MEDIA  EDUCATION   F O U N D A T I O N 60 Masonic St. Northampton, MA 01060 | TEL 800.897.0089 | [email protected] | www.mediaed.org AMMO FOR THE INFORMATION WARRIOR Transcript “The Countdown” Ralph Nader: I hear you say often that you’re not turned on to politics. But let me bring to bear the lessons of history. If you’re not turned on to politics, the lesson of history is that politics will turn on you. So let’s start he countdown. Those who are excessively greedy and excessively powerful must, must give up their privileges. They must give up some of their power. Big business has been colliding with American democracy and American democracy has been losing. We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both. Now imagine what can happen if political campaigns began paying attention to controlling what we own. We’d have our own radio station. Our own television stations. Our own cable channel. It is time for a change. The system is not working. Now look at your late evening news if you can bear it. Look at it. It’s thirty minutes. Nine minutes of ads. Three minutes of street crime right at the beginning, never corporate crime. Very superficially covered. One minute of impromptu chitchat between the anchors. Four minutes of weather. Four minutes of sports. And that’s what happened in your town tonight? And we own the public airwaves. It’s a disgrace! MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 It’s time to have our own television station, radio stations, and cable channels. What we own, the public airwaves, has been surrendered to the most myopic and avaricious corporations. It is time for a change. The system is not working. (Scratched) This is the message of hope. Chanting: Go we go. Ralph Nader: By the way by now you know I’m not using the teleprompter. Man on street: You’re watching the Guerilla News Network. Crack the CIA Announcer: This program includes dramatic reenactments of scenes which depict real events and contains material which was intended for (Sound of channel changing) George Bush (Sound of channel changing) Welcome to the show! (Sound of channel changing) Today more drugs are coming into America than ever before. (Sound of channel changing) We have best intelligence of the world. (Sound of channel changing) We could stop anything we wanna stop. (Sound of channel changing) You still may know little about. (Sound of channel changing) The CIA’s involvement with drug lords. (Sound of channel changing) Happened in Vietnam. (Sound of channel changing) Happened in the Iran-Contra affair. MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 (Sound of channel changing) This was a multibillion-dollar business. (Sound of channel changing) Even more menacing. (Sound of channel changing) The CIA. (Sound of channel changing) Have gone into the drug trade and are trying to take over the government. (Sound of channel changing) [Laughing] (Sound of channel changing) In the war (Sound of channel changing) On drugs (Sound of channel changing) Which side is the CIA on? (Sound of channel changing) When you think crack, don’t think black. When you think crack, think CIA. (Sound of channel changing) The CIA (Sound of channel changing) Crack (Sound of channel changing) The CIA (Sound of channel changing) Crack Narrator: Christopher Simpson is an author and professor at American University, Washington DC. Christopher Simpson: The CIA’s operational directorate—In other words that’s our covert operations, our paramilitary, dirty tricks, call it whatever you want—has, for at least forty years that we can document, paid for a significant amount of its work through the sales of heroin and cocaine. It happened in Vietnam. It happened in Afghanistan. It happens in South America. It happened in the Iran-Contra affair. Narrator: In 1987 Oliver North was investigated for his role in a covert drugs for arms operation. The Iran-Contra hearings proved that the CIA smuggled cocaine to fund the Nicaraguan contra army. MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 Senator Al D’Amato (at Iran Contra hearings): The intelligence agencies of this country by God should be involved in this battle instead of working with the scum of the earth, which they’ve been doing. Narrator: The former DEA agent Cele Castillo discovered the CIA drug smuggling operation at Ilopango Air Force Base, El Salvador. Cele Castillo (former DEA agent): When I started seeing all of this I started documenting and writing reports. And I was forewarned by my supervisor that if I kept it up I was going to get kicked out of the country and sent back because I was making waves. When I opposed the ambassador in El Salvador and told him “Look, the contra’s here at Ilopango Airport. Your airport they’re flying drugs. They sell and my hands are tied. It’s a code operation being run by the White House and there’s nothing I can do about it.” And I was devastated because I was first of all trying to justify what they were doing. I says there’s gotta be a catch to this. There’s something here that’s not right. Senator John Kerry (at Iran Contra hearings): We were complicitous as a country in narcotics traffic at the same time as we’re spending countless dollars in this country to try to get rid of this problem. It’s mindboggling. Cele Castillo: See, you go