Colombia:

INTRODUCTION

In the early morning hours of July 23, 1999, a plane crashed in the remote jungle area of Putumayo in southern Colombia, near the border with Ecuador and very close to the old American missionary base of Limonocha that the Wycliffe Bible Translators had abandoned back in 1982. This was no ordinary aircraft - it was a military spy plane, known as a RC-7. It was equipped with sophisticated radar and infrared sensors and was capable of eavesdropping on radio communications on the ground. On board were five U.S. Army soldiers and two Colombian Air Force officers. All died in the crash. News reports about the incident revealed that such U.S. air operations are now quite common. Last year, for example, U.S. military surveillance planes carried out 2000 such flights (an incredible six separate flights a day) in Colombia and other countries of the region. What’s going on here? - there’s a lot more afoot in the jungles of Colombia than most Americans are aware of, that’s for sure.

But that's not all there is! - there’s more. Two weeks before the RC-7 crash, the Forces of the Armed Revolution of Colombia (FARC) - the largest armed anti-government group in Colombia - began a large-scale military offensive. At one point, FARC forces battled government troops to within 25 miles of the capital city, Bogota. The FARC offensive rang alarm bells in Washington - and the U.S. began scrambling for ways to shore up the Colombian regime. Calling the situation a "serious and growing emergency," Clinton administration officials proposed major increases in military aid - as much as one billion dollars for Colombia and other countries of the region. (Colombia, a country that most Americans would be hard pressed to find on the map, already receives more American military aid than any other country on earth save two: Israel and Egypt - $300 million.) That’s a lot of money going to a country that most Americans know very little about!

The official line from the American government is that the U.S. is in Colombia to battle "narcotraffickers," and that FARC is heavily involved in the drug trade there which makes them a legitimate target for America’s "anti-drug" operations. That’s what Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the head of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, says. He believes that it’s "silly" to distinguish between America’s anti-drug operations in Colombia and the counter-insurgency war in that beleaguered country because the drug traffickers and FARC are one-and-the-same-thing.

That’s not really true at all, however; and the fact is, a better case could be made that if anyone is allied with the drug traffickers, it isn’t FARC, but the Colombian government itself. No! - there is something more going on here than the U.S. "War on Drugs." What’s really occurring is that the U.S. is battling to shore up its "New World Order" dreams in Latin America! - something the American elites do not want you to know about at all!!

AMERICA’S NEW WORLD ORDER

The "New World Order!" It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but it's for real! - and slowly, deliberately, and very, very methodically, the United States has been constructing it right under the noses of the American public for some time now. It is an evil empire based on state-sponsored terrorism, rigged elections, and "free trade" in which indigenous populations in the Third World (as well as growing numbers of the "working poor" in the First World) are being reduced to slave-laborers in a vast and very grotesque empire of corporate greed and avarice that would make Darth Vader's empire in the Star Wars trilogy look like a fairy kingdom. And one needs to be perfectly clear here - the entity responsible for this "New World Order" is not the United Nations, nor the European Community (E.C.) nor OPEC, it's the United States. At best, the U.N., the E.C., and OPEC are merely "instrumentalities of convenience" that the U.S. is using to hide behind.

The purpose of this globe-girdling empire of "client countries" is to serve the interests of America's system of multinationals, and - ipso facto - feather the nests of the wealthy shareholders of these gigantic corporations with the exorbitant profits which are possible when doing business in the "Developing World." This system involves the blatant and violent economic and political suppression of the vast majority of the "client state" populations, and takes the form of an alliance of convenience between the multinationals, the CIA and the American embassy (on the one hand); and the local military, police and business community (on the other hand). Together, this alliance then seizes control of the state, shatters the organizational defenses of the majority of the population and strives to reduce it to passivity through the use of terror.

And one needs to be very clear here insofar as the raw energy of this "FORCE OF LAST RESORT" is concerned! - because its dominion and power is far beyond the imagination of most people who continue to think in terms of the old paradigm where there existed not just one, but many different power centers. THAT IS NO LONGER TRUE ANYMORE!! - and although the American elites would just as soon hide this fact behind a multiplicity of masks and facades (i.e., NATO, the United Nations, the OAS, etc.), preferring wherever possible to operate in conjunction with other nations in a "multinational" format, the "New World Order" which is taking shape today is an AMERICAN "New World Order" much more than it is anything else, and is based - in the end - almost solely on the naked fact of American military preponderance.

THE NEW PARADIGM: ABSOLUTE
AMERICAN MILITARY PREPONDERANCE

The truth is, at this moment in history the American military is more powerful than any other armed force in the history of the world - stronger than the Roman legions at the peak of their empire, stronger than Britannia when the sun never set on the British Empire, stronger than the German Wehrmacht on the day it entered Paris sixty years ago.

This is the new paradigm - and most people still don’t get it!! Nonetheless, the reality remains that America is stronger today than any nation or any combination of nations that presently exists or even has the possibility of existing, or has ever existed. In money, American military spending is two and a half times China’s, Russia’s and the European Community’s spending COMBINED. [Please see our article on "The Revolution in Military Affairs."]

To be sure, problems exist. The booming economy makes recruitment and retention difficult, weapons procurement is simultaneously wasteful and underfunded, there are deep morale problems with women and gays in the military, etc. Nonetheless, as Greg Easterbrook - writing in the New Republic - says, despite all the talk of a "hollow" military, the American military is the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen. For example, in nuclear arms, Russia has about the same number of warheads as the United States, but most are today unusable. Russia’s sea-launched warheads, its most valuable kind, are effectively decommissioned because Moscow’s strategic submarine fleet is in such poor repair that it rarely ventures far from port. (And when it does, well, remember what happened to the Kursk.)

By contrast, several of America’s Ohio-class strategic submarines are at sea at any given moment, and each one of these submarines bears enough force to incinerate Russia and China several times over. Verses what? Russia would have trouble launching any missiles right now, and China possesses only 18 antiquated single-warhead ICBMs that require days of launch preparation, plus a single nuclear-missile submarine that almost never departs its dock slip. This is to say nothing of France and Britain’s nuclear capabilities, which stand even further down the line than do the nuclear capabilities of Russia and China. Britain, in particular, has allowed its nuclear capability in recent years to slide to the point of UTTER obsolescence. Moreover, while America may not yet have a reliable missile defense, something no country yet has, if any country ever develops one, the United States will be that country.

Overall, Eastabrook says, AMERICA’S STRATEGIC DETERRENT IS TODAY STRONGER RELATIVE TO THE REST OF THE WORLD THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN AT ANY POINT SINCE THE UNITED STATE’S BRIEF ATOMIC MONOPOLY IN THE LATE 1940s.

In air power, America today possesses more jet bombers, more advanced fighter planes and tactical aircraft, and more aerial tankers, which allow fighters and bombers to operate far from their home soil (a capability that no other nation on earth has) than ALL THE OTHER NATIONS OF THE EARTH COMBINED! On the seas, the U.S. navy boasts more than twice as many principal combat ships than the European Community, Russia and China combined, plus a dozen SUPERCARRIER battle groups, compared with ZERO for the rest of the world. These are floating cities crewed by nearly 6,000 sailors each and capable of launching more aircraft per minute than Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. There is no other navy in the world like this - and none anywhere in the foreseeable future.

On the ground, the U.S. Army not only rolls the world’s best armor (including nearly 8,000 of the fearfully effective Abrams tanks, MORE THAN THE COMBINED NUMBER OF TANKS POSSESSED BY RUSSIA AND CHINA), but - as the Gulf War showed - it has the world’s best-trained troops. China has more soldiers, but the bulk of them are poorly educated forced conscripts, while America boasts the best-educated large military ever. Ninety-nine percent of all officers have finished college, and a master’s degree is essential for promotion at the top - and this education shows! Iraq actually brought to the Gulf War a larger ground force than the United States, yet the army was so thoroughly routed that it sometimes appeared that the Iraqis weren’t even firing their weapons. Often they weren’t: Abrams tanks possess such effective long-range cannon and fire control that in most clashes they destroyed Iraq’s best Russian-built armor while the enemy tanks were a full mile too far away to begin shooting.

In amphibious forces, other nations have service branches called "marines," but none possesses anything like the U.S. Marines - whole divisions backed by helicopter carriers, "swimming" armor, and "jump jets," capable of going ashore anywhere in the world. The United States is the only nation that even maintains a standing heavy amphibious force.

In technology, U.S. "smart" weapons increasingly hit targets EXACTLY - within a "circular error probable" of as little as a meter. Individual U.S. soldiers can receive space-relayed battlefield updates, while U.S. electronic jamming and "spoofing" devices have grown so effective that they cause false squadrons of aircraft to appear on enemy screens while keeping the real ones undetected. And that’s just what the United States has today. Under development are lasers for shooting down tactical missiles, fighters that sustain supersonic speed for hours (instead of minutes as the best planes do today), mobile artillery that fires at unheard of rates, remote-control fighter-bombers so much smaller than piloted planes that they are invisible until within lethal range, electromagnetic rays that fry the circuitry of whatever they hit and even precision-guided weapons that fall from orbit without it being necessary for an American aircraft to enter another country’s airspace.

FORCE PROJECTION

The very real truth is, AMERICA'S MILITARY IS THE WORLD’S SOLE MILITARY FORCE WHOSE PRIMARY MISSION IS NOT DEFENSE, BUT OFFENSE. THE FACT IS, PRACTICALLY THE ENTIRE U.S. MILITARY IS ONE GARGANTUAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE DESIGNED NOT TO GUARD BORDERS - A DUTY THAT TIES DOWN MOST UNITS OF OTHER MILITARIES - BUT TO "PROJECT POWER" ELSEWHERE IN THE WORLD. America maintains 100,000 soldiers in Europe (so many, in fact, that it is not too much to say that the most powerful military in Europe is not the German army, nor the French, nor the British, but the American army in Europe), 100,000 in the Western Pacific and literally hundreds of other forces scattered across the globe (including pre-positioned weapons and fuel), all aimed at "projecting power."

