Author Topic: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills  (Read 2332 times)

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Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« on: July 28, 2003, 08:15:00 PM »
reconsiDer: TIDBIT  
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 Former DEA agent Michael Levine shares a behind-the-scenes look at the drug war and the CIA involvement in it. He also sheds some light on why you don't get the whole story of the drug war in your local newspaper (or any American media). The ReconsiDer Tidbits tries to remedy this but we need your support. Send us a check to keep these Tidbits coming your way!

Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills by Michael Levine (unedited draft of essay now published in INTO THE BUZZSAW, Prometheus  Press, edited by Kristina Borjesson)

Everything you need to know about mainstream media's vital role in  perpetuating our nation's three-decade, trillion dollar War on Drugs  despite overwhelming evidence that it is a fraud you can learn by watching  a Three Card Monty Operation.

Three Card Monty is a blatant con game where the dealer lays three cards on  a folding table, shows you that one of them is the Queen of Spades, turns  them over, shuffles them quickly. You're sure you know where the queen is  and you saw a guy before you win easily a couple of times, so you bet your  money. If that dopey looking guy can win, so can you. But, incredibly, you  've guessed wrong. You lost. You've been taken for a sucker.

The suckers in Three Card Monty cannot possibly win, it's an obvious and  well known con game, yet, as you walk away, you see a whole line of other  suckers, eyes gawking, jaws slack, hands deep in their pockets mesmerized  by the show and ready to lay down their money as fast as the dealer can get  to them. Why? Because they also saw the same dopey looking guy win too,  only what they don't know is that he's a shill.

Shills are the conmen (and women) who entice suckers into the phony game by  putting on a show intended to convince those watching that the game is  honest, that if you keep playing you can actually win. A good shill also  helps cover-up the operation by distracting the police away from the  illegal action. In a court of law where three Card Monty dealers are  considered crooks and thieves, shills are considered their  "co-conspirators." They are liable to an equal penalty if indicted and  found guilty after trial. In the Drug War Monty game, mainstream media is  nothing less than a shill.

Media's success as a shill is unparalleled in the history of scams, con  jobs and rip-offs and can best be measured by how effectively they continue  to sell us a fraud so obvious and so impossible to win that it makes South  Bronx Gold Mine certificates look like a conservative investment.

Here's some of the true history that-thanks to excellent shilling-most of  you are unaware of:

When President Nixon first declared war on drugs in 1971, there were less  than a half million hard-core addicts in the entire nation, most of whom  were addicted to heroin with the problem being largely centered in inner  city areas, the largest percentage of which were all found in the New York  City metropolitan area. Only two federal agencies were charged with any  significant enforcement of the drug laws-the Bureau of Narcotics and  Dangerous Drugs and US Customs. Two agencies that were greater enemies to  each other than they would ever be to any drug cartel. The total drug war  budget was less than $100 million.

Three decades later, despite the expenditure of $1 trillion in federal and  state tax dollars, the number of hard-core addicts is shortly expected to  exceed 5 million. Our nation has become the Wal-Mart of the drug world with  a wider variety and more drugs available at cheaper prices than ever  before. The problem now not only affects every town and hamlet on the map,  it is difficult to find a family anywhere that is not somehow affected.  There are now fifty-five federal and military agencies involved in federal  drug enforcement alone (not counting state and local agencies) and US  military troops are now invading South and Central American nations under  the banner of drug war. The federal drug war budget alone (not counting  state and municipal budgets) is now well over $20 billion a year, and my  personal quest to find one individual anywhere in the world who could  honestly testify that the trillion-dollar , US war on drugs had somehow  saved him or her from the white menace has thus far been fruitless.

Do you need a cop to tell you that this is evidence of an overwhelming  fraud? If your stockbroker invested your money the way our elected leaders  have done with our Drug War Monty dollars, you'd have jailed or shot him  before 1972, yet the game continues.

Why?

Because mainstream media, as they did during the Vietnam War, shills us, by  means of an incessant flow of fill-in-the-blanks bullshit "victory" stories  into believing that Drug War Monty is a real war that our leaders intend to  win. Media shills, which now includes Hollywood and "entertainment"  television and the publishing industry, are continuously conning us into  believing that, if in a fit of sanity, we really tried to end the costly  and deadly fraud, some unspeakable horror, like Mexican and Colombian drug  dealers led by the latest Media created "Pablo Escobar" invading across our  (for ever) insufficiently protected borders to force-feed our kids heroin  and cocaine. We might even have to arm the Partnership for a Drug Free  America with missiles and rockets.

Unless of course our kids "Just say No" as Nancy Reagan's billion dollar  media boondoggle campaign taught them.

And when mainstream media hasn't directly shilled us into supporting Drug  War Monty, as they do to this day, they have aided in its perpetuation with  their censorship, by conscious omission, of scandalous events that - had  they been reported with the fervor the Washington Post showed during the  Watergate era - would have brought the whole deadly and costly charade  crumbling to the ground three decades ago. I know this first hand because I  took part in some of the most significant of those events either as a  federal agent, and/or court qualified expert witness, and/or a journalist.

Outrageous Acts: My Personal Experiences on Both Sides of The Drug-War-Monty Table

The Vietnam War

The undercover case that brought me into Southeast Asia during the Vietnam  War was the most dangerous of my career, only the source of that danger was  not just the dealers. It was the case that first brought me face-to-face  with the fact that, like Vietnam War, the War on Drugs was never intended  to be won and that it was a deadly fraud perpetrated against the people  paying for it. It was also the first case that taught me that a runaway,  corrupt federal bureaucracy could count on mainstream media to shill for  it. Ironically, it began on July 4, 1971.

At that time President Nixon had recently declared war on drugs. Our  political leaders had already begun pimping Americans through media  megaphones into believing that our growing drug problem was the fault of  evil foreigners and that - other than the Vietnam War - the drug problem  was our number one national security concern. I was a young agent with US  Customs assigned to the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Unit in New York City. My  25 year old brother David at that point had been a heroin addict for 10  years and I was a TB (True Believer).

It was on that July 4th day that I arrested John Edward Davidson at JFK  International Airport in New York City with three kilos of 99 percent pure  white heroin hidden in the false bottom of a Samsonite suitcase and the  investigation known as US v Liang Sae Tiew et al began.[1]

By nightfall the investigation had brought my team deep inside a desolate  swamp on the outskirts of Gainesville, Florida where a lone trailer was  parked at the end of barely visible trail. During the pre-dawn hours we  raided the trailer and arrested the US based financier of the smuggling  operation, Alan Trupkin, and his heroin addicted gofer 22 year old John  Clements (remember this name, we'll see him later). By the following day I  had all the details I needed to destroy one of the biggest heroin import  operations on the globe. But there was one major problem to contend with  that neither I nor any of the senior officers to whom I reported could  have, in our wildest dreams, imagined: the CIA.

Two years earlier, Davidson, stationed with the army in Vietnam had taken  R&R leave in Bangkok. There he had connected with a Chinese heroin dealer,  Liang Sae Tiew a/k/a Gary. The prices were the cheapest in the world, the  supplies unlimited. After Davidson's discharge, all he had to do was  smuggle the stuff into the US and he and his partners would be rich. Seven  trips and 21 kilos later his luck ran out and I arrested him.

Now, to do my job in accordance with my training and the very philosophy of  the entire war on drugs, I had to take the next step and go for the source.

One month later I arrived in Bangkok, posing as Davidson's heroin dealing  partner. Within days I made contact with his heroin connections Gary and  some called "Mr. Geh." (UC photo available). At first my presence in  Bangkok was kept secret from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs,  the sworn enemies of US Customs. The war between the two agencies for  budget and media had reached the level of fist fights, the arrests of each  others' informants and had, in fact, even come close to a shoot-out. But  that's another story. My presence in Bangkok was also kept secret from the  Thai police whose only competition for the most corrupt police force in  recorded history, in my experience, was their Mexican counterparts, and,  the fact was, I was in their country illegally. At the time undercover  operations were illegal in most of the world. It was unthinkable that cops  would be permitted to commit crimes to catch criminals. I'd already been  warned by my own bosses that if the Thai police got wind of me being there  to do a drug deal, undercover or otherwise, they would bust my ass and  disappear me and my own country would disavow all knowledge. In short, my  butt was way out on a limb and I knew it, but I did not know the half of my  problems.

After a week of hanging with the dopers, I had managed to convince that  them that I was the capo di tutti fruti of the Mafia hooked into individual  Mafiosi across the US, each looking for large quantities of drugs. I was  The Main Man. I told them that I needed a new supplier because my previous  source, the French Connection, had been busted.

At the time the largest heroin seizure in history was in the neighborhood  of 200 kilos, part of the original French Connection, I knew the case well,  I'd played a small role in it. The two Chinese heroin dealers were as aware  of the American market as I was and assured me that these amounts were  child's play compared to their operation. They had a "factory" in Chiang  Mai run by Mr. Geh's uncle that was churning out a couple of hundred kilos  a week. What didn't go to the soldiers in Vietnam was going into the veins  and brains of American kids. Like my own brother.

I cut a deal: I would buy a kilo of Dragon Brand for $2500 cash and send it  to my US Mafia customers as "samples." I'd then remain in Thailand awaiting  their orders. I gave Gary and Mr. Geh an estimate that I might need as much  as 300 kilos as a first order. The dopers' price for a 300 kilo load: $2000  a kilo or a very paltry $600,000. That amount of heroin, at that time,  could have met the entire US demand for about 2-3 weeks. The cost to our  nation in death, destruction and taxes was incalculable; the potential  profits to the dopers breathtaking.

French Connection heroin was then selling wholesale, delivered in the US,  at $20,000 a kilo. The purity of the Dragon Brand heroin I was buying in  Asia was as good or better. It was close to 100% pure, meaning that you  could cut (dilute) the stuff up to fourteen times for the street. The US  street price per ounce was $2,000, meaning that a single kilo (40 ounces)  of Asian heroin at $2,000 could theoretically gross $1,120,000. Now just  multiply that by 300 kilos and your original investment of $600,000 has now  yielded more than $300 million.

At the moment I had everything I needed to destroy the operation but its  location, but I knew how to remedy that. I made one proviso: I demanded to  personally inspect their heroin producing facilities in Chiang Mai - "The  Factory"- before finalizing the deal. If they agreed, I would be one step  away from destroying them.

Within days, the two dealers made contact with the factory's owner, Mr.  Geh's uncle. He agreed to go forward with the transaction and authorized me  to inspect The Factory after I bought the first sample kilo.

Sitting in my room at the Siam Intercontinental that night, alone, I  replayed the words of the heroin dealers on a mini-recorder. The  implication of what I had just learned to our nation, to my own  heroin-addicted brother, mixed with the bullshit exhortations of our  political leaders, seemed to sink deep inside of me. I felt as if I were  playing some hero role in a John Wayne (now Tom Clancy) movie. I was in  position to do what our leaders and mainstream media had psyched me to do:  strike at the heart of America's greatest enemies.

I was on a mission from God.

I was a naive idiot.

Bam! The adrenaline was pumping. I was moving. I made contact with my  control officer, Customs Attaché Joe Jenkins. At a pre-dawn meeting I  brought him up to date. He was as excited as I was but a lot more reserved.  I could tell there was something he wasn't telling me but at the moment I  had a pressing need. I was almost broke. I needed cash to maintain my cover  as a 'big time" dope dealer, $2500 cash for the first kilo of heroin. Hell,  I didn't even have enough money left to pay my hotel bill. I was already  receiving notes under my door from the management asking me to bring it up  to date.

Jenkins instructed me to meet him later at a girlie bar on Sukamvit. By  that time he assured me, he'd have headquarters and - more important -  embassy approvals for the operation to proceed. And - most important - he'd  have money.

Late that night I met Jenkins again. As three butt naked, Oriental doll  women in 4" spike heels performed a somnambulistic, wriggle-writhe-squat  over beer bottles, on the bar above us to a Rolling Stones album blasted on  monstrous speakers, Jenkins shouted that he had neither approvals nor  money. From that point on, things got strange. Very strange.

The suddenly nervous Jenkins, his eyes jerking at every movement in the  shadows around us, gave me Kafkaesque, bureaucratic reasons for the delays,  saying he needed specific signatures from specific bureaucrats in  Washington who were, for some reason or other, unavailable. He fed me other  bullshit that only a brain-numbed, government employee would find normal.

I went back to my room and began stalling both the hotel and the drug  dealers. My people are being cautious; they are sending me a courier. They  take no chances. Etc., etc., etc, ad nauseam.

At first the dopers thought that the caution of "my people" was admirable,  but when more than a week had passed and the delays continued I found  myself out of excuses and in serious danger. For the first time in my life  I heard myself utter the threat "I'm going to the press." Jenkins looked at  me and just rolled his eyes. He recognized an idiot when he saw one.

Some time before dawn, I was called into the embassy for a meeting with the  first CIA officer I'd ever knowingly met. He gave no name, I didn't ask for  one. Joe had told me he was CIA, that was all I needed. The guy was short,  stocky, bald and wearing what I would come to know was a typical CIA  uniform: a khaki leisure suit. He looked at me with a mixture of bemusement  and disdain that I would also learn was typical.

"You're not going to Chiang Mai" he said. "We just lost a man up there.  It's dangerous."

"But I'm an undercover," I protested. "Already certified crazy. I didn't  take this job to be safe."

Like I said: a naive idiot.

After not much discussion the spook looked at his watch and cut the  conversation short. "You served in the military, right? (He didn't wait for  my answer) Well, our country has other priorities [than the drug war]." He  was firm - I was not going to Chiang Mai and that was it. CIA had made the  decision for us - a harbinger of things to come. My instructions were to  buy the single kilo of heroin and set up the arrest whomever delivered it.  Then I was to leave the country ASAP. Case closed.

This was years before the CIA would come to be known among DEA agents  assigned overseas as The Criminal Inept Agency and later the Cocaine Import  Agency. Years before anyone with a government job questioned the judgment  of the gang that can't spy straight. Years before I would state on my own  radio show that the CIA seal at Langley, instead of reading "...and the  truth shall set you free" ought to read "...and the truth shall piss you  off."[2]

I'd stumbled into a quick look at an ugly truth that would haunt me for the  rest of my life, but at that moment I was not prepared to believe it. I had  served three years in the military as an Air Force Sentry Dog  Handler-combat trained military police. I'd been an undercover federal  agent for six years. I was a good soldier, trained to follow orders. I  believed in the virtue and morality of my leaders. Like the devoted husband  who catches his beloved wife exchanging a torrid look with the pizza  delivery boy, the truth was too emotionally charged for me to absorb. It  was much easier for me to accept that the CIA man knew more than I did and  that it was in our national interest for me to simply follow orders.

