Executed for Drug Trafficking

[Steve James]

Mike, I agree with you. My point was that the drugs (and things) that kill the most are legal and profitable. Prescription drugs kill more than heroin, but it's been the suburban housewife's high. If you're not one of her kids, you have to go to the doctor and get a slip. Fetanyl is a hospital drug that is just being misused, but it's been around for a long time. The question is why it's becoming so common now. Meth has been epidemic since the early 2000s, but it's one of those drugs that people either survive or not. Heroin addicts can get high for life if they have a supply. Their problems start when they don't have the drug.

So, like I said, if you want to get rid of addicts, just make their overdose powder available. Dealers don't want buyers to die, though it isn't out of altruism. Oh well.

[.Q.]

Really? Starting in the 70s, there was spraying of marijuana plants. Afa today, there's a strain of heroin on the street labelled "Batman" that is laced with fentonyl and/or elephant tranquilizer. That's today. It's an easy Google search. There are also books on how the CIA introduced crack into particular neighborhoods http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/1 ... 61748.html.

I only have a passing curiosity w/ regards to drug related info so I only read part of the article. Quick search on the article did not show anything w/ regards to spraying, Batman or fentonyl. Still, based on things you said I think you meant the CIA was trying to encourage/enhance drug use. I wouldn't doubt it and understand the logic, but what I didn't understand was your statement that making a drug more potent would discourage its use. Am I just misunderstanding your statement?

[wiesiek]

just to be clear :
I`m vote for what grows naturally on the planet earth.

Right now there are lot of highly toxic chemicals equivalents quite legals, inventions of the chemical brothers "smart ass" ,
or "dope heads" inventions like better kicking heroin with elephant/horse drugs added to the mix.
Kind of our time signs - tobacco is treated by ammonia for better nicotine kick...

anyway
as our history go, restricted law in "valuable substances" for humankind -- didn`t make anything good .
and, btw.,-
legal and quite popular alc., is as addictive as heroin and has much more criminogenic factor

[Steve James]

You misunderstood somewhat. Fenton isn't sprayed on anything by the government. Poisons were sprayed on Marijuana crops. My point was that if one wanted to kill drug addicts, it would be easier to allow them to kill themselves by overdosing as opposed to executing them. That would seem an unlikely solution except that we know governmental agencies have allowed and even encouraged the proliferation lethal drugs in communities. It's easy enough to Google Cia and cocaïne or heroin. Of course you might not believe it would happen or that the Cia would do it. But the principle of how it could destroy communities and individuals should be apparent.

[Steve James]

Old article from the 90s in the NYTimes.

The CIA Drug ConnectionIs as Old as the Agency

LONDON— Recent news item: The Justice Department is investigating allegations that officers of a special Venezuelan anti-drug unit funded by the CIA smuggled more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States with the knowledge of CIA officials - despite protests by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the organization responsible for enforcing U.S. drug laws.

That is a huge amount of cocaine. But it was hardly a first for the CIA. The agency has never been above using individuals or organizations with known links to drug trafficking if it thought they could help it further its national security mission.

Let us put the Venezuelan case in context: To protect its "assets" abroad, the CIA has ensured that the DEA's concerns outside the country were subordinated to its own. Until recently, no DEA country attaché overseas was allowed to initiate an investigation into a suspected drug trafficker or attempt to recruit an informant without clearance from the local CIA station chief. DEA country attachés are required to employ the standard State Department cipher, and all their transmissions are made available to the CIA station chief. The CIA also has access to all DEA investigative reports, and informants' and targets' identities when DEA activities outside the United States were involved.

In Costa Rica, when the war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government was at its peak and cocaine was beginning to pour into the United States, the DEA attaché wanted to place cameras at clandestine airstrips from which he suspected drugs were being flown to the United States. The CIA resident gave him a list of airstrips on which he was not to place cameras. They were the strips into which the CIA was flying arms for the contras. Some were also strips from which the DEA agent suspected drugs were being flown to the United States.

Shortly after the kidnapping and brutal murder of the DEA's Enrique Camarena in Mexico, Francis Mullen, the DEA administrator, was taken by the CIA station chief in Mexico City to Mexico's director of federal security, a man who, the station chief confided, was a CIA asset. The gentleman, Mr. Mullen told me, denied any knowledge of the affair. He was lying. A DEA investigation revealed that he had been connected - a man on the CIA payroll, no less - to the murder of a U.S. federal agent.

CIA ties to international drug trafficking date to the Korean War. In 1949, two of Chiang Kai-shek's defeated generals, Li Wen Huan and Tuan Shi Wen, marched their Third and Fifth Route armies, with families and livestock, across the mountains to northern Burma. Once installed, the peasant soldiers began cultivating the crop they knew best, the opium poppy.

When China entered the Korean War, the CIA had a desperate need for intelligence on that nation. The agency turned to the warlord generals, who agreed to slip some soldiers back into China. In return, the agency offered arms. Officially, the arms were intended to equip the warlords for a return to China. In fact, the Chinese wanted them to repel any attack by the Burmese.

