Posted on 08/14/2006 8:29:35 AM PDT by TexasCajun
Federal prosecutors in Miami were prepared to indict Raul Castro as the head of a major cocaine smuggling conspiracy in 1993, but the Clinton Administration Justice Department overruled them, current and former Justice Department officials tell ABC News.
The officials say Castro, as Cuban Defense Minister, permitted Colombian drug lords to pay for the use of Cuban waters and airstrips as staging grounds for smuggling runs into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.
"It was a major investigation involving numerous witnesses that was killed at the highest levels in Washington," said a former Justice Department official with direct knowledge of the case.
"There were numerous national security and intelligence issues that would have made the case difficult," said Tom Cash, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Miami.
Convicted Colombian drug boss Carlos Lehder of the Medellin cartel testified in a 1991 federal trial that he met twice in Havana with Raul Castro to arrange safe passage for cocaine flights over Cuban airspace.
The draft indictment, as described by a former Justice Department official who saw it, listed Raul Castro as the leader of a conspiracy involved in smuggling seven and a half tons of cocaine into the United States over a 10-year period. At least a dozen other Cubans were also to be indicted.
In 1989, a top Cuban General, Arnoldo Ochoa, was convicted by a Cuban court and ordered executed with three other military officers for their roles in drug smuggling.
Cuban waters continue to be used by drug smugglers, according to federal law enforcement officials.
"The smugglers know that the U.S. Coast Guard can't go after them in Cuban waters," one official said.
There was no immediate comment from the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, D.C. In the past, Fidel Castro has denied that his country or his brother had any role in protecting drug smugglers
That's what friends are for.
I'm not surprised. I have long thought that the Cuban government was involved in smuggling drugs to the U.S.
Maybe they were doing business with brother Roger.
Or was that Hillary's brother?
That would make one big rock of cocaine.
Cuba smuggling drugs is news? Forbes Magazine listed Fidel as the "wealthiest Latin American Dictator" with a billion stashed in accounts in Switzerland and other safe cash havens. He didn't make the money on sugar.
Also during the Clintonista era, Hillary and Chelsea made at least one trip to the Dominican Republic, another country with fuzzy banking rules. Some of us believed that Hillary and Chelsea's trunks were always stuffed with cash, unsearchable and untouchable. First, a visit to business moguls in India, for instance, then a quick stop on an island with notoriously loose banking rules on the way home -- Easy as one-two-three: The Clintonista Cha Cha Cha.
From Colombia to Haiti (Aristide is another of slick's pals) to Cuba to clinton.
My other sardonic view in those days was Clinton's motive for sending meals on wheels to Haiti. My opinion was that Clinton was trying to guarantee the free flow of cocaine at market prices. (A take off of President Bush's 1991 action against Saddam Hussein to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices when Hussein invaded Kuwait).
The White House under the Clinton's control was a vast criminal enterprise. They made Mafia Don's, con artists, grifters, and gypsies weep with envy.
I still say legalize all drugs and tax them. Make something legal and the allure of using it will go down. The cost base analysis of fighting the war on drugs shows it to be a huge waste of money. And when you legalize it, you then take the criminal nature out of it and you take out all the cartels. We just don't have the guts or common sense to do it.
And no, I don't use drugs, never have. I am just a severe chocoholic.
ping
Your idea makes complete sense...that's why the powers-to-be will never go for it. Like they say, "follow the money", and it does lead to some very interesting places, even here in the good ol' USA !
I'm sure some Freepers (and Prodigy Whitewater BB lurkers) will be reminded of Mena Airport doings with this report... Any connection? Just wondering.
And, in a related story, it should be recalled that, in its very first budget, the free-spending Clinton administration actually proposed some spending cuts!
Accordingly, the U.S. spent less money on the Border Patrol and the Customs Department in FYE 1994 than in FYE 1993.
What a coincidence, huh...???
Ironically, he was the one Fidel used since he was "scarier" then Fidel himself when talking to the cartels.
The period before Lehder's arrest, the Clintonistas ran the Arkansas Cartel and Roger's "friends" were supplying NoseLikeVaccum his powdered candy.
Didn't know Slick has an Indian name?
What are you, a conservative or something?
Seriously, I think you're absolutely correct.
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