Above is another one of my favorite videos giving background on Gary Webb's story of the CIA-Crack connection.

This so called "war on drugs" is such an outrage, and is already such an obvious ploy to increase the police state and fill up prisons -- then, to add in the well-documented US govt. complicity in drug importation! Damn! This should be grounds for the immediate release of all non-violent drug offenders, and then a sincere look at other forms of criminalizing poverty.

The best overview of CIA misdeeds that I've read is by Counterpunch's Cockburn and St. Clair in their book "Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press". A longer and somewhat slower read is "The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade" by Al McCoy. Also a great overview of Sen. John Kerry's commission documenting CIA/Contra drug trafficking is "Cocaine Politics" by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall.

Also, on the issue of the marijuana / hemp fraud, my favorite is "The Emperor Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer.

Lastly, this show done by Bill Moyers is another one of my favorites, as it gives an excellent overview of the Iran-Contra scandal, the hearings about which were essentially a white-wash of the drug trafficking component of the scandal--but it is still good to know about the background to these operations.