And that's what I did. I ordered the kilo of heroin and busted the two  Chinese dealers on the spot. Back in the US I received a Treasury Act  Special Award for the first case of its kind, one agent traveling the globe  to "destroy" a heroin operation. Another "victory" for the US media shill  factory.

For a while I was lost in my own press notices.

But I was no longer the same unquestioning young undercover agent. My cop  instinct nagged at me, told me something was wrong. Within a year I would  learn that the Chiang Mai "factory" that I'd been prevented from destroying  by CIA was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the  US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam.[3] All I could do  was pray that CIA knew what it was doing. At that time I rather foolishly  believed that they had the best interests of the American people at heart,  but how competent were they? And if they weren't competent, who do you turn  to blow the whistle? Congress? The media?

I was a well trained, experienced undercover operative who, when in doubt,  observes closely, documents what he sees but takes no action-one of the  reasons, I believe, that I survived my career. And in the early 1970s there  were very few in a better position than I was to observe the development of  Drug War Monty.

My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was a small, group of men  (16-20) charged with the investigation of all heroin and cocaine smuggling  through the Port of New York, the home of the majority of our nation's  hard-core drug addicts. By necessity my unit became involved in the  investigation of every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement.  We could not avoid witnessing CIA protection of major drug dealers.

In fact throughout the Vietnam War, while massive amounts of heroin  emanating from the Golden Triangle Area were documented by us as flooding  into the US, and tens of thousands of our fighting men were coming home  addicted, not a single important heroin source in Southeast Asia was ever  indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case, like  US v Liang Sae Tiew et.al., was killed by CIA and State Department  intervention and there wasn't a damned thing we could do about it.

It was also during those years that we became aware that CIA had gone well  beyond simply protecting their drug dealing assets. Agency owned  proprietary airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs  throughout Southeast Asia allegedly in support of our "allies." (With  friends like these...) CIA banking operations were used to launder drug  money. CIA was learning the drug business and learning it well.

Those of us on the inside who were aware of the these glaring  inconsistencies between drug war policy as reported through mass mainstream  media and its reality, were afraid to turn to either congress or to media  for help. It seemed impossible that anyone with any knowledge whatsoever of  our growing drug problem would not have noticed the absence of enforcement  in Southeast Asia. It was just too big, too out in the open. During those  years I believe a good journalist would have had many frustrated, "inside  sources" to quote from, yet no stories appeared.

It was also during those waning years of Vietnam that CIA protection of  drug dealers spread to other areas under our watch. As cocaine traffickers  grew in economic and political importance in South and Central America so  did their importance to CIA and other covert US agencies.

For example, in 1972, being fluent in Spanish I was assigned to assist in a  major international drug case involving top Panamanian government officials  whom were using diplomatic passports to smuggle large quantities of heroin  and other drugs into the US. The name Manuel Noriega surfaced as prominent  in the investigation. Surfacing right behind Noriega was the CIA to protect  him from US law enforcement.

After President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971 and all our political  leaders began bleating about how drugs were our number one national  security threat, Congress began to raise our taxes and the drug war budget  on a regular basis that continues to this day. Meanwhile, CIA and the  Department of State were protecting more and more politically powerful drug  traffickers around the world: the Mujihideen in Afghanistan, the Bolivian  cocaine cartels, the top levels of the Mexican government, top Panama-based  money launderers, the Nicaraguan Contras, right wing Colombian drug dealers  and politicians, and others.[4]

Under US law, protecting drug trafficking was and still is considered  Conspiracy to Traffic in Drugs - a felony violation of federal and state  laws. President George Bush Sr. Once said it: "All those who look the other  way at drug trafficking are as guilty as the drug dealer." Ironically, not  too many years earlier as head of CIA, Mr. Bush had authorized a salary for  Manuel Noriega as a CIA asset, while the little dictator was listed in as  many as forty DEA computer files as a drug dealer. Seems only fitting that  CIA named its headquarters after Mr. Bush.

In any case, it was clear to us on the inside of international drug  enforcement that Congress was either well aware of what was going on, or  guilty of terminal ineptitude. It was also clear to us that CIA protection  of international narcotic traffickers depended heavily on the active  collaboration of mainstream media as shills.

Media's shill duties, as I experienced them firsthand, were twofold: first,  keep silent about the gush of drugs that was allowed to continue unimpeded  into the US; second, to divert the public's attention by shilling them into  believing the drug war was legitimate by falsely presenting those few  trickles law enforcement was permitted to stop as though they were major  "victories" when in fact we were doing nothing more than getting rid of the  inefficient competitors of CIA assets.

I began to notice the fill-in-the-blanks drug stories. Every week a new  "drug baron", a new drug-corrupted government was (and continues to be)  presented by media as a new "threat" to American kids. Every case, many of  which I took part in, was headlined in the media as a "US Authorities  Announce Major Blow Against (fill in the blank) Drug Cartel." Every country  and national leader that CIA and State wanted to slander (i.e. Castro and  Cuba, the Sandanistas and leftist guerrillas anywhere)- was headlined as  "US Sources Say (fill in the blanks) Poses New Narco-Trafficking Threat. "  Foreign leaders and nations whose images CIA and State wanted to keep clean  (i.e. Manny Noriega for two decades and Mexico and every one of its  Presidents since NAFTA) were headlined as, " (fill in the blanks) New  Anti-drug Efforts Win Trust of US Officials."[5]

The media continues to do their shill job well and Drug War Monty continues  to grow massively as does our nation's drug problems.

The "Cocaine Coup".

On July 17, 1980, for the first time in history, drug traffickers actually  took control of a nation. It was not just any nation, it was Bolivia, at  the time the source of virtually 100 percent of the cocaine entering the  United States.[6] The "Cocaine Coup" was the bloodiest in Bolivia's  history. It came at a time that the US demand for cocaine was skyrocketing  to the point that, in order to satisfy it, suppliers had to consolidate raw  materials and production and get rid of inefficient producers. Its result  was the creation of what came to be known as La Corporacion - The  Corporation - in essence, the General Motors or OPEC of Cocaine.

Immediately after the coup production of cocaine increased massively until,  in short order, it outstripped supply. It was the true beginning of the  cocaine and crack "plague" as the media and hack politicians never tire of  calling it. July 17, 1980 is truly a day that should live in equal infamy  along with December 7th, 1941. There are few events in history that have  caused more and longer lasting damage to our nation.

What America was never told, in spite of mainstream media having the  information and a prime, inside source who was ready to go public with the  story, was that the coup was carried out with the aid and participation of  Central Intelligence. The source would also testify and prove that, in  order to carry out that coup, the CIA, State and Justice departments had to  combine forces to protect their drug dealing assets by destroying a DEA  investigation - US v Roberto Suarez, et al. How do I know? I was that  inside source.[7]

All the events I am referring to are detailed in my book The Big White Lie,  a book that, to date, has been virtually ignored by mainstream media - with  good reason, as I hope this chapter makes clear.[8] The documentation of  the events portrayed was carried out in accordance with accepted techniques  and practices of evidence gathering as taught in each of the four federal  law enforcement training academies I attended. I took precisely the same  precautions I would have taken were I preparing a case for a jury, backing  up every assertion with solid evidence in the form of reports and  tape-recorded conversations.

The Big White Lie is, at present, out-of-print, but it is available in  libraries. I can only urge the reader, particularly those in law  enforcement and the legal professions to read it and judge its evidentiary  value for yourselves.

