service begins revoking tax exempt status of organizations on the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations. Among those on the list: The Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, The School of Jewish Studies, the Hollywood Writers Guild, the Ohio School of Social Science, among many others.

1949 — Unvouchered (secret) funds ($5 million) authorized by Congress to "a component of the national military establishment;" money was then transferred to the State Department for secret disbursement (so as to conceal U.S. government as the source). "100 Persons" law passes. It allows CIA Director, Attorney General, and the Commissioner of Immigration to allow "questionable aliens" into the country if they are "in the interests of National security or are essential to the furtherance of the National intelligence mission." CIA defies Congress's demand for an agency audit. Prototype for terrorist actions such as U.S. undertook in Southeast Asia, Cuba, Nicaragua and other places occurs when attempted overthrow of Ukranian government fails. Some American agents find themselves involved with escape networks, smuggling thousands of Nazi war criminals to safety in the Western Hemisphere. Gen. Hoyt Vandenburg plans 70 atomic attack targets in Soviet Union. 250 Albanians stage "Bay of Pigs" style raids on Albania. All fail. NSC 86, NSCID 13, NSCID 14 (directives) institutionalized Nazis in policy. 13 authorized their use overseas, 14 authorized use in this country. Both authorized clandestine funding of private refugee organizations to ensure cooperation. 14 also authorized domestic operations as long as activities were conducted through emigre organizations. This violated CIA charter. Law enforcement crack down on non-prescription barbituates triggers 800% increase in use.

1950 — "Technical Service Groups" plan to eliminate more than 40 German Social Democrat leaders who weren't "anti-communist" enough. Plot discovered in 1952. West German Parliament officially wonders if U.S. government was aware of the plans. U.S. CIC agents take charge of those captured, hide them from W. German civil authorities. By winter, most senior levels of U.S. gov't had decided to abrogate wartime pledge to bring Nazi criminals to justice. CIA wants congress to authorize 15 thousand CIA sponsored Imimgrants. Congress authorizes 500. CIA sidesteps, gets Nazis and anti-Communists in through emigre organizations. At least 100 million dollars spent on this through 1960. U.S. Army convinces congress to pass the Lodge act allowing 12,500 foreign nationals to enlist in U.S. army for five years in return for U.S. citizenship. Most were decent people, but CIA mixed Gestapo and collaborators in with them. In a study between 1950 and 1960, the U.S. Justice department estimated that nearly 10 thousand Nazi war criminals entered the country. The report says Justice doesn't think the security agencies were involved. Vatican claims it has collected enough information about Soviet attrocities in every occupied zone to prove attrocities. Vatican increases anti-Soviet propaganda. Soviets reciprocate with anti-Catholic and anti-religious propaganda. Congress passes Internal Security Act, gives official expression to the Communist Conspiracy theory. Congress passes Internal Security Act of 1950. Anti-sedition law aimed at Communist Action, Communist Front or (after 1954) Communist infiltrated groups and their members.Essentially made membership in the Communist Party illegal, though it was never successfully enforced. In the U.S. archives is a film of Ronald Reagan raising money for one of Dulles's front groups that laundered money to the Fascist "freedom fighters." Reagan's intelligence chief, William Casey, headed another front group, "The International Rescue Committee" that helped fugitives with their immigration problems. Internal Security Act also permits the revocation of tax exempt status of communist or communist-front organizations. The IRS assumes it has the right to revoke exempt status from any group It thinks is subversive. Since that time, IRS has had no qualms about pulling exemptions, investigating, harrassing, suing in court for collections of taxes, real or imagined, against whatever contemporary enemy the government has. For example, in 1991, country music singer Willie Nelson speaks out for relegalization of Cannabis. IRS, within a few weeks, charges Nelson with a huge tax bill they claimed he owed, and confiscated practically everything he owned, even down to his guitar. In 1993 the IRS claims the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) owed over 50 thousand dollars in taxes dating back to the early '70's. George Bush gets help from his uncle, George Walker Jr.and William Farrish's British banker friends to eventually set up Zappata Oil in Texas. Oil rigs put in strategic locations for the British and American intelligence communities. Farrish becomes chariman of Bush's failed 1964 Senate campaign. Farrish invested his inherited "Auschwitz" money to back Bush's successful 1966 congressional race. When Bush went to Congress, Farrish went to the Zappata board.

1951 — Entire male, 18-34, unmarried, physically fit population of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were declared "politically acceptable" by army. Army considers Jews at the bottom of the list. Of those immigrants who enlisted in the army, 25% sent to confidential assignments. Most of the remainder became the nucleus of the Green Berets, including many former Nazis. U.S. gov't bankrolls Grambach who gets more than a million dollars a year. U.S. government begins purge of officials for not being extreme right wing. Smith Act upheld by Supreme Court. Juan Peron wins re-election as President of Argentina, thanks to immense wealth brought in by Nazis who fled Europe. These same Nazis are deeply entrenched within the military-industrial complex of Argentina.

1952 — By now there are 211 men in the Lodge Act army. U.S. army eased language and literacy requirements. Adjutant Gen. General Edward Whitsell rules civilian laws that barred ex-Nazis did not apply to the Lodge act. Ruling went unnoticed because it was issued with "Restricted Security Information Status."

1953 — Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee heads Reece Commit-tee, looking into major tax exempt foundations linked to the international money cartel. Investigation centered on those foundations and trusts controlled by Rockefellers, Fords, Carnegie, and Guggenheim foundations. The findings were so overwhelming many in Congress find it difficult to believe. As usual, nothing is done. 13.5 million persons in America subject to loyalty-security requirements. Bureau makes 26 thousand field investigations, most involving associations with the 197 Communist, Fascist (?) and totalitarian organi-zations. Third Presidential directive to FBI authorizing surveillance activities. Published regulations of Attorney General's office outlines Bureaus intelligence mission, inaccurately. The Bureau shall: "Carry out the Presidential directive of 9/6/39, as affirmed by Presidential directives of 1/8/43, 7/24/50 and 12/15/53, designating the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take charge of investigative work in matters relating to espionage, sabotage, subversive activities and related matters."Bureau asked President Eisenhower to legitimize activities. It used previous directives, except Roosevelt's original (that limited power) for an informal statement requesting cooperation by law enforcement as well as "Patriotic organizations and individuals" in reporting violations of the Atomic Energy Act to the FBI. In short, Bureau twisted the arm of history to force a permanent grant of authority, regardless of whether they have the right or not. Refugee Relief Act passed, Sen. Joseph McCarthy instigates, forces Congress to relax laws to permit entry into U.S. of Nazis who had only fought against Soviets. (circa) Hoover is so into publicity that a media member not praising the Bureau is often placed under scrutiny. Charleston,W. VA. "Gazette" critisized Bureau; all critisisms were sent to Hoover marked "urgent." Individual editors were investigated, one being labeled a "scurrilous character." and publisher W.E. Chilton III was accused of writing editorials favorable to Red China, and highly critical of the American Legion and Bureau. Paper was removed from Bureau mailing list. When one of its reporters was investigating police brutality against blacks in Georgia, Hoover ordered the Atlanta office to not cooperate in anyway, since the Gazette had been "consistently hostile" to the Bureau.

1955 — Rand Corporation formed. Most likely a CIA "Think Tank." Most of its funding comes from CIA. (Circa) Jack Ruby becomes acquainted with Cuba's Prio and helps him smuggle weapons to anti-Batista forces in Cuba. A link between Ruby and Prio is made by several people after the Oswald murder. The CIA claims it has no information, having only looked for information under the name of "Ruby." Jack "Ruby"'s name is really Jack Rubenstein. Robert Maheu, who had operated an investigative and "problem solving" agency in Washington, becomes an employee of Howard Hughes, handling Hughes's political and governmental affairs. During World War II, he worked under Guy Bannister in the Chicago FBI office. One of Maheu's first jobs for Hughes was squelching a news story about Hughes Loaning Richard Nixon's brother Donald $205,000.00. Juan Peron is overthrown in Argentina. Flees to Spain where he lived as a guest of Franco.

1956 — U.S. Narcotic Control Act provides death penalty for selling Heroin to minors. Richard Nixon authorizes Dulles' covert projects as Vice President under Eisenhower, during Eisenhower's illnesses, 1956 and 1957. Nixon's career would have been destroyed had public knowledge of the Soviet penetration of the Nazi networks had been a reality.The Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit (LEIU) formed as a private intelligence sharing network. They coordinated exchange of information between private agencies about radicals and radical organizations. By using a law enforcement cover, LEIU has managed to evade attempts by the courts to verify its reports. LEIU also recycled agents with blown covers.

1957 — Supreme Court narrows scope of Smith act, in that it could not be applied to the mere advocacy of forceable overthrow of the government, nor the discussion of abstract doctrine, but could be applied to incitement to action or preparation for overthrow.

1958 — The book "Masters of Deceit," ostensibly written by Hoover hits market. Actually, several agents wrote the book with Hoover's name on it (Ghost Writing). Many of "Hoover's" writings were not actually written by Hoover himself, but he was more than willing to take credit for them. "Masters of Deceit" was put out as the treatise on Communists and their tactics. Subsequent investigation of book proved most of the statements false or misleading, a common thread in "Hoover's" writing. Fidel Castro takes over Cuba. An obscure directive by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, attributed to Admiral Radford authorizes the military to indoctrinate Civilians on cold war issues, especially the communist threat. The message: We are losing to the Communists; civilians have a choice between appeasement or surrender and all out war. Ultra rightists (fascists) are thrilled about the directive.

1959 — Campaign against glue sniffing causes increase in Cocaine smuggling by 1969. FBI creates "extremist" category of subversives, adds the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society, Weathermen (Weather Underground) and the Ku Klux Klan. Groups added because of a committment to tactical violence in the pursuit of political change. With these groups, FBI assumed that since they thought the groups would be violent, the FBI has grounds to surveil for prevention. NATO intelligence services reviewed anti-Soviet failures, conclude support for emigre organizations should be abandoned because they were " ... Hopelessly riddled with Communist spies." (NATO'S West German liason was Hans Felfe, top Communist mole in Gehlen's organization.) Robert Edward Webster, Lee Harvey Oswald "defect" to Soviet Union ... both probably CIA agents. Webster defects just before Oswald. Webster was working for Rand Development Corp., which might have been a front for Rand Corp. and CIA. When he returned to U.S., Webster's return was sponsored by Rand Corp. Oswald returned one month later. When he reached Russia, Oswald denounced U.S. citizenship, was interviewed at U.S. Embassy in Moscow by Richard E. Snyder, identified by East German intelligence as a CIA agent. Oswald allegedly received orders before long to return to U.S. He contacted Snyder who told him that since his citizenship denunciation was only verbal and in a hand-written note, he was eligible to return to America. Vice President Richard Nixon plans "Operation 40," the invasion of Cuba which came to be known as "Bay of Pigs." Nixon planned for the invasion to occur as soon as he won the 1960 Presidential race. CIA agent George Bush was put in charge of recruiting for the task. The anti-communist community (CIA, FBI, etc.) wanted an invasion of Cuba. Howard Hunt was in charge of forming a govenment in exile that would take over after Castro was deposed. Originally, he was to set up in Costa Rica or Mexico, but the political climate there wasn't right, so he set up the "Cuban Revolutionary Front" in Miami. He also secured the use of a large plantation in Guatemala which was turned into a training base. CRF included hardline anti-communists Manuel Artime of the Movement of Revolutionary Recovery and Jose Ignacio of the Christian Democratic Movement. Artime ran a student group that opposed Batista (whom Castro overthrew). Artime joined Castro and was put in charge of collective farming, but he had an argument with he Guevarra and had to go underground. Artime was exfiltrated from Cuba by Bernard Barker. CRF and its allies failed to cause a popular uprising in Cuba, so an invasion was planned. All was well until Kennedy won election of 1960. Kennedy ordered the CIA to draft a new Cuban Constitution and gave the go-ahead for an invasion, but he demanded leftist elements opposing Castro to be included. Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) formed, and a new liason officer installed, since Hunt refused to work with leftists. No Americans were to be included in the invasion. Air strikes were planned, with planes with Cuban markings. Once Castro's air force was crippled, ground forces would move in. Once a beachead was established, Organization of American States (OAS) would be asked for help. 27 terrorists were arrested in Cuba for plotting against Castro. The first air strikes were unsuccessful; one plane landed in Miami. Hunt instigates a New York ad agency to make a press release stating pilots of the planes were "defecting members of Castro's Air Force with whom the Cuban Revolutionary Council were in touch with." Most reporters didn't believe the story. Kennedy cancelled the second air strike when the first story seemed transparent. CIA troops commanded by Artime were soundly defeated by Castro and his Air Force. Artime was taken prisoner. Hunt blames Kennedy pretty much solely for the fiasco, claimed Kennedy was part of the "international communist conspiracy." Hunt does also blame General Cabel (CIA) because he asked Kennedy for the second air strike instead of just doing it. Hunt possibly tries to distance himself from Cabel. (Cabel's brother Earl was the Mayor Dallas when Kennedy was killed there, and was instrumental in choosing the parade route, and knew Jack Ruby). Cabel was fired from the CIA and went to work for Pacific Corporation, the parent company of Air America, the CIA-run carrier that was heavily involved in Opium traffic in Southeast Asia. Allen Dulles forced to retire from CIA. Both were moved out because of BOP.

1960 — Kennedy elected President, in spite of Prescott Bush's campaign managing and Gerald Ford's fundraising for Nixon. Plans of anti-communist establishment thwarted by election. Kennedy doesn't back up Bay of Pigs invaison, consequently alienates the most reactionary and powerful elements in America: CIA, Foreign Policy Establishment, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and organized crime organizations (who lost a lot of money when Castro took over Cuban casino operations). In his farewell address, outgoing President Eisenhower, America's hero of World War II, two-term president who, nevertheless, permitted Nazi infiltra-tion into American government and allowed anti-communists (fascists) to take over, warned of encroachment on the part of the military and industry. He urged Americans to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence" by what has come to be called the Military-Industrial Complex. America pays no heed. Future President George Bush, working in the CIA, begins recruiting exiled Cubans for an invasion of Cuba. Recruited former Batista head of police, Felix Rodriquez. Rodriquez had fled Cuba along with Batista, Frank Sturgis and Rafael Quintero. Bush denies being involved with the Agency before his appointment by President Ford in 1976. Other records indicate Bush was a senior official of the Agency in at least 1959, probably earlier. Bush worked with fellow Texansk, oilman Jack Crichton and Air Force General Charles Cabel. Cabel was to coordinate air support for the invasion.

1961 — Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba fails miserably, with 1100 operatives taken prisoner. General Cabel partially blamed for failure since he asked President Kennedy for permission for air support. Kennedy said no. CIA and associates blame Kennedy, promise revenge. Three ships, painted to look like civilian vessels, are delivered to CIA agent George Bush who renames them Barbara, for his wife, Houston, for his home town, and Zappata for his oil company. The same people involved in the Bay of Pigs are the same people involved in the 1963 assasination of President Kennedy and the Watergate affair in 1973. Bush later denied he had any connection with the CIA until 1976 when appointed its Director by then President Gerald Ford. President Kennedy fires Dulles as CIA chief. A large number of OPC files were "routinely destroyed." Wisner had already committed suicide; Dulles betrayed his country by taking the Vatican secret with him. Angleton placed in charge of investigation of collaboration. He made sure that politically embarrassing reports never left his office. During Nixon administration, State Dept. secretly informed Australian government they were ignoring Ustashi fugitives in America because they were useful in turning out ethnic votes in several U.S. state and local elections. Single Nation Treaty signed by major countries of the world. Agreement was spearheaded by Harry Anslinger. In a 1968 interview Anslinger laughed at efforts to relegalize because of the treaty. They agreed to keep controlled substances like Cannabis, Heroin, etc. illegal. Richard Helms becomes Deputy Director of Plans. Tracy Barnes, who worked with Hunt in overthrowing Arbenez of Guatemala in '50's, forms Domestic Operations Division and appoints Hunt its chief of covert actions. Division takes on jobs that no one else in Agency wants. Many men connected with BOP were moved into the new unit. Kennedy reportedly says he's under great pressure to have Castro killed. Hunt most likely one of the advisors in this regard. Almost all of future attempts on Castro's life could eventually be traced back to Hunt. (Circa) Robert Maheu is alleged to be in charge of the CIA's part of the effort to assassinate Castro. He probably used the same cover Hunt was using ... Mullen and Company, a "public relations" firm located across the street from the White House. Mullen was a former press aide to President Eisenhower and he ran General Marshall's propaganda arm in Europe (the Marshall Plan). Mullen knew Howard Hunt, who had also worked for Marshall's ECA. One of Mullen's biggest clients was General Foods whose Washington representative, Douglas Caddy, worked out of Mullen's office. Caddy would later become Hunt's lawyer. He was a Goldwater supporter and helped form the Young American's for Freedom with William F. Buckley Jr. and Robert Bennett. Caddy was also active in Youth for Nixon and was a member of the Lawyer's Committee to Reelect the President. Hunt has said that Mullen and Co. always had close ties to the CIA and that the Agency had paid for Mullen's Europe-an office. Mullen also maintained an office in Mexico City, In 1963, according to Phillip Agee. When Hunt "retired" from the Agency in 1970, he went to work for Mullen the next day. Former Nixon administrator and Hughes' employee Robert E. Bennett buys Mullen and Co. in 1970. Bennett brings the Howard Hughes account with him, and helps Nixon set up dummy groups to raise campaign funds. Hunt most likely still working for the CIA while working for Mullen. Strong evidence that Loran Hall's Free Cuba Committee is likely a Mullen and Co. front. Mullen may have also paid for a rifle identical to the one Oswald supposedly used against Kennedy. Kennedy denounces the ultra right wing. In the wake of his attack, IRS responds to suggestions by President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy that the IRS investigate right wing groups. Commission adviser Mitchell Rogovin, also a liason between the CIA and the IRS, supplies a list of right wing groups. Task force is called "Ideological Organizations Project." IRS essentially goes through the motions of investigating right wing groups, but still concentrates on the left wing. It amounts to cosmetic hiding of bias. Costs of investigating groups, who usually have very modest treasuries, is prohibitive.

1962 — Congress passes legislation increasing F.D.A.'s ability to limit drug sales. F.D.A. halts legal production of L.S.D. causes skyrocketing use by 1970. Kennedy makes deal with Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev that if he'll remove the missiles from Cuba, Kennedy won't invade. This is the famous "Cuban Missile Crisis" result. Attorney General Robert Kennedy is the chief investigator for the McClellan Committee, which looks into organized crime in America. Several crime figures, such as Edward Partin, Phillip Scheib, Dennis Mower, Eugene Hall, and others, are discovered to be involved in smuggling weapons to anti-Castro Cubans in Cuba. Jimmy Hoffa very heavily investigated by committee for many things, including gun-running. Hoffa had been associated with Meyer Lansky. FBI investigates connec-tions between Hoffa and Jack Ruby. Officially declares there is no connection, however some of the Bureau's own files contradict that conclusion. Hoffa is eventually pardoned by Richard Nixon. The deal was set up by Charles Colson.

1963 — President Kennedy is assasinated in Dallas, Texas. (July)Lee Harvey Oswald passes out pro- Castro literature with the CIA'S New Orleans address (544 Camp St.) Evidence exists in Warren Commission report #CD1080 that Oswald's cousin, Dorothy Murret, was a CIA agent. When Oswald was in the Marine Corps, he was stationed at Atsugi, a Japanese base devoted to training intelligence agents. The U2 spy plane was kept on this base. Oswald was taught Russian as part of his military training, and had security clearance. He may have been a part of a plan to plant an agent in Soviet Union. Given a hardship discharge, to lend credence to his defection in 1959. COMINFIL, the Communist Infiltration program of Bureau employed against Afro-American civil rights movement, specifically against the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and its leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Racist politi-cians, primarily in South, urged Hoover to do something, like link the Communists to the movement. Hoover is only too happy to help. He claims (of course) that Negroes were encouraged and aided by Communists. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, in a report, stated they could find no influence. Hoover rejects report, in spite of less than 200 of an estimated 250,000 participants in the March on Washington being identified as Communist Party members. Bureau Intelligence Chief, William Sullivan, who first issued report to Kennedy, now turns around, claims "There are many Negroes who are fellow travellers, sympathizers, who aid the Party, knowingly or unknowingly, but do not qualify as members. These we must not ignore. The old Communist principle still holds: Communism must be built with non-Communist hands.'" Though it was never proved, King associate Stanly Levison was accused by Bureau of having Communist ties. By 1964, Hoover, as usual with no justification, claimed he has proof of Communist influence in the Civil Rights Movement. Same tactics used against American Civil Liberties Union, Ameri-can Friends Service Committee, National Lawyers Guild, and others. Hoover outraged at King's criticism of Bureau, upset when Marquette University awarded an honorary degree to King, after giving an honorary degree to Hoover himself some years earlier. Hoover really upset when Time Magazine named King "Man of the Year" and Hoover had not been so honored. Hoover enraged when King wins Nobel Peace Prize. Hoover refers to King as "The most notorious liar" and as a "moral degenerate." Hoover, Bureau, contin-ues trying to link King to Communists. The name "Frank Sturgis" first appears in an FBI report dated Nov. 27. Sturgis's real name is Fiorini. Howard Hunt, in several testimonies and investigations, claims to not have known Sturgis until 1972. Evidence indicates, though, that he did know Fiorini, possibly as early as 1949. Hunt wrote a spy thriller whose main character, Hank Sturgis, had a lifestyle too close to Fiorini's to be coincidental. Sturgis, since at least the early '50's had worked in Cuba on various matters of intrique, and worked with Castro just prior to his takeover. There were several occasions Sturgis had to have known and worked with Hunt (Author's italics). One of the pictures of the Tramps from the Kennedy assassination very closely matches Sturgis (see Coup D'Etat evidentiary photographs). (Nov. 24) A long distance operator in Mexico City monitors an international phone call. She hears someone say "The Castro plan is being carried out. Bobby is next. Soon the atomic bombs will begin to rain and they won't know from where." A trce of the numbers reveals one of them belongs to Emilio Nunez Portundo, a former ambassador to the U.S. during the Batista regime. He's a right-wing political figure in the Cuban exile community. He reportedly had become "bitter" at the U.S. for not following through on an invaison of cuba. The Protective Research Division of the Secret Service investigates, creates a file on Portundo. The other number belongs to Jose Anotonio Cabarga of Mexico City. He is supposedly a good investigator, who could develop information. According to Portundo, "Cabarga was in close contact with the U.S. embassy in Mexico City." Despite telegrams to Washington, by an honest Secret Service agent, who worked under Aragon, the Washington Secret Service did not send an agent to interview Cabarga. Case is closed. (early falls) Loren Hall was arrested by Federal agents while taking a trailer full of weapons to the the Interpen-IAB training camp at No Name Key in Florida. Hall is another soldier of fortune who fought alongside Castro during the takeover. Arrested in 1959 on a charge of training recruits to overthrow the Nicaraguan govern-ment. Major William Morgan, Frank Sturgis and Alex Rorke participated in a similar plot. At least two of these three were CIA agents. Hall was the subject of a very strange FBI investigation. There is no Justice Department letterhead, insignia, nor other identifier on the report, and the report is unsigned. The report is credited to S.A. Gamberling, in an index listing the report in the National Archives. Gamberling, at the time though, worked in the Dallas FBI office. The report deals mainly with a private detective, Richard Hathcock, Loran Hall, and Interpen-IAG figure Gerald Patrick Hemming. On Sept. 18, Hall takes a rifle out of pawn that was described as being identical to the rifle Oswald allegedly uses against Kennedy. The FBI investigates, interviews a man who says he saw the transaction, but doesn't talk with Hall or Hemming. Hathcock is associated with International Anti-Communist Brigade, which was run by Frank Sturgis. The FBI checks no further. If they had, they would have found an entire network of anti-Castro organizations, all funded by the CIA, are connected in this incident,and can all be traced back to Howard Hunt. Loran Hall was an officer of the Free Cuba Committee; the check used to get the rifle out of hock was written on FCC's check. Hall may have been the unknown tramp in Dallas. There is a rifle identical to the one Oswald allegedly used, purchased at a Pawn Shop by a CIA front organization, one month before a President is assassinated. The FBI, as usual, fails to investigate, lends credence to a furthering of the cover up of the Kennedy murder. During the Watergate affair, Richard Nixon also funneled money through anti-Castro Cuban groups. (Nov. 23) Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit, who could have been part of the conspiracy, assigned to kill Oswald, is also a known weekend John Birch Society member, and is a "double" for Bernard Weisman, who placed the welcoming ad in a Dallas newspaper for Kennedy's visit. There is evidence of a Tippit-Jack Ruby meeting prior to this date. Tippit was out of his patrol district when he stopped Oswald. Evidence exists that Oswald did not kill Tippit. Witnesses described the assailant, but the descriptions do not fit Oswald. Nevertheless, there is some evidence against Oswald. He had powder burns on his hands, indicating he had fired a handgun. There were no powder burns on his face, which would indicate he had recently fired a rifle. The weapon that was used to kill Tippit was found in Oswald's possession with his fingerprints on it. Oswald might have figured out he was the patsy for the assassination, may have thought Tippit was going to kill him, which would account for Oswald's run to a theatre (where there would be witnesses). We know Oswald has CIA ties. If he actually did kill Kennedy, why did he buy a rifle commercially? Would not the CIA have supplied an untraceable weapon? Watergater Eugenio Martinez did tell a Harper's magazine reporter in 1973 that doing so would put distance between Oswald and the CIA. During Oswald's interrogation, none of the federal investigators called in a stenographer nor recorded any of it. Oswald calls a press conference from jail, denies both Kennedy's and Tippit's killings, says he was "just a patsy" in the deal. It's not likely that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald knew each other, but the common thread between the two is the CIA/Syndicate plot to kill Castro. If Webberman/Canfield's theories are correct, and Dallas police officer Tippet was supposed to kill Oswald, and bungled the job, Ruby, Tippet's overseer, would be responsible for doing it. He did. Warren Commission members were in an ideal position to cover up any CIA/Syndicate involvement in Kennedy's death. Vast majority of members and special counsels had ties to people and organizations that could be connected to the assassination. Chief Justice Earl Warren, a staunch Republican (considered a 'liberal' Republican) was easily manipulated by Nixon. Nixon had considered asking Warren to set up a similar commission to investigate Watergate. Warren states the American people would not learn the whole truth about Kennedy's assassination for a hundred years. Gerald Ford, though appearing to not want it to be generally known, was also chairman of the House Republican Caucus, and a leading member of the House Oversight Committee on the CIA. Ford was also very close to Nixon, and was considered as a running mate in 1960. Ford heard more witnesses and asked more questions than anyone else on the Commission. He used a classified transcript of Commission proceedings in his book: "Portrait of THE Assassin." He was also thought by the FBI of being the person who leaked Oswald's diary to the media. Ford was later named Vice President after Spiro Agnew's resignation in 1972. Ford became President when Nixon resigned in 1973. Ford then pardoned Nixon for the Watergate events. He then named Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President. Rockefeller himself wasn't on the Warren Commission, but two people very close to him were. John J. McCloy, almost an honorary Rockefeller family member, and his law firm, repre-sented Standard Oil during the '20's and '30's. McCloy engineered the merger of Chase and Manhattan banks, which provided David Rockefeller a strong financial base. McCloy later became Chairman of the Board of Chase Manhattan, a Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, and a board member of Rockefeller's United Fruit. He had a strong background in intelligence as assistant to the Secretary of War during World War II. McCloy was also the High Commissioner to Germany, and was appointed by Allen Dulles as a disarmament negotiator under Eisenhower. Howard Hunt has said McCloy was an important part of the power base of the Office of Policy Coordination, a predecessor of the CIA. Warren Commission Counsel William T. Coleman was Rockefeller's number two man who worked for J. Richardson Dilworth, the law firm that handled Rockefeller's assets. When Rockefeller was appointed Vice President, Coleman became Secretaryof Transportation. President Johnson appointed Allen Dulles to the Warren Commis-sion. Dulles was primarily responsible for setting up the CIA and worked very closely with Howard Hunt. Dulles also encouraged the importation of Nazis into American intelligence circles, just after World War II (see above). Dulles had also worked with Nixon on the National Security Council and was president of the Rockefeller-dominated Council on Foreign Relations, known in 1994 as a "New World Order" organi-zation. Dulles stated that he would lie to his associates about Lee Harvey Oswald and his connections to the CIA. Dulles also said his agents would be willing to lie. John Sherman Cooper, a Republican Senator from Kentucky, was on the Commission. He threatened to write a minority report if the "informa-tional gap" on Oswald's activities in Mexico City was not adequately covered. After the Warren report was issued, Cooper never said another word about it. He was eventually appointed Ambassador to India by Nixon. Another member, Congressman Richard Russell, a democrat from Georgia, was a dissenter on the Commission, publicly stating he disagreed with the "single bullet" theory and parts of the reports on outside influences and Lee Harvey Oswald. He expressed these views on WAB-TV in Atlanta. A short time later, he died of "natural causes." Congressman Hale Boggs also had second thoughts about the Commissions findings. In 1971 he gave a speech in Congress about how the FBI had used Gestapo tactics in the investigation. A year later, Boggs was killed in a mysterious plane crash in Alaska. Shortly thereafter Alaska InterAir was the recipient of extensive government contracts in Europe and Africa. Laura Bergt, the wife of the airline's president was appointed to the National Commission on Indian Affairs,and some time later went seal hunting with William F. Buckley, Howard Hunt's good friend. Hoover pulls out the stops, wants full Bureau resources used to stop Dr. M.L. King. Hoover is outraged by King's critisism of the Bureau, awards King is given (such as being named Time Magazine's Man of the Year [especially when Hoover himself didn't get that award]) and what Hoover perceived was King's "immorality." A number of agents along with Hoover himself, tries progaganda, linking King with Communist groups. The Bureau releases a document called "Communism and the Negro Movement-A Current Analysis," ostensibly written by William Sullivan. The document was specifically meant to discredit King. Attorney General Robert Kennedy is so angered by the document, he orders it stopped immediately. Assistant Director Alan Belmont, though, says the Bureau will still disseminate the document. Hoover and Sullivan, meanwhile, try to get King replaced. They suggest using Samuel R. Pierce, a prominent Black lawyer to replace King. Pierce was never asked, nor is there evidence that he ever asked for such a job. The switch never occurs.

1964 — Klan-White Hate Groups program started in Bureau. Directed at 17 Ku Klux Klan groups, American Nazi Party. Bureau, however, does not give the program any priority, preferring to catch even car thieves first. Of course, "counter-subversive" program gets Bureau's top priority. Bureau's institutional racism is best seen in its systematic refusal to intervene to protect victims of federal civil rights violations on the part of local law enforcement officials, even when violations occur in the presence of agents. Nor would they warn victims when they had advance knowledge of planned attacks. Even back to 1961 when a Klan informer gave the Bureau three weeks notice of a planned beating of a group of Freedom Riders. Informer told Bureau the Klan arranged a 15 minute head start with Birmingham Police Dept. before police arrived, local Bureau office took no action, not even notifying Justice Dept. Letter by Hoover to Warren Commission admits the first description of Kennedy's assassin was "Initiated on the basis of a description furnished by an unidentified citizen who had observed an individual approximating Oswald's description running from the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) immediately after the assassination." The description could not have been given by James Worrell, most likely the first eyewitness. He did not report seeing a man run "like a bat out of hell" from the rear of the TSBD until the next day. Oswald was still in the building. Dallas Police Sgt. D.V. Harkness went to the back of TSBD and encountered several men who said they were Secret Service agents. James Romack also saw them. lee Bowers, a worker at the railroad yard behind TSBD sighted a northbound train, stopped it for authorities. Authorities found three "tramps" on board. Bowers testified before Warren Commission and was about to elaborate on the tramps when he was cut off by Joe Ball. When Sgt. Harkness tried to talk about the Tramps, David Belin changed the subject of conversation. Tramps were turned over to Sheriff Will Fritz. Fritz refuses any details about what happend to the Tramps, except referring Michael Canfield (co-author) to the FBI. FBI, of course, knows nothing. One person near TSBD was a man inside the Daltex building who gave the name of Jim Braden, and used a credit card for identification. Los Angeles CBS producer Peter Noyes, just by checking a driver's license number discovers Jim Braden is actually Eugene Hale Brading, reportedly a gangster, with a long criminal history, long history of association with organized crime and was a charter member of the La Costa Club. La Costa Club is located 20 miles south of San Clemente, California,(home of Richard Nixon). Club financed by Teamsters Union and owned by Meyer Lansky's "front man" Moe Dalitz. La Costa frequented by quite a few organized crime figures, as well as Nixon's close friend Murray Chotiner. John Dean, John Erlichman, and H.R. Haldeman met at La Costa to get their Watergate stories together. Brading also supposedly had an office next to Ferrie's in New Orleans during the President Kennedy assassination plot, and was reportedly in Los Angeles when Robert Kennedy was murdered. The Bureau begins its anti-King program by planting microphones in King's hotel room to try and develop a file on King's private life. In the spring, "Atlanta Constitution" newspaper editor Eugene Patterson is approached by Bureau agents wanting the paper to say King was immoral. They also try to get some reporters to ask King embarrassing questions about his private life, based on what they were hoping to overhear on their surveillance. They were also hoping to derail King's publishing efforts. William Sullivan gets President Johnson's press aide Bill Moyers to disseminate Sullivan's "Communism and the Negro Movement" document around the executive branch. UN representatives, foreign office personnel, were supplied with copies of the document. Copies were given to the National Science Foundation in an effort to remove funding from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Scholarship Fund. The Bureau also looked for a Swiss bank account in King's name. They, of course, found none. Marquette University, however, after pressure from the Bureau, rescinded the honorary degree given King earlier. Hoover also released King's files to the Baptist World Alliance, trying to discredit King. These efforts continued until King was killed. The Bureau also steps up harrassment of black organizations and individuals like Ralph Abernathy, Stokely Carmichael, Muhammed Kenyatta, Jesse Jackson, Charles Koen, and Dick Gregory, among others. The Bureau also starts COINTELPRO actions against groups like the Black Panthers. Agents caused dissension within groups and between organizations. They would infiltrate organizations, frequently steal organization money, then often plant weapons and explosives in members homes or organization headquarters.

1965 Amphetamine enforcement intensifies. Causes a "boom in Cocaine smuggling" by 1969. (Circa) British intelligence finally discovers that "Dickie" Ellis was a Nazi agent with ties to General Turkul's Soviet network. The decided it was so disturbing that Ellis had turned NTS into the most deadly component of Soviet espionage, right under their noses,that they were too embarrassed to admit to FBI or CIA that it had happened. British had sold a Soviet network, under the guise of NTS to America. British try to claim they covered up to protect former King Edward's involvement. It was SIS's reputation, not Edwards, they were protecting. President Johnson sends FBI agents to Dominican Republic to ensure that government installed by U.S. arms was free of subversives.

1966 — Syva division of Syntex begins biochemical research to develop urine tests for controlled substances. Four of the seven largest oil companies in the world under the control of the Rockefeller family. The largest of these, Standard Oil of New Jersey, (Exxon) controlled 371 other companies, including Humble Oil and Creole Petroleum of Venezuela. (circa) FBI used Dr. Martin Luther King's association with an alleged Communist Party member as probable cause to wiretap King. The associate reportedly does not have official membership, but is suspected of following the Communist Party line. FBI views subversive behavior as "a disease that is hereditary, chronic, incurable and contagious." FBI prepared statement for the use of Senator Long of Missouri in which the Bureau knew to be false and mis-leading. Neither the 16 Attorneys General nor the Presidents Hoover served under were ever informed about the number of "Cointelpros" or mail openings or electronic monitoring of international communications. Hoover's deceptive practices were routine. When he thought he was in trouble, he would use cryptic language and went on his way. Bureau not only denied access to files to General Accounting Office investigators, they attempted to sabotage secret instructions to field agents. President Johnson asks the Bureau to assemble dossiers on legislators and prominent citizens who oppose the Vietnam war. Johnson was particularly interested in what Senator J. William Fullbright had in conversation with a Russian ambassador.Johnson orders the Bureau to monitor the Fullbright Committee on the Vietnam war to try and compare Fullbright's statements and views with the "Communist Party Line." Johnson also wants surveillance on critics of the Warren Commission report which contained references and photographs of the critic's private sex lives. Johnson, in conjunction with Hoover, investigates a number of personal or political enemies. Some of those investigations were initiated by Hoover to score points with Johnson.

1967 — Franz Stangl recaptured from South America. Tells War Crimes Commission that Nazis had advance knowledge of escape networks being run by the Vatican. Other war criminals also report similar information. FBI's intelligence high command decided that National Security required an investigation of every individual who lived in a commune. They were also trying to keep an eye on Black Militants in the ghettos, and anti-Vietnam war protestors. American Anthropological Association reports that in many parts of the world, American anthropologists are suspected of being CIA agents. Many, in fact, are, having been approached by CIA with grant money in exchange for surveillance requests on the part of students and teachers who are studying abroad. "Rabble Rouser Index", otherwise known as "agitator index" authorized. Abandoned in 1971 as redundant. Black Nationalist Hate Groups program started by Bureau, has standard "Neutralize-Disrupt" strategy. Expanded in 1968 to 41 field offices. Program gets second priority to CPUSACOINTELPRO plan. Dr. Martin Luther King is assassinated. About a month after, fomer FBI agent Bill Turner realized that the composite picture of King's possible assassin very strongly resembles Lee Harvey Oswald, or an Oswald double. There has been much speculation about an Oswald double (see Coup D'Etat evidenciary photos). A Mexican artists drew the picture based on an FBI description. A few weeks later the FBI disclaimed the sketch. James Earl Ray is arrested, eventually convicted of the murder. He allows Bernard Fensterwald of the CTIA to represent him. Fensterwald's associate, Robert Livingston, had obtained a hearing for him in October. He suddenly announces that a person was going to come forward and admit that he had been hired by "four wealthy, prominent American citizens" to kill King, in exchange for clemency. Livingston also is quoted as saying "There are three men who propose to testify to give a complete expose of the King murder case." These people never materialize. Ray is in prison for the killing. There are striking similarities between Kennedy and King's kill-ings: Scoped rifles, easily traced back to their owners were used; A map with the TSBD, King's house and church were found in possession of their respective suspects; there is also a strange lack of credible witnesses in both shootings. Ray dismissed his first lawyer, keeping Fensterwald. Gerald Alch testified that James McCord funded CTIA while he was working with the CIA. Black Nationalist Hate Groups program started in Bureau. It has the standard "Neutralize-disrupt" strategy as other anti-humanist programs. Program is expanded in 1968 to 41 field offices. The program gets second priority only to Communist Party infiltrations CPUSACOINTELPRO.) Johnson orders all intelligence agencies to develop evidence that would discredit the anti-war movement. None could be developed. Cointelpro-type programs began against American Indian Movement leaders and members. Johnson, later Nixon, keeps pushing the agencies until the end of the war. In October, the CIA provides one of many useless memos about a Washington demonstration, since they could not link the demonstration to any kind of subversion. Johnson, in a private White House briefing a week later with Republican leaders, says he has the evidence of foreign influence on the anti-war movement. Johnson says he will release the evidence, but when pressed for it, he refused (he didn't have the evidence, and pushed the CIA for it. They couldn't come up with anything. The McClellan Committee is formed to look into urban rioting. They, too, try the old line of blaming communism instead of dealing with true causes of rioting such as dissatisfaction with government policies on poverty, racism, etc. The Committee specializes in attacking New Left groups using the same old intelligence gathering techniques that violate citizens rights.

1968 — Campaign against Cannabis use by soldiers in Vietnam results in increased use of Heroin. Congressman Wright Patman of Texas looks into manipulation by foundations and the Federal Reserve. Unable to get media attention for reports on the one world government concepts Rockefellers, Rothschilds, etc. have in mind. Richard Nixon elected President. With the anti-war movement, ghetto uprisings and campus unrest, the Nixon Administration, from the beginning, goes into a siege mentality. (Circa) Nixon's State Dept. quietly warned a few American politicians to avoid any Croatian functions on April 10 because that's when Ustashis celebrate Hitler's setting up of Pavelic's puppet government. Then-Governor of California, Ronald Reagan either didn't get the message or ignored it, as he proclaimed April 10 "Croatian Independence Day" in California. He did the same later, when he was President. He also had his picture taken with ex-Fascists and war criminals of the ABN. Despite CIA objections, Jaroslalv Stetsko was treated as an honored guest by Reagan and leaders of several other Western nations. Hoover visits newly-elected President Nixon, briefed him on Johnson's wiretapping of political targets, including Nixon. Nixon, in his "Memoirs," points out that Hoover and Johnson both shared a fascination with gossip and information. It was under Johnson that Hoover allowed the Bureau to reach its peak of political involvement. Nixon starts "Operation Integrity," his plan to keep an eye on Illinois voting practices since he attributed his 1960 presidential defeat to vote tampering on the part of Mayor Richard Daley. H. Louis Nichols put in charge; he had worked for Schenley Distilleries, whose president had been linked to Meyer Lansky. Nixon also disliked Robert Kennedy who had forced Nixon aide Murray Chotiner to testify before the McClellan committee investigating organized crime. Hitler's rise to power was preceeded by a long series of assassinations and the discrediting of his political opponents. Robert Kennedy's assassination, the Chappaquidick incident with Edward Kennedy and the attempt on George Wallace's life definitely benefited Nixon. Were they planned with Nixon's involvement? Could John Kennedy's assassination have a Nixon hand in it? (author's questions). Lawyer for H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman after Watergate is John J.Wilson, who also represents Interhandel Corporation, which is owned by General Aniline and Film (GAF) which is itself controlled by I.G. Farben which supplied chemicals for the gas chambers in World War II. With Nixon in power, Nazis and their sympathizers held high positions in the Republican Party. Nixon's men funneled money to the Nazis. Nixon expresses admiration for Albert Speer. Columnist Jack Anderson reported that Gordon Liddy had arranged for showings of Nazi propaganda films in the National Archives for members of Nixon's administration. Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis,Tennessee. About a month after, former FBI agent Bill Turner realized that the composite picture of King's possible assassin very strongly resembles Lee Harvey Oswald, or an Oswald double. There has been much speculation about an Oswald double (See Coup D'Etat evidenciary photos). An artist drew the picture after being given an FBI description of the assailant. A few weeks later, after comparison to Oswald is made, FBI disclaims the sketch. James Earl Ray arrested, eventually convicted of King's murder. He allows Bernard Fensterwald of CTIA to represent him. Fensterwald's associate, Robert Livingston, had obtained a hearing for him in October. He suddenly announces that a person was going to come forward and admit that he had been hired by "four wealthy, prominent American citizens" to kill King, in exchange for clemency. Livingston also is quoted as saying "There are three men who propose to testify to give a complete expose of the King murder case." These people never surfaced. Ray is in prison for the killing. There are striking similarities between Kennedy and King's killings: Rifles with scopes which which were easily traced back to their owners were used; there is also a lack of credible witnesses in both shootings. Ray dismissed his first lawyer, keeping Fensterwald. Gerald Alch testified that James McCord funded CTIA while he was working for the CIA. FBI starts the "New Left" program, with the intent of implementing their tried and true Gestapo tactics of surveillance and investigation, plus adding the elements of dispersion and disruption under COINTELPRO. Anti-war, anti-nuclear, pro-environment, pro-"Marijuana" groups, women, gays, and others now suffer the same treatment as communists and blacks. Author Frank Donner describes it by saying: " ... The New Left COINTELPRO was an undisguised assault by the self-appointed defenders of the American way of life against an entire millieu ... "The government, however, did not count on the dedication and tenacity of what they considered "dirty Hippies." Because of an enlightened attitude among many of the Hippies, the government has only limited success in infiltrating and disrupting most groups. They did, however, target the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and its militant faction, the Weather Underground. As a result of the major riot at the Chicago Democratic National Convention, SDS leaders Abbie Hoffman and others were tried and convicted of inciting to riot. SDS survived for several years, but was severely weakened by the Chicago actions. Congress passes the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. This act authorized the federal courts to issue wiretapping warrants at the request of the Attorney General when "there is probable cause for belief that an individual is committing, has committed, or is about to commit" any one of a long list of crimes. The House Unamerican Affairs Committee (HUAC) is dissolved and replaced with the House Internal Security Committee (HISC). This committee is established to keep an eye on organizations whose goal is to overthrow the government by "any unlawful means" or "to obstruct or oppose the lawful authority of the Government of the United States in the execuition of any law or policy affecting the internal security of the United States." Just what constitutes a threat to "internal security" was not well defined, and, as we know, the hiding of actions behind the catch-all phrase "National security" became entrenched. It's used most frequently to cover up the illegal actions of members of government or political parties. Has been used mostly by Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, the Republican presidents since. The Gun Control Act of 1968 passes. It is directly written from Germany's Weapons Control law of 1938.

1969 — New York City increases drug arrests by 9000. No impact on drug availability noted. The Supreme Court rules in the Alderman case that in a criminal proceeding, the court must be notified of evidence overheard through electronic monitoring. If the court rules the evidence was illegally obtained, the defendant has the right to review the evidence to determine if the illegally gathered evidence tainted the entire case. A refusal by the government to reveal the surveillance, or its extent, is ruled as grounds for dismissal of the case. The Justice Department is upset because of the impact on their investigations on domestic dissidents. If the records of such surveillance were released, the cover of various intelligence agencies would be blown, and their illegal or quasiegal activities would be exposed. On the night before rehearing requested by Justice, Attorney General John Mitchell appeared before a Senate committee, condemned the court's decision and warned that forced disclosure of wiretapping and bugging records would endanger "National Security" and the lives of agents. The Supreme Court ends up not rehearing the case. Mitchell starts sending arguments to various courts around the country where tapping issues are involved. The "Mitchell Doctrine" as it is called, insists that the President has inherent constitutional power to authorize electronic surveillance without warrant in national security matters. Mitchell further claimed that the domestic threat was greater than the foreign threat. A California court in 1971 ruled that the government can not treat domestic radicals as if they were foreign agents from unfriendly countries. Mitchell claims that easvesdropping had not been started to prosecute the target, but as a part of an on-going domestic intelligence investigation. Various courts turn down this notion since, if there's no intent of prosecution, a citizen's rights could be violated for years without the citizen even being aware of it. In 1972 the Supreme Court in the Keith case determined the government must get a warrant where "There is no evidence of any involvement, directly or indirectly, of a foreign power." The Administration moves to dismiss a number of cases rather than have their records examined. In May of 1973, the indictment of Daniel Ellsberg was overturned because the government had violated warrant proceedures. The Justice Department had autho-rized a tap of a former National Security Council staffer, Morton Halperin, and had gathered evidence against Ellsberg through that tap. Halperin's tap was one of 17 against government officials and journalists authorized by the Nixon administration. These were not countersubversive taps, but attempts at plugging "leaks" of information. Electronic surveillance of American citizens to trace leaks of classified information became an obsession of the Nixon Administration. "Plumbers" unit formed in the White House, with its ostensible purpose is to plug leaks of information. Involved are Nixon aides G. Gordon Liddy, Egil Krogh, John Erlichman, Howard Hunt, others. For the first time in history, the President organized an intelligence unit working entirely outside of Constitutional law and answerable only to the President, for purposes not only of passive information gathering, but to take aggressive means of injuring and eliminating specific political targets. Nixon ignores the Eisenhower and Scranton reports. The Eisenhower Commission was formed to look into the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the violations of rights involved. The Scranton Commission was set to look into campus unrest. They determined that the actions on the part of the government needlessly sacrificed citizen's rights to maintain order, and that campus demonstrations were a result of unaddressed national problems. Nixon repudiates the Scranton Commission report all told. He expands the Attorney General Clark's Interdepartmental Information Unit (IDIU) to cover campus dissidence. The Intelligence Evaluation Committee (IEC) is formed, with its ultimate purpose being the reviving and implementation of the Huston Plan, while soothing J. Edgar Hoover's feathers. U.S. military intelligence units, next to the FBI, become the most important components of the government's intelligence apparatus. They grossly overstep their boundaries, conducts surveillance, and assembles dossiers on individuals and organizations from every quarter of dissent and literally every organization of a liberal, radical or dissident leaning. Once again, the government violates the Constitution, since the military is only to be used to repel invasion, suppress insurrection and execute the laws of the land, according to Article I, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Military intelligence gathering becomes more intense than other agencies, due to the inherent bias and greater technology of the military. (Circa) The Secret Army Organization (SAO) is formed. As many other right wing extremist groups,this one's trademarks are violence and terror, vandalism, fire-bombings, shootings, assasinations, etc. Extreme right wing groups often follow these kind of tactics. The SAO is linked to the bombing of a porno movie theatre in San Diego in 1972. One of the group's principals is Howard Berry Godfrey, a San Diego fireman and an FBI informer. SAO targets are the same as the FBI's, and the two undoubtedly shared information. Congressman George Bush holds hearings using Eugenic ideas about Black people and their alleged inferiority. Consults heavily with close friend General William H. Draper, a longtime Eugenicist.

1970 — Hoover breaks off liason with CIA when Agency refused to name FBI agent who had given them intelligence info. In May he terminated liason with all other federal intelligence agencies. "Huston Plan" is put into effect. Calls for increased surveillance of "violence prone campus and student related groups" through illegal operational methods. Done because the "campus is the battle ground of the revolutionary protest movement." Colleges have been the single concentration area of American intelligence units, both federal and local. Coverage stepped up during the late '60's. Bureau's role goes back to on-campus recruitment efforts, where agents got to be known on campus, and to college administrators. This gave agents a way to gather information on organizations and individuals, without arousing suspicion, allowing agents to develop "confidential sources." In spite of heavy intelligence gathering on various campuses, FBI doesn't even detect bombing of a lab on a Wisconsin campus. Doesn't detect emergence of SDS's Weather Underground, and can't manage arrests of members. After a bomb assembly operation blows up in Greenwich Village, and a number of demonstrations around the country, Nixon tells the Congress the problems "Were the work of young criminals posturing as romantic revolutionaries." One of Nixon's advisers characterized the movement by telling the press: "It wouldn't make a lot of difference if the war and racism ended overnight. We're dealing with the criminal mind, with people who have snapped for some reason." A key Nixon aide added that "We are facing the most severe internal security threat this country has seen since the depression." The Internal Security Division (ISD) grand jury program convinces prosecutors to harass dissidents and their supporters by verbally abusing them during testimony in front of grand juries, often without benefit of counsel, often asking questions that might cause them to incriminate themselves. Most activists opt to suffer a contempt of court charge and are put in jail until they either talk or the grand jury term ends, or 18 months. ISD chief William Olson stated that "No inquiries are conducted for the purpose of supplying intelligence information to any other office of government." However, once information is in ISD's files, it was distributed to virtually every intelligence gathering organization in government. All of the ISD grand juries provided the "legal" forum to gather information about activists and organizations in parts of the country that were distant from where the actual grand jury sessions took place. Witnesses were harassed, jailed. None were under indictment nor actively suspected of crimes.HISC Chairman Richard Ichord launches an "investigation" into the funding of revolutionary groups by requesting 179 colleges and universities to supply the names, sponsorship and honoraria of "all guest speakers on the campus from Sept. 1968 to May of 1970." U.S. District Judge Gerhard Gesell bans publication of the list on the grounds it was a blacklist, intended "to inhibit speech on college campuses" and "it is without proper legislative purpose and infringes on the rights of the indiviudals named therein." Judge Gesell further determined it would be "illegal to publish the list at public expense." Regardless, the committee publishes the list claiming immunity from the court's interference with legislative function. The Senate version of HISC is the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS). It too tries to play the intelligence gathering game by broadening its own powers of "investigation" and blames communist influence for our domestic problems. (Circa) The National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC) is formed by Lyndon LaRouche, a former OSS agent. LaRouche is a former Socialist Worker's Party member, who eventually turned to the extreme right wing. In 1973 NCLC spun off the U.S.Labor Party as its political wing. Both organizations get their guidance from their prime enemy: The Rockefeller organizations. LaRouche sees Rockefeller as the harbinger of what has come to be called the "New World Order." Politics sometimes does make strange bedfellows. Richard Helms, CIA Director, is ordered by Nixon to stop Chilean Marxist Presidential candidate Salvador Allende from taking office. Nixon authorized $10 million dollars to get the job done. Nixon ordered Allendea's downfall because certain American businesses, including Pepsico, the maker of Pepsi Cola, and a company Nixon has been associated with for many years, did not want a Marxist regime where they have a plant. President Johnson's final budget includes $43 Million dollars for drug enforcement, $59 Million for research, rehabilitation and treatment.

1971 — Campaign against Heroin use in Vietnam fails. Robert L. duPont,Jr. named first head of National Institute on Drug Abuse. duPont begins, very quietly, to urge urine testing. Hoover tries to expand his "Legal attaches" overseas. Agents engaged in secuirty work involving American citizens or residents. Hoover wants a total of 22 foreign cities with bureaus, formalizing and enlarging duties to include general political intelligence (traditional State Dept.job) for transmission in code directly to the White House, bypassing State Dept. and CIA. Hoover lobbied Nixon for approval. Got it, telling subordinates (who were against the idea) that the White House insisted on it. Hoover may have got the idea when President Johnson asked for evidence of foreign involvement in anti-war movement. Congressman (later President) Gerald Ford, while on the Warren Commission panel that investigated President Kennedy's assasination, fed secret testimony and deliberations of panel to Hoover. Ex-agent Robert Wall reveals that use of informers induced the use of fake informers. Wall, in an interview, said he and other agents would go through a phone book, pick a name, file reports under that name, report "informer" wanted payment, then the agent would pocket the money. Accountability was limited, so agents could get away with it. GAO reports the FBI employed some 37,000 informers between 1940 and 1978, including 7,893 in 170 Racial and Extremist groups' surveillance (assume these figures are very conservative). Between 1966 and 1976 the Chicago Bureau office alone paid out $2.5 million to 5,145 informers during investigating or develop-ing files on 27.900 organizations and individuals. Investigating the Socialist Workers Party and its youth affiliate, with a combined membership of 2500 cost $1,683,000. This sum was paid to 301 informers who joined the two groups, and does not include pay for 1,000 others who snooped, but never joined. By 1976, FBI budgets $7,401,000.00 to pay political informers. In 1979, then Director William Webster refused to allow a congressional audit of Bureau's informers. "Media Papers" removed from resident FBI agency at Media, Pennsylvania. One of the thousand documents removed refers to "educators and administrators who are established sources." Others mention sources like a Swarthmore College Switchboard operator, a registrar at an Eastern Women's college, an administrative employee at the University of California Berkley campus, the Swarthmore campus Police chief and a file custodian at Swarthmore. Congress repeals emergency detention provisions of Internal Security Act of 1950. Wording indicates congress' intent to wipe out detention as well as incidental authority to keep lists of individuals who might be detained. As usual, Bureau works to get around the law. Bureau instituted "Administrative Index" (ADEX) which, with the blessing of Attorney General John Mitchell, continued the indexing process. Cointelpros stopped by Bureau, for fear of discovery of disruption programs with the release of the Media papers.2340 disruption programs instituted; 715 approved to cause disruption within an organization, or between two organizations. An ISD grand jury in Los Angeles indicts Dr. Daniel Ellslberg for his procurement and release of documents pertaining to the Vietnam war. The New York Times newspaper published these documents which came to be called the "Pentagon Papers." Nixon's White House tries to paint Ellsberg as a spy, working for foreign (communist) powers, claims Ellsberg delivered documents to the Russian embassy. The FBI, with great, continual surveillance on the embassy, could find no evidence that the documents had been delivered there. During the investigation from Los Angeles, plus the convening of a grand jury in Boston also looking into the case, associates of Ellsberg were subpoenaed; several were jailed for contempt for refusing to testify. Harvard faculty member Dr. Samuel Popkin, in addition to being harassed by the prosecution during questioning, was jailed on contempt charges for refusing to answer questions that would have revealed the confidential sources of his research. He was the first American scholar to go to jail for refusing to name his sources of his research. Nixon declares drugs "Public Enemy Number One." Veterans addicted to heroin begin returning from Vietnam.

1972 — Shafer commission report issued. Finds no reason that Cannabis should remain criminal. Urges decriminalization, falls just short of calling for relegalization. Finds no physical, mental, or moral problems with the smoking. President Nixon, who commissioned report, refuses to accept findings. Nixon calls drugs "America's public enemy #1." Congress passes $1 Billion dollar anti-drug bill. Little effect noted. By 1972 Communists were becoming an endangered species. Bureau (Hoover) needed new enemies. Started concentrating on "New Left," such as Women's Liberation Movement, Gay movement, Anti-War Movement (though they had been looking at anti war movement for awhile) and Hemp (at that time Marijuana) Movement. Hoover determined that Women's Movement was violence prone, and he especially wanted the Students for a Democratic Society and its faction, the Weather Underground. Bureau forms an association with the Honeywell Corporation in Minneapolis to frustrate an anti-war group demonstrating against Honeywell (the company was making cluster bombs [anti-personel bombs]) for use in Vietnam. Other agencies (CIA, IRS, Military Intelligence, Office of Naval Intelligence, National Security Agency, grand juries, other intelligence organizations) join forces to investigate virtually all anti-establish-ment organizations. Just before his death, Hoover stated that Bureau was not involved in campus activities, though the record proves otherwise. Lawrence Trackman, identified as "an American adventurer" by the Rome newspaper "Il Messaggero." They report Trackman was arrested in Manila, Phillipines because of his alleged involvement in an assassination plot against Ferdinand Marcos. He told interviewers that Kennedy was "The victim of a plot by 15 Cuban and American mercenaries enlisted for the Bay of Pigs invaison." The group could have been Interpen-IAB. James McCord, security chief for Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP), claims the anti-war organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) was planning violent demonstrations against Nixon at the Republican National Convention in Miami. McCord, in testimony during the Watergate hearings in 1973, said the ISD reports showed this alleged violence would happen just before the Watergate break-in in May. However, ISD did not convene a grand jury until after the Watergaters had been caught and an urgent need by the Administration for a cover was at hand.Just prior to the Republican convention, the ISD grand jury subpoenaed 23 leaders of VVAW, forcing them to leave Miami, disrupting the demonstration. Six VVAW members were eventually indicted for conspiracy to disrupt the convention. Four VVAW members refused to testify, and were jailed for comtempt of court. The Court of Appeals overturned the contempt citations and remanded the case to District Court. District court jailed the four again for contempt; they stayed behind bars for a month, with no bail. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas finally set bail, expressing disgust that the grand jury system was being subverted for political purposes. Any planned demonstrations outside the convention involving VVAW was effectively stopped. The break in at the Watergate Office and apartment complex in Washington occurred on May 27th. Efforts against Daniel Ellsberg, VVAW, and other organizations had a "blow back" effect on the government. The government, in most cases, could not back up their charges with evidence. Using the grand jury system for political purposes, however, did set a very dangerous precedent against dissidents. One tool the government used was the "unindicted co-conspirator" charge. This caused a stigma to be attached to those people who, in most cases, were mere witnesses to activities. By labelling someone an unindicted co-conspirator, the victim is not even given a chance for legal defense. It also caused a secondary inducement to testify, which would remove the stigma. It also gave the impression to the public that the cases ran deeper than what was officially indicated. The grand jury is still being used as an intelligence-gathering tool against American citizens, even through 1998. Efforts to convince the Lakota Indian nation to sell uranium fall through. Between 1972 and 1975 there are 60 violent deaths of American Indian Movement members or supporters. AIM had been asked to protect the Lakota people at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Leonard Peltier was one who came to help preserve his people's way of life.

1973 — Nixon declares "We have turned the corner on drug addiction in America." Nelson Rockefeller's tough anti-drug bill passes in New York. Little effect noted.ADEX declared by Bureau "strictly an administrative device" in an attempt to provide legitimacy. Bureau agents refer to "files," not "dossiers" because "dossiers" sounds ominous. Even though Bureau files are supposed to be confidential, they find their way to the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP). Files probably came in through James McCord, CREEP's security chief, a former FBI, CIA operative. One file, on a "Letterhead Memo" (LHM) didn't deal at all with CREEP, but with the organization "Vietnam Veterans Against the War." FBI Director Clarence Kelly urges legislation to reinstitute Cointelpros, saying they did more good than harm. Inititive denied. 10th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination. Demonstration outside of National Archives in Washington, demands evidence be released about assassination. Author of "Executive Action," Don Freed states Gerald Ford, member of the Warren Commission, should be arrested for including classified documents in his book "Portrait of the Assassin." Also states that when Dr. Cyril Wecht was given permission to see some previously witheld pathological evidence, he found that Kennedy's brain, preserved in formaldehyde, and allegedly turned over to the National Archives, was missing. Eugenio Martinez, after Watergate, tells Harper's magazine that the Watergaters had used the same pseudonyms they used during the Bay of Pigs. James McCord was using the name Edward J. Martin. Hunt was using the name Mr. White. Was this the Mr. Martin that was going to sell weapons to Cubans? In 1972 ex-political informant for the Los Angeles Police, Louis Tackwood, said he was approached by a Mr. Martin and a Mr. White and had been asked to incite a riot at the 1972 Republican Convention. How did Tackwood know the code names before the Watergate episode occured? CIA Director Helms, in testimony to Congress in connection with his appointment as ambassador to Iran, denied that the Agency had ever spied on American citizens. In response to whether he knew about the Nixon administration's urging that all intelligence agencies join together to investigate the anti-war movement, Helms stated "I don't recall if we were asked, but we were not involved because it seemed to me that was a clear violation of what our charter was." The evidence overwhelmingly indicates Helms was fully aware of what was going on, and, in fact,encouraged it. Therefore, he lied to Congress. H.R. Haldeman, during the attempted implementation of the Huston plan, said that Tom Huston was afraid of refusal of CIA help, but the CIA was "most cooperative and helpful." Huston said the only stumbling block was J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover probably didn't want to share the limelight with the CIA. Helms eventually admits "his arm was twisted" by Presidents Johnson and Nixon to commit domestic surveillance. The ramrod behind the Agency's involvement was none other than James Angleton, with his background in encouraging Nazi war criminal involvement in the CIA in the late 40's. Nixon's staff, upset by the counter demonstrations at Nixon rallies, puts out the false news story that foreign and communist money financed anti-Nixon efforts. The CIA is still unable to provide any proof, as none existed. Nixon later changes the story to mean "foreign support," a vague statement that, in reality, meant people in other nations did not want the Vietnam war either. Juan Peron briefly seizes power once again in Argentina. He dies in 1974. His return to power is believed to have been mostly financed by his late wife Evita's fortune of Nazi money. Thanks to the Peron's, the original Nazis, and now their direct descendants, are firmly entrenched in not only Argentina, but all of South America.

1974 — Rubin, Comitas study "Ganja in Jamaica" released. Finds no long term physical, mental, moral problems from Cannabis smoking. Budget for drug enforcement reaches $292 Million dollars. $462 Million earmarked for demand reduction and treatment. "Coup D'etat" co-author Michael Canfield, looking into the identity of three tramps near the scene of Kennedy's murder, is shown photographs; One is definitely Frank Sturgis, one is Howard Hunt, the other is Bernard Barker, all of Watergate infame. Activist Dick Gregory is given photographs, immediately releases information in a press conference, later testifies before Rockefeller CIA activities panel. Generally, media ignores confirmed photographic evidence (Columnist Jack Anderson is the only one who picks up story). After an expose of CIA domestic operations, Angleton, whose cover was now blown, tried the excuse of claiming he was victim of the Soviet KGB efforts to descredit American intelligence organizations. SISS publishes 400 page report claiming Marijuana traffic constitutes an unprecedented threat to nation's security by New Left groups trying to ruin this country's morals. The report, as most are, is full of falsehoods and outright lies about Cannabis. There is no evidence that any foreign government or "communism" has anything to do with Marijuana or drug trafficking.

1975 — Rockefeller's now hold largest block of stock in Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and were believed to be in control of Texaco as well. Rockefellers also thought to control Royal Dutch Shell. All these companies were, in policy, committed to the New World Order. FBI, in spite of bureau attempts to lessen critisism, targets 1100 organizations they suspect of being communist-infiltrated. In testimony to Church commit-tee, Charles Brennan, chief of Internal Security Section of FBI'S Domestic Intelligence Division tried to justify Bureau's surveillance of Vietnam war opponents because they might be subversive in the future. Church committee demands, receives files from Bureau dealing with "subversives" but Bureau doesn't even review its secret field files. Files in New York office subsequently reveal its burglary program. Obtained pursuant to a court-ordered search. About this time, Howard Hunt, after Watergate, writes several books, one of which is blatantly anti-Kennedy. John Dean finds several bogus telegrams in Hunt's safe accusing Kennedy of having South Vietnamese Premier Ngo Dinh Diem killed. Hunt had shown General Charles Conein copies of the telegrams (Conein had been an adviser in Vietnam under Kennedy). Conein begins blaming Kennedy for Diem's assassination. Soon after, Conein is hired by Drug Enforcement Administration. Gets in touch with a private company that produces sophisticated assassination weapons. On June 26, two FBI agents drive into an AIM encampment, claiming to be trailing Indian Jimmy Eagle for reportedly stealing a pair of used cowboy boots. A firefight developed, killing the two agents and one Indian. No investigation into the killing of Joe Stuntz Killsright, the Indian. The FBI chooses four of 20 possible suspects for prosecution: Dino Butler, Bob Robideau, Jimmy Eagle, and Leonard Peltier. Robideau and Butler were taken into custody, the whereabouts of Eagle and Peltier unknown. Robideau and Butler were tried and acquitted. The FBI dropped charges against Eagle and went after Peltier, a possible future AIM leader. Prior to Robideau and Butler's trial, Peltier had gone to Canada. The government presented affadavits that they finally admitted in 1985 were falsified and coerced against Peltier to gain his extradition. He is removed back to this country. FBI memo, "American Indian Movement Investigative Techniques" recommends a "Full investigation of local AIM chapters, its leaders and members." The memo adds: " ... Any full investigation involves a degree of privacy invasion and that of a person' right to free expression. " After exposure of some undercover agents, an FBI document states:"As a result of certain disclosures regarding informants, AIM leaders have dispersed, have become extremely security conscious and literally suspect everyone." FBI documents also reveal that friendly media helped in suppressing groups like AIM and black activist organizations. The help came in the form of manipulation of information to the media as a whole and feeding slanted stories to cooperative media outlets. In 1978 The National Lawyers Guild would publish a list of media who helped with Cointelpro: The Hearst Papers, the Associated Press, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Milwaukee Journal, Los Angeles Examiner, U.S. News & World Report, and the Arizona Daily Star, among others. A counterinsurgency plan code named "Garden Plot" is exposed in New Times Magazine. State, local police were trained by the military in the event of a domestic insugency. The martial law network included the FBI, all branches of the military, the Federal Marshalls Service, Highway Patrols, SWAT teams and other riot police. The action at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the part of AIM, was the first opportunity for actual practice for the network.

1976 — F.D.A. powers expanded to control all "medical devices." President Gerald Ford signs executive order forbidding government recognition of any study that finds benefits from Cannabis. Allows only pharaceutical companies to do research into Cannabis. Congressman Larry P. McDonald writes introduction to book "The Rockefeller File" where he warns America that Rockefeller's aim is one world government,(New World Order) where the Rockefeller family, for at least 50 years, has been structuring a plan to gain political control of first, America, then the world. McDonald is convinced a generations-old plan, designed to slowly implement change and "evil in intent" has been going on. NCLC renounces its leftism, becomes an authoritarian conservative organization, ostensibly uses its intelligence gathering skills against "terrorists." They try to label the environmental movement as terrorist in nature. FBI files show that NCLC has collaborated with various government agencies, and has instigated national security investigations against its political enemies such as Jewish, Black, Native American and environmental groups. Jimmy Carter is elected President. CIA covert actions under Carter amount to distribution of pro-American democracy books throughout the Soviet Union. Carter's administration starts shoring up relations with friendly countries such as Britain and Saudi Arabia. Carter's CIA was involved with a paramilitary support operation in Marxist South Yemen, though the biggest intelligence action came with CIA assistance of the Afgani rebels after the Soviet Union invaded Afganistan. For the first time, American made weapons were being used against Soviet troops. The "Dirty War" in Argentina begins. The "War Without Borders" against the political left extended beyond Argentina. Peronist students, laborists and other supporters are the first targets. The "Butcher of Lyon," Klaus Barbie, was among those helping the Neo-Nazis in their anti-leftist crusade.

1977 — A Department of Justice investigative report, just released this year, would not recommend prosecution of individuals involved in mail-opening programs instituted by Nixon. They use the grounds that the program may have been justified by the President's national security power. CIA counterintel-ligence chief James Angleton defends the program saying that it produced valuable information. He rejected as "Inconceivable" that the CIA should be required to conform to law. A 400 page report is prepared and leaked to the media by the Bureau that indicates the Weather Underground had foreign "support." The report was released as a defense to the Kearney Commission indictments over wiretapping and mail covering of dissidents. The report maintained that no crimes were committed by government intelligence agents because the Weathermen were in fact foreign agents, subject to inherent executive power. The Bureau was made to adhere to the standards reached in the Keith case of 1975, backed up by the decision in Zwiborn v. Mitchell that the mere influence or support of a foreign power did not deprive a domestic organization of constitutional rights that require warrants for tapping. (Circa) Nuclear Regulatory Commission forms the Intelligence Assessment Team (IAT) to ostensibly monitor possible thefts of nuclear materials and information. However, as usual in the intelligence community, they end up monitoring anti-nuclear, environmental, and other groups with "left" leanings. Immediately, IAT liasons with other intelligence gathering organizations. Leonard Peltier is found guilty of murdering two FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. The FBI in the 90's finally admit they really don't know who killed the agents.

1978 — (Circa) DDU becomes CIA within the CIA. Dulles, Wisner, Angleton sabotaged Agency's filing system to protect State dept. Nazis in 1950's. This year, CIA reports to Congress that "No Nazis were ever smuggled into this country under the "100 persons" program. President Carter issues an executive order limiting intelligence agencies. However, electronic surveillance is still allowed if the government suspects a citizen of being an agent of a foreign power. Order reinforces a Nixon Administration doctrine of executive authority to bypass the Constitutional protections of the fourth amendment. A "briefing paper" released to Congress dealing with Terrorism claims that laws and regulations against counterintelligence is hampering law enforcement ability to deal with terrorists. Chicago Police Superintendent James E. O'Grady, in congressional testimony, claims the lawsuit against Chicago's "Red Squad" to halt police spying of lawful, peaceful activity renders the Chicago Police virtually helpless to stop terrorist activities there. This argument ignores first amendment rights of protest The Justice Department findings for 1977 indicate out of 1318 bombings in America, only 4 could be considered subversive. The Task Force on Disorder and Terrorism releases findings that between 1965 and 1976 incidents involving political violence are substantially caused by right wing and racist groups, not "communist" or "new left" organiza-tions. Most U.S. based terrorist groups are right wing, supporting various right wing governments and overseas terrorist operations. As government "cracks down" on intelligence agencies through tighter congressional oversight and new laws, local and state intelligence agencies (that usually work through police departments) have taken over. For instance, a Los Angeles Police Department team made still photographs and videotapes of witnesses opposing a proposed nuclear power plant. The police claimed they were taking pictures as part of a police training excercise, but recanted that later These groups tend to still investigate "new left" targets as they always have, but now the just simply claim the targets are "terrorists." Ayatollah Khomeni takes power in Iran, ousting U.S. backed dictator Shah Palavi, and taking Americans who had been living in Iran as hostages. Carter orders a rescue attempt. Several military helicopters used in the attempt mysteriously fail, causing the mission to fail. The bungled attempt becomes the symbol of a failed presidency.

1980 — Costa Rica studies released on Cannabis. No distinguishable harm found from use of Cannabis. First Emit Cannabinoid test developed. With aggressive marketting to industry, government, military, Emit is the fastest growing of the tests, though accuracy is next to nothing. Ronald Reagan is elected President and installs William Casey as CIA Director. Reagan has been directly linked to emigre groups run by Nazis. Casey was a protege of William "Wild Bill" Donovan while at the OSS during WWII. Casey was responsible for setting up a spy ring in Nazi Germany six months before the end of the war. CASEY HEADED A FASCIST FRONT GROUP, "THE INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE" THAT HELPED NAZI FUGITIVES WITH IMMIGRATION PROBLEMS. Reagan's staff published a calender celebrating April 10th as "Croatian Independence Day" and permitted known Nazis to work on his campaign. Casey vows to revamp the CIA under Reagan. The CIA had the wind taken out of its sails during the Carter years as a result of Congressional investigations. Casey has CIA legal staff start drawing up plans to eliminate Justice Department oversight of the agency. Under Casey's plan, the ban on domestic surveillance of American Citizens would be lifted. First Lady Nancy Reagan begins her "Just Say No" to drugs campaign. Klaus Barbie helps to organize a brutal coup d'etat against the democratically elected government in Bolivia. Bolivian drug lords and an international coaltion of neo-fascists bankroll the putsch. Support was given by the World Anti-Communist League, which was led by WWII war criminal Ryoichi Sasakawa of Japan and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Barbie started a secret lodge called "Thule," where he lectured his followers. During the 80's, the Argentine government would extend its Nazism to Central America and would become staunch allies of America's CIA, particularly under Reagan. The Argentines would organize paramilitary forces in several countries, including the Nicaraguan Contras and Honduran "Death Squads."

1981 — U.S. Military begins forced urine testing of military troops. Drug control now costs $1.5 Billion dollars ... .more precisely, $1,531,000

1983 — Korean airlines 007 flight shot down when it "accidentally" flies over Soviet territory. Plane contains Congressman Larry McDonald, who had been investigating Rockefeller family. The attempt on Reagan's life exposes weaknesses in planning for emergencies. Secretary of State Alexander Haig,in violation of the Constitution, claims he is in control of the government, then backs down. The FBI immediately takes possession of Reagan's clothes and briefcase as "evidence." Included in the possessions is Reagan's secret personal code card that provides the coded number that can be used to authenticate a nuclear weapons strike. The incident points out the failure of the "fail safe" management of nuclear weapons. Casey names Dr. Constatin Menges as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America. Menges had worked for Frank Carlucci, the former deputy CIA Director under Carter, and former deputy at the department of Health, Education and Welfare. Carlucci has a background in intelligence. Why are people with Intelligence backgrounds serving in HEW, the agency that sets national education policy? Casey, Reagan, Donovan, the Dulles brothers, and that ilk go back a long way. Casey, along with most of the rest of the Reagan administration grows concerned about Central America. Claims that Cuba, the right wing's old nemesis, was exporting communism to El Salvador through Nicaragua. Casey further claimed that CIA intelligence indicated that it was a textbook case of communist global conspiracy, citing, among other evidence, that American-made M-16 rifles whose serial numbers matched those weapons missing from the Vietnam war, being found in Sandinista possession. Intelligence further indicated that Cuba had infiltrated the Sandinista government, permitting weapons and supply shipments a base on the way to El Salvador. Philosophically, the Reagan government wanted no communist government that close to the U.S. Diplomatic approaches were made by threatening to withold financial aid and asking that the Nicaraguan government not help the El Salvadoran rebels. The Sandinistas refused to go along with American demands. Consensus, which Reagan prefered among his staff, was lacking on Central Ameri-ca. Secretary of State Haig wanted an open war. Defense Secretary Weinburger wanted no part of another jungle war like Vietnam. Chief of Staff Baker and others wanted Reagan to stick to his domestic policy and not worry about the internal affairs of Central American nations. Casey allies the CIA with the right-wing Argentine government whose intelligence agency was already involved with Nicaragua. Montoneros guerillas opposed to the Argentine government were working out of Nicaragua. Argentina was training anti-Sandinista rebels in Honduras, just to the north of Nicaragua. Casey prefered this "piggyback" style of espionage, riding on the coattails of another nation such as the actions in Chad. Casey succeeded in obtaining $19 Million dollars to fund the Argentine efforts and to create a 500 man insurrection force to be used against the Sandinistas. The Reagan administration approves. Reagan signs a top secret order authorizing the expenditure. The decision was made to keep the Nicaraguan operation from the American people for fear of lack of acceptance. Funds, therefore, could not be obtained through Congress without public debate, but both House and Senate Intelligence committees had to be notified of a major covert operation, as per law. Questions were raised about the illegality and morality of the operation, but in the end, Casey won out. With Presidential approval. General Richard Secord sells weapons to the Contras. Later, he brokers the arms deal with Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni. Private money for the Contras is being raised. Secord and Albert Hakim control secret Swiss bank accounts that hold the Contra money. Beer magnate Adolph Coors contributes $85 Thousand, for example. Oliver North gave Coors the account number and name of the Swiss account for the deposit. Secord purchased $3.7 million dollars worth of missiles from the CIA and sold them to Iran for $10 million. Most of the money, though, never made it to the Contras.The Enterprise sold weapons to the Contras at a huge mark up. The Contras bought these weapons and used them mainly against civilian targets in Nicaragua ... old men, women and children, to break the spirit of the Sandinistas.

1982 — (Circa) Mena, Arkansas was set up as a secret base for the training of Contra (Nicaraguan) rebels, with the full cooperation and approval of then Governor Bill Clinton. The story of the Mena connection broke when notorious smuggler Barry Seal told of the servicing and unloading of his C123 cargo plane at Mena.

1984 — Seal unloads a shipment of Cocaine in Nicaragua. He had picked up the load in Columbia and was ordered by the DEA to stop in Nicaragua. Seal had been arrested on drug charges in 1982, and beat the arrest by working with DEA in a sting operation against the Medellin Cartel. The CIA had fitted Seal's plane with hidden cameras for the next trip for Cocaine. He therefore recorded secret tape of Cocaine being smuggled, which the Reagan Administration used to try and scare Congress into appropriating money for the Contras. DEA became upset that the CIA had co-opted its sting operation in favor of providing pro-Contra propaganda. Seal's cover was blown, and he was dropped from favor by both the CIA and DEA. Seal was sent to prison for his drug conviction, but was shortly released on probation. Seal was subsequently killed by "unknown gunmen." The CIA kept Seal's plane, "The Fat Lady" and pressed it into service, still running guns and drugs between Central and South America and the U.S., much of it coming in through Mena, Arkansas. Pilot Eugene Hasenfus survived the "Fat Lady" being shot down by Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and promptly claimed the protection of President Ronald Reagan. Mena continued to be one of the major staging grounds for the Contra training effort. Arkansas businessmen were coopted to produce untraceable pirate M-16 rifles for the Contras. Author Terry Reed says that Bill Clinton, as governor, laundered Contra money to hide the pirate rifle production and the fact that he used profits for the Arkansas political patronage system. Reed claims some $40 million dollars per month in CIA payoffs were channeled into Clinton's governors administration through wealthy Clinton supporters such as Little Rock investment banker Dan Lasater. Congress passes strengthened asset forfeiture laws

1985 — Milton, Wisconsin high school students forced to submit to weekly urine tests. Baseball commissioner Peter Uberroth orders all personel, except union players, submit to urine tests. By 1990, even ball players are forced to be tested. American industry, labor unions are encouraged by government to begin wholesale drug testing. Many comply. Author Reed says much of the payoff money dealing with the Iran Contra affair was channeled through the Arkansas Development Finance Authority, (ADFA), which then-Governor Clinton used for industrial development in Arkansas.

1986 — Omrcanin now lives in Washington, D.C. where he publishes pro-Ustashian tracts. He confirms Simcic and Cecelja's views. Claims Montini (Pope Paul VI) was fully aware of Ratlines. A report issued in a Lebanese magazine indicates the American government had traded weapons valued at about $3.7 million dollars to Iran's Ayatollah Khomeni for $10 million. Ten days later,President Reagan denied the report in a televised press conference. Nine days later, however, several laws were broken by Reagan and his staff. Admiral John Poindexter claims responsibility, says he left "deniability" to Reagan. Reagan, though, did did say on several occaisons that he wanted to help the Contras unilaterally ... that is, without Congressional approval. In several speeches, Reagan makes it clear he is in solidarity with the Contras. Because of CIA bombing of harbors,oil tankers and other targets, the operation is exposed. Congress stopped funding the Contras. Lt. Col. Oliver North was instrumental in obtaining a million dollars a month for the Contras from Saudi Arabia. Millions of dollars were also gathered from other allies. Former General John Singlaub, a known Nazi sympathizer (author's words) and head of the International Anti-Communist League, a known fascist organization, also raised money for the Contras. It is revealed that a group called "The Enterprise" has been formed by Albert Hakim, a presidential adviser and an Iranian by birth that supported the Shah's regime. The Enterprises purpose is to manage the Contra funds. The Enterprise consists of Hakim, General Richard Secord, Admiral John Poindexter, and North, possibly others. Secord ran the CIA secret war in Laos in the 1960's and was a major Pentagon figure in arms sales overseas, especially to the deposed Shah of Iran. According to author Terry Reed, duffel bags full of money were dropped on Seth "Skeeter" Ward's ranch at night, from airplanes. The CIA's handler for the operation was future president Bush's Attorney General, William Barr. Barr denies the story, but does admit having worked with the CIA. CIA figures meet with Governor Clinton to advise him the Mena operation was going to be moved to Mexico and the Arkansas money line would be cut off. Clinton protested that he had taken risks to accomodate the operation. Barr reportedly said: "This has turned into a feeding frenzy by your good ol' boy sharks, and you've got a hand in it too, Mr. Clinton ... our deal with you was to launder our money through your bond business ... 10% of the profits, not 10% of the gross. No one agreed for you to start loaning out our money to your friends through your ADFA ... we didn't count on Arkansas becoming more difficult to deal with than most banana republics."

1987 — Nearly half of all major American industry is now forcibly urine testing employees.

1988 — The British All Party Parliamentary Committee determines the Galician SS had not even been minimally screened in 1947, for normal immigration into Britain, which allowed many war criminals to escape prosecution. U.S. Senate adds $2.6 Billion to federal anti-drug efforts. Little effect noted. George Bush had to know about Croatian terrorists, since they hijacked an airplane on his watch as CIA director. Bush and his staff published a calender celebrating April 10 as "Croatian Independence Day." Bush also permitted known Fascists to work on his "Ethnic Outreach" program. Bush starts his version of the "War on Drugs" with a televised speech from his office where he holds up a bag of alleged Crack he claims was purchased a block from the White House. It was actually an arranged sale through DEA that took place elsewhere in Washington. Drug Free Workplace Act passes Congress, urges all private employers to drug test employees, in violation of their individual rights. Many insurance companies demand their customers drug test under the guise of accident prevention. Privately owned prisons are now common in most states,with varying standards of health and cleanliness. Problems with prison and jail overcrowding become reality as more and more drug users are jailed. Violent criminals are often released early so as to accomodate drug prisoners. Violent crime escalates as police resources are diverted to apprehend drug criminals. Governor Clinton issues "Arkansas Travellers Certificates," kind of "Key-to-the-City" type of awards, usually given to political friends, to Contra commander Adolfo Calero and Contragate figure and known Nazi, General John Singlaub. According to William Duncan, a former IRS investigator, $250 thousand dollars was laundered through local banks in Mena, Arkansas by Barry Seal's network to pay for upkeep on planes involved in the Contra operation. Duncan told Terry Reed: "I can assure you there was a cover-up." Duncan resigned from the IRS after clashing with his superiors over the Mena case. Duncan told "High Times" magazine he quit IRS after attorneys at the agency's Disclosure Litigation Branch pressured him to gloss over his testimony of the Mena affair. Duncan further alleged that he was told to say that he had no information about the allegation. Duncan finally quit IRS in 1989 over testimony about IRS corruption. Arkansas representative Bill Alexander pressured the government's General Accounting Office (GAO) to look into the Mena affair. Within four months, the investigation was shut down because of pressure from the National Security Council. Meanwhile, Polk County, Arkansas prosecutor Charles Black told the "CBS Evening News" that he met with Governor Clinton about the Mena affair. Clinton reportedly told him he would put a man on the case, but Black says he had never heard from Clinton about it. Bill Duncan says then U.S. Attorney for Arkansas, J. Michael Fitzhugh flatly refused to present money laundering evidence to the federal grand jury investigating the Mena affair. Duncan says Fitzhugh barred him from testifying. Of course, no indictments were ever handed down. Congress recreates the office "Drug Czar" and requires annual "National Drug Control Strategies" be presented, complete with short term and long term goals. The Marijuana Movement, now encompassing the industrial and medical benefits of the plant, reassembles in response to stepped-up prosecution.

1989 — Dr. John P. Morgan finds drug testing "... far from reliable ... testing companies are held to no standards but their own." Most testers are poorly trained, uncertified. Drug budget reaches $6.7 Billion dollars. By late in the year, drugs reach the top of public opinion polls. President Bush institutes his first drug control strategy, which emphasizes law enforcement. FY 1989 budget calls for spending $6.6 Billion dollars.

1990 — Lord Shawcross led fight in House of Lords to stop belated prosecution of war criminals. Effort fails. Drug budget for this year is $9.7 Billion dollars ... and rising every year.

1991 — NIDA reports drug testing more for surveilance than safety. Drug
Budget: $10.9 Billion dollars.

1992 — Bill Clinton elected President. Steps up "War on Drugs." Drug budget: $11.9 Billion dollars.

1993 Dr. Joycelyn Elders, U.S. Surgeon General, calls for discussion on relegalizing drugs. President Clinton quickly reins her in. Elders son is arrested and charged with possession of Cocaine. Drug budget for FY 1993: $12.1 Billion dollars.

1994 — World Anti-Communist League (WACL), has taken over Intermarium, ABN activities. Same organization suspected by Congress of running guns for the Iran Contra affair. Had been run by retired U.S. General John Singlaub. Some of WACL's leaders were the same Nazis recruited by Kim Philby. Heads of Western Intelligence may be afraid to open Cold War files for this reason. Secretary General of Interpol, Raymond Kendall, lends his voice to the growing list of significant persons opposing the "war on drugs," as unwinnable and too costly, proposes what he terms depenalization" of drugs. Supreme Court invalidates controlled substances excise taxes as being in violation of double jeopardy points in Constitution. Estimates are that Cannabis is America is a $24 billion dollar a year crop, while still illegal. Estimates of the nation's largest legal crop, corn, are $16 billion. Police departments across the country run ads, otherwise encourage citizens to turn in drug users, with an emphasis on Cannabis. There are an Estimated 340,000 people in jail or prison for Cannabis related crimes, at a cost of $25,000 to $27,000 dollars per prisoner per year. Greatest effort in the nation's history to ban firearms from citizen possession. Attempt at passing yet another Omnibus Crime Bill fails over the proposed ban on 19 types of "assault" rifles. Would provide money for 100 thousand more police officers, and build still more prisons. At least one sixth of nation's prison population are behind bars for Cannabis "crimes," and you are more likely to draw more prison time for involvement with Cannabis than for killing someone. Widespread police use of road blocks looking for drugs begins. Police use intimidation to coerce driver's into consenting to vehicle searches. Police begin to use "Profiling," a method of stopping people who fit a certain description as a method of finding drugs. Drug budget up to $12,184,400,000

1995 — April 19-Federal Building in Oklahoma City bombed. Building contained a day care center. Children are among the victims. As usual, not much information from gov't. A lot of allegations on the Internet about who was responsible. Internet was used to transfer information between right wing militia groups linked to bombing. Congress, because of this, and certain newsgroups dealing with sex, introduces bill to restrict (censor) internet traffic. Anti-terrorism act introduced to Congress. Calls for Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency (FEMA) to identify "terrorist" groups, suspend civil rights and arrest. Definition of "terrorist" group can be interpreted to include those organizations supporting anti-government positions on drugs, homosexuality, other alternative life styles. Has backing of President Clinton, Attorney General Reno, FBI Director Freeh, and law enforcement community. Militia groups, mainly right wing, become prevalent. They are now touting issues the left wing has sponsored for sometime like reduced government, repeal of income taxes, and restoration of the Bill of Rights. Still pushes racism, anti-semitism, fundamentalist Christianity. Drug budget: $13.2 Billion dollars.

