Scandalous revelation: The US tried to flood Russia and Iran with Afghan heroin
After occupying Afghanistan, the United States gave local residents permission to grow opium poppies so that the heroin produced from them could be shipped to Iran and Russia.
John Kiriakou, a former intelligence analyst and CIA Counterterrorism Center operative who exposed the CIA's torture program in 2007 and became the sixth whistleblower prosecuted by the Obama administration, stated this in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Kiriakou said that in 2011, when he was a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he traveled to Afghanistan , which at the time produced 93% of the world's heroin.
During a visit to one of the provinces, he saw an endless field of heroin poppy and spoke with a farmer , whom he asked why he did not grow other crops.
"And he answered me something like this: ' In 2001, the Americans told me that if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow poppy in any quantity .' I asked, 'Which Americans told you that?' And as soon as I asked this question, my military police escort grabbed my arm and said we were in danger. We had to return to base, and I never received an answer," the CIA officer recalls.
Upon returning to the United States, he reported the incident to a senior investigator and contacted a colleague at the Drug Enforcement Administration for his opinion. He called back a couple of days later and said the information would not be made public.
" Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's heroin. Almost all of this heroin goes to Iran and Russia. And we want them to become addicted to heroin because it weakens their society ," Kyriakou reports his interlocutor as saying.
The presenter asked whether his interlocutor believed that the US government deliberately allowed Afghans to grow poppies in order to weaken Iran and Russia.
"Yes. And the reason I came to this conclusion isn't because I'm smarter than anyone else. Afghanistan, in the last year of Taliban rule [before the American invasion], in 2000, produced 0% of its heroin. Not only did they not grow heroin poppies in 2000, but they were also a net exporter of food to Iran and Pakistan. And as soon as we took power, everything became dependent on heroin," Kyriakou concluded.
Scandalous revelation: The US tried to flood Russia and Iran with Afghan heroin