DRUG STORY HARD TO BELIEVE

Since the earlier publication of evidence of US government officials 
trafficking in drugs in SE asia, evidence has been piling up in the Digest 
office.  There is so much of it, from widely diverse sources ranging from
Mother Jones and the Christic Institute on the left, to Reuters and US News
and World Report, to first)hand testimony from a warlord of the Golden
Triangle, that it seems that there must be a real fire somewhere under all
this smoke.  Since the evidence is massive and the trail of the players
twisted, let us attempt to summarize.  Opium and heroin have been imported
into the US from SE Asia in huge quantities by US and allied government
officials since the 1940s.

This activity became especially heavy from the 1960s forward.  A great deal of 
the money generated by this drug trade, particularly after it became monstrous
in the '60s and '70s, was apparently laundered through the Nugan)Hand Bank in
Australia.  Upon the failure of this bank some 7 years ago, and at the same
time as the alleged suicide of one of the partners, Frank Nugan (1980), it
became clear that CIA and US military officers were deeply involved in the
bank and its nefarious operations.  A full)blown investigation by the
Australian government produced a 4)volume report.  It showed that some $50
million in losses were suffered when the bank went down, but untold amounts of
illicit drug money were undoubtedly not accounted for at the time because the
owners of that money didn't want to draw attention to themselves.  Strangely
enough, the whole affair of the Nugan)Hand failure was hushed up by our
government and many bank records were shredded by former US officials.

Now to Central America.  Cocaine from this area has apparently been imported 
into the US in large quantities for years by officials of the US and allied 
nations.  Some of the funds from these drug sales have apparently supported
the Contra's in Central America, along with funds from arms sales to Iran.
Here's the mind)blower: The central players in these arms and drug deals seem
always to be the same people: Theodore Shackley, a former high CIA official,
Thomas Clines, always Shackley's assistant, Richard Secord, retired Air Force
major general, and shifting cast of support players.  With the exception of
Secord, these same people show up in the testimony of Gen. Khun Sa, the
recognized drug kingpin of the Golden Triangle (Thailand)Laos)Burma).

Khun Sa describes the sale of huge amounts of drugs to some of these US 
officials and even notes that the funds were run through Australian banks.  
Lt. Col.  "Bo" Gritz, who first exposed this story on a radio talkshow in 
southern California, has continued his campaign on talkshows throughout the
United States.  In almost every show, says Gritz, he will get one or more
calls from Vietnam vets who describe how they participated or knew of drugs
being shipped either under US auspices or at a minimum with a "wink and a nod" 
from officials on the scene.

We should note here that Gen. Khun Sa has offered to stop this drug traffic in 
his part of the world but says that for 15 years, he can get "no interest" 
from our government.  In the videotaped interview with Gritz, Khun Sa even 
agreed to provide security for the US and/or UN inspection teams if 
they\j\wanted to come in to verify his efforts.  Khun Sa's offer is connected 
to his request for help for his people in the form of agricultural 
instruction, etc.  His point is that if he stops the growing of opium, his 8 
million people will need help in replacing the income that crop is generating.

To date, his offer has stirred not one iota of interest in Washington.
Unbeknownst to Gritz, H. Ross Perot had been working on this same story since
some time in late 1986.  Perot took the evidence to Washington, presented it
to the Vice President, the FBI, and to the White House, and got no help
whatsoever.  He even received a call from Frank Carlucci, now head of the
National Security Council, telling him to "stop pursuing" Richard Armitage,
whom Gen Khun Sa named as a big buyer of drugs in Burma.

Armitage is now Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security.  
Former Chief of Special Operations for the US Air Force L.  Fletcher Prouty 
says many CIA officials knew all about the use of drugs to pay some troops in 
Burma during WW II.  One who knew was Sam Wilson who ended up as head of the 
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).  Prouty also states that this drug trade 
was the reason for the start of the Nugan)Hand Bank in Australia, and further 
states that Michael Hand (one of the partners in the bank) worked out of his 
office in the Pentagon before he went to Vietnam and Laos where he met the 
Nugan brothers.  Prouty, by the way, assisted Alfred McCoy in the preparation 
of his monumental book The Politics of Heroin in SouthEast Asia (Harper & Row, 
1972).  A lawsuit filed by the leftist Christic Institute alleges many of the 
above events, naming these and other players.  The Institute alludes to a 
"Secret Team" that was/is running many of the arms/drug deals.

Much of the outline of this informal organization (if that's what it is) is 
also fully covered in US News and World Report (8/10/87, p. 16), with only a 
casual mention of the drug trade in the last paragraph.  But at least it was
mentioned.  An article by the Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny
appears in the August)September issue of Mother Jones.  Both the reporter and
the magazine are leftist, to say the least.  However, Kwitny's recounting of
the Nugan)Hand Bank failure was accurate so far as we can tell.

Among the names mentioned by Kwitny are (brace yourself): Shackley, Clines, 
Secord, Eric von Marbod (another Pentagon official), 3)star US Gen. LeRoy 
Manor (former chief of staff for the entire US Pacific Command), Gen. Edwin 
Black (high)ranking intelligence officer and Assistant Army chief of staff for 
the Pacific), Gen. Earl Cocke, Jr. (former commander of the American Legion), 
William Colby (former CIA director), Adm. Earl "Buddy Yates, Michael Hand (CIA 
veteran), and numerous bit)part players.  Then there's the strange story of 
former CIA agent Edwin Wilson, currently serving a 55)year sentence in 
solitary confinement for arms dealing.  Wilson has consistently asserted that 
his own questionable activities were part of a larger pattern of corruption 
and subversion among high CIA and Pentagon officials.  According to Wilson, 5 
conspirators ) Shackley, Clines, Secord, von Marbod, and Wilson himself ) met 
secretly in 1978, setting up a partnership to run arms, using the power of 
these top bureaucrats.  Wilson himself put up $500,000 for the operation, and 
he says he has a tape recording of the whole transaction.  Not only did he 
lose his investment, he ended up in the dungeon."

When I saw that I was the only one among all our partners to be indicted and 
convicted, I realized that I was being buried for the rest of my life in a 
solitary cell so that my former partners could shut me up.  I was afraid to 
talk," he said.  To add to this mystery, it appears clear that the Mafia 
serves as the retail distribution for the drugs.  Richard Armitage, Santo 
Trafficante (Mafia chieftain, now deceased), Shackley, Daniel Arnold, and 
Jerry Daniels (said by Khun Sa to have taken over Armitage's drug duties) are 
listed by Khun Sa as handling the enormous drug trade from the Golden 
Triangle, and he says, they used Australian banks to launder the money.  Khun 
Sa also notes that Thailand's English)language newspaper Bangkok Post reported 
that CIA agents were using Australia as a transit base for the drug business 
and using banks in Australia for the funds.

Finally, in this strange line up of sources, it's of interest to note that the
US Communist Party newspapers, People's Daily World, and the communist
Guardian, have been playing up this story for months.  We can attribute this
interest in our "drug problem" by the Reds as an attempt to divert attention
from the fact that since 1962 it has been official Communist policy to use
drugs to help being down the United States.  Nicaragua, Cuba, Bulgaria, etc.,
have all been working from an edict issued by Nikita Khrushchev at a secret
Warsaw Pact meeting in Moscow in 1962.

It may be only coincidence that involvement by our government officials seemed 
to pick up steam at about the same time.  Several aspects of this story are 
appalling to us.  First, we are dismayed that we find material in far)left 
publications with which we agree.  But even a stopped clock is right twice a 
day.  Second, there is an enormous amount of corroborative material being sent 
to our office nearly every day.  It supports the conclusion that a formal or 
informal organization of high CIA and US military officers, some former, some 
present, exists which has for decades been a major ) if not the major ) 
importer of heroin and cocaine into the US.

