Norwin Meneses Cantarero, known as "El Rey de la Droga" (The King of Drugs) and "El Perico," was the leader of the Meneses drug organization and is believed to have been the [[Cali Drug Cartel|Cali cartel]]'s representative in [[Nicaragua]]. A drug trafficker since the early 1970s, Meneses lived in the [[United States]] from 1979 to 1985 and worked for the [[Contras]] as a recruiter, arms supplier, and benefactor throughout the entire Contra war.[^2] He simultaneously worked as a [[DEA]] informant from 1985 to 1991.[^2] ### Background and Family Meneses had close connections to the Cuban anti-Communist movement and to the pre-revolution Nicaraguan power structure. His brother, [[Edmundo Meneses]], was a former Nicaraguan ambassador to [[Guatemala]], former general in the [[Nicaraguan National Guard]], former chief of police in [[Managua]], and a probable [[Central Intelligence Agency]] asset. Edmundo Meneses was a graduate of the [[U.S. Army School of the Americas]] and was assassinated in Guatemala in 1978 by guerrillas shortly before Somoza's overthrow. Another brother, Brigadier General Fermin Meneses, commanded the Guardia garrison in the city of Masaya. "The whole [Meneses] family was anti-Sandinista to the death," the Nicaraguan newsmagazine El Semanario reported in 1996. "It is a hate that seems almost genetic, ancestral."[^3] ### Early Criminal Career Meneses had been selling [[cocaine]] since before there were any cartels. His association with [[Colombia|Colombian]] drug lords began during the marijuana era of the early 1970s. According to [[Roger Mayorga]], a former [[Sandinistas|Sandinista]] intelligence officer who headed investigations for the Nicaraguan National Police narcotics unit, Meneses's first big deal occurred after an airplane full of marijuana made an emergency landing at a ranch owned by one of the Somozas. Colonel Edmundo Meneses, who commanded the Managua police, released the Colombian pilots and airplane but kept the marijuana, which was turned over to Norwin. Under Edmundo's protection, Managua became an open city for Norwin. By the late 1970s he owned discotheques (the Frisco Disco and the VIP Club), drive-in brothels with waterbeds and porno tapes, and a thriving drug business. A "highly reliable" [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] informant reported that Meneses used his influence within the [[Anastasio Somoza|Somoza]] regime to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. and "had even used a Nicaraguan Air Force plane once for such a shipment." [[Rafael Cornejo]] described prerevolution visits to Managua where "you'd walk down the street with Mundo, and everyone would salute you." In his teens and twenties, Meneses worked as an undercover informant for the [[OSN|Office of National Security (OSN)]], Somoza's secret police, infiltrating pro-Communist groups. Former Managua police chief Rene Vivas said Meneses sometimes posed as a news photographer, other times as the secretly disaffected son of a powerful Somocista family. ### The Oskar Reyes Murder In spring 1977, Nicaraguan Customs chief inspector Oskar Reyes Zelaya investigated Meneses for running a massive car theft ring using the National Guard to "import" stolen American cars. Meneses attempted to frame Reyes with a fake rape accusation. On June 2, 1977, Reyes was lured to an alley and shot three times. As he lay dying, Reyes identified Meneses: "Pablo, protect me! This is Norwin! Norwin Meneses sent [someone] to kill me!" Norwin was arrested but cleared after a "rigorous and exhaustive" investigation ordered by brother Edmundo. In 1986, Edmundo's son Jairo Meneses informed federal prosecutors in [[San Francisco]] that "Norwin Meneses smuggled weapons, silencers, and video equipment into Nicaragua, which he exchanged for money or narcotics. The operation was discovered by Oscar Reyes. Norwin then arranged for Reyes' assassination." ### Entry into the United States In 1979, the FBI office in [[Mexico City]] asked that Meneses be included in the Bureau's "top thief" program and requested an arrest warrant to prevent him from entering the United States. The U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco, citing Meneses's "political connections" in Nicaragua, refused. Despite an extensive criminal record dating to the 1960s (statutory rape, shoplifting, misuse of slot machines in San Francisco in the early 1960s; suspected murder of a money changer in 1968), Meneses entered the United States freely in early 1980, applied for political asylum, and began buying property — a used car lot, commercial buildings, a travel agency, a restaurant, and two houses in [[Pacifica, California|Pacifica]]. He drove a gray Jaguar sedan registered in his own name.