From the golden triangle, to soldiers in Afghanistan, to Mena airport in Arkansas in the 80s, our government has a long history of happily allowing drug production/smuggling in exchange for military and CIA goals.
Combine that with the billions knowingly laundered by mainstream banks, and the fact that you don’t exactly see anyone moving to close the border with a nation involved in a narco civil war and yes, it’s pretty obvious that our intelligence agencies and government are cutting deals with some cartels.
IIRC both DC and CHicago are top of the “drug use” list. They don’t want to stop their own source.
Maggie, did you see this thread? Don’t we know information on money laundering, drugs and produce flow as payment to Mexico.
They looked the other way during WW II, as well.
Luciano was helping with the invasion of Sicily, and his underling, ILA boss Tough Tony Anastasia kept east coast docks free of Nazi sabotage after the converted luxury liner/troopship “Normandie” mysteriously burned and sank in NY harbor.
The fact that Charlie Lucky also ran the biggest heroin smuggling operation in the world at the time from his jail cell in Dannemora was given a wink and a nudge by the OSS and ONI.