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University of California Press

About the Book

When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship between the CIA, the Contras, and crack, they reignited the issue of the intelligence agency's connections to drug trafficking, initially brought to light during the Vietnam War and then again by the Iran-Contra affair. Broad in scope and extensively documented, Cocaine Politics shows that under the cover of national security and covert operations, the U.S. government has repeatedly collaborated with and protected major international drug traffickers. A new preface discusses developments of the last six years, including the Mercury News stories and the public reaction they provoked.


When the San Jose Mercury News ran a controversial series of stories in 1996 on the relationship between the CIA, the Contras, and crack, they reignited the issue of the intelligence agency's connections to drug trafficking, initially brought to li

About the Author

Peter Dale Scott is Professor of English Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (California, 1993). Scott is also a poet: in 2002, his "Seculum" trilogy won a Lannan Literary Award. Jonathan Marshall is the Economics Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of To Have and Have Not: Southeast Asian Raw Materials and the Origins of the Pacific War (California, 1995).

Table of Contents

Preface to the 1998 Paperback Edition
Preface to the 1992 Paperback Edition
Acknowledgments

Introduction
1 The Kerry Report: The Truth but Not the Whole Truth

PART I RIGHT-WING NARCOTERRORISM, THE CIA,
AND THE CONTRAS
2 The CIA and Right-Wing Narcoterrorism in Latin America
3 Bananas, Cocaine, and Military Plots in Honduras
4 Noriega and the Contras: Guns, Drugs, and the
Harari Network
5 The International Cali Connection and the United States
6 The Contra Drug Connections in Costa Rica

PART II EXPOSURE AND COVER-UP
7 Jack Terrell Reveals the Contra-Drug Connection
8 North Moves to Silence Terrell
9 How the Justice Department Tried to Block the
Drug Inquiry
10 Covert Operations and the Perversion of Drug
Enforcement
11 The Media and the Contra Drug Issue
12 Conclusion
Notes
Names and Organizations
Index

Reviews

"Tells the sordid story of how elements of our own government went to work with narcotics traffickers, and then fought to suppress the truth about what they had done."—Jonathan Winer, Counsel, Kerry Subcommittee on Terrorism and Narcotics