Jonathan Marshall is an independent scholar and former journalist living in San Anselmo, CA. His latest book is Dark Quadrant: Organized Crime, Big Business, and the Corruption of American Democracy, from Truman to Trump (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021). He is also author or co-author of five previous books, including The Lebanese Connection: Corruption, Civil War, and the International Drug Traffic (Stanford); Cocaine Politics (University of California); and To Have and Have Not: Southeast Asian Raw Materials and the Origins of the Pacific War (University of California), as well as many scholarly and popular articles.
Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989, marked a critical turning poi... more Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989, marked a critical turning point in America's foreign and military policy. As the first sizeable commitment of U.S. armed forces after the Vietnam debacle, it set the stage for the much larger intervention in the Persian Gulf a year later. It also marked a remarkable escalation in the previously metaphorical 'war on drugs', by asserting Washington's legal claim to the extraterritorial use of force to apprehend suspected drug traffickers abroad. This article examines the largely ignored aftermath, particularly with respect to drugs. It should surprise few students of the drug trade that General Manuel Noriega’s downfall, like that of many bigger traffickers before and after, did nothing to hold back the rising tide of cocaine into the United States. What may be more surprising was Washington’s willingness to replace Noriega with civilian leaders who had an unambiguous record of serving Colombia’s biggest drug lords by protecting their secret financial assets in Panamanian banks. Key members of the new government had in the 1980s represented dirty banks that Noriega, in a remarkable display of cooperation with U.S. law enforcement, closed down or put at risk. This study calls into question the commitment of senior American leaders to the "war on drugs" at a time of many other foreign policy challenges, including the fall of communism and the showdown with Saddam Hussein in Desert Storm.
Numerous monographs have explored the tragic history of Washington’s covert intervention against ... more Numerous monographs have explored the tragic history of Washington’s covert intervention against Guatemala’s democratic government in 1954. Although the scholarly consensus discounts popular notions that policymakers acted primarily to advance the interests of United Fruit Company, this article examines new evidence of the company’s direct political influence over President Truman, who was personally beholden to a major investor in United Fruit and Guatemala’s power company for support in the 1948 campaign. I show that Truman’s ambassador to Guatemala acted as the investor’s personal representative while driving a lasting wedge between the two countries and laying important groundwork for the 1954 coup.
Watergate was the greatest of all 20th century U.S. political scandals, yet no one ever proved th... more Watergate was the greatest of all 20th century U.S. political scandals, yet no one ever proved that President Nixon ordered the burglary and none of his top aides was ever prosecuted for planning or authorizing it. Remarkably, no official body even determined what motivated the crime. This article demonstrates that the burglars' target wasn’t ‘inside information on a presidential campaign’, but rather inside information on the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Lawrence O’Brien. And they wanted it to protect one of Nixon’s darkest secrets: his financial and political ties to one of America’s richest industrialists, Howard Hughes. Hughes personified the deep state: he was infamous for his secrecy, for his back-room manipulation of politicians and government agencies, and for making billions of dollars from his work for the Pentagon and intelligence community as their budgets soared through the Cold War and Vietnam era. Watergate was in part the product of secret payoffs by Hughes to protect his business empire, and a frantic effort by Nixon to head off potential exposure of their relationship lest it kill his chances for re-election.
During World War II, U.S. intelligence agents forged an alliance with Chinese drug traffickers. A... more During World War II, U.S. intelligence agents forged an alliance with Chinese drug traffickers. At the center of their secret relationship were two strategic materials: tungsten and opium. For both the U.S. and Japan, tungsten was a scarce material vital to their war economies, and opium was a preferred means of payment in its major country of supply: China. For China's government, tungsten supplies helped ensure Washington's commitment to its war effort.
Tungsten and opium, seemingly so different, had one other thing in common besides their extraordinary value: to reach their ultimate consumers during wartime, both had to be smuggled. That fact put a premium on finding criminal organizations able to mobilize their operatives to move those materials where needed. In vying for China's tungsten, both Japan and the United States turned to gangsters for help, setting in motion a political dynamic that would peak some years later during the Cold War.
In America today, as throughout the West, most people fundamentally accept the" welfare stat... more In America today, as throughout the West, most people fundamentally accept the" welfare state." Republican Presidents live happily with huge deficits in government accounts, while conservative politicians no longer challenge Medicare or Social Security. The State has ...
This article is the first in English to mine declassified White House documents and CIA records t... more This article is the first in English to mine declassified White House documents and CIA records to examine the extent of U.S. involvement in an abortive plot by neofascist extremists and military sympathizers to overthrow the Italian government in December 1970. Its findings largely comport with those of a handful of specialized Italian monographs that contradict the widespread perception in Italy that the White House and CIA actively supported neofascist coup plotters. However, as the article also shows, there is ample evidence that hardline U.S. officials kept in close touch with rightwing extremists and took no options off the table in their efforts to prevent Communist participation in Italy’s government.
This article also draws on both new and largely forgotten sources to examine the background and involvement of two private U.S. citizens who were closely aligned with senior coup plotters. They were primarily affiliated with the U.S. Republican Party and had personal political agendas. Their involvement with Italian extremists should raise concerns, highly relevant today, about the dangers of private meddling in foreign policy and the potential for private actors to create misperceptions about key U.S. government policies.
This article probes hitherto overlooked evidence of CIA connections to
underworld-linked private... more This article probes hitherto overlooked evidence of CIA connections to underworld-linked private foundations used by the Agency to launder funds to seemingly independent student, labor, religious, publishing, and other organizations involved in international operations. It demonstrates how CIA-protected foundations helped seemingly upstanding business leaders and Wall Street institutions collaborate with shady operators and outright criminals in pursuit of profit and political advantage. Their deals helped drive the wild bull market of the 1960s and produced the largest wave of corporate mergers since the beginning of the 20th century. Although the 1960s merger wave has been the subject of many academic studies, none has identified the role of criminal money in fueling its progress. The stories that follow illustrate that organized crime was an important force in 20th century U.S. business history.
