STOP THE DRUG WAR

In 1991, Elliot Abrams pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the
Iran-Contra scandal. Abrams covered up massacres that the U.S.-funded
Salvadoran military committed in the l980s. President Bush has just
appointed Abrams to head the National Security Council's office for
democracy, human rights and international operations.

Let's revisit what we learned during the Iran-Contra hearings. One
was that the CIA was actively involved in smuggling drugs into the
country to fund paramilitary operations in South America. Some of the
senators who sat through those hearings in the mid-1980s and are
still in office expressed disgust and amazement when these facts were
revealed.

The United States is engaged in a so-called drug war in Columbia and
Venezuela. The awful truth is that nothing has been done to change
CIA operations since the Contra hearings. Forty percent of the coca
fields are under the control of paramilitaries, and the rest is
controlled by left-wing guerrillas.

Abrams' appointment tells me that nothing has changed. The drug war
is being used to raise money, as it was in the past for covert CIA
operations. And, just as in the past, the CIA is probably helping to
bring drugs into this country to fund those operations.

The appointment of a man who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress to
cover up drug smuggling and human-rights abuses confirms that this
so-called war on drugs must stop.

John Burgess

Louisa