Lawmakers demand CIA drug probe

by Rosalind Muhammad

LOS ANGELES--In response to requests by two Californian federal lawmakers to investigate the relationship between the cocaine pipeline and the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA director John Deutch has agreed to launch an independent probe into the allegations.

On Sept. 5, responding to recent requests by Rep. Maxine Waters (D) and Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, Mr. Deutch called the charges "extremely serious," but denied that the CIA participated in or condoned drug trafficking by U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra forces in the 1980s.

Mr. Deutch's response came in the wake of damaging evidence unearthed by a series of San Jose >Mercury News stories, which detailed how for the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay area drug ring sold tons of cocaine and weapons to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angels, and channeled millions in drug profits to the Nicaraguan Contras, a Latin American guerrilla army run by the CIA.

"Although I believe there is no substance to the allegations in the Mercury News, I do wish to dispel any lingering public doubt on the subject," Mr. Deutch said in a letter to Sen. Boxer obtained by The Final Call. "I have asked that the review be finished within 60 days."

Powder and crack cocaine have devastated poor Black neighborhoods. From crack-addicted babies to the murderous going cocaine turf war that marred the 1980s, the effects of cocaine and arms dumped into cities have been far-reaching.

Teresa Allison, co-founder of Mothers Reclaiming Our Children, a grassroots organization with monitors trials, visits prison, and mentors current and former street organizers, see crack cocaine addiction as "a slow death."

Mr. Allison knows first-hand "over 100" people, some of them friends and acquaintances, who have died behind crack cocaine--whether from the drug itself, or as victims of drive-by shooting and bloody gang wars.

"To this day, my brother (a crack user) is not the same brother I used to have," Ms. Allison. "I hate to know that 'bad medicine' came into our community to take away our children in a new form of slavery (addiction and prisons)."

Compton activist Mollie Bell, called the CIA cocaine-Contra connection "diabolical."

Local drug dealers "barely traveled from Compton to Long Beach," Ms. Bell said, "How could they have a connection to Nicaragua? Dick Gregory, Minister Louis and Black talk radio have said it all before, that the government was pouring drugs and weapons into our community."

Morris "Big Money" Griffin, chairman of the grassroots L.A. Coalition for Justice and Peace said he attended an Aug. 29 meeting of the Chicago Black Caucus just hours before President Clinton addressed the Democratic National Convention in the Windy City. Mr. Griffin said he placed a copy of the Mercury News articles in the hands of an aide to the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

"It's important that he knows that one of the goals of this cocaine network was to annihilate, destroy, eradicate and cause a genocidal environmental effect that was targeted in L.A.," Mr. Griffin said.

Michael Zinzun, founder of the Coalition Against Police Abuse, warned that scapegoating young Blacks and Latino youths for the drug epidemic takes the focus off the real culprit: the U.S. government.

"What's involved here is politics ands racism," Mr. Zinzun said, "From three strikes laws to the federal sentencing guidelines that punish crack cocaine users far worse than they do powder users, something has to be challenged."

"There's no question that the number (of Blacks in prison) did rise in the 1980s," said Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C. "Some people attributed it all to crack cocaine that but that's not the case. Longer prison sentences played a part. There's (more than enough) evidence to say these sentencing laws should be changed, whether the CIA was bringing in the drugs or not."