Morales assassins: Bolivia gang "fought in Balkans"

[Jan Klimkowski]

Magda & David - excellent posts.

MSM is running a mile from the starkly obvious truth here.

I suspect the spinmeisters know there are so many skeletons in this cupboard that they're struggling to impose a coherent MSM narrative. And therefore the story will be ignored until the financial elites decide it's time to claim Bolivia's natural resources for themselves.

It's good to know that Evo Morales has a loyal Secret Service protecting him from neo-Nazi murderers. As an indigenous Aymara, he knows all about Nazis in Bolivia. He's old enough to remember the openly Swastika flag-waving scum of the "Cocaine coup" with Klaus Barbie's "Thule Lodge" and other noteworthy backers.

The image above of the Swastika-daubed car is business as usual for the foreigners who would loot Bolivia.

Yes. Business as usual.

A Nazi Reunion
In nearby coca-producing Bolivia, Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie was working as a Bolivian intelligence officer and drawing up plans for a putsch that would add that central nation to the region's "stable axis" of right-wing regimes. Barbie contacted Argentine intelligence for help.

One of the first Argentine intelligence officers who arrived was Lt. Alfred Mario Mingolla. "Before our departure, we received a dossier on [Barbie]," Mingolla later told German investigative reporter Kai Hermann. "There it stated that he was of great use to Argentina because he played an important role in all of Latin America in the fight against communism. From the dossier, it was also clear that Altmann worked for the Americans." [For an English translation of Hermann's detailed account, see Covert Action Information Bulletin, Winter 1986]

As the Bolivian coup took shape, Bolivian Col. Luis Arce-Gomez, the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, recruited neo-fascist terrorists such as Italian Stefano della Chiaie who had been working with the Argentine death squads. [See Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall] Dr. Alfredo Candia, the Bolivian leader of the World Anti-Communist League, was coordinating the arrival of these paramilitary operatives from Argentina and Europe, Hermann reported. Meanwhile, Barbie started a secret lodge, called Thule. During meetings, he lectured to his followers underneath swastikas by candlelight.

While the CIA was encouraging this aggressive anti-communism on one level, Levine and his DEA field agents were moving against some of the conspirators for drug crimes. In May 1980, DEA in Miami seized 854 pounds of cocaine base and arrested two top Bolivian traffickers from the Roberto Suarez organization. But Levine saw the bust double-crossed, he suspected, for geo-political reasons.

One suspect, Jose Roberto Gasser "was almost immediately released from custody by the Miami U.S. attorney's office," Levine wrote. (Gasser was the son of Bolivian WACL associate Erwin Gasser, a leading figure in the upcoming coup.) The other defendant saw his bail lowered, letting him flee the United States. Levine worried about the fate of Bolivian officials who had helped DEA. [See Levine's Deep Cover]

On June 17, 1980, in nearly public planning for the coup, six of Bolivia's biggest traffickers met with the military conspirators to hammer out a financial deal for future protection of the cocaine trade. A La Paz businessman said the coming putsch should be called the "Cocaine Coup," a name that would stick. [Cocaine Politics]

Less than three weeks later, on July 6, DEA agent Levine met with a Bolivian trafficker named Hugo Hurtado-Candia. Over drinks, Hurtado outlined plans for the "new government" in which his niece Sonia Atala, a major cocaine supplier, will "be in a very strong position."

Later, an Argentine secret policeman told Levine that the CIA knew about the coup. "You North Americans amaze me. Don't you speak to your own people?" the officer wondered. "Do you think Bolivia's government -- or any government in South America -- can be changed without your government and mine being aware of it?"

When Levine asked why that affected the planned DEA investigation, the Argentine answered, "Because the same people he's naming as drug dealers are the people we are helping to rid Bolivia of leftists. ...Us. The Argentines ... working with your CIA." [Big White Lie]

The Cocaine Coup Cometh
On July 17, the Cocaine Coup began, spearheaded by Barbie and his neo-fascist goon squad dubbed Fiances of Death. "The masked thugs were not Bolivians; they spoke Spanish with German, French and Italian accents," Levine wrote. "Their uniforms bore neither national identification nor any markings, although many of them wore Nazi swastika armbands and insignias."

The slaughter was fierce. When the putschists stormed the national labor headquarters, they wounded labor leader Marcelo Quiroga, who had led the effort to indict former military dictator Hugo Banzer on drug and corruption charges. Quiroga "was dragged off to police headquarters to be the object of a game played by some of the torture experts imported from Argentina's dreaded Mechanic School of the Navy," Levine wrote.

"These experts applied their 'science' to Quiroga as a lesson to the Bolivians, who were a little backward in such matters. They kept Quiroga alive and suffering for hours. His castrated, tortured body was found days later in a place called 'The valley of the Moon' in southern La Paz." Women captives were gang-raped as part of their torture.

To Levine back in Buenos Aires, it was soon clear "that the primary goal of the revolution was the protection and control of Bolivia's cocaine industry. All major drug traffickers in prison were released, after which they joined the neo-Nazis in their rampage. Government buildings were invaded and trafficker files were either carried off or burned. Government employees were tortured and shot, the women tied and repeatedly raped by the paramilitaries and the freed traffickers."

The fascists celebrated with swastikas and shouts of "Heil Hitler!" Hermann reported. Col. Arce-Gomez, a central-casting image of a bemedaled, pot-bellied Latin dictator, grabbed broad powers as Interior Minister. Gen. Luis Garcia Meza was installed as Bolivia's new president.

Moon & the Putschists
Among the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to congratulate the new government was Moon's top lieutenant, Bo Hi Pak. The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with Gen. Garcia Meza. After the visit to the mountainous capital, Pak declared, "I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world's highest city."

According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup. Bolivia's WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of Moon's anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers. [CAIB, Winter 1986]

After the coup, Arce-Gomez went into partnership with big narco-traffickers, including Trafficante's Cuban-American smugglers. Klaus Barbie and his neo-fascists got a new assignment: protecting Bolivia's major cocaine barons and transporting drugs to the border. [Cocaine Politics]

"The paramilitary units -- conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS -- sold themselves to the cocaine barons," concluded Hermann. "The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America."

According to Levine, Arce-Gomez boasted to one top trafficker: "We will flood America's borders with cocaine." It was boast that the coup-makers backed up.

"Bolivia soon became the principal supplier of cocaine base to the then fledgling Colombian cartels, making themselves the main suppliers of cocaine to the United States," Levine said. "And it could not have been done without the tacit help of DEA and the active, covert help of the CIA."

On Dec. 16, 1980, Cuban-American intelligence operative Ricardo Morales told a Florida prosecutor that he had become an informer in Operation Tick-Talks, a Miami-based investigation that implicated Frank Castro and other Bay of Pigs veterans in a conspiracy to import cocaine from the new military rulers of Bolivia. [Cocaine Politics]

Years later, Medellin cartel money-launderer Ramon Milian Rodriguez testified before Senate hearings chaired by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Milian Rodriguez stated that in the early days of the cartel, "Bolivia was much more significant than the other countries." [April 6, 1988]

As the drug lords consolidated their power in Bolivia, the Moon organization expanded its presence, too. Hermann reported that in early 1981, war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were often seen together in apparent prayer. Mingolla, the Argentine intelligence officer, described Ward as his CIA paymaster, with the $1,500 monthly salary coming from the CAUSA office of Ward's representative. [CAIB, Winter 1986]

On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at the Sheraton Hotel's Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Bo Hi Pak and Garcia Meza led a prayer for President Reagan's recovery from an assassination attempt. In his speech, Bo Hi Pak declared, "God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as the ones to conquer communism." According to a later Bolivian intelligence report, the Moon organization sought to recruit an "armed church" of Bolivians, with about 7,000 Bolivians receiving some paramilitary training.

Cocaine Stresses
But by late 1981, the obvious cocaine taint was straining U.S.-Bolivian relations. "The Moon sect disappeared overnight from Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived," Hermann reported. Only Ward and a couple of others stayed on with the Bolivian information agency as it worked on a transition back to civilian rule.

According to Hermann's account, Mingolla met Ward in the cafeteria Fontana of La Paz's Hotel Plaza in March 1982. Ward was discouraged about the Bolivian operation. "The whole affair with Altmann [Barbie], with the whole fascism and Nazism bit, that was a dead-end street," Ward complained. "It was stupid having Moon and CAUSA here." [CAIB, Winter 1986] Ward could not be reached for comment about this article.

The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run. Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was eventually extradited to Miami and is serving a 30-year sentence for drug trafficking. Roberto Suarez got a 15-year prison sentence. Gen. Garcia Meza is a fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse of power, corruption and murder. Barbie was returned to France to face a life sentence for war crimes. He died in 1992.

But Moon's organization paid little price for the Cocaine Coup. Funding U.S. conservative political conferences and founding the ultra-conservative Washington Times in 1982, Moon ingratiated himself to President Reagan and other leading Republicans. Moon also continued to build a political-economic base in South America.

In 1984, The New York Times called Moon's church "one of the largest foreign investors" in Uruguay, having invested some $70 million in the three preceding years. Investments included Uruguay's third largest bank, the Banco de Credito; the Hotel Victoria Plaza in Montevideo; and the newspaper, Ultimas Noticias. Moon's venture were aided by generous tax breaks from Uruguay's military government. "Church officials said Uruguay was especially attractive because of liberal laws that allow easy repatriation of profits abroad," the Times reported. [NYT, 2-16-84]

Supporting the Nicaraguan contra rebels, Moon's organization developed close ties, too, with the powerful Honduran military which gave the contras base camps along the Nicaraguan border. Again, Moon's representatives were in contact with officers suspected of supporting the shipment of cocaine into the United States. Anti-Castro Cubans linked to the Miami drug networks also appeared on the scene to advance the anti-communist cause as did intelligence officers from the Argentine military.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/moon6.html