Enrique Bermudez

Enrique Bermúdez "Commandante 380" was the supreme military commander of the FDN, the largest Contra faction.³ A former military attaché for the Somoza regime in Washington, he was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1980 to reassemble Somoza's scattered National Guard brigades into a fighting force.

Contra Leadership

Bermúdez commanded the FDN throughout the Contra war and was a close friend of the Meneses family. He reportedly trafficked in arms and cocaine with Norwin Meneses. Dennis Ainsworth, a San Francisco Contra supporter, told the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1987 that he had discovered Meneses and Bermúdez were dealing arms and drugs together.¹

Earlier Career

Before the revolution, Bermúdez served in the Nicaraguan National Guard under Somoza.⁴ In 1965 he was deputy commander of an infantry company Somoza sent to support a U.S.-led invasion of the Dominican Republic to suppress a leftist political movement.

Bermúdez had been in the U.S. since 1975, first as a student attending courses on subversion and counterinsurgency at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington and later as the Nicaraguan government's liaison to the American military. The Americans considered him one of six Guardia officers they recommended to head the National Guard during the final days of the Somoza regime. The State Department considered Bermúdez a safe choice because he had spent most of the revolution in Washington and could not be held responsible for the Guardia's human rights violations. Somoza picked someone else. When the Somoza government collapsed, Bermúdez began a new career as a truck driver, delivering Newsweek magazines.⁴

Recruitment by the CIA

Somoza's cousin, Luis Pallais Debayle, visited Bermúdez to gauge his interest in leading a resistance force. Soon after, Major General Charles E. Boyd, a top U.S. Air Force official, invited Bermúdez to the Pentagon to discuss ideas. Boyd told him he had a friend at the CIA who was interested in speaking with him. By mid-1980 Bermúdez had moved to Miami and was on the CIA payroll.⁴ He began traveling widely, gauging the sentiment of vanquished National Guardsmen hiding in the U.S. and Central America and reporting findings to his CIA handlers.

A U.S. official later told journalist Sam Dillon: "He fit the profile. He was malleable, controllable, docile."⁴

According to Boyd, the CIA "put Bermúdez in touch" with the Legion of September 15 in Guatemala. He also co-commanded the Legion along with Ricardo "El Chino" Lau. In 1981, Bermúdez visited Danilo Blandón's FDN group in Los Angeles, giving a pep talk and asking them to adopt the FDN colors and flag.⁴

Renato Peña Cabrera, the FDN's San Francisco representative, told federal investigators that he was present "on many occasions" when Meneses telephoned 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 would also bring back military information, bulletins, and communiques from Bermúdez that Peña put into newsletters.⁵

Death

Bermúdez was murdered in Managua in 1991. The slaying has never been solved.²