Drugs are Bad: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 473-489

 Conspiracy theorists have a strange relationship with “drugs” as a concept. On the one hand people like Bill Cooper seem to want a very limited government, a very hands-off police, and very few laws that are about the most basic of crimes. If it isn’t hurting anybody then there shouldn’t be any issue with it. On the other hand, they really hate the drugs. There are two reasons for them to hate the drugs: the first is simple racism. Drug crimes typically focus on the poor. The history of the United States’ drug laws is not only classicist but it also overtly racist. Drug laws targeting crack were far more strict than the ones targeting cocaine.

The other reason that drugs are a focal point is that they offer proof of the grand conspiracy. Drugs provide an example of a problem that everyone sees, that makes lots of money, but no one seems “willing” to fix. In the conspiracy theorist’s mind, fixing the drug problem is as simple as sending in the military to destroy the cartels like in “Delta Force 2” or “Clear and Present Danger.” The situation with illicit drugs is much more complicated than that. It’s a spider with a strand everywhere. The conspiracy theorist doesn’t see any of this, in the late 80s and early 90s what they saw was the crack epidemic and news reports on drug related crime. It would seem that someone is just looking the other way, if not actively making the drug problem occur, the scanned document claims, “drugs can be stopped any time the American people get fed up enough to do something about it on the local scene and in the local courts.”

What we have in Appendix F is proof of the claim that the US government controls the international drug trade—this is something that both David Icke and Lyndon LaRouche would both advocate. This overall claim is not something that Cooper focused in the proper book which gives us more proof that he does not understand what an Appendix is for.

The conspiracy theorists get some traction out of real events. The US government was involved in actively ignoring drug traffickers and groups because it believed that fighting Communists was the more important target. The accusation that the CIA was actively involved in the drug trade is more myth than fact. In the world of the conspiracy theorist the CIA is the invisible mover and shaker of all, but reading a history of the CIA’s exploits would shine a completely different light on that (I will admit that we know of the failures because they were public, the successes of a clandestine agency would never come to light).

This long document is two letters written by Nord Davis, a leader in the Christian Identity Movement—a racist and antisemitic version of Christianity which was heavily tied to the militia movement in the 90s. What these letters claim is that President Bush (88-92) had ties to Panamanian dictator Manual Noriega and thus, the international drug trade.

The former accusation is true, as CIA director and Vice President under Reagan; Bush would have had ties to Noriega because of the Iran-Contra affair and the aforementioned situation where the US looked the other way on drugs in order to fight Communists. Noriega’s Panama was the way that weapons and cash flowed South into Central/South American countries. The problem is that Davis cum Cooper is trying to claim that Bush was directing Noriega in the drug trade. Noriega’s involvement in the international drug operations stems from his involvement in the wars in the South. He made connections to smuggle in weapons and equipment, and decided he could get rich smuggling the other way too. I’ll repeat that the accusation that the US facilitated and took part in this is not supported by evidence.

The Davis paper also claims that there were financial ties between the Bush’s and the banks in Panama. This may be true, but it’s hard to say. Panamanian banks are notorious for being money laundering, tax shelters, and corporate hiding places. There was a leak in 2016, the exposed terabytes of data, but the Bush family’s name never turned up. Even if it did, that doesn’t mean that anything illegal was happening. Claiming that a rich family has financial connections isn’t mind blowing. It would be far easier to claim that this document was just a hack job by someone that hated Bush if it didn’t mention the “New World Order” or get into some sovereign citizen nonsense.

The second Davis paper merely continues the same themes as the first. It is interesting to see right wing conspiracy theorists attacking a Republican president, that kind of thing just doesn’t happen now. It’s pretty standard until we hit the character of “Michael Harari.” Harari was one of Noriega’s advisors and he was an Israeli national, which in conspiracy circles means “Mossad Agent” and for people like Davis means “international Zionist.” This claim went from being a polemic against President Bush to a full-on antisemitic conspiracy theory. Harari was a Mossad agent, that much is true, but whether he was an advisor to Noriega is an unproven assertion. Harari himself denied these accusations.

Davis claims that he predicted the exact time of the invasion months before it happened (he does not provide this prediction), because he’s so smart. On the other hand, the Israeli community “was given at least a six-hour warning to not be around when the Americans landed.” He then claims that this six-hour waiting period was used by the Israelis to warn the Panamanian army that US Special Forces were landing so they could be ambushed. It’s the cliche that we would later become known as the conspiracy theory that “no Jews died on 9/11.” The rest of this document is a pin and string conspiracy theory of allegations. Davis mentions that Oliver North was involved in Iran-Contra, which, yeah, we know. There’s nothing really new in here.

The next document is an article from the Orange County Register of 12 November 1989. It tells the story of two men arrested for attempting to smuggle cocaine on a C-5 Cargo plane. Cooper wants this to be proof, but it’s proof of the opposite. The US arrested and charged the men, confiscated the drugs, and then made all of this public. If the government was part of this operation it would make more sense to never make the arrest, never stop the plane, and never make this public.

The next article details a defense department plan to use islands in the Pacific to house drug offenders. According to the article, the idea is that using islands surrounded by sharks would save on both costs and prison overcrowding. There is no mention of the Bush family or the US involvement in the drug trade. I’m not sure what the point of this is. This plan was never, to my knowledge, put in place.

The third article alleges that the CIA allowed the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 that over Lockerbie, Scotland. Most historians place the bombing at the feet of Muammar Ghaddafi the dictator of Libya. What this article is alleging is that warnings about the bombing were given by German intelligence, but the CIA ignored them to allow it to happen. In truth, warning were sent to US airline carriers but still the bomb got through. It is unfortunate, but these things do happen. The article does cite Connie Chung’s interview with Democrat Representative James Traficant who makes the claim that the bomber was trained to smuggle drugs by the CIA but no other evidence is presented. Traficant was a bit of a conspiracy theorist himself who believed that the IRS was illegal, he would later be arrested for taking bribes, using campaign money for his own purposes, and racketeering. I’ll repeat from the previous paragraph: there is no mention of the Bush family or the US involvement in the drug trade. I’m not sure what the point of this is.

The fourth article is titled “Ex-CIA Agent says diary referring to Kennedy Assassination is hoax.” Not only does this article not refer to drugs, the Bush family, or the US involvement with drugs; it argues that a piece of evidence alleging a conspiracy to assassinate JFK is fake. It not only doesn’t belong in Appendix F it doesn’t belong in this book.

That wraps up Appendix F; of which we have learned very little. We haven’t even learned about the conspiracy theory the book is claiming. The only thing of value that we know is that Cooper and company aren’t fans of Bush and that the US will ally itself with people of ill-repute if it can pursue a larger goal.