Movin' Money - The Documents
M. d'Roubaix
Copyright 2012 by M. d'Roubaix
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Other Books by M. d'Roubaix
Movin' Money
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/33417
Movin' More Money
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/60076
Moved Money (soon to come)
Table of Contents
Source 2 Gary Webb and Dark Alliance
Source 6 1996 CIA Internal Audit
Source 7 1998 Justice Department Internal Audit
Source 8 National Security Archives
Source 9 Robert Parry Articles on OpEdNews.com
Source 11 British Biography of Ronald Reagan
Source 13 President Jimmy Carter
Source 14 Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick
Source 18 US Historical Interventions in Central America
Introduction
The Movin' Money series is what I have called "Documentary Fiction," which means that the background of the story is documented by sources available the public. The fiction part is in the telling of the story by characters which are amalgamations of real people I have known personally.
The story deals with the efforts of the United States Government in the 1980's to deal with what they called "Godless Communism" in Latin America. In that effort, guided by President Reagan's foreign policy advisor and later Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the United States gave help to those who were friendly to it and served its national interest. That help often required cash money, as it still does in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and perhaps others we are not aware of. When the wars we fought were more secret or not approved by Congress, that cash money had to come from secret sources. Like selling weapons to Iran, or like allowing tons of drugs to come into the United States to finance a prohibited invasion of Nicaragua.
In many cases, those governments who were friendly were dictatorships, usually military governments who committed gross atrocities against their own people. Dr. Kirkpatrick argued very convincingly that the dictatorships of the right who we knew were much more stable than the new dictatorships of the left, which often started with what appeared to be popular rebellions but turned out to be worse than the governments they replaced, such as in Iran and Nicaragua.
What has come to light in the years since is that some of those friendly governments the United States chose to support, like those of Argentina, El Salvador, or Guatemala committed almost incredible atrocities against their own people once they had the tacit support of the United States, and once they had the money or weapons which the United States supplied, often against the wishes of Congress.
Guatemala is a special case, where well over a hundred thousand Mayan peasants were murdered in two to three years without a single comment by the Reagan Government. Murder had been going on in that country for decades, the total cost of their Civil War numbering over two hundred thousand dead and close to a million displaced during the thirty years of conflict. But most of those murders, and specifically most of the atrocities committed against the Maya took place in a few short years during the Reagan Administration.
Instead of decrying genocide like the United States would be expected to do, President Reagan congratulated the General responsible for the worst atrocities, Efrain Rios Montt, for keeping Communism our of his country. President Clinton later apologized as the Catholic Church and the United Nations presented to the world the lists of the hundreds of villages destroyed, the nearly two hundred thousand dead and buried in mass graves.
President Reagan's actions were in sharp contrast to those of the Carter Administration, which had introduced the doctrine of Human Rights as the underlying base of its foreign policy, a doctrine later adopted by the United Nations and still part of official United States foreign policy. Moreover, it felt that people everywhere had the right to elect their own governments, even if those elected were not friendly to the United States.
Democracy was not something we could impose, the Carter government said, but that over time it would be the natural result of an evolutionary process in a world increasingly tied together by economics and communication. Over the long term that would seem to be true, as we now have diplomatic and commercial relations with Viet Nam, Nicaragua and so many of our perceived enemies from before, where so many of those former guerrilla fighters now sit as elected officials. Those who formed the State of Israel were at one time classified as terrorists, so such evolution is possible. It all depends on who is the winner.
I started my experience in Latin America in Argentina as a missionary, then lived in Central America from the mid - 1960's into the beginnings of the 1980's. It was a violent time there, which grew more violent with each passing year. I started as a student, continued as a contractor to the U. S. Agency for International Development, eventually was drafted into the U. S. Foreign Service. I later lived in Peru and Chile, traveled extensively to Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador and to the Cayman Islands as a consultant and a researcher. I even took groups of U.S. university students to Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba (legally), and Honduras. The U.S. Foreign Service classified me as a "native speaker" of Spanish, I taught university classes in Spanish at three universities in Guatemala, and one in Texas.
So I could understand what was going on there. As a professional Geographer with an earned PhD I could observe for myself as well as listen to what others told me. I was also trained as a researcher, and have carried out research projects ranging from Cuban property issues to Solid Waste Issues in Florida, from illegal Salvadoran migration onto the Pacific Coast lowlands of Guatemala to slums in Lima. My ultimate research before retiring from professional life was for law firms in Florida defending citizens from gross environmental pollution by corporations.
When I began to tell my students at a Florida university about what I witnessed in Central and South America, I realized that although the stories I told might serve as "real life" flavor, I needed to back them up with documentary research. It was not hard: there are literally hundreds of thousands of pages of public documents from Congress, Federal Agencies, declassified Government Documents, all available to anyone who wishes to read them. And there are hundreds of news articles written about the subject background of the Movin' Money series; along with those there are dozens of books that have been written, backed up with their own documents that are inexpensively available to anyone who is interested.
Movin' Money tells a story within the background of the Reagan War on Communism in Central America. It takes as fact that cash money from drugs as well as from arms sales to Iran and who knows what other irregular means, was used to help finance that war. The teller of the story, Dr. Neal Hanson, is a fictional character who while working in Guatemala sees something he shouldn't have seen, tries to tell his story, and ends up in jail in that country. Over the next two years he gets out of jail but is drafted into the process of moving drug money from Peru to Panama to the Cayman Islands, supposedly as a research project. Eventually he and his closest friends end up in El Salvador where they are forced to move a very large amount of drug money stolen from the Contra cause by one of the people responsible for funding that army.
His closest friends, one a former student from Guatemala who has become a lawyer, has worked for the forerunner of Human Rights Watch, and has become his live-in housemate; another a Peruvian woman who is a former Miami TV personality who prefers women to men; still another is a hyperactive sculptor in Peru who makes special suitcases to transport drugs, and now money; and one of the largest coca growers who supplies Coca Cola legally, as well as the Colombians because he was asked to do so by the Americans as part of the War on International Communism.
Behind all these is his family, who escaped from Guatemala when he was put in prison, but who he has vowed to protect even to his own destruction, if not with his presence, at least with the money needed to take care of them.
Always there is a villain, in this case Neal Hanson's controller, who has been a long time patriot doing the jobs no one wants to know about, cynical after so many years and so many countries, but in reality a person just like Neal, or perhaps Neal is just like him.
There are other people of course; Cayman Island bankers, Houston financial managers, beautiful members of the Peruvian Lesbian community who can get through customs anywhere because they are just not interested in the male drug police, as well as rich young drug dealers and university professors who cook cocaine in their labs at school. And of course members of the U.S. Foreign service who taught him, mentored him, and used him in an earlier life.
That is the story.
I cannot finish without a comment about our current times and the current elections. I hear daily some of the candidates wishing for the return of the Reagan days when our country regained its pride. I was not in the United States for some of those days, but I was personally involved with the "Reagan days" as a person living in foreign countries. I do not wish for the return of the Reagan days, for the United States was an international bully, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in foreign countries to show its power. If you believe as we do, fine. If not, "better dead than Red." I am not anxious for that kind of a foreign policy to come back. It did during both of the Bush administrations. We should be able to see some sort of pattern there.
If you have not heard of this, it is because much was kept from the American people. As was brought out during the Iran-Contra Congressional Hearings, there was a very successful attempt to control the news that the American people received. That also is not something that I would like to see us return to.
My books are not an attack on President Reagan personally. I prefer to let sleeping gods lie. He was a product of his times, and chose to surround himself with those who brought him to the governorship of California and eventually to the Presidency of the United States. As he admitted himself, some of those people made decisions he was not aware of, or if he was, they fell on their swords to protect him. In spite of being convicted of crimes, only one of those people went to jail, the lowest ranking one. President Bush pardoned all of the upper level ones as one of his final acts as President, and many went on to serve in Bush 2 Presidency.
But then President Bush knew what was going on. Was he not in charge of the War on Drugs when the tons of cocaine sent by the Contras entered freely into the country? If he was not aware of it, then he was a very poor choice to be in charge. Other people were aware, and wrote about it, as will be seen below.
But what happened outside the United States did happen. I witnessed it and took part in it; I knew many good people who did not survive it. Movin' Money takes place within that background.
The Documents
Now to the documents. This is not an academic research paper, so I have not listed the documents in that format. Nor have I discarded sources that are not acceptable in the academic world, such as Wikipedia articles. These are often a good starting place, and should be taken as such. I have tried to list those documents which can be accessed through the Internet, which includes some of the books and nearly all of the government documents. Some of the newspaper ones (such as New York Times and Associated Press, require a small fee to access their archives, but many of them are included on other websites, which I have listed. The list is not complete, but these are the ones I have used.
I have tried to provide on-line references whenever possible. As a faculty member at a university, I also had access to an excellent library and to inter-library loan where I could get books from almost any other university in the United States. For the electronic sources, I have included links, all of which worked at the time of publication.
Source 1 The Mayan Genocide
For those who might doubt that there was a genocide committed just south of Mexico in the 1980's, the following references might supply the information needed. Yes, this is the worst genocide we've never heard of in the United States, and the closest to our border: just 3 hours flying time from Houston.
Most of us think of the Mayans as those people who lived on the Yucatan Peninsula, built great pyramids, disappeared but whose calendar foretells the end of the world in 2012. The Yucatan Mayans actually originated in the highlands of Guatemala where their ancestors had domesticated corn, or maize. While the Mayan culture flourished in the lowlands, it existed in the Guatemalan highlands long before and long after it disappeared in the Yucatan. When I first went to Guatemala in the 1960's, they and other indigenous groups formed seventy percent of the population and communicated in nearly two dozen Mayan root languages.
Officially, the Guatemalan Civil War which stretched from 1962 through the final peace in 1996, caused the death of over 200,000 people out of a country of four and a half million in 1965. Ninety three percent of those casualties were caused by the armed forces of the country, 83% were Mayans. Up until the Presidency of General Romeo Lucas Caballeros in 1978, the Indigenous population of the Guatemalan highlands had been considered inert. But then the Armed Forces began targeting that population for the first time, fearful that it might succumb to "outside influences" and convert to Communism. Even though the functional literacy rate was less than 20%, infiltrators from Cuba and Russia and China and eventually Nicaragua would certainly be able to convince them that the ideas of Marx would work for them.
So it was that General Lucas and the two Generals who succeeded him in the Presidency murdered the vast majority of the 200,000, destroying entire villages along with their animals and their farmland in a Viet Nam style "scorched earth" campaign taught to them in the United States by the United States Armed Forces which trained them at the School of the Americas.
