Dark Alliance and the Contra cocaine allegations

In August 1996 the San Jose Mercury News published Dark Alliance, a three part series by reporter Gary Webb. It traced how two Nicaraguan exiles, Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, who raised money for the CIA-backed Contra rebels, sold large amounts of cocaine in the 1980s to Los Angeles dealer Ricky Ross, helping fuel the crack epidemic in Black neighborhoods. The series was one of the first major newspaper investigations posted on the internet, and it spread fast. Many readers took it as proof the CIA had deliberately flooded Black communities with drugs, a claim Webb himself did not make.¹⁴

The story built on earlier findings. In 1989 a Senate subcommittee led by John Kerry reported that some Contra networks were involved in drug trafficking and that the State Department had paid companies run by traffickers. The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times attacked Webb's series as overstated, and in 1997 his own paper said it fell short of its standards. In 1998 the CIA's inspector general, Frederick Hitz, reported that the agency had continued to work with people it knew or suspected were involved in trafficking. Webb left journalism and died in 2004.¹²³⁴