During the months after the Bolivian coup I watched the massive news  coverage with astonishment. Nothing even came close to the true and easily  provable events. All of it was accurate in that it frighteningly portrayed  the new Bolivian government as one comprised of expatriate Nazis like Klaus  Barbie and drug dealers like Roberto Suarez and that the power and  influence of the drug economy was much greater than all the US experts had  imagined, but it left out the most important fact of all: It was CIA  directed and US taxpayer dollars that had put these guys in power.

As I detailed in the book, the failure of US media to cover what was  arguably the most significant event in drug war history was enough to push  me over the edge.

I was no hero, believe me. I was an undercover operative who knew well how  to play the angles, not someone who took unreasonable chances. But this was  not that long after Woodward and Bernstein and the Washington Post's  concentrated, full-court- press attack on the Watergate affair that  resulted in real indictments and prison sentences for crimes a lot less  serious than what I was about to report. The media still seemed to offer  some hope. I could not believe that the failure to accurately cover the  Cocaine Revolution was intentional. I would provide them with the missing  pieces. I would be the Drug War's Deep Throat.

The smoking gun evidence of the CIA's role in the Bolivian coup could be  found in the Roberto Suarez case, a complicated, DEA covert operation that  I had run only two months before the Coca Revolution. Media shills had  trumpeted it as the greatest undercover sting operation in history. Its  finale occurred when Bolivian cartel leaders, Roberto Gasser and Alfredo  Gutierrez, were arrested outside a Miami bank after I had paid them $8  million dollars for the then-largest load of cocaine in history. Some of  the actual facts of the case were used in the screenplay for Al Pacino's  Scarface.

What America was never told before the publication of my book was that  within weeks of their headlined arrests, both Gasser and Gutierrez were  released from jail. When I learned from my post in Argentina that these two  men and their drug cartel were key players in the Cocaine Revolution and  that the whole thing was CIA inspired and supported, I wrote anonymous  letters to The New York Times , The Washington Post and the Miami Herald.

In spite of the fact that the letters contained enough information to  convince them that I was in fact "a highly placed source" and to furnish  them with information and leads that would quickly and easily lead a true  investigative journalist to the truth, nothing happened. Ironically, the  only journalists who were at all curious about the sudden disappearance of  the case from mainstream media news and the DEA's reluctance to even talk  about it, were working for High Times. They wrote this about the Suarez case:

"The drug Enforcement Administration will confirm that the arrests were  made but will go no further. This is curious, because [the operation] may  have been the all-time great sting operation...."

The other message mainstream media began to deliver with shill-like  efficiency, were the unquestioned bleatings of politicians, bureaucrats and  media-anointed "experts" of how, as a result of the Cocaine Coup, it was  more urgent than ever that more money be budgeted and more federal  enforcement agencies and military branches tasked to fight the war on  drugs. President Carter even mandated CIA to get involved in fighting drugs.

When this last hit the news, I ran a little test at the embassy in Buenos  Aires, just so that I could say I did it. I asked the CIA station chief to  lend me a spy camera to cover an undercover operation I had going in Buenos  Aires. "I'm back into the Bolivian cartel" I told him. The top spook didn't  hesitate nor blink an eye when he said he didn't have one single camera  available. CIA was simply not going to help me in any way that might, no  matter how remotely, jeopardize their "assets." How, I wondered, could any  international, DEA agent who took his job and oath seriously, be considered  anything but a threat by CIA? In my Secret Country Report for the year I  put the "paradoxical" situation in as diplomatic terms as I could muster,  pointing out that our policy makers, where the war on drugs was concerned,  seemed to be at odds with each other. Of course, as I expected, I received  neither answer nor comment.

Then the "news" story hit that pushed me over the edge, the story that  would change my life. Larry Rohter and Steven Strasser of Newsweek had just  authored a feature piece on the Bolivian Cocaine Coup that was, in my  opinion, the hydrogen bomb of drug war scare stories. Maybe the greatest  Drug War Monty story of all time. It detailed how drug money had not only  funded the Bolivian cocaine coup but was now funding revolutions around the  world. How many of these revolutions, I wondered, were backed by CIA and  American taxpayer dollars? But then how, I wondered, could the journalists  know the truth unless they had a Deep Throat to steer them straight?[9]

I flew into action without thinking. I should have heeded the words of the  CIA chief played by Cliff Robertson in Three Days of the Condor - a warning  that should be issued to all potential real-life government whistleblowers.  Near the end of the movie, after a CIA employee, played by Robert Redford,  had escaped two hours of Agency attempts to kill him to prevent him from  blowing the whistle on some typically depraved CIA plot - although  Hollywood CIA plots are always so much more clever than the real goofball  variety - he is about to enter the front door of a major newspaper (think  NY Times, Washington Post)). There waiting for him is the head of the CIA  played by Cliff Robertson who smiles shrewdly and utters the last line of  the movie: "What makes you think they'll print the story?"

Fade to black.

But my mind was full of Woodwards and Bernsteins. I sat down at my desk in  the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never in life  imagined myself writing. After fully identifying myself I detailed, in  three type-written pages written on official US embassy stationary, enough  evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists  along with my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly  to Strasser and Rohter care of Newsweek. And sent it registered mail return  receipt requested. Within a couple of weeks I received the receipt (which I  still have) and waited anxiously to hear from them. Two sleepless weeks  later I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three  weeks later, it rang.

It was DEA's Internal Security. They were calling me to notify me that I  was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from  black-marketing and having sex with a married female DEA agent during an  undercover assignment to "playing loud rock music on my radio and  disturbing other embassy personnel," an investigation that would wreak  havoc with my entire life for the next four years.[10] My days as the  whistle-blowing diplomat were cut short. I would end up a lot luckier than  most high-level government whistle-blowers. I would survive. When push came  to shove, I was a well trained undercover with the survival skills of a  Bronx Roach.

DEA Headquarters

Back in the "Palace of Suits" I decided that to survive the ongoing and  ever expanding onslaught from Internal Security, I would follow the sage  advice of a veteran suit: "A bureaucracy has a short memory. Keep your  mouth shut and the suits will forget you even exist." And that's exactly  what did happen. To survive, I became a Drug War Monty player.

On my first day back at DEA headquarters in DC, assigned to the Cocaine  Desk, I fielded a phone call from a wire service journalist. The newsie  wanted to know what percentage of drugs being smuggled into the US were  intercepted at the borders. During my negotiations with the Bolivian Cartel  the top cocaine producers in the world at the time, I was told that they  factored a less than one percent loss at the US borders. Before I could  answer, one of the other desk officers overheard the conversation and said:  "Tell him ten percent. That's the [official] number." I repeated the number  and ten percent was the number published in the story.

It was that easy. The same phony percentage was used over the next two  decades without a single so-called journalist ever asking the logical  questions: How can you possibly know that you are intercepting ten percent?  and Who is doing the calculations? It is interesting to note that the magic  number has recently been drastically increased and it is Hollywood now  helping out with the shill job.

I noticed what I recognized as a "rigged" scene in the recent hit movie  Traffic. (Its important to note that the movie was shot with both the  cooperation and collaboration of the Drug War Monty suits). The "Drug Czar"  played by Michael Douglas is visiting a US- Mexican border crossing. He  asks a real-life Customs officer (drafted for the movie role) what  percentage of drugs are intercepted at the border. The answer, blasted in  an unnaturally loud voice, is "forty-eight percent."

Ten percent to forty-eight percent in twenty years, and there are more  drugs on the streets than ever before?? An Academy Award winning movie? If  this isn't shilling I don't know what is.

But you've got to remember dealers and shills have no shame at all. And, I  suppose you could say that neither did I, because for the next five or so  years, I took an active and conscious part in Drug War Monty.

Operation Hun and South Florida Task Force

I spent much of 1983 shuttling between an undercover assignment on  "Operation Hun" and a temporary post as a supervisor in Vice President  Bush' s south Florida Task Force. Operation Hun, ironically, was aimed at  bringing down the same Bolivian drug trafficking government that CIA had  put into power three years earlier. As I detailed in The Big White Lie, the  operation, which could have truly been one of the most successful in DEA's  history, was still controlled by CIA and ultimately destroyed in order to  hide the fact that protected CIA assets were the guys responsible for  producing and distributing almost all the world's cocaine at the time. I  can only urge everyone with an interest to read it as if it were one of my  prosecution case reports.

When I wasn't working undercover in Hun, I filled two consecutive  assignments in Vice President Bush's task force. My first was Watch  Commander, which basically meant that, during my watch, I was to notify  Washington of every drug seizure so that a press releases and Television  appearances could be scheduled for Mr. Bush's, first-in-history "Drug  Czar," Admiral Murphy. My second task force assignment was as Supervisor of  Miami Airport Operations. I had about 14-16 DEA and Customs agents under my  command. Our job was mostly to conduct follow-up investigations of customs  drug smuggling arrests at the airport. The trouble with both jobs and the  whole South Florida Task force concept was that it was all an expensive  Drug War Monty publicity stunt. A massive shill job.

Vice President Bush and his Drug Czar, through the ever reliable media,  would shill the public into believing that drug seizures in South Florida  had doubled. On any Sunday morning you couldn't avoid seeing Drug Czar,  Admiral Murphy - the "Little Admiral" as we used to call him - on two,  three and four popular news shows, waving the drug war victory flags. The  media driven shilling of the public during this period was relentless.  Check it out for yourself. It's easy to research on the Internet. There was  only one trouble with the claims of drug war victory: they were pure Drug  War Monty - bogus and easily disproved.

The same drug seizures that DEA, Coast Guard and Customs were normally  making in the South Florida area prior to existence of the task force, were  now being turned over to the task force and trumpeted as "victories" when  in reality there were no more seizures than before.

What was even more fraudulent, if this was possible, was that the seizures  were now being double counted for congressional budget hearings. Customs  would seize 1000 pounds of marijuana and turn it over to the task force.  Both the task force and customs would count the seizures on their yearly  statistics for Congress. The media points all went to the VP's task force.  The bill, as always, to the US taxpayer. And thanks to media shilling,  everyone but the American taxpayer was aware of the fraud and the  perpetrators were made to look like heroes.

Did the media know the truth and hide it?

I personally tipped off at least a dozen "journalists" who called for  information and know of other agents who did the same. It would not have  taken much investigation to verify what we were saying - no more than a  couple of phone calls to the agencies involved - yet nothing ever surfaced.  Shills don't tell marks anything, do they?

Afghan and Contra Wars

While a barrage of media headlines continued to shill America's attention  toward Vice President Bush's South Florida Task Force as a valiant and  effective drug war effort - the sucker card - the real action that was  consciously omitted from news coverage was that some of the biggest drug  dealers in the world were funneling drugs directly into the veins and  brains of America's children with the protection of CIA and the State  Department. Namely, the Nicaraguan Contras and the Mujihideen rebels in  Afghanistan.

For the entire duration of the Contra war, we in DEA had documented the  Contras - those "heroes" as Ollie North called them - as putting at least  as much cocaine on American streets as the Medellin Cartel. We had also  documented the Mujihideen as vying for first place as America's source of  Heroin. Yet, not a single case of any significance was allowed to go  forward to prosecution against either entity. All were effectively blocked  by CIA and State.

The media's shilling and misdirection was both relentless and effective. As  an example, Ollie North was voted in a media poll as one of the "ten most  admired" in the nation in spite of the fact that his efforts to protect  major drug dealers and killers like Honduran army general Bueso-Rosa from  prosecution had been well documented by Congress. Astoundingly, North, a  CIA station chief and a US ambassador had been banned from entering Costa  Rica for running drugs through that democratic nation into the US, (among  other crimes), by that country's Nobel prize winning President, Oscar  Arias, yet the news barely surfaced in the US. Now compare this to Monica  Lewinsky coverage.[11]

Even drug-dealing Contra supporters in other countries were being  protected. In one glaring case, an associate of mine was sent into Honduras  to open a DEA office in Tegucigalpa. Within months he had documented that  as much as fifty tons of cocaine had been sent into the US by Honduran  military people who were supporting the Contras. Enough cocaine to fill a  third of the US demand. What was the DEA response? They closed the office.  [12] The tip-offs-both anonymous and straight out -to journalists continued  to fly from sources within DEA and other agencies, yet not one significant  truthful story ever surfaced.

Back in the Big Apple - the Drug War Media Capital

In 1984 I received a hardship transfer back to New York. My daughter living  there now had a drug problem. By this time my brother David, a 19 year  heroin addict had committed suicide in Miami, leaving a note that said: "I  can't stand the drugs any more." I was going to do whatever it took to save  my little girl.

In New York City I was assigned as the supervisor of an active squad that  was constantly being called out to stage raids for television news, CBS,  ABC, etc. all the big players. On a slow news day the SAC would get a call:  You guys got anything going down we can put on the eleven o'clock news? We  could always come up with something. What was good for their ratings was  good for our budget.

During those years if you linked every doper the media shilled as a member  of either the Medellin or Cali Cartels, hand in hand, the chain would reach  the moon. The Cartels were so effectively painted as devils that even the  normally level headed Mayor Ed Koch called for the bombing of Colombia.  Ironically that is exactly what we're doing now.

I played the game, led the bogus raids, gave the newsies whatever they  needed to sell papers or raise ratings. As an insider I learned the secret  of the drug war generals' control over the media shills.

Drug stories sold newspapers, got media ratings and made great screen  stories for Hollywood and television - as they still do. To get "access" to  a police agency, that is to get the "inside story" and "credibility" the  media executives, producers and editors have to play the game. They can't  broadcast or write an unfriendly story and expect an open door the next  day. You don't make a tell-all movie and expect to film it with US  government cooperation, do you?

The bottom line is money. No one in mainstream media's taken an oath to  protect anything but their jobs - not a criticism, just a fact. Fourth  estate might as well be fifth, sixth or seventh estate, it's all bullshit.  For the money, mainstream media could (and can) be counted upon to shill  the Drug War Monty game as if their collective bank accounts depended on  it. But this was only part of the media economic story. It would get worse.  Much worse.

There were a few of us who, in sudden fits of madness or naiveté, did risk  our lives and careers to blow the whistle. More often than not we'd find  ourselves telling some incredulous Columbia School of Journalism-trained  newsie that the current "news" release issued by (fill-in-the-blank) Drug  War Monty agency talking about the "new political hope" in Mexico and/or  Colombia and/or (fill-in-blank) who was going to "clean up" government drug  corruption, was just a repeat of the same bullshit story that 's been  printed every couple of months since the beginning of time. And if they  didn't believe us, all they had to do was check their own archives.

We'd tell them that our first-hand experience on the front lines had taught  us that, as long as Americans bought hundreds of billions in illegal drugs,  there could be no new hope and that to ignore this history and to print or  broadcast that bullshit was no different than shilling for Three Card Monty.

