December 29, 2001

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A Narco News Global Alert

INTERPOL Seeks Banzer in Bolivia

-- General Cancels Washington Trip

-- Argentina Presses Charges

-- Italy Has Collected Evidence

-- Mrs. Banzer Accused in Spain

http://www.narconews.com/

Dear Colleagues,

The complicity of United States media correspondents in

Latin America in the

silence that protects those war criminals supported by

Washington has never

been clearer than this week.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, is crawling with U.S.

correspondents, due to the

recent upheavals caused by the failure of the dollarization

of the Argentine

economy that had been imposed by the World Bank and the

International

Monetary Fund, and led Argentine president Fernando de la

Rua to resign and

flee.

This week, right under the noses of this overpopulation of

North American

reporters, a Federal Judge in Argentina ordered the arrest

and capture of

former Bolivian dictator-turned-"president" Hugo Banzer,

for his

participation in the brutal alliance of South American

dictators in the

1970s known as Operation Condor.

But has a single United States newspaper or North American

wire service

reported this inconvenient news in English?

No, and through its silence, the North American media --

and its inauthentic

journalists, as individuals -- make themselves complicit in

crimes against

humanity.

For example, how proud can the Washington Post's Marcela

Sanchez be, today,

of her November 30th puff piece on Banzer's hand-picked

successor, Jorge

Quiroga, now that Quiroga impedes INTERPOL's extradition

warrant against his

former boss?

Or, at the New York Times Buenos Aires bureau, where are

the official hitmen

who pose as "journalists," Larry Rohter and Clifford

Krauss, who purportedly

are assigned to report the news from this region?

It is as if the arrest warrant comes for them too: they are

in hiding from

this story.

The Bolivian government, headed by Banzer's former Vice

President and

protege Jorge Quiroga, continues to give haven to this war

criminal, who,

according to the evidence collected in Argentina, Italy and

Spain,

participated in an international plot to detain, torture,

disappear and

assassinate opposition leaders, and, in those cases where

the leaders were

young mothers, conspired to kidnap their infant children

and sell them on

the black market.

This story is hard news, and not only because an arrest

warrant has been

issued for a former head of State.

The element of this story that gives it currency is how

today's regime in

Bolivia, and its presiding Viceroy -- US Ambassador Manuel

Rocha -- are

committing the crime of obstruction of justice.

To Washington, Banzer must be protected at all costs, lest

he spill the

secrets of the Narco-State and those who protected him as

he built it. As a

military general, a dictator and a president, Banzer

presided over the

development of the South American model for the modern

Narco-State: the

denial of democracy and civil liberties in the name of the

"war on drugs,"

while allowing military and government operatives to

control and profit off

the illicit cocaine trade; a model that Quiroga and his

Viceroy Rocha

preside over today.

The international arrest warrant and prosecution of Banzer

opens a window to

the darkest secrets of the US-imposed "war on drugs": a

"war" that requires

brutal repression and the prevention of democracy in our

hemisphere. Today,

Narco News publishes a new translation of various stories

from the national