The Politics Of Heroin In Southeast Asia

Condition remarks:
Condition: Good. Jacket: Chipped and worn with some minor damage. Page Condition: Yellowed with some foxing. Markings: No markings. Binding condition: Good.

Few books have rattled the corridors of power quite like Alfred W. McCoy's explosive exposé, which tore back the curtain on the CIA's alleged complicity in the Southeast Asian heroin trade during the Vietnam War era. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across Laos, Vietnam, and the Golden Triangle, the book meticulously documents how covert intelligence operations inadvertently — and at times deliberately — facilitated the flow of opium and heroin from remote highland villages to the streets of American cities. McCoy names names, traces smuggling networks, and presents damning evidence that implicates not only local warlords and corrupt officials, but also Western intelligence agencies operating under the cover of Cold War necessity. A landmark work in investigative political history, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia redefined the boundaries of what journalism and scholarship could demand of government accountability. McCoy writes with the precision of a historian and the urgency of a reporter, marshalling primary sources and eyewitness testimony to construct an airtight indictment of institutional complicity. The book was so incendiary that the CIA attempted to suppress its publication before it went to press — a fact that only deepened its notoriety. Decades after its first publication, it remains a foundational text for anyone seeking to understand the dark intersection of geopolitics, intelligence, and the global narcotics trade.