The Colonels Corner Cocaine Death Squads and the War on Terror Part 6

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Transcript

0:00 Good morning, Colonel. Good morning, Bridget. How are you? Wonderful. Another beautiful day in the world, right? Yes, it is. As we watch them take down the deep state. Yeah, I love the narratives that are being built. It's very, very interesting to watch this whole thing unfold. Especially with our...

0:30 Are Gladio prescription firmly affixed? Absolutely. Somehow we need to get transferred to the contact lenses as opposed to the glasses because now they're permanently affixed to our head. Right. I guess it would be kind of like having, you know, eye surgery where they... Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:58 LASIK surgery. We're done. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah. Yeah. Gladio surgery on my eyes. Okay. So let's get started. Today is a travel day. So we're just going to stick to the one chapter today. But this chapter is a fairly beefy chapter because what it does is it documents the transition from.

1:26 what the author talks about as primarily a cartel system in Colombia to actually embedding it in the infrastructure. And he does a really good job of kind of documenting how that whole process started. And he refers to it as the post-cartel system. Now, that doesn't mean the Cali cartel went away, but you're going to see how it was permanently embedded in the

1:54 country of Colombia. And this happened, this has happened all over. And I just want you guys kind of to start off with that. The countries that are involved in drug trafficking, even when substantial changes happen within the country, it doesn't mean that they stop being part of the illicit drug trafficking.

2:19 It eventually transitions because of the money that it generates into the corporate structure of the actual country, both in the government, in businesses, and for the most part throughout the citizenry, unfortunately. Okay, so he begins off talking about the time frame.

2:45 Throughout the late 70s and the 80s, the Colombian narco elite relied heavily on drug cartels and money laundering specialists to get their profits into banks. And there was a law passed in the United States in 1986 that was a U.S. Money Laundering Control Act.

3:14 Now, what that did was force changes in Colombia. The narco elite switched to contracting out their money laundering services. And that is where Panama became a vital link in this business. And it also shifted the burden, as we're going to see, on to established banks because

3:44 Keep in mind, in 1986, we're getting to the end of BCCI and the Nugent Hand Bank, who both went away by the early 90s. And again, he documents the institutionalization of drug trafficking into the broader global economy. So instead of using these CIA front banks,

4:17 For money laundering, they transitioned into existing banks. They were able to accumulate capital through ownership of legitimate enterprises, as well as attract foreign investors in those business enterprises. And if you guys recall, we saw that happening in several of the other areas because the U.S. real estate market

4:46 remained the only market in the United States where when you made cash purchases, you didn't have to show that you legitimately, through legitimate business practices, accumulated that cash. The same was true with commercial real estate, i.e. businesses. So there was investments made into potassium.

5:17 her manganate companies, transport companies, and private security firms. Again, that keeps coming back over and over again. In contrast to the conventional framework and organized crime model with a centralized hierarchy, what the Colombian drug enterprise became after the death of Pablo Escobar was sophisticated

5:47 modes of production and distribution and technology to increase efficiency. When the Medellin cartel was basically decapitated, it had little impact on the actual narco elite in Colombia. The decentralization and privatization would be key to the success of the narco economy in what the author calls the post-cartel economy.

6:14 The destruction of the Medellin cartel did not affect the collaboration among the narco elite and the sectors of the ruling class, as well as the military, particularly in the regions where the FARC contested Medellin's control. The cartel system had relied too heavily on drug lords like Pablo Escobar, and he was eliminated, so they restructured.

6:46 Now the Colombian government, with the support of the United States, took firm measures that resulted in structural changes of the entire production and distribution of drugs. In the transition, the Colombian cocaine industry was decentralized into 80 to 300 distinct private enterprises, according to varying official estimates. The restructuring did not affect cocaine exports.

7:17 but made it easier for corporations and businesses in Colombia to prosper without taking as much risk. The Colombian traffickers adopted a management strategy and moved into legal business activities, even negotiating with Mexican drug cartels to hand over parts of their distribution network to the United States. One such Mexican cartel that emerged from these arrangements is the

7:48 Genoa Montoya Organization, also known as the Norte de Valle Cartel, with which the AUC, the Cali Cartel, was affiliated. By the end of the 20th century, Colombia had become the most advanced cocaine-producing country in the Crystal Triangle. Two factors made this possible. The institutionalization of cocaine trade in Colombia.

8:17 and the Colombia proximity to neighboring crystal triangle countries, Peru and Bolivia. And then again, also Panama for the monetary piece of this. It also created transit countries, Mexico, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic. The consumer and distribution countries, the U.S. and Spain,

8:48 and Spain was considered the gateway into Europe. The Medellín cartel had attempted to establish a monopoly control over the trade without negotiating market share with other enterprises, which is why it was decapitated. The Cali cartel, on the other hand, assisted the state in their effort to eliminate the Medellín cartel leadership from the cocaine trade network, and it was left to the Cali group.

9:20 to link together the various components of the industry to a broader drug trafficking organization with opportunities to branch into other markets such as heroin and amphetamines. According to a UN report that was issued in 1994, the year after Pablo Escobar's death, this is a quote.

9:42 In spite of the rise of illicit transnational corporations in developing countries, the Cali cartel remains, in effect, the developing country's most successful transnational corporation.

10:17 The narco-economy system

10:22 involves a complex network of banks, corporations, and professionals with offices in New York, Miami, the Caribbean, and throughout Latin America. The rise of the quote-unquote legitimate transnational drug corporations coincided with the rise of a new kind of drug trafficker, the white-collar trafficker, to suit this globalization, market integration, and technology-driven innovation.

10:51 The U.S. and Colombia appeared to develop a mutual dependency on the export of cocaine and an interest in preserving the economic conditions and the status quo. The narco elite acquired continuous greater capital and assured greater economic power in these arrangements. Nevertheless, most of the profits went to the U.S. as illegal money was laundered through CIA-linked banks.

11:21 Those banks initially included BCCI and Nugent Hand, but with the elimination of those two banks, it was transferred to J.P. Morgan, Chase Manhattan, World Finance Corporation, which was still a CIA front bank, Castle Bank, which was a CIA front bank started by Paul Helliwell, Citibank, Citicorp, and the Bank of America.

11:48 The narco economy is not a product of capital flight in which capital leaves the country because the profits accumulated from the drug trade are too high and ongoing. The black market peso exchange in Colombia's narco economy assists in the elimination of the nation's trade deficit. So it became critical to Colombia's elite that this operation was maintained. Ray Kelly.

12:17 A former U.S. Customs Commissioner, and who at the time this book was written, was the current New York Police Commissioner, suggested that the underground money market, quote, is the ultimate nexus between crime and commerce, using global trade to mask global money laundering, unquote. Leading Fortune 500 companies benefited directly and indirectly in these dealings.

12:45 with U.S. corporations, and some of that was exposed. For example, one case involved Philip Morris, which was found to have laundered $40 million in Columbia black market pesos in 1995. The case was closed without any prosecution, because what happens? The CIA says, hey, it's national security. You can't do that.

13:18 Three years later, and again in 2000, Philip Morris was accused of smuggling Marlboro cigarettes into Columbia that had been purchased with black market pesos. So even American corporations are getting in on this. Another company involved in these dealings in Columbia was Bell Helicopter, which had been a contractor under Plan Columbia.

13:48 August of 2000, pandemonium officials impounded a helicopter belonging to Victor Carranza, a Colombian property owner and paramilitary leader of the death squads. The helicopter had been purchased from Bell Helicopter with the proceeds of a major cocaine and heroin operation. Only $335,000 was seized from Bell's bank account in the Chase Manhattan Bank.

