“a sophisticated member of the top echelons of the U.S. government”, i.e. a member of the US Deep State (Bilderberg group, Trilateral Commission, and CFR) and the number two man in the George W. Bush State Department under Colin Powell, who referred to him as “my white son.” He admits that he publicly released the classified information that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA spook, and so triggered the Plame affair, although he has claimed it was inadvertent because it was “just an offhand question.” Khun Sa, interviewed by Bo Gritz, names Armitage as involved in drug trafficking. Mark Gorton names him as a member of “The Enterprise”, a multifaceted criminal conglomerate that runs a large number of criminal activities including: drug trafficking, arms trafficking, savings and loan fraud, securities fraud, oil and gas fraud, insurance fraud, and real estate fraud and was embedded within the national security infrastructure and protected from prosecution by corrupted elements within enforcement agencies.
Michael Springmann’s revelations about visa fraud suggest that Richard Armitage was responsible for 15 out of the 19 visas given to the supposed 19 hijackers. On September 10th, 2001, Armitage met with the UK’s national security advisor, Sir David Manning.
Armitage began in covert CIA operations (the murderous Operation Phoenix); gained a reputation as die-hard negotiator, ubiquitous problem solver and fixer; and when his specific party was out of power, Armitage exploited his inside connections to the power elite and operated a lucrative consulting firm – Armitage Associates. An egomaniacal individual who understood power, its cold essence and often illusive nature, and knows how to tenaciously grasp hold of it.
After WWII, the heroin operation moved to Vietnam and Laos, then to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as the CIA embroiled itself in a covert war against the Soviets. Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs Richard Armitage sat on the “208 Committee,” which oversaw military aid to the Mujahadeen.
Fazoe Haq, the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (the largest heroin growing province in Afghanistan), who was originally worth $100,000, was suddenly was worth $200 million after the war. Armitage was his main contact. (WSJ, 4/18/80)
If Richard Armitage was, as Khun Sa avowed, a major participant in parallel government drug trafficking, then it explained why our efforts to rescue POWs had been inexplicably foiled, time after time… If it was true, Richard Armitage would be the last man in the world who would desire to see prisoners of war come home alive. (Bo Gritz, Called to Serve, 1991) As “Special Consultant to the Pentagon on the MIAs,” in Bangkok in 1975, Armitage reportedly spent more time repatriating opium profits than recovering POWs. In 1976, when Khun Sa was still selling heroin to CIA officials, the head of the CIA was none other than George Bush. A name Khun Sa mentioned repeatedly was Ted Shackley whose main contact was Armitage.
Former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, who was appointed presidential investigator for POW/MIA affairs, came upon the same information, and was warned by former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci to stop pursuing the connections to Armitage. As he sadly explained to a group of POW/MIA families in 1987: “I have been instructed to cease and desist.“1
Ironically, between 1987 and 1991, Vice-President Bush served as head of the South Florida Drug Task Force, and later as chair of the National Narcotics Interdiction System, both set up to “stem” the flow of drugs into the U.S. While Bush was drug czar, the volume of cocaine smuggled into the U.S. tripled.
Sources: Wikispooks; Lew Rockwell
Notes:
- Speech given to the Arizona Breakfast Club in Phoenix in 1989, quoted in Craig Roberts, The Medussa File: Crimes and Cover-Ups of the U.S. Government (Tulsa, OK: Consolidated Press, 1996), p. 200.
- Jack Colhoun, “The Family That Preys Together,” Covert Action Quarterly, date unknown. President Bush later appointed former Florida Governor Bob Martinez as head of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. Martinez had accepted campaign donations from drug trafficker Leonel Martinez (no relation). Bush’s son Jeb also had links with the Contra drug supply line through Leonel Martinez; In November 1984, two years after Reagan announced his “bold, confident plan” promising to “be on the tail” of drug traffickers, cocaine imports had jumped 50 percent and heroin was more plentiful than at any other time since the late 1970s. An estimated 63 tons of cocaine glutted the U.S. market in 1984. (James Mills, The Underground Empire, p.1125.)
Chronological History of Events Involving Richard Armitage