Trump Pardons Honduran ex-President

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2024/06/dictators-and-drug-dealers-americas.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1kpm0rvxepo

The Mainstream Media is actually giving this latest Trump pardon story some attention - even while it all but ignored Orlando Hernandez's conviction and sentencing last year.

The coverage focuses on the fact that Trump is undermining the Justice Department and the work done by the US Attorney in building the case against the former Honduran president.

It also calls attention to the utter incongruity and hypocrisy of Trump's argument (without evidence) that Venezuela's Maduro is an imminent (even terroristic) threat with regard to narco-trafficking, even while there is abundant evidence against Orlando Hernandez and documentation that he sought to harm the 'gringos' by stuffing drugs up their noses - as he so eloquently put it.

The coverage fails in the analysis of Trump's motives. Clearly he sought to steer the recent and still disputed Honduran election and argued for Nasry Asfura, the Right-wing candidate - suggesting he would withhold aid unless he was elected.

But how would the pardoning of Orlando Hernandez affect the election? If anything it might galvanize the opposition - the mere prospect that this controversial and corrupt authoritarian leader might return to the country would hardly motivate the Right to vote in greater numbers. If anything it would startle the Left and motivate their bloc to action.

So why pardon him?

The media won't touch this but it's an oft repeated story - it concerns the internal battles within the US Federal Government. The State and Justice Departments (which includes the FBI) are often at odds with the White House and the CIA. The Justice Department pursues the conviction of criminals breaking US laws and the State Department works to facilitate extraditions etc. The White House and CIA are concerned with big picture geopolitics and the latter organisation has a long history of backing dictators and narco-regimes. The money flows into the coffers of Langley and allows it to run its off the book black operations beyond any kind of oversight or accountability. Indeed there are those who argue the US financial system is so awash with drug money and dependent on it that it's removal would bring about collapse. The CIA would be in a position to understand this and factor it into its larger set of calculations.

The White House and especially the CIA and even the larger (and fluid) body of figures that we might think of as modern day Praetorians also think in terms of 'the big picture' of how US power works - something the Justice Department doesn't even register. The State Department is also often lost in the weeds of bureaucracy and minutiae, and strict legal frameworks. It's a vast organisation that has many tasks and responsibilities and this (all too often) seems to limit the vision and effectiveness of Secretaries of State. There are many instances where they are effectively cut out of the action.

But there are exceptions. Some Secretaries are very powerful, especially when serving under presidents lacking foreign policy credentials and prowess. Kissinger certainly dominated Ford as did Hillary Clinton with Obama. John Foster Dulles (along with his CIA-director brother Allen) certainly exerted great influence over Eisenhower.

But so many others such as Schultz (under Reagan), Powell (under Bush), and Rogers (under Nixon) were marginalised and often circumvented. Tillerson (under Trump) was curtailed and ineffective and it could be argued that Rubio is also limited - playing a large role in Latin America but taking a back seat almost everywhere else.

I posit Orlando Hernandez was released because he was a powerful and favoured US ally that emerged from the context of the US sponsored coup in 2009. His conviction fell under the aegis of the Biden administration and Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. While the latter is certainly tainted with accusations of corruption, it follows that he wouldn't have been on board with the kind of Realpolitik advocated by the CIA in Latin America. Garland is an absolute 'by the book' sort of figure, and Biden while impressive in terms of rallying NATO was in other respects ineffective, in obvious decline, and easily outmaneuvered.

What of Orlando Hernandez's connections to drugs and organised crime?

What of it? The CIA and White House have long allied with and utilized such figures and its clear he was a favourite who still had friends. The idea that he was just going to rot in prison the rest of his life was dubious to me. I figured there was a good chance he could end up dead - but release was always a distant possibility.

Did Orlando Hernandez have a 'trump' card, some kind of information that still made him viable and even dangerous to figures within the US Empire? He may have or he may be reckoned as still useful. Clearly there are those unhappy with the fate of Jair Bolsonaro and don't want to further establish the precedent of jailing corrupt Right-wing leaders.

The media is missing the story. They're arguing - what about all these things he did? How could be released? They say this failing to realize that it's because of those very things that he has been pardoned and released. They either fail to understand or willingly obfuscate the deep criminality at the heart of the American system and its foreign policy.