Barry & 'the Boys': The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History
by Daniel Hopsicker
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Book Summary Information
Author: Daniel HopsickerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-01
ISBN: 0970659172
Number of pages: 482
Publisher: Trine Day
Book Reviews of Barry & 'the Boys': The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History
Book Review: A Rollercoaster Ride down Conspiracy lane
Summary: 5 Stars
This "high octane," fast-moving rendition of Barry Seal's lifetime of intelligence escapades covers a half-century of some of the most important if not the most sordid aspects of American history. The author makes a valiant attempt at pulling together disparate and often elusive, threads, and then tries to show how the "mostly hidden" elite managed drug trade is a systemic generator of corruption. He does this by connecting the dots in Barry Seal's various and numerous roles as a CIA contract agent in the JFK assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, smuggler for both the Pablo Escabar and Cali drug cartels, confidential informer for the FBI, and the events still going on in Mena, Arkansas, among many others.
In doing so, this guided rollercoaster ride speeding down what is normally recognized as "conspiracy lane" does indeed have its high and low points.
Its highs include moments like the picture on the cover that shows Porter Goss (ex-CIA head) living it up in January 1963 in Mexico city with members of the Operation 40 assassination squad; or the tale about GW and Jeb Bush being tricked by Seal into being caught on a hidden camera unloading cocaine from one of Seal's planes; or the way the CIA plays the corporate shell game to hide and launder unimaginable sums of drug money; or how officials from both political parties somehow always manage to find themselves blocking investigations of the lucrative "in house" drug trade; or how Jackson Stephens built up the Arkansas Industrial Development Corporation, the largest bonding company outside of Wall Street, by laundering huge sums of cocaine money -- some of which was smuggled across the border inside race horses destined for the Oak Lawn race track in Hot Springs; or how he and Don Tyson of Tyson's Chicken fame were the real powers behind the Clinton Presidencies; or how Oliver North sanctioned Barry Seal's "hit" after Seal threatened to reveal VP HW Bush's role in Seal's drug smuggling enterprises; and last but surely not least, the long-running and very lucrative cocaine operation that began with Iran-Contra and continues in Mena, Arkansas even today.
Also, to give credit where credit is due, it is worthwhile to mention in passing that another high point of the book is the author's attempt to place this sordid history of America's "Shadow Government" in a larger conceptual frame: that sketched out by David R. Simons' "Elite Deviance" theory and the "Deep Politics" of Professor Peter Dale Scott. In this regard, Gerry Patrick Hemming's (one of the Oswald look-a-likes during the JFK assassination and a long-term CIA contract operative) made perhaps the most prophetic statement in the book when he gave the only plausible explanation (other than greed, power and wealth) for why the U.S. is, and should remain, involved in the international illicit drug trade, he said: There is so much money involved in the drug trade that to leave it to "regular" criminals, is to leave the whole world at risk of being economically destabilized! It is for this reason that the U.S., through the CIA, has had to come in and take over the reins and lend order to an otherwise out-of-control and potentially internationally destabilizing global enterprise.
Had the author continued down this path, what a valuable contribution to American history and the American political process this book could have been. But, like so much else about this book, this bow to theoretical necessity turned out to be a mere genuflection, more an empty gesture or pose than a serious attempt to actually apply the theories mentioned in the introduction to the book.
Unfortunately, most of the book is a rehash of many well-known events better reported on and better documented in their original sources. And to his credit, the author makes liberal use of and properly credits these better sources. The main flaw of the book is thus excusable. It is that the author sets up for himself an almost impossible task. Thus he cannot really be blamed for failing at the one responsibility he laid out for himself: that of connecting the dots across the key events and across a half century of mostly hidden American history -- the period of existence of the shadow government that overlaps with and as viewed through the prism of Barry Seal's life.
Based on what is reported in the manuscript, no one can say that Mr. Hopsicker did not give it the proverbial good old schoolboy try. The ride has been interesting, with mind-altering scenery all the way down to the bitter end. But if we are to be entirely honest, in the end all of the meandering to make critical connections, were done loosely and mostly through innuendo, leaps in logic, third or fourth-hand reports, through weak historical analogies, and guilt by name association -- or guilt by the author's own clever but ultimately tiring snide remarks which punctuated the end of each chapter. This last trick obviously was designed for the reader to fill in the blanks, and to connect the dots for himself.
But there are other low points as we speed along the steep downward slope of this 450-page stretch of the rollercoaster ride. Like so many potholes in the road, the book is littered with all of the well-known tricks of the worst conspiracy writer's trade, the favorite one being that of treating "near-fact," fiction, "faction," poorly documented rumors, legends, and good natured yarns all as if they were one and the same: well-established fact. It does not take much scrutiny to determine that almost all of them are neither.
But of course this does not mean that Seal's life did not happen exactly as the author describes it, just that most of his research could not be proven in a court of law -- the hidden standard and almost impossible threshold against which all of America's "so-called" conspiracy theories are misjudged. Plausibility, cross-validation and sheer preponderance of interconnected facts it seems are not valid and acceptable standards of proof for those challenging the standard model of societal orthodoxy.
The saving grace of the book is that the sheer preponderance, utter penetration, persistence and totality of the drug trade on our way of life - from the upper echelons all the way down to the ghettoes and suburbs where the substance is plied - is so unmistakable that even its background noise and radioactive fallout makes it impossible to deny its staggering influence. There is so much money involved, and our political process is so distorted and compromised by it that the drug trade has its own aura, literally a life of its own, and dictates its own corrupt terms upon our political system and on our way of life more generally. So much so that it has become a regularized part of our culture and is now enfolded seamlessly into every aspect of what we do. To talk about it openly is to be a conspiracy theorists nut.
Bill Clinton in his 900-page autobiography did not mention Mena, Arkansas even once. Nearly 85% of the more than two million incarcerated in U.S. prisons have drug related problems. As well, a staggering 75% of all paper money in Miami has traces of cocaine on it. If these and Barry Seal's life and death are not the ultimate metaphors for a culture thoroughly corrupted by drugs, then I don't know what is.
I think the author's main point is that like the war on poverty, the war on drugs remains a war waged by "deviant elites" against the rest of us. What is needed is for "the rest of us" to wake up and recognize that these deviant elites - the greedy, power hungry and corrupt corporatists and their courtiers and minions -- are winning; and that Peter Dale's Scott's paradigm: that the corruption built into the system is an honest reflection of its realities. That is, that the nation's staggering amount of corruption is not just a distortion, but is indeed the way the system actually works. Pretending that America's built in corruption (as reflected in its CIA run "shadow government") is just a "conspiracy theory," or an accident or an aberration external to our culture is oxygen depleting illusionary self-deception.
The "shadow Government" is not an accident and it is not external; it is reality. The grand criminal enterprises like the drug trade and the influence that it buys in the American political process is real and is robbing us of our freedoms. It is not a conspiracy theory; it is a cold-blooded reality. And now, it is so well organized, and has so much momentum that no one can put this genie back in the bottle again - or even speak about it openly.
Can our own utter helplessness somehow trigger a revolting reaction?
In any other era, having the political process run by a "Shadow Government" would not be called freedom at all, but "stealth totalitarianism." George Orwell's 1984 is still with us in 2007 and beyond. For his efforts, Mr. Hopsicker deserves the Medal of Freedom. Amen.
Five stars
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