In an exclusive interview with the MadCow Morning News, a Special Forces Commander just returned from Afghanistan has offered a reluctant-but-candid assessment of the reasons for the increase in hostility last summer between the U.S. and the "Evil Ones" that led to the heinous September 11 attack…

"The Taliban were launching an effort to take over the worldwide heroin trade, and then use that as a basis to move into cocaine distribution as well," stated this grizzled veteran of recent rescue missions behind enemy lines.

"They were planning on supplanting the Cali Cartel."

Who, one wonders, might have gotten a little bent out of shape about that?

Three related stories, whose outcomes may provide the answer, have surfaced in the news this week…

In the first, it was announced that the Senate Intelligence Committee has been quietly gearing up for major hearings in February about the "massive intelligence failure" that resulted in tragedy on September 11.

"It is going to be a bombshell of an investigation of historic proportions — a lot of embarrassing red faces resulting from it," stated columnist Bob Novak on CNN.

In the second story, President Bush called on Americans to join the Sept. 11 war effort… by giving up illegal drugs. Citing narcotics trafficking as a source of funding for terrorism, Bush said, "It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror…that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder.''

"The Taliban were a drug trafficking government,'' said a spokesman at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, while stating that the Northern Alliance was also heavily involved in the drug trade.

In fairness it must be noted that the American DEA is currently led by Asa Hutchinson, who while US Attorney in Bill Clinton’s Arkansas provided protection for what one former National Security Council official called "the biggest drug smuggling operation in history" in Mena Arkansas,  just a few short miles from Hutchinson’s office.

No word from the DEA on whether this makes the Bush Administration a "drug trafficking government" too…

The Bush administration plans to lean on Kabul's new government to promote crops like winter wheat, says Hutchinson, to any reporter capable of sitting through a DEA briefing with a straight face.

"It's a rare opportunity that we have, to influence 70 percent of the world's supply of heroin,'' Asa Hutchinson told Reuters.

You can almost hear the cash registers ringing in his head.

But DEA chief Asa Hutchinson’s unfortunate past is not why some people are growing increasingly-nervous in tiny Venice, Florida.

The third related story coming out this week concerns this ‘wave of nerves’ and what it may portend for the success of the upcoming Senate hearings into September 11.

In Venice, home to blue-haired widows, early-bird specials, and two flight schools at the airport that trained Bin Laden’s terrorist Air Force, the local paper revealed last week that Venice City Manager George Hunt has been keeping a loaded gun in a desk in his office.

Hunt decided that top city officials, including the airport manager, should procure concealed weapons permits. Presumably with a straight face, he told the local paper his decision (later rescinded in the face of public outcry) was based on "massive amounts" of evidence from the American Waterworks Association(!) about threats to the water supply.

If that were not puzzling enough, Hunt also pushed through a measure which the Gondolier heralded in a front page headline:

"Airport to Get Its Own Cops."

Venice Airport Manager Larry Heath said the issue was how best to protect the airport. But citizens in other parts of the country, notably New York and Washington DC, might be excused for feeling that slightly more to the point than protecting the Venice Airport would be protecting Americans from the Venice Airport. Or at least from the covert operations run there.

With tensions running so high, some view Bush’s linkage of drugs and terrorism as coming at a particularly inopportune and potentially embarrassing moment, especially given the pending Senate Intelligence Committee Sept 11 investigation.

Were the real truth to ever become known about the commodities being traded so casually in Florida's over-active black market, heads would roll in such numbers that there might be calls to bring back the guillotine, just for efficiency.

But with Ashleigh Banfield and Geraldo constituting what passes for American journalism, there thankfully appears little chance of that.

"Trading with the Enemy"

President Bush's comments about drugs and terrorism recognize, however obliquely, that Bin Laden's organization derived much of its funding through the heroin and opium trade in Afghanistan.

But no one has yet alleged that Bin Laden’s "Islamic fundamentalists" distributed these drugs. They merely sold them to some other organization, that then in turn distributed to retail on the American street… leaving some to question whether Osama might have had a deal with the American Mob.

The MadCow Morning News was the first to report on Mob connections to Magic Dutch Boy Rudi Dekkers and the covert operations conducted at the Venice Airport. Flight School Owner Has Shady Ties.

"Frankly, we can't differentiate between terrorism and organized crime and drug dealing," Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff told the Senate Banking Committee which briefly "looked into" the terrorists’ money trail in the aftermath of the Sept 11 disaster.

"These groups don't hold themselves independently: They work with one another. Terrorists get engaged in drug activity. They have relationships with organized crime," Chertoff said.

In a related story illustrating this premise, reported heavily in Mike Ruppert’s From the Wilderness, US federal agents arrested Kevin Ingram on 12 June as he prepared to board a privately-chartered Lear jet carrying more than $ 500,000 in cash raised from the sale of sophisticated weaponry, including missiles machine guns and grenade launchers.

The weapons were destined for the Middle East to be used in possible terrorist attacks.

If the deal he got caught doing was typical, insiders state, it was oil and heroin up front for guns and training.

Perhaps envisioning a new career as a Magic Dutch Boy, Ingram was heading for Amsterdam on his Lear when he was arrested.

Will the Senate Intelligence Committee find any of this worthy of their interest?

So little is still known about the true nature of the Sept. 11th attack that any kernel of fact is an island adrift in a sea of 'journalists' in  designer eyewear.

For example, on the question of whether Mohamed Atta was involved in previous terrorist acts, reports that Mohamed Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986 have been ridiculed as an "urban legend one sees so much of on the internet."

It is a minor curiosity, perhaps, but we have discovered that, true or no, the Internet is not where this report first surfaced.

The following is taken verbatim from NBC News Sept 13 transcript:

"This investigation also takes us to Florida where the FBI task force saw a name on the passenger manifest that was familiar to them. NBC News has learned that flight training for Mohamed Atta, one of the alleged hijackers, apparently took place at a flight school in Florida. As NBC's Kerry Sanders reports, the FBI can also link Atta to a suspected car bombing in Israel in 1986…"

Curiously, the transcript then omits whatever it was that correspondent Sanders had to say about his discovery.

This couldn't be wartime censorship…could it?

Finally, in the matter of wartime censorship, there is still no word from the International Officer's School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala. concerning our polite but persistent queries about Mohamed Atta's reported attendance there.

First reported by Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the Miami Herald–no slouches themselves as purveyors of urban legend–the story still awaits plausible denial.

Perhaps plausibility has been replaced, priority-wise, by interesting-looking frames.

Or perhaps, as with so many other matters in American life these days, government officials just believe that we are better off not knowing.