American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library) [Hardcover]

Peter Dale Scott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0742555941 | ISBN-13: 978-0742555945

This provocative, thoroughly researched book explores the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Prominent political analyst Peter Dale Scott marshals compelling evidence to expose the extensive growth of sanctioned but illicit violence in politics and state affairs, especially when related to America's long-standing involvement with the global drug traffic. Beginning with Thailand in the 1950s, Americans have become inured to the CIA's alliances with drug traffickers (and their bankers) to install and sustain right-wing governments. The pattern has repeated itself in Laos, Vietnam, Italy, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Turkey, Pakistan, and now Afghanistan_to name only those countries dealt with in this book. Scott shows that the relationship of U.S. intelligence operators and agencies to the global drug traffic, and to other international criminal networks, deserves greater attention in the debate over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. To date, America's government and policies have done more to foster than to curtail the drug trade. The so-called war on terror, and in particular the war in Afghanistan, constitutes only the latest chapter in this disturbing story.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In Scott's view, the American military-industrial complex so feared by Eisenhower has grown into a military-industrial-corporate behemoth. This "overclass," often functioning independently from the official elected government, has spearheaded countless actions that it perceives to be in the best interest of perpetuating American hegemony. With exhaustive research and extremely persuasive arguments, Scott (The Road to 9/11) seeks to prove that the funding and motivation behind America's assertion of global supremacy can be traced to drugs. Drug money fueled American actions in Laos and Vietnam during the Cold War, American support of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 80s, and defines American political action in Latin America and present-day Afghanistan. By looking at covert activity and recorded history through the lens of American global dominance, Scott makes a terrifyingly compelling case; he asks readers to consider what actions taken in the last 50 years have not benefited America's military-industrial complex, such an integral part of the global economy. While Scott can get mired in minutiae, his carefully structured arguments never fail to interest or disturb. (Oct.)
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Review

What I like most about Peter Dale Scott are his fierce intellectual curiosity, his willingness to investigate radioactive topics, and his tireless commitment to unearthing the truth. Over the years, he has done more than almost anyone to discover and chronicle the forces that covertly shape our policies. American War Machine may be his greatest work yet. (Russ Baker )

Praise for Deep Politics and the Death of JFK: Staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy?of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic.... (Kirkus Reviews )

Praise for Cocaine Politics: For the evidence that narcotics . . . have been instruments of U.S. foreign policy, you simply have to read Cocaine Politics. This, one of the most enlightening books of the year, will redefine your usage of the silly term 'drug war.'''' (Hitchens, Christopher The Nation )

Praise for Cocaine Politics: An authoritative account of a crucial but underpublicized issue..... (Library Journal )

Praise for Cocaine Politics: This important, explosive report forcefully argues that the 'war on drugs' is largely a sham, as the U.S. government is one of the world's largest drug pushers..... (Publishers Weekly )

Praise for The Road to 9/11: The broad picture he paints is all too accurate. . . . This book, like all of Scott's prose works, is meticulously researched and sourced. His formulations are grounded in the evidence. . . . In short, the scholarship is excellent. (Liberty )

Praise for Deep Politics and the Death of JFK: Staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy—of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic. (Kirkus Reviews )

Praise for Cocaine Politics: For the evidence that narcotics . . . have been instruments of U.S. foreign policy, you simply have to read Cocaine Politics. This, one of the most enlightening books of the year, will redefine your usage of the silly term 'drug war.' (Hitchens, Christopher The Nation )

Praise for Cocaine Politics: An authoritative account of a crucial but underpublicized issue. (Library Journal )

Praise for Cocaine Politics: This important, explosive report forcefully argues that the 'war on drugs' is largely a sham, as the U.S. government is one of the world's largest drug pushers. (Publishers Weekly )

Praise for Drugs, Oil, and War: A new book by Scott is an occasion. (Lobster )

Peter Dale Scott is our most fearless and illuminating chronicler of the lethal and mysterious web of unaccountable violence linking government to organized crime, the drug trade, state terror, and eventuating in disastrous wars. Read this extraordinary book to understand why this country finds itself gridlocked in Afghanistan, yet another costly quagmire, because a small cabal at the top is still dedicated to the mirage of American global dominance. (Falk, Richard )

