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| U.S. Anti-Drug Strategy Stalls in the Andes |
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Posted by FoM on June 21, 2001 at 12:49:16 PT By Anthony Boadle Source: Reuters 
U.S. anti-drug strategy in the Andes has stalled as officials figure out how an American missionary plane was shot down by a Peruvian Air Force plane and politicians ask why U.S. allies in Peru are now wanted for corruption.The State Department this week expanded an inquiry into the downing of the plane that killed an American woman and her baby in April to a review of its program to intercept airborne drug shipments in Peru and Colombia. Interceptions have been suspended. The shoot-down policy adopted in 1994 was key to cutting off an air bridge used by traffickers in Peru, once the world's largest producer of cocaine before Colombia took that role. As Colombia pushes ahead with a controversial U.S.-funded military and police offensive against drug plantations, U.S. officials acknowledge there are signs that coca growing is on the rise again in Peru. Democratic senators, now in control of the Senate agenda, plan to hold hearings early this Fall on Andean counterdrug policies, aides said on Thursday. They also want to look at U.S. ties to Peru's former intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos, now a fugitive accused of crimes including involvement in massacres, arms and drugs trafficking, money laundering and vote rigging. Human rights groups had long warned that the United States was turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Peru for the sake of advancing its drug war objectives under president Alberto Fujimori, who was brought down in November by a series of political scandals surrounding his spy master, including the running of guns to Colombia's Marxist guerrillas. Cozy Deal: ``I think there was a little cozy deal with the previous government that I have my suspicions about. I cannot say that with absolute certainty, but boy there is an awful lot of smoke around,'' Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd told Reuters. Dodd said he has held private talks with other senators about holding a hearing on U.S. links to Montesinos. ``The U.S. was allied with Montesinos for counternarcotics purposes and it turns out that he may have been controlling the drug trade in Peru,'' said Gina Amatangelo, an expert at the independent Washington Office on Latin America. Amatangelo said it was not the first time that a U.S. ally was found to be involved in the drug trade, pointing to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who like Montesinos once was an informant of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). U.S. forces invaded Panama in 1989 to overthrow Noriega, who is now serving 30 years in a Florida high-security jail for drug trafficking. The Clinton administration conducted a review of its ties to Montesinos in the mid-1990s, but decided that his role in providing Peruvian cooperation in the drug war was too vital, a former official said. Eyes Wide Open: ``It was not a matter of turning a blind eye. It was more troubling than that. It was eyes wide open to the good and the bad,'' a former Clinton administration official told Reuters. ``It was so patently clear that what Fujimori and Montesinos were doing undermined democracy in Peru,'' he added. When Fujimori sought an unprecedented third term last year, U.S. officials knew the vote was rigged by Montesinos. ``That was all engineered by Montesinos. Everyone knew that. It was no secret,'' the former official said. Washington brought international pressure to bear on Fujimori that contributed to his downfall. But there had been constant run ins between the CIA and the National Security Council and the State Department over Peru, he said. ``There was friction between the NSC and the CIA, between the drug czar's office and the NSC, between the Pentagon and State, and within the embassy in Lima,'' the official said. No Alternative: Despite rumors that he was corrupt, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies maintain they had to work with Montesinos because he was the equivalent of national security advisor and head of Peru's intelligence service at the time. ``The U.S. government by necessity had to deal with him,'' a U.S. intelligence official told Reuters. Under Fujimori, the Peruvian government defeated Maoist and Marxist guerrilla groups and succeeded in reducing coca leaf cultivation by 70 per cent in five years. Fujimori fled to Japan and is wanted in Peru to stand trial for corruption. Clinton's drug policy director Gen. Barry McCaffrey admits Montesinos was a ``dangerous character'' responsible for the ''corruption and authoritarianism'' of Fujimori's government. The shadowy Montesinos infuriated McCaffrey in 1998 by doctoring a video tape of their meeting to show Peruvians that he was on good terms with the U.S. drug czar. But McCaffrey insisted: ``Montesinos was a Peruvian creature, not a U.S. creature.'' Source: Reuters Related Articles & Web Site: Colombia Drug War News U.S. To Review Anti-Drug Plan Treachery Over The Andes CannabisNews Articles - Bowsers Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help |
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| Comment #3 posted by Doug on June 22, 2001 at 08:38:55 PT |
| As Those Who Will Not See. The Doctor and the Kaptin have done a good job of dissecting this story, but I feel the need to rant a little. It was appaarent from the Eighties that Fujimori was an autocrat, to say the least. After his self-coup it should have been clear to everyone that Peru was not a democracy. But no, we -- the United States -- kept supporting that government as long as they played the ant-ccmmunist, anti-drug, pro-corporate card. And this type of behavior has operated repeatedly in the United States, at least from the end of the Second World War, as indicated by the link below. But still it continues. One must assume that if the same behavior occurs over and over and over again, it is not a mistake but instead policy. [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on June 22, 2001 at 05:02:31 PT:
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| "``The U.S. was allied with Montesinos for counternarcotics purposes and it turns out that he may have been controlling the drug trade in Peru,'' said Gina Amatangelo, an expert at the independent Washington Office on Latin America. Amatangelo said it was not the first time that a U.S. ally was found to be involved in the drug trade, pointing to former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who like Montesinos once was an informant of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (Emphasis mine) Many years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of Nicaraguan Dictator Somoza: "He's a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch." Yes, and what happens when 'our' sons-of-bitches are caught up to their elbows in the drug trade? Suddenly, they're somebody else's sons-of-bitches. from http://www.drugwar.com/vivazapata.htm "On November 7th, 1991, 100 Mexican soldiers, helping to unload a planeload - tons - of Colombian cocaine near Veracruz, were interrupted by Mexican drug agents. Seven of the drug agents were shot through the head, execution style. The Colombian plane escaped, the soldiers went unpunished, and the coke was distributed. It is this army that Clinton, McCaffrey, Gelbard and Company are now arming and training in the name of the anti-drug effort. McCaffrey's "Hueys" and "Rapid Reaction Units," of course, are invariably aimed at the poor campesinos trying to maintain control of their own land. Shortly after the January 1994 onset of the Zapatista rebellion, in late April, Defense Secretary William Perry huddled with his Mexican counterpart, Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, to "explore ways in which our militaries could cooperate better." In May, along with the first dozen of the 50 promised Hueys, combat helicopters, went Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey to oversee the formation of GAT, the Anti-Terrorist Group. GAT coordinates Mexico's secret service death squads with those of Guatemala, Spain and Argentina. Green Beret Gen. McCaffrey, who has operated as a "counterinsurgency expert" in the U.S. Southern Command since 1969, helped to coordinate the original Operation Condor death squads in the 1970's and 80's, which were also "anti-drug" operations. Barry McCaffrey applauded the December of 1996 appointment of a career army officer, Gen. José de Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, rather than another corrupt politician, (interjection: uproarious laughter) to head the INCD, Mexico's DEA. This coincided with the replacement of opposition party reformist Lozano as Attorney General, apparently for turning up way too much information on the PRI's family feud. Gen. Gutiérrez, said McCaffrey, "has a reputation of impeccable integrity, and he is known as an extremely forceful and focused commander.'' On February 19, 1997, after less than three months on the job, Gen. Gutiérrez was relieved of his INCD command and formally charged with being on the payroll of Amado Carillo Fuentes, Mexico's "Lord of the Skies.'' Carillo had pioneered the use of low-flying jetliners to transport multi-ton loads of cocaine from his Colombian partners to Mexico. Carillo, a power for years under Salinas, did this from his position within Mexican military intelligence. He carried Mexican Federal Judicial Police Group Chief credentials for special investigations and an officer's gold card. Barry has been strangely silent about this royal gaffe ever since. Rather embarrassing, no? So what does happen to the likes of these 'allies' in the War on Drugs when they are found to be anything but that? Not a friggin' thing. And how can that be? Because the entire DrugWar apparatus is corrupt in the same way a fish rots; from the head down. "Treason doth never propser; what's the reason? If treason doth prosper, none dare call it treason." [ Post Comment ] |
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Comment #1 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on June 21, 2001 at 13:13:24 PT:
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| Notice how Amerika tolerates corruption and repression so long as the principles espouse anti-Marxist views, and allows our multi-nationals to rob them of their natural resources? One wonders how the people involve can hold their noses so well from the stench? How do they keep their lunch down? I would think that the situations were so bad that they would all need medical marijuana to keep them dying from starvation. [ Post Comment ] |
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