(CNN) — Mexican federal authorities arrested 62 police officers in the state of Baja California Thursday suspected of ties to organized crime and drug trafficking, the state’s attorney general said, according to the state-run Notimex news agency.

The arrests were the result of investigations ranging between one and two years in length, into local police activities. The federal attorney general’s office led the efforts, Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno said.

A federal judge authorized the arrest warrants, and officers from all three levels of the government participated in the roundup of the police officers.

Those arrested included 16 active state police officers, 40 active municipal police officers, and six municipal cops who had already left the force.

An investigation into a small amount of cocaine found in a space shuttle hangar at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida has ended without disciplinary action.

NASA’s Office of Inspector General has concluded its investigation and would not comment on the matter.

KSC officials confirmed that none of roughly 200 people screened for drug use after the January incident tested positive, and no employees were disciplined.

A space center employee notified security Jan. 12 after finding a small plastic bag outside a bathroom in the hangar where Discovery is processed for flight, known as Orbiter Processing Facility No. 3.

Tests confirmed trace amounts of cocaine in the bag.

NASA and lead shuttle contractor United Space Alliance identified about 200 people who had access to the restricted area around the time the bag was found and required them to take drug tests.

Managers found no shuttle work done improperly nor anything else out of the ordinary.

The investigation apparently did not determine how the illegal drugs ended up in the hangar.

At least two tonnes of cocaine with a street value of some $1bn has been seized in The Gambia, bound for Europe.

In addition to the huge haul of drugs, the Gambian authorities have arrested a dozen suspected traffickers, and seized large quantities of cash and arms.

Gambian investigators made the first arrests then called in British agents to gather forensic evidence.

West Africa has become a major transit hub for trafficking Latin American drugs to markets in Europe.

Agents from the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency – the rough equivalent of the US FBI – helped discover the haul of highly concentrated cocaine behind a false wall in a warehouse basement an hour’s drive from the Gambian capital.

The BBC’s Mark Doyle in Banjul says some of the Gambian officers involved in the bust are clearly pleased, if saying nothing in public for now.

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

Film that includes clips from mainsteam media at the time, CBS etc. http://www.ncoic.com/clinton.htm ARKANSAS GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH CIA DRUGS FOR GUNS CONNECTION By Paul DeRienzo An independent group of researchers in Arkansas are charging that Governor Bill Clinton is covering up an airport used by the CIA and major cocaine smugglers in a remote corner of the Ozark mountains. According to Deborah Robinson of In These Times, the Inter mountain Regional Airport in Mena,Arkansas continues to be the hub of operations for people like assassinated cocaine kingpin Barry Seal as well as government intelligence operations linked to arms and drug smuggling. In the 1980′s, the Mena airport became one of the world’s largest aircraft refurbishing centers, providing services to planes from many countries.Researchers claim that the largest consumers of aircraft refurbishing services are drug smugglers and intelligence agencies involved in covert activities.In fact, residents of Mena, Arkansas, have told reporters that former marine Lt. Colonel Oliver North was a frequent visitor during the 1980′s. Eugene Hasenfus, a pilot who was shot down in a Contra supply plane over Nicaragua in 1986, was also seen in town renting cargo vehicles. A federal Grand Jury looking into activities at the Mena airport refused to hand down any indictments after drug running charges were made public.Deborah Robinson says that Clinton had “ignored the situation” until he began his presidential campaign.” Clinton then said he would provide money for a state run investigation of the Mena airport. But according to Robinson, the promise of an investigation was never followed up by Clinton’s staff. In fact, a local Arkansas state prosecutor blasted Clinton’s promise of an investigation, comparing it to “spitting on a forest fire.”

Two of the most persistent offensives of the Reagan presidency have been the war against communism in Central America and the war on drugs here at home.

But investigations of America’s secret war in Nicaragua have revealed mounting evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency has been fighting the Contra war with the help of international drug traffickers.

It is not a new story.

Tonight’s FRONTLINE investigation traces the CIA’s involvement with drug lords back to the agency’s birth following World War II. It is a long history that asks this question: “In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?”

