miko's blog: October 2011

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Centre for Research on Globalisation

Centre for Research on Globalisation

Drugs, the CIA and Faustian Alliances

by John Stanton www.globalresearch.ca 28 June 2004

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/STA406B.html

Drugs, Faustian Alliances and Sibel Edmonds

Taking Turkey as the focal point and with a start date of 1998, it is easy to speculate why Sibel Edmonds indicated that there was a convergence of US and foreign counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and US national security and economic interests all of which were too preoccupied to surface critical information warning Americans of the attacks of September 11, 2001. After all, who would have believed drug runners operating in Central Asia? And besides, President Clinton was promoting Turkey, one of the world’s top drug transit points, as a model for Muslim-Western cooperation and a country necessary to reshape the Middle East.

The FBI’s Office of International Operations, in conjunction with the CIA and the US State Department counter-narcotics section, the United Kingdom’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Pakistan’s ISI, the US DEA, Turkey’s MIT, and the governments and intelligence agencies of dozens of nations, were in one way or another involved in the illicit drug trade either trying to stop it or benefit from it. What can be surmised from the public record is that from 1998 to September 10, 2001, the War on Drugs kept bumping into the nascent War on Terror and new directions in US foreign policy.

It’s easy to imagine the thousands of drug couriers, middlemen, financiers and lab technicians moving back and forth between Pakistan and Turkey, and over to Western Europe and the United States, and the tidbits of information they gleaned from their sponsors as they traveled. As information gathering assets for the intelligence agencies of the world, they must have been invaluable. And given the dozens of foreign intelligence services working the in the counter-narcotics/terrorism fields, the "chatter" that just dozens of well-placed operatives may have overheard about attacks against Western targets must have found its way into the US intelligence apparatus. But, again, who could believe the audacity of non-state actors organizing a domestic attack against the supreme power of the day, the USA? Implementing a new strategic direction and business deals may have overcome the wacky warnings from the counter-narcotics folks.

Back in the late 1990’s and early 2000, who would have believed the rants of a drug courier from Afghanistan saying that some guy named Bin Laden was going to attack America, particularly if it involved America’s newest friend, Turkey? Or that a grand design to reshape Central Asia and the Middle East with Turkey and Israel as pivot points was being pushed by the Clinton Administration as a matter of national policy.

The historical record shows that the US War on Drugs and the nascent War on Terror kept colliding with not only within the US intelligence, policy and business apparatus, but also with European strategic and business interests. Turkey continues its push for entry into the European Union and the USA wants that to happen as the June 2004 meeting of NATO, and President Bush’s attendance under dangerous circumstances, in Turkey demonstrates. Turkey is one of the USA’s and Europe’s top arms buyers and is located near what could be some of the biggest oil and natural gas fields in the world. At this point it’s worth noting that the one of the FBI’s tasks is to counter industrial espionage and to engage in it. Where big arms sales pit the US against its European competitors--as is the case in Turkey (particularly starting in 1998)--the FBI is busy making sure the US gets the edge over its competition. Allies are friends only so far.

Did warnings foretelling of an attack on American soil by Bin Laden’s crew get lost in the War on Drugs or the US national and economic interest in troublesome Turkey? It seems only Ms Edmonds knows.

Turkey Cold to UK and USA Concerns

In 1998, the US Department of State (DOS) was finally forced to admit that Turkey was a major refining and transit point for the flow of heroin from Southwest Asia to Western Europe, with small quantities of the stuff finding its way to the streets of the USA. In that same year, Kendal Nezan, writing for Le Monde Diplomatique, reported that MIT, and the Turkish National Police force were actively supporting the trade in illicit drugs not only for fun and profit, but out of desperation.

"After the Gulf War in 1991, Turkey found itself deprived of the all-important Iraqi market and, since it lacked significant oil reserves of its own, it decided to make up for the loss by turning more massively to drugs. The trafficking increased in intensity with the arrival of the hawks in power, after the death in suspicious circumstances of President Turgut Özal in April 1993. According to the minister of interior, the war in Kurdistan had cost the Turkish exchequer upwards of $12.5 billion. According to the daily Hürriyet, Turkey’s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996...Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organize trafficking on such a scale. Drug barons have stated publicly, on Turkish television and in the West, that they have been working under the protection of the Turkish government and to its financial benefit. The traffickers themselves travel on diplomatic passports…the drugs are even transported by military helicopter from the Iranian border."

