Issue # 7 Subscribe and Be Alerted to New Reports

This is the Face of the US-Imposed Drug War in América

Like the Drug War, this man was imposed by the US Government...

Like the Drug War, this man has committed untold atrocities...

This man is a known Narco-Kingpin, but few speak of that fact...

Like US Drug Policy, this man is dying...

His is the decayed, corrupt, and cruel face of the war on drugs...

He is...

NARCO OF THE YEAR 2000

...few dared to call his atrocity by name as it was happening

...he used censorship and libel suits to silence the truth

...history has begun to judge him as wrong

But like the Drug War that supported him...

...he continues to escape justice

His role in the Narco-System as a US-backed narco-kingpin will also be remembered...

Justice demands that the drug war die with him...

The Narco News Bulletin

"The Name of Our Country is América"

-- Simón Bolívar

The Narco News Bulletin declares...

NARCO OF THE YEAR

Augusto Pinochet

"Never a leaf moves in Chile if I don't move it"

- General Pinochet 1975

A pioneer of anti-drug posturing and of narco profiteering, General Augusto Pinochet of Chile is the Narco of the Year for 2000.

Dishonorable mention goes to all who aided and abetted his campaign of terror, torture, assassination and narco-trafficking, especially former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and current US Ambassador to Mexico Jeffrey Davidow, who aided the Pinochet military coup in Chile from 1971 to 1974 as political officer of the US Embassy in Santiago de Chile.

Today we dedicate this declaration to the memories of Chilean statesman Orlando Letelier, US humanitarian Ronnie Moffet, Chilean folksinger Victor Jara, US journalist Charles Horman, and thousands of others assassinated by the Pinochet regime with the complicity of US officials.

We received many nominations for Narco of the Year from our readers, the majority of them naming public figures from inside the United States. Our readers clearly know from where the atrocity of the war on drugs emanates: from the top down. Among the nominees was a pantheon of US officials and institutions who will be remembered as harshly in the future as Pinochet is remembered today; Clinton, McCaffrey, Bush (father and son), Gore, the New York Times, the CIA for which it stands, the DEA, the Justice Department, Citibank and other financial institutions foreign and domestic, Wall Street, and certain others cogs in the narco-wheel who are, specifically, trying to silence Narco News.

We also received nominations for various heads of state throughout América: Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, Andrés Pastrana of Colombia and ex-presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Alberto Fujimori of Perú, all whom have led Narco-States with the blessing and support of US officials.

Vladimiro Montesinos, the Peruvian spy chief-turned-fugitive also received many nominations.

All of these individuals and institutions are part of the Narco-System.

They all claimed to be combatting drugs, and they all protected those who traffic in illicit drugs.

It was the foremost social humorist of our time, Barry Crimmins, who first suggested Pinochet as Narco of the Year, noting that the disgraced general and dictator may not live to receive this dishonor in future years.

We agree with Barry.

For humanitarian reasons, Pinochet should know, before he dies, that his legacy includes the atrocity of the drug war in Latin America, and that he helped deliver his people and nation to foreign rule under this pretext.

Not a leaf moved in Chile unless he moved it -- he said that himself in 1975. And that includes coca leaves, marijuana leaves and other drugs that do not come from leaves.

We urge our readers to write to the disgraced Pinochet -- he probably learned some English while protected in London in recent years -- and inform him of his latest dishonor as Narco of the Year:

Pinochet's Email Address:

pinochet@congreso.cl

 

Augusto Pinochet is the face of the Narco-System in Our América because he is a drug trafficker who claimed to be fighting drugs, and also because of the lesson of history that he symbolizes.

Pinochet symbolizes the word atrocity.

Throughout human history, atrocities have occured but have not been acknowledged until after their worst moments. Such it was with Chile 1973, and so it is with the Drug War 2000.

The parallels between these two related atrocities are compelling. Indeed, when the death toll and the misery index of the war on drugs is finally counted, it may even surpass the statistics of his brutal dictatorship in Chile.

Millions imprisoned for nonviolent "crimes." Massive persecution of free speech and the press. Cruel and inhuman punishments. Needless deaths. Torture of every form. Violation of national sovereignty and the right of all nations to democratic rule. And complicity at the highest levels of State and Industry.

This is Pinochet's legacy and it is the drug war's legacy.

In the service of the public's right to know, we offer two new lines of information and facts that clarify why Augusto Pinochet is Narco of the Year, the decomposed face of the drug war.

First, is his hands-on involvement as a US-protected drug trafficker and narco-kingpin.

Second, are his repeated efforts for three decades to prevent Free Speech and Press Coverage of his atrocities, using State Power and Libel Suits -- along with his allies -- to try to silence the truth about his atrocities.

We bring to you, kind readers, a series of articles and links that demonstrate how history repeats itself.

This information documents how atrocities happen, through a combination of terror and censorship.

Here, in América, we are living that nightmare today.

Ever since syndicated columnist Jack Anderson revealed in 1972 that the ITT corporation and the US government were plotting Pinochet's coup, he and other journalists were persecuted -- some even assassinated -- with imprisonment, libel suits and other forms of repression for nothing more than telling the truth and reporting the facts.

This is the story of two censored wars. Only when the truth comes out, will the atrocities be over and peace restored to Our América.

Salud, Abrazo, y Hasta La Victoria Siempre,

Al Giordano

Publisher

The Narco News Bulletin

http://www.narconews.com/

narconews@hotmail.com

Exhibit A


From the
Guardian Weekly of London

December 14, 2000

Reprinted at: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1887/a07.html?43664

PINOCHET'S DRUG LINK COMES TO LIGHT

For years Chile has been supplying cocaine to Europe

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

The Chilean army and secret police have spent almost two decades secretly flooding Europe and the United States with cocaine.

The trafficking began during General Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship, and continues to this day, a year-long investigation has established. Twelve tonnes of the drug, with a street value of several billion dollars, left Chile in 1986 and 1987 alone.

The drugs, destined for Europe, have often been flown to Spanish territory by planes carrying Chilean arms to Iraq and Iran. Distribution to European nations has been controlled by secret police stationed in Chilean embassies in Stockholm and Madrid.

There can be no doubt that Gen Pinochet, whose power was absolute between the 1973 coup and 1990, when he stepped down, was a party to trafficking. He declared in October 1981: "Not a leaf moves in Chile if I don't move it - - let that be clear."

The secret police - originally known as the Dina and from 1977 as the SNI - was staffed by service personnel, and helped Gen Pinochet to torture and kill opponents. The general kept a close, day-by-day check on all secret police operations. The Dina's former director, Gen Manuel Contreras, told the Chilean supreme court in 1998 that he undertook nothing without Gen Pinochet's permission.

The huge profits from the drug deals went to enrich senior figures in Chile, with some going to finance the Dina/SNI operations.

Gen Pinochet, who is fighting arrest on kidnapping and murder charges in Santiago, has not clarified how he and his wife, Lucia, had more than $1m in their account in the Riggs Bank in Washington in March 1997. As commander-in-chief of the Chilean army his annual salary at that time was $16,000.

New evidence of Gen Pinochet's collaboration with Colombian drug dealers, first sketched out last year in my book, Pinochet: The Politics Of Torture, has emerged in The Thin White Line, a new book by Rodrigo de Castro, a former international civil servant in Chile, and Juan Gasparini, an Argentine journalist.

It quotes US court documents, Chilean police files and depositions by a former US marine, Frankell Ivan Baramdyka, who was involved in the trafficking. Baramdyka was extradited from Chile in May 1993 and convicted in California of narcotics offences. He worked for US intelligence in the early 80s, and was encouraged to traffic in drugs on condition that some of the profits went to the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, who were supported by President Ronald Reagan.