Our program was produced by Leslie and Andrew Cockburn. It is called Guns, Drugs, and the CIA and is reported by Leslie Cockburn.

Ronald Reagan:
Illegal drugs are one thing that no community in America can, should, or needs to tolerate. America’s already started to take that message to heart. That’s why I believe the tide of battle has turned and we’re beginning to win the crusade for a drug-free America.

U.S. Senator John Kerry:
The subcommittee on narcotics, terrorism, international operations will come to order. From what we have learned these past months, our declaration on war against drugs seems to have produced a war of words and not action. Our drugs seem to have produced a war of words and not action. Our borders are inundated with more narcotics than in anytime ever before. It seems as though stopping drug trafficking in the United States has been a secondary U.S. foreign policy objective, sacrificed repeatedly for other political and institutional goals such as changing the government of Nicaragua, supporting the government of Panama, using drug-running organizations as intelligence assets, and protecting military and intelligence sources from possible compromise through involvement in drug trafficking.

RAMON MILIAN RODRIGUEZ, Government Witness
If we start with the premise that drug trafficking is morally reprehensible, our government agencies are not supposed to do anything like that, but they live in a practical world.

On July 28, 1988, two DEA agents testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime regarding a sting operation conducted against the Medellin Cartel. The two agents said that in 1985 Oliver North had wanted to take $1.5 million in Cartel bribe money that was carried by a DEA informant and give it to the contras. DEA officials rejected the idea.

The first few minutes are in dutch, but the rest is in english. The war on drugs has been going on for more than three decades. Today, nearly 500,000 Americans are imprisoned on drug charges. In 1980 the number was 50,000. Last year $40 billion in taxpayer dollars were spent in fighting the war on drugs. As a result of the incarceration obsession, the United States operates the largest prison system on the planet, and the U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska. Try to imagine the Drug Enforcement Administration erecting razor wire barricades around two states to control crime and you’ll get the picture. According to the U.S. Dept of Justice, the number of offenders under age 18 imprisoned for drug offenses increased twelvefold from 1985 to 1997. The group most affected by this propensity for incarceration is African-Americans. From 1985 to 1997, the percentage of African-American young people put in prison increased from 53 to 62 percent. Today, 89 percent of police departments have paramilitary units, and 46 percent have been trained by active duty armed forces. The most common use of paramilitary units is serving drug-related search warrants, which usually involve no-knock entries into private homes.

• Atenolol, a beta-blocker used to treat cardiovascular disease

• Atrazine, an organic herbicide banned in the European Union, but still used in the US, which has been implicated in the decline of fish stocks and in changes in animal behaviour

• Carbamazepine, a mood-stabilising drug used to treat bipolar disorder, amongst other things

• Estrone, an oestrogen hormone secreted by the ovaries and blamed for causing gender-bending changes in fish

• Gemfibrozil, an anti-cholesterol drug

• Meprobamate, a tranquiliser widely used in psychiatric treatment

• Naproxen, a painkiller and anti-inflammatory linked to increases in asthma incidence

• Phenytoin, an anticonvulsant that has been used to treat epilepsy

• Sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic used against the Streptococcus bacteria, which is responsible for tonsillitis and other diseases

• TCEP, a reducing agent used in molecular biology

• Trimethoprim, another antibiotic

COLOMBIA has become the hot new destination among backpackers, offering tourists a tour of the country’s notorious cocaine factories.

The drug that has plagued the country for years has become a major tourist attraction, with details of tours spreading by word-of-mouth almost as quick as the drugs are being exported.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico arrested a military officer suspected of passing information to drug traffickers as part of a government sweep to rout out corruption, the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Friday.

Mexico’s liaison to Interpol and the former head of the country’s organized crime bureau were also arrested in recent weeks for alleged drug ties. Another 30 anti-drug police have been fired on suspicion of corruption.

Peru’s Interior minister Remigio Hernani covers his nose as he inspect bags containing cocaine in Lima December 18, 2008. More than four tons of drugs including cocaine paste, marijuana, cocaine, opium and heroine were incinerated. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares (PERU)

In the cramped and dirty cells of La Picota prison in Bogotá, some of Colombia’s most hardened criminals languish, existing on the barest amenities. The prison is notorious – the scene of bloody feuds and riots.

But in part of this sprawling complex a number of well-heeled detainees have a starkly different routine. Their cells are newly painted, decorated with bedspreads, curtains, and filled with tape players and personal belongings. A freezer is stocked with a steady supply of their favourite foods: dried fish from the Caribbean coast, catfish, duck, and small turtles – a local speciality. On visiting days, they have festive barbecues with their families.

These fortunate few – seven senators and one congressman – are political allies of President Alvaro Uribe, and all are charged with collusion with illegal rightwing militias. Some also face charges of conspiring to commit electoral fraud, murder, kidnapping and even organising massacres.

Accusations of alliances with drug-trafficking death squad leaders who effectively controlled swaths of the country have engulfed Colombia’s political, military and business elites. They increasingly threaten to touch the president’s office, and while the Bush administration’s support for its only ally in the region has been unwavering, the US Congress is increasingly questioning the multimillion dollar military aid packages handed out to the Bogotá government in the so-called “war on drugs”.

Over a ton and a half of cocaine, said to be worth an estimated NIS 2 billion, was seized in three raids around the world, including the seizure of two shipping containers at international ports, the head of the Coastal Police’s Central Unit, Dep.-Cmdr. Michael Shafshak told the Jerusalem Post Tuesday.

FPI – DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THESE DRUGS ARE DESTROYED?

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — A private jet that crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine had previously been used for CIA “rendition” flights, a newspaper report said here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European Parliament.

The plane was carrying Colombian drugs for the fugitive leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman, when it crash-landed in the Yucatan peninsula on September 24, El Universal reported.

The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which “show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects.”

It said the European Parliament was investigating the private Grumman Gulfstream II, registered by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation, for suspected use in CIA “rendition” flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.

It also said the US Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) logbook registered that the plane had traveled between US territory and the US military base in Guantanamo.

It said the FAA registered its last owner as Clyde O’Connor in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Extraordinary rendition has been harshly criticized since it began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.

WASHINGTON — An internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency has found that the agency withheld crucial information from federal investigators who spent years trying to determine whether C.I.A. officers committed crimes related to the accidental downing of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.

The August 2008 report by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, could lead the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into the shooting, examining in particular whether senior C.I.A. officers obstructed justice or lied to Congress by burying details about the episode and the C.I.A.’s broader counternarcotics program.

By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer

MEXICO CITY – A top police official who worked as Mexico’s main liaison with Interpol was placed under house arrest as part of an investigation into leaks of information to drug cartels, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The arrest of Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas — who served as director for International Police Affairs and Interpol at the Federal Investigative Agency — was the latest blow to Mexico’s police forces, which have seen a number of top officials linked to the nation’s powerful and violent drug gangs.

The investigation that netted Gutierrez Vargas also resulted in the detention of several other federal police officials in recent weeks on suspicion of leaking information to traffickers.

An Interpol Web site identified Gutierrez Vargas as head of Interpol’s Mexico National Central Bureau, or NCB.

Mexican Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino has been killed along with seven others when his ministry plane crashed in central Mexico City.

The Learjet burst into flames as it came down during rush-hour in the heart of the capital’s financial district at around 1900 local time (0000 GMT).

A former assistant attorney general, Jose Luis Santiago, and other senior advisers were also killed in the crash.

FPI – NOTICE HOW THE POLICE COMMISSIONER ESCAPES PROSECUTION.

ONE of Mexico’s top police officers has quit after an aide was accused of working for a leading drug cartel, the security ministry said on Saturday.

Gerardo Garay, acting federal police commissioner, has stepped down and said he will cooperate with an organised crime investigation, a ministry spokesman said.

One of Garay’s top lieutenants is being investigated by police on suspicions he was offering protection to the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s main drug gangs.

“I am resigning because in the bloody fight against organised crime, it is our duty to strengthen institutions, which means it is essential to eliminate any shadows of doubt regarding me,” Garay said late on Friday.