"In the first summer of Ronald Reagan's presidency, in 1981, the CIA organized guerrilla forces to topple the new, socialist government of Nicaragua.

But the CIA needed a way to arm the contras."

From ......... Daily News Miner, FBKS, AK

14 Sept.1996 page A-4 .................. OPINION

The cops finally busted Boston's Intervale Street gang. Even though the 23 men are mostly in their 20s, many of them face life in jail after eight years of round-the-clock crack selling, six alleged murders and terrorizing neighborhoods.

The bust was a welcome event. The problem is, these local African-American knuckleheads are the caboose of the drug trade. The engine is the federal government.

Last month the 'San Jose Mercury News' linked the Central Intelligence Agency with the first flood of crack in South-Central Los Angeles.

In the first summer of Ronald Reagan's presidency, in 1981, the CIA organized guerrilla forces to topple the new, socialist government of Nicaragua. But the CIA needed a way to arm the contras.

It turned to Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes. Blandon, the son of a Nicaraguan slumlord, supported the previous U.S.-backed dictator in Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza.

Blandon left Nicaragua to sell cars in Los Angeles. Through the exile community, he met Col. Enrique Bermudez. Bermudez was Somoza's liaison to the U.S. Army and was hired by the CIA to organize the contras. Bermudez, murdered in 1991, was paid by the CIA during the presidencies of Reagan and George Bush.

Blandon also met another exile, Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero. Meneses had long been suspected of being a California cocaine kingpin. Bermudez put Meneses in charge of "intelligence and security" for the contras in California. Blandon testified that Meneses taught him the drug trade.

Blandon, in turn, hooked up with the top street seller in Los Angeles, Ricky Ross. Street sellers had just figured out how to make crack, a much cheaper form of cocaine, and by 1983, the Meneses-Blandon-Ross connection sold up to $3 million of the stuff a day. Meneses flew shipments to Blandon, who sold them to Ross, who sold them to both the major gangs in South-Central, the Crips and the Bloods, who spread their crack and terror to other cities in the United States.

Blandon and Meneses sent their profits back to the contras. A former associate of Meneses said that cocaine was even flown to a U.S. Air Force base in Texas. The crack flood was not taken seriously by Los Angeles police until 1987, because the higherups could not believe that so much volume and cash could flow through poverty-stricken South-Central.

Finally, Ross and Blandon were jailed for crack trafficking. A federal prosecutor said Blandon had sold so much cocaine that his mandatory sentence would have been "off the scale." But while Ross spent five years in jail, Blandon spent only 28 months. Furthermore, Blandon became a paid government informant. After their releases, Blandon set up Ross for a sting. Ross was rearrested, convicted of cocaine conspiracy and faces life in prison without parole.

Blandon, meanwhile, is on unsupervised parole, has maintained his businesses in the United States and Nicaragua and has collected, so far, $166,000 of your tax dollars as an informant. Meneses is now in jail in Nicaragua for cocaine trafficking but is scheduled to be paroled this year

Meneses never spent a day in a U.S. jail despite being implicated in 45 separate federal investigations over the last two decades. He owns several homes, restaurants and factories in the Bay Area. Drug agents told the News that anytime they got serious about nailing Meneses, the CIA and the Justice Department were uncooperative, citing "national security."

Those agencies also refuse to discuss Blandon and Meneses with the Mercury News. Freedom of Information Act requests filed with the CIA, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, the State Department and the Immigraration and Naturalization Service have either been denied on national security grounds or have not yet been answered.

A black guy faces life in prison. His supplier lives the high life as a paid informant. The supplier's supplier was clearly protected by the feds and is about to resume the high life. It makes for colorful Page 1 news when gangs like the Intervale are rounded up. It made a juicy sound bite when Nancy Reagan said "Just No" to drugs. But the CIA's version of how crack flooded inner city and began the dramatic cycle of landing tens of thousands of black men into prison remains a top White House secret. Derrick Z. Jackson is a Boston Globe columist.

