The Dark Alliance

Gary Webb's Incendiary 1996 S1 Mercury News Expos

1hese articles were downloaded from the web
site of the Seattle 1imes, since the San 1ose
Mercury Aews has removed the entire series
from their web site.
Gary Webb's career as a professional
journalist was destroyed shortly after
these articles were published. Anyone
who challenges the House of Rockefeller
is persona non grata throughout the
establishment.
-The Editor
Aug 22, 1996
Cocaine pipeline financed rebels
Evidence points to CIA knowing of high-volume drug
network
bv Garv Webb
San Jose Mercurv News
For the better part oI a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug
ring sold tons oI cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs oI
Los Angeles and Iunneled millions in drug proIits to an arm oI
the contra guerrillas oI Nicaragua run by the Central Intelligence
Agency, the San Jose Mercury News has Iound.
This drug network opened the Iirst pipeline between Colombia's
cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods oI Los Angeles, a
city now known as the "crack" capital oI the world. The cocaine
that Ilooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America
- and provided the cash and connections needed Ior L.A.'s gangs
to buy weapons.
It is one oI the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the
union oI a U.S.-backed army attempting to overthrow a
revolutionary socialist government and the "gangstas" oI
Compton and South-Central Los Angeles.
The army's Iinanciers - who met with CIA agents beIore and
during the time they were selling the drugs in L.A. - delivered
cut-rate cocaine to the gangs through a young South-Central
crack dealer named Ricky Donnell Ross.
Unaware oI his suppliers' military and political connections,
"Freeway Rick" turned the cocaine powder into crack and
wholesaled it to gangs across the country.
Drug cash for the contras
Court records show the cash was then used to buy equipment Ior
a guerrilla army named the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense
(Nicaraguan Democratic Force) or FDN, the largest oI several
anti-communist groups commonly called the contras.
While the FDN's war is barely a memory today, black America
is still dealing with its poisonous side eIIects. Urban
neighborhoods are grappling with legions oI homeless crack
addicts. Thousands oI young black men are serving long prison
sentences Ior selling cocaine - a drug that was virtually
unobtainable in black neighborhoods beIore members oI the
CIA's army brought it into South-Central in the 1980s at
bargain-basement prices.
And the L.A. gangs, which used their enormous cocaine proIits
to arm themselves and spread crack across the country, are still
thriving.
"There is a saying that the ends justiIy the means," Iormer FDN
leader and drug dealer Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes testiIied
during a recent cocaine-traIIicking trial in San Diego. "And
that's what Mr. Bermudez (the CIA agent who commanded the
FDN) told us in Honduras, OK? So we started raising money Ior
the contra revolution."
Recently declassiIied reports, Iederal court testimony,
undercover tapes, court records here and abroad and hundreds oI
hours oI interviews over the past 12 months leave no doubt that
Blandon was no ordinary drug dealer.
Shortly beIore Blandon - who had been the drug ring's Southern
CaliIornia distributor - took the stand in San Diego as a witness
Ior the U.S. Department oI Justice, Iederal prosecutors obtained
a court order preventing deIense lawyers Irom delving into his
ties to the CIA.
Blandon, one oI the FDN's Iounders in CaliIornia, "will admit
that he was a large-scale dealer in cocaine, and there is no
additional beneIit to any deIendant to inquire as to the Central
Intelligence Agency," Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale
argued in his motion shortly beIore Ross' trial on cocaine-
traIIicking charges in March.
The 5,000-man FDN, records show, was created in mid-1981
when the CIA combined several existing groups oI anti-
communist exiles into a uniIied Iorce it hoped would topple the
new socialist government oI Nicaragua.
Waged a losing war
From 1982 to 1988, the FDN - run by both American and
Nicaraguan CIA agents - waged a losing war against Nicaragua's
Sandinista government, the Cuban-supported socialists who'd
overthrown U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
Blandon, who began working Ior the FDN's drug operation in
late 1981, testiIied that the drug ring sold almost a ton oI
cocaine in the United States that year - $54 million worth at
prevailing wholesale prices. It was not clear how much oI the
money Iound its way back to the CIA's army, but Blandon
testiIied that "whatever we were running in L.A., the proIit was
going Ior the contra revolution."
At the time oI that testimony, Blandon was a Iull-time inIormant
Ior the Drug EnIorcement Administration, a job the U.S.
Department oI Justice got him aIter releasing him Irom prison in
1994.
Though Blandon admitted to crimes that have sent others away
Ior liIe, the Justice Department turned him loose on
unsupervised probation aIter only 28 months behind bars and
has paid him more than $166,000 since, court records show.
"He has been extraordinarily helpIul," Iederal prosecutor
O'Neale told Blandon's judge in a plea Ior the traIIicker's release
in 1994. Though O'Neale once described Blandon to a grand
jury as "the biggest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United
States," the prosecutor would not discuss him with the Mercury
News.
Blandon's boss in the FDN's cocaine operation, Juan Norwin
Meneses Cantarero, has never spent a day in a U.S. prison, even
though the Iederal government has been aware oI his cocaine
dealings since at least 1974, records show.
Meneses - who ran the drug ring Irom his homes in the Bay Area
- is listed in the DEA's computers as a major international drug
smuggler and was implicated in 45 separate Iederal
investigations. Yet he and his cocaine-dealing relatives lived
quite openly in the Bay Area Ior years, buying homes, bars,
restaurants, car lots and Iactories.
"I even drove my own cars, registered in my name," Meneses
said during a recent interview in Nicaragua.
Meneses' organization was "the target oI unsuccessIul
investigative attempts Ior many years," O'Neale acknowledged
in a 1994 aIIidavit. But records and interviews revealed that a
number oI those probes were stymied not by the elusive
Meneses but by agencies oI the U.S. government.
CIA hampered probes
Agents Irom Iour organizations - the DEA, U.S. Customs, the
Los Angeles County SheriII's Department and the CaliIornia
Bureau oI Narcotic EnIorcement - have complained that
investigations were hampered by the CIA or unnamed "national-
security" interests.
One 1988 investigation by a U.S. Senate subcommittee ran into
a wall oI oIIicial secrecy at the Justice Department.
In that case, congressional records show, Senate investigators
were trying to determine why the U.S. attorney in San
Francisco, Joseph Russoniello, had given $36,000 back to a
Nicaraguan cocaine dealer arrested by the FBI.
The money was returned, court records show, aIter two contra
leaders sent letters to the court swearing that the drug dealer had
been given the cash to buy weapons Ior guerrillas.
AIter Nicaraguan police arrested Meneses on cocaine charges in
Managua in 1991, his judge expressed astonishment that the
inIamous smuggler went unmolested by American drug agents
during his years in the United States.
His seeming invulnerability amazed American authorities as
well.
A Customs agent who investigated Meneses in 1980 beIore
transIerring elsewhere said he was reassigned to San Francisco
seven years later "and I was sitting in some meetings and here's
Meneses' name again. And I can remember thinking, `Holy cow,
is this guy still around?' "
Blandon led an equally charmed liIe. For at least Iive years he
brokered massive amounts oI cocaine to the black gangs oI Los
Angeles without being arrested. But his luck changed overnight.
On Oct. 27, 1986, agents Irom the FBI, the IRS, local police and
the Los Angeles County sheriII Ianned out across Southern
CaliIornia and raided more than a dozen locations connected to
Blandon's cocaine operation. Blandon and his wiIe, along with
numerous Nicaraguan associates, were arrested on drug and
weapons charges.
The search-warrant aIIidavit reveals that local drug agents knew
plenty about Blandon's involvement with cocaine and the CIA's
army nearly 10 years ago.
"Danilo Blandon is in charge oI a sophisticated cocaine
smuggling and distribution organization operating in Southern
CaliIornia," L.A. County sheriII's Sgt. Tom Gordon said in the
1986 aIIidavit. "The monies gained Irom the sales oI cocaine are
transported to Florida and laundered through Orlando Murillo,
who is a high-ranking oIIicer oI a chain oI banks in Florida
named Government Securities Corporation. From this bank the
monies are Iiltered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in
Nicaragua."
Raids a spectacular failure
Despite their intimate knowledge oI Blandon's operations, the
police raids were a spectacular Iailure. Every location had been
cleaned oI anything remotely incriminating. No one was ever
prosecuted.
Ron Spear, a spokesman Ior Los Angeles County SheriII
Sherman Block, said Blandon somehow knew that he was under
police surveillance.
FBI records show that soon aIter the raids, Blandon's deIense
attorney, Bradley Brunon, called the sheriII's department to
suggest that his client's troubles stemmed Irom a most unlikely
source: a recent congressional vote authorizing $100 million in
military aid to the contras.
According to a December 1986 FBI teletype, Brunon told the
oIIicers that the "CIA winked at this sort oI thing. . . . (Brunon)
indicated that now that U.S. Congress had voted Iunds Ior the
Nicaraguan contra movement, U.S. government now appears to
be turning against organizations like this."
That FBI report, part oI the Iiles oI Iormer Iran-contra special
prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, was made public only last year,
when it was released by the National Archives at the San Jose
Mercury News' request.
Blandon has also implied that his cocaine sales were, Ior a time,
CIA-approved. He told a San Francisco Iederal grand jury in
1994 that once the FDN began receiving American taxpayer
dollars, the CIA no longer needed his kind oI help.
None oI the government agencies known to have been involved
with Meneses and Blandon would provide the Mercury News
with any inIormation about them, despite Freedom oI
InIormation Act requests.
Blandon's lawyer, Brunon, said in an interview that his client
never told him directly that he was selling cocaine Ior the CIA,
but the prominent Los Angeles deIense attorney drew his own
conclusions Irom the "atmosphere oI CIA and clandestine
activities" that surrounded Blandon and his Nicaraguan Iriends.
"Was he involved with the CIA? Probably. Was he involved with
drugs? Most deIinitely," Brunon said. "Were those two things
involved with each other? They've never said that, obviously.
They've never admitted that. But I don't know where these guys
get these big aircraIt."
That very topic arose during the sensational 1992 cocaine-
traIIicking trial oI Meneses aIter he was arrested in Nicaragua in
connection with a staggering 750-kilo shipment oI cocaine. His
chieI accuser was his Iriend Enrique Miranda, a relative and
Iormer Nicaraguan military intelligence oIIicer who had been
Meneses' emissary to the cocaine cartel oI Bogota, Colombia.
Miranda pleaded guilty to drug charges and agreed to cooperate
in exchange Ior a seven-year sentence.
In a long, handwritten statement he read to Meneses' jury,
Miranda revealed the deepest secrets oI the Meneses drug ring,
earning his old boss a 30-year prison sentence in the process.
"He (Norwin) and his brother Luis Enrique had Iinanced the
contra revolution with the beneIits oI the cocaine they sold,"
Miranda wrote. "This operation, as Norwin told me, was
executed with the collaboration oI high-ranking Salvadoran
military personnel. They met with oIIicials oI the Salvadoran air
Iorce, who Ilew (planes) to Colombia and then leIt Ior the U.S.,
bound Ior an Air Force base in Texas, as he told me."
Meneses - who has close personal and business ties to a
Salvadoran air-Iorce commander and Iormer CIA agent named
Marcos Aguado - declined to discuss Miranda's statements
during an interview at a prison outside Managua in January. He
is scheduled to be paroled this summer, aIter nearly Iive years in
custody.
U.S. General Accounting OIIice records conIirm that El
Salvador's air Iorce was supplying the CIA's Nicaraguan
guerrillas with aircraIt and Ilight support services throughout the
mid-1980s.
The same day the Mercury News requested oIIicial permission
to interview Miranda, he disappeared.
While out on a routine weekend Iurlough, Miranda Iailed to
return to the Nicaraguan jail where he'd been living since 1992.
Though his jailers, who described him as a model prisoner,
claimed Miranda had escaped, they didn't call the police until a
Mercury News correspondent showed up and discovered he was
gone.
He has not been seen in nearly a year.
Aug 22, 1996
Salvador air force linked to cocaine flights, Nicaraguan
contras, drug dealer's supplier
bv Garv Webb
San Jose Mercurv News
One thing is certain: There is considerable evidence that El
Salvador's air Iorce was deeply involved with cocaine Ilights,
the contras and drug dealer Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes'
cocaine supplier, Norwin Meneses.
Meneses said one oI his oldest Iriends is a Iormer contra pilot
named Marcos Aguado, a Nicaraguan who works Ior the
Salvadoran air-Iorce high command.
Aguado was identiIied in 1987 congressional testimony as a CIA
agent who helped the contras get weapons, airplanes and money
Irom a major Colombian drug traIIicker named George Morales.
Aguado admitted his role in that deal in a videotaped deposition
taken by a U.S. Senate subcommittee that year.
His name also turned up in a deposition taken by the
congressional Iran-contra committees that same year. Robert
Owen, a courier Ior Lt. Col. Oliver North, testiIied he knew
Aguado as a contra pilot and said there was "concern" about his
being involved with drug traIIicking.
While Ilying Ior the contras, Aguado was stationed at Ilopango
Air Base near El Salvador's capital.
In 1985, the DEA agent assigned to El Salvador - Celerino
Castillo III - began picking up reports that cocaine was being
Ilown to the United States out oI hangars 4 and 5 at Ilopango as
part oI a contra-related covert operation. Castillo said he soon
conIirmed what his inIormants were telling him.
Starting in January 1986, Castillo began documenting the
cocaine Ilights - listing pilot names, tail numbers, dates and
Ilight plans - and sent them to DEA headquarters.
The only response he got, Castillo wrote in his 1994 memoirs,
was an internal DEA investigation oI him. He took a disability
retirement Irom the agency in 1991.
"Basically, the bottom line is it was a covert operation and they
(DEA oIIicials) were covering it up," Castillo said in an
interview. "You can't get any simpler than that. It was a cover-
up."
Aug 22, 1996
Trio created mass market in U.S. for crack cocaine
bv Garv Webb
San Jose Mercurv News
If they'd been in a more respectable line oI work, Norwin
Meneses, Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes and "Freeway Rick"
Ross would have been hailed as geniuses oI marketing.
This odd trio - a smuggler, a bureaucrat and a ghetto teenager -
made Iortunes creating the Iirst mass market in America Ior a
product so hellishly desirable that consumers will literally kill to
get it: "crack" cocaine.
Federal lawmen will tell you plenty about Rick Ross, mostly
about the evils he visited upon black neighborhoods by
spreading the crack plague in Los Angeles and cities as Iar east
as Cincinnati. Tomorrow, they hope, Freeway Rick will be
sentenced to liIe in prison without the possibility oI parole.
But those same oIIicials won't say a word about the two men
who turned Rick Ross into L.A.'s Iirst king oI crack, the men
who, Ior at least Iive years, supplied him with enough
Colombian cocaine to help spawn crack markets in major cities
nationwide. Their critical role in the country's crack explosion
has been a strictly guarded secret.
To understand how crack came to curse black America, you
have to go into the volcanic hills overlooking Managua, the
capital oI the Republic oI Nicaragua.
Biggest military upset
During June 1979, those hills teemed with triumphant guerrillas
called Sandinistas - Cuban-assisted revolutionaries who had just
pulled oII one oI the biggest military upsets in Central American
history. In a bloody civil war, they'd destroyed the U.S.-trained
army oI Nicaragua's dictator, Anastasio Somoza.
In the dictator's doomed capital, a minor member oI Somoza's
government decided to skip the war's obvious ending. On June
19, Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes gathered his wiIe and young
daughter and Ilew into exile in CaliIornia.
Today, Blandon is a well-paid and highly trusted operative Ior
the U.S. Drug EnIorcement Administration. Federal oIIicials say
he is one oI the DEA's top inIormants in Latin America,
collecting intelligence on Colombian and Mexican drug lords
and setting up stings.
In March, he was the DEA's star witness at a drug trial in San
Diego, where, Ior the Iirst time, he testiIied publicly about his
strange interlude between government jobs: the years he sold
cocaine to the street gangs oI black Los Angeles.
Blandon swore that he didn't plan on becoming a dope dealer
when he landed in the United States with $100 in his pocket,
seeking political asylum. He did it, he insisted, out oI patriotism.
When duty called in late 1981, he was working as a car
salesman in East Los Angeles. In his spare time, he said, he and
a Iew Iellow exiles were working to rebuild Somoza's deIeated
army, the Nicaraguan national guard, in hopes oI one day
returning to Managua in triumph.
But the rallies and cocktail parties the exiles hosted raised little
money. "At this point, he became committed to raising money
Ior humanitarian and political reasons via illegal activity
(cocaine traIIicking Ior proIit)," said a heavily censored parole
report, which surIaced during the March trial.
That venture began, Blandon testiIied, with a phone call Irom a
wealthy college Iriend in Miami.
Blandon said his college chum, who also was working in the
resistance movement, dispatched him to Los Angeles
International Airport to pick up another exile, Juan Norwin
Meneses Cantarero. Though their Iamilies were related, Blandon
said, he'd never met Meneses until that day.
"I picked him up, and he started telling me that we had to (raise)
some money and to send to Honduras," Blandon testiIied. He
said he Ilew with Meneses to a camp there and met one oI his
new companion's old Iriends, Col. Enrique Bermudez.
Bermudez - who'd been Somoza's Washington liaison to the
American military - was hired by the Central Intelligence
Agency in mid-1980 to pull together the remnants oI Somoza's
vanquished national guard, records show. In August 1981,
Bermudez's eIIorts were unveiled at a news conIerence as the
Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN) - in English, the
Nicaraguan Democratic Force. It was the largest and best-
organized oI the handIul oI guerrilla groups known as the
contras.
Bermudez was the FDN's military chieI and, according to
congressional records and newspaper reports, received regular
CIA paychecks Ior a decade, payments that stopped shortly
beIore his still-unsolved slaying in Managua in 1991.
Reagan OKs covert operations
White House records show that shortly beIore Blandon's
meeting with Bermudez, President Reagan had given the CIA
the green light to begin covert paramilitary operations against
the Sandinista government. But Reagan's secret Dec. 1, 1981,
order permitted the spy agency to spend only $19.9 million on
the project, an amount CIA oIIicials acknowledged was not
nearly enough to Iield a credible Iighting Iorce.
AIter meeting with Bermudez, Blandon testiIied, he and
Meneses "started raising money Ior the contra revolution."
While Blandon says Bermudez didn't know cocaine would be
the Iund-raising device they used, the presence oI the mysterious
Mr. Meneses strongly suggests otherwise.
Norwin Meneses, known in Nicaraguan newspapers as "Rey de
la Droga" (King oI Drugs), was then under active investigation
by the DEA and the FBI Ior smuggling cocaine into the United
States, records show.
And Bermudez was very Iamiliar with the inIluential Meneses
Iamily. He had served under two Meneses brothers, Fermin and
Edmundo, who were generals in Somoza's army.
Despite a stack oI law-enIorcement reports describing him as a
major drug traIIicker, Norwin Meneses was welcomed into the
United States in July 1979 as a political reIugee and given a visa
and a work permit. He settled in the San Francisco Bay Area,
and Ior the next six years supervised the importation oI
thousands oI kilos oI cocaine into CaliIornia.
At the meeting with Bermudez, Meneses said in a recent
interview, the contra commander put him in charge oI
"intelligence and security" Ior the FDN in CaliIornia.
Blandon, he said, was assigned to raise money in Los Angeles.
Blandon said Meneses gave him two kilograms oI cocaine
(roughly 4 1/2 pounds) and sent him to Los Angeles.
"Meneses was pushing me every week," he testiIied. "It took me
about three months, Iour months to sell those two keys because I
didn't know what to do. . . ."
To Iind customers, Blandon and several other Nicaraguan exiles
working with him headed Ior the vast, untapped markets oI
L.A.'s black ghettos.
Blandon's marketing strategy, selling the world's most expensive
street drug in some oI CaliIornia's poorest neighborhoods, might
seem baIIling, but in retrospect, his timing was uncanny. He and
his compatriots arrived in South-Central L.A. right when street-
level drug users were Iiguring out how to make cocaine
aIIordable: by changing the pricey white powder into powerIul
little nuggets that could be smoked - crack.
Emergence of crack
Crack turned the cocaine world on its head. Cocaine smokers
got an explosive high unmatched by 10 times as much snorted
powder. And since only a tiny amount was needed Ior that rush,
cocaine no longer had to be sold in large, expensive quantities.
Anyone with $20 could get wasted.
It was a "substance that is tailor-made to addict people," Dr.
Robert Byck, a Yale University cocaine expert, said during
congressional testimony in 1986. "It is as though (McDonald's
Iounder) Ray Kroc had invented the opium den."
Crack's Kroc was a disillusioned 19-year-old named Ricky
Donnell Ross, who, at the dawn oI the 1980s, Iound himselI
adriIt on the streets oI South-Central Los Angeles.
A talented tennis player Ior Dorsey High School, Ross had
recently seen his dream oI a college scholarship evaporate when
his coach discovered he could neither read nor write.
A Iriend oI Ross' - a college Iootball player home at Christmas
Irom San Jose State University - told him "cocaine was going to
be the new thing, that everybody was doing it." Intrigued, Ross
set oII to Iind out more.
Through a cocaine-using auto-upholstery teacher Ross knew, he
met a Nicaraguan named Henry Corrales, who began selling
Ross and a Iriend , Ollie "Big Loc" Newell, small amounts oI
remarkably inexpensive cocaine.
Thanks to a network oI Iriends in South-Central L.A. and
Compton, including many members oI various Crips gangs, the
pair steadily built up clientele. With each sale, Ross reinvested
his heIty proIits in more cocaine.
Eventually, Corrales introduced Ross and Newell to his supplier,
Blandon. And then business really picked up.
"At Iirst, we was just going to do it until we made $5,000," Ross
said. "We made that so Iast we said, no, we'll quit when we
make $20,000. Then we was going to quit when we saved
enough to buy a house . . ."
Ross would eventually own millions oI dollars' worth oI real
estate across Southern CaliIornia, including houses, motels, a
theater and several other businesses. (His nickname, "Freeway
Rick," came Irom the Iact that he owned properties near the
Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles.)
Within a year, Ross' drug operation grew to dominate inner-city
Los Angeles, and many oI the biggest dealers in town were his
customers. When crack hit L.A.'s streets hard in late 1983, Ross
already had the inIrastructure in place to corner a huge chunk oI
the burgeoning market.
It was not uncommon, he said, to move $2 million or $3 million
worth oI crack in one day.
"Our biggest problem had got to be counting the money," Ross
said. "We got to the point where it was like, man, we don't want
to count no more money."
Nicaraguan cocaine dealer Jacinto Torres, another Iormer
supplier oI Ross and a sometime-partner oI Blandon, told drug
agents in a 1992 interview that aIter a slow start, "Blandon's
cocaine business dramatically increased. . . . Norwin Meneses,
Blandon's supplier as oI 1983 and 1984, routinely Ilew
quantities oI 200 to 400 kilograms Irom Miami to the West
Coast."
Blandon told the DEA last year that he was selling Ross up to
100 kilos oI cocaine a week, which was then "rocked up" and
distributed "to the major gangs in the area, speciIically the Crips
and the Bloods," the DEA report said.
At wholesale prices, that's roughly $65 million to $130 million
worth oI cocaine every year, depending on the going price oI a
kilo.
"He was one oI the main distributors down here," said Iormer
Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detective Steve Polak,
who was part oI the Freeway Rick Task Force, which was set up
in 1987 to put Ross out oI business. "And his poison, there's no
telling how many tens oI thousands oI people he touched. He's
responsible Ior a major cancer that still hasn't stopped
spreading."
But Ross is the Iirst to admit that being in the right place at the
right time had almost nothing to do with his amazing success.
Other L.A. dealers, he noted, were selling crack long beIore he
started.
What he had, and they didn't, was Blandon, a Iriend with a
seemingly inexhaustible supply oI high-grade cocaine and an
expert's knowledge oI how to market it.
"I'm not saying I wouldn't have been a dope dealer without
Danilo," Ross stressed. "But I wouldn't have been Freeway
Rick."
The secret to his success, Ross said, was Blandon's cocaine
prices. "It was unreal. We were just wiping out everybody."
"It didn't make no diIIerence to Rick what anyone else was
selling it Ior. Rick would just go in and undercut him $10,000 a
key," Chico Brown said. "Say some dude was selling Ior 30.
Boom - Rick would go in and sell it Ior 20. II he was selling Ior
20, Rick would sell Ior 10. Sometimes, he be giving (it) away."
Ross said he never discovered how Blandon was able to get
cocaine so cheaply. "I just Iigured he knew the people, you
know what I'm saying? He was plugged."
But Freeway Rick had no idea just how "plugged" his erudite
cocaine broker was. He didn't know about Meneses, or the CIA,
or the Salvadoran air-Iorce planes that allegedly were Ilying the
cocaine into an air base in Texas.
And he wouldn't Iind out about it Ior another 10 years.
Aug 22, 1996
Crack was born during 1974 in S.F. Bay Area
bv Garv Webb
San Jose Mercurv News
Though Miami and Los Angeles are commonly regarded as
the twin cradles oI crack, the Iirst government-Iinanced study oI
cocaine smoking concluded that it was actually born in the Bay
Area in January 1974.
AIter comedian Richard Pryor nearly immolated himselI during
a cocaine-smoking binge in 1980, the National Institute on Drug
Abuse hired UCLA drug expert Ronald Siegel to look into the
then-unIamiliar practice.
Siegel, the Iirst scientist to document crack's use in the United
States, traced the smoking habit back to 1930, when Colombians
Iirst started it.
But what was being smoked south oI the border - a paste-like
substance called BASE (bah-SAY) - was very diIIerent Irom
what CaliIornians were putting in their pipes, Siegel Iound, even
though they called it the same thing: Iree base.
BASE was a crude, toxics-laden precursor to cocaine powder.
On the other hand, Iree base (which later became known as
crack or rock) was cocaine powder that had been reverse-
engineered to make it smokable.
When San Francisco Bay Area dealers tried recreating the drug
they'd seen in South America, Siegel learned, they'd screwed up.
"When they looked it up in the Merck Manual, they saw cocaine
base and thought, well, yeah, this is it," Siegel, a nationally
known drug researcher, said. "They mispronounced it,
misunderstood the Spanish, and thought (BASE) was cocaine
base."
The base described in the organic-chemistry handbook was
cocaine powder separated Irom its salts, a process easily done
with boiling water and baking soda.
It was an immediate, iI unintentional, hit.
"They were wowed by it," Siegel said. "They thought they were
smoking BASE. They were not. They were smoking something
nobody on the planet had ever smoked beIore."
Using the sales records oI several major drug-paraphernalia
companies, Siegel correlated crack's public appearance with the
appearance oI base-making kits and glass pipes Ior smoking it.
The sales records zeroed in on the Bay Area.
"We were able to show to our satisIaction that they were directly
responsible Ior distributing the habit throughout the United
States," Siegel said.
"Wherever they were selling their kits, that's where we started
getting the clinical reports. It all started in Northern CaliIornia."
His groundbreaking study was never published by the
government, purportedly Ior budgetary reasons.
Siegel, who said he grew concerned that the inIormation would
not be made available to other researchers, published it himselI
in an obscure medical journal in late 1982.
Aug 23, 1996
Drug king free, but black aide sits in jail
How cheap cocaine became the scourge of the inner city
bv Garv Webb
San Jose Mercurv News
For the past 1 1/2 years, the U.S. Department oI Justice has
been trying to explain why nearly everyone convicted in
CaliIornia's Iederal courts oI "crack" cocaine traIIicking is black.
Critics, including some Iederal-court judges, say it looks like the
Justice Department is targeting crack dealers by race, which
would be a violation oI the Constitution.
Federal prosecutors, however, say there's a simple, iI unpleasant,
reason Ior the lopsided statistics: Most crack dealers are black.
But why - oI all the ethnic and racial groups in CaliIornia to pick
Irom - crack planted its deadly roots in L.A.'s black
neighborhoods is something Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes may
be able to answer.
Blandon is the Johnny Appleseed oI crack in CaliIornia - the
Crips' and Bloods' Iirst direct connect to the cocaine cartels oI
Colombia. The tons oI cut-rate cocaine he brought into black
L.A. during the 1980s and early 1990s became millions oI rocks
oI crack, which spawned new markets wherever they landed.
On a tape made by the Drug EnIorcement Administration in July
1990, Blandon casually explained the Ilood oI cocaine that
coursed through the streets oI South-Central Los Angeles during
the previous decade.
"These people have been working with me 10 years," Blandon
said. "I've sold them about 2,000 or 4,000 (kilos). I don't know. I
don't remember how many."
"It ain't that Japanese guy you were talking about, is it?" asked
DEA inIormant John Arman, who was wearing a hidden
transmitter.
"No, it's not him," Blandon insisted. "These . . . these are the
black people."
Arman gasped. "Black?!"
"Yeah," Blandon said. "They control L.A. The people (black
cocaine dealers) that control L.A."
But unlike the thousands oI young blacks now serving long
Iederal prison sentences Ior selling mere handIuls oI the drug,
Blandon is a Iree man today. He has a spacious new home in
Nicaragua and a business exporting precious woods, courtesy oI
the U.S. government, which has paid him more than $166,000
over the past 18 months, records show - Ior his help in the war
on drugs.
That turn oI events both amuses and angers "Freeway Rick"
Ross, L.A.'s premier crack wholesaler during much oI the 1980s
and Blandon's biggest customer.
"They say I sold dope everywhere, but, man, I know he done
sold 10 times more dope than me," Ross said during a recent
interview.
Nothing epitomizes the drug war's uneven impact on black
Americans more clearly than the intertwined lives oI Ricky
Donnell Ross, a high-school dropout, and his suave cocaine
supplier, Blandon, who has a master's degree in marketing and
was one oI the top civilian leaders in CaliIornia oI an anti-
communist guerrilla army Iormed by the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency. Called the Fuerza Democratica
Nicaraguense (FDN), it became known to most Americans as the
contras.
In recent court testimony, Blandon, who began dealing cocaine
in South-Central L.A. in 1982, swore that the Iirst kilo oI
cocaine he sold in CaliIornia was to raise money Ior the CIA's
army, which was trying on a shoestring to unseat Nicaragua's
new socialist Sandinista government.
AIter Blandon crossed paths with Ross, a South-Central
teenager with gang connections and street smarts necessary to
move the army's cocaine, a blizzard engulIed the ghettos.
Former Los Angeles police narcotics detective Stephen Polak
said he was working the streets oI South-Central in the mid-
1980s when he and his partners began seeing more cocaine than
ever beIore.
"A lot oI detectives, a lot oI cops, were saying, `hey, these
blacks, no longer are we just seeing gram dealers. These guys
are doing ounces; they were doing keys,' " Polak recalled. But he
said the reports were disregarded by higher-ups who couldn't
believe black neighborhoods could aIIord the amount oI cocaine
the street cops claimed to be seeing.
"Major Violators (the LAPD's elite anti-drug unit) was saying,
basically, `ahh, South-Central, how much could they be
dealing?' " said Polak. "Well, they (black dealers) went virtually
untouched Ior a long time."
It wasn't until January 1987 - when crack markets were popping
up in major cities all over the nation - that law-enIorcement
brass decided to conIront L.A.'s crack problem head-on. They
Iormed the Freeway Rick Task Force, a cadre oI veteran drug
agents whose sole mission was to put Rick Ross out oI business.
Polak was a charter member.
"We just dedicated seven days a week to him. We were just on
him at every move," Polak said.
Ross, as usual, was quick to spot a trend. He moved to
Cincinnati and quietly settled into a woodsy, suburban home.
"I called it cooling out, trying to back away Irom the game,"
Ross said. "I had enough money."
His longtime supplier, Blandon, reached the same conclusion
about the same time. He moved to Miami with $1.6 million in
cash and invested in several businesses.
But neither Ross nor Blandon stayed "retired" Ior long.
A manic deal-maker, Ross Iound Cincinnati's virgin crack
market too seductive to ignore.
Plunging back in, the crack tycoon cornered the Cincinnati
market using the same low-price, high-volume strategy - and the
same Nicaraguan drug connections - he'd used in L.A. Soon, he
also was selling crack in Cleveland, Indianapolis, Dayton and St.
Louis.
"There's no doubt in my mind crack in Cincinnati can be traced
to Ross," police oIIicer Robert Enoch told a Cincinnati
newspaper three years ago.
But Ross' reign in the Midwest was short-lived. In 1988, one oI
his loads ran into a drug-sniIIing dog at a New Mexico bus
station, and drug agents eventually connected it to Ross. He
pleaded guilty to crack traIIicking charges and received a
mandatory 10-year prison sentence, which he began serving in
1990.
In Miami, Blandon's retirement plans also had gone awry as his
business ventures collapsed.
He returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and began brokering
cocaine again, buying and selling Irom the Nicaraguan dealers
he'd known in his days with the FDN. In 1990 and 1991, he
testiIied, he sold about 425 kilos oI cocaine in Northern
CaliIornia - $10.5 million worth at wholesale prices.
But unlike beIore, when he was selling cocaine Ior the contras,
Blandon was constantly dogged by the police.
Twice in six months he was detained, Iirst by Customs agents
while taking $117,000 in money orders to Tijuana to pay a
supplier, and then by the LAPD when he was in the act oI
paying one oI his Colombian suppliers more than $350,000.
The second time, aIter police Iound $14,000 in cash and a small
quantity oI cocaine in his pocket, he was arrested. But the U.S.
Justice Department - saying a prosecution would disrupt an
active investigation - persuaded the police to drop their money-
laundering case.
Soon aIter that, Blandon and his wiIe, Chepita, were arrested by
DEA agents on charges oI conspiracy to distribute cocaine. They
were jailed without bond as dangers to the community, and
several other Nicaraguans also were arrested.
The prosecutor, L.J. O'Neale, told a Iederal judge that Blandon
had sold so much cocaine in the United States his mandatory
prison sentence was "oII the scale."
Then Blandon "just vanished," said Juanita Brooks, a San Diego
attorney who represented one oI Blandon's co-deIendants. "All
oI a sudden his wiIe was out oI jail and he was out oI the case."
The reasons were contained in a secret Justice Department
memorandum Iiled in San Diego Iederal court in late 1993.
Blandon, prosecutor O'Neale wrote, had become "valuable in
major DEA investigations oI Class I drug traIIickers." And even
though probation oIIicers were recommending a liIe sentence
and a $4 million Iine, O'Neale said the government would be
satisIied iI Blandon got 48 months and no Iine. Motion granted.
Less than a year later, records show, O'Neale was back with
another idea: Why not just let Blandon go? AIter all, he wrote
the judge, Blandon had a Iederal job waiting.
O'Neale, saying that Blandon "has almost unlimited potential to
assist the United States," said the government wanted "to enlist
Mr. Blandon as a Iull-time, paid inIormant aIter his release Irom
prison."
AIter only 28 months in custody, most oI it spent with Iederal
agents who debrieIed him Ior "hundreds oI hours," he said,
Blandon walked out oI the Metropolitan Correctional Center in
San Diego, was given a green card and began working on his
Iirst assignment: setting up his old Iriend, "Freeway Rick," Ior a
sting.
Records show Ross was still behind bars, awaiting parole, when
San Diego DEA agents targeted him.
Soon aIter Ross went to prison Ior the Cincinnati bust, Iederal
prosecutors oIIered him a deal. His term would be shortened by
Iive years in return Ior testimony in a Iederal case against Los
Angeles County SheriII's detectives that included members oI
the old Freeway Rick Task Force.
Within days oI Ross' parole in October 1994, he and Blandon
were back in touch, and their conversation quickly turned to
cocaine.
According to tapes Blandon made oI some oI their discussions,
Ross repeatedly told Blandon that he was broke and couldn't
aIIord to Iinance a drug deal. But Ross did agree to help his old
mentor, who was also pleading poverty, Iind someone else to
buy the 100 kilos oI cocaine Blandon claimed he had.
On March 2, 1995, in a shopping-center parking lot in National
City, near San Diego, Ross poked his head inside a cocaine-
laden Chevy Blazer, and the place exploded with police.
Ross jumped into a Iriend's pickup and zoomed oII "looking Ior
a wall that I could crash myselI into," he said. "I just wanted to
die." He was captured aIter the truck careened into a hedgerow.
He has been held in jail without bond since then.
Ross' arrest netted Blandon $45,500 in government rewards and
expenses, records show. On the strength oI Blandon's testimony,
Ross and two other men were convicted oI cocaine-conspiracy
charges in San Diego last March - conspiring to sell the DEA's
cocaine. Sentencing was set Ior today. Ross is Iacing a liIe
sentence without the possibility oI parole. The other men are
looking at 10- to 20-year sentences.
Acquaintances say Blandon, who reIused repeated interview
requests, is a common sight these days in Managua's better
restaurants, drinking with Iriends and telling oI his "escape"
Irom U.S. authorities.
According to his Miami lawyer, Blandon spends most oI his
time shuttling between San Diego and Managua, trying to
recover Nicaraguan properties seized in 1979, when the
Sandinistas took power.
Aug 23, 1996
Cocaine sentences weighted against blacks
bv Garv Webb
San Jose Mercurv News
When it comes to cocaine, it isn't just a suspicion that the war
on drugs is hammering blacks harder than whites. According to
the U.S. Justice Department, it's a Iact.
The "main reason" cocaine sentences Ior blacks are longer than
Ior whites, the Bureau oI Justice Statistics reported in 1993, is
that 83 percent oI the people being sent to prison Ior "crack"
traIIicking are black "and the average sentence imposed Ior
crack traIIicking was twice as long as Ior traIIicking in
powdered cocaine."
Even though crack and powder cocaine are the same drug, you
have to sell more than six pounds oI powder beIore you Iace the
same jail time as someone who sells one ounce oI crack - a 100-
to-1 ratio.
That logic has eluded Dr. Robert Byck, a Yale University drug
expert, Irom the moment he discovered the 100-to-1 ratio may
have been his inadvertent doing.
In 1986, at the height oI an election-year hysteria over crack,
Byck was summoned beIore a U.S. Senate committee to tell
what he knew about cocaine smoking.
Byck, a renowned scientist who edited and published Sigmund
Freud's cocaine papers, had been studying crack smoking in
South America Ior nearly 10 years, with growing alarm.
Sen. Lawton Chiles, a Florida Democrat (and now that state's
governor), was pushing Ior tougher crack laws, and he asked
Byck about testimony he had given previously that "some
experts" believed crack was 50 times more addictive than
powder cocaine. Byck acknowledged some people believed that.
Despite the speculative nature oI the Iigure, Byck said, the
addictive Iactor oI 50 was "doubled by people who wanted to
get tough on cocaine" and then, Ior reasons he still Iinds
incomprehensible, turned into a measurement oI weight.
The resultant 100-to-1 (powder-vs.-crack) weight ratio, Byck
said, was "a Iabrication by whoever wrote the law, but not
reality. . . . You can't make a number."
Recently, the U.S. Sentencing Commission - a panel oI experts
created by Congress to be its unbiased adviser in these matters -
tried and Iailed to Iind a better reason to explain why powder
dealers must sell 100 times more cocaine beIore they get the
same mandatory sentence as crack dealers.
The "absence oI comprehensive data substantiating this
legislative policy is troublesome," it reported last year.
In 1993, cocaine smokers got an average sentence oI nearly
three years. People who snorted cocaine powder received a little
over three months. Nearly all oI the long sentences went to
blacks, the commission Iound.
Justice Department researchers estimated that iI crack and
powder sentences were made equal, "the black-white diIIerence .
. . would not only evaporate but would slightly reverse."
Based on such Iindings, the commission recommended in May
1995 that the cocaine-sentencing laws be equalized, calling the
100-to-1 ratio "a primary cause oI the growing disparity between
sentences Ior black and white Iederal deIendants."
Apparently IearIul oI being seen as soIt on drugs, Congress
voted overwhelmingly last year to keep the crack laws the same.
On Oct. 30, President Clinton signed the bill rejecting the
commission's recommendations.
Oct. 3, 1996
Affidafit shows CIA knew of contra drug ring
bv Garv Webb and Pamela Kramer
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
LOS ANGELES - During the early 1980s, Iederal and local
narcotics agents knew that a massive drug ring operated by
Nicaraguan contra rebels was selling large amounts oI cocaine
"mainly to blacks living in the South Central Los Angeles area,"
according to a search-warrant aIIidavit obtained by the San Jose
Mercury News.
The Oct. 23, 1986, aIIidavit identiIies Iormer Nicaraguan
government oIIicial Danilo Blandon as "the highest-ranking
member oI this organization" and describes a sprawling drug
operation involving more than 100 Nicaraguan contra
sympathizers.
The aIIidavit oI Thomas Gordon, a Iormer Los Angeles County
sheriII's narcotics detective, is the Iirst independent
corroboration that the contra army - the Nicaraguan Democratic
Force - was dealing "crack" cocaine to gangs in Los Angeles'
black neighborhoods. Known by its Spanish initials, the FDN
was an anti-communist commando group Iormed and run by the
CIA during the 1980s.
Gordon's sworn statement says that both the Drug EnIorcement
Administration and the FBI had inIormants inside the Blandon
drug ring Ior several years beIore sheriII's deputies raided it Oct.
27, 1986. Gordon's aIIidavit is based on police interviews with
those inIormants and one oI the DEA agents who was
investigating Blandon.
Twice during the past year, Ron Spear, Los Angeles County
SheriII's Department spokesman, told the Mercury News that his
department had no records oI the 1986 raids and denied having a
copy oI Gordon's search-warrant aIIidavit.
The Mercury News obtained the entire search-warrant aIIidavit
this week. SheriII Sherman Block's oIIice did not respond
yesterday to written questions about the aIIidavit.
A recent Mercury News series revealed how Blandon's
operation, which sold thousands oI kilos oI cocaine to black Los
Angeles drug dealers, created the Iirst mass market Ior crack in
America during the early 1980s and helped Iuel a crack
explosion that is still reverberating through black communities.
Both the CIA and the Justice Department have denied
government involvement.
But according to a legal motion Iiled in a 1990 case involving a
deputy who helped execute the search warrants, one oI the
suspects involved in the raid identiIied himselI as a CIA agent
and asked police to call CIA headquarters in Virginia to conIirm
his identity. The motion, Iiled by Los Angeles deIense attorney
Harlan Braun on behalI oI Deputy Daniel Garner, said the
narcotics detectives allowed the man to make the call but then
carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the U.S.
government to cocaine traIIicking and money-laundering eIIorts
on behalI oI the contras.
The motion said CIA agents appeared at the sheriII's department
within 48 hours oI the raid and removed the seized Iiles Irom the
evidence room. But Braun said detectives secretly copied 10
pages beIore the documents were spirited away. Braun
attempted to introduce them in the 1990 criminal trial to Iorce
the Iederal government to back oII the case. Braun was hit with
a gag order, the documents were put under seal and Garner was
convicted oI corruption charges.
Internal sheriII's department records oI the raid "mysteriously
disappeared" around the same time the seized Iiles were taken,
Braun's motion said. That claim was buttressed in an interview
this week by an oIIicer involved in the raid.
The oIIicer, who requested anonymity, said the alleged CIA
agent was Ronald Lister, a Iormer Laguna Beach police
detective who worked with Blandon in the drug ring. The 1986
search-warrant aIIidavit identiIies Lister's home in Laguna
Beach as one oI the places searched. It says Lister was involved
in transporting drug money to Miami and was Blandon's partner
in a security company. The company, according to a Iormer
employee, was doing work at a Salvadoran military air base in
the early 1980s. Lister pleaded guilty to cocaine traIIicking in
1991.
Oct. 23, 1996
How Web fueled story of CIA, crack
Difference in format a problem, says editor
bv Eleanor Randolph and John M. Broder
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - The controversy that began with the San
Jose Mercury News' publication oI a series on cocaine and the
Nicaraguan contras has become a case study in how inIormation
caroms around the country in the digital age.
In its printed version, as the paper's editor has pointed out, the
stories were careIul never to claim that the Central Intelligence
Agency condoned or abetted drug dealing to support the contras.
Reporter Gary Webb has said that his research into the CIA-
crack connection "ended at the CIA's door," but did not Iirmly
establish a link between the agency and the crack epidemic oI
the 1980s.
But that unproven link has become established as Iact in the
minds oI many Americans, and the Mercury News' editor, Jerry
Ceppos, says the way the paper used the World Wide Web to
disseminate its material may have contributed to that
misinterpretation.
Even beIore the stories were published in mid-August, managers
oI the paper's Web site, Mercury Center, were alerting Internet
users to a coming bombshell.
The electronic version oI the series appeared with a logo - a
Iigure smoking crack superimposed on the CIA seal - that was
more prominent than in the newspaper series. Underneath were
the words, "the story behind the crack explosion."
Many Americans believed that the Mercury News had Iinally
proved what had been a long-running rumor oI government
complicity in the scourge oI drugs in U.S. cities.
Ceppos said earlier this week that editing standards at the
paper's Web site are not always consistent with those Ior the
print version oI the paper. He said the paper deleted the CIA
logo Irom the Web site aIter it became controversial.
"We changed the logo, because Ior a day or two it seemed to be
the Iocus oI attention," Ceppos said. "You have to make sure
you're keeping your standards high, and we're going to have
some more conversations about that."
The series has provoked startlingly diIIerent reactions in
diIIerent media.
It ignited a storm oI controversy on black-oriented radio
programs and in such newspapers as Louis Farrakhan's "The
Final Call," which headlined its account oI the Mercury News
story, "How the U.S. government spread crack cocaine in the
black ghetto."
Washington talk-radio host Joe Madison, who is also black, is
starting a hunger strike to protest the CIA's alleged role in
cocaine traIIicking. The newspaper series was seen by many as
conIirmation oI what had long been suspected in black
neighborhoods. "We've always speculated about this, but now
we've got prooI," Madison said.
On the other hand, several prominent newspapers have
published stories that have been skeptical about the allegations.
The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and The New
York Times ran articles this month casting doubt on a direct link
between the cocaine trade and the CIA's support oI the contras.
The reaction on the "new media" oI the Internet has opened an
additional dimension. The Mercury News' Web site received
100,000 additional "hits" a day aIter the series was posted, the
paper reported.
The paper invited Internet readers to comment, and hundreds
replied. Many indicated that they believed the paper had Iinally
proved that the CIA was traIIicking in cocaine in black
neighborhoods.
The Mercury News broke new ground by making available not
only the articles, but much oI the supporting documentation -
legal aIIidavits, court Iilings, charts, diagrams and interview
transcripts.
But a key document that appears to undercut one oI the series'
central contentions is made available on the Internet site in
heavily edited Iorm with contradictory material leIt out.
That document is the court testimony oI convicted drug dealer
Oscar Danilo Blandon. The paper's stories lean heavily on
Blandon's testimony in the recent cocaine traIIicking trial oI Los
Angeles drug dealer "Freeway" Ricky Ross in San Diego.
The stories cite the testimony as establishing that Ior a period oI
several years in the early- and mid-1980s, Blandon's drug proIits
were going to the contras. The Internet site includes portions oI
the trial transcript that support the story's contentions.
But the complete transcript, which is not included on the Web
site, includes statements by Blandon that point in a diIIerent
direction. According to his testimony, he diverted drug proIits to
the contras not Ior years, but only during a period oI months
early in his career - at a time when he was making virtually no
money dealing cocaine.
During the trial, Webb says, he gave questions to Ross' attorney
that the attorney, in turn, asked Blandon under oath. Webb then
used the statements elicited Irom Blandon as inIormation Ior his
series.
Webb dismisses criticism oI the appearance oI taking sides in a
criminal case he was covering by saying that the Blandon
testimony provided "the best interview I've ever had - while the
man was under oath in a Iederal court and being vouched Ior by
two Iederal agencies."
Ceppos deIended his reporter's relationship with Blandon's
attorney. "I may be missing something here," he said, "but I
think that everything he did with the lawyer was journalistically
ethical and aboveboard."
Mondav, Mav 12, 1997
CIA series fell short, says paper
bv Associated Press
SAN JOSE, CaliI. - The executive editor oI the San Jose
Mercury News has admitted to shortcomings in the newspaper's
controversial series on the crack-cocaine explosion in Los
Angeles in the 1980s.
In an open letter to readers in the newspaper's editorial section
yesterday, Jerry Ceppos said the newspaper solidly documented
that a drug ring associated with the contra rebels in Nicaragua
sold large quantities oI cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles, and
that some oI the proIits Irom those sales went to the contras.
However, he said, the three-part "Dark Alliance" series,
published last summer, occasionally omitted important
inIormation and created impressions open to misinterpretation.
"I believe that we Iell short at every step oI our process - in the
writing, editing and production oI our work. Several people here
share that burden," he wrote.
"We have learned Irom the experience and even are changing the
way we handle major investigations."
The series, written by reporter Gary Webb, reported that a San
Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold cocaine in South Central Los
Angeles, then Iunneled proIits to the contras Ior the better part
oI a decade.
The series traced the drugs to dealers Danilo Blandon and Ricky
Ross, leaders oI a CIA-run guerrilla army in Nicaragua.
The Seattle Times ran the series on Aug. 22-23, 1996.
The reports sparked widespread anger in the black community
toward the CIA, as well as numerous Iederal investigations into
whether the CIA took part in or countenanced the selling oI
crack cocaine to raise money Ior contras.
The investigations never Iound that the CIA had any link to drug
dealing. Several newspapers also disputed the Mercury News
report.
Ceppos wrote that while the newspaper did not report the CIA
knew about the drug operations, it implied CIA knowledge.
"Although members oI the drug ring met with contra leaders
paid by the CIA and Webb believes the relationship with the CIA
was a tight one, I Ieel that we did not have prooI that top CIA
oIIicials knew oI the relationship," he wrote. "I believe that part
oI our contract with readers is to be as clear about what we don't
know as what we do know.
"We also did not include CIA comment about our Iindings, and I
think we should have."
Ceppos also said the series omitted conIlicting inIormation that
Blandon testiIied he stopped sending cocaine proIits to the
contras at the end oI 1982, aIter being in operation Ior a year.
That inIormation, Ceppos said, "contradicted a central assertion
oI the series" and should have been included.
The editor also said the series reported the proIit Iigures Irom
the drug sales as Iact when they were estimates, and unIairly
suggested the drugs Iunneled to Los Angeles played a critical
role in the crack problem in urban America.
"Because the national crack epidemic was a complex
phenomenon that had more than one origin, our discussion oI
this issue needed to be clearer," Ceppos said.
Wednesdav, Mav 14, 1997
Mercury News retraction won't stop drug probe
by Thomas Farragher
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - A Iederal investigator said he will continue to
examine whether a CaliIornia drug ring sold cocaine to aid a
CIA-run guerrilla army, even though the San Jose Mercury
News has backed away Irom some aspects oI the stories that
sparked the inquiry.
"We have our own investigative agenda . . ." said Justice
Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich.
The Mercury News series spawned twin investigations by the
inspectors general oI the CIA and the Justice Department.
Bromwich's comment came aIter the Mercury News on Sunday
acknowledged that its series about shadowy drug dealers didn't
meet the paper's standards.
The inspector general drew a distinction between journalistic
concerns oI Mercury News editors and what interests
government investigators. "We're not examining per se the
practices in the newspaper that led to the publication oI the
article," Bromwich said.
In its "Dark Alliance" series published last August, the Mercury
News traced urban America's crack-cocaine explosion to a
Northern CaliIornia drug ring involving two Nicaraguan cocaine
dealers who also were civilian leaders oI the contras, an anti-
communist commando group Iormed and run by the CIA during
the 1980s. The series said millions oI dollars in proIits Irom the
drug sales were Iunneled to the contras. It never reported direct
CIA involvement, though many readers drew that conclusion.
But on Sunday, Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos
told readers that "we didn't know Ior certain what the proIits
were" and that the crack-cocaine scourge "was a complex
phenomenon that had more than one origin."
Ceppos also said the newspaper "did not have prooI that top CIA
oIIicials knew oI the relationship" oI the drug ring and contra
leaders.
Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CaliI., the chieI congressional champion
oI a thorough investigation into the newspaper's Iindings,
insisted yesterday that the Mercury News, while acknowledging
problems with its series, has not retreated Irom Iindings that
some drug money went to the contras.
from
http.//www.parascope.com/mx/articles/garvwebb/garvWebbSpea
ks.htm.
Gary Webb Speaks: A ParaScope Special Report
Investigative journalist Gary Webb speaks to a packed house
on the CIA's connection to drug trafficking, and the failure
of the media to expose the truth.
by Charles Overbeck
Matrix Editor
easterisleaol.com
Dark Alliance author Gary Webb gave a Iascinating talk on the
evening oI January 16, outlining the Iindings oI his investigation
oI the CIA's connection to drug traIIicking by the Nicaraguan
contras. Approximately 300 people, crowded into the First
United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon, listened with rapt
attention as Webb detailed his experiences. Webb's riveting
speech was Iollowed by an intense question-and-answer session,
during which he candidly answered questions about the "Dark
Alliance" controversy, his Iiring Irom the San Jose Mercurv
News, and CIA/contra/cocaine secrets that still await revelation.
It was a Iascinating exchange packed with detailed inIormation
on the latest developments in the case. Webb spoke eloquently,
with the ease and conIidence oI an investigator who has spent
many long hours researching his subject, and many more hours
sharing this inIormation with the public. ParaScope will have a
Iull report on Webb's talk on Wednesday, January 20.
In the meantime, you get another opportunity to see a ParaScope
article come together Irom scratch, Irom behind the scenes. So
check back with us soon Ior the latest additions as this piece is
developed.
Last update 1:40 a.m. EST 1/21. Video clips and hypertext
annotations coming soon.]
Transcript: Gary Webb Speaks on CIA Connections to
Contra Drug Trafficking (and Related Topics)
Date: 1anuary 16, 1999
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Location: First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive St.,
Eugene, Oregon
Gary Webb: I look like an idiot up here with all these mikes,
the CIA agents are probably behind one or the other... |laughter
Irom the audience|. It's really nice to be in Eugene -- I've been in
Madison, Wisconsin talking about this, I've been in Berkeley,
I've been in Santa Monica, and these are sort oI like islands oI
sanity in this world today, so it's great to be on one oI those
islands.
One oI the things that is weird about this whole thing, though, is
that I've been a daily news reporter Ior about twenty years, and
I've done probably a thousand interviews with people, and the
strangest thing is being on the other side oI the table now and
having reporters ask me questions. One oI them asked me about
a week ago -- I was on a radio show -- and the host asked me,
"Why did you get into newspaper reporting, oI all the media?
Why did you pick newspapers?" And I really had to admit that I
was stumped. Because I thought about it -- I'd been doing
newspaper reporting since I was Iourteen or IiIteen years old --
and I really didn't have an answer.
So I went back to my clip books -- you know, most reporters
keep all their old clips -- and I started digging around trying to
Iigure out iI there was one story that I had written that had really
tipped the balance. And I Iound it. And I wanted to tell you this
story, because it sort oI Iits into the theme that we're going to
talk about tonight.
I think I was IiIteen, I was working Ior my high school paper,
and I was writing editorials. This sounds silly now that I think
about it, but I had written an editorial against the drill team that
we had Ior the high school games, Ior the Iootball games. This
was '71 or '72, at the height oI the protests against the Vietnam
War, and I was in school then in suburban Indianapolis -- Dan
Quayle country. So, you get the idea oI the Ilavor oI the school
system. They thought it was a cool idea to dress women up in
military uniIorms and send them out there to twirl riIles and
battle Ilags at halItime. And I thought this was sort oI
outrageous, and I wrote an editorial saying I thought it was one
oI the silliest things I'd ever seen. And my newspaper advisor
called me the next day and said, "Gosh, that editorial you wrote
has really prompted a response." And I said, "Great, that's the
idea, isn't it?" And she said, "Well, it's not so great, they want
you to apologize Ior it." |Laughter Irom the audience.|
I said, "Apologize Ior what?" And she said, "Well, the girls were
very oIIended." And I said, "Well, I'm not apologizing because
they don't want my opinion. You'll have to come up with a better
reason than that." And they said, "Well, iI you don't apologize,
we're not going to let you in Quill & Scroll," which is the high
school journalism society. And I said, "Well, I don't want to be
in that organization iI I have to apologize to get into it." |More
laughter Irom the audience, scattered applause.|
They were sort oI powerless at that point, and they said, "Look,
why don't you just come down and the cheerleaders are going to
come in, and they want to talk to you and tell you what they
think," and I said okay. So I went down to the newspaper oIIice,
and there were about IiIteen oI them sitting around this table,
and they all went around one by one telling me what a scumbag
I was, and what a terrible guy I was, and how I'd ruined their
dates, ruined their complexions, and all sorts oI things...
|Laughter and groans Irom the audience.| ...and at that moment,
I decided, "Man, this is what I want to do Ior a living." |Roar oI
laughter Irom the audience.| And I wish I could say that it was
because I was inIused with this sense oI the First Amendment,
and thinking great thoughts about John Peter Zenger and I.F.
Stone... but what I was really thinking was, "Man, this is a great
way to meet women!" |More laughter.|
And that's a true story, but the reason I tell you that is because
it's oIten those kinds oI weird motivations and unthinking
consequences that lead us to do things, that lead us to events that
we have absolutely no concept how they're going to turn out.
Little did I know that twenty-Iive years later, I'd be writing a
story about the CIA's wrongdoings because I wanted to meet
women by writing editorials about cheerleaders.
But that's really the way liIe and that's really the way history
works a lot oI times. You know, when you think back on your
own lives, Irom the vantage point oI time, you can see it. I
mean, think back to the decisions you've made in your liIetimes
that brought you to where you are tonight, think about how close
you came to never meeting your wiIe or your husband, how
easily you could have been doing something else Ior a living iI it
hadn't been Ior a decision that you made or someone made that
you had absolutely no control over. And it's really kind oI scary
when you think about how capricious liIe is sometimes. That's a
theme I try to bring to my book, Dark Alliance, which was about
the crack cocaine explosion in the 1980s.
So Ior the record, let me just say this right now. I do not believe
-- and I have never believed -- that the crack cocaine explosion
was a conscious CIA conspiracy, or anybody's conspiracy, to
decimate black America. I've never believed that South Central
Los Angeles was targeted by the U.S. government to become the
crack capitol oI the world. But that isn't to say that the CIA's
hands or the U.S. government's hands are clean in this matter.
Actually, Iar Irom it. AIter spending three years oI my liIe
looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S.
government's responsibility Ior the drug problems in South
Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever
wrote in the newspaper.
But it's important to diIIerentiate between malign intent and
gross negligence. And that's an important distinction, because
it's what makes premeditated murder diIIerent Irom
manslaughter. That said, it doesn't change the Iact that you've
got a body on the Iloor, and that's what I want to talk about
tonight, the body.
Many years ago, there was a great series on PBS -- I don't know
how many oI you are old enough to remember this -- it was
called Connections. And it was by a British historian named
James Burke. II you don't remember it, it was a marvelous show,
very inIluential on me. And he would take a seemingly
inconsequential event in history, and Iollow it through the ages
to see what it spawned as a result. The one show I remember the
most clearly was the one he did on how the scarcity oI Iirewood
in thirteenth-century Europe led to the development oI the steam
engine. And you would think, "Well, these things aren't
connected at all," and he would show very convincingly that
they were.
In the Iirst chapter oI the book on which the series is based,
Burke wrote that "History is not, as we are so oIten led to
believe, a matter oI great men and lonely geniuses pointing the
way to the Iuture Irom their ivory towers. At some point, every
member oI society is involved in that process by which
innovation and change come about. The key to why things
change is the key to everything."
What I've attempted to demonstrate in my book was how the
collapse oI a brutal, pro-American dictatorship in Latin America,
combined with a decision by corrupt CIA agents to raise money
Ior a resistance movement by any means necessary, led to he
Iormation oI the nation's Iirst major crack market in South
Central Los Angeles, which led to the arming and the
empowerment oI LA's street gangs, which led to the spread oI
crack to black neighborhoods across the country, and to the
passage oI racially discriminatory sentencing laws that are
locking up thousands oI young black men today behind bars Ior
most oI their lives.
But it's not so much a conspiracy as a chain reaction. And that's
what my whole book is about, this chain reaction. So let me
explain the links in this chain a little better.
The Iirst link is this Iellow Anastasio Somoza, who was an
American-educated tyrant, one oI our buddies naturally, and his
Iamily ruled Nicaragua Ior Iorty years -- thanks to the
Nicaraguan National Guard, which we supplied, armed, and
Iunded, because we thought they were, you know, anti-
communists.
Well, in 1979, the people oI Nicaragua got tired oI living under
this dictatorship, and they rose up and overthrew it. And a lot oI
Somoza's Iriends and relatives and business partners came to the
United States, because we had been their allies all these years,
including two men whose Iamilies had been very close to the
dictatorship. And these two guys are sort oI two oI the three
main characters in my book -- a Iellow named Danilo Blandon,
and a Iellow named Norwin Meneses.
They came to the United States in 1979, along with a Ilood oI
other Nicaraguan immigrants, most oI them middle-class people,
most oI them Iormer bankers, Iormer insurance salesmen -- sort
oI a capitalist exodus Irom Nicaragua. And they got involved
when they got here, and they decided they were going to take
the country back, they didn't like the Iact that they'd been Iorced
out oI their country. So they Iormed these resistance
organizations here in the United States, and they began plotting
how they were going to kick the Sandanistas out.
