Operation Intercept was an anti-drug measure engaged by President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

from 21 September to 11 October 1969 that resulted in a near shutdown of border crossings between Mexico and the United States. The initiative was intended to reduce the importation of Mexican

marijuana Cannabis (), commonly known as marijuana (), weed, pot, and ganja, List of slang names for cannabis, among other names, is a non-chemically uniform psychoactive drug from the ''Cannabis'' plant. Native to Central or South Asia, cannabis has ...

to the United States during what was considered to be the prime harvest season.''The 1969 marijuana shortage and "Operation Intercept,"'' The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs.
/ref> It was implemented by

Myles Ambrose Myles Joseph Ambrose (July 21, 1926 – June 3, 2014) was an American lawyer and United States federal government official. He served as the Commissioner of Customs under President Richard M. Nixon and paved the way for the establishment of the ...

, who served as the Commissioner of Customs in the

Nixon administration Richard Nixon's tenure as the 37th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1969, and ended when he resigned on August 9, 1974, in the face of almost certain impeachment and removal from office, the ...

Description

Freshly elected as US President,

launched an anti-drug war by following his Anaheim campaign pledge of September 1968. He targeted the cannabis coming from Mexico and the heroin coming from Turkey through the

French Connection The French Connection was a scheme through which heroin was smuggled from Indochina through Turkey to France and then to the United States and Canada. The operation started in the 1930s, reached its peak in the 1960s, and was dismantled in the 1 ...

.Kate Doyle
Operation Intercept: The Perils of Unilateralism

National Security Archive The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy, the N ...

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...

, with copies of 18 previously classified documents. Operation Intercept is considered the opening act of the US involvement in the

Mexican Drug War The Mexican drug war is an List of ongoing armed conflicts, ongoing Asymmetric warfare, asymmetric armed conflict between the Federal government of Mexico, Mexican government and various Drug cartel#Mexico, drug trafficking syndicates. When the ...

. With that move, Nixon strengthened his conservative base in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...

.Jamie Shenk
Doomed From the Start: "Operation Intercept" and Changing Public Perceptions of Marijuana in the United States
''Underfraduatelibrary.org'', 2015 The operation was prepared with

G. Gordon Liddy George Gordon Battle Liddy (November 30, 1930 – March 30, 2021) was an American lawyer and FBI agent who was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping for his role in the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration. Work ...

(who was involved in

Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in 1974, in August of that year. It revol ...

and prosecutions against

Timothy Leary Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from "bold oracle" to "publicity hound". Accordin ...

) and Arizona sheriff

Joe Arpaio Joseph Michael Arpaio (; born June 14, 1932) is an American former law enforcement officer and politician. He was the Sheriffs in the United States, Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Maricopa County, Arizona for 24 years, from 1993 to 2017, ...

.Shaun Assael
Trump echoes Nixon on Mexico gambit
''Bostonglobe.com'', 28 June 2016 The policy was instituted as a surprise move although Nixon had given Mexican President

Gustavo Diaz Ordaz Gustavo is the Latinate form of a Germanic male given name with respective prevalence in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. It is derived from Gustav /ˈɡʊstɑːv/, also spelled Gustaf, a Swedish name, likely from Slavic Gostislav. People with ...

some advance warning when they met on September 8, 1969 to dedicate the

Lake Amistad Dam International Crossing The Lake Amistad Dam International Crossing is a dam that serves as an international bridge which crosses the Rio Grande south of Lake Amistad. The dam connects the United States-Mexico border cities of Del Rio, Texas and Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila ...

. The effort involved increased surveillance of the border from both air and sea, but the major part of the policy was the individual inspection, mandated to last three minutes, of every vehicle crossing into the United States from Mexico. On the same day, Nixon's plan was leaked to the public by the White House correspondent for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' Felix Belair, Jr. The operation was deployed in all 30 border-crossing stations. Radars were installed to detect unobserved border-crossings. The Navy was deployed in the Gulf of Mexico to reinforce the operation. Twenty-seven international airports in the US with flights from Mexico were also affected by the operation. On the eighth day, the US authorities declared the ongoing operation was a success, despite many complaints of abusive search techniques by US custom patrols. On the US side of twin cities along the border, retail business dropped more than 50%. The United States-Mexican Border Cities Association organized protests against the operation in those cities. Because of complaints from cross-border travelers and from Diaz Ordaz, the searching of vehicles was reduced after 10 days and completely abandoned after about 20 days. The

believed that it had largely achieved its goal of encouraging the Mexican government to begin an effort to stem domestic drug production. California Governor

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...

made a public speech on television to approve the operation.

Aftermath

Operation Intercept was disapproved by the

State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

and the

Bureau of the Budget The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). The office's most prominent function is to produce the president's budget, while it also examines agency pro ...

. Statistics on the volumes of cannabis seized were way below expectations and did not exceed the average volumes that had been seized before the operation. Much of US press publicized marijuana during the crisis. Other temporary illegal smuggling channels were activated during the operation, such as high-potent marijuana shipped from

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

and of hashish from

Northern Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

. A marijuana shortage throughout the country led users to experiment with other drugs or to grow their own.

would later state, "For diplomatic reasons the true purpose of the exercise was never revealed. 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, simple, and effective, designed to bend Mexico to our will." When the operation was ceased, it was replaced by Operation Cooperation, a new anti-drug agreement aiming at designing a shared strategy in fighting drug trafficking. According to Kate Doyle, senior analyst of the

, the operation was a success for Nixon on three levels: he gained law-and-order stamina, made Mexico bend to his demands, and started a war on drugs that would last for decades. On the national level, the anti-Mexican campaign had an impact on the stereotype of Mexicans conveyed in the press. Along the border, it revealed how deeply intertwined the Mexican and American border communities were. In early 1970, the

Jefferson Airplane Jefferson Airplane was an American Rock music, rock band formed in San Francisco, California, in 1965. One of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the San Francisco Bay Area, ...

released a single, "

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

." The song was not played on some radio stations at the time because the lyrics referred to Operation Intercept, but this song became a classic on many of the so-called underground radio stations. Operation Intercept is sometimes referred to in the issue of the

Mexico–United States border wall The Mexico–United States border wall is a series of disjoined physical barriers built along portions of the Mexico–United States border. The barriers were constructed in a piecemeal manner over the course of several President of the United ...

.Trump's Wall: Nixon's 1969 'Operation Intercept', the Hemispheric Drug War and the Border Wall
''Ucl.ac.uk'', 14 November 2017

Description

Aftermath

See also

References

Further reading