Anger over CIA and crack trade
By Barry Sheppard
A few months ago, the San Jose, California, Mercury News ran a series of articles documenting how the Nicaraguan contras pushed crack cocaine in the United States as a way to fund their war against the revolutionary government in the early 1980s.
The series also raised serious doubt about whether the CIA was actively involved in pushing crack into Los Angeles' black community, or whether it simply turned a blind eye to the contra operation.
While the contra link to the crack trade was exposed in the 1980s by solidarity groups, it was not widely known. The new revelations by reporter Gary Webb were based on a year-long investigation including official documents, court testimony, and hundreds of hours of interviews.
Webb has said that whenever his investigation led toward the CIA's possible involvement, he was denied access to information on the grounds of "national security".
Webb's series sparked a ground swell of protest, and many black leaders, including black Democrats, demanded an investigation into the CIA-contra-crack connection. There was a big demonstration in Los Angeles on the same demand. Among blacks, there is strong suspicion that the connection is real.
As a result, the CIA went on a campaign of denial, and the Senate has opened hearings on the issue. The fact that the CIA denies any involvement or knowledge convinces no-one, because it is stated CIA policy to deny all charges of any wrongdoing, whether it concerns assassination attempts, spying or crack.
Also, it is hard to believe that one of the world's largest spy and covert operations organisations was not aware that operatives of the contra groups it set up were running drugs.
CIA director John Deutch even went to a meeting in the black community of Watts, Los Angeles, to defend the agency. "We have no evidence of a conspiracy that the CIA was involved in drug trafficking", he told the sceptical crowd. But even he would not deny the charges outright. "I ask you to keep your minds open until we have a thorough investigation", he told the booing and hooting crowd, who aren't going to believe the results of the CIA investigating itself anyway.
Acquaintances of the director said he came to address the meeting because he is concerned about the agency's reputation with an increasingly cynical public. "I did not expect to come here and hear everybody applauding", he said.
He certainly didn't hear that. Several members of the audience shouted angrily when Deutch kept insisting that "there was no credible evidence". Others, tears in their eyes, spoke of the agency ruining lives and killing babies through crack distribution.
Representative Juanita Millender-McDonald, whose congressional district includes Watts, organised the meeting and tried to keep the disruption down. But at one point she too got angry. "Drug trafficking of this nature has never happened before. And it's not up to us to prove the CIA wasn't involved. It's up to them!"
The big capitalist dailies have joined in the campaign to clear the CIA, ridiculing the charges and implying that many blacks are paranoid about the US government. In an odd development, the increasingly isolated Socialist Workers Party broke ranks with the rest of the left and even many liberals to join the campaign to clear the CIA. Its paper Militant ran a front-page article titled "Socialist: 'reject CIA conspiracy theory'" quoting an SWP candidate.
But the US government's connection with forces throughout the world — like the contras — it has relied on to defend its interests against the exploited and oppressed, have often included drugs. A book by Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, demonstrated the CIA-drug lords connection during the years of the Vietnam War.
McCoy explained that there was almost no heroin use in the US immediately following World War II as a result of the disruption of shipping during the war. But drugs began flowing again as the "French connection" was re-established when the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) formed an alliance with the Mafia in order to have a support network for the invasion of Italy. Lucky Luciano was released from prison to function as a liaison.
The OSS then worked with the mob to organise a physical attack on the powerful dock workers' union in Marseilles after the war. McCoy points out that the OSS/CIA turned a blind eye on opium growing in Turkey that was the Mafia's source for the drug trade. He explains that the social base of the US-backed dictatorships in South-East Asia depended upon drug trafficking out of the "golden triangle". These forces were used against the Chinese revolution and then against the Vietnamese revolution.
Did the CIA do something similar with regard to the contra drug traffickers? We'll never know for sure until we are able to open the CIA's records (if they don't shred them first). But it is certainly plausible, given the CIA record, and the nature of the gangsters and Somocista goons it was working with.