{"article":{"id":132548,"heading":"Evidence links George Bush to Los Angeles drug operation","author":"see-art","created":"2005-07-15 13:53:16","modified":"2005-08-15 00:14:24","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:14:24","article":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p>from: <br>  <br> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bwbadge.com\/bush.htm\">http:\/\/www.bwbadge.com\/bush.htm<\/a> <br>  <br> <a href='\"&lt;a'>http:\/\/www.bwbadge.com\/bush.htm&amp;quot<\/a>;&gt;Bush linked to Los Angeles Drug <br>  <br> Operation <br>  <br> ----- <br>  <br> New evidence links George Bush to Los Angeles drug operation <br><br> by Edward Spannaus <br><br> On Oct. 27, 1986, federal and local law enforcement officials executed <br>  <br> search warrants on more than a dozen locations connected to a major <br>  <br> cocaine-trafficking ring in southern California centered around Danilo <br>  <br> Blandon.. One of the locations raided was the home of a former Laguna <br>  <br> Beach police officer by the name of Ronald Lister. <br><br> Los Angeles Sheriff's Department detectives reported that when they <br>  <br> raided Lister's house, they found ``films of military operations in <br>  <br> Central America, technical manuals, information on assorted military <br>  <br> hardware and communications, and numerous documents indicating that drug <br>  <br> money was being used to purchase military equipment for Central <br>  <br> America.'' Documents were also found which diagrammed ``the route of <br>  <br> drug money out of the United States, back into the United States <br>  <br> purchasing weaponry for the Contras.'' <br><br> An official report by one of the detectives from the 1986 raid stated: <br>  <br> ``Mr. Lister ... told me he had dealings in South America and worked <br>  <br> with the CIA and added that his friends in Washington weren't going to <br>  <br> like what was going on. I told Mr. Lister that we were not interested in <br>  <br> his business in South America. Mr. Lister replied that he would call Mr. <br>  <br> Weekly of the CIA and report me.'' <br><br> New evidence has now surfaced showing who some of Lister's ``friends in <br>  <br> Washington'' were, and we shall see that these ``friends'' ran all the <br>  <br> way up to the Office of the Vice President, at that time George Bush. <br>  <br> Mark Richard's tell-tale notes <br><br> Around the same time as the October 1986 drug raid, ``Mr. Weekly,'' <br>  <br> whose full name is David Scott Weekly, became the subject of a federal <br>  <br> investigation opened for the purpose of prosecuting him on federal <br>  <br> explosives charges. According to later testimony, this investigation was <br>  <br> under way for some time before Weekly himself first learned about it, <br>  <br> which was on Dec. 21-22, 1986. <br><br> But ten days before Weekly learned that he was being targetted, Bill <br>  <br> Price, the U.S. Attorney in Oklahoma City handling Weekly's case, had a <br>  <br> telephone conversation with a top official at Justice Department <br>  <br> headquarters about some of the stickier aspects of the investigation. <br>  <br> The official to whom Price talked was Mark Richard, a Deputy Assistant <br>  <br> Attorney General in the Criminal Division, and the career Justice <br>  <br> Department official who served as the Department's liaison to the <br>  <br> intelligence agencies. <br><br> The question arises: What might have triggered this conversation between <br>  <br> Mark Richard--the DOJ's point of contact for the NSC, CIA, and military <br>  <br> intelligence agencies--and the Oklahoma prosecutor? <br><br> First of all, on Oct. 5, 1986, a C-123 cargo plane, flying from El <br>  <br> Salvador's Ilopango military air base, had been shot down over <br>  <br> Nicaragua. Three crewmen were killed, and the fourth, Eugene Hasenfus, <br>  <br> was captured by the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. This was the beginning of <br>  <br> the public unravelling of what became known as the ``Iran-Contra'' <br>  <br> affair. <br><br> Then came the Oct. 27 raid in Los Angeles, after which the Los Angeles <br>  <br> FBI office communicated to FBI headquarters what had transpired, <br>  <br> including Lister's claims of involvement in arming the Contras, and his <br>  <br> citation of ``Mr. Weekly'' as being ``CIA'' and a ``DIA <br>  <br> subcontractor''--referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency. (The FBI <br>  <br> had already interviewed a businessman to whom Lister had bragged, on <br>  <br> Aug. 1, that he was involved in arming the Contras, and that his arms <br>  <br> deals were ``CIA approved.'') <br><br> On Nov. 10, 1986, the FBI sent a teletype to various sections of the <br>  <br> CIA, inquiring about Lister, Blandon, Weekly, and some others. The <br>  <br> inquiry, over the name of the FBI Director, asked diplomatically if any <br>  <br> of these individuals were ``of operational interest'' to the CIA. <br><br> FBI documents also show that a teletype was sent to FBI headquarters on <br>  <br> Dec. 9, followed up by a phone conversation with an FBI supervisor on <br>  <br> Dec. 11--the same day that Mark Richard spoke to the prosecutor in <br>  <br> Oklahoma City--who was at the time secretly preparing his case against <br>  <br> Scott Weekly. <br><br> In August 