CIA Involvement in Drug Smuggling Part 2

After World War II the French returned to Indo-China and became directly involved in drug trade with the Hmong tribesmen in the highlands of Laos. At first, the French attempted to eliminate opium addiction in 1946. However, desperately short on funds, French intelligence and paramilitary organizations became involved in opium trafficking in order to finance their covert operations against Ho Chi Minh in the north. By 1951, French intelligence controlled most of the opium trade in the region. The French started top secret Operation X which resulted in a steady supply of Hmong opium into the dens of cities such as Saigon and Danang.

In 1950 President Truman implemented the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) which approved a CIA invasion into southern China. This meant that CIA operants need to infiltrate various local tribal units particularly in the Golden Triangle — Burma, Laos, and Thailand. The CIA recruited agents

such as William Colby who years later was elevated to CIA director. When CIA operants moved into the Shan states in the Golden Triangle region of northern Burma, opium growers operated only randomly. However, the region soon was transformed into one of the largest growing opium regions in the world. The CIA needed an alliance with the KMT, which had just been driven out of China by Mao Tse-tung a year before, and the Thai police in order to bolster its position in the region.

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In the 1960s, thousands of KMT mercenaries made their way across the mountains of the Golden Triangle to eastern Burma. Khun Sa's army was defeated by KMT General Ouane Rattikone in the 1967 Opium War, and his troops fled into central Laos. Khun Sa was arrested and released at a later date, but by that time the size of his army had dwindled to about one thousand. Khun Sa not only lost major casualties among his troops, but he also lost his monopoly on opium trade in the Shan states.

The Opium War left Rattikone and the KMT in control of 80 percent of the opium trade in Burma.

During the duration of the KMT's dominance in northern Burma — from the end of World War II to 1960s — his CIA subsidized army increased opium production by nearly 500 percent from 80 tons to 500 tons annually. The Golden Triangle provided approximately 33 percent of the world's illicit opium trade.

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