COMMUNITIES SUE OVER CRACK EPIDEMIC

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) City residents who claim the federal government
did nothing to stop crack cocaine sales in their neighborhoods in the
1980s sued the CIA and Justice Department on Monday.

The complaints were filed on behalf of mostly black residents whose
babies were born addicted to crack, whose relatives died in
drug-related drive-by shootings and whose communities were affected by
crowded emergency rooms and gutted business districts, the lawsuit
said.

"This is not some sort of litigation lottery ticket," attorney Katya
Komisaruk said. "The government contributed to what happened to us, so
now we need the government to come and help us."

The federal civil rights lawsuits, filed in Oakland and Los Angeles,
were partially prompted by last year's disclosure of a 1982 agreement
between the late CIA Director William Casey and former Attorney
General William French Smith that the spy agency had no duty to report
drug crimes to the Justice Department.

Komisaruk said she wants a judge to declare the agreement illegal,
order the CIA and Justice Department to report crimes they are aware
of and issue reparations to cities affected by cocaine sales.

Justice Department officials had not reviewed the lawsuit and will not
comment on it until Tuesday, spokesman David Slade said. The CIA did
not return a telephone message left by The Associated Press.

The complaints are the latest result of a 1996 San Jose Mercury News
series that claimed a drug ring funneled profits to the Nicaraguan
Contra rebels for the better part of a decade. The series traced the
drugs to traffickers who were also leaders of a CIA-run guerrilla
army in Nicaragua during the 1980s.

The executive editor of the Mercury News later acknowledged in a
letter to readers that the series had shortcomings.

Last summer, an 800-page internal Justice Department report exonerated
the department and the CIA.