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||| A N T I F A |||
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||| I N F O - B U L L E T I N |||
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||| * News * Analysis * Research * Action * |||
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|| * -- SPECIAL -- * -- June 20, 1997 -- * -- EDITION -- * ||
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* SPECIAL EDITION *
_____
_________________________________________________________________
`CIA-CONTRA-CRACK CONNECTION'
_________________________________________________________________
*
* THE CONSORTIUM FOR INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM *
http://www.delve.com/consort.html
* Vol. 2, No. 15 (issue 41) - Washington, D.C. - June 30, 1997 *
-----
_________________________________________________________________
HUNG OUT TO DRY:
`DARK ALLIANCE' SERIES DIES
_________________________________________________________________
By Georg Hodel
The "Dark Alliance" contra-crack series, which I co-reported
with Gary Webb, has died with less a bang or a whimper than a
gloat from the mainstream press.
"The San Jose Mercury News has apparently had enough of
reporter Gary Webb and his efforts to prove that the CIA was
involved in the sale of crack cocaine," announced Washington Post
media critic Howard Kurtz, who has written some of the harshest
attacks on Webb. "Editors at the California newspaper have yanked
Webb off the story and told him they will not publish his
follow-up articles. They have also moved to transfer Webb from
the state capital bureau in Sacramento to a less prestigious
suburban office in Cupertino." [WP, June 11, 1997]
Webb got the news on June 5 from executive editor Jerry
Ceppos, who had publicly turned against the series several weeks
earlier with a personal column declaring that the stories "fell
short of my standards" and failed to handle the "gray areas" with
sufficient care. [SJMN, May 11, 1997]
In killing the new stories, Ceppos said Mercury News editors
had reservations about the credibility of a principal Webb
source, apparently a reference to convicted cocaine trafficker
Carlos Cabezas who has claimed that a CIA agent oversaw the
transfer of drug profits to the contras. Ceppos also complained
that Webb had gotten too close to the story.
Ceppos then ordered Webb to the paper's San Jose
headquarters the next day to learn about his future with the
newspaper. On June 6, as that final decision was coming down, I
called Ceppos to protest. I wanted him to understand the human as
well as journalistic costs of what he was doing, not just to Webb
but to other journalists associated with the story in Nicaragua
where I have worked for more than a decade.
I thought he should know that his decision to distance
himself from the "Dark Alliance" series -- combined with earlier
attacks from major American newspapers -- had increased the
dangers to me and others who have been pursuing this story in the
field.
Just as Webb has been under personal attack in the United
States, I have faced efforts from former contras to tear down my
reputation in Nicaragua. Ex-contras also have harassed Nicaraguan
reporters who have tried to follow up the contra-cocaine
evidence.
In one paid advertisement, Oscar Danilo Blandon, a drug
trafficker who has admitted donating some cocaine profits to the
contras in the early 1980s, called me a "pseudo-journalist" and
accused me of having some unspecified links to an "international
communist organization." Blandon also accused Nicaraguan
reporters from El Nuevo Diario of "trying to manipulate" members
of the U.S. Congress looking into the contra-cocaine charges.
Former contra chief Adolfo Calero declared in an article in
La Tribuna what he thought should be done to these politically
suspect Nicaraguan and foreign reporters. He used metaphorical
language that refers to leftist Nicaraguan journalists as "deer"
and fellow-traveling foreign reporters as "antelopes." "The deer
are going to be finished off," Calero wrote on Feb. 2. "In this
case, the antelopes as well." As a Swiss journalist, I would be
an "antelope."
Less subtly, there have been threatening phone calls to my
office. In late May, a male voice shouted obscenities at me over
the phone and threatened to "screw" my wife who is a Nicaraguan
lawyer representing Enrique Miranda, one of the Nicaraguan
cocaine traffickers who has spoken with congressional
investigators.
Earlier I had sent Ceppos a letter which complained that his
May 11 "column provoked ... a series of very unfortunate
reactions that seriously affect my working environment and
exposes unintentionally everybody here who has been involved in
this investigation." In the phone conversation on June 6, Ceppos
first denied having received the letter, but then admitted that
he had it. Still, he refused my request that the letter be
published.
A CLEAR MESSAGE
My appeal also did not stop Ceppos from informing Webb later
that day that the investigative reporter would be transferred to
a suburban office 150 miles from his home where he and his wife
are raising three young children. That would mean that Webb would
have to relocate from Sacramento or not see his family during the
work week. The message was clear and Webb did not miss its
significance: he saw the transfer as a clear message that the
Mercury News wanted him to quit.
The retributions against Webb were a sad end to the "Dark
Alliance" series which has been enveloped in controversy since it
was published in August 1996. The series linked contra cocaine
shipments in the early 1980s to a Los Angeles drug pipeline that
first mass-marketed "crack" cocaine to inner-city neighborhoods.
The series drew especially strong reactions from the
African-American community which has been devastated by the crack
epidemic. In fall 1996, however, The Washington Post and other
major newspapers began attacking the series for alleged
overstatements. The papers also mocked African-Americans for
supposedly being susceptible to baseless "conspiracy theories."
The furor obscured the fact that "Dark Alliance" built upon
more than a decade of evidence amassed by journalists,
congressional investigators and agents of the Drug Enforcement
Administration who found numerous connections between the contras
and drug traffickers. Some of that evidence was compiled in a
Senate report issued in 1989. Other pieces came out during the
Iran-contra scandal and still more during the drug-trafficking
trial of Panamanian Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1991.
But the contras were always defended by the Reagan-Bush
administrations which saw the guerrillas as a necessary geo-
political counterweight to the leftist Sandinista government that
ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s. With a few exceptions, the
mainstream media joined the White House in protecting the contras
-- and the CIA -- on the drug-trafficking evidence. [For more
details about the controversy, see Robert Parry's Lost History:
Contras, Cocaine & Other Crimes or I.F. Magazine, July-August
1997]
CONTRA COCAINE
Still, from time to time, even The Washington Post has
acknowledged legitimate concerns about contra drug trafficking.
Last fall, for instance, after initiating the attacks on "Dark
Alliance," the Post ran a front-page article describing how
Medellin cartel trafficker George Morales "contributed at least
two airplanes and $90,000 to" one of the contra groups operating
in Costa Rica. The story quoted contra leaders Octaviano Cesar
and Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro as admitting receipt of the
contributions, although they insisted that they had cleared the
transactions with their contact at the CIA. [WP, Oct. 31, 1996]
The Post did not mention the name of that contact, an
omission that angered Chamorro. He told me that the CIA man was
Alan Fiers, who served as chief of the CIA's Central American
Task Force in the mid-1980s. Fiers has denied any illicit
involvement with drug traffickers, although he testified to the
congressional Iran-contra investigators that he knew that among
the Costa Rican-based contras, drug trafficking involved "not a
couple of people. It was a lot of people."
While admitting some truth to the contra-cocaine
allegations, the Post story stopped short of any self-criticism
about the newspaper's failure to expose the contra-drug problem
in the 1980s as the cocaine was entering the United States. In
the Oct. 31, 1996, story, the Post only noted that "a broad
congressional inquiry from 1986 to 1988 ... found that CIA and
other officials may have chosen to overlook evidence that some
contra groups were engaged in the drug trade or were cooperating
with traffickers."
The Post then added obliquely: "But that probe caused little
stir when its report was released." With that indirect phrasing,
the Post seemed to be shunting off blame for the "little stir"
onto the congressional report. The newspaper did not explain why
it buried the Senate report's explosive findings on page A20.
[WP, April 14, 1989]. Instead, last fall, the Post and other big
papers focused almost exclusively on alleged flaws in "Dark
Alliance."
When that drumbeat of criticism began, Ceppos initially
defended the series. He wrote a supportive letter to the Post
(which the newspaper refused to publish). But the weight of the
attacks from major newspapers and leading journalism reviews
eventually softened up the Mercury News. Inside the paper, young
staffers feared that the controversy could hurt their chances of
getting hired by bigger newspapers. Senior editors fretted about
their careers in the Knight-Ridder chain, which owns the Mercury
News.
NEW LEADS
In the meantime, Webb and I continued following contra-drug
leads in Nicaragua and the United States. The new information
eventually became the basis for Webb's submission of four new
stories to Ceppos. Webb has described these stories as completed
drafts although Ceppos called them just "notes."
Though I have not seen Webb's drafts, I know they include
two stories relating to witnesses in Nicaragua who were part of
the cocaine networks of Norwin Meneses, a longtime Nicaraguan
drug trafficker who was based in San Francisco and who
collaborated closely with senior contra leaders.
Meneses's operation surfaced with the so-called Frogman case
in 1983 when the FBI and Customs captured two divers in wet suits
hauling $100 million worth of cocaine ashore at San Francisco
Bay. The federal prosecutor* ordered $36,020 captured in that
case be given to the contras who claimed it was their money.
For the new "Dark Alliance" stories, we interviewed Carlos
Cabezas who was convicted of conspiracy in the Frogman case.
Cabezas insisted that a CIA agent -- a Venezuelan named Ivan
Gomez -- oversaw the cocaine operation to make sure the profits
went to the contras, not into the pockets of the traffickers.
Last year, Cabezas outlined his claims in a British ITV
documentary. "They told me who he [Gomez] was and the reason that
he was there," Cabezas said. "It was to make sure that the money
was given to the right people and nobody was taking advantage of
the situation and nobody was taking profit that they were not
supposed to. And that was it. He was making sure that the money
goes to the contra revolution."
The ITV documentary, which aired on Dec. 12, 1996, quoted
former CIA Latin American division chief Duane Clarridge as
denying any knowledge of either Cabezas or Gomez. Clarridge
directed the contra war in the early 1980s and was later indicted
on perjury charges in connection with the Iran-contra scandal. He
was pardoned by President George Bush in 1992.
The new "Dark Alliance" stories also would have examined the
claims of other contra-connected drug witnesses in Nicaragua as
well as the career problems confronted by DEA agents when they
uncovered evidence of contra drug trafficking. But prospects that
the full contra-cocaine story will ever be told in the United
States have dimmed with the shutting down of "Dark Alliance."
I am also afraid that Ceppos's decision to punish Webb will
strengthen the campaign of intimidation inside Nicaragua. But
beyond the personal costs to Webb and me, Ceppos's actions sent a
chilling message to all journalists who some day might dare
investigate wrongdoing by the CIA and its operatives.
What's especially troubling about this new "Dark Alliance"
tale is that the investigative spotlight was turned off not by
the government, but by the national news media. ~
(c) Copyright 1997
*
* AFIB EDITOR'S NOTE: The "federal prosecutor [who] ordered
$36,020 captured" in San Francisco from contra operatives
"who claimed it was their money" was Joseph P. Russionello,
the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California.
Currently Russionello is a "legal analyst" for KTVU Channel
2, Oakland-San Francisco, the local Fox Broadcasting
affiliate. Talk about revolving doors! For further
background on the "Frogman Case" see: Peter Dale Scott and
Jonathan Marshall, _Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the
CIA in Central America_, 1991, Berkeley, University of
California Press, pp. 104-111, 172.
-----
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