The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21

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Transcript

0:00 Hello, everyone. We'll wait just a minute for Bridget. I'm going to go ahead and go live over here on Rumble. Renee, I'm going to go ahead and bring you up as a co-host until she gets here in case it throws me out so that we don't lose our... Oh, there she is right there. There we go. How are you this afternoon, Colonel? Great. How are you? Great. Sarah, I got...

0:48 Spade today. She's my little rock star. Cool. I just gotta say. She's my little rock star. Mama fell in love with her. Yeah. That's so cool. How is everything with you going? Um. Glad to be home? Yes. I have some news. Oh. So. They are. They.

1:21 I will give you more information after the event. But there is an alternative meeting, an alternative media meeting in Washington, D.C. that is invitation only. I got an invitation. I know Alpha got an invitation. I don't know whether he's going or not.

1:52 But I am going officially now. And I made the reservations to go this morning. Oh, my God. So I have to tell Billy he was right? Yes, you have to tell him. Billy is Bridget's husband. And when I called and told her about the invite over the weekend, her husband was like, you have to go, you have to go, you have to go. So my husband and I talked about it.

2:21 I have decided that I'm going. So you guys can keep me in your prayers as I travel to Washington, D.C. and represent our little corner of the world. And there's a lot of really interesting people that are going to be there, like Laura Logan and several other alternative media.

2:51 people that will be talking at this venue. So I'm really looking forward to it. It's going to be awesome. Yeah. Brian Cates got invited as well. He's not going to be able to make it. So I told him I'd take copious notes for him as well. So I owe everybody here on Rumble and our X Spaces.

3:19 Huge debt of gratitude because without you guys spreading our content, this would not be happening. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will give you a full debrief when I get home about what goes on. It's on the 30th. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So.

3:49 I will try my best to behave there. But there's going to be some very interesting people there. So I'm just going to say I'll try my best. That works in amazing ways, doesn't it? Yes. OK. And then, of course, as soon as we get back from that, I will be attending the.

4:13 Badlands Guard over in Cocoa Beach as well. And I know many of the people in our audience attend those. I have obviously some very dear friends that go to the guards, which I love interacting with all of you there. And of course, I know lots of the presenters at guard and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them as well. So.

4:43 It's going to be an exciting next couple of weeks. That's all I got to say about that. Okay, part 21. Oh, and let me just also say, I have given all of the glory to God about picking our topics, our books, and obviously a lot of you have recommended some tremendous

5:13 material that we've covered as part of our expose. But I can't get over how timely the information is that we have covered here. It does seem like all of this material is preparation for what's happening. And it's not lost on me.

5:42 that having this information is critical to understanding what's going on in the world today. So it's just crazy how all of that works out. Amen. Amen. Exactly. All right. So Chapter 21, Dark Alliance, starts off with Ricky Ross wanting and doing.

6:12 He wants to get away from Los Angeles. He wants to get away from all of the craziness that he himself created in conjunction with the Nicaraguan mafia that the CIA had moved in there to flood the zone with cocaine, both in Los Angeles and San Francisco. So he decides he's going to take Mary Brawner and their children to Cincinnati, Ohio.

6:42 was where Mary Bronner had grown up. Ricky had traveled there at least once with her to try to get her help from her being hooked on cocaine. So he was interested in moving somewhere in the Midwest so that his money that he had stashed away would go a lot further.

7:11 And he could live kind of incognito as just the guy on the block and not the crack cocaine dealer, that mega dealer that he had become. So he had taken $300,000 in cash with him in, which of course in that city at that time would allow them to live very comfortably. Plus he still had revenue coming in from his rental properties.

7:43 He moved into a townhouse and basically just kind of wanted to live the recluse lifestyle outside of drugs. He had an obsession with real estate and wanted to get into that business in Cincinnati. At the time, he was 27 years old. And people would ask him like,

8:18 Ollie, his partner in Los Angeles and some of the other Nicaraguans. Why do you want to quit? You're needed back there. Ollie can't do the same kind of business that you're doing. Blanton also was contacting him. And now Blanton has moved to Miami himself. So he had.

8:47 This is something that Blanton had said. Blanton had invested his L.A. drug profits in a string of companies, sometimes in partnerships with other Nicaraguan exiles that were living in Miami. One of them was Jose Mercurio Estrada. He had been a family friend.

9:14 who was also Blanton's immigration lawyer. Like Blanton, Mercurio was deeply involved in the Contra network in Miami. He worked to get Contra's travel papers and permits to come into the United States. They also had set up a bunch of nonprofits down there. Mercurio said, I was with the...

9:45 Contra here in Miami, working in Miami since 1980. He confirmed that he got here just before the revolution and had acquaintances.

10:04 with people that had worked in the U.S. Embassy in Managua. So he was kind of like sponsored here into the United States as someone that was going to be able to help the CIA get people into the United States to set up this network is the bottom line. He had many CIA agents as friends. In fact, he said one of them had saved his life in 1979. A squad of Sandinista revolutionaries.

10:36 had come to pass me some arms, like weapons. And it also said, he also went on to say that they were going to eliminate me in summary proceedings. The next day, he decided to seek asylum at the embassy in Colombia, which, as it turns out, was located in the home of Marcario's friend.

11:07 and attorney Carlos Izaca, a son-in-law of General Menendez, the guy that died a long time ago. Acasa was the personal attorney for Calero, who had been a CIA agent before 1979's revolution and would become one of the Contra's political leaders. Acasa shielded Mercario from the Sandinistas for a while.

11:38 and Macario escaped the country seven months after the revolution on the last day of February 1980. Macario's protector, Icaza, was publicly accused by the Sandinistas of being a CIA agent in 1983, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was charged for being a central conspirator in a foiled CIA plot to poison.

12:08 Nicaraguan's foreign minister with a bottle of liquor that had thallium added to it. Icaza fled Nicaragua and went to work for the Contras in Honduras, as did his wife. Later, he became an attorney for Norwin Menendez. He arranged for the sale of the Salvador Dali painting that Norwin owned.

12:37 and served as a corporate lawyer for Norwin's suspected money launderer, Orlando Morella. And Morella is the guy that owned a series of different financial institutions in Miami that was laundering all of the cocaine money for the Nicaraguans and the CIA. In late 1986, Macario

13:02 was appointed to a blue-ribbon commission by the Contras to look into newspaper allegations that the Contras were squandering U.S. humanitarian aid, so the fox in the henhouse. Another member of the Contra panel was accountant Rene Gonzalez of a law firm located in Caracas, Venezuela. After exonerating

13:31 the FDN slash Contra, both men became business partners with Daniello Blanton in a company called Mex, M-E-X dash U-S Import Export, another import export company. Other directors of that same company included Blanton's Mexican college friend and convicted money launderer, Sergio Herrera.

14:02 and a Panamanian banker by the name of Jose Fernando Soto, the longtime representative of a Swiss bank corporation in Panama notorious for money laundering, and an old friend of Chepita, Daniello Blanton's wife's uncle, Orlando Morella.

14:33 Money Launderer, Money Launderer, and Crook. Blanton also bought his wife a business called Hoopie's P-U-P-I Children's Boutique, which Chepita ran in a shopping mall in Sweetwater, Florida. He bought a Nicaraguan restaurant in Miami called La Perella. La Perella had been started by...

15:02 And Stacio Samosa's former counterintelligence expert, Major General Gestapo Medina. Huh. So it's another CIA type restaurant that's money laundering. And its partner is the chief of intelligence from the Samosa government. Also in business with them was a Miami businessman.

15:37 by the name of Donald Barrios, B-A-R-R-I-O-S. He also was an FDN Contra supporter who'd sent Blanton to fetch Norwin Menendez from LAX seven years earlier in 1980. Ricky Ross's former cocaine supplier, Henry Corrales, also owned a piece of the restaurant, according to the court records.

16:07 It was an elegant restaurant and became a hangout for the Contras. They also conducted seminars in the back room. The Miami Herald lightheartedly described the cuisine as Contra cooking from ex-Samosa General Gustavo Medina. Another story noted that, quote, despite the proximity of Fontainebleau Park,

16:38 The apartment complex that so reminds Nicaraguan of the apartments in Managua, La Perella's customers are primarily Cuban, unquote. Now, what's interesting about that, of course, is the CIA required them to use the Cuban network for drug writing in Miami. So that would be a surprise to no one. General Medina.

17:08 would later say the Cubans are compatriots in exile, are also very fond of Nicaraguan food. In 1987, the Herald named it the best Nicaraguan restaurant in Dade County. But the cocaine lord's main investment was in Alpha 2, Roman numeral 2, Rent-A-Car, which began with an office outside of Miami's International Airport.

17:41 and spread to 24 other locations in South Florida. Blanton's rent-a-car business was so successful, court records show, he became an authorized outlet for Chrysler Corporation and GM vehicles. They loved those car lots. Ross said that he visited Blanton in Miami several times in the mid-1987 time frame and was treated like royalty.

18:10 Blanton provided him with free rental cars and complimentary hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Ross turned Blanton's daughters on to rap music, bringing them the latest CDs and talked to them about rappers and how he was bankrolling them from his cocaine profits. Quote, Daniello took me around and introduced me to his friends like he was showing me off.

18:43 He kept saying he could get me some stuff for really cheap and could make me a lot of money if I started dealing in Cincinnati. Ricky, initially, was not interested. When Blanton called him from Detroit one day in the fall of 1987 and asked him to come up to Detroit for a meeting, Ross said he knew that his old friend,

19:12 had what he had in mind. Ross said that his relationship with the Nicaraguans was such that he would have done almost anything for them. The business, as Daniello called it often, had been custom made for Ricky. He went on to say that Ricky believed that he was, quote unquote, the cocaine man. When he wasn't dealing, he felt like a nobody.

19:45 He was just an illiterate high school dropout, a zero. When he was dealing, he was something big. And Daniello would prey on that. Quote, it got to the point where I enjoyed selling drugs so much that I could be in bed with a woman and I'd get a page, this is from Ricky Ross, of course, and I'd get up and go make a deal. Making Cincinnati his...

20:17 his own was effortless. By then, Ross was an old hand at creating new crack markets. I knew the recipe. I knew what to do. I would just go into the black neighborhoods and meet people. So, Daniello was not going to allow Ricky Ross a minute of peace. So, Ricky Ross starts scouting out the neighborhoods.

20:50 giving recruits apartments, beepers, cocaine with instructions on how to conduct street sales. The drugs were stored in the trunks of parked cars placed around the neighborhoods, which again is why they love the car dealership business. Suddenly, Cincinnati had two problems. Crips from L.A. was imported and their crack. In 1987,

21:21 We had a lot of crack in the east and west, but not in Cincinnati until Ricky Ross came here, one of the local police officers said. He could blow the locals out of the water when it came to making drug deals because he was getting them so cheap from Blanton. The cocaine was turning up in the hands of crack dealers in Toledo, Cleveland, Columbus, Hamilton.

21:55 Middleton and Fairfield, Ohio, as far west as Cincinnati and St. Louis, as far south as Atlanta and even in Texas. One of the police officers said that Ricky Ross could sell popsicles to Eskimos. Ross later said, I could go anywhere in the world and sell dope. I just need one person in a city.

22:29 In 10 months, Ross said he had sold 300 to 400 kilos of Blanton's cocaine in the Midwest, netting himself about $2 million in profit. He flew to Miami once a month to drop off the cash. Either we would meet there or we would meet in New York a few times we met in Atlanta. Ross also wired money to Florida in Chapita's name. In September 1988,

23:01 An eastbound Greyhound bus eased into a station in New Mexico. A state policeman walked by the bus with a drug-sniffing dog. The canine got near the luggage compartment and went crazy. The officer found a suitcase carrying nine kilos of cocaine worth about $100,000. The luggage tag

23:30 said the bag was bound for Cincinnati. A call was placed to the Cincinnati DEA's office. They asked for advice. The DEA office said that they'd stake out the bus and see who shows up for the suitcase. A few days later, one of Ross's employees, a young L.A. Crip named Alfonso Jeffries, went to the bus depot and claimed the suitcase, the DEA's spring.

23:59 was trapped. Ross got the news and quickly assessed the damage. Nine kilos was enough to put Jeffries away for a couple of decades. The pressure would be on him to roll over and give someone up. If the dominoes started falling, they would form a straight line to Ricky Ross. Ross contacted Jeffries and told him all his legal bills would be paid.

24:26 and he'd have the best lawyers. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut. The mere fact that a Crip had been caught in Cincinnati with cocaine, quote, led the FBI and DEA field office in Cincinnati to investigate allegations that the Crips were flooding Cincinnati's market with inexpensive, high-quality cocaine, unquote. That came from the Justice Department. The feds were on the hunt.

24:55 and Ricky knew his time was short. Ross discovered that one of his underlings was having sex with his girlfriend. That sensed it for him. He was getting screwed every way in Cincinnati, and it became time to go home. I sold what I had, and I quit, he said. When he got back to L.A. in the fall of 1988, he wanted nothing to do with cocaine. Again.

25:25 He was worried about Alfonso Jeffries, whose steadfast silence on Ricky's behalf had been rewarded with a 20-year prison sentence. That was straight federal time, no parole. Jeffries had already rolled on him for all Ricky knew. Ross went into the home improvement business in L.A., buying specialized equipment to do renovations.

25:56 He said, I guess about a month after I got back to Los Angeles, Blanton started calling him again. Blanton would call two or three times a month until the word got out that Ross was under investigation as well. A grand jury in Smith County, Texas, returned an indictment charging Ross with cocaine conspiracy. He had called his cousins.

26:26 in Texas in May of 1988 and discussed a cocaine deal on a tapped phone line. The fugitive warrant was issued. About three months after I was in Los Angeles, they did a program on CBS that was talking about me, that I was under investigation in Cincinnati and now in Texas as well. After the CBS program aired, Daniello stopped calling me.

26:53 A lot of people stopped calling after that, Ross said. As Ross had feared, Alfonso Jeffries had broken. He told the police about Ross's trip to New York City and California to pick up cocaine. They brought 20 kilos back from New York the first time, Jeffries said. DEA agents found travel records and motel receipts that confirmed Jeffries' statements.

27:22 In June of 1989, Ross and 13 other people were indicted on federal charges of cocaine conspiracy in Cincinnati. And another fugitive warrant was issued. Now he had the state of Texas and the U.S. government after him. Ross melted into South Central and kept his head down, staying busy with his construction work. Months went by. One afternoon in late November, he was pouring concrete.

27:51 when an unmarked police car came screeching up. One of the guys said that it was NARCS, so Ricky Ross ran. And when I ran, they started shooting at me. They had shot about 12 times at me. Bullets were zipping by. He found an unlocked house and barricaded himself inside, retreating into a bedroom closet. In the darkness,

28:24 He pulled out a cell phone and tried to call his attorney, Alan Fenster. While the police yelled at him to come out, a two-man SWAT team arrived with a dog and approached the house. They told me to come out, Ross said, and the next thing I knew, they kicked the door in. They came in with the dog. The dog came to the closet and alerted on me. The police pulled open the door and Ross found himself staring into...

28:56 He was told to come out with his hands in front of him and to get down on his knees. And when he did, they handcuffed me. Then all of a sudden the dog went crazy. He started biting me. He was biting my legs. He was biting me in the butt. He was biting me all over. So I kicked him. All the pent up rage and frustration of the L.A. police had had saved up for a freeway. Ricky was.

29:27 They started hitting him in the head with flashlights. One of them broke the flashlights on his head. And after he did that, he went into the kitchen and got a frying pan. And he started clubbing me over the head with the frying pan. Then he was kicking me all over my back, my stomach. I had boot marks all over my body, Ricky said.

29:53 The police claimed that Ross had attacked them with a frying pan, so naturally they just used it on him. Bruised and sore and swollen all over, the crack king of L.A. was unceremoniously dumped into a cell in Los Angeles Metropolitan Correctional Center to await extradition to Cincinnati. In all his life, things had never seemed more hopeless.

30:21 Politically, the timing of his capture couldn't have been worse. In the last year, the police and media had finally discovered the connection between the L.A. gangs and the spread of crack and automatic weapons to cities all connected to the Contras. The Los Angeles drug gangs were spreading cocaine and violence into cities now nationwide.

30:49 say members of two prominent rival gangs in Los Angeles, Crips and Bloods, had infiltrated the cities from Alaska to Washington, D.C. During the 88 presidential campaign in Washington, they had started stressing an anti-drug crusade, which of course we know is complete bullshit. Now, some of the facts to back up what they were fearing was being revealed.

31:18 Congressional hearings had unearthed the links between crack profits and the proliferation of assault weapons in inner cities. Government studies had been done showing that L.A. had indisputably become the main source of the crack contagion and the transshipment to other locations.

31:45 Robert Bonner told Congress these emerging modern day gangsters have set up raw cocaine distribution outlets in cities all across the country. It was organized crime akin to the mafia. Congress passed a whole new set of anti-crack laws that, among other things, made even first time offenders like Ross eligible for a mandatory 10 year sentence with no parole.

32:15 Again, a reminder that the source of all of this is the CIA in collaboration with the FBI and DEA. But let's go after the guys selling it and we'll lock them away forever. And keep in mind, Texas is still waiting for their turn. Ross sat awaiting extradition in Los Angeles and initially.

32:52 Several people had came by to see him there. But the longer he sat, the less people came. All of his properties were going into foreclosure and everything that he had was going away. When the people from the U.S. Justice Department came calling and by the time they left, he could hardly stop smiling. God, it seemed, had not forsaken the cocaine man after all.

33:23 When Ross was finally led from his cell to meet representatives of the Justice Department, his thoughts had been with Danielle Blanton. The feds, Ross assumed, wanted his source. It was what the task force had been after the entire time. It was his choice of whether he was going to be a rat or a jailbird. He managed to duck the situation the last time, but he wouldn't have the luxury this time.

33:54 The feds had him by the balls. Could he rat out Daniello? He was Daniello, you know. He was like my mentor. But to Ross's surprise and relief, the fed people had no interest in the Nicaraguan. They didn't ask me nothing about where I was getting it from. All the Justice Department wanted to hear about was his experiences with the detectives on the freeway rig.

34:28 They'd been reading some complaints he and his friends had filed against the officers. Were they true? And would they be willing to testify? Ross was dumbfounded. He'd been willing to testify two years ago, but nobody wanted to hear about it then. Besides, the Justice Department Civil Rights Division had already looked into the complaints and dismissed them for lack of evidence.

34:54 He'd been told. Yet now they wanted to know if he would be a U.S. government witness against the police. A drug dealer helping to put NARTS in jail. If that doesn't beat all, he thought. Now, again, this is the feds wanting a consent decree so they can control the Los Angeles Police Department. And they're willing to go to any length to get it to include.

35:23 using someone as big and as villainous as Ricky Ross. Ricky Ross had one question. What was in it for him? It could change the way certain people felt about him, he was told. If he cooperated and testified truthfully and honestly, it would help when he appeared before the Ohio sentencing. Plus, the government might decide not to seize his properties or his remaining cash under the asset.

35:54 forfeiture laws. An added attraction of getting back at the cops who had harassed him and his family. To the Justice Department, Ricky Ross was no longer a dope peddler. He was a witness in a case involving allegations of serious misconduct by members of the majors and the Freeway Ricky Task Force. An FBI sting called Operation Big Spender was behind Ross's newfound credibility with the federal government.

36:24 This may be a terrible thing to say, said L.A. County Sheriff Sherman Block, but as we got into things, it became obvious that the stories being told by the crooks were more credible than the stories being told by the officers. In the fall of 1989, after Block received anonymous complaints that the majors were ripping off drug dealers, the FBI sent an undercover agent.

36:53 into the major's territory, posing as a courier for a money launderer. The majors were tipped off that he was carrying a load of cash, which could be found in his room at the Warner Center Marriott. The FBI had reserved three adjoining rooms at the hotel. The courier was in the middle. On one side were agents with video equipment, and on the other side, a SWAT team. It was like...

37:21 dangling a pork chop in front of a dog. Seizing cash had become the majors' specialty by the end of the 80s. They were no longer real narcotic detectives anymore. Thanks to expanded asset forfeitures, the majors had become a sin tax collector for Sheriff Block. In 1988 alone, the sheriff's office hauled in an astounding $34 million in cash.

37:50 and another $33 million the following year, along with 66 houses, 110 vehicles, four airplanes, and two businesses. Of the 33 million seized in 1988, the majors had brought in 13.6 million of it all by themselves, along with 4,470 pounds of cocaine.

38:17 The lion's share of that booty had been produced by Majors 2 crew, which was now under the command of Sergeant Robert Sobel. After Freeway Ricky Task Force disbanded in 87, Sobel was handpicked to lead Majors 2, and he had driven his squad to Olympian Heights. All men are trained to tear flesh when they smell blood.

38:47 Sobel had bragged to interdepartmental people. The majors zeroed in on an FBI courier so fast that they barely had the surveillance team in place when they arrived. The detectives quickly learned that the courier had reserved the rooms on either side and got suspicious, wondering if they were being led into a trap.

39:17 Worried that the deputies might bust into the other rooms and expose the sting, the FBI agents cautiously approached Sobel's crew and told them they'd done their jobs too well. They had stumbled onto a federal undercover operation and were about to expose it, which was technically the truth, but they didn't let them know they were the targets. Two weeks later, the FBI tried again, this time renting a room at a Hilton hotel.

39:47 In Sherman Oaks, again, the major snapped at the bait. A hidden video camera was rolling as two plainclothes police officers busted into the room and found almost half a million dollars in a garment bag. Oh, ho, ho, one deputy said. Is this your bag? The deputy skimmed $48,000 in marked cash, stuffed it into a gym bag and left.

40:16 Sobel and other deputies then entered the room and questioned the undercover FBI agent about the money. After the agent claimed no knowledge of where the cash came from, one of the deputies persuaded him to sign a form disclaiming ownership of the money. You can say room service left it, Sobel joked.

40:41 In a series of lightning raids that night, the authorities found some of the marked cash in the homes and cars of the deputies. Sheriff Block immediately suspended nine members of the squad. Within 48 hours, distraught and appearing heavily medicated, Sobel approached the feds and volunteered to testify against his crew. He admitted that much of what Ross and his partners had accused them of was true.

41:09 The task force had routinely beaten suspects, a practice known as giving someone a quote-unquote tune-up. Planted dope called flaking a suspect, lied in court, falsified search warrants, affidavits, and had stolen drug money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. When their ill-gotten gains

41:36 With their ill-gotten gains, the Majors had gone on spending sprees, buying vacation homes in Colorado, big screen TVs, jewelry, fancy cars, boats, helicopters, Hawaiian vacations. The FBI discovered that LAPD Detective Pollack had liposuction performed on his butt and his wife had paid cash for breast enhancements. The agents were told of...

42:06 Champagne-drenched parties, officers were dabbling in stocks and bonds and starting side businesses. Remarkably, considering their line of work, the detectives had left a huge paper trail. In February of 1990, a grand jury indicted 10 deputies on 27 counts of theft, income tax evasion, and conspiracy. Prosecutors promised they were just getting started.

42:34 there were more indictments to come. One of the first to be charged was Deputy Danielle Garner, a hard-nosed detective who had been one of the quote-unquote spiritual leaders of Majors 2. Garner decided that if he was going down, he was taking everybody down. He hired one of LA's most high-profile criminal attorneys, Harlan Braun.

43:01 who had defended Lee Marvin in the famous palimony suit and would later successfully represent one of the officers in Rodney King's beating case. Dan Garner came in my office and told me that there was nothing the feds were going to be able to do to them because he had proof that they were dealing in drugs and laundering money. Braun recalled in an interview, he said, they can't touch us.

43:28 And he gave me these papers he said he had seized in a drug raid several years earlier. They were documents the majors had taken from Ron Lister's house, which Garner had secreted away as insurance. Though Braun privately doubted the records would have the impact Garner suspected, he agreed that they could be useful as a bargaining chip. Certainly, the majors had little else to hope for.

