The Nation - News from July 29, 1988

A federal drug agent testified he was told that a White House aide leaked details of one of the government’s most sensitive cocaine investigations--thus ending it prematurely--in order to expose drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan government. Ernest Jacobsen, an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said that following the leak in July, 1984: “I heard from my superiors the leak came from an aide in the White House.” While Jacobsen did not name the official, the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime released pages from Oliver L. North’s diary showing the former National Security Council aide made frequent references to the operation in the weeks before the leak. And the diary shows he was aware of photographs from the investigation showing cocaine being loaded at a Nicaraguan airstrip. A purported Nicaraguan government official who aided the smuggling operation was in the pictures.