Alfred W. McCoy

Alfred William McCoy (born June 8, 1945) is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. McCoy has been recognized as "one of the world’s leading historians of Southeast Asia and an expert on Philippine political history, opium trafficking in the Golden Triangle, underworld crime syndicates, and international political surveillance."

McCoy graduated from the Kent School in 1964. He earned his BA from Columbia College, and his PhD in Southeast Asian history from Yale University in 1977.

McCoy served on the faculty of the University of New South Wales for eleven years. In 1989, he joined University of Wisconsin-Madison.

As a Ph.D candidate in Southeast Asian history at Yale, McCoy testified before the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee on June 2, 1972 and "accused American officials of condoning and even cooperating with corrupt elements in Southeast Asia's illegal drug trade out of political and military considerations." One of his major charges was that South Vietnam's President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Vice President Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, and Prime Minister Trần Thiện Khiêm led a narcotics ring with ties to the Corsican mafia, the Trafficante crime family in Florida, and other high level military officials in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Those implicated by McCoy included Laotian Generals Ouane Rattikone and Vang Pao and South Vietnamese Generals Đăng Văn Quang and Ngô Dzu. He told the subcommittee that these military officials facilitated the distribution of heroin to American troops in Vietnam and addicts in the United States. According to McCoy, the Central Intelligence Agency chartered Air America aircraft and helicopters in northern Laos to transport opium harvested by their "tribal mercenaries". He also accused United States Ambassador to Laos G. McMurtrie Godley of blocking the assignment of Bureau of Narcotics officials to Laos in order to maintain the Laotian government's cooperation in military and political matters. A spokesman for the United States Department of State responded to the allegations: "We are aware of these charges but we have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate them, much less proof."

...
Wikipedia