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CIA drug trafficking allegations

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It has been alleged [1] that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in drug smuggling in three significant periods.

Vietnam Era

Western Vietnam and Eastern Cambodia had some opium fields. It was widely alleged among various veterans that the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in smuggling this opium to heroin producers in the United States at considerable profit. In the book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred W. McCoy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides evidence of the use of opium by agents of the U.S. Government to fund covert operations in Vietnam. McCoy discusses the use of opium to fund covert operations done by the CIA in Vietnam and provides prolific testimony from interviews with many of the principles involved.[2] According to Dr. McCoy, the agency intimidated his sources and tried to keep the book from being published.[3]

There is also an article in Peace Magazine containing similar allegations.[4]

Speculation on this matter played a role in the Steven Seagal film Above the Law, as well as in the fictional Mel Gibson film, Air America with a strong focus on drug trafficking. Air America was loosely based upon the Christopher Robbins nonfiction, Air America, which chronicled the history of CIA proprietary airlines in Southeast Asia.

Soviet Afghanistan

Further information: Inter-Services Intelligence § Afghanistan

It was alleged by the Soviets on multiple occasions[citation needed] that American CIA agents were helping smuggle opium out of Afghanistan, either into the West, in order to raise money for the Afghan resistance or into the Soviet Union in order to weaken it through drug addiction.

According to historian Alfred W. McCoy, the CIA supported various Afghan drug lords, for instance Gulbuddin Hekmatyar [5]. In particular, McCoy stated that:[6]

"In most cases, the CIA's role involved various forms of complicity, tolerance or studied ignorance about the trade, not any direct culpability in the actual trafficking ... [t]he CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug-lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection. In sum, the CIA's role in the Southeast Asian heroin trade involved indirect complicity rather than direct culpability."

Iran Contra Affair

Main article: CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US

Released on April 13, 1989, the Kerry Committee report concluded that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."

In 1996 Gary Webb wrote a series of articles published in the San Jose Mercury News, which investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel and directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras.

In 1996 CIA Director John M. Deutch went to Los Angeles to refute the allegations raised by the Gary Webb articles, and was famously confronted by former LAPD officer Michael Rupert, who said he had witnessed it occurring. [7]

Venezuelan National Guard Affair

In November 1993, Judge Robert Bonner, the former head of the DEA, appeared on 60 Minutes and alleged that the CIA had permitted a ton of cocaine to enter the United States.[8]

The New York Times reported:

The CIA - over the objections of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a branch of the Justice Department - approved the shipment of at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to Miami International Airport as a way of gathering information about the Colombian drug cartels. But the cocaine ended up on the street because of "poor judgment and management on the part of several CIA officers," the intelligence agency said.[9]

In November 1996 a Miami jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who "led a CIA counter-narcotics program that put a ton of cocaine on U.S. streets in 1990."

Reading list

  • Cockburn, Alexander St. Clair, Jeffrey (1999). White-out: CIA, Drugs and the Press. Verso Books. ISBN 1-85984-258-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Dale-Scott, Peter Marshall, Jonathan (1998). Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-21449-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • McCoy, Alfred W. (2003). The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Columbia. Lawrence Hill & Co. ISBN 1-55652-483-8.
  • Webb, Gary (1999). Dark Alliance: CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press,U.S. ISBN 1-888363-93-2.
  • Ruppert, Michael (2004). Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-86571-540-8.
  • Kruger, Henrik. (1980). The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism. South End Press. ISBN 0-89608-031-5.

See also

References

  1. ^ MENA
  2. ^ Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
  3. ^ Alfred W. McCoy, "A Correspondence with the CIA, New York Review of Books 19:4 (21 September 1972).
  4. ^ "The Secret Team, Part IV: Visiting Vietnam", John Bacher, Peace Magazine Jun-Jul 1988, page 10
  5. ^ 9 November 1991 interview with Alfred McCoy, by Paul DeRienzo
  6. ^ p. 385 of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, by McCoy, with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard P. Adams II, 2003, ISBN 1-55652-483-8
  7. ^ "Crack the CIA" , winner of the 2003 Sundance Online Film Festival
  8. ^ http://www.csun.edu/coms/ben/news/cia/ven/60m.html
  9. ^ New York Times Service, "Venezuelan general who led CIA program indicted," Dallas Morning News (26 November 1996) p. 6A.
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