As a recreational intoxicant, alcohol has been with the human race for thousands of years. It is very easy to come by. Indeed, it's early appearance in our history can be explained by it's tendency to show up even where it is not wanted.
As mankind moved from hunter-gatherer to the agrarian phase, and the means to store various agricultural products started to be developed, the process of fermentation introduced itself to those early farmers.
Alcohol was everywhere, in every home, for thousands of years.
Until.....
It was called "Prohibition". Sold as a moral necessity, to end public drunkenness, and ignoring the inherent sociological instabilities created whenever government intrudes on personal morality, Prohibition was in fact little more than a marketing device to increase demand and profits for the product of alcohol.
With the vote of the U.S. Congress, alcohol that had been selling for mere pennies was instantly worth ten times as much.
That sheer force of monetary power took on a life of it's own, and led to the wholesale corruption of the entire government. Those who profited from illegal alcohol actually supported the continuance of Prohibition, funding (via intermediaries) the temperance movement. In this way, profits were perpetuated (and weaker competitors shut down to make the police look good). Turf wars were settled with drive-by shootings.
Once the rum-runners and their pet Congresscritters were at the peak of their power, the Congress repealed prohibition. This "locked" the new distribution of power where it was, leaving the rum-runners safe from upstarts unable to exploit the same means by which the rum-runners had come to power. After all, the first official act by any new ruling class is to make unusable the very means by which they came to power.
The effects of prohibition are with us still. The crime syndicates whoes roots lay in prohibition wisely invested their ill-gotten wealth in places like Las Vegas, an enterprise unreachable by the more law abiding, and the political power purchased by such wealth such as the Kennedys, still shapes the American political landscape to this day.
In criminalizing alcohol, Congress created a society in which crime paid. That encouraged crime, because crime was an attractive alternative to more benevolent pursuits. As long as Congress, in the form of corrupted politicians shared in that booty, they were little motivated to change the situation until the sheer weight of the scandal threatened the very legitimacy of the government itself.
Along with alcohol, early man discovered that certain "Magic" plants produced some pleasurable effects. Alexander the Great fed hemp the campfires of his men before battle. The eastern coast of the Mediterrainian was the route by which opium poppies moved from Turkey down to Egypt and Arabia. (This sheds light on the reported difficulty Jesus had keeping his disciples awake on the Mount of Olives).
The indigenous peoples of the Andes Mountains discovered that the leaves of the Coca plant, when mixed with calcium from burnt and ground up seashells, helped them cope with the thin air of the high mountains. Coca chewing became an integral part of their daily lives, while more exotic concoctions were incorporated into the rituals of the royalty. Gold Coca/calcium containers called "Poporos" are found in all royal tombs, and stone carvings of rituals involving pleasure/pain in which are seen these Poporos survive to this day in South America.
Coca contains several powerful alkaloids, of which the most powerful and best known is cocaine.
Like alcohol, what started out as available to everyone was soon exploited as a commercial product. Cocaine quickly found a home in dental topical anesthetics, pain killers such as Demerol, and even the original version of Coca-Cola (the pause that REALLY refreshes).
Cocaine was everywhere. There is even an unflattering parody of a cocaine user in one of Charlie Chaplin's films.
Until......
Claiming moral and health reasons (which are admittedly far more valid concerns in the case of cocaine) Congress outlawed cocaine. Coca-Cola removed that particular derivative of the plant leaf from the recipe; it's fortune already made.
With the vote of the U.S. Congress, powders that had been selling for mere pennies were instantly worth a thousand times as much.
That sheer force of monetary power has taken on a life of it's own, and led to the wholesale corruption of the entire government. Those who profit from cocaine actually support the continuance of "The War On Drugs" funding (via intermediaries) such "feel good" and totally ineffective programs as D.A.R.E. In this way, profits are kept high (and weaker competitors shut down to make the police look good). Turf wars were settled with drive-by shootings.
The CIA's involvement in the drug trades dates back to at least the Viet-Nam war, when the United States inherited from France not only the political realm but the French Intelligence pipeline into Kuhn Sa's heroin fields, the source of the "French Connection" made famous by the Eddie Egan arrest in New York, and the Roy Scheider/Gene Hackman film of the same name. Heroin from Kuhn Sa's poppies found it's way into the United States via Air America and the body bags of our Viet-Nam dead. The profits, not subject to review by Congress, funded the most covert of CIA operations, not likely to have been approved of by Congress in the first place. The flow of Khun Sa's heroin into the United States is documented in Bo Gritz' book, later a documentary, "A Nation Betrayed." The CIA airline that carried the heroin, Air America, was first made famous by the Mel Gibson film of the same name, then later by the assassination of pilot Barry Seal and the crash of Eugene Hassenfuss.
It's quite possible that a great many of the CIA assets involved in the transport of heroin back to the United States deluded themselves into thinking that what they did served some "higher" purpose, excusing the damage to the citizens with the justification that if they didn't ship in the heroin, someone else would and with far less "noble" ends for the money. Certainly, the concept of government selling addictive drugs to the population is hardly a new one. The British even fought a war in China to preserve it's right to operate opium dens, and so corrupted the imperial government that the way was paved for the eventual communist takeover. Not exactly the high point of British Foreign Policy.
