MERCURY NEWS SERIES IS HIT AGAIN

Justice Dept. dismisses CIA tie to crack cocaine

A long-delayed Justice Department report released yesterday found no
substantiation for a newspaper's allegations that the CIA protected
Nicaraguan rebels who brought crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles
in the early 1980s.

The sensational charges, made in an August 1996 San Jose Mercury News series
called ``Dark Alliance,'' were later retracted by the newspaper.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, whose office acts as
a watchdog over the department's internal operations, said investigators
reviewed more than 40,000 pages of documents and interviewed 200 people over
15 months.

``In short, our review did not substantiate the main allegations stated and
implied in the Mercury News articles,'' Bromwich wrote.

A San Jose Mercury News spokeswoman said that Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos
``would prefer to report the news instead of being part of it, and so he
declines comment.''

REPORTER RESIGNED

The author of the series, reporter Gary Webb, resigned from the Mercury News
in December.

The series alleged that two Nicaraguans with ties to the Contras, a rebel
group that was trying to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist regime, sold cocaine
in South Central Los Angeles in the early 1980s. Profits from these sales
were funnelled back to the Contras, according to the report, which strongly
implied that CIA officials knew of the operation.

The series provoked a national uproar and gave rise to fears among African
Americans that elements of the government were deliberately sabotaging their
communities by creating a crack epidemic.

Bromwich said that while ``some drug traffickers supplying cocaine to Los
Angeles drug dealers were Contra supporters, they were investigated and
pursued by the Department of Justice.''

These investigations ``were not always successful,'' Bromwich found, but
they were not obstructed because of any connections to the Contras or the
CIA. Nor did the report conclude that the drug dealing in question ``was the
cause of the crack explosion in Los Angeles or across the United States, as
the articles implied.''

The inspector general's report follows several previous investigations by
government agencies and Congress as well as major news organizations, none
of which could confirm the main substance of the Mercury News' allegations.

Representative Maxine Waters, whose district includes South Central Los
Angeles, said she will continue her effort to get the CIA to declassify its
own inspector general's report on the allegations.

SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH

``It doesn't end,'' said Waters, noting that the Justice Department report
acknowledges there were connections between the Contras and drug
traffickers. ``We will continue to try and get to the truth.''

Bromwich said the investigation did uncover several ``problems and
ambiguities.''

One of these involved Julio Zavala, a Nicaraguan drug trafficker allegedly
tied to the Contras. Zavala was arrested in a case involving drug smuggling
from a Colombian vessel in San Francisco Bay. About $36,000 was seized from
Zavala's residence but was later returned to him.

The Justice Department report found that a memo from a CIA attorney
suggested that depositions involved in the Zavala case ``could cause damage
to the CIA's image and program in Central America.''

The report found that the CIA ``did in fact intervene in the Zavala case and
may have played a role in having a sum of money returned to him.''

But while such findings ``are troubling,'' Bromwich said, ``they are a far
cry from the type of broad manipulation and corruption of the federal
criminal justice system suggested by the original allegations'' in the
Mercury News.

1998 San Francisco Chronicle

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett