The Narco-Trafficking Elite Set to Run Venezuela (w/ Maureen Tkacik) | The Chris Hedges Report
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Marco Rubio’s personal ties to drug trafficking underscore a deep irony in the Trump administration’s attempts to use the drug war as a means of achieving their imperialist goals in Latin America.
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Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro is being held in a Brooklyn jail charged with smuggling cocaine into the United
States. But even the Drug Enforcement Agency estimates that less than 10% of
cocaine shipments to the United States come through Venezuela. The vast majority of cocaine shipments originate
in Colombia and move through the Pacific route and Mexico. Added to this, most
overdose deaths in the US come from fentanyl, and fentanyl does not
originate from Venezuela. There are no shortages of Latin American leaders and military chiefs who are heavily involved
in drug trafficking, but who are considered close allies of the United States. One of them, former Honduran
President Juan Orlando Hernandez, was pardoned by Donald Trump last month
after he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to distribute over
400 tons of cocaine in the US. A conviction that was justified with far
greater evidence than that which supports the charges levied against Maduro. Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
who is also Trump's national security adviser, comes out of the right-wing Cuban exile community in Miami, one that
has for decades engaged in drug trafficking and a dirty war against those it condemns like Maduro of being
communists. The investigative journalist Meen Tasik at the prospect in her
article narco terrorist elite looks at the close ties these anti-communist
Cubans including Rubio's inner circle have with the drug trade and their fullthroated support for Latin American
leaders in including the Ecuadorian president whose family fruit business is accused of trafficking 700 kilos of
cocaine who are engaged in drug trafficking. Joining me to discuss this long nexus between the drug trade in
Latin America and the Cuban anti-communist movement as well as the CIA and the DEA is Marine Tasik. It's a
great article and let's just go through it. Um uh I want to begin with how you
open it. So you're talking about Marco Rubio as a teenager working for his brother-in-law Orlando Cecilia. Explain.
Well, Marco Rubio has a sister who is
substantially older than him, maybe 10, eight or 10 years older than him, and got married uh fairly young. She met a a
man named Orlando. Um in high school, he had come over to Miami in the early '7s,
I want to say 1972. Um they fell in love. uh his family
moved to Las Vegas in 1979. Um and I'm not sure why he I think he he
has suggested that there was a strike. He thought that he would get better um
opportunities. He was working as a bartender um and a banquet waiter. So he
thought that there was um better opportunity in the restaurant business in Las Vegas. So they go to Las Vegas
and his sister doesn't want to go and she stays in Miami with Orlando and many
of his happiest childhood memories are, you know, times when they returned for Christmas to Miami. They times they went
home and Orlando made them a big um, you know, homestyle Cuban meal. He butchered
a whole pig. um you know he he he put together Marco Rubio's bicycle at Christmas when he was
8 years old. Um just this sort of wonderful figure in um Marco Rubio's
life when they finally decide to move back. Let me just interrupt. This is this is according to Marco Rubio's memoir.
Yes, this is according to Marco Rubio's memoir. There's been there's also been biographies. Um there's a biography of
him written by the Washington Post reporter Manuela Royia. Um so this is
sort of yes this is the the the version of his life. Um, and
Orlando Cecilia begins working for a pet store in 1983.
And he has um, you know, Marco, little Marco, literal little little Marco doing
some odd jobs, um, building cages um, and looking after his dogs, pet related
uh, jobs and and Marco Rubio makes enough money to go see every single uh,
Miami Dolphins home game. um in you know the 1985 season I think um maybe 1984 or
1985 season. I gotta get that right. But um but anyhow turns out uh 1987 rolls
along and um uh Cecilia gets locked up.
Um he's one of I think 11 um individuals indicted in this uh you know in
operation um what is it operation giraffe or
something like that some some uh reference to the pet store actually it was a front for a um cocaine and
marijuana trafficking organization that what do you know had been uh in operation uh since 1976
um was accused of you know, trafficking at least $79 million worth of drugs and
um you know, speaking in code words um about the drugs on on wires. You know,
it there there were a lot of but but basically the the idea was that the the pets was a front for a cocaine
trafficking um organization. Now, the leader the the the you know, the the
leader or the the leader son of this operation um has since starred on a very
popular show called Tiger King. And he claims now that he only sold Coke to uh
to to support his animal habit because he loves exotic animals so much. Um but
it's an awful lot of drugs that he trafficked. And it turns out also, and
this is what, you know, this is a known story. It's not like I broke the story of of uh, you know, Marco Rubio's
brother-in-law being a drug trafficker. This has been uh, wellknown since 2011.
