53. Epstein, Agency of Fear, 161; James Mills, The Underground Empire: Where Crime and Government Embrace (New York: Dell, 1986), 777 (two-thirds). Cf. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976 (hereinafter FRUS) (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office), vol. 20, 328–30, Memorandum of February 29, 1972, from the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (Eliot) to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger). Egil Krogh, chairman of the White House Committee on International Narcotics Control, also traveled to the Far East and bought out heroin labs in the Golden Triangle (Epstein, Agency of Fear, 237; Russ Baker, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America [New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009], 225–26).
54. Valentine, The Strength of the Pack, 172–73. There is partially declassified discussion of the proposal in FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. 20, 286, 297–98.
55. Valentine, The Strength of the Pack, 174, citing correspondence with Fred Dick.
56. Valentine, The Strength of the Pack, 174; cf. 399; Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 179.
57. Valentine, The Strength of the Pack, 172.
58. Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 313–14. James Mills hoped to fly up from Chiang Mai in a Thai helicopter to meet Khun Sa, but the project was eventually vetoed not by Khun Sa but by the DEA regional director in Chiang Mai (Mills, The Underground Empire, 778–79, 786–88).
59. Mills, The Underground Empire, 787. One of Khun Sa’s many Western interviewers, Edith Mirante, wrote later that “Khun Sa was widely known to spend time in Chiang Mai and even occasionally visit his wife in Bangkok, but he was coyly going along with the Thai fiction that he was a wanted man with a price on his head” (Edith T. Mirante, Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure and a Jungle Revolution [New York: Grove Press, 1993], 170).
60. Francis Belanger, Drugs, the U.S., and Khun Sa (Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1989, 102–4); cf. Mills, Underground Empire, 1071–72; Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 321–23; McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, 418–21. Before the attack, Khun Sa “initiated terrorist missions against American officials in northern Thailand. Following Khun Sa’s directives, two CIA agents were killed, a move that proved to be a big mistake. Families of U.S. officials were evacuated from the northern provinces to Bangkok for their protection, and the war against Khun Sa was stepped up dramatically. . . . In a few weeks [after the attack], things were back to normal for Khun Sa. When interrupted to ask why he had ordered the killings of Westerners, he replied, “Because they turned on me,” he shouted. “At one time, they were my partners—them, the DEA and the CIA, both” (Belanger, Drugs, the U.S., and Khun Sa, 102–4).
61. James Gritz, A Nation Betrayed (Boulder City, NV: Lazarus, 1989), 86, quoted in Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 379. (Route 1285 can be seen on Google Maps.) Gritz’s detailed account is erratic and unreliable, but Lintner, who was present at the time on the Thai side of the border, assures me that his overall picture is accurate. Cf. Belanger, Drugs, the U.S., and Khun Sa, 108–9: “The road, capable of accommodating 10-ton trucks, was ironically built by the Thai Government with manpower, time, and materials financed by U.S. taxpayers’ money allocated to drug suppression funds.”
62. Khun Sa fared far better in Burma after 1982, when he ceased to be subordinate to the KMT generals and began to dominate the market himself.
63. Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 392.
64. Alfred W. McCoy, “Lord of Druglords: One Life as Lesson for US Drug Policy,” Crime, Law, and Social Change, November 1998, 309.
65. Lintner, Burma in Revolt, 392.