-END QUOTE-

[while the above and following is taking place, a KNIGHT OF MALTA,

"The CIA has covertly funded key Sandinista opponents for years, including at times 'La Prensa' and the Roman Catholic Church, say intelligence sources."

[NEWSWEEK July 25, 1988]

"Report says clergy in Managua tapped North's war chest"

"Some funds from Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North's secret bank account

made their way to the Catholic church in Nicaragua,

according to press reports and recent congressional testimony."

[Jim McManus, Washington Bureau Chief, National Catholic Reporter]

From ..... Associated Press

JULY 30, 1988

LATIN AMERICAN DRUG TRAFFICKERS GIVE TO PRIEST

CARACAS, Venezuela [AP] - Drug traffickers in many Latin American countries are donating money and offering drugs to parish priests, and the Roman Catholic Church is not sure what to do about it, a Venezuelan bishop said. [--------------] -END QUOTE-

From ............ National Catholic Reporter

31 January 1992, Page 11

"This made great contrast with the Ronald Reagan era.

In the "good old days" the pope was in alliance with the United States in Central America, destabilizing Nicaragua, supporting the contras, propping up the Salvadorans and generally repressing liberation theologians with the aid of the CIA.

[----------] -END QUOTE

'I am proud to call myself an ally of Pope John Paul,

who stood up to this administration in Cairo.'

[ Ralph Reed Jr., [exec. director of the Christian Coalition]

From- National Catholic Reporter 30 Sept. 1994 page 4-5

From............. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY & THE VATICAN:

By Dr. [Phd.] Stephen Mumford

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 84-72500

Pub.by- Humanist Press PO Box 146 Amherst, NY

Available [about $10] from-

Center for Research on Population and Security PO Box 13067 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709

page 172

Consider the intensity of the commitment of these secret society members as "international defenders of the Church."

It is hardly a secret that one of the most important American advances in "defending the Church" by Catholic elitists was the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA].

The activities of the CIA go far beyond intelligence gathering of an international nature. The CIA serves as an agency through which secret "assistance' to the Holy Mother Church can be provided by secret American society members acting as her defenders:

During the CIA's formative years, Protestants predominated...... Somehow, however, Catholics wrested control of the CIA's covert-action section.

It was no coincidence that some of the agency's more grandiose operations were in Catholic countries of Latin America and the Catholic regime of South Vietnam.11 -END QUOTE-

From....... Time Magazine Cover Story 24 February 1992

[------------------]

The Catholic Team

The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics--CIA chief William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, Walters and William Wilson, Reagan's first ambassador to the Vatican.

They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship

From....... Time Magazine Cover Story 24 February 1992

[-------------]

Haig dispatched Ambassador at Large Vernon Walters, a devout Roman Catholic, to meet with John Paul II. Walters arrived in Rome soon after, and met separately with the Pope and with Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state. Both sides agreed that Solidarity's flame must not be extinguished, that the Soviets must become the focus of an international campaign of isolation, and that the Polish government must be subjected to moral and limited economic pressure.

According to U.S. intelligence sources, the Pope had already advised Walesa through church channels to keep his movement operating underground, and to pass the word to Solidarity's 10 million members not to go into the streets and risk provoking Warsaw Pact intervention or civil war with Polish security forces. Because the communists had cut the direct phone lines between Poland and the Vatican, John Paul II communicated with Jozef Cardinal Glemp in Warsaw via radio. He also dispatched his envoys to Poland to report on the situation. "The Vatican's information was absolutely better and quicker than ours in every respect," says Haig. "Though we had some excellent sources of our own, our information was taking too long to filter through the intelligence bureaucracy."