The government of General Efrain Rios Montt, who himself was a graduate of the School of the Americas as well as an evangelical minister converted and ordained in California, began through a coup in 1982. He lasted less than two years, but his motto became "beans or guns." The Mayans were to agree with the military and get fed (their fields had been destroyed), or die from bullets. Not very different than when Pizarro and other Conquistadores of centuries earlier demanded that large indigenous gatherings accept baptism or be enslaved, or die. In this case there were posters on trees and walls everywhere which showed a square jawed soldier with a Bible in one hand, an automatic weapon in the other just to remind people who was in charge.
During the Reagan Administration, the Mayan Genocide took place with few comments from the United States Embassy in Guatemala. Embassy staff was over two hundred when I was there in the early Sixties and Seventies. But very little information reached anyone outside a select few in the United States whose best interest, it would seem, was to not rock the popular President's boat with "leftist" sounding complaints. President Reagan even came to Guatemala in December of 1982 to congratulate President Rios Montt for his war against International Communism, telling the world that the murderous General had Guatemala's best interests at heart. The international news media, all leftist of course, was well informed of what was going on, and released a continual stream of news about Reagan supporting those who had donated millions to his campaign, even at the cost of thousands of innocent lives. But once again, those in Europe, most of them socialists of course, were not voices heard in the United States.
Along with the dead, a million peasants, mostly Mayan, fled to Southern Mexico, losing their traditional lands to the non-Indigenous land owners who very often had been deputized by the military governments to control the populations in their areas. Their resettlement back into Guatemala is still going on, very slowly.
President Clinton cooperated with the work of the United Nations Historical Clarification Commission formed in 1994 as part of the peace treaty between now civilian governments in Guatemala and the various insurgent groups. As part of that process (known as the Oslo Accords) President Clinton ordered the gathering and releasing of State Department documents from the 1980's to that Commission. After that Commission's reports, President Clinton apologized to the Guatemalan people for the United States having supplied many of the arms and other equipment used in the genocide, and for having looked the other way.
It takes a long time, but some form of justice is coming. General Lucas was indicted for crimes against humanity, but fled to Venezuela where that government protected him, and recently died of old age. General Rios Montt has protected himself over the years by continual election to the Guatemalan Congress, giving him immunity. Until this year, when, without his congressional protection, he has finally been indicted in Guatemala and will stand trial.
A U.S. photo journalist, Victor Blue, resident in New York, has been chronicling the recovery of the bodies of the missing in Guatemala for over ten years. This week (February 10, 2012) a sequence of his pictures appeared in CNN Photos. This set chronicles the recovery of approximately 300 bodies from an area of Guatemala City known as La Verbena. If you have any doubts, take a look at his photos, just a small sampling of the long term recovery going on there. They are found at:
http://cnnphotos.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/10/searching-for-the-disappeared-in-guatemala/?hpt=hp_c4
The Historical Clarification Commission
This was Guatemala's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, much like that of South Africa, and later Ruanda and Bosnia. The Commission was to investigate human rights violations by both sides, and inform the people of Guatemala what had happened between January 1962 and the final peace accord, to be signed in 1996. The Commission's Report is named "Memory of Silence"
Memory of Silence - The report.
A Summary in English can be found at
http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/toc.html
A Press Conference by the Members of the Historical Clarification Commission was given March 1, 1999 and can be found on the United Nations website.
http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/1999/19990301.guate.brf.html
A BBC news report on the Press Conference is given on its website on February 25, 1999: "World: Americas: Guatemala 'genocide' probe blames state"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/286402.stm
Report by the Archdiocese of Guatemala
Bishop Gerardi.
Guatemalan Bishop, Juan Gerardi was a Guatemalan born priest who studied theology in New Orleans. After serving in several parishes around the country, he was named Bishop of Verapaz, a heavily Mayan area of the country north of Guatemala City. In 1974 he was also named Bishop of Quiche, which in he 80's was to become one of he most violent areas of the Guatemalan Army's attempt to control the Mayans. In 1980 we went to Rome for a conference, was denied entry back into Guatemala, and also into El Salvador, finally spending the next two years in Costa Rica. After returning in 1982 he became Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala (1984) and director of the Office of Human Rights of the Archbishopric.
In 1988 he was appointed to the National Reconciliation Commission of the then civilian government, which led to the gathering of data by the Catholic Church and others of specific results of the Civil War. His work was entitled the Recovery of Historical Memory. His four volume report listed the dead, the missing and the displaced, and recorded personal testimonies of atrocities committed by the Guatemalan Armed Forces, the Civil Action Patrols, the National Police and the various guerrilla groups. The report of the findings was summarized in his report in Spanish entitled Guatemala; Nunca Mas In English:
Guatemala: Never Again!
This report is available in book form at Amazon.com. The listing is at:
http://www.amazon.com/Guatemala-Never-Again-Archidiocese/dp/157075294X
An on-line summary of the report's statistics can be found at:
Bishop Gerardi was brutally murdered some fifty hours after the publication of the report. Over a ten year period, two Army officers, a civilian and a priest were accused of the conspiracy and convicted in a civil court. The entire process received a great deal of publicity. Bishop Gerardi was accused of being a Marxist because he blamed the Army for the vast majority of the hundred thousand deaths attested to. The United States was blamed for the murder because the Army Colonel leading the conspiracy was trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia. Further information came out that nearly all of the upper level Army staff that carried out the Genocide had been trained in the same school.
For interest purposes only, some of the articles and websites referring to all of this are listed.
A website dedicated to keeping a "watch" on the School of Americas published the following:
http://soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=218
An article remembering Bishop Gerardi and his death on the tenth anniversary is found at:
Another excellent article is found in Upside Down World, Saturday January 21, 2012. Written by Jennifer Mizgata in 2006, it is entitled "Challenging Impunity Through the Guatemalan Justice System"
And probably the best recounting of the killing of the Bishop and the aftermath is found in the book: "The Art of Political Murder" by Francisco Goldman. Published by Atlantic Books in 2008 and available on Amazon.co.UK. To locate the book and get a good description, go to;
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Political-Murder-Killed-Gerardi/dp/1843547376
or, to Amazon.com at the same site for a Kindle edition.
Rigoberta Menchu': Nobel Peace Prize Winner in 1992
Rigoberta Menchu' is a Mayan woman who lived through parts of the Genocide. Her father was a member of one of the guerrilla groups, killed when the Army stormed the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City killing the Ambassador and dozens of others. She later became part of an insurgent organization, was exiled for years but continued assisting in the battle for Indigenous rights in Guatemala. That battle earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. She describes her life as an Indigenous Mayan in Guatemala during the Civil War.
Her Biography at the official Nobel Site can be found at:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1992/tum-bio.html
Her own biography, as dictated in Venezuela to Elizabeth Burgos Debray, entitled "I, Rigoberta Menchu, An Indian Woman in Guatemala" was published internationally in 1984 by Verso, New York and London. Elizabeth Burgos is a Latin American Anthropologist. The original title in Spanish was "My Name is Rigoberta Menchu' and This is How my Consciousness was Raised."
Her autobiography, entitled "Crossing Borders: An Autobiography" was published in 1988 by Verso, New York. First written in Italian, then translated into Spanish and English. This book was later published in twelve languages, won several awards, and formed an international consciousness of what was happening in Guatemala in the 1980's.
All of Rigoberta Menchu's books, including some in Spanish, are available at Amazon.com. There are six of them listed, including a very recent one specifically about the Genocide. These books are all either paperback or hard cover. The listings are at:
"The Man we Called Juan Carlos".
This is a fifty minute documentary film I used to show my students, It starts in the 1970's and continues into the 1990's. It details the history of one Mayan man and his family as they passed through the bad years. Made by independent Canadian film makers Heather MacAndrew and David Springfield, it was a hard sell and never highly successful at the time it was produced. There was "no market in the States for this kind of reportage" during the Reagan and Bush Administrations. They continued to add to it into the 90's, during the peace process. It has since won several international prizes.
A review of the film is available in Yes Magazine, posted Mar 31, 2003 at this site:
Bullfrog Films distributes the film. Their description is as follows:
"The Man We Called Juan Carlos Chronicles the violent history of Guatemala and life of Wenceslao Armira, a Mayan father, farmer, teacher, guerilla, priest and champion of human rights."
The catalogue listing for the film is:
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/man.html
To bring it right down to the nitty gritty, the Guatemalan Death Squads kept good records of their work. In fact, two of the children of the man described in "The Man We Called Juan Carlos" were murdered by one of the Death Squads, and those murders were recorded. The film shows their names and listings when shown to their mother and their father.
National Security Archive records
The National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 15 entitled "Guatemalan Death Squad Dossier" can be found at:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB15/press.html
One of The National Security Archives' human rights reporters, Kate Doyle, has recently won several prestigious awards for her work on Guatemala, El Salvador, and Peru. A news brief on her awards with a listing of her many documentary discoveries, including police files such as the above "Death Squad Dossier," evidence which is now being brought to bear thirty years later in the genocide trails of several army officers and finally the President at the time, General Efrain Rios Montt, are linked to that news page. These are actual records of massacres, torture, plans to eliminate whole groups of Mayans, etc. See:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20120203/index.htm
Source 2 Gary Webb and Dark Alliance
What started me writing about Guatemala and the War on Communism after many years of purposely staying away from it were the articles that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in 1993 under the title Dark Alliance. What really stimulated me was when Gary Webb committed suicide several years later after being ridiculed in the national press, having his articles recalled by his own paper and his career ruined.
What really called my attention at first was that his suicide consisted of two shots to the head. How does one shoot himself twice in the head? It reminded me of the brother of a young lady who worked in our home in Guatemala; he'd shot himself sixteen times in the chest with his army issued automatic weapon.
Gary Webb did commit suicide, but he did so because he ran into a wall trying to report on the irregularities of President Reagan's not so secret war against Nicaragua. He claimed that tons of cocaine were imported into California, with full knowledge of the CIA and the Justice Department who were protecting certain dealers because they were supplying money to the Contras. He also made the claim that the crack revolution in Los Angeles had been purposely started by the CIA to kill African Americans there. I found that claim hard to accept, just as I had never accepted that AIDS had been started in Africa by the CIA.
Nevertheless, his articles revealed the outlines of a great conspiracy, and he backed his claims up with extensive documentation. The conspiracy had to do with providing cash money to the Contras against the wishes of Congress through the protected import of large amounts of cocaine. Enough cocaine that the price on the street dropped from $100 a gram to $25. I, as well as everyone else in California it would seem, was personally aware of that. That abundance is what most probably led to the crack revolution. An unintended consequence, and a good example of the market trumping political expediency. The more they allowed in, the less money they made, so the more had to come in. Until it was finally cheap enough to make crack with.
His articles, while hotly denied by everyone, nevertheless stimulated internal audits at the CIA, the Justice Department and other agencies, audits demanded by Congress which only a decade earlier had gone through the Iran-Contra affair. His web site after his articles came out was the most visited in the United States. But under pressure from the government agencies involved, and the ridicule of the major news media in the country, the San Jose Mercury news disavowed the story from its prize winning investigative journalist, took down the web site and farmed Gary Webb out to a small town.
Nearly everything he said has turned out to be true, as will be seen from references presented in later pages.
Gary Webb: "Dark Alliance," three articles originally published in the San Jose Mercury News starting August, 1993. The stories are no longer available in that newspaper's archives. But they can be read in some others. Unfortunately, the thousands of documents that he had on his website are no longer available on line, but they are in his book, which will be listed shortly.
Narconews: This website has all three stories plus updated news about the stories through 1996 and some of the documents.
http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/drugs/start.htm.
Another website contains the articles as downloaded at the time by the Seattle Times.
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/webb.html
Gary Webb published his articles in 1999 in book form. The book, published by Seven Stories Press, is entitled "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion." The book is complete with extensive source materials and citations, material from the web site that was taken down, including parts of an early CIA internal audit backing up much of what he wrote about in the first two articles. The book is available on Amazon.com in print and electronic format for Kindle, PC, IPAD, I-phone, etc. at a very low price.
The Columbia Journalism Review published a very complete story entitled "The Storm over 'Dark Alliance'" in its January/February 1997 issue under its section "Anatomy of a Story." Written by David Kornbluh, it is a very complete analysis of how and perhaps why the American media criticized Gary Webb's story so very heavily.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/storm.htm
The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc. has published on its website, Consortiumnews.com, an "Archive: Contra-Crack Series" with 28 on-line stories related to Webb's assertions written between 1996 and 2007. This can be found at
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html
Other books about "Dark Alliance"
Robert Parry (1999). "Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'". Media Consortium, publisher. Robert Parry was an Associated Press Reporter, who with Brian Barger, first reported on claims that there were elements of the Contras trafficking drugs. That article was the stimulus for Senator John Kerry's investigation of the issue. More about Robert Parry and about Senator Kerry's investigation below. Parry knew Gary Webb well, and told him that if he continued his research and published these stories, he would "destroy his reputation."
Robert Parry: "Lost History" Available at Amazon.com in a medium priced paperback edition at:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Robert+Parry+
See also:
Nick Schou (Charles Bowden, preface) (2006). "Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Gary Webb" Nation Books. Available at Amazon.com. in a low priced paperback version, but not in electronic format.
Source 3 Iran-Contra
There are volumes of material written about the Iran-Contra affair or scandal or issue. It was the Reagan Administrations major scandal, with the President himself having to explain why his administration was dealing with a terrorist government, selling it arms, in fact. Even worse, he had to explain why part of his administration was expressly going against the wishes of Congress as expressed in the Boland Amendments to three annual budgets which prohibited the funding of an invasion of Nicaragua by the Contras. Selling weapons to Iran was one thing, going against the express wishes of Congress something else. So a joint House/Senate investigative committee was formed (and televised), then a special prosecutor named to seek criminal indictments against those responsible.
Some references I have used are the following:
A New York Times article just before the Congressional Committee hearings, "Unraveling the Iran-Contra Affair"
A website that attempts to pull together a lot of available information about the Iran-Contra issue is the following:
http://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/index.php
The National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 2, entitled "The Contras, Cocaine and Covert Operations" gives reference to a wealth of information once classified, now open for public reading. Reference is made below to the National Security Archive and to this particular source. Just one of those documents is titled: "The Iran-Contra Scandal: The Declassified History" and lists "101 most important documents on the policy decisions, covert operations and the subsequent cover up." The whole Book is worth browsing. The first website below will take you to the Briefing Book No. 2, the second to the specific article mentioned.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/DOC_readers/icread/icread.html
An on-line document prepared by the Independent Counsel for the criminal trial of those identified by the Congressional hearings is:
"Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters: Lawrence E. Walsh"
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/.
A number of now unclassified documents, such as Col. Oliver North's diaries and memos about Senator John Kerry's investigation can be found in the National Security Archives, listed below.
Source 4 Kerry Commission
Senators John Kerry and Christopher Dodd, minority members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked the Chairman, Senator Richard Lugar, to instigate an investigation into the issue of the Contras trafficking drugs and the CIA being possibly implicit. Senator Church approved it, and the Subcommittee on Drugs. Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy began its investigation in early 1986. The Committee issued a report in 1989 naming Lt. Col. Oliver North and the National Security Council as violating U.S. law in his supply operation to the Contras and that the Contras were actively involved in drug trafficking as well as arms trafficking, and that the U.S. State Department had even made payments to indicted drug dealers.
As Parry asserts in his article below, a concerted effort was made to thwart the work of the Sub Committee and downplay its findings, even though this investigation occurred at the same time as the Iran-Contra Congressional Hearings and later trial, which were a public scandal.
The newswire article that started Kerry's investigation was written by Robert Parry and Brian Barger of the Associated Press, appearing on December 20, 1985. The article entitled "Reports Link Nicaraguan Rebels to Cocaine Trafficking" ran in most major American Newspapers. That same article moved the Reagan Administration to order an FBI investigation and issue a brief statement when that was complete. I have not been able to find the specific article on line, although the Associated Press does have a searchable Archive which can be accessed for a small price. Other Robert Parry articles are listed below.
The Kerry Commission Report
The final report, released to the public on April 13, 1989 was 400 pages long, with an additional 600 page appendix. The committee stated "It is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."
A printed version entitled U.S. Senate: Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy. (S. Rpt.100-165). Washington, was available from the Government Printing Office, after 1989 for the cost of reproduction. I received an electronic copy in 2008 or 2009 from the GPO, but it no longer seems to be available from that source.
The report is available on-line from the National Security Archives at George Washington University under the title Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, with the date December 1988. Go to:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/north06.pdf
Parts of the report are also available electronically at:
http://www.pinknoiz.com/covert/contracoke.html
An article by Robert Parry talks about the difficulties of the Committee and the attempts to bury its report. Like all of Parry's journalistic work, it is very complete and well documented. "How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine Scandal" first appeared in print on Oct. 25, 2004. It was reprinted in the electronic web magazine, Salon.com on December 1, 2010.
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2004/10/25/contra/index.htm
Source 5 FBI Investigation
The report itself was never available to the public, but could possibly be found in the National Security Archives if it has been declassified. Shortly after its findings, the Reagan Administration released a three page statement on April 17, 1986, explaining that a "limited number of individuals" among the Contras were approached by known drug traffickers in 1984 and 1985 when the "freedom fighters" were hard pressed for cash (because of Congress). In every case, the approaches were "rebuffed."
While the FBI document may not be available, the Associated Press news reports are, written again by Robert Parry and Brian Barger.
"FBI Reportedly Probes Contras on Drugs, Guns" AP (April 10, 1986)
"U.S. Concedes Contras Linked to Drugs but Denies Leadership Involved." AP (April 17. 1986)
Source 6 1998 CIA Internal Audit
On March 16, 1998, the Inspector General of the CIA, Frederick Hitz admitted that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals the CIA knew were involved in the drug business. Hitz told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that "there are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations."
His complete testimony before Congress (which only deals with Part I of the Report) can be found at:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_hr/980316-ps.htm
The Report of Mr. Hitz's internal audit was released in two volumes. One deals with the "California Story," in other words the story reported by Gary Webb in Dark Alliance. The second volume deals with the larger question of the Contras and the CIA connections to them, including an analysis of all the contractors, companies, individuals etc. who were connected, some of which had been accused of trafficking drugs. This second volume was extremely specific in naming the names of all who trafficked drugs for the Contras, a great many of whom were CIA contractors or collaborators.
The two volumes were first classified, then edited and declassified for public release, and were made available at: www.odci.gov/cia but that link is no longer valid. I found and read them at a different source.
Volume I deals with "The California Story" in direct response to Gary Webb's Dark Alliance articles. The "Overview" of findings was available at the time my research was done, and was even available up until the writing of this booklet. It no longer seems to be so. But go ahead and try at the website below for Volume II.
Volume II, dealing very specifically with the Contras and their connections is available at the following website:
https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/contents.html
The Appendices to Volume II can be found at the same website.
While Congress held hearings on Volume I which disputed the idea of the CIA sponsoring the crack revolution, they never held hearings on Volume II, which did reveal the importation of large amounts of cocaine into the United States.
Robert Parry on ConsortiumNews.com, in an article entitled "Gary Webb's Enduring Memory" written December 11, 2009 recounts his reaction upon hearing of Gary Webb's suicide. The article describes how the major newspapers of the country blocked Mr. Webb's stories, as well as failed to report the CIA internal audits by Mr. Hitz. He goes over both Hitz reports in great detail. The article can be found at:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/121007.html
Frederick Hitz, the CIA Internal Auditor, in a PBS interview (Frontline) commented freely about his investigative work.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/hitz.html
Robert Parry, in an article dated October 15, 1998 entitled "CIA's Drug Confessions" deals specifically with the second volume of the Hitz Report. This is part of the Consortiumnews.com Archive: Contra Crack Series.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor29.html
Another article for a professional association by Frederick Hitz and others is also instructive. Frederick P. Hitz; Inaba, DS; Sheppard, CW; Newmeyer, JA (1999).. International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence "Obscuring Propriety: The CIA and Drugs"12 (4): 448–462.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/088506099304990
A PBS documentary entitled "Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories, and the CIA in Central America," recounts Webb's claims in the San Jose Mercury News and then concentrates on the Hitz Report, the CIA internal audit. The documentary is written and produced by Craig Delaval for the PBS Series, "Drug Wars".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/cia.html
Source 7 1998 Justice Department Internal Audit
On July 23, 1998, the Justice Department released a report by its Inspector General, Michael R. Bromwich. The Bromwich report claimed that the Reagan-Bush administration was aware of cocaine traffickers in the Contra movement and did nothing to stop the criminal activity. The report also alleged a pattern of discarded leads and witnesses, sabotaged investigations, instances of the CIA working with drug traffickers, and the discouragement of DEA investigations into Contra-cocaine shipments. The CIA's refusal to share information about Contra drug trafficking with law-enforcement agencies was also documented. The Bromwich report corroborated Webb's investigation into several of the San Francisco area Nicaraguan drug smugglers.
Department of Justice: The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions (December, 1997)
The Executive Summary can be found at:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/exec.htm
The Table of Contents to the full report is at:
http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/index.htm
And finally, an Epilogue written in July, 1998 dealing with reasons for a delay in releasing the report, can be found at: the Index site above.
Source 8 The National Security Archives
The National Security Archives is a privately-held collection of documents at George Washington University. This is the largest existing collection of declassified documents relating to National Security issues, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, Obligatory Declassification as mandated by law, etc. For information about the Archives, go to:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/the_archive.html
Their Electronic Briefing Book No. 2 has the title "The Contras, Cocaine and Covert Operations." It was issued as a result of Gary Webb's articles, and contains declassified documents from the National Security Council and from Oliver North's diaries and notebooks.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm
A special part of the Electronic Briefing Book 2 deals with the specific knowledge that drug trafficking by the Contras was well known by the CIA and other parts of the U.S. Government. This part is covered in the testimony of one of the National Security Archive analysts.
"Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade: Testimony of Peter Kornbluh, Senior Analyst, National Security Archive, October 19, 1996,"
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/pktstmny.htm
NSA Briefing Book No. 113 issued February 26, 2004 deals specifically with Oliver North, including documents from his prosecution file as well as his notes and memos about John Kerry's investigation and others.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm
Kate Doyle of the National Security Archives has recently won two prestigious awards for her human rights reporting on Guatemala, El Salvador and Peru. A complete list of her collections of police and army documents, as well as survivors' testimony has been instrumental in having army and police officers, including the former President of Guatemala, Efrain Rios Montt, finally enter that country's court system on genocide charges. See the news announcement about her awards and her long list of documentary revelations at:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20120203/index.htm
Source 9 Robert Parry Articles on OpEdNews.com
Robert Parry is mentioned a great deal in this booklet. As a credible journalist for the Associated Press, later for Newsweek and other publications, he was the first to expose possible drug trafficking by the Contras. His articles stimulated the Kerry Committee Investigation, and throughout the years he has continued reporting as an independent journalist on the Contra-Cocaine connection as well as other political issues. Over four hundred of his articles can be found on the on-line news magazine, OpEdNews.com. Not all of them deal now with this theme, but all of them are interesting.
http://www.opednews.com/author/author1553.html
He can also be found on Consortium.com, which is the website of the Consortium for Independent Journalists, Inc. Additional reference to some of his articles there will be made later.
Source 10 Other Books
While all of these books are available at Amazon.com, some are relatively expensive even there. I found most of these at university libraries around the United States and accessed them through Inter-library loan.
Celerino III Castillo & Dave Harmon (1994). "Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras & the Drug War." Sundial Press. Available in paperback from Amazon. Com. Written by a former DEA agent who served in Peru and later in Central America, not at all happy about the use of drugs to finance the Contras. Available at Amazon.com. The specific reference is
Alexander Cockburn Sinclair (1998). "Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press" available in hardcover and paperback from Amazon.com. Basically it is a criticism of the handling of the press by the Reagan and Bush administrations and the press's acquiescence. Available at Amazon.com. The specific reference is
Marcy, William L. (2010) "The Politics of Cocaine: How U.S. Foreign Policy Has Created a Thriving Drug Industry in Central and South America" Available at Amazon.com in hardcover and on Kindle and other electronic devices. The specific reference is:
Scott, Peter Dale (1998). Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. University of California Press. Available at Amazon.com in paperback and for Kindle or other electronic device. The specific reference is
Source 11 British Biography of Ronald Reagan
By John Simkin, for Spartacus Educational which is a British on-line college. This is a view from someone outside the United States, with no obligation to support or tear down a legend. It is well documented, relying on sources such as the BBC which was able to report much more than the U.S. news media was willing to do.
As part of the Iran-Contra hearings, for example, it discloses that in Oliver North's office there was an ex-CIA officer whose job it was to control the press, mostly by rewarding those who printed favorable information with access, denying that access to those reporters who did not.
Also included are the facts that Guatemala and other countries helped to elect Ronald Reagan on promises of renewed military aid. Amigos del Pais in Guatemala gave $11,000 per month to the office of candidate Reagan's publicist, Michal Deaver, who was a lobbyist registered as agent for various foreign countries, including Argentina, Guatemala and Taiwan. As President Reagan's Assistant Chief of Staff, Deaver was eventually convicted of fraud involving the charging of one of his overseas clients for a sit down with President Reagan while a public official.
Simkin also claims that General Lucas of Guatemala gave the Reagan campaign a million dollars personally, and was rewarded by receiving assistance from the United States in his anti-Communist genocide of the Mayas in spite of Congressional limitations.
In commenting on the death squads in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Simkin makes the claim that representatives of the Reagan campaign. along with members of the World Anti-Communist League publically stated that "some innocents get killed" in such wars, but that was the price to pay."
I can find no date on the Spartacus Biography, but following the actual biography are a great many news and book clips for discussion which are excellent.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAreagan.htm
One very important part of the Spartacus Biography is a discussion of what has become known as October Surprise. This concerns the claim that the Reagan campaign team, including George Bush Sr., William Casey, and Michael Deaver met with representatives of the Iranian Government to hold of on the release of the American Hostages in Iran. Had they been released toward the end of President Carter's term, he might well have won a second term. But if the Reagan campaign team actually had secret dealings with the hostage holders to put off that release until Reagan's inaugurations day (which is what actually happened) then that group of people is guilty of treason.
The term and the claim was made in 1999 by Barbara Honegger, a researcher for the Reagan campaign, in her book, "October Surprise." She gives details of meetings in Madrid with the Iranians to arrange the delay of the release of the hostages. She published that book after President Reagan left office. While this was not part of the material I researched at the time I was writing Movin' Money, I have since gathered a great deal of information about it. That is given below under the October Surprise title.
Source 12 October Surprise
The original book by Barbara Honegger which claims that members of the Reagan campaign organization held secret meetings with the Iranian government to keep American hostages captive until after the elections available on Amazon.com in hardcover form. Its specific website is:
Another book describing the same potential act of treason is by Gary Sick. "October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan." November, 1991. Available on Amazon.Com in hardcover and paperback. The specific website is
http://www.amazon.com/October-Surprise-Gary-Sick/dp/0812920872/ref=pd_sim_b_1
A book by Robert Parry entitled "Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery" written in 1993 is available on Amazon at the following reference:
A source for recent articles about the "October Surprise" issue can be found on the Consortium for Independent Journalism Inc. website, Consortiumnews.com under Archive: The October Surprise Mystery. That can be found at:
http://consortiumnews.com/the-new-october-surprise-series/
The October Surprise issue has raised its head lately due to the release of formerly classified documents in the Presidential Library of George Bush. Some of these documents seem to place him in Europe on those days when the meetings with the Iranians took place. For several articles about this and other developments, see the most recent Robert Parry articles on OpEdNews.com, referenced earlier. Many of them are also on the Consortiumnews.com site listed above.
http://www.opednews.com/author/author1553.html
Source 13 President Jimmy Carter
"Human Rights and Foreign Policy" Commencement address given at Notre Dame University, June 1977. setting United States policy on human rights around the world.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=727
Source 14 Dr. Jeane Kirkpatrick
Article in Commentary, November 1979 "Dictatorships and Double Standards" criticizing the Carter Administration foreign policy and setting the stage for the Reagan government's foreign policy.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/dictatorships-double-standards/
Source 15 Washington Monthly
Article "Follow the Money" by David Sirota and Jonathan Baskin in, September 2004 As part of the Kerry Investigations, BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) was identified as one of the major banks for drug dealers, as well as for the Contras.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html
Source 16 Time Magazine
"Central America Battling Over a Not so Secret War." Monday, May 7, 1984. By George Russell, Barrett Seaman, Ricardo Chavira. This article deals with the Nicaraguan claim before the International Court that the United States had mined the Nicaraguan Ports and assisted the Contras directly in their attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of that country. These claims led to the passage of the Boland Amendments to the Federal Budget during several years. These amendments prohibited Intelligence Agencies, later the Pentagon and eventually any part of the Reagan Administration from giving military aid to the Contras for the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government. President Reagan by-passed Congress by having his National Security Council Staff, including Colonel Oliver North, do the work.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,954298,00.html
Source 17 WICKIPEDIA Articles
For short summaries with references and bibliography, the following Wikipedia articles are useful. In academic writing they are not considered valid sources, but for general knowledge, dates, timelines, and basic reference, they are largely excellent.
a. Boland Amendments
b. CIA and Contras Cocaine Trafficking
c. Contras
d. Gary Webb
e. Iran-Contra Affair
f. Kerry Committee Report
g. Mayan Genocide
h. National Security Archives
i. Oliver North
j. Robert Parry
Each article gives references to others. Some of the articles have been challenged as to point of view, but not corrected.
Source 18 U.S. Historical Interventions in Central America
For a good article about U.S. historical interventions in Central America see "U.S. Interventions in Latin America," by Mark Rosenfelder, 1966
http://www.zompist.com/latam.html
Hope these references help. Good Reading!
About the Author
M. d’Roubaix is the ancestral name used for these books as the pen name for Dr. Melvin S. Droubay, a retired university professor now living in Costa Rica. Dr. Droubay has a PhD in Geography, and has taught both Geography and Environmental Studies in several universities in the United States and Latin America, most recently at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, Florida.
Dr. Droubay has lived and worked in Central and South America for over three decades. He did his Doctoral Dissertation research in Guatemala, became a contractor to the U.S. Agency for International Development and was later given an appointment as a Foreign Service Reserve Officer there. He has lived for extended periods of time in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Mexico and Costa Rica. He has taken groups of students to Cuba and Honduras, as well as to Guatemala and El Salvador.
Movin’ Money is a written as Documentary Fiction. Names of real people, places, and events as recorded in public documents, newspapers and internal investigations are part of the story. The fictional characters who tell the story are amalgamations of people known by the author, a few of which are still alive. There are three books in the Movin' Money series. The first is Movin' Money, the second, Movin' More Money is now out in e-book form, and the final one, Moved Money which deals with the aftermath of what is described in the two earlier books will follow in 2012.