Baramdyka has revealed how he first made contact with the Chileans in 1984 when, acting for Colombian cocaine producers, he delivered $2m to the Chilean consulate-general in Los Angeles. This was a payment for chemicals needed to make cocaine which had been supplied by the Chilean army. At the time Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio, was on the consulate-general's staff.

After the US authorities raided his home in Los Angeles in 1985, Baramdyka fled to Santiago, where he set up a new trafficking operation. Later that year he was recruited by the Chilean secret police, and was soon overseeing the army's drug-export activities.

Exhibit B

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."

-- US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

Pinochet: Repression and Lawsuits to Silence the Facts of his Atrocities

From: http://www.btinternet.com/~donald.macdonald/chile1.htm

On numerous occasions since the hand-over to a civilian president in 1990, those who have suggested that General Pinochet be prosecuted, have themselves been threatened, attacked, arrested or imprisoned, and actions against human rights violators have been frustrated. Among these events are:

26.09.90 Three journalists are jailed by military courts for 'offence to the armed forces'.

26.01.91 The Supreme Court suspends Judge Carlos Cerda for refusing to invoke the Amnesty Law to dismiss a case relating to the disappearance of 13 persons.

23.09.92 Pinochet announces that he intends to file a criminal complaint against a former Army Intelligence Service (DINE) officer who blows the whistle on continuing phone-tapping operations.

03.03.93 A book entitled Ethics and Intelligence Services is confiscated and its author, a retired Naval Captain, is arrested.

28.05.93 Armed soldiers in camouflage uniform appear near the Moneda Palace in a calculated threat to the continuation of human rights trials. Military courts subsequently close (dismiss) 14 cases and the Supreme Court applies the Amnesty law to 7 others.

23.09.93 The Supreme Court upholds the decision of a military court to apply the Amnesty Law to close the investigation of the clandestine cemetry at Pisagua, where 19 bodies of disappeared prisoners were discovered.

10.93 The Supreme Court refuses an application by the Chamber of Deputies for a special prosecutor to investigate the assassination of General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires in 1973.

19.07.95 Pinochet sues Arturo Barrios for libel after the student leader calls for criminal charges to be filed against the General for human rights violations. Barrios is jailed briefly.

05.10.96 Communist Party General Secretary Gladys Marin is jailed for two days on charges of defamation after calling Pinochet 'a psychopath who reached power by means of intrigue, treason and crime'.

04.06.97 Pinochet threatens to sue members of Congress who criticised the Army in the case of the murder of Army conscript Pedro Soto Tapia.

However, on January 20 1998, Pinochet for the first time faced criminal charges, when a Court of Appeals judge agreed to hear a criminal complaint of genocide brought by the Communist Party, and in March eleven Christian Democrat deputies filed a constitutional accusation against Pinochet charging him with threatening national honour and security by his actions as Commander-in-Chief of the Army between 1990 and 1998. The Chamber of Deputies subsequently defeated the motion by 62 votes to 52.

Exhibit C

$60 Million Libel Suit by US Official to Stop a Movie about the Truth

Military officer sued Costa-Gavras' film Missing, about the assassination of Charles Horman in Chile

Source http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/oct1998/horm-o23.shtml

The Hormans subsequently filed suit for wrongful death, but it was eventually dismissed because the CIA refused to release the relevant files. The film Missing won the Golden Palm award at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, and Jack Lemmon, who played Ed Horman, was awarded the prize for best actor. The director Costa-Gavras won an Oscar for best screenplay based on material from another medium, and Missing gained Oscar nominations for best picture, best actor and best actress (Sissy Spacek in the role of Charles's wife).

Some, however, were not so pleased. Ray Davis, the senior US Military Group officer in Chile at the time of the coup (Captain Ray Tower in the film), filed a $60 million libel suit against Costa-Gavras and Universal Studios.

The suit was dismissed on summary judgment in 1987.

Exhibit D

Pinochet Regime Sued More than 30 Journalists

http://www.derechoschile.com/english/chrono4.htm

SEPTEMBER 21 - 26, 1990 Three journalists are jailed by order of the military courts for "offense to the armed forces." Charges against Juan Pablo Cardenas were eventually dropped and he was released. Juan Andres Lagos and Alfonso Stephens were released on bail. By the end of 1990, 30 journalists had been the subjects of legal actions brought by the military courts for the same offense.

Exhibit E

Pinochet Lost Libel Suit in 1998

http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1998_hrp_report/chile.html

1998: In mid-July, retired General Pinochet asserted that he was misquoted in La Tercera newspaper following a breakfast meeting with four members of the press. He brought a libel suit, which a court dismissed in November.

Lawsuits and Threats of Legal Action are Part of How the Narco-System Tries to Silence the Truth Today

McCaffrey Used Office's Law Firm to Research Lawsuit v. Hersh

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1482/a10.html?45190

The issue grew out of a critical article that the New Yorker magazine published in May. It charged that during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, troops led by McCaffrey--then an Army general--used unnecessary force in a battle with Iraqi soldiers following a cease-fire.

McCaffrey branded the article "nonsense" at the time it appeared.

GAO investigators found that McCaffrey received professional advice on how to handle the fallout from the article from Paul Johnson, a regional president for Fleishman-Hilliard Inc. The public-relations powerhouse receives about $10 million a year from McCaffrey's office for its media campaign work.

"Director McCaffrey denied to us that anyone had assisted him in his response to the article," GAO investigators said in their report. But investigators said Johnson acknowledged that McCaffrey had called him because he was very concerned about the effect the article might have on the war on drugs, and Johnson said he spent three to four hours helping to shape a response to the New Yorker and also referred McCaffrey to a libel attorney.

Johnson said he did not bill McCaffrey or the drug policy office for his time because "he did this as a personal favor to Director McCaffrey," according to the report.

Through his spokesman, McCaffrey said that there was nothing inappropriate.

Johnson could not be reached for comment, and officials at Fleishman-Hilliard said they would not be able to discuss the issue.

DARE Sued Rolling Stone

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1441/a06.html?45190

And in fact, everything seemed to be going DARE's way after it turned out that two of the most critical exposes - the Rolling Stone and New Republic stories - were written by the arch-falsifier Stephen Glass. In letters to the editors, DARE supporters point to these as examples of malicious press, and imply that all the negative coverage was equally removed from reality. DARE sued Glass and Rolling Stone for libel.

This spring, it lost its case as Federal Judge Virginia Phillips found the charges against the program to be "substantially true." Glass may have fictionalized many of his other stories, but the truth about DARE is that there is no scientific data to support it and that it has repeatedly strong-armed and tried to silence reporters and researchers who try to point this out.

The decision received surprisingly little media attention - just a 200 word business section mention in the New York Times and a similarly short piece in the Los Angeles Times ( both 4/18/2000 ). And it didn't stop editorialists from trying to tar other DARE critics with Glass' sins: an op-ed published in the Washington Times ( 9/14/00 ) mentioned Glass' apology to DARE, but, interestingly, not the decision of the federal court that the charges were substantially true.

Bush, Sr. Threatened Lawsuit Over Drug Allegations about W.

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1162/a07.html

Former President Bush has considered legal action against a discredited book that claimed he attempted years ago to quash a drug arrest of his son Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. In an interview taped last week and aired on Fox News Sunday, the former president said he was "so outraged" by the allegations in the book that he consulted his attorney, "something I seldom do." The interview was apparently taped before St. Martin's Press took action against its book Fortunate Son: the Making of an American President by J.H. Hatfield.

On Thursday, St. Martin's halted distribution of the book and on Friday ordered all copies to be returned so they could be destroyed. The publisher's action came after aides at the Bush campaign said the governor was seeking advice on legal moves that could be taken against the book. Hatfield, in a final chapter that St. Martin's said was added at the last minute, said that in 1972 the younger Bush was arrested in Harris County for possession of cocaine. He said the arrest was expunged after the elder Bush arranged through a friendly Republican judge to have his son perform public service.

