Gary Webb on Kiki Camarena (audio)

[MinM]

Although the Kiki Camarena story was long before the issues Gary Webb investigated in the '90s he briefly touched on it in the interview below. Gary points out that DEA Agent Celerino Castillo suggested looking into the CIA's role in Camrena's death only to find himself on the outside looking in ...

Show #703
Original airdate: October 23, 2014
Guests: Jim DiEugenio / Gary Webb
Topics: Gary Webb / CTKA / Treefrog / Letters

Gary Webb (1:07:51) Real Media or MP3 download or YouTube Video

*Gary Webb with Len and Anita Langley on BOR Show #47, August 23, 2001
*Gary was a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in California
*Drug asset forfeitures, cocaine, Crips and Bloods
*Some of the money was used to buy weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras
*"Freeway" Ricky Ross, the start of the crack epidemic, Dark Alliance: (Webb 1999)
*CIA was running the drugs into the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles
The group included an MBA in marketing, a weapons advisor, a macro-economist
*Norwin Meneses, they were untouched by law enforcement for many years
*A professional marketing operation, not a lot of moral examination
*Crack democratized cocaine, a cheaper unit cost, a bigger kick
*Dr. Robert Byck congressional testimony on the smoking of cocaine
*Increased prison sentences, not allowed to study it
*Political overtones to the crack market, Miami, Haiti
*An LAPD Rick Ross task force, civil rights violations
*CIA/Contra evidence disappeared, CIA/Meneses, operated fairly openly
*He could be blatant about it because he was a useful money launderer
*The Sandinista revolution, the Somozas, Reagan, a PR campaign
*"The moral equivalent of our founding fathers", [font color=blue]DEA Agent Celerino Castillo[/font]
*A DEA Investigation of CIA, these things get rooted in systems, they're protected
*Did Gary make a difference? Yes. In African-American society this is still an issue
*This story took off in 1996 on the world wide web, linked to source documents
*The backlash was enormous, the Washington Post, the newspaper's reputation
*CIA was allowed to investigate itself, cocaine brought in on freighters
*3 million dollars a day in crack sales, Dr. Hugo Spadafora
*Cocaine trafficking was the coin of the realm in Central America
*Memorandum of Understanding between the CIA and the Department of Justice
*Agencies were profiting from the Drug War
*Asset forfeiture, property confiscated without being charged

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