Special Agent Roy Ibble reporting . . .

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

Hey there Mr Blue Skyyye!

Mr. Dinn,
 
> Most
> damning of all is the fact that the government carefully and explicitly
> changed
> the law in 1981 so that they would not be obliged to report any
> information they obtained regarding drug trafficking to the Justice
> Department.

This was not accomplished by a change in the law (which would have 
required congressional involvement), but by a request from the CIA 
Directorate (read Bill Casey) to the Solicitor General's office 
seeking an exemption from the requirement to REPORT all criminal 
activity including drug running, to the Justice Dept. Those of a 
conspiratorial bent will appreciate that the Solicitor General was 
employing one Kenneth Starr (M. A. Brown University) at the time.
The letter requesting this exemption was only made public in the last 
couple of years, I recall it being aired in the middle of Monica 
Gate, a brilliant if unintended juxtaposition. 

> Webb's story is one of its main concerns, particularly the way his story
> was rubbished by the mainstream press (particular thanks are due to a host
> of mainly Washington journalists who have acted as apologists for the CIA
> many times) and his paper was squeezed into backing down on the story and
> dumping the blame on Webb. Webb resigned in protest at his treatment and
> went on to publish the full story as a book.

I don't think it was a coincidence that the paper changed Editors 
shortly thereafter. It was the new guy that issued the craven 
"re-evaluation". The Times and the Post did indeed behave like good 
establishment pawns, perhaps partly due to the fact that their own 
people, for reasons unknown, had let the ball drop. It is 
particularly amusing given that the CIA-Crack story is a staple of 
the GET BILL crowd through the operation at Mena Airport in Ark-
even R. Emmett Tyrrel, the editor of the American Spectator wrote the 
Wall Street Journal a nasty letter for not being sufficiently 
aggressive regarding that sordid partnership.

> This is where the Pynchon trail picks up again. The CIA chemical warfare
> people
> were a major player in research into psychoactive drugs, most notably LSD
> but also
> cannabis.

...and in a post some time ago, I offered a brief blurb on one Dr. 
Murray (an american pointsman) who guided a lot of those efforts. A 
net search yielded suspiciously little, with the exception of several 
references to the Murray Center @ Harvard U.


> the CIA repeatedly tested these drugs (not to mention others
> which
> are far more scary such as the hallucinogen developed by for military use
> which
> sends you on a major trip for at least a week) on their own citizens
> without the
> subjects' consent or, frequently, knowledge of what was being done to them.
> Slothrop's
> trip down the toilet could be taken straight out of one of their case
> reports. Oh and
> yes, Ghengis Cohen, who is doling out LSD to housewives in TCOL49, may not
> be real


No, but experiment subject Teddy Koszinski (sp) sure is.

> but the idea that such experiments were conducted is no figment of Pynchon's
> imagination; such research programmes were bankrolled by the CIA. In fact, you
> find any US research into LSD before 1965 and it is almost certain it will
> have
> been backed by money ultimately derived (via various laundering channels)
> from the
> CIA. Even Ken Kesey's acid came from the CIA via the military.


I believe that the agency was sued succesfully by the survivors of 
one such subject.


> e.g. as an extremely successful treatment for
> alcoholism.
> It is more than a little suspicious that this research was squashed and
> hidden as the
> drug moved to the streets and the hints of various CIA-connected people
> being involved
> in the 60s drug markets suggests that once again the CIA might have found a
> better use for
> the drug as a tool to control or divert forces within their own country
> than for
> operations against enemies abroad.


There could be a more benign explanation. It is possible that LSD, 
like MDA, which was originally believed to have desirable properties, 
fell out of favor as treatments. I had a buddy in college whose 
girlfriend's mother, an oil heiress, had been issued a prescription 
for MDA, and found it very much to her liking.

> This phoney
> war eventually grew into a federal boondoggle encouraging excesses such as
> CAMP, commando
> like raids, asset seizures, spotter planes, helicopters, etc just as
> Pynchon describes
> them in Vineland.

Carter and his Drug Czar almost had it licked, then the DC got caught 
up in a scandal involving old friend quaalude. The Atlantic Monthly 
had a great story of how things went down hill from there - it 
begins with a couple of suburban parents being shocked to find 
roaches among the piles of beer cans and liquor bottles left behind 
after a party hosted by their high school aged kids. 

> then what is the federal government doing
> providing funds
> to support states in clamping down on the drug trade? Well, it does add up,
> actually. The
> drug trade is very much about turf wars.

and about the 16 billion dollar business of enforcement. Its a big 
apple, chewed from both ends.

> The war on drugs served to
> allow highly
> repressive legislation which required minimal evidence (in many cases no
> evidence at all)
> in order to sieze assets and imprison suspects.

It is interesting to note that the fight against such laws is being 
led by Henry Hyde, among others. Reason is beginning to prevail - but 
it was very scary there for a while as the Supremes (anxious to 
accomodate the rabid right) actually defined property as a 
defendant, thereby smartly sidestepping questions of due process, 
double jeopardy and "proportionality".

> since provision of evidence is
> one of things
> the CIA (not to mention those who cooperated with them in the FBI, DEA
> Justice Dept and
> Dept of State) have repeatedly done their best to avoid, as Gary Webb's
> book shows.

Much embarrasment as low life defendants are claiming to be FBI 
assets. At least three such cases currently in Mass. alone. 

> In many of these cases even when they were acknowledged as innocent
> they received no
> recompense for their imprisonment and no return of their money/property.
> Pynchon did not
> make up Zoyd's story from whole cloth.


The late Malibu rancher, Mr. Scott offers a perfect example. Turns 
out the raid on the legally blind seniors  ranch was designed solely 
to deprive him of this desirable spread, for the benefit of a couple 
of the officers. I believe we are still awaiting indictements in this 
case.

> Steely's book was described by one commentator as `disturbing'. Alex
> Cockburn, his co-author,
> replied that no, actually, it was not disturbing to find that the CIA was
> implicated in
> drug dealing on a global scale.

Such a commentator is clearly a mental deficient - ever hear of 
Nugan Hand Bank?


> The US, the champion of the `free' world, has been destabilising
> governments, perverting
> democracy, assassinating, torturing and abusing free people around the
> world for most of
> the last 50 years. If the agents of this abuse, the CIA, needed to fund the
> abuse by peddling
> drugs to `the dregs of their society' do you think they would baulk at that?

But this is the MO, not of the US, but of ANY international player. 
Drugs are a tremendous source of ready and disguisable cash, it has 
funded efforts as diverse as those of the Kosovars and the Turkish 
Government, it is likely the life line of a number of movements of 
national liberation.

> I now live in Edinburgh where from 1983-6 heroin
> distribution led
> to the highest per capita incidence of HIV in Europe, exacerbating some of
> the worst slums in
> Britain with the appalling consequences of that disease. The heroin came
> from Afghanistan,
> from the Mujaheddin who were trained, funded and aided in the distribution
> of the drug by the
> CIA.

That heroin would have gotten there one way or the other. The CIA 
(and other intelligance agencies) have simply lifted a page from the 
books of the Mafia.

> It is about people, lives being squashed or destroyed by evil vested
> interests.
> The same old shit happening to the same old people. Don't ignore it. Read
> about it, get
> wise and then get angry. Then tell people about it and get them angry too.

...and then insist on zero tolerance of cocaine use among your 
acquaintances. 

> Let's see if we can start that ball rolling before the Reagans, Bushes,
> Norths, et al
> make it to the crypts.

Tragically, I suspect that the Right has won this one already. By 
inflating the mundane to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, 
their minions have created an atmosphere where the public simply 
doesn't care about scandals of ANY nature - how else to explain the 
rise of that spawn of venality Little Shrub Bush? The silence of all 
those who wailed about Oval Office BJ's is deafening.

love,
cfa