Red Cocaine by Joseph Douglass part 37

enable addicts to 'do their thing' until they die. These fancy and false notions will not solve the crisis, or indeed contribute to its remediation, because they do not attack the supply; and as the data in Figure 7 confirm, it is indeed the supply that creates the drugs crisis in the first place. The objective of this supply is to generate addicts so that the supply can be consumed - that is to say, to foster demand. There is no equivalence between such addiction demand and normal commercial demand, as is always deceitfully implied.

Secondly, the preceding material shows that the illegal drug question is not going to be solved by attacking it as a 'law and order' or a 'law enforcement' or even a diplomatic

challenge. The accuracy of this conclusion can be seen in the fact that the prevailing 'war on

drugs' has been shown to have been totally ineffective - precisely because it has been approached as a law and order, law enforcement, and diplomatic challenge since it emerged in 1950. The 'results' achieved during the Reagan Administration provide a further demonstration of this fallacy. The drugs scourge was then approached as a law enforcement matter. As a consequence, US jails went from being three-quarters full to far over capacity; yet during that period, drugs became more plentiful, more potent, and more easily accessible, than ever before. The policy was a total waste of money.

Treating the drug plague as a law enforcement or a diplomatic problem will not suc- ceed because those responsible are not common criminals and because they operate with the protection of the local law and order communities, the domestic and international banks, and under diplomatic immunity. The only way to approach the illegal drug plague is to

recognise it for what it is - an intentional attack on the United States and the West

generally. This concerted and relentless assault amounts to an undeclared war in which all available means are employed - overt, covert, illegal, and indigenous - in the pursuit of the enemy, which remains the West.

As for the US Government's supposed determination to decapitate the producers and traffickers, another comparison provides the needed perspective. Since the drug plague emerged, the United States has undertaken numerous military adventures, at great risk, cost, and without the invitation of those who were attacked. Consider, for example, Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Libya. We have even attacked, unilaterally and without anyone's concurrence, pharmaceutical plants suspected of producing nerve agents and the training and supply depots of individuals who evidently sponsored terrorist activities. In none of these adventures was the United States under attack, or even directly

threatened. Yet, in sharp contrast, there has not been one instance of a similar US military

attack on a foreign drug producing or drug-trafficking regime, notwithstanding the fact that it is the United States (and of course the West generally) that is under direct attack, is directly threatened, and has suffered and continues to suffer extensive casualties, economic and social disruption, and individual fatalities as a consequence of this offensive. Indeed, since the drug offensive is an act of war, those countries which encourage or sanction or turn a blind eye to it should be placed on notice once and for all that if they do not cease their malevolent activities forthwith, the United States (and, if necessary, other targeted countries) will no longer be responsible for the destructive consequences. In short, such regimes should be regarded as enemy regimes. In this connection, it is worth recalling that the 'former' Soviet Union respected the West only when it stood up to its Bolshevik bullying.

If, then, 'conventional wisdom' is set aside, and along with it all the various explana-

tions of the drug scourge which flow so glibly from the official and unofficial talking heads in Western capitals, a sharply divergent image emerges. Specifically, the illegal drug

plague will be seen to be an international criminal 'business' which, due to the corruption it engenders, enjoys the support and protection of many countries and of many powerful people, some of whom are well-known personalities. And the scourge can be seen to have grown for five primary reasons.

First, the drug plague is not the brainchild of 'common or garden' crooks and criminals. It is the result of long-term strategic intelligence operations undertaken by countries with the largest and most capable intelligence services in the world: China and the Soviet Union and its satellites, and their successors. This means that unlike an independent criminal operation, the drug-traffickers who built the business have and continue to have at their disposal the assets and resources of various states and govern- ments, together with the benefit of open and unlimited sanctuaries in which to hide, plan, finance, organise, recruit, and train for the next phases of their collective offensive.

Secondly, the plague has been able to flourish because it has been politically protected. The protection that the US Government, for instance, has provided - free of charge - has

been well documented in the cases of China, Russia, Bulgaria, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and the former Czechoslovakia, to name a few of the countries involved. Moreover, the corruption of drug money is so pervasive that it has truly become a serious question to ask whom one can trust any more - and not just in foreign countries, but, for Americans, in the Federal Departments and agencies, and in Congress as well. Why have no Government records on the drug-trafficking and money-laundering activities run out of Mena, Arkansas, been released or even investigated by Congress or by the Office of the so-called Independent Counsel', and why have US election financing links to drug money-launder-ers, to the Palestinian Authority and to Chinese interests, not surfaced properly?

Thirdly, the drug plague has been free to develop without constraint because the money-laundering dimension of drug-trafficking has been organised - not just tolerated or

enabled, but organised - by the international financial community, and by national (US)

banks as well*. There is no way such a multi-trillion dollar financial stream could exist without the active and knowing assistance of banks and financial institutions, the laun- dering and 'investment' profits of which represent an estimated 15 to 20 percent of their aggregate annual profits. And by 'international financial community', I do not just mean banks and bankers. Of equal importance, and functioning as integral elements of the international financial community, are associated investment advisers and companies, accountancy firms and specialists, and - most importantly of all - the associated lawyers and legal firms upon whom the banks are critically dependent.

* Editor's Note: A case in point was highlighted in a report published by the US General Accounting Office [GAO], the accounting and investigative arm of Congress, on 4th December 1998. In a vivid example of how banks allegedly flout the law while maintaining deniability and appearing to uphold it, Citibank was reported by the GAO to have secretly transferred between $90 million and $100 million of alleged drugs money for a Mexican client without examining the source of the funds, or the client's financial background. The GAO concluded inter alia that Citibank, now part of Citigroup, failed to follow its own procedures against money-laundering, and

'facilitated a money managing system that disguised the origin, destination and beneficial owner of the funds'. The GAO had responded to a request by Senator John Glenn, the astronaut, to look into reports that up to $100 million was laundered out of Mexico to Citibank accounts in London and Switzerland. A separate investigation was being carried out by the US Justice Department. The GAO report revealed that Citibank's private banking unit had established an offshore private company to hold its client's assets, had waived bank references, had allowed the client to use a different name to transfer funds from Mexico, and had failed to prepare a financial profile on the prominent client in question. The bank earned about $1.1 million in fees associated with its running of the relevant accounts. A spokesman for Citigroup, cited by The Daily Telegraph of London [5th December 1998], insisted that the report 'contained errors of fact and interpretation', adding that 'we have looked into the matter ourselves and have found that neither the company nor any employee has violated the law. We're cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities'.

Such lawyers hide behind their protection of respectability and the 'rule of law': but they are whited sepulchres, hypocrites and active participants in this evil business. For this reason, it was encouraging to be able to read in the British press5 in late November 1998 that Detective Chief Inspector Simon Goddard, the head of the organised and economic crime unit at the National Criminal Investigation Service [NCIS] in London had revealed that lawyers from at least six large law firms were in the process of being investigated for alleged money-laundering on behalf of drug-traffickers and other organised criminals. Reporting the essence of an interview given by this top British law enforcement officer in The Lawyer magazine, Mr Goddard explained that several law enforcement agencies, including a number of UK police forces, were investigating the handling of profits from drugs, gun-running and violent gangster-style activities. These firms are actively working on behalf of organised crime. We know who they are [the lawyers concerned]. We are aware of some of their activities, and we are at varying stages of our investigations. We certainly have lawyers who perform the role like an old consigliere in the mafia films. They know who their clients are and they know how their clients make their money, and they know it isn't from a legitimate activity'.

Sources at the NCIS further confirmed that the lawyers and the firms concerned were located in the City of London, and elsewhere in the British capital. In one case, the whole of a small firm had been identified as a front for money-laundering. In other cases, it was suspected that lawyers in some large firms were accepting illicit funds and using their positions in respectable concerns to hide their activities. Typically, the funds are co-mingled with other funds in the firms' clients' accounts, and then transferred as instructed by their drug-linked 'clients'. But of course any suspicious money transactions must by law, in the United Kingdom, be reported to NCIS. Out of 14,500 reports filed under the relevant UK legislation in 1997, precisely 240 were from solicitors (attorneys); and NCIS told The Guardian newspaper that many British lawyers were 'failing in their legal and moral obligations'6. The newspaper also confirmed that it had been told by a spokesman for NCIS that 'we have intelligence on at least six law firms we believe to be involved in money-laundering'. Police believed that 'the money is wired to solicitors, who put it in clients' accounts in London. It is then transferred to offshore accounts or trusts'. As General Sejna described the position while he was alive, the money-laundering contacts in the various banks selected to provide 'banking services' were set up by the bankers themselves.

Background security checks on the individuals who were to handle drug money transactions in the banks were run not only by Soviet counter-intelligence, but also by one of the Israeli intelligence services, Mossad, as well. The bankers were so integrated into the operations that secret meetings took place in Prague between the Soviets and the international financiers concerned, every week. General Sejna knew this because secret villas under his control were used as the locations for most of the Soviets' meetings with the bankers involved. In other words, Western bankers have knowingly participated in this destructive, Leninist revolutionary activity from the outset of the drug offensive launched by Soviet and Chinese intelligence to destroy the West.

In the fourth place, the explosion of the drug scourge has been facilitated by the encouragement and complicity of confused intellectuals of the Left, whose power base also controls, or has achieved mind-hegemony within, the marketplace for ideas7. This is no accident, of course, since it has been a consequence of the parallel revolutionary drive to destroy values, religion and morality throughout the targeted West, to which brief references have been made. The drug plague expanded between 1965 and 1980, when drug

usage in the West first became rampant, to a significant degree because drug use was pop- ularised by intellectuals in academic settings and because these people published books promoting drug use via permissive messages and a perverse and wilful insistence that there were no bad drugs, only ill-informed drug users - and because such permissive works outnumbered those stressing the biological and social dangers by a ratio of 50 to l8. In the fifth place, people have been mesmerised - brainwashed by politicians, governments, news media, and academia - into thinking, as noted earlier, that it is they themselves who are the cause of the crisis [see page 155]; that if people did not use drugs, there would be no drug scourge, that their governments have all along been hard at work fighting the plague, and that the public should not become involved at all, since it is all so horribly dangerous. Depend on us, we have the task covered, and all we need is more time and money, US officials routinely tell Congress. Certainly, drug users and abusers are not without fault, and are themselves in danger of perdition; but they would have been far less vulnerable if they had enjoyed the benefit of principled responses and retaliation by their governments -and had not the enemy been working overtime to destroy Western culture, beliefs and values, and to subvert education.

Today, with the further intent of continuing the charade and to avoid reality (and responsibility), people ask: 'But are they - the Russians, Chinese, Cubans, and their many surrogates, still involved?'

Certainly, there have been significant changes. However, there is not one identifiable change that suggests any diminished Soviet, Chinese, or Cuban involvement. What has happened is that production and trafficking have entered an even more aggressive phase aimed at expanding drug usage and corruption on a world-wide scale, without restric- tion. Drug-trafficking is more open, in a real sense parallelling the sudden 'emergence' of Russian organised crime as a 'new' phenomenon in industrialised countries9.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a reasonable hypothesis as to why the Russians,the

Chinese or Cubans, would not be as active today as ever - indeed more so. Consider:

First: The KGB/GRU is as alive and as 'well' as ever, and enjoys greater power than before the implementation of 'collapsible Communism'. Why on earth would they walk away from the most profitable business and the most effective political compromise, blackmail, and influence operation the world has ever seen? What bureaucracy ever went out of business without being forced out of business, when the parent organisation is alive and healthy and so powerful that it has become a 'state within the state' [see page 162] (although that in itself is nothing new at all)?

After all, the drug-trafficking operation, 'Druzhba Narodov', produced scores of billions of dollars in secret revenues each year. These revenues were controlled by the KGB and never went near the official government budget. This converted the KGB/GRU into a fiscal

powerhouse independent of the state. There is no way these revenues would have been

discarded, and there was no-one on the outside with the knowledge and power who could ever question or challenge their provenance.

Secondly, the political blackmail and compromise dossiers on people holding positions of power around the world, which became crucial components of the narcotics trafficking products were - and still are - exceedingly valuable assets for use in support of Russian foreign and financial policy. Such files and operations were so valuable that prior to the controlled geopolitical 'changes' which the KGB/GRU itself orchestrated, control of global drug operations was shifted to Moscow and the key files were moved to Russia. Asset preservation was a hallmark of KGB/GRU activities on the

eve of the controlled disintegration of the Stalinist model ('collapsible Communism').

Thirdly, nor has the manner in which secrecy has been preserved in critical areas, been significantly changed since 1989-91. Much information has emerged, but next to nothing has been revealed of strategic importance. Where important strategic information has been identified, the means used to safeguard any leakage have remained as strong-armed and as ruthless as was always the case under 'overt Communism' prior to 1989-91.

In the fourth place, there is no coherent reason for the managers of the global drugs offensive to cease and desist - since Western Governments, having protected the drug trade for thirty years and more, are not about to change their attitudes. It is still contrary to the policies of most Western Governments to say anything negative about, or to embarrass, the Soviets or the Chinese. Britain has leant over backwards to placate the Chinese, even though it has handed them the world's primary drug entrepot, Hong Kong, with its stu- pendous power and infrastructure, on a plate. And, in an unbelievable repeat of misjudged joint US-Bulgarian operations to help the Bulgarians curb drug-trafficking across their bor- ders in the 1970s, an initiative that would have been ludicrous had it not been so tragic [see Chapter 9], the US intelligence communities (FBI and CIA) have opened offices in Moscow so that they can work jointly with the KGB in 'fighting organised crime, drug-trafficking, and international terrorism' - with no apparent understanding of the extent of KGB and GRU involvement in each of these three activities.

The net result of this folly is as follows: first, the Soviets/Russians have been well briefed on Western crime-fighting methodology, attitudes and responses. Secondly, they have been kept well-informed about initiatives considered and mounted by US intelli- gence to 'combat crime', enabling the Russians to ensure that their criminalist operatives have been able to remain several steps ahead of Western intelligence at all times. To keep US and Western intelligence agencies 'on side' whenever doubts may appear to have arisen in Western  minds  about  the  integrity  and/or  the  sincerity  of  Russian  activities  and intentions, snippets of otherwise unobtainable, but usually expendable, intelligence, have been vouchsafed from time to time for the benefit of Western intelligence, so as to make sure that this ill-advised 'cooperative' crime-fighting activity could continue to be justified in Western capitals. Again, such behaviour is nothing new at all: it is standard Leninist deception practice.

Since 1990-91, Lenin's 'criminal state' has been exported as a model for the whole world. Drug-trafficking is more aggressive, widespread and open than at any time in human history. Russia itself has become a hotbed of crime and corruption. Organised crime controls over forty percent of private businesses, sixty percent of state-owned com- panies, over half of Russia's commercial banks (a large number of which were to have been closed down in late 1998, having outlived their 'usefulness'), and eighty percent of the shops, hotels and service industries in Moscow. The KGB is widely credited with being at the centre of these criminal operations, and their primary benefactor - a devel- opment which led one Russian writer, Yevgenia Albats, to be the first to label the KGB a

'state within a state'10. Russian organised crime has also experienced phenomenal growth in the United States and in Latin America.

The Russians also forged with the speed of light, ties and alliances with the mafia, Japanese yukaza, Chinese triads, Jamaican 'Yardies' (some leaders of which group were seized in a dramatic police drug-bust in central London on 30th November 1998: see also

page 164), and other drug-trafficking organisations around the world. The KGB/GRU's

political influence operations must also remain of global scope - as an inevitable and nat-

ural consequence of the tens of thousands of dossiers they hold on people of power and influence in the West and elsewhere, who have been corrupted by the drug trade.

In 1991, the Russian central banking system began printing roubles as fast as it

could. Naturally, the value of the rouble tumbled. Suddenly, the law was changed. Early in

1992 it ceased to be illegal any longer to hold dollars in Russia. Overnight, US dollars became the preferred currency throughout the 'former' Soviet Union. One newspaper reported as early as mid-1993 that there were more paper dollars in circulation in Russia than in the United States - up to $100 billion in dollar bills.

Where did all the dollars circulating in the 'former' Soviet Union come from? Cer- tainly, they did not originate among tourists or businessmen. Since US dollars became the preferred currency in Russia, between $1.0 and $3.0 billion in dollar bills have also been leaving Russia every month (at least $50 million a day), destined for foreign banks. Russian crooks now own Cyprus11 and are moving into Malta. Their preferred money-laundering and sequestering locations these days are indeed Cyprus, Lebanon, the Cayman Islands (especially via certain Canadian banks), and to a lesser extent, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Yet notwithstanding this immense outward flow, there are still thought to be more paper dollars in circulation in Russia than in the United States.

While all this unconstrained criminal activity has been developing and maturing over the past decade, the West (and East, but mainly the West - and within the West, pri- marily Europe) has been pouring massive financial and technical assistance into Russia. The socialist European Union has been particularly conscientious in this regard. All of which brings to mind the manner in which the drunken sailor spends his wages. Why would anyone, knowing the situation in Russia and the nature of the Russian leadership and culture, provide 'economic' assistance, or even think they could do clean and prof- itable business, in accordance with Western standards and norms, with the Russians - especially recognising that Western businessmen and financiers are generally not naive in pursuing their normal activities? Clearly, there must be a dimension which is not widely understood. Perhaps the long-term background and nature of Soviet-Western financial cooperation may have some connection with the compromise dossiers mentioned above. We have seen that Western bankers were 'integrated' into the Soviet drug infrastructure from the beginning. Given the predominant participation of Soviet/Russian and Chinese intelligence in these nefarious activities, it would be incredible if the dossiers were not in active use today, and if their use of blackmail and other methods of compromising Western and European Union politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, policymakers and agents of influence were not as commonplace and routine as in the past.

