Gary Webb: Was he Murdered?

[Guest David Guyatt]

I seem to remember that Wackenhut were also implicated in the narcotics trade, as being yet another arrow notched on to their crooked bow (I hope I am not misremembering, however, as it is well over a decade ago that I looked at them and the Casolaro and Ricsonscito story).

This then brings us back to the Gary Webb story posted by Douglas Caddy at the start of this thread, and the limited hangout/fig-leaf argument presented in that article about the CIA's involvement in the drugs trade.

It was an explosive charge, although a careful reading of the story showed that Webb had never actually stated that the CIA intentionally started the crack epidemic. In fact, Webb never believed the CIA had conspired to addict anybody to drugs. Rather, he believed that the agency had known that the contras were dealing cocaine and hadn't lifted a finger to stop them. He was right, and the controversy over "Dark Alliance" — which many consider to be the biggest media scandal of the 1990s — would ultimately force the CIA to admit it had lied for years about what it knew and when it knew it.

The problem with the foregoing argument about CIA/government complicity in the contra drugs trade, is that taken in isolation this sounds like a reasonable defence of the CIA. It knew but wasn't really at fault, is the logic presented.

But, of course, it had also known about the drugs being shipped by Khun Sa, the Golden Triangle drug lord. It had known about the drugs shipped by Vang Pao out of Air America Long Tieng air base in Loas, during the same period. It had also known about the drugs being shipped by the Afghan Mujahieen fighting the Russians during the 1980's. It also knew about the drugs shipped by the Kosovo Liberation Army in the war fought to splinter the former Yugoslavia into tiny factions.

The CIA will never be found guilty of dealing in drugs. It is far too smart to get directly involved. It is simply the paymaster of those who do the dirty work, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.

[Guest David Guyatt]

In December of 2005, the Chicago Tribune reported that, “A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions.” The lobbying groups, “say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.”25 However, human trafficking experts have criticized the move by the lobbying groups, and told “the Pentagon that the policy would merely formalize practices that have allowed contractors working overseas to escape punishment for involvement in trafficking.”

The allegations of human trafficking include, “the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during the U.S. military's deployment there in the late 1990s,” and that, “Middle Eastern firms working under American subcontracts in Iraq, and a chain of human brokers beneath them, engaged in the kind of abuses condemned elsewhere by the U.S. government as human trafficking,” which pertained to KBR. The Chicago Tribune then reported in 2006 that, “some of KBR's subcontractors, and a chain of human brokers stretching to South and Southeast Asia, allegedly engaged in the same kinds of abuses routinely condemned” as human trafficking.26

In December of 2007, it was reported that, “A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.” The article continued, “Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.”27 Jones filed a lawsuit against Halliburton and KBR, and “says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave. Jones described the container as sparely furnished with a bed, table and lamp.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=8258

Jan, thanks for this posting this piece, I hadn't known about the human trafficking angle before now. Quite revolting. I'm posting the whole Chicago Tribune article in its entirety below:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationw...1,2117782.story

U.S. stalls on human trafficking

Pentagon has yet to ban contractors from using forced labor

By Cam Simpson | Washington Bureau

December 27, 2005

WASHINGTON - Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had "zero tolerance" for trafficking in humans by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy.

But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.

A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.

The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.

Lining up on the opposite side of the defense industry are some human-trafficking experts who say significant aspects of the Pentagon's proposed policy might actually do more harm than good unless they're changed. These experts have told the Pentagon that the policy would merely formalize practices that have allowed contractors working overseas to escape punishment for involvement in trafficking, the records show.

The long-awaited debate inside the Pentagon on how to implement presidential and congressional directives on human trafficking is unfolding just as countertrafficking advocates in Congress are running into resistance. A bill reauthorizing the nation's efforts against trafficking for the next two years was overwhelmingly passed by the House this month, but only after a provision creating a trafficking watchdog at the Pentagon was stripped from the measure at the insistence of defense-friendly lawmakers, according to congressional records and officials. The Senate passed the bill last week.

Delay seen as weakness

The Pentagon's delay in tackling the issue, the perceived weakness of its proposed policy and the recent setbacks in Congress have some criticizing the Pentagon for not taking the issue seriously enough.

"Ultimately, what we really hope to see is resources and leadership on this issue from the Pentagon," said Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a national security think tank in Washington. She also had called for creation of an internal Pentagon watchdog after investigating the military's links to sex trafficking in the Balkans.

Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), author of the original legislation targeting human trafficking, said there seems to be an institutional lethargy on the issue at the Pentagon below the most senior levels. He said he was concerned that the Pentagon's overseas-contractor proposal might not be tough enough and that the delays in developing it could mean more people "were being exploited while they were sharpening their pencils."

But he pledged to maintain aggressive oversight of the plan.

`We're addressing the issue'

Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said he did not know why it has taken so long to develop a proposal but said, "From our point of view, we're addressing the issue."

An official more directly involved with the effort to draft a formal policy barring contractors from involvement in trafficking said it might not be ready until April, at least in part because of concerns raised by the defense contractors.

Bush declared zero tolerance for involvement in human trafficking by federal employees and contractors in a National Security Presidential Directive he signed in December 2002 after media reports detailing the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during the U.S. military's deployment there in the late 1990s.

Ultimately, the company fired eight employees for their alleged involvement in sex trafficking and illegal arms deals.

In 2003, Smith followed Bush's decree with legislation ordering federal agencies to include anti-trafficking provisions in all contracts. The bill covered trafficking for forced prostitution and forced labor and applied to overseas contractors and their subcontractors.

But it wasn't until last summer that the Pentagon issued a proposed policy to enforce the 2003 law and Bush's December 2002 directive.

The proposal drew a strong response from five defense-contractor-lobbying groups within the umbrella Council of Defense and Space Industries Associations: the Contract Services Association, the Professional Services Council, the National Defense Industrial Association, the American Shipbuilding Association and the Electronic Industries Alliance.

The response's first target was a provision requiring contractors to police their overseas subcontractors for human trafficking.

In a two-part series published in October, the Tribune detailed how Middle Eastern firms working under American subcontracts in Iraq, and a chain of human brokers beneath them, engaged in the kind of abuses condemned elsewhere by the U.S. government as human trafficking. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, relies on more than 200 subcontractors to carry out a multibillion-dollar U.S. Army contract for privatization of military support operations in the war zone.

Case of 12 Nepali men

The Tribune retraced the journey of 12 Nepali men recruited from poor villages in one of the most remote and impoverished corners of the world and documented a trail of deceit, fraud and negligence stretching into Iraq. The men were kidnapped from an unprotected caravan and executed en route to jobs at an American military base in 2004.

At the time, Halliburton said it was not responsible for the recruitment or hiring practices of its subcontractors, and the U.S. Army, which oversees the privatization contract, said questions about alleged misconduct "by subcontractor firms should be addressed to those firms, as these are not Army issues."

Once implemented, the new policy could dramatically change responsibilities for KBR and the Army.

Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council who drafted the contractors' eight-page critique of the Pentagon proposal, said it was not realistic to expect foreign companies operating overseas to accept or act on U.S. foreign policy objectives.

"This is a clash between mission execution [of the contract] and policy execution," Chvotkin said. "So we're looking for a little flexibility."

He said that rather than a "requirement that says you have to flow this through to everybody," the group wants the policy to simply require firms to notify the Pentagon when their subcontractors refuse to accept contract clauses barring support for human trafficking.

Still, Chvotkin said, "We don't want to do anything that conveys the idea that we are sanctioning or tolerating trafficking."

In a joint memo of their own, Mendelson and another Washington-based expert, Martina Vandenberg, a lawyer who investigated sex trafficking for Human Rights Watch, told the Pentagon its draft policy "institutionalizes ineffective procedures currently used by the Department of Defense contractor community in handling allegations of human trafficking."

Without tough provisions requiring referrals to prosecutors, they said, contractors could still get their employees on planes back to the U.S. before investigations commenced, as they allege happened in several documented cases in the Balkans. They said some local contract managers even had "special arrangements" with police in the Balkans that allowed them to quickly get employees returned to the U.S. if they were found to be engaged in illegal activities.

----------

csimpson@tribune.com

[Maggie Hansen]

I am assuming that members here were aware of the trafficking of Serbian and others for body parts but in case not here is one article in English. I have lots more info if any one wishes to find out more.

This matter has been known about for some time particularly by those who have family and friends missing because of it. It has only recently come into wider knowledge because of the publication of Carla Del Pontes book on her time as a Hague Tribunal judge where she tried to investigate this matter. She is no friend of Serbia/Yugoslavia and it is surprising to see such revelations in her book.

http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/novina/artic...mp;NrSection=20

Investigation on Kosovo organ trafficking gets underway

Belgrade /22/05/ 15:12

The investigation into the suspected trafficking of organs extracted from abducted Kosovo Serbs is under way and a lot had been done to uncover the truth about what happened in Kosovo and north Albania in 1999, said Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor spokesman Bruno Vekaric.

While not giving away details of the investigation, Vekaric said that all the signs pointed to the possibility of an international organized crime ring involving many officials on the current Albanian political scene.

The spokesman added that there were indications that, as former Hague Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte mentioned in her book, certain former UNMIK officials had also been seriously involved in all these goings-on.

“It is known from reliable sources that UNMIK conducted an investigation into missing Serbs, that it was called off very abruptly, and that no-one knows the exact findings of the investigation. The fact that many charges have been pressed for organ trafficking by the Albanians themselves leads us to believe that we are talking about international organized crime here. This must now be confirmed,” Vekaric said.

He added that Belgrade expected to receive from the Hague Tribunal information gathered by Hague investigators as well as official responses from UNMIK on the probe and an answer from the International Red Cross regarding the existence of concentration camps in Albania. /end/

[William Kelly]

I'm more interested in learning why the House Select Committee on Assassinations, investigating the murders of JFK and MLK, wanted to see the CIA Security file on Wackenhut?

BK

[Guest David Guyatt]

Roberrt Parry's most interesting article on Gary Webb's suicide:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/120906.html

[Guest David Guyatt]

I am assuming that members here were aware of the trafficking of Serbian and others for body parts but in case not here is one article in English. I have lots more info if any one wishes to find out more.

This matter has been known about for some time particularly by those who have family and friends missing because of it. It has only recently come into wider knowledge because of the publication of Carla Del Pontes book on her time as a Hague Tribunal judge where she tried to investigate this matter. She is no friend of Serbia/Yugoslavia and it is surprising to see such revelations in her book.

http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/novina/artic...mp;NrSection=20

Investigation on Kosovo organ trafficking gets underway

Belgrade /22/05/ 15:12

The investigation into the suspected trafficking of organs extracted from abducted Kosovo Serbs is under way and a lot had been done to uncover the truth about what happened in Kosovo and north Albania in 1999, said Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor spokesman Bruno Vekaric.

While not giving away details of the investigation, Vekaric said that all the signs pointed to the possibility of an international organized crime ring involving many officials on the current Albanian political scene.

The spokesman added that there were indications that, as former Hague Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte mentioned in her book, certain former UNMIK officials had also been seriously involved in all these goings-on.

“It is known from reliable sources that UNMIK conducted an investigation into missing Serbs, that it was called off very abruptly, and that no-one knows the exact findings of the investigation. The fact that many charges have been pressed for organ trafficking by the Albanians themselves leads us to believe that we are talking about international organized crime here. This must now be confirmed,” Vekaric said.

He added that Belgrade expected to receive from the Hague Tribunal information gathered by Hague investigators as well as official responses from UNMIK on the probe and an answer from the International Red Cross regarding the existence of concentration camps in Albania. /end/

Maggie, this is also an outrage. Is there any indication that western companies, for example, are also involved in this (othr than as beneficiary of the organs/body parts), or is this just a eastern european profit stream.

Maybe you could post a separate thread on this subject?

[Christopher Hall]

I am a couple of chapters into "Whiteout", which is, in large part, about Webb and his discrediting by the media and others.

I am enjoying it so much, that I have also ordered "Kill the Messenger".

I watch some documentary about Freeway Ricky Ross, which included interviews with him, in which he addresses his CIA contacts.

I forget what channel it was on, but it was a fairly recent documentary.