Supervisors Urge White House Probe of Alleged CIA Drug Link
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ask President Clinton for an independent investigation into whether the CIA was involved in the distribution of drugs in South-Central Los Angeles.
“This is a real issue with the county paying the price in terms of hospital care for babies born to crack cocaine mothers, building prisons like Twin Towers, and child dependency issues,” said Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who introduced the motion.
The San Jose Mercury News recently reported that throughout the 1980s, a San Francisco-area drug ring sold cocaine to Los Angeles gangs, with some of the profits funneled to Central Intelligence Agency-directed Contras in Nicaragua.
“The government owes an explanation,” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. “The possibility that the government could take part in such a crime . . . is mind-boggling, absolutely mind-boggling.”
The motion, approved unanimously, said in part: “It is time to demand that the long-standing suspicions of a connection between the drug trade in the inner city on the one hand, and the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. government on the other hand, be thoroughly investigated.”
Last month the Los Angeles City Council asked U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to investigate the reports.
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