Deep Politics Forum

Whilst we're at it, let's remember the Nazi/Ustaša/Vatican ratlines to Bolivia and elsewhere, and the US intelligence connection.

Quote:The Ratline: The US-Ustasha Connection
By Carl Savich
June 2, 2007

The Ratline Operation following World War II was a covered-up and censored joint venture or enterprise between the US government and accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals. The US became enmeshed in the large scale “underground railroads for Nazis” after the US Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) “hired” former Croatian Ustasha leader and alleged Bosnian Croat war criminal Monsignor Krunoslav Draganovic.

Croatian Roman Catholic priest Krunoslav Dragonovic ran “special ratlines” for the US government for US intelligence assets that were deemed too “hot” for an official connection with the US government. These hot assets were former Nazis, Ustasha leaders, Roman Catholic priests and officials, former members of the Gestapo and SS, and accused war criminals. Based on a US Justice Department report, the US knew Krunoslav Draganovic was “a high-ranking prelate within the Croatian Catholic Church” who was directly involved in the deportation or ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Jews in Croatia and Bosnia. He was stated to have been a “relocation” official in the fascist Ustasha regime of Ante Pavelic. When he realized that Nazi Germany would lose the war, he fled the NDH in 1943 and established a base in the Vatican itself from which he organized one of the largest and most important “evacuation” projects of the Cold War, Operation Ratline. He specialized in getting high level Croatian Ustasha officials, accused of committing war crimes against Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, out of Yugoslavia.

[Videp: Croatian Nazi chief Ante Pavelic and his Bosnian Muslim Foreign Policy Minister Mehmed Alibegovic meet Hitler.]

Krunoslav Draganovic was from Travnik in Bosnia-Hercegovina, where he attended secondary school. He studied Roman Catholic theology and philosophy in Sarajevo. From 1932 to 1935, Draganovic had been a student at the Papal Oriental Institute and the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome.

After finishing his religious studies in Rome, Draganovic returned to Bosnia where he became secretary to Sarajevo Roman Catholic Bishop Ivan Saric, known as “the hangman of the Serbs”. According to declassified CIA documents, Draganovic was known by the US to be a leading Ustasha cleric and Nazi collaborator during World War II. Draganovic was a prominent Ustasha clerical leader during the NDH regime. He was claimed to have been part of an Ustasha commission that oversaw the forced religious conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism.

A US Justice Department report revealed that Draganovic himself was responsible for the mass deportation of Serbs and Jews from Croatia. The US knew Draganovic was a suspected war criminal himself implicated in the mass deportations and murders of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia. And yet the US government hired and worked with a known suspected war criminal and Nazi collaborator.

Draganovic was the Ustasha's unofficial emissary at the Vatican and the liaison to the Vatican organization that aided war refugees. He laundered Ustasha assets after the war. In 1945, after the collapse of the NDH Ustasha regime, 288 kilograms of gold were removed from the Croatian National Bank. Much of the Ustasha assets were made up of seized property and assets of Serbs. Draganovic, known as the “Golden Priest”, used this gold to finance the escape of known Croatian Ustasha war criminals, such as the Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic, who was smuggled out through Draganovic’s Ratline to Argentina.
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When it became increasingly clear that Germany would lose the war, in August, 1943, Draganovi? again went to Rome. In Rome, he was the “secretary” of the Croatian “Confraternity of San Girolamo”, a Franciscan order, which was based at the monastery of San Girolamo degli Illirici in Via Tomacelli. The college was founded in 1901 as the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, known in Italian as Pontificio Collegio Croato Di San Girolamo. San Girolamo was the hub out of which Draganovic organized the Ustasha Ratline Operation, later in conjunction with the US government.

The Ratline Operation was made up of prominent Croatian Roman Catholic Priests and Ustasha operatives: Fr. Vilim Cecelja, who had been a former Deputy Military Vicar to the Ustasha regime, Fr. Dragutin Kamber, based at San Girolamo, Monsignor Karlo Petranovic based in Genoa, and Fr. Dominic Mandic, regarded as an official Vatican representative at San Girolamo and the treasurer of the Franciscan order.

[Video: Croatian Nazi chief Ante Pavelic on an official state visit to Rome on May 22, 1941 to meet Benito Mussolini.]

The Ratline “route” began in Austria where many of the accused and escaped Croatian Ustasha war criminals and other Nazis and collaborators were in hiding, and ended in the northern Italian port city of Genoa, which was the embarkation point for many of the accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals and Nazi collaborators on their transit to South America.

Thousands of senior Ustasha leaders were able to escape by means of the Vatican in Rome. Ivo Omrcanin, a former Ustasha emissary who lived in Washington, DC after World War II, and who had been a senior aide to Draganovic, said that Vatican funds were used to allow the Ustasha fascist war crimes suspects to escape. The Vatican was footing the bill for the Ratline, was funding and financing it.

The Ustasha “refugees” the Vatican helped escape justice “included men such as Ustachi chieftain Ante Pavelic and his police minister, Andrija Artukovic, who between them had organized the murder of at least 400,000 Serbians and Jews.” Christopher Simpson concluded that because Draganovic “went to work for the Americans” in smuggling Nazis out of Europe, the US “provided a source of financing and shield of protection, in effect, for the priest’s independent Nazi smuggling work.” In other words, the US paid for and organized the escape of Ustasha war crimes suspects accused of genocide. Both the US government and the Vatican funded escape routes for accused former Nazis and Croatian Ustasha war criminals implicated in war crimes and genocide.

Draganovic was a Croatian leader of the Intermarium. The Vatican had been working with smuggling Nazis and other accused war criminals out of Europe in the Roman Catholic group Intermarium, a militant organization made up of Roman Catholics. This group later became a key source for recruiting CIA exile committees and organizations. These Intermarium members became activists or officials in the CIA’s Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation propaganda networks and in the Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN), another CIA propaganda outlet.

What was the Vatican connection to the Ustasha NDH regime? NDH Poglavnik Ante Pavelic was personally received by the Pope. Ustasha Croatia was described as a “pure Catholic state”. Roman Catholics in Croatia and Bosnia were the most ardent supporters of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and the Nazi New Order in Europe.

The US government knew of the role of the Vatican in smuggling accused war criminals implicated in genocide out of Europe. In a top secret 1947 US State Department intelligence report, it was reported that “the Vatican…is the largest single organization involved in the illegal movement of emigrants.” Intermarium was “an instrument of the German intelligence,” Abwehr, according to a US Army intelligence report. The US government merely took over the functions of this pro-Nazi group.

Another way the US was able to continue the policies of Nazi Germany was by using ethnic and religious groups to undermine countries that were regarded or targeted as enemies. This policy was known as the “Captive Nations” strategy, using various ethnic groups to sow discord in target countries to destabilize the enemy country. Not surprisingly, the “captive nation” in Yugoslavia was Kosovo. US policy was to use the Albanian Muslim ethnic minority in Yugoslavia to destabilize and destroy the Yugoslav federation. The policy was rather simplistic. In fact, any ethnic or religious group that the US could exploit and manipulate became a “captive nation”. It was a win-win approach. The US could claim that it was bringing “freedom” and “democracy” whenever it sought to destabilize a target country. The CIA sponsored and funded and organized the first Assembly of Captive European Nations (ACEN) congress in New York and published a book, The Assembly of Captive European Nations. Included in this book were commentaries by Albanian Bloodstone émigré Hasan Dosti, an accused Albanian war criminal and Nazi/fascist collaborator. The CIA also recruited Midhat Frasheri, a known Albanian fascist and Nazi collaborator, the leader of the Albanian Balli Kombetar, to head the Albanian department. Frasheri was a militant sponsor of a Greater or Natural Albania that would include Kosovo-Metohija.

