Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

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Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

Gary Webb Seven Stories Press, USA, $24.95   This appeared in San Francisco Chronicle on June 28, 1998. The Chronicle edited out a section… This has been restored and is in italics. What the Chronicle found too sensitive to publish is rather interesting – editor. Peter Dale Scott is Professor of English Emeritus at the … Read more

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Who Owns Agca? Book Reviews: Plots to Kill the Pope

Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££

[…] linked to the American Mafia, notably the Gambino Brothers, who are into heroin. (4) Gelli had connections with the Bolivian Army, which is in control of the drugs traffic there. (5) Gelli and Calvi were in P2. Some of the heroin shipped out by the Turkish/Bulgarian network was going to the US via the […]

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The Strength of the Wolf

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

The Strength of the Wolf: The Secret History of America’s War on Drugs Douglas Valentine London/New York: Verso, 2004, h/back, £20   This comes garlanded with praise from Jim Hougan and Anthony Summers. The praise is justified: this is, as Hougan says, ‘a ground-breaking work of investigative reporting’; and it is, as Summers says, […]

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Operation Julie revisited: the strange career of Ron Stark, parapolitical alchemist

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] Home Office, annual seizures of 20,000 tabs means that ‘the use of LSD in Britain was restricted to a small number of people’. Lee approached the Central Drugs Intelligence Unit (CDIU), who ‘denied having any information which showed LSD to be a problem’. It would take Lee another three years to fully discover that […]

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Mind Control and the American Government

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] control research was transferred to the Office of Research and Development (ORD): project cryptonyms remain unrevealed. (20) What was studied? Everything — including hypnosis, conditioning, sensory deprivation, drugs, religious cults, microwaves, psycho-surgery, brain implants, and even ESP. When MKULTRA leaked to the public during the great CIA investigations of the 1970s, public attention focused […]

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Print: Journals and book review

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] Central America policy. Among other things, the panel sought to determine if top leaders of the Colombian cocaine cartel escaped arrest because the much ballyhooed “war on drugs” took a back seat to a covert operation designed to discredit the Nicaraguan government – this at a time when the administration was seeking additional aid […]

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Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (Book review)

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Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] corrupt, drug-linked forces in other parts of the world.’ The peculiar American twist to this sequence of events has been the accompanying noisy, utterly futile, ‘wars’ on drugs. As Edward Herman’s book (reviewed in this issue) would have it, this is beyond hypocrisy. It’s rather as if the Nazis had simultaneously spent tens of […]

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Agca: true confessions

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] through his friendship with Casillo, second-in-command to Cutullo, and another leading member, Giardili. (Parapolitics/Intelligence 1984/85) In 1980 and 81, under SISMI head Guiseppe Santovito (arrested for arms- drugs traffic between Italy and the Middle East), Musumeci formed a ‘parallel SISMI’, or ‘Super S’, which, according to some reports (Parapolitics/Intelligence XII 1984-’85) included Pazienza, member […]

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‘Privatising’ covert action: the case of the Unification Church

Lobster Issue 21 (1991) £££

[…] Koo, Youngnok and Han, Sun-Joo (eds.) — The Foreign Policy of the Republic of Korea (New York, Columbia University, 1985). Kruger, Henrik — The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence and International Fascism, (Boston, South End, 1980). Kwak, Chung Hwan — Outline of the Principle: Level 4, (New York, HSA-UWC, 1980). LAB/IEPALA — Narcotrafico y […]

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Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Media

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Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair London:Verso, 1999, £10   Much has been written about the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in the global drugs trade but this is the first book that actually brings it all together in one place. The authors haven’t exposed much that is new, instead they have taken […]

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