The Florida Shuffle

From 1959 Till Today!
{UPDATED: Tuesday, June 27th, 2017} 

         NBC News took anchor Megyn Kelly from Fox News with a $20-million-a-year deal and slotted her newly debuted "Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly" at prime-time 7:00 PM on Sundays. On June 25th, 2017 her program led off with a superb 15-minute investigative segment entitled "THE FLORIDA SHUFFLE."

          This is a scene from the excellent investigative report "The Florida Shuffle" on Megyn Kelly's NBC program Sunday. Cynthia McFadden, shown above, hosted the segment from Palm Beach County in Florida and it served as a reminder that, since 1959, South Florida has been at the absolute forefront of the illegal drug bonanzas in the United States, including trafficking and its infamous Pill Clinics and Medicare schemes. "The Florida Shuffle" focused on a tragic aspect of the Opium Epidemic that is currently devastating much of America, specifically detailing how Palm Beach County is the epicenter for a lavish scheme supposedly helping addicts to recover but in actuality raking in vast sums of money from desperate families and from the federal government, the taxpayers. Enticed from many other states, addicts have flocked to South Florida for promised treatments that Cynthia McFadden discovered were "scams" that are often deadly. She pointed out that the Opium Epidemic is so widespread and out-of-control in the U. S. that a large percentage of American families with children up to age 26 are affected, and the sheer heartbreak of one such typical father and mother who lost their daughter in Palm Beach County is prominently featured by Cynthia McFadden. "The Florida Shuffle" prime-time report on NBC June 25th revealed how South Florida is today at the epicenter of the Opium Epidemic sweeping the U. S. but in reality it is a well-known fact that Miami in January of 1959 became America's drug capital thanks, unwittingly, to the Cuban Revolution that overthrew the U.S.-and-Mafia-backed Batista dictatorship.

        The best documentation of "HOW MIAMI BECAME THE COCAINE CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES" -- as stated by the above graphic -- was best told in the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" by Billy Corben in 2006. At one point in that documentary, pointing back at the lush and beautiful Miami skyline, the famed crime-reporter in Miami, Edna Buchanan, explained that it was courtesy of the mammoth drug revenue.

       The "Cocaine Cowboys" graphic above shows the gorgeous Miami skyline and also touts "THE BLOOD-DRENCHED MIAMI DRUG CULTURE" that played a role in creating it "in the 1970s and 1980s." Also note in the upper-right that the graphic promoting the scintillating documentary heralds the fact that the truth is far more dramatic than the famed Oliver Stone movie "Scarface," which started off with actual black-and-white film of Cubans arriving on the dock in Miami prior to turning Miami into the very deadly drug oasis.

       Billy Corben's documentary "Cocaine Cowboys" was so gripping that Hollywood's elite movie stars became enchanted with it but the documentary itself stands uncontested for exposing the Cuban-connection to Miami's drug culture following the 1959 overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba.

         While NBC is to be congratulated for its update Sunday night -- June 25, 2017 -- on Miami's ongoing drug connection, the History Channel the previous Sunday -- June 18th as noted above -- began a brilliant two-hour documentary entitled "America's War on Drugs." With massive documentations, including with notable former CIA personnel, this must-see program explains in detail how the CIA and the U. S. government -- especially the Reagan-Bush administration with Cuban-exiles at the forefront -- introduced illegal drugs into the U. S. and used the profits to finance such secretive right-wing operations as Iran-Contra against anything that hinted of being pro-communist or pro-peasants in small foreign nations.

       In promoting its brand-new "War on Drugs" documentary, the History Channel used the above graphic with this exact caption: "Mainstream media finally exposes CIA drug trafficking conspiracy." The documentary itself doesn't shy away from using names, photos and videos of former top government and military officials -- including former CIA director, Vice President and President George H. W. Bush and, of course, Oliver North. But, like many other notable documentaries, the History Channel emphasizes the post-Batista role the leading anti-Castro Cuban exiles -- such as Miami's still-celebrated Felix Rodriguez -- played as Bush-connected CIA operatives. The documentary in detail shows how U. S. military bases and U. S. military airplanes were used to transport illegal drugs to the United States to, for example, fund its Iran-Contra scandal that involved operatives like North and Rodriguez supported from Washington by tax dollars.

         The photo above shows Vice President George H. W. Bush with Felix Rodriguez. But long before and long after this photo was taken, Mr. Bush was intimately involved with the most infamous Cuban exiles.

       This photo montage shows Felix Rodriguez -- left to right -- being grilled by Senator John Kerry about CIA drug operations; as a fierce pro-Bush opponent of John Kerry's political career and post-Senate ambitions; and as a newly graduated 2nd Lt. at Fort Benning in the Cuban-exile Brigade that was trained to attack Cuba in the failed April-1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rodriguez were both prominently mentioned in the History Channel's new "War on Drugs" documentary, especially with Oliver North.

