Our Very Own American Drug Cartel

by Daniel Hopsicker

"Its been six hundred and twenty-two days since an American-registered DC9 airliner, "tricked out" to look like an airplane from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, took off from the St. Petersburg-Clearwater Int'l Airport (left) and was busted in Mexico carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine.
It reads like a Hollywood pitch that gets rejected for not being believable enough.
But it all really happened.

Two American-registered airplanes associated with the CIA— a DC9 airliner (N900SA) and a Gulfstream business jet (N987SA)—each underwent a rapid-fire series of ownership changes before taking off a final time from St-Petersburg-Clearwater Int’l Airport (left).
The planes were on their way to being busted in Mexico eighteen months apart.
Between them, they were carrying more than ten tons of cocaine.
(...)
Not since the 1986 downing over in Nicaragua of a C-123 military cargo plane with CIA asset Eugene Hasenfus aboard to kick off the Iran Contra Scandal has there been aviation news potentially this disasterous to the party in the White House."