1980s, U.S./Central America:  Contras, Gangs and Crack

By William Blum, author, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II.

In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published articles by Gary Webb, linking the CIA's Contras to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles.  Webb's year-long investigation revealed that, during the 1980s, the CIA financed its covert war against Nicaragua's leftist government through sales of cut-rate crack cocaine to South Central L.A. drug dealer, Ricky Ross.

      The CIA's drug network, wrote Webb, "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the `crack' capital of the world."  Black gangs used profits to buy weapons, sometimes from CIA-linked drug dealers.

      Webb contended that Bay Area-based Nicaraguan drug dealers, Juan Norwin Meneses and Oscar Danilo Blandon, worked for the CIA and contributed "millions in drug profits" to the contras.  Senate investigators and agents from four law enforcement organizations complained that their Contra-drug investigations "were hampered," "by the CIA or unnamed `national security' interests."  In 1989, a Senate subcommittee concluded a three-year investigation:

"There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones by individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras and Contra supporters throughout the region....  U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts....  In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter....  Senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems."1

      In Costa Rica, several different CIA-Contra networks were involved in drug trafficking.  In addition to those servicing the Meneses-Blandon operation, detailed by the Mercury News, and Noriega's operation, there was CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica's border with Nicaragua were a Contra-staging area. 

      Hull and other CIA-connected Contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million and several planes to Contra leaders.2  In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)-hired plane clandestinely and illegally flew the CIA operative to Miami, via Haiti.  The U.S. repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull back to Costa Rica to stand trial.3

      Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved Cuban Americans hired by the CIA as military trainers for the Contras.  Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking.  They used Contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shrimp company, which laundered money for the CIA, to move cocaine to the U.S.4

      Guatemala, whose military intelligence service - closely associated with the CIA - harbored many drug traffickers, according to the DEA, was another way station along the cocaine highway.5  The Medellin Cartel's Miami accountant, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, testified that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan Contras through long-time CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, based at Ilopango Air Force Base, El Salvador.6

      The Contras provided planes, pilots, airstrips, warehouses, front companies and banks to these CIA-linked drug networks.  At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received U.S. government contracts to carry non-lethal supplies to the Contras.7  Southern Air Transport, "formerly" CIA-owned and later under Pentagon Contract, was involved in the drug-running as well.8  Cocaine-laden planes flew to Florida, Texas, Louisiana and other locations, including several military bases.  Designated as 'Contra Craft,' these shipments were not to be inspected.  When some authority wasn't clued in and made an arrest, powerful strings were pulled on behalf of dropping the case, acquittal, reduced sentence or deportation.9

 Footnotes:

 1. Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, Senate Committee Report on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics & International Operations, 1989.

 2. Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s, 1994. 

 3. Martha Honey & David Myers, "U.S. Probing Drug Agent's Activities in Costa Rica," San Francisco Chronicle, Aug.14, 1991.

 4. Martha Honey, Hostile Acts.

 5. Frank Smyth, "In Guatemala, The DEA Fights the CIA," New Republic, June 5, 1995; Blum, Killing Hope, p.239.

 6. Martha Honey, "Drug Figure Says Cartel Gave Drugs to Contras" Washington Post, June 30, 1987.

 7. Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, pp.2,36,41.

 8. Peter Dale Scott & Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America, 1991, pp.17-18.

 9. Scott & Marshal; Murray Waas, "Cocaine and the White House Connection," Los Angeles Weekly, Sept.30-Oct.6 and Oct.7-13, 1988; National Security Archive Documentation Packet: "The Contras, Cocaine and Covert Operations."

Source: "The CIA, Contras, Gangs and Crack," Foreign Policy in Focus, Nov. 1996.

www.foreignpolicy-infocus. org/briefs/vol1/cia.html

"For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drugs-guns ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funnelled millions in profits to the CIA's Contras.  This opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, now known as the 'crack' capital of the world.  The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons."

Gary Webb, San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 18, 1996.