This book provides insight into the paradigmatic approaches evolved by CIA decades ago in Vietnam which remain operational practices today in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and
elsewhere.Valentine’s research into CIA activities began when CIA Director William Colby gave him free access
to interview CIA officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. The CIA would rescind it, making every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment,
imprisonment, torture and assassination in Vietnam.
While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos, to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this
illegal activity focused on the CIA’s relationship with the federal drugs agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine
wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug law
enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive
management, intelligence and foreign operations staffs in order to
ensure that the flow of drugs continues unimpeded to traffickers and
foreign officials in its employ.
Ultimately, portions of his research materials would be archived at the
National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center,
and John Jay College.
This book includes excerpts from the above titles along with
updated articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current
topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the
CIA’s ongoing illegal and extra-legal activities. These terrorism and
drug law enforcement articles and interviews illustrate how the CIA’s
activities impact social and political movements abroad and in the
United States.
A common theme is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the
American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned
shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability.
Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then
continues to inform CIA praxis now. Valentine tracks its steady
infiltration into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to
the exigencies of the American empire: the American people.