World War II offers the ideal laboratory for exploring the delicate means by which nations at war... more World War II offers the ideal laboratory for exploring the delicate means by which nations at war keep open clandestine channels of communication. Various factions within Germany and the Western allies extended dozens of peace feelers during that war, yet historians have never described them in any truly systematic fashion. Too often they have merely chronicled these contacts as sidelights to the more gripping drama of resistance efforts within Germany itself. Historians have been equally prone to compartmentalize their studies of the German resistance and of the Nazi opportunists as if their activities had nothing in common. As this study shows, a remarkable number of these secret peace overtures were initiated or communicated by international financiers who took advantage of their extensive network of pre-war business connections and high-level political contacts. Bankers in America, Britain, France, Switzerland, and Sweden kept open lines of communication between the Allied governments and Germany. In a time of unparalleled terror and state control, theirs was a remarkable achievement.
This paper aims to fill some of the glaring gaps in the history of Mexico’s pre-cartel drug trade... more This paper aims to fill some of the glaring gaps in the history of Mexico’s pre-cartel drug trade by viewing it as part of an international system connecting European and Latin suppliers with North American organized crime syndicates. It opens with a brief review of Mexico’s early development as a supplier of both narcotics and alcohol following the passage of prohibition laws in the United States. It examines the role of major U.S. organized figures, and their prominent “legitimate” business partners in businesses such as racing, gambling, and the cross-border narcotics trade. After World War II, U.S. crime organizations shifted their source of supply from Mexico to Europe, where more advanced chemists converted Turkish opium and morphine base into prized white heroin. However, almost from the start, French Corsican and Sicilian traffickers used Mexico as a transit country to evade U.S. Customs and narcotics agents at East Coast ports and the Canadian border. Mexico thus became deeply integrated into a global drug supply chain, at the same time “modernizing” leaders such as President Alemán were opening Mexico up to international trade and capital. Ultimately, as we will see, Miguel Félix Gallardo and the "Guadalajara cartel" inherited the priceless business and political connections of this international network, allowing them to enjoy a meteoric rise with protection from the Mexican state.
Transnational relations between state institutions and organized criminal groups have excited tre... more Transnational relations between state institutions and organized criminal groups have excited tremendous interest among criminologists since the 1990s but have been largely neglected by historians, in part because of the paucity of source material. Thanks to the extensive declassification of FBI and CIA files, we can now glimpse the importance of such relations during the Cold War through a case study of the tactical alliances forged between powerful US criminals and Gen. Rafael Trujillo, who ran the Dominican Republic with an iron hand from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. Trujillo tapped their expertise in gambling, arms trafficking, and even murder to increase his wealth and to extend his power into the United States and other nearby countries, such as Cuba. US organized crime bosses in turn were drawn to the Dominican Republic as a market for the kind of lucrative gambling businesses they had enjoyed in Cuba before the Castro revolution. They came on Trujillo's terms, as business partners and anti-Communist allies, never as rivals for power. But they maintained enough independence to stay entrenched in the country even after Trujillo's assassination. Jonathan Marshall is an independent scholar living in San Anselmo, California. He can be contacted at jvmarsha1@yahoo .com.
The Banque de l'Indochine (Bank of Indochina) has long been recognized as a major force in France... more The Banque de l'Indochine (Bank of Indochina) has long been recognized as a major force in France's colonial lobby. This paper sheds light on its unknown role in World War II, when its president, Paul Baudouin, was foreign minister of the collaborationist Vichy government, and his top aide, Jean Laurent, was Charles de Gaulle's cabinet secretary. Laurent played a key role, with other bankers and British intelligence agents, in arranging Germany's surrender of Paris to prevent a Communist insurrection that could endanger the future of their businesses.
Intelligence on the international narcotics menace has been particularly subject to political and... more Intelligence on the international narcotics menace has been particularly subject to political and bureaucratic pressures ever since U.S. leaders vowed to wage “war” on the illicit drug trade more than a half century ago. In recent years, influential interest groups and policy makers have leveled epithets like “narco-terrorism” and “narco-communism” against targets such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Syria, the Taliban, and Venezuela to justify harsh policies ranging from economic sanctions to armed invasion, while ignoring or downplaying evidence implicating U.S. allies (the Nicaraguan Contras, the Afghan mujahedeen and Karzai administration, the Colombian military, and so forth). Given the stakes, critical scrutiny of such claims, and rigorous attention to de-politicizing intelligence on international narcotics matters, may be as vital to preventing foreign policy disasters as is ensuring sound intelligence on more traditional matters of national security. To shed historical light on the dangers of turning international drug enforcement into a political weapon, this paper re-examines a classic case of alleged manipulation of narcotics intelligence: the vilification of Communist China by U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger at the height of the Cold War. His inflammatory rhetoric denouncing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an evil purveyor of narcotics went largely unchallenged in the Western media during the 1950s and early 1960s, when Anslinger acted as America’s leading drug enforcement official and its official representative to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). As we shall see, his charges strongly reinforced Washington’s case for diplomatic isolation of China, including its exclusion from the United Nations. New evidence, including recently declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Central Intelligence Agency, along with overlooked public materials from that period, sheds important new light on the state of Anslinger’s knowledge and probable motives. The records, unavailable to or unused by previous historians, provide strong new confirmation of Anslinger’s manipulation of intelligence to serve both his agency’s bureaucratic interests and a militantly anti-Communist foreign policy agenda at the expense of genuine narcotics enforcement. They leave open the possibility that Chinese traffickers continued to smuggle opiates out of the mainland into the 1950s, but do not challenge what is widely accepted today about the communist government’s attempt to suppress cultivation and trafficking.
After World War II, supporters of France’s imperial mission hit upon a novel way to restore the e... more After World War II, supporters of France’s imperial mission hit upon a novel way to restore the economic fortunes and thus the political clout of the colonial lobby: issuing a decree to overvalue the Indochinese piaster. That obscure and apparently technical financial decision gave soldiers, bureaucrats and businessmen a powerful profit motive to serve in Indochina. Above all, it greatly inflated their buying power. By giving them more francs for every piaster they earned in Indochina, a high exchange rate allowed them to stretch their money. They could import goods from France on the cheap, including luxuries they could otherwise never afford. Any piasters they chose to save rather than spend could be repatriated at a premium in francs to family members or others in France. Of course, this huge subsidy to colonial interests was not free: It had to be paid for either by French taxpayers or through the “printing” of francs by government monetary authorities, creating inflation that taxed the purchasing power of French consumers. As long as the cost was modest, it could be easily disguised, minimizing any political consequences. Over time, however, the cost soared and this financial policy blew up in the face of French leaders who instituted it as a tool for promoting colonialism. Beneficiaries, including not only French citizens in Indochina but their privileged Indochinese allies, figured out how to reap huge profits from currency exchange rackets between Indochina and France. The resulting piaster traffic ballooned the cost of war and corrupted the French polity. The profiteering unleashed by the currency racket eventually triggered one of the Fourth Republic’s worst political scandals and fed the public’s darkest suspicions about their leaders. The epithet “dirty war” stuck inexorably to the Indochina campaign, setting the stage for popular acceptance of France’s withdrawal from the colony. In taking over from France in 1954 as the dominant foreign power, the United States inherited all the challenges that made Paris capitulate after immense loss of lives and treasure. Washington had a chance to learn from France’s mistakes. Instead, among the many lessons that American policy makers failed to learn from the French defeat was the cost—political as well as economic—of trying to buy support for an unpopular war. In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Laos, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid went to support over-valued exchange rates, in turn spawning profiteering and corruption. As in the French era, these rackets tainted the war effort. Spreading corruption sapped the moral underpinnings of the anti-Communist cause, casting a mercenary pall over the righteous claims of war supporters. Piaster profits did not cause the two Indochina wars, but they did initially sustain—and then powerfully undermine—both the French and American operations. This account is the first to explore the remarkable continuity and disastrous impact over more than two decades of the French and American experiences with currency corruption. It taps long-forgotten published accounts, including the findings of several parliamentary and congressional investigations, as well as unpublished State Department files, FBI records and other government and private archives that shed new light on the intersection of war, politics and crime.
This study is an investigation of the way in which rightist politicians and criminals in National... more This study is an investigation of the way in which rightist politicians and criminals in Nationalist (Republican) China collaborated to exploit the opium traffic as a lever to entrench their power at the expense of social reform. Centralization of the traffic was critical to the centralization of Chiang Kai-shek's power against rival warlords, the Communists, and the Japanese. But the sharing of power and wealth with gangsters like Tu Yueh-sheng also undercut the legitimacy and stability of his regime in the face of foreign and domestic challenges.
The precursor to many of today's foreign lobbies was the powerful China Lobby, a pressure group o... more The precursor to many of today's foreign lobbies was the powerful China Lobby, a pressure group of paid agents of Nationalist China, members of Congress, right-wing journalists, and others who fought to keep deny diplomatic recognition to Communist China and keep it out of the United Nations. The China Lobby was a close ally of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The CIA was a target rather than an instigator of the China Lobby, but its own propaganda front groups, like Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, contributed to the rigidly anti-Communist foreign policy of the 1950s and helped spawn the Vietnam lobby that promoted U.S. intervention on behalf of the Diem regime.
The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) created a tremendous reservoir of expertise and scholars... more The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) created a tremendous reservoir of expertise and scholarship in the field of Asian studies over its brief life (1925-1950). Accused of harboring Communist agents and contributing to the downfall of Nationalist China, it collapsed in the early 1950s under attack by China Lobbyists and right-wing critics of U.S. foreign policy. Far from being left-wing, however, the IPR was strongly backed by major U.S. corporations, business executives, and government officials who saw its value as a tool for promoting U.S. political and economic expansion into East Asia. It was a key part of an internationalist "establishment" anchored by the Council on Foreign Relations, with which it collaborated closely.
William Graham Sumner was much more than a crude Social Darwinist; he was a sophisticated champio... more William Graham Sumner was much more than a crude Social Darwinist; he was a sophisticated champion of laissez-faire ideology, a serious critic of modern liberalism and the activist State, and a major precursor to modern libertarianism. More surprisingly, he was also a severe critic of the power of organized capital and of U.S. militarism and imperialism.
Historians increasingly recognize the important role that considerations of foreign policy played... more Historians increasingly recognize the important role that considerations of foreign policy played in shaping the Constitution. Leading Federalists, many of whom had had experience abroad negotiating treaties or procuring foreign loans, were acutely sensitive to the demands of power politics and were determined to see the states united under a strong, "energetic" government. The Constitution met that need. In debates over ratification, however, the Antifederalists bitterly fought its centralizing provisions. In rejecting the Federalist dream of a glorious American America, based on a strong, consolidated central government, they challenged the notion that the confederated states had to mimic European empires to safeguard their independence.
Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989, marked a critical turning poi... more Operation Just Cause, the U.S. invasion of Panama in December 1989, marked a critical turning point in America's foreign and military policy. As the first sizeable commitment of U.S. armed forces after the Vietnam debacle, it set the stage for the much larger intervention in the Persian Gulf a year later. It also marked a remarkable escalation in the previously metaphorical 'war on drugs', by asserting Washington's legal claim to the extraterritorial use of force to apprehend suspected drug traffickers abroad. This article examines the largely ignored aftermath, particularly with respect to drugs. It should surprise few students of the drug trade that General Manuel Noriega’s downfall, like that of many bigger traffickers before and after, did nothing to hold back the rising tide of cocaine into the United States. What may be more surprising was Washington’s willingness to replace Noriega with civilian leaders who had an unambiguous record of serving Colombia’s biggest drug lords by protecting their secret financial assets in Panamanian banks. Key members of the new government had in the 1980s represented dirty banks that Noriega, in a remarkable display of cooperation with U.S. law enforcement, closed down or put at risk. This study calls into question the commitment of senior American leaders to the "war on drugs" at a time of many other foreign policy challenges, including the fall of communism and the showdown with Saddam Hussein in Desert Storm.
