The crack cocaine epidemic started with the cut-off of
funding for the Contras in 1985. Congress had cut off all funding because of the CIA's mining of Nicaraguan harbors. The
Contras who were desperate for funds, had access to cocaine from Central
America, the use of CIA proprietary C-130A/Es to fly the white
powder into US military bases, and the distribution channels to sell cocaine on the street. Crack, an inexpensive, highly addictive drug is processed from cocaine; crack was an unknown drug at the beginning of 1985 but by the end
of the year, its usage had increased dramatically.
In April 1984, the CIA had mined Nicaraguan harbors, killing
the Reagan Administration’s changes to obtain more funding for the
Contras. Congress cut off all aid to the
Contras and prohibited the use of appropriated funds to support the Contras for
fiscal year 1985. “President Reagan
instructed McFarlane -- who in turn told [Lt. Col. Oliver] North -- that the NSC staff had to
keep the contras alive ``body and soul.'' [1]
Robert Tosh Plumlee, former CIA contract pilot, and three
retired DEA agents said that tons of cocaine were flown into US military
bases in the 1980s from Central America.
The easy answer for funding the Contras was to create or at least
reinvent crack cocaine for sale in the US.
The Contras had drug connections; some of them were drug dealers.
Crack cocaine was the cheap version of white powder. Cocaine, a high
priced recreational drug, was found among affluent communities. Inhabitants of South
Central Los Angeles and depressed communities throughout the US couldn’t afford
cocaine at $250 per gram but they could afford crack cocaine at $5 to $10 a rock,
which gave a 15 minute intense dopamine high. The downside was addiction, and
willingness to do anything for the drug.
Prostitution. Robbery. Murder.
But, you couldn’t sell cocaine in the inner cities; it just
cost too much money and there were no buyers in these neighborhoods.
The facts are that crack cocaine was off the radar prior to
1985; the Contras had access to US military bases like El Toro and March AFB in
Southern California and Homestead AFB in Florida via CIA proprietary aircraft that
flew guns south and drugs north.
Nicaraguan
drug dealers like Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses needed to come up with a ‘new
drug’ that was priced for sale in the inner cities. Their answer was crack cocaine, which is processed from cocaine. Crack is a form of cocaine that has been processed to make a rock crystal (also called “freebase cocaine”) that can be smoked. The crystal is heated to produce vapors that are absorbed into the blood-stream through the lungs. (The term “crack” refers to the crackling sound produced by the rock as it is heated.)
It’s not like cocaine came with a manufacture’s product
instruction sheet on how to make crack cocaine.
Crack cocaine is a smokeable
form of cocaine made into small “rocks” by processing (cooking) cocaine with
sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and water.
It’s not a complicated process but since crack was virtually unknown on the
street prior to 1985, Blandon, Meneses and probably others had to prove to
hardened drug dealers that crack was easy to process from cocaine, highly addictive, inexpensive to the end
user, and profitable to drug dealers.
Once the
information became available to inner city drug dealers, it was only a short
time before crack became the drug of choice in depressed neighborhoods throughout the country.
In LA, Freeway Ricky Ross, an illiterate
black man in his 20s, became a
multi-millionaire drug dealer, a major distributor of crack cocaine using
the Crips and Bloods, Black gangs with thousands members in the inner cities, until
he was arrested in a DEA sting operation in 1996.
Ross had no idea that Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, Nicaraguans and his source of powder cocaine,
were CIA informants who funneled millions in profits to the Contras in support
of the undeclared war in Nicaragua.
You have to
live in a fantasy world to believe that Ricky Ross came up with the idea of
converting powder cocaine into crack cocaine and making
it into a highly marketable narcotic. Ross was a natural at marketing; he had a
Ph.D. in street smarts and used it to make millions. But, Ross wasn’t the first one to make crack. Some of his customers in the
early 1980s were cooking the powder and turning it into crystal rocks to
smoke. Ever the entrepreneur, Ross hired
someone to cook the cocaine for customers and then seeing how easy it was did
it himself. Ghetto drug dealers are not
chemists. You don’t need a laboratory to manufacture crack cocaine. Ross ran a number of ‘cook houses’ in LA to
make crack. All he needed was a large
pot, cooking stove, water and backing soda. Dissolving powder cocaine in water,
adding baking soda, and heating results in crack cocaine, crystal smokeable
rocks.[2]
In a Dickenson
University blog, The
Role of Chemistry in History, the author described the negative impact on
crack cocaine on the Black communities in the 80s and 90s:
The discovery of crack cocaine is directly responsible for the
deterioration of inner cities during the 1980s and 1990s. A studies show, at
the same in time in which crack cocaine became noticed in different American
cities, devastating proportions of crime, HIV/AIDS, and minority incarcerations
followed. In the years following the fall of communism, the ending if the
Vietnam war, and domestically, the civil rights movements, and increasing
upward mobility amongst minorities, crack cocaine stood as an unmovable road
block in the betterment of American people. As cocaine was actively used drug
in the United States for over a century before crack was introduced, the less
expensive and overly available smoke able form took the inner city by storm.[3]
The retail market for crack cocaine
in economically depressed communities was facilitated by the low unit cost of
crack and the availability of Black gangs like the Crips and Bloods to sell the
drug on every street corner to anyone looking for an inexpensive high.
The
health effects on crack users was devastating.
The increase of dopamine in the brain from smoking crack causes a euphoria and almost
instant addiction. Users would do
anything for the drug. As long as easy money could be made for the inexpensive
but relatively short lasting highs, users would literally kill for it.
A Harvard University study, “Measuring Crack
Cocaine and Its Impacts” published in April 2006, reported, “Between 1984 and
1994, the homicide rate for Black males aged 14-17 more than doubled and
homicide rates for Black males aged 18-24 increased almost as much…in stark
contrast, homicide rates for Black males 25 and older were essentially flat
over the same period. By the year 2000, homicide rates had fallen back below
their initial levels."
The Sub-Committee
on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, chaired by Senator John
Kerry, reported in 1989 “that it is clear that individuals who provided support
for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the
Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras
themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug
traffickers." [4]
The use of US military bases and government issued transponder codes to allow aircraft to freely cross the Mexican border with tons of cocaine would have cause a public uproar, if known. Powerful people would have been indicted, prosecuted and convicted of cocaine trafficking. It's not a surprise that those who were a threat to blow the whistle on illegal narcotrafficking were murdered.
The sales of weapons to the Iranian government and the diversion of funds to support the Contras pales in comparison to the risk of public disclosure of the use of US military bases and CIA proprietary aircraft to fly cocaine into the US to support the Contras. The resulting public uproar over cocaine trafficking in a covert operation would have brought down the Reagan and Bush administrations, resulting in multiple incitements and convictions of powerful people. If you’re looking for a motive to murder Colonel Sabow and others who were a threat to blow the whistle on illegal cocaine trafficking, you found one.
[1] CIA website: “Introduction: The Contra Story,” https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/intro.html
[2] The Kerry Report: "Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations" (April 1989). Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy. p. 86.
[3] Mark Wachtler, “RIP Michael C Ruppert, the Cop that busted the CIA.” Whiteout Press, April 17, 2014, http://www.whiteoutpress.com/articles/2014/q2/rip-michael-c-ruppert-the-cop-that-busted-the-cia/
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