Drugs as Weapons of War: The US CIA and the Heroin Trade
Why examine the role of the CIA in the rise of the global Heroin trade? Three reasons-
First, during my recent travels to Rome, I learned of “Operation Blue Moon (Operazione Blue Moon),” which is widely covered in Italian press, publications, and embedded in the Italian political belief system. An account paradoxically completely absent in both the CIA declassified document reading room and in US press coverage. In Italy, “Operation Blue Moon” is shorthand for a commonly believed narrative involving collusion between the CIA and the Italian Mafia to flood dissident Italian groups with inexpensive heroin.
Second, the Chinese CCP government appears to be intentionally targeting the USA with cheap imported Fentanyl, a drug similar to Heroin in mechanism of action but much more potent and deadly. In the US, the commonly accepted narrative is that this is a form of intentional but surreptitious politically motivated chemical warfare by the CCP against American citizens intended to corrode and compromise the cultural backbone of the USA. Assuming this to be true, this strategy and associated tactics would be eerily similar to Italian claims of CIA strategy and tactics in the case of the widely held belief in the history of “Operation Blue Moon.” Tangential but related is that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was once addicted to Heroin and was convicted of felony Heroin possession.
And third, today, with what is proposed to be the complete release of the entire unredacted dossier of US Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we may be able to finally conclude whether or not the US CIA was involved in that seminal event. Was his assassination an internal coup? HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has repeatedly asserted that he believes that the CIA was involved in the assassinations of both his uncle and father.
Is the culture of the CIA truly so evil, so Machiavellian, that the organization would promote and facilitate the global heroin trade as a political weapon? Is it so evil that it would even participate in a violent domestic coup by assassinating a sitting US President to defend and advance its organizational interests? Or assassinate a leading presidential candidate that would likely act to reduce CIA power or even dissolve the organization? Well, the willingness of the CIA (and its corrupt partner organization USAID) to assassinate or in a multitude of other ways overturn sovereign foreign governments is well documented. As is the long history of CIA/USAID foreign election interference, including interference in Italian elections.
For those who have not read “The Prince,” Machiavellianism is a psychological trait centered on manipulation, coldness, and indifference to morality. There can be no doubt that the dominant culture of the US CIA is both Machiavellian and utilitarian – a belief system in which the ends are considered to justify the means. In the field of personality psychology, Machiavellianism is the name of a personality trait construct characterized by manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest. Does this sound like the culture of the CIA as you know it? Speaking for myself, it is a precise description of the trained CIA agents I have known during my career. I have come to believe that dark triad personality traits are both selected for and intentionally amplified in how CIA agents are trained. Picture “The Real” Anthony Fauci, and you have a pretty good example. A US Government bureaucrat known to surreptitiously frequent CIA headquarters, according to various whistleblowers.
Turning to Wikipedia for the historical “official narrative” regarding the theory that the CIA played a hand in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:
The CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. According to ABC News, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is represented in nearly every theory that involves American conspirators. The secretive nature of the CIA, and the conjecture surrounding the high-profile political assassinations in the United States during the 1960s, has made the CIA a plausible suspect for some who believe in a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have ascribed various motives for CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, including Kennedy’s firing of CIA director Allen Dulles, Kennedy’s refusal to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy’s plan to cut the agency’s budget by 20 percent, and the belief that the president was weak on communism. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
Worth noting is that the very origins of the use of the term “conspiracy theory” in US corporate media traces back to CIA and FBI injection of precisely that term into the national dialog (via media surrogates/operation mockingbird) as a way to delegitimize those promoting suspicions that CIA was involved in the assassination. When you hear the term “conspiracy theory’, you should immediately suspect the hidden hand of US/Five Eyes intelligence propaganda/PsyWar operations.
What is the evidence that the CIA has promoted the Heroin trade?
NCJ Number
133614
Journal
Progressive Volume: 55 Issue: 7 Dated: (July 1991) Pages: 20-26
Author(s) A W McCoy
Date Published1991
Length 7 pages
Annotation
The author contends that American diplomats and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents have been involved in the narcotics trade during the Cold War at three levels: coincidental complicity through covert alliances with groups actively engaged in drug trafficking; support of drug trafficking by covering up for drug lords; and active engagement in the transport of heroin and opium.
Abstract
Covert CIA operations in Afghanistan, for example, have transformed South Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market. The author reviews President Carter’s policies in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Drug Enforcement Administration efforts, heroin production and trade in South Asia, the role of Pakistan in supporting the Mujahideen resistance fighters in Afghanistan, and involvement of Pakistan in channeling U.S. aid to the Afghan resistance. He emphasizes the role of the CIA in U.S. foreign policies toward the region and its complicity in the narcotics trade. He also examines the significance of host government corruption in relation to CIA operations.
PBS Frontline
“Guns, Drugs and the CIA”
#613
Original Air Date: May 17, 1988
Produced and Written by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn
Directed by Leslie Cockburn
You can access the archived transcript here.
There is abundant evidence supporting CIA involvement in the distribution of Heroin and other drugs.
I rest my case.
The story of “Operation Blue Moon” provides new insights into why the CIA seems to have an interest in expanding the availability and distribution of addictive opiates like Heroin.
What is “Operation Blue Moon”?
Heroin and Italy’s ‘Disappeared’ Generation
By Emilio Torrini
The alleged collaboration between drug traffickers and government forces in pushing heroin during the 1970s in Italy brought on a devastating rise in opiate dependency and deaths in the 1980s, creating the so-called “disappeared generation.”
Drug use in Italy experienced a seismic shift in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1974 and 1975, heroin began to appear in large quantities on Italy’s drug market. During this period, heroin use was primarily concentrated among the country’s counterculture; groups who were firmly against the political establishment and who rejected consumerism. However, this association between heroin and rebellion/political struggle did not last long. By the beginning of the 1980s, use of this substance involved groups across the societal spectrum, including the most disadvantaged social classes, adolescents, students, and professionals, among others.
There is, of course, no simple explanation behind this sudden spread of heroin in Italy. One overarching dynamic, though, is the shift in drugs marketing by dealers; as dictated by traffickers, there was a dearth of other narcotics on the market and an abundance of heroin at low prices. Once a number of drug users had shifted to the opiate and in many cases become dependent, drug sellers exploited this by increasing the price.
The motive behind introducing heroin onto Italy’s black market in such a calculated way is tied up in conspiracy theories that traffickers at the time were colluding with the government and American intelligence services to quell anti-government social movements. Such movements were known to constitute one of society’s larger groups of recreational drug users, and the rationale in pushing heroin in these circles was that it would essentially render them ineffective.
What has become known as Operation Blue Moon (Operazione Blue Moon) allegedly had three main components:
1) The aforementioned market move. The mafia, through their control of the soft drugs market, had no difficulty in orchestrating a drought of one set of narcotics and a glut of another; heroin. Thousands of people, who had no prior experience of the drug, or knowledge of its effects, were not resistant to trying it.
2) To ensure heroin dominated every area of the market, the regulated supply of opiates – principally in the form of morphine – similarly dried up. Although prices were higher, morphine users had no choice but to switch to heroin, considering that it is a pharmacologically suitable substitute.
3) Arrests related to other drugs such as hashish and cannabis, along with interdiction of these substances increased as the government enforced a clampdown on illicit narcotics other than heroin.
In the context of the final component, the dynamic of the public-police partnership was also extremely important in ensuring that drug use outside of the newly available, little understood heroin was cracked down on. Authorities were feeling the pressure from media outlets and the public to combat the perceived negative effects of drugs in Italy at the time.
To illustrate a typical case in 1970s Italy, a parent would be more likely to report their child to the police for drug use in a misguided attempt to “save them,” rather than fostering a network of support. The result in such a scenario was the transformation of the family into a network of “free espionage” for the police.
The heightened stigma and criminalization attached to all other substances than heroin left Italy’s youth vulnerable to the latter’s devastating effects. Authorities were not concerned with policing the drug as heavily as other narcotics meaning people could essentially use without fear of arrest at the time. Even if someone were interested in purchasing something like hashish, they were being increasingly deterred by its scarcity, high prices (£2-3 per gram, a huge price for the era), and poor quality.
