Cocaine Politics : Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America

How should one evaluate the republication of Cocaine Politics eight years after its original appearance? It is not a book that can claim to be definitive. After all, as Scott and Marshall note, "even the most reputable sources cannot guarantee accuracy in an area as murky as the narcotics traffic" (p. 7). As in federal racketeering trials, the charges are enormous and the witnesses of unsavory show more background. It is hard to avoid agreeing with much of what Cocaine Politics says about the Central American wars--that elements of the U.S. government willfully cooperated with known drug traffickers and money launderers against what Ronald Reagan declared as the "unusual and extraordinary threat" of Sandinista Nicaragua. It is certainly clear that the U.S. government successfully obstructed efforts of the Kerry subcommittee and the Iran-Contra prosecutors to get to the bottom of U.S. foreign policy scandals. In addition, the ability of the Reagan administration to use the tactic of "the big lie" to obscure the political reality of its actions in Central America is well known. While these weighty allegations from Cocaine Politics are valid, much of substance--questions of degree, levels of individual responsibility, and causal linkages, for example--remains murky. show less

"Recently updated with reports from the crack war in LA., Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall's explosive text reveals how the federal government allegedly got into bed with some of the worst elements of the international drug trade, then used the guise of national security to hide it from the American public."

"Building on the courageous (but largely ignored) investigation by Senator John Kerry's terrorism and narcotics subcommittee into the Contra-cocaine-CIA connections, the authors pile up layer after layer of further evidence of those links. The result is a dense, massively documented indictment of American foreign policy....This incredible indictment has been put together from published show more sources, ranging from Congressional inquiries to underground newspapers. This wonderful piece of research is, by a mile, the best book yet on the disgusting foreign policies of the Reagan era." show less