Last year’s revelations in the San Jose Mercury News about the role
of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contra rebels in California’s crack-
cocaine trade in the 1980s highlighted the CIA’s relations with
illegal narcotic traffickers. But CIA alliances with international
narcotics traffickers is nothing new. Professor Alfred McCoy of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison argues in his acclaimed book, The
Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, that
CIA alliances with illegal drug production and distribution has
been an integral part of the agency’s efforts to maintain US
power abroad.

Today, we are joined by Professor McCoy for a historical review of
the CIA’s role in the international drug business, from Turkey,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia, to Honduras and
Nicaragua.

Guest:

PROFESSOR ALFRED MCCOY, a professor of Southeast Asian
history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of
the acclaimed study, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the
Global Drug Trade.