SB News Press May 13, 1990 Sunday B section under the misleading headline …
Ex-officer foresees new canal
James “Bo” Gritz, a retired U.S. lieutenant colonel with the Army's Special Forces, who has more than 70 decorations for valor based on his tours of duty in Vietnam [foresees] about 1993 arrangements will be made to place underground more than 200 nuclear bombs along a 17 mile stretch of Nicaragua separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to create a canal in Nicaragua between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, to be used by the latest generation of super-tankers carrying oil from around the world..
“When I was commander of Special Forces for Latin America these plans were already laid out,” he added. “We were going to do it. The only thing that stopped us was the liberal Congress.” He says it is the desire for the new canal that has been behind the Contra war in Central America, the drug war in Latin America, and the destabilization of the former Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua, since last century has been the focus of United States attention in the building of a canal to connect the two oceans, but the engineering problems of such a project have stopped it from happening. Instead, a canal was built by the United States along a part of what was then Colombia, and which then became Panama, near the turn of the Century. But the Panama Canal has outlived its usefulness, and nuclear bomb technology makes it possible to build a new canal across Nicaragua. That explains, he said, why former President Jimmy Carter was willing to sign treaties turning over the waterway to the Panamanians by the end of the century.
Carter, and, subsequently, former President Ronald Reagan, realized that eventually the new canal had to be built across Nicaragua, but situations needed to be created to allow the United States to build its canal.
To do so, however the United States had to destabilize and replace the revolutionary Sandinistas and get a more cooperative government in place. ...
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was called upon and the Contras were equipped and financed for this purpose. Congress refused to supply all the money needed to accomplish the task, so the CIA and the U.S. government went into the drug-running business to help finance the operations.
The running of drugs was something the government had been doing for decades, mainly in Southeast Asia, said Gritz.
Dim: “Hey, how about that Harry?”
Headline Harry: “Huh? What? Headlines said something about a new canal.”
Establishment Ed: “It seems to me that CIA is doing some secret work for the government designed to protect American interests abroad against those Communists. They're everywhere.”
Dim, “Not quite. Israeli's shipping guns to Colombian drug lords. Where are the Communists? CIA running drugs to support their habit of overthrowing 3rd world Central American countries to obtain governments more pliable to American interests. Where are the Communists?”
Ed: “Nicaragua is Communist.”
Dim: “It doesn’t bother you that an ex-Army lieutenant says the CIA has been dealing drugs for years to finance their efforts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government in order to establish a canal in Nicaragua? No mention of Communism, only the canal. What do you think about that, Ed?”
Establishment Ed: “What am I supposed to think? What does the Bush Administration say I am supposed to think? I don't want to stir up any unrest. After all I have my wife and family to think of. Promotions, two weeks paid vacation, big screen TV, and mortgage payments on my nice middle class house in suburbia. Must take care of myself – protect my security.”
Dim: “& I quote, ‘We always decline to comment on reports of this nature,’ said CIA spokesman Peter Earnest.’”
SB News-Press May 19, 1990, a brief synopsis:
North notebooks suggest Bush-Noriega conversation
By Pete Yost Associated Press
“Newly released portions of Oliver North's notebooks suggest that then-Vice President Bush may have played a role in pressing Israel to take partial blame for diverting Iran arms-sale profits to the Nicaraguan Contras.
... Bush has said that he did not know details of the Iran initiative until December 20, 1986 and did not know of North's Contra resupply operation while it was in operation.
A North notebook entry from Nov. 25, 1986, the day the affair became public, refers to a telephone call to North from National Security Adviser John M Poindexter and states “VP call Peres,” Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.
The entry adds that the “Contra connection” has been discovered and that it “would be best if Israel would accept that they were aware that some funds were diverted.”....
Attorney General Edwin Meese, in disclosing the diversion that day, put the responsibility on Israel. Meese said Iran arms sale money went directly from the Israelis into bank accounts held by the Contras...
Israel had made three arms deliveries to Iran in 1985 with the blessing of the Reagan administration and had charged far in excess of what it had paid the Pentagon to replenish the arms. The diversion to the Contras apparently began with the November 1985 shipment of Hawk missiles, when unexpected funds wound up in accounts controlled by Richard Secord and Albert Hakim. ...
