Author: Daniel Hopsicker

  • Six years on: The mysterious crash of Cocaine2

    Six years on: The mysterious crash of Cocaine2

    Six years ago this week an American-registered luxury jet, a Gulfstream II—later dubbed “Cocaine 2”—crashed just before dawn in the middle of the jungle in Mexico’s Yucatan carrying four tons of cocaine. The event, and its aftermath, changed forever an official narrative of the war on drugs which has for years been pushing the notion…

  • The FBI took a powder: Things you never knew about 9/11

    The FBI took a powder: Things you never knew about 9/11

    If the Bush Administration lied to justify waging a war against Iraq, what truths still lie buried beneath the official explanation for what happened on September 11 2001? Before discussion about 9/11 was squeezed—in a pincer movement worthy of Hitler’s Panzer divisions—between the so-called “official story” and the subsequent campaign of disinformation that gave conspiracy a bad name, there…

  • War in Syria, Yogi Berra, & the two John Kerry’s

    Why is the debate over air strikes on Syria like America’s decades-long Drug War? Because, if you’re one of those Americans unlucky enough to have left your security clearance in your other pair of pants, questions about either receive essentially the same answer: “You’re not cleared for that information.” An informed citizenry is the basis…

  • Colombian Drug Lord Vanishes After Conviction… in the US!

    A major Colombian drug trafficker who willingly sought extradition to the United States—even offering a $40 million bribe to officials in Brazil to send him to the US—apparently knew what he was doing. After being extradited and convicted in Federal Court in New York of felony drug charges that could have put him in jail…

  • Up in Smoke? 24 Tons of Cocaine in “No Peek Burn Run”

      Its called a "burn run." When the government of Costa Rica asked for assistance in disposing of a huge stash of cocaine and other drugs they’d accumulated during the past two years worth of drug trafficking busts—in airports, in airplanes, and on the high seas—the US was only too willing to help. According to…

  • Narco-jet in Costa Rica scandal tied to Iran Contra figure

    A key employee in Bogotá of the Canadian oil company owners of the drug plane flown by Costa Rica’s President Laura Chinchilla was at the heart of the Contra Cocaine pipeline profiled by the late author Gary Webb in his 1996 best-seller “Dark Alliance.” David Scott Weekly was both a CIA agent and drug trafficker, according to Webb’s book. His nickname was "Dr. Death." …

  • Costa Rica’s President flew narco-jet to Hugo Chavez funeral

    An American-registered drug plane has been plying the airspace over Central and South America carrying cargoes of cocaine for a good long while (authorities admit they’ve been “investigating” it since 2011) without apparent incident, until recently, when a newspaper in Costa Rica reported that the President of Costa Rica had been seen using it to…

  • DC-9 ‘Cocaine One’ kingpin’s secret conviction

    It was the biggest drug seizure on an airplane in Mexican history. It led directly to the forced sale of Wachovia, then America's 4th largest bank. And it threatened to become America’s most notorious drug scandal since Iran Contra. Yet when a leader of the drug smuggling organization responsible for the flight of the DC-9…

  • Did the CIA commandeer the Boston bombing investigation?

    It’s been more than 300 years ago since demonic possession figured as heavily in a criminal probe as it has in the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing. Not since the Salem Witch Trials has the search for accomplices to a major crime centered so heavily on finding a suspect who believed he could talk…