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If it ends here, at least it
ends on a grace note... Last week, two wire services, Agence France Presse and
the Associated Press, reported news that readers of
the investigative reporting at this website have known about for almost a year.
From
the AFP report: “A private jet that
crash-landed almost one year ago in eastern Mexico carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine
had previously been used for CIA "rendition" flights, a newspaper report said
here Thursday, citing documents from the United States and the European
Parliament.”
While happy to see the mainstream media
waking up, a little "credit where credit is due" would be nice, too. We broke
this news on this website eleven
months ago (Oct 8, 2007). In a story headlined
“SLOPPY TRADECRAFT EXPOSES CIA
DRUG PLANE”, we reported:
“Seventeen months after an
American-registered DC9 airliner was busted with 5.5 tons of cocaine, a major
international scandal is brewing over a second drug trafficking incident in
Mexico's Yucatan involving an American-registered jet owned by a dummy
front
company of the kind usually associated with the CIA.”
(SEE today’s companion news
story for new developments in the 100-Drug Plane Scandal,
which kicked off over two
years ago when
two CIA and Republican Party-connected airplanes were busted carrying a cumulative
10 tons of cocaine in Mexico.)
It's a small small world... with small small wire services
This
story was just the first of
more than
a dozen stories
on the crash of the
Gulfstream II business jet, and the earlier bust of the DC9 airliner caught with
5.5 tons of cocaine
that have appeared under my
byline in this space.
Our reporting
of this scandal has been
followed avidly in Mexico; so much so that one of the principals in the case
cited it when challenging the DEA’s official account in the same newspaper
responsible for the new wire service “revelation,” Mexico City's, El Universal,
which has generously credited and referenced my reporting in their coverage of
the CIA drug planes busted in Mexico.
All of this makes the studied
lack of credit almost funny. Almost.
When
not unsuccessfully
attempting to debunk it, America’s corporate media has assiduously ignored my
reporting on a whole host of scoops we’ve broken.
The practice
goes all the way back to an AP story about a piece of suspicious news I first
broke in
"Barry & the boys" (as well as in a story so old I can no longer
find it on this website) that George W Bush's favorite airplane,
while he was Texas Governor,
had been
a Beech King Air which
previously belonged to Barry Seal, the biggest drug smuggler in American history
and a life-long CIA pilot.
Probably just a coincidence.
"Alien locusts explained... from a Biblical perspective."

Ultimately, the effort
is designed to make me go away, for the same reason
that stories about 9/11 "conspiracies" never mention
real investigative reporting
on 9/11, which, alas, appears in very few places.
And, in combination with
a series of nuisance
libel lawsuits, it has almost succeeded.
When you cannot
afford the ruinous legal costs associated with defending yourself against them,
nuisance lawsuits are more than a nuisance.
Despite the admirable
assistance of volunteer attorneys like Barry
Bachrach in Boston and Christopher Hopkins in West Palm
Beach, the threat this past Spring of two new
lawsuits left me feeling like one of those people referred to in
unemployment statistics—which don’t count them—as “discouraged workers.”
Adding insult to injury, I
was recently informed that a million-selling Oprah book
club author has appropriated my research
and used it in a cheesy best-seller. I admit to not being able to
force myself to read the whole note,
which began: “Hey
this book is about Venice Florida
and is stolen from all the work of investigative reporter Daniel
Hopsicker!”
Some things, like having
someone else profit from investigative reporting which—back when it might have
done some good—was kept from breaking through using a variety of
occasionally-vicious tactics--has been hard. It has hurt, I have to admit, my
sense of professional pride.
Frustration like this
sometimes made the idea of moving to a sheep ranch in Western Australia seem an
attractive career option. But the reality is that
I’m probably too old to get a
job as a cowboy.
And, anyway, I don’t know how
to ride a horse.
I keep telling myself: "It's not about me"
In two books ("Welcome
to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta & the 9-11
Cover-up in Florida"; & "Barry & 'the Boys':
The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History," as well as in a half-dozen documentaries and
six years of investigative reporting, it has never been my
intention to make myself the issue.
I am not leading (or
pretending to lead, like others who shall remain thankfully nameless) any social crusades. I am merely delving into those
subjects—the 9/11 attack, the felons running America’s election service
companies involved in worldwide electronic vote fraud, and elite involvement in
drug trafficking— about which I have a burning desire to know more.
Some people
think that reporting under the “MadCowNews” banner
is inappropriate for a real investigative reporter.
But what a mad cow actually does,
as I understand it, is charge the farmer... which is pretty funny,
if you think about it... Because even if a
mad cow catches the farmer, without horns it
can’t actually do
anything to him, which seems emblematic of what happens to
anyone trying to make a difference by bringing light to bear on America's big taboos.
All you can do is point out The Emperor's
New Clothes.
Somebody else owns my name. Hmm.
Even
if I wanted to
change
the name of this website to something serious, like
www.danielhopsicker.com ,
“the boys” have got there first.
This domain name--MY NAME--
belongs to a certain German
pilot, a close associate of Wolfgang Bohringer, another German
pilot who was a close associate of Mohamed Atta's, and who was the subject of
an FBI-issued terror alert in the South Pacific two years ago.
All of these impediments, I
guess, are sort of left-handed compliments. So maybe I’m not totally ineffectual.
At
any rate. I plan to soldier on, and keep trying. Maybe the Jesuits were right
in the old maxim, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the
man." Because somewhere in the back of my mind, where everything I “learned”
before I was twelve still resides, I still believe America is, and can be, the
greatest country in the whole world.
Against strong evidence to
the contrary, I still believe all of the old platitudes, that our nation can be
a light on the hill. A beacon for humanity. A force for good. The Last Best
Hope.
"To wreak
whatever havoc I have left in me to wreak"
I
will be re-entering the fray with a new blog, also on this site, and with
whatever vigor I have left pursue the high-minded goal of muckrakers everywhere.
To do this, I need your help.
Although this
recession has hit everyone hard, the financial distress is now keeping me
from doing my job, which requires travel and poking around.
Travel
is costly. Travel to Mexico is costly... and dangerous.
I need to raise almost five
thousand dollars to finish and distribute “The
New American Drug Lords” and to complete
research on my new book "BushFellas" which
will be released this winter, I need professional legal and publicity
assistance, donations, and investors.
You can make the difference
in keeping the news real by putting your money
where your mouth is. Please send advice, and
donations, and pre-order both the book and DVD.
want to close with a sincere and heartfelt thank you to all the Mad Cow readers who have been supportive over these past
years...
Without
your donations, and your support of and for my books and videos I would have
either had to make this site subscription only by now...
Either
that, or retire my keyboard for a shepherd's crook, and cowboy hat. But I
don't think I'd be very good at counting sheep, let alone herding them.
Happy
Trails!
Daniel
Hopsicker
09/07/2008
PO 314
Venice, fl 34284
www.madcowprod.com
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