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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

The Vietnam War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was on a mission from God.

I was a naive idiot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like I said: a naive idiot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The "Cocaine Coup".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fade to black.

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

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

DEA Headquarters

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Hun and South Florida Task Force

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

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

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

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

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

Did the media know the truth and hide it?

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

Afghan and Contra Wars

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

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

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

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

Back in the Big Apple - the Drug War Media Capital

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Trifecta - Deep Cover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten Years of Journalism

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

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

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

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

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

Drug War Invasion of Panama.[15]

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

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

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

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

I guess the stuff really works.

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

Media shills to the rescue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rise in Police Drug War Violence After Panama

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

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

As an Expert Witness

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

From my point of view, the use of the word "atrocities" is no hyperbole.
As a front-line participant, I've watched the drug war evolve from where,
in 1973, DEA agents who raided a premises in Collinsville, Indiana in
honest error were prosecuted for that error in federal court, to where the
killing of innocent Americans in their own homes is now not only condoned
under the drug war banner, but actively covered up by drug war generals
with the acquiescence of media shills.

Here's an example. Donald Carlson, a Fortune 500 Company executive in San
Diego who couldn't distinguish cocaine from garden mulch, was gunned down
in his own home, in 1992, by a federal-state, multi-agency, Drug
Enforcement Task Force SWAT team that had conducted a military style
invasion using machine guns and grenades. They were acting on allegations
made by a criminal informant who claimed that Mr. Carlson was concealing in
his house five thousand pounds of cocaine and four Colombian hit men who
had sworn never to be taken alive.

The very gringo Mr. Carlson, despite the drug agents' best efforts to stop
his clock, miraculously survived three gunshot wounds. He decided to sue
the government. I was hired by his attorneys to examine the government's
reports related to the investigation and to provide an expert opinion-a job
I had been trained to do as a DEA Inspector of Operations.

After reviewing more than 5,000 pages of government reports, transcripts of
interviews, and statements, I came to the conclusion that the government
agents had based their Probable Cause for the search warrant on the
uncorroborated words of a street level criminal informant whom the
telephone company did not trust enough to furnish with a telephone. I
concluded, citing specific examples from the governments own reports and
statements, that the agents and prosecutors were not only criminally
negligent, but that they had knowingly violated all Mr. Carlson's
constitutional rights against unlawful search of his home and that they
then compounded this crime by perjuring themselves in an effort to cover up
their misdeeds. My recommendation was, as it would have been had I been
doing the job for the Justice Department, that the evidence be put before a
federal grand jury with an eye toward a federal indictment of the agents
and prosecutors.

Instead of giving US citizens, in the form of a grand jury, the opportunity
to review what had actually happened and make their own choice as to
whether the agents and prosecutors deserved to be prosecuted themselves,
the United States Attorney, Allan Bersin, a recent Clinton appointee,
called a press conference for the drug war shills. He proclaimed that "the
system failed, but [that] the agents [and prosecutors] had done their job."
This proclamation was the "news" broadcast as far and wide as mainstream
media could reach.

System failed? What the hell does that mean? Only drug war shills would
accept a statement like this on face value, not real journalists.

The bottom line of the whole adventure came soon after I turned in my
report. The government settled for $2.7 million in damages to Mr. Carlson
and all government reports were classified.

Classified? How in hell can the suits get away with classifying the events
leading up to the shooting of an American citizen in his own home? I kept
waiting for some Woodward or Bernstein to even ask the question. Never
happened. The media shills did their by then customary penguin walk, one
following the other off the end of a rock their gazes rigidly pointed away
from the truth.

Once again I tried to tell the story through any mainstream media outlet
that would listen. 60 Minutes, which in my opinion is one of the few
remaining hopes in mainstream media, was the only entity interested. The
Carlson debacle was run as part of a special called "Informants" during the
summer of 1993. Unfortunately, the cover-up was omitted.