Unfortunately, this is no benign and benevolent force that has been assembled together to make the world "safe for democracy" - as has been advertised to the American public - but is a force designed specifically to maintain America’s system of "client states" and to guard against the possibility of popular resistance against that system - or does anyone really think that a force that has been so precisely designed to "project power" in the way the American military has been designed to do exists merely to guard its own borders and protect its own citizens? If so, I have some swampland in Florida I would like to sell them.

AMERICA'S EMPIRE OF "CLIENT STATES"

One needs to remember, however, that - as we have already indicated - this is a "FORCE OF LAST RESORT." It has been designed as a cogent and forcible backup mechanism to the police powers of America’s "client states," "client states" which rely - in the first instance - on rigged elections, brutal police forces, and the use of paramilitaries and death squads. Occasionally, when the situation calls for it, "green beret" or "special forces" troops - acting under the direction of the CIA and the American Embassy - will provide immediate backup and "population control" expertise to the "client states." Implicit in the use of such forces are torture and terrorism, and insofar as the use of such techniques (i.e., torture and terror) are intended to help stifle unions and contain reformist threats that might threaten the ability of America’s system of multinational corporations to maximize profits, it would not be a stretch to say that - in an important way - the torturers and terrorists in these "client states" are the functionaries of IBM, Citibank, Ailis Chalmers, Nike, Liz Claiborne, Ford, G.E., etc.

A SHOCK TO MOST AMERICANS

To most American evangelicals, however, all this would come as a shock. They have a messianic image of the United States which pictures our country as God's chosen land, "... henceforth to lead (the other nations and peoples of the earth) in the regeneration of the world" (Senator Beveridge's words, circa. 1900); that the United States is in her origins, institutions, history, and international conduct God's "New Israel" chosen by Divine Providence to bring about the earth's redemption. Indeed, to most American evangelicals, the parallel between the interests of God and the interests of the United States is self-evident. It certainly is evident enough to Pat Robertson. He writes:

"... if America is free, people everywhere can hope for freedom; but if America goes down, all hope is lost to the rest of the world."

But such thinking is utter nonsense - and it's not particularly difficult to discover that it is so. The information is there! People (mainly socialists, unionists, and other assorted"lefties") report on what's happening in America's "client states" all the time. But Christians aren't listening; after all, it's mainly left-wing radicals that are doing this kind of reporting, and what else can you expect from people like that anyway? Anything they say should be dismissed out of hand! - right? I suspect, however, that there is a deeper reason behind the fact that Christians aren't paying attention. It's not just that "lefties" are doing the reporting, it's also because Christians don't want to hear about it. They're not listening because they don't want to listen. As Jesus said:

"... seeing they see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand." (Matt. 13:13)

The very real truth is, democracy in most of the nations of America's system of "client states" is a sham - and, as political scientist Hector Dada has observed, the lesson of "free elections" in America's "New World Order" is instructive as to just how farcical it is; to wit: the United States will not allow elections to take place in her "client states" until civil society there has been so demolished by violence or sufficiently intimidated and undermined that an "approved outcome" is assured. This means, of course, the exclusion from "free elections" of all political and social movements that the U.S. cannot control. Dada goes on to say:

"The pattern is common up to the point of virtual invariance, and remains obscure only to those who are dedicated to remaining in ignorance themselves, and inducing blindness in others" (as is the case with Wycliffe, WYAM, and the American evangelical community in general).

CASE IN POINT: COLOMBIA

And this brings us back to Colombia and what's going on there. Professor Noam Chomsky of MIT writes:

"A highly instructive illustration of U.S. policy (in this regard) is one that ... (has until recently been) rarely discussed: COLOMBIA, which has taken first place in the competition for LEADING TERRORIST STATE in Latin America ... (and has, ipso facto, by now) become the leading recipient of U.S. military aid ..."

Chomsky reports that not more than seven years ago (1994) Colombia was being touted by apologists of America's "client state" strategy in South America as a "model in democracy." For example, take what "Latin Americanist" John Martz wrote back in 1993:

"Colombia now enjoys one of the healthiest and most flourishing economies in Latin America. And in political terms its democratic structures, notwithstanding inevitable flaws, are among the most solid on the continent; it is a model of well-established political stability."

Oh, really? - only an idiot who is all but TOTALLY ignorant of the reality in Colombia could make such a statement! - but then what should one expect from someone who is in the employ of various American multinationals that have large financial interests in Colombia? This, of course, makes Martz's idiocy appear very deliberate.

