Copyright 1996 Times Mirror Company  
                               Los Angeles Times
                   December 30, 1996, Monday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part A; Page 1; National Desk
LENGTH: 1561 words
HEADLINE: AMID DOUBTERS, CIA BEGINS CRACK PROBE
BYLINE: DOYLE McMANUS, TIMES WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 BODY:
 
   In a warren of windowless offices deep inside CIA headquarters, a dozen
deliberately anonymous researchers have begun combing through more than 10,000
aging documents, the secret records of Nicaragua's covert war of the 1980s.
   Their task is to look for something that they candidly hope they will not
find: evidence of connections between the CIA, the agency's rebel Contra army 
in Nicaragua and Latin American cocaine dealers.
   And underlying that job is a real-life mission impossible: to convince a
skeptical public that the CIA can investigate itself unsparingly, even on a
question as explosive as this.
   The agency's chief internal watchdog, Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz, is staking his credibility on the inquiry. "We intend to do our best to tell the whole story of what happened," he said. "If there are points on which we don't find information, we'll point that out too."
   But because he wants to be thorough, Hitz said, it will take a long time to
produce results. "It's going to take most of 1997," he predicted.
   The agency's critics are openly skeptical of the CIA's intentions. "Of
course we're all suspicious," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) said. "We are
going to be monitoring this process and keeping the pressure on."
   Even the agency's own investigators acknowledge the dilemma. "I know, 'Trust 
us,' doesn't go very far these days," a CIA official said. "All we can do is
offer up our record and our work."
   Spurred by a public outcry over charges that the CIA actively supported and
protected drug traffickers who flooded Los Angeles and other cities with cheap
crack cocaine in the 1980s, the agency, the Justice Department and Congress'
two intelligence committees are looking into decade-old questions:
   * Did the CIA encourage, condone or ignore connections between its favorite
Contra leaders and drug traffickers in Honduras? A 1987 congressional
investigation led by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) found that two of the Contras'
main air cargo contractors were owned or operated by known drug traffickers who 
reportedly used the planes for smuggling.
   * Did the CIA turn a blind eye to connections between cocaine smugglers
and leaders of the Contras' Nicaraguan "southern front" (who were not being
funded by the CIA at the time)? Alan D. Fiers, then chief of CIA operations 
in Central America, told Congress in 1987 that many southern-front figures were 
"involved in cocaine."
   "It is not a couple of people," he testified. "It is a lot of people."
But it is not clear whether the agency passed its information on to law enforcement
officials.
   * Did the CIA know anything about alleged payoffs by Colombia's Cali
cocaine cartel to Contra leaders? Several witnesses told the Kerry
subcommittee that investigated the charges that the Cali traffickers gave about 
$ 10 million to the Contras, perhaps in hope of using rebel airfields for
cocaine flights. But the allegation has never been proved.
   * Did the CIA or the Contras have any connection with a California-based
ring of Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers that supplied crack to Ricky Donnell
Ross, who helped flood South-Central Los Angeles with the drug by undercutting
his competitors' prices?
   The San Jose Mercury News revived the CIA-cocaine issue last summer with a 
series of articles charging that the California ring, operating with CIA
protection, deliberately introduced crack to black neighborhoods in Los Angeles 
and sent millions of dollars to the Contras. Other newspapers, including The
Times, investigated the same allegations and came to different conclusions. The 
Times reported that, although the Nicaraguan traffickers did send some money
to the Contras, the only donations that could be substantiated came to about $
50,000.
   CIA officials said they already have some initial findings.
   They said they have found no direct link between the CIA and the
California-based cocaine ring, which was the focus of the Mercury News report.
The agency said it knew as early as 1984 that the leader of the ring, Juan
Norvin Meneses, was a drug trafficker, but it did not know of any link between
Meneses and the Contras.
   They said they have confirmed that CIA officials knew southern-front
leaders were taking money from drug traffickers--and reported the problem to
headquarters. At the time, however, the agency had stopped funding those
Contras.