1996 — Clinton wins a second term as President. He names retired Army General Barry McCaffrey, former commander of the Southern Command in Panama as his new drug Czar. California passes Proposition 215 which permits Californians to possess and grow Marijuana under a doctor's order. Arizona passes Proposition 200 which allows a doctor to prescribe a variety of currently illegal drugs. California Attorney General Dan Lungren tries every stalling tactic possible until the U.S. Justice Department can intervene and arrest people on Federal charges. Lungren runs for Governor, loses. New California Attorney General Lockyer favors the legislation. Some California citizens, with open-minded local governments do get needed medicine. Arizona's legislature overturns the referendum. Arizonans go back to the ballot box in 1997 and vote it back in. A routine flight from New York to Paris , France, TWA 800 ends in the crash of the plane in the Atlantic Ocean. Around 30 eyewitnesses claim to have seen a missile-like object rise from the ground. Independent research indicates explosive residue on some of the seats. FBI, NTSB, news media claim it was a fuel leak that caused an explosion.Evidence of a cover up exists. FY 96 Drug budget: $13.4 Billion dollars.

1997 — Nearly 642 thousand arrests are made in 1996 for Marijuana. 545 thousand were for simple possession. The Clinton Administration is responsible for about 2.1 million Marijuana arrests. One person was arrested every 49 seconds on a Marijuana charge.The U.S. Supreme Court in April ruled a Georgia law requiring candidates for public office be required to take a urine test for drugs. According to the court, the law failed to demonstrate a "Special need" substantial enough to override 4th Amendment provisions. Canadian authorities rule that bona fide Medical Marijuana users are exempt from criminal prosecution. Clinton announces doctors who prescribe or recommend Marijuana under voter-approved provisions in California and Arizona will be prosecuted and lose their ability to write prescriptions. The DEA demands the names of Arizonans who purchase Marijuana cultivation books.Federal agents seize 331 Marijuana plants and associated growing equipment in a raid on the Flower Therapy Marijuana Buyers Club in San Francisco.An Australian study shows the health of long term Marijuana users is virtually no different than that of the general population. "We don't see evidence of high psychological disturbance among long term users" according to study chief investigator David Reilly. "The results are unremarkable; the exceptional thing is that the respondents are unexceptional." In May, Rep. Barney Frank introduces a Medical Marijuana Bill in the House. Bill is virtually ignored. The New England Journal of Medicine calls the U.S. government's opposition to Medical Marijuana "Misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane." They call the Clinton administration's position "Hypocritical," and calls on the government to change Marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2.A study is released by the U.C.L.A. School of Medicine showing that no long term lung damage is evident in Marijuana smokers.The study is an 8-year long investigation into the study conducted by Dr. Donald Tashkin. "Neither the continuing nor the intermittent Marijuana smokers exhibited any significantly different rates of decline in (lung function) as compared to those who never smoked Marijuana.The conclusion of a comprehensive, long-term study by Kaiser Permanente shows no substantial link between regular Marijuana smoking and death.It does conclude that Marijuana Prohibition causes much greater harm.Researchers found no increase in deaths among the more than 14 thousand patients who reported smoking Marijuana as compared to those who had never used Marijuana. The 1997 Drug budget climbs to $15.03 Billion dollars.

1998 — Marijuana becomes the nation's fourth largest crop, in spite of being illegal. The industry by now rakes in $10 billion dollars annually. Nearly 700 hundred thousand arrests for Marijuana were reported in 1996. 87% of those were arrested on simple possession charges ... the remaining 13% on sales or cultivation charges. Under the Clinton administration, nearly 2.8 million Marijuana arrests have been made. Yet another study showing very little risk of having an automobile accident after having smoked Marijuana. This one is from Australia.Clinton's drug czar, General Barry McAfferey, lies about the impact tolerance of Marijuana in the Netherlands has had on crime in that country.McAfferey claims the Dutch murder rate is twice that of America's. In fact, the Netherland's murder rate is 440% lower than the U.S. McCafferey further claimed Dutch children are three times more likely to try Marijuana than American kids. The fact is that that 21% of Dutch high school kids tried Marijuana as opposed to 45% of Americans during the same time period. It's not the first time McCafferey has been caught in public lies about the War.The magazine New Scientist exposed a conspiracy from the World Heatth Organization with the U.S. government to not publish a study favorable to Marijuana. An unnamed National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and someone from the UN International Drug Control Programme (sic) "warned the WHO that it would play into the hands of groups campaigning to legalise (sic) Marijuana." The WHO report found that Marijuana fared well in 5 of 7 long-term health comparisons. Further, the WHO report states there is no threat of long term lung damage such as blocked airways or emphysema, nor was it seriously addictive nor does it lead to other drug use. Clinton signs into law a bill that would take student financial aid away from those caught with drugs. One time offenders are denied money for college for one year; two time offenders for two years.Students are allowed eligibility in the participate in a drug rehabilitation program and pass two random drug tests.A coalition of Republican representatives on the House Judiciary Committee approves a "Sense of the House of Representatives" resolution stating "Marijuana is a dangerous and addictive drug and should not be legalized for medical use." A study indicates that workplace drug testing has a negative impact on worker productivity. The study by the Le Moyne College Institute of Industrial Relations found that pre-employment and random testing proceedures reduced productivity by 20%. By this year, however approximately 82% of all American companies have some sort of drug testing protocol. Urine tests are still highly innaccurate. All of the tests can be defeated. Congress approves 23 million dollars to develop a fungus that destroys Marijuana plants. The fungus, however, is found to have a general negative impact on the environment. Congress pushes the program anyway.ALASKA, WASHINGTON STATE, OREGON AND NEVADA PASS MEDICAL MARIJUANA LEGAL REFORMS! The residents of Washington D.C. also pass a voter initiative, however because of a last-minute bill introduced by Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga), no money could be spent to count the ballots! Congress, for the first time in American history, and with impunity, negated the results of an American election before the results were even known! A federal judge ordered the ballot box sealed until the court could hear the case. It would take months before it was discovered that D.C. had passed the initiative by 62%. Nevertheless, Congress, which has financial control over the D.C. board of Managers, passed legislation to prevent the initiative from being put into law! As usual, nothing is done. Several public opinion polls indicate 2/3 of the American public favor relegalizing for medicine. Most Medical Associations favor an end to Marijuana prohibition as well. A bill is introduced into the Mississippi legislature by Rep. Bobby Moak (R-Lincoln County) authorizes "The removal of a body part in lieu of other sentences imposed by the court for violations of the Controlled Substances law." Law fortunately does not pass. The Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University releases a study stating that Marijuana alone does not cause criminal activity. The three year study showed less than one percent of persons who committed crimes were under the influence of only Marijuana when they committed a violent crime. Further, the study shows only between one and four percent of violent criminals were under the influence of Crack Cocaine or Heroin during the commission of crime. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich called for "Greatly increased" activity on the part of government in the War on Drugs. He urges Drug Czar Barry McAfferey to map "A World War II style battle plan" to end drug use in America. America spends on average of $30 billion dollars a year ... a third of that is used to combat Marijuana. Gingrich authored a bill calling for the death penalty for anyone caught importing more than 100 dosage units of an illegal substance. That could include anyone carrying more than 50 grams of Marijuana over the border.A rather dramatic study out of Italy shows Marijuana-like chemicals are produced naturally by the human body to combat pain. Researchers at the University of Naples found Anadamides, chemicals similar in structure to chemicals contained in Marijuana, causes the body to ease the symptoms of pain. Thus, Marijuana is an analgesic, according to Dr. John Morgan, a long time Marijuana researcher. The federal drug budget for this year is $15.9 Billion.

1999 — A U.S. Air Force directive in February forbids all personnel from using Hemp seed oil products, claiming that military drug tests can not distinguish between legal Hemp products and Mairjuana. It is revealed that California Against Marijuana Planting employeestestified to the environmental and human damage caused by the government's aerial eradication programs. "Every officer that's been in a helicopter involved in the CAMP program ... would say "Yes, we have flwn under 500 feet (In violation of legally mandated guidelines.) ... We got as close as we could to treetops to hover; we have looked into people's windows, " according to a former deputy sheriff and CAMP officer Gary Holder. The hearings are part of a class action suit agains the government's eradication program. The American Farm Bureau Federation withdrew language from previous statements opposing research and domestic cultivation of industrial Hemp. The Farm Bureau says it dropped its opposition because farmers are in need of alternative crops. Estimated American farmer profits from Hemp go as high as $141 per acre. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) released its findings that Marijuana holds medical value and has a low potential for abuse. IOM supports an administrative petition that seeks to remove Marijuana's classification as a Schedule 1 drug. The study, commissioned by the Clinton Administration, also shows no evidence that Marijuana is a "Gateway" substance, leading to stronger drugs. "Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications." Clinton, as Nixon before him in dealing with the Shaffer Commission in 1972, ignores the report. A study published in the February 4, 1999 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows no link between miscarriages and Marijuana use. Further, Marijuana shows "No reliable impact on birth size, length of gestation or the occurrence of physical abnormalities," according to Dr. John Morgan, of NORML. This year's drug war budget will cost taxpayers $17,886,200,000. That's nearly $2 Billion dollars more than President Clinton had requested. In December, a conference of the World Trade Organization is held in Seattle. A massive protest of that body that seeks to control the commerce of the entire world ends in bloodshed and some property damage. Police are likely causes of the trouble. Crowd is fired on with rubber bullets and "Flash Bang" grenades, in spite of police denials of such weapons. Several hundred arrests are made. Evidence that police launched cannisters of nerve gas against the crowds exists. Police again deny that they used this weapon. Many of the delegates refuse to agree on trade regulations. The Echelon spy satelite network is finally confirmed by some of America's allies. The system was first put into place shortly after WWII and upgraded several times since. The system is designed to spy on the citizens of several countries, including the United States. NATO begins bombing Yugoslavia, with major backing by the U.S. and U.K. It's the first time NATO has initiated war against a sovereign nation. U.S. and NATO claim massive "Ethnic Cleansing" against serbs. Bombing lays waste to Yugoslavia. Many thousand are killed, and the bombing creates hundreds of thousands of refugees. Los Angeles Police experience the greatest revealed corruption in the history of their department. Up to 100 police officers, working in what's known as the Ramparts area of L.A. are suspect in in shaking down suspected drug dealers for cash and drugs, beating suspects and prisoners, planting evidence on their "enemies" and shooting and killing a number of drug suspects. Close to 70 cases are thrown out of court due to police malfeasance. Police corruption because of the War On Some Drugs is rampant across the nation.

2000 — The annual budget for the War On Some Drugs request is the highest ever: $17.7 Billion dollars ... some claim $19 Billion. It's not known as of this writing how much will actually be spent. As of this writing, Congress is debating spending up to nine billion additional dollars to arm the nation of Columbia in the War On Some Drugs. Many fear a repeat of the Vietnam fiasco. As of February 15, two million people are behind bars in America. With approximately 10% of the world's population, we now incarcerate 25% of the world's prisoners. Of the two million, approximately 61% are jailed on drug charges. Of that group, approximately 82% are in on Marijuana charges. Of that subset, 65% are for mere possession cases. Reports begin to surface on the overuse of drugs like Prozac and Ritalin on preschool children. Amnesty International reports a continuation of abuses in the former Yugoslavia. The Kosovar Liberation Army, which the U.S. State Department claims is disbanded, still rules the streets of Kosovo. 28 thousand NATO troops remain as "Peacekeepers." The Miami Herald releases a document signed by an imprisoned Chilean Military Officer that directly implicates Chilean former President Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet was put into power in the 70's after U.S. President Richard Nixon's CIA provided assistance to overthrow popularly-elected Salvador Allende. According to the Herald, the document reveals Pinochet's involvement in a 1976 operation that assasinated Chilean exile leader Orlando Letelier. The bombing occured in Washington, D.C. and is still considered the most serious act of international terrorism to date on U.S. soil. The Herald quotes Espinoza saying that "... by order of the President, we must begin an investigation of Orlando Letelier, who is threatening the stability of the Chilean Government." Espinoza was never extradited to the U.S. to face bombing charges, but he and one other were convicted of the bombing in Chile in 1995.

 

[roots69]

Just something to think about..

Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation

By Mary Louise

The CIA's secret activities, covert missions, and connections of control are all done under the pretense and protection of national security with no accountability whatsoever, at least in their minds. Considering the public is held accountable for everything we think, say, and do there is something seriously wrong with this picture. The CIA is the President's secret army, who have been and continue to be conveniently above the law with unlimited power and authority, to conduct a reign of terror around the globe.

The "old boy network" of socializing, talking shop, and tapping each other for favors outside the halls of government made it inevitable that the CIA and Corporate America would become allies, thus the systematic infiltration and takeover of the media.

Under the guise of 'American' objectives and lack of congressional oversight, the CIA accomplish their exploits by using every trick in the book (and they know quite a few) that they actually teach in the notorious "School of the Americas", nicknamed the "School of Dictators" and "School of Assassins" by critics. The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that 6 million people had died by 1987 as a result of CIA covert operations, called an "American Holocaust" by former State Department official William Blum. In 1948, the CIA recreated its covert action wing called the Office of Policy Coordination with Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner as its first director. Another early elitist who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961 was Allen Dulles, a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other trusts, corporations, and cartels.

Starting in the early days of the Cold War (late 40's), the CIA began a secret project called Operation Mockingbird, with the intent of buying influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and putting reporters on the CIA payroll, which has proven to be a stunning ongoing success. The CIA effort to recruit American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda, was headed up by Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post). Wisner had taken Graham under his wing to direct the program code-named Operation Mockingbird and both have presumably committed suicide.

Media assets will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. and 400 journalists, who have secretly carried out assignments according to documents on file at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens. The CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives by the 1950's. CIA Director Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale with figures like George Herbert Walker Bush from the "Skull and Crossbones" Society.

Many Americans still insist or persist in believing that we have a free press, while getting most of their news from state-controlled television, under the misconception that reporters are meant to serve the public. Reporters are paid employees and serve the media owners, who usually cower when challenged by advertisers or major government figures. Robert Parry reported the first breaking stories about Iran-Contra for Associated Press that were largely ignored by the press and congress, then moving to Newsweek he witnessed a retraction of a true story for political reasons. In 'Fooling America: A Talk by Robert Parry' he said, "The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn't stand up, who didn't write the big stories, who looked the other way when history was happening in front of them, and went along either consciously or just by cowardice with the deception of the American people."

Major networks are primarily controlled by giant corporations that are obligated by law, to put the profits of their investors ahead of all other considerations which are often in conflict with the practice of responsible journalism. There were around 50 corporations a couple of decades ago, which was considered monopolistic by many and yet today, these companies have become larger and fewer in number as the biggest ones absorb their rivals. This concentration of ownership and power reduces the diversity of media voices, as news falls into the hands of large conglomerates with holdings in many industries that interferes in newsgathering, because of conflicts of interest. Mockingbird was an immense financial undertaking with funds flowing from the CIA largely through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) founded by Tom Braden with Pat Buchanon of CNN's Crossfire.

Media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations including banks, investment companies, oil companies, health care, pharmaceutical, and technology companies. Until the 1980's, media systems were generally domestically owned, regulated, and national in scope. However, pressure from the IMF, World Bank, and US government to deregulate and privatize, the media, communication, and new technology resulted in a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of super-powerful transnational media corporations (mostly US based), working to advance the cause of global markets and the CIA agenda.

The first tier of the nine giant firms that dominate the world are Time Warner/AOL, Disney/ABC, Bertelsmann, Viacom/CBS, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation/Fox, General Electric/NBC, Sony, Universal/Seagram, Tele-Communications, Inc. or TCI and AT&T. This is just the head of the octopus which has its second and third tier tentacles working together in unison or feigned division. This would include The Washington Post/Newsweek, The New York Times/Weekly Standard, Tribune Co., US News, Gannett/USA Today, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Knight-Ridder, etcetera. A good site to visit for more information is Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a public interest media watchdog group, at www.fair.org/index.html, www.fair.org/mediafiles/index.html and www.fair.org/extra/9711/gmg.html. Media propaganda tactics include blackouts, misdirections, expert opinions to echo the Establishment line, smears, defining popular opinions, mass entertainment distractions, and Hobson's Choice (the media presents the so-called conservative and liberal positions).

"Who Controls the Media? The Subversion of the Free Press by the CIA, The Depraved Spies and Moguls of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird", "The CIA: America's Premier International Terrorist Organization", and "Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America" by Alex Constantine are an excellent source of information on this topic: www.alexconstantine.50megs.com/the_cia_and.html and www.alexconstantine.50megs.com. David Guyatt has written books and many articles including one entitled "Subverting the Media" at www.deepblacklies.co.uk/subverting_the_media.htm. Then there are two articles called "A Timeline of CIA Atrocities" and "The Origins of the Overclass" by Steve Kangas that are very informative although from a more liberal perspective. Steve will not be writing anymore articles as he is no longer with us, having unfortunately met his untimely death that was 'apparently' from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. If you read about him on his web page that is still available, you will see that he did not seem like a person who was suffering from deep depression. In his memory, please take the time to read what he wrote at www.korpios.org/resurgent/CIAtimeline.html, www.korpios.org/resurgent/CIAtimeline.html, and www.korpios.org/resurgent/index.html.

CNN aired "Valley of Death" in June of 1998 and Time magazine (both owned by Time-Warner) ran a story about a secret mission called Operation Tailwind and the activities of SOG, Studies and Observations Group, a secret elite commando unit of the Army's Special Forces that used lethal nerve gas (sarin), on a mission to Laos designed to kill American defectors. Suddenly the network was awash in denials and the story was hushed up, as usual. Acknowledged use of this gas coming at a time when the U.S. government was trying to get Saddam to comply with weapons inspections, was an embarrassment to say the least. What hypocrisy! Having actually used the weapons on our own troops, then complaining and accusing Saddam of potential use of stored similar weapons, of which some were manufactured in and supplied by the U.S. The broadcast was prepared after exhaustive research and rooted in considerable supportive data. To decide for yourself what the truth is read Floyd Abrams' report on the CNN site at www.cnn.com/US/9807/02/tailwind.findings/index.html.

Journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward broke the stories on Watergate (late 70's) in the Washington Post, having gained access to what the CIA was trying to keep from congress about its program of using journalists at home and abroad, in deliberate propaganda campaigns. It was later revealed that Woodward was a Naval intelligence briefer to the White House and knew many insiders including General Alexander Haig. A high-level source told Bernstein, "One journalist is worth twenty agents." CFR/Trilateralist Katharine Graham, in a 1988 speech given to senior CIA employees at Agency headquarters said, "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." Maybe that's another reason why folks get the impression that a suspicious agenda lurks behind the headlines. "25 Ways to Suppress Truth: Rules of Disinformation" and "8 Traits of the Disinformationalist" at www.proparanoid.com/truth.htm, sums it up very well.

Ralph McGehee was a CIA agent for 25 years, mainly in South-East Asia where he witnessed bombing and napalming of villages, which caused him to examine closely what the CIA was really all about. He has written about Vietnam's Phoenix Program www.vwip.org/articles/m/McGeheeRalph_VietnamsPhoenixProgram.htm and after a long battle with CIA censors, he published the book "Deadly Deceits" in 1983. Ralph has been harassed by the CIA and FBI, involving bodily injury, and his CIABASE website was shut down on Spring of 2000. He copied some reports that can be found at http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/ciabase_report_1.htm (and 2.htm), http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/death_squads.htm, and www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Deadly_Deceits.html. He concluded that the CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency but rather the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisors, of which disinformation is a large part of its responsibility and the American people are the primary target of its lies.

One of the primary reasons John F. Kennedy was assassinated had to do with the fact he dared to interfere in the framework of power. Kennedy was intent on exercising his ELECTED powers and not allowing them to be usurped by power-crazed individuals in the intelligence community, threatening to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind." There were four things that filled the CIA with rage and sealed his fate; JFK fired Allen Dulles, was in the process of founding a panel to investigate the CIA's numerous crimes, put a damper on the breadth and scope of the CIA, and limited their ability to act under National Security Memoranda 55.

There is such an overwhelming amount of information pertaining to the CIA that it is impossible to cover it all in one book, much less an article. Personally, I have come to the conclusion that the media is not only influenced by the CIA.....the media is the CIA. Many Americans think of their supposedly free press as a watchdog on government, mainly because the press itself shamelessly promotes that myth. One of the first tenets for the control of a population is to control all sources of information the population receives and mostly because of the pervasive CIA and Operation Mockingbird, the mainstream American Press is a controlled multi-national corporate/government megaphone. They are up to their eyeballs in dirty deeds and there will never be an end to the corruption that prevails unless the CIA is abolished. Otherwise, the CIA will just keep on using their tricks of propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, drug trafficking, sexual intrigue, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, demolition and evacuation procedures, death squads, and politically motivated assassinations. The CIA is the epitome of organized crime run amuck!

 

[roots69]

What is Rick Simpson Oil (RSO)?




(All Peer News articles are submitted by readers of Citizen Truth and do not reflect the views of CT. Peer News is a mixture of opinion, commentary and news. Articles are reviewed and must meet basic guidelines but CT does not guarantee the accuracy of statements made or arguments presented. We are proud to share your stories, share yours here.)
When researching medicinal cannabis, we’re likely to stumble across a product called Rick Simpson Oil (RSO). After reading about the potential medicinal properties of RSO, we may be encouraged to learn more. What is RSO, and should we trust the claims? Let’s explore this product further.

As a note, RSO is a marijuana-derived product that is not carried by Made by Hemp. Under FDA regulations, we cannot prescribe cannabis for any illness. Any claims made here are purely testimonial.


The Story of Rick Simpson
Rick Simpson is famous in the cannabis industry, but he entered the space for personal reasons. Simpson began using cannabis as medicine after a work-related accident. For years after the accident, Simpson experienced dizzy spells and ringing in the ears. Prescription medication did little to help. In fact, it made his symptoms worse.


Simpson had watched a documentary on cannabis and inquired about using marijuana with his doctor, who refused to consider cannabis as a treatment.

Remember, this was in a time where a small percentage supported the medicinal qualities of cannabis. Plus, marijuana was still illegal in Canada. Simpson went on to source cannabis on his own and saw an improvement in his symptoms.

Then, in 2003, Simpson was diagnosed with a form of skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma. Conventional treatment didn’t work. He had seen an improvement with cannabis for his other symptoms, and he had heard about a 1975 study from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in which THC, the psychoactive compound of cannabis, was found to kill cancer cells in mice.

Simpson again turned to cannabis and applied concentrated cannabis oil topically to his cancerous spots. He left the topical on for four days.

When he took off his bandages, Simpson claimed the cancerous spots had disappeared.


His physician refused to recognize cannabis as a treatment, but Simpson was a true believer in the medicinal qualities of cannabis.

Simpson then began to cultivate his own cannabis and harvested the plants to create a cannabis concentrate now known as Rick Simpson Oil. He made it his mission to give the cannabis oil to those who needed it, at no cost. What Simpson was creating was nothing new, but his oil became popularized through his activism.

Today, Simpson is still an advocate for cannabis oil and, while he no longer provides RSO, he encourages others to create their own cannabis oil. According to the Rick Simpson website, “The only way to know that you have the real thing, is to produce the proper oil yourself.”


So, what is RSO?
RSO is concentrated cannabis oil with high levels of THC. As we remember, THC is the intoxicating compound of cannabis. Compared to the 0.3% THC in hemp-derived CBD oil, RSO contains 60-90% THC. Similar to our Proprietary Hemp Extract, RSO is a concentrated form of cannabis. Rather than CBD as the main cannabinoid (as with our concentrates), RSO is raw marijuana oil with high concentrations of THC. It is recommended that RSO be consumed sublingually (under the tongue) or applied topically.

Hemp extract

Given the high percentage of THC in RSO, consumers can get high off the oil, even in low servings. This can produce side effects such as paranoia, impaired motor control, and impaired memory. These side effects are short lasting and, when consumed properly, RSO does not pose any major health risks.

Simpson recommends making RSO from “very potent and sedative medicinal Indica varieties” which help relax the body. Indica varieties are recommended for their sedative properties, which Simpson says will “aid in healing the patient’s body”.

Benefits of RSO
Many have heard of the medicinal qualities of RSO, particularly when it comes to cancer. While there are several studies that look at the effects of THC on cancer, it is dangerous to make claims that RSO can cure cancer or any other disease. RSO is not a cure-all, but it does contain therapeutic qualities that many find beneficial. To discover if RSO is right for you, we suggest researching the studies performed on THC. We do not recommend accepting any claim as fact.

RSO is a full-spectrum marijuana oil, meaning it contains all the available plant material. This extract includes terpenes, cannabinoids, vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, phytonutrients and any other materials that are extracted from the marijuana plant. With all the plant components, full-spectrum oils benefit from the synergistic properties between the components. In what is called the entourage effect, researchers are finding components of the marijuana plant to work better together than on their own.


Risks of RSO
The biggest risk of RSO is the claim that it is a cure-all substance. Consumers may stop medical treatment in replacement of RSO. We always recommend speaking to a doctor before starting a new supplement or stopping any current treatment.

Additionally, Simpson recommends consumers make their own RSO, which comes with risks. Making RSO requires a large amount of marijuana, which is illegal in many states. The process of creating RSO can be dangerous as well. The recommended solvents are flammable and can leave behind residue if improperly handled.

Dispensing CBD oil onto finger (for sublingual use).

To create our CBD concentrates, we use the CO2 method, which is the safest and cleanest method of extraction. If you are interested in a CBD concentrate, it is best to source it from a reputable manufacturer that uses the supercritical CO2 method. Here, we’ve done the work for you, ensuring a safe consumption every time.

Final Thoughts
There are many benefits of consuming cannabis oil which can be discovered through research. THC is an intoxicating compound, but it is also a therapeutic compound. The potential of cannabis oil is intriguing, but we do caution consumers to be wary of cannabis companies that make claims about their products. Currently, there is not enough research to support these claims. The best course of action is to perform your own research and try the product for yourself.

 

[roots69]

What is CBD Oil, Hemp Oil, THC Oil, Cannabis Oil, and Marijuana Oil?



Cultivation of industrial hemp for fiber and for grain in France. [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons)

(All Peer News articles are submitted by readers of Citizen Truth and do not reflect the views of CT. Peer News is a mixture of opinion, commentary and news. Articles are reviewed and must meet basic guidelines but CT does not guarantee the accuracy of statements made or arguments presented. We are proud to share your stories, share yours here.)
Every field of interest comes with its own terminology. In the world of CBD, it can seem like there are many terms that are being thrown out there, such as CBD oil, hemp oil, THC oil, cannabis oil, and marijuana oil. With the vast amount of information being introduced, it is easy to confuse one term from the next. We have received numerous questions in regards to the difference between all of these terms.Reasonably, many individuals research their information on the internet; however, some of the information found online can be misleading. CBD is still a relatively new field and we’ve noticed many reported misconceptions. CBD oil, hemp oil, THC oil, cannabis oil, and marijuana oil all refer to oils coming from the cannabis plant. However, they differ in how they are grown, extracted, and used. In this blog post, we will discuss the differences between these terms in hopes of educating the public and helping people gain a more beneficial understanding.

The Difference Between Hemp and Marijuana
First, it is important to explain the difference between hemp and marijuana. It is common for these two plants to be grouped as one and the same. However, hemp and marijuana are two distinct strains of the cannabis plant; they are cultivated for different purposes and react differently in the body.Hemp pertains to a strain of Cannabis Sativa that has been bred precisely for oils and topical ointments, fiber used for clothing and construction, nutritional benefits, and a broad thriving variety of other purposes that do not involve the euphoria that is associated with marijuana. Hemp is a fast-growing plant and was one of the first plants to be spun into usable fiber more than 10,000 years ago.

Marijuana is a slang term used to characterize strains of Cannabis Sativa specifically bred for resinous glands, which are very potent and grow on the flowers and some leaves.


Scientifically, the difference between what we refer to as hemp and marijuana comes from the intention the strain was bred for. The main difference between hemp and marijuana is the level of THC in the plant. Hemp has high levels of cannabidiol (CBD) and very low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Marijuana is recognized for having high levels of THC and lower in CBD. In order to be considered hemp, the plant must have less than 0.3 percent THC. High levels of THC are responsible for the intoxicating feeling that marijuana is known for

CBD Oil
With that being said, let’s discuss the wonderful thing we call CBD oil. CBD oil is made from the specific hemp strain that is bred for fiber, topicals, nutritional benefits, and more. It is made from high-CBD, low-THC hemp. CBD oil is extracted using the whole plant or aerial parts. Aerial parts of the plant are parts which are completely exposed to air. Since hemp contains only trace amounts of THC, CBD oil productsare non-psychoactive.

CBD is the second most abundant cannabinoid in marijuana after THC. Cannabidiol (CBD) is just one of over 85 cannabinoids presently identified in the cannabis plant. Since CBD is non-psychotropic, this makes it a safer, less controversial alternative to marijuana while still offering significant wellness benefits.

Hemp Seed Oil
A lot of times people call CBD oil “hemp oil”. This is accurate because both oils are derived from hemp. However, it causes much confusion when hemp seed oil is called hemp oil. Hemp seed oil is much different than CBD oil.

You may notice hemp seed oil as an ingredient in some of your beauty products or while shopping at the grocery store. Although hemp seed oil is very beneficial, it is not the same as CBD oil. Hemp seed oil does not contain CBD. Hemp seed oil is acquired by pressing only the hemp seeds. It is important that you are buying cold pressed, unrefined hemp seed oil because it hasn’t been depleted from its beneficial constituents. Cold pressed, unrefined hemp oil is dark to light green in color, with a nutty flavor. Refined hemp seed oil is clear and colorless, with little flavor and is depleted in natural vitamins and antioxidants.


THC Oil, Marijuana Oil, and Cannabis Oil
THC oil, marijuana oil, and cannabis oil are generally associated with the same product. Essentially, they all mean the same thing. With the help of alcohol, this oil is made by extracting the resin of the female marijuana plant. Remember, the marijuana plant is the high-THC strain. The resin dissolves in alcohol and then the alcohol evaporates. The residue will consist of a thick syrup abundant in THC. This type of oil is illegal because of the high levels of THC.

What’s the Difference?
CBD oil can be interchanged with hemp oil. CBD oil comes from high-CBD, low-THC hemp and is legal in the United States. THC oil, marijuana oil, and cannabis oil can be interchanged as well. These oils come from high-THC, low-CBD marijuana and are illegal in the United States. When you are ready to purchase CBD products it is important to not only know the difference between hemp and marijuana, but also to purchase from a reputable company that sources their hemp legally. For more information about hemp sourcing and CBD’s legality in the United States, check out this blog post: Is Hemp Oil Legal In the United States?

 

[roots69]

Advanced Cannabis Concentrates

Cannabis concentrates, oils, and extracts offer many unique benefits that you won’t find smoking flower. From easy, precise dosing to clean and refined flavors, concentrates focus on the ingredients in cannabis that matter most. In this 4-part series, you’ll learn the fundamentals of concentrates, explore product options, discover how extracts are made, and more.

Cannabis concentrates come in a range of product types, forms, and consistencies. These products may vary in purity or chemical composition (i.e., THC, CBD, terpenes), which generally comes down to how the concentrate is extracted and refined as well as the source material from which the final extract is derived.

There are many different extraction techniques that can result in concentrates exhibiting a range of potencies, textures, and consistencies. These various forms are often named according to how they were made or their appearance—for example, butane hash oil (BHO) refers to extracts created using the solvent butane, and shatter describes a concentrate that appears glasslike in texture.

In this section, you’ll learn more about the different types of concentrates that are popularly vaporized or dabbed by consumers looking for a potent and refined cannabis product. We’ll also explain how they’re made through a variety of extraction processes.

How Cannabis Extracts Are Made
When it comes to concentrating the cannabinoids and terpenes from cannabis, methods can generally be broken into two primary types: solvent-based and solventless extractions.

Sound complicated? Don’t worry, we’ll break it down for you.

Solvent Extraction

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Solvent-based methods are commonly used by commercial extractors looking to create large volumes of extract. They use chemical solvents like ethanol, butane, propane, carbon dioxide, and others to strip essential oils (i.e., cannabinoids and terpenes) from plant material.

Most solvent-based extraction methods require a process known as purging. During this process, the remaining chemical solvents evaporate from the extract. Products labeled solvent-free are solvent-based extractions that have the chemical solvent completely removed during purging. (Note: Solvent-free is different from solventless extraction—the latter does not use chemical solvents at any stage of production.)


RELATED STORY
In Photos: These ‘Dragon Balls’ Contain 3,000 Grams of Pure Cannabis Oil
Solventless Extraction

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Solventless extraction uses mechanical techniques that utilize pressure, temperature, and filtration to concentrate the essential compounds from the plant material. The tools used to create solventless extracts, like hash and rosin, are relatively accessible and safe to use at home.

Solventless techniques are usually more labor-intensive than solvent-based extraction, but concentrate enthusiasts often prefer them because they’re natural and handmade—an artisanal craft concentrate.

Note: Water is a solvent in the purest sense of the word. However, when the term “solventless” is used in cannabis products, it simply means no chemical solvents were used.

Explore Solvent-Based Extracts
Variations in solvent-based extracts can be attributed to the solvent used as well as the purging methods used in the extraction. These affect how a product looks, feels, and smells. Below, explore some of the most common solvent-based concentrates you’ll find on dispensary shelves.

Hydrocarbon Extracts (or BHO)

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Hydrocarbon extracts are often simply referred to as BHO, short for butane hash oil. These concentrates are created using pressurized chemical solvents like butane and propane to strip the essential oils of cannabis from plant matter within a closed-loop system.

Here’s what’s so great about them: While other extraction methods might destroy the delicate chemical profile that makes a strain unique, hydrocarbon extraction tends to better preserve the cannabinoids and terpenes native to your favorite strains.

Hydrocarbon extracts can also be purchased at every imaginable price-point and consistency. While the potency and purity can vary between products, a standard THC-rich hydrocarbon extract typically express potency between 70-90% total cannabinoids.

Hydrocarbon extracts are usually vaporized through a process known as dabbing.




CO2 Oil

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
CO2 extracts use carbon dioxide under extreme temperature and pressure to strip essential cannabis oils from plant material. Carbon dioxide is a common solvent used for pharmaceutical extraction and other processes like decaffeinating coffee.

This extraction process has a reputation for being safe; CO2 is noncombustible and present in the air we breathe. While most solvent-based extractions use gas or liquid solvents, extracting with CO2 is unique because it utilizes carbon dioxide in its supercritical state, allowing it to take on properties of both a liquid and a gas.

CO2 extracts are commonly packaged as vape cartridges or as applicators used to refill cartridges. They are often further refined through a process known as distillation.





Distillate

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
A raw or crude extract may still contain many terpenes, fats, and lipids. However, it can be further refined to contain only essential compounds like THC and CBD in a process called distillation. Good, clean distillate usually tests up to 90% or higher in total cannabinoids.

Pure distillate is virtually flavorless and is popularly used as a base ingredient for other cannabis products like edibles and topicals. Most commonly, distillate is used in vape cartridges and sometimes has terpenes added to enhance the flavor and effects.





Explore Solventless Extracts
Dry Sift

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Dry sift, also called dry sieve, is a collection of refined resin glands that have been mechanically separated from the cannabis flower using a series of fine mesh screens. It’s essentially a refined form of kief.

To create dry sift, extractors rub, roll, and tumble dried cannabis over a finely woven screen. This process of agitation causes the dried resin glands to break from the plant matter, while the fine screen mesh allows only the smallest of particles—the trichome heads—to pass through. More advanced techniques use static electricity to help further separate the resin.

The sand-like, powdery resin is often used to top a bowl or sprinkled in a joint for added potency. Others prefer to press it into traditional hash or dabbable rosin.





Ice Water Hash (Bubble Hash)

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Ice water hash, also known as bubble hash, is created by agitating cannabis buds in ice water, which are then filtered through fine screen bags.

Making ice water hash is often referred to as washing because hashmakers use specially designed washing machines to agitate their plant material before it’s filtered through a series of fine screen bags. Once the resin has been filtered, collected, and dried, we’re left with usable hash. Its appearance and texture can range between dry and chalky to greasy and oily.

The highest grade ice water hash, often called full melt or ice wax, can be dabbed while lower quality grades are commonly pressed into rosin, smoked like a traditional hash, or reserved for infusions. The quality of hash is graded on a star system, with six being the highest quality and a single star reserved for the least refined products.





Rosin

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Rosin is a dabbable solventless concentrate that’s extracted using pressure and gentle heat to squeeze the resinous sap from cannabis flowers. Because rosin is an accessible form of extraction that can be done safely at home, it’s popular among DIY homecrafters.

There are three main types of rosin: flower rosin, hash rosin, and dry sift rosin. All three kinds are named after the starting material from which they were pressed.



Concentrate Consistencies

The many consistencies of cannabis concentrates (from left): oil, sugar, wax (top), shatter (bottom), crumble (top right), batter (middle right), pull ‘n’ snap (bottom right). (iStock/Leafly)
It’s not uncommon for concentrate products to be labeled and sold according to their consistency. While these forms are most commonly associated with dabbable hydrocarbon extracts, it’s possible to achieve these consistencies by manipulating other extraction methods.

Shatter

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Shatter is a hard, translucent concentrate that easily “shatters” like broken glass or hard candy. Concentrates with this consistency are most often the result of hydrocarbon extraction, and it forms when a raw extract is poured out in a thin, flat slab and left undisturbed during the purging process.

Shatter products are generally affordable compared to other dabbable hydrocarbon extracts because they do not require additional processing. Shatter is easy to dose and you can handle it at room temperature or colder, but be careful if you’re using a tool—shatter can pop apart and fly in every direction if handled roughly.






Wax

(Grant Hindsley for Leafly)
Cannabis wax is a soft, opaque concentrate that can vary in appearance, texture, and color—as determined by heat, moisture, chemical composition, and purging process. Many waxes are the result of agitating a raw extract into a whipped, aerated consistency.

When whipped vigorously into a smooth consistency that is moist with terpenes, these products are branded with names like budder, badder, frosting, icing, and more. When waxes are purged to create a drier texture, products are often named honeycomb and crumble for their porous appearance and chunky crumbs.

Pull ‘n’ Snap
Pull ‘n’ snap is a glossy, flat concentrate with a soft, taffy-like texture. It often looks like shatter but has a more pliable consistency. Similarly to shatter, it is commonly a result of hydrocarbon extracts that are left undisturbed during the purging process.

Pull ‘n’ Snap products are appreciated for being relatively easy to work with, but they’re known to become stringy and messy when exposed to warm temperatures. When stored in cooler temperatures, the pull ‘n’ snap consistency becomes more shatter-like.

 

[roots69]

Legalization Isn’t Enough: 10 Things Every New Cannabis Law Must Have

(greyj/iStock, Leafly)
Cannabis legalization has hit a turning point. No longer are the most exciting conversations about whether to legalize; today they’re about how best to go about it. As legal cannabis evolves from an abstract concept to a fully fleshed-out policy, we have complicated questions to answer.

Thankfully, we’re not starting from scratch. Every legal-cannabis state has offered important lessons about how seemingly small regulatory details can play a big role in shaping the industry, for better or worse. Sometimes tedious provisions around taxes or licensing can make lasting impacts on what the market looks like—or even whether that market is allowed to exist. Last month we saw legalization measures in New York and New Jersey falter due to disagreement over taxation, licensing, and equity details.



Few have seen these issues from as many angles as Shaleen Title, one of five members of the Cannabis Control Commission in Massachusetts. As an attorney and entrepreneur, Title launched a women-led cannabis staffing agency and provided regulatory expertise for cannabis businesses. She also co-authored Question 4, the ballot initiative that legalized adult-use cannabis in Massachusetts. Along the way, she’s been a steady voice for a fair, equitable industry that addresses the drug war’s past harms, which fell disproportionately on people of color.

“Don't get boxed into outdated pro vs. anti-pot.”
Shaleen Title, Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission
Recently, Title posted a Twitter thread laying out her “top 10 must-haves for any state cannabis legalization bill.” It’s a best-practices list aimed at ensuring equity and accountability. She’s been sharing versions of the list with officials in neighboring states, most recently Connecticut. “I rewrite these every time I give a speech in another state,” she said, “because every day I learn more and they evolve.”

Title has allowed Leafly to publish an edited version of the list, which she offers with this disclaimer: “These are my subjective opinions based on experience as both an activist and regulator, offered in good faith for those trying to keep improving on our current progress. As more states learn more lessons and share them, we will all keep refining our knowledge.”



10 Must-Haves in Any Cannabis Legalization Bill
1. Allow homegrow. Let consumers grow a limited number of their own plants at home and gift a limited amount to other adults. In Massachusetts, adults can grow up to six plants per person, with a maximum of 12 per residence (see law for details), and can give away up to an ounce. This serves as a check on monopolies, delays to store openings, and more.



2. Automatic expungement for cannabis convictions—in the same law at the same time as legalization. Period.

3. Diverse representation in regulation. Ensure as a non-negotiable, never-expiring statutory requirement that people from disproportionately harmed communities are represented at the very top of the regulating agency. (Yes, there are plenty who are qualified.)

4. Transparency in regulation. Ensure that the regulating agency is diverse, independent, subject to full transparency, and appointed by different people. This is something I’m incredibly proud of in Massachusetts, and I recommend adopting it. Brand new agencies take time and resources to start up, but it’s worth it.



5. Dedicated tax revenue. Don’t allow legislators to divert cannabis tax revenue. Demand that it be reinvested into disproportionately harmed communities. Give this measure teeth; don’t let that revenue be “subject to appropriation,” and don’t require bureaucratic application processes that only privileged communities will be able to tap into.

Sidenote: The Minority Cannabis Business Association model state bill, which I worked on before becoming a commissioner, creates an Office of Justice Reinvestment to fairly distribute such revenue. You can find the model bill on the MCBA website.

6. (a) Establish equity assistance programs. Separate from that reinvestment, invest a specific percentage of tax revenue into technical assistance, hiring programs, and interest-free loans for disproportionately affected communities with a funding mechanism for initial programming and outreach as soon as the law passes.

6. (b) Deadlines must be met. It is very important that you hold the agency or agencies in charge to specified deadlines. Impose consequences for missing those deadlines. I think every existing equity program thus far, including the one I designed, underestimated the need for immediateoutreach and education.


By the way if anyone brings up "constitutional concerns" over benefits for disproportionately harmed communities, they're probably using that an excuse to not have to say they don't like equity. Ask for the specific legal concerns in writing and you likely won't hear back.


7. Limit licenses and require diversity goals. Require state regulators and local governments to ensure diversity in the industry at ownership and employee levels, with goals, measurement, and accountability for the regulators (it may be best for them to design their own goals). Impose and enforce limits on the number of licenses a single entity can control. (In Massachusetts, an entity can control up to three of each license type.)


8. Tie tax revenue to met mandates. Make this a statutory requirement: Tax revenue flows only to municipalities that have honored these mandates. Leave it up to the municipalities to figure out how to make their local laws and processes inclusive to disproportionately harmed communities beforereceiving any local taxes.

My recommendation to anyone seeking an equitable cannabis program would be to not compromise an inch on this one. Doing so could easily undermine the rest of your work. There are good and bad local examples throughout Massachusetts and California.

9. License holders must contribute to government-set goals. Require every licensed cannabis business to contribute to these goals in addition tobut not instead of the government’s role. One option is to require diversity plans and positive impact plans as requirements for licensure and renewal, as in Massachusetts, but there are many ways to accomplish this.



10. Demand regular data reporting. Require the regulating agency to collect data on each of these items, report the data regularly, and take remedial measures when the data is not satisfactory. Give the regulating agency broad flexibility and authority to accomplish this.


Hope you found this helpful. Feel free to use and share with or without attribution. If you're standing up for equity before the law passes, team up with everyone who doesn't want an industry controlled by a handful of corporations. Don't get boxed into outdated pro vs. anti-pot.

 

[roots69]

How Can Black People Get Rich Off Cannabis, Too?

(Gillian Levine for Leafly)


How can Black people get rich off cannabis, too?

It’s a question I’ve asked multiple Black cannabis professionals over the past month. While I’ve received many different answers and pieces of advice, the truth is, it all comes down to one thing: a true and complete industry demand for reparations to those harmed most by the war on drugs—completely backed, supported, and upheld by the government.

Social Equity Programs
The single most important thing for Black people in the cannabis industry is a social equity system built by the government to help educate, support, fund, build, and give Black people the opportunity to succeed across all channels of this industry.

