Date: 1980s
Location: Nicaragua
The Conspirators: CIA, drug cartels, Contra rebels
The Victims: American drug addicts, Sandinistas
Nicaragua had long been ruled by the US-backed Somoza Administration. But in 1979, Somoza was overthrown by the Socialist Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan Revolution, who then took control. The CIA then funded and trained the right-wing Contra rebels to try to retake control from the Sandinistas. Both the Sandinistas and the Contras had ties to the drug cartels, but the CIA looked the other way and knowingly continued funding the Contras despite their cartel connections.
However, conspiracy theorists take this indirect relationship between the CIA and the drug cartels to another level. These theorists believe that the CIA assumed a leading role in the actual transport and sale of the cartel’s drugs to American citizens, whom they purposefully got addicted to crack cocaine in order to maximize profits, resulting in more money to buy guns for the Contras. Media revelations and Senate hearings, conspiracy theorists claim, have endorsed their view and proven them right.
The relationship between the Contras and the cartels existed with or without the CIA, and the CIA never participated in the sale of drugs to Americans to fund the Contras.
Since the United States didn’t want a Socialist government in Nicaragua, the CIA began funding and training the Contra rebels in 1981. The United States’ war against Socialism in the Western hemisphere, fought on the ground between the Contras and the Sandinistas, was the basic background for this whole conspiracy theory.
It was impossible to ignore the fact that factions on both sides had ties to the major drug cartels; the drug economy was simply woven into the fabric of Nicaragua during those turbulent times. But the CIA didn’t really care, because their main concern was getting the Socialist Sandinistas out of the way. However, the abundance of drug money as a source of funding for the Contras did conveniently fit into their plans, since it was a funding source that didn’t have to be funneled through Washington.
Newspapers began reporting the ties between the Contras and the drug cartels in 1984, and this reporting increased through 1986. The association with drug cartels was something of a public relations nightmare for the United States. The Reagan administration downplayed the ties, saying that they were minor, that they were without the knowledge of Contra leaders, and that they’d already severed any such ties, but few people were persuaded.
In 1986 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a series of hearings and ultimately prepared what became known as the Kerry Committee Report. This report essentially confirmed what everyone basically already knew: that narcotics trafficking and Contra activities were intertwined. They shared resources, business relationships, and supply operations. The cartels provided direct support to the Contras including cash, weapons, planes, pilots, air supply services, and other materials. By then, Nicaragua had begun general elections, and in 1990 a coalition of anti-Sandinista parties assumed power. The CIA’s war with the Sandinistas was over. From then on, things on the “CIA drugs for guns” front were essentially quiet. But everything changed in 1996, when the modern conspiracy theory received its greatest boost.
In 1996 reporter Gary Webb published a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News titled “Dark Alliance,” which he later expanded into a book. Webb’s premise was that the crack cocaine epidemic among the African-American population in South Central Los Angeles was the direct work of a handful of major drug dealers tightly connected to the CIA, and that the CIA was fully complicit in a solid pipeline of cocaine from the Contras to these dealers and to Los Angeles. Getting African Americans in Los Angeles addicted to crack was, Webb claimed, fundamental to the CIA’s plan to fund the Contras.
There was a tremendous response to Webb’s series from all quarters, very little of it positive. The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times all assigned teams of reporters to scrutinize the “Dark Alliance” articles and found Webb’s claims to be poorly supported and greatly exaggerated. The African-American community was especially outraged at Webb’s claims. California senators and the Justice Department demanded that Webb’s claims about the CIA be investigated. Three major federal investigations were launched, plus one by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. These investigations found little to substantiate Webb’s claims that went beyond what was already known from the Kerry Committee Report. The CIA did work with parties they knew to be connected to the cartels, but there is a lack of evidence that the CIA took any active role in the drug trade.
Although theorists love to claim the “CIA drugs for guns” debacle as a victory for conspiracy theories being proven true, there are two major problems with this: First, the links between the Contras and the cartels had been public information almost from the very beginning, as the newspapers were all reporting it. Conspiracy theorists can hardly claim credit for revealing something that they read in the papers.
Second, what they claim today widely misses the mark. The conspiracy theories trumpeted today are of activities that were investigated and then dismissed. The theorists claim that the CIA was involved in selling cocaine to Americans and even actively trying to get them addicted in order to sell more, but not even Gary Webb ever alleged that anything like that happened, and there was certainly never any evidence of it. The crack epidemic in Los Angeles had no connection to the CIA and was not caused by them, but in fact had myriad complex real causes. Conspiracy theorists can hardly claim vindication for believing something that is demonstrably wrong.
Ample evidence proves that the CIA was aware that the Contras they worked with were linked to the drug trade. The CIA knew that much of the Contras’ supplies were financed by drug money. Although this would have been the case even if the CIA had never become involved, the CIA did get involved to a higher degree. They authorized and made payments to people they knew to be drug traffickers. They used their influence to protect Contra officials from prosecution for drug-related crimes. They even hired drug trade professionals to perform certain tasks, such as aerial transport.
But as far as taking an active role in the drug trade and taking actions to distribute drugs in Los Angeles and get African Americans addicted, there is no evidence whatsoever that anything like this took place.