How John Kerry Exposed the Iran-Contra Scandal and Showed the Cracks in the War on Drugs by Freeway Rick Ross 1/14/2013

7/29/2019 How John Kerry Exposed the Iran-Contra Scandal and Showed the Cracks in the War on Drugs by Freeway Rick R

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Freeway Rick Ross

Writer, Entrepreneur, Founder: Freeway Literacy Foundation

How John Kerry Exposed the Iran-Contra Scandal and

Showed the Cracks in the War on Drugs

Posted: 01/14/2013 6:34 pm

"Can't you tell that I came from the dope game? -- Blame Reagan for making me into a monster -

- Blame Oliver North and Iran-Contra -- I ran contraband that they sponsored" -- Jay-Z, "Blue

Magic"

John Kerry being nominated to Secretary of the State brings his ever looming presence within

the Iran Contra Scandal full circle. The man responsible for uncovering a scandal that cocaine

was being brought into the United States as part of a multicontinental black market with theknowledge of the CIA and U.S. government will now hold one of the most powerful

international offices in the world. The backdrop of his presence on Capitol Hill will always be

built upon pillars of his desire to have America be honest to itself, and the rest of the world as toits own actions here and abroad.

In early 1986, the 42-year-old Massachusetts Democrat stood almost alone in the U.S. Senate

demanding answers about the emerging evidence that CIA-backed Contras were filling theircoffers by collaborating with drug traffickers then flooding U.S. borders with cocaine from

South America... In taking on the inquiry, Kerry challenged President Ronald Reagan at theheight of his power, at a time he was calling the Contras the "moral equals of the Founding

Fathers." Kerry's questions represented a particular embarrassment to Vice President George

H.W. Bush, whose responsibilities included overseeing U.S. drug-interdiction policies... Kerry'sprobe infuriated Reagan's White House, which was pushing Congress to restore military funding

for the Contras. Some in the administration also saw Kerry's investigation as a threat to the

secrecy surrounding the Contra supply operation, which was being run illegally by White House

aide Oliver North and members of Bush's vice presidential staff.

The Reagan administration did everything it could to thwart Kerry's investigation, including

attempting to discredit witnesses, stonewalling the Senate when it requested evidence and

assigning the CIA to monitor Kerry's probe. But it couldn't stop Kerry and his investigators fromdiscovering the explosive truth: that the Contra war was permeated with drug traffickers who

gave the Contras money, weapons and equipment in exchange for help in smuggling cocaine into

the United States. Even more damningly, Kerry found that U.S. government agencies knew


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about the Contra-drug connection, but turned a blind eye to the evidence in order to avoid

undermining a top Reagan-Bush foreign policy initiative. -- Salon.com

Long forgotten today is the resolve Kerry had to have to almost singularly stand up to theReagan & Bush administration. All despite the McCarthyesqe efforts used to make him seem

crazed for his ground breaking investigation.

Though John Kerry's early warnings about White House-aided Contra gunrunning had proved

out, his accusations about Contra drug smuggling would continue to be rejected by much of the

press corps as going too far.

On Jan. 21, 1987, the conservative Washington Times attacked Kerry's Contra-drug investigationagain; his alleged offense this time was obstructing justice because his probe was supposedly

interfering with the Reagan administration's determination to get at the truth. "Kerry's staffers

damaged FBI probe," the Times headline read. Congressional investigators for Sen. John Kerry

severely damaged a federal drug investigation last summer by interfering with a witness whilepursuing allegations of drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan resistance. The drift of the article

made Kerry out to be something of a dupe. His Contra-cocaine witnesses were depicted assimply convicts trying to get lighter prison sentences by embroidering false allegations onto the

Iran-Contra scandal. But the information in the Times story was patently untrue. The AP Contra-

cocaine story had run in December 1985, almost a year before the Iran-Contra story broke. --

Salon.com

Made into a pariah much like Gary Webb, the reporter that wroteDark Alliance on the Iran

Contra in 1996, people simply wanted it all to go away because within Kerry's accusation was adarker reality than discovered in any international relations scandal in American History. "Kerry

wanted to get to the bottom of something so dark,... Nobody could imagine it was so dark."Miami-based federal public defender John Mattes told Salon. The possibility the United Statesgovernment might be involved in the cocaine trade, while at the same time it was writing some

of the harshest known sentences in the world if its citizens sold those same drugs once they

arrived to shore.

