FTAA's drug deal: NAFTA was enacted despite warnings that it would increase the already-horrendous flow of drugs into this country. The FTAA would prove to be even more catastrophic.

In early August, U.S. "Drug Czar" John Walters visited Colombia to assess Washington's efforts to train, equip and assist that nation's counter-narcotics efforts. "Plan Colombia," a $3.3 billion, five-year operation begun during the Clinton administration, has included fumigating coca fields, intercepting cocaine shipments at the border, and cracking down on drug traffickers.

"You are making lives better for people who you will never meet," insisted Walters in an address to Colombian counter-narcotics police. This isn't to say, however, that those supposed improvements could be measured in tangible results. "Thus far we have not seen a change of availability in the United States," Walters admitted, pointing out that the street price of cocaine in the U.S. had remained constant. For all the good that was done, the billions of dollars spent by Washington on "Plan Colombia" might as well have been distributed to potheads for use as wrapping papers.

Washington has no intention of winning the "war on drugs." Nowhere is the abject phoniness of that "war" more apparent than in Washington's dealings with Latin America, where U.S. policy has consistently supported corrupt figures deeply entangled in the narcotics underworld. In fact, many of the worst participants of the drug trade have been embraced by Washington as "allies" in the supposed war on drugs--and, more importantly, in the campaign to merge the nations of this hemisphere through NAFTA and the FTAA.

As we will see, NAFTA was enacted over the protests of high-ranking counter-narcotics officials, who warned that the pact would amount to a "Magna Carta" for the drug cartels. Those dire predictions were completely fulfilled--foreshadowing an even greater catastrophe that would descend were the FTAA to be established.

Drug Lord as "Key Ally"?

While in Colombia, Walters attended a funeral lot nine counter-narcotics police killed in a shootout with drug traffickers. At his side for that somber event was Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, regarded by Washington as a valuable ally in both the counter-narcotics struggle and the "war on terror." Uribe's background tells a different story.

Thirteen years ago, a Defense Intelligence Agency report listed Alvaro Uribe as "a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin [drug] cartel at high government levels." The wealthy young politician was described as "a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar," kingpin of the notorious narcotics cartel. The report also referred to Uribe's connections with "a business involved in narcotics activities in the U.S."

These charges did not become public until last year, after the previously classified report was pried out of the Pentagon through a Freedom of Information Act request. The 1991 report lists Uribe's name among those of 106 individuals--contract killers, traffickers, bankers and politicians--serving Escobar's cartel. But this was old news in Colombia, where Uribe, despite his drug-tainted past, was elected president in 2002--thanks in no small measure to the Bush administration's emphatic support.

During the administration of President Bush the elder, Uribe was identified as an ally of the largest and most powerful narcotics syndicate in Latin America. During the second Bush administration, noted the August 9 edition of Newsweek, Uribe has been elevated to the status of "Washington's main ally in the U.S.-financed war on drugs in South America." He earned that status by extraditing 140 accused drug traffickers to the United States.

But Uribe's willingness to hand over some relatively minor drug traffickers has been more than matched by his eagerness to extend a hand to more powerful underworld figures. Uribe's chief campaign promise was to beat back FARC, a Marxist narco-terrorist group that controls a Switzerland-size swath of Colombian territory. For decades FARC has been embroiled in a civil war against "right-wing" paramilitary groups, with both sides heavily involved in narcotics trafficking as a revenue source.

Upon assuming office, Uribe extended leniency to outlawed paramilitary leaders who would repudiate the drug trade and lay down their arms. However, as Latin American affairs analyst Adam Isacson points out, "Some of these people don't even have anti-guerrilla credentials. They're just drug traffickers who've bought their way into the paramilitary movement as a way to claim political status, legitimize their fortunes and walk free."

Uribe's leniency proposal thus gives Colombian drug traffickers a vested interest in keeping the FARC threat alive: By enlisting, however speciously, in the anti-FARC effort, the traffickers can effectively launder themselves, just as onetime Medellin cartel asset Alvaro Uribe did before them.

The FARC menace has also offered Uribe a valuable foil in his efforts to consolidate power. In a fashion reminiscent of the post-9/11 enactment of the Patriot Act --but with more immediately brutal results--Uribe's administration passed a series of counter-terrorism measures permitting the military to detain, and torture, anyone suspected of sympathizing with the guerrillas.

But Uribe is more than just a key "ally" in the wars on drugs and terrorism; he is also a critical player in the campaign to consolidate the hemisphere politically and economically through the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Last May, Washington and Bogota began negotiations on a free-trade area (FTA) encompassing not only Colombia but its Andean neighbors, Ecuador and Peru. U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick was dispatched by President Bush as a personal envoy to Uribe's August 2002 inauguration. Extolling "Colombia's courageous fight against narco-trafficking terrorists that threaten democracy and regional stability," Zoellick predicted rapid completion of a U.S.-Andean FTA that would "remove barriers" and "foster additional reform and economic development in the region."

