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On May 11, 1997, the Mercury News published a column that is important to
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America's 'crack' plague
has roots in Nicaragua war
Colombia-San Francisco Bay Area drug pipeline
helped finance CIA-backed Contras
Published: Aug. 18, 1996 [Other stories]
BY GARY WEBB Testimony links
Mercury News Staff Writer U.S. to
drugs-guns
FOR THE BETTER PART of a decade, a San Francisco Bay trade
Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Dealers got
Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled their 'own
millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla little arsenal'
army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a
Mercury News investigation has found.
This drug network opened the first pipeline between
Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods
of Los Angeles, a city now known as the "crack''
capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in
helped spark a crack explosion in urban America à and
provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s
gangs to buy automatic weapons.
It is one of the most bizarre alliances in modern
history: the union of a U.S.-backed army attempting to
overthrow a revolutionary socialist government and the
Uzi-toting "gangstas'' of Compton and South-Central
Los Angeles.
The army's financiers -- who met with CIA agents both [document link]
before and during the time they were selling the drugs Biographical
in L.A. -- delivered cut-rate cocaine to the gangs information on
through a young South-Central crack dealer named Ricky Rick Ross
Donnell Ross.
[Photo link]
Unaware of his suppliers' military and [Image] More photos of
political connections, "Freeway Rick" -- a Rick Ross
dope dealer of mythic proportions in the L.A.
drug world -- turned the cocaine powder into crack and
wholesaled it to gangs across the country.
The cash Ross paid for the cocaine, court records
show, was then used to buy weapons and equipment for a
guerrilla army named the Fuerza Democratica
Nicaraguense (Nicaraguan Democratic Force) or FDN, the
largest of several anti-communist commonly called the
Contras.
While the FDN's war is barely a memory today, black
America is still dealing with its poisonous side
effects. Urban neighborhoods are grappling with
legions of homeless crack addicts. Thousands of young
black men are serving long prison sentences for
selling cocaine -- a drug that was virtually
unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of
the CIA's army started bringing it into South-Central
in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices.
And the L.A. gangs, which used their enormous cocaine
profits to arm themselves and spread crack across the
country, are still thriving, turning entire blocks of
major cities into occasional war zones.
"There is a saying that the ends justify the [Image] [document link]
means,'' former FDN leader and drug dealer Biographical
Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes testified during a information on
recent cocaine trafficking trial in San Diego. "And Danilo Blandon
that's what Mr. Bermudez (the CIA agent who commanded
the FDN) told us in Honduras, OK? So we started [audio link]
raising money for the Contra revolution.'' Blandon's
testimony
Recently declassified reports, federal court [Image] 100K
testimony, undercover tapes, court records here and
abroad and hundreds of hours of interviews over the AIFF
past 12 months leave no doubt that Blandon was no [Image] 301K
ordinary drug dealer. WAV
Shortly before Blandon -- who had been the drug ring's [document link]
Southern California distributor -- took the stand in Motion to
San Diego as a witness for the U.S. Department of preclude
Justice, federal prosecutors obtained a court order reference to
preventing defense lawyers from delving into his ties CIA involvement
to the CIA.
Blandon, one of the FDN's founders in California,
"will admit that he was a large-scale dealer in
cocaine, and there is no additional benefit to any
defendant to inquire as to the Central Intelligence
Agency,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale argued
in his motion shortly before Ross' trial on cocaine
trafficking charges in March.
The most Blandon would say in court about who called
the shots when he sold cocaine for the FDN was that
"we received orders from the -- from other people.''
The 5,000-man FDN, records show, was created in
mid-1981 when the CIA combined several existing groups
of anti-communist exiles into a unified force it hoped
would topple the new socialist government of
Nicaragua.
From 1982 to 1988, the FDN -- run by both American and
Nicaraguan CIA agents -- waged a losing war against
Nicaragua's Sandinista government, the Cuban-supported
socialists who'd overthrown U.S.-backed dictator
Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
Blandon, who began working for the FDN's drug [audio link]
operation in late 1981, testified that the drug ring
sold almost a ton of cocaine in the United States that Blandon's
year -- $54 million worth at prevailing wholesale testimony
prices. It was not clear how much of the money found [Image] 137K
its way back to the CIA's army, but Blandon testified AIFF
that "whatever we were running in L.A., the profit was [Image] 412K
going to the Contra revolution.''
