Evidence links George Bush to Los Angeles drug operation

from:

http://www.bwbadge.com/bush.htm

http://www.bwbadge.com/bush.htm">Bush linked to Los Angeles Drug

Operation

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New evidence links George Bush to Los Angeles drug operation

by Edward Spannaus

On Oct. 27, 1986, federal and local law enforcement officials executed

search warrants on more than a dozen locations connected to a major

cocaine-trafficking ring in southern California centered around Danilo

Blandon.. One of the locations raided was the home of a former Laguna

Beach police officer by the name of Ronald Lister.

Los Angeles Sheriff's Department detectives reported that when they

raided Lister's house, they found ``films of military operations in

Central America, technical manuals, information on assorted military

hardware and communications, and numerous documents indicating that drug

money was being used to purchase military equipment for Central

America.'' Documents were also found which diagrammed ``the route of

drug money out of the United States, back into the United States

purchasing weaponry for the Contras.''

An official report by one of the detectives from the 1986 raid stated:

``Mr. Lister ... told me he had dealings in South America and worked

with the CIA and added that his friends in Washington weren't going to

like what was going on. I told Mr. Lister that we were not interested in

his business in South America. Mr. Lister replied that he would call Mr.

Weekly of the CIA and report me.''

New evidence has now surfaced showing who some of Lister's ``friends in

Washington'' were, and we shall see that these ``friends'' ran all the

way up to the Office of the Vice President, at that time George Bush.

Mark Richard's tell-tale notes

Around the same time as the October 1986 drug raid, ``Mr. Weekly,''

whose full name is David Scott Weekly, became the subject of a federal

investigation opened for the purpose of prosecuting him on federal

explosives charges. According to later testimony, this investigation was

under way for some time before Weekly himself first learned about it,

which was on Dec. 21-22, 1986.

But ten days before Weekly learned that he was being targetted, Bill

Price, the U.S. Attorney in Oklahoma City handling Weekly's case, had a

telephone conversation with a top official at Justice Department

headquarters about some of the stickier aspects of the investigation.

The official to whom Price talked was Mark Richard, a Deputy Assistant

Attorney General in the Criminal Division, and the career Justice

Department official who served as the Department's liaison to the

intelligence agencies.

The question arises: What might have triggered this conversation between

Mark Richard--the DOJ's point of contact for the NSC, CIA, and military

intelligence agencies--and the Oklahoma prosecutor?

First of all, on Oct. 5, 1986, a C-123 cargo plane, flying from El

Salvador's Ilopango military air base, had been shot down over

Nicaragua. Three crewmen were killed, and the fourth, Eugene Hasenfus,

was captured by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. This was the beginning of

the public unravelling of what became known as the ``Iran-Contra''

affair.

Then came the Oct. 27 raid in Los Angeles, after which the Los Angeles

FBI office communicated to FBI headquarters what had transpired,

including Lister's claims of involvement in arming the Contras, and his

citation of ``Mr. Weekly'' as being ``CIA'' and a ``DIA

subcontractor''--referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency. (The FBI

had already interviewed a businessman to whom Lister had bragged, on

Aug. 1, that he was involved in arming the Contras, and that his arms

deals were ``CIA approved.'')

On Nov. 10, 1986, the FBI sent a teletype to various sections of the

CIA, inquiring about Lister, Blandon, Weekly, and some others. The

inquiry, over the name of the FBI Director, asked diplomatically if any

of these individuals were ``of operational interest'' to the CIA.

FBI documents also show that a teletype was sent to FBI headquarters on

Dec. 9, followed up by a phone conversation with an FBI supervisor on

Dec. 11--the same day that Mark Richard spoke to the prosecutor in

Oklahoma City--who was at the time secretly preparing his case against

Scott Weekly.