Third, the same players show up nearly everywhere where drugs and arms are
involved.  The only place Gen. Secord's name has not appeared is in connection
with the Khun Sa story in Burma.  It's also of interest that much of this
activity occurred while Vice President George Bush was in charge of the CIA.
It's strange that Bush does not seem to be interested (based on the lack of
cooperation given Perot when he visited him) in stopping this drug business.
And Bush is "the top cop" appointed by President Reagan to handle this drug
problem.

The mere fact that the mass media has completely ignored this abundance of 
evidence is further indication of the probability that very high members of 
the Establishment are deeply involved.  Only CBS TV in the "West 57th Street" 
broadcasts have dealt with the Central American connection and that show ranks 
at the bottom in the ratings.  The Golden Triangle connection has yet to be 
looked into.  We were told by a Washington reporter for the Christian 
Broadcast Network (CBN) that one reason the major TV networks have not touched 
the Gritz story is that lawyers for Richard Armitage called each of them\j\and 
said: "If you run the story, we'll sue".  With the Westmoreland case still 
vividly imprinted on the minds of network executives, the threat has 
apparently worked.  We have heard that a major overseas network is planning a 
story sometime in the next 6 months.  If this story is correct in it's broad 
outline ) and there is strong evidence for this ) we are looking at the worst 
scandal in government corruption in US history.

There is simply no other way to describe it.  In brief, here is what appears
to be factual: The US government has outlawed various drugs since 1914 with
the explicit intent of driving up the price to make them more difficult to
obtain.  Then this same government has for decades actually participated in
the importation of these very same drugs! The Mafia has served as the retailer
for our government.  In the latter years of this decadent operation, drug
monies have allegedly been used to fund some Freedom Fighter operations,
particularly in Laos and Central America.  It's very possible that the
recipients of this dirty money didn't know of its origins.  It's even more
likely that huge amounts of money from these illicit operations stuck to the 
hands of the major players.  We also think it's possible, although we've seen 
little evidence to support it, that there is an involvement by the big 
international banks.

The closest we`ve come to proof is in the book The Underground Empire: Where 
Crime and Government Embrace, by James Mills (Doubleday, $22.95).  Perhaps the 
most discouraging aspect of this whole grimy situation is that there is so 
little interest among government officials and the mass media.  It seems that 
only a demand from the grass)roots, reaching some critical mass of mail, can 
stir an investigation into this dirty business and bring it to a halt.  Your 
congressman must hear from you. You must demand action. You must demand the 
major TV networks get on this story.  You must demand that your newspaper 
conduct its own investigation and print the results.  You, dear friend, hold 
the key.  You, by your actions, will determine whether this practice continues 
or is stopped.










   THE SILENT WAR

   We are engaged in a silent war.  Those waging this brutal conflict have
   not the decency to inform their victims ))) who include ourselves and
   almost everyone we know.  Their standard bearers include George Bush and
   David Rockefeller.  As the high priced professional liars in the mass
   media assure us all is well, the common people of the world are being
   crushed ))) like foot soldiers over run by a panzer division.

   And yet, the only real power of these perpetrators derives only from this
   force fed ignorance.  Apart from the power to keep us fighting each
   other, the Monopolists have no power.  If a critical mass of people can
   learn the information contained herein, and what is more important, the
   sources of this information, a global reign of terror will end.

   These articles are taken from my monthly column in MONETARY AND ECONOMIC
   REVIEW.  I am also the Director of Research for INTELLIGENCE CONNECTION a
   speakers agency that arranges events on university campuses for front
   line researchers, like those mentioned in these articles.  My name is
   Brian Quig.


   You can arrange speaking events with any of these legendary people by
   calling

   (602) 945-3858

   or writing                                                                 
                                                                              
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