This book provides a cross-section of Douglas Valentine's investigations
into CIA engagement in terrorism, drugs, and propaganda. Author of three
books on CIA operations, Valentine's research into CIA activities began
when CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA
officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix
program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The
CIA would rescind it, making every effort to impede publication of The
Phoenix Program, which documented the CIA's elaborate system of
population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture and
assassination in Vietnam.
While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium
and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos, to generals and
politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into
this illegal activity focused on the CIA's relationship with the federal
drugs agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering
the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine
wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of
the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug law enforcement
agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence and
foreign operations staffs in order to ensure that the flow of drugs
continues unimpeded to traffickers and foreign officials in its
employ.
Ultimately, portions of his research materials would be archived at the
National Security Archive, Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center, and
John Jay College.
This book includes excerpts from the above titles along with subsequent
articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics,
with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA's
ongoing illegal and extra-legal activities. These terrorism and drug law
enforcement articles and interviews illustrate how the CIA's activities
impact social and political movements abroad and in the United States. A
common theme is the CIA's ability to deceive and propagandize the
American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of
official secrecy and plausible deniability.
Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then
continues to inform CIA praxis now. Valentine tracks its steady
infiltration into practices targeting the last population to be
subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people.
