Hello James,

Per your inquiry, yes, I’ve had an extensive look into the USA’s international narcotics trafficking, over decades, actually. It is a CIA project, primarily, with junior partner at the Pentagon and sometimes in business with MOSSAD as a matter of convenience. This piece focuses on the CIA. Because it is a long piece, I’ve omitted extensive notes and references. The entire piece with illustrations, live links, extensive references and appended notes can be read online at:

-Ron West

"The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than a history of crime"

-Voltaire

It had been reported in the New York Times the CIA has been handing off many millions of dollars to individuals in the Afghan government to buy influence. Using open source analysis, I will propose a case for these many millions being heroin trafficking ‘hush money.’ But first, a bit of history:

In 1970, serving in Vietnam, I had transferred from the 199th Light Infantry Brigade based at Long Binh, for extended tour of duty with the 330th Transportation Company located at Vung Tau. The US Army Airfield at Vung Tau was an advanced aircraft maintenance location, primarily, with a runway that could handle freight aircraft up to a C-130. By far, however, it was mainly a service center for helicopters needing advanced repairs, engine overhauls, rotor replacements, et cetera. Among other tasks, I worked airfield perimeter and flight line security. We had fully armed Cobra gun ships for airfield protection that needed secured from possible sapper attack, particularly, as well as the more typical security needs. The period was from October of 1970 to November of 1971.

As an E-5, I had responsibility for men on the perimeter at times, at other times on the flight line. Perimeter duty in my sector was parallel to the landing and take off (main) runway. This was Vietnam approaching late stage conflict. Heroin addiction was estimated by myself and other non-commissioned officers to be about 30% of the US Forces enlisted men on this airfield. Our own company and it’s platoons were about this average level of addicts as was our understanding this being the similar case of the other Army units located there.

Again and again, over this 13 month period, heroin ran out. It could not be missed when nearly a third our soldiers at Vung Tau, a few hundreds of men, went into physical and mental symptom of withdrawal. It was not pretty. This was not the weak, comparatively speaking, heroin someone would needle. It was STRONG. It was smoked or ‘snorted’ up the nose. Intravenous use of this drug would have been almost instantly fatal. Tremendous quantity of the drug was consumed by these horrifically addicted men.

Vung Tau could not be easily supplied with heroin on demand, without some serious interruptions, in the large quantities required to maintain the habits of hundreds of badly addicted soldiers by Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents. The location was separated from the mainland by bracken marsh, accessed by a single causeway secured in multiple sectors with tightly controlled traffic having to pass American and Australian security checks. By sea would have been more likely, but here it is also problematic for the un-interrupted enemy supply of our soldiers with drugs. Vung Tau was highly secured by sea with armed patrol boats because of the high military value of its mission. It is a small area of land with essentially little coastline to secure. Security was tight. Interdiction would have been a near certainty, at least once in a while. It didn’t happen.

The Viet Cong or North Vietnamese agents of course did not have air access to us. The CIA did.

It was nowhere near rocket science to note the CIA airline Air America flight that parked 1/4 mile away from every other aircraft, never came in to parking area. 3 people, armed, stayed with the aircraft, command staff car picked up 2 others. Luggage (nearly modern steamer trunks filled with not only heroin but also high grade marijuana) for at least 10 (TEN) people was picked up by a 3/4 ton truck, with 2 persons riding with the baggage, 1 left guarding the aircraft. All airfield personnel were strictly instructed NEVER to approach the Air America flights. They never stayed more than several hours. Bingo, heroin flush by that evening. Again and again. Every time the soldier’s suppliers had run out of heroin, there was an Air America flight landed. Problem solved, the addicted soldiers were functional again.

After Vietnam I served with 19th Special Forces Group as (11F40) Sergeant for Operations and Intelligence, working together with some of the best in the field, a position that eventually pointed to my later career as an investigator. In conversation with special forces veterans of CIA liaised Indochina operations, it became clear CIA narcotics trafficking in Vietnam was not a ‘one off’ by some isolated or small rogue element. I continued to follow the CIA in the available sources and have made some assessments, drawn some conclusions.

The covert, operational or ‘black ops’ sector itself of the CIA has been the source of major narco-trafficking or, there has been a large and well organized rogue element within this sector where oversight is problematic. These people are in major international drug trafficking and their worldwide tracks are beginning to emerge over time, with overwhelming circumstantial evidence.

It had been established by the 1970s and reported on in media that the CIA had bought the loyalties of tribes in the so called ‘Golden Triangle’ opium producing region with cash for their crop, the most likely or closest proximity, raw base or source of the heroin in Vietnam. War zones with covert logistics for intelligence services are perfect opportunities to commercially process on large scale with no effective police oversight. Again and again, reliable CIA narcotics trafficking accounts have surfaced only to be quashed, noting in the linked affidavit, the Iran-Contra’s Robert Gates associated Richard Secord, and George W Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (at time of invasion of Afghanistan.)

After Vietnam, and the loss of direct military backing in force for our covert agency and no longer in control of the necessary areas in the region, heroin waned and cocaine became big. One only has to look at the tracks of the graduates of the School of the Americas, and connect the dots. This is the CIA associated initial source of the leadership training that has today’s Mexican Federal Police sometimes overwhelmed in pitched battles with drug lord militiamen that are now days professional commandos. Move south from there and you had Noriega in Panama, same source of training and a CIA asset, became a major international narco-trafficker.

South farther again and you have Uribe associated with cartels, right wing militias and associated death squads, CIA, School of the Americas training, all in the mix of Colombia, and drug trade and coca production is up there, eradication a farce. In 2005 you find Gulf Stream jets used in the CIA renditions are passing through the hands of known CIA assets, to Uribe family linked cartel, one had crashed in Mexico carrying 4 tons of Cocaine as noted in the narco-sphere news:

“the Gulfstream II was purchased less than two weeks before it crashed in Mexico by a duo that included a U.S. government operative who allegedly had done past contract work for a variety of US law enforcement and intelligence agencies, according to a known CIA asset (Baruch Vega) who is identified as such in public court records. The four tons of cocaine onboard of the Gulfstream II at the time of its crash landing, according Vega, was purchased in Colombia via a syndicate that included a Colombian narco-trafficker named Nelson Urrego, who, according to Panamanian press reports and Vega, is a U.S. government (CIA) asset”

And now Mexico is severing its relationship with the CIA having anything to do with the so-called ‘war on drugs’ and it is a smart move (when considering the Pentagon has enlisted Blackwater as a contractor in the business.) Meanwhile the ‘war on drugs’ discovers the Rick Perry administration in the George W Bush home state of Texas moves very quickly to shut down investigators who’d discovered high powered American judges, politicians and law enforcement at parties thrown by drug cartels. Couple this to a joint Blackwater/CIA covert assassination program that had been run by known cartel killer Enrique Prado, coupled to Erik Prince’s known religious extremism with ties to and funding of the American religious right, one may more than speculate international narcotics trafficking is funding Rick Perry’s Islamophobic Tea Party.

And Bush appointed Robert Mueller’s FBI? NOT INTERESTED, Small wonder with Mueller having been at the center of damage control and cover-up of the Iran-Contra linked BCCI terror and narcotics money laundering scandal. This is reinforced when Attorney General Eric Holder had concealed religious-right big shot Carl Lindner‘s contributions to the Uribe linked AUC death squads in Colombia.

The CIA trafficking in Latin America is the most well documented, on account of the Iran-Contra affair having spilled into the open. And it is here we come up with the Bush family criminal syndicate who’s who of international narcotics traffickers .. oh and that ties into George H.W. Bush’s close buddy Bill Clinton, the business is a bi-partisan bag of maggots.

Blackwater, who the Pentagon had farmed out the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico to, is identified as an extension of the CIA. Meanwhile, Blackwater’s military contractor aviation had become a multi-hundred million dollar business.

A Robert Gates linked Iran-Contra player, Duane Clarridge, had a ‘private’ CIA operating in Afghanistan, run by an Air Force contractor named Michael Furlong The New York Times had reported. Some 40 days after this story broke, we see this:

“Defense Secretary Robert Gates has opened an inquiry into whether civilian Department of Defense (Air Force) employee Michael Furlong had “violated rules” by using his position inside a highly secured military facility to coordinate a secret, unauthorized spy ring employing private contractors, to include convicted Iran-Contra CIA operative Duane ‘Dewey’ Clarridge.”

By waiting 40 days since this had spilled, Robert Gates had given damage control in this affair ample time to meet, plan, erase tracks, create false leads, and destroy evidence. Throughout his series, the New York Times reporter neglects to mention Robert Gates is also an Iran-Contra figure with a history of cover-up, investigated by prosecutor Lawrence Walsh who stated:

“By October, when Gates claimed he first remembered hearing of the diversion, Casey ordered an inquiry and later made a report to Poindexter; but, by then, the Hasenfus aircraft had been shot down and Casey and Gates were beginning to cover.”

The now known operation coordinated by Furlong employed International Media Ventures, run by veterans of General McChrystal’s Special Operations forces, American International Security, run by a former Green Beret, and most interestingly, as we have seen, a company belonging to Duane ‘Dewey’ Clarridge, a former top CIA official with close ties to Robert Gates and Iran-Contra, as well utilized by the FBI in Afghanistan. Gates waited well over a month to “open an inquiry” to see whether “rules were violated” (notice contract murder is suddenly a mere ‘rules violation.’) With reports across the globe shouting bloody murder at the trouble he was in, Furlong appears never to have been prosecuted. Where had the Furlong/Clarridge operation been based and run out of? Almost certainly from the government protected Afghan drug lord (and presidential brother) Walid Karzai’s CIA rented compound outside Kandahar. The Clarridge operation is most certainly a cover for heroin trafficking.

