CIA and the Drug Business

Special Report: The corrupt connections between U.S. intelligence and drug enforcement go back more than seven decades as American spies and drug investigators routinely crossed paths and collaborated — with the interests of average citizens never high on the agenda, as author Douglas Valentine describes.

By Douglas Valentine

The outlawing of narcotic drugs at the start of the Twentieth Century, the turning of the matter from public health to social control, coincided with the belief that the U.S. government had an obligation to American industrialists to create markets in every nation in the world, whether those nations liked it or not.

Civic institutions, like public education, were required to sanctify this policy, while “security” bureaucracies were established to ensure the citizenry conformed to the state ideology. Secret services, both public and private, were likewise established to promote the expansion of private American economic interests overseas.