Both Bushes vehemently deny the allegation, and Hatfield's account has several factual problems, including that there were no Republican judges in Harris County in 1972 and that the law allowing arrests in Texas to be expunged was not enacted until later in the 1970s. Carol Vance, a Democrat who was district attorney in 1972, said the allegations are baseless.

St. Martin's, without commenting directly on Hatfield's allegations, moved against the book after learning that Hatfield had been convicted 11 years ago of hiring a hit man in an unsuccessful car bombing against his boss. The elder Bush said his attorney, whom he did not name, made further legal inquiries, although the former president did not make clear if the contact was with representatives of the author or publisher or both. At any rate, he said: "They just brushed us off."

"I may not be finished with this yet, even though I'm a public figure. It's outrageous," Bush said. He referred to a legal standard that makes it more difficult for public figures to sustain a libel action unless they can prove that false statements were made with malicious intent. Bush said the book was "a fraud and ugly." "You know," Bush said, "I debated whether to say anything, but frankly, that book accused me of being anti-Semitic. It accused me of obstructing the justice system by going to a judge and having a narcotics charge dropped and have George do community service.

"It's a lie. It was a vicious lie. And I'll tell you, it's one of the things that makes a lot of people stay out of public service. Who wants to have books written that are totally false?"

Bonus Question:

Why Do Atrocities Go Unreported as They Are Happening?

History of CIA Agents Posing as Journalists

As with the US-Pinochet Atrocities in Chile, Jack Anderson was the first to report the facts in 1973

http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/media_bias.html

The first shoe was dropped by Jack Anderson in late August, 1973, when he revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst bureau in London, was a CIA agent. Freidin, already in the news because the Republicans paid him $10,000 in 1972 to spy on the Democrats, confirmed Anderson's story. At that point William Colby, the new CIA director, was asked by the New York Times and the Washington Star-News if any of their staff were on the CIA payroll.

James (Scotty) Reston of the NYT was satisfied with an evasive answer, but when the Star-News editorial board met with Colby, they made some progress. The other shoe dropped with an article by Oswald Johnston on November 30: the Star-News learned from an "authoritative source" (Colby) that the CIA had some three dozen American journalists on its payroll. Johnston named only one -- Jeremiah O'Leary -- who was one of their own diplomatic correspondents. (The Star-News stopped publishing in 1981, at which point O'Leary joined Reagan's national security staff. From 1982 until his death in 1993, he was with the Washington Times.)

That was the first and last time that Colby was helpful on this topic. Some believe that the new director was under pressure from the "young Turks" (junior staffers) at the Agency, who were granted a mandate by Colby's predecessor to cough up the "family jewels" -- a list of illegal exploits that could be culled from the CIA's files. Already there were rumors that the CIA was guilty of illegal spying on the antiwar movement -- rumors that were confirmed a year later by Seymour Hersh, whose sources were some of these same "young Turks."

Why was Colby initially forthcoming on the issue of the CIA and the media, and why did he then start stonewalling? Some believe that he was attempting a "limited hangout" as the best way out of a position that made him nervous, while others feel that he was implicitly threatening to provide additional names in order to scare off the media. Colby had reason to be worried: by late 1973, investigative journalism was in the air because of Watergate -- an issue that had more than the usual share of CIA connections.

Colby's stonewalling continued for the remainder of his tenure, even as a Senate committee led by Frank Church desperately tried to squeeze more names out of him. George Bush replaced Colby in January, 1976, and eventually agreed to a one-paragraph summary of each file of a CIA journalist, with names deleted. When the CIA said it was finished, the Church committee had over 400 summaries.

"All Tyrants Fall"

-- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Defeating the Narco-System, One Fact at a Time