The entries show that:
• Shortly after Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega's alleged involvement in drug trafficking was exposed in the NEW York Times, CIA official Dunae Claridge and North on Aug. 24, 1986, discussed a possible meeting sought by Noriega to discuss “cleaning up image.”...
• At a Sept. 3, 1986, meeting with State Department and CIA officers focusing on Panama, North's notebooks mention “corruption … drug-arms trafficking ... money laundering.”
• As revealed at North's trial last year, Noriega met North on Sept. 22, 1986, in London, where the Panamanian leader said he would sabotage Nicaraguan targets. ...
• One entry from the Noriega meeting …touched on what appears to be an idea for a “school” with “courses for commandos” with courses in “booby traps…night ops ... raids.”...
• In an April 25, 1986 entry, Abrams and North discussed details of the Contra resupply network, including a secret airstrip in Costa Rica, efforts to get 100 Blowpipe missiles from Chile and “support” for the Contras southern front.”
So it’s all here – the ex head of the CIA Bush's connection with Ollie North a full month before he admitted knowing anything about the Iran-Israeli-Contra affair. (Why don't they ever mention the Israeli part of the connection?) And then comes Noriega needing assistance from establishment hero Ollie North to clean up his image after it was discovered that he was running cocaine as well as guns from Panama. In his diaries Ollie North also mentions the drugs/arms trafficking and the secret airstrip in Costa Rica. It’s evident that Secord & North were fully aware of Noriega’s drug running through Panama. Long after his connection with cocaine he still remained good enough friends with them to discuss with North setting up a school for commandos, as they called them. They could easily have called them terrorists with their booby traps and counter terrorist operations.
Obviously North and Noriega knew each other quite well since they met in London to talk about their plans together. Even though nothing came of the meeting, the meeting established that Noriega and North were hardly casual acquaintances, but were instead good friends sharing common goals and aims in world politics. Then of course North attempting to aid his good friend Noriega with his image problem and then Noriega's support for his friend Ollie North to help sabotage Nicaragua from the South. We can imagine their meeting.
“Greetings friend. If you help me with the Contras against the Sandinistas, I will help clear your image problem in the USA. But please don't step out of line too much because they're already starting to put the heat on me too.”
How sweet. Two good friends, Ollie North and Manuel Noriega, their careers growing together through their connection to the Central American gun and drug running CIA network supervised by George Bush, head of the CIA. Need I say more?
Psych: “And he didn’t. The Author, my friend and patient, came to a dead halt – no recapitulation – no transition – no tying up loose ends – nothing. He stopped writing for 4 months after researching and composing rather continuously for nearly 6 months. The prior article was written in mid-May 1990. He didn’t begin writing again until late September, and then on an entirely different topic – although related. Even this connection was unbeknownst to him at the time – and for years later.
I think he was stunned at the depth of the corruption – the depravity it had sunk to. 1) The CIA run by George Bush coordinating operations between Israel, Columbia’s cocaine cartel, and Iran, our supposed enemy to overthrow the Nicaraguan government because it was unfriendly to the business interests of the International Corporations. 2) The US government supplying military aid to right wing death squads allied with the cocaine cartels to undermine Colombia’s democracy through the assassination of thousands of leftist political candidates. 3) CIA agents and an American general setting up a location in Costa Rica to run illegal guns and drugs. 4) Then the Propaganda generated by the Establishment controlled Media making it seem as if the American government was a protector of freedom and that our Military struggled to set up democracies as they fought with the evil Communists, when the facts indicate the opposite.
Perhaps the utter disregard for the sanctity of life, property and community in the pursuit of Profit to satisfy Corporate Greed overwhelmed his worldview – his personal constructs. Why were these evil creatures rewarded with acclaim and prosperity even though they displayed a complete lack of any kind of human decency? What kind of God would allow these despicable things to happen? If he stood up and spoke out, would they crush him like a bug in their path? Maybe he needed a break to digest all these uncomfortable insights.
Whatever the reasons he ceased production at this point. And we’re going to leave it that way – resist the urge to tidy the collection of essays with some pat conclusions.”