By fall 1998, Washington was obsessed with President Bill Clinton's Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning Contra-cocaine disclosures in the CIA's Volume Two.
In Volume Two, published on Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s.
According to Volume Two, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its Contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. The earliest Contra force, called the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen "to stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre," according to a June 1981 draft of a CIA field report.
According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981. ADREN's leaders included Enrique Bermà ºdez and other early Contras who would later direct the major Contra army, the CIA-organized FDN which was based in Honduras, along Nicaragua's northern border.
Throughout the war, Bermà ºdez remained the top Contra military commander. The CIA later corroborated the allegations about ADREN's cocaine trafficking, but insisted that Bermà ºdez had opposed the drug shipments to the United States that went ahead nonetheless.
The truth about Bermà ºdez's supposed objections to drug trafficking, however, was less clear. According to Hitz's Volume One, Bermà ºdez enlisted Norwin Meneses, a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine smuggler and a key figure in Webb's series, to raise money and buy supplies for the Contras.
Volume One had quoted a Meneses associate, another Nicaraguan trafficker named Danilo Blandà ³n, who told Hitz's investigators that he and Meneses flew to Honduras to meet with Bermà ºdez in 1982.
At the time, Meneses's criminal activities were well-known in the Nicaraguan exile community. But Bermà ºdez told the cocaine smugglers that "the ends justify the means" in raising money for the Contras.
After the Bermà ºdez meeting, Contra soldiers helped Meneses and Blandà ³n get past Honduran police who briefly arrested them on drug-trafficking suspicions. After their release, Blandà ³n and Meneses traveled on to Bolivia to complete a cocaine transaction.
There were other indications of Bermà ºdez's drug-smuggling tolerance. In February 1988, another Nicaraguan exile linked to the drug trade accused Bermà ºdez of participation in narcotics trafficking, according to Hitz's report.
After the Contra war ended, Bermà ºdez returned to Managua, Nicaragua, where he was shot to death on Feb. 16, 1991. The murder has never been solved.
The Southern Front
Along the Southern Front, the Contras' military operations in Costa Rica on Nicaragua's southern border, the CIA's drug evidence centered on the forces of Edà ©n Pastora, another top Contra commander.
But Hitz discovered that the U.S. government may have made the drug situation worse, not better. Hitz revealed that the CIA put an admitted drug operative -- known by his CIA pseudonym "Ivan Gomez" -- in a supervisory position over Pastora. Hitz reported that the CIA discovered Gomez's drug history in 1987 when Gomez failed a security review on drug-trafficking questions.
In internal CIA interviews, Gomez admitted that in March or April 1982, he helped family members who were engaged in drug trafficking and money laundering. In one case, Gomez said he assisted his brother and brother-in-law in transporting cash from New York City to Miami. He admitted that he "knew this act was illegal."
Later, Gomez expanded on his admission, describing how his family members had fallen $2 million into debt and had gone to Miami to run a money-laundering center for drug traffickers. Gomez said "his brother had many visitors whom [Gomez] assumed to be in the drug trafficking business."
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