Continuing with the final two chapters of Part 1 of Dark Alliance...The CIA,The Contra's and The Crack Cocaine Explosion
By Gary Webb.Part 1 has been the narrative of the players involved in the conspiracy.Part 2 which is much shorter explains how Gary got involved.

snip....

...."Surprisingly, in 1989, even after the San Francisco indictment and arrest warrant were issued, Meneses continued to work as an informant for the DEA in Costa Rica and travel to the United States on behalf of the DEA," the Justice Department Inspector General marveled. "During this time, the FBI was apparently unaware of his activities. . ." Records show DEA agents were regularly sending the drug kingpin on still-classified missions to San Francisco, Miami, L.A., Panama, and Colombia and paying him thousands of dollars for his time. Moreover, the Costa Rican DEA office continued to protect him, mainly from the FBI, which was trying to arrest him on the San Francisco indictment. In 1990, in response to an FBI request for help, the DEA's Costa Rican attache, Ron Lard, described Meneses as a "very valuable and current active DEA source in Costa Rica." The San Francisco FBI reacted furiously. In February 1990, it demanded to know when the DEA had suddenly discovered Meneses' amazing worth—before or after the FBI had indicted him? "San Francisco FBI would not have pursued an indictment of Meneses if it had been aware of Meneses' cooperation with any law enforcement or intelligence agency," the FBI cable complained. "Did DEA conduct appropriate checks to determine Meneses' legal status prior to [activating] him?"

Oops, the DEA replied. Our mistake. Norwin was no longer an active DEA informant and, once again, no one knew where he was. One FBI agent complained that he "did not believe that the DEA in Costa Rica, or the Costa Rican authorities, would arrest Meneses." .....

.....In the summer of 1992, as one drug potentate, Norwin Meneses, was settling into the dreary Tipitapa prison, another, Ricky Ross, was preparing to rejoin society. Freeway Rick had done his time carefully at Phoenix, learning the basics of reading and writing, obtaining his high school equivalency certificate. He became a vegetarian and a devotee of self-help guru Anthony J. Robbins, whose motivational tapes Ross listened to incessantly.

He had a plan for the rest of his life, and ever the promotional genius, he used his notoriety as one of L.A.'s biggest crack dealers to jump-start his plan. In the wake of the nightmarish riots in South Central that April, which had fleetingly focused the nation's press on the problems of inner-city neighborhoods, Ross had begun granting interviews to reporters searching for reasons for the area's self destruction. In quick succession, Ross was interviewed by CBS News, the Cincinnati Post, Esquire magazine, ABC News, and NBC News. Freeway Rick was an instant hit with the press. He was accessible and self-effacing. He answered reporters' questions directly and made sense. He would open up his prison records to anyone who asked and was disarmingly honest about the crimes he'd committed.

"Soft-spoken, dressed in sweats and sporting shoulder-length dreadlocks, Ross hardly seems like a man who spent about four years in prison for drug trafficking," an LA. Times reporter wrote in 1993.

Asked by The Cincinnati Post if he'd ever felt regret when he was dealing cocaine, Ross said the feeling was just the opposite: "I felt I'd accomplished something. I'm a money-maker. A capitalist."
context

https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/08/part-13-dark-alliancehe-had-backing-of.html