"The CIA dropped crack into the inner cities in the 80s under the direction of Reagan," what do you know about this theory?

I think it’s complete crap.
That kind of evil has a way of showing itself eventually. And since I’ve seen no proof, but I have seen it mentioned seriously, not just as a joke mostly by people I would seriously think are unbalanced – I just can’t see any merit. Your darling self, not included dale. :)

I have no sources, only my general belief in there being some good in the world.

@asmonet – that’s kind of what I’m getting at. To me, it seems like complete crap, which I can understand why some people would believe. But I have just never seen any evidence one way or the other, so it’s kind of hard because some things I have heard which at first seemed like crap (like the stolen election) seem to be supported by more than just a political hatred of someone. I’m curious if anything serious is behind this or not.

@dalepetrie: I am too, to a degree. My old Gov. teacher mentioned it to us as fact. Then again, she did burst into tears and blame me for her husband’s death – from a heart attack which occurred a year prior before I’d ever even seen her – because I asked her when our next test was.
Loony bin.

I’m curious what the collective will say, conspiracy theories have kevbo written all over them.

All truly evil acts leave a trail behind them in the world. Someone always has a conscience – or a backup plan.

I don’t buy it – Reagan is the one who started the “War on Drugs”. I can’t see him condoning the use of drugs on the very people he was trying to stop drugs getting to.

@Lightlyseared – excellent point. Though one would have to expect that someone who DID believe this might counter that Reagan was not trying to stop the poor black folk from getting drugs, just the more affluent white folk. I have a hard time believing that as well, though I do think powerful politicians may not always have the best interest of “the people”, meaning the unwashed masses at heart, so that alone doesn’t prove or disprove it, but it’s a good logical argument.

If he did it was probably because one of his kids started manufacturing the stuff and he was trying to create a market.

At the very least, the CIA knowingly aided drug runners who could also deliver money and arms to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. The agency also interfered with Federal investigations of drug smuggling into the US. This much was admitted by the CIA.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9811/03/cia.drugs/

Deep Throat was W. Mark Felt.

People can’t shut the fuck up. The temptation to make millions on a book deal make it likely that in a group of people greater than five one of them will spill the beans.

more addicted people > more drug users > more people to put in jail + justification for “war on drugs” > happy prison industrial complex

It is a distortion and a funny kind of an admixture of a couple of true stories. Reagan financed the Contras by selling arms to Iran, in a program that was directed by Bush senior who, during the Vietnam war, financed the Montangnard fighters (the Hmong) by using CIA planes to allow them to sell their major crop, opium, outside of the country. Some of that opium inevitably made it to the US in the form of heroin. These tales formed the basis of the conspiracy theories you discuss, proving the adage that most lies are founded upon a little bit of truth.

There was also much that the CIA and other govt agencies did without Reagan having much knowledge or involvement. In retrospect, it’s becoming more clear that many were aware of the beginnings of his Alzheimers (even tho they may not have specifically termed it that.)

Add to that the fact that he was a champion “delegator” not known for being a hands-on type of guy and I think it’s possible that there was a lot of stuff being slipped by him. He was basically the “anti-Carter”
The primary complaint about Carter was that he focused on far too much minutiae; Reagan took the opposite tack.

I also know that there are tons of black folks who do believe this, but that proves nothing in and of itself.

They point to the patients who were infected with Syphilis by govt medical staff, and how that was successfully covered up for ages. I think there are power-hungry agents in our govt who are capable of some pretty heinous stuff, but I don’t see Reagan as being cynical like that.

It’s certainly true that much of his administrations policies had devastating results on poor people but I don’t think it was by design.

Just my two cents worth

No one was infected with syphilis by government anything. The Tuskegee Institute did allow Black men suffering from syphilis to go untreated so that they could watch the progression of the disease. Ugly, disgusting, unconscionable, unethical, but not the same as infecting people with a lethal disease.

I know nothing about it and I don’t buy this. Maybe there was some isolated action by a rogue CIA agent. Individuals do strange things sometimes.

I don’t knowthe answer to your main q, but as far as where crack “came from”: it comes from cocaine. No one had to “drop it in” – it can be made from a drug that was already readily available.

As others have said, Reagan probably was less or not at all involved and that Bush was.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Alliance
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7726031384917866364#

It’s really easy to want to assume that some of this stuff is a little bit true, especially if you are against the GOP. I think it is not unreasonable at all to assume Regan thought he could get away with exterminating minorities. Despite his public persona, he was a racist biggot who hid cleverly behind the “I was a Hollywood Actor” facade. It was Nancy who kept him in check. I think she was really running the shit, especially toward the end, when he started to forget all the things he’d said and done. How convenient for him.

I don’t think W. is smart enough to have come up with any of the theories on your list. He might have had a hand in carrying them out, but there is NO WAY he thought of any of that. He’s such a dolt.

/facepalm

I suppose in 20 or 30 years we’ll all believe there were no terrorist attacks under Dubya

I’ve always believed that the US government, at best, turned a blind eye to the introduction of crack.

It’s not much of a stretch to believe that we wanted to support the ‘anti-communist’ Latin American regimes we were propping up, and the institutions of power had no problem doing so by arresting millions of the least among us.

So far as anyone knows, Reagan didn’t order any such thing—but that is not surprising, since any such operation would have to have been compartmentalized in order to shield higher-ups in ways that gave them plausible deniability. As we saw during the Iran-Contra hearings, it was Oliver North and his superior, Admiral Poindexter, who took the fall for the whole Iran-Contra affair.

Reagan’s Vice President, Bush senior, had been Director of the CIA under Nixon and was very close buddies with Panama’s Manuel Noriega; so it struck many people as simply unbelievable for him to claim that he was “out of the loop,” especially when allegations of Administration complicity in the cocaine trade surfaced later.

The cocaine connection was never pursued during the Iran-Contra hearings even though the story of CIA involvement in the cocaine trade had been broken by the San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb. Webb’s story was overreaching and not fully documented so it was discredited initially. In fact, the CIA-led campaign to discredit Webb is an interesting well documented story all by itself. Alexander Cockbern and Jeffry St. Clair (who write for The Nation) lay it all out in their book Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. Webb doesn’t think that anybody got the idea to start a crack epidemic. His take on it was that the CIA guys were just out to make money and ended up fueling it. Of course, they could have stopped if they really gave a crap about inner city blacks.

Nonetheless, Webb’s central assertion was later confirmed; namely, the CIA had sanctioned and substantially assisted the flow of cocaine from Central America to America’s inner cities, and had been doing so for decades. Who exactly invented crack and introduced it to the inner cities is unknown and largely beside the point, but it certainly wasn’t something that inner city blacks could have organized by themselves. There is a great documentary on this called, American Drug War: The Last White Hope which you can watch online. One of the things is lays out is how the crack trade had to have been organized from outside and by people with high level connections.

The BBC’s Greg Palast recounts further evidence that Oliver North was running an operation involving plane loads of cocaine from his office in the White House Basement (according to e-mail backups they forgot to erase found by the Clinton Administration). Since then DEA agents have come forward to corroborate the story and how the fix was put in at the highest levels.

Palast also documents how Bush II (with help from Jim Baker, his daddy’s right-hand man) stole the presidency in 2000 and the election in 2004, and lied to get us in the Iraq war. You can get the book for a penny at Amazon and it is well worth reading. Apart from striking 96,000 black men from the voting rolls under the pretext that they were felons when they were not felons, the fix was also in at the Republican-dominated U.S. Supreme Court. Here, Vincent Bugliosi documents how the court simply threw out all the ballots that couldn’t be read by machine, disenfranchising some 60,000 voters, and awarded them all to Bush on utterly specious legal reasoning.

And, it appears, that Prescott (grand-pappy) Bush was indicted for selling oil to the Nazis in 1942.

First of all, what would be the point?
Second of all, it’s a huge water system serving an entire city. You can’t “target” any one specific population via that.

@Val123 Dummy! The OP didn’t say anything about putting it in the water supply! PAY ATTENTION!! Although in your defense I will say that we have heard of conspiracy theories where they put stuff in the water supply to target specific groups, so you had the right answer to the wrong question!

@Zuma The fact that a book can be purchased for a penny is a fairly good indicator that it is not well worth the read. Unless I am at a garage sale.

@Supacase Don’t be daft. There are lots of great books that had large initial printings—especially books on current events—that now sell cheaply used or on remainder. The one cent price referred to at Amazon was in their used books section, which is a kind of nationwide electronic garage sale.

The government uses gangs as a sort of civilian army called the MJTF. They were deployed during the L.A. riots in 92’. The CIA is crooked, the government is crooked. They give gangs all sorts of cash and drugs, just as long as they keep recruiting desperate street thugs to do some dirty work for them.Reagan had all sorts of black projects. One, called Rex-84, was created as a result of the massive civil disobedience of the 60’s. Rex-84 is apart of a civilian inmate labor program. It is a fascist police state on command. You wanna know who brought the world Coke, then it’s byproduct crack? The Rothschild family, formerly known as the Bauer family.

They own just about the whole world, but also the Bayer pharmaceutical company. Massive scandal at nearly every level. Behind most evil deeds, and oligarchies there are also certain secret brotherhoods. We need not discuss all of that. You have a brain, if you choose not to use it in order to seek the real truth, that is your problem.

Don’t go using the word conspiracy incorrectly either. I think that the media has us damn near trained to laugh the very instant we hear the word conspiracy. Conspiracy is simply when two or more people are engaging in secretive illegal activities. That is all! They just throw the word theory on the end to degrade anyone that thinks outside the box, and it is a very small box indeed. Conspiracy happens everyday. It is a very real subject. To say that evil doesn’t exist is pure ignorance.

Citations, @Darbio16?

Do your own research man. Shit, that is what Google is for.

I wanted to thank everyone for the wonderful answers so far…there’s more information than I’ve had time to read, but from what I can see, I’m really looking forward to reading it all this week.

This is my first time hearing a some of the theories. As far as my own belief, I think some conspiracy theories are born out of some truth( and yes some times just a strain). For example, while this is the first time I ever heard the case that darbio posted about but the fact of the matter is that it sounds like the Othello case aka Ed Riggs that the FBI was guilty of against the black panthers and other black groups. It was always said The feds were involved And most laugh them off. Until Riggs came out in the 80’s with with actually letters and taped conversations and exposed a horrible ex-con drug dealer doing the same.- Now many survivors (from pre WW2) of early labor movements identified the same techniques used against them. They would make deals with known violent criminals on their way out of jail and giving them leeway in their crimes. The biggest benefit was any time they wanted warrants,they would use these excons’ record to do so.

@Darbio16 I have done my own research. I don’t consider Google adequate for anything this critical. That is why I am suggesting that if you are going to make flat statements you should be able to back them up. Otherwise your credibility is hurt, and people will merely ignore your posts.

@pdworkin

Notice the removed post of mine above. The moderator felt it necessary to remove the numerous links and citations that I had provided. I really tried just for you man.

Please don’t ignore my posts. It would really hurt my feelings.

Moderators remove offensive content, not citations and links.

They would also remove a post with several hundred irrelevant links.

The theory is based on classic transferrence of resposibility:

“I’m hooked on crack and It’s someone else’s fault’.

Or it’s denial of racial realities:

One refuses to believe that African Americans are poorer on average and have lifestyles more conducive to addiction, so their reason for finding crack appealing must become something else (the group was intentionally targeted)

Oh dear, here comes the book on the subject…

@proXXi Nope. Your theory is racist and based on a denial of collective responsibility.

Inner city blacks didn’t do this to themselves all by themselves. It was white society that cut off all legal forms of economic opportunity and created the demoralizing poverty of America’s inner cities. It was whites who invented crack and who imported it into the country, and it was whites—notably the CIA—who profited from the drug trade at the upper levels; and who passed the laws which punish crack 100 times more than powdered cocaine (preferred by whites); and it was—and is—whites who profit from the prison industrial complex which punishes 7 black men for every white.

This is all very well documented. And here.

@Zuma Just wow.. Are you trolling me or do you really believe what you say?

Explain ‘collective responibility’. I really hope it doesn’t mean what I think it means.

Prison Industrial Complex..(shakes head) So the majority of blacks in jail couldn’t possibly be because they commit more crimes, or heck, not even be because the are less likely to be able to afford quality representation.

“Cut off ALL legal forms of economic opportunity and created the demoralizing poverty”? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

I alone am responsible if I become addicted to crack, no matter where my supply comes from. I do not engage in the victim mentality.

When you’re reading something and you see the word” responsibility” preceeded by the words “individual” or “personal” how does your brain process it??

