The CIA Crack Connection

by Jesse Hicks

Ah , crack. Sweet, sweet crack. If cocaine is the unblemished White Lady of a thousand rock-star dreams, the tanned cheerleader-student counsel president-homecoming queen of upper-class America , then crack is her spunky younger sister - the one who'd out drink all the boys, tossing empty Pabst cans out the side of her Scorpions-blasting pickup truck as she spun donuts in the high school football field.

It's hard to believe there was a time before the crack rock. That time - like the age before flavored spring water and the war on Iraq - is hazy, undefined, like a dream evaporating in the morning sun. Sure, cocaine was popular among the American Psycho jet-set, but few had heard of crack, let alone faced down a "crack epidemic."

All that changed in the early 1980s, in Los Angeles , California . Suddenly, it seemed, crack was everywhere, spreading its tendrils of death and despair throughout urban California . Unlike cocaine, primarily the drug of choice for upper-class, suburban whites, crack appealed to inner-city blacks: it was cheap, readily available, and offered more bang for the buck than coke.

And, as investigative journalist Gary Webb detailed in a 1996 San Jose Mercury News series, California 's crack epidemic was largely the result of a winking tolerance by our good friends at the Central Intelligence Agency.

In "Dark Alliance," Webb tells the story of "Freeway Rick" Ross, a South-Central crack dealer who, for over a decade supplied L.A. 's gangs - the notorious Crips and Bloods - with cut-rate cocaine, which the gangs then unleashed on the streets, mostly in the form of highly-addictive crack. Ross was supplied by Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes, a founder of the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Democratic Force) or FDN, one of the many anti-communist guerrilla armies then fighting in Nicaragua . During the eighties, as later revealed by the Iran-Contra scandal, elements of the American government clandestinely funneled money to groups like FDN to support their fight against the communist Nicaraguan government. Blandon's drug profits were then channeled, via Miami , directly to FDN forces. While Ollie North's Iran-Contra group sold weapons to Iran to fund the Contras, the CIA allowed Blandon to sell crack to California 's lower-class black population in order to fund a covert war in South America .

Of course, the joys of crack addiction didn't remain confined to California . Freeway Rick, unaware exactly who he was working for or where the drug profits - Blandon bragged to selling over a ton of cocaine in 1981, at a street value of around $54 million - peddled his wares as far east as Cincinnati. As the crack wildfire spread, the CIA not only turned a blind eye, but actively stifled investigations by the FBI, DEA and BATF.

Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" series outraged the black community, who - rightfully - believed the CIA would never have sold drugs to rich white folks in order to fund South American paramilitaries. The Central Intelligence Agency denied Webb's claims; mainstream media outlets like The New York Times and Washington Post spent more time tearing apart Webb's reportage than actually investigating his story.

The CIA promptly investigated itself, and according to the Times and Post , declared itself beyond reproach. However, neither the Times or Post reporters bothered to read the actual investigation, in which the CIA's Inspector General, Fred Hitz, admitted numerous CIA-Contra-Crack connections. If Hitz's report contained no "smoking gun," it certainly should've provoked any investigative reporter who knew how to read - you know, with your eyes.

Hitz's report came too late for Gary Webb. Facing pressure from the media big dogs, Mercury executive editor Jerry Ceppos retracted the "Dark Alliance" series. The paper forced Webb off investigative reporting, until he eventually quit. His wife divorced him, and on December 10, 2004, police found Gary Webb's body. A longtime sufferer of clinical depression, he'd shot himself - twice, in the back of the head.

Complexity : It's not really all that hard to grasp, compared to the Byzantine Iran-Contra scandal. Nicaraguan guerrilla fighters start importing cheap cocaine from El Salvador , funneling it through Freeway Rick to the L.A. street gangs, turning a wicked profit then used to by guns and supplies. CIA turns a blind eye.

Plausibility : By this point, fairly well proven. Continues the grand tradition of CIA's disaster management plan: deny deny deny deny, are they gone yet? Yes? Ok, admit it. We are spin wizards.

Where It Will Help You Score : Mostly at investigative journalist conventions. Except it's been a long time since we've had enough investigative journalists to justify a convention.

More at http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/ drugs/index.htm