The typical newsie answer would be a blank stare. Blank because they didn't  have the slightest idea what we were talking about, nor the curiosity to  research it. Blank, because while they've been trained in sound bites,  ellipses and correct language, they haven't the slightest notion of the  history or inner workings of Drug War Monty. They don't even know that  Conspiracy is the federal law responsible for the majority of humans in  cages. Their editors tell them that whatever "credentialed government  spokespeople" say (usually some public affairs officer) is the story. They  are assigned to be reporters, not investigative journalists.

Meanwhile these encounters leave you, the potential whistleblower, with a  sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you wish you'd kept  your damned mouth shut.

But back then, except for those few fleeting moments of sheer madness, I no  longer had the slightest desire to play the Robert Redford role in my own  movie. I had a daughter on drugs, a mortgage and a debt-financed life. The  only thing between myself and ruination was my job. I had learned the Three  Days of the Condor lesson well: they most definitely would not print the story.

Then, in 1987, I was once again pushed over the edge. There would be no  turning back.

Operation Trifecta - Deep Cover

By 1987, as the DEA suit had predicted, I'd kept my mouth shut and my  "sins" had been forgotten. DEA Headquarters was now asking me to play a  lead role in a deep cover sting operation that would become The New York  Times best-selling book, Deep Cover.

Posing as a Puerto Rican-Sicilian Mafia chief, myself and a small cadre of  DEA and Customs undercover agents managed to penetrate to the top of the  drug world in three countries: Bolivia, Panama and Mexico. DEA called it  "Operation Trifecta." Customs name for it was "Operation Saber." Our  fictitious little "Mafia" managed to make a 15 ton cocaine purchase and  smuggling deal with the Bolivian drug cartel known as La Corporacion, the  same group that the CIA helped in its takeover of Bolivia, the same group  responsible for most of the cocaine base being processed in Colombia to  this day.

Hidden video cameras rolled as I negotiated the price and quantity of the  drugs with top representatives of the cartel. The deal done, I sent  undercover pilots into the jungles of Bolivia to verify that the cocaine  was on the ground and ready for delivery. Then I arranged with top Mexican  government officials for military protection of the drug shipments as they  transited through Mexico into the United States. Among those with whom I  negotiated directly were Colonel Jaime Carranza, grandson of Mexico's  former President, Venustiano Carranza, and Pablo Giron, a bodyguard of  Mexico's President-elect at the time, Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

To verify that the Mexican government was keeping its part of the deal,  "Mafia" representatives (undercover officers) were dispatched to Mexico to  observe military units preparing our landing field. As part of the deal, my  first drug payment - five million dollars in cash - would be made to  Remberto Rodriguez, chief money launderer for the Bolivian and Colombian  Cartels. His operation, as the Cartel leaders told me, was protected by -  then, CIA asset - Manuel Noriega. I personally went to Rodriguez's  headquarters in Panama City where we made arrangements for the first  transfer of the down payment of $5 million cash and shook hands on the deal.

During this harrowing assignment our undercover team gathered hard evidence  in the form of secretly recorded video and audio-tapes, first hand  observations and secret government intelligence reports that clearly  indicated that members of the military and staff of incoming President of  Mexico Carlos Salinas de Gortari were planning to open the Mexican border  for drug smuggling once he took office as President and NAFTA (North  American Free Trade Agreement) was passed. Hard evidence that that they had  already begun to put their plan into action.

We had also stumbled onto evidence indicating that the corrupt Mexican  officials we were negotiating with were also directly involved in training  CIA-supported Contras. We uncovered uninvestigated, personal links between  US government officials (including at least one DEA officer) and corrupt  Mexican government officials, some of whom may have been involved in the  torture/murder of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena and/or its cover-up.

And we had proof that the US paramilitary operation in the Andean Region  (then Operation Snowcap, now Plan Colombia and/or The Andean Initiative)  was a premeditated fraud on the American people, never intended to have any  effect on the supply of drugs from its inception.

As I detailed in Deep Cover, once top officials in our government became  aware of what we had uncovered, the CIA became involved.[1] We had gone too  far and had to be stopped. The top drug dealers, the Panama based  money-laundering operation, and the high-ranking corrupt Mexican government  officials that we had snared were effectively protected from prosecution.  Operations Trifecta and Saber were destroyed.

Once again I can only urge the reader of this chapter to read the book and  judge it for its factual value keeping in mind that the information in it  was never intended to be a book.

In the book, I detail how all the revelations listed above were first  presented to DEA's Internal Affairs in one lengthy memorandum that I named  the "Memo Bomb." I was hoping - naively - that it would end up in the hands  of someone in government with a conscience, some bureaucrat or politician  who took his/her oath to defend the Constitution seriously. When I learned  that it was going to be covered up I didn't even consider turning to media.  I began writing Deep Cover, which was published three months after I retired.

The book made The New York Times bestseller list despite being virtually  ignored by mainstream media and Congress. What little media coverage it did  receive portrayed me as a disgruntled whistleblower. Why? Because that is  what "credentialed government spokespeople" said I was.

DEA and Justice Department officials refused to comment on any of the  specifics. Not one single mainstream media journalist undertook to do what  my publisher's (Delacorte Press) attorneys had done: conduct a libel  reading, or a detailed examination of how I had documented my facts. I was  a man whose words in courts across the land were credible enough to convict  and sentence thousands to tens of thousands of years in prisons. My book  screamed in a loud clear voice that the drug war was a premeditated fraud,  yet no one in media was interested in investigating the story.

In 1991, Bill Mayors' "Project Censored" called Deep Cover one of America's  ten most censored stories. During the taping of a show with Mr. Moyers he  commented to me that he'd heard that Deep Cover was the best read and least  talked about book between the [Washington DC] beltways. I had already heard  the same thing from my own sources inside DEA and other agencies.

I pointed out to Mr. Moyers that what I found both frightening and  depressing about the whole affair was that, despite the fact that a team of  US undercover agents had uncovered hard evidence of massive Mexican  government drug corruption and involvement in the torture/murder of a DEA  agent, our Congress had granted them "cooperating nation" status in the  drug war, meaning that they would be rewarded with US taxpayer dollars for  their betrayal. I also told Moyers that I was deeply disturbed that despite  the book's well-documented revelations showing that Operation Snowcap was a  premeditated fraud, Congress was expanding the militarized South American  drug war without even making a single inquiry.

All Mr. Moyers could do was shake his head the way a streetwise cop does  when he watches the suckers line up to play Three Card Monty. And as the  Plan Colombia war body count continues to mount, including the shooting  down of an aircraft belonging to religious missionaries.

Could this have happened if mainstream media had pursued the facts and  leads revealed in Deep Cover with the aggressive persistence shown during  the Watergate and Monica Lewinsky affairs? I think not. Instead they  averted their collective gazes and continued the barrage of  fill-in-the-blanks Drug War Monty stories. And the suckers watched the show  and continued to pay.

Ten Years of Journalism

After my retirement and the publication of Deep Cover, I wrote Fight Back,  How To Take Back Your Neighborhood, Schools and Families From the DRUG  DEALERS, [13] followed by The Big White Lie (co-written with Laura  Kavanau-Levine). Whatever I thought I knew about Drug War Monty and how to  fight it was now in book form, but I still had a lot to learn, only now  from the opposite angle.

Beginning with my retirement from DEA on 1/1/90 up to this moment, I have  been active as a free-lance print journalist, media consultant and on-air  drug and crime expert, as well as an Expert Witness on all matters related  to drug trafficking and the use of deadly force in federal and state  courts. Since 1997, I have been the host of The Expert Witness Radio Show,  which airs on WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York City and KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los  Angeles. The show features interviews with front-line participants in major  Drug War Monty events and other crime and espionage stories that mainstream  media have either misrepresented or consciously ignored.

