History of CIA-Mossad Operations: Supporting Murderous Dictators, Backing Terrorist Militias, and Training Drug Cartels

By: Joel v.d. Reijden | Date: July 9, 2023 | Last update: Dec. 9, 2024.

Contents

Intro

CIA-Mossad: Middle East
1949-1979: The Shah of Iran's torture prisons
1948-1982: From Lebanese Christian fascism to the Sabra and Shatila Massacre
- March 1985 Beirut bombing
- Lebanon's Christians: a doomed cause due to Muslim immigration
CIA-Mossad: Africa
1963-1997: Mobutu of the Congo / Zaire: a murderous personality cultist
1966-1979: Bokassa of Central Africa: cannibal emperor who fed subjects to lions and crocodiles
1962-1971: Uganda's Milton Obote and his "General Services Unit"
1964-1979: Idi Amin of Uganda: a genocidal "black Hitler" running a torture gulag; fed subjects to crocodiles
1986-2020s: Uganda's Yoweri Museveni
CIA "rogues"
1970s: CIA's Consultants Int. aiding terrorism: Gaddafi and super-terrorist "Carlos the Jackal"
1970s-1980s: Danny Casolaro's "Octopus": Wackenhut, CIA and Mossad angles

CIA-Mossad: Latin America
1948-1979: Somoza in Nicaragua
School of the Americas: a school for military torture
Contras: arms, death squads and cocaine

CIA-Mossad: Panama
1968-: Mossad agent Mike Harari builds ties with Torrijos before coup
1968-: Torrijos' subordinate, Col. Manuel Noriega, trained in Israel
1968-1981: Omar Torrijos: anti-U.S., pro-Israel strongman of Panama; mentor of Noriega
1968-1989 - Noriega I: CIA "frenemy", Israel friend
1979-1989 - Noriega II: the Medellin Cartel partner, alongside communists Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega
1971-1987 - Noriega III: DEA and CIA covered up Medellin Cartel and other drug ties

CIA-Colombia-Panama: Ramon Milian Rodriguez
1979-1983: Medellin Cartel and Cali Cartel money launderer
1972-1977: CIA, Manuel Artime, and Operation 40 ties
Ramon Milian Rodriguez: inconsistencies

CIA-Mossad-MI6: Training drug cartels
CIA- and Wackenhut-tied anti-communist death squad training for the Medellin Cartel
1987-1989: British and Israelis training the Medellin Cartel; Khashoggi supplying arms
1980-1990s: Early CIA, Mossad and British ties to the Cali Cartel

Conclusions

Notes

"The truth is that we [too, similar to our critic Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi,] clearly wrote that Israeli intelligence and the Israeli government helped Amin's Uganda and Mobutu's Zaire, armed Pinochet's Chile and Noriega's Panama, and secretly cooperated with the South African regime."

Aug. 26, 1990, Israeli covert operations experts Dan Raviv Yossi Melan for the Los Angeles Times, 'Censorship and 'Every Spy a Prince'').

"Terpil received [a] 53 year sentence. Why was a man with serious charges against him released on bail twice [and allowed to] slip out of the United States? ... The man confirmed [that] Terpil's [pro-terrorist] Libyan operation was in the best long-term interest of the western powers. He also warned us that if we were recording the meeting we could end up, quote, "under a bush in Surrey."

"[Yet] there's a question that has bothered us: [are we] being used as well? ... You see, we have had no impediments put in our way. ... Nobody stopped us. And nobody has made anything difficult for us. ...

"After following his trail for 7 months, we were more and more convinced that the most dangerous [CIA rogue and terrorist supplier] in the world was but a medium-sized cog in the machinery in international intrigue and covert diplomacy - an indiscrete NCO, [purposely] dismissed from the ranks by master tactitians whose games are too complex, too frightening, to understand."

David Fanning, the founder of Frontline on "liberal CIA" media outlet PBS, about chasing the story of CIA "rogues" Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil. 1

Intro

The time that this author worked on articles for 8 to 18 months at a time before publishing a "final product" are over. The intention of this article/book is to tie together much of the historic (joint) CIA-, Mossad- and right-wing coup-plotting-, death squad- and drug trafficking-activity, and do so fully based on reliable sources. It seems simple, but this author has not seen such an oversight anywhere. There's always something missing: too few sources, unreliable sources, disinformation mixed in, too polite, too long-winded, a "liberal CIA" or "conservative CIA" bias, crucial details missing, not broad enough, not having a to-the-point summary, etc.

So, slowly, this will be done here. The author is further ahead than what has been published here and it turns out to be quite easy to tie the same group of indivuals to a whole lot of these "individual" conspiracies - and then some. It's just way too much work to research, write and source all in one go.

Do keep in mind, this author is not about Israel-bashing, or even CIA- and "imperialism"-bashing for that matter. Knowing full well that the world is filled with very undeveloped, radical and even outright evil people, it is quite neutral on the matter. It's really about "finding a better way" in the end - and that's it. So we leave this type of criticism to the usual conspiracy disinformers, the "liberal CIA" network and even mainstream media, who seek any excuse to pepper us with more anti-white, pro-Third World immigration propaganda every day. Let's not forget, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, United Nations, Ford Foundation, and Soros's Open Society Foundations alone aren't just hellbent on making whites minorities in the West, they seek to do the same with the Jews in Israel. 2 It should be clear that this author does not come from that perspective, and does not approve of it.

In fact, maybe westerners should be worried that western security services - always on orders of the globalist party - won't eventually bring their practices in the Third World back home. Because if western democracies are scrapped due to overwhelming immigrant crime, terrorism and outright civil war among ethnic groups, guess who these security services will employ at the camps and torture centers for white dissidents? That's right, people from opposing tribes: little Amins and Bokassas. Because white people, especially from the same country, will not so easily go along with such an agenda.

1949-1979: the torture prisons of the Shah of Iran

The Shah of Iran held his position from 1941 until his overthrow in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Already in 1949 the Shah reaches out to Israel 3 , allegedly to use the Israel Lobby to get more done for his regime in the United States. It isn't until after the CIA- and MI6-ran overthrow of prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, due to Mossadegh nationalizing the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (the later BP, which exploited workers to the extreme in Iran 4 and paid very little taxes), that the Shah slowly becomes the dominant power figure in Iran.

Key in consolidating the Shah's power in Iran is the creation of the notorious SAVAK secret intelligence and police agency, tasked with spying, counterintelligence, apprehending and interrogating (read: torture and murder) aimed at any and all dissidents of the Shah. The work for this starts immediately after the 1953 coup, but the SAVAK itself is only officially established in 1957. From 1954 on the SAVAK received "guidance and training from the CIA and Turkey, as well as Israel." 5 The CIA was considered the primary financier. 6 According to an 11-year advisor to a SAVAK commander:

"It wasn't just cooperation with the CIA and Mossad (the Israeli secret service), it was joint activities. ... The CIA devised our entire system. [They] did not give SAVAK agents direct training in torture methods. But ... they provided general guidelines on interrogation techniques, such as attaching electrodes to sensitive parts of the body, and taught agents how to carry out surveillance of dissidents." 7

A Washington Post reporter allowed to tour Iran for a month in 1977, and who was allowed to visit at least one notorious prison related to SAVAK torture, stated:

"Innumerable Iranians, including many in a position to know, told me that the Israelis oversee SAVAK's techniques." 8

The Soros-, Rockefeller- and Ford Foundation-funded Institute for Policy Studies, citing a Harvard Human Rights Journal report that seems to have gotten lost in time, wrote:

"Many of SAVAK’s 15,000 full-time agents were "trained in the United States and Israel where they learned 'scientific' methods to prevent unwanted deaths from 'brute force'." Electrified chairs fitted with metal masks were used "to muffle screams while amplifying them for the victim." Another historian called the Shah’s methods of torture "horrendous," and "equal to the worst ever devised."" 9

Great Britain, West Germany and France all maintained ties with the Shah's regime, handing over information on Iranian student groups in the West in exchange for intelligence they needed or wanted. 10 Meanwhile, the Shah demonstrated himself to be a fervent opponent of the "Red Menace", Islamic extremists and women's rights - with the CIA "responsible for monitoring oil-field security." 11

Most torture took place in Tehran's two main prisons, Evin and Qasr, with a lot of the remaining work taking place in sound-proofed, blood-stained "neighborhood torture centres throughout Tehran." 12 Those brought into these centers involved anyone opposing the regime, from Muslim extremists trying to topple the Shah 13 or placing bombs at government building 14; to liberal-oriented journalists 15, "satirical play writers" 16, or activists spreading political flyers. 17 People would be arrested for merely speaking the wrong words in the presence of an undercover SAVAK agent or informant. The result was that no one in Iran discussed politics outside of their homes. As one Iranian Medical student explained:

"If someone came up to you at a party and started talking about politics, you would know there was something suspicious about him. Either he was a SAVAK agent trying to get you to reveal your views, or he was just plain crazy." 18

People were locked up for years on end for reading certain "forbidden" books 19 Torture could take place over a period of months before people were brought before a judge or tribunal. 20 Methods of torture included:

cigarette burning and fingernail pulling; 21;
nails hammered under fingernails and heating them; 22;
electroshocking by "attaching electrodes to sensitive parts of the body"; 23;
the use of devices named "parrot's perch, the dry submarine, the horsemen"; 24;
hanging in the air from arms crossed behind the back, by one victim described as, "the most intolerable torture"; 25;
"women [being] raped ... with snakes" 26;
"whips, maces and "the toaster", a wire-covered bedframe that is heated electrically" 27;
"rack[s] where prisoners were made to lie down above a fireplace" 28;
driving iron nails through prisoners' hands and feet 29;
"devices known as "Apollo helmets" ... designed by an Iranian when he was in the United States ... to amplify a prisoner's own screams and send them reverberating unbearably in his ears." 30;
as an alternate description: "Electrified chairs fitted with metal masks were used "to muffle screams while amplifying them for the victim."" 31;
"installing a gallows in a prisoner's cell" 32;
"playing recordings of screaming torture victims" 33.

Apparently, SAVAK guards involved in the torture were not allowed to leave, and would even themselves be locked up and tortured for weeks on end if they asked to leave. 34

Similar to other dictatorships across the world, John F. Kennedy, in power during 1960-1963, served as a moderating influence to the Shah's human rights abuses. 35 From 1977 on, pressure from the Jimmy Carter administration played an equally important role in this regard. 36

At the same it must be said that these "new left", "liberal CIA" elites have been exposed in the modern era of being particularly tolerant towards endless Third World immigration. This was also personified at the time by the "anti-U.S. imperialist" "slightly dissenting" CFR member 37 Dr. Richard Falk, who, for example, in 1979, wrote the article 'Trusting Khomeini' for the New York Times:

"Editor's note: Richard Falk ... recently visited the Ayatollah Khomeini in France. ... [Falk:] More than any Third World leader, he has been depicted in a manner calculated to frighten. President Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski have until recently associated him with religious fanaticism. The news media have defamed him in many ways... " 38

Coincidentally, Falk later emerged as a 9/11 "Truth" disinformer, writing the foreword to the well known October 2004 book 'The New Pearl Harbor' of Dr. David Ray Griffin - another no-planer and 9/11 "Truth" disinformer.

It should be clear that it was not as if human rights under Ayatollah Khomeini became any better. We know this today, with feminist protestors being strung up, amidst continued support for nuclear programs and terrorism against the state of Israel. But also immediately after the fall of the Shah, Amnesty International reported that prisoners in the Ayatollah's jail cells "are kept blindfolded for weeks at a time" and suffer "torture by electric shock, beating, whipping and sexual abuse." 39

Despite being credited with turning Iran towards the West, by the 1970s, apart from the extreme repression, the Shah's regime was known for being extremely corrupt, with the Shah being able to acquire a $20 billion fortune at the expense of public spending. 40 As a result, at the time of the regime's end, in 1979, it was reported that the country had "spectacular Government office buildings but no feasible transportation system. ... There is no subway and cars jam the streets bumper-to-bumper from dawn till dusk." 41

Despite the extremely brutal and corrupt nature of the Shah's regime, CIA-tied elites as David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and associates - who maintained major financial ties to the regime through the 1974-founded Iran-U.S. Business Council 42 - successfully lobbied their fellow Trilateral Commission member, President Jimmy Carter, to give the Shah sanctionary in the United States. 43 Elements of the Shah's entourage also were part of the 1001 Club in the 1960s and 1970s.

1948-1982: From Lebanese Christian fascism to the Sabra and Shatila Massacre

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, in reaction to the establishment of the state of Israel, Lebanon was Israel's only covert ally among the aggressors. Arab pressure forced Lebanon into joining the invasion, but already before the war, founding Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion had negotiated a deal with Lebanon's Christian Maronites, the country's dominant Christian sect that was very influential in the army, intelligence services and the office of the president, to only stage a mock invasion of Israel with just 436 troops.

From that point on, Israel regularly cooperated with the Maronites and its Phalanges political party, founded in 1936 by Pierre Gemayel and modeled after Mussolini's fascist party and Franco's fascist Falange party. The esoteric, mixed-religion Druze sect also have been considered allies 44, with past ambitions of Israeli political leaders having existed since the 1950s of creating both Druze 45 and Maronite buffer states 46 to the north of Israel.

In 1958, when Lebanon was under threat of civil war with growing Muslim factions, the Mossad transferred arms to the militias belonging to President Camille Chamoun and the Phalanges under Pierre Gemayel. 47 The same thing happened at the start of the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War, with Israel supplying arms to the new head of the Phalanges, Bachir Gemayel 48, who reportedly had been recruited by the CIA 49 in the period that he studied at the Center for American and International Law in Texas in 1971-1972. 50 A second key laison for both the Mossad and the CIA was Gemayel's chief of security, Elie Hobeika, who also had been trained by the Mossad and Israeli army. 51

In the late 1970s, the IDF's Northern Command commander, General Avignor Yanosh Ben-Gal and, working under him, future Mossad director Meir Dagan had been running huge car bombing attacks against PLO targets and PLO collaborators all over Southern Lebanon, including cities as Tyre and Sidon and various Palestinian "refugee camps", "killing everyone there" and "causing massive damages and casualties." This operation was ran by a small group of IDF commanders, without asking (formal) approval from the cabinet. Sharon was supportive of these type of operations and soon was looking to use them to goat the PLO into giving it a reason to invade Beirut. 52 After a variety of PLO-tied terrorist incursions into Israel, in June 1982 then-defense minister Ariel Sharon gave the order to invade Beirut, the purpose being to dislodge Yassar Arafat's PLO from the city. He was in charge of siege, quickly resorted to indiscriminate bombing and shelling, as well as implementing more car bombings against the Arabs. It failed into making Arab citizens and PLO militants leave the city en masse.

Instead, the international community struck a deal between the PLO and the Israelis that Yassar Arafat and his PLO guerrilla fighters would leave Lebanon. On August 30, 1982 the news media reported that "Arafat left after more than 9,100 of his guerrilla fighters had been evacuated" from places as "refugee camps" (Palestinian displacement ghettos in Beirut) as Sabra and Shatila to various surrounding Arab nations, as well as Tunis. 53

Enter Mossad and the CIA liaison and Gemayel's chief of security, Elie Hobeika, who from September 16 to 18, 1982, a good two weeks later, largely became responsible for the "Sabra and Shatila Massacre" 54, with testimony existing that he openly sanctioned the killing of women and girls during the event. In other words, the PLO terrorists agree to leave and subsequently read in the newspapers that their women and children may have been murdered by their enemies in the ghettos they just abandoned. As reported by the Israel-based Kahan Commission of Inquiry into the incident in 1983:

"According to Lt. Elul's testimony, while he was on the roof of the forward command post, next to the Phalangists' communications set, he heard a Phalangist officer from the force that had entered the camps tell Elie Hobeika (in Arabic) that there were 50 women and children, and what should he do. Elie Hobeika's reply over the radio was: "This is the last time you're going to ask me a question like that, you know exactly what to do;" and then raucous laughter broke out among the Phalangist personnel on the roof. Lieutenant Elul understood that what was involved was the murder of the women and children. ...

"Brigadier General Yaron did not deny in his testimony that Lt. Elul had translated for him and told him what he had heard when the two of them were on the roof of the forward command post [but] he understood from what he had heard that the reference was to 45 [50] dead terrorists." 55

It is quite clear that Israel, in particular defense minister Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir, purposely sent the Phalangists into the refugee camps (really large ghetto neighborhoods inside West-Beirut with about 50,000 total inhabitants 56) to drive out any remaining terrorists (read: "terrorists") and hopefully bulldoze the place and remove the encampments all-together from the city.

This intent was clear from the start. After the Israeli army surrounded the ghettos, the "Lebanese Forces" militia of Gemayel and Hobeika started massing at the local airport. So did the "South Lebanon Army" militia under the Christian Saad Haddad 57, who from 1978 until his death in 1984 58 ran the "Free Lebanon State", an 8 mile security strip along the northern border of Israel. Haddad's army similarly was tied to Northern Command and the highest levels of the Likud-dominated Israeli goverment. 59 In 1979 he set up a radical evangelist radio station in South Lebanon funded by George Otis 60, a retired Learjet executive and Reagan supporter, who once warned that the Dalai Lama "was allied with Satan and brought as many as 7,000 demons to wreak havoc to [Los Angeles]". 61 As the Israeli army lit up the camps' dark, narrow allyways with flares all night 62, these two militias of Hobeika and Haddad were allowed to "inspect" the camps to see if Yassar Arafat indeed had withdrawn all his terrorist militia forces out of Lebanon, also in these locations. What happened instead was that these militias immediately started shooting every Palestinian in sight. Even Palestine doctors and nurses at the nearby Akka Hospital were singled out for rape and murder by various militias stopping by. 63 Bulldozers were brought in to level house blocks and bury the dead. 64

Making things even more damning, two days before Hobeika's "South Lebanon Army" militia was allowed into the camps, the group's leader, Bachir Gemayel and various other top Phalange politial leaders, had been killed in a bombing of their headquarters. At the time it was not yet known that the Syrian government was behind it. Similarly bad, Hobeika's fiance had been raped and murdered by Baathist and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) militants in the 1976 Damour massacre. 65 Needless to say, worries about Phalangists committing a massacre at the refugee camps / displacement ghettos had already been expressed in the months before. 66 Worries about "a relentless slaughter" were also expressed by army chief of staff Rafael Eitan and U.S. officials who in vain tried to get Sharon to pull back the Phalangists. 67 Despite all these warnings and incoming reports of a massacre taking place, defense minister Ariel Sharon kept stalling withdrawal orders. 68 It wasn't really until he started receiving messages as these from U.S. special envoy Morris Draper that he ordered the withdrawal of the militias:

"You must stop the massacres. They are obscene. I have an officer in the camp counting the bodies. You ought to be ashamed. ... They are killing children. You are in absolute control of the area, and therefore responsible for the area." 69

The above information all became known in the days and weeks after the massacre and - due to their usually anti-Israel (and later anti-white) bias - was extensively reported on in CFR-tied and arguably "liberal CIA"-type publications as the New York Times and Washington Post. Secret appendices of the Kahan Commission that only came to light in 2012 confirmed that a "demographic remake" by terrorizing the Palestinians out of the Sabra and Shatila certainly had been a preoccupation of Bachir Gemayel, and that he even referred in the presence of Sharon and a Mossad head for the need of "several 'Dir Yassins'." 70

For readers that don't know, that is a reference to the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre that caused a panic among Palestinians during Israel's War of Independence, prompting hundreds of thousands to flee their homes to Lebanon and other surrounding states. The massacre was carried out by Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and (Yitzhak Shamir's) Lehi, which, to be fair, were considered lowlife thugs even by the more respectable Haganah militia surrounding them.

The following excerpts are from a report included in the secret appendix of the Kahan Commission. The report is about a July 8, 1982 meeting of Sharon at the "Lebanese Forces" militia headquarters in Beirut, just over two months before the Sabra and Shatila Massacre:

"[Bachir Gemayel asked] whether we would object to him moving bulldozers into the refugee camps in the south, to remove them, so that the refugees won't stay in the south... the DM [Sharon] responded by saying that it was none of our [Israel's] business. We do not wish to handle Lebanon's internal affairs..." 71

In the same period, in the wake of reports that the Phalanges were "terminating" Palestinian terrorists or "terrorists" 72, Gemayel met with then-Mossad director-general Nahum Admoni. Notes of the meetings included:

"N. Admoni stresses that as long as the IDF is around, the Christians will have to refrain from this type of action. Bashir explains once again that he will act at a later stage since a Christian state would not be able to survive if the demographic aspect will not be dealt with..." 73

In the secret appendice of the Kahan Commission, Admoni explained:

"Bashir had a very spontaneous speaking style. He was preoccupied with Lebanon’s demographic balance, and discussed it a lot. When he (Bashir) talked in terms of demographic change -- it was always in terms of killing and elimination." 74

The same secret Kahan Commission index reports on a September 12, 1982 meeting between Bachir Gemayel and Sharon, in which the former said, "Gemayel told Sharon that "conditions should be created which would lead the Palestinians to leave Lebanon." 75 Gemayel, of course, was assassinated in a bombing on September 14, with the Sabra and Shatila Massacre taking place from September 16 to September 18, under the watch of Sharon.

All in all, it's not hard to see what Likud politicians Ariel Sharon, the defense minister; and Yitzhak Shamir, the foreign minister; were doing. Seeing how both rose to dthe prime ministership - Shamir over 1983-1984, 1986-1992 and Sharon over 2001-2006 - they got away with it too. Of course, the Kahan Commission, headed by Israel's attorney general, was just the usual limited opposition:

"In the circumstances that prevailed after Bashir's assassination, no prophetic powers were required to know that concrete danger of acts of slaughter existed when the Phalangists were moved into the camps without the I.D.F.'s being with them... [However, Sharon] did not think that that decision could bring about the very disaster that in fact occurred...

"Contentions and accusations were advanced that ... all those who had enabled the entry of the Phalangists into the camps should be regarded as accomplices... These accusations too are unfounded. We have no doubt that no conspiracy or plot was entered into between anyone from the Israeli political [or] military echelon in the I.D.F. and the Phalangists, with the aim of perpetrating atrocities in the camps. ... No intention existed on the part of any Israeli element to harm the non-combatant population in the camps." 76

One other thing is certain: the Sabra and Shatila Massacre didn't have the intended result. In no small part due to anti-Israel pressure from the United Nations and western governments, the camps remained in operation, with the massacre serving as a good excuse for Yassar Arafat's exiled PLO party to infiltrate back into Lebanese society and continue the Lebanese Civil War. 77 According to "rogue" CIA agent Frank Terpil, who joined a group of PLO guerrilla fighters in their evacuation to a Tunis military camp, PLO fighters in general (and quite obviously) had the idea of infiltrating back into Palestine even before their ships had left the harbor. The Sabra and Shatila massacres only hastened that intent, also radicalizing PLO guerrillas even more against Israel, with some now also agreeing to work for Syrian intelligence against Israel. For many, according to Terpil, Arafat was not their leader, or sole leader, anymore:

"We walked out with our tails between our legs [under Arafat]. What victory [did we have]? And our families were slaughthered right after that?" 78

Unsurprisingly, in 1991 it was reported that, "there are more than 10,000 armed guerrillas entrenched in six main refugee camps scattered across Lebanese territory." 79 Eventually it would be Israel's extensive wall building that from its completion in mid 2006 dramatically helped bring down Palestinian terrorist attacks, especially in terms of large bombings and shootings against busses and at bus stations, night clubs and malls. 80 Even the generally Israel-hating media has had to acknowledge that. 81 Subsequently, of course, anti-tunnel barriers with motion detection sensors had to be created as well, as Palestinians would spend months digging tunnels just to be able to kill two random Israelis. 82

March 1985 Beirut bombing

Hobeika's affiliation with the CIA and Mossad lasted until the aftermath of the March 8, 1985 Beirut bombing that targeted the Iran-backed Hezbollah leader Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. The bombing killed 80 citizens, with 200 more maimed and wounded, but failed to kill the Hezbollah leader.

Despite suspicions being leveled against the Syrians, attention was particularly drawn to the U.S., this due to the fact that Fadlallah was the suspected leader of the October 23, 1983 Beirut Marine Barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen. He also was the main suspect in various other terrorist attacks over 1983-1984, including one against the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut. 83 In the wake of the event, it came out that the U.S. secretary of State George Shultz - a major right-wing, pro-Israel David Rockefeller ally - and national security advisor Robert McFarlane had authorized the CIA to train Lebanese counter-terrorism units, and that one of these units had trained the team that carried out the bombing attack against Fadlallah. A Lebanese intelligence source stated that the CIA was aware that the operation was being planned, but did not seek to intervene. This, of course, was denied from Washington's end. 84

However, in later years it turned out that CIA director William Casey had funded the terrorist attack through Saudi Intelligence 85, which in the same period was part of the private CIA network the Safari Club, as well as Cercle Pinay. These private networks existed in part to circumvent congressional oversight. After the botched attack and likely a worried Fadlallah, it turned out to be relatively cheap to bribe the Hezbollah leader into ceasing attacks on American targets. 86

In any case, as a result of the blowback, the CIA operation to train anti-terrorism units in Lebanon was canceled. 87 While it may not be confirmed without doubt, it has been written that Elie Hobeika is the one who oversaw the March 8, 1985 Beirut bombing. 88 He would definitely be a likely suspect. In early May 1985 already, immediately after the Reagan administration was forced to cancel anti-terrorist funding in Lebanon, Hobeika had switched the allegiance of his Lebanese Forces militia to Syria 89, already then under the rule of the Assad family. In January 1986 he was ousted as head of his militia by the anti-Syria faction. In September 1987 he survived an assassination attempt. 90

After a career in Lebanese politics due to his Syrian patrons, Hobeika and his car were blown up on January 24, 2002, immediately after announcing that he was interested in testifying on Sharon's role in the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. Considering the car was blown up by remote control and the assassination occurred close to his house, which was situated right next to a military barracks with the area teeming with security agents, the operation was considered relatively complex. Whether by then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon played a role in the assassination though, remains unknown. 91

Lebanon's Christians: a doomed cause due to Muslim immigration

Much more important than all the pointless bickering in Lebanon between Christian fascists, Druze, Sunni and Shiite radicals, and influence coming from foreign governments, is to ask the question: What went wrong in Lebanon? In general terms? Why has it become a "failed state"?

Fact is, even in the 1960s Beirut, Lebanon's capital, was considered "the Paris of East" or the "Paris of the Levant", with women walking around without headscarfs and in western clothing. That may not have gone up for the entire country, but definitely for the coastal areas and still some of the major cities. The reason? A large majority of Christian manorities, which Lebanon enjoyed since at least the mid 19th century.

Unfortunately, Lebanon's Christian population has been on a permanent decline throughout the 20th century. Before World War I (1914-1918), Christians constituted roughly 75% of Lebanon. During World War I, the Axis-Allied Ottoman Empire cut off food shipments to what was then called "Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate", a Christian nation that was allowed to exist semi-autonomously under Ottoman rule as a result of western pressure. The famine killed half the population: from 414,747 to roughly 200,000 in 1918. Realistically, maybe this event shouldn't be called the 'Great Famine of Mount Lebanon', as it happened in the exact same time frame as the similarly Ottoman-induced Assyrian genocide, Greek genocide and slightly earlier Armenian genocide, all involving the ethnic cleansing of Christians in order to enlarge the Ottoman Empire.

Also after the multiple genocides by the Ottomans, which may well have prevented Christians from other areas migrating to Lebanon in later decades, the Christian population in Lebanon kept declining relative to the Muslim population. Some historical numbers:

1895: Christian: 80%. Druze: 13%. Muslim: 8%.
1913: Christian: 80%. Druze: 11%. Muslim: 9%.
1920: Christian: 55%. Druze: 7%. Muslim: 38%. 97-3 Sunni/Shiite.
1932: Christian: 51%. Druze: 7%. Muslim: 42%.
1956: Christian: 54%. Druze: -%. Muslim: 44%.
1971: Christian: 54%. Druze: -%. Muslim: 44%.
2005: Christian: 39%. Druze: 5%. Muslim: 55%.
2007: Christian: 35%. Druze: 5%. Muslim: 58%. 50-50 Sunni/Shiite.
2019: Christian: 32%. Druze: 5%. Muslim: 68%. 92

The numbers for Beirut were somewhat lower, but with a comparable trend. After a growth of Christians over the 19th century, from about 1865 until the end of World War II in 1918, Christians constituted about 66% percent of Beirut versus about 33% Muslim. 93 In 1922 Christians were censed at 45 percent versus 39 percent for Muslims. 94 Certainly after the establishing of Israel in 1948, the Christian percentage kept declining, until they mainly occupied East Beirut and a portion of the North. 95

Why did this happen? Looking at all the same sources compiled for getting the demographic numbers, plus comments from people who lived in Lebanon, it comes down to the following recognizable issues:

A 1914-1918 genocide against Christians by the Ottoman Empire - today known as Turkey.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing into Lebanon and other countries when Israel was established in 1948. This happened due to reports on the massacre at the Deir Yassin village, carried out by Jewish terrorist militants of the Irgun and Lehi.

Large scale Shiite immigration being allowed into Lebanon, on top of the Sunni Palestinian refugees, also causing the usual Sunni-Shiite ethnic strife. In the early 20th century there were almost no Shiites in Lebanon. Anno 2023 both Shiites and Sunnis each constitute about 31-32% of the population.

Yassar Arafat's pro-Soviet, Sunni terrorist PLO group moving into Lebanon after losing the 1970-1971 Jordanian Civil War ("Black September").

Lebanese Muslims - also generally belonging to a lower class - having considerably higher birth numbers than Lebanese Christians.

"Christian flight" from Lebanon towards western or South American countries, mainly due to having lost political and social influence in their own country, and the increase in conflict and terrorism.

To summarize, Lebanon is a failed state, because the Christian majority was partially genocided by Muslims, allowed itself to be out-immigrated and outbred by Muslim immigrants from sects that in turn also hate each other, and fled their country as a result in greater numbers than the Muslims.

Because of this, we have to consider Israeli support for Lebanese Christians to be historically almost moot in terms of practical research into CIA-Mossad covert operations. It always was doomed to fail. All sides backed by the Israelis also were killing each other's soldiers and citizens: the Phalangists under Gemayel and Hobeika hated Saad Haddad and his Free Lebanon State, seeing him as a rival for Israeli patronage. 96 They murdered the rival Christian Maronite Tony Franjieh, a vicious murderer himself, along with his family. 97 Phalangists also committing massacres against the Druze. 98

All of these sects predominantly were fighting the Sunni Palestinians. Next the Sunni-hating Shiites came in, who ended up being backed by Iran. While the Shiite Hezbollah militia and the Sunni-Palestine Hamas and old Black September group have received the most attention, the facts is that Christians and Druze also have their fair share of animosity with the Jews. Meanwhile, Syria's Assad regime, representing the Muslim Alawite sect, has also tried to control a weakened Lebanon, eseentially fighting all the other sects at various times.

The question, of course, is: how does anyone expect to build a country on this ethnic and religions pile of garbage? Keeping the peace already is very tough. Making the country thrive and making people feel like they "belong" and are part of a "one big family" is literally impossible.

And yet, this same situation is being stimulated by our own globalist elites in the West. The history and fate of Lebanon is worth studying in this regard.

CIA-MOSSAD: AFRICA

1963-1997: Mobuto in Zaire/the Congo

Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga - "Mobutu" for short - ruled Zaire / The Congo from 1965 until just before his death in 1997. Western support for his brutal regime is well-known. Eisenhower and CIA director Allen Dulles are known to have given the order to the CIA to assassinate Mobutu's precedessor, the nationalist-oriented Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba 99, whose chief of staff Mobutu was.

Within the Congo, it was the country's CIA station chief from 1960 to 1968, Larry Devlin - recruited into the CIA in 1949 at Harvard by McGeorge Bundy 100 - who mentored the anti-communist-oriented Mobutu in his rise to power, in no small part through the "Binza group" that brough politicians, the country's national bank and the CIA together. 101 Devlin never needed to use poisonous toothpaste he had personally been handed by the CIA's MKULTRA chief, Sidney Gottlieb 102, because the problem was dealt with in a different way. After Mobutu launched a first Devlin-backed coup in September 1960 to depose Lumumba, the latter fled, with a new prime minister being put in place. Lumumba was caught, however, by Mobutu's army in December 1960. In January 1961 Mobutu handed him over to Moishe Tshombe, the head of Katanga, the province that had broken away from Lumumba's Congo with the support of the Union Miniere mining company and other Belgian colonial authorities. Seeing him as major threat for having advocated the United Nations invasion of Katanga, attempting to enlist Soviet support for the invasion after the United Nations refused, and holding him responsible for the major increase in violance against whites after his election, Tshombe and Belgian mercenaries immediately executed Lumumbu. 103

Before saying anything else, it should be pointed out that one element that would greatly confuse U.S.-Congo relationships, as well as America's relations to left and right-wing regimes all over the planet, was the administration of U.S. president John F. Kennedy from January 1961 until Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. Eisenhower, before Kennedy; and LBJ, after Kennedy, allowed the CIA to intervene on behalf of big business and anti-communism all around the world. Under Kennedy, who could basically be seen as "liberal CIA", this was very different. ISGP discusses all these changes in global U.S. policy in its article on the JFK assassination.

Very telling in terms of long-term western support was Mobutu's membership in the 1970s and 1980s of the 1001 Club, alongside Prince Bernhard, Prince Philip, the Liechtenstein royal family, King Juan Carlos, the British and French Rothschilds, David and Laurance Rockefeller, the Bechtels, other elites, and various CIA- and Mossad-tied individuals. This author is actually the first to publish these membership lists online. With a membership list like that it makes sense that the Congo's capital, Kinshasha, was considered an "African Versailles" in the 1970s and 1980s, with Mobutu visitors including anything from the Pope John Paul II and United Nations secretary generals to heads of state, globalists as David Rockefeller and Maurice Tempelsman, and CIA chieftains as William Casey. 104 It's also where the "The Rumble in the Jungle" boxing bout between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman took place in 1974.

Of course, it is no different from how the Belgians once ran the "Belgian Free State" in the Congo, but Mobutu's international friends and 1001 Club membership are fascinating to look at considering that at the same time he tortured his political opponents in wide variety of ways. This included:

Beating prisoners with "a large stick with nails protruding from the end." 105
Guards telling prisoners that they are going to kill them at some specific time in the future. 106
Applying electric shocks to prisoners, including their genitals. 107
Using electric prods against activists on the who are streets demanding higher minimum wages. 108
Walking on prisoner's fingers with studded boots. 109
Face punching and toe stomping, also with foreign journalists. 110
Large-scale rape by Mobutu's soldiers, both in and out of prisons. 111

The torturous and repressive nature of the Mobutu regime quickly coincided with large-scale nationalizations and a communist-style personality cult dictatorship. A rough timelife here reads:

1967: Under the slogan, "If we have to go hungry to be free and independent, then we'll go hungry. We prefer to remain poor and free to being rich slaves," Mobutu nationalizes the Societe Generate de Belgique-owned Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga, turning all the assets over to a Congolese state company ran only by black Congolese. 112 The company "accounted for about one-half of the government's revenues and 70% of the nation's foreign exchange. [It] produce[s] more than 6% of the world's copper and 60% of its cobalt" 113 Despite the nationalization, Mobutu asked white Belgian technicians and managers to continue running the mines, because Mobutu "knows that keeping Union Minière's complex operations going himself would be almost impossible." 114
May 1967: Mobutu sets up his Popular Revolutionary Movement, the only political party allowed. All citizens of Zaire automatically become a member of it from birth.
1970s: Every office is required to have a picture of Mobutu. 115
1970s: The evening news is forced to play a scene of Mobutu descending from heaven in a cart. 116
1970s: Radio stations are forced to include segments that recite speeches of Mobutu as incantations. 117
Every school class has to start with 15 minutes of dancing and shouting Mobutu's name. As one Zairan high school principal remembered it: "We had to recite, "One party, one country, one father: Mobutu, Mobutu!" It was ridiculous. [But] not to sing and dance was to commit suicide." 118
1971: Mobutu decrees that titles like "Mr." and "Mrs." need to be dropped in favor of "citizen". European-style dressing becomes forbidden, and is to be replaced by "tunics for men and wraps of printed cloth for women." 119
Jan. 1972: Mobutu, born Joseph-Desire Mobutu, changes his name to "Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga", which translates as "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake."
Nov. 1973: Mobutu introduces his "Zairization" program that expropriates all "farms, ranches, plantations, concessions, commerce, and real estate agencies" owned by foreigners, which "will be turned over to sons of the country." 120 The "Sons of the country" soon turn out to consist "essentially of high-ranking party members and government officials, in all approximately 300 people [of the] top political elite." 121 Few have any experience with business, many just sell everything off that they have been handed, leading to an enormous, permanent crash of the economy. From 1975 on Mobutu is attempting to reverse the policy out of sheer economic necessity. 122

Despite the Congo's natural minerals wealth, the nationalizations, and the attempts to reverse "Zairization", by 1987 it was reported that real wages were just one-tenth of what they had been in pre-independence Congo. 123 Already in the late 1970s, the road network of The Congo, under Belgian rule considered among the best in Africa, had completely eroded, making it impossible for farmers to bring their produce to world markets. 124 Meanwhile, Mobutu kept looting the economy, shipping much of the proceeds abroad. 125 Eventually he amassed a fortune of roughly $4 to $7 billion, much of it stashed and laundered through Swiss banks, resulting in "sumptuous residences in France, Portugal and Morocco, hotels in Spain and South Africa, and coffee plantations in Brazil and the Ivory Coast." 126

The only reason Mobutu was able to hold such a giant country together was due to western support, after reversing his "Zairization" to a large extent, Belgium was training Mobutu's 21st Infantry Brigade, while the French trained his 31st Paratroop Brigrade, respresenting "a significant strengthening of Zaire's military capabilities." 127 In the mean time, in 1977, Morocco helped Mobutu with getting rid of rebels in his mineral-rich Katanga / Shaba province. In 1978 the French Foreign Legion came to his aid. Even the Chinese were involved in training Mobutu's army. How exactly the profits for mineral extraction were divided at the time, remains a good question. 128

As for the Israeli role in Zaire, it has always been among the most significant. Defense-related negotiations and ties between Israel and Mobutu started in 1963, when Mobutu still has chief of staff of the army. 129 Israel delivered tanks to the Congo in 1964. 130 France, West Germany and Canada also aided the Congo.

Already in August 1963, a reported 219 Congolese troops went to Israel for paramilitary training, with Mobutu overseeing the training during a two-week visit. 131 Mobutu also came to Israel to be trained himself, earning his paratrooper wings here. 132

Diplomatic relations with Israel were broken off after the 1973 Arab–Israeli War and officially remained non-existent until 1982, when Mobutu "broke ranks" with many other African states and restored official ties. This occurred after Israel's withdrawal from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. 133 A November 1981 visit of Ariel Sharon to the Congo preceeded the renewel of diplomatic ties, with suspicions of military aid from Israel to Zaire playing an important role. 134

However, covert ties continued between Israel and Mobutu during the 1973-1982, with Israel helping to "train Zaire's secret police although relations were severed." [37] 135 Two months before official relations were reopened in May, a "five-man team of Israeli military advisers [arrived in Zaire] whose job is to retrain the President's personal bodyguard." 136 Mobutu also employed Israeli agricultural experts at his personal estates and maintained ties with Zaire's Jewish emigree community during the period of "non-contact". One Israeli insider explained that Mobutu mainted these ties in part as he thought that the "Israeli lobby in the United States and Western Europe, can help him and win him a more sympathetic approach" and "undermine the powerful anti-Mobutu lobby that centers on the House Foreign Relations Committee." 137

Israel's covert diplomacy to Mobutu largely ran through a close Israeli business partner of his, Meir Meyuhas (Meyouhas). Meyuhas was one of the Mossad operatives arrested in Nasser's Egypt in 1954 as part of the "false flag" Lavon Affair. After Meyuhas release in 1962, he ended up in Zaire as part of Mobutu's entourage 138, where still in the 1980s he was arranging secret visits of the likes of Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Shamir. 139 In contrast to CIA activity in Zaire, virtually nothing has been written about Meir Meyuhas.

In 1985 Mobutu founded the Special Presidential Division / Division Speciale Presidentielle, a special military unit stacked with members of Mobutu's own tribe, the Ngbandi, and headed by Mobutu's cousin, General Etienne Nzimbi Ngbale Kongo wa Basa. Once again it was Israel who took care of the training of this military unit 140, which followed a similar to recipe as the unit that protected and catapulted Colonel Idi Amin into power in January 1970. That unit also was put together and trained by the Israelis.

1966-1979: Bokassa of Central Africa: cannibal emperor who fed subjects to lions and crocodiles

The Central African Republic (CAR), with about 1.6 million inhabitants, ceased being a colony of France in 1960. With French support, David Dacko became the country's first president. Unfortunately, the country dove into an economic crisis rather quickly. Dacko, in an attempt to show the country didn't need its "colonial masters" anymore, visited Mao Zedong in communist China in 1964, where he signed "agreements on trade, cultural, economic, and technical cooperation." 141 China brought advisors into the CAR, offered a "$4 million interest-free loan", and asked the CAR to help solve so-called "Sino-Soviet Split". 142 Predictably, Chinese agents went into CAR villages, showing communist propaganda films. 143 As the economy kept dwindling 144, the CAR was unable to properly protect its borders. Rebels supporting the nationalist Patrice Lumumba, for example, infiltrated the CAR's southern border. 145

A fellow member of the M'Baka (Ngbaka) tribe and a distant cousin of Dacko, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, quickly climbed the ranks to become commander-in-chief of the (tiny) CAR army. As Bokassa had been part of Charles de Gaulle's Free French Forces during World War II, and had been awarded 12 medals for bravery, as well as the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre, he was held in high esteem by De Gaulle. When in July 1965 Dacko - warned repeatedly of Bokassa's aspirations for a coup - banished Bokassa to France, it was due to pressure from the French government under (by then) French president Charles de Gaulle that Bokassa was allowed back into the CAR in October 1965. 146

On December 31, 1965 Bokassa implemented his New Year's coup, deposing Dacko. On January 1, 1966 he was the new president of the Central African Republic (CAR), explaining that communist influences on Dacko were the reason for his coup. Bokassa gave Chinese advisors in the CAR 48 hours to leave, seized any cooperation with China, and restored relations with communist China's arch enemy, Taiwan, in 1968. 147

Bokassa would hold his presidential position until 1977, at which point he crowned himself emperor. He would be deposed in a French-backed coup in 1979 over a scandal of having aided the beating to death of children. With that, Bokassa's rule overlapped with that of the dictatorships of Mobutu in the Congo and Idi Amin in Uganda, rivaling them in brutality.

What exactly occurred though in Bokassa's remote Central African Republic (CAR) to this day still is a bit of a mystery compared, which is interesting considering Bokassa received the first open trial of an African warlord with a proper defense laywer. 148 On top of that, there were live daily broadcasts across the country of witness testimony and Bokassa himself during the trial. Initially a political gamble, the openness turned a lot of his supporters away. And six months into the trial, barely anyone was interested anymore. 149 People, for example, were listening to the radio, going to each other, "[Bokassa] is lying again - he's denying everything." 150 It killed his support base. Far from all of that live testimony though has made it into western media outlets, certainly not in any organized manner.

In addition, prosecutors never charged Bokassa with feeding subjects to crocodiles or lions. 151, despite the testimonies and evidence. Bokassa also was never convicted for cannibalism, which in any case wasn't explicitly illegal anyway. Because of that, these intriguing claims officially still are "alleged".