43:58 While the FBI had an incriminating videotape, marked cash, and tape recordings Sobel had secretly made of the deputies plotting their defense at a bar, all detectives had were this lame story of hitting jackpots in Las Vegas, which of course reminds me of Pritzker. Garner and his co-defendants went on trial in October of 90.

44:28 and the federal prosecutors let off their case by playing the devastating videotape for the jurors, who had become noticeably upset at the sight of police officers helping themselves to drug money and joking about it. Braun decided it was time to spring the Lister papers on the government. While he was cross-examining one of the FBI agents who had participated in the sting, he casually asked if the agent knew anything.

44:56 about the seized drug money laundered by the federal government and then diverted to the Contras by the CIA. The federal prosecutors leapt to their feet to object. Braun let the question hang in the air before moving on. After court, Braun walked out onto the steps of the federal courthouse and held his usual post-trial spin session with reporters.

45:25 Reporter asked about the strange question he'd put to the FBI agent about the Contras and the CIA. Braun calmly replied that he was laying the groundwork for his client's defense. Outrageous government conduct. Deputy Garner, Braun pointed out, was a court-certified expert in money laundering. Garner said he would explain how some of the cash

45:52 They were accused of stealing from drug dealers had been laundered by the CIA to buy weapons for the Contras. Braun's startling claims were mentioned in the 17th paragraph of the L.A. Times trial story the next day. But the Justice Department reacted as if it had been on the front page.

46:23 Edward Rafidi, and demanded a gag order against the defense attorneys in the case, complaining that he had publicized matters that were likely to seriously impair the right of the defendants, the government, and the public to a fair trial. He singled out Braun in particular, reporting his accusation that the government laundered drug profits, which were diverted by the CIA to the Contras.

46:52 Braun responded in an inflammatory motion opposing the gag order in which he exposed a long hidden detail of the Major's 1986 raid on Ron Lister's house. Lister, who wasn't identified by name, was referred to as a money launderer who the Majors, too, knew was associated with major drug and money trafficking ring connected to the Contras.

47:19 Braun told of Lister's claim of CIA connections and the strange items the deputies had found in his house. Films of military operations in Central America, technical manuals, information about military hardware, communications and documents indicating drug money was being used to purchase military equipment for the Contras. The officers also discovered blown up pictures of the suspect.

47:47 in Central America with the Contras showing military equipment and military bases. The suspect also discovered to have maintained two-way communications for Nicaraguan transients coming into California. Officers also pieced together the fact that this suspect, who was working with the Blanton family, which was importing narcotics from Colombia through Costa Rica,

48:17 into the United States. Braun's motion linked the Blanton family to the crash that Hassan Foss C-123 drug plane in Nicaragua in October 86. In other words, he's going for broke here. The same crash Scott Weakley claimed on tape that he'd been tied to. It also told of Lister's files disappearing as federal agents swooped down on the sheriff's headquarters and removed

48:47 all of the recovered property. Mysteriously, all records of the search, seizure, and property had disappeared from the sheriff's department. Garner, Braun wrote, had secretly made copies of 10 pages of the documents seized from the CIA operative. He gave the name of the CIA operatives in Iran, specifically mentioning the Contras.

49:11 A list of various weaponry that had been purchased and even diagrams on the route the drug money was being routed through in the United States. And then back to the Contras and that the State Department was involved. Braun said he asked the Justice Department to provide a letter stating explicitly that no drug money was used by the United States government or any U.S. government agency to purchase weapons for the Contras or weapons to be traded for hostages from Iran.

49:42 but it had refused to do so, which Braun interpreted as an admission. The count will note that nowhere in the declaration by the U.S. attorney does he state that this allegation is false. From this, the council concludes that, in fact, the government conceives the truth of the statement and only attempts to suppress it so the public won't know.

50:10 obviously fears the exposure of this drug finance Central American operation. The seven deputies on trial, Braun noted, weren't the ones complaining about unfair publicity, even though they had been pillared with media by federal prosecutors since the day they were indicted. The only party complaining is the government, who is accused of money laundering themselves to buy weapons for the Contras. The next day, the Justice Department...

50:40 department fired back with a motion of its own, once again sidestepping the Contra allegations. Prosecutors asked the judge to issue a court order excluding any questions, testimony, or other evidence relating to any CIA plot to launder drug money or to finance Nicaraguan operations. Those claims, prosecutor wrote, were wholly irrelevant to the case.

51:09 and would be nothing more than a smokescreen to divert the jury's attention. Since the raid had occurred in 1986, Hagman argued it was well outside the time frame for allegations in the indictment. There was no connection. Well, except for the CIA, the FBI, and the DOJ knew that there were documents that were missing from the documents they stole out of the Sheriff's Department.

51:36 So was this whole thing, do you think the federal government even cares that the sheriffs were beating up these people that they had allowed to be drugged for the last 10 years? Or were they going after these guys to indict them, send them to prison because they knew they had damaging information on the federal government? You could actually make a case either way. The judge called the lawyers in his courtroom.

52:05 The next morning and lashed out at Braun, calling him sneaky and unprofessional. And the motion that he had filed, the judge said, was in bad faith. Even if everything that you have said is true, it has nothing to do with whether or not your clients filed false tax returns and whether or not they were stealing money and making purchases with the money. The judge was pissed. He went on.

52:37 That is, what the CIA or government did has nothing to do with that, so far as I can see. I cannot conceive of any theory under which that evidence would be admissible in the case, and therefore, putting this information out in the guise of an opposition to a restraining order simply to ensure that it gets into the public is perhaps contaminating this case. Frankly, I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Braun.

53:07 a lawyer of your ability and skill, would ever consider doing this. The judge would later display the same sensitivity to suggested CIA links during one of the trials involving a 1985 murder of a DEA agent by the name of Enrique Kiki Camarena.

53:30 When defense lawyers tried to introduce evidence alleging CIA and Contra involvement with the Mexican drug lords, the same judge ruled the information was irrelevant to the murder and refused to allow it. Except it was directly relevant. Stunned by the judge's venom, Braun tried to reply, but the judge told him to sit down and shut up. This opposition, which you filed.

53:57 is the most clear and convincing evidence that an order, a restraining order, is necessary, the judge said. This document manifests a continuing intention to use the media to make statements in the public, which violate the American Bar Association model of rules and professional conduct. I have, after receiving this, decided that it is appropriate to issue the order. Braun once again asked to be heard, but the judge told him,

54:27 It didn't matter what he had to say. He was issuing the gag order. The order he was informed prevented him from saying anything that a reasonable person would expect to be construed as public communication. Any violation would be viewed as contempt of this and punished accordingly. It was, as the judge noted, only the second time in 21 years on the bench that he had ever gagged an attorney.

54:57 Finally, Braun was permitted to speak. He asked the judge to give him some time and some leeway to gather additional evidence to substantiate the claims. We are not trying to determine the Iran-Contra affair, the judge said. Suppose I accept as true everything you said. I don't see the relevance. Braun said the judge's gag order would make it impossible for him to find witnesses to corroborate.

55:26 Garner's contention, but the judge was unmoved, and he refused to allow Braun to pursue that subject. Garner, during his testimony, did manage to tell the jury that he discovered the CIA was doing, conducting illegal activities in which the guys in the CIA were getting rich. But the judge immediately told the jurors to disregard it. Six of the seven deputies were convicted of corruption charges and sent to prison. Garner received the harshest sentence.

55:56 54 months. And in 1996, he was released from prison. He emerged defiant. I didn't dump 500 tons of cocaine into a ghetto, Garner said. I stole American money and spent it in America. The U.S. government can't say the same. Before the big spender investigation was over, most of the officers who had worked on the major's investigation of Blanton and Freeway Rickey would be charged with crimes or forced out of law enforcement.

56:24 Bell PD detective Jerry Gazzetta, the narcotics officer who originally began the investigation, was accused of stealing cocaine but never charged. In 1988, IRS agent Carl Knudsen, who'd had a falling out with Gazzetta over his handling of the Torres brothers, blamed Gazzetta for the disappearance of six kilos of cocaine the police department had stored in a public locker.

