Augusto Pinochet and the Drug Trade

[John Simkin]

Investigators have long wondered how the CIA imposed dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, managed to amass a $26m (£14m) fortune. Earlier this week, Manuel Contreras, the former head of Chile’s intelligence services DINA, claimed that Pinochet and his son, Marco Antonio, organized a massive production and distribution network, selling cocaine to Europe and the US in the 1980s. Contreras ran Pinochet’s death squads in the 1970s that killed an estimated 3,000 Chileans.

Contreras has also given evidence of illegal arms deals that was organized via Chile. These deals involved arms companies in the west including BAE Systems.

Is it a coincidence that the CIA in the form of people like Ted Shackley (the Secret Team), were involved in the creation of the Pinochet dictatorship? It was the same group of CIA operatives who made fortunes out of the drug trade in the 1960s in South-East Asia and then were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal and the Edwin Wilson case that involved the selling of illegal arms.