Distrust Greets CIA Promise of Crack Probe

“It’s going to take a miracle,” mechanic Donald Shorts said Saturday, as he took a break from puttering in his Watts garden. A miracle for the CIA to investigate itself over a cocaine controversy. Another miracle to solve the city’s drug problems.

During his 20 years in the neighborhood, Shorts said, he has seen it change from a community where “everybody was sticking together” to a place where “drugs have became a way of life and people are killing each other.”

“That didn’t just happen,” said Shorts, who lives around the corner from the home of convicted drug dealer “Freeway” Ricky Ross’ mother.

Surveying the modest homes in front of him, with their heavy security gates and shutters, Shorts said he is convinced that the introduction of crack cocaine in Los Angeles was a conspiracy to get blacks to destroy each other.

In homes, businesses and at a church, African Americans in South-Central said that CIA Director John M. Deutch’s unprecedented trip Friday to the community did little to convince them the agency would get to the bottom of recent allegations.

Deutch told a skeptical and angry gathering of 800 at Locke High School that he will order a thorough probe into the allegations that the CIA’s laxity let Latin American cocaine dealers get a foothold in South-Central. The controversy surfaced in August after a San Jose Mercury News series alleged that crack was introduced to Los Angeles to fund the CIA-backed Contras.

Although some saw no harm in Deutch’s visit, others condemned it as an insult and a media event to placate the community by denying the Mercury News’ charges.

Women and men, old and young, said they will have to see a complete investigation to believe it. They have experienced too many broken promises from government officials, they said.

“How do you [the government] investigate yourself and find yourself guilty?” asked Earl Swain, a postal worker who is an elder at the Church of God in Christ.

Swain, a native Angeleno who has lived in South-Central all his life, said that as far as he is concerned, the evidence of government complicity seems “cut and dry.”

Belinda Givens, a clerk at a dry cleaning business, agreed:

“Somebody had to let all that stuff [cocaine] in. We got the Border Patrol and Coast Guards. How did all that stuff get in if they didn’t let it in? It had to get here in some kind of way.”

“That’s right,” said Eddie McKinley, a tow-truck driver who had stopped to pick up his shirts. “It’s got to be somebody that knows how to go there and bring it back. We ain’t got no planes.”

Although the Mercury News’ allegations have been challenged, speculation persists about whether some in the agency tolerated drug trafficking by people with ties to the Contras.

The Mercury News’ allegations were questioned by articles in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times. The Los Angeles Times probe found that the crack epidemic was not orchestrated by the Contras, the CIA or any single drug ring.

Debra Riley, executive director of the Frank Riley Memorial Youth Center in Watts, said residents of South-Central are angry about the allegations because the community is “so vulnerable.”

“They [the CIA] have an upper hand,” she said.

Should the investigation find CIA involvement, the government ought to compensate victims, Riley said.

“I feel very strongly about this,” she said. “Everyone is watching to see if they [the CIA] are going to follow up on it.”

One South-Central minister, who asked for anonymity, characterized both Deutch’s visit and his call for an investigation as a “waste of time.”