From daemon Wed Feb 26 23:09:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by pencil.math.missouri.edu.math.missouri.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA22090; Wed, 26 Feb 97 23:09:13 CST Date: Wed, 26 Feb 97 23:09:13 CST Message-Id: <9702270509.AA22090@pencil.math.missouri.edu.math.missouri.edu> From: Larry-Jennie Subject: CAQ: CIA: Running Drugs & Secret Wars Organization: InterAccess, Chicago's best Internet Service Provider Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive Followup-To: alt.activism.d Approved: map@pencil.math.missouri.edu Apparently-To: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu Status: OR "Running Drugs and Secret Wars" by David Truong D.H. CovertAction Information Bulletin Number 28 (Summer 1987) David Troung D.H. is a researcher and policy analyst and a long-time watcher of U.S.. intelligence activities in the Third World. World War II had barely ended when major western powers scrambled to reassert control over their former colonies. Asia was one region where France, England, and the U.S. reached understanding about their respective spheres of influence. In September 1945, France sought to reestablish her rule over Indochina and other former colonies where she had been unceremoniously humiliated by the Axis powers. With British assistance, and strengthened by Truman's policy against independence movements in Indochina, the French returned to Indochina to begin their disastrous nine-year war against the Viet Minh, Vietnam's burgeoning independence movement. In exchange for French support of America's Marshall Plan and anticommunist operations throughout Europe, the United States contributed to France's reconquest of Indochina. By the time of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the U.S. had spent $3.5 billion, or seventy-five percent of French war costs in Indochina. Nevertheless, throughout the war, the French found themselves short of funds to finance their covert operations against the Viet Minh. Thus in 1951, the French intelligence service, SDECE (Service de Documentation Exterieure et du Contre-Espionage). and its covert operations branch, Service d'Action, took over the enormous opium trade in French Indochina. (1) Known as the "Opium Monopoly," the opium trade was first established by me French in the 1880s to finance their colonial rule over Indochina. (2) Service d'Action had dubbed its opium-financed secret war "Operation X." (3) The operation involved French-trained commandos made up of Hmong and other tribesmen to be sent into action against Viet Minh strongholds and a distribution network of French-sponsored local pirates who ran hundreds of opium dens throughout Vietnam and Laos. Operation X included a supporting cast of Corsican underworld characters and their small airline, "Air Opium," shuttling drug cargos between Laos and Vietnam. The Corsicans had links with their equally enterprising colleagues in France. In post-war metropolitan France the CIA had made its own alliance with the Corsican underworld in its program to neutralize the influence of French Communist trade unions. (4) During the same period, in neighboring Thailand, the U.S had established a major presence. U.S. intelligence activities in Thailand were part of a broad covert program, sanctioned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Trumam White House, against the newly established Chinese Communist government. Since 1948, the Office for Policy Coordination under the late Frank Wisner, driven by Cold War fever, had initiated a number of covert operations in Europe and laid the ground for more anti-communist operations in Asia. Civil Air Transport (CAT). American intelligence's first proprietary airline in the Far East, flew clandestine missions and drops for the OPC and later for the CIA throughout Indochina, Thailand, Burma and southern and eastern China In early February 1951, the CIA initiated Operation PAPER. the first major paramilitary operation in that part of Southeast Asia. It involved the invasion of Yunnan province, southern China, by some 4,000 Kuomintang troops based in Mong Hsat, Burma. (5) KMT General Li Mi's troops met defeat and were driven back to Burma; with continued CIA assistance, the KMT again tried twice to invade Yunnan province before retrenching itself in the territory of the Shan States in Burma. (6) In the decades that followed, Thailand became the launching pad for the multitude of U.S. covert operations against China. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, as the U.S. increased its role in Laos and South Vietnam, the Agency developed its Thai-based covert, paramilitary programs against Indochina and the rest of Southeast Asia. This theater of clandestine operations was also a major opium growing region, stretching from southern Yunnan to neighboring Burma's Shan states, northern Thailand, and northern Laos. It was commonly known as the "Golden Triangle" to opium and heroin traffickers, and was the source of 70 percent of the world's opium production in the early 1970s. Today, the Golden Triangle still produces at least 90 tons per year of heroin destined for the American market. (7) The ClA-backed KMT troops settled in Burma after World War II and controlled the opium traffic for buyers in northern Thailand and Bangkok. From 1948 on, American intelligence activities in the Golden Triangle were intertwined with the opium trade. Infiltration routes for CIA commando teams into southern China were also used as drug smuggling routes for traffickers in Burma and Thailand. Local Shan tribesmen provided the guides to both the Agency's teams and opium caravans near the Burma-Chinese border. And the Agency had maintained five secret training camps and two key listening posts in the Shan states protected by its drug smuggling KMT troops and local tribesmen. (8) Thailand was of course a major opium marketplace at the tip of the Golden Triangle. The military cliques of strongmen which ruled the country, beginning with General Phao Siyanon in 1947, also controlled the Thai National Police Department (TNPD) which was the largest opium traffic syndicate in the country. These "strongmen" grew immensely wealthy from their drug monopoly and from ties to the CIA. (9) Much of this drug smuggling network remains very active today, and has deep roots in Thailand's military and paramilitary circles. The Agency's role was much more pervasive than that of the French Service d'Action in Vietnam. The CIA founded and trained General Phao's paramilitary police force, and equipped it with artillery, tanks, and helicopters. The police force not only protected Thai borders but also conducted commando missions into Indochina, Burma, and China. U.S. paramilitary specialists, either retired military personnel or detailed from other departments, were brought to Bangkok to train this new Border Patrol Police (BPP). To manage the training and equipping of the BPP. the CIA had asked a retired OSS China hand, the late Paul Helliwell, to form a cover organization out of Miami. The Overseas Southeast Asia Supply Company, or Sea Supply, had the sole contract with Thailand for services to the BPP. (10) Helliwell, also Thailand's Consul in Miami during the early 1950s, was one of the ClA's specialists on forming front companies and laundering funds for "black" operations in the Caribbean in support of the Agency's secret war against Cuba, (11) especially in preparation for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The Agency's primary airline, CAT, renamed Air America in the late 1960s, flew military equipment from CIA depots in Okinawa to Bangkok for Sea Supply. (12) Within the Thailand-Burma theater. CAT flights carried weapons, paramilitary personnel, and opium for the Thai strongmen as well. By 1950, the CIA had created its own "Operation X" in neighboring Thailand, larger and much more efficient than that of the French SDECE. The historical roots of today's secret supply network for the Contras in Central America lie with the ClA's paramilitary programs with the KMT and the BPP in Southeast Asia. These covert operations provided the Agency with considerable experience in the management of secret wars and drug running. The ClA's clandestine war against the Pathet Lao, which involved at least fifty thousand Thai and Hmong mercenaries, and some KMT troops, remains the largest in Agency history. Air America had a fleet of several hundred of all kinds of aircraft from 1968 on, operating out of six bases throughout Thailand and Long Tieng, the Agency's operational headquarters in northern Laos. Long Tieng was the main base of the Hmong commanding general, Vang Pao, and the site of his main heroin lab for me entire Golden Triangle region. In the late 1960s, the Agency even assisted Vang Pao in his purchase of Air America aircraft to form his own airline, Xieng Khouang Air Transport (XKAT). The airline flew cargos of opium and heroin between Long Tieng and Vientiane. (13) The Hmong mercenaries' heroin production went mostly to Laos's prime drug king and merchant, General Ouane Rattikone, commander of the Laotian Air Force It was during this period, between 1966 and 1969, that several key players in the current weapons supply network to the contras developed their skills in drug running and secret war management Theodore Shacklev was CIA station chief in Laos from 1966 to 1969 and the de facto chief of staff for the Agency's secret war. Shackley later did a tour in South Vietnam where he managed Operation Phoenix, the "pacification" program against the Vietnamese. Tom Clines worked under him in Laos, managing ground support activities for the war. Richard Secord, then a lieutenant colonel detailed to the Agency, was handling air support which included Air America and other minor CIA proprietary airlines. Secord stayed on in Thailand in the early 1970s to manage operations by U.S. Special Forces and Hmong troops in Laos. Together with Robert "Red" Jantzen, the Agency's station chief in Thailand (1958-1969) and the infamous Edwin Wilson, Shackley, Clines and Secord were cited in the late 1970s in the scandal of the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank in Australia. (14) The bank was found to be heavily involved in drug trafficking between Thailand and Australia, as well as money laundering and weapons deals in southern Africa and Asia. The revelations about the operational structure of the supply network for the contras shows that U.S. involvement in drug running and secret wars remains the same The techniques of clandestine warfare also remain unchanged. A number of Cuban-Americans who had worked under Clines and Shackley in the Agency's covert war against Cuba during the 1960s provided field management for the Nicaraguan contra supply network. It is not surprising under these circumstances that the contras would make drug running an integral part of this secret war in Central America. However, past congressional committees investigating the drug running facet of the Agency's secret wars in Southeast Asia chose to clear the CIA from drug trafficking wrongdoing, (15) even though documentation collected by the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics was ample. Will the Iran/contra hearings also choose to gloss over the integral drug part of the contra supply network? In the fall of 1972, the CIA was under pressure to prove that it was not involved in opium and heroin smuggling for the Hmong mercenaries and drug dealing generals in Indochina. Ironically, it was allowed to investigate itself by way of its own Inspector General. Then Air America and Continental Air Services flew DEA agents, on contract, throughout Thailand and Southeast Asia in search of the facts, (16) and all parties came back satisfied. The current Iran/contra hearings have revealed the participation of the DEA in a fanciful operation under Oliver North's supervision to search for American hostages in Lebanon. (17) It was a covert operation where no narcotics were involved. On the other hand, there seems to be no involvement or investigation by DEA agents of drug running activities by the contras, even though many participants in the contra supply network were fully aware of it. The question which remains to be answered is: Will the investigating committees again decide to whitewash this latest episode of CIA drug running to fund its illegal secret wars? 1. Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 92-109. 2. Ibid., pp. 73-75 3. Ibid., pp. 99-100 4. Ibid., pp. 37-47 5, William. M Leary, Perilous Missions: Civil Air Transport and CIA Covert Operations in Asia (University, Ala.: University Of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 129. 6. Ibid., p 131. 7. U.S. News and World Report, May 4, 1987, p. 33 8. McCoy, op. Cit., n. 1, pp. 306-8 9. Thomas Lobe, United States Security Policy and Aid to the Thailand Police, University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies: Monograph Series in World Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 2 (University of Denver, Colorado Seminary, 1977), p. 20. 10. Ibid., p. 23. 11. Penny Lernoux, In Banks We Trust (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, l984), pp 80-83. 12. Leary, op.cit., n. 5, p 129. 13. Christopher Robbins, Air America: The Story of the CIA's Secret Airlines (New York: Putnam's, 1979), p. 237. 14. Commonwealth-New South Wales Joint Task Force on Drug Trafficking Report, Vol. 4, Nugan Hand (Part II) (Sydney: Government Printing Office, 1983). 15. Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities, U.S. Senate, April 26. 1976, Book I: Foreign and Military Intelligence (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1976). 16. Robbins. Op. Cit., n. 13, pp. 239-40. 17. See "Doc-u-drama." in this issue. (Posters note. 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