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Media Reacts to
Contra/Cocaine Allegations
Hasty Dismissals of San Jose Mercury News Series as "Conspiracy Theory" Ignore Its Significance
by Ashley Overbeck
Special Assignments Editor
(PSCPAshley@aol.com)
The San Jose Mercury News series "Dark Alliance" has gone from breaking news to making news. Reporter Gary Webb's articles outlining a link between CIA-backed Contras and cocaine sales in South Central Los Angeles went unnoticed by leading papers for weeks after it was published in August. When the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times finally chimed in on the subject, the general thrust of coverage in all three papers was critical of the Mercury News series and its conclusions.
One constant criticism of Webb's stories was that they failed to prove that the CIA was involved in the genesis of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles -- but the "Dark Alliance" series never claimed a direct CIA link in the first place.
"While there is considerable circumstantial evidence of CIA involvement with the leaders of the drug ring, we never reached or reported any definitive conclusion on CIA involvement," Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos wrote in a letter to the Post. "Do we bear responsibility for making the limits of our reporting as clear as possible? Of course -- and we think we did so quite carefully. We reported that men selling cocaine in Los Angeles met with people paid by the CIA. We reported that they received fund-raising orders from people paid by the CIA. We reported that the money raised was sent to a CIA-run operation. But we did not go further -- and took pains to say that clearly."
While the claims made in the Mercury News were rather tame -- stopping at the door of the CIA, as Webb described it, but not going so far as to blame with the agency for the crack epidemic-- the criticism doled out by the establishment press was harsh.
The Washington Post published a 5,000-word piece largely rebutting the series on October 4, concluding that "available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed contras -- or Nicaraguans in general -- played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States." The New York Times ran their story October 20, and on the same day the Los Angles Times began a voluminous three-day series of their own to answer the Mercury News's revelations about events that took place in the Time's own backyard. The L.A. Times series asserted that "the epidemic was not sparked by a single conspiracy, but by an array of suppliers and dealers" -- apparently meant as a rebuttal to the Mercury News, although Webb never made such allegations to begin with.
Similarly, the Post argued that "significant contradictions in testimony ... cast doubt on the articles' racially charged allegation that 'the CIA's army' of contras deliberately targeted the black community in an effort to expand the market for a cheap form of cocaine." Again, refutation of claims that were not ever made.
Ceppos told American Journalism Review: "I almost feel like I'm denying things we never said. My fear is that some of the critics may not have read the series."
Webb's series outlined how the relationship between "Freeway" Ricky Ross and Nicaraguan dealer Oscar Danilo Blandon opened up a cocaine pipeline between Columbia and South Central Los Angeles in crack's earliest days, at a time when the drug was "virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods." Webb does not claim that this was the first, the only or the largest source of coke in South Central. Rather, he makes the simple point that the timing of Blandon's entry into the Los Angeles market with vast supplies of very cheap cocaine as its rock form was first becoming popular was a significant contribution to the crack epidemic. This is noteworthy because it begins to answer questions as to how the jetset drug of choice found its way to the ghetto, and because it is the first evidence of a link between the Contras -- whose drug trafficking in the 1980s has been well-documented -- and a specific group in the United States.
The L.A. Times argued: "The crack epidemic in Los Angeles followed no blueprint or master plan. It was not orchestrated by the Contras or the CIA or any single drug ring." The story went on to say that the crack explosion "lent itself more to makeshift mom-and-pop operations than to the sinister hand of a government-sanctioned plot." The Mercury News made no such claims.
Times reporter Jesse Katz further argued that crack's genesis "did not follow a simple, linear path" nor was its introduction unique to Southern California. "Crack was breaking out elsewhere -- New York, Washington, Miami -- at almost exactly the same time in the early 1980s," Katz wrote. This was hardly news, though, and certainly did not represent an alternative opinion to anything that Webb claimed.
At the Post, longtime CIA apologist and former paid operative Walter Pincus concluded that "a Washington Post investigation into Ross, Blandon, (Blandon supplier Norwin) Meneses and the U.S. cocaine market in the 1980s found that the available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed contras -- or Nicaraguans in general -- played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States." Again, the key word here is major. If Pincus wanted to refute what he perceived as Webb's claim that the characters in this particular case were solely responsible for crack's emergence, he was off base. On the other hand, considering the volume of cheap cocaine involved -- several thousand kilos over ten years -- the Post would have a tough time making the case that this was not significant in some way.
Pincus added that "the mere idea that any one person could have played a decisive role in the nationwide crack epidemic is rejected out of hand by academic experts and law enforcement officials." To the extent that it was meant as a criticism of the Mercury News's assertions, this statement was wholly unnecessary. It is not possible to draw such a conclusion from Webb's work.
This was, however, symptomatic of another misguided line of criticism in the Post and Times stories -- the downplaying of the importance of Ross and Blandon in the crack trade. The L.A. Times stressed that cocaine was in the black community before Nicaraguans arrived on the scene and that "Oscar Danilo Blandon, the ring's Los Angeles point man, was not 'the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California,' as the Mercury News contended." Reporter Katz apparently misinterpreted this metaphor, if he understood it to mean that Blandon introduced or invented crack cocaine. The Contra sympathizer no more created crack than Johnny Appleseed created apples; however, like the folklore character, he did help spread the drug far and wide. "Crack already was here," Katz wrote. "South-Central drug dealers manufactured it, not Latin American middlemen." The Mercury News series never suggested that this was not the case.
Downplaying Blandon's relationship with Ross, the Times wrote: "(Ross's) introduction to cocaine came not from a nefarious Latin American cartel, but a friend from his own South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood." But Webb himself acknowledged this fact in his series, naming Ross's first coke connection as neighborhood friend Michael Willie McLaurin. He never said that Blandon was Ross's first or his only supplier.
As for Ricky Ross himself, Katz pointed out that "the crack epidemic ... had nothing to do with Ross," that "market forces ... would have created the problem whether any one individual sold crack or not," and that "although Ross had become a millionaire by 1984 ... the market was so huge by then that even a dealer of his stature could seem dwarfed." None of these claims can be found in Webb's stories. Strangely enough, what Katz did contradict was earlier Times coverage of Ross's case. A December 20, 1994 story asserted: "If there was an eye to the storm, if there was a criminal mastermind responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was 'Freeway' Rick.'"
Along the same lines, the Post reported that "even considering the total drug trafficking attributed to Blandon, Meneses, other Contra sympathizers and Contras themselves, the Nicaraguans accounted for only a small portion of the nation's cocaine trade." Mercury News Editor Ceppos reminded the Post in a letter, "We never said otherwise."
This statement from the Post, like those listed above, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Mercury News series' significance. The scope of the operation in question was not the story -- it was merely an illustration of the articles' central argument that there was a connection between Contra drug sales and the beginnings of the crack epidemic. None of the critical stories refuted this link, which was clearly the most significant revelation. Rather the critics stressed the unimportance of the key player in Webb's narrative, which does little to detract from his message.
In addressing the Contra link, the Post and Times did not successfully disprove the connection. The New York Times reported that "CIA officials who worked closely with the FDN during the first half of the 1980s disputed the notion that the rebels were... significantly involved in procuring weapons or raising money themselves before Congress temporarily cut their support from the agency in 1984" and that "Blandon himself said he had stopped sending anything to the contras by 1983." But the issue was whether Blandon and his associates supported the Contras, not the relative scope of that support or how long it lasted.
The L.A. Times reported that "far from the 'millions' allegedly sent, less than $50,000 went to the rebel cause" according to one of Blandon's business partners. This contradicts Webb's evidence, making it difficult to draw a conclusion about the extent of Blandon's assistance, but at the same time it confirms that the drug dealer did in fact donate at least part of his profits to the CIA-involved mercenaries.
As for Times claims that "This was not some grand design of the drug cartels or someone at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, who was sitting around thinking up ways to raise money for the Contras," the point is largely irrelevant. The Mercury News series never claimed direct CIA involvement, and likewise none of the rebuttal stories proved that there was no such involvement.
In their haste to dismiss Webb's work as conspiracy theory, the establishment papers took a few bizarre conspiratorial detours of their own. For Pincus and the Post, this involved shady innuendo about Webb's reporting practices. Pincus claimed Webb gave Ross's attorney Alan Fenster the idea that the CIA had been involved in Blandon's drug sales to his client. Webb suggested questions that Fenster should ask Blandon, then "subsequently used some testimony ... in one of his articles to support the thesis of CIA involvement." Fenster later "cited the Mercury News articles as the basis for a motion to overturn the conviction of his client on grounds of government misconduct." The Post gives the strong impression that Webb and Fenster were somehow cooperating to simultaneously win the attorney's case and bolster the reporter's reputation. This is in many ways far more paranoid and unsubstantiated than implications that there could have been a CIA-crack connection.
The Times also raised the specter of conspiracy, noting that "to a degree that would surprise most white Americans, blacks are far more likely to see U.S. history as a series of government-sponsored efforts to harm, oppress or exterminate them." Black Americans, the Times reporters argued, are prone to believe implications of CIA wrongdoing because "the powerless in society have always suspected that grand forces control their lives," and "the litany of real injustices has spawned rumors that stretch the imagination." This is a gross oversimplification of the issue and an insult to the African-American community's ability to evaluate some fairly compelling evidence about the CIA and drug trafficking operations. This also does not explain why the possibility of CIA involvement resonated with a wide spectrum of the population outside of the black community.
Perhaps the reason why the Post and the Times were unable to comprehend the public response to Webb's series is because their own reaction to the stories was essentially "So what?" The Post marveled that "The Mercury News stories echoed decade-old allegations that some contras had engaged in drug trafficking, but the articles triggered protests with the new charges on the origins of crack," as if it were impossible to comprehend such an outcry. As Ceppos pointed out in a letter to the Post editors, "the Post says that Blandon handled 'only' about five tons of cocaine over a decade. Even if that were true, that strikes us as a lot of pure cocaine being dumped into one section of a city, especially considering that it would have been diluted three to seven times before hitting the street."
"But we're talking about far more than five tons," Ceppos continued, "and you needn't take our word for it. Blandon himself told the DEA in a 1995 statement (posted on our Web site for all to see) that he sold cocaine to Ross for 10 years and supplied him with an average of 50 to 100 kilos a week. That works out to 2.8 to 5.7 tons a year, and Blandon testified that Ross was not his only customer."
The Mercury News Editor concluded: "The Post has every right to reach conclusions different from those of the Mercury News. But I'm disappointed in the 'What's the big deal?' tone running through the Post's critique. If the CIA knew about illegal activities being conducted by its associates, federal law and basic morality required that it notify domestic authorities. It seems to me that this is exactly the kind of story that a newspaper should shine a light on."
Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who headed a Senate inquiry into Contra drug connections in the 1980s, said he was "impressed by the reporting of the San Jose Mercury News," noting that his panel "never found specific evidence of a drug pipeline to targeted cities." Whether the establishment press accepts it or not, this sums up the relative importance of Webb's contribution -- that "Dark Alliance" formed one small piece of the complex puzzle of CIA involvement in the U.S. drug trade and brought researchers who have been exploring this question for decades a step closer to lifting the agency's veil of secrecy.
(c) Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.
