CIA and Drugs
(I do not want to focus exclusively on the JFK assassination and I realize that so far in this blog I have just been throwing things out there almost at random. I currently do not have a computer at home so I am limited to what I can do in about half an hour on my lunch break at work and while visiting my daughter (Hi Tara!) on weekends. Hopefully, after I get a new home computer I will be able to get a little more focused.) Today, a news article I came across in my files (emphasis added):
(Cincinatti Post, October 2, 1976)
Justice Dept. accused of CIA cover-up in opium case
By Gene Goldenberg
Scrippt-Howard Staff Writer
WASHINGTON--The Justice Department dropped charges against a CIA operative indicted in 1973 for smuggling opium into the United States after the CIA argued that prosecuting the case posed a "national security" risk.
A House subcommittee which investigated the incident concluded that by failing to prosecute this case the Justice Department "may have assisted in a cover-up of CIA participation in Southeast Asian drug traffic."
In a supressed report, the House government and individual rights subcommittee recommended that an independent special prosecutor be appointed to investigate illegal activities of CIA personnel because of the Justice Department's "disturbing ineptitude and neglect" in this and other cases.
The subcommittee report has not been made public because not enough members of the parent Government Oerations Comittee showed up to vote for it at the committee's final meeting of the year. However, a copy of the report was obtained by Scripps-Howard News Service.
The smuggling case involved seven persons, six Americans and a Thai national who the CIA admitted was a "contract employee." The seven were indicted on Aug. 3, 1973, in Chicago on narcotics smuggling charges developed by the U.S. Customs Service, which intercepted a shipment of 25 kilos of raw opium from Thailand to Chicago.
When prosecutors discovered that the Thai citizen was actually a CIA operative, they sought CIA assistance in pursuing their investigation, according to the subcommittee report. This became vital when the defendent promised he would testify that the CIA knew of his smuggling activities and approved them.
After initially promising full cooperation, the CIA then balked, according to the subcommittee report, and refused to provide any of the documentation or rebuttal witnesses necessary to convict the CIA employee in the smuggling case.
John K. Greaney, associate general counsel of the CIA, told the prosecutors that the necessary documents, if exposed would reveal sources and methods of on-going CIA operations in Southeast Asia, the report said.
Greaney further refused to allow a federal judge to examine the documents to determine whether their exposure would jeopardize national security, the subcommittee found.
The U.S. Attorney in Chicago then appealed to the Justice Department to intervene with the CIA. On April 15, 1974, Henry Petersen, then assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division, and other Justice officials met with Greaney, who reiterated his claim of "national security" and asked that the case against the CIA employee be dropped.
Petersen testified that he ordered subordinates to look into the matter. Two weeks later, William e. Ryan, the narcotics section chief in the criminal division, signed dismissal papers dropping charges against the CIA operative.
"Neither Ryan nor Petersen asked to see the documents in order to judge whether they were relevant or too sensitive", said the subcommittee report. "They simply accepted the CIA's assertion."
"The behavior of CIA officials in this case indicates that they still believe that the agency and its employees are above the criminal law and that CIA personnel may be set above the law by the mere invocation of 'national security'," the report concluded.