In August 1987--less than a year later--Mark Richard was required to

give testimony in the Congressional Iran-Contra investigation. While

being interrogated about various matters in which there were allegations

of Justice Department interference in Contra-related cases, Richard was

specifically questioned about handwritten notes he had made during his

Dec. 11 conversation with prosecutor Bill Price. Richard said that Bill

Hendricks of the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, which was dealing with

a lot of the Iran-Contra matters, had previously been in touch with

Price. After examining his own notes, Richard said that the conversation

pertained to ``an individual who had been arrested and his possible

involvement in some CIA/Contra-related activities.'' (In fact, Scott

Weekly was out of the country on Dec. 11, and had not yet been

arrested.)

Richard was asked about the portion of the notes which read: ``Weekly

posts on tape that he's tied into CIA and Hasenfus. Said he reports to

people reporting to Bush.'' Richard disclaimed any knowledge of what

this meant, and said that the matter had been referred to the

Independent Counsel. He said that in his notes, ``There is a suggestion

of a relationship to the CIA and the exportation of explosives to

the--countries.''

Richard was then asked: ``And he's alleging or indicating to someone

that he's connected with the CIA and he is reporting to people who

report to Bush?'' Richard answers: ``That's what he's asserting.''

Richard's notes, printed in Appendix B, Volume 23 of the Congressional

Iran-Contra Report, also reference Weekly's toll calls to ``Col. Nestor

Pino, Spec Asst to Undersecretary for Security Assistance,'' apparently

made in September-October 1986, and also ``Phone calls from Weekly to

Alex, Va.--Tom Harvey of NSC,'' apparently on Oct. 30, 1986.

Richard's reference to Tom Harvey is most significant. {EIR'}s

investigations have shown that Harvey was operating out of George Bush's

office, and was definitely one of the ``people who report to Bush.''

Nestor Pino was likewise deeply involved in the drug-ridden Contra

supply operation, which was being run out of Bush's office though Felix

Rodriguez, as well as by Oliver North, under the direct supervision of

Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg.

What has misled many investigators--and has continued to confuse the

issue--is that many of these operatives, even Bush himself, at one point

or another worked for the CIA. But the Contra-drug operation was not a

``CIA'' operation: It was run at a level {higher} than the CIA,

primarily through military and private networks deployed out of the

National Security Council, which in turn was operating in these matters

under the direction of Vice President Bush.

The case at hand--of Ron Lister, Scott Weekly, and Tom Harvey--is a very

good example of how such things actually worked, in contrast to popular

fairy tales about the ``CIA.''

Who is Ron Lister?

Before discussing Lister's ``friends,'' a few salient facts about Lister

himself.

The investigation of the Blandon drug ring--the Contra-linked

cocaine-smuggling operation featured in the controversial {San Jose

Mercury News} series last Fall--appears to have begun in late 1984, with

a probe into a Colombian money-laundering operation in the city of Bell,

California, near southeast Los Angeles. The police officer who initiated

the investigation, which was done at the request of agents from the U.S.

Internal Revenue Service and Customs Service, identified former Laguna

Beach police officer Ronald Lister as transporting large amounts of

cocaine and ``millions of dollars'' for Danilo.

During interviews with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department last year,

as part of their internal investigation of the {San Jose Mercury News}

series, Lister acknowledged that he and Blandon were in the drug

business, and he told Sheriff's investigators that ``he had moved -60

million for Blandon.'' Lister also admitted that he himself had been a

user of cocaine from 1985 to 1989.