Nonetheless, idiocy or not, the Clinton administration was so impressed by then outgoing Colombian President Caesar Gaviria's "democratic credentials" that it successfully promoted him as Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS). As the U.S. representative to the OAS explained, "he has been very forward looking in building democratic institutions in a country where it is sometimes dangerous to do so," and he has also been "forward looking on economic reform in Colombia and on Colombia's economic integration into the hemisphere." These, of course, are codewords and phrases used by America's corporate elites to describe policies in the Third World (in this case, Latin America) which are aimed at placing these economies at the disposal of the rapacious business policies of America's corporations.

INEVITABLE FLAWS

And exactly what were these "inevitable flaws" in Colombian democracy that Martz so cavalierly dismissed? Chomsky writes:

"The 'inevitable flaws' (that Martz alludes to here) have been reviewed in some detail in the 1993-1994 publications of ... Americas Watch (AW) and Amnesty International (AI). They (i.e., AI and AW) find 'appalling levels of violence', the worst in the hemisphere. (Between) ... 1986 (and 1993), more than twenty thousand people have been killed for political reasons, most of them by the Colombian military and police, and the paramilitary forces (i.e., death squads) that are closely linked to them - for example, the private army of rancher, emerald dealer, and reputed drug dealer Victor Carranza, considered to be the largest in the country, dedicated primarily to the destruction of the left-wing political opposition Patriotic Union (UP), in alliance with police and military officers. The department (province) in which Carranza operates (Meta) is one of the most heavily militarized, with some thirty-five thousand troops and thousands of police. Nevertheless, paramilitary forces and hired killers (i.e., death squads) operate freely there, carrying out massacres and political assassinations. An official government inquiry in the early 1980s found that over a third of the members of paramilitary groups engaged in political killings and other terror in Colombia were active-duty military officers; the pattern continues, including the usual alliances with private power (i.e., death squads in the indirect employ of American multinationals) ...

"More than fifteen hundred leaders, members, and supporters of UP have been assassinated since the party was established in 1985 [i.e., between 1985 and 1993 (and many, many more since then)]. This 'systematic elimination' of the leadership of UP is 'the most dramatic expression of political intolerance in recent years', Amnesty International (AI) observes - one of the so-called 'inevitable flaws' Martz alludes to.

"The pretext for these terror operations is (1) the war against guerrillas and (2) narcotraffickers, the former (i.e., the war against guerrillas) only a partial truth, the latter (i.e., the narcotraffickers) 'a total myth', AI concludes in agreement with other investigations. The myth was concocted in large measure to replace the 'The Communist threat' as the Cold War was fading along with the propaganda system based on it. In reality, the official security forces and their paramilitary associates work hand in glove with the drug lords, organized crime, landowners, and other private interests (i.e., the American multinational corporations) in a country where avenues of social action have long been closed, and are kept that way by intimidation and terror. The government's own 'Commission to Overcome Violence' concludes that 'the criminalization of social protest' is one of the 'principal factors which permit and encourage violations of human rights' by the military and police authorities and their paramilitary collaborators."

The U.S., of course, supports this myth - i.e., that the United States military is in Colombia for no other reason than to combat "narco-traffickers," which - according to the Americans - means, ipso facto, fighting the guerrillas [i.e., the "Forces of the Armed Revolution of Colombia" (FARC) and the "Patriotic Union" (UP)] which the U.S. says are in league with the various Colombian drug cartels. But very plainly, as we have already indicated, the narco-traffickers are not allied with the guerrillas so much as they are allied with the government - THE VERY PEOPLE THE UNITED STATES IS HELPING.

AMERICA'S COMPLICITY IN THE DRUG TRADE

The truth is, every single Colombian president since 1984 has been supported by drug money. Indeed, the country's former president, Ernesto Samper of the Liberal Party, was charged with taking enormous campaign contributions from the Colombian drug cartels. And other high-ranking officials in the Colombian military and the right-wing paramilitaries (i.e., the death squads) have been similarly charged. Moreover, it's not as if the American government has had no knowledge of how deeply involved the Colombian government and military is in the drug trade. The fact is, the U.S. has not only known about it, it has been complicent in it. For example, take the Clinton administration, specifically, Al Gore. As we suggested last month, Gore's complicity with the trade in Colombian drugs extends back to 1995 when he appeared at a conference of the Western hemisphere's political leaders (including President Samper), and declared that -

"... the drug traffickers shall not prevail. They will be defeated. We can applaud the work of those like President [Ernesto] Samper and Defense Minister [Fernando] Botero of Colombia, who are standing up to the traffickers, often at tremendous personal risk, demonstrating personal courage."

Less than a year later, however, Botero had squealed on Samper, and revealed that this seeming paragon of virtue had been on the take all along. Samper's entire campaign had been planned and financed by the Cali drug cartel from the very beginning — and, what's more, U.S. government officials appear to have been fully cognizant of this fact early on. According to PBS's Charles Krause, they suspected Samper was a front for the drug lords in 1994, when he was inaugurated: yet there was Gore, a year later, holding up Samper as a model to Latin America.

