The accusation has been thrown around for decades: the war on drugs is a farce, and the CIA works with the very traffickers America claims to be fighting. In Narcos and Spies, Ioan Grillo separates fact from fiction to reveal the truth about CIA’s long history of dubious collaborations.

Taking readers to Europe after World War II, Grillo examines how the CIA plotted with Corsican mobsters to combat the rising communist threat. Meanwhile, those mobsters were creating the French Connection that kickstarted the rise of the American heroin market. Later, as the U.S. army went to war in Vietnam, the agency colluded with opium-growing Hmong tribesmen in Laos to push back the North Vietnamese Army, creating an opportunity for them to smuggle dope on a CIA-owned airline. From there, we move to Nicaragua, and Grillo maps how the CIA teamed up with the Contras, as their affiliates moved the cocaine that fueled the crack epidemic, and to Afghanistan, where the CIA again worked with heroin producers to take out the Taliban. Grillo closes with an erudite look at Mexico, a shattering profile of the CIA partners who have almost single-handedly caused the crisis of fentanyl.

Stepping into a shadow world, bestselling author Ioan Grillo connects the dots between these alliances, uncovers what the agency knew about their unsavory associates, and explains why they worked with them again and again. The book is a damning account, leaving readers to ask what must be done to hold our intelligence agencies accountable for their recurring part in the loss of the War on Drugs.