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February 15, 1989 - Image 4

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The Michigan Daily, 1989-02-15

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OPINION
Wednesday, February 15, 1989

The Michigan Daily

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Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan

The CIA's secret supply network:

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420 Maynard St.
Vol. IC, No.97 Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Unsigned editorials represent a majority of the Daily's Editorial Board. All other
cartoons, signed articles, and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion
of the Daily.

Bringin
Philip Agee was a CIA operative for
twelve years until he quit the agency and
published Inside the Company, which ex-
posed the crimes of the CIA in Latin
America. He was the first CIA operative
to resign from the agency and publish an
account. Agee recently returned from exile

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drugs

home

'
e

Let
,17HE PRESIDENT
Aierican countries
Salvador this wee
prospects for pea
;Iresident Reagan's
aggression against
tift most part failed,
prqrmal relations wit
:cimal.
}t is unlikely tha
awrds Nicaragua w
dally under the Bu
tons are that it w
,hypocrisy. The nev
,o Elliot Abrams' p
>n affairs is Berna
and at promoting
Under him there w
from armed confron
,cf the contras - to
ther undermine Nica
rid politically. The
ever, will not cease.

Nica:
rS of five Central
are meeting in El
ek to assess the
ce in the region.
policy of armed
Nicaragua has for
but the chance for
h Nicaragua is still
at U.S. policy to-
ill change dramati-
sh regime; indica-
vill be strong on
w appointee vying
ost in Latin Amen-
rd Aronson, an old
the contra cause.
ill likely be a shift
tation - by means
an attempt to fur-
ragua economically
aggression, how-

ragua live
but it neglects to mention that this is
directly attributable to the U.S.-fi-
nanced contra war, the U.S. embargo,
and the U.S. pressure on European
countries to cut off economic aid to
Nicaragua. The Nicaraguans are now
blamed for their misery. The Bush
regime is not likely to give up on these
"blame the victim" accusations so
prevalent during the Reagan era.
Tens of thousands of Nicaraguans
have been killed or maimed, hundreds
of thousands have been uprooted or
forced to emigrate, and the economy
has been pounded into shambles.
Washington deems this a success.
Nicaragua's enormous strides in
improving the lot of the majority of the
population can not be disputed.
Nicaragua does not butcher its citizens,
unlike the U.S. allies in the region,
such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras - all democracies by
Washington's distorted standards. The
Sandinista's perseverance in the face of
U.S. aggression is further proof of
their popular support.
It is time to reverse the bloody poli-
cies of the Reagan era. Minimum de-
cency would demand reparations for
the plundering of the U.S.-paid merce-
naries. Halt the undeclared war by
disbanding the contras, dismantling
U.S. bases in Honduras, and stopping
U.S. maneuvers in the region. It is
time to improve relations, end the em-
bargo, and accept the rule of interna-
tional law.
m coverup

North, Casey and others - was afraid it
was going to blow up sky high because it
was financed with drug money from
Colombia. This thing started in 1983
when it was clear that the Congress was
going to cut off the military funding for
the contras, which they did.
Casey and North turned to the Israelis to
find a solution to this problem. The Is-
raelis organized this new resupply opera-
tion to replace the one which had previ-
ously been funded by the Congress, and it
was financed with drug money. The key
figure here is Ramon Milan Rodriguez, a
Cuban-American whose history goes way
back to the Bay of Pigs with the CIA. He
was trained by the CIA in money launder-
ing (that means passing it through differ-
ent accounts to conceal the original

these flights, and the money to finance
these activities also came through Panama
from the Cocaine Cartel. Felix Rodriguez
even came to Washington, according to
the notes of Bush's appointment secretary,
to brief the vice-president on the arms re-
supply operation.
In 1975, the Justice Department con-
ducted an investigation of the Drug En-
forcement Agency for corruption. The re-
sults of that investigation came out of a
report in June of 1975 known as the De-
faille Report, after the attorney in the Jus-
tice Department who coordinated thein-
vestigation. The report showed that Nor-
iega in Panama was up to his neck in drug
dealing. The report was sent to the CIA,
but at that time Noriega became a very
important liaison contact with the CIA

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'his slight shift in policy is already
i Vjdent on the front pages of The New
;'prk Times. The Times recently re-
ported on Nicaraguan refugees pouring
into Miami. What was not deemed "fit
to print" is the fact that CIA controlled
'xdio stations beaming into Nicaragua
ave been telling Nicaraguans to leave
"e country," according to ex-contra
Mader Edgar Chamorro. To decry now
l~e arrival of these refugees is most
pypocritical.
Finally, The Times reports on
Picaragua's economic deterioration,
Courtroo:
HE LEGAL shenanigans surrounding
he trial of Oliver North are a constant
V,.
reminder of how profoundly un-
emocratic the United States is.
President Bush, through the Justice
d7epartment, is threatening to block the
1 se from going to trial because it
Might reveal national security secrets.
agreement with Independent Coun-
I Lawrence Walsh has apparently
iten reached to let the case go forward,
Nit it has yet to be approved by the
Ydge hearing the case.
Why is the Bush administration, like
4 le Reagan administration, so eager to
Sonceal the facts of the case? Because,
s North's lawyers are threatening to
~eveal, the Iran-contra scam was not
pe man running wild, it was a con-
pious policy of the entire executive
ranch. And it involved issues larger
an arms for money, which was then
nt to the Nicaraguan contras, such as
e Central Intelligence Agency's par-
pipation in arms-for-drugs smuggling
with the contras, and the Reagan ad-
imnistration's deal with Iran to delay
he release of American hostages until
:fter the 1980 presidential elections.
The Congressional hearings on the
,andal served to provide official dam-
*ge control. North was painted as a
k.
e,
t,

Former CIA operative Philip Agee.
and has since been on the university lec-
ture circuit. At a recent conference on anti-
Communism and the United States at
Harvard University, Agee spoke about the
U.S. government's involvement with drug
smuggling. Daily reporter Paulo DeRooij
transcribed some of his comments, which
appear below.
I have always asked myself: For the
United States - with all its technology,
all of its military and police power - is it
really impossible to impede the inflow of
drugs into the United States? Is there some
political benefit in the fact that thousands
upon thousands if not millions of ghetto
youths - who are potential political ac-
tivists, who have everything to gain from
radical change in this country - are taken
out of the political scene when they go on
crack, cocaine or heroin?
You see, the CIA has been in this drug
scene from the very beginning [and] these
things that we see today go back to the
very beginning. When Mao defeated the
Chinese Nationalists, a whole division
[of] ten thousand people found refuge in
the hills of Burma. And they were sup-
plied for years by the CIA, and they were
kept operating as a unit. They were going
to be a liberation army, something like
the contras are today. They kept going,
but it turns out that early on they got
much better at raising poppies and making
opium than they were at fighting the
communist forces in China. And that was
the beginning of the "Golden Triangle,"
which continued on into the years of U.S.
intervention in South-East Asia.
[It] seems that few people know that the
diversion of profits to the contras from the
arms sales to Iran had a very specific pur-
pose in replacing an on-going contra re-
supply operation, known as the "Arms
Supermarket." Everyone concerned -

In military air bases, the aircraft that brought cocaine into
the United States were loaded up, and they were loaded up with
arms in U.S. Air Force bases to go back to Central America.'

source), and he placed these talents at the
service of the Cocaine Cartel. He laundered
hundreds of millions of dollars, probably
even billions of dollars, through Panama-
nian banks, including branches of
Citibank and Bank of America. In late
1983 he delivered ten million dollars in
cash for the commencement of this "Arms
Supermarket" operation to another Cuban-
American, Felix Rodriguez (whose his-
tory also goes back to the beginning, and
who is now operating out of the Illopango
air base in El Salvador).
When Eugene Hasenfus was shot down
over Nicaragua in 1986, Felix Rodriguez,
who dispatched him from Illopango on
that flight, made the first cry of alarm to
the Vice-President's office. The telephone
records show it. Those records also show
that there was constant contact between
Felix Rodriguez and Bush's office, princi-
pally [through] Donald Gregg - his na-
tional security advisor - and Samuel
Watson, a Colonel that was also his na-
tional security advisor.
The aircraft that brought cocaine into
the United States were loaded up in mili-
tary air bases, and they were loaded up
with arms in U.S. Air Force bases to go
back to Central America. Noriega gave
transit privileges through Panama for

because of his position as the chief of the
Panamanian Defense Forces Intelligence
Service. The CIA had large bases there at
the time, and -they had important opera-
tions going on in Panama. It was very
important for them to keep good relation
with Noriega so there would be no inter-
ference in these operations.
Well, Bush came in as CIA director in
January 1976, after the CIA obtained the
Defaille Report, and in the course of that
year, as CIA director, he met Noriega on
at least one occasion. When a CIA director
meets a foreign intelligence chief of im-
portance like Noriega he is briefed totally
on the background of that person. If the
CIA didn't know before the Defaille Re-
port that Noriega was drug dealing, and
they had to because they knew what was
happening in Panama, they certainly did
from the Defaille Report.
And so this certainly would have been
part of the briefing. The briefing would
have included a history of the agency's
relationship with this person, how much
money the agency was paying him (I read
$200,000 to $250,000 a year to Noriega at
that time), what their problems had been,
and what the joint operations between the
two services were. All these details were
known to Bush before meeting Noriega.

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rogue out of control; Reagan, Bush
and the rest of the executive branch
were protected.
Evidence of contra/CIA drug smug-
gling has surfaced occasionally, only to
be ignored by Congress because it im-
plicates Reagan, Bush and other high
officials.
In April, 1987, Mike Tolliver, a free-
lance pilot and drug smuggler, testified
that a year earlier (when aid to the con-
tras was banned) he flew 28,000
pounds of military supplies to Agua-
cate, a U.S. base in Honduras used for
contra supply efforts. He returned to
the U.S., landing at Homestead Air
Force Base in Florida, with twelve and
a half tons of marijuana. Congress
conveniently neglected to investigate
how it is possible to fly into an Air
Force Base, avoiding customs, and
unload 25,000 pounds of marijuana.
The evidence suggests that both
Ronald Reagan and George Bush were
fully aware of these activities.
North's trial is full of irony, reveal-
ing the U.S. government's utter lack
of accountability. The same executive
branch that was running drugs to sup-
port terrorism against the Nicaragua is
now using its position to hide those
activities.
/f; r I

MR. ME-StMMeT, 'I KVNOW YOUiLL

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A SsbnTkSTkLw4ART, A WAIt116ToN At4D TOlt of 1t 'olN.PR WE4ORT
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Support mandatory

class,

By Michael Wilson
On college campuses, the Civil Rights
and Black liberation struggles of the 60s
took the form of demanding that colleges
and universities open their doors to Black
people. As a direct result, in the early 70s
many institutions had the highest percent-
age of Black student enrollment in their
history (7.7 percent at this University).
As universities retreat from objectives ar-
ticulated in the late 60s and early 70s, we
must fight for true access to universities
- access for poor and working class peo-
ple of color - but also, in the words of
professor and 60s activist Vincent Hard-
ing, "Not only fight for the right to a seat
on the bus, but also ask the question
'Where is this bus going anyway?"'
The University is an elitist white insti-
tution, and must become something which
has not yet been created, reflecting the ex-
periences and addressing the concerns of
people of color, particularly women of
color, and the poor and working class sec-
tors of our communities.
Accordingly, in the spring of 1987,
amidst an upsurge of racist violence, stu-

dents of color and anti-racist whites
formulated a series of demands which
would, if met, begin to make this univer-
sity less racist in its structure and atmo-
sphere. One of the demands was for a re-
quirement that all incoming students take
a course dealing with the issue of race and
racism.
The proposal for this requirement was
developed and revised for over a year by
members of Concerned Faculty, UCAR
and Faculty Against Institutional Racism,
and is currently being considered by the
college of LSA. It calls for the establish-
ment of a requirement that must be ful-
filled by students in the school of LSA
during their first two years here. Students
can do this by choosing a single four
credit class from a series of classes on
racism.
This is one way in which we can make
institutions of higher education, especially
public institutions like the University, be
accountable to people who have histori-
cally been marginalized. It's also an op-
portunity to provide a much needed service
to the general student body. The majority
of college students graduate with little or
no understanding of the complexity and'
centrality of the isseonf racism in inr

society. And many students who perpetrate
horrendous acts of racism cite ignorance as
a rationale for their offences. While this
lack of sensitivity and familiarity with the
issues does not make the acts themselves
any less racist, a mandatory class on
racism would help to explore and hope-
fully deter some of the myths and stereo-
types which encourage and perpetuate
racism.
Forum Tonight
The United Coalition Against racism,
the Black Student Union, The University
of Michigan Asian Student Coalition, and
Concerned faculty are hosting an open fo-
rum tonight at 7 pm, in the Anderson
room of the Michigan Union, to engage in
dialogue with the general campus
community regarding the merits of this
proposal. The faculty of the college of
LSA will be considering the proposal for
the first time on Monday, March 6, and
we must organize to generate as much
support as possible to insure that this
much needed change in the university
takes place. Institutions make progressive
change only when people demand and
guide that change. Come to the forum and
continue the struggle for education that is
arr c-iul on- n: l,1..a

Michael Wilson is a member of UCAR.

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