Newt Gingrich is clearly a ringer thrown into the 2012 campaign to ensure the reelection of Barack Obama, and not a character worthy of much serious analysis. However, some of his hypocritical transgressions against our republic are so extreme as to warrant a mention, like for example, his advocating the execution of people found guilty of importing two or more ounces of marijuana:
The first time we execute 27 or 30 or 35 people at one time, and they go around Colombia and France and Thailand and Mexico, and they say, ‘Hi, would you like to carry some drugs into the U.S.?’ the price of carrying drugs will have gone up dramatically.
While Gingrich has admitted to consuming marijuana himself, it comes attached with a qualification. While smoking marijuana is in his opinion immoral, he's explained that in his very special case, it wasn't immoral for him to smoke it, just for you to smoke it. Here's what he told the Wall Street journal in 1996:
See, when I smoked pot it was illegal, but not immoral. Now, it is illegal AND immoral. The law didn’t change, only the morality… That’s why you get to go to jail and I don’t.
The really shameful hypocrisy, however, is in Gingrich lusting for the murder or small time marijuana sellers while politically defending the world's largest drug traffickers, the Central Intelligence Agency.
For those unfamiliar with the numerous and very damning instances of CIA involvement in global level drug dealing, here are just three quick examples. Firstly, we have the CIA Gulfstream Guantanamo Bay transport jet which crashed in the Mexican Yucatan peninsula in 2007. The crash site, rather than containing torture victims, actually revealed four tons of cocaine, presumably intended for shipment into the US. Secondly, there is former LAPD narcotics officer Mike Ruppert who very famously confronted former CIA director John Deutch about the CIA working in tandem with Los Angeles police to sell crack cocaine on the streets of L.A. After becoming aware of the CIA's connection with notorious crack dealers like Ricky Ross, and their supplying of nearly all cocaine and crack to poor communities in America, Ruppert very bravely and patriotically blew the whistle on his former colleagues and their intelligence crime partners, and very likely singlehandedly crushed the political aspirations of corrupt CIA directer Deutch.
One last example, among many to choose from, is the seizure of a US military aircraft by the Argentinian government earlier this year. Inside the plane Argentinian officials discovered both illegal drugs and illegal weapons. US officials described the seized contraband as merely routine equipment used for police training in Argentina. No explanation was offered as to why hard drugs might be considered "routine equipment" for Argentinian police.
But what does any of this have to do with Newt Gingrich? Well, throughout the past two decades Gingrich has enthusiastically jumped to the defense of the criminal endeavors of the CIA whenever he could. In 1995 former New Jersey congressman Robert Torricelli helped State Department whistleblower Richard Nuccio reveal to the public that CIA assets were responsible for the murders of both American citizens and leftist opposition leaders in Guatamala. Michael DeVine ran a hotel in Guatemala, and likely became aware of smuggling activities being conducted by Guatemalan military and western intelligence, and for this reason was allegedly killed by CIA asset Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez. Rather than applauding congressman Torricelli's attempt to uphold the rule of law and restore the dignity of holding congressional office, Gingrich described the former congressman's actions as causing "a public embarrassment to the United States" and called for Torricelli's removal from office.
Another example of Gingrich's willingness to play guard dog for drug dealers and torturers came in 2009 when speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying about briefing her on the use of torture. Gingrich described this moment of likely honesty from Pelosi as a "dispicable, dishonest and vicious political effort". Gingrich, while quick to accuse Pelosi of dishonesty, didn't explain how exactly he was able to know for certain whether or not such a briefing took place.
So Gingrich is beyond the hypocrisy of merely having used drugs while later supporting laws that ruin others' lives for using drugs, a contradiction of which, sadly, many of our politicians are guilty. He's kicked it up a notch and actively supported, defended and attempted to hide the drug dealing activities of his friends in the CIA, a level of drug smuggling that makes his support of executing someone over two ounces of marijuana seem like an extremely tasteless joke.
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