Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
- Submitted by: Love Knowledge
- Category: Politics
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
Major Motion Picture based on Dark Alliance and starring Jeremy Renner, “Kill the Messenger,” to be be released in Fall 2014
Winner of the 1999 PEN/Oakland Censorship Award
Winner of the 1999 Firecracker Alternative Bookseller (FAB) Award, Politics category
Finalist for the 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Awards
Dark Alliance is a book that should be fiction, whose characters seem to come straight out of central casting: the international drug lord, Norwin Meneses; the Contra cocaine broker with an MBA in marketing, Danilo Blandon; and the illiterate teenager from the inner city who rises to become the king of crack, “Freeway” Ricky Ross. But unfortunately, these characters are real and their stories are true.
In August 1996, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb stunned the world with a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News reporting the results of his year-long investigation into the roots of the crack cocaine epidemic in America, specifically in Los Angeles. The series, titled “Dark Alliance,” revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.
Gary Webb pushed his investigation even further in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Drawing from then newly declassified documents, undercover DEA audio and videotapes that had never been publicly released, federal court testimony, and interviews, Webb demonstrates how our government knowingly allowed massive amounts of drugs and money to change hands at the expense of our communities.
Webb’s original article spurred an immediate outcry. Within days of publication, both of California’s senators made formal requests for investigations of the U.S. government’s relationship with the cocaine ring. As a result, public demonstrations erupted in L.A., Washington D.C., and New York. Then-chief of the CIA, John Deutsch, made an unprecedented attempt at crisis control by going to South Central L.A. to hold a public forum. Representative Maxine Waters later said in George magazine, “I was shocked by the level of corruption and deceit and the way the intelligence agencies have knowledge of big-time drug dealing.”
The allegations in Webb’s story blazed over the Internet and the Mercury News’ website on the series was deluged with hits—over a million in one day. A Columbia Journalism Review cover story called it “the most talked-about piece of journalism in 1996 and arguably the most famous—some would say infamous—set of articles of the decade.”
Webb’s own stranger-than-fiction experience is also woven into the book. His excoriation by the media—not because of any wrongdoing on his part, but by an insidious process of innuendo and suggestion that in effect blamed Webb for the implications of the story—had been all but predicted. Webb was warned off doing a CIA expose by a former Associated Press journalist who lost his job when, years before, he had stumbled onto the germ of the “Dark Alliance” story. And though Internal investigations by both the CIA and the Justice Department eventually vindicated Webb, he had by then been pushed out of the Mercury News and gone to work for the California State Legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. He died in 2004.
The updated paperback edition of Dark Alliance features revelations in just-released reports from the Department of Justice, internal CIA investigations, and a new cache of recently declassified secret FBI, DEA, and INS files—much of which was not known to Webb when writing the first edition of this book. Webb further explains the close working relationship that major drug traffickers had with U.S. Government agencies—particularly the DEA—and recounts the news of the past year regarding this breaking story.
After more than two years of career-damning allegations leveled at Webb, joined in the past year by glowing reviews of the hardcover edition of Dark Alliance from shore to shore, the core findings of this courageous investigative reporter’s work—once fiercely denied—are becoming matters of public record. The updated paperback edition of Dark Alliance adds yet another layer of evidence exposing the illegality of a major CIA covert operation.
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Customer Reviews 326 of 329 people found the following review helpful CIA Case Officer from Central American Era Validates This Book, June 9, 2007 By Robert David STEELE Vivas (Oakton, VA United States) – See all my reviews  Verified Purchase(What’s this?)
I am probably the only reviewer who was a clandestine case officer (three back to back tours), who participated in the Central American follies as both a field officer and a desk officer at CIA HQS, who is also very broadly read. With great sadness, I must conclude that this book is truthful, accurate, and explosive. The book lacks some context, for example, the liberal Saudi funding for the Contras that was provided to the National Security Council (NSC) as a back-door courtesy. There are three core lessons in this book, supported by many books, some of which I list at the end of this review: 1) The US Government cannot be trusted by the people. The White House, the NSC, the CIA, even the Justice Department, and the Members of Congress associated with the Administration’s party, are all liars. They use “national security” as a pretext for dealing drugs and screwing over the American people. 2) CIA has come to the end of its useful life. I remain proud to have been a clandestine case officer, but I see now that I was part of the “fake” CIA going through the motions, while extremely evil deeds were taking place in more limited channels. 3) In the eyes of the Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, and Honduran people, among many others, the US Government, as represented by the CIA and the dark side Ambassadors who are partisan appointees rather than true diplomats, is evil. It consorts with dictators, condones torture, helps loot the commonwealths of others, runs drugs, launders money, and is generally the bully on the block. I have numerous notes on the book, and will list just a few here that are important “nuggets” from this great work: 1) The CIA connection to the crack pandemic could be the crime of the century. It certainly destroys the government’s moral legitimacy in the eyes of the people. 2) The fact that entrepreneur Ricky Ross went to jail for life, while his supplier, Nicaraguan Blandon, was constantly protected by CIA and the Department of Justice, is a travesty. 3) Nicaragua, under Somoza, was the US Government’s local enforcer, and CIA was his most important liaison element. As long as we consort with 44 dictators (see Ambassador Palmer’s “The Real Axis of Evil,” we should expect to be reviled by the broader populations. 4) I believe that beginning with Henry Kissinger, the NSC and the CIA have had a “eugenics” policy that considers the low-income blacks to be “expendable” as well as a nuisance, and hence worthy of being targeted as a market for drugs to pull out what income they do have. 5) I believe that CIA was unwitting of the implications of crack, but that Congress was not. The book compellingly describes the testimony provided to Congress in 1979 and again in 1982, about the forthcoming implications of making a cocaine derivative affordable by the lowest income people in our Nation. 6) The Administration and Congress, in close partnership with the “mainstream media,” consistently lied, slandered witnesses to the truth, and generally made it impossible for the truth to be “heard.” 7) The ignorance of the CIA managers about the “ground truth” in Nicaragua and Honduras, and their willingness to carry out evil on command from the White House, without actually understanding the context, the true feelings of the people, or even the hugely detrimental strategic import of what they were about to do to Los Angeles, simply blow me away. We need to start court-martialling government employees for being stupid on the people’s payroll. 8) CIA officers should not be allowed to issue visas. When they are under official cover they are assigned duty officer positions, and the duty officer traditionally has access to the visa stamp safe for emergencies (because the real visa officers are too lazy to be called in for an emergency). 9) I recently supported a movie on Ricky Ross, one that immediately won three awards in 2006 for best feature-length documentary, and I have to say, on the basis of this book, that Rick Ross was clearly not a gang member; was a tennis star and all-around good guy, was trying to make school grades; was disciplined, professional, and entrepreneurial. He did not create the cocaine, he did not smuggle it into the country, he simply acted on the opportunity presented to him by the US Government and its agent Blandon. 10) There is a connection between CIA, the private sector prison managers in the US, and prisoners. This needs a more careful look. 11) Clinton’s bodyguards (many of whom have died mysteriously since then) were fully witting of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s full engagement in drug smuggling into the US via Arkansas, and CIA’s related nefarious activities. 12) CIA not only provided post-arrest white washes for its drug dealers, but they also orchestrated tip-offs on planned raids. 13) Both local police departments, especially in California, and the US Government, appear to have a standard "loot and release" program where drug dealers caught with very large amounts of cash (multiple millions) are instantly freed in return for a quit claim on the money. 14) CIA Operations Officers (clandestine case officers) lied not just to the FBI and Justice, but to their own CIA lawyers. 15) DEA in Costa Rica was dirtier than most, skimming cash and protecting drug transports. The book ends with a revelation and an observation. The revelation: just prior to both the Contra drug deals and the CIA's ramping up in Afghanistan, which now provides 80% of the world's heroin under US administration, the CIA and Justice concluded a Memorandum of Understanding that gave CIA carte blanche in the drug business.. The author says this smacked of premeditation, and I agree. The observation: here is a quote from page 452: " ...the real danger the CIA has always presented--unbridled criminal stupidity, clouded in a blanked of national security." Shame on us all. It's time to clean house. Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' A stunning story from start to end, February 27, 2002 By Joshua M. Tanzer (Hoboken, NJ United States) – See all my reviews  I followed the “Dark Alliance” story from the time it was published in the San Jose Mercury News to the time it was ridiculed by the country’s largest newspapers and Gary Webb was hung out to dry by his own paper. I picked up the book with an open mind but no expectation of being convinced. I was not only convinced, I was stunned by the story from start to finish. Webb has assembled not shadowy sources leaking dark innuendos but a thorough reporting of facts taken from congressional testimony, court testimony, declassified documents and personal interviews. It’s clear, at a minimum, that the US government was connected to the people responsible for a large piece of the cocaine trade. The only thing that remains uncertain is whether US officials actually participated in the drug trade directly with these people or simply forged a marriage of convenience and looked the other way. It’s worth noting that a large amount of information comes from documents that are only partially declassified — meaning that plenty of incriminating information remains to be disclosed. Years from now we’ll finally see what is still being concealed, and I suspect we’ll learn that the story goes beyond the basic verifiable information that Webb reports here. For those who believed the NY Times’ cursory dismissal of this story, please note the Times’ record in the case of El Mozote as told in the book “The Massacre at El Mozote” by Mark Danner. The Times pulled its own Latin American correspondent off the story of a massacre by US-supported Salvadoran troops when the government went on the attack. Ten years later, the hundreds of bodies were found and the whole story was confirmed. The Times was left looking as if it had participated in the official coverup, and maybe it did. It would be no surprise to find out a similar story in this case. Sometimes Conspiracies do Happen, October 21, 2002 By Richard Holden – See all my reviews This is a remarkable book. My first inclination was to disregard it as another conspiracy theory. After reading it and checking some of the sources, however, I have concluded that it is accurate. Gary Webb traces the introduction of crack cocaine into Los Angeles in the early 1980’s and followed its rise to a full blown epidemic by the mid to late 80’s. Undoubtedly, agents of the CIA and DEA, and most certainly Oliver North and his Contra operation were aware of the source of the cocaine. Indeed, it is apparent that the White House knew and acted to protect the drug pipeline in order to keep the money flowing to the Contra organization. Ronald Reagan was clearly more interested in fighting the war on communism than the war on drugs. The hypocrisy of the Reagan administration is apparent when we realize that Reagan declared illicit drugs a national security issue and championed the most draconian drug laws written to that date. Would crack cocaine have become an epidemic without CIA support? Probably, Webb points out that the development of a similar drug in Latin America by the 1970’s had been studied and scientists warned that a similar epidemic in the U.S. was imminent. Would it have happened as fast or been as bad without government protection? No one knows the answer to that question. Ultimately, there were two big losers. Inner city dwellers were hit hardest. Not only were they exposed to this incredibly addicting drug, but they bore the brunt of the government crack-down on illicit drugs. The other loser was Ronald Reagan, whose legacy of integrity and honor is destroyed in his ends justifies the means approach to government. Anyone who reads this book will never look at Ronald Reagan or Oliver North in quite the same way.
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