Crack

TWAS THE WEEK before Christmas, and I was cruising Baltimore's streets in my 1994 Fixed Or Repaired Daily Escort. I was on no particular mission, just driving around, because I'm funny that way.While using a pay phone at a 7-Eleven store, a woman walked up and stood beside me. I cut the conversation short, figuring she was waiting to use the phone."

IT SEEMED TO make perfect sense in 1986 when Congress decided the possession or sale of crack cocaine should be treated as more serious crimes than having or selling the powdered form. Much cheaper crack -- so accessible in poor, urban neighborhoods -- had ignited dangerous drug wars.Murder rates rose as dealers fought over turf. Welfare cases grew as those who had resisted other drugs succumbed to the affordable escape crack provided. By mandating tough sentences for crack possession and sales, Congress had hoped to send a strong message.

A windstorm in April 1975 was not kind to a fragile piece of American history. Almost 200 years after the American Revolution, a living link to that age - the Liberty Tree on the St. John's College campus in Annapolis - was about to snap. The 400-year-old tulip poplar, under which the Sons of Liberty are supposed to have gathered during the Revolution, had developed a 4-foot crack near its top several years earlier. The crack opened up 1.5 inches farther when battered by the 60 mph winds.

WASHINGTON -The Obama administration signaled a sharp departure Wednesday from 20 years of federal policy and called on Congress to close the huge disparity in prison sentences for those dealing crack versus powdered cocaine, agreeing with critics who say it is unfair to African-Americans. Newly confirmed Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said the administration believes the so-called mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines are so inherently unfair that they have undermined trust in the country's judicial institutions, particularly among minorities who bear the brunt of the law. Breuer and other witnesses testifying before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee said the policies, launched when authorities feared crack was becoming an epidemic in the mid-1980s, are based on faulty assumptions that have long since been discredited, including that crack users were far more violent and dangerous to the community than powder cocaine users.

THE RUMOR has persisted in African-American communities for years: The Central Intelligence Agency smuggles drugs into the country. This rumor is heard on the streets, repeated on black talk radio stations and uttered in films. A terrible allegation, the rumor is spoken with great conviction, but has never been proved.There was no smoking gun in a series in the San Jose Mercury News last month that linked the nation's crack epidemic to a CIA-backed army of Nicaraguan contra rebels. But the stories raise troubling questions about whether the CIA helped bring drugs into the country or knew that its contra soldiers played a role in the country's crack-cocaine trade.

A group of politicians and religious and community leaders, meeting last night in a West Baltimore church, expressed concern over the crack cocaine epidemic in the inner city and outrage over the possibility that it may have been fueled by drug traffickers with links to the CIA.The list of Maryland civic leaders calling on Congress to hold public hearings on the allegations continued to grow, with Archbishop William H. Keeler joining a group that includes Mayor...

Local and federal authorities yesterday broke up what they say is a crack cocaine ring operating in Calvert and southern Anne Arundel counties.After a nine-month investigation, officers raided an Annapolis apartment and arrested three men, two identified as leaders of the ring, the third as a dealer, police said. Officers confiscated $3,170 from the apartment in the Admiral Oaks complex, but no drugs. In all, police seized $5,000 and six vehicles, and were expecting to make more arrests.The ring is suspected of supplying 40 ounces of crack a month to northern Calvert and southern Anne Arundel counties.

Police have arrested a man charged with operating an alleged crack cocaine organization accused of selling up to 6 pounds of narcotics a day in East Baltimore. Investigators from Baltimore, Baltimore County and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, who arrested Dante Chauncy Linton on Tuesday night, said 22 other suspected drug dealers were indicted yesterday on various charges. The charges resulted from several months of investigating drug dealing in the city's McElderry Park area.

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.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In a highly unusual critique published in his own newspaper, the editor of the San Jose Mercury News acknowledged Sunday that articles last year on the rise of crack cocaine in urban America were marred by serious shortcomings, including their strong implication that the CIA had countenanced the drug's spread in league with Nicaraguan dealers.The publication of the series, "Dark Alliance," provoked a furor among black elected and community officials and prompted multiple federal investigations.