At this point in time, Jimmy Carter was president, and Carter
wasn't all that interested in helping these Iolks out. The CIA
was, however. And that's where we start getting into this murky
world oI, you know, who really runs the United States. Is it the
president? Is it the bureaucracy? Is it the intelligence
community? At diIIerent points in time you get diIIerent
answers. Like today, the idea that Clinton runs the United States
is nuts. The idea that Jimmy Carter ran the country is nuts.
In 1979 and 1980, the CIA secretly began visiting these groups
that were setting up here in the United States, supplying them
with a little bit oI money, and telling them to hold on, wait Ior a
little while, don't give up. And Ronald Reagan came to town.
And Reagan had a very diIIerent outlook on Central America
than Carter did. Reagan saw what happened in Nicaragua not as
a populist uprising, as most oI the rest oI the world did. He saw
it as this band oI communists down there, there was going to be
another Fidel Castro, and he was going to have another Cuba in
his backyard. Which Iit in very well with the CIA's thinking. So,
the CIA under Reagan got it together, and they said, "We're
going to help these guys out." They authorized $19 million to
Iund a covert war to destabilize the government in Nicaragua
and help get their old buddies back in power.
Soon aIter the CIA took over this operation, these two drug
traIIickers, who had come Irom Nicaragua and settled in
CaliIornia, were called down to Honduras. And they met with a
CIA agent named Enrique Bermudez, who was one oI Somoza's
military oIIicials, and the man the CIA picked to run this new
organization they were Iorming. And both traIIickers had said --
one oI them said, the other one wrote, and it's never been
contradicted -- that when they met with the CIA agent, he told
them, "We need money Ior this operation. Your guy's job is to go
to CaliIornia and raise money, and not to worry about how you
did it. And what he said was -- and I think this had been used to
justiIy just about every crime against humanity that we've
known -- "the ends justiIy the means."
Now, this is a very important link in this chain reaction, because
the means they selected was cocaine traIIicking, which is sort oI
what you'd expect when you ask cocaine traIIickers to go out
and raise money Ior you. You shouldn't at all be surprised when
they go out and sell drugs. Especially when you pick people who
are like pioneers oI the cocaine traIIicking business, which
Norwin Meneses certainly was.
There was a CIA cable Irom I believe 1984, which called him
the "kingpin oI narcotics traIIicking" in Central America. He
was sort oI like the Al Capone oI Nicaragua. So aIter getting
these Iundraising instructions Irom this CIA agent, these two
men go back to CaliIornia, and they begin selling cocaine. This
time not exclusively Ior themselves -- this time in Iurtherance oI
U.S. Ioreign policy. And they began selling it in Los Angeles,
and they began selling it in San Francisco.
Sometime in 1982, Danilo Blandon, who had been given the LA
market, started selling his cocaine to a young drug dealer named
Ricky Ross, who later became known as "Freeway" Rick. In
1994, the LA Times would describe him as the master marketer
most responsible Ior Ilooding the streets oI Los Angeles with
cocaine. In 1979, he was nothing. He was nothing beIore he met
these Nicaraguans. He was a high school dropout. He was a kid
who wanted to be a tennis star, who was trying to get a tennis
scholarship, but he Iound out that in order to get a scholarship
you needed to read and write, and he couldn't. So he driIted out
oI school and wound up selling stolen car parts, and then he met
these Nicaraguans, who had this cheap cocaine that they wanted
to unload. And he proved to be very good at that.
Now, he lived in South Central Los Angeles, which was home to
some street gangs known as the Crips and the Bloods. And back
in 1981-82, hardly anybody knew who they were. They were
mainly neighborhood kids -- they'd beat each other up, they'd
steal leather coats, they'd steal cars, but they were really nothing
back then. But what they gained through this organization, and
what they gained through Ricky Ross, was a built-in distribution
network throughout the neighborhood. The Crips and the Bloods
were already selling marijuana, they were already selling PCP,
so it wasn't much oI a stretch Ior them to sell something new,
which is what these Nicaraguans were bringing in, which was
cocaine.
This is where these Iorces oI history come out oI nowhere and
collide. Right about the time the contras got to South Central
Los Angeles, hooked up with "Freeway" Rick, and started
selling powder cocaine, the people Rick was selling his powder
to started asking him iI he knew how to make it into this stuII
called "rock" that they were hearing about. This obviously was
crack cocaine, and it was already on its way to the United States
by then -- it started in Peru in '74 and was working its way
upward, and it was bound to get here sooner or later. In 1981 it
got to Los Angeles, and people started Iiguring out how to take
this very expensive powdered cocaine and cook it up on the
stove and turn it into stuII you could smoke.
When Ricky went out and he started talking to his customers,
and they started asking him how to make this stuII, you know,
Rick was a smart guy -- he still is a smart guy -- and he Iigured,
this is something new. This is customer demand. II I want to
progress in this business, I better meet this demand. So he
started switching Irom selling powder to making rock himselI,
and selling it already made. He called this new invention his
"Ready Rock." And he told me the scenario, he said it was a
situation where he'd go to a guy's house, he would say, "Oh man,
I want to get high, I'm on my way to work, I don't have time to
go into the kitchen and cook this stuII up. Can't you cook it up
Ior me and just bring it to me already made?" And he said,
"Yeah, I can do that." So he started doing it.
So by the time crack got ahold oI South Central, which took a
couple oI years, Rick had positioned himselI on top oI the crack
market in South Central. And by 1984, crack sales had
supplanted marijuana and PCP sales as sources oI income Ior the
gangs and drug dealers oI South Central. And suddenly these
guys had more money than they knew what to do with. Because
what happened with crack, it democratized the drug. When you
were buying it in powdered Iorm, you were having to lay out a
hundred bucks Ior a gram, or a hundred and IiIty bucks Ior a
gram. Now all you needed was ten bucks, or Iive bucks, or a
dollar -- they were selling "dollar rocks" at one point. So
anybody who had money and wanted to get high could get some
oI this stuII. You didn't need to be a middle-class or wealthy
drug user anymore.
Suddenly the market Ior this very expensive drug expanded
geometrically. And now these dealers, who were making a
hundred bucks a day on a good day, were now making Iive or
six thousand dollars a day on a good day. And the gangs started
setting up Iranchises -- they started Iranchising rock houses in
South Central, just like McDonald's. And you'd go on the streets,
and there'd be Iive or six rock houses owned by one guy, and
Iive or six rock houses owned by another guy, and suddenly they
started making even more money.
And now they've got all this money, and they Ielt nervous. You
get $100,000 or $200,000 in cash in your house, and you start
getting kind oI antsy about it. So now they wanted weapons to
guard their money with, and to guard their rock houses, which
other people were starting to knock oII. And lo and behold, you
had weapons. The contras. They were selling weapons. They
were buying weapons. And they started selling weapons to the
gangs in Los Angeles. They started selling them AR-15s, they
started selling them Uzis, they started selling them Israeli-made
pistols with laser sights, just about anything. Because that was
part oI the process here. They were not just drug dealers, they
were taking the drug money and buying weapons with it to send
down to Central America with the assistance oI a great number
oI spooky CIA Iolks, who were getting them |audio glitch --
"across the border"?| and that sort oI thing, so they could get
weapons in and out oI the country. So, not only does South
Central suddenly have a drug problem, they have a weapons
problem that they never had beIore. And you started seeing
things like drive-by shootings and gang bangers with Uzis.
By 1985, the LA crack market had become saturated. There was
so much dope going into South Central, dope that the CIA, we
now know, knew oI, and they knew the origins oI -- the FBI
knew the origins oI it; the DEA knew the origins oI it; and
nobody did anything about it. (We'll get into that in a bit.)
But what happened was, there were so many people selling
crack that the dealers were jostling each other on the corners.
And the smaller ones decided, we're going to take this show on
the road. So they started going to other cities. They started going
to BakersIield, they started going to Fresno, they started going to
San Francisco and Oakland, where they didn't have crack
markets, and nobody knew what this stuII was, and they had
wide open markets Ior themselves. And suddenly crack started
showing up in city aIter city aIter city, and oItentimes it was
Crips and Bloods Irom Los Angeles who were starting these
markets. By 1986, it was all up and down the east coast, and by
1989, it was nationwide.
Today, Iortunately, crack use is on a downward trend, but that's
something that isn't due to any great progress we've made in the
so-called "War on Drugs," it's the natural cycle oI things. Drug
epidemics generally run Irom 10 to 15 years. Heroin is now the
latest drug on the upswing.
Now, a lot oI people disagreed with this scenario. The New York
Times, the LA Times and the Washington Post all came out and
said, oh, no, that's not so. They said this couldn't have happened
that way, because crack would have happened anyway. Which is
true, somewhat. As I pointed out in the Iirst chapter oI my book,
crack was on its way here. But whether it would have happened
the same way, whether it would have happened in South Central,
whether it would have happened in Los Angeles at all Iirst, is a
very diIIerent story. II it had happened in Eugene, Oregon Iirst,
it might not have gone anywhere. |Restless shuIIling and the
sounds oI throats being cleared among the audience.| No
oIIense, but you Iolks aren't exactly trend setters up here when it
comes to drug dealers and drug Iads. LA is, however. |SoIt
laughter and murmuring among the audience.|
You can play "what iI" games all you like, but it doesn't change
the reality. And the reality is that this CIA-connected drug ring
played a very critical role in the early 1980s in opening up South
Central to a crack epidemic that was unmatched in its severity
and inIluence anywhere in the U.S.
One question that I ask people who say, "Oh, I don't believe
this," is, okay, tell me this: why did crack appear in black
neighborhoods Iirst? Why did crack distribution networks
leapIrog Irom one black neighborhood to other black
neighborhoods and bypass white neighborhoods and bypass
Hispanic neighborhoods and Asian neighborhoods? Our
government and the mainstream media have given us varying
explanations Ior this phenomenon over the years, and they are
nice, comIorting, general explanations which absolve anyone oI
any responsibility Ior why crack is so ethnically speciIic. One oI
the reasons we're told is that, well, it's poverty. As iI the only
poor neighborhoods in this country were black neighborhoods.
And we're told it's high teenage unemployment; these kids gotta
have jobs. As iI the hills and hollows oI Appalachia don't have
teenage unemployment rates that are ten times higher than inner
city Los Angeles. And then we're told that it's loose Iamily
structure -- you know, presuming that there are no white single
mothers out there trying to raise kids on low-paying jobs or
welIare and Iood stamps. And then we're told, well, it's because
crack is so cheap -- because it sells Ior a lower price in South
Central than it sells anywhere else. But twenty bucks is twenty
bucks, no matter where you go in the country.
So once you have eliminated these sort oI non-sensical
explanations, you are leIt with two theories which are Iar less
comIortable. The Iirst theory -- which is not something I
personally subscribe to, but it's out there -- is that there's
something about black neighborhoods which causes them to be
genetically predisposed to drug traIIicking. That's a racist
argument that no one in their right mind is advancing publicly,
although I tell you, when I was reading a lot oI the stories in the
Washington Post and the New York Times, they were talking
about black Americans being more susceptible to "conspiracy
theories" than white Americans, which is why they believe the
story more. I think that was sort oI the underlying current there.
On the other hand, I didn't see any stories about all the white
people who think Elvis is alive still, or that Hitler's brain is
preserved down in Brazil to await the Fourth Reich... |laughter
Irom the audience| ...which is a particularly white conspiracy
theory, I didn't see any stories in the New York Times about
that...
The other more palatable reason which in my mind comes closer
to the truth, is that someone started bringing cheap cocaine into
black neighborhoods right at the time when drug users began
Iiguring out how to turn it into crack. And this allowed black
drug dealers to get a head start on every other ethnic group in
terms oI setting up distribution systems and traIIicking systems.
Now, one thing I've learned about the drug business while
researching this is that in many ways it is the epitome oI
capitalism. It is the purest Iorm oI capitalism. You have no
government regulation, a wide-open market, a buyer's market --
anything goes. But these things don't spring out oI the ground
Iully Iormed. It's like any business. It takes time to grow them. It
takes time to set up networks. So once these distribution
networks got set up and established in primarily South Central
Los Angeles, primarily black neighborhoods, they spread it
along ethnic and cultural lines. You had black dealers Irom LA
going to black neighborhoods in other cities, because they knew
people there, they had Iriends there, and that's why you saw
these networks pop up Irom one black neighborhood to another
black neighborhood.
Now, exactly the same thing happened on the east coast a couple
oI years later. When crack Iirst appeared on the east coast, it
appeared in Caribbean neighborhoods in Miami -- thanks largely
to the Jamaicans, who were using their drug proIits to Iund
political gains back home. It was almost the exact opposite oI
what happened in LA in that the politics were the opposite -- but
it was the same phenomenon. And once the Miami market was
saturated, they moved to New York, they moved east, and they
started bringing crack Irom the east coast towards the middle oI
the country.
So it seems to me that iI you're looking Ior the root oI your drug
problems in a neighborhood, nothing else matters except the
drugs, and where they're coming Irom, and how they're getting
there. And all these other reasons I cited are used as explanations
Ior how crack became popular, but it doesn't explain how the
cocaine got there in the Iirst place. And that's where the contras
came in.
One oI the things which these newspapers who dissed my story
were saying was, we can't believe that the CIA would know
about drug traIIicking and let it happen. That this idea that this
agency which gets $27 billion a year to tell us what's going on,
and which was so intimately involved with the contras they were
writing their press releases Ior them, they wouldn't know about
this drug traIIicking going on under their noses. But the Times
and the Post all uncritically reported their claims that the CIA
didn't know what was going on, and that it would never permit
its hirelings to do anything like that, as unseemly as drug
traIIicking. You know, assassinations and bombings and that sort
oI thing, yeah, they'll admit to right up Iront, but drug dealing,
no, no, they don't do that kind oI stuII.
UnIortunately, though, it was true, and what has happened since
my series came out is that the CIA was Iorced to do an internal
review, the DEA and Justice Department were Iorced to do
internal reviews, and these agencies that released these reports,
you probably didn't read about them, because they contradicted
everything else these other newspapers had been writing Ior the
last couple oI years, but let me just read you this one excerpt.
This is Irom a 1987 DEA report. And this is about this drug ring
in Los Angeles that I wrote about. In 1987, the DEA sent
undercover inIormants inside this drug operation, and they
interviewed one oI the principals oI this organization, namely
Ivan Torres. And this is what he said. He told the inIormant:
"The CIA wants to know about drug traIIicking, but only Ior
their own purposes, and not necessarily Ior the use oI law
enIorcement agencies. Torres told DEA ConIidential InIormant
1 that CIA representatives are aware oI his drug-related
activities, and that they don't mind. He said they had gone so Iar
as to encourage cocaine traIIicking by members oI the contras,
because they know it's a good source oI income. Some oI this
money has gone into numbered accounts in Europe and Panama,
as does the money that goes to Managua Irom cocaine
traIIicking. Torres told the inIormant about receiving
counterintelligence training Irom the CIA, and had avowed that
the CIA looks the other way and in essence allows them to
engage in narcotics traIIicking."
This is a DEA report that was written in 1987, when this
operation was still going on. Another member oI this
organization who was aIIiliated with the San Francisco end oI it,
said that in 1985 -- and this was to the CIA -- "Cabezas claimed
that the contra cocaine operated with the knowledge oI, and
under the supervision oI, the CIA. Cabezas claimed that this
drug enterprise was run with the knowledge oI CIA agent Ivan
Gomez."
Now, this is one oI the stories that I tried to do at the Mercurv
News was who this man Ivan Gomez was. This was aIter my
original series came out, and aIter the controversy started. I went
back to Central America, and I Iound this Iellow Cabezas and he
told me all about Ivan Gomez. And I came back, I corroborated
it with three Iormer contra oIIicials. Mercurv News wouldn't put
it in the newspaper. And they said, "We have no evidence this
man even exists."
Well, the CIA Inspector General's report came out in October,
and there was a whole chapter on Ivan Gomez. And the amazing
thing was that Ivan Gomez admitted in a CIA-administered
polygraph test that he had been engaged in laundering drug
money the same month that this man told me he had been
engaged in it. CIA knew about it, and what did they do?
Nothing. They said okay, go back to work. And they covered it
up Ior IiIteen years.
So, the one thing that I've learned Irom this whole experience is,
Iirst oI all, you can't believe the government -- on anvthing. And
you especiallv can't believe them when they're talking about
important stuII, like this stuII. The other thing is that the media
will believe the government beIore they believe anvthing.
This has been the most amazing thing to me. You had a situation
where you had another newspaper who reported this
inIormation. The major news organizations in this country went
to the CIA, they went to the Justice Department, and they said,
what about it? And they said, oh, no, it's not true. Take our word
Ior it. And they went back and put it in the newspaper! Now, I
try to imagine what would happen had reporters come back to
their editors and said, look, I know the CIA is involved in drug
traIIicking. And I know the FBI knows about it, and I've got a
conIidential source that's telling me that. Can I write a story
about that? What do you think the answer would have been?
|Murmurs oI "no" Irom the audience.| Get back down to the obit
desk. Start cranking out those sports scores. But, iI they go to
the government and the government denies something like that,
they'll put it in the paper with no corroboration whatsoever.
And it's only since the government has admitted it that now the
media is willing to consider that there might be a story here aIter
all. The New York Times, aIter the CIA report that came out, ran
a story on its Iront page saying, gosh, the contras were involved
in drugs aIter all, and gosh, the CIA knew about it.
Now you would think -- at least I would think -- that something
like that would warrant Congressional investigation. We're
spending millions oI dollars to Iind out how many times Bill
Clinton had sex with Monica Lewinsky. Why aren't we
interested in how much the CIA knew about drug traIIic? Who
was proIiting Irom this drug traIIic? Who else knew about it?
And why did it take some guy Irom a CaliIornia newspaper by
accident stumbling over this stuII ten years later in order Ior it to
be important? I mean, what the hell is going on here? I've been a
reporter Ior almost twenty years. To me, this is a natural story.
The CIA is involved in drug traIIicking? Let's know about it.
Let's Iind out about it. Let's do something about it. Nobody
wants to touch this thing.
And the other thing that came out just recently, which nobody
seems to know about, because it hasn't been reported -- the CIA
Inspector General went beIore Congress in March and testiIied
that yes, they knew about it. They Iound some documents that
indicated that they knew about it, yeah. I was there, and this was
Iunny to watch, because these Congressmen were up there, and
they were ready to hear the absolution, right? "We had no
evidence that this was going on..." And this guy sort oI threw
'em a curve ball and admitted that it had happened.
One oI the people said, well geez, what was the CIA's
responsibility when they Iound out about this? What were you
guys supposed to do? And the Inspector General sort oI looked
around nervously, cleared his throat and said, "Well... that's kind
oI an odd history there." And Norman Dix Irom Washington,
bless his heart, didn't let it go at that. He said, "Explain what you
mean by that?" And the Inspector General said, well, we were
looking around and we Iound this document, and according to
the document, we didn't have to report this to anybody. And they
said, "How come?" And the IG said, we don't know exactly, but
there was an agreement made in 1982 between Bill Casey -- a
Iine American, as we all know |laughter Irom the audience| --
and William French Smith, who was then the Attorney General
oI the United States. And they reached an agreement that said iI
there is drug traIIicking involved by CIA agents, we don't have
to tell the Justice Department. Honest to God. Honest to God.
Actually, this is now a public record, this document. Maxine
Waters just got copies oI it, she's putting it on the Congressional
Record. It is now on the CIA's web site, iI you care to journey
into that area. II you do, check out the CIA Web Site Ior Kids,
it's great, I love it. |Laugher Irom the audience.| I kid you not,
they've actually got a web page Ior kids.
The other thing about this agreement was, this wasn't just like a
thirty-day agreement -- this thing stayed in eIIect Irom 1982
until 1995. So all these years, these agencies had a gentleman's
agreement that iI CIA assets or CIA agents were involved in
drug traIIicking, it did not need to be reported to the Justice
Department.
So I think that eliminates any questions that drug traIIicking by
the contras was an accident, or was a matter oI just a Iew rotten
apples. I think what this said was that it was anticipated by the
Justice Department, it was anticipated by the CIA, and steps
were taken to ensure that there was a loophole in the law, so that
iI it ever became public knowledge, nobody would be
prosecuted Ior it.
The other thing is, when George Bush pardoned -- remember
those Christmas pardons that he handed out when he was on his
way out the door a Iew years ago? The media Iocused on old
Caspar Weinberger, got pardoned, it was terrible. Well, iI you
looked down the list oI names at the other pardons he handed
out, there was a guy named Claire George, there was a guy
named Al Fiers, there was another guy named Joe Fernandez.
And these stories sort oI brushed them oII and said, well, they
were CIA oIIicials, we're not going to say much more about it.
These were the CIA oIIicials who were responsible Ior the
contra war. These were the men who were running the contra
operation. And the text oI Bush's pardon not only pardons them
Ior the crimes oI Iran-contra, it pardons them Ior evervthing. So,
now that we know about it, we can't even do anything about it.
They all received presidential pardons.
So where does that leave us? Well, I think it sort oI leaves us to
rely on the judgment oI history. But that is a dangerous step. We
didn't know about this stuII two years ago; we know about it
now. We've got Congressmen who are no longer willing to
believe that CIA agents are "honorable men," as William Colby
called them. And we've got approximately a thousand pages oI
evidence oI CIA drug traIIicking on the public record Iinally.
That said, let me tell you, there are thousands oI pages more that
we still don't know about. The CIA report that came out in
October was originally 600 pages; by the time we got ahold oI
it, it was only 300 pages.
One last thing I want to mention -- Bob Parry, who is a Iine
investigative reporter, he runs a magazine in Washington called
I.F. Maga:ine, and he's got a great website, check it out -- he did
a story about two weeks ago about some oI the stuII that was
contained in the CIA report that we didnt get to see. And one oI
the stories he wrote was about how there was a second CIA drug
ring in South Central Los Angeles that ran Irom 1988 to 1991.
This was not even the one I wrote about. There was another one
there. This was classiIied.
The interesting thing is, it was run by a CIA agent who had
participated in the contra war, and the reason it was classiIied is
because it is under investigation by the CIA. I doubt very
seriously that we'll ever hear another word about that.
But the one thing that we can do, and the one thing that Maxine
Waters is trying to do, is Iorce the House Intelligence Committee
to hold hearings on this. This is supposed to be the oversight
committee oI the CIA. They have held one hearing, and aIter
they Iound out there was this deal that they didn't have to report
drug traIIicking, they all ran out oI the room, they haven't
convened since.
So iI you're interested in pursuing this, the thing I would suggest
you do is, call up the House Intelligence Committee in
Washington and ask them when we're going to have another
CIA/contra/crack hearing. Believe me, it'll drive them crazy.
Send them email, just ask them, make sure -- they think
everybody's Iorgotten about this. I mean, iI you look around the
room tonight, I don't think it's been Iorgotten. They want us to
Iorget about it. They want us to concentrate on sex crimes,
because, yeah, it's titillating. It keeps us occupied. It keeps us
diverted. Don't let them do it.
Thanks very much Ior your attention, I appreciate it. We'll do
questions and answers now Ior as long as you want.
|Robust applause.|
Question and Answer Session
Gary Webb: I've been instructed to repeat the question, so...
Voice From the Audience: You talked about George Bush
pardoning people. Given George Bush's history with the CIA, do
you know when he Iirst knew about this, and what he knew?
Gary Webb: Well, I didn't at the time I wrote the book, I do
now. The question was, when did George Bush Iirst know about
this? The CIA, in its latest report, said that they had prepared a
detailed brieIing Ior the vice president -- I think it was 1985? --
on all these allegations oI contra drug traIIicking and delivered it
to him personally. So, it's hard Ior George to say he was out oI
the loop on this one.
I'll tell you another thing, one oI the most amazing things I
Iound in the National Archives was a report that had been
written by the U.S. Attorney's OIIice in Tampa -- I believe it was
1987. They had just busted a Colombian drug traIIicker named
Allen Rudd, and they were using him as a cooperating witness.
Rudd agreed to go undercover and set up other drug traIIickers,
and they were debrieIing him.
Now, let me set the stage Ior you. When you are being debrieIed
by the Iederal government Ior use as an inIormant, you're not
going to go in there and tell them crazy-sounding stories,
because they're not going to believe you, they're going to slap
you in jail, right? What Rudd told them was, that he was
involved in a meeting with Pablo Escobar, who was then the
head oI the Medellin cartel. They were working out
arrangements to set up cocaine shipments into South Florida. He
said Escobar started ranting and raving about that damned
George Bush, and now he's got that South Florida Drug Task
Force set up which has really been making things diIIicult, and
the man's a traitor. And he used to deal with us, but now he
wants to be president and thinks that he's double-crossing us.
And Rudd said, well, what are you talking about? And Escobar
said, we made a deal with that guy, that we were going to ship
weapons to the contras, they were in there Ilying weapons down
to Columbia, we were unloading weapons, we were getting them
to the contras, and the deal was, we were supposed to get our
stuII to the United States without any problems. And that was
the deal that we made. And now he double-crossed us.
So the U.S. Attorney heard this, and he wrote this panicky memo
to Washington saying, you know, this man has been very reliable
so Iar, everything he's told us has checked out, and now he's
saying that the Vice President oI the United States is involved
with drug traIIickers. We might want to check this out. And it
went all the way up -- the Iunny thing about government
documents is, whenever it passes over somebody's desk, they
have to initial it. And this thing was like a ladder, it went all the
way up and all the way up, and it got up to the head oI the
Criminal Division at the Justice Department, and he looked at it
and said, looks like a job Ior Lawrence Walsh! And so he sent it
over to Walsh, the Iran-contra prosecutor, and he said, here, you
take it, vou deal with this. And Walsh's oIIice -- I interviewed
Walsh, and he said, we didn't have the authority to deal with
that. We were looking at Ollie North. So I said, did anybody
investigate this? And the answer was, "no." And that thing sat in
the National Archives Ior ten years, nobody ever looked at it.
Voice From the Audience: Is that in your book?
Gary Webb: Yeah.
Voice From the Audience: Thank you.
Audience Member #1: Well, Iirst oI all, I'd like to thank you Ior
pursuing this story, you have a lot oI guts to do it.
|Applause Irom the audience.|
Gary Webb: This is what reporters are supposed to do. This is
what reporters are supposed to do. I don't think I was doing
anything special.
Audience Member #1: Still, there's not too many guys like you
that are doing it.
Gary Webb: That's true, they've all still got jobs.
|Laughter, scattered applause.|
Audience Member #1: I just had a couple oI questions, the Iirst
one is, I Iollowed the story on the web site, and I thought it was
a really great story, it was really well done. And I noticed that
the San Jose Mercurv News seemed to support you Ior a while,
and then all the sudden that support collapsed. So I was
wondering what your relationship is with your editor there, and
how that all played out, and when they all pulled out the rug
Irom under you.
Gary Webb: Well, the support collapsed probably aIter the LA
Times... The Washington [Post] came out Iirst, the New York
Times came out second, and the LA Times came out third, and
they started getting nervous. There's a phenomenon in the media
we all know, it's called "piling on," and they started seeing
themselves getting piled on. They sent me back down to Central
America two more times to do more reporting and I came back
with stories that were even more outrageous than what they
printed in the newspaper the first time. And they were Iaced with
a situation oI, now we're accusing Oliver North oI being
involved in drug traIIicking. Now we're accusing the Justice
Department oI being part and parcel to this. Geez, iI we get beat
up over accusing a couple oI CIA agents oI being involved in
this, what the hell is going to happen now? And they actually
said, I had memos saying, you know, iI we run these stories,
there is going to be a Iirestorm oI criticism.
So, I think they took the easy way out. The easy way out was not
to go ahead and do the story. It was to back oII the story. But
they had a problem, because the story was true. And it isn't
every day that you're conIronted with how to take a dive on a
true story.
They spent several months -- honestly, literally, because I was
getting these draIts back and Iorth -- trying to Iigure out how to
say, we don't support this story, even though it's true. And iI you
go back and you read the editor's column, you'll see that the
great diIIiculty that he had trying to take a dive on this thing.
And he ended up talking about "gray areas" that should have
been explored a little more and "subtleties" that we should have
not brushed over so lightly, without disclosing the Iact that the
series had originally been Iour parts and they cut it to three
parts, because "nobody reads Iour part series' anymore." So, that
was one reason.
The other reason was, you know, one oI the things you learn
very quickly when you get into journalism is that there's saIety
in numbers. Editors don't like being out there on a limb all by
themselves. I remember very clearly going to press conIerences,
coming back, writing a story, sending it in, and my editor calling
up and saying, well gee, this isn't what AP wrote. Or, the
Chronicle just ran their story, and that's not what the Chronicle
wrote. And I'd say, "Fine. Good." And they said, no, we've got to
make it the same, we don't want to be diIIerent. We don't want
our story to be diIIerent Irom everybody else's.
And so what they were seeing at the Mercurv was, the Big Three
newspapers were sitting on one side oI the Ience, and they were
out there by themselves, and that just panicked the hell out oI
them. So, you have to understand newspaper mentality to
understand it a little bit, but it's not too hard to understand
cowardice, either. I think a lot oI that was that they were just
scared as hell to go ahead with the story.
Audience Member #1: Were they able to look you in the eye,
and...
Gary Webb: No. They didn't, they just did this over the phone. I
went to Sacramento.
Audience Member #1: When did you Iind out about it, and
what did you...
Gary Webb: Oh, they called me up at home, two months aIter I
turned in my last Iour stories, and said, we're going to write a
column saying, you know, we're not going ahead with this. And
that's when I jumped in the car and drove up there and said,
what the hell's going on? And I got all these mealy-mouthed
answers, you know, geez, gray areas, subtleties, one thing or
another... But I said, tell me one thing that's wrong with the
story, and nobody could ever point to anything. And today, to
this day, nobody has ever said there was a Iactual error in that
story.
Inaudible question from the audience.]
Gary Webb: The question was, the editors are one thing, what
about the readers? Um... who cares about the readers? Honestly.
The reader's don't run the newspaper.
Another inaudible question from the audience regarding
letters to the editor and boycotts of the newspaper.]
Gary Webb: Well, a number oI them did, and believe me, the
newspaper oIIice was Ilooded with calls and emails. And the
newspaper, to their credit, printed a bunch oI them, calling it the
most cowardly thing they'd ever seen. But in the long run, the
readers, you know, don't run the place. And that's the thing about
newspaper markets these days. You Iolks really don't have any
choice! What else are you going to read? And the editors know
this.
When I started in this business, we had two newspapers in town
where I worked in Cincinnati. And we were deathly aIraid that iI
we sat on a story Ior 24 hours, the Cincinnati Inquirer was going
to put it in the paper, and we were going to look like dopes. We
were going to look like we were covering stuII up, we were
going to look like we were protecting somebody. So we were
putting stuII in the paper without thinking about it sometimes,
but we got it in the paper. Now, we can sit on stuII Ior months,
who's going to Iind out about it? And even iI somebody Iound
out about it, what are they going to do? That's the big danger
that everybody has sort oI missed. These one-newspaper towns,
you've got no choice. You've got no choice. And television?
Television's not going to do it. I mean, they're down Iilming
animals at the zoo!
|Laughter and applause.|
Audience Member #2: I assume you have talked to John
Cummings, the one that wrote Compromised, that book?
Gary Webb: I talked to Terry Reed, who was the principal
author on that, yeah.
Audience Member #2: Well, that was a well-documented book,
and I had just Iinished reading this when I happened to look
down and see the headlines on the Sunday paper. And he stated
that Oliver North told him personally that he was a CIA asset
that manuIactured weapons.
Gary Webb: Right.
Audience Member #2: When he discovered that they were
importing cocaine, he got out oI there. And they chased him
with his Iamily across country Ior two years trying to catch him.
But he had said in that book that Oliver North told him that Vice
President Bush told Oliver North to dirty Clinton's men with the
drug money. Which I assumed was what Whitewater was all
about, was Iinding the laundering and trying to Iind something
on Clinton. Do you know anything about that?
Gary Webb: Yeah, let me sum up your question. Essentially,
you're asking about the goings-on in Mena, Arkansas, because oI
the drug operations going on at this little air base in Arkansas
while Clinton was governor down there. The Iellow you reIerred
to, Terry Reed, wrote a book called Compromised which talked
about his role in this corporate operation in Mena which was
initially designed to train contra pilots -- Reed was a pilot -- and
it was also designed aIter the Boland Amendment went into
eIIect to get weapons parts to the contras, because the CIA
couldn't provide them anymore. And as Reed got into this
weapons parts business, he discovered that the CIA was shipping
cocaine back through these weapons crates that were coming
back into the United States. And when he blew the whistle on it,
he was sort oI sent on this long odyssey oI criminal charges
being Iiled against him, etcetera etcetera etcetera. A lot oI what
Reed wrote is accurate as Iar as I can tell, and a lot oI it was
documented.
There is a House Banking Committee investigation that has been
going on now Ior about three years, looking speciIically at
Mena, Arkansas, looking speciIically at a drug traIIicker named
Barry Seal, who was one oI the biggest cocaine and marijuana
importers in the south side oI the United States during the 1980s.
Seal was also, coincidentally, working Ior the CIA, and was
working Ior the Drug EnIorcement Administration.
I don't know how many oI you remember this, but one night
Ronnie Reagan got on TV and held up a grainy picture, and said,
here's prooI that the Sandanistas are dealing drugs. Look, here's
Pablo Escobar, and they're all loading cocaine into a plane, and
this was taken in Nicaragua. This was the eve oI a vote on the
contra aid. That photograph was set up by Barry Seal. The plane
that was used was Seal's plane, and it was the same plane that
was shot down over Nicaragua a couple oI years later that
Eugene HasenIus was in, that broke open the whole Iran-contra
scandal.
The Banking Committee is supposed to be coming out with a
report in the next couple oI months looking at the relationship
between Barry Seal, the U.S. government and Clinton's Iolks.
Alex Cockburn has done a number oI stories on this company
called Park-On Meter down in Russellville, Arkansas, that's
hooked up with Clinton's Iamily, hooked up with Hillary's law
Iirm, that sort oI thing. To me, that's a story people ought to be
looking at. I never thought Whitewater was much oI a story,
Irankly. What I thought the story was about was Clinton's buddy
Dan Lasater, the bond broker down there who was a convicted
cocaine traIIicker. Clinton pardoned him on his way to
Washington. Lasater was a major drug traIIicker, and Terry
Reed's book claims Lasater was part and parcel with this whole
thing.
Voice From the Audience: Cockburn's newsletter is called
Counterpunch, and he's done a good job oI deIending you in it.
Gary Webb: Yeah, Cockburn has also written a book called
Whiteout, which is a very interesting look at the history oI CIA
drug traIIicking. Actually, I think it's selling pretty well itselI.
The New York Times hated it, oI course, but what else is new?
Audience Member #2: Well I just wanted to mention that he
states also -- I guess it was Terry Reed who was actually doing
the work -- he said Bush was running the whole thing as vice
president.
Gary Webb: I think that George Bush's role in this whole thing
is one oI the large unexplored areas oI it.
Audience Member #2: Which is why I think Reagan put him in
as vice president, because oI his position with the CIA.
Gary Webb: Well, you know, that whole South Florida Drug
Task Force was full oI CIA operatives. Full oI them. This was
supposed to be our vanguard in the war against cocaine cartels,
and iI those Colombians are to be believed, this was the vehicle
that we were using to ship arms and allow cocaine into the
country, this Drug Task Force. Nobody's looked at that. But
there are lots oI clues that there's a lot to be dug out.
Audience Member #3: Thank you, Gary. I lost my Ieature
columnist position at my college paper Ior writing a satire oI
Christianity some years ago, and...
Gary Webb: That'll do it, yeah. |Laughter Irom the audience.|
Audience Member #3: And I lost my job twice in the last Iive
years because oI my activism in the community, but I got a job
|inaudible|. But my question is, I knew someone in the mid-'80s
who said that he was in the Navy, and that he had inIormation
that the Navy was involved in delivering cocaine to this country.
Another kind oI bombshell, I'd like to have you comment on it, I
saw a video some years ago that said the UFO research that's
being done down in the southwest is being Iunded by drug
money and cocaine dealings by the CIA, and that there are 25
top secret levels oI government above the Top Secret category,
and that there are some levels that even the president doesn't
know about. So there's another topic Ior another book, I just
wanted to have you comment...
Gary Webb: A number of topics Ior another book. |Laughter
Irom the audience.| I don't know about the UFO research, but I
do know you're right that we have very little idea how vast the
intelligence community in this country is, or what they're up to. I
think there's a great story brewing -- it's called the ECHELON
program, and it involves the sharing oI eavesdropped emails and
cell phone communications, because it is illegal Ior them to do it
in this country. So they've been going to New Zealand and
Australia and Canada and having those governments eavesdrop
on our conversations and tell us about it. I've read a couple oI
stories about it in the English press, and I read a couple oI
stories about it in the Canadian press, but I've seen precious little
in the American press. But there's stuII on the Internet that
circulates about that, iI you're interested in the topic. I think it's
called the ECHELON program.
Audience Member #4: I'm glad you brought up James Burke
and his Connections, because there are a lot oI connections here.
One I didn't hear too much about, and I know you've done a lot
oI research on, was how computers and high tech was used by
the Crips and Bloods early on. I lived in south LA prior to this,
knew some oI these people, and you're right, they had virtually
no education. And to suddenly have an operation that's computer
literate, riding out oI BakersIield, Fresno, on north and then east
in a very quick period -- I'm still learning the computer, I'm
probably as old as you are, or older -- so I'd like to hear
something on that. The whole dislocation oI south LA that
occurred -- the Watts Festival, the whole empowerment oI the
black community was occurring beginning in the late '60s and
into the early '70s and mid-'70s, and then collapses into a sea oI
Ilipping demographics, and suddenly by 1990 it is El
Salvadoran-dominated. And that's another curious part oI this
equation as we talk about drugs.
Gary Webb: Well, that's quite a bevy oI things there. As Iar as
the sophistication oI the Crips and the Bloods, the one thing that
I probably should have mentioned was that when Danilo
Blandon went down to South Central to start selling this dope,
he had an M.B.A. in marketing. So he knew what he was doing.
His job Ior the Somoza government was setting up wholesale
markets Ior agricultural products. He'd received an M.B.A.
thanks to us, actually -- we helped Iinance him, we helped send
him to the University oI Bogata to get his M.B.A. so he could go
back to Nicaragua, and he actually came to the United States to
sell dope to the gangs. So this was a very sophisticated
operation.
One oI the money launderers Irom this group was a macro-
economist -- his uncle, Orlando Murillo, was on the Central
Bank oI Nicaragua. The weapons advisor they had was a guy
who'd been a cop Ior IiIteen years. They had another weapons
advisor who had been a Navy SEAL. You don't get these kinds
oI people by putting ads in the paper. This is not a drug ring that
just sort oI Ialls together by chance. This is like an all-star game.
Which is why I suspect more and more that this thing was set up
by a higher authority than a couple oI drug dealers.
Audience Member #5: Hi Gary, I just want to thank you Ior
going against the traIIic on this whole deal. I'm in the journalism
school up at U. oI O., and I'm interested in the story behind the
story. I was hoping you could share some anecdotes about the
kind oI activity that you engaged in to get the story. For
example, when you get oII a plane in Nicaragua, what do you
do? Where do you start? How do you talk to "Freeway" Ricky?
How do you go against a government stonewall?
Gary Webb: The question is, how do you do a story like this,
essentially. Well, thing I've always Iound is, iI you go knock on
somebody's door, they're a lot less apt to slam it in your Iace
than iI you call them up on the telephone. So, the reason I went
down to Nicaragua was to go knock on doors. I didn't go down
there and just step oII a plane -- I Iound a Iellow down in
Nicaragua and we hired him as a stringer, a Iellow named
George Hidell who is a marvelous investigative reporter, he
knew all sorts oI government oIIicials down there. And I speak
no Spanish, which was another handicap. George speaks like
Iour languages. So, you Iind people like that to help you out.
With these drug dealers, you know, it's amazing how willing
they are to talk. I did a series while I was in Kentucky on
organized crime in the coal industry. And it was about this mass
oI stock swindlers who had looted Wall Street back in the '60s
and moved down to Kentucky in the '70s while the coal boom
was going on, during the energy shortage. The lesson I learned
in that thing -- I thought these guys would never talk to me, I
Iigured they'd be crazy to talk to a reporter about the scams they
were pulling. But they were happv to talk about it, they were
flattered that you would come to them and say, hey, tell me
about what you do. Tell me your greatest knock-oII. Those guys
would go on Iorever! So, you know, everybody, no matter what
they do, they sort oI have pride in their work... |Laughter Irom
the audience.| And, you know, I Iound that when you appeared
interested, they would be happy to tell you.
The people who lied to me, the people who slammed doors in
my Iace, were the DEA and the FBI. The DEA called me down
-- I wrote about this in the book -- they had a meeting, and they
were telling me that iI I wrote this story, I was going to help
drug traIIickers bring drugs into the country, and I was going to
get DEA agents killed, and this, that and the other thing, all oI
which was utterly bullshit. So that's the thing -- just ask. There's
really no secret to it.
Audience Member #6: I'd like to ask a couple oI questions very
quickly. The Iirst one is, iI you wouldn't mind being a reIerence
librarian Ior a moment -- there was the Golden Triangle. I was
just wondering iI you've ever, in your curiosity about this,
touched on that -- the drug rings and the heroin trade out oI
Southeast Asia. And the second one is about the Iellow Irom the
Houston Chronicle, I don't remember his name right oII, but you
know who I'm talking about, iI you could just touch on that a
little bit...
Gary Webb: Yes. The Iirst question was about whether I ever
touched on what was going on in the Golden Triangle.
Fortunately, I didn't have to -- there's a great book called The
Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, by AlIred McCoy, which is
sort oI a classic in CIA drug traIIicking lore. I don't think you
can get any better than that. That's a great reIerence in the
library, you can go check it out. McCoy was a proIessor at the
University oI Wisconsin who went to Laos during the time that
the secret war in Laos was going on, and he wrote about how the
CIA was Ilying heroin out on Air America. That's the thing that
really surprised me about the reaction to my story was, it's not
like I invented this stuII. There's a long, long history oI CIA
involvement in drug traIIic which Cockburn gets into in
Whiteout.
And the second question was about Pete Brewton -- there was a
reporter in Houston Ior the Houston Post named Pete Brewton
who did the series -- I think it was '91 or '92 -- on the strange
connections between the S&L collapses, particularly in Texas,
and CIA agents. And his theory was that a lot oI these collapses
were not mismanagement, they were intentional. These things
were looted, with the idea that a lot oI the money was siphoned
oII to Iund covert operations overseas. And Brewton wrote this
series, and it was Iunny, because aIter all hell broke loose on my
story, I called him up, and he said, "Well, I was waiting Ior this
to happen to you." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "I was
exactly like you are. I'd been in this business Ior twenty years,
I'd won all sorts oI awards, I'd lectured in college journalism
courses, and I wrote a series that had these three little letters C-I-
A in it. And suddenly I was unreliable, and I couldn't be trusted,
and Reed Irvine at Accuracy In Media was writing nasty things
about me, and my editor had lost conIidence in me, so I quit the
business and went to law school."
Brewton wrote a book called George Bush, CIA and the Mafia.
It's hard to Iind, but it's worth looking up iI you can Iind it. It's
all there, it's all documented. See, the diIIerence between his
story and my story was, we put ours out on the web, and it got
out. Brewton's story is sort oI conIined to the printed page, and I
think the Washington Journalism Review actually wrote a story
about, how come nobody's writing about this, nobody's picking
up this story. Nobody touched this story, it just sort oI died. And
the same thing would have happened with my series, had we not
had this amazing web page. Thank God we did, or this thing
would have just slipped underneath the waves, and nobody
would have ever heard about it.
Audience Member #7: I'm glad you're here. I guess the CIA,
there was something I read in the paper a couple oI years ago,
that said the CIA is actually murdering people, and they
admitted it, they don't usually do that.
Gary Webb: It's a new burst oI honesty Irom the new CIA.
Audience Member #7: They'll murder us with kindness. In the
Chicago police Iorce, there were about 10 oIIicers who were
kicked oII the police Iorce Ior doing drugs or selling drugs, and
George Bush or something... I heard that he had a buddy who
had a lot oI money in drug testing equipment, so that's one
reason everybody has to pee in a cup now... |Laughter Irom the
audience.| The other thing I Iound, there was a meth lab close to
here, and somebody who wasn't even involved with it, he was
paralyzed... And as you know, we have the "Just Say No to
Drugs" deal... What do you think we can do to stop us, the
People, Irom being hypnotized once again Irom all these
shenanigans, doing other people injury in terms oI these kinds oI
messages, at the same time they're selling. Because all this
money is being spent Ior all this...
Gary Webb: I guess the question is, what could you do to keep
Irom being hypnotized by the media message, speciIically on the
Drug War? Is that what you're talking about?
Audience Member #7: Yeah, or all the Iunds... like, there's
another thing here with the meth lab, they say we'll kind oI turn
people in...
Gary Webb: Oh yeah, the nation oI inIormers.
Audience Member #7: Yeah.
Gary Webb: That's something I have to laugh about -- up until I
think '75 or '76, probably even later than that, you could go to
your doctor and get methamphetamine. I mean, there were
housewives by the hundreds oI thousands across the United
States who were taking it every day to lose weight, and now all
the sudden it was the worst thing on the Iace oI the earth. That's
one thing I got into in the book, was the sort oI crack hysteria in
1986 that prompted all these crazy laws that are still on the
books today, and the 100:1 sentencing ratio... I don't know how
many oI you saw, on PBS a couple oI nights back, there was a
great show on inIormants called "Snitch." |Murmurs oI
recognition Irom the audience.| Yeah, on Frontline. That was
very heartening to see, because I don't think ten years ago that it
would have stood a chance in hell oI getting on the air.
What I'm seeing now is that a lot oI people are Iinally waking up
to the idea that this "drug war" has been a Iraud since the get-go.
My personal opinion is, I think the main purpose oI this whole
drug war was to sort oI erode civil liberties, very slowly and
very gradually, and sort oI put us down into a police state.
|Robust burst oI applause Irom the audience.| And we're pretty
close to that. I've got to hand it to them, they've done a good job.
We have no Fourth Amendment leIt anymore, we're all peeing in
cups, and we're all doing all sorts oI things that our parents
probably would have marched in the streets about.
The solution to that is to read something other than the daily
newspaper, and turn oII the TV news. I mean, I'm sorry, I hate to
say that, but that's mind-rot. You've got to Iind alternative
sources oI inIormation. |Robust applause.|
Voice From the Audience: How can you say that it was all a
chain reaction, that it was not done deliberately, and on the other
hand say it has at the same time deliberately eroded our rights?
Gary Webb: Well, the question was, how can I say on one hand
it was a chain reaction, and on the other hand say the drug war
was set up deliberately to erode our rights. I mean, you're talking
about sort oI macro versus micro. And I do not give the CIA that
much credit, that they could plan these vast conspiracies down
through the ages and have them work -- most oI them don't.
What I'm saying is, you have police groups, you have police
lobbying groups, you have prison guard groups -- they seize
opportunities when they come along. The Drug War has given
them a lot oI opportunities to say, okay, now let's lengthen
prison sentences. Why? Well, because iI you keep people in jail
longer, you need more prison guards. Let's build more prisons.
Why? Well, people get jobs, prison guards get jobs. The police
stay in business. We need to Iund more oI them. We need to give
bigger budgets to the correctional Iacilities. This is all very
conscious, but I don't think anybody sat in a room in 1974 and
said, okay, by 1995, we're going to have X number oI Americans
locked up or under parole supervision. I don't think they mind --
you know, I think they like that. But I don't think it was a
conscious eIIort. I think it was just one bad idea, aIter another
bad idea, compounded with a stupid idea, compounded with a
reallv stupid idea. And here we are. So I don't know iI that
answers your question or not...
Audience Member #8: To me, the Iran-contra story was one oI
the most interesting and totally Irustrating things. And the more
inIormation, the more about it I heard -- we don't know anything
about it, I mean, iI you look Ior any oIIicial data, they deny
everything. And to see Ollie North, the upstanding blue-eyed
American, standing there lying through his teeth, and we knew
it... |Inaudible comment, "beIore Congress and the President"?|
What galls me is that these people who are guilty oI high crimes
and misdemeanors are now getting these enormous pensions,
and we have to pay Ior these bums. It sickens me!
Gary Webb: Right.
Audience Member #8: And I actually have a question -- this is
my question, by the way, I know you have a thousand other
questions |laughter Irom the audience| -- but the one that stays
with me, and has always bothered me, was the Christic Institute,
and I thought it was Iantastic. And they were hit with this
enormous lawsuit, and they had to bail out. This needs to be
|"rehired"?| because they knew what they were doing, they had
all the right answers, and they were run out oI oIIice, so to say,
in disgrace, because oI this lawsuit.
Gary Webb: The question was about the Christic Institute, and
about how the Iran-contra controversy is probably one oI the
worst scandals. I agree with you, I think the Iran-contra scandal
was worse than Watergate, far worse than this nonsense we're
doing now. But I'll tell you, I think the press played a very big
part in downplaying that scandal. One oI the people I
interviewed Ior the book was a woman named Pam Naughton,
who was one oI the best prosecutors that the Iran-contra
committee had. And I asked her, why -- you know, it was also
the Iirst scandal that was televised, and I remember watching
them at night. I would go to work and I'd set the VCR, and I'd
come home at night and I'd watch the hearings. Then I'd pick up
the paper the next morning, and it was completelv diIIerent! And
I couldn't Iigure it out, and this has bothered me all these years.
So when I got Pam Naughton on the phone, I said, what the hell
happened to the press corps in Washington during the Iran-
contra scandal? And she said, well, I can tell you what I saw.
She said, every day, we would come out at the start oI this
hearings, and we would lay out a stack oI documents -- all the
exhibits we were going to introduce -- stuII that she thought was
extremelv incriminating, Iront page story aIter Iront page story,
and they'd sit them on a table. And she said, every day the press
corps would come in, and they'd say hi, how're you doing, blah
blah blah, and they'd go sit down in the Iront row and start
talking about, you know, did you see the ball game last night,
and what they saw on Johnny Carson. And she said one or two
reporters would go up and get their stack oI documents and go
back and write about it, and everybody else sat in the Iront row,
and they would sit and say, okay, what's our story today? And
they would all agree what the story was, and they'd go back and
write it. Most oI them never even looked at the exhibits.
And that's why I say it was the press's Iault, because there was
so much stuII that came out oI those hearings. That used to just
drive me crazy, you would never see it in the newspaper. And I
don't think it's a conspiracy -- iI anything, it's a conspiracy oI
stupidity and laziness. I talked to Bob Parry about this -- when
he was working Ior Newsweek covering Iran-contra, they weren't
even letting him go to the hearings. He had to get transcripts
messengered to him at his house secretly, so his editors wouldn't
Iind out he was actually reading the transcripts, because he was
writing stories that were so diIIerent Irom everybody else's.
Bob Parry tells a story oI being at a dinner party with Bobby
Inman Irom the CIA, the editor oI Newsweek, and all the
muckity-mucks -- this was his big introduction into Washington
society. And they were sitting at the dinner table in the midst oI
the Iran-contra thing, talking about everything but Iran-contra.
And Bob said he had the bad taste oI bringing up the Iran-contra
hearing and mentioning one particularly bad aspect oI it. And he
said, the editor oI Newsweek looked at him and said, "You know,
Bob, there are just some things that it's better the country just
doesn't know about." And all these admirals and generals sitting
around the table all nodded their heads in agreement, and they
wanted to talk about something else.
That's the attitude. That's the attitude in Washington. And that's
the attitude oI the Washington press corps, and nowadays it's
even worse than that, because now, iI you play the game right,
you get a TV show. Now you've got the McLaughlin Group.
Now you get your mug on CNN. You know. And that's how they
keep them in line. II you're a rabble rouser, and a shit-stirrer,
they don't want your type on television. They want the pundits.
The other question was about the Christic Institute. They had it
all Iigured out. The Christic Institute had this thing Iigured out.
They Iiled suit in May oI 1986, alleging that the Reagan
administration, the CIA, this sort oI parallel government was
going on. Oliver North was involved in it, you had the Bay oI
Pigs Cubans that were involved in it down in Costa Rica, they
had names, they had dates, and they got murdered. And the
Reagan administration's line was, they're a bunch oI leIt-wing
liberal crazies, this was conspiracy theory. II you want to see
what they reallv thought, go to Oliver North's diaries, which are
public -- the National Security Archive has got them, you can
get them -- all he was writing about, aIter the Christic Institute's
suit was Iiled, was how we've got to shut this thing down, how
we have to discredit these witnesses, how we've got to get this
guy set up, how we've got to get this guy out oI the country...
They knew that the Christic Institute was right, and they were
deathly aIraid that the American public was going to Iind out
about it.
I am convinced that the judge who was hearing the case was part
and parcel to the problem. He threw the case out oI court and
Iined the Christic Institute, I think it was $1.3 million, for even
bringing the lawsuit. It was deemed "Irivolous litigation." And it
Iinally bankrupted them. And they went away.
But that's the problem when you try to take on the government
in its own arena, and the Iederal courts are definitelv part oI its
own arena. They make the rules. And in cases like that, you
don't stand a chance in hell, it won't happen.
Voice From the Audience: But iI you cannot get the truth in the
courts, iI you cannot write it in the papers, then what do you do?
Gary Webb: You do it yourselI. You do it yourselI. You've got
to start rebuilding an inIormation system on your own. And
that's what's going on. It's very small, but it's happening. People
are talking to each other through newsgroups on the Internet.
People are doing Internet newsletters.
Voice From the Audience: Do you have a website?
Emcee: Let's use the mike, let's use the mike.
Gary Webb: The question is, do I have a website. No, I don't,
but I'm building one.
Inaudible question from the audience.]
Gary Webb: Well, let's let these people who have been standing
in line...
|Commotion, murmuring. Someone calls out, "Please use the
mike."|
Audience Member #9: When you mentioned prisons a moment
ago, I couldn't help but remember that it is America's Iastest-
growing industry, the "prison industry" -- which is a hell oI a
phrase unto itselI. But it seems that the CIA had people aligned
throughout Central America at one point, and El Salvador, with
the contras, and in Honduras and Nicaragua, and in Panama,
Manuel Noriega...
Gary Webb: Our "man in Panama," that's right.
Audience Member #9: Yeah. But something went wrong with
him, and he got pinched in public. And I'm interested to know
what you think about that.
Gary Webb: The question is about Manuel Noriega, who was
our "man in Panama" Ior so many years. What happened to
Noriega is that -- I don't think it had anything to do with the Iact
that he was a drug traIIicker, because we knew that Ior years.
What it had to do with was what is going to happen at the end oI
this year, which is when control oI the Panama Canal goes over
to the Panamanians. II you read the New York Times story that
Seymour Hersh wrote back in June oI 1986 that exposed
Noriega publicly as a drug traIIicker and money launderer, there
were some very telling phrases in it. All unsourced, naturally,
you know -- unattributed comments Irom high-ranking
government oIIicials -- but they talked about how they were
nervous that Noriega had become unreliable. And with control
oI the Panama Canal reverting to the Panamanian government,
they were very nervous at the idea oI having somebody as
"unstable" as Noriega running the country at that point. And I
think that was a well-Iounded Iear. You've got a major drug
traIIicker controlling a major maritime thoroughway. I can see
the CIA being nervous about being cut out oI the business.
|Laughter Irom the audience.|
But I think that's what the whole thing with Noriega was about
-- they wanted him out oI there, because they wanted somebody
that they could control a little more closely in power in Panama
Ior when the canal gets reverted back to them.
Audience Member #9: Was there much oI a proIit diIIerence
between Nicaragua and Panama as Iar as the drugs went?
Gary Webb: Well, what Noriega had done was sort oI create an
international banking center Ior drug money. That was his part
oI it. Nicaragua was nothing ever than just a trans-shipment
point. Central America was never anything more than a trans-
shipment point. Columbia Peru and Bolivia were the producers,
and the planes needed a place to reIuel, and that's all that Central
America ever was. The banking was all done in Panama.
Audience Member #10: You talk about how they sat on their
stories, the newspapers? Why did they suddenly decide to
pursue the stories?
Gary Webb: Which stories are these?
Audience Member #10: The stories about the crack dealing and
the CIA. Why did they suddenly decide that, well, actually...
Gary Webb: The question was -- correct me iI I'm wrong -- the
question raised the Iact that the other newspapers didn't do
anything about this story Ior a while, and then aIter I wrote it
they came aIter me. Is that what you're asking?
Audience Member #10: Well, yeah, and then eventually the
CIA admitted it... and I mean, why are people asking, it sat Ior a
long time, and then suddenly everyone was on it. What was the
turning point that made them decide to pursue it?
Gary Webb: The turning point that made them decide to pursue
the story was the Iact that it had gotten out over the Internet, and
people were calling them up saying, why don't you have the
story in vour newspaper? You know, I don't think the subject
matter Irightened the major media as much as the Iact that a
little newspaper in Northern CaliIornia was able to set the
national agenda Ior once. And people were marching in the
streets, people were holding hearings in Washington, they were
demanding Congressional hearings, you had John Deutch, the
CIA director, go down on that surreal trip down to South Central
to convince everyone that everything was okay... |Laughter Irom
the audience.| And all oI this was happening without the big
media being involved in it at all. And the reason that happened
was because we had an outlet -- we had the web. And the people
at the Mercurv News did a Iantastic job on this website.
And so, news was marching on without them. There's a
proIessor at the University oI Wisconsin who's done a paper on
the whole "Dark Alliance" thing, and her thesis is that this story
was shut down more because oI how it got out than Ior what it
actually said. That it was an attempt by the major media to
regain control oI the Internet, and to suggest that unless thevre
the ones who are putting it out, it's unreliable. Which I think you
see in a lot oI stories. The mainstream press gladly promotes the
idea that you can't believe anything you read on the Internet, it's
all kooks, it's all conspiracy theorists... And there are, I mean, I
admit, there are a lot oI them out there, but it's not all Ialse. But
the idea that we're being taught is, unless it's got our name on it,
you can't believe it. So they can retain control oI the means oI
communication anyway.
Audience Member #11: You mentioned Iran-contra, which was
private Ioreign policy in deIiance oI Congress, which means it
was a high crime. From there, we get more drugs, we get erosion
oI civil liberties and the loss oI the Fourth Amendment, which
you mentioned. And we have to get that back, because without
it, we're just commodities to one another. So what I'd like to ask
you is, what are you working on now? And do you have your
own journalistic chain oI reaction? Are you going to be doing
something that connects back to this?
Gary Webb: The question is what am I doing now -- believe it
or not, I'm working Ior the government. |Laughter Irom the
audience.| I work Ior the CaliIornia legislature, and I do
investigations oI state agencies. I just wrote a piece Ior Esquire
magazine which should be out in April on another Iabulous DEA
program that they're running. Actually, part oI it's based here in
Oregon, called Operation Pipeline. That story is coming out in
April, and Esquire told me they want me to write more stuII Ior
them, they want me to do some investigative reporting Ior them,
so I'll be working Ior them. And I'm putting together another
book proposal, and a couple oI other things. I'm not going to
work Ior newspapers any more, I learned my lesson.
Audience Member #12: A year ago the editor oI your
newspaper was here to speak, sponsored by the University oI
Oregon School oI Journalism. BeIore I got up here, I took a
casual look around -- I don't know all oI the members oI the
journalism Iaculty, but I didn't recognize any. We did have a
student here who got up and asked a question. That leads to this
question: I'd like, iI you don't mind, to ask iI there is someone
Irom the University oI Oregon journalism Iaculty here, would
they mind being acknowledged and raising their hand?
Gary Webb: All right, there's one back there.
Audience Member #12: There is one. Okay. |Applause Irom
the audience.| I'm pleased to see it. There is that one person. My
point is, I think much oI what you've said this evening
constitutes an indictment -- and a valid indictment -- oI the
university journalism programs in this country. |Applause.|
Most Americans and I believe -- and I'm interested in your
reaction -- that it reinIorces that indictment when we see, to that
person's credit, that she is the only Iaculty member Irom our
school oI journalism to hear you tonight.
Gary Webb: I think the general question was about the state oI
the journalism schools. The one thing journalism schools don't
teach, by and large, is investigative reporting. They teach
stenography very well. That's why I consider most oI journalism
today to be stenography. You go to a press conIerence, you write
down the quotes accurately, you come back, you don't provide
any context, you don't provide any perspective, because that gets
into analysis, and heavens knows, we don't want any analvsis in
our newspapers.
But you report things accurately, you report things Iairly, and
even iI it's a lie you put it in the newspaper, and that's considered
journalism. I don't consider that journalism, I consider that
stenography. And that is the way they teach journalism in
school, that's the way I was taught. Unless you go to a very
diIIerent journalism school Irom the kinds that most kids go to,
that's what you're taught. Now, there are specialized journalism
schools, there are master's programs like the Kiplinger Program
at Ohio State, that's very good.
So, I'm not saying that all journalism schools are bad, but they
don't teach you to be journalists. They discourage you Irom
doing that, by and large. And I don't think it's the Iault oI the
journalism proIessors, I just think that's the way things have
been taught in this country Ior so long, that they just do it
automatically. I'd be interested in hearing the proIessor's
thoughts about it, but that's sort oI the way I look at things. I
spent way too many years in journalism school. I kind oI got
shed oI those notions aIter I got out in the real world.
End of transcript.]