Mexico City

Mexico City was where the Federal Bureau of Investigation office requested in 1979 that 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 in Los Angeles to fund the Contras. Despite this awareness, Meneses was never prosecuted and continued to operate freely in 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