The operation was discussed on an
episode of PBS’ Frontline, titled
“Guns, Drugs and the CIA,” which aired in 1988. The documentary looked at the Meo Tribe, whose members served as
“the foot soldiers of a secret CIA army” in Laos, just across the border from North Vietnam.
Ron Rickenbach, former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development, served in Laos during the 1960s. He told Frontline that for the soldiers involved, they initially believed that what they were doing was
“in the best interests of America,” even if it meant being involved
“in some not so desirable aspects of the drug traffic.”
“These people were willing to take up arms. We needed to stop the Red threat and people believed that in that vein we made, you know, certain compromises or certain trade-offs for a larger good,” Rickenbach said.
“Growing opium was a natural agricultural enterprise for these people and they had been doing it for many years before the Americans ever got there. When we got there they continued to do so.”
Fred Platt, a former pilot in Laos, told Frontline about the incentives the Meo tribesman had to take part in the trade.
“When a farmer raised a crop of opium, what he got for his year’s worth of work was the equivalent of 35 to 40 U.S. dollars,” Platt said.
“That amount of opium, were it refined into morphine base, then into morphine, then into heroin and appeared on the streets of New York, that 35-dollar crop of opium would be worth 50, 60, a hundred thousand dollars in 1969—maybe a million dollars today.”
How does Air America come into play? According to PBS’ Frontline, the CIA’s secret airline played the role of both a transportation service for the Meo farmers’ cash crop, and the only lifeline between the tribespeople and the outside world—to the point where Meo children
“came to believe that rice fell from the sky.”
While Air America reportedly only operated from 1950 to 1976, the CIA’s obsession with opium has continued to flourish over the years.
The CIA supported the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan—in the name of fighting the Soviet Army—in the 1980s. According to a 2009
report from the United States Institute of Peace, the CIA turned a blind eye to the group’s involvement in the opium trade.
The U.S. then encountered Afghanistan’s poppy-rich land again in 2001, when it invaded the country. In the years since the invasion, Afghanistan’s opium production, which is
“an important source of funding for the Taliban,” has
increased 35-fold.
