CIA OFFICIAL TESTIFIES ON DRUG LINK

House panel: Agency sometimes slow to cut ties with Contra dealers,
inspector general says.

WASHINGTON -- A top CIA official acknowledged Monday that the intelligence
agency hasn't always cut ties to known Central American drug dealers as
quickly or consistently as it should have.

But he defended the agency's blanket denial of allegations made in a 1996
Mercury News series that alleged the Central Intelligence Agency was
connected to two Nicaraguan drug dealers in the 1980s and the explosion of
crack cocaine in the United States.

``There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent
fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra
program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity or
take action to resolve the allegations,'' said Frederick Hitz, inspector
general of the CIA.

Hitz said he would present additional findings on what the CIA knew about
Nicaraguan Contra revolutionaries who were the subject of drug-trafficking
allegations in a 600-page classified report to the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence next month.

Hitz was testifying before the committee Monday. Members said the committee
would launch its own independent investigation of the Mercury News
allegations.

The Mercury News has acknowledged shortcomings in the ``Dark Alliance''
series, saying it failed to report conflicting evidence on some key
assertions of the stories.

Hitz testified that his internal investigation into the CIA's relationship
with the Contras found no evidence of any conspiracy by the CIA to bring
drugs into the United States.

But one congresswoman who asked to speak before the committee called the
report worthless.

``In my informed opinion, the CIA Inspector General report and the
investigation lacks credibility and its conclusions should be dismissed,''
said Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat whose district includes areas of
central Los Angeles that have been devastated by crack cocaine.

Waters said the investigation's findings could not be trusted, among other
reasons, because the CIA could not subpoena seven former CIA and Drug
Enforcement Agency officials who refused to be interviewed.

She also faulted the CIA's original report, which was based on 365
interviews for only summarizing statements of 12 people and not listing who
was interviewed.

Explaining the committee's decision to go forward with an independent
probe, chairman Porter Goss, R-Fla., said, ``Any suggestion of government
complicity in that terrible outcome is one that must be seriously
considered and answered.''

The internal CIA investigations began after the Mercury News ``Dark
Alliance'' series described the 1980s drug dealings of two Nicaraguans,
Juan Norwin Meneses and Oscar Danilo Blandon.

The stories alleged that the men, as civilian members of the CIA-backed,
anti-Communist guerrilla army called the Contras, had for the ``better part
of a decade'' sold tons of cocaine to a young Los Angeles street dealer
named Ricky Ross.

The drugs helped trigger the nation's crack epidemic, the series alleged,
while mysterious government entities appeared to have protected Blandon and
Meneses as they funneled ``millions'' of dollars in drug profits to the
``CIA's army,'' the Contras.

Gary Webb, who wrote the ``Dark Alliance'' series and resigned from the
newspaper in December, was present at Monday's hearings.