Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall
University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1998, $15.95 pb
ISBN 0-520-21449-8
This is a revised and updated version of this book which was first published in 1991 (and was reviewed in Lobster 24). Since that first edition we have had the great furore over the 1996 stories published in the San Jose Mercury News which claimed that cocaine being consumed in black areas of cities in California was being brought in by a network linked to the CIA via the war against Nicaragua. Quite why the Mercury stories created a storm and this book did not remains a mystery to me, for there is infinitely more evidence of the contra-CIA-cocaine link in here than Gary Webb offered in his San Jose Mercury News stories, admirable though they were; and the contra connection is just one of the many areas in which the CIA has tolerated or taken part in drug trafficking documented in this devasting assault on US foreign policy.
The earlier edition was published in the UK but as far as I can see this edition will not be. If you have trouble ordering this you could try contacting the book’s PR person