CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities

This article deals with activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency related to transnational crime, including the illicit drug trade.

Two offices of the CIA Directorate of Intelligence have analytical responsibilities in this area. The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging US national security threats. It provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury (OFAC).

Another part of the CIA, the National Clandestine Service, collects human intelligence (HUMINT) in these areas.

Drug trade According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC),

Drug cultivation thrives on instability, corruption and poor governance. The world's biggest drug producing centres are in regions beyond the control of the central government, like South Afghanistan, South-West Colombia and East Myanmar. Until government control, democracy and the rule of law are restored, these regions will remain nests of insurgency and drug production—and represent the biggest challenge to containment.

Especially in developing countries in conflict, there have been allegations that the CIA assisted the illicit drug activities of local leaders who saw that as a payment for their assistance.

Counternarcotics mission

CIA publishes reference materials in this area, such as "Heroin Movement Worldwide".

CIA supported a reevaluation of US antidrug priorities by the President's Office of National Drug Control Policy by publishing a paper that addressed the strategic vulnerabilities of the global drug trade. The paper addressed the exploitable operational, logistical, financial, and geographic weakness of the many criminal enterprises that supply narcotics to the United States and other markets. The paper was well received by the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and he instructed the law enforcement community to use it as a template to craft a companion product addressing the vulnerabilities of the US domestic drug trade.

CIA analysts wrote the first-ever analysis of drug flows and consumption in Brazil, the world's second-largest consumer of cocaine after the United States. The study entailed open-source field collection and an innovative methodology for calculating the prevalence of drug use.

Latin America

There have been allegations that CIA was involved in the Latin American drug trade, possibly to finance operations in Nicaragua and other areas around the world where Congress had denied funding, such as Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. According to a personal account by Everett Ellis Briggs, former U.S. Ambassador to Panama and Honduras, CIA undermined efforts to put a stop to the drug smuggling activities of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega prior to the December 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama.

Iran-Contra related Released on April 13, 1989, the Kerry Committee report found that the U.S. State Department had assisted drug traffickers:

who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking ... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.

Some of these payments were after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges or while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies. The report declared, "It is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking ... and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."

Representative Maxine Waters testified to Congress:

In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles for the San Jose Mercury News entitled, "Dark Alliance", in which he reported evidence that CIA aircraft, which had ferried arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, had been used to ship cocaine to the United States on their return flights. In 1998 the new DCI, George Tenet, declared that he was releasing the report. The report of CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz and Hitz's testimony showed that the "CIA did not 'expeditiously' cut off relations with alleged drug traffickers" and "the CIA was aware of allegations that 'dozens of people and a number of companies connected in some fashion to the contra program' were involved in drug trafficking" Hitz also said that under an agreement in 1982 between Ronald Reagan's Attorney General William French Smith and the CIA, agency officers were not required to report allegations of drug trafficking involving non-employees, which was defined as meaning paid and non-paid "assets [meaning agents], pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, as well as contra officials and others. This agreement was revealed, at a time when there were allegations that the CIA was using drug dealers in its covert operation to bring down the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Only after Congressional funds were restored in 1986 was the agreement modified to require the CIA to stop paying agents whom it believed were involved in the drug trade.

Webb also alleged that Central American narcotics traffickers could distribute cocaine in U.S. cities in the 1980s without the interference of normal law enforcement agencies, and that the CIA intervened to prevent the prosecution of drug dealers who were helping to fund the Contras. The Mercury News ultimately retracted Webb's conclusions, and Webb was not authorized to conduct any further investigative reporting. Webb was transferred to cover non-controversial suburban stories and subsequently gave up journalism and committed suicide.

Nicaragua 1984 In 1984, U.S. officials began receiving reports of Contra cocaine trafficking. Three officials told journalists that they considered these reports "reliable." Former Panamanian deputy health minister Dr. Hugo Spadafora, who had fought with the Contra army, outlined charges of cocaine trafficking to a prominent Panamanian official and was later found murdered. The charges linked the Contra trafficking to Sebastian Gonzalez Mendiola, who was charged with cocaine trafficking on November 26, 1984, in Costa Rica.

Nicaragua 1983

On March 16, 1986, the San Francisco Examiner published a report on the "1983 seizure of 430 pounds of cocaine from a Colombian freighter" in San Francisco which indicated that a "cocaine ring in the San Francisco Bay area helped finance Nicaragua's Contra rebels." Carlos Cabezas, convicted of conspiracy to traffic cocaine, said that the profits from his crimes "belonged to ... the Contra revolution." He told the Examiner, "I just wanted to get the Communists out of my country." Julio Zavala, also convicted on trafficking charges, said "that he supplied $500,000 to two Costa Rican-based Contra groups and that the majority of it came from cocaine trafficking in the San Francisco Bay area, Miami and New Orleans."

Former CIA official David MacMichael explained the inherent relationship between CIA activity in Latin America and drug trafficking:

Once you set up a covert operation to supply arms and money, it's very difficult to separate it from the kind of people who are involved in other forms of trade, and especially drugs. There is a limited number of planes, pilots and landing strips. By developing a system for supply of the Contras, the US built a road for drug supply into the US.

1990 Colombian counternarcotics blowback In November 1996, shortly after then-CIA Director John Deutsch went to Los Angeles to refute allegations raised by the Gary Webb investigative report on cocaine trafficking and the CIA, a Miami jury indicted Venezuelan CIA asset, General Ramon Guillen Davila, who "led a CIA counter-narcotics program that put a ton of cocaine on U.S. streets in 1990." The New York Times reported:

The CIA—over the objections of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a branch of the Justice Department—approved the shipment of at least one ton of nearly pure cocaine to Miami International Airport as a way of gathering information about the Colombian drug cartels. But the cocaine ended up on the street because of "poor judgment and management on the part of several CIA officers," the intelligence agency said.

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 Secret Team, Part IV: Visiting Vietnam", John Bacher, Peace Magazine Jun-Jul 1988, page 10 The Mel Gibson film, 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 in Southeast Asia), although there seem to be differences in the degree of knowledge and consent by CIA management.

Beginning of transnational drug trade in colonial Indochina McCoy asserts that the French administration of Indochina had financed its covert operations with the drug trade, and the CIA had simply replaced the French, to finance similar operations. He said he had gone to Paris and interviewed retired general Maurice Belleux, the former head of the French equivalent of the CIA, an organization called Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE, predecessor of the current French service, the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure).