Drug policy and foreign policy. What a mess.

Ryan Grim and Nick Wing have a fascinating piece in Huffington Post: Operation Naked King: U.S. Secretly Targeted Bolivia’s Evo Morales In Drug Sting

Because of a confidential informant who is suing the federal government for $5 million in back pay, we’re learning a lot more about the DEA’s attempts to go after Morales and Bolivia. This article gives a good background on the animosity between the two countries and the use of the DEA and drug control policy as a weapon.

In 2009, Hillary Clinton warned of Morales and the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s “fear mongering” in written testimony during her secretary of state confirmation hearings. Yet Morales’ fears, it turns out, weren’t rooted in mere paranoia. The DEA was, in fact, out to get him.

The revelation of Operation Naked King goes to show that Bolivian leaders’ paranoia was well justified, said Kathryn Ledebur, who runs the Andean Information Network based in Bolivia. “US authorities frequently dismiss Bolivian government denunciations about the DEA and US intervention as absurd speculation, but these revelations show what is common knowledge on the ground — there has long been an alarming lack of oversight of DEA operations in Latin America, including recurring mission creep and a violation of agreements with host countries,” she wrote in an email.

“Even before Morales’s election, high-ranking US officials warned his policies on coca and drug control and rejection of American policy dictates would plunge Bolivia into drug trafficking chaos. Yet, without the DEA or US funding, Bolivia has consistently improved its track record, with the lowest coca crop in the region and credible interdiction policies. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance for US drug warriors, and in this case, it appears some worked to make their predictions appear true.”

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16 Responses to Drug policy and foreign policy. What a mess.

  1. kaptinemo says:

    And behind the DEA, behind the CIA, behind the cartels, behind it all are the banksters. The buck literally stops at the bank deposit window. DEA was CI’s ‘bitch (as always) and CI is JP Morgan’s ‘bitch’.

    As the old saying goes:,

    “Little fleas have lesser fleas, upon their backs to bite ’em.
    And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad infinitum.”

    The littlest and most dangerous fleas of all are the banksters. And this time they’re making an even bigger mess. Google dollar devaluation. Enough said.

    • Peoria Dude says:

      And behind the DEA, behind the CIA, behind the cartels, behind it all are the Democrat and Republican voters, who give power to the banksters. The buck literally stops at the Democrat and Republican voters in the voting booth.

  2. Frank W. says:

    The Huffpo Morales piece is on “Democracy Now!” at this moment.

  3. primus says:

    Yet another example of HRC the liar. A recent survey showed that the first word that popped into voters’ minds in response to her spoken name was “Liar”. Turns out they are correct. This should put an end to her presidential aspirations, once it becomes common knowledge, because it confirms what was already strongly suspected. Confirmation bias anyone?

  4. jean valjean says:

    “Operation Naked King”….. I think the DEA must have named this piece of skullduggery after themselves… after all, everyone is now beginning to see that they are the emperor in his new clothes….

  5. Servetus says:

    ‘Lawfare’ is a word that doesn’t appear in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, according to Wiki, but nevertheless it is a word used frequently by transnational political activists. It even has a website. Lawfare is derived from the word ‘warfare’. Its use indicates a situation in which law is used as a weapon of war against governments and people. It can take the form of SLAPP lawsuits, for instance, which uses the law to subordinate opponents in some way.

    The Lawfare Project views lawfare as completely illegitimate, and seeks suppression of its use. Meanwhile, the United States uses lawfare on its own citizens when it targets them for being black, brown, or hippie, and then arrests them on drug charges, or plants drugs on a person as an excuse to arrest them. In the case of President Morales, drug lawfare is being used by the U.S. to undermine Bolivia’s government, just as it was used to oust General Noriega of Panama. The DEA by itself wouldn’t be involved in ousting a foreign leader; that’s a job for the DEA’s CIA affiliation, which would in the Morales case be using lawfare while acting as a covert DEA adjunct.

    The U.S. has no problem using lawfare against foreign states, or even its own citizens, but it is loathe to have lawfare directed against itself. Its laws are structured to avert lawfare attacks, and it has refused to join the International Criminal Court where lawfare counterattacks could take place, brought about by U.S. citizens filing suit in the ICC, no less. The U.S. has refused to criticize lawfare when it’s been used by foreign corporations and governments like those in Mexico to force indigenous peoples off their land using dangerous, phony drug raids.

    More attention needs to be placed on lawfare and its universal system of legal abuses. Its use needs to become a hot topic of discussion in Congress and the United Nations.

    • Servetus says:

      Operation Naked King is also being featured at Truthout along with a 54-minute video interview with Nick Wing, the author of the Huffington Post piece, and is hosted by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. The DEA/CIA scandal looks like it could be big. It will certainly give UN representatives something to talk about at the upcoming UNGASS meeting.

      • kaptinemo says:

        Anyone wanna place any bets that Leonhart knew this was coming and decided to duck the worst of the scheissesturm by resigning before it got too thick? (looking around) Any takers? (shrugs, sighs glumly) Oh well, I should have known better than to try that with The Couch.

        This stinks worse now than when it did 6 months ago. DEA has just provided many enterprisiong pols tons of free face time, prior to an election year, no less. Already reeling from the cartel-supplied hooker scandal, this could be the final nail in the DEA’s coffin. What a wonderful distraction, something to pontificate against, a political turkey-shoot against something already lame-and-limping from having shot itself in the foot with cartel-supplied ‘bullets’.

        Finishing off this bureacratic lame horse would be a mercy.

        And in the process, I think we’ll see lots of new faces in the back of the Reform bandwagon, real soon. Political faces. Congressional faces.

        Drug law reform may have been handed the instrument by which it can make the final coup de grace of the rabid beast called Drug Prohibition. This bombshell is on par with the Snowden revelations; more evidence of the perfidy of the American Ruling Class and its userpation of the government to achieve what amounts to private ends.

        The de facto Elite have reached the pinnacle of power on the laundering of drug money, and then attack those who seek to re-legalize and regulate the trade they have been enriched by. Their hypocrisy is beyond measure…and given the bloody and horrific results of their labors, it is also beyond measured response.

  6. Freeman says:

    Lots and lots of background information on this sort of behavior by the DEA in the link Allan left on the 11th. (Thanks Allan)

  7. ACW says:

    Ugh, nobody’s sympathetic here. Morales and Chavez are not good guys (and Chavez was a scumbag), but the DEA’s bad too.

  8. DdC says:

    All this fuss just to protect me from smoking a joint? I should feel honored in some slimy disgusting dysfunctional way.

    Bernie and the Bankster Billionaires

    Kathmandu and the Black Prince
    The Nepalese Royal Family has a long history of involvement with the CIA. Through out the 1960s and 1970s the CIA maintained a secret base at Lo Mustang on the Tibetan plateau bordering China. This was the jumping off point for CIA-trained Tibetan Khampa guerillas fighting the Chinese. Today they are building a road from the Indian border to Lo Mothang and it’s quite obvious that once again it will be used as a forward base.

    Did pope use coca leaves?
    Inside Pope Francis’s South American Trip
    via @katiecouric

    UN: “make coca illegal” – Evo: “whatever!”

    Coca, Bolivia, and Law 1008

  9. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    OK, OK, I know everybody here hates GW Pharm but me. But just for the moment forget the stock price or whatever it is that annoys you. I really thought that some of you would enjoy the utter irony of today’s headline about their organic phytocannabinoid medicine to treat schizophrenia. I’m pretty certain it’s just unbranded Epidiolex, if anybody cares: GW Pharma Jumps On Schizophrenia Marijuana Drug Study
    (There’s no doubt that IBD needs a new headline editor. Forget the horrid grammatical construction, where’s the mandatory stupid joke? How in the world does a pro mispell Pharm? It almost looks like IBD hires undocumented foreigners to write their headlines!)

    • primus says:

      Outsourced to Asia? Our local “news” paper has outsourced the composition of ads to India. If they can do that, why not outsource headline writing and assembly of other media?

    • Tony Aroma says:

      Wait… I thought it CAUSED schizophrenia. Now they’re saying it helps schizophrenics? Now I don’t know whether I’m really crazy or just think I’m crazy.

      I bet all the anti-mj people are scrambling to ignore and/or discredit this study.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        Francis’ Law (revised):

        “Any time the prohibitionist parasites makes a claim about cannabis, it will eventually be discovered to be not only false, but the complete opposite of the truth.”

        I can’t believe that I lost the link and can’t find in a web search the results of a study intended to be presented to the FDA as part of the required protocols for approving organic CBD. It was done double blind style. On of the study subjects had a full blown psychotic episode. The fact that the patient was receiving the placebo is compelling evidence supporting the assertion that cannabis only makes people who don’t use it go crazy.

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