The Colonel's Corner LIVE RESEARCH INTO OPERATION GLADIO

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0:00 of Operation Gladio Research. And I wanted to thank Renee for providing me all of these links that we're going to go through tonight and see what she put together. It starts with, let me get my screen started. It starts with this, CIA cocaine.

0:37 Agency assets cross the line. This does not have a date on it. One after another, former CIA allies in Latin America seem headed for the dock on cocaine trafficking charges. The latest CIA asset in drug trouble is Venezuelan General Ramon Guillen de Villalobos.

1:10 who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami earlier this year. Gillian, who remains at large, presumably in Venezuela, was charged with smuggling 22 tons of cocaine into the United States between 1987, which is during the Iran-Contra time, and 1991. Gillian allegedly ran this massive smuggling operation in coordination with the Cali

1:40 cocaine cartel, while he simultaneously was running the Venezuelan Guard Unit, which coordinated with the CIA on quote-unquote drug interdiction. They weren't interdicting any drugs. They were trafficking in drugs. He was the CIA's most trusted asset in Venezuela. This is one of the guard guys that was in the Cartel of the Sons, Cartel de los Soles.

2:11 Even worse, in December of 89, the CIA actually collaborated with Gillen on one dubious plan to ship a ton of cocaine, which I posted about purportedly for intelligence purposes. It was part of the supposed plan to catch drug traffickers. When the DEA country attache for Venezuela objected to this scheme,

2:39 The CIA went over the attache's head and appealed to Washington. DEA headquarters also said no, but that was an answer the CIA would not accept. A federal statute forbids the government's importation of illicit drugs for controlled crime-fighting purposes without DEA approval, but CIA officers authorized the cocaine shipment to go ahead. The agency's decision apparently fit

3:09 the spies agency's certainty that in areas of national security, it always knows best. In an internal government report on the case, DEA Special Agent James Kibble wrote that vital information was not forwarded to the DEA or was withheld for unknown reasons. In the Gillen case, however, the CIA's heavy-handed actions

3:35 exploded three years later as a public relations embarrassment when 60 Minutes broadcast a report on the illegal shipment of the one ton, not the 20-some tons, but just this one. The story also led the CIA to make a rare admission of error. CIA headquarters admitted to poor judgment and management on the part of several CIA officers. One agent resigned. He was likely hired right back.

4:04 As a special advisor, which is the normal course of action, the Caracas station chief was recalled and retired soon after, but no CIA official was charged. They never are. The Miami Herald has reported that internal DEA documents claim that Gillen

4:26 cracked during interrogation in November of 1991 and confessed to the illegal shipments. A year later, however, he denied that he had made any such confession. He insisted that his involvement in the drug shipment to the U.S. was done with proper U.S. government authorization. It was the CIA's. But according to federal charges, he allegedly shipped as many as two tons of cocaine illegally into the United States.

4:55 while supposedly standing shoulder to shoulder with the CIA in the drug war. Those 22 tons over four years averaged out to six tons a year, a volume that would put him in the same big leagues with Mexican drug kingpin Juan Garcia Abrego, who was convicted last October for smuggling seven tons of cocaine per year into the United States. If the federal indictment is correct, Gillen would have been a major

5:23 cocaine smuggler at the time he was palming himself off to the CIA as the leading anti-drug warrior. Whichever way one looks at the case, it does not reflect well on the boys at Langley. Either the CIA was complicit in the illegal drug shipments, they were, or its intelligence gathering capability left a lot to be desired. It does not. The Gillen indictment also comes at a time when federal

5:52 when several federal investigations are underway into the CIA's possible role in cocaine smuggling by the Nicaraguan Contra rebels during the 1980s. Extensive documentary evidence, including the findings of a congressional investigation, has existed since the mid-80s, implicating the Contras in cocaine shipment to the U.S. with the CIA.

6:18 But that history and the U.S. government's failure to take action came under renewed scrutiny last year with a series of published in the San Jose Mercury News, citing more documents and testimony linking those shipments to the outbreak of the nation's crack epidemic. An angry African-American community demanded a full investigation and public release of all relevant documents. The Mercury News series also prompted angry denials from the CIA, which.

6:48 protested its innocence. Major newspapers, the Washington Post, New York Times, the LA Times, sided with the CIA, as they always do. In lengthy articles, all three papers attacked the Mercury News of poor journalism, but acknowledged the long-standing and largely overlooked evidence of cocaine smuggling by the CIA-backed Contras.

7:10 The newspapers could have noted, too, a large, longer history of CIA assets peddling narcotics. That history goes back to post-World War II days when the Cold War was just beginning and the newly created CIA enlisted organized crime elements in Italy, France, and possibly Germany, or Japan, they mean Taiwan, to combat communist-dominated trade unions. That's not what they were doing. The CIA used the mob organizations to route the communist,

7:40 especially from the strategic crucial transportation industry. But organized crime exploited its Cold War protection to rebuild international trade routes for smuggling of heroin and other illicit goods, meaning arms and people. That same pattern held true in the CIA.

7:58 needed indigenous forces for proxy wars in Indochina in the 50s and 60s to Afghanistan in the 80s. Many of those local troops supported themselves with opium production. To gain an allegiance to these forces and to help finance the conflicts off budget, the CIA either tolerated the drug smuggling as a price for doing business or directly assisted in the transportation. Not or, they did. That's all been documented.

8:27 Concerns about the suppression of drug trade took second place to the Cold War. The rules of this intelligence game were the same in America's backyard, but only more so. One of the CIA's worst setbacks occurred in Cuba in the 1950s when Fidel Castro revolutionary forces ousted the U.S. dictator, the CIA-installed dictator.

8:53 and closed the mafia-owned casinos in Havana. Then Castro declared his commitment to communism, putting a Soviet ally only 90 miles from American territory. The CIA's Western Hemisphere Division got the job of ridding Cuba of Castro, and the assignment soon put the spy agency in collaboration with the mafia dots again. One of the crime kingpins recruited in the anti-Castro

9:20 Cause, which included assassination plots with Santo Trafficani Jr., who had used his Savannah operations as a base for narcotics trafficking with the CIA. The CIA also trained an army of Cubans, meaning exile Cubans, which failed to defeat Castro in battle, but remained in South Florida as a potential political force, i.e. our own Operation Gladio forces.

9:49 While maintaining ties to the CIA and other U.S. agencies, some of the Cuban exile warriors adapted their clandestine cells to the cocaine importation business. In collusion with the CIA, they became foot soldiers for Traficani's drug armies. One of the most notorious of these was Ricardo Monkey Morales Navarrete.

10:17 who had been trained by the CIA as a paratrooper and demolitions expert and fought in a U.S. government covert operation in the Congo, i.e. the overthrow of Lumumba, as well as in Cuba. In the late 1970s, he also took his skills to Venezuela, where he served as a high-ranking officer in the Venezuela's corrupt intelligence agency known by the acronym DISIP.

10:47 which, again, like the other intelligence agencies, was a satellite of the CIA. But Morales became a legend in Miami as a prototype of the CIA-connected operative who worked part-time for the U.S. government as an informant, part-time for the mafia as a drug trafficker, and part-time as an anti-Castro terrorist engaged in violent attacks against civilian and diplomatic Cuban targets.

11:13 He acts like those are separate employers, but they're not. It's all the same employer, the CIA. Morales parlayed his CIA connections and his on-again, off-again services, they were never off, as the U.S. government informant to buy himself a measure of protection. No, that's not how any of this works. They label them or hire them as an informant, them protection. They're not doing it themselves.

11:42 In the 1970s, some of the CIA handlers for the Miami Cuban exiles developed a flexible attitude towards what would be tolerated in exchange for help of these informants. But for Morales, his dangerous game finally caught up with him when he was murdered in Little Havana in 1982. In the 1980s, brought a resurgence of interest in the CIA Latin American division.

12:10 With the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua against longtime U.S.-supported Somoza, Castro had his first allied government in power on the mainland of North America. A new and staunchly anti-communist president, Ronald Reagan, wanted the Sandinistas crushed at almost any cost. And again, this guy's focusing this on...

12:36 Like Castro's the mastermind behind all of this? It's not. It's U.S. oligarchs that want that land in Nicaragua, in Honduras, and Guatemala. The blunt instrument, which the CIA chose as a ragtag army of former Somoza soldiers who were holed up in Honduras, already they had been receiving training from Argentine intelligence, another satellite.

13:04 This Argentine intelligence, though, was a direct derivative of the Nazis all piled in there and the Galen organization, which again is a satellite of the CIA. They had been running a brutal, dirty war in Argentina. The Argentine military also had helped organize the so-called cocaine coup in Bolivia, which had installed drug traffickers to power in the South American nation.

13:33 with the help of the CIA. The Contra Wars proved a magnet, too, for the anti-Castro Cubans. They flew into Central America on a mission that combined business and passion. One part anti-communism, one part cocaine trafficking. The Colombian drug cartels were also quick to pick up on the value of using the Contra freedom fighters as a cover for transiting cocaine to the United States. Yeah.

14:02 That was the CIA, too. After all, President Reagan had held the Contras as the moral equal to our founding fathers. The U.S. government would be hard pressed to expose the Contras as drug traffickers. In Panama, CIA director William Casey recruited General Manuel Noriega as a Contra banner. He may have been the best known drug tainted leader who cooperated with the CIA's operations in Nicaragua.

14:32 He is now in federal prison serving a lengthy sentence for cocaine trafficking. But the little general was not alone. Under the protection of the CIA, local commanders assisted Contra units in drug shipping to Costa Rica and El Salvador. And bullies and everywhere else that we found out. Yet possibly the most important Central America drug way station was Honduras, an impoverished.

14:58 members of the high command and its intelligence arm already saw cocaine trafficking as a very tempting route to riches. The powerful Honduran-based trafficker Juan Ramon Mata Ballesteros had financed a military coup in 1978. Then, through most of the 80s, Mata lived in open luxury at a ranch.

15:29 In the mid-1980s, the U.S. government hired Setco, a MADA-connected airline, to fly supplies to the Contra. The hiring occurred despite a DEA report that Setco was formed by an American businessman dealing with MADA and smuggling narcotics to the United States.

15:54 But the DEA was hampered in its investigation of Mata's operation because the Reagan administration had closed the DEA's office in Honduras in 83. So with no regular in-country DEA agents, only the FBI's capture of the 763 pounds of cocaine at a remote airstrip in Florida tipped off law enforcement authorities to the planned military assassination of the Honduran civilian president.

16:24 General Jose Rosa, a senior officer who had worked with the CIA Contra operation. They're all involved. As arrested, was arrested and charged with masterminding the coup, which was to be financed with cocaine profits. After the arrest, White House Oliver North urgently interceded with the Justice Department to gain leniency for the general's assistance in the Contra cause.

16:50 To the north in Mexico, meanwhile, the DEA was fighting an ever more violent war with the cocaine cartels. In Mexico, in February 1985, star DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar was tortured and then murdered by the application of a Phillips head screwdriver to the skull. Mata and several of his Mexican associates were implicated in the murder.

17:18 murder finally stirred senior DEA agents to action. In the late 1980s, with the Contra War winding down, the DEA reportedly compiled a list of Honduran officials implicated in the drug trade. The list had the names of officers who had held jobs as defense minister, director of military intelligence, armed forces chief of staff, director of the military school, and the Navy chief of staff. All of those military people, because I've looked into this before,

17:47 were trained by the United States. Faced with this new pressure, Honduran authorities surrendered Mata. In a raid on Mata's ranch in April of 1988, the U.S. and Honduran law enforcement agents seized the drug kingpin and spirited him off to the U.S. He was convicted in L.A. on murder and drug trafficking charges. So the Gillen case in Venezuela does not stand alone. Indeed, it might be called part of a pattern, a pattern of the U.S.

18:16 of the CIA's shady alliances with Latin and other international drug lords. The spy agency clearly put the war against leftists and communists ahead of the war against cocaine and organized crime. It had nothing to do with communism. It had everything to do with where U.S. oligarchs had decided that they wanted resource control in those countries. The fact that they labeled communism a communist were just,

18:48 convenient to say the least. Okay. So that's the first article. And what I'm going to do is I want to spend a second. Let me put this back up a little bit. I want to spend a second and pull up, um, uh, set and see, um, let's see set co what that actually is. Um, let's see.

19:25 And then you get all of these weird things. CETCO and CIA. OK, let's see. This is just let me share this with you. This is an overview. What drug trafficking allegations was CIA aware of and when involving pilots and companies supporting the Contra program?

20:20 And this basically gives you a background of how they found out. So this is from the Cary Committee report, which was kind of a fluff over, although it did come up with some very interesting information. But this is the names of all of the aviation companies or other companies.

20:48 that had direct ties to the CIA Contra operation. And STETCO is one. We've talked about ocean hunters before. Vortex, the Hondoo, Carib have come up in some of the books that we've read. But I just wanted you to see. Here's the STETCO one. In 1983, the Customs Investigation said that it was formed by an American businessman.

21:18 who men who were dealing with MADA and smuggling drugs. And it goes on to talk about how it was used by Oliver North. But you notice in here where it doesn't tell you who the businessmen were, that's on purpose. And these are excerpts out of the actual report.

21:47 And that's how they hide this shit from us. They don't ever want to name the names. So let's go on with the material first that Renee had given to us. So we're going to move on to the next document here. All right, moving on. Let's see. What's the next one? It's got this one right here. Does this elderly smock?

22:22 pot smuggler deserved to die in prison in Miami. Let's see if we check the view, the original article so we can get a date. Um, this is 2016, um, written in, um, the location it's written by John, um, Schmutt, Smup, however you say his last name, Smoop. One morning in 1977, Antonio Boscara,

22:55 A swashbuckling Cuban pilot, meaning Cuban exile, who'd once been trained with. And that's why these articles are so misleading. When you read these things, you're thinking it's a Cuba pilot like Castro Cuba. And it's not. It's a Cuban exile pilot who'd once trained with the CIA in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

23:18 stopped inside a little Havana jewelry store that served at the crossroads of the city's criminal underworld. The shop owner, a fellow Bay of Pigs exile, was a friend of theirs from their CIA days, whose customers included some of the city's flashiest drug dealers. One of them needed help checking up on boats he used to smuggle weed. The friend thought Boscaro, who'd flown reconnaissance missions for the Cuban Navy,

23:48 could help. Later, over dinner, the young man, also a Cuban immigrant, but two decades younger, invited him to join their operation. Do you have the guts to come with me, Bascara remembered the man asking. That is how Bascara, a former military officer with a sterling service record, drifted into Miami's booming marijuana economy.

24:12 and became a target in America's escalating war on drugs. Arrested in 1980 and convicted of importing more than 600,000 pounds of Colombian marijuana into the southeastern United States, Bascaro has been behind bars ever since. With 36 years of incarceration, he is now one of the longest serving federal inmates doing time on marijuana charges.

24:39 Everyone was convicted with him, including the man who hired him, went free years ago. The one exception is a former co-defendant who is serving a life sentence for the shooting of two American drug agents in Colombia. Quote, I made a mistake and I'm still paying for it, unquote. Boscaro, 81, said in his interview in a Miami Federal Correction Institute, as the government rethinks laws that fueled an explosion in epic drug sentences.

25:08 And President Obama offers clemency to hundreds of drug offenders serving long prison sentence. And as marijuana has become a legal crop in some states, the decades old smuggling case. Yeah, this isn't growing marijuana for medicinal purposes. It's 600,000 pounds. It's not like he's just on some, you know, packet of weed in his car. The author asks, why is he still in jail?

25:37 Bascaro's story has gone unnoticed in large part because he does not fit the typical profile of a war on drugs casualty. He was not a street level dealer pulled into a business as a way to feed himself or his family or his drug addiction. He's not an American citizen, but his case is revealing in other ways. It points to a dark period of recent American history when the Cold War bled into a drug war with Cuban exiles on their side. It recalls the early days of that drug war.

26:05 before the explosion in violent crime and the rise of mandatory minimum sentences, when many politicians and policymakers favored decriminalization of marijuana. And it offers a glimpse into one of the world's key tools in the drug war, persuading inmates to help build cases against other criminals in exchange for shortened sentences, while allowing those who decline such deals, even well-behaved prisoners like Boscaro, to grow old behind bars. In other words, you play our game.

26:34 or you stay in jail. Bascaro's one piece of good fortune is that he got busted before federal laws restricted the amount of good time credit inmates could receive. He was sentenced to 60 years, but because he still falls under the old rules, he has earned a 2019 release date, meaning that he will, in the end, serve nearly 40. Bascaro is afraid he won't live that long, but his appeals and requests for leniency have failed in part because his

27:02 case was too old to be covered under recent reforms. He also has been repeatedly denied clemency. Obama's program, which was commuted more sentences than that of his 11 predecessors combined, turned him down in August without explanation. Bascaro can apply again in a year, but it's hard to imagine a different result. And so he waits, sharing his story with anyone who'll listen. Many, including some of the jailers, are

27:31 left wondering, should an ailing old man who has spent more than three decades in prison for a serious but nonviolent crime be allowed to die behind bars? Even the lawman who put him there isn't sure. Nicholas Geeker, who was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida, prosecuted Boscaro and dozens of others in a case known as Operation Sunburn.

27:52 pointed out that the smugglers handled only marijuana and not cocaine, heroin, drugs that drove a long wave of brutal violence in the 80s and 90s. Many cocaine and heroin offenders have received early freedom under Obama's program. With what the president has done with the sentences of other people dealing in more substantial, harder drugs than Boscarro was, why would he still be in here? I have no explanation.

28:21 Jose Luis Acosta has an explanation. The charismatic young kingpin who recruited Bascaro was also sentenced to 60 years, but he got out in 1994 after serving little more than 12. The reason Acosta said was that he cut deals with federal agents, offering them information on a number of other cases involving drug trafficking and police corruption, including one that targeted the jewelry store owner who introduced him to Bascaro.

28:50 Prosecutors in turn persuaded judges to shorten his time in prison. He said he tried to get Boscaro to do the same, but his former partner refused. I'm very sorry he's still in prison, Acosta said. He's been in too long. I tried to get him to cooperate, but he lost his opportunity to do something for himself to get out of there. And cooperation means that you're on the hook for them to work for the CIA forever.

29:16 if you start cooperating with them, then they have their hooks in you. So this is Acosta, this guy here with the beard, and that's Bascaro. Mary Price, the General Counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums and an advocate of compassion release of old and ailing federal prisoners, called Bascaro's sentence ridiculous and faulted the federal criminal justice system for making him serve a quarter century more than someone.

29:47 who was just as guilty but became an informant. Is the fact that Basquero didn't cooperate worth 28 years? It's not. Nothing justifies that difference. Basquero said he does not regret refusing to testify or provide information against others. That, he said, would have broken an inviolable code that has guided him since his days as a young officer in the Cuban Navy. Don't cross sides, no matter the cost.

30:14 I don't believe in using somebody to be in a better position. But he does lament the hole he's left in the lives of his three children and 11 grandchildren. I feel sorry for my family, he said. Aicha, I'm not sure how you pronounce her name, A-I-C-H-A, Bascaro, who was 12 when her father was imprisoned and 24 when she next saw him, in a federal penitentiary.

30:42 in Pennsylvania, said she believed he was driven to drug smuggling by his desire to provide for his children after his parents divorced. As the decades passed, she said, Boscarro became consumed with reuniting, ending every conversation and letter with the promise that they'd one day be together. When he turned 80, she quit her job to try to find a way to help him. She became his advocate.

31:07 raising awareness on his case online and enlisting support of his Old Bay of Pig buddies. I know my dad did something, but whatever he did, he didn't deserve to serve 36 years. In person, Boscaro could pass as a harmless grandfather, his khaki prison uniform aside. Let's see, he gets around Miami federal jail in a wheelchair or with a cane.

31:36 wearing chunky orthopedic shoes. He talks a lot about the glory days. I always wanted to fly, he said. He had made a decision as a young man to quit medical school and become a pilot in the Cuban Navy. That was under the rule of Batista, the dictator who would be deposed by Castro's communist rebels six years later. Bascaro and his fellow Navy airmen

32:01 fought to repel them, taking reconnaissance photos of Castro's training site in Mexico and supporting counterintelligence operations when the rebels landed into Cuba in 1956 and set up guerrilla strongholds in the mountains. Vazcarro flew two rescue missions with the government forces pinned inside, making a crash landing on the second. He said he was held in hospital for more than a month, during which Castro's brother, Rayol, tried to recruit him to the rebel side.

32:29 He said he told Rayol, if you want to kill me, kill me, but I don't switch sides. To this day, he says he can't understand why Rayol Castro didn't call his bluff. After Fidel Castro took power and Batista fled the country in 1959, Bascaro said he was held in various prisons, but was somehow spared the mass executions of other Batista officials. He said he was mistakenly released and then went into hiding before being granted asylum in.

32:58 He traveled for a few months, eventually coming into contact with the CIA, which was everywhere in Uruguay, which was recruiting former Cuban military members in a clandestine effort to topple Castro. He and the others were brought to Miami. They were processed, paid and sent to Guatemala for training. He and about 14 other.

33:22 1,400 other recruits were stationed there in April of 1961 when they moved to Nicaragua and launched the Bay of Pigs invasion. It failed in less than one day before Basqueiro's fighter got off the ground. He and others who remained were sent back to Miami, but instead for waiting for instructions from the CIA, he said he went back to Guatemala where he'd fallen in love with a local woman whose uncle was a top federal government official.

33:50 They married and he found work, first flying crop dusting planes and later a pilot for tourist companies and wealthy businessmen. His Bay of Pig contacts in Miami invited him to join them for other covert operations, but he declined, telling them to let him know if they ever planned to take back Cuba. He kept in contact with some of them, including Guillermo Tabre, who'd served as the exile's liaison with the CIA.

34:20 and was now the owner of a thriving little Havana jewelry store. In 77, Miami had become a drug capital in the Western Hemisphere, a hub for smugglers and money launderers. Many drug dealers and city cops shopped at the store. He was later accused of trafficking himself, but the case fell apart when he was revealed as a government paid informant to provide information on former Bay of Pigs veterans who'd gone into the drug business.

34:48 He was just a government. They put them all on their payroll. We know this by now. By then, Boscaro had divorced. He wanted to do more to help his children financially. That is why he said he welcomed the introduction to Acosta, who was looking for a pilot to help keep tabs on his fleet of vessels and help scout places to offload bales of marijuana on the Florida coast. The prospect gave him a thrill that he hadn't had in years.

35:16 In some parts of Florida, marijuana smuggling, which was largely free of violence, had become a way of life, turning fishermen, pilots and truckers into wealthy outlaws. This goes back to the Sintaf book that I was reading where they were bringing in just ship after ship. They would have five off the coast waiting to come in and they offloaded them at very wealthy people's private docks.

35:45 It was enriching bankers and local law enforcement authorities who chose to look the other way. Bascaro was among several Bay of Pigs veterans who found their past experience as clandestine operatives useful. It was exciting, he said. I wasn't fighting in a war, but it was something similar. The money was also good, about $30,000 for a few hours of work. Acosta's operation brought together an assortment of players that included Columbia suppliers,

36:15 Cuban exiles, rural haulers, corrupt lawyers, and suntan lotion distributor. Bascaro says he never actually touched any of the marijuana, strictly sticking mainly to logistics and occasionally observing the unloading of shipments. He estimated he made between $750,000 to a million dollars over two years. He and Acosta became close, like father and son. And Bascaro

36:43 persuaded the younger man to move to Guatemala where they started legitimate side businesses together. Bascaro bought a ranch in Guatemala and a home in Miami where he brought his children during school vacations. He partied too, but generally tried to avoid outlandish behavior. He said he liked good food and good women. Authorities got tipped to Acosta's organization in 1978. And again, this is Syntac. He is one of the guys in the Syntac that was,

37:13 I can't remember the actual marijuana kingpin that they took down. But remember that it was, let's see. Anyway, this is talking about. And then he goes on to say, after one of the shrimp boats it used to ferry loads into the Gulf of Mexico ran aground. The shrimp boats again. Investigators tapped the smugglers' phones and tracked their shipments to Florida and Georgia.

37:43 In February of 80, Bascaro was taken into custody in Guatemala and sent to Georgia, where he was convicted of marijuana possession. He was then sent to Florida, where he refused his offers of immunity from further prosecution if he'd tell a grand jury about the group's operation. Other members did. However, Bascaro, Ascosta, and several others were convicted of operating a massive criminal enterprise.

38:10 Bascaro remained resolute in his stand against helping authorities. He declined to parlay his smuggling connections and declined to serve as a witness when he saw wrongdoing behind bars, an act of self-preservation that aligned with his moral stand. Gradually, his former co-defendants started getting released after serving fractions of their sentence, which included another Bay of Pigs exile who had been sentenced to 40 years but escaped while on furlough, helping U.S. agents ensnare Cuban officials suspected of trafficking.

38:40 cocaine. He was recaptured four years later and then was released in 2002. Bascaro focused on less compromising routes out of prison. He amassed good behavior credit and tried repeatedly to appeal the length of his sentence. He applied for compassion relief due to his age. He left clemency as his only option. He filed twice on his own and this summer got a volunteer assistant from an attorney to do it and that failed.

39:08 He began to wonder if there was something in his files he didn't know about, a black mark. Bascaro's hope turned to desperation. After completing just about every education and vocational program available to him, he says he now spends his days reading, listening to music, and corresponding with anyone who'll listen to his story. He keeps in contact with some of his old friends from Bay of Pigs, but not Acosta, saying he still holds a grudge related to a fight they had while they were incarcerated in Pennsylvania.

39:37 Acosta, for his part, says he no longer harbors any resentment to his old friend. That was a long time ago, Acosta said. I don't hate him. I'm here to help him. If I can in any way, get out of there. But obviously he hasn't helped him. So that's a crazy story. That's like a really crazy story. All right, let's move on to.

40:05 The next one. Now, I'm going to share this, but I'm going to put a caveat here. I have done some research on this next one, the site. So I'll share that with you and then I'll tell you what I have found about it. OK, this one skips over to Venezuela. This incite crime is.

40:36 what do I want to say about it? The words that come to my mind is it's a hokey site. And by that, I mean, it appears to write things that need to be written to help propaganda narratives. So I'm going to go through this, but I want you guys to keep that in the back of your mind.

41:05 This site has come up a couple of times in my research, and a lot of things that they say on it is just literally not true. Always skirting around the CIA when I've looked here before. Okay, so this is a Venezuela profile. Venezuela became a strategic hub of organized crime. And oh, by the way, it's dated 2017, but it was updated.

41:35 just recently on 9 January yesterday, 2026. Venezuela has become a strategic hub for organized crime. Venezuelan government, especially during the administration of Maduro, has established a collaborative governance system with Venezuela and Colombia criminal groups, granting them state approval to carry out criminal activities with impunity. That's literally not true.

42:02 Criminal organizations that do not receive government backing have been targeted and dismantled. Networks made up of military personnel and government officials are involved in drug trafficking that move narcotics from Colombia to international markets, while other criminal groups and military factions control illegal gold mining in the South. Yeah, so you can see the massive exodus of Venezuelans to countries around the region.

42:33 allowed Trende Aragua, the prison gang, to operate under the protection of Maduro's government. I'm not sure that's true either. To grow and expand across Americas, exploiting the routes needed for the Venezuela diaspora. At the same time, Colombian guerrillas, and this is very interesting to me, the National Liberation Army, because in all of the indictments, it's saying the FARC is who,

43:04 the Venezuelan, whoever it is, was involved in, not the ELN, took on a binational character after years of consolidating control in the Venezuelan border area. Working in collusion with political and military actors, the...

43:23 Complex humanitarian emergency faced by Venezuelan population has made migrants vulnerable to human trafficking networks. Inside the country, widespread extortion by criminal gangs has affected entire communities. And then it talks about the geography of it. We've talked about this, about the border that they share, drug trafficking, because that's why the CIA was there.

43:52 the history. Venezuela coasts have historically attracted organized crime, serving as routes for smuggling alcohol, tobacco, precious metals, and other illicit goods. During the 20th century, the country's dictatorships contributed to rising inequality and fueled emergence of violent guerrilla movements in the 1960s when the CIA was there. These groups later disbanded and disarmed following peace deals with the government.

44:22 That's not true. The Italian Costa Nostra clans were among the first foreign organized crime groups to establish a presence in Venezuela. Now, the Costa Nostra's Italian gang, that's the family that was taken down in 2019 that I've talked to about to you guys a lot about that during Trump's first administration.

44:47 This is the one where they one night went out and arrested like 400 of these people throughout the country of Italy and took them to a secret court place that had been constructed over the two years prior to that and had their trials in the secluded place so that they could protect all of the people and they didn't get knocked off like it happened during the years of Lett.

45:14 That was all done in 2019, which is weird that this article doesn't mention it because it was obviously updated since then. Taking advantage of post-World War II migration in the 80s and 90s, members of the Kunterra and Karuna families found lucrative opportunities of trafficking cocaine and heroin from

45:44 Colombia to Europe. Yeah, it wasn't heroin, it was cocaine. As Colombian drug shipments came under increasing scrutiny, Venezuela emerged as an alternative route under the CIA. This combined with the mass migration of Colombians fleeing armed conflict and Venezuela's economic downturn accelerated the expansion of the drug trade.

46:10 Again, you see there's no mention of CIA. The CIA's participation in Venezuela during this time is well known. It's like we just saw that was in a 60 Minutes video. It's well known, but no mention of it here anywhere.

46:26 Both active and retired members of the Venezuela security forces have historically participated in drug trafficking. Multiple high ranking officers were arrested in the 80s with cocaine shipments bound to Florida, exposing longstanding state involvement. Prominent political and even religious figures were implicated in drug and cocaine trafficking cases during this period. Over time, drug trafficking in Venezuela evolved into a systematic phenomenon that fueled the corruption networks.

46:55 that would later form the Cartel of the Sons, a web of military officers profiting from drug smuggling. Any mention here of it being on the CIA payroll? No. Under the presidency of Hugo Chavez, who took office in 1999, trafficking groups further consolidated their operations in Venezuela. The rupture in relations with U.S. law enforcement and DEA

47:24 who had been running the drug cartels, ended years of international anti-narcotics cooperation. No, it ended years of international narcotics cooperation, not anti-narcotics, because they were facilitating it, not trying to get away from it. Simultaneously, elements of the National Guard and Army shifted from accepting bribes to handling drug storage and transports.

47:53 Yeah, no, no, that the National Guard were actively participating in it. In the late 2010s, international agencies warned the increasing volume of cocaine were moving through Venezuela. The case that elevated Venezuela's profile as a drug transit when 2013 seizure of 1.4 tons of cocaine on Air France flight departing from the nation's main airport.

48:23 And this is where we get into them dealing with the FARC. And keep in mind, in Colombia, the FARC is the resistance to the government. They're the people who saw that their government was corrupted and being ran by the CIA.

48:41 that formed a resistance. And they knew that the U.S. corporations were down there buying off all the politicians and were in bed with all of the rich elites, suppressing the people. And that's basically what gave birth to the FARC. The FARC has, and I explained to you this a while back, the FARC's not good, but they're lesser of the two evils in Venezuela. And they have such

49:09 I did the math in one post recently of the actual drug network in Colombia of exporting drugs. And the whole basis of the indictment against Maduro is that he was dealing with the FARC, which if anybody understands the dynamics down there, it was like literally ridiculous.

49:30 you know, 90% of the cocaine coming out of Colombia. And you've got this little slice of the pie over here that possibly is going through Venezuela as opposed to the entire rest of the pie going out of Colombia. And we're going to focus on this part over here. It's just like blows my mind.

49:52 All right, it goes on to say that Chavez viewed Colombia's rebels as allies, famously stating that the FARC was not the enemy of Venezuela while cracking down on right-wing paramilitary in western Venezuela. And by right-wing paramilitary, they're talking about CIA stay-behinds. Venezuela, the government provided guerrilla fighters with safe conduct, weapons, and munitions.

50:23 2013, after Chavez's death, made decisions that compromised national security and laid the groundwork for organized crime to flourish. Now, I find this hilarious that this guy sitting in America is telling Maduro what compromises Maduro's national security. It may have been the least of two evils.

51:46 Doing business with the FARC was probably good for Maduro to keep all of the rest of the bad guys.

52:13 Okay, I'm back. My computer died. So I had to start up a new one. So let me run back over to Twitter. We were done with that article anyway. And get the rest of them that Renee had sent. Oh, good gosh. Okay. Go to my chat. I had all of the...

52:56 tabs open already so i could be prepared so now i gotta go find them okay um let's see there's renee all right let's go back up here and find my links sorry about that guys i guess i'm gonna have to stop doing videos on that one all right so we did that one we did that one all right so here's um

53:27 The next thing that she had sent me, let's go over there. Let's see. This is the mafia clan that was mentioned in that article. The Cosa Nostra held key positions in illicit drug trade money laundering in the 1980s and 90s. Actually, it went right up until 2000.

54:05 when they were all taken down. The Italian press baptized the clan, the Rothschilds of the mafia, the bankers of the Costa Nostra. Italian prosecutors described this mafia clan as an international holding, a holding which secured certain services for the Sicilian Costa Nostra as a whole, drug trafficking routes, channels for money laundering. The clan is a very tight-knit group of men of honor.

54:35 not only joined by mafia bonds, but also blood ties. According to the Mafia Commission, the Klan played a central role in international drug trafficking that went from Italy to Canada to Venezuela. And this is one that the CIA worked with consistently. And then it mentions the names, I'm not even going to try to say the names, of the prominent Klan brothers in this operation. It was a family deal.

55:06 They originated in the southern coast of Sicily. They were relatives. They intermarried to strengthen their criminal alliance. And let's see, a former officer of public security, of course.

55:25 The Klan used to be armed guards for the local Baron Agnello, who owned most of the village and the surrounding lands. Everybody in the village depended on the Baron for work and income. When the land reform started in the 1950s, the Baron had to give up most of his holdings. The Mafia brokered the cell. The power of the Mafia in those days was unchallenged. They entered the town council and become the mayor, blah, blah, blah.

55:55 In 1952, one of them and his brother-in-law, Leonardo, were indicted for double murder, the theft of four cows, and arson. Both were acquitted in 1953, not having committed the act, an almost ritual verdict where the mafia was concerned. Because what happened, as I explained to you guys, it was happening in the 90s when I was there, is the prosecutors would get murdered.

56:25 If they were effective, the judges, if they ruled the wrong way, would get killed. So it was just perfunctory theater when you had a trial there because the mafia wasn't going to get convicted. In 1966, police reports concluded that Siculiana had been ruled by the mafia, which is the name of the town they're from, for years. Giuseppe Cariana, his brother,

56:56 Leonardo and Pascual exploited every economic activity in the village and the surrounding communities. They had created an atmosphere of omarta through violence and intimidation. They made sure that nobody dared to denounce them. The Argento court decided to ban them from the village. Some returned. However, in the 70s, Leonardo became a capo.

57:25 after he was deported from Canada of the area under leadership of the mafia boss in the province of Argento. Giuseppe Settecassi, the power base of the Klan, reached into politics. An influential politician, Calargerio Manino,

57:55 of the Christian Democrat Party, which was the party favored by the CIA, was a witness at the marriage of Leonardo. Leonardo was murdered in 81 in front of his house in Palermo on the day of his other son's marriage. The killing occurred at the height of the Second Mafia War and stayed unavenged. Montreal was the first base outside of Sicily for this clan.

58:25 Canadian immigration records show that Pasquale and Libario brothers arrived in 1951 and acquired Canadian nationality in 57. They moved up and down between Sicily and Montreal, setting up a base on both sides of the Atlantic. And this is interesting because we haven't gotten into too many Canadian ties to this whole operation. But if you guys remember, they came in originally through Cuba and into Canada.

58:54 to come into the United States. So this is very interesting. It says, according to their own story, they worked hard in Canada, starting plowing snow as barbers, saving enough money to start the first shop, a pizzeria. However, more likely is that some of them had left Sicily to escape persecution. That's true. In 66, most of the clan left the village when they were banished by a court order as a result of a crackdown by the Italian police after a massacre.

59:25 The Argento court banned several members of clan to locations elsewhere in Italy, mostly in the North, but they chose to leave the country instead. They moved to Montreal in Canada, but one of them, Giuseppe preferred Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. And again, this is, we overthrew Brazil in 63. And so this is 66. So the CIA and their, um,

59:52 military general dictator is in firm control of Brazil. So this makes perfect sense. Let's just take them to these operations overseas that we can use them over there. Some of them moved to Caracas in Venezuela, which of course also during this time, the CIA is there too, because they're everywhere. In the beginning of the 1970s, the Klan redeployed after mafia persecution in Italy had slowed down.

1:00:25 In Italy's major mafia trials ended in the non-convictions of most of the mafia bosses. Some of the clan went to the Italian mainland, a seashore resort near Rome. Some went to the UK. Some remained in Caracas, while others remained in Montreal. So now they've got a worldwide network here. Venezuela became an important hideout. Venezuela has its own Costa Nostra,

1:00:56 family as if it's a Sicilian territory. According to the Italian police, the structure and hierarchy of the mafia has been entirely reproduced in Venezuela. The Quintero and Cariana clan had direct links to the ruling commission of the Sicilian mafia, acknowledged by the American Costa Nostra itself. In the Second Mafia War,

1:01:24 The Klan initially sided with the established mafia families of Palermo, who were massacred by the Corleones, headed by Salvadori Rina. However, they apparently were able to find some kind of an agreement. The families were necessary and irreplaceable for every other mafia family, according to the police.

1:01:53 almost certainly was involved in the heroin trafficking networks in the 50s. Oh, yes, they were. Their names appeared in investigations of famous cases like the French Connection and in the 70s in the Pizza Connection in the 1980s. Several intertwining Sicilian networks were running heroin in the United States. They had the same source, suppliers in the Corsican underworld and their high-quality laboratories initially, and then it moved to Italy.

1:02:24 The repression caused by the Siakoli massacres disarranged the Sicilian heroin trade to the United States. Mafiosa were banned, arrested, and incarcerated. Control over the drug fell into the hands of a few fugitives. Salvador Greco, his cousin Salvador Salvadori

1:02:52 also known as whatever that name is, Tommaso Buscetta and Gattano Badalana Menta. All of them were acquainted to the original clan and brothers. The famous turncoat, Buscetta, told an anti-mafia judge, Giovanni Falcon,

1:03:21 In 1984, how he had met the Klan in Montreal in 69 during Christmas. Bosetta stayed at Pasquale Quintero's house, recovering from VD. They were introduced to him by a man of honor. When Bosetta met them, they were already very rich. They were trafficking in heroin. The Italian police finally got an idea of the role of the Klan in 82 and 83.

1:03:51 when they investigated the Italian end of what was later called the pizza connection. Now, this is a complete bullshit, okay? Maybe some facets of the Italian police, but the Italian police, to include the carabinieri, at the very top were part of Operation Gladio. They were part of the money laundering. They were part of the transferring money into the Vatican. They knew all about this operation.