In a well-researched article in the May 22 issue of the {Los Angeles

Weekly}, investigative reporter Nick Schou has documented some of

Lister's ties to former CIA officials. A San Diego weapons dealer,

Timothy LaFrance (mentioned in Mark Richard's notes), told Schou that

Lister's company, Pyramid International Security Consultants, was a

``private vendor that the CIA used'' to do things that the agency itself

couldn't do. LaFrance said he had made a number of trips to Central

America with Lister, providing weapons to the Contras. Another employee

of Pyramid was Paul Wilker, a former CIA officer who, after leaving the

CIA, had worked for a company called ``Intersect'' in Orange County,

California. One of the founders of Intersect was still another former

CIA officer, John Vandewerker. Vanderwerker told reporter Schou that he

had met Lister through Wilker, his former employee. Vanderwerker also

said that either Lister or Wilker had helped him apply for a job at

Fluor Corporation, the large construction firm, with Bill Nelson, then

Fluor's vice president for security and administration. Nelson was a

well-known figure, having been the CIA Deputy Director for Operations in

the 1973-76 period. According to Schou, Nelson, Wilker, and Vanderwerker

all retired from the agency around 1976, when they set up Intersect.

(This was prior to the late 1970s purge of the CIA's Operations

Directorate under Adm. Stansfield Turner; the Turner housecleaning spun

off many of the privatized ``asteroid'' operations, which then played

such an important role during the 1980s.)

To round out the picture of Lister's associates, we note that in ten

pages of notes seized from Lister's house in the 1986 raid, is a list of

six names, which starts with Bill Nelson, and ends with Roberto

D'Aubuisson, the military strongman of El Salvador in that period.

Also in the list is Scott Weekly. Elsewhere in Lister's ten paes of

notes, he had written: ``I had regular meeting with DIA Subcontractor

Scott Weekly. Scott had worked in El Salvador for us. Meeting concerned

my relationship with the Contra grp. in Cent. Am.''

Ron Lister's `friends in Washington'

Recall, that among the names mentioned in Mark Richard's notes were

those of Nestor Pino and Tom Harvey.

Nestor Pino, an Army colonel, worked with one William Bode; both Pino

and bode were designated as special assistants to the Undersecretary of

State for Security Assistance. Pino was posted to the State Department

from the Pentagon's Defense Security Assistance Agency. Both Bode and

Pino were deeply involved in the then-secret program supplying arms and

supplies to the Contras. This program is often described as ``guns down,

drugs back.'' It is not surprising, therefore, that Pino and Bode were

also both closely tied to Felix Rodriguez, one of the top drug-runners

in the Contra operation, who was directly deployed out of Bush's office

through Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg--another former

CIA official.

It was William Bode who introduced Felix Rodriguez to Oliver North in

December 1984, as Rodriguez was on his way to meet with Gregg. (A few

weeks after this, Gregg introduced Rodriguez personally to Bush, in the

Vice Presidents's office.)

In his book {Shadow Warrior}, Rodriguez describes Pino as a close buddy

of his from the days of the Bay of Pigs ``2506 Brigade.'' Rodriguez says

that at the ``2506'' training camp in Guatemala, he became friends with

both Nestor Pino, and with Jose Basulto--more recently known for his

provocative actions as part of the ``Brothers to the Rescue'' operation.

Scott Weekly's involvement with Bode and Pino came about in the

following way. In August 1986, Bode contacted Col. James ``Bo'' Gritz,

the retired, highly decorated special forces commander, and asked him to

come to Washington to discuss a training program for Afghanistan

mujahideen general-staff officers--another of the clandestine operations

being run by the intelligence community simultaneously with the Contra

operation. Gritz meet with Bode and Pino at the State Department twice

in early August, and then, with his longtime associate Scott Weekly,

launched a training program in unconventional warfare for the Afghanis,

conducted on federal land in Nevada.

The training program, as Gritz later testified, was financed by ,000,

paid through Albert Hakim's Stanford Technology Group--one of the

companies used by Oliver North, Richard Secord, et al. for shipping arms

to Iran and to the Contras. The Stanford group was found by Iran-Contra

Independent Counsel prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to have been at the heart

of what he called ``The Enterprise.''

Now, there is no evidence whatsoever that Gritz had any knowledge of

Weekly's ties to the drug-dealer and money-launderer Ron Lister, much

less any involvement in it. Indeed, Gritz is well-known for his

opposition to drug trafficking; he was prosecuted by the federal

government in the late 1980s after exposing the role of certain

Reagan-Bush government officials in drug smuggling in Southeast Asia--as

we shall see below.

Scott Weekly was a weapons specialist, working as part of a team created

by Gritz, after Gritz had been requested in 1979 by the deputy director

of the Defense Intelligence Agency to officially resign from the U.S.

Army, and carry out a private intelligence operation in Southeast Asia.

Gritz's team carried out a number of U.S. government-backed missions

into Thailand, Laos, and Burma between 1982 and 1986, to determine

whether America POWs were still alive in Southeast Asia.

In his 1991 book {Called To Serve,} Gritz described how he formed a

``private'' team with the assistance of the DIA, CIA, and the Army's

Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). The ISA was a secret Army special

operations unit, involved in counter-terrorist activity, and also in

support for the Nicaraguan Contras in Central America. Sworn evidence

exists showing that, during most of the 1980s, Gritz was reporting to

military intelligence officials through an intermediary known as a

``cut-out.''

To return to our narrative: In late October 1986, as the first round of

the Afghan training program was being completed, and just before the Los

Angeles Sheriff's raid on the Blandon drug ring, Gritz was contacted by

an NSC staff officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Harvey. (The misnamed ``NSC

staff'' is not a staff for the National Security Council, but it serves

the President--and in this case the vice president--on national security

matters.)

Colonel Harvey told Gritz that information had recently been given to

Vice President Bush indicating that Burmese drug lord Khun Sa had

information on U.S. prisoners of war still being detained in Southeast

Asia. Harvey asked Gritz if he could go to the Golden Triangle area of

Southeast Asia to attempt to verify this report. He could, Gritz said,

but he told Harvey that he would need special documents for such a

mission.

A few days later, Harvey told Gritz to come to Washington. On Oct. 29,

1986, Gritz and Scott Weekly flew there, and met Harvey near the White

House. Harvey provided them with two letters, one for Gritz on White

House letterhead, and one for Weekly on National Security Council

letterhead, stating that Gritz and Weekly were cooperating with the U.S.

government.

The letter given to Weekly states:

``The bearer and undersigned of the only original of this document is

David Scott Weekly. Mr. Weekly is cooperating in determining the

authenticity of reported U.S. prisoner of war sightings....

``Mr. Weekly is an operational agent cooperating with this office....''

This was Oct. 29. Mark Richard's notes also indicate a toll call by

Weekly to Tom Harvey the next day.

`CIA' was the cover story

As to the claims by Lister, Weekly, and others that Weekly was working

for the CIA, Gritz has more recently had a number of highly pertinent

things to say.

In his {Center for Action} newsletter, Dec. 5, 1996, while discussing

the FBI's confusion over whom Weekly worked for when he was working for

Gritz, Gritz wrote:

``The FBI never knew exactly who I was working for.''

Gritz indicates that he was working for ISA--the Army's Intelligence

Support Activity, and explains:

``The truth is that the initials `ISA' were above Top Secret to the

point where CIA was our cover. ISA worked directly for the National

Security Council.''

Gritz then says that he initially worked for DIA, and was then

transferred to J-5 (Strategic Plans and Policy) of the Joint Chiefs of

Staff, when his POW operations went into the field.

``Toward the end it was ISA that picked up the effort.''

He describes how he was called into the White House by Adm. Bobby Inman,

then deputy director of the CIA, just before the POW mission was taken

away from ISA and given back to DIA.

Gritz continues:

``It is no wonder the FBI had no idea who was actually carrying the

ball! Scott Weekly never worked for DIA--he worked for me.''

When Gritz was reached by {EIR}, he confirmed and elaborated what he had

written in his newsletter. Gritz disavowed any knowledge of a link

between Weekly and Ron Lister, and said that Weekly only had a few

contacts with the CIA, and that those were through Gritz. Gritz

confirmed that he himself was actually working for the ISA.

``It was identified, incorrectly, as a low-level Army intelligence

effort,''

Gritz explained,

``but it really worked directly for the National Security Council.

Otherwise, how in the hell could we have been doing all the weird things

we were doing? And we used the CIA as a cover, when you had to get

messages, and this kind of stuff.''

``When I came on board,''

Gritz continued,

``I was carefully briefed: `We are not under the CIA, we are not under

Defense Intelligence; we work for the National Security Council.'|''

He also said that ISA coordinated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which

provided the ``muscle'' for ISA, using Delta Force special operations

forces.

Tom Harvey, Bush, and `the families'

Now, to the matter of Col. Thomas Harvey.

Thomas Nelson Harvey graduated from West Point in the early 1970s, and

was posted to a SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe)

support group position. In 1975, he trained as a Foreign Area Specialist

in Yugoslav studies. Harvey was later assigned to the headquarters of

the Ninth Army Division (which has responsibilities throughout the

Pacific), and in 1983 attended the Command and General Staff College,

thus becoming eligible to serve with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Informed sources indicate that Harvey is a proteage of Richard Armitage,

who was Assistant Secretary of State for International Affairs. Armitage

is a notorious intelligence community ``Asia hand'' whose career has

been colored with allegations of gun running, drug smuggling, and

privateering on a grand scale. During Gritz's mission to Khun Sa in

1986, Khun Sa identified Armitage as playing a central role in ``Golden

Triangle'' drug trafficking--which has some bearing on Harvey's behavior

after Gritz returned from his 1986 mission.

>From 1983 until his retirement in 1991, Harvey was usually listed in

Pentagon directories as located in the office of the Deputy Chief of

Staff of the Army; he was, among other things, a speechwriter

responsible for space, arms control, and low-intensity operations.

According to his own testimony, he held numerous sensitive intelligence

positions during that time. Among these, were his serving as a military

assistant to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he worked

closely with Senators Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and John Warner (R-Va.).

Asked about Tom Harvey, Gritz told this reporter that Harvey was

actually working out of George Bush's office.

``Harvey was the military adviser to Sen. John Warner, and he was also,

of course, in the NSC, working in the Vice President's Office--George

Bush at the time,''

Gritz said.

``Harvey was the Ollie North look-alike for George Bush.''

It was apparently while Harvey was at the NSC in 1985-86, that he was

instrumental in the creation of a bizarre ``private'' paramilitary unit

in Loudoun County, Virginia, called ``ARGUS'' (Armored Response Group

U.S.). ARGUS's ostensible purpose was to provide surplus armored

military equipment for use in ``anti-terrorist'' and other crisis

situations by local law enforcement agencies in the mid-Atlantic region.

Among its acquisitions were a C-130 military aircraft, an armored

personnel carrier, and an armored forklift.

One of the few times that ARGUS equipment was actually deployed, to be

on standby, was during the Oct. 6-7, 1986 raid, by federal, state, and

local agents, on the offices of organizations associated with Lyndon

LaRouche in Leesburg, Virginia. That raid was officially run by the FBI,

but it was later learned that planning for the raid included the ``focal

point'' office of the J-3 Special Operations Division of the Pentagon's

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two truckloads of seized documents were taken to

highly secure U.S. Marine Corps facilities at Henderson Hall in

Arlington, Virginia, where they were presumably culled over by

intelligence specialists, before being reviewed by state and federal

prosecutors.

ARGUS was a project of the oligarchal families based in the Loudoun

County ``Hunt Country'' (see article, p.|64). Magalen Ohrstrom Bryant

and John W. Hanes were both officials and funders of ARGUS; at the same

time, Bryant and Hanes were both funding Oliver North's secret Contra

operations as well.

In 1988, by which time Harvey was posted to Senator Warner's staff, he

was able to set up ARGUS's training base at the Army's Cameron Station

base in Alexandria, Virginia. ARGUS also housed some of its specialized

armored vehicles at Cameron Station. iven that ARGUS was supposedly a

completely private operation, this was rather extraordinary--except that

ARGUS was obviously {not} ``private;'' it was rather part of the

{privatized} military-intelligence operations which flourished under the

authority of Executive Order 12333 and Bush's ``secret government''

apparatus.

