Casey Gane-McCalla - Inside the CIAs Secret War in Jamaica

Coat of Arms for Jamaica

Considered a legacy from the British with slight modifications over the years, the Jamaican coat of arms was granted to Jamaica in 1661. The original was designed by William Sancroft, then Archbishop of Canterbury.

The motto of the seal has been a matter of discussion since inception. The original motto, INDUS UNTERQUE SERVIET VNI is the Latin translation for The two Indians will serve as one, or Both Indies will serve together, in reference to the collective servitude of the Taino and Arawak Indians to the colonizers. The motto was replaced in 1962 with the English motto Out of Many, One People, as tribute to the unity of the different cultural minorities inhabiting the nation. Perhaps as coincidence, the motto has the same meaning as the motto of the United States; E Pluribus Unum.

Introduction

There have been allegations of the CIAs destructive involvement in Jamaica for years. Stories of CIA-sponsored guns, drugs, and violence have been around all my life. My father is from Jamaica; Ive been interested in the country for a long time. As a child, I would travel there for vacations and holidays, staying in nice neighborhoods in the capital of Kingston.

Still, from the sheltered, bourgie Kingston houses, I could clearly see that Jamaica was drastically different than the U.S. I noticed the poorly clothed children in the shantytowns living in tin houses. I noticed the policemen who, unlike American police, carried M-16 machine guns as opposed to pistols.

While driving through Kingston, I saw graffiti that also caught my eye. In many of the poor neighborhoods that we drove through, I became intrigued by simple three-letter graffiti, the initials PNP or JLP. My relatives told me that they were the political parties of the country.

I knew no one in America would write graffiti about Democrats and Republicans so I was impressed that Jamaicans took so much pride in politics. Little did I know that there was a secret war on the streets of Kingston, between supporters of the Peoples National Party and the Jamaican Labor Party, a conflict that had turned into a low-intensity civil war with the help of the CIA.

I first became aware of the CIAs role in Jamaica because of my interest in reggae star Bob Marley. On a tour of the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, the tour guide showed us the bullet holes from the attempted assassination of Marley in December 1976. The tour guide claimed that Marley was shot at the direction of the CIA.

Why would the CIA want to kill a reggae singer? My grandmother bought me a book, Marley and Me , written by Marleys former manager Don Taylor. In the book, Taylor claimed that he was present at the execution of one of Marleys would-be assassins. Taylor said that before being killed, the gunman claimed he tried to kill Marley on the orders of the CIA and was paid with cocaine and guns.

This was not the only time I read about the CIA being involved in drugs, guns, and Jamaica. I read Gary Webbs series in the San Jose Mercury News and learned about the CIAs involvement in the cocaine trade to support the Contras war in Nicaragua.

In his book The Dark Alliance , Webb also wrote about Jamaica being exploited by the CIA in 1976; that the agency used the same tactics of manipulating the drug trade to force regime change. Webbs books opened my eyes to what type of organization the CIA really was.

The Iran-Contra affair showed how the CIA would facilitate Latin American drug dealers in order to fight Communism. I was intrigued by the government corruption. At the same time the First Lady was telling kids to Just Say No , the Vice President was aiding the large-scale importation of cocaine into the United States to help wage a secret war in Nicaragua and other countries.

In college, I became an amateur Bob Marley scholar and bought every album he made and every book written about him. For my senior thesis at Columbia, I wrote about Jamaica in the 1970s. My paper was titled The Eagle, the Bear, and the Lion. The eagle was the U.S., the bear was the Soviet Union, and the lion was Bob Marley and the Rastafarian Movement. In this thesis, I wrote about how Jamaica was caught between the interests of Russia and Cuba, and how Marley saved the country by uniting the warring leaders of the PNP and the JLP, avoiding a civil war.

My fathers first cousin, Trevor Rhone, wrote the epic Jamaican movie The Harder They Come , which told the story of a poor Jamaican man who moves from the country to Kingston to become a musician. Unable to make money from music, Ivanhoe Martin, played by reggae star Jimmy Cliff, becomes involved in the marijuana trade and a wanted outlaw.

Outlaw culture plays a big part in Jamaica. American cowboy and gangster movies were very popular in Jamaica. Unlike in America, where cowboy movies are a throwback to days of a lawless era, modern-day Jamaicans could relate to the Wild West and its outlaw heroes. Jamaicans would name themselves after the American cowboy characters and the mythical criminals of American gangster movies.

Through conversations, music, books, and newspaper articles, I became more familiar with the culture of Jamaican gangsterism and its ties to politics and the drug trade. Shower Posse was written by Duane Blake, the son of Vivian Blake, one of the leaders of the JLP-connected criminal organization. Born Fi Dead, by white American Laurie Gunst, revealed previously untold tales from Jamaica. She told stories of politicians from both political parties and the gangsters they used as representatives, and gunmen affiliated with both political parties that later embarked on criminal careers in the U.S., Canada, and the UK.

Living in the West Indian neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn, NY, I had access to several documentaries on Jamaican history. One of the best films on Jamaica I watched was Blood and Fire , a BBC documentary that took its name from a speech by JLP leader Edward Seaga, who threatened political violence against his opponents.

Another documentary on Lester Lloyd Jim Brown Coke, Seagas bodyguard and infamous Jamaican drug lord, would claim the CIA was arming Browns militia of armed political gunmen. Later, an American Gangster episode on BET would bring up the same allegations.

I first began writing about the CIA and the Jamaican Shower Posse after the U.S. forced Jamaica to capture the son of Shower Posse leader Lester Jim Brown Coke, Christopher Dudus Coke, who had followed in his fathers footsteps to become a drug lord himself. Given the media attention given to the case, I decided to write about the history of Jamaican Shower Posse and the hypocrisy of the United States for secretly condoning, promoting, and enabling drug dealing while openly condemning it.