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Re:45 years after the Pentagon Papers, a new challenge to go... by alanwatts on Thursday June 16, 2016 @10:33PM (#11920346)
>In the rare cases when corruption was masked by military secrets, e.g. the Iran Contra affair, the profits were small (in the tens of thousands

Where did you get that figure? Ricky Ross made billions personally on that racket

Re:45 years after the Pentagon Papers, a new challenge to go... by linkregister on Friday June 17, 2016 @01:29PM (#11924075)
Where did you get the figure that Rick Ross made a billion dollars?

He was dealing drugs before the Iran-Contra affair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Freeway%22_Rick_Ross

Thanks for mentioning him, though. I didn't know much about this particularly interesting part of history.

Re:45 years after the Pentagon Papers, a new challenge to go... by alanwatts on Tuesday June 21, 2016 @03:56PM (#11948934)
Well, it's on his wiki[1], but most information about this part of the Iran-Contra is questionable, and Ross is very cagey about what he says in his interviews. The last person[2] to really take a deep look into this part of the story killed himself, by shooting himself in the head -- twice.

>According to the October 2013 Esquire article, “Between 1982 and 1989, federal prosecutors estimated, Ross bought and resold several metric tons of cocaine. In 1980 dollars, his gross earnings were said to be in excess of $900 million – with a profit of nearly $300 million. Converted roughly to present-day dollars: 2.5 billion gross, and $850 million in profit, respectively. As his distribution empire grew to include forty-two cities, the price he paid per kilo of powder cocaine dropped from as much as $60,000 to as low as $10,000. ”

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/"Freeway"_Rick_Ross

[2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb