WHAT WILL CONGRESS DO ABOUT NEW CIA-DRUG REVELATIONS?

CONGRESS WILL shortly have to decide whether to bury or deal with
explosive new revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency
protected major drug traffickers who aided the Contra army in Central
America. These new findings go far beyond the original stories which
gave rise to them by Gary Webb in 1996.

Webb had alleged that cocaine from two Contra-supporting traffickers,
Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon, had helped fuel the national crack
epidemic. The resulting political firestorm brought promises of a full
investigation. After an unprecedented review of internal CIA and
Justice Department files, three massive reports, totaling almost 1,000
pages, were released by the inspectors general of the CIA (Fred Hitz)
and Justice Department (Michael Bromwich).

The new revelations confirmed many of Webb's claims. Meneses and
Blandon were admitted to have been (despite previous press denials)
"significant traffickers who also supported, to some extent, the
Contras." For years they escaped prosecution, until after support for
the Contras ended.

Meanwhile the reports opened the doors on worse scandals. According to
the reports, the CIA made conscious use of major traffickers as
agents, contractors and assets. It maintained good relations with
Contras it knew to be working with drug traffickers. It protected
traffickers which the Justice Department was trying to prosecute,
sometimes by suppressing or denying the existence of
information.

This protection extended to major Drug Enforcement Agency targets
considered to be among the top smugglers of cocaine into this country.
Perhaps the most egregious example is that of the Honduran trafficker
Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros. Matta had been identified by the DEA in
1985 as the most important member of a consortium moving a major share
(perhaps a third, perhaps more than half) of all the cocaine from
Colombia to the United States. The DEA also knew that Matta was behind
the kidnapping of a DEA agent in Mexico, Enrique Camarena, who was
subsequently tortured and murdered.

A public enemy? Yes. But Matta was also an ally of the CIA. Matta's
airline, SETCO, was recorded in U.S. files as a drug-smuggling
airline. It was also the chief airline with which the CIA contracted
to fly supplies to the Contra camps in Honduras. When the local DEA
office began to move against Matta in 1983, it was shut down. Though
Matta's whereabouts were well-known, the United States did not arrest
and extradite him until 1988, a few days after Congress ended support
for the Contras.

At Matta's first drug trial, a U.S. attorney described him as "on the
level of the top 10 Colombian drug traffickers." We now learn from the
CIA Hitz reports that, in the same year, 1989, CIA officials reported
falsely, in response to an inquiry from Justice, that in CIA files
"There are no records of a SETCO Air." CIA officers appear also to
have lied to Hitz's investigators about who said this.

There appears to have been a broad pattern of withholding information
from the Justice Department. For example, when Justice began to
investigate the drug activities of two Contra supporters, CIA
headquarters turned down proposals that CIA should interview the two
men. The reason in one case was that such documentation would be
"exactly the sort of thing the U.S. Attorney's Office will be
investigating."

The House Committee on Intelligence received this information, and
chose to deny it. According to a recent committee report, "There is no
evidence . . . that CIA officers . . . ever concealed narcotics
trafficking information or allegations involving the Contras."

Just as dishonestly, the committee found that "there is unambiguous
reporting in the CIA materials reviewed showing that the Nicaraguan
Democratic Force (FDN) leadership in Nicaragua would not accept drug
monies and would remove from its ranks those who had involvement in
drug trafficking." In fact, the Hitz reports contained a detailed
account of drug-trafficking by members of the main FDN faction, the
September 15th League (ADREN). Those named included the FDN chief of
logistics. According to the Hitz Reports, "CIA also received
allegations or information concerning drug trafficking by nine
Contra-related individuals in the (FDN) Northern Front." This included
credible information, corroborated elsewhere, against leaders such as
Juan Ramon Rivas, the Northern Army chief of staff. Yet CIA support
for the FDN continued, through a period when aid to any drug-tainted
Contra organization was forbidden by statute.

In short, the House Committee Report is a dishonest coverup of CIA
wrong-doings, what one might expect from a committee chaired and
staffed by former CIA officers.

As committee member Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, D-S.F., said in a
hearing two years ago, "This is an issue of great concern in our
community." Will she, and other like-minded representatives, repudiate
this flimsy attempt to silence that concern with falsehoods?"

The answer may depend on the voters: Will they object as strongly as
before?