www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/7/212349.shtml
Additionally, we cannot wage a real war on terrorism without waging a real war on illegal drugs, because the two are closely coupled. The two are so intertwined that perhaps the real question is How can we win a war on terrorism if we cant win a war on drugs? The root of several terrorist groups is narcotics trafficking, and vice versa. The few drug traffickers who are not terrorists depend on terrorists for protection and enforcement services that are usually paid for in drugs. This is just the start of the hidden side of the war on terrorism. Organized Crime: A Behind-the-Scenes Player A little over a year ago, a United States government interagency group conducted a study of international organized crime. Just the money-laundering part of international organized crime revenues was estimated to be at least $900 billion, possibly exceeding $2 trillion, a year. Drug trafficking, with annual revenues at $500 billion, is one of the major components of organized crime. Another component is the sale of illegal goods and arms, most of which go to terrorists and terrorist regimes. A third component is organized crimes role as an intermediary in helping terrorist groups and rogue nations acquire weapons of mass destruction. The money dimension of organized crime its use for buying favors, corruption and compromise is probably of greatest concern. Only a few statements from the interagency report, International Crime Threat Assessment December 2000, are needed to tell the story. Consider: Most organized crime groups have successfully corrupted those persons charged with investigating and prosecuting them. Criminal groups are most successful in corrupting high-level politicians and government officials in countries that are their home base of operations. International criminals are attracted to global finance and trade. They are able to avoid scrutiny because of the importance to businesses and governments of facilitating commercial and financial transactions. Criminal groups cultivate and rely on corrupt political elites, government officials, and law enforcement and security personnel to protect their operations and to provide cover. They use illicit proceeds to: finance political campaigns, buy votes, protect their operations, influence legislation, gain insider access, and pre-empt prosecutions. One of the more significant developments since the end of the Cold War has been the growing involvement of insurgent, paramilitary, and extremist groups. One Big Happy Family It is not just that terrorism feeds off drug trafficking. Rather, terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime are one big happy family. Originally, these were independent operations that emerged in different regions and grew in an evolutionary manner. This is because in the latter half of the last century, various states mainly Communist states that were inherently criminal and terrorist in nature recognized the potential of these operations as revolutionary weapons. Thus they proceeded to build narcotics trafficking, organized crime and terrorism into major state intelligence operations. The three operations trafficking, terrorism and crime are different but complementary. They work together while striving to appear independent of each other. They do not compete with each other, but cooperate synergistically. The three have become so intertwined that war on any one of the three means war on all. In reality, this is what needs to be done to wage war on all three. They are all unacceptable, they are all covert state intelligence attack operations, each can have dire consequences, and all need to be eradicated. The most damaging are drug trafficking and organized crime, not terrorism. Terrorism is the least damaging of the three because its main product is physical damage, in contrast to organized crime and drugs, which attack the moral basis of society and corrupt its leadership and institutions. However, because of the built-in publicity that goes along with terrorism, it is terrorism that gets the lions share of the attention. Witness the United States governments response to the 9-11 attacks. Actually, far greater damage is done each year by organized crime and drug trafficking in terms of deaths, casualties, corruption and economic costs. The Overworld In organized crime, the top of the underworld is the overworld. These are the people who pull the political and financial strings. See David Jordan, Drug Politics, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. The level of importance of the overworld can be judged by the $2 trillion in annual revenues, which buys a horrendous amount of corruption, compromise and complicity. Its main targets are political parties, top government officials, judges, top law firms, financial institutions, news media, investigatory/police agencies and intelligence services. As pointed out in the International Crime Threat Assessment, the corruption and compromise achieved staggers the mind. This is a global phenomenon including corruption, compromise and complicity in the United States and in our allies as well as in the usual Middle East suspects. Our war-on-terrorism objective is to destroy terrorism around the world, in the process drawing no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them. Terrorism is critically dependent on the financial, logistic, material supply and political corruption networks that involve or overlap those of organized crime and state intelligence services. We cannot cut the terrorists principal financial support without invading the heart and soul of organized crime: finance and money laundering. Further, organized crime has 10 times more lawyers and finance specialists than our Justice Department and FBI, and they are all much better paid, better connected and more committed. This is where the war-on-terrorism rabbit hole takes us and the end is still not in sight. Involvement of Russia and China Another critical yet overlooked facet of the terrorism problem was raised briefly during the recent Senate Intelligence Committee National Security Threat hearings. This question was highly relevant because certain facts with respect to China and Russia, both of which presumably joined us in the war on terrorism, have been missing in discussions about the war on terror. It is well known that China has been one of the biggest supporters of Middle East terrorists and rogue regimes seeking to acquire long-range missiles and weapons of mass destruction. In its former incarnation as the Soviet Union, Russia is the granddaddy of international terrorism. Todays international terrorism is fundamentally the product of Russias military intelligence, the GRU, and to a lesser extent its civilian intelligence, the KGB. Both the KGB and GRU are alive, well and more powerful today than they were under Communism.
Thus, the possible involvement of Russia and China should have been under intense CIA covert scrutiny for many years, and Sen. Consider Director Tenets answer: Well, sir, I would say that, first of all and its all separate. And at times we have distinctions between government and entities. And thats always and I dont want to make it a big distinction, but sometimes youre dealing with both those things. Translation: Yes, Senator, we believe there is involvement, but we dont understand the role of those who are involved, whether they are independent entities or government representatives. Obviously, because we are trying to build a friendship with Russia and because we would not know what to do if they were involved, we would rather not discuss this subject at this time. Bayhs question, we need to go back 50 years, to the origins of todays international terrorism, narcotics trafficking and organized crime. This is not an easy subject to address because of the efforts within academia, political circles, the news media and policy centers for 80 years to keep silent about the crimes of Communism, as eloquently explained in the recent study The Black Book of Communism Harvard University Press, 1999. Because of this silence, data on Communist crimes come as a shock to most people and, hence, is hard to believe. This silen...
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