Key cocaine dealer in Poppy Bush's IranContra ops applauds choice of John Kerry for SoS

[blm]

Quite a bit of essential US history in this piece that most establishment news media has refused to touch the last 20 years. After reading this, some of you will have greater understanding of why the corporate media has always shown a concerted effort to marginalize Kerry publicly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-ross/how-john-kerry-exposed-th_b_2469665.html


<<
Long forgotten today is the resolve Kerry had to have to almost singularly stand up to the Reagan & Bush administration. All despite the McCarthyesqe efforts used to make him seem crazed for his ground breaking investigation.

-Though John Kerry's early warnings about White House-aided Contra gunrunning had proved out, his accusations about Contra drug smuggling would continue to be rejected by much of the press corps as going too far.

On Jan. 21, 1987, the conservative Washington Times attacked Kerry's Contra-drug investigation again; his alleged offense this time was obstructing justice because his probe was supposedly interfering with the Reagan administration's determination to get at the truth. "Kerry's staffers damaged FBI probe," the Times headline read. Congressional investigators for Sen. John Kerry severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by interfering with a witness while pursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance. The drift of the article made Kerry out to be something of a dupe. His Contra-cocaine witnesses were depicted as simply convicts trying to get lighter prison sentences by embroidering false allegations onto the Iran-Contra scandal. But the information in the Times story was patently untrue. The AP Contra-cocaine story had run in December 1985, almost a year before the Iran-Contra story broke. -- Salon.com

Made into a pariah much like Gary Webb, the reporter that wrote Dark Alliance on the Iran Contra in 1996, people simply wanted it all to go away because within Kerry's accusation was a darker reality than discovered in any international relations scandal in American History. "Kerry wanted to get to the bottom of something so dark,... Nobody could imagine it was so dark." Miami-based federal public defender John Mattes told Salon. The possibility the United States government might be involved in the cocaine trade, while at the same time it was writing some of the harshest known sentences in the world if its citizens sold those same drugs once they arrived to shore.
>>>

[Hotler]

1. Never fucking forget. Kicking. n/t

[blm]

2. Uncovering IranContra also opened doors to S&L coverups and use of BCCI to fund global terrorism

through Poppy Bush's moneylaundering, drugrunning and arms dealing schemes.

A great amount of energy in DC has been used to protect the coverups of the last 20 years. Everyone involved should have been jailed long BEFORE 9/11, and, most certainly, AFTER 9/11.

[starroute]

14. Kerry wrote about this in "The New War"

Here's a link to a DU thread from 2004 with some excerpts from the introduction:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2029264

"In a fundamental sense, work on this book began over ten years ago. In 1985, soon after I entered the Senate, a Vietnam veteran called me with information about a group of arms-trafficking mercenaries he had met in Central America. I began investigating and stumbled onto Oliver North's secret network of soldiers of fortune, arms dealers, cocaine traffickers, and corrupt officials who later became the heart of the Iran Contra scandal. Ironically, as I write these words, that scandal has again drawn national attention, as people try to understand how some in the United States government could have allowed foreign policy objectives, like support for the Nicaraguan Contras, to facilitate the transport of illegal narcotics into the United States."

<snip>

"A decade ago I began to uncover portions of a common international infrastructure for transnational crime. I saw it created in changes in the global marketplace, in computerization and globalization, in the realm of illicit arms and espionage, in the networks of terrorism, in banking capitals and financial centers, in far-flung island resorts, and at ports and borders all over the world. I found that most people in the government did not have a clue as to the existance of this infrastructure or how it operated.

"In the years that followed, one investigation led to another. My staff and I interviews criminals from the inside of various U.S. prisons and found that they had had remarkable access to political figures in countries all over the world. I began tracking Colombian drug traffickers to the Bahamas and Haiti, and this work led me to the network of Manuel Noriega. Noriega's drug and intelligence network used some of the same people Olliver North had used in supplying the Nicaraguan Contras, another example of the common infrastructures of transnational crime. Some of Noriega's drug traffickers were, unfortunately, also the Contras', and for some of them were even employed by the United States."

