Word: contras
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...Administration consulted with the Vatican on other matters as well. In Lebanon, the Reagan Administration adopted policies favoring the interests of the church and Maronite Christians. On several occasions, Casey used church channels to deal with the contras, though the Vatican itself took no official position on the war in Nicaragua. (Indeed, the Pope issued numerous appeals for peace in Central America and implicitly criticized the U.S. for prolonging the conflict.) Cardinal Laghi, who had served in Nicaragua in the early 1950s as secretary at the Apostolic Nunciature in Managua, played a key role by assuring contra leaders that...
...lawyers began their response to the 10-count indictment charging him with taking millions in bribes to turn Panama into a way station for Colombian cocaine lords. The presentation was unexpectedly tame. Gone were the claims that Noriega, who helped the U.S. funnel illegal aid to the Nicaraguan contras, had been duped by CIA contract pilots using their empty planes to fly home cocaine. By last week any hint of that defense had been discarded, as had plans for calling as a witness Oliver North, the former White House aide at the center of the Iran-contra arms scandal...
...what's more interesting is Marrs' arcadian vision of what America might be like today if J.F.K. had lived: "No divisive Vietnam war . . . ((no)) Watergate, no other political assassinations, or the Iran-contra-Pentagon-CIA attempt at a secret government. Detente with communist Russia and China . . . ((would have saved defense dollars)) that could have been put to use caring for the needy and cleaning up the environment . . . no organized-crime control over drugs, gambling . . . even toxic waste . . ." One feels Marrs believes that if Kennedy had lived the toxic waste just wouldn't have been as toxic anyway, because...
...moving, fluid thing, a series of forces at play. It's not necessarily individuals. Military-industrial interests are at stake. That puts into play certain forces. We have had many incidents recently, with Oliver North, with Richard Secord, the whole Iran-contra business. We've seen the scale on which arms are moved around the world. We've seen secret deals. There's more going on than ever meets the eye, and there's more going on than is ever written about in the newspapers...
Pasty-faced after four years and 10 months in federal prison, where he is serving a life sentence plus 135 years for drug trafficking, Lehder conceded that he had only hearsay knowledge of the payment. Responding to the accusation, former contra leaders denied receiving Medellin money and rejected any suggestion of involvement in guns-for-drugs deals with the cartel...