By Liane Casten

Americans are taught that it's wrong to murder, rob, rape and bribe, but that it's okay to topple foreign governments, quash socialist movements, or drop powerful bombs on foreigners, so long as it serves the national interest.

According to William Blum, author of Rogue State (Common Courage Press, 2002), "From the end of World War II to the beginning of the 21st century, the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US has caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many million more to a life of agony and despair." One of the most useful tools to perpetuate these incursions comes under the cover of "the war on drugs."

A Short History of US Drug Policy

The war on drugs, in its most repressive form, began under the government of President Richard Nixon with a federal budget of $6.5 million dollars. Today, this budget has risen to $18 billion. For fiscal year 2003 the executive branch has presented a budget of more than $19 billion — 70 percent are destined for repressive policies and only 30 percent for education and health services.

According to Rodney Stich, author of Defrauding America (Diablo Western Press, 1993), the US took over the drug operations in Southeast Asia from the British and French in the 1950s: "The CIA drug trafficking is handled in an organized manner as if it were a large corporation such as GM; different geographic areas and different type of level of operations were given code names. In the Golden Triangle area of Southeast Asia, the code names included Operation Short Flight, Operation Burma Road, Operation Triangle."

During the battles in Laos and Vietnam, enterprising fellows discovered that in the Golden Triangle — the junction of Burma, Laos and Thailand — poppy plants (raw material for opium and heroin) were growing abundantly. And it became equally clear that the drugs would bring in a nice profit for those clever enough to export them to eager customers in the US. The vehicles of choice were the coffins and body bags of the fallen US military.

After the Vietnam War, profits became just one of the official goals of the drug trade. The other goal: use the profits for destabilization and war activities in targeted Third World countries.

Enter Lieutenant Colonel James "Bo" Gritz — a 30-year military veteran and the most decorated Green Beret commander of the Vietnam era. Gritz was awarded 62 citations for valor, five silver stars, eight bronze stars, two purple hearts and a presidential citation. The feature films Rambo, Uncommon Valor and Missing in Action were based in part upon his real-life military experiences.

According to tapes produced by the now-defunct The Other Americas Radio based in Santa Barbara, CA, Gritz had been asked by National Security Council staffer Tom Harvey to resign from his commission and, as a private citizen, go back into the jungles of Vietnam to search for American POWs and MIA soldiers. Gritz did so. But what he found was a heroin highway and a nation betrayed by high-level American officials involved in narcotics trafficking. He discovered Gen. Khun Sa, drug lord of the Golden Triangle.

"The US government was his best customer," Gritz reported. The drug lord told Gritz that he would like to stop dealing in drugs and stop the flow of heroin into the US, but that "he'd need help from the US government."

"Drug suppression money came through alright, and it went into paving a road in the jungles so they could bring out the heroin in ten-ton trucks," Gritz said disgustedly.

"The whole POW situation was being undermined by US government officials involved in drug trafficking. US government officials are Khun Sa's biggest drug customers, and have been for the last 20 years.

"We have a Constitution that says that the laws will be made by the Congress, enforced by the executive branch, interpreted by the judicial branch. But in reality we have an executive branch that has for more than a 20 years operated in what Ollie North called a parallel government.

"When the Congress says no, it makes no difference. They're gonna do it anyway. And it is special intelligence — top secret. Why? Not because the Communists don't know what were doing. It's to keep it a secret from you: the public. You're not capable of making those kinds of decisions, according to those in parallel government. The reason I know...I was there. I've been a product of parallel government myself."

"The CIA used drugs to fund covert operations in Laos," Gritz said. "The money that would not be appropriated by a liberal Congress was appropriated anyway. And you know who we used for distribution? Santos Trafficante, old friend of the CIA and mobster out of Cuba and Florida. We lost the war! Fifty-eight-thousand Americans were killed. Seventy-thousand became drug casualties. In the Sixties and Seventies you saw an infusion of drugs into America like never before."