A few months after Gore publicly embraced his friend Samper, Botero gave his damning testimony — corroborated by Samper's campaign manager as well as the campaign treasurer - and it was the UP and FARC (together with Amnesty International and America Watch) that slipped this information into the hands of Spanish journalists, who in turn published it in various European magazines and newspapers, and which was then (reluctantly) picked up by the American media.

American officials, of course, expressed surprise by all this, but with DEA agents swarming all over that country, in addition to America's other intelligence capabilities, it is difficult to believe that the Vice President was not at least aware of — if not fully briefed — on the investigation into a man he had at one time held up as a model of virtue before the assembled leaders of the New World. The very real fact of the matter is, for anyone to believe that Gore was not fully cognizant about Samper and Botero's connection to the drug cartels is nothing short of idiotic. GORE KNEW!! There are - as we just indicated - so many American intelligence agents and agencies in Colombia that they are practically tripping over each other. Colombia is all but "perforated" (in this case, a better word than permeated) with these agencies on a collateral level (CIA), on a SIGINT level (NSA) and by the various agencies of the DEA. To believe that these agencies didn't know about Samper and Botero is absurd. And it is even more absurd to believe that Gore wouldn't have been thoroughly briefed on these two men. The fact is, Gore knew and he just didn't care. But this isn't just a Democrat problem - the same is true of most of the Republicans, their fake surprise concerning Samper and Botero notwithstanding.

RICHARD GRASSO AND THE
NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE

So much for the myth that the American elites and the government that serves these elites care even one hoot for combating the "narcotraffickers." The "War on Drugs" is merely a convenient excuse for the Americans to hide behind as they viciously tighten their control on Colombia in the interests of their "New World Order" dreams. What frightens the elites is not that Colombian drugs might reach America's youth, but that the Colombian guerrilla movements might spread to other countries - especially Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Panama.

Since 1994, the violence in Colombia has become much worse as the U.S. - under the cover of its "War on Drugs" - has ferociously pursued its effort to squash the Colombian guerrillas. Nothing has been "out of bounds" for the elites in their efforts to stop the guerrillas and regain control of Colombia in the interests of America's multinational corporations - even reaching the absurd when in June of 1999 Richard Grasso, president of the New York Stock Exchange, flew into the jungles of southern Colombia and met with representatives of FARC. Grasso told reporters he made the trip to make clear to FARC that U.S. "financial circles" had great interest in the "peace process," and to this end they wanted to discuss with the FARC leadership "financial arrangements" to end the civil war.

Now think about this for a minute!! The president of the New York Stock Exchange and other high-level representatives of the American financial elite flying into the jungles of Colombia in their three-piece Armani suits to discuss the "peace process" with people the American press has labeled "narcotraffickers" and "drug dealers?" What is this? If FARC is really what the American elites [and the elite press (i.e., NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, etc.)] claim that it is - a "criminal drug cartel" - then what is the President of the New York Stock Exchange and the representatives of Morgan-Stanley, CitiBank, Chase-Manhattan, etc. doing talking with the fatigue-clad, gun-totting FARC leadership? If FARC is the drug cartel the American government has been saying that it is, than it's akin to the presidents of these elite institutions sitting down and talking with the Gambino crime family and other members of the New York Mafia about how to divide New York City up among themselves to their mutual benefit!

There is something wrong here!! Either the American people haven't been told the truth about FARC, or the American elites don't care about FARC's drug dealing (after all, they don’t care about the Colombian government’s drug dealing) - all they want is a deal which will free them to pursue their economic agenda in Colombia, and hang the consequences insofar as the "War on Drugs" is concerned! It's probably a little of both.

The question to be asked here, naturally, is what is it about Latin America that would propel the president of the New York Stock Exchange into the jungles of Colombia with an economic deal for FARC? MONEY! - lots and lots of money! What else? AND IT’S HERE - PRECISELY HERE - THAT ONE FINDS THE AMERICAN EVANGELICAL COMMUNITY INVOLVED UP TO ITS NECK IN LATIN AMERICA, ALMOST AS IF AMERICAN INVESTMENT IN SOUTH AMERICA AND THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST WERE SYNONYMOUS. Most American evangelicals, of course, have little or no idea how intertwined the interests of America’s multinational corporations and the interests of the so-called Gospel of Christ (death squad style) are. But they are!! AND GOD HELP US ALL AS EVANGELICALS ON JUDGMENT DAY BECAUSE OF IT!!

AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT

Most Americans have only an inkling as to how deeply invested the American elites are in Latin America - but it's probably safe to say that there is NOTHING in Latin America that the American elites are not invested in either directly - or indirectly through European or Japanese surrogates: From railroads to airlines; from mining to construction; from health care (at least at the elite level) to meat-packing and agriculture; from automobiles to steel making; from banking to insurance; ad nauseum. For example, Rockefeller interests virtually control Brazilian banking through their control of such Brazilian financial institutions as IBEC, Banco Lar Brasileiro, Banco Moreira Salles, the IFI, Banco de Investimento do Brasil, Deltec, Deltec Holdings, etc. - all of which was made possible after the CIA engineered a military coup back in the 1960s against the Goulert government which had threatened to nationalize American investments in Brazil (i.e., kick the Americans out).

