Undeterred, Waters Crusades for Answers

Politics: She pursues alleged CIA crack link, presses anti-drug campaign.

By JOHN L. MITCHELL, Times Staff Writer

BALTIMORE - As she crusades across the country, from
hotel ballrooms to college campuses, from talk radio to the
Internet, Rep. Maxine Waters (DLos Angeles) asks a series
of troubling questions at almost every stop: "Who knew what?
When did they know it? And how high did it go?"

For six months, she has been demanding answers to a
controversial and disputed San Jose Mercury News series that
suggested the federal government aided the spread of crack
cocaine in the inner city.

Waters' questions imply a willingness to take the allegations
further than even the Mercury News was prepared to go.
Never mind that most of the news media and the political
establishment months ago dismissed the CIAcrack link as
overstated or unprovable. This is a Maxine Waters kind of
issue: full of rage, full of history, easily grasped by many of her
constituents, misunderstood by much of the outside world.

The story of how Waters has seized and run with the CIA
allegations is a story of why a combative, polarizing, inspiring
lone wolf is arguably America's most visible black politician.

She walks a tightrope. On one hand, she blames the
government for somehow betraying its poorest citizens. "It
doesn't matter whether [the CIA] delivered the kilo of cocaine
themselves or turned their back on it to let somebody else do
it," she said with cold deliberateness that built into an engaging
rhythm two weeks ago at a Baltimore Urban League dinner.
"They're guilty just the same."

On the other hand, she is trying to use the crack issue to
mobilize those same citizens against the pitfalls of drugs. The
allegations against the CIA matter, she says, because crack has
so viciously undermined personal responsibility and
exacerbated other social problems such as crime.
"You have to be stronger, you have to be better," she tells
young audiences. "You can't do that if you're cracked out, you
can't do it if you are alcoholed out."

Watching as Crack Ravages City

To understand why the 58yearold Waters takes the CIA
allegations so seriously, listen to her talk about an incident that
happened in the 1980s, when crack was surging through the
neighborhoods of her innercity state Assembly district.

At the time, she said, she was involved in a job training
program that provided $10 a day to men and women who
finished the classes. The money was supposed to help out with
incidental expenses. But often the money seemed to make it no
further than the door of a neighborhood crack house.

Ultimately, she said, the program was paralyzed until the
employment counselors and trainers confronted participants
with the evils of drug addiction.

"We put up signs saying, 'I'm not going to give the crack
man my $10 today,' " she said.

The lesson, to Waters, was that all the social programs so
dear to liberals are meaningless unless drugs are eradicated.

"You can't talk about job training, teenage pregnancy,
welfare reform or even communities turning themselves around
until you talk about drugs," she said.

Last August, the San Jose Mercury News reported that
Nicaraguan drug dealers Norvin Meneses and Danilo Blandon
had set up one of the original cocaine pipelines in the early
1980s with a Los Angeles dealer named "Freeway" Ricky
Ross and funneled millions in drug profits to the
CIAsupported Contras. The newspaper suggested that the
CIA either approved of the scheme or turned a blind eye as
the pipeline ignited a cocaine epidemic that spread from
SouthCentral Los Angeles to urban centers across the nation.

Eventually, Meneses landed in jail. His partner, Blandon,
became a paid drug enforcement agent, participating in a sting
that nabbed Ross, who is serving life in prison.

Other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, found
significant lapses in reporting in the Mercury News series. For
example, The Times found that the crack epidemic was
triggered by myriad drug networks and that little money from
the Nicaraguan drug dealers made its way back to the
Contras. A preliminary report by the CIA also cleared the
agency.

A Puzzle's Missing Pieces

But Waters was captivatedand enraged. The allegations
touched a raw nerve with her and throughout communities like
those in her 35th Congressional District, which includes
Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena and part of SouthCentral
Los Angeles. Through the 1980s, blocks had been devastated
by the seemingly sudden influx of affordable, highly addictive
crack cocaine. The Mercury News allegations, Waters said,
provided the missing pieces to a puzzle many had been trying
to figure out: Why was crack so easily available in the inner
city?
"It made my heart pound," she said.

It sent her on a mission. She met with Ricky Ross in prison
in San Diego and organized a workshop on crack and the CIA
at the annual Congressional Black Caucus weekend. She put
together her own makeshift probe on the controversy, saying it
was needed to "hold the feet to the fire" of those responsible
for the investigations being conducted by the CIA, the Justice
Department and both houses of Congress.

"I'm glad to see someone with an inyourface, hereIam,
I'mrightyou'rewrong philosophy on the scene," said noted
civil rights activist Julian Bond. "She's got this issue by the
throat and she is not going to let it go."

Waters' dominance of the issue was hammered home in
November when Rep. Juanita MillenderMcDonald
(DCarson) hosted a town hall meeting in Watts for CIA
Director John Deutsch to answer residents' questions about the
agency's alleged misdeeds. Deutsch's answers were drowned
out by angry crowds who denounced the visit and chanted,
"Where's Maxine?"

Waters was not there because she had dismissed the CIA
director's visit as meaningless. Meanwhile, she was quietly
consolidating support to capture the chairmanship of the
Congressional Black Caucus, making drug abuse her top issue.

She won a close fight, and was also elected to the House
Democratic leadership as vice chairwoman of the Steering
Committee. Suddenly, she had two highprofile posts,
providing her with an instant national platform and a greater
voice and negotiating power in Congress. It was a dramatic
change for a fourterm Democrat whose influence seemed to
have evaporated once the Republicans took control of
Congress in 1994.

During the congressional recess, Waters pulled off another
surprise while vacationing in the Bahamas, where her husband,
Sidney Williams, is the U.S. ambassador. She slipped away for
a fivehour visit to Nicaragua to interview a drug dealer in a
prison outside Managua.

"Sometimes we don't learn until the last minute just where
she is or what she is doing," said one of her staff members.
"We get a call from someone saying, 'Your boss is on the
television,' and there she is."

To Stanley Sheinbaum, a longtime Democratic Party
contributor, former Los Angeles police commissioner and
longtime friend of Waters, one of her strongest characteristics
is that she "refuses to be ignored."

"She is always carrying things to the White House on things
they overlook," he said.

Determined to Be Heard

The fifth of 13 children raised by a single mother in St.
Louis, Waters could not afford to be meek.

"When you have 12 sisters and brothers and you are
competing for everything from space in the bathroom to the
most favorable bed," she once said in an interview, "I suppose
it helps to shape the personality an awful lot."

She got her first job cleaning tables in a segregated
restaurant at the age of 12. By 23, she was married with two
children, holding down a series of odd jobs. Her first marriage
ended in the 1970s. She earned a college degree at Cal State
L.A., became a social worker at a Head Start program, and
turned into a political organizer, which ultimately landed her in
the California Assembly. A year after her election, she married
Williams, a luxurycar salesman and former professional
football player.

In 14 years in the Assembly, she rose through the ranks,
sponsoring legislation that focused on creating setaside
programs for minorities and women and initiating legislation that
forced the state to cease investing in South Africa. She was
instrumental in helping San Francisco Democrat Willie Brown
form a coalition to capture the speakership. She cochaired the
Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign and
seconded Bill Clinton's nomination at the 1992 Democratic
Convention.

LaVerne McCain Gill, the author of "African American
Women in Congress," said Waters has the feisty nature of the
first African American woman elected to Congress, Shirley
Chisholm"a community activist in Congress."

Gill recalled Waters' audaciousness in 1993 when
Midwestern members of the House were trying to push
through an emergency relief bill for floodravaged areas in their
districts. Waters attached an amendment to the bill requesting
$10 million for job training in SouthCentral Los Angeles.

Through backdoor bargaining, the amendment was
removed to expedite the passage of the emergency legislation;
in exchange, sponsors promised Waters they would set aside
the money through another source.

"It was the kind of incident for which she was derided by
her critics for her tactics, but admired for her tenacity," Gill
said.

While Waters enjoys close ties with the president, she does
not shy away from pushing him on issues.

At a recent speech at Bowie State University in Maryland,
she criticized Clinton's State of the Union address for not
saying enough about the poor.

"It was a good speech, and if you are a middleclass
American, you would say, 'Oh, I can get a tax break,' " she
said. "If you are a welfare recipient, you better wonder where
are the jobs going to come from. It was a wonderful speech for
some folks, but there are a lot of people it didn't touch."

Her supporters hope her toughness will give the
Congressional Black Caucus a more aggressive stance in
confronting the Republican leadership.

"Her style is needed to be able to focus the attention on the
real disparities that exist," said Kweisi Mfume, the former
Congressional Black Caucus chairman who now is president of
the NAACP. "Maxine does that better than anyone I know."

Those who oppose her tend to see her in onedimensional
terms. Friends see a more complex picture, someone who can
be engaging one minute and coldly dismissive the next. Many
say the best time to reach her is at work after office hours,
when she is still answering the phone.

"She is a living contradiction, one day she mothers you,
caring about your health, your family and the next she can just
walk right by you and never say a word," said a longtime
friend.

Waters, he said, often uses statesman Lord Henry
Palmerston's description of Britain to describe her own plight.
"She always says she has 'no permanent friends; only
permanent interests,' " he said.

At her field office in SouthCentral Los Angeles, national
interest in her CIA crusade can be measured by the boxfuls:
Thousands of prisoners serving time under the nation's stiff
crack laws have written offering their support.

Critics accuse Waters of being a showboat with no real
hope of indicting the CIA, of wanting to make the government
a scapegoat for social problems that go much deeper than
drugs, of having no concrete goal. But she is already willing to
offer one plan.

It involves those mountains of letters that her staff is now
categorizing by state and length of the prisoner's sentence. She
wants to take the letters to the street corners in her district and
have gang members and families read them.

"It is the only way I can think of to have them understand
what happens to young people who sell drugs," she said.