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Spain was where DEA agent James Kible visited jailed Medellín cartel boss Jorge Ochoa in an attempt to recruit him to implicate the Sandinistas in drug trafficking.

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Spain was where DEA agent James Kible visited jailed Medellín Cartel boss Jorge Ochoa in 1984 and attempted to persuade him to publicly implicate the Sandinistas in drug trafficking. The approach demonstrated the U.S. government's willingness to use the drug war for political purposes.1

Political Manipulation of Drug Enforcement

Kible's visit to Ochoa in a Spanish prison was part of a broader pattern of the U.S. government attempting to manufacture propaganda against the Nicaraguan government. While the DEA was ostensibly fighting drug trafficking, agents like Kible were being used to recruit drug lords for political operations. The irony was that the same government protecting Contra-connected drug traffickers like Danilo Blandón and Norwin Meneses was simultaneously trying to use imprisoned cartel leaders to smear the Sandinistas. Ivan Gomez, the alleged CIA agent present at Contra drug meetings, was reportedly living in Spain.2

Sources

  1. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 19. ↩
  2. Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 19, Ch. 4. ↩

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Operation Gladio
Operation Gladio was the Italian component of a NATO-sponsored network of secret stay-behind armies established across Western Europe by the CIA and British intelligence after World War II to conduct resistance and sabotage operations in the event of a Soviet invasion, whose members in Italy were linked to the right-wing terrorist bombings of the 'strategy of tension' from the late 1960s through the 1980s, exposed publicly by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in October 1990.
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viaVincenzo Vinciguerra · Junio Valerio Borghese · Ordine Nuovo · Golpe Borghese · Peteano bombing

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