Drug smuggling

Drug smuggling (smuggling,  global drug trade)
The plane busted in 2006 in Mexico carrying over 5 tons of cocaine, termed "Cocaine 1" since it had been made to look like a US government plane.
Interest of	Daniel Hopsicker
The covert transport of drugs. Although increasingly legal in some places, when not, governments clandestinely often get involved.

Drug smuggling is the illegal transshipment, e.g. across borders of nation states, of drugs. It can be highly profitable, reflecting a high demand for the small volume product. Drug smuggling, like weapons smuggling, is systematically misrepresented by the commercially-controlled media to hide the degree to which the deep state - and the CIA in particular - is responsible for drug trafficking. While small groups no doubt do smuggle drugs, the most significant shipments are carried out using establishment insiders and are measured in tons.

Official narrative

How the CIA Created a Cocaine Dictator - VICE NEWS In December 1989, 25,00 US troops invaded the small, Central American republic of Panama. But this was not a war against some communist regime or terrorist group – this was a drugs bust, aimed at arresting Manuel Noriega, the dictator of Panama, who was wanted on trafficking charges in Miami. Awkwardly for the US, Noriega had been a major CIA asset for decades – even as they knew he was becoming massively embedded with the cartels flooding the streets of the US with coke. This is how US intelligence shielded Noriega, even as he trafficked cocaine and laundered cartel millions – and also how the War on Drugs came to replace the Cold War as the central feature of US foreign policy.

Wikipedia redirects the topic to the "Global drugs trade" and has never had a separate page on "drug smuggling". Most corporate media has chosen to ignore the involvement of deep state controlled groups such as the CIA in the business of drug smuggling.

War on drugs

Full article: War on drugs

The "war on drugs" is an essential backdrop to the global drug trade, most obviously since it keeps profit margins up by maintaining a huge price differential between producer and consumer nations. It also keeps competition down by using groups such as the DEA or the US Customs and Border Protection to try to remove independent groups from dealing with drugs. Sibel Edmonds reports that these groups are regularly prevented from intercepting the large scale smuggling efforts by deep state forces, which intervene at the last minute citing a pretext such as "national security" or the need to prevent a diplomatic incident.

Top level smuggling

Full articles: CIA/Drug trafficking, Illegal drug trade

In November 1993, just after leaving his post as DEA Administrator, Robert Bonner appeared on 60 Minutes and criticized the CIA for permitting a drug shipment of one ton of pure cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. without notifying and securing the DEA's approval. The pattern of large scale continued CIA drug dealing has given rise to events such as Cocaine 1, Cocaine 2 or Western Global Airlines N545JN. The continued failure of commercially-controlled media to show interest in these events underlines the extent to which it is not only the CIA which controls the drug smuggling, but a covert network which can also effect a more or less global corporate media cover.

“I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez [Uzbekistan] in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe. I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan. Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it.”
Craig Murray

In 2015 a Saudi prince, Abdel Mohsen Bin Walid Bin Abdulaziz, was arrested in Syria with 2 tons of illegal drugs on board his private jet, a record seizure in Beirut.

Corporate media cover

U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported in 2016 that "two men involved in separate weekend attempts to sneak approximately $87,000 worth of methamphetamine through the Port of Nogales." If this sounds like a lot, you are not paying attention.

Although the DEA did cite the 2006 Mexico DC-9 drug bust‎ as an example of their campaign to intercept smuggling by sea it received minimal attention from the corporate media. Corporate media instead focuses on relatively low level attempts by individuals or groups to evade detection by authorities.

While drug mules or cocaine-filled pineapples make for graphic images, it also hides the evidence that suggest that the largest drug shipments never go through customs, but instead are part of the global drug trade shapes US Foreign policy such as the invasion of Afghanistan or Plan Colombia are influenced by potential profits reaped from drug trafficking (heroin and cocaine respectively).

 

An example

Page name	Description
"Iran-Contra"	A drug trafficking/weapons smuggling operation carried out in the 1980s with the approval of the top of the US government.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author
Illegal drug trade	“the drug [cocaine] was carried across the border hidden in suitcases and shoes [but] as the industry grew, the cartels expanded and shipped by cargo ships, planes, stolen cars and trucks.”	Gary Webb

 

Convicted of Drug smuggling

Person	Born	Summary	Description
Howard Marks	10 April 2016	Drug trafficker	Oxford attending large scale drug smuggler with MI6 among his wide range of contacts

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.