After his retirement from active military service in 1991, Harvey

continued to work for these same intelligence-related ``family''

networks. He became the chairman and CEO of the Global Environmental &

Technology Foundation. On Global's Board of Directors, naturally, is

Maggie Bryant, also listed as chairperson of the National Fish and

Wildlife Foundation. It is reported that Harvey was personally selected

for this role by Maggie Bryant, who has called him one of her most

trusted operatives. Among Global's projects is what is called the

``Defense and Environmental Initiative,'' which, in their words,

involves ``integrating environmental considerations into America's

national and international security mission.''

`Erase and forget'

Now, back to Gritz's dealings with Tom Harvey in 1986-87.

Gritz and his team, including Scott Weekly, did go to Burma, where they

met with Khun Sa. Khun Sa told Gritz that he did not have any American

POWs, but he proposed a deal with the United States: that he would stop

all drug flows out of the Golden Triangle, in return for recognition of

his Shan State. He would guarantee the eradication of opium production

in the Golden Triangle, which was the major source of heroin coming into

the United States--although it was rapidly being supplanted by drugs

from the ``Golden Crescent'' of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a by-product

of the arms and money flowing into the Afghan War. The parallels between

the Bush ``secret government'' clandestine operations in Central

American and those in Afghanistan are striking: The net result of both

was a massive increase in drugs coming from those areas into the United

States. Guns and drugs, like love and marriage, go together like the

proverbial horse and carriage. (The Afghan operation gave us something

else: the world-wide British-controlled terrorist network known today as

the ``Afghansi.'')

The other thing which Khun Sa offered--even more explosive--was that he

would name the names of U.S. government officials involved in illegal

arms and drug trafficking.

Gritz and his team returned just before Christmas, 1986. In his book,

Gritz reports that he submitted his after-action report to Harvey; a few

days later, Harvey called. When Gritz asked Harvey about the reaction to

Khun Sa's proposal to stop the drug trade, Harvey told Gritz:

``Bo, there's no one around here who supports that.''

Gritz's account continues:

``I reminded him that Vice President George H.W. Bush was appointed by

his boss, the President of the United States, as the `Number-One Cop'

for stopping drugs before they got to the United States. Reagan had

declared war on drugs, and Bush was his so-called `Czar.'"

Harvey reiterated, this time in a more forcible tone,

{`Bo, what can I tell you? There's no interest in doing that.'}

``I knew then that we were treading on some very sensitive toes,'' Gritz

writes, ``but I didn't know whose.''

Almost immediately, Scott Weekly was charged with illegal shipments of

explosives (the C4 used in the Afghani training program) and he was

induced to plead guilty without a trial, and even without a lawyer.

In May 1987, Gritz was told in no uncertain terms to cease and desist

all of his activities related to the Golden Triangle and drugs. He was

contacted by Joseph Felter, his close friend and the former head of

Wedtech, the scandalized defense contractor. Felter told Gritz that he

was conveying a message from Tom Harvey and a State Department official

named William Davis: that Gritz was to ``erase and forget'' everything

about his trip to the Golden Triangle. Felter told Gritz that Harvey and

Davis said that ``if you don't stop everything you're doing ... you're

gonna serve 15 years in prison as a felon!'' (Felter later confirmed the

thrust of his remarks, and that he was acting on behalf of Harvey, in a

sworn affidavit.)

Gritz was at the time about to be charged with using a false passport,

for travelling to Southeast Asia on a passport in a different name which

had in fact been provided to him by the U.S. government, through the

NSC-run ISA. Gritz was also threatened with charges for neutrality

violations, for the Afghan training operation. Gritz says that when he

was finally indicted in 1989, Tom Harvey showed up, and told him

privately:

``Bo, we're so angry with you! Your focus is supposed to be prisoners of

war. Why do you insist on getting involved in this government drug

operation?''

The coverup continues to this day. The attacks on Bo Gritz to prevent

exposure of the U.S. government complicity in the Golden Triangle drug

trade, and the frantic efforts in late 1986-87 to suppress any exposure

of the Contra drugs-for-guns dealings--as shows up in the Lister-Weekly

case--were clearly one and the same.

And in both cases, we see that the trail leads directly to the same

place: George Bush.

1. For a more thorough description and documentation of this structure,

which operated under the authority of Executive Order 12333 and various

National Security Decision Directives, see the two {EIR Special

Reports}: ``Would a President Bob Dole Prosecute Drug Super-Kingpin

George Bush?'' September 1996; and ``George Bush and the 12333 Serial

Murder Ring,'' October 1996.

Bush, `Lords of Loudoun' caught pushing drugs, genocide

by Jeffrey Steinberg

Just as George Bush and Oliver North were celebrating a recent

``apology'' by the editor-in-chief of the {San Jose Mercury News,} over

last August's ``Dark Alliance'' story linking the U.S. government-backed

Nicaraguan Contras to the launching of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los

Angeles, dramatic new evidence has surfaced, not only confirming the

direct role of the former vice president and President in the drug

trafficking. The evidence further links Bush to a network of Virginia

Hunt Country barons, centered in Loudoun County, Virginia, who were in

on the ground floor of the operations that have led to the recent years'

mass genocide in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Through his involvement with the Canada-based Barrick Gold Corp., Bush

has already been deeply implicated in the genocide in Zaire, which has

been conducted on behalf of the rapacious London strategic raw material

cartels, whose stated policy is to ``de-Africanize'' the Great Lakes

region, while grabbing up the raw materials wealth of the African

continent.

Among the ``Lords of Loudoun'' linked to Bush in the drugs and genocide

scandals, are Sir Paul Mellon, Arthur Arundel, Magalen Ohrstrom Bryant,

her step-son, Herbert Bryant, and their man on Capitol Hill, Rep. Frank

Wolf (R-Va.). Most of these individuals, in addition to being intimates

of the Bush clan, are on similarly close terms with the current members

of the House of Windsor, including Sir Paul Mellon's occasional house

guest, Queen Elizabeth II. A real-life Elmer Gantry, Rev. ``Diamond''

Pat Robertson, is yet another Bush-tamed creature who has gleefully

jumped into the Africa raw materials grab, and the resulting genocide.

Some of these same individuals were involved, with Bush, in the 1984-89

judicial frame-up and aborted assassination attempt against Lyndon

LaRouche. In particular, those Hunt Country networks were deeply

involved through an illegal paramilitary group, ``Armed Response Group,

U.S.'' (Argus), in the Oct. 6, 1986 Waco-style government armed military

assault on the publishing offices and residence of LaRouche and his

associates in Leesburg, Virginia, and the subsequent railroad

prosecutions of a dozen LaRouche associates in the Commonwealth Court of

Virginia. Five of those LaRouche associates--Michael Billington, Paul

Gallagher, Anita Gallagher, Laurence Hecht, and Donald Phau--are still

behind bars, serving outrageous sentences, ranging from 25-77 years in

jail, for alleged ``securities'' violations which never happened.

New Bush ties to guns-for-drugs revealed

The new revelations emerge from material published in the May 23-29

issue of the {Los Angeles Weekly}, in an article by investigative

reporter Nick Schou. Relying on previously unavailable documents and

eyewitness accounts, Shou detailed the role of former Laguna Beach,

California police officer Ronald Lister in the Norwin Meneses, Danilo

Blandon, and ``Freeway'' Ricky Ross cocaine-trafficking organization,

and showed that Lister was, at the same time, involved in supplying arms

to the Contras, through clandestine arms manufacturing plants in El

Salvador. While he was in the center of a Contra cocaine-for-arms

pipeline that stretched from southern California to Central America,

Lister was reporting to former Navy SEAL David Scott Weekly, according

to his own testimony to Los Angeles County sheriffs, who raided his home

in 1986 as part of a crackdown on the Ross-Blandon crack cocaine

distribution ring.