Social equity, reparations, the war on drugs, and minorities in cannabis: these cannot continue to be buzzwords used to promote identities and principles that cannabis companies don’t actually stand on.
The very first social equity program in cannabis was created in Oakland, CA in 2016. It was designed to reserve and provide licensing, as well as funding, to Black cannabusinesses. It was also the prototype that every other cannabis equity program (in Los Angeles, Massachusetts, etc.) was built on.

“The whole purpose of their equity program was to give people of color and people with [criminal] records opportunities and ownership that white people have had in cannabis,” said Tucky Blunt, co-owner of Blunts+Moore, the very first dispensary to open under Oakland’s social equity program. “[This helps] people who have wrongly been targeted by the war on drugs to obtain money in this industry legally.”

Blunt, now 39, has been trying to open a cannabis retail location since the age of 22. However, as a person of color with a criminal history, he was barred from entry for so long that he had already given up. Until this program came along.



“Without this program, I would’ve been stuck,” he told me. “I tried to open my first dispensary around [age] 22. Me and my cousin had $1.5 million cash, and one of our white homeboys [in the industry] told us flat out, ‘The way it’s set up now, y’all will never get in. You can buy the property and all the stuff, but once they find out it’s a Black owner, it’s going to be a problem.’”

This deep-rooted system of oppression in the cannabis industry is the exact reason Day 1 Equity, in all counties, cities, and states that legalize cannabis, is so important. The day legalization happens, there needs to be a social equity program that simultaneously goes into effect.

Funding—and a Lot of It
Two. Million. Dollars. That’s the number I heard when I asked Raft Hollingsworth, co-owner (along with his wife, Joy) of Hollingsworth Cannabis, how much it would take to open a Tier III producer/processor facility in Washington state.

Three. Million. Dollars. That’s what Tucky Blunt quoted for the lowest possible amount of cash one would need to open a dispensary in California.

The cost of creating a plant-touching business is astronomical when it comes to licensing, manufacturing, operating, and general overhead. Son. Who has that kind of money?


Private investors, that’s who. However, when those private investors don’t want to fund your business, how can you proceed? This, again, is where the importance of social equity programs providing funds to support Black businesses is established. Without it, the industry cannot honestly say it’s providing the same opportunities to the marginalized.

Considering the costs of owning and operating a cannabis business, the fund also needs to be large and accessible enough for more than just a couple businesses to get up and running.

Education
There is a huge lack of educational resources for Black people who want to enter this industry. Even in a perfect world where the government supports social equity programs that provide licensing and funding, without incubators that provide education and mentorship for Black people on how to navigate the business of this industry, we will still be in a position to fail—or even worse, be taken advantage of by big corporate entities. Blunt calls them “The Snakes.”

“Everyone won’t be capable of negotiation with The Snakes,” Blunt said. “We’re like blood in the water. So equity candidates are a hot commodity, and all these big corporations want to come buy us out and send us on our way.”


Licenses, which grant you the ability to open a business, hold mega-million-dollar value. So if you’re a person who’s never had more than a few dollars in the bank, and you’re suddenly given a piece of paper worth millions—but you’re not educated on the value of that paper—you’re now a prime target for a someone who does understand its value.

“I was offered $3 million by a company,” Blunt said. “Why would I take your $3 million when I can make that in a year, easily? The whole purpose for this program is for me to have ownership—not for you to come in as Big Pharma and buy me out.”

Empowerment From Ownership
Along with ownership, another critical component to the success of Black people in the cannabis industry will be empowerment from within. That is, an understanding that when one of us makes it, one of us has to come back and empower others along the way. Outside of true government support, this is how we create a space for ourselves within cannabis. We are our brother’s keeper.

In new industries, there is a theme of competition that comes from everyone racing to be the first or the best. This doesn’t have to be like that. There’s plenty of money in cannabis for everyone, and tremendous value in collaboration.


One person who can go the distance, create space, and empower our community from within is Al Harrington, former NBA player and owner of Viola, a cannabis producer, processor, and lifestyle brand. On the Van Lathan podcast, when asked if he thinks he will make the same money with Viola as he did in the NBA, he replied, “We’re going to be a billion dollar company.”

If Viola, or any other company in position for massive success, can reach the top, then come show the rest of us how to do so.

True Government Support & Community Reinvestment
Reparations for the war on drugs cannot and will not happen unless the government completely backs and supports it. On this, I spoke to Mary Pryor, co-founder of CannaClusive, a community-focused business aimed at fair representation of people of color in cannabis.



This industry was built on the backs of people who look nothing like those who are on the front street of its success. It’s time for that to change.
“When it comes to equity, most people think expungement or vacating records is pretty much it,” Pryor told me. “What about taxes going into reinvestment for communities harmed by the war on drugs? What about programs and job training and incubators so that people who were previously incarcerated will have a way into this industry?”

I repeat: The success of Black people in the cannabis industry comes down to how truly committed the government and this industry as a whole are to correcting and repairing the damage done to marginalized communities from the war on drugs.

Social equity, reparations, the war on drugs, and minorities in cannabis: these cannot continue to be buzzwords used to promote identities and principles that cannabis companies don’t actually stand on.

This industry was built on the backs of people who look nothing like those who are on the front street of its success. It’s time for that to change. It starts and ends with an industry demand and government support. Period.

 

[roots69]

This information shouldnt surprise anyone!! When you have a medical industry that is run by a rockefeller model of medicine, all you gonna get is oil produce medicine and never a cure!! I might be wrong, I dont think your doctor can even say the word cannabis!!

JAMA: Most Doctors Know Nothing About Cannabis

In JAMA, the leading medical journal, one doctor describes medical education as an institution that completely ignores medical cannabis, leaving doctors unequipped to care for their MMJ patients. (enisaksoy/iStock)
Most American physicians are woefully ignorant and “unprepared” for the reality of cannabis consumption among patients despite it being approved for medical use in 34 states and legal for all adults in 10 of those states.

'Marijuana has become an inescapable part of my medical training, and most of my learning has come from patients.'
Nathaniel Morris, Stanford University School of Medicine
That’s the diagnosis of Nathaniel Morris of the Stanford University School of Medicine, who wrote about the shameful state of clinician knowledge in an op-ed published in the influential Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) earlier today.

Morris attended medical school in California, where medical marijuana has been legal for nearly 23 years. Despite that fact, the psychiatric specialist revealed that he’s had to turn to his patients, rather than his medical education, to gain knowledge about cannabis.

“Marijuana has become an inescapable part of my medical training,” he wrote, “and most of my learning has come from patients.”


Doctors Unprepared to Talk MMJ
This comes as no surprise to America’s millions of medical marijuana patients and adult cannabis consumers, who have long been frustrated by the medical profession’s refusal to take cannabis seriously as anything other than a drug of addiction.

As Leafly has written about and documented, many desperate patients often turn to specialty cannabis clinics after being shamed by their own family physicians when inquiring about medical cannabis. Others have simply sought out adult-use cannabis on their own, and begun self-medicating, after finding that their doctor knew less about cannabis than the patient did.

As Leafly writer Bruce Kennedy documented in a story published earlier today, researchers in Colorado found that more seniors in that legal state are using cannabis both medically and recreationally—though fewer are speaking to their doctors about it for fear of being shamed or running into stark ignorance on the part of the physician.


THC Gummies, CBD Capsules: What They?
Morris, a young physician just entering the profession, notes that “when I review medications at the bedside, some patients and families hold out THC gummies or cannabidiol capsules, explaining dosages or ratios of ingredients used to treat symptoms, including pain, insomnia, nausea, or poor appetite.” What he doesn’t know is that for every patient who offers that information, many others take the same medications but keep it hidden from him.

He wrote:

“On inpatient units, there are patients who ask to use marijuana products for various conditions like they do at home. I have seen patients who have smuggled marijuana into the hospital and smoked in their rooms. Patients tell my coworkers and me about recent marijuana trends, such as using ‘wax’ or shatter,’ concentrated extracts that are highly potent and poorly understood. Heavy marijuana users who abruptly stop using when they enter the hospital sometimes experience withdrawal symptoms including sleep disturbances and restlessness.”

These “recent marijuana trends” have, of course, been around for years. Full information about these various forms of cannabis are available at Leafly and plenty of other sites, if physicians would only care to look.


Only Saying What Others Know
It took courage for Morris to write about this subject in a forum as high-profile as JAMA. At the same time, he exhibits many of the same assumptions that discourage patients from talking about their cannabis use openly. It should come as no surprise that “heavy marijuana users” sometimes experience withdrawal symptoms in hospitals. Most hospitals won’t allow them to medicate with cannabis. If you take away any patient’s regular medications, they’re likely to suffer negative reactions.

And that “heavy marijuana user” might be a military veteran who’s managing their PTSD with medical cannabis. Or a twentysomething regulating their anxiety. Or a chronic pain patient who’s gone off opioids thanks to medical cannabis—but now they’re forced to endure the pain or return to opioids because they’re stuck in a hospital bed. So yeah, they’re going to report a little “discomfort.”


91% of Med Schools Won’t Touch It
The statistics on this problem are outrageous. Morris quotes a 2016 survey that found only 9% of medical schools had any curricular content on medical cannabis. The same survey found that 85% of medical residents reported receiving no education—zero—about medical marijuana in medical school or during their residency.

Imagine that an entire class of drugs like statins came on the market, were prescribed in the millions—but doctors didn’t know the first thing about them. They weren’t mentioned in medical school or during a doctor’s residency. That’s where we are with cannabis.


No Studies? Hardly.
“Part of the reason physicians may feel poorly trained is that many of marijuana’s health effects are not known,” Morris writes. This is untrue. Though it has been extremely difficult to conduct federally-approved cannabis research in the United States, thousands of studies have been published on the medical effects of cannabis. Entire issues of The Lancet and other leading journals have been devoted to the subject. It’s not that hard to find. The first step is to use a little tool commonly known as The Google.

Morris ends his article by noting that “most of my medical training around marijuana has been realizing how much I still have to learn.”

Welcome to Leafly, Dr. Morris. Make yourself comfortable. We have everything you want to know about cannabis but were afraid to ask.

 

[roots69]

National Drug Stores Selling CBD, but Not Walmart or Target—Yet

A customer tries a free sample of a pain cream that contains cannabidiol (CBD) for her arthritis at Minnesota Hempdropz in Maplewood, Minn. (Jean Pieri/Pioneer Press via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Mainstream retailers are leaping into the world of products like skin creams and oils that tout such benefits as reducing anxiety and helping you sleep.

The key ingredient? CBD, or cannabidiol, a compound derived from hemp and marijuana that doesn’t cause a high.

CVS, Martha Stewart, and Neiman Marcus are selling CBD products. Walmart and Target are holding off for now.
Retailers are taking advantage of the booming industry even as its legal status and health benefits remain murky. And the flood of products is only testing how federal regulators can police it.

Retail sales of CBD consumer products in 2018 were estimated to reach as much as $2 billion, according to Cowen & Co. By 2025, that figure could hit $16 billion in retail sales, the investment firm predicts.

CBD has been cropping up in everything from dog treats to bath balms in the past few months. Domestic diva Martha Stewart is working with Canada’s Canopy Growth Corp. to develop new CBD products. Authentic Fitness is planning to sell CBD foot creams, oils and soaps under the Nine West brand starting this fall. CVS Health is beginning to sell CBD-infused creams, sprays, lotions and salves at more than 800 stores in seven states; drug store rivals Walgreens and Rite Aid are now following suit. And the nation’s largest mall owner, Simon Property Group, has hooked up with a cannabis goods maker to open roughly 100 kiosks at its U.S. malls by mid-summer.



Neiman Marcus Is Getting In
Even high-end retailers are getting in on the action, charging anywhere from $12 to $150 an ounce. Barneys New York has opened a shop in Beverly Hills, California, that sells CBD-infused creams along with hand blown glass bongs and other accessories, while Neiman Marcus is now offering an array of CBD-infused beauty products from balms, lotions soaps and masks in five of its stores.

“There’s definitely a huge opportunity for expansion,” said Matthew Mazzucca, creative director at Barneys New York.

He acknowledged, however, the legal hurdles are still hard to navigate and companies should take it slow.



Walmart, Target, Amazon: Not Yet
Indeed, some are doing just that. Walmart says it doesn’t have plans to carry CBD-infused products at this time and Target, which in 2017 sold hemp extract products on its website but then quickly yanked them, said it’s monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile, online behemoth Amazon is staying clear of the stuff. Spokeswoman Cecilia Fan says the company prohibits the sale of products that contain CBD and will remove them from its site if it sees them.

CBD’s ubiquity persists despite very little evidence for all the health claims the industry touts. If you believe in the hype, CBD treats pain, reduces anxiety and helps you sleep and keeps you focused. But most claims are based on studies in rats, mice or in test tubes. Human research has been done but on small numbers of people.



Only drugs that have been reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective can make claims that they treat or prevent diseases or medical conditions. Many CBD producers try to get around that by using vague language about general health and well-being.

That seems to be good enough for at least some shoppers eager to calm their nerves.

“We are a more anxious society and people are looking for cures,” said Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist and professor at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. “There’s a growing distrust in business and pharma and so people are wanting to find cures that seem more real and wholesome.”

Seems to Work for Some
Amy Nichols, a former food scientist from Indianapolis, reflects that distrust. Nichols, 46, who’s been battling symptoms from autoimmune illness, has been using CBD oils by a brand called Recept that she sticks under her tongue.

“For me, this is a more natural solution to treating symptoms that I am having instead of taking pain killers,” said Nichols, who now works as a sales representative for Recept. “I have more energy. I get more done. I am in less pain. I am more active.”


Different States, Different Laws
CBD is operating within a patchwork of regulations that vary by cities and states. In New York City, regulators are prohibiting outlets to sell CBD-infused food and beverages, threatening them with fines. Other states like Ohio and California are taking similar action. Maine’s governor, on the other hand, signed an emergency bill in late March allowing CBD in food products after state inspectors warned stores to pull them from shelves earlier in the year.

The farm bill, passed late last year, gave states and the U.S. Department of Agriculture authority to regulate industrial hemp, a type of cannabis that is high in CBD. That opened the door to hemp-derived CBD products.

CVS and Walgreens are sticking to topicals. Others are rolling the dice and selling CBD-infused drinks and supplements.
But the farm bill gave the FDA authority over the food supply and the agency recently warned that it’s illegal to add CBD or THC—the compound that gives marijuana its high—to human or animal food and beverages and transport it over state lines. Dietary supplements using CBD are also illegal.

Bigger players like CVS and Walgreens are sticking with skin creams and lotions where the FDA hasn’t specifically expressed concern. Others are rolling the dice and selling CBD-infused drinks and supplements anyway in hopes of a profit, said Whitt Steineker, a Birmingham, Alabama, attorney who advises the hemp industry.

“They have determined the reward is worth the risk,” Steineker said.

With rules and guidance still being written, the landscape is highly uncertain but Steineker expects that to improve.

“Now that hemp is legal, I think the USDA and state departments of agriculture are interested in seeing what type of crop it will be and what its applications are,” he said. “They’ll move with the speed governments often move with … (but) by the 2020 growing season, people will have a better understanding how to operate within the law.”

 

[roots69]

MEXICO WANTS TO DECRIMINALIZE ALL DRUGS AND NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S. TO DO THE SAME



Mexico's president released a new plan last week that called for radical reform to the nation's drug laws and negotiating with the United States to take similar steps.

The plan put forward by the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, often referred to by his initials as AMLO, calls for decriminalizing illegal drugs and transferring funding for combating the illicit substances to pay for treatment programs instead. It points to the failure of the decades-long international war on drugs, and calls for negotiating with the international community, and specifically the U.S., to ensure the new strategy's success.

“The ‘war on drugs' has escalated the public health problem posed by currently banned substances to a public safety crisis,” the policy proposal, which came as part of AMLO's National Development Plan for 2019-2024, read. Mexico's current “prohibitionist strategy is unsustainable,” it argued.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador delivers a speech at the Santa Lucia Air Force Base in Zumpango, near Mexico City, on April 29. The plan put forward by the president’s administration calls for decriminalizing illegal drugs and transferring funding for combating the illicit substances to pay for treatment programs instead.PEDRO PARDO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The document says that ending prohibition is “the only real possibility” to address the problem. “This should be pursued in a negotiated manner, both in the bilateral relationship with the United States and in the multilateral sphere, within the [United Nations] U.N.,” it explained.


Drug reform advocates have welcomed AMLO's plan. Steve Hawkins, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, told Newsweek that the Mexican president's plan “reflects a shift in thinking on drug policy that is taking place around the world, including here in the U.S.”

“The war on drugs has been extremely costly, not just in terms of government resources, but also human lives, and it has failed to accomplish its objective,” he explained. “Prohibition policies have, by and large, caused more harm to people and communities than the drugs they were intended to eliminate, and they haven't come anywhere close to eliminating the supply or the demand.”

Last October, the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), a global coalition of 170 nongovernmental organizations working on drug policy issues, released a report that highlighted the “spectacular” failure and global increase in violence that has been caused by the war on drugs. Instead of curbing the problem, “consumption and illegal trafficking of drugs have reached record levels,” Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, wrote in the document's foreword.

A couple attends a rally in support of the legalization of marijuana at the Alameda Central Park in Mexico City, on May 4. One in five prisoners globally are incarcerated due to drug-related crimes, often for simply possessing cannabis or other illicit substances.PEDRO PARDO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The IDPC report found that there had been a 145 percent increase in drug-related deaths over the previous 10 years. The number of deaths reached an estimated 450,000 in 2015 alone. Drug overdose deaths have also skyrocketed, with 71,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. alone in 2017. Additionally, one in five prisoners globally are incarcerated due to drug-related crimes, often for simply possessing cannabis or other illicit substances.

“Mexico's president is rightly identifying one of the major drivers of violence and corruption in his country: the prohibition of drugs,” Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that advocates for ending the war on drugs, said in an emailed statement to Newsweek. “The next step is to translate words into action, by pursuing both a domestic and international agenda of drug policy reform, grounded in respect for human rights.”





AMLO's policy plan shouldn't have come as a surprise to Mexican voters. During his campaign and after winning election, he has consistently called for major reforms to his country's prohibition on drugs. Mexico's Supreme Court also issued its fifth ruling on cannabis prohibition at the end of last October, determining that punishing people for using the drug violated the constitution. Mexican lawmakers have since worked to push forward legislation to regulate the use of recreational mairijuana.

“More and more countries are developing programs for regulating cannabis for medical and adult use, and there is a growing sentiment that drug use should be treated more like a public healthmatter than a criminal justice issue,” Hawkins told Newsweek .

A woman waves a flag with a marijuana leaf to celebrate National Marijuana Day in Ottawa, Ontario, on April 20, 2016. With Canada’s decision to legalize and Mexico pushing to decriminalize all drugs, the U.S. may soon find itself isolated by its neighbors when it comes to drug policy.CHRIS ROUSSAKIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Canada became the first major major economic power to legalize and regulate the sale of recreational cannabis last year. With Canada's decision to legalize and Mexico pushing to decriminalize all drugs, the U.S. may soon find itself isolated by its neighbors when it comes to drug policy. Although 10 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized recreational marijuana, and more than 30 have legalized some form of cannabis for medicinal use, it remains classified as a Schedule 1 illegal drug by the federal government.

Polls have shown that legalizing marijuana nationwide enjoys bipartisan support. Republicans and Democrats have come together in Congress to support legalization as well as protecting states that have already legalized at the local level. President Donald Trump has previously suggested he is supportive of easing laws surrounding marijuana, although his administration has given mixed messages.

Attorney General William Barr said last month during testimony before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that he would "still favor one uniform federal rule against marijuana." However, he added that he thought the "way to go is to permit a more federal approach so states can, you know, make their own decisions within the framework of the federal law."

Decriminalizing all drugs is not a perspective that is widely advocated or discussed in Washington. This week though, Denver became the first city in the country to pass a ballot measure to fully decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms, commonly known as magic mushrooms or simply shrooms.

“The vote [in Denver] shows again that the public is ahead of politicians on drug law reform—and shows the power and potential of public action in demanding it!,” the drug policy foundation Transform said in an email to supporters.

Posters in support of Ordinance 301, which decriminalized psilocybin mushrooms, adorn an election night watch party, in Denver, on May 7.MICHAEL CIAGLO/GETTY IMAGES
How the U.S. would respond to AMLO's plan remains to be seen. Globally, however, it's clear the conversation around drugs has shifted. Countries from Uruguay to South Africa to Georgia to Thailand have been reforming their drug laws, specifically when it comes to cannabis. Meanwhile, momentum has increased in the past few years within the U.S. as state after state has pushed through medical or recreational marijuana legalization.

Congressman Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, who co-founded the bipartisan Congressional Cannabis Caucus in 2017, told Newsweek last summer that he envisions marijuana will soon be traded across North American borders. “In the course of the next decade, I think there will be a North American cannabis market,” he said. If AMLO's plan succeeds, that cross-border cannabis market could more likely come to fruition.

“Governments are increasingly finding they can neither justify nor afford maintaining the war on drugs,” Hawkins pointed out. “Leaders are looking for exit strategies, as we are now seeing in Mexico."

 

[roots69]

Unbelievable!!


LEGAL WEED: TEXAS REJECTS BILL TO REDUCE MARIJUANA PENALTIES DESPITE JUST 14% OF STATE SAYING IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL

Texas lawmakers have dismissed a bill to reduce the penalties for marijuana-related offenses, citing strong opposition to decriminalization despite the fact that a plurality of voters in the state believe the drug should be fully legalized.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick declared the legislation “dead” in the Texas Senate just after the House gave the bill the go-ahead earlier this week. The preliminary approval was granted by the lower chamber by a vote of 103-42. Republican majorities control both chambers of the Texas legislature.

“I join with those House Republicans who oppose this step toward legalization of marijuana,” Patrick added in a tweet on Tuesday.

The legislation would lower marijauna possession of one ounce or less to a “Class C” misdemeanor, putting it in the same criminal classification as a traffic ticket. For those found to possess two ounces or less, the possible penalties include a fine up to $2,000, jail time or both.


Most Texans believe that marijuana should be completely legalized, according to an Emerson College poll released Monday. The survey showed that 38 percent of state voters believe the drug should be fully legalized, while another 35 percent say it should be legalized for medical purposes only. Only 14 percent of state voters in Texas said that marijuana should be illegal.

State Representative Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso who has been the leading advocate of the state's decriminalization effort, said in a speech on the House floor on Tuesday that Patrick was the “odd man out” in this situation.

“Whatever you think about Colorado-style legalization, this isn't it. It isn't even a step toward it,” Moody said, according to a report by the Texas Tribune. “Mr. Patrick has been tweeting about this bill instead of giving us the courtesy of talking to us here in the House.”

A marijuana dispensary grow operation in Los Angeles, California on January 24, 2019.ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Moody then added that lawmakers should “vote this across the hall so they can get to work on the House's priorities and so we can see how those priorities are respected as we consider Senate bills over here over the next few weeks.”

In Texas, one of the reddest states in the country, possessing any amount of marijuana is illegal. But the Republican Party and conservative Governor Greg Abbott have signaled in recent years a changing perspective on marijuana decriminalization.

In 2017, Abott signed the Compassionate Use Act into law, which for the first time allowed qualifying patients in the state to have access to low levels of THC.

Then, in 2018 at the state's Republican Party convention, nearly 10,000 conservative politicians voted to revise the party platform on marijuana. The changes included supporting industrial hemp, decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana possession and urging the federal government to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule II drug. Schedule I drugs are those, that according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, have "no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse."

Lieutenant Governor Patrick's declaration earlier this week that the bill is “dead” may have been premature, say some Texas legislators.

“I don't believe it's dead, and I'm going to do the best I can [to round up support]," Senator John Whitmire, the chairman of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, told the Austin-Amercan Statesman. He will take up the measure in his committee and fight for its passage.

"I'm trying to see if we have the votes in the Criminal Justice Committee to get it to the floor,” Whitmire added.

 

[roots69]

Welcome to the future!!

POLICING FOR PROFIT: HOW CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE FUNDS LAW ENFORCEMENT

Picture this: You’re driving home from the casino and you've absolutely cleaned up – to the tune of $50,000. You see a police car pull up behind you, but you can’t figure out why. Not only have you not broken any laws, you’re not even speeding. But the police officer doesn’t appear to be interested in charging you with a crime. Instead, he takes your gambling winnings, warns you not to say anything to anyone unless you want to be charged as a drug kingpin, then drives off into the sunset.

This actually happened to Tan Nguyen, and his story is far from unique. It’s called civil asset forfeiture and it’s a multi-billion dollar piggybank for state, local and federal police departments to fund all sorts of pet projects.

With its origins in the British fight against piracy on the open seas, civil asset forfeiture is nothing new. During Prohibition, police officers often seized goods, cash and equipment from bootleggers in a similar manner to today. However, contemporary civil asset forfeiture begins right where you’d think that it would: The War on Drugs.

In 1986, as First Lady Nancy Reagan encouraged America’s youth to “Just Say No,” the Justice Department started the Asset Forfeiture Fund. This sparked a boom in civil asset forfeiture that’s now become self-reinforcing, as the criminalization of American life and asset forfeiture have continued to feed each other.

In sum, asset forfeiture creates a motivation to draft more laws by the legislature, while more laws create greater opportunities for seizure by law enforcement. This perverse incentive structure is having devastating consequences: In 2014 alone, law enforcement took more stuff from American citizens than burglars did.

The current state of civil asset forfeiture in the United States is one of almost naked tyranny. Don’t believe us? Read on.

THE ORIGINS OF CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE
Civil asset forfeiture has a deep history in maritime law. In many cases, it just wasn’t practical to bring owners of vessels carrying contraband in front of an American court. So customs enforcement would simply seize the contraband. But in practice, seizure of assets was rare and generally required a felony conviction in court. Often times these convictions were obtained in absentia, but the point is that there was a criminal proceeding and due process.

During the Civil War, as part of sweeping attacks on liberty that included Lincoln suspending habeas corpus and obtaining an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, supporters of the Confederacy had their property confiscated without due process. Civil asset forfeiture was used during the Prohibition Era to seize assets from bootleggers and suspected bootleggers. Even innocent owners had no defense during Prohibition if their property was used in violation of the Volstead Act.

In 1984, civil asset forfeiture entered a new phase. The Comprehensive Crime Control Act, championed by then-President Ronald Reagan, allowed for police agencies to keep the assets they seized. This highly incentivized the seizure of assets for the purpose of funding police departments rather than pursuing criminal charges. However, the game changed completely in 1996 – the year of the landmark Supreme Court decision Bennis v. Michigan(516 U.S. 442). This ruling held that the innocent owner defense was not sufficient to recover assets seized during civil asset forfeiture.

The plaintiff, Tina Bennis, was the joint owner of a vehicle with her husband John. The latter was arrested by Detroit police when caught with a prostitute on a street in Detroit, and the car was seized as a public nuisance. The court found that despite having no knowledge of the crime, there was no violation of either her property rights or her right to due process. Michigan’s law was specifically designed to deter people from using their assets in criminal activity, which the Supreme Court found to be Constitutional in a 5-4 decision. The Supreme Court likewise found that there was no right to compensation for Bennis.

CRIMINAL ASSET FORFEITURE VS. CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE

Before going any further, it’s important to delineate the differences between criminal asset forfeiture and civil asset forfeiture. The primary difference is that criminal asset forfeiture requires a conviction while civil asset forfeiture does not. However, there are other differences worth mentioning.

Civil asset forfeiture is a lawsuit against the seized object in question rather than a person. This leads to rather strange lawsuits like “Texas vs. One Gold Crucifix.” The legal burden of proof varies from one state to another, but the most common is preponderance of evidence, notreasonable doubt. What this means is juries decide if the state’s case is more likely to be true than not – not beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil asset forfeiture trial, courts can weigh the use of the Fifth Amendment. This is not true in criminal trials.

The burden of proof question becomes crucial when it comes to retrieving property. In criminal cases, assets are returned if the prosecution fails to prove the guilt of the accused. In a civil asset forfeiture trial, the accused effectively has to prove their innocence to get their property back. Thus, civil asset forfeiture is a highly attractive option for police departments looking to scare up extra scratch in tight budgetary times. What’s more, the accused is not entitled to legal counsel. This is why, in most cases, it’s not economically advantageous to try and get one’s property back. The lawyer fees will quickly eclipse whatever value the seized assets have.

A 2015 study from FreedomWorks graded the states on their civil asset forfeiture laws. Only New Mexico received an “A,” after the state passed sweeping reforms with regard to its civil asset forfeiture processes. Over half the states received a “D” or less.

Sound paranoid? Keep reading.

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE: BIG BUSINESS FOR POLICE
To say that police departments are funding themselves with civil asset forfeiture is more true than you might think. Civil asset forfeiture has exploded since 1986, when total seizures were at $93.7 million. By 2005, this had passed the $1 billion mark. That was double the 2004 amount, $567 million. By 2010, this figure jumped to $2.5 billion with more than 15,000 forfeiture cases – 11,000 of which were civil, not criminal.

By 2014, this figure climbed to $4.5 billion, with $29 billion seized between 2001 and 2014. Between 1985 and 1991, federal forfeitures increased by 1,500 percent, an increase of over 26 times. The Justice Department’s forfeiture fund (that does not include customs forfeitures) ballooned from $27 million in 1985 to $644 million in 1991. By 1996, this fund grew to over $1 billion for the first time. By 2008, it had tripled again to $3.1 billion.

Cash seizures in Tennessee have gotten so widespread that the state legislature has begun investigating it. Traffic stops have turned into shakedown operations. Interstate 40 was described as “a major profit center” by Phil Williams, a reporter for Channel 5 in Nashville. Much like extra-legal gangs, police gangs in Tennessee have started engaging in turf warfare over the spoils of civil asset forfeiture. The Dixon Interdiction Enforcement (DICE) and the 23rd Judicial District Drug Taskforce were caught on video trying to cut one another off in their vehicles to stop civilians and search for cash. Indeed, officers were in danger of losing their jobs if they didn’t seize enough cash. The head of DICE admitted that it was funded entirely by civil asset forfeiture cash.

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE DRIVES BAD POLICING

Civil asset forfeiture isn’t just effectively a legalized form of theft. It also drives (and indeed, incentivizes) bad policing. There is ample evidence to suggest local smokies use civil asset forfeiture to pad their budgets. For example, a 1994 study found that police delay drug busts to increase the value of a forfeiture. A 2001 study of 1,400 police departments published in the Journal of Criminal Justice found that half of the departments surveyed agreed that civil asset forfeiture was “necessary as a budget supplement.” Far more disturbing is the 2004 report showing that police departments keep wish lists for items they wish to obtain via civil asset forfeiture.

To provide some context, in 2014, the total amount of civil asset forfeiture seizures in the United States was $4.5 billion. The total value of property stolen in burglaries was $3.9 billion. This means that police agencies in the United States are taking more from the American public than burglars. More to the point, all the time police agencies use seizing assets from citizens who are in no way a danger to their neighbors is time they don’t spend tracking down actual criminals. In some cases, it might be more “profitable” for a police department to harass a law-abiding citizen while entirely ignoring dangerous criminals.

Case in point: In Tennessee, officers set up a post to bust drug traffickers on a known highway used for muling drugs from Mexico into the United States. However, their post was not set up to stop the flow of drugs into the United States, which one would think would ostensibly be the goal of the “War on Drugs” – to protect American citizens from the inflow of drugs. Instead, the post was set up to bust cars bound for Mexico that might be carrying cash, a far more valuable commodity for the police departments.

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE TARGETS REGULAR PEOPLE


Let’s assume that you’re against the War on Drugs and against civil asset forfeiture on principle. So what? Who cares about big-time drug kingpins getting their assets seized by the government? Well, as it turns out, the police aren’t generally taking things from drug lords operating in what are effectively domestic war zones. They’re taking them from average Americans.

First, it’s important to remember what the “civil” in “civil asset forfeiture” means. It means that no one has actually been convicted of a crime. Once property has been seized, it’s not only difficult to regain it, but it can also be dangerous for the person who has had their items effectively stolen by the police.

Additionally, it’s worth looking at the scope creep associated with civil asset forfeiture, for which there are currently over 400 federal statutes on the books. This amount has doubled since the 1990s. People who are victims of civil asset forfeiture are many times not even suspected of drug crimes or money laundering. Civil asset forfeiture is applied to crimes like DWI or violating the National Halibut Fishing Act. In 85 percent of all cases, no one is ever charged with a crime, though many people are pressured into signing away their right to a defense in exchange for a guarantee against criminal prosecution. In the case of seized vehicles, between 50 and 80 percent were being driven by someone other than the owner when seized.

In one particularly egregious example, a Philadelphia family had their home seized because their son did a $40 drug sale on the porch. In New York City, police seize money from people with as little as $100 in their pocket. A whopping 94 percent of California seizures in 2013 were for $5,000 or less, but the average DEA seizure in 1998 was $25,000 – precisely the cap on what attorneys advise against trying to reclaim due to legal fees and court costs. Indeed, 88 percent of Department of Justice seizures are “administrative,” meaning they were never challenged in court, likely due to the high cost and risk associated with challenging a seizure.

In addition to the legal fees being prohibitively high for most people, anything you say in the course of recovering your property can be used against you in criminal proceedings. This includes the nebulous charge of “lying to investigators” that is so often invoked against people once it has been determined that they committed no other crime.

It’s a rare moment when the American Civil Liberties Union and the Heritage Foundation come together, but when they do, it’s worth noting. Both oppose civil asset forfeiture.

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE NIGHTMARES

While such cases are hardly the rule, it’s worth pointing out that there have been instances of civil asset forfeiture that can only be described as nightmarish. Some examples of egregious overreach of civil asset forfeiture include:

• Sheriff’s deputies in Campbell County, TN tortured a suspect until he agreed to sign over his assets.
• In El Monte, CA, narcotics officers shot a 65-year-old grandfather as he knelt beside his bed. They then seized his life savings and hauled his family in for questioning before admitting that no one had any connection to the drug trade.
• Police in Bradenton, FL have a longstanding policy of coercing drug suspects into signing over their assets.
• In many municipalities, it is policy to seize vehicles from intoxicated drivers who have had no criminal trial.

Nightmarish scenarios aren’t necessary to show the tyranny of civil asset forfeiture, however. While losing a Honda Civic with a market value of $1,000 might not sound like a huge tragedy to you, it certainly is to the woman who has to use the vehicle to get to and from her waitressing job every day.

DON’T CARRY CASH!
One of the most disturbing aspects of civil asset forfeiture is what some have called “the war on cash.” Put simply, don’t be caught with a large amount of cash in your vehicle, even if it’s 100 percent legal, unless you wouldn’t mind a budget-strapped local police department taking your wad.

United States courts have repeatedly ruled that simply having a large amount of cash on hand is “strong evidence” of criminal wrongdoing, in particular drug trafficking. Then it’s up to you to prove you didn’t get the money from drug trafficking, and even then you probably won’t get it back. The Patriot Act created a new crime called “bulk cash smuggling,” which expanded the scope of civil asset forfeiture of cash.

militarized police forces increasingly common in the United States are funded through civil asset forfeiture. This is a highly disturbing trend. However, civil asset forfeiture is also used to purchase things that there is virtually no argument for a police department “needing.”

Here’s a short list of frivolous purchases made using civil asset forfeiture funds:

• Sports tickets
• Office parties
• Home security systems
• A “party house”
• A $90,000 sports car
• First-class flights and Cadillac rentals
• Lip-sync videos
• $500 popcorn machine
• Margarita machine
• $400 in catering
• Drugs, prostitutes and a tanning salon
• Casino trips
• Candy for a poultry festival
• $637 coffee maker
• $225 on a clown
• $5,300 of challenge coin medallions
• $9,547 worth of Gatorade
• A Zamboni
• Flat-screen TVs and Disney customer service training

Confiscated cash has also gone to local Chamber of Commerce chapters, youth baseball leagues, and local Baptist churches.

[paste:font size="5"]HOW CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE WORKS
Civil asset forfeiture is big business and many times only tangentially related to law enforcement, if at all. But how does the process work?

First, there are three different kinds of property that can be seized under the law:

• Proceeds: Anything of value obtained through the commission of a crime.
• Facilitating Property: Anything used in the commission of a crime, including property and assets used to hide a crime or make its commission easier.
• Property Involved In: This is generally property used in money laundering (for example, a cash-based business).

This property can be real or imaginary, anything from cold, hard cash to intellectual property rights, websites, interests, claims and securities. However, it must be connected – in theory, at least – to some crime that has been committed.

Different states have different standards of proof when it comes to civil asset forfeiture. Unsurprisingly, states with a lower burden of proof tend to seize more assets. Likewise, states with the fewest restrictions on how the money can be used tend to seize more.

• Prima Facia / Probable Cause: This is the lowest level of proof required, which is little more than what might be required to search your car after a traffic stop. This is the standard in nine states (Alabama, Alaska, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Wyoming).
• Preponderance: In these states, the state actor has to present evidence that is “more likely true than not.” Four states (Georgia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington) use this standard in conjunction with probable cause. 20 states use this as a standard on its own. An additional three states (Kentucky, New York, Oregon) combine preponderance with “Clear and Convincing.”
• Clear and Convincing: “Clear and convincing” is a higher standard of proof. Rather than just “more likely true than not,” the evidence must be compellingly more likely to be true than not. 11 states use this standard of proof alone, or in combination with preponderance or beyond a reasonable doubt.
• Beyond a Reasonable Doubt: This is the same standard used in criminal cases. It places the burden of proof on the state to eliminate all potential other reasonable explanations. This is the standard in three states (Nebraska, North Carolina, Wisconsin), as well as one (California) where it is used in conjunction with “clear and convincing.”
• In Florida, criminal charges are required for seizure. Montana and, most recently, New Hampshire, require a criminal conviction for forfeiture. One state, New Mexico, has abolished the practice entirely.

CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE STATE BY STATE

Civil asset forfeiture laws and procedures vary widely from one state to another. If you’re an innocent victim looking to get your goods and cash back, the process to do so can be byzantine and obscure.

• At the federal level and in 35 states, the burden of proof is on the owner.
• In five states, it depends on what kind of property was seized.
• In the remaining states and the District of Columbia, the burden of proof is on the government.
• In some states, fighting seizure in court means the risk of paying the state’s legal fees.
• In half of all states, law enforcement keeps 100 percent of all forfeited assets. In an additional nine states, 80 percent or more is retained by law enforcement.

Some high-profile abuses of civil asset forfeiture have taken place in Texas, which has become a sort of poster child for everything wrong with the civil asset forfeiture system:

Teneha, TX: Population: 1,046

• Police force targeted black and Latino motorists on Highway 84. The highway connects Houston with Louisiana casinos.
• In three years, Tenaha police stopped 140 drives for forfeiture.
• Drivers who refused were hassled for months and paid thousands in attorney fees. The fees generally cost more than the value of the seizure.
• Court records were found indicating that in 200 seizure cases, only 50 were charged.

Kingsville, TX: Population: 25,000

• Highway forfeitures paid for:
  • Souped-up Dodge Chargers
  • $40,000 digital ticket writers
  • Sniper rifles and military-style rifles

Kimble County, TX

• District Attorney Ron Sutton used forfeiture to pay for travel to a conference in Hawaii.
• The funds also paid for 198th District Judge Emil Karl Pohl’s travel. Pohl approved the expenditure and later resigned.

Shelby County, TX

• This is the county including Tenaha.
• District Attorney Lynda Kay Russel paid for tickets to a Christmas parade and a motorcycle rally using forfeiture money.

EQUITABLE SHARING: HOW CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE CIRCUMVENTS THE LAW
As if civil asset forfeiture wasn’t bad enough on its own, there is also a process allowing police organizations to circumvent the existing laws. It’s called equitable sharing and it’s a gold mine for both the federal government and police departments. This process further incentivizes civil asset forfeiture as a means of funding police departments at the federal, state and local levels.

Here’s how it works: state and local law enforcement turn assets over to federal authorities for federal crimes. The feds then return up to 80 percent of the assets back from whence it came. This effectively allows state and local authorities to circumvent relevant local laws by bringing in the feds. For example, in Missouri, seized money is supposed to go to the schools. When equitable sharing is used, nothing goes to schools.

From 2000 to 2013, equitable sharing payments to states tripled from $198 million to $643 million. Only $3 million of this was actually seized in cooperation with federal authorities. Between 2008 and 2015, $5.3 billion was seized through equitable sharing. Where the burden of proof is higher, equitable sharing payouts increase. In 2009, the federal government paid out $500 million in assets under “equitable sharing” schemes. This is up 75 percent from the previous year.

The top states for equitable sharing payouts (even when controlling for the number of drug arrests) are Rhode Island, California, New York and Florida. South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming are the states using the program the least.

THE CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE PROCESS IS NOT TRANSPARENT

Civil asset forfeiture might be a powerful tool for law enforcement to go after bad guys (and the word “might” is doing a lot of work there), but it suffers from a terrible lack of transparency.

Only 11 states (Oregon, California, Minnesota, Missouri, Arkansas, Hawaii, Michigan, Georgia, New York, New Hampshire) and the federal government put any forfeiture information available. Three states and the District of Columbia were on track to put forfeiture information online (Nevada, New Mexico, Texas). The remaining states require public records requests or keep no records at all.

Where information is available, it often lacks details like the percentage of criminal versus civil forfeitures or the type of property seized. When spending categories are included, they tend to be very broad, such as “equipment” or “salaries.” For its part, the federal government carefully tracks the type of property, but does not release statistics on which seizures involved convictions. The Institute of Justice found most state records it could actually obtain to be unusable.

The four most transparent states with regard to spending are Arizona, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Texas. In these four states:

• 33 percent went to equipment
• 21 percent went to salaries
• 17 percent marked as “other”

Everything that’s not salary is incredibly opaque. For example, the aforementioned margarita makers could easily be filed under “equipment,” to say nothing of the totally nebulous “other” category.

PUSHING BACK AGAINST CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE
There has been an increasing skepticism from the bench about civil asset forfeiture, and some states are amending their laws to restore rights to people whose assets are seized in this fashion. Some recent reforms have been enacted at the state level, including:

• Arizona: In April 2017, the Arizona State Legislature unanimous passed civil asset reform legislation. The language of the bill is vague, however, it does raise the burden for civil asset forfeiture on police departments. The legislation likewise takes steps to close the equitable sharing loophole.
• California: In January 2017, new legislation took effect requiring a criminal conviction to seize any assets below $40,000. This limit is high because the main reason people do not challenge civil asset forfeiture is due to the property seized often not being worth the legal fees that would be involved in getting the goods back.
• Connecticut: Connecticut now requires an arrest for assets to be seized through civil asset forfeiture. Barring a conviction or a guilty plea, assets must be returned at the end of criminal proceedings.
• Georgia: The State of Georgia passed very modest civil asset forfeiture reform in 2015. The law created greater transparency in the process and required that seized assets be used directly for law enforcement. No more margarita machines. Despite these reforms, Georgia continues to have some of the worst civil asset forfeiture laws in the nation.
• Minnesota: The Metro Gang Strike Force settled with 96 victims in 2009 for $840,000. In the wake of this scandal, the state legislature passed SF 874, a sweeping reform of the state’s civil asset forfeiture laws. Criminal conviction or an admission of criminal conduct is now required in Minnesota to seize assets. The burden of proof was also shifted to the state.
• New Mexico: The Land of Enchantment passed what are perhaps the most sweeping reforms of civil asset forfeiture in the nation. Criminal convictions are required for forfeiture and the proceeds now go into the state’s general fund rather than acting as spoils for the seizing police department. The legislation sharply limited the degree to which local and state agencies can participate in the equitable sharing program.
• Pennsylvania: In June 2017, Pennsylvania passed legislation raising the burden of proof on police departments involved in civil asset forfeiture cases and created innocent owner protections. A hearing is now required to seize property.
• Tennessee: Former state trooper and state Rep. Barrett Rich introduced a bill requiring a warrant, but this bill failed to pass. An amended version did pass, however, with far more modest reforms including the right to an immediate hearing before a judge. Previously, victims of civil asset forfeiture had to wait up to a year.

In addition to state reforms, the judiciary is becoming increasingly critical of civil asset forfeiture. In June 2017, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of civil asset forfeiture victims. What’s more, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a scathing critique of civil asset forfeiture as a whole in March 2017. While rejecting the victim’s appeal on procedural grounds, he called into question the entire existence of civil asset forfeiture as it currently exists.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF

You might think there’s nothing you can do to protect yourself against civil asset forfeiture. However, this is not the case. While there is no 100-percent guarantee against civil asset forfeiture, there are some things you can do to provide yourself with some level of protection:

• Establish innocent ownership. If you rent property, include a clause stating that illegal behavior is prohibited on your property.
• Be careful who you rent your property to. If you don’t trust someone completely, don’t let them borrow your car or house sit for you.
• Keep your LLC property on the up and up. It’s increasingly common for people to own property through an LLC. If you do this, make sure that all the legal i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed in terms of establishing your ownership.
• Exercise dominion over your property. You can protect your rental property by regularly visiting it and documenting these visits.
• Obtain fresh notes for any large amounts of cash. Nearly all circulated currency has drug residue on it, which is often used as evidence of criminal wrongdoing in civil asset forfeiture suits. You can protect yourself by requesting fresh notes when you go to the bank.

Show that you have taken active steps to prevent illegal activity on or with any property that you own, rent or lend. It won’t protect you completely, but it will give you a legal leg to stand on if you ever end up on the wrong side of a greedy police department.

While civil asset forfeiture is certainly scary to anyone who values liberty and property, much like the War on Some Drugs, the tide seems to be turning in favor of liberty and against those who wish to take it.

RELATED ARTICLES:
Sunday, September 2, 2018 - New Colorado Law Expands Asset Forfeiture Reforms
Today, a new Colorado law went into effect expanding asset forfeiture reporting requirements instituted last year. The law passed last year requires “seizing agencies” to submit extensive forfeiture reports... By increasing transparency, HB1020 allows Coloradans to see the reality of asset forfeiture more clearly. As the saying goes, sunlight is the best antiseptic. Transparency often creates the momentum needed to drive future change.

Friday, July 6, 2018 - Utah police seized $2.2M in cash under civil forfeiture law
Utah police seized about $2.2 million in cash last year under a law allowing authorities to take someone’s property even if they aren’t charged or convicted of a crime, a state report showed. The 2017 report on state asset forfeiture showed virtually all of the money and other assets seized by police came in drug investigations. In 13 percent of the cases no criminal charges were filed.

Friday, May 25, 2018 - While Teachers Have to Beg For Funding, Police Caught Stealing Millions From Public Schools
While teachers across the United States protest for higher wages and increased funding for public schools, police officers in one state are actively stealing millions of dollars in funds that were supposed to be used to for public education—and they are getting away with it.

Thursday, May 17, 2018 - DOJ’s Stealth Nationalization of Local Police
Under a Department of Justice program known as “Equitable Sharing,” local police are being deputized as federal agents in order to participate in Joint Terrorism Task Forces, enabling them to bypass their state’s own forfeiture and surveillance laws so they can spy on individuals suspected of terrorism or other crimes falling under federal jurisdiction.

Tuesday, May 8, 2018 - Local Cops Can Skirt State Limits on Surveillance By Joining Federal Task Forces
By joining joint law enforcement task forces run by the federal government, local cops can often ignore stringent state and local laws governing surveillance and engage in warrantless spying. It’s well-known that a federal program known as “Equitable Sharing” allows local prosecutors and police to bypass more restrictive state asset forfeiture laws by passing cases off to the federal government through a process known as adoption. A Department of Justice directive issued last summer by Attorney General Jeff Sessions reiterates full support for the equitable sharing program, directs federal law enforcement agencies to aggressively utilize it, and sets the stage to expand it in the future.

Monday, December 4, 2017 - Judge Hands Back $92,000 Taken From Musician By Cops For Failing To Buckle His Seatbelt
Another awful story of civil asset forfeiture abuse comes to us via German Lopez at Vox. But at least this one has a happy ending. The beginning, however, is anything but happy. Musician Phil Parhamovich made the mistake of driving in Wyoming without his seatbelt buckled. A click-it ticket in Wyoming usually runs about $25. In Parhamovich's case, it cost him nearly $92,000.

 

[roots69]

Celebrating a Golden Anniversary 50 Years of Drug Dealing by the CIA

PART I. THE HELLWELL DYNASTY
or HOW BURMA GOT ITS START

Various News Sources
It's generally agreed that 1996's biggest news story was Gary Webb's San Jose Mercury scoop that ghetto drug dealers claim none other than the American CIA to be their supplier!
But Spooks dealing drugs isn't a 90's thing. Our beloved agency busily flew heroin around Asia on the CIA proprietary airline AIR AMERICA during Viet Nam, and refined Hmong and Burmese poppy in Asian soft drink bottling factories, used the U.S. Mafioso MOB to distribute the drugs and banked millions in their own Bank which they later collapsed, stealing the receipts.
Just revealed: the sixties weren't the start of the CIA dealing poppy to ghettos. Colonel Paul Hellwell of the OSS brought heroin from Burma and sold it in U.S. ghettos as far back as the 40's, so Gary Webb is five decades late with his scoop! We are in a 50 year anniversary of something other than just Roswell aliens! The Hellwell Aliens also were gray men, that being the exact shade of their MORALS!
The heroin that the OSS dealt was grown in Burma, and refined in Shanghai. The OSS stumbled upon this import when they were in Asia with the Flying Tigers to stop MAO TSE TUNG from getting into power. Tigers were supposedly heroic civilian volunteers --John Wayne even played one in a movie, but this was just a lacquer job. The Tigers were OSS mercenaries paid for with OSS SECRET funds (at first, OLIGARCH money, later drug receipts). ALLEN DULLES was the brains behind the Tigers and the entire agency then. Dulles ran an inner clique at the OSS, what was to become Directorate of Covert Actions. Dulles was also very tight with the super-rich Eastern billionaire families, (read Dulles' biography and read BITTER FRUIT by S. Kinzer which indicates oligarchs paid for dirty tricks). If you read up on it, you'll discover that Dulles ran secret wars out of the White House (not unlike Ollie North) and had a repressive agenda related to every banana republic that had nationalistic or socialist tendencies, which might get in the way of transnationalist corporative agendas.
The Flying Tigers were in China helping a General named Chiang Kai-Shek (nicknamed 'CASH MY CHECK' as behind our backs, he sold our guns to the Japs). Chiang was used in an attempt to destroy Mao. Of course, it couldn't be done and in 1949 they had to beat a fast retreat to Taiwan. Mao later stopped all poppy-dealing by making death a penalty for it. But before the end, Colonel Paul Hellwell, an Ivy leaguer, rich kid, observed how Chiang sold opium to Chinese addicts to earn revenues for guns and troops. The French saw the same thing going on in Vietnam when it was their colony. Dope and spooks kind of made terrific sense to Dulles. An intelligence service can't pay for underhanded illegal covert ops. Tax payers can't, Congress WON'T. Why should it be left to poor oligarchs to fund the secret fight? You have to think like the OSS. In their heads, the fight was patriotic...it was against nasty nationalists or dirty communists seeking to get nice YANKEE traders out so they could have their OWN industries. Actually nationalists called us Yankee IMPERIALISTS and felt we were out to exploit their banana republics and acted so much like Commies that we felt it was patriotic to rub them out. Why should oligarchs pay for their murder when blacks in U.S. ghettos would empty their pockets for drugs? And boy, did those nickles add up!
Industriously, Colonel Hellwell created SEA SUPPLY, an OSS proprietary company, out of Miami and used it to carry guns across the ocean to China. The opium was grown in Burma, so Hellwell went to Burma and made friends with the royal family. After WWII, Hellwell became the Burmeese Consulate in Miami so up to his chin was he with the Burmeese. In Burma, Hellwell secured all the poppy franchises he needed and sent the basic black poppy tar to CHINA to be processed into China White then brought it back to America on Sea Supply boats, totally immune to snoopy customs inspectors. Then, he shipped guns back to China, a classic 'boats go both ways full' profitable shipping Modus Operandi. Next, he used the CIA's old pals in the American 'mob' to distribute drugs in the ghetto.
Parenthetically, the OSS had befriended Lucky Luciano, at the height of WWII, when they'd sprung him from the pen 'early,' --considering he was a lifer---as the OSS needed his help winning the war. The Mafia-controlled dockworkers on the Atlantic coast were unruly, always striking for more pay, which wasn't very patriotic of them. Also, the OSS needed spies in Sicily for the planned invasion.
In Lucky Luciano they found a kind of all-purpose Swiss Army knife. Charlie Lucky became the Agency Poster boy for Civilian volunteerism. In all his career, Luciano had resisted dealing drugs, so his services had a price. (There's a Chris Reeves movie 'MONISGNEUR' about the toehold U.S. Mafia got in Italy during the war. Rent it. A huge CIA network mushroomed in Italy with Vatican bankers tied to the Mob.)
After the war, the OSS needed the mob to distribute heroin in the ghettos. Luciano, relocated to Italy, said 'use my main man in The Big Apple, my accountant, Meyer Lansky. He'll set you up.' The Agency did, and Meyer gave them his Tampa, Florida lieutenant, Santo Trafficante. When he got old, they used his son Santo Trafficante Jr. So when people say the CIA first used the Mob to assassinate JFK & FIDEL in the early 60's, they're off by a few decades, but who's counting?
Parenthetically, another scumbag friend of the OSS (after '47, when they had so many Nazis on board, they decided to ditch the double S's and called it THE CIA) was the German GESTAPO. The military actually brought dozens of top echelon Gestapo and SS spies out of Germany when these men approached them with a valuable bargaining chip: their spy networks and personal war records could be used to survey and CONTROL the Russians. These Nazis made it to Georgetown and eventually their philosophy and tactics were grafted on to the Allen Dulles --oligarch funded, drug-running SPY MACHINE which began to use racist, gestapo tactics designed to eradicate dissent just as Hitler had done.. They murdered intellectuals, constitutionalists, nationalists, socialists and Utopians with death squad tactics ---which were taught at Fort Benning to foreign officers and began to be used extensively in Latin America by local militaries. Our own soldiers did it too, as the Phoenix Program in Viet Nam, which killed thousands of teachers, civilians, village leaders suspected of sympathizing with Hanoi. Nazi genocide continues to be used up to the present day. Nazi-invented methods are still used for the murdering of intellectuals, university teachers, heroic politicians or snoopy reporters to quiet them and frighten others. Ask Danny Casolero, or Vince Foster.
And where do they get the money for hitmen and killers? The Poppy trail is alive and well with Burmese heroin exported to China for refining, then to Long Beach Crips and Bloods gangs. Addicts, in the ghettos, the Nazis in the CIA, their Cuban-exiles who worked in Latin America, who murdered Che, all of it sprang from the Hellwell Dynasty. Paul Hellwell was the magnificent, sick tap-root of an ancient, tall, poisonous tree. Hellwell (well named when you think of it) devised a way around the U.S. Constitution just when spooks needed millions of dollars in discretionary funds far from Congressional purview. Dope did the job. BURMA did the job. Lansky kept moving the stuff to the barrio in the late 40's and through out the 50's. No one cared as long as only blacks were addicted.
PART II. THE DRUG DEALERS HMONG US
The 50's were the years of CIA covert operations in Latin America, designed to keep our colonial hegemony over our nearest neighbors. The heroin profits rolled in via addicted blacks in the big cities. U.S. police kept busting the French Corsican traffickers, the FRENCH CONNECTION, trying to keep UNCLE SAM's BURMA CIA drug cartel #1.
In the sixties, the Saigon office of the CIA (Ted Shackley of IranContragate fame) ran both the genocidal Phoenix program and infamous AIR AMERICA and still found time to sell heroin to G.I's. (No wonder we lost!) And they found time to run a bank into the ground, too. Cash drug receipts went to their OWN, BOLDLY incorporated Nugan Hand bank, with CIA officials actually ON THE BOARD. Guess who the bagmen were? Colonel Ollie North and Lieutenant Richard Secord showed up as the two madcap PILOTS who ferried bags of cash that poured in both from Asian earned receipts from Nam /G.I. addicts and from the U.S. where Santos Trafficante pere et fils, (Meyer Lansky's lieutenants) were distributors. All these receipts were deposited in Australia where they could lend them out 9 times to the dollar when they weren't being used and see a tidy growth rate.
To keep the Burmeese Generals in check, --by the 60's they were a bunch of very uppity millionaires,-- the CIA expanded to buying poppy from Hmong villagers in Laos which they refined right there in VietNam in Pepsi factories. (You saw it in the Mel Gibson movie, Air America. I know you didn't believe it. It was beyond imagination but it happened.) Parenthetically, today, "Free Burma" activists at American colleges wonder why Pepsi keeps doing biz in such a nasty country. They want a trade blocade and Pepsi won't cooperate. Heck, Pepsi RUNS the drug machine in Asia. During the Nixon years, Pepsi bottling companies were used for refining the tar into powder. Go see AIR AMERICA. It's all there. PEPSI, bold as brass.
A Pepsi Co. chairman was Nixon's most excellent pal ever since days when Nixon was White House Case Officer on Cuba during the Eisenhower administration. Nixon broke champagne bottles at Pepsi plant openings regularly after he and Ike left Washington until he returned to DC as president, with a decade between posts giving him time to do some serious bonding with Pepsi. In that time, Dick also ran around with his Cuban-exile crew who worked for the CIA, doing the worst kinds of mischief: murdering Che Guevara, downing commercial Cuban planes and killing JFK.
Where was Nixon the day JFK got hit? At a Pepsi convention in Dallas. The truth is, Nixon loved spywork as much as he hated the handsome liberal who ran against him and won in the 1960 election, hated him as much as he hated Fidel, which is A LOT as best buddy Cuban exile Bebe Rebozo had taught him all about Cuba. Nixon was on a first name basis with all the Cuban exiles and spooks in that infamous Miami proprietary "ZENITH CORP" on the Miami University grounds. A team of them went after both Fidel and JFK simultaneously: David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and actually, to the very last Cuban, were the Cast of Watergate. Last but not least, Howard Hughes was Dick's Daddy War Bucks or 'Deep Purse.'
Dick Nixon was an integral link in the Hellwell Lineage. When he fell, Reagan, Casey and George Bush carried the torch through an interesting period. After the Viet Nam heroin years, there was a new drug trend: peppier LATIN-produced drugs, cocaine...and new suppliers -- Columbian cartels -- but the same old U.S. barrio black customers as in the late 40s when Hellwell and company began.
The truth about the Cocaine years (which we still are in) has much to do with IranContragate, a three way tie between the CIA/ the Shah and Nicaragua. This White House operation emerged from the White House, it's true, but not from dim-bulb Ronald Reagan but from his industrious V.P. George Bush, a career CIA officer. Bush started the Contras to harass Nicaragua and prevent Danny Ortega's Marxist Leninist socialists from creating a New Cuba. You know, the kind of Republic that sends more teachers, doctors and food growing techs to the third world than God himself? Bush funded the Contras with cocaine receipts.
The star gambit of the period was that triangle between the Shah, the Contras and Bush. The CIA had supported the Shah from way back. They couldn't always give him cash so they did the next best thing. They gave him a money-printing set -- a U.S. intaglio press, silk paper, mint Green #1 ink, and genuine U.S. printing plates. Mini-treasuries were apparently a perk of tyrants who chummed with the Agency. This printing press was known to Bush so next, Bush offered a favor to cocaine king Pablo Escobar (his prime supplier) -- to LAUNDER 8 billion dollars of coke receipts, i.e. make them into legal, spendable, investable money. How? Well, it was imaginative. Bush took 8 billion from Escobar, which was deposited into a Panama bank in Escobar's name. But Bush did a fast one. He took 4 billion in GOOD coke -- dusted hundred dollar bills to Iran and told the Shah he could have real dollars if he'd give him back 8 billion of the Shah's freshly printed, funny money. The Shah had presses going day and night for a few weeks, then Bush brought 8 billion back to Escobar's vault, in their U.S. Panama bank. Then, Bush purloined the other half of Escobar's good money and gave it to a Latin American politician, Nana DeBusia of Guyana where it was laundered in accounts under the signatures of Bush and Casey earmarked for use by the Contras. This was the real Iran Contragate -- the story that never surfaced.
Well, whaddya want? Drugs for guns is a fifty year old American tradition. Life goes better with coke, Pepsi AND heroin too, it would seem. Drugs produced untraceable cash for spies to do the things they love best: run armed mercenaries, kill University professors, anti-colonials, anti-imperialists, anti-fascists, journalists, all of which are the standard Hitlerian Dirty Tricks, along with turning elections with paid staged dramatics. Michael Manley got chased out of a second term in Jamaica, with great bloodshed during election. Manley had anti-colonial smarts that rivaled Karl Marx, a Fidel with no trigger finger, no rough edges, an urbane gentle, English Abe Lincoln type. Mobs were hired. That debacle cost a pretty penny. Same thing getting ALLENDE out in Chile. The people had to be roused, anti-Allende propaganda achieved by buying Chilean journalists. Go see film MISSING with Lemmon/Spacek. From the book The Kidnapping of Charles Horman written by the boy's father, who was played by Lemmon, and see our battleships parked off shore during the week long 'revolution.'
Costa Gavras movies really trace agency history---in "Z", see U.S. installed GENERALS IN GREECE murdering every dissident. A later film with Yves Montand, "State of Siege" about a CIA torture expert, of the DESAPARECIDO period, kidnapped by leftists in Uruguay. WE DID THAT. OUR CIA. Killing activist students, angling for MEN SYMPATHETIC TO THE multi-nationals to WIN ELECTIONS, changing the monkey, they call it all of which costs big bucks.
The Agency has been 'fixing things' that way ever since Italy in the late 40s when Commies first began running for office. It's very costly to swing a vote. But the CIA has its little coffers, filled by its little importing businesses, cheap merchandise from the orient. This is how the CIA built the Burmese generals into what they are today: repressive genoicidal murderers. It built Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin and Marcos, Noriega, and the Shah and Somoza and all those African and Latin despots who sold out, allowed the multi-nationals to come in and enslave peasants, take the land, control industry, and who exploited and plundered their own people, wrecked their countries, stole all the money and banked it in Switzerland and who have caused plagues and famines and civil wars and genocide in their home towns. The usual Suspects. Pals of the Agency, all the way. Conversely, the same CIA murdered all the good presidents like Arbenz of Guatemala, Allende in Chile for daring to speak out. And now the CIA is being forced to look at the monsters they created in Burma. You probably didn't see that Patricia Arquette film about Burma, it showed us what Hell looks like.
Burma, Africa, Latin America, Central America, South East Asia was the same carnage that was in Chile when the Agency tryed to stop Allende. The CIA batter fried that country to make it look so chaotic they had to park battleships offshore, and send people in to stop non-existent riots so they could machine gun Allende to death and say he committed suicide. Stupid locals to this day think Allende ruined their country. It was Henry Kissinger who told Nixon, 'we will make their economy scream.' He used American trojan horse agencies like A.I.D. to put the forceps to the economy to make the Chileans think their ruler was a Commie rat. Since the 40's, Henry and his bosses and their hireling intelligence agents have made the entire planet scream to prevent ONE THING happening, the HOLD of the world bankers and transnationals they own, the Rothschilds, Morgans, Lehmans, Warburgs in Europe, the ROCKEFELLERS in NYC and their FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, and the rest of the 13 families ---to prevent that oligarch hold loosening on all the trade, banks and gold on the planet.
And it isn't over. Let us move to current events. CLINTON just opened Long Beach Harbor to the RED ARMY, the processor and distributor for Burma-grown poppy. Why did John Huang raise all that Chinese money for Bill? Clinton and the CIA have allowed RED CHINA to bring heroin in in exchange for it. This was not Bill's idea, of course. Clinton has been the CIA's go-fer-& facilitator for two decades. Remember MENA airport in Arkansas? That's where all the IranContragate coke got into the U.S. You've read COMPROMISE by TERRY REED? Mort Sahl has been heard telling people to read it. You find it at better bookshops. It tells how Clinton was paid for his long years of CIA work.
LONG BEACH HARBOR did not want these Chinese in there, fought it. The Prez got them in. Now, COSCO (People's Liberation Army's shipping company) containers come in by the thousand FULL of the most sophisticated guns in the world, AK- 47's, GIVEN to CRIPS AND BLOODS who are the distributors of the heroin to American schoolkids.
Groups that want to get the Generals out of Burma have to step on the snake's head, locate that long, thin supply line from Burma to the USA. You people who are on the Net reading this, do your research. It's all in books. Then, join the FREE BURMA coalitions at local colleges or the Black Outrage groups. Next, stir up a media ruckus. Find the authors, get them on your favorite, local radio shows where the NAACP can hear them. Keep the Gary Webb story CIA DEALING DRUGS TO GHETTOS alive. Contact author researchers Fred Landis, Donald Freed, and ex CIA guys, Victor Marchetti, Ralph McGehee, Phillip Agee, John Stockwell, and ex-DEA agent Michael Levine. And Danny Sheehan, Father Bill Davis. Their websites and lecture agents are easy to find with a search engine like <alta vista.digital.com> Just appoint yourself a booking agent, and get them on radio shows you enjoy, preferably nationally syndicated. You can even look for British authors as it's all done by telephone interview these days. Black Outrage groups, FREE BURMA groups are taken very seriously but they don't do their homework. They have to research, write and footnote, publish and broacast. They have to use this information in their demonstrations, mounted as street theatre. CIA spooks with big needles, Burmese Generals dancing with American Generals.
The Hellwell dynasty IS A LINEAGE of spies, funding guns for dirty trix, fixed elections, tumbling the monkeys in third world republics, and all of it paid for by US barrios. THIS ARMY crawls on its stomach because it's a SNAKE! It should be sued out of business by MOTHERS of addicts who have been jailed, wives of fathers jailed, and last of all, all the crippled crack babies born to addict mothers. VICTIMS SHOULD seek pro-bono lawyers and SUE these spymasters and the oligarchs who run them---as INDIVIDUALS ---for multi-million dollar damages under federal racketeering laws. Judges often cannot be bought. Law suits might be profitable for such citizen activist groups.
The opportunity for ending the CIA's reign of terror may fall ironically and finally to the blacks who were spoon fed drugs for so long. Gary Webb's getting the Black Caucus and NAACP mad as Hell was part miracle, part good move. Burma activists and black activist groups should make a rainbow coalition and get in touch with Webb ( gwebb@sjmercury.com ). More than any other journalist, Webb can help expose this genocidal phalange of the CIA.
There is a sophisticated Brit researcher David Guyatt, E-Mail is davidg7@ukonline.co.uk, whose article, "The PEGASUS File" in Nexus New Times, (April/May issue and June/July issue, or see http://www.wild-life.com/TatumPages/Nexus.html ) supplies the exact facts on the George Bush cocaine years. If enough people cite these facts and summon the witnesses and sue CIA spooks and ex-presidents as individuals, we may not only make the government's role in dealing drugs in the ghettos part of public record but we may prove that they have been trashing the constitution and implementing oligarch agendas outside of our country and breaking the law, the Boland Amendment, which says we cannot interfere abroad.
We may also end up proving their part in killing JFK. The oil men that researcher/author Donald FREED thinks murdered JFK were Rockefeller oil pals in Texas. Kissinger, stuck like a PIN in Nixon's administration as Secretary of State, was a one-man think-tank for the Rocks. The Rockefellers are the main stockholders of all U.S. oil companies and controlled oil in the USA from its turn-of-the-century discovery. Kennedy had reduced the oil depletion allowance, and was about to end the war that the Rocks created. Rocks were after the biggest oil field on the planet in the South China sea. The Rocks are not lilly white. They lured the Saudis into depositing all petrodollars from 30 years of drilling into western banks, new, little offshore' banking SUBSIDIARIES which couldn't be linked to them. They lent the petrodollars to third world countries, who couldn't pay it back, so they on paper 'lost it', then they bankrupted/collapsed all the banks so the Saudis lost all their money. Jed Bush got to collapse one, Keating another. Rocks blatently stole the petrodollars of the poor towel heads!
It's odd but anywhere the Hellwell Heritage is, Rockefellers turn up. Winthrop Rockefeller was governor of Arkansas when Clinton needed signatures to become a Rhodes Scholar. Clinton was from camp Rockefeller from day one. And why not? Rothchilds and Rocks are all there is on this planet. They HAVE all the marbles. The other 5 billion of us can go starve.
Is that a dumb greedy game or what? Who's going to buy their Lincoln towncars or even a bottle of aspirin at current costs? Today, no matter what kind of Ollie North right winger you are, there is no justification for dealing drugs to fight Commies. There simply IS no more cold war. Ruskis and Red Chinese now appear to play ball with us. (Many have their doubts, knowing that a well trained Leninist does not turn coat on that knowledge that the transnationals are blood-suckers and there is no real trckledown no matter what the glad rap.) But, seeing that Commies seem to want to get into mutual funds, what has the CIA got left to fight or control? But this agency has control on the brain, control the target country to lie down and accept the pronged teeth in the neck. The big trading powers espouse 'free trade' but in truth can't let anything be free or organic. Everything is by control, implemented by conspiracy.
Don't kid yourself. The CIA FUND raisers are raising money for something these days. The drugs are flowing through the ghetto faster than ever, and rival dealers are being arrested all the time so the Agency is up to something, implementing some hidden agenda with the money.
But suddenly, out of nowhere, we can celebrate. Journalist Gary Webb, the Free Burma groups and the NAACP NIMBYs are right on the JUGULAR of the BIG GUY like a chupacabra. The big guy knows it, even if he doesn't let you KNOW that he knows and even if you don't know that he knows that you're right. He's sweating that you're going to find eveything out and come after him. Will you? What do you mean? If you read this far, YOU JUST DID!
So go and tell your friends what you know. Download this article and print it out. (Highlight text, Click on 'File' then 'SAVE AS', stick it in a directory where it won't get erased, not in CACHE! Later, go find it, edit and print its mere 12 pages out.)
And don't worry. Truth will out. Certainly some seriously bad karma awaits this slimeball group and it is coming. Y2k may toss the oligarchs and entire banking system, their henchman IRS and all the governments on their collective behinds. We probably should welcome the Coming Computer Chaos. What an irony. TWO DIGITS instead of FOUR, a tiny little cobol programmer slip, in their precious computers, and their whole system goes bang on the stroke of midnight, 1999. Do a search on 'y2k' or Millenium Bug on a search engine.
PREPARING America's middle class and ghetto denizens for the cash free millenium is the trick. Two years 5 months and 25 days to teach the LANDLESS how to grow food on a vacant lot. As for facts in this article? The Tom Davis Book company ( http://www.cruzio.com/~tdbooks/ ) offers a free catalogue where books on the CIA's drug dealing are described. TOM DAVIS BOOKS, PO Box 1107w, Aptos, CA 95001-1107.
It is only our ignorance which keeps the CIA snake crawling through the banana republics causing poverty, urban unrest, famine, civil wars and babies dying and through the ghettos and cities of America, causing the same. Now, we are no longer ignorant! So by reading this, you just saved a baby!

 

[roots69]

America’s Drug War Is Ruining the World

A half-century of Washington’s harsh drug prohibition policies has brought misery to millions across the globe.

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  Afghan farmers harvest raw opium in a poppy field. (AP Photo / Allauddin Khan)
  
  
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  We live in a time of change, when people are questioning old assumptions and seeking new directions. In the ongoing debate over health care, social justice, and border security, there is, however, one overlooked issue that should be at the top of everyone’s agenda, from democratic socialists to libertarian Republicans: America’s longest war. No, not the one in Afghanistan. I mean the drug war.
  
  For more than a century, the US has worked through the UN (and its predecessor, the League of Nations) to build a harsh global drug-prohibition regime—grounded in draconian laws, enforced by pervasive policing, and punished with mass incarceration. For the past half-century, the United States has also waged its own “war on drugs” that has complicated its foreign policy, compromised its electoral democracy, and contributed to social inequality. Perhaps the time has finally come to assess the damage that drug war has caused and consider alternatives.
  
  Even though I first made my mark with a 1972 book that the CIA tried to suppress on the heroin trade in Southeast Asia, it’s taken me most of my life to grasp all the complex ways this country’s drug war, from Afghanistan to Colombia, the Mexican border to inner-city Chicago, has shaped American society. Last summer, a French director doing a documentary interviewed me for seven hours about the history of illicit narcotics. As we moved from the 17th century to the present and from Asia to America, I found myself trying to answer the same relentless question: What had 50 years of observation actually drilled into me, beyond some random facts, about the character of the illicit traffic in drugs?
  
  At the broadest level, the past half-century turns out to have taught me that drugs aren’t just drugs, drug dealers aren’t just “pushers,” and drug users aren’t just “junkies” (that is, outcasts of no consequence). Illicit drugs are major global commodities that continue to influence US politics, both national and international. And our drug wars create profitable covert netherworlds in which those very drugs flourish and become even more profitable. Indeed, the UN once estimated that the transnational traffic, which supplied drugs to 4.2 percent of the world’s adult population, was a $400 billion industry, the equivalent of 8 percent of global trade.
  
  In ways that few seem to understand, illicit drugs have had a profound influence on modern America, shaping our international politics, national elections, and domestic social relations. Yet a feeling that illicit drugs belong to a marginalized demimonde has made US drug policy the sole property of law enforcement and not health care, education, or urban development.
  
  During this process of reflection, I’ve returned to three conversations I had back in 1971 when I was a 26-year-old graduate student researching that first book of mine, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. In the course of an 18-month odyssey around the globe, I met three men, deeply involved in the drug wars, whose words I was then too young to fully absorb.
  
  The first was Lucien Conein, a legendary CIA operative whose covert career ranged from parachuting into North Vietnam in 1945 to train communist guerrillas with Ho Chi Minh to organizing the CIA coup that killed South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. In the course of our interview at his modest home near CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, he laid out just how the agency’s operatives, like so many Corsican gangsters, practiced the “clandestine arts” of conducting complex operations beyond the bounds of civil society and how such arts were, in fact, the heart and soul of both covert operations and the drug trade.
  
  
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  Second came Colonel Roger Trinquier, whose life in a French drug netherworld extended from commanding paratroopers in the opium-growing highlands of Vietnam during the First Indochina War of the early 1950s to serving as deputy to General Jacques Massu in his campaign of murder and torture in the Battle of Algiers in 1957. During an interview in his elegant Paris apartment, Trinquier explained how he helped fund his own paratroop operations through Indochina’s illicit opium traffic. Emerging from that interview, I felt almost overwhelmed by the aura of Nietzschean omnipotence that Trinquier had clearly gained from his many years in this shadowy realm of drugs and death.
  
  My last mentor on the subject of drugs was Tom Tripodi, a covert operative who trained Cuban exiles in Florida for the CIA’s 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and then, in the late 1970s, penetrated mafia networks in Sicily for the US Drug Enforcement Administration. In 1971, he appeared at my front door in New Haven, Connecticut, identified himself as a senior agent for the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Narcotics, and insisted that the bureau was worried about my future book. Rather tentatively, I showed him just a few draft pages of my manuscript for The Politics of Heroin, and he promptly offered to help me make it as accurate as possible. During later visits, I would hand him chapters, and he would sit in a rocking chair, shirtsleeves rolled up, revolver in his shoulder holster, scribbling corrections and telling remarkable stories about the drug trade—like the time his bureau found that French intelligence was protecting the Corsican syndicates smuggling heroin into New York City. Far more important, though, through him I grasped how ad hoc alliances between criminal traffickers and the CIA regularly helped both the agency and the drug trade prosper.
  
  Looking back, I can now see how those veteran operatives were describing to me a clandestine political domain, a covert netherworld in which government agents, military men, and drug traders were freed from the shackles of civil society and empowered to form secret armies, overthrow governments, and even, perhaps, kill a foreign president.
  
  At its core, this netherworld was then and is today an invisible political realm inhabited by criminal actors and practitioners of Conein’s “clandestine arts.” Offering some sense of the scale of this social milieu, in 1997 the United Nations reported that transnational crime syndicates had 3.3 million members worldwide who trafficked in drugs, arms, humans, and endangered species. Meanwhile, during the Cold War, all the major powers—Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States—deployed expanded clandestine services worldwide, making covert operations a central facet of geopolitical power. The end of the Cold War has in no way changed this reality.
  
  opium production from 250 tons in 1979 to 4,600 tons by 1999. This nearly 20-fold increase transformed Afghanistan from a diverse agricultural economy into a country with the world’s first opium monocrop—that is, a land thoroughly dependent on illicit drugs for exports, employment, and taxes. Demonstrating that dependence, in 2000, when the Taliban banned opiumin a bid for diplomatic recognition and cut production to just 185 tons, the rural economy imploded and their regime collapsed as the first US bombs fell in October 2001.
  
  To say the least, the US invasion and occupation of 2001–02 failed to effectively deal with the drug situation in the country. As a start, to capture the Taliban-controlled capital, Kabul, the CIA mobilized Northern Alliance leaders who had long dominated the drug trade in northeastern Afghanistan, as well as Pashtun warlords active as drug smugglers in the southeastern part of the country. In the process, they created a postwar politics ideal for the expansion of opium cultivation.
  
  Even though output surged in the first three years of the US occupation, Washington remained uninterested, resisting anything that might weaken military operations against Taliban guerrillas. Testifying to this policy’s failure, the UN’s Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007 reported that the harvest that year reached a record 8,200 tons, generating 53 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and accounting for 93 percent of the world’s illicit narcotics supply.
  
  When a single commodity represents over half of a nation’s economy, everyone—officials, rebels, merchants, and traffickers—is directly or indirectly implicated. In 2016, The New York Times reported that both Taliban rebels and provincial officials opposing them were locked in a struggle for control of the lucrative drug traffic in Helmand province, the source of nearly half the country’s opium. A year later, the harvest reached a record 9,000 tons, which, according to the US command, provided 60 percent of the Taliban’s funding. Desperate to cut that funding, American commanders dispatched F-22 fighters and B-52 bombers to destroy the insurgency’s heroin laboratories in Helmand—doing inconsequential damage to a handful of crude labs and revealing the impotence of even the most powerful weaponry against the social power of the covert drug netherworld.
  
  With unchecked opium production sustaining Taliban resistance for the past 17 years and capable of doing so for another 17, the only US exit strategy now seems to be restoring those rebels to power in a coalition government—a policy tantamount to conceding defeat in its longest military intervention and least successful drug war.
  
  HIGH PRIESTS OF PROHIBITION
  For the past half-century, the ever-failing US drug war has found a compliant handmaiden at the UN, whose dubious role when it comes to drug policy stands in stark contrast to its positive work on issues like climate change and peacekeeping.
  
  In 1997, the director of UN drug control, Pino Arlacchi, proclaimed a 10-year program to eradicateillicit opium and coca cultivation from the face of the planet, starting in Afghanistan. In 2007, his successor, Antonio Maria Costa, glossing over that failure, announced in the UN’s World Drug Report that “drug control is working and the world drug problem is being contained.” While UN leaders were making such grandiloquent promises about drug prohibition, the world’s illicit-opium production was, in fact, rising almost ninefold, from just 1,200 tons in 1971, the year the US drug war officially started, to a record 10,500 tons by 2017.
  
  This gap between triumphal rhetoric and dismal reality cries out for an explanation. That ninefold increase in illicit opium supply is the result of a market dynamic I’ve termed the stimulus of prohibition. At the most basic level, prohibition is the necessary condition for the global narcotics trade, creating both local drug lords and transnational syndicates that control this vast commerce. Prohibition, of course, guarantees the existence and well-being of such criminal syndicates, which, to evade interdiction, constantly shift and build up their smuggling routes, hierarchies, and mechanisms, encouraging a worldwide proliferation of trafficking and consumption while ensuring that the drug netherworld will only grow.
  
  In seeking to prohibit addictive drugs, US and UN drug warriors act as if mobilizing for forceful repression could reduce drug trafficking, thanks to the imagined inelasticity of or limits on the global narcotics supply. In practice, however, when suppression reduces the opium supply from one area (for example, Burma or Thailand), the global price just rises, spurring traders and growers to sell off stocks, old growers to plant more, and other areas (say, Colombia) to enter production. In addition, such repression usually only increases consumption. If drug seizures, for instance, raise the street price, then addicted consumers will maintain their habit by cutting other expenses (food, rent) or raising their income by dealing drugs to new users and so expanding the trade.
  
  Instead of reducing the traffic, the drug war has actually helped stimulate that ninefold increase in global opium production and a parallel surge in US heroin users, from just 68,000 in 1970 to 886,000 in 2017.
  
  By attacking supply and failing to treat demand, the UN-US drug war has been pursuing a “solution” to drugs that defies the immutable law of supply and demand. As a result, Washington’s drug war has, in the past 50 years, gone from defeat to debacle.
  
  THE DOMESTIC INFLUENCE OF ILLICIT DRUGS
  That drug war has, however, incredible staying power. It has persisted despite decades of failure because of an underlying partisan logic. In 1973, while President Richard Nixon was still fighting his drug war in Turkey and Thailand, New York’s Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, enacted the notorious Rockefeller drug laws. Those included mandatory penalties of 15 years to life for the possession of just four ounces of narcotics.
  
  As the police swept inner-city streets for low-level offenders, prison sentences in New York State for drug crimes surged from only 470 in 1970 to a peak of 8,500 in 1999, with African Americans accounting for 90 percent of those incarcerated. By then, New York’s state prisons held a previously unimaginable 73,000 people. During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, dusted off Rockefeller’s anti-drug campaign for intensified domestic enforcement, calling for a “national crusade” against drugs and winning draconian federal penalties for personal drug use and small-scale dealing.
  
  For the previous 50 years, the US prison population remained remarkably stable at just 110 prisoners per 100,000 people. The new drug war, however, almost doubled those prisoners, from 370,000 in 1981 to 713,000 in 1989. Driven by Reagan-era drug laws and parallel state legislation, prison inmates soared to 2.3 million by 2008, raising the country’s incarceration rate to an extraordinary 751 prisoners per 100,000 population. And 51 percent of those in federal penitentiaries were there for drug offenses.
  
  Such mass incarceration has led as well to significant disenfranchisement, starting a trend that would, by 2012, deny the vote to nearly 6 million people, including 8 percent of all African-American voting-age adults, a constituency that had gone overwhelmingly Democratic for more than half a century. In addition, this carceral regime concentrated its prison populations, including guards and other prison workers, in conservative rural districts of the country, creating something akin to latter-day rotten boroughs for the Republican Party.
  
  Take New York’s 21st Congressional District, which covers the Adirondacks and the state’s heavily forested north. It’s home to 14 state prisons—including some 16,000 inmates, 5,000 employees, and their 8,000 family members—making them collectively the district’s largest employer and a defining political presence. Add the 13,000 or so troops in nearby Fort Drum and you have a reliably conservative bloc of 26,000 voters (and 16,000 nonvoters), or the largest political force in a district where only 240,000 residents vote. Not surprisingly, the incumbent Republican congresswoman survived the 2018 blue wave to win handily with 56 percent of the vote. (So never say that the drug war has had no effect.)
  
  So successful were Reagan Republicans in framing this partisan drug policy as a moral imperative that two of his liberal Democratic successors, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, avoided any serious reform of it. Instead of systemic change, Obama offered clemency to about 1,700 convicts, an insignificant handful among the hundreds of thousands still locked up for nonviolent drug offenses.
  
  While partisan paralysis at the federal level has blocked change, the states, forced to bear the rising costs of incarceration, have slowly begun reducing prison populations. In a November 2018 ballot measure, for instance, Florida—where the 2000 presidential election was decided by just 537 ballots—voted to restore electoral rights to the state’s 1.4 million felons, including 400,000 African Americans. No sooner did that plebiscite pass, however, than Florida’s Republican legislators desperately tried to claw backthat defeat by requiring that those felons pay fines and court costs before returning to the electoral rolls.
  
  Not only does the drug war influence US politics in all sorts of negative ways, but it has also reshaped American society—and not for the better. The surprising role of illicit-drug distribution in ordering life inside some of the country’s major cities has been illuminated in a careful study by a University of Chicago researcher who gained access to the financial records of a drug gang inside Chicago’s impoverished Southside housing projects. He found that in 2005 the Black Gangster Disciple Nation, known as GD, had about 120 bosses who employed 5,300 young men, largely as street dealers, and had an additional 20,000 members aspiring to those jobs. While the boss of each of the gang’s hundred crews earned about $100,000 annually, his three officers made just $7.00 an hour, and his 50 street dealers only $3.30 an hour, with other members serving as unpaid apprentices, vying for entry-level slots when street dealers were killed, a fate which one in four regularly suffered.
  
  So what does all this mean? In an impoverished inner city with very limited job opportunities, this drug gang provided high-mortality employment on a par with the minimum wage (then $5.15 an hour) that their peers in more affluent neighborhoods earned from much safer work at McDonald’s. Moreover, with some 25,000 members in Southside Chicago, GD was providing social order for young men in the volatile 16-to-30 age cohort—minimizing random violence, reducing petty crime, and helping Chicago maintain its gloss as a world-class business center. Until there is sufficient education and employment in the nation’s cities, the illicit drug market will continue to fill the void with work that carries a high cost in violence, addiction, imprisonment, and more generally blighted lives.
  
  THE END OF DRUG PROHIBITION
  As the global prohibition effort enters its second century, we are witnessing two countervailing trends. The very idea of a prohibition regime has reached a crescendo of dead-end violence not just in Afghanistan but recently in Southeast Asia, demonstrating the failure of the drug war’s repression strategy. In 2003, Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched a campaign against methamphetamine abuse that prompted his police to carry out 2,275 extrajudicial killings in just three months. Carrying that coercive logic to its ultimate conclusion, on his first day as Philippine president in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte ordered an attack on drug trafficking that has since yielded 1.3 million surrenders by dealers and users, 86,000 arrests, and some 20,000 bodies dumped on city streets across the country. Yet drug use remains deeply rooted in the slums of Bangkok and Manila.
  
  On the other side of history’s ledger, the harm-reduction movement led by medical practitioners and community activists worldwide is slowly working to unravel the global prohibition regime. With a 1996 ballot measure, California voters, for instance, started a trend by legalizing medical-marijuana sales. By 2018, Oklahoma became the 30th state to legalize medical cannabis. After initiatives by Colorado and Washington in 2012, eight more states have decriminalized the recreational use of cannabis, long the most widespread of illicit drugs.
  
  Hit by a surge of heroin abuse during the 1980s, Portugal’s government first reacted with repression that, as everywhere else on the planet, did little to stanch rising drug abuse, crime, and infection. Gradually, a network of medical professionals across the country adopted harm-reduction measures that would provide a striking record of proven success. After two decades of this ad hoc trial, in 2001, Portugal decriminalized the possession of all illegal drugs, replacing incarceration with counseling and producing a sustained drop in HIV and hepatitis infections.
  
  Projecting this experience into the future, it seems likely that harm-reduction measures will be adopted progressively at local and national levels around the globe as various endless and unsuccessful wars on drugs are curtailed or abandoned. Perhaps someday a caucus of Republican legislators in some oak-paneled Washington conference room and a choir of UN bureaucrats in their glass-towered Vienna headquarters will remain the only apostles preaching the discredited gospel of drug prohibition.
  

 

[roots69]

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 DeathsEvery Year


This article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the best article I have ever seen written in the published literature documenting the tragedy of the traditional medical paradigm.
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This information is a follow-up of the Institute of Medicine report which hit the papers in December of last year, but the data was hard to reference as it was not in peer-reviewed journal. Now it is published in JAMA which is the most widely circulated medical periodical in the world.

The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she describes how the US health care system may contribute to poor health.

ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:

• 12,000 -- unnecessary surgery 8
• 7,000 -- medication errors in hospitals 9
• 20,000 -- other errors in hospitals 10
• 80,000 -- infections in hospitals 10
• 106,000 -- non-error, negative effects of drugs 2

These total to 250,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!
What does the word iatrogenic mean? This term is defined as induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment.

Dr. Starfield offers several warnings in interpreting these numbers:

• First, most of the data are derived from studies in hospitalized patients.
• Second, these estimates are for deaths only and do not include negative effects that are associated with disability or discomfort.
• Third, the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report.1

If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebrovascular disease).

