There is a long and expanding history of American tax payer dollars being used to help certain people get rich off of illicit drug sales.
Gang violence has been a part of some Los Angeles neighborhoods for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1980’s that gang members saw their biggest money making opportunity with crack cocaine. Little did they know that the CIA was using them as pawns in a larger scheme by allowing the more affordable drug to come into their neighborhood.Freeway Ricky Ross, one of America’s biggest drug dealers, unwittingly became a main player in the Central American drug connection, which sent millions of American dollars in drug money to Nicaragua.The CIA’s plan was to promote and finance the Contra revolutionary group, which was trying to depose the Socialist Sandinista government in the Central American country.“Russia had given the Sandinistas a hundred million dollars to fight with. Congress had cut off all the money from the contras, so now, the Sandinistas had the advantage,” said Ricky Ross.President Ronald Reagan and then Vice President George H. W. Bush fretted over Soviet influence in Nicaragua.“They would be in our backyard.I believe that they felt it was more valuable to sacrifice a particular sector of America, and a race of people in America in order to save the whole country,” said Ross.Former LAPD detective and author Michael Ruppert has written extensively about the government’s involvement in drug trafficking around the world.He says politics isn’t the only motive.“The control of the cash from the drug trade is of vital importance to wall street, because drug profits are laundered under corporations and banks net profits,” said Ruppert.The CIA’s policy of looking the other way wasn’t just for the benefit of big business or crushing revolutionary movements abroad.Domestically, drugs and drug lords were used to quell black activist movements that challenged the status quo.Imam Abdul Alim Musa was a major drug dealer in Oakland, California where the revolutionary Black Panther Party had its headquarters.“So the government wanted to stop the black movement in this track?? Technically they used us, drug dealers, it gave us high quality heroin and cocaine to pop into our own neighborhood and then we sold it to our own people, to break the back of the revolution,” said Alim Musa.The drug ravaged Oakland’s poor community just like Ricky Ross’ drug empire ruined parts of Los Angeles.Ross admits to his crimes, but he doesn’t think that he should have been the only one who was punished over the Contra cocaine connection.Many in his community agree, including gang expert, Alex Alonso. “We just want to blame black or Hispanic drug dealers.At the end of the day, we want to ignore this totality of circumstances that really ends up causing drugs to be grown in Colombia and ending up on our doorsteps in the United States,” said Alonso.The government’s efforts resulted in a generation of young black men being sent to prison and caused many hard working families to lose their homes. Many wonder if Los Angeles’ poor neighborhoods can recover from the damage inflicted by the crack epidemic.“So once you look at this here, then its easy for you to see they didn’t mind sacrificing a particular sector of America,” said Ross.As long as the government and America’s elite continue to benefit from the illegal drug trade, more suffering may lie ahead.As minorities fall through the cracks the CIA created through drug addiction, US media has largely ignored the epidemic and discounted any investigation into the problem. “Investigative reporting has been suffering probably in this country [United States] for the past 30 years. And good reporting is bad business, so you have the corporatization of media as well,” explained Georgetown University professor Chris Chambers.
Radio host Alex Jones said the allegations against the CIA regarding drugs and black market money are facts, not merely speculation and that the CIA control the profits for the prison system via money laundering and lobbying. “They [CIA] sell you the drugs, and when their police on the street catch you with them, they then put yu in their prisons working for 25 cents an hour displacing American workers and driving down wages,” he said. “This is all still going on at an even greater level today in Afghanistan and is now hidden in plain view.” He further argued the US uses the drug war as a cover to spy on the world.