The AP broke the story in '86 and the Kerry Committee concluded that the Contras had indeed been involved in drug trafficking.
The CIA wasn't directly implicated, though.
Charles Bowden, in his intro to the book Kill the Messenger, mentions his own investigations into the drug underworld in the '80s and the numerous "whiffs of the CIA that can never be completely documented" he found (e.g., a DEA agent telling him about seeing a plane loaded with cocaine landing at a US Air Force base in the '80s).
He encountered enough instances of CIA-related drug trafficking to convince him "that the CIA has for decades knowingly dealt with drug dealers and justified these actions by citing national security...Gary Webb stumbled upon one such instance, pursued it with tenacity, willed his account into print, and consequentially, was run out of the news business."
The CIA Inspector General essentially corroborated the gist of Webb's story in his report that was instigated by Webb's series:
Six weeks after the declassified and heavily censored report was made public, Inspector General Hitz testified before a House congressional committee. Hitz stated that:
As I said earlier, we have found no evidence in the course of this lengthy investigation of any conspiracy by CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States. However, during the Contra era, CIA worked with a variety of people to support the Contra program. These included CIA assets, pilots who ferried supplies to the Contras, as well as Contra officials and others. Let me be frank about what we are finding. There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations.
Hitz also testified that the CIA did not "expeditiously" cut off relations with alleged drug traffickers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US
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