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Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair take the revelations of the links between the Central Intelligence Agency, the Nicaraguan Contras, and the Los Angeles crack market that journalist Gary Webb exposed in 1996--revelations that are the basis of Webb's book Dark Alliance--and use them as a springboard for a tale of the U.S. government's involvement with the illegal drug trade that extends much further back than Webb's tale.
The specific revelations are not, perhaps, entirely new; many know, for example, that even before there was a CIA, the WWII-era Office of Strategic Services enlisted the aid of gangster "Lucky" Luciano in arranging support among the Sicilian Mafia for the American invasion of Italy, or that the CIA was actively involved in the Southeast Asian opium trade during the Vietnam War. But Cockburn and St. Clair persuasively argue that the traditional explanation for such events--"rogue elements"--is deliberately misleading, and that the mainstream "liberal" press plays an active role in this obfuscation (noting, for example, that Webb's three biggest attackers were the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post). By providing an overarching narrative rather than treating these incidents as isolated, the authors present a damning indictment of the CIA--but one that fully admits that the agency was not acting on its own, but was merely fulfilling the mandates of the American government. --Ron Hogan -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
Pressestimmen
"Cockburn and St. Clair present a litany of CIA misdeeds, from the recruitment of Nazi scientists after WWII to the arming of opium traffickers in Afghanistan. All of this is extremely well documented ... a chilling history that many will take issue with of what the CIA has been up to in the past 50 years." - Kirkus "A solid, pitiless piece of muckraking, ... Cockburn and St. Clair raise troubling questions about the role of a largely secretive government agency in a democratic society." -- San Diego Union Tribune "A probing examination of the CIA's chilling history of coddling major drug traffickers, gangsters and Nazi psychopaths." -- Philadelphia Tribune "A convincing, well-researched, comprehensive condemnation of the CIA." -- Maximum Rock 'n Roll
Kurzbeschreibung
An expose of the CIA's involvement in the drug trade and the media's silence on the issue.
Synopsis
An expose of the CIA's involvement in the drug trade and the media's silence on the issue.
Der Verlag über das Buch
The CIA, Drugs, And Race: Whiteout¿s Chilling Story
A shocking expose of the CIA's role as drug baron On March 18, 1998, the CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz, told astounded US Reps that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals that the Agency knew to be involved in the drug business. More shocking was the revelation that the CIA had received from Reagan's Justice Department clearance not to report any knowledge it might have of drug-dealing by CIA assets. Many years' worth of CIA denials, much of it under oath to Congress, were sunk. Hitz's admissions made fools of some of the most prominent names in US journalism and vindicated others that had been ruined. Particularly resonant was the case of the San Jose Mercury News, which published a sensational series on CIA involvement in the smuggling of cocaine into black urban neighborhoods, and then under pressure conspired in the destruction of its own reporter, Gary Webb. In Whiteout, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair finally put the whole story together, from the earliest days, when the CIA's institutional ancestors cut a deal with America's premier gangster and drug trafficker, Lucky Luciano. This is a thrilling history that stretches from Sicily in 1944 to the killing fields of Laos and Vietnam, to CIA safe houses in Greenwich Village and San Francisco where CIA men watched Agency-paid prostitutes feed LSD to unsuspecting clients. We meet Oliver North, as he plotted with Manuel Noriega and Central American gangsters. We travel to little-known airports in Costa Rica and Arkansas. We hear from drug pilots and accountants from the Cali Cartel. We learn of DEA agents whose careers were ruined because they tried to tell the truth. Cockburn and St. Clair show how the CIA's complicity with drug-dealing criminal gangs was part and parcel of its attacks on labor organizers, whether on the docks of New York, Marseilles, or Shanghai. They trace how the Cold War and counter-insurgency led to an alliance between the Agency and the vilest of war criminals like Klaus Barbie, or fanatic opium traders like the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Charges of outraged black communities, that the CIA had undertaken enduring programs of experiments on minorities, are horrifyingly affirmed by Cockburn and St. Clair. They show that the CIA imported Nazi scientists straight from their labs at Dachau and Buchenwald and set to work, developing chemical and biological agents, tested on blacks, some of them in mental hospitals. The CIA, drugs and the press. Cockburn and St. Clair dissect the shameful way American journalists have not only turned a blind eye to the Agency's misdeeds, but helped plunge the knife into those who tried to tell the truth. Fact-packed and fast-paced, Whiteout is a richly detailed excavation of the CIA's dirtiest secrets. For anyone who wants to know the real truth about the Agency, this is the book to start with. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
A shocking expose of the CIA's role as drug baron On March 18, 1998, the CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz, told astounded US Reps that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals that the Agency knew to be involved in the drug business. More shocking was the revelation that the CIA had received from Reagan's Justice Department clearance not to report any knowledge it might have of drug-dealing by CIA assets. Many years' worth of CIA denials, much of it under oath to Congress, were sunk. Hitz's admissions made fools of some of the most prominent names in US journalism and vindicated others that had been ruined. Particularly resonant was the case of the San Jose Mercury News, which published a sensational series on CIA involvement in the smuggling of cocaine into black urban neighborhoods, and then under pressure conspired in the destruction of its own reporter, Gary Webb. In Whiteout, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair finally put the whole story together, from the earliest days, when the CIA's institutional ancestors cut a deal with America's premier gangster and drug trafficker, Lucky Luciano. This is a thrilling history that stretches from Sicily in 1944 to the killing fields of Laos and Vietnam, to CIA safe houses in Greenwich Village and San Francisco where CIA men watched Agency-paid prostitutes feed LSD to unsuspecting clients. We meet Oliver North, as he plotted with Manuel Noriega and Central American gangsters. We travel to little-known airports in Costa Rica and Arkansas. We hear from drug pilots and accountants from the Cali Cartel. We learn of DEA agents whose careers were ruined because they tried to tell the truth. Cockburn and St. Clair show how the CIA's complicity with drug-dealing criminal gangs was part and parcel of its attacks on labor organizers, whether on the docks of New York, Marseilles, or Shanghai. They trace how the Cold War and counter-insurgency led to an alliance between the Agency and the vilest of war criminals like Klaus Barbie, or fanatic opium traders like the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Charges of outraged black communities, that the CIA had undertaken enduring programs of experiments on minorities, are horrifyingly affirmed by Cockburn and St. Clair. They show that the CIA imported Nazi scientists straight from their labs at Dachau and Buchenwald and set to work, developing chemical and biological agents, tested on blacks, some of them in mental hospitals. The CIA, drugs and the press. Cockburn and St. Clair dissect the shameful way American journalists have not only turned a blind eye to the Agency's misdeeds, but helped plunge the knife into those who tried to tell the truth. Fact-packed and fast-paced, Whiteout is a richly detailed excavation of the CIA's dirtiest secrets. For anyone who wants to know the real truth about the Agency, this is the book to start with. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .
Über den Autor
Alexander Cockburn is a columnist for The Nation, New York Press and a range of other newspapers. He is the author of Corruptions of Empire, Fate of the Forest (with Susanna Hecht), and The Golden Age Is In Us, all from Verso. Jeffrey St. Clair has written for The Nation and contributes to the newsletter CounterPunch. He is the publisher of Wild Forest Review.
