While Ronald Reagan was preaching freedom around the world here at home he was escalating a war on his own people better known as the failed war on drugs. While America's youth was just saying no or getting busted this sacred cow was incahoots with Iran , Manuel Noriega ,the Medellin Cocaine Cartel, Mercaneries , Arms smugglers , Drug smugglers , rogue CIA agents, the Contras , crack dealers, and just about every other nefarious individuals or groups than one can imagine. Ronald Reagan was a cold warrior first and a drug warrior second so in name of defeating communism he went to bed with major players in the international drug trade all the while he's leading a war on drug users at home. Pretty hypocritical isn't it basically we allowed the drugs to be imported then had our law enforcement bust the users. The good guys in this story are a young Senator named John Kerry and a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter named Gary Webb. The bad guys are Reagan , Bush 41 , and their stooge Oliver North.
This 1 minute clip is from Ronald Reagans last role in the 1964 movie The Killers it's the only time old Ronnie ever played a Gangsta. Reagan was worried that this movie would ruin his political career. This clip is funny but the rest of this diary is dead serious.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The CIA overlooked or ignored reports that the Nicaragua Contra rebels financed their fight to oust the communist Sandinistas through the sale of drugs in the United States, according to an internal CIA report.
DEA discouraged from investigating
The report details cases where the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dissuaded other federal agencies, notably the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), from probing the activities of Contra groups and their contractors. In one instance, the CIA discouraged the DEA from examining Oliver North's efforts to evade legal restrictions on Contra aid through a secret supply operation in El Salvador, according to the report.
The report is the second released by the agency in response to a series of articles that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in the summer of 1996. Those articles accused the CIA of forming an alliance with drug dealers and Contra groups to introduce crack cocaine into south-central Los Angeles during the 1980s.
Selections from the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy chaired by Senator John F. Kerry
Gary Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative journalist, best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" investigative report series, written for the San Jose Mercury News. In the three-part series (later published as a book), Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan supplied cocaine sparked and significantly fueled the widespread crack epidemic that swept through urban areas. Webb's reporting generated a large controversy and the Mercury News backed away from the story, effectively ending Webb's career as a mainstream media journalist.
On December 10, 2004, he died from two gunshot wounds to the head, said in media reports to be self-inflicted.
In the Senate Kerry made his bones as a prosecutor rather than a legislator. In the spring of 1986, he assigned staffers to investigate whether the contras fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were involved in drug trafficking and gunrunning. Kerry's inquiry stumbled into Oliver North's still-secret contra support network, and for several years Kerry pursued the cocaine-contra angle. It was a lonely endeavor. The investigators of the House-Senate Iran/contra committee were steering clear of the contra-drugs business. "Kerry took crap from everybody," recalls Jack Blum, who ran the investigation. "The White House was telling the press our witnesses were full of shit, the story was crazy. There were Democrats in the Senate--like Sam Nunn--looking at us like we were nuts. And he kept going. Did he enjoy it? No. He was frustrated that so much of our work was written off by the Senate and much of the press."
After three years of digging--and several hearings that discomfited the CIA--Kerry produced a report that declared, "It is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers." And, the report indicated, the CIA had been aware of this. Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington. Almost a decade later, the CIA inspector general would release a study confirming these conclusions. The contra probe led Kerry into other muckpits. He discovered that the US government had long sat on information regarding the crimes of Manuel Noriega, the drugged-up dictator of Panama. The Noriega investigation drew Kerry to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a $23 billion institution used by money launderers, arms merchants, drug dealers, terrorists and spy services, including the CIA.
Kerry Committee report
The Kerry Committee report found that "the Contra drug links included...payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies." The US State Department paid over $806,000 to known drug traffickers to carry humanitarian assistance to the Contras.
Kerry's findings provoked little reaction in the media and official Washington. When the report was released on April 13, 1989, coverage was buried in the back pages of the major newspapers and all but ignored by the three major networks. The Washington Post ran a short article on page A20 that focused as much on the infighting within the committee as on its findings; the New York Times ran a short piece on A8; the Los Angeles Times ran a 589-word story on A11. ABC's Nightline chose not to cover the release of the report. According to Doyle McManus, the Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, the report "did not get the coverage that it deserved." This was in sharp contrast to those same newspapers' lengthy rebuttals to the Gary Webb "Dark Alliance" series seven years later in the Mercury News, which collectively totalled over 30,000 words.
The Kerry report was a precursor to the Iran-Contra affair.
Iran-Contra Affair
Reagan Administration admits Contra-cocaine connections
On April 17, 1986, the Reagan Administration released a three page report acknowledging that there were some Contra-cocaine connections in 1984 and 1985, arguing that these connections occurred at a time when the rebels were "particularly hard pressed for financial support" because U.S. aid had been cut off. The report admitted that "We have evidence of a limited number of incidents in which known drug traffickers have tried to establish connections with Nicaraguan resistance groups." The report tried to downplay the drug activity, claiming that it took place "without the authorization of resistance leaders."
The CIA Drug connection under Reagan
The "War on Drugs" really started with President Nixon and his attack on marijuana, but Reagan is known as the "Just Say No" president for his campaign against recreational drugs in America and a strong policy of international drug eradication. Under Reagan’s policy, at a time when Americans were being presented with strong anti-drug propaganda, the CIA was in fact an accomplice to a large narcotics smuggling ring in the United States. It was in fact Reagan’s policies that led to the cooperation between the CIA and the Contras. The Contras were a counter-revolutionary group that was fighting against the Sandinistas to return the corrupt Somoza regime to power in Nicaragua.
CIA and Contra's cocaine trafficking in the US
In 1998 the CIA finally admitted to its involvement in drug trafficking in the United States after years of federal investigation by the Kerry Congressional Committee. What the CIA admitted to was allowing cocaine trafficking to take place by Contras who were being supported by the CIA, using facilities and resources supplied by the US government, and preventing investigation into these activities by other agencies. This was done because funds for the support of militant groups in South America had been withdrawn by Congress so the CIA allowed the Contras to engage in the drug trade in the United States in order to make money to fund their military operations. If you are wondering why this was not covered more widely in the news during the Clinton Administration it may be because Arkansas was one of the major trafficking centers for the operations.
Some of the most prohibitive drug control laws ever were passed on Reagan's watch -- and Just Say No wasn't the half of it.
As Reagan's deification by the media and the right reaches epic proportions, three of his less-than-endearing legacies deserve to be highlighted:
Mandatory minimum drug sentences in 1986. This was the first time Congress passed mandatory minimum sentences since the Boggs Act in 1951.
Federal sentencing guidelines: Under this new method of sentencing, which went into effect in 1987, prison time is determined mostly by the weight of the drugs involved in the offense. Parole was abolished and prisoners must serve 85 percent of their sentence. Except in rare situations, judges can no longer factor in the character of the defendant, the effect of incarceration on his or her dependents, and in large part, the nature and circumstances of the crime. The only way to receive a more lenient sentence is to act as an informant against others and hope that the prosecutor is willing to deal. The guidelines in effect stripped Article III of their sentencing discretion and turned it over to prosecutors.
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988: This law established a federal death penalty for "drug kingpins." President Reagan called it a new sword and shield in the escalating battle against drugs, and signed the bill in his wife's honor:
Nancy, for your tireless efforts on behalf of all of us, and the love you've shown the children in your Just Say No program, I thank you and personally dedicate this bill to you. And with great pleasure, I will now sign the Anti-Drug...
Here are some of the lowlights of Reagan-era drug policy:
Erosion of the Posse Comitatus Act, the 1868 law that forbids federal troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities. It was the erosion of Posse Comitatus that led to the killing of US citizen Esequiel Hernandez by US Marines outside Redford, Texas, and the use of military equipment and personnel against the Branch Davidians in Waco in 1993 (under the pretext that they were cooking meth).
Zero-tolerance "Just Say No" as a public policy approach to drug use. "Not long ago in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs," explained Nancy Reagan in 1986. "And I answered, 'Just Say No.' Soon after that those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No Club and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country."
Passage of the 1986 crime bill, notable for the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences for the first time since 1970. This act also created the federal Sentencing Commission and the current system of federal sentencing guidelines, which did away with parole in the federal system, ensuring that prisoners would serve at least 85% of their sentences. And it included asset forfeiture.
Passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which established a federal death penalty for "drug kingpins." Reagan signed that bill in his wife's honor.
The home page of the Cato Institute,a libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, features a glowing homage to Reagan, but the former president wins no drug policy kudos from Cato's Timothy Lynch. "When it comes to the drug war, there's just not much good that can be said about Reagan's policy," Lynch conceded. "It was bad, no doubt about it."
This scandal was so damn bad hell it was much worse than Nixon and Watergate. The evidence is so overwhelmingly clear these GOP bastards are a bunch of drug dealers. But it's OK when they do it but not anyone else. The most ironic part of this wicked saga is that for all the trouble they went through to get rid of the Sandinistas guess who won the last presidential election in Nicaragua believe it or not it was Daniel Ortega the same exact guy that they had deemed such a communist threat back in the 1980's that they resorted to dealing drugs in order to get rid of him.I wish the John Kerry of 1986 was the same John Kerry of today I wonder what happened to him but just think about it he probably didn't want to wind up like Gary Webb. You can't get me to believe for a second that Gary Webb committed suicide by shooting himself not just once but twice in the head.
Recommended Readings
INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 1999 (House of Representatives)
A Tangled Web: A History of CIA Complicity in Drug International Trafficking
Barry Seal
What the CIA knew about the drug trade, in its own words
CIA-led Nicaraguan rebels brought cocaine to poor L.A. neighborhoods in early '80s to help finance war -- and a plague was born.
The CIA's Crack Dealer
Revisiting Ronald Reagan on the Drug War
RONALD REAGAN ON DRUGS
The Reagan-Era Drug War Legacy
The Bush Crime Family