Published on CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov) (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom)


WAR & HEROIN-AN EXPENSIVE HABIT

Document Type: 
CREST [1]
Collection: 
General CIA Records [2]
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300012-8
Release Decision: 
RIFPUB
Original Classification: 
K
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
December 16, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 4, 2004
Sequence Number: 
12
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
December 4, 1972
Content Type: 
MAGAZINE
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300012-8.pdf [3]138.4 KB
Body: 
]A'riWL Approved For Release 200441 1t'& : -RDP88-01350R000 0.03000:1 b , ( J' r ~CQ - S' !' --t- e e (~ , THE POLITICS OF. HEROIN.' IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. By Alfred W. Mc- Coy, with Cathleen B. Read and Leonard P. Adams 11. Harper & Row. 464 pp. $10.95. L' ucfi ni. usfai rz. Mr. Russett teaches political science at Yale University. Most Americans used to think that the costs of an interventionist foreign policy were low. For relatively small expendi- tures of foreign aid money, arms, or oc- casionally ? the presence of American troops, one could build bastions of the Free World all around the globe. Anti- Communist governments in the under- developed countries could be supported or created, and anti-Communist politi- cians subsidized. Indeed, as in the Shan states of Burma or the Indonesian islands, separatist forces could be encouraged- if the ruling government could not be overthrown, or at least persuaded to move in desired directions. Some of these efforts might also bring enlightened gov- crnments and policies, to the countries in question. Others would succeed at the cost of strengthening or imposing cor- rupt, oligarchic, reactionary govern- ments. Many others would fail, at the :cost of death and misery, for the peoples who lived in those distant countries. But the costs to the United States would be minimal, easily tolerated by the world's richest power. And those small costs to us seemed far preferable to living in a world of Communist or neutralist- nationalist states. Our innocence about the costs of an interventionist foreign policy has been lost in the wake of Indochina. Even if we could (as many still would) ignore the costs of our war to the wretched peoples of that area, we now have felt some substantial costs to ourselves. Fifty- six thousand young Americans dead, $200 billion spent, an economy and for- eign trade balance badly out of kilter, intense strains on our domestic, social and political system-these we now recognize as part of the price we pay. In this new book Alfred McCoy and his associates show us another cost, very possibly the grimmest of all, resulting from our addiction to interventionism: the heroin plague. Drug addiction has of course been a curse of men for many centuries, and the United States has had thousands of heroin addicts since about sixty years ago. Neither the CIA nor Dean Rusk nor Henry Kissinger invented heroin ad- diction. But every designer, executor, or enthusiast for an interv94 tjipbyd@l?gt i- rand that includes me and prob- ably you in our less-enlightened ' days) contributed by failing to know or to care much about the more subtle conse- quences of that policy. As McCoy points out, there were around 20,000 addicts in the United States in 1946; the best estimates are that the figures then grew to about opium runners and their accomplices in Southeast Asia, that was just the. way it had to be. In any case, it usually seemed to be the. citizens of the countries far away, not Americans, who paid the price of such alliances. Until 1970, for in- stance, opium grown in the Golden Tri- angle stayed almost entirely in South- east Asia for Southeast Asians. Only in 57,000 in 1965, 315,000 in 1969, and ~ that spring did the great flood of heroin '560,000 in 1971. The avalanche of ad- . diction was made possible by an evil to GIs in Vietnam begin, and only later combination of supply and demand, De- still did it start to flow directly to the mand means the ability of American United States, And it was not until that drug consumers to pay high prices, social time that senior officials in the U.S. Gov- conditions feeding the desire for an es- eminent decided that the Southeast Asian cape, and the enthusiasm of pushers pre- heroin trade should be suppressed. pared to distribute free samples gener- ously. Under such circumstances the McCoy and his colleagues show market will grow as fast as supply will us, convincingly, that the heroin trade permit. The supply comes from abroad: grew with the acquiescence and some- formerly from Turkey and Iran, now times with the assistance of men in our largely from Southeast Asia-60 to 70 government. Without our government's ' per cent of the world s illicit opium from ' history of single-minded anti-cornmu- the "G ld " o en Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand. It is grown by peasants, shipped to the United States and dis- tributed by Corsican and Mafia under- world gangs, and moved from the peas- ants to the gangs with the assistance of such friendly Freedom Fighters as Gen. Phoumi Nosavan of Laos, and Ngo Dinh Diem and Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky of South Vietnam. After enormous and carefully documented exposition McCoy finds that the United States: has acquired enormous power in the region, And it has used this power to create new nations where none existed, handpick prime ministers, topple governments, and crush revolu- tions. But U.S. officials in Southeast Asia have always tended to consider the opium- tratlic a quaint local custom and have generally turned a blind eye to official involvement. . However, American involvement has gone far beyond coincidental complicity; em- bassies have covered up involvement by client governments,. CIA contract airlines have carried opium,' and in- dividual CIA agents .have winked at the opium traffic. nism, and of meddling in the politics of foreign lands, our government and our people would now have a heroin prob- lem of much smaller proportions:' Oilicial American complicity in the drug trade has to stop. No matter. how much some cold-warrior leaders may like the foreign policy of a particular foreign govern- ment, if that government is condoning heroin traffic, American military and economic aid should be withdrawn. The Cit.t\i~,0 t ?t a t'tcr fs, C. I. y-I C, i _ t -1k 0 c or^t This important book should not be interpreted.as a piece of yellow journal- ism or as an expose of scandals in the CIA. It details none of the, classic sort of corruption for personal enrichment on the part of CIA men or of any other U.S. Government officials (though there is plenty on the, part of the locals). The corruption is of a more subtle sort, stem- ming from the enthusiasm of "good" men for doing a good job. The job was de- lined as halting. communism; the choice of means or of allies was not so im- portant. One worked with the tools available. If this meant Corsican gangs lieldise3e8@Q4IIid0/MafiCIAt

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[1] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document-type/crest
[2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/general-cia-records
[3] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300012-8.pdf