1987--less than a year later--Mark Richard was required to <br>  <br> give testimony in the Congressional Iran-Contra investigation. While <br>  <br> being interrogated about various matters in which there were allegations <br>  <br> of Justice Department interference in Contra-related cases, Richard was <br>  <br> specifically questioned about handwritten notes he had made during his <br>  <br> Dec. 11 conversation with prosecutor Bill Price. Richard said that Bill <br>  <br> Hendricks of the DOJ's Public Integrity Section, which was dealing with <br>  <br> a lot of the Iran-Contra matters, had previously been in touch with <br>  <br> Price. After examining his own notes, Richard said that the conversation <br>  <br> pertained to ``an individual who had been arrested and his possible <br>  <br> involvement in some CIA\/Contra-related activities.'' (In fact, Scott <br>  <br> Weekly was out of the country on Dec. 11, and had not yet been <br>  <br> arrested.) <br><br> Richard was asked about the portion of the notes which read: ``Weekly <br>  <br> posts on tape that he's tied into CIA and Hasenfus. Said he reports to <br>  <br> people reporting to Bush.'' Richard disclaimed any knowledge of what <br>  <br> this meant, and said that the matter had been referred to the <br>  <br> Independent Counsel. He said that in his notes, ``There is a suggestion <br>  <br> of a relationship to the CIA and the exportation of explosives to <br>  <br> the--countries.'' <br><br> Richard was then asked: ``And he's alleging or indicating to someone <br>  <br> that he's connected with the CIA and he is reporting to people who <br>  <br> report to Bush?'' Richard answers: ``That's what he's asserting.'' <br><br> Richard's notes, printed in Appendix B, Volume 23 of the Congressional <br>  <br> Iran-Contra Report, also reference Weekly's toll calls to ``Col. Nestor <br>  <br> Pino, Spec Asst to Undersecretary for Security Assistance,'' apparently <br>  <br> made in September-October 1986, and also ``Phone calls from Weekly to <br>  <br> Alex, Va.--Tom Harvey of NSC,'' apparently on Oct. 30, 1986. <br><br> Richard's reference to Tom Harvey is most significant. {EIR'}s <br>  <br> investigations have shown that Harvey was operating out of George Bush's <br>  <br> office, and was definitely one of the ``people who report to Bush.'' <br>  <br> Nestor Pino was likewise deeply involved in the drug-ridden Contra <br>  <br> supply operation, which was being run out of Bush's office though Felix <br>  <br> Rodriguez, as well as by Oliver North, under the direct supervision of <br>  <br> Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg. <br><br> What has misled many investigators--and has continued to confuse the <br>  <br> issue--is that many of these operatives, even Bush himself, at one point <br>  <br> or another worked for the CIA. But the Contra-drug operation was not a <br>  <br> ``CIA'' operation: It was run at a level {higher} than the CIA, <br>  <br> primarily through military and private networks deployed out of the <br>  <br> National Security Council, which in turn was operating in these matters <br>  <br> under the direction of Vice President Bush. <br><br> The case at hand--of Ron Lister, Scott Weekly, and Tom Harvey--is a very <br>  <br> good example of how such things actually worked, in contrast to popular <br>  <br> fairy tales about the ``CIA.'' <br>  <br> Who is Ron Lister? <br><br> Before discussing Lister's ``friends,'' a few salient facts about Lister <br>  <br> himself. <br><br> The investigation of the Blandon drug ring--the Contra-linked <br>  <br> cocaine-smuggling operation featured in the controversial {San Jose <br>  <br> Mercury News} series last Fall--appears to have begun in late 1984, with <br>  <br> a probe into a Colombian money-laundering operation in the city of Bell, <br>  <br> California, near southeast Los Angeles. The police officer who initiated <br>  <br> the investigation, which was done at the request of agents from the U.S. <br>  <br> Internal Revenue Service and Customs Service, identified former Laguna <br>  <br> Beach police officer Ronald Lister as transporting large amounts of <br>  <br> cocaine and ``millions of dollars'' for Danilo. <br><br> During interviews with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department last year, <br>  <br> as part of their internal investigation of the {San Jose Mercury News} <br>  <br> series, Lister acknowledged that he and Blandon were in the drug <br>  <br> business, and he told Sheriff's investigators that ``he had moved $50-60 <br>  <br> million for Blandon.'' Lister also admitted that he himself had been a <br>  <br> user of cocaine from 1985 to 1989. <br><br> In a well-researched article in the May 22 issue of the {Los Angeles <br>  <br> Weekly}, investigative reporter Nick Schou has documented some of <br>  <br> Lister's ties to former CIA officials. A San Diego weapons dealer, <br>  <br> Timothy LaFrance (mentioned in Mark Richard's notes), told Schou that <br>  <br> Lister's company, Pyramid International Security Consultants, was a <br>  <br> ``private vendor that the CIA used'' to do things that the agency itself <br>  <br> couldn't do. LaFrance said he had made a number of trips to Central <br>  <br> America with Lister, providing weapons to the Contras. Another employee <br>  <br> of Pyramid was Paul Wilker, a former CIA officer