Page "Sandinista National Liberation Front" Paragraph 43

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U. S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on links between the Contras and drug imports to the US concluded that " senior U. S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras ' funding problems.

" According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, the US-backed president of Panama.

The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s.

In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb published a series titled Dark Alliance, linking the origins of crack cocaine in California ( largely aimed at its African-American population ) to the CIA-Contra alliance.

Freedom of Information Act inquiries by the National Security Archive and other investigators unearthed a number of documents showing that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money raised via drug trafficking to fund the Contras.

Sen. John Kerry's report in 1988 led to the same conclusions.

However, the Justice Department denied the allegations, and the mainstream US media downplayed them.