Texas Congressman Ron Paul has long lobbied against government restrictions on the drug use of American citizens, but in the past the outspoken presidential hopeful has linked the US with narcotics closer than one might imagine.
As early as 1988, Paul was preaching of a relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and Contras in Nicaragua amid the Iran-Contra scandal that plagued the Reagan administration. That relationship, said Paul, was one built with an intricate drug trade.
According to the GOP frontrunner in the race to the White House, the CIA imported cocaine from the Contras into America and then supplied domestic drug dealers with their loot, a transaction that allowed the Agency to operate its illegal trade with its Latin American neighbors that would have been otherwise impossible to fund with legitimate money.
Instead, said Paul, the CIA used dirty money made by the Agency’s drug deals to help afford the cost of arming the Contras against Sandinistas.
Speaking at a gathering of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a NORML, Paul told an audience along the campaign trail back during his bid for the presidency in 1988 that the CIA was involved in dealing coke.
Drug trafficking is “a gold mine for people who want to raise money in the underground government in order to finance projects that they can’t get legitimately. It is very clear that the CIA has been very much involved with drug dealings,” Paul said in the address. “The CIA was very much involved in the Iran-Contra scandals. I’m not making up the stories; we saw it on television. They were hauling down weapons and drugs back. And the CIA and government officials were closing their eyes, fighting a war that was technically illegal.”
Danilo Blandón, a former cocaine trafficker pegged by the US government, testified in 1981 that in regards to his own operation, “whatever we were running in LA the profit was going to the Contra revolution.” Blandón, from Nicaragua, added that he was outfitted with supplies by the CIA and sold cocaine cheaply to California dealers in order to turn a profit around for the government.
Rumors of the connection have circulated since the Iran-Contra affair though and have gone largely unreported. Paul, however, is no stranger to calling out corrupt government whenever he can. In televised debates of would-be Republican contenders for the GOP nomination this year, Paul has repeatedly gone after Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama for involving America in foreign wars for interests not vested in the American public .In the case of the War on Terror, Paul recently remarked that the Bush administration was full of glee after the September 11 terrorist attacks as it had finally allowed the government a reason to invade.
