>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <03c501bf1874$3b98dd10$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: Clear thinking from Ireland >Date: Sun, 17 Oct 1999 00:50:08 -0700 >X-Mozilla-Status: 9003 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >And isn't it sad that the War is currently being fought by a McCaffrey? > >Enjoy, > >Peter McWILLIAMS > > >Pubdate: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 >Source: Irish Times (Ireland) >Copyright: 1999 The Irish Times >Contact: lettersed@irish-times.ie >Address: Letters to Editor, The Irish Times, 11-15 D'Olier St, Dublin 2, >Ireland >Fax: + 353 1 671 9407 >Website: http://www.ireland.com/ >Author: Fintan O'Toole > >DRUGS WAR INVENTED BY NIXON TO EXTEND HIS POWER > >This week, when the Garda seized 100,000 ecstasy tablets in Dublin, the haul >was widely reported to have a "street value" of 1.2 million pounds. That >phrase "street value" has become so familiar a part of drugs crime reporting >that we take it for granted. And yet it is, if you think about it, a rather >obvious distortion. > >Valuing a wholesale load of drugs by the price it might fetch if and when it >reaches the point of sale is like valuing a herd of rustled cattle by >calculating what the meat might sell for as prime steak in a fancy >restaurant. > >By quoting such figures, rather than the actual cost to the dealers of the >drugs, the success of the operation is dramatised. > >This game suits the Garda and the media and probably does little harm. It's >worthy of attention only as evidence of the forgotten but pervasive legacy >of events which culminated 25 years ago this summer and which continues to >be recognised by a single word - Watergate. > >The long-term consequences of Watergate are agreed to be profound. It >massively enhanced the power of the press. It greatly diminished the >prestige of public office, creating, far beyond the US, a scepticism about >the integrity of great leaders. All of this has been commented on as >nauseam, most recently during the Lewinsky affair. > >And yet the most profound effect of Watergate may well be something which is >seldom if ever mentioned in the history of those strange events - the >distortion of public policy on drugs. > >Who now remembers that the Watergate conspirators (G. Gordon Liddy, John >Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, Egil Krogh and others) were among the fathers of >the "drugs war"? Their invention and manipulation of understanding the drugs >problem was at the heart of Nixon's attempt to build a private security >apparatus to extend his power beyond its democratic limits. > >The drugs war started out as a matter of cynical politics. Nixon won office >in 1968 largely on the back of a "law and order" campaign. He promised to >crack down on street crime and to make the US safe. > >Once in office, he quickly discovered that the president had no real control >over law enforcement and that he would have to run for re-election in 1972 >in the face of ample evidence that crime was continuing to rise and that all >his tough talk had led nowhere. The solution was to build up a panic about >drugs and to invent a war on heroin in which the president could be the >hero. > >The men who would become notorious through Watergate were brought in to >create this war. They started by manufacturing an emergency, hyping up an >"epidemic" which had in fact reached its peak before Nixon took office and >was actually declining. In 1971, Nixon's administration claimed that heroin >use was responsible for $18 billion of property crime a year. In fact, the >total of all property crime in the US in 1971 was $1.3 billion. > >Likewise, the total number of heroin addicts was wildly exaggerated. Data >for 1969 showed that there were 68,000 addicts in the US. These same data, >however, were statistically "reinterpreted" to increase the figure first to >315,000 and then to 559,000. By reworking precisely the same set of figures, >Nixon's people produced a "tenfold" increase in the number of junkies in two >years. This increase was accepted by the media and Congress. > >Then, in the real master stroke, the same figures were reworked again to >show that there were 150,000 addicts. This massive "decrease" was then cited >as the great success of the war on drugs. The term "street value" was given >currency as a way of glorifying these apparent successes. > >Nixon's drug war delivered large doses of farce. A doped-out Elvis Presley >was inducted as an honorary member of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous >Drugs. A heroin "sniffer" device - conspicuously concealed in a Volkswagen >camper van with a snorkel sticking out of the roof - was dispatched to >Marseilles in the belief that it could locate the labs where morphine was >turned into heroin. The intricate map of heroin labs it produced turned out >to be a map of Marseilles restaurants: the "sniffer" was unable to >distinguish the fumes emitted by heroin from those emitted by salad >dressing. > >In spite of these and other fiascos, however, the drugs war took hold in the >public imagination. Instead of being understood as a health and social >problem, drug addiction was defined as a law-and-order problem. Movies and >TV serials spread the image of the drugs war around the world and shaped the >way most countries responded to the problem of drug abuse. > >There was, though, a hidden agenda. Nixon wanted all along to have his own >private security agency, beyond the control of the FBI, the CIA or any other >official government body, which could investigate leaks, tap phones and >gather intelligence on his internal and external opponents. > >G. Gordon Liddy came up with the brilliant idea that the best way to do this >was to establish the agency under the cloak of the war on drugs. Who, after >all, would complain if a little illegality was indulged in the cause of >protecting the families of US from the plague of heroin? > >Nixon ordered John Ehrlichman and Egil Krogh to establish this unit which >was to be called the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement. > >The Watergate conspirators who came to be known as "the plumbers" - Liddy >and Krogh, who had been leading figures in the administration's drugs war, >Howard Hunt, who was brought in from the CIA, and others - were assembled, a >preliminary version of this putative anti-narcotics agency. Krogh, the >official co-ordinator of Nixon's war on drugs, was also, in his unofficial >capacity, the head of "the plumbers" who organised the Watergate break-in. > >Liddy, the most colourful and notorious of "the plumbers", was Krogh's >assistant. Hunt was a consultant on the drug problem to the president's >Domestic Council. Essentially, Nixon's covert criminals and his drug >warriors were one and same. As Edward Jay Epstein put it in his remarkable >1977 investigation, Agency of Fear, "the new opiate war provided the perfect >cover for this seizure of power". > >The weird thing is that long after these people were found out and sent to >jail, the rhetoric and imagery which they had pioneered in the manipulation >of the drugs issue retained its power. > >By a supreme irony, these criminals shaped a key aspect of law enforcement >worldwide. The notion that drug addiction needed to be fought as a war >between the state and the traffickers, rather than a social disease, took a >hold which has yet to be relinquished. > >It was a Watergate legacy so insidious that few people remember its origins. >Only now, after decades of waste and failure, is it becoming possible to >think of drug abuse in terms other than those which were invented by Nixon's >crooks. > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: