Some say the CIA was behind the rise of drug lord “Freeway” Ricky Ross and the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic. The truth may actually be darker than that.
In Part One of this tale, we explained how in 1996, Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist, Gary Webb, published a three-part investigative series for the San Jose Mercury News, which exposed a link between the CIA and the crack cocaine epidemic that had devastated America’s inner cities in the 1980s.
Webb alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers were responsible for much of the cocaine flooding Los Angeles during that period, and that the CIA was allowing (and perhaps helping) the shipments to reach the United States. According to Webb’s findings, Nicaraguan traffickers were using the drug profits to fund the Contras, a small army of anti-Communist rebels, fighting to overthrow the ruling regime, the Sandinistas. The Contras were trained and backed by the CIA. But the CIA’s budget wasn’t enough to get the job done, and so, Webb alleged, American operatives began working with the traffickers to raise money through drug sales.
As if this wasn’t sinister enough, the cocaine being shipped from Nicaragua to the United States was fueling an epidemic that was destroying entire urban communities. The recipe for “crack” had been discovered. Cocaine was no longer a rich man’s drug; it could be cooked into nugget-sized “rocks” and smoked. The high was cheap, super-powerful, and incredibly addictive.
South Central Los Angeles was ground zero for the crack plague, and it was “Freeway” Ricky Ross, aka “The King of Crack,” who controlled the market. Freeway Rick was the “dealer’s dealer,” purchasing mass quantities of coke, turning it into crack, then selling it to L.A. street gangs who distributed it in the streets. By 1984, Ross was overseeing dozens of fortified crack houses throughout Los Angeles that moved up to $3 million worth of crack a day.
The secret to Freeway Rick’s success was his supplier: Danilo Blandon, a Nicaraguan national who was forced into exile in California when the Sandinistas seized control of his country. Blandon, like many upper-class Nicaraguans, had lost everything when the Sandinistas took over. He arrived in California, determined to find a way to help finance the Contras in their struggle against the Sandinistas. Cocaine trafficking was the answer. Blandon hooked up with suppliers in Nicaragua who were allegedly connected to the Contra-CIA alliance. Now he needed a point man in California to buy their product, and oversee its distribution.
As fate would have it, Blandon met Ricky Ross, a 19-year-old, nickel-and-dime coke dealer. Blandon was willing to front him hundreds of kilos on consignment. Ross jumped at the opportunity. With his inexhaustible supply of product, Ross was able to undercut the competition and conquer the market—first the western United States, then spreading his distribution routes into the Midwest.
Ross was unaware of Blandon’s connections to the CIA and the war effort in Nicaragua. He didn’t realize that when he bought kilos from Blandon, the money was being used to arm and equip the Contras. It would certainly appear that people in high places were allowing Blandon and Ross’ operation to continue; for more than a decade, Blandon’s massive cocaine shipments arrived in America unscathed, and Ross’ empire flourished. Little did Freeway Rick know his batches of crack were financing a shadow war in the jungles of Central America.
In 1988, their operation suddenly went south. Blandon lost his Contra connection and Ross was busted when a drug-sniffing dog detected one of his cocaine loads at a New Mexico bus station. He received a mandatory 10-year prison sentence, which he began serving in 1990.
With Ross behind bars, Blandon decided to retire in Miami. But he soon needed money again and returned to brokering cocaine deals, buying hundreds of kilos from his Nicaraguan connections and importing it to California.
This time, the DEA was watching. They arrested Blandon for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and jailed him without bond. But instead of putting him away for life, the DEA decided to turn him into a full-time, paid informant. They arranged for Blandon to be set free and given a green card. His first assignment as a snitch would be to set up his old partner, Ricky Ross, who had recently been paroled.
In October 1994, within days of returning to the streets, Freeway Rick was contacted by Blandon. He told Ross he had 600 kilos of cocaine, worth about $12 million, and needed help selling it. Ross initially declined, but when Blandon persisted, Ross said he could find a buyer for 100 of the kilos.
The sting went down in a parking lot near San Diego. Ross showed up for the meet, and when he poked his head inside a Chevy Blazer carrying the kilos, cops swarmed him from all directions. He was jailed without bond. At his trial, the government’s star witness against him was Blandon. Ross was convicted and received a life sentence. Records showed that the government paid Blandon $45,000 to assist with Ross’ arrest.
Ross, who considered Blandon a close friend, was stunned by the betrayal. "I would have died for him,” Ross said in a jailhouse interview. “He's the worst. When I see how (the government) twists the rules for him and they want to give me a life sentence, to me it's sickening."
A federal court of appeals later reduced Ross’ sentence to 20 years. Today, he’s still in prison in North Texas, while Blandon continues to be a well-paid operative for the DEA.
Ross’ legend has grown over the years. In some segments of urban culture, he is hailed as a hero—the ghetto Tony Montana—the ultimate street entrepreneur. Miami-based rap star, Rick Ross, even adopted his name. Others call Ross a villain, a murderer of his own people. There’s no question that Ross’ product was responsible for destroying countless black lives and families.
While Ross admitted to feeling “partially responsible” for the victims of the crack plague, he said that ultimately, the U.S. government was to blame. "They put it in our hands. They financed it. It was their planes that brought it over here," he said. "Their guy, Danilo, Blandon, he set up the market. They picked me. I didn't go to Nicaragua. This could go higher than the CIA. They say that drugs corrupt whole governments."
Gary Webb’s stories about the Contra-cocaine connection generated a firestorm of controversy when they were published in 1996. But rather than being hailed as a crusader for truth, Webb was attacked by the mainstream news media, who accused him of shoddy research and overstating what really happened. Webb’s reputation was trashed and his career in journalism was destroyed. In 2004, he died from two gunshots to the head. The media reported it as a suicide. Others close to Webb hint that he was more likely “silenced.”
But Webb wasn’t the first to explore these troubling links. The public first became aware of the Contras and their cocaine funds back in 1987, when the political scandal, known as the Iran-Contra affair, erupted. High-ranking members of the Reagan administration were accused of selling arms to Iran, an enemy of the United States, and using the profits to fund the Contras. When a U.S. Senate subcommittee, chaired by John Kerry, investigated the matter, they found links to cocaine trafficking as well. Their report, issued in 1988, concluded that, "Senior U.S. policymakers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems.” It also stated that members of the U.S. State Department, "…who provided support for the Contras, were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves, knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.”
Ricky Ross could be paroled from prison as early as next year. SLV |
