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Dark Alliance: Contras, ****, and the CIA

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Author Topic: Dark Alliance: Contras, ****, and the CIA  (Read 391 times)
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Firefly
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« Reply #15 on: November 08, 2007, 12:43:13 am »

CIA agent Felipe Vidal, a Cuban the CIA says "served as a logistics coordinator for the contras" in Costa Rica, was a convicted drug dealer and was working for a Miami company that was importing **** into the U.S. from Costa Rica. Top CIA officials knew of Vidal's drug-dealing associations and his "general thuggery," as former CIA chief Alan Fiers put it, but they kept him on the CIA payroll and continued to protect him. In the midst of the Iran-contra probe, the CIA shut down an internal investigation of Vidal because "narcotics trafficking relative to contra-related activities is exactly the sort of thing that the U.S. attorney's office will be investigating." The CIA's lawyers fretted that any information the internal probe turned up "could be exposed during any future litigation."



*Two of Norwin Meneses' drug-trafficking associates, New Orleans distributor Manuel Porro and LA distributor Sebastian Pinel, were identified in the CIA report as important figures behind the formation of the contras. Porro, who was arrested by the DEA in 1979 as part of a sweep called "Operation Alligator," became FDN political boss Adolfo Calero's personal assistant and "reportedly handled Calero's funding transactions between Miami and San Jose, Costa Rica, banks."





The Inspector General's report should put to rest the long-simmering historical debate over what the CIA as an institution knew about the contras' drug trafficking. The answer: it knew everything, despite its best efforts to remain ignorant.



A former station chief in Central America told CIA inspectors that he became aware of drug-trafficking allegations against the contras "fairly early" during his assignment.



"Early traces revealed these folks should be treated carefully. Some were scoundrels," he acknowledged. But the fact that the CIA did nothing about it "had to be considered in the context of [then-CIA director] William Casey's overriding political objectives," the station chief added. "Yes, there is derogatory stuff, and we would be careful in terms of counterintelligence and operational security, but we were going to play with these guys. That was made clear by Casey and by [Latin American division chief Dewey] Clarridge."



One of the most jarring examples of the agency's studied indifference to contra drug dealing came during an interview it conducted in 1987 with a particularly unsavory CIA asset working with the contras in Costa Rica. Moises Dagoberto (Dago) Nunez, a Bay of Pigs veteran, ran a shrimp fishery in Puntarenas, Costa Rica; the CIA report laconically describes the fishery as a "seafood company that was created as a cover for laundering drug money." The DEA's office in Costa Rica had been getting reports "for two or three years" that Nunez's company was shipping **** to the U.S., but because Nunez was one of the DEA's informants there, nothing was done. The drug loads definitely weren't shrimpy. In January 1986, DEA agents in Miami intercepted 400 pounds of coke concealed in a crate of yucca that was destined for Vidal's employer, Ocean Hunter.



Despite its fragrant background, Nunez's company was awarded a no-bid U.S. State Department contract in early 1987 to funnel "humanitarian aid" to the contras. Soon, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and the National Security Council (NSC) began laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars through the shrimp company's bank accounts, just as the Medellin Cartel had done.



In March 1987, as the Iran-contra scandal was convulsing the public, CIA agents "questioned Nunez about narcotics-trafficking allegations against him. Nunez revealed that since 1985, he had engaged in a clandestine relationship with the National Security Council. Nunez refused to elaborate on the nature of these actions, but he indicated it was difficult to answer questions relating to his involvement in narcotics trafficking because of the specific tasks he had performed at the direction of the NSC," according to the CIA's recently released report.



In other words, North-the man who would soon emerge as the hero of the Iran-contra hearings-and the Reagan White House had been in cahoots with drug traffickers.



After first instructing its Costa Rican agents to follow up on Nunez's heart-stopping revelations, CIA headquarters changed its mind and quickly slammed on the brakes. "The next day," the Inspector General wrote, "a Headquarters cable stated, 'Headquarters has decided against . . . debriefing Nunez.' The cable offered no explanation for the decision."



But Louis Dupart, the CIA's compliance officer for the contra project, had one. "The agency position was not to get involved in the matter," he told CIA inspectors. "It had nothing to do with the agency but with the National Security Council. It was someone else's problem."



That sentiment was echoed by the CIA's Central American Task Force chief Alan Fiers. "My recollection is that because of the NSC connection and the possibility that this could be somehow connected to [North's] Private Benefactor program . . . a decision was made not to pursue this matter, but rather to turn it over to Judge Lawrence Walsh, the Independent Counsel for Iran-contra," Fiers said.



The issue of drugs and the NSC never arose during the congressional Iran-contra hearings or during North's later trial for lying to Congress. Nor does it appear from Walsh's files that any great effort was made to settle the question. In an interview, Walsh recalled that his prosecutors spent little, if any, time investigating North's links to drug traffickers because it was outside the very narrow confines the courts had put on his probe.
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