LIFE OF A SCANDAL

In mid-October 1996, two months after the publication of Gary Webb's
series "Dark Alliance" in the San Jose Mercury News, an extraordinary
town meeting took place in Compton, California, one of the South
Central neighborhoods of LA ravaged by the crack epidemic. A daylong
series of panels, convened by Representative Juanita
Millender-McDonald, examined many of the critical issues related to
drug use and abuse--the human casualties of crack-related crime, gang
operations, sentencing inequities, police corruption and, of course,
the brewing CIA-contra-cocaine scandal.

One witness could not be physically present. The voice of "Freeway"
Ricky Ross, serving life without parole for his activities as LA's
most renowned crack dealer in the eighties, was piped in over the
loudspeakers. Ross, who received some of his coke from a Nicaraguan
trafficker whom Webb identified as a CIA-backed contra, clearly had
the sympathy of the 800 people who filled the audience. When he told
Representative Millender-McDonald that Ronald Reagan and George Bush
"deserve to be in jail with me," the crowd cheered its approval.

The surreal nature of Ross's participation in this forum--the man whom
the Los Angeles Times once called "the one outlaw capitalist most
responsible for flooding Los Angeles streets with mass-marketed
cocaine" being hailed as a victim rather than the foremost
victimizer--illustrates at least a temporary distortion in the debate
over drug policy that Michael Massing attributes to the
CIA-trafficking scandal. In this case, the focus and outrage of the
audience was directed away from the criminal damage wrought by a
member of the community and toward the amorphous specter of CIA and US
government misconduct. Across the country, immediately following the
publication of the "Dark Alliance" series, thousands of activists,
community leaders and citizens vented their rage at the CIA's
"responsibility" for drugs flowing into the inner cities.

But the agenda of those who helped to expose this scandal was to
highlight the government's criminal abuse of power and gross
distortion of social and political priorities during the cold war--not
to find a solution to the scourge of drugs in our society. By
suggesting that they constitute a "main school" of thought on drug
reform, or even a "tendency" on the left, Massing is creating a
straw-man argument--itself a diversion in the drug debate.

With one exception, the main writings and reports on the reprehensible
merging of covert operations and drug trafficking during the CIA's Third
World wars have never offered prescriptions for drug policy. The Senate
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, led by
Senator John Kerry, documented government knowledge of and tolerance for
drug smuggling under the guise of national security; Gary Webb's book
(drawn from his series) is a journalistic account of the CIA-backed
contras, cocaine smuggling and corruption and competition among
law-enforcement agencies in California; the Alexander Cockburn/Jeffrey St.
Clair book, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, was about just what its
title suggests.

Only Alfred McCoy, in his seminal work The Politics of Heroin: CIA
Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, concluded with policy analysis and
recommendations to confront the crisis. Contrary to Massing's argument
that, for the CIA-crack "tendency," "the solution consists in cracking down
on producers, processors and smugglers," McCoy writes: "Simply put,
narcotics are major global commodities resistant to any attempt at
localized suppression. As long as the demand for drugs in the cities of the
First World continues to grow, Third World producers will find a way to
supply their markets." He agrees with Massing that legalization would
expand drug use and abuse, particularly among teenagers. His "middle
ground" solution, worth considering in the context of this discussion, is
"regulation"--a combination of emphasizing (1) treatment and education to
reduce demand, (2) short-term interdiction to reduce but not eliminate
shipments bound for the United States, (3) multilateral efforts through the
UN aimed at reducing global supply and (4) barring CIA protection of drug
smugglers in the name of covert operations.

Likewise, the vast majority of political and social activists working
on drug reform have not allowed the scandal to dominate their agenda
or distort their priorities; rather, they have used it to increase
public interest in reconsidering other aspects of the "war on drugs."
Even at the Compton meeting, the CIA debate helped draw attention to
issues like drug-related violence that might not otherwise have
received such scrutiny. In the aftermath of the scandal, the Institute
for Policy Studies created a Citizens' Fact-finding Commission on US
Drug Policy. Its first meeting, held in Los Angeles in May, covered
everything from the CIA-crack scandal to the social costs of the drug
war and how the drug economy functions, and examined policy
alternatives such as harm reduction. And when the Congressional Black
Caucus, chaired by Representative Maxine Waters, drew up its agenda
last year, the goal of "investigating allegations of involvement in
drug trafficking by intelligence agencies" was the last of six CBC
objectives, including:

* Increase funding for drug prevention, treatment and education for
at-risk communities.

* Refocus federal resources to target and punish large-scale drug
smugglers, suppliers and distributors.

* Propose enhanced sentences for law-enforcement personnel convicted
of drug-related offenses.

* Organize town-hall meetings, workshops and educational forums to
take our drug-eradication message to communities across the nation.

* Eliminate sentencing disparities.

The CIA-contra-crack scandal remains a salient issue of history and
accountability--one that will not be fully laid to rest until Congress
bars the CIA from secretly putting traffickers on the US payroll. As a
confidence-building measure with the public, the agency must also
declassify all documentation on its sordid relations with drug
traffickers posing as freedom fighters. Full disclosure, along with a
concrete apology, would not be just an academic exercise. The lasting
impact of this scandal is not that it distracted the left from
engaging in the drug policy reform debate but that, throughout the
communities most affected by the horrors of drug abuse, it has
reinforced cynicism and skepticism about the willingness of the US
government to address this issue credibly and fulfill its
responsibility to protect our citizens from true threats to their
security and well-being.