The screaming need for the show was best illustrated during a three-hour  interview of four veteran federal agents called "100 Years Experience."[1]  It was a roundtable discussion with Ralph McGeehee (25 years with CIA),  Dennis Dayle (27 years with DEA), Wesley Swearingen (25 years with FBI) and  me (25 years with DEA, Customs, IRS Intelligence and BATF). All of us had  taken part in some of the highest profile events in law enforcement,  military and espionage history. All of us easily agreed that not a single  one of these events - from the Vietnam War and Cointelpro to the entire War  on Drugs - had been reported honestly by mainstream media. (CD Now  available under title FIRST WARNING, from web site).

Dennis Dayle, a principal subject in James Mills' best selling book,  Underground Empire, stated that the CIA had interfered with and/or  destroyed every major international drug dealing investigation he had ever  conducted. You remember seeing that anywhere in the news?

Now, as a journalist, I want to give you details on some of the most  important events that I experienced first-hand and the media shilling that  went on as they unfolded.[1][14]

Drug War Invasion of Panama.[15]

As I've already said, it was as early as 1971, when I was serving in the US  Customs Hard Narcotics Smuggling Unit, that I became personally aware that  both US Customs and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs knew very  well that Manuel Noriega was heavily involved in drug trafficking to the  United States, and that he was protected from prosecution by the gang that  can't spy straight.

This wacky little drug dealer, like countless other criminals doing damage  to America, was on the CIA payroll. He'd even had lunch with George Bush.  Ollie North had been assigned to "clean up his image."  The protection had  been going on for so long and was so well known that no one in the CIA had  bothered to tell DEA agent Danny Moritz and federal prosecutor Richard  Gregorie that the dude was off limits.[16]

So the same CIA that didn't know that the Berlin Wall was coming down until  the bricks were hitting them in the head, didn't learn that their  two-decade, drug dealing asset Manny "Pineapple Face" Noriega was getting  indicted until it was too late. Now there was a problem, a problem that  only media shills could handle.[1]

On the evening of December 20, 1989, I watched with a mixture of horror and  wonder as Noriega's fortress of a home was blown to smithereens along with  Chorillo, Panama City's entire inner city area. It was the opening shot of  America's first full scale drug war invasion. Hundreds, perhaps thousands  (depending on whom you believe) of Panamanians died. Women, children, tiny  babies. Burned, shot, mutilated by our finest and most advanced weaponry.  It was a great opportunity to try out our stealth bombers and fighter  planes. I could not help but be reminded of the Nazi bombing of Guernica,  Spain.

I guess the stuff really works.

Twenty-six American soldiers also died, many of them shot by friendly fire.  All this awesome firepower and death to arrest a man whose drug dealing the  CIA had been protecting for almost two decades. How, I wondered, were the  drug war generals and the CIA gonna hide the truth behind this grotesque  atrocity?

Media shills to the rescue.

Within months, the media coverage had omitted and obliterated and/or  minimized and/or trivialized Manuel Noriega's true history and reputation  with the CIA and DEA and turned the event into a major drug war "victory."  So effective was the media shilling that instead of being indicted as a  co-conspirator, George Bush Sr. enjoyed a massive surge in his popularity  ratings. Lee Atwater, the Chairman of the Republican Party called the  monstrous atrocity a "political jackpot."

The damage this did to those in law enforcement with a conscience was  incalculable. Whatever faith we ever had in media fulfilling its alleged  Fourth Estate role was gone.

The "political jackpot" comment was the final straw for me. I had just  retired and felt (again, albeit foolishly) relatively safe from  retribution, so I began firing off a barrage of articles to every media  outlet I could think of. It was really a futile attempt from the beginning  and I knew it, but I had to try and keep trying. It was only through  alternative media and the then-nascent Internet that the truth surfaced,  but who paid any attention to that? And as long as alternative media had no  affect on the polls, it would have no affect on American politicians.

I am close to many men and women who have spent their lives in law  enforcement. All of them, when sitting in comfortable little living rooms  after having a couple of drinks, will lower their voices and admit that if  any cop had done what those involved with the Noriega cover-up and the  subsequent phony invasion had done, they'd have been buried under a federal  jail. They'll say the words that no shill journalist would ever print, that  anyone who was responsible for that invasion ought to be tried as a war  criminal. It was the realization that our silence was the ugliest part of  history repeating itself that kept me at my computer trying to out the true  Noriega story. But the wall of media shills was impenetrable.

It was after my son, Keith Richard Levine, a New York City police sergeant,  was killed by crack addicts on 12/28/91 that The New York Times published  one of my Noriega pieces.[17] [1] I was never sure whether it was my son's  very public murder that changed their attitude or the upcoming Clinton-Bush  election, but I was grateful, even hopeful. My Bush-Noriega article - an  Op-ed piece - was a tiny drop in a media tidal wave going the other way,  but it made an important point. There was some hope in media. It was not  monolithic. While it was, by and large, controlled by easily frightened and  manipulated little people of little courage, there were editors, producers  and journalists out there who were still willing to risk taking a moral  stand against the criminal and/or criminally inept exercise of power.

I was also learning another hard lesson: to force real congressional action  against corruption and/or criminal ineptitude at the highest levels of  government, one article or one television special is far from enough to  combat the ocean of media shills. What's needed is a  Watergate/Lewinsky-like wave of investigative journalism. A sprinkling  won't work. A sprinkling will only be used to shill us into thinking we  really have a free, aggressive media.

Rise in Police Drug War Violence After Panama

It was after the mass murder of women and children in Panama that, as a  journalist, I began to notice a distinct increase in the militarization of  the drug war in the US. A very clear acceptance by our elected "protectors"  and the public of an increase in the use of deadly force in the drug war  that continues to this day affecting all aspects of police-community relations.

This too could never have happened without mainstream media, television and  Hollywood shilling us with bullshit-based, Drug War Monty movies like Clear  and Present Danger, television drug war specials and so-called "reality"  based programs like Cops, and the incessant flow of fill-in-the-blanks drug  stories with headlines like "New Threat in Drug Supply Discovered in (fill  in nation of your choice)" "New Link in Opium Trail Discovered in (fill  in)" "The Hunt for (fill in) New Leader of the (fill in) Cartel"  "Government Sources Alarmed by Increase in Flow of (fill in) " "Government  Sources Allege Drug Corruption in (fill in some nation CIA wants to  initiate some, usually dangerous, foolish and very expensive action)"  "Startling Rise in Drug Use Predicted by (fill in the name of agency that  wants a budget increase)." [18]

As an Expert Witness

Since my retirement, I've worked as an expert witness for attorneys  defending people from the excesses of a Drug War Monty game gone wild. I've  been directly involved in a continuous flow of atrocities perpetrated on  innocent citizens that, thanks to the reliable practice of censorship via  omission by mainstream media shills, never get mainstream media exposure.

 From my point of view, the use of the word "atrocities" is no hyperbole.  As a front-line participant, I've watched the drug war evolve from where,  in 1973, DEA agents who raided a premises in Collinsville, Indiana in  honest error were prosecuted for that error in federal court, to where the  killing of innocent Americans in their own homes is now not only condo
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Offline Froderik

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Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2003, 09:43:00 PM »
I started reading that 'book' you posted, lol. Indeed, "it was the governments fault, it was the fault of the government..." I got curious about corruption in our government (which includes this whole drug war thing of course) about 10 years ago while being shacked up with an old coke-head.
There were some thought-provoking lyrics on "Give 'Em Enough Rope" by The Clash, which she had, that inspired me. (I forget which song. If you care to, go listen to the album or read the lyrics on line.)

