The Real Drug Lords: A brief history of CIA involvement in the Drug
Trade
Global
Research, January 31, 2015
This article was first published on
August 31, 2008.
1947 to 1951, FRANCE
According to Alfred W. McCoy in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, CIA
arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in
Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party. The
Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks — ideal
conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors,
which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world.
Marseille’s first heroin laboratones were opened in 1951, only months after the
Corsicans took over the waterfront.
EARLY 1950s, SOUTHEAST ASIA