The New Phoenix Program; CIA: Guns, Drugs, Fraud

CIA: Guns, Drugs, Fraud;

During World War II (WWII) the United States released Meyer Lansky from prison and deported him to
Italy in exchange for Mafia assistance during the military campaign to drive the Nazi's from the Italian peninsula. Lansky promptly flew to Cuba and set up large scale illegal operations there that included working with American corporations to control Cuba. On conclusion of the Italian campaign the Mafia was rewarded with control of the ports in Italy to exclude unions friendly to socialist and Communist interests. Heroin smuggling through the ports became the major pipeline to supplying the American and world markets for decades to come, exemplified in the movie 'The French Connection'. The docks were the transit point for the "rat lines", routes that Nazi war criminals used to escape justice from international tribunals, most of whom came to the United States or South America, aided by Allen Dulles and the CIA in Operation Paperclip.
In China in 1949 the Communists drove out the US backed Nationalist warlord Chiang Kai Shek, whose
defeated army, the Kuomintang (KMT) fled to the Golden Triangle, and took over opium production
to finance weapons purchases and the finer things in life. By the 1950's heroin had become a nationwide concern in the US, from Senate hearings, to popular movies, and criminologists blamed assicts for soaring crime rates. These KMT operations were hidden from the US public for 30 years, and it is only recently that Afghanistan has captured 90% of the world heroin market. The US exploited the Montagnard and Hmong tribesmen as a source of opium, and used the CIA's Air America to bring in guns and supplies in exchange for drugs. Large quantities of heroin appeared in the US, much of it smuggled inside the bodies of dead American GI's. Addiction plagued the Army in Vietnam to the point of reducing their fighting capacity, and after the war these men brought their drug problem home with them. The US Government promoted the drug traffic and intervened to make sure the traffic would not be discovered. In the words of one former investigator, "you'd be running a criminal investigation, say narcotics, you'd find out that Inspector so and so of your national police is involved in this,""You investigate up to a point and you can't go any further","It would go to our headquarters and then it would go to Washington and nothing would ever happen. The intelligence gleaned from these people was more important than stopping the drug traffic". The senior public relations man for the DEA offers the explanation,"Their mission was to get people to fight against the Communists, not stop the drug traffic".

Edwin Wilson

was a career CIA officer who reported to Ted Shackley, the architect of the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Wilson "retired" in 1971 and reported to CIA officer Shackley, Robert Keith Gray (RNC), and did business through his numerous shipping and international consulting firms used as front companies with such firms as Control Data Corporation (Bobby Ray Inman). Wilson was paid $35.000 a year while living on a $4 million dollar estate in Virginia where he regularly entertained senators, congressmen, generals, admirals, political officials and senior intelligence officers. Wilson had began selling his services for high fees to companies or foreign governments that wanted help obtaining US government contracts or weapons. Wilson was discovered to have worked for Muammar Gaddafi, selling heat seeking missiles, plastic explosives, and training programs covering 'espionage, sabotage and general psychological warfare'.

EXCERPT FROM WIKIPEDIA;

Edwin P. Wilson (born 1928) was a former CIA officer who was convicted of illegally selling weapons to Libya. It was later found that the United States Department of Justice and the CIA had covered up evidence in the case.

Wilson and Frank Terpil supplied sophisticated assassination gear, and began hiring anti-Castro Cubans to assassinate Gaddafi's political opponent abroad. Green Berets were hired for assassinations and were led to believe that the covert operations were being carried out with the full backing of the CIA. When the operation was blown, Wilson's handler, Ted Shackley denied all knowledge of operations and denied that Wilson was in fact an asset of the CIA. Wilson was convicted of arms dealing and sentenced to prison from which he was recently released when evidence that he was actually working for the CIA surfaced decades later. The judge in the case freed WIlson because of air tight proof that this was not a rogue operation.
The Nugan-Hand Bank In Australia was he scene of the largest bank fraud in history at that time(1980). The investment firm was set up in 1973 by covert intelligence assets from the US and the board staffed by prominent US admirals, generals, and colonels. Millions of dollars were used to purchase weapons and trade them for heroin in the Golden Triangle in order to finance on-going operations outside of legislative or even executive control of the elected US government. Branches of the banking front were opened on several continents to move weapons, drugs, and money between drug producers, customers, and covert wars in South Africa, Central America, Iran, and other places. Corrupt foreign leaders such as Ferdinand Marcos, as well as drug lords in the Golden Triangle, were actively courted by Nugan-Hand participants. The Stewart Royal Commission that investigated the billion-dollar fraud functioned largely to cover up the nature and intent of the crime. When the house of cards collapsed, the two owners were allowed time to flee, Michael Hand, the former Green Beret and intelligence asset (Air America) disappeared, while Frank Nugan was found murdered in what was covered up as a suicide. In 1975 CIA team leder Theodore Shackley issued an ultimatum to the Australian intelligence services that their relationship would end if the Prime Minister continued to question the CIA's influence in Australian internal affairs. Three days later, the Govenor General John Kerr, a man with extensive ties to the CIA front organizations (Asia Foundation) going back many years, dismissed Prime Minister Whitlam in a constitutional coup.