[^3] Meneses told the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] he met with CIA agents shortly after the Sandinista takeover to teach them how to cross Nicaragua's borders undetected.[^3] ### DEA Investigations The DEA first identified Meneses as a drug dealer in 1974. By December 1976 its office in [[Costa Rica]] had identified him as a cocaine "source of supply" based in Managua. The FBI learned in April 1978 that Norwin and his brother Ernesto "were smuggling 20 kilos of cocaine at a time into the United States." The DEA's "Operation Alligator" in [[New Orleans]] determined Meneses was a source of supply for cocaine smuggled into that city. In November 1981, DEA agent [[Sandra Smith]] filed an affidavit stating: "The Drug Enforcement Administration has developed information over the past several years that the Meneses Family has been involved in the smuggling and distribution of cocaine in the San Francisco Bay Area." Smith described the investigation as "the only thing that I ever worked, in all the time I worked there, that I thought was really big." Despite the scope of the operation, Smith said DEA management did not give her the time and assistance needed, and she quit the agency three years later. ### Contra Involvement Meneses worked for the Contras throughout the war as a recruiter, arms supplier, and benefactor. He had close ties to FDN military commander [[Enrique Bermudez|Enrique Bermúdez]], reportedly trafficking in arms and cocaine together. Meneses said of Bermúdez: "I've known him since he was a lieutenant," adding that his brother Edmundo had been friends with Bermúdez since childhood. Meneses became Bermúdez's intelligence and security adviser in [[California]]; anyone recruited to fight for the Contras in [[Honduras]] had to pass his muster first. "It was an understanding between old friends. Nobody would join the Contra forces down there without my knowledge and approval." [[Dennis Ainsworth]], a San Francisco Contra supporter, told the FBI in 1987 that Meneses and Bermúdez were dealing arms and drugs. Ainsworth later told [[Gary Webb]] that Meneses "ran one of the major distributions in the U.S.. It wasn't just [[Los Angeles|L.A.]]. He was national. And he was totally protected."[^3] Meneses met with FDN political leader [[Adolfo Calero]] several times during the years he was selling drugs for the Contras. Calero confirmed that Meneses had traveled to Honduras to meet with Bermúdez and had brought him a crossbow as a gesture of esteem, though he denied the traffickers held official FDN positions. Former FDN director Edgar Chamorro acknowledged: "This man [Meneses] was connected with the Contras of Bermúdez, because of the military kind of brotherhood among the Somoza military - the brotherhood of military minds."[^3] Meneses associate Rafael Cornejo said he attended some of the parties Meneses hosted for the FDN at his homes in the San Francisco area. "You can say what you want about that man, but his heart and soul was into the movement, and that was his priority more than anything else," said Cornejo, whose father had been a sergeant in Somoza's National Guard. "It's kind of hard to be kicked out of your own country and that's what his passion was. He was straight-up pro-Somocista."[^5] ### Public Role with the FDN As the Contra support organizations in San Francisco and Los Angeles grew more active, Meneses's role with the FDN became much more public. Former FDN director [[Edgar Chamorro]] told the San Francisco Examiner in 1986 that he and FDN director [[Frank Arana]] flew to San Francisco in October 1982 to select local leaders for the FDN's support committee there. Meneses attended the organizational meeting, standing quietly in the back of the auto body shop where the meeting was held. "He appeared like a fund-raiser, an organizer," Chamorro said. The next day, Chamorro said, Meneses helped set up a similar meeting in Los Angeles, providing refreshments beforehand and throwing a party afterward. "He was one of the main contacts in L.A.," Chamorro told Examiner reporter Seth Rosenfeld. "He was in charge of the organization of the L.A. meeting, the reception. He drove us to the place. He gave us the schedule for that day. He knew people, he was recommending names" for leadership positions.[^5] [[Renato Pena|Renato Peña]] Cabrera, the FDN's San Francisco representative, told federal investigators in 1997 that he was present "on many occasions" when Meneses telephoned FDN commander Enrique Bermúdez in Honduras. "Meneses told Pena of Bermúdez's requests for such things as gun silencers (which Meneses obtained in Los Angeles), cross bows, and other military equipment for the Contras." Meneses sometimes personally delivered the supplies to the Contras; other times he had contacts in Miami and Los Angeles forward them to friendly Honduran authorities. Meneses would also bring back military information, bulletins, and communiques from Bermúdez that Peña would put into newsletters and distribute to the press and Contra sympathizers.[^5] In a 1996 interview with the CIA, Meneses said that "between 1983 and 1984, his primary role with the California sympathizers was to help recruit personnel for the movement." He was asked by Bermúdez to recruit Nicaraguans in exile and others who supported the Contra movement. He was a member of an FDN fund-raising committee but was not its head, and did not raise much cash but was "involved in 1985 in attempting to obtain material support, medical and general supplies" for the Contras. When asked where he got the money to pay for these war materials, Meneses gave a slight smile: "There was money available for these purchases."[^5] Among the Nicaraguan exile community, it was strongly suspected that Meneses was dealing cocaine for the Contras, and it was not unadmired. Somoza's former secretary, Juan C. Wong, who visited Meneses in San Francisco in 1983, said: "It's true, it was widely spread around that he was involved with drugs. And I don't doubt that they wanted to raise money for the FDN. That's only natural. They were doing their patriotic duty."[^5] ### Weapons Dealing and Arms Smuggling Meneses expanded beyond drug trafficking into weapons dealing through his partnership with [[Ronald Lister]]. [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]] told Justice Department interviewers that he and Meneses "entered into an informal partnership [with Lister] for the purpose of selling weapons abroad," specifically in [[El Salvador]]. Lister sold Blandón numerous machine pistols, which Blandón told him he was sending to the Contras. Meneses clarified: "We, in fact, did make arrangements to sell arms to the Contras, but the FDN couldn't collect sufficient funds in order to finalize the deal." Meneses, Blandón, and Lister then "traveled to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to make arrangements with local governments" for the donation of arms. Meneses added cryptically: "If I told you where we got them, governments would fall."[^5] An FBI informant told Justice Department inspectors that Meneses had spoken of obtaining night vision scopes from Lister in 1982, which the drug lord planned to sell to the Salvadoran government. Meneses intended to "use the proceeds from the night scopes to aid the Contras," the informant reported, but the deal fell through.[^5] Meneses's involvement in Contra gun running was confirmed in 1996 by the New York Times, which quoted an unnamed Clinton administration official as saying that Meneses had "contacts with the Contras in Honduras in 1982 or 1983 and 1984, and that he was believed then to have had some involvement in arms smuggling as well as money laundering and drugs."[^5] ### Counterfeiting A former associate of Blandón, a Puerto Rican man convicted of counterfeiting U.S. currency, believed that Blandón and Meneses's silk-screen company JDM Artwork Inc. also printed fake twenty-dollar bills that provided operating cash for the FDN. The associate produced Polaroid photographs showing him at work in an office with FDN banners and slogans on the wall, and a picture of Blandón in the same office with a blue-and-white FDN flag visible. According to CIA cables filed in federal court, the CIA had information by 1984 that Norwin Meneses was involved in counterfeiting - both American dollars and Costa Rican colones. In a 1986 interview, Meneses said he allowed FDN members to use his wife's Los Angeles T-shirt factory as a meeting place.[^5] Meneses was introduced to Danilo Blandón through Donald Barrios, a wealthy former insurance broker from Managua living in [[Miami]] who was a relative of former Nicaraguan president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Meneses proposed that Blandón sell cocaine in Los Angeles to raise money for the Contras. After a trip to Honduras for a meeting with Bermúdez, where the Contra commander told them "the ends justify the means," Blandón agreed. Meneses gave Blandón a two-day seminar on drug dealing, showing him how to assess quality, transport cocaine in pickup truck door panels, and avoid common mistakes. Meneses provided Blandón with two kilos of cocaine (worth about $60,000 each) and customer contacts in Los Angeles. According to Blandón, the Meneses organization moved 900 kilos of cocaine, almost a ton, into the United States in 1981, about $54 million worth at wholesale prices. ### Drug Operations Meneses's nephew Rafael Cornejo was one of his distributors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other key operatives included [[Horacio Pereira]], identified by the FBI as the source of cocaine for the [[Frogman Case|Frogman drug ring]] in San Francisco; [[Troilo Sanchez|Troilo Sánchez]], brother of FDN officials; Frank Vigil, a former Nicaraguan advertising executive; and [[Marcos Aguado]], a CIA-trained pilot and business associate. His right-hand man from 1989 to 1991 was [[Enrique Miranda]], a former Sandinistas intelligence officer and CIA asset.[^3] The Meneses network's Costa Rican cocaine pipeline was run through Horacio Pereira and Troilo Sánchez, who supplied Peruvian cocaine to [[Julio Zavala]] and [[Carlos Cabezas]] in San Francisco. Cocaine was smuggled inside Peruvian woven baskets, with about a kilo hidden in wax-coated strings inside each basket's framework. Cabezas and other Contra mules, typically airline flight attendants, brought the baskets into the United States. Drug profits were then carried back to Costa Rica and Honduras, with Cabezas averaging $64,000 on each of his twenty trips.[^4] Former Meneses aide Renato Peña told the Justice Department in 1997 that Meneses had a DEA agent on his payroll who warned him of the impending arrests of Julio Zavala and Carlos Cabezas weeks before the February 1983 raids.[^4] ### Investigation and Arrest The potential exposure of Meneses in the spring of 1985 came at a devastating time for the Contras. Had he been indicted on federal cocaine trafficking charges - after all his meetings with FDN directors Adolfo Calero, Enrique Bermúdez, Edgar Chamorro, and Frank Arana—the resultant scandal would likely have wiped out what little congressional support remained. Meneses was in a position to expose the [[FDN]]'s long involvement with drug merchants and lead investigators to Danilo Blandón's operation in South Central Los Angeles. A 1998 CIA Inspector General's report confirmed that as early as 1984, the agency had information tying Meneses to a drug and arms network in Costa Rica in partnership with top Contra official [[Sebastian Gonzalez|Sebastian "Guachan" Gonzalez]]. Former assistant U.S. attorney [[Eric Swenson]] confirmed that the Justice Department knew about Meneses's Contra activities because he had personally reported them.[^6] Despite one of Meneses's top lieutenants having pleaded guilty to cocaine charges and publicly implicated him, the drug lord was not prosecuted in the spring of 1985. Allowing Meneses to take the witness stand was out of the question—he knew too much. The cozy relationship between the CIA and San Francisco's U.S. attorney [[Joseph Russoniello]] coincided with the decision not to charge Meneses.[^6] ### Volume Estimates At Tipitapa Prison, Meneses was shown a 1992 FBI report in which the [[Torres Brothers]] estimated that between 1980 and 1991 Blandón moved over 5,000 kilograms of cocaine. Meneses laughed and said: "It would be more accurate if you multiplied that by ten." Fifty thousand kilos - fifty-five tons of cocaine - "Easily," he said. The DEA estimated Blandón imported between 18,000 and 27,000 kilos between 1982 and 1990. The Torres brothers later boosted their own estimates, telling police "they heard that Blandón sold 10,000 kilos of cocaine, mostly in South Central Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area" during a two-year span in the mid-1980s - enough for 30 million doses of crack. Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale asked Blandón's DEA case agent Charles Jones during a 1995 grand jury hearing: "Mr. Blandón was considered to be probably the largest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States, is that correct?" Jones replied: "I believe so, sir."[^7] ### Move to Costa Rica After the arrests of his nephew Jairo and Renato Peña in late 1984, Meneses wound up his affairs in San Francisco, selling his gray Jaguar, used car lot, and Mission District office building, and moved to his beachfront ranch in Costa Rica. Meneses owned several houses and large ranches in northern Costa Rica near the war zone. The L.A. Times reported that "beginning in November 1982 Meneses was spending much of his time in Costa Rica and commuting back to San Francisco." An informant told the DEA that "Norwin receives political protection from Jose Marti Figueres, the son of former Costa Rican President Jose 'Pepe' Figueres."[^7] Meneses was arrested and jailed in Nicaragua in 1991 and sentenced to twelve years in prison. At Tipitapa Prison, the old Guardia prison where FDN founder Ricardo Lau once held court as warden and chief torturer, Meneses strolled freely through the grounds and the guards murmured "Señor" when he passed. His cell door was closed only when he wanted it that way. [[Georg Hodel]] and Gary Webb interviewed Meneses there in January 1996.[^1] ### Secret 1989 Indictment About two weeks after former CIA director George Bush was sworn in as president, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco brought a secret indictment against Meneses, charging him with conspiracy to import cocaine between 1984 and 1985 and possession of one kilo in 1985. Both the warrant and indictment were locked away in courthouse vaults and sealed from public view for nine years. Meneses called the indictment "a phony," suggesting it was filed to protect the U.S. government in case its relationship with him was ever revealed. Prosecutor Eric Swenson said the case was filed because it was approaching the statute of limitations.[^11] ### Nicaragua Return and Drug Network In 1990, after the Sandinistas were voted out, Meneses moved back into his mansion on the outskirts of Managua and began reclaiming $12 million in holdings confiscated during the revolution. He recruited former Sandinista intelligence officer Enrique Miranda to reestablish his smuggling pipeline, using concealed airstrips and underground bunkers. Miranda testified that cocaine was smuggled via cargo planes making quick stops at a 2,600-meter airstrip near Rosita, and through automobiles with cocaine-filled PVC pipes welded into their frames. Rafael Cornejo recalled: "For the amounts that were coming in, you almost needed flatbed trucks."[^11] ### Arrest and Trial in Nicaragua In November 1991, Nicaraguan police under Commander Rene Vivas and criminal investigations chief Roger Mayorga raided Meneses's drug ring, seizing 725 kilos of cocaine, the largest seizure in Nicaraguan history. Meneses was relaxed when Vivas interrogated him. "He said he wasn't worried about me because he had the backing of a higher power, a superpower," Vivas recalled. "He said he was working for the United States to get Sandinista officials on drug charges." DEA agent Federico Villarreal had been secretly meeting with Meneses in Managua. At trial, Miranda testified about drug flights from El Salvador and meetings with CIA pilot Marcos Aguado and FDN commander Enrique Bermúdez. Meneses was convicted and sentenced to thirty years. He was released in 1997 after serving only six years. Three weeks after the verdicts, the U.S. State Department pressured the Chamorro government to fire Vivas; Mayorga was fired soon after.[^11] ### DEA Informant in Costa Rica According to the official account, Meneses walked into the U.S. Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica, in July 1986 and announced he wanted to help the Reagan Administration's war on drugs. DEA agent [[Sandalio Gonzalez]] recorded the official reasons: Meneses's desire to clear up an IRS problem, terminate his involvement in drug trafficking, and help the U.S. fight drugs. But there are reasons to doubt this account. Meneses said he had helped the DEA gather intelligence on the February 1985 torture-murder of DEA agent [[Kiki Camarena|Enrique "Kiki" Camarena]] in Mexico, and had met with DEA attaché Robert J. Nieves in late 1985 concerning the case - months before the official date he supposedly walked into the embassy.[^7] The DEA made no official record that Meneses was an informant for at least a year. His name did not appear in the DEA's database until 1987. Gonzalez explained that Meneses "initially refused to sign DEA's informant registration," an unusual arrangement Gonzalez allowed "because of Meneses' background and potential to make cases." The result was that "other DEA offices could not get information on Meneses' use by the DEA through this database." The Justice Department's Inspector General found the accusations Meneses made against other traffickers were "vague and sometimes wildly misleading," including the claim that Blandón "was a Sandinista sympathizer."