Mrs Thatcher’s secret £100k plot to ‘bomb’ Peru’s cocaine crop using weaponised MOTHS revealed in declassified files

13th October 1984: British Conservative prime minister Margaret Hilda Thatcher, addressing the Tory Party Conference in Brighton, following the bombing of The Grand Hotel, where many delegates were staying. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Credit: Getty MARGARET Thatcher approved plans to “bomb” Peru’s cocaine crop with moths, documents reveal. Top-secret briefings from 1989 show Tory ministers agreed to spend £100,000 on the covert strategy. The then PM personally rubber-stamped the proposal to breed thousands of moths to halt cocaine exports to Britain. Documents recently declassified by the National Archives explored the potential to weaponise moths which feed on Erythroxylum coca — the plant from which cocaine is produced. Sign up for the Politics newsletter Thank you! One Foreign Office briefing read: “It is clear that this moth offers great potential for the biological control of illegal crops — provided a way can be found to propagate the insects in very large numbers. “From what is known of Eloria [the moths] it might be thought of as a ‘smart bomb’ with a very short range.” READ MORE ON MARGARET THATCHER It said the Peruvian government had asked British scientists at a Porton Down research lab in Wiltshire for help in breeding thousands of the moths. The insects would then be flown to Peru and dropped by helicopters over drug plantations. But despite Thatcher’s personal interest, the proposal never came to fruition due to a lack of financial support from Peru. Comment now