Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair take the revelations of the links between the Central Intelligence Agency, the Nicaraguan Contras, and the Los Angeles crack market that journalist Gary Webb exposed in 1996 as a springboard for a tale of the U.S. government's involvement with the illegal drug trade. The specific revelations are not, perhaps, entirely new; many know, for example, that even before there was a CIA, the WWII-era Office of Strategic Services enlisted the aid of gangster "Lucky" Luciano in arranging support among the Mafia for the Allied invasion of Italy, or that the CIA was involved in the opium trade during the Vietnam War. But this book shows that such that the mainstream "liberal" press plays an active role in obfuscating these as "rogue events". By providing an overarching narrative, the authors present a damning indictment of the CIA as it was fulfilling the mandates of the American government.