The CIA did itself a favor last week by clearing itself of any involvement in drug trafficking in black neighborhoods of Los Angeles. But the agency also almost certainly guaranteed that the ranks of those who still believe it was involved will swell even more. PNS commentator Dr. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of "The Assassination of the Black Male Image" and the forthcoming "The Crisis in Black and Black." (email: ehutch344@aol.com)

LOS ANGELES -- Last week's CIA report absolving itself of the charge that it pumped cocaine into black neighborhoods of Los Angeles to finance its Contra war in Nicaragua underscores the danger of having a government agency investigate itself.

Ex-CIA operatives who plotted the war have blasted the report as shoddy and superficial. They claimed the CIA investigators did not ask them the right questions -- or asked no questions at all -- and that the sole intent was to wipe any taint of scandal off the agency.

The irony is that Gary Webb, who broke the story in the San Jose Mercury News in August, 1996, never explicitly charged that CIA officials directly conspired to, let alone approved, heaping drugs in LA's black neighborhoods. Webb made a compelling case that after Congress cut off funds to the Contras in the early 1980s, key operatives within one of the Contra factions organized and bankrolled by the CIA briefly supplied cocaine to black drug dealer Ricky Ross in Los Angeles to raise money for weapons and equipment to keep their illegal war in Nicaragua going.

While there was no smoking gun proof of direct government conspiracy to dope up black communities, Webb's allegations were enough to suggest that some CIA-connected operatives at least turned a blind eye to dirty deals. This alone should have stirred outrage from all Americans -- not just black Americans. The drug plague has slammed many families hard, created chaos with many lives, and allowed vote-pandering officials to turn public hysteria over drugs into public approval for harshly punitive drug laws that target minorities and the poor.

By instantly embracing the conspiratorial implications of the story, however, well-intentioned black activists and elected officials gave the media the perfect opening to downplay the drug issue as a black problem and ridicule the CIA connection as yet another case of "black paranoia." This allowed the Clinton administration to ignore the charges, the Justice Department to dodge them, and CIA officials to deny them. It prevented blacks from gaining broad support from elected officials and from some non-blacks who wanted the appointment of a special counsel to fully investigate the charges. It also prevented the full prosecution of any public official or private citizen involved in drug trafficking.

The issue of government complicity was left to wither on the vine within and outside the black community, with no official action ever taken against the culprits actually involved in the drug trafficking who may have been operating with the government's tacit seal of approval.

By leaving loose ends dangling, the CIA report will only further feed the suspicions of the conspiracy theorists that there is a plot to wipe out African Americans. The theory, which has been gathering adherents since the 1960s, goes like this: Following the urban uprisings of the 1960s, the ghettos were flooded with drugs, alcohol, gangs and guns. During the 1980s, AIDS was added to this list of lethal imports. The "white establishment", according to the theorists, wanted to stop blacks from unifying around programs to counter oppression. The plot was to get blacks to self-destruct.

There is no hard evidence that any of this is true. But repeated demands by black political leaders for independent government investigations and the appointment of special prosecutors to delve into the political assassinations of black leaders, and gun and drug dealing in the black communities, have been largely ignored or ridiculed by government officials. This has made many blacks feel that there is much truth to the claim of the conspiracy theorists of secret government plots against African Americans.

While the CIA did itself a favor by clearing itself of any involvement with drug dealers, it almost certainly guaranteed that the ranks of those who still believe it was involved will swell even more.