Myth #7: The CIA Sold Drugs

You’ve seen it in films, read it in books and possibly heard about it from a teacher or a professor and just like the other conspiracies, this conspiracy is a load.

This conspiracy gets weaved into several other BS conspiracies, so don’t wet yourself if your tangential pet conspiracy is not included. Someday, you will be made fun of, you just have to wait your turn. Many people who laughed at the first few conspiracy posts are jumping up and down right now, declaring this in not a conspiracy.

They’re right. It isn’t.

The Conspiracy: The CIA sold drugs to… everybody

There are hundreds of books and thousands of Internet posts dedicated to “proving” the CIA is the world’s biggest drug dealer.

There are films that have been made and films that will be made, despite this idea being right next to bullsh*t. Why? Because selling books, films and articles that affirm people’s beliefs makes money.

How it started: The CIA helped combat Chairman Mao’s Communists

The history of Western powers cashing in on other peoples drugs is not in dispute here, but the timing for that accusation in this case is off by over one-hundred years. The British engaged the Chinese in the Opium Wars and of course, whipped their asses and made big money on opium.

Fast forward to 1934 China, during the Long March, the forces of the Communists found opium in the Yunnan province. They confiscated and sold it to fund their forces.

When the Communists and the Kuomintang joined forces to repel the Japanese, the use of opium as funding source became more evident.

It is here that many claim the CIA used Air America to make drug deals for the KMT because we wanted to take out Chairman Mao.

That will lead us into…

The Stupid Part I: Air America didn’t do drug deals for the KMT.

If you look at the ever-reliable Wikipedia, you will see that they say this was true:

Now fear not, there is no way the serious thinkers at Wikipedia would dare base their evidence on a crappy Hollywood film.

Citation [3]: Cockburn, Alexander; Jeffrey St. Clair (1998). “9″. Whiteout, the CIA, drugs and the press. New York: Verso. ISBN 1-85984-258-5.

Jeffery St. Clair, his co-author, is interviewed here at the Socialist Worker.org.

This is Alexander Cockburn:

In Mr. Cockburn’s book, he cites Gary Webb, who wrote the Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News, which sends us closer to modern times.

Actually, Cockburn and St.Clair don’t really cite Gary Webb, they pretty much just rip him off and peddle a book.

The Stupid Part II: The CIA didn’t sell drugs & the source for this conspiracy said so

Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance series is the keystone in this conspiracy and it was discredited along with Gary Webb getting demoted, which lead to Webb’s departure from the paper. Webb later did some good work on racial profiling stories and even won a Pulitzer for his coverage on an earthquake, yet he was obsessed with political operatives from the Reagan-Bush era and after battling with depression (mainly because the people now cashing in on his theory wouldn’t help him get a journalism job) he sadly took his own life. This also became a minor conspiracy theory.

Webb will admit there is no evidence to support the theory that the CIA sold drugs or knowingly shipped them. However Webb does little to slap down tangential conspiracy theories and he himself was an Operation Tailwind conspiracy theorist.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters eagerly hyped the CIA/Drug trafficking conspiracy:

“The consequences of this wholesale dumping of cocaine into inner cities by CIA-organized agents has been widespread homelessness, violence, the destruction of families, and death.”

Here is a taste of the conspiracy loving Maxine Waters:

Notice the people laughing after her unintentional admission.

For a short time Waters joined Michael C. Ruppert, a 9/11 Truther and peddler of many other conspiracy theories.

Here is Ruppert in his own words:

Also, Ruppert sells the book Powderdburns by fellow conspiracy peddler Celerino Castillo. The Amazon reviews are amazing.

Here’s a link to Castillo on the Alex Jones Show. (Please don tin foil hats before clicking)

Alex Jones is also a 9/11 Truther among other things, and his website, features Castillo, promoting the theory that Gary Webb was murdered.

Castillio is now in the can, meaning prison. He was allegedly selling guns to “backers” in Mexico.

When you exchange money in a bathroom over a firearms deal, you know you are doing something illegal.

That means the DEA whistleblower was selling arms to drug cartels in Mexico. Of course, the conspiracy theorists are making another conspiracy out of this guy’s crime.

With number [3] withering away, let’s see what [4] has to offer.

Citation [4]: Blum, William. “The CIA and Drugs: Just say “Why not?”". Third World Traveller.

Clicking on the link brings up this:

An excerpt:

Early 1950s, Southeast Asia

The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand and Laos), the world’s largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the CIA’s principal airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia.{4}

Coming in at {4} we have:

4. Christopher Robbins, Air America, New York: Avon Books, 1985, chapter 9; McCoy, passim

Now you might think these journalists use the book, not the film.

No, they use the movie.

From Air America.org:

The books author, Christopher Robbins, deleted his drug trafficking theory in later editions, so only this asinine film promotes the theory:

Christopher Robbins: Air America, 1979 edition. Inexplicably Robbins has deleted from his 1988 edition of Air America many references and quotes that occurred in his original 1979 edition regarding direct CIA involvement in drug smuggling in Laos and Southeast Asia. Robbins became embroiled in controversy when he spoke out against the 1990 movie Air America, and was roundly criticized by former Air America pilot Jack Smith, ex-ClA agent John Stockwell, and journalist Andrew Cockburn. – Crazy Ass News Site

Robbins wrote an op-ed in the NYT trashing the film. Air America’s producers fired back. Time magazine got in some digs at the film’s crazy ideas and the there is Christopher Robbins himself:

“They made a film of my book, Air America, and it was one of the stupidest movies ever! A tragic story of the secret war in Laos, albeit with the derring-do of American mercenary pilots, was turned into a daft comedy with Mel Gibson. The greatest humiliation is to be congratulated on it by strange people who genuinely seemed to enjoy it.”

The book was edited in 1988, the movie made in 1990, and film’s producers decided Vang Pao would be a villain, something conspiracy theorists insist upon.

The Stupid Part III: Okay, the CIA moved drugs instead of selling them & we will prove this with bad sources and lying witnesses.

In 2007, Alfred McCoy, (who wrote a CIA/drugs book) challenged the naming of a school after Vang Pao.

Vang Pao’s side eventually lost because the general was arrested for trying to overthrow the Laotian government. That’s some awesome work ethic right there. The charges were later dropped.

Professor McCoy is a specialist at selling books that prove diddly squat. His book is filled with neato factoids about everybody but the CIA and the best info he can come up with about CIA complicity is from desperate dudes who spent 2 years in a Vietnamese prison.

The book is riddled with unnamed sources or even politically biased sources:

In August 1971 The New York Times reported that the director of Vietnam customs “said he believed that planes of the South Vietnamese Air Force were the principal carriers” of heroin coming into South Vietnam.” (114)While the director is a Thieu appointee and his remark may be politically motivated, U.S. customs advisers, more objective observers, have stated that the air force regularly unloads large quantities of smuggled narcotics at Tan Son Nhut Air Base.” (115)

Notes:

Who is this adviser?

Maybe he is the guy who tipped McCoy off that Pepsi was helping the heroin get around.

That’s pretty interesting but, how does it involve the CIA? It really doesn’t. It should be noted that McCoy confesses to being a Coke drinker however:

Damn, that was easy.

McCoy also cites Mike Levine, an attention whore of the first order.

Levine has a heroic sounding background, but then he leaves the rails with stuff like:

I Volunteer to Kidnap Oliver North

He also likes to repeat the debunked lie of heroin being smuggled in the bodies of dead soldiers:

“Years later, I was put on the DEA desk tracking tribal factions in the Golden Triangle, and learned that the people who I had been stopped from penetrating were the source for the case in which they were smuggling heroin in the dead bodies of GIs.” -High Times, January 1999, No. 281

How credible is a guy who tells such outright lies just to peddle a few pages? The “drugs-in-cadavers” lie is so stupid, it shows how much contempt he has for his audience.

Here he is in his own words, elaborating on a total fantasy during an appearance on Democracy Now:

How does Amy Goodman allow this crap to be passed on to her listeners as fact? It’s total fantasy.

He might as well say the Giant Magic Rabbit of the golden triangle was shipping drugs in the bodies of G.I.’s.

Levine even cited a case, The U.S. v Jackson @ 0:49. Guess what? There is no mention of cadaver capers in the whole damn thing. Levine just thinks his audience is too stupid to look it up.

Michael Levine may have had a good career, but this is not a good way to cap it off.

The other major witness du jour is Celerino Castillo, the guy covered earlier who is going to jail for selling arms to drug dealers.

The other guy conspiracy authors run to is Anthony Poshepny, a.k.a Tony Poe.

Poe cuts quite a heroic figure, two purple hearts at Iwo Jima, trained saboteurs in Korea, he trained the Hmong people in guerrilla tactics to defend themselves from communist aggression and he also seemed to be the favored choice to lead rescue efforts for downed Air America pilots.

Here is a quote from Tony Poe:

“Jane Fonda, that bitch, daring to question John McCain? I wish I had been in the country when those college kids were protesting at Sather Gate. I woulda gone down there and beat the shit out of them.”

Aside from cutting off ears, putting heads on spikes, wanting to beat the sh*t out of most of these authors and according to a PBS interview, turning a blind eye to opium trafficking, Anthony Poe was known to embellish stories.

Alfred McCoy wrote his book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia after reading Mister Pop by D. A. Schanche.

Schanche insisted the CIA had to be moving dope, so McCoy expanded on this belief. Christopher Robbins bought it at first, but then realized it was BS and downplayed it. The rest of the kooks saw money and attention.

Here an excellent chart, provided by TRN’s supercomputer-assassin-coffee maker:

The authors favor the more wild and conspiratorial “sources.” Most of them are not without their own pet conspiracies either, which sometimes get woven into the CIA/Drugs narrative.

Edgar “Pop” Buell, the subject of Mister Pop by D. A. Schanche, dedicated his life to helping the Hmong people. He helped develop their first schools and he even tried to get them to convert from poppies to sweet potatoes.

The potato thing didn’t work out, but you can’t blame a guy for trying.

Buell’s story is pretty amazing, and Schanche’s book about him is worth a read. Just don’t feel the need to jump off a cliff when when you are told he thinks the CIA moved some dope. He’s got a belief, a conspiracy theory. He’s also got some excellent accounts of Buell:

“There are two great doctrines competing with each other in this little part of Asia: the sayings of Mao Tse-tung, and the sayings of Pop Buell.”

The other two names on the Flowchart of Mythmaking are Peter Dale Scott of Lee Harvey Oswald denier fame & Joel Bainerman, a New World Order believer:

While Bainerman can be safely laughed away, Scott touches on something that will bring us into more modern times.

The Reality: These guys mostly just hate Ronald Reagan

Scott’s cover story beard is that his JFK/CIA writings are about “Deep Politics” and not conspiracy theories. While something is definitely getting deep with Scott’s theories, the guy drags us along with Celerino and Levine into the roaring 80′s when Ronald Reagan was President and the Iran Contra scandal took place and… you guessed it, all the trolls came out of the dark claiming that Oliver North and the CIA, with Reagan’s blessing, flew drugs for rebel leaders to fight communist warlords.

The opportunity of the Iran-Contra scandal (which cast some light on arms for hostages, but no drugs) breathed new life into the conspiracy theorists and is the reason people like Mike Ruppert got to be a “Congressional Advisor.”

He later ripped off some clients, absconded from the country and was finally denounced by fellow conspiracy theorists and even the Boston Globe.

The Conclusion: The CIA is as guilty as the city bus

The best any of these books ever come to proving the CIA moved junk, is the citation of the many Congressional investigations into such theories.

These have produced a speculation by the very people these characters impugn. They will cite a page from Oliver North’s diary, yet North is painted as a huge liar.

They will say a foreign general/rogue officer/enriched himself but never offer up who his high paying customers really are.

The few speculations by people who were actually there amount to “If they sneaked some opium in with the rice packages, then we may have transported some” doesn’t rise to the level of Cartel Partner.

It rises to the level of moving less junk than a taxi-cab in New York City, the city bus or a subway system.

Let the hearings begin.