The recent corrections by San Jose Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos to last year's explosive revelations about CIA complicity in cocaine importation did not alter or challenge the basic thrust of Gary Webb's assertions. The corrections were, in fact, accurate. Public reaction however, as defined by the major media was to hear that somehow the Mercury News had retracted the stories.

We have long held the position that the stories were not about CIA agents dealing crack cocaine in central cities. The stories were about CIA protecting rings bringing in powdered cocaine which was converted to crack by inner city gangs. Gary Webb agrees that he made no assertions that this was a genocidal conspiracy directed at the inner cities. That was the spin put on the stories and it was because of that spin that they were "shot down".

Ricky Ross in South Central L.A. sold approximately four tons of cocaine over three years. There is evidence that his operations were protected by CIA as were those of his suppliers, Danillo Blandon and Norwin Meneses. These facts are certain and unchallenged. But Ricky Ross was just a drop in the bucket!

Just one CIA drug ring, that of Rafael Caro Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo based in Guadalajara, Mexico was smuggling four tons A MONTH into the U.S. during the same period! Other operations including Manuel Noriega (Panama), John Hull (Costa Rica), Felix Rodriguez (El Salvador), Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros (Honduras) and elements of the Guatemalan and Honduran military were dealing close to two hundred tons a year or close to 70% of total U.S. consumption at the same time! All of them have been connected to CIA by documentation and testimony which already exists! This coke was smoked, snorted and injected by people of every race and in every state; in the cities and on the farms.

Those who have hung their hats on a CIA conspiracy to sell crack to minorities alone and who have written letters and petitions saying this should take care. No one questions that inner cities were hardest hit but words do matter and understanding is everything. That is why this Coalition has taken such great pains to educate on the real evidence and the nature of the problem. If you don't think wording is important just ask Gary Webb. He's probably out of a job.

At our Los Angeles demonstration on February 22, our key informational speakers included Celerino Castillo, a DEA agent who witnessed CIA drug dealing from El Salvador in 1986; Ralph McGehee, a former CIA analyst who documented hundreds of references to cocaine in Ollie North's diaries; Dave Sabow, M.D. whose brother a

Marine Colonel was murdered after discovering CIA smuggling drugs onto military bases in 1990 (three years after the Contra war ended); and Mike Ruppert, a former LAPD narc who came from a CIA family and who caught CIA dealing heroin and cocaine in 1976-7 (before the Contra war started!). None of these speakers used any information from Gary Webb. This was not because Webb was wrong but because Webb was a small piece of a very big and ugly puzzle.

And the puzzle is getting uglier.

Bill Clinton has just announced an urgent effort to help Mexico "fight" drugs which will consist of close to a hundred Huey helicopters being given to the Mexican government for interdiction. The program is being run out of Belize by Ted Shackley (retired Deputy Director of CIA), Felix Rodriguez (CIA veteran since Bay of Pigs) and Chi Chi Quintero (same). Anyone who is educated on the subject will recognize these names from CIA drug operations during Iran-Contra, Pakistan and Vietnam/Laos going back thirty years.

More than likely these helicopters will be used to smuggle drugs and to crush an indigenous revolt in Chiapas by the Zapatistas and may well be the opening move in our next counterinsurgency war in Latin America; the next Vietnam.

The CIA/drug story is not dead. There will be hearings in the late summer or early fall. According to a Congressional investigator who spoke to Mike Ruppert this week the scope of the hearings will be determined by: what Maxine Waters does, the credibility of the reports from the CIA and the Department of Justice and public reaction. When asked what would determine the "credibility" of the reports the investigator answered, "Public reaction."

Read between the lines and educate yourselves. If we whine about Gary Webb then the whole issue will die the quiet death Washington wants it to. The public response must be accurate and based on readily provable evidence. Above all the real witnesses must be allowed to testify.

Don't be surprised at what happened to Gary Webb. Any time a movement gets centered around one person's work or life then the movement can be stopped by stopping the person. It happened ten years ago with Daniel Sheehan.

Do you know who Daniel Sheehan was?

Why not?