Peter Dale Scott writes with his inimitable eloquence about the intersection between U.S. covert operations and international narcotics trafficking and its destructive undermining of American democracy. The past half-century of drug politics—and the country’s complicit acceptance of the violence it has spawned—is an ominous portent for our present and future. American War Machine should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the upper- and underworld marriage that drives contemporary foreign policy. (Sally Denton )

Peter Dale Scott flashes a bright light on a dark illicit world of lowly thugs and high-placed political and moneyed cabals. Thoroughly researched and deeply informed, this book makes for an intriguing read. (Parenti, Michael )

I said of Scott's last brilliant take on this subject, Drugs, Oil and War, that 'It makes most academic and journalistic explanations of our past and current interventions read like government propaganda written for children.' Now Scott has written an even better book. Read it! (Daniel Ellsberg )

In Scott's view, the American military-industrial complex so feared by Eisenhower has grown into a military-industrial-corporate behemoth. This 'overclass,' often functioning independently from the official elected government, has spearheaded countless actions that it perceives to be in the best interest of perpetuating American hegemony. With exhaustive research and extremely persuasive arguments, Scott (The Road to 9/11) seeks to prove that the funding and motivation behind America's assertion of global supremacy can be traced to drugs. Drug money fueled American actions in Laos and Vietnam during the Cold War, American support of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 80s, and defines American political action in Latin America and present-day Afghanistan. By looking at covert activity and recorded history through the lens of American global dominance, Scott makes a terrifyingly compelling case; he asks readers to consider what actions taken in the last 50 years have not benefited America's military-industrial complex, such an integral part of the global economy. . . . [His] carefully structured arguments never fail to interest or disturb. (Publishers Weekly Starred Review )

Scott has written a provocative account of CIA machinations and their link to spikes in global drug production, war and terrorism. His chapters on Thailand and the Far East are especially well-grounded and of great use to historians....[Scott] is a creative thinker who deserves credit for delving into the netherworld of clandestine operations and global corruption which most academics choose to ignore....At his core, Scott is an idealist who believes that in exposing the sinister forces accounting for the spread of unnecessary violence, an aroused citizenry can mobilize to rein them in. The stakes today are especially high, because if left unchecked, the pattern of warfare and destabilization which Scott describes may lead to a global confrontation of truly catastrophic proportions as well as irreversible environmental damage and the economic bankruptcy of the United States. (History News Network )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (November 16, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742555941
• ISBN-13: 978-0742555945
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #283,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You Will Want to Read This One, November 12, 2010

By 

Guy Benveniste, Professor Emeritus, Universit... - See all my reviews

This review is from: American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library) (Hardcover)

Yes, you will want to read "American War Machine". Why? because it reveals much we do not know about the role of intelligence agencies, drug cartels , corruption , conflict and American Foreign Policy. If you have served in government, you are aware that events you know first hand about, are not always reported in the media, as you saw them unfold. When it comes to agencies like the CIA, the war on drugs, and our policies abroad, you can be suspicious that you do not have the full story. Peter Dale Scott provides 257 pages of analysis and another 107 pages of detailed notes on his sources. As a result,you will know much more about the role of various US agencies in countries like Mexico, Burma, Laos or Afghanistan. You will also understand how destructive the war on drugs has become and how it undermines our democracy. If nothing more, when you read a brief account in the New York Times or other sources about drug traffickers ( for example the NYT of Monday, November 8, 2010 p.1) you will be able to turn to page 246 of Peter Dale Scott's book and read more on the exact topic. Peter Dale Scott does not believe in conspiracy theories, nor do I. But he describes the forces and interests at work doing the logical thing for them to do, and he describes the confusion, the errors , the misjudgments that always abound in politics and in wars. "American War Machine" is an important contribution

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of American War Machine, by Peter Dale Scott, February 14, 2011

By 

Kevin R. Ryan "dainink" (South Bend, IN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library) (Hardcover)

Having read a few of Peter Dale Scott's earlier books, I was looking forward to his new work, American War Machine. I was not disappointed. Published by Roman & Littlefield in late 2010, this book examines a wide-ranging number of covert US operations since World War II, and, among other things, demonstrates that many of these operations were intimately connected with, and dependent on, illicit drug trafficking. Although my background and experience do not qualify me to write an authoritative review of this important book, I hope that my impressions will compel others to read it.

