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Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press Paperback – November 17, 1999

by Alexander Cockburn (Author), Jeffrey St. Clair (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars 104
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On March 16, 1998, the CIA’s Inspector General, Fred Hitz, finally let the cat out of the bag in an aside at a Congressional Hearing. Hitz told the US Reps that the CIA had maintained relationships with companies and individuals the Agency knew to be involved in the drug business. Even more astonishingly, Hitz revealed that back in 1982 the CIA had requested and received from Reagan’s Justice Department clearance not to report any knowledge it might have of drug-dealing by CIA assets.

With these two admisstions, Hitz definitively sank decades of CIA denials, many of them under oath to Congress. Hitz’s admissions also made fools of some of the most prominent names in US journalism, and vindicated investigators and critics of the Agency, ranging from Al McCoy to Senator John Kerry.

The involvement of the CIA with drug traffickers is a story that has slouched into the limelight every decade or so since the creation of the Agency. Most recently, in 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published a sensational series on the topic, “Dark Alliance,” and then helped destroy 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, the OSS and the Office of Naval Intelligence, cut a deal with America’s premier gangster and drug trafficker, Lucky Luciano.

They show that many of even the most seemingly outlandish charges leveled against the Agency have basis in truth. After the San Jose Mercury News series, for example, outraged black communities charged that the CIA had undertaken a program, stretching across many years, of experiments on minorities. Cockburn and St. Clair show how the CIA imported Nazi scientists straight from their labs at Dachau and Buchenwald and set them to work developing chemical and biological weapons, tested on black Americans, some of them in mental hospitals.

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, or of Marseilles and Shanghai. They trace how the Cold War and counterinsurgency led to an alliance between the Agency and the vilest of war criminals such as Klaus Barbie, or fanatic heroin traders like the mujahedin in Afghanistan.

Whiteout is a thrilling history that stretches from Sicily in 1944 to the killing fields of South-East Asia, 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 Medillin Cocaine Cartel. We learn of DEA agents whose careers were ruined because they tried to tell the truth.

The CIA, drugs… and the press. Cockburn and St. Clair dissect the shameful?way many American journalists have not only turned a blind eye on the Agency’s misdeeds, but helped plunge the knife into those who told the real story.

Here at last is the full saga. Fact-packed and fast-paced, Whiteout is a richly detailed excavation of the CIA’s dirtiest secrets. For all who want to know the truth about the Agency this is the book to start with.
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  1. Print length
    418 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Verso Books
  4. Publication date
    November 17, 1999
  5. Dimensions
    5 x 1.05 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1859842585
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1859842584
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Cockburn and St. Clair present a litany of CIA misdeeds, from the recruitment of Nazi scientists after WWII to the arming of opium traffickers in Afghanistan. All of this is extremely well documented ... A chilling history that many will take issue with of what the CIA has been up to in the past 50 years.”—KIRKUS

“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

“A probing examination of the CIA’s chilling history of coddling major drug traffickers, gangsters and Nazi psychopaths.”—Philadelphia Tribune

“A convincing, well-researched, comprehensive condemnation of the CIA.”—Maximum Rock 'N Roll

About the Author

Alexander Cockburn co-edits CounterPunch with Jeffrey St. Clair. Together they have written Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press and A Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils.

Jeffrey St. Clair co-edits CounterPunch with Alexander Cockburn. Together they have written Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press and A Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso Books (November 17, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 418 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1859842585
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1859842584
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 1.05 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 out of 5 stars 104

About the authors

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  1. Jeffrey St. Clair

    Jeffrey St. Clair

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    Jeffrey St. Clair (born 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is an investigative journalist, writer and editor. He is the co-editor, with Joshua Frank, of the political magazine and website CounterPunch, and a contributing editor to the monthly magazine In These Times. He has also written for The Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner, The Nation, The New Statesman and The Progressive.

    St. Clair attended the American University in Washington, D.C., majoring in English and history. In 1990, he moved to Oregon to edit the influential environmental magazine Forest Watch, later renamed Wild Forest Review. In 1994, he joined journalists Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein on CounterPunch. He now co-edits the newsletter and the popular website.

    In 1998, he published his first book, with Cockburn, Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, a history of the CIA's ties to drug gangs from World War II to the Mujahideen and Nicaraguan Contras. This was followed by A Field Guide to Environmental Bad Guys (with James Ridgeway), Five Days that Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond, Al Gore: a User's Manual, The Politics of Antisemitism, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature, Imperial Crusades, Grand Theft Pentagon, A Dime’s Worth of Difference, End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, Red State Rebels, Born Under a Bad Sky, Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence, Bernie and the Sandernistas, The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink, and An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents.

    He was the recepient of the Anti-Censorship prize at the 2022 American Book Awards.

    Jeffrey St. Clair lives in Oregon City with his wife Kimberly Willson, a librarian.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Alexander Cockburn

    Alexander Cockburn

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    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
104 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jacob Selchau
5.0 out of 5 stars A book of horrors
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is a horrifying book. Every reader has two options: Either he must decide that at least ninety percent of the contents of this book is lies, or they must concede that the US government is fundamentally corrupt. And sadly, all the major claims that I researched up on were well-documented.

The book contains accounts of the US government complicity in drug trade, state terror, torture, genocide and mass murder. Even its own citizens have been subjected to terrible crimes through grotesque biological, radiological and chemical experimentation. The book details many such cases and describe how politicians and the so-called "respectable" press often deliberately look the other way.

The book is also highly readable. The authors are good narrators and the absurdity of the subject matter comes through clearly. It does not contain much original research, but it does collect scattered and willfully-forgotten knowledge that is very valuable. Frankly, I know of no books which describes as many grotesque and absurd high crimes by various US administrations and institutions. It clearly shows that these actions are not performed for the sake of the US citizenry, which are among the victims of this book.

A highly recommended book.
22 people found this helpful
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Robert W. Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars outstanding
Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2009
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I found this book very easy to read and devoured it quite briskly. I found the whole premise to be plausible and I believe that the conclusions were well supported with references to facts. It is a deeply disturbing conclusion. I think that this is a well written book that addresses US involvement in several geo-political regions. I think I say this of any book that's not 50,000 pages in length, but, it was certainly not comprehensive, providing only a smattering of conflicts about which the reader's whistle is whetted. This book might be interesting supplemental reading for an undergraduate political science course or simply an excellent read for novices (especially on raining weekends). I give the premise of the book an "A+" and I give the writing and scholarship an "A-". It is highly recommended.
5 people found this helpful
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Cathleen M. Walker
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the most important books in my library
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2001
Verified Purchase
This is a story that can't be told too many times by too many people. It's volatile, it's important, and there are still too many people who don't know anything about it at all.
The most crucial aspect of this book and the clearest documentation I have yet to find, regards OPERATION PAPERCLIP and the birth of CIA generated projects MK-ULTRA and BLUEBIRD. While this is only the tip of the iceberg of what the CIA has done and is doing to this country, it is imperative that people understand this part of the story in order to believe any of the rest of it. To that end, Whiteout is one of the most important books in my library. If there is better documentation of MK-ULTRA, Bluebird, CHATTER, MKSEARCH, SPELLBINDER, ARTICHOKE, and ultimately, MONARCH, I want to know about it.
12 people found this helpful
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zansdor
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and informative
Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2017
Verified Purchase
Excellent book. Found out things I had no idea happened. It also proved to me once again that the people who are responsible for tragic things are seldom held accountable.
One person found this helpful
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Love to read
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2016
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Great read, very informative. Enjoyed it very much.
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Zach
5.0 out of 5 stars Can't say enough good things about this book
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2015
Verified Purchase
Can't say enough good things about this book.

I'm still waiting for a Walter Pincus retraction. Pincus, you have blood on your hands.
One person found this helpful
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Rick Davenport
5.0 out of 5 stars Eye opening book about how the CIA is in bed ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2015
Verified Purchase
Eye opening book about how the CIA is in bed with drug dealers or are in fact sponsoring their black ops with drug money.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Cafe Baghdad
5.0 out of 5 stars The CIA's involvement in the drug trade
Reviewed in Germany on August 13, 2020
Verified Purchase
A fantastic account of the drug trade, the people involved and their CIA connections. The sourcing of the drugs and the main market, the US where effectively the CIA helped bring it to market. The book does touch on the history but misses out on the family of the Iraqi Jew David Sassoon, whose father was the Nassi of Baghdad, the Jewish Pope, that ran the Asian opium heroin trade in the 19th century that basically was the predecessor of all drug lords. The family founded the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation in 1865 aka HSBC and prints the money in HK still today.
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Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in Canada on October 30, 2015
Verified Purchase
Very difficult to get into, but interesting once you bury yourself into the materiel.
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