When Mr. Patrushev... 

 ... says something, it means he has huge reasons to do so, unlike it is the case with spokespersons circus in the West who simply lie to your face.  Same goes for Mr. Bortnikov--the Director of FSB. 

МОСКВА, 26 мар — РИА Новости. Показания задержанных по делу о теракте в "Крокус Сити Холле" подтверждают украинский след, заявил директор ФСБ Александр Бортников журналисту Павлу Зарубину, который выложил видео в Telegram-канале."Первичные данные, которые мы получили от задержанных, подтверждают это. Поэтому будем дальше дорабатывать информацию, которая должна нам показать — реально присутствие и участие украинской стороны или нет. Во всяком случае, пока есть основания говорить, что это именно так", — сказал руководитель спецслужбы.Translation: MOSCOW, March 26 – RIA Novosti. The testimony of those detained in the case of the terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall confirms the Ukrainian trace, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov told journalist Pavel Zarubin, who posted the video on the Telegram channel. “The primary data that we received from the detainees confirms this. Therefore, we will further refine it information that should show us whether the presence and participation of the Ukrainian side is real or not. In any case, for now there is reason to say that this is exactly the case,” said the head of the special service. Bortnikov also pointed out the obvious "interest" of Western special services in Crocus-City atrocity. So, as you can see--404 and Budanov are already being dealt with, now it is the matter of establishing the main "customer". This may take some time but we already know the circle of suspects and they are not in 404. As I pointed out not for once, at this stage neither Russia as a state nor Russians as people give a flying fuck about what West thinks or says, only what it does. Russia reacts appropriately. As Mr. Medvedev said (in Russian)--it would be good for France to send a couple of regiments to Russia to be annihilated. This is your answer in regards to the "direct conflict" with NATO. Russia will kill anyone who enters 404. It is one thing when Petr Tolstoy says it, however important MP he is, totally another when the deputy chair of Russia's Security Council says so. Medvedev is NOT a "bad cop" in tandem with "good cop" Putin--he is a genuine hawk who hates the West viscerally. He has some reasons for that. So, for NATO it is the time to exhale and praise the Lord that Vladimir Putin won these elections. Medvedev may yet run in the future and, believe me, he will win. Meanwhile, for French troops, if they ever make it--Welcome to Hell. https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/  --------  The Nuland – Budanov – Tajik – Crocus connection  BY Pepe Escobar  

Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of investigation.

December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign behind the lines.”

January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC News, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the road map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.

January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for asymmetric war.

February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.

February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.

Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the dots.

Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).

Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.

March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.

March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.

March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two days.

March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus was massive, so the op is postponed.

March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.

ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms

The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi – similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.

And that brings us to the Tajik connection.

There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.

The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away, almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the border to Ukraine.

All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all – quite literally.

A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.

And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.

The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.

Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.

Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.

Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually indistinguishable from ISIS.

Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.

Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.

The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.

The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom. Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the 500 thousand ruble reward.

After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then Afghanistan.

That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the client.

The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs

Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.

Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.

One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.

The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.

The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable.

Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,

As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban.

Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).

The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.

But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.

The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.

But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.

Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators” chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for centuries.

In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/03/26/the-nuland-budanov-tajik-crocus-connection/

 

-----

 

by Vincent Gouysse

The Atlanticist merdias trapped at the bottom of the abyss of their “Salafist” narrative: the (phony) claim of the attack on Moscow by the “Islamic State” did NOT fool the Russians AT ALL…

The Ukrainian track is today the most probable (and rational) in view of the first elements already in our possession:

1. the recruitment role of the Ukrainian Embassy in Tajikistan;

2. the TOTAL absence of ideological (political/religious) motivation of the terrorists – just the lure of profit promised by a preacher on Telegram;

3. a TOTAL discordance with the modus operandi of the Islamic State (attackers ready for martyrdom);

4. the (abortive) flight of the accomplices towards the Ukrainian border where they were to receive the second half of their loot (or be liquidated so that the sponsor could be assured of their silence)…

 

https://en.reseauinternational.net/les-merdias-atlantistes-pieges-au-fond-de-labime-de-leur-narratif-salafiste/

 

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

READ FROM TOP

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

 

 

May 26, 1998.....

 

Observers in Latin America and Italy commented on Washington's announcement last Monday of the culmination of a three-year undercover operation that resulted in the indictment of officials from 12 of Mexico's biggest banks, accused of laundering drug money for the Mexican Juarez and Colombian Cali cartels. Perhaps not surprisingly, the investigation--dubbed "Operation Casablanca"--prompted a big wave of critical commentary in the Mexican press, with many analysts there imputing U.S. political motives to the operation. Editorialists elsewhere focused on the problems many nations face in attempting to deal effectively with illegal drug trafficking and money laundering. Following are salient themes in the commentary:

MEXICO RAILS AGAINST U.S.: A majority of the major newspapers in Mexico City strongly protested the U.S. handling of the money-laundering "sting." Most egregious, in the view of a majority of opinionmakers, was that Washington undertook the mission without the knowledge of the Mexican government, thus severely damaging U.S.-Mexican bilateral relations. Left-of-center La Jornadasaid: "The U.S. has undermined compliance with the principles of equality, respect, and bilateral cooperation." The press dismissed recent reported statements by Attorney General Reno that the operation was not intended to accuse the entire Mexican banking system. Traditionally pro-PRI Excelsior said that "this rectification will have little effect. The damage has already been done [to Mexico's international image.]" Observers went on to criticize the results of the operation, contending that the "$110 million allegedly laundered" was "insignificant to drug traffickers." Others wondered about the role of U.S. banks, and why they were not included in the investigation. Nearly all Mexican analysts questioned the U.S. motives behind the operation, contending that the investigation was carried out for political ends. Some charged that Washington was determined to force down the values of Mexican bank stocks, making it "easy for the large financial consortia of New York to acquire our banks, as they have long desired." Independent Reforma pointed out that the investigation's results were known "just a few days after Mexico signed an important trade agreement with the EU. Is the U.S. perhaps sending messages of the 'risks' European investors could face in Mexico?" Official government Nacional saw in all this a U.S. move to discredit Mexico's anti-drug initiatives. Several papers urged the Mexican government to retaliate, and "brandish" its "will for autonomy" by expelling U.S. DEA agents from Mexican soil. Notably, other media voices in Mexico, while not necessarily embracing the U.S.' management of the investigation, clearly condemned the failure of Mexican banking officials and safeguards. They expressed deep concern that "the American authorities don't trust the Mexicans...that bank regulations to prevent this kind of thing don't work...[and that this is] the worst banking scandal in our history." OTHER PLAYERS: In Italy, dailies noted their country's cooperation with the U.S. on Operation Casablanca. Meanwhile, in a related development, papers in Caracas lamented that a Venezuelan banker was charged in a money-laundering case in a federal court in Los Angeles. Influential, liberal El Nacional did not inveigh against the U.S. action, but instead stressed that 

the U.S. government would not have taken such a step "without good evidence." 

This survey is based 27 reports from 5 countries, May 19-24.

EDITOR: Diana McCaffrey

To Go Directly To Quotes By Region, Click Below|  LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN  | |  EUROPE  |   

LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

MEXICO: "Clear Rules For Bilateral Cooperation"

The lead editorial in top-circulation El Universa said (5/24): "The so-called Operation Casablanca, in which the U.S. government tried to deactivate a money laundering network, is an example of the need to be able to count on clear rules that promote bilateral cooperation based on mutual respect.... It is important to point out that it is not with words which the United States sees itself obliged to respect our legal requirements, but with facts that show the capacity of Mexican authorities to act with firmness, honesty and efficiency in solving problems as serious as narcotics trafficking."

"'Washington Trying To Repair Damage"

Traditionally pro-PRI Excelsior held (5/24): "After encountering a tempest of adverse public opinion over the way in which Operation Casablanca was managed, Washington is trying to repair the damage. Attorney General Janet Reno said that it was not intended to accuse the entire Mexican banking system, only corrupt employees who had committed crimes.... But the way in which the operation was announced and the international repercussions it has had have caused great damage to our international image. This rectification will have little effect. The damage is already done." 

"No Bilateral Communication"

Sergio Sarmiento wrote in top-circulation, independent El Norte of Monterrrey (5/22): "If the United States was searching for a way to generate a political and economic shock to Mexico, they found the right method, no doubt. The announcement of Operation Casablanca has affected Mexico's markets and political life. Investors are not concerned by the supposed money laundering of Mexican banks. Whoever deals with investments internationally is aware that banks all over the world, not only in Mexico, are involved in these kind of operations. The concern is that the United States has decided to confront the Mexican government openly on money laundering. It was clear that the United States did not inform the Mexican government on Operation Casablanca while it was on (because it was an undercover operation). But it is very peculiar that there was no communication to inform Mexican authorities, not even an hour before the press conference took place announcing the operation."

"We Should Not Defend Delinquents--Mexican Or Not"

Ricardo Rojas wrote in top-circulation, independent El Norte of Monterrey (5/24): "We are upset. This investigation (Operation Casablanca), we say in Mexico, interferes in our affairs; besides, the United States should first take care of its own problems. But, under the eyes of an exaggerated nationalism, we should not defend delinquents, even though they are Mexicans and are being accused by foreigners. We should support the information gathered by the United States and allow the accused to be sanctioned. It is not convenient for anybody to have delinquents working in the banking system. Operation Casablanca is good, but it only attacks a very limited side of the problem. It does not go to the origin of the issue." 

"How Is U.S. Attitude Justified?"

Daily political gossip column Templo Mayor in independent Reforma (5/21) noted, "If Mexican authorities were to decide to lead an undercover Operation Los Pinos in the United States, they would uncover little. A major scandal has been made over $110 million laundered by Mexican bank employees but what about the fact that $300 million is laundered annually? That information doesn't come from whistle blowers; far from it. 

"It simply comes from Under Secretary of the Treasury Raymond Kelly, who informed the House of Representatives of that figure on July 24, 1997.... How is the U.S. attitude justified when such exorbitant figures are reached in the United States? If what is good for the goose is good for the gander, Alejandro Carrillo Castro (head of international affairs at the Mexican Office of Immigration) should follow directions by expelling DEA agents (from Mexico)." 

"Political Ends"

Ricardo Aleman held in large circulation El Universal (5/22): "It is clear that Operation Casablanca has evident political ends and that it's ridiculous results--ridiculous because in the biggest operation in the history of the United States to uncover money laundering, it has barely uncovered $35 million--is a good excuse to show the world that the United States has lost confidence in Mexico. If not, why did Robert Rubin and Janet Reno make no reference to Citibank, the U.S. bank that is under investigation for laundering money belonging to Raul Salinas, amounting to $132 million? Why didn't they provide information about DEA and FBI investigations of laundering of narcotics money?"

"U.S. Intentions"

Traditionally pro-PRI Excelsior opined (5/22): "Several hypotheses have arisen about the intentions of this investigation thrown onto Mexico's shoulders. If the values of Mexican bank stocks go down, as occurred after Janet Reno's revelations, it would be easy for the large financial consortia of New York to acquire our banks, as they have long desired. On the other hand, it could be that an attempt to pressure Mexico to enter quasi-military Latin American organizations, supposedly to combat narcotics trafficking, but which really are intended as a screen for U.S. interventionism (remember Cuba, Panama and Santo Domingo). Mexico has resisted such pressures until now and this could be the right moment to brandish our will for autonomy." 

"Self-Satisfaction In Face Of Scandal"

The lead editorial in left-of-center La Jornada asserted (5/21): "One of the most notorious results of Operation Casablanca is the persistent effort (of Mexican authorities) to wash their hands of or de-emphasize the levels and implications of criminal activity. Of greatest concern is that the investigation, undertaken without the knowledge of Mexican authorities, was summarized yesterday by those very authorities in official declarations that sought to excuse them and minimize their role.... In that way they have sought to convert a problem that places Mexico in a weak and discredited position in relation to its northern neighbor and the international community into a mere incident of law enforcement. This event should be considered an affair of state of great importance. Those comments distract the attention of Mexicans from the serious aspects of the announcement of Operation Casablanca: on the one hand, the lack of official controls over private banking...seem to have been given the understanding and the eternal benevolence of the authorities. On the other hand, the United States has undermined compliance with the principles of equality, respect, and bilateral cooperation." 

"U.S. Motives"

Political gossip column "Templo Mayor" in independent Reforma observed (5/21): "The so-called investigation has resulted in sound and fury signifying nothing. Following the event in Washington announcing the results of this operation, analysts worked hard on the figures given by U.S. authorities. Analysts agreed that the $110 million allegedly laundered are insignificant to drug traffickers. The money invested in this operation has not been justified by the number and rank of the persons involved and arrested.... 

"Some analysts believe that the announcement of Operation Casablanca was a great publicity event by the Clinton administration. The U.S. government could be seen as taking a great step in the program against international organized crime announced by President Clinton a week ago. Others say more pragmatically that Attorney General Reno had to justify the $30 million spent over the last three years on this operation....

 

"One should not overlook other U.S. motives behind this political-banking-criminal blow. Only a few weeks ago, Secretary Rubin was praising the possibility of foreign investment in Mexican banks. But two of the banks allegedly involved in illegal activities count on foreign capital that does not come from the United States: Serfin from the Shangai Hong Kong bank; and Bancomer from the Bank of Montreal. Is this a mere coincidence? What about the timing? The results of Operation Casablanca were known just a few days after Mexico signed an important trade agreement with the European Union. Is the United States perhaps sending messages of the 'risks' European investors could face in Mexico?"

"Failure In Bilateral Cooperation"

The lead editorial in traditionally pro-PRI Excelsior asserted (5/21): "Operation Casablanca, carried out by specialized U.S. agencies, has had great results from a law enforcement point of view. But it has been a terrible failure for bilateral cooperation. It has demonstrated that the U.S. government can act with absolute independence of its commitments to Mexico and that the United States disdains the mutual support it has agreed to in many accords. There is a third negative aspect: U.S. interference in our domestic issues and violation of our sovereignty. The strong drop in Mexican stock values and the slight devaluation of the peso are two negative impacts on the Mexican economy resulted from this investigation. But the worst is still to come. The lack of reciprocity in investigative operations and distrust in our institutions and government will surely damage bilateral cooperation." 

"Dubious Coincidences"

An editorial in official government El Nacional observed (5/21): "It is essential to fight corruption by bank employees and money brokers in Tijuana and Guadalajara. But Operation Casablanca does not call into question the integrity of the Mexican banking system as a whole.... It is important to remember that the United States is the main drug consuming country in the world. As a result, drug-money is used mostly in U.S. territory. It is difficult for the United States to recognize how money is laundered there and how those funds enter U.S. banks. Mexico does not produce dollars, so the drug-money that is laundered in Mexico comes from the United States. Why were U.S. banks not included in this investigation? One of the most important elements of bilateral cooperation in fighting drug trafficking and money laundering is the exchange of information. If communication between both governments is insufficient, it can affect bilateral cooperation. 

"There are also some dubious coincidences in this case. Operation Casablanca ended three weeks before the UN General Assembly extraordinary session is scheduled. During this UN session, Mexico's initiative on drug-related problems, drug trafficking and money laundering issues will be discussed. It is also important to stress that the results on Operation Casablanca were announced just a few days before the U.S.-Mexico binational committee meeting is scheduled to take place in Washington. International cooperation is needed to fight drug trafficking and money laundering because it is an international problem and must be widely discussed during the upcoming UN General Assembly extraordinary session." 

"Mexican Narco-Bankers"

Independent Publico of Guadalajara maintained (5/21): "If the U.S. government had informed Mexico or asked for help during the Casablanca investigation, it would surely have failed. Somehow, the information would have gotten back to the narco-traffickers. The high level of infiltration by organized crime into Mexican law enforcement threatens any investigation that requires secrecy.... The investigation leaves a lot of questions. In the first place, were higher officials in the banks involved in money laundering? Is it possible that bank directors were ignorant of the suspicious movement of money? It's also curious that the U.S. investigation didn't catch any Americans involved in money laundering." 

"Bankrupt Country"

Nationalistic Occidental of Guadalajara advised (5/21): "The Casablanca investigation shows once again the urgency of returning to a state of laws before its too late. Or before a Mexican Fernando Marcos or Soeharto shows up." 

"And The Gringo Bank Employees?"

Nationalistic Occidental ran this opinion piece (5/21): "The success of the DEA, Customs and the other U.S. agencies has to be recognized. However, the results raise the question: What about the bankers and employees of banks in the United States? It's not yet clear how the 'corrupt' Mexicans send drugs to the United States, sell them on the streets to the addicts, earn enormous quantities of money, and then send it all back to Mexico. It seems that U.S. drug addicts are just consumers, and it's not their fault that millions of dollars end up in the pockets of the drug dealers." 

"What About The Other $50 Billion?"

Nationalistic Occidental of Guadalajara held (5/20): "Conservative estimates are that the annual value of the drug trade in the United States is around $50 billion. After a three year investigation, Attorney General Janet Reno and the secretary of the treasury, James Rubin, have tracked down $150 million. Which is to say that at this rate they'll find all of the money in about 10 light years. So, while we have to congratulate the U.S. authorities for the success of Operation Casablanca, we might as well sit down while we wait to find out where in the world they're laundering the rest of the $50 billion." 

"Hypocrisy File"

In the view of conservative Ocho Columnas of Guadalajara (5/20): "There are several interesting points about the Casablanca investigation. One is that Mexican banking and tax officials were not only not aware of the money laundering problem, they weren't even aware they were being investigated. Another is that the trustworthiness of these officials is so low that the U.S. federal authorities had to carry out the investigation without breathing a word to them. One has to seriously question whether it is really possible to launder millions of dollars through a Mexican bank without the bank's officials being aware of it. And what of the U.S. bankers involved? We understand that some 50 employees are being charged. But is it possible that U.S. bank officials also weren't aware of the problem?" 

"U.S. Playing Politics"

Independent Publico of Guadalajara held (5/20): "It is clear that by playing politics with a criminal investigation, the United States wanted to show the degree of corruption in Mexican financial institutions in order to lower their prestige and show that only foreign ownership of the banks can save them." 

"Bank Safeguards Aren't Doing The Job"

Nationalistic Occidental of Guadalajara commented (5/19): "Even though the Mexican banks assure us that those involved were only minor officials, they were making major deals with the drug cartels. After learning about the scandal, the appropriate Mexican authorities quickly offered to cooperate to get to the bottom of the matter. It's a shame they didn't already do that. The really worrisome thing is not that some thug opened a bank account undetected--it's almost impossible to know where the money comes from at first--but when an account starts to grow like magic in the middle of an economic crisis that is shrinking everyone else's assets, it's obvious that the safeguards in place aren't doing the job." 

"Worst Banking Scandal In Our History"

Independent Publico of Guadalajara observed (5/19): "For the moment, things are still a little unclear. We know for certain three things: that this is the worst banking scandal in our history; that the American authorities don't trust the Mexicans; and that bank regulations to prevent this kind of thing don't work. Adding to the confusion is the enormity of the information offered by the Americans, and the silence of Mexican banking officials. The National Commission on Banking and Taxes hid its head like an ostrich. The procurator's office, which did show its face, seemed stunned by the announcement and limited itself to saying that it wanted to cooperate in the investigation. No one doubts the U.S. findings. But there are a lot questions. For example, if this laundering operation was so large, why is there only $85 million? Also, how much responsibility do individual employees bear, and how much their supervisors?" 

ARGENTINA: "We Lack Adquate Legislation To Fight Money Laundering" 

Leading Clarin commented (5/22): "The discovery of an enormous money laundering network tied to drug trafficking in Mexico unveiled the importance reached by this criminal action, that has become one of the strategic security concerns of the big powers. It also showed, in contrast, that our country lacks adequate legislation to fight this kind of crime. 

"In Argentina, this kind of crime is relatively smaller than in other countries but it might have increased during the past years. In this sense, the DEA...has allegedly detected considerable financial operations in our country, which consisted in changing low denomination bills presumably coming from drug trafficking. But our country does not have the adequate legal instruments to penalize laundering.... 

"The reason for this deficit is that the local authorities preferred not to impose restrictions that could discourage the entry of investments. Congress is in the process of studying a bill that is similar to the one implemented in the United States, but its passing has been delayed for the past two years. This deficit inhibits our ability to fight an increasing crime that will have harmful consequences over our institutional and social system."

JAMAICA: "A Serious Risk" 

The business-oriented, centrist Daily Observer held (5/20): "Not very long ago this newspaper joined independent and opposition members of the legislature as well as private sector groups in opposing measures that would require banks and other financial institutions to report the names of people from whose accounts tax on interest income has been deducted.... We are naturally wary of intrusive government and the capacity of those in authority to use sensitive information as a basis of control and an extension of power.... We are fearful of what could happen if myriad officials and petty bureaucrats have such access to confidential information, especially in an environment in which we sense a strong cynicism on the part of the government towards the private sector as well as official vindictiveness. 

"Our second reason for concern is that forcing banks to disclose information would lead to capital flight. This, of course, is linked to the first point. It is not that people necessarily have anything to hide.... It is just that the distrust of the government is too great for people to be sanguine about the confidentiality of information which reaches the eyes of officialdom. We have made these points to underline why we would suggest to the government to reject any pressure from the United States to tighten the reporting procedures for financial transactions. Banks now have to report lodgements above US$10,000, making them into a kind of policeman looking for 'suspicious transactions'. 

"Once we begin to put banks in the invidious position of watchmen, we run a serious risk of harassing and warding off legitimate businesses. We must be careful, as the saying goes, of cutting off our noses to spite our faces." 

PANAMA: "International Efforts Should Continue And Double"

Conservative El Panama America ran this inside editorial (5/21): "The illegal drug producers' cartels in Colombia and other South American countries have the courage to keep themselves in this dangerous business.... We have seen the complete cycle in Panama.... In the Dominican Republic the ingredients could mix themselves to convert it into the newest transshipment center to the United States....

"Mexico, another important transshipment center, has become one of the highest cost and risk countries for the drug barons.... The international efforts to combat the traffic and consumption of drugs, as well as money laundering, should continue and double.... With U.S. support, the local authorities in the different transshipment countries must be able to count on the resources to combat them. The fight against drugs will continue until this transnational problem is stopped by multinational attacks."

EUROPE

ITALY: "FBI And Carabinieri: Crackdown Against Narco Traffickers"

Leading leading Italian media (5/20) cover widely the success of Operation Casablanca, noting that the two hundred American agents who were involved in this major crackdown for three years worked closely with their Italian Carabinieri police colleagues to successfully infiltrate Mexican and Colombian drug organizations. All reports quote the announcement made by Attorney General Janet Reno and Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin presenting the operation as the world's biggest crackdown ever made against the recycling of narco-dollars. Headlines (5/20) included: "U.S.-Mexico-Italy: Narco Traffickers Hit at Heart" (La Repubblica); "FBI and Carabinieri: Crackdown Against Narco Traffickers" (Il Messaggero) "Narco-Traffic: Tentacular Ring Routed" (L'Unita')."

 

https://irp.fas.org/news/1998/05/wwwhm526.html

 

BEFORE CASABLANCA:....

THE CIA-CONTRA-CRACK COCAINE CONTROVERSY:
A REVIEW OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S
INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS

Chapter I: Introduction

A. The San Jose Mercury News Articles

On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published the first installment of a three-part series of articles concerning crack cocaine, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Nicaraguan Contra army. The introduction to the first installment of the series read: 

For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.

This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack" capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.

The three-day series of articles, entitled "Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion," told the story of a Los Angeles drug operation run by Ricky Donnell Ross, described sympathetically as "a disillusioned 19-year-old . . . who, at the dawn of the 1980s, found himself adrift on the streets of South-Central Los Angeles." The Dark Alliance series recounted how Ross began peddling small quantities of cocaine in the early 1980s and rapidly grew into one of the largest cocaine dealers in southern California until he was convicted of federal drug trafficking charges in March 1996. The series claimed that Ross' rise in the drug world was made possible by Oscar Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, two individuals with ties to the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN), one group comprising the Nicaraguan Contras. Blandon and Meneses reportedly sold tons of cocaine to Ross, who in turn converted it to crack and sold it in the black communities of South Central Los Angeles. Blandon and Meneses were said to have used their drug trafficking profits to help fund the Contra army's war effort.

Stories had previously been written about the Contras' alleged ties to drug trafficking. For example, on December 20, 1985, an Associated Press article claimed that three Contra groups "engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua." Rumors about illicit activities on the part of the Contras had also been probed in Senate hearings in the late 1980s. However, the Mercury News series contained -- or at least many readers interpreted it to contain -- a new sensational claim: that the CIA and other agencies of the United States government were responsible for the crack epidemic that ravaged black communities across the country. The newspaper articles suggested that the United States government had protected Blandon and Meneses from prosecution and either knowingly permitted them to peddle massive quantities of cocaine to the black residents of South Central Los Angeles or turned a blind eye to such activity.

The Mercury News later proclaimed that the article did not make these allegations. However, notwithstanding the Mercury News' proclamations, involvement by the CIA and the United States government in the crack crisis was implied through oblique references and the juxtaposition of certain images and phrases in the Dark Alliance articles: the Contras, who purportedly received drug money from Blandon and Meneses, were referred to as the "CIA's army" and links between the CIA and the leadership of the Contra movement were repeatedly emphasized throughout the articles; the stories reported how investigations into Blandon's cocaine operation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were allegedly dropped without cause or shunted aside for unexplained reasons; the articles told how United States prosecutors invoked the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) to prevent certain testimony concerning Blandon from being presented to a jury in the interest of national security during Ross' federal trial; and, from August 1996 until October 1996, the image of a crack smoker silhouetted against the emblem of the CIA was emblazoned on the Mercury News web page carrying the Dark Alliance stories.

The news media picked up on the Mercury News series' insinuation and made it explicit in coverage of the series. On August 20, 1996, the headline of the first article to cover the Mercury News series, published by the Associated Press, stated, "Newspaper Alleges that CIA Helped Spark Crack Cocaine Plague." It was followed by other articles and editorials declaring that the crack cocaine crisis had been created by the CIA and/or agents of the United States government: "CIA's War Against America," (Palm Beach Post, September 14, 1996); "The U.S. Government Was the First Big Crack Pusher," (Boston Globe, September 11, 1996); "Thanks to the U.S. Government, Oscar Blandon Reyes is Free and Prosperous Today; One Man is Behind L.A. Tide of Crack," (Pittsburgh Post Gazette, September 16, 1996). 

Critics and commentators would later debate whether the Mercury News articles in fact accused the United States government of being responsible for the nation's crack cocaine epidemic. In an October 2, 1996, Washington Post article, Gary Webb, the reporter who wrote the Dark Alliance series, asserted that the article had not claimed that the CIA knew about Blandon's drug trafficking. The Washington Post article quoted Webb as saying, "We've never pretended otherwise . . . This doesn't prove the CIA targeted black communities. It doesn't say this was ordered by the CIA.. . . Essentially, our trail stopped at the door of the CIA. They wouldn't return my phone calls." Webb would say as late as June 22, 1997, in an interview with The Revolutionary Worker, "We had The Washington Postclaim that the stories were insinuating that the CIA had targeted Black America. It's been a very subtle disinformation campaign to try to tell people that these stories don't say what they say. Or that they say something else, other than what we said. So people can say, well, there's no evidence of this, you know . . . You say, well, this story doesn't prove that top CIA officials knew about it. Well, since the stories never said they did, of course they don't."(1)

According to The Washington Post, Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos stated that he was troubled by the interpretive leap many people made about the article's claims of CIA involvement in the growth of crack cocaine. Ceppos was quoted as saying, "Certainly talk radio in a lot of cities has made the leap. We've tried to correct it wherever we could . . . People [have been] repeating the error again and again and again." Approximately a month and a half after the Dark Alliance series was posted on the Mercury News website, the newspaper changed the introduction to the articles, in apparent recognition that certain wording had contributed to the misunderstanding. Rather than stating:

For the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency . . .

the Dark Alliance website introduction was altered to read:

The Mercury News published a three-part series in late August that detailed how a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the street gangs of South-Central Los Angeles in the 1980s, sending some of the millions in profits to the Contras. The series never reported direct CIA involvement, although many readers drew that conclusion.

Regardless of the intent of the Mercury News, the accusation of government involvement in the crack epidemic had taken root. This dramatic interpretation of the series continued to build with ferocious velocity, especially in black communities, as the Mercury News story attracted the attention of newspapers across the country. 

Throughout September 1996, the Dark Alliance series was published in one newspaper after another: the Raleigh News and Observer ran the articles on September 1, 1996; the Denver Post published them on September 13, 1996; the Pittsburgh Post Gazette ran them on September 15, 1996; and so on. While many other newspapers did not publish the Dark Alliance series, they carried stories about the sensation created by the series' claims. The story garnered further exposure from television and radio talk show appearances by Gary Webb. Ricky Ross' attorney, Alan Fenster, also made several appearances on television shows to assert that the government, not his client, was responsible for cocaine dealing in South Central Los Angeles.

Many African-American leaders were particularly troubled by the articles, mindful of the frequency with which young black men were being incarcerated for drug offenses. If the Mercury News was right, it appeared that the same government that was arresting so many black men had played a role in creating the drug crisis that precipitated their arrest. This point was emphasized by the Mercury News' Dark Alliance series, which included articles entitled, "War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans; Contras case illustrates the discrepancy: Nicaraguan goes free; L.A. dealer faces life"; and "Flawed sentencing the main reason for race disparity; In 1993, crack smokers got 3 years; coke snorters got 3 months." The president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP issued the following statement in response to the Dark Alliance series: "We believe it is time for the government, the CIA, to come forward and accept responsibility for destroying human lives." In a letter dated August 30, 1996, Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) requested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the House Judiciary Committee conduct investigations of the allegations. The Congressional Black Caucus and many leaders in the black community also insisted upon an investigation into the charges raised by the Mercury News.

B. The Contra Story

As noted above, the Mercury News series was not only a story about the United States government and crack cocaine. It also revisited allegations concerning the Contras and drug trafficking that has been reported upon and investigated for many years. In 1987, the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations began an investigation focusing on allegations received by the subcommittee chairman, Senator John Kerry, concerning illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with the Contras. A two-year investigation produced a 1,166-page report in 1989 analyzing the involvement of Contra groups and supporters in drug trafficking, and the role of United States government officials in these activities. Allegations of cocaine trafficking by Contras also arose during the investigation conducted by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh into the Iran-Contra affair. Drug trafficking allegations, however, were not the focus of that inquiry and the Walsh report included no findings on these allegations.

The issue of drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras has also been the subject of books: e.g., On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency, by Mark Hertsgaard, 1989; Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, 1991. It was also reported upon in the news media. Following the December 1985 piece mentioned above from the Associated Press, the San Francisco Examiner ran stories in 1986 about Norwin Meneses, Carlos Cabezas (an individual with links to Contra organizations who was convicted in the mid-1980s of drug charges), and drug trafficking by the Contras. 

It is undisputed that individuals like Meneses and Blandon, who had ties to the Contras or were Contra sympathizers, were convicted of drug trafficking, either in the United States or Central America. There is also undeniable evidence that certain groups associated with the Contras engaged in drug trafficking. The pervasiveness of such activities within the Contra movement and the United States government's knowledge of those activities, however, are still the subject of debate, and it is beyond the scope of the OIG's investigation, which we describe below. Yet it is noteworthy that, as interesting as the story of Contras and illicit drug deals may be, it was not the catalyst for the public's or the media's interest in the Dark Alliance series. Investigations into the alleged connection between Contras and cocaine dealing were conducted and articles were printed in the late 1980s, at a time when interest in the Iran-Contra story was cresting. Neither those investigations nor the published articles tracking the allegations sparked a firestorm of outrage comparable to that created by the Dark Alliance series. The furor over the Mercury News series was driven by the allegations of the government's complicity in cocaine deals within black communities. If the Dark Alliance series had been limited to reporting on Contras, it seems unlikely that the groundswell of press and public attention would have occurred. 

C. Reaction from the Journalism Community

Notwithstanding the Mercury News' explosive allegations, the series did not receive extensive coverage from major newspapers in either August or September 1996. The Los Angeles Times briefly discussed the Mercury News series in several articles in August and September 1996 that covered Ross' postponed sentencing and other events in the Ross trial. Similarly, the Dark Alliance series did not initially receive much television coverage. With the exception of CNN, which ran several pieces on the story in September, and the NBC Nightly News, which ran a piece about the allegations on September 27, 1996, the story received little national television news coverage. By early October 1996, however, that changed. 

The Washington Post weighed in first on October 2, 1996, with a short analysis -- "Running with the CIA Story: Reporter Says Series Didn't Go as Far as Readers Took It" -- noting that the allegation of CIA involvement in drug trafficking in the United States had not actually been made in the article. The Washington Post followed-up two days later, on October 4, 1996, with a story entitled, "The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking of Alleged Plot." The Washington Post piece concluded that "available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed Contras -- or Nicaraguans in general -- played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States." The Washington Post article mainly addressed the Mercury News series' claims about Ross' and Blandon's roles in the growth of crack cocaine. It did not, for the most part, wrestle with the series' claims about drug dealing by the Contras. The Washington Post noted that the series had been selective in its use of Blandon's testimony to support its claims: 

The Mercury News uses testimony from Blandon in establishing that Nicaraguans selling drugs in California sent profits to the Contras. But if the whole of Blandon's testimony is to be believed, then the connection is not made between Contras and African American drug dealers because Blandon said he had stopped sending money to the contras by [the time he began selling to Ross].

And if Blandon is to be believed, there is no connection between Contras and the cause of the crack epidemic because Blandon said Ross was already a well-established dealer with several ready sources of supply by the time he started buying cocaine from Blandon.

The Washington Post piece also emphasized apparent contradictions between Ross' and Blandon's accounts. For example, while Blandon claimed to have been a used car salesman in 1982 who on the side sold two kilograms of cocaine for Meneses, Ross said Blandon was instead handling bulk sales of 100 kilograms of cocaine for Meneses at the time. The article did not seek to resolve these issues and merely noted the conflicts.

The Washington Post piece was followed on October 20 and 21, 1996, by two New York Times articles that also found fault with the Mercury News series. One article, "Though Evidence Thin, Tale of CIA and Drugs Has Life of Its Own," primarily reported on the reactions within the black community to the series. The other article, "Pivotal Figure of Newspaper Series May Be Only Bit Player," noted problems with the series' portrayal of Blandon and Meneses. It concluded, after conducting interviews of various unnamed sources:

[W]hile there are indications in American intelligence files and elsewhere that Mr. Meneses and Mr. Blandon may indeed have provided modest support for the rebels, including perhaps some weapons, there is no evidence that either man was a rebel official or had anything to do with the C.I.A. Nor is there proof that the relatively small amounts of cocaine they sometimes claimed to have brokered on behalf of the insurgents had a remotely significant role in the explosion of crack that began around the same time.

After reportedly assigning three editors and fourteen reporters to the story, the Los Angeles Times published its own three-part analysis of the Mercury News piece, which ran from October 20 to October 22, 1996. The Los Angeles Times concentrated on three claims raised by the Mercury News series: 1) that a drug ring related to the CIA had sent millions of dollars to the Contras; 2) that the same drug ring had created a cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles and other United States cities, and 3) that the CIA had approved a plan for the ring to raise money for the Contras through drug trafficking or had deliberately turned a blind eye to the drug ring's activities. The Los Angeles Times found that "the available evidence, based on an extensive review of court documents and more than 100 interviews in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and Managua, fails to support any of those allegations." 

The first installment of the Los Angeles Times series was devoted to a discussion of the origins of crack cocaine. It found that crack cocaine existed in Los Angeles long before Ross began selling it. In response to the claim that Ross had played a principal role in bringing cocaine to South Central Los Angeles, it identified several drug dealers from South Central Los Angeles who were contemporaries of Ross and were reputed to have sold similar quantities of cocaine.

The second installment of the Los Angeles Times series explored whether there was in fact a CIA-sanctioned operation that funneled millions of dollars into the Contras. It found no proof that Blandon and Meneses had given millions of dollars to the Contra party and could confirm only that Blandon had given about $50,000. Indeed, the Los Angeles Times article concluded that the Mercury Newshad arrived at its million-dollar estimate of Meneses' and Blandon's donations based on its own calculations derived from "the volume of cocaine that they were selling, and Blandon's statement that what he sold, he gave to the Contras."(2) Rejecting the Dark Alliance assertion that Blandon had sent profits to the Contras from 1981 to 1986, the Los Angeles Times found, based upon Blandon's testimony, that he had sent profits to the Contras in only one year. The second installment of the Los Angeles Times series also suggested, based on interviews with various CIA officials and former government officials, that CIA involvement in such a scheme was improbable. But the article quoted the chief investigator for Senator Kerry's subcommittee investigation, Jack Blum, as saying that, while the CIA did not have agents selling drugs to fund the Contras, the United States government may have opened channels that helped drug dealers bring drugs into the United States and protected them from law enforcement. 

The last installment of the Los Angeles Times series examined the reaction in black communities to the series, particularly the proliferation of conspiracy theories.

The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post articles were criticized by some who believed that the mainstream press was attempting to minimize a story that it had failed to cover. Some accused the papers of erecting strawmen by accusing the Mercury News of making allegations that it had not in fact made: e.g., that the CIA "targeted" communities into which crack cocaine was distributed. Others stated that the major papers had committed the same mistakes it criticized the Mercury News of making: e.g., selectively picking from among available information to support their conclusions, crediting information provided by suspicious sources, and failing to evaluate contradictory evidence.(3)

Despite the major newspapers' mounting criticism of the Dark Alliance series, the Mercury News continued to defend its story. However, in the meantime the paper launched its own investigation of the claims made by the Dark Alliance series. On May 11, 1997, Jerry Ceppos, the Executive Editor of the Mercury News, published the results of the newspaper's analysis of its own series. Ceppos wrote that the story had four short-comings: 1) it presented only one side of "complicated, sometimes-conflicting pieces of evidence"; 2) it failed to identify the estimate of Blandon's financial contributions to the Contra movement as an "estimate"; 3) it "oversimplified the complex issue of how the crack epidemic in America grew," and 4) it contained imprecise language and graphics that fostered the misinterpretation concerning the CIA and crack dealing. Ceppos attributed some of these problems to the newspaper's failure to present conflicting evidence that challenged its conclusions. The column also revealed that the same debate over the correct interpretation of the Mercury News' conclusions found in the press also existed in the Mercury News newsroom:

The drug ring we wrote about inflicted terrible damage on inner-city Los Angeles, and that horror was indeed spread to many other places by L.A. gangs. Webb believes that is what our series said. I believe that we implied much more, that the ring was the pivotal force in the crack epidemic in the United States. Because the national crack epidemic was a complex phenomenon that had more than one origin, our discussion of this issue needed to be clearer.

Some of the reporting on Ceppos' column by the major newspapers failed to recognize that it was not intended as a repudiation of the entire Dark Alliance series. Rather, it was a limited admission that portions of the story had been misleading and should have been subjected to more rigorous editing. Ceppos specifically did not disclaim what he believed were the articles' central allegation -- that a drug ring "associated with the Contras sold large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles in the 1980s at the time of the crack explosion there" and that "some of the profits went to the Contras." It is noteworthy, however, that the facets of the article about which Ceppos had the greatest reservations were the articles' most sensational claims -- the way crack cocaine spread in the United States, and the ties between the CIA and the spread of crack. 

D. What Did the San Jose Mercury News Articles Allege?

It is difficult to discern which allegations the Mercury News intended to make, in large part because the series is replete with innuendo and implication that verge on making assertions that are in fact never made. Many readers interpreted the series to assert that the CIA and other agencies of the United States government had intentionally funneled crack cocaine into black communities by either permitting or endorsing cocaine trafficking by Blandon and Meneses. Others interpreted the Dark Alliance series to charge that the spread of crack cocaine was the unintended -- but proximate -- result of actions taken by the United States government to promote the Contra war effort. While the series does not allege that there was a deliberate plan to target black communities by the CIA or other agencies of the United States government mentioned in the article (e.g., DEA, U.S. Attorney's Offices, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the articles strongly imply such a plot. 

First, the title of the series, "Dark Alliance," is itself ambiguous, since the series fails to identify the parties to the purported "alliance." One interpretation is that it refers to the link between Blandon and Ross. However, another interpretation, bolstered by the repeated mention of the CIA throughout the series, is that the title refers to an agreement between the CIA and drug-trafficking Contras. The web page bearing the "Dark Alliance" title and the image of a crack smoker silhouetted against the CIA emblem strengthened the insinuation. The Dark Alliance story also included leaps of logic that suggested direct CIA involvement in Blandon's trafficking activities. For example, the article notes: "The most Blandon would say in court about who called the shots when he sold cocaine for the FDN was that 'we received orders from the -- from other people.'" An explanation of how the CIA created the FDN from various anti-communist factions immediately follows the quote. The writer's implication is patent: the CIA was giving "orders" to the FDN about cocaine deals.

One oft-quoted portion of the articles relates to a meeting that allegedly occurred in Honduras among Meneses, Blandon, and Enrique Bermudez, a leader of the FDN's military effort. The preceding paragraph in the article recounted how cocaine "has spread across the country . . . turning entire blocks of major cities into occasional war zones." The paragraph that immediately followed reads:

"There is a saying that the ends justify the means," former FDN leader and drug dealer Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes testified during a recent cocaine trafficking trial in San Diego. "And that's what Mr. Bermudez (the CIA agent who commanded the FDN) told us in Honduras, OK? So we started raising money for the Contra revolution." 

The implication of this paragraph, made through its juxtaposition to the discussion of black communities ravaged by cocaine, is that a "CIA agent" decided to raise money for the Contras by any means, including by selling cocaine in black communities. It is noteworthy that the parenthetical reference to Bermudez as a "CIA agent who commanded the FDN" was added by the Mercury News and was not a statement actually made by Blandon. The parenthetical underscores reputed ties between Bermudez and the CIA. 

The specter of a government-wide plan to target black communities is raised throughout the article in other ways, but mostly through innuendo. The subtext of the article seems to be: If there was no government plot, why else would an Assistant U.S. Attorney prevent evidence relating to Blandon's drug trafficking from being raised in open court under the claim of protecting classified information during a 1990 federal trial?; how else would Blandon have escaped more vigorous prosecution by the Department of Justice or other prosecutor's offices for drug trafficking?; why else would federal agents descend upon the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department to claim evidence obtained in a search of Blandon's home in 1986?; and how else would Meneses escape arrest and prosecution in the United States or be allowed by the INS to freely enter and exit the country? While the allegation of a deliberate government plan was not explicitly made, the drumbeat of questions insinuated a multi-agency, government scheme designed to protect Blandon's illegal activities, which "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles." 

The Mercury News stated repeatedly that the series was not intended to allege a deliberate government scheme to use cocaine dealing in black communities to finance the Contra effort, notwithstanding the logical inference that could be drawn from the series' substance. But while it is true that the articles did not explicitly allege a government conspiracy, the path charted by the Dark Alliance series' trail of implications led to that conclusion. In fact, a prophetic editorial that appeared in the Mercury News on August 21, 1996, the day after the Dark Alliance series finished running in the paper, made just that point. It read:

[T]he CIA-Contra story can only feed longstanding rumors in black communities that the U.S. government "created" the crack cocaine epidemic to kill and imprison African-Americans and otherwise wreak havoc in inner cities.

At times, the Mercury News sent conflicting messages that confounded attempts to correct misconceptions about the article. While the newspaper was disavowing allegations of CIA involvement in the spread of crack, the articles' author was making public comments to the contrary. In an article entitled, "The CIA-crack connection: The story nobody wants to hear: Your worst fears are true -- the CIA did help to smuggle drugs into American ghettos, says an investigative reporter," Webb was asked whether his story had confirmed the suspicion within the black community "that the crack cocaine epidemic might be part of a government conspiracy." He replied:

It confirms the suspicion that government agents were involved. Clearly, when you're talking about drug dealers meeting with CIA agents it does go a long way toward validating this suspicion. There's a grain of truth to any conspiracy theory and it turns out there are a lot of grains of truth to this one. If you want to stretch it to its logical conclusion, the government was involved in starting the crack epidemic, because it was this pipeline that did it. Now we know what we didn't know in the '80's -- which is where they were selling the stuff. We were able to close the circle and show how this affected American citizens, whereas before it was some sort of nebulous foreign policy story. Now we can see the damage. Whether or not these guys were part of our government or just contract agents is unclear.

Further, the newspaper itself was sending mixed messages. An August 21, 1996, Mercury News editorial supported claims of CIA or United States government involvement. The editorial, entitled "Another CIA disgrace: Helping the crack flow," stated: 

It's impossible to believe that the Central Intelligence Agency didn't know about the Contras' fund-raising activities in Los Angeles, considering that the agency was bankrolling, recruiting and essentially running the Contra operation. The CIA has a long history of embarrassing the country it is supposed to work for, from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the jungles of Vietnam. But no action that we know of can compare to the agency's complicity, however tacit, in the drug trade that devastated whole communities in our own country.

1. In contrast, Webb has made other statements all but stating that the Dark Alliance series did demonstrate CIA involvement in the spread of crack in America. In September 1996, in the immediate wake of the Dark Alliance series, Webb reportedly posted the following comment on the Mercury News electronic bulletin board: "One thing I did want to respond to directly is the writer who claimed there wasn't any 'proof ' of CIA involvement in this thing. That's like saying there's no proof of General Motors involvement in making Chevrolets. I also heard a great line while I was doing a radio show in Florida yesterday: `Now we know what CIA really stands for: Crack in America.'" 

2. In a response to a May/June 1997 Columbia Journalism Review article analyzing the Mercury News series, Webb more specifically explained how he arrived at a figure, which he believed to be between $12 million and $18 million: "My stories were about the drug money [Blandon] admitted delivering to Meneses for the FDN. When you look at that cash, the sums are obvious. Blandon told a federal grand jury in 1994 that he sold between 200 and 300 kilos of cocaine for Meneses in L.A. In court, Blandon swore that all the profits from that cocaine went to the contras, and said he was selling it for $60,000 a kilo ... Some might call it an extrapolation to describe $12 million to $18 million as 'millions.' I call it math." 

3. See, e.g., Columbia Journalism Review, January-February 1997, at 33.

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch01p1.htm

 

It is now one year since American journalist Evan Gershkovich was detained on a reporting trip in Russia. His best hope of release may be Vadim Krasikov, who is sitting in a German jail, convicted of an execution that was ordered by the Kremlin.

 

In the summer of 2013, a Moscow restaurant owner was gunned down in the Russian capital. A hooded man jumped off a bike and shot his victim twice before fleeing.

Six years later, an exiled Chechen “commander”, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, was murdered in a busy Berlin park in eerily similar circumstances, shot by a man on a bike with a silenced Glock 26 in broad daylight.

The assailant was arrested after dumping a pistol and wig in the River Spree close to the Reichstag, the building housing the German parliament.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-68555627

 

THIS STORY IS FASCINATING BECAUSE IT HAS INFORMATION COMING FROM THE LIES-PORKIES-HOUSES, THE BBC, BELLINGCAT AND THE INSIDER…

IT ONLY PROVES THAT Vadim Krasikov IS A FOOL… 

SHOOTING SOMEONE IN A PARK NEAR THE REICHSTAG, IN BROAD DAYLIGHT IS NOT VERY SMART. HE WOULD HAVE HAD TO KNOW THAT THE PLACE WOULD HAVE BEEN CRAWLING WITH POLICE AND A COUPLE OF AGENTS AS HIS PREY WOULD HAVE BEEN UNDER SURVEILLANCE OR PART OF A STING. AN exiled Chechen commander, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, WHO WOULD HAVE MURDERED MANY RUSSIANS, WOULD HAVE ATTRACTED SOME CLOSE ATTENTION FROM THE GERMAN SECRET POLICE…

ACTUALLY, APART FROM OTHER NASTY DEEDS, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili HAD BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN A TERRORIST RAID THAT HAD MURDERED 91 PEOPLE INCLUDING AT LEAST 47 POLICE OFFICERS… 

HAD Zelimkhan Khangoshvili COMMITTED SUCH CRIMES IN THE WEST, HE WOULD HAVE BEEN HANGED BY THE SHORT AND CURLIES, QUARTERED INTO BITS — AND SHOT BY A 200 MEN FIRING SQUAD. BUT… BECAUSE HE’D DONE HIS TERRORISM IN RUSSIA, HE WAS A HEROE TO THE WEST. PUTIN IS CORRECT. Zelimkhan Khangoshvili WAS A “BANDIT”. ACTUALLY, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili MIGHT HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH THE GERMAN SECRET SERVICES (BND — Bundesnachrichtendienst) FOR ALL WE DON’T KNOW…

I’D BET HE WAS… PEOPLE LIKE HIM DO NOT COME USED-CAR SALESMEN OVERNIGHT… 

“The Russians are blaming me for many things, including terrorist attacks. This is a lie. No one can provide any evidence that a single civilian was injured or killed in any of my actions!”

THIS IS A GLORIOUS LIE… EVERYONE CAN PROVE IT....

Putin reiterated in a February 2024 interview, that he desired Krasikov in return for imprisoned American Evan Gershkovich (accused of espionage), and accusing Khangoshvili of running over the heads of Russian soldiers in a truck WHICH HE DID….

SO PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE IN THE FANTASY LAND OF THE BBC WITH TWO TONNES OF SALT….

AND BY THE WAY, THE CIA NEVER HAS COMMITTED ANY MURDERS….

LAUGH…

 

GUS LEONISKY

POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951….

 

 

READ FROM TOP

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

In light of recent developments in the Julian Assange extradition case, former CIA officer John Kiriakou joins host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast, to delve deeper into the contradictions within the United States government and intelligence agencies regarding the disclosure of classified information and the veil of secrecy they maintain.

As highlighted in earlier episodes, John Kiriakou’s role as the whistleblower who exposed the U.S. torture program vividly illustrates the consequences of airing the government’s dirty laundry—it unleashes its full might upon you.

Kiriakou adds to this by sharing additional stories, including how his then-now-former wife, who also worked for the CIA, was secretly reporting on his activities to the agency for a number of years after he exposed the program.

Scheer and Kiriakou also reflect on the government’s hypocrisy in overlooking certain intelligence and government figures illegally allowing Hollywood stars and producers—like those of the 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty”—to access classified material yet face no repercussions while Kiriakou, Julian Assange and others face the utmost legal scrutiny for acting in the service of the people.

CreditsHost:

Robert Scheer

Producer:

Joshua Scheer

Introduction:

Diego Ramos

Transcript

This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy. 

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, and intelligence comes from my guest. The radio station gave me the title of the show, I know it sounds arrogant, and I’ve had this guest on, I think this is our third encounter, John Kiriakou, who I first got to know when he was in the news as the person who blew the whistle, really, we could talk about the details of that, on the torture program. The great shame of America, some could argue maybe the greatest shame in the last half century, certainly up there. And that still haunts the reputation of the country and really makes us question what we really are all about. And we’ll get into his case a little bit. We’ve done that before. And let’s just it this way he is the only person connected with the torture program and he didn’t do any of it. He was not involved in the torture. He refused to be trained in it. He was very successful in the arrest of, at the time what was thought to be the third ranking leader of al Qaeda. And he and an FBI agent received all of the usable information ever obtained from Abu Zubaydah there. He’s now still in Guantanamo, still has never had a trial, and has been tortured extensively, of course, along with a lot of the prisoners, all of the prisoners that are there. And yet no one connected with the program at the CIA psychologist, none of them have been accused of a crime.

And John Kiriakou served, over two years in, federal prison. for, we’ll get into that issue, maybe talk a little bit about the Julian Assange case and how we treat whistleblowers, but the reason I wanted to do this interview today is that John was speaking on my class where I teach at USC and he told a story about what has happened to him because he lost, obviously, he had left the CIA, but he lost his pension and he was led to a divorce because his wife was also at the CIA and he’s been in battles about status and, custody battles were more appropriate to this story, with his wife. And as recently as last August, no, August ’22, still pretty recent, during a custody hearing, and I’ll let John tell the story, it was revealed that his wife had been in fact spying on him, for years and including preceding the birth of the last two of their five children.

And I thought, my God, this is a story you get out of a totalitarian regime, out of Stalin’s Russia or Nazi Germany or something, what is this? So why don’t you tell that story? So I don’t mangle it. 

John Kiriakou: Yeah, it’s a terrible story really. My ex-wife and I were both senior CIA officers and, as you might imagine, as you might assume, my arrest after blowing the whistle on the torture program was a great, blow to our marriage. And, about a year and a half after I got home from prison, she began a relationship with someone at work. I caught them. And I filed for divorce. We fought for custody for years, we continue to fight over custody, but we were in court over custody in August of 2022, and I was on the stand and my attorney asked me a very simple question. He said, was she a good wife? And I said, Oh, she was an amazing wife. She stuck by me like a rock when I got in trouble, she toughed out my two years in prison. She took care of the kids and the household. She was great. In fact, I said, she was so supportive that she went with me to ABC news on the day that I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. She sat just off camera And when I finished I said, how did I do? She said great,I said, I didn’t say anything classified, right? And she said, no, you did great. I finished my testimony and she went up on the stand and her attorney said, is it true that you went with him to ABC news when he blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program?

She said, yes. The attorney said, why did you do that? And she answered the CIA’s office of security instructed me to go with him to report back to them on his activities. I was dumbstruck when she said it, my lawyer actually kicked me under the table. And afterwards, my lawyer said, do you think she said that just to hurt you or did she mean it? And I said, after thinking about it for a little while. About six months after I blew the whistle on the torture program, the Los Angeles Times asked me to write an op-ed on Iranian foreign policy in Latin America. And I had sat down at my computer to start writing this piece and my phone rang and it was the CIA general counsel’s office. And they said, you better not be writing about Iran today. And I said, I don’t work for you guys anymore. You don’t get to say what I write and what I don’t write. Besides, I get everything cleared and I hung up on them. And I went to my wife and I said, can you believe these guys had the nerve to call me and threaten me and tell me not to write about Iran, but how could they know I was writing about Iran?

And she said, they must have somebody at the LA Times. And I said, Oh, my God, that would be so illegal, but they must have somebody at the LA Times. Coming out of that courtroom in August of 2022 made me realize after all those years, 14 years had passed, they didn’t have anybody at the LA Times. She was reporting back to them on my activities. She told them that I was writing about Iran that day. 

Scheer: Now we really don’t know that for sure, but you’re just surmising that, right? 

Kiriakou: Sure, you’d have to ask, too, if the CIA would want to take the legal risk of placing somebody inside the Los Angeles Times or any other outlet. Of course, they could, they might, I don’t know. But her admission that she was reporting back to the CIA on my activities made it clearer for me. 

Scheer: This is amazing though, in a way, because what had happened was, as you say, you were both senior officers at the CIA. And for people who don’t know this story, I’ve interviewed you before, other people have, you’ve written books about it, but just to do the short story here, you were a naive, patriotic American, you were at college at George Washington University, one of your professors was actually a recruiter. For the CIA, he approached you, he asked you if you were interested. You already knew Greek because you come from a Greek Orthodox family, they [the CIA] sent you to school for a year to learn Arabic, and you went into the agency first as an analyst and then as a covert agent. And, you were made the head of the Anti-Terrorism Bureau in Pakistan.

Where you were involved in the capture of Abu Zubaydah and so forth. And, then, you, we’re going along with the program and arresting people and breaking into houses and doing the whole thing right. When torture came in the form of these two psychologists who thought they had the secret way. The FBI, which had been involved with you and interrogating prisoners, they knew how to do it and so forth, didn’t use torture were opposed to torture. Actually, you were offered, they asked you if you wanted to be trained and you wouldn’t go in for it. And then your career ended so I want to be clear about that. What happened was, you were challenged and on this ABC show of whether you were in fact, the source. of the torture program, whether you had tortured, right? 

Kiriakou: In fact, that’s the reason why I agreed to the interview in the first place, because Brian Ross from ABC news, Brian Ross, who’s won a dozen Emmy awards and two or three George Polk awards, the guy’s a very serious investigative journalist. He said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. And I said that was absolutely untrue. He responded with what I later learned was an old reporter’s trick by saying, you’re welcome to come on the show and defend yourself. And once I was able to conclude that his source was at the White House and they were likely to try to blame me for the torture program, I decided to not just go on and defend myself, but to go on and answer truthfully whatever question he might have. 

Scheer: And then how did revealing the name come up?

Kiriakou: About six months later, I got an email from a journalist who, was writing a book on something called the Abu Omar rendition. Abu Omar was, an Egyptian cleric living in Milan, Italy. And, the CIA believed that he was an Al Qaeda plant. And so the CIA kidnapped him, just snatched him off the street while he was walking down the street in Milan one morning, rendered him to Egypt, tortured him, and it turned out that he was a completely innocent, just a run of the mill cleric. He had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. So this journalist said he was writing a book about Abu Omar and could I introduce him to anybody who might be able to, talk about it? I said, I don’t know anything about Abu Omar other than what I had read in the Washington Post and he said, can you introduce me to any of these people? And he listed a dozen people. I said, I don’t know them. Then he sent me a second email with another dozen names.

Can you introduce me to any of these people? I said, look, you clearly know this issue far better than I do. I don’t know any of these people. Kidnapping was not my thing when I was at the agency. I can’t help you. And then he said, what about in your book on page, whatever it was, 150 something, you mentioned somebody, I think his name is, I’ll say, John, can you introduce me to him? And I said, Oh, you’re talking about John Doe. I don’t know whatever happened to him. He’s probably retired and living somewhere in Virginia. But when I said the last name, I said the surname, that was a felony. That was a violation of the intelligence identities protection act of 1982. Now, nobody had ever been prosecuted for that. People use the names of covert operatives all the time. General David Petraeus, the CIA director revealed the names of 10 covert operatives to his girlfriend and biographer. He wasn’t even charged, but the CIA was so angry that I had exposed the torture program, that I had aired the agency’s dirty laundry, that they used that confirmation of the last name to go after me.

Scheer: And they came after you demanding what, 20 years? 

Kiriakou: Or something? 45 years is what I initially faced. They charged me with three counts of espionage, and I hadn’t committed espionage, of course. They charged me with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, and they charged me with making a false statement that we were never exactly clear on what the false statement was supposed to be. It was eventually dropped, and all three of the espionage charges were dropped. But in order to make it go away, after going bankrupt and having this hanging over my head, like a… 

Scheer: And losing your pension. 

Kiriakou: Not, yet, that came along with it. But this was like the sword of Damocles hanging over me. I elected to take the plea deal and it included a loss of my federal pension, yes. 

Scheer: Okay, I want to get back to the story of your wife, because you were under the impression right through the ABC discussion and everything else that she was being supportive of you. 

Kiriakou: Oh, yes, very much so. 

Scheer: Every time we have this, the totalitarian model, the Orwellian 1984, the bad guys in this world who run totalitarian regimes, they turn husband against wife or vice versa. They use families, they divide them, and so forth. And in your case, you’re saying that after you served your jail time, because they came down, they finally gave you a plea bargain of, so you got two and a half years or something. Nonetheless, she was acting like you still were a married couple, right? 

Kiriakou: Oh, yeah, by then we had three kids together and yeah moved back into our house and began moving on with our careers and our lives. She had done very well for herself. in the private sector after leaving the agency. So yeah, I thought I was getting back into the track of my life. 

Scheer: So what does it mean she was reporting to the agency after you got out of prison and for two years and two other children? 

Kiriakou: No, I think you have the timeline a little confused. So I blew the whistle on the torture program in 2007 and she was reporting on my activities until 2012. And then 2012 is when I got in trouble. 

Scheer: I see. Okay, just so I understand it now, you had already had three children with her when she started reporting on you? 

Kiriakou: No, we had one and then we had two more. 

Scheer: And why don’t you tell me the story correctly? 

Kiriakou: So I Sure. We had a child, but we got married in 2003, we had a child. I blew the whistle, we had another child immediately thereafter and then our third child in 2011, but from 2007 until 2012, she was telling the CIA’s office of security what I was writing, who I was writing it for, what I was saying, who I was meeting with. God knows what she told them, but they always seemed to know what I was up to and it was always a mystery to me how.

