ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610070146
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DID THE CIA play a role in the introduction of cheap, crack cocaine on the streets of America's inner cities in the 1980s, unleashing a plague of violence and wasted lives that has had awful repercussions throughout society?
As ridiculous as that question seems, Americans need a credible answer to it. Their only reasonable hope of getting one may be through the subpoena powers of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
If it seems lawmakers already conducted such a probe, that is because Sen. John Kerry tried to, back in 1987 and 1988. The accusation then, as now, was that drug dealing became entwined with the CIA-directed contras, a rebel group fighting to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Congress cut off funds for the contras in 1984. But the Reagan administration and its zealous CIA director, the late William Casey, turned the operation over to Lt. Col. Oliver North, then a member of the National Security Council staff. They continued to support the rebels illegally by raising money from U.S. allies and rich private donors. And, just possibly, from drug smugglers who enjoyed the protection of the CIA - an allegation that has not been proved.
After Kerry's select subcommittee on narcotics abuse and control heard days of testimony about the contras and drug smuggling, the CIA denied any link and stonewalled investigators.
But the murky mess created by the Reagan administration's unconstitutional adventurism has been stirred again, this time by a series of stories in the San Jose Mercury News. Reporter Gary Webb traced the U.S. crack epidemic to 1981, when a former Nicaraguan government official began supplying L.A. gangs with huge amounts of cheap crack and, Webb alleges, funneling the proceeds to the contras.
"This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the 'crack' capital of the world," Webb wrote. "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America - and provided the cash and connections for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons."
The series does not accuse CIA agents of direct involvement in drug trafficking. But if the intelligence agency knowingly allowed such an insidious assault to be made on America's inner cities in order to further an illegal war against a perceived threat to American interests in another country, the irony is almost too bitter to comprehend.
We hope the suspicions prove unfounded. Paranoia runs freely enough as it is in many black communities ravaged by drugs. In any event, the new Congress, when it convenes after the elections, needs to investigate. Nothing less than a full accounting to the American people will do.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB