In 1971 a second-year grad student at Yale named Alfred McCoy met the poet Allen Ginsberg at a demonstration for Bobby Seale in New Haven, Connecticut. Ginsberg found out that McCoy had studied up on the drug trade and also knew several Southeast Asian languages, as well as the political history of the region. He encouraged McCoy to research allegations about CIA involvement in the region’s drug trade. McCoy finished his term papers and traveled to Southeast Asia in the summer of 1971, where he embarked on a courageous and far-reaching investigation that yielded brilliant results.