[^7] ### 1986 Media Expose In 1986, San Francisco Examiner reporter [[Seth Rosenfeld]] published a front-page story exposing Meneses's cocaine trafficking network and his involvement with the FDN in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Rosenfeld reported on Meneses's meetings with Enrique Bermúdez and Adolfo Calero, the FDN spokesman's cocaine conviction, and Meneses's donations at FDN fund-raisers. The story was considerably more damaging than the earlier Frogman case expose because it directly involved the CIA's primary army with a major trafficker. Yet it drew no response from the administration. The State Department's White Paper, which belittled every other Contra drug allegation, studiously avoided any mention of Meneses. The story appeared two days before the House was to vote on Reagan's $100 million Contra aid package; not a single major newspaper in the country touched it.[^9] ### CIA Connections Former Sandinista intelligence officer Roger Mayorga, who monitored Meneses for years, believed Meneses was actually working for the CIA in Costa Rica, using his DEA informant role as cover. "They used Meneses in Costa Rica basically for money laundering operations," Mayorga said. Meneses's brother Jaime Sr. owned a large money-changing business in San Jose, and Norwin had legitimate fronts useful for laundering cash—a restaurant across the street from the U.S. Embassy, a gambling club, and a bean processing factory with Troilo Sánchez as partner. DEA agents told the Justice Department of "having an amicable relationship with the CIA Costa Rica Station personnel."[^7] In a 1988 cable to FBI headquarters, San Francisco FBI agent Donald Hale wrote: "It became apparent to the FBI that Norwin Meneses was, and may still be, an informant of the DEA. It is also believed by the FBI, SF, that Norwin Meneses was, and may still be, an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency." The CIA denies it. Meneses was paired with a veteran CIA operative who arrived from Europe, whom Meneses introduced as "Roberto." The mysterious agent played a significant role in keeping Meneses out of the FBI's clutches.[^7] Despite his drug dealing being well known to the CIA, the DEA, and the Costa Rican OIJ since 1984, Meneses was neither arrested nor expelled from Costa Rica during all the years he lived there. Rafael Cornejo said Meneses's business "expanded terrifically" while he was supposedly working for the DEA. "Those were very big years in terms of. . .well, the contraband. That's why I have a hard time believing Norwin was working with the feds."[^7] Ainsworth described the government's disinterest in pursuing Meneses: "Nobody in [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] wanted to look at this. Republican, Democrat, nobody. They wanted this story buried and anyone who looked any deeper into it got buried along with it." ### Family Network The Meneses drug operation was a family enterprise. Nephews Guillermo Meneses, Jaime Meneses, and Jairo Meneses were all involved in cocaine trafficking in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jairo Meneses was the son of Edmundo Meneses and partnered with Danilo Blandón in hotels and casinos in Nicaragua. ### Ilopango Drug Pipeline Enrique Miranda, who became [[Norwin Meneses|Meneses]]'s emissary to the cartels of Colombia in the late 1980s, testified in a 1992 trial in Nicaragua that "Norwin was selling drugs and tunneled the benefits to the Contras with help of high-ranking military officials of the Salvadoran Army, especially with the help of the head of the Salvadoran Air Force and a Nicaraguan pilot named Marcos Aguado." Miranda said cocaine from Colombia arrived at Costa Rican airstrips including one on CIA operative [[John Hull]]'s farm, and was placed aboard Contra planes flown into [[Ilopango Airbase|Ilopango Air Force Base]]. There, Aguado and Meneses supervised loading the cocaine onto U.S.-bound aircraft owned by the Salvadoran Air Force and the Miami-based CIA contractor [[Southern Air Transport]]. Miranda said Meneses told him U.S. military hardware stockpiled at Ilopango was loaded onto Salvadoran transport planes and flown south, where guns were traded for cocaine and flown back.[^8] A member of Meneses's drug ring described by the Justice Department as "a long track record of providing information" and "extremely reliable" was questioned in April 1986 by a DEA intelligence analyst as part of a secret DEA assessment of Contra drug smuggling. He confirmed Meneses was selling cocaine to raise money for the Contras and said "some of these proceeds were used to buy weapons for the Contras in Colombia." The informant said Meneses had recruited him to coordinate drug and weapons shipments from Colombia, and that "Meneses boasted that he traveled in and out of Nicaragua freely and that U.S. agents would assist him."