CIA-DRUG TIE UNPROVEN, PANEL TOLD.

Byline: Thomas Farragher Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

No direct link connects the Central Intelligence Agency to a crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, a former investigator into the labyrinthine Central American drug wars told a Senate panel Wednesday.

But arguing that the U.S. government's integrity is at stake, a key Senate committee chairman vowed to bolster two current government probes - perhaps with congressional subpoena power - into possible CIA ties to a drug ring that helped touch off the crack scourge of the 1980s.

``We have some tools that you don't have,'' Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told two inspectors general looking into the charges. ``We have the power to hold up confirmations. We also have the power to hold up appropriations.''

The Pennsylvania Republican said his Senate panel may jump into ongoing probes by the Justice Department and the CIA if they are stymied by reluctant witnesses.

Wednesday's hearings looked at the early stages of investigations sparked by a San Jose Mercury News series, ``Dark Alliance,'' which reported that a Northern California drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the street gangs of South Central Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a CIA-run guerrilla army in Nicaragua.

The series traced the crack cocaine explosion to two Nicaraguan cocaine dealers, Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, who were civilian leaders of an anti-Communist commando group formed and run by the CIA during the 1980s.

Blandon, who is now an undercover informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, admitted in federal court recently that his biggest customer was a South Central crack dealer named ``Freeway'' Rick Ross, who turned Blandon's cocaine into crack and distributed it to the Crips and Bloods street gangs. He told the DEA in 1995 that at the height of his business with Ross, he was providing 100 kilograms of cocaine a week to the gangs.

The series has touched off a firestorm of interest nationwide, lighting up talk radio switchboards and infuriating the African-American community, particularly in Los Angeles. The stories have also been criticized by three of the nation's biggest newspapers, which have assailed parts of the Mercury News report as unsubstantiated.

The emotional impact of the allegations was evident at Wednesday's hearing, which attracted a standing-room-only crowd that included activist Dick Gregory and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, who has championed the call for formal investigations since the series was published. The audience was warned repeatedly that their applause and skeptical snickers could cause the room to be cleared.

``This is a very inflammatory subject to say the least,'' said Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb. ``Either the CIA, a U.S. government agency, approved or condoned the introduction and sale of crack cocaine to Americans in order to finance the Nicaraguan Contras during the Reagan administration, or the people who served in the CIA at the time, many of whom are still serving, have been erroneously accused.

``We have a duty to get to the bottom of these allegations.''

But Jack Blum, who was special counsel to a Senate subcommittee that investigated Contra drug operations in 1987-88, told the committee Wednesday that Ross' story about CIA ties is a ``fable.''

``Ricky deserves life in prison for what he did to his people in his community,'' Blum told the committee. ``The CIA didn't make him do it, and the profits from his deals certainly didn't go to help the Contras. But that does not mean that there is not a need for a very powerfully done investigation and a backward look at the entire 40-year history of this problem.''

Blum said the answers investigators receive depend on the questions they ask.