Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels

[bemildred]

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In January of 2000, six months after the crash of the DeHavilland RC-7, Laurie Anne Hiett pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and was sentenced to five years in prison. According to the New York Times (July 14, 2000), Hiett had shipped heroin from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá to confederates in the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens.

Hiett's conviction created something of an embarrassment to the Army, owing to the fact that she was married to Colonel James C. Hiett, the commander of 200 U.S. soldiers who were busily conducting training for Colombian drug-control personnel.

After an investigation, the Army concluded that James Hiett had not participated in his wife's drug-smuggling business. Nonetheless, in July 2000, Judge Edward R. Korman of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn sentenced Hiett to five months in prison for not reporting his wife's scheme. Proof that he knew about the scheme lay, among other places, in the fact that he had paid numerous family expenses with thousands of dollars that came from Ms. Hiett's heroin trade.

During the trial, the mother of one of the U.S. soldiers who died in the crash of the Army's DeHavilland RC-7 spy plane in Colombia asked Judge Korman to investigate that incident. She claimed that Colonel Hiett had caused the death of her adult child by, according to the Times, "revealing secret information about military surveillance flights to Colombian drug traffickers." She believed those traffickers had shot down the plane, presumably with a surface-to-air missile made in the USA.

http://www.counterpunch.org/irelan04012008.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. It's exciting learning how many intelligent, decent people are watching Colombia so closely. This

article truly let me down by not being about 5 times as long as it is! How refreshing it is to see someone watching the events and thinking about it all, rather than relying on the corporate media.

It's ALWAYS a good day when someone reminds others who may not have heard it yet, just what kind of man has really been running Colombia, has secured an unheard of 2nd term, and has his people working on the third, while right-wingers have been chewing the scenery anytime they can get your attention, about Hugo Chavez suggesting he'd like to run for the Presidency indefinitely, in Venezuela's well-monitored by international observers, transparent elections. (Uribe has had the luxury of voter coercion in his favor by the paramilitaries (death squads) as has been testified to in sworn statements in recent times in Colombia!) From the article:

The report then presents profiles of dozens of individuals, such as Manuel Noriega and Iran-Contra arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. It also includes "Álvaro Uribe Velez-a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellín Cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the US. His father was murdered in Colombia for his connection with the narcotic traffickers."

This Álvaro Uribe Velez is, of course, the current president of Colombia. The DIA report says that Uribe "has worked for the Medellín Cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar." This is the same Álvaro Uribe who now claims that Hugo Chávez paid $300 million to FARC.

Chávez said that Uribe was a "mob boss" and a "liar." George Bush says the mob boss is a champion of democracy and a close ally. Manuel Noriega was also a close ally until he lost his usefulness during the pontificate of George I. The CIA had recruited Noriega when George I himself ran the spy shop. President Uribe might want to take note of these troubling facts in the history of mob bosses and the Bush family.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Greg Palast blew the Colombian "mystery computer" away when he used LOGIC

--hey...reason, thinking, analysis, common sense..imagine--on the Colombian allegation that Chavez gave $300,000 to the FARC. Ireland in the above article mentions this, also, and quotes the "mystery computer":

"The specific passage from the laptop said, 'With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call 'dossier,' efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo, which I will explain in a separate note. Let's call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.'

"I've read this repeatedly, and I still can't get it to say '$300 million from Chávez to the FARC.' Maybe the new laptop computers will clarify the statement."

Ireland's latter statement (re maybe the "laptop computers" will clarify) is in reference to the quickly multiplying computerS that the Colombia claims to possess. He is highly skeptical and figures, like I do, that these "computers" come from the FBI Lab in Washington DC (Bush FBI Lab, that is--or similar Bush-CIA or Bush-NSA facility). But Greg Palast states the obvious--that the number "300" pretty obviously refers to a previous hostage exchange, not to money, and that "dossier" means information on people, that is, on hostages.

$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE
by Greg Palast, published March 7th, 2008
http://www.gregpalast.com/300-million-from-chavez-to-farc-a-fake/

Colombia's wild accusations against President Chavez, and also against President Rafael Correa of Ecuador, are so Joe McCarthy-like as to provide us with a cartoon of the Bush Junta and its accusation against anyone who opposes them as "terrorists" or "terrorist-lovers." Read "communist" or "commie-lover," and they are under every bed, and embedded in every leftist government in South America, and sitting in the very halls of Congress opposing "free trade" with Colombia (the country with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere and one of the worst in the world). Colombia accused Chavez of "genocide" for godssakes--Chavez, who has harmed no one, who has invaded no one, who has jailed no one unfairly, and who has run a scrupulously lawful, beneficial government for ten years. That is "McCarthyism." ('I have documents! I have lists! I have evidence..."--so McCarthy raved.) The Bushites--and their tool in Colombia, Uribe--are McCarthyites.

The wonder is that our war profiteering corporate news monopolies just keep repeating these unvetted accusations over and over and over. Well, I guess it ain't a wonder. Chavez and Correa are both social justice presidents of countries that are members of OPEC with lots and lots and lots of oil. The Bushites want to get that oil on behalf of the global corporate predators who are their puppetmasters. And they are building up to a war in South America to do that--just as Joe McCarthy was building up anti-communist sentiment on behalf of the "military-industrial complex" and their manufactured war on Vietnam (needed for looting American taxpayers, and cheating them of post WW II peace).