who, after leaving the <br>  <br> CIA, had worked for a company called ``Intersect'' in Orange County, <br>  <br> California. One of the founders of Intersect was still another former <br>  <br> CIA officer, John Vandewerker. Vanderwerker told reporter Schou that he <br>  <br> had met Lister through Wilker, his former employee. Vanderwerker also <br>  <br> said that either Lister or Wilker had helped him apply for a job at <br>  <br> Fluor Corporation, the large construction firm, with Bill Nelson, then <br>  <br> Fluor's vice president for security and administration. Nelson was a <br>  <br> well-known figure, having been the CIA Deputy Director for Operations in <br>  <br> the 1973-76 period. According to Schou, Nelson, Wilker, and Vanderwerker <br>  <br> all retired from the agency around 1976, when they set up Intersect. <br>  <br> (This was prior to the late 1970s purge of the CIA's Operations <br>  <br> Directorate under Adm. Stansfield Turner; the Turner housecleaning spun <br>  <br> off many of the privatized ``asteroid'' operations, which then played <br>  <br> such an important role during the 1980s.) <br><br> To round out the picture of Lister's associates, we note that in ten <br>  <br> pages of notes seized from Lister's house in the 1986 raid, is a list of <br>  <br> six names, which starts with Bill Nelson, and ends with Roberto <br>  <br> D'Aubuisson, the military strongman of El Salvador in that period. <br><br> Also in the list is Scott Weekly. Elsewhere in Lister's ten paes of <br>  <br> notes, he had written: ``I had regular meeting with DIA Subcontractor <br>  <br> Scott Weekly. Scott had worked in El Salvador for us. Meeting concerned <br>  <br> my relationship with the Contra grp. in Cent. Am.'' <br>  <br> Ron Lister's `friends in Washington' <br><br> Recall, that among the names mentioned in Mark Richard's notes were <br>  <br> those of Nestor Pino and Tom Harvey. <br><br> Nestor Pino, an Army colonel, worked with one William Bode; both Pino <br>  <br> and bode were designated as special assistants to the Undersecretary of <br>  <br> State for Security Assistance. Pino was posted to the State Department <br>  <br> from the Pentagon's Defense Security Assistance Agency. Both Bode and <br>  <br> Pino were deeply involved in the then-secret program supplying arms and <br>  <br> supplies to the Contras. This program is often described as ``guns down, <br>  <br> drugs back.'' It is not surprising, therefore, that Pino and Bode were <br>  <br> also both closely tied to Felix Rodriguez, one of the top drug-runners <br>  <br> in the Contra operation, who was directly deployed out of Bush's office <br>  <br> through Bush's national security adviser Donald Gregg--another former <br>  <br> CIA official. <br><br> It was William Bode who introduced Felix Rodriguez to Oliver North in <br>  <br> December 1984, as Rodriguez was on his way to meet with Gregg. (A few <br>  <br> weeks after this, Gregg introduced Rodriguez personally to Bush, in the <br>  <br> Vice Presidents's office.) <br><br> In his book {Shadow Warrior}, Rodriguez describes Pino as a close buddy <br>  <br> of his from the days of the Bay of Pigs ``2506 Brigade.'' Rodriguez says <br>  <br> that at the ``2506'' training camp in Guatemala, he became friends with <br>  <br> both Nestor Pino, and with Jose Basulto--more recently known for his <br>  <br> provocative actions as part of the ``Brothers to the Rescue'' operation. <br><br> Scott Weekly's involvement with Bode and Pino came about in the <br>  <br> following way. In August 1986, Bode contacted Col. James ``Bo'' Gritz, <br>  <br> the retired, highly decorated special forces commander, and asked him to <br>  <br> come to Washington to discuss a training program for Afghanistan <br>  <br> mujahideen general-staff officers--another of the clandestine operations <br>  <br> being run by the intelligence community simultaneously with the Contra <br>  <br> operation. Gritz meet with Bode and Pino at the State Department twice <br>  <br> in early August, and then, with his longtime associate Scott Weekly, <br>  <br> launched a training program in unconventional warfare for the Afghanis, <br>  <br> conducted on federal land in Nevada. <br><br> The training program, as Gritz later testified, was financed by $50,000, <br>  <br> paid through Albert Hakim's Stanford Technology Group--one of the <br>  <br> companies used by Oliver North, Richard Secord, et al. for shipping arms <br>  <br> to Iran and to the Contras. The Stanford group was found by Iran-Contra <br>  <br> Independent Counsel prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to have been at the heart <br>  <br> of what he called ``The Enterprise.'' <br><br> Now, there is no evidence whatsoever that Gritz had any knowledge of <br>  <br> Weekly's ties to the drug-dealer and money-launderer Ron Lister, much <br>  <br> less any involvement in it. Indeed, Gritz is well-known for his <br>  <br> opposition to drug trafficking; he was prosecuted by the federal <br>  <br> government in the late 1980s after exposing the role of certain <br>  <br> Reagan-Bush government officials in drug smuggling in Southeast Asia--as <br>  <br> we shall see below. <br><br> Scott Weekly was a weapons specialist, working as part of a team created <br>  <br> by Gritz, after Gritz had been requested in 1979 by the deputy director <br>  <br> of the Defense Intelligence Agency to officially resign from the U.S. <br>  <br> Army, and carry out a private intelligence operation in Southeast Asia. <br>  <br> Gritz's team carried out a number of U.S. government-backed missions <br>  <br> into Thailand, Laos, and Burma between 1982 and 1986, to determine <br>  <br> whether America POWs were still alive in Southeast Asia. <br><br> In his 1991 book {Called To Serve,} Gritz described how he formed a <br>  <br> ``private'' team with the assistance of the DIA, CIA, and the Army's <br>  <br> Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). The ISA was a secret Army special <br>  <br> operations unit, involved in counter-terrorist activity, and also in <br>  <br> support for the Nicaraguan Contras in Central America. Sworn evidence <br>  <br> exists showing that, during most of the 1980s, Gritz was reporting to <br>  <br> military intelligence officials through an intermediary known as a <br>  <br> ``cut-out.'' <br><br> To return to our narrative: In late October 1986, as the first round of <br>  <br> the Afghan training program was being completed, and just before the Los <br>  <br> Angeles Sheriff's raid on the Blandon drug ring, Gritz was contacted by <br>  <br> an NSC staff officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Harvey. (The misnamed ``NSC <br>  <br> staff'' is not a staff for the National Security Council, but it serves <br>  <br> the President--and in this case the vice president--on national security <br>  <br> matters.) <br><br> Colonel Harvey told Gritz that information had recently been given to <br>  <br> Vice President Bush indicating that Burmese drug lord Khun Sa had <br>  <br> information on U.S. prisoners of war still being detained in Southeast <br>  <br> Asia. Harvey asked Gritz if he could go to the Golden Triangle area of <br>  <br> Southeast Asia to attempt to verify this report. He could, Gritz said, <br>  <br> but he told Harvey that he would need special documents for such a <br>  <br> mission. <br><br> A few days later, Harvey told Gritz to come to Washington. On Oct. 29, <br>  <br> 1986, Gritz and Scott Weekly flew there, and met Harvey near the White <br>  <br> House. Harvey provided them with two letters, one for Gritz on White <br>  <br> House letterhead, and one for Weekly on National Security Council <br>  <br> letterhead, stating that Gritz and Weekly were cooperating with the U.S. <br>  <br> government. <br><br> The letter given to Weekly states: <br><br> ``The bearer and undersigned of the only original of this document is <br>  <br> David Scott Weekly. Mr. Weekly is cooperating in determining the <br>  <br> authenticity of reported U.S. prisoner of war sightings.... <br><br> ``Mr. Weekly is an operational agent cooperating with this office....'' <br><br> This was Oct. 29. Mark Richard's notes also indicate a toll call by <br>  <br> Weekly to Tom Harvey the next day. <br>  <br> `CIA' was the cover story <br><br> As to the claims by Lister, Weekly, and others that Weekly was working <br>  <br> for the CIA, Gritz has more recently had a number of highly pertinent <br>  <br> things to say. <br><br> In his {Center for Action} newsletter, Dec. 5, 1996, while discussing <br>  <br> the FBI's confusion over whom Weekly worked for when he was working for <br>  <br> Gritz, Gritz wrote: <br><br> ``The FBI never knew exactly who I was working for.'' <br><br> Gritz indicates that he was working for ISA--the Army's Intelligence <br>  <br> Support Activity, and explains: <br><br> ``The truth is that the initials `ISA' were above Top Secret to the <br>  <br> point where CIA was our cover. ISA worked directly for the National <br>  <br> Security Council.'' <br><br> Gritz then says that he initially worked for DIA, and was then <br>  <br> transferred to J-5 (Strategic Plans and Policy) of the Joint Chiefs of <br>  <br> Staff, when his POW operations went into the field. <br><br> ``Toward the end it was ISA that picked up the effort.'' <br><br> He describes how he was called into the White House by Adm. Bobby Inman, <br>  <br> then deputy director of the CIA, just before the POW mission was taken <br>  <br> away from ISA and given back to DIA. <br><br> Gritz continues: <br><br> ``It is no wonder the FBI had no idea who was actually carrying the <br>  <br> ball! Scott Weekly never worked for DIA--he worked for me.'' <br><br> When Gritz was reached by {EIR}, he confirmed and elaborated what he had <br>  <br> written in his newsletter. Gritz disavowed any knowledge of a link <br>  <br> between Weekly and Ron Lister, and said that Weekly only had a few <br>  <br> contacts with the CIA, and that those were through Gritz. Gritz <br>  <br> confirmed that he himself was actually working for the ISA. <br><br> ``It was identified, incorrectly, as a low-level Army intelligence <br>  <br> effort,'' <br><br> Gritz explained, <br><br> ``but it really worked directly for the National Security Council. <br>  <br> Otherwise, how in the hell could we have been doing all the weird things <br>  <br> we were doing? And we used the CIA as a cover, when you had to get <br>  <br> messages, and this kind of stuff.'' <br><br> ``When I came on board,'' <br><br> Gritz continued, <br><br> ``I was carefully briefed: `We are not under the CIA, we are not under <br>  <br> Defense Intelligence; we work for the National Security Council.'