French Connection
Auguste Ricord, a French war criminal who had collaborated with the Gestapo, set up shop in Paraguay and opened up the French Connection heroin channels to American Mafia drug kingpin Santo Trafficante Jr., who controlled much of the heroin traffic into the United States.
Columns by Jack Anderson identified
Ricord's accomplices as some of Paraguay's highest-ranking military
officers.
Another French Connection mobster, Christian David, relied on
protection of Argentine authorities. While trafficking in heroin, David
also "took on assignments for Argentina's terrorist organization, the
Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance," Henrik Kruger wrote in The
Great Heroin Coup.
During President Richard Nixon's original "war on drugs," U.S. authorities smashed the famous French Connection and won extraditions of Ricord and David in 1972 to face justice in the United States.
However, by the time the French Connection was severed, powerful Mafia drug lords had forged strong ties to South America's military leaders. An infrastructure for the multi-billion-dollar drug trade, servicing the insatiable U.S. market, was in place.
Trafficante-connected groups also recruited displaced anti-Castro Cubans, who had ended up in Miami, needed work, and possessed some useful intelligence skills gained from the CIA's training for the Bay of Pigs and other clandestine operations.
Heroin from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia soon filled the void left by the broken French Connection and its mostly Middle Eastern heroin supply routes.
During this time of transition, Moon brought his evangelical message to South America. His first visit to Argentina occurred in 1965 when he blessed a square behind the presidential Pink House in Buenos Aires, but he returned a decade later to make more lasting friendships.
Moon first sank down roots in Uruguay during the 12-year reign of right-wing military dictators who seized power in 1973. He also cultivated close relations with military dictators in Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, reportedly ingratiating himself with the juntas by helping the military regimes arrange arms purchases and by channeling money to allied right-wing organizations.
"Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the [World Anti-Communist] League led to acceptance of the [Unification] Church's political and propaganda operations throughout Latin America," the Andersons wrote in Inside the League.
"As an international money laundry, " the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin America. Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the Church could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil, where official oversight was lax or nonexistent."
Cocaine Coup
In 1980, Moon made more friends in South America when a right-wing alliance of Bolivian military officers and drug dealers organized what became known as the Cocaine Coup. Moon's WACL associates, such as Alfred Candia, coordinated the arrival of some of the paramilitary operatives who assisted in the violent putsch.
Right-wing Argentine intelligence officers mixed with a contingent of young European neo-fascists as they collaborated with Nazi war criminal Barbie in carrying out the bloody coup that overthrew the elected left-of-center government.
The victory put into power a right-wing military dictatorship indebted to the drug lords. Bolivia became South America's first narco-state.
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