Weekly, in turn, was working for Tom Harvey, {in the office of Vice

President Bush.} Former Vietnam War hero Col. Bo Gritz, who worked

closely with Weekly and Harvey at this time, described Harvey as Bush's

``Ollie North look-alike.''

The tying of Harvey to the West Coast cocaine- and gun-smuggling ring is

the crucial new piece of ``closure'' provided by the Schou story. At the

same time that he was part of the Bush liaison team to the Contra crew

on the West Coast, via Weekly, Harvey was functioning as one of the Bush

office liaisons to the Loudoun County oligarchical families. To this

day, in fact, Harvey is on the payroll of the Ohrstrom Bryant family,

through an Annandale, Virginia outfit called Global Environmental

Technology Foundation.

Back in the mid-1980s, on behalf of the vice president, Harvey was

involved in the creation of Argus, a private paramilitary group, linked

to a crew of rabidly Anglophilic Hunt Country families. Through Harvey's

Pentagon ties, Argus obtained used military equipment, including armed

personnel carriers, and stored the equipment at the U.S. Army storage

facility at Cameron Station, Virginia. Ultimately, the equipment was

transferred to facilities of the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department,

and was used during the anti-LaRouche Leesburg raid. Some of the leading

Hunt Country families involved in Argus, including the Hanes family and

the Ohrstrom Bryant family, were simultaneously pouring money into Bush

and North's cocaine-Contras.

Cover-up of George Bush's role

The {Los Angeles Weekly} expose also tears a big hole in the desperate

effort by friends of George Bush in the major media, to bury the {San

Jose Mercury News} revelations. When {Mercury News} editor Jerry Ceppos

published a signed editorial on May 11, criticizing reporter Gary Webb's

August 1996 three-part series, ``Dark Alliance,'' which exposed the

Meneses-Blandon-Ross crack cocaine ring and its ties to the Contras, the

{New York Times}, the {Los Angeles Times,} and the {Washington Post} all

gave prominent, distorted coverage to the Ceppos statements, falsely

portraying them as a repudiation of the Contra cocaine story. All three

papers had published lengthy stories themselves, attempting to refute

the original Webb stories.

In fact, the {only} error in the Webb ``Dark Alliance'' series was his

failure to identify George Bush as the kingpin of the operation,

focusing, instead, on the CIA.

As {EIR} documented in a September 1996 {Special Report,} ``Would a

President Bob Dole Prosecute Drug Super-Kingpin George Bush?'' Vice

President Bush--not the CIA!--was fully in charge of the secret war in

Central America. Bush's authority derived from a series of Executive

Orders and Presidential Decision Directives, now declassified, that were

signed by President Reagan, beginning in December 1981. Bush personnel,

including Donald Gregg, the vice president's chief national security

aide, and former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, maintained hands-on

control over the cocaine-for-guns pipeline running from Colombia, to

Central America, and to cities all across the United States, according

to qualified eyewitness sources, including former El Salvador-based Drug

Enforcement Administration agent Celerino Castillo.

With Sir George Bush now aggressively pushing his son, Texas Gov. George

W. Bush, to become the leading candidate for the Republican Party

Presidential nomination in the year 2000, it became a matter of great

urgency for the former President to bury the Contra cocaine scandal once

and for all. The efforts of the {New York Times}, the {Washington Post,}

and the {Los Angeles Times} to assist in the Bush cover-up have now gone

up in smoke, as you will read in the articles that follow

-----

Aloha, He'Ping,

Om, Shalom, Salaam.

Em Hotep, Peace Be,

Omnia Bona Bonis,

All My Relations.

Adieu, Adios, Aloha.

Amen.

Roads End