4um: U.S. to blame for much of Mexico violence

MEXICO CITY, March 25 (Reuters) - An "insatiable" appetite in the United States for illegal drugs is to blame for much of the violence ripping through Mexico, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.

Clinton acknowledged the U.S. role in Mexico's vicious drug war as she arrived in Mexico for a two-day visit where she discussed U.S. plans to ramp up security on the border with President Felipe Calderon.

A surge in drug gang killings to 6,300 last year and fears the violence could seep over the border has put Mexico's drug war high on President Barack Obama's agenda, after years of Mexico feeling that Washington was neglecting a joint problem.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the death of police officers, soldiers and civilians," Clinton told reporters during her flight to Mexico City.

Clinton said the Obama administration strongly backed Mexico in its fight with the drug cartels and vowed the United States would try to speed up the transfer of drug-fighting equipment promised under a 2007 agreement.

"We will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you ... Our relationship is far greater than any threat," Clinton said at a news conference in Mexico City.

Crushing the drug cartels, who arm themselves with smuggled U.S. weapons and leave slain rivals, sometimes beheaded, in public streets, has become the biggest test of Calderon's presidency as the bloodshed rattles investors and tourists.

Washington plans to ramp up border security with a $184 million program to add 360 security agents to border posts and step up searches for smuggled drugs, guns and cash.

The Obama administration will spend $725 million to modernize border crossings and provide about $80 million to help Mexico purchase Black Hawk helicopters, Clinton said.

It was unclear whether this would be new money from the United States or whether the Obama administration had already requested the funds from Congress.

In Washington, Senator Joseph Lieberman said Obama's plans were not enough and he would seek $385 million more from Congress to pay for 1,600 more Customs and Border Patrol agents and bolster law enforcement centers in border areas.

"The danger here is clear and present. It threatens to get worse," Lieberman said.

Clinton will use her visit to address a trucking dispute with Mexico and long-running trade and immigration issues.

She said the trading partners were making headway on a spat which saw Mexico slam high tariffs on an estimated $2.4 billion worth of U.S. goods after the U.S. Congress ended a pilot program to let Mexican trucks operate in the United States.

"On the trucking dispute, we are working to try to resolve it. We are making progress," she said, adding that she expects Congress will be receptive to the administration's ideas.

Clinton, whose includes a stop in the northern business city of Monterrey on Thursday, said the thorny issues on the table did not mean that U.S.-Mexico relations were in trouble.

"I don't see it that way," she said. "I think that we have some specific challenges ... but every relationship has challenges in it."

Mexico has felt slighted by a delay in the arrival of drug-fighting equipment pledged by former President George W. Bush, as U.S. officials have sought assurances that the aid would not end up in the hands of corrupt officials or police.

The U.S. Congress this month trimmed the amount of drug aid money it will set aside this fiscal year to $300 million from $400 million last year, under a pledge of $1.4 billion to Mexico and Central America over three years.

Since taking office in Dec. 2006, Calderon has spent more than $6.4 billion on his drug war and sent 45,000 troops and federal police to trouble spots around the country.

Mexico has repeatedly said, however, that its efforts will come to nothing if the United States does not clamp down on the smuggling of U.S. guns used in 90 percent of drug crimes south of the border.

Clinton described the violence Mexico is grappling with as "horrendous" and said cartels were alarmingly well equipped.

"It's not only guns. It's night vision goggles. It's body armor. These criminals are outgunning the law enforcement officials," she said. "When you go into a gun fight, where you are trying to round up bad guys and they have ... military style equipment that is much better than yours, you start out at a disadvantage." (Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Kieran Murray)

But Hillary, drugs are illegal in this nation. So is gun smuggling. Do we need a new round of legislation making this conduct MORE illegal? I suppose all we can do is stop selling guns to EVERYONE so the Mexican drug cartels stay safer.

The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools. - Herbert Spencer

Roger and Slick's coca tab alone keeps one moderate sized cartel fully operational..

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams

As if we don't have enough individual pressure, now we have to take responsibility for opening up the border, supplying kindergarteners with marijuana and arming drug cartels. It's all about priorities, and we need a damn good self shellacking for being self absorbed.

The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. - Herbert Spencer

CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe.

"In my 30-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA."Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit. {1}

On August 18, 1996, the San Jose Mercury initiated an extended series of articles about the CIA connection to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles. Though the CIA and influential media like The Washington Post , The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times went out of their way to belittle the significance of the articles, the basic ingredients of the story were not really new -- the CIA's Contra army, fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua, turning to smuggling cocaine into the U.S., under CIA protection, to raise money for their military and personal use.

What was unique about the articles was (A) they appeared in a "respectable" daily newspaper and not an "alternative" publication, which could have and would have been completely ignored by the powers that be; and (B) they followed the cocaine into Los Angeles' inner city, into the hands of the Crips and the Bloods, at the time that street-level drug users were figuring out how to make cocaine affordable: by changing the costly white powder into powerful little nuggets of crack that could be smoked cheaply.

The Contra dealers, principally Oscar Danilo Blandon and his boss Juan Norwin Meneses, both from the Nicaraguan privileged class, operated out of the San Francisco Bay Area and sold tons of cocaine -- a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before -- to Los Angeles street gangs. They then funneled millions in drug profits to the Contra cause, while helping to fuel a disastrous crack explosion in L.A. and other cities, and enabling the gangs to buy automatic weapons, sometimes from Blandon himself.

The principal objection raised by the establishment critics to this scenario was that, even if correct, it didn't prove that the CIA was complicit, or even had any knowledge of it. However, to arrive at this conclusion, they had to ignore things like the following from the SJM series:

a) Cocaine flights from Central America landed with impunity in various spots in the United States, including a U.S. Air Force base in Texas. In 1985, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent assigned to El Salvador reported to headquarters the details on cocaine flights from El Salvador to the U.S. The DEA did nothing but force him out of the agency {2}.

b) When Blandon was finally arrested in October 1986, after congress resumed funding for the Contras, and he admitted to crimes that have sent others away for life, the Justice Department turned him loose on unsupervised probation after only 28 months behind bars and has paid him more than $166,000 since.

c) According to a legal motion filed in a 1990 police corruption trial: In the 1986 raid on Blandon's money-launderer, the police carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the U.S. government to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering on behalf of the Contras. CIA personnel appeared at the sheriff's department within 48 hours of the raid and removed the seized files from the evidence room. This motion drew media coverage in 1990 but, at the request of the Justice Department, a federal judge issued a gag order barring any discussion of the matter.

d) Blandon subsequently became a full-time informant for the DEA. When he testified in 1996 as a prosecution witness, the federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into Blandon's ties to the CIA.

e) Though Meneses is listed in the DEA's computers as a major international drug smuggler and was implicated in 45 separate federal investigations since 1974, he lived openly and conspicuously in California until 1989 and never spent a day in a U.S. prison. The DEA, U.S. Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement have complained that a number of the probes of Meneses were stymied by the CIA or unnamed "national security" interests.

f) The U.S. Attorney in San Francisco gave back to an arrested Nicaraguan drug dealer the $36,000 found in his possession. The money was returned after two Contra leaders sent letters to the court swearing that the drug dealer had been given the cash to buy supplies "for the reinstatement of democracy in Nicaragua". The letters were hurriedly sealed after prosecutors invoked the Classified Information Procedures Act, a law designed to keep national security secrets from leaking out during trials. When a U.S. Senate subcommittee later inquired of the Justice Department the reason for this unusual turn of events, they ran into a wall of secrecy. "The Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from getting access to people, records -- finding anything out about it," recalled Jack Blum, former chief counsel to the Senate subcommittee that investigated allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking. "It was one of the most frustrating exercises that I can ever recall."

CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party. The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks -- ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille's first heroin laboratories were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront. {3}

The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand and Laos), the world's largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the CIA's principal airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia. {4}

During U.S. military involvement in Laos and other parts of Indochina, Air America flew opium and heroin throughout the area. Many GI's in Vietnam became addicts. A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world's illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America's booming heroin market. {5}

The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including former CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt. {6}

For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated "guns-for-drugs" flights for the Contras, providing protection and pilots, as well as safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellin Cartel patrons). When a confluence of circumstances led to Noriega's political luck running out, the Bush administration was reluctantly obliged to turn against him, invading Panama in December 1989, kidnapping the general, and falsely ascribing the invasion to the war on drugs. Ironically, drug trafficking through Panama was not abated after the US invasion. {7}

Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the Contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating: "There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region. ... U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua. ... In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. ... Senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems." {8}

In Costa Rica, which served as the "Southern Front" for the Contras (Honduras being the Northern Front), there were several different CIA-Contra networks involved in drug trafficking, including that of CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica's border with Nicaragua were the main staging area for the Contras. Hull and other CIA-connected Contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million in cash and several planes to Contra leaders. {9} In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a DEA-hired plane clandestinely and illegally flew him to Miami, via Haiti. The US repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull back to Costa Rica to stand trial. {10}

Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Americans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the Contras. Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking. They used Contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shrimp company, which laundered money for the CIA, to move cocaine to the U.S. {11}

Costa Rica was not the only route. Other way stations along the cocaine highway -- and closely associated with the CIA -- were the Guatemalan military intelligence service,which harbored many drug traffickers, and Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador, a key component of the U.S. military intervention against the country's guerrillas. {12}The Contras provided both protection and infrastructure (planes, pilots, airstrips, warehouses, front companies and banks) to these CIA-linked drug networks. At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received US government contracts to carry non-lethal supplies to the Contras. {13} Southern Air Transport, "formerly" CIA-owned, and later under Pentagon contract, was involved in the drug running as well. {14} Cocaine-laden planes flew to Florida, Texas, Louisiana and other locations, including several military bases. Designated as "Contra Craft," these shipments were not to be inspected. When some authority wasn't clued in and made an arrest, powerful strings were pulled on behalf of dropping the case, acquittal, reduced sentence, or deportation. {15}

CIA-supported Moujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society. The Agency's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies. {16} In 1993, an official of the DEA called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world. {17}

While working to keep key Haitian military and political leaders in power, the CIA turned a blind eye to their clients' drug trafficking. In 1986, the Agency added some more names to its payroll by creating a new Haitian organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN). SIN was purportedly created to fight the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in the trafficking, a trade aided and abetted by some of the Haitian military and political leaders. (18)

Cartels fly narcotics by Uncle Sam

THE reaction from the State Department official was one of shock. "Are you kidding me? We sold what? To whom?" He added world-wearily: "That's just great, just great!"

It isn't every day that a normally staid diplomat lets down his professional guard and expresses his gut feelings, but then it isn't often that Uncle Sam supplies, albeit indirectly and unwittingly, surplus American military transport aircraft to Mexican drug smugglers.

The type of aircraft concerned? Lockheed Hercules C-130s, the robust, tactical multi-mission plane that's been the cargo-hauling mainstay of the US armed forces since the 1950s. To let a cartel - in this case Mexico's second largest - get its hands on one Hercules could be regarded, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, a misfortune but what about four? That begins to look careless. While the Clinton administration has been trumpeting in recent weeks its law-enforcement success with Operation Casablanca, the $87m money-laundering sting operation that led to the arrests in mid-May of dozens of Mexican bankers, American officials have been much quieter about a multi-agency cock-up that allowed the Arellano Felix brothers of Tijuana to transport tons of narcotics on board four former US Air Force C-130s between 1993 and 1997. How the planes got into the possession of the Tijuana cartel - one of the Arellano Felix brothers was recently added to the FBI's Most Wanted List - is the kind of story that appears on a made-for-TV movie. But the comedy of errors and mishaps that dominate the story could also be considered as a case study in what is wrong with America's languid war on drugs. "The traffickers are alert and quick to exploit any loopholes and we lack vigilance and are asleep on watch," says one senior agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. "We battle to take from the smugglers with one hand and then give with the other." The 'giving' has irritated the Mexican government, frequently the butt of harsh American criticism for its failures to curb narco- trafficking. But Mexico City hasn't raised a public hue-and-cry about the C-130s since it discovered last October that they were being used for smuggling. The muted nature of the Mexican protests - the issue has been the subject of behind-the-scenes discussions between officials of the two governments - is a reflection, say US Justice Department sources, of a recognition by Mexico City that it is as much to blame as Washington for the Tijuana cartel getting hold of the C-130s. "After all, they were being operated in Mexico territory," stresses an American lawman. Even so, there is likely to be uproar on Capitol Hill when the full details emerge of the transactions that landed the C-130s in criminal hands. Several congressional committees are poised to start investigations, including the House National Security Committee. According to the national weekly news magazine Insight, which this week publishes an exclusive on the debacle, two C-130s mothballed by the US Air Force were bought in 1992 and 1993 by a Mexican air freight firm called Aero Postal and two others were temporarily leased to the company. The planes, which were decommissioned a few years earlier by the air force, were part of a series of mothballed C-130s that were swapped for antique aircraft that could be exhibited at national air museums. T&G Aviation, an Arizona-based aerial fire- fighting concern, obtained all four, either directly in the swap programme or from other private US air companies that had swapped museum-worthy aircraft for them and then sold them to T&G. One of the C-130s was stored for a time at Mena, a remote Arkansas airport that has been the target for more than 10 years of several inconclusive federal and state probes into persistent allegations that it was at the centre of an Iran-Contra-linked arms-smuggling and narco-trafficking operation. T&G, which was founded by Woody Grantham, a former pilot for Air America when it was owned by the CIA, sold two to Aero Postal after gaining the necessary approval from the State Department's Office of Defence Trade Controls, a section responsible for ensuring that both new and used US-manufactured military equipment is sold only to friendly nations or companies not connected with terrorism or criminal activity. State Department sources have told Scotland on Sunday there were no problems with the applications for the two sales. Nor were later T&G applications to lease two other C-130s to Aero Postal questioned. "As far as we are concerned the system worked perfectly and nothing slipped through the cracks," says a State Department official. "An American company applied to sell to a Mexican company two planes. We held no derogatory information on either business, so we approved the applications. We did however lay down strict conditions on how the planes were to be used. It isn't our fault if the owners diverted their use from legal cargo-shipping to drugs- smuggling." James Turner, a Pentagon spokesman concurred: "It isn't the Pentagon's policy to let any US military equipment find its way to narco-traffickers." The State Department's line is likely to buckle when congressional investigators get to grips with the debacle. "They should have known - for God's sake, it's their job," one infuriated House Republican aide told Scotland on Sunday. In fact, there were warning signals available for the State Department to pick up, if not at the time of the sales, then at least a few months later and well before the Mexican attorney general raided Aero Postal last autumn, shut the company down as an Arellano Felix-front, impounded one of the C-130s and issued warrants for the arrest of all of the executive officers of the business. But no one in the federal government reacted. "This is the way you lose a war," comments a veteran US lawman. Congress is sure to agree.

A smuggler's flying dream.(Mexican drug traffickers allegedly used US military transport airplanes)

The State Department, in a move unnoticed by the media, has allowed monthballed U.S. military transport planes to fall into the hands of notorious Mexican drug runners. What's going on?

Are you kidding me? We approved what? To whom?" The reaction from the State Department official was one of shock. "That's just great, just great!" It isn't every day that a normally staid diplomat lets down his professional guard and expresses gut outrage, but then it isn't often that Uncle Sam supplies surplus U.S. military aircraft to Mexican drug smugglers.

The type of aircraft concerned? Lockheed Hercules C-130s, the robust tactical multimission plane that's been the cargo-hauling mainstay of the U.S. military and the armed services of friendly nations since the 1960s. To let a drugs cartel -- in this case Mexico's second largest -- get its hands on one Hercules may be regarded as a misfortune. But what about two? That, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, looks like carelessness.

The cock-up began to come to light last October when the Mexican attorney general ordered the seizure of Aero Postal, a Mexican air-freight firm discovered to have ties with the Arellano Felix brothers, Benjamin and Ramon, who control the Tijuana drugs cartel. Two former U.S. Air Force C-130s and a Boeing 737 belonging to the company were impounded and remain grounded at Mexico City airport. There was a flurry of brief Mexican press reports at the time about the attorney general's intervention, but the scale of the Tijuana cartel's C-130 capability was missed -- and so were the mistakes Uncle Sam made in letting the planes head south of the Rio Grande.

While the Clinton administration has been trumpeting its law-enforcement success in recent weeks with Operation Casablanca, the $87 million money-laundering sting that led to the arrests in mid-May of dozens of Mexican bankers, U.S. officials haven't been advertising the multiagency debacle that between 1993 and 1997 gave the Arellano Felixes the opportunity to transport tons of narcotics on board the now- impounded C-130s. Aero Postal also was considering at one time leasing two other Air Force C-130s, which have a market value of about $5 million each.

How the planes got into the possession of the Tijuana cartel -- remember that one of the Arellano Felix brothers, Ramon, was added last year to the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List -- is a story worthy of a made-for-TV movie. According to a senior agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, the comedy of bureaucratic errors that led serious "bad guys" to secure the aircraft -- the C-130 is any smuggler's dream plane -- also is a case study in "our inept war on drugs." The DEA agent adds: "We battle to take from the traffickers with one hand and we give with the other. They remain alert and we lack vigilance."

The "giving" has irritated the Mexican government, frequently the butt of harsh U.S. criticism about its failures to curb the drugs trade. But Mexico City hasn't raised a public hue and cry, hence the lack of American press coverage on the matter. The muted nature of the Mexican protests -- the issue has been the subject of behind the-scenes talks between officials of the two governments -- is a reflection, Justice Department sources claim, of Mexico City's recognition that there's plenty of blame to go around.

Lockheed built the two planes involved for the U.S. Air Force. Their Air Force numbers were 570517 and 570518. After long military histories they were were mothballed, at different times and separately, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson, Ariz., according to the Lars Olausson Lockheed Hercules tracking book published in Sweden.

The two left the boneyard at Davis- Monthan after being swapped with private U.S. concerns for antique planes worthy of exhibition in national air museums. The exchanges were part of a controversial U.S. government program that was the subject this year of a major federal fraud prosecution in Arizona.

In total, three dozen surplus military C-130s were swapped for antique planes under the U.S. Forest Service's Historic Aircraft Exchange Program. Most of the C-130s went to a handful of American aerial firefighting companies or other private businesses. The two Aero Postal bought were sold to it by T&G Aviation of Chandler, Ariz., a company founded by William "Woody" Grantham, formerly a pilot for the onetime CIA-owned Air America, which itself purchased the aircraft from private businesses, including a bank in California.

For a time, one of the aircraft was stored at Arkansas' remote Mena Intermountain Regional Airport, which currently is the subject of a House Banking Committee drugmoney laundering probe.

T&G applied in 1992 and 1993 for State Department permission to ship the aircraft down to Guadalajara, the Dodge City of the Mexican trafficking scene. The exporting of American manufactured military aircraft, including the C-130s, is meant to be a tightly controlled business. Under the Arms Export Control Act, the State Department's Office of Defense Trade Controls has broad powers to prevent new or used military equipment from being sold to states deemed pariah nations or to foreign companies linked to terrorism or criminal activities, such as drug smuggling.

Both T&G applications for the sales of 570517 in 1992 and for 570518 in 1993 went forward, concedes a State Department spokesman, without a hitch. "We held no derogatory information on either company and so we approved the applications, though Aero Postal was required to use the planes for pesticide spraying or for legal cargo-shipping purposes." State Department sources say there were "no flags of warning" about either T&G or Aero Postal in the Customs Service intelligence computer or in databases run by the DEA.

