drug wars

THE DRUG WAR
Noam Chomsky
The folllowing discourse is taken from Chapter Four of NoamChomsky's book entitled "Deterring Democracy" and first publishedin 1991. In it, the author reveals the large gap between the realitiesof today's world and the image of it that is presented to thepublic by a complacent media. Media that never so assisted theU.S. government by maneuvering public opinion to the point of believingin the necessity of a "war on drugs".
To fit the part, a menace must be grave, or at least portrayableas such. Defense against the menace must engender a suitablemartial spirit among the population, which must accord its rulersfree rein to pursue policies motivated on other grounds and musttolerate the erosion of civil liberties, a side benefit of particularimportance for the statist reactionaries who masquerade as conservatives.Furthermore, since the purpose is to divert attention away frompower and its operations - from federal offices, corporate boardrooms,and the like - a menace for today should be remote: "theother", very different from "us", or at least whatwe are trained to aspire to be. The designated targets shouldalso be weak enough to be attacked without cost; the wrong colorhelps as well. In short, the menace should be situated in theThird World, whether abroad or in the inner city at home. Thewar against the menace should also be designed to be winnable,a precedent for future operations. A crucial requirement for theentire effort is that the media launch a properly structured propagandacampaign, never a problem.
A war on drugs was a natural choice for the next crusade. Thereis, first of all, no question about the seriousness of the problem;we turn to the dimensions directly. But to serve the purpose,the war must be narrowly bounded and shaped, focused on the propertargets and crucially avoiding the primary agents; that too wasreadily accomplished. The war is also structured so that in retrospect,it will have achieved some of its goals. The major objective ofthe Bush-Bennett strategy was a slow regular reduction in reporteddrug use. The test is to be the Federal Household Survey on DrugAbuse, which, a few weeks before the plan was released, showeda decline of 37 percent from 1985 to 1988 (1). The stated objectivethus seemed a rather safe bet.
The war was declared with proper fanfare by President Bush inearly September 1989 - or rather, re-declared, following the conventionestablished twenty years earlier by President Nixon when he issuedthe first such dramatic declaration. To lay the ground properlyfor the current phase, Drug Czar William Bennett announced thatthere had been a remarkable doubling in frequent use of cocainesince 1985 - "terrible proof that our current drug epidemichas far from run its course" - and that we are faced with"intensifying drug-related chaos" and an "appalling,deepening crisis"; a few months later, the White House calleda news conference to hail a new study "as evidence that theirnational drug strategy was succeeding and that narcotics use wasbecoming'unfashiionable among young Americans", Richard Berkereported in the New York Times. So the drug warriors, in the truestAmerican tradition, were stalwartly confronting the enemy andovercoming him.
There are, however, a few problems. The decline in 1989 simplycontinues a trend that began in 1985-6 for cocaine and in 1979for other illicit drugs, accompanied by a decline in alcohol consumptionamong the elderly, though there was no "war on alcohol".Cocaine use declined sharply in 1989, with a drop of 24 percentin the third quarter, prior to the declaration of war, accordingto government figures. Bennett's "doubling" is a bithard to reconcile with the figures on decline of cocaine use,but a few months after the shocking news was announced with properfanfare and impact, the paradox was revealed to be mere statisticalfakery. On the back pages, we read further that a study by theState Department Bureau of International Narcotics Matters contradictedBennett's claims that "the scourge is beginning to pass",thanks to his efforts (2).
As required, the war is aimed at "them", not "us".Seventy percent of the Bush-Bennett drug budget was for law enforcement;if the underclass cannot be cooped up in urban reservations andlimited to preying on itself, then it can be imprisoned outright.Countering criticism from soft-hearted liberals, Bennett supported"tough policy" over "drug education programs":"If I have the choice of only one, I will take policy everytime because I know children. And you might say this is not avery romantic view of children not a very rosy view of children.And I would say 'You're right'". Bennett is somewhat understatinghis position when he says that punishment is to be preferred ifonly one choice is available. In his previous post as Secretaryof Education, he sought to cut drug education funds and has expressedskepticism about their value (3).
The flashiest proposal was military aid to Columbia alter themurder of presidential candidate Luis Carlo Galan. However, ashis brother Alberto pointed out "the drug dealers' core militarypower lies in paramilitary groups they have organized with thesupport of large landowner~ and military officers". Apartfrom strengthening "repressive and anti-democratic forcesGalan continued, Washington's strategy avoids "the core ofthe problem" - that is, "the economic ties between thelegal and illegal worlds," the "large financial corporations"that handle the drug money. "lt would make more sense toattack and prosecute the few at the top of the drug business ratherthan fill prisons with thousands of small fish without the powerfulfinancial structure that gives life to the drug market" (4).
It would indeed make more sense, if the goal were a war on drugs.But it makes no sense for the goal of population control, andit is in any event unthinkablc hecause of the requirement thatstate policy protect power and privelege, a natural concomitantof the "level playing field" at home.
As Drug Czar under the Reagan Administration, George Bush wasinstrumental in terminating the main thrust of the real "waron drugs". Officials in the enforcement section of the TreasuryDepartment monitored the sharp increase in cash inflow to Florida(later Los Angeles) banks as the cocaine trade boomed in the 1970s,and "connected it to the large-scale laundering of drug receipts"(Treasury Department brief). They brought detailed informationabout these matters to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and theJustice Department. After some public exposes, the governmentlaunched Operation Greenhack in 1979 to prosecute money-launderers.It soon foundered; the banking industry is not a proper targetfor the drug war. The Reagan Administration reduced the limitedmonitoring, and Bush "wasn't really too interested in financialprosecution," the chief prosecutor in Operation Greenbackrecalls. The program was soon defunct, and Bush's new war on drugsaims at more acceptable targets. Reviewing this record, JeffersonMorley comments that the priorities are illustrated by the actionsof Bush's successor in the "war against drugs". Whenan $8 billion suplus was announced for Miami and Los Angeles banks.William Bennett raised no questions about the morality of theirpractices and initiated no inquiries, though he did expedite evictionnotices for low-income, mostly Black residents of public housingin Washington where drug use had been reported (5).
There may also be some fine-tuning . A small Panamanian bank waspressured into pleading guilty on a money-laundering charge aftera sting operation. But the US government dropped criminal chargesagainst its parent bank, one of Latin America's major financialinstitutions, based in one of the centers of the Columbian drugcartel (6). There also appear to have been no serious effortsto pursue the public allegations by cartel money-launderers abouttheir contacts with major US banks.
The announced war on drugs has a few other gaps that are difficultto reconcile with the announced intentions, though quite reasonableon the principles that guide social policy. Drug processing requiresether and acetone, which are imported into Latin America. RafaelPerl, drug-policy adviser at the Congressional Research Service,estimates that more than 90 percent of the chemicals used to producecocaine comes from the United States. In the nine months beforethe announcement of the drug war, Columbian police say they seized1.5 million gallons of such chemicals, many found in drums displayingUS corporate logos. A CIA study concluded that US exports of these chemicalsto Latin America far exceed amounts used for any legal commercialpurpose, concluding that enormous amounts are being siphoned offto produce heroin and cocaine. Nevertheless, chemical companiesare off limits. "Most DEA offices have only one agent workingon chemical diversions", a US official reports, so monitoringis impossible. And there have been no reported raids by DeltaForce on the corporate headquarters in Manhattan (7).
Reference to the CIA brings to mind another interesting gap inthe program. The CIA and other US govermnent agencies have beeninstrumental in establishing and maintaining the drug racket sinceWorld War II, whena Mafia connections were used to split and underminethe French labor unions and the Communist Party, laying the groundworkfor the "French connection" based in Marseilles. TheGolden Triangle (Laos, Birma, Thailand) became a major narcoticscenter as Chinese Nationalist troops fled to the region aftertheir defeat in China and, not long after, as the CIA helped implementthe drug flow as part of its effort to recruit a mercenary "clandestinearmy" of highland tribesmen for its counterinsurgency operationsin Laos. Over the years, the drug traffic came to involve otherUS clients as well. In 1989 General Ramon Montano, chief of thePhilippine constabulary, testified in a public hearing in Manilathat drug syndicates operating in the Golden Triangle use thePhilippines as a transshipment point to other parts of Asia andthe West, and conceded that military officers are involved, asa Senate investigation had reported. The Philippines are on theirway to "becoming like Columbia", one Senator observed(8).
The effect was the same as the CIA shifted its attention to theterrorist war against Nicaragua and the Afghan resistance againstSoviet occupation. The complicity of the Reagan-Bush administrationsin the drug rackets in Central America as a part of their Contrasupport operations is by now well known. Pakistan is reportedto have become one of the major international centers of the herointrade when Afghan manufacturers and dealers "found theiroperations restricted after the Soviet invasion in 1979",and moved the enterprise across the borders (South). "TheU.S. government has for several years received, but declined toinvestigate, reports of heroin trafficking by some Afghan guerillasand Pakistani military officers with whom it cooperates",the Washington Post reported well after the drug war was chargingfull steam ahead. United States officials have received first-handaccounts of "extensive heroin smuggling" by leadingAfghan recipients of US aid and the Pakistani military establishment,who gave detailed information to the press in Pakistan and Washington."Nevertheless, according to U.S. officials, the United Stateshas failed to investigate or take action against some (read "any")of those suspected". US favorite Gulbudin Hekmatyar, theterrorist leader of the fundamentalist Hizbe-Islami Party, isreported to be deeply implicated in drug trafficking. Other reportsindicate that the Afghat rebels are being "debilitated byincreasingly fierce local battles for the lucrative heroin trade"(9).
As in Asia, US allies in Central America are also caught up inthe drug traffic. Only Costa Rica has a civilian government (despitepretenses), and its Leglislative Assembly's Drug Commission hasprovided information about these matters. Former president DanielOduber was cited for accepting a campaign contribution from JamesLionel Casey, a US citizen in prison in Costa Rica on chargesof drug trafficking. The Commission recommended that Oliver North,Admiral John Poindexter, former Ambassador Lewis Tambs, formerCIA station chief Joe Fernandez, and General Richard Secord "neveragain be allowed to enter Costs Rica", the Costa Rican pressreported in July 1989, blaming them for "opening a gate"for arms and drug traffickers as they illegally organized a "southernfront" for the Contras in Costa Rica. A rural guard Colonelwas charged with offering security for drug traffickers usingairstrips - probably including those used for supplying Contrasin Nicaragua, the Commission President told reporters. OliverNorth was charged with setting up a supply line with General Noriegathat brought arms to Costa Rica and drugs to the US. The Commissionalso implicated US rancher John Hull. Most serious, the Commissionreported, was "the obvious infiltration of internationalgangs into Costa Rica that made use of the (Contra) organization",on requests "initiated by Colonel North to General Noriega,"which opened Costa Rica "for trafficking in arms and drugs"by "this mafia", in part as an "excuse to helpthe contras" (10).
There are good reasons why the CIA and drugs are so closely linked.Clandestine terror requires hidden funds, and the criminal elementsto whom the intelligence agencies naturally turn expect a quidpro quo. Drugs are the obvious answer. Washington's long-terminvolvement in the drug racket is part and parcel of its internationaloperations, notably during the Reagan-Bush administrations. Oneprime target for an authentic drug war would therefore be closeat home.
These facts are too salient to have been ignored completely, butone has to look well beyond the media to become aware of the scaleand significance of the "Washington connection" overmany years. The public image conveyed is very different. A typicalillustration is a story by New York Times Asia correspondent StevenErlanger, headed "Southeast Asia Is Now No. 1 Source of U.S.Heroin". The story opens with the statement that "ThcGolden Triangle of Southeast Asia, whose flow of drugs the UnitedStates has been trying to control for 25 years, is once againthe single-largest source of heroin coming into America..".Why has the Golden Triangle been such a problem to US officialssince 1965, a year that carries some associations, after all?The question is not raised, and there is no mention of the roleof the United States government and its clandestine terror agenciesin creating and maintaining the problem that "the UnitedStates has been trying to control". The US figures merelyas a victim and guardian of virtue. Discussion about drugs betweenUS and Thai officials is becoming more "forthright"and "even, at times angry," Western diplomats say, Thailandhaving become the main smuggling and shipment center for the GoldenTriangle.
Not coincidentally - though no hint appears here Thailand wasalso designated as the focal point for US military, terror, andsubversion operations in the secret planning to undermine the1954 Geneva Accords a few weeks after they were adopted over USobjections, and after that, served as the major base for US bombingoperations and clandestine war, as well as a source of mercenaryforces for Indochina. "We're trying to get across to theThais that drugs are an international problem and that Thailandis a target too", a diplomat said. That, however, is thelimit of the US role in Thailand generally or the Golden Triangledrug operations specifically, as far as the Times is concerned(11). The media rallied to the narrowly conceived drug-war withtheir usual efficiency and dispatch. The President's decisionto send military aid to Columbia and the September 5 declarationof war against "the toughest domestic challenge we've faced indecades" set off a major media blitz, closely tailored toWhite House needs, though the absurdities of the program wereso manifest that there was some defection at the margins. Several(unscientific) samples of wire service reports through Septembershowed drug-related stories surpassing Asia, Africa, Latin America,and the Middle East combined. Media obedience reached such comicalproportions as to elicit sarcastic commentary in the Wall StreetJournal, where Hodding Carter observed that the President proceededon the basis of "one lead-pipe cinch": that the mediawould march in step.
"The mass media in America", he went on, "havean overwhelming tendency to jump up and down and bark in concertwhenever the White House - any White House - snaps its fingers(12). The short term impact was impressive. Shortly after theNovember 1988 elections, 34 percent of the public had selectedthe budget deficit as "George Bush's No. 1 priority oncehe takes office". Three percent selected drugs as top priority,down from previous months. After the media blitz of September1989, "a remarkable 43% say that drugs are the nation's singlemost important issue", the Wall Street Journal reports, withthe budget deficit a distant second at 6 percent. In a June 1987poll of registered voters in New York, taxes were selected asthe number 1 issue facing the state (15 percent), with drugs fardown the list (5 percent). A repeat in September 1989 gave dramaticallydifferent results: taxes were selected by 8 percent while thedrug problem ranked far above any other, at a phenomenal 46 percent.The real world had hardly changed; its image had, as transmittedthrough the ideological institutions, reflecting the current needsof power (13). A martial tone has broader benefits for thosewho advocate state violence and repression to secure privelege.The government-media campaign helped create thee required atmosphereamong the general public and congress. In a typical flourish,Senator Mark Hatfield, often a critic of reliance on force, saidthat in every congressional district "the troops are outthere. All they're waiting for are the orders, a plan of attack,and they're ready to march". The bill approved by Congresswidens the application of the death penalty, limits appeals byprisoners, and allows police broader latitude in obtaining evidence,among other measures.
The entire repressive apparatus of the state is looking forwardto benefits from this new "war", including the intelligencesystem and the Pentagon (which, however, is reluctant to be drawninto direct military actions that will quickly lose popular support).Military industry, troubled by the unsettling specter of peace,scents new markets here and is "pushing swords and weaponsin the drug war", Frank Greve reports from Washington. "Analystssay sales for drug-war work could spell relief for some sectors,such as commando operations, defense intelligence and counterterrorism",and Federal military laboratories may also find a new role. ArmyColonel John Waghelstein, a leading counter-insurgency specialistsuggested that the narco-guerilla connection could be exploitedto mobilize public support counterinsurgency programs and to discreditcritics:
A melding in the American public's mind and inCongress of this connection would lead to the necessary supportto counter the guerilla/narcotics terrorists in this hemisphere.Generating that support would be relatively easy once the connectionwas proven and an all-out war was declared by the National CommandAuthority. Congress would find it difficult to stand in the wayof supporting our allies with the training, advice and securityassistance necessary to do the job. Those church and academicgroups that have slavishly supported insurgency in Latin Americawould find themselves on the wrong side of the moral issue. Aboveall, we would have the unassailable moral position from whichto launch a concerted offensive effort using Department of Defense(DOD) and non-DOD assets (14).
In short, all proceeded oncourse.
THE CONTOURS OF THE CRISIS
A closer look at the drug crisis is instructive. There can beno doubt that the problem is serious. "Substance abuse,"to use the technical term, takes a terrible toll. The grim factsare reviewed by Ethan Nadelmann in Science magazine (15). Deathsattributable to consumption of tobacco are estimated at over 300,000a year, while alcohol use adds an additional 50,000 to 200,000annual deaths. Among fifteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds, alcoholis the leading cause of death, also serving as a "gateway"drug that leads to use of others, according the National Councilon Alcoholism (16). In addition, a few thousand deaths from illegaldrugs are recorded: 3562 deaths were reported in 1985, from allillegal drugs combined. According to these estimates, over 99percent of deaths from substance abuse are attributed to tobaccoand alcohol.
There are also enormous health costs, again primarily from alcoholand tobacco use: "the health costs of marijuana, cocaine,and heroin combined amount to only a small fraction of those causedby either of the two licit substances," Nadelmann continues.Also to be considered is the distribution of victims. Illicitdrugs primarily affect the user, but their legal cousins seriouslyaffect others, including passive smokers and victims of drunkendriving and alcohol-induced violence; "no illicit drug...isas strongly associated with violent behavior as is alcohol",Nadelmann observes, and alcohol abuse is a factor in some 40 percentof roughly 50,000 annual traffic deaths.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 3800 nonsmokersdie every year from lung cancer caused by breathing other people'stobacco smoke, and that the toll of passive smoking may be asmany as 46,000 annually if heart disease and respiratory ailmentsare included. Officials say that if confirmed, these conclusionswould require that tobacco smoke be listed as a very hazardouscarcinogen (class A), along with such chemicals as benzene andradon. University of California statistician Stanton Glantz describespassive smoking as "the third leading cause of preventabledeath, behind smoking and alcohol. (17)
Illegal drugs are far from uniform in their effects. Thus, "amongthe roughly 60 milllion Americans who have smoked marijuana, notone has died from a marijuana overdose," Nadelmann reports.As he and others have observed, federal interdiction efforts havehelped to shift drug use from relatively harmless marijuana tofar more dangerous drugs.
One might ask why tobacco is legal and marijuana not. A possibleanswer is suggested by the nature of the crop. Marijuana can begrown almost anywhere, with little difficulty. It might not beeasily marketable by major corporations. Tobacco is quite anotherstory. Questions can be raised about the accuracy of the figures.One would have to look into the procedures for determining causeof death, the scope of these inquiries, and other questions, suchas the effects on children of users. But even if the officialfigures are far from the mark, there is little doubt that WilliamBennett is right in speaking of "drug-related chaos"and an "appalling, deepening crisis" - largely attributableto alcohol and tobacco, so it appears.
Further human and social costs include the victims of drug-relatedcrimes and the enormous growth of organized crime, which is believedto derive more than half of its revenues from the drug trade.In this case, the costs are associated with the illicit drugs,but because they are illicit, not because they are drugs. Thesame was true of alcohol during the Prohibition era. We are dealinghere with questions of social policy, which is subject to decisionand choice. Nadelmann advocates legalization and regulation. Similarproposals have been advanced by a wide range of conservative opinion(the London Economist, Milton Friedman, and so on), and by someothers.
Responding to Friedman, William Bennett argues that after repealof Prohibition, alcohol use soared. Hence legalization cannotbe considered. Whatever the merits of the argument, it is clearthat Bennett doesn't take it seriously, since he does not proposereinstituting Prohibition or banning tobacco - or even assaultrifles. His own argument is simply that "drug use is wrong"and therefore must be barred. The implicit assumption is thatuse of tobacco, alcohol, or assault rifles is not "wrong",on grounds that remain unspoken, and that the state must prohibitand punish what is "wrong". Deceit, perhaps? (18).
Radical statists of the Bennett variety like to portray themselvesas humanists taking a moral stance, insisting on "the differencebetween right and wrong". Transparently, it is sheer fraud.
THE NARCOTRAFFICKERS
Social policies implemented in Washington contribute to the tollof victims in other ways, a fact illustrated dramatically justas the vast media campaign orchestrated by the White House peakedin September 1989. On September 19, the US Trade Representative(USTR) panel held a hearing in Washington to consider a tobaccoindustry request that the US impose sanctions on Thailand if itdoes not agree to drop restrictions in import of US tobacco. SuchUS government actions had already rammed tobacco down the throatsof consumers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, with human costsof the kind already sketched.
This huge narcotrafficking operation had its critics. A statementby the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society andAmerican Lung Association condemned the cigarette advertisingin "countries that have already succumbed to the USTR crowbarof tracle threats," a campaign "patently designed toincrease smoking by ... young Asian men and women who see U.S.men and women as role models". US Surgeon General EverettKoop testified at the USTR panel that " when we are pleadingwith foreign governments to stop the flow of cocaine, it is theheight of hypocrisy for the United States to export tobacco".Denouncing the trade policy "to push addicting substancesinto foreign markets" regardless of health hazards, he said:
"Years from now, our nation will look back on this applicationof free trade policy and find it scandalous". Koop toldreporters that he had not cleared his testimony with the WhiteHouse because it would not have been approved, and said he alsoopposed actions under the Reagan Administration to force Asiancountries to import US tobacco. During his eight years in office,ending a few days after his testimony, Koop backed reports brandingtobacco a lethal addictive drug responsible for some 300,000 deathsa year.
Thai witnesses also protested, predicting that the consequencewould be to reverse a decline in smoking achieved by a fifteen-yearcampaign against tobacco use. They also noted that US drug traffickingwould interfere with Washington's efforts to induce Asian governmentsto halt the flow of illegal drugs. Responding to the claim ofUS tobacco companies that their product is the best in the world,a Thai witness said, "Certainly in the Golden Triangle wehave some of the best products, but we never ask the principleof free trade to govern such products. In fact we suppressed (them)".Critics invoked the analogy of the Opium War 150 years ago, whenthe British government compelled China to open its doors to opiumfrom British India, sanctimoniously pleading the virtues of freetrade as they forcefully imposed large-scale drug addiction onChina. As in the case of the US today, Britain had little thatit could sell to China, apart from drugs. The US sought for itselfwhatever priveleges the British were extracting from China byviolence, also extolling free trade and even the "great designof Providence to make the wickedness of men subserve his purposesof mercy toward China, in breaking through her wall of exclusion,and bringing the empire into more immediate contact with westernand christian nations" (American Board of Commissioners forForeign Missions). John Quincy Adams denounced China's refusalto accept British opium as a violation of the Christian principleof "love thy neighbor" and "an enormous outrageupon the rights of human nature, and upon the first principlesof the rights of nations". The tobacco industry and its protectorsin government invoke similar arguments today as they seek to relivethis triumph of Western civilization and its "historic purpose"(19).
Here we have the biggest drug story of the day, breaking rightat the peak moment of the government-media campaign: the US governmentis perhaps the world's leading drug peddler, even if we put asidethe US role in establishing the hard-drug racket after World WarII and maintaining it since. How did this major story fare inthe media blitz? It passed virtually unnoticed -and, needlessto say, without a hint of the obvious conclusion (20).
The drug traffic is no trivial matter for the US economy. Tobaccoexports doubled in annual value in the 1980s, contributing nearly$25 billion to the trade ledger over the decade according to areport of the Tobacco Merchants Association, rising from $2.5billion in 1980 to $5 billion in 1989. Tobacco provided a $4.2billion contribution to the trade balance for 1989, when the deficitfor the year was $109 billion. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentuckytook due note of these figures while testifying in support ofthe tobacco companies at a Senate hearing. The president of theAmerican Farm Bureau Federation, commenting on the benefits tothe US economy from tobacco exports, "cited the removal ofoverseas trade barriers, primarily in Japan, Taiwan and SouthKorea" as a contributory factor (21).
We see that it is unfair to blame the huge trade deficit on thepolicies of the Reagan-Bush administrations without giving themcredit for their efforts to overcome it by state interventionto increase the sale of lethal addictive drugs.
As the drug war proceeded, opposition to tobacco exports beganto receive some attention. In April 1990 Dr. James Mason, AssistantSecretary for Health, declared that it was "unconscionablefor the mighty transnational tobacco companies - and three ofthem are in the United States - to be peddling their poison abroad,particularly because their main targets are less-developed countries".A few weeks later, however, he cancelled a scheduled appearancebefore a congressional hearing on the matter, while the Departmentof Health and Human Services "backed away from its pastcriticism of efforts to open new markets for American cigarettesaround the world. The Department said that "the issue wasone of trade, not health", Philip Hilts reported in the NewYork Times. A Department spokesman explained that Dr Mason's appearancewas cancelled for that reason. Citing the trade figures, anotherofficial described Mason's criticism of tobacco exports as "anunwelcome intrusion on the Administration's efforts to open newcigarette markets" - particularly in Thailand, Hilts reportedfurther. Meanwhile US Trade Representative Carla Hills dismissedThai protests about US imperialists thrusting cancer sticks uponthem, saying, "I don't see how health concerns can enterthe picture if the people are smoking their own cigarettes"(22).
Or, by the same logic, smoking their own crack. In our passionfor free trade, then, we should surely allow the Medellin cartelto export cocaine freely to the United States, to advertise itto young people without constraint, and to market it aggressively.
Others continued to voice objections. In an open letter to Columbianpresident Virgilio Barco, Peter Bourne, who was Director of theOffice of Drug Abuse Policy in the Carter Administration, wrote:"perhaps nothing so reflects on Washington's fundamentalhypocrisy on (the drug) issue as the fact that while it railsagainst the adverse effects of cocaine in the United States, thenumber of Columbians dying each year from subsidized North Americantobacco products is significantly larger than the number of NorthAmericans felled by Columbian cocaine"
The Straits Times in Singapore found it "hard to reconcilethe fact that the Americans are threatening trade sanctions againstcountries that try to keep out U.S. tobacco products" withUS efforts to reduce cigarette smoking at home (let alone itsefforts to bar import of illicit drugs) - a surprising failureto perceive the clear difference between significant and insignificantnations, to borrow some neoconservative rhetoric (23).
