Trices Group Book Review Journal

C.I.A: Cocaine in America?

Bucchi, Kenneth C.

by:

Shapolsky Publishers, Inc

Publisher:

Location:

1994

Cover:

Paperback

Type:

Lynard Barnes

reviewed by:

12/01/1994

Comment:

Good fantasy?

Reprinted from Crushies Book Review, December 1994 Volume I, Issue No. 6….

Alright now, here's the deal. The Columbians are smuggling tons of -cocaine into America. DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs agents are being killed trying to prevent the smuggling; cops are picking up the residual bullets trying to keep the stuff off the streets. Lives are being destroyed, families decimated, the national security threatened. Okay, fine. Since we as the federal government can't defend our national borders as we are charged with doing in some ancient document or other--something called a constitution or something--we're going to offer the Columbian drug lords a deal. We're going to assure them that half of all the cocaine they target for smuggling into America actually gets into the country--no interdiction, no seizure. Okay. In return, the drug lords must allow us to either seize the other half or send to Columbia a special team of wild and crazy guys and gals to destroy the other half. Okay, that's the deal. We'll call the deal Pseudo Miranda, the false right to engage in criminal activity--a little play on Latin words because I'm such a brilliant guy………………..

The premise of Kenneth C. Bucchi's book is plausible. The concept represents the type of elemental thinking we have come to associate with bureaucratic problem solving. It gives new meaning to the words "half measures." But there is a big problem with Bucchi's book. It's a credibility problem………….

Supposedly, sometime in early 1980, Bucchi was recruited while in college by the CIA. Based on his natural, god-given extraordinary talents, he was trained and headed an operation called Pseudo Miranda--a name he came up with himself. The basic arrangement was that for every ounce of cocaine the Columbian manufactured, the CIA assured safe passage of one half into the United States in exchange for destruction of the other half. The Columbian drug lords, recognizing a good deal when they saw one, agreed to the arrangement. Sounds silly but it would have made perfect sense for the Columbian cartels. They are in the business of exporting a product. Products are usually taxed. Their tax rate was 50% of the product. Still plenty of money left over to purchase elephants, gazelles and other exotic creatures for personal zoos if you're a drug lord…………..

But what would be the benefit of such a deal for the United States? Stumble, stumble, mumble, mumble--well, according to Bucchi, half the drugs that could have been on the

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streets, aren't. Let us ponder that for a moment as our little heads swirl with thoughts of Adam Smith, the capitalist system, the profit motive, supply and demand and other common sense things which just might have some bearing on Mr. Bucchi's rationalization……………….

Meanwhile, ripping through the pages of C.I.A: Cocaine in America?, there is absolutely nothing within its pages to confirm the existence of a taxation agreement between Columbian cartels and the United States government. Mr. Bucchi mentions three meetings between himself and then Director of the CIA, William Casey. He also mentions George Lauder, an assistant to the CIA Director, as being present or aware of two of the meetings. (He even floats the name of George Bush around a couple of times, but not in a manner that would make a publisher's lawyer nervous). Other than these meetings, everything else mentioned in the book could very well be fiction. It certainly reads like it. This is not to say that there was no operation Pseudo Miranda; it is not to say that such an operation did not involve the CIA and drugs. We may never know. Even when we toss in the Iran-Contra mess, with the government supplying military weapons purchased from illicit drug proceeds supplied by the CIA operation to Iran to free hostages, the scenario provided by Mr. Bucchi still lacks all the gears necessary to pull a vapor banner of truth.

What we learn in C.I.A: Cocaine in America? Is that drug dealers are slimeballs and that Mr. Bucchi and his team of one black, three Hispanics, three females and assorted white American males make Agent 007 James Bond look like a character in a movie--but not this movie. If Mr. Bucchi is not describing a trip to an airport, he's describing a trip back from an airport. If he's not describing a trip back from an airport, he describing the flight. If he's not describing the flight, he's describing his sensitive encounter with the women in his love life--I counted three. Intermixed with this are the meetings. The William Casey meetings. The Don Fabio Ochoa (Medelin drug-cartel ) meetings. The Jose Ocampo meeting. The General Manuel Noriega meeting. The Pablo Escobar meeting. With all these meetings, you would think we would learn something that hasn't been covered by Time magazine. We don't. Casey mumbles, Ochoa had a personal zoo, Ocampo was cruel, Noriega had a face like a pineapple, and of course, Escobar was amazingly tall and fair complexion for a Columbian.

Throughout the effort to make the Columbians live up to their end of the bargain and the destruction of secret cocaine labs in the jungles of Columbia and Peru, the Bucchi character keeps reminding us of why he and his compatriots are willing to suffer so--to prevent drugs from reaching the streets of America. It's that gear thing. Not only does Mr. Bucchi's book lack the mechanism of truth, the rationalizations have grand canyon size gaps of logic

If you can read this book as a work of genre fiction--the paramilitary guys and gals out saving the world again--you might find something entertaining. Reading it as something related to the real world puts it in the category of info-trash............

Publisher's note: Cocaine smuggling and the C1A is the subject of' The Big White Lie, a book by Michael Levine which will be reviewed in these pages in the near future.........Additional Publisher’s note: The book, “Cocaine”, to be reviewed later, pretty much explains with fact what this book attempts to explain as the result of hush-hush meetings.

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