http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/october96/crack_contra_11-1.html
Webb's series that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News has been saved here:
http://www.mega.nu/ampp/webb.html
Oct. 3, 1996
Affidafit shows CIA knew of contra drug ring
by Gary Webb and Pamela Kramer
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
LOS ANGELES - During the early 1980s, federal and local narcotics agents knew that a massive drug ring operated by Nicaraguan contra rebels was selling large amounts of cocaine "mainly to blacks living in the South Central Los Angeles area," according to a search-warrant affidavit obtained by the San Jose Mercury News.
The Oct. 23, 1986, affidavit identifies former Nicaraguan government official Danilo Blandon as "the highest-ranking member of this organization" and describes a sprawling drug operation involving more than 100 Nicaraguan contra sympathizers.
The affidavit of Thomas Gordon, a former Los Angeles County sheriff's narcotics detective, is the first 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 formed and run by the CIA during the 1980s.
Gordon's sworn statement says that both the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI had informants inside the Blandon drug ring for several years before sheriff's deputies raided it Oct. 27, 1986. Gordon's affidavit is based on police interviews with those informants and one of the DEA agents who was investigating Blandon.
Reagan not only ramped up the War on Drugs by using it at part of the southern strategy to arrest and deny African-Americans voting rights, he backed right wing cocaine dealers who sold on American soil.
Fuck Ronald Reagan.
Iran-Contra and Arms-for-Hostages Scandals
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?irancontraaffair_key_figures=irancontraaffair_eugene_hasenfus&timeline=irancontraaffair
Early October-November, 1986: Iran-US Arms-for-Hostages Deals Unravel; US Begins Providing Extensive Military Aid to Iraq
October 5, 1986: North Cuts Short Negotiations with Iran after Revelation of CIA Involvement with Contras
On the same day that CIA worker Eugene Hasenfus survives the destruction of his transport plane over Nicaragua (see October 5, 1986), Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, the National Security Council staffer who is heavily involved in the secret arming of the Nicaraguan Contras, is on his way to Frankfurt, Germany. North is slated to negotiate with representatives of the Iranian government. But news of Hasenfus’s capture forces North to cut short the negotiations and fly back to Washington for damage control.
And, sadly, we know that Clinton used the War on Drugs to target African-Americans too - in a bid to win racist votes - just as he did with dog whistle economic policies.
He also arrested more people for simple possession of cannabis than Bush Sr.
Democrats need to stop colluding in the racist politics of the right wing in this nation.
= new reply since forum marked as read
