Dare to keep the CIA off drugs |
Now here is an idea whose time has come. Just think how much more effective anti-drug education in schools would be if it were grounded in appreciation for what really moves our world. Lately the slogan has acquired fresh currency in the wake of a series of allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency played an active role in initiating the crack cocaine epidemic which has ravaged inner cities since the mid 80s, laying waste to innumerable lives and setting off a horrific round of gang-related violence. The intermediary pushers are said to have been representatives of Washington's fascists-of-the-decade, the Nicaraguan Contras, who, having been deprived of Congressional funding for the disembowelment of pregnant women and the destruction of health centers, were forced to turn to the underworld for money. The charge is that the CIA facilitated this movement of illicit cash, thereby cynically setting loose the crack holocaust.
The story was broken by the San Jose Mercury News this past summer, and soon made its way onto the internet. I picked up two accounts in August, and there were many others. Curiously, the Newspaper of Record, The New York Times, overlooked the news for more than a month. Evidently they didn't think a story about the US security apparatus setting loose a domestic plague even as it was ravaging Central America was "news fit to print." Finally, however, with investigations about to to begin and African-Americans in a rage, the story could no longer be suppressed. Now the Times, along with other official media like the Washington Post, put into motion the second law of damage control: pooh-pooh what you cannot ignore. In a seemingly thorough analysis which appeared on October 21, the Times became the voice of reason to refute the hysterical blacks and the paranoids on the left. "With little evidence to back it, tale of C.I.A.-drug link has life of its own" read one headline; while another told of "An endless supply of suspicion" and a third of "An assortment of connections, but no devastating picture."
What gave rise to this sage conclusion? The Times was candid: interviews with "current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, former rebel leaders and Contra supporters," who "uniformly gave very different descriptions of the Nicaraguan's role." Now there's hard-hitting, impartial journalism for you. The Times runs the case by the accused, who deny the charges. Imagine conducting the Nuremburg trials by asking the Nazi High Command whether the Third Reich had ever engaged in crimes against humanity, and then resting the case. No doubt this too would have produced "an assortment of connections, but no devastating picture."
Of course there is no reason to believe that the story is prima facie true.
Maybe a full and fair investigation will exonerate the CIA. But if this is
so, if it turns out that the CIA in fact played no significant role in
launching the crack cocaine plague, it will be one of the very few times in
the past fifty years that a major transfer of drugs into the US was not
midwifed by the agency. Consider:
And so it has gone, and so it goes. Too bad that Representative Maxine Waters and other blacks won't take the reassurances of the government that this time is different. Lacking the subtle discernment of the New York Times, they persist in believing that the leopard has spots and will kill for its food.
Why does this leopard have these spots? Why has the CIA consistently, year in and year out, consorted with gangsters and played so dreadful a role in the drug plague? I think there is a twofold answer. One part is the logic of defending an immense global disparity in wealth when the country controlling this wealth also happens to profess the egalitarian ideals of democracy. This contradiction forces the security apparatus into a permanent strategy of clandestine activity, to keep hidden what would otherwise besmirch the fair image of its patron. Once started down that path, it is only a matter of time before alliances are forged with organized crime.
And the other part is the tacit, perhaps scarcely conscious, but nonetheless powerful recognition that the urban underclasses, structurally discarded by the system and potentially explosive, are best dealt with through the introduction of deadly substances that directly blast the mind and indirectly destroy the fabric of society. Thus the schemes of drug-runners and those of the CIA run in parallel channels. The CIA runs drugs because, in the normal conduct of its affairs, it often makes perfect sense to do so. And it is in a position to act this way because of the essential structure of our system.
And so, to keep the CIA off drugs, you have to set out to have the CIA abolished. One small way to start would be to vote for a presidential candidate who would not pursue business as usual. Now let's see . . . just who could that be?
--END--