Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion

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In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One--the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about--without even looking for it. A simple phone call concerning an unexceptional pending drug trial turned into a massive conspiracy involving the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, L.A. and Bay Area crack cocaine dealers, and the Central Intelligence Agency. For several years during the 1980s, Webb discovered, Contra elements shuttled thousands of tons of cocaine into the United States, with the profits going toward the funding of Contra rebels attempting a counterrevolution in their Nicaraguan homeland. Even more chilling, Webb quickly realized, was that the massive drug-dealing operation had the implicit approval--and occasional outright support--of the CIA, the very organization entrusted to prevent illegal drugs from being brought into the United States.

Within the pages of Dark Alliance, Webb produces a massive amount of evidence that suggests that such a scenario did take place, and more disturbing evidence that the powers that be that allowed such an alliance are still determined to ruthlessly guard their secrets. Webb's research is impeccable--names, dates, places, and dollar amounts gather and mount with every page, eventually building a towering wall of evidence in support of his theories. After the original series of articles ran in the Mercury-News in late 1996, both Webb and his paper were so severely criticized by political commentators, government officials, and other members of the press that his own newspaper decided it best not to stand behind the series, in effect apologizing for the assertions and disavowing his work. Webb quit the paper in disgust in November 1997. His book serves as both a complex memoir of the time of the Contras and an indictment of the current state of America's press; Dark Alliance is as necessary and valuable as it is horrifying and grim. --Tjames Madison

Customer Reviews:

CIA Case Officer from Central American Era Validates This Book.......2007-06-09

I am probably the only reviewer who was a clandestine case officer (three back to back tours), who participated in the Central American follies as both a field officer and a desk officer at CIA HQS, who is also very broadly read.

With great sadness, I must conclude that this book is truthful, accurate, and explosive.

The book lacks some context, for example, the liberal Saudi funding for the Contras that was provided to the National Security Council (NSC) as a back-door courtesy.

There are three core lessons in this book, supported by many books, some of which I list at the end of this review:

1) The US Government cannot be trusted by the people. The White House, the NSC, the CIA, even the Justice Department, and the Members of Congress associated with the Administration's party, are all liars. They use "national security" as a pretext for dealing drugs and screwing over the American people.

2) CIA has come to the end of its useful life. I remain proud to have been a clandestine case officer, but I see now that I was part of the "fake" CIA going through the motions, while extremely evil deeds were taking place in more limited channels.

3) In the eyes of the Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, and Honduran people, among many others, the US Government, as represented by the CIA and the dark side Ambassadors who are partisan appointees rather than true diplomats, is evil. It consorts with dictators, condones torture, helps loot the commonwealths of others, runs drugs, launders money, and is generally the bully on the block.

I have numerous notes on the book, and will list just a few here that are important "nuggets" from this great work:

1) The CIA connection to the crack pandemic could be the crime of the century. It certainly destroys the government's moral legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

2) The fact that entrepreneur Ricky Ross went to jail for life, while his supplier, Nicaraguan Blandon, was constantly protected by CIA and the Department of Justice, is a travesty.

3) Nicaragua, under Somoza, was the US Government's local enforcer, and CIA was his most important liaison element. As long as we consort with 44 dictators (see Ambassador Palmer's "The Real Axis of Evil," we should expect to be reviled by the broader populations.

4) I believe that beginning with Henry Kissinger, the NSC and the CIA have had a "eugenics" policy that considers the low-income blacks to be "expendable" as well as a nuisance, and hence worthy of being targeted as a market for drugs to pull out what income they do have.

5) I believe that CIA was unwitting of the implications of crack, but that Congress was not. The book compellingly describes the testimony provided to Congress in 1979 and again in 1982, about the forthcoming implications of making a cocaine derivative affordable by the lowest income people in our Nation.

6) The Administration and Congress, in close partnership with the "mainstream media," consistently lied, slandered witnesses to the truth, and generally made it impossible for the truth to be "heard."

7) The ignorance of the CIA managers about the "ground truth" in Nicaragua and Honduras, and their willingness to carry out evil on command from the White House, without actually understanding the context, the true feelings of the people, or even the hugely detrimental strategic import of what they were about to do to Los Angeles, simply blow me away. We need to start court-martialling government employees for being stupid on the people's payroll.

8) CIA officers should not be allowed to issue visas. When they are under official cover they are assigned duty officer positions, and the duty officer traditionally has access to the visa stamp safe for emergencies (because the real visa officers are too lazy to be called in for an emergency).

9) I recently supported a movie on Ricky Ross, one that immediately won three awards in 2006 for best feature-length documentary, and I have to say, on the basis of this book, that Rick Ross was clearly not a gang member; was a tennis star and all-around good guy, was trying to make school grades; was disciplined, professional, and entrepreneurial. He did not create the cocaine, he did not smuggle it into the country, he simply acted on the opportunity presented to him by the US Government and its agent Blandon.

10) There is a connection between CIA, the private sector prison managers in the US, and prisoners. This needs a more careful look.

11) Clinton's bodyguards (many of whom have died mysteriously since then) were fully witting of Bill and Hillary Clinton's full engagement in drug smuggling into the US via Arkansas, and CIA's related nefarious activities.

12) CIA not only provided post-arrest white washes for its drug dealers, but they also orchestrated tip-offs on planned raids.

13) Both local police departments, especially in California, and the US Government, appear to have a standard "loot and release" program where drug dealers caught with very large amounts of cash (multiple millions) are instantly freed in return for a quit claim on the money.

14) CIA Operations Officers (clandestine case officers) lied not just to the FBI and Justice, but to their own CIA lawyers.

15) DEA in Costa Rica was dirtier than most, skimming cash and protecting drug transports.

The book ends with a revelation and an observation.

The revelation: just prior to both the Contra drug deals and the CIA's ramping up in Afghanistan, which now provides 80% of the world's heroin under US administration, the CIA and Justice concluded a Memorandum of Understanding that gave CIA carte blanche in the drug business.. The author says this smacked of premeditation, and I agree.

The observation: here is a quote from page 452: " ...the real danger the CIA has always presented--unbridled criminal stupidity, clouded in a blanked of national security."

Shame on us all. It's time to clean house.

Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition
The Big White Lie: The Deep Cover Operation That Exposed the CIA Sabotage of the Drug War : An Undercover Odyssey
Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA
From BCCI to ISI: The Saga of Entrapment Continues
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Fog Facts : Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books)

CIA=Criminals in Action.......2007-03-22

Gary Webb proves that at the very least the US government at the highest levels knew about and protected Contra connected Nicaraguans who were smuggling MASSIVE amounts of cocaine into America and more or less created and caused the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980's. These same Nicaraguans were in most cases working for the CIA.

Don't kid yourself, the global elite control the drug trade. The CIA is just a conduit for them to do it. From what I have read the illegal drug trade is the second largest industry in the world so why should it be any surprise? Whats covered in Dark Alliance is just one of their many operations along these lines. Do some research about Mena, Arkansas and Barry Seal. Read the book Dope Inc. Read Celerino Castillo's book. Do you think its a coincidence that once the American military removed the Taliban from Afghanistan and installed a puppet government that Heroin use has went to all time highs? Gee I wonder why there is so much semi-covert US military and CIA action going on in Columbia these days? One of the main reasons new world order military forces were in the Balkans murdering Serbians was because they want to control that area because its a big drug pipeline for smuggling Heroin and Hash into Europe from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The CIA was caught smuggling Heroin into America by sewing kilos inside of dead bodies during the Vietnam war. A drug lord that totally controlled a whole region of Cambodia admitted on videotape that the CIA was who he was doing his business with. I mean what do you need to hear to know the United States government is a criminal enterprise!?!?

Gary Webb somehow managed to commit "suicide" by shooting himself in the head TWICE! Murders made to look like "suicides" are trademarks of the CIA. Webb was sniffing around and exposing a lot of dangerous people, from Crips and Bloods, to Columbian drug lords, to the highest level of the US government so it shouldn't be that surprising that he turned up dead under mysterious circumstances. Although we will most likely never know for sure who murdered him (most likely it was the cia) don't believe for one second that this guy commited suicide.

