From the Radio Free Michigan archives ftp://141.209.3.26/pub/patriot If you have any other files you'd like to contribute, e-mail them to bj496@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu. ------------------------------------------------ THE UNDERGROUND EMPIRE: Where Crime and Governments Embrace by James Mills [Excerpts] The inhabitants of the earth spend more money on illegal drugs than they spend on food. More than they spend on housing, clothes, education, medical care, or any other product or service. The international narcotics industry is the largest growth industry in the world. Its annual revenues exceed half a trillion dollars -- three times the value of all United States currency in circulation, more than the gross national products of all but a half dozen of the major industrialized nations. Narcotics industry profits, secretly stockpiled in countries competing for the business, draw interest exceeding $3 million per *hour*. Though everyone knows narcotics is big business, its truly staggering dimensions have never been fully publicized. The statistics on which the above statements are based appear in classified documents prepared with the participation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. These studies are circulated in numbered copies with warnings of "criminal sanctions" for unauthorized disclosure. Why is this information withheld from public view? The international narcotics industry is, in fact, not an industry at all, but an empire. Sovereign, proud, expansionist, this Underground Empire, though frequently torn by internal struggle, never fails to present a solid front to the world at large. It has become today as ruthlessly acquisitive and exploitative as any nineteenth-century imperial kingdom, as far-reaching as the British Empire, as determinedly cohesive as the states of the American republic. Aggressive and violent by nature, the Underground Empire maintains its own armies, diplomats, intelligence services, banks, merchant fleets, and airlines. It seeks to extend its dominance by any means, from clandestine subversion to open warfare. Legitimate nations combat its agents within their own borders, but effectively ignore its power internationally. The United States government, while launching cosmetic "wars" on drugs and crime, has rarely attacked the empire abroad, has never substantially diminished its international power, and does not today seriously challenge its growing threat to world stability. There is no question that the Underground Empire today has more power, wealth, and status than many nations. It flies no flag on the terrace of the United Nations, but it has larger armies, more capable intelligence agencies, more influential diplomatic services than many countries do. We are so accustomed to thinking of crime in terms of street muggings, burglaries, and Mafia murders that we fail to recognize it as a major international force, a Fourth World of nations united not by military might, economic condition, or political theory, but by an ideology of greed, by the institutionalization of state-supported crime. Without the cooperation of corrupt governments, the international narcotics industry could not exist. But governments, our own particularly, lean over backward to conceal this fact from their constituents (and sometimes from themselves), for to recognize it would cripple foreign relations. How natural, how necessary, it is that the United States government, principally through its intelligence services, should have secret relations with the Underground Empire, just as it must with other sovereign entities, even when they invade innocent neighbors and torture dissidents. The interests and methods of intelligence agencies are in many cases identical to those of high-level criminals. Both seek power, or the paths to power, through bribery, blackmail, and intimidation. So it is natural that as one progresses upward through layers of crime one finds more and more intelligence agents. They take power where they can get it. The world that international criminal groups have created is precisely the kind of world intelligence people seek out and populate. They are not only within it, but of it. If an intelligence agent finds that his asset, the man with the power, happens to be the world's biggest drug trafficker -- well, so be it. If you've worked hard to get him in your pocket and then see his power threatened, you'll work hard to help him hang on, even if it means a little smuggling -- drugs, guns, sacks of cash. Where criminal proceeds so vastly exceed those of traditional industries, a nation is tempted to stop fighting crime and nationalize it. And in some cases, before a nation can nationalize crime, crime criminalizes the nation. This happened in Bolivia in 1980. International crime eventually ascends through politics, diplomacy, and statesmanship to a level of supracrime, where, having triumphed absolutely, it rules even that which had been created to destroy it, and is eventually not recognized as crime at all. So long as they do not seriously imperil American foreign interests, the United States government will take no effective action against international groups engaged in crime for profit. To assuage the anger of voters who do not like to be murdered, robbed, swindled, and burglarized, who do not like to see narcotics on sale in schoolrooms, the Pentagon, Congress, and future administrations will continue to declare the war on drugs. The war will continue to be a civil war, one aboveground sector of the government attacking the drug traffic on front pages and the seven o'clock news, another underground sector secretly permitting the traffic, at times promoting it. What can we do? It has, as my agent friend said, "been going on forever." The first coconspirators were two humans and a reptile, the first contraband an apple. Today the Underground Empire, the international narcotics industry, affects each one of us, from the films we watch to the music we listen to, the price we pay for our homes, the safety of our streets, the readiness of our defense forces, the honesty of our government, the behavior and habits of our children. You do not have to be a CIA-hater to trek around the world viewing one major narcotics group after another and grow amazed at the frequency with which you encounter the still-fresh footprints of American intelligence agents. You might never be absolutely certain the footprints shouldn't be there, but you will always be uncomfortable that so many solemn men in pin- striped vests are lying about them. If the United States finds it necessary to deal secretly with powerful criminals, some of them masquerading as democratic leaders of free nations, it would be nice to know that we are aware of the price we're paying. How much intelligence and influence is worth how many heroin deaths? How many cocaine overdoses? How many marijuana-fogged seventh-graders? It would be nice not to be told that the problem will be solved shortly after the next election by another thousand agents, a few score prosecutors, a dozen new jails. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + *The Underground Empire* by James Mills. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1986 ------------------------------------------------ (This file was found elsewhere on the Internet and uploaded to the Radio Free Michigan archives by the archive maintainer. 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