CIA Com­plic­i­ty in the Glob­al Drug Trade
by Alfred W. McCoy
2003, Lawrence Hill Books
ISBN 1556524838
Illus­trat­ed, 734 pages.

From Pub­lish­ers Week­ly
Near­ly 20 years ago, McCoy wrote The Pol­i­tics of Hero­in in South­east Asia , which stirred up con­sid­er­able con­tro­ver­sy, alleg­ing that the CIA was inti­mate­ly involved in the Viet­namese opi­um trade. In the cur­rent vol­ume, a sub­stan­tial­ly updat­ed and longer work, he argues that pk the sit­u­a­tion basi­cal­ly has­n’t changed over the past two decades; how­ev­er the num­bers have got­ten big­ger. McCoy writes, “Although the drug pan­dem­ic of the 1980s had com­plex caus­es, the growth in glob­al hero­in sup­ply could be traced in large part to two key aspects of U.S. pol­i­cy: the fail­ure of the DEA’s inter­dic­tion efforts and the CIA’s covert oper­a­tions.” He read­i­ly admits that the CIA’s role in the hero­in trade was an “inad­ver­tent” byprod­uct of “its cold war tac­tics,” but he limns con­vinc­ing­ly the path by which the agency and its fore­bears helped Cor­si­can and Sicil­ian mob­sters reestab­lish the hero­in trade after WW II and, most recent­ly, “trans­formed south­ern Asia from a self-con­tained opi­um zone into a major sup­pli­er of hero­in.” Scrupu­lous­ly doc­u­ment­ed, almost numb­ing­ly so at times, this is a valu­able cor­rec­tive to the mis­in­for­ma­tion being ped­dled by anti-drug zealots on both sides of the aisle. First ser­i­al to the Pro­gres­sive. Copy­right 1991 Reed Busi­ness Infor­ma­tion, Inc.

THIS BOOK IS IN PRINT
Avail­able com­mer­cial­ly.