The history of how the US became involved in narcotics trafficking dates back more than a 150 years. Prominent families of great wealth - often members of secret societies such as Yale's "secretive Order of the Skull and Bones - pounced on the Opium trade to generate wealth and influence. One of the founding families of the Skull and Bones were the Russells. To this day, the Russell Trust is the legal entity of the Order of the Skull and Bones.
In 1823, Samuel Russell established "Russell and Company. He acquired his Opium supplies in Turkey and smuggled it to China aboard fast Clippers. By 1830, Russell bought-out the Perkins Opium syndicate of Boston and established the main Opium smuggling enterprise to Connecticut. His man in Canton, was Warren Delano Jr., grandfather of Franklin Roosevelt who was US President during the WWII years. Other Russell partners included the Coolidge, Perkins, Sturgis, Forbes and Low families.
By 1832, Samuel Russell's cousin, William Huntington, formed the first US chapter of the Order of the Skull and Bones. He attracted membership to the Order from the most powerful and influential American families. These membership roster read like a Who's Who of America: Lord, Whitney, Taft, Jay, Bundy, Harriman, Weyerhauser, Pinchot, Rockefeller, Goodyear, Sloane, Simpson, Phelps, Pillsbury, Perkins, Kellogg, Vanderbilt, Bush, and Lovett - to name some of the more prominent. Significantly, Skull and Bonesmen have always had a very close and enduring association with the US intelligence community. Former US President and Bonesman, George Bush, was a one time Director of Central Intelligence. Interestingly, the by-product of Opium, Heroin, was a trade name of the Bayer Company - still a world leader in the pharmaceutical industry - that launched its highly addictive product in 1898.
The intelligence connection unsurprisingly dates back to Yale University, where four Yale graduates formed part of the "Culper Ring" - one of the first US intelligence operations established in great secrecy by George Washington to gather vital intelligence on the British throughout the War of Independence. By 1903, Yale's Divinity School had established a number of schools and hospitals throughout China. Mao Zedong was a member of the staff. By the 1930's such was the clout of Yale's Chinese connection that US intelligence called on "Yale in China" to assist them in intelligence operations.1 Historically, Heroin and Cocaine were legally available to purchase but were outlawed by the League of Nations - the forerunner to the United Nations - and the USA in the 1920's. Following prohibition consumption of these drugs began to spiral. Even so, the wars years 1939-46 saw addiction virtually eradicated in Europe and North America - a happy state of affairs that would not last long.
Indochina, historically under French control was captured by the Japanese during WWII. At the conclusion of the war, France regained control over Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. But independence movements had begun fighting to evict the French. This ultimately resulted in the Vietminh orchestrated battle of Dien Bien Phu which resulted in French defeat and eventual withdrawal from Indochina. They were to be immediately replaced the United States.
In the interim, the French had developed a wide-ranging intelligence apparatus throughout the region. This was financed by Opium. Maurice Belleux, former head of SDECE, the French equivalent of the CIA, confirmed this during a remarkably frank interview with historian, Prof Alfred McCoy. Belleux told McCoy that "French military intelligence had all their covert operations from the control of the Indochina drug trade." This covered the French Colonial war from 1946 through to 1954.
Bellereux revealed how this worked. French paratroopers fighting with hill tribes scattered throughout the region, collected raw Opium and transported it aboard French military aircraft to Saigon. Here, it was handed over to the Sino-Vietnamese Mafia for distribution. Also heavily engaged in the Opium traffic were Corsican crime syndicates that shipped the Opium to Marseilles for refining into Heroin. From here it was distributed to Europe and the United States - becoming known as "The French Connection." It was a case of the underworld working hand in glove with French government - both of whom benefited financially from the joint arrangement. The shared profits were channeled through Central bank accounts under French Military intelligence control. The SDECE master-spy closed his interview by stating that he believed the CIA "had taken over all French assets and were pursuing something of the same policy."2
The words 'Vietnam war' are something of a misnomer. More correctly, the US involvement in the entire region should be called the Southeast Asia war. While the fighting in Vietnam reached the media on a daily basis, the secret war in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand remained secret and continued right through the nineteen eighties. This was the CIA's own hot little war, fought with the assistance of local tribesmen and "off the books," American soldiers and airmen, who once captured were abandoned by a chillingly ungrateful and cynical secret government.3
The American military strategy in Vietnam was unique. Although American military superiority gave them the ability to win the war in approximately one year, they were expressly forbidden from doing so by US foreign policy makers. This doctrine was spelled out in National Security Council Memorandum 68 - which was the template for the "cold war." This was the same policy that forbade Allied victory in Korea, as explained by Colonel Phillip Corso, former Head of Special Projects Branch/Intelligence Division/Far East Command, in testimony to Congress in 1996. Upon returning from Korea, Corso was assigned to the Operations Coordinating Board of the White House National Security Council, and discovered the "No Win" policy. He was appalled by it.4
But if winning militarily was not a US objective, securing control of the region's Opium production most certainly was. Little time passed before the CIA had a stranglehold on the Opium trade. This resulted in a massive increase in Opium production followed by a surge in Heroin addiction in North America and Western Europe. Paralleling this was a enormous growth in Heroin addicts amongst US combat troops in Vietnam. Fully one third of all combat forces were hooked on "China White" - courtesy of the men from Spooksville, Virginia.5
Drug dealing was rampant amongst South Vietnamese military commanders. One of the principal figures was General Dang Van Quang - the Military and Security Assistant to President Nguyen Van Thieu. Quang developed a network of dope trafficking via Vietnamese Special Forces operating in Laos.
Laos - a CIA fiefdom - was a principal Opium producer under the nominal control of General Vang Pao - leader of the Meo tribesman fighting the CIA's secret war. Vang Pao would collect raw Opium grown throughout Northern Laos and transport it aboard the CIA's "Air America" helicopters to Long Thien. A massive, sprawling US built complex, Long Thien was known as "Spook Heaven" by some, or "Alternate 20" by others. It was here that General Pao's raw Opium was processed into top grade No 4 China White heroin. At this point, direct CIA involvement in the "product" ceased. Meanwhile, the CIA provided Vang Pao with his own airline known to insiders as "Air Opium," that would transport it to Saigon, landing at the giant US military Ton Sohn Nut Air Base. Thereafter part of the bulk was divvied up among Quang's network for sale to US servicemen hooked on the drug. The rest was shipped to the Corsican syndicate in Marseilles for delivery to Cuba - a transshipment point controlled by Mafia boss Santos Trafficante - and thence to the United States. A regular variation of the delivery route occurred when sealed bags of Heroin were stitched inside the dead bodies of GI's returning home for military burial.
Drugs and the
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Back at home, US policy makers didn't give a flying damn about the growing drug problem among US servicemen. The view of disregard was best stated by Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. "Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy," Kissinger told Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein.6 We may also pose a related chain of thought in this respect. If military men are "dumb, stupid animals" to be used and abused as "pawns" for foreign policy, are ordinary tax-paying citizens viewed any differently when it comes to the wholesale supply of Heroin to America's inner cities? An addict population, arguably, more than adequately caters to one of requirements of NSC 68 - that of establishing "domestic tranquillity."7 In any event, the proceeds from dope sales were laundered through the Nugan Hand Bank in Australia and used to finance the CIA's secret war throughout the region.
Following the US backed invasion of Cambodia in May 1970, another Heroin pipeline was established. Previously inaccessible regions of Cambodia ideal for Opium cultivation were immediately brought on-line. The smuggling pipeline was operated by the Vietnamese Navy who had established bases at Phnom Penh and throughout the Mekong river. Within a week of the Cambodian incursion, an armada of Vietnamese and US Navy craft - totaling 140 vessels - under the command of Captain Nguyen Thanh Chau crossed into Cambodia. This was "hailed as a 'tactical coup' and a great 'military humanitarian fleet,'" the armada immediately went to work smuggling "vast quantities of Opium and Heroin into South Vietnam."8 Said to be the biggest pusher in South Vietnam, General Quang - following the US withdrawal from Vietnam - quietly relocated to Montreal, Canada, via the US Army's military base, Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. Quang's entry to Canada is said to have resulted from quiet but intense pressure from the United States government.
The apparent face-value dichotomy between the CIA's international, decades long dope trade and the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) "war on drugs," is illusory. During a radio interview in 1991, historian Alfred McCoy outlined what he called "... the institutional relationship between the DEA and the CIA." Back in the 1930's the forerunner of the DEA - the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was established to curtail the use and sale of narcotics. The FBN was the only US agency that had agents working in covert roles prior to WWII. With the arrival of WWII, key agents from the FBN were transferred to the newly established Office of Strategic Services (OSS) - fore-runner of the CIA - to teach OSS personnel the "clandestine arts." This relationship continues to present times, McCoy states. The result is that where the CIA are running drug operations in various parts of the world, the DEA officially goes to sleep9.
This has led to the realization that the DEA is principally tasked with prohibiting the flow of drugs from other than CIA "approved" sources - and that successive US "war on drugs" programs are, de facto, engaged in killing off the competition. Whether this is purposeful policy or not, the result is clearly the same. Taken to its logical conclusion, CIA approved and protected traffickers will increasingly gain greater and greater control over the global dope business, making the US government the biggest dope peddler in the world. Meanwhile, some believe this has already occurred and was always part of the long-term plans drawn up by covert policy planners, as they cast jealous eyes toward the planets raw materials - of which narcotics is one of the most profitable.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon declared his "war on drugs." Heroin entering the United States was produced by two principal Opium monopolies: those controlled by the CIA in Southeast Asia, and from Turkey - a close US ally. Nixon's "war on drugs" closed the Turkish connection that flowed through Marseilles under the control of the Corsican crime syndicates. This created an ever greater demand for Heroin produced in the Golden Triangle region of Southeast Asia - especially Burma.
Earlier, in 1949, the region became an armed redoubt for fleeing Chinese nationalist forces - under the command of Chiang Kai-Shek - following their rout by Mao's Red Army. The CIA established a massive support operation that used these former Chinese forces to collect intelligence inside China, engage in pitched battles with communist forces and act as a "trip-wire" to a feared communist invasion of Southeast Asia. To finance this secret little war, the CIA required the type of black funds that come from the large scale sale of narcotics. It was here that the old OSS "China hands" did their duty, by turning the region into largest single Opium producer of the world, accounting for close to 1000 tons by 1961.
Today, the Burmese "growing fields" remain under the watchful control of the CIA backed warlord, Khun Sa. It is here that out story comes full circle. In Part One we revealed the contents of an affidavit signed by Colonel Cutolo regarding his direct knowledge and involvement of US military sanctioned Cocaine trafficking from Bogota, Columbia to Panama. The senior US Special Forces commanding officer of the entire region at that time was Colonel Bo Gritz. Gritz was one of those who quietly involved himself in the investigation of Cutolo's death and those of other officers.
In 1978, Gritz, a long time campaigner for US Missing in Action/Prisoners of War (MIA/POWs) from the Vietnam era, was informed by Ross Perot that three American POWs were now held by Khun Sa and that the warlord had agreed to hand them over. Perot made arrangements to gain access to Khun Sa's headquarters in the remote hills of Shanland, via high level contacts in the Chinese government. Gritz knowing he could get in and out a lot faster by utilizing his network of contacts in the region, set off with a few hand-picked ex Special Forces men.
It took Gritz and his team three days to negotiate their way through the wild and remote territory of Shanland. Eventually meeting with a bewildered Khun Sa, Gritz was told that there had never been any US POW's. However, during their conversation, Gritz asked why Khun Sa was so heavily involved in Opium, pointing out how many problems this caused for America. The reply was astonishing. Khun Sa stated that his entire Opium supply - 900 tons for 1989 - was bought by the US government. The warlord then stated he wanted to change production as he hated Opium, and if Gritz could get the US to provide just one tenth of what it spent in the war on drugs in the region, he would shift production to other crops.
Gritz took this suggestion back to the US government and was amazed to learn that the offer was spurned. The former Green Beret Colonel also discovered that he would become a target of US dirty tricks if he didn't back away from the Opium subject. Ignoring these threats, Gritz traveled back to Burma for a second meeting with Khun Sa, five months later. This time he took a video recorder and asked Khun Sa to name the names of those responsible on camera.
Khun Sa instructed his secretary to read the names from his diary, but stipulated that the names he was going to reveal were old ones and not those he was presently doing business with. The US government officer responsible for buying the Opium crop was Richard Armitage - a high level and well known administration official. Armitage was working, the secretary read, with an individual named Santos Trafficante, who operated as Armitage's "traffic manager." Gritz was well aware of who Trafficante was - the legendary Florida "Boss" of the Mafia.
During a 1991 lecture, Gritz pointed out the economics of Khun Sa's Heroin pipeline on the US government. The warlord was paid $300,000 per ton from the US government, but the product sold on the street for $1 million per pound. "No one wants him out of business," Gritz observed wryly.
Once more returning to America, Gritz attempted to get someone in the administration - including Vice President George Bush - to take note of his information. His approaches were forcefully spurned. As a gesture of goodwill to the US government, Khun Sa wrote a letter to President Bush offering him free and gratis one ton of No 4 pure Asian heroin. This was the warlord's way of offering an incentive with the US to reach an agreement aimed at converting production from Opium to another crop. Bush didn't respond to the letter.
Disgusted, Gritz began actively campaigning to alert Americans just what their government was doing in their name. This eventually resulted in Gritz being arraigned on criminal charges for using a false passport during his visit to Burma. Pleading guilty to the charge, but pointing out that this was standard procedure in the world of "black operations," the jury found him innocent. Since that time Gritz has become an outspoken critic of successive governments - and their duplicitous, secret policies - and as a consequence has suffered at the hands of a wretchedly biased media.
Despite this, Gritz central story was not abandoned. Others had taken up the call from behind the scenes. Quiet investigations into the hidden activities of Richard Armitage, began in earnest. An immensely powerful "insider," Armitage had arranged for Colonel Dave Brown to been placed next to the president, as a military liaison, on a daily basis. The purpose of this move was in the words of one individual familiar with these events to "subtly influence his thinking daily." Moreover, "other actions of this type had been instituted in key departments and agencies."10
With the president effectively muzzled, Armitage and his small coterie of Washington movers and shakers believed they were untouchable. To a large extent they were. Already the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Armitage was nominated, in February 1989, by a grateful President Bush to become Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. This move was blocked and Armitage was, instead, nominated for the post of Secretary of the Army.
Behind the scenes, a virtual war was in progress as the department of Justice and the FBI fought to indict Armitage for his narcotics and other criminal activities. These measures were powerfully resisted by Attorney General Thornburg, a political appointee of President Bush. Significantly, however, Armitage was also under scrutiny by Federal Investigators working for the President's Commission on Organized Crime, with a focus on foreign organized criminal activity in gambling and drug trafficking.
This resulted from Armitage's close association with a Vietnamese female, Ngdyet Tui (Nanette) O'Rourke. The latter was at the center of an extremely large scale gambling ring operated by US based Vietnamese. O'Rourke was awarded US citizenship, according to one source, under "highly suspect circumstances." She was also suspected of being a prostitute. As investigators developed their case, they came to believe that Armitage's association with O'Rourke dated back to his service in Vietnam, when he is thought to have operated a shady bar with her in Saigon. There were also suspicions that O'Rourke operated as Armitage's "courier."
Another source who was involved in these investigations noted that " nearly every Vietnamese woman involved in major gambling operations on the East Coast [of America] is married to an American who is either CIA or has connections to the agency," - including O'Rourke's husband. Meanwhile, yet another investigator who believed Armitage was "dirty" was frustrated in his investigations by Frank Carlucci, the Secretary of Defense, and other powerful patrons. In 1975 during Armitage's CIA tour in Vietnam, Carlucci was the no2 man in the CIA.
Because of the numerous high level obstructions, investigations into Armitage's criminal activities were curtailed, but not before some damaging information had been gathered. Not least of this was Armitage's special relationship with O'Rourke. Investigators discovered a photo, believed to have been taken professionally, showing a naked O'Rourke posing in her bedroom with a partly undressed Armitage. This, and other factors, led investigators and, in fact, some very influential political insiders, to conclude that O'Rourke was really working for North Vietnamese intelligence, and that the photo had been used to blackmail Armitage into becoming a spy.11
Such was the strength of the information developed on Armitage that he was forced to abandon his nomination for Secretary of the Army, and, in fact, all other official US government posts. Subsequently, Defense officials stated privately that Armitage will never again be permitted to darken the doors of the Department of Defense. Known as "Mr. Phu" (literally meaning "Mr. Rich") amongst the Vietnamese community, Armitage, despite his disgrace was still able to count on the enormous power of his political patrons and avoided criminal prosecution. Knowing far too much about US government "dirt" during the previous three decades provided him with an instant "do not go to jail" card.
By 1992, the Opium crop from Khun Sa's region of the Golden Triangle had reached a staggering 300,000 tons. Whereas this had always been difficult to convey due to mountainous terrain, a high speed tarmac road had been built allowing trucks to move the drug at high speed to government run airports in Thailand. From here, refined Heroin is flown direct to the US and other western destinations.
If Frank Carlucci - formerly No 2 in the CIA hierarchy - was one of Armitage's principal "protectors" during his "difficult" years, we can also legitimately ask who else might have been protecting the disgraced one time CIA officer. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, George Bush reigned as the CIA's No 1 honcho, following his appointment by President Gerald Ford as Director of Central Intelligence. This might make for a small world, but clearly a very dirty one, too.
In the final analysis, the CIA's ongoing activities on behalf of a small clique of powerful individuals clearly does amount to a secret government that uses democratic structures as a little more than a useful facade to hide behind. Drugs, a phenomenally profitably product, have financed much of the secret government's secret activities. Weapons, too, are another useful and highly profitable tool extracted from the public purse. The over-riding yet covert policy is apparently to continually create nasty wars overseas and at the same time, keep the folks back home drugged up to their eyeballs. Or rather, those sections of society that are viewed as a bothersome adjunct to the self elected elite masters who rule from the shadows.
The kicker to the whole story, is not just that it's done in your name and the name of freedom and democracy - captivating slogans that mean less than nothing to those who utter them - but it's your money, your tax dollars, that continues to finance the entire scam. Maybe one reason why the slang term for drugs is dope?
ENDS
The Yale material has been liberally extracted from Kris Millegan's excellent essay "Everything you wanted to know about Skull and Bones but were afraid to ask." Other first class material is available in Paul Goldstein's and Jeffrey Steinberg's "George Bush, Skull and Bones and the New World Order." Both are available on the internet only, so far as I am aware.
Paul DiRenzo interview with McCoy, November 1991.
For a detailed analysis of the connection between drugs and MIA/POWs see "Kiss the Boys Goodbye" by Jensen-Stevenson and Stevenson (Bloomsbury 1990).
See Corso's 17 September 1996 testimony to the US House Subcommittee on Military Personnel. "The 'No Win' policy was contained in NSC 68, NSC 68/2, and NSC 135/3," Corso told Congressmen, adding that "the basis for this policy was in directives ORE 750, NIE 2 2/1, 2/2, 10 and 11. We called it the 'Fig leaf Policy.'"
Figures quoted by McCoy during his interview with Paul DiRenzio, 9 November 1991.
See "Kiss the Boys Goodbye - by Stevenson & Stevenson p97 (Futura 1990).
National Security Council memorandum 68. This document outlined the US requirement resulting in the cold war.
Confidential papers in this writers possession.
McCoy's interview by radio host Paul DiRienzo, 9 November 1991.
Excerpted from a letter addressed to Senator Paul Laxalt dated 27 April 1987
I am reliably informed that Ross Perot was one of those who believed Armitage was a North Vietnamese spy.
The moral to Webb's story is don't expect the major media to inform you of what is really going on in the world. They won't. To paraphrase Walter Mattheu's one-liner uttered to perfection in the movie JFK: "These dogs don't hunt." Least-ways not anymore. The old media "blood-hound" is, today, curled up on a rug in front of the salary fire. His muscles have wasted, his belly is full and his nose has forgotten how to twitch - and his arm twitching dreams are of earlier days.