University of Virginia Library

Pervasive Network

So bizarre is the opium network and so
pervasive the traffic that were it to appear in an
Ian Fleming plot we would pass it off as
torturing the credibility of thriller fiction. But
the trade is real and the net has entangled
governments beyond the steaming jungle of
Indochina. In 1962, for instance an opium
smuggling scandal stunned the entire Canadian
Parliament.

It was in March of that year that Primer
Minister Diefenbaker confirmed rumors that
nine Canadian members of the immaculate
United Nations International Control
Commission had been caught carrying opium
form Vientiane to the international markets in
Saigon on UN planes.

The route from Laos to Saigon has long
been one of the well-established routes of the
heroin-opium trade. In August 1967, a C-47
transport plane carrying two-and-a-half tons of
opium and some gold was forced down near Da
Lat, South Vietnam, by American gunners
when the pilot failed to identify himself.