The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

Rating:
Summary: Do not support ANY type of prohibition. It supports terror!
Review: 1 - Declassified War Documents Korea, US drug smuggling for war effort.
2 - The Contra Affair, Commission Report, CIA drug smuggling. Top offenders pardoned by Ronald Regan.
3 - The Northern Alliance in Afghanistan managed by the pre-Taliban heroin cartels, now in control of the heroin market again, in a country occupied by...
4 - CIA agents suing for unfair dismissal because they busted other CIA agents in secret black ops using drugs to sponsor a government ousting of a politician in a foreign country, numerous times over these people win their cases.

Why no news exposure?

SEE - "NATIONAL SECURITY"

SOLUTION - "Find a Judge who can lift that barrier."

RESULT - "Have a commission ask an FBI director why he shredded all the documents related to the MKULTRA mind control experiments conducted on unsuspecting citizens of Canada?"

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET NO ANSWER? - "Get pro sticky tape people to put together whatever they can find so that they can write a book about it."

Way it goes.

This book is another addition to that lot that no Judge (ahahaha, all of them), will even bother trying to look at it in their life time should they find that they live a big lie when putting any drug user to jail just for using drugs. The legal system should have nothing to do with the drug problem. By supporting prohibition narco-terrorists and the military industrial complex makes huge profits at the cost of human lives. We need to bring the problem back under our control again.

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly, but limited
Review: By all accounts, this is the standard reference on the explosive topic of drugs and politics; the reputation is well deserved despite several shortcomings. The volume is lengthy, the style impersonal, the language carefully measured, the conclusions temperate in the extreme. All in all, qualities befitting a scholarly navigation through minefields that customarily produce heavy-handed hyperbole. Distinguishing Mc Coy's work is the inclusive historical background each topic receives as it evolves over the pages into the familiar news stories of the day. Thus, the roots of heroin addiction among GI's in Vietnam is traced back in time to Kuomintang exiles of northern Burma and to the politics of intrigue among the many power-brokers of southeast Asia. The reader emerges from this hundred page excursion knowing a great deal more about the Golden Triangle than he perhaps wanted, but nonetheless is thoroughly informed about that murky but crucial region.

Oddly missing from the book is a similar historical account of Turkey's role as a major supplier of First World markets. Though mentioned sporadically, Turkey remains largely outside the text's focus, despite its traditional connection to Mediterranean traffickers. Also eclipsed is Mc Coy's all-too-brief discussion of Latin America's part in the developing world of drug trade, about which so much new material has surfaced since the book's 1991 publishing date. Unfortunately, readers looking for material on these critical areas should look elsewhere.

No book on the drug trade is complete without a discussion of the role the CIA has played in boosting the industry's world-wide network. Here Mc Coy's cautious approach is paticularly damning in its findings. In a brief but telling conclusion, CIA policy is indicted for protecting drug lords in the name of national security, and for directly contradicting Drug Enforcement Agency's efforts to interdict major traffickers. Worse, he sees a growing tolerance for narcotics as an informal weapon of covert warfare whose trajectory now extends beyond Cold War confines. Considering the evidence amassed of at least indirect CIA complicity in a variety of hot spots, such conclusions are hardly overblown. However, his hope for both a reformed CIA and domestic War on Drugs are, it would seem, tenuous at best, given the global size of wealth and power that is at stake. As his book has shown, Cold War or no, the political economy of illegal narcotics, with its often useful underworld connections and expanded instruments of repression, is simply too powerful a tool for empire builders of any stripe to surrender.

Rating:
Summary: A must read during the "war on terrorism"
Review: Ever since the publication of this updated edition
in 1991, this book has been an essential text
for those trying to understand the "war on
drugs," the exceedingly dangerous role of the CIA
in influencing the course of history, and
historical relations between drugs and empire.
But now the book takes on crucial new
significance. Anybody attempting to comprehend
how billions of U.S. dollars were spent in
creating the agents and forces that launched
the September 11 attacks should read McCoy's
final chapter. And this chapter suggests
what a treacherous path has now been chosedn for ou
nation and the world by the very same people
who created and nurtured the Frankenstein's monster
now lurking in Afghanistan and developing
new schemes for destroying its creator.

Rating:
Summary: Wanted more on the Golden Crescent as well...
Review: The author is no doubt the master of his domain in as far as the Southeast Asia (the Golden Triangle) is concerned, but only 20 or so pages talk about Golden Crescent, while more than 400 pages are about very minutely detailed drug trade (& politics/ economics) of the Golden Triangle. Considering that countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan earn more than $12b in drug trade every year (only about $1b worth foreign exchange in legal exports), the importance of drug money in financing these breeding grounds of terrorism can't be emphasised enough.
I have to admit that the writing style lacks pace, and I was often confused with the different names that keep cropping up as the author goes back and forth in history. This is a great book for anyone wanting to understand the Southeast Asia though.

Rating:
Summary: Source book of allegations. Cannot ignore or believe all.
Review: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade Alfred W. McCoy Almost everywhere in reading this book I kept thinking of sentences starting "What this book needs is...." Added up, the need is for a revised edition with an intolerant editor. The book is a combination of two earlier publications {The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia and Drug Traffic} plus some further research bringing in Central America and Southern Asia. The central theme of the book would appear to be that any covert goal of the CIA is allowed to override almost all other considerations. The major claims concern anti-Communist tasks that became enmeshed in the illicit narcotics trade. The CIA is perceived to get into alliances with 'Drug Lords' who control the opium crop. It appears to be at best indifferent to misuse of the transport it funds, or even operates. Supplying arms for its allies, it is said to be unconcerned if the transport returns loaded with opium or cocaine. When in need of 'muscle' its chosen allies can be the owners of factories that refine morphine into heroin, or persons with long records of trading these commodities into the American [United States] market. It should be noted that to make such connections the CIA is lumped in with its ancestral OSS and other branches of its family tree. More telling, McCoy remarks that CIA equivalents in a number of named countries have similar blots on their histories. He does include police forces as being caught up the same web, but does not go on to list them. In the final few pages of the last chapter he makes a tentative suggestion that partial legalisation may provide an answer to the current problems within the United States. To go any further would invite a much wider debate including other related areas for partial legalisation like prostitution, alcohol, gambling, tobacco, marijuana and maybe even usury. All have been completely banned somewhere, and all are partially legalised somewhere on the globe now. Quite definitely any discussion of organised crime and police corruption will eventually find all of them on its agenda. We here reach one of the untouched central themes that ought to appear under the title. Whatever happened to China? In an era of legalisation it produced, and presumably consumed, at least 8 times as much opium as the whole world does now. As late as 1934 the production was still 50% above current world production. When the Communists took over, China vanished behind some sort of curtain. McCoy states that poppy growing ceased in the Yunnan. There was a diaspora from China of drug merchants and heroin chemists. An allegation that China orchestrated the GI epidemic of drugs in 1970 is mentioned and dismissed. Presumably legalisation, partial or total, is all over. True or not the material in this paragraph should rate at least a chapter in any book about Politics of Heroin. Possibly, but not definitely, related is an atmosphere in the first part of the book. Up to the second to last chapter, one could imagine that all Communists kept clear of the narcotics trade. Out of nowhere on page 433 we learn that in the first six years of Communist government in Laos under an 'informal policy of drug promotion' opium production rose sevenfold, to 9% of the world total. There is other material that could be better organised so that this subject could be treated at greater length in a book of the same size. As the various war/drug lords with whom the CIA became allied are introduced there is a depressing sameness about their portraits. Individuals were frequently presented, initially, in the western press as new clean and incorruptible. As a famous actress once said on a wedding day, "This time it is true love". It does appear that initially some of the leaders were clear of the taint of drugs. As they shuffled off into the wings most even of these were seen to have been corrupted in clinging to office. Some of those who arrived and left with them were revealed as corrupt all along. Eventually the Communists in Cambodia and 'the West' in Afghanistan were left with the question, "Can this be described as winning?" It seems defensible to conclude that all the potential leaders on both sides of the equation came from the same stable. It is well known that there are some personality types who are attracted to positions of power, and should be kept away from it at all costs. It is not clear what you do if they are the only ones available. In the discussion of events in Afghanistan it is suggested that the CIA was at least negligent in allowing the rulers of Pakistan to select its allies. Some of the subsequent reporting shows that at least some of the alternatives were as corrupt and as corruptible. That might be the CIA stance. There is a more numerous group with an even less happy set of alternatives. If your geographical location makes you an asset, and if your strategic attachments can be disputed, you are likely to find yourself living in 'interesting times'. This was the fate of the Hmong people. The underside of a brigand is unlikely to show the colours of the coat he is wearing on the top side - or to change when he turns that coat. In a region in a state of flux it is wise to have no visible possession that you cannot defend, and wise also to be able to disappear with your assets at short notice. To compress a year of agriculture into a few kilos of opium would become highly attractive. From the point of view of the drug enforcement agency it may well be desirable to have a stable ruler who desires to strut a little on a wider stage. From the underside he may still look like the brigand he once was, but he may desire to levy his exorbitant taxes on crops that can be photographed for National Geographic. Those who grow the crops may also like him better that way. The CIA, according to McCoy, also lost out half a world away. Those who had best fitted in with the opium/heroin brigands came to show some of the same colouration. With less excuse they became brigands themselves at home or on their next assignments. Only the drug had been changed (to cocaine) and the innocents protected were those who trusted. The evidence McCoy presents is contradictory in places, as when the role played by Mr Tomas Castillo on p483 conflicts with his reported evidence on the previous page. Congressional enquiries can be full of hearsay, but still cannot be ignored. All told the selection of information on Central America is a grade below that to do with opium. Cocaine production is not considered in detail, something that needs to be done before any proposed remedies can be evaluated. The sixty four dollar question is how to pick up the pieces. McCoy makes a plausible suggestion that it is time to reassess, or deny, a need for the CIA to accept any covert roles. Failing that all such services need to be able to remove internal brigands, at least in times of peace. He suggests that there are partial answers to what must be the thirty two dollar question, being how to remove the bad apples from a visibly corrupt law enforcement system without a complete breakdown of order. I read the main text aloud onto tape for a visually impaired user. Audio tape can be a demanding medium. Very few texts can be transferred smoothly, so glitches that came to light here can generally be ignored. There is a plentiful, but by no means unusual supply. I suspect that anyone else reading simply through the text would also become irritated about some matters of presentation. Issues like those below should be attended to by the hypothetical "intolerant editor" of the revised edition suggested above. Some maps that do help considerably in understanding events are listed in the contents. They are however not always next to the text where they would be most useful, and not referred to there. A map setting out the world illicit opium production on pages 12 and 13 is not dated. Depending on how slavishly one reads the numbered notes, it may be some time before one discovers a table on page 495 and hence that the map mirrors the data for 1989. For severa

Rating:
Summary: McCoy's book is thoroughly interesting, and informative.
Review: Zack Schwartz 11/12/98 U.S. Drug Policy: Book Review

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade by Alfred McCoy is a volume obviously devoted to opiates, more specifically heroin. This version is a combination of two of McCoy's earlier works (The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia and Drug Traffic). Also there is further research incorporated into the book concerning Central America and Southern Asia. The main focus of the book is how the goals and operations of the CIA and its predecessors (e.g. OSS) basically take precedence over most if not all other interests. McCoy also delves into the world of American/ Sicilian organized crime in the context of the global heroin trade. However, the important points McCoy makes concern anti-Communist interests that became intertwined with the illicit opiates trade. McCoy accuses the CIA of aligning itself with local cartel leaders who command the opium crop. Furthermore, the CIA seems to be indifferent to, if not encouraging of, abuse of the transport of funds by operatives. In supplying weapons for its allies, the CIA, claims McCoy, does not especially care if the load that is returned is one of cocaine or opium, so long as they make their money. On occasion, the Agency might need a local to run a little shakedown action in case the locals feel like asserting themselves, or if they show any measure of discontent with how they were being treated. These native bosses could be refinery managers, traffickers, racketeers, etc. Amazingly enough, McCoy does point out, briefly it ought to be remembered, that the Agency's foreign counterparts such as Mi-6 and the French Surete have similar track records in such illicit affairs in the area. McCoy also includes a number of corrupt local officials like police agencies. Toward the end of the book, McCoy makes a rather haphazard attempt at advocating limited legalization of heroin in this country. One flaw in an otherwise compelling and informative analysis is the matter of China. In the days when opium was legal, China produced an ungodly amount of opium for world consumption. In fact, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of five to eight times what the world produces even today. Even in the twenties and thirties, when the opium/heroin market stateside was controlled by organized crime (mostly Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky) China still out-produced the rest of the world by a great deal, as much as fifty percent more than the rest of the world. Of course this all supposedly ended when Mao seized power in 1949. McCoy asserts that poppy cultivation ended in Yunnan province at this time. There was a pilgrimage from China of any individual or organization involved with the illegal drug trade. McCoy does briefly address the rumor that the so-called "GI epidemic" was masterminded by the Chinese, but discounts it on the grounds that there is insufficient evidence to support such a theory. Clearly however, McCoy needs to look much more closely at the Chinese contribution to the opiate trade, and devote at least a full chapter to the discussion, as opposed to brief references scattered haphazardly throughout the text. McCoy does a skillful job of tying the Communists into the picture. On page 433 he states how the Communist government in Laos used opium sales to for revenue. Remembering the staunch drug-free image they projected for the eyes of the world, this is rather curious. For a small country, this is extremely significant, especially when one considers the temporal setting of the Cold War, and the mounds of drug-free propaganda spewed by the Communists of the time. As the various drug lords with whom the CIA became allied are introduced there is a depressing sameness about their portraits. Individuals were frequently presented, initially, in the western press as new, clean, and incorruptible. And indeed, it did appear that initially some of the leaders were clear of the taint of drugs. However, as they shuffled off into the wings most were corrupted in clinging to office. Some of those who arrived and left with them were revealed as corrupt all along. Eventually the Communists in Cambodia and 'the West' in Afghanistan were left with the question, "Can this be described as winning?" It seems defensible to conclude that all the potential leaders on both sides of the equation came from the same paradigm. It is well known that there are some personality types who are attracted to positions of power, and should be kept away from it at all costs. It is not clear what you do if they are the only ones available. In the discussion of events in Afghanistan it is suggested that the CIA was at least negligent in allowing the rulers of Pakistan to select its allies. Some of the subsequent reporting shows that at least some of the alternatives were as corrupt and as corruptible. That might be the CIA stance. There is a much larger group with an even less happy set of alternatives. If your geographical location makes you an asset, and if your strategic attachments can be disputed, you are likely to find yourself living in interesting times. This was the fate of the Hmong people. The underside of a brigand is unlikely to show the colors of the coat he is wearing on the topside - or to change when he turns that coat. In a region in a state of flux it is wise to have visible possession that you can defend, and wise also to be able to disappear with your assets at short notice. To compress a year of agriculture into a few kilos of opium would become highly attractive. From the point of view of the drug enforcement agency it may well be desirable to have a stable ruler who desires to strut a little on a wider stage. From the underside he may still look like the brigand he once was, but he may desire to levy his exorbitant taxes on crops that can be photographed for National Geographic. Those who grow the crops may also like him better that way. The CIA, according to McCoy, also lost out half a world away. Those who had best fitted in with the opium/heroin pirates came to show some of the same coloration. With less excuse they became pirates themselves at home or on their next assignments. Only the drug had been changed (to cocaine) and the innocents protected were those who trusted. The evidence McCoy presents is solid throughout the book. Congressional inquiries can be full of hearsay, but still cannot be ignored. Also the selection of information on Central America is, while less plentiful, just as credible as that having to do with opium. McCoy makes a plausible suggestion that it is time to reassess, or deny, a need for the CIA to accept any covert roles. Failing that, all such services need to be able to remove internal brigands, at least in times of peace. He suggests that there are partial answers to what must be the million-dollar question, being how to remove the bad apples from a visibly corrupt law enforcement system without a complete breakdown of order. Indeed this is an intriguing question, and one that we continue to struggle with all over the world.