CIA FINDS NO LINK TO NICARAGUAN COCAINE TRAFFIC

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA says an extensive internal investigation found
no evidence to substantiate allegations made in a series of 1996 newspaper
reports of a CIA link to cocaine trafficking in California.

The CIA released today the first volume of conclusions reached by the
agency's inspector general. It found no basis for the allegation that CIA
employees or agents colluded with allies of Nicaraguan Contra rebels to
finance their guerrilla operations by bringing crack cocaine into the
United States.

``I am satisfied that the IG has left no stone unturned in his efforts to
uncover the truth,'' CIA Director George Tenet said in a written statement
accompanying the IG report.

Tenet called it the most extensive investigation ever undertaken by the
inspector general.

In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News in California published a series
of stories that concluded a San Francisco Bay area drug ring sold cocaine
in Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels for the
better part of a decade. It traced the drugs to dealers who were also
leaders of a CIA-run guerrilla army in Nicaragua during the 1980s.

The newspaper series reported that two Nicaraguan cocaine dealers, Oscar
Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, were civilian leaders of an
anti-communist commando group formed and run by the CIA during the 1980s.
The newspaper articles traced the explosion of crack cocaine abuse in the
United States to a crack dealer named Ricky Donnell Ross and said he was
supplied through Blandon and Meneses.

The CIA report said there was no such CIA link.

``No information has been found to indicate that any past or present
employee of CIA, or anyone acting on behalf of CIA, had any direct or
indirect dealing with Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandon or Juan Norwin
Meneses,'' the CIA report said.

``No information has been found to indicate that the drug trafficking
activities by Blandon and Meneses were motivated by any commitment to
support the Contra cause or Contra activities undertaken by CIA,'' it
added.

The newspaper series generated widespread anger toward the CIA among black
Americans, as well as federal investigations into whether the CIA took part
in or countenanced the selling of crack to raise money for the Contras.

The Justice Department has done its own investigation. Attorney General
Janet Reno ordered the department's inspector general last week to keep
that report secret indefinitely because of what she called ``law
enforcement concerns'' unrelated to the conclusions reached in the
investigation.

In his statement today, Tenet said that while he is satisfied that the CIA
had no role in bringing cocaine into the United States to help the
Nicaraguan Contras, the damage done to the CIA's reputation may never be
fully reversed.

``The allegations made have left an indelible impression in many Americans'
minds that the CIA was somehow responsible for the scourge of drugs in our
inner cities,'' Tenet said.

``Unfortunately, no investigation -- no matter how exhaustive -- will
completely erase that false impression or undo the damage that has been
done.''