HOW THE C.I.A. GOT HOOKED ON HEROIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300004-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: June 1, 1973
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

On vacation from Yale, nng vacation at ale that
Al McCoy came across the first clues that enabled s
him to untangle the web of intrigue involving America's national security year, McCoy went to Paris. There he_'
agency in the Vietnam heroin epidemic talked not only to Vietnamese and
Laotian political exiles but also to former
officials of the French colonial govern-
` r1 "FE ment of Indo-China, which comprised
` r y 4/ t- J r ~ (t Ll ~[ (DII present-day North and South Vietnam
(DULL 1 -acs and D II)LKLDO N "rma ementt ned firmly shut swuno open to the
? by Thomas Buckley young unknown graduate student.
Maurice Belleux, now an executive in
? swelled the estimated number of addicts helicopter concern, received him in his
in the United States to 500,000 or more. .ur'artment. He was once head of the
The 'cost in ruined lives, packed jails, "rune de Documentation Exterieure et
and losses in the robberies and assaults dip Contre-Espionage, the French
The whipping elephant grass tore at his that these addicts will commit for years eg'rivalent of the C.I.A., in Indo-China.
black pajamas. The monsoon rain to come to support their addictions will it. was amazing,"' McCoy recalled. "The
turned the red earth to gluey mud that add substantially to the $150 bilns or (ir` t thing he said was, 'I bet you want
pulled at his boots. A creeper vine more that this country squandered in its to know how we ran the opium traffic
hooked his spectacles and pulled them ill-starred Vietnam adventure. Os"ii~g the first Indo-China War. Here,
off. Pressing f/at against the ground, he While President Ni xon was bargain- lei trio draw you a chart.' The chart in the
twistedhis body and groped blindly until ing with the Turkish government to back is the chart he drew for me."
si
found them. For a moment he lost reduce its opium crop, supposedly the t 1nlrke the C.I.A., Belleux' organiza-
sight of his Laotian interpreter and his hArr was kept on a tight budget, in-
Australian photographer. And the flat source of most of the heroin coming into,,, rr tte to pay for its informers, its hired
crack-crack-crack of the automatic rifles the United States, and other so-called as~;,,;sins and all the other expenses of
continued. He heard the bite of the experts were arguing that Communist RA iritclligence organization that govern
bullets through the air over his head, China and North Vietnam wer were secretly >rh,rrt accountants prefer know nothing
heard them thudding into the sodden running the trafficinto South J~etnam, gib )rrt Beginning in 1946, when the
hillside behind them, and Alfred W McCoy found persuasive evidence, now Frriich colonialists were trying to' make
McCoy, doctoral candidate at Yale becoming generally accepted, that 70% fheunselves more popular with their
University, thought to himself, "What of the world supply of illicit opium was
the hell am / doing here? / feel like the being grown in the inaccessible mown- Vietnamese subjects by suppressing the
~/
the
patsy in one of those EricA mb/er thrillers, tain valleys of the "Golden Triangle" f S.D.E.C.E. t.C.E. raffi gradually c that they had
took it promoted, over.
Suddenly everyone wants to kill me. "" northern Burma and Laos. o
Sitting in his modest apartment in New More important, he found out that In alliance with French military intel-
Haven one day recently, Al McCoy was between the simple tribesmen who grew ligence, which had similar financial
inclined to laugh it all off, but there are the stuff--and seldom used it them- problems, S.D.E.C.E. took on local
experienced intelligence officials who selves except in case of illness-and the experts-the organized racketeers of the
still wonder how he got back to the ultimate consumer in American cities, it Union Corse and the Binh Xuyen gang
United States alive. Many men who was our "anti-communist" allies who of Chinese and Vietnamese, who in the
take on the Mafia, the Unione Corse, the were making fortunes out of this crop of last days of French rule in Saigon had
South Vietnamese, Laotian and Thai misery. Not surprisingly, the C.I.A., virtual control of the city, even to running
governments, riot to mention the Central which has grown accustomed to operat- its police force.
Intelligence Agency and its private ing outside the law all over the world, "It was very strange in Paris," said
armies, don't. tried to suppress the book by threaten- McCoy, who speaks fluent French. "I
But perhaps because he's tough ing McCoy's publisher with libel actions. would go to see someone I knew had
enough behind his spectacles and his When the agency failed to produce a been a. leader of the Binh Xuyen
diffident manner to have played prep- convincing case against the book, the (pronounced Bin-Zwin), which was an
school football and rowed on the master spies of Langley, Va., in effect absolutely merciless, ferocious outfit-
Columbia crew, hasn't learned the bad were admitting what anyone, including one of them was Van Sang, who at one
habits of professional journalists and is this writer, who has spent any time in time had been the head of the national
still young enough at 27 to be sure he's Southeast Asia already knew-that he police-and he would be sitting in his
going to live forever, McCoy got away was absolutely right. luxury apartment, talking absolutely
with it. He came back to write a book calmly about the worst sort of murders
The Politics of Heroin in SourheastAsla., "I first got interested in Vietnam when I and tortures."
that ripped the veil of secrecy from one was studying for my master's degree at Before he left Paris, McCoy had a
of the grimmest sides of the American Stanford," McCoy told me. "I wrote an pretty good idea of the extent of the
involvement in that part of the world, article on Pan American World Airways' traffic, not only in the 1950s but also-
besides being one of the best pieces of profits out of the Vietnam war for and here his sources were the tens of
investigative reporting published in the Ramparts and then I edited a collection thousands of Vietnamese who make the
last 20 years. of articles on Laos. After it appeared in French capital their home-down to the
What McCoy put together was a January, 1971, my editor at Harper Et present day. He told his publisher what
devastating and amply documented Row suggested that there might be a he had found out, and Harper 0 Row
indictment of the C.I.A. and the motley book in the Golden Triangle. The opium
collection of warlords it has been had been mentioned in news )a or and
supporting for as 'AWrta,geg~ 1041ik0113rv(plA8trQ1OR000200300004-7
for their responsibility for the heroin no one had ever tried to pull it all coil"
epidemic that engulfed American troops together and get to the bottom of it."
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Approved For Release 2b0~4'{ 1413 T7lA-R u8 .[`- i OR0002003000?vQ4-7