|'' <br><br> He also said that ISA coordinated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which <br>  <br> provided the ``muscle'' for ISA, using Delta Force special operations <br>  <br> forces. <br>  <br> Tom Harvey, Bush, and `the families' <br><br> Now, to the matter of Col. Thomas Harvey. <br><br> Thomas Nelson Harvey graduated from West Point in the early 1970s, and <br>  <br> was posted to a SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) <br>  <br> support group position. In 1975, he trained as a Foreign Area Specialist <br>  <br> in Yugoslav studies. Harvey was later assigned to the headquarters of <br>  <br> the Ninth Army Division (which has responsibilities throughout the <br>  <br> Pacific), and in 1983 attended the Command and General Staff College, <br>  <br> thus becoming eligible to serve with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. <br><br> Informed sources indicate that Harvey is a proteage of Richard Armitage, <br>  <br> who was Assistant Secretary of State for International Affairs. Armitage <br>  <br> is a notorious intelligence community ``Asia hand'' whose career has <br>  <br> been colored with allegations of gun running, drug smuggling, and <br>  <br> privateering on a grand scale. During Gritz's mission to Khun Sa in <br>  <br> 1986, Khun Sa identified Armitage as playing a central role in ``Golden <br>  <br> Triangle'' drug trafficking--which has some bearing on Harvey's behavior <br>  <br> after Gritz returned from his 1986 mission. <br><br> &gt;From 1983 until his retirement in 1991, Harvey was usually listed in <br>  <br> Pentagon directories as located in the office of the Deputy Chief of <br>  <br> Staff of the Army; he was, among other things, a speechwriter <br>  <br> responsible for space, arms control, and low-intensity operations. <br>  <br> According to his own testimony, he held numerous sensitive intelligence <br>  <br> positions during that time. Among these, were his serving as a military <br>  <br> assistant to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where he worked <br>  <br> closely with Senators Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and John Warner (R-Va.). <br><br> Asked about Tom Harvey, Gritz told this reporter that Harvey was <br>  <br> actually working out of George Bush's office. <br><br> ``Harvey was the military adviser to Sen. John Warner, and he was also, <br>  <br> of course, in the NSC, working in the Vice President's Office--George <br>  <br> Bush at the time,'' <br><br> Gritz said. <br><br> ``Harvey was the Ollie North look-alike for George Bush.'' <br><br> It was apparently while Harvey was at the NSC in 1985-86, that he was <br>  <br> instrumental in the creation of a bizarre ``private'' paramilitary unit <br>  <br> in Loudoun County, Virginia, called ``ARGUS'' (Armored Response Group <br>  <br> U.S.). ARGUS's ostensible purpose was to provide surplus armored <br>  <br> military equipment for use in ``anti-terrorist'' and other crisis <br>  <br> situations by local law enforcement agencies in the mid-Atlantic region. <br>  <br> Among its acquisitions were a C-130 military aircraft, an armored <br>  <br> personnel carrier, and an armored forklift. <br><br> One of the few times that ARGUS equipment was actually deployed, to be <br>  <br> on standby, was during the Oct. 6-7, 1986 raid, by federal, state, and <br>  <br> local agents, on the offices of organizations associated with Lyndon <br>  <br> LaRouche in Leesburg, Virginia. That raid was officially run by the FBI, <br>  <br> but it was later learned that planning for the raid included the ``focal <br>  <br> point'' office of the J-3 Special Operations Division of the Pentagon's <br>  <br> Joint Chiefs of Staff. Two truckloads of seized documents were taken to <br>  <br> highly secure U.S. Marine Corps facilities at Henderson Hall in <br>  <br> Arlington, Virginia, where they were presumably culled over by <br>  <br> intelligence specialists, before being reviewed by state and federal <br>  <br> prosecutors. <br><br> ARGUS was a project of the oligarchal families based in the Loudoun <br>  <br> County ``Hunt Country'' (see article, p.|64). Magalen Ohrstrom Bryant <br>  <br> and John W. Hanes were both officials and funders of ARGUS; at the same <br>  <br> time, Bryant and Hanes were both funding Oliver North's secret Contra <br>  <br> operations as well. <br><br> In 1988, by which time Harvey was posted to Senator Warner's staff, he <br>  <br> was able to set up ARGUS's training base at the Army's Cameron Station <br>  <br> base in Alexandria, Virginia. ARGUS also housed some of its specialized <br>  <br> armored vehicles at Cameron Station. iven that ARGUS was supposedly a <br>  <br> completely private operation, this was rather extraordinary--except that <br>  <br> ARGUS was obviously {not} ``private;'' it was rather part of the <br>  <br> {privatized} military-intelligence operations which flourished under the <br>  <br> authority of Executive Order 12333 and Bush's ``secret government'' <br>  <br> apparatus. <br><br> After his retirement from active military service in 1991, Harvey <br>  <br> continued to work for these same intelligence-related ``family'' <br>  <br> networks. He became the chairman and CEO of the Global Environmental &amp; <br>  <br> Technology Foundation. On Global's Board of Directors, naturally, is <br>  <br> Maggie Bryant, also listed as