Rion is representing Charles Goff Jr., 28, of Dayton, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine and is to be sentenced March 19. Police said they confiscated nearly $1 million and 80 pounds of cocaine when Goff was arrested in 1996.

Federal sentencing guidelines call for a sentence of 16 to 19 years, but Rion will try to persuade U.S. District Judge Walter Rice to give Goff a shorter term.

Rion said he will try to prove that the CIA knew of the importation of about 60 tons of cocaine to finance the Contras in their covert war against Nicaragua.

After Webb raised this claim in his August 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper reassigned Webb and said parts of the series didn't meet journalistic standards. Webb later quit, insisting he had written accurately.

Rion said that when the cocaine was brought to the United States, the price of the drug fell. As a result, crack became available to people of all income levels and turned up frequently in black communities, he said. Goff is black.

Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's drug policy adviser, has said that while blacks represent only 12 percent of the U.S. population and just 14 percent of the drug users, they make up 48 percent of those in prison for drug offenses.

Those statistics have led civil-rights leaders and others to challenge the sentencing guidelines.

In July, an internal Justice Department report found the CIA blameless in the crack cocaine epidemic.