CIA HAD NO ROLE IN CRACK EPIDEMIC, HOUSE PROBE CONCLUDES

The CIA did not play a role in bringing crack cocaine into the Los Angeles
area in the 1980s, the House intelligence committee concluded in a report
yesterday.

The report, the latest in a series by investigatory bodies to exonerate the
CIA, said no evidence was found of any conspiracy by CIA agents to bring
drugs into the United States.

"Bottom line: The allegations were false," said committee Chairman Porter
J. Goss (R-Fla.).

Allegations of CIA links to drug dealers surfaced in an August 1996 series
published by the San Jose Mercury News, suggesting a San Francisco Bay area
drug ring sold cocaine in Los Angeles and funneled profits to the
Nicaraguan contra rebels for the better part of a decade.

"The committee found no evidence to support the allegations that CIA agents
or assets associated with the contra movement were involved in the supply
or sale of drugs in the Los Angeles area," the committee said in a report.

The committee noted that similar conclusions had been reached in previous
inquiries by the CIA's inspector general, the Justice Department and the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

"All the issues raised by the Mercury News articles were addressed in the
investigation," said Rep. Julian C. Dixon (Calif.), the committee's senior
Democratic member.

"I believe that the committee's effort, together with the work of the
Justice Department and CIA [inspector general], thoroughly examined those
issues," he said.

The newspaper series also reported that two Nicaraguan cocaine dealers,
Oscar Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, were civilian leaders of an
anti-communist commando group formed and run by the CIA during the 1980s.

The House committee said it found "no evidence to support the allegations."

None of the paper's top editors was immediately available yesterday to
comment on the report, Mercury News spokeswoman Patty Wise said.

In 1997, the executive editor of the Mercury News, Jerry Ceppos, wrote a
column that critiqued the series, saying it "did not meet our standards" in
key areas. Among other things, Ceppos said the series often presented only
one interpretation of complex evidence, oversimplified the spread of crack
and used graphics and language "that were open to misinterpretation."

The articles were followed by a storm of protests in urban areas such as
South Central Los Angeles, with citizens demanding answers as to whether
their communities had been ravaged by drugs to help pay for a foreign
policy goal.

"The explosive nature of the story and the seriousness with which we view
allegations of complicity in narcotics trafficking by any official U.S.
agency led us to go the extra mile in our inquiry," Goss said in a statement.