attacking the Mercury story and accusing that paper of fanning the flames of racial discord." The contrast was a guerrilla force that was backed by President Reagan's administration, the same government that attacked Nicaragua's Sandinista government during the 1980s. A year later, the Office of the Inspector General, of the US Department of Justice, investigated the "CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine" matter, and planned to issue a report in 1997. 1998 On December 17, 1997, I signed our completed report entitled, The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions. This 407-page report was the culmination of a comprehensive 15-month investigation by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) into allegations first raised in the San Jose Mercury News that U.S. government officials -- including Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) employees -- either ignored or protected drug dealers in Southern California who were associated with the Nicaraguan Contras. We originally planned to release the report the following day, December 18 publicly, 1997. However, the Attorney General, citing law enforcement concerns, invoked Section 8E of the Inspector General Act to defer the release of our report. This was the first time that the publication of one of our reports has been prevented in this manner. Given the extraordinary nature of the Attorney General's action and the significant interest in why our story was not released in December 1997, we believe it necessary to describe the sequence of events that resulted in the Attorney General's decision not to permit the report to be publicly disclosed until now. The report we are releasing today is the same report that we completed on December 17 and planned to release on December 18. It has not been changed in any way. Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich stated, in the epilogue, that the key issue causing the scheduled release to be deferred was the apparently lenient treatment given to a Nicaraguan, accused of drug dealing by the San Jose Mercury News. This individual, Oscar Danilo Blandon, fled to the United States soon after the Sandinistas came to power. The articles said Blandon was a major supplier to "Freeway" Ricky Ross, major cocaine and crack cocaine dealer in Los Angeles. The question addressed by the Inspector General is why Blandon received a much more lenient sentencing for drug crimes than did Ross. Ross served a thirteen-year sentence from 1996 to 2009. "Freeway" Ricky