Subject: CIA and drugs Date: 8 Oct 1996 20:12:15 GMT Sacramento Bee

======== Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,alt.conspiracy,alt.drugs Subject: CIA and drugs From: snopes Date: 8 Oct 1996 20:12:15 GMT Sacramento Bee October 4, 1996 RUMOR HAS IT By: Fahizah Alim Did the CIA pour drugs into Los Angeles' African American community to finance its war in Central America? African Americans have been telling Patricia Turner that for years. It was an enduring and pervasive rumor -- and it may be true. Turner is an associate professor of African, African American and American studies at the University of California, Davis. For 10 years, she's been "an almost around-the-clock field worker" studying rumors in the black community. In 1993, she wrote "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," one of the first books to explore rumors, urban legends and folklore in the African American com-munity. These rumors, Turner writes, are used "as tools of resistance for many of the folks who share them." In her book, Turner, 41, compiled many rumors whose underlying message is that white society wants to undermine or destroy African Americans. So she is particularly intrigued with the story about the CIA, drugs in the African American community and the contras in Nicaragua. "There seems to be unnerving evidence that (crack) is a mechanism to support a political goal that the U.S. had," Turner says. What she is referring to is a series of articles published a month ago in the San Jose Mercury News that detailed purported links among the CIA, the contras and drug trafficking in South Central Los Angeles. According to the story, "a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." The stories have sparked cries for a congressional investigation. CIA Director John M. Deutch said the agency doesn't believe it happened but has promised an investigation. Turner is surprised that there may be truth to the rumors. She's also dismayed by what she sees as the public's muted response. "We are in the middle of a presidential campaign and both candidates are talking about their drug record, and this news is not more prominent than it is," she says. "They are talking about all this stale stuff." This is all tailor-made for Turner. As an expert on rumors in the black community, she has appeared on ABC's "20/20" and has been quoted in the Boston Globe, Time and Newsweek and other publications. She is fascinated with rumors, collecting them from students in classrooms, from friends at beauty parlors and barbershops, from churchgoers and colleagues -- wherever she happens to be. But now, as she sits in her office on the UC Davis campus, Turner wants to make one thing clear. Rumors are everywhere. And they're often based in history. "The conspiracy theory is not the province of any race, gender or religious group," she says. "Certain personalities are drawn to the suspicion that. . . "they're out to get me.' Rumors are not idiosyncratic to the black community." Still, at least five books on rumor and legend in the white community were written before Turner's work. None received the attention her book got -- "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" was reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, among other places -- leading her to believe that the mainstream media "want to believe that only black people believe all these weird things." Here are some of the rumors Turner mentions in her book: * The FBI was responsible for the killings of at least 21 young African Americans in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981. * American scientists created AIDS in a laboratory as a weapon to be used on enemies of the United States and began testing it on unsuspecting populations in Africa and Haiti. * Reebok shoes were made in South Africa and the profits were used to maintain apartheid. * Certain malt liquors with high alcohol content are specifically aimed at the African American community in order to hasten its social decline. These rumors, Turner argues, are a coping device -- they're used by "an oppressed people in a hostile society" to make sense of their plight. The rumors are rooted in history. Take, for instance, the rumor about AIDS. For 40 years, beginning in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experiment at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Hundreds of African American men with syphilis were denied treatment and told instead that they had nothing more than "bad blood." "When you interview lots of people about what they believe, the only thing they say that can't be proven is the rumor itself," Turner says. "When you talk about AIDS, they talk about Tuskegee and support their rumors with the Tuskegee experiment." It's this mistrust of government that Turner has found is at the root of many rumors in the African American community. That contrasts with the white community, where many rumors are rooted in a distrust of the individual, Turner says. Because these two worlds often clash, Turner is now examining how these views can heighten racial tensions. Turner, an African American, and Gary Fine, a sociologist at the University of Georgia who is white, are working on a book that will focus on rumors that deal with race relations. The book's working title is "Rumors in Black and White." Here are some of the rumors in the white community: * Black jurors will never convict a black defendant. * Blacks are targeting wealthy community for riots. * Gang members will drive with their lights out and if you blink your lights at them, they will follow you home and kill you. "We have felt that many of the most prominent rumors in the current period deal with issues of race relations," Fine says on the phone from his home in Duluth, Ga. "What is so striking is how frequently blacks and whites have a very different perspective of the world, and, furthermore, cannot understand the perspective of the other group and are prone to label these other perspectives as paranoid or racist. "Whites will typically look at black beliefs and say, "This is paranoia, how can anyone believe this?' On the other hand, blacks will say, "This is clearly racist. How can they believe this?' In some ways, it's a mirror image of the two beliefs." For instance, Fine says, rumors such as the one about AIDS are labeled by whites as paranoia. On the other hand, rumors in the white community about gang initiations targeting blonde virgins are labeled by blacks as racist. Fine and Turner felt it was important for blacks and whites to understand what the other group believes, and why. "Many of these stories are false or unlikely," says Fine. "They are based in history, and occasionally you find that some of these beliefs that we want to dismiss, like the CIA and crack, may have some plausibility. While it is true that many of these stories are false, there is enough evidence for people to see that they are plausible." While most rumors are rarely substantiated, Turner says the rumors are pervasive because fear and mistrust persists in both white and black communities. Turner and Fine believe the fear in both communities began with slavery. "Let's take a large plantation which has a few whites who are trying to control a large number of blacks, blacks who they perceive as not being quite human," Fine says. "There is always this fear that these people can rise up and kill us and rape us. And in a sense they say, "Why wouldn't they?' If we were in their position we would rise up and kill those people who enslaved us. "It's terribly frightening to be the oppressor." And, according to Pat Turner, equally frightening to be the oppressed. ***************************** RUMOR HAS IT Patricia Turner, UC Davis associate professor of African and American Studies, and Gary Fine, a sociologist at the University of Georgia, have examined how rumors reveal the differences in how African Americans and whites view the world. Here are some examples of rumors circulating in each community. AFRICAN AMERICANS * The U.S. government introduced AIDS and crack into the African American community. * The U.S. government was secretly involved in the serial murders of nine black children in Atlanta in the late '70s and early '80s. * There is a conspiracy to frame O.J. Simpson for the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman. * The Ku Klux Klan owns certain cigarette brands that market their products to African Americans. *********************** WHITES * John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the Mafia. * The Procter & Gamble insignia, which features a sun, moon and stars, represents the devil. * Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, charged in the Oklahoma City bombing, were framed, enabling the U.S. government to crack down on survivalists. * Gang members drive at night with the car lights off. If you blink your headlights at them, they will follow you home and kill you.