---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 16:57:22 -0600 (CST) From: Colombian Labor Monitor <xx738 at prairienet.org>
FOX NEWS NETWORK
Monday, 29 January 2001
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* THE O'REILLY FACTOR *
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Is the CIA Involved in Drug Smuggling?
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GUESTS: Ken Bucchi
HOST: Bill O'Reilly
O'REILLY: In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, a couple of years ago radical California Congresswoman Maxine Waters accused the Central Intelligence Agency of being involved with drug smuggling, especially crack cocaine. Now, many Americans just shrugged that off because Ms. Waters can be extreme in her positions. But now, a former CIA operative is making similar charges.
With us is former CIA operative, as I just said, Kenneth Bucchi, author of "Operation Pseudo Miranda: A Veteran of the CIA Drug Wars Tells All." Tells all about what? What did you do? What did you see?
KEN BUCCHI, AUTHOR, "OPERATION PSEUDO MIRANDA": Well, what I saw, and this predates long before what Maxine Waters was purporting, there was basically a decentralized organization in Colombia. Anybody with a pint of chutzpah and a Cessna could fly in half a ton of cocaine and there was really no way of stopping them.
What they tried to do, and they did very successfully, was centralize it, give a small cache of drug lords the means by which, which is is intelligence and weapons, to basically destroy the numerically larger number of smaller dealers.
O'REILLY: All right, so in the country of Columbia...
BUCCHI: Yes?
O'REILLY: You had all kinds of free lance cocaine smugglers.
BUCCHI: Yes. Hundreds.
O'REILLY: The CIA said this is out of control.
BUCCHI: Yes.
O'REILLY: We want to wipe the little guys out and in order to do that we're going to cooperate with the big guys?
BUCCHI: Exactly.
O'REILLY: All right, so the big guys wiped them out themselves...
BUCCHI: Right.
O'REILLY: ... killed them or whatever it had to do.
BUCCHI: And so now you've basically increased their drug traffic to the -- let's say, 10-fold. And you set up corridors now by which they can fly those drugs into the country.
O'REILLY: All right, now, let me stop you again. So the CIA was actually helping...
BUCCHI: Yes.
O'REILLY: ... big cartels in...
BUCCHI: And so was the...
O'REILLY: ... Colombia fly drugs into the United States...
BUCCHI: Yes.
O'REILLY: ... in return for them knocking the little guys out.
half to us.
O'REILLY: Ah.
BUCCHI: So now we stop half the drugs.
O'REILLY: So that the cartel people harvesting the coca plant, turning it into cocaine, primarily, we're talking about here...
BUCCHI: Right.
O'REILLY: ... gave the CIA 50 percent of it?
BUCCHI: Well, it wasn't give on that level. We -- there was a game, in a sense, where we will develop the corridors, and if we intercept them, And once that represented half the drugs for a certain period, we'd let the other half go free.
O'REILLY: Really? So if you got a certain amount of drugs in any period of time, you would let the rest fly in?
BUCCHI: We'd not only let it fly in, we'd facilitate it, in that we would...
O'REILLY: Help it fly it?
BUCCHI: We would help it fly in...
O'REILLY: Who was behind this?
BUCCHI: Well, and that's the thing, and what differentiates this story, really, from what Maxine Waters is saying is that I believe that what happened with Maxine Waters, or that story from "The San Jose Mercury News," was really a fractioned-out part of the CIA, and I don't think necessarily was sanctioned by our government.
This -- I worked directly for the State Department. I had -- you know, Bill Casey was three people out of my chain of command, and I was person...
O'REILLY: William Casey, the director of the CIA at the time...
BUCCHI: Yes.
O'REILLY: ... under president...
BUCCHI: This was under President Reagan.
O'REILLY: Under President Reagan.
BUCCHI: Yes.
O'REILLY: Do you believe that President Reagan...
BUCCHI: No.
O'REILLY: ... Vice President Bush, knew anything about this?
BUCCHI: Well, I don't have any firsthand knowledge. I mean, I suspect that they would have had some peripheral knowledge (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
O'REILLY: How about Casey? Did he know?
BUCCHI: Casey definitely, because I met with him twice.
O'REILLY: Really?
BUCCHI: Absolutely positive, yes.
O'REILLY: So the director of the CIA said to himself, It's better for us to control the drug flow in here and help it than have all of this other stuff come in.
BUCCHI: Yes. Because the -- it represented probably a 50 to 60 percent increase for us, or, heck, probably more than that...
O'REILLY: Of seizures.
BUCCHI: ... of seizures. Because right now...
O'REILLY: So they were rationalizing.
BUCCHI: They were ra -- it was definitely a rationalization. And I think it was considered an interim operation, so that while we're doing this, we can learn a lot about how it works down there.
O'REILLY: Now, once you put this in a book, they said you were a psycho.
BUCCHI: Actually they said that long before that, and there's probably a level of truth to that. But -- being facetious. But -- and that would have stuck, except for the fact that the -- Noriega gets captured by the DEA. He -- I get put on the witness list by Frank Rabino saying the operation happened.
O'REILLY: All right. So you can prove it by these documents...
BUCCHI: A series of documents...
O'REILLY: ... that you have. And we've looked them over. But, you know, documents can be doctored. I...
BUCCHI: No, these are original (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
O'REILLY: I know, I just have to tell the audience...
BUCCHI: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: ... I can't vouch...
BUCCHI: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: ... for your story.
BUCCHI: Absolutely.
O'REILLY: You're saying this, it's certainly provocative...
BUCCHI: Right.
O'REILLY: ... and I understand a number of other media outlets are going to write about this. All right, the last question is, and I'm going to have you back again to get more in details, is this morally wrong? I mean, you're stopping more drugs than you would ordinarily coming in.
BUCCHI: Well...
O'REILLY: Is it morally wrong? I wouldn't do it.
BUCCHI: Well, you know, I think it's tantamount to saying, you know, if I can make you God tomorrow, I mean, it's probably not a real stretch for you, I don't know, but if I could do that, would -- and you could cure half the AIDS patients, and you could absolutely cure half the AIDS patients, but in order to cure half, you had to allow the other half not to get treatment, let's say, would you do it? I -- it's unethical, it's improper. Who decides?
And what we did was highly unethical, and I would never do it again. I was 20-something years old when I signed on to it. (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
O'REILLY: And billions of dollars it's taken, too,
BUCCHI: And -- but the only thing I would say is, at least it was a step in the right direction, that I think we need to really seriously consider legalization, control (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
O'REILLY: All right, I don't want to get into that now.
BUCCHI: I don't either, but, but, but what we're doing now...
O'REILLY: We got to run.
BUCCHI: ... is futile.
O'REILLY: All right. Thanks very much.
Back with Richard Lewis and alcoholism in a moment.
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