Numerous monographs have explored the tragic history of Washington’s covert intervention against ... more Numerous monographs have explored the tragic history of Washington’s covert intervention against Guatemala’s democratic government in 1954. Although the scholarly consensus discounts popular notions that policymakers acted primarily to advance the interests of United Fruit Company, this article examines new evidence of the company’s direct political influence over President Truman, who was personally beholden to a major investor in United Fruit and Guatemala’s power company for support in the 1948 campaign. I show that Truman’s ambassador to Guatemala acted as the investor’s personal representative while driving a lasting wedge between the two countries and laying important groundwork for the 1954 coup.
Watergate was the greatest of all 20th century U.S. political scandals, yet no one ever proved th... more Watergate was the greatest of all 20th century U.S. political scandals, yet no one ever proved that President Nixon ordered the burglary and none of his top aides was ever prosecuted for planning or authorizing it. Remarkably, no official body even determined what motivated the crime. This article demonstrates that the burglars' target wasn’t ‘inside information on a presidential campaign’, but rather inside information on the chair of the Democratic National Committee, Lawrence O’Brien. And they wanted it to protect one of Nixon’s darkest secrets: his financial and political ties to one of America’s richest industrialists, Howard Hughes. Hughes personified the deep state: he was infamous for his secrecy, for his back-room manipulation of politicians and government agencies, and for making billions of dollars from his work for the Pentagon and intelligence community as their budgets soared through the Cold War and Vietnam era. Watergate was in part the product of secret payoffs by Hughes to protect his business empire, and a frantic effort by Nixon to head off potential exposure of their relationship lest it kill his chances for re-election.
During World War II, U.S. intelligence agents forged an alliance with Chinese drug traffickers. A... more During World War II, U.S. intelligence agents forged an alliance with Chinese drug traffickers. At the center of their secret relationship were two strategic materials: tungsten and opium. For both the U.S. and Japan, tungsten was a scarce material vital to their war economies, and opium was a preferred means of payment in its major country of supply: China. For China's government, tungsten supplies helped ensure Washington's commitment to its war effort.
Tungsten and opium, seemingly so different, had one other thing in common besides their extraordinary value: to reach their ultimate consumers during wartime, both had to be smuggled. That fact put a premium on finding criminal organizations able to mobilize their operatives to move those materials where needed. In vying for China's tungsten, both Japan and the United States turned to gangsters for help, setting in motion a political dynamic that would peak some years later during the Cold War.
In America today, as throughout the West, most people fundamentally accept the" welfare stat... more In America today, as throughout the West, most people fundamentally accept the" welfare state." Republican Presidents live happily with huge deficits in government accounts, while conservative politicians no longer challenge Medicare or Social Security. The State has ...
This article is the first in English to mine declassified White House documents and CIA records t... more This article is the first in English to mine declassified White House documents and CIA records to examine the extent of U.S. involvement in an abortive plot by neofascist extremists and military sympathizers to overthrow the Italian government in December 1970. Its findings largely comport with those of a handful of specialized Italian monographs that contradict the widespread perception in Italy that the White House and CIA actively supported neofascist coup plotters. However, as the article also shows, there is ample evidence that hardline U.S. officials kept in close touch with rightwing extremists and took no options off the table in their efforts to prevent Communist participation in Italy’s government.
This article also draws on both new and largely forgotten sources to examine the background and involvement of two private U.S. citizens who were closely aligned with senior coup plotters. They were primarily affiliated with the U.S. Republican Party and had personal political agendas. Their involvement with Italian extremists should raise concerns, highly relevant today, about the dangers of private meddling in foreign policy and the potential for private actors to create misperceptions about key U.S. government policies.
This article probes hitherto overlooked evidence of CIA connections to
underworld-linked private... more This article probes hitherto overlooked evidence of CIA connections to underworld-linked private foundations used by the Agency to launder funds to seemingly independent student, labor, religious, publishing, and other organizations involved in international operations. It demonstrates how CIA-protected foundations helped seemingly upstanding business leaders and Wall Street institutions collaborate with shady operators and outright criminals in pursuit of profit and political advantage. Their deals helped drive the wild bull market of the 1960s and produced the largest wave of corporate mergers since the beginning of the 20th century. Although the 1960s merger wave has been the subject of many academic studies, none has identified the role of criminal money in fueling its progress. The stories that follow illustrate that organized crime was an important force in 20th century U.S. business history.
World War II offers the ideal laboratory for exploring the delicate means by which nations at war... more World War II offers the ideal laboratory for exploring the delicate means by which nations at war keep open clandestine channels of communication. Various factions within Germany and the Western allies extended dozens of peace feelers during that war, yet historians have never described them in any truly systematic fashion. Too often they have merely chronicled these contacts as sidelights to the more gripping drama of resistance efforts within Germany itself. Historians have been equally prone to compartmentalize their studies of the German resistance and of the Nazi opportunists as if their activities had nothing in common. As this study shows, a remarkable number of these secret peace overtures were initiated or communicated by international financiers who took advantage of their extensive network of pre-war business connections and high-level political contacts. Bankers in America, Britain, France, Switzerland, and Sweden kept open lines of communication between the Allied governments and Germany. In a time of unparalleled terror and state control, theirs was a remarkable achievement.
This paper aims to fill some of the glaring gaps in the history of Mexico’s pre-cartel drug trade... more This paper aims to fill some of the glaring gaps in the history of Mexico’s pre-cartel drug trade by viewing it as part of an international system connecting European and Latin suppliers with North American organized crime syndicates. It opens with a brief review of Mexico’s early development as a supplier of both narcotics and alcohol following the passage of prohibition laws in the United States. It examines the role of major U.S. organized figures, and their prominent “legitimate” business partners in businesses such as racing, gambling, and the cross-border narcotics trade. After World War II, U.S. crime organizations shifted their source of supply from Mexico to Europe, where more advanced chemists converted Turkish opium and morphine base into prized white heroin. However, almost from the start, French Corsican and Sicilian traffickers used Mexico as a transit country to evade U.S. Customs and narcotics agents at East Coast ports and the Canadian border. Mexico thus became deeply integrated into a global drug supply chain, at the same time “modernizing” leaders such as President Alemán were opening Mexico up to international trade and capital. Ultimately, as we will see, Miguel Félix Gallardo and the "Guadalajara cartel" inherited the priceless business and political connections of this international network, allowing them to enjoy a meteoric rise with protection from the Mexican state.
