-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sat, 1 Dec 2007 7:40 am Subject: Drugs, Thugs, Double Agents and Geeks Saturday, December 01, 2007 http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/ Drugs and thugs Daniel Hopsicker has the latest on the drug jets saga, which is now a much wider tale. A power struggle between warring cartels has led to a string of busts -- including the largest drug seizure in the history of the planet: An incredible 33 tons of cocaine were discovered in cargo containers offloaded from the cargo ship Esmeralda which sailed to Mexico’s Pacific Coast port of Manzanillo from Buenaventura in northwestern Colombia. I would remind folks that -- by coincidence -- the same Delaware incorporation service used by Clyde O'Connor (who figures in the drug jet saga) was also used by a couple of Al Qaeda-related characters who owned -- wait for it! -- cargo ships. (Remember? Here.) I mention this because no-one seems to know who owns the good ship Esmeralda... Back to Mexico, and to Hopsicker: Kamel Nacif and Jean Succor, prominent Lebanese businessmen in Cancun, are widely reported to be major figures in the dominant drug cartel in the Yucatan whose cocaine was seized on the two American planes. The two men are ALSO at the heart of a scandal involving a huge child sex ring which has been providing children as young as five to a clientele of wealthy Mexican and foreign businessmen. This blog has previously focused on what I call "the seedy of Lebanon." Time and again, these stories lead to a small but tight-knit group of wealthy right-wing Lebanese expatriate "businessmen." (Lebanon was and is a major center of the drug trade: See, for example, here.) The Skyway drug jet was housed in a hangar owned by Richard Rainwater, another Lebanese businessman who happens to have strong ties to Bush. A previous post discussed Nacif and Succor. A Mexican journalist named Lydia Cacho wrote a book called The Demons of Eden on the Succor child exploitation ring. Succor's buddy Nacif arranged for Cacho's rather severe legal harassment. This piece (translated) in the Mexican press tells us that Nacif has strong ties to former Mexican president Vicente Fox. Which brings us to Hopsicker's bottom line: An officially 'protected' drug cartel associated with now-former Mexican President Vicente Fox is no longer being protected. Apparently, the message has been a little slow to sink in. Replacing it on the route is is main competition, apparently favored with Fox’s successor, current Jefe-in-Chief Felipe Calderon. Elsewhere, Calderon is receiving high marks for establishing a new record in drug seizures. And while we're on the subject of new drug rings, feast your peepers on this little-known tale -- Arizona National Guardsmen are involved in running coke. There were so many Arizona National Guardsmen eager to run cocaine from the border of Arizona and Mexico to Tucson and Phoenix, that the FBI had to shut down its sting, Operation Lively Green. While those soldiers were being sentenced in recent months in Tucson, the Arizona National Guard announced its soldiers would be commanding an armed drone in Iraq by remote control from Tucson. And: Arizona National Guardsmen ran cocaine in uniform in official vehicles, and even flew loads of cocaine in planes, to avoid being noticed, according to court documents. The cocaine runners included a recruiting officer working in Tucson public schools. The utter lack of national media attention given to the AZ National Guard scandal leads me to suspect that this operation ties in with the new drug importation routes being established down south. Every time the media trumpets progress in the drug wars, a larger view reveals that one criminal organization has lost official sanction while another has gained it. This is the thesis of Kruger's classic The Great Heroin Coup. Back in the 1980s, the (too few) readers of that book were the first to ask why the American media focused on the Medellin cartel while ignoring the Cali cartel. RUDY'S "WAR ON TERROR" PARTNER The Congressional Research Service report summarized the evidence against [al-Thani]: "According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah (Abdallah) bin Khalid Al Thani, provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders during the 1990s," including Khalid Sheik Mohammed. CIA officer Robert Baer has revealed that Abdallah al-Thani is a Wahabbi zealot who personally provided twenty blank passports to KSM. Al-Thani apparently also aided in the attack on the American barracks at Khobar Towers. According to a 16 page Defense Department assessment, ...in a January 1996 visit to Qatar, Osama bin Laden "discussed the successful movement of explosives into Saudi Arabia, and operations targeted against U.S. interests" in Khobar and two other locations, "using clandestine al Qaeda cells in Saudi Arabia." Morever... ...the "Qatari individual" who reportedly hosted bin Laden for these discussions was none other than Abdallah al-Thani. Why didn't Giuliani's opponents in the Republican debate mention any of this material? It's not as though those guys are too pure to do oppo research. They know about Rudy's links to Al Thani. So why won't they say something? WIPED I hope you've read this odd TPM story about Scott Bloch, who runs the Office of Special Counsel, a watchdog agency within the Bush administration. Bloch is himself the target of investigation, due to accusations of religious and anti-gay discrimination. Late last year, he called a tech services company to have the hard drive on his work 'puter wiped. Ostensibly, he was having virus trouble -- but every virus I've ever heard of was "cured" through a simple wipe and a re-installation of the OS and programs. (This is why the compu-gods gave us Norton Ghost.) The tech guys did a seven level wipe, which is something you do only when you are trying to hide data from the FBI's forensic investigators. He also had two laptops undergo the same process. Here's the part I don't get: The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus. For that kind of money, why not just buy a new drive? $200 buys a hell of a lot, these days. Toss the old one into the Potomac. Why would you spend $50 to repair a $20 can-opener? Best practice is to keep ALL data (emails, chat logs, porn, your screenplay) on a separate drive. Or: He could have done a seven-level wipe using software purchased for cash at Frys. I realize that Bosch is no tech-head, but if your ass is on the line, it pays to spend a few nights doing research. Check out AOL Money & Finance's list of the hottest products and top money wasters of 2007. ________________________________________________________________________ More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL Mail ! - http://o.aolcdn.com/cdn.webmail.aol.com/mailtour/aol/en-us/text.htm?ncid=aolcmp00050000000003
