Changing lanes
Former crack dealer ‘Freeway’ Ricky Ross on Gary Webb, the CIA, coke in Pasadena and going straight after 14 years in prison
By Kevin Uhrich 04/29/2010
Ricky Donnell “Freeway Ricky” Ross, the notorious Los Angeles crack dealer sentenced to life in federal prison in 1996 but released in September after serving 14 years, said he had no idea proceeds from his business helped fund CIA-backed counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua.
But — contrary to the results of an investigation of Ross’ illegal activities conducted in 1996 by Pasadena police — the former drug kingpin, who turns 50 Monday, said he certainly knew some of the profit he was making back in the early 1980s was coming from Pasadena, where Ross said he personally did business in the cocaine trade.
In an exclusive interview with the Pasadena Weekly, the recently freed Ross talked about his time as one of the country’s top drug dealers and his relationship with Pasadena crime lord Elrader “Ray Ray” Browning, who is believed to have ordered as many as 70 murders in a 12-year period. Browning was arrested in 1987 and a year later was sentenced to two life terms in federal prison for drug dealing.
Ross also spoke about Gary Webb, the intrepid investigative journalist who linked Ross to the anti-Sandinista Contras through one of his drug connections, Nicaraguan expatriate-turned-Drug-Enforcement-Administration-informant Oscar Danilo Blandón.
According to Webb’s stories, which appeared in August 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News, Blandón, whose wealthy family supported deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza, and Norwin Meneses Cantarero, a former high-ranking Somoza government official, smuggled cocaine into San Francisco and Los Angeles from Colombia. Blandón, according to the stories, provided Ross with low-cost powder. That was then converted into even cheaper and easy-to-smoke crack nuggets, which over the ensuing decade left in their wake death and ruin in cities around the country, where Ross also did business.
Ross also spoke of Webb’s death: A suicide committed by a despondent reporter — at first vilified by his colleagues then ultimately vindicated by the CIA’s own inspector general and some of those same newspapers, among them the LA Times — who was found dead in his home on Dec. 11, 2004, after shooting himself twice in the head, a rare feat in any coroner’s book.
During an hour-long discussion on the patio of the Gaylord Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, the affable Ross, dressed in a gray hooded sweatshirt and accompanied by his agent John “Apollo” Payne, also talked about his new Web site and the life he’s trying to now build.
One proposal he’s currently considering is a reality show about his life as a former drug dealer — one who never finished high school, but also never used his own “product,” and at times made millions of dollars a week, enabling him to acquire properties along the Harbor (110) Freeway, hence the nickname “Freeway Ricky.”
During Ross’ time in prison, his story captured the imaginations of recording artists, some who used his name in lyrics to songs about drugs and the CIA. He’s been interviewed by a few TV outlets, and it seems his speaking card is full, having just given a talk to students at Compton High School the previous day. In fact, an interview Ross had done with TMZ, the entertainment gossip site, was posted earlier on the day of this interview, April 19.
Pasadena Weekly: Why do you think the media is so interested in you now?
Ricky Ross: What they are trying to figure out, what they want to know is why people like me.
You’re obviously a pretty shrewd business guy. Is that part of it?
Yeah, that could be. You know, the black community needs heroes, guys who make it. Guys who make it, like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and all these guys, they don’t come back to the community. Sad to say, but they are afraid of the community. Someone like me, who comes back to the community, someone that they can touch and they can feel, you know, they just cling to it.
Not to switch gears, but I was reading through some of Gary Webb’s stories, and you had interviewed with him …
Numerous times.
What was your feeling when you heard he had killed himself?
[Filmmaker] Kevin Booth was the first one who told me. He was doing an interview for a piece he was doing called “American Drug Wars,” … [in prison] they only allow 300 minutes a month, so I had been spending most of my phone time talking with him, for about three months, four months. Then one day he called me and said that Gary Webb had been killed.
Not suicide?
Yeah, he said killed.
After you heard that, what did you think?
Well, Gary and I had become friends. So it was not like someone in a foreign country getting killed. This is someone who had helped me, almost to the point you could say that I don’t think it was his story that actually got me out, but I know his story helped me get a look in the courts that most people don’t get, so my issues could be discovered. In the court system … if the judges don’t take a good look, you could be overlooked.
Now, about this CIA connection …
I never claimed that. You have to look at how we met. Gary was chasing Blandón when he met me [in 1995, prior to the start of Ross’ trial in San Diego in 1996]. Trial enabled Gary to talk to Blandón — through my attorney. See, Gary never got to speak to Blandón personally. He only spoke to Blandón while he was on the witness stand, through my attorney. I didn’t have money to hire an investigator, so what my attorney did was use Gary as our investigator, and Gary used my attorney to question Blandón, if you know what I mean. Gary didn’t have the authority to question Blandón. The only one who had that authority was my attorney. … He had become my lawyer’s confidante.
Do you believe he committed suicide?
I didn’t think so. I mean the last time I spoke to Gary, me and Gary hadn’t spoken in a while because I had given up on the CIA case. … The last time I spoke to him, he said he was still pursuing it. I told him I was going on with my life. That had to be around 2002, 2003.
What did you think when you saw the reaction to Gary’s stories from other newspapers that went out of their way to attack him?
I wasn’t surprised. Who wants to go up against the CIA? I was on trial and I was afraid of going up against the government. I’m not surprised the [San Jose Mercury News] editor backed down, either. Basically, Gary’s story was proven true. They admitted they knew these guys were selling drugs. And I don’t believe Gary ever said in his report that the CIA was the actual perpetrators of the crime. But if you go with the conspiracy theory that the government uses to convict, the evidence that they had, you could convict on that evidence. A jury could find [the CIA] guilty.
Were you ever involved with Norwin Meneses Cantarero?
Blandón had testified that I had been in a room with Meneses, and one other guy, but I didn’t remember that.
Did you know these guys were connected to the Contras?
I knew they were fighting a war in their country. I knew nothing about Nicaragua. Remember, I’m illiterate at this time. I never read a book, never read a newspaper, I didn’t care about politics. When I was in prison, I educated myself because it became relevant to me. Before I went to prison, none of this was relevant to me. Who cared about what’s going on in Nicaragua? Not me. I was more concerned about what was going on in South Central and how I was going to keep the lights on and the gas on and food in the refrigerator. Those were my concerns. I was talking today at Compton High School, and I was telling them that when I was in high school I didn’t care about things they were teaching in school, and I didn’t learn it because it didn’t concern me. But once I got in the streets, they taught me how to use a triple beam, how to know ounces, grams, tenths of grams, all these other things.
There was quite an upset in Pasadena when your case became associated with Gary’s stories. A lot of coke went through Pasadena through people like Ray Ray Browning and this dude named Felix Mitchell from Oakland. So did you deal with [Browning]?
I knew Ray Ray.
What was your relationship with him?
I can’t go any further than we’re friends. His case is on appeal.
I didn’t know Felix.
Did you do business in Pasadena?
I’ve been to Pasadena numerous times and I did business in Pasadena. … Not that much. I was in Pasadena early on [in the early 1980s]. Pasadena was a small market for me. I had a couple partners who were up there. But their prices were always higher than in Los Angeles.
I’ve read recently that you are going legit. How are you going to do that?
Right now, it’s by going around the country speaking to people about making the right choices. I try to give kids the full story in the drug game, because I found out the people who introduce you to the drug game don’t give you the whole story. I can give them the whole story.
Around the time Pasadena people were talking about it, people like [Congresswoman] Maxine Waters were calling for investigations. One person called crack a scourge on the black community, and another person called it “Holocaustic,” on a par with the Jewish experience during the war, and you being a part of that … how do you feel about that? Did anyone ever say anything like that to you?
Yeah, they called me a Judas. I used to get hate mail while I was in prison.
How did you respond to that?
I do feel bad for what I did, but, on the other hand, the community has to feel bad because they allowed me to get cocaine. There was a time that Rick Ross never saw cocaine. He didn’t know what cocaine looked like. He didn’t know what cocaine smelled like. So how did he get a hold of cocaine? Who is responsible for me getting cocaine for the first time? If you are going to point the finger, you have to point it at the root. You can’t go and look at fruit on a tree and blame it on the fruit. He’s just a piece of fruit growing on the tree. … You have to look at the whole community. The whole community has a problem. This country has a drug problem. Rick is not the problem. The Kennedys sold alcohol. Now their kids are running this country and making policy. The way I saw it, this was a way out of the ghetto. They didn’t leave me too many opportunities to get out of the ghetto.
Visit Ross’ Web site at freewayenterprise.com.
Ross will be appearing as a guest on “Grand Theft Audio: The Jake, Brant & Carl Show” at latalkradio.com Channel 1 from 6 to 8 p.m. May 6. Podcast can be downloaded beginning May 7 from iTunes.com’s “Grand Theft Audio” page.
Reporter Carl Kozlowski, one of the co-hosts of “Grand Theft Audio,” contributed to this story.
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I want to be the first to let you know that your children and I are so proud of you. Im here to help you along the way with anything that comes along your way. God sent you home here for a reason you have a mission with our children thats currently out here lost. They need guidance, mentorship, advice and financially literature told to them. Our generation today is lost and caught up in the pressures that our society place on them such as gangs, drugs and sex. Start your campaign that will make a mark in this world and change lives one day at a time. Continue to travel and do the work you have been called to do and remember Im here for you and will need give up on you or your dreams.
Mychosia Nightingale
www.freewayenterprise.com