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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 5, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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New dirt on CIA drug operations

By Gary Wilson

CIA Director John Deutch baldly lied when he told the Black community in South Los Angeles, "The CIA does not encourage drugs."

Less than a week later a grand jury in Miami indicted a Venezuelan general for being part of a CIA operation that sold at least a ton of cocaine on the streets of cities across the U.S.

Deutch knew at the time of his speech in Los Angeles that the Miami indictment was about to come down. In fact, a CIA official was forced to resign three years ago when news of this operation first surfaced. It was Deutchµs arrogance and the racism that pervades the upper class that made him believe his lies would go unchallenged.

The Miami indictment on Nov. 22 should have been front-page news across the country. But it wasnµt.

What the grand jury found should have shaken the foundations of the government in Washington.

Consider the facts. They are startlingly similar to several past charges that the CIA has been involved in bringing drugs into the U.S. as part of its covert operations.

The Miami grand jury found that in the 1980s the CIA set up an operation involving the Venezuelan National Guard that was aimed at so-called drug cartels in Colombia. The real target was the popular revolutionary forces in Colombia.

Even the fairly conservative Human Rights Watch as well as Amnesty International have both charged that the U.S. governmentµs operations in Colombia have nothing to do with fighting drugs. They say the U.S. government is sponsoring death squads that are targeting the popular liberation army because it threatens to overthrow the U.S.-backed Colombian government and its supporters.

The grand jury indictment says the drugs were brought into the U.S. in order to "learn how the drug cartels worked." This would be like a doctor infecting a patient to learn more about a disease. It sounds more like the official cover story than a plausible explanation of what happened.

CIA drug operations have been used to raise funds for covert operations as well as to introduce drugs into oppressed minority communities across the country.

The indictment says that the CIA brought in at least a ton of cocaine in 1990 in this one operation.

When news of the operation first broke in 1993, it was quickly hushed up and one CIA official was forced to resign. No CIA official has been charged in the case, only a Venezuelan general working for the CIA. According to the Nov. 23 New York Times, the Venezuelan National Guard is a paramilitary force that is funded completely by the CIA.

The Times report also indicates that the amount of cocaine brought into the United States was "much more than a ton."

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