14:17 The narco elite can exchange U.S. dollars for Colombian pesos, buy American goods for sale back home. According to U.S. federal officials, that was a $5 billion market per year. They can then direct billions of dollars into narco capital into legitimate commerce and trade. According to Mike Wald, who ran a consortium of law enforcement agencies

14:46 In Florida, quote, this is positive for U.S. business. There is no doubt about it. The Colombian comprador, if he pays less for his dollars, can buy more goods. This is a pretty obvious economic fact, unquote. This demonstrates how the Colombian cocaine trade is linked to the U.S. economy in very diverse ways.

15:14 and not simply limited to just money laundering activities with U.S. banks. The U.S.-Colombian mutual dependency on the cocaine market and its profits is intrinsic to the continuous operation of the cocaine trade. The post-cartel system amalgamated Colombia's narco economy and the cocaine trade with the corporate world outside of Colombia. The narco elite

15:43 Access to global markets ensured that the Colombian narco economy now intersected with global drug production and trade. The global drug trade is a self-generating engine of economic growth shaping international economies all over the world. Despite drug seizures and interdiction measures, according to a UN report, quote, drug traffickers introduce new products into an untapped market.

16:12 Buyers are found, and once users become addicted, a minimum level of demand is guaranteed. Unquote. The drug trade has been characterized by a trend towards globalization and proliferation of trafficking routes. The decentralization of the cocaine trade brought a division of labor in production and distribution from poor peasants selling coca leaf

16:40 and pays to skilled professionals working as chemists, financial advisors, lawyers, managers, security and intelligence personnel, transporters, distributors, entrepreneurs, and investors in Colombia and the U.S. who specialized in only one aspect of the cocaine industry. For example, chemical diversion, communication,

17:08 Sales, marketing, finance, shipping, aviation, information technology, and distribution all benefited. In this way, no one individual enterprise could dominate the drug trade as the cartel system had done in the past. These new methods of organization and operation concealed the economic relationship between the narco elite, the Colombian state, and U.S. corporations.

17:37 Economic operations for cocaine today are in many ways similar to other modes of commodity production, such as the manufacturing of electronic components in Asia that are then shipped off to the U.S. for the assembly line, or the way in which General Motors manufactures parts overseas and then transports them back to the U.S. and marks them made in America. Whether manufacturing cars, computers, or narcotics, these enterprises come

18:05 comprise a complex organization with many departments and occupations. So just build it in, then it's almost impossible to get rid of because too many people have vested interest in the network. In Colombia, the narco elite established their domination over the coca production process when they first emerged, but consolidating their political base in areas where drug production was concentrated.

18:34 They built a working relationship with the military in the regions of cocoa production to fight increasing influence of the FARC. This opened the door for private clandestine armies that became an integral part of the security network. This narco-military intelligence network defended the interest of the network and their organized crime contacts, ensuring ongoing production.

19:03 Many drug traffickers like Carlos Constano and Victor Carranza of Bell Helicopter Case became wealthy by initiating a narco elite with vast land holdings throughout Colombia. By the late 90s, this institutionalization process continued in other areas throughout Colombia.

19:30 In all cases of drug trafficking activity, military personnel, police officers, and local officials worked together with narco-military networks and were even listed on the payrolls of many businesses. A Human Rights Watch report in 2001 revealed the payroll was based on rank. A captain received between $2,000 and $3,000 a month, a major $2,500 a month,

19:59 and a lieutenant approximately 1,500 a month. The AUC, again, that's the Cali cartel alone, had approximately 8,000 soldiers in the 1990s, soaring to at least 30,000 in the mid-2000s. The 30 aircraft, 11 of which was Cessnas, four shipping planes, 14 military helicopters, including Black Hawk,

20:30 one state-of-the-art military helicopter for emergency operations, and like hundreds of speedboats. The AUC consists largely of mercenaries with military backgrounds or experience, with the remainder trained by the U.S., Britain, and Israel. One of the largest cocaine processing laboratory complexes was near Porta Piaca as...

21:02 an AUC base and special handling zone along a river with a capacity to produce eight tons of cocaine per month. Eight tons of cocaine per month. And that's one location. And keep in mind, they've now distributed this all over Colombia. These locations are everywhere.

21:25 In 1999, the Colombian newspaper estimated that the cost of constructing this plant was approximately $5 million, with the potential to employ well over 100 workers. The AUC controls the strategic drug trafficking routes from that location and into the pandemonium border along the Gulf of Uraba.

21:52 It is estimated that the AUC's annual net income, as cocaine is not taxed because it's covert funding, from protecting economic operations is $75 million per year. The Narco Military Network operates cocaine processing plants throughout the country and is aided by the narco elite investments in the properties, ranches, and resorts in those areas.

22:26 Real estate has become an effective method of circulating drug money within the narco economy. 4.4 million hecaters with an estimated value of $2.4 billion have been purchased by the narco elite, which throughout the narco cartel system period up until the new millennium.

22:52 earned approximately $23 billion in cocaine profits. In 2003, the narco elite had acquired approximately 18 million hecaters for coca cultivation. The AUC, and again, now I have to remind everybody, this land is being taken by peasants through terrorism.

23:21 They will go in and burn down entire villages because most of this land was under the FARC protection. And they just keep encroaching and pushing the FARC farther and farther away through the training of those 30,000 paramilitary people. And that's consistent with the number that Bridget and I found of the 20,000.

23:51 paramilitary that are available and on call to NATO and the UN to put paramilitary assets anywhere in the world. We are building an international army covertly with U.S. taxpayer dollars through U.S. South Com all under the guise of fighting drug trafficking.

24:18 and eliminating the FARC, which is protecting the peasants in Colombia. And that production gave us train killers that they can now covertly use all over the world. And that dovetails right into the book we just finished about the private military contractors, because what you find throughout the world is Colombian...

24:45 paramilitary people being hired by those companies that we trained aren't tax dollars. We found them in Iraq, Afghanistan. They're in Ukraine right now. They're all over. The AUC was instrumental to trafficking of cocaine, controlling the coastal region where the cocaine is exported.

25:09 Jeff Bruner, a DEA supervisor in Colombia in 2004, claimed traditional drug lords still existed, but they had to work under the AUC decentralized process if they wanted to ship their drugs to the U.S., Europe, or Africa. The DEA estimated that Colombia's net cocoa cultivation more than tripled from 50,000

25:37 hecaters of production in 1995 to 170,000 in 2001. Keep in mind, billions of our dollars are going down there, and the net result is the increase in production of cocaine, not the decrease. In 1995, Columbia produced only 25% of the world's cocaine-based product.

26:07 Colombian traffickers were dependent upon Peruvian and Bolivian sources of the coca leaf. In 2001, Colombians' land total area under coca cultivation was three times the size of that used to grow the combined Peru-Bolivia crop. In terms of potential cocaine-based exports, Colombia's production increased 217%.

26:40 They went from 230 metric tons in 1995 to 730 metric tons by 2001. Again, the entire time we're pouring billions of dollars. Columbia accounted for 76% of the world's cocaine production by 2001. So they grew from 25 to 70.

27:10 That marked a turning point for Colombians' cocaine production as traffickers switched to relying more on Colombia rather than Peruvian or Bolivian sources for their cocaine-based supply. And of course, we know during this time, Evo Morales comes to power in Bolivia and cuts them off completely. Technology developments in communication, finance, transportation, and distribution have meant

27:36 that ramifications of Colombia's cocaine industry extended well beyond the borders of Colombia. The lucrative and dynamic cocaine industry has not merely provided the U.S. with a constant supply of cocaine, but it has presented profit-making opportunities for American banks, corporations, and investors through money laundering, currency exchange, and more legitimate activities.

28:01 In 1994, discovery of a computer owned by a member of the Cali cartel offered clues on the complexity of the system. It illustrated technological sophistication of the narco economy. The computer was a $1.5 million IBM mainframe. And again, we found IBM throughout Latin America as part of Operation Condor. That was the whole...

28:29 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Network. That was all IBM computers as well. This computer was networked with a half a dozen terminals and monitors and six technicians overseeing its operation. The cartel had assembled a database that contained both the office and residential telephone numbers of U.S. diplomats and agents based in Columbia, along with an entire call log.

28:59 for the phone company in Cali. Custom written data mining software cross-referenced Cali's phone exchange traffic with phone numbers of American personnel, Colombian intelligence, law enforcement, and others. The computer was seized and taken back to the United States for a forensic examination by the DEA, which never released the results because it would have implicated

29:30 the entire U.S. network. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia have not commented on it. The DEA in Washington does not confirm or deny the incident. The Colombian government denies any knowledge that the computer existed. It was set up by the intelligence apparatus that the CIA had set up in Colombia.

29:58 The Colombian government had established a toll-free hotline for information about Cali cartel leaders, but a former high-ranking DEA official said, quote, all of these anonymous callers were immediately identified and they were killed, unquote. So they were using the hotline for anyone to call in to complain about drug trafficking, and then they would sick an assassin team to eliminate the person.

30:30 This included informants within the Cali cartel. They were using this system just like they used the computer systems throughout Operation Condor to eliminate anyone who became a thorn in their side. Another high-level DEA official said, quote, it is very reasonable to assume that people were killed as a result of this capacity. Potential sources of information were compromised by the system, unquote.

31:01 Advanced communication encryption technology are used in drug-related economic operations, you know, like crypto AG. The internet is used to camouflage the movement of illegal money through international financial markets. Traffickers track radar sweeps of drug surveillance planes and map out gaps in coverage to avoid detection. Fleets of submarines, mini subs, and semi-submersibles

31:30 were also used to transport drugs, often to cargo ships that were labeled as hazardous waste. Inside, they would put bales of cocaine that could be concealed. Much of the high technology equipment used in finance, communication, transportation, and distribution is American-made, and many of the technicians were trained inside the United States.

32:03 In 2003, a former Colombian Army General, Gabriel Ramon Diaz, reported that DEA and Colombian police agents were involved in the murders of two informants in a case involving two tons of cocaine. A U.S. Embassy spokesperson immediately issued a statement, quote, the DEA is in no way involved in illegal activities, unquote. Diaz, who had been blamed,

32:31 but not charged for the disappearance of the cocaine shipment was removed from his post by President Uribe. According to the Miami Herald, which was infiltrated with CIA as well, quote, Diaz has claimed that he delivered to a DEA office at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota three informants who had approached him with information about local drug trafficking cartel.

32:59 Based on the informant's tips, Colombian police intercepted a truck in August of 2002 containing two tons of cocaine, but the shipment, with a straight value of $40 million, was returned to the smugglers. Two of the informants were assassinated, which obviously implicates the U.S. Embassy. Seven police officers were arrested in relationship to the case.

33:27 and 18 people were fired in the wake of the ensuing scandal. However, the case was dismissed. The shared use of intelligence systems technology may be seen as evidence of a broader narco-military network comprising the police, military intelligence, and traffickers. According to a top...

33:53 Special Operations Commander in 2001, a Bell helicopter used for the government's cocoa fumigation program was also used by members of the Hinoa Montoya cocaine trafficking organization for an attempted assassination. They sought to target an imprisoned rival trafficker using the helicopter to drop a bomb on the jail.

34:23 The bomb fell to explode, so he didn't die, but they definitely tried to kill him. The profitability of the $80 billion per year cocaine trade poses challenges. The internet has concealed the source of such...

34:45 Large sums of illegal money as well as presented opportunities for the laundering of drug profits through online investments in legitimate corporations. According to an unnamed veteran Treasury Department investigator, password-protected websites are used to update daily inventory of U.S. currency available from drug distributors across America.

35:10 In business-to-business exchanges, the website allows stockbrokers to bid on black market funds for traffickers who want to convert the dollars to Colombian pesos for use in their operation at home. A trafficker can bid on different rates. For instance, what he can sell for $1 million in cash in Miami is the equivalent of approximately 800,000 Colombian pesos.

35:40 The annual turnover from this online finance was estimated to be $3 billion. So everybody's in on it. Information technology specialists from legitimate local businesses are also involved in providing technology support to Colombia's traffickers and cocaine profiteers. A number of retired electronic experts with experience in military technology and special operations units in the U.S., Israel, and Britain

36:10 have been given contracts in Colombia. At the same time, the narco elite has members of their own family attending U.S. engineering and aeronautical schools. Most of the technology used directly or indirectly in the cocaine trade comes from American multinational companies like IBM, Motorola, Cisco Systems, and front companies owned by traffickers.

36:38 are used to purchase equipment from sales offices in Colombia or through a series of intermediary operating in the United States. The network command center of the AUC-linked Hinoa Montoya organization was hidden in a Bogota warehouse with up to 20 computers networked with servers and relatively small mainframe computers.

37:06 The command center of that particular enterprise was outfitted with retractable German-made Rode and Swartz transmission antennas approximately 40 feet high. So, obviously, if you have a major nerve center like that, having a bunch of antennas sticking out of your building would have been a dead giveaway, so they used retractable ones. Seized invoices and letters show that

37:37 The organization had bought $100,000 of Motorola gear, 12 base stations, 16 mobile stations installed in trucks and cars, 50 radio phones, and eight repeaters that boosted radio signals over long distances. The range of Columbia's network extends across the Caribbean and into the upper half, half of South America.

38:05 According to one intelligence official, this network transmitted 1,000 messages per day, and not one of them was ever intercepted by U.S. spy planes. When messages are typed into computers, they create a digital stream that is encrypted and fed through a converter that

38:30 parcels the data out to high frequencies. Digital communications over a radio network can be put into code much more easily than voice transmissions and are far more difficult to intercept or decipher. Colombian intelligence officials say the communications was never intercepted. Did they not try? By sea or air, fleet and vessels today still need to dodge surveillance.

39:00 such as the P-3 Orion aircraft used by U.S. Customs. Bribing officials and drawing on an elaborate counterintelligence database seem to be outdated. According to an anonymous retired narcotics operative in U.S. Army's Southern Command, SALCOM,

39:21 Colombian pilots routinely map the radar coverage of U.S. biplanes by putting fuzz buster radar detectors in their airplane cockpits and logging the hits. The traffickers use every piece of data to build a picture of the radar signatures, much like a jigsaw puzzle, to avoid detection. They continually upgrade the technology based on the latest advancements in common encryption gear bought in the United States.

39:50 In addition to surveillance and encryption technology, submarines have been used by drug trafficking operations for at least two decades. The Cali cartel purchased a Soviet Tango-class diesel submarine in 1990. Italian engineers, after overseeing the construction of the Colombian Navy's fleet Commando submarines, helped to build submarines for use in trafficking cocaine. But again, we have...

40:20 aircraft that can detect these submarines. We're seeing that played out today. Colombia has been experiencing a civil war for more than half a century. What was begun as a mission of the Colombian army backed by the United States to attack and destroy peasant-based operations and communities evolved into a high-intensity conflict. The principal forces in this conflict

40:48 are between the FARC and the Colombian state, and the Colombian state, of course, is backed by the U.S. Many analysts from a variety of disciplines contend that the FARC deserves serious examination as a powerful political and military force in Colombia. The FARC, Latin America's largest and long-running insurgency since the Mexican Revolution, aims to overthrow the Colombian government because they know it's corrupt.

41:17 Colombia's central role in the cocaine trade has elevated a decades-old civil conflict to a war. Throughout Colombia's civil war, more than half of the Colombian territory has been contested by the FARC. Apart from the common source of funds collected by this group, which includes membership fees, donations,

41:40 the sale of music, art, and literature films produced by the organization. The FARC funds its military wing through extortion of the Colombian narco elite. They kidnap members of the Colombian government for ransom or prisoner exchanges, bank robberies, especially ones they know are dealing in the illicit funds, because who's going to internationally investigate a money laundering operation?

42:09 that they're all involved in. Given the sophistication and secrecy involved in the political economy of cocaine, the FARC alleged involvement in drug trafficking has been an intensely debated political issue. The claim of extensive FARC involvement has been rejected by a number of authoritative sources. For example, a report produced by the Council on Hemispheric

42:37 Affairs found no evidence of FARC involvement in drug trafficking, but its main finding pointed to an extensive drug smuggling into the U.S. by the paramilitary groups in collaboration with wealthy drug barons, the military, key financial figures, and senior government bureaucrats. Not the FARC. According to the DEA, which played at least a...

43:05 complicit, if not compliant, role with the CIA in drug trafficking during the cocaine decade, FARC involvement in the drug trade mainly involved the taxation of the coca leaf, which does not involve any cocaine manufacturing, the trafficking of cocaine, or the shipment transportation arm of the cocaine. Congressional testimony by James Milford

43:36 A former deputy administrator of the DEA indicates that there is little to support the drug trafficking claims about the FARC. Quote, the FARC controls certain areas of Columbia, and the FARC in those regions generate revenue by taxing local drug-related activities. And he's talking about the growing of the coca leaf. Unquote. This position is confirmed.

44:06 by Klaus Nyholm, the director of the UN Drug Control Program, which has agents throughout the drug-producing region. He argues that local FARC fronts are quite autonomous, and in some areas, they're not involved at all in the coca production. In the other areas, they actually tell the farmers not to grow coca. Ricardo Vargas

44:36 of the Transnational Institute, an independent research center that specializes in drug issues in Colombia, describes the role of the FARC as primarily focused on taxation of illicit crops. And of course, coca production was not considered an illicit crop. He also said that the guerrillas have long called for a development plan for the peasants that would allow

45:02 eradication of coca on the basis of alternative crops. The punitive approach of the U.S. to the problem of the drug industry in Latin America has fostered a new form of cultural imperialism on the continent. Despite recognition of the significant cultural, historical and economic differences between the production of coca

45:25 as opposed to cocaine, much of the literature and popular commentary on the FARC continues to focus upon a group's alleged drug trafficking and terrorism. Those allegations underpin the U.S. role in contemporary Colombia, and in the context of the war on drugs and the war on terror, the U.S. has backed the Colombian state in the war against the FARC. In other words,

45:50 All of our money goes to the production of cocaine, not the elimination of it, which was primarily represented by the FARC. And this is consistent with everything that we've found. All of the resistance efforts throughout all of these contested areas, whether it was Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Nicaragua, whatever it is, Guatemala, we are on the wrong side of every single one of them.

46:18 That's basically what it boils down to. Okay. The Colombian narco elite at the profit end of the cocaine commodity chain is also determined to defend its political and economic interests through their insurgency strategy, which involves the use of paramilitary organizations. The existence of the FARC has complicated and in some cases constrained production of coca in rural areas of Colombia.

46:53 For the FARC campesinos, their mantra is not to get rich from coca. The narco elite view the FARC as an obstacle to their source of wealth and, more critically, a threat to their existence as a class. In contrast to Central American peace accords of the 1980s, the demobilized guerrilla movements, the FARC,

47:22 continues to wage a struggle with the support of the poor peasantry and relies on the legitimate production of coca for their substance. If the FARC did not exist, the potential for coca exploitation of cocaine production would be unbounded. The FARC maintains the only armed struggle to overthrow Colombian narco state.

47:50 and defeat U.S. imperialism. While the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union were widely interpreted as the death of communism, these events did not weaken any of the resolve and in many cases was argued had nothing to do with the FARC in Colombia at all. One of the commandants of the FARC, Manuel Maralanda Velez, criticized the Soviet

48:21 leadership routinely. But that's not convenient to our argument here because we want to call them communist. In spite of the narco elite's sophisticated cocaine production and distribution system, the growing of the fundamental ingredient, the coca leaf, has been complicated by the presence of the FARC in the Colombian countryside. Indeed, the FARC is considered an intractable problem for the Colombian state and economy.

48:53 fortified by the cocaine industry and its profits. The FARC struggle is waged in an unwelcoming terrain of mountains and jungle that overlooks Colombia in its entirety, favoring the FARC. Figures that indicate the size of FARC-controlled territory are increasingly outdated and unreliable. In the late 1990s, the insurgency that they deemed the FARC was dominated

49:21 was the dominant political force in a thousand municipalities across Colombia, which included rural areas without any coca cultivation at all. The export of cocaine is worth about, and again, it's covert, so who knows what the total, but it was estimated as high as $25 billion a year back then, according to estimates. One of the mayors downplayed the role of coca.

49:50 In the insurgency, quote, the guerrillas will be just as strong without coca. They can increase kidnapping and extortion to support themselves. They're powerful in many parts of the country that don't have any coca, unquote. Evidence shows the FARC taxes only six tenths of a percent of peasants who have no choice but to grow the coca to live.

50:15 Another source estimates that no more than 2.5% of all cocoa production in the country is indirectly connected to the FARC. The taxation system introduced by the FARC not only reduces the profits of the narco elite, but has made cocoa cultivation a focal point of conflict between the FARC and the Colombian state. Throughout the cocaine decade,

50:42 Members of the narco elite, the cartels, the high-ranking military officers, and the paramilitary leaders would take the land closest to the controlled FARC to drive them off and kill their support base. This insurgency strategy has been contested by the state. When territory is captured by FARC insurgents, the narco elite is driven out, and the Colombian land and resources

51:12 are used for the peasants. By depicting the FARC as a major drug trafficking organization, the U.S. and Colombia capitalized on the conflict involving cocaine production between rebel-held zones and the rest of Colombia, where coca was also cultivated in the hopes it will corrupt the insurgency. Yet, if the FARC dominated the multi-billion dollar cocaine trade,

51:38 In any way, it could not be in conflict with needed contacts within the Colombian establishment or the U.S. Donnie Marshall, the head of the DEA under George W. Bush, presented the agency's view on the role of cocaine in the conflict, and this is a direct quote. The most recent DEA reporting indicates that some FARC units in southern Colombia are indeed involved in drug trafficking activities.

52:06 such as controlling local cocaine-based markets. Some insurgent units have assisted drug trafficking groups in transporting and storing cocaine and marijuana in Colombia. In particular, some insurgent units protect clandestine airstrips in southern Colombia. However, despite the fact that uncooperated information from other law enforcement agencies

52:32 does indicate a nexus between certain traffickers and the FARC. Uncooperated, meaning it's a complete lie. There is no evidence that any FARC or ELN units have established international transportation, wholesale distribution, or drug money laundering networks in the US or Europe. In other words, we think they are, but we have no evidence of it. The eventual domination of COCA in the much

53:04 and much of rural Colombia is part of the FARC's resistance to U.S. imperialism. Colombia's cocaine decade coincided with a period of intensified political activity on behalf of the U.S. via MAS, which was the paramilitary narco-state creation along with the CIA. This political activity involved the assassination of 5,000 activists and leaders.

53:33 including two presidential candidates, when the Union patriots and sectors of the Colombian left signed a peace pact with the government to engage in electoral politics. So this was a ploy to get the people to participate in politics so they could kill them. That's the Reader's Digest version. The fart contends that...

53:59 Only the legalization of drug consumption and a plan to eradicate and develop alternative crops can eliminate the drug trade. So that's the real reason why they hate the FARC. In response to a deepening civil war, the FARC expanded and reorganized their own forces. A military academy was established to prepare fighters with a chain of command comparable to a regular army. The FARC army, complete with armament,

54:28 Command and Control and Communication Equipment moved its zone of operation closer to middle-sized cities in areas of natural resources like oil, gold, coal, and emeralds. By the new millennium, the FARC had 18,000 fighters on 60 fronts and had built support bases in barrios across the country that brought the total to at least 35,000.

54:53 The number of militant supporters in Bogota alone were estimated between 2,200 and between 4,000 and 6,000 nationwide. At its peak from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, FARC numbered between 40,000 and 50,000 fighters. The stated objective of the FARC was to create a strong economic infrastructure to wage war against the narco state.

55:24 The cocoa plantations in rebel-held territories became the source of economic survival for the peasants. Support for the FARC grew as the guerrilla protection for the peasants who were trying to earn a living. Cocoa leaf sold at an average of $1.50 per kilogram, which was far more than coffee at the time.

55:58 Columbia's traditional agricultural export, which was coffee, was dwarfed by the size of the demand for coca leaves. The FARC forced drug merchants and drug traffickers to pay peasants and rural laborers the estimated market price of their leaf. Law 002 was created by the FARC to force any Colombian with more than $1 million to hand over 10% of their income.

56:28 Targeting the cocaine trade assisted the FARC to finance their war. So there's, let's see, there's quite a bit more to this, but I think you guys understand where we're going with this. There's a lot more details to this, and it involved the use of Klan...

57:01 Playing Columbia, that kind of was the impetus to begin the fight against the FARC in a more legitimate way because they were making quite a bit of military success in their fight against the narco state. And that scared the hell out of everybody dependent on this international narco trade.

57:27 So the next chapter gets into playing Columbia. So this is a good place to stop. But understanding the underpinnings and the motivation of both. So you have literally the entire world against the FARC in Columbia. Because I described to you at the beginning the inner working relationships of the banks, corporations, and...

57:56 the narco state of Colombia and the entire apparatus of the U.S. government coalescing. And that doesn't even describe the inner workings of Europe and their dependency on cocaine being imported through Spain into Europe. So you literally have the complete forces of this entire global cocaine trade that is going to be directed.

58:26 against the FARC. They commercialized the drug trade and anytime they got their caught doing it, they just blamed it on the FARC. Yes. And when legitimate regulators or investigators found the truth about what was really happening, no charges. And I find it fascinating that

59:01 They have this entire infrastructure set up in Colombia, and somehow the CIA missed it. The DEA missed it. All of the military resources that were deployed to Colombia missed it. Or they didn't miss it. They hid it. You're right. They just looked the other way. And not even that, really. They tried to distract from it.

59:32 Wouldn't you agree? 100%. That was the beauty of having the FARC. Right. And if the FARC wasn't there, they would have just created another one. I mean, right. They needed a boogeyman to blame everything on. Patterns, patterns, patterns, as you always say. Right. Oh, my God. Playbook. They need a new playbook. Correct. So anyway, let's say USR 71.

1:00:10 Good morning, Carl, and good morning, everyone who's attending our spaces today. I know we're all going through withdrawals, Carl, but it is what it is. And thank those on Rumble as well. I'm looking at the fact that we're talking about the financial structure also about what went on and how we got around or how they got around.

1:00:41 All of it to make it legitimate and pull all of these other places, all of these other businesses, all of these other banks into this whole deal on money laundering. And my first thought when we were talking about land was all the land acquisition at this point that's taken place and how that money may well be laundered.

1:01:11 in what's going on with the drug trade. So I'm sure Warhamster would have a lot more to say about that than myself, but something that I got tumbling in my head at the moment. Thank you, Colonel. So, and just keep in mind that this big transition happened in the early 90s.

1:01:36 Right. They're transferring this entire cartel into a business structure. And it's not coincidental that we took out Noriega in 1989. Just keep that in the back of your mind. But SR-71, can you talk to me a minute about the whole computer system? Do you think that it is possible?

1:02:05 that they have this huge elaborate computer network and at no time was any white hat hacking into this computer system and exposing it. If we actually were serious about taking out a narco state, do you think it's possible that the people in Colombia were so brilliant?

1:02:33 that they evaded all NSA, all CIA, all DIA capability to expose that network. No, they didn't avoid any of that. They worked in tandem with them. There's no doubt in my mind. If I look at today's technology and where we're at concerning encryption and communications specifically.

1:03:06 There's no way we didn't know what was being communicated when, where, how, and what. As far as being able to hide their operations from a technological standpoint, it's quite easy to figure out where certain data installations are at, why they're there, as a matter of fact.

1:03:36 Well, we're talking about IBM and we're talking about other major components. These are not something that you can just go buy off the street, not the common man. We're talking millions of dollars invested in technology. Just a retractable antenna should tell you a lot. So let me ask you this. If McAfee can...

1:04:05 wire computers, give them to secretaries in the government and extract data from them. There's absolutely zero possibility that all of that equipment came from the United States and did not have backdoors to it. Every single technology that is supplied to a country has intelligence backdoors to them.

1:04:34 If you think that the CIA is going to outsource drug production to Colombia and not keep tabs on them, you don't live in the real world. There is no way that that entire computer system, because all of the components of it came from the United States, there's no way that they trust anyone in their drug network.

1:04:58 There's no way that they did not have backdoor capability to every single piece of that equipment. No way. Well, Colonel, even when you talk about IBM, IBM is supposedly limited. You went away, SR-71. False. It gets out to the rest of the world regardless.

1:05:29 When you look at what's really going on in the computer world and how all of this transpires, this is part of the reason you can't just wipe the internet clean. Because if you did that, everybody loses. And that's not what everybody wants. They want specific entities to lose. And they can't target specific entities and they've tried. That's...

1:05:58 That's the worst part of all of this. This is why a lot of this is coming to light. From IBM's perspective and the code that's been built by IBM, you also have to take into consideration it's just not U.S. employees that work on that code. Yeah. Okay? It's people from India. It's people from China. It's people from Argentina. It's all over the world.

1:06:28 Even the Polish get into it, and the French, you name it. They develop code as well as the UK does. It runs on these large mainframes. So there's no way that somebody's going to say, yep, this is totally secure, and you're not ever going to get into it, and this, that, and the other. The only way that's possible is in a closed network and a closed confinement. And if you do that,

1:06:58 You can't do any transactions other than internal. Correct. So you're stuck. Let's put it that way. Yeah. Illini, go ahead. Colonel, I'll push back a little bit. And SR-71 is probably going to weigh in and tell me why I'm wrong on this. But in the early 90s, you know, I'm not 100% sure that, you know, like.

1:07:26 A lot of us didn't get the internet until the mid to late 90s. And if you start to make that assumption, then you're starting to think about a network in Colombia is probably going to be a relatively close network. It's probably going to be air-gapped. It's going to have some of the inherent safety.

1:07:52 of you know a a system from you know the 70s 80s or 90s yeah it's it's it's a mainframe yeah there's there's networking cables running off to the terminals but you know are you really going to be able to connect all the way to washington dc using all these different protocols and and using all these different you know intervening networks without necessarily having

1:08:19 You know, what is a TCP IP protocol? And, you know, I'm not even sure there's IP addresses involved yet. All being able to talk to each other. I'm not talking about the Internet. I'm talking about just like with crypto AG, where they built in back doors. So they tapped into all communications from country state departments to their embassies. That's what I'm talking about.

1:08:44 There's not any technology that is sold to countries that the U.S. wants to control that does not have capability for them to control that country. And Crypto AG was set up in the 40s, and they were able to tap into everything. And that's my point.

