Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
This month I am looking at dirty dealings our government has gotten up to, making this weeks book Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb.
I actually want to start with a quote from the book that's near the very end, because I do believe it’s highly relevant, and fully encompasses the true tragedy of everything Webb uncovered during his years working on this case:
“The four-part series I turned in focused on the relationship between the Contras and the crack king. It mentioned the CIA’s role in passing, noting that some of the money had gone to a CIA-run army and that there were federal law enforcement reports suggesting the CIA knew about it. I never believed, and never wrote, that there was a grand CIA conspiracy behind the crack plague. Indeed, the more I learned about the agency, the more certain of that I became. The CIA couldn’t even mine a harbor without getting its trench-coat stuck in its fly. That the Contras’ cocaine ended up being turned into crack was a horrible accident of history, I believed, not someone’s evil plan. The Contras just happened to pick the worst possible time ever to be peddling cheap cocaine in black neighborhoods. That, I believed, was the real danger the CIA has always presented—unbridled criminal stupidity, cloaked in a blanket of national security.”
This truly is a central theses of this book. That the CIA was allowing cocaine to be brought into the country by Nicarguans with the express intent of the sale of those drugs being used to buy arms for Contra fighting against the Sandanistas is a foregone conclusion, at this point. The author provides a plethora of receipts to back this up, so much so that the only real question remaining is how Gary Webb managed to shoot himself in the head...TWICE...and have it be ruled a suicide. The story here is the amount of drugs that were introduced to South Central LA and the immeasurable harm it did, and the federal cover up that allowed it to continue for over a decade. Basically, the black communities of first South Central LA and then the rest of the country, were nothing more than collateral damage in the CIA’s attempt to keep the Contra’s in Nicaragua supplied against the Sandanistas.
All of this got its true start when Jimmy Carter was sworn in to the White House on January 20, 1977. How so? Well, up til then Congress and the White House had been supporting the Somoza family, which basically ran the entire country and all businesses in Nicaragua. When Carter came in, he believed this was unneccessary, to support an undeniable dictator, and he withdrew US Support. And within two years, so by 1979, the Somoza’s were out and the Sandanistas were in. Going into the home stretch of the cold war, this became a problem for incoming President Reagin in 1981 as the Sandanistas were communists. For their part, the Somoza’s and their supporters, primarily Norwin “El Perico” Meneses, formed what became the Contras. Staunch “capitalists” and I put that in quotes because they were the walking picture of crony capitalists, meaning they only liked capitalism with government backing that made them the only company able to engage in such activities.
Now, Meneses had been a drug smuggler from at least the mid-1970's, and there were several references in the book to Bush, this being George HW Bush, aka Bush 41, having been in some way involved. Webb does not go down those rabbit holes and only mentions it peripherally when the sources mention it. There was never any smoking gun linking Bush and I personally don’t believe it, largely based on timing. Yes, Bush was CIA director in the 1970’s. But his resignation as such was accepted by Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1977. Additionally, the book pinpoints Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, which basically puts the actions of the CIA and national security above department of justice actions, meaning the CIA no longer had to report illegal activities it engaged in. And by the time this was signed, Bush was VP, and no longer in charge of the CIA. So I strongly suspect that the well known fact he HAD been in charge of the CIA was bandied about by the drug smugglers to show that their actions were approved at the highest levels of US Government.
So, now that that’s out of the way, by 1979, the newly forming Contras needed money. And the US Government was happy to supply it at first. But, covertly. And as the covert pipeline ended under more strenuous government oversight and the Boland Act, initially passed in 1982 and strengthened in 1984, the CIA used EO12333 to help first Meneses team, then Meneses protege, Danilo Blandon, to bring drugs into the country. As the drugs were sold, the proceeds from these sales would be split into buying more drugs for future sale, and arms purchases for the Contras. And that’s the sum of the CIA’s involvement. The DEA was involved to an extent, and there is an entire cast of characters that are painfully outlined in the book, detailing when and where and how sales were made, from 1979 on through like 1993/1994.
And right around 1981, Blandon made the acquaintance of Rick Ross, aka Freeway Ricky. Now...I have immediately purchased Ross’s autobiography, and I will get it on my reading list sometime in the next year, but his is a fascinating story. Ross was raised by a single mother in S Central LA and passed high school by playing tennis. Just another aside, while I abhor the Department of Education, it’s important to note that he passed high school BEFORE the inception of Carter’s failed brain child, not being able to read or write, based entirely on his ability to play tennis. The teachers just kept passing him based on his athletic ability, rather than his academic ability. And he wanted to go to college, which was immediately scuttled when the colleges, while delighted with his ability on the court, realized he was functionally illiterate.
How Blandon and Ross met is in the book, although I don’t recall the specific details, but the end result is Ross began selling cocaine for Blandon. And then Ross quickly learned how to convert cocaine into crack cocaine. Now...another big societal talking point is the disparity in sentencing laws between those who use cocaine, typically white people, and those who use crack cocaine, typically black people. And there’s something to be said on that. On the flip side, the author goes into what the key differences are between the two drugs. Cocaine, powder cocaine, is costly. Like, $2,500 a gram expensive. Which is why it falls under the purvue of rich white people use it. Crack cocaine is not actually the same thing. Crack cocaine is baked with baking soda....plain, used for cooking and cleaning, baking soda. Which crystallizes it into a rock, which is then smoked. Whereas cocaine is snorted and you get a brief stimulation through the capillaries in your nose and sinuses, smoking crack cocaine infuses your lungs, creating an instantaneous, very powerful, and incredibly addictive high. Cocaine is to crack cocaine as Nasal decongestants are to methamphetamines. They are not chemically the same.
And Crack Cocaine is massively cheaper. $2,500 for a gram of cocaine. $20 for a single rock of crack cocaine. I mathed it out at one point, and Freeway Ricky was pulling in somewhere around $300 million a year...in 1980’s dollars. Adjusted for inflation and his enterprise would have been around $875 million in modern currency. The author confirms near the end of the book, around $1 million a day in sales. Which is why Freeway Ricky is absolutely fucking fascinating. Like, from a libertarian, old school entrepreurial capitalist stance, I was like “God DAMN son!” Ironically of course, he’s 20 years older than me. But fuck that’s an impressive amount of hustle! In SIX YEARS he went from not really even knowing what cocaine was, to $300 million per year.
On the other hand, the criminal justice major in me was like ....God DAMN Son! That is a lot of damage to the community. Crack is highly addictive. The author describes the inner working of a crack house once...once is enough to give you a solid picture of the nightmare. Millions of lives ruined, and not just the men who were thrown in jail for selling at the street level. I’m talking about the babies born to crack addicted mothers. The HIV pandemic that would have torn through the neighborhoods because if you’re high on crack or withdrawing, safe sex is the last thing on your mind when you’re searching for your next hit.
Eventually, Freeway Ricky came to see this, not least of which when Blandon started making noise like he was getting out, and moved to Florida, and Ricky’s girlfriend became addicted to what he was selling. So he moved to Ohio. Cleveland, specifically. And wanted to retire. He had had a very close call, where in he was actually arrested and charged. But, the officers involved were A. Corrupt and B. Stupid, resulting in them bragging on camera to Ricky about their corruption. When Ricky’s defense got ahold of that tape, all charges were thrown out. So he moved to OH to get out of the business and get his girlfriend clean.
But once there, Blandon...I think it was Blandon, but it may have been another connection...reached out and said hey...wanna make some money? Why don’t you do for Cleveland what you did for S Central LA. And Ricky did. And when a shipment from LA to Cleveland on a bus was sniffed out by a drug dog, the officer who spotted it in NM called the DEA in Cleveland and said what do you want me to do? DEA Cleveland said let it come through, will snap up whoever picks it up in Cleveland. And that person was, of course, a runner for Ricky. And despite Ricky paying for the very best lawyers, the runner got 20 years, and began talking, which resulted in Ricky getting picked up as a major narcotics trafficker. This time, it looked like the charges were going to stick.
In an unrelated case, the DoJ had been looking at corruption in the LA County Sheriff’s Office and offered Ricky a sweetheart deal. If Ricky would testify to the corruption he had experienced, the DoJ attorney’s would plead clemency on his behalf. Ricky held up his end of the bargain and served 51 months. The officers were acquitted because the jury nullified. They didn’t like the deal Ricky received and let the cops go. I bet those same people were stunned with the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict.
Anyways, after his time in CA, Ricky served like 10 months in Texas, also for smuggling related charges, and then determined he was going clean. And he tried. He really did. But Blandon kept calling. And here’s the thing. Blandon was claiming he just wanted Ricky’s help recouping money from the guy who had taken over Ricky’s enterprise. And because Ricky genuinely like Blandon, saw him as a mentor and friend, he wanted to help. Blandon knifed him in the back, set him up with the DEA. And that was Ricky’s third strike in CA.
The author’s story was ready for publication on the San Jose Mercury’s website and while tying up the loose ends, he attended Ricky’s trial. In a clever bit of legal defense, the defense attorney was able to get Blandon on the record about a lot of his dealings with the DEA and CIA by asking questions Webb needed answered, and Blandon declined to provide Webb directly in an interview. Even better, the judge overruled most of the prosecutor's objections.
And the story, when it was published, became an instant sensation, and the first truly viral story on the Internet. Until the editors at San Jose Mercury News published a partial retraction, claiming there was no evidence of CIA involvement. This despite having published documents, hard copies, which they had uploaded to their website. The author generously attributes it to his editor’s battle with cancer, and just not having the wherewithal to fight both cancer and the entire rest of the news industry. Webb parted ways with the San Jose Mercury news in like 1998, and allegedly shot himself two times in the head in 2004.
This book is unquestionably well documented, and while it can be a bit dry when breaking down some of the connections in Nicaragua, it lays out a truly appalling pathway from the province of the rich and famous, to highly addictive substance that destroyed entire communities and cities, destroying families, and escalating violence to previously unseen levels. As much damage as the welfare state has done in destroying black communities, the drug epidemic did an equal share in furthering that destruction. And it can be argued that if the CIA hadn’t cockblocked the DEA at every turn, it might not have reached the catastrophic proportions it did.