   And they said they plan to pursue a question that many investigators believe 
could turn up results embarrassing to the agency: whether CIA officers
deliberately turned a blind eye to Contra connections with cocaine smugglers
and failed to report what they knew.
   But that avenue of inquiry faces a Catch-22: Investigators are looking for
information that was never reported.
   Moreover, many of the people involved are no longer CIA employees. At the
peak of the Contra war, the agency had as many as 400 people in the field, but
many of them were former military officers on short-term contracts.
   The investigators said they have no power to compel current or former agency 
officers to testify. "We can't know what nobody will tell us about," one
investigator said.
   Added a former CIA officer who participated in the Contra war (and said he 
knew of no agency complicity in drug smuggling): "If you had failed to report
something like that, would you confess it? I wouldn't."
   *
   Nevertheless, the investigators said they will ask "everyone of any interest"
to talk about what they know.
   "I have no indication that anybody has refused or will refuse" to talk, a
senior CIA official said. The agency's investigators do not have the power to 
subpoena witnesses but they can notify Congress or the Justice Department if
important figures refuse to cooperate, and those bodies can issue subpoenas.
   The investigators beg
an in September by issuing a letter to every current
employee of the CIA, asking them to come forward with "any information . . .
relating to possible drug trafficking and related activities by the Nicaraguan
Contras or persons associated with that organization directed toward or
conducted within the United States, as well as what action CIA took in
response."
   Merely reading and digesting the documents in the CIA's electronic archive 
from the 1980s--now being printed out and organized in binders and boxes--will
take until spring, officials said.
   After that, the investigators plan at least 200 interviews with former
Contras, former CIA officials and other knowledgeable figures.
   A "rough outline" of a report should take shape during the summer. But
finishing it, shepherding it through CIA internal reviews and then producing
an unclassified version for the public will take months more.
   "There's no practical way we could suppress anything even if we wanted to,"
asserted one official involved in the inquiry. "The congressional committees are
looking over our shoulders. . . . And they have access to every piece of
information we do."
   *
   Members of Congress give Hitz and his office generally high marks for the
quality of their investigations. The CIA inspector general operates under a
1989 law that seeks to protect his independence; the law guarantees the
inspector general access to all agency records, requires him to report major
problems directly to Congress and provides that he can be fired only by the
president.
   Waters and other congressional watchdogs said they will watch the
investigation closely.
   "We're going to monitor what they're doing," she said. "Those of us close to 
this process are learning enough to help keep it going. We will have our own
list of people who we feel should be subpoenaed."
   The Los Angeles congresswoman already has conducted a series of town meetings
in several cities around the country that stoked outrage among African Americans
and others over the charges against the CIA, and she plans a new series of
teach-ins in 1997, beginning at California State University campuses at
Northridge, Fullerton and Long Beach. John M. Deutch, who is leaving his post as
CIA director, spoke Nov. 15 at a town meeting in South-Central Los Angeles.
   One reason for the teach-ins, she said, is that the incoming chairman of the 
House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is a former CIA
operations officer who has fiercely defended the agency's honor.
   "I'm skeptical about Goss," she said. "He's a CIA man. I'm under no
illusion that he would eagerly and aggressively pursue this."
   Goss returns the compliment in kind.
   "Ms. Waters will attempt to sensationalize these matters, but that's her
business and that's her agenda," he said. "It's not my agenda."
   In the thankless position of mediator is Rep. Julian C. Dixon (D-Los
Angeles), one of the intelligence committee's senior Democrats.
   Both the House and Senate intelligence committees have begun their own
investigations and already have sent aides to interview witnesses in
California--including Ross, the convicted cocaine dealer, who has said he only
learned of a connection to the CIA from a reporter for the Mercury News.
   The congressional committees plan hearings next year but none have been
scheduled yet.
   "Nobody's ever going to be satisfied on an issue like this," one
congressional investigator said with a sigh. "It's like the John F.  Kennedy
assassination. You can never put the thing to rest."