One of the most pernicious myths, still unfortunately widespread in parts of the black community, is that in the 1980s, the American government introduced crack cocaine into America's ghettos, starting in Los Angeles, to help keep black people down.
It's a lie. It's always been a lie. But part of the conspiracy theory, if you hear it, also says that they used the money to help the Contras in Nicaragua. Or, alternatively, that the Contras sold the crack in Los Angeles to get it started, and the government encouraged them to do it.
It ain't so. But its widespread belief is incredibly corrosive. It leads a lot of black people to cynicism, to paranoia about their government, to believe that they are being kept down by white people, and so on. You can see it driving the politics in a lot of black neighborhoods, and you even see it cropping up in mostly-black cities like Detroit. It really is pernicious nonsense.
Reason magazine has a great review online of a book that, once again, peddles the same old "CIA sold crack to fund the contras and hurt black people" myth. It's from a few years ago, but it's still valid today. The review not only exposes the fraud, but also where the myth came from, why it's a fraud, and what really happened with drugs in Central America back in the '80s. It's dynamite reading. I recommend it highly.
http://COPvCIA.com
Conspiracy Fact
Thanks, Flux. Good example of the lunacy.
I like how their site is "continuously hacked," but for only a few $$$ you can still support their cause. Which is to point to stuff in publicly available documents, even though they're the only ones ever to have read them.
Because I don't want to be in the position of defending the site referenced in the first post, I would only point out that finding excerpts from the CIA Inspector General's report on the subject is not a difficult proposition.
http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia/ven/931120.wp.html, or
http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/coke.html (summary of news articles)
Of course it's logically indefensible to then turn it into a "government vs. black community" conspiracy. However, it's equally indefensible to ignore the underlying facts concerning "innovative" methods of CIA finance, CIA connections with drug lords, Manuel Noreiga's existence as a CIA asset when it was known that he was a drug-runner, etc.
That Noriega was a CIA asset does not in and of itself implicate the CIA in drug running.
Did the CIA occasionally look the other way while drug running was going on...almost certainly. It was (is) not their job to interdict drugs, but to supplant (perceived) threats to national security (namely communism, in this case). But did the CIA directly peddle (or encourage the peddling) of drugs? I sincerely doubt it, not out of blind faith in their honesty but out of simple common sense. The amount of money they stood to gain would be a tiny fraction of the amount spent here fighting drugs and drug related crime. What point is there to that? Hmmm, I'll earn a hundred mill dealing drugs, then turn around and spend a billions fighting them? It just doesn't make any economic sense.
The poison planted by the first conspiracy theorists about the Kennedy assasination has borne fruit - now everyone has a conspiracy theory about everything.
I think a lot of this has been fed by the post-Watergate, scandal-driven media. For all the folks who are into the mysterious conspiracy stuff, the perpetual litany of scandal that has graced modern media for an eon just feeds this stuff.
As far as it goes, I think that the "corrosive and pernicious" effects of this conspiracy-mongering have done a lot to foster the schism between the far (wingnut, barking moonbat) Left and the Democratic Party.
(Shameless link whoring here) I would reckon that the constant air of media-driven scandal is one of the four principle developments that have created the grounds for political realignment in the US.
Patrick: Only if you assume two things: (a) that government decisions make economic sense and (b) that agencies work in policy-driven concert together, especially where one of the agencies is the CIA.
I agree to both of those assumptions because the conspiracists say that this is coming from the top-down (i.e. from the prez, not a rogue CIA group). If the prez wants to shift a relatively small amount of funding from the military to the CIA, I believe there are fairly easy ways to do it without going through all the contrivances of CIA agents trafficking in drugs to pick up a little pocket-change.
Regardless of the truth or falsehood of any allegations about CIA involvment with drugs, anywhere or anytime, Drug Prohibition does indeed damage lower class communities, regardless of race.
Doesn't matter who introduced the crack, Prohibition breeds corruption.
