Allegations regarding “Butch” Merritt, Watergate, Intelligence Agencies and “Crimson Rose,” Vol. V

The Third Rail – Part Two

Written (and first posted) by Kris Millegan, March 19, 2011

Without opium, there would be no empire. Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Empire

How does the drug trade work? Basically, you have mercantilists (drug lords), who: 

1. Engender “primitives” to grow a plant.
2. Pay pennies for the crop. (Historically gold/silver has been used as payment, more recently munitions.)
3. Transport bulk raw plant material to a processing site.
4. Process the plant material for consumption.
5. Transport the bulk processed-plant product to marketplace.
6. Market the product to wholesalers.
7. Who then market the product to distributors.
8. Who then market the product to retailers (many are also users).
9. Who then market the product to users.
10.  Consumption of product.
11. Go back to step one

There are numerous dynamics surrounding a contraband trade, a major one is money and its movement: to pay the remote tribes-people, the monies received from the users, and monies distributed for “protection.”

There is a Latin saying: Pecunia non olet – Money has no smell, colloquially known as, “Money doesn’t stink,” meaning: it makes no difference where the money comes from. “Easy” money trumps ethics.

So, strategy, empire and easy money trump ethics – and, it seems, the US Constitution.

Just how do these operations get around the Constitution? Emergency powers? Of the executive branch? Of the other two branches? The power of the Commander-in-Chief? Sleight of hand? Just how do “black” projects operate? Is there any oversight or accountability? And absent of accountability, how do they operate?

Generally, it appears, with boots on the ground.

The mercantilist doesn’t smuggle the drugs back himself, unless he is cowboying it, for historically the large, sustaining amounts of contraband have been smuggled within trade goods using general transportation: ships, railroads, trucks and planes. There also appears to be a significant amount of smuggling done under the protection of “diplomatic immunity,” (both by nation-states and elites with access), and there is ample evidence of the involvement of many nation-state’s military/intelligence apparatus, especially the empire superpower, the United States and it’s allies. But to be fair most countries in the world today have a “strategic” involvement in the illegal narcotics trade.

With the involvement of state intelligence and military apparatus, you get “official” secrecy (need-to-know), compartmentalization (boxing) and channeled communication (stove-piping), and other spy-craft tricks: covert front companies (shells), legitimate companies being used (shills), transportation fronts (movers) and money laundering (shakers) among others. The same tricks used by the mercantilist; developed over a centuries-old narcotics smuggling trade.

An earlier essay of mine, “Hon’ble John’s Band” gives my historical view of some the early US mercantile opium smugglers. For now let’s just say that one of the best sources of information on early American opium smuggling is found in History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family, 1475-1927 by L. Vernon Briggs, Boston, 1927), and the Order of Skull and Bones co-founder was William Huntington Russell, scion of (at that time) the family “in-charge” of America’s largest opium-smuggling operation.

Volume 6 of this series will explore the Viet Nam war, and what the history of that war can tell us about the opium business. Plus, before we can truly understand the role “Butch” Merrit plays in US history, we must begin an exploration of another piece of the Watergate puzzle: psy-ops aka Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program).

to be continued …

Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up (as told to Douglas Caddy, original attorney for the Watergate Seven), by Robert Merritt is available at TrineDay, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository, and Books-a-Million.