DIVIDING LINE: CRACK, CONTRAS AND CYBERSPACE

Never mind the furor over the murder of rap star Tupac Shakur and the recriminations that are sure to erupt over the civil trial of a certain ex-football player. The hottest topic in black America, bar none, is whether the CIA was responsible for introducing crack cocaine to the ghetto. This idea is, of course, a hardy perennial among conspiracy theorists, who blame every plague that afflicts the black community on racist government plots. But this time it is not so easy to write off the talk as paranoid mumbo jumbo for two reasons: it springs, for once, from a credible...