Posted by Bob on February 21, 2001 at 15:21:31:
An open secret secret about our government threatens to erupt into full public view. The film industry makes movies about it; respected historians document its tiniest details; Senators convene sub-committees to investigate it; and people who have defected from it give inside views. "It" refers to Uncle Sam, Dope Dealer. Only the mass media and the criminals themselves refuse to allow the public to view it fully.
Consider how the movies deal with this open secret. Taking a global tragedy as an opportunity for a good-ol'-boy joke, Hollywood released Air America in 1990. This film tells a story about how some CIA pilots in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War worked as air couriers for Asian druglords. They claimed to be doing this to win the support of drug-peddling "anti-communist" guerillas who were our allies in a war that officially didn't exist. But the Air America pilots were not "unselfishly serving their country by fighting communism." They were making fortunes for themselves as dope dealers; they were generating illegal funds for the CIA and for drug syndicates; and they were supplying a pipeline for the heroin epidemic among U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam. Air America was part of a crime network that inevitably saturated cities of the United States itself with high-grade narcotics.
For those of us who had loved ones killed or maimed in Vietnam, there is nothing funny about the movie's allegation of CIA complicity in drug trafficking in that war. For those willing to look the historical record in the face, it is clear that Hollywood's Air America premise was based on verifiable fact.
The mass media ignores Senator Kerry's report about the Iran-Contra drug connection. Few bookstores dare to openly advertise or display McCoy's Politics of Heroin. CIA whistleblower Stockwell is accused by right-wing "patriots" of treason. Oliver North, who arrogantly lied to Congress, enjoys idolization as a national hero. The line between treason and patriotism has been blurred. American newspapers and television stations are hiding the complete truth about the Iran-Contra scandal. The full story about what went on in the Vietnam War is being left to the professional liars who are rewriting our history to prevent future generations from knowing about the CIA and Air America. If we believe what McCoy, Kerry, Stockwell and even Hollywood are telling us, then Washington's "war on drugs" is star-spangled hypocrisy and tyyranny. Perhaps America is, in fact, ruled by what Washington insider and television journalist Bill Moyers calls "the secret government"--a partnership between the CIA, multi-national corporations and organized crime. If the new Clinton administration makes an earnest effort to expose the Iran-Contra drug connection, there is no telling what else we will find buried in our secret government's basement. The open secret of Uncle Sam, Dope Dealer, is likely to be only one of the many horrors hidden there.