[^8] ### La Nacion Expose and Operation Perico In early December 1986, Costa Rica's biggest newspaper, La Nacion, published an extensive series on Contra connections to drug trafficking, with one installment focusing squarely on Meneses, describing him as a Contra supporter and financier holed up in Costa Rica under some type of protection, hiding from American drug agents. The story sent the DEA office at the U.S. Embassy into a panic. If the increasingly hostile Costa Rican government started poking around, it would not take long to discover the drug kingpin's special relationship with the U.S. Embassy.[^10] On December 21, 1986, without waiting for DEA approval, Meneses and the CIA operative "Roberto" left Costa Rica for the United States on a mission code-named "Operation Perico," officially to penetrate Blandón's organization and gather intelligence. In early January 1987, Meneses and Roberto met with Blandón, FDN official [[Ivan Torres]], and others in Los Angeles. Roberto's debriefing reports captured damaging admissions: Torres claimed CIA representatives were aware of his drug activities and "don't mind," and said the CIA encouraged cocaine trafficking by Contras as a source of income. The reports also documented Torres's claim that his brothers Jacinto and Edgar were distributing up to 1,000 kilograms of cocaine monthly in L.A.[^10] ### Refusal to Return to the United States The FBI's San Francisco office, upon learning of Meneses's DEA cooperation, issued arrest warrants for both Roberto and Meneses "because the FBI suspected them of conducting drug deals in San Francisco." They quickly fled back to Costa Rica. Meneses then declared he was done as an informant. As long as the FBI was trying to indict him, he would never go back to the United States and would never testify against anyone.[^10] FBI agents [[Douglas Aukland]], Don Hale, and Gordon Gibler assembled evidence to indict Meneses for running a continuing criminal enterprise, carrying a possible life term. In February 1987 they presented the case to San Francisco U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, who rejected it within a week, citing a supposed "cooperation agreement" that Justice Department investigators later determined never existed.[^10] ### DEA Rehiring After the OCDETF investigation was shelved in July 1987, Meneses "miraculously reappeared" and the DEA hired him back, issuing him visas that allowed him to travel in and out of the United States at will. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, the Justice Department had dropped a criminal investigation involving Contra cocaine sales in Los Angeles and clamped a lid of secrecy on the case that would not come off for another ten years.[^10] ### CIA Cables on Webb's Investigation A CIA Inspector General's report released in early 1998 referenced three CIA cables about Gary Webb, titled "Possible Attempts to Link CIA to Narcotraffickers," written within weeks of Webb's October 1995 meeting with the DEA. A December 4, 1995, cable from CIA headquarters stated: "DEA has been alerted that Meneses will undoubtedly claim that he was trafficking narcotics on behalf of CIA to generate money for the Contras. Query whether Station can clarify or amplify on the above information to better identify Meneses or confirm or refute any claims he may make. HQS trace on (FNU) Meneses reveal extensive entries." Those extensive entries were not revealed in the declassified version of the CIA's report.[^12] The DEA's public affairs office in Washington later attempted to arrange an interview with Meneses in exchange for Webb omitting Blandón's DEA ties from the story, but journalist Georg Hodel reached Meneses first, locating him in a Nicaraguan prison.[^12] ### Footnotes [^1]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know" [^2]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Cast of Characters [^3]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 3: "The brotherhood of military minds" [^4]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 5: "God, Fatherland and Freedom" [^5]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty" [^6]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it" [^7]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction" [^8]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends" [^9]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 15: "This thing is a tidal wave" [^10]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter" [^11]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 23: "He had the backing of a superpower" [^12]: Gary Webb, *Dark Alliance*, Chapter 25: "Things are moving all around us"