Alfred W. McCoy

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Alfred "Al" William McCoy (born June 8, 1945 in Concord ) is Professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin in Madison . He researches and publishes on the history of the Philippines , US foreign policy , the colonization of Southeast Asia , the illegal drug trade and covert operations of the CIA .

Study and professional development

His parents are Alfred Mudge McCoy and Margarita Piel. McCoy attended the Kent School until 1964 and passed his bachelor's degree at Columbia University in 1969, and in 1969 he completed his master's degree in Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1977 he received his doctorate from Yale University as a Doctor of Philosophy in Southeast Asian History. His dissertation was supervised by Harold C. Conklin and dealt with Yloilo : Factional Conflict in a Colonial Economy, Iloilo Province, Philippines, 1937-1955.

He began his academic career as a research fellow at Yale. After completing his doctorate, he spent a research semester as a research fellow at the Australian National University . McCoy remained in Australia at the University of New South Wales as a lecturer (1978–1981), senior lecturer (1981–1985), and was eventually promoted to associate professor (1985–1989). He returned to the United States in 1989 as a full professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has since spent his career. McCoy has been given two endowed chairs during his tenure: JRW Smail (2004-2015) and Fred Harvey Harrington (2015-present).

Publications

The CIA and Heroin, 1972, 2003

McCoy has been involved in US government involvement in the international drug trade for over 40 years . His 1972 book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade (German: Die CIA und das Heroin , Verlag Zweiausendeins, 2003) triggered a scandal in the USA. During his research, McCoy spent a long time in Southeast Asia and interviewed local warlords , drug lords and CIA agents , among others . He is considered one of the most prominent experts on the subject and testified before several state investigative commissions that investigated the CIA's involvement in the drug trade in Southeast Asia.

The CIA tried before publication of the book in 1972 to get through pressure on McCoy's publisher Harper & Row influence on the manuscript. Well-known investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article about this censorship attempt in the Washington Post , after which McCoy became known nationwide overnight. The book was revised several times and expanded to include current events; it is now considered a standard work. Chapters added in more recent editions deal with the role of the CIA in Latin and South America as well as in Afghanistan (see table of contents under web links ).

McCoy accuses the CIA less of direct complicity in drug trafficking - although in his book he shows a few examples from the time of the Vietnam War - than of the silent tolerance of the trade and complicity with drug dealers. According to McCoy, this includes, for example, actively obstructing US law enforcement agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) when they want to prosecute drug traffickers who are collaborating with the CIA on covert operations . The author includes commanders of the CIA-supported contra rebels in the contra war against Nicaragua , who have been shown to smuggle cocaine into the USA on a large scale in the 1980s (see also Iran-Contra affair and Dark Alliance ).

Policing America's Empire, 2009

Another research focus of McCoy is the recent history of the Philippines . He examined in the book Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. also to what extent US policy in the Philippines with its strong secret service presence there later shaped surveillance in the USA itself.

Torture and Impunity, 2012

In his most recent books he examines torture methods used by the CIA. In it, McCoy states that torture is not a "last resort" for the CIA, but a systematic tool. He spans an arc from the human experiments of the secret research program MKULTRA to the support of the South American military dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s to the events in the Iraqi Abu Ghuraib prison .

Prizes and awards (selection)

  • 1985 - Philippine National Book Award
  • 1995 - Philippine National Book Award
  • 1998 - Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad
  • 2001 - Philippine National Book Award
  • 2001 - Association for Asian Studies, Grant Goodman Prize
  • 2004 - University of Wisconsin Graduate School, JRW Smail Chair in History
  • 2011 - Association for Asian Studies, George Kahin Prize
  • 2012 - Yale Graduate School Alumni Association, Wilbur Cross Medal
  • 2012 - University of Wisconsin-Madison , Hilldale Award for Arts and Humanities

See also

Publications

  • The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Harper & Row, New York 1972, ISBN 0-06-012901-8 .
    • The Politics of Heroin. CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade - Revised Edition. Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago 2003, ISBN 1-55652-483-8 .
  • ed. with Alan A. Block: War on Drugs: Studies in the Failure of US Narcotics Policy. Westview, Boulder 1992, ISBN 0-8133-8551-2 .
  • Closer Than Brothers: Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy. Yale University Press, New Haven 1999, ISBN 0-300-07765-3 .
  • A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror. Henry Holt and Company, New York 2006, ISBN 0-8050-8041-4 .
  • Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2009, ISBN 978-0-299-23414-0 .
  • Torture and Impunity (Critical Human Rights). University of Wisconsin Press, July 20, 2012, ISBN 0299288544
  • In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power (Dispatch Books). Haymarket Books, Chicago 2017, ISBN 1608467732
German language translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://history.wisc.edu/people/mccoy-alfred-w/

Web links

personal data
SURNAME McCoy, Alfred W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McCoy, Alfred William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Concord