Another analysis concluded that between 4% and 18% of consecutive patients experience negative effects in outpatient settings,with:

• 116 million extra physician visits
• 77 million extra prescriptions
• 17 million emergency department visits
• 8 million hospitalizations
• 3 million long-term admissions
• 199,000 additional deaths
• $77 billion in extra costs

The high cost of the health care system is considered to be a deficit, but seems to be tolerated under the assumption that better health results from more expensive care.

However, evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care.

An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among them die each year as a result of medical errors.2

This might be tolerated if it resulted in better health, but does it? Of 13 countries in a recent comparison,3,4 the United States ranks an average of 12th (second from the bottom) for 16 available health indicators. More specifically, the ranking of the US on several indicators was:

• 13th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages
• 13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall 14
• 11th for postneonatal mortality
• 13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes)
• 11th for life expectancy at 1 year for females, 12th for males
• 10th for life expectancy at 15 years for females, 12th for males
• 10th for life expectancy at 40 years for females, 9th for males
• 7th for life expectancy at 65 years for females, 7th for males
• 3rd for life expectancy at 80 years for females, 3rd for males
• 10th for age-adjusted mortality

The poor performance of the US was recently confirmed by a World Health Organization study, which used different data and ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries.

There is a perception that the American public "behaves badly" by smoking, drinking, and perpetrating violence." However the data does not support this assertion.

• The proportion of females who smoke ranges from 14% in Japan to 41% in Denmark; in the United States, it is 24% (fifth best). For males, the range is from 26% in Sweden to 61% in Japan; it is 28% in the United States (third best).
• The US ranks fifth best for alcoholic beverage consumption.
• The US has relatively low consumption of animal fats (fifth lowest in men aged 55-64 years in 20 industrialized countries) and the third lowest mean cholesterol concentrations among men aged 50 to 70 years among 13 industrialized countries.

These estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recent Institutes of Medicine report, and if the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000.

Even at the lower estimate of 225,000 deaths per year, this constitutes the third leading cause of death in the US, following heart disease and cancer.

Lack of technology is certainly not a contributing factor to the US's low ranking.

• Among 29 countries, the United States is second only to Japan in the availability of magnetic resonance imaging units and computed tomography scanners per million population. 17
• Japan, however, ranks highest on health, whereas the US ranks among the lowest.
• It is possible that the high use of technology in Japan is limited to diagnostic technology not matched by high rates of treatment, whereas in the US, high use of diagnostic technology may be linked to more treatment.
• Supporting this possibility are data showing that the number of employees per bed (full-time equivalents) in the United States is highest among the countries ranked, whereas they are very low in Japan, far lower than can be accounted for by the common practice of having family members rather than hospital staff provide the amenities of hospital care.

Journal American Medical Association 2000 Jul 26;284(4):483-5

DR .MERCOLA'S COMMENT:

Folks, this is what they call a "Landmark Article". Only several ones like this are published every year. One of the major reasons it is so huge as that it is published in JAMA which is the largest and one of the most respected medical journals in the entire world.

I did find it most curious that the best wire service in the world, Reuter's, did not pick up this article. I have no idea why they let it slip by.

I would encourage you to bookmark this article and review it several times so you can use the statistics to counter the arguments of your friends and relatives who are so enthralled with the traditional medical paradigm. These statistics prove very clearly that the system is just not working. It is broken and is in desperate need of repair.

I was previously fond of saying that drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in this country. However, this article makes it quite clear that the more powerful number is that doctors are the third leading cause of death in this country killing nearly a quarter million people a year. The only more common causes are cancer and heart disease.

This statistic is likely to be seriously underestimated as much of the coding only describes the cause of organ failure and does not address iatrogenic causes at all.

Japan seems to have benefited from recognizing that technology is wonderful, but just because you diagnose something with it, one should not be committed to undergoing treatment in the traditional paradigm. Their health statistics reflect this aspect of their philosophy as much of their treatment is not treatment at all, but loving care rendered in the home.

Care, not treatment, is the answer. Drugs, surgery and hospitals are rarely the answer to chronic health problems. Facilitating the God-given healing capacity that all of us have is the key. Improving the diet, exercise, and lifestyle are basic.

Effective interventions for the underlying emotional and spiritual wounding behind most chronic illness are also important clues to maximizing health and reducing disease.

 

[chitownsfinest]

You just gave Colin a stroke

 

[roots69]

You just gave Colin a stroke

I know... I tried to make the post short, but that wouldve been a disservice to our people.. So, I gotta post the whole article or report..

 

[roots69]

This is a interesting article.. Shows how are these issues are linked and how they feed off eachother..




HIP-HOP PIPELINES: THE GLARING CONNECTION BETWEEN COMMERCIAL RAP AND THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX


“We may be 5 percent of the world’s pop but, we 25 percent of the world’s locked up.” -MC Invincible

It’s common belief that the music industry has fully manipulated mainstream hip-hop to glorify violence, drug use, misogyny and materialism. Save for a few select artists in this realm, the music industry’s initiative is quite clear: suppress the music with merit, ethics and substance; support the music that brings in money. This so-called rule of thumb regarding the music industry is nothing new. The book Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, which was published in 1990, discusses how businesses place profit over ethics, with a stern example focusing on most of the country’s radio station rotations, and how records are bought and paid for by promoters, not the fans. Another saddening example Hit Men points out is that songs become hits primarily because an individual or corporation paid for it to happen, not because of consumer preference. That aside, unless you were unaware before, now you can see that the gangly fingers of the music business have more influence in music than we can ever imagine. But that’s what I would like you to do real quickly: imagine. Imagine something horrifying. Imagine something bleak. Imagine something where the music industry, major label stockholders and private prison owners all profit, while suppressing and incarcerating a population of people in the process. Imagine for me, not the school-to-prison-pipeline (although this devastating catastrophe is another thing we as a nation need to terminate), but rather some sort of commercial rap-to-prison pipeline. Imagination it seems, may not be needed, because the connection between mainstream rap labels and the private prison industrial complex seems to be coming full-circle.


There was, a few years back, an anonymous letter sent out by a former employee in the music industry that detailed haunting connections between the industry and the private prison complex. In the letter, the author details a meeting he was invited to by record executives and how they explained these ties. Because these executives had stocks in private prisons, and needed them to stay occupied to see a profit, they enlisted their employees (among them, the letter’s author) to use the music label as a way to generate heads for jail cells. To make this happen, the author points out that the executives told their staff to sign and promote popular gangsta rap that reinforced violence and drugs, which would not only push some of their own artists into incarceration, but also a massive population of individuals who were pushed to a life of crime due to the popularity of this music

An excerpt from the letter:

“At this point, my industry colleague who had first opened the meeting took the floor again and answered our questions. He told us that since our employers had become silent investors in this prison business, it was now in their interest to make sure that these prisons remained filled.”

Since the letter itself is anonymous, and no names or places are detailed, there is no definitive proof that this piece is a legitimate source. But what out there makes us think otherwise?

Speaking broadly, there is no denying the private prison industrial complex and its influence in America. There’s also no denying the individuals behind this operation, and the tactics they use to keep these prisons filled for profit. Beyond all of this, there surely is no denying the government-backed programs tied to the private prison industrial complex as a whole: the school-to-prison-pipeline in America; the crack epidemic and War on Drugs, and more specifically, the story of “Freeway” Rick Ross, the C.I.A., and cocaine in South-Central L.A. Just recently, Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder cut Detroit college funding and put that towards prisons, and Michigan as a state throws more funding towards prisons than it does towards schools.

So even if this anonymous letter about the music industry’s involvement in the private prison business is a hoax, there are still definite ties between the two businesses.

For one, let’s look no further than General Electric, one of the most profitable corporations in this country. As one of the biggest weapons manufacturers in the world, GE also owns stock in major private prisons. Furthermore, they’re also owners of Interscope Records, which is the parent-label of Death Row Records, the head label for the gangsta rap boom. The relation here isn’t shocking as much as it is disturbing: here we have a company that owns record labels that glorify crime and violence, while at the same time manufacturing weapons and investing heavily in private prisons for profit.

A recent example of this connection deals with Interscope’s signing of Southside Chicago rapper Chief Keef. As one of the forerunners in Chicago hip-hop’s drill and trap scene, Keef is one of the leaders in a genre of music that plays as anthems to gunfights. In these Southside and Westside neighborhoods–neighborhoods that are purposely being underfunded and ignored by politicians–drill and trap are the popular wave. The music is tough, gritty and harsh, with nihilistic lyrics that tote violence, murder and gang activity. This is music, that in itself, is a look into communities and neighborhoods that have been shut off and exiled from the rest of Chicago, having to deal with constant misfortune (a recent example being the closing of 49 Chicago public schools mostly on the south and west sides). Dozens of individuals die under the excruciating pulses of this music every week, and city crime has been influenced by its lyrical threads. Chief Keef himself has been arrested for heroin manufacturing, aggravated assault with a firearm and aggravated unlawful use of a firearm. To add, Keef at one time also mocked the shooting death of fellow Englewood rapper Joseph “Lil’ Jo Jo” Coleman, which led to him being a suspect in the case. Even with all of this, despite all of the social irresponsibility, ties to crime and gang activity, Interscope signed Chief Keef to a three album, six million dollar deal.




In relation, Keef’s cousin Mario Hess (aka Big Glo) had signed to Interscope Records earlier this year. Two weeks after signing however, Hess was shot and killed in Englewood on April 9th.

Fellow Chicago rapper Rhymefest said it perfectly in an interview with SOHH where he explains Interscope’s profit over ethics stance:

“Right or wrong has to be qualified by right or wrong. If you’re right, in a city where 506 people died in one year which is really double the amount of Afghanistan and Iraq put together, for murder, is it right to put out music that encourages that behavior? A major label is going to give a million dollars to an artist to encourage that behavior with no sense of social responsibility… It’s like, these guys weren’t even designed to sell records. When people give these guys money, they know they’re not gonna sell no records. What they’re selling, and we all seem to get it lost, in the media and the fans, they’re selling ideas. They’re selling ideas to be replicated to send your ass to prison. Prison is a $55 billion a year industry. Prison makes more money than rap music makes, every year. Private prisons are being traded on the stock market. If they’re going to advertise, how are they going to do it? How are they going to put more people in prison and advertise? It’s through the record labels that they own. Look at Interscope Records. Interscope Records is owned by General Electric. General Electric has a huge stock and share in private prisons. It’s so basic for people to say I’m dissing Chief Keef. I ain’t dissing Chief Keef, I’m dissing [Interscope CEO] Jimmy Iovine. Think about it. The East Coast, West Coast beef, who was behind it all? Interscope Records. Death Row. Now, violence in Chicago is the new hot shit. Who gave the biggest deal? Interscope Records. At what point are we going to say, “Damn. We’re letting this motherfucker mess up my hood.”


Chief Keef via http://www.xxlmag.com

Outside of actual artists being signed to labels like Interscope, this system has affected the lives of all those influenced by the music being promoted. I mentioned before that drill and trap music has been a heavy influence on Southside and Westside activity in Chicago, and how a lot of individuals are being led to a life of crime and violence not only due to the system and the circumstances surrounding them (although this is the major reason), but also because of the mainstream rap being promoted through radio and commercial outlets. If you have Chief Keef toting guns and violence as an Interscope artist with a six-figure contract, don’t you think young kids and teenagers listening to Keef’s music will try to do the same for that payout? In a community with very little opportunity, what makes you think these kids will do any different? The notion remains that the majority of the time, when crime and violence occurs in the inner-city, it’s not the people, but their environment, their circumstances and the system itself that predisposes them to hopelessness and failure. Part of that system is mainstream rap and the music industry, its influence and the message it’s sending to our youth, its ties with the private prison industrial complex and its money-making trap.

It’s scary to think that certain individuals and executives have gone to such extreme and inhumane tactics to build upon their wealth and greed, but is it even surprising anymore? With everything that we as citizens have discovered about our nation, can we really be all that shocked? The facts and statistics are all out there, and the only thing that people need to do is put the pieces together in order to think of solutions to end this madness.

I would like to clarify that the subject of this article isn’t an attack on hip-hop as a whole. If anything, this is my reiteration that there is true hip-hop out there, but it won’t be found on the airwaves or mainstream level. There are MCs with depth, meaning, political and social messages and creativity; dancers with breaking skills that set a crowd in a frenzy; visual artists with murals that not only paint vivid displays of beauty, but also inherent messages of resistance, fight, collaboration, community and love; DJs that spin endless vinyl to get a party going; and hip-hop programs that teach youth that dreams can be achieved through art, music, film, dance, critical thinking, continual education and working together.

What I am trying to get across however is that the prison-for-profit epidemic in America has continually risen and will keep on doing so until we as a community are fully aware of the situation and have a plan to exile the people pulling these strings. Like the War on Drugs, or the government sliding Rick Ross crack, or the aforementioned horror of the school-to-prison-pipeline, it should be apparent in your mind that the mainstream rap connection to private prisons is fully functioning. In this mess, we as a nation are seeing mainstream rap music’s popularity influence a population of people into a life of crime, which eventually leads to incarceration, while the operators behind this cyclical system profit on all ends. As an audience, it would be one thing to blame the artists themselves, and how they produce music that glorifies violence, crime, drugs and misogyny. It’s another thing altogether however, to consider the fact that industry executives are profiting from the promotion of this music and the mass incarceration that this perpetuates.

 

[roots69]

...... Wake up!! Lets get back at it!! The illusion never sleeps!!

 

[roots69]

The CIA: 70 Years of Organized Crime

Photo by Tom Thai | CC BY 2.0


Lars Schall: 70 years ago, on September 18, 1947, the National SecurityAct created the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA. Douglas, you refer to the CIA as “the organized crime branch of the U.S. government.” Why so?

Douglas Valentine: Everything the CIA does is illegal, which is why the government provides it with an impenetrable cloak of secrecy. While mythographers in the information industry portray America as a bastion of peace and democracy, CIA officers manage criminal organizations around the world. For example, the CIA hired one of America’s premier drug trafficker in the 1950s and 1960s, Santo Trafficante, to murder Fidel Castro. In exchange, the CIA allowed Trafficante to import tons of narcotics into America. The CIA sets up proprietary arms, shipping, and banking companies to facilitate the criminal drug trafficking organizations that do its dirty work. Mafia money gets mixed up in offshore banks with CIA money, until the two are indistinguishable.

Drug trafficking is just one example.

LS: What is most important to understand about the CIA?

DV: Its organizational history, which, if studied closely enough, reveals how the CIA manages to maintain its secrecy. This is the essential contradiction at the heart of America’s problems: if we were a democracy and if we truly enjoyed free speech, we would be able to study and speak about the CIA. We would confront our institutionalized racism and sadism. But we can’t, and so our history remains unknown, which in turn means we have no idea who we are, as individuals or as a nation. We imagine ourselves to be things we are not. Our leaders know bits and pieces of the truth, but they cease being leaders once they begin to talk about the truly evil things the CIA is doing.

LS: A term of interest related to the CIA is “plausible deniability”. Please explain.

DV: The CIA doesn’t do anything it can’t deny. Tom Donohue, a retired senior CIA officer, told me about this.

Let me tell you a bit about my source. In 1984, former CIA Director William Colby agreed to help me write my book, The Phoenix Program. Colby introduced me to Donohue in 1985. Donohue had managed the CIA’s “covert action” branch in Vietnam from 1964-1966, and many of the programs he developed were incorporated in Phoenix. Because Colby had vouched for me, Donohue was very forthcoming and explained a lot about how the CIA works.

Donohue was a typical first-generation CIA officer. He’d studied Comparative Religion at Columbia and understood symbolic transformation. He was a product and practitioner of Cook County politics who joined the CIA after World War Two when he perceived the Cold War as “a growth industry.” He had been the CIA’s station chief in the Philippines at the end of his career and, when I spoke to him, he was in business with a former Filipino Defense Minister. He was putting his contacts to good use, which is par for the course. It’s how corruption works for senior bureaucrats.

Donohue said the CIA doesn’t do anything unless it meets two criteria. The first criterion is “intelligence potential.” The program must benefit the CIA; maybe it tells them how to overthrow a government, or how to blackmail an official, or where a report is hidden, or how to get an agent across a border. The term “intelligence potential” means it has some use for the CIA. The second criterion is that it can be denied. If they can’t find a way to structure the program or operation so they can deny it, they won’t do it. Plausible denial can be as simple as providing an officer or asset with military cover. Then the CIA can say, “The army did it.”

Plausible denial is all about language. During Senate hearings into CIA assassination plots against Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders, the CIA’s erstwhile deputy director of operations Richard Bissell defined „plausible denial“ as “the use of circumlocution and euphemism in discussions where precise definitions would expose covert actions and bring them to an end.”

Everything the CIA does is deniable. It’s part of its Congressional mandate. Congress doesn’t want to be held accountable for the criminal things the CIA does. The only time something the CIA does become public knowledge – other than the rare accident or whistleblower – is when Congress or the President think it’s helpful for psychological warfare reasons to let the American people know the CIA is doing it. Torture is a good example. After 9/11, and up until and through the invasion of Iraq, the American people wanted revenge. They wanted to see Muslim blood flowing, so the Bush administration let it leak that they were torturing evil doers. They played it cute and called it “enhanced interrogation,” but everyone understood symbolically. Circumlocution and euphemism. Plausible denial.

LS: Do the people at the CIA know that they’re part of “the organized crime branch of the U.S. government”? In the past, you’ve suggested related to the Phoenix program, for example: “Because the CIA compartmentalizes itself, I ended up knowing more about the program than any individual in the CIA.”

DV: Yes, they do. I talk at length about this in my book The CIA as Organized Crime. Most people have no idea what cops really do. They think cops give you a speeding ticket. They don’t see the cops associating with professional criminals and making money in the process. They believe that when a guy puts on a uniform, he or she becomes virtuous. But people who go into law enforcement do so for the trill of wielding power over other people, and in this sense, they relate more to the crooks they associate with than the citizens they’re supposed to protect and serve. They’re looking to bully someone and they’re corrupt. That’s law enforcement.

The CIA is populated with the same kind of people, but without any of the constraints. The CIA officer who created the Phoenix program, Nelson Brickham, told me this about his colleagues: “I have described the intelligence service as a socially acceptable way of expressing criminal tendencies. A guy who has strong criminal tendencies but is too much of a coward to be one, would wind up in a place like the CIA if he had the education.” Brickham described CIA officers as wannabe mercenaries “who found a socially acceptable way of doing these things and, I might add, getting very well paid for it.”

It’s well known that when the CIA selects agents or people to run militias or secret police units in foreign nations, it subjects its candidates to rigorous psychological screening. John Marks in The Search for the Manchurian Candidate told how the CIA sent its top psychologist, John Winne, to Seoul to “select the initial cadre” for the Korean CIA. “I set up an office with two translators,” Winne told Marks, “and used a Korean version of the Wechsler.” CIA shrinks gave the personality assessment test to two dozen military and police officers, “then wrote up a half-page report on each, listing their strengths and weaknesses. Winne wanted to know about each candidate’s ability to follow orders, creativity, lack of personality disorders, motivation – why he wanted out of his current job. It was mostly for the money, especially with the civilians.”

In this way, the CIA recruits secret police forces as assets in every country where it operates, including occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. In Latin America, Marks wrote, “The CIA…found the assessment process most useful for showing how to train the anti-terrorist section. According to results, these men were shown to have very dependent psychologies and needed strong direction.”

That “direction” came from the CIA. Marks quoted one assessor as saying, “Anytime the Company spent money for training a foreigner, the object was that he would ultimately serve our purposes.” CIA officers “were not content simply to work closely with these foreign intelligence agencies; they insisted on penetrating them, and the Personality Assessment System provided a useful aid.”

What’s less well known is that the CIA’s executive management staff is far more concerned with selecting the right candidates to serve as CIA officers than it is about selecting agents overseas. The CIA dedicates a huge portion of its budget figuring how to select, control, and manage its own work force. It begins with instilling blind obedience. Most CIA officers consider themselves to be soldiers. The CIA is set up as a military organization with a sacred chain of command that cannot be violated. Somebody tells you what to do, and you salute and do it. Or you’re out.

Other systems of control, such as “motivational indoctrination programs”, make CIA officers think of themselves as special. Such systems have been perfected and put in place over the past seven decades to shape the beliefs and responses of CIA officers. In exchange for signing away their legal rights, they benefit from reward systems – most importantly, CIA officers are immune from prosecution for their crimes. They consider themselves the Protected Few and, if they wholeheartedly embrace the culture of dominance and exploitation, they can look to cushy jobs in the private sector when they retire.

The CIA’s executive management staff compartments the various divisions and branches so that individual CIA officers can remain detached. Highly indoctrinated, they blindly obey on a “need to know” basis. This institutionalized system of self-imposed ignorance and self-deceit sustains, in their warped minds, the illusion of American righteousness, upon which their motivation to commit all manner of crimes in the name of national security depends. That and the fact that most are sociopaths.

It’s a self-regulating system too. As FBN Agent Martin Pera explained, “If you’re successful because you can lie, cheat, and steal, those things become tools you use in the bureaucracy.”

LS: Can you tell us please what’s behind a term you like to use, the “Universal Brotherhood of Officers”?

DV: The ruling class in any state views the people it rules as lesser beings to be manipulated, coerced, and exploited. The rulers institute all manner of systems – which function as protection rackets – to assure their class prerogatives. The military is the real power in any state, and the military in every state has a chain of command in which blind obedience to superiors is sacred and inviolable. Officers don’t fraternize with enlisted men because they will at some point send them to their deaths. There is an officer corps in every military, as well as in every bureaucracy and every ruling class in every state, which has more in common with military officers, top bureaucrats, and rulers in other states, than it does with the expendable, exploitable riff raff in its own state.

Cops are members of the Universal Brotherhood of Officers. They exist above the law. CIA officers exist near the pinnacle of the Brotherhood. Blessed with fake identities and bodyguards, they fly around in private planes, live in villas, and kill with state-of-the-art technology. They tell army generals what to do. They direct Congressional committees. They assassinate heads of state and murder innocent children with impunity and with indifference. Everyone to them, but their bosses, is expendable.

LS: In your opinion, it is the “National Security Establishment’s deepest, darkest secret” that it is involved in the global drug trade. How did this involvement come about?

DV: There are two facets to the CIA’s management and control of international drug trafficking, on behalf of the corporate interests that rule America. It’s important to note that the US government’s involvement in drug trafficking began before the CIA existed, as a means of controlling states, as well as the political and social movements within them, including America. Direct involvement started in the 1920s when the US helped Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime in China support itself through the narcotics trade.

During World War II, the CIA’ predecessor, the OSS, provided opium to Kachin guerrillas fighting the Japanese. The OSS and the US military also forged ties with the American criminal underworld during the Second World War, and would thereafter secretly provide protection to American drug traffickers whom it hired to do its dirty work at home and abroad.

After the Nationalists were chased out of China, the CIA established these drug traffickers in Taiwan and Burma. By the 1960’s, the CIA was running the drug trade throughout Southeast Asia, and expanding its control worldwide, especially into South America, but also throughout Europe. The CIA supported its drug trafficking allies in Laos and Vietnam. Air Force General Nguyen Cao Ky, while serving in 1965 as head of South Vietnam’s national security directorate, sold the CIA the right to organize private militias and build secret interrogation centers in every province, in exchange for control over a lucrative narcotic smuggling franchise. Through his strongman, General Loan, Ky and his clique financed both their political apparatus and their security forces through opium profits. All with CIA assistance.

The risk of having its ties to drug traffickers in Southeast Asia exposed, is what marks the beginning of the second facet – the CIA’s infiltration and commandeering of the various government agencies involved in drug law enforcement. Senior American officials arranged for the old Bureau of Narcotics to be dissolved and recreated in 1968 within the Justice Department as the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The CIA immediately began infiltrating the highest levels of the BNDD for the purpose of protecting its drug trafficking allies around the world, especially in Southeast Asia. The CIA’s Counter-Intelligence Branch, under James Angleton, had been in liaison with these drug agencies since 1962, but in 1971 the function was passed to the CIA’s operations division. In 1972, CIA officer Seymour Bolten was appointed as the CIA director’s Special Assistant for the Coordination of Narcotics. Bolten became an advisor to William Colby and later DCI George H.W. Bush. By 1973, with the establishment of the DEA, the CIA was in total control of all foreign drug law enforcement operations and was able to protect traffickers in the US as well. In 1990 the CIA created its own counter-narcotics center, despite being prohibited from exercising any domestic law enforcement function.

LS: Is the war on drugs also a war on blacks? Let me give you some framework for this question, because John Ehrlichman, a former top aide to Richard Nixon, supposedly admitted that: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” (1) And I can quote from H. R. Haldeman’s diaries in this respect, of course. In the early stages of his presidency, more specifically on April 28, 1969, Nixon outlined his basic strategy to his chief of staff: “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.” (2) So, is the war on drugs that started under Nixon also a war on blacks? And if so, what does this tell us about the United States?

DV: America is a former slave state and a blatantly racist society, so yes, the war on drugs, which is managed by white supremacists, was and is directed against blacks and other despised minorities as a way of keeping them disenfranchised. The old Bureau of Narcotics was blatantly racist: not until 1968 were black FBN agents allowed to become group supervisors (Grade 13) and manage white agents.

I interviewed former FBN Agent William Davis for my book about the FBN, The Strength of the Wolf. Davis articulated the predicament of black agents. After graduating from Rutgers University in 1950, Davis, while visiting New York City, heard singer Kate Smith praising FBN Agent Bill Jackson on a radio show. “She described him as a black lawyer who was doing a fine job as a federal narcotic agent,” Davis recalled, “and that was my inspiration. I applied to the Narcotics Bureau and was hired right away, but I soon found out there was an unwritten rule that Black agents could not hold positions of respect: they could not become group leaders, or manage or give direction to whites. The few black agents we had at any one time,” he said bitterly, “maybe eight in the whole country, had indignities heaped upon us.”

Davis told how Wade McCree, while working as an FBN agent in the 1930s, created a patent medicine. But McCree made the mistake of writing to Eleanor Roosevelt to complain that prosecutors in the South were calling black agents “*******.” As a result, the FBN’s legal staff charge McCree with using FBN facilities to create his patent medicine. McCree was fired with the intended ripple effect: his dismissal sent a clear message that complaints from black agents would not be tolerated.

In an interview for The Strength of the Wolf, Clarence Giarusso, a veteran New Orleans narcotic agent and its chief of police in the 1970s, explained to me the racial situation from local law enforcement’s perspective. “We made cases in Black neighborhoods because it was easy,” he said. “We didn’t need a search warrant, it allowed us to meet our quotas, and it was ongoing. If we found dope on a Black man we could put him in jail for a few days and no one cared. He has no money for a lawyer, and the courts are ready to convict; there’s no expectation on the jury’s part that we even have to make a case. So rather than go cold turkey he becomes an informant, which means we can make more cases in his neighborhood, which is all we’re interested in. We don’t care about Carlos Marcello or the Mafia. City cops have no interest in who brings the dope in. That’s the job of federal agents.”

Anyone who thinks it is any different nowadays is living in a fantasy world. Where I live, in Longmeadow, MA, the cops are the first line of defense against the blacks and Puerto Ricans in the nearby city of Springfield. About 15 years ago, there was a Mafia murder in Springfield’s Little Italy section. At the time, blacks and Puerto Ricans ere moving into the neighborhood and there was a lot of racial tension. The local TV station interviewed me about it, and I said the Al Bruno, the murdered Mafia boss, was probably an FBI informant. The next day, people I knew wouldn’t talk to me. Comments were made. Someone told me Bruno’s son went to the same health club as me. In a city like Springfield and its suburban neighborhoods, everyone is related to or friends with someone in the Mafia.

A few years before Bruno’s murder, I had befriended the janitor at the health club I belong to. By chance, the janitor was the son of a Springfield narcotics detective. The janitor and I shot pool and drank beers in local bars. One day he told me a secret his father had told him. His father told him that the Springfield cops let the Mafia bosses bring narcotics into Springfield and in exchange, the hoods named their black and Puerto Ricans customers. That way, like Giarusso said above, the cops keep making cases and the minority communities have a harder time buying houses and encroaching on the established whites in their neighborhoods. This happens everywhere in the US every day.

LS: Is it ironic to you that the whole drug trade wouldn’t exist as it does today if the drugs were not illegal in the first place?

DV: The outlawing of narcotic drugs turned the issue of addiction from a matter of “public health” into a law enforcement issue, and thus a pretext for expanding police forces and reorganizing the criminal justice and social welfare systems to prevent despised minorities from making political and social advances. The health care industry was placed in the hands of businessmen seeking profits at the expense of despised minorities, the poor and working classes. Private businesses established civic institutions to sanctify this repressive policy. Public educators developed curriculums that doubled as political indoctrination promoting the Business Party’s racist line. Bureaucracies were established to promote the expansion of business interests abroad, while suppressing political and social resistance to the medical, pharmaceutical, drug manufacturing and law enforcement industries that benefited from it.

It takes a library full of books to explain the economic foundations of the war on drugs, and the reasons for America’s laissez faire regulation of the industries that profit from it. Briefly stated, they profit from it just like the Mafia profits from it. Suffice it to say that Wall Street investors in the drug industries have used the government to unleash and transform their economic power into political and global military might; never forget, America is not an opium or cocaine producing nation, and narcotic drugs are a strategic resource, upon which all of the above industries – including the military – depend. Controlling the world’s drug supply, both legal and illegal, is a matter of national security. Read my books for examples of how this has played out over the past 70 years

LS: Is the CIA part of the opium problem today in Afghanistan?

DV: In Afghanistan, CIA officers manage the drug trade from their hammocks in the shade. Opium production has soared since they created the Karzai government in 2001-2 and established intelligence networks into the Afghan resistance through “friendly civilians” in the employ of the opium trafficking warlord, Gul Agha Sherzai. The American public is largely unaware that the Taliban laid down its arms after the American invasion, and that the Afghan people took up arms only after the CIA installed Sherzai in Kabul. In league with the Karzai brothers, Sherzai supplied the CIA with a network of informants that targeted their business rivals, not the Taliban. As Anand Gopal revealed in No Good Men Among the Living, as a result of Sherzai’s friendly tips, the CIA methodically tortured and killed Afghanistan’s most revered leaders in a series of Phoenix-style raids that radicalized the Afghan people. The CIA started the war as a pretext for a prolonged occupation and colonization of Afghanistan.

In return for his services, Sherzai received the contract to build the first US military base in Afghanistan, along with a major drug franchise. The CIA arranged for its Afghan drug warlords to be exempted from DEA lists. All this is documented in Gopal’s book. The CIA officers in charge watch in amusement as addiction rates soar among young Afghan people whose parents have been killed and whose minds have been damaged by 15 + years of US aggression. They don’t care that the drugs reach America’s inner cities, for all the economic, social, and political reasons cited above.

The drug trade also has “intelligence potential”. CIA officers have an accommodation with the protected Afghan warlords who convert opium into heroin and sell it to the Russian mob. It’s no different than cops working with Mafia drug dealers in America; it’s an accommodation with an enemy that ensures the political security of the ruling class. The accommodation is based on the fact that crime cannot be eradicated, it can only be managed.

The CIA is authorized to negotiate with the enemy, but only if the channels are secure and deniable. It happened during the Iran Contra scandal, when President Reagan won the love of the American people by promising never to negotiate with terrorists, while his two-faced administration secretly sent CIA officers to Tehran to sell missiles to the Iranians and use the money to buy guns for the drug dealing Contras. In Afghanistan, the accommodation within the drug underworld provides the CIA with a secure channel to the Taliban leadership, with whom they negotiate on simple matters like prisoner exchanges. The criminal-espionage underworld in Afghanistan provides the intellectual space for any eventual reconciliation. There are always preliminary negotiations for a ceasefire, and in every modern American conflict that’s the CIA’s job. Trump, however, is going to prolong the occupation indefinitely.

The fact that 600 subordinate DEA agents are in Afghanistan makes the whole thing plausibly deniable.

LS: Did the U.S. employ characteristics of the Phoenix program as a replay in Afghanistan? I ask especially related to the beginning of “Operation Enduring Freedom” when the Taliban leaders initially laid down their weapons.

DV: Afghanistan is a case study of the standard two-tiered Phoenix program developed in South Vietnam. It’s guerrilla warfare targeting “high value” cadre, both for recruitment and assassination. That’s the top tier. It’s also psychological warfare against the civilian population – letting everyone know they will be kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured, extorted and/or killed if they can be said to support the resistance. That’s the second tier – terrorizing the civilians into supporting the US puppet government.

The US military resisted being involved in this repugnant form of warfare (modeled on SS Einsatzgruppen-style special forces and Gestapo-style secret police) through the early part of the Vietnam War, but got hooked into providing soldiers to flesh out Phoenix. That’s when the CIA started infiltrating the military’s junior officer corps. CIA officers Donald Gregg (featured by the revisionist war monger Ken Burns in his Vietnam War series) and Rudy Enders (both of whom I interviewed for my book The Phoenix Program), exported Phoenix to El Salvador and Central America in 1980, at the same time the CIA and military were joining forces to create Delta Force and the Joint Special Operations Command to combat “terrorism” worldwide using the Phoenix model. There are no more conventional wars, so the military, for economic and political reasons, has become, under the junior officer corps recruited by the CIA years ago, the de-facto police force for the American empire, operating out of 700 + bases around the world.

LS: In what form and fashion is the Phoenix program alive today in America’s homeland?

DV: Karl Marx explained over 150 years ago how and why capitalists treat workers the same, whether at home or abroad. As capitalism evolves and centralizes its power, as the climate degenerates, as the gap between rich and poor widens, and as resources become scarcer, America police forces adopt Phoenix-style “anti-terror” strategies and tactics to use against the civilian population. The government has enacted “administrative detention” laws, which are the legal basis for Phoenix-style operations, so that civilians can be arrested on suspicion of being a threat to national security. Phoenix was a bureaucratic method of coordinating agencies involved in intelligence gathering with those conducting “anti-terror” operations, and the Department of Homeland Security has established “fusion centers” based on this model around the nation. Informant nets and psychological operations against the American people have also proliferated since 9-11. This is all explained in detail in my book, The CIA as Organized Crime.

LS: How important is mainstream media for the public perception of the CIA?

DV: It’s the most critical feature. Guy Debord said that secrecy dominates the world, foremost as secret of domination. The media prevents you from knowing how you’re being dominated, by keeping the CIA’s secrets. The media and the CIA are same thing.

What FOX and MSNBC have in common is that, in a free-wheeling capitalist society, news is a commodity. News outlets target demographic audience to sell a product. It’s all fake news, in so far as each media outlet skews its presentation of the news to satisfy its customers. But when it comes to the CIA, it’s not just fake, it’s poison. It subverts democratic institutions.

Any domestic Phoenix-style organization or operation depends on double-speak and deniability, as well as official secrecy and media self-censorship. The CIA’s overarching need for total control of information requires media complicity. This was one of the great lesson defeat in Vietnam taught our leaders. The highly indoctrinated and well rewarded managers who run the government and media will never again allow the public to see the carnage they inflict upon foreign civilians. Americans never will see the mutilated Iraqi, Afghani, Libyan, and Syrian children killed by marauding US mercenary forces and cluster bombs.

On the other hand, falsified portrayals of CIA kidnappings, torture, and assassinations are glorified on TV and in movies. Telling the proper story is the key. Thanks to media complicity, Phoenix has already become the template for providing internal political security for America’s leaders.

LS: Is the CIA an enemy of the American people?

DV: Yes. It’s an instrument of the rich political elite, it does their dirty business.

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

You have to be a real fuckin spiritual

Retard to not see the big karma payback

In all this..

They purposely waged war on the god race

And look at them now...

Dying at a rate so fast it nullified the cac birth rate in twenty six states..

We don't even have to lift a finger to win wars

We just have to focus our energy and refuse to let demons control our emotions


Wr already won...

Adderall anyone racist and hateful???

 

[roots69]

Legalize It All
How to win the war on drugs
How did the United States entangle itself in a policy of drug prohibition that has yielded so much misery and so few good results? Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco’s anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman’s boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first “war on drugs” and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. I’d tracked Ehrlichman, who had been Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, to an engineering firm in Atlanta, where he was working on minority recruitment. I barely recognized him. He was much heavier than he’d been at the time of the Watergate scandal two decades earlier, and he wore a mountain-man beard that extended to the middle of his chest.


A patient drinks a dose of methadone at the Taipas rehabilitation clinic in Lisbon, Portugal © Rafael Marchante/Reuters

At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

I must have looked shocked. Ehrlichman just shrugged. Then he looked at his watch, handed me a signed copy of his steamy spy novel, The Company, and led me to the door.

Nixon’s invention of the war on drugs as a political tool was cynical, but every president since — Democrat and Republican alike — has found it equally useful for one reason or another. Meanwhile, the growing cost of the drug war is now impossible to ignore: billions of dollars wasted, bloodshed in Latin America and on the streets of our own cities, and millions of lives destroyed by draconian punishment that doesn’t end at the prison gate; one of every eight black men has been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction.

As long ago as 1949, H. L. Mencken identified in Americans “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” an astute articulation of our weirdly Puritan need to criminalize people’s inclination to adjust how they feel. The desire for altered states of consciousness creates a market, and in suppressing that market we have created a class of genuine bad guys — pushers, gangbangers, smugglers, killers. Addiction is a hideous condition, but it’s rare. Most of what we hate and fear about drugs — the violence, the overdoses, the criminality — derives from prohibition, not drugs. And there will be no victory in this war either; even the Drug Enforcement Administration concedes that the drugs it fights are becoming cheaper and more easily available.

Now, for the first time, we have an opportunity to change course. Experiments in alternatives to harsh prohibition are already under way both in this country and abroad. Twenty-three states, as well as the District of Columbia, allow medical marijuana, and four — Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska — along with D.C., have legalized pot altogether. Several more states, including Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada, will likely vote in November whether to follow suit. Portugal has decriminalized not only marijuana but cocaine and heroin, as well as all other drugs. In Vermont, heroin addicts can avoid jail by committing to state-funded treatment. Canada began a pilot program in Vancouver in 2014 to allow doctors to prescribe pharmaceutical-quality heroin to addicts, Switzerland has a similar program, and the Home Affairs Committee of Britain’s House of Commons has recommended that the United Kingdom do likewise. Last July, Chile began a legislative process to legalize both medicinal and recreational marijuana use and allow households to grow as many as six plants. After telling the BBC in December that “if you fight a war for forty years and don’t win, you have to sit down and think about other things to do that might be more effective,” Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos legalized medical marijuana by decree. In November, the Mexican Supreme Court elevated the debate to a new plane by ruling that the prohibition of marijuana consumption violated the Mexican Constitution by interfering with “the personal sphere,” the “right to dignity,” and the right to “personal autonomy.” The Supreme Court of Brazil is considering a similar argument.

Depending on how the issue is framed, legalization of all drugs can appeal to conservatives, who are instinctively suspicious of bloated budgets, excess government authority, and intrusions on individual liberty, as well as to liberals, who are horrified at police overreach, the brutalization of Latin America, and the criminalization of entire generations of black men. It will take some courage to move the conversation beyond marijuana to ending all drug prohibitions, but it will take less, I suspect, than most politicians believe. It’s already politically permissible to criticize mandatory minimums, mass marijuana-possession arrests, police militarization, and other excesses of the drug war; even former attorney general Eric Holder and Michael Botticelli, the new drug czar — a recovering alcoholic — do so. Few in public life appear eager to defend the status quo.

This month, the General Assembly of the United Nations will be gathering for its first drug conference since 1998. The motto of the 1998 meeting was “A Drug-Free World — We Can Do It!” With all due respect, U.N., how’d that work out for you? Today the U.N. confronts a world in which those who have suffered the most have lost faith in the old strong-arm ideology. That the tide was beginning to turn was evident at the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, when Latin American leaders for the first time openly discussed — much to the public discomfort of President Obama — whether legalizing and regulating drugs should be the hemisphere’s new approach.

When the General Assembly convenes, it also will have to contend with the startling fact that four states and the capital city of the world’s most zealous drug enforcer have fully legalized marijuana. “We’re confronted now with the fact that the U.S. cannot enforce domestically what it promotes elsewhere,” a member of the U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board, which monitors international compliance with the conference’s directives, told me. Shortly before Oregon, Alaska, and the District of Columbia added themselves to the legal-marijuana list, the State Department’s chief drug-control official, William Brownfield, abruptly reversed his stance. Whereas before he had said that the “drug control conventions cannot be changed,” in 2014 he admitted that things had changed: “How could I, a representative of the government of the United States of America, be intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with legalization of marijuana if two of the fifty states of the United States of America have chosen to walk down that road?” Throughout the drug-reform community, jaws dropped.

As the once-unimaginable step of ending the war on drugs shimmers into view, it’s time to shift the conversation from why to how. To realize benefits from ending drug prohibition will take more than simply declaring that drugs are legal. The risks are tremendous. Deaths from heroin overdose in the United States rose 500 percent from 2001 to 2014, a staggering increase, and deaths from prescription drugs — which are already legal and regulated — shot up almost 300 percent, proving that where opioids are concerned, we seem to be inept not only when we prohibit but also when we regulate. A sharp increase in drug dependence or overdoses that followed the legalization of drugs would be a public-health disaster, and it could very well knock the world back into the same counterproductive prohibitionist mind-set from which we appear finally to be emerging. To minimize harm and maximize order, we’ll have to design better systems than we have now for licensing, standardizing, inspecting, distributing, and taxing dangerous drugs. A million choices will arise, and we probably won’t make any good decisions on the first try. Some things will get better; some things will get worse. But we do have experience on which to draw — from the end of Prohibition, in the 1930s, and from our recent history. Ending drug prohibition is a matter of imagination and management, two things on which Americans justifiably pride themselves. We can do this.



Let’s start with a question that is too seldom asked: What exactly is our drug problem? It isn’t simply drug use. Lots of Americans drink, but relatively few become alcoholics. It’s hard to imagine people enjoying a little heroin now and then, or a hit of methamphetamine, without going off the deep end, but they do it all the time. The government’s own data, from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, shatters the myth of “instantly addictive” drugs. Although about half of all Americans older than twelve have tried an illegal drug, only 20 percent of those have used one in the past month. In the majority of those monthly-use cases, the drug was cannabis. Only tiny percentages of people who have sampled one of the Big Four — heroin, cocaine, crack, and methamphetamine — have used that drug in the past month. (For heroin, the number is 8 percent; for cocaine, 4 percent; for crack, 3 percent; for meth, 4 percent.) It isn’t even clear that using a drug once a month amounts to having a drug problem. The portion of lifetime alcohol drinkers who become alcoholics is about 8 percent, and we don’t think of someone who drinks alcohol monthly as an alcoholic.

In other words, our real drug problem — debilitating addiction — is relatively small. One longtime drug-policy researcher, Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland, puts the number of people addicted to hard drugs at fewer than 4 million, out of a population of 319 million. Addiction is a chronic illness during which relapses or flare-ups can occur, as with diabetes, gout, and high blood pressure. And drug dependence can be as hard on friends and family as it is on the afflicted. But dealing with addiction shouldn’t require spending $40 billion a year on enforcement, incarcerating half a million, and quashing the civil liberties of everybody, whether drug user or not.

It’s possible, of course, that one reason we have a relatively small number of drug addicts is precisely that the most addictive drugs are illegal. If cocaine were to be legalized, says Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at New York University who has been a critic of the war on drugs since the 1970s, there’s no evidence indicating that the number of cocaine abusers would be less than the number of alcoholics, or about 17.6 million. Moreover, legalizing cocaine might worsen both cocaine addiction and alcoholism, Kleiman adds. “A limit to alcoholism is you fall asleep. Cocaine fixes that. And a limit to cocaine addiction is you can’t sleep. Alcohol fixes that.”

Kleiman’s prediction of a big increase in post-legalization addiction rates seems intuitively correct. Common sense and decency dictate that any plan for legalizing drugs ought to make provisions for a rise in dependence. Millions of addicts already go untreated in the United States. Although treatment is a bargain — the government estimates that for every dollar spent on drug treatment, seven are saved — treatment and prevention get only 45 percent of the federal drug budget while enforcement and interdiction get 55 percent, and that’s not including the stupendous cost of incarcerating drug offenders. Treatment may become more available now that the Affordable Care Act requires many insurers to pay for mental-health services, including drug addiction, at parity with physical illnesses. Training effective treatment providers is time-consuming and expensive, but the billions freed up by the end of enforcement and mass incarceration could be used to help address that need.

It is also not a certainty that legalizing drugs would result in the huge spike in addiction that Kleiman predicts. In fact, some data argue against it. The Netherlands effectively decriminalized marijuana use and possession in 1976, and Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, and New York State all followed suit. In none of these jurisdictions did marijuana then become a significant health or public-order problem. But marijuana’s easy; it isn’t physically addictive. So consider Portugal, which in 2001 took the radical step of decriminalizing not only pot but cocaine, heroin, and the rest of the drug spectrum. Decriminalization in Portugal means that the drugs remain technically prohibited — selling them is a major crime — but the purchase, use, and possession of up to ten days’ supply are administrative offenses. No other country has gone so far, and the results have been astounding. The expected wave of drug tourists never materialized. Teenage use went up shortly before and after decriminalization, but then it settled down, perhaps as the novelty wore off. (Teenagers — particularly eighth graders — are considered harbingers of future societal drug use.)

The lifetime prevalence of adult drug use in Portugal rose slightly, but problem drug use — that is, habitual use of hard drugs — declined after Portugal decriminalized, from 7.6 to 6.8 per 1,000 people. Compare that with nearby Italy, which didn’t decriminalize, where the rates rose from 6.0 to 8.6 per 1,000 people over the same time span. Because addicts can now legally obtain sterile syringes in Portugal, decriminalization seems to have cut radically the number of addicts infected with H.I.V., from 907 in 2000 to 267 in 2008, while cases of full-blown AIDS among addicts fell from 506 to 108 during the same period.

The new Portuguese law has also had a striking effect on the size of the country’s prison population. The number of inmates serving time for drug offenses fell by more than half, and today they make up only 21 percent of those incarcerated. A similar reduction in the United States would free 260,000 people — the equivalent of letting the entire population of Buffalo out of jail.

When applying the lessons of Portugal to the United States, it’s important to note that the Portuguese didn’t just throw open access to dangerous drugs without planning for people who couldn’t handle them. Portugal poured money into drug treatment, expanding the number of addicts served by more than 50 percent. It established Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction, each of which is composed of three people — often a doctor, a social worker, and an attorney — who are authorized to refer a drug user to treatment and in some cases impose a relatively small fine. Nor did Portugal’s decriminalization experiment happen in a vacuum. The country has been increasing its spending on social services since the 1970s, and even instituted a guaranteed minimum income in the late 1990s. The rapid expansion of the welfare state may have contributed to Portugal’s well-publicized economic troubles, but it can probably also share credit for the drop in problem drug use.

Decriminalization has been a success in Portugal. Nobody there argues seriously for abandoning the policy, and being identified with the law is good politics: during his successful 2009 reelection campaign, former prime minister José Sócrates boasted of his role in establishing it.



So why doesn’t the United States decriminalize? It’s an attractive idea: Lay off the innocent users and pitiable addicts; keep going after the really bad guys who import and push the drugs. But decriminalization doesn’t do enough. As successful as Portugal’s experiment has been, the Lisbon government still has no control over drug purity or dosage, and it doesn’t make a dime in tax revenue from the sale of drugs. Organized crime still controls Portugal’s supply and distribution, and drug-related violence, corruption, and gunned-up law enforcement continue. For these reasons, the effect of drug decriminalization on crime in Portugal is murky. Some crimes strongly associated with drug use increased after decriminalization — street robberies went up by 66 percent, auto theft by 15 percent — but others dropped. (Thefts from homes fell by 8 percent, thefts from businesses by 10 percent.) A study by the Portuguese police found an increase in opportunistic crimes and a reduction in premeditated and violent crimes, but it could not conclude that the changes were due to the decriminalization of drugs. Heavy-handed enforcement also requires favoring scare tactics over honest inquiry, experimentation, and data gathering; and scare tactics are no way to deal with substances as dangerous as heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine.

Portuguese-style decriminalization also wouldn’t work in the United States because Portugal is a small country with national laws and a national police force, whereas the United States is a patchwork of jurisdictions — thousands of overlapping law-enforcement agencies and prosecutors at the local, county, state, and federal levels. Philadelphia’s city council, for example, voted to decriminalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana in June 2014, and within a month state police had arrested 140 people for exactly that offense. “State law trumps city ordinances,” Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey told the Philadelphia Inquirer. And while marijuana may be legal in four states and D.C., under federal law it is still as illegal as heroin or LSD — and even more tightly controlled than cocaine or pharmaceutical opioids. The Obama Administration has decided, for the moment, not to interfere with the states that have legalized marijuana, but times change and so do administrations. We cannot begin to enjoy the benefits of managing drugs as a matter of health and safety, instead of as a matter of law enforcement, until the drugs are legalized at every level of American jurisprudence, just as alcohol was re-legalized when the United States repealed the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933.

One of the evils that led to Prohibition in the first place was the system of “tied houses” — saloons owned by alcohol producers that marketed their product aggressively. As Prohibition was ending, John D. Rockefeller commissioned a report published as Toward Liquor Control that advocated total government control of alcohol distribution. “Only as the profit motive is eliminated is there any hope of controlling the liquor traffic in the interests of a decent society,” he said. That never happened, of course. Tied houses were banned, but Seagram, Anheuser-Busch, and other companies became gigantic from the manufacture and sale of alcohol; only eighteen states assumed any direct control over the distribution process.

We’ve grown used to living with the consequences of legal alcohol, even though alcohol is undeniably costly to the nation in lives and treasure. But few would argue for a return to Prohibition, in part because the liquor industry is so lucrative and so powerful. Binge drinkers — 20 percent of the drinking population — consume more than half of the alcohol sold, which means that for all the industry’s pious admonitions to “drink responsibly,” it depends on people doing the opposite. At the same time, Big Alcohol’s clout keeps taxation low. Kleiman, of NYU, estimates alcohol taxes to be about a dime a drink; the societal cost in disease, car wrecks, and violence is about fifteen times that. Neither the binge-dependent economics of alcohol nor the industry’s capture of the regulatory process is something we would want to mimic when legalizing substances such as heroin and crack cocaine. We’ll have to do a better job at legalizing drugs than we did at re-legalizing alcohol if we want to hold addiction to a minimum, keep drugs away from children, assure drug purity and consistency of dosage, and limit drugged driving. Last November, Ohio voters rejected marijuana legalization, most observers believe, precisely because the proposed initiative would have allowed only ten companies, all of which sponsored the initiative, to grow and distribute marijuana in the state.

If we can summon the political will, the opportunity to establish a state monopoly on drug distribution, just as Rockefeller urged for alcohol in 1933, is now — before the genie is out of the bottle. Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands have successfully made heroin legally available to addicts through networks of government-run dispensaries that are divorced from the profit motive. The advantages of a state monopoly over a free market — even a regulated one — are vast.


A poster showing how to use a syringe at Insite, a safe-injection site for drug addicts in Vancouver, British Columbia © Andy Clark/Reuters

In the 1970s, the eighteen states that established government control over alcohol distribution at the end of Prohibition began to water down their systems by feeding their wholesale or retail alcohol businesses, or both, to private industry. Still, in 2013 a team of researchers at the University of Michigan found that even in “weak monopoly” states, consumption of spirits was 12 to 15 percent lower than in states with private liquor stores or grocery stores. In states that retained control over retail sales, alcohol-related traffic fatalities were about 7 to 9 percent lower than in states that did not; crime rates were lower as well.

Just about everybody who thinks seriously about the end of drug prohibition agrees that we’ll want to discourage consumption. This goal could be accomplished, at least in part, under a system of regulated, for-profit stores: by setting limits on advertising and promotion (or banning them altogether), by preventing marketing to children, by establishing minimum distances from schools for retail outlets, by nailing down rules about dosage and purity, and by limiting both the number of stores and their hours of operation. In a for-profit system, however, the only way government can influence price — the strongest disincentive to consumption — is by levying a tax, and getting taxes right is no small task. First, on what basis should the tax apply? Federal taxes on alcohol are set according to potency, but keeping up with the THC content of every strain of marijuana would be impossible. Weight? The more potent the drug, the less you need to buy, so taxing by weight might end up promoting stronger drugs over weaker. Price? Post-legalization prices are likely to plummet as the “prohibition premium” — which compensates dealers for the risk of getting caught — disappears, competition sets in, and innovation increases production. To keep prices high enough to discourage use, legislators will have to monitor those prices constantly and risk their jobs by pushing for politically unpopular tax increases.

“It’s too hard to adjust taxes quickly enough,” said Pat Oglesby, a North Carolina tax lawyer who was chief tax counsel for the Senate Finance Committee from 1988 to 1990 and who now researches marijuana taxes. “Legislatures love lowering taxes. Getting them to raise taxes is like pulling teeth.” What’s more, if legislators overdo it and set taxes too high, they’ll risk reawakening a black market in untaxed drugs.

A government monopoly on distribution solves the problem by making the setting of prices a matter of administration, not legislation. Government officials, whether at the state or federal level, would have infinite flexibility to adjust the price — daily, if necessary — to minimize use without inspiring a black market. The production of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin could remain in private hands, and the producers could supply the government stores, just as Smirnoff, Coors, and Mondavi provide their products to state liquor stores. If the cost of producing a drug drops because of innovation or competition, the government agency selling that drug to the public would see an increase in revenues. Likewise, it is much easier for the government to set the dosage and purity of products it sells in its own outlets than to police the dosage and purity of products that are spread throughout a free market. And the government could decide on its own to what extent it wants to permit advertising, attractive packaging, and promotions.

Finally, of course, when the government holds a monopoly, the public, not private shareholders, enjoys the profit. The states that retain control over alcohol distribution collect 82 to 90 percent more in revenue than states that license private alcohol sales collect in taxes, depending on whether they control both wholesale and retail. That the government should profit from a product it wants to discourage could be seen as hypocritical, but that’s the way things stand now with tobacco, alcohol, and gambling. States generally reduce the moral sting of those profits by earmarking them for education or other popular causes. In the case of drugs, the profits could go toward treating addicts. The great thing about trying a state monopoly first is that if it doesn’t work, it’s politically much easier to liberalize to a regulated free market than to go the other way.

But as long as federal law in the United States maintains an absolute prohibition on marijuana, cocaine, and heroin — and stringent restrictions on methamphetamine — it’s hard to imagine state drug monopolies on the model of state liquor stores. Even if the international bans on Schedule I drugs were to lift, could our legislators muster the will to legalize them, much less to expand government to distribute them? It’s one thing for the chief executive to turn a blind eye to the states’ experiments in licensed marijuana commerce; it’s another to grind the gears and shift conservative congressional sensibilities.

This is a pity, since a government monopoly would be the least expensive and most flexible way to legalize drugs. It would generate the most revenue and — more important — it would protect public health. Until Congress reschedules marijuana, heroin, and cocaine, and until we get over the idea that government can do nothing right, we’re stuck with second best: state-size experiments that ignore the federal ban on marijuana and license private industries. Colorado is the furthest along that path, and its experience is instructive.



Colorado has allowed medical marijuana since 2000 through a system of licensed private dispensaries. The state originally required marijuana businesses to be vertically integrated; dispensaries could sell only what they grew themselves — a replication of the old tied houses. The theory was that it was easier to regulate businesses from “seed to sale.” In November 2012, 55 percent of voters approved Amendment 64 to the Colorado constitution, which legalized recreational marijuana. (The initiative was strategically timed; having marijuana on the ballot helped draw young and progressive voters to the polls to win the state for President Obama.) After the election, Colorado chose a system of licensed businesses over state monopoly; in 2014, it dropped the requirement that recreational dispensaries be vertically integrated — one business can now grow marijuana for another to sell. As soon as Governor John Hickenlooper formalized the results, five weeks after the vote, Coloradans twenty-one years of age and older could legally possess and use marijuana. Stores and commercial cultivators were not allowed to open, though, until January 2014, fourteen months after the vote. The delay was meant to allow the state time to expand the Marijuana Enforcement Division, within the Department of Revenue, to incorporate retail marijuana into its jurisdiction, and to allow the division to write rules concerning signage, advertising, waste disposal, video surveillance, labeling, taxes, and required distances from schools.


A man prepares a heroin injection at Insite © Ed Ou/Getty Images Reportage

Already, legal marijuana in Colorado is following the grim economics of alcohol. Daily smokers make up only 23 percent of the state’s pot-smoking population, but they consume 67 percent of the reefer. That may have been true too when marijuana was illegal; maybe the number of daily stoners is neither rising nor falling. We’ll never know, because one problem with illegal markets is that you can’t track them. But we do know that the legal, for-profit marijuana business in Colorado is already mimicking the alcohol business in its dependence on heavy users. From a public-health standpoint, that’s troubling.

The effect of legalization on crime has been difficult to determine. Overall, crime fell in Denver by almost 2 percent in 2014, the first year of full marijuana legalization. And, strangely, surveys of 40,000 teenagers before and after legalization showed that although fewer now believed marijuana to be harmful — just as the opponents of legalization predicted — fewer were smoking pot. Were they lying? Was it a statistical anomaly? Are pot dealers harder to find now that they’re competing with legal stores? Or is it possible that marijuana, once legalized, lost its cachet?

Colorado has run into glitches. The fourteen months between the vote and the opening of the stores wasn’t enough time to write regulations on such variables as pesticide use in cultivation or dosages in edibles. Nor was there time to write a new training curriculum for police, who found themselves not knowing exactly what to do about the large quantities of marijuana they were encountering. People have been stringing extension cords together to make their own grow rooms — and burning down their homes. They’ve pumped so much water into pot cultivation that monstrous blooms of black mold have rendered their houses uninhabitable. And Denver has seen a spate of burglaries and robberies at marijuana greenhouses and stores. The law let local jurisdictions decide whether to allow retail pot stores. Only thirty-five counties did so at first, which is partly why the state received only $12 million in new marijuana taxes in the first six months of legal pot sales — about a third of what regulators had anticipated. (“That’s changing,” said Lewis Koski, the forty-four-year-old who is the deputy senior director of Colorado’s Enforcement Division, in 2014. “Just about every week we have new jurisdictions allowing it.”) It may also be that the state set the tax on retail marijuana too high — 10 percent on top of the usual sales tax. Some smokers are apparently continuing to buy on the black market, which is often cheaper. (It may be that almost everybody who wanted to buy legal pot already had a medical-marijuana I.D. card; 111,000 Coloradans — more than 2 percent of the population — hold them, and medical pot carries only the regular sales tax.) Still, in 2015, Colorado collected about $135 million in marijuana taxes and fees, almost double what it took in the year before.


A bud tender holds a jar of marijuana buds under a magnifying glass at a dispensary in Denver © Benjamin Rasmussen/Offset

Cracking down on unlicensed growing operations and training cops has been relatively easy. What’s going to be tougher is keeping big business from overwhelming the exercise and rigging the game. Even with only four states and the District of Columbia having legalized, and only twenty-three states allowing the medical use of marijuana, legitimate production is already a $5.4 billion industry. Forbes has published a list of the “8 Hottest Publicly Traded Marijuana Companies.” Cannabis stocks include biotech companies, makers of specialized vending machines, and manufacturers of vaporizers that allow inhalation without tar or burning the product. The combined value of marijuana stocks rose by 50 percent in 2013 and by 150 percent in the first three weeks of 2014, before settling down to a still-impressive 38 percent gain for the year. In September 2014, MJardin, a maker of turnkey growing operations, announced that it was considering an initial public offering. Even the Wall Street Journal analyzes marijuana as a serious investment opportunity. These enormous bets are being placed at a time when recreational marijuana is still illegal in forty-six states and under federal law.

The citizens of the U.S. jurisdictions that legalized marijuana may have set in motion more machinery than most of them had imagined. “Without marijuana prohibition, the government can’t sustain the drug war,” Ira Glasser, who ran the American Civil Liberties Union from 1978 to 2001, told me. “Without marijuana, the use of drugs is negligible, and you can’t justify the law-enforcement and prison spending on the other drugs. Their use is vanishingly small. I always thought that if you could cut the marijuana head off the beast, the drug war couldn’t be sustained.”

Even in my hometown of Boulder, which may be the most pot-friendly city in the United States, “it’s not marijuana gone wild,” as Jane Brautigam, the city manager, told officials from Colorado and Washington during a public conference call in September 2014. People were, for the most part, “feeling okay about it,” she said. Marijuana charges in Colorado were down 80 percent: only 2,000 or so Coloradans were charged for marijuana offenses in 2014, as opposed to nearly 10,000 in 2011. Brautigam has had to shut down a few marijuana businesses for violations, but no more than in other industries. “There was an implication that there would be people smoking all over the place,” she said. “That hasn’t happened.” When I checked in with her office in January, things were still going well, Patrick von Keyserling, the city communications director, told me, in large part because “it’s a very well-regulated industry.”

To the extent that we in Colorado think about legal marijuana, now that the initial excitement has worn off, we have a smug sense that we have taken the lead in doing something smart. We are as divided as any place over immigrants, guns, and climate change, but our police don’t waste their time chasing down pot smokers anymore. Adults don’t have to worry, as they used to, about neighbors smelling reefer smoke wafting from their patios. Even if marijuana tax revenues — which are slated to help public schools — aren’t what we’d hoped, our state is making money from something that used to cost it money. Marijuana is no big deal. We look at other states that treat it as a public menace and wonder what in the world they’re thinking.

Nobody I spoke with in the United States or elsewhere envisioned stores selling heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine as freely as Colorado stores sell marijuana or as state liquor stores sell vodka. The way most researchers imagine hard-drug distribution, short of a state monopoly, involves some kind of supervision. A network of counselors — not necessarily physicians — would monitor how a drug fits into a person’s life. When Kleiman, at NYU, allows himself to imagine legal cocaine, he pictures users setting their own dose. “You can decide whether you want to raise your quota — a bureaucratic process — or see someone about your cocaine problem. This is to give your long-term self a fighting chance against your short-term self.”

Eric Sterling, the executive director of the anti-prohibition Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, envisions a similar system. “Someone might say, ‘I want cocaine because it stimulates me in my creative work,’ or, ‘I want cocaine to improve my orgasms.’ The response might be, ‘Why don’t you have enough energy? Do you exercise?’ Or, ‘What might be interfering with the current quality of your sex life?’ ” Those who want to try LSD or other psychedelics, Sterling suggests, might go to licensed “trip leaders,” analogous to wilderness guides — people trained, indemnified, and insured to take the uninitiated into potentially dangerous territory.

Of course, it’s easy to imagine people who enjoy cocaine, heroin, or psychedelics saying “to hell with all that” and continuing to buy on the black market. But, as Sterling points out, doing so is risky. If someone as rich and well-connected as Philip Seymour Hoffman can die from a heroin shot, nobody is safe. Also, as Sterling notes, “It’s a hassle to be an addict. Find a dealer, score, find a place to get off . . .” If a lawful, regulated system is fine-tuned — so that drugs are cheap and trustworthy, the process is not too burdensome, and the taxes on them are not too high — users will likely come to prefer it to the black market. Competition, not violence, will destroy the criminal gangs that control illegal drug distribution. “Ultimately this is all about building the proper cultural context for using drugs,” Sterling says, a context in which “the exaggerations and the falsehoods get extinguished.”

In 2009, Britain’s Transform Drug Policy Foundation put out a 232-page report called “After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation.” The authors suggested issuing licenses for buying and using drugs, with sanctions for those who screw up — much like gun licenses in some U.S. states, or driver’s licenses. Users would have their purchases tracked by computer, so rising use would, in theory, be noticed, making intervention possible. Legal vendors would bear partial responsibility for “socially destructive incidents” — the way bartenders can be held responsible for serving an obvious drunk who later has an accident behind the wheel. For pricing, the report suggests prices high enough to “discourage misuse, and sufficiently low to ensure that under-cutting . . . is not profitable for illicit drug suppliers.” And although the British group argued for a generally more laissez-faire market than European and Canadian government-run heroin-distribution systems, it embraced a complete ban on any kind of advertising and marketing, and argued instead for plain, pharmaceuticalstyle packaging.



Ivoted for marijuana legalization even though I hadn’t smoked pot in years and wasn’t much interested in doing so. Legalization seemed a sensible political and economic measure, and a way to distinguish Colorado as a progressive beacon of the West. But one night in July, I was headed for the Cruiser Ride, Boulder’s goofy, costumed weekly bicycle parade, and I thought it might be fun to try it stoned. It was a lightbulb-over-the-head moment. A year ago, I wouldn’t have known where to find a joint. Now, I simply pedaled to the Green Room, a marijuana retail store a mile from my house. Although I wear every one of my fifty-nine years on my face, I was carded — in a reception room decorated with portraits of Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix. A bud tender escorted me into the store, where I stood at a counter, separated from the customer next to me by a discreet, bank-teller-like divider. I picked up a card titled edibles education: start low, go slow and read that if I bought any of the pot-laced artisanal goodies, I should not consume them with alcohol; I should keep them out of the reach of children; I should start with a single small serving and wait two hours before taking more. “Everybody’s metabolism is different,” it said. For a new consumer, no more than one to five milligrams of cannabis was recommended; the potency of the buttery candies and cookies was listed on the labels. This was a far cry from the fibrous, foul-tasting pot brownies I used to eat before late-night college screenings of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

A young bud tender — tattooed and achingly professional — presided over a copious array of marijuana blossoms in large glass apothecary jars. I confess I got a little lost as he discoursed, with Talmudic subtlety, on the differences between Grape Ape, Stardawg, and Bubba Kush. The joint that I bought for $10 — fat, expertly rolled, and with a little paper filter — came in a green plastic tube with a police-badge-shaped sticker reading department of revenue, marijuana. For someone who started buying pot in alleys when Gerald Ford was president, this felt like Elysium.

I wasn’t allowed to light up in the store or outside on the street; I had to go home to smoke legally. As instructed, I started low and went slow, taking only one hit. Twenty minutes later, I was stoned in that good way I remembered: I felt perceptive and amused, with none of the sluggishness or paranoia common to the old fifteen-dollar ounces. That single joint I bought is so strong that even though I’ve taken hits from it half a dozen times since my Cruiser Ride, I still have about a third left, a treat to keep around for the right occasion.

So under legalization I have become a pot smoker again. But I don’t drive stoned or need treatment, so who cares? I drink a beer or a dram of Laphroaig most days too, and I still hit my deadline for this article.

If it is now time to start thinking creatively about legalization, we’d be wise to remember that, like carefully laid military plans, detailed drug-liberalization strategies probably won’t survive their first contact with reality. “People are thinking about the utopian endgame, but the transition will be unpredictable,” says Sterling, of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. “Whatever system of regulation gets set up, there will be people who exploit the edges. But that’s true for speeding, for alcohol, for guns.” Without a state-run monopoly, there will be more than one type of legal, regulated drug market, he says, and the markets won’t solve every conceivable problem. “Nobody thinks our alcohol system is a complete failure because there are after-hours sales, or because people occasionally buy alcohol for minors.” Legalizing, and then regulating, drug markets will likely be messy, at least in the short term. Still, in a technocratic, capitalist, and fundamentally free society like the United States, education, counseling, treatment, distribution, regulation, pricing, and taxation all seem to better fit our national skill set than the suppression of immense black markets and the violence and corruption that come with it.

 

[roots69]

You have to be a real fuckin spiritual

Retard to not see the big karma payback

In all this..

They purposely waged war on the god race

And look at them now...

Dying at a rate so fast it nullified the cac birth rate in twenty six states..

We don't even have to lift a finger to win wars

We just have to focus our energy and refuse to let demons control our emotions


Wr already won...

Adderall anyone racist and hateful???

Right on, bruh!!! Ive been saying, we've gotta stop giving our energy away to these sellouts!!

 

[roots69]

Haldeman Diary Shows Nixon Was Wary of Blacks and Jews

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  In an entry on June 23, 1971, Mr. Haldeman dictated a passage about how to use reports of sexual escapades against Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat whom Mr. Nixon considered a likely rival for the Presidency in 1972. "We need to take advantage of this opportunity and get him in a compromising situation if we can," Mr. Haldeman said.
  
  Mr. Nixon died last month. Mr. Haldeman died last year.
  
  Mr. Haldeman's recollections also indicate that Mr. Nixon had wanted his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, to persuade Democratic senators to halt their Watergate inquiry and had threatened to reveal that Mr. Johnson bugged the Nixon campaign plane in 1968.
  
  Mr. Haldeman recorded that on June 25, 1972, eight days after the Watergate break-in set in motion the events that eventually led Mr. Nixon to resign, the President was concerned about "the Martha Mitchell problem."
  
  Mrs. Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John N. Mitchell, Mr. Nixon's campaign manager and mentor, had a habit of calling reporters, especially Helen Thomas, the White House correspondent of United Press International. Martha Mitchell's Telephones
  
  
  In one entry Mr. Haldeman said Mrs. Mitchell had told Ms. Thomas that if Mr. Mitchell did not get out of politics "she was going to kick him out of the house, but her phones were then pulled out either by her or someone in her room."
  
  After noting that Mrs. Mitchell was demanding that her telephone be reinstalled, Mr. Haldeman said, "She's now threatening that if they don't get her phones in she's going to blow the whole Republican deal, whatever that means."
  
  The next day Mr. Haldeman recorded that it was Mr. Nixon's opinion that "John's got to close her down somehow or lock her up, but he can't just leave her speaking out like this; it's going to create a major national problem."
  
  Later, Mr. Haldeman learned that it had been an agent of the FederalBureau of Investigation who had pulled out the phone. "She had a monumental tantrum, started throwing things at him, demolishing the room," Mr. Haldeman said. "They locked her in. She busted the window with her hand, cut herself badly. They had to get a doctor, who had to throw her on the bed and give her a shot in order to subdue her."
  
  Mr. Mitchell resigned as head of the re-election campaign on July 1, saying that he had "to meet the happiness" of his wife and daughter.
  
  Mrs. Mitchell died in 1976, and Mr. Mitchell in 1988.
  
  Asked for comment on the racial statements the Haldeman diaries attributed to Mr. Nixon, the director of the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, Calif., John H. Taylor, said, "Politics and anti-Semitism are two different things." Mr. Nixon's statements about blacks and Jews "should be viewed strictly in a political context," he said.
  
  "I had the privilege of serving him for 15 years and never heard him make an anti-Semitic statement," Mr. Taylor said.
  

 

[roots69]

A Half Truth About the War on Drugs

“Nixon’s Drug War Was (and Still is) a Racist Tool to Disrupt and Neutralize Black Communities” was the headline of an article published recently week by Melissa Franqui, communications director of the Drug Policy Alliance. She was stating a half-truth. Her hook was a comment made in 1994 by John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide who had done time for his role in the Watergate cover-up, to a very good journalist named Dan Baum. Baum had used the quote years ago, Dr. Sunil Aggarwal cited it in a scholarly article in 2012, but Ehrlichman’s blunt confession remained below the radar until Baum recounted it in the new issue of Harpers:

“I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Reading Franqui’s headline and article, you would never know that the gang in the White House was targeting not just black people but “the antiwar left!” And what a success they made of it! Today the US military has bases in more than 100 foreign countries and US armaments manufacturers are selling weapons of mass destruction to governments and insurgents waging war from Afghanistan to Nigeria. (Who says nothing is manufactured in the US anymore?) The military-industrial complex is so thoroughly in charge that Barack Obama was compelled to replace Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, a soldier, with Ashton Carter, an arms salesman.

The Drug Policy Alliance’s analysis of Prohibition entwined with racism is right on but incomplete. What other purposes were and are being served by proponents of the War on Drugs? The federal government spends trillions of dollars —we, the people, are not allowed to know how much— making the world safe for corporate investment. It is very heartening to hear Senator Sanders ask, “Who made us the police of the world?”

Now obstructing Sanders’ path to the White House are the Democratic Party “super-delegates” —office-holders and party functionaries who are not obligated to abide by the will of the rank-and-file as expressed in the primaries. The super-delegate mechanism was created by party insiders to prevent a repetition of “antiwar leftists” nominating a candidate as they did in 1972, when Senator George McGovern, got slaughtered by the Nixon gang in the 1972 general election. The strategy described so succinctly by Ehrlichman achieved both its goals. Was only one of them objectionable? The DPA line amounts to: “Deplore Racism, Ignore Imperialism.”

More than 125,000 members of the military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan —about 6.5% of the total can’t get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs due to “bad paper” discharges, according to a new report from Swords to Plowshares. Ten percent of Marine Corps enlistees become ineligible after service in combat zones. Attorney Coco Culhane observes, “We separate people for misconduct that is actually a symptom of the very reason they need health care.”

 

[roots69]

A Half Truth About the War on Drugs

“Nixon’s Drug War Was (and Still is) a Racist Tool to Disrupt and Neutralize Black Communities” was the headline of an article published recently week by Melissa Franqui, communications director of the Drug Policy Alliance. She was stating a half-truth. Her hook was a comment made in 1994 by John Ehrlichman, a top Nixon aide who had done time for his role in the Watergate cover-up, to a very good journalist named Dan Baum. Baum had used the quote years ago, Dr. Sunil Aggarwal cited it in a scholarly article in 2012, but Ehrlichman’s blunt confession remained below the radar until Baum recounted it in the new issue of Harpers:

“I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Reading Franqui’s headline and article, you would never know that the gang in the White House was targeting not just black people but “the antiwar left!” And what a success they made of it! Today the US military has bases in more than 100 foreign countries and US armaments manufacturers are selling weapons of mass destruction to governments and insurgents waging war from Afghanistan to Nigeria. (Who says nothing is manufactured in the US anymore?) The military-industrial complex is so thoroughly in charge that Barack Obama was compelled to replace Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, a soldier, with Ashton Carter, an arms salesman.

The Drug Policy Alliance’s analysis of Prohibition entwined with racism is right on but incomplete. What other purposes were and are being served by proponents of the War on Drugs? The federal government spends trillions of dollars —we, the people, are not allowed to know how much— making the world safe for corporate investment. It is very heartening to hear Senator Sanders ask, “Who made us the police of the world?”

Now obstructing Sanders’ path to the White House are the Democratic Party “super-delegates” —office-holders and party functionaries who are not obligated to abide by the will of the rank-and-file as expressed in the primaries. The super-delegate mechanism was created by party insiders to prevent a repetition of “antiwar leftists” nominating a candidate as they did in 1972, when Senator George McGovern, got slaughtered by the Nixon gang in the 1972 general election. The strategy described so succinctly by Ehrlichman achieved both its goals. Was only one of them objectionable? The DPA line amounts to: “Deplore Racism, Ignore Imperialism.”

More than 125,000 members of the military who served in Iraq and Afghanistan —about 6.5% of the total can’t get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs due to “bad paper” discharges, according to a new report from Swords to Plowshares. Ten percent of Marine Corps enlistees become ineligible after service in combat zones. Attorney Coco Culhane observes, “We separate people for misconduct that is actually a symptom of the very reason they need health care.”

 

[roots69]

The War on Drugs is a War on You


The drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of.

This is an abomination of everything that America is supposed to stand for. As long as this country continues the drug war, you are not free. At the root, then, those that force the drug war on you are enemies to your freedom.

If you are concerned at all about liberty, the economy, the Constitution and the power of the Federal Government – you cannot ignore the US government’s longest and most costly “war” – the War on Drugs.

But no matter how long it lasts, how much is costs, how many lives are disrupted, and how much it fails – the war rages on.

Why? Well, because Federal “authorities” don’t care what your local laws are, they don’t care what your personal choices are, and they don’t care what reason you have for your choices.

All they care about is their own power. Period.

In this ongoing drug war, you are always treated as a suspect and your neighborhood is much less safe. You are searched at airports and your bank accounts are spied on. While drug users who are no physical threat to anyone but themselves are put in jail, the prisons become more and more overcrowded, resulting in the early release of violent criminals on a regular basis.

If you love your freedom and you want your city to be safer, this psychotic war on drugs must be ended – now.

Understandably, many Americans are afraid that ending the drug war will result in countless drug addicts, including children. In reality, though, that’s just what we have now!

On top of it, we generally don’t even consider the people who are addicted to federally-approved drugs to be drug addicts. According to a 2004 CDC report, almost one-half of Americans use at least one prescription drug. It should be obvious, then, that the drug war has done nothing to reduce Americans’ use of drugs – it’s simply to control which drugs people use, and who can make a profit from them.

So what’s really going to be different – can our nation’s addiction to drug use get any worse? It’s doubtful that legalizing all drugs could make things any worse, but even if it does, then so be it.

People will always do plenty of things that are bad for them, and there’s no reason to put them in prison for it. Think about all the things that you do which are bad for your own health and well being – should the government outlaw those too?

People eat too much fast food and they forget to floss every day. They watch too much TV and they don’t count their calories. They stay up too late and they spend too much. And, guess what else? People swallow, snort, shoot and smoke drugs that are both legal and illegal – and it’s not going to stop. A free society just wouldn’t force you, under the threat of punishment, to be “good” to yourself all the time. That was the job of your parents – unless, of course, you want the feds to be your new “daddy.”

In all seriousness, though, if we are ever going to have a nation that respects the Bill of Rights, of which the Ninth and Tenth Amendments may be the most important, the DEA and the entire drug war must be eliminated.

If not, what’s going to be next? Orwellian telescreens in our homes and a state-mandated morning exercise routine? That would most assuredly keep the cost down on the coming national healthcaresystem.

Won’t that be nice?

Every day that the war on drugs continues is another day of injustice; another day of spending countless billions to lock people up that don’t behave the way the bureaucrats want them to behave.

It’s time to bring this multi-billion dollar attack on your liberty to an end.

 

[roots69]

State-by-State the War on Cannabis is Ending


Judging by its first six months, 2019 has been a banner year for marijuana policy reform.

Most notably, lawmakers in Illinois legalized the commercial production and retail sale of cannabis to adults. The state is the 11th to legalize the use of marijuana by those over the age of 21, and it’s the first to pass such a measure with a statehouse vote (rather than a public initiative).

“Illinois is going to have the most equity-centric law in the nation,” Governor J.B. Pritzker announced. “For the many individuals and families whose lives have been changed — indeed hurt — because the nation’s war on drugs discriminated against people of color, this day belongs to you.”

Illinois is far from alone. Several other states have also approved measures in recent weeks to significantly reduce marijuana penalties.

In New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed legislation reducing first-time penalties for low-level possession from a criminal misdemeanor — punishable by up to 15 days in jail — to a “penalty assessment,” punishable by a $50 fine. Similar decriminalization legislation in Hawaii awaits Governor David Ige’s signature.

In North Dakota, lawmakers reduced penalties involving the possession of both cannabis and cannabis paraphernalia from a criminal misdemeanor to an infraction. In Colorado, they reduced felony marijuana penalties to misdemeanors.

A growing number of states are also moving to vacate criminal convictions related to prior marijuana offenses. Lawmakers in Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington all enacted legislation this spring expediting the expungement process for those seeking to vacate their criminal records.

“This is a small step, but one that moves us in the direction of correcting injustices that disproportionately affected communities of color,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee explained. “A successful pardon of a marijuana possession conviction can assist with barriers to housing, employment, and education.”

Legislators are also taking steps to halt employment discrimination against those who consume marijuana off the job.

In Nevada, a new law prohibits certain employers from refusing to hire workers solely because they tested positive for cannabis on a pre-employment drug screen. A similar law in New York City bars pre-employment drug testing for people seeking non-safety sensitive positions. City officials similarly prohibited marijuana testing as a condition of probation.

Officials are also expanding upon existing medical cannabis accessprograms, which now operate in the majority of U.S. states.

In New Jersey, the Murphy administration enacted regulatory changes providing up to 108 additional cannabis manufacturers and providers to serve the state’s nearly 50,000 registered patients. Other states — such as Colorado, Connecticut, New Mexico, Nevada, North Dakota, and West Virginia — enacted new measures expanding the pool of patients eligible to receive medical cannabis therapy.

In Georgia, lawmakers passed legislation to allow for the state-sponsored production and distribution of low-THC varieties of cannabis, while Texas lawmakers moved to expand participation in a similar statewide program. Several states, such as Washington and Virginia, codified legislation permitting student patients to legally possess and consume medical cannabis products while on school grounds.

In Alaska, regulators finalized rules in March making the state the first in the country to permit on-site cannabis consumption at licensed facilities. Colorado lawmakers passed similar legislation in May, and Massachusetts regulators have also advanced a pilot program licensing social use facilities. Colorado lawmakers also enacted legislation establishing rules for the home delivery of retail cannabis products.

This unprecedented wave of legislative activity at the state level is yet further evidence that public consensus on cannabis legalization has undergone a seismic shift. Rather than being viewed as a political liability, lawmakers across the country are now embracing cannabis policy reform as a political opportunity — and finally taking steps to end the criminalization and stigmatization of those who use the plant responsibly.

 

[roots69]

The Secret History of the War on Drugs

Corruption, addiction and murder on a large and small scale. This is the story that Douglas Valentine chronicles in his new book The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs(Verso, 2004). Valentine, who is also the author of the definitive story of the US counterintelligence program in Vietnam known as Operation Phoenix (The Phoenix Program), does a thorough job of detailing the crooked and sordid history of the original US agency created to fight the so-called war on drugs. That agency, for those who don’t know the history or have only known the Nixon-created Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), was the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). Created for fundamentally racist reasons, the FBN was the brainchild of Harry Anslinger-an ambitious law-and-order type guy who devoted his life to protecting America’s upper classes. Anslinger built he agency based on white Americans fears and, in doing so, changed the society’s perspective on drugs from one where virtually everything was legally available to one where the government tried to control every aspect of drug distribution. It is Anslinger and his agency that is responsible for America’s current conception that drug abuse is a police problem and not one better left to health professionals.

Valentine’s central thesis is explained in the book’s introduction. Briefly stated, it is this: “federal drug enforcement is essentially a function of national security, as that term is applied in its broadest sense: that is, not just in defending America from its foreign enemies, but preserving its traditional values of class, race and gender at home, while expanding its economic and military influence abroad.” As the book delves deeper into the story of how this thesis worked out in practice, it becomes clear that this did not always mean that the big-time drug dealers got arrested. Indeed, if they had the right connections and skills (such as those skills required for assassination and those connections that might serve the counterintelligence capabilities of the US), not only were these men not arrested; they were protected in all their enterprises, legal and otherwise.

It’s a tawdry to downright demonic story that comes out in these pages. From questions about the role of big time heroin manufacturers and traffickers in the subversion of governments and democratic movements to stories about MKULTRA (a secret program developed by the CIA to find drugs to use in brainwashing) LSD experiments on unsuspecting citizens, this book makes it clear that nothing is as it seems in the “war on drugs.” For those who fight battles in this war on a daily basis, be they cops or users, this is not news. The depth of the deception and inhumanity may be, however. The more one reads of Valentine’s work, the more it becomes clear that honest agents and cops have little place in this business. More than once, the reader is provided with the story of an agent’s years of hard work setting up and tracking a big-time trafficker being blown or destroyed some other way because of that trafficker’s connections and use to the national security state.

What is remarkable about this story is that it holds surprises even for those who consider themselves hardened to the realities of government skullduggery. For example, the government’s complicity with various Mafia bosses and their Cuban cohorts make it all but inevitable for questions to be raised about the intelligence community’s involvement in the JFK assassination. In addition, there are several passages that raise the issue of Israel’s role in international drug smuggling since before its inception in 1948-an involvement, which Valentine believes, continues under the aegis of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Of course, this makes perfect sense if one considers the history of US intelligence “encouraging” its surrogates involved in counterrevolutionary work to use drug trafficking profits to buy guns and other weaponry. After all, US intelligence and Israeli intelligence are more than brothers in arms-they are two arms of the same body.

The tone of The Strength of the Wolf is summed up best with a quote from a conversation Valentine held with FBN agent Jim Attie thirty-five years after he retired. “I’m not proud of what I did. It was a dirty job. It was a form of amorality, and to this day I feel tremendous guilt and have unending nightmares as a result of what I did as a narcotic agent.” Unfortunately, Valentine’s book makes it clear that many agents don’t have such qualms. This history makes it abundantly clear that those who directed them certainly didn’t. All of which leaves us common folk with the nightmare of their policies.

Encyclopedic in its scope, Valentine’s book is an important and necessary story that reads like a coherent speed freak’s monologue-detailed and relentless in its delivery. If nothing else, The Strength of the Wolf makes it abundantly clear that many members of the illegal drug business are on government payrolls and that the US “war on drugs” is really nothing more than one more front in the Empire’s war on those who disagree with its plans for the planet. Furthermore, the book leaves the reader with the feeling that this front has only expanded since the end of the FBN. This book and its story certainly makes one skeptical about anything the government might say or do at home and abroad. If the CIA and Mossad could help the ultra-right counterrevolutionary OAS in Algeria in an attempt to divide the anti-colonialist movement back in the 1950s, who’s to say that they aren’t doing something similar in Iraq?

 

[roots69]

Drug War Capitalism: An Interview with Dawn Paley

Dawn Paley is one of the best journalists covering the Drug War in Latin America in the English language. Her work has been published in NACLA and many other international publications, covering Latin America extensively.

Dawn’s book, Drug War Capitalism (AK Press 2014), provides a provocative thesis. The drug war is not about crime nor security. Rather, it enables global capitalist expansion through enclosure. In our hour-long interview we discuss how this understanding comes from a sense of justice and activism, from the periphery, from below. Dawn elaborates on how elites collude across borders for their own benefit at the expense of their populations. She describes the consequences of this collusion as militarism, human rights abuses, and insecurity. As the interview develops, Dawn brings optimism back into the equation, with a discussion of resistance in everyday life, activism, and grassroot, peoples’ movements.

This in-depth analysis is crucial for anyone who wants to understand and resist one of US foreign policy’s (and the transnational elites who execute it) greatest, ongoing failures and crimes against humanity.

***

Andrew Smolski: Before we discuss the details, could you explain what drives you as a journalist and how that has impacted your understanding of the drug war?

Dawn Paley: What drives me as a journalist, and as a researcher, is I think we need to, as writers, people of conscience, and activists, update much of the received wisdom about the conflicts that are happening around the world. So, Drug War Capitalism came out of a desire to challenge the mainstream media narrative with the hope that eventually different people, like anti-war movement people, people working around policing in the United States, and other folks who might not think of the drug war in Mexico and Central America as being actually a political issue, who might think of it as being more about crime. Or really just the analysis of the mainstream media, which is what we mostly have access to in terms of the drug war, to challenge that narrative and try and bring more people on board in terms of fighting these US policy programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Central America that have done irreparable damage to people in all the countries where they are being applied.

A: Towards the end of writing your book you talk about how you were in Colombia and began to encounter activists who were thinking in a similar way. Do you think it is the activist orientation of your work that brings you into contact with other people who understand that the drug war is a political issue, and not just a manifestation of say Mexico alone, or Colombia alone?

D: It took me a while to find people who had that critique, and it’s definitely something I started to come across a lot more in Colombia, because, as you might have heard, Plan Colombia just turned 15. So, the White House has been celebrating the 15 years of Plan Colombia, and there’s just been a lot more time there for people to really think about and analyze what the experience of it has been. Because, you know as we’ve seen here in Mexico, and during the time of Plan Colombia, it basically puts people into a kind of survival mode. As activists you’re constantly responding to tragedies, like here in Mexico the most famous example is the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School who were disappeared. So, society and activists as well are constantly forced to respond to these tragedies, day to day. It’s like you’re a fish in the ocean trying to get of a macro view of what’s going on and develop a critique of it. It’s not an easy task.

In Colombia and in here Mexico there are critiques of the war on drugs, they are marginalized and harder to find sometimes, but they’re there. Specifically, getting to the idea that the war on drugs is a war on people, and it’s becoming a little bit more mainstream in certain circles and so on. So yeah, I am hoping to have that conversation more in Mexico; the book has been translated, and we are finding a publisher, that’s the next step in kind of widening the circle of these discussions here in Mexico and in the south.

A: Ya, I think it is key to discuss the role that imperialism plays in a war on people, as opposed to saying a war on drugs. In thinking of the role imperialism plays, in the book you discuss an interview you had with Greg Grandin, where he brings up that the “work of national security forces on an international level [is] subordinated, either directly or indirectly, to Washington’s directive.” Can you elaborate on how important understanding U.S. imperialism is to understanding drug war capitalism, especially pertinent when you said the people in D.C. are celebrating 15 years of Plan Colombia?

