GIS AND HEROIN: THE FACTS OF LIFE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74B00415R000400030063-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 10, 2005
• Sequence Number: 63
• Publication Date: July 23, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

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Approved For Release c'5/~9,FIA-RDP74B00415R000400030063-2
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But it would lie a. severe enibarrassment
to allies jr, Southeast Asia. it would hinder
the prosecution of the ,gar in Indochina, per-
haps so seriously that basic U.S. policy
would have to be changed.
There have been some changes in the past
y# ar, but they have followed a pattern or
seeking compromise with the drug-produc-
ing, countries, not confror.Lation.
The CIA has changed its rules in an effort
to stop the use of its private airline, Air
America, for the transport of drugs in Laos.
Although only two months ago CIA Directors
Richard Helms adamantly denied there had
ever been any agency involvement in the
traffic, he is now said to have told a secret
congressional hearing that there was in-
volaement but it has been stopped in the
past year.
The U.S. Embassy in Laos has pressed the
government there to put through. a strict
law on drugs which may be passed this
month. There was none before. -
The U.S. Embassy in Saigon got the Viet.
namese government to remove some of the
corrupt customs officials, and similar efforts
are being made in Thailand. With Congress;
vociferously taking np the issue, the White.
house is cracking the whip on all the as.
sorted American officials who thought dr'tt,
traffic was not their concern, who thought
their job was only fighting, the war, gathering intelligence, maintaining foreign vela;
tions.
. BY Flora Lewis
JOHN W. PARIKER, director of strategic
intelligence in the Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs, knows a good deal about
Southeast Asia's contribution to the clop
problem. And while he is a soft-spoken
Southerner, sometimes so quiet one has tc
strain to hear hint, he is the most st:raight?
forward man I have yet found on the sub.
jest in the administration.
He starts with an explanation. Remember,
he says, that until 1970 we were concentrat-
ing on the drug problem here in the United
States. Not too much attention was paid by
the bureau to the source of supplies. And
the Army, the CIA, the State Deprtment, the
people out there where the heroin comes
from weren't concerned about drugs. They
were concentrating on other problems.
Further, while there has been opium in
Southeast Asia since the British introduced
it in the early 19th century, until 1970 the
heroin refineries in the area were all in
Thailand and Hong Kong, Parker says. It
didn't seem to affect the United States.
In fact, the dominant government attitude
was that this was a fact of life in Asia which
Americans shouldn't try to upset, especially
since by the beginning of the decade so
many Americans were so deeply engaged iii
trying to control other facts of Southeast
Asia's life, namely the Vietnamese war and
all its offshoots.
Now, according to Parker, practically all
the heroin refineries have been resituated
along the Mekong Biver, in Burma, Thailand
and Laos, and "almost all have been identi-
fied."
If so, why hasn't the United states, which
completely subsidize, and virtually runs
Laos and has poured billions into Thailand,
whose 'volunteer soldiers" it employs in
Vietnam and Laos, made sure the heroin fac-
tories were destroyed?
The obvious urgent question didn't annoy
Parker. On the contrary, his stolid face
slowly eased into a Cheshire cat grin. At
first he didn'tsay? anything. I suggested that
the reason wasn't hard to guess and wasn't
really secret.
"I know," he said. "I'm struggling not to
say it."
ear
THE QUESTION is whether these rera_
tively gentle pressures will convince governs
,inents largely dependent on the United
States that they mast fight heroin. Years of
ai,u:urnent rot nowhere in 't'urkey, but a
threat to c?ud off foreign aid finally (lid.
Now the 'l'urks have promised to wipe out
opium production after the 1972 crop, which
means that in three or four years that
source of supply will dry up. Parker is con
vincd now that the Turks can and will en-
force the ban. But ask him how much differ.
once it will make in the amount of heroin.
supplied to Americans. -
"If nothing else is clone," he says flatly,
"no difference." And. the "something else"
can only be done in Washington, a decision
to be just as tough in Southeast Asia as thr
Nixon administration was in Turkey.
Meanwhile, the inch-high vials of 9u to 98
per cent pure heroin distributed in South
Vietnarcr have begun to turn tip in the
United States. The buraau foresees an all
most uncontrollable flood as veterans re;
turn, find themselves without jobs and real.
ir:e how much money can he made by having
buddies or friends send then supplies from
the Far East.
Addicts can. be Li Bated, but there isn't
much likelihood that there won't he far
more new ones than cures cacti day unless
the flow of heroin is cut at the source,A,t
the Bureau of Narcotics, experts are eon.
vincd that. is possible. except perhaps fora.
C+S
IT IS 0.T Once a simple and excruciatingly
tough answer. As he finally pointed out, it is
a matter of poli.ticni decision in Washington.
There is a choice to wake, it would be easy
to blow up the refineries, defoliate inert of
the poppy fields, push the governments in-
volved into cracking down on their owii
high level military and civilian profitecis
and blocking the supply of heroin to GIs in
N'ietri,- a and, increasingly, to the United
Approved For Release 2005/06/1z1'iC1'nt7(0 6063-2
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