Here again, I re-learned the lesson that, as much of a media powerhouse as
60 Minutes is, a single story does not a change in government policy make.
As devastating as the "Informant" piece should have been to Drug War Monty,
it was only another drop against the mighty torrent of mainstream media
shilling.

The big question that the Fourth Estate should have been asking was: if our
drug warriors and prosecutors could get away with acting so criminally in
the case of a Fortune 500 executive, what can the average citizen expect?

Ezekiel Hernandez is the answer. In 1997, the 18 year-old recent high
school graduate was gunned down by a Marine sniper on "anti-drug" patrol
while herding his family's goats in his own backyard. The young man
probably never knew what hit him, since the shot was fired from more than a
distance of 250 yards. I couldn't help wondering whether or not they were
trying out a new weapon.

No one in young Hernandez's MacAllen, Texas community was aware that those
odd moving bushes out on the range were marine snipers in cammo outfits
assigned to patrol the Texas-Mexican border - in direct violation of the
Posse Comitatus Act.

As a radio journalist who also happens to be a court-qualified expert in
the use of deadly force, I began my own investigation of the case, which,
in my opinion, was at best a clear-cut case of negligent homicide and/or
manslaughter. At worst, it was an execution.

While mainstream media continued to shill the death of young Ezekiel as an
unfortunate but justifiable error, I tried to get a government spokesman to
come on my show and explain the government's position on the young man's
murder to a court-qualified expert. No one was willing.

I watched the media-television, newspapers, and magazines-closely. No
government spokesman would field questions on the matter. Only
self-serving, vague and misleading statements were released. Why should the
drug war generals explain the murder of an American citizen that occurred
during an alleged anti-drug action, as long as mainstream media willingly
shilled for them?

In this case, like the Carlson case, no government official admitted any
wrongdoing. Why should they? The settlement with the Hernandez family was
$1.7 million - significantly less than the very white and still living Mr.
Carlson's $2.7 million - but then again, why should that fact interest a
shill? [19]

Drug War Monty Billions Paid Directly to the Shills

A new level of the Drug War Monty con game began when President Clinton and
Republican Majority leader Newt Gingrich raised each other's hands in
victory to announce a new billion dollar, "Say-No-To-Drugs" style ad
campaign. The money would be paid directly into the coffers of every
Hollywood and mainstream media entity on Wall Street's big board. The first
$sixty-million would go to Disney Studios. All the full-page "anti-drug"
ads you see in The New York Times (for instance) are paid for from this
taxpayer-funded pot.

I received a tip from an inside person in the upper ranks of government who
finds me cheaper to talk to than a psychiatrist and a lot more reliable
than anyone in mainstream media. "Fraud" this person said. "Go get 'em,
Mike." [1]

So I flew into Expert Witness investigative action. I mean, Get real! Do
you think some mainstream media journalist is going to investigate the
source of his/her company's millions? Particularly at a time when
advertising income is on the decline?

My investigation, buttressed by research that I had done for my book Fight
Back, revealed that neither the Partnership for A Drug Free America, nor
anyone else for that matter, had done any research into the effectiveness
of this kind of advertising. In fact, according to psychological studies
conducted by neuro-linguistic experts, there was a growing body of evidence
indicating that the ads weren't just ineffective, they actually increased
drug use by suggestion. They actually put the idea of using drugs into the
minds of kids to whom the idea had never occurred.

A lone article in Brand Week, the highly respected Madison Avenue trade
magazine, pointed out that the full amount of taxpayer dollars that the
Partnership for a Drug Free America was about to give away was $2 billion,
making them the biggest advertisers on Madison Avenue. The article called
the giveaway "very suspect." My own DEA source pointed out that $2 billion
would have been enough to buy up every coca leaf produced in South America
that year. It could have replaced all law enforcement and military
operations in effectiveness.

If you put Three Card Monty dealers and shills in the can for ripping off
hundreds of dollars from innocent suckers, what do you think these guys
deserve?

