Even more damaging was Hitz’s revelation that in 1982 the CIA had signed a memorandum of understanding with Ronald Reagan’s attorney general, William French Smith, freeing the Agency from any requirement to report allegations of drug trafficking involving non-employees. The non-employees, according to Hitz (who refused to release the entire memo), were described as paid and non-paid “assets, pilots who ferried supplies to the Contras as well as Contra officials and others.”
Thus, in 1982, as it was mounting its covert Contra supply operation, the CIA was evidently aware enough of the nature of the traffic it was supervising to make sure that it would not have to report the drug-trafficking activities of any Contra leaders, contract pilots, businessmen, etc. with whom it was doing business. Only in 1986, after the flow of congressional funds to the Contras had been restored, was the agreement with the Justice Department modified to require the Agency to stop paying “assets” whom it believed to be involved in the drug trade. The agreement was officially ended in 1995.
This kind of arrangement typifies the extralegal mindset of the CIA. “In an Agency that employs pressure and ‘national security’ to hide violations of law, incompetence, politically unacceptable facts, and an assortment of malfeasance, you need the highest degree of accountability,” observes former CIA officer Ralph McGehee. “What you have is the opposite – a system that defends itself at all costs – no matter what the transgression.”
So much for uncover-up. As the CIA turned fifty in 1997, it attempted to define its role in a world no longer containing the Soviet Union. What it came up with was a plan to combat something it had done so much to encourage over the first half-century of its existence: international crime! Among the CIA’s proposed targets for preserving its slice of the $27 billion intelligence budget were money laundering, illegal immigration, drug smuggling and chemical and biological terrorism. Only three years earlier the CIA was still enjoying an exemption from reporting the drug activities of any of its associates. If they were alive to read the CIA’s prospectus for the third millennium, the ghosts of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Chiang Kai-shek, George Hunter White, Barry Seal and thousands of others would surely have laughed at the effrontery of their old partner in crime.
Sources
The tender topic of which journalists have been on the CIA’s payroll has been touched upon from time to time by investigators. In 1977 Carl Bernstein attacked the subject in Rolling Stone, concluding that more than 400 journalists had maintained some kind of alliance with the Agency from 1956 to 1972. In 1997 the son of a well-known senior CIA man in the Agency’s earlier years said emphatically, though off the record, that “of course” the powerful and malevolent columnist Joseph Alsop “was on the payroll.”
At the fiftieth anniversary of the CIA, President Bill Clinton outlined his vision of the CIA’s future. “Our first task is to focus our intelligence resources in the areas most critical to our national security – the areas where, as Director Tenet has said, we simply cannot afford to fail. Two years ago I set out our top intelligence priorities in the Presidential Decision Directive. First, supporting our troops and operations, whether turning back aggression, helping secure peace or providing humanitarian assistance. Second, providing political, economic, and military intelligence on countries hostile to the United States so we can help to stop crises and conflicts before they start. And, third, protecting American citizens from new transnational threats such as drug traffickers, terrorists, organized criminals, and weapons of mass destruction.”
Has the CIA changed? There isn’t much evidence of it. In March 1998, the Agency responded angrily to a move by the Congress to enact whistle-blower protection provisions for CIA employees. Director George Tenet duly trotted out the refrain that to do so would pose a “grave” threat to national security. Similarly, in May the Agency denounced legislation that would have required it to open up its files about its relationships to murderous police gangs in Latin America. The CIA’s Lee Strickland, the man who tried to cover up the Frogman case, testified that the Agency was able to decide on its own which documents should be disclosed to the public without any interference from Congress.
Beamish, Rita. “CIA Uses Intelligence Briefing to Tout Role in Battling Drugs.” AP Wire, June 28, 1995.
Bernstein, Carl. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, Oct. 20, 1977.
Cockbum, Alexander, and Jeffrey St. Clair. “Crack-Up: The CIA Probe.” CounterPunch, Feb. 1–15, 1998.
Honey, Martha. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: The CIA’s Complicity with Drug Traffickers Was Official Policy.” In These Times, May 17, 1988.
Parry, Robert. “Contra-Coke: Bad to Worse.” The Consortium, Feb. 16, 1998.
Pincus, Walter. “CIA Finds No Link to Cocaine Sales.” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 1997.
——. “Probe Finds No CIA Link to L. A. Crack Cocaine Sales.” Washington Post, January 30, 1998.
——. “Inspector: CIA Kept Ties With Alleged Traffickers” Washington Post, March 17, 1998.
Tenet, George J. “Statement on Release of Inspector General’s Report.” USCIA Public Affairs Office, Jan. 29, 1998.
US Central Intelligence Agency. Office of Inspector General. Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations Between CIA and the Contras in Trafficking Cocaine to the United States. USCIA Inspector General’s Office, Jan. 29, 1998.
US Executive Office of the President. “Remarks of President William Jefferson Clinton on the 50th Anniversary of the Central Intelligence Agency.” White House Press Office, Nov. 4, 1997.
Weiner, Tim. “Aging Shop of Horrors: The CIA Limps to 50.” New York Times, Nov. 16, 1997.
——. “CIA Says It Has Found No Link Between Itself and Crack Trade.” New York Times, Dec. 19, 1997.
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