On Tue, 20 Aug 1996, Jim Ray wrote:
OK, Rich cites a loon, but the fact is that Southern Air Transport right here in Miami was in there early in the contraarms-coke trade.
Oh, I don't think it's impossible or even unlikely that at least some of the groups lumped together as "contras" were involved in drug smuggling, and I think it's reasonable to have different views regarding how much money was involved and who knew what when (my view is very little, and medium). What I object to are conspiracy theories along the lines of: 1. The Reagan Administration used the Contras to smuggle crack to the US in a deliberate attempt at genocide against Black people. (I heard this a lot, though seldom in so many words, on KPFK in the mid-80's; the SJ Merc series certainly has this as a subtext.) 2. Clinton was a CIA agent involved in the Contra drug-smuggling CaBaL. He was involved in anti-war protests only as a CIA informant. (This is the suggestion of the Morris book.) 3. Anything involving the Kennedy assassination, Donna Rice, or Elvis.
It is a major, bipartisan, Watergate-style but bigger scandal, and the strange bedfellows in the media who were doing a halfway decent job of covering it [The Wall Street Journal and "High Times" magazine(!)] have fallen strangely silent on the subject as the election approaches. Hmmmmm.
4. Anything where vague unsupported asserions are thrown out, followed by a Hmmmmm (sorry). -rich