[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 17, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H10437]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            WHY WE HAVE COCAINE IN SOUTH CENTRAL LOS ANGELES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hancock). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of May 12, 1995, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Waters] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I come today to try and create a real 
discussion about drugs. In this election year, we have begun to hear a 
discussion, a discussion of blame. Obviously President Dole has decided 
he is going to make drugs an issue, and we kind of hear them talking 
about who funded what and who did not fund what.
  While this discussion is going on, there is a startling revelation 
about something that took place in America that will outrage the 
average citizen. The San Jose Mercury News published a series of 
articles starting August 18, 19, and 20. These articles were done by an 
award-winning journalist named Gary Webb. After over a year of 
investigation, what did he find out? I think it is all reported, maybe 
in the first paragraph of the article that you see displayed here.
  It says,

       For the better part of a decade a Bay Area drug ring sold 
     tons of cocaine to the Cripps and Blood street gangs of Los 
     Angeles and funneled millions of drug profits to a Latin 
     American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence 
     Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found.

  Now Gary Webb is indeed an award-winning journalist who developed 
these articles, and they are extraordinary because it describes 
starting back as far as 1979 how CIA operatives came into south central 
Los Angeles, part of the district that I represent, connected with a 
young man named Ricky ``Freeway'' Ross. One of the operatives was Mr. 
Danilo Blandon, the other was a Mr. Meneses. They connected with this 
man in south central Los Angeles, supplied him with tons of cocaine 
which was cooked into rock cocaine, spread out among street gangs and 
others who began to sell this drug at a very cheap price.
  Before they came into south central Los Angeles, cocaine was not 
known there. Cocaine was the drug of kind of the elite, the rich, and 
the famous. It could not be afforded in poor neighborhoods. But when 
they learned to cook it up and put it into rock cocaine, they could 
sell it for very small amounts of money.
  But not only did they bring the drugs in, they brought the guns along 
with them.
  I went a week ago to the San Diego Federal Detention Center, the 
metropolitan center in San Diego, and met with Mr. Ricky Ross to find 
out whether or not he could confirm what is displayed in the series of 
articles. Not only did he take me back to 1979, when he was 19 years 
old and started selling these drugs, he said:
  ``Ms. Waters, they brought the guns in. I didn't know what an uzi 
was. They brought us so many weapons, we had a huge arsenal,'' and he 
went on to verify that they even brought in a grenade launcher.
  But of course they were putting drugs out on the street on 
consignment, which simply means you can pass them around, people do not 
have to have money to become drug dealers, you pass them around, but 
they better bring the profits back, and the guns were there to ensure.
  Back in the 1980's we saw this terrific activity. Something was 
happening in south central Los Angeles. We began to see the drug 
addiction, the crime, the gang warfares, the violence. None of us in 
our wildest imagination would have thought that our own Government may 
have been involved. To have this revealed to us helps us to understand 
the devastation, not only in Los Angeles, but all across America as the 
gangs spread out, as the drug dealers spread out to sell crack cocaine.
  As a result of this we have crack addicted babies, we have women 
walking the streets of America cracked out, we have homelessness. Much 
of the homelessness, whether it is in New York, St. Louis, 
Philadelphia, Los Angeles, are crack addicts. The cost of health care 
in our emergency rooms has gone up.
  Mr. Speaker, this is just a beginning. I am going to talk about it 
every day. We are going to get to the bottom of it. We are calling for 
investigations. We are going to find out who is behind all of this. We 
are going to do something about it.

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