Castillo, Celerino,
III. Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras, and the Drug War. Oakville, Ontario:
Mosaic, 1994.Much of what follows must stand as utter drival in the absence of any real "evidence" to the contrary. I particularly "like" the stories that put Casey in a bunker in Arkansas, handpicking Bill Clinton to replace George Bush. Whatever faults or positive attributes Bill Casey had and Bill Clinton may have, I can imagine no circumstances where the two men would have found each other acceptable as acquaintances, much less partners.
The October 1996 San Jose Mercury News story linking the Nicaraguan contras, the distribution of crack cocaine in southern California, and the CIA is in a separate file, "Crack/1996."
Castillo, Celerino,
III. Powderburns: Cocaine, Contras, and the Drug War. Oakville, Ontario:
Mosaic, 1994.
McGehee, "CIABASE Update Report," Aug. 1997, says that this book, by a former DEA officer, "describes the use of CIA Contra supply planes to transport drugs to the United States."
Cockburn, Alexander, and Jeffrey St. Clair. White Out: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. New York: Verso, New Left Books; 1998.
Denton, Sally, and Roger Morris. "The Crimes of Mena." http://www.magnet.ch/serendipity/ cia/c_o_mena.html [link not active] ("from the July 1995 issue of Penthouse Magazine").
The authors claim to have "documents" from the period 1981 to 1986 (when Barry Seal was killed), showing that everyone from Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton to the "mainstream media" (by which I assume the authors mean those media that wouldn't publish their article) to the paper boy was either involved in or is covering up "the crimes of Mena."
Douglass, Joseph D., Jr. Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America. Atlanta, GA: Clarion House, 1990.
Surveillant 1.1: The author sees a "war-by-drugs against the U.S. by both China and the USSR and its surrogates.... [His] research is supported by abundant documents and notes.... [Douglass points to] links to the intelligence services of the USSR, China, and Cuba."
Kruger, Henrik.
The Great Heroin Coup: Drugs, Intelligence, and International Fascism. Chicago: South End Press, 1980.
Wilcox: "Leftist conspiracy theory involving CIA, narcotics."
Kwitny, Jonathan.
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA. New York: Norton, 1987.
According to Hartung, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jul. 1988, this book "delves into ... the rise and fall of the Australian-based Nugan Hand bank in the second half of the 1970s.... Kwitny ... is scrupulously careful not to stretch his conclusions beyond the available evidence."
Levine, Michael.
Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence, and Subterfuge Lost Us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War. New York: Delacorte, 1990.
Petersen says that this book is an "[e]xpose with intelligence aspects, by [a] former DEA official."
Levine, Michael,
and Laura Kavanau-Levine. The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic -- An Undercover Odyssey. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993.
Surveillant 3.4/5 comments that the authors write in "a 'you are there' style." The book purports to expose "the U.S. government's questionable actions in its unsuccessful 'war on drugs,'" and "suggests that the CIA-created La Corporacion became a 'General Motors of cocaine' trafficking.... Levine is the Drug Bureau Director for Cape Cod, MA."
McCoy, Alfred
W. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Brooklyn, NY: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991.
Surveillant 1.2 identifies the 1991 title of this book as "revised and expanded" to include Afghanistan. McCoy charges that "CIA and State Department officials ... covered up the involvement of our Indochinese allies in heroin trafficking ... [and] participated in aspects of the narcotics trade." Constantinides notes McCoy's "practice of using unidentified sources or questionable source attributions," and suggests that the book be compared with the results of later congressional investigations.
According to Sinkin, NameBase, McCoy recounts the "symbiotic relationship between drug merchants, and intelligence and law enforcement.... 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."
Reed, Terry,
and John Cummings. Compromised: Clinton, Bush, and the CIA. New York: Shapolsky, 1993.
Surveillant 4.1 sees this as "[c]onspiracy weaving at its finest. Given a button, the authors have crafted an entire 3-piece suit." The book has "as much logic as the spoof publication Spy magazine." But it is useful -- as "a litmus test of ultimate gullibility."
Scott, Peter
Dale, and Jonathan Marshall. Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. 1992. [pb]
According to Ramsey, MI 19.1, the "villainy theory" on which this book is based "collapses when one reviews the entire story that was known, through unclassified sources, when the book was published." This is a "churlish cannon shot in a political gutter war." See also, Ramsey's review in Parameters, Autumn 1995. Surveillant 2.4 says the authors "conclude that America's war on drugs possibly has been a sham.... Many of the findings are based on the 1989 Kerry Report and hearings."
Smyth, Frank.
"Still Seeing Red: The CIA Fosters Death Squads in Columbia."
Progressive, Jun. 1998, 23-26.
Being of the mindset that outrage does not replace research, two errors of fact in the first 13 lines of this article provide sufficient evidence of the author's lack of knowledge about his subject for this reader to abandon this piece: (a) "...in the basement of its Directorate of Operations headquarters in Langley..."; and (b) "the agency is seeking a new purpose to justify its $26.7 billion annual subsidy."
Return to CIA Table of Contents
Return to Assorted Accusations
Table of Contents