Two years after the San Jose Mercury News published its controversial "Dark Alliance" series, the scandal over the CIA, the Contras and cocaine refuses to go away. The public uproar over the August 1996 articles has set in motion a chain of events that has produced new and startling information about CIA knowledge of drug smuggling - a sordid and sorry history that the Agency has yet to fully and honestly share with the American people.
The controversy provoked by the articles has been considerable. The mainstream press devoted large amounts of space and resources to debunking the main assertion of the articles - that the cocaine epidemic began because the CIA needed millions in drug profits to finance Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters" in the covert war against Nicaragua.
The Mercury News subsequently issued a major "clarification" saying parts of the stories didn't meet journalistic standards. The reporter who wrote the series, Gary Webb, resigned after he was put on another beat. He has recently published a lengthy book - also called "Dark Alliance" - offering a broader, albeit still cloudy, picture of Contra drug operations.
Most important, public pressure forced the CIA and the Justice Department to launch internal inquiries, centralizing thousands of pages of classified documents and writing three major reports.
Last winter, the CIA's Inspector General released Volume I of his report on "Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States." Late last month, after interviewing 200 witnesses and reviewing 40,000 pages of documents, the Justice Department's Inspector General released a 400-page study, "The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions." (Oliver North and the CIA's top agent in charge of the Contra war, Duane Clarridge, refused to cooperate.)
The CIA's Volume II, a comprehensive, 600-page report on "The Contra Story," was completed and, in May, turned over to the House Intelligence Committee. But, because it contains incriminating documentation on drug smuggling by CIA "assets," the Agency has refused to declassify a word.
To be sure, the two reports that have been released undercut Webb's primary assertion, that the CIA knew and protected two California-based Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers who were allegedly funneling massive amounts of money to the counter-revolutionary operations in Central America. The Justice Department's study - the more credible of the reports - found not a conspiracy of malevolence but a conspiracy of mediocrity. The drug smugglers managed to stay free from prosecution because the DEA and the FBI waivered between arresting them or enlisting them as informants. Neither report found evidence of CIA knowledge of, or involvement in, the Los Angeles drug operations.
But contrary to newspaper headlines suggesting these reports thoroughly rebutted the "Dark Alliance" stories, they have, in fact, advanced the larger premise of the articles: The CIA and the Reagan Administration tolerated drug traffickers because they could help advance the covert war against Nicaragua.
Trafficking condoned
For years, U.S. officials have vociferously denied any tolerance for narcotics trafficking during the CIA's 1980s Contra campaign against the Sandinista government. Clarridge has labeled the official inquiries "bull--." One of the Los Angeles Times rebuttals to the "Dark Alliance" series quoted another former high-ranking CIA manager of the Contra war, Vincent Cannistraro, as saying that when it came to wrongdoing by Agency assets, "there's no tendency to turn a blind eye to drug trafficking. It's too sensitive. It's not a fine line."
Spurred by public outrage over the scandal, the official investigations by the CIA and Justice Department have produced concrete evidence disproving, once and for all, such specious claims of innocence. The public has learned that:
* In 1982, CIA director William Casey sought an agreement with the Justice Department allowing the Agency to legally ignore drug smuggling by its covert assets. According to the Justice Department, the CIA and the Attorney General's office worked out a "memorandum of understanding" that exempted the CIA from having to report drug smuggling by its assets to the DEA, Customs and FBI. Other criminal behavior -- bribery, sabotage, hijacking and perjury, for example -- would be reported, but not narcotics trafficking. "I am pleased," Casey wrote to Attorney General William French Smith in a March 2, 1982, letter (reluctantly provided by the Agency to Congresswoman Maxine
Waters) that "these procedures strike the proper balance between enforcement of the law and protection of intelligence ,, sources and methods."
* The CIA, despite repeated denials, did, in fact, interfere with law enforcement proceedings in the 1983 San Francisco "Frogman Case" -- at the time the biggest cocaine bust in California history. After two Nicaraguans were arrested and more than $30,000 in cash seized from their safe house, the suspects claimed the money was Contra funds rather than drug revenue. The CIA, according to newly disclosed documents, made a "discreet approach" to high-level Justice Department officials and dispatched an agency lawyer to San Francisco "to avoid inquiry into activities or other [CIA] interests" in Central America. The CIA acted to spare the embarrassment of what one CIA official called "bad publicity" from the "explosive" allegation that CIA funds were being mixed with drug money. (The publicity was feared because Congress was then voting on whether to cut off CIA appropriations for the Contra war.) After the meeting, the U.S. Attorney's office returned the confiscated cash to the Contra/drug traffickers.
* High-level officials at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., made the strategic decision to keep known Contra drug traffickers on its payroll. In a briefing on the still-secret report before the House Intelligence Committee last March, CIA Inspector General Fred Hitz admitted that "there are instances where the CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relations with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity." Hitz's internal review of CIA records showed that more than 50 Contra operatives, as well as the founding Contra organization, the 15 of September Legion, were implicated in narcotics trafficking.
Worst fears confirmed
As the historical record emerges, it is clear that the CIA did draw a "fine line," but drug smuggling was on the acceptable side. This confirms the worst fear of many U.S. citizens -- that their own government would, and did, knowingly condone the flow of drugs into U.S. cities and communities.
The public deserves full disclosure of this controversial history. Yet the CIA has informed Congress that it has no intention of declassifying its final report, nor releasing an unclassified version.
The Agency has put itself in the peculiar position of having conducted an internal inquiry in response to widespread public questions on what the CIA knew and what it did about drug trafficking during the Contra war - and steadfastly refusing to supply the answers.
National security at issue
CIA officials have told Congress that releasing the report will jeopardize national security. The House Intelligence Committee, chaired by a former CIA operative, Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, has accepted their position.
But that argument only demonstrates the same distortion of policy priorities that prompted the scandal. The Agency's position seems to be that protecting the identities of former "freedom fighters" on the covert payrolls is more important than identifying known drug traffickers. Notwithstanding the ease with which the names of former CIA assets could be deleted from the report, the Agency is asserting that keeping this seamy history secret is more important for security considerations than full and informed public scrutiny and absolute accountability on this controversial issue.
In this case, however, it is clear that real national security interests are far better served by disclosure, rather than secrecy. For cities, communities and citizens across the nation, the scourge of drugs is the No. 1 security issue. Addressing the anger generated throughout the inner cities of America by the "Dark Alliance" series must be a policy priority itself. Having contributed, however indirectly, to the destructive impact of the drug epidemic, the CIA can begin to rebuild confidence and respect for the national security establishment only by coming clean. It can do that by declassifying its final report and all supporting documentation.
In an era when the past has refused to recede into history until it has been fully aired, the fullest possible accounting of the CIA-Contra-cocaine controversy is necessary to resolve this scandal. The CIA must expand its covert code of sharing information on only a "need to know" basis. The American people not only have a need to know - they have a right to know.
Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive and co-author of the "Iran-Contra Scandal: A Declassified History."
Pub Date: 8/30/98