CIA Drug Smuggling - The Venezuelan National Guard Case

What would be the appropriate action of a truly independent, mainstream
media if say, the Central Intelligence Agency was caught red-handed
actually smuggling as much cocaine into the US as the Medellin Cartel, in
direct violation of federal law and with no political excuse?

Well, precisely that did happen.

Sometime in 1990, US customs intercepted a ton of cocaine being smuggled
through Miami International Airport. An investigation by Customs and DEA
quickly revealed that the smugglers were the Venezuelan National Guard
headed by General Guillen a CIA "asset" who claimed that he had been
operating under CIA orders and protection. A fact that was soon, albeit
very reluctantly, admitted by CIA. Once again, as in the Noriega case, it
seemed that the gang that can't spy straight had failed to notify DEA and
Customs of what they were up to. That would turn out not to be the case. If
CIA is good at anything it is the complete control of American media. So
secure are they in their ability to manipulate media that they even brag
about in their own in-house memos.

CIA pimps and shills by far outnumber and outclass the Drug War Monty
variety, but in this case both con games - CIA Monty and Drug War Monty -
were at grave risk.

The CIA Public Information Office, referred to by CIA insiders as "The
Mighty Wurlitzer," flew into action. Result: The story appeared nowhere in
media for the next three years.

Example: The New York Times actually had the story almost immediately in
1990 and did not print it until 1993. It finally became news that was "fit
to print" when the Times learned that 60 Minutes also had the story and was
actually going to run it.[1] The Times ran the story on Saturday, one day
before the 60 Minutes piece aired. There were, however, serious differences
between the Times report and the one aired by 60 Minutes.

The Times piece said:

"No criminal charges have been brought in the matter, which the officials
said appeared to have been a serious accident rather than an intentional
conspiracy. (Emphasis mine) But officials say the cocaine wound up being
sold on the streets in the United States."

The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when Federal Judge Robert Bonner
tells Mike Wallace:

"There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug
smuggling. It's illegal..." (emphasis mine).

Judge Bonner further revealed that his assertion came as a result of a
secret joint investigation conducted by DEA and CIA's internal affairs
divisions. As if that weren't enough, Annabella Grimm, the DEA agent
Country attaché in Venezuela when the incident occurred was interviewed on
camera. She too said that the CIA had simply smuggled drugs in violation of
lots of US laws.

You don't have to be a police detective to note that there are some serious
differences in the two reports, or to suspect media shilling in the first
degree. The Expert Witness once again flew into action. I did what I
thought a real journalist should do - investigate the story.

Accompanied by my life's partner, wife and co-writer, Laura Kavanau, I flew
out to the coast to meet with Annabella Grimm, an ex colleague of mine
whose work and forthrightness I had always admired. After speaking with
Annabella we spoke with another DEA officer who was directly involved with
the incident.

The sum total of my investigation was that the CIA had not only been
smuggling a lot more cocaine - around 27 tons - than the one ton they were
caught with, but had been warned by DEA not to do it, that what they were
proposing as an "intelligence gathering operation" was not only a "whacko
idea," but it was a felony violation of US law punishable by up to life in
prison.

The identities of at least two, top level CIA personnel who had chosen to
ignore DEA's warning and had gone ahead with the massive smuggling
operation had been turned over to the DEA for indictment but instead of
focusing on these criminals, the investigation had turned on Ms Grimm and
others.

As I investigated the incident I noticed that James Woolsey, the then head
of CIA, was appearing on every mainstream media television and radio "news"
show that would have him, (including NPR Radio) broadcasting the claim that
no criminal act had taken place and that the event had all been a
"snafu....a joint investigation between CIA and DEA that had gone awry."

Woolsey's public statement directly contradicted that of federal judge
Bonner. The overwhelming evidence, my DEA sources assured me, showed that
Woolsey, an attorney, was lying and that mainstream media was shilling for
him. Any real journalist could have done what I was doing, but none - other
than 60 Minutes - dared. Was there ever a news story more important than
one that should have read something like: "CIA BETRAYS NATION - CAUGHT
RED-HANDED SMUGGLING MORE DRUGS ONTO US STREETS THAN THE MEDELLIN CARTEL"
or " DRUG WAR A $TRILLION FRAUD"?

The facts behind the case seem to be proof positive that the whole War on
Drugs has been the longest running, deadliest con game in the history of
American mis-government. In The Venezuelan National Guard Case, there were
top level credentialed government spokespeople ready to speak openly, to
tell a devastating truth about the worst kind of treason possible being
committed by CIA against its own people, yet no mainstream media entity,
other than 60 Minutes, deemed this news fit to pursue with the same
in-depth zeal devoted to investigating the shape of President Clinton's penis.

Censorship by omission? Drug War Monty shilling? I would say so.

Unfortunately for America, my Expert Witness Radio Show was among the very
few places that this important truth could be heard. I should mention that
when I called the Miami US Attorney's office in charge of prosecuting
General Guillen et al, I was told that "national security" interests
prevented them from providing me with a case status, or any statement
whatsoever for that matter.[1]

A fitting postscript for this event and the whole Drug War Monty game for
that matter: I was recently made aware that John Clements, the 20 year-old
addict "gofer" featured in the Bangkok heroin investigation referred to at
the beginning of this chapter, is about to be released from federal prison
after having served most of his 35-year prison sentence. Young Mr. Clements
was convicted of "conspiracy" to traffic in heroin for driving a drug
dealer (Alan Trupkin) to one single meeting to pick up drugs. Of course,
the rest of the story is that the media, while ignoring the massive flow of
heroin coming into the US at the hands of CIA assets, had shilled the case
to the point where there was no way the kid was going to get anything but
the max. Unfortunately I was as guilty as they were.

I can only hope this helps make up for it.

Black Tuesday - the Shilling Continues

The events of September 11th occurred after I'd completed this chapter make
this short addendum vital. If what I wrote before has convinced you that
mainstream media has spent the last three decades shilling the American
taxpayer into believing in the efficacy of a war on drugs when every bit of
this so-called war was as fraudulent as a game of Three Card Monty then
here's what you should be asking yourself about what happened on September
11th: Did mainstream media also shill for an inept and bumbling FBI and CIA
in a successful campaign at convincing Americans that our homeland defense
was in the most capable hands possible, when in fact the Boy Scouts of
America might have done a better job? And, did this shilling play a role in
making us vulnerable to the events of Black Tuesday?

Hard to believe, right? Well, the fact is that - and you can read it for
yourself in federal court records, or obtain the actual recorded
conversation from my web site - seven months before the first attempt at
blowing up the World Trade Center in 1993, the FBI had a paid informant who
had already infiltrated the bombers and had told the FBI of their plans to
blow up the twin towers. Without notifying the NYPD or anyone else, an FBI
supervisor "fired" Salem who was making $500 a week for his work. After the
bomb went off, the FBI hired Salem back and paid him $1.5 million to help
them track down the bombers.

But that's not all the FBI missed. When they finally did catch the actual
bomber, Ramzi Yousef (a man trained with CIA funds during the
Russia-Afghanistan war), the FBI found information on his personal computer
about plans to use hijacked American jetliners as fuel laden missiles. The
FBI ignored this information too.

If at this point you are scratching your head and asking yourself why you
hadn't heard this story, you can thank mainstream media "coverage" which
for the most part gave the FBI "credit" for "solving" the case. Media then
went on to convince us that the FBI "solved" the Unibomber case as well,
when in fact the only way the madman was caught was when his own brother
turned him.

Had the media done a professional job of investigating and reporting the
CIA and FBI's amateurish failures, perhaps our elected protectors would
have been moved to begin working feverishly on revamping a human
intelligence system that appears to be competing with the Three Stooges for
our enemies' respect.