SQUARING OFF ON THAILAND'S GOLDEN TRIANGLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130115-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 115
• Publication Date: April 4, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STET
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100130115-3
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ARTICL$ APPEARLrD
ON PAGE~~1_
Squaring Of f
On Thailand's
Golden Triangle
Thailand has redrawn the bound-
arieS of the notorious Golden Trian-
gle, ~ the untamed hill region of "
Southeast Asia that for the past two
decades has supplied tons of heroin
to the world's junkies.
The Thais finally have gotten
tough on dope"traffickers. "
In fact, with the encouragement
provided by U.S. financing .and ex-
pertise, the Thai- government has
cracked down so severely on drug
exporters and opium-poppy growers
that Thailand is now a net importer
of heroin. _
The 35 tons of opium produced in
the country last year-half the
amount produced in 1980-weren't
sufficient to satisfy the needs of
Thailand's estimated 500,000 heroin
addicts, roughly 1 percent of the
population.
Production and refining of opium
into heroin now are largely confined
to Burma, which produces about 500.
tons a year. Laos, the third leg of the
triangle, accounts for about 50 tons a
year.
On a trip to Thailand, my asso-
ciate Dale Van Atta visited the area
WASHINGTON POST
4 April 1984
where Thailand, Aurma and Laos
meet. He talked with border ?uards,
sliUped into Burma briefly, and
talked with intelli ence sources in
C~ianQ Mai and Bangkok. Here's
what he learned: -
? In bloody battles fought in Jan-
uary, 1982, the Thais managed to
push the 3,000-man army of drug
warlord Chang Chi-fu across the bor-
der into Burma.
? The expulsion of Chang effec-
tively ended the local domination of
mercenary armies in northwestern
Thailand.
? In the last four years, the Thai
government has succeeded in cutting
by half the acreage of poppy fields in
Thailand.
The Thai crackdown is a joint
effort with U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agents. "We have
pushed all active refineries back to
Burma," a U.S. official in Chiang
Mai boasted. "Our intelligence is
pretty good, so they don't last long if
they start up in Thailand."
Chang and the other dope traf-
fickers are still a threat. Thai gov-
ernment informers have been buried
alive, drawn and quartered and suf-
fered other grisly deaths. When the
Thais offered "a $23,000 reward for
Chang's capture, he countered with
an offer to pay cash for killing Amer-
icans. In 1980, a DEA agent's wife
was gunned down in Chiang Mai.
Much of the heroin that comes
out of the triangle still travels
through Thailand. But an American
official in Bangkok noted that Thai-
land does a better job at interdiction
than the United States does within
its own borders.
"A single seizure usually brings in
more drugs than a stateside DEA
agent is likely to see in his" entire
career. In fact, the week Van Atta
was there, the Thai government
seized 265 kilograms of heroin from
a single shipment, worth $500 mil-
lion in the United States.
It is only fitting that the United
States has taken a major support
role in the Thai crackdown on her-
oin. Aclassified DEA report blames
the long American presence in
Southeast Asia for creating both'the
need and the greed that nurtured . ,
the Golden Triangle in the first -
place. ~ "-
"It was not until the buildup of
U.S. forces in Indochina "in the latter ,
part of the 1960s that heroin pro-
duction became well-established in
the Golden Triangle," the report
said. "U.S. military personnel in
Vietnam and Thailand provided a
ready market for the heroin."
Another DEA report noted that
"many U.S. armed forces personnel
returned from the conflict in Viet-
nam not only.with heroin habits, but
also with the knowledge of where to
purchase heroin and smuggle it into
the U.S."
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100130115-3