Insight encountered profound reluctance at U.S. agencies when requesting formal on-the-record comment about what went wrong with the process. Drug czar Barry McCaffrey's spokesman, Bob Weiner, referred queries to his Pentagon counterpart, Ken Bacon, on the grounds that the planes were military aircraft and "we want to speak with one voice." Bacon, however, was voiceless on the subject. He sent forth underling James Turner, whose only comment was, "It isn't our policy to sell anything to narcotraffickers." The Customs Service's head of press, Bill Anthony, became so enraged that he slammed down the phone.

And State, the department that approved the paperwork allowing the aircraft to be sold to Aero Postal? An official in the Office of Defense Trade Controls initially said: "I don't know anything about this." Later, State officials were more forthcoming and confirmed the details of the transfers from T&G to Aero Postal but dismissed as "inaccurate" the suggestion that they did anything wrong in approving the sales. "The system worked perfectly. Nothing slipped through the cracks. We had no reason to decline the applications. There wasn't anything we could have done differently. It isn't our fault if the end-user diverted the planes for illegal purposes."

This "we-saw-no-evil" defense is likely to buckle when Congress comes to grips with what happened. After Insight made inquiries on Capitol Hill to determine whether any of the oversight panels had information on the Aero Postal seizures -- they didn't -- staffers on several congressional committees said they would investigate. One top House GOP investigator rejected State's no-mistakes line as "absurd," adding, "We spend a lot of money on intelligence and it's their job to know."

In fact, Washington's fail-safe alarms probably should have gone off within a few months after State approved the sales. In 1994, the DEA revealed in court filings for a major Chicago-based drugs case that Luis Carlos Herrera-Lizcano, a top Cali and Medellin cartel operative, had tried in the mid-1980s to buy mothballed C-130s from the Australian government. The middle man in the deal? According to Australian press accounts it was John Ford III, an attorney and corporate secretary for T&G. Further, this magazine has discovered that Ford dispatched an associate to check out the Australian C-130s. The associate? Frank Battiston-Posada, who in 1991 was the pilot of a Twin Otter aircraft seized by the DEA at Arkansas' Mena airport on suspicion of drugrunning. No charges were filed against Battiston-Posada.

The Chicago court filing by the DEA also noted that T&G Aviation pilots at one time flew for Trans Latin Air, a Panamanian airline indicted in the same court case on trafficking charges. Trans Latin was dropped from the indictment by the DEA as it abruptly declared bankruptcy.

T&G President Grantham was forthcoming when contacted by Insight. His position? That he can't be held responsible for what Aero Postal did with the planes. "No one can control what happens to a plane after you've sold it," he says. "We dealt with a man who seemed very upstanding, Julian Aparicio. I checked him out with the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and with the head of civil aviation in Mexico. He appeared to be a very honest man. It can be very hard to know who you are dealing with."

Of his pilots flying for Trans Latin, Grantham said in a telephone interview: "We leased a C-130 to them and our pilots flew it in Panama. We know that that C-130 was never used for anything illegal. After every flight it was inspected by Customs and sniffer dogs. There was no sign of drug activity. We worked with U.S. officials down there -- it was after [Panamanian dictator] Noriega was kicked out."

Grantham confirmed that he nearly leased two other military-surplus C-130s to Aero Postal -- their USAF numbers were 560537 and 560487. But the Mexican company decided against the leasing, though their paperwork on the leases is being held by the State Department, sources say.

"It is absolutely unbelievable to think that traffickers had that kind of airlift power" says former U.S. Special Forces Maj. Andy Messing, now the head of the National Defense Council Foundation. "Those babies can land on dirt tracks and they have incredible short takeoff and payload-drop capabilities." And thanks to U.S. government agencies, the Arellano Felix family had years to enjoy all of those capabilities.

Federal programs gave addicts street drugs

The federal government is giving crack and powder cocaine, morphine, and other hard-core drugs to taxpayer-funded researchers for testing on addicts, The Examiner has learned.

For decades, the government has authorized, funded and lobbied for studies in which otherwise illegal drugs were given to addicts in cities such as Washington, Bethesda, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis and San Antonio. The studies continue today and have an array of aims, from documenting the ways cocaine warps the brain to the intensity of pain from morphine withdrawal.