56:53 The L.A. County Sheriff's Department was called in to investigate, but couldn't find any evidence that Gazzetta had anything to do with it. Indeed, it was discovered that the Bell Police had given one of the keys of the locker to a convicted drug dealer working as a police informant. Though two prosecutors examined the case and declined to press charges, Gazzetta said the investigation ruined his career.

57:20 He filed a lawsuit against the city, which was later settled out of court, and he retired. He remains convinced that he and the majors were targeted for destruction because of their investigation of Blanton. Every policeman who ever got close to Blanton was either told to back off, investigated by their own department, forced to retire, or indicted, Guzetta said. He felt that he had been victimized.

57:48 by the conspiracy, which damaged and ruined many police officers who had attempted to bring Blanton to justice. Former Deputy Virgil Bartlett, who assisted on the Blanton raids, disagreed. Nobody set us up. We screwed ourselves, he said.

58:11 The last big spender indictment to come down was against Sergeant Thomas Gordon, the chief investigator of the Blanton case, who was accused of spending stolen money to fix up his house. He was charged with money laundering, tax evasion, and representing himself, fought the government to a draw on the money laundering charges and was convicted on tax charges. Defense lawyer Harlan Braun had

58:39 No way of knowing it, of course, but his efforts to drag Ron Lister into the Big Spender case came perilously close to exposing the Contra drug connection, which may explain the Justice Department's efforts to gag Braun and keep a lid on the raids. By the time of the deputy's trial, Ron Lister was working for the DEA as an informant, and he had been briefing federal prosecutors about his work on behalf of the Contra.

59:08 and the CIA during the 1980s. The DEA considered him to be so valuable that it interceded with local police to keep him out of prison. Lister's transformation from drug trafficker and weapons trafficker to a drug warrior began in August 1988 when he met a prostitute at a party and confided that he could get her cocaine if she wanted it. The hooker

59:37 happened to be a police informant, ran to tell the cops in Costa Mesa Police Department. They sent out an undercover agent who ended up buying two kilos of cocaine from Lister. But after just two days in jail, Lister was released on his own recognizant and put back on the streets, apparently having convinced the detectives that he'd be more valuable as an undercover informant. In late 1989,

1:00:07 To the chagrin of Costa Mesa's authorities, Lister was arrested by a DEA agent in San Diego and charged with conspiracy to distribute 13 kilos of cocaine. But the same thing happened again. Instead of being taken off the streets, Lister was soon back walking them as an undercover police informant. Lister had mesmerized the DEA and U.S. Attorney's Office as easily as he had the Costa Mesa police.

1:00:36 Why were these police agencies so eager to drop slam dunk drug cases against Ronald Lister and make him an informant? Easy. He was their ticket to the big time. He was going to lead them to the crime of the century. Today, the cops and lawyers who worked with Lister call him a pathological liar, a manipulator, a charlatan.

1:01:02 That wasn't what they thought when they signed him up as informant. During the negotiations for Mr. Lister's service, his attorney, Lynn Ball, sent the San Diego DEA and U.S. Attorney's Office a resume of his work history, touting him as having experience in the most outstanding agencies around. Lister knows the cocaine business better than most, Ball said. He had worked for the government's...

1:01:32 of El Salvador, Colombia, Italy, and Iran. He knew intelligence operatives, weapon smugglers, the whole thing. He knew Norwin Menendez. He knew Daniel O'Blanton, everybody. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mesa, in a 1997 interview with the CIA inspectors, said the DEA agents in San Diego, Chuck Jones, suggested using Lister as an informant in an investigation conducting

1:02:00 conducted against Daniela Blanton. So she asked Lister's attorney, Lynn Ball, if Lister would be interested. The reaction from Lister's lawyer was memorable. Ball indicated that Lister was going to have to check with the agency first to see if he could provide any information about Blanton's organization. The prosecutor was shocked. Ball later indicated that Lister had been given clearance to cooperate.

1:02:31 Lister then began a series of debriefings and grand jury appearances. Lister alluded to the CIA during debriefings, but no one from the investigative team pursued the subject. The focus of the U.S. attorney's investigation was on cocaine smuggling. She claimed she never questioned Lister about

1:02:56 nor allowed him to discuss any information of the CIA's involvement or that of any other government entity. But Lister said there was another motive behind the prosecutor's lack of curiosity about that topic. In a letter to his CIA contact, Scott Weakley,

1:03:20 Written while Lister was in prison in 1990, Lister said his debriefers are purposely staying away from anyone who might be connected to the agency. They would like to tell them who they can't get because of national security. Lister informed Weekly they were extremely afraid of national security blocks, so they logically

1:03:47 would not go after anyone associated. Where the personal gain is clear and no contra activity appears, they proceed. They say they don't even want to know about the contra organization or anything related. Lister appeared before a federal grand jury four times, providing detailed physical evidence, a complete chronology from 1982 to 86 of the Central American operation.

1:04:17 naming roughly 80 people who worked with the Blanton drug ring. He also provided information to San Francisco FBI Don Hale about Norwin Menendez. Lister said that Hale was convinced that Lister and the Nicaraguans were connected with the CIA. Hale wanted to prove a connection between the U.S. government, the Contras, and drug smuggling. On December 1990,

1:04:44 The 20th, 10 days after the verdicts in the first big spender case, that's all of the L.A. sheriffs and deputies were handed down. Ron Lister was released from federal custody and sent out into the world as an undercover DEA informant to insist the government in an investigation. He went to work as a salesman for a San Diego company called Marcon Inc. M-A-R-K-O-N.

1:05:13 Incorporated, which happens to be an international barter brokerage company owned by none other than Scott Weekly, Mr. Death. Whether the DEA was using Weekly's company as a cover or if Lister was also spying on Weekly is not clear. Whatever the reason, DEA records show that Lister began engaging in some very

1:05:42 unorthodox activities for a federal informant, moving mountains of cash for drug traffickers, just as he had done while he was working for Blanton. Barely six months after he began working for the DEA, Lister strolled into Anthony's Fish Grotto, a waterfront San Diego restaurant, to have lunch with several Colombian drug traffickers and their associates. Unbeknownst to Lister,

1:06:09 Two of the men at the table were undercover DEA agents posing as money launderers. According to their report, one of the Colombians demanded to know what Lister had done for some half a million dollars he'd been given to launder. At this time, Lister commenced to explain how he had originally received instructions from Colombia to wire transfer money to a European bank, only later to be told to transfer it to another account.

1:06:39 Lister went on to say that he could not wire transfer the money from the account again since it was originally laundered with the assistance of the CIA. At this point, Lister explained how he and the CIA used to transport multiple hundreds of kilos of cocaine from the Cali cartel in Colombia and Costa Rica to the US. The DEA agent wrote that Lister had a paper in his hand.

1:07:08 appeared to be a copy of an outgoing wire transfer on it, the agent noticed the following, Swiss Bank of New York, World Trade Center. The rest of the numbers was not obtained. Lister was asked by one of the undercover agents if he knew what had happened to him if he refused to pay the drug traffickers their money. Lister replied that he had nothing to fear since he worked for the CIA.

1:07:37 At that time, the agent asked Lister if he also was employed with the FBI or DEA. He said no. Lister's explanation apparently didn't satisfy the Colombians. The group's leader, Osvaldo Montalvo, was overheard telling his associates that Lister was a dead man. A few days later, according to federal prosecutors,

1:08:04 One of the undercover agents was being contacted by the Colombians and said, quote, by the way, we want to kill this guy Lister. And if we can't kill him, we're going to kidnap his mother and put her on the phone and torture her. So he pays us back our money that he stole from us. We ran Lister through the indexes and it showed up that he was an informant. So we brought him in, actually brought him into the San Diego Police Department.

1:08:31 Hey, we have reason to believe there's a threat against your life, a serious threat. We're taking it serious. We're offering to protect you. Lister said he laughed it off, saying that he wasn't afraid of any effing Colombians. The prosecutor made Lister sign a declination in case he turned up dead. Lister went back to one of the Colombians and told him that he knew what was up.

1:08:57 He was also unconcerned, he said, that he had declined federal protection because he was not afraid because, again, he works for the CIA. He told the Columbians that he did not need any protection since he and his associate, Scott Weakley, could take care of them. Lister further commented that Weakley was a U.S. SEAL and equipped to take care of anything they wanted to throw at him.

1:09:24 To show the Columbians he was serious, Lister also pulled out some surveillance photos of the undercover DEA agents who had been at the lunch. The photographs appeared to have been taken from the top floor. Lister claimed that the photographs were taken by his surveillance people. In mid-June 1991, the prosecutor said federal agents intercepted the hit team the Columbians had sent to kill Lister. They were stopped at the Temecula

1:09:53 immigration checkpoint with a picture of Lister and a map to his mother's house. They were in the country illegally. Embarrassed by the fact that another DEA team had discovered their prize informant was money laundering for Colombian drug dealers, Lister's DEA handlers threw him in jail for violating the terms of his plea agreement. In a motion filed to cancel their deal and send Lister to prison, the case agents claimed Lister was involved in money laundering.

1:10:24 through Weekly's company, Marcon Corporation, which they said was set up to launder money for narcotics and weapons. Defendant intended to sell weapons as well. Weekly insisted Marcon was a legitimate trading company. In any event, no charges were ever filed against anybody. So we're going to stop right there. We'll finish up with Lister tomorrow.

1:10:55 The guy that won't ever die. Anyway, thoughts, Bridget? Go ahead. Bridget, go ahead. I don't know what's wrong with Bridget's mic. Renee, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah. I don't know what's going on with Bridget. Let me take her down and bring her back up and see if it's her. The question is, who's not involved in this whole thing? That's what I think. It's like, who?

1:11:47 Who walking on the street is not involved in this whole racket? Good grief. Right? Yeah. But I think this goes, it shows how this whole thing works and how they protect these people. You can be the single worst criminal in the whole world, but the FBI, DEA, CIA, whatever, they will make you an informant in order to protect you.

1:12:17 to keep doing your nefarious thing. The entire system's corrupt. Go ahead, Bridget. Oh, I was just cracking up. Cheryl Magga over on Rumble said, the book wouldn't make a great movie. And she's right, if it wasn't so sick and twisted. You know? It just, I echo what Renee said, and that is, it would be easier to say,

1:12:48 Who wasn't involved rather than who was. Well, and I mean, obviously, the cops are dirty, right? The L.A. Sheriff's Department, completely dirty, beating people up. That's ridiculous. Just arrest them, throw them in jail, throw them in prison. They're doing shit they shouldn't be doing. But why stop with them? That's the part that pisses me off about all of this.

1:13:18 They were purposely targeting black neighborhoods with cocaine to destroy black families. And for them, it was fine to the point where they would even start siphoning off part of the money for their own illicit activities. But then the feds come in and target the corrupt cops.

1:13:48 Still ignoring where all the drugs are coming from. So it's like if we just stay down here, you know, like slap happy the bad coke dealers and the bad cops, we can completely ignore the hundreds of thousands of tons of cocaine coming in and poisoning the entire United States. Let's just focus down here. Go ahead, Stiller.

1:14:18 Well, as you were talking about, you know, like the drugs that they brought in in the 80s, you know, you had all those riots also going on, whether it was, well, maybe Watts was earlier. But I know that like within a few years, you know, like early 90s, you had, was it Rodney King? And that whole area of LA, even in Las Vegas, I mean, there were riots.

1:14:44 you know, all around that area too. And it was, you know, bloods, crips, like you were mentioning. So it just, you know, and then it turned out to be a big land grab too, you know, in the future because of those riots and stuff. But it's just really sad what they've done. Yeah. They destroyed an entire area of Los Angeles and then all inner cities across the United States.

1:15:09 both with gang violence of the Bloods and Crips and then later on from the Dominican Republic, from Jamaica. They had them in from everywhere. And the inner cities became a hellscape, all focused around the cocaine. And then later, I guess, crack. I mean, even here in Las Vegas, we had Bloods and Crips from L.A. And then there was another gang that came in.

1:15:39 I don't know. It's just crazy. It's crazy to think that this is all, yeah, CIA, go fuck off. Yeah, all courtesy of the CIA. But in conjunction with the FBI and DEA, CIA could have never gotten away with what they did without the complicity of ATF, immigration, the DEA, all of them. They're all in it together.

1:16:09 However, now history makes a lot more sense in that how these things developed, that they were not organic, that they were, again, the drugs, the gangs, how they, quote, couldn't break up the gangs. I mean, and yet every single police officer knew right where the gangs were. Just, again, it all makes so much more sense now, hindsight-wise.

1:16:41 And oh, sorry. Also, I just wanted I was trying to look up the name because I knew there was a movie that was based off of Gary Webb's research is called Kill the Messenger. It came out in 2014. Go ahead, Stella. Well, I was going to say, because, I mean, L.A. was corrupt with its police was corrupt already from the 30s and 40s because of Hollywood. And we know what.

1:17:08 You know, these people, they've been doing this for such a freaking long time. Yes. Yes, they have. And it's still going on today. Like what is going on today? Are there like they're embedding 20, 30 years ago and all the same stuff that they did all over the world. They've just been doing it here. Just not maybe to the full extreme to an overthrow till now. Right.

1:17:36 So isn't that interesting that at the same time that we're not that we haven't been talking about this for the last three years, but to be doing this right now while Trump is finally addressing Colombia. I absolutely loved this weekend, the cutting off. And I told you guys a while back.

1:18:05 that as soon as Trump removed their certification as a collaborator in the war on drugs, that the very next thing was going to be cutting off all aid. And the next thing is going to be directly attacking the avenues. And of course, it's being done simultaneously because we just took out one of their subs. And I can't wait until they start taking out the aircraft.

1:18:34 I'm not advocating we shoot the aircraft down. I am advocating that we know exactly, because I know we do, where those aircraft are coming in at. And there do massive, you know, swats around the aircraft when they land. They have all of the media there. And we just start taking down the entire trafficking network. So did anybody here know?

1:19:05 that the, whatever it is, the Cartel of the Sun was a CIA setup to begin with. Renee, go ahead. I read about them through Patrick Byrne's ex-account, but I was too confused because it's very complicated. I mean,

1:19:37 The stuff he posts is really deep and he's like in hiding. And so, but, you know, with Gladio glasses on, you kind of think, well, okay, so yeah, the military has probably been infiltrated. Is Maduro part of that or not? I mean, it's really complicated. I don't have really a strong opinion yet, but definitely feeling or felt.

1:20:05 Like the CIA had totally infiltrated Venezuela. But I can't figure out the starting point. But I'm so happy you started talking about that and posting about that. And hopefully we can all work together to figure it out because it's super complicated. I agree with you from the perspective that he makes it more complicated by the way he talks.

1:20:33 Almost cryptically, as opposed to me, I just blurt the shit out. I think it's very easy, actually, if you go back and read the history, which, as you guys know, I'm going through that book for it to be our next book. They're not the military. So the military is different than their National Guard. Their National Guard.

1:21:02 The CIA had agents in their National Guard, two of the most senior guys, and their uniforms had that sun on it. That's where that cartel came from. So those two guys were basically CIA assets that were not working with the Venezuelan government in any way, shape, or form.

1:21:33 They had a secret network from the Colombian border, the Venezuelan southern border, up through Venezuela, putting shit on boats and ships from Venezuela. And this piggybacks off of the book that we were reading about Colombia and the Medellin cartel.

1:22:02 What the CIA was doing is they had, you know, numerous routes out of Colombia through Costa Rica, through Honduras, through the Trinidad, through Dominican Republic. So there's all kinds of avenues coming out of Colombia for these drugs all the way through Mexico, multiple venues. But in order to keep attention away from all of those other.

1:22:32 What they were attempting to do is to have avenues which were not their money makers through Venezuela. So they could implicate the Venezuelan government in narco trafficking, even though that was not their most profitable route. And they were using internal government officials with or without the knowledge.