The American Medical Association also condemned trade policiesthat ignore health prohlems, estimating that some 2.5 millionexcessive or premature deaths per year are attributable to tobacco- about 5 perrcent of all deaths. At a World Conference on LungHealth in May 1990, former Surgeon General Koop, noting that UStobacco exports had risen 20 percent the preceding year whilesmoking dropped 5 percent in the US, again called the export oftobacco "a moral outrage" and denounced it as "theheight of hypocrisy" to call on other governments to stopthe export of cocaine "while at the same time we exportnicotine, a drug just as addictive as cocaine, to the rest ofthe world". In Taiwan, Koop said, the government had beenable to cut smoking drastically by an antismoking campaign, untilWashington threatened trade sanctions in 1987, leading to a 10percent rise in smoking. "America better stop being a drugpusher if we expect to have any credibility in our war on drugs,"Congressman Chester Atkins said at a news conference. Public healthexperts warned of a "global epidemic" from tobacco-relateddeaths as a result of the surge in overseas sales, now one-sixthof US production, .predicting that the death toll will rise totwelve million annually by mid twenty-first century. Speakingfor the government, the USTR spokesman repeated that the matteris simply one of free trade: "Our question is basically oneof fairness". Coverage was again slight (24).
Thatcher's England was not far behind. The alternative press reporteda London Sunday Times expose of a multimillion dollar marketingdrive by British American Tobacco (BAT) to sell cheap and highlyaddictive cigarettes in Africa - an easy, regulation-free marketwith levels of tar and nicotine far above those permitted in theWest. A corporation letter to the country's head of medical servicesstated that "BAT Uganda does not believe that cigarette smokingis harmful to health... (and) we should not wish to endanger ourpotential to export to these countries which do not have a healthwarning on our packs". A British cancer specialist describedthe situation in the Third World as similar to that in Englandin the early years of the century, when one in ten men was dyingof lung cancer. He estimated that in China alone fifty millionof today's children will die through tobacco-related diseases(25).
If such estimates are anywhere near accurate, the reference tothe Opium Wars is not far from the mark, and it might be fairto warn of the blurring of the boundary between narcotraffickingand genocide.
SOCIAL POLICY AND THE DRUG CRISIS
Serious concern over the drug crisis would quickly lead to inquiryinto a much wider range of government policies. US farmers caneasily be encouraged to produce crops other than tobacco. Notso Latin American peasants, who, with far fewer options, turnedto cocaine production for survival as subsistence agricultureand profits from traditional exports declined. In the case ofColumbia, for example, suspension of the international coffeeagreement in July 1988, initiated by US actions based on allegedfair trade violations, led to a fall of prices of more than 40percent within two months for Columbia's leading legal export(26).
Furthermore, US pressures over the years - including the "Foodfor Peace" program - have undermined production of cropsfor domestic use, which can not compete with subsidized US agriculturalexports. US policy is to encourage Latin America to consume theUS surplus while producing specialized crops for export: flowers, vegetables for yuppie markets - or coca leaves, the optimalchoice on grounds of capitalist rationality. The Council on HemisphericAffairs comments that "only economic growth in Latin America,the promotion of financing of alternate legal crops and a decreasein U.S. demand will provide a viable alternative" to cocaineproduction (27).
As for US demand for illegal drugs, middle-class use has beendecreasing. But the inner city is a different matter. Here again,if we are serious, we will turn to deep-seated social policy.The cocaine boom correlates with major social and economic processes,including a historically unprecedented stagnation of real wagessince 1973, (28) an effective attack against labor to restorecorporate profits in a period of declining US global dominance,a shift in employment either to highly skilled labor or to servicejobs, many of them dead-end and low-paying; and other moves towardsa two-tiered society with a large and growing under-class miredin hopelessness and despair. Illegal drugs offer profits to ghettoentrepreneurs with few alternative options, and to others, temporaryrellief from an intolerable existence. These crucial factors receiveoccasional notice in the mainstream. Thus, a specialist quotedin the Wall Street Journal comments that "what is new islarge numbers of inner-city people - blacks and Hispanics - sufficientlydisillusioned, a real level of hopelessness. Most northern Europeancountries have nothing remotely comparable" (29).
In a British television film on drugs, a political figure drawsthe obvious conclusion: "We cannot police the world. We cannotstop (heroin) supplies. We can only limit the demand for it byproducing a decent society that people want to live in, not escapefrom" (30).
With their contributions to growth and punishment of the underclass,the Reagan-Bush administrations helped to create the current drugcrisis, yet another fact hat merits headlines. And the current"war" may well exacerbate the crisis. Meeting with congressionalleaders, Bush outlined his proposals for paying the costc of thedrug plan, including elimination of almost $100 million from publichousing subsidies and a juvenile justice program. The NationalCenter on Budget priorities estimated that the Bush program wouldremove $400 million from social programs (31). The misery of thepoor is likely to increase, along with the demand for drugs andthe construction of prisons for the superfluous population.
THE USUAL VICTIMS
The Columbian operation illustrates other facets of the drug war.The military aid program for Columbia finances murderous and repressiveelements of the military with ties to the drug business and landowners.As commonly in the past, the current US drug programs are likelyto contribute to counterinsurgency operations and destructionof popular organizations that might challenge elite conceptionsof "democracy"
These prospects were illustrated at the very moment when the Presidentmade his grand Declaration of a all-out war on the drug merchants,featuring aid to the Columbian military, in September 1989. Asthe media blitz peaked, the Andean Commission of Jurists in Limapublished a report on the Columbian military entitled "Excessesin the Anti Drug Effort". "Waving as pretext the measuresadopted against drug trafficking," the report begins, "themilitary have ransacked the headquarters of grass root organizationsand the homes of political leaders, and ordered mans arrests."-A series of illustrations follow from the first two weeks of September1989. On September 3, two days before President Bush's dramaticcall to battle. the army and the Department of Security Administration(DAS) ransacked homes of peasants in one region, arresting fortylaborers; the patrols are lead by hooded individuals who identifytargets for arrest, townspeople report. In a nearby area housesearches were aimed principally against members of the PatrioticUnion (whose leaders and activists are regularly assassinated)and the Communist Party, some alleged to have "subversivepropaganda" in their possession. In Medellin, seventy activistsand civic leaders were arrested in poor neighborhoods. Elsewhereat the same time, two union leaders, one an attorney for the unionwere assassinated and another disappeared. Other leaders receiveddeath threats. Hired assassins murdered three members of the NationalOrganization of Indigenous People, injuring others, while unidentifiedpersons destroyed a regional office (32).
These are examples of the regular behavior of the forces to whomPresident Bush pledged US aid and assistance, published just atthe moment of the domestic applause for his announcement - butnot available to the cheering section that pays the bills.
Ample publicity was, however, given to the capture in mid Septemberof twenty-eight people charged with being leftist guerillas workingwith the drug cartel, and to claims by the Columbian militarythat guerilla organizations had formed an alliance with the Medellindrug traffickers and carried out bombings for them.
The Columbian military in Medellin charged that staff membersof the Popular Education Institute (LPC) arrested in a raid bysecurity forces, were members of a guerilla organization hiredas terrorists by the cartel. Unreported, however, was the conclusionof the Andean Commission of Jurists that the charges are "clearlya set-up by the military forces which are looking to discreditthe popular work (of) the IPC,", a community-based organizationworking in popular education, training and human rights. The staffworkers arrested - all those present at the time, including thedirector - were held incommunicado and tortured, according tothe Columbian section of the Andean Commission. The ColumbianHuman Rights Committee in Washington reported increasing harassmentof popular organizations as new aid flowed to the military inthe name of "the war on drugs". Other human rights monitorshave also warned of the near inevitability of these consequencesas the US consolidates its links with the Columbian and Peruvianmilitary, both of whom have appalling records of human rightsviolations (33).
The New York Times reports that senior Peruvian military officerssay that they will use the new US money "to intensify theircampaign against the guerillas and try to prevent the smugglingof chemicals" (mainly from US corporations, which suggestsanother strategy that remains unmentioned). US officials concurwith the strategy, though they profess to be uneasy that it "issteering clear of the growers and traffickers". In Bolivia,also a recipient of US military aid and hailed as a great successstory, the military does not match its Peruvian and Columbiancolleagues in the scale of state terror, but there was no US reactionto the declaration of a state of emergency by the President ofBolivia, followed by the jailing of "hundreds of union leadersand teachers who he said threatened his Government's anti-inflationpolicies with their wage demands" (34). This is not, afterall, Nicaragua under the Sandinistas, so passionate concern overhuman rights issues would have no purpose.
It should be borne in mind that human rights have only an instrumentalfunction in the political culture, serving as a weapon againstadversaries and a device to mobilize the domestic public behindthe banner of our nobility, as we courageously denounce the realor alleged abuses of official enemies.
In this regard, human rights concerns are very much like the factsof past and present history: instruments to serve the needs ofpower, not to enlighten the citizenry. Thus, one would be unlikelyto find a discussion in the media of the background for the stateterrorism in Columbia that the Bush Administration intends toabet. The topic is addressed in a discussion of human rights inColumbia by Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa, president of the ColumbianPermanent Committee for Human Rights. "Behind the facadeof a constitutional regime", he observes, "we have amilitarized society under the state of siege provided" bythe 1886 Constitution. The Constitution grants a wide range ofrights, but they have no relation to reality. "In this contextpoverty and insufficient land reform have made Columbia one ofthe most tragic countries of Latin America". Land reform,which "has practically been a myth", was legislatedin 1961, but "has yet to be implemented, as it is opposedby landowners, who have had the power to stop it" - again,no defect of "democracy", by Western standards. Theresult of the prevailing misery has been violence, including laViolencia of the 1940s and 1950s, which took hundreds of thousandsof lives. "This violence has been caused not by any massindoctrination, but by the dual structure of a prosperous minorityand an impoverished, excluded majority, with great differencesin wealth, income, and access to political participation".
The story has another familiar thread. "But in addition tointernal factors", Vasquez Carrizosa continues, "violencehas been exacerbated by external factors. In the 1960s the UnitedStates, during the Kennedy administration, took great pains totransform our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades,accepting the new strategy of the death squads". These Kennedyinitiatives "ushered in what is known in Latin America as the NationalSecurity Doctrine,...not defense against an external enemy, buta way to make the military establishment the masters ' of thegame...(with) the right to combat the internal enemy, as set forthin the Brazilian doctrine, the Argentine doctrine, and the Columbiandoctrine: it is the right to fight and exterminate social workers,trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment,and who are assumed to be Communist extremists. And this couldmean anyone, including human rights activists such as myself (35)."
The president of the Columbian Human Rights Commission is reviewingfacts familiar throughout Latin America. Military-controlled NationalSecurity states dedicated to "internal security" byassassination, torture, disappearance, and sometimes mass murder,constituted one of the two major legacies of the Kennedy Administrationto Latin America; the other was the Alliance for Progress, a statisticalsuccess and social catastrophe. The basic thrust of policy wasestablished long before, and has been pursued since as well, witha crescendo of support for murderous state terror under the ReaganAdministration. The "drug war" simply provides anothermodality for pursuit of these long-term commitments. One willsearch far for any hint of these fundamental truths in the drum-beatingfor a war of self-defense against the terrible crimes perpetratedagainst us by Latin American monsters.
As the first anniversary of the drug war approached, the HouseGovernment Operations Committee released a study concluding thatUS anti-drug efforts had made virtually no headway in disruptingthe cocaine trade in Peru and Bolivia, largely because of "corruption"in the armed forces of both countries. This "corruption"is illustrated by the stoning of DEA agents and Peruvian policeby local peasants led by Peruvian military personnel, and thefiring by Peruvian military officers on State Department helicopterswhen they approached drug-trafficker facilities - in short, bythe well-known fact that "the drug dealers' core militarypower lies in paramilitary groups they have organized with thesupport of large landowners and military officers," the beneficiariesof US aid, exactly as Alberto Galan pointed out at the momentwhen his brother's murder provided the pretext to set the latest"drug war" into high gear.(36).
The domestic eneity is likely to be subjected to the same kindof treatment as the poor abroad. In keeping with the general commitmentsof neoconservatism, the drug war seeks to undermine civil libertieswith a broad range of measures, such as random searches basedon police suspicion, aimed primarily at young Blacks and Hispanics. The attack on civil rights has aroused some concern, though notbecause of the increased abuse of the underclass. Rather, it is"the threat to individual rights from the drug war"as it shifts to "middle-class whites who are casual drugusers" (John Dillin, reporting on the threat to civil libertiesin the lead story of the Christian Science Monitor). "Asmiddle America comes under scrutiny", Dillin continues, "criticsexpect a growing outcry about violations of civil liberties"(37).
Power can defend itself. In practice, the capitalist ethic treatsfreedom as a commodity: a lot is available in principle, and youhave what you can buy.
