The Chicago Sun-Times ran a story this week by crime reporter Frank Main with the title Is drug smuggler working for the CIA?  

In the story, previously convicted drug smuggler Allen Long says the load of marijuana he was trying to pick up from a storage facility on the southwest side of Chicago was sanctioned by government officials. Long said he proposed a plan to catch terrorists by posing as a drug smuggler, and a DEA agent...

...liked the idea, so he introduced Long to a CIA official at an Arlington, Va., hotel Aug. 16, 2005 ... Long presented an outline of his plan, Operation WeedEater, to the CIA official, Long said.

The CIA official told Long he could not immediately give him the $250,000 a year for five years and a $50,000 signing bonus he was after, but encouraged him to start schmoozing his smuggler pals and money would eventually come, Long said.

As a result, Long said, he identified corrupt U.S. customs agents in Mexico at a pre-screening facility for trucks crossing the border into the United States and also discovered Indonesians were being smuggled over the border. Indonesia, Long points out, is an al-Qaida stronghold.

In the story, no officials really deny (or confirm) Long's assertion (though some refuse to comment), but Long understands that people may not believe what he says: "I know my defense is like 'the dog ate my homework.'"

A few months before he died, veteran reporter Walter Trohan changed his story about how he beat the mob to the scene of the Saint Valentine's Day shootings.

"You know, I have one great story," said Walter Trohan, once the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Tribune.  

This sounded a bit disingenuous from a journalist who'd chatted with Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon at the height of their power, not to mention every president in between.

"I don't know how it would end up with you," he added somewhat gruffly. "I've been trying to peddle the story for, oh God, at least 50 years. And that is the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre."

Excerpt from an obituary in the Sacramento Bee:

Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said.

Mr. Webb, 49, was found dead in his Carmichael home Friday morning of gunshot wounds to the head, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office said Saturday.

He left a note, but officials would not disclose its contents.

"I'm still in a state of shock," said Tom Dresslar, who works as a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and had known Mr. Webb for 15 years.

"He was a hard-core, no-fear investigative reporter," Dresslar said. "He wasn't afraid to stand up to whatever authority."

The Chicago Sun-Times carries a story today about the employee of a local law enforcement agency who was reinstated to her job after a failed drug test. She claimed the use of coca tea, which she first obtained during a trip to Peru, caused the positive test falsely.

But last week, the Illinois Court of Appeals ruled Garrido should not have lost her job in 2001 because the positive test result probably didn't come from cocaine, but instead from the tea she'd been drinking.

Garrido, the wife of a Chicago narcotics officer, said she drank "a significant amount" of the coca-tinged tea, which she got from Peru, just before her drug test.

Though the sheriff's merit board didn't buy it -- and fired her -- the judges ruled the small traces of cocaine metabolites in Garrido's system were more likely to have come from tea than drugs.

Anyone concerned about a future drug test, plenty of coca tea suppliers sell their wares on the internet. Just Google it, and be prepared to drink a "significant amount" (or at least say you did) when the time comes. And, it might not hurt to marry a narcotics officer.

Today's New York Times has a Juan Forero story in the business section that actually discusses the benefits of coca. The story extols an energy drink processed from coca leaves as a way to create a (from the viewpoint of the NYT) legitimate export market for coca farmers.

The question: Has Forero been learning about coca's upside from Narconews?

I'm probably missing some nuances here, but here's part of what Forero says:

In this Andean country, that pitch - that KDrink is natural and good for consumers - has the beverage flying off the shelves of some of Peru's biggest supermarket chains. Though priced at $1 a bottle, far more than what other beverages sell for, KDrink is selling about 50,000 bottles a month.

But it is the possibility that KDrink could be sold abroad that is seen as a tantalizing solution for poverty-stricken coca farmers who are periodically forced to eradicate their illicit crops in Washington-backed antidrug efforts.

The rest of the story is at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/business/worldbu

nted=print&position