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Carlos Lehder was released from a US prison today.

A founder of the Medellín drug cartel along with Pablo Escobar, he was known as one of the biggest cocaine kingpins of the '80s.

He was also deemed "a homegrown Hitler" due to a political party he founded in Colombia.

In the early 70s, Lehder was selling weed and stolen cars.

By 1983 he was worth $270 million, and flying so much cocaine out of his small Bahamian island airstrip that US officials described it as looking like Chicago's "O'Hare Airport."

Lehder's lifestyle was extravagant.

He owned a newspaper, numerous planes, a zoos worth of animals, and... a statue of John Lennon with a gaping bullet wound.

For years, Lehder operated with near impunity in the Bahamas, a Caribbean country composed of 700 islands.

The Bahamas has close economic ties to the US and is just 45 miles off the coast of Florida.

Lehder flew most of his cocaine into Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.

Under Carter, the US Embassy pressured the Bahamians to arrest Lehder. His island was raided - but he had been given two weeks advanced notice.

When the Reagan administration arrived, the US ambassador was fired and not replaced - these were Lehder's most active smuggling years.

Along with the firing of the Bahamian ambassador, the Reaganites also fired the ambassador to El Salvador, Robert White.

White had been publicly critical of the murderous fascist junta in El Salvador. He was hated by the likes of Jesse Helms.

A shift was underway.

El Salvador during late 1970s and 1980s:

The contras were waging war against Nicaragua at this time.

With the arrival of Reagan, they had a new ally.

Previously the contras had been sponsored through drug sales by the Argentine dictatorship. A US Senate investigator noted that the US was encouraging all of this.

(As a side note, this old interview with that Senate investigator, Jack Blum, is tremendous. Wish I could interview him today.) https://ourhiddenhistory.org/entry/senate-investigator-kerry-committee-jack-blum-on-cia-contra-drugs-intelligence-reform-and-oliver-north-1996

During this time, according to Lehder, his trafficking organization had given some $10 million to the Contras.

He also worked with Noriega. Noriega's massive drug dealing - though the US was well aware of it - was ignored in favor of the contra war. https://twitter.com/OurHiddenHistry/status/1088967887153442822

In early 1983, Reagan sent an ambassador to the Bahamas.

It was Lev Dobriansky, a virulently anti-communist Ukrainian academic who was associated with the fascist World Anti-Communist League and the so-called American Council for World Freedom. https://twitter.com/OurHiddenHistry/status/1094053048400445441

Dobriansky dealt with a Bahamian government was deeply corrupt. Lehder and others were bribing officials so they could continue their operations.

This was common knowledge in the United States government and was soon to be made public by and NBC-TV report.

There was even an effort by the FBI to set up an ABSCAM style sting operation - Bahamian officials would be filmed taking bribes and then arrested.

The plan was well underway - then Ambassador Dobriansky refused to let it proceed.

In his own words, "I've stopped it."

Despite that 70% of the weed and cocaine entering the US came through the Bahamas - protected by these Bahamian officials - Dobriansky felt arrests might:

"upset delicate negotiations with the Bahamians over a US Navy submarine testing base in the Bahamas."

Mm hm.

During the period with no ambassador, a State Dept. officer tried to talk to the Bahamians about the bribes.

He even managed to get ledgers and telephone records belonging to Lehder.

Then Ambassador Dobriansky arrived, fired the officer, and the records all went missing.

All the while, drug money flowed to the contras, paying for their brutality against peasants, doctors, nurses... whoever.

The anti-communist "crusade" being waged against a small Central American country went on. https://twitter.com/OurHiddenHistry/status/993832848909053953

Lehder wasn't the only contra-supporting criminal of course.

At the time, Noriega worked with the Harari Network. Run by an Israeli named Mike Harari, the network was set up by Mossad and the CIA to support the contras through drugs and money laundering.

Israel had supported US efforts in Central America in all sorts of ways - weapons, training, etc...

Deals were made with the right-wing governments in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and others.

In Sept. 1983, an NBC-TV report exposed how Lehder's partner, Robert Vesco, was paying off Bahamian officials.

The scandal of drugs, corruption, and the Reagan administration's "failures to act" came to be known.

The Bahamians froze Lehder's bank accounts. He fled to Colombia.

The US wanted to bring Lehder to trial in the US.

The book 'Cocaine Politics' notes that "The CIA and George Bush had their own reasons for targeting Lehder."

Lehder and the Medellins had pushed the CIA's favored exile Cubans out of the cocaine market. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-dirty-secrets-of-george-bush-71927/

The US took its normal position and furiously insisted that Lehder was a communist.

But while the Reagan administration was busy linking Lehder to Cuba, Nicaragua, and left-wing groups in Colombia - Lehder was earning a reputation as "a homegrown Hitler."

Lehder founded the "National Latin Movement" in Colombia.

"In 1983... he founded a new political party to oppose the U.S.-Colombian extradition treaty, its youth movement was urged to 'defend the fatherland against imperialists and Communists.'"

Source: 'Cocaine Politics'

Lehder leaned fascism and anti-communism. As most gangsters do.

The US tried to link him to the leftist M-19 - despite the fact that they had shot Lehder trying to kidnap him - setting off a bloody paramilitary battle between the cartel and the guerrillas.

The cartel's impunity in Colombia began to come to an end in 1984 with the assassination of Lara Bonilla, the country's Minister of Justice.

Lehder was extradited to the United States in 1987 and was sentenced to life plus 135 years in prison.

Lehder was a key witness at the trial of Manuel Noriega. Much came out.

For instance - Noriega, whom the US was protecting, had provided Lehder with "the pictures of all the DEA agents assigned to Panama and their names and addresses” in exchange for $500,000.

Lehder indicated in prison interviews that his drug shipments used a Costa Rican airstrip on the property of John Hull, an American citizen who supported the contras.

This is well worth watching for more on Hull and the cocaine traffic.

Cocaine out... weapons in...

Hull's airstrip was also used for weapons shipments to the Contras. This with the knowledge of Oliver North, the CIA, and Lewis Tambs, the US Ambassador to Costa Rica.

The Noriega trial was pretty wild. The govt's star witness was an American drug trafficker - Floyd Carlton.

In exchange for his testimony, he was let to keep all his drug profits ("tax-free" lol), and kept his homes and ranch in Panama.