The Great Pretense: A Tour through the Boneyard of the CIA’s War for Drugs, by Bill Conroy
The CIA broke U.S. law in the ‘80s by arming Nicaragua’s Contra rebels. Rumored was the drug-running angle, with the covert agency collaborating with drug cartels and street gangs, spreading crack to support its Central American activities.
While the mainstream media offered little more than glimpses of those undertakings, Milwaukee expat journalist Bill Conroy continued to report on the dark corners of America’s War on Drugs, mostly for websites but also for documentaries broadcast by major networks. The Great Pretense compiles his observations, including what his deep sources have said about collusion with drug trafficking and their political consequences. Why the Pretense? How can a government fight a War on Drugs while complicit with the traffickers?
Conroy draws conclusions by peering through the cracks in secrecy, the redacted reports and grand jury testimony that have leaked. According to him, the CIA has infiltrated the DEA to manipulate the War on Drugs from within. In a rambling account that would have benefitted from a tighter, perhaps chronological structure, Conroy finds that CIA’s involvement in trafficking dates as far back as the Vietnam War and was the motivation for America’s “arrest” of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriego and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Reading The Great Pretense, one can’t help but wonder: What good is whistleblowing if no one hears the whistle through the static of instant entertainment and mediated distraction?
Get The Great Pretense on Amazon here.
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