Now the clincher. More than 90% of this years Heroin supplied to the world (90% TO THE WORLD) will come from poppies grown in Afghanistan. This is not just the Taliban folks, it is the CIA. Cleaning up the problem or cornering the market? It would very much seem any ‘drug eradication program is window dressing the problem while in actuality cornering the market. This thought is buttressed by the Russian experience with attempting cooperation in cleaning up the hundreds of heroin labs in Afghanistan, with the American military commanders at the top blocking any efforts:

After, (video, above) the Russians’ high visibility whistle-blowing, there is grudging (and minimal) actions by the USA, busting just a few labs out of hundreds and ONLY those labs it would seem are not under the CIA’s protection. The southwest of Afghanistan is the poppy region where the USA military had taken a ‘hands off’ attitude and done little to nothing to address the problem. Any drug interdiction program efforts had been initiated against only THOSE OPUIM FARMERS WHO DO BUSINESS WITH THE TALIBAN, or 15% of the labs and traffickers. As the USA winds down the American military involvement, it is clear the problem had never been honestly addressed.

Meanwhile, a British ambassador had been sent packing for investigating the problem from neighboring Uzbekistan and subsequently pens an article “Britain is Protecting the Biggest Heroin Crop of All Time.” It is interesting to note his linking a murdered former Russian anti-corruption investigator, Alexander Letvnenko working for MI6, had uncovered the Afghan heroin pipeline to St Petersburg… a crime blamed in popular media on Russia with no mention whatsoever of his connections in this regard. Litvenenko’s fatal mistake likely had been to concurrently cooperate with Spanish authorities on Russian mafia, bringing him too close to his expertise on the Afghan heroin pipelines. That MI6 may have been the actual perpetrator of Litvenenko’s murder is almost a certainty, with MI6 now also having been identified as piling ‘off the record’ cash to the government of Karzai and its known close connections to heroin trafficking. In the end, it come down to western complicity in the Afghan heroin trade is old news.

Meanwhile FBI whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds, details [above] the ‘deep state’ apparatus that uses heroin trafficking to fund false flag terrorism around the world (the narcotics trafficking aspect is discussed in segment four)

And in a 2009 interview with Phillip Giraldi, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds has the following to say:

EDMONDS: Okay. So these conversations, between 1997 and 2001, had to do with a Central Asia operation that involved bin Laden. Not once did anybody use the word “al-Qaeda.” It was always “mujahideen,” always “bin Laden” and, in fact, not “bin Laden” but “bin Ladens” plural. There were several bin Ladens who were going on private jets to Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. The Turkish ambassador in Azerbaijan worked with them.

There were bin Ladens, with the help of Pakistanis or Saudis, under our management. Marc Grossman was leading it, 100 percent, bringing people from East Turkestan into Kyrgyzstan, from Kyrgyzstan to Azerbaijan, from Azerbaijan some of them were being channeled to Chechnya, some of them were being channeled to Bosnia. From Turkey, they were putting all these bin Ladens on NATO planes. People and weapons went one way, drugs came back.

GIRALDI: Was the U.S. government aware of this circular deal?

EDMONDS: 100 percent. A lot of the drugs were going to Belgium with NATO planes. After that, they went to the UK, and a lot came to the U.S. via military planes to distribution centers in Chicago and Paterson, New Jersey. Turkish diplomats who would never be searched were coming with suitcases of heroin.

GIRALDI: And, of course, none of this has been investigated. What do you think the chances are that the Obama administration will try to end this criminal activity?

EDMONDS: Well, even during Obama’s presidential campaign, I did not buy into his slogan of “change” being promoted by the media and, unfortunately, by the naïve blogosphere. First of all, Obama’s record as a senator, short as it was, spoke clearly. For all those changes that he was promising, he had done nothing. In fact, he had taken the opposite position, whether it was regarding the NSA’s wiretapping or the issue of national-security whistleblowers. We whistleblowers had written to his Senate office. He never responded, even though he was on the relevant committees.

As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.

Criminals do not voluntarily surrender their business models. Cleaning up the problem is not going to happen until the CIA covert operations is brought under control. The CIA, or a rogue element within the organization has been, personally enriching themselves for decades as international narco-traffickers, my assessment. All the while using our nation’s ‘Security’ together with all of the power of the apparatus the term implies, to cover a rogue and criminal club within our ranks. And so, another example of how it is the pursuit of violence through wars corrupts and/or attracts corrupt people. C’est la vie.