In any case, the following is a summary of what Bokassa did and-or was accused of during his 1966-1979 rule in term of torture and execution:

On Mother's Day 1971, Bokassa freed all women from prison while ordering the execution of all men sentenced for having committed assaults on women. 152

Bokassa lusted after other men's wives, in at least one case killing a husband who refused. 153

A journalist who referred to a Bokassa conference as "a statement" instead of a "press conference" (because no questions were asked), was immediately arrested by Bokassa, beaten to a pulp and locked up for a year in the country's notorious Ngaragba prison. Other journalists were beaten and locked up to for various perceived transgressions. 154

Prisoners designated to die were generally "starved to death [while chained down], dispatched by strangulation with chains, or finished off with hammer blows." 155

According to "schoolteacher Baga", after a break-in into his house, Bokassa was so enraged that "he went to the prison and beat prisoners to death and gouged out their eyes the next day." Some 100 victims of this orgy of violence, some with "brains protruding from crushed skulls" and-or still alive, were laid out at a local square as a warning to the population. 156

It was at this point that Bokassa introduced a law that mandated the cutting off of an ear for theft, the second ear for the second theft, the right hand for the third theft, followed by execution if someone was caught a fourth time. "You can still see some people around here without ears. They used to cut them off with scissors." As the schoolteacher explained. 157 School classes were occasionally forced to watch people have their ears cut off, with the "thought that if they watched the punishment, they wouldn't steal." 158

Bokassa had a maid, Martine N'Douta, and three security guards murdered for having orgies with his (regularly lonesome) wife 'La Roumaine' at the Kongolo mansion, after having been informed by a maid named Adele Mokossi-Tendel and handed a secret "album d'amour" with kinky sex photos. A fourth security guard survived prison and later testified at Bokassa's trial. His wife 'La Roumaine' was sent packing, which is what she desired anyway at that point. 159

Bokassa would occasionally have people with particular birth defects shot for having "supernatural powers". 160

In January 1979 Bokassa's men shot an estimated 150 161 protesting students in the streets after a new Bokassa decree was implemented that forced students to wear school uniforms - for which they had no money 162, and which was made from fabric of a factory owned by his wife, Empress Catherine. 163

Protests continued. Apparently 180 164 students were arrested on April 18, "aged 8 to 16" 165, after at least a number of them had "thrown stones at the imperial car." 166 Surviving children - apparently 27 167 - testified to Amnesty International in May and eventually to a "five-nation African commission" 168 named La Mission de Constatation des Evenements de Bangui that an incensed Bokassa personally came to the Ngaragba prison to help kill the students. Before being dumped in a mass grave, an estimated 100 students were stoned, clubbed and bayonetted to death, with the "clubs containing nails." 169 Bokassa himself was accused of clubbing at least 5 students to death with his ebony walking stick 170, and also that he "gouged out a boy's eye with [his] sharpened cane." 171 Based on the witness testimony and related evidence, in its August 16, 1979 report the Mission de Constatation des Evenements de Bangui concluded that Bokassa "almost certainly participated personally in the killing." 172 He certainly is known to have enjoyed clubbing people at random with his walking cane, even at official government meetings. 173

This is the event that would quickly lead to Bokassa's downfall.

Bokassa fed prisoners to crocodiles apparently not systematically, but occasionally. While Bokassa later claimed he kept crocodiles "simply for decoration" 174, French troops who drained Bokassa's crocodile pond at his Villa Kolongo after his removal in 1979 "discovered bone fragments belonging to some 30 victims." 175

Looters and other witnesses on-site at the time at Villa Kolongo when the French paratroopers arrived pointed to Bokassa also maintaining a personal zoo there with lions 176, and that people had also been fed here to those lions. One story, told by former Bokassa chauffeur Nicolai Suwawa and others, involved the lion tamer being thrown in with his own lions after Bokassa found out that he had been skimming lion food to feed his own family. When the lions refused to eat the tamer, Bokassa had him thrown into the crocodile pond. 177 Bokassa himself admitted that he kept lions on the premises, but did not admit to feeding anyone to them. 178

According to a 1987 guard of the Kongolo mansion and a student who happened to tag along with a Vanity Fair journalist, Bokassa would sometimes organize "kangaroo courts", together with his ministers, at the mansion. Apart from the apparently famous story of the lion tamer, the usual victims here were "hauts places, political biggies" that Bokassa either fed to his crocodiles or lions the second he figured that they were lying. 179 A teary-eyed Central African journalist added that Bokassa "got his power from the animals - the lions, crocodiles, and snakes he raised. "If he saw you were strong he said, "Let's see how you make out against my animals," and laughed." 180

Cannibalism of Bokassa is a topic that to this day is part of the realm of "speculation" largely because Bokassa always denied it (as he did with everything) and was not convicted for it. Despite that, there are some serious bits and pieces of evidence that Bokassa maintained a cannibal kitchen from Hell in his Kongola mansion:
1. French troops breaking into Bokassa's Kolongo mansion after his overthrow - the same who drained the crocodile pool - found (at least) two bodies in Bokassa's freezer. 181 Apparently it involved a large standing freezer with "the frozen body of a schoolteacher hanging on a freezer hook and mounds of human flesh prepared for roasting." 182 One body belonged to Jean-Robert Massanquet, a 25-year-old student who had been arrested 3.5 weeks before. A second body, identified via a chest tattoo by a niece, belonged to math teacher Gaston Wengue, who "had been arrested on 11 August near one of Bokassa's residences on a minor traffic offence." This last body was missing two arms, one leg and a head. 183
2. Bokassa's cousin, David Dacko, who ruled the country again from 1979 to 1981. announced the find back in 1979. 184 When pressed by reporters on the cannibalism issue, he "readily conceded" that Bokassa engaged in these practices and also that it had been served clandestinely to foreign dignitaries. 185
3. At some point the French magazine Paris-Match published pictures of what it claimed was this freezer at Bokassa's mansion, containing bodyparts of children. 186 For some reason these pictures are not available on the internet.
4. In 1987 a guard of the Kolongo Mansion showed a Vanity Fair journalist the "abattoir" where "the bodies were cut into small pieces on this table, the blood ran out in these troughs in the floor, then the pieces were kept in these cold-storage rooms." As the detailed Vanity Fair article explains next: "In the ceiling of an adjoining room [i.e. the freezer] the guard showed me a cardboard box where he said the French soldiers found the torso of the mathematics teacher Massangue, which was identified by his relatives." 187
5. Students, such as Paul Edouard Maidou, in later years were among those bringing reporters to a "torture chamber and cold storage" at Bokassa's former mansion, where one door led to a former "walk-in freezer [with] a French manufacturer's label ... still on the door." 188
6. Bokassa's cook, Philippe Linguissa, testified in 1987 he had prepared human bodies stuffed with rice for the dictator. 189
7. Three women - named Rosalie Angelique Onzale, Emilie Yabgunzo and Marie Monique Ngereangbome - testified in 1987 that authorities had shown them photographs of "disemboweled" and "mutilated" corpses in freezers to see if they could identify their brother Maurice Pundzo. 190
8. At his 1977 coronation as emperor, Bokassa is said to have told the French Minister of Cooperation (and soon minister of defense) Robert Galley, "You never noticed, but you ate human flesh." 191

Despite Bokassa's violence and increasingly blatant plunder of the economy, the economy did relatively well under him. At least, that is what historic GDP graphs and IMF reports say. People definitely were highly motivated to find work under Bokassa, because early on in his regime he decreed that anyone without a job would be fined or imprisoned. 192 Reportedly, according to the IMF, Bokassa also instated a program of ensuring "adequate supplies of food crops, improve yields of export crops, and achieve a measure of diversification", which was made possible with "generous financial assistance from the international donor community." As a result, the economy improved, at least until 1977 - according to the IMF. 193 And it must be said, various citizens of the CAR in the 1980s reminiscened that the country had better job opportunites and roads in the 1970s - also in a pre-AIDS era - under Bokassa. 194 Although, granted, similar to neighboring Congo, the roads had been laid down by colonial authorities and were never properly maintained again. As had seemingly nothing else under Bokassa. A New York Times summary of an April 1981 United Nations report on the Central African Republic seems to give a more "boots on the ground" reality-check compared to the later "real GDP" and "capital stock per person"-analysis of the IMF. It reads:

"It said a United Nations group that visited a hospital in the town of Mbaiki had found no mattresses or blankets, no water, electricity or food and practically no drugs or medicine. ...

"There are only 265 miles of paved road. ... Mr. Bokassa's successors [have] "inherited a road system in grave danger of complete collapse, due to absence of maintenance of roads, bridges and ferries over the last 10 years. ... The television system has deteriorated to such a point that the service is practically non-existent." ...

"The diamond trade is the country's major export earner [but] the production of diamonds fell from 600,000 carats in 1968 to 284,000 carats in 1978. Cotton output declined from 58,000 tons in 1969-70 to an e stimated 20,500 tons in 1981-82." 195

The article further explained that the CAR government essentially would completely collapse were it not for massive aid from France:

"Last year French aid totaled $85 million, of which $53 million was an outright gift. The aid was almost equal to the country's budget. ... Two-thirds of the [CAR's] national budget is used to pay salaries.

"Abdoul Barry, the representative here of the United Nations Development Program said:]: "These people shouldn't be poor. They have uranium, manganese, diamonds, timber and good agricultural prospects."" 196

What exactly happened in the CAR in terms of big business exploitation is a good question. Little has been written about it. Although reading how Bokassa was photographed in New York City in 1970 embracing CFR and Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, this does appear to be a legitimate question to ask. 197 The only thing we can say for certain is that Bokassa increasingly immersed himself into a personality cult by the 1970s, with endless accusations of having looted the economy:

Bokassa's December 1977 self-coronation as emperor, which had a strong Napoleon theme, cost anywhere from $10 million 198, to $20 million 199, to $25 million 200, to $50 million 201, to $100 million 202, to "more than $100 million" 203 The country's GDP in 1977 was $507 million. So while claims that "Bokassa blew as much as 100 percent of the country's GDP on a coronation" 204 are overstatements, it certainly could be described as "obscenely lavish". 205

A detailed analysis of Time managine at the time estimated the costs to be about $20 million ($100 million in 2023): his gold-plated eagle throne cost about $2.5 million, his crown $2 million, his scepter and the empress' diadem together about $5 million. In addition about 240 tons of food was shipped in, including crates of Chateau-Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Mouton-Rothschild ('71) wines. Time called it "a bit much", but had also learned that French president Giscard d'Estaing was already shoring up up the CAR's annual budget; and recounted an old quote of Bokassa: "We ask the French for money, get it and waste it." 206

Interestingly, by that time Bokassa also was taking "aid money from anyone", including "South Africa, China and the Soviet Union." It should be clear that the aid was not going to the population. 207

After he became emperor, Bokassa dictated that subjects were to hail him "from six steps away while making a slight forward indication of the head." 208

During his 1986-1987 trial, Bokassa literally denied knowing anything about tortures and disappearances, continually claiming his subordinates must have been responsible.

After being freed from prison in 1993, he told a crowd of thousands, "I have returned after being condemned in your name, like Jesus Christ was for all our sins." 209

Bokassa's former treasurer, Albert Kuda, testified he personally handed the dictator $55,000 from the Treasury every week for personal expenses. 210 A government attorney representing France, Bertrand Jouanneau, testified that Bokassa took at least $170 million from the Treasury for personal use, and smuggled a lot of wealth out of the country. 211

He used public funds to "buy 300 limousines, 15 villas in Bangui, two each in Belgium and Switzerland plus two chateaux and four villas in France." 212

After Bokassa's overthrow, "15 of his children lived outside Paris, where he owned four chateaux, a hotel and a villa." 213

Given all these circumstances, some would consider it noteworthy that French presidents Charles De Gaulle (1959-1969) and Valery Giscard d'Estaing (1974-1981) were so supportive of Bokassa. De Gaulle died in 1970, but, as already explained, played a role in forcing his old comrade-in-arms back into the CAR right before he staged his coup. Giscard d'Estaing, who met Bokassa for the first time at the funeral of De Gaulle 214, regularly went hunting in the CAR and held other meetings with Bokassa, in both France and the CAR. 215 When visiting Bokassa's Chateau De La Coutanciere south of Paris, situated amidst hunting grounds, in 1974, Giscard famously referred to a pleasantly-shocked Bokassa as, "My relative and my friend [because] our relations will be [as] the relations of one relative to another." continued over the years and was a unique thing for the French president to do 216 This trend of Giscard d'Estaing referring to Bokassa as "dear relative" or "dear cousin" 217, quite possibly because it was realized how well flattery worked on Bokassa and because France considered the CAR's uranium in particular to be very important resource. In March 1975 in the CAR's Bangui capital, Giscard d'Estaing, said to Bokassa:

"Believe me, Mr. President for Life [Bokassa], my dear relative and friend, that France deeply feels solidarity towards the Central African Republic which has, under your leadership, committed itself to an in-depth effort to promote economic, cultural, and human development." 218

Maybe the particularly warm relationship had something to do with the fact that Valery's father, Edmond Giscard d'Estaing, held "vast agricultural and forestry holdings in Central Africa," while his cousin, Jacques, as financial adviser to the French Atomic Energy Commission, signed an uranium mining agreement in 1975 between the Bokassa government (40%), Alusuisse (30%), the French Atomic Energy Commission (15%) and the French Rothschild group (15%). 219 Unsurpringly, the Giscard d'Estaing family features in ISGP's Superclass Index as one of the most important globalist families from France.

Needless to say, if the Bokassa regime had the blessings of the French government and big business, it had the blessings of the 1,200 or so French paratroopers stationed in the country. 220 The CAR's army varied from about 1,500 to 6,000 poorly-trained soldiers during and around the Bokassa years, never even remotely forming a credible threat to French interests. It all raises the question what exactly the agenda of France and other western powers was in the CAR in terms of economic benefit.

The only major noteworthy influence on Bokassa and other CAR rulers all these years was, or seems to have been, Israel. First, the closest reported continious associate of Bokassa since he arrived in the country in 1974 seems to have been the retired Israeli general Shmuel Gonen. Gonen was a right-wing, high-level general of the Israeli army who was disgraced over a reckless, failed military operation during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After retiring from the army in 1974, he came to CAR's capital, Bangui, to make it in the diamond business, something very dear to the heart of Orthodox Jews from Israel to cities as Brussels and New York.

The situation with Gonen and Bokassa is very similar to the role of Meir Meyuhas with regard to Mobutu: we don't know the details, but it seems to have been rather significant. The difference is that with Mobutu we have independent confirmation that his presidential guard was trained by the Israelis. With Idi Amin in Uganda we know that Colonel Baruch Bar-Lev was both a close contact as well as the one who arranged that Idi Amin's personal guard received military training from Israel. 221 We don't have that proof with General Shmuel Gonen in relation to Bokassa.

It has actually been written by Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi - who arguably is an authority on the subject - that Bokassa's personal guard, similar to Idi Amin and Mobutu, was "trained and armed by Israel." 222 Unfortunately, the original source for that claim is not known. For the rest it is only inferred in the Beit-Hallahmi narrative that Gonen had anything to do with that development. As in, "The imperial army was trained and armed by Israel, and Bokassa's closest adviser was a retired Israeli general, Shmuel Gonen." 223

There actually exists a fascinating book about prostitutes that talks about a number of these women having been sent to a uranium-tied business conference in Bokassa's Central African Republic in the mid to late 1970s. There's no telling, however, if the author hasn't been doing a little creative storytelling, especially since the book dates to 2018 with the mention of Shmuel Gonen by name being awfully specific for an (initial) interview with a prostitute, who only was present in the country for five days - a long time ago. Here the author captures the narrative of a prostitute called Holly:

"Bokassa bragged to the girls that they had been trained by Israeli security, the best in the business at assassination prevention. ...
"I also met this famous Israeli general, Shmuel Gonen... He and Bokassa, in his velvet robes and dripping with bling, made an odd couple. Two of the girls talked about how the general, what everyone called him, had bought two modern military transport jets for Bokassa from Israel and filled one of them with Claude girls as a gift." 224

Gonen was getting around in and around Bangui, both during and after Bokassa's rule, so much is clear. When Sharon came to the Central African Republic to reopen (official) military and diplomatic with the new coup-governent of General Andre Kolingba, he explained that at the airport "we were received by one of the cabinet ministers, and also by General Shmuel Gonen." 225 Interestingly, Sharon noted how he subsequently was shocked to see Gonen living in a "cottage" that amounted to "a broken-down place with one bed and a map on the wall of the Central African Republic highlighting its diamond fields." 226 Six years later a Vanity Fair journalist described meeting "a group of expatriates" in Bangui, "safari-jacketed types like General Shmuel Gonen ... who came to the C.A.R. to be Bokassa's diamond consultant and has been in business for himself since the coup." 227

To close off this chapter, Bokassa was deposed in a French-backed coup in September 1979, this after reports of Bokassa's personal involvement in clubbing, bayonetting and stoning roughly hundred imprisoned teenage students to death became too much of a liability for the the French government under Valery Giscard d'Estaing. 228 France initially refused to grant Bokassa asylum, forcing the dictator to flee to Ivory Coast, another former French colony. 229

President of Ivory Coast from 1960 to 1993 was Felix Houphouet-Boigny, a very pro-West, anti-commmunist, Catholic autocrat who brought an unusual amount of stability and economic prosperity to his country - for African standards. He was protected by the French and very friendly with Israel and apartheid South Africa. Eventually it did come out though that Houphouet-Boigny had hoarded hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to Switzerland. A devout Catholic and apparently suffering from the usual African delusions of grandeur, Houphouet-Boigny build his own Vatican - the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace - at his birth village of Yamoussoukro at an estimated cost of $180-$600 million.

In December 1980, under the continued protection of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Bokassa was sentenced to death in absentia. 230 In 1983 the mass murderer still was allowed asylum in France, where in November 1985 he was complaining that he only received a $780 military pension, with the government having confiscated all his identity papers. He vowed a way to find a way back to his home country though 231, which he managed to do in 1986, only to be promptly arrested. After a six-month public trial, he was sentenced to death in 1987. As already expected, his death sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison. 232 Already in 1993 Bokassa was released, this after "outgoing military dictator Andre Kolingba ordered freedom for all inmates in the nation's 20 prisons, " a bizarre move that the opposition claimed Kolingba did as revenge for having been forced to instate elections and losing them. 233 He died in 1996. In 2010 Francois Bozize, an old army and government protege of Bokassa and president of the Central African Republic from 2003-2013, posthumously pardoned his old boss, saying:

"[Bokassa has] given a great deal for humanity. [He's] a son of the nation recognised by all as a great builder. ... He built the country but we have destroyed what he built." 234

Needless to say, the Central African Republic has seen continued conflict and corruption over the decades, even after the deposal of Bokassa.

1962-1971: Uganda's Milton Obote and his "General Services Unit"

With the end of colonialism in Uganda in 1962, Milton Obote was elected the first prime minister of the country. From 1963 on, Israel was able to make a large amount of arms sales to the country; train pilots, infantry troops and intelligence officers 235; and also engage in construction of buildings, roads, medical facilities and agricultural projects. 236

Obote held the prime ministership until 1966. At that point he suspended the constitution to avoid a parliamentary investigation into himself for corruption, and appointed himself president. This dictatorial position Obote held until the Idi Amin coup of 1971.

Obote's cousin, Akena Adoko, ran Uganda's secret police and paramilitary intelligence unit called the General Service Unit (GSU). It was founded on April 1, 1964 after army munities in January and February of that year calling for Africanization of the army and higher pay in post-colonial Uganda. Interestinly, future Ugandan dictator Idi Amin not only became the leader and spokesperson of the mutineers 237 , as a result he also entered the 'inner circle' of Obote and Adoko. 238 General Service Unit members and leadership were trained in and by Israel. 239 Adoke himself was trained in Israel. 240 So was Idi Amin. 241 Recruiting for training in Israel started right in early 1964. 242 A curious former British intelligence agent and reported Mossad agent named Bob Astles became a key officer within the General Service Unit 243, served as a key advisor to Obote, and eventually occupied the same role in the Idi Amin regime. Similarly-named General Service Unit outfits existed in Kenya and Tanzania, all trained by the British and the Israelis.

Obote's General Service Unit mainly came to employ men and women of the Tutsi tribe and extensively ran infiltration operations against the opposing Bantu and Hutu tribes in the south (the Hutus would massacre the Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide). 244 At the same time, Obote filled government positions with Acholi and Lango/Langi tribe members 245, pressured into this process by elders of his and Akena Adoko's own Oyima clan (part of the Lango tribe). 246

It has been estimated that the first Obote administration killed between 400 and 1,000 people for political reasons 247, much of it taken care of by the General Services Unit. Already dreaded at the time, the situation would become much worse for Ugandans.

1971-1979: Idi Amin of Uganda: the smiling genocidal "black Hitler" running a torture gulag; fed subjects to crocodiles

The career of long-time Milton Obote ally, Colonel Idi Amin, started two decades earlier. In 1946, Amin signed up for the British colonial army in Africa, known as the King's African Rifles. In the 1952-1960 period he fought the indigeous Mau Mau rebels in British Kenya on behalf of the British colonialists. Very little has been written about Amin from this period, but contemporaries from this period still remember him as "the Eichmann of the British Army" 248 for stuffing socks down the throats of suspected rebels, choking them to death. 249 Two decades later, in U.S. congress, Amin would similarly be referred to as "the black Hitler of Africa". 250 In 1962 Amin's military unit was under suspicion for having tortured and massacred villagers in Kenya. 251 British authorities, who seemed to have made use of Amin's dirty services for at least a decade at that point, recommended to incoming Ugandan prime minister Milton Obote that he fire Amin from the army. Obote refused 252 and made Amin one of his more important allies in the new post-colonial era. Amin was appointed the Ugandan army's commander-in-chief in 1965.

Amin trained in Israel, coup supported by Israel

A relatively young Amin with Colonel Baruch Bar-Lev.

Despite Amin's promotion under the Obote regime, there were differences between the two men, in no small part because Obote preferred to promote members of his own tribe within government. 253 With Obote in power, and parallel to many General Service Unit operators, Amin followed a paratrooper course in Israel in 1964 254, was given the name Hagai Ne'eman by Israel 255, and subsequently kept close to the Israeli element in Uganda. The most important friendship here was Colonel Baruch Bar-Lev, Israel's military attache in Uganda. Amin's tribe, the Kakwa, was situated next to South Sudan where rebel groups were fighting the Arab-dominated government in the north. Israel was looking to fuel this conflict in order to distract the Arab government from allying itself with other Arab countries against Israel. Because of the tie with Amin and the Kakwa tribe 256, which largely resided and resides in South Sudan, it remained possible for Israel to ship arms to the area even when Obote started to oppose it. 257

From 1966 on Obote did not just run an increasingly repressive dictatorship of his own, he also introduced his nationalist and "socialist" "Move to the Left" agenda, leading to his government taking a 60% stake in private corporations and banks by 1970. Despite not being much written about it, it is known that this policy did not please western goverments and corporations. This included Great Britain, whose prime minister was happy to see Obote go. 258 Despite the British High Commissioner privately toasting to the claim, "We can't be the first to recognise him. Let's be the third!", 259, Great Britain did, in fact, become the first country to recognize the Amin government. 260 Apparently Obote nationalized about 80 (unnamed) British corporations 261, with Great Britain having played a role in the December 1969 failed assassination attempt on Obote. 262 The fact that the shooter in that event later explained that his group was trained at the home of Prince David Ssimbwa, the younger brother of the Obote-deposed first president of Uganda, King Mutesa II of Buganda, who was living in exile in London; gives some additional credence to these claims. 263 However, in the end, Israel would be the state most solidly tied to the 1971 coup of Amin.

By 1969-1970 Amin became worried that Obote was looking to have him purged as well. These worries in no small part emerged after German mercenary Rolf Steiner was caught by the Obote government, his notebook casting suspicions that Amin was working with Steiner and the Israelis in supplying the Kakwa-tied South Sudanese rebels, a policy opposed by Obote. 264 Amin was put under investigation for this, similar to how he was under investigation for any involvement in the January 1970 murder of an Acholi arch rival of his, Brigadier Pierino Okoya.

Under the tutelage of Colonel Bar-Lev, Amin set up a small, but highly armed military force at his military headquarters that was stacked with members of his own Kakwa tribe. When Obote indeed tried to have Amin arrested in January 1971, this force was able to kill the officers attempting to do so and subsequently take over the country. 265 The CIA and MI6 are here and there said to have aided the coup, but it was Israel who was the closest tied to it. 266 Israeli soldiers were aiding the coup and seen manning roadblocks and patrolling Kampala and its immediate environment for some time after. 267

Despite being advised by Colonel Bar-Lev from the start that Amin was "emotionally unstable" 268, despite every contact ever of Amin saying the same 269, and despite mounting brutality, Israel (and Britain) continued to allow state visits from Amin after the coup, even sending over an extra "60 Israeli military instructors ... to help train [Amin's] forces, plus several hundred Israeli technical advisers." 270 Much of this was related to Amin's dreaded State Research Bureau, founded in February 1971 to replace Obote's General Service Unit, which had similarly been trained by Israel.

Britain aided Amin's coup

Amin did not just rely on the expertise of the Israeli security services to run one of the more effective and brutal dictatorships in modern history. The British too were operating in the background in Uganda in support of Amin, and, as already discussed early on in this section, for much longer than the Israelis. The British operations are much harder to get a grasp on though. Bob Astles' curiosities alone would require a chapter of its own - which is exactly why we're skipping this weirdly "anti-racist", "anti-imperialist" actor for the time being.

Mercenary Rolf Steiner - who can be spotted in photos and video with Israeli paratrooper wings on his military jackets - claimed to have unearthed a British plot to overthrow Obote, using his support network for South Sudan rebels as a cover for the operation. According to Steiner, the man they wanted to replace Obote with was Idi Amin, because, as he was told by British intelligence agent Alexander Gay, "the British knew Idi Amin well and ... he was the stupidest and the easiest to manipulate." 271 Reportedly, under the guise of military exercises, Great Britain stationed 700 British soldiers in neighboring Kenya in the days before the coup to aid Amin's coup if necessary. They were not needed though. Amin and the Israelis were able to handle it by themselves. 272

This description of Amin fits quite well with how Major Iain Grahame and other British sources described Amin. Grahame was Amin's mentor in the King's African Rifles. He was tasked with attempting to build Amin into a post-colonial leader, but, despite considering the African a great leader, he found adding to the intellectual capabilities challenging. 273 His relationship with Amin continued into the 1960s and 1970s. Amin trusted him enough to inform him beforehand of his January 1971 coup against Obote. 274 Neither Grahame nor his superiors appear to have given out any warnings. He continued to serve as occasional liaison to Amin for the British government whenever Amin was looking to blackmail the British government. In August 1972 he accompanied Lord Geoffrey Rippon to Uganda. 275 In June 1975 he arrived in the country with General Sir Chandos Blair. 276 After the Kenyan invasion during Amin's last day in office, Grahame decided he "just wanted to see the state that [Amin] was in..." 277

British firms selling Land Rover and spyware to Amin

More clearly, British-based firms as Contact Radio Telephones, Pye Telecommunications, Security Systems International, and Wilken Telecommunications kept supplying essential communications and eavesdropping equipment to the State Research Bureau throughout Amin's regime 278, with British prime minister James Callaghan (1976-1979) making excuses that "Land Rovers specifically equipped with radio detection devices" were to be used to "detect television license dodgers." 279 Alternately, one could think it helped suppress resistance radio and TV networks. Britain also equipped the State Research Bureau with radio-fitted Range Rovers. 280 That sounds simple, but in dark Africa it greatly aided in the coordination of state repression.

Wilken Telecommunications of the Wilken Group was owned by the Kenya-based Bruce McKenzie, a South African-born British government agent in the Kenyan government; and Keith Savage. 281 Both were killed in 1978 when Amin had their plane blown up in retaliation for McKenzie's role in assisting the Mossad in the 1976 Entebbe raid. Paul Lennox, the managing director of Wilken Telecommunications; and Gavin Whitelaw, Lonrho's head of exports, also went down with the plane. McKenzie, despite being warned not to risk going to Uganda by the curious journalist Chapman Pincher for having been publicly awarded by the Israelis over the Entebbe raid 282, had visited Amin to sell him still more military vehicles and communications equipment. 283 After the bombing, Pincher informed "our mutual friend, Maurice Oldfield, the MI6 chief [from 1973 to 1978]," of McKenzie's death. 284 How much MI6 was involved in allowing Amin to be supplied by McKenzie and other British firm is unknown.

Latter-day U.S. and Israeli support to Amin

Idi Amin got rid of his Israeli "advisors" in March 1972. Russian "advisors" came in their place to oversee the State Research Bureau terrorism. In August 1972 Amin ordered all Indians out of his country, collapsing the economy and alienating the regime further. Despite that, and increasing amounts of reports that Amin was conducting a genocide inside Uganda, by 1977-1978 clandestine coffee exports through a British airfield, Stansted, continued to serve as a last lifeline for the internationally shunned Amin regime. 285

In the same period, it was found out that the CIA- and NSA-tied 286 Harris Corporation was selling satellite equipment to Amin. The Harris Corporation also was involved in the training of a group of 21 Ugandans in Florida. 13 of this group once again belonged to the notorious State Research Bureau, with four others being employed by Uganda's Ministry of Defense. 287 Other U.S. companies were involved in these activities. Bell Helicopters, for example, was training Ugandas pilots and attempting to sell helicopters, only to be blocked by the State Department. 288

An interesting detail is that two of the three Ugandan planes - the only ones constituting Ugandan Airlines 289 - to haul coffee, personnel and essential military supplies for Amin, had been provided to the dictator in 1976 and 1977 by Israeli billionaire Shaul Eisenberg through two Mossad front companies as part of an anti-Gaddafi intelligence operation. 290 Considering the fact that landing flights at Benghazi's airport in Libya to refuel planes of Ugandan Airlines did not translate into any meaningful intelligence 291, it can be wondered if not simply the prime purpose was to keep Amin in power.

"Rogue" CIA psywar, spy and torture equipment sales to Amin

By this time, from about 1976, notorious "rogue" CIA officer Frank Terpil had moved into Uganda from Gaddafi's Egypt. His firm, Consultants International, through various fronts and subsidiaries, similar to other U.S. and British corporations, had its office at the third floor of the dreaded State Research Bureau. 292 After all, this is where all their equipment was directly sold to. 293 The courtyard and basement of the State Research Bureau were a non-stop spectacle of Ugandan citizens being tortured and murdered. Prisoners were even stuffed in a makeshift cell on the third floor, literally stacked on top of each other and dying from hunger and thirst. 294 Despite that, Terpil was just happy to physically work at the office and doing business with Amin:

"Found in the third-floor office of the bureau's head of technical operations was a contract dated Aug. 3, 1977, between the Government and a person identified as F. Terpil of Intercontinental Technology. It was for $3.2 million in surveillance equipment and "secret special weapons." These included liquid explosives, remote radio detonators, telephone monitoring units and weapons in the form of pens, cigarette lighters and attaché cases.

"The contract also covered "training of selected students in the art and craft of intelligence, sabotage, espionage, etc.," including "psychological warfare practices."" 295

It wasn't just the selling of equipment. Wilson became a "very good friend of Amin", visited Uganda on average about twice a month 296, and regularly had "long, lazy afternoons" with Idi Amin and Bob Astles, even discussing the possibility of providing Amin with nuclear weapons. 297 He was on the last plane out of Uganda with Idi Amin after the dictator's overthrow and worked with Amin and the Saudi government backing him in potentially getting the dictator back into power. 298 To undercover police officers in 1979 Terpil implicated himself saying he had observed "unreal" torture in the basement of State Research Bureau, including multiple times the "best" and "totally effective" torture of having a rat eat through the stomach of live victims. 299 Multiple times he also claimed to have eaten human liver at dinner with Amin. 300

Terpil dryly denied all of this when put on the spot by PBS in 1981, including that he had ever witnessed any kind of torture. However, literally to the point of hilarity, Terpil seemed more embarrassed to deny he had witnessed all the dead bodies while coming and going to "work" at State Research Bureau, and even admitted that he heard screams coming from the basement:

"I was in the administrative [area]. The first second and third floor, there were no prisoners kept there. In the basement the prisoners were kept. And I never went down to the basement. ...

"[Yeah] it was hard to miss [the torture]. You'd have to walk out of State Research and walk right past the courtyard. ... At times you could hear sounds emitting from the basement. Screams, yeah." 301

The statement that the third floor purely was an administrative area actually was not an universal narrative. As one survivor explained - who also detailed that beheadings and beatings to death took place all the time on the courtyard - he and many others had been kept in an overcrowded cell on the third floor of State Research where most died from starvation. 302

To summarize what we've discussed until here, Israeli government support for the Obote and Amin governments in terms of training the personnel for torture and murder centers was the most blatant. We can imagine that the British government and MI6 purposely allowed British firms to sell military vehicles and communications equipment to Amin, in effect also helping to make the regime as repressive as possible. Frank Terpil's "rogue" CIA operation is in a class of its own and needs separate analysis, from which it is going to be quite clear that he was far less "rogue" from the CIA than the official narrative goes. We might expect the same with the U.S.-based Harris Corporation, although there's less information there. Bob Astles potential deep cover purpose remains a mystery as well.

Amin's "big brother" terror state

What remains a fact though is that the Israeli, British and U.S. governments - ignoring the Soviet one, whom we wouldn't expect anything different from - aided what amounted to Amin's genocide. The second Amin got into power, he started purging, torturing and murdering anyone in government from opposing Acholi and Langi tribes. 303 Next, blocking his citizens from leaving the country, he set up a ring of concentration camps around Kampala where people were sadistically tortured to death round the clock. 304 The atrocities at State Research Bureau headquarters was just one element of the genocide.

Most sources over the years have estimated that the total number of people murdered by the Amin regime sits at roughly 250,000 to 500,000 on a population of 10-11 million - about 3 to 5% of the entire population. Everybody knew someone who had been grabbed and killed.

The terror was even greater than that though. The State Research Bureau had stationed about 5,000 spies throughout society, consisting of undercover "civil servants, office messengers, doctors and priests, street hawkers and sweepers." 305 It also deployed over a thousand female spies, often trained as assassins. 306 Secret agents of Amin even were to be found among prisoners in the death-row cells. 307 Even "the lowliest soldier or intelligence agent" had a license for indiscriminate rape, torture and murder whenever they ran into a "subversive". 308 This authority was abused all the time. Husbands were killed in their homes. Wives were kidnapped, raped and murdered. Businessmen were extorted before being killed. People were shot in the streets for the slightest accidental transgression. 309 Kampala's International Hotel had to put its rooftop nightclub in the basement, because "State Research boys" got into the habit of tossing teenagers off the roof if they wanted to dance with their girlfriends, or girls if refused their avances. 310 Mainly the rich, educated, Christians and enemy tribes were targeted. As one witness observed:

"It was a crime to be educated. It was a crime to be Christian. It was a crime to be wealthy. It was even a crime to be seen with a foreigner or to have a wife or girlfriend Amin or one of his thugs wanted." 311

Phone tapping and computer technology coming from western companies resulted in an even greater level of control 312, often used to covertly spy on Amin's own ranking enforcers. 313 The CIA's Frank Terpil was involved in this, similar to what he had done for the Shah of Iran. 314

The combined result of these repressive techniques was that so much fear was instilled in the population, that many people stopped visiting friends, "I didn’t know if they were with me or on the other side. I had nobody to trust any longer." 315 They would go from work to their house and sleep, with many not even daring to ask within their own circle why people were getting picked up. 316 Sometimes best friends did indeed hand over each other, or even mothers their daughters for privately speaking ill of Amin. 317 Wealthier people would whisper in and around the house to prevent servants from hearing anything related to Amin. In general "the golden rule was not to talk about anything, anywhere to anybody." 318

Why would citizens of a country terrorize other citizens to this extent? In no small part because Amin's State Research Bureau for the most part consisted of Amin's "tiny Kawatribe, Nubians and Moslems" supplemented with "weaklings from other tribes, the thieves and tramps." 319 As another witness said, "From the earliest years, the State Research Bureau was mostly Nubian." 320 Uganda only was 5 percent Muslim. 321 Nubians were Muslim foreigners who hailed from Egypt and Sudan. So essentially Amin used foreigners, minority Muslims and general lowlives to terrorize his own citizens. In case of Amin this makes sense, because, through his parents and grandparents, he was half Kakwa and half Nubian, identifying as "a Nubi-Kakwa". Liked by the British for their fierceness, these tribes were considered particularly masculine and violent, and therefore hated by South Ugandans. 322 One notorious Nubian was Major Farouk Minawa, who reportedly even executed his own wife and daughters at State Research Bureau 323 - which he headed. Amin's cousin or nephew, Colonel Isaac Maliyamungu, consistly identified as a vicious torturer, was also regularly referred to as a "Nubian". 324

Amin's methods of torture and murder

Details of the genocide, torture and murder implemented under Amin included:

"Entire villages [being] slain by machinegun" 325, mainly involving Obote's Lango tribe, as well as the allied Acholi tribe. Already in August 1974 - the first 3.5 years of Amin's rule - an estimated 59,000 members of these tribes were killed at a total of 90,000 estimated victims. 326
So many bodies were thrown into the Nile river that crocodiles were "not bothering to devour people [anymore]." 327
So many bodies were dumped in Uganda's national forests that they became "graveyards" to such an extent that anyone driving through them needed to "roll up the car windows, because the stench of human flesh so permeates the countryside." 328
In late November 1975, as estimated 4,000 crippled people 329 were loaded into dump trucks and dumped alive into the crocodile-infested Nile river. This happened days after a crippled person publicly confronted Amin over destroying the economy 330, the result of Amin having deported all Indians in the country.
One of the remaining Indians, who was part of Amin's entourage, stated how at one point he saw how, "Amin was standing besides the river, cutting flesh off an Asian man and feeding it to crocodiles in the river." 331
Prisoners were made "to consume their own flesh until they have bled to death." 332
Torturing people by drilling holes in them, followed by inserting firecrackers. 333
Having rats eat themselves through the stomachs of torture victims, as "rogue" CIA officer Frank Terpil said to have witnessed at State Research Bureau about three times to undercover police officers. 334

Forcing people to stab each other to death 335 or fighting each other to death with hammers. 336
"Dismemberment of live people" 337 and mancheting people to death on the streets. 338
Cutting the genitals of live victims. 339
Chopping off hands before live transport to mass graves. 340
Sometimes burying alive in mass graves, also involving mass graves for the elite of society. 341
Beating tied up prisoners for two hours a day with metal rods until their skin falls off. 342
Making prisoners crawl on broken glass. 343
Forcing prisoners to drink the urine of guards. 344
"Forklift [wounded prisoners] with guns mounted with bayonets." 345
Smashing people's heads in with shovels 346 and sledgehammers 347, to the point comments were made as, "They rarely wasted any bullets on us." 348
Dragging condemned prisoners up the stairs with a rope around their necks in between rows of soldiers hitting them "with hammers, crowbars, pistols and guns", finally smashing in their heads. 349
Feeding prisoners with poisoned food in their cells. 350

Amin's descent

Relations between Amin and Israel soured in late 1971, according to Amin buddy Colonel Bar-Lev, because Israel felt it was forced to cancel a visit of Amin to celebrate the graduation of 200 Ugandan paratroopers trained in Israel. The time of Amin's visit turned out to be inconvenient due to a planned meeting with other African heads of state to discuss peace between Arab states and Israel. According to Colonel Bar-Lev, Amin felt greatly insulted. 351 In another version of events, the main issue was Britain and Israel's refusing to sell Amin arms that "went beyond the requirements of legitimate self-defence." 352 In particular, this was a reference to Amin, in July 1971, looking to buy U.S.-supplied F4 Phantoms from Israel, specifically to bomb Tanzania. After Israeli prime minister Golda Meir refused this request, Amin tried the same in Britain, which also denied him. Amin also failed to get a debt cancelation or debt rescheduling from private Israeli firms, or get an additional ten million pounds loan. 353

After these far-reaching demands from Amin to Israel and Britain failed in July 1971, and soon also felt slighted by Israel in December 1971, Amin decided to negotiate a military deal with Israel's greatest enemy, President Muammar Gaddafi of Egypt. 354 Part of the deal necessitated that Amin expel the Israelis from Uganda, which he did in April 1972 355, famously attempting to send Gold Meir a diplomatic memo that read, "Pick up your knickers and go back to America where you came from!" 356 His assistant refused to sent it. Gaddafi also demanded that Amin embrace the Palestinian PLO - which he did as well. From that moment on, Amin was among Israel's greatest opponents. Considering Amin had been a Muslim since age 15, this may have been the natural course of events.

Relations with Britain soon also broke down, in particular after expelling the entire Indian population of Uganda in August 1972. Interestingly, Amin actually had good reasons for that, as the Indian population controlled one-fifth of the economy despite only being 1% of the population. They populated Uganda's city centers, sending off their black workers to their huts outside town after each work day was over. 357 The British had brought the Indians there, with the dominant British banks - Barclays, Standard Bank, National and Grindlays Bank 358 - predominantly lending to Indian businesses, with profits moving overseas, away from Uganda. Already under British rule, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya had begun to restrict immigration. 359 By the 1970s these now independent countries were also hostile to the Indians, not wanting to absorb those expelled from Uganda. Most ended up in England or Canada, because even their home country, India, had no desire for them.

When in September 1972 Amin starrted praising the Nazi holocaust in a telegram to United Nations secretary general Kurt Waldheim 360, the United States too decided to start withholding loans to the Amin regime. 361

In 1979 Amin, due to international boycotts and a failed war effort against Tanzania, was overthrown. Fleeing the country towards Gaddafi's Libya with CIA rogue Frank Terpil 362 , Amin eventually was able to live out his days in exile in Saudi Arabia. For some time the Saudi State, Amin and Terpil contemplated ways to get Amin back into power in Uganda, but this desire never came to fruition. 363

1980-1985: the Ugandan genocide during Obote II

In December 1980, after the deposal of Idi Amin, formerly hated Milton Obote once again was able to get back onto the throne of Uganda. As discussed earlier, Obote's General Services Unit, his secret police, was trained by the Israelis and mainly stacked with Langi and, secondary, Acholi tribe members. After Obote's nationalist and "socialist"-inspired "Move to the Left", during which he turned the country into a dictatorship, and his opposition to Israelis running anti-Arab operations in South Sudan through army commander Amin, it was predominantly Israel that aided the Amin coup.

Because the first Obote regime only had cost 600 to 1,000 lives of dissidents, the second Obote administration wasn't expected to be worse than Amin. 364 However, immediatly the Ugandan Bush War against Yoweri Museveni broke out, mainly in what is called the Luwero Triangle, primarily home to the Baganda tribe, considered loyal to Museveni's LRA incursion. 365 As a result, after regaining much of the territory, Obote blocked foreign aid to the region in March 1984 and initiated a "policy of terror" in which ordinary citizens were starved, massacred and raped. Torture in "secret military detention centers" for political opponents was also reported. 366 A year after the initial reports on this came out, Amnesty International agreed that the second Obote regime was marked by "widespread and systematic use of torture against detainees." 367

In July 1985, at the end of Obote's regime, the U.S. State Department estimated that "about 200,000 Ugandans were killed or disappeared" in the past five years. 368 Other sources estimate that possibly up to one million people, mainly civilians, were killed in this period. 369 Atrocities were committed on both sides though, with Obote apparently also having trouble keeping his troops in line on this issue. 370

Gen. Tito Okello: 1985-1986

In any case, Obote was overthrown after he once again began to promote his own Langi tribe members, this time by Acholi tribe members Bazilio Olara-Okello and Tito Okello. Tito Okello served as president of Uganda from 29 July 1985 to 26 January 1986. Okella immediately started asking for military support from Israel to fend off the National Resistance Army (NRA) of Yoweri Museveni in particular. Working through diplomat-turned-businessman Uri Lubrani, representing the Mossad, and after a number of high-level diplomatic visits back and forth, Israel agreed to send arms in return for the opening of formal diplomatic relations, the idea being that even if the Gaddafi-supported Museveni would succeed in taking over, it would make it relatively hard for him to sever the existing diplomatic ties. Okello accepted and "from December 1985 until early January 1986, Israel sent three planes full of weapons" to Okello's regime. 371 While the arms were able to push back Museveni for some time, on January 24, 1986 Israel refused to send additional arms to Okello's forces, realizing that Museveni was about to win the conflict. 372 Two days later, Museveni was in power.

1986-2020s: Uganda's Yoweri Museveni

For obvious reasons, once in power, Yoweri Museveni complained that the Israelis had militarily supported his precedessor, Tito Okello. Israeli diplomats came up with the excuse that "Israel supports governments, not rebels." Despite maintaining ties with Gaddafi and the PLO, and Israeli diplomats as early as August 1986 reporting back that Museveni was "mobilizing children for the military", from the start Israel agreed to "train and arm [Museveni's] military forces." Also when it became known that Museveni "arrested government ministers and political rivals, executed dozens of jailed detainees, ... was working to establish a one-party regime [and] killed thousands," it didn't have a negative effect on the relationship. 373

It is hard to say how much Israel and the United States got out of the partnership in the first years, except that it wouldn't push Museveni entirely into the corner of Gaddafi and the Soviets, despite Museveni dealing with these interests as well. Later on, as a person supporting Christianity, Museveni helped keep Islamic militants, such as Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and the later Islamic State militants, at bay. In the Congo, Museveni was "instrumental in the rise to power of the Kabila family." The Kabila family overthrew the relatively pro-West Mobutu, but at the same time managed to similarly develop "extensive security and economic ties with the Jewish state" and various Israeli businessmen. 374

Museveni's war and genocide against the Acholi: 1986-2011

In the months after the Janury 1986 coup, the NRA troops of Museveni, himself a member of the Hima tribe, increasingly began to terrorize Acholi tribe members in the north. Resistance armies were set up. Among them would be Joseph Kony's the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Both the LRA and the NRA would accuse the local Acholi population of supporting the opposite camp and as a result both target them with atrocities. On top of that, the LRA, soon supported by Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, kidnapped a lot of children to become soldiers in its army. The general population didn't support either the LRA or the NRA and were caught in a hopeless situation.

In response to the LRA incursions, in 1997, Museveni came up the idea to put the northern Acholi population in what was termed "internal displacement camps" for the people's "own safety". 375 Amidst a non-stop stream of NRA atrocities, the Acholi received a 48 hours notice to pack their belongings and move into the camps - or get shot by troops from the ground and in helicopters. The refugees actually had to build their own houses in the camps, had very little water and other resources, and would start dying, according to a joint World Health Organization and Uganda Ministry of Health report "at a rate 1,000 to 1,500 excess deaths per week." 376 Considering the camps existed for 14 years, until 2011, we're talking about an estimated 730,000 to 1.1 million deaths in what in effect were concentration camps or death camps. Adam Branch, the future director of the Centre of African Studies and a professor of International Politics in the Department of Politics & International Studies at Cambridge University, was a researcher of these camps in the 2000s, and summarized the Uganda situation as follows:

"It wasn't until a few months after the occupation that violence by the NRA against the Acholi civilization population really started to escalate. ... That's the time when they start talking about real abuses by the NRA in terms of killings, a few isolated massacres; in terms of rape, in terms of displacement, in terms of going into the villages and [eventually] forcing everybody out of the villages. ...

"The NGOs [like Invisible Children] want to call these people "internally displaced people", or IDP, so as to hide the fact that they are actually interned into forced displacement camps. ... If we look at other places where the government has attempted these kinds of forced displacement, for example Burundi 377, the international community wouldn't let it happen." 378

Olara Otunnu, Uganda's minister of foreign affairs from 1985 to 1986 under Okello and later an undersecretary of the United Nations, and someone who maintained very elite globalist ties, summarized the situation in the camps in the following manner:

"The camps [opened in 1997] and [Acholi] people were uprooted from their homes... You have 4,000 people on average using one public latrine... It can take three days to get to a water source where you can get one jerrycan of water. If it has taken you 12 hours, you are very lucky. In fact, a United Nations report in November, visiting these camps, said the death rates in these camps in northern Uganda are twice the mortality rates in [the] Darfur [genocide] in western Sudan." 379

The 1 million or so estimated camp-related deaths, is without all those from the 1986-1997 civil war period. Also the civil war of 1985 should not be discounted, during which, apparently, "many Ugandans had thought they had witnessed the worst atrocities in the country's history" in the region where Museveni's army ran his campaign against the goverment of Tito Okello. 380 Considering Uganda had Amin in its recent past, that is quite a strong statement. As we shall see a little further, additional atrocities under Museveni continued into the 2020s, albeit likely at a considerably smaller scale. As a result, the claim that Museveni's regime over the decades "almost certainly claimed more lives than Obote's, Amin's, and Okello's combined" 381 may well be true. The world just doesn't know about it.

Apparently the world wasn't informed about Museveni's crimes, because the dictator's "reputation has been protected by highly paid American lobbyists, World Bank officials, diplomats and politicians from the donor countries that enlist his military." 382 Footage certainly exists of 1995-2005 World Bank president James Wolfensohn negotiating with Yoweri Museveni, urging him to build roads and educate people, and literally joking Museveni is a dictator who will do what he pleases anyway. The problem at the time was that Museveni not only would use most aid money for military purposes, but also that he effectively prevented Acholi children from attending school by removing most teachers and forcing the remainder to teach to classes of 200 to 350 children. Museveni's response to the quip of Wolfensohn wasn't very promising 383, but somehow criticism on his regime has been very rare, with aid money continuing to come in. It's the same when then U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited Uganda. She subtlely urged Museveni to cede power 384, but he ignored it and nothing changed.

Museveni and son: heavy torture of opposition figures

In his move towards turning Uganda into a "democracy", Musevini has used his army since at least the 2001 election to crush protests. In 2005 he got rid of presidential term limits and again used the army to crush protestors who were claiming the elections were rigged. In 2017 he got parliament to overturn the 75-year age limit for presential candidates, while opposing members of parliament trying the filibuster the bill were forcibly removed from the building by Museveni's Special Forces Command (SFC). A number of MPs sustained serious injury in the process. 385 "Pollster Afrobarometer a year ago found three quarters opposed the bill" 386, yet it was passed and Museveni continued to "win" elections around the 59% mark.

As late as January 2021 Museveni "won" a heavily-rigged and violently-repressed election in his country. Already in the preceding November, dozens of protestors were killed by Museveni's forces protesting the anticipated election rigging 387, with Amnesty International concluding that Museveni was "using Covid-19 guidelines to repress opposition [while his] governing party has held large campaign events." 388 At least 177 protest participants, including various opposing candidates, were arrested, and only released after the election was over. 389 This included main opposition candidate and Independent member of parliament Bobi Wine, whose bodyguard was ran over by a military truck right before the election. 390 Another politician complained that his driver was shot, and thought he himself was supposed to be the target. Also in the months after the election, people were continually kidnapped for months on end by Museveni's security services. 391

For the most part, above is how far the mainstream media has traditionally tended to take criticism of the Museveni regime. Things changed a little bit in recent years. First, in August 2018, Congressman Bobi Wine detailed his recent kidnapping and torture. Initially being prevented from leaving the country, Wine went to the U.S. for treatment of his injuries sustained during the torture. 392 More reports have come out since the turbulent January 2021 election and social media becoming ever more important. For example, it has been reported that Ugandan satirical writer, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, was kidnapped and tortured by being forced to dance on fractured ankles all night, received beatings with steel or leather whips, and had pieces of his thigh torn out with pliers. The huge whip-like scars on his back alone make it clear that he has not been inventing his ordeal. 393

Ronald Ssegawa, after his kinapping, first was shown "a video where he urges people to vote for [Bobi] Wine." Next his kidnappers burned him with red-hot iron rods and pulled out several fingernails, leaving the tips of his fingers necrotic. His wrist was broken, with a bone sticking out. One of his torturers tried to pull out his tongue with pliers, but was stopped by a colleague.394 Ssegawa was put in a body bag and dumped at the local morque. When he, surprisingly, showed signs of life here, he was brought to a local hospital. 395 In the ensuing controversy, a soft-spoken police spokesman, with a look of mortification on his face, read up a fictional story for the news and buried the case. 396 Like Rukirabashaija, Ssegawa's lived to tell his tale and was able to show the world the wounds he sustained.

Since then, more and more mainstream media reports have surfaced, really conclusively proving that critics of the Museveni regime are being kidnapped from the streets 397 and often heavily tortured.

The thing is, these reports of torture, and that on a rather large scale, have always been there. Just not much has been done with them by the western media and activist groups. It took many hours of research for this author to really realize just how bad Museveni is; how he does not differ at all from Idi Amin. He even smiles like Amin, denying any allegation, no matter what the presented proof. But take, for instance, the following Human Rights Watch report dating back to 2004:

"An informal survey at Kigo Prison near Kampala, where "political" cases are held, indicated in June 2003 that 90 percent of detainees/prisoners had been tortured during their prior detention by state military and security agencies. ...

"Forms of torture in use in Uganda include kandoya (tying hands and feet behind the victim) and suspension from the ceiling of victims tied kandoya, "Liverpool" water torture (forcing the victim to lie face up, mouth open, under a flowing water spigot), severe and repeated beatings with metal or wooden poles, cables, hammers and sticks with nails protruding, pistol-whipping, electrocution, male and female genital and body mutilation, death threats (through showing fresh graves, corpses and snakes), strangulation, restraint, isolation, and verbal abuse and humiliation. Some of these practices have resulted in the death of detainees in custody." 398

Nothing rally was done with these reports. So in 2022 Human Rights Watch again reported:

"Since at least 2018, Ugandan security forces have unlawfully detained and tortured many people, including government critics and opposition supporters, often in unsanctioned or unauthorized places of detention. [These are] somewhat ironically termed "safehouses" [and fall] under the authority of the Internal Security Organization (ISO), Uganda’s domestic intelligence body. ...

"Victims told Human Rights Watch [that they were] undergoing ... beatings, shackling, injections with unknown substances, and the application of live electric currents to their bodies. Some former detainees, both men and women, survived rape... [One witness said:] "They were giving me a slow killing poison. I am now limp. I feel a lot of pain in my limbs on my right side." ...

"In nearly all cases ... officials stole and extorted money from the victims or their families during arrests or as a condition of their release." 399

Looking at the same report, the torture in Uganda seems to have taken on Satanic proportions:

"Rachel N. told Human Rights Watch that three men and one woman abducted her in 2019, while she was in the early stages of pregnancy. Her captors drove her to Base One in Kyengera where they detained her for six months. .... An officer called Charles Opoka raped her twice and beat her with shoes, causing her to miscarry and bleed severely. [She] kept the pregnancy tissue (fetus, placenta, and pregnancy membranes) in a black plastic bag... The doctors at the hospital had to remove her uterus... After the officers returned her [from the hospital] to the safehouse they subjected her to further torture." 400

In February 2021, political candidate Bobi Wine put out a list of about 3,000 of his supporters who were either missing or located in "safe houses" and prisons around the country, all of them arrested since Nov. 18, 2020, when the most recent electoral protests started. 401 According to a U.S.-based black newspaper published by a Columbia University "Adjunct Assistant Professor of Journalism" 402, which has been embraced by anything from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times and the "liberal CIA" WBAI radio station 403, and with apparant long-existing Uganda ties 404, "A police source informs this author that as many as 7,000 people are missing." 405

One would think if dead and half-dead bodies are being dropped at local morgues after having undergone torture, as was the case with Ronald Ssegawa, and looking at the Human Rights Watch reports, that these numbers could be accurate. In fact, in the same article, a Justine Ssekandi, who "composed a song that challenged the authorities ... also regained consciousness in a mortuary." In case of a 40-year-old Abraham Mubiru, kidnapped by the government in August 2019, "his clothes - but not body - was discovered with a pile of bodies dumped in the mortuary." 406 The author of the article also provided a list of 67 names of people who had gone missing, already "before the Nov. 18 [2020] protest and massacre." 21 of these persons were directly reported to the newspaper by relatives. 407

It should be clear that for many years there has been a huge human rights problem under Museveni.

Israel ties of Museveni's private Special Forces Command and wider regime

The human rights atrocities in Uganda can partly be ascribed to Israel. As discussed, Israel has funded and trained the Museveni regime from the start in 1986. This relationship always continued. In 1999, Museveni made a Pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Since then he has signed various additional economic development and military contracts with Israel. In this process he met with then-Israeli President Moshe Katsav, past and sitting prime ministers as Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, and Mossad chief Tamir Pardo. 408

Fascinatingly, Museveni's 2011 visit to Israel was arranged last-minute and rather hush-hush by businessman and decades-long Mossad agent Rafi Eitan, with Israel officials not having a clue how Eitan was even allowed in the VIP section of the airport where Museveni was received. Eitan himself explained to Haaretz that he had been "a friend of the Ugandan president for many years", that he arranged the visit, and that he knows "a few people in the wider world and sometimes I go with them to see the prime minister and the president." 409 The details of his "many years" friendship with Museveni are unknown, except that at the time he was looking "to start farming projects, like a cattle ranch" in places as Uganda. 410 It would be interesting to have more details on Eitan's past relationship with Museveni. After all, Eitan might well be the most celebrated of Israeli spies. He ran various key nuclear spying operations against the United States from the 1960s to 1980s, at least some of it with the quiet consent of the CIA and various U.S. presidents. Eitan died in 2019.

One controversial sale of Israel to countries as Uganda and Rwanda is the notorious Pegasus hacking software. 411 Rwanda used it to hack Ugandan diplomats, while Uganda used it to hack U.S. State Department officials situated in the country. 412

More controversial still is that Israel has been covertly supplying Galil-ACE and Tavor assault rifles to Uganda's Special Forces Command (SFC). Israeli human rights activists learned of these sales in 2019 mainly due to pictures that appeared on the Twitter account of the unit's head, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba - and started a court case to ban the sales. 413 Uganda's Special Forces Command is problematic to say the least. In 2017, for example, this special army unit was reported to be used "to quell dissent over collapsing public services, corruption, growing poverty and brutality by security services." 414 The SFC, which is estimated to have grown to 10,000 soldiers, is heavily stacked with members of Museveni's Hima tribe, operates as a private militia for Museveni, and receives better equipment, higher pay and better housing than the rest of the military. 415 Much of the earlier-discussed kidnappings and torture of dissidents, including members of parliament, is tied to the SFC.

Now, it must be said, while Israel has been taking care of "training" aspects of the Ugandan military, it is not clear if Israel also trained Special Forces Command. Looking at Israel's long history and expertise with training extra-governmental presidential guards that engage in torture and murder, and some of the other circumstances, one is tempted to say "yes" here. But in the end this aspect is not proved.

The SFC was headed by Museveni's son, General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, from 2008 to 2017, and again from December 2020 to 2021, right after the violently suppressed November 2020 protests that, according to Human Rights Watch, were followed in the next few weeks by security forces carrying out "a spate of abductions and arrests of opposition supporters, government critics, and others for allegedly participating in the protests." 416 The son graduated from Sandhurst military academy in 2000, took a one-year course at Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 2007, walks around with a U.S. army jump wings badge, was fast-tracked in the Ugandan military by his father 417 and has always been thought to be groomed to be his father's presidential successor. The son was removed though as head of the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) in October 2022, after repeatedly and rather aggressively tweeting that Uganda should conquer Kenya:

"It wouldn't take us, my army and me, 2 weeks to capture Nairobi. Union is a MUST! No honourable men can allow these artificial, colonial borders anymore. If we our generation has men, then these borders must fall!" 418

Needless to say, the Museveni's son is just as much of a human rights problem as Museveni himself, if not bigger. In that sense it is ironic, as well as worrisome, that in 2016 the right-wing Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced Amin as a "cruel dictator who worked with terrorists", while praising Museveni as "a leader who works to fight terrorism." Netanyahu was in the country at the time to "strengthen Israel's multilateral ties in Africa." In 2020 he again visited Uganda, referring to the relationship as "a true friendship." 419 This is the way that it has been for decades.

Uganda and Israel: "Conservative CIA" forces

It must be kept in mind that Sharon and Netanyahu have been Israeli right-wingers of the Likud Party, with Israel's right-wing having been very dominant for decades. If one studies this aspect of the establishment though, it still has to be concluded that it falls in line with the international conservative CIA" establishment, as well as the slightly more "mainstream elite" U.S. neocons. This establishment has always been involved in pushing neoliberalism / income inequality and military adventures that have involved anti-terrorist wars and death squads. It's the heritage of the American Security Coucil, the much more neocon Center for Security Policy, Le Cercle Pinay and the Council for National Policy. In that respect, we shouldn't expect much from these Israeli leaders in terms of human rights concerns, even outside of what would be in the general interest of the Israeli state.

Rafi Eitan too, in 2018, filmed a video in support of anti-immigration, "alt right", "populist" Alternative for Germany (AfD), saying, "You might become an alternative for all of Europe." This action, of course, was heavily criticized in media across the West. 420 So what was Eitan doing? Well, simply following the international "conservative CIA" narrative.

Uganda and Israel: "liberal CIA" forces

Also when we look at western interests mildly trying to steer and increasingly criticizing the Museveni regime, we have to keep in mind that usually there are powerful forces behind them. As for the mainstream (liberal-globalist) media, it's not actually as if Museveni's recent kidnappings and torture of dissidents has been completely ignored by the media. The amount of attention has just been too limited to make people aware on a large scale. Very tellingly, if we search for Museveni's new law in May 2023 giving the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", we see a long list of mainstream media in every western country criticizing it. From top to bottom in the Google search engine: BBC, AP, Reuters, CNN, The Guardian, NPR, CBS, France24.com, Japan Times, Le Monde, Politico, PBS, ABC, etc., etc. Also the move immediately received criticism from U.S. President Joe Biden 421, under whose presidency Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ flags were hung around U.S. embassies around the world. 422

However, when we search for 'Museveni' and 'torture' a whole lot less mainstream articles show up. Most of it involves social media pages, African news sites, mixed in with some Reuters and Guardian articles. Then you've got to wonder who it is exactly they are giving attention to. These media outlets are not exposing torture crimes against Joe Average (think of its African equivalent), but more for people who work for the liberal-globalist establishment. Feminist and LGBTQ activist Stella Nyanzi has been given a lot of attention, and eventually was brought to Germany under writers association Pen International. 423 The earlier-discussed Museveni torture victim Kakwenza Rukirabashaija is another political-satirical writer awarded and then brought to Germany by PEN International. 424 Pen America is a known grantee of the "liberal CIA" Ford and Soros foundations 425, with a key leader of Pen America and Pen International from the 1980s until 2021 being CFR member Joanne Leedom-Ackerman 426, the wife of Superclass Index member Peter Ackerman and a trustee of George Soros' International Crisis Group from at least 1996 to 2016. 427

The earlier-discussed torture victim Ronald Ssegawa was an ally of rapper and Independent Congressman Bobi Wine, who was brought to the U.S. for medical treatment in 2018. Already in 2016, Wine's was somewhat primitively and mockingly bragging that two songs of his were part of the soundtrack of Disney's 2016 movie 'Queen of Katwe', one of them, 'Ndi Muna Uganda', being used as the opening song that "plays over the Disney logo (one of the few times that has ever happened)." The other song, 'Kiwani', was the only song included in the soundtrack that was not in the movie. 428

Clearly, not exactly every torture victim is meant to receive attention from the western media. Everything seems to serve a purpose. For that matter, Human Rights Watch, which summarizes the accounts of all the anonymous torture victims, has as its biggest donor George Soros 429, with more millions coming from the Ford Foundation. 430 The Guardian too, always at the forefront with any fallout from "western imperialism", receives millions from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. Haaretz, which detailed historic Israel-funding of the Museveni regime, is considered the most "Israel-hating" newspaper of Israel, with ties to all the pro-Palestine Soros, Ford, UN and EU-funded NGOs in the country, as well as the "liberal CIA" Meretz Party, with a 25% owner being old pro-West Russian oligarch Leonid Nevzlin. 431

David Rockefeller ally James Wolfensohn and Lynn Forester de Rothschild ally Hillary Clinton - who tried to tame Museveni a bit in previous decades - are liberal-globalist elites. But also behind the unassumingly-dressed Museveni-critic Olara Otunnu, earlier discussed as a central figure in the completely unknown 2006 documentary that exposed Museveni's genocide through "internal displacement camps", we see these powerful liberal-globalist forces. Otunnu wasn't just Uganda's minister of foreign affairs from 1985 to 1986 under Okello and later an undersecretary of the United Nations. In 1995 he and Museveni both were invited to the Davos conference. As a result, the following biographical aspects of Otunnu can be copied from that article:

President of the curious JFK assassination-tied International Peace Institute (IPI) from 1990 to 1998, serving on the advisory board for decades after. Headquartered at 777 United Nations Plaza in New York City, the group has received funding from the Rockefeller, Ford, Bill Gates, Carnegie and Hewlett foundations, as well as Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation. Obviously quite a few elites have served on the IPI's various boards of the decades. Kofi Annan, Rita Hauser, Mortimer Zuckerman, Kevin Rudd and Prince Turki al Faisal all appear in ISGP's Superclass Index.
As only learned while doing research for this article: Otunnu showed up at the 1995 Davos conference, opposite to his great nemesis, Yoweri Museveni.
Trustee of the Carnegie Corporation between 1998 and 2007.
In 2002 he became a full member of the Club of Rome, which through people as Maurice Strong and Aurelio Peccei has a shared history with Davos.

'KONY 2012': pushing Bush and Obama's pro-Museveni agenda; hiding genocide and foreign plunder

Then there is the outright bizarre 'KONY 2012' propaganda film, the most "viral" video ever made at that point, reaching 100 million hits in just 6 days, outstripping all past popular entertainment videos. 432 Not only did it try to rally the whole world into supporting the arrest of Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army, which had fallen apart 6 years before the film came out and couldn't be considered a present threat to the Museveni regime and the people anymore - the film also was fully quiet on past and present genocidal and police state activities of Museveni, as well as western support for his regime. It's not surprising to see it received no support in Uganda either. Even among globalist "let's get together"-propaganda, it is among the strangest films ever produced.

Whether the film is tied to U.S. AFRICOM's mission to guarantee "the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market," cannot be said with any certainty 433, although it certainly has something to do with Obama sending troops to Uganda in 2011 434 and 2014 435 in helping Museveni track "Mr. Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army across Uganda, Central African Republic, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo." Kony was never found, but Museveni's troops quickly did make a name for themselves in the 2009-2017 period for "massive plunder of resources like diamonds and timber in the tiny and war-wracked Central African Republic" 436, where they were also accused of employing and impregnating child prostitutes. 437

'Kony 2012' actually was produced by the NGO Invisible Children, which was criticized throughout the 2006-2007 documentary featuring Olara Otunnu of ignoring Museveni's Acholi death camps (meanwhile making the case for foreign intervention against Kony). From there we could ask the question: who funded and coordinated with Invisible Children the year before 'Kony 2012' video was released? Well, the Davos network: "liberal CIA" foundations as The Omidyar Network, Oprah Winfrey Foundation, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, the Soros and Ford Foundation-funded New Venture Fund, as well as the UN Refugee Agency. Soon Invisible Children was running a "consulting practice" with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - which donated $750,000 in 2014 - "to teach others how to launch campaigns like "Kony 2012."" 438 The film itself was created together with Invisible Children partner The Enough Project of actor George Clooney and John Prendergast, a former director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and State Department advisor before becoming "special advisor" to the president of George Soros' International Crisis Group. 439 Clooney and Prendergast, both featured in 'Kony 2012', are known to have been playing basketball with sitting president Barack Obama, who had been sending U.S. troops to Uganda for some time, with the both of them admitting at one point that the film was little more than propaganda piece for Obama's re-election campaign. Prendergast was particularly forthcoming:

"You know, [Obama] needs a little political support in an election year. So now you have all these young people all across the United States who are captivated by the idea that the United States can help the African region." 440

Also fascinating is that all the "culture makers" and "policy makers" that 'Kony 2012' suggests viewers should harass over the film... all, or virtually all, are known liberal-globalist operatives we already know are fully allied with the agenda of 'Kony 2012'. They included politicians as George W. Bush, who praised Museveni in 2003 for his AIDS policy 441 and in 2008 for being a "strong leader [who has] been very helpful in solving regional conflicts on the continent of Africa" 442; Obama's future secretary of state John Kerry; and "culture makers" as George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey - who aided the creation of the film; Ben Affleck, a major think tank enthusiast who was a neighbor of famous antifa Howard Zinn in his youth; Bono, a known Soros and Bill Gates employee; Jay Z, who is known to have partied with George Soros; and CFR member Angelina Jolie, who had just begun her own little LGBTQ United Nations family. On it goes.

At this point, count the number of Davos people involved in 'Invisible Children' and 'Kony 2012' film: George Soros and Bill Gates have been annual visitors of Davos since the mid 1990s. Their joint employee at Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa (DATA), Bono of U2, has been a regular Davos visitor. John Kerry was as IGWEL participant in the mid 1990s already. Oprah, George Clooney, and Angelina Jolie have visited Davos. Multiple managers of the Omidyar Network have visited as well: Sushant Kumar, Katie Hill, Paula Goldman, etc.

So what are we looking at here? Well, the fact is that the atrocities in Darfur have been committed by a China-backed oil regime that allied itself with Joseph Kony in opposition to the U.S.-backed SPLA in South Sudan and the genocidal Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. All these politicians, "philanthropists" and celebrities have been falling in line with this complex, overarching geopolitical strategy that can only be overseen by the security state. Hence, we have to conclude they are assets, and-or fully part, of an "insider" national security or CIA network. And while Otunnu was directly attacking this network in 2006-2007 - in an unusually low-profile manner for such an "established" individual - we have to conclude he too is employed by the same interests at the United Nations, Carnegie Corporation, International Peace Institute and other places.

1970s: Consultants International: "Rogue" CIA firm aiding America's enemies: Gaddafi Carlos the Jackal, etc.

In relation to Idi Amin it was discussed here earlier how his regime received crucial support from Frank Terpil and his Consultants International.

Frank Terpil is a strange player. He and his senior partner, fellow "former"-CIA operative Edwin P. Wilson, ran Consultants International in this period. At the time, the firm was selling enormous amounts of explosives, timers and other components and weapons to be used for assassination, spying and terrorism to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi 443, who in turn would make this available to Palestinian terrorist groups such as the Black September Organization - the group behind the Munich Olympic massacre of 1972 against Israeli athletes - and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). While Wilson was in Libya in 1976, Terpil and a third partner, Kevin Mulcahy, who quickly became an informant of government agencies and the media, were in London at a boat party meeting with Sayad Gaddafi, the head of Libyan intelligence and a cousin of the dictator; and Carlos "The Jackal" Ramirez, the Marxist–Leninist terrorist who worked for Yassar Arafat's PLO. 444

In 1967 Terpil and Wilson were active at Fort Bragg, recruiting Green Beret instructors here for Gaddafi. Master Sergeant Luke J. Thompson was approached by Pat Loomis, a CIA officer who had just been fired from the CIA by Jimmy Carter's new CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, and who represented Terpil and Wilson 445; and asked if he could put together a team of 5 people to be part of a covert CIA operation that was not explained in any detail. 446 Here's how Master Sergeant Thompson explained what happened next:

"As soon as got done talking, I called counterintelligence people and made them aware that I was approached by what I felt was a foreign agent. They came over to my house and the intelligence people said, "This is completely legal and above board. So you have no worries. Pursue it as you desire."" 447

Master Sergeant Thompson took his squad to Libya, taking with them 365 kg / 800 lb of explosives. Here, in a desert palace, he observed Americans "priming ashtrays, books - even desks - to explode on contact," with Wilson, who awaited the squad in Switzerland before revealing they were en-route to Libya, clearly being the one in charge of the whole operation. The main person who set up the basement bomb lab was John H. Harper, a former CIA ordnance technician. Knowing something was wrong, he and his son left the operation after a short time. 448 Meanwhile, the Libyan intelligence chief not only asked the Green Berets for advice on how to deal with Egyptian insurgents, he also asked them to put together a "terrorist training program for Libyan commandos." 449 At this point, certainly team leader Thompson had seen enough as well, and went back to the United States, despite the excellent pay. 450 Once again he informed counterintelligence, explaining that something is obviously wrong with this operation. Counterintelligence tried to dig deeper, but could only report back that all details of the operation were blocked in their computer systems. 451

When Terpil in a later interview was asked why the United States was helping Gaddafi, known as "the most prominent state sponsor and participant in international terrorism", Terpil almost cheekily answered:

"Gaddafi does not have the capability, nor the facility, to manufacture weapons - at all. So we had to get them from leading powers. ... For the most part the leading powers were cognizant of it." 452

In short, Consultants International and its partners were arms merchants for all of America's enemies, supposedly as "rogue" CIA agents. Yet at the same time, Wilson was working in these operations with Ted Shackley, the CIA's associate deputy director of operations since May 1976 under CIA director George H. W. Bush; Thomas Clines, a senior officer in the CIA's Office of Training; and William Weisenburger, "then a branch chief in the C.I.A.'s Technical Services Division" - the James Bond gadgets department. 453 Shackley, of course, has been tied to:

CIA drug trafficking 454;
Vietnam's "Phoenix" death squad program and about 250 political assassinations in neighboring Laos 455;
the JFK assassination, being considered by HSCA investigators Gaeton Fonzi and Ed Lopez as likely a CIA officer in charge of that operation, together with Richard Helms;
Gladio/Stay Behind false flag terrorism 456;
and eventually the secretive Cercle Pinay Group - where's Shackley's biography is described in detail.

In that sense, it may not be a surprise to see Shackley's name pop up as a close ally of Frank Terpil and Edwin Wilson. Wilson, actually, was an old subordinate of Shackley at the CIA at the time both were involved in planning the Bay of Pigs invasion. 457

Now, in later years, Wilson mysteriously had access to various leading senators and congressmen. He was able to call police chiefs and the IRS through which he immediately was able to get information on number plates and personal financial information. He circumvented trade embargos with the greatest ease. He was able to put out assassination contracts on international individuals through old anti-Castro militants in Florida. You have to read it in New York Times Magazine to believe it:

"Altering the State Department's export license, known officially as the end-user certificate, was considered ... a normal part of the arms business by Wilson and Terpil...

"Ed Wilson was friendly ... with many senior legislators, including Senators Strom Thurmond [and others]. He could telephone a contact in the Internal Revenue Service and within 15 minutes have intimate financial details on a potential customer. He was able, with a telephone call to Washington's police headquarters, to obtain registration information on a local automobile license plate. ...

"The assassination assignment had been subcontracted by Wilson to three anti-Castro Cubans in Miami with whom he had once worked in the C.I.A." 458

The Cuban assassins actually involved Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero and two brothers, Raoul and Rafael Villaferde. Quintero in particular is a very well-known name. He had been deputy leader of the anti-Castro militant group Movement for the Recovery of the Revolution or (MRR), headed by Manuel Artime, a name that needs remembering for this article. They were some of the most important individuals preparing the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1960 on behalf of CIA director Allen Dulles, CIA liaison E. Howard Hunt, and JM/Wave head Theodore Shackley, a network also linked to Wilson. Afterwards this group set up shop in Nicaragua, where they plotted another invasion of Cuba, or assassinations against Fidel Castro and other regime members. This was all part of the Operation 40 CIA program. Wilson talked about the Cubans on another occasions:

"I supposedly utilized three Cubanos who work for the agency. Their job was assassination, but on behalf of the United States government. Yes, [for the CIA.] I asked. That's how we got them. They told us that they performed hits for the CIA, and it was verified. I met them through an active duty CIA agent. She was the one that brought them to Washington to Wilson and myself. Now, the verification that these people should be okay came from an active duty CIA agent. She brings them to me, introduces them to me." 459

Wilson and Terpil wanted these anti-Castro Cubans to assassinate an opponent of Gaddafi. Villaferde refused and walked off after hearing that Castro-loyal Cubans were working as Gaddafi's bodyguards. He wouldn't take the job. Ironically, in March 1982 Villaferde died in an explosion on his ship at sea, in what is seen as a handful of curious deaths in this case.

In October 1982 the most prominent of the suspicious deaths was Kevin Mulcahy, the third partner in Consultants International next to Wilson and Terpil who was the key whistleblower behind the affair. Well after being featured in countless newspaper and television stories, he was found dead in November 1982, a month before he was to testify in the Wilson case. According to the medical examiner, Mulcahy, age 39, had serious lung issues that were sooner or later going to do him in, but couldn't tell if those issues actually killed him. More tests were announced, but the results were never reported on, with Mulcahy's father - a CIA veteran himself - and brother making more excuses than anyone for a death of natual causes. At his death scene, "A window had been shattered by a shotgun," but no additional information was given. 460 Fellow witness, Green Beret Luke Thompson, who had been recruited in the past by Wilson en Terpil, was convinced at the time Mulcahy was assassinated, likely by poison. 461 More worryingly, a policeman from Colorado, Ray Martinez, stated that "Mulcahy called him a week and a half ago, and said he was being followed from one motel room to another," that people had been in his motel rooms while he was gone, and that he was worried "in his words, if there's a bomb [going to be] planted or somebody was setting him up, or if he's going to be poisoned." 462

Frank Terpil explained that he and Wilson too were in danger of assassination if they got stuck in prison in the United States at time of their controversy and subsequent mysteripous escape:

"Somebody in an official position had gone to Gary Corkeler and informed him that due to information I might possibly reveal about a political figure, that we would not survive one month. ... Yes [we were told to get out of the country]. We were also told that no official agency would stop us. In other words, there would be a blind eye turned. Because I left the country right from Washington, D.C. No problem at all. No [I cannot discuss how I got out of the country]." 463

And even Jim Hougan of the NPR network, when he started investigating Frank Terpil and doing an interview with him, was warned in Great Britain that he and crew members could end up dead if they dug too deep:

"The man confirmed [that] Terpil's [pro-terrorist] Libyan operation was in the best long-term interest of the western powers. He also warned us that if we were recording the meeting we could end up, quote, "under a bush in Surrey." [But] there's a question that has bothered us: [Are we] being used as well? ... You see, we have had no impediments put in our way. ... Nobody stopped us. And nobody has made anything difficult for us. ...

"We came to Beirut to confront the man who put steel into the spine of Idi Amin, supplied to Gaddafi, Somoza, and the Shah of Iran. Terpil had been all these thing. But on whose behalf? After following his trail for 7 months, we were more and more convinced that the most dangerous [CIA "rogue" and terrorist supplier] in the world was but a medium-sized cog in the machinery in international intrigue and covert diplomacy - an indiscrete NCO [non-commissioned officer], [purposely] dismissed from the ranks by master tactitians whose games are too complex, too frighting, to understand." 464

1970s-1980s: Danny Casolaro's "Octopus": Wackenhut, CIA and Mossad angles

In 2024 ISGP wrote an in-depth article about the INSLAW Affair, the related death of Danny Casolaro, and some details on "The Octopus" that Casolaro was investigation apart from the specifics of the INSLAW case.

In brief, INSLAW created PROMIS, at the time revolutionary software to register and monitor criminal cases. It sold it to the U.S. Justice Department, ended up in a contract dispute, with the Justice Department eventually making illegal copies of the software. On top of that, it appears that with attorney general approval, the Justice Department shipped off the PROMIS software to CIA-tied entities that build backdoors into the software, with the idea of selling it to other countries.

Whatever exactly the details of this last accusation, it led freelance researcher Danny Casolaro to investigate Wackenhut's activities at and surrounding the Cabazon Indian reservation, where there was involvement in Contra support operations and a number of curious murders had taken place. It was a certain Michael Riconosciuto, deeply involved in the Wackenhut operation here, who initially made Bill Hamilton aware of this angle. The Wackenhut and Contra angle largely ran through Peter Videnieks, the old Justice Department contracting officer for PROMIS; and Dr. Earl Brian, who had coordinated with the Justice Department under his friend attorney general Ed Meese III in trying to take over INSLAW after controversy arose. 465

Besides a September 10, 1981 police observation at the Cabazon Indian reservation, which spotted Videnieks and Brian here with Contra elements 466; a second witness to the activities of Dr. Earl Brian was a CIA officer named Charles Hayes, who became an associate of Bill Hamilton. Hayes claimed to have seen "Earl Brian, [General] Richard Secord and [Colonel] Oliver North in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the mid-1980's ... purchasing weapons for the Contras in Nicaragua, [while] Brian was marketing INSLAW's PROMIS software to the Government of Brazil." 467

Whatever the truth, from there Casolaro started digging into what he described as "The Octopus", a network of largely "retired" CIA operatives involved in such things as drug and arms trafficking. A year into his investigation, under very suspicious circumstances, Casolaro ended up in a hotel room bathroom with his wrists slashed. Most of Casolaro's notes disappeared, but some of them surrounding "The Octopus" he was investigating survived. Hence we know that he was looking into controversial CIA names as Richard Helms, Ted Shackley, Thomas Clines, Edwin Wilson and E. Howard Hunt:

It could well be that mainly digging up specifics on the INSLAW case is what got Casolaro killed, after tying the affair, through Peter Videnieks, to Senator Robert Byrd and senior Justice Department officials. But there is no doubt he was investigating a network that involved CIA, Wackenhut, Consultants International, BCCI, Iran-Contra, the Nugan Hand Bank and other very dangerous elements. It's actually the same network that even "lefty" mainstream media outlets as the Washington Post and New York Times also have dug into over the decades on different occasions, but certainly never "all the way". There's a ton of overlap as well with "the Secret Team" that Daniel Sheehan and his "liberal CIA"-tied Christic Institute were looking into at the time, which also involved the Consultants International network.

One important angle to mention still is that INSLAW owner Bill Hamilton claimed he eventually figured out that back in February 1983 the Justice Department had sent legendary Israeli spymaster Rafi Eitan to his doorstep for a demonstration of the PROMIS software, and that the Justice Department secretly handed over a copy of the PROMIS software to Israel three months later. 468

That's important, because now with this case too we see an apparent coordination between very recognizable right-wing CIA and Mossad elements. INSLAW, before going private, had been financed by the "liberal CIA" Ford Foundation 469, with its founder, Bil Hamilton, having an NSA background and maintaining a ton of intelligence contacts. This may well explain why the makers of the excellent 2024 documentary 'American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders' in the end remained puzzled about Hamilton's shenanigans as much as Casolaro's death. 470

CIA-MOSSAD: LATIN AMERICA

1937-1979: Nicaragua's Somoza family

The Somozas were the official and de fact rulers of Nicaragua from 1937 to 1979, mostly as presidents:

Anastasio Somoza Garcia (1896-1956): 1937-1947, 1950-1957.
Luis Somoza Debayle (1922-1967): 1956-1963.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1925-1980): 1967-1972, 1974-1979.

The Somoza regimes were repressive, anti-communist, right-wing dictatorships. The last dictator, Anastasio Somoza, not only fought the Marxist Sandinistas, his family owned vast business empires and about 15% of all of Nicaragua's land, while, by the mid 1970s, about half the country lived in "hopeless poverty". 471 American "foreign aid" always was forthcoming, despite the fact that Somozas kept almost all of it for themselves and their closest friends. 472 Even when Nicaragua received $250 million in aid money from the international community for an earthquake that destroyed most of downtown Manuagua, Somoza didn't bother to rebuild. At most a number of shopping malls were build in the more upper class neighborhoods. 473 Under the guise of fighting communism, Anastasio kept giving land to the upper classes at the expense of poor farmers, who, especially in the provinces of Matagalpa and Zelaya systematically saw their land expropriated through torture, rape and murder. 474 Catholic lay leaders trying to protect the farmers were far from safe here either. Their chapels were turned into torture centers with the intent of turning any opposition leader into a "vegetable". 475 To be fair, the torture wasn't necessarily worse than under the Sandinista Marxist Daniel Ortega, who has ruled the country from 1985 to 1990 and again since 2007. 476

Due to the regimes' "pro-business" and "anti-communist" attitude, they were major favorites of the CIA and the U.S. government as a whole. in 1954 the Somozas aided the United Fruit-backed CIA coup coup in Guatemala, when the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz was replaced by the military dictatorship of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas 477, a first step in decades of death squad activity in Guatemala. In the 1960-1961 period the Somozas allowed a CIA base in their country to train and prepare anti-Castro Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. 478

The first Somoza to lead the country lived for some time with family in Philadelphia. The last two were educated in the United States, with Anastasio graduating from West Point n 1946. Subsequently, 75 percent of Anastasio's National Guard - which carried out the torture and murder, but was military largely inept - was trained by the U.S. Army, in no small part at the notorious Panama-based School of the Americas, where a very primitive form of McCarthyite communism was instilled into these troops, something that also was continually expouded by Somoza himself. 479 Between 1970 and 1977 the U.S. provided $13.2 million in aid for the National Guard to "suppress communism". 480 An additional $14 million USAID donation through the Institute of Peasant Development was considered ineffective at best and problematic as worst, considering the aid would go to institutions largely ran by informers of the Somoza regime and an included databank on peasants would likely only be used for more effective repression of the peasants. 481

Personal CIA ties to the Somoza regime also were abound. Manuel Artime, the leader of the right-wing anti-Castro Bay of Pigs militants on behalf of the CIA in the 1960s and 1970s, not only was present in Nicaragua as an advisor to Somoza, but also maintained business ventures with the dictator. 482 Watergate mastermind E. Howard Hunt personally dealt with Luis Somoza during his Bay of Pigs days in 1960-1961, when Hunt served as an assistant to CIA director Allen Dulles. In 1970, after retirement, Hunt couldn't wait to introduce the CIA-tied billionaire Howard Hughes to Somoza, an offer that he was not picked up on. 483 In 1978, the "secret team" network of by-then forcibly-retired CIA officers Ted Shackley and Thomas Clines offered to set up a counterinsurgency network against the Sandinistas for Somoza, with negotions still ongoing when the Somoza regime was overthrown in July 1979. 484

The Somozas also had long-standing ties to Israel. This started with Anastasio Somoza shipping arms to the Jews in Palestine in the 1940s when the Jews were fighting for their independence. 485 This continued with the Somozas backing Israel within the United Nations 486, often far from being the popular thing to do. The first Israeli arms were shipped between 1957 and 1961, although these shipments remained sporadic until the mid 1970s. 487

The Somozas' ties with Israel were maintained further, because the communist rebels and regimes Somoza and the CIA were fighting against - namely the Sandinistas and Castro's Cuba - sided with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). 488 It wasn't until the Carter government started putting obstacles in the way to foreign aid for the Somoza regime, such as demanding that martial law be lifted in September 1977 489, that Israel stepped up its game. As a result, "Israel became Somoza's chief supplier of arms at the end of 1977" 490, while Anastasio Somoza tried to survive a Sandinista uprising. Carter continued to cut back on economic and military aid in early 1979 491, resulting in the collapse of the Somoza regime in July 1979.

The dictator fled the country with hundreds of millions of dollars in personal property, as well as all the remaining gold in the treasury. In September 1980 Anastasio - the last of the Somozas - was assassinated in Paraguay by a team of Sandinista rebels.

School of the Americas: a school for military torture

The U.S.-ran School of the Americas was operated at Panama's Canal Zone from 1946 to 1984, and ceased to exist under that name in 2001. Financed by the State Department, the School of the Americas has played an important role in covert Latin American politicans, with large numbers of graduates later popping up as military dictators or otherwise becoming involved in death squad-, drug trafficking- and CIA coup-plotting activity. A few examples of controversial graduates:

Gen. Hugo Banzer: 492 President Bolivia 1971-1978, 1997-2001.
Gen. Efrain Rios Montt: 493 De facto president Guatemala 1982-1983.
Col. Enrique Bermudez: 494 Military attaché to the U.S. for anti-communist Nicaraguan dictator Antonio Somoza, under whom "4,693 members of his widely despised National Guard" went through the School of the Americas. 495 After Somoza's overthrow in 1979, Bermudez became the dominant Contra leader operating from Honduras against the communist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. According to human rights group Americas Watch, Bermudez's Contra group FDN "raped, murdered, tortured, kidnapped and mutilated unarmed civilians." 496 Himself accused of having tortured a man to death with an electric rod in front of his mother's eyes. 497 Bermudez and his associates were working with Danilo Blandon, the Contra operative and former Somoza official who sold many tons of cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s. 498 In 1987 Bermudez was visited by American Security Council members in Honduras. 499 In 1991, after his assassination, his wife was brought to the U.S. by the American Security Council, where they tried to prove the Sandinistas were behind the assassination. 500 In 2010 his death was later commemorated by the American Security Council. 501
Gen. Manuel Noriega: 502 Protege of fellow graduate Omar Torrijos in the 1960s and 1970s. De facto ruler of Panama 1983-1989 and key Medellin Cartel partner.
Gen. Ruben Dario Paredes: 503 Right-wing dictator of Panama in 1982-1983, eventually pushed aside by follow alumni Manuel Noriega. One of his sons became involved in Medellin Cartel drug trafficking. 504
Gen. Gustavo Alvarez: 505 Commander of the armed forces in Honduras in 1982-1984, where he gave shelter to the anti-communist Contras and operated the Battalion 3-16 death squad.
Roberto d'Aubuisson: 506 Attended the School of the Americas in 1976. Founder El Salvador's ARENA Party in 1981. In the 1980s he liaised with the CIA- and Pentagon-dominated American Security Council 507, as well as deputy CIA director Vernon Walters. 508 He visited Walters along with his aide, Francisco Guirola, a suspected cocaine trafficker who in 1985 was "arrested on a small Texas airstrip with $5.9 million in small bills." ($17 million in 2024 dollars) 509 D'Aubuisson's chief ally in setting up CIA-backed death squads, "blamed for many of the 50,000 civilian deaths in El Salvador" by 1985, Mario Sandoval Alarcon 510, also was embraced by the American Security Council, as well as other ultraright American think tanks. 511
Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri: 512 Autocratic president of Argentina 1981-1982.
Otto Perez Molina: 513 Head of Guatemala's army intelligence unit G-2. Head of the presidential staff of President Ramiro de Leon in 1994. Founder and candidate of Guatemala's Partido Patriota (PP) anno 2009.
Col. Byron Lima Estrada: A pupil at the School of the Americas, but not listed among the alumni. 514 Lima Estrada was part of Guatemala's G-2 death squad in the 1980s. Later he became a member of Guatemala's Cofradia who, along with his son, murdered Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi in 1998, two days after his commission released a human rights report about military and big business-backed death squads.
Gen. Raoul Cedras: 515 The last (de facto) military ruler of Haiti 1991-1994.

Eventually, in the 1990s, unearthed training manuals from the School of the Americas caused additional controversy:

"Training manuals used by the United States Army's special school for Latin American military and police officers in the 1980's recommended bribery, blackmail, threats and torture against insurgents... "[The CI agent could] cause the arrest of the employee's parents, imprison the employee or give him a beating..."

"The manuals [were] written in Spanish and carrying titles like ''Interrogation'' and ''Revolutionary War and Communist Ideology'' ... It has trained nearly 60,000 officers, including many dictators and military leaders accused of abusing human rights." 516

1979-: Contras: arms, death squads and cocaine

Similar to Nicaragua's dictator Anastasio Somoza in the 1977-1979 period, when U.S. congress blocked the U.S. government from providing the anti-communist Contra rebels with military aid via the 1982 and 1984 Boland Amendments, Israel solved part of the problem. Reagan's CIA director William Casey convinced Israel to supply "several million dollars in aid to the contras" while also using "private Israeli arms merchants" to sell "the contras light arms [that were] funneled through Honduras." 517 Also Panama dictator Manuel Noriega was persuaded by Casey to help finance some of the contra leaders, in this case Eden Pastora, who soon fell out of favor with the U.S. and more hardline Contra leaders. 518

As the previous chapter already makes clear, anti-communist death squad-inclined contra leaders as Colonel Enrique Bermudez 519 and Roberto d'Aubuisson 520 both were supported by right-wing American interests surrounding the American Security Council and other such groups. They also liased with the CIA. The same went for Mario Sandoval Alarcon, another controversial contra leader with a CIA history who was widely accused of running death squads, in his case alongside Roberto D'Aubuisson. 521 General Gustavo Alvarez, the commander of the armed forces in Honduras in 1982-1984, where he gave shelter to the anti-communist Contras and operated the Battalion 3-16 death squad 522, also has been named in the previous chapter.

As for Americans, the Contra affair featured well-known names as Colonel Oliver North, General John Singlaub, General Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, and Thomas Clines, 523 as well as, a bit more in the background, Edwin Wilson, Ted Shackley, Erich von Marbod, and Rafael Quintero. 524 Shackley, Clines and Wilson have been discussed earlier as the "rogue" CIA agents behind Consultants International, supplying arms and technology to Third World tyrants as Idi Amin. Known Reagan administration supporters of this Contra-supply network at that point were CIA director William Casey, vice president George H. W. Bush, and Frank Carlucci. Not much is known about an Israeli role here, apart from arms support.

The most controversial aspect of the Contra affair was the drug trafficking, in which sanctioned cocaine shipments into the United States paid for Contra supplies and arms. Evidence for it was all over the place. We literally just mentioned two examples in relation to the School of the Americas and the Contras:

During the Contra crisis, Roberto D'Aubuisson visited deputy CIA director Vernon Walters with his deputy, Francisco Guirola 525, who subsequently, in 1985, was "arrested on a small Texas airstrip with $5.9 million in small bills" ($17 million in 2024 dollars) and was widely suspected of being a drug trafficker. 526

It was the similarly notorious Contra leader and CIA asset, Colonel Enrique Bermudez, and his associates, who were working with Danilo Blandon, the Contra operative and former Somoza official who sold his cocaine to "Freeway" Rick Ross, causing the notorious 'Crack Cocaine Affair'. 527

Notorious cocaine transshipment points during the Contra affair were John Hull's ranch in Costa Rica, where the bodyguards were paid by the CIA and Colonel Oliver North and Contra leader Adolfo Calero made additional monthly payments 528; and Ilopango airport in El Salvador. 529

ISGP dealt with this a bit in its CIA drug trafficking article, but there are more aspects that need discussing here - eventually. At the moment, there is no time.

CIA-MOSSAD: PANAMA

1968-: Mossad agent Mike Harari builds ties with Torrijos before coup

Before discussing Panamian politics under Omar Torrijos (1968-1981) and and his henchman Manuel Noriega (1983-1989), it might be fruitful to discuss these men's preceding ties with Mossad officer Mike Harari. Or to be more precise, to give a point summary as to who this largely-still-mysterious Mossad officer actually was.

Mossad agent since 1954. 530

"Chief of the Mossad's operations section in 1967." 531 Head of the Mossad's special operations division, Caesarea, 1970-. 532 Reportedly it was Harari who within Caesarea set up the Kidon group, which specialized in assassinations. 533

Founding team leader of 'Operation Wrath of God' 534, the assassination of plotters and the three surviving gunmen of the Palestinian Black September group who carried out the 1972 Olympics massacre in Munich that killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. The group carried out assassinations from 1972 until too much bad press in early 1974, but continued in 1978 under Likud prime minister Menachem Begin. Hariri was able to escape Norway in 1973 after a botched assassination against what they had thought was Ali Hassan Salameh, a.k.a. the "Red Prince". 535 Harari's last assassination operation was a successful one against Ali Hassan Salameh in Beirut, Lebanon in January 1979. 536 While the car bomb took out Salameh and four bodyguards, the bomb also took the lives of four innocent people and injured 18 others.

Ironically, Kidon operatives were never able to get the three surviving gunmen.

Harari ran the investigation into the failed 1973 Norway assassination himself, prompting critisism towards prime minister Golda Meir and a number of resignations of more junior Mossad personnel. 537

Harari first traveled to Panama in 1968, apparently in relation to money laundering for covert operations: "Panama is a land of duty free, no taxes, and there is a presence of 180 international banks." 538

More fascinating still, at the time Harari "decided to relent to the constant hassling of a local collaborator to meet with a Panamanian major who was at the time in charge of airport security, one Omar Torrijos." 539 Torrijos was a huge fan of Israel. A few weeks or months later, Torrijos became the strongman of Panama, which he ruled from October 11, 1968 to July 31, 1981.

In 1976 Harari played a key role in the preparation for Operation Entebbe in Idi Amin's Uganda 540, whose only Israeli casualty became Benjamin Natanyahu's brother, Yonathan.

Prime minister Menachem Begin tried to convince him otherwise 541, but in 1979 Harari retired from the Mossad. After briefly trying out the insurance business in 1979-1980 to boost a pension of roughly $4,000 per month in 2023 dollars, Harari decided to get back into action. After contacting an "old friend", Nachum Admoni, the deputy director of the Mossad at the time (who at the time was talking with Sharon to Eli Hobeika, soon of the Sabra and Shatila Massacre), Harari was given the post of Mossad representative for Central America. 542

Officially stationed at the Israeli embassy of Mexico City, Harari was tasked in particular with monitoring the PLO ties of the communist Sandinistas and Castro's Cuba. In this capacity Harari increasingly became a "close confidant" of rising strongman Manuel Noriega of Panama 543, an old acquaintance of his and someone known to have been transferring arms to these communist elements.

Alternately, briefly before his death, Harari himself explained that Israeli Prime minister Mechachem Begin from the start wanted him to maintain ties with Panama's rulers - whom he had known for a good decade - due this country's "critical importance" for Israel's "state security". 544

Coinciding with his apparent formal duties at the embassy of Mexico City, Harari was able to set up a number of business ventures in Panama "in the field of irrigation." 545

According to Harari himself, before the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, known as Operation Just Cause, U.S. officials on behalf of President George H. W. Bush contacted Israeli Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir, "to recruit Harari as a mediator between Panama City and Washington." The deal for Noriega was that if he stepped down voluntarily, he could leave with his money for another country. While it is unknown if he explained it in more detail, according to Harari the deal collapsed due to "infighting in the Panama regime." 546

In December 1989 Harari apparently was caught by surprise with regard to Operation Just Cause. He was arrested and his ties to Manuel Noriega entered the international media, however briefly. In the ensuing controversy, "Israeli officials ... disavowed any connection with his activities in Panama." 547 These officials claimed Harari was an independent businessman who since long has "retired" from the Mossad and "is absolutely not connected in any way to the government." 548 However, even a very pro-government Yedioth Ahronot (YnetNews.com) explained that "Harari ... led the Mossad bureau in South America, where he had controversial ties with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, whom some claim Harari had advised until he was deposed by the US." 549

When a senior US Embassy official in Panama City first said that the US had seized Harari on December 27, new Panamanian government spokesman Louis A. Martinez announced: "Everyone is really delighted here. It's big news. Second to Noriega, he was the most important person in Panama. He had tremendous influence on Noriega." 550 More specifically, it was reported that Hariri "helped train Noriega’s bodyguards and his elite Special Anti-Terror Unit", in addition to "maintaining lucrative business interests". 551

Panama's new police commander at the time, Eduardo Herrara Hassan, explained: "I was [Panama's] ambassador to Israel [under Noriega] but he was my boss. Everything I did had to be authorized by Harari." When Herrara refused to take orders from Harari, he was removed as ambassador. 552

Noriega wasn't the only Israeli seemingly having a whole lot of influence on Noriega. As the New York Times reported at the time: "On Tuesday, Panamanian officials said that another Israeli citizen close to General Noriega, identified as Eliezer Ben Gaitan, left the Papal Nunciature here, where he had taken refuge with the general and about 30 other loyalists, and surrendered to American troops. Mr. Ben Gaitan was said to be a civilian supervisor of the Noriega security detail." 553 Absolutely nothing else has ever been reported about this "Eliezer Ben Gaitan".

1968-: Torrijos' subordinate, Col. Manuel Noriega, trained in Israel

Noriega's Israel ties need to be discussed first too:

Similar to Mobutu and Idi Amin 554, Noriega received paratrooper training in Israel. In countless pictures of the dictator throughout the 1980s, all the way until his arrest in 1989, it is possible to see him wearing the Israeli paratrooper logo, either embedded in his uniform or as a golden emblem pinned to his chest.

Noriega with Mossad agent Mike Harari during a visit to Israel in the 1980s. 555

Noriega owned a seaside villa in Herzliya, Israel and at one point sent his children to the prestigious Alberto Einstein day school, located within Panama City's Jewish community. 556

The Mossad helped Noriega under the 1984 candidacy of Arnulfo Arias by releasing the book 'Holocaust in Panama', in which it was incorrectly claimed that Arias had ordered the massacre of Jews in 1941, when he was Panama's ambasador to Mussolini's fascist Italy. 557

The book didn't have the intended effect. Arias still was winning the elections. This forced Noriega to halt the count and rig the results in his favor.

For details on Noriega's ties with Mossad officer Mike Harari, see the previous section.

1968-1981: Omar Torrijos: anti-U.S., Mossad-tied strongman of Panama; mentor of Noriega

Now that we have a basic concept of the pre-existing ties between the Mossad's Mike Harari with Omar Torrijos and his right-hand man Manuel Noriega, we can discuss Panamanian affairs under these two rulers in more detail, including ties to the CIA.

From 1968 to 1981, Panama was ruled by Omar Torrijos, an autocratic, middle-of-the-road strongman 558, whose style - for a dictator - was considered "relatively benign". Opponents of the regime were generally exiled rather than assassinated, with "no charges of systematic torture". In line with that, Torrijos opposed the more right-wing, U.S.-backed military dictatorships that littered Latin America 559, while at the same time opposing communism. 560 He garnered the support of labor unions and the mestizo-dominated lower and middle classes - especially out on the countryside 561 - by implementing land and social reforms. He limited the political power of traditional, national, white economic elites, but at the same time allowed foreign corporations to invest in Panama. 562 He also pushed for autonomy from the U.S. over the Panama Canal. 563 In 1978 he even started to make beginnings with transforming Panama back into a democracy. 564

All this does not mean Torrijos was perfect:

Ambassador Jack Vaughn recalled how he met Torrijos "on some 50 occasions ... not once finding him sober." 565

Torrijos came to favor Jews over Christian elites, with Panama City's shopping district eventually counting "about 80 to 90 percent" Jews - who, looking at the looting here after 1989's Operation Just Cause - were not liked either by the masses. 566

Torrijos silenced the press (which arguably is always at the whim of corrupt corporate and political forces anyway).

A later Truth Commission in Panama that investigated 110 political murders and disappearances still did conclude that "the majority of victims were killed or disappeared between 1970-80 for opposing Torrijos' regime." His henchman, Colonel Manuel Noriega, in 1971 was personally involved in tossing Father Jesus Gallego Herrera - a protest organizer who angered landlords and the military - out of a chopper. 567

In February 1971, as part of Nixon's war on drugs, Joaquin Him Gonzales, the chief of air traffic control at Panama's Tocumen International Airport, is kidnapped and flown to the United States for trial over drug trafficking charges. He receives 5 years for it. The Nixon administration is blaming Torrijos of sanctioning drug trafficking. 568

In July 1971, the son of a Panamian ambassador to Taiwan and the "chauffeur-bodyguard" of Torrijos' brother, Moises, were caught at JFK airport trying to smuggle in 154 pounds / 70 kg of heroin. 569 It appears that in a subsequent DEA investigation in Panama that began in June 1972 that Noriega's name also came up for the first time in relation to drug trafficking. 570 These investigations never went anywhere over the next decade-and-a-half.

Despite not being a communist, by the late 1970s the CIA and soon also the Reagan administration considered Torrijos a "dangerous leftist" 571 for providing the Marxist Sandanistas, alongside Fidel Castro in Cuba and the Soviet Union, with "military, diplomatic and financial support" in their fight against the right-wing, CIA- and Israel-backed Somoza regime. 572

With regard to this last point, the Torrijos-Marxist clique actually succeeded in July 1979 when the Sandanistas were able to get Anastasio Somoza to flee his country, along with a few billion dollars from the Treasury; with the Sandinistas assassinating him in Argentina in September 1980. This success story was tied in with the Carter Administration cutting off military and economic aid to Somoza in February 1979. 573 Yassar Arafat was another supporter of the Sandinistas over Somoza. 574

1968-1986, Panama: Noriega

More right-wing elements in the United States, which rather prominently got into power in January 1981 with the Reagan administration, clearly did not agree with the Sandinista aid of the Torrijos government. Luckily for them, the problem went away when Torrijos plane fell from the sky in July 1981. This paved the way for his personal "gangster" 575 Manuel Noriega to seize (full) power in Panama, which he would rule from 1983 to 1989 in a semi-covert manner, under a variety of puppet presidents. On the surface of things, the CIA now had a long-standing paid employee as defacto head of Panama:

According to U.S. prosecutors in 1991, Noriega was paid at least "$322,000 over a 31-year period" by the U.S. government, starting in 1955 and ending in 1986. 576 The U.S. Army - often indicated to have involved the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) 577, which was founded in 1961 - made the initial payments since 1955, reaching a peak of $25,000 in 1985. 578

In 1955, when he started his relationship with the Pentagon and likely, indirectly, the CIA, Noriega was a member of Panama's Socialist Party's youth wing participating in street protests - ostensibly as a spy. He started his military training in 1958, becoming a protege of Torrijos in 1962. Both men received training at the notorious U.S.-backed School of the Americas in 1965, with Noriega receiving another course here in 1967 579, all of it related to intelligence, counterintelligence and psychological warfare. When Torrijos was able to become the ruler of Panama in 1968, Noriega acted as the "strongman under the strongman", preventing at least two coup attempts against his boss. From 1970 to 1983 Noriega served as Panama's chief of military intelligence 580, becoming Panama's military commander in August 1983.

The CIA started paying Noriega in 1971 581, amounting to $160,058 until 1986. 582 This was 16 years after Noriega's U.S. Army association, 6 years after his initial School of the Americas training, and immediately after having become Panama's chief of military intelligence.

Noriega's attorney claimed the CIA in addition provided him with off-the-books "contingency funds" that eventually amounted to $11 million. 583 As we shall see, and as was speculated at the time, these funds could just as well from arms and drug profits. 584

On the other hand, looking at the official payments, one can wonder why Noriega would accept an average of $10,700 a year for his services... This amounts to $39,000 a year in 2023 dollars. Still insultingly low, especially, as we shall see, to a man like Noriega. A 1990 Washington Post article co-written by an American associate of Mossad operative Mike Harari - a "close confidant" of Noriega 585 - and top CIA people, Neil Livinstone 586, claimed that Noriega received "$200,000 a year for his services, according to U.S. intelligence sources." 587 To outsiders it remains speculation though how much Noriega received from U.S. government agencies.

According to Noriega's defense, he provided the CIA with reports on Torrijos' meetings with Fidel Castro and interactions with other communist countries. 588

Noriega claimed he retrieved U.S. service members captured by Cuba in the Bay of Pigs. 589

On behalf of the CIA, Noriega provided Argentina with Exocet anti-ship missiles to be used against Great Britain in the 1982 Falklands War. 590 At the time Argentina was ruled by military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri, a Contra-supporting, ultraright death squad veteran who thought he could gain popularity by taking over the Falkland Islands. He miscalculated, but did have the covert support of the Reagan administration. The CIA "was concerned that Argentina's forces ... would be crushed" 591 and as a result bolster left-wing forces in the country. The Exocet missiles turned out to be the only effective weapon Argentina had against the British and helped lead to the negotiation of a truce.

While almost all aspects of his Contra connections were blacked out by the U.S. government, including information over 1983-1986 meetings with CIA director William Casey, Colonel Oliver North and vice president George H. W. Bush 592, Noriega certainly "funneled hundreds of thousands of CIA dollars to leaders of the "contra" rebellion in Nicaragua" in the 1980s. 593 Much of this went to Contra leader Eden Pastora 594, who eventually fell out with the U.S. government for not wanting to merge his unit with Contra units that contained many former Somoza supporters. 595

In the 1980s Noriega also offered the Reagan administration and CIA to "conduct sabotage raids inside Nicaragua ... to oust the Sandinista government." 596 In September 1986, at a meeting with Colonel Oliver North in London, he offered to "assassinate the entire Sandinista leadership." North declined the offer, but did provide Noriega with "a list of targets inside Nicaragua he said he could blow up for North and the U.S. government." 597

Intelligence with regard to a shift in power in the Soviet Union passed on by Noriega to the CIA in January 1985, coming from East German social democrat politician Hans Juergen Wischnewski, reportedly led to "U.S. support for then little-known Gorbachev and his people." 598

The above list makes Noriega sound as a person acceptable to spend time and money on by the Pentagon and the CIA. Also maybe to the Mossad, which had its own lengthy relationship with Torrijos and Noriega going back to at least 1968, weeks or months before Torrijos' 1968 coup 599 until their primary agent fleeing the home of Noriega's wife six hours before America's Operation Just Cause on December 20, 1989. 600 Over time, a lot of negatives developed though especially for the United States. Examples of this include:

As mentioned earlier, suspicions surrounding Torrijos and Noriega of involvement in drug trafficking - at that point heroin - into the United States emerged as early as 1971. 601

In the mid 1970s, the National Security Agency (NSA) was looking to have Noriega prosecuted for illegally purchasing and then transferring "highly sensitive agency materials to Havana." 602

In the same period Noriega began to set up front companies, sometimes for just one transaction, to supply "restricted American technology to Cuba and Eastern European countries." 603

Noriega made deals with the Soviet Union to build trucks and marine ships through private Panamanian companies. 604

"State Department, White House, Pentagon and intelligence sources" claimed that Noriega had been supplying arms to the nationalist and socialist M-19 rebels in Colombia. 605

Under Torrijos, Noriega was the one overseeing arms shipments to the Sandinistas in the 1977-1979 period, and support to the leftist rebels fighting the ultraright U.S. government in El Salvador from 1980. 606 Through companies as Caza y Pesca and G-2 intelligence associates as Carlos Wittgreen - who also was a DEA liaison 607 - Noriega also often carried out these operations at a personal profit. This got the attention of U.S. law enforcement, who wanted to bring Noriega to trial in 1980, only to be stopped by the State Department. 608 It also angered a number of associates, most notably Panamanian Sandinista rebel Hugo Spadafora. 609

Noriega's drug trafficking turned into a full-fledged (opportunistic) partnership with Pablo Escober's Medellin Cartel by early 1982 that lasted until at least December 1984. Certainly through Noriega associates as Floyd Carlton Caceres ties continued into 1985 and 1986.

As a result of all these issues coming to light over the years, Noriega was considered opportunistic and a "Machiavellian character", who "managed to play left against right" 610 Eventually he had American politicians claiming that "he used us more than we ever got from him" 611 and prosecutors that he managed "to trick the DEA [and] the CIA." 612

The question, of course, is: did Noriega really "fool" the United States? Or the Israeli Mossad for that matter? Or was there more going on than met the eye?

1982-1983: Noriega II: Partnership with the Medellin Cartel, alongside communists Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega

We really need to focus on the last-mentioned element in the previous chapter, namely Noriega's partnership with Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel, starting in 1982. It's too much of a shocking and important claim to leave undocumented.

Initially, the author thought that providing proof of the Noriega - Medellin Cartel partnership in the form of all kinds of witnesses would be overkill, but then, looking at Wikipedia's entries on the Medellin Cartel and Pablo Escobar anno 2023, shockingly, there's only one tiny paragraph on the Medellin Cartel page under the heading 'Relations with Panamanian Government'. This section is six sentences long and contains not a single source. The Pablo Escobar page doesn't contain any information on the Medellin Cartel leadership fleeing to Panama in 1984, or its relations with Noriega. Skimming through both pages, there even are incorrect sentences to be found, all making it feel as if these pages have been stuck in time since 2008. It is quite shocking, especially after the popular 2015-2017 series 'Narcos' that detailed the life of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel.

In any case, below 13 witnesses (including an indirect one, as he was killed beforehand) from Noriega's 1991 trial can be found, including a summary of their testimony. These witnesses very specifically described the ties between the Medellin Cartel and Noriega. Except maybe for a few details that would need an (even) deeper analysis, in general the accounts all match and primarily describe the 1982-1984 period.

Gabriel Taboada: Colombian drug trafficker and car dealer who admitted to bribing 47 foreign diplomats into importing luxerous cars into Colombia, which then were handed over to leading members of the Medellin and Cali cartels, still registered with license plates that gave diplomatic immunity. Luxury cars could not be directly imported into Colombia at the time. 613

Taboada also testified he was present in May or early June 1983 when the Medellin Cartel offered six French prostitutes to Noriega as part of a $500,000 payment for protecting cartel shipments. These prostitutes were also reported by fellow witnesses Striedinger and Del Cid. 614

Roberto Striedinger: Drug pilot who testified that in late May or early June 1983 he was present at a meeting in Medellin where Noriega met Pablo Escobar and other Medellin Cartel leaders at the office of Jorge Ochoa. He also saw fellow witness Gabriel Taboada at this meeting 615, commenting that Noriega was not thrilled using his ambassadors to import cars into Colombia for the Medellin cartel. 616

Before reaching the office, he noticed a group of "16, 17 years old [girls] sitting in the living room," whom he later that day flew "to the coast", before returning to the meeting with Noriega and the Medellin Cartel. 617

Floyd Carlton Caceres: Panamanian "co-pilot and guide" of Striedinger in flying Colombian cocaine of the Medellin Cartel into Panama. This went via small airstrips, but Carlton apparently also was tied to "black flights" into Panama City's Tocumen International Airport 618, despite the fact that most planes who landed here seem to have been tied to the parallel trafficking operation of Ricardo Bilonick and his INAIR, as well as possibly other flights.

Carlton confirmed the testimony of Colonel Luis Del Cid, Noriege's aide, that he would hand over pay-offs from the Medellin Cartel to Noriega between September 1982 and December 1983, starting with $100,000 and ending with $200,000, all for allowing planes to fly into Panama City's Tocumen International Airport. 619

Carlton testified he and fellow-pilot Cedar Rodriguez set up a charter airline company - soon known as Aviones de Panama - in the 1970s and basically were "bush pilots". In 1977 they were recruited by Noriega - whom Carlton had been friendly with since 1966 - to fly arms to the Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua 620 and "leftist guerrillas in El Salvador" - who were fighting an ultraright, CIA-backed military regime. In case of Salvador, Carlton himself explained to have made 17 arms flights into the country, for each trip being paid $35,000 (about $150,000 in 2023 dollars). 621

These arms flights continued until Rodriguez's plane crashed in El Salvador in mid June 1980. Noriega ordered Carlton to save Rodriguez, who sat in his plane with broken legs, and blow up the airplane. Due to arriving El Salvadoran choppers and extra fuel on the plane, Carlton was only able to save Rodriguez. 622 As a result, the operation was exposed, causing a huge embarrassment for Torrijos, because at that very same moment he was involved in peace negotiations between the rebels, the El Salvadoran government and Carter administration national secutity council staffers as Robert Pastor. 623

Carlton also became one of Noriega's private pilots. 624

In September 1982 Carlton, through a "well-dressed Colombian named Francisco Chavez Hill" 625, was invited to Medellin and asked by Pablo Escobar and associates to fly cocaine into and through Panama. When Carlton brought the proposal to Noriega, the latter became upset that Carlton had not contacted him beforehand and-or asked for more details 626 - quite possibly because quietly Noriega already allowed a parallel operation with the Medellin Cartel through Ramon Millian Rodriguez.

Despite his initial annoyance, two weeks later Noriega started negotiations with the Medellin Cartel and settled on $100,000 for three flights into Panama. These varied between 880 and 1,100 pounds of cocaine, with Carlton apparently being paid $160,000. After Noriega started to become aware how much money the cocaine was worth in the U.S., he began to raise his asking price, which annoyed Escobar, going, "Here we go again." 627 Another reason given for Noriega upping the price to $200,000 and shutting the cocaine flights down after January 1984 - at least from Carlton - was that vice president George H. W. Bush had indicated to him that concerns were mounting in the U.S. of Panamanian drug trafficking and money laundering. 628 According to Carlton, there also was an issue that the Medellin Cartel was testing Noriega's resolve by trying to sneak through an extra unsanctioned flight. Noriega found out, had the shipment confiscated and the personnel on the ground "severely tortured." 629

Carlton had run into fellow arms trafficker Ricardo Bilonick - another future witness - at Noriega's offices, and suspected parallel operations were going on that he knew nothing about. This turned out to be correct. A year later, in May 1984, right after the Medellin Cartel had moved to Panama, Bilonick called him and said Escobar wanted to see him. At that point the Medellin Cartel was located in an office in central Panama City with "dozens of secretaries, aides and a contingent of bodyguards." Escobar explained they had paid Noriega $5 million protection money. Carlton's assignment was to fly a suitcase of money into Nicaragua where the cartel was setting up a cocaine lab and to buy a C-130 transport plane in the United States. 630

A pilot of Escobar told Carlton that another cocaine lab was being constructed in Panama, in the Darien Province, right next to Colombia. In May 1984, Noriega exposed this lab to the DEA and had the whole operation rolled up. At leasttemporarily. More on this aspect later.

Despite being a friend of a soon-dead Hugo Spadafora, who tried to convince Carlton to get out of the business and help build his case against Noriega 631, in 1985 Carlton continued more independently in the drug business. In May of that year he ran into trouble when one of his pilots, Teofilo "Philip" Watson, was murdered, the cocaine transported to the ranch of Contra-tied CIA agent John Hull. 632 When even Pablo Escobar's vote of confidence couldn't keep him out of trouble, Noriega's army had to protect him. 633

After the DEA refused to talk to anyone Carlton send to them in the latter half of 1985, he arranged a personal meeting with DEA agents in January 1986. They rebuffed him the second he mentioned he was willing to testify against Noriega. 634

Eventually Carlton was arrested in Costa Rica in January 1987, which is when he made his first confessions along these lines to DEA agents.

Col. Luis Del Cid: A "trusted aide" of Noriega. Explained he was running errands for Noriega, being sent to welcome VIPs coming to meet his boss and passing envelopes with "drug money" to Noriega. One of the persons Noriega sent him to was drug pilot Floyd Carlton Caceres, from whom he received such an envelope with drug money that he passed on to Noriega. He did so in November 1983 and February 1984. 635

Del Cid testified that Luis Quiel, chief antidrug official of the Panamanian Defense Forces, was a deep insider to the drug trafficking. Confirmed that Noriega met Fidel Castro in Havana in mid 1984, but was not part of the actual meeting and thus could not confirm it involved a dispute. He was aware that Luis Quiel, also present at the Havana meeting, had a video with him of the seized cocaine lab. 636 Jose Blandon, Noriega's trusted political aide, actually showed photographs to the Kerry Committee in 1988 of both him and Del Cid meeting with Fidel Castro at that point. 637

Del Cid also stated / confirmed that the Panamanian ambassador to France, a certain "Gaspar Whitgreen" (Carlos Wittgreen, the DIA liaison and Noriega's henchman in shipping high tech material to Cuba), brought French prostitutes - he said four - with him to Noriega's office in Panama in late 1983. 638

Anel Perez: The chief air traffic controller at Panama City's Tocumen International Airport in the early 1980s. He testified that in this period roughly two flights a day came in without flight plans or contact with the tower, regularly causing dangerous situations. He was forced to explain to his personnel that complaints were of no use, because the military's General Staff ordered him to allow the flights. The "black" flights were often met by military intelligence officers. In one case in 1983, Perez saw acetone and ether - components used to make cocaine - loaded onto a dozen Colombia-registered "black" DC-6 planes at the airport. Each Thursday or Friday a Learjet, thought to be owned by Noriega, would land at the airport from Miami. The planes were met by armed security which unloaded wooden crates in a manner of seconds and disappear though an emergency gate. 639

Perez also testified that he observed through binoculars Noriega meeting at the airport with Medellin Cartel boss Jorge Ochoa three times within a three month period in 1983. 640

Cesar Rodriguez (murdered in March 1986, but features in many testimonies): The business partner and co-pilot of Floyd Carlton Caceres, who since 1977-1978 flew arms for Noriega to leftist guerillas in Nicaragua and El Salvador and later Medellin Cartel drugs into Panama. Rodriguez also was tied to "black flights" into Panama City's Tocumen International Airport. 641

Rodriguez leased three floors of Panama's Bank of Boston building, owned an exclusive restaurant here, the Tower Club; as well as a private club only for politicians and members of the Panamanian Defense Forces. 642

Rodriguez is the one who introduced American weed smuggler Steven Kalish to Noriega in 1983. He ended up partying a lot with Kalish and Noriega, but also felt forced into allowing Noriega to bed his girlfriend for a weekend. 643

Eventually, by October 1985, a rift developed between Noriega and Rodriguez, in particular after Noriega became politically vulnerable after Rodriguez, "someone known in Panama as a drug trafficker", had bought a $1.2 million mansion almost right next to one of Noriega's mansions. Jose Blandon overheard Noriega saying to Major Luis Del Cid that, if Rodriquez "continued to flaunt his wealth ... that he would end up just as Spadafora did. He would be beheaded." 644

Alongside a son of General Ruben Darío Paredes, the military dictator of Panama between Torrijos and Noriega in 1982-1983 who was a right-wing veteran of Somoza's military 645 and the School of the Americas 646, Rodriguez was kidnapped in Medellin on March 13 and murdered somewhere within the next 12 days. With the protection of Noriega, the men had chartered a yacht named Krill, loaded it with 1,000 M-16 rifles and shipped it to Colombia. For the return voyage the yacht was loaded with over 300kg / 650 pounds of cocaine, stashed in secret compartments. Unfortunately for Rodriguez and Ruben Paredes (who had the same name as his father), the yacht was confiscated by the Colombian coast guard on its return trip. It is not exactly clear what happened, but it appears somebody wasn't happy with Noriega failing to protect his associates. People involved pointed fingers to Noriega, but the details are unclear. 647

Even more mysterious is that a key witness in the case died in a car crash while completely sober and surrounded by police officers a few days after the prosecution decided he was too unreliable a witness to put on the stand and had massively abused the federal protection program. 648

Steven Kalish: U.S. marijuana trafficker who was making so many millions that his Cayman Islands banks informed him they had reached their limit in what they could stash for him. Soon he was put in touch with Cesar Rodriguez, and through him, Enrique "Kiki" Pretelt.

Rodriguez and Pretelt introduced Kalish to Noriega, with Rodriguez explaining "Noriega ... is the boss. [His army men] run the country, they control everything." After Noriega's approval, Rodriguez opened two bank accounts for him at Banaico and BCCI to stash an estimated total of $100 million. Noriega and Rodriguez had accounts here as well. Soon Kalish also held a 25% stake in Servicios Turisticos, S.A., the other partners being Noriega, Rodriguez and Pretelt. Servicios Turisticos was in the business of selling airplanes and helicopters to the Panamanian military at considerable markups. 649

Kalish was arrested on July 26, 1984 at Tampa Bay Airport in Florida.

Enrique "Kiki" Pretelt: Jewelry store and nightclub owner who was involved in the drug business with Noriega and Cesar Rodriguez. He was part of Noriega's entourage when he visited the U.S. from November 14 to November 17, 1983, which included a four-hour lunch with CIA Director William Casey. Pretelt was only part of the unofficial evening gatherings. Cesar Rodriguez flew in as well with a Learjet owned by Steven Kalish. Both were only known to the Americans as "Noriega's friends and business associates." 650

Juan Cabrera: Testified that he trafficked 9,000 tons a year through the Bahamas into the United States before he was arrested.

He also explained that he was present at the early May 1984 meeting between Noriega and Medellin Cartel leaders, including Pablo Escobar, at the remote Panamanian island of Contadora, when Noriega allowed them refuge in Panama. This was done after the cartel killed Colombian justice minister Rodrigo Lara on April 30. According to Taboada, Noriega greeted the group with, "Welcome, muchachos. Everything is safe now. There is nothing to worry about." and seemed particularly good friends with cartel boss Gustavo Gaviria. 651

This meeting was also talked about by Noriega advisor Jose I. Blandon and also fits the narrative of and exact timeframe of the son of Pablo Escobar, who at that point was 7-years-old. 652

Ricardo Bilonick: Charge d'affaires of the Panamanian embassy in the United States anno 1977.

Testified that he was a middleman between Noriega and the Medellin Cartel and that, through his INAIR avation firm, he organized 19 flights totaling 20 tons of cocaine into the United States between 1982 and June 14, 1984, the last one being seized at Miami International Airport. According to Bilonick, Noriega received a total of $500,000 per flight from the Medellin Cartel.653

According to Bilonick, in late May 1984 Pablo Escobar told him that Noriega had introduced him to Nicaragua's Sandinista leader, Daniel Ortega, and that they cut a deal to ship Medellin Cartel cocaine through Nicaragua to the United States. As a result, Escobar asked Bilonick to start organizing flights from Nicaragua. 654 These shipments too ended on June 14, 1984, whem an INAIR flight landing at Miami International Airport was seized with 2,000 pounds of cocaine. 655

Top Medellin Cartel member Carlos Lehder testified how indeed Bilonick's INAIR airplanes and hangars had been used to ship cocaine, that it were Bilonick's "black" planes that landed at Panama City's Tocumen airport with a special radiofrequency for ID, and that it were G-2 army intelligence agents under Noriega who were protecting the shipments. 656

Of course, as discussed, fellow Noriega drug trafficker Floyd Carlton had seen Bilonick at Noriega's headquarters in 1983, making him suspicious that parallel drug trafficking operations were going on besides his own. In May 1984 Carlton was called by Bilonick, who sent him to the new Medellin Cartel heaquarters in Panama City. 657

Questions actually appeared why Bilonick had come to the U.S. to testify. Soon it was reported that Bilonick - reportedly as part of a "silver or lead"-deal 658 - had received a $1.25 million bribe from the head of the Cali Cartel, whose brother, Luis "Lucho" Santacruz Echeverri, had been serving a 23-year sentence in the United States since 1987. 659 Bilonick denied, but coincidentally, it was found out that prosecuters had recommended "sentence-reduction credit" for the brother "for helping bring Bilonick in from the cold." 660 Eventually the brother saw his "sentence ... reduced by nine years, from 23 to 14." Prosecutors only admitted in the summer of 1995, three years after Noriega had been sentenced, that they had become aware that bribe money had been paid 661, but what remains a particularly strange story is the one of a Cali Cartel lawyer promising the Miami attorney general's office: "If the government reduce[s] the sentence of a jailed cartel boss, the cartel [will] help change Bilonick's mind." 662 Eventually the court ruled that indeed a deal had taken place with the prosecutors, but also that the prosecution team "was within its rights to keep the deal secret," and that there was no reason to assume Bilonick's testimony had been false. As a result, Noriega was not granted a retrial. 663

Despite having imported rougly 20 tons of cocaine into the United States, Bilonick only received 3 years prison. Apart from the deal he made to testify, Bilonick received "letters of reference from former president Jimmy Carter ... and former undersecretary of state William D. Rogers." 664 Whatever it exactly was what they wrote in their letters, it might be interesting to note here that Jimmy Carter was a product of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission. And William D. Rogers, in 1967, was president of the Center for Inter American Relations (CIAR) under chairman David Rockefeller. By 1972 Rogers and Henry Kissinger were "fellow members" of the neocon-dominated Hudson Institute. From there, from 1974 to 1976, Rogers served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, under secretary of state Henry Kissinger. In 1982 he was a founding director of Kissinger Associates, where he stayed until his death in 2004, eventually as vice chair.

Carlos Lehder: Top Bahama and eventually just Norman's Cay-based cocaine shipper for the Medellin Cartel, whose wealth reached into the billions. This situation collapsed over 1982-1983. After a stint in Colombia with Escobar, Lehder became the first cartel member to be arrested, in 1987. He was extradited to the U.S. that same year, and testified against Noriega in 1991 in return for bringing and keeping his family safe in the U.S.

Lehder testified that originally the Medellin Cartel had been wary of Noriega because his "G-2 intelligence officers had been torturing cartel smugglers." Despite being "nauseous" over Noriega's behavior, when the Medellin Cartel's trafficking route through the Bahamas was shut down in late February 1982, the cartel bosses realized they had to either "bribe him or fight him." 665 In March Cartel bosses Gustavo Gaviria, Pablo Correa and Alonso Cardenas visited Noriega in Panama. Noriega struck a deal with them to ship cocaine into Panama. Noriega received $1,000 for every kilogram of cocaine shipped through Panama, plus a percentage of drug proceeds laundered through Panamanian banks. 666

According to Lehder, Noriega visited Escobar's Colombian estate Hacienda Napoles in 1983 "to iron out differences". He didn't see Noriega personally, but upon asking why so many choppers and security people were around, he was told "El Tigre" is here: the nickname for Noriega. 667 This involved the May or early June 1983 meeting where Gabriel Taboada and Roberto Striedinger also were present. While Lehder was not present he later saw the $500,000 payment to Noriega in the Cartel's ledger book. He also was informed that Noriega had handed over "the pictures of all the DEA agents assigned to Panama and their names and addresses." 668

Lehder also fingered communist Cuba as a country that allowed Medellin Cartel cocaine shipments towards the United States. His initial contact from 1979 with the Cuban government ran through curious fugitive financier Robert Vesco 669, a secret 670 close ally of Fidel Castro for a long time 671 who bought Norman's Cay cocaine island with Lehder 672 and also came to work in Cuba as a "business consultant" to Castro alongside "rogue" CIA officer Frank Terpil. 673 Vesco and Terpil were unacknowledged residents of Cuba until Castro had them arrested in 1995. 674

In 1982 Lehder negotiated directly with Raul Castro on allowing drug flights on Cuban soil. 675 Lehder also dealt with another close Fidel Castro confidante on this issue: Manuel Pineiro Losada (a.k.a. "Barba Roja", a.k.a. "Red Beard"). 676 Interestingly, key Noriega advisor Jose Blandon was photographed with Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Piniero and "Red Beard" in June 1984, discussing a solution on the rift between the Medellin Cartel and Noriega. 677

Over the years, Fidel and Raul Castro allowed other drug traffickers to operate from Cuba as well 678, something which the DEA found evidence of over the years. 679 Cuban navy and air force colonels were all fully involved in aiding drug traffickers. 680 In 1989, when the pressure rose, Castro even put up a show trial in which 14 bureaucrats and military officers were sentenced for smuggling 7 tons of Medellin Cartel cocaine into the United States. Four of them were sentenced to death 681 and executed in about a week, with Castro pleading the United States "for a dialogue leading to cooperation in the war against drugs.". 682

Amjad Awan: Noriega's banker at the 1001 Club-tied Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) between 1982 and 1988. Awan testified to regularly picking up suitcases with hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash in them and stashing them at Noriega's secret account at the BCCI in London. In early 1988, days after Noriega was indicted for drug trade, Noriega and Awan had $19.3 million moved from Noriega's London's BCCI account to an account in Luxumbourg in order to make it harder for authorities to seize it. 683

Awan's testimony was of limited value, because he could deny knowing the source of the cash. The BCCI's notoriety speaks for itself though.

