Undercover Armies - CIA FOIA - Central Intelligence Agency

C05303949
Appendix
The recollection of Jim Glerum regarding the emergence of narcotics as an
intelligence and enforcement priority differs from that of Larry Devlin by
about a year. Glerum remembered Washington as displaying little interest in
the question' until about 1969 t the first year of the Nixon administration. But
even before that,' Ihad been making a conscious and continuous effort to
stay on top of the subject, mainly to ensure that Hmong or other project units
were not using US assets, especially air transport, to move illicit opium.
rr
The
upcountry units were aware of this interest-case officers were required, for
example, to enforce the prohibition on opium aboard Air America and CASI
planes-and sometime in late 1968 or early 1969,1
rep.orted the progress through Laos of an opium caravan from China. 18
I
Ithought the information detailed and authoritative enough to merit
dissemination, and put it on the wire. Headquarters reacted with a yawn, wondering
in its eval~ation of the report whyDhad even bothered with it.O
Headquarters had expressed no more interest, at the time, in covering Laotian
military involvement in the traffic. Vientiane station I
regarded FAR, from Gen. Ouane Rathikoun on down, as "up to its ears" in the
opium trade. But information on specific transactions, let alone comprehensive
coverage, would have demanded a major clandestine collection effort. At
this point, the topic did not enjoy that high a priority.D
In any case, CIA .officers in VientianeI Isaw little chance that the
Hmong could contribute to the heroin traffic even if they wanted to. Highgrade,
No. 4 opium was required for conversion into heroin, and Laotian
opium, in Glerum's understanding, never reached that level. The result was
that most of the Hmong product went to feed the habit of smokers in Laos.
And the volume of Hmong production in any case remained sma11, jith most
of the poppies grown by individual users or petty traffickers. l knew of
just one commercial-scale entrrpri1se, and that was at Bouam Long, in northern
Xieng Khouang Province. ,
In the view of0 officers, the tenacious defense of Bouam Long by
Hmong leader Cher Pao Moua and his irregulars owed something to their
determination not to lose this source of income.l Ialso assumed that the
Bouam Long defenders would exploit any access t~ CIA-sponsored liaison
I
18 Material dealing with the emergenceof Nixon administration concern about narcotics. including
Bouam Long and the Nam Yuraid and its aftermath, is from Jim Glerum. Other recollections'
of CIA managers and case officers differ on such points as the prevalenceof poppy fields in the
mountains of MR 2. the ultimate size of the Office of Security contingent, the significance of
Burma as a point of originor a destination of drug shipments, the suitabilityof Laotianopium as a
heroin base, and the chronology of the emergingpriorityof the drug traffic as an intelligencetarget.D
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