Central Intelligence Agency. Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the
Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States. 96-0143-IG. Volume II:
The Contra Story. Issued on 1998-04-27 as a classified report, and 1998-10
in declassified form. 236 pages. (This page count depends on the printout;
the report itself uses paragraph or item numbers instead. NameBase also
used these, resulting in numbers from 1 to 1148, new numbers for appendices
A to E, and again for graphical reproductions of documents in G1 to G14.)
In August 1996, Gary Webb and the San Jose Mercury News sparked a
frenzy about the CIA's role in 1980s cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles.
After the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post savaged
Webb's story in three-part harmony, the Mercury News caved and Webb was out
of a job. Four so-called "investigations" were launched on the issue of CIA,
contras, and cocaine: two by Congress, one by Justice, and one by the CIA's
then-Inspector General, Frederick Hitz. Two years later, it looked like a
fizzle. Then Volume II of the Hitz report was posted on the web, and quite
unexpectedly, it was full of names. Hitz lacked subpoena power, but he had
a 17-person team dig out old CIA records. This report reviews the record
of CIA message traffic, letters, and documents. There are no stunning
conclusions, merely an overwhelming impression for anyone who reads it:
CIA consistently dropped the ball on this issue, and rarely ran with it to
begin with, except to neutralize external pressure. Their only concern was
the contra war effort, and everything else took a back seat.
Extract the names from this source
Back to search page