Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press
by Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair

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Book Reviews of Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press

Book Review: Devastating critique of US drug-running
Summary: 5 Stars

The authors document many CIA activities, including the following. In 1945, the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's predecessor, got Mafioso 'Lucky' Luciano, the USA's premier gangster and drug trafficker, released from jail and protected him while he organised an enormous increase in the global heroin trade. The CIA then worked with the Mafia to break trade unions in the USA, Italy and France.

From the 1940s, CIA planes flew opium from Chiang Kai-Shek's Burmese bases for export to the USA. Protected by the CIA, the Burmese military dictatorship has turned Burma into the world's top producer of high-grade opium.

The CIA also organised drug smuggling from Latin America into the USA, using the services of, among others, Klaus Barbie, the Nazi 'Butcher of Lyons', whom they protected until 1983. In the 1980s, as part of Reagan's war against Nicaragua, the CIA protected the Contra supporters running the biggest drug sales operation in California, selling crack to buy weapons for the Contras. Recently the CIA created, and still fund, the heroin-producing and trafficking organisation, Taliban, who have turned Afghanistan into the world's leading supplier of raw opium.

In 1989, British Customs reported to British Intelligence allegations from several sources that the husband of Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto funded large heroin shipments from Pakistan to Britain and the USA. The Thatcher Government did nothing. The authors also document CIA attempts to murder, among others, Castro and Gadaffi. Of course, the British 'intelligence' agencies, official and unofficial, that work hand in glove with their US colleagues across the world never had anything to do with any of these illegal activities.

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