[Firestarter]

Gary Webb - Dark alliance

Maybe the sub topic on which I have most information in this thread is the cocaine importing orchestrated by Oliver North for the Reagan/Bush White House in which the Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton was also involved.
It shows that the whole Iran-Contra affair was a cover-up of the ugly truth that the CIA was making the crack epidemic of the 1980s happen, and used the proceeds to finance the Contras in Nicaragua. Also some other Latin American countries were involved (notably the Panama of Dictator Manuel Noriega).

Maybe Gary Webb’s book that I present in this post is the best book in this whole thread because Webb presents almost an overkill of evidence. The result is that it’s too long for people that rather wait for the movie than read a book (the PDF counts 867 pages).


Gary Webb is one of the suspicious deaths of the Clinton-Bush bodycount; on 9 December 2004 he was suicided. Conveniently Webb’s suicide letter was typed.
According to Coroner Robert Lyons: “It’s unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility”.
Webb was found with 2 bullets from a 38 calibre revolver in his head ((some claim even 3 pistol shots).
One of the sources Webb had based his story on, Ricky Ross, spoke to Webb in the days before his death. Webb had told him that he was working on a new story concerning the CIA and drug trafficking: http://www.rense.com/general60/move.htm


I will to summarise the book, by presenting the most interesting names, with some additional information. And some nice pictures.


PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN
In March 1981, Ronald Reagan authorised the CIA to explore ways of aiding the Contras. By November 1981, the Contra project was already running, and the CIA made its sponsorship of the FDN official. Reagan approved the plans and in December 1981 sent CIA director William Casey to present it to Congress, saying that the covert operations for Nicaragua were in the interest of US national security.
From 1981 to 1984, the CIA helped the Contras directly, by providing weapons, money, training, planning strategy and tactics, and keeping tabs on its hirelings.

The Contras became too controversial (if I understand correctly about some minor technicalities like murdering some innocent people). On Christmas Eve 1982 the Boland amendment passed the House by a vote of 411–0. It looked like Congress was cracking down the Contra project, by cutting funding, but without actually doing so.
By early 1983, CIA dollars were pouring into Honduras and Costa Rica, which benefitted the Contras. But the money the Contras received wasn’t nearly enough to finance the growing military organisation. The CIA recruited Norwin Meneses so that drug sales could be used to support the Contras.
Ronald Reagan installed Oliver North to arrange the details.

The following picture shows from right to left Ronald Reagan, Oliver North, Adolfo Calero (CIA operative installed as FDN commander) on 4 April 1985.


In the following picture are Adolfo Calero (centre) and drug lord Norwin Meneses on the far right, around June 1984.



OLIVER NORTH
With the assistance of lawyer and then CIA-director William Casey, Oliver North created a network of offshore bank accounts to conceal the source of the drugs money.
When the Boland Amendment went into effect in October 1984, day-to-day control of the Contra project passed to the Reagan White House and Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North at the National Security Council. The US government was business partners with cocaine traffickers.
Norwin Meneses' cocaine was smuggled to the USA in military transport planes.

In June 1985, on a yacht in the Pacific port of Balboa, North and Manuel Noriega made a deal that Panama would help to support the Contras; particularly by making airbases located in Panama available for the drugs for arms pipeline.
The Columbian drug trafficker, George Morales, testified that in March 1984 in Fort Lauderdale he talked with 3 Contras close to the CIA, Octaviano Cesar, Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro and Marcos Aguado, who asked him to support the Contras and told him they worked for the CIA. Cesar and Aguado (old friends of Meneses) promised Morales that they could help make his “legal problems disappear”.
Aguado, the chief pilot for the ARDE Contra forces in Costa Rica, was identified in a 1987 congressional testimony as a CIA agent.
Morales said planeloads of weapons were flown to a ranch in Costa Rica owned by CIA-operative John Hull; a training area for Contra soldiers. After the arms were dropped off, large green duffel bags stuffed with cocaine from the Contras were loaded aboard and flown back to the United States, usually to the public airport at Opa Locka, Florida. A pilot, Gary "Hippie" Betzner, testified that their flights were protected by the CIA.

In 1984, at a top-level meeting with DEA officials in Washington, North shocked the room by suggesting that $1.5 million in cocaine cash the DEA planned to seize from the Medellin cartel should be turned over to the Contras.
A $10 million donation from the Medellin cartel to the Contras was arranged by Carlos Lehder and paid to the Cuban (former) CIA agent Felix Rodriguez. Here’s a picture of George H.W. Bush and Rodriguez.


Oliver North used Rob Owen to carry out orders and inform him on the CIA’s operation in Central and South America. In this way North could keep his hands clean.
According to Oliver North’s personal notes in July and August 1985 he was informed of the drugs trafficking by the Contras: https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2015/04/...lassified/
North summarised a meeting with Rob Owen on 9 August 1985 and wrote down in his notebook:

Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into U.S.

MANUEL NORIEGA
Manuel Noriega was the dictator of Panama that helped in the cocaine trafficking; he suddenly became an enemy of the USA and was sentenced to prison.
In 1988, Noriega's pilots would fly up weapons for the Contras along with the drugs, leaving the guns behind in Costa Rica, and dumping the drugs in Louisiana and Texas.


NORWIN MENESES
Norwin Meneses Cantarero came from Nicaragua to the USA in 1979 (he settled in Miami), and later moved to Costa Rica.
In the 1980s, Meneses and Blandón became the biggest cocaine suppliers for the USA; both were working for (one or both of) the DEA and CIA.
In 1982 and 1983, Blandón and Meneses brought 3 or 4 planeloads of cocaine from Miami to Los Angeles. Each one of those loads ranged between 200 and 400 kilos. These flights continued until at least 1984.
When Meneses lived in Costa Rica he was dealing cocaine for the Contras. Meneses was one of the first economic supporters of the FDN in Costa Rica.

Both to the Costa Rican authorities and the DEA knew that Norwin Meneses was a drug lord. The DEA was informed of Meneses' Costa Rican drug operations in February 1984.
According to Contra supporter Dennis Ainsworth: Meneses was protected by the US government.
Enrique Miranda Jaime, who became Meneses' emissary to the cartels of Colombia in the late 1980s, testified in his 1992 trial in Nicaragua that:

Norwin was selling drugs and tunnelled the benefits to the Contras with help of high-ranking military officials of the Salvadoran Army, especially with the help of the head of the Salvadoran Air Force and a Nicaraguan pilot named Marcos Aguado.

In 1992 Meneses was sentenced to prison. In January 1996, Gary Webb interviewed Meneses in the Tipitapa prison outside Managua.


DANILO BLANDON
On 5 July 5 1979 Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes arrived at LAX from Nicaragua; he became partners with Norwin Meneses and used Ricky Ross to sell cocaine in Los Angeles.
The Colombians advanced Blandón 15 kilos (worth about $885,000). He started out with 15 kilos a month and within a couple months had progressed to 30 kilos a month. According to Meneses between 1980 and 1991 Blandón moved some 50,000 kilograms of cocaine to the USA.
Blandón's DEA case agent, Charles Jones, stated in 1995 that Mr. Blandón was considered the largest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States.
Blandón’s attorney, Bradley Brunon, said in court in 1992 that the DEA knew already in 1981 of Blandón's dope dealing.
Blandón set both Meneses and Rocky Ross up, in return for a relatively small prison sentence. Blandón walked out of jail on 19 September 1994 after serving only 28 months for 10 years of cocaine trafficking.


RICK ROSS
Ricky “Freeway” Donnell Ross was selling between 1,000,000 and 1,250,000 doses of crack every single month in Los Angeles (20–25 rocks of crack per gram of powder, 20,000 to 25,000 per kilogram). At seven kilos a day, Ross was moving more than 200 kilos of cocaine every single month. That meant he was pumping out around 165,000 vials of crack a day (5 million rocks a month).
When in 1987 things got a little too hot for Ricky Ross in LA, he moved to Cincinnati. Pretty soon Blandón made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Ross asked some of his associates to come over from LA, and took over the cocaine business not only of Cincinnati, but also Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Hamilton, Middle-town, Fairfield, Ohio, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Atlanta, Texas, and even in faraway Seattle.
Ross said he sold 300 or 400 kilos of Blandón's cocaine in the Midwest, netting around $2 million in profits.
When one of his dealers, Alphonso Jeffries, got locked up in prison, Ricky decided to go back home to LA in the fall of 1988.

Right at that moment the LAPD was doing something against crack. In 1988, the sheriff's office hauled in $33.9 million in cash and another $33 million in 1989 — along with 66 houses, 110 vehicles and 4 airplanes. In 1988, only the Majors had brought in 4,470 pounds of cocaine.
Alphonso Jeffries had turned government witness against Ricky Ross. When Ross was finally arrested, the cops beat him up. Ross was asked to testify against the cops that had not only had beaten him up, but were also taking some of the money from the dealers. On 22 February 1990, a federal grand jury indicted 10 deputies on 27 counts of theft, tax evasion, and conspiracy, Ricky Ross the star witness in 1991.
Ross was released from federal prison in August 1993 and returned home to South Central. He still had another charge in Texas, to which he pleaded guilty, and re-entered prison in December 1993, until August 1994 when he was released.

Then Blandón contacted Ricky Ross numerous times. Ross said he wanted to stay clean, but found a normal job too difficult, and the profits too low. When his friend, Chico Brown, asked Ross to introduce him and his friend from Baltimore, Curtis James, to his dealer, in return for the $30,000 Ross had already loaned, and an additional $70,000 for his troubles, Ross introduced them to Blandón.
In late February 1995, Ross, Brown, and James were set up by government witness Blandón and were arrested. Ross's third strike; he was looking at a very long time in prison this time.
Gary Webb repeatedly interviewed Ricky Ross in prison for his book.


Gary Webb “Dark alliance - The CIA, the CONTRAS, and the CRACK COCAINE EXPLOSION” (1998): http://www.mediafire.com/file/kdayngc76n...953236.pdf