A newspaper and the CIA San Jose Mercury-News: Stories alleging CIA involved in crack epidemic were flawed.

HOW THE American people feel about the CIA is important. Spying and clandestine operations are vital to the national security, but they also cause unease in a nation that reveres open government. So when the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News published a series that strongly implied the CIA was involved in the sale of crack cocaine to help finance Nicaraguan rebels fighting the Sandinistas in the 1980s, the repercussions were nationwide. Especially in the black community, where suspicions about the CIA and the FBI run deep.

After the Mercury News stories appeared last fall, the Congressional Black Caucus led a clamor for an investigation. When the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times ran articles challenging the series, comedian-activist Dick Gregory complained in an article carried in The Sun that this was just cover-up by the "white press" (as though the Mercury News and its white editor, Jerry Ceppos, and the white reporter, Gary Webb, who worked the series, were something else).

Now Mr. Ceppos has conceded his newspaper over-reached, over-simplified and published material not supported by the facts. "Although members of the drug ring met with Contra leaders paid by the CIA, and Webb believes the relationship with the CIA was a tight one, I feel we did not have proof that the CIA knew of the relationship," he wrote.

This is a matter over which editor and reporter disagree. In fact, Mr. Webb described his boss' mea culpa editorial Sunday as "nauseating." But what may be more important than a journalistic dispute is the impact of this whole affair on a CIA already reeling over other disclosures. Or how the agency will be regarded by African Americans who have heard a barrage of allegations that the CIA encouraged the crack-cocaine epidemic devastating inner cities.

Mr. Ceppos' recantation will not be the end of it. The CIA is pursuing the case and will be reporting to Congress. This is clearly a matter requiring more detailed disclosure.

Pub Date: 5/15/97