In naddition to the cases cited above of drug-laden planes landing in
the US unmolested by the authorities, there is the striking case os
Oscar Danilo Blandón and Juan Norwin Meneses, two Nicaraguans living
in California. To support the Contras (particularly during a period
in which Congress banned funding them), as well as enriching
themselves, the two men turned to smuggling cocaine into the US under
CIA protection. This led to the distribution of large quantities of
caciane into Los Angeles' inner city at a time when drug users and
dealers were trying to make the costly white power more affordable by
changing it into little nuggets of “crack.” The Nicaraguans
funneled a portion of their drug profits to the Contra cause while
helping to fuel a disastrous crack explosion in Los Angeles and other
cities, and enabling the gangs to buy automatic weapons, sometimes
from Blandón himself.
The ties between the two Nicaraguans and the CIA were visible not far
beneath the surface, as the following indicate:
When Blandón was finally arrested in October 1986 (after Congress
had resumed funding for the Contras and his services were much less
needed), and he admitted to crimes that have sent others away for
life, the Justice Deaprtment turned him loose on unsupervised
probation after only 28 months behind bars and subsequently paid him
more than $166,000 as an informer.
According to a legal mption filed in a 1990 police corruption trial
in Los Angels: in a 1986 raid on Blandón' money-launderer, the
police carted away numerous documents purportedly linking the US
government to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering on behalf of
the Contras. CIA personnel appeared at the sheriff' department within
48 hours of the raid and removed the seized files from the evidence
room. At the request of the Justice Department, a federal judge
issued a gag order barring any discussion of the matter.
When Blandón testified in 1996 as a prosecution witness in a drug
trial, the federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing
defense lawyers from delving into his ties to the CIA.
Though Meneses was listed in the DEA's computer as a major
international drug smuggler and was implicated in 45 federate
investigations since 1974, he lived openly and conspicuously in
California until 1989 and never spent a day in a US prison. The DEA,
US customs, the Los Angeles Country Sheriff's Department and the
California Bureau fo Narcotic Enforcement all complained that a
number of the probes of Meneses were stymied by tha CIA or unnamed
“national security” interests.
Lastly the Cia-Contra-Drugs nexus brings us the case of the US
attorney in San Francisco who gave back $36,800 to an arrested
Nicaraguan drug dealer, which had been found in his possession. The
money was returned after two Contra leaders sent letters to the
courts swearing that the drug dealer had been given the cash to buy
supplies “ for the reinstatement of democracy in Nicaragua.” The
letters were hurriedly sealed after prosecutors invoked the
Classified Information Procedures Act, a law designed to keep
national secrets from leaking out during trials. When a US Senate
subcommittee later inquired of the Justice Department the reason for
this unusual turn of events, they run into a wall of secrecy. “The
Justice Department flipped out to prevent us from getting access to
people, records – finding anything out about it, 2recalled Jack
Blum, former chief counsel to the Kerry Senate subcommittee referred
to above, which investigated allegations of Contra cocaine
trafficking. “It was one of the most frustrating exercises that I
can ever recall.”
Then more I Think about it, it's the diference between manslaughet
and murder. It's the intent. The intent was not to poison black
America but to raise money for the Contras, and they [the CIA] didn't
care what it came from. If it involved selling drugs in black
communities, well, this was the price of admission Gary Webb
From the book “ROGUE STATE”, by William Blum
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