America has a very serious drug problem affecting all people, all races, in all areas and genders nation-wide. And one of the world’s biggest drug pushers is the CIA. In 1972, Alfred W. McCoy published The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which traced through firsthand interviews and dangerous field work the CIA’s alliance with opium-growing warlords in the Golden Triangle and corrupt generals in the South Vietnamese military. The CIA tried to suppress publication of the book and McCoy managed to avoid being expelled from Yale University (a school with deep CIA ties) only because his graduate school adviser was visiting from Germany.
In the 1980s Contra War, the CIA forged an alliance with Alan Hyde, a notorious cocaine trafficker who controlled 35 ships crisscrossing the Caribbean and gave the CIA access to his strategic port facility in the Bay Islands off Honduras. More recently, the United States has allied with warlord traffickers in Afghanistan, where the opium flower blooms widely in a war-ravaged economy and been used to finance the Taliban’s resurgence.
Source – The Progressive
While the CIA’s heavy involvement in the drug trade, and especially the crack cocaine trade, has been well documented by scholars such as Dr. Peter Dale Scott at least since the Iran-Contra hearings in the 1980s, mass media ignore the issue and information is buried. When media does take notice, most continue to parrot the absurd government line in contradiction to the blatant facts, which are available to anyone who reads beyond the corporate summaries of government press releases.
Links to information about the CIA complicity in the drug trade:
- Dark Alliance: The San Jose Mercury News exposé. This excellent web site presents the evidence in a series of compelling articles, along with photographs and sound clips from testimony about the CIA’s involvement in the crack trade in South Central.
- (Never heard of the contras? Read this.)
- Contras, Crack, and the CIA: Editorial by Robert Parry in a recent issue of the Nation which gives evidence that the U.S. government knew about and covered up contra drug dealing for at least the past ten years.
- Media Focus on CIA’s Cocaine Links is Long Overdue, short article by Norman Solomon, dated Oct. 1 ’96.
- Media War over CIA and Cocaine, also by Norman Solomon.
- The Kerry Report: During the Iran Contra Investigation ten years ago, much evidence linking the CIA to drug dealing came out but was successfully covered up by mass media. Read excerpts of the Senate Investigative Committee Report which detailed this evidence here, or ask your library for the full document.
- Crack Reparations. Argues that the U.S. government should pay reparations to South Central Los Angeles for destroying communities by bringing in crack cocaine.
- How the CIA Created the Crack Epidemic, story from the Revolutionary Worker.
- Ex-DEA Agent Castillo Tells All: Excerpt from Castillo’s book Powderburns. (5-10 errors per page the book becomes unreadable)
- Chronology of Events outlining the CIA/Contra Drug Dealing Connection. Note that this chronology was developed in 1990, six years before the most recent revelations.
- Cocaine Importing Agency: Dave Feustel maintains a nice collection of articles on CIA drug smuggling over the years.
- “WormScan”: A collection of news items relating to official complicity and responsibility for the drug trade. Mirrored here, with a longer version here.
- Cockburn v. Secord: When Leslie and Andrew Cockburn exposed the CIA’s drug connections in 1987, Richard Secord sued them for defaming his character. He lost the suit because he was unable to produce any evidence of malice or distortion.
- CIA is Up to Its Eyeballs in Cocaine Deals, by Dierdre Griswold. Could the title be any more plain?
- Dark Alliance: Reprint of the SJMercury article with commentary from Arm the Spirit.
- CIA’s Contras Linked to Crack Trade: nice summary of the San Jose Mercury News exposé
- DEA’s Finest Details Corruption, by John Viet for MediaFilter.
- Congressional Reports on Drug Corruption in the Federal Government, a list of resources available from the government documents collection of your library.
- U.S. Officials Joined Mexican Drug Smugglers, from the Sacramento Bee in February of 1996.
- Snowbound: A 1989 expose on U.S. government drug smuggling from Penthouse magazine.
- Justice Department Investigation Begins: This brief CNN report of 23 September 1996 indicates the first sign that the government is looking into the CIA involvement in drug trafficking.
- Ex-DEA Agent Celerino Castillo announced his intention to confess about the CIA/DEA connection to the drug trade over a year ago.
- Haiti’s Nightmare: The Haiti connection to the CIA/Contra Drug Operation (mirrored here). See also “Haiti, Thugs, and Drugs.”
- The De-Central Intelligence Agency, a site dedicated to ending the media blackout on the CIA’s involvement in heroin and cocaine trafficking.
- A Scandal Unravels in Arkansas: Just because the contra war against Nicaragua was the product of the 12-year reign of the G.O.P. (Greedy Old Pricks), doesn’t mean Bill Clinton’s hands are clean. 1995 article from the New York Post
- Arkansas Drug Probe Could Be Dynamite. Followup of the above. Also a 1995 followup exists.
- Starr Investigation Targets Arkansas Police: Read how Arkansas Law Enforcement tried to cover the CIA’s tracks while it was dealing drugs.
- The MENA Coverup: Wall Street Journal article on Clinton’s role in the CIA-drug connection.
- More on MENA, from Paul DiRienzo in 1992. See also this post from alt.politics.clinton.
- 1985: from the Secret History of the United States. Details some of the Clinton-Bush-North connection in the drug scandal. More info in 1996.
- The Crimes of MENA: A London Perspective. London’s Sunday Telegraph points out that the Whitewater connection to drugs and contras is a smokescreen being used both to smear the Clinton White House and cover up the fact that these operations have been going on for a long time.
- Assorted Mena Links: more links to articles on Mena from the Real Change website, exposing the corruption of all of the currently running Presidential candidates.
- Drugs and Covert Operations, 1991 article from Convergence magazine.
- How the Drug War Created Crack, from Cures not Wars. Excellent article from the Village Voice in 1990 arguing that the U.S. “War on Drugs” led to the crack cocaine epidemic.
- Shooting Up in Public, by Ron Reed. Great essay against prohibition which discusses the U.S. involvement in narcoterrorism in Central America and Vietnam. Mirrored here.
- The Duplicity of the War on Drugs: a nice USENET post against drug prohibition which discusses the U.S. government’s heavy involvement in the Southeast Asian heroin trade in the 1970s.
- The Politics of Drugs in America, by Frank Morales. From MediaFilter
- Alfred McCoy discusses U.S. involvement in the Southeast Asian Heroin trade. See also the interview here.
- Doping and Duping America: more on the hidden history of heroin.
- The Intelligence Connection, designed for the “incurably informed” by the De-Central Intelligence Agency.
- Want More Information on CIA Covert Operations Domestically (in explicit violation of Federal Law)? Check out this site for details.
- Cops and Drugs: Details corruption of Law Enforcement Agencies Across the Nation.
- Rhetorical Genealogy of the War on Drugs: a Drug War History. Mentions some of the U.S. government complicity in the heroin trade, as well as the CIA’s use of LSD in the 1950s and 1960s. Also see links to drug legalization resources for further information.
Source – CSUN.edu
And that Pan Am flight 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland? The result of a DEA/CIA drug deal that went sour?
NBC news has learned that Pan Am flights from Frankfurt, including [Flight] 103, had been used a number of times by the DEA as part of its undercover operations to fly information and suitcases of heroin into Detroit as part of a sting operation to catch dealers in Detroit. The undercover operation, code-named Operation Courier, was set up three years ago by the DEA in Cyprus to infiltrate Lebanese heroin groups in the Middle East and their connections in Detroit
[I]nformants would put suitcases on the Pan Am flights, apparently without the usual security checks, according to one airline source, through an arrangement between the DEA and German authorities. Law enforcement officials say the fear now is that the terrorists that blew up Pan Am 103 somehow learned about what the DEA was doing, infiltrated the undercover operation and substituted the bomb for the heroin in one of the DEA shipments” so the bomb would sail through the security loophole, undetected.
Along with the 270 dead were approximately $500,000 in American bills and an envelope marked with $547,000, carrying travelers checks. But according to a few key witnesses, something else was found. Drugs. Heroin, to be exact. Additionally, locals were perturbed by the immediate presence of large numbers of Americans who showed up in Lockerbie within a couple of hours of the downing of the plane.
When the CIA agents arrived on the scene, they were looking for highly confidential papers that should have been found on the body of the pilot, Captain James McQuarrie, No such papers were found. They also sought something of great importance, but would not specify what it was. They told the Scottish officials they’d know it when they found it.
Source – Consortium News
In the 1980’s, CIA assets shifted their controlled of heroin trade from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
As the Mujaheddin guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. Once the heroin left Pakistan’s laboratories, the Sicilian mafia managed its export to the United States, and a chain of syndicate-controlled pizza parlors distributed the drugs to street gangs in American cities, according to reports by the Drug Enforcement Agency. Most ordinary Americans did not see the links between the ClA’s alliance with Afghan drug lords, the pizza parlors, and the heroin on U.S. streets.
During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests. Before we invaded Afghanistan, opium production was nearly zilch. Now records are being set for poppy field cultivation and opium and heroin production.
Source – Third World Traveler
The DEA: America’s Largest Cocaine Smuggler
An investigation by El Universal found that between the years 2000 and 2012, the U.S. government had an arrangement with Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel that allowed the organization to smuggle billions of dollars of drugs while Sinaloa provided information on rival cartels. Sinaloa, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, supplies 80% of the drugs entering the Chicago area and has a presence in cities across the U.S. There have long been allegations that Guzman, considered to be “the world’s most powerful drug trafficker,” coordinates with American authorities. But the El Universal investigation is the first to publish court documents that include corroborating testimony from a DEA agent and a Justice Department official.
Source – 21 Century Wire
And then their is the “LEGAL” means to obtain drugs – also big business
Big Pharma: The World’s Biggest Drug Pusher is Killing Hundreds of Thousands
Beginning in the early 1990s, Big Pharma began pushing for deregulation of opioids, arguing that their own research showed this could help many people suffering from chronic pain with less than 1% of users becoming addicted. The result has not only been a large growth in prescription opioid use,but an explosion in opioid addiction and deaths, so great that United States Center for Disease Control has finally issued new guidelines (unfortuately voluntary in nature) to try to decrease the tragic toll of 40 deaths a day in the US and more than 200,000 deaths in the US alone since the 1990s. “We know of no other medication routinely used for a nonfatal condition that kills patients so frequently,” said CDC director Thomas Frieden. “We hope to see fewer deaths from opiates. That’s the bottom line. These are really dangerous medications that carry the risk of addiction and death.”
Source – USA Today
Pharma Association Defends Law Weakening DEA, Ignores Key Facts
By Ethan Barton 10-19-17
A major trade association for pharmaceutical distributors defended a law that weakened the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), while ignoring key facts about how the now-stripped power once let the agency suspend distributors that shipped alarming numbers of opioid pills. But the Healthcare Distribution Alliance ignored examples in the WaPo/60 Minutes report where the DEA suspended distributors that were shipping especially large numbers of pills.
In one instance, 11 million painkillers were shipped to a West Virginia county with a population of 25,000, according to the WaPo/60 Minutes investigation. In another, some Walgreens pharmacies in Florida sold more than one million opioid pills a year – nearly 14 times the number sold by a typical pharmacy.
The DEA’s aggressiveness with suspensions was already hampered before the law passed, according to the WaPo/60 Minutes investigation. Officials were forced to present more evidence before suspending distributors and the agency’s management became more willing to cooperate with the pharmaceutical industry. Meanwhile, dozens of DEA officials left the agency and took jobs with drug companies over the past few years, according to the investigation.
Source – Daily Caller
Additional Resources:
Opioids: The Prescription Drug & Heroin Overdose Epidemic