By Rosalind Muhammad |
West Coast Bureau Chief
LOS ANGELES—New evidence has surfaced
linking the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to the introduction of crack
cocaine into Black neighborhoods with drug profits used to fund the
CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contra army in the early 1980s.
This evidence has given credence to long-held
suspicions of the U.S. government's role in undermining Black communities.
According to a series of groundbreaking reports
by the San Jose Mercury News,
for the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring,
comprised of CIA and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents and informants,
sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles.
Millions of dollars in drug profits were then
funneled to the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Democratic
Force), the largest of several anti-Communists commonly called the Contras.
The 5,000-man FDN was created in mid-1981 and run by both American and
Nicaraguan CIA agents in its losing war against Nicaragua's Sandinista
government, the Cuban-supported socialists who had overthrown U.S.-backed
dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
This CIA-backed drug network opened the first
pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartels and the Black neighborhoods of
Compton and Los Angeles, according to the Mercury News.
In time, the cocaine that flooded Los Angeles
helped spark a "crack explosion" in urban America and provided the cash and
connections needed for Los Angeles's gangs to buy Uzi sub-machine guns,
AK-47 rifles, and other assault weapons that would fuel deadly gang turf
wars, drive-by shootings, murders and robberies -- courtesy of the U.S.
government, according to the article.
"While the FDN's war is barely a memory today,
Black America is still dealing with its poisonous side effects. Urban
neighborhoods are grappling with legions of homeless crack addicts.
Thousands of young Black men are serving long prison sentences for selling
cocaine -- a drug that was virtually unobtainable in Black neighborhoods
before members of the CIA's army started bring it into South Central in the
1980s at bargain basement prices," wrote Mercury News reporter Gary
Webb, in the first installment of the shocking series of reports.
Although the Mercury News details the
activities of numerous Nicaraguan and American informants and ties involved
in the drug-gun trade, three men are cited as key players: Norwin Meneses, a
Nicaraguan smuggler and FDN boss; Danilo Blandon, a cocaine supplier, top
FDN civilian leader in California, and DEA informant; and Ricky Donnell
Ross, a South Central Los Angeles high school dropout and drug trafficker of
mythic proportions, who was Mr. Blandon's biggest customer.
According to the Mercury News article,
for the better part of a decade, "Freeway Rick," as he was nicknamed, was
unaware of his supplier's military and political connections.
But together, the trio was directly and
indirectly responsible for introducing and selling crack cocaine as far away
as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Dayton and St. Louis.
Ricky Ross' street connections, ability to
obtain cocaine at low prices and deals that allowed him to receive drugs
from Contra-CIA operatives with no money upfront helped him to undercut
other dealers and quickly spread crack. He also sold crack wholesale to
gangs across the country, said the Mercury News report.
Most of the information surrounding the CIA's
involvement in the crack trade came from testimony in the March drug
trafficking trial of Mr. Ross, 36, who, along with two other men were
convicted of cocaine conspiracy charges in San Diego.
A federal judge indefinitely postponed Mr.
Ross's Aug. 23 sentencing to grant his lawyer time to try to show that
federal authorities misused DEA agent Mr. Blandon to entrap Mr. Ross in a
"reverse" sting last year. Mr. Ross could receive life in prison without the
possibility of parole.
Records show that Mr. Ross was still behind
bars in Cincinnati in 1994, awaiting parole, when San Diego DEA agents
targeted him for the reverse sting-- one in which government agents provide
the drugs and the target provides the cash.
Though Mr. Blandon has admitted to crimes that
have sent others away for life, the U.S. Justice Department turned him loose
on unsupervised probation in 1994 after only 28 months behind bars and has
paid him more than $166,000 since, court records show.
Mr. Blandon's boss in the FDN's cocaine
operation, Norwin Meneses, has never spent a day in a U.S. prison, even
though the federal government has been aware of his cocaine dealings since
at least 1974, according to the Mercury News article.
For years, writers, authors, activists, gang
members and others have implicated the U.S. government in the deadly crack
cocaine-gun trade.
Many have charged the U.S. government with
supplying gang members with these tools in an effort to undermine and
eradicate the Black community through wanton murder, drug addiction and
crime.
Some believe crack did not become an "American
problem" until the drug began hitting white neighborhoods and affecting
white children.
On Aug. 23, the Los Angeles City Council,
responding to pressure by the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black American
Political Association of California (BAPAC), asked U.S. Atty. Janet Reno to
investigate the government's involvement in the alleged sale of illegal
street drugs in Los Angeles' Black community to support the CIA-backed
Contras.
BAPAC vice chairman Glen Brown told The
Final Call that a federal agency monitored by a civilian advisory board
is one way the government could investigate the matter because "we can't
have people who are responsible for this investigate themselves."
BAPAC, a statewide coalition of political
activists, has also demanded that the U.S. government provide the necessary
funding, materials and labor to rebuild urban areas destroyed by crack
cocaine, as well as the necessary medical care, education, counseling, and
vocational training to restore shattered lives.
Long-term Los Angeles activists Chilton
Alphonse, founder of the Community Youth Sports & Arts Foundation, which
aids former gang members, said he briefly assisted Ricky Ross when the drug
dealer was paroled from prison inn October 1994, after serving about half of
a 10-year prison sentence in Cincinnati in exchange for his testimony
against corrupt Los Angeles police detectives.
"He came back to Los Angeles and tried to get
his life together," Mr. Alphonse said. "Rick was a legend in the streets.
But he flipped (testified against law enforcement officers). He said they
used him to skim money from him."
Mr. Alphonse was referring to Mr. Ross's 1991
testimony against Los Angeles Police Department narcotics detectives who had
been fired or indicted along with dozens of deputies from the Los Angeles
County sheriff's elite narcotics squads for allegedly beating suspects,
stealing drug money and planting evidence.
Mr. Alphonse, who now resides in Alabama, said
he has warned for years that the flood of crack cocaine and assault weapons
into the Black community was not the doing of the Bloods and Crips.
"Inner city youth don't have the resources to
manufacture cocaine or ship in guns," Mr. Alphonse said.
Others agree.
In December 1989, while head of the NAACP Los
Angeles Chapter, Anthony A. Samad (then Anthony Essex) announced his
findings that some Bloods and Crips members had implicated the U.S.
government in the ruthless crack and assault weapons trade among Los Angeles
street gangs. Mr. Samad said that he learned this after extensive interviews
with gang members housed in Los Angeles County Jail. But he was largely
ignored by Black elected officials, he said who sided with law enforcement.
"Gang members charged then that gang rivalry
and drug wars were being perpetuated by the police and the government," said
Mr. Samad, who is now president of Samad & Associates, a consulting firm.
Henry Stuckey, of Stop the Violence/Increase
the Peace, said that government involvement in community drug trafficking
was common knowledge in some circles.
"Obviously African American males didn't have
planes and boats to move the guns and narcotics into the Black community."
Mr. Stuckey said.
Mr. Stuckey said that Black and Latino youths
must be appraised of the government's involvement in order to understand
that their communities will continue to be the dumping grounds for guns and
drugs unless the youths "do for self."
"I do think that the blame that was laid on the
gangs was wrong," Mr. Stuckey said. "But I can't say that it vindicates them
for their actions because they had a choice in the matter. (Still) it's
horrible that the government targeted our youth."
Roland Freeman, a spokesperson for the Los
Angeles Chapter of the International Campaign to Free Geronimo Pratt, is a
former member of the Black Panther Party. The BPP was targeted and
ultimately nullified by FBI counterintelligence programs.
Mr. Freeman said he knows firsthand of the
deceit of which the government is capable; a government, he said, that tries
to "set itself up as if it's higher than God when really it's lower than the
devil."
"(They put) small pox in the Indian's blankets
and gave them fire water," Mr. Freeman said. "They make drugs available to
Blacks and other minorities. It only surprises me that (the CIA) got
caught."
CIA
operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business
interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected
leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct
land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize
foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers,
consumers and the environment.
So, on behalf of American business,
and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it
identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military),
and offers them a deal: "We'll put you in power if you maintain a
favorable business climate for us." The Agency then hires, trains and
works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a
democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot
boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false
stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption
of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture,
intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination.