1:04:22 The Italian police was following the movements of Giuseppe, the middleman between the buyers of the Gambinos and the Bonanno crime families in New York, the Sicilian clans who organized the heroin traffic to the US. Almost all of the money of the Sicilian mafia in North America to purchase heroin and resulting proceeds went through their hands because it was going to the Vatican Bank. In 81, Gaspari Mutolo, who would become a,

1:04:52 um pentinto which was a collaborator um in 92 organized a 400 kilogram shipment of heroin to the u.s the brothers clan received half the load while gambino and the gambino family in new york took care of the other 200 the shipment was financed by a consortium of sicilian mafia clans who had organized a pool to provide the money to buy the merchandise from thai

1:05:22 suppliers, you know, the CIA. The system in the heroin business was that every mafia family could invest in a shipment if it had the money. The Klan were their trusted buyers who supplied the market in North America. In 85, a joint operation of the Canadian

1:05:44 Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Customs and Excise, a heroin transport was seized in London and Montreal. Subsequent investigations revealed that the Klan was picking up the heroin in Thailand since 1983. You're joking me. They've been picking it up in Thailand since the 40s. They replaced the supply line of

1:06:11 Gaspari Mutolo, who had been arrested. In 88, the Canadian police seized a 30 kilo load of heroin at a factory owned by Cafaro's brother-in-law in Windsor in Canada near the U.S. border. The same year, Giuseppe and Pasquale were arrested in Germany. Germany.

1:06:37 They discovered an extensive network that had been tied to set up heroin trafficking from the Far East to Europe. Yeah, because it's the CIA and MI6 and the German BND and the Italian SAFAR and all of them. This is hilarious. While in Venezuela, the Klan started to be involved in cocaine trafficking. They became seriously involved in a joint venture of the Nostradada.

1:07:10 family and needed Carriana to supply them. He organized a network that smuggled 11 metric tons of cocaine to Italy in 91 through 94. That's interesting. That's while I was there. Carriana brought together the cocaine suppliers of the Cali cartel and the Italian distributors of the Donostrata in Calabria.

1:07:40 And if you look at where Calabria is, this is hilarious because I don't know if you guys can see this on the map, but my base was right over here. We were in southern Italy. I used to drive through there every time I went to Sicily because Sicily is right down here off the coast of the tow. That's hilarious. The pipeline fell apart when the Italian police seized almost 6,000 kilos of cocaine, a European record, in March of 94.

1:08:10 A year later, the Turin Prosecutor's Office presented the indictment. The investigation was codenamed Operation Cardigan. The operation neutralized the most important supply line of narcotics to Europe, so they claim. The family was labeled as the flywheel of the drug trade, an indispensable link between suppliers and distributors.

1:08:40 moved the cocaine pipeline towards Canada, where the family took care of the wholesale distribution with the consent of Vito Rizzotto, which was Montreal's Teflon Don, an Italian-Canadian crime boss. Huh. In Montreal. Quebec. The leader of the Costa Nostra, who came from the same region in Sicily. Arrests and convictions.

1:09:12 I don't know that we need to go through all of this, but obviously Renee's point is that there were, during the time the CIA was in control of Venezuela, they even had their own mafia family there, which is hilarious. All right, going back, let's go to the next link.

1:09:39 She mentions that they had moved. Yeah, she just cut that piece out. All right. So then she brings me to this next piece. And let me stop sharing this one. And we're going to start sharing the next one. Now, obviously, I'm not going to.

1:10:11 go through this whole thing. But this is a 500 page book of Mafia Inc. And look what it says, the long bloody reign of Canada's Sicilian mob. Now, what I will find interesting here, let me stop sharing this for just a second and see if I can log into this. Let's see.

1:10:44 Well, I'll post the link. Let me, I'm not going to be able to log into that because this is a new computer since my old one keeps crashing on me. I am going to post the link over here and y'all can look into that. It'll be interesting to search. I don't know if Renee's already done it.

1:11:15 Renee, did you search that book when you logged into archive.org and see if there was any Venezuela mentionings in it? I think that would be very interesting. Let me see. I already am logged in on my phone. I'll see if I can do it real quick here. See if it'll let me in there real quick. Yep. Let's see. No, it's not going to.

1:12:05 Let's see. Oh, there it is. All right. Let's look real quick. Venezuela. Oh, yes, there are. All right. Let me go back over here real quick. There's actually quite a bit. Yeah. So let's just read this. A couple of these things. Yeah. After that. Yeah. So that.

1:12:47 Wikipedia thing probably was written mostly from this book because it's talking about the same thing about the period of forced exile. They went to Venezuela, continued their criminal activity. And then it says where they got in bed with Columbia and started interacting with them. Let's see project.

1:13:19 Jaggi, an operation conducted 13 years earlier. Yeah, there's a lot in here about Venezuela. So I'll have to look through that later. Says here, eventually crossed the Atlantic again, this time winding up in Venezuela where he lived in secret, then returned to Sicily and began making arrangements to immigrate to North America.

1:13:54 And then set up outposts in Venezuela. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot in here about Venezuela. A lot. That's crazy. Then they're bringing over more of their family. Guys transporting coke from Venezuela to Canada. Yeah, they had like a major operation there.

1:14:26 Risotto traveled regularly back and forth between Italy and Venezuela. Quintero went to see Meyer Lansky in Rome. The two men were already had met in Toronto. This time he solicited Lansky's counsel on laundering the profits from the drug connection he had set up in South America. Lansky offered one extremely valuable piece of advice, invest as often as possible in legitimate enterprises.

1:14:55 because that's what they did to money launder. One of them was tipped off by Interpol that Italian authorities learned that the men were suspected of crimes in Venezuela, including arson and drug trafficking, and that they were going to get deported. That's crazy. Yeah, lots of Venezuela. Okay, so she made her point.

1:15:33 Lots of Venezuela drugs going on when the CIA was in control of Venezuela. All right. What's next? Okay. She then moves on to looking at Stefano Della Shea, who was a major connection to Italy, P2, Gladio, Spain, and a gentle press and South America operation Condor and Kloss Barbie, which is true.

1:16:06 And then makes the connection to Caracas, Venezuela as a major hub. So we're going to just for a second, go over to, let me share my screen again to this website. And this too is a very long, I mean, it's got lots of information in it. I am going to copy and paste this.

1:16:39 into the chat as well. Um, so that you guys will have that. Um, let's see. This is about Stefano Delasche. And we've talked about him a lot. So he's the guy, um, that was involved in all of these things, as gender press. Um, if you look there, um,

1:17:12 This is the Portugal Operation Gladio that was happening. And so let's go back up there to the top, to the outline. So all of these things here were all of the major operations that he was involved in. And notice what they call it, strategy of tension. Okay. These here, who is he? What's his background?

1:17:46 Born in 1936, a fascist, failed political science student, turned insurance underwriter, becomes active in politics in neo-fascist party. Didn't like that. It was too slow. So he starts falling in with the old guard fascists. He abandons the MSI.

1:18:13 in 1958, gave his allegiance to the newly formed and more overtly Nazi and anti-Semitic Orden Nouveau. This is Operation Gladio in Italy, under the leadership of Pino Ratti. The motto of Orden Nouveau was also that of the Nazi SS, our honor is our loyalty. And so this organization was basically

1:18:42 one that was involved in many of the bombings and stuff like that, that was blamed on the Red Brigade. So he was recruited into Secret Service work as an auxiliary agent in a crisis period of 1960s. There was riots, 12 people were killed. These are the domestic terror events that we've talked about. In the summer of 60, while the tension was still mounting,

1:19:10 He was approached by the Interior Ministry to overtake covert operations against anti-fascist and left-wing militants. That's Gladio. It was around this time that Delachey decided to leave Orden Nouveau and set up his own neo-fascist organization, which eventually became known as Avant-Guardia Nationale, an organization that was a breeding ground for the neo-fascist terrorists for decades.

1:19:39 Operation Gladio. What exact role he had is not yet known. It's very well known. But whatever it was, it was sufficiently successful to convince factions of the interior ministry of the usefulness of employing plausible, deniable fascist groups as auxiliary police and agents of the state. That's Gladio. And that's what they did.

1:20:06 This is very interesting. I definitely need to bookmark that because this gives us the overview, kind of a timeline of all of the stuff that he did. And see right here, it talks about Otto Skorzeny being freed by Mussolini. And here it's talking about basically, if you look at these names, John McCafferty, this is the beginnings of Operation Gladio.