The story was broken by Univision. Um, it's somehow, you know, not reached
conventional wisdom. I thought sort of thought it had, but a lot of people were have been shocked by this. But I thought
if I look a little bit into this guy's drug trafficking organization, I bet it might tell us something about the
millure um of, you know, Cuban drug trafficking in Miami in the 80s and kind
of how that um fits into the larger, you know, geopolitical uh scene here, right? And
what do you know? Um, what I didn't realize until I, you know,
started peeling, uh, away the layers is that cocaine trafficking, you know, drug
trafficking generally in the United States between, you know, the late60s
um, at least and the um, you know, the the late 80s was totally dominated by
um, Bay of Pigs veterans, veterans of this um, of this you know, supposed um
you know massive in American history, this sort of joke. But um it it
was a very uh it it it lives on. It was a very successful sort of network. Um
it, you know, all of those guys who who were veterans and I think that there
were 1500 veterans of um the Bayig invasion. Um you know, they they had a
level of prominence and and and a certain amount of um you know, respect in the community and um a massive
percentage of them got into drug trafficking um in in the late60s. Um and
this was from the very beginning. I found um a uh a story that had been
totally forgotten from the early '60s from I think 1946
where um a Cuban woman um you know comes to the CIA and says listen um I think
that you know my husband I got this anonymous letter um my husband has been at a training camp for Manuel Artime was
a doctor who led the Bay of Pigs. um uh
brigade uh 5206 um or the MR um is you know there were
various um words for the group that um that that launched the attack. Um Manuel
Artime was um the sort of charismatic leader of this group. He was also very uh controversial. Um and this woman says
you know listen my husband's disappeared. I haven't heard from him. He was recruited by a team to go um uh
to Nicaragua to to train for you know an invasion and o overthrow of Castro. Um
but I'm told that he was killed and indeed what they discovered is that he
had been um you know it was an inside job and he had been killed because he
was complaining about the fact that our team wasn't actually um training anyone to to do any invasions or you know
overthrow Castro. He was training them to smuggle contraband. And at the time it was
whiskey and clothing. It was it was it was uh not uh narcotics that they were
um that they were accused of smuggling. But very quickly by 1971 there's this
massive drug bust. Um 150 drug traffickers the 150 of the
biggest drug traffickers in America all get arrested on a single day. And what do you know? You know, maybe 70% of them
are BA pigs veterans. So, um, you know, one of the Bay of Pigs veterans in the
cocaine trafficking, you know, in the drug trafficking scene, uh, not arrested that day is a guy named Guo Tabrow. Um,
I'm probably mispronouncing that, but Tabra, um, had probably been a, um, a
criminal before the revolution. Um, I found a an old uh clipping of him
getting arrested for um a car theft as part of a car theft enterprise in Havana
in 1959. Um he ran a jewelry store um that was extremely popular and they sold
stolen jewelry and the jewelry store uh was renowned for giving police officers
and judges very very good prices on you know gold cuff links and Rolex watches.
Um, so this was a very popular jewelry store and um in at some point he signs
up to be a DEA CIA informant and um
because the the DEA has just been established, they realize that all of these CIA affiliated Bay of Pigs
veterans are um you know in the cocaine trafficking and heroin trafficking
business now. um we'd better figure out what they're up to. And um a gentleman
from the CIA comes in and says, "Ah, you know, I can handle that. I'll I'll set
up a a little um agency inside this new DEA and I will, you know, make sure that
that we know everything about what the Bay of Pigs veterans um are are doing in
the you know, drug trafficking um community." So Tabrell signs up as an
informant for this guy and at the same time he gets into trafficking marijuana
and um soon after cocaine um through the jewelry store through and he also has a
an unlicensed abortion clinic. Um he's got a few different um and and and then
later his son comes in and starts the pet store. And this is the enterprise and it's connected to just an
unbelievable array of um Bay of Pigs veterans run uh uh trafficking
organizations. later Bay of Pigs or people associated this Artim has this um
you know accounting whiz kid protetéé who he trains in these you know sort of
um he sets up this like uh money laundering sort of university
where he he trains this this kid in hotel rooms um and the kid doesn't know
you know the names of his his instructors or anything but um this guy goes on to become the medí cartel's uh
lead accountant. Um so there's it's this unbelievable cast of characters. Um they
you know a lot of them um they're very and and and you know they
very quickly after you know the the the CIA is always talking they're always writing memos about how they need to cut
these guys loose. Um but what they really became was um this sort of you
know secret police deep state uh of of Latin America. And um one of these
characters is a guy named Felix Rodriguez. He remained a CIA asset. I
think I mean he's he's still alive too, which is saying something um because a lot of these guys uh have been murdered.
And um Felix Rodriguez um uh is is a a
real kind of you know uh rich and and
you know prolific character in the um in in kind of the history of Latin America. And well let me let me just interrupt since
I met him during the war in El Salvador. He was uh
disguised as a Bolivian captain when they captured Cha Gavvara. uh was there for the execution of Chay and he used to
show us uh his wristwatch and and tell us that he'd taken it off the body of Chevara. Um so and and this was during
the whole Iran Contra which we'll get into. But I want to just stop because
and go back to Rubio. You write um that uh Rubio's approval ratings, you're
writing about how they're the highest in the Republican party, but you write even as he is the architect of what is
arguably Trump Trump's single most cynical policy, the scheme to appoint drug cartel bosses and their cronies at
top the governments of every Latin American country in the name of fighting drug cartels. And then you go on, in
September, Rubio held Ecuador and President Danielle Nooa, who leads a country whose homicide rate has risen
eightfold since 2016, as quote, "an incredibly willing partner, who has
quote done more just in the last couple years to take the fight to these narco
terrorists and these threats to the security and stability of Ecuador than
any previous administration. Just 5 months earlier, a damning investigation
revealed that Nooboa's family fruit business had trafficked 700 kilos of
cocaine to Europe in banana crates between 2020 and 2022. Rubio has
tireless tirelessly promoted the cause of convicted alas just pardon drug
trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez. In 2018, Rubio personally and publicly
commended Hernandez, then president of Honduras, for combating drug traffickers
and supporting Israel just 7 months before his brother was indicted for
trafficking 158 tons of cocaine in containers stamped thorandez.
Rubio has raved about the crime fighting efforts of Salvadoran and Argentine
junior strongman Naib Boulli and Javier Mele in spite of the former's documented
alliance with MS-13 and various Miami cocaine trafficking scandals that enveloped his libertarian political
party last fall as well as both leaders slavish devotion to the drug cartel's
single favorite mode of moneyaundering. Rubio has been one of the beltway's biggest backers of newly elected Chilean
President Jose Antonio K, the son of a literal Nazi war criminal who has spent
his entire political career lionizing, whitewashing, and promising a restoration of the brutal reign of Austo
Pinoche, who personally ordered the Chilean army to build a cocaine laboratory, consolidated the narcotics
trade inside his terrifying secret police, and then allegedly disappeared. ed key conspirators like his secret
police chief chemistio Berios. At least for a decade, Rubio has lauded,
strategized with, and vicious uh viciously condemned the multitude of criminal investigations into former
Colombian President Alvarado Aribe, who some describe as a kind of Kissingerian
figure to the former Florida senator. I just want to read that because uh Rubio
has uh for for years and years and years and of course years and years and years
calling for the overthrow of Chavez and Maduro made these alliances with a
variety of figures who uh the DEA and other agencies
uh have investigated and found to be huge drug traffickers.
Indeed. Um it's and and again you know this is not my area of expertise um come
into writing about Latin America in a very ciruitous fashion um but when you
examine the evidence it's shocking um it's not shocking to you covered around
Contra but um I grew up thinking initially that you know oh CIA
involvement in cocaine was some sort of conspiracy theory And then I, you know, did a little bit of research and
realized, oh no, the CIA did, you know, over they they did traffic cocaine. Um,
that happened. You know, they there are various excuses and reasons for that.