Scheer: And the mystery for you was solved when she revealed getting the dates right. In 2022, August of 2022. She said that she had been, that the CIA had ordered her to keep spot to spy on you. Correct. 

Kiriakou: Yeah. 

Scheer: And did anybody, did the CIA ever, anybody ever confront them or ask him that was true?

Kiriakou: No. 

Scheer: Am I the first person to be interrogating this tale? Because 

Kiriakou: Yeah, I haven’t mentioned it to tell you the truth for a couple of reasons. One, it was so shocking to me and I only learned about it relatively recently, but second, to tell you the truth, it’s a little embarrassing. You think that these things happen only in the movies or in, cheap dime store novels.

Scheer: And in totalitarian countries.

Kiriakou: And in totalitarian countries.

Scheer: Let me be clear. Maybe I’m more shocked than you are, but I just heard the story. You’ve lived with it, but you’re saying that they had your wife spying on you after you, how many children did you already have at that point?

Kiriakou: One, 

Scheer: And then you had two others, right? 

Kiriakou: Yes. 

Scheer: Okay. While she’s spying on you. So when you go see her in the hospital, when you get the baby, when you do all that is, she is filing reports on you? 

Kiriakou: Can you imagine? 

Scheer: No, I’m asking as a question. 

Kiriakou: Yes.

Scheer: Is that what you’re saying? 

Kiriakou: Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And this is by her own admission. This isn’t just, I’m trying to connect the dots of things that I didn’t heretofore understand. This is what she said under oath in court. 

Scheer: August of ’22, and she said it in, again, to explain what information? 

Kiriakou: Yeah, she said this in the circuit court of Arlington County, Virginia. And she said it just. in response to my assertion that she was supportive of my whistleblowing. 

Scheer: And she said she wasn’t. She was pretending to be? 

Kiriakou: She was pretending to be. She led me to believe that she was. 

Scheer: But she was spying on you. Yes. And while she was spying on you, she had two other children.

Okay. this is not my, a pursuit of gossip. I want to understand what our government does. What our government does and, I wonder why other reporters and journalists are not questioning how could they do this? How, it is appalling. 

Kiriakou: And I, I’ll add something to that as well, if I may interject. there was a very odd provision in my plea agreement. It was something that the government absolutely insisted on, and it was that for the rest of my life, I’m not allowed to file a requestFreedom of Information Act  on myself. And I wonder now if this is the reason. That they never wanted me to find out that they had tasked my wife with spying on me.

Scheer: Can someone else file? 

Kiriakou: My attorneys say, yes. Someone else can file. 

Scheer: After you die. 

Kiriakou: Right, after I die yeah. 

Scheer: Long after we’ve solved these problems. I do want to point out one thing. What you were convicted for was revealing the identity of the CIA agent. Fact of the matter is, and this goes to the whole selective use, and this gets, we can maybe segue a little bit into the current case of Julian Assange this gets to the whole question of how do we get information about what our government’s doing. And they selectively leak classified information all the time, 

Kiriakou: Literally every day. 

Scheer: And we had a startling example of that relates to the efficacy of torture, a very big question because their justification of what they call enhanced interrogation is you’re saving lives, you’re learning something, I don’t know what’s happening now with, the people who killed so many in Russia, and they look like they were treated in a harsh way, physical appearance.

Kiriakou: It seems that way, yes. 

Scheer: Yeah under Putin. And so anywhere that happens in the world, we say, no, that’s not, who we are. In fact, I think it’s, Obama said that. Obama’s guy who brought charges against you, but he said that about the torture program. That’s not who we are. we didn’t know who we are until you are confirmed this torture program. So here’s the great constitutional lawyer, Barack Obama, saying, oh, that’s not who we are. We don’t do torture, which was admirable. On the other hand, we wouldn’t have known they did torture if you, more than anyone else, had not exposed that. Which they couldn’t come after you on that, they went after you on the other of revealing. And I want to stick to that because we had a movie, Zero Dark Hour, Catherine Bigelow, which, justified, I think, as a viewer, justified the torture program, said it was necessary to capturing and, I guess killing, bin Laden, and, there was an affirmation of that, and that movie was based in part, major part, on leaks from the CIA. Take us to that scene that people, you know, when Leon Panetta was a former liberal Democrat Congressional member, who I interviewed a few times He took over the CIA and tell us about this. This is not somebody revealing the name of one agent or something, but describe that process. 

Kiriakou: Yeah. this is, no matter how many times I tell this story, it’s still just as scandalous in my mind. As if I were telling it for the first time, so the CIA has an office within its office of public affairs, whose job it is solely to cooperate with Hollywood studios, right? Now, they’re not going to cooperate with a studio making a movie that condemns the CIA or criticizes the CIA in any way. But if you’re making a movie or a television show that is. that is supportive of what the CIA does, that is pro-CIA, then they are very happy to cooperate with you. That’s what happened in the case of Zero Dark Thirty. The director and producer was Catherine Bigelow. The writer and producer was, Mark Boal, both A list figures in Hollywood. And they said that they wanted to make this pro-CIA movie. And what they ended up doing was working with the CIA to perpetuate the lie that the torture program led to the location of Osama bin Laden and that without the torture program, we would not have been able to find Osama bin Laden.

That is absolutely 100 percent not true. But that’s the theme of this film. And so what the CIA did for Catherine Bigelow and Mark Boal was, to give them really carte blanche at CIA headquarters. Bigelow and Boll flew out to, to Langley and they were given a classified briefing over a mock up, a classified mock up of the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Now that’s a violation of the Espionage Act. Providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. They were given classified briefings by analysts in the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center. That also is a violation of the Espionage Act. And and they got briefings by the CIA’s leadership. And when I say leadership, the actual leadership, the director of the CIA, the deputy director of the CIA, the associate, sorry, the Deputy Director for Operations and the Associate Deputy Director for operations, the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Senior officers, the, senior most officers, that’s also a violation of the espionage act.

And in the end, not only was nobody punished, but once the movie came out, Boal and Bigelow. invited everybody who had briefed them to LA for the film’s premiere, and for those people who couldn’t make the premiere, they sent gifts of watches and other Hollywood swag. Now that’s also a crime. You’re not allowed to accept gifts if you’re in the CIA. It’s outrageous. But they did it just to make matters even worse after this was all done, bin Laden was dead. The movie comes out. Leon Panetta, the CIA director that you just mentioned, gave sort of an attaboy speech in the CIA’s auditorium called the bubble. And, in the course of giving that speech, he revealed the names of the special forces soldiers who actually killed bin Laden. Those names were classified. So he did exactly what I had been accused of doing. And when called on it, he said, 

Scheer: That’s the key thing, that, the writer of the movie was at the, briefing.

Kiriakou: Yeah, it was at the briefing. So this uncleared individual at the briefing! 

Scheer: For CIA agents was a briefing for Hollywood screenwriter and others that they, in addition, I just want to be clear about that. 

Kiriakou: And then even beyond that, when the office of public affairs went back to redact the names that Panetta had revealed, they realized that there was another 27 lines of classified information in the speech that they had just missed. So they retroactively classified 27 lines of the speech that all these uncleared people had already heard. 

Scheer: And these unclear people, as you say, some of them were from the movie.

Kiriakou: Yes, correct. 

Scheer: And I think there was A special, general, what is it called? The inspector general of the CIA. He did a report in which I think Panetta was criticized. 

Kiriakou: Yes, Panetta was heavily criticized about it. In fact, just as the funniest side on this issue, I was in prison when this happened and the LA times reached out to me in prison and asked me to write an op-ed that they entitled, I got 30 months in prison, why does Leon Panetta get a break? And, I wrote it in longhand because I wasn’t allowed access to a computer or a typewriter, and they published it on a Sunday. The hypocrisy, the double standard is just glaring in this case, that if you have a pro-CIA story, if you want to leak a pro-CIA, piece of classified information, then by all means, you’re free to do it. But if you have a criticism, you’re taking your life into your hands, and they will ruin you. 

Scheer: Yes, and, and they have the power to ruin people, and in your case, they could force you to admit to something you didn’t think was a crime, as I recall. Otherwise, you would have had 45 years, and as it is, you lost your retirement and everything else that you actually had risked your life earning. You were one of those people in Pakistan running around, trying to grab people who were in Al Qaeda. You clearly were a potential target. You risked your life for your country, you never mentioned that in the time I’ve talked to you. No, but you did. You risked your life in a very dangerous, you were, what was the title in Pakistan? 

Kiriakou: I was chief of counterterrorism operations. 

Scheer: What kind of job is that to take? 

Kiriakou: You know what it’s, funny that you ask. I’m going to give you an answer by telling you a very short story. Every day, I, stayed in a small guest house, a 16 room guest house. When I first arrived in Pakistan, my first day, they took me to the Marriott. And I said, are you out of your minds? if Al Qaeda is going to attack any place in Islamabad, it’s going to be the Marriott. I’m not staying at the Marriott. So I spent the first night there. And then I moved into a 16 room guest house. Sure enough, a month later, they blew up the Marriott and they killed 156 people. So I was in this guest house and every single day, I would leave at a different time and take a different route to the American embassy because I didn’t want to establish a pattern to make it easier for them to kill me or to try to kill me on the way to work or the way home.

So every day, same thing, either I leave at 5, at 6, at 7, on the half hour, whatever it was, I never established a pattern. One morning, I left, like I always did, and I would check under my car. They assigned us these mirrors on a stick so you could look underneath the car for bombs, and I, would go out there and look under my car and look in the wheel wells, and I didn’t see anything, I got in the car and I started driving. And I wasn’t even at the end of the block when I noticed a man on a motorcycle with a red helmet trying very hard to stay in my blind spot. I’d speed up. He would speed up. I’d slow down. He would slow down. I took this crazy circuitous route and he was on me the whole time and then when I got to the entrance of the diplomatic quarter where the American Embassy, where most foreign embassies were housed, he broke off and I thought oh, that’s not good.

