U.S. AID FOR THE DRUG TRAFFICKERS?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300079-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 79
• Publication Date: July 31, 1972
• Content Type: NSPR

LO cqv, ~oRFglease-4004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-01350R000200300079-5 -10
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AS PART OF the effort to combat drug
abuse-which, according to President Nixon
last, summer, has "assumed the dimensions
of a national" emergency"-the administration
is committed to an all-out attack on the inter-
u
t
t
l
s
j
ves no
:national narcotics,trade. This invo
the breaking up of the syndicates that pro-
cess and import the heroin to the United
States, but persuading other governments,
particularly' in Southeast Asia where most of
the world's Heroin now originates, to come
.!down hard on the- growers and marketeers.
But is the Nixon administration trying as hard
as it could to cut off this profitable trade at
its source?
c
1
tion that was so bad cou ~av p
sign I t 1 ,dd~~zs . if~tl as h t Certain- in drugs, And that's why we ask: Is the ad-
ly tr - 4 r 115861 9 -K iPh dac1Ar iMR0 l 3s,~Qi Q(~? 0(Ml19-Sn in the
ing the success it scored last year when it. was ' war on drugs, or must that effort still rank,
able to persuade the urki h government to way below .a certain view of a solution for
Disturbing evidence is accumulating that
it may not be. -There is The Politics of Heroin
in Southeast Asiq to be published this fall but
excerpted in the July issue of llarper's by a
young Ya;e graduate student specializing in
Sout.h'~ast Asian history and politics. This
documents the involvement of high govern-
ment and r military officials in Laos and Thai-
land in ',ho narcotics trade; it even charges
complicit' by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA has challenged all the autlioi's alle-
gations, asserting that most of them are with-
out foundation. -
`Lever,' is hard to. use
But there is also the study made last winter
by top-level officials of the CIA, the State De-
partment and the Pentagon, and just now dis-
closed. This report concludes that there is no
prospect of cutting off the smuggling of nar-
cotics from Southeast Asia because oil. "the
corruption, collusion and indifference at some
places in some governments, particularly Thai-
land and South Vietnam." This conclusion,
too, is being discounted by administration of-
'ficials, who argue that it is out of date and
that "substantial progress" has been made
in the past four months.
Yet it would be naive to assume that a situa-
im roved as
ld 1
Dowling In The ransas City Star
"The place to start is the
other end."
of the opium poppy. In Turkey's case the
United States is to help in compensating the
thousands of peasant farmers for whom poppy-
growing has been an innocent livelihood for
centuries and who now must switch to other
cash crops. Whether the Turkish government
or anyone else is compensating the many mid-
dlemen who have grown fat off the opium
trade is not discussed publicly.
But the United States has another way of
persuading reluctant governments to join the
anti-drug campaign. Congress tacked on a pro-
vision to last year's foreign aid bill permitting
the President to suspend aid to any country
that doesn't take action against the drug traf-
fic. The only problem is that suspending Kid
to the governments of Southeast. Asia would
virtually end the Vietnam war overnight.
It's a dilemma; to be sure. But it's worth
recalling that . last winter, when President
Nixon was vehemently reiterating this coun-.
try's commitment to keeping President Thieu
in power in' Saigon, even though this was the
main obstacle'to serious negotiations in Paris,
the same. regime was one of the major factors
being blamed by U.S. officials for the con-