After Downing Street Memos, the US Should Reconsider this Book, .......2006-12-10

When this book was published in 1998, I bought and read the hardback edition. I found the author's argument's compelling. However, the Bush Family machine was in high gear polishing its image for W.'s presidential run, so the nation's so called free press pretended that this story of abuse of government power to sponsor terrorism at the cost of ignoring a crack cocaine epidemic here at home was less important than Bill Clinton's flirtation with an intern. The journalists who dismissed this book can not bear all the blame. Their bosses at the corporate media was chaffing under federal media ownership rules, and one of the promises which the Bush family and Karl Rove would make repeatedly all the way until W. was sworn in for his second term in 2005 was that they were going to relax those rules and give the US corporate media monopolies beyond their wildest dreams. So, the Heathers, like Ms. Connelly dutifully reported that Gore was a liar, and the book reviewers panned Mr. Webb's masterpiece of investigative journalism.

Now that we know that the second Bush administration, which is crawling with Iran-Contra figures, was willing to lie in order to deceive this nation into going to war in Iraq---a war that has cost us billions of dollars, thousands of US lives, made us less safe from terror, and cost us the goodwill of our allies around the world as well as being a convenient excuse for a deliberate administrative power grab at the expense of the US Constitution--maybe the skeptics who said "Such a thing could never happen here" to Webb's account of CIA "ends justify the means" gone wild should take off their rose colored glasses.

There are factions within the government who think that some lies to the American people are "good." Indeed, the Washington Post sank so low as to call the administration Plame Scandal "The Good Lie." Then, there are those people who believe that the truth shall set you free. Most people searching Amazon for something to read (and most people reading the Washington Post for that matter) belong to the latter group. I am saddened that Mr. Webb's life ended so tragically, but I am glad for the sake of our country that he wrote what he did. It is never too late to learn the important lesson, that it is the responsibility of the people to keep their eyes on their elected leaders, because you never know what kind of trouble they will get up to.

Conspiracy history.......2006-08-09

It would take a LOT of research to check the accuracy of Webb's extensively documented thesis in this book, but he makes a chillingly convincing case that elements within the Reagan admin. encouraged or at least acquiesced to the flooding of US markets with cocaine as a source of funds for the illegal contra war in Nicaragua, thereby fueling the crack epidemic of the 80s. It transcends the tag of 'conspiracy theory' and becomes legitimate conspiracy history for 3 main reasons: 1) He does an impressive job of getting to the primary sources, including drug kingpins 2) much of the most damning evidence is culled from USG documents and federal witnesses testifying under oath 3) he builds a 3D, global picture of the case, following the story to nicaraguan prisons and costa rican police files when it leads there. Ultimately, he simply out-reports the critics and naysayers of his Mercury News expose on this subject. Highly recommended.

A brave effort.......2006-07-17

Just to remind everybody... don't let yourselves be fooled again and again... Gary Webb was KILLED.

If you really want to know why then read this book. You'll be seriously shocked about the truths revealed here.

Product Description

Learn about and identify birds using Stan Tekiela's state-by-state field guides. The full-page, color photos are incomparable and include insets of winter plumage, color morphs and more. Plus, with the easy-to-use format, you don't need to know a bird's name or classification in order to easily find it in the book. Using this field guide is a real pleasure. It's a great way for anyone to learn about the birds in your state.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book!.......2007-08-10

Well laid out ... I have identified tons of birds with this book, not cumbersome and works great...

so easy..........2007-01-23

my mother in-law brought me this book for my state and I loved it. my daughter lives in kentucky so I got the same one for her. I didn't want to spend a lot of time trying to fiqure out what a bird is when I see it. This book couldn't be easier. you look under the color of the bird you saw and then find the bird. The colors are all indexed. It's a great book for a nonexperienced birdwatcher as myself...

Kentucky Bird Watching: A Year-Round Guide

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Like gardening, bird watching is a fast-growing regional hobby. Now, Cool Springs Press brings its proven method of successful state-specific gardening approach to bird watching guides. In collaboration with Bird Watcher's Digest, these bird watching guides provide accessible, credible advice.

The birds that frequent the backyards of Kentucky differ from the birds that frequent the backyards of Tennessee. In addition to unique descriptions, each bird profile includes a range map to identify each bird's North American distribution. One hundred birds are profiled, each with a color photograph, to ensure accurate identification. A seasonal section informs the reader of:
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Wendell Berry's best collection
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The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership
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Manufacturer: North Point Pr
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Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Wendell Berry's best collection.......2000-04-30

He has many great fiction writings but I would start with this one. Solid, clear, continuously beautiful. 'Fidelity' comes in second place but this by far is leads. Should replace lots of other nonsense in the American lit canon.

Wendell Berry's best collection.......2000-04-30

Mr. Berry creates an empathy for his characters,..........1999-01-03

...and their sense of place, that runs through his readers like an umbilical spirit to the Earth. Making those connections in ways that move us emotionally and profoundly, from complacency to caring, about how we relate to each other, our communities, and the land that nourishes, sustains, and gives rise to this, and all life. In six finely crafted stories of character, conscience, and enduring values, the author inspires and challenges the reader to think of responsibility beyond their own mortality and how that caring strengthens and enriches their existence and gives it meaning.

Stories that lift your soul to rejoicing........1997-08-12

My first encounter with Berry's fiction rekindled my appreciation for this genre of writing. These stories are filled with love and emotion while conveying Berry's ideals of community and cohesiveness. They decry materialism and champion mankind. I was inspired to be a better person during this walk through the Port William Membership

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a great work
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a great work.......2004-11-19

This is a excellent,thorough book written by an excellent, thorough lady and professor. Sadly, she passed away in August 2004, so there will be no more books. However, this book stands as a monument to her diligence as a historian and talent as a writer. Dr. Delatte will be missed.

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First and formost it is a shame that Dr.Delatte has only had time to write one book. And I hope that she will get the chance to write another soon. In her book Lucy Audubon A Biography she sets the tone in the first chapter. She goes in great detail to explain to her reader Lucy Audubon's life. She gives a rare insight to a historical figure and brings her to life with her words. the reader feels as if they are there with Audubon as she goes through life and overcomes the obstacles in her life.

one of the best.......2001-03-13

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you have to read it.......2001-03-13

There is not much to say but that this book is one of the best books that I have ever read. It gives you a rare look into the life of Lucy Audubon.

you have to read it.......2001-03-13

There is not much to say but that this book is one of the best books that I have ever read. It gives you a rare look into the life of Lucy Audubon.

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A former student of McElmurray...
Language soars in "Strange Birds..."
Award Finalist
A powerful and talented writer
This is a writer to watch--Genius at Work

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This haunting debut novel invites us to explore the boundaries between beliefs, desires, obsessions, and madness. Karen Salyer McElmurray's story is set in Mining Hollow, Kentucky, where we meet Ruth Blue Wallen; her husband, Earl; and their son, Andrew. Ruth longs to know God, the only escape she can find in a world that has shown her spiritual, emotional, and sensual defeat. Earl yearns for the music-making of his past, now lost as he makes a living as a coal miner. Andrew desires the affection of a boyhood friend, an expression of love considered sinful in rural Kentucky. And with the divinely inspired yet tormenting help of his mother, in a world of deeply and tragically conflicting desires, Andrew must choose to live or die--he must choose an uncertain love or nothing at all.

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A former student of McElmurray..........2002-08-09

...in great appreciation for a wonderful book. The broiling minds and pure intensity of the characters were, in my opinion, equal in complexity and raw emotionality to the characters of D.H. Lawrence, Ayn Rand - and that is what I seek out most in anything I read.

Language soars in "Strange Birds...".......2002-05-21

Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven is a remarkable book that examines the most universal of human emotions and the struggles we all experience in an attempt to maintain control of our own lives. While the reader's attention can wander at times, McElmurray never fails to draw the reader back in with her beautiful use of language and clearly depicted scenes. The images she creates stay with you long after you've read the last page.

Award Finalist.......2000-09-18

This complex and many-layered book was was 1 of 6 books nominated for the Appalachian Book of the Year Award. It should have won. Once Karen is discovered by the reading public, her books will win many awards. Buy this book. It will be with you long after you have read the last page.

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Karen McElmurray is a powerful writer who produces a magical beauty not often found. Her abilities to present feelings and dreams, thoughts and emotions, fear and hope, longing and regret far exceeded my expectations. Her talent to create and bring to life the characters and places are a gift to the senses and the heart. Her words flow like liquid, I await anxiously for her next work.

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