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Drug trade Fidel Castro

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 5:06 pm
by Firestarter
Firestarter wrote: Sun May 27, 2018 4:35 pmIn 1982, Vesco relocated to Cuba to become the financial adviser to dictator Fidel Castro. Vesco and Carlos Lehder Rivas arranged that Castro got a stake in the cocaine and marijuana business, in return for the use of Cuban airstrips to refuel their drug flights to the US. According to Ernest Volkman, by 1984, Castro had got a $20 billion cut of the growing Western Hemisphere dope trade.
In 1987, in the US trial of Carlos Lehder Rivas, Robert L. Vesco was identified as his co-conspirator. Lehder was charged with smuggling 3.3 tons of cocaine into north Florida and Georgia from Colombia through the Bahamas from 1978 to 1980.

Charles Kehm testified on his conversation with Vesco.
Continental Airlines pilot, Eben Mann, admitted making 3 cocaine-smuggling flights for Lehder to Colombia in 1977-78 for $75,000 in cash.
Radio announcer, Russ O'Hara, said he began working for Lehder in 1978, as co-pilot on drug flights made by John Finley Robinson and Jack Carlton Reed.

The witnesses received immunity for their testimony: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/11/us/f ... trial.html
(http://archive.is/h3cfQ)


Vesco bought IOS in 1970 for less than $5 million, gaining control of an estimated $400 million in funds.

After he escaped the US to evade the charges brought against him, he first settled in Costa Rica, where he invested some $11 million to become “friends” with President José Figueres.
Vesco also befriended nephew of President Richard M. Nixon, Donald A. Nixon Jr., and gave $200,000 to the Nixon campaign illegally.
After Vesco started a machine guns factory, which included President Figueres’s son as a partner, a public and political outcry ensued, and in 1978 he was forced to leave for the Bahamas.
In the years that followed he hop scotched to several countries, including stops in Antigua and Nicaragua, before settling in Cuba.

Vesco eventually became an enemy of the Castro government, when he was accused of defrauding a state-run biotechnology laboratory run by Fidel Castro’s nephew, Antonio Fraga Castro, and sentenced to 13 years. This was about the production of the miracle medicine Trioxidal that would cure cancer, AIDS, arthritis and even the common cold.
I couldn’t find more information on Trioxidal…

After serving most of his time in a private cell, Vesco was quietly released in 2005 and continued to live a “simple” life.

Vesco died 23 November 2017, without ever facing charges in the US for crimes that included securities fraud, drug trafficking and political bribery: http://www.robertnovell.com/robert-vesc ... h-16-2018/
(http://archive.is/5YsZv)


In 1991, convicted cocaine trafficker Carlos Lehder testified during Gen. Manuel A. Noriega's drug trial that Robert Vesco helped him ply the drug trade in Cuba and the Bahamas.
Lehder testified that the Cubans directed cocaine traffic through the Central American nation with the complicity of the Sandinista government.

Lehder stated that he first visited Cuba in 1981 to meet with Vesco and Raul Castro (Fidel’s brother) and he donated a plane to Raul Castro as part of a deal to allow the cartel to ship drugs through Cuba.
In 1982, Lehder became the cartel's "connection" for shipping drugs through Cuba.

Lehder testified that in 1984 he saw Vesco in Nicaragua with Manuel "Redbeard" Pineiro, the head of Cuba's intelligence service: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-1 ... uba-lehder
(http://archive.is/xkRpH)


Fidel Castro's former bodyguard, Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, has also accused Fidel Castro of being involved in drug trafficking.

Sanchez claims that he once was told by Castro to “don’t record” an interview of several hours. Out of curiosity Sanchez put on the headphones to listen in on their conversation.
Gen. José Abrantes asked for Fidel’s authorisation to bring a Cuban “lanchero” (someone who smuggles drugs by boat) living in the US, as the “lanchero” would pay $75,000.
Fidel agreed with this scheme.

In 1986, Castro founded the MC Department (for Moneda Covertible: convertible currency), which traded in illegal and legal goods for “hard currency” from third parties, principally Panama.

Fidel used a warning light to alert the president of the court discreetly, whenever a session should be interrupted.
It has been rumoured that Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa’s death sentence and José Abrantes’ sentence to 20 years in prison were over drugs. After 2 years of detention, in 1991, Abrantes died of a reported “heart attack”: https://nypost.com/2015/05/03/former-bo ... uble-life/
(http://archive.is/V2o5c)

See Fidel Castro shaking the hand of Juan Reinaldo Sanchez.
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Coleman - Drug trade by Committee of 300

Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2018 5:13 pm
by Firestarter
I found another good book; Dr. John Coleman – Conspirators' Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300 (1992): https://ia801908.us.archive.org/18/item ... tee300.pdf

It’s not (only) about drugs (as you can see from the title), but a surprising large part is about drugs….
In a top-secret paper of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), the plan is explained:
… having been failed by Christianity, and with unemployment on every hand, those who have been without jobs for five years or more will turn away from the church and seek solace in drugs. That is when full control of the drug-trade must be completed in order that the governments of all countries who are under our jurisdiction will have a MONOPOLY which we will control through supply…
Drug-bars will take care of the unruly and the discontent, would-be revolutionaries will be turned into harmless addicts with no will of their own…

Coleman makes a strong case that the world is controlled by The Committee of 300, and that the drug-trade plays an important role. The Order of the Garter leads The Committee of 300.
The US is run by 300 families and Britain is run by 100 families. These families are intertwined through marriage, companies, and ties to the Black Nobility, Freemasonry, the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, etc.
This elite group are Gnostics, Cathars, members of the Cult of Dionysus, Osiris, Illuminism, and Bogomilism; and also calls itself the "Olympians".

The American elite grew wealthy from the China opium-trade: the Delanos, Forbes, Appletons, Bacons, Boylestons, Perkins, Russells, Cunninghams, Shaws, Coolidges, Parkmans, Runnewells, Cabots and Codmans. The Astors, Rockefellers, Spelmans, Vanderbilts and the Warburgs became rich from the liquor-trade.
The Oppenheimers of South Africa are higher in the world hierarchy than the Rockefellers.
Lord Beaverbrook, speaking for the Crown, came over from England to instruct these wealthy American families to invest in the WCTU.
Lord Halifax delivered The Committee of 300 orders to the British government during the Second World War. Halifax's son, Charles Wood, married a blood-relative of Lord Rothschild - Miss Primrose.

The BEIC-British government held the monopoly on the opium-trade, and made sure that only the elite of England benefitted. Many of their descendants became members of the The Committee of 300 (just as their forefathers sat on the Council of 300 that ran the BEIC).
The Matheson family was one of the "noble" families in the opium-trade. The Mathesons once loaned $300 million to China for real-estate investment; billed as a "joint-venture” between China and the Matheson Bank.

Almost 13% of the income of India under British rule came from the sale of Bengal opium to the British-controlled opium-distributors in China.
The Opium Wars against China were designed to "put the Chinese in their place". The lucrative opium trade provided the British oligarchical families with billions, and left China with millions of opium-addicts.
In the period of 1791-1894, the number of licensed opium-dens in Shanghai rose from 87 to 663. Opium flow to the US was also increased.

The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (headquartered in London) is in the middle of the opium trade through the TEJAPAIBUL company.
TEJAPAIBUL imports the chemicals needed in the heroin-refining-process into Hong Kong and it also supplies acetic anhydride to the Golden Crescent and Golden Triangle (Pakistan, Turkey and Lebanon). This is financed by the Bangkok Metropolitan Bank.
Stopping the heroin trade is childishly simple. Just check the factories that make acetic anhydride, an essential chemical component to refine heroin from opium, and follow the trail!

The Committee of 300 controls the British colony Canada through the Governor-General appointed by the Queen. Trizec Holdings, supposedly owned by the Bronfman family, is in reality the main Canadian asset of Queen Elizabeth. The Southeast Asian opium-trade is interlocked with the Bronfman-empire and traffics heroin to the US.
The Mary Carter Paint Company was a joint Lansky-MI6 venture. Two Eagle Star directors, top MI6 operatives Sir Kenneth Keith and Sir Kenneth Strong, took control of the Bronfman family shortly after WW II ended. Sirs Keith and Strong set up Trizec Holdings, and legitimated the Bronfman family.
Lord Sassoon was later murdered because he was skimming money and threatened to blow the whistle. Ray Wolfe was more presentable, and became the representative for the Bronfmans.
Canada is in fact the most used route to traffic heroin from the Far-East to the US; a secret carefully hidden by The Committee of 300.

The main countries involved in growing poppies (in 1992) and the coca-bush are: Burma, Northern China, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Thailand, Lebanon, Turkey, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Colombia is the main refiner of cocaine and the chief financial-centre of the cocaine-trade.
Heroin is trafficked into Europe through Corsica and then Monaco.
The Grimaldi family has been in the drug-smuggling-business for centuries. Because Prince Rainier got too greedy: his wife, Princess Grace, was murdered in a car "accident". The order was given by the Committee Monte Carlo and Propaganda Due.

After Khomeini was put in power in Iran by the The Committee of 300, opium-production skyrocketed. By 1984, Iran's opium production exceeded 650 metric tons of opium per year.
William Buckley began sending back damning reports to the CIA in Langley about the opium-trade in the Golden Crescent and Pakistan. The US Embassy in Islamabad was firebombed, but Buckley miraculously escaped.
After his cover was blown, Buckley was sent back to Beirut. William Buckley was then kidnapped by agents of The Committee of 300 and brutally tortured and murdered.

The trend in making huge profits out of drugs was carried over into the 1960s by such "legal" drug merchants as Sandoz (makers of LSD) and Hoffman la Roche (manufacturers of Valium). The cost to manufacture Valium is $3 per kilo (2.2 pounds); and then sold for $20,000 per kilo. The consumer has to pay $50,000 per kilo Valium. Hoffman la Roche also produces Vitamin C for less than 1 cent a kilo and sells it for a profit of 10,000%.
When a friend of Coleman blew the whistle on the crimes of Hoffman la Roche, which had a monopoly, he was arrested and locked up in prison. His wife died in Switzerland of a reported “suicide”. He was eventually released to Britain – his life destroyed.

Jamaica's Gross National Product is mostly made up of sales of marijuana. The mechanism for the marijuana-trade was set up by David Rockefeller and Kissinger under the name – Caribbean Basin Initiative.

After graduating from Vanderbilt University in 1917, William Yandell Elliot was drafted by the Rothschild-Warburg banking-network. Elliot was responsible for Henry Kissinger’s meteoric rise to power as chief US advisor to The Committee of 300.
In 1952, Kissinger was prepared for his task at the Tavistock Institute by R.V. Dicks. By the mid-1960s, Kissinger had proved his worth and was placed in charge of a small group consisting of James Schlesinger, Alexander Haig and Daniel Ellsberg. Cooperating with this group was the chief theoretician of the Institute of Policy Studies Noam Chomsky. Haig, like Kissinger, had worked for General Kraemer. When Kissinger was installed as National Security Advisor, Haig became his deputy.
Ellsberg, Haig, and Kissinger orchestrated Watergate to oust President Nixon for disobeying orders. Haig was the White House leak known as "Deep Throat".
See Henry Kissinger, President Nixon, Gerald Ford and General Alexander Haig, Jr.; 13 October 1973 (7 weeks before Gerald Ford would be sworn in as Vice President).
Image

The disruption of South America and the US was a special assignment for Kissinger under the guidance of Lord Carrington (a top-ranking member of The Committee of 300).
Also involved were John Graham (a.k.a. Irwin Suall) of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is effectively a British intelligence-operation. Suall is still (in 1992) a member of the super-secret British SIS.
Another important co-conspirator was Philip Agee, the so-called CIA "defector", not a member of the Committee, but its case officer for Mexico.

The Assassination Bureau in Europe and the US for The Committee of 300, to carryout high-level assassinations, is absolutely real. A second assassination-bureau is located in Switzerland.

The Bank of International Settlements and the IMF are basically clearing-houses for the drug-trade. The BIS helps the IMF make any country collapse by letting capital flow out of the country.
The BIS does it best to not “recognise” nor make any distinction between flight-capital and laundered drug-money.

MKULTRA – LSD

Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2018 5:08 pm
by Firestarter
Even before I started investigating this topic, I already knew about the CIA’s involvement in the psychedelic drugs explosion of the 1960s by reading John Marks’s excellent book on MKULTRA.
That book is about mind control experiments in which illicit drugs are only a part.
I thought that in the context of this thread that book doesn’t really fit in; it’s still an excellent book that includes information on the CIA’s connection to drugs; John Marks – The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control (1979): http://www.wanttoknow.info/mk/search-ma ... didate.pdf


I’ve found another book that focuses on LSD, but its writers Lee and Shlain are too much of a fan of the psychedelic scene for my taste. They push the common “conspiracy theory” that it was LSD that started the protests against the war in Vietnam.
I think that these flower power “protesters” were more concerned with “tripping out” (ego trips) on psychedelic drugs, music and free sex (make love not war) than the dying Vietnamese and US soldiers. I don’t believe at all that the psychedelic drugs caused the protests against the war in Vietnam to erupt…

Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain “Acid Dreams; The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond” (1985): https://www.erowid.org/library/books_on ... dreams.pdf

In 1938, Dr. Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) for Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.
In 1942, General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the ClA's predecessor, assembled half a dozen American scientists to perform “top-secret” research to develop a speech-inducing “Truth Drug” for use in interrogations.
Various ways of administering “Truth Drugs” were tried on witting and unwitting subjects. The OSS injected it “into any type of food, such as mashed potatoes, butter, salad dressing, or in such things as candy" and determined that the best approach was to inject the “Truth Drug” into a cigarette or cigar. “Truth Drugs” would either stimulate "a rush of talk" or made subjects so paranoid they hardly said a word.
From 1947 to 1953, the navy tried similar experiments in Project CHATTER. The navy experimented with mescaline as an interrogation agent when they learned of the mind control experiments by the Nazis at the Dachau concentration camp. Eventually some 1600 Nazi “scientists” were recruited in Project Paperclip, under supervision of the CIA.

In the late 1940S, the CIA experimented with narcohypnosis, in which a psychiatrist induced a trance after administering a mild sedative. Another technique involved 2 different drugs with contradictory effects: a heavy dose of barbiturates to knock the subject out; followed by a stimulant, usually a type of amphetamine. The CIA also experimented with ice pick lobotomies and other brain surgery via UHF sound waves. In the early 1950s, the CIA tried to make a microwave "amnesia beam" to destroy memory neurons. CIA operatives also experimented with magnetic fields, ultrasonic vibrations, and other forms of radiation on the brain.
During the early 1950S, US secret agents tried cocaine as a potential truth serum. They found that heroin could be used as an effective interrogation technique, because after they stopped giving it to addicts, they became willing to talk (to get drugs).
Deadly chemicals were developed to induce a heart attack or cancer without leaving a clue as to the actual source of the disease.
These experiments were first conducted under the project name BLUEBIRD that evolved into Operation ARTICHOKE in August 1951.

In 1951, the CIA first investigated LSD (acid). Suddenly lots of grants for LSD research were granted and funnelled through ClA-linked conduits. The CIA also studied the effects of: morphine, ether, Benzedrine, ethyl alcohol, and mescaline.
Favourable reports kept coming in, LSD supposedly unearthed secrets buried deep in the unconscious mind, but also caused amnesia during the effective period. Accurate information could not always be obtained because LSD distorted the memory to some degree.
From the mid-1950s through the early 1960s, the CIA used LSD as an aid in interrogation. LSD is colourless, odourless, and tasteless, and could therefore easily be secretly administered through food and beverage.
The intelligence agencies envisioned drugs for every conceivable circumstance: smart shots, memory erasers, anti-vitamins, knock-out drops, aphrodisiacs, drugs that caused headaches or uncontrollable twitching, drugs to induce cancer, a stroke or a heart attack without leaving a trace.
Almost all of the illicit drugs that appeared on the black market during the 1960s — including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, PCP, amyinitrate, mushrooms, DMT, barbiturates, laughing gas, and speed — had previously been tested, and in some cases refined, by CIA and army scientists.

The CIA asked the Eli Lilly Company to synthesise acid. By mid-1954, Lilly had succeeded in breaking the secret formula held by Sandoz.
As LSD could break down behaviour patterns, this raised the possibility of brainwashing. The “respected” psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron heavily sedated his victims, confined them to "sleep rooms", and had messages played over and over from speakers under their pillows. These experiments violated the Nuremberg Code for medical ethics by experimenting on unwitting subjects. Ironically, Cameron had been a member of the Nuremberg tribunal that sentenced many Nazis for similar “war crimes”.
The CIA enlisted the aid of the navy and the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), which served as conduits for channelling money to Dr. Harris Isbell, who experimented with over 800 compounds, including LSD and other hallucinogens. Isbell was a long-time member of the Food and Drug Administration's Advisory Committee on the Abuse of Depressant and Stimulant Drugs. Isbell poisoned some of his victims — nearly all black inmates — with LSD for more than 75 consecutive days.
Dr. Paul Hoch gave LSD to psychiatric patients and then lobotomised them in order to compare the effects of acid before and after psychosurgery.
Robert Heath and his colleagues of Tulane University administered LSD to people and then subjected them to electronic brain stimulation via electrode implant.
The CIA also monitored the latest developments in LSD research worldwide. Drug specialists funded by the CIA made periodic trips to Europe for discussion.

In 1953, Dulles authorised Operation MKULTRA, the ClA's major mind control program during the “Cold War”. MKULTRA was the brainchild of Richard Helms, a high-ranking member of the Technical Services Staff (TSS). For a time both the TSS and the Office of Security (which directed ARTICHOKE) were engaged in parallel LSD tests.
Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who ran the MKULTRA program, explained that they were “investigating” how to “modify an individual's behavior by covert means". Gottlieb approved a plan to give acid to unwitting US citizens.
LSD could cause a person to act foolishly in public. The CIA could administer LSD to sabotage key meetings, speeches, etc.
One of the unwilling subjects, Dr. Frank Olson, died after he plunged headlong through a window from the tenth floor after he had been poisoned with LSD.
In 1953, tennis professional Harold Blauer was the victim of a drug study by a group of doctors working for the army at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He died a few hours after receiving an injection of MDA.
In Operation MKULTRA, the CIA used terminal cancer patients as guinea pigs for testing knockout drugs and psychochemical weapons.

Two hundred officers assigned to the Chemical Corps school at Fort McClellan, Alabama, were given acid during their regular training program. In 1961, soldiers at Edgewood Arsenal were given LSD and confined to sensory deprivation chambers and then subjected to hostile questioning by intelligence officers.
By the mid-1960s, nearly 1500 military personnel had served as guinea pigs for LSD experiments. Vietcong POWs were also used to test LSD.
Psilocybin was given to 32 prisoners at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Concord. At least one member of Timothy Leary's research team took psilocybin with the prisoners while another observer took notes.
In the safe house experiments of George Hunter White that started in 1955, prostitutes spiked the drinks of their “customers” while CIA operatives observed, photographed, and recorded the results. They also explored the possibilities of using sex for espionage purposes.
The safe house experiments continued until 1963, when CIA inspector general John Earman accidentally stumbled across the clandestine testing program during a routine inspection of TSS operations. Earman recommended a freeze on unwitting drug tests, but deputy director for covert operations Helms defended the program.

From Hoffmann-La Roche the army obtained its first batch of a drug called quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ).
Clinical studies with BZ were initiated at Edgewood Arsenal in 1959 and continued until 1975. During this period some 2800 soldiers were exposed to the super hallucinogen BZ. BZ resulted in test subjects lapsing into a state of "semi-quiet delirium" and had no memory of their BZ experience.
BZ was better suited than LSD as a chemical warfare agent. BZ was cheaper, more reliable, and packed a stronger punch than LSD. Most important, BZ could be dispersed as an aerosol mist that would float with the wind across city or battlefield (unlike LSD).
According to CIA documents there are probably contingency plans to use BZ in the case of a major civilian insurrection either by releasing clouds of "madness gas" or spike the city's water supply.

After LSD was first introduced to the US in 1949, in less than a decade the drug had risen to a position of high standing among psychiatrists. LSD therapy was by no means a “fad”. More than a 1000 clinical papers were written on the subject, which included experiments on some 40,000 patients. The rate of recovery or improvement was higher with LSD therapy than with “traditional” psychiatric “treatment” like electroshock, lobotomy, and anti-psychotic drugs.
In May 1953, within a month after the CIA initiated Operation MKULTRA, Aldous Huxley tried mescaline for the first time at his home in Hollywood Hills, California, under the supervision of Dr. Humphry Osmond. Huxley became a propagandist for hallucinogenic drugs. In 1955, Huxley had his second mescaline experience, this time in the company of Captain "Cappy" Alfred M. Hubbard and Huxley’s close friend philosopher Gerald Heard. Later that year, Huxley took his first dose of LSD with "Cappy". Hubbard even received special permission from Rome to administer LSD within the context of the Catholic faith.
Timothy Leary tested prospective employees for the CIA and other organisations. When Dr. Humphry Osmond passed through Boston, Huxley took him to meet Leary.
The word “psychedelic” was coined as a marketing gimmick. LSD became the talk of the town in Hollywood and Beverly Hills in the late 1950s as various movie stars were dosed by their psychiatrists. Cary Grant was guided by Dr. Mortimer Hartmann and Dr. Oscar Janiger to take LSD.

Los Angeles psychiatrist Dr. Oscar Janiger gave psychedelics to various writers, actors, musicians, and filmmakers, including: Anais Nin, Andre Previn, Jack Nicholson, James Coburn, Ivan Tors, and Lord Buckley. Allan Ginsberg supplied mushroom pills to legendary jazz musicians Theolonius Monk and Dizzy Gillespie. Bob Dylan also entered a period of heave drug use.
Starting in 1965, John Lennon, George Harrison, Donovan Leitch, Keith Richards, and the Yardbirds were introduced to LSD. Lennon was inspired to write "She Said She Said" by a conversation in California with Peter Fonda during his second LSD trip.
Frank Zappa also promoted "freaking out". LSD was promoted by “adverse publicity” in the mainstream media.
The Mafia stepped in by setting up its own production and distribution networks for LSD.
It is impossible to understand the psychedelic culture without considering marijuana, as this was also widely used.

Throughout Europe cities became scenes for psychedelics. Amsterdam was the magic city where every drug was readily available. In 1965, the Provos took Amsterdam by storm, whose “happenings” anticipated the style of the San Francisco Diggers. Acid was also plentiful in London, Munich, Berlin (where hippies were called Gammler), Rome (with its capellones), Paris, Zurich, Madrid, the Greek Isles, and even in Prague...
By mid 1967 speed rivalled pot and acid as the most widely used substance in the area. Speed ravaged people mentally and physically and resulted in widespread malnutrition.
A drug subculture also thrived among US troops in Vietnam. 80% of American servicemen smoked pot. They also used plenty of heroin (15% of those who returned from Vietnam had become heroin addicts).
LSD was the most used drug. One type of acid was particularly popular - "orange sunshine". In the late 1960s and early 1970s orange sunshine turned up in all 50 states and numerous foreign countries, including Goa Beach in India, the mountains of Nepal, Indonesia, Australia, Japan, South Vietnam, Costa Rica, Israel, and even the ancient Muslim shrine of Mecca.
Some suspected that heroin was used by the government to pacify the young masses. This was allegedly set in motion in 1969, when Nixon initiated Operation Intercept to cut off the supply of marijuana from Mexico. During this shortage came the influx of heroin.

Billy Hitchcock made his family's 4000 acre estate in New York, available to Leary’s psychedelic clan for a nominal 500 dollar a month rent. One day NASA “scientist” Steve Groff joined the fun at Millbrook. Groff got some acid, and he provided samples of a secret drug developed by the military “JB-118”.
Hitchcock’s specialty was setting up tax shelters and knew exactly what to do with the proceeds from the Brotherhood's missionary work. The cash was laundered through Bahamian slush funds in the same way professional criminals did it. Castle Bank had been set up by the CIA as to funnel money to a wide range of covert operations in the Caribbean.
Billy Hitchcock wasn't the only figure in the Mellon clan who rubbed shoulders with the intelligence community. A number of Mellons served in the OSS, notably David Bruce, the OSS station chief in London. Mellon family foundations have been used repeatedly as conduits for CIA funds. CIA director Richard Helms was even a frequent weekend guest of the Mellon patriarchs in Pittsburgh.
In 1969, Hitchcock's bagman Charles Rumsey was caught by Customs with $100,000 in cash. Rumsey fingered his boss, revealing that the money came from various Paravacini accounts in Switzerland. Customs officials alerted the IRS, which already had a thick file on Billy Hitchcock.

Thirteen agencies — including the FBI, CIA, BNDD, IRS, Customs, and the State Department — eventually cracked down on the Brotherhood. In August 1972, Operation BEL scored its first major victory when narcotics agents arrested 40 people in 3 states.
After the feds broke up the Brotherhood network in the early 1970s, Ronald Hadley Stark ended up with most of the money and property in his name. Stark knew a high-placed Tibetan close to the Dalai Lama. Stark was also in regular contact with officials at the US embassy in London. He even got their help in setting up his Belgian drug lab.
After he was granted immunity, Hitchcock testified in San Francisco before a grand jury on the Brotherhood LSD conspiracy. He named many key figures in the drug trade. He also identified the Swiss and Bahamian banks that were used to launder drug profits.
Scully got 20 years, Sand got 15, while Hitchcock received only a five-year suspended sentence and a $20,000 fine.

While the CIA had actually starting the youth of the world “tripping out” on acid, the “antidrug campaign” in turn was used to get rid of the leaders of “radical politics”.
The FBI shadowed John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and other rock stars, many of whom were prosecuted on drug charges. Rock stars were falling like dominos including Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison.
In 1969, leader of the White Panther party in Michigan John Sinclair, was sentenced to 9 ½ years in prison for giving 2 joints to an undercover officer.
Black militant and antiwar organizer at Texas Southern University Lee Otis John-son was given a 30-year sentence after sharing a joint with a narc.
SDS militant Mark Rudd, who played a prominent role in the uprising at Columbia University, was fingered for drugs by an informant.
Police in Buffalo, New York, planted dope in a bookstore run by black anarchist Martin Sostre, who served 6 years in prison.
Even Timothy Leary got in trouble with the law. At one time, at forty-nine years of age, he faced a virtual life sentence. Then Leary escaped prison. He escaped to Afghanistan where he and his small group were taken into custody. On 17 January 1973, Timothy Leary stepped off a plane in Los Angeles.
Leary got off easy after he promised to collaborate with the feds. Leary was granted an early parole for good behaviour in 1976.

New AG William Barr

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2018 3:59 pm
by Firestarter
It’s amazing that every time Donald Trump replaces somebody on his team, the new person is even worse than the scumbag that’s replaced...
On 7 December, President Donald announced that he would nominate William Pelham Barr for Attorney General. From 1991 to 1993 he had already been Attorney General in the George Bush Sr. administration.

Firestarter wrote: Sat Mar 31, 2018 5:46 pmDois Gene “Chip” Tatum, as a helicopter pilot for the US Army from 1982 to 1986, was involved in massive drug smuggling into the USA.
His passengers included: William Barr; Buddy Young; Felix Rodriguez; Oliver North; Joe Fernandez; Manuel Noriega; Mike Harari.
Tatum reported these illegal activities to his superiors in the army, his handlers in the CIA, the National Security Council, and various high ranking officials, including: George H.W. Bush; Oliver North; Don Gregg; William Barr; Felix Rodriguez; Joe Fernandez; Dewey Clarridge.

William Barr is a particularly sordid case. As George H.W. Bush’s most notorious insider, and as AG from 1991 to 1993, Barr stonewalled several investigations into CIA abuses; including BCCI and BNL CIA drug money laundering.

When George H.W. Bush became CIA Director in 1976, Barr joined the CIA’s “legal office” and worked alongside CIA criminals like Theodore “Ted” Shackley, Felix Rodriguez, and Thomas Clines, who were involved in the Phoenix Program and Golden Triangle narco-trafficking.
Barr was an important player in the Iran-Contra operation, simultaneously managing the operation while also “fixing” the legal end…

Whistleblower Rodney Stich, in his books “Drugging America: A Trojan Horse” and “Defrauding America: Dirty Secrets of the CIA and other Government Operations”, exposed how these operatives participated in many criminal operations during the Bush and Clinton presidencies. William Barr used the name “Robert Johnson”.
Stich wrote:
before William Barr came to the Justice Department, he was an attorney with the Washington law firm of Shaw Pittman Potts & Trowbridge. This law firm represented BCCI for several years…Barr’s former law firm also represented B. Francis Saul II, a director and powerful shareholder in Financial General Bankshares, Inc. Financial later became First American Bankshares, a covert BCCI operation…Further, Barr had been legal counsel for the CIA, the same agency that was heavily involved with BCCI corrupt activities. He was CIA counsel during the time that George Bush was Director of the CIA.

(…)

Terry Reed had been in frequent telephone contact with the man he knew as Robert Johnson. Johnson directed the drug trafficking and drug money laundering, the training in Arkansas of Contra pilots and fighters, and authorized Reed to set up the CIA proprietary in Mexico. At a later date, Reed learned that Robert Johnson was really William Barr, appointed by President George Bush to be Attorney General of the United States.
When the CIA and the Justice Department connections and cover-up of BCCI were exposed by the Congressman Henry Gonzalez, then-FBI Director William Sessions (not related to departing attorney general Jeff Sessions) promised an investigation. This prompted Attorney General Barr, to remove Sessions on trumped-up ethics charges: https://www.globalresearch.ca/ciabushir ... al/5662609
(archived here: http://archive.is/B5fIq)


In March 1985, Tatum wrote in his “flight transcription” about meeting Noriega, Gov. of AK (Clinton) and Barr “concerning missing monies”.
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Also see the letter to Chip Tatum, signed by George H.W. Bush, that authorises him to kill a liability, with the words “If loss of life occurs (...) you shall be exempt and protected from prosecution”.
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See the interview of Chip Tatum by the late Ted Gunderson about George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Dan Lasaster´s involvement in drug trafficking and William Barr’s role.
https://youtu.be/kTSPAi2uHe4

Lockerbie bombing

Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2019 5:14 pm
by Firestarter
There are very few sources on the internet on the Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died that was blamed on Libya. I’m not totally convinced that drugs was the motive, but I do believe that there was a cover-up.
It was no other “special” cover-up artist Robert Mueller who supervised the Lockerbie Bombing “investigation” in 1988…


Shortly before take-off, FBI Assistant Director Oliver "Buck" Revell rushed out to the tarmac and pulled his son and daughter-in-law off the plane that would later crash. Revell had a relationship with Lt. Colonel Oliver North.

On 21 December 1988, a BKA surveillance agent watching the Pan Am flight's loading noticed that the "drug" suitcase was different from that used for all previous drug shipments. This one was a brown Samsonite case.
About an hour before takeoff he phoned in a report, saying something was wrong.

Tundergarth farmer Jim Wilson told relatives of Pan Am victims that he was present "when the drugs were found". He informed local police, who notified the Americans.

A member of a mountain rescue team recalled:
We arrived within two hours [of the crash]. We found Americans already there.
Tom Dalyell, a British MP, said:
Absolutely swarms of Americans [were] fiddling with the bodies.
The crash site was quickly bulldozed, destroying crucial forensic evidence, with an Army official maintaining a watchful eye at all times: http://constitution.famguardian.org/ocbpt/ocbpt_08.htm
(archived here: http://archive.is/CKVb6)


In 1987, investigations into Iran-Contra found that al-Kassar was paid 1.5 million pounds by someone in the US government for arms to the Nicaraguan Contras.

In 1992, al-Kassar sold millions of dollars worth of arms to Croatia, Bosnia and Somalia, violating UN embargoes against these countries.

Was the bombing to protect the heroin and arms trafficking by intelligence asset Monzer al Kassar, an associate of Oliver North and Richard Secord?

On board Pan Am 103, on 21 December 1988, were Major Charles McKee, of the the US Defence Intelligence Agency in Beirut, and Matthew Gannon, CIA Deputy Station Chief in Beirut.
It has been reported that McKee and his team discovered evidence that the “rogue” CIA unit COREA, was involved in drugs with Monzar Al-Kassar: http://web.archive.org/web/202106221526 ... eroin.html

.
Firestarter wrote: Mon Apr 09, 2018 4:55 pmThe Lockerbie bombing, “investigated” by amongst others Robert Mueller, was to cover-up a drug scandal: http://web.archive.org/web/202108020810 ... ink-k.html
.

According to former Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, there is indication that the CIA did the Lockerbie bombing.
MacAskill admits that “Megrahi was not the bomber”: http://web.archive.org/web/202105122020 ... n-cia.html


The Scottish cops investigating the 1988 bombing knew that US intelligence had offered $2 million (£1m) to the Crown's key witness (and his brother) in the Lockerbie trial - Tony Gauci. It still has not been disclosed whether the brothers accepted any money.
This should have been relayed to the defence attorneys before the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan serving 27 years for the bombing.

Another document, probably from the CIA, contains classified information about the MST13 timer which allegedly detonated the bomb. In 2007, in the appeal court, the Crown was still refusing to hand the material over to the defence (for national security reasons).

On 1 June 2000, the US government made a secret deal with a senior member of the Crown Office, Norman McFadyen, to not disclose certain information.
It looks like the right to a fair trial, of Megrahi, was breached.

Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the tragedy, said:
It is shocking to me that if after 19 years of trying to get to the truth about who murdered my daughter, national security is being used as an excuse.
(original version was deleted for some reason): http://web.archive.org/web/200806060646 ... 67.0.0.php

Re: Lockerbie bombing

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2019 5:30 pm
by Firestarter
To finish the story on the Lockerbie bombing...

The “Scottish trial” was held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands (home of corruption and cover-ups). Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in prison for the Lockerbie bombing.
Megrahi's appeal against his conviction was refused in March 2002 by 5 Scottish judges (again) at Camp Zeist.

Ulrich Lumpert, the Mebo AG engineer who testified on a key piece of evidence, admitted to lying in court and stealing the evidence from his employer.

Several legal experts as well as the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial have challenged the verdict that convicted Megrahi.
At the beginning of 2003, Nelson Mandela asked for the intervention of the Western Christian churches in what he described as "a clear miscarriage of justice".

In June 2007, Megrahi was granted permission to appeal against his life sentence for a second time.
On 10 August 2009, doctors reported that Megrahi had terminal cancer. Megrahi abandoned his second appeal in August 2009 after making a deal.

On 20 August 2009, Megrahi, who had served over 8½ years in prison, was pardoned on “compassionate grounds” and moved to Libya (so he was never found innocent).
Megrahi died on 20 May 2012, 2 years and 9 months after his release: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelbaset_al-Megrahi

Hans Derks – History of the opium problem

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 5:02 pm
by Firestarter
I’ve read a relatively short book in Dutch on the VOC, NHM and the House of Orange as opium lords; Hans Derks – Verslaafd aan opium; De VOC en het Huis van Oranje als drugsdealers (2015).
What it lacks in length it more than makes up in shock value! It is really an excellent summary of a much longer book by Hans Derks.
Should I be as “proud” as Hans Derks of the pioneering role the Dutch colonial Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) played in getting the world hooked on drugs?

Arab Muslims were the first to trade hallucinogenic products, including opium, for medical purposes (including for anesthesia).
The Portuguese that controlled Goa learned about opium from the Arabs, but never made it into a mass products (the fools!) and until the 16th-century opium was never a real problem.

The Dutch Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563-1611), while serving as the Protestant Archbishop in Goa, copied secret Portuguese nautical maps that enabled the British East India Company (EIC) and Dutch VOC to take over the Portuguese monopoly on trade with the East Indies.
Van Linschoten, together with his friend Paludanus, published a bestseller in 1598, also translated to English, that included information on opium (called “amphioen” or “taryak” at that time).

At first the Dutch continued to trade in opium, starting at the latest in 1620, at the relatively small scale of the Portuguese until 1660. It is estimated that between 1640 and 1652, Batavia received only some 250 kilogram of opium annually from Surat.
In 1642, the VOC obtained a monopoly from the Sultan to import opium, while the population of the Sultanate was obliged to maintain a fixed number of pepper plants. Around this time VOC officials had the great idea to trade opium for pepper - the East India product with the highest priority until the 19th-century.
The VOC labelled their monopoly an “octroy”, which was defended by military force. The VOC introduced a passport system and if others were caught “smuggling” these goods (opium, spices, tin and cloth), they were confiscated and the “smuggler” severely punished.

In 1663, the VOC started trafficking opium as a mass product in the Malabar coastal region. VOC officials were also involved in some private opium selling. In 1676 the VOC got the exclusive opium import rights in Mataram, in 1678 in Cheribon and a bit later in Bantam (before the British EIC).
In the second part of the 17th century (the “Gouden eeuw”), the Dutch exported Bengal opium not only to the Malabar coast, but also to Southeast Asia (Malacca, Manila, Arakan or the East Indies archipelago), Ceylon, Maldive Islands, Gujarat (Surat, Cambay) and the Persian Gulf/Red Sea (Bandar Abbas, Hormuz or Jeddah). Bengal opium was the VOC’s second-largest profit-maker after raw silk.
This led directly to war and from 1680 to 1740 the amount of junkies coming to Batavia doubled from 10 to 20 per year.
According to official statistics, in 1667 the VOC exported only 1,173 kg; 1675 - 13,322 kg; 1691 - 43,500 kg; 1703 - 60,290 kg; and by the year 1715 - 79,968 kg.
The whole of the 17th-century export to the East Indies from Bengal is estimated at 1.1 million kilograms; this rose to some 5.5 to 6.3 million kilograms in the 18th-century.

The new important man in the VOC opium game was Jacob Mossel (1704-1761). After he arrived in Batavia, the opium profits suddenly trebled from 512,000 to 1,415,00 guilders. After this succes, Mossel was chosen as the successor of Governor-General Van Imhofff, and established the Amphioen Society (AS, amphioen was another name for opium) in 1745 that was active until 1794.
Mossel took 40 shares AS for himself. To have been able to buy these shares, he must have “earned” an amazing 160,000 guilders in only 2 years (since he arrived in Batavia) that could only have come from opium. Jacob Cool (the “Court Jew of Van Imhofff”) originally possessed 30 AS shares, but had to leave 10 to his “favorites”.
To exploit the opium to the utmost, the AS introduced a lease on smoking prepared opium (madat) in districts outside Batavia at the end of 1746. But the opium income actually decreased, because corruption increased.
The AS became the “society” that made all the profits, while the VOC did all the work. The VOC-colonial state remained responsible for the import of opium and the military security in the whole archipelago at the cost of the “taxpayer”. The AS received the opium from the VOC for 1125 guilders per chest and could sell it for 1375 guilders (a profit of more than 22%)...

Most of the wealthy AS shareholders lived in the Netherlands.
An important participant in the Amphioen Society was “stadhouder” Willem IV, who had become a Knight of the Garter in 1733 (and called himself Prince of Orange), who acquired 30 shares AS in 1748. He was promised that by taking this share, in 1755 he would already be 200,000 guilders richer, when the octroy of the AS expired.
Every time the octroy was renewed, Willem IV and his “stadhouder” successor, Willem V, would receive an enormous amount of opium money, e.g. 1.2 million guilders in 1795. All shareholders together pocketed a total of about 13 million guilders; an amount comparable to a present value of about a billion guilders. Willem V made a fortune through the Amphioen Society.
See Willem V, who after being born in 1748, became a Knight of the Garter in 1752.
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Because of this remarkable construction, the VOC got weaker. This was followed by the Dutch–English war in 1795, in which Ceylon was lost and the Napoleonic wars in which the Netheralands lost its independence. There was even a large opium debt owed to the EIC and the British easily conquered Java and took over the rest of the East Indian archipelago.
To avoid a transfer into British hands, the Dutch government took over all the VOC shares (a nationalisation of the private VOC) at the cost of the taxpayer.

Another interesting opium family are the Van Hogendorps. The patriarch Willem van Hogendorp (1735-1784) first lost his fortune through investments in the EIC. He then went to the East Indies with his own ship and made a substantial fortune by “officially” smuggling opium. On his return trip to a retire in Holland, he drowned near the Cape of Good Hope because he had overloaded the ship with too much gold on board.

In 1802, Willem V made a deal with Napoleon after he escaped to England.
During the French occupation, Governor-General Daendels (1808-1811) rationalised the distribution of opium and tried to stimulate its consumption by establishing government opium dens. The opium income of the state multiplied nearly 10 times in 1804 and more than doubled in less than 2 years (1809-1810).
Willem’s second son, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1762-1834), became a lawyer and a real “hero” of the Dutch monarchy. After the planned defeat of Napoleon, in 1813 Gijsbert Karel and 2 associates staged a coup to establish the Dutch kingdom with Willem VI crowned King Willem I, who had become a Knight of the Garter in 1814, and Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp as his prime minister.
Often overlooked in this “heroic tale” is that Willem’s eldest son, Dirk van Hogendorp, ultimately became a general in Napoleon’s army. Dirk even appears in Napoleon’s testament!

In 1824, King Willem I founded the Koninklijke Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij, NHM (Royal Dutch Trading Company) to take over the looting role of the Amphioen Society. Willem I explained about the NHM:
… its aim is to integrate all branches of industrious activities into one whole, of which the NHM is the nucleus; the Chambers of Commerce, the factories and the agricultural committees are the main branches of this whole …
The Dutch taxpayer had to guarantee a net profit to the NHM of 300,000 guilders annually. King Willem I bought 4 million shares, but was the only one to take his money back quickly, and doubled his investment within 13 years. He also took out 1.3 million too much from the NHM in 1830.
While the NHM initially made a profit of 37 million per year, in a few years’ time only 24 million were left.

The Royal NHM was the state opium dealer for a lease of only 2.6 – 3 million guilders annually and 2/7th of the net profit. From 1847-1849 the total opium income of the Dutch colonial state was 6.7, 6.5 and 6 million guilders respectively. The NHM even reached into China, the largest market for opium. By the 1850s, the opium income constituted 16.8% of the revenue collected in the Indies. Between 1860 and 1910 this level was more or less maintained at an average of 15%.
The NHM under a lucrative contract could also buy other goods (including meat, wheat and flour) and sell them for a profit of 16%.
Until 1921, the head of state King/Queen got a weekly report from the President of the NHM. Later the NHM evolved into the ABN Bank, now part of ABN Amro Bank that still has a warm relationship with the Dutch Royal family.

In 1827, the Netherlands concluded a contract with the Chinese captain Tan Hang Kwee to start tin mining on Billiton, starting with 300 laborers. The Chinese miners were kept enslaved by opium. The House of Orange not only made money from the tin but also from the opium. The Chinese sub-farmer had to buy a fixed quantity of opium every month for much higher than market prices.
In 1852, Prince Hendrik (1820-1879), brother of King Willem III, wanted to invest in the tin mines on Biliton to found the private Billiton Mining Company (BM). John Loudon became Hendrik´s representative. The stupidity of the greedy House of Orange is unbelievable since they already had the highly rewarding 1827 contract from which at least a profit of 100,000 guilders per year would be gained from the Chinese labor.
Many Chinese miners died, in the months of February and March 1860 alone, some 700 Chinese miners died, mainly from beriberi (caused by thiamine deficiency).

In 1884 the Dutch journal for the medical profession was very positive about cocaine with an estimated price of 9,000 Dutch guilders per kilo. The Netherlands started coca plantations on Java around 1885.
A quick calculation shows that this leads to an annual turnover of 1.53 billion Dutch guilders!

In 1898, the German Bayer Pharmaceutical Products also produced heroine.
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Parallel to the Opium Factory, a Cocaine Factory was established. In 1900, in Amsterdam the Nederlandsche Cocaïne Fabriek (NCF) was founded by the Koloniale Bank in which the Royal NHM owned a stake.
The NCF became the largest cocaine factory in the world. It even expanded to other products like codeine, benzedrine (amphetamine), efedrine, and developed the fully synthetic cocaine, novocaine. From 1932 onwards, the NCF also processed raw opium into morphine. Around that time several South American countries became large producers of coca leaves.
During the Anglo-American-Dutch funded Nazi occupation in World War II, the NCF received 165 tons of raw opium for free, and it could charge its processing costs to the state. The NCF realised fabulous profits on its morphine during the war. Soon after the war AKZO Nobel bought the company for an undisclosed amount. How much loot went to Queen Wilhelmina?

The performance of this cocaine industry impressed Merck USA so much that it started its own coca plantation on Java with great success in the 1930s.
The American John Cushing, employed in his uncles’ James and Thomas H. Perkins Company of Boston, acquired his wealth from smuggling Turkish opium to Canton (1812). In 1830, the Perkins Company merged with Russell and Co of the grandfather of President Franklin Roosevelt that was “the third-largest opium dealer on the China coast”. In one of those strange coincidences, the Van Rosenvelt family had first come to America from the Netherlands between 1638 and 1649.

Hans Derks – History of the opium problem. The assault on the East, ca. 1600 – 1950 (2012), 39.5 MB: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1000347

Dutch Cocaine Factory

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 4:22 pm
by Firestarter
The Nederlandsche Cocainefabriek (NCF), Dutch Cocaine Factory, was established In Amsterdam by the Koloniale Bank (Colonial Bank) on 12 March 1900. The NCF legally produced drugs until the early 1960s – cocaine, morphine, heroin and novocaine. The coca plants came from the Dutch East Indies.
In 1902 the factory on the Schinkelkade was expanded. Around 1909 a new cocaine factory was built at the Duivendrechtsekade, which was gradually expanded.
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The NCF initially benefited from the First World War because major competitor Merck from Germany no longer had access to some markets and had diffulty getting the raw material.
Even though the “neutral” Netherlands claimed an export ban for medicines during the First World War, the NCF received an exemption for this and made a huge profit. Later in the war, the NCF had problems keeping their profits at the same high level because of the war.

The NCF sold cocaine to Burroughs Wellcome that sold it to British soldiers to turn them into addicted “fighting machines”.
Burroughs Wellcome sold cocaine in pills with the name Forced March since 1890.
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The Dutch Opium Act of 1919 prohibitted the production of cocaine, except by licensed companies. This was even more restricted by the Opium Act in 1928.
This gave the NCF an advantage, because it simply got the permission to produce cocaine, and other drugs, legally (for medical purposes).

During WW II, the NCF also sold amphetamines for German soldiers.

In 1963, the NCF was taken over by Koninklijke Zwanenberg Organon (KZO) from Apeldoorn. This meant the end of the NCF as an independent company: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xdvn ... nufacturer
(archived here: http://archive.is/EZD5e)

The story of the NCF finally got some publicity after Conny Braam researched this not widely known history and published a novel on it, also translated into English – The cocaine salesman (2009). After that she gave interviews to boost the sale of her book.
According to Braam, between 1914 and 1918 the NCF exported an average of 30,000 kilos of cocaine annually.

See the following interview in Dutch, with English subtitles.
In my opinion, the most interesting part of the video is that Braam tells about the involvement of the Dutch Royal family and Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij (NHM), controlled by Queen Wilhelminan, and also tells that the Dutch Royal family had been in the opium trade...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHJlc6pfVoQ

After this interview, Conny Braam was discredited in the wonderful Dutch media, over supposedly making false claims.

Hans Bosman - History Nederlandsche Cocaïne Fabriek

Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2019 3:34 pm
by Firestarter
I’ve tried to find better information on the Nederlandsche Cocainefabriek (NCF), Dutch Cocaine Factory, than Conny Braam, who wrote a novel on it, but didn’t find any.
Hans Bosman was given a PhD in 2012 for the report to discredit Braam’s research.

Bosman presents tables and figures, with estimated numbers, to “prove” once and for all that the NCF was never the largest cocaine producer in the world. According to Bosman the NCF, with 2 locations where factories were built (in 1900 in Amsterdam and in 1909 in Ouder-Amstel), from 1910 to 1917 could produce a maximum of 750 and after that 1,500 kg of cocaine per year.
In 1931, the drugs factory at the Duivendrechtsekade was expanded to produce a a maximum of 5 kg morphine and codeine per day (more than 1800 kg/ year).

It´s amazing how Bosman could present information on this interesting topic, in such a boring way!
Bosman is really, really independent, as he was a manager reponsible for the production of hard drugs at both the NCF and Verenigde Pharmaceutische Fabrieken N.V. (VPF, the company that was previously named Bonnema) from 1960 to 1973.

From the late 1880s onwards, the coca plant was cultivated on a commercial scale on Java.
By 1908, Java had taken over from Peru as the larges coca producer in the world (respectively 4,500 and 4,400 kg in 1908).
By 1913, Java produced 14,500 kg per year (compared to 4,100 kg in Peru).
See the origins for the cocaine manufactured worldwide, 1892-1930.
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Most of the Java coca was exported to and sold in Amsterdam.
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Then Bosman argues with estimated numbers that the biggest cocaine producing countries in the world were Germany (60% of the world cocaine) and the USA (ca 25%).
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According to Bosman, the German Merck, Darmstadt, produced an average of almost 7,000 kg annually in 1912-1914 and 1,700 kg in 1918. In 1915 and 1916 Merck produced less than 750 kg, which Bosman “ignores” in his text.
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Interesting to note is that the recipe for the world famous Coca Cola, from it inception in 1886 to 1903 included coca leaves (the raw material to produce cocaine).

In November 1909, the Koloniale Bank acquired 84% of the shares of the Soekamadjoe plantation on Java, where the coca for the NCF was cultivated.
Hans Bosman does present information on the shareholders and board of directors of the NCF, but sadly missing is this type of information of its parent company - the Koloniale Bank. Bosman doesn´t even mention that the Queen Wilhelmina controlled Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij owned a stake in the Koloniale Bank. In 1949, the Koloniale Bank N.V. changed its name to Cultuur- Handel- en Industrie-Bank (Cultuurbank) N.V.
The Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij is only mentioned once, on the Board of the Coca Producers Association (Coca Producenten Vereniging, CPV) that was established on 7 October 1925 (that also included the Koloniale Bank).

In 1931, the Dutch government tried and failed to get a cocaine monopoly for the NCF through a quota plan under supervision of the League of Nations.

The profit achieved by NCF was excellent as a percentage of the NLG 12,000 shareholders capital.
In 1902-1908, its profit margin was a whopping 41%
In 1910-1914, its profit margin was a respectable 20%
In 1915-1920, World War I and its aftermath, its profit margin was close to 100%!
In 1928, its profit margin was at an all time high.
In 1939, NCF profit jumped because of World War II. In 1943, the Nazi government made a policy to boost the profits of the NCF.
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As the paper by Bosman is filled with estimates I found it interesting to look at how he did this (to conclude that the NCF was worldwide a relatively small cocaine producer).
He estimates the quantities of cocaine sold by NCF for the period 1902-1930, by taking the profits made and by including sales volume and prices, manufacturing costs and overheads, determined the amount.
This would only be reliable if there was no creative bookkeeping or some intermediary company that made even more profit than the NCF.
This becomes even more doubtful, as Bosman admits that no data are available for the quantity of coca leaves shipped to NCF in the period 1902-1908.

One of the strange thing in the numbers presented, is that Bosman assumes that tonnes of coca leaves were stocked in Amsterdam (instead of made into cocaine).
Image

In the early 1960s both NCF and VPF became part of the multinational Koninklijke Zwanenberg Organon (KZO), later Akzo (now Akzo Nobel), that produced opiates under the name Diosynth.
From 1960 on, Turkey became the main source of poppy straw, the raw material for VPF’s opiate business. When Turkey, in 1972 abandoned poppy cultivation, until 1976 Diosynth couldn´t buy sufficient raw material.

It takes until the Appendix before Bosman explicitely attacks Conny Braam´s book. It´s dubious at best in a report to become PhD to attack a “novel” for no other reason than the adverse publicity. As Braam founded what she said on sources, in my opinion Bosman should have attacked the sources instead of Braam.
One of the claims by Braam is that in WW II the NCF sold amphetamine to the German army. Bosman states with authority that the NCF never manufactured amphetamine. Bosman does admit that starting in 1937, the NCF produced racemic ephedrine (that is similar to amphetamine).
He doesn´t explicitelt mention whether the NCF sold racemic ephedrine to the German army...

Hans Bosman – The History of the Nederlandsche Cocaïne Fabriek and its Successors as Manufacturers of Narcotic Drugs, analysed from an International Perspective (2012): https://chg.kncv.nl/history

Drugs flooded Amsterdam on subsidy

Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2019 4:55 pm
by Firestarter
I’ve read a biography on “super-criminal” Steve Brown. Knowing the “quality” of Dutch journalists, the book was better than I expected.
The book shows that flooding my home town of Amsterdam with “soft drugs” (weed and Hashish) was an intentional strategy, paid for with subsidies from the City of Amsterdam.
Of course journalist Bas van Hout gives it a spin, insinuating that it was really the evil Steve Brown that took advantage of the gullible Dutch government, but in many ways it’s the other way around. Steve Brown was used as a pawn of the government of turn Queen Beatrix´s subjects into easily controlled drug addicts.

Steve Brown was born in the USA in 1954 and as a young boy moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands (where his mother came from).
When he was 17 he discovered the corrupt world of government subisidies for the “lower class” youth.

In 1979, Steve Brown started the first Happy Family establishment in Amsterdam, Rustenburgerstraat 207. It was started with the help of a subsidy of 180,000 guilders yearly.
This was quickly followed by 4 other Happy Family “youth centers” on Overtoom, Nes, Dapperstraat and the nightclub: Happy at the Night.
At one point the Happy Happy Family received 2.2 million guilders subsidy a year. Part of the personell was also paid for with tax money.

“The Happy Family” was a “non-profit” Foundation, with according to the Dutch Belastingdienst (IRS) a turnover of 12 million guilders, 4 million of net profits in 1983. In reality turnover and profits were much higher.
Most of the profits came from soft drugs, alcohol and gambling. Because it was a “non-profit” Foundation, they paid no taxes.
In 1984, the Happy Family scandal first hit the media, but nothing was done.

Most people don´t realise that in the Netherlands it is strictly illegal for coffeeshops to buy, grow or import soft drugs. If you don´t understand that every single coffeeshop breaks the law, you could become a journalist.

Steve Brown imported most of the weed and hashish from Morocco, Pakistan, India, Colombia and Afghanistan.
Some of the drugs trafficking was done by official embassy personell with diplomatic immunity, who couldn´t be touched.

The “Happy Family” didn´t even bother to hide what they were doing. They accepted foreign currency from the flood of tourists coming to the “youth centers” that were then easily exchanged by the banks.
Money laundering was nothing more than double bookkeeping (or maybe it could be called no bookkeeping?) and then take the profits to Luxembourgh or offshore Guernsey using a shell sompany to obscure the ownership. The money could then be used to buy real estate without drawing suspicion.

At the end of the 1980s, the narcotics brigade of the Amsterdam police gave Steve Brown an offer he couldn´t refuse. The cops would help him get confiscated drugs and they would split the profits 50-50.
After Brown refused, most of his drugs imports were caught by the cops, who didn´t even bother to press charges, but instead kept the highly valuable narcotics for themselves.
It is no great mystery how the cops could do this, as the “super-criminal” Steve Brown and associates were talking about the trafficked drugs shipments over the phone!

The final nail in the coffin of the Happy Family franchise was a smear campaign in the media, notably the Dutch state TV-station TROS.
In 1990, Steve Brown put an end to Happy Family.

Steve Brown was a big spender and tried to keep the money coming, by ripping criminals off with the group of Ferry Koch (taking cash or drugs).
Steve Brown also occasionally trafficked hashish and ecstasy (XTC) with the Yugoslav mafia and the organisation of Klaas Bruinsma and Etienne Urka.

In April 1992, Steve Brown and Martin Hoogland were arrested for the assassination of Tony Hijzelendoorn (Brown´s friend).
Steve Brown then became government witness against former cop Martin Hoogland for the murder of Tony Hijzelendoorn and “drug baron” Klaas Bruinsma. No charges were brought against Brown.

Bas van Hout became the enemy of Steve Brown when he published his book - Steve Brown; beroep supercrimineel; de ongecensureerde biografie (1995) - with on the cover a price on Brown’s head of 500,000 guilders ($300,000).
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Martin Hoogland was sentenced to 20 years in jail and on 18 March 2004 was assassinated when he was serving his sentence in an open prison in Hoorn.
He was riding his bicycle in town and was shot and killed, possibly by Boneka Belserang: https://stevenbrownsblog.wordpress.com/ ... eve-brown/
(archived here: http://archive.is/YxEmI)


Here’s an interview with Steve Brown; he has an American passport, but you can hear he’s more Dutch...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g79497sHyDk