When Gritz returned from the Golden Triangle in December 1986 with information about the involvement of high-level US officials in large-scale drug trafficking in Southeast Asia, Tom Harvey and his superiors in the White House were not pleased. Harvey told Gritz that White House had no interest in stopping the flow of drugs coming in from the Golden Triangle into the free world.

Gritz had come away with a list of key Washington players who were part of the Khun Sa network. But when he got back to the US, he was called by a "friend." He was told to expunge the list of drug trade connections in the MIA files, and that should he talk, he would find himself up on charges, with "witnesses" ready to testify against him.

Gritz went public. He mentioned Ted Shackley, who used civilians to organize the drugs, and Richard Armitage, who handled the finances in the banks of Australia. As the official in the US government responsible for MIAs, Armitage failed in his official duties and resigned in 1977. Armitage is now Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, despite his known connections to the Iran-Contra and other scandals.

Gritz also mentioned George Bush, Sr., head of the CIA in 1975-76. Vice President Bush had been appointed by President Reagan as the number one policeman to control drug entry into the US. Gritz asked, "How can you say there's no interest and no support when we bring back a videotape with a direct interview with a man who puts 900 tons of opium and heroin across into the free world every year and is willing to stop it?"

Iran-Contra

In 1978 when Somoza's dictatorship of Nicaragua was sent packing by the Sandinistas, Washington dreaded another "Cuba" and tightened the economic thumbscrews. Later, during the Reagan years, the anti-Sandinista strategy turned deadly. Washington's proxy army of Contras sabotaged the country's infrastructure, including schools, ports and health clinics.

The Contras raped, bombed, tortured and killed tens of thousands of people. The State Department approved the CIA's creation of a "terrorist army" to destroy "soft targets" in Nicaragua, including agricultural cooperatives. A UN resolution called for the US to observe international law. Nicaragua initiated proceedings in the World Court, which in 1984 ruled against the US, making the US the only country condemned by the World Court for international terrorism.

After Congress passed the Boland Amendment forbidding incursions into Nicaragua, the shadow government took over, under the leadership of VP George Bush. It was so easy to break the law, bring drugs into the US from Colombia, sell them to a hungry US, and take that money to fund the illegal incursions into Nicaragua and later into El Salvador and Guatemala. George Bush, Sr. appears to have played a powerful role in this drugs-for-guns drama. The LA Weekly (10-88) reported some alarming details:

• Bush signed off on CIA military shipments to the Contras as early as 1983. Although these deliveries predated the Boland Amendment and were legal, Bush's role in approving them certifies that his involvement was far more intimate than he admitted.

• Bush took part in crucial White House sessions in mid-1984 that led to increased aid to the Contras as the Boland ban on direct US military assistance went into effect.

• Bush aide Donald Gregg was involved in planning Contra strategy and monitoring re-supply problems, despite his claim that he and his colleagues had no responsibilities in the area. Gregg and Bush's friend Felix Rodriguez drew up strategic plans that led to deep-insertion raids on Sandinista targets.

• Informal contacts were maintained by Bush's staff with private security firms, arms brokers and moonlighting US commandos involved in assisting the Contras.

• Bush's staff claimed no US agency knew of Manuel Norie-ga's early drug connections, or his efforts to help the Contras, but Felix Rodriguez said that he informed both the CIA and the FBI of Noriega's drug connections as early as 1985.

Panama

After sustained hate campaigns against former US ally and puppet president Manuel Noriega, the US launched an aerial assault on Panama City. Various independent inquiries put the death toll at between 3,000 and 4,000. Most of the corpses lay rotting in pits on US bases, which were off limits to investigators. However, American news networks did not regard the UN's overwhelming condemnation of the attack to be worth broadcasting.

The official reason for the assault was Noriega's drug trafficking, long known to Washington. In fact, it may have been the main reason: Noriega knew too much.

Stich, in Defrauding America, writes: "In 1990, President George Bush ordered the military to invade Panama because Col. Noriega was allegedly violating the US drug trafficking laws... This was rather bizarre in light of the fact that CIA operative and then-Director of the CIA George Bush paid Noriega for years for engaging in drug-related activities.

