00:00Music
00:13Today on APT History, we go back to a moment the US intelligence community would prefer the world forget.
00:20A moment buried inside sealed indictments, shuttered investigations, and a CIA report that has remained classified for 33 years.
00:28A moment that began with a counter-narcotics operation and ended with one ton of CIA-linked Venezuelan cocaine flooding into the United States,
00:37triggering one of the most explosive drug scandals of the late Cold War.
00:42This is the story of 1990.
00:45When a secret CIA-Venezuela drug infiltration program spiraled out of control, federal prosecutors were quietly overruled
00:53and a foreign general linked to cocaine trafficking walked free because indicting him would damage bilateral relations.
01:00In 1990, the Central Intelligence Agency's anti-drug program in Venezuela inadvertently, or deliberately depending on interpretation,
01:10shipped approximately one ton of nearly pure cocaine to the United States.
01:15Rather than seize the drugs and controlled shipments, the CIA authorized uncontrolled shipments,
01:21allowing cocaine to enter the US without interception to gather intelligence on drug trafficking networks.
01:27When US Customs seized nearly 1,000 pounds at Miami's airport in late 1990, the scandal exploded.
01:35The Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, had explicitly refused to participate, warning that the operation violated federal law.
01:44One CIA officer resigned, another was disciplined, but General Guillen was granted immunity in exchange for cooperation,
01:52and reportedly said nothing implicating the CIA.
01:56The CIA's own inspector general completed a secret report in 1992, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee,
02:04but it remains classified to this day.
02:07In June 1991, the US Attorney in Miami proposed indicting General Guillen,
02:13but State Department official Melvin Levitsky intervened, warning that charges could damage US-Venezuela relations
02:21and force Washington to cut off assistance to Caracas.
02:25The indictment was quietly dropped.
02:28Congressional oversight proved minimal.
02:30The House Intelligence Committee later acknowledged that CIA liaison relationships with foreign intelligence agencies,
02:37rarely if ever, were voluntarily reported to Congress.
02:42The scandal exposed a pattern.
02:44CIA counter-narcotics programs across Central and South America,
02:48Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, operated with minimal transparency,
02:53creating conditions for corruption, drug trafficking and abuse.
02:57The Venezuela program was effectively crippled,
03:00but similar programs continued operating with the same structural weaknesses and lack of accountability.
03:06The 1990 cocaine scandal was not an isolated incident.
03:11It reflected a broader CIA strategy in Venezuela dating to the mid-1980s,
03:17when President Ronald Reagan ordered the agency to establish anti-drug programs in major cocaine-producing nations.
03:24The CIA worked directly with Venezuela's National Guard, a paramilitary force controlling borders and highways,
03:32creating opportunities for corruption and dual loyalties.
03:35The scandal also echoed earlier CIA involvement in Haiti,
03:39where the agency had created a Haitian intelligence service whose officers became involved in drug trafficking and political terror.
03:47Congressional investigators noted a troubling pattern.
03:51CIA anti-drug operations in Latin America frequently became compromised by the very criminal networks they were supposed to infiltrate,
03:59blurring lines between intelligence gathering, law enforcement and complicity in drug trafficking.
04:05The lack of DEA oversight, minimal congressional scrutiny and diplomatic pressure to avoid indictments all contributed to institutional failure and impunity.
04:15The scandal, exposed by CBS's 60 Minutes and later investigated by federal grand juries,
04:21involved CIA officers Mark McFarlane and General Ramón Guillén Dávila of Venezuela's National Guard,
04:29who had accumulated over 3,000 pounds of cocaine from Colombian traffickers as part of an undercover infiltration operation.
04:36Today on APT History, we don't revisit the 1990 CIA scandal as a relic, but as a warning.
04:44A reminder that today's US-Venezuela showdown isn't unfolding in a vacuum,
04:50but in the long shadow of an operation that slipped one ton of cocaine into America,
04:55and a secret report still locked away 33 years later.
04:59A legacy of secrecy, impunity and mistrust that now hangs over every threat,
05:05every deployment, every declaration of airspace closure in 2025.
05:11We'll be there with the ruins of the world of the world!
05:14A magnificent world of a modern constitution of war-based peace,
05:16is a record of all its contains all kinds of the human rights of the world!
05:23And the latter part of the world is the rest of the world!
05:26It's a critical part of the world that I have seen before listening to the internet,
05:28in the local community of the world,
05:30we will not be able to pick up my life.
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