Customer Reviews

The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Governments Embrace

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was recommended to me by a DEA agent. When I opened the cover, I stepped into another world, and when I emerged, I could no longer take seriously such presidential pronouncements to "Just Say No" or "read my lips." Later, I encountered a "friend" who had been in jail with one of the major individuals featured in the book. He told me that the convicted drug dealer had discussed the book and proclaimed that his part of the story had been reported accurately, except for the amount of money he'd been caught with. Evidently, DEA agents turned in $1M of drug money found in his trunk. He said there was at least $3M. Such corruption, I discovered upon reading the book, was more the rule rather than the exception. The book moved me to write my congressman, who admitted he had never even heard of the secret drug enforcement organization detailed in the book. And when Reagan and Ollie North were getting roasted about "guns for hostages," I laughed. If the American people knew about the drug deals our government oversaw (and I'm sure continues to oversee) to prop up "U.S. causes" in other countries, as well as our own, they also would have found the affair amusing. This book opened my eyes and blasted my naivete regarding our government's involvement in the dark underworld of illegal drugs. It will do the same for you. James Mills has written a remarkable book, and he had sense enough not to overwrite and allow this astounding story to speak for itself.

And I do mean everyone, absolutely everyone. Yes, it's huge, one of the thickest paperbacks I've ever seen. But every single page, indeed every paragraph, hums with Mills's hyperefficient prose, propelled by the astonishing story. Every single person in the United States should read this book. And then we should tell our political leaders we've read it, and that we know better to believe their posturing and BS any more. THEN we'd see some results. Does that sound like an impossible exaggeration? Well... go read this book, then come back and see if you still have any doubts. This is a must read to top other must reads -- far and away one of the most staggering books I've ever read. Bravo to all.

Wow, this book should be required reading for an educated adult, this could be used as a university text. This book is hard hitting, realistic and well written about the illegal trade and alliances between Narco-trafficers and governments, whether willing or not. This book exposes the facades and uncovers startling and incredible truths about the impact of illegal drugs on America that the mainstream media just glosses over. I wish this book was still in print. There needs to be more investigative reporting like this to resurrect journalism.

There are two kinds of government crime against the taxpayer, and both are wide-spread and costly to the taxpayer. There is corporate corruption, the buying of politicians, such that decisions are made that in effect transfer the taxes paid by individuals (who carry every government's costs) to unethical corporations focused on profit at any cost (to others). This book documents the second kind of crime: where government agencies charged with protecting the taxpayer from drugs or crime or terrorists or other threats, themselves become allies with criminals, and seek to profit from crime while permitting field officers to go bad, steal money, and become nothing more than officially sanctioned criminals. If and when each Nations cleans house within its "secret world," the ethics of intelligence, and how to police the police, will be among the most fearsome challenges to be addressed.

This extraordinary book, at 1165 pages (1974 edition) is a deeply documented, thoughtful, credible account of the second kind of corruption. It is strongly recommended for purchase by anyone who pays taxes.

When one reads this book, it is like dropping into the hole of Alice in Wonderland, or falling into one of Carlos Castenada's peyote trances never to come out again. One arrives unprepared at a station in a new dimension of human existence. It is an odyssey "across," "within," "through" and ""around" the world of where drugs, and the drug Kingpins that traffic them, meet with our non-existent "shadow government."

Both are overlapping "nether worlds" that we are told do not exist, but exist they do: as partners in crimes at some place well above our heads. Not only do they exist, but if one can believe the expanded paradigm of the U.S. government put forth by Berkeley Professor, Peter Dale Scott, the drug cartels and those agents and agencies of government that intersect with them -- which promote or passively allow them to ply their trade -- make up the "Sixth Estate" of our government (with the "Press", the mob and other organized crime cartels being the Fourth and the Fifth).

This book is a tale of such staggering proportions that were the facts not all in perfect alignment with the reality we see in the ghettoes where the drug trade is mostly plied, one would believe it to have been invented: made from whole cloth like a fairy tale. However, once the motive of money, unimaginable amounts of money, enters the picture, then our senses begin to tell us that this is not fiction, no fairy tale at all: but the outer limits of what can happen when greed and the pursuit of money are let loose, unbridled, unrestrained to seek its own logical path and endpoint.

As but two examples, during the 1970s, before the "real" drugs crisis with "crack cocaine" ever got off the ground, there was so much money in marijuana trafficking that the drug kingpins bought, all along the Atlantic coast, from New Jersey to Miami, all of the available multi-million dollar beachfront mansions they could find. The purpose of this vast investment: To use them as storage houses for transshipments of the vast amounts of marijuana: A whole class of U.S. property was used only as storage sheds for marijuana.

As another example, in order to support their defensive needs, the drug Kingpins, would "let" contracts for the development of new equipment needed to support their smuggling efforts. Things like new guns, radar equipment, night goggles, submarines, excavation equipment, poisons, etc. were procured through private contractors just as the military does with new weapon systems.

And as always, their biggest problem was never finding buyers for their product, but how to transport and launder staggering amounts of money, which with the advent of cocaine, weighed more than the drugs that were sold, and was much more difficult to conceal and dispose of. The sophistication with which large sums of money was laundered and otherwise invested in the normal economy, even in the days when this book was written, still are enough to amaze the best Phds in economics: setting up and "breaking out" bonding houses, issues stocks, setting up shell companies, etc., ad infinitum. During the 1980s, for instance, 85% of all Miami paper money tested positive for trances of cocaine.

Given that the amount of money involved is enough to destabilized even the largest governments in the world, it is easy to see why governments were able to rationalized being and staying involved in the drug trade: better to regulate and give order to it than to allow random criminals to destabilize the entire world.

This book tells the complete story of how a handful of drug cartels and renegade drug entrepreneurs, did almost that.

Five stars

I read this book many years ago, but it's impact on me was so powerful that I vividly remember it to this day. Yes it is long and the material is now dated, but the overall content is something every American citizen should read. It will open your eyes to what a farce the so called "war" on drugs really is in this country. It's understandable how our government caves into the corruption when you look at the staggering amounts of money and power plays involved. The now dissolved Centac organization (the focus of this book) is about the only U.S. government agency worth the tax dollars. Their approach was to go after the top men, unlike the DEA and police system making small/mid-level busts every now and then to get good news coverage, while they continue taking their kickbacks and ignoring the kingpins and tons of drugs coming in. This book will make you ripping mad and scare the hell out of you at the same time.

This book will open your eyes about the war on drugs and make you realize it is a war that is impossible to win. The conflicts within our own agencies allow the drug czars to continue to do business as usual and not have to worry about be caught.

I have read this book twice. It is an amazing story of high crime. when i lend it it never comes back. The reason it is out of print is , as the book says, 'the names are not changed to protect the guilty' from the CIA to the whitehouse, politicians make conscessions with the bad guys. WAR on drugs? HA........ When the government puts its interests before the people it reads like this book. When criminals can operate with impunity, it reads like this book. Excellent......scary, and REAL

America was and is built and surviving on CRIME

I found this book to be very informative. It opened my eyes as to why the US cannot seem to win this war. I liked the style that Mr. Mills used and really appreciate the amount of research he must have done. After reading this book I don't have any trouble understanding the "doublespeak" used by the politicians in this country. It brought to light that the American people are kept in the dark. What our government really does for us. My only hope is that enough people read this book, ask enough questions of the people who can and will do something to correct the wrongs brought to light.

During a recent interview with the retired Colombian Colonel who headed the Bloque de Busqueda (Search Bloc) that was instrumental in dismantling the so-called Cali 'cartel', he stated that he had read Mill's book a number of years ago in an attempt to learn more about Colombian trafficking organizations at a time when Colombian police and military intelligence was rather thin on the subject (This situation has since changed dramatically).

Like other journalistic accounts of the drug trade, Mill's book is somewhat sensationalistic. Moreover, the idea of an 'underground empire' or international 'octopus' (see Claire Sterling) of crime controlled by a few individuals or organizations is factually incorrect. The reality is much more diffuse and complex: Thousands of independent organizations of varying size and complexity operating in different countries and markets.

However, there is no denying Mill's skill as a writer, and his book does contain some useful information regarding the criminal activities of a number of marijuana and cocaine trafficking organizations, as evidenced in the Colonel's observation.