Um, but not really that like the CIA and its assets um veritably invented cocaine
trafficking. very you know really that you must be intelligence
um affiliated to kind of play in this game and the
rightwing of in Latin America um
you know they it's it's it's so unbelievably cynical it it it you know makes your
head spin. Um, but that, you know, the the the major drug traffickers are um
fascist right-wing jerks and just who you would think would be involved in
such a predatory um and destructive industry as um narcotics. So, you know,
there you go. Um, and all of what's really really um,
surprising to me and and I and I understand that um, I think to do uh,
business in Latin America, you in order to be a politician in Latin America, you have to sort of um, you have to deal
with this being one of your industries. um you know this this is these are the
power um brokers in in your region and you have to contend with them. You can't
sort of pretend that they um you know don't exist and um you can't put them
all away. Um they are more powerful than you will ever be. But um but it it it is
the cynicism and and it it's also something that like because of um uh the
recently published Fort Bragg cartel. um Seth Harp's book which we I interviewed
him but the book is amazing and uh uh yeah you can explain just a little bit
in that book which is not about Latin America um it's it's about Afghanistan you know he really digs into he he
expresses the similar sense of awe that he felt upon discovering that everything
that we had ever said that the that we had ever heard about the uh the Taliban trafficking heroin
was the opposite of reality. the Taliban that was their that was the source of
almost all of their popular support was that they had clamped down on that industry um because it was not popular
uh for the reasons that you know drug are destructive industries and uh you
know addictive narcotics are are um you know probably the most destructive um
and they're not popular um with uh with with anyone um But uh
you know the Taliban had had successfully sort of eradicated um that industry in Afghanistan. Then we come
in, we overthrow the Taliban and what do you know you know um you know that the
the poppies are back like never before. Hmed Carzi who was our puppet and his brother controlled 90% of the heroin
trade. And what Seth documents in his books is how Delta Force and these other
elite units uh came back essentially and started dealing they could ship the
drugs over easily started dealing drugs all up and down the eastern seabboard.
And he also documents this really systematic effort to by the DEA to
suppress the evidence that this is happening. So, you know, they're saying, "Hey, look, we've tested the the heroin
and absolutely no um heroin from Afghanistan is is coming into America.
It's all from Mexico or, you know, it's all from from here." Um and and
those kinds of efforts that are made um to to to conceal and and distort what is
um what is plainly happening um that everybody knows um is also really uh
quite astonishing. Um and and in the earlier days of the DEA, um the agency
had I think I'm I'm not sure, but it seems like the agency had um a lot more
folks working for it who understood that their relationship with the CIA was
going to be adversarial and that in order to like actually eradicate drugs, um they were going to come up against,
you know, some very powerful people within their own government. like that was sort of understood. I think by now
the the DEA is just fully, you know, in on it. Um, but it it I felt a similar
that, you know, when he's been given a lot of interviews describing um how
rigorously he fact checked this his his his thesis. um because the the the
propaganda was so you know the the the certainty was among all of the
chattering classes that it's sort of like you know Majoro is a a terrible ruthless um killer um you know so many
people will tell you this um you know with all the the the conviction um you
could muster and um but you don't really ever know where it comes from and in this case it was the the name. Um, we
accuse the Taliban of being drug traffickers. We were the drug traffickers. Um, and as soon as the
Taliban um, takes charge, you know, they get rid of the drug traffickers and that's why we hate them
and that's why they hate us. I want to talk about Iran. Well, we also occupied their country for 20 years.
Um, um, I want to talk about Iran,
uh, Contra, um, which I did cover. Um
because it was during the Reagan administration and uh Reagan was having
trouble getting funds approved. The Congress was more adversarial. Now it's
completely supine of course. Uh and so they set up this system of trafficking
drugs to fund the Contras. Uh Eden Pastor who was a renegade Contra leader
operating out of northern Costa Rica, I knew him as well. uh was
uh very involved in this as was Felix Rodriguez who went by the pseudonym Max
Gomez. Uh but talk talk about that because it's an an important moment
where you're in essence really setting up this infrastructure which continues.
Sure. And I and I would just like to say the infrastructure did predate Iran
Contra. Um, one of the reasons that these uh, gentlemen have been so
resilient in um, in our deep state is because they funded their own they self-funded their operations. So the
church committee happens, you know, the CIA endures all of these scandals uh, in the 1970s.
You want to do some, you know, covert ops, uh, who are you going to call? Um
but you know one thing that really it this was happening very early. So so the
um our team you know was was getting in all of these scandals. There was the woman whose um husband had been
murdered. There was also he he had this um uh wife who was um you know maybe a
bit of a prostitute. She'd been the mistress of Batista and just some other uh big you know dictators and she'd also
posed for smut. um lesbian smut. Um and uh so they send him off to Nicaragua. Um
and uh and and he sets up a base there and and that he kind of this is sort of the the start of this sort of uh you
know black ops uh regional you know uh dirty army um that you know does a lot
of coke trafficking but they also sort of form militias and there are it's
there's something called operation condor which actually turns out to be two things um but maybe they are the
same and um it's supposedly uh started with Pino and the Argentinian.
It was it was three countries that united to fight communism
led perhaps by Argentina and Chile, right? Operation Condor.