John Kerry Iran Contra Cocaine Hearingsby dm_50d808e999ca9

What if the cocaine was allowed to be trafficked by the government without regard or care for

the impact it would have on a black community fresh out of the throws of Jim Crow? What ifwhile demonizing crack, the drug we were selling, the government was simultaneously complicit

in trafficking the cocaine the deadly drug was being made from? As a result of Kerry's

investigation (along with the efforts ofRep. Maxine Waters) there is no if -- it is proven, there issimply the question of why it happened and what the long lasting effects on cities and families

are across the nation. All of these decisions were being made while at the same time the federal

justice system without care or regard for context decided to sentence these nonviolent offenders

with the harshness of murderers in an effort to make it all go away.


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The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 ("the 1986 Act") initiated the disparate treatment between

crack and powder cocaine. At that time, crack cocaine was believed to be more problematic anddangerous than powder. Based on these mistaken beliefs, the 1986 Act authorized a 100-to-1

ratio sentencing scheme, which equated a single gram of crack with 100 grams of powder. No

rationale for the ratio was discussed in the legislative history. The newly created United States

Sentencing Commission simply adopted the 1986 Act's sentencing scheme without utilizing therequired empirical approach founded upon past sentencing practices. -- United States Sentencing

Commission

In 1981 I was at the heart of this question, as one leg of the triangle that tied the U.S.

government, South America and the Hood. I saw first hand how when Ronald Reagan waselected the jobs and social programs in the ghetto dried up over a very short time because of his

policy choices, and young black males impoverished because oflongstanding U.S. policy were

left with no way to provide for themselves. Young teenage African American men that were notdrug addicts, or career criminals were in mass choosing to become such for the first time since

blacks were brought to America. While I am apologetic for my part in the cocaine epidemic (I

served over 20 years prison as punishment). You cannot understand me without this context ofan extremely deep economic recession, and lack of proper government reaction toward a group

in dire need of assistance. Prior to this era a drug dealer tended to be an older man that had beenturned by life, this bottlenecking turned young men like myself from children into criminals

overnight. This contextual shift led to a reality today that Black men are the most imprisonedgroup in the history of the world. Some 10,000 per 100,000 in prison between ages 25-30,

primarily for nonviolent offenses. To put this statistic in context, the prison rate for Africans in

South Africa during the time of Apartheid was 836 per 100,000.


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As President Obama appoints John Kerry one must contextualize his choice to understand howthis may mark a remembrance of African Americans' mistreatment at the hands of the War on

Drugs. Taken in conjunction with the Fair Sentencing Act President Obama signed into law in

2010 we only hope it is the first of many steps by the nation's first Black president to correct a

longstanding wrong done to Black America at the hands of the War on Drugs. At the heart of thelong lasting effects of the Contra Cocaine scandal is the beefing up of the War on Drugs, which

has driven black male nonviolent criminals to prison at rates no other singular group in America,or any other industrial country has experienced in history. The upcoming documentary "Crack in

the System" by Emmy award winning Documentary maker Marc Levin will cover me and the

topic in more depth than ever. While I served my time and recognize my fault, I believe there is ageneration across the globe that deserves the full story to be given light. Since my release I have

started a nonprofit organization Freeway Literacy Foundation, because 60 percent of prisoners in

the U.S. are functionally illiterate and it is a key factor in recidivism. My biopic film already

written by Nick Cassavetes (writer ofBlow starring Johnny Depp), will give John Kerry andmany others a chance to be appreciated for their efforts in uncovering the cocaine scandal that

led to mass incarceration and what many are calling the New Jim Crow. John Kerry is anAmerican hero and his nomination by President Barack Obama holds with it a remembrance ofhis noble acts to tell the truth no matter the personal political cost.

Rick Ross is now a Community Activist with a nonprofit Freeway Literacy Foundation. He was

at the center of the Iran Contra Scandal as noted by publications and television globally.http://www.freewayrick.com/

"...San Jose Mercury News published "Dark Alliance," a three-part series charging that the CIA


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was all mixed up with the drug lords who flooded South Central Los Angeles, and then the rest of

America, with crack during the 1980s. Written by reporter Gary Webb after a yearlong

investigation, the stories allege that a San Francisco Bay-area drug ring, headed by Danilo

Blandon and Norwin Meneses, two men with close ties to a CIA-sponsored Nicaraguan contra

group known as the FDN, sold tons of coke to a notorious Los Angeles-based dealer named

Freeway Rick Ross" Times Magazine 2001 - Crack Contras and Cyberspace

Follow Freeway Rick Ross on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FreewayRicky

See the original article here: This article contains links and videos.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-ross/how-john-kerry-exposed-th_b_2469665.html

How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal

Derided by the mainstream press and taking on Reagan at the height of his popularity, the freshman

senator battled to reveal one of America's ugliest foreign policy secrets. By Robert Parry

http://www.salon.com/2004/10/25/contra/

Documents

How John Kerry Exposed the Iran-Contra Scandal and Showed the Cracks in the War on Drugs by Freeway Rick Ross 1/14/2013