back. Every drug traffickers that was flying for the Contras were all documented in D.E.A. files and yet they were getting U.S. visas to fly back to the U.S. by the Central Intelligence Agency. Narrator: Many of the planes from Ilopango were landing at Mena Air Force Base in Arkansas. Arkansas journalist Mara Leveritt investigated the drug smuggling operation: Mara Leveritt: A tremendous amount of cocaine was coming into the state. People wanted to know what was happening in Mena in Arkansas. So a good deal of information had come to light. Arkansas had been the home base for this major international drug smuggler and he had been able to operate without being stopped. MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 Narrator: In January 1986 Barry Seal was subpoenaed by the Arkansas Grand Jury of the Mena connection. He became a government informant: Barry Seal: My top load paid me one and a half million dollars for a single trip. Mara Leveritt: Because of the C.I.A. connections and the federal involvement in that operation, no investigation of Barry Seal or anyone connected with him was ever going to be allowed to go anywhere because if any part of that operation were brought to light it might tumble the whole house of cards. Narrator: Before he could testify about his role in the CIA drug operation, Barry Seal was gunned down in cold blood. Mara Leveritt: Here’s by any definition the biggest major drug kingpin we’ve ever run into and nobody seems to know anything about it. And nobody wants to raise it. Senator John Kerry: I don’t know if we’ve got the worst intelligence system in the world. I don’t know if we’ve got the best and they knew it all and just overlooked it. But no matter how you look at it, something’s wrong. Something is really wrong out there. Narrator: Former cop Mike Ruppert was forced out of the LAPD. for investigating CIA ties to drug trafficking: Mike Ruppert: I am a former LAPD narcotics detective. I worked South Central and I saw the hands-on working relationship—the interface—between local police departments and the CIA. What we saw was a deliberate effort by the agency to make sure that large quantities of the cocaine, the high quality cocaine, got into the inner cities like Los Angeles. Narrator: After a report the San Jose Mercury News, CIA Director John Deutch was forced to confront allegations of drug dealing. Mike Ruppert: I had confronted CIA director John Deutch at Locke Highschool. He had come to Los Angeles to talk about allegations of CIA dealing drugs. MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 Cele Castillo: Deutch knew exactly what was going on. What he didn’t realize was the fact that that many people were going to show up. Mediator: Sir the man in the leather jacket. Mike Ruppert: I will tell you, director Deutch, as a former Los Angeles Police Narcotics Detective that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time. The room exploded. What I saw at that time was that there was a crying lack of knowledge in the body politic about how much evidence there really was about the criminal activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, specifically dealing drugs. Director Deutch, I will refer you to three specific agency operations known as “Amadeus,” “Pegasus,” and “Watchtower.” I have “Watchtower” documents heavily redacted by the agency. I was personally exposed to CIA operations and recruited by CIA personnel who attempted to recruit me in the late seventies to become involved in protecting agency drug operations in this country. I have been trying to get this out for 18 years and I have the evidence. John Deutch: If you have information about CIA illegal activity in drugs you should immediately bring that information to wherever you want but let me suggest three places, the Los Angles Police Department- [Crowd Laughter] John Deutch: It is your choice but the Los Angeles Police Department, the Inspector General, or a office of one of your Congress persons [Yelling] Voice in crowd: I’ve given eighteen years sir and I got shot at for it. Cele Castillo: What was the big deal? He came up here and he set there and he lied to the American people. John Deutch: Let me say something else: If this information turns up wrongdoing—if it turns up wrongdoing, we will bring the people to justice and make them accountable. MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 Cele Castillo: He came, he went, and nothing ever happened. [Music] Cele Castillo: First of all there is no such thing as the War on Drugs. There never has been and there never will be. Mike Ruppert: There are currently right now in the United States sixty thousand active open cases of police corruption and that’s due to drug money. Christopher Simpson: Drug money has been integral in the CIA covert operation practically from the beginning of this agency. Mara Leveritt: These are very serious allegations that are being leveled and they go to the heart of our nation and if all of the people who have spoken today telling their own piece of what they have been able to assemble have been—are wrong, somebody needs to shut us up. [Music] Voice: This Channel has been liberated by the Guerilla. News. Network. THE WAR CONSPIRACY Peter Dale Scott (Professor, UC Berkeley): I would say that since World War II, America has come to play more and more a new kind of role in the world. It’s inherited the imperial role that used to be played by the British and the French. [Music] The people who plan the foreign policies of America have known for sixty or seventy years that we are living way beyond our means and that if we are an isolated and insular economy in the continental United States we will not sustain the standard of living we have. [Music] Text on screen: In 1970, Peter wrote The War Conspiracy, exposing the manipulation of U.S. foreign policy by MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 intelligence agencies to escalate the Vietnam War. The book was suppressed by the CIA and never reached the public. Peter Dale Scott: A war conspiracy—I do not mean that there is some kind of master war room where there is—they’re working out all the details. I mean that there are things going on that the newspapers don’t write about and the fact that certain aspects of our government are suppressed makes them even more powerful because they’re not controlled in the usual way by rational debate. They just happen. [Music] You know we have a kind of myth about our society that our democracies are accountable, and when I wrote The War Conspiracy, I talked about a kind of politics in which accountability is consciously diminished. I was making the point about Vietnam that very big powerful bureaucracies are not accountable at all, most notably the CIA. [Music] Power politics is something that is controlled, which is manipulated to get us into Vietnam. People know its there but they don’t talk about it in political science classes I know because I used to take and teach those classes. Text on screen: One of the most powerful para-political forces in the Vietnam War was the oil industry. Peter Dale Scott: The CIA is a big example of this. The CIA is not only being allied with the oil companies in the sense of placing their people with them but a lot of their descendants of oil families a very common pattern is for their sons to go into the CIA. Text on screen: Using their influence, the oil companies pushed for military escalation in order to get access to Indochinese oil deposits. Peter Dale Scott: I wouldn’t say that those economic issues of fighting over resources and so on are the only explanations to war but I think its recurringly the explanation of the biggest wars between the biggest powers. So what do you want to ask me? MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 [Music] Text on screen: If not for economic reasons, then why do wars arise? I think wars arise when people are faced with intolerable conditions. Sometimes it’s economic. Sometimes it may be ideological. You know it may be certain forms of Islam, for example, fighting right now where it’s a more cultural than an economic matter. But when you are living in a society based on injustice, there’s like a time bomb ticking. I mean someday you’ll have to pay the price. It’s not a stable, permanent sort of thing. And of if we don’t change our behavior we are going to see more of that kind of war. This is The Guerilla News Network. ____________________________________________________________ WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS Taalam Acey: And it goes like this… And it goes like this… Sometimes… Sometimes I believe that some of these emcees sit down and consciously try to figure out how to get more young black men shot. Like they figured out a correlation between making money and delivering more young black souls into the hands of the cops. I mean, for them, its all about moving CDs out of one-stops and record shops, even if that means convincing them young brothers to do whatever they have to do in order to get the things that them emcees videos say they got. But, yo... they ain't got. So, how many more need to be caught shoplifting inside the Versace shop before we realize that they are not that successful. MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009 And when Gil Scott Heron dropped Message to the Messenger, I really hoped that they would listen, but I'll tell you something when the smoke clears them emcees gonna be all ears when the smoke clears them emcees gonna be all ears when the smoke clears them emcees gonna want to hear why BET don’t seem to be able to see as well as Univision. Ninety-nine percent of the time pimping the worst parts of capitalism through record company ho's, platinum coated egos, putting out bullshit lyrics hyper marketed to supercede those revolutionary mantras of yesteryear. Si si watu weusi watu wazuri pamoja tu tashinda pamoja tu tashinda We are black beautiful people. Together we will win Together we will win. Meanwhile, on the other side of town, emcees been going from record sales to prison cells. From standing outside of strip bars to stripping behind bars: being stripped of their clothes, jewelry and cars. Ass out, holding their jaws... Ass out, holding their scars... Ass out, holding their drawers... while record execs continue to puff on fifty dollar cigars looking at pop charts trying to figure out how they are going to make the next self-deprecating black star MEDIA  EDUCATION  FOUNDATION  |  www.MEDIAED.org   This transcript may be reproduced for educational, non-profit uses only.   © 2009