Cocaine
Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America
by Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan
Marshall
Reviews
Synopsis
"This important, explosive report forcefully
argues that the 'war on drugs' is largely a sham, as the U.S. government
is one of the world's largest drug pushers. . . . (authors) Scott and Marshall
call for immediate political action to end Washington's complicity. Their
heavily documented book deserves a wide audience". - Publishers Weekly
This is a study of drug trafficking
in Central America. The book argues that the United States might actually
have furthered the flow of cocaine from Central America to the States by
colluding with anti-Sandinista forces. {According to the authors}, government
intimidation of witnesses, a complacent Congress, and timid media have
served to keep this a quiet story." (Libr J) Index.
Reviews
From Robert Gardner - San Francisco Review
of Books
Despite decades of declarations
of war on drugs, from several presidents, it is clear we are nowhere near
winning one . . . {This volume is a} fascinating and frightening view into
these wars, and shows why drug enforcement is remarkably ineffectual .
. . {The book is} detailed and footnoted, showing how the CIA became intertwined
with corrupt governments involved in the trade it was assigned to fight.
Characters and connections are set forth, making for a readable reference
work and a staggering story.
From Library Journal
Coauthor Marshall's recent
Drug
Wars ( LJ 2/15/91) shows how Washington overlooks or supports drug
trafficking as part of its efforts to thwart Third World communism around
the world. This new book explores in detail the tangled connection between
the Nicaraguan Contras, U.S. support for them, and drugs. Marshall and
Scott argue that the United States might actually have furthered the flow
of cocaine from Central America to the States by colluding with anti-Sandinista
forces. Government intimidation of witnesses, a complacent Congress, and
timid media have served to keep this a quiet story. Extensive interviews,
government records, and secondary sources (enough, in fact, to produce
over 60 pages of cited sources), are used to document in great detail how
the war on communism took precedence over the war on drugs. An authoritative
account of a crucial but underpublicized issue. - Cathy Seitz Whitaker,
Univ. of Pittsburgh Lib.
Customer Comments
Gary Webb from Sacramento,
California, March 19, 1999
A masterpiece of investigative reading
This incredible volume was one of the first
things I read when I began researching the issue of Contra cocaine trafficking
for the San Jose Mercury News in 1995. To call the experience an
eye-opener is a major understatement. Cocaine Politics not only
confirmed to me that the Contra-drug link was for real, but that it was
just a small part of an even more insidious picture: a secret and practically
invisible world where intelligence operatives and criminals collude, wreak
havoc, and almost always escape prosecution and accountability. When a
producer from Dateline NBC, which did a show about my Dark Alliance series,
asked me for recommended reading material on this issue, I unhesitatingly
recommended Cocaine Politics. His reaction afterwards was memorable:
"This is the most amazing book I've ever
read. How come I've never heard any of this stuff before?" The answer is
pretty obvious once you read this book. If the American public ever got
wind of this story, our country and our government would never be the same
again.
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