EZLN Criticizes the Drug War

Harry,

The following passage, which you are about to read, is not supposed to be read, at least as far as your government is concerned. It's from court records used for an investigative story I pursued, and published, back in 2003 — while it seemed most of the mainstream media was content to drive their SUVs and print war propaganda.

The reason you should not be reading it is because after my story was published, and after the court records were filed in open court, the U.S. Justice Department moved to get court record sealed retroactively under the pretense of national security. It also sought an order from a federal judge to seize my computer and any other records related to the story.

The judge refused to issue the latter order, but did not preclude the government from refiling the motion in the future. However, he did sign off on the order to seal and redact the previously public court records.

The reason, I believe to this day, that the federal judge showed even a small bit of restraint — at a time when the Bush administration was at the height of its power — is due in large part to Al Giordano and Narco News.

In an act of courage, Al published the court records on the Internet prior to the judge's ruling, so they had spread like a virus. That act of truth telling meant that the government would have had to seize thousands, if not millions of computers; and on top of that, the late, great Gary Webb picked up on the story and advanced it, keeping it, and the banished public record, in the public eye.

The story dealt with an FBI agent [working with the blessing of the CIA] named Lok Lau, who penetrated the narco/criminal world in China because it was a way to gain access to the halls of power in that country in a high-stakes spook game. Though it played out in China, it's a story common to all countries where corruption is enthroned at the expense of justice -- and Mexico and the U.S. are no exception.

Here is the excerpt that, in particular, caused the Justice Department to go for the knives, because it exposes the reality of how things work -- not a game, but a realty with life and death consquences.

From a reading of the record, it is not difficult to discern that Lau was involved in espionage activities, kidnappings, trading in human slavery, illegal immigration, murder, torture, kidnapping, extortion hostage taking and any number of other criminal activities that involved crimes against humanity, then and now, in his undercover work.

Lau 'penetrated' the Chinese Triads, the Tong and other Chinese Organized Crime Organizations that trade in all of these things as a way of life. There is no way that Lau could have performed his undercover so well that he received awards and other forms of recognition were that not so.

And here's what Gary Webb wrote about Lau's mission:

Because Lau was in China posing as a businessman instead of a diplomat, which is the typical cover used by CIA agents, he had no diplomatic immunity to spying charges. If caught, he would have been imprisoned or executed, not merely deported.

... Declassified FBI documents suggest that by 1991, Lau was deep inside the Chinese diplomatic community. In his performance review for that year, Lau's supervisor wrote: "SA LAU continues working in an undercover capacity in a complex, sensitive investigation of a major criteria country diplomatic establishment. He has succeeded in becoming a trusted confidant of numerous subjects of investigation and has also penetrated the 'inner circle' of the subject community. As a result, he obtains singular and sensitive information

..." Lau's undercover mission was so productive, court records show, that then-FBI director William Sessions flew to Chicago in January 1988 to commend Lau personally and award him a bonus check for his work. One of his supervisors, former top FBI official Michael Waguespack - whose forte was Soviet intelligence and Chinese industrial espionage - described Lau's work in a 1992 report as an "exceptional performance."

So, it appears, in the name of our national security, or maybe as little as career advancement for some ambitious bureaucrats, Lok Lau engaged in a range of criminal conduct, sanctioned by Justice and the CIA. And he did risk his life, in his mind doing the right thing for his country, only later to be discarded and washed out of the FBI in disgrace when he became an inconvenient truth. That is a truth, which even years after the fact, the government seeks to keep in the dark by threatening to seize computers, purge public records and silence journalists.

So I take acception to your contention that Narco News has been late to anything when it comes to the drug war or the war against human rights.

On the contrary, I suspect it is so far ahead of the game that this may well be the first time you are learning about the case of Lok Lau and the risks Giordano and Narco News took to keep the truth alive in that case. And that is just one example.

There is no great risk to telling that truth when it is already part of history, though it needs to be repeated often, so people do not forget.

The real risk is in telling the truth before it is history. Absent that act, history will assuredly become a lie -- and the conclusions you hold so dear worthless.