CIA Skit

[Skit: Lowell Bergman, Mike Wallace & Interviewees: Judge Robert Bonner & Annabelle Grim]

A tonne of cocaine, pure cocaine worth hundreds of millions is smuggled into the United States

Sound familiar? Not the way this tonne of cocaine got here

According to what the former head of the drug enforcement administration told Mike Wallace

This drug shipment got here courtesy of what he calls

Drug trafficking by the CIA in partnership with the Venezuela national guard

Let me understand what you're saying

A tonne of cocaine was smuggled into the United States of America

By the Venezuelan national guard

Well they--

In co-operation with the CIA?

That's what-- that's exactly what appears to have happened

Until last month, Judge Robert Bonner was the head of the drug enforcement administration, the DEA

And Judge Bonner explained to us that only the head of the DEA is authorised

To approve the transportation of any illegal narcotics, like cocaine, into this country

Even if the CIA is bringing it in

Let me put it this way, Mike

If this has not been approved by DEA or an appropriate law enfrocement authority in the United States, uh

Then it's illegal, it's called drug trafficking, it's called drug smuggling

So what you're saying in effect is the CIA broke the law, simple as that

I don't think there's any other way you can, uh, rationalise around it

Back in the 1980s, the CIA was mandated by then president, Reagan

To develop intelligence on the Columbian drug cartels

And so the CIA with Venezuela's Guardia Nacional or national guard

Set up an undercover operation, a drug smuggling operation in Venezuela

That could handle the grand shipment of the Columbian cartel's cocaine on its way to market

Anabelle Grim was a DEA agent with 18 years experience when she was made agent in charge in Caracas

And she says that the CIA station chief James Campbell, and this man, Martin McFarlane, the CIA offer in charge at the center

Told her that to keep the undercover smuggling operation credible, they had to keep the cartel happy

And the way to do that was simple, deliver their dope untouched by US law enforcement

To the cartel's distributors, their dope dealers in the United States

The CIA and the Guardia Nacional wanted to let cocaine go on into the traffic

Without doing anything, they wanted to let it come up to United States, no surveillance, no nothing

Now would--, you weren't gonna stop them in Miami, or Houston, or wherever, um

These drugs were simply gonna go to the United States and then go into the traffic, and potentially reach the streets?

That's what they wanted to do, yes

I looked at that thousand kilos, at least that thousand kilos

I look at the fact, I mean, Mike, you're a taxpayer

And that was US taxpayer money that built that sand, that funded it, that maintained it

And I really take great exception to the fact that that thousand kilos came in funded by US taxpayer money

And it hit the streets of the United States

I find that particularly appalling when you look at the damaged lives that thousand kilos represents