1:23:01 That's still an open question of the Nicaraguan government in the form of those two National Guard generals. And that way, every once in a while, they could expose a Nicaraguan boat and go, oh, it's Nicaragua. Well, we don't like Nicaragua anyway because they nationalize their oil. So all of the American government is already deposed.

1:23:27 to attacking Venezuela because it's the one holdout of not allowing themselves to be exploited by American corporations. And so, again, I'm not saying Chavez or Maduro's good. I'm just saying that this is exactly what they did to the Sandinista government, too, where they land a plane, throw a bell of cocaine out on the tarmac, take a picture, throw it back in the airplane and take off.

1:23:55 Just so that they had the propaganda material to say all of this shit's coming from Sandinista, from Nicaragua. Not from Colombia, not from Peru, not from Bolivia, not through Mexico. It's all Nicaragua. And why? Because we don't like the Sandinistas. That's exactly what they're doing with Nicaragua. And that doesn't make Maduro or Chavez good. That's not what I'm saying. But we need to understand that.

1:24:25 Literally everything that you're told in the media is not true. So we spend our time trying to find out what is true. Does that clear it up a little bit, Renee? A little. I just feel I have to learn more because it's a lot that I think we all will want to learn because going back into the 30s and the Rockefellers in there with Creole oil.

1:24:58 Yeah, and Chavez, and then Cuba's got some fingers and stuff going on. It's a lot to unfold, I think, for us, so I look forward to it. But it's exciting. I think I mentioned that last time of just...

1:25:17 This is a big operation going on on so many levels, you know, and historically. And that's probably why it's very confusing and hush-hush. There are so many levels to this whole thing. The drugs, the Dominion, the Cartel de Solis, which we don't know about, but it seems like a big deal. Yeah, there's all different angles. But, yes, thank you, and I look forward to learning more.

1:25:46 Yeah, I had no idea that that cartel was actually I mean, it doesn't surprise me at all because the CIA set up both the Cali and Medellin cartel and most of the cartels in Mexico. So it's not shocking at all. It's just fun when you stumble across it and you can start putting pieces together.

1:26:10 It's, as Bridget says, it's a pattern. They set up all the cartels. Why would we be surprised? Well, a week ago here in Las Vegas, or it might have been longer than that. I don't know. I just found out about a week ago. There were like 10 or 14 kids that were rescued. The school teacher was married to a cartel person.

1:26:36 And apparently, so they're still doing it, but at least we're starting to see that things are getting done. Never heard about it really, but apparently it was in the news, but I don't watch the news. So, but there you go. So I do see things happening all over the place. Thank you, X, for at least letting me see that part of stuff. And thank you, Colonel Tanner, because, you know.

1:26:58 It's nice being able to see that things are actually getting done, see through, you know, through that fog of Operation Gladio and having these glasses on, you know, even being able to decipher, you know, something that could be a false flag as being a false flag and then being able to tear it apart, you know, based on seeing truth because of all the, oh, it's crazy out here. It is definitely crazy.

1:27:28 It is definitely crazy. All right. Let's see. Why are you so mad? Did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, I want to throw something at you again just to get your take on it, because I'm seeing something going through some of my research, and I'm just going to make a general statement, and you can just shoot me a yes or a no.

1:28:06 It seems like every leader that wants to nationalize a resource that the U.S. covets in any way throughout history, it seems like, or if they just don't want to use the petro dollar anymore, I'll make that general statement too. They're labeled as someone who's a socialist, a communist, someone that should be taken out.

1:28:33 Is that something I mean, that's just a pattern that I'm looking at. Is that that's a pattern we talked about for three years. OK, so even write down some Milosevic. Right. Down to him. Yeah. And then the rest of them. So it's like I understand Gaddafi and how he wanted to do the create the gold Dinar and Saddam Hussein who wanted to.

1:29:00 No longer beyond the petrodollar. And so it's just it's that that's throughout history. That is throughout history that we have demonstrated starting in the late 1800s. Yeah. Moving forward. Yeah. All right. Okay. So it's easy. You're not even allowed to be neutral. It doesn't matter if.

1:29:31 not naturalizing stuff. You're not even allowed to be neutral. Yeah. If you don't give it to us, we're going to take it one way or another. No, not even if you don't have anything, you're not allowed to be neutral. You're not allowed. Oh, wow. So you're not allowed to have conversations with people or countries that are not in the West. Wow. Okay. Yeah. You're not allowed to be neutral. Wow.

1:29:59 One of the problems that Sukarno had in Indonesia was now they had technically the Dutch and Standard Oil had discovered in the 1930s that there were gold and oil in Indonesia. Now, the world did not know that. Even their president didn't know it. But he had set up a.

1:30:28 group of countries, primarily in Africa, but also him in Indonesia and a few other areas in Southeast Asia that were just neutral. They wanted to do business with everybody. Whoever would give them the best deal, they wanted to do business with them. Yeah, okay. And they didn't get the chance to do that either.

1:30:51 The CIA overthrew him. They attempted and failed and then they came back and cooed him later on. And that one was the second one was successful. So you're not allowed to be neutral. You're not allowed to be neutral. No. Wow. And that is true today. If you open conversations with Russia like.

1:31:17 India has opened a lot of conversations with Russia and yeah, with the oil and everything. Yeah. Blow back from the entire Western oligarchy and they will manipulate any trade deal or anything else. Not in your favor. And in the past, the first like Georgia and several of the countries, Slovakia.

1:31:47 You know, where they tried to kill that guy. If you have any conversations with someone that's not approved by these this international syndicate, they will target you. Wow. Yeah. And in most cases, they are doing what's best for their country. And that's not allowed. Yeah. I mean, I knew someone who's from Libya.

1:32:19 The what he told me when Gaddafi was in charge and everything like that, they had a really good. I mean, they had a really, really well. I mean, he got got free college to wherever he wanted to. I mean, it was really a nice place. They were everything the left says they had free medicine. They had free college. They had free everything as they were living off the revenue from selling.

1:32:49 their resources on an open market. And Rabi was organizing African countries that had been exploited by their previous colonial powers and that they were not going to allow, be allowed to form an African union so that they could improve the lot of all of their countrymen collectively.

1:33:17 And you, he wanted to create the, the, the gold Dinar, right? Yeah. Yep. Okay. Wow. Okay. It's just, it's, it's so eyeopening and it's just like all the connections and everything. It's like, wow. That's all I can say is just, wow. Yeah, I know. We've, we've been there. We've been there. Okay. All right, guys, I'm starving.

1:33:46 I don't see any more hands. We're going to call it a day. Like I said, I do think there's some parts of the last few chapters that we're not going to go into as much depth on, but we're almost to the end. So, and interestingly enough, probably not tomorrow, but the day after, we're going to get to the circle back to, if you guys remember at the beginning of the story,

1:34:17 Gary Webb had been called to help that woman with her court case against her boyfriend that had been sitting in jail for years. We will get back to her in a day or two and how that all turned out. Because what Gary Webb has taken us through is all of the, just that one phone call from that woman and her asking him,

1:34:46 to help her figure out what was going on with her boyfriend who had sat for years in jail with no charges preferred. We get back to that story. But that simple request for help led Gary Webb through everything that we've just uncovered. This was his journey that he's documenting from going down to San Diego and pulling out all of those court cases.

1:35:15 talking to Ricky Roth, talking to the attorneys. He is reliving for us his journey based on that one phone call. And we're going to get back to that at the end of the book. And it'll blow your mind. But I can't even imagine living through this. And the portrayal of him with the, he's doing all of this work.

1:35:45 to write the story that literally blows Iran Contra out of the water and exposes everything. And, you know, it destroys his life as it has so many other people that have exposed pieces of this entire octopus. So anyway, we're in for a few more bumps along the way, but we will get done with this book hopefully this week.

1:36:14 And then we're going to move on and do kind of a deep dive into Venezuela. So take care, everybody. Have a nice evening. We'll be back tomorrow.