WAV
At the time of that testimony, Blandon was a full-time [document link]
informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, a Motion for
job the U.S. Department of Justice got him after reduction of
releasing him from prison in 1994. Oscar Danilo
Blandon's
Though Blandon admitted to crimes that have sent sentence
others away for life, the Justice Department turned
him loose on unsupervised probation after only 28
months behind bars and has paid him more than $166,000
since, court records show.
"He has been extraordinarily helpful,'' federal
prosecutor O'Neale told Blandon's judge in a plea for
the trafficker's release in 1994. Though O'Neale once
described Blandon to a grand jury as "the biggest
Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States,'' the
prosecutor would not discuss him with the Mercury
News.
A known dealer since '74 has stayed out of U.S. jails
Blandon's boss in the FDN's cocaine [Image] [document link]
operation, Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero, has Biographical
never spent a day in a U.S. prison, even information on
though the federal government has been aware of his Norwin Meneses
cocaine dealings since at least 1974, records show.
[Photo link]
Meneses -- who ran the drug ring from his homes in the More photos of
San Francisco Bay Area -- is listed in the DEA's Norwin Meneses
computers as a major international drug smuggler and
was implicated in 45 separate federal investigations.
Yet he and his cocaine-dealing relatives lived quite
openly in the Bay Area for years, buying homes in
Pacifica and Burlingame, along with bars, restaurants,
car lots and factories in San Francisco, Hayward and
Oakland.
"I even drove my own cars, registered in my name,''
Meneses said during a recent interview in Nicaragua.
Meneses' organization was "the target of unsuccessful
investigative attempts for many years,'' prosecutor
O'Neale acknowledged in a 1994 affidavit. But records
and interviews revealed that a number of those probes
were stymied not by the elusive Meneses but by
agencies of the U.S. government.
Agents from four organizations -- the DEA, U.S.
Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement --
have complained that investigations were hampered by
the CIA or unnamed "national security'' interests.
1988 investigation hit a wall of secrecy
One 1988 investigation by a U.S. Senate subcommittee
ran into a wall of official secrecy at the Justice
Department.
In that case, congressional records show, Senate
investigators were trying to determine why the U.S.
attorney in San Francisco, Joseph Russoniello, had
given $36,000 back to a Nicaraguan cocaine dealer
arrested by the FBI.
The money was returned, court records show, after two
Contra leaders sent letters to the court swearing that
the drug dealer had been given the cash to buy weapons
for guerrillas. Russoniello said it was cheaper to
give the money back than to disprove that claim.
"The Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from
getting access to people, records -- finding anything
out about it,'' recalled Jack Blum, former chief
counsel to the Senate subcommittee that investigated
allegations of Contra cocaine trafficking. "It was one
of the most frustrating exercises that I can ever
recall.''
It wasn't until 1989, a few months after the
Contra-Sandinista war ended and five years after
Meneses moved from the Peninsula to a ranch in Costa
Rica, that the U.S. government took action against him
-- sort of.
Federal prosecutors in San Francisco charged Meneses
with conspiracy to distribute one kilo of cocaine in
1984, a year in which he was working publicly with the
FDN.
In San Francisco photo, Meneses seen with CIA [Photo link]
operative 1984 meeting of
anti-communist
Meneses' work was so public, in fact, that he posed group in San
for a picture in June 1984 in a kitchen of a San Francisco
Francisco home with the FDN's political boss, Adolfo
Calero, a longtime CIA operative who became the public [document link]
face of the Contras in the United States. Biographical
information on
According to the indictment, Meneses was in the midst Adolfo Calero
of his alleged cocaine conspiracy at the time the
picture was taken.
But the indictment was quickly locked away in the
vaults of the San Francisco federal courthouse, where
it remains today à inexplicably secret for more than
seven years. Meneses was never arrested.
