<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.17023" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, April 23, 2010 10:11 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> The Never Ending Drug War: The Personalities, Politics and
Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the DEA</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial color=black size=2><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT><BR><BR>
<DIV id=AOLMsgPart_2_d479d937-8511-4d2d-865a-c7a97f9267c1><FONT face=arial
color=black size=2><FONT
face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"></FONT><BR><BR>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5><B><SPAN lang=en-GB>The Never Ending Drug War:
The Personalities, Politics and Espionage Intrigues that Shaped the
DEA</SPAN></B></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT size=4><B>A Review of Dougals Valentine's
book </B></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0in"><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt" size=4>by Dr. John
Jiggens </FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify><SPAN lang=en-GB>After 40 years,
the War on Drugs is about to become the longest continuous war in US history. In
</SPAN><EM><SPAN lang=en-GB>The Strength of the Pack</SPAN></EM><SPAN
lang=en-GB>, Douglas Valentine explains why dismantling the $44 billion a year
DEA juggernaut is unlikely to happen as long as America attempts to maintain a
world empire.</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>This never-ending war
has been a phony contest, an arm wrestle between two arms of the US state: the
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Central intelligence Agency (CIA).
Routinely, the DEA’s attempts at prosecuting major traffickers in US courts were
dismissed on national security grounds, because the traffickers were CIA assets.
As CIA director George Bush explained in 1976, these cover-ups were legal under
a 1954 agreement between the CIA and the Justice Department, which gave the CIA
the right to block prosecutions and to keep its crimes secret in the name of
national security. The “de-facto” immunity from prosecution enabled CIA assets
to brazenly deal drugs, knowing they were ‘protected’.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>Valentine’s research
for The Strength of The Pack involved interviewing a score of former US
narcotics agents who worked for the FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics), the BNDD
(Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs) and the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency),
as “the narcs”, the US government’s drug enforcement police, have variously been
known. Their stories reveal that America’s drug law enforcement agents were
pawns in a rigged game, a never-ending conflict that served to keep in place a
gigantic black market, allowing faceless forces to exert political and financial
pressure from the shadows. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>In the process of
penetrating the world drug trade, US narcotic agents invariably stumbled upon
the CIA’s involvement in drug-trafficking. One of the reasons the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics was abolished in the 1960s was that its case-making agents
uncovered these political and espionage intrigues. In the 1970s the DEA and the
CIA warred over the role of South Vietnamese government officials in the heroin
trade and DEA agents were taught the rules of “plausible deniability” to
insulate US involvement. During the 1980s the DEA’s priority was protecting the
Reagan’s administration’s illegal drug operations in Central America and Central
Asia. The DEA was suborned and became an adjunct of the CIA in American foreign
policy, politely staying away from CIA sponsored war zones in Central Asia and
Central America, operating the War on Drugs along ideological lines.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>Today, says Valentine,
the DEA is a top-heavy bureaucracy, ruled by ideologues unsullied by street
work, strained though a sieve of security clearances, oblivious to their mandate
and beholden only to political power brokers. As a consequence, the Northern
Alliance can deal drugs with impunity while Taliban associates require
investigating. In the never-ending war, the US empire and its assets always
win.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>Valentine traces the
CIA’s hi-jacking of federal drug law enforcement from the early 1950s when a
handful of narcotics agents, at the behest of the CIA through its MKULTRA
Program, set up safe houses in New York and San Francisco for illegal
drug-testing experiments on US citizens. Equipped with two-way mirrors, the drug
agents observed US congressmen and others, under the influence of LSD. Over the
next decade, federal drug agents helped sprinkle so much acid in the Bay area
that it spawned the psychedelic generation. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>While the CIA
developed the Golden Triangle, CIA moles in the Bureau of Narcotics routinely
buried reports that implicated the CIA’s proprietary airline, Air America, in
heroin smuggling. Using the cloak of national security, Ted Shackley, the CIA’s
station chief in Laos, managed to keep the Laos operation flying beneath the
radar. When narcotics agents reported that the CIA was using US army trucks to
transport drugs, Shackley responded angrily telling them that if they did not
stop monkeying around they would end up toppling the South Vietnamese
government. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>The South Vietnamese
military ran the biggest drug trafficking network in South Vietnam; Air Force
chief Ky, Prime Minister Khiem and Vice President Thieu were all involved in the
racket through their wives. The CIA did not want to bust the generals or the
hills tribesmen who were fighting the crucial flanking war that kept the
communists from conquering Vietnam. Nor would they allow narcotics agents to
pursue the corrupt Thai police, military and politicians who allowed the CIA to
use Thailand as its base for its regional operations. To fight the war on
communism, the war on drugs had to be subverted.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>As the director of the
Bangkok DEA office Fred Dick told Valentine “I will believe until my dying day
that there was, and probably still is, an unholy alliance between the CIA, the
Kuomintang and the Thai government. The agency is aiding and abetting the
opium-smuggling traffic in the Golden Triangle, while at the same time the DEA
is trying to combat it.” </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>The CIA’s covert
involvement in drugs continued through Laos, Iran-Contra, the invasion of
Panama, Columbia and Afghanistan. The Agency continually helped drug warlords in
Vietnam and Nicaragua traffic in narcotics in the name of anti-communism, and it
does the same today in Afghanistan in the name of anti-terrorism. For decades,
the CIA and its assets sabotaged the War on Drugs in order to win wars in Asia
and Central America, a fact corralled from the US public by the mainstream
media, under an almost impenetrable “whiteout”.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>In the 1960s South
Vietnamese President Diem and his opium addicted brother, Nhu, financed their
secret police through the opium trade, but they were presented as models of
Christian propriety by the US media. Their assassins inherited the state, the US
media adoration and the opium trade. This historical precedent is a lesson that
might concern the Karzai brothers today.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify> </DIV>
<DIV lang=en-GB style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0.1in" align=justify>Drug running and gun
running are, in Jonathon Kwitny’s phrase, “The crimes of patriots”. At a time
when international attention is starting to focus on the opium war in
Afghanistan, The Strength of the Pack is a well researched investigation, in the
spirit of The Politics of Heroin and Whiteout, into this secret world and the
hidden agenda of the US national security state and its historic role in the
world drug trade.</DIV>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both"></DIV></FONT></DIV><!-- end of AOLMsgPart_2_d479d937-8511-4d2d-865a-c7a97f9267c1 -->
<STYLE>.AOLWebSuite .AOLPicturesFullSizeLink {
OVERFLOW: hidden; WIDTH: 1px; HEIGHT: 1px
}
.AOLWebSuite A {
CURSOR: pointer; COLOR: blue; TEXT-DECORATION: underline
}
.AOLWebSuite A.hsSig {
CURSOR: default
}
</STYLE>
<LINK href="http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/31423/css/microformat.css"
type=text/css rel=stylesheet>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both"></DIV></FONT><br />--
<br />This message has been scanned for viruses and
<br />dangerous content by
<a href="http://www.mailscanner.info/"><b>MailScanner</b></a>, and is
<br />believed to be clean.
</BODY></HTML>