After the so-called "supercoup" of 1968 - the one that Beverly LaHaye believes was God’s gift to Brazil (really Satan’s gift to America’s multinationals doing business in Brazil) - Deltec (see above), at the behest of Rockefeller interests, began consolidating its power in Brazil, buying up International Packers, Ltd. The purchase of this huge meat-packing conglomerate brought not only members of America’s Swift family and most of the Swift family’s international meat-packing empire into an alliance with the Rockefeller camp, but also the Milbank interests through Deltec director Arthur Oakley Brooks, a longtime executive of mutual funds controlled by Sam Milbank.

MILBANK: WYCLIFFE'S FINANCIAL ANGEL

Milbank was one of Wall Street’s "financial angels" insofar as the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) were concerned. Milbank was chairman of the Milbank Memorial Fund, one of Wall Street’s richest foundations. In addition, Milbank controlled the law firm of Wood, Struthers & Winthrop, the Pine Street Fund and the De Vegh Mutual Fund - all of which were heavily involved or invested in Latin America. Through Milbank, Wycliffe had become inextricably involved in the business activities of these and other companies, especially insofar as the Amazon basin was concerned, which includes not only western Brazil, but also eastern Peru, eastern Ecuador, and southern Colombia. Naturally enough, these business contacts led inevitably to contact with covert U.S. military and CIA-led Green Beret activity - and so much so that by the 1960s Wycliffe’s jungle base at Limonocha in Ecuador had become a center for such activity. For example, in 1962 Wycliffe played host to a Green Beret counterinsurgency team consisting of five men who called themselves a "Civic Action Team." The men were led by Colonel Joseph A. McChristian.

COLONEL JOSEPH A. McCHRISTIAN:
CHRISTIANITY DEATH SQUAD STYLE

McChristian was a true believer, not only in the Cold War, but also in the Bible - or at least his rather "dominionist" version of it. As special assistant to the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group in Greece from 1949 to 1950 (which coincided with the end of the Greek Civil War), he had seen that Protestant Bibles were distributed to every Greek soldier fighting the communists. McChristian understood the value of religion in America’s war against communism. McChristian believed that if soldiers could be made to think that they were "fighting for God," they would be that much more imbued with a "fighting spirit," and that much more confident in what they were doing when called upon to engage in the dirtier, more sordid side of counterinsurgency activity. After all, not everyone is a sadist and a pathological killer, especially insofar as conscript armies are concerned. It’s difficult to kill, and if the killers can be convinced that what they are doing is "killing demons" in the name of God rather than killing innocent human beings, it makes the job that much easier. It eases the conscience when one is alone at night.

McChristian introduced this kind of thinking wherever he went. He believed in it! He wasn’t just pretending for the sake of convenience. To McChristian, spreading the Gospel was synonymous with spreading the American "free enterprise" system and expanding the financial interests of people like the Rockefellers, the Milbanks, the Swifts and the Morgans. It’s no accident or flight of fancy, therefore, when peasants - in describing the activities of death squads throughout Latin America - inevitably tell stories of death squad members praising God, singing hymns, and "speaking in tongues" as they go about their gruesome business of butchering people. This is what McChristian and people like him believe! - and this is precisely what makes it possible for death squad members to also be "members in good standing" in countless numbers of Protestant evangelical groups throughout Latin America. This is why - in following Oliver North and members of his entourage around the Contra-training camps in the 1980s - one reporter could describe it as if he had been following a traveling revival.

LIMONOCHA

When McChristian arrived at Limonocha in April 1962, he arrived with the silver leaf of an American Green Beret Lieutenant Colonel. Actually, that was just a cover; he was in fact a major-general working in army intelligence as chief of the Western Hemisphere Division. His counterpart in the CIA was Colonel J.C. King - another CIA confident of Cam Townsend’s Wycliffe Bible Translators who had gotten Townsend and Wycliffe heavily involved in the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, which - like Goulert’s government in Brazil - had threatened to nationalize various American business enterprises there in the early 1950s, and which had cost the lives of thousands and thousands of peasants, many of whom had been converted to Protestant Christianity through the efforts of Wycliffe translators. [Please see our article on "The American Empire."] It seems that in instance after instance when "push came to shove" and the interests of the Gospel clashed with the interests of Townsend’s business backers, the business backers won out.

McChristian was only forty-seven years old when he made Wycliffe’s Limonocha jungle base the unofficial headquarters for his counterinsurgency activities in the Amazon basin; but there was no mistaking his mastery of the techniques of counterinsurgency. Moreover, he was well connected to conservative networks, being the son-in-law of General A. Van Fleet, who had recently violated military law by publicly challenging President Kennedy’s handling of the Bay of Pigs. Van Fleet was then a top counterinsurgency consultant to Kennedy’s army secretary on guerrilla warfare.

BENDING THE RULES FOR CHRIST

So convinced of his own righteousness and the righteousness of the cause he served, and so sure that in battling for the "American free enterprise" system in Latin America, he was helping to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, McChristian was not above helping things along for the "Lord’s side" by bending the rules a little in its advancement. For example, when the government of President Carlos Julio Arosemena of Ecuador began making moves which McChristian believed would lead Arosemena down the same road Goulert had taken in Brazil and Arbenz had taken in Guatemala, he swung CIA assets in the country against Arosemena and provoked a rebellion at the CIA advised Cuenca garrison. When, in answer to this rebellion, a group of young intellectuals in Quito associated with the University of Ecuador began training to defend Arosemena, McChristian sought to link the students to the local Communist Party. He turned Quito upside down looking for evidence, and finding none, he doctored interrogation reports to the Ecuadorian military that falsely linked the students to the Communist Party.

Most of the students were shot, and Arosemena was so frightened by what had happened that he quickly caved. In doing so, Arosemena gave into a CIA demand that he launch a "civic action program" (utilizing death squads) - the first of its kind in America - which combined $1.5 million in U.S. military assistance with another $500,000 in AID funds for public works projects. McChristian took this concept to Vietnam later in the decade and turned it into the Phoenix Program. In 1969, Phoenix was re-introduced into Latin America as a fully developed counterinsurgency program - AND THIS IS PRECISELY THE LINK BETWEEN THE DEATH SQUADS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE EVANGELICAL "CHRISTIAN" COMMUNITY!!

A STAGGERING THOUGHT

THINK ABOUT IT!! THE THOUGHT IS STAGGERING! THE CONCEPT OF THE DEATH SQUAD WAS DEVELOPED BY A MAN WHO OPENLY PROFESSED CHRISTIANITY THROUGHOUT HIS LIFE AND WAS CLOSELY LINKED TO THE WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS. And people call this Christianity? God help all of us, for if this is so, we have all surely lost our way.

But the Wycliffe Bible Translators certainly thought otherwise. Wycliffe’s Donald Johnson said that McChristian was "... one of the most impressive officers that I have ever met. If all of our top commanders and diplomats were of his caliber, we could be proud and there would not be any ‘ugly Americans’."

McChristian’s approach to counterinsurgency in utilizing Wycliffe was enthusiastically embraced by everyone at Wycliffe. Wycliffe’s Jerry Elder even sent Cam a clipping from Lima’s La Prensa that reported on a conference between Ecuadorian and Peruvian army commanders on the border. Writing from Limonocha, Elder wrote: "The high point was the fact that they should unite to fight the common enemy, Communism ... I think this is particularly significant in light of the fact that one of the reasons that Commander Melger (CIA) went out there was to give a report to the military on the possibility of our (i.e., Wycliffe) doing espionage along the border."

OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE

Wycliffe operated the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS). JAARS employed a small plane known as a Helio Courier. It had been developed for the CIA and it was an aeronautical marvel: the Helio Courier was capable of taking off from a landing strip as short as a tennis court, soaring at speeds well over 100 miles per hour or hovering silently at 30 miles per hour. It had a range of almost 900 miles. It was perfect for Wycliffe’s purposes. It was also perfect for use by the CIA - and it was no accident that Wycliffe was provided with such an aircraft. The fingerprints of the CIA were all over Wycliffe's acquisition of the plane.

The Helio Corporation was deeply involved with the CIA. Wycliffe’s first Helio Courier had been purchased from a Cuban American in Miami (a CIA "contact" who "just happened" to have such a plane) with a $5,000 down payment donated by Sam Milbank. The plane’s other major donor was the Pew Memorial Fund, controlled by J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil Company (Sunoco), a man so profoundly distrustful of everything left of Barry Goldwater that he thought Nelson Rockefeller was soft on communism. Sun Oil was - after Texaco - the second-largest seller of crude oil to Brazil, most of it from Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo where Sunoco was deeply invested. The plane was christened in Philadelphia by Mayor Richardson Dilworth, a cousin of J. Richardson Dilworth, Nelson Rockefeller’s top financial aide. The latter was the key representative of the Rockefeller family in the Hanna Mining-Chrysler-National Steel financial complex that the Goulert government in Brazil had been trying to take over "in the interests of the Brazilian people." The Milbank family’s law firm was also involved in the suit in Brazil's courts brought on behalf of the Rockefeller interests there against the Goulert government. John J. McCloy, a presidential adviser and former Chase Manhattan chairman (who later became chief of the Central Intelligence Agency) was employed at the time by Milbank in the litigation; specifically, McCloy was in charge of Hanna’s suit against Brazil’s nationalization of its iron resources. All of this nexus of wealth was involved in Goulert’s overthrow. [The suit against Goulert was failing on its own merits, so the Americans simply overthrew the Goulert government, installed their own people, then packed the court with their own supporters and won. Not surprisingly, McCloy successfully represented the Americans before the generals who overthrew Goulert’s government.]

