How to Write Your Own Life Story: A Step-by-Step Guide for the Nonprofessional Writer Book

McCoy is an academic historian. His book is an extremely well-researched and well-documented account of the importance of heroin to Southeast Asian politics from the post-war French occupation through their replacement by, first, the C.I.A. and, second, the Armed Forces of the United States of America.

Opium has been produced since time immemorial in the Golden Triangle and has had its place in the lifeways of the peoples indigenous to the area. It is, like alcohol for us, part of the social life of young men, its use usually moderating, without ill effect, with age.

The physiological dangers of habitual opium use were exponentially magnified when European science developed methods of refinement, producing, finally, the quintessential opiate, heroin four--a drug so powerful as to be deadly in overdose.

Until the second world war, the production of heroin for European and American markets was controlled by the Italian Mafia. With Italian fascism's alliance with German Nazism and America's entry into the war, however, heroin was no longer available on our streets, dwindling supplies being carefully controlled by the government for medical use. By war's end, with the possible exception of a few doctor's with access to the precious medicine, heroin addiction was not a social problem in the States. Within a few years all of that changed. Why?

When the U.S.A. and Britain were staging for the invasion of Sicily (my dad was at the Gela landing there), members of military intelligence remembered Lucky Luciano, languishing in SingSing having received a couple of life sentences (with no possibility of parole) after having been successfully prosecuted for "white slavery" by Thomas Dewey. Lucky had connections, particularly with certain relatives of his back in the old country.

Now Mussolini did not get along with Communists and he did not get along with the Mafia, the Reds for principled reasons, the Cosa Nostra for more personal ones. Here, in the States, the F.B.I., under Hoover, did not recognize the existence of the Mafia (for what have been revealed to be very personal reasons on Mr. Hoover's part), but it did recognize the Communist Party, and certain circles such as the military brass and the F.B.I. deemed them a grave threat. Thus, in the councils of government, it was decided to deal with the Mob and cut the Communists out as regards the Sicilian invasion.

In exchange for the release of Luciano to friendlier, foreign climes (Cuba and its mob-owned casinos and ancillary businesses), in exchange for that and for certain other, more important, considerations, the Cosa Nostra cooperated in the planning and process of our occupation of Sicily. Sicily was freed, free to be a virtual safe haven for the Mob, their primary political enemies, the Communists, having been marginalized.

The other considerations, the really important ones, were economic. The Mafia would have its monopoly of the heroin trade and its markets restored. Thus the return of the social plague, quickly, and, until recently, the virtual inability of any other players to get a slice of the heroin business.

The postwar French populace, unlike their military and elements of their elites, were not particularly interested in regaining the Southeast Asian colonies. Indeed, France, like Italy, may well have freely elected a Left government were it not for U.S. interference in their elections. Still, despite that, the voters made it clear enough thru the representatives they were able to elect that no colonial reestablishment would be tolerated in Asia and they expressed that sentiment by denials of funding. The United States, after Roosevelt's death, began to pick up the slack, supplying the French military both openly (starting in '47) and covertly.

Now "covert" means secretly. Only so much money could be made available thru black budget fancy bookkeeping. Besides, the U.S.A had had a long tradition of opposing colonialism and dictatorship, a tradition that the millions who had lived thru the war had thought they were upholding. Indeed, under Roosevelt, there had actually been some serious sentiment in the Executive to allow the peoples of the area the independence they had been fighting for, first against the Chinese, then the Vichy and the Japanese, now the French Republic. Thus the agents on the ground, the operatives of the C.I.A. and its dummy, "civilian" corporations were, like Ollie North fighting for "freedom" from the bowels of Washington, encouraged to find their own means of funding above and beyond. Following the trail already blazed by French intelligence and military circles, our agents got involved in the reestablishment of the lucrative heroin business.

One could go on and on--an McCoy does, taking the story into our period of military involvement in VietNam under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. For that part, probably the most interesting to American readers, read the book.

For the next chapter, the part after his date of publication, for the American defeat and the Communist liquidation of the heroin trade thru their country, read McCoy's subsequent volume about Afghanistan (The Politics of Heroin, reviewed here also).