Reporters found a copy of the secret indictment in [document link]
Nicaragua, along with a federal arrest warrant issued Indictment of
Feb. 8, 1989. Records show the no-bail warrant was Norwin Meneses
never entered into the national law enforcement
database called NCIC, which police use to track down [Photo link]
fugitives. The former federal prosecutor who indicted Photo of the
him, Eric Swenson, declined to be interviewed. arrest warrant
(58K)
After Nicaraguan police arrested Meneses on cocaine
charges in Managua in 1991, his judge expressed
astonishment that the infamous smuggler went
unmolested by American drug agents during his years in
the United States.
"How do you explain the fact that Norwin Meneses,
implicated since 1974 in the trafficking of drugs ...
has not been detained in the United States, a country
in which he has lived, entered and departed many times
since 1974?'' Judge Martha Quezada asked during a
pretrial hearing.
"Well, that question needs to be asked to the
authorities of the United States,'' replied Roger
Mayorga, then chief of Nicaragua's anti-drug agency.
U.S. officials amazed Meneses remained free
His seeming invulnerability amazed American
authorities as well.
A Customs agent who investigated Meneses in 1980
before transferring elsewhere said he was reassigned
to San Francisco seven years later "and I was sitting
in some meetings and here's Meneses' name again. And I
can remember thinking, "Holy cow, is this guy still
around?'.''
Blandon led an equally charmed life. For at least five
years he brokered massive amounts of cocaine to the
black gangs of Los Angeles without being arrested. But
his luck changed overnight.
On Oct. 27, 1986, agents from the FBI, the IRS, local
police and the Los Angeles County sheriff fanned out
across Southern California and raided more than a
dozen locations connected to Blandon's cocaine
operation. Blandon and his wife, along with numerous
Nicaraguan associates, were arrested on drug and
weapons charges.
The search warrant affidavit reveals that local drug
agents knew plenty about Blandon's involvement with
cocaine and the CIA's army nearly 10 years ago.
"Danilo Blandon is in charge of a sophisticated
cocaine smuggling and distribution organization
operating in Southern California,'' L.A. County
sheriff's Sgt. Tom Gordon said in the 1986 affidavit.
"The monies gained from the sales of cocaine are
transported to Florida and laundered through Orlando
Murillo, who is a high-ranking officer of a chain of
banks in Florida named Government Securities
Corporation. From this bank the monies are filtered to
the Contra rebels to buy arms in the war in
Nicaragua.''
Corporate records show that Murillo -- a Nicaraguan
banker and relative of Blandon's wife -- was a
vice-president of Government Securities Corporation in
Coral Gables, a large brokerage firm that collapsed in
1987 amid allegations of fraud. Murillo did not
respond to an interview request.
Despite their intimate knowledge of Blandon's
operations, the police raids were a spectacular
failure. Every location had been cleaned of anything
remotely incriminating. No one was ever prosecuted.
Ron Spear, a spokesman for Los Angeles County Sheriff
Sherman Block, said Blandon somehow knew that he was
under police surveillance. Others thought so, too.
"The cops always believed that investigation had been
compromised by the CIA,'' Los Angeles federal public
defender Barbara O'Connor said in a recent interview.
O'Connor knew of the raids because she later defended
the raids' leader, Sgt. Gordon, against federal
charges of police corruption. Gordon, convicted of tax
evasion, declined to be interviewed.
Lawyer suggests aid was at root of problem
FBI records show that soon after the raids, Blandon's
defense attorney, Bradley Brunon, called the sheriff's
department to suggest that his client's troubles
stemmed from a most unlikely source: a recent
congressional vote authorizing $100 million in
military aid to the CIA's Contra army.
According to a December 1986 FBI Teletype, Brunon told [document link]
the officers that the "CIA winked at this sort of FBI Teletype
thing. ... (Brunon) indicated that now that U.S. regarding
Congress had voted funds for the Nicaraguan Contra conversation
movement, U.S. government now appears to be turning with attorney
against organizations like this.'' Bradley Brunon
That FBI report, part of the files of former
Iran-Contra Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, was
made public only last year, when it was released by
the National Archives at the Mercury News' request.
