Aby The Liberal

Dmitri June 17th, 2007

“CIA and drugs? Are you joking?” Well I hoped I did, as much as you do. But it is a stark and unpleasant fact that an agency which is deemed law enforcement group by a nation would be involved in something like narcotics. The very drugs which became a plague in the backbone of USA due to its rampant abuse by teenagers and addicts are being proliferated by CIA into other countries. Drugs cause more loss of life and social problems than terrorism and if the American government really cares about the safety of the world, they need to work to remove the drug cartels from among their own brethren first. The Central Intelligence Agency popularly known as CIA, the foreign intelligence branch of US Justice Department is seen dislike and suspicion around the world because of its underhanded and nefarious activities like drug trade, destabilising stable governments and other serious crimes around the world.

The major trafikking routes of global drug trade of which CIA has a large share.

The CIA often resorted drug trade to fund its operations in countries like Burma, Vietnam and Laos. In 1950 the CIA regrouped the defeated ‘Nationalist Chinese Army’ (KMT) along the Burma-Chinese border for an invasion of Yunnan, a province of Southern China in an effort to draw Chinese troops away from the Korean front as North Korea was aided by China during the Korean war. To support the KMT which lacked funds, the CIA transported opium from Monghast to Taiwan and Thailand using C-47 aircrafts. The Golden Triangle of world’s drug trade was then born, aided and abetted by the CIA. The incursion in China however turned out to be disastrous as a lot of CIA agents were detected and killed and the invasion repealed by Mao Zedong’s PLA.

In the 1965 invasion of Indo China the United States got into a losing battle with Vietnam (which France had already lost). To support South Vietnam’s corrupt Thieu-Ky regime, the CIA’s long range C-47 aircrafts flew opium, morphine and heroin out of Laos, a feat temporarily beyond the capabilities of the South Vietnamese Air Force. To procure the drugs, CIA encouraged the Hmong hill tribes in Laos to grow opium as a cash crop for export instead of rice. This also made the Hmongs dependent upon CIA for food which the CIA provided only if they joined in the fighting against communists. The Hmongs refused to fight because of their religious restrictions against violence which made them face America’s AC-47 helicopter gunships with infrared sensors, firing 6,000 rounds per minute at anything warm enough to be living.

There is no doubt that CIA complicity in the drug trade in and around the Southeast Asia Golden Triangle contributed greatly to an increase in the availability of heroin worldwide during the 60’s and 70’s. The brief history of drug operations in Vietnam, Burma and Laos were just the tip of the iceberg which came into public notice (thanks to investigations by foreign authorities). There were other CIA involvements in drug trades in South America, Afghanistan, etc. but they could not be proved because of lack of investigation unlike Vietnam, Laos or Myanmar. Successive US Presidents have used their opposition to drugs as a political tool but would not admit CIA’s involvement in drug rackets around the world during their campaigns against drug abuse. Instead of making them accountable, CIA had their powers increased and the same powers later got involved in the politics of drug trade which has started to sting the very younger generation hooked to drugs.

Further Information and Resources

• The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (book) by Prof. Alfred W. McCoy, Univ. of Wisconsin, USA
• 50 Years of Drug Trafficking - CIA Drugs

• Historical Bias , Crimes , America
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