Michael Levine is a 25-year veteran of the DEA turned best-selling author and journalist. His articles and interviews on the drug war have been published in numerous national newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Esquire.
When President Nixon first declared war on drugs in 1971, there were fewer than 500,000 hard-core addicts in the entire nation, most of whom were addicted to heroin. Three decades later, despite the expenditure of $1 trillion in tax dollars, the number of hard-core addicts is shortly expected to exceed five million. Our nation has become the supermarket of the drug world [...][...]
The CIA and the Department of State were protecting more and more politically powerful drug traffickers around the world: the Mujihadeen in Afghanistan, the Bolivian cocaine cartels, the top levels of Mexican government, Nicaraguan Contras, Colombian drug dealers and politicians, and others. Media’s duties, as I experienced firsthand, were twofold: first, to keep quiet about the gush of drugs that was allowed to flow unimpeded into the US; second, to divert the public’s attention by shilling them into believing the drug war was legitimate by falsely presenting the few trickles we were permitted to indict as though they were major “victories,” when in fact we were doing nothing more than getting rid of the inefficient competitors of CIA assets.
[...]
In one glaring case, an associate of mine was sent into Honduras to open a DEA office in Tegucigalpa. Within months he had documented as much as 50 tons of cocaine being smuggled into the US by Honduran military people who were supporting the Contras. This was enough cocaine to fill a third of US demand. What was the DEA response? They closed the office.
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The CIA along with the State and Justice Departments had to combine forces to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never myself imagined ever writing. I detailed three pages typewritten on official US embassy stationary—enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists. I also expressed my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter, care of Newsweek. Two sleepless weeks later, I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang. It was DEA’s internal security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing to having sex with a married female DEA agent. The investigation would wreak havoc with my life for the next four years.
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The fact is—and you can read it yourself in the federal court records—that seven months before the attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, the FBI had a paid informant, Emad Salem, who had infiltrated the bombers and had told the FBI of their plans to blow up the twin towers. Without notifying the NYPD or anyone else, an FBI supervisor “fired” Salem, who was making $500 a week for his work. After the bomb went off, the FBI hired Salem back and paid him $1.5 million to help them track down the bombers. But that’s not all the FBI missed. When they finally did catch the actual bomber, Ramzi Yousef (a man trained with CIA funds during the Russia-Afghanistan war), the FBI found information on his personal computer about plans to use hijacked American jetliners as fuel-laden missiles. The FBI ignored this information, too.
I recommend you read it, too. (It's a lot shorter than the "10 page" note implies.)Since 9/11, I have thought that the government knew that something might happen, or certainly would at some undetermined time, that the magnitude and exact location were unknown, and that it was merely the usual US government bungling that allowed events to unfold as they did.
My lingering patriotism would not allow me to believe that the government not only allowed it to happen, but knew almost exactly what would happen, and actively encouraged it; I thought that that was an extreme 'wing nut theory'.[...]
I have thought that the Iraq war is a complete abomination, but that the Afghanistan war, at least initially, was just. I have thought that the US has stayed too long in Afghanistan, committed too many war crimes, and made the classic blunder of splitting its forces (sending them to Iraq), instead of finishing off the Taliban and capturing or killing Bin Laden.
I no longer believe those things ...[...]
I always knew that it was partly about the Middle Eastern and Central Asian oil, but thought that it was partly about terrorism, as well.
Mea culpa, folks; I've been a fool.[...]
Please read http://www.wanttoknow.info/9-11cover-up10pg. I recommend the 10 page version, as a good compromise between time spent, and facts learned. Email it to your friends....perhaps one of those mailings can be the one that reaches the tipping point, and achieves a critical mass of informed and vocal citizens.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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