CIA drug trafficking

CIA drug trafficking

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CIA drug trafficking

It has been alleged ^[1] that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in drug smuggling in three significant periods.

Vietnam Era
Soviet Afghanistan
Iran Contra Affair
Venezuelan National Guard Affair
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Vietnam Era

Western Vietnam and Eastern Cambodia had some opium fields. It was widely alleged among various veterans that the Central Intelligence Agency was involved in smuggling this opium to heroin producers in the United States at considerable profit. In the book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred W. McCoy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides evidence of the use of opium by agents of the U.S. Government to fund covert operations in Vietnam. McCoy discusses the use of opium to fund covert operations done by the CIA in Vietnam and provides prolific testimony from interviews with many of the principles involved.^[2] According to Dr. McCoy, the agency intimidated his sources and tried to keep the book from being published.^[3]

There is also an article in Peace Magazine containing similar allegations.^[4]

Speculation on this matter played a role in the Steven Seagal film Above the Law, as well as in the fictional Mel Gibson film, Air America with a strong focus on drug trafficking. Air America was loosely based upon the Christopher Robbins nonfiction, Air America, which chronicled the history of CIA proprietary airlines in Southeast Asia.

Soviet Afghanistan

It was alleged by the Soviets on multiple occasions that American CIA agents were helping smuggle opium out of Afghanistan, either into the West, in order to raise money for the Afghan resistance or into the Soviet Union in order to weaken it through drug addiction.

According to historian Alfred W. McCoy, the CIA supported various Afghan drug lords, for instance Gulbuddin Hekmatyar .^[5] In particular, McCoy stated that:^[6]

Iran Contra Affair

Released on April 13, 1989, the Kerry Committee report concluded that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."

In 1996 Gary Webb wrote a series of articles published in the San Jose Mercury News, which investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel and directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras.

In 1996 CIA Director John M. Deutch went to Los Angeles to refute the allegations raised by the Gary Webb articles, and was famously confronted by former LAPD officer Michael Ruppert, who said he had witnessed it occurring. ^[7]

Venezuelan National Guard Affair

In November 1993, Judge Robert C. Bonner, the former head of the DEA, appeared on 60 Minutes and alleged that the CIA had permitted literally a ton of cocaine to enter the United States.^[8]

The New York Times reported:

In November 1996 a Miami jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who "led a CIA counter-narcotics program that put a ton of cocaine on U.S. streets in 1990."