ConTRAVENTION - Cocaine politics and the war against Nicaragua

Part two of a three part series looking at why America's most powerful suppliers claim to be fighting a War on Drugs

Norml News 1994 Autumn

The most well known CIA cocaine involvement is in their Contra support operations.

In 1980 the brutal rule of Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza was ended by a popular revolution. The US government refused to deal with the new Sandinista government of Nicaragua because of its communist leanings. The USA and the Argentine military junta formed an alliance to help start a guerilla army, the Contras, to fight against the Sandinistas.

The FDN Contras

In 1980 the FDN (Nicaragua Democratic Front) Contra movement was started. The organisation centred around a former Somoza National Guard Colonel, Enrique Bermudez. Bermudez was given $50 000 by the Argentineans and sent 50 Contra guerrillas there for training in 'dirty war' tactics.

The FDN was based in Honduras, a country closely allied to Argentina and involved in the continent-wide establishment of death squads and torture squads.

The Argentines provided the Contras with connections to the cocaine trade. The link between the cocaine trade and right wing governments was documented in the Summer 1993 issue. The major cocaine connection for the Contras in Honduras was through Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, an important member of the Cali cocaine cartel of Columbia. Matta had been an important financier of the coup that brought General Policarpo Paz Garcia to power in Honduras. "The CIA relied totally on the cocaine-trafficking military of Honduras to back its plans to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua... By 1984 Mattas airline, SETCO, had become the CIA backed (FDN' s) chief mover of supplies and personnel"¹ . Matta's involvement in the cocaine trade and control of SETCO were known to the US government. Honduran military sources told reporters that SETCO was "set up by the CIA"², and US Customs confirmed Matta's involvement as early as May 1983.

The Southern Front

Another Contra faction, ARDE, was launched by Eden Pastora in 1983. Pastora had been a member of the old international Tercerista (noncommunist left) coalition that had fought Somoza. ARDE was also known as the Southern Front, because it was based in Costa Rica.

After the Falklands war in 1982, the US government tried to distance itself from the Argentinean junta. Part of this disengagement involved replacing the management of the Contras, which had been in the hands of the Argentines, with that of Duanne Clarridge of the CIA.

The Cocaine connection that had been funding the Contras in Costa Rica up until then (the 'Frogman' connection) was busted by the US Drug, Enforcement Agency (DEA). 'Frogman' had been closely linked with the Argentineans. Many high level operatives were pre-warned, however, and managed to escape. The CIA also inserted a new FDN leader, Adolfo Calero, into place.

The Frogman busts increased the importance of those Contras in Costa Rica associated with Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro and Sebastian "Guachan" Gonzalez. Under Eden Pastora, "Guachan" Gonzales became an important link for cocaine shipments. Cocaine was flown to Costa Rica from Panama by associates of Manuel Noriega; Cesar Rodriguez, Floyd Carlton and Teofilo Watson These pilots had flown support for Eden Pastora in 1979, during the Nicaraguan revolution.

Noriega

Noriega was first recruited as a US agent in 1959, while a military cadet in Argentina. He was put on the CIA payroll in 1967, the year before he became head of Panamanian intelligence.

By 1972 the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs had enough evidence to indict him on serious drug smuggling charges, but he continued to be an important CIA asset right up until the breaking of the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986.

Noriega was also involved in arms smuggling. In 1976, he had enlisted pilot Floyd Carlton to fly arms for the Sandinistas. By that time he was receiving $110 000 a year from then CIA director George Bush.

In 1981, after Panamanian President Tonijos was killed in a suspicious plane crash, Noriega took over as president of Panama. In 1981 Gonzalez Gacha of the Medellin cartel approached Noriega with a business proposition. Their association lasted until 1984, when Noriega put an end to Medellin cocaine flights through Panama. That was the year after the US began to target the Medellin cartel.

Noriega was also very busy on behalf of the Contras, and received $200 000 a year under the Reagan administration.

The Double Cross

After 1984 the leadership of the "Guachan"-Chamorro connection collapsed. "Guachan" Gonzalez was indicted in 1984 in Costa Rica. The DEA in Miami opened an investigation of Floyd Carlton's airline, DIACSA, which had been supplying the ARDE Contras. Teofilo Watson was murdered in 1985, Cesar Rodriguez in 1986. "El Negro" Chamorro defected to the ranks of the FDN Contras, along with a majority of the ARDE governing council.

This ending of the Panamanian supply line followed the 1984 take over of Contra management by Oliver North from Duane Clarridge and the termination of US support for the left wing Eden Pastora, who had been its main beneficiary.

With the Panama supply route cut off, two new networks stepped in to supply the Southern Front Contras: that of Columbian Jorges Morales and that of the Miami Cubans Francisco Chanes, Moises Nunez, and Felipe Vidal. Both had been visited by John Hull the year before.

John Hull was a CIA "operational asset". In 1983 he visited Washington, where he met Oliver North and Robert Owen. Owen and Hull then flew to Costa Rica, where they spoke with Alfonso Robelo, a Nicaraguan millionaire based in Costa Rica. Owen was largely responsible for the creation of a new Contra umbrella organisation, the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), in which the dominance of right wing Contras Adolfo Calero and Enriques Bermudez was disguised by the presence of more liberal leaders like Robelo.

Robelo endeared himself to Hull when he led a majority of ARDE's governing council into alliance with the FDN. The. next day, when Pastora called a press conference at the offices of the La Penca newspaper to disavow the defection, a bomb exploded. This event persuaded ranking ARDE member "El Negro" Chamorro to defect to the FDN.

After the defections, Pastora appointed a new second in command, Octaviano Cesar, a CIA agent. Cesar went to trafficker Jorges Morales and arranged for him to supply financial and material support to the ARDE Contras in return for Cesar getting his CIA friends to sort out Morales's 1984 indictment for drug offenses. For a little over a year, Morales arranged arms flights from the USA to John Hull's ranch and other airports, which were paid for by returning cargoes of cocaine. Morales was allowed an extraordinary amount of freedom to travel, despite his indictment, and appears to have had his shipments protected.

In 1985, when the Contra-drug story broke in the American press, Morales was made the scapegoat. Before the story was broken by associated press reporters Brian Barger and Robert Parry, their editorial superiors removed all references to other Contra factions and replaced them with a CIA report attributing drug-financed arms purchases to 'one of Pastora's top commanders'. "Three weeks later, Morales's magical protection vanished. Bahamian police authorities, advised by DEA, seized an 80kg shipment of cocaine that had been flown in from a Costa Rican airport... In the same month... Carlton and DIACSA were indicted"³.Carlton eventually got nine years. His case led to the 1988 indictment of Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking.

The sudden turning on Noriega by the US, the people who had paid and protected him for so long was not just because he was backing the wrong side in the Contra's internal struggle. Cocaine politics is more of a means to an end than an end in itself, and it was over control of the economically crucial Panama Canal that the USA invaded Panama. The American documentary "The Panama Deception" spells out clearly the maneuverings that led to that illegal military occupation.

By the time of the Morales bust, Oliver North had consolidated Contra drugs and arms shipments in the hands of Admiral Richard Secord. Most of the shipments funding ARDE were now coming in through El Salvador instead of Panama. Pastora had become dependent on the Morales operation. After Morales was put out of business, Pastora announced his retirement in 1986.

Morales's indictment did not touch the other network contacted by Hull - that of Frank Castro, Rene Corvo, Moises Nunez and friends, operating through a drug money laundering shrimp company, Frigorificos de Puntarenas. Frigorifico was not about drugs for arms deals, but was a CIA operational asset using CIA trained Cubans. Hull, North and the CIA were using the company to conduct covert maritime operations against Nicaragua, and to funnel narcotics profits to the Contras. This group was also involved in a number of terrorist activities, while enjoying the protection of the US government.

"The protected terrorism of this group in the 1980s (when George Bush was in charge of the War on Drugs and counter terrorist activities) was a prolongation of the protected terrorism of the Frank Castro-Armando Lopez Estrada-Luis Posada Carriles connection in 1976 (when Bush was director of the CIA)"⁴(see Summer 1993 issue).

To briefly summarise: the Argentinean junta and the US government funded the setting up of the Contras to fight the Sandinistas. They set them up with cocaine contacts, so that the Contras would be as self-funding as possible. After the Falklands war, the US tried to back away from the Argentines. This led to the loss of protection for Argentinean drug contacts, many of whom were busted. The traffickers who then took over the supply of the (left-wing) ARDE Contras were busted in 1984, after the right wing extremist Oliver North took over control of the Contras. This hurt the ARDE badly, and led to the defection of many top ARDE members to the right wing FDN faction.

Eden Pastora was set up with an extremely vulnerable coke connection by the CIA. This connection was busted in 1985. The move on Noriega began at that time also, with the indictment of Floyd Carlton. This effectively destroyed ARDE, leaving the FDN Contras in control, and totally untouched by the busts.

The power struggle between the FDN and ARDE was also mirrored in the power struggle of their suppliers, which was outlined in part one of this series. FDN and the Cali cartel were economically, politically and philosophically linked, as were ARDE and Medellin. ARDE and Medellin lost.

When the Iran-Contra-Drug scandal broke, the US government was able to contain the damage. By sacrificing people who has outlived their usefulness (such as Noriega), by sacrificing the traffickers supplying the Southern Front Contras 'while protecting FDN's connections, and by locking up those trying to blow the whistle on the operation (such as Jack Terrel and Jesus Garcia), major figures in the affair have been spared.

Since that time, the role of the CIA and the military in the War on Drugs' has been expanded and military aid to Latin American governments under the guise of Drug Interdiction has increased. The War on Drugs is being increasingly seen as a raison d'etre for the military. Bill Clinton' s administration does appear to be testing the waters for a change in drug policy. Whether the powerful interests that profit from drug prohibition will allow a change is another story. American history shows clearly that even Presidents are not safe when they try to challenge those powers.

endscript

The last few months have seen Pablo Escobar, one of the last remaining important figures of the Medellin cartel still at large, gunned down by Colombian security forces. Escobar had been in hiding for some time from a group established by rival drug traffickers (presumably the Cali cartel, though the name has not appeared in media reports) specifically to kill him. He was finally caught after his family was refused asylum in Germany, fleeing his (and their) would be killers. Telephone calls he made in an attempt to provide for their protection were traced and the Colombian security forces finished off the job' that his business rivals had begun.

Curiously, while Escobar, Ochoa, and Gacha of the relatively new (post 1980) Medellin cartel have become well known names in the media, members of the older, more pervasive, and infinitely better politically connected Cali cartel (Matta, Ocampo, Rivera, Rodriguez Orjuela to name a few) have escaped notice. It is hard to escape the notion that the Medellin cartel have become the fall-guys for the International Narcotics Organisation (INO). A way of diverting attention from the real drug lords.

Equally interesting, while the Cali cartel and the INO are closely linked to right wing regimes and heads of military forces throughout Latin America, Escobar and Medellin are seen as sort of folk heroes by the peasant populations of their home territory. The NZ Herald carried a story on 8/12/93 describing, how Escobar had built a neighborhood, with church and amenities, for homeless people in Medellin.

The Columbian government and others are pleased to crow about his killing. They haven't destroyed the cocaine trade - their biggest export earner. But they have disposed of a political irritation.