@proXXi Watch the documentary cited. Quite a bit was done politically in your name that you evidently are not aware of (or are denying). No, blacks don’t commit more crimes than whites. Ever heard of Jim Crow? If not, look it up. The 100-fold penalty for crack is a blatantly racist policy perpetrated by whites. Laughing about any of this makes you look ridiculously ignorant as well as racist.

Individuals simply refusing to engage in illegal and harmful behavior would cause your ‘complex’ grind to a halt.

Yes I’m watching your documentary. One deferrment of responibility after another…

Ignorant and racist? I won’t be dignifying that with a response.

I found it interesting that “crack” cocaine started showing up on the streets at about the same time the Mexican marijuana production fields were being target by the US and the cost of pot was getting to be more expensive than crack.

African-Americans have a lifestyles more conductive to addiction? Really, Funny how the
National Drug Control Policy and each respected Drug czar( from Peter Bourne under carter and up to Bush John Walters) have flatly stated this is a falsehood that actually contributes to the growth of drug abuse and the diminishing of effectiveness of policies and tools used to combat it. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/
But more importantly I am curious to read what exact attributes you are referring to-
considering alcoholism is the most common form of substance addition, and how much people are more exposed to it As widespread as it is knowing to be Can you really racially tie someone into addition and if so why does racial use change according substance or even other form of addition. What Higher amount of abuse of prescription drugs or cases of gambling additions in white community doesn’t count? http://www.justice.gov/ndic/index.htm
Sorry to original poster I know this has nothing to do with your question but I just wanted to respond to what was posted earlier

(googles “crack cocaine airdrop vial”, no applicable result)

@proXXi Not going to dignify if? Not going to deny it either. The drug laws don’t have anything to do with saving people from harm; they in fact create the harm. The drug war is simply an extension of Jim Crow.

I got the punchline. My assertion still stands.

@proXXi Nope. That’s not how arguments work. Your ignorant and racist assertion is still ignorant and racist.

“Ignorant” and “racist” doesn’t make it wrong.

Also, making an assertion with a racial compnent isn’t necessarily racist.

It’s like accusing me of being a white supremacist just because I suggest that blacks tend to have darker skin.

In your world no one ever says: “If I engage in this dangerous act anything could happen to me, especially something bad for me and or others”

@proXXi Oh yes it does!

Heh..

@proXXi Saying that there are higher proportions of blacks in prison because they commit proportionally more crime is both ignorant and racist. It is ignorant because it isn’t true; institutional racism is pervasive throughout the American criminal justice system.

Heh..

And you account for the black practitioners in the system how?

@proXXi You have, in just a few posts, become the poster child for White Privilege, so befogged by its relative comfort in life that it no longer attributes differential outcomes in ethnic groups to the very privilege that allows the outcomes. You spout ancient creaky sophistries about “individual responsibility” without ever raising your head from your comfortable pillow to examine the structural and systemic reasons for poverty and hopelessness that prevent people from making any personal decisions, let alone wise ones. However, I do not expect you to acknowledge this, as I fear you are ineducable. Rather, I expect yet another thoughtless and dismissive post from the shallow pool of your unexamined life which will simultaneously prove me right and insulate you from any possible breach of your ingnorance.

@proXXi ; I’m not sure how you arrived at this statement, “Ignorant and racist don’t make it wrong.” I understand the point you were making but I absolutely disagree with this. Think about it—Ignorant means that you haven’t been informed on a topic, like children of backwater racists. Just because their parents hate, they think it’s protocol for human existence. The term racist is a hate word. It only has negative connotations when used (unless it’s in that one song from ‘Avenue Q’) and it only causes anger and sadness in its wake. What’s not wrong about a word like that?

@proXXi By “black practitioners” I assume you mean people like Clarence Thomas. Obviously, there are always a few who will sell out their own for personal privilege.

When one group uses the law and the criminal justice system to target another group for the purposes of disenfranchising them—as is the case with Jim Crow, the Drug War, and the 100-fold penalties for crack—trying to pretend that the mass incarceration of blacks is all about their “lack of personal responsibility” is exactly the sort of intellectual bad faith that racism engenders.

I think @pdworkin has it exactly right, there is nothing particularly thoughtful or persuasive about your posts. They are simply gratuitous assertions of a mean-spirited racism.