"Time alone, oh, time will tell. Think you're in heaven but you're
living in hell." - Bob Marley

Part 3 of a series excerpted from the Conscious Rasta Report entitled
HIGH CRIMES OF MURDER (©1998/$10.00)
Footnoted documentation can be found on page 76 of the report.
(To Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 of "The CIA & Reggae)

THE CIA AND DEA IN JAMAICA: AMERICA'S DIRTY LITTLE SECRET: An interesting series of articles appeared in the Los Angeles Times between September and December 1994 which shed further light on the CIA's presence in Jamaica. The articles focused on a lawsuit brought by Janine Brookner, "the first female chief of station in Latin America." Brookner had been assigned to head the CIA's Jamaican station in 1989; her mission was to "clean up the Jamaican operation." News accounts of her rotten experience in Kingston focused on sexual shenanigans and the rampant alcoholism that had come to distract several of the agency's operatives in Jamaica. The Times article yielded a few tawdry bits of gossip regarding such behavior:

According to accounts reaching Washington in the late 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency station in Jamaica was a menagerie of misfits, incompetents and twisted personalities-an overstaffed way station for time-servers no one else wanted. The deputy station chief reportedly assaulted his wife repeatedly, once throttling her until she passed out. Another agent was cited for getting drunk in a hotel bar and screaming out her rage against the CIA. A third allegedly threatened to kill his own security guards.

These sordid details leap out of a sex-discrimination lawsuit filed in August by the CIA agent-the first female chief of station in Latin America-assigned to clean up the Jamaica operation... At least two of the current top operations directorate chiefs have had sexual affairs with subordinates, the Brookner suit alleges. One of them was discovered in flagrante delicto with a female employee on the couch in his office at CIA headquarters.

Aside from such sordid episodes, which were generally the focus of the Times' articles, the story did allude to one detail that caught my interest. Brookner was accused by her detractors of "misusing a CIA helicopter assigned to Jamaica for anti-drug operations." As we should be aware, such operations are typically conducted under the agency of the DEA.

But another more recent Times news story appeared to confirm our more sinister interpretation of the CIA's clandestine history in Jamaica. Convicted drug baron Charles "Little Nut" Miller is a native of, and currently residing in, the tiny Caribbean island of St. Kitts. Times writer Mark Fineman posted an article dated December 7, 1997, which detailed much of Miller's activity as a CIA operative active in Kingston during the tumultuous 1970s. Miller operated under the cover of Cecil Conner, a "political enforcer." The article, which contained a number of devastating revelations similar to the "Dark Alliance" series (CIA links to crack cocaine sales in California), written by Gary Webb and originally posted in the San Jose Mercury News, contained the following accounts of covert U.S. intelligence activities in Jamaica and elsewhere:

...the U.S. government indicted him [Charles Miller], then protected him as a key federal witness who helped put two gang leaders in prison for life, only to have him emerge nearly a decade later as one of Washington's worst nightmares. Today, Miller is the target of one of the U.S. Justice Department's most intensive and frustrating extradition efforts-a two-year court battle in this tiny Caribbean island nation that is made all the more confounding for U.S. law enforcement officials because, they acknowledge, Miller was once one of theirs.

The CIA employed Charles "Little Nut" Miller as a political thug attached to Edward Seaga's JLP Party and later as a member of a vicious Jamaican "posse" drug gang in the U.S. Now an influential local soft-drink and chicken distributor, Miller is cast by U.S. official sources as an ingenious former federal witness-turned-fugitive who has learned the inner workings of U.S. anti-drug intelligence, law enforcement and judiciary... Working for what he called "the underworld section" of Jamaica's Labor Party in Kingston [allied to Edward Seaga], he stated, he stuffed ballot boxes, intimidated voters, shot and wounded a clerk during a robbery and spent years in prison.

He also testified, according to court records and documents, that he escaped the Jamaican prison using political connections in 1983 and came to the United States, where he became a trusted member of a brutal Jamaican drug gang known as the Shower Posse. The gang's trademark was spraying victims-from California to Miami to New York-with machine-gun fire, often killing and maiming bystanders... He said he was present the day posse leaders opened fire with machine guns in a Florida crack house, killing five people-including a pregnant woman found in a praying position-and shooting the sole survivor in the mouth.

These first-hand revelations from courtroom documents serve to confirm our worst suspicions over criminal provocateur activities that were being carried out by U.S. intelligence operatives. The Jamaican "posses" which are being described here were the subject of a sordid propaganda film produced during the mid-1980s entitled Marked for Death, which significantly elevated the career of action-film heavy Steven Segal. While the violent record of "Little Nut" as revealed in the Times piece is full of such sordid details, it is Miller's experience in Jamaica during the political conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s, which is our principal concern. The article contained these additional revelations:

Under cross-examination, Conner readily admitted to his violent past in Jamaica, where, at 17, he was convicted of a jewelry store robbery in which he shot and wounded a clerk in the chest. He stated that he worked for an armed underground faction in the Labor Party of former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, a close U.S. ally in the fight against Cuba-inspired communism.

CONCLUSION: For myself, this investigation has been most satisfying. We have demonstrated how the U.S. international security establishment created a structure to subvert the social order of another nation. The Jamaican operation ultimately undermined the natural ambitions of we, in this country, as we would seek to operate within reggae and Rasta culture. This research project has led me to a greater insight into related sub-conspiracies, spanning drug smuggling, biological warfare, intelligence activities, mind control and political corruption. Ultimately this is an example of social engineering on an international scale.

As much as anything, this study has reinforced one theme which, for me, has been reoccurring over the past year: the critical importance of culture in shaping the behavior of large groups. I trust that you can now imagine how powerful organizations manipulate conditions in order to apply external pressure to hostile cultural forces. This lesson can and should be applied by we who wish to stiffen the resistance of those who have too long been victim to such clandestine manipulation.

Our intent is to modify the behavior of oppressed groups and to defeat the hidden hand of repression. More so than any other strategy, I have become convinced that we would be best to utilize the tremendous motivation inherent within culture as a force of change. Culture is anchored within our 1) religion, 2) language, 3) traditions, 4) history (or historical perspective), 5) values and 6) logic (mode of thinking).

Reggae and Rastafarian culture has presented to our generation a wonderful opportunity. Through this movement the humble musicians of Kingston's ghettos demonstrated that they could have an impact on people from a variety of ethnic, class and nationalistic backgrounds throughout the globe. Rasta culture transcended economics, politics, gender and language. We did it once; we can do it again. Please recognize this power of culture to reshape whole societies in a relatively brief period of time. Apply the knowledge gained from such insight to your own agenda. Please make sure that your agenda is constructive and non-injurious to any individual or group that displays good intentions.

Smash the CIA conspiracy, long live conscious music. Bob Marley and Peter Tosh live on!

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