"Corrupt people in control of the US Intelligence agencies and their cohorts were themselves engaging in drug trafficking against their own country and were guilty of crimes far more serious than any which Noriega had committed."

Stich says, "It is unclear why Noriega was singled out in this deadly invasion of Panama. One guess: Keep him from talking. The federal judge barred attorneys supposedly defending Noriega from presenting any information on the CIA's role in drug trafficking, or anything of a political nature. This standard tactic protected the web of corruption within the US intelligence agencies and involving federal officials."

Stich states that at least half a dozen former CIA, OSS and DEA personnel had given him many hours of statements concerning Central and South America drug operations in which US intelligence agencies participated.

He notes, "To obtain a conviction, Justice Department prosecutors rewarded known drug smugglers with reduced prison terms, granted them freedom from prosecution or compensated them for testifying against Noriega. They were paid witnesses. On July 10, 1992, a federal jury in Miami sentenced Noriega to 40 years in prison."

Colombia

CIA involvement with various Colombian drug dealers goes back a long way. In 1981, the CIA arranged meetings where individual drug dealers in Colombia organized into a cartel for shipping drugs to the US.

Stich reported that the first meeting occurred with 20 of the biggest cocaine dealers in Colombia. "The second and final meeting was held at the Hotel International in Medellin, attended by about 200 drug dealers, pushers and smugglers. Establishment of the Medellin Cartel occurred in February 1982, and each of the members paid a fee to fund a security force for the cartel members to protect their operation."

Now we've done an about-face: instead of working with the Medellin cartel, we have created "A War on Drugs."

Within the US, the war on drugs has reached capacity. Of eight million prisoners worldwide, two million are in the US, making us the world leader. One quarter of those prisoners are in jail for nonviolent drug offenses. And yet drugs are more available than ever. Since our domestic drug policies have failed, we are lashing out at producing countries like Colombia.

In August 1999, under pressure from the US, the Colombian government began to spray herbicides on coca fields in an attempt to wipe out cocaine production. The spraying has devastated other field crops, contaminated water sources, and sickened adults and children.

In November 2000, President Clinton signed Public Law 106-429, a $1.3 billion aid package in order to step up the war on drugs in Colombia and neighboring countries in South America. Of this sum, $860 million was designated for Colombia itself, mainly as aid to the military.

Aerial fumigation using the chemical glyphosate was to be part of the program. But just as Agent Orange destroyed vast areas of Vietnam, the spraying of glyphosate in Colombia has endangered the fragile ecosystems and indigenous cultures of Colombia's Amazon Basin. It has become a human and ecological disaster.

Glyphosate is a non-selective chemical — any plant exposed to a sufficient amount of it will die. Critics say the program indiscriminately wipes out legitimate subsistence crops as well as natural plants. It kills birds, mammals and aquatic life. Monsanto, however, claims that its herbicide Roundup, with glyphosate as the active ingredient, is safe.

Though carried out by Colombian police and military, the aerial fumigation program utilizes US government aircraft, fuel, escort helicopters and private military contractors, not to mention US-made chemicals.

In January 2001, under US oversight, the Colombian government escalated "crop eradication" activities. The stories of destruction coming in under the media radar screen tell of great damage to the countryside and deep hardship to the farmers.

Colombia's indigenous peoples are often victims of the fumigation, subjected to a variety of health afflictions. According to the New York Times, in one case several spray victims traveled 55 miles by bus to visit a hospital. The doctor who treated them said their symptoms included dizziness, nausea, muscle and joint pain, and skin rashes: "poisoned by ingesting pesticides."

"Since August the air we breathe hasn't been the same, and there are neighbors who have sore eyes and headaches, which isn't normal," said a farmer in the region. Corn crops and banana patches are wiped out. Sometimes the spray also lands on schoolyards or people's homes.

Damage has even been recorded by villagers in neighboring Ecuador, who told the InterPress Service that in the days after planes fumigated nearby Colombia, dozens of trees in their town died. Deaths in the area have been linked to the extensive and prolonged fumigation.

Farmers in the Caqueta province had designed inter-cropped gardens of native species, pasture areas with tree cover and small-scale fish farming. But spraying has undone the success of these small farmers who were working to establish ecologically and economically sound alternatives to the drug crops.

Emperatriz Cahuache, president of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, came to Washington to voice her opposition to the plan. "Fumigation violates our rights and our territorial autonomy," the indigenous leader said. "It has intensified the violence of the armed conflict and forced people to leave their homes after their food crops have been destroyed."

A host of non-governmental groups, including the Amazon Alliance, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Lindesmith Center, the US/Colombia Coordinating Office and the Washington Office on Latin America have all spoken out against this weapon of war. No one is listening.

A study conducted by the UN at the request of the Colombian government found that coca crop production has actually increased since the aerial eradication began. US State Department figures show coca production increasing in Colombia by 268 percent since large-scale spraying started. As coca growers move into more isolated areas to escape aerial eradication, their transportation costs increase and they must grow more plants to make the same amount of money. For every acre of coca crops eradicated in southern Colombia, three acres of the Amazon rainforest are cut down to replace them.

As many as 10,000 Colombians have been displaced, making local residents vulnerable to the guerrillas and paramilitary groups that were spawned from Colombia's long running civil war. Colombia continues to be an under-reported killing field of rebels, narcotics growers, smugglers, and political rivals attacking each other. Thousands of innocent peasants and labor leaders are murdered. The Colombian military has a well-documented record of human rights abuses including disappearances, arbitrary detentions, kidnappings and torture of civilians.

Originally, Congress made its drug war military aid dependent upon the Colombian government improving its human rights profile, but President Clinton waived this requirement so that the funds could flow south.

Now President Bush has allocated millions more for Colombia. Here is what he is proposing as part of the "Emergency Supplemental on Counter- terrorism" and the "Foreign Aid Bill for 2003":

• To remove human rights restrictions, as well as basic health and safety conditions on fumigation.

• To remove the counter-narcotics restrictions on past and present aid. This means full US involvement in Colombia's civil war, with devastating and long-term consequences.

• To spend over $100 million to protect Occidental Oil's pipeline despite protests by indigenous residents and owners of the land.

• To double the amount of fumigation by 2003, despite the fact that fumigation is a total failure.

• To increase military aid for 2003, even though the money we have sent down has only helped increase human rights violations and violence on all sides.

Bush's hidden agenda includes the development and export of oil, coal and even timber from that resource-rich country.

The Chicago Tribune ran an editorial (5-06-02) stating, "There is no advantage to the US getting deeper in the 40-year-old Colombian civil war. Money spent on drug interdiction there would be more productively used for treatment of addicts here."

Is anyone in Washington D.C. listening?

Afghanistan

Last year, while the Bush regime was spending $43 million in Afghanistan under the guise of the drug war, the Taliban actively produced and sold opium to finance their takeover of the country. Despite the propaganda, drugs in Afghanistan became more plentiful than ever.

The New York Times (10-22-01) reported, "In 1998 and 1999, US intelligence data revealed that larger laboratories for refining heroin were popping up in areas where they could exist only with the Taliban's assent. As the opium output rose, Afghanistan was processing more of its own heroin to supply newer markets in Eastern Europe and Russia, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia... In 2000, according to CIA estimates, the country's opium output surged to 4,042 tons, accounting for about 70 percent of the opium produced in the world."

The toppling of the Taliban is portrayed by the media as a triumph. However, improvements to the living conditions of the people are marginal. The emphasis remains military, not internal development. Instead, the kind of development likely to take place will be that by oil companies, among them Unocal. Up until the Taliban's recent fall, Unocal's efforts to put a pipeline through Afghanistan had been hampered by the lack of an internationally recognized government there. Now Unocal can forge ahead. In the meantime, opium-producing poppy fields continue to thrive in that poor, war-torn country.