Blandon has also implied that his cocaine sales were,
for a time, CIA-approved. He told a San Francisco
federal grand jury in 1994 that once the FDN began
receiving American taxpayer dollars, the CIA no longer
needed his kind of help.
"When Mr. Reagan get in the power, we start receiving
a lot of money,'' Blandon testified. "And the people
that was in charge, it was the CIA, so they didn't
want to raise any (drug) money because they have, they
had the money that they wanted.''
"From the government?" asked Assistant U.S. Attorney
David Hall.
"Yes," for the Contra revolution," Blandon said. "So
we started -- you know, the ambitious person -- we
started doing business by ourselves."
Asked about that, prosecutor Hall said, "I don't know
what to tell you. The CIA won't tell me anything."
None of the government agencies known to have been
involved with Meneses and Blandon over the years would
provide the Mercury News with any information about
them.
A Freedom of Information Act request filed with the
CIA was denied on national security grounds. FOIA
requests filed with the DEA were denied on privacy
grounds. Requests filed months ago with the FBI, the
State Department and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service have produced nothing so far.
None of the DEA officials known to have worked with
the two men would talk to a reporter. Questions
submitted to the DEA's public affairs office in
Washington were never answered, despite repeated
requests.
Blandon's lawyer, Brunon, said in an interview that
his client never told him directly that he was selling
cocaine for the CIA, but the prominent Los Angeles
defense attorney drew his own conclusions from the
"atmosphere of CIA and clandestine activities'' that
surrounded Blandon and his Nicaraguan friends.
"Was he involved with the CIA? Probably. Was he
involved with drugs? Most definitely,'' Brunon said.
"Were those two things involved with each other?
They've never said that, obviously. They've never
admitted that. But I don't know where these guys get
these big aircraft ...''
That very topic arose during the sensational 1992
cocaine trafficking trial of Meneses after Meneses was
arrested in Nicaragua in connection with a staggering
750-kilo shipment of cocaine. His chief accuser was
his friend Enrique Miranda, a relative and former
Nicaraguan military intelligence officer who had been
Meneses' emissary to the cocaine cartel of Bogota,
Colombia. Miranda pleaded guilty to drug charges and
agreed to cooperate in exchange for a seven-year
sentence.
In a long, handwritten statement he read to Meneses'
jury, Miranda revealed the deepest secrets of the
Meneses drug ring, earning his old boss a 30-year
prison sentence in the process.
"He (Norwin) and his brother Luis Enrique had financed
the Contra revolution with the benefits of the cocaine
they sold,'' Miranda wrote. "This operation, as Norwin
told me, was executed with the collaboration of
high-ranking Salvadoran military personnel. They met
with officials of the Salvadoran air force, who flew
(planes) to Colombia and then left for the U.S., bound
for an Air Force base in Texas, as he told me.''
Meneses -- who has close personal and business ties to
a Salvadoran air force commander and former CIA agent
named Marcos Aguado -- declined to discuss Miranda's
statements during an interview at a prison outside
Managua in January. He is scheduled to be paroled this
summer, after nearly five years in custody.
U.S. General Accounting Office records confirm that El
Salvador's air force was supplying the CIA's
Nicaraguan guerrillas with aircraft and flight support
services throughout the mid-1980s.
Miranda did not name the Air Force base in Texas where
the FDN's cocaine was purportedly flown. The same day
the Mercury News requested official permission to
interview Miranda, he disappeared.
While out on a routine weekend furlough, Miranda
failed to return to the Nicaraguan jail where he'd
been living since 1992. Though his jailers, who
described him as a model prisoner, claimed Miranda had
escaped, they didn't call the police until a Mercury
News correspondent showed up and discovered he was
gone.
He has not been seen in nearly a year.
MONDAY: How the drug ring worked, and how crack was
"born" in the San Francisco Bay Area. Plus, the story
of how the U.S. government gave back $36,000 seized
from a drug dealer after he claimed the money belonged
to the Contras.
-------------------------------------------------------
Additional reporting for this series in Nicaragua and
Costa Rica was done by Managua journalist Georg Hodel.
Research assistance at the Nicaraguan Supreme Court in
Managua was done by journalist Leonore Delgado.
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