Nowhere is the pain of Turkey’s role in the heroin trade felt more horribly than in the United Kingdom. According to London’s Letter written by a Member of Parliament, "The war against drugs and drug trafficking in Britain is huge. Turkish heroin in particular is a top priority for the MI6 and the Foreign Ministry. During his visit to the British Embassy in Ankara, the head of the Foreign Office’s Turkey Department was clear about this. He reassured an English journalist that the heroin trade was more important than billions of pounds worth off trade capacity and weapons selling. When the journalist in question told me about this, I was reminded of my teacher’s words at university in Ankara ten years ago. He was also working for the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The topic of a lecture discussion was about Turkey’s Economy and I still remember his words today, "50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing, it is two lorry loads of heroin..."

Afghanistan: Top Opiate Producer and America’s Friend

Both the DOS and the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) described in detail the transit routes and countries involved in getting the goods to Turkey. Intelligence organizations here and abroad must have sanctioned the role that they, and Turkey and Afghanistan, played in the process. "Afghanistan is the original source of most of the opiates reaching Turkey. Afghan opiates, and also hashish, are stockpiled at storage and staging areas in Pakistan, from where a ton or larger quantities are smuggled by overland vehicles to Turkey via Iran. Multi-ton quantities of opiates and hashish also are moved to coastal areas of Pakistan and Iran, where the drugs are loaded on ships waiting off-shore, which then smuggle the contraband to points in Turkey along the Mediterranean, Aegean, and/or Marmara seas. Opiates and hashish also are smuggled overland from Afghanistan via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to Turkey.

Turkish-based traffickers and brokers operate directly and in conjunction with narcotic suppliers, smugglers, transporters, laboratory operators, drug distributors, money collectors, and money launderers in and outside Turkey. Traffickers in Turkey illegally acquire the precursor chemical acetic anhydride, which is used in the production of heroin, from sources in Western Europe, the Balkans, and Russia. During the 27-month period from July 1, 1999 to September 30, 2001, over 56 metric tons of illicit acetic anhydride were seized in or destined for Turkey."

The Ankara Pact

The Middle East Report concluded in 1998 that probably the greatest strategic move in the Clinton post-Cold War years is what could be called "The Ankara Pact" -- an alliance between the U.S., Turkey, and Israel that essentially circumvents and bottles up the Arab countries. Earlier in 1997, Turkish Prime Minister Yilmaz visited with Bill Clinton to ensure him that Turkey would attempt to improve its human rights record by slaughtering less Kurds, but also mentioned that if the US pushed too hard on that subject or if the US Congress adopted an Armenian Genocide Resolution, Turkey might award a billion dollar contract for attack helicopters to a Europe or maybe even Russia.

During this timeframe, and with approval from the USA, Turkey began to let contracts to Israel to upgrade its F-4, F-5 and F-16 aircraft. Pemra Hazbay, writing in the May 2004 issue of Peace Watch, reported that total Israeli arms sales to Turkey had exceeded $1 billion since 2000. "In December 1996, Israel won a deal worth $630 million to upgrade Turkey's fleet of fifty-four F-4 Phantom fighter jets. In 1998, Turkey awarded a $75 million contract to upgrade its fleet of 48 F-5 fighter jets to Israel Aircraft Industries' Lahav division, beating out strong French competition. In 2002, Turkey ratified its largest military deal with Israel, a $700 million contract for the renovation of Turkish tanks." But that pales in comparison to the $20 billion in US arms exports and military aid dealt to Turkey over the last 24 years.

Then in 1999 came a news item from a publication known as the Foreign Report based in the United Kingdom. That publication indicated that "Israeli intelligence, the Mossad, had expanded its base in Turkey and opened branches in Turkey for other two departments stationed in Tel Aviv. The Mossad carried out several spy operations and plans through its elements stationed in Istanbul and Ankara, where it received support and full cooperation from the Turkish government. According to the military cooperation agreement between the Mossad and its Turkish counterpart, the MIT, signed by former Turkish Foreign Minister Hekmet Citen during his visit to Israel in 1993, the Mossad had provided Turkey with plans aiding it in closing its border with Iraq, as well as being involved in the arrest the chairman of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan." That agreement also included help with counter-narcotics.

Earlier in 1998, Israeli, Turkish and American military forces engaged in exercises in the Mediterranean, according to Reuters and Agencie France Press. ``[These exercises] signal to the radical states in the region that there is a strong alliance between Israel, Turkey and the United States which they must fear, Israeli political scientist Efraim Inbar said. Defense officials said during last month's visit to Ankara that they hoped the Jewish lobby in Washington would help Turkey offset Greek and Armenian influence on Capitol Hill. That's certainly part of this. They expect us to help them and we do help them a bit, said David Ivri, an adviser who directs biannual strategy talks with Turkey." Reports also indicated that the CIA and Pentagon intelligence organizations had regularly chaired meetings of Turkish and Israeli officers in Tel Aviv for years.

DEA & FBI

Prior to the US invasion of Afghanistan, the DEA monitored the Afghanistan drug trade from its two offices in Pakistan: The Islamabad Country Office and the Peshawar Resident Office. In addition to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the DEA Islamabad Country Office also includes in its area of responsibility Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Asa Hutchinson, the Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, testified in October 2001 that DEA intelligence confirmed the presence of a linkage between Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban and international terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

He went on to say that although DEA had no direct evidence to confirm that Bin Laden is involved in the drug trade, the relationship between the Taliban and Bin Laden is believed to have flourished in large part due to the Taliban’s substantial reliance on the opium trade as a source of organizational revenue. "While the activities of the two entities do not always follow the same trajectory, we know that drugs and terror frequently share the common ground of geography, money, and violence. In this respect, the very sanctuary enjoyed by Bin Laden is based on the existence of the Taliban’s support for the drug trade. This connection defines the deadly, symbiotic relationship between the illicit drug trade and international terrorism."

Meanwhile, back at the FBI, the Office of International Operations oversees the Legal Attaché Program operating at 46 locations around the world. The operation maintains contact with Interpol, other US federal agencies such as the CIA and military agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency, and foreign police and security officers. Its job is to investigate or counter threats from foreign intelligence, terrorists and criminal enterprises that threaten the national or economic security of the USA. It coordinates its activities with all US and foreign intelligence operations. In 2000, it opened offices in Ankara, Turkey and Almaty, Kazhakstan. Since 1996, it has had offices in Islamabad, Pakistan and Tele Aviv, Israel. In 1997 it opened one in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Combined, these offices monitor the entire Middle East, Persian Gulf and Central Asian threat areas developing thousands of "investigative leads".

Ms Edmonds has given the American people leads that show that they are easily sacrificed for a perceived greater good.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in national security and political issues. His forthcoming book is America 2004: A Power But Not Super. He is the author, along with Wayne Madsen, of America’s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II. Reach him at cioran123@yahoo.com

Gordon Duff: Rats In Wolves Clothing

Pentagon-CIA Uses UAV Global Hawks To Ferry Heroin

[picture and heading source for Global Hawk]

Gordon Duff: Rats In Wolves Clothing

May 10, 2010 posted by Gordon Duff · 73 Comments

NARCO NEXUS MAY BE MANAGING TERROR WAR

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

First we are told opium and heroin are financing world terrorism, then General McChrystal tells us that we have to allow the harvest to be finished, processed into 65 billion dollars of heroin and shipped out on rendition flights and American Global Hawk UAV aircraft for distribution around the world.

I was surprised to hear the “rumor” that our massive Global Hawk UAVs that fly at 80 thousand feet were being loaded with drugs in Balochistan and flown around the world. Prior to that, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds had only told us of drug trafficking on rendition flights.

This is now a fact, not “theory” or conjecture. Is the Global Hawk story fact also? Having this confirmed was a shock for us. We had been tracking the presence of “contractors” servicing UAV aircraft in this region and knew it was impossible to be arming and operating them against terrorists as facilities for this are unavailable at the 3 small air strips in the region. Each Hawk holds tens of millions of dollars of processed heroin which can be flown anywhere in the world. We have numerous confirmations that this is being done.

Tens of thousands will die from this harvest of death. Who profits and why is it necessary for chaos to continue for the money to flow?

First of all, with this much money, assume everyone is involved, no country is totally free, including our ally Israel, world’s most capable narco-capitalist but it doesn’t stop there.

HOW NARCOTICS AND TERRORISM SERVE EACH OTHER

Narcotics provide cover for the war by making it impossible for Afghanistan to ever have a stable government. Drug lords are never going to become responsible tribal leaders. However, they also can’t fly tons of heroin around the world nor can they bank billions of dollars. They need help.

This is what the war supplies, thousands of experts have flooded into the region to train Afghanis to live as free people in a democratic society. Many of these outsiders, some from India, some from Israel traveling under false passports and hired as US contractors, many Americans with security contracting companies and, perhaps government agencies themselves, are involved.

