Word: nicaraguan
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...many as 10,000 people were estimated dead in the battered countries of Nicaragua and Honduras, while some 2 million were left homeless, in the wake of the relentless rains of Hurricane Mitch. In all, the storm caused a staggering $3 billion in damage--more than half the combined Nicaraguan and Honduran gross domestic products...
...official death toll approached 7,000 Tuesday, and with 13,000 people still listed missing, that count is almost certain to rise. And true to Nicaraguan tradition, the natural disaster is impacting on politics. "President Arnoldo Aleman is being criticized for the slow progress in getting aid to stricken villages," says Orlandi. "And the Sandinistas are attacking him for not declaring a national emergency." Aleman may want to pay more attention to history: It was political fallout from the 1972 killer earthquake that helped sweep the Sandinistas to power seven years later...
After an internal re-examination of the piece by seven reporters and editors, Ceppos concluded that the series "did not meet our standards" in several respects. The story fingered Nicaraguan drug supplier Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes as the pivotal figure who funneled money from the L.A. crack trade to the contras, but failed to note that Blandon (who later became a U.S. government informant) testified that he stopped sending money to the contras in 1982, well before he began trafficking drugs in L.A. Moreover, Ceppos admitted, the assertion that "millions in profits" from drug dealing went to the contras...
...editor also acknowledged that the story's contention that crack smoking in the inner city can be traced to a single Nicaraguan drug ring (Blandon was called "the Johnny Appleseed of crack") was an "oversimplification" and ignored evidence that the crack epidemic was a "complex phenomenon that had more than one origin." Finally, Ceppos admitted, the Mercury News "did not have proof" that top CIA officials knew the contras were getting money from the L.A. drug connection. "If we were to publish 'Dark Alliance' today," he said, "it would be edited differently. It would state fewer conclusions as certainties...
...recantation--as unusual as it was--did not knock the struts out of the story entirely. Ceppos noted that Webb's reporting was "right on many important points." The series did, for example, establish a link between one of the most notorious L.A. drug dealers--"Freeway Rick" Ross--and Nicaraguan suppliers who were admitted supporters of the contras. And while strongly hinting at CIA knowledge of the drug connection, the story never explicitly made that claim...