Operation Naked King: U.S. Secretly Targeted Bolivia's Evo Morales In Drug Sting

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Huffington Post

Operation Naked King: U.S. Secretly Targeted Bolivia's Evo Morales In Drug Sting

A confidential informant says the DEA had its sights set on Bolivia's populist leader.

Ryan Grim
Washington Bureau Chief, The Huffington Post

Nick Wing
Senior Viral Editor, The Huffington Post
Posted: 09/15/2015 07:46 AM EDT | Edited: 5 hours ago

The United States has secretly indicted top officials connected to the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales for their alleged involvement in a cocaine trafficking scheme. The indictments, secured in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration sting called "Operation Naked King," have not been previously reported.

Morales, a former leader of Bolivia's coca growers union, has long been at loggerheads with the DEA. In 2008, Morales expelled the agency from the country and embarked on his own strategy of combatting drug trafficking, acknowledging the traditional uses of coca in Bolivian culture and working cooperatively with coca growers to regulate some legal activity and to promote alternative development elsewhere. Morales' plan has been effective at reducing cultivation, according to the United Nations.

But that doesn't mean the DEA accepted its eviction quietly. In fact, the agency went after members of Morales' administration in an apparent effort to undermine his leadership.

The sealed indictments, revealed last week in a lawsuit filed by long-time DEA informant Carlos Toro, target Walter Álvarez, a top Bolivian air force official; the late Raul García, father of Vice President Álvaro García Linera; Faustino Giménez, an Argentine citizen and Bolivian resident who is said to be close to the vice president; and Katy Alcoreza, described as an intelligence agent for Morales. Toro said in the court document that he played an integral role in securing the indictments as part of the DEA's undercover investigation into the alleged Bolivian cocaine trafficking ring, which the agency ran out of its office in Asuncion, Paraguay.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/operation-naked-king-evo-morales_55f70da2e4b077ca094fdbe1

[Peace Patriot]

1. Dreadful! We need to GET RID OF THE D.E.A.!

De-fund it! Break it up! And investigate its many criminal undertakings.

[MyNameGoesHere]

2. I think getting rid of

capitalism would work better.

[7962]

6. Yes, its working SO well in Venezuela!

[MyNameGoesHere]

7. And it's working splendily

in the USA. You point?

[7962]

8. Well, if you think the US is in as deep a shithole as VZ, I cant help you

Anyone here can go to any store anywhere and buy food. Thats as major a difference as anything else. Because its so basic.
The "revolution" is a failure and after 15 yrs everyone down there knows it. Except for the ones at the top of course!
Maybe you at least believe in free elections?

[MyNameGoesHere]

10. Anyone can go to any store and buy food?

Wow you are lost in America. Don't choke on that Capitalism sausage you are being served. If your really good little capitalist you will crap Golden Bald Eagles and Sparking Stars and Stripes. Go you!

[7962]

12. Yes every store anywhere you go will have stocked shelves. Very few in VZ

And anyone who wants to can buy food there. Sure YOU would probably find SOMEONE who either has no cash or no help, but thats not representative of the entire country. I live in a city of about 70k. If you have no food its because you didnt try. Outside of state and local assistance, many churches in town give out sacks of groceries on a weekly basis; as well as cooked meals. You may not get as much as you'd like, but you'll also not go hungry. And everyone has paper to wipe their asses too! I doubt my town is much different from others.
In VZ even if you have money theres little to buy. And thats just the most obvious of the failures. There is a long list if you cared to see it. But you dont. I also doubt you actually wish we were more like them.

[dougolat]

3. If "we" hadn't engaged in dirty tricks and sabotage against a foreign leader who...

..was "too leftist" or "too anti-business", it would be the first damn time!

He's lucky it wasn't worse, much worse. The statement he made when he kicked out the DEA was quite correct.

Shame on "us".

[questionseverything]

4. important article

[Drug trafficking] must be fought -- we are convinced of that -- and we are doing so more effectively and more wisely," Morales told Al Jazeera in a 2014 interview. "When the United States was in control of counternarcotics, the US governments used drug trafficking for purely geopolitical purposes .... The US uses drug trafficking and terrorism for political control .... We have nationalised the fight against drug trafficking."

In 2009, Hillary Clinton warned of Morales and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's "fear mongering" in written testimony during her secretary of state confirmation hearings. Yet Morales' fears, it turns out, weren't rooted in mere paranoia. The DEA was, in fact, out to get him.

The revelation of Operation Naked King goes to show that Bolivian leaders' paranoia was well justified, said Kathryn Ledebur, who runs the Andean Information Network based in Bolivia. "US authorities frequently dismiss Bolivian government denunciations about the DEA and US intervention as absurd speculation, but these revelations show what is common knowledge on the ground — there has long been an alarming lack of oversight of DEA operations in Latin America, including recurring mission creep and a violation of agreements with host countries," she wrote in an email.

"Even before Morales’s election, high-ranking US officials warned his policies on coca and drug control and rejection of American policy dictates would plunge Bolivia into drug trafficking chaos. Yet, without the DEA or US funding, Bolivia has consistently improved its track record, with the lowest coca crop in the region and credible interdiction policies. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance for US drug warriors, and in this case, it appears some worked to make their predictions appear true."

[DisgustipatedinCA]

5. Thugs.

I actively detest the DEA, and I truly believe that there are some coke dealers in the world with a better moral code than the DEA.

[Zorro]

9. Top government officials in Bolivia engaged in drug smuggling

Who in the world would ever have expected that?

[Dont call me Shirley]

11. And why is this not surprising.