SPECIAI THE CIA AND CRACK COCAINE IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES Editor's Note: A three-part series by the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996 on the possible role played by the CIA in the influx of crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles drew outcry from the African-American community and calls for Congressional investigations by elected officials, including Rep. Maxine Waters and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer-all California Democrats. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a Justice Department probe while the CIA is conducting an internal investigation of the charges. Los Angeles Urban League President Brother John W. Mack gives us his first-hand assessment of the situation in South Central Los Angeles in this Special Report to The SPHINX™.
By Brother John W. Mack ^ H H
OS ANGELES, CA-Los Angeles, for the past five years, has been on a collision course leading to racial, cultural and class disaster. Problems here have been fueled by a series of high-profile events that threaten to transform the City of Angels into America's Bosnia instead of the municipal model of diversity and democracy intended for the city. Since the police beating of Rodney King in February 1991, African-Americans here have been confronted with a series of "earthquakes"-both natural and man made. Most of the man-made earthquakes have involved the criminal justice system and the government-with African-Americans receiving the short end of the justice stick. (The O.J. Simpson criminal trial stands as an exception). There has been flagrant abuse of authority by government agencies. The breach of authority I I I I |
The SPHINX/Spring 1997
has caused tremendous distrust of government and the dangerous erosion of law-enforcement agency credibility. Examples of blatant injustice faced by African-Americans in Los Angeles include: the not-guilty verdict in the first trial for Los Angeles policemen involved in the brutal beating of Rodney King; and the shooting death of 17-year-old Latasha Harlin by a Korean-American grocer. Latasha Harlin was shot in the back. The community was insulted when Joyce Karlins, a white judge in Los Angeles, allowed the Korean grocer to go free after a jury found the woman guilty of second-degree murder. If these incidents of double-standard justice were not outrageous enough, information also was being leaked onto the streets about CIA involvement with crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles. Predictably, the charge of CIA involvement with L.A.'s drug problem was vehemently denied by local law enforcement officials, political leaders and spokespersons for
the CIA. The news media wrote the reports off as paranoia in the African-American community. Political leaders confronted with the allegationsincluding Congressional and White House officials-also ignored the reports. The charges against the CIA gained momentum within the African-American community when a well known and respected, grass-roots community leader from Watts, named "Sweet" Alice Harris, held a press conference along with other community activists to make the accusations public. The leaders expressed outrage and concern about CIA involvement in drugs that are destroying the minds of our youth and threatening our future 7