“George H.W. Bush: Biggest. Drug Lord. Ever.” by David Malmo-Levine (2017)

May 16, 2017

Dear Reader,

Do you ever get tired of hearing white journalists blame dark skinned people for the illegal drug problem?

Do you suspect white people are also to blame for illegal drugs coming into North America? Do you hear rumors of CIA involvement in drug smuggling, but don’t feel like diving into a 2000 hour research project?

Well then, you’re in luck. David Malmo-Levine has put all the evidence of CIA drug smuggling into one easy-to-follow format. The best evidence that the CIA is the biggest drug smuggling organization in the world is now conveniently located in one place. Over the course of the next several months, Malmo-Levine will be publishing the secret history of hard drugs at cannabisculture.com, so that the public will come to realize how the drug war was created by and for the elite section of the intelligence community, to help finance assassinations, military coups, secret armies and to pad their own pockets.

Part 1: Born a spook

“A drug lord, drug baron, kingpin, or narcotrafficker is a person who controls a sizable network of persons involved in the illegal drug trade. Such figures are often difficult to bring to justice, as they are never directly in possession of something illegal, but are insulated from the actual trade in drugs by several layers of underlings. The prosecution of drug lords is therefore usually the result of carefully planned infiltrations of their networks, often using informants from within the organization.”

– “Drug Lord”, Wikipedia

“World-class drug trafficker. Sinister spymaster with tentacles spanning the planet. President — the most corrupt president in United States history. George Herbert Walker Bush.”

– Bill Weinberg, George Bush: The Super-Spy Drug-Smuggling President, 1992 (1)

“Under the CIA program code-named ZRRIFLE, foreign heads of state who stood in the way of American control of the drug traffic were targeted for assassination; this program is essential to understanding the origins of the plot against President Kennedy.”

– Rogue Elephant: The Drug Trade, the Kennedy Assassination, and the War in Vietnam, Kent Heiner, 2001, (2)

“We both thought Bush might prove the worst president in American History and the all-around worst man of the 20th Century, even considering such competition as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.”

– Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger, 1995 (3)

Part 1: Chapter 1: A few quick questions

Is it really the 41st President of the United States George Bush Sr. — not Lucky Luciano or Sam Giancana or Pablo Escobar or Joaquin Guzman Loera — who can accurately be called the biggest (and most dangerous) drug criminal who has ever lived? Is it really the Central Intelligence Agency — and not the Mafia or the Medellin Cartel or Sinaloa Cartel — that is the biggest drug-smuggling organization? Is there any credible evidence that this is so?

Is Bush Sr. — along with his sons — really guilty of drug smuggling, gun-running, murder, and treason? Was JFK’s assassination tied to CIA drug trafficking? Was Bush Sr. the second-highest ranking member of the CIA to be in Dealey Plaza at the time of JFK’s assassination? How important is illegal drug trafficking to US — and world — politics? How many US Presidents — or foreign heads of state — can connect their rise — or fall — to profits from illegal drugs?

Is raising awareness about the role drug money has to play in funding the “Shadow Government” the key to a more rational drug policy for both hard and soft drugs? Will knowledge of our ruler’s role in the illegal drug economy help us replace hierarchy with a more effective form of democracy? Is drug peace the most direct path to a sustainable society?

Is there enough evidence of these crimes being tied to Bush Sr. that he could be made to stand trial? And if there was enough evidence, would any lawyer be brave enough to take him to court? Would any judge be brave enough to find him guilty?

“What I wish to point out … is how deep-seated the fear of passing judgment, of naming names, and of fixing blame — especially, alas, upon people in power and high position, dead or alive …”

– Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship”, 1964 (4)

Fear of passing judgment

Back in 2013, I was asked by Vice Magazine to give a tour of the Herb Museum, and when I got to the section on coca leaves I briefly mentioned — as I often like to do — that JFK was killed by George Bush because Kennedy interfered with Bush’s cocaine smuggling. I also mentioned Jesus Christ was a pot dealer who was probably nailed for distributing it and using it in “magic” ways. I mentioned that there was some very convincing evidence for these things being true. (5)

Rather than do what I imagine good journalists would do — look into it — the Vice reporters just took the easy way out and edited my statements in such a way as to make me sound a bit insane. In fact, unless the evidence was in front of you in a well-organized, clearly written manner, the theory would no doubt appear to be the result of some sort of mental disorder. “Conspiranoia”, as my friend Bill Weinberg likes to call it.

That’s what this book is all about — it’s an “I’m not crazy, these are the actual facts” sort of book. The close-minded people will never pick this book up. Hopefully, someone with access to the world’s attention will take the information in this book and do something amazing with it — like put it in a package that even non-readers and coincidence theorists can enjoy.

Honest academics — and honest students of history among the public — must admit that these things are most likely true — there’s certainly more evidence for these scenarios than any of the other explanations of what happened with Jesus and JFK.

However, this evidence is hidden away in relatively obscure books and websites. The mainstream media — and popular websites like Vice.com — shy away from that sort of thing — that old “fear of passing judgment” thing that Hannah Arendt was talking about. Plus nobody wants to be called a conspiracy theorist — you stop getting invited to all sorts of parties and denied memberships in all sorts of groups after getting that label. It’s amazing to me how human beings are so easily domesticated into a form of livestock — persuaded to avoid looking into the actual history of their rulers — with just a bit of name-calling.

But some of us care more for the truth than for social acceptance. Noam Chomsky said it was the responsibility of intellectuals, to tell the truth, and expose lies. For the truth lovers out there … let’s look at the evidence.

Jesus was a pot dealer

The Jesus-as-pot-dealer-evidence has already been collected by my friend Chris Bennett and I let his work speak for itself. Google “Cannabis and the Christ: Jesus used Marijuana” By Chris Bennett. (6)

For those who can’t be bothered to check out that link and just want the two most relevant biblical passages, they are Exodus 30:23 — the recipe for the cannabis/kannabosm-infused “Christ/Messiah” anointing oil, and Mark 6:13 — where Christ sent out his apostles to heal with that very same oil. Yeah. Jesus was a pot dealer. In our modern day stigmatization-focused pundit-speak, he would be known as the “ringleader” of an illegal anointing-oil distribution syndicate.

Some more recent translations of the Bible translate that word in Exodus 30:23 into “calamus” (which doesn’t have the properties described in the Bible) or “fragrant cane” (which is the literal meaning of the word “cannabis” in Greek) — Bennett goes into this stuff in much more detail in his work — It’s quite convincing. (7)

Cannabis is the tree of life spoken about in our holy books. Why not? It does yield at least “twelve manners of fruits” that come from industrial/nutritional/medicinal hemp and its leaves are great for “the healing of the nations”. You can juice cannabis leaves — it’s loaded with non-toxic medicinal cannabinoids and terpenes and is good for treating everything from lupus to cancer. (8)

Who’s the real kingpin?

Regarding who the biggest drug lord ever is … according to the United States law enforcement officials, the Sinaloa Cartel is “the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world” (9) — but if it’s true that the CIA is actually more deserving of that title, then it would make sense that the CIA would use their associates in the US law enforcement establishment to try and pin that honor on someone else. All smart kingpins have their patsies.

Quite frankly I’m sick to death of the white supremacist media trying to tell me it’s Joaquin Guzman (10) or Pablo Escobar who’s the “biggest drug lord ever” (11) when in fact it is Guzman who just got arrested and is facing extradition (12) and Escobar who got shot back in 1993 … while George Bush Sr. is still well-respected and livin’ large. To me, if you’re big enough to get away with it, you’re bigger than the losers who didn’t. Plus kilo for kilo, Bush has ’em both beat.

According to the evidence you’re about to read, It looks like Bush Sr. was smuggling cocaine at least a decade before Loera or Escobar got started, and it also looks like Bush had his CIA lackeys help to set up the Medellin, Cali and Sinaloa cartels because Bush’s cocaine buyers got tired of having to make the rounds amongst a few dozen independent suppliers to fill his airplane full of cocaine.

According to the highest ranking whistleblower on Bush’s drug smuggling team — Al Martin — Bush and his lackeys single-handedly brought the price of cocaine down from 30 grand a kilo to 12 grand a kilo by flooding the market. (13) Bush’s “secret team” raked in $350 billion from their Iran-Contra operation alone (14) — more than ten times what Pablo Escobar made during his entire career (15) and they didn’t have to get shot on the rooftops of Medellín Columbia to do it, either.

Should those who work at Vice, their readership or anyone else ever want to actually seriously investigate this particular “vice” — the Bush/CIA control of the illegal drug supply — I’ve made it easy for them. I have collected all the evidence of Bush’s drug running crimes and murder-relating-to-drug crimes and then organized it into an easy-to-read format that even a Vice reporter could follow.

Given the fact that the CIA have all but admitted to having people working for them in the major media (Google “Operation Mockingbird”), (16) the responsibility of the alternative media to question the official CIA-related narratives is all the more important.

The following is a summary of the major evidence indicating that:

1. Bush Sr.:

a) was born into an elite fraternity made up of America’s biggest 19th-century drug smugglers: Skull And Bones,

b) was born into the CIA, which was itself a creation of Skull and Bones members,

c) became associated with the “secret team” of dealers and assassins within the CIA which had been involved in drug smuggling from the very beginning,

d) supervised drug smuggling as early as the mid-1950’s for the CIA,

e) continued to commit and/or coordinate and/or cover-up drug crimes during the next 50 or 60 years as a secret member of the CIA, as head of the CIA, as Vice President, as President and as the father of President George W. Bush.

1. drugs — mostly illegal drugs — had everything to do with:
2. how Taft, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Bush Sr., Quayle, Clinton, Bush Jr., Cheney and Biden got selected for — how JFK and Nixon got removed from — and how Reagan was nearly removed from — the White House,
3. the assassination of those who threatened to interfere with the CIA smuggling operations, including but not limited to the shooting of JFK, RFK, Bob Marley, John Lennon and Peter Tosh, and
4. the success of the political careers of Walter Mondale, John Walters, Asa Hutcheson, Eric Holder, John Kerry, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

Things might not unfold exactly in that order … but that’s the material I wish to explore in this work. I really don’t have any room in this book to get into the World War 1 and 2 war-profiteering, Nazi Banking, Carlyle Group war profiteering, October Surprise engineering, bank fraud, insurance fraud, real estate fraud, pedophilia and the litany of other crimes Bush Sr. and his family and friends have been accused of. This is just his “gangster stuff”: drug smuggling, drug-induced mind control, extortion, murder, assassination, treason and using illegal drug dealing as a pretext to invade Panama in order to shut up one of Bush’s former drug smuggling business partners: Manuel Noriega.

Part 1: Chapter 2: Skull & Bones and drugs (1832-present)

“Laws: We know what they are, and what they are worth! They are spider webs for the rich and mighty, steel chains for the poor and weak, fishing nets in the hands of the government.”

– Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, “General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, Fourth Study. The Principle of Authority, 1851 (17)

“It is a Princeton tradition that whenever a Yale man who is a member of the widely advertised “Skull and Bones” hears the sacred name mentioned, he must leave the room. It is also a tradition that the members are invariably successful in later life, amassing fortunes or votes or coupons or whatever they choose to amass.”

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, 1920 (18)

“One of the largest opium importers of the day was Jardine-Matheson, a company still in existence today. A memo from their company directors revealed sinister motives for opposing legalization, “If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us.” They were right, the price soared after opium was made illegal through an international ban in 1914.”

– The Rise of the Opium Trade, Patricia Smith, Dec. 18, 2012 (19)

There’s no business like opium business

The Order of Skull & Bones is a secret society at Yale that George Bush Sr., father Prescott Bush and son George W. Bush all belonged to. It was created back in 1832, using money from America’s biggest drug dealer at the time — Samuel Russell. (20)

Samuel Russell founded Russell & Company in Canton, China, in 1824. Dealing mostly in silks, teas, and opium, Russell & Company prospered, and by 1842, it had become the largest American trading house in China. (21)

Opium is a drug that is — through shallow cuts in the pod or with boiling water — extracted from the poppy plant (Papaver somniferum). Opium helps with pain and with sleep, but it is possible to die of an overdose so caution is needed with dosing. As well, if you use it every day for a few weeks then you will feel uncomfortable if you suddenly stop — similar to how you will feel if you suddenly stop (and with similar relapse rates as) tobacco. If you use it carefully every day of your life, you might dull your physical or emotional senses, but it does not destroy internal organs like alcohol and cigarettes tend to do if you use those drugs daily. The important fact to remember when evaluating the risks of opium — and it’s derivatives morphine and heroin — is that they all have a tremendous reputation for being addictive, but it’s alcohol — not opium, not morphine, not heroin — that has fatalities on record from the withdrawal.

Russell took advantage of opium being illegal (and the massive jack up in prices as a result of it being illegal) in China to make lots of money, quickly, (22) by buying opium legally in Turkey and selling it illegally in China. (23) His Chief Of Operations in the city of Canton, China was Warren Delano Jr. — Grandfather of FDR. (24) Ancestors of Senator John Forbes Kerry — Secretary of State under Barak Obama — also worked for Russell. (25) William Huntington Russell (Skull & Bones 1832) — Samuel Russell’s cousin — was one of the founding members of Skull & Bones, along with Alphonso Taft (Skull & Bones 1832).

Taft’s son William Howard Taft (Skull & Bones 1878) supervised the Philippines as the first US civil governor of the Islands for Theodore Roosevelt between 1901 and 1903 when the Philippines became the first country of the 20th century to launch its own war on opium. The American occupiers treated the Philippines as their drug war proving grounds. According to long-time CIA/drug researcher, Alfred McCoy wrote that “the Philippine ban … launched America’s attempt at drug diplomacy.” (26) Another drug historian, David Musto, wrote that “The Philippines also gave the United States leadership of the international control of narcotics, a role it still holds.” (27) Taft appointed a three-man “Opium Committee” to investigate the “opium situation”, who then released a reported light on evidence and heavy on ideology. (28)

The Root of the problem

W. C. Whitney (Skull and Bones 1863), who married Flora Payne (of the Standard Oil Payne dynasty), was Secretary of the Navy between 1885 and 1889. His attorney was a man named Elihu Root. Root hired Henry Stimson (Skull and Bones 1888), out of law school. Stimson became Secretary of War in 1911 — appointed by fellow Bonesman William Howard Taft. (29) It was Root who convinced Taft to become Governor of the Philippines. (30)

Root was Secretary of War from 1899 to 1904, in President William McKinley’s cabinet. As Secretary of War, Root responded to charges of brutality in the Philippines:

“The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare … with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed.” (31)

Modern estimates of the number of Filipinos killed in the Philippine-American War and the Moro Rebellion run as high as 1.4 million. (32) According to historian William Blum,

“William McKinley’s idea of doing the very best by the Filipinos was to employ the United States Army to kill them in the tens of thousands, burn down their villages, subject them to torture, and lay the foundation for an economic exploitation which was proudly referred to at the time as ‘imperialism’ by leading American statesmen and newspapers.” (33)

The penalties meted out for disobeying the new anti-opium laws were also quite brutal. Take, for example, “ACT NO. 1761 — AN ACT GRADUALLY TO RESTRICT AND REGULATE THE SALE AND USE OF OPIUM PENDING THE ULTIMATE PROHIBITION OF THE IMPORTATION OF OPIUM INTO THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS IN WHATEVER FORM EXCEPT FOR MEDICINAL PURPOSES …”. The following section is typical of the many punishments provided for the many regulations:

“Sec. 31. Any unauthorized person owning, carrying, holding, having, controlling, having possession of, or knowingly having on his premises, any opium, cocaine, alpha or beta eucaine, or any derivative or preparation of such drugs or substances, on and after March first, nineteen hundred and eight, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand pesos, or by imprisonment for not exceeding five years or by both such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court …” (34)

In other words, the punishment for simple possession of opium or cocaine was up to five years in prison or a potentially massive fine, or both, whereas just a few years ago simple possession was completely legal. At the time the new law became effective, there had been 12,668 registered habitual users of opium in the country. (35)

Root was Secretary of State between 1905 and 1909 under Theodore Roosevelt. In 1908 he proposed to Congress that the US adopt

“a combination of the legislation pertaining to the import of opiates into the Philippines (of March 1905) and the standard statute used in the prevention of illegal imports. He modified the Philippine legislation to make it possible for citizens to import opiates other than smoking opium.” (36)

Secretary of State Root organized the 1909 Shanghai Commission — touted in the headlines as a “WORLD WAR ON OPIUM TRAFFIC” — and his submissions to the Commission made it into the Washington Herald on New Year’s Eve, 1908:

“Our idea is that each government’s commission should proceed independently with the investigation of the opium question on behalf of its respective country, with a view, first, to limit the use of opium in the possession of that country; second, to ascertain the best means of suppressing the opium traffic if such now exists among the nationalities of that government in the Far East, and, third, to be in a position so that when the commission meets at Shanghai the representatives of the various Powers may be prepared to co-operate and to offer, jointly or severally, definite suggestions of measures which their respective governments may adopt for the gradual suppression of opium cultivation, traffic and use within their Eastern possessions, thus assisting China in her purpose of eradicating the evil from her empire.” (37)

In spite of being responsible for mass murder and mass incarceration in the Philippines, Root went on to win the Nobel Prize for Peace for the year 1912 — “for the promotion of international arbitrations”! (38)

President/Supreme Court Chief Justice Taft

Taft later became president of the United States (1909–1913), and “had heartily encouraged the initial steps” to create the 1909 Shanghai Opium Commission, the beginning of international drug prohibition. (39) In his 1910 message to Congress, President Taft helped to expand the list of “bad drugs” when he warned that “Cocaine is appalling in its effects than any other habit-forming drug used in the United States.” (40)

The first manifestation of this “world war” on opium in US law came in the form of the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act of 1914. The Act “was a United States federal law that regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca products. The effect of the Act was to price opiates out of the range of all but the richest people. A gram of morphine cost 60 cents before the Harrison Act and $35 dollars after. (41) The act was proposed by Representative Francis Burton Harrison of New York and was approved on December 17, 1914. (42) Harrison was a member of Skull and Bones, class of 1895. (43)

Between 1913 and 1921 Taft taught law at Yale and likely influenced Robert Lovett, F. Trubee Davison, and Dean Acheson. These three men were all secret society members at Yale at the time and they all eventually became lawyers and architects of the CIA.

From July 1921 to February 1930 Taft was the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court — he was the only man to ever be both President and Chief Justice. He presided over two important drug cases stemming from the Harrison Narcotics Act. US v. Behrman, argued March 7th, 1922, involved prescription quantity limits and the legitimacy of “addiction” as a disease treatable through maintenance or tapering. Taft’s Court released its decision 20 days later, ruling that “it was not legitimate medical practice to prescribe for an addict even in diminishing amounts with intention of cure”. (44) April 13, 1925, Linder v. US decision put some power back in the hands of doctors — at least in theory — to “give an addict moderate amounts of drugs for self-administration in order to relieve conditions incident to addiction.” … but in practice, this ruling was ignored. (45)

The actions of Bonesmen Taft and Harrison — and Bonesman-Lawyer Root — were pivotal to setting up the modern-day drug war. For those sneaky, secretive types who wished to make massive amounts of money from prohibition-priced drugs — just as Skull and Bones founder Samuel Russell did — they were a godsend.

Part 1: Chapter 3: Skull and Bones and the CIA

“‘Spook,’ the Yale slang word for secret-society member, is, of course, Agency slang for spy.”

– Ron Rosenbaum, Travels with Dr. Death, 1991 (46)

A cavalcade of coincidences

The connection between Yale — the location of Skull and Bones — and the American spy community goes back to the very beginning. Nathan Hale — perhaps America’s most famous spy (the man who said “I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country” right before he was executed for spying for George Washington’s army in the American Revolutionary war) — has a statue at Yale, and an identical one at CIA headquarters.

Aside from being founded by opium smugglers and associated with starting the modern drug war, Skull & Bones was also the entity most responsible for the creation of the CIA — and the CIA is arguably the biggest drug dealing organization of them all. So which Skull & Bones members were also CIA creators or CIA agents?

Henry L. Stimson (Skull & Bones 1888) was Secretary of War under Taft, the president who created the modern-day war on drugs, and also Secretary of War under Truman, the president who created the CIA. He also did a stint as Governor General of the Philippines (1927–1929), as did the drug warriors and fellow Bonesmen Taft (1901–1904) and Harrison (1913–1921). He was known to have a huge influence on younger politicians and bureaucrats, to the extent that his crew became known as the “Stimson Kindergarten”. (47)

Harvey Hollister Bundy (Skull & Bones 1909) was Stimson’s Special Assistant Secretary of War, and father of the Skull & Bones brothers and Kennedy aides William and McGeorge Bundy. (48)

Averell Harriman (Skull & Bones 1913) was a trusted advisor to Harry Truman and then later a member of the National Security Council. (49)

Prescott Sheldon Bush (Skull & Bones 1917) was in US Army Intelligence back in WW1. He is the son of “Merchant of Death” Samuel Prescott Bush — who was a war profiteer in World War 1 — and father of George Herbert Walker Bush. (50) Some say Prescott Bush got his friend Allen Dulles the job of head of the CIA. (51)

Robert A. Lovett (Skull & Bones 1918), WW1 aviator, chaired the 1945 Lovett Committee, which led to the creation of the CIA in 1947. (52)

Harriman, Bush, and Lovett — along with US intelligence operative and non-Bones member David K.E. Bruce — worked at the Brown Brother’s Harriman bank, and all four of these men lived in the tiny, exclusive and rich neighborhood of Jupiter Island, Florida, at exactly the same time as the CIA was being formed in 1946 and 1947. (53)

Other Skull & Bones members who were also in the CIA:

F. Trubee Davison (Skull & Bones 1918), WWI aviator, Assistant US Secretary of War, New York State Representative, Director of Personnel at the CIA. (54)

Eugene Stetson (Skull & Bones 1934), an assistant manager at Brown Brothers, Harriman, organized the H. Smith Richardson Foundation, which helped finance MK-ULTRA, a secret CIA domestic psychological warfare operation which included some of the most brutal mind-control experiments using drugs such as LSD at Bridgewater Hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts in the ’50s — a hospital later exposed as a horrific affront to human dignity in the brutal documentary “Titticut Follies”. (55)

William P. Bundy (Skull & Bones 1939), CIA officer from 1951 to 1961, and McGeorge Bundy (Skull & Bones 1940), not officially CIA, but was in military intelligence and worked closely with members of the CIA at the Council on Foreign Relations. Both were close advisors to JFK, advising him on Cuba and Vietnam. Colonel Fletcher Prouty — Chief of Special Operations under the Joint Chiefs of Staff under JFK — accused McGeorge Bundy of sabotaging the Bay of Pigs invasion to attempt to force JFK into overt American involvement, as well as having prior knowledge of the JFK assassination. (56)

Richard Drain, (Skull & Bones 1943), one of the CIA’s masterminds of the Bay of Pigs invasion. (57)

Charles S. Whitehouse (Skull & Bones 1947), CIA Agent (1947–1956), U.S. Ambassador to Laos and Thailand in the 1970s (58) — the site of major CIA drug operations during that period.

George H. W. Bush (Skull & Bones 1948), 41st President of the United States, 11th Director of Central Intelligence. Son of Skull & Bones member Prescott Bush. Father of the 43rd president of the USA: George W. Bush. The biggest drug kingpin in history. His life reads like a moment-by-moment history of CIA drug trafficking. This book is mainly about him. (59)

Evan G. Galbraith, (Skull & Bones 1950), CIA Agent from 1953 to 1957 (60) — best friend to his Bones Brother William F. Buckley, Jr. (Skull & Bones 1950), founder of National Review, “former” CIA officer. (61)

Some researchers tie at least 25 Skull & Bones members to the US intelligence community (62), including Senator John Kerry (Skull & Bones 1966), who chaired the Kerry Commission from 1986 to 1989, which looked into drug smuggling by the CIA in the Iran-Contra affair, (63) and David Boren (Skull & Bones 1963), who was the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1987 to 1993, during the height of the various Iran-Contra investigations. (64)

Richard M. Bissell was not a Bonesman, but his older brother William Truesdale Bissell (Skull & Bones 1925) was. Richard M. Bissell taught at Yale, was an assistant to Averell Harriman, a member of the CIA and in charge of the Bay of Pigs invasion. (65) He was offered a membership in Skull & Bones but turned it down. (66)

Porter Goss was a member of two other Yale-based secret societies: “Book and Snake” and “Psi Upsilon”. He later went on to be a member of the CIA, the CIA-sponsored assassination squad “Operation 40”, participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion, was Chairperson of the House Intelligence Committee from 1997 to 2005, and finally Director of the CIA briefly under George W. Bush — himself Skull & Bones, class of 1968. In his 1960 Psi Upsilon frat was John Negroponte (Ambassador to Honduras 1981–1985 and Director of National Intelligence 2005–2007 — and William Henry Trotter Bush aka “Bucky” Bush, baby brother of George HW Bush. (67)

Dean Acheson was a member of yet another Yale-based secret society — “Scroll and Key” — and was Secretary of State under Truman. He came up with the “Truman Doctrine” — the plan to contain the Soviet Union and prevent expansion — a plan that would call for plenty of “intelligence”. His daughter Mary married William Bundy — a CIA agent and member of Skull & Bones. (68)

Cord Meyer was a CIA agent in charge of “Operation Mockingbird” — a plan to secretly influence domestic and foreign media, and implicated in the assassination of JFK. Meyer was married to JFK’s closest lover, Mary Pinchot Meyer — daughter of Amos Pinchot, Skull & Bones 1897 — who herself was murdered mysteriously about a year after JFK was. Cord Meyer was also a member of Scroll and Key. (69)

Tracy Barnes, a senior staff member at the CIA — responsible for Planning the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’etat and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion were also a member of Scroll and Key. (70)

George H.W. Bush’s great-grandfather James Smith Bush supported the founding of a secret society at Yale called “Wolf’s Head” back in 1883. (71) Amongst its members was Lewis Lehrman who back in 1983 helped to found Citizens for America, an organization which aided Oliver North‘s campaign to supply the anti-communist Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua. (72)

Skull & Bones — and the other secret societies at Yale — seemed to be (at one time) farm teams for the CIA … a trial runs to see if a person was any good at keeping secrets. Given the apparent fact that members of Skull & Bones gave birth to the CIA and have played a prominent role in its activities since it’s inception, the next question should be: is there any convincing evidence that the CIA had and/or has anything to do with drug smuggling? Skull & Bones was begun by a drug dealer — did members of Skull & Bones design the CIA to be the perfect drug-dealing organization?

Part 1: Chapter 4: CIA and drugs (1947-present)

“This situation went back a quarter century.”

– Ramsey Clark, in conversation with Allen Ginsberg, regarding the fact that most narcotic agents “are themselves involved in dope trafficking”, 1970 (73)

“The CIA’s operational directorate, in other words, that are their covert operations, para-military, dirty tricks — call it whatever you want — has for at least 40 years that we can document — paid for a significant amount of its work through the sales of heroin and cocaine. It happened in Vietnam, it happened in Afghanistan, it happened in Pakistan, the wars with the Russians, it happens in South America, it happens in Columbia and so forth. In the Iran-Contra affair, drug money has been integral to CIA covert operations practically from the beginning of this Agency.”

– Christopher Simpson, “Crack The CIA”, Guerrilla News Network, 2001 (74)

“For the purpose of coordinating the intelligence activities of the several Government departments and agencies in the interest of national security, it shall be the duty of the Agency, under the direction of the National Security Council — … (5) to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.”

– National Security Act, 1947, Act of July 26, 1947 (75)

“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”

– President Harry S. Truman, “Limit CIA Role To Intelligence” Harry S Truman, The Washington Post, December 22, 1963 (two months after the JFK assassination) (76)

CIA drug lord pioneer Paul Helliwell

The OSS — or “Office of Strategic Services” — was the main intelligence gathering tool of the US armed forces during World War 2, and the predecessor of the CIA. Many authors have connected the OSS with drug trafficking. Douglas Valentine, author of numerous books and articles about the CIA, the DEA and “black ops”, highlights the importance of OSS officer Paul Helliwell as a pioneer of CIA drug dealing:

“Paul Helliwell is the personification of the CIA’s respectable, financial aspect of international drug trafficking. While serving as an Army Intelligence officer in the Middle East in the Second World War, he was drafted by William Donovan to managing OSS Special Intelligence operations in China. In that sensitive position, Helliwell worked with Chiang Kai-shek’s intelligence chief, General Tai Li, and through him the drug smuggling Green Gang in Shanghai. Under his direction, OSS officers also employed opium as a weapon of political warfare. As historian Richard H. Smith informs us, ‘Through his agent, Le Xuan, [OSS officer] Roberts bribed an old Vietnamese nationalist with a pouch of opium and thus secured a full dossier on Ho’s revolutionary background, including the record of his years in Moscow.’ This was no small event. The discovery of that dossier convinced the Americans not to back the Vietnamese nationalists against the French in Indochina and turned the tide of history. After serving as chief of a Strategic Services Unit in the Far East, Helliwell joined a Miami law firm in 1947. A specialist in private financing, he helped set up the CIA proprietary companies Civil Air Transport (later renamed Air America)…” (77)

Other authors point to Helliwell’s fund-raising activities. Investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker identifies Helliwell’s initial role as one of drug smuggler:

“But the Sixties weren’t the start of the CIA dealing drugs. Before there was a CIA there had been the OSS. The heroin that the OSS dealt was grown in Burma and refined in Shanghai. They stumbled upon this import when they were in Asia with the Flying Tigers trying to stop Mao from assuming power. The poppy-to-ghetto connection actually began in World War 2, with Colonel Paul Helliwell of the OSS, who brought heroin from Burma to the U.S. as far back as the mid-1940’s.” (78)

Paul Helliwell was A Colonel in the US Army and head of the Secret Intelligence Branch of the OSS in Europe in 1943. Here he began working with future CIA head Richard Helms, Iran-Contra conspirator & CIA founder John K. Singlaub, and CIA Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. And here Helliwell began participating in the drug trade in order to pay informants — the going rate was “three sticky brown bars” of opium, apparently. (79)

More than one researcher claims that Helliwell was the CIA’s number one black ops banker. (80) One researcher has tied Helliwell to Bush:

“A CIA front in the Bahamas run by former OSS China hand (and former boss of E. Howard Hunt) Paul Helliwell, it was used as a personal bank by Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Robert Vesco, as well as by an assortment of Republican movers-and-shakers and the occasional drug runner and Mafia don.” (81)

Helliwell was key in setting up the massive infrastructure and labyrinth of financial institutions necessary to import drugs and finance coup-d’etats. As author Pete Brewton explains:

Helliwell later became the financier for the CIA’s anti-Castro operations such as “Operation 40”, “JM Wave”, “Operation Mongoose” and “Operation Zapata” — otherwise known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. He also set up many airlines and banks that specialized in smuggling and drug profits: “Sea Supply Inc.”, “Mercantile Bank and Trust”, “Castle Bank and Trust”, “American Bankers Insurance Company”, “Intercontinental Holding”, and most famously “Civil Air Transport” which later became “Air America” — the notorious smuggling CIA smuggling operation in the Golden Triangle. Air America became so notorious Hollywood made a movie about it starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. Helliwell was identified by journalist Jim Drinkhall as being the reputed paymaster for the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. (82)

The Sicilian and Corsican Mafias

Regulations or events such as the US Pure Food And Drug Act of 1906 (which required “addictive” and/or “dangerous” drugs be labeled as such), the Canadian Anti-Opium Act of 1908 (which banned the “importation, manufacture and sale of opium for other than medicinal purposes”), the 1909 US “act to prohibit the importation and use of opium for other than medicinal purposes”, the Shanghai Conference of 1909 (the beginning of international cooperation on “drug control”), the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 (which regulated and taxed the production, importation and distribution of opiates and coca products and was later seen by the courts as a prohibition on prescribing opiates to addicts) all helped to set the stage for the slew of other prohibitions on certain drugs in the US (including the 1924 Heroin Act, the 1932 Uniform State Narcotic Drug Act, the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act and several international treaties) that were all in place by WW2. (83)

Jewish and Italian gangsters immediately began providing these drugs to all manner of U.S. customers the moment they began disappearing from drug stores. Illegal drugs didn’t really become less accessible after drug prohibition came into effect — the distribution just switched over to less accountable retailers.

The OSS began working with the Mafia when the OSS traded Mafia cooperation in breaking up striking dockworkers and assistance with the Invasion of Italy in exchange for the freedom of Lucky Luciano and hundreds of other gangsters who were in jail at the time. The CIA continued to work with the Mafia in the destruction of the striking dockworkers of Marseilles. As a reward for cooperation, the Mafia was allowed to use Marseilles as their “French Connection” between the opium that arrived from the Golden Triangle and the heroin that left for Cuba.

Alfred W. McCoy, who was the first author to bring attention to CIA drug dealing in his landmark book “The Politics of Heroin In Southeast Asia” (1972), provided much of the evidence for CIA-Mafia cooperation in the 1940’s, and draws attention to the tendency of the CIA to justify “complicity in the drug trade” by claiming “anti-communism” as a higher priority:

“The CIA’s complicity in the drug trade was a product of the cold war. … From 1948 to 1950, the CIA allied itself with the Corsican underworld in its struggle against the French Communist party for control over the strategic Mediterranean port of Marseille. With CIA support, the Corsicans overcame their rival and for the next quarter century used their control over the Marseille waterfront to dominate the export of heroin to the U.S. market.” (84)

Authors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair tie the CIA to the biggest illegal drug smuggling operation of the 1950’s and 1960’s — the “French Connection”:

“(In 1950) Both Lansky and Luciano were eager to get out the vulnerable business of heroin production and concentrate on drug sales. Production was assigned to the Guerinis and other Corsican syndicates based in Marseilles. The Corsicans already had a worldwide production network, with labs in Indochina, Latin America, and the Middle East. They also enjoyed near perfect political protection. They not only have the gratitude of the French right (they had prudently never sold heroin in France) but also of the CIA, which had helped make them the most powerful force in Marseilles. Thus was forged the French Connection, whereby 80 percent of the heroin entering the United States via Cuba came from Marseilles with the compliance of US government agencies, primarily the CIA. Between 1950 and 1965 there were no arrests of any executive working in this French Connection.” (85)

These early CIA drug deals have been verified through other sources, including authors Henrik Kruger, Rodney Stich and Michael Ruppert. (86)

1. George H. W. Bush and drug trafficking

“Many researchers contend that George Bush has been with the CIA since the early 1950’s and that one of his jobs was to consolidate and co-ordinate the worldwide narcotics industry, the largest industry on Earth. Some say that one of the reasons behind the Vietnam “Police Action” was a cover for the consolidation of the “Golden Triangle”.”

– Kris Millegan, 1996 (87)

Cuba, the Mafia, Zapata Offshore & the JFK assassins (1953–1959)

“I know you’re working for the C-I-A

They wouldn’t have you in the maf-I-A”

– War, Why Can’t We Be Friends? 1975

Lorelei: What are you? C.I.A., Mafia?

Wallace: Both.

– The Man Who Knew Too Little, 1997

“In a 1961 Treasury Department document, it is noted that “… Cubans were engaged in smuggling large quantities of Peruvian cocaine to the United States, via Cuba…” — as far back as 1947.”

– U.S. Treasury Department, Bureau of Narcotics, September 1961, Washington, D.C. (88)

Havana: The first Gangsta’s Paradise

To understand how George H. W. Bush became the world’s biggest drug lord, one must first understand the illegal drug scene that existed when he began his career. Up until Bush and the CIA stepped up their smuggling game, Heroin and Cocaine were smuggled into the United States through one of two groups — the Corsicans (who came from an island in the Mediterranean under the control of France) and the Sicilians (who came from an island in the Mediterranean under the control of Italy). Because these Islands were often the last stop before contraband was smuggled into Europe, these communities had a long history in the black market business.

The Sicilians were organized by Charles “Lucky” Luciano and his Jewish partner Meyer Lansky. At the end of 1946, Luciano and Lansky held a major gathering of Mafia bosses. They hired Frank Sinatra to perform — and to provide a cover/excuse — to explain the presence of so many gangsters in one place at one time. Havana was already “the most important transit point for Luciano’s European heroin shipments.” (89) The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had spies at this meeting, and quickly surmised that the mob planned to make Cuba “the center of all international narcotic operations.” (90)

The Corsicans were in charge of an operation that moved opium from the East, processed it in Marseille, France, and moved it from Canada into the US. This was famously known as the “French Connection”. (91) It was begun back in the 1920’s. (92) The Sicilians were junior partners in this operation, but by 1957 they would establish their own operation called the “Pizza Connection” — due to Italian pizzerias being the principal retail outlet. (93)

Attending the Havana Conference was Santo Trafficante Jr. — who ran things for his dad — Miami mobster Santo Trafficante Sr. (and Meyer Lansky) in Havana. (94) Trafficante was a sometimes employee of Jack Ruby — the killer of JFK assassination patsy Lee Harvey Oswald. Also attending was Carlos Marcello — boss of New Orleans, sometimes employer of David Ferrie — a major suspect in the JFK assassination.

David Ferrie was a pilot and a captain in the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol. He had connections in the CIA and the Mafia.

In the film “JFK” by Oliver Stone, David Ferrie — played by Joe Pesci — had this to say about Jack Ruby:

“Jack was a pimp. A bagman for the Dallas mob. Ran guns to Castro when he was on our side. Castro was almost with us till we tried to whack him. Everybody keeps flipping sides.”

In the Civil Air Patrol Ferrie met and taught a young Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald and Ferrie can be seen together in a group photograph from a 1955 CAP training camp. When Oswald was arrested for shooting officer Tippit, they found Ferrie’s library card in his wallet. (95)

“…Seal participated in many of the signal events in America During the second half of the 20th Century… Running guns to Fidel Castro in the mountains of Cuba … flying at the Bay of Pigs invasion … piloting a get-away plane after the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy … flying into the Golden Triangle during America’s Secret War in Laos … Barry Seal even had a cameo role in the Watergate Scandal.”

– Daniel Hopsicker, Barry And The Boys, 2001, (96)

Barry Seal — #1 CIA black-ops pilot from the 1950’s to the 1980’s.

Another member of the Civil Air Patrol was Barry Seal. Like Bush, he seems connected to many important CIA events of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Like Oswald, he was also a teen when Ferrie instructed him in the ways of the paramilitary spy. In a letter written by Seal to Federal Judge Lestage, written in 1972 and quoted in “Barry And The Boys”, Seal wrote:

“In the years 1956, 1957 and 1958 I worked for the CJ Simpson de Cuba Drilling Company, which had three rotary drilling rigs operating in Cuba. Whether you or any of your associates are aware of the number of “implements of war” shipped by that company out of the United States as components of drilling equipment, I have no idea. But I advise you to find out! These shipments of “implements of war” by the CIA had no known open approval of the United States Government. … I can name names of agents involved in these shipments. This whole sorry mess of the CIA putting Fidel Castro into a position to overthrow the government of Juan Batista has never been told to the public.” (97)

Barry Seal may soon become a topic of conversation in the collective consciousness — “American Made” — a movie about his life in the CIA starring Tom Cruise — is slated for release in late 2017. The film was originally going to be called “Mena” and released early in 2017. I hope they manage to pull it off. There will be more about Mena and Seal in an upcoming chapter in this series.

Fuck bananas — let’s import cocaine instead!

Author Dan Russell has taken note of the difficulties the CIA was having in its fundraising activities during the early 1950’s:

“One of the ways the CIA raised money was through the United Fruit Company — Allen Dulles, head of the CIA in 1953 — was a major stockholder, and a director of the Shroeder Banking LTD, which was tied to United Fruit and the CIA. But by 1952 the new socialist President, Colonel Jacobo Árbenz, had instituted modest land reform which included giving back some unused land that the United Fruit company had stolen from the people years earlier. This threatened United Fruit’s — and the CIA’s — ability to extort low wages from the no-longer-dependent peasants, so the CIA staged a coup in 1954. They also began looking for other sources of income.” (emphasis mine) (98)

George Bush — born into the CIA and destined to be its director — was no doubt viewed by his father as a solution to the “other sources of income” problem. Bonesman Neil Mallon and fellow Bonesman Prescott Bush (both Skull and Bones 1917) organized this “project”:

“On April 10, 1953, exactly two weeks after Zapata Offshore’s land-based sister, Zapata Petroleum, was launched, Neil Mallon wrote to CIA director Dulles about an upcoming meeting at D.C.’s Carlton Hotel. ‘In addition to Bob Johnson, I have invited a close personal friend, Prescott Bush. We want to talk to them about our Pilot Project in the Caribbean and have you listen in.’” (99)

Less than one week later (April 16th, 1953), the CIA drafted a plan to use the money to bribe members of the Iranian establishment to support a coup in Iran. (100)

It isn’t just the timing that is suspect. Careful examination of the other men involved in this pilot project confirms Zapata Off-Shore was a CIA front. Thomas Devine was one of Bush’s partners, and declassified memos have confirmed him as a CIA agent. (101) Another Partner — Richard Haigh“Robert” Gow — was Skull and Bones — class of 1955. (102)

Unaccustomed to going through customs

What was the nature of the Zapata Offshore operation? It appears that having an off-shore oil rig was the easiest way of moving large shipments of things from the Caribbean to mainland America while avoiding customs because off-shore oil rig crews did not have to go through customs as they went to and from work every day. There were many pieces of this puzzle, and when you put them together you get a clearer picture of what Zapata Offshore was all about:

“… George Bush, who at the time was the president and CEO of the offshore division of Zapata Oil, based in Texas. … It was correctly thought that the drugs could be shipped from South America to the offshore platforms by a fishing boat, to be taken from there to shore by the normal transportation used for supplies and personnel. By this method, no customs or law enforcement agency would subject the cargo to search. George Bush agreed to help and organized the operation in conjunction with the CIA. The plan worked better than anyone had dreamed. It has since expanded worldwide. … The CIA now controls most of the world’s illegal drug markets.”

– William Cooper, 1991 (103)

“It also seemed likely that Mooney (Sam Giancana), along with Marcello and Trafficante, continued to reap the benefits of an extensive CIA-Mafia-Texas cocaine smuggling ring with literally billions of dollars — a joint effort based in South America, Costa Rica, and Panama, which Mooney had described to Chuck (Charles Giancana) during the Bay of Pigs era. Based on his brother’s comments at that time, Chuck suspected the ring utilized offshore Texas oil wells to subvert the efforts of U.S. Customs.”

– Sam and Chuck Giancana, 1992, (104)

“A body of leads has been assembled which suggests that George Bush may have been associated with the CIA at some time before the autumn of 1963. According to Joseph McBride of The Nation, ‘a source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities.’”

– Webster Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, 2012 (105)

“The real mission [of these oil and gas drilling platforms was to funnel weapons and money to the Nicaraguans, and also to bring illegal drugs into the United States. … Rowan International was a cover for a branch of Zapata Oil. Zapata Oil and Exploration had many land-based operations in Central and South America as well as offshore rigs.”

– Rodney Stich, 1994 (106)

“Michael Maholy alleges that Zapata Off-Shore was used as part of a CIA drug-smuggling ring to pay for arming Nicaraguan Contras in 1986–1988, including Rodriguez, Eugene Hasenfus and others. Mahony claims Zapata’s oil rigs were used as staging bases for drug shipments, allegedly named “Operation Whale Watch.” Mahony allegedly worked for Naval Intelligence, US State Department and CIA for two decades.”

– Wikipedia entry for “Zapata Offshore” circa 2011 — before it was edited out (107)

Ted Shackley — a high-ranking member of the CIA and longtime associate of George Bush — was also involved in drug trafficking back in the 1950’s:

“Bowen was a friend of Shackley’s, having worked with him from the early 1950s until 1984. In 1959, Shackley was a passenger onboard a C-46 piloted by Bowen when the plane crashed in the Bolivian Andes. As Bowen told Stich: ‘It was loaded with drugs!’”

– Rodney Stich, 1998 (108)

The above information should be enough to make those who respect the truth suspicious of CIA claims of innocence regarding it’s relationship to the illegal drug trade. There is a phenomenon that can be found throughout human history called “elite deviance”, where the rich and the powerful — already isolated inside a bubble of inequity — begin to feel and act like laws don’t apply to them. Nothing illustrates 20th-century elite deviance like CIA drug dealing — perpetrated by rich, white, over-privileged men who got sent to the best schools and joined the best clubs.

Nothing … except for maybe a huge list of CIA-perpetrated assassinations by these same over-privileged frat boys in the pursuit of fostering and protecting CIA drug dealing.

Which is exactly what the next chapter of this story involves — the drug smuggling CIA assassination squad that first went after Fidel Castro … and then JFK. A demon of death was let loose upon the Earth as a result, which left many skulls and bones in its wake.

George H.W. Bush: Biggest. Drug Lord. Ever. (Part 2)

David Malmo-Levine

February 1, 2018

Part 2: In Cuba & Dallas with Op. 40, Vietnam & Laos with the Secret Team

This is part two in an ongoing series attempting to provide in a systematic way the best evidence of CIA drug trafficking in general, and President George H.W. Bush’s key role in those activities in particular.

Part one — where we learn about Skull and Bones (the Yale fraternity started by the biggest drug smugglers of the 1800’s, who created the modern drug war which began in the early 1900’s and who also created the CIA in the mid 1940’s) — can be found here.

“Our paramilitary teams and boat operators were in and out of Cuban waters all the time and had the opportunity to meet with Cuban fishing trawlers at places like the island of Cay Sal. I did not want the teams and operators moving illicit drugs out of Cuba.” — Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life In The CIA, 2005 (109)

“He also claimed that he did not remember where he was the day John F. Kennedy was killed — ‘somewhere in Texas,’ he said. George Bush is possibly the only person on the planet who did not recall his whereabouts that day, although his wife clearly remembered their being in Tyler.”

– Kitty Kelley, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, 2004 (110)

“All I gotta do now is take Dick Cain and work deals for the CIA and the Outfit … all over the world. … Overseas is where it’s all headin’, Chuck,” Mooney continued. I’ve got Trafficante on board for Asia. The Vietnam War is gonna make a lot of guys rich.” — Mob boss Sam Giancana, speaking in 1966, “Double Cross”, 1992 (111)

Part 2: Chapter 1: Ted Shackley aka The Blonde Ghost

We begin our story exactly where we left off, with evidence of long-time Bush associate and CIA station chief in Miami and Laos — Ted Shackley — said to have been smuggling planeloads of drugs as far back as 1959:

“Bowen then enlarged upon the purpose of that trip. He stated that this trip occurred several years before Shackley was made CIA chief in Miami, and that Shackley was instrumental in setting up the CIA drug trafficking into the United States from South America. Bowen said that the series of flights went from Miami, to Columbia, to Quayaqui, to Lima, and then to Arequita. After the plane left Arequita going eastbound over the Andes, one of the two engines failed, causing the aircraft to lose altitude. Bowen was able to maneuver the aircraft into one of the few available flat areas, and crash-landed the plane. Bowen said that Shackley had arranged for cocaine to be loaded on board the aircraft, where it was hidden in the tail section. Bowen, Shakley, and the others then abandoned the crashed aircraft. Eventually, the Bolivian authorities discovered the drugs, but the pilots and passengers were long gone.” (112)

Ted Shackley had an interesting career with the CIA. Nicknamed “the Blonde Ghost” due to his blonde hair, pale features and “mysterious ways”, he was one of the most highly decorated CIA agents ever. (113)

Between 1962 an 1965, Shackley was the station chief in Miami Florida — the biggest CIA base outside of their headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He worked there with Major General Edward Lansdale of the OSS/CIA, along with other CIA operatives in the area, no doubt including George H.W. Bush (being the “born and raised in the CIA” intelligence brat that he was) who was in the Gulf of Mexico with his off-shore oil rig business. Shackley was also well acquainted with many of the politically active or militarily inclined “Miami Cubans” who escaped from Fidel Castro’s revolution — all working hard to defeat Castro in any way possible.

It is surely no coincidence that both of the largest CIA stations of the 1960’s — Miami, Florida and Vientiane, Laos — were at the end and the beginning of the “French Connection” drug trafficking route. Often the route was from the Golden Triangle to Marseille, France to Havana, Cuba to Miami, Florida — at least until Castro took over Cuba. (114)

Also it was no coincidence that Ted Shackley was in charge of both stations. He needed to keep a close watch on agency drug operations, as it was the thing they did that would eventually pay for most of their “off the books” activities. Hence they were the biggest stations:

Under Ted Shackley‘s leadership from 1962 to 1965, JMWAVE grew to be the largest CIA station in the world outside of the organization’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, with 300 to 400 professional operatives (possibly including about 100 based in Cuba) as well as an estimated 15,000 anti-Castro Cuban exiles on its payroll. The CIA was one of Miami’s largest employers during this period. (115)

Let’s follow Shackley’s career — it seems to cross paths quite often with Bush’s. First we should start with the Miami CIA station. Why all the focus on Miami? It was all due to Fidel Castro, who kicked the mob out of Cuba and screwed up Mafia/CIA trafficking operations — not to mention CIA sugar plantations and their take from the Casinos. The CIA wanted their drug route back. Miami was their base of operations on that particular project.

Cuba Libre

“To choose one’s master is not to be free.” — Jose Marti

“Fidel had few fans in the mob. It had lost $100 million a year when he took it’s Cuban casinos, brothels, and drug trade away.” — Alex Von Tunzelmann, Red Heat, 2011 (116)

“Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba naturally put a dent in that (drug) trade, though it never ceased entirely.” — The Cocaine Wars, Paul Eddy with Hugo Sabogal and Sara Walden, 1988 (117)

The Cuban revolution of 1959 — like most but not all revolutions — was one boss replacing another boss — one gang replacing another gang. The Cuban anarchist and national hero of Cuba — Jose Marti — (whom both the communists and capitalists claim for themselves but whom wouldn’t be caught dead with either) would argue that

“We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from. We must say no once more. Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.” (118)

Nevertheless, Fidel Castro managed to convince most Cubans to trade the exploitation of capitalism for the slavery of communism, and many Cubans benefitted somewhat by an increased standard of living and were thankful to trade in one set of rulers for another, despite the obvious disadvantages of the elimination of all political and economic freedoms for the politically and/or economically independently-minded people.

And the mob — who valued independence above all other considerations — the mob wasn’t happy at all. They lost their Disneyland.

Havana’s casinos, brothels and drug smuggling had been mainly controlled by legendary mob boss Meyer Lansky — and to a lesser extent the Trafficante family.

“It was Lansky who opened up what was for a time the syndicate’s greatest source of income, gambling in Havana. He alone handled negotiations with dictator Fulgencio Batista for a complete monopoly of gambling in Cuba. Lansky was said to have personally deposited $3 million in a Zurich, Switzerland bank for Batista and arranged to pay the ruling military junta, namely Batista, 50 percent of the profits thereafter.” (119)

This version of events is echoed in other works. For example, in David Southwell’s encyclopedic The History of Organized Crime, the arrangement is expanded on further:

“When Batista returned to power in Cuba in 1952 after a coup d’état, Meyer approached him with a plan to transform the island into a major tourist destination. Meyer and his Mafia friends would take over all the casinos and racetracks in Cuba, clean them up and promote them as a gambling Mecca to Americans. In return for a free rein in this and other rackets, they would pump money into building luxury hotels and modernizing Havana. Then Meyer opened up a suitcase containing $6 million in cash for Batista. . . . When his regime collapsed, Lansky, Trafficante and many other Mob bosses lost millions in investments as Castro closed the casinos and the residents of Havana went on a slot machine smashing rampage in revenge against those known for being good friends of Batista.” (120)

I think by “other rackets” they meant brothels and drug smuggling. According to one source, the mob controlled “gambling” as well as “real estate … luxury hotels and casinos … the traffic in drugs, jewels, the currency exchange, white slavery and pornographic films.” (121)

According to this same source;

“The New York Times had estimated the Mob’s annual gambling take from Cuba at between $350 and $700 million. It was not surprising, therefore, that Castro’s distaste for the Mob was vociferously reciprocated.” (122)
A most accurate snapshot of Castro’s interactions with the Mafia could be obtained from the tell-all book Doublecross by mob bosses Sam (Mooney) Giancana and Chuck Giancana;

“We helped the CIA get guns to Castro, thinkin’ the guy would repay us by goin’ easy on our business down there. But Castro, the lousy bastard . . . I gotta hand it to him . . . he can’t be bought. He says Americans are all crooks and pimps. He’s a fuckin’ double-crosser if there ever was one.”

“But he’s pretty accurate in his view of Americans, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, Castro’s no dummy,” Mooney conceded. He sighed. “So, the CIA finally woke up to the fact that Castro’s closin’ down American business. The government doesn’t like that kind of shit. . . . After all, the CIA’s lost their cut of the take from the casino’s too.” (123)

Every source says much the same thing. The support for Castro provided by the CIA and Mafia pre-revolution was also mentioned by Barry Seal and David Ferrie (see part 1), which explains why — initially — the Mob wasn’t worried about Castro and didn’t fight against the revolution (they thought Castro was on their side), and why so many pro-Batista Cubans turned into the CIA’s Miami army (they felt totally betrayed and wanted revenge).

There were quite a few potential anti-Castro soldiers to choose from. Henrik Kruger’s 1976 book The Great Heroin Coup provides insight into the magnitude of the Miami Cuban community;

With Fidel Castro’s 1 January 1959 ouster of Batista, Lansky and Trafficante were in trouble. Though they were expelled from their Cuban kingdom, nearly a year elapsed before the Syndicate departed and the casinos were closed. Along with Trafficante and Lansky, half a million Cubans left the island in the years following Castro’s takeover. Some 100,000 settled in the New York City area, especially Manhattan’s Washington Heights and New Jersey’s Hudson County. Another 100,000 headed to Spain, others to Latin America, and a quarter of a million made their new home in Florida, the site of Trafficante’s new headquarters. Out of the Trafficantetrained corps of Cuban officers, security staffers and politicians, a Cuban Mafia emerged under the mobster’s control. It specialized in narcotics, first Latin American cocaine, then Marseille heroin. (124)

I believe, at this point in our story, it’s time to focus on one of those crooked Cuban cops who turned a blind eye to the Batista/Mafia rackets that would crank out all those profits. I’m talking about a man named Felix Rodriguez, who’s career was very similar to Ted Shackley’s career and Barry Seal’s career in that it followed George Bush to the Bay of Pigs, the Golden Triangle, Iran Contra and nearly everywhere in between.

Felix Rodriguez and the war in the shadows

In Felix Rodriguez’s book Shadow Warrior, Rodriguez denied knowing Bush back in his days of Bush being the head of the CIA during 1975–1976. (125) According to at least one researcher, the Rodriquez/Bush relationship went back a decade and a half before then;

“In 1959 (Felix) Rodriguez was a top cop in Cuba under Batista. When Batista fled to Miami Rodriguez went with him, along with Frank Sturgis and Chi Chi Quintero. Officially Rodriquez didn’t join the CIA until 1967, well after both the CIA invasion of Cuba in which he participated, and the assassination of JFK. But records recently uncovered show he actually joined the CIA in 1961, when he was recruited by a certain fella’ named Bush, which is, Rodriguez says, how he became such a “close personal friend of Bush.” (126)

Bush was considered to be a CIA recruiter in Miami by more than one researcher. Russ Baker states;

“In his memoirs, former Cuban intelligence official Fabian Escalante asserted that Nixon had met with an important group of Texas business businessmen to arrange outside funding for the operation. Escalante … claimed that the Texas group was headed by George H. W. Bush and Jack Crichton.” (127)

Alex Constantine quotes John Simkin saying much the same thing;

‘The CIA put millionaire and agent George Bush in charge of recruiting exiled Cubans for the CIA’s invading army; Bush was working with another Texan oil magnate, Jack Crichton.” (128)

Felix Rodriguez joined a special group inside Bush’s anti-Castro army — a group called “Operation 40” — an elite group of assassins;

“Operation 40, in approximately 1960, was supplemented by a political assassination unit, which was formed specifically to locate and murder Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and Che Guevara.” (129)

Unlike much of this story (which remains hidden away amongst the shadows) a bunch of these spies and assassins were all photographed together in one incredibly illuminating and incriminating photograph. (130) Barry Seal kept a photograph of Operation 40, taken January 22nd, 1963 at the Mexico City nightclub La Reforma. The photo contained;

• CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, front left.
• Porter Goss (future head of the CIA under George W. Bush) sits next to him.
• CIA agent and pilot Barry Seal is immediately behind them.
• Fifth from the left is CIA agent Juan Restoy — a notorious drug smuggler.
• On the far right sits CIA agent William Seymour
• and the man behind Seymour — hiding his face — is said to be either CIA agent Frank Sturgis or CIA agent Tosh Plumlee.

All were under the direct command of CIA agent E. Howard Hunt. Seymour, Sturgis and Hunt were also tied to the Kennedy assassination, and Sturgis and Hunt were also arrested in the Watergate break-in.

Many of the recruits to Operation 40 were hand-picked by José Sanjenis Perdomo, said to also be the doorman at the Dakota on December 8, 1980, the day Beatle John Lennon was assassinated. (131) There is more to be said about Perdomo and Lennon later on in this story.

Rodriguez ended up boasting about achieving one of Op 40’s stated goals: catching and participating in the execution of Che Guevara. Rodriquez even had a picture taken with Che right before Che’s execution. He stole Che’s watch from another soldier, (132) and still wears it to this day. (133)

The Bay of Pigs: a Skull & Bones operation

Bush’s role wasn’t limited to recruitment — he and his Skull & Bones brothers were planning and executing the entire invasion of Cuba! The “constellation of evidence” on this fact is pretty massive:

The new papers of reincorporation that erased the century-old Russell Trust Association were filed at 10:15 a.m. on April 14, 1961. Two hours later, at noon on that day, the orders went out to begin the Bay of Pigs operations–the covert C.I.A.-financed invasion of Castro’s Cuba, a bloody fiasco that still haunts us four decades later. Coincidence? Probably. But then it’s also true that one of the C.I.A.’s masterminds for the Bay of Pigs was a man named Richard Drain, Skull and Bones ’43. And the White House planner of the Bay of Pigs operation was McGeorge Bundy, Skull and Bones ’40. And the State Department liaison for the Bay of Pigs operation was his brother William P. Bundy, Skull and Bones ’39. And the man who filed the reincorporation papers that erased the Russell Trust Association from existence on the day of the Bay of Pigs was Howard Weaver, Skull and Bones ’45 (George Bush’s class), who retired from the C.I.A. in 1959. All of which might lead one to suspect that the Skull and Bones corporate shell had been used as a clandestine conduit of funds for the Bay of Pigs, and then erased from existence to cover up the connection as the invasion got underway. (134)

It wasn’t just his frat that connected Bush to the Bay of Pigs invasion. His Dad also had major investments on the island:

Bush’s father Prescott Bush (Skull & Bones 1917) and uncle George H. Walker (Skull & Bones 1927) both lost millions in sugar plantation investments to Castro’s revolution. (135)

And it wasn’t just the Bonesmen everywhere or his father’s investments, it was the naming of the operation and the naming of two of the ships;

According to reliable sources and published accounts, the CIA code name for the Bay of Pigs invasion was Operation Zapata, and the plan was so referred to by Richard Bissell of the CIA, one of the plan’s promoters, in a briefing to President Kennedy in the Cabinet Room on March 29, 1961. Does Operation Zapata have anything to do with Zapata Offshore? The run-of-the-mill Bushman might respond that Emiliano Zapata, after all, had been a public figure in his own right, and the subject of a recent Hollywood movies starring Marlon Brando. As J. Hugh Liedtke had observed, he was the classic figure for the revolutionary-cum-bandit. A more knowledgeable Bushman might argue that the main landing beach, the Playa Giron, is located south of the city of Cienfuegos on the Zapata Peninula, on the south coast of Cuba. Then there is the question of the Brigade 2506 landing fleet, which was composed of five older freighters bought or chartered from the Garcia Steamship Lines, bearing the names of Houston, Rio Es of Houston, Rio Escondido, Caribe, Atlantic, and Lake Charles. In addition to these vessels, which were outfitted as transport ships, there were two somewhat better armed fire support ships, the Blagar and the Barbara. (In some sources Barbara J.) 8 The Barbara was originally an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) of earlier vintage. Our attention is attracted at once to the Barbara and the Houston, in the first case because we have seen George Bush’s habit of naming his combat aircraft after his wife, and, in the second case, because Bush was at this time a resident, booster, and Republican activist of Houston, Texas. But of course, the appearance of names like “Zapata,” Barbara, and Houston can by itself only arouse suspicion, and proves nothing. (136)

Newspaper reporter Drew Pearson wrote in the syndicated May 6th, 1961 column “Washington Merry-Go-Round” that the Barbara J was named by skipper “G.C. Jullian” after his wife. But Pearson was known as one of the journalists who co-operated with the CIA in “Operation Mockingbird”. (137)

Combine the Skull and Bones evidence, Prescott Bush’s Cuban investments, the ship naming and the fact that Bush’s off shore oil rig was often situated near where the many anti-Cuban operations begin — the island of Cay Sal (138) — it’s a safe bet to say Bush was in on the invasion. This pile of evidence is made even taller when you add evidence connecting Bush to “the Cubans” & “the Texans” mentioned by Nixon and Hoover, as well as connecting Bush to Seal, Rodriquez and other members of Operation 40. This evidence is explored in the following chapters.

The big myth of the Bay of Pigs invasion was that the invasion failed because Kennedy refused to send in air cover. The reality — explained in detail by high-level participant L. Fletcher Prouty (Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1962–1963) — was that one of the Skull & Bones member close to Kennedy — McGeorge Bundy — sabotaged the invasion by insisting that the air cover not arrive until after the securing of a nearby landing strip. (139)

This was against the plan approved by JFK, who allowed some slow-flying B-26’s to attack Cuba’s tiny air force at the start of the invasion — a few crappy planes that supporters could believe were part of the Cuban rebel forces and not the US Air Force. The military were convinced that — with no air cover, the invasion force would be in trouble, and Kennedy would be forced to send in the entire US military, who were already waiting and ready to invade in case the assassins sent for Castro were successful. But the assassins screwed up. And Kennedy didn’t fall for the trap.

Kennedy’s refusal to be tricked into invading Cuba pissed off the Mafia, who wanted their casino’s brothels and drug supply lines back in operation. It pissed off the CIA, who wanted their drug supply lines and other investments back in operation. The CIA sure didn’t appreciate Kennedys firing the top three guys in charge of the Bay of Pigs invasion at the CIA — Dulles, Cabell and Bissell. And Kennedy was beginning to show signs of going soft on those who threatened the supply side of the French Connection — the areas in Laos that grew the opium in the first place. The French Intelligence services were — by late 1963 — losing control of the opium smuggling lines, and it looked to the CIA like Kennedy might treat Vietnam like he treated Cuba — he might have been lying to his military about refusing to pull out entirely “without victory”. This is an assumption, but not entirely without evidence.

Juan Restoy and Operation Eagle — that’s a lot of coke

After the CIA had their first ever defeat — one of America’s only military defeats — at the Bay of Pigs, what happened to their invading army? Evidence suggests over 100 of them went to work becoming the biggest drug traffickers in US history:

On June 21, 1970, agents of the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) arrested 150 suspects in cities around the country. The agency termed it “the largest roundup of major drug traffickers in the history of federal law enforcement.” Attorney General John Mitchell announced at an unprecedented morning press conference that the Justice Department had just broken up “a nationwide ring of wholesalers handling about 30 percent of all heroin sales and 75 to 80 percent of all cocaine sales in the United States.” The syndicate smashed in “Operation Eagle” was remarkable not only for it’s size but also for it’s composition. As many as 70 percent of those arrested had once belonged to the Bay of Pigs invasion force unleashed by the CIA against Cuba in April 1961. The bust gave a hint of evidence that would accumulate throughout the coming decade of the dominance of the U.S. cocaine and marijuana trade by intelligence-trained Cuban exiles. Chief among those arrested in Eagle was Juan Restoy, a former Cuban congressman and member of Operation 40, an elite CIA group formed to size political control of Cuba after the Bay of Pigs landing. (140)

Even more interesting than the scope of the operation was that the main organizer of it all was killed in circumstances similar to another member of Operation 40 — Barry Seal — in that he threatened to blow the whistle on the drug smuggling operation and then was shot immediately after:

“Juan Restoy, on the other hand, turned to blackmail. He threatened to expose a close friend of President Nixon’s as a narcotics trafficker, if not given his freedom and $350,000. Restoy was shot and killed by narcotics agents…” (141)

Dead whistleblowers seem to be a re-occurring theme in CIA drug history.

Utopiates

Between 1962 and 1963, Kennedy was smoking pot and taking LSD and tripping balls with his peacenik/artist/mistress/true love Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was attempting to use these drugs as an opportunity to get Kennedy out of the rut of cold-war thinking and turn him towards world peace.

On July 16th, 1962, Mary Pinchot Meyer smoked cannabis with JFK. The event was recorded in Peter Janney’s book “Mary’s Mosaic”:

“Mary produced ‘a snuff box with six marijuana cigarettes’ in Jack’s bedroom. ‘Let’s try it,’ Jack reportedly said to Mary. ‘She and the President sat at opposite ends of the bed and Mary tried to tell him how to smoke pot,’ Truitt was quoted saying in the 1976 National Enquirer article. ‘He wouldn’t listen to me,’ Mary told Truitt. ‘He wouldn’t control his breathing while he smoked, and he flicked the ashes like it was a regular cigarette and tried to put it out a couple of times.’ ‘Mary said that at first JFK didn’t seem to feel anything, but then began to laugh and told her: ‘We’re having a White House conference on narcotics here in two weeks!’ “ “She said that after they smoked the second joint, Jack leaned back and closed his eyes. He lay there for a long time, and Mary said she thought to herself, ‘We’ve killed the President.’ But then he opened his eyes and said he was hungry.” “He went to go get something to eat and returned with soup and chocolate mousse. They smoked three of the joints and then JFK told her: ‘No more. Suppose the Russians did something now!” (142)

JFK’s use of LSD had some very interesting timing to it. It was in May of 1963 that Pinchot Meyer was tripping on LSD with — according to her biographer — JFK;

In May of 1963, Meyer told Tim Leary that “My friends and I have been turning on some of the most important people in Washington.” (143)

It was also in May of 1963 that Kennedy came up with the idea for his “American University Speech” — regarded as “one of Kennedy’s finest and most important speeches”. (144)

In May 1963, the president informed his National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy that he wished to deliver a major address on peace. According to Special Assistant Ted Sorensen the speech was kept confidential in fear that the unprecedented tone would “set off alarm bells in more bellicose quarters in Washington” and allow political attacks against Kennedy in advance of the speech. (145)

Kennedy painted a picture of a world without war. This vision was attractive to all … except those who depended on war for massive profits — the “military industrial complex” Kennedy’s predecessor Eisenhower warned America about as just as he left office. The content of the speech seems inspired, to say the least.

“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. … For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.” (146)

Perhaps coincidentally, the term “utopiate” was coined around this time by Dr. Richard Blum of Stanford University (who also coincidentally worked with the CIA) (147) — a word which meant “drugs which create images of utopia”. (148)

This author’s personal experience with LSD leads him to believe that LSD can interrupt day to day routines and conventional thinking, force one to contemplate the big picture for six to eight hours, and in the proper setting (being among people who value peace, love and happiness, for example) an LSD trip can inspire a person to visions of world peace. It is very likely that this is what happened to Kennedy, with his American University speech being the end result.

In Noam Chomsky’s 1993 book “Rethinking Camelot”, Chomsky argues that Kennedy was lying to the American people when he spoke of world peace and was telling the truth to his generals — he would not pull out of South Vietnam without victory. (149) I think the opposite could be true — he was lying to his Generals (who had lied to him about the Bay of Pigs invasion, he must have realized by then) and was telling the truth to the American People. He did, after all, disappoint the US Army and the right wing when it came to the Cuban invasion. Perhaps he would disappoint them again in Vietnam. It’s reasonable to suspect that’s what the military industrial complex was thinking, in any case.

Kennedy’s combination of 1) refusing to invade Cuba — angering the CIA and their partners the Mafia — with 2) permanently threatening the profits of the military industrial complex with the “world peace” outlined in his American University speech must have been too great of a threat to the true powers that be. This road to world peace, unfortunately, took a wrong turn when it passed through Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963.

Part 2: Chapter 2: CIA’s greatest hits vol. 1: the early sixties

“Only cooperating command elements within the CIA, Army Intelligence, the National Security Agency and the FBI had the reach to coordinate what actually happened at Dallas and during the Warren Commission cover-up — and protection of the geopolitical power financed by the international drug trade was at the very heart of it.”

– Drug War, Dan Russell, 1999 (150)

The CIA had a habit of killing (or attempting to kill) world leaders who stood in the way of their drug operations. It wasn’t just Cuban revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevara the CIA were gunning for — arguably the assassinations of General Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic on May 30th, 1961 and of Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam on November 2nd, 1963 (20 days before JFK was shot) also follow this pattern. Take Trujillo, for example:

It is well-established that beginning some time around 1959, the CIA contracted with organized crime to assassinate particular foreign heads of state. What is not generally recognized is that, not at all coincidentally, those foreign heads of state were often in countries key to the CIA-Mafia drug traffic. Prime targets were Cuba’s Fidel Castro, who survived numerous attempts on his life, and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo, killed in 1961. After Castro took over Cuba and closed the island to mafia activity, the Dominican Republic became a staging point for a CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba, as well as a new transit point for Trafficante’s narcotics traffic. Henrik Krüger writes: “Furthermore, the CIA, according to agents of the BNDD [Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs], helped organize the drug route by providing IDs and speed boats to former Batista officers in the Dominican Republic in charge of narcotics shipments to Florida.” (Krüger 1980:145) President Rafael Trujillo may have done something to get in the way of the drug traffic, for the CIA-mafia alliance marked him for death and he was assassinated in May 1961, just after the CIA’s failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. (151)

The other major example relevant to this discussion is Diem, and those the CIA chose to replace him.

Diem — the other November 1963 assassination

Ngo Dinh Diem was the president of “South Vietnam” between 1955 and 1963. The CIA had rigged the election of 1955 for Diem. (152)

Diem and his family began as anti-drug crusaders:

During her brother-in-law’s (Diem’s) presidency, Madame Nhu pushed for the passing of “morality laws” outlawing abortion, adultery, divorce, contraceptives, dance halls, beauty pageants, boxing matches, and animal fighting, and closed down the brothels and opium dens. (153)

… but the realities of funding a police state made it impossible to rule without drug profits funding the secret police, so three years after his war on drugs was initiated, Diem’s complicity in drug running began.

“Shortly after the Binh Xuyen gangsters were driven out of Saigon in May 1955, Diem, a pious Catholic, launched a determined anti-opium campaign by burning opium-smoking paraphernalia in a dramatic public ceremony. Opium dens were shut down, addicts found it difficult to buy drugs, and Saigon was no longer even a minor transit point in international narcotics traffic. However, only three years later the government suddenly abandoned its moralistic crusade and took steps to revive the illicit opium traffic. The beginnings of armed insurgency in the countryside and political dissent in the cities had shown Ngo Dinh Nhu, Diem’s brother and head of the secret police, that he needed more money to expand the scope of his intelligence work and political repression.” (154)

Particularly involved in the illegal drug trade was Diem’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, head of the secret police,

“… Ngo Dinh Nhu, continued to funnel his American-supplied Laotian opium to the world market through Saigon, Bangkok and Hong Kong. The Golden Triangle opium/heroin trade remained the financial mainstay of the Saigon regime long after the November 1, 1963, CIA-engineered demise of the transparent, and increasingly independent, Ngo Dinh brothers.” (155)

and his other brother, Ngô Đình Cẩn, dictator of “Central Vietnam” and in control of the secret police and army there.

Cẩn was widely believed to be selling rice to North Vietnam on the black market, as well as organizing the trafficking of opium throughout Asia via Laos, and monopolizing the cinnamon trade. (156)

Conein the barbarian

Many have speculated as to the exact reason Diem was killed. Basically it boils down to his ineffective and PR-nightmare-laden repression of the Buddhist community in Vietnam (which included world-famous protests by Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to draw attention to the repression). That and a little too much “independence” — the CIA preferred their puppet government with a few more strings attached.

The responsibility for engineering Diem’s assassination fell mostly on the CIA, particularly two men who’s reputations are forever tied to drug trafficking. The first was the notorious Loucien Conein. By 1963, Conein had already experienced a long career with the CIA, and worked along side many of this story’s main characters:

In 1951, Gordon Stewart, the CIA chief of espionage in West Germany, sent Conein to establish a base in Nuremberg. The following year Ted Shackley arrived to help Conein with his work. … In 1954 Conein was sent to work under General Edward Lansdale in a covert operation against the government of Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam. … Joseph Trento has also pointed out that Conein worked with Ted Shackley and William Harvey at the JM/WAVE CIA station in Miami in 1963. (157)

There is ample evidence of Conein’s involvement in the Diem assassination.

Toward the end of October of 1963, the ubiquitous Lou Conein was given funds to disperse to insurgent generals. The coup proceeded, and on November 2, 1963, Diem and his brother were killed. (158)

The CIA also provided $42,000 in immediate support money to the plotters the morning of the coup, carried by Lucien Conein, an act prefigured in administration planning Document 17). The ultimate effect of United States participation in the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem was to commit Washington to Saigon even more deeply. Having had a hand in the coup America had more responsibility for the South Vietnamese governments that followed Diem. (159)

From 1973 until 1984, Mr. Conein ran secret operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Much about these missions remains secret, although Mr. Conein became a public figure of sorts in 1975 by candidly testifying about his role in the Diem killing to a Senate committee investigating the United States role in the assassination of foreign leaders. (160)

Very interestingly, Conein kept his role of assassinating those “key figures” tied up in the drug trade for at least a decade … and he did so using some more of the CIA’s anti-castro-Cuban secret out-of-work army:

In 1972 Conein had been appointed by Nixon to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Special Operations Group to set up an international network to smash the drug trade, and he proselytized a group of Cubans who had fought against Castro into a unit code-named Deacon 1. It was said that Conein’s methodology included plots to assassinated key international drug figures. (161)

This quote seems to echo other statements in this section — that the CIA was busy killing the drug dealers who weren’t on their team, or were but were bad at their job. In the eyes of the CIA, JFK qualified either way.

And then there’s Conein’s more famous partner in crime — General Edward Landsdale.

General Edward Lansdale — retired at exactly the right time

Conein was assisted by Edward Lansdale — the man who put Diem into power back in 1955 with a rigged election. There is much evidence tying Lansdale to CIA drug operations — including the elimination of the CIA’s main competition in the Golden Triangle — French Intelligence and the Corsicans:

In 1955 CIA agent General Edward Lansdale began a war to liquidate the Corsican supply network. While Lansdale was cracking down on the French infrastructure, his employer the CIA was running proprietaries, like Sea Supply and Cat, that worked hand-in-hand with the opium-smuggling Nationalist Chinese of the Golden Triangle, and with the corrupt Thai border police. The Lansdale/Corsican vendetta lasted several years, during which many attempts were made on Lansdale’s life. Oddly enough, his principal informant on Corsican drug routes and connections was the former French Foreign Legionnaire, Lucien Conein, then of the CIA. Conein knew just about every opium field, smuggler, trail, airstrip, and Corsican in Southeast Asia. He spent his free time with the Corsicans, who considered him one of their own. Apparently they never realized it was he who was turning them in. (162)

Lansdale’s resume included experience in an array of political and psychological warfare operations that involved drugs. In 1953, he had viewed the vast Laotian opium fields, and in 1955, he had chased the French out of Saigon and installed the Catholic Ngo regime. The Ngo regime’s own drug smuggling operation was directed by Diem’s brother Nhu (an opium smoker) through his secret police chief, Dr. Tran Kim Tuyen. (Ky’s First Transport Group was at Tuyen’s disposal and shuttled Tuyen’s drug couriers between Laos and Saigon from 1956 until 1963.) In 1960, Lansdale had investigated SDECE’s involvement in drug smuggling, and in 1962 he’d employed drug smuggling Mafiosi in the CIA’s shadow war against Cuba and its KGB advisors. Possessed of a wild imagination, Lansdale had even proposed the introduction of cheap marijuana as a way of undermining Cuba’s economy. (163)

Lansdale — according to multiple researchers — was also one of the planners of JFK’s assassination, and was identified in some of the photos taken that day in Dealey plaza. (164) Coincidentally — or perhaps not — Lansdale retired the day of the Diem Coup — three weeks before Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. (165)

General Nguyễn Cao Ky — the most famous drug pusher of 1971

One of those involved in the 1963 CIA Coup and assassination of Diem was General Ky of the Vietnamese Air Force. (166)

Kỳ began his association with the American covert operations community in 1961. While still ranked as a major commanding Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base, he became the first pilot for South Vietnam’s presidential liaison officer, which was organizing to infiltrate military intelligence teams into North Vietnam. He recruited pilots from his command for this intelligence program of the Central Intelligence Agency, and flew some of the missions himself after being trained by an expert pilot from Air America. (167)

When General Ky assumed control of Vietnam in 1965, his involvement in the opium trade was so “routine that it had lost almost all of it’s adventure and intrigue.” (168)

“When the Diem administration was faced with large-scale insurgency in 1958, it reverted to the Binh Xuyen formula, and government clandestine services revived the opium trade with Laos to finance counterinsurgency operations. Faced with similar problems in 1965, Premier Ky’s adviser General Loan would use the same methods.” (169)

By May of 1971, Ky was on the cover of “Ramparts” magazine next to text asking the question “Marshall Ky: The biggest pusher in the world?”

It is clear that by November of 1963, the CIA put their favorite drug pusher into power in Vietnam through an assassination, and were not above killing world leaders who were not their preferred drug pushers. This is important to keep in mind when looking at CIA involvement in JFK’s assassination.

Was Kennedy viewed by the CIA as just another politician who was getting in the way of their action, who needed to be “whacked”? What evidence exists for the CIA’s involvement in the assassination? And more importantly for this particular telling of the story, is there any connection between the CIA’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination and the CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking? If you look closely at the careers of those involved, the theme of “drugs, guns, assassinations and secret armies conducting secret wars” seems the constant.

Part 2 Chapter 3: Dallas

Where was George?

The most bizarre claim made by George Bush in regards to the JFK assassination was that he didn’t remember where he was when he heard about it. If this was true he would have been one of the only Americans who did not have this moment engrained into their memory — what makes his claim even more unlikely was that he was a member of the opposing political party to Kennedy and it was in his state where the assassination took place — his life revolved around Texas politics and he can’t remember where he was when Kennedy was killed? For real? In his 2009 book “Family of Secrets”, Russ Baker looks into this astonishing claim in detail. (170).

Several bits of evidence that are relevant to this question have arisen since 1963.

A newspaper announcement in the Dallas Morning News from November 20th, 1963, puts Bush at the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel the night before, speaking at the American Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors. (171) If Bush was spotted in Dallas that day, he had an excuse as to why he was there.

Then there was the “Bush Alibi Memo”. Kennedy was shot at 12:30pm. At 1:45pm — just an hour and fifteen minutes after the shooting, George Bush phones in a red-herring tip about hearsay evidence about an innocent man to the Houston FBI, to establish that he was in Tyler, Texas, a small town 97 miles Southeast of Dallas. (172) A Comanche 250 — one of Barry Seal’s airplanes at the time — had a top cruise speed of 185 miles per hour, so Tyler Texas was about 30 minutes away by small aircraft.

Then there was the “J. Edgar Hoover Memo” — dated November 29th, 1963. It concerned the FBI director passing on the concerns of the Miami FBI, that “some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba” — passing on this concern to “Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency”. (173)

Then there was the strange coincidence of the un-named Texas Oil Man caught running out of the Dal-Tex building, and arrested only due to the “clamor of the onlookers”:

“At least one man arrested immediately after the shooting had come running out of the Dal-Tex Building and offered no explanation for his presence there. Local authorities hardly could avoid arresting him because of the clamor of the onlookers. He was taken to the Sheriff’s office, where he was held for questioning. However, the Sheriff’s office made no record of the questions asked this suspect, if any were asked; nor did it have a record of his name. Later two uniformed police officers escorted him out of the building to the jeers of the waiting crowd. They put him in a police car, and he was driven away. Apparently this was his farewell to Dallas, for he simply disappeared forever.” (174)

“Jim also asked me about the arrests made in Dealey Plaza that day. I told him I knew of twelve arrests, one in particular made by R. E. Vaughn of the Dallas Police Department. The man Vaughn arrested was coming from the Dal-Tex Building across from the Texas School Book Depository. The only thing which Vaughn knew about him was that he was an independent oil operator from Houston, Texas. The prisoner was taken from Vaughn by Dallas Police detectives and that was the last that he saw or heard of the suspect.” (175)

Given these factors derived from the evidence above:

• Bush doesn’t remember where he was when he found out.
• Bush was in Dallas the night before.
• The Bush Alibi Memo puts Bush within range of the assassination.
• The Bush Hoover Memo outs Bush as CIA and places him amongst Cuban anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy elements.
• That someone matching his description got arrested running out of one of a possible sniper’s nests.
• That Bush was coordinating assassination groups for the CIA since 1961.
• That Bush felt betrayed by Kennedy for a) messing with the CIA’s and the Bush family’s investments in Cuba and b) refusing to use US troops to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

To top it all off, 8) some researchers believe Bush’s eldest son and future president George W. Bush — then 17 years old — can also be seen in photos from that day, walking in front of the Dal-Tex building, looking for his Dad, who was probably being questioned by police at the time. (176) It must have been “bring your son to work day” at the CIA that day.

To that list we must add 9) — that one of Bush’s oil buddies and old friends was Oswald’s CIA handler — George De Morensheldt.

According to Bush himself, Bush and de Morensheldt met in the “early 40’s” as an uncle to a school roommate at Andover. (177) Russ Baker makes a compelling case that de Morensheldt was a CIA agent. (178)

De Morensheldt wrote then CIA director Bush in 1976, complaining about being followed and having his phone tapped. Baker p. 67 Shortly after that de Morensheldt was found dead in his home, his head blown off by a shot gun, ruled a suicide. (179)

When 9 coincidences tie you or me or some regular, not-too-powerful person to the murder of an unexceptional victim, there’s usually an investigation of such a person. If it’s the president of the United States and there’s no investigation into Bush’s role in the assassination given the 9 coincidences, something fishy is going on with the US justice system.

You don’t know Jack Ruby

Jack Ruby seemed to know many of those associated with the assassination of JFK. He was a gangster who worked for Santo (sometimes spelled “Santos”) Trafficante Jr. and Carlos Marcello. He knew members of the FBI and CIA. He knew both Castro and the anti-Castro Cubans, and ran guns to both. And he knew Lee Harvey Oswald. (180)

Like Bush, Lansdale, Rodriguez, Trafficante, Marcello, Ferrie and Seal, he seemed to have been deeply involved in the drugs/guns/assassinations world.

Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and Santos Trafficante cooperated in smuggling drugs into the United States, with Teamsters Local 320 in Miami being one of the fronts for the business (Krüger 1980:143). Chicago mobster David Yaras, who answered to Sam Giancana, had assisted Hoffa in organizing Local 320, where Trafficante kept an office (Scott 1993:175). Jack Ruby of Dallas reported to Yaras and was another of Giancana’s men, involved in drug trafficking as well as gambling, arms smuggling, and operating a strip club. The CIA was aware of Ruby’s drug smuggling activities, according to former anti-Castro operative Robert Morrow, who worked under the CIA’s Tracy Barnes. Barnes was one of the Bay of Pigs planners, perhaps the most high-ranking one to have survived the Kennedy post-invasion firings. According to Morrow, Barnes said that one of Ruby’s arms smuggling partners was also one of the Agency’s ZRRIFLE assassins and that Ruby was taking advantage of that fact, counting on the CIA to remain silent on the smuggling for fear of exposing the assassination program (Morrow 1992). As one of the CIA-connected men who had supplied Castro with arms before he came to power and subsequently fell from favor with the U.S., Ruby is thought to have negotiated Trafficante’s release from Castro’s prison (Giancana 1992:279; Marrs 1989:394–98). … Ruby had been the subject of investigation by federal narcotics agents as early as 1947, for suspected involvement in a scheme to fly opium over the border from Mexico (Scheim 1983:117). It may have been as a result of this investigation that Ruby first became a federal informant. In 1947, an FBI staff assistant in Congressman Richard Nixon’s office wrote a memo asking Ruby to be excused from testifying before congress on the grounds that Ruby was “performing information functions” for the Congressman’s staff (Marrs 1989:269). (181)

And like many involved in the JFK assassination, he died of mysterious circumstances. More on that in a future chapter.

Part 2: Chapter 4: The Vietnam Drug War

Billy Covington:

“Business? I was just getting used to this being a war.”

Major Donald Lemond:

“Who told you they were two different things?”

– Air America, a 1990 film about the CIA opium/heroin operation in Laos.

According to former CIA Director William Colby, “The CIA has a solid rule against being involved in drug trafficking. That’s not to say that some of the people whom the CIA has used … over the years may well themselves have been involved in drug trafficking, but not the CIA.” Colby should know — from 1959 to 1972 he oversaw most major U.S. intelligence operations in the Vietnam Theater, undertaken in support of a series of drug-corrupted South Vietnamese leaders like Ngo Dinh Diem, (1955–63), Nguyen Cao Ky (1965–67) and Nguyen Van Thieu (1968–75). Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, head of South Vietnam’s secret police, guaranteed safe conduct for the Corsican-run Air Laos Commerciale to ship opium from Laos to Vietnam. Nhu used his profits to expand the scope of the secret police’s power. After Diem’s CIA-sponsored 1963 assassination, Ky became commander of the Vietnamese Air Force which, in two years, displaced the Corsican airline as the prime mover of Laotian opium. Ky also “taxed” opium shipments through his control of both the Vietnamese Customs Service and the Saigon Port Authority. Thieu’s intelligence chief, General Dang Van Quang, was by 1971 “the biggest pusher in South Vietnam,” according to NBC Saigon correspondent Phil Brady. Colby became CIA director in 1973. In 1976, he formally retired, but soon became a lawyer for the Australian-based, CIA-connected Nugan Hand Bank. There he joined forces again with several men previously under his command in Vietnam — Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines, Richard Secord and the bank’s co-founder, Michael Hand. (182)

– Paul Brancato, “The Vietnam (Drug) War”, Drug Wars Trading Cards, 1991

The Vietnam war was a great way for corporate America to make a buttload of cash. If the US defeated the Vietnamese, the defeated faced a loss of control of their off-shore oil prospects replaced with export-agriculture and raw material extraction and high-repression, low wage jobs. If America lost, at least there would be weapons sales, military supplies, planes, helicopters, fuel sales and (for the CIA) drug smuggling. By the early 1970’s, some researchers were catching on to the drug smuggling, and writing about it in the alternative press:

“Who are the principles in this new opium war? The ubiquitous CIA, whose role in getting the U.S. into Vietnam is well known but whose pivotal position in the opium trade is not. … According to the United Nations Commission on Drugs and Narcotics, since at least 1966 80 percent of the world’s 1200 tons of illicit opium has come from Southeast Asia.” (183)

“Many big parts of the Indo-China War (such as that strange little war in Laos) are merely political excuses for territorial fights between opium overlords. It has been claimed many times that the government of South Vietnam and the American C.I.A. are both in the opium business up to their eyebrows …” (184)

Later scholarship confirmed the pervasiveness of the drug smuggling going on in Vietnam, and hints at Bush’s awareness of it all:

Relations between Bush and Perot had gone downhill ever since the Vice President had asked Ross Perot how his (Vietnam war) POW/MAI investigations were going. “Well, George, I go in looking for prisoners,” said Perot, “but I spend all my time discovering the government has been moving drugs around the world and is involved in illegal arms deals. … I can’t get at the prisoners because of the corruption among our own covert people.” This ended Perot’s official access to the highly classified files as a one-man presidential investigator. (185)

“Unstated activities” in Laos

According to his son and future President George W. Bush;

“The day after Christmas 1967, Congressman George Bush embarked on a sixteen-day trip through Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. He met with senior American officials. He also spent time with junior officers and enlisted men…” (186)

If one were to speculate as to which “senior American officials” and “junior officers and enlisted men” Bush went to visit, one might consider he left with another CIA agent — Thomas Devine. And there were lots of CIA agents in that part of the world that Bush was likely to have hung out with. According to investigative journalist Russ Baker;

In December 1967, less than a year after Bush was sworn in (to Congress) he was off to Indochina, with his CIA partner Thomas Devine in tow. It was Christmas break, a time when congressmen often make overseas trips, but Bush and Devine did not have a typical agenda. Correspondence indicates that having arrived in Vietnam, Bush and Devine hastily canceled an appointment with the U.S. ambassador in favor of other, unstated activities. For the CIA, the hot item at the time was the so-called Phoenix Program, a secret plan to imprison and “neutralize” suspected Vietcong. This was being rolled out at precisely the moment that Poppy and Devine arrived “in country.” By the time CIA director William Colby admitted to the program in July 1971, more than twenty thousand people had been killed — many of them possibly innocent, officials later concluded. One person involved in Phoenix’s early stages was Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban exile and CIA operative. Rodriguez would go on to become a great friend of Poppy Bush’s, even visiting him in the White House. If J. Edgar Hoover’s 1963 memo was correct in mentioning “George Bush of the CIA” as an intermediary with Cuban exiles, the coincidence of Rodriguez’s activities in Vietnam with that of Bush’s visit raises questions as to how the two were connected. In 1970 Rodriguez joined the CIA front company Air America, which allegedly played a role in trafficking heroin from Laos to the United States. The Laotian operation was led by Donald Gregg, who would later serve as national security adviser during Poppy Bush’s presidency. When Bush and Devine traveled to Vietnam the day after Christmas 1967, Devine was in his new CIA capacity, operating under commercial cover. Handwritten notes from the trip show that Poppy was especially interested in the Phoenix program, which he referred to by the euphemism “pacification.” The two remained in Vietnam until January 11, 1968. (187)

Secret teamwork makes the secret dream work

“Whether or not the Secret Team had anything to do with the deaths of Rafael Trujillo, Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu, Dag Hammarskjold, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and others may never be revealed … “ (188)

– L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, 2011

Spending more time on the topic of “who might Bush have been meeting up with in Southeast Asia” is also a who’s who of what Fletcher Prouty calls “the Secret Team”. Some “Secret Team” participants in 1960’s-1970’s Southeast Asia connected to Bush:

Richard Armitage

A Navy “advisor” in Vietnam, a number of researchers link Armitage to the CIA and drug trafficking in Southeast Asia. (189) Later he became Reagan’s “Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy” and did things like meet with Noriega. (190) Bush kept him busy with that and then running bases in Thailand, and tried to get him a job in the Defense Department but he withdrew his nomination while under investigation by the FBI. He later became famous for outing fellow CIA agent Valerie Plame. (191)

Ted Shackley

Before 1965 he was the CIA station chief for JM/Wave — the biggest CIA base outside of Langley, Virginia. “JM” was a CIA cryptonym for “Cuba”. The base was located on the University of Miami campus. The base was closed down in 1965 after it was discovered that the base was used to organize drug smuggling. (192) Shackley was then moved to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, to run the now-largest CIA base in the world. Shackley has been linked to drug trafficking by many researchers. (193)

Shackley was accused of heroin smuggling in Laos by Lt. Col. James Gordon “Bo” Gritz in 1987 in Congress:

“According to Khun Sa, Shackley was a major player in the opium trade in the years 1965–1975. During part of this time, Shackley was the head CIA man in Vietnam and Laos. According to Khun Sa, Shackley was also the head of the US involvement in the narcotics trade in Southeast Asia at this time.” (194)

In May 1976, Shackley was made Deputy Director of Covert Operations by CIA director Bush. Later, Shackley becomes Bush’s speechwriter in the 1979–1980 election campaign. (195) He later found himself to be the originator of the “arms for hostages” part of the Iran Contra scandal, famously suggesting a “discussion of a quid pro quo that involved items other than money” — because, you know, cash for hostages looks so much worse in the public eye than weapons (or drugs) for hostages.

Felix Rodriguez

In his 1989 autobiography — “Shadow Warrior” — Rodriguez claims he went to Vietnam in 1970 and never mentions Laos or Vientiane or Air America or Ted Shackley. The Christic Institute claims Rodriguez was in Laos with Shackley. (196) Rodriguez only mentions the Christic Institute in passing — as a “left wing” organization that he definitely didn’t leak information to — and does not mention their accusations against him. (197) Rodriquez claims to have been in Ecuador and Peru between 1968 to 1970 (198) but then again, he also claims that he was never involved in drug trafficking (199).

Barry Seal

Not much information exists about Barry Seal in Vietnam — even in the book about him. But there is a few short passages about his experience in Southeast Asia, including this one;

Then these men, “Barry and ‘the boys,’” all go off to Southeast Asia. Laos was where they went: because Laos was where the money was. “Barry was not a soldier of fortune or a mercenary — he was a covert operative. It was the 1970’s when I saw Barry again.” Says friend ‘Red’ Hall, delivering a bombshell. “Right after he got caught flying drugs in a 747 out of the Orient during the Vietnam War. He had a lot of government connections: that’s a fact.” Needless to say, no official record of this, nor many other events in this story, remains. (200)

Donald Gregg

Gregg claims to have been “in charge of the ten provinces around Saigon from ’70 to ’72.” (201) Russ Baker (202) has him in Laos in charge of drug operations with Shackley and Rodriguez. Gregg answered a number of questions in an FBI polygraph examination in 1990. It was judged that he lied in his responses to multiple questions, including: “Have you ever given any false or misleading testimony about Felix Rodriguez to the Grand Jury or the congressional investigating committees?” (203) Greg appears with Rodriguez in Vietnam in photo #16 in Rodriguez’s autobiography: “Shadow Warrior”.

John Singlaub

Not involved in the drug trafficking until later on, he “ran the assassinations arm of the enterprise” and would go on to supply Seal with a “fleet of drug smuggling aircraft” in the 1980’s (204). In his 1991 autobiography “Hazardous Duty”, Singlaub admits to being in Laos in 1966 until 1968 — the same years that Shackley was there (205) — and also admits to being a friend of Ted Shackley (206).

Richard Secord

In his 1992 autobiography “Honored and Betrayed”, Secord admits working with Shackley in Vientiane, Laos, beginning in 1966 — when Shackley arrived (207), and also waxes poetic about the sight of the “lush valley filled with opium poppies waving scarlet in the breeze” that met him when he first got there. (208) The Christic Institute has him “dropping airborne incendiary devices on the jungle caravans of Vang Pao’s opium competitors” and overseeing “the transport of raw opium by Vang Pao’s tribesmen in paramilitary aircraft from the mountain opium fields of the Hmong tribe to locations where it could be processed into morphine base, later to be processed into ‘China White’ heroin” (209)

Santos Trafficante

This famous mob boss of Havana and Miami was reported to have first visited Laos back in 1962 (210) and visited again in 1968 to meet with the Corsicans. (211) According to the Christic Institute, Shackley set up a meeting between Trafficante and Vang Pao — the Hmong tribe leader — to “set up a heroin smuggling operation from Southeast Asia to the United States” — continuing the cooperation experienced by Trafficante and Shackely back in Miami in the early 1960’s. (212) Trafficante didn’t bother to write an autobiography, never spent a day in jail, and died of old age. (213)

Edward Lansdale

Major General Edward Lansdale was an OSS/CIA man who used his position in the Air Force as a cover. When he first got to Vietnam in 1953, he discovered opium smuggling by French intelligence, but was told not to interfere by his superiors. (214) In 1955 he attacked the pro-French drug dealing locals. (215) Lansdale extolled the virtues of “Civil Air Transport” — a forerunner of Air America — in a 1961 document that found it’s way into the Pentagon Papers (216). He knew Shackley from as far back as late 1961, when Lansdale’s “Operation Mongoose” began to be run out of Shackley’s Miami base. He retired November 1st, 1963. It was claimed by his associates he could be seen in a photo of Dealy Plaza on November 22nd, right after JFK’s assassination. (217) Lansdale returned to Southeast Asia from 1965 through 1968 and wrote about the “extra legal money-collecting systems” he helped to set up on behalf of Marshal Ky — said by some to be the “Biggest Drug Pusher in the World”. (218) When he returned to Vietnam in 1965, he negotiated a “truce” with the Corsican smugglers, and agreed not to investigate their drug running — a percentage of Corsican drug profits ended up going to Ky. (219)

Oliver North

Believe it or not, the famous Oliver North makes an appearance way back in 1965 with the rest of the secret team — and the story involves — of all things — drugs;

Although North’s 1991 Autobiograph — “Under Fire” — does not mention Laos, a number of writers have placed him there. Dan Russell writes: “(Joseph) Califano’s Vietnam era playmates, William Colby, Edward Lansdale, Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, Edwin Wilson, Lucien Conein, Richard Secord, Richard Armitage, John Singlaub, Felix Rodriguez, Barry McCaffrey and Oliver North, engineers of the Vang Pao-Laotian Opium connection, wen on to engineer Reagan’s Trafficante-supported Contra-Cocaine connection. … Serving under Secord in Laos was Oliver North.” (Russell, 2000, p. 341) Daniel Hopsicker writes: “With Jack Kennedy reduced to a flickering flame over a gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery, ‘the boys’ were firmly in the saddle, and ready to persue their dreams in that section of the planet known as Southeast Asia. They moved to Laos, because that was where the money was, a man who spent over 20 years in Special Forces, who we’ll call Colonel Nick, told us. He’d been stationed in Laos in the mid-‘60’s, he said, in charge of an ‘A’ base in the hills. His job had been to pay hill tribesmen $6 dollars per kilo for their opium. ‘The Chinese only paid $4, and that was how we ‘bought’ their allegiance,’ this Special ops vet told us. ‘And once a month we would pile all the acquired opium down on the end of the dirt runway and burn it in a bonfire. Then, as I recall, some of the guys would run around quick to get downwind. There’s not that much to do in Laos.’

‘Everything changed in early ’65’, Col. Nick said. ‘Then an order came down to burn no more opium, but to ‘store it’ instead, for removal to a more ‘secure’ location.’ That order coincided with Ted Shackley, Oliver North and Richie Secord coming into the theater of operations,’ he stated crisply. (220)

Needless to say, North plays a much more pivotal role in a future chapter of this comprehensive collection of evidence of CIA drug trafficking — in a little 1980’s scandal known as “Iran-Contra”.

But there’s lots of other topics to cover in this story before we even get there.

Stay tuned for part three, where we figure out how the RFK assassination, the Marilyn Monroe assassination, the MK-Ultra drug experiments, Richard Nixon and Watergate relate to Bush and his collection of spooks, pilots, drug smugglers and hit men you have been reading about in this already pretty effed-up story. It seems very incredible … until you read all the evidence at the same time — then it explains a lot of mysteries and ties up a lot of loose ends. Because if there’s a lesson in all of this hidden history, it’s that “elite deviance” isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s actually astute institutional analysis — right out of first year sociology. (221)

Malmo-Levine, David. “George H. W. Bush: Biggest Drug Lord Ever. Part One” Cannabis Culture, 16 May 2017, www.cannabisculture.com/content/2017/05/16/george-h-w-bush-biggest-drug-lord-ever.

Malmo-Levine, David. “George H. W. Bush: Biggest Drug Lord Ever. Part Two” Cannabis Culture, 01 Feb 2018, https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2018/02/01/george-h-w-bush-biggest-drug-lord-ever-2/

Footnotes, Part One :

1) Bill Weinberg, George Bush: The Super-Spy Drug-Smuggling President, 1992, Shadow Press, New York, New York, p. 1

(2) Rogue Elephant: The Drug Trade, the Kennedy Assassination, and the War in Vietnam, Kent Heiner, 2001 http://bottleofbits.info/econ/rogue.htm https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg72702.html

(3) Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger Volume 3 — My Life After Death, 1995, New Falcon Publications, Reno, Nevada, p. 121

(4) Hannah Arendt, Responsibility and Judgment, 2003, Schocken Books, New York, p. 21, originally from an article entitled “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship”, 1964

(5) http://www.vice.com/en_ca/video/bc-bud-part-2

(6) https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/1998/1/2/1301

(7) Chris Bennett, Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, Forbidden Fruit Publishing, Gibsons, BC

(8) https://www.alchimiaweb.com/blogen/dr-courtneys-raw-cannabis-juice/

(9) “We’ve certainly seen them get stronger,” said a U.S. law enforcement official in Mexico, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security reasons. The Sinaloa cartel is “the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world.”
U.S. Intelligence Says Sinaloa Cartel Has Won Battle for Ciudad Juarez Drug Routes April 9, 2010–4:35 AM, ALICIA A. CALDWELL AND MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press http://www.cnsnews.com/node/63984

“According to the U.S. Attorney General, the Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for importing into the United States and distributing nearly 200 tons of cocaine and large amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2008.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaloa_Cartel 200 tons = 181437 kilos. Cocaine is about 30,000 dollars per kilo. 181437 times 30,000 equals 5.5 billion dollars. “Prior to his arrest in a condominium in the Pacific resort of Mazatlan last Saturday, El Chapo had cut a near-mythical figure as the head of the Federation, establishing himself as Mexico’s dominant drug lord with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.” http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/drugs/mexicos-cartel-brats-brag-social-media/

(10) Loera http://www.forbes.com/profile/joaquin-guzman-loera/

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/19/world/americas/mexico-drug-lord/index.html

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/84890446/

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/some-of-the-most-notorious-drug-barons-in-history-11-photos/85120880/

(11) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdkE7DX2cdM 10 Notorious Drug Lords

(12) http://nation.time.com/2014/02/23/mexican-drug-lord-el-chapo-joaquin-guzman-extradition/

(13) Al Martin, The Conspirators, 2002, National Liberty Press, Montana, pp. 196–197

(14) “Not only is it a shocking and uncensored expose’ of Iran-Contra scandals, the book is a hidden history of US Government crime and corruption. Al Martin’s account include first-hand knowledge of US Government drug trafficking, illegal weapons deals, as well as wholesale fraud by government perps — securities fraud, real estate fraud, and insurance fraud. When George Bush, Bill Casey and Oliver North initiated their plan of State-sanctioned fraud and drug smuggling, they envisioned using 500 men to raise $35 billion. When Iran-Contra finally fell apart, they had ended up using 5,000 operatives and making $350 billion.” — Publisher’s blurb, The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran-Contra Insider by Al Martin almartinraw.com/book.html

(15) http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/20-richest-drug-dealers-time/#!/1-pablo-escobar-net-worth-30-billion_1083/

(16) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ED63A_hcd0

(17) http://fair-use.org/p-j-proudhon/general-idea-of-the-revolution/the-principle-of-authority#s2.2p5

(18) http://www.bartleby.com/115/12.html

(19) http://yubanet.com/regional/The-Rise-of-the-Opium-Trade.php#.Vl6LT2SrRFU

(20) Kris Millegan, Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, 2003, TrineDay, Waltervill, Oregon, pp. 2, 325

(21) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_%26_Company

(22) W. Travis Hanes & Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars, 2002, Sourcebooks Inc., Naperville, Illinois, p. 42 See also: Steven Sora, Secret Societies of America’s Elite, 2003, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, pp. 242–243

(23) Secret Societies of America’s Elite, p. 252

(24) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 2, see also http://www.minormusings.com/Drugs/Delanos.html

(25) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_%26_Company

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_family

(26) Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, 1991, Laurence Hill Books, Brooklyn, New York, p. 98

(27) David F. Musto, MD, THE HISTORY OF LEGISLATIVE CONTROL OVER OPIUM, COCAINE, AND THEIR DERIVATIVES

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/ophs.htm

(28) Dale Gieringer, America’s Hundred Years War On Drugs — Centennial of the 1st Congressional Anti-Drug Law — Prohibiting Opium in the Philippines — Mar. 3rd 1905–2005, http://www.drugsense.org/dpfca/DrugWarCentennial1.htm

(29) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 6

(30) Christopher Silvester, ed., The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology From 1859 To The Present Day, 1993, Viking, London, p. 244

(31) Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, Harper Perennial, New York, 1980, p. 308

(32) https://espressostalinist.com/genocide/philippine-american-war/

(33) William Blum, Killing Hope, 2004, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, p. 39

(34) http://www.chanrobles.com/acts/actsno1761.html

(35) https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/1306/today-in-philippine-history-october-10-1907-the-new-opium-law-was-passed-by-the-philippine-commission

(36) David Musto, The American Disease, 1999, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 34 — See also: Opium provided the Islands’ government with an early test of its moral intentions.8 For more than half a century the Spanish had operated a government opium monopoly. Opium was contracted out to merchants who paid taxes on their sales to the Chinese, the only ethnic group permitted to purchase it. When Spanish control suddenly ended, opium imports increased. A cholera epidemic in 1902 reportedly made opium use widespread among the natives, because the constipating qualities of the alkaloids in opium were thought to be life-saving. A tradition of government monopoly of opium sales, supported by a sizable number of Chinese opium smokers and a growing number of natives smoking or eating opium, presented the federal government with an unprecedented problem and unprecedented latitude in the choice of a solution. The Supreme Court had decided in 1901 that doctrines of states’ rights were inapplicable to the insular possessions; Congress and the Philippine Commission, therefore, had authority to take almost any action with regard to the opium question.10-The first solution proposed was pragmatic: reinstitution of the opium monopoly, restriction of sales to Chinese, and application of the revenue to the immense task of public education.11 Commissioner of Public Instruction James Smith strongly favored this approach, and his recommendation was approved by Governor Taft. The bill started routinely through the machinery of the Philippine government, but between the second and final readings it was “electrocuted by Presidential lightning.” 12 The Reverend Wilbur Crafts, leader of the International Reform Bureau in the United States, recalled that he heard almost casually of this moral outrage–a government pandering to opium craving by degenerate races. Quickly, by letter and by telegraph, he organized opposition: messages flowed into the ‘White House asking President Roosevelt to veto the bill. To profit from such ignoble trade would involve the United States in the support of indefensible vices. Bishop Brent also opposed the scheme on grounds identical with those he gave when returning donations earned through gambling.” When the opposition first appeared, Secretary of War Root cabled Taft: “Hold opium monopoly bill. Further investigation. Many protests.” 14 Soon opposition proved so strong that the bill was withdrawn. David Musto, The American Disease, 1999, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 26 http://www.drugtext.org/The-American-Disease/2-diplomats-and-reformers.html

(37)“PLAN WORLD WAR ON OPIUM TRAFFIC”, Washington Herald, December 31st, 1908, reproduced in The Dope Chronicles, Gary Silver, editor, 1979, Yellow Press, San Francisco, p. 84 — See also: “The acceptance of this invitation by Great Britain — the arch-offender in this drugging of China that has gone on relentlessly since before our revolutionary war — amounts to one of the greatest diplomatic triumphs ever won by a nation, one whose honors Secretary Root must share with Robert Bacon, his assistant Secretary of State. … The brown ‘dope’ got into our veins when we got hold of the Philippines, where Mr. Taft found thousands of our subjects addicted to the drug. He had hospitals opened for the ‘fiends’ and he called a Commission to draw up a plan for the eradication of the vice.” — “OPIUM CONFERENCE TO UNDO THE CRIME OF A CENTURY”, The Daily Picayune, New Orleans, Dec. 27, 1908

(38) http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1912/root-facts.html

(39) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 157–158 See also: The American Disease, p. 38

(40) Jill Jonnes, Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, 1996, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, p. 334

(41) Barbara Hodgson, In The Arms Of Morpheus, 2001, Greystone Books, Vancouver & Toronto, p. 128

(42) http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/history/e1910/harrisonact.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act

(43) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 620

(44) Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams, p. 56 See also: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/258/280/case.html

(45) http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/268/5.html

“It is evident that the Supreme Court opinion in the (1926) (sic) Lindner (sic) case, removing restrictions on treatment of addicts, had no noticeable restraining effect on the Treasury Department in its war on physicians.” — Report on Drug Addiction II, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, July 1963, Vol. 39, №7, pp. 432–33 — “In Webb v. U.S., decided in 1919, the Court held that it was not legal for a physician to prescribe narcotic drugs to an addict-patient for the purpose of maintaining his or her use and comfort. In U.S. v. Behrman, decided three years later, this ruling went one step further by declaring that a narcotic prescription for an addict was unlawful, even if the drugs were prescribed as part of a cure program. The impact of these decisions combined to make it almost impossible for addicts to obtain drugs legally. In 1925 the Supreme Court emphatically reversed itself in Lindner (sic) v. U.S., disavowing the Behrman opinion and holding that addicts were entitled to medical care like other patients, but the ruling had almost no effect. By that time, physicians were unwilling to treat addicts under any circumstances, and a well developed illegal drug marketplace had emerged to cater to the needs of the addict population.” — James A. Inciardi, The War On Drugs: Heroin, Cocaine, Crime, and Public Policy, 1986, Mayfield Publishing, Palo Alto, California, p. 15

(46) Ron Rosenbaum, Travels with Dr. Death, 1991, Penguin Books, New York, New York, p. 376

(47) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 617 “US Secretary of War Henry Stimson hired McCloy as a consultant in September 1940, who became immersed in war planning … McCloy during the war served on the government task forces that built the Pentagon, created the Office of Strategic Services, which eventually became the Central Intelligence Agency …” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._McCloy see also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_L._Stimson

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_skullbones05.htm#HENRY STIMSON: MASTER BONESMAN

(48) Webster Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin, George Bush, the Unauthorized Biography, 1992, Progressive Press, Washington, DC, p. 127 — See also Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 627

(49) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 630 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_National_Security_Council_1947%E2%80%9353

(50) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 632 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush

(51) “President Eisenhower, just a month into his presidency in 1953, appointed Dulles as the first civilian director of the CIA, acting on the advice of Ike’s friend and confidant Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut. Bush, the father of a president and grandfather of another, was one of Hitler’s American bankers during World War II until the FBI shut down the bank, and all records of his Nazi past vanished. … The truth about the CIA’s use of Nazis remained secret for nearly half a century, covered up by the Dulles and others, including a later CIA director and future U.S. president, George H.W. Bush, who gave Angleton access to his files which Angleton destroyed in a fire before his death.” Michael B. Schweitzer, Q&A ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY: An Attorney’s Evidentiary & Historical Analysis November 22, 2012

https://mikiestar.com/qa-about-the-assassination-of-president-kennedy-2/

(52) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 633

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Lovett#Early_government_career

(53) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, pp. 296–300

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1964&dat=19860730&id=23wkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=idsFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1028,6778433

http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-7-skull-and-bones-the-racist-nightmare-at-yale/

http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boodleboys1.html

(54) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 633 — See also: “Time Magazine of August 24, 1925 featured Davison on its cover. He had been appointed Chairman of a prestigious new office, the National Crime Commission, to organize a national movement for the reduction of crime. With Prohibition in full swing, consider the context of his responsibilities in this assignment! He served that office until 1927.”

http://dmairfield.com/people/davison_ft/

(55) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 643 http://www.hightimes.com/read/skull-bones

(56) L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, 2011, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, New York, p. X — See also: Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, pp. 645–646

(57) Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty, 2004, Viking, New York, New York, p. 206 — See also: Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 648

(58) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 650 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_S._Whitehouse

(59) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 650

(60) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 652 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_G._Galbraith

(61) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 652 http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-7-skull-and-bones-the-racist-nightmare-at-yale/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Skull_and_Bones_members

http://www.snowwowl.com/hhgeronimosskull.html

(62) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, pp. 6–9,

(63) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 661

(64) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 659 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boren

(65) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones p. 319 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Bissell,_Jr.

(66) https://boldtcastle.wordpress.com/fun-facts/stand-alones/skull-and-bones/

(67) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/qclub.htm

Interestingly, Bob Woodward — famous for his Watergate reporting — is also a member of Book & Snake. His connections to the intelligence community are investigated in “Family of Secrets” by Russ Baker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Woodward

(68) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Acheson

(69) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cord_Meyer

http://mssa.library.yale.edu/obituary_record/1925_1952/1943-44.pdf

(70) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Barnes

(71) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Smith_Bush

(72) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Lehrman

Apparently lawyer Robert Bishop Fiske, Jr. — a lawyer associated with both the Clinton Whitewater and BCCI scandals — is also a member of Wolf’s head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Fiske

http://wpedia.goo.ne.jp/enwiki/Wolf’s_Head_(secret_society)

(73) The Realist, Issue Number 89 — March-April 1971 — Page 105

http://www.ep.tc/realist/89/105.html

(74) http://web.archive.org/web/20020101221939/http://www.guerrillanews.com/crack/c_simpson.html

https://archive.org/details/ctc

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking

http://www.serendipity.li/cia.html

http://darkpolitics.wordpress.com/cia-involvement-in-drug-smuggling-part-1/

(75) “National Security Act”, Public Law 80–253, 61 STAT 495, https://research.archives.gov/id/299856

(76) — page A11, Copyright, 1963, by Harry S Truman

http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman’s%20CIA%20article.html

(77) Douglas Valentine, The Strength Of The Wolf, 2004, Verso, London, pp. 154–155

(78) Daniel Hopsicker, Barry and the Boys, 2001, Mad Cow Press, Eugene, Oregon, pp. 186–187

(79) http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.ca/search/label/Paul%20Helliwell http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.ca/2013/05/an-off-books-private-war.html

http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.ca/2013/07/three-degrees-of-separation-from-cia.html

http://www.madcowprod.com/10182007.html

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhelliwell.htm

http://www.minormusings.com/Page/Norton.html

See also: Patricia Goldstone, Interlock: Art, Conspiracy, and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi, Counterpoint; Reprint edition, 2016

(80) “During the 1960s and 1970s, several shady banks in the Caribbean were associated with the CIA, notably Castle Bank & Trust Company and an affiliate called Mercantile Bank and Trust Ltd. Both institutions were run by an OSS veteran named Paul Helliwell and were used by the CIA for covert operations.” Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin, False Profits, Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York, 1992, pp. 124–125

(81) The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, THE GREAT DOPE OPERA

http://belhistory.weebly.com/acid-daze.html

(82) Pete Brewton, The Mafia, CIA & George Bush, 1992, S.P.I. Books, New York New York, p. 297

(83) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_State_Narcotic_Drug_Act

http://stressedanddepressed.ca/photo-gallery/essential-documents/

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/371/ille/rep/repfinalvol3-e.htm#Chapter 19

(84) The Politics of Heroin, pp. 17–18

(85) Cockburn & St. Clair, Whiteout — The CIA, Drugs and The Press, 1998, Verso, London and New York, p. 141

(86) “The U.S. government’s narcotics Mafia connection goes back, as is well known, to World War 2. Two controversial joint operations between OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and ONI (U.S. naval intelligence) established contacts (via Lucky Luciano) with the Sicilian Mafia, and (via Tai Li) with the dope-dealing Green Gang of Tu Yueh-Sheng in Shanghai.” Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, 1980, Black Rose Books, Montreal, p. 14

“My CIA, OSS, and DEA informants described their roles in the intelligence agency drug trafficking starting in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Rodney Stich, Defrauding America, Second Edition, 1994, Diablo Western Press, Alamo, California, p. 294

“The CIA has been dealing drugs since before it was the CIA; already in its first days, as the OSS during World War 2 it was facilitating and managing the trade, and directing its criminal proceeds to the places of it’s masters’ choosing.” Michael Ruppert, Crossing The Rubicon, 2004, New Society, Gabriola Island, BC, p. 67

(87) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 11

(88) http://cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0126.html

(89) “Organized crime was welcome in prerevolutionary Cuba, and Havana was probably the most important transit point for Luciano’s European heroin shipments. The leaders of Luciano’s heroin syndicate were at home in the Cuban capital and regarded it as a “safe” city: Lansky owned most of the city’s casinos, and the Trafficante family served as Lansky’s resident managers in Havana. Luciano’s 1947 visit to Cuba laid the groundwork for Havana’s subsequent role in international narcotics smuggling traffic. Arriving in January, Luciano summoned the leaders of American organized crime, including Meyer Lansky, to Havana for a meeting and began paying extravagant bribes to prominent Cuban officials as well.” The Politics of Heroin, p. 40

(90) The Politics of Heroin, p. 40

(91) Illegal heroin labs were first discovered near Marseille, France, in 1937. These labs were run by Corsican gang leader Paul Carbone. For years, the Corsican underworld had been involved in the manufacturing and trafficking of heroin, primarily to the United States.[1] It was this heroin network that eventually became known as “the French Connection”. The Corsican Gang was protected by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the SDECE after World War II in exchange for working to prevent French Communists from bringing the Old Port of Marseille under their control.[2] Alfred W. McCoy, Cathleen B. Reach, and Leonard D. Adams, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (Harper & Row, 1972); Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy (Bobbs-Merrill, 1972); Henrik Krueger, The Great Heroin Coup (South End, 1980); Leslie Cockburn, Out of Control (Atlantic Monthly, 1987). Carlo Cortes, AP, Manila, Oct. 25, 1989.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Connection#From_the_1930s_to_the_1950s

(92) The Politics of Heroin, p. 14

(93) “At first the Mafia’s operation was one of many individual operations connected or affiliated to the French-Corsican Mob or Unione Corse‘s famous “French Connection” heroin distribution ring. By the late 1950s, the Sicilians and Americans organized a joint U.S. and Sicilian La Cosa Nostra narcotics operation that would eventually grow into one of the largest global narcotics operation ever. This famous joint U.S.-Sicilian operation came to be known as the “Pizza Connection” and was cemented between the two mafia organizations at the famous mafia summit held at the Grand Hotel des Palmes in Palermo, Sicily in October 1957.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_Conference#Narcotics_trade

(94) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_Conference#Narcotics_trade

(95) J. V. Baker, David Ferrie, 2014, Trine Day, Waterville, Oregon, p. 12

(96) Barry and the Boys, p. 19

(97) Ibid, p. 173

(98) Dan Russell, Drug War, 2000, Kalix.com, Camden, New York, p. 195

(99) Russ Baker, Family Of Secrets, 2009, Bloomsbury Press, New York, p. 34

(100) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax#U.S._role

http://cryptome.org/iran-cia/sum.pdf

“On 16 April 1953 a comprehensive study entitled “Factors Involved in the Overthrow of Mossadeq was completed. The Study indicated that a Shah-General Zahedi combination, supported by CIA local assets and financial backing, would have a good chance of overthrowing Mossadeq, particularly if this combination should be able to get the largest mobs in the streets and if sizable portion of the Tehran garrison refused to carry out Mossadeq’s orders.” — I. PRELIMINARY STEPS, p. 3, from a secret CIA report: “CLANDESTINE SERVICE HISTORY, OVERTHROW OF PREMIER MOSSADEQ OF IRAN, November 1952-August 1953,” an operation planned and executed by the CIA and British SIS:

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

https://cryptome.org/iran-cia/cia-iran-pdf.htm

(101) Thomas Devine was born in around 1926. After the Second World War he joined the Central Intelligence Agency. According to a de-classified memo, Devine left the CIA in 1953 to help his associate, George H. W. Bush to establish the oil company, Zapata Petroleum Corporation. In his book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty (2009) Russ Baker argues: “For Devine, who would have been about twenty-seven years old at the time, to resign at such a young age, so soon after the CIA had spent a great deal of time and money training him, was, at minimum, highly unusual. It would turn out, however, that Devine had a special relationship allowing him to come and go from the agency, enabling him to do other things without really leaving its employ.” After the sale of the company, Devine became a member of the investment firm of Train, Cabot and Associates in New York. According to a CIA memo this was an “investment banking firm which houses and manages the (CIA) proprietary corporation WUSALINE.” John Train was one of the founding editors of the CIA-connected The Paris Review. Devine later rejoined the CIA under non-official cover (NOC) status on 12 June 1963, as a covert commercial asset for Project WUBRINY/LPDICTUM. Joan Mellen points out that: “This CIA document reveals that Thomas Devine had informed George Bush of a CIA project with the cryptonym WUBRINY/LPDICTUM. It involved CIA proprietary commercial operations in foreign countries.” Mellen goes onto argue that this links George H. W. Bush to George de Mohrenschildt and Lee Harvey Oswald. “WUBRINY involved Haitian operations, in which, the documents reveal, a participant was George de Mohrenschildt, the Dallas CIA handler of — Lee Oswald.” Russ Baker interviewed Devine in 2008 and he refused to say whether he was involved with WUBRINY. However, another CIA officer, Gale Allen, confirmed in another interview that Devine did take part in the project. Devine continued to work closely with George H. W. Bush. According to the CIA memo Devine “accompanied Bush on a trip to Vietnam from 26 December 1967–11 January 1968, for which he was issued an interim top-secret clearance by the US Department of Defense.” Russ Baker has suggested that there might be a link with the controversial Phoenix Program.

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKdevineTJ.htm

http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=12758#relPageId=2

(102) Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, p. 655, see also: In 1962, Bush was joined in Zapata Off-Shore by a fellow Yale Skull and Bones member, Robert Gow. By 1963, Zapata Off-Shore had four operational oil-drilling rigs — Scorpion (1956), Vinegaroon (1957), Sidewinder, and (in the Persian Gulf) Nola III.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapata_Corporation

(103) William Cooper, Behold A Pale Horse, 1991, Light Technology, Sedona, Arizona, p. 214

(104) Sam and Chuck Giancana, Double Cross, 1992, Macdonald Books, London, p. 350

(105) Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Chapter 8b — The Bay of Pigs and The Kennedy Assassination, 2012

http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-9-the-bay-of-pigs-and-the-kennedy-assassination/

(106) Rodney Stich, Defrauding America, Second Edition, 1994, Diablo Western Press, Alamo, California, p. 339

(107) http://maps.thefullwiki.org/Zapata_Corporation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HRG_Group

See also Defrauding America, 1994, pp. 337–341

(108) Rodney Stich, Defrauding America, Explosive 3rd edition, 1998, Diablo Western Press, Alamo, California, p. 375

http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_world_class_criminal.html

Footnotes, Part Two:

(109) Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life In The CIA, 2005, Potomac Books, Virginia, p. 52

(110) Kitty Kelley, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, 2004, Doubleday, New York, p. 213

(111) Sam & Chuck Giancana, Double Cross, 1992, Macdonald & Co., New York, p. 328

(112) Rodney Stitch, Defrauding America, 1998, Third Edition, Diablo Western Press, Inc., Alamo, California, pp. 375–376

(113) Theodore Shackley, Enigmatic C.I.A. Official, Dies at 75

By DAVID STOUT, DEC. 14, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/14/us/theodore-shackley-enigmatic-cia-official-dies-at-75.html

(114) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unione_Corse — see also Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout — The CIA, Drugs and The Press, 1998, Verso, London and New York, p. 141

(115) Wikipedia, JMWAVE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JMWAVE

(116) Alex Von Tunzelmann, Red Heat, 2011, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, p. 181

(117) Paul Eddy with Hugo Sabogal and Sara Walden, The Cocaine Wars, 1988, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, p. 44

(118) Quotations from Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994) edited by Carlos Ripoll https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%AD

(119) Carl Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia, 1987, Facts On File Inc., New York, p. 179

(120) David Southwell, The History of Organized Crime, 2006, Carlton Books, Ltd, London, pp. 190–191

(121) David E. Scheim, Contract On America, 1988, Shaplosky Publishers, New York, p. 188

(122) Ibid, p. 189

(123) Doublecross, p. 293

(124) Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, updated, 2015, TrineDay, Walterville, Oregon, p. 140 http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-great-heroin-coup-chapter-15.html

(125) Felix Rodriguez and John Weisman, Shadow Warrior, 1989, Simon & Schuster, New York, p. 265

(126) Daniel Hopsicker, Barry and the Boys, 2001, Mad Cow Press, Eugene, Oregon, p. 167

(127) Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 2009, Bloomsbury Press, New York, p. 83

(128) John Simkin, quoted in “Jackals: The Stench of Fascism”, Alex Constantine, 2016

(129) Christic Institute, Inside the Shadow Government, 1988, Christic Institute, Washington, D.C., p. 6

(130) Barry and the Boys, p. 507

(131) Warren Hinckle & William Turner, The Fish Is Red, 1981, Harper & Row, pp. 307–308, see also Fenton Bresler, Who Killed John Lennon, 1989, St. Martin’s Press, New York, p. 201

(132) Shadow Warrior, p. 170

(133) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Post-execution_and_memorial

(134) Ron Rosenbaum, “I Stole the Head of Prescott Bush! More Scary Skull and Bones Tales,” New York Observer, July 17, 2000 http://observer.com/2000/07/i-stole-the-head-of-prescott-bush-more-scary-skull-and-bones-tales/

(135) Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty, 2004, Viking, New York, pp. 203–206 see also Family Of Secrets, p. 36

(136) Webster Griffin Tarpley, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, tarpley.net http://tarpley.net/online-books/george-bush-the-unauthorized-biography/chapter-9-the-bay-of-pigs-and-the-kennedy-assassination/

(137) spartacus-educational.com/JFKmockingbird.htm

(138) Family of Secrets, pp. 34–35

(139) L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, 2011, Skyhorse Publishing, Delware, pp. 132–135

(140) Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 1991, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 26–27

(141) The Great Heroin Coup, updated, 2015, p. 145 http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-great-heroin-coup-chapter-15.html

(142) Peter Janney, Mary’s Mosaic, 2012, Skyhorse Publishing, Delware, pp. 225–226

(143) Tim Leary, “The Murder Of Mary Pinchot Meyer”, The Rebel, November 22, 1983, p. 46 See also Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 225, 255–256

(144) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_University_speech

(145) Sorensen, Ted. Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. Harper-Collins Publishers, New York, 2008 See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_University_speech

(146) John F. Kennedy, American University Speech, June 10th, 1963

(147) https://www.almanacnews.com/morgue/2005/2005_02_23.blum.shtml

(148) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/572204

(149) Noam Chomsky, Rethinking Camelot, 1993, Black Rose Books, NYC, pp. 105–148

(150) Dan Russell, Drug War, 1999, Kalyx.com, Camden, New York, p. 291

(151) Rogue Elephant — The Drug Trade, the Kennedy Assassination, and the War in Vietnam, Kent Heiner (2001) https://www.memresearch.org/econ/rogue.htm

See also page 434 in the CIA’s “Family Jewels” collection:

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_full_ocr.pdf

And page 255 of Douglas Valentine’s book Strength of the Wolf (2004, Verso, NYC) and pages 26–27 of Mark Zepezauer’s book The CIA’s Greatest Hits (1994, Odonian Press, Tucson, Arizona) and page 439 of the third edition of “Defrauding America” for more on Trujillo and the CIA.

(152) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Vietnam_referendum,_1955

(153) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Nhu

(154) Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, 1991, Lawrence Hill Books, Brooklyn, New York, p. 203

(155) Drug War, p. 231

(156) Wikipedia, Ngô Đình Cẩn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ng%C3%B4_%C4%90%C3%ACnh_C%E1%BA%A9n

(157) http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKconein.htm

(158) David Corn, Blonde Ghost, Ted Shackley and the CIA’s Crusades, 1994, Simon and Schuster, New York, pp. 174–175

(159) JFK and the Diem Coup, John Prados, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book №101, Posted — November 5, 2003 https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/

(160) http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/07/world/lucien-conein-79-legendary-cold-war-spy.html

(161) Deadly Secrets, Warren Hinckle & William Turner, 1992, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, p. 399

(162) The Great Heroin Coup, Updated, 2015, p. 133

(163) Douglas Valentine, Strength of the Wolf, 2004, Verso, New York, p. 417

(164) Ibid, p. 262

See also: March 6, 1990 letter from L. Fletcher Prouty to Jim Garrison:

I was studying those photos. One of them is the “Tramps” picture that appears in your book. It is glossy and clear. Lansdale is so clearly identifiable. Why, Lansdale in Dallas? The others don’t matter, they are nothing but actors and not gunmen but they are interesting. Others who knew Lansdale as well as I did, have said the same thing, “That’s him and what’s he doing there?”

https://www.prouty.org/letter.html

https://www.prouty.org/photos.html

Ed Landsdale was identified walking past “the three tramps” (center) by no less authorities than L. Fletcher Prouty, the liaison between the Pentagon and the CIA for covert activities–who was the basis for the figure, “Col. X”, in Oliver Stone’s “JFK”, and Victor Krulak, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, both of whom knew him well.

http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.ca/2015/09/did-george-hw-bush-coordinate-jfk-hit.html

(165) Edward Geary Lansdale, In The Midst Of Wars, 1972, 1991 edition published by Fordham University Press, New York, p. 378

(166) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_South_Vietnamese_coup

(167) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_Cao_K%E1%BB%B3

(168) Ramparts Magazine, May 1971, p. 38 http://www.unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1971may-00032:40

(169) The Politics of Heroin, p. 161

(170) Family of Secrets, pp. 44–66, 117–118

(171) Ibid, p. 59, also reproduced on page 5 of the photograph section.

(172) Ibid, pp. 50–52

(173) http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/11/us/63-fbi-memo-ties-bush-to-intelligence-agency.html

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Hoover.html

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_Sr,_JFK_-_J_Edgar_Hoover_memo_2.jpg

(174) Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, 1988, Warner Books, New York, p. 238

(175) WHEN THEY KILL A PRESIDENT, Roger Craig, 1971 http://www.ratical.com/ratville/JFK/WTKaP.html

(176) https://realitieswatch.com/proof-george-hw-bush-was-a-cia-agent-involved-in-the-assassination-of-jfk/

(177) Family of Secrets, p. 67

(178) Ibid, pp. 68–84

(179) Ibid, p. 68

(180) James W. Douglas, JFK and the Unspeakable, 2008, Touchstone, New York, pp. 357–362

(181) Rogue Elephant — The Drug Trade, the Kennedy Assassination, and the War in Vietnam, Kent Heiner (2001) https://www.memresearch.org/econ/rogue.htm

(182) — Paul Brancato, “The Vietnam (Drug) War”, Drug Wars Trading Cards, 1991, Eclipse Enterprises, card #12

(183) Frank Browning and Banning Garrett, “The New Opium War”, Ramparts Magazine, May 1971, pp. 33, 38

(184) Georgia Straight cover story on the heroin/opium trade, January 11–18, 1973

(185) Monika Jensen-Stevenson & William Stevenson, Kiss The Boys Goodbye, 1990, Dutton Books, New York, p. 337

(186) George W. Bush, 41: A portrait of my father, 2014, Crown Publishing, New York, p. 85

(187) Family of Secrets, pp. 130–131

(188) L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team, 2011, Skyhorse Publishing, Delaware, p. 3

(189) Michael Ruppert, Crossing The Rubicon, 2004, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, B.C., Canada, pp. 73, 132

See also: Christic Institute, p. 21, Barry And The Boys, p. 190 Drug War, pp. 458, 468 Defrauding America, pp. 248–249, 259, 448

(190) Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, 2007, Harper Perennial, New York, p.565

(191) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Armitage_(naval_officer)

(192) New York Times, Jan. 4, 1975, p.8

(193) Christic Institute, pp. 9–19, 21, 23–44, 47, 48, 96, 106, 119, 177–179, 194–196 –Whiteout pp. 247–248 — The Politics of Heroin, 1991, pp. 462, 466, 478 — Crossing The Rubicon, pp. 73, 83, 132 — Drug War, pp. 341, 357, 458, 523 — George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, pp. 391–392

(194) U.S. Narcotics Control Efforts in Southeast Asia, June 30th, 1987, Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, June 30, 1987 pp. 22–23 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pur1.32754077270076;view=2up;seq=28

(195) George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, pp. 307, 333

(196) Christic Institute, pp. 15–16

(197) Shadow Warrior, p. 251

(198) Ibid, pp. 173–183

(199) Ibid, p. 254

(200) Barry & ‘the boys’, p. 20

(201) http://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Gregg,%20Donald%20P.toc.pdf

(202) Drug War, p. 131

(203) https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/profile-gregg.php

(204) Barry And The Boys, p. 188

(205) John K. Singlaub, Hazardous Duty, 1991, Summit Books, New York, p. 17

(206) Ibid, p. 310

(207) Richard Secord, Honored and Betrayed, 1992, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, p. 56

(208) Ibid, p. 75

(209) Christic Institute, pp. 13–14

(210) Joe Durden Smith, Mafia: The Complete History Of A Criminal World, 2003, Arcturus Publishing Limited, London, p. 130

(211) The politics of Heroin, p. 212

(212) Christic Institute, pp. 14–15

(213) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Trafficante_Jr.

(214) Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, 1972, Harper & Row, New York, p. 102, See also: Whiteout, p. 242

(215) Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil And War, 2003, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, Maryland, p. 196

(216) Pentagon Papers, 1971, Bantam Extra, New York Times Publishers, New York, p. 137

(217) Drug War, p. 260

(218) The Great Heroin Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, 1980 edition, Black Rose Books, Montreal, p. 134, see also: Drug War, p. 346

(219) The Politics Of Heroin In Southeast Asia, pp. 211–212

(220) Barry and the Boys, p. 183

(221) https://uncgsoc101.wordpress.com/module-5-deviance-and-social-control/part-2/