I started reading books. "Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes" by Jonathan Vankin..."Unreliable Sources" which was about lies in the media (by someone else) Oh, well that's about all I had to say on this subject anyway. Gotta go, family probs. Peace out, FR13
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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2008, 04:18:32 AM »
Quote from: "Froderik"
I started reading that 'book' you posted, lol. Indeed, "it was the governments fault, it was the fault of the government..." I got curious about corruption in our government (which includes this whole drug war thing of course) about 10 years ago while being shacked up with an old coke-head.
There were some thought-provoking lyrics on "Give 'Em Enough Rope" by The Clash, which she had, that inspired me. (I forget which song. If you care to, go listen to the album or read the lyrics on line.)

I started reading books. "Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes" by Jonathan Vankin..."Unreliable Sources" which was about lies in the media (by someone else) Oh, well that's about all I had to say on this subject anyway. Gotta go, family probs. Peace out, FR13

this is old, but have you ever thought that it's a requirement for the police an 104 i.q. or lower  because this limits their ability to convert their conscience into resistance of unethical demands?

Serpico seemed a pretty smart guy. He made a lot of trouble for fairly powerful people.
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Offline Froderik

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2008, 03:10:13 PM »
There are smart people in law enforcement..

A group like http://www.leap.cc/ is proof of this.
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2008, 03:46:54 PM »
Legalizing all the drugs would definitely take a load off of law enforcement and lower the cost of drugs overall, then the police could focus on those who are committing crimes.  We could dedicate an entire state to dealing with those people who abuse the drugs and become addicted to the point where they can’t support themselves or function in society.  Maybe a state like Utah could harbor all the people on assistant living which would take the load off of all the local communities to support them.  This would actually reduce taxes and allow more of the tax money to go towards education and community sponsored events.

Not sure how it is today but when I was growing up Burlington Vermont had a no tolerance for people seeking a free ride or those who refused to support themselves.  If you were caught sleeping on the streets the cops would pick you up and you had a job the next day working for the city to help keep it clean.  If you didn’t want to work then they gave you a free bus ticket to any other city you wanted.  Burlington had very low crime rate, very clean, no bums on the street and one of the lowest welfare recipient cities in the country.  If all these people could be sent to one central area, say Utah, then they call all be dealt with as a group (reeducated, taught skills which would help them support themselves, deal with drug addiction etc.) instead of just writing checks out to them to pay for room and board without helping them to get back into the system.



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Offline Anonymous

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2008, 04:28:36 PM »
How thoroughly Orwellian of you.

My god.  You're worse than I thought.
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2008, 04:34:52 PM »
Quote from: "1984"
How thoroughly Orwellian of you.

My god.  You're worse than I thought.

What is wrong with that? Local taxes could go towards those who worked (paid into the tax base) and a portion of federal money/taxes could go to the state of Utah to help with those people who fall out of the system for one reason or another.  If the money was concentrated into just helping people it would be more effective and people would get the help they need instead of feeding an addiction or going towards abusing drugs.

Why is this a bad thing?  Where is the down side?



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Offline Anonymous

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2008, 04:39:43 PM »
Quote from: "TheWho"

Not sure how it is today but when I was growing up Burlington Vermont had a no tolerance for people seeking a free ride or those who refused to support themselves.  If you were caught sleeping on the streets the cops would pick you up and you had a job the next day working for the city to help keep it clean.  If you didn’t want to work then they gave you a free bus ticket to any other city you wanted.  Burlington had very low crime rate, very clean, no bums on the street and one of the lowest welfare recipient cities in the country.  If all these people could be sent to one central area, say Utah, then they call all be dealt with as a group (reeducated, taught skills which would help them support themselves, deal with drug addiction etc.) instead of just writing checks out to them to pay for room and board without helping them to get back into the system.



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How thoroughly Orwellian of you.

My god.  You're worse than I thought.
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2008, 04:54:13 PM »
The money saved would be tremendous and could be put towards rehabilitation.  Each local community would not have to create and fund a local rehab thereby reducing the burden locally.  Instead all this money could go towards one nationwide state of the art rehab which would be much more effective in getting people back into the work place and reestablishing their self worth and contributing to society again.

They could focus on drug abuse, re-education etc. instead of just writing people checks which may go towards things which do not benefit them getting back on track.



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Offline Anonymous

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2008, 04:59:58 PM »
Quote from: "TheWho"

 If all these people could be sent to one central area, say Utah, then they call all be dealt with as a group (reeducated, taught skills which would help them support themselves, deal with drug addiction etc.) instead of just writing checks out to them to pay for room and board without helping them to get back into the system.



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I'll bet you're practically salivating at the thought of being able to "re-educate" (brainwash) an entire section of the population.  Round 'em up and ship 'em off for, ahem, "re-education".

How thoroughly Orwellian of you.

My god.  You're worse than I thought.
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #10 on: August 09, 2008, 05:09:50 PM »
Quote from: "George O"
Quote from: "TheWho"

 If all these people could be sent to one central area, say Utah, then they call all be dealt with as a group (reeducated, taught skills which would help them support themselves, deal with drug addiction etc.) instead of just writing checks out to them to pay for room and board without helping them to get back into the system.



...



I'll bet you're practically salivating at the thought of being able to "re-educate" (brainwash) an entire section of the population.  Round 'em up and ship 'em off for, ahem, "re-education".

How thoroughly Orwellian of you.

My god.  You're worse than I thought.

So you consider education brainwashing?  You probably wonder why people consider you closed minded.


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Offline Anonymous

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #11 on: August 09, 2008, 05:16:03 PM »
Education isn't brainwashing.  rounding up an entire section of the population, isolating them from the rest of society and RE-educating them runs pretty goddamn close, you self righteous and silly little man.
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #12 on: August 09, 2008, 05:21:18 PM »
Consider this:

Suppose you organized a parade and invited everyone who was on welfare and living off the backs of those who worked for a living to attend.  They could hold up banners and celebrate their lifestyle openly to others.  How many would you think would show up?  Not many probably because the majority of people would rather contribute to society and the only way to get there is by providing them the skills to do just that.  This is thru education.

Trying to accomplish this locally is difficult, expensive and hasnt proved effective to date.  But if there was one central place that offered all the services needed then people could get back into mainstream society much quicker.



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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #13 on: August 09, 2008, 05:49:10 PM »
Or take it down to a more local personal level.  Suppose you were the only one with a job in your building with 10 apartments and the cable bill was $50 per apartment.  You worked 60 hours a week and paid all your bills on time while everyone else stayed home and watched TV and got high all day.  While you were at work they all had a meeting and decided that since you had money (and they didn’t) that you should pay the cable bill for the whole building.  So instead of paying $50 a month you would have to pay $500.  Would you pay the cable bill?
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Offline TheWho

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Re: Mainstream Media: The Drug War Shills
« Reply #14 on: August 09, 2008, 06:39:01 PM »
Maybe you say no, but you respond with a compromise and agree to pay for the cable in the community room instead of paying for all of them individually.  They respond with “Why do we have to be transported to one area to watch what we want?  You are so Orwellian!!  Just give us the money we ask for!

Is that fair?


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