The worst is yet to come. We have observed the growth of an immense international narcotics business since the early 1960s. This business represented an outward manifestation of two state-run intelligence operations, those developed by the Chinese and the Soviets, in collaboration with their East European satellite surrogate services. The operations concerned were fully integrated from the outset, with international finance, law and politics. In parallel, the world experienced the headlong growth of what is now referred to as global criminal capitalism ('criminalism')12.

This embraces narcotics trafficking, organised crime, illegal arms sales, the theft of national resources, income tax evasion, and pornography. And as explained above, almost the instant the Soviet Union 'disintegrated', Russian banks, managed and staffed in large measure by former KGB and GRU personnel, began proliferating, while sizeable Russian crime syndicates surfaced all over the world - forging, as noted, almost instanta-

neous ties with mafia networks (which the KGB/GRU knew well, of old), with drug-traf- fickers and with other organised criminal groups everywhere. Indeed, the links between the Soviets and Italian mafia groups had long historical roots: for instance, Soviet Georgia had traditionally provided Moscow's mafia connections in Italy with hunting privileges -so that when the time came for Eduard Shevardnadze to seek help from Western sources to cement his brutal regime, it was to Italian mafia-linked allies that his government turned for special expedited deliveries of rubber truncheons (the Italians make excellent rubber truncheons used for 'crowd control' purposes). Is all this just mere coincidence?

In 1996, annual revenues derived from global criminalist activities were estimated by the World Bank's experts at $1.2 trillion, of which $500 billion were thought to repre- sent profits. These were and remain highly conservative estimates. The narcotics trade alone is in the $500 billion or more range. A more realistic estimate today would probably be of the order $2 trillion per year, as already noted - with $1 trillion, more or less, by way of straight profit; and some experts would raise these estimates further, towards $3.0 trillion annually in turnover. That is to say, governments, banks and the global criminalists are arranging the transfer of at least $1.0 trillion every year of national and private wealth into the bank accounts of the global criminal fraternity - a massive transfer of wealth for which there has been no historical parallel. This scandalous state of affairs has been continuing for several decades on an ever expanding scale, and the power conferred as a consequence threatens to destroy governments, democracy and the international banking system itself. Drug money also weakens and corrodes competition by favouring some economic agents at the expense of others.

Two trillion+ dollars a year (a conservative figure, as noted) over the past two decades, excluding interest, would imply that more than $40 trillion will have been added to the wealth of the global criminal classes, including the managers and representatives of Lenin's continuing world socialist revolution. Most of this money has been invested in property, bonds and stocks, and each year a further trillion or more dollars is added to the pool. Given that even these data are believed by some experts to understate the position, the probable value of accrued drug money lodged in the international financial system worldwide probably now exceeds this $40 trillion estimate by a considerable margin*. The associated corruption among financial institutions, investment advisory services (including stock brokerage houses and mutual funds), prestigious law firms, and among the political classes, has by now long since reached epidemic proportions. And this trans- formation has been accompanied by minimal publicity, with the exception of extensively publicised, but intermittent, 'drug busts', such as the sizeable operation mounted by British law enforcement agents on 30th November 1998 against Jamaican 'Yardie' opera- tives [see page 162], which resulted in the seizure of hard drugs and weapons13.

In December 1996, Business Week gave some exposure to what it termed the 'tip of the iceberg', in a feature about drug money corruption on Wall Street, entitled 'The Mob on the Street'. The article explained:

'In the canyons of lower Manhattan, one can find members of organised crime, their friends and associates. How large a presence? No-one - least of all regulators and law enforcement - seems to know. The Street's reputed ranking underworld chieftain, Abramo, is described by sources familiar with his activities as controlling at least four brokerages through front men, and exerting influence upon still more firms'14.

* Author's Note: One of the principal hidden motivations behind the contemporary drug legalisation drive is to procure the instantaneous legalisation of drug profits and to eliminate the potential risks of disclosure and exposure - that is, to legitimise accumulated illegal drug-derived fortunes.