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up in Mexico and customs inspectors searching cars at border crossings. The Customs Bureau briefed the press
on the operations of its patrol planes and ships as if it were a wartime operation, and periodic announcements
were made of the seizures of marijuana. The Associated Press reported, "Pleasure boats, fishing vessels, cargo
ships and ocean liners are being searched." By the end of September, however, the State Department's press
office counterattacked by briefing reporters on the damage that Operation Intercept was wreaking on United
States-Mexican relations. Incidents were described, as later reported in the New York Times, where "delays as
long as six hours have kept outraged motorists waiting in line in the broiling sun ... some travelers have been
obliged to strip naked ... thousands of Mexican workers have lost their jobs in the United States because of the
customs inspection delay ... millions of innocent people have been harassed. Border cities are facing economic
collapse and tempers are wearing thin. . . ." President Diaz was even quoted as saying that Operation Intercept
had created "a wall of suspicion" between Mexico and America. By mid-October the State Department had
won that battle of the leaks, and the White House recognized that Operation Intercept was now generating
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Chapter 7 - Operation Intercept
negative publicity, according to Krogh. The task force thus was quietly withdrawn from the Mexican border,
and, in return for $1 million in aid for the purchase of light aircraft, the president of Mexico agreed to sign
some protocols which changed Operation Intercept in name to Operation Cooperation, which was then totally
abandoned without further fanfare.
Although Egil Krogh later noted in a White House memorandum (July 23, 1970) that "Operation Intercept ...
received widespread media coverage," he did acknowledge to Ehrlichman that it had had no effect on the drug
traffic. Others in the White House doubted the public-relations value of the Mexican adventure. To
demonstrate the danger of such under-takings, Daniel Patrick Moynihan cited New York Times stories that
suggested that Operation Intercept, by temporarily interrupting the marijuana traffic, had caused children to
switch to heroin. Though there was little reason to believe that children would addict themselves to heroin
because marijuana was temporarily more expensive, Moynihan used these stories to temper White House
enthusiasm for such foreign adventures. Nevertheless, the inner circle at the White House continued to
recommend the more highly dramatized crackdowns with code names like Operation Intercept. A 1970
crime-control memorandum circulated by the Domestic Council noted that the "feasibility of mounting major
operations with code names against heroin trafficking [would] create an aura of massive attack on our most
feared narcotic." The memorandum recommended launching an election-year Operation Heroin modeled after
Intercept. Moynihan, still worried about more Operation Intercept fiascoes, proceeded to persuade President
Nixon that heroin control should be elevated to the status of a national security problem. The president agreed
and created the Ad Hoc Cabinet Committee on Narcotics, which was to be chaired by Henry Kissinger, then
his national security advisor.
The ad hoc committee included the more illustrious figures of the early Nixon administration: Pat Moynihan;
John Mitchell and his deputy, Kleindienst, who held that all law-enforcement matters should be the business of
the Justice Department (which would include IRS as well as narcotics operations); the ambitious Eugene
Rossides; John Ingersoll, the Democratic-appointed director of the BNDD; Richard Helms, the
independent-minded director of the CIA; and Elhot Richardson, the undersecretary of state. Myles Ambrose
was not a member, but he attended a couple of the meetings as an observer. Kissinger, who evidenced little
interest in the heroin problem, rarely attended the committee meetings, which were then chaired by his deputy,
General Alexander, Haig. (On one typical occasion Kissinger arrived an hour late, joked about his having to
translate the Vietnam peace negotiations from German to English for the president, then promptly left.)
Though Moynihan at times sparred with Mitchell, most of these officials, though impressive in their own
spheres of action, had little special knowledge about heroin and therefore had to rely on working groups to
establish facts-all of which added to the confusion.
Kissinger, Richardson, and Haig spent most of their efforts dampening the enthusiasm of White House zealots
to launch a new heroin crusade which might again threaten diplomatic relations with important allies.
Meanwhile, the White House, usually through John Mitchell, made it known to the ad hoc committee that it
wanted another dramatic effort. The crusaders thus sought another country in which to crusade.
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The War of the Poppies
Agency of Fear
Opiates and Political Power in America
By Edward Jay Epstein
Chapter 8 - The War of the Poppies
In 1970, more than five centuries after the Christian knights had abandoned their ill-fated crusade against
the Turks, the Nixon administration moved to renew the ancient hostilities. Unable to uproot the
marijuana plant from Mexico, the Ad Hoc Committee on Narcotics next turned its attention to the
Turkish connection. To be sure, Turkey was by no means the sole, or even the largest, producer of
opium. The opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) had been cultivated for centuries in virtually every
country between Yugoslavia and Japan. And according to CIA estimates compiled for the ad hoc
committee, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand, Laos, and Burma all produced substantially more
illicit opium than did Turkey. Moreover, after a thirteen-year prohibition, the Shah of Iran had decided in
1969 to plant 20,000 hectares with poppies, which was a 50percent-greater area than Turkey had in
cultivation. In all, the CIA estimated, Turkey produced only from 3 to 8 percent of the illicit opium
available throughout the world. Nevertheless, Turkey was chosen as the most feasible target by the
committee for several reasons. For one, Turkey was assumed to be the most convenient and proximate
source for the European heroin wholesalers in the various scenarios, or "systems," worked out by the
Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The putative distribution routes-from Afyon to Beirut to
Marseilles to Montreal to New York, etc.-were neatly marked out on the bureau's maps, as if they were
readily available tourist itineraries. (For the most part these maps reflected locations where the BNDD
already had agents, and did not necessarily include all the smuggling routes.) According to these
scenarios, all opium routes led to the Turkish province of Afyon, and alternative routes in Southeast
Asia, which were not on the bureau's maps, were deemed of less importance. Second, and more
important, Turkey was a NATO ally, dependent on United States military aid, and it could therefore be
expected to be more vulnerable to American pressure than "neutral" countries such as Burma and India.
Although India was still the world's largest producer of opium-both licit and illicit-the ad hoc committee
considered it unlikely that it would bow to American diplomatic or military pressure. Indeed, Elliot [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]