In the first hours of the crisis, Reagan ordered that the Pope receive as quickly as possible relevant American intelligence, including information from a Polish Deputy Minister of Defense who was secretly reporting to the CIA. Washington also handed over to the Vatican reports and analysis from Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a senior member of the Polish general staff, who was a CIA informant until November 1981, when he had to be smuggled out of Poland after he warned that the Soviets were prepared to invade if the Polish government did not impose martial law. Kuklinski had issued a similar warning about a Soviet military action in late 1980, which led the outgoing Carter Administration to send secret messages to Leonid Brezhnev informing him that among the costs of an invasion would be the sale of sophisticated U.S. weapons to China. This time, Kuklinski reported to Washington, Brezhnev had grown more impatient, and a disastrous harvest at home meant that the Kremlin did not need mechanized army units to help bring in the crops and instead could spare them for an invasion. "Anything that we knew that we thought the Pope would not be aware of, we certainly brought it to his attention," says Reagan. "Immediately."

The Catholic Team

The key Administration players were all devout Roman Catholics--CIA chief William Casey, Allen, Clark, Haig, Walters and William Wilson, Reagan's first ambassador to the Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their church combined with their fierce anticommunism and their notion of American democracy. Yet the mission would have been impossible without the full support of Reagan, who believed fervently in both the benefits and the practical applications of Washington's relationship with the Vatican. One of his earliest goals as President, Reagan says, was to recognize the Vatican as a state "and make them an ally."

[-------------]

Casey's Cappuccino

Meanwhile, in Washington a close relationship developed between Casey, Clark and Archbishop Laghi. "Casey and I dropped into his [Laghi's] residence early mornings during critical times to gather his comments and counsel," says Clark. "We'd have breakfast and coffee and discuss what was being done in Poland. I'd speak to him frequently on the phone, and he would be in touch with the Pope." Says Laghi: "They liked good cappuccino. Occasionally we might talk about Central America or the church position on birth control. But usually the subject was Poland."

"Almost everything having to do with Poland was handled outside of normal State Department channels and would go through Casey and Clark," says Robert McFarlane, who served as a deputy to both Clark and Haig and later as National Security Adviser to the President. "I knew that they were meeting with Pio Laghi, and that Pio Laghi had been to see the President, but Clark would never tell me what the substance of the discussions was."

On at least six occasions Laghi came to the White House and met with Clark or the President; each time, he entered the White House through the southwest gate in order to avoid reporters. "By keeping in such close touch, we did not cross lines," says Laghi. "My role was primarily to facilitate meetings between Walters and the Holy Father.

The Holy Father knew his people. It was a very complex situation--how to insist on human rights, on religious freedom, and keep Solidarity alive without provoking the communist authorities further.

[----------]

"The Administration plugged into the church across the board," observes Derwinski, now Secretary of Veterans Affairs. "Not just through the church hierarchy but through individual churches and bishops. Monsignor Bronislaw Dabrowski, a deputy to Cardinal Glemp, came to us often to tell us what was needed: he would meet with me, with Casey, the NSC and sometimes with Walters." John Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia, whose father was born in Poland, was the American churchman closest to the Pope. He frequently met with Casey to discuss support for Solidarity and covert operations, according to CIA sources and Derwinski. "Krol hit it off very well with President Reagan and was a source of constant advice and contact," says Derwinski. "Often he was the one Casey or Clark went to, the one who really understood the situation." [----------] -END QUOTE

For Holy Alliance 2 of 2

From.......... National Catholic Reporter

31 January 1992, Page 11

"This made great contrast with the Ronald Reagan era. In the "good old days" the pope was in alliance with the United States in Central America, destabilizing Nicaragua, supporting the contras, propping up the Salvadorans and generally repressing liberation theologians with the aid of the CIA. [----------] -END QUOTE

'I am proud to call myself an ally of Pope John Paul,

who stood up to this administration in Cairo.'

[ Ralph Reed Jr., [exec. director of the Christian Coalition]

From- National Catholic Reporter 30 Sept. 1994 page 4-5

From .............. COMMENTARY magazine

Nov.1995 ........... pg 79

Regarding the fall of Soviet rule in the Eastern Bloc,

Seth Lipsky mentions the

"partnership not only of Ronald Reagan and John Paul II

but also of the democratic labor movement"

-END QUOTE-