Forging the Bad Neighbor Policy: The Drug War From Nixon to Reagan

It was perhaps appropriate, given his image, that Richard Nixon would be the president to explicitly declare a "war" on drugs. Although Nixon's announcement to the press on June 17, 1971, and his subsequent message to Congress on the same day generally are viewed as the key events, his strident policy should have come as no surprise. Nixon's election campaign in 1968 had stressed the need to restore "law and order" in America (an especially ironic promise, given that his administration turned out to be the most lawless in the nation's history), and cracking down on narcotics was an important subtheme of that message. In a September 1968 speech in Anaheim, California, Nixon addressed the issue in emotional and uncompromising terms, describing illegal drugs as "a modern curse of American youth" and promising to "take the executive steps necessary to make our borders more secure against the pestilence of narcotics."

Of course, Nixon did not invent the drug prohibitionist strategy or even the nation's commitment to strike at the source of illegal drugs outside our borders. The domestic prohibitionist strategy received its initial impetus from the passage of the Harrison Act in 1914, and the U.S. involvement in international antidrug efforts dates from its adherence to the Hague Convention for the control of opium sales in 1912. In addition, the United States had pursued a variety of antidrug initiatives throughout the Western Hemisphere during the decades prior to the 1970s. But by proclaiming that the fight against illicit drugs was the functional and moral equivalent of war, Nixon escalated the stakes.

Although the Nixon administration's efforts to curtail the supply of illicit drugs focused on such heroin-source countries as France and Turkey, one of the earliest coercive measures was applied against Mexico. In fact, it predated Nixon's celebrated declaration of a war on drugs. In early 1969 Nixon established the Presidential Task Force Relating to Narcotics, Marijuana and Dangerous Drugs (otherwise known as Task Force One), which attempted to combine the talents of the Justice Department's Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and the Treasury Department's customs bureau for a joint operation against Mexican drug traffickers. (It was also apparently a mechanism to try to end the turf fights between the two departments over which group would have the lead role in efforts to stem the flow of drugs into the United States.) Task Force One's report, submitted in June of 1969, recommended that the highest priority should be "an eradication of the production and refinement in Mexico of opium poppies and marijuana." Not only did the report contend that Mexico was a crucial source of heroin entering the United States, but it asserted that marijuana was a critical "stepping stone" to heroin addiction. As usual, the report cited no evidence to support its assertion that marijuana was a gateway drug leading users to move on to more potent — and addictive — drugs.

The resulting confrontation with Mexico is recounted vividly by Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy, who was at the time a special assistant to the secretary of the treasury. Task Force One, on which Liddy served, wanted to obtain Mexico's consent for U.S.-directed aerial reconnaissance of Mexican drug fields and for "chemical crop destruction" efforts. At a bilateral meeting in June 1969, Washington's "request" was presented to Mexican officials. Liddy describes Mexico's resistance in his own inimitable style: "When the United States and Mexico met ... the Mexicans, using diplomatic language, of course, told us to go piss up a rope. The Nixon Administration didn't believe in the United States' taking crap from any foreign government. Its reply was Operation Intercept."

Operation Intercept was the concerted application of a maximum-right-to-search policy. Two thousand customs and border patrol agents were deployed along the Mexican border for what was officially described as the nation's largest peacetime search-and-seizure operation. Technically, both Mexico and the United States have the right to carefully search individuals and vehicles crossing the border, but normally inspections are brief or nonexistent. Given the amount of traffic crossing the U.S.-Mexican border each day, comprehensive inspections would create monumental traffic snarls and create havoc with commerce — as they did in the weeks following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That is precisely what happened with Operation Intercept. The results, according to Liddy, were "as intended: chaos."

Indeed it was. Automobiles and trucks crossing the border were delayed up to six hours in 100-degree temperatures. Travelers who seemed suspicious — or who dared complain — often were strip-searched. Thousands of Mexican workers lost their jobs in the United States because of the customs delays at the border. Ultimately more than 5 million citizens of the United States and Mexico were caught up in that nightmarish dragnet before it finally ended.

Liddy was quite candid about the administration's motives for Operation Intercept, although he conceded that for "diplomatic reasons" the true purpose was not revealed at the time: "Operation Intercept, with its massive economic and social disruption, could be sustained far longer by the United States than by Mexico. It was an exercise in international extortion, pure and simple and effective, designed to bend Mexico to our will. We figured Mexico would hold out for about a month; in fact they caved in after about two weeks and we got what we wanted."

In the short run, Operation Intercept did attain the desired concessions. Mexican leaders swallowed their pride and acquiesced in the notorious Paraquat marijuana eradication project (spraying plants with the herbicide Paraquat). The long-term repercussions of U.S. intimidation, however, may have been less favorable. Mexican leaders complained heatedly at the time about the operation, with President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz stating bluntly that the episode had created "a wall of suspicion" between the two countries. A Mexican expert on the drug issue concluded more than two decades later that "Operation Intercept entailed high political and diplomatic costs." It was certainly apparent to international observers that relations between the two countries were cool at best throughout the 1970s. While it would be too much to suggest that resentment over Operation Intercept was entirely responsible for that...