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It seems as though every time I attend a COPA conference, the national championship of some sport is being decided. This trip was the worst of all. The Chicago Bulls defeated the Utah Jazz and I missed one hell of a game --- not to mention the party later. I didn't find out that they had won until I saw it in the paper the next day. Next year, when they do it again, maybe I'll be home to celebrate.
I heard Michael Jordan say that the Bulls' victory was for all the working people in Chicago --- so they would have something to cheer about and reason to be proud. But if we as a country could recognize the sophisticated timing and teamwork which killed our President and other leaders --- which killed the greatest spiritual leader our country has yet produced --- that would be far, far greater cause for jubilation.
If the Warren Commission had kept faith with the people of this country, we might not be struggling today to put an end to sanctioned traffic in cocaine. The reality, however, is that collaboration between our national security apparatus and organized crime has dealt us a crippling, if not fatal wound.
So, at this conference, as at the '96 meeting, author John Newman (Oswald and the CIA; JFK and Vietnam) presented new documents on contra-cocaine smuggling in the 1980s, and a broader perspective of the problem.
The issue is grave, and yet the media appear incapable of addressing it. Referring to Walter Pincus' denigration of the threat in the Washington Post, Newman pointed to a government document projected on the screen and said, "I don't understand how you can look at a [CIA] document that has the words in it 'kingpin of narcotics trafficking' and not understand that that's narcotics trafficking."
And the media in general continues to ignore or dissemble on the implications of Gary Webb's series in the San Jose Mercury News and on the trafficking which persists. The contras are gone. But corruption, once invited, is not so easily ended. President Clinton visited Mexico and the U.S. confirmed Mexico as our ally in the war on drugs. Yet the next day, "Mexico has to fire its entire counter-narcotics organization because they're working for the narcotics traffickers. And while Clinton is down there...Ted Koppel goes down with a camera crew, puts a camera on the border at Laredo, films it for 24 hours, and they checked 1% of the trucks --- and none at night. You know what that means, ladies and gentlemen? If you are a narcotics trafficker, you have a 100% chance of loading an 18-wheeler full of cocaine and sending it right in here."
New information on the earlier contra-cocaine traffic has come out in the trials of participants in California, providing still more detail on the scope and the seriousness of the situation. Prior to the sentencing of Freeway Ricky Ross, the judge sought formal notice from the CIA on its knowledge of contra smuggling. The Agency, through the directorate of operations, responded. (That, Newman observed, was interesting in and of itself. The reply did not originate in the public relations office, but rather, as Newman put it, from the "spook" side of the CIA.) According to the directorate of operations, the CIA conducted 3 internal inquiries in the late 1980s and had uncovered no evidence of contra trafficking.
However, a decade ago, the head of the CIA's Central American task force testified under oath that a great deal was known. DEA documents show that agency conducted two investigations of the L.A. operation between 1983 and 1986. The DEA knew who the participants were, the Florida bank through which the money traveled, and how it was funnelled to the contras. In that same interval, the FBI conducted an investigation. And of course, the L.A. sheriff's department conducted the investigation which inadvertently turned up the Agency's involvment. Furthermore, the Kerry investigation "uncovered considerable evidence" that "contras were involved in drug trafficking" and that in each case, "one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement..."
With regard to the L.A. operation, Newman showed a 1984 document which identified one of the smugglers as a member of "the Nicaraguan mafia." The following year, that "kingpin of narcotics" was in Costa Rica using informant status as a cover while continuing to traffic. And if by chance that factoid had somehow escaped the attention of the director of the CIA, he still ought to have known. Newman displayed a memo from the director of the FBI to the director of the CIA which told the whole story and provided all the names. Yet today, a form of institutional Alzheimers has thwarted the CIA's recollection.
Still other DEA documents list specific drug investigations which were terminated because the target was connected to the CIA, and Newman related some examples. In one instance, a DEA fugitive who was a major trafficker was apprehended abroad, but his return to the U.S. was stymied when the prisoner was identified as the subject of CIA surveillance. The U.S. then declined the offer of deportation, and the trafficker was released. In another case, a key heroin trafficker was indicted after more than 20 years of investigation by the DEA. (Do you know how much is invested, Newman asked his audience, in 20 years of investigation? Being assassination researchers, of course they knew. But I digress.) Newman read on:
"Subsequent to obtaining the indictment, it was learned that the trafficker was the principal in a unilateral CIA-coordinated electronic survelliance. The purpose of the survelliance was to identify other possible traffickers. The result...was the immunization of the target trafficker from U.S. prosecution.
Immunization subsequently befell all those "contacted by that principal."
In another case, "[s]ubsequent to indictment and arrest, a trafficker agreed to cooperate," providing information on some 20 "top-level international drug traffickers." Prior to indictment, a defense discovery motion turned up CIA electronic survelillance. (Seems like the sort of thing the Agency could have plausibly denied, don't you think?) Plans for indictment of all suspects were dropped. Case closed. Another: A corrupt foreign law enforcement official was allowed to plead to non-drug related charges because he was a CIA informant. Another: Without DEA knowledge, the CIA used DEA material to blackmail, and thus recruit, the target of a DEA investigation. The recruitment attempt was unsuccessfu, but the investigation was nonetheless compromised. In still another case, the DEA found that the CIA had provided "a "foreign-based narcotics trafficker" with "false documentation with which to travel to the United States."
Is that mere knowledge of trafficking, Newman asked? Or is it complicity?
Not everyone agrees with Newman. Walter Pincus maintains there is no evidence that the CIA knew of contra involvment in trafficking. The Washington Post apparently regards the question as merely another instance of black paranoia, and we all know how paranoid blacks are. Otherwise, we should dismiss it as a "liberal" fantasy, since, as we all know, conservatives will never find their children high on cocaine.
Remarkably, a reporter from The Washington Post was present for at least part of Newman's presentation, so John Newman asked him to convey an invitation to Walter Pincus to discuss these documents in some public forum. It seems like a good idea to me. Forget what I think; forget the opinions of Pincus and Newman. Show those documents on nationwide television, and let the public decide.
Last fall, Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos was applauding Gary Webb's series. He sent a letter to the staff, accompanied by a copy of a letter he sent to the Post, praising Webb's stories and pointing out that "four experienced Post reporters, re-reporting our series, could not find a single factual error."
"I'm not sure," said Newman, "how many of us could sustain such microscopic examination of our work." The other point we must bear in mind is the ongoing media approach of investigating the Mercury News rather than the traffic. If the Kerry Committee's conclusions are correct, then there must have been similar operations in many cities around the country.
But the Post didn't publish Ceppos' letter. And Ceppos evidently changed his mind. He transferred Webb to another office 150 miles away --- quite a commute. Ceppos recanted earlier claims that further articles in the series had been planned and said that Webb's accounts weren't up to standards.
In the absence of any demonstrated errors, I couldn't help wondering what standards those might be. Although it is still the case that no one has yet documented any errors in his reports, his writing on the CIA and cocaine isn't up to standards, so from now on, he'll report on less significant matters.
In Newman's estimation, "a foreign policy objective got in the way of protecting our own people." And while it is true, he said, that parents and schools and churches must all play their parts in lifting this scourge, the whole system must work. You cannot remove the federal apparatus "from the equation and expect local law enforcement to clean up the whole thing."
And then there's Mexico...
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