Robbins, Christopher. Air America. New York: Avon Books, 1985. 328 pages.

There are at least two books and a controversial movie about Air America, which is known for ferrying opium to market in exchange for Meo support of the CIA's military strategy in Laos. Robbins has one chapter on the opium question, but concentrates more on material he collected from "personal interviews with pilots, copilots, kickers, ground personnel, administrative workers, CIA men, journalists, and people on the fringe of the strange world of the Agency's air proprietaries."

Air America, which at its height had the largest commercial airfleet in the world, was secretly run by the CIA. A study of the executives and lawyers who played shell games with various CIA proprietaries ought to be done someday. When E-Systems bought Air Asia from the CIA in 1975, they pointed out that their intelligence contracting was with the Air Force, not the CIA, and that former CIA director William Raborn, a director of E-Systems, was not involved in the purchase. E-Systems president John W. Dixon insists that "we have never done any business with the CIA," even though other former top CIA officials are among the senior executives at E-Systems, and Dixon himself was a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers in 1983. Okay, we'll assume that they work together out of love of country to prevent excessive corporate profiteering....
ISBN 0-380-89909-4

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