Source:   Los Angeles Times
Contact:                   Fax:  2132374712
Pubdate: December 18, 1997
Authors: Doyle McManus, James Risen,  Times Staff Writers and  Times staff
writer

                Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.

[Editors note:  The previous article posted "CIA Clears Itself in Crack
Probe" only appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.  This is the article
from the LA Times]

CIA ROBE ABSOLVES AGENCY ON L.A. CRACK

Cocaine: The report rejects newspaper's charges. But several exofficers
who were questioned criticize inquiry.
 

WASHINGTONAfter a yearlong investigation described as the most intensive
in its history, the CIA has completed a report declaring it was not
responsible for introducing crack cocaine to Los Angeles, officials said
Wednesday.

The stillsecret report concludes that charges that the CIA actively
protected drug traffickers in California who funded the Nicaraguan rebels
known as Contras are "without foundation," one knowledgeable official said.

The charges were raised last year by the San Jose Mercury News in a series
of articles that touched off a public outcry. Other newspapers, including
The Times, investigated the same allegations and found evidence that
cocaine traffickers had contributed money to the Contras but no proof that
the CIA knew of the transactions.

Former CIA Director John M. Deutch, who launched the investigation and has
read the report, said: "I think it is very professional, and is thorough
and convincing."

But several former CIA officers who were interviewed by the agency's
investigators said the inquiry did not seem very exactingand some of its
targets provided little or no cooperation.

"They sent me questions that were a bunch of [nonsense], and I wrote back
that they were a bunch of [nonsense]," said Duane R. Clarridge, a retired
CIA officer who ran the covert Contra war against Nicaragua's leftist
government in the early 1980s.

Clarridge, now an executive of General Dynamics Corp. in San Diego, said he
refused to be interviewed by the agency's investigators. "They had no
leverage" on retired CIA officers, he noted.

CIA officials confirmed that they had no power to compel testimony from
former operatives.

Another former officer, Donald H. Winters, said he submitted to an
interview and found it fairly gentle.

"Their interview with me was simply to go through the motions of touching
all the bases," said Winters, who ran the CIA's Contra operation in
Honduras in 198284. "They started off by saying they had no substantive
evidence that any of the allegations in the San Jose article had any
basis."

The Mercury News reported that a major California cocaine trafficker
traveled to Honduras to meet with Contra leaders in 1982, when Winters was
stationed there. But Winters said the CIA investigators did not ask him
about that report. He did not know of any such visit, he added.

Several other major figures from the Contra war who were not CIA officers
said the agency's investigators never contacted them. For instance, former
Ambassador Cresencio S. Arcos, who monitored the Contras' conduct for the
State Department for most of a decade, said he was never questioned. Nor
was Robert Owen, a conservative activist who warned the White House as
early as 1985 that some Contra leaders appeared to have connections with
drug traffickers.

Clarridge, Winters and two other former CIA officers all said they knew of
no evidence of agency complicity in drug trafficking during the Contra war.

And CIA officials said they will point to the scope of their
investigationincluding more than a dozen investigators, more than 10,000
documents and several hundred interviewsto buttress their findings.

But officials acknowledged that the report is unlikely to put to rest all
the questions about CIA complicity with cocaine trafficking in Central
America's turbulent 1980s.

The Mercury News articles that prompted the investigation focused on one
narrow set of charges: that two Nicaraguan cocaine dealers in California
"opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black
neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and funneled "millions" in drug profits to
the Contras while the CIA stood by.

Although those explosive charges have not been substantiated, there is
evidence to support some other questions about the agency's conduct. A 1987
congressional investigation led by Sen. John F. Kerry (DMass.), for
example, found that two of the Contras' main air cargo contractors were
owned or operated by drug traffickers who may have used the planes for
smuggling.

Other officials have long said that some CIA officers turned a blind eye to
connections between cocaine smugglers and Contra leaders. "They looked the
other waybecause it would get in the way of the project," said a former
senior State Department official who helped direct the Contra war.

CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz, who conducted the agency's
internal investigation, has divided his report into two parts, officials
said. Volume 1, which focuses on the San Jose Mercury News allegations, has
been completed and is ready for release; Volume 2, which covers the wider
issue of the agency's vigilance toward narcotics issues throughout Central
America, is not yet finished.

It is unclear when the public will see either half of the report. Hitz
planned to release the first volume today, but the Justice Department asked
for a delay, officials said.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich conducted a
similar investigation of allegations that law enforcement officials
protected the drug traffickersand, like the CIA, concluded that most of
the charges were groundless, officials said.

But Atty. Gen. Janet Reno ordered a delay in the release of his report for
"law enforcement reasons," officials said.

Rep. Maxine Waters (DLos Angeles), who has demanded a full investigation
of the Mercury News charges, said she was unhappy with the delay.

"It undermines the credibility of the report," she said. "It raises
questions and suspicions. . . . In the minds of some people, it stinks."