Transnational relations between state institutions and organized criminal groups have excited tre... more Transnational relations between state institutions and organized criminal groups have excited tremendous interest among criminologists since the 1990s but have been largely neglected by historians, in part because of the paucity of source material. Thanks to the extensive declassification of FBI and CIA files, we can now glimpse the importance of such relations during the Cold War through a case study of the tactical alliances forged between powerful US criminals and Gen. Rafael Trujillo, who ran the Dominican Republic with an iron hand from 1930 until his assassination in 1961. Trujillo tapped their expertise in gambling, arms trafficking, and even murder to increase his wealth and to extend his power into the United States and other nearby countries, such as Cuba. US organized crime bosses in turn were drawn to the Dominican Republic as a market for the kind of lucrative gambling businesses they had enjoyed in Cuba before the Castro revolution. They came on Trujillo's terms, as business partners and anti-Communist allies, never as rivals for power. But they maintained enough independence to stay entrenched in the country even after Trujillo's assassination. Jonathan Marshall is an independent scholar living in San Anselmo, California. He can be contacted at jvmarsha1@yahoo .com.
The Banque de l'Indochine (Bank of Indochina) has long been recognized as a major force in France... more The Banque de l'Indochine (Bank of Indochina) has long been recognized as a major force in France's colonial lobby. This paper sheds light on its unknown role in World War II, when its president, Paul Baudouin, was foreign minister of the collaborationist Vichy government, and his top aide, Jean Laurent, was Charles de Gaulle's cabinet secretary. Laurent played a key role, with other bankers and British intelligence agents, in arranging Germany's surrender of Paris to prevent a Communist insurrection that could endanger the future of their businesses.
Intelligence on the international narcotics menace has been particularly subject to political and... more Intelligence on the international narcotics menace has been particularly subject to political and bureaucratic pressures ever since U.S. leaders vowed to wage “war” on the illicit drug trade more than a half century ago. In recent years, influential interest groups and policy makers have leveled epithets like “narco-terrorism” and “narco-communism” against targets such as Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Syria, the Taliban, and Venezuela to justify harsh policies ranging from economic sanctions to armed invasion, while ignoring or downplaying evidence implicating U.S. allies (the Nicaraguan Contras, the Afghan mujahedeen and Karzai administration, the Colombian military, and so forth). Given the stakes, critical scrutiny of such claims, and rigorous attention to de-politicizing intelligence on international narcotics matters, may be as vital to preventing foreign policy disasters as is ensuring sound intelligence on more traditional matters of national security. To shed historical light on the dangers of turning international drug enforcement into a political weapon, this paper re-examines a classic case of alleged manipulation of narcotics intelligence: the vilification of Communist China by U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger at the height of the Cold War. His inflammatory rhetoric denouncing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an evil purveyor of narcotics went largely unchallenged in the Western media during the 1950s and early 1960s, when Anslinger acted as America’s leading drug enforcement official and its official representative to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). As we shall see, his charges strongly reinforced Washington’s case for diplomatic isolation of China, including its exclusion from the United Nations. New evidence, including recently declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Central Intelligence Agency, along with overlooked public materials from that period, sheds important new light on the state of Anslinger’s knowledge and probable motives. The records, unavailable to or unused by previous historians, provide strong new confirmation of Anslinger’s manipulation of intelligence to serve both his agency’s bureaucratic interests and a militantly anti-Communist foreign policy agenda at the expense of genuine narcotics enforcement. They leave open the possibility that Chinese traffickers continued to smuggle opiates out of the mainland into the 1950s, but do not challenge what is widely accepted today about the communist government’s attempt to suppress cultivation and trafficking.
After World War II, supporters of France’s imperial mission hit upon a novel way to restore the e... more After World War II, supporters of France’s imperial mission hit upon a novel way to restore the economic fortunes and thus the political clout of the colonial lobby: issuing a decree to overvalue the Indochinese piaster. That obscure and apparently technical financial decision gave soldiers, bureaucrats and businessmen a powerful profit motive to serve in Indochina. Above all, it greatly inflated their buying power. By giving them more francs for every piaster they earned in Indochina, a high exchange rate allowed them to stretch their money. They could import goods from France on the cheap, including luxuries they could otherwise never afford. Any piasters they chose to save rather than spend could be repatriated at a premium in francs to family members or others in France. Of course, this huge subsidy to colonial interests was not free: It had to be paid for either by French taxpayers or through the “printing” of francs by government monetary authorities, creating inflation that taxed the purchasing power of French consumers. As long as the cost was modest, it could be easily disguised, minimizing any political consequences. Over time, however, the cost soared and this financial policy blew up in the face of French leaders who instituted it as a tool for promoting colonialism. Beneficiaries, including not only French citizens in Indochina but their privileged Indochinese allies, figured out how to reap huge profits from currency exchange rackets between Indochina and France. The resulting piaster traffic ballooned the cost of war and corrupted the French polity. The profiteering unleashed by the currency racket eventually triggered one of the Fourth Republic’s worst political scandals and fed the public’s darkest suspicions about their leaders. The epithet “dirty war” stuck inexorably to the Indochina campaign, setting the stage for popular acceptance of France’s withdrawal from the colony. In taking over from France in 1954 as the dominant foreign power, the United States inherited all the challenges that made Paris capitulate after immense loss of lives and treasure. Washington had a chance to learn from France’s mistakes. Instead, among the many lessons that American policy makers failed to learn from the French defeat was the cost—political as well as economic—of trying to buy support for an unpopular war. In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Laos, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid went to support over-valued exchange rates, in turn spawning profiteering and corruption. As in the French era, these rackets tainted the war effort. Spreading corruption sapped the moral underpinnings of the anti-Communist cause, casting a mercenary pall over the righteous claims of war supporters. Piaster profits did not cause the two Indochina wars, but they did initially sustain—and then powerfully undermine—both the French and American operations. This account is the first to explore the remarkable continuity and disastrous impact over more than two decades of the French and American experiences with currency corruption. It taps long-forgotten published accounts, including the findings of several parliamentary and congressional investigations, as well as unpublished State Department files, FBI records and other government and private archives that shed new light on the intersection of war, politics and crime.
This study is an investigation of the way in which rightist politicians and criminals in National... more This study is an investigation of the way in which rightist politicians and criminals in Nationalist (Republican) China collaborated to exploit the opium traffic as a lever to entrench their power at the expense of social reform. Centralization of the traffic was critical to the centralization of Chiang Kai-shek's power against rival warlords, the Communists, and the Japanese. But the sharing of power and wealth with gangsters like Tu Yueh-sheng also undercut the legitimacy and stability of his regime in the face of foreign and domestic challenges.
The precursor to many of today's foreign lobbies was the powerful China Lobby, a pressure group o... more The precursor to many of today's foreign lobbies was the powerful China Lobby, a pressure group of paid agents of Nationalist China, members of Congress, right-wing journalists, and others who fought to keep deny diplomatic recognition to Communist China and keep it out of the United Nations. The China Lobby was a close ally of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The CIA was a target rather than an instigator of the China Lobby, but its own propaganda front groups, like Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, contributed to the rigidly anti-Communist foreign policy of the 1950s and helped spawn the Vietnam lobby that promoted U.S. intervention on behalf of the Diem regime.
The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) created a tremendous reservoir of expertise and scholars... more The Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) created a tremendous reservoir of expertise and scholarship in the field of Asian studies over its brief life (1925-1950). Accused of harboring Communist agents and contributing to the downfall of Nationalist China, it collapsed in the early 1950s under attack by China Lobbyists and right-wing critics of U.S. foreign policy. Far from being left-wing, however, the IPR was strongly backed by major U.S. corporations, business executives, and government officials who saw its value as a tool for promoting U.S. political and economic expansion into East Asia. It was a key part of an internationalist "establishment" anchored by the Council on Foreign Relations, with which it collaborated closely.
William Graham Sumner was much more than a crude Social Darwinist; he was a sophisticated champio... more William Graham Sumner was much more than a crude Social Darwinist; he was a sophisticated champion of laissez-faire ideology, a serious critic of modern liberalism and the activist State, and a major precursor to modern libertarianism. More surprisingly, he was also a severe critic of the power of organized capital and of U.S. militarism and imperialism.
Historians increasingly recognize the important role that considerations of foreign policy played... more Historians increasingly recognize the important role that considerations of foreign policy played in shaping the Constitution. Leading Federalists, many of whom had had experience abroad negotiating treaties or procuring foreign loans, were acutely sensitive to the demands of power politics and were determined to see the states united under a strong, "energetic" government. The Constitution met that need. In debates over ratification, however, the Antifederalists bitterly fought its centralizing provisions. In rejecting the Federalist dream of a glorious American America, based on a strong, consolidated central government, they challenged the notion that the confederated states had to mimic European empires to safeguard their independence.
This short book compiles more than three dozen of my essays since 2022 synthesizing scholarly res... more This short book compiles more than three dozen of my essays since 2022 synthesizing scholarly research related to carbon pricing in all its ramifications. My hope is these essays will help members of the lay public and policy makers alike better appreciate the remarkable progress made by social scientists and public policy scholars in understanding the impact of carbon pricing, its relation to other climate policies, and the challenges of winning public support. To facilitate further study, I have appended selected journal or book references at the end of most posts in addition to the many other sources identified through hyperlinks in the text.
"Marshall deftly argues that the decisive turn in U.S. policy toward war with Japan came because ... more "Marshall deftly argues that the decisive turn in U.S. policy toward war with Japan came because Japan pressed upon raw materials vital to America. This work will be the definitive study of materials policy and the coming of the war." - Bruce Cumings
“In bringing to light with meticulous research and graceful prose an utterly neglected area that contributed greatly to the tragic outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the United States, Marshall has produced the most thought-provoking book in decades on the origins of the Pacific War.” —Daniel L. Wick, University of California, Davis
“Marshall’s work is exemplary. Is combination of broad structural analyses and detailed historical narratives based on solid original materials provides food for deeper thought about the past, the present, and the future.” --Tieting Su, McGill University, in Contemporary Sociology, January 1996.
“Marshall does an admirable job assembling hard documentary evidence and articulating reasoned arguments. He does not simply duplicate the themes of the already voluminous literature on the road to Pearl Harbor. His convincing and extremely well-written monograph augments earlier works by highlighting the crucial role of Southeast Asian natural resources in U.S. policy in the years leading to Pearl Harbor.” --Thomas W. Burkman, The Historian, Spring 1996
“An outstanding contribution to understanding the road to World War II in the Far East . . . an excellent historical narrative, with enough interesting detail to move even the strongest skeptic.” —Laurence H. Shoup, author of The Carter Presidency and Beyond
When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship ... more When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship between the CIA, the Contras, and crack, they reignited the issue of the intelligence agency's connections to drug trafficking, initially brought to light during the Vietnam War and then again by the Iran-Contra affair. Broad in scope and extensively documented, Cocaine Politics shows that under the cover of national security and covert operations, the U.S. government has repeatedly collaborated with and protected major international drug traffickers. A new preface discusses developments of the last six years, including the Mercury News stories and the public reaction they provoked. When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship between the CIA, the Contras, and crack, they reignited the issue of the intelligence agency's connections to drug trafficking, initially brought to light during the Vietnam War and then again by the Iran-Contra affair. Broad in scope and extensively documented, Cocaine Politics shows that under the cover of national security and covert operations, the U.S. government has repeatedly collaborated with and protected major international drug traffickers. A new preface discusses developments of the last six years, including the Mercury News stories and the public reaction they provoked
Using previously secret government records, The Lebanese Connection uncovers for the first time t... more Using previously secret government records, The Lebanese Connection uncovers for the first time the story of how Lebanon's economy and political system were corrupted by drug profits—and how, by financing its many ruthless militia, Lebanon's drug trade contributed to the country's greatest catastrophe, its fifteen-year civil war from 1975 to 1990. In so doing, this book sheds new light on the dangerous role of vast criminal enterprises in the collapse of states and the creation of war economies that thrive in the midst of civil conflicts.
