The Chester County Republican Party has been linked to organized crime since criminal gangs went international during Prohibition. When the Mafia switched to much easier to run heroin law enforcement & political connections were already in place.

 As a small boy I looked forward to visiting Sante and Concetta Giunta Piscoglio at Christmas. There was a large Lionel Train layout in the basement.

Sante Piscoglio once lived in a 1920s style stone home overlooking Coatesville at the top of 13th Avenue. Sante ran Scotch Whisky from Canada to Chester County Common Pleas judges. 

He got 2 pops in the back of the head at 8th Avenue & Harmony Street. 

When the Mafia switched to much easier to run heroin law enforcement & political connections were already in place. 

 It’s universal. The war on people to profit on drugs. 

CIA in Vietnam ran H using U.S. Air Force, wealthy Philly Narcotics Detectives?, ChesCo DA Bill Lamb’s witness Daniel Joseph’s murdered while in witness security for fingering 2 PA State Police & ChesCo FBI selling heroin.

Watching “The Informer” on Amazon & remembering former Chester County DA Bill Lamb’s star witness Daniel Joseph who fingered 2 PA State Police for selling “French Connection heroin. Joseph was murdered while in federal protection.

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“SIU operations include the infamous 2011 Allende massacre, in which an entire town was virtually wiped out by organized criminal groups operating under the eye of Mexican federal law enforcement and military units.”

"A trial date has been set in the high-profile prosecution of a former top-ranking Mexican federal police official once considered the United States’ leading ally in the war on drugs. Genaro García Luna, the former head of public security in Mexico who was arrested in 2019 on charges of cocaine trafficking, listened in from jail Wednesday as Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Eastern District of New York set a tentative October 24, 2022, date for the potentially historic trial.

Noting the complexity and sensitivity of the case, which would be roughly comparable to an FBI director accused of colluding with the mafia, Cogan set backup dates for early January 2023. Federal prosecutors have accused García Luna of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to allow Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s Sinaloa drug cartel to “operate with impunity in Mexico” for more than a decade, while at the same time working side by side with the most powerful officials in the U.S. national security and law enforcement apparatus. García Luna has denied the charges.

Given García Luna’s extensive U.S. government connections, his trial has the potential to peel back the secrecy surrounding drug war cooperation at the highest levels of the U.S. and Mexican governments and upend commonly held misperceptions of the Mexican drug war as simple two-sided struggle between drug traffickers and law enforcement alone."

MORE AT:

High-Stakes Prosecution of U.S.-Backed Mexican Drug War Commander Set for Trial

The development in Genaro García Luna’s case in New York comes amid rising concerns over DEA operations abroad.

Ryan Devereaux

October 27 2021, 6:44 p.m

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When is the “War on Drugs” that’s murdering & killing thousands of people and that police & politicians profit from going to stop?

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History of CIA Involvement in Drug Trafficking

“In my 30­year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.” — Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite DEA enforcement unit.

The foregoing discussion should not be regarded as any kind of historical aberration inasmuch as the CIA has had a long and virtually continuous involvement with drug trafficking since the end of World War II.

1947 to 1951, France

CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrest control of labor unions from the Communist Party. The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks–ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille’s first heroin laboratories were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront.

Early 1950s, Southeast Asia

The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium baron of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand, and Laos), the world’s largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the CIA’s principal proprietary airline, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia.

1950s to early 1970s, Indochina

During U.S. military involvement in Laos and other parts of Indochina, Air America flew opium and heroin throughout the area. Many GI’s in Vietnam became addicts. A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world’s illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America’s booming heroin market.

1973 to 1980, Australia

The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of U.S. generals, admirals, and CIA men–including former CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America, and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering, and international arms dealing. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt.

1970s and 1980s, Panama

For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated “guns-for-drugs” flights for the contras, providing protection and pilots, safe havens for drug cartel officials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-CIA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellín cartel patrons). The U.S. government only turned against Noriega, invading Panama in December 1989 and kidnapping the general, once they discovered he was providing intelligence and services to the Cubans and Sandinistas. Ironically, drug trafficking through Panama increased after the U.S. invasion.

1980s, Central America

The San Jose Mercury News series documents just one thread of the interwoven operations linking the CIA, the contras, and the cocaine cartels. Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating: “There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual contras, contra suppliers, contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the contras, and contra supporters throughout the region. . . . U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua. . . . In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter. . . . Senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the contras’ funding problems.”

In Costa Rica, which served as the “Southern Front” for the contras (Honduras being the Northern Front), there were several CIA-contra networks involved in drug trafficking. In addition to those servicing the Meneses-Blandon operation (detailed by the Mercury News) and Noriega’s operation, there was CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua were the main staging area for the contras. Hull and other CIA-connected contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million in cash and several planes to contra leaders. In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a DEA-hired plane clandestinely and illegally flew the CIA operative to Miami, via Haiti. The U.S. repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull to Costa Rica to stand trial.

Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Americans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the contras. Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking. They used contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shrimp company, which laundered money for the CIA, to channel cocaine to the U.S.

Costa Rica was not the only route. Guatemala, whose military intelligence service–closely associated with the CIA–harbored many drug traffickers, according to the DEA, was another way station along the cocaine highway. Additionally, the Medellín cartel’s Miami accountant, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, testified that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan contras through long-time CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was based at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador.>

The contras provided both protection and infrastructure (planes, pilots, airstrips, warehouses, front companies, and banks) to these CIA-linked drug networks. At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received U.S. government contracts to carry nonlethal supplies to the contras. Southern Air Transport, “formerly” CIA-owned and later under Pentagon contract, was involved in the drug running as well. Cocaine-laden planes flew to Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and other locations, including several military bases. Designated as “Contra Craft,” these shipments were not to be inspected. When some authority wasn’t apprised and made an arrest, powerful strings were pulled to result in dropping the case, acquittal, reduced sentence, or deportation.

Mid-1980s to early 1990s, Haiti

While working to keep key Haitian military and political leaders in power, the CIA turned a blind eye to their clients’ drug trafficking. In 1986, the Agency added some more names to its payroll by creating a new Haitian organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN). SIN’s mandate included countering the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in trafficking, a trade aided and abetted by some Haitian military and political leaders.

1980s to early 1990s, Afghanistan

CIA-supported Moujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting the Soviet-supported government, which had plans to reform Afghan society. The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading drug lords and the biggest heroin refiner, who was also the largest recipient of CIA military support. CIA-supplied trucks and mules that had carried arms into Afghanistan were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The output provided up to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. U.S. officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies. In 1993, an official of the DEA dubbed Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world."

MORE AT:

Institute for Policy Studies

The CIA, Contras, Gangs, and Crack

Based on a year-long investigation, reporter Gary Webb wrote that during the 1980s the CIA helped finance its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cut-rate cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross.

December 5, 2018