Proof that the CIA smuggled or helped smuggle drugs into low income areas?

[Aspiring Humanist]

I just had a pretty big argument with my dad about CIA's involvement in drug trafficking so I need some legitimate sources. Preferably nothing with the words "socialist" or "worker" or anything leftist in the title. I scoured the web but I can't find any thing that's not anecdotal or CIA documents that hide the truth by wording their reports weird. Thanks a bunch

[Ocean Seal]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ross_%28drug_trafficker%29#Iran-Contra_involvement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US

This should give you a good amount of ammunition, also hard drug use surged during the years of COINTELPRO activity in low income areas, I think it could be very easily suggested that drug dealers played a key role in undermining worker movements like the Black Panthers.

[Jimmie Higgins]

There's some evidence that's pretty strong about a lot of shady things that the government has done in the name of the "war on drugs" or the "war on gangs". But I don't know if I've ever found hard evidence of some kind of large scale "plot" by the government.

It's "common knowledge" in California that the government brought drugs into low income areas and I've even heard people say that the governmnet set-up the Bloods gang in order to both weaken the Crips but also ensure that street gangs fought each other rather than becoming a possible political force.

Frankly, while these arguments are common and I don't doubt there are real examples of police and FBI corruption (and attacks on the Black Panthers and other radicals through COINTELPRO as well as drug testing and drug smuggling into the population from the government via things like MKULTRA), I think these claims are really just conspiracy theories. Like I said, I don't doubt that the government and the "war on drugs" could give two shits about how crack and meth ruin people's lives and keep communities targeted by police but I don't think the government is coordinated enough or has enough motivation to "create" drug use. They can be fine creating "drug hysteria" without any actual use of drugs going up.

[Aspiring Humanist]

To the extent of my knowledge the CIA didn't proactively put drugs in the communities but rather let them come in and not do anything about it

[Dacaru]

Webb, Gary. (1998). Dark alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the crack cocaine explosion. New York: Seven Stories Press.

[GPDP]

It's hardly hard evidence, but I did attend a talk by George McGovern (an ex-member of the CIA's intelligence division) some time ago, wherein he reluctantly admitted semi-privately (after some probing by my leftist professor) that the CIA's operations division was indeed involved on drug trafficking, and still is.

Again, take it with a grain of salt, but it kinda did come from the horse's mouth. I say kinda, because he apparently holds no love for the operations division of the CIA.

[Jose Gracchus]

Webb, Gary. (1998). Dark alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the crack cocaine explosion. New York: Seven Stories Press.

I'd second this. A major fleshing out of this whole episode and the connections and facts surrounding it is contained in Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography by Dominic Streatfeild. A later Kerry Commission (yes, that Senator Kerry) confirmed all the basic assertions of fact in Gary Webb's reporting for the San Jose Mercury News. However an organized campaign of media denunciation and disinformation from both within the state ideological apparatus, as well as major official media, forced him out of his job, ruined his journalism career, driving him to commit suicide in his personal ruin.

As Chomsky has put it, unlike in our domains in Central America, we don't cut off your genitals, rape your sister in front of you, and then hang your and hers flayed bodies from a tree if you talk out of line here, but real power is brought to bear against you if you do not learn to conform and obey when it counts.

[the desire to rebel]

There´s this book by mexican journalist Anabel Hernandez( "Los senores del narco") that shows the way the CIA did deals with the druglords:


"They would turn a blind eye to the smuggling of drugs into the United States if Traffic lords helped finance the counterrevolution in Nicaragua. There are declassified documents that I have had access to that prove this"

I think the book is coming out on english this November but I´m not sure.

Also, you should check this out, it´s not drug smuggling but it´s a pretty controversial issue right now:

xxx.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/03/eveningnews/main20039031.shtml

(please put ws on the place of the xs, I can´t post links yet :( )