1:20:35 I don't know if he uses that word in here, but it's certainly this is the timeline. James Jesus Angleton collecting the Princess Borghese. Basically, they rescued him because he put to death. He was evil. But anyway, Italy signs NATO agreement after the interference in this election here.

1:21:03 Um, this is the election where they spent $35 million. And then it goes through several of the, um, other terrorist events, um, the man in his crimes. And then it just goes through all of the narrative. This was an excellent find Renee. I'd never seen this before. And thank you for sharing that with us. Um, that's awesome. So that's crazy. Um, and this, I, I'm,

1:21:33 Very grateful to all of you guys. And what do you say, Renee? If you copy and paste and grab Grok or Jet to GBT, whoever will give you the overview of the book and then you can start asking it to search on specific things. Yes. And I've done that before. That's kind of like the tool that Illini had set up for me because I can just go through and do search engines or search.

1:22:02 request on it by name. And the only problem with that is if you haven't read the book, Grok tends to give you a benign Reader's Digest version of these books without the necessary nuances that we're looking for. And so I don't use it for overviews.

1:22:28 To me, the better thing to do is click on, you know, search the text for and then you can go back a couple of pages and read the context of it. But, you know, if you have to and you don't have the books, it's a good place to start. That's for sure. But anyway.

1:22:48 I just want to go through all of that. I appreciate all of you guys being here and I'm glad we were finally able to get to it. It just goes to show all of the great research that all of us are capable of doing in addition to the stuff that I provide because working as a hive is awesome. And that's what we do very well, I think, here. So thank you all for being here. I appreciate it.

1:23:16 And I will see you, if not tomorrow, on Monday. Take care, everybody.

Entities here

Italy35 Antonio Boscara35 Venezuela26 CIA25 United States25 Cuba22 Quintero and Cariana clan18 Contras14 Colombia14 Ramon Guillen de Vela11 Miami10 Fidel Castro9 DEA8 Operation Gladio8 Canada8 Juan Mata Ballesteros7 Honduras7 Montreal7 Operation Pluto7 FARC6 Cosa Nostra6 Jorge Acosta Velasco6 Leonardo Cariana5 Ricardo Morales5 Setco5 Argentina5 Nicolás Maduro4 Guatemala4 Alabama Ku Klux Klan4 Nicaragua4 Pasquale Cariana3 Tommaso Buscetta3 Havana3 Stefano Delle Chiaie3 Italian Police3 Giuseppe Cariana3 Gaspare Mutolo3 Ndrangheta3 Ronald Reagan3 Royal Canadian Mounted Police3

Claims made here

Ramon Guillen de Vela trafficked CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:10

“who was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami earlier this year. Gillian, who remains at large, presumably in Venezuela, was charged with smuggling 22 tons of cocaine into the United States betwee…”

CIA collaborated_with Ramon Guillen de Vela host_asserted ▶ 2:11

“Even worse, in December of 89, the CIA actually collaborated with Gillen on one dubious plan to ship a ton of cocaine, which I posted about purportedly for intelligence purposes. It was part of the su…”

CIA authorized Ramon Guillen de Vela host_asserted ▶ 2:39

“The CIA went over the attache's head and appealed to Washington. DEA headquarters also said no, but that was an answer the CIA would not accept. A federal statute forbids the government's importation …”

CIA admitted_error Ramon Guillen de Vela documented ▶ 3:35

“exploded three years later as a public relations embarrassment when 60 Minutes broadcast a report on the illegal shipment of the one ton, not the 20-some tons, but just this one. The story also led th…”

Ramon Guillen de Vela confessed_to CIA book_quoted ▶ 4:26

“cracked during interrogation in November of 1991 and confessed to the illegal shipments. A year later, however, he denied that he had made any such confession. He insisted that his involvement in the …”

CIA implicated_in Contras documented ▶ 5:52

“when several federal investigations are underway into the CIA's possible role in cocaine smuggling by the Nicaraguan Contra rebels during the 1980s. Extensive documentary evidence, including the findi…”

Fidel Castro ousted CIA host_asserted ▶ 8:27

“Concerns about the suppression of drug trade took second place to the Cold War. The rules of this intelligence game were the same in America's backyard, but only more so. One of the CIA's worst setbac…”

CIA recruited Santo Trafficante Jr. host_asserted ▶ 9:20

“Cause, which included assassination plots with Santo Trafficani Jr., who had used his Savannah operations as a base for narcotics trafficking with the CIA. The CIA also trained an army of Cubans, mean…”

CIA trained Ricardo Morales host_asserted ▶ 10:17

“who had been trained by the CIA as a paratrooper and demolitions expert and fought in a U.S. government covert operation in the Congo, i.e. the overthrow of Lumumba, as well as in Cuba. In the late 19…”

Ricardo Morales member_of DISIP host_asserted ▶ 10:17

DISIP satellite_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 10:47

“which, again, like the other intelligence agencies, was a satellite of the CIA. But Morales became a legend in Miami as a prototype of the CIA-connected operative who worked part-time for the U.S. gov…”

CIA trained Contras host_asserted ▶ 12:36

“Like Castro's the mastermind behind all of this? It's not. It's U.S. oligarchs that want that land in Nicaragua, in Honduras, and Guatemala. The blunt instrument, which the CIA chose as a ragtag army …”

BND satellite_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 13:04

“This Argentine intelligence, though, was a direct derivative of the Nazis all piled in there and the Galen organization, which again is a satellite of the CIA. They had been running a brutal, dirty wa…”

Army Intelligence satellite_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 13:04

William Casey recruited Manuel Noriega host_asserted ▶ 14:02

“That was the CIA, too. After all, President Reagan had held the Contras as the moral equal to our founding fathers. The U.S. government would be hard pressed to expose the Contras as drug traffickers.…”

Manuel Noriega cooperated_with CIA host_asserted ▶ 14:02

Setco smuggling_narcotics United States documented ▶ 15:29

“In the mid-1980s, the U.S. government hired Setco, a MADA-connected airline, to fly supplies to the Contra. The hiring occurred despite a DEA report that Setco was formed by an American businessman de…”

Oliver North interceded_for Jose Bueso Rosa host_asserted ▶ 16:24

“General Jose Rosa, a senior officer who had worked with the CIA Contra operation. They're all involved. As arrested, was arrested and charged with masterminding the coup, which was to be financed with…”

Juan Mata Ballesteros implicated_in Enrique Kiki Camarena host_asserted ▶ 16:50

“To the north in Mexico, meanwhile, the DEA was fighting an ever more violent war with the cocaine cartels. In Mexico, in February 1985, star DEA agent Enrique Camarena Salazar was tortured and then mu…”

Juan Mata Ballesteros convicted_in United States host_asserted ▶ 17:47

“were trained by the United States. Faced with this new pressure, Honduran authorities surrendered Mata. In a raid on Mata's ranch in April of 1988, the U.S. and Honduran law enforcement agents seized …”

CIA trained Antonio Boscara book_quoted ▶ 22:55

“A swashbuckling Cuban pilot, meaning Cuban exile, who'd once been trained with. And that's why these articles are so misleading. When you read these things, you're thinking it's a Cuba pilot like Cast…”

Nicholas Geeker prosecuted Antonio Boscara book_quoted ▶ 27:31

“left wondering, should an ailing old man who has spent more than three decades in prison for a serious but nonviolent crime be allowed to die behind bars? Even the lawman who put him there isn't sure.…”

Jose Luis Acosta recruited Antonio Boscara book_quoted ▶ 28:21

“Jose Luis Acosta has an explanation. The charismatic young kingpin who recruited Bascaro was also sentenced to 60 years, but he got out in 1994 after serving little more than 12. The reason Acosta sai…”

Fulgencio Batista overthrew Fidel Castro host_asserted ▶ 31:36

“wearing chunky orthopedic shoes. He talks a lot about the glory days. I always wanted to fly, he said. He had made a decision as a young man to quit medical school and become a pilot in the Cuban Navy…”