Yes. Um so yes, that is the the one that you know most people know um and
supposedly launched in 1975. But I was speaking to a scholar of the stuff. He was saying really it started with the um
the murder of Cheu Guavuara posing as a Bolivian um uh you know as as as a
Bolivian colonel or um but but um uh Felix Rodriguez, this um Bay of Pigs
veteran and this um sort of you know longtime CIA asset um you know and he
also you know he not only took Guavar's Rolex but apparently he's he he would brag that he had cut off his finger and
sent it to Fidel El Castro. Um, so I've been told that this in this is in 1967.
This is sort of the soft launch of Operation Condor and the beginning of this kind of like cooperation between um
all of these right-wing um uh forces in uh throughout Latin America. There's
another Operation Condor in Mexico that started in the early '7s that was a crackdown. It was a specifically DEA um
sort of uh DEA Mexican military project that cracked down on marijuana farmers.
Um and um this was uh you know I don't
know you know if there's if they were the same thing or but that it it it it had some of the same effects. Um it was
this real uh crackdown on um you know left-wing sort of uh gorilla movements.
um you know, labor organizers. It was they it was very easy for them to get sort of rounded up um in in this um in
this, you know, blitz to to um eradicate marijuana throughout Mexico. And um so,
you know, altogether we have see an enormous amount of cooperation. A lot of it is um orchestrated by the CIA. Pinish
at some point comes in and does some things that the CIA supposedly doesn't know about. the CIA was very um uh uh
you know there's one I I read one um interesting uh passage about how the CIA
wasn't really on board with Operation Condor. They weren't entirely behind it
and they were very very intent on making sure that it wasn't headquartered in Miami because that would have been the
obvious place to uh to headquarter such a mission. All of these guys uh funded
their operations by trafficking massive quantities of drugs. And this is
something that like there is on the left. I think there's this sort of conventional wisdom. I there's a um a
public intellectual Michael Massing. He's got a genius grant. He's written a few books on drug policy. And you know
his line on Gary Webb was always like it didn't really matter. Let me just interrupt for people that don't know. Harry Webb was the reporter
who really broke the story. He did break the story of the shipment of cocaine by
Contras and CIA affiliated operatives into American cities like Oakland. The
press, the establishment press worked overtime, including I was at the New York Times to discredit him. They
discredited him not by going down and checking on his reporting or trying to re-report what he did, but by getting
background briefings at the CIA and then he ultimately committed suicide.
Yes. And um you know with the benefit of of hindsight, it is absolutely
mindblowing to read any of the you know the reports from
Iran Contra or Um, you know, a lot of the the
sources that I used in this story just came from some of the collections of declassified JFK um files, right?
Because that, you know, these guys also um were deeply involved in that assassination and others. Um, and uh you
can look up, you know, anybody who was a a Cuban exile in Miami in the '60s. Um,
you know, you you you can probably see if they've had any prominence. Um, you can probably find some information uh
about them in in these files, but um but anyway, you look at the the evidence that was just known by the end of the
the 80s about the C the CIA involve, you know, the CIA involvement and the contra
involvement in drug trafficking. And this wasn't new news. One thing that
Gary Webb really um a connection that he really nailed down was the connection between the drug dealers that really
first popularized crack in uh the Rick I think Rick Ross was the name of of uh
one of them in in uh 1985. Um because when crack hit, I mean it it it hit it
it changed everything. Um when I started writing for newspapers
um in the mid late 90s, you know, crack was still people under the influ the
source of a lot of violence in in cities. Um it you know it was a drug that um really had um just an
you know a a a a devastating effect um on already
devastated uh American cities. and he nailed down the connection between the
this CIA, this just massive supply of cheap drug and this, you know,
desperation to find new customers for this stuff. And to do that, they had to
go to people who had way less money than your average uh cocaine consumer. And um and and that's
what what they did with it. Um this supply matters. you know, there's this idea that the only way you can really
fight drug, you know, uh, addiction, um, and the scourge of illegal drugs is, uh,
is by working on the demand. And, and there's an element of truth to that. It makes a lot of sense. But the fact is
our government's run by drug traffickers, our our our institutions of power. Um, and that's one of the
reasons, you know, look at what the Sacklers did. that was a supply side uh
you know addiction epidemic and um and we allow these things um or you know for
whatever reason um but it it the the the evidence was
absolutely overwhelming that the the CIA that the highest levels of the American
intelligence apparatus were deeply involved and even that you know there's a documentary that came out recently um
that uh that that has a lot of uh quite a few um DEA um and and other um
intelligence uh officers from the 1980s saying that Felix Rodriguez himself,
remember um this this uh character who assassinated Che Guavara. Um they
he didn't actually assassinate Gavvara. He was a Bolivian soldier shot but he was there
just as a small point. He just he just cut his finger off after he was dead. Um, well, you know, he sent that he he they
they they he assassinated in the sense that they ordered they they determined that there
was no way Chay was going to he was captured alive, of course, was going to live, but he didn't actually pull the
trigger. They got some poor Bolivian soldier to do it. Um, that's just a small footnote. Read John
Lee Anderson's great book on CH. So um so but Felix Rodriguez is supposedly now
according to these folks the um the guy who actually ordered the um the murder
the torture and um subsequent murder of a DEA agent who had sort of um
you know run a foul of the had become sort of a whistleblower. Um
this is Kiki Kiki Kamarena. Yeah. Um and um and that is something
that you know the cartels had long sort of been um uh been uh blamed for. um
Rodriguez. Now, somebody tried to, I think, sue the Netflix documentarian for defamation, but Felix Rodriguez, who's
still alive and still kicking and indeed recently hosted uh none other than uh
Alvaro Uribe, former um Colombian prime minister and good good friend of Marco
Rubio, um at a Bay of Pigs reunion event.
Um, so, uh, so Felix Rodriguez is still, um, a figure of some prominence in
Miami. Um, these got a lot of blood on his hands, um, allegedly and, you know,
and and you know, not allegedly, um, and and by his own, um, uh, uh, you know, by
his own testimony. So um so but these are this is the type of of of guy who
you know is sort of in the mu of um of this this crew that ran this drug
trafficking organization that um Marco Rubio's brother-in-law had sort of ascended um relatively you know the to
the number two spot in essentially and um another thing is that is interesting
about Rubio's um own biography is that he has said that his father trained at
18 um in I forget where, but he trained in some training camp in Central America
to um this is this would have been back in the ' 40s um
for a mission that never, you know, came off to overthrow and possibly assassinate uh Trujillo, the um the
dictator uh of uh the longtime I think 30-year dictator of the Dominican
Republic. um who was sort of a you know CIA asset and then sort of a CIA thorn in its side
um for for for many years. Um so I don't know that's the the only um sign I've
ever gotten that Rubio's own family was involved in any of this stuff. um his family um came to Miami uh before the
revolution uh escaping Batista um and then subsequently you know would move
back and it kind of scrape some money together because I don't think that anybody in his family was particularly
um you know privileged uh and Rubio would would change all that and one
thing that's really also fascinating is that the prosecutor that prosecuted his
brother-in-law and the entire drug trafficking King organization. Um then
uh you know the following year um uh prosecuted Manuel Noriega
um in a really fascinating trial that is
another one of these um you know unbelievable windows into the CIA involvement in drug trafficking. Um
because you know Nora's defense attorney and a lot of evidence was suppressed in this case. Um but you know his defense
attorney was constantly uh you know cross-examining um various government witnesses saying like, "Okay, you know,
um but, you know, didn't didn't wasn't the CIA paying Noriega uh this whole time as
well?" Um and you know, Noriega claimed that they he'd made $10 million um uh
cooperating with the CIA over the years. Um they never had any problem with him uh you know, facilitating money money
laundering. Um, and that's the other thing, you know. So, so there's there's a lot of um it rich history that
prosecutor then um his wife uh gives Rubio his first job literally like the
the year after um the uh indictment or that you know I think that this might
still be going on like during the trial or directly after the trial. um the prosecutor's wife, um uh Ilana Rose, uh
a god, what is his last name? I can never um uh this guy, she's a a a a
giant in the Congress in u Miami, a lot a good friend of W. Asherman Schultz. Um
and her, uh father was another Cuban exile, deeply involved in in um uh Voice
of America, I believe. But um this congresswoman gave um uh Marco Rubio an
internship uh when he got out of high school and you know they were very early on it was decided that he was um you
know sort of a prednatural political talent. Um so you know the this ties to
drug traffickers um never stopped uh Marco Rubio but he is very sensitive
about the story. um really went on a little jihad against uh Univision when they broke the story. Um and it it it's
it's just not really necessarily part of the conventional wisdom of who he is. And I think it's important not because
I, you know, would accuse Marco Rubio of being involved in in drug trafficking himself, but understanding
the landscape of of, you know, social capital, not to sound uh annoying, in in
Miami in the 1980s to understand the how intertwined
um, you know, right-wing politics and drug trafficking are in that community and how sort of this cognitive
dissonance is just something that everybody lives and breathes down there. Um, you know, drugs uh drugs are only
illegal uh you know, drug crimes are only illegal when the wrong people are
committing them. And and that is something that is um understood in in I
think throughout Latin America that we don't uh seem to uh comprehend.
Yeah. You you succinctly write, "Drug traffickers who are allied with the CIA's ideological objectives were
protected, assisted, and/or recruited as assets, while drug traffickers who
bribed or cooperated with leftists crossed the agency or outlived their usefulness were set up for prosecution
or discarded." Um, that's precisely correct. Uh and I I want to also mention
and you know you may have heard this but the common understanding is that uh
Maduro like Shine Bomb in Mexico was fairly clean.
Oh my god. Yes. Um I have read um the indictment
against Maduro. There are episodes. It's it's a it's a strange
document. Um nothing like uh the the indictment of Juan Orlando Hernandez. Um
which is very um you know it's a classic indictment. The evidence is there. You
see it. I don't know how you know the grand jury that uh you know
I I I could see a Florida grand jury um uh going for this, but I it's it it it
it's it's not very strong. And one of the things one of the pieces of evidence, one of the passages that was
most bizarre to me was um this they they they have a section about to this 2013
drug bust. The biggest drug bust in the you know drug seizure in the history of commercial air travel was um 2013
Charles de Gaulle airport. Probably one of the biggest you know most busiest uh uh airports in in the world. Um
1.3 tons of cocaine are found in 33 suitcases uh in this um Air France uh
flight from Karacas and uh you know immediately Maduro who is very new
Chavez has just died he's just taken over he has you know 25 uh you know
airport security and sort of military um um officers who are involved in uh the
airport operation um arrested um and
then this strange British guy uh gets
arrested he for having claimed on a wire tap that he was the actual owner of the
1.3 tons of cocaine. Um he's, you know,
a very strange figure. um you know, supposedly a big crime boss in uh the
UK, but uh but he's never really been written about before that except for some, you know, very strange like
harassment charges. Um doesn't seem particularly bright. And his lawyer claims and then he later claims no, he
was just saying that he the coke was his on the wire tap to get them off his back. I don't understand. I'm I've been
meaning to kind of look into this a little bit more closely, but it seems like it was some sort of setup. This
whole thing, it's it's a very strange way to try and traffic cocaine um just
putting it into suitcases in uh in an a commercial airliner that is destined for
the busiest passenger airport in the world. I I something about that is a
little off to me. The whole thing is a little off. And there was never any suggestion that Maduro had any
involvement or knowledge in that. And at the time, you know, none of the investigations revealed anything of the
sort. Um, but it's used in this, it's deployed in this indictment as like this, you know, this sign of like what
a, you know, sort of, you know, unbelievably prodigious uh,
drug trafficker Maduro is. Um, so a lot of it is stuff like that. There's something about Malaysian heating oil.
It's it's it's that the fact is that commerce itself in Venezuela is is is mostly criminalized um because of the um
severity of the sanctions that we've imposed uh over the years on that country. Um so you know there
you know I think that we almost feel like you know is as you see with the um you know the blowing up the oil tankers
um there's this sense of entitlement that we have to sort of get our way with Venezuela because we've literally criminalized most of the economic
activity that you know that that that that country is involved in. Um, another
thing about Maduro is that he has two uh two nephews who were apparently they
were um arrested for narot trafficking um a few years back. Um and they sort of
claimed that they were framed. It was it's they they don't seem part they're another doesn't seem particularly
intelligent. uh they were trying to do a drug deal so that they could get some money to win um I think the 2018
election and um but they this massive quantity of cocaine apparently was found
in their room um at La Romana um I think that's what it's called. It's a resort
in the Dominican Republic. It's owned by the the Fanule family. And uh one um
Menendez, one Bob Mendez in 2013 claimed that uh he was uh that that that the
Fanule family was trying to set him up by sending to his villa at La
Romana. Um I I just just triggered something in my mind like hm I wonder I
wonder if there's something to that. And I wonder if that that that you know that cocaine they found um really belonged to
the Narco nephews um you know what's really going on there. I I I want to
delve a lot more deeply into this. But the the indictment against him I don't I I don't understand how they think now
Miami if they were trying him in Miami um you know he might be a dead man but
um in New York uh are they going to get a conviction in New York on this? I don't you know it it seems absurd.
