-------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <FONT COLOR="#000099">GET A NEXTCARD VISA, in 30 seconds! Get rates of 2.9% Intro or 9.9% Ongoing APR* and no annual fee! Apply NOW! </FONT><A HREF="http://click.egroups.com/1/7872/1/_/_/_/967543618/"><B>Click Here!</B></A> ---------------------------------------------------------------------_-> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are 5 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest: 1. [] What Will Congress Do About New CIA-Drug Revelations? From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2. [] OPED: How Do We Mend The Inequities Of Justice? From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 3. [] TX: Gramm Examines U.S. Customs Operations From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 4. [] CA: Campbell's Courageous Stance From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 5. [] A Marijuana Arrest Every 46 Seconds: Washington's War On Pot From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 13:24:35 +0000 From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [] What Will Congress Do About New CIA-Drug Revelations? Pubdate: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/ Author: Peter Dale Scott Note: The author was an expert witness before the Citizens' Commission on U.S. Drug Policy and will participate in a panel discussion on U.S. drug policy at The Independent Institute in Oakland on Wednesday. To attend, please call the Institute at (510) 632-1366. WHAT WILL CONGRESS DO ABOUT NEW CIA-DRUG REVELATIONS? CONGRESS WILL shortly have to decide whether to bury or deal with explosive new revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency protected major drug traffickers who aided the Contra army in Central America. These new findings go far beyond the original stories which gave rise to them by Gary Webb in 1996. Webb had alleged that cocaine from two Contra-supporting traffickers, Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon, had helped fuel the national crack epidemic. The resulting political firestorm brought promises of a full investigation. After an unprecedented review of internal CIA and Justice Department files, three massive reports, totaling almost 1,000 pages, were released by the inspectors general of the CIA (Fred Hitz) and Justice Department (Michael Bromwich). The new revelations confirmed many of Webb's claims. Meneses and Blandon were admitted to have been (despite previous press denials) "significant traffickers who also supported, to some extent, the Contras." For years they escaped prosecution, until after support for the Contras ended. Meanwhile the reports opened the doors on worse scandals. According to the reports, the CIA made conscious use of major traffickers as agents, contractors and assets. It maintained good relations with Contras it knew to be working with drug traffickers. It protected traffickers which the Justice Department was trying to prosecute, sometimes by suppressing or denying the existence of information. This protection extended to major Drug Enforcement Agency targets considered to be among the top smugglers of cocaine into this country. Perhaps the most egregious example is that of the Honduran trafficker Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros. Matta had been identified by the DEA in 1985 as the most important member of a consortium moving a major share (perhaps a third, perhaps more than half) of all the cocaine from Colombia to the United States. The DEA also knew that Matta was behind the kidnapping of a DEA agent in Mexico, Enrique Camarena, who was subsequently tortured and murdered. A public enemy? Yes. But Matta was also an ally of the CIA. Matta's airline, SETCO, was recorded in U.S. files as a drug-smuggling airline. It was also the chief airline with which the CIA contracted to fly supplies to the Contra camps in Honduras. When the local DEA office began to move against Matta in 1983, it was shut down. Though Matta's whereabouts were well-known, the United States did not arrest and extradite him until 1988, a few days after Congress ended support for the Contras. At Matta's first drug trial, a U.S. attorney described him as "on the level of the top 10 Colombian drug traffickers." We now learn from the CIA Hitz reports that, in the same year, 1989, CIA officials reported falsely, in response to an inquiry from Justice, that in CIA files "There are no records of a SETCO Air." CIA officers appear also to have lied to Hitz's investigators about who said this. There appears to have been a broad pattern of withholding information from the Justice Department. For example, when Justice began to investigate the drug activities of two Contra supporters, CIA headquarters turned down proposals that CIA should interview the two men. The reason in one case was that such documentation would be "exactly the sort of thing the U.S. Attorney's Office will be investigating." The House Committee on Intelligence received this information, and chose to deny it. According to a recent committee report, "There is no evidence . . . that CIA officers . . . ever concealed narcotics trafficking information or allegations involving the Contras." Just as dishonestly, the committee found that "there is unambiguous reporting in the CIA materials reviewed showing that the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) leadership in Nicaragua would not accept drug monies and would remove from its ranks those who had involvement in drug trafficking." In fact, the Hitz reports contained a detailed account of drug-trafficking by members of the main FDN faction, the September 15th League (ADREN). Those named included the FDN chief of logistics. According to the Hitz Reports, "CIA also received allegations or information concerning drug trafficking by nine Contra-related individuals in the (FDN) Northern Front." This included credible information, corroborated elsewhere, against leaders such as Juan Ramon Rivas, the Northern Army chief of staff. Yet CIA support for the FDN continued, through a period when aid to any drug-tainted Contra organization was forbidden by statute. In short, the House Committee Report is a dishonest coverup of CIA wrong-doings, what one might expect from a committee chaired and staffed by former CIA officers. As committee member Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-S.F., said in a hearing two years ago, "This is an issue of great concern in our community." Will she, and other like-minded representatives, repudiate this flimsy attempt to silence that concern with falsehoods?" The answer may depend on the voters: Will they object as strongly as before? __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: greg ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 2 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 13:25:49 +0000 From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [] OPED: How Do We Mend The Inequities Of Justice? Pubdate: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 Source: Chicago Tribune (IL) Copyright: 2000 Chicago Tribune Company Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Address: 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611-4066 Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/ Author: Salim Muwakkil, [EMAIL PROTECTED] HOW DO WE MEND THE INEQUITIES OF JUSTICE? The criminal justice system is the location of our most grievous social failures. How did it come to be that this democratic superpower imprisons more of its own people than any other nation? What's more, the racial characteristics of these prisoners echo patterns of bias that have changed little since the days of our nation's white supremacist beginnings. We are limping into the new century with the social wounds of racial inequity. The roots of this inequity are so extensive and so deeply embedded in our culture, it seems increasingly clear that only a massive Marshall Plan, justified as a structured system of reparations, can adequately address this country's enduring racial distress. Recent studies that showcase vast racial inequities in the criminal justice system ("And Justice For Some," published by the Youth Law Center and "Justice on Trial" by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights) help reveal the dimensions of that distress. The latest in an increasing parade of evidence detailing our racial divisions is a report by Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected international human-rights groups, which detailed wide disparities in the way black and white drug offenders are treated within the system that many have come to call the prison-industrial complex. Specifically, the study--"Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs"--found that there are five-times more white drug users than black ones, but African-Americans are imprisoned at many times the rate of whites. The greatest disparity is in Illinois, where blacks are imprisoned for selling or using drugs at 57 times the rate of whites, and where African-Americans comprise 90 percent of the inmates imprisoned for drugs. "Black and white drug offenders get radically different treatment in the American justice system," said the group's executive director Ken Roth at a news conference outlining the study's conclusions. "This is not only profoundly unfair to blacks, it also corrodes the American ideal of equal justice for all." It's my impression that reaction to these studies tends to split along racial lines. Many black Americans tend to applaud such reports for documenting their charges about a biased and brutal criminal justice system. Most white Americans seem reluctant to attribute racial disparities in imprisonment to racism. If African-Americans are disproportionately imprisoned, it's because they commit a disproportionate amount of crime. Racism is the cause, say many African-Americans. Balderdash, many whites retort; bad behavior is the cause. And here we remain. Stuck in the great racial impasse. Truth is, both views are right. According to Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, African-Americans are victims of violent crimes (murder, robbery and aggravated assault) at rates higher than other races. The victimizers also are almost exclusively African-American. In fact, homicide was the leading cause of death for young black men until HIV/AIDS took over first place three years ago. Clearly, African-Americans have disturbingly high rates of crime or bad behavior. But that behavior is, in fact, a product of slavery's legacy. The race-linked disadvantages that predispose African-Americans to social pathology (poverty, poor education, self-hatred, resource-starved communities, cultural isolation) were set in motion by racial slavery and perpetuated by a culture of racial exclusion. This legacy is the target of the call for reparations. Centuries of enforced deprivation have had a residual effect that is clearly evident in the negative statistics that outline African-Americans' life chances. The influence of the criminal justice system is just one aspect of this history, but its impact is powerful. Among the effects of these high rates of imprisonment are devastated families, widespread disenfranchisement of black men (13 percent already have lost voting rights, with 30 to 40 percent of the next generation projected to lose those rights due to felony convictions). The list goes on. Redress of these widespread racial disparities is possible only through large-scale capital and cultural investments in black America, but white Americans seem to lack the will for this ambitious enterprise. A short look back into the past could provide some needed perspective. In 1947, the U.S. instituted the Marshall Plan, which provided grants, low-interest loans and outright currency transfers totaling $13.3 billion (about $92 billion in today's dollars) to help reassemble the remnants of 16 European countries--including former enemy Germany--shattered by World War II. If the U.S. thought that kind of massive aid was essential to Europeans after five years of war, why isn't something similar necessary for those victimized by 245 years of chattel slavery and a century of apartheid? __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: greg ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 3 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:56:15 +0000 From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [] TX: Gramm Examines U.S. Customs Operations Pubdate: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 Source: Corpus Christi Caller-Times (TX) Copyright: 2000 Corpus Christi Caller-Times Address: P.O. Box 9136, Corpus Christi, TX 78469-9136 Feedback: http://www.caller.com/commcentral/email_ed.htm Website: http://www.caller.com/ Author: Deborah Martinez Gramm Examines U.S. Customs Operations U.S. Senator Introduced To P-3 AEW Radar Aircraft, Which Are Used To Hunt Drug Smugglers U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm got a first-hand look Thursday at how local U.S Customs agents are waging a decades-old drug battle as he flew over the Gulf of Mexico aboard a Customs turboprop. "The war on drugs is an uphill battle," Gramm said. "We're still trying to find ways to win it. We're doubling the fleet. We passed legislation to increase funding for more technology in Customs service and for 1,700 new Customs agents." Gramm spent about an hour, 10,000 feet into the air, aboard a P-3 AEW radar aircraft that patrolled its way as far south as the waters off Brownsville's coast. Used as one of the U.S. Customs' primary drug hunters, the P-3 AEW is the fifth airplane to join the U.S. Customs locally and the first of four new aircraft designed to enhance the fleet. U.S. Customs in Corpus Christi use six P-3 AEW aircraft, nicknamed the "Dome." The radar plane has a large radar dish on its roof and is able to detect aircraft in a 250-mile radius. Radar operators aboard the plane monitor surrounding aircraft, looking for red flags such as low-flying planes who may be trying to avoid land radar, or planes that may be going too slow. Once a suspicious plane is tracked, the Dome crew will alert a P3-A interceptor aircraft to take pictures of the plane's identification tail wing number and match it up to records in a database, said Customs radar operator Jerry Lunceford. "If a plane is too low, then it's trying to not be noticed," Lunceford said. "If it's numbers don't match up with our database, then they probably tampered with the I.D. numbers. It's enough to make us suspicious and follow them." The 30-year-old plus aircraft are the Navy's gift to Customs, which then revamps them with radar equipment and new engines. Typical missions consist of six to eight-hour flights patrolling the U.S./Mexico border or up to 10-day detachment operations as far south as Aruba, Peru and Ecuador. "We need to let people know that we haven't forgotten the war on drugs," Gramm said. "There may be some people who are discouraged. We're working to keep drug thugs from taking over, like in countries such as Colombia." __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 4 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:53:04 +0000 From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [] CA: Campbell's Courageous Stance Pubdate: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/ CAMPBELL'S COURAGEOUS STANCE Last week, we noted that both major presidential candidates have avoided the subject of America's military intervention in Colombia. Since then, President Clinton signed a human rights waiver that frees $1.3 billion in aid to Colombia, even though President Andres Pastrano has barely met the conditions imposed by Congress. American soldiers and civilians are arriving in Colombia, yet the war is not even a blip on the political radar. All the more reason to applaud the courage of Rep. Tom Campbell, a Republican who wants to make it an issue in his campaign for U.S. Senate. Unlike other politicians, Campbell openly acknowledges that the drug war -- at home and abroad -- has been a dismal failure. Over the past two decades, the government has spent more than a quarter of a trillion dollars. Yet the drug problem has only worsened. While other political leaders argue that the aid will be used exclusively for the eradication of the growth and trafficking of coca leaves, Campbell tells a starker truth: "The money is to buy 63 U.S. helicopters . . . to help the military of Colombia, whose human rights record has been criticized for years, to fight an insurgency it has been battling for over 30 years." To those who say the United States will not be aiding a counterinsurgency military campaign, Campbell responds, "We are entering a Third World jungle. We're creating strategic hamlets, into which those living in the countryside will be concentrated. We're sending U.S. military advisers, and the legislation puts no cap on the number of those advisers." To Campbell, who fought against the aid -- unlike Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer -- the choice is clear: We can spend $1.3 billion to enter "one side of a civil war" in Colombia or "we can use that money to help countless addicts who seek to get clean." Of his Washington colleagues, Campbell says, "Their brains work fine," he says, "it's their backbones that are missing." How right he is. __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 5 Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 12:06:52 +0000 From: Peter Webster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [] A Marijuana Arrest Every 46 Seconds: Washington's War On Pot Pubdate: Thu, 17 Aug 2000 Source: Seattle Weekly (WA) Copyright: 2000 Seattle Weekly Contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.seattleweekly.com/ Forum: http://www.seattleweekly.com/forum/index.html Author: Manny Frishberg WASHINGTON'S WAR ON POT Marijuana Arrests Are On The Rise. POLICE MAKE a marijuana arrest every 46 seconds in this country, 24/7, every day including February 29, according to a recently released study by the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. And that doesn't mean being given a ticket; according to NORML, arrest means being handcuffed and locked up. Of those busts, more than 88 percent are for simple possession of small quantities of grass, not for growing, transporting, or holding larger amounts for sale. Washington [state] still has relatively liberal laws on the books concerning marijuana possession compared to a number of other places where possessing any amount of the herb can net a person several years hard time. This state still makes a distinction between holding a small amount of marijuana, up to 40 grams, for personal use (a misdemeanor) versus growing or holding larger amounts, presumably for sale. For simple possession, state law calls for a mandatory one day in jail and a fine, typically $250. Defense attorneys who handle a lot of these cases said the overnight incarceration can be waived by a judge in exchange for community service, if the jails are overcrowded. Marijuana felonies (sale, possession of larger quantities, and growing--except in the case of medical marijuana) are treated the same as most other narcotics, with a five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to $10,000 possible. In terms of enforcement, Washington state came out in about the middle of the pack in the study, compiled from published 1995-97 crime statistics by public policy analyst Jon Gettman. Although this state has not been as eager to nab its stoner citizens as some, Washington has been showing an increasing interest in pot, with total arrests for marijuana climbing by more than a third, from about 9,000 statewide in the middle of the last decade to over 12,000 three years later. While statistics for this year are not yet available, defense attorneys who represent drug defendants say the numbers appear to be running apace and in some areas are increasing. "An increasing number of our clients who run a red light and admit to having smoked marijuana in the last several hours are finding themselves charged with" driving under the influence (DUI) of drugs, says Brad Maryhew, a local defense attorney. Maryhew sees many such cases as supervisor of the misdemeanor unit at the Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons, one of the six legal organizations in King County that provides attorneys for poor defendants. The reason for the increase in marijuana DUIs, he claims, is a recent state Supreme Court ruling that specially trained drug-recognition experts can provide "probable cause" to demand a blood test for drug use. Initiative 692, which legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana for medical use, has not affected arrests, according to Maryhew. "On the misdemeanor side, where you're talking about possession of a small amount of marijuana, we have not seen a huge change since the medical marijuana initiative was passed," notes Maryhew. "If a defendant can prove that they suffer from one of the particular illnesses and a physician has recommended the marijuana to alleviate one of those symptoms, then it's my sense that the prosecutors are not pursuing those cases, but those are rare circumstances." Dan Donohoe, a spokesman for the King County Prosecutor's Office, confirms that prosecutors have been told not to charge people with possession in clear-cut medical marijuana cases. Furthermore, he claims King County has not prosecuted any cases against people growing marijuana for medical purposes since the initiative took effect. In spite of that, King County has the highest number and percentage rate of marijuana arrests in the Puget Sound area. Between 4,300 and 4,500 arrests have been made in King County in each of the last two years. The vast majority of the arrests are for simple possession: 4,156 in '98 and 4,295 in '99. Numbers of busts run as much as 30 percent higher than the state average, and range between 50 and 100 percent more than rates in either Pierce, Snohomish, or Kitsap counties. Nearly 3 in 1,000 people were arrested in King County for marijuana violations last year, with the highest rate by far in Bellevue, where there were 887 arrests (all but 30 for simple possession)--a number approaching one percent of the city's 106,000 residents. In fact, Bellevue has been responsible for about 20 percent of all the reported marijuana arrests in the county, despite having only about seven percent of the county's total population. Considering how much lower the rates were in nearby communities such as Newcastle, Redmond, and Issaquah, one might wonder if Bellevue is uniquely hostile territory for tokers. Government agencies and antidrug groups consistently insist that no one gets arrested for marijuana offenses any more. Unfortunately, the truth is just the opposite. Gettman's study concluded: "More people in the United States are arrested for marijuana offenses today than ever before. Marijuana arrests have doubled in the United States over the last decade despite considerable public opposition. It is time to focus more closely on the costs and benefits of these historic arrest levels and whether or not they meet the standards for criminal sanctions in a just and free society." Local policymakers seem unmoved by NORML's arguments. Dick Van Wagenen of Governor Gary Locke's staff says, "It's no secret" that possessing marijuana is a crime. He continues, "People who are doing it presumably know they are committing a crime, and they make a decision to do that on, I suppose, some sort of cost/benefit calculation of their own. I don't think Governor Locke supports legalizing marijuana. I've never had any indication that he did." This weekend, people attending Hempfest, promoted as "the nation's largest and most political cannabis event," will be protesting the record number of arrests in Washington. As Gettman noted in the NORML study, the more time and money gets spent on enforcing the marijuana laws, "the more important it has become for the government to justify these arrests and the accompanying economic and social costs." __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________
