Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Cocaine Explosion in the US

Gary Webb, Dark Alliance. San Jose Mercury News (online at Narco News), 18, 19 and 20 August 1996 and 16 September 1996. Part One, 18 August 1996: “America’s ‘crack’ plague has roots in Nicaragua war. Colombia-SanFrancisco Bay Area drug pipeline helped finance CIA-backed Contras. Backers of CIA-led Nicaraguan rebels brought cocaine to poor L.A. neighborhoods in early ’80s to help finance war–and a plague was born.” Part Two, 19 August 1996: “How a smuggler, a bureaucrat and a driven ghetto teen-ager created the cocaine pipeline, and how crack was ‘born’ in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1974. [In the] shadowy origins of ‘crack’ epidemic, [the] role of CIA-linked agents [was] a well-protected secret until now [August 1996]. Part Three, 20 August 1996: [The] war on drugs has [an] unequal impact on black Americans. [The] Contra case illustrates the discrepancy: Nicaraguan goes free; L.A. dealer faces life.”

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