Pubdate: July/August 1999
Source: Extra! (US)
Contact:  http://www.fair.org/extra/index.html

TIME CHANGES TUNE ON KLA'S HEROIN MONEY

In its May 17 issue, Time Magazine noted that the Kosovo Liberation Army has
$33 million in the bank. In an adjacent feature, called "How the KLA Gets
Its Money," the magazine reported that the separatist group's financial
resources come from "fund raisers, mailings and other sources." What "other
sources" produced a $33 million surplus? Bake sales?

But other media outlets have done some digging on the question - and turned
up some troubling answers.  The San Francisco Chronicle (5/5/99) reported
that international law enforcement groups see officers of the KLA as "a
major force in international organized crime, moving staggering amounts of
narcotics through an underworld network that reaches into the heart of
Europe.

The London Times (3/24/99) reported that Europol and European national
police forces are investigating "growing evidence that drug money is funding
the KLA's leap from obscurity to power," citing a German intelligence report
that indicated as much as half of the funding for the KLA's guerrilla war
comes from profits from the heroin trade.

Even the U.S. government has been concerned about possible KLA drug ties for
at least four years. The Chronicle cites a 1995 advisor by the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration that "warned of the possibility 'that certain
members of the ethnic Albanian community in the Servian region of Kosovo
have turned to drug trafficking in order to finance their separatist
activities.'" The Washington Post (3/23/99) quoted the DEA's Rome office:

"Turkish [drug] trafficking groups are using Albanians Yugoslavs and
elements of criminal groups from Kosovo to sell and distribute their heroin.
These groups are believed to be a part of the [KLA's] war against Servia.
These Kosovars are financing their war through drug-trafficking activities,
weapons trafficking and the trafficking of other illegal goods."

Ironically, Time itself has noted the KLA's drug connections - in reporting
by the same journalist who wrote the May 17 piece. Massimo Calabresi, who
covers Eastern Europe for the magazine, wrote last year (11/30/98) that
"both the U.N. and Interpol believe that proceeds from the heroin trade go
to fund the ethnic Albanian insurgency in the Serbian province of Kosovo."
And even after the U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia began (4/29/99), he wrote of
the KLA: "Some commanders are outright criminals. Interpol cops say parts of
the KLA are funded by profits from smuggling along the infamous 'Balkan
route,' the main line for 90 percent of Western Europe's heroin."

But the next month, such unpleasant accusations were gone from Calabresi's
reporting, replaced by a sentimental account of an ethnic Albanian farmer in
Macedonia who gave his entire life savings - $8 - to the KLA, receiving in
exchange a receipt that "now holds pride of place in Behadini's empty
wallet, next to the picture of his wife."

Had the drug allegations been disproved between April 29 and May 17? Or did
the change in reporting have more to do with the U.S.'s increasing closeness
to the guerrilla group, to the point where , as a senior administration
official told Time (5/17/99), "we're in some respects now the KLA's
airforce"?

An anecdote from the 1980s suggests how Time handles such issues. In a 1987
investigation into allegations of drug-smuggling by the Nicaraguan Contras,
Time staff writer Laurence Zuckerman found serious evidence of
Contra-cocaine links. The story was written and rewritten, but somehow never
made it into print. Finally, a senior editor offered Zuckerman some friendly
advice, telling him to drop the story: "Time is institutionally behind the
Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you'd have no
trouble getting it in the magazine." (see Extra!, 11-12/91, 1-2/97.)

Could it be that Time has also gotten "institutionally behind" the KLA - and
there are some things the magazine doesn't want its readers to know about
the group that it's gotten behind?

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