I I want to go back to Rubio. You write when Marco Rubio maligns the efficacy of
interdiction and other traditional law enforcement approaches to mitigating narot trafficking in favor of military
operations as he did in a recent speech on Trump's speedboat bombings. He is contradicting every empirical evaluation
of drug war efficacy that exists. Yes. But he is also pining for a kind of cold
war era blanket license to commit dirty war in the name of some bigger goal. I
was telling you before we went uh into the interview that I was in Argentina at the end of the dirty war. Uh, of course,
uh, Carter had, uh, imposed uh, s some some sanctions, uh, which Reagan lifted
a fullthroated support under the Reagan administration for this hoto, which disappeared 30,000 of its own citizens.
But it was common knowledge that in police stations, there were large freezer
industrial size freezers full of cocaine. Um, and when we talk about that
dirty war, that nexus, which I think you capture in this story between drug trafficking and the the desaidos, the uh
killing uh of labor union leaders, student leaders, it's they're intimately
intertwined. There's um a book called Powder Burns, I
believe, by a former DEA agent um you know, recalling his uh odyssey of being
um raped by CIA guys in his um efforts to combat drug trafficking in Latin
America in the 80s and early 90s. And um you know at one point he recalls a a few
conversations where you know somebody's like well you know the war on drugs is important but the war on communism is
even more important. And he's like you know like where are you from? Uh cuz I'm
from I I forget, you know, I'm from like a a a city that's been, you know,
devastated by uh de-industrialization and now is being, you know,
uh brought to its knees by addiction. Uh I don't really, you know, I'm not a fan
of communism, but I don't really think that it's a it's a threat to uh to my
society. Um and he just describes how he was not um able to understand that um
that rationalization. Um but now we're using the drug war as
its own, you know, as the same sort of like I said like blanket license. Um
and uh and and you know what it really is I guess is the same as the cold war
is this c country has um you know uh decided to threaten this is another
thing I I there's so much talk about the oil curse and it is true. Um I grew up a
lot of my uh youth I spent in uh China. Um my dad was in the state department.
Um, and I always wonder, you know, gosh, like, you know, the Taiwanese, like they had a lobby just like the Miami lobby,
just the Cuba lobby and the the Zionist lobby. Um, they had the China lobby and they traffic drugs and they were bad
guys and they they they were right-wing. Um, but at some point, uh, you know,
they they they maybe they switched drugs for for bicycles and then semiconductors
and they started to build factories in China even though they were technically at war. And um you know those two places
are very interdependent right now. We there's a lot of parallels that we like to make. But why were they allowed why
was China allowed to build an industrial economy? And why did we allow our agents
in uh Taiwan to facilitate this? Um you know would they have been even able to
do it if they hadn't sort of all done it in Taiwan first and they had the language yada yada. Um it's just such a
different story and it seems like um you know part of the maybe part of the
benefit of that China had other than you know it's 1 billion people was that they didn't have any resources to exploit it
had to be their their human um capital uh as as they like to say in the business. But you know, we do not allow
countries with resources to nationalize those resources in hopes of uh trying
to, you know, nationalize the the the surpluses that they might bring and then diversify their economy into something
more sustainable. the the resource curse is something that
uh you know countless uh nations obviously Libya you know Iran, Venezuela, you know Russia have all
tried to sort of reverse and and figure out how to deal with and whenever they do we um they feel our wrath. Um, and so
it really pisses me off when when um, uh, you know, pundits talk about the
resource curse as though it's not, you know, really the sort of, you know, like
uh, gratuitous sanctions for having the tmerity to threaten hijgemony
um, curse. Well, it's that's how Pino was overthrown in 73. It was at the service
of Anaconda Copper. It's how our Benz was overthrown in 54 in Guatemala on
behalf of United Fruit. Uh as soon as you go and that's why that's what's happening with Venezuela. Uh and uh the
Trump unlike previous presidents was quite open about it. Uh uh it's about
the oil, the largest reserves of oil in the world. Uh and the article is smart
and good and people should read it. The narot terrorist elite. in the American Prospect where Mo works as the
investigative uh editor. It's really a fine piece of journalism and important uh for understanding what's driving this
policy and who Marco Rubio is. Thank you, Mo. And thanks so much to
It's an honor. Thanks to Victor and Diego and Max,
Sophia and Thomas who produce the show. You can find me at chrisedges.substack.com.
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