A research report on the trend of the epidemic of drug use in Italy, published in 1992 by the British Journal of Addiction, indicates a noticeable increase in both drug-related deaths (mainly from overdose) and HIV/AIDS cases reported in injecting users during the 1980s. The report authors estimate that in 1977 there were 28,000 opiate users; by 1982, this had jumped to a staggering 92,000. To highlight this increase further, the authors found during their study period (1985-89), that the number of subjects attending drug dependency units increased from 13,905 to 61,689, a rise largely driven by the uptick in heroin use.
Unlike places such as the United Kingdom – where the rise in heroin use in the 1980s was mainly due to its spread in areas hardest hit by the economic recession – Italy’s increase was one partly driven by a period of comparative prosperity. Areas of the country, particularly the north-east, began to experience sudden and increased economic well-being. In fact, the 1980s were years of economic and social modernization, years in which the Italian society quickly got rid of the previous decades’ features. As a consequence, the increased financial capacity of large segments of the population allowed a cross-cutting diffusion of drugs, in particular heroin. The middle class and professionals had newfound disposable income, and thanks to the lack of education on the drug, were using it in many cases to purchase heroin.
According to several studies, this phenomenon mostly hit northern Italy. Big cities such as Verona, Pordenone, Udine, Milan, Varese registered the highest level of drug users among the most disparate of social backgrounds.
Of course, this phenomenon of a manipulated black market and possible governmental involvement was not long-term. However, its impacts were lasting with the rise in heroin dependency rates and overdose deaths in the 1980s, a devastating result that ensured a disappeared generation.
In Conclusion
There is a long history of governments using highly addictive psychoactive drugs as weapons against opponents. Not just for targeting individuals, but more commonly for targeting entire societies. The British empire notoriously deployed this strategy against imperial China in the Opium wars. Italians believe that the US CIA has used this strategy as a means to undermine dissident political groups in Italy in cooperation with the Italian Mafia. If this is the case, or possibly one example of a more widely deployed strategy, then we may have an explanation for the perplexing question of why the CIA might have an interest in increasing global heroin supply. This is a question that has long bothered me when reading about US facilitation of Afghan poppy cultivation.
Is this “Operation Blue Moon” theory of CIA-Mafia collusion plausible? Before this period, it is well documented that the US CIA also cooperated with the Italian Mafia to manipulate early Italian elections to counter the risk of growing Soviet Union influence in those same early post WWII elections. One version of the various narratives concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy involves CIA/Mafia collusion. Whether or not the upcoming document releases support this theory, it is clear that the US CIA has contributed to the rise in power of the Italian Mafia to the point where it is functionally integrated into daily Italian politics, banking and government. In a very real sense, the Italian Mafia and the US CIA share similar cultures of manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest. In other words, there is a natural cultural alignment between these organizations, which lends further plausibility to these hypotheses.
So with this background and historical context, it is no surprise that the Chinese Communist Party, which also shares these dark triangle characteristics of manipulativeness, indifference to morality, lack of empathy, and a calculated focus on self-interest, would deploy a strategy of stealthy distribution of Fentanyl, a more potent Heroin, into the population of its chief geopolitical rival the United States. A sort of geopolitical quid pro quo played out over centuries, with USA being a surrogate for the British Empire. What I find particularly fascinating (and supportive) about this is that Fentanyl abuse and deaths are almost unheard of in Italy. The United States is being specifically targeted.
This is explicitly an act of war, and should be treated as such.
This is a form of political, chemical and psychological warfare, deployed by an offshore adversary, against the population and government of the United States. It is an insidious form of warfare that exploits a specific human biochemical weakness – the opioid receptors in our nervous systems. It is an ancient strategy, made even more effective through modern pharmaceutical chemistry. And it appears to be a strategy that the US CIA has itself deployed to advance short term US geopolitical interests. The role of the CIA in the heroin trade may have seemed like a useful gambit at the time, but it was inherently evil, and now compromises US legitimacy if we seek to muster international support and condemnation for countering CCP actions. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The US State Department will need to argue the impossible case that this form of warfare is good for me but not for thee.
This is why John F. Kennedy was absolutely correct in his stated desire to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds. Because the CIA is evil. And the USA can never become the beacon of freedom and liberty that the world so desperately needs while supporting and deploying corrupt “dark triangle” organizations like the CIA and USAID. The ends do not justify the means. The USA must commit to and maintain a moral center that cannot be compromised. The failure to do so is the source of the rot, and it must be excised.
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