Soon intelligence began to flow to Washington from the area, which became known as the Golden Triangle. So, too, did heroin, en route to Southeast Asia and often to the United States.

If the agency never condoned the traffic, it never tried to stop it, either. The CIA did, however, lobby the Eisenhower administration to prevent the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the DEA's predecessor, from establishing monitoring posts in the area to study the traffic. Today, the Golden Triangle accounts for about half the heroin in circulation in the world.

During the Vietnam War, operations in Laos were largely a CIA responsibility. The agency's surrogate there was a Laotian general, Vang Pao, who commanded Military Region 2 in northern Laos. He enlisted 30,000 Hmong tribesmen in the service of the CIA.

These tribesmen continued to grow, as they had for generations, the opium poppy. Before long, someone - there were unproven allegations that it was a Mafia family from Florida - had established a heroin refining lab in Region Two. The lab's production was soon being ferried out on the planes of the CIA's front airline, Air America. A pair of BNDD agents tried to seize an Air America.

A pair of BNDD agents tried to seize an Air America DC-3 loaded with heroin packed into boxes of Tide soap powder. At the CIA's behest, they were ordered to release the plane and drop the inquiry.

The CIA was made officially aware of Manuel Antonio Noriega's involvement in the drug traffic in 1972, when Mr. Noriega was chief of intelligence of the Panama National Guard, and a promising CIA asset. The BNDD found evidence that Mr. Noriega was taking payoffs for allowing heroin to flow from Spain, through Panama City airport, and on to the United States. That information was part of a lengthy file on Mr. Noriega compiled by Jack Ingersoll, then chief of the BNDD.

Mr. Ingersoll was aware of Mr. Noriega's ties to the CIA, as was President Richard Nixon. When Mr. Nixon ordered Mr. Ingersoll to Panama to warn the country's military dictator, General Omar Torrijos, about the activities of Mr. Noriega and General Torrijos's brother Moises, Mr. Ingersoll hoped that law enforcement was finally "beginning to get the upper hand in its ongoing struggle with the CIA." He was wrong. The Watergate break-in occurred shortly after his visit. Mr. Nixon needed CIA support; his enthusiasm for the drug war evaporated. Mr. Ingersoll's successors at the newly formed DEA - Peter Bensinger, Francis Mullen and John Lawn - all told me they never saw his file, although they had asked to see everything the DEA had on Mr. Noriega. The material has disappeared.

Shortly after General Torrijos's death in a mysterious airplane crash, Mr. Noriega, with CIA assistance, took command of the Panama National Guard.

No one in the Reagan administration was prepared to do anything about the Noriega drug connection. As Norman Bailley, a National Security Council staff member at the time, told me, "The CIA and the Pentagon were resolutely opposed to acting on that knowledge, because they were a hell of a lot more worried about trying to keep Panama on our side with reference to Nicaragua than they were about drugs." Nowhere, however, was the CIA more closely tied to drug traffic than it was in Pakistan during the Afghan War. As its principal conduit for arms and money to the Afghan guerrillas, the agency chose the Pakistan military's Inter-Services Intelligence Bureau. The ISI in turn steered the CIA's support toward Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Islamic fundamentalist. Mr. Hekmatyar received almost half of the agency's financial support during the war, and his fighters were valiant and effective. But many of his commanders were also major heroin traffickers.

As it had in Laos, the heroin traffic blossomed in the shadows of a CIA-sustained guerrilla war. Soon the trucks that delivered arms to the guerrillas in Afghanistan were coming back down the Khyber Pass full of heroin.

The conflict and its aftermath have given the world another Golden Triangle: the Golden Crescent, sweeping through Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of the former Soviet Union. Many of those involved in the drug traffic are men who were once armed, trained and financed by the CIA.

The writer's latest book, "Black Eagles," deals with the CIA, cocaine traffic and Central America in the mid-'80s. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/03/opini ... larry.html

The argument is not that they wanted to destroy a community. They had other interests, and they were prepared to sacrifice people in order to accomplish their goals.

Afa spraying, google "paraquat," but I'll quote the Times.

U.S. to Resume Using Paraquat on Marijuana
AP
Published: July 14, 1988

WASHINGTON, July 13— The director of the Drug Enforcement Administration said today that the Government would use the herbicide paraquat and two others in a stepped-up campaign to eradicate domestically grown marijuana.

The use of paraquat, banned from national forests in 1983 because of environmental concerns, was announced by the director, John C. Lawn, at a news conference.

A drug agency spokesman, Cornelius Dougherty, subsequently said that, in light of a 1983 ruling by Federal Judge June Green, paraquat would be sprayed for marijuana eradication on private land, not on public property.

The other two herbicides cited by Mr. Lawn, 2,4D and glyphosate, are not involved in the ruling and could be used on public lands, a spokesman said.

Jay Feldman, coordinator of the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, said: ''The other two chemicals don't have the same restrictions, but while that may be complying with the letter of the law, it is violating the principles that protect national lands to ensure the protection of wildlife habitats and recreation areas.''