Scott previously defined concepts such as deep events, deep politics and the deep state, to refer to covert mechanisms that facilitate the strategies of the politically minded rich, a group otherwise referred to as the overworld. Deep events, which Scott defines as those which are "systematically ignored or falsified in the mainstream media and public consciousness," can be seen as sharing certain features, such as cover-up of evidence and irresoluble controversy over what happened. These features contribute to a suppressed memory of the event among the general public. Deep events are often associated with illegally sanctioned violence, and involve little known, but historically evident, cooperation between leaders of the state and organized crime.

In American War Machine, Scott sets out to write the first "deep history" of such events, politics and state entities. As he writes: "In my experience, deep events are better understood collectively than in isolation. When looked at together, they constitute a large pattern, that of deep history."

Some of the more well known deep events are briefly reviewed, such as the JFK assassination and Tonkin Gulf incident, as well as the plans known as Operation Northwoods. Scott also makes clear that he now sees 9/11 as not only a deep event, but a "constitutional deep event" in that the implementation of continuity of government (COG) plans, as a result of 9/11, means that the US constitution has been circumvented in favor of what former assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith, called the "Terror Presidency." The latter office has been exploited by an influential power group, among whose major operatives are Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, to pursue long-standing goals of US global domination at the expense of citizen protections as has been done with warrantless surveillance, warrantless detention and suspension of habeas corpus.

One great value of Scott's writing is that, as with the "deep" terms, he provides us with a wealth of new intelligent language that allows people to discuss matters that otherwise either leave too much to uncertainty or, alternatively, generate confusing and unsupported assumptions. With phrases like "global dominance machine" and the "global drug connection" we can better attribute acts and plans to an influential and interconnected transnational organization that is not yet fully defined, while at the same time not oversimplifying by implying that the US government is always to blame. On the other hand, the "war machine" is a US-based construct that has been used to enforce those acts and plans, and therefore the term war machine helps take us a step closer to seeing how the US government relates to the global dominance machine.

Another great value of the book is the tremendous historical perspective provided for the origins and changing patterns of the global drug connection. Scott begins this history lesson by examining the certain characters involved in the World War II era intelligence agency called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the birth of the National Security Council and the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).

The book describes how leaders of the wartime OSS, including William Donovan and Allen Dulles, lobbied for the creation of the CIA through the National Security Act of 1947. At the same time, however, they created private alternatives for covert operations that would operate outside of government control, such as the World Commerce Corporation (WCC).

As CIA executive director, Buzzy Krongard, would later say - ""the whole OSS was really nothing but Wall Street bankers and lawyers." Scott confirms this by writing that, when the CIA was created, it was dominated by "aristocratic elements of the New York overworld." Despite this fact, and despite the creation of privately controlled CIA-like alternatives, a secret government funded organization was authorized by the National Security Council a year later. This was the OPC, led by Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, a State Department official who wielded unprecedented power due to his position in New York law and financial circles.

What American War Machine covers most well are the operations that the OPC and CIA engaged in that contributed to the establishment and growth of drug trafficking and terrorism throughout the world. Scott writes: "After World War II, the United States, along with Britain and France, recurrently used both drug networks and terrorist groups as assets or proxies in the Cold War."

The book begins this discussion in Mexico, where a global drug connection consisting of major organized crime figures and US covert operatives worked together to give birth to a national narcosystem that competed for control of the entire country for many years. The Mexican drug problem was pre-existing, and Scott describes how it grew as a result of a reduction in Chinese opium production in the 1930s. In the late 1940s, however, the Mexican Federal Security Directorate (DFS), which was "setup with FBI assistance" and "partly managed and protected by its sister organization, the CIA," developed an "institutional relationship with drug traffickers [who] supplied recruits for off-the-books governmental violence."

The DFS became a protector of the drug traffickers and "both in turn were protected by elements in the CIA." The Mexican drug traffic, which was a primary factor in the introduction of drugs to the US and Canada, was also dominated by major figures in international organized crime, such as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and "Lucky" Luciano. It was also controlled by the OPC Mexico station chief, E. Howard Hunt, who later was convicted in the Watergate scandal.

In the early 1950s, Operation Paper was a US initiative to supply arms and materiel to the opium-trafficking Kuotmintang (KMT) in Burma, for the purpose of invading the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. Hunt and Lansky both had pre-war KMT connections (as did OSS chief Donovan) and were apparently instrumental in developing the flow of Chinese opium to Mexico via the KMT. Hunt had been an OSS agent under Paul Helliwell in Kunming, which was "a station that had made payments to its agents in opium."

Helliwell is an important figure in the context of American War Machine. He coordinated the purchase of General Claire Chennault's Civil Air Transport (CAT), an offshoot of the wartime "Flying Tigers" that later was modified for transport of drugs through Taiwan. CAT is the predecessor of Air America, the air corps that the CIA utilized for drug-running out of Southeast Asia.

Paul Helliwell also incorporated a CIA-proprietary firm called Sea Supply, Inc. which funneled funds to OPC agents, including Bangkok-based Willis Bird, and supplied covert operatives in Thailand. Through such mechanisms, and at a time when Chinese opium production was vanishing, "US covert support for the Thai and KMT drug traffickers converted Southeast Asia, for more than two decades, into the world's major source of opium and heroin."

In 1953, OSS chief Donovan was named ambassador to Thailand, with additional powers as "Personal Representative of the President." Donovan's power in the region allowed for the OPC and the players who formed WCC to dominate the international drug trade under the guise of fighting the spread of communism. Thai organizations like the Thai Border Police (BPP) and the Police Aerial Reinforcement Unit (PARU) were developed into off-the-books paramilitary resources for US dominance in Southeast Asia and were paid in part through the drug trade and also through CIA funding.

Although Scott takes pains to recognize that some of these maneuvers might have actually stabilized the region (e.g. BPP activities), he also emphasizes how important these activities were to long-term US foreign policy. He writes that, overall, this was how a bureaucratic cabal used Thailand as a base to, over a decade, "induce US military engagement in Southeast Asia in advance of presidential authority or even knowledge. By 1965, if not earlier, this engagement had produced the Vietnam War."

The book moves on to Laos, where in the early 1960s the CIA attempted to polarize the communist and anti-communist factions of the nation using the cross-border forces of PARU. CIA-controlled KMT forces from Burma joined in this effort. Scott describes how US intelligence agency leaders simultaneously manipulated President Eisenhower, and shows that long-term war in Laos and Vietnam was initiated without approval from the US government and was driven primarily by overworld concerns.

The Golden Triangle encompassing Burma, Thailand and Laos, was for many years the largest opium producing region in the world. Scott writes about how CIA-supported drug proxies and the de-facto protection they conferred on the opium trade in this and similar drug producing regions (e.g. the Golden Crescent) is "clearly a major historical factor for the world crime scourge today."

The de-facto protection conferred upon drug traffickers by the CIA included protection of some of the dominant figures in organized crime,... Read more ›

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing Research, December 7, 2010

By 

Jeff - See all my reviews

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This review is from: American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (War and Peace Library) (Hardcover)

The footnotes are exhaustive. There is ample third party research to support claims of Nationalist Chinese insurgents in Thailand. There other academic sources that point to General Phao of Thailand with similar conclusions. This book opens up the opium mystery and it raises some intriguing questions for further research. This might force economists to now re-examine their "gold standard" economic model data for hyper-inflation policy in Taiwan from 1950-53. Was the gold siphoned off for the KMT insurgents in Burma at the start of the Korean War? Is this classic tale of fighting hyper-inflation too perfect for a real world scenario? Did the KMT party embezzle the ROC gold reserves of China in 1950 and cover it up with "too perfect" or falsified economic data? Economists might be forced to restate their now flawed economic theories if there is truth to this scenario.