What we are keeping quiet is the fact that so much money is flowing out of the region into so many pockets, journalists included, that nothing is reported, nothing is done and training and arming terrorists has become an integral part of maintaining the war.

If the war ends, the Taliban might take over and end drug trafficking like they did before.

EACH NATION HAS AN AGENDA

Israel is in Afghanistan and Balochistan to do a couple of things. They are in Pakistan’s “breakaway” province of Balochistan organizing attacks on Iran and working to separate Balochistan from Pakistan. India and Israel would then control this region allowing access for a new gas pipeline bypassing Iran.

This has been very public but never reported. The illegal wars against Pakistan and Iran, yes Iran has suffered many terror attacks by Israel staged from this area of Pakistan, serve a number of purposes.

Pakistan’s economy is destroyed, making it impossible, were Pakistan not endemically corrupt politically, for them to deal with the root causes of extremism in the tribal areas. Helping drown Pakistan in debt is the key. With US funding tied to Paksitan quietly taking a beating from Israel without complaint, the absurdity of the situation must be overwhelming at times.
Iran is openly attacked, suffers UN sanctions for violations that Israel openly escapes sanctions for because of the US/Israel Security Council veto, and Iran’s responses are misconstrued as aggressive threats when they are much more the victim, albeit led by a total fool.
Israel has been allowed to become a nuclear state, protected, financed and armed by the US though Israel’s policies are distinctly anti-American. Their penetration of congress and the press have allowed them to engage in ethnic cleansing, illegal nuclear proliferation, massive financial crimes, narco-trafficking and espionage against the United States without consequence. Any American politician who speaks of Israels nukes faces assassination. Famed White House correspondent, Helen Thomas has asked many and none have ever answered.
India, aided by Israel and the United States, has set up terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, a country led by a pro-Indian government under Karzai. These camps, openly admitted by US officials, sit beside similar camps that collect, process and ship heroin. Nobody wants to talk about any of this. However, as these camps also directly support the Pakistan Taliban, their only real purpose, and have now been proven instrumental in an attack on the United States, even more effort will be made to hide their presence.

IRAN AND ISRAEL

The New York Times tells us that Iran has threatened Israel with a nuclear holocaust. This was the threat:

Time will ease Israel from the pages of history.

This is what the New York Times said:

We will wipe Israel off the map!!!

Every report of Iran building nuclear weapons has been debunked. Iran has been “one to five years” from having a “nuclear device” for 20 years. So has Luxembourg, Andorra and the Maldives.

Any country in the region, by international law, who develops nuclear weapons is considered a rogue state except for “wink and nod” Israel. Aiding such a state is a crime. US aid for such a state, “the only democracy in the region” is a crime.

These are the issues where total misconceptions of history are used to support Israel:

The 1947 war was not “poor unarmed Israelis” fighting Arab armies. It was a highly organized war on annihilation that killed 300,000 Palestinians. Everything said about this war is a total fiction. This was the beginning of an ethnic cleansing.
In 1956, Israel went to Britain and France to aid in a sneak attack on Egypt to take over the Suez Canal. President Eisenhower blocked this, threatening broad economic sanctions against both France and Britain. Israel was the aggressor in this sneak attack on Egypt.
In 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, a sneak attack, catching Egypt’s air force on the ground. Israel started the 6 Day War as an illegal war of aggression with no provocation. To hide this, Israel attacked an American ship, the USS Liberty, an act of war against the United States. This attack has more documentation than the holocaust. Every word about attacks on Israel by “Arab armies” is a total lie. This was an illegal aggressive war begun by an atrocity against American sailors and a sneak attack on Egypt.
Israel developed nuclear weapons, starting in the 1960s. President Kennedy, soon after demanding that Israel immediately cease was murdered. Since this time, the US has used its veto hundreds of times to protect Israel from sanctions exactly like being imposed on Iran, sanctions for, not only nuclear weapons but for gross violations of human rights. None of this has been accurately reported to Americans. We have been lied to in a brutal fashion by, not only our press but our own government for decades.
Israel has operated as a “pirate” haven, not unlike Somalia, a home for financial criminals, weapons and narcotics dealers, spies and powerful financial organizations that spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year entertaining American politicians and military leaders, often leading to threats and blackmail. These tactics and others have given Israel total control over American foreign policy.

Israel claims Iran is planning a new “holocaust.” The more death and destruction in Gaza, the more we hear “holocaust.”

