Fort Leavenworth
Fort Leavenworth was a U.S. Army base in Kansas where Nicaraguan National Guard officers received advanced military training, producing the leadership cadre of the Contra army.
Fort Leavenworth was a U.S. Army base in Kansas where Nicaraguan National Guard officers received advanced military training, producing the leadership cadre that would later form the Contra army. Along with Fort Gulick and Fort Benning, Fort Leavenworth was one of the U.S. military schools that trained the Nicaraguan officers who became the FDN's commanders.1
Training the Guardia
Somoza invoked the American military education program when pleading with the U.S. ambassador not to abandon his National Guard: "They have been fighting Communism just like you taught them at Fort Gulick and Fort Benning and Fort Leavenworth. Out of nine hundred officers we have, eight hundred or so belong to your schools." Enrique Bermúdez, the future FDN military commander, was among the hundreds of Nicaraguan officers who attended U.S. military schools, receiving the training that later made him the CIA's choice to lead the Contra army.2
Sources
Hidden connections 1
Entities named in this page's prose without an explicit wikilink — surfaced by scanning for known titles and aliases.
Local network
Fort Leavenworth's direct connections. Click any node to navigate, drag to pan, scroll (or pinch) to zoom. + 2‑hop expands the neighborhood one level further.
An interactive diagram of Fort Leavenworth's connections, drawn on a canvas and explored with a pointer. The same connections are listed as links in the Connected and Mentioned-in sections below.
Legend — how to read this graph
- People
- Organizations
- Programs
- Events
- Concepts
- Places
Larger = more mentions across the vault.
Explicit link (wikilink between entries).
Inferred connection (name co-mention) — toggle with “Inferred”.
Gold ring — a bridge entity linking distant clusters.
Accent ring — your current selection.