UNCLE SAM - DRUG PUSHER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R001200910001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 14, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 29, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-016611MN$OL0910001-1
Uncle Sam - drupousher
E - 11,792
EditoridS
TORRINGTON, CONN.
REGISTER
L 2 9 1972
Acting FBI Director Patrick
Gray declared the other day that
a shortage of heroin on the street
market has developed as a result
of the government's crackdown on
the drug traffic, "the most intensive
drive this nation has ever dirccted
against narcotics racketeers." This
might be encouraging news were
it not for the fact that while the
FBI is trying to crack down on. the
drug merchants another federal
agency has been aiding and abet-
ting them.
A. detailed report linking the
CIA to the enormously profitable
traffic in heroin is presented in the
July issue of Harper's maazine.
It was written by Alfred W. Pv cCoy,
a PhD student in Southeast Asian.
history at Yale, not as a journalistic
expose but as a chapter in a Harper
& Row book scheduled for Scp-
tember publication under the title
"The Politics of Heroin in Southeast.
Asia."
It is a shocking indictment that
McCoy presents in. reciting how, as
a result of direct and indirect Amer-
ican involvement, opium production
in. Southeast Asia Is increasing and.
the export of hig,i-grade heroin is
flourishing. Most of the heroin used
by American GIs in Vietnam has
J come from. Laotian areas where the
CIA is active, McCoy writes, and
increasing amounts are being sent
to the United States and Europe.
As~ part. of the U. S. effort to
bolster Southeast Asia against Corn-
munist inroads, the CIA has been
working since 1959 with the Meo
tribesmen. of hilly northern Laos.
In forging an effective guerrilla
army, the CIA built up the power
of tribal commanders both mil-
itarily and economically. But by
Laos tradition, economics .is opium,
starting with poppy farmers' like
the Tvleos and extending into the
royal Laotian government.
One of the commanders of the
CIA secret army, McCoy reports,
is General \7ang Pao., a major en-
trepreneur in the opium business
since 1961. CTAI_operatives guided
the buildiiigF of airstrips to link his
villages via Air America planes -
which, naturally, soon were flying
'`Teo opium..to market. CIA and the
J. S. Agency for International De-
velopment later helped finance a
private airline for Yang Pao, who
went on to open a heroin processing
plant near CIA headquarters.
A year ago, President Nixon de-
clared war on the international he-
roin traffic, and -- under U. S. prey-?
slit e --- opium dens in Laos were
shut by the hundreds. But, ac-
cording to McCoy's report, neither
U. S. nor Laotian officials are going
after the drug traffickers. He notes
that, according to a United Nations
report, 710 per cent of the world's
illicit opiun.-i has been coming from-
the Golden Triangle of Southeast
Asia - northeast Burma, northern
Thailand and northern Laos, ---
"capable of supplying the U. S. with
unlimited quantities . of heroin for
generations."
McCoy's conclusion: "Unless
something is done to change Amer-
ica's policies and priorities in South-
east Asia, the drug crisis will deep-
en. and the heroin plague will con-
tinue to spread." _
Approved For Release 2001/03/04: CIA-RDP80-01601 R001200910001-1