Fidel Castro attempted_assassination_of Antonio Boscara host_asserted ▶ 32:01

“fought to repel them, taking reconnaissance photos of Castro's training site in Mexico and supporting counterintelligence operations when the rebels landed into Cuba in 1956 and set up guerrilla stron…”

Antonio Boscara member_of Operation Pluto host_asserted ▶ 33:22

“1,400 other recruits were stationed there in April of 1961 when they moved to Nicaragua and launched the Bay of Pigs invasion. It failed in less than one day before Basqueiro's fighter got off the gro…”

Guillermo Tabre member_of Operation Pluto host_asserted ▶ 33:50

“They married and he found work, first flying crop dusting planes and later a pilot for tourist companies and wealthy businessmen. His Bay of Pig contacts in Miami invited him to join them for other co…”

Jorge Acosta Velasco trafficked Antonio Boscara host_asserted ▶ 34:48

“He was just a government. They put them all on their payroll. We know this by now. By then, Boscaro had divorced. He wanted to do more to help his children financially. That is why he said he welcomed…”

Libyan National Army member_of Colombia host_asserted ▶ 42:33

“allowed Trende Aragua, the prison gang, to operate under the protection of Maduro's government. I'm not sure that's true either. To grow and expand across Americas, exploiting the routes needed for th…”

FARC member_of Colombia host_asserted ▶ 48:23

“And this is where we get into them dealing with the FARC. And keep in mind, in Colombia, the FARC is the resistance to the government. They're the people who saw that their government was corrupted an…”

Nicolás Maduro funded FARC host_asserted ▶ 49:52

“All right, it goes on to say that Chavez viewed Colombia's rebels as allies, famously stating that the FARC was not the enemy of Venezuela while cracking down on right-wing paramilitary in western Ven…”

Quintero and Cariana clan trafficked Cosa Nostra host_asserted ▶ 54:35

“not only joined by mafia bonds, but also blood ties. According to the Mafia Commission, the Klan played a central role in international drug trafficking that went from Italy to Canada to Venezuela. An…”

Leonardo Cariana assassinated Salvatore Riina host_asserted ▶ 57:55

“of the Christian Democrat Party, which was the party favored by the CIA, was a witness at the marriage of Leonardo. Leonardo was murdered in 81 in front of his house in Palermo on the day of his other…”

Venezuela front_for Cosa Nostra host_asserted ▶ 1:00:25

“In Italy's major mafia trials ended in the non-convictions of most of the mafia bosses. Some of the clan went to the Italian mainland, a seashore resort near Rome. Some went to the UK. Some remained i…”

Quintero and Cariana clan trafficked Pizza Connection host_asserted ▶ 1:01:53

“almost certainly was involved in the heroin trafficking networks in the 50s. Oh, yes, they were. Their names appeared in investigations of famous cases like the French Connection and in the 70s in the…”

Quintero and Cariana clan trafficked French Connection host_asserted ▶ 1:01:53

Tommaso Buscetta exposed Quintero and Cariana clan host_asserted ▶ 1:02:52

“also known as whatever that name is, Tommaso Buscetta and Gattano Badalana Menta. All of them were acquainted to the original clan and brothers. The famous turncoat, Buscetta, told an anti-mafia judge…”

Italian Police laundered_money_for Catholic Church host_asserted ▶ 1:03:51

“when they investigated the Italian end of what was later called the pizza connection. Now, this is a complete bullshit, okay? Maybe some facets of the Italian police, but the Italian police, to includ…”

Italian Police member_of Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:03:51

Sicilian Mafia laundered_money_for Catholic Church host_asserted ▶ 1:04:22

“The Italian police was following the movements of Giuseppe, the middleman between the buyers of the Gambinos and the Bonanno crime families in New York, the Sicilian clans who organized the heroin tra…”

Giuseppe Cariana trafficked Sicilian Mafia host_asserted ▶ 1:04:22

Gaspare Mutolo trafficked Alabama Ku Klux Klan host_asserted ▶ 1:04:52

“um pentinto which was a collaborator um in 92 organized a 400 kilogram shipment of heroin to the u.s the brothers clan received half the load while gambino and the gambino family in new york took care…”

Sicilian Mafia financed_via Gaspare Mutolo host_asserted ▶ 1:04:52

Royal Canadian Mounted Police carried_out_attack Alabama Ku Klux Klan documented ▶ 1:05:44

“Royal Canadian Mounted Police and British Customs and Excise, a heroin transport was seized in London and Montreal. Subsequent investigations revealed that the Klan was picking up the heroin in Thaila…”

Alabama Ku Klux Klan trafficked Thailand documented ▶ 1:05:44

Giuseppe Cariana trafficked Pasquale Condello documented ▶ 1:06:11

“Gaspari Mutolo, who had been arrested. In 88, the Canadian police seized a 30 kilo load of heroin at a factory owned by Cafaro's brother-in-law in Windsor in Canada near the U.S. border. The same year…”

Royal Canadian Mounted Police carried_out_attack Cafaro family documented ▶ 1:06:11

Alabama Ku Klux Klan trafficked Ndrangheta host_asserted ▶ 1:06:37

“They discovered an extensive network that had been tied to set up heroin trafficking from the Far East to Europe. Yeah, because it's the CIA and MI6 and the German BND and the Italian SAFAR and all of…”

Carriana trafficked Cali Cartel host_asserted ▶ 1:07:10

“family and needed Carriana to supply them. He organized a network that smuggled 11 metric tons of cocaine to Italy in 91 through 94. That's interesting. That's while I was there. Carriana brought toge…”

Italian Police carried_out_attack Ndrangheta documented ▶ 1:07:40

“And if you look at where Calabria is, this is hilarious because I don't know if you guys can see this on the map, but my base was right over here. We were in southern Italy. I used to drive through th…”

Ndrangheta trafficked Vito Rizzuto host_asserted ▶ 1:08:40

“moved the cocaine pipeline towards Canada, where the family took care of the wholesale distribution with the consent of Vito Rizzotto, which was Montreal's Teflon Don, an Italian-Canadian crime boss. …”

Meyer Lansky laundered_money_for Vito Rizzuto host_asserted ▶ 1:14:26

“Risotto traveled regularly back and forth between Italy and Venezuela. Quintero went to see Meyer Lansky in Rome. The two men were already had met in Toronto. This time he solicited Lansky's counsel o…”

Stefano Delle Chiaie member_of Aginter Press host_asserted ▶ 1:15:33

“Lots of Venezuela drugs going on when the CIA was in control of Venezuela. All right. What's next? Okay. She then moves on to looking at Stefano Della Shea, who was a major connection to Italy, P2, Gl…”

Stefano Delle Chiaie member_of Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:15:33

Stefano Delle Chiaie member_of Ordine Nuovo host_asserted ▶ 1:18:13

“in 1958, gave his allegiance to the newly formed and more overtly Nazi and anti-Semitic Orden Nouveau. This is Operation Gladio in Italy, under the leadership of Pino Ratti. The motto of Orden Nouveau…”

Pino Rauti headed Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:18:13

Stefano Delle Chiaie recruited Thai Ministry of Interior host_asserted ▶ 1:18:42

“one that was involved in many of the bombings and stuff like that, that was blamed on the Red Brigade. So he was recruited into Secret Service work as an auxiliary agent in a crisis period of 1960s. T…”

Thai Ministry of Interior recruited Stefano Delle Chiaie host_asserted ▶ 1:19:10

“He was approached by the Interior Ministry to overtake covert operations against anti-fascist and left-wing militants. That's Gladio. It was around this time that Delachey decided to leave Orden Nouve…”

Stefano Delle Chiaie founded Avanguardia Nazionale host_asserted ▶ 1:19:10

Benito Mussolini pardoned Otto Skorzeny host_asserted ▶ 1:20:06

“This is very interesting. I definitely need to bookmark that because this gives us the overview, kind of a timeline of all of the stuff that he did. And see right here, it talks about Otto Skorzeny be…”

James Jesus Angleton recruited John McCaffrey host_asserted ▶ 1:20:35

“I don't know if he uses that word in here, but it's certainly this is the timeline. James Jesus Angleton collecting the Princess Borghese. Basically, they rescued him because he put to death. He was e…”