More extensive chunks of the book are available through Google Books at http://books.google.com/books?id=vQPp9qLyeLoC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=%22In+a+fundamental+sense,+work+on+this+book+began+over+ten+years+ago.%22&source=bl&ots=1WAUygorhB&sig=ch3_MrLej8fKqttgLJMXQ-ixp64&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jYH1UPCOH-bF0AHxoYDAAQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22In%20a%20fundamental%20sense%2C%20work%20on%20this%20book%20began%20over%20ten%20years%20ago.%22&f=false

[blm]

16. if IranContra and BCCI had the focused attention from DC media as Lewinsky case, BushInc would have

been jailed, no Bush would ever have been allowed near the WH again, and a 9-11 event executed by a thriving group of global terrorists would NEVER have occurred.

[JackRiddler]

24. Why didn't it happen in 1993...

Since that was the opportunity.

Seems like a new administration somehow failed to disclose the documents now its possession, hold internal investigations, assign the investigation to a law enforcement agency... or anything!

Also seems like this lesson is never learned!

[blm]

27. This is my gripe about Clinton and his closeness w/Poppy Bush. However, if you scrutinize

the background of Poppy Bush crony Jackson Stephens the reasons for Why? become clearer. Jackson Stephens bankrolled Bill Clinton's primary campaign in 92 when Bush believed that a win in 92 would mean certain impeachment for him - they had succeeded in delaying the release of the BCCI Report to Dec 1992, a month after the election.

Clinton came into office and urged the country to 'move on' past the scandals of the last administrations and concentrate on the economy. For the 'good' of the country, of course.

Whatever deal Clinton had with Bush and Stephens certainly failed this country in the longterm.

[JackRiddler]

31. Agreed, but "gripe" doesn't cover it, I'm sure you'll agree.

It was a grave failure of responsibility and effectively endorsement of crime and impunity. It directly led to the second Bush regime doing the same things on an epic, previously impossible scale.

And look what happened after that - same deal. If the economy tanks (and the Wall Street control of policy can easily contribute to that), this quite may end up with Jeb Bush in 2016. (Puke!)

[blm]

33. You should know by now, JR, that I was just being DU civil in using the word 'gripe' here. ;)

His failure to do the right thing changed history for the worse.

[JHB]

47. It wasn't "on their radar screens" aka version 1 of "looking forward not back"

Giving the previous administration a pass on criminal wrongdoing didn't gain any goodwill in passing an agenda. The opposite in fact: without needing to dodge bad odors from their direction uncovered by investigations, it freed them to harp on one bullshit claim after another. That, and it allows the malefactors to lie low for a while then return to power in the next Republican administration.

It really shouldn't have been a surprise.

[blm]

53. Exactly the point of Parry's article "Hey Democrats, Truth Matters"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2663206#2663325

[JHB]

59. And earlier Parry articles:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/clinton.html

Main address for Parry's site:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/

[karynnj]

3. What I wonder was what the impact of closing this source of cocaine was.

Once it was exposed, it had to end. I know that the 1980s were the decade of crack cocaine. What I wonder is how much of the improvement in the quality of life in the inner cities in the early 1990s - credited to people like Guilliani was due to the combination of the reduction in crack availability and the change in demographics (fewer people in the late teen early 20s), not the crackdowns.

One of my sisters teaches in an urban city and her accounts of how hard it was for the 6 and 7 year old former crack babies to learn were really depressing.

It is really hard to believe that an American administration would trade the welfare of the inner cities to illegally arm RW insurgents in Central America. It is hard to even think of how you could estimate the number of lives here - and in Central America - that were worsened by this action. Yet, Reagan and even GHWB are respected.

[blm]

4. I also see Poppy Bush's covert ops here dumping tons of cheap coke in urban neighborhoods as a way

of stripping voting rights of so many citizens who THEY targeted to seduce with easy availability of the drugs in the first place.

[Coyotl]

17. The laws in certain states strip the vote from felons

and millions of black men were taken out of the voting population. These laws are not found in white states!!

[lastlib]

12. Wish I could rec your post

It is infuriating to think that our government would be involved in such evil. I wish Reagan and Bush could be impeached post facto; Bush needs to spend the rest of his life in prison for crimes against humanity. Reagan just needs to continue rotting in hell.

[karynnj]

18. Thanks - it is infuriating

Made even more infuriating when the CRIMINAL Oliver North was on Fox News in 2004 questioning Kerry's past!

[blm]

21. North, Abrams, Weld - all involved in operation or coverup (Weld) for BushInc.

.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

29. Crack was readily available here

in Palm Beach County, FL in the 1990s... My children went to school with those children born addicted to crack...a real scourge.

[rurallib]

5. Wow - great link well worth the read

I spent the 80s raising my babies and dealing with a bad situation at home. So my knowledge of the Reagan admin is still shallow.
So I did not know the depths of the bad in Reagan Bush. Thanks.

[blm]

7. Some who studied this time aren't so sure that Poppy Bush even bothered to let Reagan know what

he was up to, let alone the greater details of his illegal operations.

[Berlum]

6. Republicans intensified drug addiction in the USA

...so they could profit insanely, and keep the proles quiet with soma.

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R

[Octafish]

9. Gary WEBB

The Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist documented how CIA-connected drug runners helped usher in the crack cocaine epidemic in The San Jose Mercury News.

Read the series here.

For his trouble, meaning good reporting, Corporate McPravda , led by the L.A. Times and New York Times, raked him over the coals.

Telling the truth cost Webb dearly. He lost his career, family and life.

[malthaussen]

15. Yep. Shot twice in the back of the head.

"Worse case of suicide we ever saw."

-- Mal

[Octafish]

20. That's how a Pulitzer Prize winner gets treated, who crosses the BFEE.

Only God may know how many others, less famous, have met similar fates.

Cliff BAXTER, for instance.

[MinM]

30. Robert Parry: We All Failed Gary Webb

We All Failed Gary Webb...

BTW a few stories down from the link above Lisa Pease has an excellent piece on Gary Webb.

[Octafish]

44. Sure enough.

The opening salvo came from Walter Pincus in the Washington Post. Pincus wrote a story in which he created allegations Webb had not made and then tore them down. This tactic was to be repeated over and over until the only ones who knew what Webb had actually said were the who had bothered to read his pieces all the way through.

Mr. Webb got the Treatment. To know that each of his oppressors one day will be judged gives some small satisfaction.

Thank you for the heads-up, MinM!

[Blue_Tires]

67. Thanks for this...

Last edited Fri Jan 18, 2013, 05:24 PM - Edit history (1)

as a college sophomore in 1996, I still remember how much foolish skepticism, disbelief and disdain I had for Webb when that story ran and the campus was talking about it...Happily I'm a little older and wiser to the way the world works now..

[zappaman]

35. I worry that they could get you my friend!

Stay safe and alert!

[Octafish]

42. Dude the Disruption Dude

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=311425&mesg_id=311559

[zappaman]

43. Stay safe, my question-dodging friend!

Keep ducking and dodging the questions.
Nice that everyone can see your moves!

[Octafish]

45. Dude the Disruption Dude

Like a good mini minder dude, always on the alert.

http://metamorphosis.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=298715&mesg_id=298856

[zappaman]

46. You have become an expert on dodging questions.

Guess you don't have much faith in your accusations, eh?
Oh well...just keep bloviating!

[Octafish]

68. So what have you to say about Rick Ross and the CIA cocaine trade, zappaman?

You've added nothing on this thread, as usual.

[zappaman]

69. Stay safe my friend!

The BFEE has eyes and ears!

[hootinholler]

63. Was not shot in the back of the head.

He was shot twice, which when I looked into it, does happen rarely.

[navarth]

10. All agreed....but I don't get the title of the post....what did I miss? nt

[blm]

13. Ricky Ross was one of the biggest distributors of all that cheap IranContra cocaine

that Poppy Bush was dumping in urban neighborhoods at the time.

The crack epidemic was another crucial layer to the overall story, and one that most corporate media wouldn't touch.

For those familiar with all the layers of Bush's IranContra, BCCI and CIA drug running ops we know the facts surrounding Ross and his role pretty well. Most Americans have never even heard Ross's name, let alone WHY an inner city drug dealer could have been such a key figure in one of the biggest crimes against the Constitution in American history.

Ross knows and knows that Kerry KNOWS.

[dotymed]

11. There have been 1st hand accounts

around for years (there still are, Jeremy Scahill, opium in Afghanistan) about the (very evil) CIA covert drug selling that helps them
finance their other covert operations and make some of them very wealthy.
They did it in Viet Nam (Air America), my father was a pilot there and told me 1st hand accounts and even a job offer transporting drugs and weapons for the CIA. Instead, he ferried around Nixon's entourage for a while after he left Viet Nam....
IMO, this agency has been rogue since it's inception. Also this is another reason for the war on drugs. The CIA and many of it's employees (including politicians) get very wealthy from the illegality of these and other drugs.
"Our" government (especially these covert agencies) is evil incarnate.
There is a reason(s) why so many nations describe America as "the great satan", in Islamic countries and many Southern and central American countries use (basically) the same terminology when referring to "our" nation.
Most American citizens have no clue (many do not want to know ) how truly twisted our government is. It has even gotten worse
since corporatism has become blatant.

[d_r]

19. the linked 2004 salon article

http://www.salon.com/2004/10/25/contra/
is a must read

[blm]

22. People forget how complicit corpmedia has been in the DC power elite's targeting of Kerry

And why some of us reject the constant sniping from those on the left who repeat the 'conventional wisdom' of the DC press corps who perpetuate a narrative crafted to undermine Kerry's credibility.

[d_r]

37. Just think how bad it would be

if the media didn't have a liberal bias

[freshwest]

38. +1,000

[OldDem2012]

51. The MSM was corrupted long ago....Operation Mockingbird, 1948.....

Operation Mockingbird

QUOTE:

In 1948 Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects. Soon afterwards it was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."

This is well worth the time to read...details the subversion of the so-called Free Press. You'll recognize a lot of very visible names.

[HiPointDem]

23. kerry was made a pariah like webb? please. did he lose his job? was he blacklisted? did he

become impoverished? was he driven to suicide?

[karynnj]

25. I agree that goes too far -

Kerry was better positioned and had better resources. He also had the good fortune to represent Massachusetts, which did not dump him.

What it probably did was to keep the very talented Kerry from being one of those the Democratic higher ups mentor and give plum assignments to such as the keynote speech. (Remember Kerry was first known through his eloquent testimony to the SFRC - he should have been an obvious choice.)

It is a measure of Kerry's strength and ability that he still rose and that in 2004 he got the nomination - even though others had more party endorsements and more money.

[JHB]

48. "Like Webb" in the sense that he was marginalized...

...but his position and connections protected him from Webb's fate.

The Democratic leadership in Washington was in full "we can't have another failed (Republican) presidency" mode. They'd huff and puff over Reagan scandals, but would never press an investigation deep enough to expose the real nasties.

[HiPointDem]

49. how was he marginalized? he continued as a legislator, got committee appointments, became

the democratic nominee for president.

how was he marginalized?

[blm]

54. The press regularly dismisses him as an empty suit and rarely mentions his 5 year investigation

into irregularities that uncovered IranContra, BCCI, CIA drug running,and even the S&L scandal.

They try to make him out to be a boring old nobody who only protested the Vietnam War to get in front of a camera, when the truth about him and his investigations uncovering the funders of global terrorism thru illegal arms dealing, money laundering and drug running is worthier of a helluva lot more distinction than Bob Woodward ever deserved for Watergate.

Yes, the corporate press corps will NEVER acknowledge their role in dropping the most important story of the last hundred years, most certainly to protect the power elite they serve.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

26. I'm reading America's Stolen Narrative

There was sooooo much to cover-up in this investigation....not just the drug running. The powers that be were afraid the Reagan /Bush involvement in the Iran hostage crisis would make its way to full daylight. They wanted every aspect of the investigation closed down and brushed under the rug.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

28. wow.

[Party Favors]

32. I've been a lurker for a long time

and I learned soooo much from this thread back during the DU2 days. I bookmarked it because it was so much info to wrap my mind around http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1927518. I hope I did that right...


The title of the thread is "Cocaine Plane that crashed in Mexico Linked to the Government?" and was started by Ghost in the Machine back in September 2007. The responses to the initial thread really fleshed out the story.

[blm]

34. Once you wrap your brain around the facts in IranContra/BCCI everything else that happens in the

world is much easier to analyze.

[bananas]

36. Don't put a period at the end of a link

or it becomes part of the link and makes the link invalid.
Here it is without the period: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1927518

[PufPuf23]

39. Lack of action after BCCI report. Not Senator Kerry's fault.

BCCI ties together arms trading, drugs, covert financing, money laudrying, etc.

Senator Kerry confuses me over the years.

First became aware of Senator Kerry at an anti-Vietnam War rally with Tom Hayden northern California circa 1972-73.

He has my support for SOS.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

41. This thread has been unlocked.

Carry on with the discussion.

[blm]

52. Thank you.

It's relevance to everything happening today cannot be overstated, especially with Kerry's nomination for SoS.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

55. I didn't unlock it.

I'm not a General Discussion host. A consensus was reached in the host forum among GD hosts.

[blm]

56. Good to know.

.

[hootinholler]

60. Rather rude of the host that locked it not to announce the unlock. n/t

[blm]

61. I believe freshwest is right, many people are unaware of the details involved, and US media

intends to keep it that way. Hard to blame anyone for not knowing something corpmedia rarely mentions.

[hootinholler]

62. Yes, but that has nothing to do with my point

Which is since only the locking host can unlock it, when they unlock it to not comment on the unlock or kick the thread, is rude.

I can maybe understand an overzealous lock based in ignorance, but that does not excuse being rude in how one deals with it.

This is not the only time I've seen questionable locks by that host.

[blm]

64. I can only expect they'll be more careful in the future.

.

[idwiyo]

50. K&R for visibility

[Coyotl]

57. Someday maybe we will find out who the drug lords in the USA are.

You never hear mention of things like, "Who is the big dealer in America?" If the USA was not completely corrupt, that would be a legitimate question.

[blm]

58. Companion question: How did 'Poppy' Bush earn that nickname from his CIA pals in the 60s?

Yep - biggest drug runner, arms dealer, money launderer in US history.

[hootinholler]

65. And I had assumed that Poppy was a term for a grandfather or patriarch

I thought he was more the Cuban specialist rather than Asian.

[Octafish]

66. At Carlyle Group...

...he was brought in for his special relationships with the various roils based in the Arabian penninsula.

The Carlyle Group, a private massive equity firm, the 12th largest defense business with an obscenely high profit margin, is a business "arrangement" between the Bush and Bin Laden families, wealthy Saudis, former British Prime Minister John Major, James Baker III, Afsaneh Masheyekhi, Frank Carlucci, Colin Powell, other former US Government administrators, and Madeleine Albright’s daughter. The Carlyle Group is the ‘gatekeeper’ to the Saudi investment community. It owns 70 percent of Lockheed Martin Marietta, the largest military contractor in the US, and because Carlyle is privately owned, has no scrutiny or accountability whatsoever. A journalist who calls himself ‘a skunk at the garden party’ described investigating the Carlyle Group, he said ‘it’s like shadow boxing with a ghost’. The Group hires as lobbyists the best known politicians from around the world, in order to influence the politics of war, and privately profit from their previous public policies. The conflict of interest is obvious: President George W. Bush is creating wars as his father, former President George Bush, is globally peddling weapons and "protection". Lockheed Martin Marietta now owns Sandia Laboratories, a private contractor that makes the trigger for nuclear weapons, with a Sandia laboratory facility across the street from Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories, where the nuclear bombs are made.

-- "Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War," by Leuren Moret

SOURCE: http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.ungerhouseofbush10.htm

Sorry, hootinholler, I don't have more on the thing. No excuse but, 2001 was a couple of hard drives' back and the GOOGLE, it seems to return new and shinier things these days.