At first the US merely “observed” and marveled at the efficiency of Krunoslav Draganovic’s Vatican-based Ratline. In the summer of 1947, however, the US was so impressed with Draganovic that it entered into a joint project with him, “hiring” him as a US intelligence asset. A declassified US Army intelligence report from 1950 by "IB Operating Officer" Paul Lyon of the 430th Counter Intelligence Corps disclosed that the US government had begun to use Draganovic’s Ratline Operation, his established network, to “evacuate” its own “visitors”, in the summer of 1947. The visitors were suspected war criminals and Nazi collaborators which the Soviets wanted to prosecute for war crimes. US intelligence, however, determined that it could use these Croatian Ustasha war crimes suspects and former Nazis as assets during the Cold War.

The US “deal” or agreement with Draganovic consisted of getting the “visitors” to Rome. According to the report, "Dragonovich handled all phases of the operation after the defectees arrived in Rome, such as the procurement of IRO Italian and South American documents, visas, stamps, arrangements for disposition, land or sea, and notification of resettlement committees in foreign lands."

The US made a deal with Draganovic to smuggle CIC assets out of Eastern Europe. He would create false IDs, visas, transport, and other necessary documentation. In exchange, the US would help Draganovic smuggle the Ustasha alleged war criminals accused of genocide escape out of US occupied areas.

The US government knew and was fully aware that Draganovic was harboring Ustasha war crimes suspects at his church, San Girolamo, which Christopher Simpson mistakenly called “Geronimo”. CIC Special Agent Robert Mudd reported that ten major Ustasha leaders were known to be living with Draganovic at the Vatican. Monsignor Juraj Madjerec, who headed the San Girolamo monastery and who was a personal favorite of Pope Pius XII, also helped in the Ratline. Dragonovic was nominally Madjerec’s secretary.

CIC Agent Paul Lyon and Major James Milano established the initial contacts with Draganovic. George Daniel Neagoy, who would replace Lyon, would later work with Draganovic as part of the CIC Ratline Operation.

George Neagoy died on January 19, 2005 at the age of 88 of congestive heart failure. At the time of his death, he was a retired Central Intelligence Agency agent who had owned and operated restaurants in the Washington, DC area. He was born in Romania. Neagoy grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, where he had owned a bar. After the start of World War II, he joined the Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC).

The Counter Intelligence Corps or CIC was an intelligence agency of the US Army. The CIC evolved out of the Corps of Intelligence Police (CIP) created in 1917 by Ralph Van Deman for action during World War I. It gained prominence during World War II and during the initial stages of the Cold War. The CIC was replaced in 1961 by the US Army Intelligence Corps. In 1967, the Corps itself was replaced by the US Army Intelligence Agency. CIC intelligence operations eventually were assumed by the Defense Intelligence Agency and US Army Intelligence and Security Command.

After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor and the US entry into World War II, the CIP was renamed the CIC on December 13, 1941 by the Adjutant General of the US Army and membership was expanded to include 543 officers and 4,431 non-commissioned agents.

As a member of the Counterintelligence Corps, Neagoy organized the 1951 “escape” of Gestapo and SS leader Klaus Barbie from Germany to first Argentina, then Bolivia. The US government had been using Barbie as an agent since 1947. Barbie, a known Nazi Gestapo and SS officer, was on the US payroll. US agents prevented British forces from turning him over to the Nuremburg Tribunal. The US hired the known Nazi Barbie to work for US intelligence. US officials rationalized his use as vital because of his expertise and knowledge in the intelligence field. Barbie was accused of committing atrocities and war crimes in Lyons, France, during World War II, where he was known as “the Butcher of Lyons”, torturing and executing members of the French resistance. The US knowingly used a Nazi war criminal in its intelligence operations during the Cold War.

The “evacuation” of Klaus Barbie was part of Operation Ratline, whose stated goal was to “evacuate” Soviet informers and military and diplomatic defectors to “safe havens”. In actuality, the Ratline was used to get former Croatian Ustasha and Nazi accused war criminals out of Communist or Soviet-controlled countries. Croatian Ustasha and Albanian fascist and Nazi collaborators were smuggled out because they would face war crimes prosecutions. The US government wanted to use these Croatian and Albanian former Nazis and fascists as assets during the Cold War.

Neagoy personally escorted Barbie and his family in their escape, which was organized by Draganovic. Neagoy recounted: "Barbie was the only Nazi we took out. Barbie and his wife were frightened and concerned the whole trip, like a couple of scared dogs.”

Neagoy was blasé and detached about his role in helping an accused Nazi war criminal escape from justice. In 1987, Klaus Barbie was tried in France, convicted of committing “crimes against humanity”, and sentenced to life in prison. Neagoy remained unconcerned about his role in helping a Nazi war criminal escape prosecution. In intelligence work, there is never an issue of right or wrong. It is “right” if it succeeds and “wrong” if it fails. It is a very simple code of “morality”.

Neagoy joined the newly-created Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1951. He was assigned to Romania during the Cold War because of his birth there. His role was to help destabilize Romania during the Cold War. During the early 1960s, he worked in Vietnam.

From 1970 to 1989, he owned and operated Gourmet Snacks restaurants in Rosslyn and Washington and the Top of the Town restaurant in Rosslyn. He used the money he earned helping accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals and Nazi war criminals and Albanian Nazi/fascist collaborators to become a successful entrepreneur and businessman.

Neagoy had been a former board member of the Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, DC. The CIC and later CIA had used an Orthodox Christian operative to help Roman Catholic accused war criminals escape prosecution and punishment for war crimes. Needless to say, the majority of the victims of the accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals and the Albanian Muslim war criminals were Orthodox Christian Serbs in Krajina, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo-Metohija.

The CIC refused to arrest any of the Ustasha war crimes suspects and shielded them from the UN War Crimes Commission and the Yugoslav government following World War II. Klaus Barbie used the Draganovic Ratline to escape.

The Draganovic Ratline Operation was regarded as an “open secret” for the intelligence and diplomatic operatives in Rome. That is, they all knew that Draganovic was using the Vatican to help accused Croatian Ustasha Roman Catholics escape prosecution for war crimes against Serbs. Everyone also knew that the Vatican itself was shielding and helping accused war criminals escape, especially if they were Roman Catholics who were accused of killing Serbs or Communists. In August, 1945, Allied commanders in Rome were aware that San Girolamo, known as the Collegium Illiricum, was being used as a "haven" for Ustasha escapees and questioned why it was allowed to continue unhindered. A US State Department report from July 12, 1946 listed nine accused war criminals, including Croats and Albanians, "not actually sheltered in the Collegium Illiricum but who otherwise enjoy Church support and protection." Moreover, CIC Special Agent Robert Clayton Mudd disclosed in February, 1947 that 10 NDH cabinet members of Ante Pavelic's Ustasha regime were known by US intelligence to be residing in either the Vatican or in San Girolamo. Robert Mudd revealed that US intelligence had infiltrated an agent into the San Girolamo monastery and had confirmed that it was "honeycombed with cells of Ustashi operatives". Mudd described the operations of the San Girolamo Ratline in detail:

"It was further established that these Croats travel back and forth from the Vatican several times a week in a car with a chauffeur whose license plate bears the two initials CD, ‘Corpo Diplomatic’. It issues forth from the Vatican and discharges its passengers inside the Monastery of San Geronimo [sic].

Subject to diplomatic immunity it is impossible to stop the car and discover who are its passengers…. DRAGANOVIC's sponsorship of these Croat Quislings definetly [sic] links him up with the plan of the Vatican to shield these ex-Ustashi nationalists until such time as they are able to procure for them the proper documents to enable them to go to South America. The Vatican, undoubtedly banking on the strong anti-Communist feelings of these men, is endeavoring to infiltrate them into South America in any way possible to counteract the spread of Red doctrine. It has been reliably reported, for example that Dr. VRANCIC has already gone to South America and that Ante PAVELIC and General KREN are scheduled for an early departure to South America through Spain. All these operations are said to have been negotiated by DRAGANOVIC because of his influence in the Vatican."