Entities here

Ron Lister29 Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross25 Harlan Braun23 Contras20 Los Angeles19 Daniel Blanton17 Cincinnati17 Nicaragua16 CIA16 U.S. Department of Justice14 Miami13 United States Attorney's Office11 FBI11 Majors11 United States10 Colombia10 Jose Mercurio Estrada9 San Diego8 Venezuela8 Blanton family8 Danielle Ganser7 Crips7 Scott Weakley6 Robert Sobel6 Sandinistas5 Texas5 Alfonso Jeffries5 Gary Webb5 Colombian drug dealers5 Riverside County Sheriff's Department5 Sherman Block4 DEA4 Bloods4 Big Spender scandal4 Los Angeles Police Department4 Las Vegas4 Carlos Izaca3 Gustavo Medina3 Lynn Ball3 Chapita Blandón3

Claims made here

Carlos Izaca spied_on Sandinistas book_quoted ▶ 11:38

“and Macario escaped the country seven months after the revolution on the last day of February 1980. Macario's protector, Icaza, was publicly accused by the Sandinistas of being a CIA agent in 1983, an…”

Carlos Izaca attempted_assassination_of Nicaragua book_quoted ▶ 12:08

“Nicaraguan's foreign minister with a bottle of liquor that had thallium added to it. Icaza fled Nicaragua and went to work for the Contras in Honduras, as did his wife. Later, he became an attorney fo…”

Orlando Morello laundered_money_for Contras book_quoted ▶ 12:37

“and served as a corporate lawyer for Norwin's suspected money launderer, Orlando Morella. And Morella is the guy that owned a series of different financial institutions in Miami that was laundering al…”

Daniel Blanton member_of Mex-U.S. Import Export book_quoted ▶ 13:31

“the FDN slash Contra, both men became business partners with Daniello Blanton in a company called Mex, M-E-X dash U-S Import Export, another import export company. Other directors of that same company…”

Sergio Herrera member_of Mex-U.S. Import Export book_quoted ▶ 13:31

Jose Fernando Soto member_of Mex-U.S. Import Export book_quoted ▶ 13:31

Gustavo Medina founded La Perella book_quoted ▶ 15:02

“And Stacio Samosa's former counterintelligence expert, Major General Gestapo Medina. Huh. So it's another CIA type restaurant that's money laundering. And its partner is the chief of intelligence from…”

Henry Corrales member_of La Perella documented ▶ 15:37

“by the name of Donald Barrios, B-A-R-R-I-O-S. He also was an FDN Contra supporter who'd sent Blanton to fetch Norwin Menendez from LAX seven years earlier in 1980. Ricky Ross's former cocaine supplier…”

Daniel Blanton founded Alpha 2 Rent-A-Car book_quoted ▶ 17:41

“and spread to 24 other locations in South Florida. Blanton's rent-a-car business was so successful, court records show, he became an authorized outlet for Chrysler Corporation and GM vehicles. They lo…”

Daniel Blanton funded Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted ▶ 18:10

“Blanton provided him with free rental cars and complimentary hotel rooms. Meanwhile, Ross turned Blanton's daughters on to rap music, bringing them the latest CDs and talked to them about rappers and …”

Daniel Blanton supplied_arms_to Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted ▶ 18:43

“He kept saying he could get me some stuff for really cheap and could make me a lot of money if I started dealing in Cincinnati. Ricky, initially, was not interested. When Blanton called him from Detro…”

Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross recruited Alfonso Jeffries book_quoted ▶ 23:59

“was trapped. Ross got the news and quickly assessed the damage. Nine kilos was enough to put Jeffries away for a couple of decades. The pressure would be on him to roll over and give someone up. If th…”

Alfonso Jeffries trafficked Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted ▶ 26:53

“A lot of people stopped calling after that, Ross said. As Ross had feared, Alfonso Jeffries had broken. He told the police about Ross's trip to New York City and California to pick up cocaine. They br…”

Los Angeles Police Department covered_up Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted ▶ 29:53

“The police claimed that Ross had attacked them with a frying pan, so naturally they just used it on him. Bruised and sore and swollen all over, the crack king of L.A. was unceremoniously dumped into a…”

U.S. Department of Justice recruited Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross book_quoted ▶ 34:54

“He'd been told. Yet now they wanted to know if he would be a U.S. government witness against the police. A drug dealer helping to put NARTS in jail. If that doesn't beat all, he thought. Now, again, t…”

Sherman Block exposed Los Angeles Police Department book_quoted ▶ 36:24

“This may be a terrible thing to say, said L.A. County Sheriff Sherman Block, but as we got into things, it became obvious that the stories being told by the crooks were more credible than the stories …”

Robert Sobel headed Majors documented ▶ 38:17

“The lion's share of that booty had been produced by Majors 2 crew, which was now under the command of Sergeant Robert Sobel. After Freeway Ricky Task Force disbanded in 87, Sobel was handpicked to lea…”

Danielle Ganser member_of Majors documented ▶ 42:34

“there were more indictments to come. One of the first to be charged was Deputy Danielle Garner, a hard-nosed detective who had been one of the quote-unquote spiritual leaders of Majors 2. Garner decid…”

Majors laundered_money_for Contras host_asserted ▶ 45:52

“They were accused of stealing from drug dealers had been laundered by the CIA to buy weapons for the Contras. Braun's startling claims were mentioned in the 17th paragraph of the L.A. Times trial stor…”

CIA laundered_money_for Contras guest_asserted ▶ 45:52

Harlan Braun exposed CIA documented ▶ 46:52

“Braun responded in an inflammatory motion opposing the gag order in which he exposed a long hidden detail of the Major's 1986 raid on Ron Lister's house. Lister, who wasn't identified by name, was ref…”

Blanton family trafficked Colombia book_quoted ▶ 48:17

“into the United States. Braun's motion linked the Blanton family to the crash that Hassan Foss C-123 drug plane in Nicaragua in October 86. In other words, he's going for broke here. The same crash Sc…”

Jerry Gazzetta investigated Blanton family guest_asserted ▶ 57:20

“He filed a lawsuit against the city, which was later settled out of court, and he retired. He remains convinced that he and the majors were targeted for destruction because of their investigation of B…”

Ron Lister member_of Blanton family book_quoted ▶ 1:01:32

“of El Salvador, Colombia, Italy, and Iran. He knew intelligence operatives, weapon smugglers, the whole thing. He knew Norwin Menendez. He knew Daniel O'Blanton, everybody. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mes…”

Ron Lister spied_on Scott Weakley speculative ▶ 1:05:13

“Incorporated, which happens to be an international barter brokerage company owned by none other than Scott Weekly, Mr. Death. Whether the DEA was using Weekly's company as a cover or if Lister was als…”

Ron Lister trafficked Cali Cartel book_quoted ▶ 1:06:39

“Lister went on to say that he could not wire transfer the money from the account again since it was originally laundered with the assistance of the CIA. At this point, Lister explained how he and the …”

Colombian drug dealers attempted_assassination_of Ron Lister host_asserted ▶ 1:08:04

“One of the undercover agents was being contacted by the Colombians and said, quote, by the way, we want to kill this guy Lister. And if we can't kill him, we're going to kidnap his mother and put her …”

Ron Lister laundered_money_for Colombian drug dealers host_asserted ▶ 1:09:53

“immigration checkpoint with a picture of Lister and a map to his mother's house. They were in the country illegally. Embarrassed by the fact that another DEA team had discovered their prize informant …”

Marcon Corporation front_for Ron Lister host_asserted ▶ 1:10:24

“through Weekly's company, Marcon Corporation, which they said was set up to launder money for narcotics and weapons. Defendant intended to sell weapons as well. Weekly insisted Marcon was a legitimate…”

Kill the Messenger based_on Gary Webb host_asserted ▶ 1:16:41

“And oh, sorry. Also, I just wanted I was trying to look up the name because I knew there was a movie that was based off of Gary Webb's research is called Kill the Messenger. It came out in 2014. Go ah…”

Gary Webb exposed Iran-Contra affair host_asserted ▶ 1:35:45

“to write the story that literally blows Iran Contra out of the water and exposes everything. And, you know, it destroys his life as it has so many other people that have exposed pieces of this entire …”