Protests Over Alleged CIA Drug Traffic Role

Re “2,000 Protest Alleged U.S. Role in Crack Influence,” Sept. 29:

What are you, the Palestinian Times or the L.A. Times? There is no way that anything that happens in Palestine (“Palestinians Keep Order but Tensions Simmer”) should be on the front page while a rally of 2,000 Los Angeles residents protesting active and ongoing CIA support of cocaine dealers gets buried in the Metro section.

Why don’t you just publish Gary Webb’s San Jose Mercury News article and let the people of L.A. decide whether or not his charges are “vague” or “unproven” or “fail to make a connection” between Nicaraguan drug dealers and the CIA? Or are you still protecting your beloved Ronald Reagan?

RUSTY AUSTIN

Culver City

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If Maxine Waters, Danny Bakewell, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke et al. are so outraged over alleged government involvement in importing drugs a dozen years ago, what are they doing about it today? Clinton and his administration cut the drug interdiction budget and as a result the cities are awash in drugs. If these people are sincere, shouldn’t this be of more concern than history?

If many in the black community really believe “only the U.S. government” has the power to do this sort of thing, shouldn’t they be working with millions of conservatives to limit and control government instead of always supporting enlargement of it?

ROBERT K. DAVIS

West Hollywood

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Robert A. Jones’ essay on the CIA and drugs (Sept. 25) makes the distinction between blacks’ and whites’ perceptions of the likelihood of the CIA’s smuggling drugs into this country (and into South-Central Los Angeles). He also raises the question of why they would do this.

For most whites the very smuggling of drugs into any part of this country by the government is amoral and, for some, unthinkable. But (as in the O.J. Simpson trial which he compares this to), isn’t it crucial to look at the evidence? Jones says there is no evidence, so we do not know, but he is wrong.

For in 1989, our neighbor Costa Rica declared Oliver North and ex-CIA agent John Hull persona non grata, the most severe noncriminal penalty a government can impose, banning them from that country for life. This was for overseeing an airlift which smuggled cocaine from Costa Rica into the United States. Even though North didn’t keep the profits himself, using them instead to get arms for the Contras, he did this at the very time that then-President Reagan and then-Vice President Bush were leading our nation’s “war on drugs”! That is evidence enough for me that some government officials knew, sanctioned and/or participated in this activity.

J. THOMAS UNGERLEIDER

Los Angeles

The writer was appointed by former President Nixon to the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse.