When CIA and DEA drug traffickers operated in Venezuela

https://misionverdad.com/memoria/cuando-los-narcos-de-la-cia-y-la-dea-operaban-en-venezuela

With the operational freedom granted to it for decades by the governments of the pre-Chavez Fourth Republic era—with Punto Fijo’s regime up to its neck in drug trafficking —Venezuela would not be exempt from being used as a platform for international drug trafficking, led by the CIA and the DEA.

Several cases exploded into public view during the 1990s, more due to feuds within power interests than anything else, revealing the close ties between the CIA and the DEA  in drug exports from Venezuela through infiltration and subsequent control within the armed forces.

The so-called “anti-drug operations” in Latin America served as an excuse for the CIA to penetrate state security forces, influencing their decisions and controlling their operations, their senior leadership, promotions, and operations on the ground. Everything.

In Venezuela—given its geographic location primarily—they had dug deep, as they had in Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru.

To the point

In the 1980s, the CIA had its “most trusted man” in General Ramón Guillén Dávila, according to the Miami Herald at the time. Yes, this is the same Ramón Guillén Dávila who was arrested in 2007 for participating in a conspiracy to assassinate President Hugo Chávez.

He was head of the National Guard’s counter-drug unit and worked closely with the CIA and DEA on “counter-drug operations” supposedly to dismantle drug trafficking networks originating in Colombia. On November 29, 1993, during the American news program 60 Minutes, the former head of the DEA at the time, Robert C. Bonner, claimed that Ramón Guillermo Dávila and the CIA had worked together to smuggle at least 22 tons of cocaine into the United States.

An  800-pound shipment seized that same year at Miami International Airport by U.S. customs agents ultimately revealed the joint effort and, above all, what investigative journalist Michael Levine had been warning about during those years: Ramón Guillermo Dávila enjoyed CIA protection, and his international drug trafficking operations from Venezuela were supervised by the agency in question. Apparently, the DEA had been left out of the business: the possible real motive behind Bonner’s accusations.

That same year, the  U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation implicating two CIA agents in Venezuela in the shipment of 2,000 pounds of cocaine to the United States from Venezuela. Federal investigators following the case determined that the beneficiary of the operation was one of the branches of the Medellín Cartel, led by Pablo Escobar. The scandal was so severe that agent Mark McFarlin, a CIA attaché in Caracas, was expelled from the organization. The other agent involved, whose identity was not revealed, was also reportedly subjected to disciplinary proceedings, according to a CIA spokesman named Dave Christian. But the deal was already done, and the money had been collected.

In this case, the New York Times reported  that in 1989, CIA agents in Venezuela, Jim Campbell and Mark McFarlin, met with DEA ​​attaché Anabelle Grimm—through their handler Ramón Guillermo Dávila—to discuss cocaine shipments to the United States, supposedly to gather intelligence on Colombian cartels. Although the attaché objected, the CIA agents continued with the operation without her notifying her superiors that the intelligence agency was trafficking cocaine. Omission is also a form of complicity.

But while the CIA and DEA-led drug exports from Venezuela are serious enough to undermine the credibility of accusations against Venezuela as a supposed “narco-state,” another fact reflects the other spheres of the business: until 2005, when the DEA operated in Venezuela, there were 215 hectares of cultivated lands with various drugs. This is no coincidence.

Since that year, the UN has designated Venezuela as a territory free of illicit crops, highlighting the Bolivarian Government’s aggressive fight against drug trafficking since the DEA left the country. This is unlike Colombia, where the agency has operated freely since 1999—at least until the recent decertification by the Trump administration —which has continued to increase its production and export of drugs to the United States. This is no coincidence either.