Brian Musgrove 111I/1/111/1111111/11/1 200008830 Red-White-and-Blue Conspiracy

Alexander and Jeffrey St Clair: Whiteout: The CIA Drugs and the Press (Verso, $50).

N THE Weekend Australianof!S-16 January 2000, tion ofa journalist"inAmerican history. Through open Frank Campbell reviewed William De Maria's accusation and newsmedia networks, where CIA­ I Deadly Disclosures: Whistlebiowing and the Ethi­ friendly journalists occupied influential positions, the cal Meltdown ofAustralia, painting a grim picture of Agency relayed counter-stories which undermined the invariable fate ofthose who"see and report wrong­ and eventuaHy ruined Webb. doing as if they lived in a working democracy". In In many ways, the story uncovered by Webb was contemporary western states, De Maria suggests, the not totally new. Decades before, the CIA had mauled whistleblowers always suffer: what they represent is the historian Alfred W. McCoy, whose book on The a spike ofconscience jammed in the machines ofpoli­ Politics ofHeroin in Southeast Asia (1972) remains an tics or corporatism, momentarily showing how the indispensable studyofAmerican foreign-policy reali­ big end of town goes about its business. There is no ties inthe Vietnam era. Despite the Agency's attempt end to the rich variety ofways in which exposers of to banit, The Politics ofHeroin was published, archiv­ public· or private-sector malpractice are damned, ing a'tradition'of US intelligence involvement in nar­ demonized and destroyed; and cotics trafficking. McCoy discovered that the cheap and Jeffrey St Clair's Whiteoutstarts withsuch a study heroin peddled to American GIs in Saigon was an ac­ in classic American character assassination. tual currency of the war-effort: a fulcrum of fund­ The book's springboard is the case of Gary Webb: raising, which financed pro-US insurgents in Laos, the San Jose Mercury Newsjournalist whofirst broke bought hardware, bribed officials, and mitigated the the story that the cocaine converted into crack and unpopular conflict's cost to the American taxpayer. soldthroughstreetgangs insouth-central Los Angeles Quite simply. addiction in America's armed forces was couldbe traced backto a San Francisco syndicate.Webb a direct outcome of official political strategy. Gary revealed that major players in San Francisco - Nicara· Webb's Mercury News story had a ;imilarflashpoint guan'refugees'- had strong links with the US intelli­ that crack-cocaine use in US cities resulted from the gence community. The crack epidemic blighting CIXs Contra-supportive activities in Central America, America's ghettoes had its origins in clandestine dirty and that the Agency aHowed 'renegade'operatives to operations:the CIA-driven waragainot theSandanistas, profit from the drug trade. This was qUickly seized inwhich the co-related traffic of arms and drugs, and upon byAfrican-American communityleaders; esca­ the imperative of raising vast stashes of unaccount­ lating, at its most extreme, to the view that the na­ able cash, were the main structuralfeatures. As Webb's tion's intelligence services tacitly utilized the story gained a national profile, through his appear­ white-crystal crack as an ethnic-cleanserofthe black ance ontalkback radio, breakfast television and neigh­ underdass. bourhood-hall stages - andthe MercUlY Newswebsite, Cockburn and St Clair's Whiteoutinspects this con­ logging 1.3 million hits per day - the initial positive troversy with balance and sound judgement But interest in his claims evaporated. "Within a couple of Webb's crack'cocaine stories are only the merest be­ weeks, the storythat Webb laid [in late August 1996] ginning; setting up an argument which valuably ex­ would convulse black America and prompt the Cen­ tends work such as McCoy's. The argumentative core tral Intelligence Agency first to furious denials and of Whiteoutis thatwe mustdispense withthe idea of then to one ofthe most ruthless campaigns ofvillfica- 'renegade elements' unaccountably running amok-

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Except as pennitted under the Copyright Act 1968, copying this copyright material is ~rohfbited without the permission of the copy­ right owner or its exclusive licensee or agent o~ b.y way of a licence from Copyright Agency Limited the image of'mavericks', who take self-serving liber­ the Second World War. Even 'endemic' would not ac­ ties above and beyond the supposed legal checks that curately describe the place ofdrugs in the ClA ethos: it regulate the behaviour of intelligence. When the CIA suggests deviance or chronic illness. The shocking fact, has been flushed into the open over misfired dirty­ Cockburn and St Clair assert, is the utterly quotidian ops, its stereotypical defence is to characterize the guilty nature of CIA operations. This is a healthy bureauc­ as field-agents acting without the knowledge or sanc­ racy in which organizing drug transshipments, report­ tion of superiors, or as banana-republic brigadiers and filing, business lunches and clocking-out ofthe office brigands betraying American trust, exploiting the are the workaday routines ofwell-educated, well-spo­ power given to them as paid CIA sub-contractors for ken men in suits. In contrast to the glamorous Holly­ private gain - drug pushing, election rigging, murder­ wood depiction ofespionage culture, this is the sphere ing, money laundering - as if these were preposter­ ofpublic servants, who are bid to dothe job ofachiev­ ously outside theirjob descriptions. ing American geopolitical aspirations as best theycan: The truth is that the ClA is a tight outfit, with a "it should again be emphasized," write Cockburn and disciplined chain-of-command and communications St Clair, that the ClA works not as a "'rogue' Agency system, employing people who are rigorously vetted but always as the expression ofUS government policy" and trained, whose task i' precisely to capitalize on dictated from the Oval Office. links with crime. As Whiteoutputs it: "Organizations All this might be dismissed as conspiracy theory such as the CIA require immersion in criminal milieus, were it not for the impressive research and documen· virtually unlimited supplies of 'black' or laundered tation in Whiteout. Occasionally, this involves retelling money and a long-term cadre of entirely ruthless ex­ episodes covered elseWhere, but Cockbum and St Clair ecutives (some ofthem not averse to making personal manage to produce newsupplementarymaterial.They fortunes from theircovert activities). The drug trade is draw,for example, onMartin A. Lee and Bruce Shiain's an integral part of such a world."From its foundation Acid Dreams: The Complete SocialHistoryofLSD: The in '947, the CIlis affiliations with mafiosi have been CiA, The Sixties, and Beyond (1992), adding more vic­ mutually expedient. In the late forties, the Agency tim-histories to the list of casualties in "Dr GottlIeb's employed the Corsican heroin gangs in Marseilles to House of Horrors". This was Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA smash socialist-communist factions in French politics subaltern who headed MK-ULTRA: a '950S project in­ and the union movement -largely so that American vestigating the potential of LSD as a weapon ofmass goods, flOwing throughthe seaportto a growing Euro­ derangement. In thecourse ofthis andother ClA mind­ pean market, would pass without interruption. The drug experiments, large numbers - possibly tens of Corsicans were paid in kind: with a blind-eye turned thousands - of unsuspecting American army person· to their narcotics shipments, travelling via Havana to nel and citizens were dosed with acid. Many were Miami and onto NewYork.lf"drugs end up inAmeri­ permanently maddened: as in the case of the young can veins", Cockburn and St Clair conclude, that "has artist Stanley Glickman, discussed in The Age's Good never deterred the Agency". Weekend magaZine (20 February 1999) byRuss Baker. Guaranteeing a free market for American enter­ The CIA confessed this to Congress in the late '9705; prise has been in the CI.A:s mission-statement since its and since then, as Whiteout details, it has beenforced inception. And as super-capitalists par excellence,"drug to repeated admissions of"dark alliances" with drug traders ... are oftenin oppositionto the ruling power" cartels. in leftish or unstable states, and thus allies "of para­ Whiteoutdraws onCongressional hearings, ClA pa­ mount interest to a body such as the Clli'. As Billy pers, interviews with Agency employees, and many Bragg says in 'The Marching Song of the Covert Bat­ more reputable sources to construct an overview of talions', one ofthe ClIis roles is"making the world safe systemic narco-miscreance; and there is little need for for capitalism"- 'J\nd ifyou want narcotics we can get wild speculationwhenthis is mostly a matterofpublic you those as well". record. The value of Whiteout is its comprehensive Drug trafficking, like many otherforms ofsubver­ survey ofa series of historic CIA pacts with right-wing sion -fromthe death-squad to the infiltration oftrade political movements which are, in the main, involved unions - has been an officially-endorsed keystone in in drugs and indistingUishable from organized crime. the architecture of US foreign policy since the end of Dating to its support for the notorious opium-trader

26 overland.158 •2000 Chiang Kai-shek, through the guerrilla warlord Li Mi media establishment's corruption; its reluctance to in Burma's Shan states, the CIAs CiV11 Air Transport probe the apparently improbable fringes ofgovern­ and its successor, Air America, shuttled drugs andarms mentality, and its processes of professionally exclud­ and helped build the infrastructure of what would ing dissident voices in its own ranks. In this regard, an become the'Golden Triangle' - one ofthe world's big­ investigation of the proximity of drug trafficking to gest opium-heroin suppliers. the corridors ofpower inside Washington's beltway or Then there is the tale ofColonel Oliver North - an­ in Langley. , is only one volatile issue which other 'rogue' patriot - who acted under instruction demonstrates the long and continuing collapse ofjour­ from the Reagan White House to set upthe'Iran-Con­ nalistic integrity. For years, Noam Chomsky has ar­ tra' drugs-arms deals. This is a saga studied before-in gued repeatedly that the media in countries like the Leslie Cockburn's Out Of ControL The Story of the US - and, indeed, Australia- deserve public disrespect Reagan Adm11ustration:S Secret War 1/1 Nicaragua. the for their cowed complicity and neglect ofvital social Illegal Arms Pipeline, and the Contra Drug Connec­ responsibilities. Consequently, Chomsky-himself an tion (lg88), but Whiteout puts it in perspective by outspoken critic ofAmerican aggression in Nicaragua highlighting the simultaneityof policy-based narco­ and of US narco-warfare - has been universally be­ trafficking and America's domestic attack on its own rated in the press as a conspiracisl, anarchist lunatic hapless streetjunkies. As "The queen ofthe drug war, who should have stuckto linguistics. Nancy Reagan" preached to the people - "If you're a The author biographies on Whiteoufs dustjacket casual drug user, you're an accomplice to murder"­ proudly note that Alexander Cockburn andJeffrey St her husband and his intelligence corps were flying Clair are co-editors "of the muckraking newsletter plane-loads of cocaine into Florida and California to CounterPunch". Muckraking smells bad; its habitus is pay for a CentralAmerican warwhichwas reputedly the gutter and its motivation is money-grubbing. But not happening. The Reagan administration watched, as D.H. Lawrence memorably said, "culture" itself too unconcerned, as American pilots and 'investors', often has "roots in the deep dung of cash"; and Columbian drug barons, and'refugee' Nicaraguans in Whiteout adds to that Lawrencean perception, dem­ San Francisco (CIA-backed agents) banked narco-dol­ onstrating how the promotion of American culture lars as a reward for fighting communism. Given this, and its democratic triumphalism is grounded in a Whiteoutmaintains, the international narcotics in­ squalidrealpolitikwhich enables politicians, business­ dustry Is 'business as usual'- and what odds, it asks, menandgangsters to mintvast personal fortunes as a of any single nation winning 'the war on drugs' in silent pay-offfor their functionary allegiance. In this such circumstances? context, at least,'muckraking' acquires a better odour. The resonant 'whiteout' of the book's title is the There should be more excavations ofthe policy dung­ trade in white powders - heroin and cocaine - which hill unearthed by Cockburn and St Clair -though fu­ has beenso usefultothe red-white-and-blue conspira­ ture spadeworkers ought to know in advance that, for cies hatched bythe CIA in manytroubling parts ofthe theirtrouble and conscience, theywill be branded con­ world. 'Whiteout' is also the magic stuffthat obliter­ spiracy-theorists (or worse), threatened, harassed, ates typescript, that over-writes the pages ofhistory dragged through the courts, and greeted with main­ with blank denia!, that creates a gap-in-sense where stream-media disbelief. To anyone who is already con­ different words can be inserted. Whiteout discusses versant with the extensive literature on nareo-politics, this kind ofscripted re-invention inminute detail, show­ however, the revelations dug up by White Outwill be ing how the CIA retains "journalistic assets" in high sometimes familiar and generally credible. For those places; writers and broadcasters who willingly recy­ who wish to begin exploring this byzantine global cle misinformation supplied by the Agency as legiti­ underworld, Whiteoutis an absorbing introduction. mate news, narratively masking what they know to be wrong and profiting from the deception. Brian Musgrove teaches at the University ofSouthern Afinal lesson ofWhiteout, embedded in the tale of Queensland. His first book on drug literature is due Gary Webb's systematic ruination, is ofthe American soon; a second, on drugs and geopolitics, is in train.

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