Read The Clintons' War on Women Online
Authors: Roger Stone,Robert Morrow
I
n 1988, highly decorated Green Beret Bo Gritz wrote a letter to George H. W. Bush in which he castigated the then vice president for the drug running of the federal government. Gritz had been tasked with finding American POWs left behind in Asia after the Vietnam War by Texas businessman and Bush associate Ross Perot. What Gritz found was a Burmese drug lord named General Khun Sa who “offered to identify U.S. Government officials who, he says, have been trafficking in heroin for more than 20 years.” Gritz was incensed that when Perot brought information and evidence of the drug running to Bush’s attention it was ignored.
258
Perot’s personal attorney Tom Luce, a Republican Party elder, told me that Perot had requested a meeting with the vice president to present him with evidence of the CIA’s drug smuggling in Asia and the U.S. “All Ross got from Bush was a grim smile,” Luce told me.
In
an open letter, Gritz excoriated Bush:
Mister Richard Armitage, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, is one of those USG officials implicated by Khun Sa. Nothing was done with this evidence that indicated that anyone of authority, including yourself, had intended to do anything more than protect Mr. Armitage. I was charged with ‘Misuse of Passport’. Seems that it is alright for Oliver North and Robert MacFarlane to go into Iran on Irish Passports to negotiate an illegal arms deal that neither you nor anyone else admits condoning, but I can’t use a passport that brings back drug information against your friends.
Please answer why a respected American Citizen like Mister H. Ross Perot can bring you a pile of evidence of wrongdoing by Armitage and others, and you, according to TIME magazine (May 4, page 18), not only offer him no support, but have your Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci tell Mr. Perot to ‘stop pursuing Mr. Armitage’. Why Sir, will you not look into affidavits gathered by The Christic Institute (Washington, DC), which testify that Armitage not only trafficked in heroin, but did so under the guise of an officer charged with bringing home our POWs. If the charges are true, Armitage, who is still responsible for POW recovery as your Assistant Secretary of Defense ISA, has every reason not to want these heroes returned to us alive. Clearly, follow on investigations would illuminate the collective crimes of Armitage and others….
I failed to realize the fullness of his meaning, or these other events, until in May 1987, Gen Khun Sa, in his jungle headquarters, named Richard Armitage as a key connection in a ring of heroin trafficking mobsters and USG officials…. You were Director of the CIA in 1975, during a time Khun Sa says Armitage and CIA officials were trafficking in heroin.
259
Both Gritz and Perot, who cared about bringing United States POWs home, were stunned, shocked, and enraged to find out
that the government was running drugs under the Reagan administration.
The Bushes were heavily involved in many facets of the drug trade.
The 1990 book
Blue Thunder,
by Thomas Burdick and Charlene Mitchell, goes over the close ties between Donald Aronow and Meyer Lansky. Aronow was a Mafia-associated drug smuggler. A close friend of Vice President Bush, he was also a pioneer in the building of very fast speed boats that were popular with the drug smugglers. Aronow was murdered in Miami in a professional hit while he was sitting in his car on February 2, 1987.
The authors of
Blue Thunder
present an interesting story. They write that Teagle, an imprisoned, well-connected drug smuggler, went to authorities and told them why Aronow was murdered. He told them that Bobby Young had become indebted to Colombian drug kingpins and as a payment for this debt he had to murder Aronow as a way of wiping his debt clean. Aronow had been placed on the death list, Teagle told the DEA agents, because he also had failed to pay cocaine debt with the Colombians. According to Teagle, Aronow and George Bush’s son Jeb were partners in a major cocaine-smuggling operation, and they owed their Colombian suppliers $2.5 million. Jeb and Don had refused to pay.
260
Retired US Navy Lieutenant Commander Al Martin knew that “Jeb [Bush] was extremely familiar with what these boats were actually used for, that although they were going to be gun-boats for the Panamanian Navy, they were actually going to be used for the transportation of narcotics.”
