Red Cocaine by Joseph Douglass part 18

Previously, in 1963, during a meeting of the Czechoslovak Defence Council when money-laundering was being discussed, the Chief of the General Staff had stated that the Soviets had decided that officials in the Soviet finance department should not be informed about the precise sources of the funds they were handling because there was too great a risk of compromise. At risk, the Soviet adviser had explained, were people in seventy-five percent of the banks in Latin America and in forty-five percent of the banks in the United States and Canada. When the amount of money involved was considered, around $300 billion per year in the United States in the late 1980s, $500 billion or more per year worldwide, these percentages certainly do not seem high.

Furthermore, in the spring of 1967, General Savinkin, head of the Soviet Administrative Organs Department, convened a meeting in Moscow of the top leadership of the Warsaw Pact drug-trafficking countries, plus Cuba. Savinkin chaired the meetings, which continued for several days. Numerous Soviet military and intelligence generals were present at different times. In addition to Sejna, Josef Kudrna, the Czech Minister of Interior, and General Bohimir Lomsky, the Minister of Defence, were present. Four Cubans attended the meeting: Raul Castro, Cuba's Minister of Interior, the deputy military intelligence chief in charge of narcotics, and one other. The other countries represented were East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland.

One of the most important topics addressed at this particular meeting was the importance of attacking NATO and US military forces more aggressively with drugs. Detailed studies of all NATO forces were presented, and their vulnerabilities discussed. In his remarks, General Savinkin identified three primary objectives: To corrupt officers, to recruit agents and to impair the functioning of troops.

The offensive against US troops based overseas, received special emphasis. Savinkin explained that areas where US troops were based - Germany, Turkey, Greece, Panama and so forth - were, to use a military term, to become zones of strategic destruction. This task was so important that Soviet Major General Vasil Fedorenko was placed in charge of coordinating the attack. Each country had a similar coordinator designated, who acted as the primary liaison with Fedorenko. And as will be described shortly, the need to corrupt US forces in NATO received additional emphasis in the fall of 1967. (By 1970, the standard of US command of forces in NATO had in fact already fallen to dangerously low levels and was soon to trigger far-reaching disciplinary measures).

In this operation, Panama received special emphasis because of the Panama Canal and because of the presence in Panama of several US military bases. Colonel Frantisek Penc, of Czechoslovak military intelligence, was in charge of the Czechoslovak operation in Panama. He was also the liaison to Fedorenko for drug-trafficking against US bases in other regions of the world.

At one of the special sessions focused on Latin America, General Shevchenko, head of the Department of Special Propaganda [see page 65], explained that the Soviets believed that over seventy percent of the top-level Panamanian military (Lt. Colonel and above) were

anti-American. A list of these officers had been drawn up with the assistance of the

Communist Party of Panama. They had all operated with the Communist Party and some had contributed money to the Party. The officers were not targets to be destroyed, General Shevchenko emphasised, but to be protected because some of them were our 'Gold Reserve'. Many, if not most, of them were involved with drugs. One of the Panamanian

military officers on the list was Omar Torrijos Herrera, who was to seize control of Panama in 1969. Raul Castro said that Cuba believed that anti-American sentiments were even stronger among lower level officers, and that the Cubans would like to focus more attention on recruiting lower level officers. The Soviets concurred with this proposal.

By 1972, Panama had developed such a severe drug problem that special measures were discussed at the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs [BNDD, subse-quently

absorbed into the DEA]. In an attack on Noriega in 1986, the New York Times published a

detailed account of these anxieties. John E. Ingersoll, who was then head of the Bureau of National Dangerous Drugs, confirmed that BNDD had hard intelligence that Noriega was trafficking in drugs - adding that the BNDD had been frustrated in its attempts to persuade General Torrijos to take action against Noriega. According to a 1978 Senate Intelligence Committee report, five measures had been discussed to deal with the 'Guardia National official', which was the Committee's description of Noriega: Link Noriega to a fictitious plot against Torrijos, leak information on Noriega's drug-trafficking to the press, link negotiations over the Panama Canal to Noriega's removal, secretly encourage powerful groups in Panama to raise the issue, and 'total and complete immobilisation', which was of course an euphemism for assassination4.

Colombia was another country which the Moscow meeting held in the spring of 1967 discussed in detail. With respect to Colombia, Raul recommended that Cuba should develop

more than one group to control drug-trafficking. (At that time, there were two Soviet- controlled operations: the Cuban operation and the Czechoslovak operation). Savinkin pointed out that the number of groups should be kept to a minimum. The more groups there were, the more people there would be in the know, and the greater was the risk of exposure. He was referring to exposure of the Soviet operation*. Castro agreed, but said the risk was also high with just one group because of the internal politics involved. Savinkin approved Castro's recommendation and emphasised that it was the Cubans' responsibility and he would trust their judgment in this matter - but that Havana should be careful not to go too far.

Raul also raised the question of how much the Communist Party of Colombia should be told and presented a long list of people corrupted by the drug trade in Colombia which

had been assembled by Cuban intelligence agents who had infiltrated the indigenous

Colombian drug-trafficking networks. The Soviets were concerned about some of the names on the list whom they believed to be among various 'double agents' whom the indigenous drug-trafficking organisations had  corrupted and  were  using  against the Soviet-Cuban drug operation. Savinkin said that these people were all criminals. They don't trust anybody except themselves, he explained. We are in the same position and cannot trust any of them, either.

In his review of Mexico, Savinkin said that there were no corrections to be made in respect to the corruption of Mexican political officials. For all practical purposes, they had all been corrupted. The next priority was to work on the Mexican business elite.

There were also discussions about the networks into Western Europe. The principal distribution outlets into the European market were Switzerland, Austria (Vienna) and

* Editor's Note: This revealing admission of the obvious - that exposure must be avoided at all costs - points the way for serious Western observers and for all who are determined, even at this late stage, to confront the drug offensive against civilisation. The one hazard that the perpetrators fear is, precisely, exposure. Hence the present work, intended by the Author to expose this long-term act of war against humanity. Note also that Savinkin was concerned about the Soviet drug programme being exposed, not so much the ultimately expendable ones of the satellites, which existed in part to provide Moscow with a veneer of deniability.

Sweden (Stockholm). All the Soviet Bloc intelligence services operated in these regions, which served as centres for drug distribution and for the covert transfer of stolen technology to the Soviet Bloc. (Panama was also to become a centre for these two activities). Intelligence linkages into other countries favoured certain national intelligence services; for example, the Germans were particularly active in marketing drugs through the Netherlands.

Another topic discussed was the increased use of drugs to corrupt the elite classes in Third World countries. Bulgarian officials said that Turkey and Iran had posed no prob- lem. They had destroyed themselves. Savinkin criticised this remark and told the Bulgarians to listen more carefully - he was referring to the elite class. They must improve the quality of drugs and push their use into the upper classes.

In 1967, the head of the Health Administration briefed the Czechoslovak Defence Council on seven or eight new drugs which had been developed in the course of their drug research and development program. The research activity had been started five years earlier, in a facility constructed next to the Central Military Hospital in Prague specifically for the development of chemical and biological warfare agents, mind-control drugs, assassination weapons, and more effective narcotics.

The drugs reviewed in 1967 were a product of this program. They had been devel-

oped by scientists and medical doctors from the Central Military Hospital and the Air Force Scientific Centre and tested on prisoners. The new drugs were considered more effective because their immediate effects were longer lasting, and, as a bonus, they caused long-term damage in the capacity of humans to think logically. Sejna was particularly impressed with one of the more effective drugs that left the user optimistic and put him in a 'no worries, don't care' frame of mind. When tested on prisoners, the prisoners became unconcerned about penalties or having to spend their whole lives in jail. The longer-term effects, tested after two to three years, were residual mental attitudes of passivity and res- ignation. The test subjects did not even try to make intelligent decisions. Evidently, the drug attacked the centre of motivation.

At the briefing, the Czechoslovak doctors recommended three drugs that they believed would be the drugs of the future. The Soviet adviser, who also attended the meeting, said the drugs should not be marketed then because they might cause questions to be asked. At that time, the Soviets believed that the blame for the drug epidemic, as desired, had been successfully placed on organised crime. If we put new drugs on the market, the Soviets reasoned, people in the West might become suspicious. We need to be very careful to wait until the correct time; for example, when there are other potential co-producers who can be blamed as the source for the new drugs.

Another especially interesting new dimension arose in September 1967, in connection with a visit by Raul Castro to Czechoslovakia. This event was the annual develop ment and approval of the next one-year plan. Accompanying Castro were several high-level Cuban officials: the Chief of Military Intelligence, Chief of the Military Medical Administration, Deputy Head of the Administrative Organs Department, Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Armaments and Technology, and the Deputy Chief of the Main Political Administration. As in the past, Sejna was the Czechoslovak official who hosted the entourage. The principal subject of the meeting was the drug and narcotics operation. A sizeable expansion of Cuban and Soviet Bloc drug and narcotics trafficking activity was agreed. At this meeting, too, a protocol was signed which enabled Cuban scientists (seventeen or eighteen of them) to assist joint Soviet Bloc research teams work-

ing on drugs and narcotics. Henceforth the Cuban scientists would be working with Czechoslovak scientists, but not with the other Soviet Bloc teams. This was an indirect way of bringing the Cubans into the Soviet Bloc program.

One of the principal areas in which the Cuban scientists had been conducting research and one that they would be working on in cooperation with other Warsaw Pact scientists was an analysis of the influence of drugs on the 'intellectual stagnation' of society. The idea was that drugs would inhibit the development of the mind (intellect) and this would in turn help to bring about a stagnation of bourgeois society. The questions of interest involved what drugs or combinations of drugs were most effective in crippling the mind

and how many drugs, over how many years, were required to cripple a society. That is,

what drug-trafficking was required to achieve the desired effect?

This was part of a highly important Soviet operation; and all the Soviet Bloc countries had programs underway to develop the best drugs and accompanying analyses. Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself were heavily involved. The crippling of bourgeois society was the 'main order'.

The efficacy of this strategy could only be appreciated in the West after the event, since the long-term debilitating effects of nearly all drugs on the brain, even (indeed, espe- cially) including those of marijuana, have since become better known and gained publicity and recognition. One factor of special relevance that is now recognised is the neurological effect on infants born to women on marijuana or cocaine, including long-term behavioural impairment and learning disabilities5.

Castro was particularly forceful in presenting his position to Czechoslovak and Soviet

officials. He argued that it was important to push this aspect of drug-trafficking operations even harder, and to advance the onset of stagnation by targeting younger students, specifi- cally, high school students and children6. The Soviets were thinking in terms of forty to fifty years to bring about the desired results. Castro believed they could be accomplished in thirty- five years7. The Soviets were more conservative because of the social changes they believed would have to be achieved in parallel, and because they had coordinated these changes with other events in their long-range plan to destroy the West.

The Soviets were also concerned that pushing drugs on high school students and children might be too radical and cause an undesirable counter-reaction. In their plan, the Soviet-preferred bourgeois targets were the technical elite, intellectuals, soldiers and college students.

Following the meeting between Cuban and Czechoslovak officials in Prague described above, a Czechoslovak delegation went to Havana to work out details for the participation of Cuban scientists in the joint studies, to explore the possibility of including even more than seventeen scientists, and to determine if it would be possible through Castro to recruit more 'progressive' scientists throughout Latin America to assist (unwit- tingly) in analysing the impact of drugs on society. The delegation was headed by General Oldrich Burda, Chief of the Zs. Accompanying him were the deputy chief of the Health Administration, the chief of research at the main military hospital (his speciality being neurology), and the deputy head of the Department of Science.

Castro also believed that more emphasis in Latin America should be placed on cor- rupting and recruiting the military. This was necessary in order to push the revolutionary

movement forward, he argued; the politicians were already thoroughly corrupted. By 1988,

resources throughout Latin America were reporting the heavy involvement of military officers and police officials in drug-trafficking. This was particularly true in Colom-

bia, its neighbours, and in Panama, Honduras and Mexico8.

Additionally, by 1967 the Cuban campaign to penetrate the 'independent' Latin American drug operations was nearing completion. Cuban intelligence now estimated that ninety percent of the targeted organisations had already been penetrated and Castro argued that the time had come to destroy the Latin American drug groups which still resisted penetration and were 'uncooperative'.