DRUGS-U.S.: Probes Ordered into Alleged CIA Link to Crack-Cocaine

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

San Francisco, Sep 24 1996 (IPS) - Thirteen years ago, frogmen laden with 181 kilogrammes of cocaine and tens of thousands of dollars in cash, were caught swimming into Hunter’s Point, a poor neighbourhood on the eastern side of this city.

The incident was the first public clue that San Francisco had become a major centre for the international trade in “crack”, a cheap and powerful variety of cocaine. But the significance of the San Francisco connection was unknown until just last month.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Justice Department and the Intelligence Committee of the House of Representatives last weekend announced a new probe into possible CIA connections to a drug ring that allegedly sparked the “crack” cocaine epidemic which ravaged mainly black and Hispanic inner cities for much of the 1980s.

The probes are the direct outcome of a three-part report published last month in the San Jose Mercury News. It explained how Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero, a Nicaraguan, used a number of houses in the San Francisco suburbs of Pacifica and Burlingame, to mastermind a major drug-trafficking operation whose proceeds went to the Nicaraguan “contras.”

The series has caused a major uproar here and in Washington, where the Congressional Black Caucus has pressed successfully for new investigations to determine to what extent the CIA knew about or was involved in the operation.

“If that story is true, it is earth-shattering,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sunday on his CNN public affairs programme ‘Both Sides’. “It indeed is treason.”

The crack epidemic of the 1980s did not only result in the addiction of thousands of youths and young adults, but it is also seen as responsible for the sharp rise in the murder rate of many inner U.S. cities as rival street gangs fought to gain control over distribution of the new drug.

Gary Webb, the series’ author, says that the drug pipeline overseen by Meneses funnelled cocaine from Colombia, via El Salvador and other Central American points, to the United States, and then to such gangs as the Crips and the Bloods in Los Angeles.

The proceeds went in the other direction, to Costa Rica and Honduras, to help fund the CIA-backed “contras” whose nine-year war against the Sandinista government formed one of the central elements of the foreign policy of former president Ronald Reagan.

Charges that the contras were funded in part by drug-smuggling operations are not new. They were first reported by the Associated Press in 1984. The Reagan administration itself accused associates of former anti-Sandinista leader Eden Pastora of involvement in drug-smuggling out of Costa Rica after he broke with the main CIA- backed group, the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN).

At the same time, however, the administration defended the FDN from charges of drug-trafficking. In a letter to a California senator this month, CIA director John Deutch noted that the agency investigated the charges in 1988 and found that it “neither participated in nor condoned drug trafficking by Contra forces.”

But the Mercury News report points directly at the FDN and the role played by at least some of its civilian leadership in fueling the crack epidemic in the U.S. West Coast.

Meneses’ key contact, according to Webb, was a drug dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes, the son of a wealthy Managua slumlord, who fled here when the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. Blandon, in turn, employed Ricky “Freeway” Ross, a top Los Angeles crack dealer who is currently awaiting sentencing on a federal drug conviction.

In the San Francisco area, according to the Mercury News, Meneses worked with unsuspecting Republicans and Nicaraguan exiles through groups like United Support Against Communism in the Americas which promoted the FDN.

In Central America, Meneses worked with Col. Enrique Bermudez, the FDN’s military chief based in Honduras, according to the Mercury News. Bermudez, who was handpicked for the job by the CIA, was gunned down in Managua shortly after the Sandinistas were defeated in the 1990 elections.

Blandon, who also had close connections with Bermudez, has testified that he bought arms from a Los Angeles man named Ronald Lister who claimed to be working for the CIA.

Yet another Meneses contact was Marcos Aguado, a Nicaraguan who worked for the Salvadoran air force at Ilopango Air Base. Aguado, who has been identified as a CIA agent by several sources, reportedly supplied weapons to the FDN.

The same airport, which was controlled by Air Force Gen. Rafael Bustillo, was used for smuggling cocaine northwards, according to Celerino Castillo, an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), who told Webb he first reported the smuggling operation in 1985. Ilopango was also the hub of the contra-supply operation run out of the White House by Reagan’s National Security Council in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair.

While cited in 45 separate federal drug investigations, Meneses has never been prosecuted in the United States, notes Webb, who suggests that he has been protected by federal agencies.

Meneses moved to Costa Rica in 1989 and back to Nicaragua after the Sandinistas’ lost the 1990 elections. He worked briefly as a DEA informer but was arrested on drug-smuggling charges in 1991. He now languishes in Tipitapa prison outside Managua but is expected to be released soon, according to the Mercury News.

Blandon was jailed for 28 months in the late 1980s but released in return for cooperating with the DEA. He has since been paid over 166,000 dollars by the DEA, money which he has reportedly invested in a timber export operations in Central America.

The key question now, according to Webb, is “what (was) the relationship between the intelligence agency and Meneses and Blandon. The CIA wouldn’t tell us,” he said on CNN.

Deutch said this month that “the agency never had any relationship” with the two men, but the furore which the stories have created in the African-American community has forced him to order the CIA’s Inspector-General to conduct a thorough investigation over the next 60 days.

Ollie North, the White House aide who ran the Iran-Contra operation out of the National Security Council, has denounced the story has “absolute garbage (and) an effort to distract the American people from the Clinton administration’s appalling record of dealing with drugs.”

But the Justice Department and House Intelligence Committee told the CBC they will be carrying out their own inquiries.