Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, Updated edition

by Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520921283
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/28/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	279
File size:	5 MB

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

Editorial Reviews

This important, explosive report charges that the U.S. ``war on drugs'' is largely a sham and calls for immediate political action to end Washington's complicity with drug networks. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Coauthor Marshall's recent Drug Wars ( LJ 2/15/91) shows how Washington overlooks or supports drug trafficking as part of its efforts to thwart Third World communism around the world. This new book explores in detail the tangled connection between the Nicaraguan Contras, U.S. support for them, and drugs. Marshall and Scott argue that the United States might actually have furthered the flow of cocaine from Central America to the States by colluding with anti-Sandinista forces. Government intimidation of witnesses, a complacent Congress, and timid media have served to keep this a quiet story. Extensive interviews, government records, and secondary sources (enough, in fact, to produce over 60 pages of cited sources), are used to document in great detail how the war on communism took precedence over the war on drugs. An authoritiative account of a crucial but underpublicized issue.-- Cathy Seitz Whit aker, Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib.

Library Journal