United Front Narcos: From Maine Farms to New York Command and Vancouver Safe-houses—Inside the CCP’s North American Drug Web

Welcome back to The Bureau. Today, we bring you a special cross-border collaboration—linking explosive findings from rural Maine to revelations inside Vancouver’s shadow economy.

Joining me is Steve Robinson, the investigative editor who got the ball rolling on a major story tying an illegal marijuana operation in Maine to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department—Beijing’s foreign influence and intelligence arm. Steve’s reporting for The Maine Wire—later advanced by the Daily Caller News Foundation—traces how a so-called community group in New York City, the Sijiu Association, maintains close ties to the Chinese Consulate and has pledged financial support to United Front projects.

These findings echo what The Bureau has uncovered in Canada, where United Front operatives have used legalization as cover for a sprawling cannabis export and laundering network. In Vancouver, Toronto, and remote parts of British Columbia and Ontario especially, United Front-linked triads have quietly consolidated legal cannabis licenses, exploited illegal migrant labor, and shipped massive volumes of marijuana to the United States and Japan, with inroads to Europe too—laundering the proceeds back through Canadian banks.

In this episode, Steve and I will compare notes, connect the dots, and expose how these networks—rooted in state-directed influence and organized crime—are reshaping the underground economy across North America, just as FBI scrutiny intensifies.

The Bureau is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thebureau.news/subscribe