The Skeptic Tank Chairman comments: I have received this material from +quot;Larry-Jennie+
The Skeptic Tank Chairman comments: I have received this material
from "Larry-Jennie", (lar-jen@interaccess.com) on Sat, 11 Jan 1997
at 08:37:59 -0600, under the subject heading "CIA drugs: Urban
legend?" It came in with various other files which I've enumerated
below. There is further materials of the same nature to be found
at ftp://pencil.cs.missouri.edu/pub/mena/ though I have not examined
them.
I have left the text alone however I have reformatted it to make it
easier to read. CAQ text that comes in lacks the reference entries
normally found in the original, by the way, so you will not find the
indexed references sited in the main-body text.
- Fredric L. Rice, (frice@stbbs.com) (818) 335-9601 24 hours
C:\WWFILES\NORTH6IC.TXT, C:\WWFILES\BLUMCIA.TXT,
C:\WWFILES\UPI11106.TXT, C:\WWFILES\CAQ59.TXT,
C:\WWFILES\SJMREBUT.TXT, C:\WWFILES\SJMCIA26.TXT
-=- Begin text -=-
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www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!
feed1.news.erols.com!news.idt.net!mr.net!winternet.com!
alpha.sky.net!news.missouri.edu!pencil.math.missouri.edu!rich
From: rich@pencil.math.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: CAQ #59: Cracking CIA-Contra Drug Link
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Date: 5 Dec 1996 17:30:11 GMT
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/** covertaction: 61.0 **/
** Topic: #59 Cracking CIA-Contra Drug Link **
** Written 10:30 AM Dec 3, 1996 by caq in cdp:covertaction **
CRACKING THE CIA-CONTRA DRUG CONNECTION
by Clarence Lusane
RECENT REVELATIONS HAVE LINKED THE CIA TO THE CRACK PLAGUE. BUT ONLY
BY FRAMING THE DISCUSSION INTHE CONTEXT OF A CRITIQUE OF US FOREIGN
POLICY OBJECTIVES THAT HAVE BEEN OPERATING SINCE AT LEAST THE MID-1940S,
CAN THE SOLID LINK BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, RACISM, AND ILLEGAL
DRUGS BE GRASPED.
In a series of explosive stories for the San Jose Mercury News,
investigative reporter Gary Webb asserts that US-backed Contras and
Contra-supporters imported cocaine into the United States; that the
cocaine was sold to at least one major Los Angeles black drug dealer
with ties or membership in the Crips street gang; and that the CIA
was aware of the Contra drug activities and chose to either ignore
them or to protect the traffickers. *1
The response to the series from the black community has been phenomenal.
Reprints sold on the streets of Harlem, Washington, DC, and other cities
have ensured wide access, while Internet postings have spread the story
like wildfire around the world. Forums and meetings as well as
demonstrations and other protests have demanded action; congressmembers
and black leaders have called for investigative hearings.
The CIA-Contra-crack story is a complicated saga with many layers and
serious implications for the black community and the nation. Although
hard documentation of CIA involvement in drug trafficking had been on
the record for decades, Webb's articles add hard, specific evidence of
the consequences at home. It would be a grave mistake either to blow up
the issue of the CIA's role in drug trafficking to one of conspiratorial
genocide, or to reduce it to the excesses of a few undisciplined
operatives. Only by framing the discussion in the context of a critique
of US foreign policy objectives that have been operating since at
least the mid-1940s, can the solid link between international affairs,
racism, and illegal drugs be grasped.
The role of US intelligence agencies in narcotics trafficking has been
a direct function of US foreign policy both during and after the Cold
War. Under the cover of anticommunism, every US administration from
Truman to Bush justified global covert operations that led directly to
the opening and expansion of trafficking routes for illegal narcotics.
Operatives associated with US intelligence agencies then either ignored
or even supported the flow of drugs that predictably followed. *2 And
even without the ideological justifications of anticommunism, the
pattern of running covert operations linked to drug traffickers
continues today under Clinton. *3
These policies are not race neutral. In the US, the consequences of
drug trafficking for the black community and subsequent growth in
substance addiction has been nothing short of devastating. But it is
also critical to note how people of color throughout the developing
world have seen their economies skewed and some of the most corrupt
elements of their societies strengthened by narcotrafficking. The
cultivation of coca leaves, opium, hashish and other crops essential to
illegal drug production is propelled by global capitalist economics that
have relegated developing nations to producing -- under profoundly
inequitable circumstances -- for the developed world. Virtually all the
media stories, including the Mercury News series, have ignored the
economic imperative driving the production of illegal drugs in the
developing world and their marketing in the US. In conjunction with
whatever role the CIA and other intelligence agencies have played in
narcotrafficking, Washington's corporate-driven international policies
are central to economic woes of millions of people both in the
developing world and in the inner-city and rural poverty belts of the
US. *4
WHAT IT SAID, WHAT IT DIDN'T
What is new and particularly shocking in Webb's series is his charge
that US-backed Contras and Contra supporters imported cocaine into the
US and sold it to black street gangs in Los Angeles. The Contra drug
dealers, according to the Mercury News, "met with CIA agents both
before and during the time they were selling the drugs in LA." *5
Despite their US backing, Nicaragua's Contras were often hard up for
cash. Most of them were supporters of the US-backed dictator Anastasio
Somoza, who had seized power in 1936 and whose dynasty ruled Nicaragua
with notable corruption and brutality. In 1979, a group of rebels, the
Sandinistas, took power and instituted numerous literacy, health, and
land reform programs. Washington was appalled both by their overtly
Marxist cast and by their policies that favored the interests of
peasants and workers over those of large landowners and international
corporations. In response, with White House approval, the CIA created
a Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) in mid-1981. This coalition of
several groups, mostly Somoza loyalists, waged Washington's surrogate
war against the Nicaraguan people even after internationally certified
elections were held. By the mid-1980s, the FDN had racked up a
horrifying human rights record while the Sandinistas had garnered strong
support around the world from both governments and solidarity groups.
Under pressure, Congress cut off funding, but some US money authorized
by President Reagan continued to pass covertly through the CIA. Some of
the Contras looked to drug money to supplement the clandestine flow.
Webb's revelations added to the picture by showing that from around 1982
to 1986, two men linked to the Contras -- Los Angeles cocaine trafficker
Danilo Blandon and his San Francisco-based supplier Norwin Meneses -- sold
large quantities of cocaine to "Freeway" Rick Ross. *6 Ross, a black
22-year-old street dealer with ties to the Crips street gang in Los
Angeles, turned the cocaine he bought from Blandon and Meneses into
crack. Because the Nicaraguans' prices were well below normal costs,
Ross quickly became a major dealer with broad influence over the spread
of crack in Los Angeles.
Part of the profits made from the drugs that Blandon and Meneses sold
to Ross, according to Ross' testimony cited by the San Jose Mercury
News, were "then used to buy weapons and equipment for a guerrilla
army." At first the CIA and Contra leaders, including Adolfo Calero, the
US-based political leader of the FDN, insisted that Meneses was not a key
player in the Contra war and that they were surprised to find out that
he was involved with drugs. These disclaimers don't ring true. Meneses
says that, for at least five years, he raised funds for the Contras,
visited Contra camps, and sent people to Honduras to work for the
Contras. *7 Calero concedes Meneses visited Contra camps numerous times
during the 1980s and the two men were even photographed together at a
Contra fundraiser in San Francisco. *8 Also, Calero's professed ignorance
of Meneses' trafficking is not credible. A detailed San Francisco Examiner
story linked Meneses' drug trafficking to his Contra connections. *9 Not
only was Meneses well- known in the US as a large-scale dealer,
Nicaraguan newspapers dubbed him "Rey de la Droga" (King of Drugs). *10
After being instructed to conduct a search, the CIA admitted that it had
records going back to 1984 implicating Meneses in drug trafficking. *11
MEDIA ROLE IN THE MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN
The major media, which had been overlooking or debunking CIA links to
drug-dealing Contras for a decade, responded to Webb's series by either
ignoring them or running a story on the story impugning Webb's motives,
facts, and research skills. The corporate press responded to outrage in
the black community by chalking it up to what the Washington Post termed
"black paranoia." While noting that a long history of government-sponsored
activities against the black community have justified black suspicion,
the majors have categorized those suspicions as baseless conspiracies
comparable to tales of UFO abductions.
There are inaccuracies and exaggerations in Webb's series which the
major media seized on, but instead of correcting the record on
specifics, they used the flaws to dismiss the piece out-of-hand. They
also created straw men only to tear them down. For example, while
Webb exaggerates the case when he writes that the cocaine sold to Ross
and later turned into crack created "the first mass market in America"
for the drug, *12 he never states, as some of his debunkers have
charged, that Ross alone was responsible for the proliferation or for
its invention. It is generally agreed that the stunning spread of crack
in Los Angeles did occur around the time Blandon and Ross entered the
market, but Webb explains how they took advantage of, rather than
created, the circumstance in which "street-level drug users were
figuring out how to make cocaine affordable ... by changing the pricey
white powder into powerful little nuggets that could be smoked crack." *13
Nor does the series allege that the CIA as an agency or any of its
identifiable employees directly sold drugs in the US or specifically
targeted the black community. These charges have been made by both
critics and proponents of the series.
Even though the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times successfully
challenged some of the Mercury's details -- such as the amount of
cocaine sold to Ross and the profits they made -- they do not address
the broad issues and their implications. By asking the wrong questions
they have diverted attention from critical points. For example: Even
if the US-created taxpayer- paid Contras dealt only one rock of crack
with the tacit approval of US officials, then serious policy and
ethical problems exist (not to mention legal ones).
Despite some factual errors, the Mercury News series has not only
added evidence on how racism intersects with US drug and foreign
policies, but also raised two key questions to which the black
community has long sought answers:
1) Did the CIA or other US officials authorize and participate in the
marketing and distribution of crack cocaine to the black community as
a matter of policy or strategy?
2) Have the CIA and other US intelligence agencies, through covert
operations and other activities, facilitated a flow of drugs into
the United States that has resulted in increased use and sales in the
black community?
The answer to the first question, so far as can be determined, is no.
Neither the series nor other reports and studies provide evidence
of such high-level authorization and targeting of the black community.
While there are examples of convictions of US officials for narcotics
trafficking, no conspiratorial network inside the CIA has ever been
identified. If the question were rephrased to ask if the blight of
drugs in the black community has had serendipitous effects -- the
blunting of social protest and organizing, an excuse to warehouse in
prisons hundreds of thousands of young black men for whom there are no
jobs -- the answer would be yes. But a useful consequence that is
tolerated or even appreciated is not the same as a deliberate conspiracy.
The answer to the second question is an unqualified yes and the evidence
is overwhelming. The CIA, FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), State
Department, Justice Department, Military Intelligence, and other agencies
have repeatedly employed operatives and agents known to be involved in
narco-trafficking. At various times the US agencies have either turned
a blind eye or knowingly allowed their facilities to be used for major
dealing. This policy was approved at the top of these agencies in the
White House and, many believe, by successive presidents.
Jack Blum, chief investigator for the Kerry subcommittee, concluded
after years of investigation and access to classified information:
"If you ask: In the process of fighting a war against the
Sandinistas, did people connected with the US government open
channels which allowed drug traffickers to move drugs to the
United States, did they know the drug traffickers were doing it,
and did they protect them from law enforcement? The answer to
all those questions is yes. *14"
HISTORY OF INVOLVEMENT
Official collaboration between US government entities and known drug
traffickers dates back at least to World War II. The Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), predecessor of the CIA, made deals with Corsican heroin
traffickers as well as with US gangster and known heroin dealer Lucky
Luciano to prevent communists from gaining a political foothold in
post-war France and Italy. *15
)From 1924-44, the US heroin addict population had dropped from 200,000
to about 20,000.16 Then Washington, "through the CIA and its wartime
predecessor, the OSS, created a situation that made it possible for the
Sicilian-American Mafia and the Corsican underworld to revive the
international narcotics traffic," according to the leading academic study
on the topic. *17 After Luciano established a worldwide network of
traffickers, distributors, and retailers for the drug, the number of US
addicts grew rapidly again. *18
Similar alliances led to similar consequences in Southeast Asia. In Laos,
beginning around 1960, the CIA created a secret army of 30,000 Hmong
tribesmen to fight their communist government. Hmong Gen. Vang Pao (who
eventually moved to Montana) was allowed to use the CIA's Air America
planes to traffic opium, the Hmong's major cash crop. Turned into heroin,
this crop not only addicted thousands of US soldiers fighting in Vietnam,
including a disproportionate number of African Americans, but by the
war's end in the mid-1970s, comprised about one-third of all heroin in
the US. *19 By 1989, Southeast Asia was producing 73 percent of the
world's heroin. *20
Beginning in the late 1970s, in Southwest Asia's Golden Crescent -- where
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran come together -- the US supported the
anticommunist mujahedin guerrillas fighting against their Soviet-backed
government. The CIA's covert activities in the region created new
trafficking lines and a tremendous wave of heroin that flooded the
lucrative US market. Scholar Alfred McCoy noted one of the consequences:
"As heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan poured into America
throughout 1979 ... the number of drug-related deaths in New
York City rose by 77 percent." By the late 1980s, the surge in
heroin from the Golden Crescent "had captured 60 percent of the
US market." *21
The pattern of exploding narcotics trafficking would be repeated when
the Reagan administration made the decision to support anticommunist
governments and rebels in Central America. Between 1982 and 1985,
covering the first Reagan term, the number of US cocaine users grew to
5.8 million, a 38 percent rise. *22 During that period, the CIA and other
agencies employed drug traffickers throughout Central America to assist
their covert wars against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and guerrillas
fighting to overthrow military and political dictatorships in El Salvador
and Guatemala. Gen. Paul F. Gorman, former head of the US Southern Command,
captured the rationale for these unsavory alliances:
"The fact is, if you want to go into the subversion business,
collect intelligence, and move arms, you deal with drug movers."
*23
It is critical to note that it was not just the CIA but the entire US
foreign policy apparatus -- including all branches of the military, the
NSA, and the State Department that helped implement the covert war
against Nicaragua and was complicit in the drug trafficking. Many of
their activities were revealed in the investigations and hearings by
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the late 1980s. McCoy notes that the
committee found, for example, that
"The US State Department paid four contractors $806,401 to
supply humanitarian aid to the Contra forces in Central America.
All four of these companies were owned by known drug
traffickers." *24
The report went on to say that the State Department made
"payments to drug traffickers ... for humanitarian assistance
to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been
indicted ... on drug charges." *25
The committee's report was unambiguous in assigning guilt:
"On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that ... elements
of the Contras ... knowingly received financial and material
assistance from drug traffickers. ... In each case, one or
another agency of the US government had information about the
involvement."
The Kerry report also concluded,
"The logic of having drug money pay for the pressing needs
of the Contras appealed to a number of people who became
involved in the covert war. Indeed, senior US policy makers
were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect
solution to the Contras' funding problems." *26
RACISM AND THE WAR ON DRUGS
The flood of drugs into the US, Contra-carried and other, had a
devastating impact on the black community; the harmful effects were
only compounded by the "war on drugs" -- pursued in turn by Nixon,
Reagan, Bush, and Clinton that disproportionately targeted African
Americans.
That effect is consistent with a long history of drug wars that
have, without exception, demonized communities of color as the main
traffickers and users. In the 1880s, the growing Chinese American
population was targeted by oppressive anti-opium legislation. While
they were deported and imprisoned, whites comprised the largest group
of users. They were mostly women who consumed great quantities of
opium-based over-the-counter "tonics" and male Civil War veterans
seeking pain relief. After opium was declared illegal, these white
users were channeled into the medical rather than the criminal justice
system.
The turn of the century "war on drugs" made cocaine the boogie monster,
and the press was full of sensationalized stories about black men --
crazed by the demon drug-- who raped white women and committed horrible
and depraved crimes. The "responsible" New York Times joined the
chorus, at one point running a headline that blared "Negro Cocaine
`Fiends' Are a New Southern Menace," and reporting that southern
sheriffs were forced to switch to higher caliber handguns to effectively
stop drug-empowered blacks. *27 There was, in fact, no evidence of a
wave of cocaine-induced crime.
During the anti-marijuana wars of the 1930s, Mexican Americans were
targeted at a time when they were moving in large numbers into cities
and competing for scarce jobs. Again the papers were peppered with
reports of drug-crazed attacks on innocent whites. The 1950s heroin
war, which coincided with the rise of the civil rights movement,
followed the same pattern-- once again aimed against blacks. *28
"The drug war is always the pretext for something else," noted political
analyst Noam Chomsky. "In the United States [it] is basically a technique
for controlling dangerous populations internal to the country and doesn't
have much to do with drugs." *29 Politicians have long used it to excuse
failed social and economic policies that have generated unrest and as an
expedient campaign issue. Richard Nixon took advantage of drug war
rhetoric in the 1960s and early 1970s and set the stage for the ingenuous
sloganeering campaigns of the 1980s. Then, while Nancy Reagan intoned
"Just Say No [to drugs]," the president did just that to spending for
social programs, aid to the cities, and most policies which had the
potential to ameliorate conditions in the black community. *30 President
George Bush and his drug czar William Bennett continued the Reagan program
with greater hyperbole but with no more effect in reducing trafficking
or addiction, and Dole in his 1996 failed bid for the presidency
unimaginatively varied the theme to "Just Don't Do It."
Meanwhile, in the 1980s and into the 1990s, the black community has
been ravaged by a drug crisis of historic proportions, resulting in
"crack" babies, record drug overdoses, unprecedented numbers of black
male youth incarcerations, arise in AIDS, and numerous other harms.
In Los Angeles County alone, according to the Mercury News, there are
more than 70,000 children in foster care for drug-related reasons. *31
In Washington, DC, of the thousands of cases of neglected and abused
children removed from homes, 90 percent involved crack mothers. *32 In
fact, however, most drug users are white, while a disproportionate
number of people incarcerated for a disproportionately greater number
of years are black. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who represents the Los
Angeles district at the center of Blandon's and Ross' activities,
wrote Attorney General Janet Reno:
@XASAS = In addition to the stress caused by crack cocaine
use, I am also terribly disturbed by the heavy-handed,
arbitrary, and discriminatory mandatory minimum sentences
which politicians have attached to crack cocaine use and
possession. These sentences have the effect of severely
punishing small-time users, and are prosecuted in a
discriminatory way which disproportionately impacts African
American males. *33
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
It was into this context that the San Jose Mercury News story fell.
One word characterizes the black community's response: outrage. That
reaction has sparked a mass movement of sorts to distribute the Mercury
News series as widely as possible and to force investigations into the
allegations. Black community leaders and activists are mobilizing
around the issues raised. From Washington, DC to California, there have
been protests, rallies, and forums. Howard University law students held
a march and rally on the US Capitol steps.34 More than 1,500 showed up at
a forum held by the Congressional Black Caucus on the issue. *35 In
Los Angeles, 1,000 turned out for a forum while 1,500 waited outside.
*36 Activist Dick Gregory, radio host Joe Madison, activist Mark
Thompson, and President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Rev. Joe Lowery, have all been jailed for demonstrating at CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia or at the Justice Department. Gregory
and Madison also have gone on hunger strikes.
Politicians are turning up the heat. In a letter to Attorney General
Reno, Rep. Waters requested
"a full and complete investigation into the connection between
law enforcement agencies, most particularly the CIA, and the
early 1980s importation of crack cocaine. In addition, I would
like to know what actions may have allowed these drug shipments
to continue. I would also like to know the status of any
efforts to investigate, punish, or prosecute those involved in
this matter." *37 "
California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, *38 San
Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan
have all written letters calling for an investigation. Rev. Jesse
Jackson is demanding that Clinton order his Intelligence Oversight
Board to conduct a full and independent investigation and calling for
the release of all classified documents on the CIA's involvement in
the Contra war, all DEA records related to the Contras, and all DEA
files on Meneses and Blandon. *39
While promising internal investigations, the Department of Justice,
CIA, and other US agencies all issued quick denials. At an October
23 Senate hearing, for example, CIA Inspector General Frederick P.
Hitz testified that based on the investigation up to that point, there
is "no credible information" to support the Mercury News' stories.40
WHAT NEXT?
The controversy around this issue underscores the necessity for black
community awareness and involvement in US foreign policy issues.
The creation of the Contras was a policy initiative that emanated from
the White House and was supported by policy makers. The fact that the
policy was consistent, sustained, and sanctioned by the highest US
officials is far more disturbing than any conspiracy theories about
secret teams or rogue operations.
Black leaders must move beyond criticism of the Contra involvement in
drug trafficking to questioning a foreign policy that shows little regard
for democratic processes or the interests of the poor and working people
in the developing world. It is not enough that those involved in drug
dealing be brought to justice -- an unlikely prospect at this point.
What is essential is an overhaul of the mission and practices of US
intelligence agencies.
It is also time to renew the call for major reform of the nation's
drug laws. The current laws and policing practices are racially
discriminatory in regard to arrest patterns, sentencing, imposition of
mandatory minimums, crack-powder sentencing discrepancy, and punitive
character of laws such as the "three strikes and you're out" provisions
in a number of state and federal statutes.
It is also important to reiterate the demand that education and
treatment access be given a higher priority in the federal drug budget.
Under Reagan and Bush, 70 percent was aimed at law enforcement while
only 30 percent was focused on education, prevention, and treatment.
Under Clinton, two-thirds of the budget is still focused on law
enforcement.41
In this presidential election year, both parties played the game of who
was toughest on crime, and neither raised concerns about increasing
treatment monies or the racialized nature of the nation's drug crisis
and drug war. If the concerns raised by the Mercury News series are to
be answered, then these reforms are only just the beginning.
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