pynchon-l-digest V2 #7241

[John Carvill]

> Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:14:18 -0700
> From: Robin Landseadel <>
> Subject: Re: News Alert: Brother of Afghan President Is on C.I.A. Payroll, Officials Say
>
> Why and how the recent NYT article is perfectly on point as regards
> Inherent Vice:
>
>  From Dave Lindorff at HuffPo:
>
>        . . . What the article didn't mention at all is that there is a clear
>        historical pattern here. During the Vietnam War, the CIA, and its
>        Air America airline front-company, were neck deep in the
>        Southeast Asian heroin trade. At the time, it was Southeast
>        Asia, not Afghanistan, that was the leading producer and
>        exporter of opium, mostly to the US, where there was a resulting
>        heroin epidemic.
>
>        A decade later, in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration,
>        as the late investigative journalist Gary Webb so brilliantly
>        documented first in a series titled "Dark Alliance" in the San
>        Jose Mercury newspaper, and later in a book by that same
>        name, the CIA was deeply involved in the development of and
>        smuggling of cocaine into the US, which was soon engulfed in
>        a crack cocaine epidemic -- one that continues to destroy
>        African American and other poor communities across the
>        country. (The Times' role here was sordid -- it and other leading
>        papers, including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times
>        -- did despicable hit pieces on Webb shamelessly trashing his
>        work and his career, and ultimately driving him to suicide,
>        though his facts have held up. For the whole sordid tale, read
>        Alex Cockburn's and Jeff St. Clair's White Out.)

So it seems. I've read Webb's stuff, and have a tape somewhere (or
probably an MP3) of him giving a talk and being interviewed, and all
of what he says (and you say, here) seems to me to hold up ok. But,
and not to stir this whole shitnest up again, but.... those guys at
Counterpunch have got it way, way, way wrong on Bosnia, which makes me
doubt pretty much everything else they say, meaning I'll never get to
enjoy reading 'Whiteout'.

Whatever, the connection between the CIA and drugs is one which
Pynchon made 100% explicit a long time ago, in Vineland, as well all
know. Robin, over to you.....