GOD AND GOULERT

It wasn't God therefore (as Beverly LaHaye and others like her prefer to believe) who overthrew the Goulert government in Brazil, but an evil nexus of wealth centered around Sam Milbank (Wycliffe's financial angel) that was responsible. The fact is, neither Goulert nor Ribeiro harbored any animosity toward Wycliffe’s evangelization efforts in Brazil. Indeed, Ribeiro was deeply involved in helping Wycliffe wherever he could.

After the overthrow of the Brazilian government of Goulert and Ribeiro, it was advertised in evangelical circles back home in the United States that Goulert had made up a list containing the names of thousands and thousands of Christian missionaries who were scheduled to be assassinated. But no such list ever existed. It was the creation of the CIA’s propaganda machine - and there could be little doubt that Townsend and others at Wycliffe knew the truth about all this. The fact is, Goulert never threatened the missionaries - his government had actually provided them aid. Why then did Wycliffe turn against Goulert? If not for the Gospel, what was the reason?

The reason, very obviously, was that the CIA and Wycliffe’s financial backers demanded that Wycliffe turn against Goulert and spread the word back home that the overthrow of Goulert was the "Act of a righteous God." The lying and deceit here is palpable - but this is what happens when the Christian community does business with the elites of this world, even for the best of reasons! THEY ARE EVENTUALLY COMPROMISED!

WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE ALLIANCE
BETWEEN THE ELITE AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS?

What, then, does all this say about the alliance that Christians have struck with the corporate elites of the economic right? What it says is, there's something wrong with it!! It doesn't pass the smell test.

If, as the Bible suggests, where money is to be found, Satan is close by (I Tim. 6:10), then what are we as Christians doing tying ourselves to people who are so in love and involved with it? And it isn't as if it's a deep, dark secret that money corrupts; that it perverts those who become involved with it; that the so-called moneyed elite is a venal and squalid group of individuals - even the world recognizes this fact: it's in our literature, it's in our movies, it's in our culture. Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University writes:

"The American elite is not composed of ... men whose conduct and character constitute models for American imitation and aspiration ... (This) is no set of men with whom members of the mass public can rightfully and gladly identify ...

This, of course, runs counter to what most American Christians have been led to believe - especially the devotees of people like Charles Capps, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland and the other purveyors of the "Green Gospel." Nonetheless, it's the truth!

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT
WEALTH (MONEY) AND CHRISTIANITY

As Christians, we need to keep clear of the rich of this world. Townsend refused to do so [no doubt, for the best of reasons - i.e., to raise money for the purpose of spreading the "Good News" of the Lord Jesus Christ]. But what did it get him in the end? - misery and grief.

From its beginning, real Christianity has been a movement of the "little people," the "common folk" - the lowly, the meek, the unassuming; people of "no reputation," "no account," and very little money. It was not a movement with which the economic elites of this world wanted to be involved - at least originally. Indeed, the Bible says of the early Christians,

"For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

"And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are ..." (I Cor. 1:26-28)

The fact is, throughout His ministry, Jesus identified Himself with the poor:

"And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6:20)

And He vilified the rich:

"... woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation." (Luke 6:24)

MONEY AS A CORRUPTING INFLUENCE

The Word of God speaks of money as "the mammon of unrighteousness" (Luke 16:9) - something which invariably leads away from God. The Bible says,

"... the love of money is the root of ALL evil ..." (1 Tim. 6:10)

Jesus called those who were blinded by the seductiveness of wealth "fools" - and He didn't use the word "fool" lightly. (Matt. 5:22) Cam Townsend forgot about all this and ruined himself and besmirched his ministry as a result - and his involvement with the American multinationals doing business in Latin America ultimately cost the lives of thousands and thousands of innocent people, many of them Christians.

Speaking concerning those who are in love with money, Peter warns:

"These are wells without water, clouds that are carried (about) with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for eve r." (2 Pet. 2:17)

In other words, Christians would be well-advised to steer clear of the Sam Milbanks of this world.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO US?

What does all this mean to us? - much in every way! There is a great "test" coming to all of us, and it has to do with money; specifically, our love of it. It's one thing to say that we love the Lord more than we love our money, but it's quite another thing to have it worked out in our lives as reality. The Bible says that when Antichrist comes, he -

"... causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Rev. 13:16-17)

"Buy or sell" - that means money!! In the light of these verses, therefore, we would all do well to examine ourselves insofar as our relationship with money is concerned - and in doing so, if we don't take great care to conduct this examination carefully and honestly, the only person we will be kidding in the long run is ourselves.

We must have a radical change in our attitude toward money or we will never make it through what's to come! No pretending then! Then we shall see if we are able to say with the prophet Habakkuk:

"Though the fig tree may not blossom, Nor fruit be on the vines; Though the labor of the olive may fail, And the fields yield no food; Though the flock be cut off from the fold, And there be no herd in the stalls -

"YET I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD, I WILL JOY IN THE GOD OF MY SALVATION." (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

God bless all of you,

S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries