Iran-Contra: How the CIA Birthed the Crack Epidemic

WARNING: This video contains violent scenes of the US' war on drugs.'

On this day in 1975, Sandinista guerilla fighters in Nicaragua uncovered a covert US operation to arm Contra (US-funded anti-communist) guerillas after they shot down former US Marine Eugene Hasenfus' plane while he was on a CIA-funded arms supply drop. Documents found on the men k*lled in the 5 October 1975 plane crash indicated the US government used proceeds from the illegal sale of weapons to Iran to support the rebel groups.

Join African Stream as we unravel the real-life drama of the Iran-Contra scandal and its devastating impact on African communities in the United States. We explore how the webs of covert US operations in Nicaragua and Iran, as well as cocaine smuggling, pummelled Black communities in the United States. Africans have yet to recover from the resulting drug addictions and incarcerations of the 1980s and 1990s.

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