The links between the drug war and the US intervention sometimesreach a remarkable level of cynicism. Thus, Columbia requestedthat the US install a radar system near its south border to monitorflights from its neighbors to the south, which provide the bulkof the cocaine for processing by Colombian drug merchants.
The US responded by installing a radar system, but as far removedfrom drug flights to Columbia as is possible on Columbian territory:on San Andres Island in the Caribbean, 500 miles from mainlandColumbia and remote from the drug routes, but only 200 miles offthe coast of Nicaragua. The Columbian government accused the Pentagonof using the fight against drugs as a ruse to monitor Nicaragua,a charge confirmed by Senator John Kerry's foreign affairs aide.He added that Costa Rica had "requested radar assistanceagainst small flights moving cocaine through the country and wasgiven a proposal" by the Pentagon. Lacking technical experts,Costa Rican officials asked for an evaluation from the BritishEmbassy, which informed them that the US proposal had no relevanceto the drug traffic but was designed to monitor the Sandinistas.In its study of the drug cartel, Kerry's Senate Subcommittee onTerrorism, Narcotics and International Operations had reportedthat foreign policy concerns, including the war against Nicaragua,"interfered with the U.S.'s ability to fight the war on drugs",delaying, halting and hampering law enforcement efforts to keepnarcotics out of the United States - a polite way of saying thatthe Reagan Administration was facilitating the drug racket inpursuit of its international terrorist project in Nicaragua andother imperatives, a standard feature of policy for decades. Thecurrent war adds another chapter to the sordid story (38). Thistoo escapes the front pages and prime-time television. In general,the central features of the drug crisis received scant noticein the media campaign. It is doubtful that the core issues reachbeyond a fraction of 1 percent of media coverage, which is tailoredto other needs.
The counterinsurgency connection may also lie behind the trainingof Columbian narcotraffickers by Western military officers, whichreceived some notice in August 1989 when, a few days after theGalan assassination, retired British and Israeli officers werefound to be training Columbian cocaine traffickers, includingteams of assassins for the drug cartel and their right-wing allies.A year earlier, a July 1988 Columbian intelligence report (Departmentof Security Administration: DAS) entitled "Organizationof Hired Assassins and Drug Traffickers in the Magdalena Medio"noted that "At the training camps, the presence of Israeli,German and North American instructors has been detected".Trainees at the camp, who are supported by cattle ranchers andfarmers involved in coca production and by the Medellin cartel,"apparently participated in peasant massacres" in abanana region, the report continues. After the discovery of Britishand Israeli trainers a year later, the Washington Post, citinganother DAS document, reported that "the men taught in thetraining centers (where British and Israeli nationals were identified)are believed responsible for massacres in rural villages and assassinationof left-leaning politicians". The same document states thatone Israeli-run course was abbreviated when the instructors went"to Honduras and Costa Rica to give training to the Nicaraguancontras". The allegation that US instructors were also presenthas not been pursued, or to my knowledge reported in the press(39).
Israel claimed that Colonel Yair Klein and his associates in theSpearhead security operation, who were identified as trainersin an NBC film clip, were acting on their own. But Andrew Cockburnpoints out that Klein's company publicly insisted that they alwaysworked "with the complete approval and authorization of ourMinistry of Defense". They also trained Contras in Hondurasand Guatemalan officers; one associate of Klein's, an Israelicolonel, claims that they trained every Guatemalan officer abovethe rank of captain, working on a contract arranged by the stateowned Israel Military Industries. "The Americans have theproblem of public opinion, international image", the marketingdirector of Spearhead explained. "We don't have this problem".Therefore, the dirty work of training assassins and mass murdererscan be farmed out to our Israeli mercenaries. In the London Observer,Hugh O'Shaughnessy reported that in a letter of March 31, 1986signed by Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the LaborParty, in the journal's possession, Rabin gave Spearhead officialauthorization for "the export of military know-how and defenseequipment," stipulating further that "It is necessaryto receive a formal authorization for every negotiation"(40).
The Israeli press reports that Colonel Klein and his associatesused a network of ultra-orthodox American Jews to launder themoney they received for their services in Columbia. It claimsfurther that Klein held a position of high responsibility andsensitivity as Commander of the War Room of the Israeli GeneralStaff.
An Israeli reserve general reported to be involved in the Israeli-Columbiaaffair attributed the flurry of publicity to US government revengefor the Pollard spycaper and "an American trick contrivedin order to remove Israel from Columbia," so that the UScan run the arms supply there without interference (41).
Jerusalem Post columnist Menachem Shalev raised the question:"Why the moral outrage" over this affair? "Is itworse to train loyal troops of drug barons than it is to teachracist killers of Indians, Blacks, Communists, democrats, et cetera?"A good question. The answer lies in the US propaganda system.Current orders are to express moral outrage over the Columbiancartel, the latest menace to our survival. But Israel's role asa US mercenary state is legitimate, part of the service as a "strategicasset" that earns it the status of "the symbol of humandecency" in New York Times editorials (42).
THE BEST LAID PLANS...
When the Bush plan was announced, the American Civil LibertiesUnion at once branded it a "hoax", a strategy that is"not simply unworkable" but "counter-productiveand cynical" (43). If the rhetorical ends were the real ones,that would be true enough. But for the objective of populationcontrol and pursuit of traditional policy goals, the strategyhas considerable logic, though its short-term successes are unlikelyto persist.
Part of the difficulty is that even the most efficient propagandasystem is unable to maintain the proper attitudes among the populationfor long. The currently available devices have none of the lastingimpact of appeal to the Soviet threat. Another reason is thatfundamental social and economic problems cannot be swept underthe rug for ever. The temporarily convenient program of punishingthe underclass carries serious potential costs for interests thatreally count. Some corporate circles are awakening to the factthat third world within our own country" will harm businessinterests (Brad Butler, former chairman of Proctor & Gamble).According to Labor Department projections, over half the new jobscreated between 1986 and the year 2000 must be filled by childrenof minorities, who are expected to constitute one-third of theworkforce before too long. These jobs require skills - includingcomputer literacy and other technical knowledge - that will notbe gained in the streets and prisons and deteriorating schools (44).
As in South Africa, business will sooner or later come to realizethat its interests are not well served under Apartheid, whetherlegal or de facto. But a reversal of longstanding policies thatreached the level of seriolls social pathology during the Reagan-Bushyears will be no simple matter.
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1. R. Burket in NYT, September 24, 1988.
2. Berke, in NYT, February 14; Philip Shenon, in NYT, September2; F. E. Zimring, director, and G. Hawkins, senior fellow, atthe Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of Californiaat Berkeley, Bennett's Sham Epidemic, Op-Ed, in NYT, January 25,1990. Berke, Drug Stucly Faults Role of State Dept., in NYT, February6, 1990, section D, p. 24.
3. R. Berke, Bennett Asserts Drug Education Isn't Key, in NYT,Februar 3, 1990.
4. Galan, in BG, September 26, 1989.
5. Morley, in Nation, Octoher 2, 1989.
6. COHA'S Washington Report on the Hemisphere, September 27,1989.
7. Brook Larmer, US, Mexico Try to Halt Chemical FlOW to Cartels,in CSM, October 23,1989, reporting on the lack of any seriousefforts and blaming Mexico.
8. See A. W. McCoy, C. B. Reach, and L. D. Adams, The Politicsof Heroin in Southeast Asia Harper & Row, 1972); P. Dale Scott,The War Conspiracy Bobbs-Merrill, 1972); H. Krueger, The GreatHeroinCoupSouth End, 1980); L. Cockbum, Out of Control Atlantic Monthly,1987). Carlo Cortes, in AP, Manila, October 25, 1989.
9. South 'the business magazine of the developing world,"October 1989, J. Rupert and S. Colt, Guerillas for God, HeroinDealers forMan, in WP Weekly, May 21, 1990; A. Rashid, in FEER,September 14, 1990. On Central America, see L. Cockbum, Out ofControl.
10. P.Brennan, inTicoTimes,July 28,1989, reviewing earlier reports.Costa Rica subsequently attempted to extradite Hull from the USon charge of participating in the 1984 La Penca bombing of a newsconference in which four people were killed; L. Gruson, in NYT,February 27,1990. See N. Wax and M. Hardesty, Drug Trade, in ZMagazine, April 1990.
11. Erlanger, in NYT, February 11,1990.
12. in NYT, September 6; Carter, in WSJ, September 14, 1989.
13. AP in Wsj November28,1988;in WSJ, September 22,1989; AP, September27 1989, reporting polls of the Marist Coliege Institute for PublicOpinion.
14. AP, September 27,1989; Greve, in Philadelphia Inquirer, January21, 1990; Waghelstein, in Military Review February 1987.
15. Nadelmann, Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequencesand Alternati?ves, in Science, September 1, 1989. SBee also letters,in C. Foster, in CSM, September 18,1989
16. C. Foster, in CSM, September18, 1989.
17. P. Hilts, in NYT, May 10; Reuters, in BG, June 26; AP, inNYT, May 21, 1990.
18. Friedman, in WSJ, September 7,1989; Bennett, in WSJ, September19, 1989.
See also A. Lewis, in NYT, September 24,1989, noting the absurdityof Bennett's argument.
19. R. van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire, Oxford UniversityPress, 1960, pp. 170 f.
20. in AP, September 1~9,20. The Wall StreetJalrnal and ChristianScience Monitor~took~-dot:EQ the hearings, omitting the majorpoints, however. See the sharp editorial in the Boston (~obe,September 24, 1989; and Alfexander Cockburn, in Nation, Octo,ber30, 1989.
21. in A*P, April 17, May 4, 1990.
22. Hilts, in NYT, May 18, 1990; M. Kay Magistad, in BG, May 31,1990.
23. Bourne, COHA Council on Hemispheric Affairs. News and Analysis,June 5, 1990 Str,aits Tirraes, in International Herald Tribune,April 9, 1990. On the relative significance of nations, see Chapter12, P. 365, below.
24. AP, NYT, June 27, also briefly noting the World Conferenceon LungHealth a month earlier; AP, May 21; R. Scherer, in CSM,May 23; B. Lehman, in BG, May 22, 1990.
25. B. Lowe, Third World is butt of deadly trade ploy,in the Guardian,New York, May 30, 1990 T. Treaster, Coffee Impasse Imperils Columbia'sDrug Fight, September 24, 1988. in Washington Report on the Hemisphere,September 13, 1989. On the Food for Peace program and others likeit, see Necessary Illusions, p.363, and sources cited.
26. J.Treaster, Coffee Impasse Imperils, Columbia's Drug Fight,September 24, 1988
27. In Washington Report on the Hemisphere, September 13, 1989.On the Food for Peace program and others like it. see necessaryillustrations
28. See G. Dvid, Real Wages are on a Steady Decline, in Los AngelesTimes, July 16,1989.
29. A. Otten, in WSJ, September 6,1989
30. J. o'Connor, in New York Times News Service, April 17,1990,reviewing the TV ftlm "Traffik" shown over PBS.
31. M. Kranish, in BG, September 5; James Ridgway, in VillageVoice, September 19,1989.
32. Andean Newsletter, Andean Commnissiors of Jurists, Lima, September1989.
33. sin the N>ew York Times, September 16,17,18. U. Marquez,in the Guardian, NewYork), October 11 1989; Columbian Human RightsCommittee, POB 3130, Washington D.C. 20010.
34. J. Treaster, in NYT, December 6. 1989.
35. Columbia Update 1.4, December F 1989.
36. see p. 116. House study, in WP-BG, August 21,1990, p.76. Apprarentlymissed by the New York Times.
37. Dillin, Nation 's Liberties at Risk.? in CSM, February 2,1990.See also Seth Mydans, Powerful Arms of Drug War Arousing ConcernforRights,
38. M. Frisby, Columbians rap US plan on radar base, in BG, April5,1989, citing Richard McCall. For review of the Kerry Commission-WashingtonSpectator, August 15,
1989; J. Hatheway, in Z Magazine,
.. October 1989.
39. NBC Nightly News, August 25,1989; DAS report, Bogota, July20,1988, reproduced in Pax Christi, Impunity E. Robinson, in WP,August 9,1989. A comment by T. Rosenberg, in TNR,
September 18,1986; may be a reference to theJuly 1988 DAS reporton the alleged presence of US instructors
40. A. Cockburn, in NYr, Op-Ed, September 8; O'Shaughnessy, inthe Observer, October l, 1989. See alsoJ. Hunter, Tbe IsraeliConnection: Israeli Ins ement in Paramilitary Training in Columbia,in Arab American Institute, September 1989.
41. R. Ben-Yishai, in Yediot Ahronot, August 30, U. Ben-Ami, AlHamishmar, August 31, military correspondent Danny Sadeh, YediotAhronot, August 29, 1989.
42. JP, August 29, 1989; editorial, NYT, February 19, 1988.
43. AP, BG, September7, 1989.
44. E. Fiske, Impending US. Jobs 'Disaster: Work Force Unqualifsed to Work, in NYT, September 2S, 1989. See Introduction.