[CitizensTruth] ARTICLE- Honduras Coup General Was Charged in 1993 Auto Theft Ring

[Walterb306 at cs.com]

All,

FYI.

Unsavory narcotics links.

Beverley

Honduras Coup General Was Charged in 1993 Auto Theft Ring
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/al-giordano/2009/07/honduras-coup-
general-was-charged-1993-auto-theft-ring


Posted by Al Giordano - July 4, 2009 at 4:15 pm 
By Al Giordano
 
General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who appeared on stage this week with 
Honduran coup "president" Roberto Michiletti, and who ordered the kidnapping and 
forced deportation of P resident Manuel Zelaya last Sunday, was charged with 
grand auto theft in 1993, Narco News has learned.
On February 2, 1993, the front page of the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo 
included this headline: "Eleven Members of the Gang of 13 Go to Prison":
"Eleven individuals arrested for their alleged participation in the theft 
of 200 luxury automobiles… were sent to prison yesterday… (including) 
Colonel Wilfredo Leva Caborrea and Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, accused as 
alleged participants…"
(Narco News makes the document available for download by press and public 
here , including two interior pages of the newspaper that report on the case, 
each mentioning the then-major, now commander of the military coup in 
Honduras.)
 
The newspaper report further stated:
"…Major Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, connected to the theft of luxury cars in 
the 'Gang of 13,' will be imprisoned in the Central Penitentiary (PC, in its 
Spanish initials)."
Prior to his criminal acts, Vásquez attended the US School of the Americas 
in 1976 and 1984, when the school was located in Panama, but he did not 
graduate.
It was the same Honduran Congress that endorsed, after the fact, last 
Sunday's military coup, and named Roberto Micheletti as the country's 
"president," that promoted this common car thief as head of the Armed Forces.
Memo to the General: Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they 
appea…

COMMENTS
The Devil is in the Details
Submitted July 4, 2009 - 11:52 pm by Bill Conroy 
As in Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and beyond in Latin America, the Honduran 
military, at the highest levels, has a track record of taking its cut of 
profits from the global narco-trafficking market - with U.S. agencies in the 
thick of the mess, often with conflicting missions that pit covert operations 
against law enforcement objectives. And overseas, the covert operations 
carried out by the CIA - and Pentagon intel agencies - always trump law 
enforcement. And like trains, these covert ops are hard to stop once at full steam, 
even by a well-intentioned White House, given their intricacies and layers 
of compartmentalization - which make such dark operations the perfect 
breeding grounds for a fungus called corruption.
It's something to keep in mind, history that is, and a nuance that it seems 
many who are quick to pounce on the Obama administration seemingly fail to 
consider - or even recognize. Operatives unleashed under the Bush 
administration [and even before then] now years deep into such missions in the region, 
who have found this line of work lucrative, might not be so easy to shut 
down as our high-school civics classes led us to believe. In places like 
Honduras, the future of democracy is under attack by this deep-seated corruption 
- which respects no borders and exists, sometimes thrives, within the 
framework of all governments, including our own.
Excerpts from a December 1997 report published by the Transnational 
Institute:
Unfinished Business: The Military and Drugs in Honduras
An ex-police officer recently commented that at the beginning of the 1990s, 
the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) paid military 
officers for each kilogram of cocaine confiscated. It was common for "high 
ranking officers" to show up before large scale missions to "guard" the drugs, 
and, obviously, await their reward.
This DEA strategy changed when it was proven that many military personnel 
were in the business.
… A prosecutor from the Attorney General's office commented that they have 
evidence that several high-ranking officers control small drug rings. It is 
difficult to capture them because they operate under a veil of impunity. He 
noted, "They have controlled everything that is drug trafficking for many 
years and, as a result, are experienced at evading justice."
… At the same time, there is a perceptible increase in banking, 
construction, tourism, availability of credit cards, beauty contests, sports 
investments, and a series of mechanisms that give reason to believe that Tegucigalpa 
is becoming a strong zone for the laundering of profits from drug trafficking 
and organized crime.
… At the request of an American journalist, the DEA declassified fragmented 
information about Honduran soldiers involved in drug trafficking. The 
report mentions, among others, retired Gen. José Abdengo Bueso Rosa, an 
unconditional ally of the United States and a trained assassin. The documentation 
states that Bueso was found guilty of transporting 760 pounds of cocaine to 
Florida. According to the DEA report, the drugs were to be used to kill the 
Honduran president, Roberto Suazo Córdoba, whose term lasted from 1982 to 1984. 
Bueso was convicted in 1986 at the Miami District Court.
The same DEA documents mention the former chief of the Honduran armed 
forces, Gen. Humberto Regalado Herná ndez, suspected of protecting Colombian drug 
traffickers, as well as of diverting funds from US military aid to a 
personal account.
Relations between military personnel and drug traffickers are a type of 
nebulous mystery. When DEA agents found evidence of officers involved in the 
business in 1989, they were suddenly removed from their posts in Tegucigalpa. 
The organization's offices were then officially closed on that date, 
according to the bulletin of the Honduran Documentation Center (CEDOH).
From documents at The Natonal Security Archive:
José Bueso Rosa
Reagan administration officials interceded on behalf of José Bueso Rosa, a 
Honduran general who was heavily involved with the CIA's contra operations 
and faced trial for his role in a massive drug shipment to the United States. 
In 1984 Bueso and co-conspirators hatched a plan to assassinate Honduran 
President Roberto Suazo Córdoba; the plot was to be financed with a $40 
million cocaine shipment to the United States, which the FBI intercepted in 
Florida.
Document 13 ?Declassified e-mail messages indicate that Oliver North led 
the behind-the-scenes effort to seek leniency for Bueso . The messages record 
the efforts of U.S. officials to "cabal quietly" to get Bueso off the hook, 
be it by "pardon, clemency, deportation, [or] reduced sentence." Eventually 
they succeeded in getting Bueso a short sentence in "Club Fed," a white 
collar prison in Florida.
Document 14 (See page 76 of Document 6, the Kerry Report )?The Kerry 
Committee report reviewed the case, and noted that the man Reagan officials aided 
was involved in a conspiracy that the Justice Department deemed the "most 
significant case of narco-terrorism yet discovered."
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