These efforts culminate in a
military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the
dictator's security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies
of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims
are said to be "communists" [or these days "terrorists"] but almost
always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders,
political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy.
Widespread human rights abuses follow.
SOURCE: Steve Kangas: Timeline
of CIA Atrocities
Alongside and underneath these
visible structures is a veritable menagerie of secret planning cabals
and "operational units" that try to put the contending strategies of
different power centers of capital into effect. This is, broadly
speaking, the principal charge of the CIA, the biggest snake in the pit.
The "Agency" is precisely that; it is the active force that puts the
plans and schemes of the most powerful Wall Street, armaments and oil
interests into operation. Within the CIA the lines between the state and
private, corporate power are totally blurred, in fact have melded into
one.
SOURCE:
Max
Kollskeg: 9/11 In Context: Plans and Counterplans
To state the obvious; the CIA has
deeply humiliated the American people in their attempt to tie the
American people to be responsible for the CIA's Crimes Against Humanity
across the world.
The CIA appears to be the world's
greatest threat to peace and prosperity. It is the penultimate terrorist
organization, being the direct or indirect creator of all other
terrorist organizations. It also appears to be the world's penultimate
illegal drug smuggler and pusher making all other illegal drug trading
possible and instigating the horrors of addiction and suffering around
the world.
If I believed that the CIA was
working in any way on behalf of the US government and the American
people then it would be sad and shameful indeed. However, it is my
belief that the CIA instead was captured long ago, as was the secret
military operations and now works for a hidden power that wants to
dominate or failing that, destroy humanity.
The Agency is Cancer. There should
be no question about the CIA's future in the US.
Dissolved and dishonored. Its
members locked away or punished for Treason. Their reputation is so bad
and has been for so long, that the fact that you joined them should be
enough to justify arrest and Execution for Treason, Crimes Against
Humanity and Crimes Against The American People.
And yet, there is something
positive in this. By experiencing and knowing evil, we can choose the
path of light or choose to ignore both dark and light. It is a choice we
all must make if we intend to evolve from being animals ruled by this
world and its illusions.
SOURCE: A comment by
Chupacabra-322 to the Zero Hedge article Trump
Saw A Disturbing Video, Then He Shut Down The CIA's Covert Syria Program
The CIA's Drug-Trafficking Activities
The CIA's operational
directorate, in other words that's their covert operations,
paramilitary, dirty tricks — call it whatever you want — has for at
least 40 years that we can document paid for a significant amount of its
work through the sales of heroin and cocaine. — Guerrilla News
Network's Interview
with Christopher Simpson
CIA-supported Mujahedeen rebels [who in 2001 were part of the "Northern
Alliance" fighting the Taliban which became the core of the new Afghani
government following the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in late 2001]
engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the
Soviet-supported government and its plans to reform the very backward
Afghan society. The Agency's principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar,
one of the leading druglords and a leading heroin refiner. CIA-supplied
trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to
transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan/Pakistan border. The
output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United
States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. U.S. officials
admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action
against the drug operation because of a desire not to offend their
Pakistani and Afghan allies. —The Real
Drug Lords
The U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency, as is by now well-known by anyone who has cared to
be informed, has long been deeply involved in the international
trafficking of the addictive drugs heroin and (since the early 1980s, if
not earlier) cocaine, the enormous profits from which have financed, and
continue to finance, both U.S. covert operations and the U.S. military
(via payments to Pentagon contractors).
The main reason why this
is not more widely known is that the main players in the U.S. media have
always worked to protect the Agency and to keep the American public in
the dark as to the nature of its activities (as documented in great
detail in Carl Bernstein's article in the October 20, 1977, issue of
Rolling Stone: "The CIA and the Media: How America's Most Powerful News
Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why
the Church Committee Covered It Up"). The information you will find on
this web page, and the web pages it links to, is not considered by the
editors of the New York Times and other mainstream U.S. "news" media as
proper for the public to know. END
Please visit:
http://www.serendipity.li/cia.html
