CIA Transnational Anti-crime and Anti-drug Activities - Drug Trade - Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia

Alfred McCoy, author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, described CIA complicity in the Vietnam-era drug trade originating in Southeast Asia, and further described CIA attempts to interfere with publication of the book.

On June 1 of this year an official of the US Central Intelligence Agency paid a visit to the New York offices of my publisher, Harper and Row, Inc. This CIA official was Mr. Cord Meyer, Jr. (now the CIA's Assistant Deputy Director of Plans; formerly the CIA official in charge of providing covert financial subsidies for organizations such as the National Student Association, Encounter Magazine, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom). Mr. Meyer urged several of his old friends among Harper and Row's senior management to provide him with a copy of the galley proofs of my history of the international narcotics traffic, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. In this book I show the complicity of various US agencies—particularly the CIA and the State Department—in organizing the Southeast Asian drug traffic since the early 1950s.

According to Dr. McCoy, the agency intimidated his sources and tried to keep the book from being published. There is also an article in Peace Magazine containing similar allegations. The Mel Gibson film, Air America. Air America was based on the Christopher Robbins book Air America, which chronicled the history of CIA proprietary airlines in Southeast Asia.

In his book, McCoy wrote

It is transported in the planes, vehicles, and other conveyances supplied by the United States. The profit from the trade has been going into the pockets of some of our best friends in Southeast Asia. The charge concludes with the statement that the traffic is being carried on with the indifference if not the closed-eye compliance of some American officials and there is no likelihood of its being shut down in the foreseeable future."

This is not inconsistent with Leary's description (with respect to Laos and Southeast Asia), although there seem to be differences in the degree of knowledge and consent by CIA management.