More importantly, concluded a March 24 press release from Zoellick's office, the U.S.-Andean FTA, along with other "high-quality agreements that promote regional economic integration ... [will] complement and provide impetus for the FTAA negotiations."

NAFTA and Narco-consolidation

As a collaborator with the Medellin drug cartel, Alvaro Uribe played a small but significant role in creating the crisis now being used to propel the "free trade" agenda. And this is hardly the only such example of corrupt collaboration between Washington and Latin American narcotics lords.

In 1987, Michael Levine led a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) sting operation called "Operation Trifecta." After years of careful, dangerous undercover work, Levine and his team were poised to crack open one of the largest narcotics cartels in the Western Hemisphere. Posing as Miguel Luis Garcia, a half-Mexican, half-Sicilian crime lord, Levine--the most decorated undercover agent in DEA history--cultivated the confidence of top-ranked leaders of Mexico's narcotics trade. These underworld figures were also, not coincidentally, in the highest echelons of that country's unfathomably corrupt government.

"We arranged a 15-ton cocaine deal with the Bolivians," recalled Levine in an interview with THE NEW AMERICAN. "The payment was to be made through Panama with one of [former Panamanian dictator] Manuel Noriega's money launderers, and security for the shipment was to be provided by the Mexican military. The drugs were going to go from Bolivia through Mexico into California with the help of the Mexican military."

Captured on videotape making the deal were several top-ranking officials of the Mexican military. Also on hand was the personal bodyguard of Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who would go on to be elected president of Mexico. "We were promised --on videotape--that Mexico was wide open once Salinas was elected," Levine reports. Which is to say that figures in the most exalted circles of the Mexican government were offering what amounted to a commercial treaty with what they believed was a major U.S. criminal syndicate.

The videotape was sent to top officials in the Justice Department. It ended up in the hands of then-U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, who acted immediately--not to help capture the drug lords, as reasonable people would expect, but rather to shut down the DEA's operation. "He called the attorney general of Mexico and warned him about us," notes Levine. "Our cover was blown, and the Mexican drug lords went free." By the mid-1990s, Mexican cartels had displaced the Colombians as the leading narcotics exporters to the U.S.

According to Levine, who documented this betrayal in his best-selling book Deep Cover,

   It wasn't until years later that I realized
   why this happened. NAFTA [the
   North American Free Trade Agreement]
   was on the drawing board. If
   the American public heard that an undercover
   DEA sting was being told
   that if Salinas was elected president
   of Mexico, it was going to throw it
   wide open for drug trafficking, at the
   same time Salinas was promising
   both the Republicans and the Democrats
   NAFTA, NAFTA never would
   have passed.... So instead, the Attorney
   General of the United States blows
   our cover. The case was killed. They
   did everything they could to kill it.

Salinas, who enjoyed a famously close relationship with the first President Bush (just as current Mexican ruler Vicente Fox is chummy with the second), would go on to plunder an estimated $100 million from Mexico's treasury. His brother Raul became notorious for laundering drug proceeds through his Citibank account, and was implicated in the murder of a Mexican presidential candidate in 1994. In 1995, ex-President Salinas became the subject of an extraordinary Customs Service "border alert." Suspected of concealing up to half a billion dollars in drug proceeds in 60 bank accounts scattered around the world, Salinas was subject to arrest and questioning if he attempted to enter the United States.

Salinas retreated to comfortable exile in Ireland, and was occasionally spotted in Cuba. And despite being on a Customs Department watch list, he was somehow able to attend regular meetings of the Dow Jones board of directors in New York City. Mr. Salinas, after all, was an esteemed co-architect of NAFTA--a stepping stone to the envisioned FTAA.

Drugs and Duplicity

The duplicity Levine uncovered began in the Republican Reagan administration. It continued during the administration of Reagan's Republican successor, George Bush (the elder). In January 1992, as the first Bush administration worked furiously to conclude the NAFTA agreement, an urgent intelligence report was sent to Washington warning that Mexican drug cartels were making preparations to exploit the pact.

According to the report, Mexican drug lords "intend to maximize their legitimate businesses within the new U.S./MX [Mexico] free trade agreements.... Their plan calls for establishing maquiladoras [assembly plants], free trade warehouse areas, 'fronted' syndicated borderland purchases, and other developments for future cross-border use. Once in place, these operations can be used as fronts for drug trafficking activities into the U.S."

This January 21, 1992 report was the clearest warning offered by DEA and military intelligence prior to passage of NAFTA. It was immediately classified until after the pact was approved in 1993, at the behest of the Democratic Clinton administration. During the campaign to approve NAFTA, Phil Jordan, former head of DENs intelligence division in El Paso, was "ordered to keep his mouth shut about the rinks between the drug business and the Mexican government," observes investigative author Charles Bowden in his book Down By The River.