How do you know it's a lie?
Some of you obviously need to read the actual article I linked to. As it lays out, the simple fact is that there is no guerilla or "revolutionary" group anywhere on this planet that has not, at one time or another, been involved in the drug trade at some level. Why? Because when you're on the edges of mainstream society, and, constantly in need of funds--which all such groups are--sooner or later you are going to discover that moving drugs will help get you necessary cash.
Thus, pick any "rebel" or "revolutionary" or "counter-revolutionary" group anywhere on the globe, whether Marxist, Fascist, religious extremist (like Al-Qaeda), whatever, and you will find that somewhere within their group at some time or another there has been involvement in the drug trade.
With the specific case of the Contras, we know that for a while, when they were strapped for cash, some Contras came up with it by selling cocaine.
We also know that when they got more funding from the U.S., the Contra leaders put a stop to it, and expelled anyone found to still be involved in it.
The evidence that the CIA countenanced the drug trade has been shown to be exceedingly questionable if not outright fabricated in many cases, and uncorroborated in almost all cases. Just go read the book review--it pretty much lays all this out.
I've advocated for quite a while that completely ending the War On Drugs and taxing them will do more to win the War On Terror than anything else.
It would suck up most of the funding, and make what remains much easier to trace.
Kind of appropriate that it will take an increase in liberty to suck up the money terrorists get.
The Reason article hardly qualifies as a review of sufficient gravity to debunk Webb's claims. Rather it is a hodgepodge of catchphrases nobody knows or cares about any longer.
I read Webb's book, and without going into depth, the most damning thing that arises from it is that the CIA and the DOJ conflicted over the prosecution of each other's stooges. And so it turned out that a particular set of investigations which would have gone to trial, putting certain embarrassing names and facts into the public record were not pursued. Webb connected the dots after the fact.
There was certainly complicity with the CIA with drug dealers and all sorts of unsavory characters. That should come as no surprise to anyone. But there was no intent, implied or demonstrated, to countenance or encourage the drug trade in black Los Angeles. If anyone has such a case it's Miami.
No one can blame the duly elected representative of the people, namely Maxine Waters, to press for investigations into such matters. It's one thing to criticize excessive political rhetoric, and debunk nutcases whose paranoia is evident on their websites, but it's something else entirely to suggest that blackfolks are losing their minds, if they ever had one.
For what? A four year old rant in Reason? Take away Reason's desire to smear the left by poking fun at Webb and what are you left with? Two facts.
Is the US Government responsible for the failure of drug interdiction? Yes. Should black communities take extraordinary measures to hold their government into account? Yes.
I support the same policy that David Mercer describes in his comments to this submission. The so-called war on drugs cannot and will not achieve its goals, any more than the prohibitionist war on licquor in the 1920s accomplished its goals. All that occured then and now was to enrich and empower the gangs that controlled the traffic, and caused much more crime than it stopped.
The time has also come to rethink the policy of locking up citizens for offenses against their own persons, which is exactly what is implied by possession of narcotics. Usage of narcotics, like homosexuality, ought to be regarded as an abuse of one's own body, in the same way that religious worship is a mild form of abuse of one's brain. But in no instance ought these abuses to be considered reasons for confining citizens in prisons, consuming facilities and funding that should be reserved for the confinement of violent criminals.
Unlike David Mercer, I am neither a former Christian, nor have I ever used drugs or practiced homosexuality. But I come to my ideas strictly through the rational exercize of my own mind. Therefore I have come to some of the same conclusions that David has reached, but perhaps for other reasons.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I would agree with Arnold if in conjunction with legalizing drugs we also removed the ability of drug users to leech the rest of society. Adults should make their own decisions AND be responsible for them.
Unfortunately, this will never happen. We're a country that sues fast food joints and we want to legalize heroin? I can just imagine the outrage when I suggest heroin addicts shouldn't be eligible for welfare or medicare.