CIA AIDS OPIUM TRAFFIC

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73B00296R000300060023-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2001
• Sequence Number: 23
• Publication Date: April 22, 1971
• Content Type: NSPR

Ty 60023-8
Approved VUO ffQM C~3B~0246R0003000MISSOURI
22 APRIL 1971
by Frank Browning and
the 55 per cent of crime in the cities which
they commit and the annual $2.5 billion
worth of goods they steal.
Once. safely isolated as part of the
destructive funkiness of the black ghetto,
heroin has suddenly spread out into Middle
America becoming as much a part of
Banning Garrett
(Editor's note: The following article has been
made available to subscribers of College Press
Service prior to its release nationally because
of CPS's involvement in the story's inception.
Sandwiched between the president's State
of the World message, in vhich he announce 1
an all-out campaign to halt the v rld's opium
traffic, the Laotian invasion, and this spring's
growing anti-var protests, the story is an
explosive one. Sen. George McGovern and
Rep. Ronald Dellums are both pressing for
hearings in Congress on the U.S. government's
complicity 'tith ttorld opium trade, and
details on these and other subsequent
developments viii follows- in other stories.)
"Mr. - President, the specter of heroin
addiction is haunting nearly every community,
in this nation." With these urgent words,
Senator Vance Hartke spoke up on March 2 in
support of a resolution on drug control being
considered in the U.S. Senate. Estimating that
there are 500,000 heroin addicts in the U.S.,
he pointed out that nearly 20 per cent of
them are teenagers. The concern of Hartke
and others is not misplaced. Heroin has
become the major killer of young people
between 18 and 35, outpacing death from
accidents, suicides or cancer. It has also
become a major cause of crime: to sustain
their habits, addicts in the U.S. spend more
than $15 million a day, half of it coming from
gained it the attention it otherwise never.
would have had. President Nixon himself says
it is spreading with "pandemic virulence."
People are becoming aware that teenagers are
shooting up at lunchtime in schools and
returning to classrooms to nod the day away.
But what they don't know--and what no one
is telling them--is that neither the -volcanic
erruption of addiction in this country nor the
crimes it causes would be possible without the
age-old international trade in opium (from
which heroin is derived), or that heroin
addiction-like inflation, unemployment, and
most of the other chaotic forces in American
society today-is directly related to the U.S.
war in Indochina.
The connection between war and opium in
Asia is as old as empire itself. But the
relationship has never been so symbiotic, so
intricate in its networks and so vast in its
implications. Never before has the trail of
tragedy been so clearly marked as in the
present phase of U.S. involvement in
Southeast Asia. For the international traffic
in opium has expanded in lockstep with the
expanding U.S. military' presence there, just as
heroin has stalked the same young people in
U.S. high schools who will also be called on to
fight that war. The ironies that have
accompanied the war in Vietnam since its
onset are more poignant than before. At the
very moment that public officials are wringing
their hands over the heroin problem,
Washington's own Cold War crusade, replete
with clandestine activities that would seem
far-fetched even in a spy novel, continues to
play a major role in a process that has already
rerouted the opium traffic from the Middle
East to Southeast Asia and is every day
opening new channels for its shipment to the
suburbia as APPNq ttdJyof516 2 osl/b830 : CITA D lbfOO2 3bbbgbbYf-%lerit starts
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 Approved For Release, 2001/08/30 : CIA-RDP73B00296R000300060023-8
crash programs to rehabilitate drub users accumulate and thicken for a day or two.
among its young people, the young soldiers it Then it is carefully gathered, boiled to remove
is sending to Vietnam are getting hooked and gross impurities, and the sticky substance is
dying of overdoses at the rate of one a day. tolled into balls weighing several pounds. A
While the president is declaring war on fraction of the opium remains to be smoked
narcotics and on crime the streets, lie is by the villagers, but most. is sold in nearby
widening the war in Laos, whose principal rendezvous with the local smugglers. It is the
product is opium and which has now become Meos' only cash crop. The hill tribe growers
the funnel for nearly half of the world's can collect as much as $50 per kilo, paid in
supply of the narcotic, for which the U.S. is gold, silver, various commodities, or local
the chief consumer. currency. The same kilo will bring $200 in
There would have been a bloodthirsty logic Saigon and $2000 in San Francisco.
behind the expansion of the war into Laos if There are hundreds of routes, and
the thrust had been to seize supply centers of certainly as many methods of transport by
opium the communists were hoarding up to which the smugglers ship opium--some of it
spread like a deadly virus into the free world. already refined into heroin-through and out
But the communists did not control the of Southeast Asia. But there are three major
opium there: processing and distribution were networks. Some of the opium from Burma
already in the hands of the free world. Who and northern Thailand moves into Bangkok,
are the principals of this new opium war? The then to Singapore and Hong Kong, then via
ubiquitous CIA, whose role in getting tile U.S. military aircraft, either directly or through
into Vietnam is well known but whose pivotal Taiwan, to the United States. The second, and
position in the opium trade is not; and a probably major, route is from Burma or Laos
rogue's gallery of organizations and to Saigon or to ocean drops in the Gulf of
people-from an opium army subsidized by Siam; then it goes either through the Middle
the Nationalist Chinese to such familiar names East and Marseille to the U.S. or througii
as Madame Nhu and Vice President Nguyen Hong Kong and Singapore to the West Coast.
Cao Ky-who are the creations of U.S. policy A final route runs directly from outposts held
in that part of the world. by Nationalist Chinese troops in Thailand to
The story of opium in Southeast Asia is a Taiwan and then to the U.S. by a variety of
strange one at every turn. But the conclusion means.
is known in advance: this war has conic home One of the most successful of the opium
again-in a silky grey powder that goes from a entrepreneurs who travel these routes, a Time
syringe into America's mainline. reporter wrote in 1967; is Chan Chi-foo, a
The CIA Poppies half-Chinese, half-Shan (Burmese)
Most of the opium in Southeast Asia is modern-day warlord who might have stepped
grown in a region known as the "Fertile out of a Joseph Conrad adventure yarn. Chan
is a soft-spoken, mild-mannered man in his
Triangle, an area covering northwestern
Burma, northern Thailand, and Laos. It is a late thirties who, it is said, is totally ruthless.
mountainous jungle inhabited by tigers, He has tremendous knowledge of the
elephants, and some of the most poisonous geography and people . of northwestern
sn tikes in the world. The source of the opium Burma and is said to move easily among
that shares the area with these exotic animals them, conversing in several dialects. Yet he is
is the poppy, and the main growers are the also able to deal comfortably with bankers
and other businessmen who finance his
Meo hill tribespeople who inhabit the region. operations from such centers as Bangkok and
The Meo man chop back the forests in the Bientiana. Under Chan Chi-fog's command
wet season so that the crop can be planted in
August and September. Poppies produce red, are from 1000-2000 well-armed men, with the
white or purple blossoms between January feudal hierachy spreading -down to encompass
and March, and when the blossom withers, an another 3000 hill tribesmen, porters, hunters
egg-sized pod is left. The women harvest the and opium growers who pay him fealty and
crop and make a small incision in the pod twhom he regards about the same as the more
with a three-glad ~ dTI6rA I ~2D?1/08/30 : G&- [ 73B00296R0003000600230-8
white latex-like substance which is left to
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 Approved For Release 2001/08/30 : CIA-RDP73B00296R000300060023-8
Moving the opium from Burma to "ltrailand of Yunnan province. These sorties are
or Laos is a big and dangerous operation. Gne coordinated by the CIA (which.is feverishly
of Chan's caravans, says one awe-struck active if not wholly successful in this area),
observer, may stretch in single file for well and the United States even provides its own
over a nifie and may include 200 mules, 200 backwater R&R for the weary KMT, flying its
porters, 200 cooks and camp attendants, and helicopters from hilltop to hilltop to pick up
about 400 armed guards. Such a caravan can the Chinese (and the Establishment reporter
easily carry 15 to 20 tons of opium worth who supplied this information) for organized
nearly a million dollars when delivered to the basketball tournaments.
syndicate men in Laos or Thailand. Although the KMT troops are often
To get his caravans to market, however, referred to as "remnants," they are not debris
Chan must pay a price, for the crucial part of left behind by history. They are in fact an
his route is heavily patrolled not by Thais or . ortant link in American and Taiwan
Laotians but. by nomadic Nationalist Chinese. Imp
or Kuomingtang (KMT) troops. Still policy toward Communist China. Not only
the ruling KMT or Taiwan, does Chian Kai-shek maintain direct contact
supported by with his old 93rd, but fres]1 recruits are
Generalissimo Chiange Kai-shek 's 93rd frequently sent to maintain a troop level of
Division controls a major part of the opium from 5000 to 7000 men, according to a
flowing out of Burma and Thailand. Roving top-ranking foreign aid official in the U.`;
bands of mercenary bandits, they fled to
Times has
northern Burma in 1949 as Chianti's armies Chiang government. And, as Kai-theshek'News York son, Chian
were being routed on the Chinese mainland, noted,
and have maintained themselves since by Chin-Kuo, is widely believed to be in charge
Meo tribesmen of the KMT operations from his position as
buying opium from the nearby chief of the Taiwan secret police.
which they then resell, or. by exacting tribute
payments from entrepreneurs like Chan
Chi-foo. As travellers to the area attest, these
troops also supplement their income by
running Intellience operations into China-
0
and Burma for the U.S.
The Burmese Government regularly
complained about all this activity to the
United Nations, the Taiwan government and
the United States, charging the Americans and
Taiwanese with actively supplying and
supporting the KMT, which in turn has
organized anti-government guerrillas. In 1959
Burmese ground troops seized three opium
processing plants set up by the KMT guerrillas
at Wonton; the troops also took an airstrip
the Chinese had used to fly in reinforcements.
By February 1961 the Burmese had pushed
the KMT troops southeast into the
Thai-Burmese and .Thai-Laotian border areas,
where they now hold at least eight village
bases. Just last year a reporter who was at
Chieng Mai Thailand, saw Thai troops and
American advisors as well as military supplies
provided by the Taiwan government. The
Taiwan government, he noted, maintains an
information office there and regularly
accompanies the KMT troops on their forays
into China to pro 169-&F~6regggs1b~1/08/30: CIA-RDP73B00296R000300060023-8