Bolivian COCAINE COUP

The 1980 Bolivian "cocaine coup" was financed by wealthy ranchers and drug lords under Roberto Suarez Gomez, a former cattleman who had become Bolivia's top cocaine baron. His cousin, Colonel Luis Arce Gomez, was the coup's most important military contact. The two men gave General Luis Garcia Meza a bribe of $1,300,000 to lead the operation. Suarez Gomez was impressed with the paramilitary skills of a mysterious German businessman named Klaus Altmann. Altmann displayed such an affinity for intelligence work and interrogation techniques that on Suarez's recommendation he was given a leadership role in the Bolivian Army. Altmann in turn hired two young Italians, Pierluigi Pagliai and Stefano Delle Chiaie, to help plan the coup. Assisting Altmann was a group of mercenaries and former Nazis known as the Fiancés of Death. On July 17, 1980, the "Cocaine Generals" seized power. Within months it was learned that Pagliai and Delle Chiaie were right-wing P-2 terrorists with suspected kills on three continents, and the mysterious Klaus Altmann was none other than fugitive Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyons! Barbie, who had sent hundreds of Jews to their deaths, had avoided prosecution when Americans in occupied Germany recruited him as an informer in 1947 and engineered his escape. Barbie was extradicted to France, tried, and convicted. Pagliai was killed when international authorities tried to abduct him to stand trial in Italy for the P-2 ordered Bologna train bombing, but Delle Chiaie escaped the dragnet and fled to Argentina. In Bolivia, a "reform coalition" of cocaine growers and military men ousted Garcia Meza 13 months after the cocaine coup.

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Google Video | August 8, 2008

Tags:. .military. .mysterious. .luis. .italy. .gave