DELTA-D, PART D: IRAN/CONTRA
While Colombian traffickers more or less took over their country in the early 1980s,
American foreign policy played into the development of a secure pipeline to ship prod-
uct from Colombia to the U.S. The background: "Contras" were exiled Nicaraguans
who fouglht a guerilla war against the Sandinista govemment that took over the country
in 1979. The Reagan administration was enthusiastic in its support of the Contras,
seeing them as allies in the fight against Communism. In one famous quote.
President Reagan referred to Contra leaders as the moral equivalent of the founding
fathers.
Congress was more skeptical. They passed two different "Boland Amendments," one
in December of 1982, the second in October of 1984. The first amendment prohibited
use of CIA fimds "for the purpose of overthrowing the Govemment of Nicaragua"
(Scott and Marshall, 1991:112). The second amendment specified that only humanitar-
ian aid could be provided to the Contras.
Reduced military support from the U.S. meant that the Contras were short on
revenue to finance their guerrilla activity. The solution was obvious, especially when
one considers the previous involvement in drug trafficking on the part of some of the
transport companies. Contra leaders, and their allies (Cockbum and St. Clair, 1998:
284; Jonnes, 1996: 361). Planes fiew loaded with supplies to Central America. Why
return empty back to the U.S.?
Under the ideological umbrella of "national security,"
a protected conduit allowed shipments of cocaine to be transported to the U.S.
The main conclusions of a congressional investigation summarize the key points
(Scott and Marshall, 1991: 10). Senator John Kerry or Massachusetts began his inves-
tigation in April of 1986 and continued for two and a half years. The conclusion,
quoted in Cockbum and St. Clair: "It is clear that individuals who provided support
for the Contras were involved in dmg trafficking. The supply network of the
Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras them-
selves received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers" (1998:303). And
an important second conclusion for present purposes: "US officials involved in Central
America failed to address the dmg issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against
Nicaragua" (1998: 304).
The Contra cocaine story haunts the U.S. still. In 1996, Gary Webb published a series
of articles in the San Jose Mercury News claiming that the CIA actively developed the
crack cocaine market in African-American communities of Los Angeles. The contro-
versy continued with the publication of his book Dark Alliance (Webb, 1998). The scan-
dal recalls earlier U.S. connections with drug trafficking, also driven by strategic anti-
Communist goals - opium and heroin in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and
opium and heroin in support of the Mujahadeen rebels during the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan (McCoy, 1991).
The extent of U.S. involvement in cocaine trafficking in the 1980s remains in dispute.
Based on past cases, it is unlikely that the CIA played an active role in developing U.S.
markets. For present purposes, one thing is clear, in Central America with cocaine, just
as with other cases in Southeast and Southwest Asia, political allies of the U.S., in wars
12 M. AGAR
against Communist regimes, used illicit drugs to raise revenue to support their efforts.
When this did happen, the U.S. at least looked the other way. At the next level, U.S.
logistical sup]x>rt was used to transport illicit drugs. One more level up, and the U.S.
actively intervened to protect its allies against the efforts of other agencies, from the
U.S. or other countries, to stop trafficking. All these levels were reached in the
Contra case. A State Department ofTicial of the time, quoted in a Washington Post
story in 1994, said, 'The whole thing is too sleazy for words. It's not a happy chapter
in U.S. history"' (Cockbum and St. Clair, 1998: 285).
After Gary Webb's articles appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996, an ABC
reporter talked to Kerry, the senator who ran the congressional investigation. He Is
quoted as saying:
There is no question in my mind that people connected with the CIA were involved in drug trafficking while in support of the Contras. We had direct evidence that somewhere between SIO million and $15 million was going to the Contras. And I am quite confident that this was the tip of the iceberg. The
Contras were desperate for money. So in a sense they took a bridge loan from anyone available and the drug lords were available (Cockbum and St. Clair, 1998: 308).
The Contra pipeline was another piece of the early 1980s puzzle. The Colombian traf-
fickers who dominated their state institutions could now access their major market with
some protection from anti-drug enforcement. The increase in production and distri-
bution in the early 1980s is refiected in numerous statistics. Jonnes, for example,
writes that the wholesale price of cocaine in Miami, in 1983, dropped from $55,000
per kilo to half that (1996: 350). Later she writes that prices had dropped from
$60,000 in 1980 to $15,000 in 1983. In January of 1984, the Baltimore DEA office
reported that wholesale prices dropped 50% over the previous year and that there
was a "glut" of cocaine in South Florida ("City sellers reportedly switch to cocaine",
1984).
Many other sources during the period document the change in the markets, including
the regular monitoring of dmg indicators by the Commimity Epidemiology Work
Group of the National Institute on Dmg Abuse (Kozel, Semiannual). Without excep-
tion, all the CEWG indicators from the early I980's showed increasing supply and
purity and decreasing wholesale price for cocaine. Cocaine was everywhere, getting
better and cheaper all the time.
As mentioned at the end of the previous section, production of powder cocaine grew
through the early 1980s and the Contra connection facilitated shipment. But, as also
mentioned at the end of the last section, there was a problem with this growth industry.
As the fiood of product into the U.S. increased, the mostly affluent, mostly white users
were about to lose interest.