Of course, whatever foreign policy objectives the CIA supported with their Viet-Nam heroin operation were clearly not achieved. Viet-Nam ranks among the worst political disasters in American history, and in combination with the British affair in China, should serve warning that narcotics and foreign policy is an imprudent blend.
It is a truism that many things are easier to get into than out of, and the drug trade is no exception. Regardless of how noble and well intentioned the reasons for starting into the drug trade, the reasons to stay quickly become clear. As addictive as the drugs are themselves, the drug money is even more so. But whereas drug addiction is a personal issue, and can, by sheer force of will, be ended, drug money addiction is a group addiction subject to majority rule of the participants.
Even the most powerful drug lord in the world must face the money addiction of those he has corrupted. Henchmen, government officials, the owners of businesses used to launder money, the distributors, all would turn on the drug lord were he or she so foolish as to try to shut down the operation. Being a drug lord is a lifetime job.
Thus it is that even the top level CIA officers connected to the drug trade know what they have created underneath them, and how little chance they have to survive trying to stop it. The drug money flow takes on a life of it's own, directing itself, shaping the world around it, destroying all threats. Is it any wonder that CIA Director Deutsch is so quick to proclaim the innocence of the CIA?
With the end of the Viet-Nam war, heroin became harder and more expensive to acquire. The search for a replacement drug soon focused on the Coca plant. Cocaine at that time was an "elitist" drug. Very expensive, more a status symbol than anything else. Available only in small quantities.
As was revealed during the Iran-Contra hearings and Oliver North's diaries, the Reagan/Bush White House wanted to bypass the congressional limits imposed on support for the Contras in Nicaragua. The Boland Amendment banned taxpayer funding for the Contras, but did not address the issue of "private" funding, a loophole North and associates exploited, even though it was contrary to the clear intent of the Boland Amendment.
Ignoring the lessons of the Opium Wars and Viet-Nam, the smuggling pipeline that ferried untraceable M-16s down to the Contras ferried cocaine back. Both the gun factories and the airfield used for the flights were located in Arkansas.
Mind you, if it hadn't been Arkansas it would have been somewhere else, and if it hadn't been Bill Clinton, it would have been someone else. The politics of contraband knows no loyalty except to itself.
Had it not been for the crash of the "Fat Lady", the aircraft purchased from Air America by smuggler Barry Seal, and the testimony of surviving crew member Eugene Hassenfus, the pipeline would have stayed covert and unknown. As it was, this chance occurrence threw the entire cocaine and gun running operation briefly into the public spotlight during the Iran-Contra hearings.
The drug money flow coming into Arkansas took on that life of it's own, directing itself, shaping the world around it, destroying all threats. Those who could be corrupted were, those who could not be corrupted were soon excluded. The moral and the immoral are mutually exclusive societies. Neither tolerates well the presence of the other.
The "group addict" addicted to the drug money inevitably includes politicians. All smugglers attempt to buy influence and protection and the CIA not only had the coin of drug money, but the face-saving gloss of "National Security". Those who might hover over whether to take bribes from drug runners would be far more inclined to accept bribes from the CIA, for the "good of the nation". The CIA would use drug proceeds to bolster political candidates more sympathetic to the agencies agenda, to defeat those candidates unwilling to go along. Over time, what starts as a luxury becomes a necessity. Candidates become dependent on CIA campaign funding to win their offices.
On the strength of the funds available to it, the politics of contraband have become, in effect, an invisible third party, running it's own candidates for high office, often disguised in the livery of the two "official" parties.
Of course, such clandestine funding (being illegal) must be laundered, and that brings us to the campaign of the former Governor of Arkansas during the height of the CIA's guns and drug running operation, Bill Clinton.
It's hard to imagine that the lurry of campaign finance irregularities, untraceable contributors, cash laundered through Buddhist Temples, and John Hang's disgrace is totally unconnected with the CIA's admitted activities at Mena, Arkansas.
In light of these 1996 events now making the news, the mysterious deaths of four 1992 Clinton Campaign fund raisers, including John Hang's boss at the Department of Commerce, Ron Brown, now take on the ominous appearance of no-longer-useful laundrymen being discarded.
Now a new scandal is appearing. Once again American guns flow south across the border and drugs are coming back. This time, instead of the Contras, the recipient of clandestine US arms are the Zetas, who openly brag that the United States has supplied them with 30,000 arms, then blocked all investigations as to where those arms went even as the bloody bodies pile up. NAFTA has created a "back door" through which trucks from Mexico cross into and through the United States. bypassing the stringent crotch-grabs ordinary citizens must endure at the airports.
It appears that the drug corruption that dominated American politics in the 1990s is at work again. Drugs pour into our society and the drug interdiction efforts seem focused on merely keeping the competition out. The eyes of officialdom stare as hard as they can in the other direction.