Awan did acknowledge to have met Mike Harari, knew him "as a friend of General Noriega" and confirmed that it was "commonly said" at the time that Hariri was "the Mossad chief in the region." 684

Jose I. Blandon: United Nations-employed agrarian expert who in 1969 "proudly joined the revolutionary government" of Omar Torrijos and until 1976 oversaw land reforms for peasants. From 1976 to 1986 he rose to the top position in Panama's "power company" 685, which in May 1985 led to "some 450 professors and staff at Panama's state university [holding] a three-day strike ... protesting the appointment of Jose Blandon as the state power corporation director, on corruption charges." 686 In 1986-1988 he served as consul general of Panama in New York City.

When in June 1987 the Noriega regime came under increased pressure due to widely-spread criticism of former henchman Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera 687 , in September Blandon was asked by Noriega to draft a plan to come up with a solution to the problems, such as negotiating with the Americans on a deal to step down in return for immunity. In coordination with assistant secretary of state Elliott Abrams and assistant secretary of defense Richard Armitage 688, Blandon's January 1988 Washington-dictated plan "called for [Noriega] to retire by spring and for free elections to be held in 1989." 689 Due to all the controversy by that time, Noriega found it impossible, or almost impossible, to receive guarantees of immunity from prosecution. On top of that, Noriega was still trying to hold on to power. Consequently, Noriega fired Blandon, who two weeks later travelled back to Washington and testified to Republican senator Al D'Amato, the co-chairman of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, that Panama has turned into a "total criminal empire." 690

In addition to the afore-mentioned positions, Blandon explained during his February 9, 1988 Kerry Committee testimony that he was a founding member and one of the "principal leaders" of Panama's Revolutionary Democratic Party (PRD). He considered himself to be Torrijos' most important political advisor from 1977 until his death in 1981. Even more important, in relation to the beginnings of the Sandinista revolution in 1977, Torrijos created a "specialized political intelligence office under [his] direction," remaining its chief until being appointed consul general in 1986. In this capacity Blandon became a political advisor to military intelligence chief Manuel Noriega. 691 Blandon had known Noriega superficially since 1971, when Noriega was a major in the province of Chiriqui, an important province for agrarian reform measures at the time. 692 However, at this point, in 1977-1978, he started meeting with Noriega about three times week, which increased to daily personal and telephone contact after Torrijos' death. 693

The political positions Jose Blandon held help explain the amount of inner circle knowledge he deposited in front of the Kerry Committee.

Similar to what Floyd Carlton explained, Blandon testified that arms shipments to Sandinistas started in 1977-1978 and to El Salvador's FMNL rebels in 1980, with the U.S. respectively supporting the murderous right-wing dictatorships of Somoza and the junta that ruled El Salvador.

Blandon had visualized the various groups operating in Panama to the Kerry Committee. Group 1 were the operations of drug trafficking pilots Enrique Pretelt, Floyd Carlton, Cesar Rodriguez, Richard Bilonick, each eventually running their own teams of pilots. 694 These men were tied in with the Medellin Cartel from 1982 on on behalf of Noriega. 695 Blandon also mentioned others in relation to this network, such as Carlos Wittgreen, "who together with Pretelt is in charge of clandestine operations and who works behind the front of a company called Ceda Dinaves..." 696 Wittgreen was particularly important to Cuba in acquiring high technology goods that were not allowed to be shipped directly to it. 697 Floyd Carlton gave the same name and details. 698

Blandon testified that when Cezar Rodriguez crashed his plane loaded with arms for FMLN rebels in El Salvador in June 1980 and had to be rescued by Carlton, that Torrijos gave Blandon the task of figuring out what had happened. Rodriguez, from his hospital bed, fingered Noriega as the one who authorized the shipments. Considering Torrijos was negotiating a peace between El Salvador and the rebels, together with Carter administration officials Robert Pastor and William Boulder, this scandal came at a particularly inopportune moment. While Torrijos started a criminal investigation against the men - whether or not he intended to push through with it - Blandon had to keep an eye on Noriega by accompanying him to every international meeting he went to. 699

After Torrijos' plane crash in July 1981, Panama, according to Blandon, quickly transformed into a full-blown criminal enterprise focused on drug- and arms trafficking and money laundering. Blandon stated he didn't know how wealthy Noriega had become, but went along with estimates ranging between $200 million and $1 billion, also pointing to all of Noriega's houses, cars, stocks and other possessions. 700

As for group 2, Blandon explained that this involved the military group that worked with the civilian drug pilots. They involved, among others, "Luis Del Cid... [Colonel] Luis Cordoba, who was in charge of the assassination of Hugo Spatafora [and Panama's drug czar] Luis Quiel." 701 He discussed Mossad chieftain and key Noriega ally Mike Harari in the same breath, explaining that Harari "trains and directs [Noriega's] own personal guards and negotiates with Noriega in weapons trafficking operations." 702

According to Blandon, on May 6, 1984, the same day (rigged) elections were going on in Panama, the Medellin Cartel had a meeting in Panama to ask for shelter in the wake of having assassinated Colombian justice minister Rodrigo Lara on May 1. This was granted by Noriega at a multi-million dollar price. As Juan Cabrera also testified, within days Pablo Escobar and other members of the cartel flew into Panama, where Noriega greeted them at a remote location. By May 22, according to Pablo Escobar's son, the cartel moved into one of Noriega's houses, also noting: "My father didn't trust the general, so we couldn't stay there indefinitely." 703 According to Blandon, the cartel members were protected by Noriega's forces "for a time ranging between 30 days or 7 months. ... There were some different versions." According to Blandon, Noriega never gave him an exact number of what the cartel paid him for his protection, only that it sat "between $4 and $7 million." 704

With much showboating to the DEA, who over the years fully went along with the ruse 705, Noriega shut down the Medellin Cartel's cocaine processing plant in Darien - close to the border with Colombia - on May 29, 1984. Looking at the timing and the observation from Noriega's usual co-conspirators that Noriega was being "cryptic" about his motives while distancing himself from the plant 706, it appears both Noriega and the DEA felt the heat of the Medellin Cartel's assassination of the Colombian justice minister, not to mention the cartel successfully having fled to Panama. They needed a "win" and the Darien bust was the only choice.

Noriega pinned the blame on his executive secretary, Colonel Julian Melo Borbua, who had personally accepted the bribe of the Medellin Cartel on this issue and coordinated the building of the plant. Ironically, Colonel Melo escaped prosecution in the 1984, but was arrested and locked up for drug trafficking as late as May 2001 707

Blandon was among those who explained the Darien seizure to the Kerry Committee. More unique to his testimony was an explanation that it actually was the Mossad, through Noriega's "business" partner Mike Harari, that found out about a subsequent assassination plot of the Medellin Cartel and Colonel Julian Melo Borbua against Noriega. The assassination was supposed to happen somewhere around June 20-25 1984, while Noriega was enroute to Israel, where he stayed for five days. 708

At the time, Medellin Cartel representative Luis Guillermo Angel actually contacted Noriega associate Stephen Kalish, and indirectly Floyd Carlton and Cezar Rodriguez, explaining:

"We paid $5 million to protect the operations and we're a little upset. We paid the money to Colonel Melo. He was our contact with Noriega. We talked to Melo. He says Noriega double-crossed him and ordered the busts to impress the DEA." 709

After the assassination plot had been unearthed by the Harari network, Angel explained that Colonel Melo indeed was trying "to involve the cartel in a plot to kill Noriega", but also that at the cartel wanted "no part of Melo's plotting against Noriega." They just wanted to see compensation. 710 Granted, the cartel could have easily pushed Melo into taking the radical action that he made.

Immediately after this discussion, Angel was arrested by Noriega's G2 military intelligence force. However, he was released in about a day with $2 million in initial compensation of the total of $5 million. Based on the statement that, "Noriega had already released the 23 prisoners more than three weeks before," 711 and that these prisoners had been deported to Colombia within a few days of the May 29, 1984 Darien cocaine plant seizure, we have to conclude that the dispute was solved somewhere between June 22 and June 30, 1984. This fits perfectly with the narrative provided by Blandon.

As soon as the assassination plot of the Medellin Cartel with Colonel Julian Melo Borbua was unearthed, Noriega sent Blandon to Fidel Castro in Cuba to discuss a solution, even more so because the Medellin Cartel at that point was operating in Noriega's own Panama and conspiring with hidden enemies. Blandon presented pictures to the Kerry Committee of June 21-22, 1984 for this meeting, involving him, Luis Del Cid and persons as Enrique Pretelt and drug czar Luis Quiel. Noriega arrived in Cuba from Israel on June 27-28, meeting Raul Castro instead. The solution became to pay back the cartel, hand back everything that had been confiscated, and fire Colonel Julian Melo Borbua - the latter which happened on June 30. As Noriega and Blandon flew back to Panama, Castro provided them with an armed guard that ended up not being necessary. The situation was quickly sorted out at that point 712, as also the narrative of Kalish and associates shows. 713

Also true is the claim of Blandon 714 that the DEA desperately kept labeling the Darien plant as an example of cooperation from Noriega in anti-drug trafficking efforts, despite the fact that no one was prosecuted and everything handed back to the Medellin Cartel, including the protection money. 715

To summarize the testimonies of these witnesses:

Mid 1979 - May 5, 1983: The period that Ramon Milian Rodriguez laundered Medellin Cartel drug money through Panama. Despite his testimony being supported by Floyd Carlton, who had heard "military intelligence" talk about his ties to Noriega and money laundering 716 and Jose Blandon, who said Noriega met with him and that Cesar Rodriguez saw him as a competitor 717, this testimony has been skipped in this chapter, because Milian operated quite distinctly from the rest of the witnesses and his operations were tied too closely to the CIA.

Mid 1982: First direct cooperation between Pablo Escobar's Medellin Cartel and Noriega, initiated after the cartel contacted Noriega ally Floyd Carlton.

1983: Noriega visits Pablo Escobar's Colombian estate Hacienda Napoles "to iron out differences", largely over Noriega wanting to be paid more. Noriega is handed $500,000, with half a dozen French prostitutes also being part of the deal. Gabriel Taboada is present because the cartel wants Noriega to use his diplomats to import expensive cars into Colombia. At this point Noriega is uncomfortable with that proposal.

May 6, 1984: In the wake of the April 30 murder of Colombian justice minister Rodrigo Lara, the Medellin Cartel agrees to pay $5 million to Noriega to be given temporary sanctuary in Panama. Initially cartel members are flown to the distant island of Contadora, where Noriega and Major Luis Del Cid greet them.

May 22, 1984: The Medellin Cartel moves into one of the houses of Noriega, where they begin operations.

Late May 1984: Richard Bilonick is told by Pablo Escobar that Noriega introduced him to Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and that he can now also begin cocaine shipments into the United States through Nicaragua. Bilonick's INAIR flights are protected at Panamanian airports by Noriega's G2 intelligence officers.

May 29, 1984: Seemingly pressured by international authorities over the cartel's murder of Colomian justice minister Rodrigo Lara, and now shielding the cartel, Noriega has the Medellin Cartel's cocaine plant in the remote Darien district confiscated, with the DEA observing the operation.

June 14, 1984: A shipment of Bilonick's INAIR are confiscated at Miami International Airport.

June 22-30, 1984: The Medellin Cartel threatens to have Noriega assassinated over the Darien cocaine plant confiscation, a plot Mike Harari and the Mossad are able to unearth. After negotiations involving Fidel and Raul Castro, everything is given back to the Medellin Cartel.

Meanwhuile, Pablo Escobar, Fabio and Jorge Ochoa and other cartel members that operated from Panama in May and June are moving to Nicaragua. 718

June 25, 1984: Long-time Medellin Cartel pilot-turned-DEA-informant Barry Seal - with claims about he was CIA from the 1960s - succesfully executes a sting operation by covertly photographing Pablo Escobar and fellow Medellin Cartel chief Gonzalo Rodriguez-Gacha helping to load up one of his cocaine shipments at Nicaragua's Los Brasiles Air Force Base. 719

The cartel bosses aren't given any attention in the media. After subsequent Reagan Administration leaks, all the focus is on another man photographed, named Frederico Vaughn, enthousiastically described by the Reagan administration as "the 'right-hand man' of Nicaraguan Minister of Interior Tomas Borge." 720]

However, at a later stage, an aide of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime called the phone number of Vaughn in its possession and learned that the house "belonged to a U.S. Embassy employee" and had been "continuously rented" by the United States since 1981." 721 Not only could the subcommittee not find anything additional on Vaughn (he's disappeared into history), and that "North's diary ... had several references to "Freddy Vaughn" including a July 6 entry that said, "Freddy coming in late July." 722 These issues led to suspicions that Vaughn, in reality, had been an agent of the U.S. government.

Bizarrely, Freddy Vaughn's apparent appearance in the Oliver North diary has gone almost completely unmentioned in the mainstream media. Only a 1988 Associated Press article mentioned the above, without referencing that North apparently wrote in his diary for July 9: "Went and talked to Vaughn, who wanted to go to Bolivia to pick up paste, wanted aircraft to pick up 1,500 kilos." This was mentioned in a 1996 Baltimore Sun article written by two "liberal CIA" assets involved in Pacifica Radio, with former DEA agent Mike Levine, also backed by Liberal CIA' outlets, commenting, "If you gave me a page from someone in the government with notes like that, I would have been on his back investigating everything he did..." 723 Unfortunatly, North's biography made it to the public.

All this did not change the fact that Barry Seal's plane was loaded with fuel and cocaine immediately outside Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, with the Medellin Cartel present on the ground. That certainly indicates the Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega made a deal with the cartel.

Once again, it should be emphasized that the informtion of the Medellin Cartel working with Noriega, Cuba and Nicaragua is quite obscure. More obscure still is the Medellin Cartel moving to Panama in early May 1984 and then into Nicaragua by June. Little bits and pieces from 1989 charges against the cartel 724 or the personal recollections of Pablo Escobar's son, Juan, do fully confirm this though. Juan, for example, also noted how his only sister, Manuela, was born on May 25, 1984 in Panama, immediately after moving into one of Noriega's houses. 725 That is a solid fact. 726, 1984 in Panama. She is the youngest child of Pablo and Maria Escobar. Where is she today?"] So, in that sense, there really is no doubt about the ties between Noriega and the Medellin Cartel.

Of course, Noriega has been convicted of drug trafficking with the Medellin Cartel, but most of the details have been forgotten and, as said in the beginning of this chapter, anno 2023 little to nothing is to be found about that in the Wikipedia histories of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel. The fact that it was all part of the confusing "CIA-Contra" and "Iran-Contra" saga has further obfuscated the facts. The incredibly important story of Ramon Milian Rodriguez has been all but forgotten today, and has never been properly told to begin with.

1971-1987 - Noriega III: DEA and CIA covered up Medellin Cartel and other drug ties

Speaking of "CIA-Contra" controversy, the above individuals were not the only witnesses and "star players" in the Noriega case. In fact, there was criticism at the time that the U.S. prosecutor's office, under the direction of the Bush administration, refused to include any witness who "smacks of intelligence." 727

Only "token debriefings" were done with these witneses in Panamanian cells with declarions subsequently going unused. The scrapped names included Noriega mentor and Mossad agent Mike Harari, who U.S. authorities deported back to Israel; and Major Felipe Camargo, a "ranking member of Noriega's intelligence force" who knew about his boss' Medellin Cartel and Raul Castro ties. He was looking to testify against Noriega, but he was never put on the list of witnesses for the Noriega trial. 728

Thinking of it, almost none of the described military intelligence personnel operating under Noriega, some of them discussed in this chapter, seem to have made it to his trial. This author also has not read any testimonies of the lower rung G-2 personnel loading, unloading and protecting various Noriega-sanctioned drug shipments arriving at Panama City's Tocumen International Airport. 729 Or those G-2 intellgence agents accused of torturing rival cartel members on behalf of Noriega. 730 It certainly does appear that a lot more witnesses could have been brought forward, and certainly discussed publicly.

There were plenty of other odd things surrounding the Noriega trial. The investigative report on the Torrijos airplane crash went missing after the U.S. invasion of Panama. Noriega's lawyer explained that they wanted to hand over a number of crucial documents, but the judge wouldn't allow them to be used. 731 Then there was the issue of "the loss of Noriega's bank records while in the possession of a DEA agent in transit from Miami to Washington." 732 A little digging immediately reveals an obvious suspicion, namely that among the missing documents were Noriega-tied account numbers and details of "the Panamanian office of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International [BCCI]." 733 Other documents that went missing included "detailed flight logs" of above-discussed Noriega-tied drug pilots Floyd Carlton and Cesar Rodriguez. These documents actually went missing after a Panama lawyer handed a "sealed box of records" to Panamanian DEA agents. After the files arrived in Florida, the lawyer noticed they were missing. He took a polygraph test on the issue, which he passed. 734 Two years later, in 1990, another lawyer, one of the representatives of drug trafficker Daniel Miranda, claimed that he too, based on an index file he found in Panama, that "potentially thousands of pages" either never were handed over by the Panama-based U.S. Army's 470th Military Intelligence Brigade, or otherwise not handed over by the prosecutors to the defense. 735

Even in the decade-plus before the trial, the DEA behaved extremely suspicious. They always heaped praise on Noriega, including 1985-1990 DEA head Jack Lawn, who saluted Noriega's "personal commitment to anti-drug efforts." Conservative elitist attorney general Ed Meese III gave similar compliments as late as May 1987. 736

Francis J. McNeil, "one of the State Department's most widely respected Latin America experts" and the deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence until February 1987, later testified to the obvious by saying that "Reagan administration officials ignored allegations about Noriega's drug ties because they wanted his help with the contras,", describing it as a "see-no-evil approach." 737 He received so much opposition from the right-wing assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs Elliott Abrams for his views and alleged leaking to the press that he essentially was pushed out of government. Looking how subsequently future Soros-ally Morton Abromowitz praised McNeil's "integrity" at his retirement ceremony, we can see a battle between the "doves" and "hawks" at the State Department in this period 738, which we could alternately describe as "liberal CIA" versus "conservative-globalist elites".

To dive into a little bit more detail, the DEA head from 1985 to 1990 that we just mentioned, Jack Lawn, at one point stated:

"In each case where we asked for an individual [tied to the drug trade] who was located in Panama to be sent to the United States ... General Noriega responded. There was not one instance when we asked for assistance that it wasn't rendered." 739

This is a very significant statement, because the DEA knew that Noriega himself was into drug trafficking. The evidence for that went all the way back to 1971. One would also expect Lawn to know that "between 1970 and 1987, Noriega's name appeared in 80 different DEA files." 740 The DEA filed all kinds of excuses, from saying that "hard evidence" was lacking to "a pact with the devil is better than no pact at all." 741 Why this statement is so significant is because it indicates that the DEA knew who NOT to ask for: Noriega himself, members of the Medellin Cartel, and the group of pilots and army commanders surrounding Noriega that themselves were deeply involved in the drug business. Men such as Floyd Carlton, Cesar Rodriguez and Richard Bilonick.

In that sense, look, for example at the experiece Floyd Carlton had with the local DEA. We discussed Carlton earlier as a close associate of both Pablo Escobar, the head of the Medellin Cartel; and Noriega, and one of the key individuals that set up and operated a partnership between these two men. As discussed earlier, in May 1985 Carlton ran into hot water due to a stolen shipment of cocaine that was transported in partnership with a Colombian trafficking group. Even though Escobar and Noriega were vouching for him and protecting him, it appears Carlton still got cold feet and started looking for a way out. As Carlton explained to the Kerry Committee, he started contacting DEA agents in this period. Things did not go as he hoped:

"In January 1986 [the DEA] picked me up at the Holiday Inn Hotel off Panama City, and we left for a short ride in their car. ...

"I asked, "Have you not heard my name?" And they said, "Yes, we have." And so I said, "On different occasions I have sent people to speak to you so that you interview me. But you have always told them that you have nothing to talk to me about." And the fact is that I believe that I can go before the American judicial system and speak of a lot of things that are happening in this country, and I can even prove them. So, they asked, "Such as what?" So, I said, "Money laundering, drugs weapons, corruption, assassinations." When I mentioned the name of General Noriega, they immediately became upset. And I noticed that, and of course I became nervous at that point. They did not try to contact me again. ...

"Actually, they tried to contact me on the phone, but when I returned their call I was not able to contact them. And to be very honest I was scared, because I thought that because of the connections that General Noriega has with the American Embassy in Panama, that I might be or my family might be hurt. [This] is why I destroyed the evidence that I had. ... Yes [tapes]..." 742

Key Noriega-Medellin Cartel insiders getting so spooked by the cold shoulder of DEA agents that they destroy their evidence? That's a serious issue. And makes clear what we have also learned through different avenues: that Noriega was protected.

As already mentioned earlier, the DEA was fully forced to admit that they, and individuals as attorney general Ed Meese III, had been lying each time they commended Noriega for his "cooperation" in the drug war. On February 6, 1992 James Bramble, the top DEA agent in Panama at the time Noriega confiscated the Darien cocaine plant on May 29, 1984, once again testified how well Noriega had cooperated in the drug war. 743 He did so at Noriega's trial, after the deposed dictator's lawyers had brought him in. Bramble was the DEA agent brought in by Noriega's drug czar, Luis Quiel to observe the confiscation of the Darien plant. Quiel, of course, has repeatedly been described as a major drug trafficking insider at the Kerry Committee and Noriega trial, during which it was also repeatedly stated that the Medellin Cartel was fully compensated for the raid by Noriega within a month. Bramble hid that though. It wasn't until his cross-examination on February 10 that his earlier testimony fell apart:

"Bramble undermined much of [his earlier] testimony by saying he received no cooperation from Noriega when it came to the Medellin Cartel of Colombian cocaine dealers.

"Noriega failed to expel the only two cartel drug traffickers the DEA identified, refused to allow wiretaps on their phones and failed to report most of their arrivals and departures with drug money, Bramble said.

Noriega's drug police also failed to tell about trafficking activities at Panama's second-largest airport, Bramble said." 744

In other words, the DEA and attorney generals had been lying all these years about Noriega's cooperation with the drug war.

The CIA also had a similar "see-no-evil" policy in place. In 1984 CIA informants literally "told the Central Intelligence Agency that Manuel Antonio Noriega was not involved in [the Darien] bribery scheme." 745 Similar to Noriega, they just pinned the scandal on Noriega's executive secretary, Colonel Julian Melo Borbua. One assumes that the benefit here was that both the CIA top and their paid agent, Noriega, kept plausible deniability in case of any future scandals.

Alternately, we could go with the official explanation of the prosecutors in the Noriega case, namely that Noriega managed "to trick the DEA [and] the CIA" 746 with regard to his decade-plus of arms and drug trafficking.

RAMON MILIAN RODRIGUEZ

1979-1983: Medellin and Cali Cartel money launderer

In the Noriega chapters we mentioned a certain drug trafficker named Ramon Milian Rodriguez, who was active from mid 1979 to May 4, 1983 in laundering Medellin and Cali Cartel drug money between Colombia, Panama's Noriega, and the United States. As discussed earlier, the testimony of Milian was supported by Noriega-employed drug trafficker Floyd Carlton, who had heard "military intelligence" talk about Milian's ties to Noriega and money laundering 747 and Jose Blandon, who said Noriega met with Milian and that Cesar Rodriguez saw him a competitor. 748 Specifically Blandon stated:

"Milian Rodriguez is a Cuban national living in Miami. ... He initially worked through Henry Ford and then worked directly with the banks selected for him by Noriega. He is a man that Noriega knows very, very well. On seversal occasions, Noriega mentioned his name. ... I saw him at a meeting, at a house where Noriega was present, but I did not have a chance to meet him. ...

"Most of the money laundering funds were in the hands of Milian Rodriguez, and you would be surprised if you heard the amounts that are to be mentioned... [Noriega henchman] Cesar Rodriguez [said to me] that Milian Rodriguez was a problem for Noriega. ... It was part of the internal struggle [of] trying to obtain control over all of the dealings in Panama." 749

So Milian was there laundering drug money with Noriega, but at the same time Noriega wanted to get rid of him. And he did, by reporting his activities to U.S. authorities. 750 This is the reason that Milian was arrested on May 4, 1983 while trying to leave the United States with $4.3 million stashed in his Lear Jet. Stranger still, Milian was unusually talkative. Despite being repeatedly told, "he was not under arrest, and was free to go," he voluntarily spilled all the beans and implicated all his mid and high level cocaine cartel contacts. He specifically asked:

"That no charges be files against him.

"That no disclosure be made of his cooperation.

"That the "4.3 million dollars" which he had in the aircraft be returned to him [because] he could "not cover the loss if the 4.3 million was seized because he was "not that liquid" and he would jeopardize the financial security of his "family unit." ... If the offer was not accepted, he stated that it would be impossible for him to continue his life as it was. ... He said that it was "amazing what would happen to the human body at 120 mph." He said that he "would never feel it."" 751

The last few sectences, when put together, seem to explain why Milian, who was about 35-years-old at the time, cooperated so heavily and instantly with the authorities. He was in fear of his life, because he couldn't cover the loss of the withheld $4.3 million, and panicked. Despite boasting about his IQ of "over one hundred and fifty" and being "the most sophisticated person with whom [the detectives] had ever dealt", he also didn't seem to understand how bureaucracies work. Prosecutors and Customs likely confiscated the money just to put pressure on him. And it worked. He gave prosecutors just about everything that they needed, who may not even have cared about his proposed "deal" with "the government" to inplicate two federal judges who "could be bought". 752

The names Milian mentioned in his 1983 report were very interesting. That aspect of his testimony, also later to the U.S. Senate under John Kerry seems credible. John Kerry certainly thought so as well. 753 Miami prosecutors later, strangely, were complaining that Milian "said he was money-laundering for major drug traffickers [in 1983] but he never said the cartel." As we shall see, he mentioned a boatload of cartel members; just didn't use the word "cartel". In addition, John Kerry replied he had "very little respect for that particular [prosecutor's] office," with "other congressional officials [having] criticized Kellner's office in the past for what they said was his failure to pursue separate allegations of illegal gun-running to the contras." 754

Readers can download the 1983 report by clicking here.

As for the alleged, allied drug traffickers Milian mentioned in his 1983 testimony, let's see how many we can independently identify:

Gustavo Gaviria: Spelled in the document as "Gustavo Gavaria". This was Pablo Escobar Gaviria's cousin and right-hand man within the Medellin Cartel, in charge of finances and trafficking routes. He was murdered in August 1990, before Pablo was killed as well.

Pablo Correa: Pablo Correa Arroyave was one of Pablo Escobar's original business partners in what became the Medellin Cartel. In 1984, after a feud, Escobar had Correa murdered. Despite the murder, his sons and brother, Jairo 755, remained leading figures in the cartel. 756 Correa also was a brother-in-law of Jorge Ochoa of the same Medellin Cartel.

Luis Carlos Molina (Yepes): "Milian said that one of his biggest customers was Luis Carlos Molina. ... Milian stated that an agent for Luis Carlos Molina, a person Milian identified as Jario Casteneda comes to Banco Consolidado and picks up those boxes which are destined for Molina. The currency for Gilberto Rodriguez is taken to the Interamericas Bank [instead] ... Molina's company in Panama [is] Confirmesa."

Primary banker of the Medellin Cartel in the 1981-1989 period, whose finances ran through the Firme S.A., Comfirmesa company and Banco Ganadero. 757 From 1981 Carlos Alberto Gaviria Velez, the first cousin of Pablo Escobar and the brother of future senator (2014-2022) Jose Obdulio Gaviria (who moved from the left to the right), sat on the board of Firme S.A. with Molina. 758 In 1983 Alvaro Uribe Velez, the founder of the hard-right "Uribism" ideology and the future president of Colombia (2002-2010), sat on the board of Comfirmesa with Molina. 759 Molina was convicted to 25 years prison for the the December 1986 murder of El Espectador journalist Guillermo Cano, but only spent six years in prison. 760

Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela: Key founder of the Cali Cartel. Referred to by Milian as a drug trafficker named "Gilberto Rodriguez", one of three persons for whom he was carrying his confiscated $4.3 million. Identifiable, because Milian also explains that the "currency destined for Gilberto Rodriguez is taken to the Interamericas Bank, a bank which according to Milian, is owned by Gilberto Rodriguez." Cali Cartel founder Gilberto Rodriguez did indeed own the Interamericas Bank. 761
Salvador Otero Ospina: One of the "Colombian narcotics traffickers [who was] associated with Wackenhut Colombia." In addition, Milian explained that he "started Consolidad Courier as another business... negotiating with Wackenhut to "go big" with Consolidated Courier."

A brief check reveals that Otero Ospina actually was "president of ... Wackenhut de Colombia SA" 762, as well as financial director of Banco del Pacifico, and a shareholder in the oil refinery Refinare. On top of that, he was a "Knight of Magistral Grace [in the] Knights of Malta [and] one of the founders of the Order more than half a century ago, along with former [1969-1974] president Misael Pastrana Borrero." 763
Joel Hirschhorn: "Millian['s] friend and attorney, Mr. Joel Hirshorn." This is a reference to Medellin Cartel lawyer Joel Hirschhorn. 764

Jose Ford: Milian mentions a certain "Henry Ford" as his "partner in [money laundering in] Panama", and that "Jose Ford was the son of Henry Ford", who would arrange Brinks armored cars after Milian landing in Panama to transport the money to different client's banks. Obviously this name is very confusing, as Henry Ford was a major American industrialist, something that also didn't go unnoticed during Milian's later Senate hearing. It took a bit of time to find, but Henry Ford was president of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama (CCIAP) in 1968-1969, who had a son named Jose Ford, who took that position for 2013-2014. 765 According to Milian, Henry Ford first introduced him to Noriega.

Banco Consolidado in Panama: This bank was named as one those through which the Medellin Cartel and Milian would launder drug funds. It's an obscure bank these days, but was considered controversial and operated by a "fugitive banker". 766

1972-1977: Ramon Milian Rodriguez: CIA, Manuel Artime, and Operation 40 ties

It gets more intriguing still when he mentions in the same 1983 interrogation that he used to work for Manuel Artime, a key CIA asset who died in November 1977:

"[Milian] said that [his money laundering career] began when he worked for "Artime" [and] that Manuel Artime was a leader of the "Bay of Pigs" [and that] many of these people ... turned to narcotics smuggling after the Bay of Pigs invasion failure. Milian said that he transported this money for "Artime" and others to Nicaragua [where Artime had a CIA base]. He said that he moved some of the money which was destined for the families of the Watergate burglars to Nicaragua for Artime." 767

Is there proof of this connection? That doesn't appear to be the case, but it does seem likely. Milian was born in Cuba around 1950 in a wealthy banker's family. When Castro took over in January 1959, among the first banks he confiscated was the Milian family's bank, while the population looted the family's stores. 768 17 days later the family arrived in Miami, having to sell family jewelry to survive. Eventually they again became a well-to-do family. 769

Milian was educated by the Jesuits from age 3 in Cuba, at the Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Havana; which eventually continued at the private, Jesuit-ran University of Santa Clara. 770 First Milian finished a Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, at which time he had already been approached by Manuel Artime, whom Milian described as a "family friend" 771 and had similarly been educated by the Jesuits. 772 Milian had become a militant anti-communist not only due to the Castro take-over of his family's assets in 1959, but also because his older brother, Osvaldo Diaz Milian, was wounded and killed on the beach during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. 773 Milian explained he left Cuba at the age of 10 in January 1959, and was 12 years old when his brother died in April 1961, making it clear he was born in 1949, or just around there.

In 1972, into his senior of his apparent MBA education at the University of Santa Clara, at the age of 23, Milian more formally was recruited into the CIA through Artime, who spoke to the university president, got him released from the army, like "magic", with Milian claiming that he "basically" spend his "senior year in Fort Gulick in Panama, being trained at the School of the Americas." 774 It is in Panama that he received his first "spy identity", with the pseudonym "Lt. Alejandro Mela Guiterrez of the Panamanian army" 775, as you had to be a non-U.S. military officer to attend the School. According to Milian it was then Lt. Col. Manuel Noriega, the chief of military intelligence from August 1970, who introduced him at the School of the Americas. It is recommended to take this episode of the School of the Americas and meeting Noriega this early with a grain oif salt, as it is rather abstract, latter-day information of Milian.

In late 1973 Milian set up his first bank, apparently in Panama. After receiving his MBA seemingly just before this, Milian received additional, unofficial training in money laundering by the Artime organization, until he made this his formal practice in 1975. The money-laundering initiations of Milian occurred right in the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal, which broke over the second half of 1972. This does fit with Milian already in 1983 claiming that he "moved some of the money which was destined for the families of the Watergate burglars to Nicaragua for Artime." 776

Milian specifically testified to the U.S. Senate in 1988 that his first money laundering project involved supplying cash to relatives of Cubans caught up in the Watergate affair of 1972. 777 Technically, speaking of Cubans, this can only have been Watergate burglers Eugenio Martinez, who only in 2016 was exposed as a paid CIA agent at the time of the break-in 778; and Virgilio Gonzalez, another member of the anti-Castro Cuban exile community in Miami. Coincidentally, Manuel Artime set up the Miami Watergate Defense Relief Fund, which (overtly) collected a meager $21,000. Artime also was the godfather of the son of Watergate organizer E. Howard Hunt, a major veteran of CIA covert operations who stated after Artime's funeral, "I just buried my best friend." 779

Another Watergate burglar was long-time CIA "hired operative" 780 Frank Sturgis, who back in the late 1950s gave paramilitary training and arms to Fidel Castro, Raul Castro and Che Guavara, as they were overthrowing Cuba's dictatorial Batista regime. As he put it himself, "[As] a spy ... I smuggled arms and men into Cuba for Castro and [later] against Castro." 781 Considering Castro, who hid his more extreme communist views, also was sought out in the mountains and the jungles by outlets as the New York Times as early as 2.5 years before his communist coup 782, he definitely was part of a CIA-sponsored coup, and further proof that truly grassroots coups don't exist. When Castro too was considered too communist, all of a sudden people with money, and the CIA, tried to get rid of him again, but it was too late.

Frank Sturgis, with some hesitation, added that he had been involved in assassinations as well 783, with a closely-allied businessman explaining that Sturgis had been a formal "CIA employee from 1959", from after the Castro take-over; "to 1968", and that "the CIA asked him to participate in asssassination plots in Cuba and elsewhere." 784 The "elsewhere" is quite significant, because that is where Operation 40 comes in. In fact, this appears to be a reference to Operation 40. As Frank Sturgis described it:

"Operation 40 was a top secret government operation consisting of American and Cuban intelligence officers who worked for the CIA. This assassination section, which I was part of, would - upon orders naturally - assassinate either members of the military in a foreign country or members of political parties of a foreign country we were going to infiltrate, and, if necessary, some of your own members." 785

Sturgis admitted to the existence of Operation 40 on at least one other occasion, in the mainstream media. 786 Interestingly, Operation 40 has never been mentioned by the Washington Post, and only twice by the New York Times, in 1961 and 1975. In 1961, right after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, it was leaked that Operation 40 members, after the successful overthrow of Castro, had "planned to seize the Government and establish a dictatorship, possibly under Capt. Manuel Artime." 787 So there he is again: Manuel Artime. The information in the New York Times was accurate. As far as we can tell, the operation was founded in the months after Castro's revolution, to overthrow Fidel Castro's regime and essentially replace it with a new military dictator, while capturing and killing all opponents. Tellingly, the original 40 members mostly were Cuban intelligence officers who had been loyal to recently-deposed dictator Batista.

consultants-international

Some time after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1960, which was part of Operation 40, until at least the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, a network of about 300 anti-Castro Cubans, headed by Manuel Artime, set up a base in Nicaragua, preparing for a new invasion of Cuba, but also being engaged in other anti-communist activity. This chapter is pretty much just as obscure as Operation 40, which actually appears to be the exact same program. The Times over in London is one of the few newspapers to have mentioned the Nicaraguan angle:

"By 1963 [Rafael] Quintero and [Manuel] Artime were in Nicaragua, where, with CIA funding, they put together a 300-strong invasion force, apparently with the approval of the Attorney-General, Robert Kennedy. The assassination of President Kennedy in November that year scotched the plans. There were reports of Quintero's involvement with [Ted] Shackley in the CIA's secret war in Laos in 1966 [involving hundreds of killings of enemy spies], but he then disappeared from view..." 788

Artime was the head of this private, CIA-backed army in Nicaragua. Quintero was his deputy. In the late 1970s, "rogue" CIA agent Edwin Wilson actually mentioned how the CIA itself referred to Rafael Quintero and allied anti-Castro Cubans when a contact killing needed to be done. So in that sense it does appear that the Artime group in Miami and Nicaragua was maintained for this kind of work. Not just in Cuba, but in other places as well. Seeing a controversial CIA officer as Ted Shackley, who in 1963 also was head of the anti-Castro CIA station in Miami (JM/WAVE), was the CIA overseer of this program at the time, makes sense as well. Shackley, among many other things, was considered a major suspect in the JFK assassination, even by official researchers. Another person involved in this army was Felix Rodriguez, yet another controversial CIA officer. Rodriguez was recruited by Artime almost a decade before Milian was:

"Even before the [Army] basic course was completed [that I started in March 1963], I had a visit from Manuel Artime and Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero, which changed the direction of my life once again. "We're going to overthrow Castro [again]..." ...

"Chi Chi was one of the resistance leaders I infiltrated back inside Cuba... Now he was Artime's deputy. [Praise of Artime.] I'd known [Artime] since 1960, when he was the political leader of the MRR. During one of our first meetings he asked Edgar Sopo and me to help him set up anti-Castro training camps. ... He engendered ... trust in people. Artime was a doctor - a psychiatrist [but] also a good soldier. He was the political officer of the 2506 Brigade - in fact he was captured on the beach at the Bay of Pigs. ...

"I spent almost two years in Nicaragua, running the communications network for Artime. The scope of the operation was considerable--more than three hundred people in all, based in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Miami. Our three main bases were in Nicaragua..." 789

Similar to Milian, Rodriguez explained that Artime had total access to the Army, convincing him that Artime's activities were backed by the U.S. government. In October 1967, Rodriguez headed the CIA team that hunted down and killed Che Guevara in Bolivia, headed by a right-wing military leader. Subsequently Rodriguez served in the Phoenix Program in Vietnam, where he worked under Donald Gregg and Ted Shackey; and was an advisor to vice president George H. W. Bush leading up to the Contra affairs, which saw him tied to cocaine shipments through Ilopango airport in Nicaragua, while also freely admitting he was a "friend" of Colonel Enrique Bermudez 790, the School of the Americas graduate deeply tied to Contra death squads and cocaine trafficking, who on top of that was a favorite of the ultraright American Security Council. Rodriguez similarly described Adolfo Calero, another cocaine dealer, as an associate. 791

At his eventual Senate hearing, Milian explained that the Cuban lobster and shrimp industries had been very profitable until the Bahamas banned the Cubans from fishing in their waters. This collapsed their profits from $50,000 to $100,000 a year to almost nothing. Next they went into marijuana smuggling, netting them $1 million in profits on average a year. It remained a closely-knit community. A lot of the fishermen also did covert work for Artime, such as allowing teams of operatives to infiltrate Cuba. 792 A lot of this covert work was tied into Brigade 2506 and throughout this period Artime kept his "national security" ties. 793

During his Senate hearing, it also became clear that Milian had played a key role in setting up and running shrimp-processing company Frigerificos de Puntarennas and its "agent" Ocean Hunter, apparently used for laundering drug money. Puntarennas also is the company to which the State Department handed $230,000 for non-military Contra aid. 794 As Milian explained it:

"Narcotics proceeds were used to shore up Contra effort. ... I was the key person setting up the interlocking chain of companies around Frigerificos de Puntarennas. ... It's a shrimp processing warehouse; but, more importantly, it was one of the fronts we used. ... Ocean Hunter was the agent, an agent for Frigerificos. It was supposed to import shrimp into the United States. ... Yes, sir, it did [receive $230,000 in humanitarian assistance funds from the State Department] ... ... I had a liaison with U.S. intelligence [with regard to Frigerificos] - or let's not call it U.S. intelligence. Let's call it whoever was running the resupply." 795

It all gets a little murky here though. How much was Milian involved in Contra drug tyrafficking, with Noriega, and with the Medllin Cartel? Good question. At the very least it appears he was a minor drug trafficker tied to the Medellin and Cali Cartels.

Ramon Milian Rodriguez: inconsistencies

Until here, the testimony of Milian seems accurate, or mostly accurate. However, we are going to cut his story off for the rest, because there simply are too many unverified and contradicting claims by Milian, especially from after he was released from prison somewhere around 2010. Let's illustrate.

In 1988, Milian testified to the U.S. Senate that he had "moved about $11 billion [which amounts to $35 billion in 2023] in drug profits from secret safehouses around the United States run by the Medellin Cartel from Colombia, through Miami to Panama." 796 While allegedly taking himself $2-3 million ($6-9 billion in 2023) a month home for laundering on average about $200 million ($600 million in 2023) a month leading up to his arrest, Milian paid Noriega a "ballpark figure" of "$320 million and $350 million" ($1 billion in 2023) over this period. 797 This represented a commission generally between 1 and 10 percent, based on the type of transaction. 798 These payments not only made sure that the Medellin Cartel had access to Panama's airports, banks and military intelligence security apparatus 799, but also that it was provided with the "identity of American [DEA] drug agents, radio frequencies and the schedules of Coast Guard and American Navy surveillance vessels." 800

There are all kinds of problems here. The information either doesn't fit or can't be verified. A list:

There are problems with the 1988-reported money laundering numbers when you compare them to Milian's original 1983 statements to U.S. Customs agents. There it is pretty clear that he could not personally cover the $4.3 million dollar they confiscated from his Lear Jet, because he was "not that liquid." How can you not be that liquid when allegedly you take home $2-3 million a month? Also that doesn't jive with Milian's 1983 claim to have "made about one million dollars a year for the past five or six years", at a profit margin of "one half of one pecent". 801

In addition, in 1983 Milian explains that he "started laundering money in 1975" and that "until recently, within the past year [so until 1982], he was transporting for Cuban narcotics traffickers." 802 Does this mean he stopped doing that, because he was *starting* to make it big? With the Medellin and Cali Cartels? Hard to say.

In the same interviews of 2023-2024, Milian claimed that he "acquired Pablo as a client in 1975. We were both two 25-year-old kids." 803 This is simply not accurate. The Medellin Cartel didn't form until 1976, and in his earlier Senate testimony Milian made it clear he struck his deal with the Medellin Cartel in 1979, which also coincided with him, on June 7, 1979, setting up Cambios Monetarios Internacional, of which documentation was presented. 804

If he started in 1975, is it likely that he almost immediately got the Medellin Cartel as clients? With little to no experience in money laundering? No, it isn't, as even Milian explains they sought him out due to his reputation. Looking at the timeline of his life, and some of his statement, Milian definitely did not start his money laundering career before late 1973.

In interviews of the 2020s, Milian claims that the money flights with his Lear Jet involved "monthly stipends" to Noriega, but that the bulk of the money proceeds for the Medellin Cartel was flown out of the country in containers on Boeing 747s. 805 That begs the question why he didn't pay Noriega's "monthly stipends" in that same manner, instead of openly reporting millions of dollars openly to U.S. Customs each month tied to his own personal self and jet?

Another discrepancy with regard to these "monthly stipends" to Noriega is that in his 1983 interrogation, he claims that the money on his Lear Jet was destined for Cali Cartel chieftain Gilberto Rodriguez, Medellin Cartel banker Luis Carlos Molina, and another, unknown Colombian. Noriega isn't mentioned anywhere. 806

His recollections of the School of the Americas are very generic. He only claims his "classmates" were men as Manuel Noriega and Pinochet, which clearly wasn't the case.

In the 2020s Milian claimed he first met Noriega when Noriega was still a captain. But Noriega wasn't a captain anymore from 1970 on, when Milian apparently was at the University of Santa Clara, before being recuited by Artime. He also claimed Noriega introduced him to the School of the Americas in 1972-1973. Yet, in his 1988 Senate testimony he mentions that he first met Noriega in 1979, in the office of his friend, Henry Ford. He did claim he "had had some social contact at a party or that type of thing. But up to that point I couldn't say I knew the man [Noriega]. I knew of him." 807It's all not very convincing though.

Milian claimed he was part of the team that killed Che Guevara October 1967. 808 This was 5 years before he was recruited by Manuel Artime though, whose old recruit Felix Rodriguez was involved in that mission.

Milian claimed he was a friend of the Ochoas, because "he saved his daughter." 809 This is a reference to Martha Ochoa in 1982, but it were her brother who were part of the cartel.

Despite having been trained as a basic soldier, it's not really explained why a key money laundering expert doubled as paramilitary.

Milian did lie about the details of his January 1985 meeting with Felix Rodriguez, likely because Milian was dsperate for a way out of his prison sentence. While Rodriguez claimed he had never met Milian, who was recruited by Artime about 9 years before Rodriguez was, Rodriguez did not deny being friends with Contra drug traffickers Col. Enrique Bermudez and Adolfo Colero.

CIA-MOSSAD-MI6: TRAINING DRUG CARTELS

1981-1982: CIA- and Wackenhut-tied anti-communist death squad training for the Medellin Cartel

On June 25, 1984 Medellin Cartel leaders Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha both were covertly photographed by CIA-installed cameras at an airport outside Managua, Nicaragua, helping to load up one of Barry Seal's airplanes with 666 kilograms of cocaine. Initially this was part of a DEA operation to capture the leaders of the Medellin Cartel. However, Nicaragua at that point was ruled by the communist Sandinistas, so none other that the Reagan Administration's Colonel Oliver North, "concerned about influencing a key Congressional vote on aid to the [anti-communist] contras, leaked "the Sandinista connection"." 810

Escobar and the names of some of the other Medellin Cartel leaders were mentioned at the time in at least some U.S. media 811, but it would take years before they were discussed on a regular basis. ABC News and the New York Times occasionally reported on Escobar and the Medellin Cartel from August 1983. 812 The Washington Post does not appear to have done so until 1986, after Medellin Cartel hitman killed Barry Seal inside the United States. 813 Even when the cartel killed Colombian justice minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in April 1984, with the New York Times talking about the Medellin Cartel largely having been protected by the sitting Colombian government until that point 814, apparently the Washington Post never bothered making any references to the background of the perpetrators. 815

Things were going on in Colombia with the Medellin Cartel well before all this though. The cocaine was there for several years when on November 12, 1981 the left-wing M-19 guerrillas kidnapped Martha Ochoa, the sister of Medellin Cartel leader Jorge Luis Ochoa. M-19 kidnapped her to demand millions of dollars in ransom, which is how M-19 largely funded itself.

This turned out to be a big mistake. Ochoa and other Medellin Cartel leaders organized a meeting of 223 drug dealers and allies, who, on December 3, 1981, organized the roughly 2,000 man strong Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS), or Death to Kidnappers, death squad. 816 There was a lot of support for this death squad among local landowners and businessmen, as both M-19 and the similarly left-wing FARC were raising "war taxes" on these interests, and often resulted to kidnapping when not enough money was paid. The local Barbula Battalion, together with "local Liberal and Conservative party leaders, businessmen, ranchers, and representatives from the Texas Petroleum Company", founded a death squad with the same name: Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS). 817 Also in later years, the Barbula Battalion was fingered as being completely complicit with the Medellin Cartel, which both ended up being bullwarks against "leftism" in Colombia. We'll deal more with that in the next chapter. On February 17, 1982, Martha Ochoa was released unharmed, with M-19 negotiating a peace with the Medellin Cartel.

It actually is due to Ramon Milian Rodriguez's 1988 testimony to John Kerry's Senate Committee that this author, after looking for independent evidence, first came onto the trail of the Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) death squad. Let's not take this aspect of Milian's testimony as something that is fully verified, but he certainly was involved in the periphery of the Medellin Cartel at the time, and also was a rabid anti-communist with CIA ties. Here is a portion of what Milian said to the Kerry Committee:

"Yes, sir [, I did attend a meeting where the war on M-19 was discussed]. ... It was about $7 million that was put up by the whole group. [They also] contributed their most sadistic sociopaths to the group... Yes, sir [, it was a private army of about 2,000 people]. ...

"M-19 decided to finance its efforts by kidnapping the family members of known drug people. There came a time [in Nov. 1981] when they kidnapped one of the Ochoa women. Now, this thing had been escalating, and after a few meetings the consensus was that, if something wasn't done to stop them, it would just get totally out of hand.

"At that time, because the cartel is not your most educated group of people, some of the people who counseled them, such as myself, were brought in. ... We explained to them some of the methods of combating terrorism. They were somewhat impressed and they wanted to carry out that type of operation, to get rid of the M-19 threat. ...

"It was a military operation to get rid of a threat, both politically and economically. You must remember that M-19 is Marxist-Leninist in ideology and the cartel is, of course, a capitalist enterprise. They don't think of themselves in those terms, but they are. ...

"Have you ever heard of a book called "Handbook for the Urban Guerrilla," by Carlos Mariglella? Well, we taught these people how to become terrorists. We taught them how their enemies would react and how they should react to counter that.

"That's why I mentioned that they contributed their sociopaths, because an urban guerrilla will use a child as a shield, and if you want to win a war against them you have to have a man behind the gun who will shoot through the child. ...

"Not only were they killed brutally, but the brutality was made public. After all, you know, Lenin said "The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize." So, the victims were hung up from trees, they were disemboweled, with signs on them, to discourage the population from cooperating with them.

"So, it was a very successful operation, not something to be proud of in humanistic terms, but something to be proud of. ... The cartel [won], beyond a doubt. ...

"There was a meeting, and it was an interesting meeting because the person that came to this meeting came wired as a human bomb - the M-19 representative. I don't know his name. He came ready to die or to find an accord. ... I want to point out I was vehemently opposed to that accord. As a Cuban, I cannot accept dealing with the communists." 818

A interesting detail is that Milian was not a counter-terrorism expert. Instead, he was one of the most important money launderers for the Medellin Cartel. He got into the employ of the cartel in mid 1979, which lasted until his arrest in Miami on May 4, 1983, just over two years after the cartel's campaign against M-19. Due to the realization that General Noriega sold him out, which indeed was the truth 819, Milian-Rodriguez sung quite a lot.

In his initial declaration Milian not only mentioned clients as Pablo Escobar Gaviria's cousin, Gustavo Gaviria; Medellin Cartel chieftain Pablo Correa; primary Medellin Cartel banker Luis Carlos Molina; and key Cali Cartel founder Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela; he similarly listed a certain Salvador Otero Ospina, who was "associated with Wackenhut Colombia," as one of the "Colombian narcotics traffickers" he laundered money for. 820

A brief check reveals that Otero Ospina not only was "president of ... Wackenhut de Colombia SA" 821, a financial director of Banco del Pacifico, and a shareholder in the oil refinery Refinare; but also a "Knight of Magistral Grace [in the] Knights of Malta [and] one of the founders of the Order more than half a century ago, along with former [1969-1974] president Misael Pastrana Borrero." 822

That's a pretty shocking revelation, considering the CIA-tied controversies over the decades with both Wackenhut and the Knights of Malta. Wackenhut largely became controversial over the INSLAW affair and the death of journalist Danny Casolaro. The affair revealed that Wackenhut was involved in various illegal CIA-tied operations, including covert support for the Contras and other "Octopus"-related affairs. The Knights of Malta have forever shown up everywhere in relation to hard-right, CIA-linked covert operations. They are discussed both in ISGP's Opus Dei and Le Cercle Pinay articles. As a result, the Order also has its own entry in ISGP's NGO index.

One would think that Wackenhut and the Knights of Malta were similarly tied to the Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS) death squad of the Medellin Cartel. They certainly are through Ramon Milian-Rodriguez, but for the time being details are missing. We'll discuss the details of Milian-Rodriguez's life later on.

1987-1989: British and Israelis training the Medellin Cartel; Khashoggi supplying arms

The Medellin Cartel largely had free reign until April 1984, when it killed Colombian justice minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. During the subsequent crackdown all of a sudden the government knew where to find many of the cartel's drug labs. 823 While it is not clear to the author if this started before or after the Rodrigo Lara assassination, this same year, as part of the "Los Extraditables" pact, cartel leaders offered to pay off Colombia's entire national debt of $9 billion in exchange for a full pardon and the scrapping of the 1980-signed extradition treaty with the United States. This was not agreed to. 824 Then, in the fall of 1986, the Medellin Cartel offered to abandon the drug trade in return for keeping the CIA informed about all left-wing guerrilla groups within Colombia. This offer too was rejected, at least formally. 825

We have to say "formally", because something peculiar happened. In August 1989 NBC News 826 broadcasted a segment "allegedly showing foreign mercenaries training Medellin cartel gunmen in ambush assassinations and other paramilitary activities." There was little "alleged" about it though. As Colombia's Administrative Security Department (DAS) security agency explained it: "At least five Israeli and 11 British mercenaries helped train teams of assassins for Colombian cocaine traffickers and their right-wing allies." 827

The captured video showed Israeli soldiers giving the training course. These stood under the leadership of a 44-year-old colonel named Yair Klein, who was spotted in the video as well. 828 Medellin Cartel boss Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha similarly was spotted in the video as a spectator to some of the exercises, together with Klein. 829 So was Gacha's son Freddy 830, who was considered one the best-performing trainees 831, and had a personal bodyguard who "spoke frequently with the mercenaries and was purportedly a knowledgable source of information concerning Gacha's organization." 832

Also seen in the footage, as another one of the trainees, was a certain "Vladimir", "whose real name is Alfredo Vaquero, ... the leader of the Medellin cartel's paramilitary organization." 833 Soon after, Vaquero was arrested "on charges of murdering four judges and nine court workers." 834

The video had been confiscated in August 1989 from the home of a certain Henry Perez 835, who oversaw a 7,000 man strong paramilitary unit that had allied itself with Medellin Cartel bosses Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar. From 1984 on, they together ran a network of "training and contract killing schools financed by drug trafficking." 836 It's these men who brought in the Israeli and British mercenaries to train the recruits for these schools. 837 In case of Klein, he claimed he was overseeing training from December 1987 to May 1988. 838 After a raid of DAS on the training camp he left Colombia for some time, but returned after additional requests for training from Perez, explaining why some reports say Klein didn't leave the country until being found out about in August 1989. 839 The known names of the mercenaries were as follows:

Col. Yair Klein.
Steven "Teddy" Melnick: the Spanish interpreter for Klein.
Amatzia Shuali
Avraam Tzedaka / Avraham Zadaka
Dror Eyal
Arik Piccioto Afek

Col. Peter Stuart MacAleese
David Tomkins:
Dean Anthony Shelley
John Richard Owen
Andrew Gibson
Alexander Lennox
R. Paxton
P. Glasgow
P. Atherton
Terrence Tagney 840

Perez was involved in at least one major massacre on peasants and plantation workers in 1988. 841 Gacha was killed in December 1989. Perez was murdered in July 1991, on orders of Escobar, after Perez refused to join Escobar's war to destabilize the entire Colombian government. 842

As for the military exercises seen in the 48-minute video confiscated at the home of Perez, which had been shot so that men who did attend the courses could still "learn something" 843, these included:

Large-scale charges of enemy positions, including on steep hills, with the use of AR-15s, AK-47s, and Uzis.
Assaults on towns, including close-quarter combat when moving from house to house.
Ambushes on cars and their counters.
Drive-by shootings from cars, firing on other cars, pedestrians and buildings.
Instruction in "setting off bombs" 844, which, according to at least one witness, involved the "construction of car bombs, remote controlled and timed explosives and other sophisticated booby traps...". 845

The situation with the British mercenaries is the most straightforward. Peter MacAleese was an SAS veteran who served in Borneo. After leaving the army and getting into judicial trouble, he decided to become a mercenary, serving in Angola, white-separatist Rhodesia and similarly white-ruled South Africa. He became close friends with David Tomkins in Angola in 1976. 846 Tomkins, similar to MacAleese, had experience fighting with Jonas Savimbi's anti-communist UNITA group in Angola, supported by anything from British intelligence and Tiny Rowland's Lonrho to the Reagan administration. Tomkins also worked in white-separatist Rhodesia, as well as with Osama bin Laden's Mujahideen in Afghanistan.

In 1988 both were brought into Colombia through an unknown British citizen arranging a meeting with an unknown Colombian general and his son. Even during Tomkins' Senate testimony, he refused to mention any of these names. This Colombian military clique was of the opinion that the government wasn't doing enough about left-wing guerrillas in the country, and introduced the men to Medellin Cartel boss Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, who would fund the entire venture. MacAleese and Tomkins were aware he was a "narcotics trafficker" from the start, but claimed they didn't know just how big he was until after leaving the country. They met the drug lord and some of his henchmen at Isla de Fantasia, similar to the Israelis. MacAleese and Tomkins specifically prepared the paramilitary army of Perez and Gacha for an assault on the mountain headquarters of the FARC. This failed after supplies didn't reach their base camp in time. 847

Tomkins' bomb-making expertise, with Tomkins referring to himself as a "enthusiastic amateur" in that regard 848, does appear to have left a legacy in Colombia. As one crucial witness, Diego Viafara, explained in his Senate testimony:

"David: he was their explosives expert and he taught us about explosives. ... I [too] learned how to make car bombs. You could use remote control detonators or time devices [like] a clock device, so after some minutes or seconds the device would explode. The use of these charges was taught by mercenary instructors like the English and the Israelis. ... What we are seeing right now in Colombia [with these mass bombings] is the result of the teachings of these instructors from Israel and England. The patrolmen who had an opportunity to take part in these courses are putting into practice what they learned." 849

According to Viafara, the British and Israeli mercenaries gave overlapping teaching, but never physically met each other. They operated completely independently of one another. 850 After the mercenary scandal broke in August 1989, Colonel Yair Klein tried to deny the situation a bit more stringently than his British counterparts would do, explaining he had only been in Colombia "to help ranchers learn to defend themselves against guerrilla attacks." 851 It is true that the group Klein aided - under Henry Perezs - started out as an association of farmers, ranchers and businessmen who were tired of being exploited by left-wing guerrillas. But by the time Klein came along, as DAS noted, the ranchers in question "had become firmly linked to the drug traffickers." 852 Henry Perez's paramilitary force, whom Klein met with in the presence of local military commanders before signing any deals 853, also makes it clear he was dealing with something more than just "ranchers". Klein eventually admitted as much, only saying he wasn't aware the group was involved with drug traffickers. The drug trafficking angle was very clear though. The British mercenaries knew from the start. And everybody on the ground around the Israeli mercenaries knew about it. 854

Looking back at 1981-1982, at the Muerte a Secuestradores (MAS), or Death to Kidnappers, death squad, the situation also is very recognizable. In that case too ranchers, businessmen, military officers and western interests as Texas Petroleum, and seemingly Wackenhut and the Knights of Malta, banded together with the Medellin Cartel in suppressing communist and overly socialist guerrilla forces in the country. In fact, in both cases the local Barbula Battalion was involved, with it having been pointed out that this Battalion strongly aided the Medellin Cartel. As for a miniature history of how the Medellin Cartel became the dominant "anti-communist" force in Colombia, below is the testimony of top-level Medellin Cartel insider and whistleblower Diego Viafara. It is an interesting read, also looking at how cocaine cartels and the drug war have evolved:

"On December 29, 1983 I was taken ... from the Barbula Battalion [to the] paramilitary group [under] Henry de Jesus Perez. I ended up staying with this paramilitary organization for 6 years, working directly for Henry Perez and his men. ... In 1984, with my help, a front organization, called the Association of Farmers and Ranchers of the Middle Magdalena was created. The acronym in Spanish is ACDEGAM. Under this association the paramilitary organization was organized, operated and funded [to combat exploitation from left-wing guerrillas]. The funds were provided by farmers and ranchers. The Association did have a legitimate side. I ran a pharmacy and offered general health care to the peasants in the Middle Magdalena region and other regions of Colombia. I worked as a paramedic, pharmacist and physician in the central office of ACDEGAM. As far as I was aware, the unification of the narcotics traffickers and the cattlemen's association occurred in 1985 [with later research reports saying 1984]. [Henry Perez] was basically a counter-guerrilla, he was never a drug trafficker. But when he began his relationship with Gacha and he began to see dollars, his philosophy changed. ... Perez is beginning to own part of the laboratories, he is beginning to enter into contact with cocaine and millions of dollars... [But] I had [also] seen countless times that people were not allowed to retire from the [Medellin Cartel] organization...

"I want to underscore that our group had nothing to do with narcotics traffickers in 1981. ... In December 1981, the narcotics traffickers, themselves, formed a paramilitary wing to fight the guerrillas and called it MAS, or death to kidnappers. ...

"After the merger of the cattlemen's association and the narcotics traffickers [in 1984], the organization grew in size and strength. One of the goals of the organization was to gather not only economic, but also political power in the region. The drug traffickers in the Middle Magdalena invested money heavily in the elections of mayors. [All] these mayors were practically members of the organization. ... At this point, the civilian paramilitary group was providing security to all the drug labs owned by traffickers in the region. I saw many of the labs because as a medic I was constantly traveling to those sites dispensing medicine, giving injections and attending to general sanitation to avoid epidemics. ...

"I was present more than once when Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, Fabio Ochoa Vasquez, Pablo Escobar, [etc.] and/or their representatives gathered there. ... I was present when many tortures and executions were carried out. I saw people sawed up, bit by bit, with a chain saw, and I saw women tortured, pregnant women, even. ... On several occasions I took part in wholesale slaughters of supporters of leftist sympathizers, workers and peasants. This isn't something I am proud of, but in an organization it is a matter of survival: kill or be killed. ...

"I personally played soccer with [Medellin Cartel leader Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha] for recreation. Gacha was always very nice to me and he always gave me money, helping me out. He never carried a weapon. He also advised me quite often to stop drinking, because I was drinking heavily at the time. However, I also saw the other side of him when ordered or planning assassinations. Gacha was fanatical about eliminating all left wing politicians and those belonging to subversive groups in Colombia. Henry Perez [since their 1984 alliance] followed Gacha's orders and carried out these assassinations, but Gacha always was the person who paid or who approved these assassinations. Gacha would frequently ... specify exactly how he wanted a given person to be killed. From what I could see, Gacha was the top international drug trafficker in Colombia at the time. I even saw him give orders to Pablo Escobar once in a while. ...

"General training for the organization was conducted in two camps ... There were special advanced training courses that were led by British and Israeli instructors. There were also retired Colombian police and military instructors at both schools. ...

"The Barbula Battalion ... has been an accomplice of the [Henry Perez] organization for the 6 years that I was in the area. When the [mercenary] courses were given, for example, some rifles needed - FAL rifles or G-3s - ... were provided by Barbula Battalion. A mortar ... ammunition, too. ... They had radio communications directly with the organization. ... They carried out patrols working directly with the Barbula Battalion... I was there, shoulder to shoulder with [the Barbula Battalion officers], and they were direct accomplices of the narco-military organization. ...

"The Barbula Battalion and other Army battalions in Colombia know that in the areas they control there are narco-trafficker interests, but they receive favors or privileges from the organization and so they prefer to look the other way. ... Many peasants, many labor union members were assassinated with the complicity of the Barbula Battalion. ...

"The war against the left in Colombia had been waged against the political arm of the FARC, the Patriotic Union. Thousands of members of the Patriotic Union have been killed in Colombia. I personally know that all of these killings have been carried out under the orders of the organization. I witnessed very many killings of the leaders' of the Patriotic Union. ... For example, the [October 1987] killing of the political leader of the Patriotic Union, Dr. Pardo Leal, was carried out by our organization. It was master minded by Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, in coordination with Henry Perez. The people that were instructed to kill the man were William Infantes and El Gato, the Cat, a brother of William Infantes. ...

"In the anti-narcotics police they have a high ranking person there-I think he is a colonel- who periodically makes contact with the organization via telephone on operations, raids against labs. ... documents coming from the security agency of the judicial police, the DAS, or the Attorney General's office... I knew that the organization had infIltrators in the other Bogota newspapers like La Prensa and EI Tiempo ... Of course, yes [my M-19 infiltrates too]. When I first infiltrated the organization, the plan was also to infiltrate the Magdalena Merio security forces, for example, the Barbula Battalion. ...

"In December 1988, I personally witnessed the receipt by the organization of thousands of AK-47s, AR-15 rifles and M-60 machine guns from [Noriega's] Panama. ... I am familiar with these weapons. These are sophisticated weapons like M-16 machine guns and .50 caliber guns. ... In 1988 the building of an ammunitions factory was planned. ... In Pacho, the organization has lathes where they maintain weapons and they build silencers... There are thousands of armed people. In Magdalena Merio the smallest group has 30 men with AK-47 weapons and three or four grenades...

"I can tell you this here and you would not believe me, but this is true. This happens in the organization. People are alienated, although these are young kids, 15 to 20 years old. They are taught how to kill because of the indoctrination of the organization. And so if you are not killing people, you can be killed. This is a motto. Those people that are not good at killing are to be killed. ...

"In the United States they have people who receive guidance in Colombia. I personally know of these people ... in Tiajuana, in New Mexico and Texas and in Southern California ... Atlanta ... in Florida, in the Miami area... There are a couple of hit men that I know [who] even took English classes before they came. And these people guarantee the penetration of cocaine overland from Mexico into the United States. ...

"There were no set plans against individuals, but Gacha and Perez on several occasions said that when problems crop up, many of the "monos" would have to be killed. "Monos" is a word used to refer to foreigners. So they said that they would have to eliminate "monos" or foreigners in Colombia or here in the United States." 855

These last few paragraphs might be very relevant in discussing the following person. One of Colonel Yair Klein's Israeli associates in providing paramilitary training to cartel and right-wing militia members was Arik Afek. 856 Afek owned a business that imported flowers from Colombia to into the United States, named First Paragon Inc.; and an arms company back in Israel. His flower-importing business may well have been a front for Israeli intelligence since before Klein came along in mid 1987, as his business partner in this venture explained to the media that Afek had "claimed to have worked for Israeli military intelligence." 857 At the same time, there were reports in Israel that the CIA "had given [Afek] an American passport in return for information on Israeli activity in Colombia." 858

By September 1989, after the revelation of the mercenary scandal, both Klein and Afek were wanted by the Colombian government. 859 Afek is the one who, according to the Colombian government, managed to get Klein out of the country, preventing his capture. Klein denied he had fled 860, but a later Senate report concluded that the Spanish-speaking Afek "helped Klein leave Colombia and return to Israel through Brazil" at the first signs of trouble in August 1989. 861

Afek fled Colombia as well. He was brought into DEA's headquarters in Miami in November 1989, after an Interpol notice to the DEA of the Colombian arrest warrent. However, after he was brought in, the Colombian government did not provide a formal request to the American DEA for his arrest, so Afek was let go again. 862

Throughout January 1990 Afek was questioned by the Secret Service about "anti-aircraft missiles or other weapons that could be a threat to President Bush during his visit to Colombia for an antidrug summit", scheduled for February 15, 1990 863, with Afek giving "several different accounts of his activities" inside Colombia. 864 According to associates, Afek travelled four times in January to Colombia with the Secret Service in preparation for the Bush trip, and also Klein in Israel to ask him "whether drug traffickers had acquired missiles that could shoot down Bush's airplane." 865 It's, of course, a little odd that Afek became such an important asset to the Secret Service about the Medellin Cartel, while Klein is not supposed to have known anything about drug ties.

Shockingly, on January 24, 1990, Afek's body was found in the trunk of a car at Miami International Airport, after complaints that it started to smell. 866 Nobody seems to have figured out for sure who killed him, although it is entirely possible, if not likely, that the Medellin Cartel followed him to the United States, and killed him in similarly unsubtle fashion as they had done with Barry Seal. According to top cartel insider and whistleblower Diego Viafara this is exactly what cartel leaders planned to do, even with "foreign" problem cases, and also had the capability to do. In fact, according to a September 1991 "confidential" U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency document, Afek's murder had been overseen by Francisco Humberto Zuluaga Pineda, who was among those "in charge of a [Medellin] cartel assassinations group in the U.S." 867

That same DIA report actually also talked about "the mercenaries who operated in Colombia between 1984 and 1990." 868 True or not, this does coincide with the alliance between paramilitary leader Henry Perez and the Medellin Cartel in running a network of "training and contract killing schools." 869 That same DIA report contains other interesting nuggets:

"Klein sent advisors to the Medellin Cartel to train cartel paramilitary forces and selected assassin team leaders on how to unleash waves of terrorism in Colombia to destroy law, order, and undermine democracy... Klein also facilitated the transport of weapons and ammunition, to the Caribbean and South American areas, which eventually surfaced in the possession of the Colombian cartels and Colombian guerrilla forces. ...

"Adnan (Khashoggi) - an international arms trafficker who allegedly has sold arms to the Colombian drug traffickers, especially to the Medellin Cartel. ...

"Many of these [Medellin Cartel] victims were interrogated and tortured [on suspicion of working for the Cali Cartel] using the "towel" method by which the individual's face was covered with a wet towel kept saturated with water so breathing is very difficult. They were then taken separately to places where they were executed by either shooting, or quartering with a manchete or axe." 870

It certainly is noteworthy that the Medellin Cartel was waterboard-torturing its suspects two decades before it became the favorite method of the CIA in the War on Terror. More importantly, Klein very much was a key military strategist of the "capitalist" Medellin Cartel, and, similar to the claims of top cartel insider and whistleblower Diego Viafara, does appear to have created a type of "strategy of tension" within Colombia - possibly to push it towards a right-wing dictatorship that would fully crush all leftist guerrillas - by teaching the Medellin Cartel how to set off timed- and remote controlled car bombs.

Finally, seeing Adnan Khashoggi pop up as an apparent arms supplier to the Medellin Cartel kind of fits like a glove as well, because Adnan Khashoggi has been tied to countless of the biggest intelligence-tied scandals of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Whenever an intelligence agency formally said, "no", a person like Khashoggi was brought in behind-the-scenes to carry out the "yes" policy. Khashoggi not only was deeply tied to the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal, having been recruited by the CIA; just by searching his name in ISGP's The Supranational Suspects Behind 9/11, sees him tied to the supranational intelligence network the Safari Club, Saudi intelligence chiefs Kamal Adham and Prince Turki al Faisal, Al Qaeda, a company ran by Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle immediately after 9/11, 9/11 in a variety of (additional) ways, Far West Ltd., the Russian Apartment Bombings, and the old Fortunato Israel prostitution network. Arguably Khashoggi deserves his own chapter here, but there likely will be more questions than answers.

1980-1990s: Early CIA, Mossad and British ties to the Cali Cartel

A second major cocaine cartel that arose around the same time as the Medellin Cartel was the rival Cali Cartel. The Cali Cartel was a smaller, more business-oriented, less flashy, and less violent cartel. It had good relations with Rodriguez Gacha of the Medellin Cartel 871, but considerably less with Pablo Escobar. The Cali Cartel emerged to prominence in the mid 1990s, after the Medellin Cartel had been eradicated. Also with the Cali Cartel we see hints of intelligence-tied individuals "influencing it":

The deeply CIA-tied Ramon Milian-Rodriguez wasn't just laundering money for the Medellin Cartel in the early 1980s. He also did that for key Cali Cartel founder Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela. 872

When we look at the 1994 ATLAS dossier we see the following, and the description which may or may not match that of Colonel Yair Klein:

"Around 1983, [FELIX] PRZEDBORSKI would have hired a MOSSAD Colonel for his own safety and that of his group. ...

"Later, this Colonel would have accepted the proposal to leave the MOSSAD and put his entire team at the service of PRZEDBORSKI.

"This Colonel would have ... trained members of the CONTRAS as well as those of the CALI CARTEL."

In January 1989 British Mercenaries Peter MacAleese and David Tomkins were invited back to Colombia by the same unnamed general, this time with the question if they were interested in assassinating Pablo Escobar, as Escobar was the one primarily responsible for the political and inter-cartel violence in Colombia at the time. The Cali Cartel put up the money. Eventually, in March 1989, the British returned to Colombia with a total of 12 mercenaries to kill Escobar. The mission failed though, and eventually became impossible after the August 1989 assassination of presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan, with the Colombian government cracking down on the Medellin Cartel. 873

Reading the details of the operation with the British mercenaries, you can't help but look at it as quite unprofessional and unstructured: a team member who left, leaking part of the plan to the British press; team members threatening to inform Rodriguez Gacha of their operation to kill Escobar, if they weren't paid; etc. It appears to have just been a bunch of semi-thugs, with MacAleese describing himself before his death as a "dirty, lowdown, scumbag of a man". 874 As long as they were anti-communist, the intelligence services and right-wing Thatcher government appear to just have given mercenaries like these some leeway, but that may just be it.

These examples are little more than a few "heads up" notices. There do not appear to be enough details available with regard to intelligence ties to the Cali Cartel.

Conclusions

When you put all the CIA-tied scandals together over the decades, you end up with surprisingly few names. Most of them were already spelled out by Danny Casolaro in relation to his "Octopus", although he by no means was the only one to mention them:

E. Howard Hunt was close to CIA directors Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, was involved in various CIA coups, the preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion, the unacknowledged Operation 40 coup and assassination squad consisting of pro-Batista Cuban emigrees and CIA officers, and eventually played a key play in the Watergate Scandal. A well-sourced biography of his is to be found in ISGP's CFR article.

Ray Cline was a Harvard and Oxford (Balliol College)-educated veteran of the OSS and CIA, eventually mainly in the analytical branches of the CIA. Early on, in the Far East, he used to work with controversial future CIA officers and assets as Richard Helms, E. Howard Hunt, General John Singlaub, Paul Helliwell and Lucien Conein. When Cline left the CIA in 1973, he because the director of world power studies at the elite Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), until 1986. CSIS would also be a major homebase for names as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. At the same time, going through ISGP's NGO index, Cline would end up being part of ultraright groups as the American Security Council, the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), CAUSA, part of the CIA-tied Moonie Cult; the CIA-Mossad neocon liaison group the Jonathan Institute; and the U.S. Global Strategy Council. Cline was an important name within the whole wider CIA network, and definitely deserved a spot in any "Octopus" list. The thing is, if you include Cline, then so should some of the other names just mentioned.

Shackley, Clines and Wilson here were part of the controversial Consultants International network exposed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shackley's name in particular has surfaced in many other CIA-tied scandals. A protege of Richard Helms in the covert operations department of the CIA, for many years now ISGP has considered Ted Shackley the most central player in any kind of personal "Octopus" list, certainly when it comes down to actually overseeing and implementing all the most controversial, unacknowledged CIA operations. This author really began to pay close attention to Ted Shackley in 2010, after finding out he oversaw Atlantic Cercle, Inc., the formal entitity of the controversial CIA-MI6-Opus Dei-tied group Le Cercle Pinay, filled with many other controversial figures. It soon turned out that Shackley:

maintained ties with Otto von Habsburg's ultraconservative SMOM/Opus Dei clique through Le Cercle since at least the early 1980s;

was considered a prime suspect by HSCA investigators of having run Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination, along with several close associates - an accusation ISGP fully agrees with;

was directly connected to the P2 Lodge and the Italian Strategy of Tension, even apart from his Cercle involvement;

has been repeatedly named in global CIA drug trafficking operations;

has been named, along with close associates, of running a private assassination network, from clear ties to anti-Castro Cuban-ran Operation 40 in the 1960s to claims surrounding "the Fish Farm" in the 1980s;

used to serve as an unofficial CIA liaison to the Israelis 875, cooperated with Sen. Henry Jackson, who was operating a Zionist 5th column in his office, in covering CIA crimes 876; and shared the neocon "admiration of Israel" 877;

is said to have recruited the Australian Zionist Rupert Murdoch 878, who went on to finance the private 6I intelligence operation 879 and in coordination with the Reagan administration build up the Fox News network 880, basically today's only significant conservative news channel;

largely set up the Iran-Contra deal with his friend Michael Ledeen 881, an arch neocon tied to the P2 and CIA;

had a key protege in the CIA named Harold Chipman, who in the final years of his life ended up close to Coast to Coast AM's Jack Sarfatti, a disinformer on UFOs and remote viewing; and at the time of death was in the process of co-founding the Sarfatti Institute with notorious CIA allies as Ray Cline and the David Rockefeller-tied Archibald Roosevelt Jr.;

was close friends with key persons suspected in allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen and bringing the towers down: George H. W. Bush (president's father; Carlyle, with its ties to Saudis as the Bin Ladens), Frank Carlucci (best friend of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Carlyle) and Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al Faisal (Osama mentor; resigned just before 9/11; linked to numerous terrorist groups); and Prince Bandar bin Sultan ("Bandar Bush" who, together with his wife paid the wage of a Saudi intelligence person who housed the Flight 77 hijackers in the U.S.).

So if this author were to make a personal "Octopus"-type list for anything controversial and conspiratotial that happened between JFK in 1963 and 9/11 in 2001, with as few names a possible, it would include the following individuals:

David Rockefeller
Henry Kissinger

Allen Dulles
William Casey
Richard Helms
Ted Shackley: Protege of Helms.

George H. W. Bush
Frank Carlucci

Prince Turki al Faisal
Prince Bandar bin Sultan
Adnan Khashoggi
Pakistani ISI

You can add more names for individual conspiracies, such as Rafael "Chi Chi" Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, Paul Helliwell, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis. Thomas Clines, Edwin Wilson, Col. Oliver North, Gen. Richard Secord, Gen. John Singlaub, and more. But ultimately the actions of these individuals tied back to one or more of the persons above.

As for the Israeli angle, we documented a few covert operations-tied names here in this article:

Ariel Sharon and other Israeli prime ministers
Rafi Eitan
Mike Harari
Col. Yair Klein

It's likely that there has been a degree of liaisoning going on with the above-mentioned CIA officers and other elites. We just don't have the details. If we can figure out all the personal connections over the decades of the Israelis mentioned and a person as Ted Shackley, we would be a lot further ahead.

Notes

Jan. 1982 (shot throughout 1981), David Fanning (founding exe. producer PBS Frontline 1983-2015) for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
*) March 27, 2016, New York Daily News, 'Promoting peace or assaulting Israel? The Rockefeller Brothers Fund supports groups that encourage or participate in the BDS movement'.
*) Dec. 8, 2016, Times of Israel, 'The Rockefeller BDS empire, the New Israel Fund and campus anti-Semitism'.
1987, Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 10.
*) 1997, Manucher Farmanfarmaian, 'Blood and Oil: Memoirs of a Persian Prince', pp. 184-185: "Wages were 50 cents a day. There was no vacation pay, no sick leave, no disability compensation. The workers lived in a shanty town called Kaghazabad, or Paper City, without running water or electricity. ... In every crevice hung the foul, sulfurous stench of burning oil ... There was nothing - not a tea shop, not a bath, not a single tree."
*) Feb. 1955, World Petroleum, p. 68 (annual compilation of issues): "The list of directors of the two companies charhed with the management of the Iranian oil industry has been made public. For the Iranen Aardolie Exploratie en Productie Maatschappij N.V. (Iranse Oil Exploration and Producing Company) they are as follows: L. E. J. Brouwer, chairman and managing director.... Other members of the board of directors are Dr. Reza Fallah, Manuchehr Farmanfarmaian, M. Hagen, D. C. Hussey...
Manuchehr Farmanfarmaian is another graduate of Birmingham University and for several years was with the Ministry of Finance in the petroleum department, being director of the department from 1948 to 1951. In 1954 he was appointed advisor on petroleum affairs to Prime Minister [Fazlollah] Zahedi [who in 1953 replaced the CIA-MI6-deposed Mohammad Mosaddegh].
Mr. Hagen was formerly with [the Rockefeller's] Standard Oil Co. ( N.J. ) and before that was with Creole Petroleum Corp. in Venezuela as manager of industrial relations
Mr. Hussey is now general manager of Abadan refinery as well as being a director. He comes from [the Rockefeller's] Esso Standard [Oil]..."
1987, Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 11.
May 9, 1977, Richard T. Sale for the Washington Post (reporting from Iran, where he toured for a month), 'SAVAK: A Feared and Pervasive Force'.
Dec. 13, 1979, Associated Press, 'Iran Says CIA Trained SAVAK'.
May 9, 1977, Richard T. Sale for the Washington Post (reporting from Iran, where he toured for a month), 'SAVAK: A Feared and Pervasive Force'.
Aug. 29, 2003, Institute for Policy Studies, 'Iran and the Forgotten Anniversary' (ips-dc.org/iran_and_ the _forgotten_anniversary/ (accessed: Feb. 5, 2023).
Dec. 13, 1979, Associated Press, 'Iran Says CIA Trained SAVAK'.
Dec. 17, 1978, Washington Post, 'CIA-Shah Ties Cloud Iran Data'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
April 10, 1979, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 'Could not leave job, ex-SAVAK man says'.
Feb. 6, 2019, Haaretz, '40 Years On, Chilling Display Brings Torture of Iranian Dissidents Close to Home'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
June 20, 1977, Newsweek, 'Rights and Wrongs - A Chamber of Horrors'.
Feb. 6, 2019, Haaretz, '40 Years On, Chilling Display Brings Torture of Iranian Dissidents Close to Home'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
Ibid.
Dec. 13, 1979, Washington Post, 'SAVAK Jails Stark Reminder Of Shah's Rule'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
Feb. 6, 2019, Haaretz, '40 Years On, Chilling Display Brings Torture of Iranian Dissidents Close to Home'.
Dec. 13, 1979, Associated Press, 'Iran Says CIA Trained SAVAK'.
Dec. 13, 1979, Washington Post, 'SAVAK Jails Stark Reminder Of Shah's Rule'.
Feb. 6, 2019, Haaretz, '40 Years On, Chilling Display Brings Torture of Iranian Dissidents Close to Home'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
June 20, 1977, Newsweek, 'Rights and Wrongs - A Chamber of Horrors'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
June 20, 1977, Newsweek, 'Rights and Wrongs - A Chamber of Horrors'.
Dec. 13, 1979, Associated Press, 'Iran Says CIA Trained SAVAK'.
Aug. 29, 2003, Institute for Policy Studies, 'Iran and the Forgotten Anniversary' (ips-dc.org/iran_and_the _forgotten_anniversary/ (accessed: Feb. 5, 2023).
June 20, 1977, Newsweek, 'Rights and Wrongs - A Chamber of Horrors'.
Ibid.
April 10, 1979, The Globe and Mail (Canada), 'Could not leave job, ex-SAVAK man says'.
Jan. 7, 1979, Washington Post, 'Shah Tells New Iranian Cabinet He Is Leaving'.
Dec. 13, 1979, Associated Press, 'Iran Says CIA Trained SAVAK'.
Nov. 21, 1971, New York Times, 'The Council on Foreign Relations - Is It a Club? Seminar? Presidium? 'Invisible Government'?'.
Feb. 16, 1979, Richard Falk for the New York Times, 'Trusting Khomeini'.
Jan. 3, 1983, Associated Press, 'Report Claims Widespread Arrests, Torture in Iranian Prisons'.
May 1, 1979, The Globe and Mail, 'To the man in the street, Iran is definitely on the right track'.
Ibid.
2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', p. 361: "In 1975 ... I was asked to join the board of the newly formed Iran-U.S. Business Council, the private sector counterpart of the U.S.–Iran Joint Committee. The latter had been formed by Henry Kissinger... We scheduled the meeting for March 1976 in Tehran and assembled a distinguished group of Americans that included Paul Volcker [head NY Fed], Donald Regan, chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co., Peter G. Peterson, chairman of Lehman Brothers, and the heads of several major U.S. commercial banks. The Iranians fielded a delegation of senior cabinet ministers, bankers, and businessmen."
Nov. 16, 1979, Washington Post, 'Chase Manhattan's Ties to the Shah'.
1987, Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 8.
*) 1968, David Kimche, 'The Sandstorm', p. 233: "...to this proposed autonomous buffer state. The Druze had proved to be friendly to the Israel Government. ... The occupied area is, moreover, close to the Jebel Druze, the heartland of the Druze sect in Syria, and the fact that an autonomous Druze region would be set up in the Golan Heights could well lead to the creation of bonds with Jebel Druze and thus possibly neutralize the Syrians from any infiltration in the future to the south or the south-west. ... In spite of the attractiveness of this suggestion, little was done to implement it."
*) 1992 annual issues compilation, Journal of Palestine Studies, p. 80: "Local residents also believe that the Israelis had the long-term ambition of setting up a Druze buffer state - like the Maronite buffer state..."
1988, Stephen Green, 'Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East, 1968-87', p. 155: "True , in the mid - 1950s ( former ) Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion had spoken and written frequently of the need to establish a Christian Maronite "buffer" state on Israel's northern border ."
*) Sep. 8, 2022, Haaretz, 'What Historical Mossad Files Reveal About 'Israel's Most Planned War''.
*) Sep. 9, 2022, TheCradle.co, 'Declassified Mossad document reveals military collaboration with Lebanese Christian militias'.
Ibid.
Sep. 26, 1987, Washington Post, 'Casey Circumvented the CIA in '85 Assassination Attempt': "After he was elected president of Lebanon in 1982, Bashir Gemayel "secretly asked the CIA to provide him covert security and intelligence assistance," and Reagan approved an intelligence "finding" authorizing such support. Woodward states that Gemayel, who was assassinated before taking office, "had been recruited by the CIA when he came to the U.S. in the early 1970s to work for a Washington law firm" and remained for many years on the CIA payroll."
2014 catalog, Academy of American and International Law, p. 43: "[Part of the] Center for American and International Law, Plano, Texas USA. ... Directory of the Alumni of the Academy (1964–2013): ... Bachir GEMAYEL, Attorney (Deceased) (1972) (Became President of Lebanon 1982)."
Sep. 30, 1982, Washington Post, 'Phalangist Ties to Massacre Detailed': "Hobeika, the chief of intelligence for the militia, was also the Lebanese Forces' chief contact with Mossad, the Israeli secret service, as well as with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Lebanese sources said. ... Hobeika ... was sent to Israel for training under Mossad and the Israeli Army."
*) jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-kahan-commission-of-inquiry (accessed: Feb. 15, 2023): "At the head of the Phalangists' intelligence division was ... Elie Hobeika."
Jan. 25, 2002, Ronen Bergman (New York Times reporter who interviewed hundreds of intelligence agents), 'Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations', pp. 234-245.
Aug. 30, 1982, AP, 'Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat left west Beirut...'
Jan. 25, 2002, Washington Post, 'Blast Kills Ex-Commander Tied to Lebanon Massacre': "Elie Hobeika..."
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-kahan-commission-of-inquiry (accessed: Feb. 15, 2023).
June 17, 1982, UPI, 'Determined remain in Beirut refugee camp': "'Normally we have to cross minefields to find the Israelis,' says Abu Hamed, a military commander in Sabra, Beirut's second largest Palestinian camp with more than 30,000 refugees in normal times..."
Sep. 16, 2012, New York Times, 'A Preventable Massacre'.
Jan. 15, 1984, New York Times, 'Maj. Saad Haddad, 47, Israel's Ally in Southern Lebanon'.
*) 1984, Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, 'Israel's Lebanon War', p. 131: "Saad Haddad had been transported to join [1978-1983 prime minister Menachem] Begin and [defense minister Ariel] Sharon at the Beaufort... [Haddad] has come prepared for a reconciliation with Bashir [Gemayel], but Gemayel could see him only as an irritating rival for Israel's patronage..."
Nov. 29, 1997, Los Angeles Times, ''Voice of Hope' Founder Puts Gospel on the Air'.
Ibid.
Sep. 26, 1982, New York Times, 'The Beirut Massacre: The Four Days'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
*) Jan. 25, 2002, The Independent, 'Elie Hobeika: lady-killer and blood-soaked war criminal'.
*) Jan. 25, 2002, The Guardian, 'Elie Hobeika: Lebanese militia leader who massacred civilians'.
Sep. 26, 1982, New York Times, 'The Beirut Massacre: The Four Days'.
Sep. 16, 2012, New York Times, 'A Preventable Massacre'.
Sep. 26, 1982, New York Times, 'The Beirut Massacre: The Four Days'.
Nov. 22, 1982, New York Times, 'Israeli Aide Tells Panel of a Warning by Draper'.
Sep. 15, 2018, Seth Anziska for the The New York Review (nybooks.com), 'Sabra and Shatila: New Revelations'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-kahan-commission-of-inquiry (accessed: Feb. 15, 2023).
Dec. 16, 1986, Christian Science Monitor, 'The PLO in Lebanon': "Slowly but surely, by air and by sea, Palestinian guerrillas have been slipping back into refugee camps in Lebanon."
Dec. 1983, Penthouse magazine, 'Penthouse Interview: Frank Terpil'.
March 29, 1991, UPI, 'Foreign Minister draws a positive picture of Lebanon's future'.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/casualties-in-suicide-and-other-bombing-attacks-in-israel-since-the-declaration-of-principles (accessed: July 15, 2023; listing of terrorist attacks from April 6, 1994 and Nov. 23, 2022.) It's possible to see that Palestinian attacks have dropped massively in frequency and effectiveness.
July 14, 2014, Vox, 'This chart shows every person killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2000': "The west bank walls and gaza withdrawal reduce israeli deaths...".
Aug. 27, 2014, Times of Israel, 'Radar barrier could detect Gaza tunnels, experts say'.
May 12, 1985, Bob Woodward for the Washington Post, 'Anti-terrorist Plan Rescinded After Unauthorized Bombing'.
Ibid.
Sep. 26, 1987, Washington Post, 'Casey Circumvented the CIA in '85 Assassination Attempt'.
Ibid.
May 12, 1985, Bob Woodward for the Washington Post, 'Anti-terrorist Plan Rescinded After Unauthorized Bombing'.
Jan. 2002, Prof. Gary C. Gambill (assoc. fellow Middle East Forum; political analyst Freedom House and the Jamestown Fdn.) and Bassam Endrawos (consultant at Mideast Monitor, Arlington, Virginia), Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, 'The Assassination of Elie Hobeika'.
May 11, 1985, UPI, 'Nine Killed in 12 Hours of Fighting in Beirut': "On Thursday, the Lebanese Forces coalition of Christian groups shunted its pro-Israeli commander, Samir Geagea. It elected Elie Hobeika [who] conceded that Syria should provide whatever outside help is needed to reconcile the civil war factions, and indicated the Christian militia would break its ties with Israel."
Sep. 16, 1987, UPI, 'Bomb at Archbishop’s Residence Injures Militia Leader'.
Jan. 26, 2002, Salon, 'Who killed Elie Hobeika?'; Jan. 28, 2002, Robert Fisk for arabnews.com, 'Ghosts and secrets at Hobeika funeral'.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Mount_Lebanon_Mutasarrifate; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Demographics_of_Lebanon (from March. 27, 2009 to Feb. 5, 2023). Cites from the 2005 CIA World Fact Book and such; Jan. 19, 2007, Reuters, 'Lebanon Muslims outnumber Christians 2 to 1-survey'; countrystudies.us/ lebanon/34.htm; quora.com/How-did-Lebanon-go-from-overwhelming-Christian-majority-to-overwhelming-Muslim-majority-in-3-generations.
1983, Leila Tarazi Fawaz and Issam M Fares (Harvard University Press), 'Merchants and Migrants in Nineteenth-century Beirut', p. 48: "Between 1840 and 1865 the number of Muslims in Beirut doubled; the number of Christians tripled. After 1860 Muslims constituted just over a third of the population, Christians just under two thirds. ... Christians retained their majority for the rest of the century..."
Ibid., p. 50: "[After] World War I ... Muslims remained at a third and Christians at about two thirds . ... French mandatory authorities in 1922 [recorded that] Muslims had increased slightly, to 39 percent; Christians have moved back to about the level of the 1840s, from about 60 percent to about 45 percent."
2006, Sandra Mackey, (political scientiest at Georgia State University), 'Lebanon: A House Divided', Chapter 1: "The overwhelming Christian area north of Beirut claimed 29 percent of the population but possessed 38.2 percent of Lebanon's schools, while the south, with 19 percent of the population—primarily Shiite Muslim—has only 14.8 percent of the schools."
1984, Zeev Schiff and Ehud Yaari, 'Israel's Lebanon War', p. 131.
July 23, 1992, The Independent, 'Obituary: Suleiman Franjieh'.
jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-kahan-commission-of-inquiry (accessed: Feb. 15, 2023): "There were reports of Phalangist massacres of women and children in Druze villages, as well as the liquidation of Palestinians carried out by the intelligence unit of Elie Hobeika."
Aug. 7, 1981, London Daily Telegraph, 'Eisenhower 'ordered Congo assassination''.
Feb. 24, 2008, New York Times, 'Memories of a C.I.A. Officer Resonate in a New Era'.
1974, Stephen R. Weissman (congressional staff director, senior governance adviser for USAID, assoc. prof. University of Texas), 'American Foreign Policy in the Congo, 1960-1964', p. 109.
*) Ibid.
*) Aug. 7, 1981, London Daily Telegraph, 'Eisenhower 'ordered Congo assassination''.
Aug. 7, 1981, London Daily Telegraph, 'Eisenhower 'ordered Congo assassination''.
Feb. 10, 2015, The Guardian, 'Where Concorde once flew: the story of President Mobutu's 'African Versailles''.
April 29, 1997, Chicago Tribune, 'Victims Describe Mobutu's Long Reign of Torture'.
Ibid.
*) Ibid.
*) Nov. 10, 1987, Washington Post, 'Mobutu is Unchallenged 'Messiah' of Zaire'.
April 29, 1997, Chicago Tribune, 'Victims Describe Mobutu's Long Reign of Torture'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 13, 1967, Time, 'The Congo: Crisis Over Copper'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Aug. 18, 1981, New York Times, 'Mobutu Endures as Symbol and Pervasive'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
May 17 1997, New York Times, 'Anatomy of an Autocracy: Mobutu's 32-Year Reign'.
Ibid.
1985, Crawford Young and Thomas Edwin Turner, 'The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State', p. 326: "30 November 1973 speech of President Mobutu to the National Legislative Council."
1994, Sandra W. Meditz and Tim Merrill (Library of Congress), 'Zaire: A Country Study', p. 53. Similar narrative: Nov. 10, 1987, Washington Post, 'Mobutu is Unchallenged 'Messiah' of Zaire'.
June 18, 1978, Washington Post, 'Mobutu: Success Through Failure'.
Nov. 10, 1987, Washington Post, 'Mobutu is Unchallenged 'Messiah' of Zaire'.
Nov. 10, 1987, Washington Post, 'Mobutu is Unchallenged 'Messiah' of Zaire'.
May 17, 1997, New York Times, 'Anatomy of an Autocracy: Mobutu's 32-Year Reign'.
May 26, 1997, Washington Post, 'Swiss Still Looking for Mobutu Billions'.
June 11, 1980, Office of the Director of Central Intelligence (CIA), 'Zaire: Is It Reformable' briefing paper, p. 3.
Aug. 18, 1981, New York Times, 'Mobutu Endures as Symbol and Pervasive Force'.
2006, Uri Dan (Ariel Sharon's close confidante from 1954 until Sharon's stroke in 2006), 'Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait', p. 117: "Shimon Peres, the deputy defense minister, had forged the first links with Mobutu in 1963 and had invited him to Israel."
1987, Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 55.
*) jfc.org.il/news_journal/ 59464-2/99878-2/?lang=eng (accessed: Feb. 24, 2023; Israel Film Archive).
*) youtube.com/ watch?v=HZG7cc8skk0 (accessed: Feb. 24, 2023; footage date: "Monday, August 19th 1963"). This footage is of the same event in Israel, showing Mobutu among his soldiers with Israeli paratrooper instructors. However, different clips are being shown.
June 19, 1982, New York Times, 'Israel's Toehold in Africa May Fall Victim to War'.
June 19, 1982, New York Times, 'Israel's Toehold in Africa May Fall Victim to War'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
1987, Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 8.
2006, Uri Dan (Ariel Sharon's close confidante from 1954 until Sharon's stroke in 2006), 'Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait', p. 117: "The Zairian general admired Sharon and had sent him several messages of encouragement through their mutual friend Meir Meyuhas: "If they strip you of your post, it will be the beginning of Israel's decline." Wherever he went in Zaire, Sharon was received with honors, particularly in the rich mining region of Lubumbashi. ... One one occasion ... Meir Meyuhas helped me buy two magnificant "talking" parrots [which would cause a minor scandal]..."
*) Feb. 23, 1993, Washington Post, 'Mobutu Clings to Power in Violence-Torn Zaire'.
*) Sep. 28, 1991, Baltimore Sun, 'Unrest in Zaire Could Spell End to 26-Year Mobutu Regime'.
2012, David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman (University of Pennsylvania Press), 'China and Africa: A Century of Engagement', Chapter 10.
Ibid.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 25.
May 1, 2004, IMF ("not for distribution") report by Dhaneshwar Ghura and Benoit Marcereau, 'Political Instability and Growth in the Central African Republic' (Chapter 7 in a larger report), p. 210: "Dacko presidency (1960–65): Per capita real GDP fell by about 5.5 percent on a cumulative basis... [Ousted] in 1965 as the country faced bankruptcy there were increasing signs of tensions from the labor unions."
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 25.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 25.
2012, David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman (University of Pennsylvania Press), 'China and Africa: A Century of Engagement', Chapter 10.
June 13, 1987, AP, 'Bokassa Silent but Tearful as He Is Sentenced to Death'.
Ibid.; Dec. 21, 1986, New York Times, 'In a Gamble, Bokassa Trial is Broadcast Live'.
Dec. 17, 1986, New York Times, 'Bangui Journal; Trial Revives Memory: What was in the Freezer?'.
Ibid.
Nov. 5, 1996, Washington Post, 'Ousted dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa dies'.
Feb. 22, 1992, Tampa Bay Times, 'Jean-Bedel Bokassa'.
June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor'.
Jan. 25, 1987, Washington Post, 'Bokassa's bloody past relived in steamy African courtroom'; Dec. 15, 1986, AP, 'Court Hears Evidence on Ex-Emperor’s 14-year Rule'; Dec. 21, 1986, Washington Post, 'Bokassa, on Trial, Blames Ex-Aides'.
Oct. 1, 1979, Washington Post, 'Nightmares From Bokassa's Empire'.
Ibid.; Nov. 5 1996, Washington Post, 'Ousted dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa dies'.
Aug. 27, 2001, San Francisco Chronicle, 'Palace of horrors / Ex-dictator's children try to restore his mansion as tourist draw'.
June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor'; Jan. 25, 1987, Washington Post, 'Bokassa's bloody past relived in steamy African courtroom'; 2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 86.
Jan. 25, 1987, Washington Post, 'Bokassa's bloody past relived in steamy African courtroom'.
2003 (written in 1988), Dr. Katarina Tomasevski (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education 1998-2004), 'Education Denied: Costs and Remedies', p. 20. Cites from August 16, 1979 report of the La Mission de Constatation des Evenements de Bangui.
May 15, 1979, New York Times, 'Central African Empire Accused of Killing Students'.
Oct. 1, 1979, Washington Post, 'Nightmares From Bokassa's Empire'.
Sep. 29, 2017, somalilandsun.com, 'Somaliland: Bokasso Cannibal exemplifies the Bad Rule of African Leaders'.
Sep. 24, 1979, New York Times, 'Bokassa Successor Says Dictator Killed Children in April Massacre'. Citing the May 1979 Amnesty International report.
Ibid.
Sep. 29, 2017, somalilandsun.com, 'Somaliland: Bokasso Cannibal exemplifies the Bad Rule of African Leaders'.
Sep. 24, 1979, New York Times, 'Bokassa Successor Says Dictator Killed Children in April Massacre'.
Ibid.
Sep. 29, 2017, somalilandsun.com, 'Somaliland: Bokasso Cannibal exemplifies the Bad Rule of African Leaders'.
Sep. 24, 1979, New York Times, 'Bokassa Successor Says Dictator Killed Children in April Massacre'.
2003 (written in 1988), Dr. Katarina Tomasevski (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education 1998-2004), 'Education Denied: Costs and Remedies', p. 20.
Dec. 16, 1986, New York Times, ''Not a Saint,' Bokassa Says at his Trial'.
1990, Alex Shoumatoff, 'African Madness', p. 97.
June 22, 2017, Wahington Post, 'Opinion: In the Central African Republic, nostalgia for a leader who is'.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 137.
Aug. 27, 2001, San Francisco Chronicle, 'Palace of horrors / Ex-dictator's children try to restore his mansion as tourist draw'.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 216.
June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor'.
Ibid.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 137; June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor': "... the guard showed me a cardboard box where he said the French soldiers found the torso..."
Nov. 4, 1996, Seattle Times, 'Bokassa, Bloody African Dictator Accused Of Cannibalism, Dies At 75'.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 137; June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor' (only mentions "Massangue").
March 3, 1987, AP, 'Mutilated Human Bodies Found In Bokassa’s Freezer, Witnesses Say'.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 137.
Nov. 5 1996, New York Times, 'Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Self-Crowned Emperor Of the Central African Republic, Dies at 75'; Jan. 13, 2015, BBC, 'CAR cannibal: Why I ate man's leg'.
June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor'.
Dec. 17, 1986, New York Times, 'Bangui Journal; Trial Revives Memory: What was in the Freezer?'.
March 3, 1987, Orlando Sentinel, 'Cannibalism testimony: The former cook said he...'; March 22, 1987 AP, 'For three months, the trial of former Emperor Bokassa I has heard...'.
March 3, 1987, AP, 'Mutilated Human Bodies Found In Bokassa’s Freezer, Witnesses Say'.
Aug. 26, 2014, Daily Maverick (South Africa), 'Poetic Injustice: Untellable tales of human flesh-eating from the Central African Republic'; Aug. 25, 2016, The Economist, 'Nostalgia for a nightmare: He fed his opponents to crocodiles. Yet people miss Emperor Bokassa'.
2002, Brian Titley (professor University of Lethbridge, Canada), 'Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa', p. 35.
May 1, 2004, IMF ("not for distribution") report by Dhaneshwar Ghura and Benoit Marcereau, 'Political Instability and Growth in the Central African Republic' (Chapter 7 in a larger report), p. 210.
June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor'. The "better roads" claim comes from another source that needs to be found again.
Sep. 13, 1981, New York Times, 'For Bangui, A New Ruler with Old Problems'.
Ibid.
Aug. 23, 1971, New York Times, 'African Ruler Full of Surprises': "Bokassa ... was in New York a few weeks later [in 1970], posing with his arm around no less a capitalist than David Rockefeller, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank."
March 15, 1987, Los Angeles Times, 'Ex-Emperor’s Reign of Terror Relived'.
Aug. 27, 2001, San Francisco Chronicle, 'Palace of horrors'.
1986, Alex Shoumatoff (staff writer at The New Yorker 1978-1987), 'African Madness', p. 93.
Dec. 17, 1986, New York Times, 'Bangui Journal; Trial Revives Memory: What was in the Freezer?'; Dec. 21, 1986, Washington Post, 'Bokassa, on Trial, Blames Ex-Aides'.
Feb. 22, 1992, Tampa Bay Times, 'Jean-Bedel Bokassa'.
Jun. 13, 1987, AP, 'Bokassa Silent but Tearful as He Is Sentenced to Death'.
May 1, 2014, The New Republic, 'Hell Is an Understatement: A report from the bloody, crumbling Central African Republic'.
Ibid.
Dec. 19, 1977, Time, 'Central Africa: Mounting a Golden Throne'. Ironically, the cost of the gold-plated throne comes from other sources.
Ibid.
Feb. 22, 1992, Tampa Bay Times, 'Jean-Bedel Bokassa'.
Nov. 5 1996, Washington Post, 'Ousted dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa dies'.
March 22, 1987, AP, 'For three months, the trial of former Emperor Bokassa I has heard...'.
Ibid.
Dec. 24, 1980, UPI, 'Bokassa sentenced to death'.
Nov. 5, 1996, Washington Post, 'Ousted dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa dies'.
2020, Nathaniel K. Powell, 'France’s Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa' , pp. 230-232.
Ibid.
May 17 1981, Washington Post, 'Bokassa's Version of Giscard Link: Portrait of Paternal Relationship'.
2020, Nathaniel K. Powell, 'France’s Wars in Chad: Military Intervention and Decolonization in Africa' , pp. 230-232.
Ibid.
Sep. 24, 1979, New York Times, 'Barred by France, Bokassa Flies off for African Nation'.
Jan. 25, 1987, Washington Post, 'Bokassa's bloody past relived in steamy African courtroom'. Granted, this is a number from 1987, well after Bokassa. We might have to go back for a 1960s or 1970s source here.
July 17, 1976, New York Times, 'Israeli Asserts He Helped Amin Achieve Rule in ’71'.
1987, Prof. Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'The Israeli Connection: Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 71.
Ibid.
2018, William Stadiem, 'Madame Claude: Her Secret World of Pleasure, Privilege, and Power'.
1989, Ariel Sharon, 'Warrior: An Autobiography', p. 409.
Ibid.
June 1987, Vanity Fair, 'Fall of a Savage Emperor'.
Sep. 24, 1979, New York Times, 'Bokassa Successor Says Dictator Killed Children in April Massacre'.
Sep. 25, 1979, New York Times, 'Bokassa Arrives in Ivory Coast, Where He Has Political Asylum'.
Dec. 24, 1980, UPI, 'Bokassa sentenced to death'.
Nov. 29, 1985, AP, 'Former Emperor Says French Keeping Him Impoverished'.
Nov. 5, 1996, AP, 'Jean-Bedel Bokassa; African Leader Jailed for Abuses'.
Sep. 2, 1993, Washington Post, 'Ex-Emperor Bokassa Released from Prison'.
Dec. 1, 2010, BBC, 'Ex-President Jean-Bedel Bokassa rehabilitated by CAR'.
jcpa.org/article/israeli-ugandan-relations-in-the-time-of-idi-amin/ (accessed: March 3, 2023; Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; original linked source: "Jewish Political Studies Review 18:3-4 (Fall 2006)"): "The first course for Ugandan infantry officers concluded in Israel in July 1963, and was followed by additional courses. A military attaché was stationed at the Israeli embassy in Kampala. Courses in the intelligence field were held both in Uganda and Israel."
1992, Phares Mukasa Mutibwa, 'Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes', p. 89.
Oct. 7, 2012, The Independent of Uganda (independent.co.ug), '1964: The year that changed Uganda'
May 19, 2018, The Monitor (monitor.co.ug; Uganda), 'Adoko Nekyon and his role in the failure of Uganda'.
June 1971, Mawazo magazine (Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences at Makerere University, Uganda), 'Wanume Kibedi, Foreign Minister of Uganda' (interview by Peter Russell, pp. 3-13), p. 9 (Kibedi's sister was Amin's wife; resigned and fled Uganda in Jan. 1973 when Amin had kidnapped and murdered Kibedi's uncle Shaban Nkutu; Museveni's UN ambassador 1986-1988).
Ibid.
Aug. 17, 2003, The Independent, 'Revealed: how Israel helped Amin to take power'.
May 19, 2018, The Monitor (monitor.co.ug; Uganda), 'Adoko Nekyon and his role in the failure of Uganda': "In early 1964, Nekyon and Akena Adoko completed recruitment, from Lango, the first batch of General Service Unit staff for training in Israel."
1983, Akena Adoke, 'From Oboto to Obote', p. 263: "On the 25th day Of January, seventy-one Bob Astles led some troops To round up and kill some Langi And Acholi soldiers Who were running away. He came across my brother... “I smell” yelled Bob Astles, “The smell of Langi.” Then he glanced at my brother [and went] "Let’s go. They’re not here.""]; 1993, Jim Bailey and Garth Bundeh, 'Kenya, the National Epic; From the Pages of Drum Magazine', p. 208: "Astles [joined] the General Service Unit during Obote's first government ... working hand in hand with Akena Adoke..."
March 2005, Remigius Kintu (paper presented to the U.N. Tribunal on Rwanda, Arusha, Tanzania), 'The Truth Behind the Rwanda Tragedy'.
Jan. 27, 1971, New York Times, 'Obote Is Free to Return, New Ugandan Chief Says'.
May 19, 2018, The Monitor (monitor.co.ug; Uganda), 'Adoko Nekyon and his role in the failure of Uganda'.
1994, A. B. K. Kasozi (McGill-Queen's University Press), 'The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda: 1964-1985', p. 4.
2014, Alicia C. Decker (Ohio University Press; Fulbright Scholar), 'In Idi Amin’s Shadow': "Loyal Gould and James Leo Garrett Jr. referred to Amin as..."
1973, Colin Legum (South Africa-born The Observer journalist 1949-1991), 'Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents', p. 270.
Feb. 1, 1978, U.S. Congress: House, Committee on International Relations, 'United States - Uganda Relations', p. 34.
Sep. 26, 2021, Nationa Africa (nation.africa.com): Kenya Edition, 'How Idi Amin got away with murder in Turkana massacre'.
Ibid.
jcpa.org/article/israeli-ugandan-relations-in-the-time-of-idi-amin/ (accessed: March 3, 2023; Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; original linked source: "Jewish Political Studies Review 18:3-4 (Fall 2006)").
1975, Idi Amin press conference at the Organization of African Unity (YouTube): "With regard to my paratrooper wing, I was trained in Israel in 1964..."; Aug. 17, 2003, The Independent, 'Revealed: how Israel helped Amin to take power': "Shortly after independence Amin was sent to Israel on a training course."
jcpa.org/article/israeli-ugandan-relations-in-the-time-of-idi-amin/ (accessed: March 3, 2023; Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; original linked source: "Jewish Political Studies Review 18:3-4 (Fall 2006)").
Jan. 27, 1971, New York Times, 'Obote Is Free to Return, New Ugandan Chief Says'.
*) Ibid.
*) jcpa.org/article/israeli-ugandan-relations-in-the-time-of-idi-amin/ (accessed: March 3, 2023; Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; original linked source: "Jewish Political Studies Review 18:3-4 (Fall 2006)").
Aug. 19, 2003, The Guardian, 'Afterword: Idi Amin'; 2001, director Ian Russel, as broadcast on the UK’s Discovery Civilisation Channel (1999-2007 under that name), 'The Most Evil Men in History: Vol. I' (Idi Amin).
Aug. 19, 2003, The Guardian, 'Afterword: Idi Amin'.
Ibid.; Aug. 25, 2003, AllAfrica.com, 'Uganda: The West Refused to Lift a Finger Against Amin': "Great Britain became the first country and first European power to recognise Amin..."
February 2001, Pat Hutton and Jonathan Bloch for New African, 'The Making of Idi Amin'. Originally a chapter of: 1979, Ellen Ray and William Schaap, 'Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa'.
Ibid.; referencing: 1978, Rudolf Steiner, 'The Last Adventurer'.
Oct. 14, 2001, The Monitor (monitor.co.ug; Uganda), 'The Untold Story of a Failed Assassination: The Aftermath': "The group used to meet at the house of a prince whom Sebaduka still declines to name. However, during their trial, it emerged that the prince was David Simbwa [Ssimbwa], and many of the meetings to plot the assassination used to be at his house in Kabowa. "We were not the only ones who used to meet there. There were many people who were always there from the time [Uganda's first president King] Mutesa died [suspected poisoned in his London house by an Obote agent], up to the night I shot Obote [in 1969]," [Mohamed] Sebaduka says."
2020, Mark Leopold, 'Idi Amin: The Story of Africa's Icon of Evil', pp. 171-172.
July 17, 1976, New York Times, 'Israeli Asserts He Helped Amin Achieve Rule in ’71'.
June 27, 2016, The New Yorker, 'Idi Amin’s Israeli Connection'.
1992, Phares Mukasa Mutibwa, 'Uganda Since Independence: A Story of Unfulfilled Hopes', p. 89: "In his first press conference he gave in Dar es Salaam after the coup, Obote explicitly blamed the Israelis for the success of the coup... There is no doubt that the Israelis were instrumental in the planning of the logistics for the coup, particularly in the deployment of the mechanised equipment, and afterwards they had a high profile in the capital and its environs. They were to be seen everywhere. For example, they manned roadblocks in Kampala, and a friend of the present author was badly roughed up by them at a roadblock in Kololo."
July 17, 1976, New York Times, 'Israeli Asserts He Helped Amin Achieve Rule in ’71'.
1995, Jeffress F. Ramsay, 'Africa', p. 276: "Okello met Idi Amin [and] he told me--"always looking to steal, wary of others, not a stable man."
Sep. 15, 1972, New York Times, 'U.S. Delays Uganda Loan Over Amin Note on Jews'.
Original source for several sources: 1978, Rolf Steiner, 'The Last Adventurer'. Alternative quote: "...and most controllable one..."
No. 2, 1984, Asia and Africa Today, 'Colonialism's Three 'Godchildren': Macias (Equatorial Guinea), Idi Amin (Uganda), Bokassa (Central Africa): "Several days before the coup 700 British soldiers arrived in Kenya ostensibly for military exercises."
2001, director Ian Russel, as broadcast on the UK’s Discovery Civilisation Channel (1999-2007 under that name), 'The Most Evil Men in History: Vol. I' (Idi Amin).
Ibid.
1992, Phares Mukasa Mutibwa, 'Uganda Since Independence', p. 95.
alamy.com/jun-06-1975-lt-gen-blair-back-from-uganda-lt-gen-sir-chandos-blair-image69480543.html: "... Blair and Major Iain Grahame, who went to Uganda..." (accessed: March 21, 2023).
2001, director Ian Russel, as broadcast on the UK’s Discovery Civilisation Channel (1999-2007 under that name), 'The Most Evil Men in History: Vol. I' (Idi Amin).
May 10, 1979, New Scientist, 'The British connection: British companies - notably Pye Telecommucinations - supplied ex-President Amin's Ugandan secret police with important radio technology'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
wilken.co.ke/assets/downloads/ Wilken_Group_Limited_Profile_2014.pdf (accessed: March 21, 2023)
2014, Chapman Pincher, 'Chapman Pincher: Dangerous to Know: A Life', chapter 9.
Ibid.
Ibid.
April 9, 1978, New York Times, 'The Ugandan Connection'.
Quick examples of CIA, NSA and DOD ties or overlap of the Harris Corporation:
*) July 10, 2022, Washington Post, 'American firm drops bid for Israeli spyware following U.S. concerns': "The American defense firm L3Harris has ended talks with blacklisted Israeli spyware company, NSO Group, to buy the firm’s hacking tools..."
*) March 30, 2015, WSWS.org, 'CIA helped spy on US cell phone data': "The cell phone surveillance devices, known as “IMSI-catchers”, “dirtboxes”, or “stingrays” after a line of such devices manufactured by the Harris Corporation, masquerade as cell phone towers to collect data from nearby cell phones"
*) Board members have other ties to Lockheed, Honeywell, Ernst & Young, the MIT Corporation, the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force.
April 9, 1978, New York Times, 'The Ugandan Connection': "Last October, three of the Ugandans being trained by the Harris Corporation in Melbourne [Florida] asked for political asylum in the United States and were granted it. ... According to the refugees, 13 of this group work directly for the dreaded State Research Bureau, while four more are employed by Uganda's Ministry of Defense."
Ibid.
Sep. 11, 1978, Washington Post, 'Ugandan Plane Deal Believed Key to Israeli Spy Operation'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 1982 (shot throughout 1981), David Fanning (founding exe. producer PBS Frontline 1983-2015) for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
April 18, 1979, New York Times, 'Secret-Police Records Reveal Vast Paranoia Of Idi Amin's Regime'.
Jan. 7, 1980, Washington Post, 'McLean Man's 'Unbelievable" Exploits in the Arms Trade'.
Jan. 1982, David Fanning for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sep. 17, 1995, UPI, 'Cuba reported detaining mystery figure'.
Jan. 1982, David Fanning for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
Ibid.
2001, director Ian Russel, as broadcast on the UK’s Discovery Civilisation Channel (1999-2007 under that name), 'The Most Evil Men in History: Vol. I' (Idi Amin).
Feb. 1, 1978, U.S. Congress: House, Committee on International Relations, 'United States - Uganda Relations', p. 34.
May 27, 1979, Washington Post, 'Amin's Dungeon'.
Nov. 3, 1977, Times of Zambia, 'Female Spies for Amin operating in Lusaka'.
May 27, 1979, Washington Post, 'Amin's Dungeon'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 1982, David Fanning for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
Ibid.
May 27, 1979, Washington Post, 'Amin's Dungeon'.
April 18, 1979, New York Times, 'Secret-Police Records Reveal Vast Paranoia Of Idi Amin's Regime'.
Ibid.
May 27, 1979, Washington Post, 'Amin's Dungeon'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
2015, Pramod K. Nayer, 'Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology', p. 487.
Ibid.
2012, Madanjeet Singh (Indian Ambassador to Uganda 1977-1980 who personally dealt with Astles), 'Culture of the Sepulchre: Idi Amin's Monster Regime', p. 113.
Aug. 4, 1974, New York Times, '"It is an African 'Gulag,'" a former diplomat said.'
Ibid.
June 15, 21, 26, 1978, U.S. Senate Hearings, 'Uganda, the Human Rights Situation', p. 88. Earlier mentioned in roughly the same context: Aug. 4, 1974, New York Times, '"It is an African 'Gulag,'" a former diplomat said.': "Bodies were fed to crocodiles in the Nile River or carried to mass graves..."
*) Ibid. Earlier mentioned in roughly the same context: Aug. 4, 1974, New York Times, '"It is an African 'Gulag,'" a former diplomat said.': "bodies were ... carried to mass graves in the bush..."
March 13, 2005, The Telegraph, 'Osama, terror [croc] of Lake Victoria, is caught at last'.
Feb. 16, 2017, Newz Post (newz.ug; mainstream Ugandan news site), 'Shocking: How Amin got rid of all the disabled people in Kampala'. Original source given: Drum Magazine.
April 16, 2007, Times of India, 'They can't forget Idi Amin's Horrors'.
Aug. 4, 1974, New York Times, '"It is an African 'Gulag,'" a former diplomat said.'
April 22, 1978, Washington Post, 'Uganda: Tragedy Of Today'.
Jan. 1982, David Fanning for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
June 15, 21, 26, 1978, U.S. Senate Hearings, 'Uganda, the Human Rights Situation', p. 88.
April 22, 1978, Washington Post, 'Uganda: Tragedy Of Today'.
Aug. 4, 1974, New York Times, '"It is an African 'Gulag,'" a former diplomat said.'
April 27, 2013, NewVision.co.ug (mainstream Ugandan news site), 'Masaka mayor was slain for ''betraying'' Kabaka: Francis Walugembe, was the Mayor of Masaka in 1972. He was murdered in cold blood by Idi Amin’s Special Research Bureau'.
Feb. 1, 1978, U.S. Congress: House, Committee on International Relations, 'United States - Uganda Relations', p. 34.
Sep. 12, 1977, New York Times, 'In Uganda, Dead, Dead, Dead, Dead'.
Ibid.
Feb. 1, 1978, U.S. Congress: House, Committee on International Relations, 'United States - Uganda Relations', p. 34.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Unable to relocate source for shovels being used to kill. The Guardian article in the next note coincidentally hints to them having been used as well.
Nov. 12, 1972, New York Times, 'The African who kicked out the Asians, who said Hitler was right, who has made his country a state sinister'; Aug. 17, 2003, The Guardian, 'Blood and fear in Idi's jail'.
May 27, 1979, Washington Post, 'Amin's Dungeon'.
Ibid.
Oct. 14, 2001, The Monitor (monitor.co.ug; Uganda), 'The Untold Story of a Failed Assassination: The Aftermath'.
Sep. 15, 1972, New York Times, 'U.S. Delays Uganda Loan Over Amin Note on Jews',
Feb. 2001, Pat Hutton and Jonathan Bloch for New African, 'The Making of Idi Amin'. Originally a chapter of: 1979, Ellen Ray and William Schaap, 'Dirty Work 2: The CIA in Africa'.
Fall 2006, Jewish Political Studies Review, 18:3-4, 'Israeli-Ugandan Relations in the Time of Idi Amin'.
Sep. 15, 1972, New York Times, 'U.S. Delays Uganda Loan Over Amin Note on Jews'.
Sep. 15, 1972, New York Times, 'U.S. Delays Uganda Loan Over Amin Note on Jews'.
May 27, 1987, Washington Post, 'Uganda's Diplomat Royal'.
Sep. 7, 1975, New York Times Magazine, 'The Jailer as Seen by his Ex-Prisoner'.
Nov. 2007, World Bank Development Research Group, 'Bank Privatization in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Uganda Commercial Bank', p. 5.
Dec. 6, 2022, The Monitor (Uganda), 'East African countries enacted law to restrict Asian migration'.
Sep. 13, 1972, New York Times, 'Amin Praises Hitler for Killing of Jews'.
Sep. 15, 1972, New York Times, 'U.S. Delays Uganda Loan Over Amin Note on Jews'.
Jan. 1982 (shot throughout 1981), David Fanning (founding exe. producer PBS Frontline 1983-2015) for PBS' WGBH Boston and Central Television, 'Frank Terpil: Confessions of a Dangerous Man'.
Ibid.
August 5, 1984, Washington Post, 'New Ugandan Crackdown Said to Kill Thousands'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jul. 30, 1985, Washington Post, 'New Leader Sworn-In In Uganda'.
Jul. 30, 1985, Washington Post, 'New Leader Sworn-In In Uganda'.
1994, A. B. K. Kasozi (McGill-Queen's University Press), 'The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda: 1964-1985', p. 4.
Aug. 7, 2015, World Peace Foundation (sites.tufts.edu), 'Uganda: 2nd Obote Regime'.
Dec. 24, 2021, Haaretz, 'The Uganda files: How Israel arms brutal dictators who recruit child soldiers; Newly declassified Israeli Foreign Ministry documents show...'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
March 6, 2015 YouTube upload by "Dr Aggrey Kiyingi", 'Genocide and atrocities in Northern Uganda under Dictator Museveni (Warning: Graphic footage)'
youtube.com/watch?v=fvGfDWaG8Tk (accessed: June 28, 2023).
Ibid.
Screenshot of the article: Dec. 2, 1999, BBC, 'Burundi urged to close internment camps'.
March 6, 2015 YouTube upload by "Dr Aggrey Kiyingi", 'Genocide and atrocities in Northern Uganda under Dictator Museveni (Warning: Graphic footage)'
youtube.com/watch?v=fvGfDWaG8Tk (accessed: June 28, 2023).
Ibid.
Ibid.
*) March 11, 2021, Helen Epstein for NYbooks.com, 'The Truth About Museveni’s Crimes'.
Ibid.
March 6, 2015 YouTube upload by "Dr Aggrey Kiyingi", 'Genocide and atrocities in Northern Uganda under Dictator Museveni (Warning : Graphic footage)'
youtube.com/watch?v=fvGfDWaG8Tk (accessed: June 28, 2023; 1:13:15).
Aug. 27, 2012, Reuters, 'Uganda president promotes son, succession plan suspected'.
Nov. 9, 2017, Reuters, 'Uganda's president boosts military unit as rural support slips away'.
Ibid.
Nov. 20, 2020, BBC, 'Bobi Wine protests: Shoot to kill defended by Uganda minister'.
Ibid.
March 22, 2022, Human Rights Watch (HRW.org), '"I Only Need Justice": Unlawful Detention and Abuse in Unauthorized Places of Detention in Uganda'.
March 11, 2021, Helen Epstein for NYbooks.com, 'The Truth About Museveni’s Crimes'.
March 22, 2022, Human Rights Watch (HRW.org), '"I Only Need Justice": Unlawful Detention and Abuse in Unauthorized Places of Detention in Uganda'.
Sep. 2, 2018, the Guardian, 'Pop-star politician reaches US after Uganda 'torture': Opposition figure arrives in US for treatment after initially being detained and prevented from leaving'.
Feb. 11, 2022, BBC New Africa Facebook post, 'I was beaten, injected and forced to dance' (video, also showing the scars of a few other victims).
March 22, 2022, Reuters, ''My flesh was burning': Uganda accused of torture again'.
Feb. 10, 2021, Youtube upload by 'NTVUganda', ''Torture case: Police hit at Bobi Wine over ‘manipulation’'. youtube.com/watch?v=JWikSG2fwIw (accessed: July 11, 2023).
Ibid.
March 8, 2021, Monitor (Nigeria), 'Museveni guards holding 50 missing person'.
March 29, 2004 report, Human Rights Watch (HRW.org), 'State of Pain: Torture in Uganda', summary section.
March 22, 2022, Human Rights Watch (HRW.org), '"I Only Need Justice": Unlawful Detention and Abuse in Unauthorized Places of Detention in Uganda'.
Ibid.
Feb. 2, 2021, Reuters, 'Ugandan opposition say 3,000 of their supporters seized since November'.
blackstarnews.com/about-us-html/ (accessed: July 11 2023): "Publisher: Milton Allimadi... internships at ... The Wall Street Journal. ... Freelance reporter for The New York Times, a reporter and deputy managing editor with The City Sun, before founding The Black Star News. ... Adjunct Professor of African History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia. [Etc.]" Credentials included, because the site and article spacing looks terrible.
Ibid.: "Milton Allimadi ... can be heard [at] “Black Star News Show” on WBAI 99.5 FM New York Radio or www.wbai.org." WBAI is a station of the "liberal CIA"-funded Pacifica Radio.
Ibid.: "Several scoops: ... a major corruption scandal where Uganda’s foreign minister earned about $30 million from the United Nations through a fraudulently acquired contract."
Feb. 13, 2021, BlackStarNews.com, 'More than 7,000 Ugandans "Disappeared" by Gen. Museveni’s Totalitarian Regime'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 15, 2003, allafrica.com, 'Uganda: Museveni Checks Out Israeli Arms'; Nov. 20, 2011, Haaretz, 'What Are the Former Mossad Chief's Business Ties to Uganda?'; Sep. 14, 2018, AfricaIntelligence.com, 'Museveni turns to Israel for military equipment'.
Nov. 20, 2011, Haaretz, 'What Are the Former Mossad Chief's Business Ties to Uganda? Rafi Eitan...'.
Ibid.
Aug. 16, 2022, Haaretz, 'Israeli Firm Cellebrite Sold Phone-hacking Tools to Uganda's Brutal Dictatorship'.
Ibid.
Jan. 24, 2021, Monitor (Nigeria), 'Activists in push to block sale of Israeli firearms to'.
Nov. 9, 2017, Reuters, 'Uganda's president boosts military unit as rural support slips away'.
Ibid.
March 22, 2022, Human Rights Watch (HRW.org), '"I Only Need Justice": Unlawful Detention and Abuse in Unauthorized Places of Detention in Uganda'.
Aug. 27, 2012, Reuters, 'Uganda president promotes son, succession plan suspected'.
Oct. 4, 2022, Reuters, 'Uganda removes president's son from army role after Kenya invasion tweets'.
July 4, 2016, Washington Post, 'Netanyahu commemorates Entebbe hostage-rescue mission on Ugandan runway'.
Feb. 3, 2018, Washington Post, 'Ex-Israeli spymaster, who helped capture Adolf Eichmann, releases video in support of German far-right part'.
May 29, 2023, Politico, 'Biden calls for immediate repeal of Uganda’s anti-gay law'.
April 23, 2021, ABC News, 'Biden admin. grants 'blanket authorization' to fly Pride flag at embassies; The move overturns the Trump administration's effective ban on Pride flag'.
June 8, 2023, pen.org, 'The PEN Ten: An Interview with Stella Nyanzi'.
*) Jan. 29, 2022, The Guardian, 'PEN prize-winning Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija illegally detained and tortured; The author is being held after tweets criticising President Yoweri Museveni and his son';
*) pen-deutschland.de/pen-welcomes-tortured-ugandan-author-kakwenza-rukirabashaija-to-germany/ (publication date: Feb. 23, 2022).
*) 2006-2021, Ford Foundation grantee list: annual donations to the Pen American Center ranging from several hundred thousand to several million dollars.
*) opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/freedom-you-can-t-take-granted (publication date: Aug. 28, 2013): "At the PEN American Center, a grantee of the Open Society Foundations...".
2022, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, 'PEN Journeys: Memoir of Literature on the Line' (Amazon.nl description as of Oct. 1, 2023): "President of one of the large centers (PEN USA West) during the year of Tiananmen Square and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, as Chair of PEN International's Writers in Prison Committee (1993-1997), as International Secretary (2004-2007), and continuing as an International Vice President since 1996. She has also served on the Boards and as Vice President of PEN American Center (2008-2015) and the PEN Faulkner Foundation (1996-2021)."
crisisgroup.org/en/about/board.aspx (accessed: Jan. 4, 2016): "Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Former International Secretary of PEN International... George Soros...".
Sep. 9, 2016, bigeye.ug, 'Bobi Wine mocks rival musicians after his music features in “Queen of Katwe”'.
Sep. 7, 2010, The Guardian, 'George Soros gives $100 million to Human Rights Watch'.
*) 2006-2021, Ford Foundation grantee list: annual donations to HRW arrange from several hundred thousand to several million dollars.
May 31, 2023, Haaretz, 'Who Faked an Israeli Magazine to Trash ‘Ukrainian Nazis’?': "Leonid Nevzlin, who also holds 25 percent of the shares in Haaretz..."
March 12, 2012, Business Insider, 'HART: How #Kony2012 Just Became The Most Viral Video Of All Time'.
March 8, 2012, New Statesman, 'Kony 2012: don't be fooled'.
Oct. 18, 2011, CNN, 'Obama orders U.S. troops to help chase down African ‘army’ leader'.
March 23, 2014, New York Times, 'More U.S. Troops to Aid Uganda Search for Kony'.
March 2, 2012, AllAfrica.com,'Uganda: UPDF in Kony Hunt Accused of Rape, Looting'.
May 15, 2017, Human Rights Watch, 'Central African Republic: Ugandan Troops Harm Women, Girls; Repeated Sexual Exploitation and Abuse'.
*) June 14, 2014, NPR, 'The 'Kony 2012' Effect: Recovering From A Viral Sensation': "Invisible Children also began a consulting practice to teach others how to launch campaigns like "Kony 2012." So far, they've worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation..."
*) donations.vipulnaik.com, 'Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donations made to Invisible Children': "750,000.00 ... 2014-3-16 ... to support Invisible Children... http://www.invisiblechildren.com/..."
intl-crisis-group.org/home/index_id_1318_l_1.htm (site as it was on Dec. 17, 2001; accessed: July 15, 2023): "John Prendergast is a Special Adviser to the President at the International Crisis Group. Prior to joining ICG, he was a Special Advisor to the U.S. State Department focusing on conflict resolution in Africa. He also was Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council."
March 14, 2012 YouTube upload by ABC News, 'George Clooney [and John Prendergast] Discusses KONY and Uganda, Sudan and His Upcoming Testimony to U.S. Senate (2012)': "[Prendergast, who was in Kony 2012:] [Quoted] [Clooney, who was also in Kony 2012:] It's amazing what political will can do."
July 11, 2003, CBC.ca, 'Bush praises Uganda's fight against AIDS'.
Sep. 24, 2008, newvision.co.ug, 'Museveni a strong leader, says Bush'.
June 14, 1981, Seymour M. Hersh for New York Times Magazine, 'The Qaddafi Connection'.
Ibid.: "Terpil explained that one of the guests on the barge was Carlos Ramirez, known to police throughout the world as ''the Jackal''... Terpil also told Mulcahy that Ramirez was living in barracks No. 3 at the former Wheelus United States Air Force base in Libya. Terpil seemed awed by Ramirez, who was accompanied at the party by Sayad Qaddafi, chief of Libyan intelligence, identified by Terpil as Qaddafi's cousin..."
March 22, 1981, Boston Globe Magazine, 'They were soldiers of fortune from the United States, ex-CIA men and Green Berets who journeyed to this Libyan palace to further the cause of International terrorism'.
Ibid.
Nov. 7, 1983, Jim Hougan for WAMU-FM NPR Network, 'Confessions of a Dangerous Man', Frank Terpil interview, 58:00.
March 22, 1981, Boston Globe Magazine, 'They were soldiers of fortune from the United States, ex-CIA men and Green Berets who journeyed to this Libyan palace to further the cause of International terrorism'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Nov. 7, 1983, Jim Hougan for WAMU-FM NPR Network, 'Confessions of a Dangerous Man', Frank Terpil interview, 58:00.
Ibid.
Ibid.: "Sometime in late May of 1976, Wilson went a step further: He telephoned Theodore G. Shackley, a prominent C.I.A. official who was then serving as the assistant to the deputy director for clandestine operations... Wilson arranged a meeting at Shackley's home a few nights later after work... Shackley was introduced by Wilson to Mulcahy and recalled knowing his father... Wilson told Shackley that he and Terpil were planning to travel to Tripoli and meet with Qaddafi. ''By now I'm convinced that the whole thing is an agency front,'' Mulcahy recalls. ''I thought Ed was in bed with the C.I.A.'' ... Shackley insisted that at no time did Wilson receive any authority or sanction from the C.I.A. for his work in Libya. He said his contacts with Wilson were solely for the purpose of obtaining any stray bits of intelligence...
In June [1976], when the 10 prototype timers were needed, another series of meetings was set up in a Virginia bar involving three of Wilson's employees, along with William Weisenburger, then an active-duty C.I.A. official... Thomas G. Clines, then a senior official in the C.I.A.'s Office of Training, also was in the bar that night, sitting with Ed Wilson. ... Clines was well known inside the agency for his closeness to Ted Shackley. Like the others, Clines had played a role in the Bay of Pigs. After Shackley's retirement from the C.I.A. in 1979, he and Clines would set up a consulting firm. ...
Everybody smelled the big money that night in the bar. Mulcahy later learned that the final contract with Qaddafi called for a total payment of $35 million for 500,000 timers..."
Ibid.: "Wilson and Shackley had worked together in 1960 on the Bay of Pigs operation."
1994, David Corn, 'Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades', pp. 197, 200.
2005, Daniele Ganser, 'Nato's Secret Armies', p. 74: "'It was Ted Shackley...', an internal report of the Italian anti-terrorism unit confirmed, 'who presented the chief of the Masonic Lodge to Alexander Haig [who] authorized Gelli in the fall of 1969 to recruit 400 high ranking Italian and NATO officers into his lodge'. (60)"
June 14, 1981, Seymour M. Hersh for New York Times Magazine, 'The Qaddafi Connection': "Wilson and Shackley had worked together in 1960 on the Bay of Pigs operation."
Ibid.
Nov. 7, 1983, Jim Hougan for WAMU-FM NPR Network, 'Confessions of a Dangerous Man', Frank Terpil interview.
Oct. 27, 1982, UPI, 'A former Green Beret who worked for the CIA...'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Nov. 7, 1983, Jim Hougan for WAMU-FM NPR Network, 'Confessions of a Dangerous Man', Frank Terpil interview.
Ibid.
Oct. 21, 1991, New York Times, 'A High-Tech Watergate'.
2024, Christian Hansen and Zachary Treitz, 'American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders', part 2, 41:45, words of homicide detective John Powers, who looked into the 1981 triple murder tied to the Cabazon Reserve.
1993, Elliot Richardson, Bill Hamilton a.o., 'INSLAW Rebuttal of the Bua Report' (PDF).
Feb. 14, 1994, Elliot Richardson, Bill Hamilton a.o., 'Addendum to INSLAW's Analysis and Rebuttal of the Bua Report', pp. 1-2, 4.
1976 annual report, Ford Foundation, p. 222: "Institute tor Law and Social Research (Washington, D.C.): $68,000."
2024, Christian Hansen and Zachary Treitz, 'American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders', part 4, final section.
April 1977, U.S. Congress: House, 'Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifty Congress, First Session, Part 3,' pp. 13, 22, 545-548, 554, 571-572.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
May 2019, Dawning.org (published by major mainstream media and with clients as the World Bank), 'Ortega’s Most Wanted', PDF p. 3: "Vice President Murillo issued an order offering us $5,000 per kill during the protests. But I refused to participate in that massacre.” ... A former Nicaraguan police officer, he currently lives in Costa Rica. After refusing orders, he was captured and taken to El Chipote prison in April 2018. “Everyone was naked and crying.” Over the course of sixteen days he was raped, mutilated and suffered electroshocks to his genitals. During his torture three toenails were removed, his jaw dislocated, and two teeth yanked out."
Sep. 18, 1980, Washington Post, 'Exiled Somoza Was 'Last Marine' Of U.S. Occupation Started in 1912'.
Ibid.
April 1977, U.S. Congress: House, 'Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifty Congress, First Session, Part 3,' p. 547.
Ibid.
Ibid.
April 1977, U.S. Congress: House, 'Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, Ninety-fifty Congress, First Session, Part 3,' p. 547.
June 3, 1973, New York Times, 'Beyond the Howard Hunt of June 17'.
Jan. 18, 1987, Peter Maas for the New York Times, 'Oliver North\s Strange Recruits'.
Aug. 20, 1979, Washington Post, 'PLO, Israel Compete for Latin Allies '.
Ibid.
1987, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (University of Haifa), 'Who Israel Arms and Why', p. 90.
Aug. 20, 1979, Washington Post, 'PLO, Israel Compete for Latin Allies '.
Sep. 20, 1977, Washington Post, 'Nicaragua Lifts State of Siege'.
Aug. 20, 1979, Washington Post, 'PLO, Israel Compete for Latin Allies '.
Feb. 9, 1979, Washington Post, 'U.S. Retaliates Against Somoza, Cuts Back Aid'.
Dec. 14, 2000, ABC News, 'Controversial 'School of the Americas' Closes'.
April 1, 2018, New York Times, 'Efraín Rios Montt, Guatemalan Dictator Convicted of Genocide, Dies at 91'.
March 20, 1986, UPI, 'Thumbnail sketches of Nicaraguan officials and Contra leaders'; April 10, 1985, State Department "resource paper", 'Groups of the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance: Who Are They?', p. 10.
cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp87m00539r001802760014-0 (released on Sep. 15, 2009; accessed: Oct. 9, 2024).
May 22, 1983, Washington Post, 'U.S. Prizes Its School For Latin Military'.
March 8, 1985, Facts on File World News Digest, 'Contra Atrocities Reported'.
May 3, 1991, New York Times, 'A Man of Hate Meets His Violent Destiny'.
Aug. 27, 1996, NPR, 'California Reporter Alleges CIA Approval of Drug Ring'.
Sep. 8, 1987, Associated Press, 'Kemp Says Honduran President Supports Aid to Contras'.
April 18, 1991, Col. Sam Dickens for Roll Call, 'Premature Hero Status'.
May-July 2010, Volume 11, Issue 11, American Security Council Foundation News Review, as written by Henry A. Fisher, ASCF president.
Dec. 17, 2000, Washington Post, 'Critics Called Facility a Training Ground for Latin Despots'.
May 22, 1983, Washington Post, 'U.S. Prizes Its School For Latin Military'.
Feb. 28, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Said to be Part of Guns-for-Drugs Deal'.
Ibid.
Dec. 17, 2000, Washington Post, 'Critics Called Facility a Training Ground for Latin Despots'.
July 2, 1980, Washington Post, 'Salvadoran Rightist Eludes Ban Against Entering U.S.'.
1999, Gary Webb, 'Dark Alliance', p. 258.
Feb. 25, 1985, AP, 'Mystery Millions: Repercussions from Washington to San Salvador'.
March 22, 1985, Los Angeles Times, 'Ex-Contra Linked to Slaying of Salvador Bishop': "Mario Sandoval Alarcon, who was helping D’Aubuisson... “They trained people for the death squads at Sandoval’s farm,” he said.""
Dec. 16, 1983, New York Times, 'Foreign Affairs'.
July 2, 2009, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA.org), 'Guatemalan Democracy: Hanging on By its Fingernails'; Sep. 2, 2015, Yahoo News, 'Otto Perez, Guatemalan crime-fighter turned suspect'.
May 22, 1983, Washington Post, 'U.S. Prizes Its School For Latin Military'.
Aug. 8, 2016, National Catholic Reporter, 'Guatemalan inmate, convicted of bishop's murder, killed in prison'.
Dec. 17, 2000, Washington Post, 'Critics Called Facility a Training Ground for Latin Despots'.
Sep. 22, 1996, New York Times, 'Old U.S. Army Manuals for Latin Officers Urged Rights Abuses'.
Dec. 12, 1986, Washington Post, 'Israeli Economy Depends on Nation's Role as Arms Exporter'; Feb. 26, 1987, Washington Post, '3 Groups Channeled Arms to the COntras after Ban' (Singlaub, Secord, and Ronald J. Martin, a Miami arms broker).
May 16, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Called 'CIA's Man' in Court Papers': "Noriega also passed hundreds of thousands of dollars from the CIA, at Casey's direction, to maverick contra leader Eden Pastora until he fell out of favor with the United States, the document says."
March 20, 1986, UPI, 'Thumbnail sketches of Nicaraguan officials and Contra leaders'.
March 22, 1985, Los Angeles Times, 'Ex-Contra Linked to Slaying of Salvador Bishop'.
Ibid.
Feb. 28, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Said to be Part of Guns-for-Drugs Deal'.
June 6, 1987, Los Angeles Times, 'Big Secord Arms Sale Markups Told: Gouging of Contras Seen as Hakim’s Data Conflicts With General’s Story'.
June 14, 1987, Los Angeles Times, 'Ghosts of CIA Haunt Hearings'.
1999, Gary Webb, 'Dark Alliance', p. 258.
Feb. 25, 1985, AP, 'Mystery Millions: Repercussions from Washington to San Salvador'.
Aug. 27, 1996, NPR, 'California Reporter Alleges CIA Approval of Drug Ring'.
May 1, 1989, People magazine, 'John Hull, Once Oliver North's Man in Costa Rica, Is Now Accused of Running Guns and Drugs'.
Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General L. Britt Snider, 'Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. Volume 2: The Contra Story', pp. 319-324.
Sep. 27, 1990, New York Times, 'Michael Harari, Israeli Agent Likened to James Bond, Dies at 87'.
Jan. 7, 1990, David H. Halevy and Neil C. Livingstone for the Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy' (about Mike Harari).
Sep. 27, 1990, New York Times, 'Michael Harari, Israeli Agent Likened to James Bond, Dies at 87'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 7, 1990, David H. Halevy and the CIA-Mossad-tied Neil C. Livingstone for the Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy' (about Mike Harari).
Ibid.
Ibid.
June 1, 2017, Ynetnews.com, 'Former Panama dictator's secret ties to Israel': "1968, when Harari travelled to Panama...
Ibid.
Jan. 7, 1990, Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy'; Sep. 27, 2014, New York Times, 'Michael Harari, Israeli Agent Likened to James Bond, Dies at 87'.
June 1, 2017, Ynetnews.com, 'Former Panama dictator's secret ties to Israel'.
Jan. 7, 1990, Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy'.
Jan. 7, 1990, David H. Halevy and the CIA-Mossad-tied Neil C. Livingstone for the Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy'.
June 1, 2017, Ynetnews.com, 'Former Panama dictator's secret ties to Israel'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 3, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Sought in Panama May Have Been Alerted to U.S. Invasion'.
Feb. 1990, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, p. 5, 'What You Won't Read About Michael Harari, Noriega's Israeli Adviser Who Got Away'.
Sep. 22, 2014, YnetNews.com, 'Mossad legend Mike Harari dies at 87'. ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4573644,00.html
Dec. 29, 1989, Washington Post, 'Top Aides of Noriega Arrested; Banks Reopened'.
June 1, 2017, Haaretz, 'Top Noriega Associates Captured; Deposed Dictator Remains in Vatican Embassy Hidy-Hole'.
Jan. 3, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Sought in Panama May Have Been Alerted to U.S. Invasion'.
Dec. 29, 1989, New York Times, 'After Noriega: Noriega's Advisor; G.I.'s in Panama Capture Israeli Regarded as Top Noriega Adviser'.
July 29, 1990, Los Angeles Times, 'Keeping the Faith While Spilling the Beans': "We should remind the authors that both Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko were given their paratroopers’ wings in the 1960s by Israeli prime ministers in official state ceremonies, not by private individuals."
June 1, 2017, Ynetnews.com, 'Former Panama dictator's secret ties to Israel'. The picture is included ad explained in this artice.
June 1, 2017, Haaretz, 'The Mossad Agent Who Was Second Fiddle to Panama's Dictator'.
March 25, 2021, Haaretz, 'The Zionist James Bond? How a Mossad Agent Helped a Brutal Dictator Retain Power; Declassified Foreign Ministry documents shed light on the secret ties woven by an Israeli businessman and Mossad agent with the military dictatorship that ruled Panama for 20 years'.
Aug. 13, 1977, Washington Post, 'Panama's Torrijos Listens to Advice, But He's in Control'.
Aug. 2, 1981, Washington Post, 'Torrijos, Who Won Canal Zone For Panama, Dies in Air Crash'.
Aug. 13, 1977, Washington Post, 'Panama's Torrijos Listens to Advice, But He's in Control'.
Feb. 17, 1977, New York Times, 'For Panama, Talks With U.S. Come at a Time of Discontent'.
Aug. 2, 1987, New York Times, 'Torrijos's Legacy Lingers in Panama'.
Aug. 2, 1981, Washington Post, 'Torrijos, Who Won Canal Zone For Panama, Dies in Air Crash'.
Oct. 12, 1978, New York Times, 'Gen. Torrijos Turns Over Executive Powers as Panama Elects President'.
Nov. 1, 1990, Washington Monthly, 'In the Time of the Tyrants: Panama, 1968-1989.'
Feb 1990, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, p. 5, 'What You Won't Read About Michael Harari, Noriega's Israeli Adviser Who Got Away'. Cites local ADL and B'nai B'rith authorities.
May 4, 1988, New York Times, 'U.S. Reportedly Knew of Noriega Role in Killing'.
March 5, 1979, Inquiry, 'A new Watergate revelation: The White House Death Squad'.
Feb. 17 1978, Washington Post, 'Brother of Torrijos Is Indicted in U.S. In Drug Smuggling'.
March 20, 1988, Washington Post, 'Noriega's Arms Indictment Stalled in '80'.
May 16, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Called 'CIA Man' in Court Papers'.
Aug. 20, 1979, Washington Post, 'PLO, Israel Compete for Latin Allies'
Feb. 9, 1979, Washington Post, 'U.S. Retaliates Against Somoza, Cuts Back Aid'.
Aug. 20, 1979, Washington Post, 'PLO, Israel Compete for Latin Allies'.
April 29 and July 23, 1986 hearings, U.S. Congress: House, 'Human Rights and Political Developments in Panama', p. 42. Words of former U.S. ambassador to Panama James Vaughn: "I knew General Torrijos quite well [and] he used to refer to him in English - to Noriega - as "my gangster.""
Jan. 19, 1991, Washington Post, 'Prosecutors List CIA, Army Payments to Noriega'.
Jan. 16, 1990, Los Angeles Times, 'Noriega’s U.S. Intelligence Ties Could Vex Prosecution'.
Jan. 19, 1991, New York Times, 'U.S. Admits Payments to Noriega'.
March 1988, U.S. Congres: House hearings, 'Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations for 1989' report, p. 907: "[ELLIOTT] ABRAMS: ... One in 1965 and one in 1967 at the Army School of the Americas. Both of these were three-week courses."
Jan. 5, 1990, Washington Post, 'Noriega, U.S. Worked Closely for Years': "chief of military intelligence from 1970-83"
Jan. 19, 1991, New York Times, 'U.S. Admits Payments to Noriega'.
Ibid.
Jan. 19, 1991, Washington Post, 'Prosecutors List CIA, Army Payments to Noriega'.
Dec. 10, 1991, Washington Post, 'Witness: Noriega Moved $19.3 Million via BCCI'.
Jan. 7, 1990, David H. Halevy and Neil C. Livingstone for the Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy' (about Mike Harari).
Readers can find biographical information of Neil Livingstone in ISGP's American Security Council and AFIO/OSS Society articles and accompanying membership lists.
Jan. 7, 1990, David H. Halevy and Neil C. Livingstone for the Washington Post, 'Noriega's Pet Spy' (about Mike Harari).
May 16, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Called 'CIA's Man' in Court Papers'.
Oct. 11, 1987, Washington Post, 'Why is Elliott Abrams Picking on Panama's Noriega?'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
July 1989 issue, Penthouse magazine, 'The remarkable life and brutal death of Adler Berriman Seal...'.
Jan. 19, 1991, New York Times, 'U.S. Admits Payments to Noriega'.
Dec. 24, 1989, Washington Post, 'The Tales Noriega Could Tell'.
May 16, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Called 'CIA Man' in Court Papers'.
June 1, 2017, Ynetnews.com, 'Former Panama dictator's secret ties to Israel': "1968, when Harari travelled to Panama...
Jan. 3, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Sought in Panama May Have Been Alerted to U.S. Invasion'.
March 20, 1988, Washington Post, 'Noriega's Arms Indictment Stalled in '80'.
June 12, 1986, New York Times, 'Panama Strongman Said to Trade in Drugs, Arms and Illicit Money'.
Ibid.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', p. 137. Testimony of Jose Blandon.
Ibid.
Feb. 11, 1988 Washington Post, 'Noriega Approved Arms to Sandinistas, Panel Told'.
March 20, 1988, Washington Post, 'Noriega Arms Indictment Stalled in '80'; July 18, 1986, Los Angeles Times, 'He Sees Plot Aimed at Canal Control : Accusations Put Spotlight on Panama’s Strongman'.
Ibid.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Oct. 11, 1987, Washington Post, 'Why is Elliott Abrams Picking on Panama's Noriega?'.
Feb. 11, 1988 Washington Post, 'Noriega Approved Arms to Sandinistas, Panel Told'.
April 1, 1992, Washington Post, 'Drug Trial of Noriega Nears End as U.S. Denounces him as a "Rotten Cop"'.
Nov. 13, 1991, Washington Post, 'Diplomats Supplied Drug Lords' Cars'.
Oct. 4, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Met with Drug Barons, Trial Told'.
Oct. 6, 1991, Washington Post, 'Case Against Noriega Buffeted by Inconsistency'.
Oct. 4, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Met with Drug Barons, Trial Told'.
Ibid.
Oct. 4, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Met with Drug Barons, Trial Told'; Oct. 18, 1991, AP, 'Air traffic controller says drug planes were hazards'.
Sep. 17, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Drug Pilot Links Noriega to Payoffs'.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', pp. 207-208.
Unable to relocate source. But Rodriguez's crash, broken legs and hospitalization were confirmed by Jose Blandon at the Kerry Committee. Rodriguez's crash also is mentioned in articles as these: Sep. 17, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Drug Pilot Links Noriega to Payoffs'.
Ibid., p. 141. Testimony of Jose Blandon.
Sep. 17, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Drug Pilot Links Noriega to Payoffs'.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Ibid.
Sep. 17, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Drug Pilot Links Noriega to Payoffs'.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', p. 208.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Ibid.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), pp. 91 (Jose Blandon testimony), 205-206 (Floyd Carlton testimony).
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', pp. 210-211.
Sep. 24, 1991, Washington Post, 'Former Aide Says he Gave Noriega 'Drug Money''.
Ibid.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama'. Feb. 9 testimony of Jose Blandon.
Ibid. French prostitutes also discussed in: Oct. 4, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Met with Drug Barons, Trial Told'.
Oct. 18, 1991, AP, 'Air traffic controller says drug planes were hazards'.
Oct. 18, 1991, Los Angeles Times, 'Noriega’s Agents Opened Skies to Drug Planes, Air Controller Says'.
Oct. 18, 1991, AP, 'Air traffic controller says drug planes were hazards'; Sep. 17, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Drug Pilot Links Noriega to Payoffs'.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Ibid.
1989, Kerry Committee Report, p. 111, testimony of Jose Blandon.
Aug. 19, 1983, Latinnews.com, 'Panama: Noriega takes over National Guard': "Paredes was trained in Nicaragua in the days of Anastasio Somoza Debayle."
May 23, 1983, Washington Post, 'U.S. Prizes Its School For Latin Military'.
Feb. 28, 1991, Washington Post, 'Noriega Said to be Part of Guns-for-Drugs Deal'.
March 1, 1991, Washington Post, 'Witness Against Noriega is Killed in Car Crash'.
Ibid.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Oct. 25, 1991, Washington Post, '4th Witness Testifies Noriega met with Cartel'.
2016, Juan Pablo Escobar, 'Pablo Escobar: My Father', pp. 135-137.
Nov. 19, 1991, Washington Post, 'Ex-Envoy Says Cartel Gave Noriega $10 Million'.
Nov. 20, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Trafficker Describes Noriega's Links to Drug Cartel'.
Nov. 19, 1991, Washington Post, 'Ex-Envoy Says Cartel Gave Noriega $10 Million'.
Nov. 20, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Trafficker Describes Noriega's Links to Drug Cartel'.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
March 5, 1996, Washington Post, 'Drug Traffickers Say Cartel Bribed a Noriega Accuser'.
Ibid.
Nov. 28, 1995, Washington Post, ''Star' Witness Emerges as Key Figure in Noriega's Quest for a Retrial'.
March 5, 1996, Tampa Bay Times, 'Key witness was bribed, Noriega's attorneys argue'.
March 28, 1996, Tampa Bay Times, 'Judge rules Gen. Noriega not entitled to new trial'.
Ibid.
Nov. 28, 1995, Washington Post, ''Star' Witness Emerges as Key Figure in Noriega's Quest for a Retrial'.
Nov. 24, 1991, Washington Post, 'Government Gambled in Turning Cartel Figure in Noriega Case'.
Nov. 20, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Trafficker Describes Noriega's Links to Drug Cartel'.
Ibid.
Nov. 24, 1991, Washington Post, 'Government Gambled in Turning to Cartel Figure in Noriega Case'.
April 8, 1993, Seattle Times, 'The U.S. Drug Case Against Cuba -- Smuggling Probe Names Raul Castro, Other Officials'.
July 21, 1998, U.S. Congress: House, Committee on International Relations, p. 29, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher: "Fidel Castro has over the years denied over and over again that Robert Vesco is there. And then they agree that he is there. ... Vesco is the man who helped organized the distribution system for the drug cartel..."
Feb. 5, 1991, PBS: Frontline, 'Cuba and Cocaine'.
Sep. 12, 1983, UPI, 'Vesco middleman for cocaine shipments'.
March 6 2016, The Observer, 'Frank Terpil: How a CIA spy went rogue to court the world’s worst dictators'.
Sept. 17, 1995, UPI, 'Cuba reported detaining mystery figure'.
April 8, 1993, Seattle Times, 'The U.S. Drug Case Against Cuba -- Smuggling Probe Names Raul Castro, Other Officials'.
Nov. 21, 1991, Washington Post, 'High-Ranking Cuban Officials Aided Cocaine Cartel, Noriega Trial is Told'.
Kerry Committee Report, p. 107.
Feb. 5, 1991, PBS: Frontline, 'Cuba and Cocaine'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
July 8, 1989, New York Times, '4 Cuban Officers Sentenced To Die for Drug Trafficking'.
July 14, 1989, New York Times 'Cuban General and Three Others Executed for Sending Drugs to U.S'.
Dec. 10, 1991, Washington Post, 'Witness: Noriega Moved $19.3 Million via BCCI'.
July 11-12, 14, 1988, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: The Cartel, Haiti and Central America', p. 439: Sep. 30, 1988 deposition of Amjad Awan.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Kerry Committee hearings, p. 80, Jose Blandon testimony.
Late May 1985, Latin America Regional Reports: Mexico & Central America, 'In Brief'.
June 8, 1987, Washinton Post, 'Panama Leader Accused of Role in Vote Fraud'; July 28, 1987, Los Angeles Times, 'Rebel Panama Colonel Seized in Home Raid'.
Jan. 19, 1988, New York Times, 'Panamanian Chief Dismisses Aide Seeking Political Deal'.
Feb. 1, 1988, Time, 'Panama Moving Against The General: Noriega rejects a U.S.-backed plan to make him step down'.
Ibid.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Kerry Committee hearings, p. 80, Jose Blandon testimony.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 88.
Ibid., pp. 90-91.
Ibid., p. 100.
Ibid., p. 91.
Ibid., p. 94
Ibid., p. 209.
Ibid., pp. 140-141.
Ibid., pp. 88-89.
Ibid., p. 91.
Ibid., pp. 93-94.
2016, Juan Pablo Escobar, 'Pablo Escobar: My Father', pp. 135-137.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Kerry Committee hearings, p. 101, Jose Blandon testimony.
Feb. 7, 1992, AP, 'U.S. Drug Agent Says Noriega Helped Fight Cocaine Traffickers'; Feb. 10, 1992, AP. 'DEA Witness Underscores Confusion On Key Lab Raid'.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Oct. 9, 2003, La Prensa, 'Condenan a ex secretario de Noriega' ('Ex-secretary of Noriega sentenced'): "The former executive secretary of the extinct Defense Forces command, Lieutenant Colonel Julian Melo Borbúa, was sentenced to 54 months in prison for the crime of drug trafficking."
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Kerry Committee hearings, p. 102, Jose Blandon testimony.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Ibid.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Kerry Committee hearings, pp. 100-107, Jose Blandon testimony.
Jan. 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega'.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Kerry Committee hearings, p. 105, Jose Blandon testimony.
Feb. 7, 1992, AP, 'U.S. Drug Agent Says Noriega Helped Fight Cocaine Traffickers' (Feb. 6 testimony of DEA agent James Bramble); Feb. 10, 1992, AP. 'DEA Witness Underscores Confusion On Key Lab Raid'.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', p. 218.
Ibid., pp. 100-107.
March 23, 1989, Los Angeles Times, 'New U.S. Charges Link Drug Cartel to Killings'.
July 28, Sep. 23, 29, and Oct. 5, 1988, Congressional Committee on the Judiciary, Enforcement of Narcotics, Firearms, and Money Laundering Laws, p. 252: "06-25-84: ... The plane is met by Federico Vaughan, Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Gacha, aka "The Mexican" [also of the Medellin Cartel], and others. Approximately 666 kilograms of cocaine are loaded onto the aircraft. The C-123K is refueled with 2,000 gallons of aviation fuel. Photos are taken with hidden cameras installed by the CIA."
March 22, 1985, UPI, 'U.S. says Nicaragua trafficking in drugs'.
July 29, 1988, AP, 'DEA Agent: White House Leaked Cocaine Sting To Implicate Sandinistas'.
Ibid.
Sep. 29, 1996, Baltimore Sun, 'The CIA-drug connection is still covered up Contra's role in drug smuggling was known as early as 1987'.
March 23, 1989, Los Angeles Times, 'New U.S. Charges Link Drug Cartel to Killings'.
2016, Juan Pablo Escobar, 'Pablo Escobar: My Father', pp. 135-137.
2007, James Mollison and ‎Rainbow Nelson, 'The Memory of Pablo Escobar', p. 192: "Since her birth in May 1984, a month after he fled to Panama to escape the clampdown following Lara Bonilla's murder..."; Aug. 7, 2018, Yahoo, 'Where Is Pablo Escobar's Daughter Now? New Details On Manuela Escobar': "Manuela was born on May 24." Other sources say May 25.
Sep. 25, 1990, Washington Post, 'What Won't Be Told at Noriega's Trial'.
Ibid.
Nov. 20, 1991, Washington Post, 'Convicted Trafficker Describes Noriega's Links to Drug Cartel'.
Nov. 24, 1991, Washington Post, 'Government Gambled in Turning Cartel Figure in Noriega Case'.
Unfortunately, the author lost both the source and the details for this claim. The source is believed to be situated somewhere in the Washington Post archive.
July 28, 1991, Washington Post, 'Panama: Dirty Business as Usual'.
May 24, 1988, Washington Post, 'Documents on Noriega Drug Ties Missing, Informer Alleges'.
Ibid.
May 24, 1988, Washington Post, 'Documents on Noriega Drug Ties Missing, Informer Alleges'.
Dec. 24, 1989, Washington Post, 'The Tales Noriega Could Tell'.
Jan. 5, 1990, Washington Post, 'Noriega, U.S. Worked Closely for Years'
Feb. 11, 1987, Washington Post, 'Top Aide Retires, Assails Abrams'.
Jan. 5, 1990, Washington Post, 'Noriega, U.S. Worked Closely for Years'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', pp. 210-211.
Feb. 7, 1992, AP, 'U.S. Drug Agent Says Noriega Helped Fight Cocaine Traffickers'.
Feb. 10, 1992, AP. 'DEA Witness Underscores Confusion On Key Lab Raid'.
March 4, 1992, Washington Post, 'CIA Document Excludes Noriega from Drug Plot'.
April 1, 1992, Washington Post, 'Drug Trial of Noriega Nears End as U.S. Denounces him as a 'Rotten Cop''.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', p. 218.
Ibid., pp. 100-107.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', p. 134.
April 2, 1989, Washington Post, 'Panamanians Arrest 5 Accused in Drug Ring': "In another letter, dated July 15, 1983, DEA Special Agent James L. Bramble thanked Noriega for assisting in the investigation of Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a Cuban-born money launderer arrested in 1983."
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', pp. 2, 3, 9. 1988 Kerry Report, p. 447, a.o.
Ibid., p. 9.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', p. 62: "testimony regarding the Cartels, General Noriega's role in narco-trafficking, and his involvement in setting up companies which were later used to support the Contras, was corroborated by a number of witnesses."
Feb. 11, 1988, Washington Post, 'Drug Money Alleged To Go To Contras'.
1993, Pedro Claver Téllez, 'La guerra verde', p. 96.
Sep. 12-13, 1989, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Structure of International Drug Trafficking Organizations', pp. 71-72, 83, 129.
Sep. 21, 2014, El Espectador (Medellin-based newspaper set up in 1887), 'Pistas para un proceso que es imprescriptible' ('Clues for a process that is imprescriptible'.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sep. 1, 1985, latinnews.com, 'American banks withdrawing; banking centre shrinking in spite of narco-dollars': "Panama cancelled the licence of the First Interamericas Bank in March 1985, after its Colombian owners Jorge Ochoa and Gilberto Rodriguez were detained in Madrid for alleged drug trafficking offences."
Feb. 19, 2011, elEspectador.com (Colombian newspaper founded in 1887), 'Caballeros de luto' ('Knights in mourning').
Ibid.
June 19, 2015, Miami Herald, 'The prominent lawyers who were sent drug cash': "Attorney Joel Hirschhorn ... who represented Medellin cartel figures in the 1980s.".
Aug. 4, 2014, PanamaAmerica.com, 'José Ford repite como presidente de la Cámara' ('José Ford on repeat as president of the Chamber'): "... the period 2013-2014 of José Luis Ford, who is sworn in as president of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama (CCIAP). On Thursday night, Ford was sworn in by his father Henry Ford, president of the CCIAP in the period from 1968 to 1969."
Aug. 14, 1997, El Universal (Mexican newspaper), 'Una figura controversial antes y después de la crisis': "José Alvarez Stelling had already been the center of many controversies before the whirlwind of the banking crisis inevitably mixed his name under the generic label of fugitive bankers. ... preserving his leadership in the Consolidado.".
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', p. 4. 1988 Kerry Report, p. 447, a.o.
July 21, 2021, Weissology podcast, 'The Cuban Perspective - Interview with Ramon Milian Rodriguez', beginning sequence.
Ibid.
Jul. 6, 2023 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Medellin Accountant laundered $17 Billion for Pablo Escobar / Al Profit', 10:30.
youtube.com/watch?v=JNQUE4yzEOM (accessed: Dec. 6, 2024).
Jul. 6, 2023 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Medellin Accountant laundered $17 Billion for Pablo Escobar / Al Profit', 10:30.
youtube.com/watch?v=JNQUE4yzEOM (accessed: Dec. 6, 2024).
Pointed out by Milian. Confirmed by: miami.gov/files/assets/manuelartime /v/1/documents/artime-bio-english-ys.pdf (accessed: Dec. 6, 2024): "Dr. Manuel Artime ... best known for his role as the Civil Leader of Brigade 2506 during the Bay of Pigs invasion,, the CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba... [When young, he] joined University Catholic Group (ACU) in Havana, a Jesuit-run organization..."
Jul. 6, 2023 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Medellin Accountant laundered $17 Billion for Pablo Escobar / Al Profit', 6:50.
youtube.com/watch?v=JNQUE4yzEOM (accessed: Dec. 6, 2024). The video shows a photo of the Bay of Pigs monument with Osvaldo Diaz Milian's name on it.
Ibid., 11:00.
Ibid., 9:00.
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', p. 4.
Ibid., pp. 223-224.
Sep. 1, 2016, Fox News, 'CIA report reveals mole among Watergate burglars – Cuban exile Eugenio Martinez'.
April 11, 2023 YouTube upload by 'Foggy Melson', 'Howard Hunt Interview on the Death of Manuel Artime/Manuel Artime Funeral (November 19, 1977)'.
April 21, 1975, Daily News, 'Our Havana Triple Spy Helped and Hurt Castro; Secrets of the CIA' (interview with Frank Sturgis).
Ibid.: "With money supplied by the Castro underground in Florida, he purchased thousands of rifles and other weapons from International Armament Corp. (Interarmco) [and] got the guns and ammunition into Cuba."
Feb. 24, 1957, New York Times, 'Cuban Rebel Is Visited in Hideout; Castro Is Still Alive and Still Fighting in Mountains'.
April 21, 1975, Daily News, 'Our Havana Triple Spy Helped and Hurt Castro; Secrets of the CIA' (interview with Frank Sturgis): ""I was a spy. I was involved in assassination plots [as well.] ... Asked if had also been been an assassin, he politely changed the subject."
Ibid.: "Max Gorman Gonzales, a Miami businessman who took part in ... operations against Batista and Castro, has known and worked with Sturgis for many years. He says Sturgis was a CIA employee from 1959 to 1968. The CIA asked him to participate in asssassination plots in Cuba and elsewhere."
1975, Michael Canfield and Alan J. Weberman, 'Coup D'état in America', p. 80.
Nov. 1993, Vanity Fair, 'The Spy who Loved Castro' (credit to jfk.hood.edu for backing up the article): "In Miami, where [Marita Lorenz] was trained for her mission, she says she met the man in charge of the ultrasecret unit dubbed Operation 40. Eduardo, as Sturgis introduced him, was tall and rather elegant. ...
Sturgis admits to using Marisa to try to kill the bastard [Castro)," but he says she never worked for Operation 40 or knew Howard Hunt. "She worked for one of the anti-Castro groups," he says. "There were about 200 of them. South Florida was the biggest C.I.A. station in the world at that time because of Cuba. I think she tried to do training with Orlando Bosch [a leader of the anti-Castro movement). Giancana and Roselli would never talk to her. She never met them. / don't remember meeting them. She's a lying bitch and a traitor. I mean, she shacked up with Fidel - a Communist!".
May 11, 1961, New York Times, 'Cuba Dictator Plan Laid to Exile Group'.
Nov. 6, 2006, The Times, 'Rafael Quintero: Cuban-born CIA operative who directed covert actions against Castro and the Sandinistas'.
1989, Felix I. Rodriguez, 'Shadow Warrior', pp. 116-117, 119.
Ibid., p. 224.
Ibid., p. 340.
Ibid., xxx .
Ibid., p. 225.
Feb. 11, 1988, Washington Post, 'Drug Money Alleged To Go To Contras'.
Ibid., p. 261.
Feb. 12, 1988, New York Times, 'Accountant Says Noriega Helped Launder Billions'.
Ibid.
Feb. 11, 1988, Kerry Commitee, p. 231.
Ibid., pp. 230-231.
Feb. 12, 1988, New York Times, 'Accountant Says Noriega Helped Launder Billions'.
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', pp. 5-6.
Ibid.
July 6, 2023 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Medellin Accountant laundered $17 Billion for Pablo Escobar', 5:20.
Feb. 11, 1988, Kerry Commitee, pp. 225-227.
Jul. 6, 2023 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Medellin Accountant laundered $17 Billion for Pablo Escobar / Al Profit', first 3 minutes.
youtube.com/watch?v=JNQUE4yzEOM (accessed: Dec. 6, 2024).
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', p. 5.
Feb. 11, 1988, Kerry Commitee, p. 229.
July 11, 2024 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Pablo's Accountant $26 BILLION/ year DON Milian'
July 11, 2024 YouTube upload by 'Al Profit', 'Pablo's Accountant $26 BILLION/ year DON Milian'
April 30, 1989, New York Times, 'Bad Things Came in Small Planes'.
July 19, 1984, New York Times, 'U.S. Accuses Managua Of Role In Cocaine Traffic'.
Aug. 19, 1983, New York Times, 'TV Weekend; Cocaine in Colombia: Dad-daughter Sleuths'.
March 9, 1986, Washington Post, 'Quick End for Flamboyant Informer'.
May 20, 1984, New York Times, 'Colombia Starts To Feel Side Effects Of Drug Trade'.
May 1, 1984, Washington Post, 'Justice Chief Assassinated In Colombia'.
Nov. 1996, Human Rights Watch, 'Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States', p. 17.
Ibid., pp. 17-18.
Feb. 8-11, 1988, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing report (John F. Kerry Committee), 'Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy: Panama', Feb. 11, pp. 247-249.
April 2, 1989, Washington Post, 'Panamanians Arrest 5 Accused in Drug Ring': "In another letter, dated July 15, 1983, DEA Special Agent James L. Bramble thanked Noriega for assisting in the investigation of Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a Cuban-born money launderer arrested in 1983."
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', p. 5. 1988 Kerry Report, p. 451.
Feb. 19, 2011, elEspectador.com (Colombian newspaper founded in 1887), 'Caballeros de luto' ('Knights in mourning').
Ibid.
May 20, 1984, New York Times, 'Colombia Starts To Feel Side Effects Of Drug Trade'.
July 19, 1988, Washington Post, 'Medellin Cartel Leaders Offered U.S. A Deal; Officials Rebuffed Plan That Sought Amnesty For Ending Drug Trade, Providing Data On Leftists'.
Ibid.
Jan. 29, 1990, Washington Post, 'Slain Israeli Reportedly Advised Bush Security'.
Aug. 29, 1989, Washington Post, 'Bogota Security Alleges Mercenary Aid to Cartels'.
Sep. 3, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 'Israelis trained Medellin Cartel's forces'.
Ibid.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', p. 52.
Sep. 12-13, 1989, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Structure of International Drug Trafficking Organizations', p. 76, testimony of Diego Viafara Salinas.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', p. 45.
Sep. 3, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 'Israelis trained Medellin Cartel's forces'.
Ibid.
July 27, 2013, elEspectador.com, 'Así fue la génesis del paramilitarismo' ('This was the genesis of paramilitarism').
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Jan. 26, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Tied to Suspect Colonel Is Discovered Slain in Miami'.
July 27, 2013, elEspectador.com, 'Así fue la génesis del paramilitarismo' ('This was the genesis of paramilitarism'). A few British and Israeli names were only mentioned in other sources, or spelled differently in other sources. "Peter Tomkins" was "David Tomkins".
May 28, 1991, Los Angeles Times, 'Behind the Story: The Drug Lord’s Dilemma: Pablo Escobar formed an alliance with rightist groups in Colombia, but now that relationship is shattered and he’s on the run'.
Ibid.
Sep. 12-13, 1989, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Structure of International Drug Trafficking Organizations', p. 74.
Sep. 3, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 'Israelis trained Medellin Cartel's forces'.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', p. 50.
March 28, 2024, BBC, 'The Scottish mercenary hired to kill Pablo Escobar'.
Ibid., pp. 25-38, testimony of David Tomkins.
Ibid., p. 38.
Sep. 12-13, 1989, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Structure of International Drug Trafficking Organizations', pp. 76, 88.
Ibid., p. 77.
Sep. 3, 1989, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), 'Israelis trained Medellin Cartel's forces'.
Ibid.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', pp. 49-50.
Sep. 12-13, 1989, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Structure of International Drug Trafficking Organizations', p. 77.
Sep. 12-13, 1989, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Structure of International Drug Trafficking Organizations', pp. 69-91, testimony of Diego Viafara Salinas.
Jan. 27, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Slain in Miami Was Under U.S. Scrutiny'.
Ibid.
Jan. 26, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Tied to Suspect Colonel Is Discovered Slain in Miami'.
Jan. 25, 1990, Washington Post, 'Israeli Tied To Drug Cartel Found Dead In Car Trunk'.
Jan. 27, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Slain in Miami Was Under U.S. Scrutiny'.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', p. 52.
Jan. 29, 1990, Washington Post, 'Slain Israeli Reportedly Advised Bush Security'.
Jan. 26, 1990, New York Times, 'Israeli Tied to Suspect Colonel Is Discovered Slain in Miami'.
Ibid.
Jan. 29, 1990, Washington Post, 'Slain Israeli Reportedly Advised Bush Security'.
Ibid.
Sep. 1991, U.S. DOD/DIA document, "Confidential" and largely blacked-out ID-wise, p. 13.
nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB131/dia910923.pdf (accessed: Dec. 3, 2024).
Ibid.
July 27, 2013, elEspectador.com, 'Así fue la génesis del paramilitarismo' ('This was the genesis of paramilitarism').
Sep. 1991, U.S. DOD/DIA document, "Confidential" and largely blacked-out ID-wise, pp. 7, 10.
nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB131/dia910923.pdf (accessed: Dec. 3, 2024).
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', p. 47.
May 4, 1983 interview / May 6, 1983 report, Treasury Department, U.S. Customs Service, 'Report of Investigation', 'Ramon Milian-Rodriguez', p. 5. 1988 Kerry Report, p. 451.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', pp. 46-48.
Feb. 27-28, 1991, U.S. Congress: Senate, 'Arms Trafficking, Mercenaries and Drug Cartels', p. 47.
2001, Joseph Trento, 'The Secret History of the CIA', pp. 410, 426: "Colby understood - as did Kissinger and Ted Shackley... - that the Israeli account was a large source of Angleton's power. For one thing, it had given them access to five American presidents. ...
For the government of Israel, the loss of James Angleton was a major blow, but one for which it was prepared. ...
Shackley made the Israeli account his own. He kept the relationship personal, as Angleton had done. According to Crowley and other Agency officials, Shackley told no one in the chain of command anything he was doing with respect to Israel. ... "
1976, Pike Report, pp. 112-113. For an excerpt, see Senator Henry Jackson's biography in ISGP's American Security Council membership list.
2005, Joseph Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', p. 283: "The admiration of Israel by the neocons was shared by Ted Shackley."
See the 6I chapter for details and sources.
May 1, 1995, The Persbundel, 'Pioneer for the Truth' (translated from Dutch; clearly part of the Cercle network): "From 1979-1989 the members of 'The 61' [including Crozier] did all they could to fight the communist, anywhere in the world. The costs on average were 1 million dollars a year, coming from fortunate friends as Rupert Murdoch, Sir James Goldsmith and Richard [Mellon] Scaife."
June 19, 2016, Consortium News, 'How Roy Cohn Helped Rupert Murdoch'.
January 18, 1987, New York Times, 'Carlucci and the N.S.C.'.