The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, the book the CIA fought bitterly and unsuccessfully to suppress in 1972 is due to be released again in October, 1990. This scholarly work, produced as a PhD thesis for Yale University by Alfred W. McCoy, is the definitive study of the illicit narcotics trade and its connection to the world's intelligence organizations.

The fabled Golden Triangle, where Laos, Thailand, and Burma meet, long a traditional opium growing area, now provides 70% of the world's illicit supply of heroin. McCoy meticulously documents how the CIA, during the Vietnam era, entered the drug trade in order to finance the secret war in Laos which was run without the consent or financing of congress and without any knowledge by the American people.

The air base at Long Tieng, Burma, was both the most secret base in the world and one of the busiest airports. This base was used as a gathering point for the opium crop which was then transported by Air America, the CIA proprietary airline which the special forces openly referred to as Air Opium. General Richard Secord of Iran-Contra fame was the air commander while General Singlaub and his trusted lieutenant Oliver North were on the ground. Theodore Shackley, Iran-Contra higher-up, was the CIA station chief. Obviously this was a very significant chapter in American scandals to follow.

McCoy documents the disquieting fact that every Southeast Asian strongman that the CIA backed had either one of two things in common. They were either the largest opium trafficker in their area or they had the entire opium monopoly. According to McCoy, the largest battle in Saigon was not with the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese, but the battle which too place between the CIA and French Intelligence over the opium monopoly of the region.

Alfred McCoy, after teaching for the last 16 years at Australia's University of New South Wales is now back in America with this very big story to tell. McCoy now teaches history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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(C) 1996 Intelligence Connection