Late sixties reference June  Ramparts has an article titled The CIAs flourishing opium trade  This is a very complete account of the CIAdrug claim complete with an island on the Mekong that boasts a factory run by an Austrian where the opium is refined to the powdery morphine base which takes up only a tenth of the space Air America flies it to the giant United States base at Udon Thani or the smaller base at Nakhon Phanom in Thailand to Chieng Mai Bangkok Danang Saigon There is no byline for the story  Lets call up Warren Hinckle and ask Given such a circumstantial account I wonder why did this whole thing not take off until four years later Im going to have to think about that one