Drug Crazy - The River of Money - Page 111

When George Herbert Walker Bush took the reins from his former boss in January of 1989, he stood on the flag-draped West Front of the Capitol and assured the country he would deal with the drug problem once and for all.  “Take my word,” he said. “This scourge will stop.”  It was a sweeping statement almost foredoomed to failure, but Bush had little choice.  He had been badly mauled on the drug issue in the recent campaign.  As Reagan’s point man in the drug war, he had supervised an eight year effort that tripled the federal anti-drug budget with practically nothing to show for it.  Law enforcement officials across the country flatly admitted they were losing ground to a new generation of high-tech smugglers.^[1] But Bush not only failed to stem the tide, he was accused of consorting with the enemy.  When the Senate’s Iran-Contra investigators ripped the sheet off covert operations in Central America, they discovered that the CIA had known for some time about Contra drug trafficking.^[2]  They also found evidence of a coke-for-guns cover-up.  National Security