So we, every CIA station has a little database that you put these in these incidents in. I documented it. So I worked 14 hours that day. The sun went down, I leave the embassy. And as soon as I pull out of the diplomatic quarter, there he is again. And again, I take a very circuitous route and he follows me all the way back to the guest house and then breaks off. So now I’m frightened. I barely slept that night. The next morning, I got up at five o’clock in the morning, looked out the door of the guest house. I didn’t see anybody out there. I went, under my car to look to see if there were any bombs. I didn’t see anything unusual. I get in the car. Again, by now it’s 5:15, 5:20 AM. I start driving. And there he is again. So I get to the embassy. I’m nervous as I get out. I waited for the security officer to arrive and I said, listen, I’m under surveillance. I’m sure I’m under surveillance. And I recounted to him these sightings. Now the definition of surveillance is multiple sightings at time and distance.

So I saw him multiple times at different times and at different locations. That’s the definition of surveillance. So he said, we have to wait for the chief to come in. He came in around seven and we went in and I said, I am 100 percent sure that I’m under surveillance. And he said, okay, you know what you have to do. And I said, I know what I have to do. So he said, don’t worry. We’re going to have a whole team out there. We’re going to have guys all around you. Everybody’s going to be armed. But you’re going to have to kill him. And I said, I know, that was the training. So he said, you never, had to do that before did you? And I said, no, I’ve never killed anybody. I was nervous all day long. And all these old timers, these retirees who had come back after 9/11 as contractors, they were coming up to me all day saying, don’t worry, buddy. We’re all going to be out there on the street. Don’t worry. We’ve all been through this before.

I said, I’m very worried. That day at two in the afternoon, I had a meeting at the Pakistani intelligence service. So I went over there, and I met with my normal counterpart, a Brigadier General Muhammad, and we did our normal exchange of liaison information, classified information, and I started walking out, and just as I got to the door, I stopped and turned, and I said, General, let me ask you a question. Are you following me? And he said, no, why? And I said, because I’m under surveillance. I’m 100 percent certain I’m under surveillance. And if I see this guy again, I’m going to kill him. And I never saw him again. And later we learned that they were all sitting around one day and they were talking about me. And one of them said, he is such a nice guy. And another said, you know what? Nobody’s that nice. He’s probably pretending to be nice. And when he’s not here, he’s probably spying on us. We should put surveillance on him. And they put the worst surveillance officer in the entire Pakistani intelligence service to follow me. And if I hadn’t stopped and questioned the general on my way out that day, I would have killed that man that afternoon. 

Scheer: So you’re saying that it was the U.S. government that was spying on you? 

Kiriakou: It was the Pakistani intelligence service. 

Scheer: But they knew, how did you learn this? Don’t go into it, I see. So they, they had Yeah

Kiriakou: they just wanted to see what I was doing during the course of the day when I wasn’t with them. 

Scheer: We’re going to run out of time here, but let me just say you raised an important point. Classification is violated all the time when they want to support the military narrative, the CIA narrative and they make up things or they reveal things that support their narrative, but you don’t get the rest of the story. Our whole history is checkered with this Gulf of Tonkin attack and justifying the whole expansion of the Vietnam War. We only learned 20 years later it was a fabrication, and so forth. And this goes on all the time, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But it’s interesting when someone, a whistleblower, and in the case of Julian Assange, he’s not a whistleblower because he had no security clearance, which you had. And he’s not an American and, he was, just, and our five leading publishers in the, Western democracies, Le Monde and the New York Times and I forget the others.

Kiriakou: El Pais and The Guardian,. and Der Spiegel, that’s right. 

Scheer: Five leading journals and I am amazed ’cause those same journals don’t even publicize this very much. Five leading journals have all said, Julian Assange does or did what we did as publishers. We would print, and we did, we printed those documents, and they said, and this is not a statement at the beginning, after all the information came out, they clearly stated, he has to be released, he should be released, or you’re destroying freedom of the press, okay, in this country. Nonetheless, this Julian Assange has been held under terrible conditions, in a high security prison in England. And the U. S. government, the only reason he wasn’t deported recently, and, two high court judges said no because the U.S. has not assured us that they will not execute him, ask for the death penalty, and they won’t deny his basic rights to speak in his defense.

And we don’t know why the Biden administration wouldn’t say they’d do that. Maybe they don’t want him to come back to the U.S. It’d be an enormous embarrassment. The case that was begun by Donald Trump, now pursued aggressively by President Biden. But it is interesting because we have been talking during this time about information selectively leaked that is of the far highest classification, and, the government does it. They release it to support their narrative as they have information about Julian Assange. On the other hand, Julian Assange’s crime is that he showed America committing, American troops, committing war crimes, shooting up, reporters and other innocent people in Iraq. 

Kiriakou: Absolutely right. Absolutely right. He’s being punished for telling the truth. He’s being punished for telling the American people about war crimes that our government committed in our name. 

Scheer: And yet you were on a show, I remember you brought this up, I think you did in my class. You were on a show, watching a show. where two reporters from Knight Ritter. Why don’t you tell us about? 

Kiriakou: This is about a year and a half ago. I sat on a panel on which two Knight Ritter reporters participated and one of the audience members got up and asked why they weren’t doing anything to support Julian Assange and without missing a single beat, one of them responded because Julian Assange is not a journalist, he’s an activist. And I said, wait a minute, even if you don’t think he is a journalist, you have to admit that he’s a publisher and Knight Ritter, in addition to every other news outlet in the Western world, used the information that Julian Assange released in their own reporting. So isn’t it incumbent upon you and every other journalist to stand up for Julian Assange? Because he stood up for you. The slippery slope here, and I think that you’ll agree with me, the slippery slope is if Julian Assange is successfully prosecuted, that means that every national security journalist in America is liable for an Espionage Act prosecution just for doing his or her job, just for doing what a journalist is supposed to be doing.

Scheer: And we, the voters, the citizens of this country, are the losers. Yeah. Other people are losers too. Particularly people who are killed when they’re innocent civilians and bombed and everything else. But as someone who’s tried to, I went to Vietnam in 1964 and when we were lying about what we were doing there and everything, the government was releasing all kinds of classified information, body counts, number of enemies, what had happened, what was blown up. So you’re going through a tissue of lies every day. You’re covering things like that. I’ve seen that I was in Egypt and Israel right after the Six Day War, governments lying all over the place. And it’s no secret, governments all over the world use classification as their excuse for not revealing the truth and preventing it from being revealed.

But it is appalling that after all of the lies have been revealed so often, and we had a Senate committee set up, the Church Committee, in the 1970s to keep our intelligence agencies in check, because there had been so many stories revealed about the CIA killing people, overthrowing government leaders, and other intelligent agencies. I want to end on this, that we haven’t made progress on this, and the thing that you went to prison for, really why you went, for revealing the torture program, we had that same Senate committee set up to control and monitor the CIA, thanks to Senator Feinstein, former Senator Feinstein from California. They spent over five years investigating the torture program. There’s a very good movie called The Report that goes into this. And the only part of it, we can’t read the main report. We don’t even know if copies exist anymore or where they are, they’ve never been released. And the introduction, however, even though heavily redacted, revealed that the torture program never came up with any usable information.

Kiriakou: Yeah. No, it’s a documented fact. Senator Feinstein and her investigators proved using primary source CIA documents that no actionable intelligence was ever gathered through the use of torture, period. It’s a fact and you’re going to get the likes of George Tenet, the former CIA director and Jose Rodriguez, the former, deputy director and, Kofor Black, the former head of counterterrorism.

Scheer: Don’t forget the so called journalists like former CIA director Brennan. 

Kiriakou: That’s right and John Brennan, another one. They’re going to repeat over and over again that torture worked because… 

Scheer: They don’t call it torture though. 

Kiriakou: They don’t call it torture. They call it enhanced interrogation techniques. And they’re going to repeat that it worked because that program is their legacy, and when their obituaries are written, that’s what’s gonna be in the first paragraph. They were the fathers, the, godfathers of the torture program. And so they want the American people to believe, falsely, that program worked and that program protected them, protected the American people when it’s all just a lie.

Scheer: Yeah, it certainly protected them because, as I say, and we’re going to end this, John Kiriakou, the only person punished for the torture program because he revealed it and confirmed it. to the American people. And for that act of service, you spent two years in federal prison. All right, John, that’s it for this edition of Scheer Intelligence.

I want to thank Christopher Ho and Laura Kondourajian at KCRW, the excellent NPR station in Santa Monica. Joshua Scheer, our executive producer. Diego Ramos, who writes the introduction, Max Jones, who does the video, projection of this show and the J.K.W. Foundation, which in memory of an excellent independent journalist, Jean Stein, contributes some support, financial support for getting these shows up there.

Thanks again, John. And check in with you, hopefully in more optimistic times.

https://scheerpost.com/2024/03/29/john-kiriakou-its-a-secret-only-when-uncle-sam-says-it-is/

 

----------------------

MEANWHILE:

China's intelligence steps out of the shadows

The Ministry of State Security regularly posts cartoons on the WeChat social media app to encourage the population to be on the alert and to act collaboratively if they suspect foreign infiltration. 

 

By Harold Thibault

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/31/china-s-intelligence-steps-out-of-the-shadows_6666888_4.html

Liu is a second-year college student in a coastal city in southern China. He met Xiao Min on a dating app and with their deepening relationship, she introduced him to a magazine that offered him a part-time freelance job, photographing tourists and pleasure boats in the harbor. Liu was pleased to make a bit of money but also thought he could surf two waves on one board – that taking the small photography job would also help him win Xiao Min's heart for good.

After a few successful initial photo orders, she suggested that he should also take photos of naval vessels entering and leaving the harbor. The charming Xiao Min even rented an apartment for him that was near the military base and also asked him to switch to a foreign messaging app as a precaution. Deep down, Liu began to suspect that she was a spy but weakly, and lured by financial gain, he continued endangering himself and China. Until the state security agency intervened.

Wang is another young man, who soon to graduate, had already entered his personal information and his CV on a job search site. He soon received a positive response, and a company offered him a job as a surveyor in the environmental sector; he was to photograph the marine environment, including the boats: Civilian to begin with but...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/03/31/china-s-intelligence-steps-out-of-the-shadows_6666888_4.html

 

SOUNDS MORE LIKE CHINESE KIDS SPYING ON CHINA ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE....

 

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FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....