The book analyzes the available evidence on the way corrupt military elites, Contra leaders, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Washington policy-makers opened the door to the cocaine trade through Central America and explores how administration intimidation of witnesses, congressional cowardice, and media caution permits this alliance to persist. The drug experience of Central America during the 1980's emerges as part of a long-standing pattern of intelligence alliances, military intervention, and official corruption and shows no sign of abating. Guatemala provides a flagrant example; U.S. backing for a corrupt and brutal military recently has fostered a booming drug market. The United States must begin to consider and experiment with proposals to take the crime out of drug markets through controlled legislation, but success is not feasible without urgent political action to end Washington's own complicity with drug traffic. 958 footnotes