D: Ya, the bad guys in D.C., cause we also have committed friends in D.C. who have been working for 15 solid years fighting Plan Colombia.

It makes a lot of sense to think about the war on drugs in Mexico, in Central America, in the Caribbean, and in South America within the context of US wars more broadly, and how US wars are conducted throughout the world. Obviously, we can’t talk about Mexico or Syria in the same breath because the situation is so different, or Afghanistan and Honduras, say. But I think that there are certain pieces of the mentality that really translate.

I was looking at the drone papers recently, the big series that The Intercept put out, the leaked documents about the US drone program in Yemen and Somalia and Afghanistan. One of the things they exposed with these leaked documents is the way that the US government is considering fatalities from drone strikes, where any man of combat age who is killed in a drone strike is automatically labeled an enemy combatant, or an enemy “killed in action.” And that’s very similar in some ways to what’s happening in Mexico, where you have young men being the principle targets of violence, a huge amount of homicides and massacres, and disappearances taking place across the country increasingly since 2006, and these massacres and terrible acts of violence are read, interpreted, and presented in the media that the people who are killed must’ve done something to deserve it.

They are essentially saying the same thing. You know, saying maybe they were drug traffickers or somehow involved in this illegal narcotics trade. It’s actually a remarkably similar kind of perspective. Instead of saying automatically that all the men killed are enemy combatants, here they are saying, well, they’re all drug traffickers or gang members. And just thinking about different US wars taking place in different places around the world and thinking about what’s happening in Mexico with the massive US funding for militarization through the Merida Initiative, it is actually a kind of shade or an echo of these boots on the ground wars that the US is carrying out in the Middle East for example.

And just another example of that total subversion, I totally agree with what Greg Grandin said, you know that recently what’s been happening is Mexico has been cracking down on Central American migrants. That’s a direct response to the US government saying too many child migrants showing up at the US-Mexico border, too many child migrants from Central America. So, Mexico has gone and done increasingly awful things officially with state forces to Central American migrants, the level of deportation and apprehension of Central Americans who are in Mexico, who are in transit, who are traveling through with only one goal, which is to get up to the United States. This is one very clear example of where Washington says Jump! and Mexico says How high?

A: So then, you say in the book we shouldn’t consider Mexico a failed state. Would you say then that we should consider Mexico a client states of the United States?

D: I mean, I would, as long as we are clear we are talking about the Mexican government. The people of Mexico have and continue to rebel in many beautiful and spectacular ways. Obviously not everyone, but many, many, many people are engaged in some form of resistance.

But, certainly the Mexican government, all the reforms we’ve seen, everything sort of coming down the pipe politically. There’s been a few examples with the PRI where there’s been a slight distancing from Washington, but in general it’s a regular refrain in Washington now, that since the war on organized crime started in 2006, Mexico and the US have been enjoying the closest relations they’ve had in over a century.

So, absolutely a client state, and I think you can say the same for all of the countries where you’ve really seen the drug war applied with the most severity. Certainly Colombia in South America, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. You know these are all countries where there’s no resistance on a state-to-state level to US policies that are gutting local economies, for example. You have El Salvadoran troops joining the so-called Coalition of the Willing in Iraq. You have all these men, actually, presiding over these countries where there’s extremely high levels of violence, of homicides, of social violence, of economic violence being done against the people, and their leaders are not willing to do anything except follow exactly what the IMF and the World Bank are telling them to do economically. The Honduran coup of 2009 stands as a stern reminder to anyone who might try.

Now, Mexico is not a failed state. I think that’s a mistaken line of thinking, because I think when we start talking about failed state, there’s often this sort of implication that states can work for people. If you look at how Guatemala has “worked” for the people of Guatemala, what has it done? It has actually been a genocide state, where state forces carried out genocide against Indigenous people. Where these same war criminals are still free today, or sometimes still part of the state apparatus.

Using the term “failed state” is a very liberal conception, and I think that’s part of the challenge I want to introduce with Drug War Capitalism. It’s about thinking through some of this stuff. Mexico is actually an exemplary state in terms of economic management. We are in a period of intense devaluation of the Mexican Peso right now. The cost of living is rising sharply. Every time we go out, everything costs more, no joke. The privatizations that have been happening, the increasing austerity, you know all that stuff, the government is managing all of that just fine. And some elites here have the panache to say publicly that the people should be happy the peso is devalued, because it means more investment.

It’s certainly a state that has failed its people, but it’s not a failed state in terms of a state that is unable to govern.

I think the discussion of whether states are actually capable of serving all people, especially marginalized people, is a different political discussion. But, I think it is certainly something worth putting on the table.

A: So, it’s that the state’s normal action isn’t about the welfare of the people. Would this place this theory of the state much more in the anarchist vein, and it sees the state’s normal role as violence?

D: Yeah, I mean myself personally, that’s my perspective. You know, I’m Canadian and when in Canada you hear this refrain sometimes about the good ol’ days of the welfare state, that’s actually often a very racist, exclusive notion of what the good ol’ days were. When actually those good ol’ days were also the days of residential schools, for example. You know, the forced removal of Indigenous children from their parents, erasure, forced assimilation, land grabs, and so on. For me, recognizing the violence inherent in state formation and in the maintenance of the state is an important task for thinkers and writers to undertake.

Hopefully, increasingly, over the next decades we will be talking about this more and more. I think we are seeing the failure of the party system and the state system to maintain its hegemony as the best way of making decisions and “looking after people”. That’s my hope anyways.

A: Then with the recent capture of El Chapo and thinking of the state maintaining itself, would this just be a matter of theatrics to look as if it is actually doing something in the drug war, like fighting the drug cartels?

D: Right, you’ve nailed it there. So, El Chapo is a key figure in the official discourse, or the official narrative of the drug war. He didn’t escape from jail. He was released from jail both times. It’s a myth he escaped in a laundry cart, and I would wager it’s a myth that he escaped through a tunnel. In fact, no journalist was allowed all the way through the tunnel into the shower that he supposedly dug his way out of. And we know all of these prison officials were fired for complicity, etc. He was let go from jail. This is part of the show, the veracity of his capture and exactly the details of it.

In my opinion, it’s these kind of details that are what get us lost when we’re talking about the drug war. You know, how many soldiers were there when they captured El Chapo, who was he with. It’s like that actually really doesn’t matter. Of course, there were people killed this time and it’s important to acknowledge that there is violence even in the creation of this myth here in Mexico.

But the question is, if they can find El Chapo, why can’t they find the almost 30,000 people officially recorded as having disappeared in the last 10 years? Where are these people? Why can’t they find them? Why can’t they find the 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School? For me, those are the questions that give push back against that narrative. You can find this guy who supposedly has billions of dollars, but why can’t you find these students. And it’s all about what the government wants.

Obviously they want to capture El Chapo, and here in Mexico that’s all you saw on TV. There was even an added level absurdity of having Sean Penn and Kate del Castillo involved in his capture. Like, where else does that happen?! This is what we are asking ourselves. Where else do you have this, sort of, celebrity capture narrative?

A lot of this just feels like a big distraction. If the government wanted to help the vast majority of poor and working poor people in Mexico it would withdraw from NAFTA, allow safe passage for all migrants, protect local food systems, provide accessible and quality education, and require people be paid living wages, for example. It would provide reparations for family members of victims of the drug war, have some kind of truth commission and proper admission of what’s been occurring in this country, and locate the many thousands of disappeared people. But for the Mexican state, or in fact any state, to do these kinds things in the current context is almost unimaginable, no matter who gets elected.

By comparison, Chapo doesn’t matter. It’s interesting actually. If you look at the short little interview he did, so not Sean Penn’s interpretation of what he said, but what El Chapo himself said in the interview, it’s actually super interesting. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, if you capture me it doesn’t matter, nothing is gonna change, and he’s right! He’s totally right!

A: The theatre being so far removed from people’s lives is also when Andrea Legaretta is on HOY saying to the Mexican people that inflation is a good thing and everything will be better for Mexico. And then, when she is called out for basically doing a government spot, she says don’t blame her, she is just reading off a teleprompter.

D: Yeah, one of the things to me that has been pretty wild is a lot of the elites from the banking sector, from the Finance Ministry, they’ve been saying this is actually a good thing for Mexico. While the peso a year ago was worth 13 pesos to one dollar, now it’s like 18. Things are not getting cheaper, everything is going up. But, it’s good for the maquiladoras, it’s good for the car manufacturers, it’s good for transnational capital. What just blows me away is how openly the elite is actually celebrating something that is terrible for almost everyone that lives in Mexico.

The media is another big part of the story in Mexico, one I didn’t go into as much in the book, like Televisa and TV Azteca, which are basically two versions of Fox News. It’s hard to tell which one is worse. Those are the main TV stations, and you have all this cross ownership. You do have a progressive newspaper, but still very party aligned. So, the media has such a huge role in maintaining this official discourse on the drug war. Not to blame journalists, because there are obviously a lot of really brave journalists in Mexico and talented journalists in Mexico. There have also been over 100 journalists since 2000 who’ve been murdered on the job.

For days after his capture on the TV media all we saw was El Chapo, a looping of El Chapo walking to the helicopter with his hands behind his head, with shots of Sean Penn and this soap star. And you’re going like, “there’s nothing else happening in this country, really?”

It’s pretty sad.

A: It doesn’t appear that the political institutions or a political party in Mexico would want to change that system. Would you say that if MORENA came into power in 2018 that that could reverse these trends? Or is it like Javier Sicilia has said, that the system at its core is rotten and it wouldn’t have any effect at all?

D: I agree with Sicilia, for reasons we have already talked about. I don’t think the state system and taking power over that system is going to be our exit ticket. Things might have been less bad if Andres Manuel López Obrador had actually taken power, as he was actually elected in 2006 and Calderón fraudulently took power. State Department cables leaked by Wikileaks show us that all presidential candidates in that election agreed that they would make fighting narcotrafficking a priority of their administration. So, it’s likely that under López Obrador, had he actually been able to govern in Mexico, would’ve been subjected to intense political pressure from the United States to implement the Merida Initiative, probably with similar results.

I can’t really comment on MORENA. It is so marginal in most parts of the country. Mexico is still a two party system, and in some places, a one party system. On a state level, the PRI still rules with an iron fist in many of the states, like Coahuila state where I’ve been working recently. In Tamaulipas state, in Veracruz state, where you have some of the worst violence in the country, there has been continuous governance by the PRI. So, bringing in this, sort of, very marginal fourth or fifth party or whatever you want to call it, just probability-wise it’s hard to think MORENA could take power. But, if it did I would wager we would then see just how intensely the US does actually govern Mexico.

A: There is a point in the documentary, El Poeta, where Sicilia talks about remembering a Mexico before the drug war violence. But, even then the PRI was very violent. So, what do we make of Mexico’s history when thinking about violence historically and contemporarily?

D: There are now over 50,000 people officially disappeared in Mexico. Over half of them have been disappeared in just the last 10 years. The other half date back when they started keeping track in the 1960s. That’s one way of understanding that yes, Mexico has been a state with paramilitary violence, with deep state violence, like the October 2nd massacre in Tlatelolco, which is actually what the Ayotzinapa students were gathering to protest when they were disappeared and massacred. So, you do have these examples of state repression. But in post WWII Mexico you don’t see genocide, like you had in Guatemala, for example, or anything approaching the war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua or against the FLMN in El Salvador.

So, the drug war definitely represents an intensification. Before the drug war started in Mexico the homicide rate was dropping. It has doubled over the last ten years. Yes, there has definitely been a huge escalation in violence in many regions, and I think for a certain class of people there’s certainly a nostalgia for the good ol’ days. For many in Mexico, the past is linked with forced migration and different forms of violence, corruption and impunity. But, certainly in the years prior we have not seen violence with the alarming frequency, intensity, and geographical distribution as we’ve seen in Mexico over the past 10 years.

In Drug War Capitalism I attempt to link these events back to US policy. I think there is a clear line between increased US funds, increased US priority on fighting narco-trafficking, and increased homicide rates, increased disappearances, and increased displacement. I was just reading that the US, well Obama, just announced this thing called Peace Colombia, which looks like a continuation of Plan Colombia. Basically, they are saying that now that Colombia has peace we are gonna have this new plan called Peace Colombia, and we’re gonna give all this new money based on what they refer to as the success of Plan Colombia. Interestingly, one of the first pillars of Peace Colombia is expanding progress on security and counter-narcotics. Which is to say, more of the same.

So, it is just continuously the US funds going in and going in. In the press release that the White House put out on February 2nd, they said the homicide rate has fallen this much since 2002. Well, 2002 is the year the US government gave the most money for Plan Colombia, and the year with the highest homicide rate. And I saw the same correlation in Mexico. The year that the US government gives the most money for the Merida Initiative is the year with the most homicides. They allow the slaughter of people, they encourage it, and then it becomes a benchmark upon which they can look back and say it’s not as bad or it’s a lot better than it was then. I think there is a direct link between coercive, blatant violence and US policy. I think in other regions we have been able to draw those lines more directly, and it’s worth coming back to and thinking about that link when it comes to Mexico, Central America and South America.

I wish this was being debated with Bernie and Hillary. But if feels like they are getting caught up on these things like Hillary’s e-mails, or the one now, her speeches to Goldman Sachs. I mean, the issues, especially on foreign policy, are not being talked about in meaningful ways.

A: Wasn’t it Hillary’s State Department that was, if not directly, indirectly involved with the Honduran coup?

D: Yes, exactly. They allowed that coup to happen, and also the coup in Paraguay as well against Fernando Lugo, the former bishop who interrupted the two party system there. So, essentially a coup in Honduras in 2009 and another in Paraguay in 2012, the State Department didn’t denounce the coup plotters or sanction those responsible. Because in both cases, the new regimes that came in were neoliberal, militaristic, Washington friendly.

When it comes to the Democractic Party primaries in the US, it’s hard to get excited about any of that stuff really. The way the media covers it, it kind of reminds me of the way the narrative of the drug war works in Mexico, like the capture of El Chapo. Are we supposed to believe that there is nothing else happening in the United States for the next year, while these guys debate? And yet the primaries make up a good portion we hear on the news, including even progressive news like Democracy Now! That’s what we are all going to listen to, every day, to what these candidates are saying? Well, what else is happening in the United States? What else is happening around the world? So many important things are happening, and they’re being obscured by this ongoing discussion, supposedly about US democracy. That’s kind of how the drug war narrative functions, but with a lot more terror involved. Just creating this discourse so far removed from people’s actual lives, this discourse that is totally state-centric, and it is actually a shield from talking about the issues that matter, about peoples’ real lives.

A: So, should we expect any meaningful change on this side in terms of the Drug War?

D: So, I’d like to split my response to that. There might be some change in the US if Bernie was elected in terms of what the Drug War would look like inside the US. I have no problem with people voting, but I don’t think that’s going to be the basis for the massive, structural change the US and the world needs.

In my own kind of thinking about things, meaningful change comes from grassroots movements, it always has, and I think it will continue to come from grassroots movements, from people on the streets and the blockades and the front lines. That applies no matter where we are, whether in Canada, or Mexico or Honduras, or in the US.

A: To wrap up, and thinking in terms of optimism and grassroots, could you expand on resistance as a facet of daily life? Also, would you elaborate on how it is activism that will force the state system and capitalism to change, rather than those power systems ever doing it on their own?

D: That is a big question, and my response is bound to be more of a personal reflection, but I will try.

Part of what Drug War Capitalism is about is the militarization carried out under the pretext of the drug war, and how the drug war in Mexico and South America is about opening new spaces for capital, creating new guarantees for capitalist expansion, foreign direct investment, and so on. I don’t think the drug war in the south would be nearly as bloody if people were less organized, if people were more atomized. Drug war capitalism has been incredibly intense in Guatemala, in Mexico, in Colombia, with the terrible massacres, the public display of bodies and efforts to terrorize the population, the thousands of disappeared, the hundreds of thousands of displaced, or the millions displaced in the case of Colombia, the hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing to the US and Europe. These tragedies lead to the destruction of peoples’ social and family ties. And although they talk about stability, it is clear that the United States government, local political elites, and capitalists can better asset their interests when the communal or social basis that gives strength to peoples’ movements is destroyed.

I consider peoples’ movements as encompassing far more than people who are organized in an activist collective. The strength of people’s connection with each other comes from strength of the connections among people in their neighborhood, with their families, from women centered networks of love, of caring, of companionship. Not to over-idealize, but to varying degrees life in the south challenges the seeming inevitability of the individualism of capitalism that rules in much of the United States. In the south, day-to-day life for many people, sometimes for the majority, is organized in a different way.

For example, in certain regions you’re more likely to go to the corner store or to a small market, or even have your own food sources than you are to go to a Wal-Mart. So in this tiny example, the local economy would be distinct, and big capital would not enjoy the same market share it would elsewhere. And there’s change obviously happening all the time, but part of the reason you have the really intense repression is the social networks, the family networks, and the community ties create a kind of wiggle room where everything isn’t always dictated all the time by market capitalism. People have other choices and are willing to defend those choices together if need be.

As I’ve been reflecting more and more on what drug war capitalism means, the ferocity of this war is a ferocity against people whose lifeways are organized in ways that are slightly different to extremely different to the nuclear family style individualism promoted in the north.

In a way this reflection is about expanding the definition of what we think of as subversive activity, and understanding that the targets of counterinsurgency are the people who participate in these lifeways. Not just thinking of activists as the person with the microphone or the demonstrators in the streets, but thinking that in these countries, unfortunately from the perspective of US policy, entire villages and towns are considered as if they were insurgents because they live in ways that are contradictory and sometimes oppositional to capitalism. This is not new, but it is ongoing. I do think those different lifeways can open and create, and often do create, different ways of organizing, different ways of sharing power, different ways of controlling territory or urban space, and sometimes they do congeal and manage to contest the power of the state. In those moments, they become more overt and more obvious.

I certainly have had that experience in a small way living in Mexico. My neighbors, we’re super organized. We don’t share the same politics, but we are organized. In the building where I live now, we organized a rent strike because of water cuts, we also eat meals together and have a chat group where we check in with each other on a regular. And we are mostly all women, doing this connective work that gives us power not only when it comes to the landlord, but because we are organized we are also stronger and safer in general.

So, coming to the autonomies, I think a lot of the autonomies exist in Mexico and elsewhere in many ways that are not always visible, but that are potentially powerful at different junctures. There is just less isolation than there is in the United States or in Canada. And part of what gives me a lot of hope is how people who are organizing in Mexico have a very clear position on the state. They might depend on it, they might need it for certain things, they might get money from it once in a while, but at the same time there is often a strong critique of it, and certainly of the party system in terms of what the next steps forward are.

Obviously there are a lot of people involved with organizing for MORENA. But, it’s just one path, and what’s exciting here is there are so many other paths. The Zapatistas have become a reference worldwide as offering that different kind of alternative. There are so many vibrant movements, for land defense, for labor rights, for the autonomy of universities and for free education, against violence, and so on. It’s worth mentioning that the 43 students who were disappeared from the Ayotzinapa Normal School were organized into a federation of socialist students. They had been carrying out very strong, direct action against neoliberal education reforms for years. I certainly think that with Ayotzinapa you have an example of a direct hit against people who are organized using the discourse of the drug war to justify or normalize it.

To wind up, the other major force in Mexico is the parents, primarily the mothers, of the victims of violence, people like Javier Sicilia and tens of thousands of others like him, especially those whose children have disappeared. Many of them have extremely nuanced analysis of what’s taking place in the country. They are organized in their communities around the country, they are out there looking for their relatives, and they are denouncing publically and saying publically things that a lot of people in the country know or have a sensation about. These families have become a major force in Mexico in denouncing the rottenness of the system, the complete corruption of the political and legal system. So, I think part of the transformative force in Mexico right now are these dozens of collectives of parents who have disappeared children and who are organizing across the country.

 

[roots69]

The Real Purpose of the Drug War


A heart in love will decipher every squiggle in a letter as a kiss. In the final days of the 2008 campaign and in the opening ones of his administration, Obama and his top legal aides seemed to the eager ears of marijuana legalizers on the West Coast to be opening the door to a new, sensible era.

Here was the basic line as dispensed by Attorney General Eric Holder on March 18, 2009:

“The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law. To the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws [such as California’s Prop 215] as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law, those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign.”

The next day drug activists exulted in a big win. “Today’s comments clearly represent a change in policy out of Washington,” Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance told the LA Times. Holder, Nadelmann added in the New York Times, had sent a clear message to the DEA that the feds now recognize state medical marijuana laws as “kosher.”

Striking a different sort of exultant note, the US Attorney’s spokesman in Los Angeles, Thom Mrozek, told the LA Times: “In every single case we have prosecuted, the defendants violated state as well as federal law.” On January 22 (two days after Obama’s inauguration) DEA agents conducted a raid on a South Lake Tahoe cannabis dispensary run by a wheelchair-bound entrepreneur named Ken Estes. They seized about five pounds of herbal medicine and a few thousand dollars. No arrests were made. “It was a typical rip-and-run,” Estes said. On February 3, the DEA raided four cannabis dispensaries in the LA area. Eight days later DEA agents busted the MendoHealing Co-operative farm in Fort Bragg, California.

The love-flushed Obamians had forgotten how to read political declarations with a close and realistic eye, and to bear in mind the eternal power struggles between federal prosecutors and enforcers—e.g., the DEA and equivalent state bodies. The feds wanted to make it completely clear that, whatever Obama might hint at, they weren’t going to be hog-tied by wussy state laws. Bust a guy in a wheelchair, bust a dispensary, make your point: I’m the man.

Meanwhile, what has been happening out in the fields, dells, plastic greenhouses, indoor grows in the counties of Mendocino and Humboldt? The timeless rhythms of agriculture: overproduction, plummeting prices, the remorseless toll of costly inputs like soil and fertilizers.

Back in the early 1990s the price to grower per pound was around $5,000. A couple of years ago, the average had dropped to about $2,000, more for really skilled growers, who “black box” their greenhouses, darkening them earlier each day to trick the plants into putting out an early crop. Right now, it’s down to maybe $1,000 a pound in the fall, dropping to $600 in the Christmas rush. Do these prices bear any relation to the prices in the fancy dispensaries in southern California? Guess.

Bruce Anderson, editor of the Boonville-based Anderson Valley Advertiser, describes the realities:

“Do a Google Earth on your Mendo neighborhood. Now knowing what to expect, we did one on Boonville. As the satellite camera zeroes in, the grows look like lemon groves, neatly arrayed in the backyards on both sides of Highway 128 from one end of Boonville to the other. Of course the in-door grows can’t be googled, but they are just as numerous throughout the Anderson Valley and every other area of vast Mendocino County. When you hear statements like “Everyone in this county is in the pot business” it’s not that far short of the reality. In an imploding economy does anyone seriously expect an enterprise that pays lots of off-the-books, tax-free cash can be stopped short of full-on legalization? In just the last week, raids were conducted on two homes, one in Eureka, one in Redwood Valley, where better than $400,000 cash was confiscated by the forces of law and order. Every time the cops make big cash hauls more people are convinced that they, too, should get into the pot business. A smaller number of people, of course, are convinced to try to find dope houses to rip off, hence X-number of annual home invasions, most of them unreported. Looked at objectively, and all things considered, the nebulous legal status of marijuana is perfect for Mendocino County’s financial well-being: Every year the cops take off just enough dope to keep pot prices to at least a thou a pound, with prices falling around Christmas to five or six hundred a pound as surpluses are unloaded for spending cash. Legalization would further depress the Mendocino County economy, and depress it big time.

But legalization is not a realistic prospect and so the status of the herb will inevitably remain cloudy. For its part the DEA is announcing big impending raids in Mendocino county, some targeting the vast stretches of the (federally) controlled Mendocino National Forest, and the growers drawing on the waters of the middle Eel. There are serious environmental and criminal issues here. Obama said at the start of his administration, “I can’t ask the Justice Department to ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books. What I can say is, “Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.”

As Mark Scaramela, also of the AVA, ticks off the list, “there are growers, many of them violent, using public lands. Who wants to go hiking and run into a criminal operation? These same growers are responsible for associated illegal water diversions and serious environmental degradation. In one recent raid they took a mile of black plastic irrigation pipe out of the Mendocino National Forest.”

Fine for the Feds to go into action here. What’s not fine is a far-reaching national campaign against medical growers right across the US. All the usual arsenal of harassments have been brought into play by multiple agencies, starting with the IRS, bankrupting dispensaries by simply denying elementary
business expenses.

Has the drug war – as a war on the poor – slowed down? In 2010 some 850,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana related offenses of which the vast majority was for possession. That means since Obama took office it is likely well over 2.5 million Americans have been arrested for marijuana. This under the aegis of a President who cosily discloses his marijuana habit as a young man. One bust, Mr Obama, and you’d be still on the South Side. But then, your sense of self-righteousness is too distended to be deflated by any sense of hypocrisy.

Take a look at New York City.

In the Bloomberg years in New York City “stop and frisks” have gone through the roof. In 2002, when Bloomberg had only just stepped into the Mayor’s office, 97,296 New Yorkers were stopped by the police under Stop and Frisk. 
80,176 were totally innocent (82 percent).

By 2009, 581,168 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
510,742 were totally innocent (88 percent).
310,611 were black (55 percent).
180,055 were Latino (32 percent).
53,601 were white (10 percent).
289,602 were aged 14-24 (50 percent). (For reference, according to the Census Bureau, there were about only 300,000 black men between the ages of 13 and 34 living in the city that year.)

In 2011, 685,724 New Yorkers were stopped by the police.
605,328 were totally innocent (88 percent).
350,743 were black (53 percent).
223,740 were Latino (34 percent).
61,805 were white (9 percent).
341,581 were aged 14-24 (51 percent).

What happens after the initiation of Stop and Frisk when the person “complies” with an NYPD officer’s directive to “empty their pockets”? If up to 25 grams of marijuana stays out of view, that constitutes only a violation. If the cop forces the weed into public view we’re looking at a misdemeanor, with potentially devastating career consequences for the target. Low level arrests for possession of marijuana in New York have gone up from about 2,000 in 1990 to 50,684 arrests in 2011 for possession of a small amount of marijuana, more than for any other offense, according to an analysis of state data by Harry G. Levine, a sociologist at Queens College.

From 2002 to 2011, New York City recorded 400,000 low-level marijuana arrests, according to Levine’s analysis. That represented more arrests than under Bloomberg’s three predecessors put together — a period of 24 years. Most of those arrested have been young black and Hispanic men, and most had no prior criminal convictions.

Don’t forget: Drug policy in the US is about social control.

That’s the name of the game.

 

[roots69]

The Death of Len Bias and the Rise of Mandatory Minimum Prison Sentences

On Thursday, May 19th, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan quietly signed legislation that (among other provisions) completely eliminates mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession crimes. Maryland is now one of nearly two dozen states to do away with a policy that has been blamed for today’s mass incarceration crisis, flooding America’s prisons with tens of thousands of nonviolent, low-level offenders over the past three decades.

But as Maryland emerges at the forefront of sentencing reform, it’s worth revisiting the origins of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which require lengthy automatic prison terms for small-time crimes. As it happens that story is also set in Maryland and stars one of its former favorite sons: Len Bias, the University of Maryland basketball star who some called the next Michael Jordan. Bias was selected number two overall in the 1986 NBA draft — thirty years ago this month — by the reigning champion Boston Celtics. Sadly, he would never play in the NBA. His untimely death from a cocaine-induced heart attack just two days after the draft rattled the nation, prompting Congress to push through a rash of anti-drug legislation that hugely escalated the nation’s War On Drugs.

On June 17th, 1986 — draft day — Len Bias couldn’t stop smiling. He must have felt deeply how far he had come — a ropey-limbed late bloomer once cut from his junior high basketball team, the 6’8’’ power forward seemed set for NBA stardom, and, unlike most first round draft picks, would be contending for a championship his rookie season, playing alongside aging superstars Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish. Seen as Bird’s heir apparent, Bias was expected to become a franchise player. “My first dream was to play in the NBA, but getting drafted by the world champions is an extra one,” he told reporters, grinning and cramming a Celtics cap onto his head during a post-draft press conference in Madison Square Garden.

Bias was a versatile player, closer to the modern point forwards that dominate today’s game than to his bigger, slower contemporaries, and he was coming off a season that saw him go from a second-team All-American to arguably the best college player in the country, averaging 23.2 points and 7 rebounds per game. During his time at Maryland he traded baskets with future Hall of Famers David Robinson and Michael Jordan (in his second year in the NBA during Bias’ senioryear). An inside-outside threat with an absurd jumping ability, at times Bias seemed to literally rise over his opponents. Once, after going in for a dunk, he jumped so high that he scraped his head on the bottom of the backboard. In overtime of a memorable game against UNC earlier that year — in a sequence that’s often cited as confirmation of his future greatness — Bias hit a long jumper, then, sprinting back to the baseline, seemingly in one motion intercepted the inbounds pass — and soared into a reverse dunk. Maryland took over the game, handing the Tar Heels a rare home loss. Bias, who finished the game with 35 points, had basically beaten them single-handedly.

“He’s maybe the closest thing to Michael Jordan to come out in a long time,” said Celtics scout Ed Badger following the draft. “I’m not saying he’s as good as Michael Jordan, but he’s an explosive and exciting kind of player like that.”

Two days later, Bias was dead.

In his college days, Bias’ Maryland teammates nicknamed him “horse” for his long stride and his ability to carry his team. This was also his last word, uttered as he sat up in bed in an on-campus Maryland apartment, a moment before he bent over a mirror and snorted one last line of cocaine after a night of post-draft partying (“I can handle it. I’m a horse”).

Bias’ aura of invincibility, his utter physical domination on the court, heightens arguably the saddest image of the Bias saga, an image etched (for most of us) not in memory but in imagination, a continual replay: in a haze of pre-seizure confusion, Bias stumbles from the bed toward the bathroom before collapsing. The droopy-eyed kid with the ridiculous hang-time was gone almost as quickly as he had arrived.

I say arguably because a few years later Bias’ little brother Jay, one of the nation’s top basketball recruits, was shot to death after an altercation in a shopping mall. In a TV interview following his youngest son’s death James Bias accidentally referred to Jay as Lenny, realized his mistake, then walked away, fighting back tears.

Today Bias represents a colossal what-if in sports history. He’s remembered as one of the best players never to play in the NBA. Mike Krzyzewski would later refer to him as one of the two most dominant players in ACC history, the other being Jordan. We’ll never know how Bias’ Celtics would have matched up with Jordan’s Bulls. The aging and injury-prone Celtics managed to make the 1987 NBA finals, but they wouldn’t play in another final until 1998. Yet it’s Bias’ concrete, lesser-known legacy that is infinitely more maddening, that extends beyond a family and a franchise’s devastation.

At the time of Bias’ death cocaine was thought of as a relatively harmless party drug. His death stripped us of this particular illusion. Almost overnight, drug abuse became the seminal issue in Washington. If Bias, invincible on the court, could die of cocaine use, so could anyone. “Members of Congress were setting up hearings about the drug problem and every subcommittee chairman was looking to get in on the action,” recalled Eric Sterling, counsel to the House Judiciary Committee at the time. “People were talking about Len Bias at every press conference and it was all tied together — the Len Bias tragedy, the potency of drugs and how it was killing America’s youth.”

Amid the ensuing political hysteria President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 into law, one of the first significant legislative moves in the nation’s drug war. (Bias has been called the “Archduke Franz Ferdinand” in the War On Drugs). Often referred to as the Len Bias law, the bill created mandatory minimum prison sentences for anyone caught with even small amounts of cocaine. It also set mandatory sentences for crack cocaine possession at 1/100th the amount of powder cocaine (5 grams to 500 grams) — a sentencing disparity that unfairly targets poor, black communities. Nevermind that Bias’ didn’t die freebasing crack cocaine. Enough media outlets had gotten it wrong. It was part of the narrative now. The most dangerous drug in America. The issue of the year.

None of this is to trivialize the damage done by crack cocaine, particularly in the DC area, where, 30 years ago, crack was so commonplace that dealers sold the cheap, potent drug at open-air markets in poor, black communities without fear of police. But ultimately the law has done little to protect young men and women like Bias. Instead of neutralizing high-level traffickers, the act has put thousands of nonviolent offenders, most of whom are black or Hispanic, in jail. In some cases they serve more time for possession than convicted murderers.

Consider the case of Derrick Curry. In 1990 Curry, a friend and former teammate of Jay Bias, was sentenced to 19 years in jail after he was caught in possession of a one pound rock of crack. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 possession of five grams of crack results in a mandatory five year sentence, longer for greater amounts. At Curry’s sentencing even the judge expressed remorse at handing down such a disproportionate prison term. It made no difference that Curry, just shy of his 20th birthday, was a first-time offender. The judge’s hands were tied. At the time of his arrest Curry was being recruited by Division I basketball programs. And though he ended up serving eight-and-a-half years of his original sentence, by the time he got out in 2001 his basketball days were behind him.

Some of the cases are even more egregious. Timothy Tyler has been in jail since 1994 for selling 5.2 grams of LSD (10 grams counting the blotter paper), an amount that triggers a life sentence on a third felony drug offense. In 2012 Ronald Hammond was sentenced to 20 years in prison over 5.9 grams of pot. Last week Weldon Angelos was released after serving 12 years of a controversial 55-year sentence for selling marijuana three times while possessing a firearm. The list goes on.

In early May President Obama commuted the sentences of 58 inmates serving mandatory sentences in federal prisons for drug-related crimes. Angelos, Tyler, and Hammond were not among them. Still, Obama has now commuted the sentences of 306 people, more than the previous six presidents combined. Meanwhile the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act — a bill which would reduce mandatory sentences for certain crimes –is currently making its way through Congress, though it has yet to be voted on. And, while this is progress, many nonviolent offenders are still serving excessively long sentences and could spend the rest of their lives in prison.

It’s difficult, given what we know, to watch footage of Bias’ triumphs without some degree of hindsight. It’s fun for instance to rewatch his 35-point outing against a Jordan-less UNC. But because narrative is impossible to resist, it’s an earlier match-up, two years previous, also against UNC, that seems more resonant.

In 1984 Michael Jordan was already a star. Bias was Maryland’s rising sophomore and hoping to do his part to keep the regular season game close. There’s a memorable possession at the beginning of the second half in which Bias elevates, hanging in midair while also somehow moving forward, propelling himself over two defenders, who shrink and step aside. The shot lands and so does he, prompting the announcer to declare him one of the best basketball players in the country.

Bias finished that game with 24 points, Jordan with 21, but his team was still two years away from being good enough to beat UNC. Jordan delivered in crunch time, coming up with his biggest shots, rebounds, and steals at the end of the game, as UNC put Maryland away. The game’s final moments seem retroactively tragic. You can catch the sequence on YouTube, the footage blurry but serviceable:

With less than a minute in regulation UNC’s Matt Doherty misses a free throw. Bias leaps, tilting backward to grab the rebound, then lands, elbows out, his back to the hoop. His eyes are already scanning down court. But Jordan is there too and from behind he pokes the ball out of Bias’ grip. The angle of the camera obscures Jordan and to the viewer the ball shoots out of Bias’ hands as if it had a will of its own. For a split second Bias stands open-palmed, wondering what hit him, confused and grasping for something that was so formerly there.

Len Bias’ loss continues to pain NBA fans, and will no doubt be discussed as the NBA draft and the anniversary of his death looms. But, in the wake of unprecedented bipartisan support for sentencing reform, it’s imperative that the legal ramifications of his death also work their way into the national consciousness.

In 1986, the federal prison population was 21,000. Today, it’s 214,000.

More than half of federal prisoners are brought in on drug charges.

 

[roots69]

Ground Zero in the Drug War

Arizona and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands are the “ground zero in the war on drugs.”

That’s the assessment of the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission (ACJC), the state office that receives federal criminal-justice grants — and which then redistributes these Justice Department grants to Arizona’s multiagency drug task forces and other counternarcotics programs.

Making the same threat assessment of the border’s frontline status in protecting the U.S. against the transnational threat of illegal drug flows, the Obama administration launched its Southwest Border Initiative in March 2009, calling it the “way ahead” in combating drug trafficking.

As part of that 2009 initiative, which brought together the resources of the Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Justice (DOJ), DHS launched the Arizona-based Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats (ACTT) in September 2009, calling it an “innovative” and “unprecedented” multiagency assault on crossborder drug trafficking.

Two years after ACTT’s startup and 24 years after ACJC entered the state’s “war on drugs,” there has been no official evaluation of the progress in this drug war at ground zero. Yet the Obama administration, along with two border states (Texas and Arizona), continue to channel more revenues and personnel into border counternarcotics operations.

ACTT claims to be directing allied forces against the transnational threats emanating from the Sonora-Arizona drug corridor. The loose alliance pulled together by DHS represents the latest manifestation of the federal-state drug war strategy – one that began taking shape after the declaration of the “war on drugs” in 1971 and became institutionalized in the late 1980s especially after congressional approval of Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.

Multi-Agency Drug Task Forces as Drug War Instruments

ACJC was established in 1987 to serve as a funding reciprocal for the expected flood of federal dollars for drug task forces and other counternarcotics operations that would issue from the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act.

When ACJC began receiving grants from the Justice Department criminal justice assistance program for counternarcotics operations that was created by the 1988 anti-drug abuse legislation, Arizona had four multijurisdictional narcotics task forces. Known commonly as narc squads, these are undercover units of police and sheriff deputies that form the vanguard of the domestic drug war.

Today, Arizona has sixteen such multijurisdictional counterdrugforces. Despite the 24 years of drug war grants and narc squad expansion in Arizona, drug consumption and drug flows in the state have boomed, as year after year of ACJC’s own statistics show.

The other nexus for drug war funding and operations is the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) group. Like ACJC and other similar state offices, HIDTA, which has affiliates throughout the nation, was also a creation of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. HIDTA is overseen by yet another drug war bureaucracy created by the 1988 drug prohibition act, namely the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Like ACJC, the HIDTA in Arizona has also depended exclusively on federal funding for counternarcotics operations targeting the state’s vibrant drug market and the drug trade through the state. HIDTA’s longtime goal has been to “disrupt and dismantle” the drug trafficking organizations and the market for “drugs” that the federal government prohibits.

Since the late 1980s the Justice Department, which includes the Drug Enforcement

Administration, has provided the main financial and logistical support for the war on drugs in Arizona. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the drug war bureaucracy expanded with the creation of DHS, whose border and immigration agencies (CBP and ICE) stepped up their counterdrug roles as part of their new security mission. Through is Joint Task Force Brave and its Counternarcotics Programs unit (CN), the U.S. Northern Command, also created after 9/11, is also a drug warrior on the Arizona border.

According to ACJC, the ACJC-supported drug “task forces operating along the border are the first line of defense in marijuana, drug-trafficking operations.”

In 2007 marijuana seizures rose to 276,906 pounds, up from 221,205 pounds in 2004. Nonetheless, ACJC acknowledges that “marijuana remains readily available and is considered the most widely used illegal drug throughout the state.”

Drug War to Transnational Combat in Arizona

The Obama administration is on the same page as the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission in viewing the Arizona-Sonora border as the frontline in fighting illegal drugs. But the war on drugs has evolved into what the Obama administration calls the combat against transnational organized crime.

No longer will you find the federal government pronouncing about drug war’s role in protecting U.S. national security.

Having dropped the drug war terminology and substituted concerns about transnational organized crime, the Obama administration, the Obama administration seems, at first glance, to have made a welcome shift in framing counternarcotics from military to law enforcement terms — from war to crime, from national security to public safety.

Officially, there is no longer a “war on drugs.” But as White House’s Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime stays true to the militaristic spirit of the four-decades old drug war. Interlaced throughout the strategy statement and the declarations of administration officials is the same military and conflict terminology such as “combat” and “transnational threats,” the same alarmist assessments that drug trafficking constitutes a threat to national security, and the same involvement of the U.S. military and national intelligence apparatus.

Except for the actual use of the term “war on drugs,” the lexicon of domestic counternarcotics operations has, if anything, become more pervaded by military jargon, including the now common use by the Border Patrol of such military terms as deconfliction, situational awareness, operational control, and defense-in-depth.

The Alliance to Combat Transnational Threats represents one of the first institutional manifestations of the Obama administration’s reconfiguration of the drug war as a combat against transnational threats.

DHS describes ACTT as a “multiagency operation” involving more than 50 law enforcement agencies that aims to “deny, degrade, disrupt, and ultimately dismantle criminal organizations and their ability to operate” and to “engage communities to reduce their tolerance of illegal activity.”

What makes ACTT distinctive, according to DHS, is that it undertakes “intelligence-driven operations” against transnational threats that are directed by a Unified Command comprising the leaders of the participating agencies.

ACTT has a clear drug war focus. In June 2011 the White House’s Office on National Drug Control Policy released its biannual National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy, which poses drug control policy as an integral part of U.S. national security strategy.

Although officially a DHS initiative, ONDCP also claims a role in deploying four counterdrug alliances along the southwestern border, beginning with the one targeting what DHS and ONDCP call the Arizona-Sonora drug corridor and following with three others, each with their own United Command, that focus on the drug corridors into Southern California, New Mexico/West Texas, and Southeast Texas. According to the counternarcotics strategy, ACTT is a counternarcotics “framework” in which “agencies should develop and maintain frameworks that address the coordination, integration, deconfliction, and synchronization of Federal, state, local, and tribal border security and law enforcement activities along the Southwest border.

In Arizona ACTT’s Unified Command comprises ten officials from DEA, ICE, CBP, US Attorney’s Office, Arizona Department of Public Safety, Arizona High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), and the Arizona border sheriffs. According to the Border Patrol, ACTT has all the counterdrug actors in Arizona “sitting around the same table and sharing information” to meet the “common goal.”

While visiting the Arizona border on Feb. 11, 2011, Alan Bersin, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), hailed the accomplishments of ACTT, pointing to, as the top-listed achievement, “the seizure of more than 1.6 million lbs. of marijuana,” along with relatively small amounts of cocaine and methamphetamines. Bersin had nothing, however, to explain how ACTT had in any way contributed to the dismantling of the transnational criminal organizations supposedly targeted by ACTT.

Praising ACTT, the CBP commissioner declared: “We will force smuggling organizations out of their entrenched positions here in Arizona north of the border and south of the border with the help of Mexican law enforcement.”

Old Drug War Numbers and Body Counts

ACTT can point to a large number of immigrant apprehensions and drug seizures, as ostensible evidence of its progress against transnational threats.

The Border Patrol and allied sheriff’s departments provide post-ACTT operation reports of the numbers of illegal aliens arrests, marijuana seized, weapons confiscated, and assets seized and forfeited.

Typically, ACTT boasts of the number of “illegal aliens” apprehended and thousands or even million pounds of marijuana seized.

The title of a May 27, 2011 CBP release reads: “ACTT Operation Yields More than $4.4 million in Marijuana.”

With the accompanying subhead: “Intelligence Drive Operations Continue to Yield Results.”

The total results of this 60-day operation in Pinal and Pima Counties were: “732 illegal aliens arrested, one U.S. citizen, 8,925 pounds of marijuana, and 17 firearms.”

Another “intelligence-driven operation” by ACTT aimed to “counter transnational criminal organizations in the Arizona corridor” called Operation Trident Surge targeted TCO traffic on Forest Service and BLM lands over three months. The headline of the May 27 CBP media release about this ACTT operation read: “1,759 people arrested; 23,650 pounds of marijuana seized.” There were no other results, and nothing about how any of the arrests or marijuana seizures related to government intelligence about transnational criminal organizations.

Marijuana seizures also headlined another ACTT operation in Pinal County, which boasted “more than 5,900 pounds of marijuana seized.” The operation also reported 55 illegal aliens apprehended, five U.S. citizens arrested, $115,000 in illicit currency seized, four firearms confiscated, and five stolen vehicles recovered. Typically, no other illegal substances except marijuana were seized and there was no attempt to show how the operation targeted transnational crime.

For the Border Patrol, which compiles the alliance’s stats, ACTT operations and reporting constitute a continuation of the agency’s decades-long tradition of measuring progress by regular reports of immigrant arrests and drug seizures. What is new with respect to ACTT is that DHS and the Border Patrol now deploy the same categories of statistics as evidence of progress in combating “transnational organized crime” and deterring “transnational threats.”

What Command? What Intelligence?