261
Martin says he had dinner with Vice President Bush, his son Jeb, and Felix Rodriguez in 1985. “But George Bush, Sr., always said that his concept of government, what he believed in, and how he had operated, was on the Big Lie principle.” The Big Lie Principle is to lie so outrageously that the masses could not conceive that you would distort the truth so flagrantly. An example would be speeches made against drugs by the vice president head of the South Florida Task Force
on Drugs, while at the same time supervising a multi-billion-dollar CIA governmental drug-running operation.
Martin worked hand in glove with Jeb Bush and Oliver North during Iran-Contra. Martin most definitely was in the “belly of the beast” as high crimes were being committed in the 1980s. Martin’s book has “eyewitness accounts including firsthand knowledge of US Government sanctioned narcotics trafficking, illicit weapons deals and an epidemic of fraud—corporate securities fraud, real estate fraud, banking fraud and insurance fraud.”
262
After Iran-Contra imploded and some of the criminals went to jail and others escaped completely scot free, Martin would have conversations with Jeb Bush about being taken care of. Jeb was not willing to “help out” Martin with any money and Martin highly resented this after all the things he had done to compromise himself with criminality during Iran-Contra. Martin would threaten to go public with what he knew and Jeb Bush’s reply as he warned Martin to keep silent was:
“There is no constituency for the truth.”
Emphasis added.
In March of 2013, we asked Hopsicker about the Jeb Bush quote and Hopsicker had revealing things to say about his conversation with Al Martin: “He said this to me in a phone interview, in which he stated he had gone public because he ‘didn’t get his briefcase’ [full of money]. It had nothing to do with morality.’ There were 5,000 guys left hanging out there when Iran-Contra broke, he said. He was one of them and he was pissed. Yes. Martin told me that Jeb Bush told him, in an effort to keep Martin from going public, and becoming a whistleblower, that “‘there is no constituency for the truth.’”
Hopsicker added, “It may be the truest thing Jeb Bush ever said.”
263
Oliver North had close connections with both Clinton and Jeb Bush during the period of Iran-Contra drug smuggling and murders of the 1980s. Call it the bipartisan criminal elite.
Here
are former CIA counterintelligence agent Chip Tatum’s notes from March 30, 1985, which allegedly memorialize what was said as he and Oliver North were inspecting some cocaine factories at some villages on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border. Vice President Bush and Oliver North were very concerned about money being lost in the chain of drug smuggling:
“Mr. North stated the following to the other passengers, ‘One more year of this and we’ll all retire.’ He then made a remark concerning Barry Seal and Governor Clinton. ‘If we can keep those Arkansas hicks in line, that is,’ referring to the loss of monies as determined the week prior during their meeting in Costa Rica. I stood silently by the vat of leaves, listening to the conversation. General Alverez had gone with the Contra leader to discuss logistics. The other three—North, Rodriguez, and Ami Nir—continued through the wooden building, inspecting the cocaine. North continued, ‘but he (Vice President Bush) is very concerned about those missing monies. I think he’s going to have Jeb (Bush) arrange something out of Columbia,’ he told his comrades, not thinking twice of my presence. What Mr. North was referring to ended up being the assassination of Barry Seal by members of the Medellin Cartel in early 1986.”
264
Though North was never proven to have murdered anyone, suspicions hang over his head.
Vice President Bush and North were worried about Bill Clinton and Barry Seal stealing too much of the drug money that was going through Mena, Arkansas, which was a major transit point for the drug smuggling of Iran-Contra.
Former DEA agent Celerino “Cele” Castillo was another source to indict Vice President Bush, Oliver North, the CIA, and the Nicaraguan Contras in drug smuggling during the 1980s.
“The end of my career with the DEA took place in El Salvador,” said Castillo. “One day, I received a cable from a fellow agent, saying to investigate possible drug smuggling by Nicaraguan Contras operating from the Ilopango Air Force Base.
“I
quickly discovered that the Contra pilots were, indeed, smuggling narcotics back into the United States, using the same pilots, planes and hangers that the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, under the direction of Lt. Col. Oliver North, used to maintain their covert supply operation to the Contras.”
265
Castillo met Vice President Bush at a U.S. embassy party on January 14, 1986. Castillo told Bush that he was a DEA agent assigned to Guatemala and that there were some funny things going on with the Contras in El Salvador. Bush did not say anything, he just smiled and walked away.
“When Bush confronted me and then just walked away after I told him some of the evidence I had, it was obvious he knew what was going on and was involved in the illegal drug trade,” said Castillo.
266
Ross Perot knew about these government intelligence operations engaged in arms and drug smuggling. Perot knew about Mena, and he knew President Bush was involved. Perot and then president Bush had a huge falling out over the matter.
“When you look into the [Vietnam POW] cover-up, you find government officials in the drug trade who can’t break themselves of the habit,” Perot said. “What I have found is a snake pit (CIA drug smuggling) without a bottom. They will do anything to keep this covered up.”
267
Perot ran in the 1992 presidential race as an independent candidate. He was not running to win the presidency. Perot felt extremely strongly that Bush should lose the general election.
The eccentric Texan was not the first presidential candidate to make these accusations. Ron Paul also exposed the operation in his run for president in 1988. Paul pointed out that the U.S. was paying Panama’s Manuel Noriega $200,000 per year when George Bush was head of the CIA in 1976.
“I think George Bush is deep into it,” Paul said. “Well over his head…. I think George Bush through his office and through the fact
that he was the head of the CIA, I think he was very, very close to it and he knows exactly what was happening [with regards to drug running] and I believe the rule that once a CIA member always a CIA member … I sadly believe that there will be very little said which means the Democrats aren’t doing [anything about] it, that means they are involved, too.”
268
Ron Paul was 100 percent correct.
Ostensibly, the reason for allowing and encouraging such drug running was that Congress would not allow the Reagan administration to fund the Nicaraguan contras to stage a counter-revolution against the Marxist Sandinistas who had removed pro-American dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua in July 1979.
Tatum said that in 1992 President Bush was terrified of Perot and on the verge of having him assassinated. Bush was afraid that the billionaire would get into office and have him prosecuted for drug crimes.
Tatum’s April 2, 1996, letter to Perot, which was widely reprinted on the Internet, read as follows:
Dear Mr. Perot:
As you prepare your part for the 1996 election, there is a matter of grave importance of which you should be aware.
In 1992, as the commander of a Black Operations Unit called Pegasus, I was ordered to neutralize you. Our unit was directed by President George Bush. It was determined, at some point, that the party you formed was counter to the American system of democracy. In his attempt to justify your neutralization, Mr. Bush expressed not only his concerns of the existence of your party and the threat which you posed to free America, but also the positions of other U.S. and world leaders.
I had been associated with Pegasus since its creation in 1985. The original mission of our unit was to align world leaders and financiers with the United States. I was personally responsible for the
neutralization of one Mossad agent, an army Chief of Staff of a foreign government, a rebel leader and the president of a foreign government [thought to be Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, murdered Feb. 28, 1986].
However, all of these missions were directed toward enemies of the United States as determined by our President. And because of this, I did not hesitate to successfully neutralize these enemies.
The order to neutralize you, however, went against all that I believed in. It was obvious to me that his order was predicated on a desire to remain as President rather than a matter of enemy alignment. I refused the order. I further advised the President and others that if you or members of your organization or family were threatened or harmed in any way, I would cause information, which includes certain documents, to be disseminated from their six locations in various areas of the world, to various media and political destinations. I walked away from Special Operations that day with the knowledge that you don’t just quit! I felt, however, that the time capsules protected my interests.
269
Bill Clinton, the democratic nominee, and Perot had many phone calls and personal meetings in the summer of 1992. Perot and Clinton were jointly coordinating the takedown of Bush by stealing Republican votes in key swing and Republican-leaning states. Perot got into the 1992 race in order to defeat Bush, who he felt was committing wrongdoings. Larry Patterson, a top Arkansas state trooper of Bill Clinton, recorded a conversation with Christopher Ruddy on a cassette tape that they titled “More Than Sex” (published by
Newsmax
in 2000), saying that Ross Perot and Bill Clinton, before the 1992 campaign met in Dallas for “lunch, dinner” several times. The implication is Perot and Clinton were colluding to take down Bush.