chairperson of the National Fish and <br>  <br> Wildlife Foundation. It is reported that Harvey was personally selected <br>  <br> for this role by Maggie Bryant, who has called him one of her most <br>  <br> trusted operatives. Among Global's projects is what is called the <br>  <br> ``Defense and Environmental Initiative,'' which, in their words, <br>  <br> involves ``integrating environmental considerations into America's <br>  <br> national and international security mission.'' <br>  <br> `Erase and forget' <br><br> Now, back to Gritz's dealings with Tom Harvey in 1986-87. <br><br> Gritz and his team, including Scott Weekly, did go to Burma, where they <br>  <br> met with Khun Sa. Khun Sa told Gritz that he did not have any American <br>  <br> POWs, but he proposed a deal with the United States: that he would stop <br>  <br> all drug flows out of the Golden Triangle, in return for recognition of <br>  <br> his Shan State. He would guarantee the eradication of opium production <br>  <br> in the Golden Triangle, which was the major source of heroin coming into <br>  <br> the United States--although it was rapidly being supplanted by drugs <br>  <br> from the ``Golden Crescent'' of Afghanistan and Pakistan as a by-product <br>  <br> of the arms and money flowing into the Afghan War. The parallels between <br>  <br> the Bush ``secret government'' clandestine operations in Central <br>  <br> American and those in Afghanistan are striking: The net result of both <br>  <br> was a massive increase in drugs coming from those areas into the United <br>  <br> States. Guns and drugs, like love and marriage, go together like the <br>  <br> proverbial horse and carriage. (The Afghan operation gave us something <br>  <br> else: the world-wide British-controlled terrorist network known today as <br>  <br> the ``Afghansi.'') <br><br> The other thing which Khun Sa offered--even more explosive--was that he <br>  <br> would name the names of U.S. government officials involved in illegal <br>  <br> arms and drug trafficking. <br><br> Gritz and his team returned just before Christmas, 1986. In his book, <br>  <br> Gritz reports that he submitted his after-action report to Harvey; a few <br>  <br> days later, Harvey called. When Gritz asked Harvey about the reaction to <br>  <br> Khun Sa's proposal to stop the drug trade, Harvey told Gritz: <br><br> ``Bo, there's no one around here who supports that.'' <br><br> Gritz's account continues: <br><br> ``I reminded him that Vice President George H.W. Bush was appointed by <br>  <br> his boss, the President of the United States, as the `Number-One Cop' <br>  <br> for stopping drugs before they got to the United States. Reagan had <br>  <br> declared war on drugs, and Bush was his so-called `Czar.'\" <br><br> Harvey reiterated, this time in a more forcible tone, <br><br> {`Bo, what can I tell you? There's no interest in doing that.'} <br><br> ``I knew then that we were treading on some very sensitive toes,'' Gritz <br>  <br> writes, ``but I didn't know whose.'' <br><br> Almost immediately, Scott Weekly was charged with illegal shipments of <br>  <br> explosives (the C4 used in the Afghani training program) and he was <br>  <br> induced to plead guilty without a trial, and even without a lawyer. <br><br> In May 1987, Gritz was told in no uncertain terms to cease and desist <br>  <br> all of his activities related to the Golden Triangle and drugs. He was <br>  <br> contacted by Joseph Felter, his close friend and the former head of <br>  <br> Wedtech, the scandalized defense contractor. Felter told Gritz that he <br>  <br> was conveying a message from Tom Harvey and a State Department official <br>  <br> named William Davis: that Gritz was to ``erase and forget'' everything <br>  <br> about his trip to the Golden Triangle. Felter told Gritz that Harvey and <br>  <br> Davis said that ``if you don't stop everything you're doing ... you're <br>  <br> gonna serve 15 years in prison as a felon!'' (Felter later confirmed the <br>  <br> thrust of his remarks, and that he was acting on behalf of Harvey, in a <br>  <br> sworn affidavit.) <br><br> Gritz was at the time about to be charged with using a false passport, <br>  <br> for travelling to Southeast Asia on a passport in a different name which <br>  <br> had in fact been provided to him by the U.S. government, through the <br>  <br> NSC-run ISA. Gritz was also threatened with charges for neutrality <br>  <br> violations, for the Afghan training operation. Gritz says that when he <br>  <br> was finally indicted in 1989, Tom Harvey showed up, and told him <br>  <br> privately: <br><br> ``Bo, we're so angry with you! Your focus is supposed to be prisoners of <br>  <br> war. Why do you insist on getting involved in this government drug <br>  <br> operation?'' <br><br> The coverup continues to this day. The attacks on Bo Gritz to prevent <br>  <br> exposure of the U.S. government complicity in the Golden Triangle drug <br>  <br> trade, and the frantic efforts in late 1986-87 to suppress any exposure <br>  <br> of the Contra drugs-for-guns dealings--as shows up in the Lister-Weekly <br>  <br> case--were clearly one and the same. <br><br> And in both cases, we see that the trail leads directly to the same <br>  <br> place: George Bush. <br><br> 1. For a more thorough description and documentation of this structure, <br>  <br> which operated under the authority of Executive Order 12333 and various <br>  <br> National Security Decision Directives, see the two {EIR Special <br>  <br> Reports}: ``Would a President Bob Dole Prosecute Drug Super-Kingpin <br>  <br> George Bush?'' September 1996; and ``George Bush and the 12333 Serial <br>  <br> Murder Ring,'' October 1996. <br>  <br> Bush, `Lords of Loudoun' caught pushing drugs, genocide <br><br> by Jeffrey Steinberg <br><br> Just as George Bush and Oliver North were celebrating a recent <br>  <br> ``apology'' by the editor-in-chief of the {San Jose Mercury News,} over <br>  <br> last August's ``Dark Alliance'' story linking the U.S. government-backed <br>  <br> Nicaraguan Contras to the launching of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los <br>  <br> Angeles, dramatic new evidence has surfaced, not only confirming the <br>  <br> direct role of the former vice president and President in the drug <br>  <br> trafficking. The evidence further links Bush to a network of Virginia <br>  <br> Hunt Country barons, centered in Loudoun County, Virginia, who were in <br>  <br> on the ground floor of the operations that have led to the recent years' <br>  <br> mass genocide in the Great Lakes region of Africa. <br><br> Through his involvement with the Canada-based Barrick Gold Corp., Bush <br>  <br> has already been deeply implicated in the genocide in Zaire, which has <br>  <br> been conducted on behalf of the rapacious London strategic raw material <br>  <br> cartels, whose stated policy is to ``de-Africanize'' the Great Lakes <br>  <br> region, while grabbing up the raw materials wealth of the African <br>  <br> continent. <br><br> Among the ``Lords of Loudoun'' linked to Bush in the drugs and genocide <br>  <br> scandals, are Sir Paul Mellon, Arthur Arundel, Magalen Ohrstrom Bryant, <br>  <br> her step-son, Herbert Bryant, and their man on Capitol Hill, Rep. Frank <br>  <br> Wolf (R-Va.). Most of these individuals, in addition to being intimates <br>  <br> of the Bush clan, are on similarly close terms with the current members <br>  <br> of the House of Windsor, including Sir Paul Mellon's occasional house <br>  <br> guest, Queen Elizabeth II. A real-life Elmer Gantry, Rev. ``Diamond'' <br>  <br> Pat Robertson, is yet another Bush-tamed creature who has gleefully <br>  <br> jumped into the Africa raw materials grab, and the resulting genocide. <br><br> Some of these same individuals were involved, with Bush, in the 1984-89 <br>  <br> judicial frame-up and aborted assassination attempt against Lyndon <br>  <br> LaRouche. In particular, those Hunt Country networks were deeply <br>  <br> involved through an illegal paramilitary group, ``Armed Response Group, <br>  <br> U.S.'' (Argus), in the Oct. 6, 1986 Waco-style government armed military <br>  <br> assault on the publishing offices and residence of LaRouche and his <br>  <br> associates in Leesburg, Virginia, and the subsequent railroad <br>  <br> prosecutions of a dozen LaRouche associates in the Commonwealth Court of <br>  <br> Virginia. Five of those LaRouche associates--Michael Billington, Paul <br>  <br> Gallagher, Anita Gallagher, Laurence Hecht, and Donald Phau--are still <br>  <br> behind bars, serving outrageous sentences, ranging from 25-77 years in <br>  <br> jail, for alleged ``securities'' violations which never happened. <br>  <br> New Bush ties to guns-for-drugs revealed <br><br> The new revelations emerge from material published in the May 23-29 <br>  <br> issue of the {Los Angeles Weekly}, in an article by investigative <br>  <br> reporter Nick Schou. Relying on previously unavailable documents and <br>  <br> eyewitness accounts, Shou detailed the role of former Laguna Beach, <br>  <br> California police officer Ronald Lister in the Norwin Meneses, Danilo <br>  <br> Blandon, and ``Freeway'' Ricky Ross cocaine-trafficking organization, <br>  <br> and showed that Lister was, at the same time, involved in supplying arms <br>  <br> to the Contras, through clandestine arms manufacturing plants in El <br>  <br> Salvador. While he was in the center of a Contra cocaine-for-arms <br>  <br> pipeline that stretched from southern California to Central America, <br>  <br> Lister was reporting to former Navy SEAL David Scott Weekly, according <br>  <br> to his own testimony to Los Angeles County sheriffs, who raided his home <br>  <br> in 1986 as part of a crackdown on the Ross-Blandon crack cocaine <br>  <br> distribution ring. <br><br> Weekly, in turn, was working for Tom Harvey, {in the office of Vice <br>  <br> President Bush.} Former Vietnam War hero Col. Bo Gritz, who worked <br>  <br> closely with Weekly and Harvey at this time, described Harvey as Bush's <br>  <br> ``Ollie North look-alike.'' <br><br> The tying of Harvey to the West Coast cocaine- and gun-smuggling ring is <br>  <br> the crucial new piece of ``closure'' provided by the Schou story. At the <br>  <br> same time that he was part of the Bush liaison team to the Contra crew <br>  <br> on the West Coast, via Weekly, Harvey was functioning as one of the Bush <br>  <br> office liaisons to the Loudoun County oligarchical families. To this <br>  <br> day, in fact, Harvey is on the payroll of the Ohrstrom Bryant family, <br>  <br> through an Annandale, Virginia outfit called Global Environmental <br>  <br> Technology Foundation. <br><br> Back in the mid-1980s, on behalf of the vice president, Harvey was <br>  <br> involved in the creation of Argus, a private paramilitary group, linked <br>  <br> to a crew of rabidly Anglophilic Hunt Country families. Through Harvey's <br>  <br> Pentagon ties, Argus obtained used military equipment, including armed <br>  <br> personnel carriers, and stored the equipment at the U.S. Army storage <br>  <br> facility at Cameron Station, Virginia. Ultimately, the equipment was <br>  <br> transferred to facilities of the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department, <br>  <br> and was used during the anti-LaRouche Leesburg raid. Some of the leading <br>  <br> Hunt Country families involved in Argus, including the Hanes family and <br>  <br> the Ohrstrom Bryant family, were simultaneously pouring money into Bush <br>  <br> and North's cocaine-Contras. <br>  <br> Cover-up of George Bush's role <br><br> The {Los Angeles Weekly} expose also tears a big hole in the desperate <br>  <br> effort by friends of George Bush in the major media, to bury the {San <br>  <br> Jose Mercury News} revelations. When {Mercury News} editor Jerry Ceppos <br>  <br> published a signed editorial on May 11, criticizing reporter Gary Webb's <br>  <br> August 1996 three-part series, ``Dark Alliance,'' which exposed the <br>  <br> Meneses-Blandon-Ross crack cocaine ring and its ties to the Contras, the <br>  <br> {New York Times}, the {Los Angeles Times,} and the {Washington Post} all <br>  <br> gave prominent, distorted coverage to the Ceppos statements, falsely <br>  <br> portraying them as a repudiation of the Contra cocaine story. All three <br>  <br> papers had published lengthy stories themselves, attempting to refute <br>  <br> the original Webb stories. <br><br> In fact, the {only} error in the Webb ``Dark Alliance'' series was his <br>  <br> failure to identify George Bush as the kingpin of the operation, <br>  <br> focusing, instead, on the CIA. <br><br> As {EIR} documented in a September 1996 {Special Report,} ``Would a <br>  <br> President Bob Dole Prosecute Drug Super-Kingpin George Bush?'' Vice <br>  <br> President Bush--not the CIA!--was fully in charge of the secret war in <br>  <br> Central America. Bush's authority derived from a series of Executive <br>  <br> Orders and Presidential Decision Directives, now declassified, that were <br>  <br> signed by President Reagan, beginning in December 1981. Bush personnel, <br>  <br> including Donald Gregg, the vice president's chief national security <br>  <br> aide, and former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, maintained hands-on <br>  <br> control over the cocaine-for-guns pipeline running from Colombia, to <br>  <br> Central America, and to cities all across the United States, according <br>  <br> to qualified eyewitness sources, including former El Salvador-based Drug <br>  <br> Enforcement Administration agent Celerino Castillo. <br><br> With Sir George Bush now aggressively pushing his son, Texas Gov. George <br>  <br> W. Bush, to become the leading candidate for the Republican Party <br>  <br> Presidential nomination in the year 2000, it became a matter of great <br>  <br> urgency for the former President to bury the Contra cocaine scandal once <br>  <br> and for all. The efforts of the {New York Times}, the {Washington Post,} <br>  <br> and the {Los Angeles Times} to assist in the Bush cover-up have now gone <br>  <br> up in smoke, as you will read in the articles that follow <br>  <br> ----- <br>  <br> Aloha, He'Ping, <br>  <br> Om, Shalom, Salaam. <br>  <br> Em Hotep, Peace Be, <br>  <br> Omnia Bona Bonis, <br>  <br> All My Relations. <br>  <br> Adieu, Adios, Aloha. <br>  <br> Amen. <br>  <br> Roads End <br>  <br> <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","summary":"-------------","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2005\/07\/opium.jpg","filesize":"22.0 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2005\/07\/132548.php","image":{"original":"\/uploads\/2005\/07\/opium.jpg","small":"\/uploads\/2005\/07\/opium.jpgthumb.jpg"}},"attachments":[{"id":132549,"heading":"trixly dixly","article":"originator of the drug war, way paver for the bush grandsons, thief extraordinaire, confidante of prescott bush scum, and hireling of zionazism...","author":"see-art","parent_id":132548,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","created":"2005-07-15 13:53:16","modified":"2005-08-15 00:14:24","fileurl":"\/usr\/local\/www-domains\/la.indymedia.org\/public\/uploads\/2005\/07\/nix.jpg","image":{"original":"\/usr\/local\/www-domains\/la.indymedia.org\/public\/uploads\/2005\/07\/nix.jpg"}},{"id":132550,"heading":"-----------","article":"----------","author":"see-art","parent_id":132548,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","created":"2005-07-15 13:53:16","modified":"2005-08-15 00:14:24","fileurl":"\/usr\/local\/www-domains\/la.indymedia.org\/public\/uploads\/2005\/07\/bush_shadow.jpgzobkuv.jpg","image":{"original":"\/usr\/local\/www-domains\/la.indymedia.org\/public\/uploads\/2005\/07\/bush_shadow.jpgzobkuv.jpg"}}],"comments":[{"id":132841,"heading":"EIR is a Larouche Front","article":"The EIR is an interesting publication, but is a front group for the Larouche group.  It's a fascist cult.","author":"johnk","parent_id":132548,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-07-16 22:51:09","modified":"2005-07-16 22:51:09","fileurl":""}]}