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 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

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, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

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, who served as the Commissioner of Customs in the

Nixon administration Richard Nixon's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 37th president of the United States began with First inauguration of Richard Nixon, his first inauguration on January 20, 1969, and ended when he resigned on August 9, 1974 ...

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, sometimes through Cuba. The operation started in the 1930s, reached its peak in the 1960s, and ...

.Kate Doyle
Operation Intercept: The Perils of Unilateralism

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George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

, with copies of 18 previously classified documents. Operation Intercept is considered the opening act of the US involvement in the Mexican Drug War. With that move, Nixon strengthened his conservative base in

Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...

.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, FBI agent, talk show host, actor, and convicted felon in the Watergate scandal as the chief operative in the White House Plumbers unit during the Nixon admi ...

(who was involved in

Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...

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. He was "a her ...

) and Arizona sheriff

Joe Arpaio Joseph Michael Arpaio (; born June 14, 1932) is an American former law enforcement officer and politician. He served as the 36th Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona for 24 years, from 1993 to 2017, losing reelection to Democrat Paul Penzone i ...

.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 some advance warning when they met on September 8, 1969 to dedicate the Lake Amistad Dam International Crossing. 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'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' 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, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

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 State Department, is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government responsible for the country's fore ...

and the Bureau of the Budget. 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 or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

and of hashish from

Northern Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in 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-Mexicican campaign had an impact on the stereotype of Mexicans conveyed in the press. Along the border, it revealed how deeply intertwined the Mexican and the Americans border communities were. In early 1970, the

Jefferson Airplane Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, that became one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to ac ...

released a single, "

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

." 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

Trump wall The Trump wall, commonly referred to as "The Wall", is an expansion of the Mexico–United States barrier that started in the U.S. during the 1980’s to keep help enforce immigration laws in the United States. Prior to Donald Trump, border s ...

.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