Let’s look at a fact. More Palestinians have died already than Jews under the “holocaust” prior to 1941. In fact, Israel has caused the death of more of its own citizens, having “classified” Palestinians the same way Germany classified the Jews, than the first 8 years of Nazi butchery. Please check the figures. Palestinian deaths are at nearly 500,000 with 300,000 having perished during the sectarian violence described so fictionally in the Leon Uris novel Exodus.

Many don’t care, even in the Middle East because Palestinians are considered “dirty and troublesome.” Europeans thought of the Jews as “dirty and troublesome” also.

ISRAEL AND THE ARABS

The US created Israel. The US also created Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, our current version of Egypt, in fact the entire region with minor exceptions has been a US creation. Why don’t you hear about threats from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Yemen or other nations against Israel?

All these countries that Israel talks about banding together and exterminating the Jews are militarily weak or have no offensive capacity and in reality have warm and friendly relations with Israel. Are these nations corrupt? Yes, of course, exactly like the United States and Israel.

Many of these nations have been found working closely with Israel.

Whether Israelis live as Europeans and behave as monsters while some of the oil rich states we use in comparison, ‘brutal and backward’ shouldn’t influence American policy. America placed Israel in the Middle East as a state that could live above any and all law, extradition, nuclear regulation, money laundering restrictions or any other civilized international convention for a purpose, much as the US created the primitive dictatorships that keep the oil flowing. These bizarre and corrupt states serve the interests of a corrupt oligarchy that now controls much of the world.

A subtext of deception and manipulation has pushed the world into a cycle of economic collapse fueled by debt, powered by war, a subtext keeping the world in poverty and chaos with one purpose, the accumulation of power without intelligence and reason.

THE ILLUSION OF TERRORISM

Terrorism is an expression of ignorance, anger and poverty. The Bush administration and its friends in Israel and elsewhere combined terrorism, deception and religious insanity into a stew meant to facilitate the creation of a biblical monstrosity designed to bring about the “end times” and the destruction of secular society and all democratic states.

Is this what Israel wanted? Do Jews all await the time when they are forced to convert to Christianity or die, the real aim of the American “Taliban?”

A good look at what the world and America in particular has become clearly shows that if terrorism didn’t exist, we would invent it.

Another good look will show that, in fact, when terrorism lacked organization or the ability to strike at targets in the US and Europe, intelligence agencies which had long penetrated every terrorist organization on earth, in fact took control of many of them.

Why would governments war on their own people? There are always reasons and justifications for everything. “We kill a few thousand people but build a more secure world that will keep us safe (and rich with cheap oil and heroin) for decades.”

RECOGNIZING A CRIMINAL

Today, it has become simple to recognize the criminals who lead us. If a military leader tells you that opium has to be protected, though it causes more suffering than any war and most diseases, you know you are hearing a criminal.

When you hear a politician talk about Afghanistan, carefully avoiding taking responsibility for massive increases in drug trafficking under US control, assume he or she is involved.

When a terrorist moves from one country to another through the toughest airports in the world while Nobel Prize winners sit in detention for hours because a “suspect” somewhere has the same last name they do, you know this government is working in support of terrorism.

When you see a politician on television talking about heroes, heroes in a war protecting no one, heroes in a war meant only to live on itself, killing spending and growing as though it were alive, talking war but never addressing the cause of war or the cost of war, you are seeing a criminal.

Every individual that profits from war, be they arms manufacturers or military officers who know how to smile in photographs and fight unsuccessfully, sacrificing the lives of others year after year or even the media that cheers it all on, a media more responsible for breeding hate than any Madrassa, as Glen Beck and Ann Levensohn Coulter prove every day, is criminal, is complicit and should be required to pay a sacrifice equal to their crime.

IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT ONE THING, MONEY

If terrorism didn’t exist, would we invent it? Was terrorism invented to replace the Cold War?

Are all intelligence and security agencies involved in terrorist acts? How can American or Israel or even Indian groups recruit Islamic terrorists? How can the tiny nation, Israel, push America into war and economic collapse?

Who is served by terrorism? If our own governments helped create terrorism, was it done to instill a regime of oppression under the guise of “keeping us safe?”

Has terrorism raised the profits of arms and oil fiends and lowered our standard of living? How many countries are now drowning in debt? How has terrorism managed to impoverish only the world’s middle class? Why has the one nation that complains most about terrorism gained the most from it?

How many millions more are living in poverty and ignorance while billions are spent to end the terrorism we only seem to be fueling?

How much less free is the world, how much more are we all watched, listened to and threatened in our daily lives because of the business of profiting from terrorism?

Who are the real terrorists?

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FEDERAL PROTECTIVE ORDER |