      The topical mainstream media, such as Time Magazine above, stressed "White House Point Man" Oliver North but not with the detailed documentation it receives in the new History Channel update "War on Drugs." Not surprisingly, North has become a rich media star with Fox News and his radio talk show.

        The extensive 2-hour History Channel documentary "War on Drugs" is considered the most documented evidence of the CIA and Cuban-exile involvement in the illegal drug trade and features how it was backed by right-wing Republican powers in Washington, both in Congress and in the White House. In fact, the documentary explains that Cubans, highly trained by the U. S. government, were used in many of the great but often sanitized U. S. scandals -- the drug trade for sure but also  many others. In 1976 when the Chilean diplomat and the beautiful American Ronni Moffitt were killed by a car-bomb near the White House, it was apparently as a part of murderous U.S.-backed dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile freely using highly trained Cuban-exiles in his famed assassinations; four of the five renowned burglars in the Watergate scandal that doomed the Nixon presidency were Cuban-exiles; etc., etc., etc. However, as the new History Channel documentary graphically points out, even the most visceral right-wingers involved in such schemes never faced justice. The History Channel poignantly mentioned the 14 well-known people pardoned by President George H. W. Bush who later and infamously also pardoned Orlando Bosch at the request of his now Miami-based son Jeb Bush. The late Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who still lives in Miami, will always be rated by history as the two all-time most famed Cuban-exile terrorists.

Indeed, "Orlando Bosch? Who?"

       Perhaps most stunning about the History Channel's new "War on Drugs" documentary is its new revelations about the CIA's long-known and well-funded no-holds-barred assaults on Cuba, starting with its support of the Batista dictatorship. But the History Channel spends a lot of its documentation time showing how Mafia kingpin Santo Trafficante's massive illegal drug operation in Batista's Cuba was INCREDIBLY also supported by the U. S. government in the United States after the Cuban Revolution's victory in 1959. 

      Of course, any mention of a "Florida Shuffle" or a "Cuban Shuffle" has to include Santo Trafficante Jr. and the famed Mob Lawyer Frank Ragano. Born in Tampa in 1914 and the son of the Sicilian-born Mafia kingpin of Tampa, Santo was the omnipotent Mafia boss of Florida both before and after he was booted out of Cuba with the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship by the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Santo, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky were the three famed Mafia bosses in Cuba along with Batista. Santo made Havana the drug capital of the Caribbean as well as the conduit for ship-loads of drugs to Miami. After getting kicked out of Cuba, Santo immediately resumed being the Mafia kingpin of Florida with his headquarters in Tampa but his main bankrolls in Miami. The aforementioned History Channel "War on Drugs"  detailed how elements of the U. S. government backed Santo in Cuba and in South Florida.

      Above is a very interesting AP photo and caption. Carlos Marcelo was the ruthless Mafia kingpin of both New Orleans and Dallas, and he was heavily invested financially in the Batista rule of Cuba. Marcelo is shown above dinning in New York with Santo Trafficante Jr. and their lawyer Frank Ragano after a benign grand jury questioning in the 1970s. Right after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, all historians know that Marcelo and Trafficante Jr. worked closely with the CIA and Cuban-exiles in repeated assassination attempts against Fidel Castro. But it is also known, and Ragano just before his death confirmed it, that Marcelo and Trafficante Jr. also vowed to kill both President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy because they blamed the Kennedys for the failure of the April-1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba.

       This book is one of the means, near the end of his life, that Mob Lawyer Frank Ragano, used to reveal Mafia deeds in Cuba and in the U. S. Ragano also revealed how easily he kept such thugs out of prison in the U. S. It is therefore known that Trafficante Jr. had little trouble using Mafia money to buy off politicians -- "except the two we offered the most money to, Castro in Havana and then Kennedy in Washington." Before that History Channel revelation, historians already knew that Trafficante Jr. hung around Havana a few days after Jan. 1-1959 to offer Castro even more money than the Mafia had been paying the Batista regime. 

      And so, on June 18-2017 The History Channel began airing a brilliant documentary that explains how the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 over the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship merely shifted nefarious and murderous Batistiano-Mafiosi money-making schemes from Cuba to South Florida...and, amazingly, such schemes continued to have support from powerful elements of the U. S. government.

        To form your own opinion about the national effect of South Florida's Cuban-related criminal activities -- from 1959 till today -- I suggest you go on line to view or review the still-pertinent 2006 "Cocaine Cowboys" documentary and, of course, Cynthia McFadden's "The Florida Shuffle" segment that aired in prime-time on NBC Sunday, June 25th, 2017. Both are searing reminders of how the deleterious effects of such activity spreads far and wide beyond South Florida, especially since the pivotal year of 1959.

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