---
category: City
summary: Mexico City was where the FBI requested that Norwin Meneses be placed on
  a watch list for drug trafficking in 1979, years before his Contra-connected operations
  were publicly exposed.
tags:
- geography
- mexico
- contra-war
---

Mexico City was where the [Federal Bureau of Investigation](/organizations/federal-bureau-of-investigation/) office requested in 1979 that [Norwin Meneses](/people/norwin-meneses/) be placed on the Bureau's "tightest watch list" for drug trafficking. The request, years before Meneses's Contra-connected operations were publicly exposed, demonstrated that federal law enforcement had long been aware of his activities.[^1]

### Early Awareness

The FBI's Mexico City office's request to monitor Meneses showed that the U.S. government knew about his drug trafficking well before he began selling [cocaine](/concepts/cocaine/) in [Los Angeles](/places/los-angeles/) to fund the [Contras](/organizations/contras/). Despite this awareness, Meneses was never prosecuted and continued to operate freely in [San Francisco](/places/san-francisco/) and Los Angeles throughout the 1980s. The failure to act on the intelligence about Meneses, combined with his known role as a Contra political leader, raised questions about whether his connections to the U.S.-backed war protected him from law enforcement action.[^2]

[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 2.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 2.