CIA Drug Planes: Now you see them, now you don't

Sometimes, during our daily work of combing through the Web looking for articles, we spot curious items that are usually published on small local news sites and don't carry any obvious significance, except for the fact that they leave us with the feeling that the most interesting details were left out. This was the case with following article:

Authorities investigate "mysterious" plane vanished from radar

Dominican Today, Thursday 11 March, 2010

Santo Domingo - Intelligence agencies investigate how a "mysterious" aircraft took off from Higüero International Airport with fake registry and a flight plan initially to Port-au-Prince, but once in flight changed course toward South America, vanishing from radar screens.

The Cessna Centurion 210L is airplane, number 21059588 left Higüero Sunday night, using for its flight plan the registration of another craft, which is under repair in one of the airport's hangars.

A mysterious aircraft with a fake registration disappears from the radar screens after turning off communication equipment. Sounds like something from a James Bond novel, doesn't it? We thought so too, and propose our 'Secret Team' buddies to be the usual suspects. Higüero International Airport has further mysteries to offer. At the end of February, the body of an unidentified man fell from a cargo plane that was taking off from Santo Domingo on a flight to Miami. Local media reported that the man was about 30 years old and had apparently stowed himself away in the airplane's wheel well. The true reasons for his actions will likely remain unknown, but we wonder why this particular location has such an unfortunate record.

In late 2008 there was another case of a missing plane, this time over the Turks and Caicos Islands nearby. The plane disappeared under mysterious circumstances, flown by an unlicensed pilot with 12 people aboard. Aviation officials gave conflicting reports on the twin-engine plane's origin, destination and where it was last reported.

A flight plan indicated the plane took off from the Dominican Republic and was to land in the Bahamas, said Santiago Rosa, aerial navigation director for the Dominican Civil Aviation Institute.

But the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said the plane disappeared shortly after taking off from Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands just southeast of the Bahamas.

A year later, another news report described distraught relatives' attempts to get to the truth of the matter regarding the vanished plane, and added that according to a report from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, about 35 minutes after takeoff pilot Adriano Jimenez sent an emergency signal to Providenciales International Airport in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The plane then disappeared from the radar. U.S. federal officials believe it plunged into the ocean about 12 nautical miles south of West Caicos island, but no debris or bodies were ever found. Gone, just like that.

Although it's possible that we're just dealing with an unfortunate and painful, but everyday tragic human reality, there is also another, no less tragic and probably more accurate possibility: that all, or at least some, of these disappearing planes had something to do with drug trafficking. And one of their favorite models is indeed the Cessna 210 single-engine plane that can haul a lot of weight and has high wings ideal for landing on dirt roads or in desert washes. In Mexico, for example, authorities have seized more than 400 drug planes like this since 2006 - a fleet bigger than the Mexican air force itself.

But make no mistake, we are not dealing with the usual drug lords and their local cartels, but the much bigger fish that pull their strings. Drug trafficking and smuggling is the favored method of self-funding for rogue intelligence agencies like the CIA and the Mossad. Ironically, Mexican authorities thank the U.S. for this 'valuable' help, while in reality they, or at least certain U.S. parties, have their cocaine and snort it too.

Consider the following from The Secret Team, The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World by L. Fletcher Prouty:

The CIA also maintains countless paramilitary and pseudobusiness organizations that weave in and out of legitimacy and do business much as their civilian counterparts would. The small airline alluded to in the Gandia example actually exists and very capably operates in Latin America. It operates as a viable business and competes with other airlines of its type. The only difference is that the officials of the other airlines, who have a hard time meeting the payroll at times, wonder how their competition is able to stay in business year after year with no more volume than they have. At such a point, most of the competition will rationalize that the cover airline must be in some illegitimate business like smuggling and the drug trade, or else that it is connected with the CIA. They could be right on both counts.

Most of these cover businesses have to be closed out and reestablished from time to time to support their usefulness. (It may be interesting to note that in September 1963, none other than the Secretary of the Senate, Bobby Baker, got mixed up with one of these cover airlines, Fairways Incorporated, without knowing it, and that the exposure resulting from his accidental charter of this small airline played a part in bringing down his house of cards.

It won't be the last time for the house of cards to be in danger of collapsing, as from time to time we hear about more cocaine planes landing in the wrong (or right, in this case) hands and exposing tight connections to U.S. government or even Corporate America's Green Movement!

But spooks are good at burying truth, or at least getting rid of and burying those who ask too many questions. This was the fate of investigative reporter, Gary Webb. On the night of December 9, 2004, devastated and depressed by his ruined career, Webb typed out four suicide notes for his family, laid out a certificate for his cremation, put a note on the door suggesting a call to 911, removed his father's handgun from a box, and shot himself in the head . . . twice. Now that is some determination to commit suicide. Is it possible that he was "assisted", especially when certain parties had an interest in silencing him? Webb's "Dark Alliance" series, published in August 1996, revived the story of how the Reagan administration in the 1980s had tolerated and protected cocaine smuggling by its client army of Nicaraguan rebels known as the contras:

Though substantial evidence of these crimes had surfaced in the mid-1980s (initially in an article that Brian Barger and I wrote for the Associated Press in December 1985 and later at hearings conducted by Sen. John Kerry), the major news outlets had bent to pressure from the Reagan administration and refused to take the disclosures seriously.

But Webb's series thrust the scandal back into prominence by connecting the contra-cocaine trafficking to the crack epidemic that had ravaged Los Angeles and other American cities in the 1980s. For that reason, African-American communities were up in arms as were their elected representatives. Soon, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times joined in vilifying Webb. The big newspapers made much of the CIA's internal reviews in 1987 and 1988 that supposedly cleared the spy agency of a role in Contra-cocaine smuggling.

The cover-up began to weaken when CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz conceded before the Senate Intelligence Committee on October 24, 1996 that the first CIA probe had lasted only 12 days, the second only three days. He promised a more thorough review. The CIA's defensive line against the contra-cocaine allegations began to break when it published Volume One of Inspector General Hitz's findings on January 29, 1998. Despite a largely exculpatory press release, the report not only verified many of Webb's allegations but showed that that he had actually understated the seriousness of the CIA's involvement in Contra-drug crimes:

According to evidence cited by Bromwich, the Reagan administration knew almost from the outset of the contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the crimes.

The Justice report also disclosed repeated examples of the CIA and U.S. embassies in Central America discouraging Drug Enforcement Administration investigations, including one into contra-cocaine shipments moving through the international airport in El Salvador.

And just to add another unfortunate coincidence to the mix, recall the case of Air France Flight 447 which disappeared over the mid-Atlantic?

Amid the media frenzy and speculation over the disappearance of Air France's ill-fated Flight 447, the loss of two of the world's most prominent figures in the war on the illegal arms trade and international drug trafficking has been virtually overlooked.

Pablo Dreyfus, a 39-year-old Argentine who was travelling with his wife Ana Carolina Rodrigues aboard the doomed flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, had worked tirelessly with the Brazilian authorities to stem the flow of arms and ammunition that for years has fuelled the bloody turf wars waged by drug gangs in Rio's sprawling favelas.

So many deaths, lies and deceit. But don't despair. In Winston Churchill's words, "The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is."