Under a consent decree resolving the 1983 suit by several environmental groups and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, the D.E.A. agreed not to spray paraquat until after the Government prepared a statement on the action's effect on the environment.

The impact statement was completed in July 1985 and found that ''there is a slight risk that heavy smokers of marijuana could be affected by paraquat-sprayed marijuana.'' The document also opened the way for use of glyphosate and 2,4-D.

Glyphosate, a weedkiller like paraquat, was first used in September 1985.

Paraquat, which is used in agriculture to clear fields before planting and after harvest, is an acid that can produce severe lung damage in humans if ingested.

The Government contends that while paraquat is dangerous in a concentrated form, once it is sprayed it becomes ''biologically inactive.''

Mr. Lawn said today that the Government must prepare another environmental impact statement when eradication is contemplated and that ''at that point, the determination is made by environmentalists, by law enforcement, which chemical will be most effective.''

Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d said ''the real environmental damage is not from'' the herbicides, but rather from what is being done by the illegal growers of marijuana.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/14/us/us ... juana.html

Sure, one could argue that they were simply killing the crops. But, as I said earlier, those crops were still sold by the dealers.

[Michael]

Sure, one could argue that they were simply killing the crops. But, as I said earlier, those crops were still sold by the dealers.

No, dear Saint Peter, sir. You should till let me in. It was in no way predictable that the dealers would sell the pot after we sprayed it with toxic substances already banned in national parks. I mean, we weren't trying to poison anyone, we were just doing our jobs.

[.Q.]

You misunderstood somewhat. Fenton isn't sprayed on anything by the government. Poisons were sprayed on Marijuana crops. My point was that if one wanted to kill drug addicts, it would be easier to allow them to kill themselves by overdosing as opposed to executing them. That would seem an unlikely solution except that we know governmental agencies have allowed and even encouraged the proliferation lethal drugs in communities. It's easy enough to Google Cia and cocaïne or heroin. Of course you might not believe it would happen or that the Cia would do it. But the principle of how it could destroy communities and individuals should be apparent.

Ok, that makes sense. I was just confused by your original wording.

[windwalker]

Budi Waseso said Indonesia has already begun to add heavy weapons, drug-sniffing dogs, and police personnel to carry out a crackdown. Waseso, like Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, is known for his controversial remarks; last year he said he’d like to jail drug traffickers on an island prison surrounded by crocodiles.

“The life of a dealer is meaningless,” Waseso said Tuesday, because a dealer “carries out mass murder. How can we respect that?”

Indonesia already has some of the harshest penalties for drug traffickers. In April 2015, it executed eight people convicted of drug smuggling, including seven foreign citizens, two of them Australian. The executions prompted Australia to recall its ambassador.

In July, Indonesia executed another four people convicted of drug crimes, three of them Nigerians.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exporting-co ... 41905.html

[wiesiek]

@ Steve , you seems to not quite understand difference in drugs.
Heroin, amphetamine , alcohol and coke - are toxic in overdose, easy make you addict, and users kilning self quickly anyway.
Problem is, that livin`, long term users has big negative impact on relatives in the most cases.
Pot, LSD, DMT, or wider- "psychedelic stuff " is not so aggressive, and has also brighter side...

BTW,
I heard recently, that part of the population has the genes responsible for particularly easy dependency developing .
so
those shitty presidente/s/ could simply tests all citizens and simply burn "rotten branch"!

----

[Steve James]

I have nothing against pot or hallucinogens. And I tend to have sympathy for addicts, and that they should be treated, not executed. They kill themselves. Of course, there are drugs like K2, bath salts, meth, pop, etc. that make people dangerous. It's ok by me to defend oneself any way one can if someone who uses drugs attacks you.

Btw, the more anti drug a politician is, the more likely he or she is just a hypocrite.

[Michael]

Btw, the more anti drug a politician is, the more likely he or she is just a hypocrite.

Just like the holier-than-thou's on sex, extra-marital sex, homo sex, etc.

[Steve James]

Just like the holier-than-thou's on sex, extra-marital sex, homo sex, etc.

Exactly.

[wiesiek]

..."the more anti drug a politician is, the more likely he or she is just a hypocrite..."
yup,
visible even for my untrained eye !

[junglist]

Seriously, the ignorance here is nauseating. A bunch of liberal whites who swear they are not racist but suggest the stupidity, illiteracy, etc. of Filipinos that don't know any better and need to be educated and feed on the teet of some ivory tower white liberal intellectual who has never been to the Philippines and has no clue what is going on there but is somehow the savior of all dirty, dumb brown people and that his one size fits all solution of education is the answer for the problem in the Philippines. If you don't want to be racist, listen to the gat damn country (91 percent of people support the man! This why all those corrupt officials are taking the political war outside the country! They know they can't win the political war in the Philippines now!) of the Philippines and research more as to why they support the Philippines. Good grief.

[junglist]

https://www.facebook.com/Mochablogger/v ... 281981522/