McCoy, Alfred W. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Brooklyn: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991. 634 pages.

When Noriega was delivering Medellin cartel competitors to the DEA, he may not have known that he was the latest in a long line of officials performing such a function. Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, recounts how Hong Kong law enforcement similarly protected their favored heroin dealers in the 1970s, as did the new York branch of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in the 1960s.

The symbiotic relationship between drug merchants, and intelligence and law enforcement, is examined in detail by McCoy. From Southeast Asia, to Central America, to Afghanistan, the trail of CIA covert action and drug smuggling runs parallel. McCoy also examines the banks that preceded BCCI as havens for tax evaders and criminals protected from prosecution because they banked with covert operators, and pinpoints critical historical periods when the narcotics trade might have been stopped had it not been for U.S. intelligence agencies.

There are two versions of this book, the classic first edition (1973), and an expanded second edition (1991) that includes Afghanistan.

-- Lanny Sinkin
ISBN 1-55652-125-1

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