This paper aims to fill some of the glaring gaps in the history of Mexico’s pre-cartel drug trade... more This paper aims to fill some of the glaring gaps in the history of Mexico’s pre-cartel drug trade by viewing it as part of an international system connecting European and Latin suppliers with North American organized crime syndicates. It opens with a brief review of Mexico’s early development as a supplier of both narcotics and alcohol following the passage of prohibition laws in the United States. It examines the role of major U.S. organized figures, and their prominent “legitimate” business partners in businesses such as racing, gambling, and the cross-border narcotics trade. After World War II, U.S. crime organizations shifted their source of supply from Mexico to Europe, where more advanced chemists converted Turkish opium and morphine base into prized white heroin. However, almost from the start, French Corsican and Sicilian traffickers used Mexico as a transit country to evade U.S. Customs and narcotics agents at East Coast ports and the Canadian border. Mexico thus became deeply integrated into a global drug supply chain, at the same time “modernizing” leaders such as President Alemán were opening Mexico up to international trade and capital. Ultimately, Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo and the "Guadalajara cartel" inherited the priceless business and political connections of this international network, allowing them to enjoy a meteoric rise with protection from the Mexican state.
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Hughes personified the deep state: he was infamous for his secrecy, for
his back-room manipulation of politicians and government agencies, and for making billions of dollars from his work for the Pentagon and intelligence community as their budgets soared through the Cold War and Vietnam era. Watergate was in part the product of secret payoffs by Hughes to protect his business empire, and a frantic effort by Nixon to head off potential exposure of their relationship lest it kill his chances for re-election.
Tungsten and opium, seemingly so different, had one other thing in common besides their extraordinary value: to reach their ultimate consumers during wartime, both had to be smuggled. That fact put a premium on finding criminal organizations able to mobilize their operatives to move those materials where needed. In vying for China's tungsten, both Japan and the United States turned to gangsters for help, setting in motion a political dynamic that would peak some years later during the Cold War.
This article also draws on both new and largely forgotten sources to examine the background and involvement of two private U.S. citizens who were closely aligned with senior coup plotters. They were primarily affiliated with the U.S. Republican Party and had personal political agendas. Their involvement with Italian extremists should raise concerns, highly relevant today, about the dangers of private meddling in foreign policy and the potential for private actors to create misperceptions about key U.S. government policies.
underworld-linked private foundations used by the Agency to launder funds to seemingly independent student, labor, religious, publishing, and other organizations involved in international operations. It demonstrates how CIA-protected foundations helped seemingly upstanding business leaders and Wall Street institutions collaborate with shady operators and outright criminals in pursuit of profit and political advantage. Their deals helped drive the wild bull market of the 1960s and produced the largest wave of corporate mergers since the beginning of the 20th century. Although the 1960s merger wave has been the subject of many academic studies, none has identified the role of criminal money in fueling its progress. The stories that follow illustrate that organized crime was an important force in 20th century U.S. business history.
To shed historical light on the dangers of turning international drug enforcement into a political weapon, this paper re-examines a classic case of alleged manipulation of narcotics intelligence: the vilification of Communist China by U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger at the height of the Cold War. His inflammatory rhetoric denouncing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an evil purveyor of narcotics went largely unchallenged in the Western media during the 1950s and early 1960s, when Anslinger acted as America’s leading drug enforcement official and its official representative to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). As we shall see, his charges strongly reinforced Washington’s case for diplomatic isolation of China, including its exclusion from the United Nations.
New evidence, including recently declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Central Intelligence Agency, along with overlooked public materials from that period, sheds important new light on the state of Anslinger’s knowledge and probable motives. The records, unavailable to or unused by previous historians, provide strong new confirmation of Anslinger’s manipulation of intelligence to serve both his agency’s bureaucratic interests and a militantly anti-Communist foreign policy agenda at the expense of genuine narcotics enforcement. They leave open the possibility that Chinese traffickers continued to smuggle opiates out of the mainland into the 1950s, but do not challenge what is widely accepted today about the communist government’s attempt to suppress cultivation and trafficking.
Of course, this huge subsidy to colonial interests was not free: It had to be paid for either by French taxpayers or through the “printing” of francs by government monetary authorities, creating inflation that taxed the purchasing power of French consumers.
As long as the cost was modest, it could be easily disguised, minimizing any political consequences. Over time, however, the cost soared and this financial policy blew up in the face of French leaders who instituted it as a tool for promoting colonialism. Beneficiaries, including not only French citizens in Indochina but their privileged Indochinese allies, figured out how to reap huge profits from currency exchange rackets between Indochina and France. The resulting piaster traffic ballooned the cost of war and corrupted the French polity. The profiteering unleashed by the currency racket eventually triggered one of the Fourth Republic’s worst political scandals and fed the public’s darkest suspicions about their leaders. The epithet “dirty war” stuck inexorably to the Indochina campaign, setting the stage for popular acceptance of France’s withdrawal from the colony.
In taking over from France in 1954 as the dominant foreign power, the United States inherited all the challenges that made Paris capitulate after immense loss of lives and treasure. Washington had a chance to learn from France’s mistakes. Instead, among the many lessons that American policy makers failed to learn from the French defeat was the cost—political as well as economic—of trying to buy support for an unpopular war. In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Laos, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid went to support over-valued exchange rates, in turn spawning profiteering and corruption. As in the French era, these rackets tainted the war effort. Spreading corruption sapped the moral underpinnings of the anti-Communist cause, casting a mercenary pall over the righteous claims of war supporters.
Piaster profits did not cause the two Indochina wars, but they did initially sustain—and then powerfully undermine—both the French and American operations. This account is the first to explore the remarkable continuity and disastrous impact over more than two decades of the French and American experiences with currency corruption. It taps long-forgotten published accounts, including the findings of several parliamentary and congressional investigations, as well as unpublished State Department files, FBI records and other government and private archives that shed new light on the intersection of war, politics and crime.
Hughes personified the deep state: he was infamous for his secrecy, for
his back-room manipulation of politicians and government agencies, and for making billions of dollars from his work for the Pentagon and intelligence community as their budgets soared through the Cold War and Vietnam era. Watergate was in part the product of secret payoffs by Hughes to protect his business empire, and a frantic effort by Nixon to head off potential exposure of their relationship lest it kill his chances for re-election.
Tungsten and opium, seemingly so different, had one other thing in common besides their extraordinary value: to reach their ultimate consumers during wartime, both had to be smuggled. That fact put a premium on finding criminal organizations able to mobilize their operatives to move those materials where needed. In vying for China's tungsten, both Japan and the United States turned to gangsters for help, setting in motion a political dynamic that would peak some years later during the Cold War.
This article also draws on both new and largely forgotten sources to examine the background and involvement of two private U.S. citizens who were closely aligned with senior coup plotters. They were primarily affiliated with the U.S. Republican Party and had personal political agendas. Their involvement with Italian extremists should raise concerns, highly relevant today, about the dangers of private meddling in foreign policy and the potential for private actors to create misperceptions about key U.S. government policies.
underworld-linked private foundations used by the Agency to launder funds to seemingly independent student, labor, religious, publishing, and other organizations involved in international operations. It demonstrates how CIA-protected foundations helped seemingly upstanding business leaders and Wall Street institutions collaborate with shady operators and outright criminals in pursuit of profit and political advantage. Their deals helped drive the wild bull market of the 1960s and produced the largest wave of corporate mergers since the beginning of the 20th century. Although the 1960s merger wave has been the subject of many academic studies, none has identified the role of criminal money in fueling its progress. The stories that follow illustrate that organized crime was an important force in 20th century U.S. business history.
To shed historical light on the dangers of turning international drug enforcement into a political weapon, this paper re-examines a classic case of alleged manipulation of narcotics intelligence: the vilification of Communist China by U.S. Commissioner of Narcotics Harry J. Anslinger at the height of the Cold War. His inflammatory rhetoric denouncing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an evil purveyor of narcotics went largely unchallenged in the Western media during the 1950s and early 1960s, when Anslinger acted as America’s leading drug enforcement official and its official representative to the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND). As we shall see, his charges strongly reinforced Washington’s case for diplomatic isolation of China, including its exclusion from the United Nations.
New evidence, including recently declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Central Intelligence Agency, along with overlooked public materials from that period, sheds important new light on the state of Anslinger’s knowledge and probable motives. The records, unavailable to or unused by previous historians, provide strong new confirmation of Anslinger’s manipulation of intelligence to serve both his agency’s bureaucratic interests and a militantly anti-Communist foreign policy agenda at the expense of genuine narcotics enforcement. They leave open the possibility that Chinese traffickers continued to smuggle opiates out of the mainland into the 1950s, but do not challenge what is widely accepted today about the communist government’s attempt to suppress cultivation and trafficking.
Of course, this huge subsidy to colonial interests was not free: It had to be paid for either by French taxpayers or through the “printing” of francs by government monetary authorities, creating inflation that taxed the purchasing power of French consumers.
As long as the cost was modest, it could be easily disguised, minimizing any political consequences. Over time, however, the cost soared and this financial policy blew up in the face of French leaders who instituted it as a tool for promoting colonialism. Beneficiaries, including not only French citizens in Indochina but their privileged Indochinese allies, figured out how to reap huge profits from currency exchange rackets between Indochina and France. The resulting piaster traffic ballooned the cost of war and corrupted the French polity. The profiteering unleashed by the currency racket eventually triggered one of the Fourth Republic’s worst political scandals and fed the public’s darkest suspicions about their leaders. The epithet “dirty war” stuck inexorably to the Indochina campaign, setting the stage for popular acceptance of France’s withdrawal from the colony.
In taking over from France in 1954 as the dominant foreign power, the United States inherited all the challenges that made Paris capitulate after immense loss of lives and treasure. Washington had a chance to learn from France’s mistakes. Instead, among the many lessons that American policy makers failed to learn from the French defeat was the cost—political as well as economic—of trying to buy support for an unpopular war. In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Laos, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid went to support over-valued exchange rates, in turn spawning profiteering and corruption. As in the French era, these rackets tainted the war effort. Spreading corruption sapped the moral underpinnings of the anti-Communist cause, casting a mercenary pall over the righteous claims of war supporters.
Piaster profits did not cause the two Indochina wars, but they did initially sustain—and then powerfully undermine—both the French and American operations. This account is the first to explore the remarkable continuity and disastrous impact over more than two decades of the French and American experiences with currency corruption. It taps long-forgotten published accounts, including the findings of several parliamentary and congressional investigations, as well as unpublished State Department files, FBI records and other government and private archives that shed new light on the intersection of war, politics and crime.
“In bringing to light with meticulous research and graceful prose an utterly neglected area that contributed greatly to the tragic outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the United States, Marshall has produced the most thought-provoking book in decades on the origins of the Pacific War.” —Daniel L. Wick, University of California, Davis
“Marshall’s work is exemplary. Is combination of broad structural analyses and detailed historical narratives based on solid original materials provides food for deeper thought about the past, the present, and the future.”
--Tieting Su, McGill University, in Contemporary Sociology, January 1996.
“Marshall does an admirable job assembling hard documentary evidence and articulating reasoned arguments. He does not simply duplicate the themes of the already voluminous literature on the road to Pearl Harbor. His convincing and extremely well-written monograph augments earlier works by highlighting the crucial role of Southeast Asian natural resources in U.S. policy in the years leading to Pearl Harbor.”
--Thomas W. Burkman, The Historian, Spring 1996
“An outstanding contribution to understanding the road to World War II in the Far East . . . an excellent historical narrative, with enough interesting detail to move even the strongest skeptic.” —Laurence H. Shoup, author of The Carter Presidency and Beyond