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Those of you who lived in Key West in the early 1980’s should be quite familiar with the disgusting tale of the CIA (Cocaine Importing Agency) and its ties to the drug trade, because of the federal indictment and subsequent trial of Deputy Police Chief Raymond Casamayor and 13 others in U.S. District Court right there in Key West in 1982. At the time, I was the reporter for the Key West Citizen who sat in federal court for four months listening to the sordid tale spun by the government’s main witness, a CIA/FBI informant sleezebag named Hector Serrano who testified under oath the he distributed more than 2,000 kilograms of cocaine to Casamayor during a two-year “drug sting” investigation. During the course of his testimony, the judge would not allow questioning as to where Serrano had obtained his drugs or where the money went, but he did testify that he had a “direct link” in the White House in the person of Charles Colson, president Nixon’s former chief of staff who was among those convicted in the Watergate fiasco. Of course, anyone paying the slightest bit of attention realized that the drugs were supplied by the federal government during the course of the alleged sting operation and that the money was then funneled to the Nicaraguan civil war. To me, the worst part of this sorry story was the fact that during the course of his “undercover” work, Serrano, who was living next to the Herb Garden on Margaret St., was definitely under the covers with a number of 12- and 13-year old boys and girls who were going to school directly across the street from his residence, all in return for cocaine. And the feds knew all about it, and didn’t do a thing to stop him. Serrano was such a sleeze in fact that he was arrested right out of the witness box during the course of his testimony when a defense attorney produced a live arrest warrant for him of which the federal prosecutors were unaware and had not thrown in with his “deal” to testify. Oh well, there’s a lot more to the tale, needless to say it was just a precursor of the story that Gary Webb later wrote about and was vilified to his grave for it.
Spoiler alert. Gary Webb was found dead from TWO gun shot wounds to the head. The death was ruled a suicide.