Government records obtained by The Examiner show that the researchers gave test subjects:

Most government officials are not aware of the experiments, even though they have been going on since at least the 1970s.

But at least one former cabinet member found out about them and wants them stopped.

In July 2008, Walters wrote a letter to Michael O. Leavitt, then secretary of health and human services. In that letter, obtained by The Examiner, Walters said that finding treatments for addictions was a “compelling” goal.

“Most people see the things that people will do to themselves when they’re addicted — what they’ll do to themselves, to their families, to their loved ones,” Walters told The Examiner. “I think that when you bring someone in and say, ‘Well, they’re not seeking treatment yet and therefore it’s OK to use them as an experimental subject’ — that’s not the understanding that the current science gives us about this disease.”

The subjects of the tests signed consent forms before engaging in the studies and were paid.

Most of the studies have been funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a government agency based in Washington that is part of the National Institutes of Health. Officials there declined to be interviewed for this story and have not responded to requests for documents relating to the studies. Records show the studies date back to at least 1979.

“NIDA issues grants to researchers all over the country and even many parts of the world,” spokeswoman Stephanie Older wrote in an e- mail. “Although all ... grantees must follow strict human subjects research guidelines, they do conduct their own independent research.”

Critics such as Walters worry that scientists are victimizing people who can’t say no.

Drug addiction is a powerful biochemical force. Studies have shown cocaine, for instance, can warp the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which governs a person’s reasoning and judgment.

“What the critics seem to be implying is that because there’s addiction, there’s coercion,” said Kathleen Neill, a bioethicist with Georgetown University Medical Center. “This has brought up all kinds of ethical concerns, but that’s not to say there isn’t an answer to them.”

Former drug addict Jesse Washington knows what his answer would be. Next month, he’ll have been clean and sober for 20 years. He still remembers acutely what it was like to wait eagerly for new kinds of cocaine, heroin and mescaline the way some collectors wait for “new cars off the line.”

“I was always trying to find a safe way to do it. There’s not,” said Washington, who now counsels addicts at Samaritan Inns, a D.C. halfway house. “But [a study] would have given me an opportunity where I could have talked myself into it and said, ‘These people are trying to help me out. Maybe we can make it [drug abuse] work this time.’ ”

Researchers interviewed by The Examiner say that their NIDA-funded work on drug addicts has yielded powerful insights into the disease.

“Sometime in the fall we’re going to begin a clinical trial on a cocaine vaccine,” said Dr. Herbert Kleber, a Columbia University researcher. “It’s a fascinating kind of research.”

Among the findings from clinical trials, for instance, were brain images taken by Johns Hopkins researchers that showed what cocaine can do to the brain. That’s led to new worlds of understanding on addiction, experts say.

“The question is whether the results justify using these individuals as disposable subjects,” Walters said.

Dr. Suena Massey is a professor of psychiatry at George Washington University who specializes in treating addiction. She says that research involving vulnerable people — such as the mentally ill or drug addicts — always challenges a scientist to find the ethical way of studying serious problems.

“There’s definitely the potential of an ethical dilemma with doing a study that appeals to a vulnerability such as addiction,” Massey said. “Having said that, I think the capacity for informed consent can and should be made on a case-by-case basis.”

“I’m trying to listen to the best science possible. But I haven’t gotten an answer,” he said. “It’s all the bureaucracy protecting itself here on the grounds that the scientists know best. It’s not a trivial matter.”

According to NIDA’s Web site, researchers in New York still are looking for “volunteers.”

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"This man is Jesus,” shouted one man, spilling his Guinness as Barack Obama began his inaugural address. “When will he come to Kenya to save us?”

heeeehe...the fed gov doesn't want those mexican drug lords cutting in on their biz!

Cartels fly narcotics by Uncle Sam

A smuggler's flying dream.(Mexican drug traffickers allegedly used US military transport airplanes)

Federal programs gave addicts street drugs

Government Drug Experiments