Jordan broke his silence in a May 5, 1997 interview on ABC's Nightline program. On that occasion he publicly charged that the Clinton administration had ordered that the impact NAFTA would have on drug trafficking "was a subject we would not discuss" prior to the congressional vote on the accord. NAFTA, lamented Jordan, was "a deal made in narco heaven" --throwing open the border to politically protected smuggling rings trafficking in both illegal aliens and illicit drugs.

Former Treasury Department official Gary Hufbauer, who lobbied on behalf of the NAFTA agreement, confirmed Jordan's account. Following congressional approval of the agreement, Hufbauer admitted that its impact on the international narcotics trade "was in the 'too hot to handle' category. It's a painfully obvious problem. The huge increases in traffic will provide a huge cover for drug traffickers."

The small border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, bore much of the brunt of the post-NAFTA smuggling boom. "Before 1994, the drug cartels that have systematically poisoned the entire north of Mexico hardly touched the residents of Eagle Pass," recalls foreign affairs commentator Georgie Anne Geyer. "Once a year, some cocaine would be seized, and in 1994 the Drug Enforcement Administration handled a relatively modest 8,000 pounds of marijuana. Then it struck. By 1995, the seizures were up to 21,000 pounds; by 1996, 49,000 pounds."

Smugglers, once furtive, suddenly became bold to the point of cockiness. U.S. law enforcement personnel in and around Eagle Pass began to find cell phones, night-vision gear, walkie-talkies, and other expensive hardware that had been casually discarded by the traffickers. Ranchers found their fences cut and their fields cluttered with waste.

Mexico: A Narco-State

In 1999, mass graves containing hundreds of bodies were uncovered on four ranches near Juarez. According to Jordan, "We knew about [the graves] in 1993, but we couldn't do anything about it. You can't turn to Mexico's federal police because they are the ones who buried some of the people." The Dallas Morning News reported that some of the graves had been dug on the orders of Rafael Aguilar Guajardo, former head of Mexico's Federal Security Directorate. Several of the disinterred victims had been counter-narcotics informants for the FBI and DEA.

Even as these atrocities were being committed by Mexican officials, the Clinton administration was pushing for approval of NAFTA. In 1995, Washington announced formation of a counter-narcotics liaison between the Pentagon and the Mexican military. Two years later, Bill Clinton and then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo signed the Declaration of the Mexican-U.S. Alliance Against Drugs, which Clinton insisted "takes our already unprecedented cooperation to a new level."

Several weeks before that agreement, Mexican officials, acting at the behest of Washington, detained General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, head of Mexico's National Institute to Combat Drugs--Mexico's "Drug Czar." Gutierrez was collaborating with that country's most powerful narcotics kingpins.

Poison and "Antidote"

The "war on drugs" resembles a ritual conducted by Mexico's ancient Aztecs--the so-called "flower war." Aztec rulers bent on conquest and consolidation of power would approach leaders of other tribes and arrange for bogus "wars" to be fought in which few warriors would be killed, but thousands of prisoners would be taken. Concealing themselves behind a barricade of flowers, the treacherous leaders would witness the results of their betrayal as their armies were taken away to serve as fodder for Aztec altars.

"The key thing about the War on Drugs is that the war never occurs, there are simply skirmishes dictated from time to time by political needs within the United States and Mexico," writes Bowden. That observation holds true of U.S. "drug war" charades involving the Andean nations and other narcotics-producing Latin American nations. That "war" has elevated Latin American narco-lords and their political allies and helped them consolidate their power. By inflating the price of narcotics, it has also offered huge windfalls for drug traffickers and allied banking interests.

As Charles Bowden points out, the "war on drugs" has also resulted in a Mexican economy almost entirely dependent on narcotics:

   Mexico [is] earning at least $15 billion
   a year from drugs and more likely
   $30 billion or more.... At $15 billion
   this constitutes 5 percent of
   Mexico's gross domestic product, at
   $30 billion 10 percent. This blizzard
   of money means life or death for the
   nation. Take away $15 billion and
   Mexico goes from a growth rate of 4
   percent to a recession of -1 percent.
   Take away $30 billion and Mexico
   collapses. Have Mexico collapse and
   a border of almost two thousand
   miles shared with the United States
   becomes a place people march across
   as they flee a dying nation.

Mexico is dying, and the border is collapsing. Neither of these developments is an accident. They are the predictable outcome of a familiar con game. And rather than strengthening our nation's borders, the same Power Elite that created the fraudulent "war on drugs" now offers a hemispheric merger of nations via the FTAA as the remedy for the violent chaos their policies created.