Source: Los Angeles Times Contact: 121997 Section: News, page 5 Author: John Diamond, Associated Press CIA CLEARS ITSELF OF INVOLVEMENT WITH CRACK COCAINE GOVERNMENT The agency's inspector general finds no evidence to support charges published in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. WASINGTONThe CIA found no evidence that its employees or agents colluded with allies of the Nicaraguan contra rebels involved in crack cocaine sales in the United States,a senior official said Thursday. The San Jose Mercury News sparked the inquiry with a series of articles in August 1996. The series concluded that a San Francisco Bay area drug ring sold cocaine in southcentral Los Angeles and funneled profits to the contras for the better part of a decade. It traced the drugs to dealers who were also leaders of a CIArun guerrilla army in Nicaragua. A senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an inspector general's report found no link between the CIA and two Nicaraguan cocaine dealers, Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses. The newspaper series had said the two were civilian leaders of an anticommunist commando group formed and run be the CIA during the 1980s. The articles traced the origin of the crack cocaine explosion in the United States to a crack dealer named Ricky Donnell Ross, saying he got his supply through Blandon and Meneses. The CIA inspector general found "nothing to indicate that CIA people or people working for the CIA or on CIA's behalf had any dealings directly or indirectly with those people, Ross, Blandon or Meneses," the senior official said. The Mercury News reported Thursday on the CIA's conclusions disputing the newspaper series. The inspector general's report, however, has two sections. The first, concerning the allegations raised by the newspaper, is about ready for release. A second section dealing with broader questions about links between the contras and drug trafficking is not yet complete, the official said. The newspaper series generated widespread anger in the black community toward the CIA, as well as federal investigations into whether the CIA took part in or countenanced the selling of crack cocaine to raise money for the contra rebels. The investigations did not find a link between the CIA and drug dealing. Several newspapers also disputed the Mercury News report. Some former intelligence officers questioned the CIA's effort. "Their interaview with me was simply to go through the motions of touching all the bases," the Los Angeles Times quoted former CIA officer Donald H. Winters as saying. "They started off by saying they had no substantive evidence that any of the allegations in the San Jose article had any basis." In an open letter to readers in May, the Mercury News' executive editor, Jerry Ceppos, said the series had shortcomings. Reporter Gary Webb, who researched and wrote the series, was transferred to a smaller bureau 10 months after the series was published. He resigned from the newspaper last week. Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder said he requested and got CIA agreement to withhold release of the report and that the Justice Department also has held on to a report on the same subject prepared by Michael Bromwich, the Justice Department's inspector general. Holder said his recommendations stemmed from lawenforcement concerns that are "not related to the underlying allegations." He declined to say whether the Justice Department reached the same conclusions as the CIA on the issue of links to drug dealers.