Gary Webb's Dark Alliance Mercury News series 1996
[back] Gary Webb
a crack smoker superimposed over the CIA seal

    "For the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods Street Gangs of Los Angeles and funnelled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.
    This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack" capital of the world.  The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America -- and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.
     It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern history: the union of a U.S. backed  army attempting to overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the Uzi-toting "gangstas" of Compton and South Central Los Angeles."--Gary Webb From the introduction to the original Dark Alliance website, August, 1996 
    For an in depth record read Narco News here

[1996 Oct 3] Affidavit shows CIA knew of contra drug ring

[1996 Aug 23] Drug king free, but black aide sits in jail

[1996 Aug 23] Cocaine sentences weighted against blacks

[1996 Aug 22] Cocaine pipeline financed rebels

[1996 Aug 22] Salvador air force linked to cocaine flights, Nicaraguan contras, drug dealer's supplier

[1996 Aug 22] Trio created mass market in U.S. for crack cocaine

[1996 Aug 22] Crack was born during 1974 in S.F. Bay Area

[1996 Aug 20] Flawed sentencing the main reason for race disparity

[1996 Aug 20] War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans

[1996 Aug 19] Drug agent thought she was onto something big

[1996 Aug 19] Shadowy origins of 'crack' epidemic

[1996 Aug 18] Testimony links U.S. to drugs-guns trade

[1996 Aug 18] America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war