The Enemy Within
Part two of a three part series looking at why America's most powerful suppliers claim to be fighting a War on Drugs
Norml News 1993/1994 Summer
The article 'CIAint kidding', in the summer issue of the NORML News outlined how the CIA collaborates with drug smugglers from Sicily, Corsica, Cuba, Columbia, Panama and Mexico, in order to secure help in anti-communist activities. The article also looked at how the 'narco-terrorist' theory legitimises these activities. Before we return to Central American politics in part three, we will examine how the 'War on Drugs' has been used as an excuse by the American government to spy on and intimidate the American public.
'Fighting drugs' has been used as a smokescreen for years. In 1966 Nelson Rockefeller campaigned for re-election as Governor of New York by saying that almost all crime in New York was committed by junkies. Using "...fictional statistics and unencumbered by facts, he achieved radical alterations in social control (addicts could be detained for up to 5 years without trial under one new Rockefeller law)" .
When Richard Nixon became president of the USA in 1968, he had two priorities. To fulfil an election promise to reduce crime, and to establish a federal agency under White House control to neutralise his enemies. Though the Federal Government had little jurisdiction over violent crimes, it did have jurisdiction over drug trafficking. Borrowing from Rockefeller, it was a simple move to blame all crime on drugs and then attack that. Further, persuading the public that "they and their children were threatened by a rampant epidemic of narcotics addiction... (meant) they would not object to...no knock warrants, pretrial detention, wire taps and unorthodox strike forces".
But if Nixon really wanted to fight a War on Drugs he faced a problem: the collusion of his own government in the trade.
In his book The Politics of Heroin, Alfred McCoy outlines how heroin addiction had almost disappeared from the American scene during WW2, due to disruption of the traffic. But the disappearance of heroin addiction was not to be... Within several years, in large part due to US foreign policy... the drugs syndicates were back in business, the poppy fields in South East Asia started to expand, and heroin refineries multiplied both in Marseilles and Hong Kong."
He explains how the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) allied itself to the Sicilian Mafia, and the CIA recruited Corsican gangsters, to combat growing sympathy for the Communist Party in Europe. "The Sicilian... and the Corsican underworld were to provide most of the heroin smuggled into the United States for the next two decades".
Of the US role in the heroin trade in IndoChina, before and during the Vietnam War, he says "American diplomats and secret agents have been involved at three levels: 1) Coincidental complicity by allying with groups involved in the drug traffic; 2) aiding the traffic by covering up for known heroin traffickers; and 3) actively transporting opium and heroin. It is ironic, to say the least, that America's heroin plague is of its own making" .
By 1973, Nixon had consolidated his national police force under the name the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). He was very close to achieving what amounted to, in Epstein's words "an American coup d'etat" . The reason he failed was the Watergate scandal. In the aftermath, the DEA was forced to keep a very low profile.
After Nixon resigned, marijuana became increasingly acceptable. By 1978, ten states had decriminalised possession of, small amounts. President Carter was about to decriminalise at federal level when his administration was hit by a scandal involving a senior aide. Action on cannabis was postponed, and Carter was not re-elected.
The second major event, of 1978, concerning the War on Drugs, was a Symposium on Marijuana, organised by Gabriel Nahas and held in Reims, France. Massive publicity was given to this meeting, which trumpeted a host of bogus claims which have since become standard in the War on Drugs - that marijuana causes birth defects, brain damage and cancer. The Reims Symposium gave new impetus to the War on Drugs, starting in Texas.
The Texas War on Drugs began in 1979, when Bill Clements (Nixon' s Deputy Secretary of Defence) became Governor of Texas. He began making statements about "legalising surveillance... Clements was upset to learn that Texas had no state secrets: it was going to take some canny manoeuvring to justify it" . Clements found his excuse in the War on Drugs.
Teaming up with Ross Perot, Clements created a Texas War on Drugs Committee, and spent federal money to spread the message that "Your Kids are on Dope. Dope Kills".
Using outrageous claims and highly emotive propaganda, Clements and Perot galvanised parental support for a raft of bills having little to do with stopping drug abuse, but a lot to do with expansion of police power. The new state laws included: legalising wire-tapping and room-bugging on the basis of almost no probable cause; creation of a computer system to keep track of certain prescriptions (if prescribed Demerol, for example, you would be put on a list of potential drug abusers. This would be sufficient cause to have your room bugged); attorneys whose clients were convicted of drug trafficking could be imprisoned and imprisoned for accepting tainted money.
Jim Adams, Nixon' s number two man in the FBI, was taken by Clements to Texas to head the agency designated to receive these new powers.
The Texas War on Drugs provided the bridge between the two federal wars. The ball was picked up by Nancy Reagan in 1981, to detract attention from criticism of her expensive tastes . She talked about creating a climate of intolerance for drug use. The Customs Department kicked off with a policy of strip searching citizens and confiscating cars and boats for any drug possession offence, no matter how miniscule, without trial (compare this with the DEA, who seized a Piper Seneca airplane because it contained one twentieth of a gram of marijuana dust). The Customs Bureau called this "zero tolerance".
An entire new industry developed in drug testing. Drug testing has become a powerful tool for control of the workforce, completely unrelated to the worker's ability to do the job. The de Hemandez case allowed even faecal matter to be searched. "This bizarre obsession with seizing and searching the bodily excrement of citizens is surely one of the most vivid proofs of the hysteria, the demented insanity, the absolute mental perversion that drives (the) War on Drugs" says Oliver Steinberg .
But as Steinberg points out, it is inaccurate to talk of a War on Drugs. "You can't arrest 'drugs' - you arrest people. You don't lock 'drugs' up in jail - you lock up people. You can't kill 'drugs' - you kill people" . In the frenzy of the battle, this gets forgotten.
The War on Drugs is filled with outlandish episodes. For example, in January 1989, the Minneapolis Police Department's 'crack squad' attacked a dwelling with 'flash bang' grenades. The place caught fire and in the blaze two elderly Afro-Americans, Lloyd Smalley and Lillian Weiss, died. The police chief said he was sorry, but "This is a war". No drugs were found.
In May 1990, Bok Kwan Kim's door was broken down. He was handcuffed and beaten unconscious in front of his wife and three daughters. Their place was ransacked and every item broken, including dishes and porcelain. Why? The police had a tip off that he had some amphetamines. No drugs were found.
No drugs were found at Judy Rolicheck's, either, when 25 armed police officers surrounded her family home, "holding them at gun point for two and a half hours, and shooting a family dog that had the audacity to bark - all without the benefit of a search warrant" .
The constitution has been thrown out the window in the War on Drugs. 'Use Immunity' means you can be compelled to testify in your own prosecution, or be jailed for contempt of court. Mechanisms for freezing suspected drug offenders' assets are deliberately aimed at preventing defendants from paying for their defence. Government informers infiltrate defence counsel briefings, and lawyers are being forced to testify against their own clients.
There is also a new version of the 'thought-crime'. In one case, a DEA informant approached a man in a pool hall and asked him if he wanted to make some money on a heroin deal. The man, Hampton, showed interest but said that he didn't have any heroin.
The informant obligingly supplied him with heroin obtained from the DEA and arranged for Hampton to resell it to DEA agents, who promptly busted him. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction on the grounds that Hampton was "predisposed" to selling drugs!
At the same time, evidence from ex DEA agents and informants, such as Basil Norris Abbott, indicate that the DEA is complicit in drug dealing - prepared to turn a blind eye to the dealing of their informants .
Evidence of US governmental agencies' involvement and collusion in drug trafficking within the USA and in international smuggling operations makes it clear that their supposed 'War on Drugs' is a sham. There is no will to stamp out drug use, or to save lives (which would entail action against tobacco and alcohol primarily). The intent is to sidestep legislative safeguards on the people's liberty, and the hysteria generated around illegal drug use provides the perfect feint.
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