Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press [Hardcover]

Alexander Cockburn (Author), Jeffrey St Clair (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 1998 | ISBN-10: 1859841392 | ISBN-13: 978-1859841396 | Edition: First Edition

A shocking expose of the CIA's role as drug baron. On March 18, 1998, the CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz, told astounded US Reps that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals that the Agency knew to be involved in the drug business. More shocking was the revelation that the CIA had received from Reagan's Justice Department clearance not to report any knowledge it might have of drug-dealing by CIA assets. Many years' worth of CIA denials, much of it under oath to Congress, were sunk. Hitz's admissions made fools of some of the most prominent names in US journalism and vindicated others that had been ruined. Particularly resonant was the case of the San Jose Mercury News, which published a sensational series on CIA involvement in the smuggling of cocaine into black urban neighborhoods, and then under pressure conspired in the destruction of its own reporter, Gary Webb. In Whiteout, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair finally put the whole story together, from the earliest days, when the CIA's institutional ancestors cut a deal with America's premier gangster and drug trafficker, Lucky Luciano. This is a thrilling history that stretches from Sicily in 1944 to the killing fields of Laos and Vietnam, to CIA safe houses in Greenwich Village and San Francisco where CIA men watched Agency-paid prostitutes feed LSD to unsuspecting clients. We meet Oliver North, as he plotted with Manuel Noriega and Central American gangsters. We travel to little-known airports in Costa Rica and Arkansas. We hear from drug pilots and accountants from the Cali Cartel. We learn of DEA agents whose careers were ruined because they tried to tell the truth. Cockburn and St. Clair show how the CIA's complicity with drug-dealing criminal gangs was part and parcel of its attacks on labor organizers, whether on the docks of New York, Marseilles, or Shanghai. They trace how the Cold War and counter-insurgency led to an alliance between the Agency and the vilest of war criminals like Klaus Barbie, or fanatic opium traders like the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Cockburn and St. Clair horrifyingly affirm charges of outraged black communities that the CIA had undertaken enduring programs of experiments on minorities. They show that the CIA imported Nazi scientists straight from their labs at Dachau and Buchenwald and set to work, developing chemical and biological agents, tested on blacks, some of them in mental hospitals. Cockburn and St. Clair dissect the shameful way American journalists have not only turned a blind eye to the Agency's misdeeds, but also helped plunge the knife into those who tried to tell the truth. Fact-packed and fast-paced, Whiteout is a richly detailed excavation of the CIA's dirtiest secrets. For anyone who wants to know the real truth about the Agency, this is the book to start with.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair take the revelations of the links between the Central Intelligence Agency, the Nicaraguan Contras, and the Los Angeles crack market that journalist Gary Webb exposed in 1996--revelations that are the basis of Webb's book Dark Alliance--and use them as a springboard for a tale of the U.S. government's involvement with the illegal drug trade that extends much further back than Webb's tale.

The specific revelations are not, perhaps, entirely new; many know, for example, that even before there was a CIA, the WWII-era Office of Strategic Services enlisted the aid of gangster "Lucky" Luciano in arranging support among the Sicilian Mafia for the American invasion of Italy, or that the CIA was actively involved in the Southeast Asian opium trade during the Vietnam War. But Cockburn and St. Clair persuasively argue that the traditional explanation for such events--"rogue elements"--is deliberately misleading, and that the mainstream "liberal" press plays an active role in this obfuscation (noting, for example, that Webb's three biggest attackers were the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post). By providing an overarching narrative rather than treating these incidents as isolated, the authors present a damning indictment of the CIA--but one that fully admits that the agency was not acting on its own, but was merely fulfilling the mandates of the American government. --Ron Hogan

Review

...a good review of how the campaign against Webb [author of Dark Alliance] evolved, and the forces behind it. -- The Nation, Jo Ann Kawell

A convincing, well-researched, comprehensive condemnation of the CIA. -- Maximum Rock 'n Roll

A history of hypocrisy and political interference the like of which only Frederick Forsyth in a dangerous caffeine frenzy could make up. -- The Guardian

A solid, pitiless piece of muckraking, . . . Cockburn and St. Clair raise troubling questions about the role of a largely secretive government agency in a democratic society. -- San Diego Union Tribune

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Verso; First Edition edition (September 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859841392
• ISBN-13: 978-1859841396
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 75 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A disturbing paradigm-shifting vision of 20th cen. history April 30, 2003

By Earl Hazell VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"Down the decades the CIA has approached perfection in one particular art, which we might term the 'uncover-up.' This is a process whereby, with all due delay, the Agency first denies with passion, then concedes in profoundly muffled tones, charges leveled against it. Such charges have included the Agency's recruitment of Nazi scientists and SS officials; experiments on unwitting American citizens; efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro; alliances with opium lords in Burma, Thailand and Laos; an assassination program in Vietnam; complicity in the toppling of Salvador Allende in Chile; the arming of opium traffickers and religious fanatics in Afghanistan; the training of murderous police in Guatemala and El Salvador; and involvement in drugs-and-arms shuttles between Latin America and the US.... Charges are raised against the CIA. The Agency leaks its denials to favored journalists, who hasten to inform the public that after intense self-examination, the Agency has discovered that it has clean hands. Then, when the hubbub has died down, the Agency issues a report in which, after patient excavation the resolute reader discovers that, yes, the CIA did indeed do more or less exactly what it had been accused of."

Alexander Cockburn and
Jefferey St. Clair
WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS
From Chapter 15: "The Uncover-up"

Two strange feelings came over me as I finished this book, which I could not put down when I picked it up until I spent an entire weekend devouring and digesting its contents until my eyes hurt. First was a complete and total numbing. No matter politically sophisticated or cynical you think you are, left, right or center, the contents of this book will kick you in the stomach repeatedly. The next feeling that comes however, is similar to the feeling of spending time in a foreign country and beginning to learn the language by rote and exposure; hearing familiar words and sounds and piecing together their meaning and social context. Only it is even more subtle. It is like traveling to England or Scotland, and hearing people speak English, but not an English to which you are accustomed... realizing that a "fag" for them is a cigarette and a "shag" is anything but a carpet...knowing that some of the most familiar words and phrases mean something totally different to what you know them to mean.

After reading WHITEOUT: THE CIA, DRUGS AND THE PRESS you will have no choice but to listen to the rhetoric of politicians and the catch phrases that dominate the airwaves like "War on Drugs," "War on Terrorism," "Operation [fill in the blank] Freedom" and know that you are not just being lied to: A FAMILIAR SOUNDING BUT ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LANGUAGE IS BEING SPOKEN. Politicians and the CIA don't just simply tell lies. They SPEAK the LANGUAGE *lie*. And though it as a language sounds like English, without a book of definitions and catch phrases the likes of which you would buy for your trip through Italy or France (Which is what WHITEOUT becomes by the third chapter), this secret dialect of English that the CIA speaks would never reveal itself. "War on Drugs," for example, is a catch phrase for social control, along socio-economic and racial lines...created by the most powerful drug dealers on earth. Nothing else.

"This is largely a story of criminal conduct, much of it by the Central Intelligence Agency. It is a story of how many in the US press have been complicit in covering the Agency's tracks. When compelled to concede the Agency's criminal activities such journalists often take refuge in the notion of 'rogue agents' or, as a last resort, of a 'rogue agency.' we do not accept this separation of the CIA's activities from the policies and directives of the US government. Whether it was Truman's meddling in China, which created the Burmese opium kings; or the Kennedy brothers' obsession with killing Fidel Castro; or Nixon's command for 'more assassinations' in Vietnam, the CIA has always been the obedient executor of the will of the US government, starting with the White House."

From the Preface

Chapter One of WHITEOUT sets the theme and tone of the entire book via describing the career assassination attempts on Gary Webb, an investigative journalist for the San Jose Mercury News who uncovered unavoidable proof of the CIA's involvement in the Nicaraguan Contra drug trade of the 80's. They, with the help of the CIA, deliberately planted tons of cocaine into the Black communities of Los Angeles which became converted and marketed in its cheap, hard rock form--ushering in the Crack era from which the whole of Black America has never recovered. (The leading newspapers of our nation, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, as opposed to supporting his work, attacked him; purposely ignoring his evidence and his sources proving the validity of his findings.) From there journalists Alexander Cockburn and Jefferey St. Clair give a fifty year history of the CIA that indirectly redefines both world history and current events and becomes more and more disturbing--even stomach turning--with every page. Collusion with and protection of Nazis; drug trading throughout the world; partnerships with the Mafia; leader assassinations and destabilizations of democracies that didn't support US interests; efforts at mind control and the testing of chemical/biological weapons on prisoners of war AND unknowing US citizens; and more. This book in fact obliterates so many Pollyanna and racist views of history since World War Two that the views themselves are revealed to be more catch phrases and ideas in this language of lies; phrases meant only to be defined according to the propagandistic symbolism of the secret society for which they were actually developed at the expense of the common people--and democracy itself.

This book is not for the faint of heart--and that includes more people than you think. And because of it, and the painstaking, probably dangerous research these journalists took on to write this, I cannot recommend it enough.

69 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superbly Researched Account of Some Unpleasant Events March 10, 2000

By Mark Wylie

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

The CIA has always been a very secretive organization, and remains one today. In 1996, the publication of Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series threatened the CIA with unwelcome public scrutiny by exposing its complicity in the drug trade: the CIA-created Nicaraguan contras were funding their operations, in part, by selling crack cocaine on the streets of Los Angeles, with the agency's knowledge.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair's "Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press" jumps off from here. Wisely, Cockburn and St. Clair do not make Webb's story the core of their book; Webb's own book does that job admirably. What they do contribute to this story is a devastating account of the shameful way that the mainstream press, led by former intelligence officer Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, turned on Webb in an effort to discredit him and his story. Cockburn and St. Clair repeatedly expose the flaws in mainstream efforts to "debunk" the Dark Alliance series, and catch many reporters acting as little more than flacks for the CIA, often writing stories that said little more than "we know Webb's story is false because the CIA told us so."

But the core of "Whiteout" has a more historical perspective, as the authors set out to review the underside of the history of the CIA and its precursor, the OSS. And an ugly picture it is, too, as we see these agencies:

-recruiting the Mafia to assassinate foreign leaders.

-recruiting Nazi scientists to conduct experiments (often on blacks) in torture and mind control.

-helping war criminal Klaus Barbie escape Europe, and justice, to become a South American drug lord, arms dealer and apparent CIA operative.

-allying with the opium and heroin traders of Southeast Asia.

Working with drug dealers and other criminal elements is so common for the CIA that it would appear from this account to have been standard Agency procedure.

"Whiteout" is a well-written and well-researched book. Helpfully, the authors end each chapter with an annotated guide to further reading on the subject.

"Whiteout" is not pleasant reading; I could only take so much at a time before having to put it aside for the day. But it is necessary reading. In a democratic society, an agency such as the CIA, if it must exist, must be under constant scrutiny or it will lapse into lawlessness (the same is true of law enforcement agencies). It is clear that the mainstream media are not going to provide such scrutiny, so we must turn to independent journalists like Cockburn and St. Clair and others like them for the accurate information we need.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable, and very important. September 3, 1998

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

In Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, authors Alex Cockburn and Jeff St Clair have synthesized a vast amount of information into an easy to read, cogent history of the CIA's involvement in the illicit trafficking of narcotics.

This unforgettable and very important book proves several things. First, that the CIA has been the world's biggest drug trafficker for the past 50 years. Second, that the major newspapers and TV networks have always known about it, but have chosen not to report it, under the aegis of national security. Third, that the end result of CIA drug dealing and the attendant media "whiteout" is the pacification of minority communities in America. And last but not least, Whiteout proves that when independent journalists like Gary Webb report the truth, they are inevitably smeared by the same powerful forces that put this unjust system into motion.

Whiteout is a volatile book and is sure to arouse the wrath of both Big Media and Big Brother. But it has been meticuously researched, and it is so well written that the case it makes is beyond any reasonable doubt. Authors Cockburn and St Clair are to be commended for their courage in providing such a valuable public service. Five stars for covering all the bases.