Despite requests for information from Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency repeatedly ignored or failed to investigate allegations of drug trafficking by the anti-Sandinista rebels of Nicaragua in the 1980's, according to a newly declassified report.
Beginning in 1986, the subject of contra drug trafficking became a focus for critics of the Reagan Administration's policy toward Nicaragua, who charged that the C.I.A. was shielding drug smugglers to protect its anti-Communist covert action program in Nicaragua.
That year Congress imposed a fund cutoff for any contra group that had members involved in drug trafficking. Despite that ban, the C.I.A. failed to tell Congress about allegations it had received against at least eight individuals with contra ties.
During the time the ban on funds was in effect, the C.I.A. informed Congress about drug charges against only two other contra-related people.
In addition, the agency failed to tell other executive branch agencies, including the Justice Department, about allegations against 11 contra-related individuals or entities.
The report quotes many active and retired C.I.A. officers who served in Central America as saying they either did not hear or did not believe allegations of drug trafficking involving the contra rebels, with whom they worked closely. It also makes clear that the agency did little or nothing to investigate most of the drug allegations that it heard about the contras and their supporters.
The C.I.A. investigation that began almost a decade later, however, found no evidence that the memorandum was distributed to anyone other than Mr. Gates's deputy for operations, Clair George.
The new study is the second volume of the C.I.A.'s internal investigation prompted by a 1996 series of articles in The San Jose Mercury-News, which claimed that a ''dark alliance'' between the C.I.A., the contras and drug traffickers had helped finance the contra war with millions of dollars in profits from drug smuggling. The series also alleged that this network was the first to introduce crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles. The first volume of the C.I.A. inspector general's report, issued in January, dealt primarily with the specific allegations raised by the Mercury-News series and dismissed its central findings.
The second volume is the result of a broader inquiry into long-unresolved questions about the contra program and drug trafficking.
In all, the report found that the C.I.A. received allegations of drug involvement by 58 contras or others linked to the contra program, including 14 pilots and two others tied to the contra program's C.I.A.-backed air transportation operations.
The report indicates that information linking the contras to drugs began to emerge almost as soon as the contras came into existence, and before it became publicly known that the C.I.A. was supporting their effort to overthrow the Marxist-led Government in Managua.
Because of an editing error, an article on Saturday about a newly declassified report that says the Central Intelligence Agency repeatedly ignored allegations of drug trafficking by the anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980's, or failed to investigate, referred incorrectly in some editions to the Acting Director of Central Intelligence in April 1987. He was Robert M. Gates, not William.