1:09:09 This was a network that included the CIA, included the DEA, included the U.S. Embassy in Colombia. So even if it's a Colombian-only network, there were people in the U.S. government. They are not ever, like I said, Colombia ends up being 80%. Some people say 75%, as this author said.

1:09:36 in control of the global cocaine network. The CIA is dependent on this stream of money for covert operations. They are not going to give them hardened communication equipment, computer equipment, without the ability to check on them. That would be outside of any of the last three years worth of research that we have done. It has never happened.

1:10:06 I agree with you and I agree with your model. But the only thing is, I'm hard pressed to say that they could run this whole thing out of Washington, D.C. in the 1980s or the early 90s. Oh, I don't think they ran it out of Washington, D.C. That's the reason why we had an embassy. That's why we had so many CIA down there. That's why we had Southcom down there. That's why we had the DEA down there. I don't think it was ran out of Washington, D.C.

1:10:34 I agree with you there. I'll jump in here real quick, please. In the 70s and late 70s, early 80s, throughout the end of the 80s, the Marine Corps was already transmitting data across every installation the Marine Corps had. And I know this because I worked on it. So you're applying a civilian...

1:11:06 technology capability to not a civilian operation. They stood up Pine Gap in Australia to monitor global transportation and with an intelligence capability of tracking systems in 1962. So the technology that you got in the late 90s, the military had 20 years before that. That's a fair point. I'm just saying that if they're receiving civilian technology,

1:11:39 It's going to, unless there's other stuff that's installed in there that the customers don't know about, it's going to be relatively air-gapped. All right. No, that's a great point, Illini. They're not necessarily buying civilian technology. That's my point. The military contracted with IBM in the 60s to provide this technology to the military.

1:12:08 Now, if they're building a network to control the global trade, do you think that the people that set up these contracts with IBM is buying off the shelf technology? They are not. The author talks about the fact that this was, you know, like military grade encryption material or computer systems that they were selling. So what I what I would assume.

1:12:37 is, and again, I don't have a document, but what I would assume is just like with Crypto AG, remember they made two types of equipment. They made equipment for their allies that didn't have a backdoor and they made equipment for the people they wanted to spy on with a backdoor. And so IBM has a multitude of different mainframe

1:13:07 computer systems, some of which is supplied to the military, which a lot sooner than it's ever, you know, that's what Skunk Works at Lockheed was all about. They dealt in an entire different industry of classified programs selling that material to the military in the United States and any military the United States wanted to share that technology with.

1:13:32 It would be my assumption that if the CIA is in control of this, that they have their own contract with IBM that either beats or is equivalent to the military-grade equipment that the military had 20 years before civilians had it. And those are the components that they are selling to their satellite narco states like Colombia.

1:13:58 So that they can monitor them. Again, they're never going to invest in computer systems they don't control. We saw that with Crypto AG and Operation Condor. We saw that with the computer system they set up in Vietnam to run the Phoenix program. Those were all computer systems built by IBM and controlled by the CIA. Good point. I'll take that a little further and say it's not just IBM.

1:14:29 Back then it was IBM, it was Amdahl, it was NEC, it was Gray. It was all of them. Honeywell, all of them. You're right. They all had secret programs with the military and the CIA. So that's the only thing that I would point out. If that happened, it would be an anomaly to our patterns. And I don't believe the CIA deals in anomalies.

1:15:05 Especially when you're talking about upwards of $100 billion a year market. But that's a good point. And it really does show, Alina, I thank you again for bringing that up. It really does show the difference of how people...

1:15:35 The normal Americans view this because that would be the exact response that 99 percent or whatever the equivalent is between the military and civilian population of the United States. That's exactly the takeaway. Well, they couldn't possibly have done that because we didn't have that technology. When, in fact, it has been well established that in the early 1960s.

1:16:01 we had the ability to track everything with the standup of Pine Gap. I think it went operational like in 1965, they began construction in 62. And again, we're talking about surveillance. And the fact that you, the ability to track aircraft, to track shipping, to track all of that stuff, that's exactly what Pine Gap was doing.

1:16:28 And then again, do you know how many ships and aircraft have to take off out of Panama to go to Spain and the United States through, I think he mentioned, Panama, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica? Not the land routes. I'm not even counting them. But for a country the size of Colombia, if you took an equivalent third world country,

1:16:57 Compare, pick a year, pick 1980. If I was to use the statistics of transportation, of the number of ships going into Columbia's ports and out of Columbia ports, and the number of aircraft landing in Columbia and taking off out of Columbia, I'm not even counting the vehicles.

1:17:23 If I was to take that type of transportation activity and superimpose that on another equivalent size population-wise of a country, what would those numbers look like? And again, from a military intelligence standpoint, to me, when you're dealing in $100 billion worth of transportation of a product out of a location,

1:17:53 There's no freaking way that a military analyst looking at those, and we look at it all the time, you could not have missed it. Fair point. You'll have to probably deal with a red herring or two around the Darien Gap. But I think you can probably win that argument. Again, I'm not talking about the land transportation. Because during the initial phases of this cartel development,

1:18:26 They didn't bother with Mexico. They didn't need to. But you're right. And again, we got satellites everywhere. I understood. Pre pre breakup of this cartel where they started using Mexico as a land route. There was a period of time when they didn't need to do that because the scrutiny was not as high. But again.

1:18:57 I find it almost impossible to believe that a normal mid-level military analyst, if they were allowed to look at that, would have missed it. But you're absolutely right. After the attention...

1:19:16 of the drug trafficking in the mid-1970s exposure, especially after they got rid of Noriega in 89, there was a complete shift from kind of all hands on deck method where the transportation routes through Mexico became a necessity to get the drugs up here as well. So that is a fair point.

1:19:51 Anyway, I guess the whole moral of this story is that the FARC isn't who we were told it was. And there's no freaking way.

1:20:02 that the powers to be in the United States didn't know this entire operation was going on, while they're sinking billions of our dollars into Colombia to do this quote-unquote war on drugs, when in fact it was a war to build up a paramilitary capability in Colombia and increase the drug trade. Alain, I go ahead. I had one other thought that's still on the subject of Latin American drug trafficking.

1:20:28 But it takes us away from a little bit, but back to Barry Seale. I don't know if you want to go there yet. Go there. All right. I'm not sure if you saw. I think you liked one of my responses to this post about a David Goyet article from the mid-1990s.

1:20:54 about this Air Force controller who got started in Vietnam and may have been involved in some of the incursions into Laos and Cambodia with what he called this operation called Red Rock. But there's a David Goyette article from the 1990s where he's talking about stuff, and he's implicating some of the same people we've seen come up before, including Kissinger and Haig.

1:21:24 He claims that Haig actually came over to Vietnam and briefed them in January of 1971, which I've been able to confirm. It's not information the State Department is excited to share with people about, but the information is out there that Haig was working on this.

1:21:50 You know, at the time, covert operation and briefing people in South Vietnam in 1971 about incursions outside of South Vietnam. And this guy named Gene Tatham talks about, again, Kissinger, Haig, Felix Rodriguez. He implicates.

1:22:18 He implicates, you know, obviously Barry Seale gives him allegedly this list that implicates everybody from Bill Barr to Bill Clinton to Oliver North and all those guys. And he's actually in MENA, Arkansas, meeting, you know, with Clinton on the tarmac is his claim. And he starts to make that claim back in the early 90s.

1:22:47 The mid-90s. So it's after the Terry Reid book comes out, but it's before Bill Barr really becomes topical. So it's probably worth a look, and it might be... I guess the one thing that frustrates me is the Terry Reid book had come out first. So he had a chance to read that. But...

1:23:16 You know, he does produce these documents from the 1980s showing, you know, from Guatemala, which he says, you know, show that he was, you know, flying these flights, you know, to the Contras. So it could be a little bit of additional corroboration of what may have really been going on back then in Arkansas and backing up Barry Seale's story.

1:23:45 And kind of undermining the government's narrative that, yeah, Barry Steele was a CIA contractor. Yeah, we think we can prove that Barry Steele was trafficking drugs. But this had nothing to do with the CIA. We didn't know about the drug trafficking when clearly I think there's a lot of evidence out there showing that they did. Yeah, well.

1:24:15 Again, it gets at some point laughable where you have, you know, dating back to the 40s with the movement of Chiang Kai-shek around by the CIA and the CIA in Afghanistan.

1:24:34 The CIA in Afghanistan, number two, when the Taliban had virtually eliminated the opium production. And that's not even considering the Latin American and their involvement there in the overthrow of governments and the increase of the production of coca. At some point, the accumulation of the evidence.

1:25:04 has to overshadow the fact, if you look at the results, it's, what do they refer to it as? Circumstantial evidence that regardless of what they say, the result of their involvement every single time was the exact opposite of what we were told they were doing. So at some point, it becomes improbable.

1:25:33 And this is kind of what I've got to at the end of the day with all of this. Three years worth of research. They're either the most... It's not ignorant. They're either the most retarded group of clowns ever assembled. They're so incompetent that they no longer justify us spending another penny of our hard-earned money or they're criminals. There is literally...

1:26:06 No room for a middle ground on that. They either missed every single important terrorist event, every single massive drug operation, while they were in the middle of it, by the way, they were in every single location of the massive explosion of drug trafficking. So they either missed everything, so they don't justify a penny, or

1:26:36 They orchestrated the entire thing. And either way, at the end of the day, you can make either one of those arguments. They still need to be destroyed. I believe inept was the word you were looking for. Colonel, you haven't even gotten to Lucky Luciano or the Italian elections or Cuba or all of that stuff and the CIA's affiliation with the mafia. Patrice Lumumba.

1:27:06 You know, I think about the drug piece of it. I'm not talking about all we got so much crap here. It's not even funny, but I'm just talking about the drug part of it. So they're either behind it or they miss the entire thing. And either way is not acceptable. I saw Kareem Patel. He's he's Shiva Analytics. Raise his hand a moment ago. I don't know if he wants to. He would be an interesting comment, probably.

1:27:37 Go ahead. Okay. You're making a lot of good points, so I'm just going to add to some of what you're stating, ma'am. We did, obviously, you mentioned Noriega's time, right? There was a different purpose there. They've even made some pretty interesting movies, right, pertaining to some of what we're talking about. You're talking about the signals intelligence cooperation with Pine Gap, right, with Australia. Yep. You have that. You have the Brits involved there as well a little bit. Yep.

1:28:07 With the amount that we do spend, ma'am, and the resources that we have, there's a company called Maxar Technologies. Let's put this one on the floor. It was publicly traded. They took it private. The chairman of the company was the former head of NORAD, General Estes. Oh, yeah, yeah. They provide even the images pertaining to what's been going on in Europe, as well as some other theaters of conflict right now.

1:28:36 Now, when it comes to the logistics that you're talking about, unfortunately, with the cartels, the NARC subs, I think that's kind of a little bit maybe what you're hinting at. Yeah. Right. So they actually also build them right kind of over in Panama, Honduras and other countries. Right. We've had a problem in Puerto Rico. You know, the Coast Guard's talked about this various times. Right. They've actually increased their presence down in Miami and Key West.

1:29:03 The reason I kind of know a little bit about this friend that I grew up with actually was serving our country in the Coast Guard and then works for Customs and Border Patrol right now. So I've heard some interesting stories pertaining to it. But Maxar and other companies, you're right, we do have the resources, even the Coast Guard themselves, when it comes to how much increase that they've had to have with their ships, their helicopters.

1:29:31 I think they're starting to use drones themselves, right? So we do have the resources, but they've come out with more lucrative ways. So these NARC subs, okay, what if I told you the U.S. Navy and the Marines are kind of learning how we could learn? I understand and I agree with you, but we could use that for our unmanned logistics drones. As crazy as that sounds.

1:30:01 Okay. There's a company, Illini, called Leidos, L-D-O-S. They're heavy also in IT, right, a defense contractor. So there's another side to it as well. But you're right. We've allowed a lot of things to slide under knowingly, right? And it kind of does put into question the legitimacy of, respectively, the government and their intentions. But I guess as the general public, as we're told, only have somewhat of the story, right? Correct.

1:30:29 That's the whole purpose of me doing these spaces is to provide information that, and thank you for sharing that with us, to provide information to people that have been purposely hidden from us.

1:30:48 I can confidently say the majority of the people in my audience when we started this a couple of years ago had no idea even what Pine Gap was. I had heard of it, but I didn't pay too much attention to it because, again, I thought going into this that my government in the United States was the good guys. I wouldn't have dedicated 30 years of my life to it if I had thought otherwise.

1:31:15 So this journey has been a very difficult one for all of us. And we welcome anybody that has information as part of this story. Now, it's funny that you mentioned General Estes because he came up several times in my career. And I just pulled up his bio and looking back on his bio.

1:31:45 I'm I'm I'm seeing lots of red flags. OK, I was just saying because he's the chairman, it used to be a publicly traded company called Maxar Technologies. Yeah, I'm definitely going to look into that. And thank you for bringing that up. But just his military background, even before he retired, he was the commander over the Air Force's U-2 flights.

1:32:10 He was, you know, the Air Division commander at Beale Air Force Base. I did not know that he was at Beale. I knew of him more from his time in the 90s because I was stationed at the Pentagon from 95 to 99.

1:32:32 He was in the joint staff as one of the Air Force representatives in the operational area during that time. And obviously, he was there from 94 to 96. And so we overlapped a little bit. I wasn't on the joint staff. I was on the air staff, which interfaces with the joint staff every day. That's how I know him. And I know that he left there and went to NORAD, which again.

1:33:01 If you look at North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is what NORAD is, it tracks aircraft coming into the United States. So again, it plays right into this, how did they not know? And they have the identifiers on all of these aircraft. They know where they're generating them from. We know where these drug traffic lines are coming from.

1:33:30 But would you say one thing, ma'am, because we've been redirecting resources now, right, when it comes to our P-8s and other types of aircraft, right, according to what we're told, right, as well as other types of reconnaissance aircraft on the borders, right? So would you say that is more of a direct approach that would you say is favorable or would you say that they could possibly do something else? I feel for the first time ever.

1:33:59 Not just from my military career, but I think for the first time ever, there is an actual plan to address everything that we talked about today for the first time ever. And to your point.

1:34:17 The redirection of the resources and the use of the military for what it was intended to do, which is the defense of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, it began in February of this year. And there is an all-out assault on those that want to harm all Americans, not on a foreign projected force capability, but protect the homeland.

1:34:49 You know, what I will say, if you don't mind me also adding to this, being well-informed, right, that never hurts, right? And I think that's what a lot of people hopefully are becoming aware of. There's a lot of also false information, right? It's not just the media per se. The government themselves, right, unfortunately sometimes kind of create false narratives at times. But having a well-informed society, I think, is highly important. I think that's why you're kind of doing what you're doing, it seems.

1:35:19 So, yeah, that's a good thing to have. Well, it's the only way you have a republic. Yes, ma'am. You have ignorant people voting, and they purposely have kept the general population of the United States ignorant of actual facts with planned deceptive propaganda. I push back on everybody that says Obama legalized propaganda.

1:35:47 Propaganda was legalized in practice by the establishment of the CIA. And we have been propagandized consistently since its creation. And that's not to say we weren't propagandized before, because we were. But there was an actual in-government plan to propagandize us. Because even if...

1:36:14 Even if, and they did not, I want to make that unequivocally clear. Even if their sole mission was to create false narratives in foreign media, 100% of the time back to the late 1800s, that foreign media made its way to the United States. So there's not ever been a time that we were not propagandized.

1:36:44 regardless of whether it was legal or illegal. It has never stopped. And that's either by withholding information or projecting false information. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. I just want to add one other thing concerning all of the ways we have today of tracking planes, ships, you name it, any mode of transportation.

1:37:21 If you really thought about it for a minute and said, no, these people didn't know, you would have to believe stealth bombers and stealth fighters were already in play and they're not. So what can I say? We are traveling over to West Virginia today. So I'm excuse me. I'm going to close up and pack up.

1:37:53 And I will be, our next show is going to be from West Virginia. So.

1:38:03 I hope everybody has a wonderful weekend. And if I can work in a few early shows throughout the weekend, since we missed a few this week, I am going to do that. And like I said, I will put out a notice on X approximately 30 minutes before we get ready to go live. And if not, you guys can always come back and check because we post them, Bridget does.

1:38:29 on the link on my pinned post so that you won't miss one of these. Also, you guys can go over to my Rumble channel at the Colonel's Corner and find anything that you've missed along this particular book. And there's hundreds of other shows over there that goes back into our research in all of the other books that we've shared with everybody over the course of the time. And I did want to...

1:38:57 if you if you go online just just as a side note if you guys go online instead of using the rumble app we've categorized them under playlist so if you missed a certain section or you want to go back to a certain book that we covered they are under playlist thank you sorry i was going to say the exact same thing bridget is my alter ego um we have worked so

1:39:20 long together over the last three years on a daily basis. We like literally have the same thoughts on these things. So yes, that's exactly what I was going to say. Bridget has done Yeoman's work behind the scenes on making access to this information as easy as possible. And like she said, you have, I don't know why that is, but if you go onto the Rumble app, there's no link to playlists for you guys to have easy access.

1:39:50 to like we did the whole series. We've been doing the whole series of secret societies with Warhamster. And obviously having them under one playlist makes it easy if that's your area of interest. But you have to actually go online to rumble.com in order to have that option available to you to be able to look at those groups. And like Bridget said,

1:40:19 She's went back and done thumbnails so that they all look alike. She's been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, and we are eternally grateful for all of her efforts. And I'm eternally grateful for my Gladio prescription. Lasix. Yeah, my Gladio Lasix. Because I can't take them off anymore. They're always in place. Exactly right.

1:40:43 OK, so thanks, everybody, for being here. Have a wonderful weekend. And until next time, I'm signing off. Thanks.

Entities here

Colombia25 United States25 Narco Elite25 FARC25 Drug Trafficking Groups12 Cali Cartel10 Peasants7 Colombian State6 General Estes5 Paramilitary groups in Colombia4 Pine Gap4 Panama4 Medellin Cartel4 Crypto AG4 Bell Helicopter4 South Vietnam4 Barry Seal4 Bolivia3 Pablo Escobar3 Spain3 U.S. Air Force3 Peru3 Operation Gladio3 Mexico City3 Alexander Haig3 Motorola3 France3 NORAD3 Manuel Noriega3 Bogotá3 Colombian Civil War3 Citigroup2 Nugan Hand Bank2 United States Marine Corps2 Guatemala2 Mexico2 Dominican Republic2 U.S. Southern Command2 Miami2 U.S. State Department2

Claims made here

Paul Helliwell founded Castle Bank & Trust book_quoted ▶ 11:21

“Those banks initially included BCCI and Nugent Hand, but with the elimination of those two banks, it was transferred to J.P. Morgan, Chase Manhattan, World Finance Corporation, which was still a CIA f…”

Philip Morris laundered_money_for Colombia documented ▶ 12:45

“with U.S. corporations, and some of that was exposed. For example, one case involved Philip Morris, which was found to have laundered $40 million in Columbia black market pesos in 1995. The case was c…”

United States funded Plan Colombia documented ▶ 13:18

“Three years later, and again in 2000, Philip Morris was accused of smuggling Marlboro cigarettes into Columbia that had been purchased with black market pesos. So even American corporations are gettin…”

Bell Helicopter supplied_arms_to Victor Carranza documented ▶ 13:48

“August of 2000, pandemonium officials impounded a helicopter belonging to Victor Carranza, a Colombian property owner and paramilitary leader of the death squads. The helicopter had been purchased fro…”

Colombia targeted_for_regime_change FARC host_asserted ▶ 18:34

“They built a working relationship with the military in the regions of cocoa production to fight increasing influence of the FARC. This opened the door for private clandestine armies that became an int…”

United States funded Colombia host_asserted ▶ 23:51

“paramilitary that are available and on call to NATO and the UN to put paramilitary assets anywhere in the world. We are building an international army covertly with U.S. taxpayer dollars through U.S. …”

Gabriel Ramón Díaz removed_from_power Alvaro Uribe documented ▶ 32:31

“but not charged for the disappearance of the cocaine shipment was removed from his post by President Uribe. According to the Miami Herald, which was infiltrated with CIA as well, quote, Diaz has claim…”

North Valley Cartel attempted_assassination_of Colombia book_quoted ▶ 33:53

“Special Operations Commander in 2001, a Bell helicopter used for the government's cocoa fumigation program was also used by members of the Hinoa Montoya cocaine trafficking organization for an attempt…”

Felix Rodriguez involved_in Operation Red Rock book_quoted ▶ 1:20:54

“about this Air Force controller who got started in Vietnam and may have been involved in some of the incursions into Laos and Cambodia with what he called this operation called Red Rock. But there's a…”

Alexander Haig involved_in Operation Red Rock book_quoted ▶ 1:20:54

Henry Kissinger involved_in Operation Red Rock book_quoted ▶ 1:20:54

Gene Tatham implicated William Barr book_quoted ▶ 1:22:18

“He implicates, you know, obviously Barry Seale gives him allegedly this list that implicates everybody from Bill Barr to Bill Clinton to Oliver North and all those guys. And he's actually in MENA, Ark…”

Gene Tatham implicated Bill Clinton book_quoted ▶ 1:22:18

Gene Tatham implicated Oliver North book_quoted ▶ 1:22:18

Gene Tatham flew_for Contras book_quoted ▶ 1:23:16

“You know, he does produce these documents from the 1980s showing, you know, from Guatemala, which he says, you know, show that he was, you know, flying these flights, you know, to the Contras. So it c…”

Barry Seal trafficked Colombia host_asserted ▶ 1:23:45

“And kind of undermining the government's narrative that, yeah, Barry Steele was a CIA contractor. Yeah, we think we can prove that Barry Steele was trafficking drugs. But this had nothing to do with t…”

General Estes headed NORAD documented ▶ 1:28:07

“With the amount that we do spend, ma'am, and the resources that we have, there's a company called Maxar Technologies. Let's put this one on the floor. It was publicly traded. They took it private. The…”

General Estes headed Maxar Technologies documented ▶ 1:28:07

General Estes commanded U.S. Air Force documented ▶ 1:31:45

“I'm I'm I'm seeing lots of red flags. OK, I was just saying because he's the chairman, it used to be a publicly traded company called Maxar Technologies. Yeah, I'm definitely going to look into that. …”

General Estes commanded Barksdale Air Force Base documented ▶ 1:32:10

“He was, you know, the Air Division commander at Beale Air Force Base. I did not know that he was at Beale. I knew of him more from his time in the 90s because I was stationed at the Pentagon from 95 t…”

General Estes member_of Pentagon documented ▶ 1:32:32

“He was in the joint staff as one of the Air Force representatives in the operational area during that time. And obviously, he was there from 94 to 96. And so we overlapped a little bit. I wasn't on th…”