Air America, Corsican Mobsters and Spies Gone Native - Did the CIA Fuel the Modern Heroin Trade?
48:49 Share

ButcherBox, you guys have heard me talk about it before. It is a service that I used even before they were an advertiser because I like getting high-quality meat and seafood that I can trust online.

right to my door, 100% grass-fed beef, free-range organic chicken, pork-raised crate-free, and wild-caught seafood. We are only like a month and a half away from chili season. You're going to want to stock your freezer with a lot of meat that's not going to cost you that much at all. It's an incredible value. There's free shipping. You can curate it to customize your box plans, and it gets delivered right to your doorstep.

No more annoying trips to the grocery store or the butcher. It's going to save you time and save you money. Sign up for ButcherBox today by going to butcherbox.com slash underworlds and use code underworld at checkout to get $30 off your first box. Again, that's butcherbox.com slash underworlds and use code underworlds.

Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. It's the early 70s. The war in Vietnam is sipping in the communist favor. And Cold War rebellions still roil across all of Southeast Asia.

British reporter Christopher Robbins is hanging out at the bar of Bangkok's Oriental Hotel, a vast block that kisses the shores of the Chao Phraya River and the narrow Klong canals that serve the city's many expats with food, drugs and other earthly delights. It's a rainy night and strange. Roger Moore has just rapped on the man with the golden gun. The debonair star is entertaining fleets of James Bond fans on the Oriental's lavish terrace.

Robbins, however, is on a different kind of assignment. He's been sent by the Observer, the Guardian's sister newspaper, to investigate the ballooning black market in exotic and endangered animals. And he's waiting to meet a married couple who will introduce him to an American pilot who, it's rumoured, keeps a menagerie of gibbons. This guy flies for Air America, the husband tells Robbins when they first meet. The name means nothing.

Air America's the spook airline, he adds. It's CIA. Robbins meets the pilot and his gibbons. But he wants to know more about Air America. There's almost no information about it anywhere, after all. A little later, he's in Saigon, drinking with a whiskey adult correspondent and a veteran of the Vietnam War. This Air America is a rather unorthodox airline, Robbins tells his drinking buddy. Adding, quote, the pilots seem to use it to smuggle their pets on.

The older correspondent sets his tumbler down and sets off on a rant. Air America have flown opium, he says. They've flown guns and bombs and ammo. They've dropped spires into China and special units into North Vietnam, flying so low their wheels are on the foliage most of the way. They've been involved with every sort of look and weirdo that a war throws up, goddammit. And all you're interested in is that they're smuggling pet poodles without the right papers.

Suddenly, the Gibbons take a back seat, and Robbins is hooked on a wild new story. Air America is, by some accounts, the world's largest airline. Weird as still, there's pretty solid information that not only has Air America helped fund the secret war in Laos by ferrying great shipments of opium, but that its pilots, a ragtag bunch of grizzled operators who wouldn't look out of place in a spaghetti western,

are playing a key role in the heroin crisis that's killing thousands of Vietnam vets, empowering global drug cartels, and spitting out addicts and bodies onto the streets of cities up and down the US. And when Robbins goes digging, it's actually all there, right in front of him. A Singapore Airlines in-flight mag he grabs soon after, for example, features an interview with one of the company's stewardesses.

Before this, I flew with Air America, but that was different, very different, she writes. Once, I went to work and had to fly on a plane full of dead bodies. Better not to say anything about that. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast. Look at that little devil operating. How come he's coming here to Shanghai, all these men and boys for his private army?

Well, now, Shanghai is an ugly word. Oh, well, how would you describe what he's doing? Oh, well, I'd say he's showing a lot of charisma. Charisma? What you've got to remember, Ms. Landreau, is these people have different values than you and I. But the nice part is we're all pulling together for the same cause. The same cause. General Sung's only cause is General Sung. Don't you get it, Senator? The CIA flies drugs for him. In return, he loans us his troops, plus he's kicking money back into the CIA. You know what?

You've been working your little fanny off in this hot sun for a darn good cause, and God bless you for it. But you're starting to rain.

Hello and welcome to another tub-thumping episode of the show that dives into bad gangsters and even worse Hollywood directors. I'm Sean Williams in New Zealand, fresh from my own Colonel Kurt's adventures in the tropics, and I'm joined by Danny Gold in what I'm assuming is a less than tropical New York City, which 1980s Colombo crime family gas pump attendants have even interviewed this week, mate.

None, but I've been watching a lot of old Las Vegas news archives from the 1970s. So, you know, exciting times with that. Shout out to Ned Day, guy was a legend. And, you know, happy Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah, yeah. I just got back from Bougainville, as I think people know from my croaky...

My croaky cameo last week. And I just found out that the hotel that I stayed in in Port Moresby was used as a giant meth lab. So keeping on point, guys. As always, thanks. Yeah, just found out. Sure. Just found out, yeah. It looked a lot like my room as well when I saw the new report. Anyway, thanks a ton to all those who subscribe on the Patreon, of course. Got stuff going up there, as always, in additions and show notes.

You've got the reading list for all our episodes. And in the case of this one especially, there's a ton of banging books to be read. Get into that in a short time. We've also got the merch just lying there in our Burmese shipping yard ready for the Christmas stocking. But if you can throw us a few bucks, that's cool too. Just be sure to follow the Insta and the YouTube and the Twitter and all that so I can give my nine-month-old son two, maybe even three lumps of coal this Yuletide.

I can usually tell like in the first five minutes, if it's going to be one of those episodes where you have like really good jokes or like a normal one where you have terrible jokes. And, uh,

It's just not looking so good, boss. Not looking so good. I mean, it's supposed to be Christmas time. I'm looking out my window and it's like blazing sunshine and blue skies, which you can't complain about, but it's not Christmas. Anyway. But that makes you less funny? That makes me less funny, yeah. If that's even believable. Okay. Yeah. Now, I don't think we've managed this in the three plus years we've been reshaping our careers as podcasters, but if you listened to Danny's show last week on Santos Traficante, you

Cuba's Castro killers and the agency. This week actually follows on from it almost directly. There's more spies and Langley plots and Cold War madness. Yeah, we've really been doing a lot of weird 60s and 70s, like you said, Cold War madness, CIA stuff lately, which is...

I guess, kind of a departure from the normal and maybe something we won't be doing a lot of because it seems like you guys kind of just enjoy the regular gangster stuff. But we'll see how it goes. Yeah, let's see. Let's tee that up from the beginning. Anyway, we didn't plan this. That's just how it goes. Get over it. And this...

Yeah, this stuff has been committed to film too, the stuff I'm going to talk about, most notably in 1990 movie Air America, starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. I mean, it's like a pre-Coke binge, Robert Downey Jr. He's so young. As a pair of red-blooded American males doing what they do best, which is carpet bombing Southeast Asia to be those dirty reds.

Given the current political climate, I'm sorry to bring up a movie starring the king of the anti-Semites, but just in case you're thinking of watching Air America, it's got a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I know, I know, those people really know their stuff. The director, the brilliantly named Roger Spottiswoode,

sandwiched it between Turner and Hooch and Stop or My Mom Will Shoot, which actually makes it sound kind of decent. Yeah, I mean, Turner and Hooch, it's a classic, you know? But I would say, though, too, because of Apocalypto, Mel almost gets a pass. Apocalypto, it's that good that we're like, all right, if he can duplicate this, it's all right. So if you question the Holocaust, but you also make this kind of apocalyptic Mayan...

You know, there's not a... And you're good. There's not a wasted second in Apocalypto. If you ever watch it, there's not one wasted second of that movie. It's just a perfect movie. I saw it at the cinema. I remember it being absolutely amazing, but I was stoned as fuck. So, yeah. Which is also a good thing, but...

This movie, which I also hadn't heard of until I started researching any of this stuff, which is surprising, right? It's got a budget of 35 mil in 1990, which is like 80 million today. And it turned a pretty handy profit. I think it made like 57 million.

So good on you, boy, Roger. I've never heard of it. Yeah. It's insane. And when you watch it, it's such a huge budget. Although I don't know how much 500 Laotian extras cost. Probably not enough.

But it's got tons of like those guys, right? The 90s actors. There's the bloke from Field of Dreams. There's Dr. Kelso from Scrubs. That guy from Total Recall had that thing coming out of his belly. And there's Kato from the Pink Panther movies, who I should add is the legendary British actor, Bert Kwok, who plays the corrupt Lao General Sung. We're going to get more on that later, but he does get some pretty dope lines just like this one. This stuff's good. Really good, Major. Yeah.

You want to try some? With all due respect, General, I'm not here for a taste test, okay? I am here to ask you again, please, let's shut this lab down for one week only, just while the Senator is here. Why don't you just tell Baggage Man Senator to go home now? Kick out! Well, I wish it was that easy, General. And in a civilized country like yours, it would be.

But in this case, it's just easier to shut down this land. Then you and me be poor men and cannot pay for war. If we don't sell heroin, no money to feed my soldiers. So yeah, that's Air America. And it's based on the airline of the same name that operated all over the world, but most significantly in Vietnam and Laos.

the latter of whose anti-communist tribesmen it armed and backed during the CIA's so-called secret war in the country. The movie's actually a very loose, incredibly loose, adaptation of Christopher Robin's brilliant non-fiction book of the same name from 1979.

which of course is the backdrop for the cold open, and which is one of the best books out there about the secret war in Laos. It's really, really, really good. Air America and the rumors that swirled around at the time, which we'll dig into, namely that the CIA wasn't only shipping opium to fuel the war, but played a pivotal role in shaping the modern heroin industry.

Now, there are other great books in this field that I read for the show. I fully recommend David Korn's Blonde Ghost, The Crimes of Patriots by Jonathan Whitney. That last one is a must-read if you want to know how feral and sane the CIA got at the Cold War. But this episode won't even get into Lumumba and the Congo, Angola, Iran, Gaddafi, the Contras, Operation Condor, and a ton of other stuff Air America did. We're going to focus on the good stuff. Guys, it's the drugs.

Yeah, it took you only 15 minutes. Yeah, it's going to take a bit longer. Anyway, to get to them, we're going to go way past Laos and the wars in Indochina all the way back to 1937. Of course, China at that time is getting overrun by the Imperial Japanese Air Force, whose forces are so much stronger than those of the Kuomintang or KMT, which is the Nationalist Chinese Forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

that they can bomb and strafe just whenever they like, fly at rooftop height, and even perform aerobatics between attacks just because they can. That year, Madam Chang, the Generalissimo's wife, invites a retired U.S. Army Corps captain named Claire Lee Chenow, yes, Claire, the guy's name, to train his Air Force on a three-month, grand-a-week contract.

Now, Chenow is old and he's partially deaf, but he's no shrinking violet. He's massive and he's scary looking. So much so that at one conference, Winston Churchill is said to have clapped eyes on him and said, quote, I'm glad that man is on our side. Chenow said, sure, Madam Chang, I'll build you an Air Force.

But he doesn't create something tight and regimented. Instead, he stitches together a ragtag team of, quote, bums and drunks. And all he can offer them is to upgrade a mothy and old assembly line churning out fire-prone Fiat fighters left in China by Mussolini's fascists. Chennault calls his men the Flying Tigers.

Many of these pilots are, quote, tin jockeys and mad dogs who go native. Take Art Wilson, a.k.a. Shower Shoes. He flies everywhere in rubber sandals, basically crocs, hence the nickname. Has actually grown up in China, speaks the language, and loves local delicacies like bloop, hatched baby chickens eaten raw. They still eat these in the Philippines, and it's the worst food I have ever tried. I couldn't take a full bite, and I fully throw up.

Wait, that's like the fertilized egg, right? They're still in the egg? Because that's in Cambodia too. And I think I have a chef around that knows where you can get it in Queens, I think. But yeah, it was never something that I wanted to get a lot of things to go when it comes to eating weird stuff. And that just never appealed to me. Yeah. I mean, on the same trip, I was happy to eat the insects and that kind of crap, but...

Oh, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's disgusting. Anyway, by 1966, with 25,000 hours under his belt, US authorities realized that Wilson doesn't actually have a pilot's license, and they send him to attend a course in Louisiana. An instructor sees the rubber sandals and asks Wilson, quote, how long do you think it would take you to walk out the jungle in those? Wilson scratches his head thoughtfully. Well, let me see, he says.

The last time it took two weeks. The time before that, it was around six. This guy rules. I mean, this is such a type, I feel like, from that era in those places of just these completely insane, you know, I don't even know if Colonel Courage is the right word for it, but just these guys who were like pirates, basically. Oh, they're totally pirates, yeah. And there are tons of these guys, right? Yeah.

quote, weird Neil Hansen, that's a pretty good nickname, crash lands his trouble once. And rather than make his way back to base, he just heads to a Laotian village, trains to become a Buddhist monk outside Vientiane, the capital, and he lives like a native. And so these guys, and there are way more of them, they comprise Chennault's Flying Tigers.

And while they're no match for the Japanese, in 1941, the US enters the war and Washington realises it needs to keep China in the game. Channel is given 100 P-40s. These are still old lumps and rejected by the British, but they're way better than the shitty old Fiat's. And he can go around bases trying to recruit pilots...

offering them a base salary of $600 a month with a bunch of add-ons, including 500 bucks for every Japanese plane blown out of the sky. That, by the way, is a lot of money back then.

These guys are officially agents of the Chinese government. That's nationalist China, of course, not Mao's. And they can slot back into their US military posts after they're done. Before long, Chennault has 100 pilots and 150 mechanics on board. And these, as we've mentioned, are no choir boys. The Tigers are first posted in Rangoon, now Yangon, Burma,

Jesus, these guys are almost as bad as British lads on holiday. Yeah, from Yangon to Magaluf.

Anyway, however bad these guys are on terra firma, in the skies, they are shit hot. In six months, the so-called Flying Tigers have racked up 299 destroyed Japanese aircraft. The real figure is likely way, way more. Attempts to standardize the men fail, and they're still known for drunkenness and unkempt appearances. But in 1942, they become the China Air Task Force, and the Chinese, again, not Mao, love them.

After the war, the task force becomes part of Chennault's relabeled CNRRA, which is a Chinese version of the UN's relief program, which is American employees shortened to CAT or CAT. The men don't wear uniforms and they often fly in shorts and tank tops. They're adventurers and they fly supply lines over communist Chinese lines to the KMT, taking fire, a lot of fire, as they go.

Sometimes they're taking wild animals, other times rice or hay or dignitaries or whatever. It's slapdash, but it works. And CAT becomes indispensable to the anti-communist effort. The CIA first gets involved with CAT in 1949 to provide cover for its anti-male paramilitary program.

The firm gets a new shell company in the States and begins to look more like its guys in later Cold War conflicts. In 1950, it gets a Delaware incorporation and relocates HQ to Taiwan, where the defeated troops of the KMT have retreated to after their defeat at Mao's hands.

Later that year, war breaks out on the Korean peninsula and suddenly, Kat is in high demand from the US and its allies. Not only that, but its commercial wing spread too, from ferrying racehorses to New Zealand, to Muslims making the Hajj to Arabia. But just as the Korean War simmers down, Indochina erupts into anti-colonial conflict against France. And of course, America is on the French side. In 1953,

CAT airlifts 16,000 men into the Dien Bien Phu colonial base in Vietnam. Sorry for the pronunciation. But the following year, the garrison is overrun and Washington refuses to act directly. Instead, it enlists CAT to run covert support with Fairchild C-119s, so-called flying boxcars. It also trains pilots in the North Vietnamese town of Hai Thong.

The NBN-PU is an absolute disaster for the colonial forces and several cat pilots die before it surrenders, with the bodies of raiders piled so high that subsequent attack waves can't climb over them, a spine-shivering precursor for the bloodshed to come.

But the CIA gets its first taste of the opium trade in Burma, where in the early 1950s, one group of KMT soldiers has been pushed across the border of China's Yunnan province into the Shan Hills, one of the most lucrative opium-producing regions on Earth.

If you want to learn more about this history, we've got my episode on Burma's billion-dollar meth lab, there's Khun Sa and Olive Yang, the transgender Shan warlord, and we even did a show on Ike Atkinson, a.k.a. Sergeant Smack. He'd become one of the world's biggest heroin smugglers out of Thailand.

But in the early 50s, the CIA is so desperate for these Chinese nationalists to keep up the fight against their communist compatriots, and they christen a Bangkok firm named Sea Supply to ship them vast quantities of weapons. Meanwhile, the KMT terrorize the Shan people. They engage in banditry. They monopolize local opium markets. These are the same Shan people Mel Gibson so eloquently describes in Air America.

So this is the face of modern communism? Wrong again. A devout communist carries an AK-47 and these guys have got the oldest weapons known to man. Look at them. Now these are hillbillies, kind of like Kentucky Green Shiners. And they're pissed about something. They don't cut the outsiders, I guess. The KMT basically becomes a rogue nation.

The land down under has never been easier to reach. United Airlines has more flights between the U.S. and Australia than any other U.S. airline, so you can fly nonstop to destinations like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Explore dazzling cities, savor the very best of Aussie cuisine, and get up close and personal with the wildlife. Who doesn't want to hold a koala? Go to united.com slash Australia to book your adventure.

and CAT helps it spirit illicit opium out of Shan State to Sea Supply, that shell company in Bangkok, with unmarked C-47 Sky Trains, these hulking propeller planes that have first been used in Pacific campaigns like Guadalcanal and New Guinea. Of course, the KMT fails in its bid to retake China, regroup in Taiwan, and the rest is history. But the CIA is not done with CAT.

In November 1955, the Vietnam War breaks out, and North Vietnamese troops use a route called the Ho Chi Minh Trail to ferry troops, supplies, and weapons to its position on the front lines. Given Laos is next door, it becomes a key transshipment point for communist materiel, and Laos has its own communist insurgency, the Pathet Lao, which is hand-in-glove with its Viet Cong allies.

So the CIA, naturally, is keen to be active in Laos. But there's a problem. The US has installed a right-wing public government there, but in 1960 it's overthrown in a bloodless coup. And in 1962, Laos signs an accord in Geneva stating its official neutrality.

There are still tons of competing interests in the country, however, and the situation there is so confusing that when asked by a journalist why he's getting conflicting reports on the country's position, the Minister of Information says, quote, if you will talk to different officials, naturally you will get different answers.

Neutrality is basically a spoiler. Spooks are all over Laos trying to figure out how they can scupper the communists without opening a new front in the Cold War or getting in any more trouble in the UN. 1960 is the first time US spies meet with Vang Pao, the leader of a tribe called the Hmong, and it proves to be one of the most fateful meetings in modern history. The Hmong are a largely agricultural group whose cash crop,

Get this. It's opium. They're not too keen on communism, and they agreed to fight a secret war against the Viet Cong and Pathet Lao.

Vang Pao is known as a fierce guy, commands utter loyalty from his men. At one early battle speech, a man is so pumped, he falls into a river and he gets swept away to his death. Sounds like he should tone it down a bit. You know, maybe it was like that Al Pacino Any Given Sunday speech. That one gets me fired up. I'm ready to jump into a river. But also, like, I kind of, you know, I think their platform of pro-opium anti-communism is something that I could get behind. Like, if they were a party in the U.S., like that.

those twin pillars are something that I think makes for just a political party that really gets it.

Well, you should go to California then because he went there after the end of the war. He took a load of Lao with him. And I think there's still a huge Hmong community in Southern California. I think it's LA, basically. Anyway, the Hmong, though, at that time, they don't know how to fight. They don't have modern weaponry. And if they're not in the field growing and selling opium, how will they stay afloat? Well, Air America. That's how.

By now, Cat has changed its name and it's added the slogan, anything, anywhere, anytime, professionally. I guess three out of four ain't bad. This thing is big. By some accounts, the largest airline on earth. It's

It's kind of an open secret that the CIA is involved, but officials deny it and the company itself is an absolute maze. According to Christopher Robbins, quote, Air America is a company incorporating Delaware, but it's also a generic name used to describe all of the CIA air activities, whether under the name of Civil Air Transport, Intermountain, Air Asia or Southern Air Transport.

There is a web of dozens of CIA airlines throughout the world which should perhaps go under the title CIA Air, but that is a logo you will not find anywhere. I'm sure AirAsia is a thing. Maybe it's CIA-owned. I don't know. No, AirAsia is still a thing. Yeah.

holy they're like a budget airline you know and i mean i haven't flown them in years but they're like a budget airline southeast asia they've got great i mean i don't remember it being too bad it was like it was like what you if you're going hopping around thailand for like uh a day flight you know and you want to pay like 150 it's like what it's what you fly i'm sure they're the guys that bought queens park rangers in london as well so maybe qpr are owned by uh by the cia i don't know looking

Air America is therefore a perfect vehicle via which the CIA can continue to fund the war effort in Laos without being accused of actually funding the war effort in Laos. Air America is therefore a perfect vehicle

Air America pilots are still cut from the same drunken cloth as their Flying Tiger forebears. They wear a two-tone grey outfit, light shirt, dark trousers with the AA insignia on a peaked hat. Only most of them ditch that for baseball caps or, way better, Stetsons.

They all wear shades and they all wear a dazzling array of jewelry. One is known for sporting a bracelet that weighed half a kilo, which is pretty much like the stuff you wear out to your bottle service nights, right? That joke I think would have done really well in like 2007. Okay, you sell it then.

These pilots claim the ice is for barter if they're shot down, but I mean, come on guys, it's fine to enjoy a bit of bling. And these guys don't much like authority. The subterfuge of Air America also leads its pilots to use an impressive array of euphemisms. The CIA is the customer,

Ammo is hard rice, a cover op is black, and flights that come under heavy fire are known as sporty. Pilots who describe near-death experiences call them fascinating. They're often exhausted, always hungover, wearing civilian clothing, carrying no papers and flying unmarked planes. If they're shot down or crash land, writes Robbins, quote, they would almost certainly have been shot as spies.

One famed AA pilot, Jim Parrish, puts it more simply, quote, our status would have been SOL. Shit, out of luck. Air America is active in Vietnam this time, but Laos is considered a far tougher assignment. Weather and conditions are incredibly tough. Sometimes they're landing on strips the size of football fields and maps are out of date and in some cases just flat out wrong.

The battlefield against the Pathet Lao is so undemarked that communist troops might just crouch down at the end of a runway and open fire when a plane lands. It is crazy stuff. Furthermore, it soon becomes clear that as heroic and passionate as the Hmong are about defending their homeland, they are no match against the huge and well-armed communists.

Many of AA's flights end up ferrying an estimated 600,000 refugees up and down the country. Others, the Americans, send on long marches. They're ambushed by communist troops and they don't take prisoners. Children are dragged from parents and dashed against walls. Women raped and disemboweled. The elderly are shot in the legs and left to die. Air America often flies entire planes stacked with stinking weeks-old bodies. Remember that Singapore Airlines stewardess?

Here's Jim Parrish again, who calls the Lao soldiers, quote, little straggly ass kids. It was pretty pathetic. Their heart wasn't in it. They didn't care who was winning, but they were running from the bad guys for one reason or another. Withhaul them from point A to point B, reallocate them somewhere and give them a few pounds of rice and they would try it again. You've got to feel really sorry for the people.

All the while, AA pilots are getting jaded and in some cases going insane off the back of these increasingly perilous and tragic missions. And I'm going to have a bonus show on the most notorious of them all this week. Apparently the foundation for the character of Colonel Kurtz. But for now, let's talk drugs.

Air America might be shipping opium all over Laos at this point, mirroring its work in Burma. But to find out just how pivotal the airline is in the heroin trade, let's go back briefly to the 19th century to see how this whole underworld began. In 1862, France annexes Saigon and immediately sees opium as a chance for its new colony to be self-sufficient. The French-administered Opium Monopoly, yep, that is its official name,

encourages Lao, especially the Hmong, to ramp up production during the Second World War. By 1946 and the end of the war, however, with opium addiction soaring around the world, there's public outcry in Paris and the monopoly shudders.

Vietnam, by the way, at this point is home to 100,000 addicts alone, and that's of a population of barely 20 million, which is nuts. I think that's still way better than North Philadelphia. Perhaps, yeah. I mean, you know, opium is one thing, fentanyl is another. Anyway, when the region decides to shake off the French in 1953, the French civil administration closes down opium production altogether, but Paris...

does something called Operation X, always a good name, which pays for a clandestine 40,000-strong army governed by 350 French officers. And because France doesn't want to commit millions of its post-war francs to the effort, those officers get creative. Major Roger Tronquier, head of Operation X, orders opium to be flown from central Laos to Cap Saint-Jacques, Bordendé-Vingt-Tau, near Saigon, where it's sold on.

This trade is so essential to the French war effort that when a CIA officer named Edward Lansdale complained about it in 1953, he's told to drop it or else open a quote keg of worms.

Nobody needs that many worms, so Lansdale drops it. But in 1954, when the French are kicked out, it creates an opium industry vacuum. Before long, that gap is filled by gangsters from the French island of Corsica, who run a charter fleet known widely as Aeropium. The most powerful of these men is Bonaventure Rock Franceschi.

who owns a shell firm named Air Lao Commerciale. His silent partner there is Noh Dinh Nhu. Apologies again to Vietnam business. And this guy just so happens to be the chief advisor to Vietnamese president Noh Dinh Diem, which means, usefully, that when Diem orders Saigon's opium den shut in 1955 and an end to the market, Franceschi uses his silent partner Nhu to keep the trade thriving.

In 1958, New himself reopens opium dens to finance his own secret police, and a few years later, Diem is murdered in a US-backed coup. You'll love the Cold War. Franceschi is getting wildly rich off this turmoil. He pairs up with Marseille's Guarini brothers, kings of the French underworld and masters of a global criminal empire.

Their syndicate would pick up between three and six hundred kilos of raw opium from dirt strips in northern Laos and deliver them to drop points in South Vietnam, Cambodia and the Gulf of Siam. It's a well-oiled machine and balloons the so-called French Connection opium trade from Asia into Europe. By 1962, Franceschi is flying high and he's got a fleet of brand new Beechcraft planes making hundreds of shipments per month.

He's tall, handsome and elegant, just like me, and he's oh so happy to tell the VNTN press corps tales of his airline's drops to troops and service to famed diplomats. To questions of drug running, however, he demurs, but he won't have that chance for too long. The Laos generals want in on the trade, and as their neutrality disintegrates and the Americans get more and more involved in the secret war, they make moves on Franceschi's empire.

One day in 1962, a Franceschi capo named Rene Babal-Enyabal takes off from Vientiane's Watte Airport to the nearby city of Savannakhet on the Thai border, and he loads his plane with 29 watertight tin crates, each one stuffed with 20 kilos of raw opium wrapped in a life belt. Then he drops them all to a point in the ocean and he flies back to Vientiane.

But Babel's had a long day, and he falls asleep at the controls, before drifting into Thai territory, where two T-28 fighters force him down. In what must be one of the most disastrous naps of the year, Babel then admits to smuggling dope, and the whole thing makes international news, including a massive time feature.

Franceschi comes under intense pressure, and the attention gives a corrupt, opium-smuggling Lao Air Force general named Iwane Ratikone a brainwave. He reclassifies Lao airports as military terminals, meaning that airlines need his permission to take off and land. Then, he simply refuses permission to any Corsicans and commandeers opium routes himself.

Iwani, by the way, is the basis for the dastardly General Sung in Air America. And he makes millions and millions of dollars from the opium trade during the war, building massive refineries in sawmills up in Laos's far north. As the war intensifies, and opium becomes key to the Hmong's success against the Viet Cong and the Pathet Lao, Air America and CIA officials don't just abide opium being shipped on the plains, they encourage it.

Writes former VNTN CIA station chief Ted Shackley, who, by the way, also had a key hand in the Cuban JM wave stuff we got into last week. Quote, not all of the CIA personnel working in Laos shared my willingness to coexist with the narcotics dragon. But as far as I know, none of them tried to play St. George during my tour of duty there.

At one point, a US Air commando named Jack Drummond gets annoyed when the Lao are using high-powered T-28s to smuggle opium. Quote, I thought it was a very inefficient use of airlines. So Drummond takes the Lao squadron commander aside. Quote, I'll make you a deal. I'll get you a C-47. I'll maintain it, put gas in it, and never ask you a question if you leave the T-28s alone.

Drummond then gets a C-47, it's a big thing, from the aid agency USAID and it's flown every night. Quote, everyone had a motorcycle in six months and then the families of the enlisted guys had enough to eat for the first time. No matter that the squadron commander is later arrested in Saigon with a C-47 loaded with dope and gold, the war effort continues.

In 1967, Awane wins big in the so-called Opium War, during which he bombs the Shan smuggler Khun Sa and makes off with half a million dollars worth of opium, plus the opportunity to take control of KMT taxes on Burmese opium coming into Laos. Still, there's silence on AA's involvement. Wait, you talked about that right in that episode about that bombing. Wasn't that the cold open of the Khuns, that bombing where they are...

Yeah, where he gets bombed and they kind of take over all his opium. Yeah, it's like Kunsa was kind of instrumental in changing the caravans of Shan opium from mules to mopeds. And he was going across the Mekong back then. And Awane, I think with word from the CIA, got word that he was doing it. And he decided to just carpet bomb them, took their opium. And it was like a major turning point in how the heroin got made in Southeast Asia.

It's like really, really important moment. And it kind of made Kansar because it kind of made him bivouac in the jungle and take stock and come back as the, as a kind of massive warlord that he'd become. But yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty nuts. But in 1968, Shackley,

the guy we just heard from, he leaves Vientiane for a new post in Vietnam. And he, by the way, is going to go on from Cuba to Laos to be vital in Washington's future engagements in Central America, Iran. I mean, this guy is totally a piece of work. You should definitely read Blonde Ghost by David Korn if you want to learn more about him. But in 1969, the following year, everything changes.

The Tet Offensive has pushed US forces back, changing the political scene surrounding the Vietnam War, and a series of media articles expose, at least in part, the CIA's involvement in Air America.

That year, heroin producers, including Awane, bring in master chemists, mostly from Hong Kong, and produce a new form of high-grade heroin, between 90 and 99% purity, much of which is taken by a growing army of American addicts that bring in dope abuse and organized crime onto the streets of major U.S. cities.

The CIA has avoided allowing Bureau of Narcotics Agents, later the DEA, into Laos until this point, nervous that they'll uncover the whole sordid trade. But that year, they relent, and bit by bit, the picture falls into place.

In 1971, Nixon fires the gun on the war on drugs, Laos launches a new anti-opium law, and narco agents arrive in Vietnam. AA is promptly told to clean up its act. Writes Robbins, quote, The public outcry back in the States prompted the CIA to investigate itself, a tactic in keeping with the Alice in Wonderland quality of the war in Laos.

To anyone at all familiar with the secret war, this, quote, investigation has a quite mad quality. But the final report in 1976 of Senator Frank Church's committee investigating intelligence activity states, quote, as allegations of drug trafficking by AA personnel grew in the spring and summer of 1972, the CIA launched a full-scale inquiry. But...

Shock horror. The inquiry results in the finding that, quote, no evidence that the agency or any senior officer of the agency has ever sanctioned or supported drug trafficking as a matter of policy.

And, barring some other hot air, that's it. The whole AA opium matter is swept under a massive, massive carpet. And, as Air America tells us, any pilots who continue to run drugs? Well, I'll let Dr. Kelso from Scrubs take it from here. Seriously, when we hear rumors of Americans lining their own pockets with dope money, gentlemen, that endangers this entire war.

Now, I want to know the truth. I'm afraid we've been keeping the truth from you, sir. We have reason to suspect that our planes are being used to fly opium from the highlands down here to Vientiane, where it is processed into heroin. Dear God. Why wasn't I told about this before? Senator, we've made a grave mistake.

We were trying to protect the good name of our pilots, sir. You mean our pilots? Are involved in smuggling narcotics? Not all of them, sir. Just a few rotten apples. They know we can't inspect every piece of cargo, and so they take advantage of our trust. You know who they are? We'll find out. I pledge to you, sir...

We'll find those rotten apples. Suddenly, Air America has done a full 180. And anti-narcotics missions are keeping its pilots busy, raiding with Thai Border Patrol and scouting for Shan opium caravans. Says pilot Bob Dawson, quote, we started with aerial reconnaissance, searching for caravans or refineries.

You'd look for a white powdery residue on the ground, a source of water, a supply of firewood, two or three small sheds or a warehouse building. The Thais won't let the Americans destroy the dope on site though, insisting that instead it's taken into custody in Bangkok. It's funny that. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords are signed and the CIA, which was never in Laos, remember, leaves Laos.

There are whole books written on the fate of the Hmong, many of whom migrate to the US with Vang Pao, but I'll let former agent Richard L. Holm describe it himself. Quote, Many Hmong have come to the United States as refugees, but thousands still languish in Thai refugee camps. Their way of life has been destroyed. They can never return to Laos. In the

In the end, our policymakers failed to assume the moral responsibility that we owe to those who worked oh so closely with us during those tumultuous years. Later that year, the agency's work expanding the opium trade comes spilling onto American soil when a Thai national called Puttaporn Kramkaran

who has worked on anti-drug ops, is arrested while attending Syracuse University after border guards seized 59 pounds of opium he's trying to ship from Thailand to the States. The CIA goes to great lengths to cover it up and eventually forces Chicago's attorney to do so. This is just after Watergate and it causes a massive scandal.

Senator Charles Percy complains that, quote, the President of the United States himself is not above the law. Yet apparently CIA agents are untouchable.

I wonder if the nation as a whole will or should accept the proposition that some people are immune from prosecution. In this case, prosecution from a sizable drug smuggling operation, simply because they are also involved in sensitive intelligence work or for any other reason. As Robbins, quote,

It's perhaps the perfect symbol of Air America's and the CIA's Jekyll and Hyde attitude to narcotics in Laos through its long involvement there that an anti-drug agent should be smuggling opium into the United States. So, did Air America ship opium during the Cold War in Southeast Asia? Absolutely. Did it help fuel the modern day heroin industry? You betcha. And is Air America worth watching this weekend?

Yeah, kinda. It's got that good-bad thing going on. Just like this rousing, rousing speech. Yeah. Right. Nothing.

Buddha says... Stop with the Buddha thing, all right? I just don't believe that a true Buddhist would be in the gun-running business, okay? You're a hustler, man. I read you covered up a little Jasmine incense. You call it Eastern religion, but you're a hustler.

I didn't say it was a good thing. Until next week, guys. Thanks for listening. Take care. Don't IG your crimes. As always, patreon.com slash the normal podcast or do it up on iTunes. And I think Spotify soon. But yeah, until next week. ... ...

♪♪♪