Allegations of CIA drug trafficking

Central Intelligence Agency

A number of writers have claimed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is or has been involved in drug trafficking. Books on the subject that have received general notice include works by historian Alfred McCoy, English professor and poet Peter Dale Scott, and journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Office of the Inspector General. The subject remains a controversial one.

Following is a summary of some of the main claims made by geographical area.

Afghanistan (Soviet Union)

Main article: Opium production in Afghanistan

Historian Alfred W. McCoy stated that:

In most cases, the CIA's role involved various forms of complicity, tolerance or studied ignorance about the trade, not any direct culpability in the actual trafficking ... [t]he CIA did not handle heroin, but it did provide its drug lord allies with transport, arms, and political protection. In sum, the CIA's role in the Southeast Asian heroin trade involved indirect complicity rather than direct culpability.

Another incident that sparked the scandal was the discovery that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the then-newly elected President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, was on the payroll of the CIA for eight years (until October 2009), and his relation to opium trafficking in the Middle East. It is alleged that the Karzai brothers helped to obfuscate the real intentions of the US intelligence services, related to the trade of the drugs. Karzai, in compliance with these relationships, would be paid to carry out operations in some regions of Afghanistan and to recruit paramilitary forces.

Golden Triangle

While the CIA was sponsoring a Secret War in Laos from 1961 to 1975, it was accused of trafficking in opium (an area known as the Golden Triangle). In response to accusations by Rolling Stone magazine in 1968, and Alfred W. McCoy in 1972, the CIA made its own internal inquiries of its staff and clients in Laos concerning the drug trade. It noted that trading in opium was legal in Laos until 1971. Cultural background was also explored. Opium served the isolated Lao hill tribes as their sole cash crop. Additionally, it was one of the few medicines available in their primitive living circumstances. Nevertheless, the CIA had its own internal security agents investigating any possible commercial exports from mid-1968 onwards. An American single plane airline was barred from CIA airfields on suspicion of drug smuggling. A guerrilla commanding officer was pressured into giving up dealing in opium. The CIA's own conclusion was that small amounts of opium might have been smuggled via their contract aircraft, given wartime conditions. The Agency's case officers even staged a couple of impromptu raids on drug refineries, only to be reined in by their Office of General Counsel.

United States

Mena, Arkansas

A number of allegations have been written about and several local, state, and federal investigations have taken place related to the notion of the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport as a CIA drop point in large scale cocaine trafficking beginning in the latter part of the 1980s. The topic has received some press coverage that has included allegations of awareness, participation and/or coverup involvement of figures such as past president Bill Clinton.

An investigation by the CIA's inspector general concluded that the CIA had no involvement in or knowledge of any illegal activities that may have occurred in Mena. The report said that the agency had conducted a training exercise at the airport in partnership with another Federal agency and that companies located at the airport had performed "routine aviation-related services on equipment owned by the CIA".

Mexico

See also: Mexican Drug War

The oldest Mexican Cartel, the Guadalajara cartel, was benefited by the CIA for having connections with the Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros, a CIA asset, who was the head of SETCO, an airline used for smuggling drugs into the US and also used to transport military supplies and personnel for the Nicaraguan Contras, using funds from the accounts established by Oliver North.

It is also alleged that the DFS, the main Mexican intelligence agency, which is in part a CIA creation and later became the Mexican Center for Research and National Security(CISEN), had among its members the CIA's closest government allies in Mexico. DFS badges, "handed out to top-level Mexican drug-traffickers, have been labelled by DEA agents a virtual 'license to traffic.'".

It is also known that the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexico's most powerful drug-trafficking network in the early 1980s, prospered largely, among other reasons, because it enjoyed the protection of the DFS, under its chief Miguel Nazar Haro, a CIA asset.

Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, known as the Godfather of the Mexican drug business and the first Mexican drug lord, provided a significant amount of funding, weapons, and other aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. His pilot, Werner Lotz, stated that Gallardo once had him deliver $150,000 in cash to a Contra group, and Gallardo often boasted about smuggling arms to them. His activities were known to several U.S. federal agencies, including the CIA and DEA, but he was granted immunity due to his "charitable contributions to the Contras".

Vicente Zambada Niebla, the son of Ismael Zambada García one of the top drug lords in Mexico, claimed after his arrest to his attorneys that he and other top Sinaloa Cartel members had received immunity by U.S. agents and a virtual licence to smuggle cocaine over the United States border, in exchange for intelligence about rival cartels engaged in the Mexican Drug War. It is important to note that this Cartel has been classified as the most powerful drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime syndicate in the world.

In October 2013, two former federal agents and an ex-CIA contractor told an American television network that CIA operatives were involved in the kidnapping and murder of DEA covert agent Enrique Camarena, because he was a threat to the agency's drug operations in Mexico. According to the three men, the CIA was collaborating with drug traffickers moving cocaine and marijuana to the United States, and using its share of the profits to finance Nicaraguan Contra rebels attempting to overthrow Nicaragua's Sandinista government. A CIA spokesman responded, calling it "ridiculous" to suggest that the Agency had anything to do with the murder of a US federal agent or the escape of his alleged killer.

Nicaragua

Main article: CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking

In 1986, the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations began investigating drug trafficking from Central and South America and the Caribbean to the United States. The investigation was conducted by the Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, chaired by Senator John Kerry, so its final 1989 report was known as the Kerry Committee report. The Report concluded that "it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."

In 1996 Gary Webb wrote a series of articles published in the San Jose Mercury News, which investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. which was then distributed as crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. His articles asserted that the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by the Contra personnel and directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras. The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post launched their own investigations and rejected Webb's allegations. In May 1997, the Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos, who had approved the series, published a column that acknowledged shortcomings in the series reporting, editing, and production, while maintaining the story was correct "on many important points." Webb later published a book based on the series, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.

Panama

See also: Illegal drug trade in Panama

The U.S. military invasion of Panama after which dictator Manuel Noriega was captured.

In 1989, the United States invaded Panama as part of Operation Just Cause, which involved 25,000 American troops. Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, had been giving military assistance to Contra groups in Nicaragua at the request of the U.S.—which, in exchange, allowed him to continue his drug-trafficking activities—which they had known about since the 1960s. When the DEA tried to indict Noriega in 1971, the CIA prevented them from doing so. The CIA, which was then directed by future president George H. W. Bush, provided Noriega with hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as payment for his work in Latin America. However, when CIA pilot Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua by the Sandinistas, documents aboard the plane revealed many of the CIA's activities in Latin America, and the CIA's connections with Noriega became a public relations "liability" for the U.S. government, which finally allowed the DEA to indict him for drug trafficking, after decades of allowing his drug operations to proceed unchecked. Operation Just Cause, whose ostensible purpose was to capture Noriega, pushed the former Panamanian leader into the Papal Nuncio where he surrendered to U.S. authorities. His trial took place in Miami, where he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Noriega's prison sentence was reduced from 30 years to 17 years for good behavior. After serving 17 years in detention and imprisonment, his prison sentence ended on September 9, 2007. He was held in U.S. custody before being extradited to France where he was sentenced to 7 years for laundering money from Colombian drug cartels.

Venezuelan National Guard Affair

See also: Illegal drug trade in Venezuela

The CIA, in spite of objections from the Drug Enforcement Administration, allowed at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to be shipped into Miami International Airport. The CIA claimed to have done this as a way of gathering information about Colombian drug cartels, but the cocaine ended up being sold on the street.

In November 1993, the former head of the DEA, Robert C. Bonner appeared on 60 Minutes and criticized the CIA for allowing several tons of pure cocaine to be smuggled into the U.S. via Venezuela without first notifying and securing the approval of the DEA.

In November 1996, a Miami grand jury indicted former Venezuelan anti-narcotics chief and longtime CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who was smuggling many tons of cocaine into the United States from a Venezuelan warehouse owned by the CIA. In his trial defense, Guillen claimed that all of his drug smuggling operations were approved by the CIA.

See also

• CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities
• War on Drugs
• MKULTRA
• Air America (airline)
• Air America (non-fiction book)
• Air America (film)
• Castle Bank & Trust (Bahamas)
• Nugan Hand Bank
• Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)

Further reading

• (The link is to the complete text of this book.)

CIA & DOJ Reports

• Overview of CIA/IG Investigation (January 29, 1998) — A short summary of The Inspector General's Report of Investigation regarding allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in cocaine trafficking to the United States.

1. Report of Investigation--Volume I: The California Story (January 29, 1998) —The Inspector General's Report of Investigation regarding allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in cocaine trafficking to the United States. Volume I: The California Story.
2. Report of Investigation -- Volume II: The Contra Story (October 8, 1998) — The Inspector General's Report of Investigation regarding allegations of connections between CIA and the Contras in cocaine trafficking to the United States. Volume II: The Contra Story.

• USDOJ/OIG Special Report. THE CIA-CONTRA-CRACK COCAINE CONTROVERSY: A REVIEW OF THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S INVESTIGATIONS AND PROSECUTIONS (December, 1997)

External links

• NarcoNews: U.S. Cocaine-Plane Invasion Spooking Latin America
• Consortium News - CIA Admits Tolerating Contra- Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s - 08/06/00
• Frontline: Guns, Drugs, and the CIA
• Congressional Testimony of Peter Kornbluh