University of Virginia Library

Ky Promotes Opium Traffic In Laos, Vietnam

When Ky came to power in February
1965, most observers supposed he had
relinquished participation in the opium
traffic (although it was "common
knowledge" that Madame Ky had
replaced Madame Nhu as Saigon's Dragon
Lady and dealt in opium directly with
Prince Boun Oum in Southern Laos).

However, a high Saigon military
official to whom Ky at one time offered a
place in the opium traffic says Ky
continued to carry loads ranging from
200 to 2000 kilos of opium from Pleiku
to Saigon in the spring of 1965 after he
had assumed power and after Operation
Haylift had been discontinued.

These runs included regular pickups
near Dak To, Kon Tun and Pleiku. Since
then there has been no indication that Ky has
in any way altered the transport.

Mr. Corson, who returned to Vietnam in
1965, observed that Ky's involvement in the
trade had become so routine that it had lost
almost all its adventure and intrigue.

With gross returns from the Indochina
traffic running anywhere from $250 to $500
million per year, opium is one of the kingpins
of Southeast Asian commerce. Indochina has
not always had such an enviable position.

Historically most of the world's supply of
opium and heroin came through
well-established routes from Turkey, Iran and
China. Then it was refined in chemical kitchens
and warehouse factories in Marseilles.

The Mediterranean trade was controlled by
the Corsican Mafia (which itself has long been
related to such American crime lords as Lucky
Luciano, who funneled a certain amount of
dope into the black ghettos).

But high officials in the narcotics control
division of the Canadian government, and in
Interpol, the International Police Agency,
confirm that since World War II - and
paralleling U.S. expansion in the Pacific - there
has been a major redirection in the sources and
routing of the worldwide opium traffic.

According to the United Nations
Commission on Drugs and Narcotics, since at
least 1966, 80 per cent of the world's 1200
tons of illicit opium has come from Southeast
Asia - directly contradicting most official U.S.
claims that the primary sources are Middle
Eastern.

In 1966, Interpol's former Secretary General
Jean Nepote told investigators from Arthur D.
Little Research Institute (then under contract
to the U.S. Government Crime Commission)
that the Fertile Triangle was a principal
production center of opium. And last year an
Iranian government official told a United
Nations seminar on narcotics control that 83
percent of the world's illegal supply originated
in the Fertile Triangle, the area where opium is
controlled by the U.S.-supplied troops of Laos
and Nationalist China.

It is odd that the U.S. government, with the
most massive intelligence apparatus in history,
could miss this innovation. But though it may
seem to be an amazing oversight, what has
happened is that Richard Nixon and the makers
of America's Asian policy have completely
blanked Indochina out of the world narcotics
trade.

Not even Joe Stalin's removal of Trotsky
from the Russian history books parallels this
historical reconstruction. In his recent State of
the World address, Richard Nixon dealt directly
with the international narcotics traffic.

"Narcotics addiction has been spreading
with pandemic virulence," he said, adding that
"this affliction is spreading rapidly and without
the slightest respect for national boundaries."
What is needed is "an integrated attack on the
demand for [narcotics], the supply of them,
and their movement across international
borders. We have," he says, worked closely
with a large number of governments,
particularly Turkey, France and Mexico, to try
to stop the illicit production and smuggling of
narcotics."

It is no accident that Mr. Nixon has ignored
the real sources of narcotics trade abroad and
by so doing has effectively precluded any
possibility of being able to deal with heroin at
home. It is he more than anyone else who has
underwritten that trade through the policies he
has formulated, the alliances he has forged, and
most recently the political appointments he has
made.

Richard Nixon's rise to power has been
intricately interwoven with the rise of
proponents of America's aggressive strategy in
Asia, a group of people loosely called the
"China Lobby" who have been in or near
political power off and on since 1950.

Among the most notable members of the
"China Lobby" are Madame Anna Chennault,
whose husband, General Claire Chennault,
founded Air America; columnist Joe Alsop;
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; former
California Senator William Knowland; and Ray
Cline, currently Chief of Intelligence for the
State Department.