Reply #214: Another important piece on the CIA and drug trafficking

[starroute]

It's an interview from 1991 with Alfred McCoy, author of "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade." Here's one interesting point it makes:

"What is the institutional relationship between the DEA and the CIA? The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was established in 1930 as an instrument of the prohibition of narcotics, the only United States agency that had a covert action capacity with agents working undercover before World War II. During the war when the OSS {Office of Strategic Services} was established, which is the forerunner of the CIA, key personnel were transferred from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to train the OSS officers in the clandestine arts."

And here's another:

"In 1979 Pakistan had a small localized opium trade and produced no heroin whatsoever. Yet by 1981, according to U.S. Attorney General William French Smith, Pakistan had emerged as the world's leading supplier of heroin. It became the supplier of 60% of U.S. heroin supply and it captured a comparable section of the European market.

<snip>

"Who were the manufacturers? They were all either military factions connected with Pakistan intelligence, CIA allies, or Afghan resistance groups connected with the CIA and Pakistan intelligence. In May of 1990, ten years after this began, the Washington Post finally ran a front page story saying high U.S. officials admit that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar {leader of the Hezbi-i Islami guerilla group}, and other leaders of the Afghan resistance are leading heroin manufacturers."


(Hekmatyar, who was premier for a while in the early 90's, was originally a CIA creation. However, the US tried to kill him two years ago, and ever since then he's been calling for holy war at regular intervals and is now said to be allied with the Taliban.)


Finally, it goes into a fair amount of detail about the sequence of Castle Bank, Nugan Hand, and BCCI. And it points out:

"There's one rather large question that nobody is asking about BCCI. It's a Pakistani bank, it booms during the 1980's, in exactly the same period that Pakistan emerges as the world's largest heroin center. We know the Pakistan military officers involved in the drug trade had their accounts with BCCI. ... In fact the boom in the Pakistan drug trade was financed by BCCI. The interrelationship between the Afghan resistance and the CIA and the Pakistan drug trade can all be seen through the medium of BCCI, the banker to both operations, the resistance and the drug trade."


Where BCCI is concerned, most of the emphasis has been on the Saudi role, because of figures like bin Mahfouz. But clearly Pakistan, and the humongous amounts of drug money sloshing around in Pakistan, were just as important. Those two countries are at the heart of most of what ails the US today -- and it all goes back to the disastrous CIA intervention of 1979-81.

On edit: Forget the link. It's actually in a lot of places -- here's one -- http://pdr.autono.net/mccoy.htm