CIA'S TRAIL LEADS BACK TO ITS OWN DOOR

Inspector General Says Agency Knew Of And Officially Shut Eyes To Drug
Trafficking.

Just under two years ago, John Deutch, at that time director of the
CIA, traveled to a town meeting in South-Central Los Angeles to
confront a community outraged by charges that the agency had been
complicit in the importing of cocaine into California in the 1980s.
Amid heated exchanges, Deutch publicly pledged an internal
investigation by the CIA's inspector general that would leave no stone
unturned. It is now possible to review, albeit in substantially
censored form, the results of that probe. At the start of this year,
inspector general Fred Hitz released a volume specifically addressing
charges made in 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News. Earlier this month,
Hitz made available for public scrutiny a second report addressing
broader allegations about drug running by Nicaraguan contras. That
first volume released 10 months ago was replete with damaging
admissions. Two examples: The report describes a cable from the CIA's
directorate of operations dated Oct. 22, 1982, describing a
prospective meeting between Contra leaders in Costa Rica for "an
exchange in [the U.S.] of narcotics for arms." But the CIA's director
of operations instructed the agency's field office not to look into
this imminent arms-for-drugs transaction "in light of the apparent
involvement of U.S. persons throughout." In other words, the CIA knew
that Contra leaders were scheduling a drugs-for-arms exchange and the
agency was prepared to let the deal proceed.

In 1984, the inspector general discloses, the CIA intervened with the
U.S. Justice Department to seek the return from police of $36,800 in
cash that had been confiscated from a Nicaraguan drug-smuggling gang
in the Bay Area whose leader was a prominent Contra fund-raiser. The
money had been taken during what was at the time the largest seizure
of cocaine in the history of California.

The CIA's inspector general said the agency took action to have the
money returned "to protect an operational equity, i.e., a Contra
support group in which it [the CIA] had an operational interest." The
report issued by Hitz a few weeks ago is even richer in devastating
disclosures. The inspector general sets forth a sequence of CIA cable
traffic showing that as early as the summer of 1981, the agency knew
that the Contra leadership "had decided to engage in drug trafficking
to the United States to raise funds for its activities." The leader of
the group whose plans a CIA officer thus described was Enrique
Bermudez, a man hand-picked by the agency to run the military
operations of the Contra organization. It was Bermudez who told Contra
fund-raisers and drug traffickers Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon
(as the latter subsequently testified for the government to a federal
grand jury,) that the end justified the means and they should raise
revenue in this manner.

The CIA was uneasily aware that its failure to advise the contras to
stop drug trafficking might land it in difficulties. Hitz documents
the fact that the agency knew at that time it should report Contra
plans to run drugs to the Justice Department and other agencies.
Nonetheless, the CIA kept quiet, and in 1982 got a waiver from the
Justice Department giving a legal basis for its inaction.

Hitz enumerates the Contra leaders--"several dozen"--the CIA knew to
be involved in drug trafficking, along with another two dozen involved
in Contra supply missions and fund-raising. He confirms that the CIA
knew that Ilopongo Air Force Base in El Salvador was an arms-for drugs
Contra transshipment point and discloses a memo in which a CIA officer
orders the DEA "not to make any inquiries to anyone re: Hanger [sic]
No. 4 at Ilopongo." Thus, the CIA's own inspector general shows that
from the very start of the U.S. war on Nicaragua, the CIA knew that
the contras were planning to traffic in cocaine in the U.S. It did
nothing to stop the traffic and, when other government agencies began
to probe, the CIA impeded their investigations. When Contra
money-raisers were arrested, the agency came to their aid and
retrieved their drug money from the police.

So, was the agency complicit in drug trafficking into Los Angeles and
other cities? It is impossible to read Hitz's report and not conclude
that this was the case.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry