DRUG TRAFFIC

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74B00415R000300230058-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 4, 2005
• Sequence Number: 58
• Publication Date: July 24, 1972
• Content Type: TRANS

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41 EAST 42ND STREET. NEW YORK. N. Y. 10017. 697-5100
PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAM RADIO NEW YORK
July 24, 1972 6:15 PM
. STATION WO R
JOHN WINGATE: What does the CIA have to do with narcotics
from Southeast Asia? This story coming up in one minute.
Alfred McCoy is a twenty six year old graduate student
at Yale University. He has written a research book on the relationship
between the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, and what he
says Is the international traffic of heroin. He's on the telephone
up at New Haven In Yale University.
How much research did you do about the CIA and trafficking
in heroin? Alfred McCoy.
ALFRED MC COY: I began work in about January, 197.1, and
it's-- I've done some preliminary work for several months before
that. And so when I add it all up, it comes to about eighteen
months of total research. I'll bet I spent almost two months
in Europe, interviewing former French intelligence personnel,
and people in the French police and generally political observers
who know a good deal about the French underworld. I travelled
for four months in Southeast Asia. In Laos, Thailand, Northern
Burma, very briefly in Northern Burma, and in Hong Kong. And
then I spent several months travelling about the country, doing
interviews with
former USAID, United States Agency for International Development,
and CIA personnel.
WINGATE: Now it's your contention, Alfred, that heroin
has moved from Southeast Asia into this country with the aid,
knowledge, collusion and even the financial support of the
CIA?
MC COY: What I will say Is simply this. In Southeast
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Asia one of the more opium ;growing tribes is the Meo Tribe of
Northern Laos. And beginning in 1960 the Central Intelligence
Agency formed an alliance, a military alliance with the leaders
of the Meo Tribe. One of the traditional perogatives of the
leaders of the Meo Tribe is to control that tribe's opium traffic.
And the CIA, beginning in the mid-1960's, provided extensive,
comprehensive air transport, moving the opium out of the hills
of Northern Laos, into the regional marketing centers, Vin Chan(?),
'Avidro(?), the administrative capital of Laos was one place
where the opium was'coming in on Air America Continental Air
Service aircraft, aircraft which are chartered and in some cases
control led directly by the CIA. And then the other place that
it was coming into was Loho Chang(?), which is the CIA Headquarters
in Northern Laos. And the CIA was absolutely, there was no
doubt that they were aware that this was going on.
First of all, their pilots were carrying it on a daily
basis. They were aware that the major cash crop of their allies,
the Meo 'Tribe,, was, opi um. They were aware that the pilots were
carrying. And also in their very own headquarters, Lohn Chang,
beginning in about 1967, to the best I can determine, there
was a very very large opium refinery built there, operating
at the northern end of the val ley.
I interviewed former IJSAI D personnel, who' said they saw
the refinery operating openly. It was processing opium into
morphine, and as you know, morphine is the substance which is
used to manufacture heroin. It was coming into Lohn Chang on
Air American Continental aircraft, and it was going out on World
Laotian Air Force ' ai rcraft, having been refined into morphine.
WINGATE: Now your book is to be published by Harpur and
Row, correct?
MC COY: Correct. Hopefully.
WING*ATE: Is it true that the CIA demanded from your publisher,
and got the right to get that book in its hands prior to the
?publi.cation date?
MC COY: The CIA was given the book last Thursday, and
it will-- It has it right now. An agent from the Central Intelligence
Agency arrived at H-arpur and Row, picked up a copy, and signed
for it, and took it down tQ Washingtc;i, D. C. to be reviewed.
And obstensively, they're going to have their response, their
objections to the book to Harpur and Row this Thursday.
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WINGATE: I understand that by the way Seymour Hersch reports
in today's New York Times,that your book,.Alfred McCoy, its
findings have been corroborated in a secret cabinet level report
on drug traffic, and he says this report has been suppressed
by the government. Do you know anything about that?
MC COY:. No. My report was done. I heard about it in,
about February or March, and I tried to get a copy of it, and
I found it just really supremely difficult. I went to a number
of sources that provided me with quite detailed information,
and he just simply said it was enormously difficult to get,
and they simply wouldn't.be able to do it for me. The fact
that Hersch has gotten it is remarkable, and it's a real contribution.
WINGATE: So apparently there is a cabinet level report,
which'is a sequel to your book, saying the CIA is involved in
heroin traffic.
MC -COY: The CIA is simply one part. They play a certain
role in the traffic, right?
WINGATE: Right.
MC COY: Probably more important in the overall structure,
and very definitely more important is the role of the Thai,
Laotian and South Vi etnames,e governments . And I .feel , you
know, criticizing the CIA solely for its alliances with corrupt
local officials involved in the traffic, and the kind of tacit
and overt support-the CIA has given the narcotics traffic, is
perhaps unfair. The State Department and the 'United States
Agency for International Development, in many cases, serve an
equal or even greater share: of the blame. The State Department,
for example, has never beery' willing to use its diplomatic leverage
on our allies, Thailand, Laos and South Vietnam, to force them
to get out of the narcotics traffic seriously. They have provided
aid, diplomatic support. They concluded military alliances,
but they have never ever been willing to make this a serious
part of our whole influence; in what we're giving Southeast Asia.
WINGATE: But the point is there is apparently a high level
government report about this, and that's been totally suppressed,
and only Seymour Hersch of THE NEW YORK TIMES knows about it,
right?
MC COY: Right. That's to the best of my knowledge. The
report deals in depth, as Hersch says in the article, with corruption
in ' Southeast A s i a , the governments in Southeast A s i a , our a l l i es .
WINGATE: Alfred McCoy., would dome a favor and come back
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tomorrow at six fifteen, as we continue a two part series on
what you say is the connection between the CIA and the State
Department and the international heroin traffic?
MC COY: Fine. I'd love to.
WINGATE: I have often asked questions on this story, and
let me ask it of you. If, my question has been to many a guest,
if the federal government with all its power wanted to, could
it really knock out-the drug traffic? What do you think?
MC'COY: In Southeast Asia?
WINGATE: Yeah.
MC COY: Absolutely no question about it. In Laos, for
exampl"e, we control over fifty percent of the entire governmental
budget and a hundred percent of the military budget. In Thailand
we provide enormous quantities of aid. In South Vietnam, if
we cut off our aid. to the South Vietnamese Government tomorrow,
both indirect and direct, the government would collapse.
WINGATE: Tomorrow we'll have the second part of those
charges of federal government involvement In the narcotics traffic
that comes to this country from Southeast Asia. There must
be something to this story. I f, as sal d, the government -h as
a cabinet level report, a report that has been suppressed.
If this book finally is published,.the book now reportedly in
the hands of the CIA, then the greatest-- I.t''s not reportedly
in the hands of the CIA. The CIA has the book. They wanted
it, and they got it. Then the most impartial investigation
in American history involving not one politician, no Democratic,
no Republican, but involving people, I don't mean a blue ribbon
panel. We'll get nowhere with a blue ribbon panel, should be
set up to?find out what's going on. It would be so ironic as
to be unspeakable if the Puerto Rican kid, call him Jose Gonzales,
if the kid from Great Neck, Abe Feinstein, if the kid from Scarsdale,
Billy Smith, if all three of these kids, could die by an overdose,
did so because of federal willful and criminal negligence.
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