From the time that the CIA secretly hired former members of the Nazi regime after World War II, one could predict that things were not going to go in a good direction, at least not in a moral sense.
After that, there was MKULTRA, which exposed an unknown number of American citizens and foreigners to mentally damaging drug experimentation, something those Nazis the CIA secretly hired undoubtedly approved of. The reason I say “unknown” is because the CIA intentionally destroyed virtually its MKULTRA records to prevent Congress and the American people from examining the true nature and extent of this evil program .
Then there was the CIA’s secret assassination program, in which an unknown number of innocent people have been assassinated in the name of protecting “national security.”
Then there were the kidnappings, torture, and executions, again to protect “national security.”
And, of course, there were the coups that have installed brutal rightwing regimes in foreign lands, which have subjected foreign citizenries to untold horrors at the hands of the CIA’s selected dictators and their respective national-security state henchmen, many of whom were trained by the CIA and the Pentagon’s School of the Americas (which is known as the School of Assassins in Latin America).
Don’t forget Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s secret program to acquire assets within the U.S. mainstream press to spread the word about what a wonderful organization the CIA was and how it was protecting “national security.”
As we are being reminded in Amazon Prime’s new series The Last Narc, the CIA also has a propensity to align itself with criminal elements, including those who push drugs.
I have written about The Last Narc in two previous blog posts (here and here). The series documents how the CIA orchestrated the kidnapping, interrogation, torture, and execution in Mexico of a 37-year-old DEA agent, Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, who, the CIA suspected, was coming dangerously close to uncovering the CIA’s participation in the Mexican drug trade, especially as part of the Iran-Contra scandal.
The “retired” CIA agent who allegedly participated in Camarena’s interrogation and torture has denied the allegation, but there is the possibility that he would deny it even if he were guilty, especially since he knows that neither the Justice Department nor the Congress would ever seriously investigate the matter. What’s interesting is that there are three witnesses who were present inside the torture room who independently put that “retired” CIA agent squarely in Camarena’s torture room, as is shown in The Last Narc.
One of the fascinating aspects of the series is that it documents how the CIA helped create and establish a high-level national police force in Mexico that became an integral part of the Guadalajara drug cartel. The police force was called the DSF, for the Direccion Federal De Seguridad. It participated directly in the kidnapping and torture of Kiki Camarena.
The DSF was a combination FBI, CIA, and Pentagon, all wrapped into one, with the full immunity in Mexico that the CIA enjoys here in the United States. Just as no one here in the United States jacks with the CIA, no one in Mexico ever jacked with the DSF.
That elite status and power came in handy for the Guadalajara Cartel because the DSF was integrated into the cartel. They were essentially one big drug-running, murderous organization, with the DSF providing protection for the cartel — and splitting the drug profits of course.
In Mexico, the police have the same types of domestic highway checkpoints that thee Border Patrol has in the American Southwest. But the Guadalajara Cartel never had to worry about those checkpoints. That’s because the truckers transporting drugs toward the United States had DSF agents serving as escorts, which guaranteed a speedy and search-free trip to the border.
Of course, as we all know, this wasn’t the CIA’s first relationship with criminal organizations. Recall that it was the CIA that fought to preserve the Batista regime in Cuba prior to the Cuban Revolution in 1959, knowing full well that Batista was partnering with the Mafia, the biggest drug-running, murderous organization in the world.
And then don’t forget the CIA’s assassination partnership with the Mafia, in which the two organizations joined forces to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, notwithstanding the fact that Cuba had never attacked or invaded the United States.
Thus creating the DSF was no big deal for the CIA. All in a day’s work in the defense of “national security.”
Every American should watch The Last Narc to get a sense of how both the U.S. government and the Mexican governments operate … and why both regimes are so steadfastly committed to continuing the “war on drugs.”