Lyon, Draganovic, and US officials, at least as senior as the Director of US Army intelligence in Europe, were aware that Draganovic was smuggling wanted war criminals. Under the Geneva Convention International Refugee Organization (IRO) charter, Nazis and Nazi collaborators and common criminals were barred. The US was violating international law in organizing and protecting Croatian Ustasha and Albanian Nazi and fascist collaborators.

US intelligence knew very well about the role of the Croatian Ustasha regime in the mass murder of Orthodox Christian Serbs. Lyon wrote that Draganovic himself “is known and recorded as a Fascist, war criminal, etc.” Lyon also noted that Draganovic’s contacts with South American diplomats “are not generally approved” by the US State department. Moreover, Lyon reported that “some of the persons of interest to Father Dragonovic may be of interest to the DeNazification policy of the Allies,” that is, these “Displaced Persons”, or DPs, were known Nazis.

Lyon offered his self-delusional plausible denial rationale: “[T]urning over a DP to a Welfare organization falls in line with our democratic way of thinking”. The CIC was being “humanitarian” and “democratic” in smuggling Croatian Ustasha, Albanian Muslim fascists and Nazi collaborators, and Nazis and known war criminals according to this rationale. This is a total and complete perversion of logic and morality. This, however, is how US intelligence operated during the Cold War, this was the modus operandi. The US wanted to control the former Nazi intelligence and espionage networks established by the fascists and Nazis. The US also wanted to exploit the knowledge and expertise of intelligence agents who had worked for Nazi Germany and for the Nazi and fascist collaborationist states. Moreover, the US wanted to use the anti-Communist, anti-socialist, anti-left fanaticism and commitment of the former Ustasha and former Nazi assets in the evolving Cold War struggle against the Soviet Union.

Croatian Ustasha Krunoslav Draganovic, as a priest, was regarded as excellent as a CIC or CIA operative in that it allowed for deniability and the cover of the church and religious freedom. The CIC and CIA could argue that Draganovic was being persecuted on religious grounds because he was a Roman Catholic. The atheistic Communists/Bolsheviks were smearing pious and devout Father Draganovic solely because of his religion. The CIC and CIA were in a win-win scenario. They were playing the religion card, and it worked. The “visitors” would not hurt a fly. Priests and the Vatican were helping these “refugees”. What could possibly be wrong with that? Of course, while the Ratline Operations were an open secret, they were conducted secretly and their existence was officially denied.

The CIC was, however, consciously and knowingly smuggling known Nazi and Ustasha war criminals out. The US was contemptuously violating international law and cynically thumbing its nose at any critics. Robert Bishop of the IRO in Rome, who was a CIA asset and former OSS agent, helped the CIC in the Draganovic Ratline Operation by issuing fake documentation for refugees. Later, Draganovic relied on Roman Catholic Church relief agency channels for false documentation. The US was infiltrating refugee and relief agencies in order to help accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals and Nazis escape prosecution for war crimes.

Vatican historian Fr. Robert Graham has acknowledged the existence of the Draganovic Ratline and has admitted that it was used to help accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals escape prosecution for war crimes: "I've no doubt that Draganovic was extremely active in syphoning off his Croatian Ustashi friends."

According to Christopher Simpson in Blowback, “considerable evidence” exists that the CIA “assumed control of Dragonovic [sic]---the “known and recorded…Fascist, war criminal, etc.,”---in mid-1951, then maintained that relationship for the remainder of the decade.” CIC Agent George Neagoy, who had replaced Lyon, switched over to the CIA in 1951. Draganovic was of “operational interest to OSI”, US intelligence, as late as October, 1960 according to CIC records. He was “a contract agent” for US intelligence for that time, most likely the CIA.

Draganovic continued to work for Vatican relief agencies and contributed to the Ustasha exile community and contributed pro-Ustasha articles in former Ustasha official Ante Bonifacic’s publications. He also smuggled currency in Italy and Yugoslavia. In 1967, Draganovic returned voluntarily to Communist Yugoslavia. He was not tried for war crimes and his past role in the Ustasha and in the Ratlines was not criticized. This accused Ustasha war criminal, fascist, Nazi collaborator and US intelligence agent, lived a normal life in Zagreb, Croatia. He died in July, 1983 in Yugoslavia.

US sponsorship and recruitment of accused Croatian Ustasha and Albanian Muslim war criminals during the Cold War created the setting for the violent breakup and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. US policy was committed to using ethnicity and religion to destabilize and ultimately to destroy the Yugoslav federation. The US nurtured and sponsored ethnic and religious enmity as divisive forces to turn one ethnic and religious group against the other.

The US sponsorship of accused Croatian Ustasha war criminals and Albanian Muslim fascist and Nazi collaborators has only encouraged ultra-nationalism and ethnic and religious fanaticism. On September 10, 1976, Croatian ultra-nationalists hijacked a TWA flight at LaGuardia Airport in New York. Bomb Squad Officer Brian Murray was killed in this Croatian terrorist attack. Croatian Zvonko Busic, one of the hijackers, was later found guilty and sentenced for the death of Murray. Blowback occurred because the Ustasha “criminals saved” by Draganovic “did not simply disappear” but “established new Ustachi cells in Croatian communities abroad, in some cases headed by the same men who had once led murder squads inside wartime Croatia. This “extremist sect” was a byproduct of the “the postwar Nazi utilization program”. Ustasha ultra-nationalists and racists were “active in the United States, Australia, and several other countries, and according to reports of FBI investigations, some cells have been responsible for an airplane hijacking, bombings, extortion, numerous murders, and the assassination of several Yugoslavian diplomats over the course of the last two decades.” “U.S. Nazi operations”, such as the Draganovic ratline operations, were done secretly. The use of Nazis and Ustasha as agents by the US expanded and became more open and “flagrant” during the Cold War. The US contributed to creating an Ustasha terrorist group in the US and outside the US and contributed to creating a neo-Ustasha ultra-nationalist movement outside of Croatia. The TWA hijacking in 1976 by Croatian ultra-nationalists and the alleged plan by Albanian Muslims to kill US Marines at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007 demonstrate that there is a price to pay for sponsoring and recruiting accused war criminals and those implicated in crimes. We may not see the effects immediately, but over time the effects become manifest.

Blowback is the inevitable result.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carl Savich is a historian who teaches history at the college level. His articles have appeared on numerous websites and newspapers.

http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.co...ction.html

David Guyatt Wrote:

Ruben Mundaca Wrote:Not really, Jan...
For me, is far more likely that any drug trade is keeped out of my country.

Ruben, while you are, of course, entirely entitled to your views, I cannot help but observe that in this respect they are very unworldly and naive. Once the narcotics trade is established in a country the immense power of the cartels and those others in foreign governments and business who are complicit in it will never allow it to be eradicated. Why should they? It generates well over $1 trillion annually. And that figure is at least a decade and a half old - which was when I last checked it out.

I would direct you to professor Peter Dale Scott's book: Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America. Ditto prof. Alfred McCoy's: The Politics of Heroin - CIA Complicity in the Global Drugs Trade.

Besides these two books the DPF has a fairly decent archive on this subject.

Quote:The habit of chewing was encouraged by spanish conquerors in order to extend the laboral journey. So, chewing coca is not "traditional". Actually, It's "colonial".

I also would direct you to post-WWII history and the development of the drug trade in Bolivia and other Latin nations thanks to the remnants of Nazis who escaped justice at Nuremberg. SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie being one of them. Barbie worked for US intelligence post WWII during his sojourn in Bolivia. Yes, the "Butcher of Lyons" was protected by the US who went out of their way to hinder him being brought to justice in France.

Quote:The truth is that coca is a big millonaire business controlled totally by coca farmers, mostly indigenous, so you will hear a lot of more justifications for his production, because the millions it yields. That's ok. with me and most of bolivian people, unless is not tranformed in cocaine. Sadly, it happens with nearly 80% of the coca produced.

The truth is that coca is a truly global business that impacts upon every developed and undeveloped nation in the world; that it continues - virtually unimpeded - because of western political and financial considerations and because it generates billionaires by the score. By far the greatest profit stream is retained not by indigenous coca farmers but by geographically external drug lords, big businessmen and other movers and shakers. This fact is easily established by the vast street value mark-up in western cities.

Forgive me for speaking plainly, but you clearly are very poorly informed on the international reverberations on this trade. But at least you're in the right place to become a great deal more informed about it if this is your ambition?

[/QUOTE]
Thank you David.
I think we are all learners in life, and we are here to share knowledge and experiences, isn't it ?..... I really don't like monologues (Socrates dixit). If a man want to fly, is better to run his plane against the wind...

If we are not able to share and respectfuly discuss different ideas, information, knowledge, experiences and different point of views, this will soon became a chorus, not a forum....

Now to your post:
1.- It's true about cartels. What I was trying to state is a desire, that ANY drug trade where performed in my country. Too late. All can we do is try to lower comsumtion and trade by implementing several measures: Lowering illegal crops, putting in jail traffickers, better educating and controlling our children, etc., etc.
What we CAN'T do is to give up "because drug cartels are more powerful that us". It's a war we MUST fight. I don't think that is naive.....

2.- First apperance of cocaine in Bolivia is reported before WWI actually. There are custom reports of an englishman (sorry, it's true) trying to export cocaine to England. In his discharge, I think that cocaine was not illegal in those early years. During the campaign against Che Guevara, there where also reports that trafficking was more active, but still very little. Bolivian army has find little factorys while searching Che guerrilla.
Trafficking increases dramatically in the decade of 1980-1990 during frequent cup d' etats by militaries, specillay during government of Luis García Mesa. There was the first time that bolivian government was clearly with traffickers due to lack of support of USA and other countries to those dictators, following the Carter policyes. Latelly CIA was involved also, using it to fund central america counter-guerrilla. They pay a high price for that in a big scandal. I know. I knew proffessor Noel Kepmff Mercado.

Seems that averybody has funded their dirty opperations with drugs. Cuban-related guerrillas has done too. Not shure about cubans traffiking directly, but there are a lot of stories here that I can't say, due to lack of proofs.

-The most notorius actual examples are the FARC in Colombia and Sendero Luminoso in Peru. Nobody can claim to be innocent and clean hands, believe me.

Post war Nazis?....yes. Klaus Barbie was one of them (and the worst here in Bolivia) that was notoriusly involved in cocaine trafficking and other felonies. But it will be a lie if somebody say all of them where a drug cartel or trafficants. I just knew one of them when I was a kid: Hitler's photographer, who lived in a very humble way and die in poverty. I barely remember him.

3.- Now don't be confused: You are writing about cocaine as a millionary business, I am writng about coca leafs as a millionary business. Is true that both are very related. Is truth also that farmer usually gets the little piece of the cake, but is true that many farmers evolve to become traffikkers also. Anyway, the farmer piece is not so little. An hectarea of coca crop can yield thousands of dollars annually.
Anyway, that still represent a little amount of the final value of a kilo.

I Might be poorly informed about CIA relations with trafficants and his dark ops, but believe me, I am informed about trafficking, production and his nasty effects in society. I MUST. I am living in a country that suffers everyday with.

Magda Hassan Wrote:

Ruben Mundaca Wrote:

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Of course, contra Ruben Mundaca, it is far more likely that the hugely lucrative international drugs trade is run by western and eastern intelligence agents - rogue and/or sanctioned - in collaboration with criminal elements and certain multinational financial institutions.

There's plenty of evidence in the Drugs directory here at DPF:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...y.php?f=75

Evo Morales' call to "decriminalize" the coca plant, which provides indigenous Bolivians with physiological and spiritual sustenance, is in reality a threat to the deep black forces who write the laws banning these substances and then profit so massively from the illegal narcotics trade.

:call2:

Not really, Jan...
For me, is far more likely that any drug trade is keeped out of my country.

I don't want to make you cry with stories of kids trapped by drugs living in the channels of my city and any bolivian city. Municipal organizations try to rescue them, but... there are so much !!!.... and growing evryday....because cocaine is cheap and easy to find. All the cocaine that trafficants can't export, is selled here.

Expending (selling) coca leafs for traditional uses is legal in my country many, many years ago (since spanish conquerors, actually. Formerly, in the Inca conquered territoryes, all the subjets were banned to chew coca leaves under penalty of immediatly death. Only the god Inca, his family, priests, and those authorized by god Inca can chew it. That's why is called "sacred leaf").

The habit of chewing was encouraged by spanish conquerors in order to extend the laboral journey. So, chewing coca is not "traditional". Actually, It's "colonial".

Many things have been sayed to justify the over-production of coca. There are little companies that actually produce tea from it, thoothpaste, etc.. None of those products has catched the consumer attention (I have tryed and, to be honest, tasted very bad).

Claims have been done that coca has nutritional value. It actually has, but not for humans, but for animals like...... cows . Human have no double stomach or rumen as cows, for example, so is very hard for human stomach to take those nutrients from the coca leaf.

Actually, coca consumpiton has been identify as one of causes of malnutrition. Because people that chew don't eat the amount needed of food, coz they doesen't feel hungry. Some guy told me justifying that is because they don't have food to eat, but with the price of coca leafs at Bs. 40 at pound, you can buy a lot of food here in Bolivia, enough for you and your family actually.

The truth is that coca is a big millonaire business controlled totally by coca farmers, mostly indigenous, so you will hear a lot of more justifications for his production, because the millions it yields. That's ok. with me and most of bolivian people, unless is not tranformed in cocaine. Sadly, it happens with nearly 80% of the coca produced.

The problems of drugs in Bolivia are not caused by Morales or his government. You can blame the US directly for all of that. For many years Bolivia was just a branch office of US Crime Inc. complete with an intergrated military and Operation Paperclip Nazis http://www.consortiumnews.com/1990s/consor24.html Ah... the good old days when private enterprise ruled and workers and the natives knew their place. So much more efficient. A large part of the US antipathy towards Bolivia is because they no longer have a free reign there to operate their black business. Not to mention that they set a terrible example, like Cuba, that small nations can be independent of the US.

Since Morales has been in government cocaine confiscation has incresed enormously:

And interestingly even more so since they no longer have the 'help' of the US DEA http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...php?t=1752

Every year since Evo Morales took office cocaine seizures have more than doubled and each year the amount of land for cocoa production has decreased by 20%
2006: 27,500 hectares
2007: 25,000 hectares
2008: 22,000 hectares

Not really, Magda.
Not blaming Morales for being the ORIGIN of the problem. Blaming him for clearly SUPPORTING it, instead of fighting it.

You have to know that statistically, if a police force is really, really efficient, can only catch 20% of the drug traffiked?... So if Morales is catching much more drug, we have only two posibilities: Or the amount of drug traffiked has dramatically increased, or suddenly bolivian policeman has become some kind of super-cops supported by radars, super comunications systems and predator drones with nigth vision able to see behind the jungle dosel 24 hours at day, in thousands kilometer radious.
Do your choice.....

I have been in little towns (villages) in the Chapare area. In one of them I have to get out fast not because somebody was chasing me, but because the smell of cocaine and chemist used in the process was so hard I barely can breath. People in that area are not even going to jungle to prepare cocaine. They are doing it in their own homes !!... The smell was in evry little town I visited.

Now, If a visitor can find cocaine traffikers so fast, you think policeman can't ?.......

I also find other signs. When the new HUMMER-V2 vehicle was imported to Bolivia, gess where the company selled the most of them ?... NO, Magda!!, Not in La Paz (1,7 millons of habitants), not even is Santa Cruz (2 millons of habitants, claimed to be the richest region), but in the (very poor?) region of... Morale's Chapare (300.000 habitants in a lot of land). I know its true. I have seen them parked in front of poor huts. Huts eqquipped with parabollic antennas, by the way.....

If the coca crops are lowering, why two indigenous people crash recently in the near El Choré national park?.... Amazonic indigenous crash recently with aimaran coca planters coz they where destroing El Choré national park and invading the land of amazonic indigenous, lowering the jungle to plant more coca crops unable to chew. By the way, one aimaran indigenous was killed (If I remember well) by a large arrow and other hurted, before they flee because more amazonic indigenous was coming to support their comrades.

Other national parks in Beni and northern La Paz are also under siege and invaded by coca planters. Decreasing land of coca crops ?... not in dreams, my dear Magda.

Latest news about "Morales assasins":

http://www.lostiempos.com/diario/actuali...69071.html

Marie Cassidy, state pathologist of Ireland has exam the body of Michael Dwayer, the irish terrorist killed in Bolivia with Rosza Flores, has inform that Dwayer did not die by six bullet impacts as bolivian authopsy say, but for a bullet impact directly to the heart, with descending trajectory, at short distance and when Dwayer was laid in a bed or sitting. She also inform that find no evidence that Dwayer has shoot a weapon. No metallic traces (of powder) in his hands, contradict bolivian police (utarc) inform that he was killed in a battle that last almost 30 minutes.

Also, from Hungary, magiar police experts that exam the body of Arpad Magyarosi (the other killed companion of Rosza Flores), concluded that Arpad was executed while he was with his arms up in clear sign of surrender (due to bullets trajectory in his body and arms).

A bolivian investigative parliament comission (oppositors) is travelling to Ireland requested by family members of Dwayer. Its possible that Morales and all involved in this killing is going to be prosecuted as responsable by European Court for assasination of european citizens, violating human rights.

Morales has not agree to let Magyar or Irish police come to Bolivia or a third party country impartially investigate the killings. the bolivian ambassador in the UK, Beatriz Souviron, initially agree to an impartial investigation, but was later deautorized by Morales. Morales is involved due to he declared he personally has authorized the confrontation with the presumed terrorists, and other facts. For example, there was a writed complaint to the police sayin that the catholic cardinal house was attacked, many hours before that the explosive actually detonate !!...

Ruben Mundaca Wrote:Not really, Magda.
Not blaming Morales for being the ORIGIN of the problem. Blaming him for clearly SUPPORTING it, instead of fighting it.

But all the evidence shows his government is doing a better job alone than with the 'help' of the US DEA. Area under cultivation is down. Busts are up. The end user, the US and Europe mainly, are still receiving their drugs but not because of Morales but because US puppet state Colombia and Peru have increased their production.

Magda Hassan Wrote:

Ruben Mundaca Wrote:Not really, Magda.
Not blaming Morales for being the ORIGIN of the problem. Blaming him for clearly SUPPORTING it, instead of fighting it.

But all the evidence shows his government is doing a better job alone than with the 'help' of the US DEA. Area under cultivation is down. Busts are up. The end user, the US and Europe mainly, are still receiving their drugs but not because of Morales but because US puppet state Colombia and Peru have increased their production.

There are two evidences, Magda.
First was the increasing amount of cocaine catched. I allready explain that point in my previous post.

Second is the allegated decrease in coca crops land. In that point, we have only to relay in government informs, that has showed not to be reliables. And there is no way to compare, only blindly believe with faith what FELNC report, since DEA was formerly making the satellital measurements of areas covered by coca crops and areas erradicated and not anymore. FELNC is not a reliable source, since is under total control of government and, as many other governamental dependencies, is allegated to tailor informs according government interests.

Anyway, what the citizen see when travel thru Chapare sanctuary and other regions, is very different that FELNC reports.

Bolivian cocaine is not going to USA anymore, coz seems that passing thru Colombia is very difficult and dangerous for them now (is very difficult for trafficant plane to ellude colombian territory in the way to USA). Cocaine now is travelling to Europe but mostly, to Brazil (and Argentina in less quantities), due Brazil economic blooming.

Brazil is desesperatly offering to Bolivia a bunch of helicopters (as a gift) to be used by bolivians to control traffiking and delinquency in his frontier.

Also, has deployed SIVAM planes, helicopters,special police forces and Tucanos squadrons in his side trying to control his large jungle frontier with Bolivia, spending a lot of money. Big, big trouble.

Thanks for your above post in response to mine Ruben. And for your clarification. It wasn’t immediately clear to me that your prior post was a desire rather than a stated fact. But I cannot help but heartily embrace your desire. I am certain that every member here does likewise. There is a great deal of anger here at DPF at the global drugs trade and how it is used to shred society and, at the same time, generate massive income streams for organized crime and its bedfellows.

I wasn’t aware of the WWI British angle to Cocaine. But I am familiar with British responsibility for bringing the opium trade - the template of everything we now see - to the world. It’s not something most Brits are proud of.

All in all, I think we are both on the same page in regard to Narco trafficking.

Quote:What we have to contemplate nevertheless is the possibility that the great American acid trip, no matter how distinctive of the rebellion of the 1960s it came to appear, was in fact the result of a despicable government conspiracy.... If U.S. intelligence bodies collaborated in an effort to drug an entire generation of Americans, then the reason they did so was to disorient it, sedate it and de-politicize it.[9]

Currently it's cocaine in the form of crack that's a major problem in the inner cities of America. Coca leaf is grown on the high Andean plateaus of Bolivia and Peru, and until 1980 it was generally refined in Colombia. After the Bolivian "cocaine coup," refinement of coca paste into cocaine became more of a local affair, while Peru and Paraguay also increased their production. New smuggling routes were established, and new strains of coca were bred that could thrive in the lowlands of the Amazon basin. Cocaine soon glutted the market. Prices dropped dramatically during the first half of the 1980s, which saw the appearance of crack -- a condensed, rock-like substance that can be produced by cooking cocaine with water and baking soda on a kitchen stove. Crack is smoked rather than snorted, a process which absorbs more of the drug into the body with less effort.
The 1980 cocaine coup in Bolivia was arranged by the Argentine military, which in 1976 seized power in Argentina and proceeded to "disappear" about 11,000 of the country's own citizens. Michael Levine, who was the DEA's country attache to Argentina and Uruguay in 1980, discovered that the high-level Argentine military officers he was trying to bust for trafficking were well-connected in Bolivia, and that the entire bunch were protected by the CIA. Some of the bloodiest coup-makers in Bolivia were recruited by Klaus Barbie, a fugitive Nazi war criminal and long-time CIA asset.[10]

Confirmation of the CIA's role came from testimony taken by the Kerry subcommittee in a closed hearing on July 23, 1987. Leandro Sanchez Reisse was assigned by the Argentine military to set up a money laundering front in Florida in 1977. He said that these fronts ran operations for and with the CIA, including weapons shipments to Argentine personnel in Central America. In 1980, funds from a major Bolivian trafficker were funneled to the Argentine military, which then sent ambulances loaded with weapons to Bolivia. These were used in the 1980 coup engineered by Luis Arce Gomez and Luis Garcia Meza, both of whom were connected to traffickers.[11]

The CIA, claiming that the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were sending arms to guerrillas in El Salvador, paid Argentina to provide military training to contras in Central America. This arrangement ended in 1982, when the military government in Argentina lost power after the Falklands debacle. Within several years, however, the contra war developed into a major CIA operation involving Cuban exiles from Miami; former Nicaraguan guardsmen who fled during the 1979 revolution and regrouped in Honduras; and assorted CIA adventurers with drug- and arms-trafficking connections.

Celerino Castillo fought in Vietnam from 1971-1972, where he saw the effects of drugs on U.S. troops. By 1975 he was a Texas cop, later a detective working drug cases. In 1980, Castillo joined the DEA and worked the streets of New York. He worked in Peru in 1984-1985, and Guatemala from 1985-1990. While stationed in Guatemala, Castillo was the DEA agent in charge of anti-drug operations in El Salvador from 1985-1987. During this period, he discovered that Oliver North's contras were running cocaine from El Salvador's Ilopango airport.

Castillo did his best to bust them, but soon learned that the traffickers were protected by the CIA. "By the end of 1988," he writes, "I realized how hopelessly tangled DEA, the CIA, and every other U.S. entity in Central America had become with the criminals. The connections boggled my mind."[12] Feeling his life was in danger, Castillo got out in a hurry in 1990. The DEA, meanwhile, was increasing the pressure with an internal investigation of Castillo. His career was over and he resigned. Lawrence Walsh's office extensively debriefed Castillo, but when Walsh released his massive report in 1993, the narcotics connection was nowhere to be found. The combined House and Senate Iran-contra hearings in 1987 also ignored the drug issue. Instead, investigators granted immunity to Oliver North.

John Kerry's subcommittee, the "Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations," began its investigations in 1987, held hearings in 1988 and 1989, and issued a 144-page report on April 13, 1989.[13] At one point, the subcommittee took testimony from the head of the Honduran DEA office, who described how it was closed down in June 1983, at a time when the CIA station was doubling in size. Honduras was a major transit station for cocaine, thanks to their corrupt military. It was clear to the CIA and Pentagon that the contra effort required the support of Honduras, and that the price for this support was to overlook the cocaine traffic.

"I watched the CIA protect drug traffickers throughout my career as a DEA agent," says Michael Levine. "I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people."[14] Tom Cash, a former top DEA official in Miami, agrees: "When you have those types of political upheavals and foreign policy considerations of the President to start with, and at the same time have a drug prosecution to contend with, drugs are going to be second. It is something we grappled with on a daily basis."[15]

One could, arguably, defend the mainstream press for refusing to follow up on stories as improbable, and characters as fringey, as some of those we've considered here: an iconoclast poet like Ginsberg, a shapeshifter like Stark, a low-level Serpico like Castillo. But the real indictment of the major media on the CIA-drugs question is their inability to follow up on obvious leads occurring in major stories taking place under floodlights in their own backyard.

Consider the case of Oliver North, known associate of drug traffickers. Oliver North's conviction for three felonies (lying, cheating, and stealing) was reversed in 1990 because his case was muddied by the Congressional grant of immunity. This meant that he could run for office, and in 1994 he was nearly elected to the U.S. Senate. North's infamous notebooks, however, may yet return to haunt him.

Ten months after the Kerry subcommittee subpoenaed these notebooks, they still lacked clean, unexpurgated copies. Nevertheless, these notebooks contain dozens of references to contra drug trafficking. In an e-mail message about General Jose Bueso Rosa from Honduras, who was involved in a conspiracy to import 345 kilos of cocaine into Florida, North noted that U.S. officials would "cabal quietly to look at options: pardon, clemency, deportation, reduced sentence." Even after Panama's Manuel Noriega was exposed in the U.S. press as a drug runner, North met with him because Noriega wanted help to "clean up his image." In exchange, Noriega offered North some helpful anti-Sandinista sabotage.

Or consider the decision by the Post and other major media to throw away a truly sensational story: the official declaration by Costa Rica, Central America's one shining light of democracy, that it considered a number of major U.S. officials to be drug traffickers, and as such was barring them from entering the country. The list here is nothing short of amazing: Oliver North himself, retired air-force major general Richard Secord, Reagan's former national security advisor John Poindexter, former U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, and former CIA station chief Joseph Fernandez.

On July 22, 1989, the Associated Press ran this story, but they were virtually alone; some major media buried this story, and the rest resolutely ignored it. When asked why, Post reporter Walter Pincus gave a revealing response: "Just because a congressional commission in Costa Rica says something, doesn't mean it's true."[16] (Before he joined the Post in the 1960s, Pincus traveled abroad on a CIA subsidy to spy on student leaders from other countries.[17] Unsurprisingly, Pincus was out in front of the pack of reporters that attacked the recent Mercury News story.)

When the major media turn aside from stories so sensational, and so easy to pursue, it's unlikely to be an accident. And given that stories so high-profile go nowhere, it's not surprising that the same thing happens to countless lower-profile stories that lack immediately-recognizable American names. Space prevents giving even a "bullet" version of many stories that could be adduced here, but consider the following items, at least:

Medellin trafficker Carlos Lehder testified at Noriega's 1991 trial that the Medellin cartel gave $10 million to the contras.
FBI informant Wanda Palacio told the Kerry subcommittee that she saw cocaine being loaded onto pilot Wallace Sawyer's plane in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1985. (Sawyer and his Southern Air Transport L382, carrying guns this time, were shot down over Nicaragua one year later. The flight logs from the plane, recovered by the Sandinistas, substantiated Palacio's story.)
George Morales, a major cocaine trafficker, offered planes and cash to the contras; when contra leader Adolfo Chamorro checked with the CIA, they said Morales was fine and to go ahead with the deal.
Ramon Milian Rodriguez, the chief accountant for the Medellin cartel, testified to the Kerry subcommittee that he transferred money to the contras and laundered more than $3 million for the CIA, even after his indictment on drug charges in 1983.
In what was known as the Frogman Case, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, Joseph Russoniello, returned $36,000 to an arrested cocaine dealer after contra leaders stipulated that the money was earmarked for weapons. The Justice Department foiled Kerry's attempts to investigate this. (Russoniello, by the way, is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.)
Recently a Venezuelan, Gen. Ramon Guillen Davila, was indicted in Miami for smuggling tons of cocaine. This is the only instance in which the CIA has acknowledged responsibility for drugs being imported into the U.S. One CIA officer resigned and another was recalled to Washington, but no CIA officials have been charged.

Or consider the blatant attempt by the Washington Post and its corporate sibling Newsweek to bury the inconvenient results of Congressional investigations into CIA complicity with drug traffickers, and then smear the investigators. On July 22, 1987, the Post ran an article whose headline seemed perfectly clear: "Hill Panel Finds No Evidence Linking Contras to Drug Smuggling."
But Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control, wrote to the Post and complained, "Your headline says we drew one conclusion, while in fact we reached quite a different one." Rangel's letter ended up buried in the Congressional Record (August 6, 1987), because the Post refused to publish it. Two years later, when the Kerry subcommittee report was released, the Post buried it on a back page, and devoted most of the short article to Republican criticisms of Kerry. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff."

------

10. Michael Levine, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993), 472 pages.

11. David Corn, "The CIA and the Cocaine Coup," The Nation, 7 October 1991, p. 404-6.

12. Celerino Castillo III and Dave Harmon, Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras and the Drug War (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press -- Sundial, 1994), p. 208.

13. The most comprehensive discussion of the details in this report can be found in Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 279 pages.

14. Geraldo Rivera Show, CNBC-TV, 9 October 1996, with guests Jack Blum, Michael Levine, and Maxine Waters.

15. Warren Richey, "CIA Under Pressure to Divulge Info on Contras," Christian Science Monitor, 20 September 1996, p. 3.

16. "Censored News: Oliver North & Co. Banned from Costa Rica," Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, Extra!, October/November 1989, pp. 1, 5. See FAIR's website < http://www.fair.org/fair > for more about major media and the CIA-cocaine story.

17. Walter Pincus, "How I Traveled Abroad On CIA Subsidy," San Jose Mercury, 18 February 1967, p. 14.

Excerpt from: Pipe Dreams: the CIA, Drugs, and the Media
by Daniel Brandt and Steve Badrich
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 16, January-March 1997

http://www.namebase.org/news16.html

Is a full unredacted copy of North's notebook freely available anywhere yet? I can't see that there is but if there is it would be good to have a copy posted on the forum for reference purposes.

Given the persistent attempts to subvert the more aware Rosza Flores threads on the internet, it feels like a good time to repost this expose from page 3 of this thread.

Note that Rozsa Flores received his journalistic cover at La Vanguardia from Ricardo Estarriol. Estarriol was a high-ranking Opus Dei operative, very active in eastern and central Europe.

From this we can hypothesize that Rozsa Flores was a creature of Opus Dei from at least 1988.

The timeline also suggests that Rozsa Flores' abandonment of his journalistic cover, and new incarnation as revolutionary Croatian, and later Muslim, dirty tricks mercenary and false flag atrocity specialist was likely at the behest of his Opus Dei masters.

Opus Dei, SMOM and Gladio are all tentacles of the same ruthless, fascist, Octopus.

Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Here we go.

Eduardo Rozsa Flores REVEALED.

Quote:"Germany's Secret Balkan's Plan" SEARCHLIGHT July 1992 - London

http://serbianlinks.freehosting.net/dogs.html

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A BBC television documentary shown in May depicted a few days in the lives of a motley crew of 100 pound a month British mecenaries, many of them ex-British army, who are helping the break away Croatian Tudjman regime as part of an international brigade.

the programe, titled "The Dogs of War" and shown in the BBC's Inside Story series, put a part of the detritus of British Society under the spotlight. Carl, a military explosives expert from Merryside, who went to Croatia for something to do and had served as a mecenary in Sri Lanka, the Sudan, Surinam and a couple of places "too sensitive to mention". Dave, seemingly from Manchester, who wanted to experience the joys of "killing without compassion, like the Yorkshire Ripper. Roy, the kid with the inane grin whose mother thought he was "working at Euro Disney"; and the Welshman known as "Frenchie", now hospitalized after shooting himself in the foot with his own machine gun.

The only onw with any redeeming features was Kit, an ex-paratrooper and French Legionnaire from the northeast, who freely describes himself as a "vagabond" and found life in Croatia preferable to the one in prison that he faces if he returns to Britain.

Kit, his personal life obviously as big a shambles as he describes his woeking colleages, had no illusions about the fact that he was in the company of cut throats whose main lust was to spill blood. "these sods are just as bad as the other side" he concided in a candid moment.

The programme was worthwhile as a series of character scetches focussing on the socially and it appears mentally disoriented flotsam and jetsam of Britain's failing economy.

However, it was important in other ways.

MURDER AND DECEPTION
What was crucial was that it gave an insight into the way in which the gangs of freelance marauders, enlisted by the Croatians to plunge Yugoslavia into bloody civil war, go about their business.

The British company, about 30 strong, was based in the town of Osijek, which was been the flashpoint for heavy fighting. One of its functions, the programme demonstrated, had been to provoke breaks in the cease fires arranged between the two sides in the conflict, in an attempt to throw the blame for continued shelling and violence on the overwhelmingly Serbian Yugoslav Federal Army.

These provocations bear the stamp of careful and systematic planning. The documentary proved this beyond doubt with footage showing a team of British and French mercenaries going out to lay explosives charges.

Radio news reports the next morning then said that "the shelling of Osijek was intense" and was "the worst violation of the cease fire since the current truce went into force."

The reality, explained the programmes commentary, was something different. The mercenaries had, in fact been in action laying explosives "to decieve the European Community observers who would assume it was the Serbs".

The British mercenaries are teh kind of people for whom fitting into normal social surroundings is anathema and for whom the mere thought of killing without feeling is attractive. They are the type of men who flocked into Hitler's Waffen-SS legions.

And like their predecessors they are being used as willing pawns in a game that is being played for staked much higher than they can begin to understand.

EDUARDO FLORES-FIXER FOR MURDE
handing out the orders to the British mercenaries in Osijek is a sinister young Spanish gentleman by the name of Eduardo Flores, a man whose name crops up with ever increasing frequency in investigations of the deaths of British photographer Paul Jenks and Swiss reporter Christian Wurtenberg in January ... around the time the BBC team filmed the "Dogs of War".

In fact, Searchlight can exclusively reveal for the first time, information about Flores' well travelled background.

Only 32 years old and claiming to be without military experience (despite sporting para wings), Jorge Eduardo Rosza Flores commands the so-called International Brigade (PIV) based in Osijek.

To get there has been a long journey involving several political mutations and numerous contacts with the twilight world of armies, secret services and quasi fascist religious organisations.

Born in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to spanish catholic mother and Hungarian Jewish father, Flores spent his formative years in Budapest, where in his teens he was an active member of the communist youth movement.

In fact, he is not without military experience, having done his military service in the Hungarian army as a border guard at Budapest airport, where he reportedly met the notorious international terrorist "Carlos".

In 1988-89 Flores' career took a new direction when he started to work with the Barcelona paper La Vanguardia as an assistent to Ricardo Estarriol, the paper's East European correspondant and an active member of the secretive rightist Catholic organisation Opus Dei.

Both men made regular trips to Vienna to visit the Opus Dei offices there and Flores mantained close contact with this historically pro-fascist Catholic organisation.

Before being assigned by La vangaurdia to Croatia, where he was to jettison his laptop computer in favor of a rifle, Flores was covering events in Hungary, Albania and Slovenia, the province in which German government insired seperatists had already begun to drive the first stakes into the hearts of Yugoslavia. Arriving in Croatia in late August 1991, Flores immediately announced that he had enlisted in the so-called Croatian National Guard and was posted to the village of Lazlovo, close to the Serbian border and populated by ethnic Hungarians.

Within weeks of his arrival, Flored had made an impact and had found allied in the shape of American Croatian Johnny "Bob" Kosic and one "Jura" a Hungarian from the village. Between them, on 3 October, they cooked up the idea of an international brigade, which gained instant recognition from Franjo Tudjman's Croatian authorities.

The conduit for the promp legalisation of the new force was Branimir Glavas, the head of the local militia in Osijek, which was to later become the base for Flores unit.

Foreigners began to flood in as recruits. Among them were the top Portugeuse sniper Alejandro Cunan Fernandez and Alejandro Hernandez Mora, a Spanish mercenary and an explosives and sabatoge expert. Also among the new arrivals was Stephan Hannock, the welshmen known as "Frenchie" because his claimed background in the French Foreign Legion.

Other recruits, who brought the brgade's strength to around 100, included a French group sent by the fascist Front National.

Other FN members found ther way into the ranks of the more explicitly fascist Black Legion, which is attached to the 15,000 strong Armed Croatian Forces (HOS) militias and based at Vukovar, about 22 miles from Osijek.

Journalists from across Europe have wanted to lift the lid on the freelance killers operating in Croatia. For Christian Wurtenberg and Paul Jenks, this curiosity was to prove fatal.

Wurtenberg working for a Swiss news agency, decided to investigate alleged links between Flores and trafficking in weapons and drugs by joining the International Brigade, despite oppostion from his editors.

In addition, he hoped to uncover evidence of right-wing extremists amongst the mercenaries who decorate their rooms with swastikas and to establish precisely who was paying them.

After serving with Flores' outfit for a few weeks. Wurtenberg secretly told Spanish television reporter Julio Cesar Alonso that very soon he would leave the brigade and return to Switzerland.

Days later, on 4 January, Alonso and a Porteguese televeision reporter, Joso Pinto Amaral, were taken from Zagreb's Hotel Intercontinental to the headquarters of the Croatian secret police. They were later interrogated.

After the questioning, Flored told the two journalists there was a mole in the brigade and that the mole was Swiss and "had to be got rid of", adding that his forces would not kill him but that they would be killed by Serbians in an ambush.

The journalists tried to warn Wurtenberg but found he had already been placed under arrest. Desperate, they travelled to Osijek only to be met by Flores who told them with a grin "By the way, we've got a loss - Christian. The Swiss problem has been sorted out."

The "sorting out" was brutal. According to teh autopsy at the Osijek hospital, Christian Wurtenberg "was killed on 6 January 1992 as a result of mechanical action with a blunt weapon and later strangulation with hands and rope".

Flores claimed later that Wurtenberg was murdered by "Chetniks" (Serbs) but in fact strangling is almost unknown among them. Prisoners simply have their throats cut.

Wurtenberg's computer went missing and his diary was returned to his family with vital pages ripped out, while the Croatian media launched a cover up of the cause of his death. When it leaked out some days later, alarm spread among the foreign journalists working in Zagreb.

On 13 January, Paul Jenks and a colleaugue Hassan Amini, visited the International brigade to ask questions about what had happened to Wurtenberg. The man they met was Stephen "Frenchie" Hannock who, in response to Jenk's persistent questions said "who knows ... who cares. I dont, for one and I know a lot more than you."

Flores was due to arrive so "Frenchie" asked the 2 photographers to leave. Nevertheless, Flores learned of thier presence and later went to the Osijek press centre to give them "his version" of the events surrounding Wurtenberg's murder.

He never met them, but four days later Paul Jenks was shot through the head at the front line in Briest, near Osijek. Officially he was killed by a Serbian sniper hidden some 900 metres away in the Serbian held village of Tenski-Antunovac, but the positions of Flores' International Brigade were much closer. The indications are that the range was far shorter than 900 metres and there are suggestions that the bullet did not enter his heead from the direction of the sniper.

A mere two days later after Jenks killing, Flores was on the telephone again to give "his version", telling Julio Alonso in Spain: "It is not very convenient being a journalist." Strong suspicions now exist about the roles of both the sinister Flores and "Frenchie" in the deaths of the two journalists.

Like the dirty war being fought by Flores and other rightist killer gangs in Croatia, the truth about the murder of Wurtenber and Jenks has been covered up.

What they discovered about the sources of funds, the role of Opus Dei, the involvement of extreme rightists and the weapons and drugs rackets may never be known. Flores and "Frenchie" have ensured that.

ANOTHER INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE
Flores's International brigade is not the only band of "soldiers of fortune" that has ensconced itself in Croatia. In Vukovar, just up the road from Flores' detachment, is another calling itself the Black Legion.

At the head of the race to tout support for this "volunteer" group is the US-based nazi NSDAP-AO led by Gary Rex Lauek. Succesive editions of Lauek's broadsheet New Order have boasted of the presence of hardline nazis in Croatia.

In the March 1992 edition, Lauek, who functions as a leg man for the German neo nazi Bewegung, carried an urgent appeal under the title "Crroatia needs help".

The appeal sets out the international neo-nazi agenda clearly: "Many Croatians stand on the side of White Europe and also on the side of the Nationalist New Order on this continent."

Lauek pitches his appeal historically, praising the wartime Nazi collaborationist butchers of the Croatian Ustashi, who slaughtered more than a million Jews and Serbs. He lauds especially their role as cogs in Hitler's Waffen-SS killing machine.

However, the kind of help that Lauek alls for only becomes clear in later editoins. In an article in the July-August edition, a US nazi relates how the NSDAP-AO recieves letters from German nazi volunteers in Croatia who, according to the published letter, "belonge to an independent unit".

This information has recieved limited confirmation fron the German government which, in a written parliamentary reply to Bundestag member Ulla Jelpke, dated 14 April, stated that "around 30 German citizens are active as advisers to the Croatian National Guard."

Remarkably, however, this same parliamentary anser, from Foreign Office State minister Helmut Schafer, claims bizzarely for example that the German government has "no knowledge" either of former soilders of the East German army fighting on the side of Croatia or of illegal weapons being delivered from Germany.

Yet this flies in the face of evidence, presented before Schafer's reply by the German Interior Ministry, confirming esistence of the Black Legion and saying that this troop was under the comand of a former East German officer.

The interior Ministry also stated unambiguously that the German security services were aware that not only German but also other European nazis were making frequent visits to Croatia and that there were plans afoot to establish a "first aid corps" which had temporarily been short circuited by the preventive detention of top Nazi Gottfried Kussel in Vienna.

In fact, a 50 strong elite troop of German and Austrian nazi volunteers was due to depart on 14 January , but Kussel's arrest a few days earlier halted the operation.

Since then, reports the erman magazine Stern, the job has been taken over by the Hamburg based Nationale Liste, led by the nazi leadership contender Christian Worch, a contact of David Irving, and the Munich based National Block whose Fuhrer is Manfred Eichner.

Both these groups are part of the nazi Bewegung, of which Eichner is the "regional leader-South" as well as being one of the commanders of the Begwegung's illegal paramilitary SA.

Also in on the act is the criminal nazi Ewald Althans, Worch's deadly rival in the battle to replace Kussel. While Worsch assists in supervisng the would be recruits, Althans has set himself the role of find raiser both to finance his leadership contest and to help publicize the neo nazi involvement in Croatia.

Althans issued a press realease in May touting "spectacular action photos for sale". The photos on offer, more than 100 in all, "document neo nazi volunteers fighting in Yugoslavia on behalf of Croatian forces as well as neo nazo involvement in Iraq."

Althans asking price is $5000 and he further offers contacts with the neo nazis involved as well as video footage. Althans fund raising stunt is clearly part of an interantional drive: the contact telephone and fax numbers on teh press release belong to the toronto based Auschwitz liar and criminal Ernst Zundel, with whom Althans was residing in May and June.

As reported earlier in Searchlight, Croatia has become the focal point for fascists internationally. Reports are being recieved about attempts to recruit US nazis for military action and French fascists have also been engaged with the Black Legion.

Notable among them is the French nazi FNE member Micheal Faci, who boasted, to reporters that he was in charge of about 200 fascists including Austrians and Germans and more plausibly, that he himself killed two Serbs.

It is significant that, despite efforts to keep a safe distance from their more violent brethren, exponents of ballot box fascism have also saught to show their backing for the Croatian war against Yugoslavia.

As already explained, jean-marie Le Pen;s Front National (FN) has sent volunteers to Croatia according to Spanish sources. In the summer of 1991, Le Pen and the German Fascist MEP Harald Neubauer made a secret trip to Zagreb for talks with senior advisers to the Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman.

Neubauer- true to his nazi beliefs- declared "We are not the last of yesterday, but the first of tomorrow," while Tudjman's henchman, Hrvoje Sosic, defended the fascists visit with the statement that "negative attitudes to le Pen and his party are Bolshevik slanders."

Where Le Pen led, Belgian Vlaams Blok Fascist Filip Dewinter followed in January, visiting the Armed Croatian Forces (HOS) militia and announcing that "politically they are very close to us". Some of these visits were arranged with the help of British right wing Tories.

The evidence of fascist links with the government and militias in Croatia is overwhelming. Yet there has been little publicity and even less official investigation in the European Community from which most of the free boters >come.

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