The Issues
A close-up on the war
The global war on drugs has stumbled more than it has succeeded. It has been troubled by patchy leadership and a contradictory history.
One such case was revealed by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Gary Webb, who wrote a series of stories in 1996 linking America's spy agency CIA to cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles. His series, Dark Alliance, which appeared in the San Jose Mercury News, revealed that the CIA had backed the transport of cocaine into the US by the Contras Nicaraguan rebel group.
The CIA's involvement with Contra rebels is largely political. After the overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a socialist party, came into power in Nicaragua. In 1981, US President Ronald Reagan was concerned that the FSLN would turn Nicaragua into a 'second Cuba', bringing Soviet-Cuban communist forces closer to the US. To suppress the socialists, Reagan directed the CIA to finance, arm and train the Contras, an anti-socialist group.
Webb wrote that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s, and that the drug profits were used to fund the Contras. He reported that the CIA and White House officials knew about the cocaine deal and the rebel group's involvement.
Webb's investigation led to an inquiry in Washington led by US senator John Kerry. Two agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) told lawmakers that an official with the US National Security Council wanted to pay the Contras US$1.5 million from a Colombian drug cartel. The official, Oliver North, has consistently denied any involvement with drug trafficking.
