Costa Rica country
also: Costa Ricans, Costa Rican, San Jose
Explore in graph → Export claims (CSV) ↓
Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Contrasorganization · 73CIAintelligence service · 66Nicaraguacountry · 53Norwin Menendezperson · 48United Statescountry · 36Hondurascountry · 32Colombiacountry · 24Guatemalacountry · 21Sandalio Sandy Gonzalezperson · 21Panamacountry · 19Joe Kelsoperson · 18Oliver Northperson · 18Sandinistasorganization · 18El Salvadorcountry · 17Horacio Perinaperson · 16Sebastian Gonzalezperson · 15Los Angelesplace · 14Miamiplace · 14Daniel Blantonperson · 13Hugo Spadaforaperson · 13John Hallperson · 13DEAintelligence service · 12Robert Nevesperson · 12Carlos Cabrazaperson · 12
Claims (11)
Legion of September 15 attempted_assassination_of
Costa Rica host_asserted
“They didn't successfully knock out. How they tried it was they tried airdropping drums of napalm onto the station roof thinking that they could burn it down. But the broadcasters, the Argentines had already tried that. So there were beefed …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 9:17
Costa Rica covered_up
John Holliday host_asserted
“That Costa Rica guarded its neutrality in the Nicaraguan War and made some efforts to enforce it. Minimum efforts. Because that's where John Hollis got his ranch and they're flying drugs and weapons through his ranch. And his ranch is in Co…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 46 (48) @ 3:38
Robert Vesco spied_on
Costa Rica documented
“Now, isn't that interesting? That's in 86. And that's when Costa Rica was in the throes of hiding Robert Vesco and facilitating the DEA and CIA running the Contra operation out of Costa Rica. That's where they had set up shop. So Jeb Bush g…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Mafia, CIA & George Bush Part 19 @ 46:14
Israel supplied_arms_to
Costa Rica host_asserted
“We're giving aid to Israel, and Israel's selling guns to the Contras and the Guatemalans and the Costa Ricans and the El Salvadorians and blah, blah, blah, to the point where they're actually setting up arms manufacturing plants in their co…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Angola, Portugal and arms dealers @ 10:33
The Finders member_of
Costa Rica documented
“See if this rings a bell. London, Germany, Bahamas, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Africa, Costa Rica. Huh, that's weird. We've talked about all of those countries. They also had folders that were identified by the word project, followed by some othe…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Medusa File by Craig Roberts Part 4 @ 59:40
Whiting Willauer ambassador_to
Costa Rica host_asserted
“to be the American ambassador to Costa Rica and Honduras. And he is also considered one of the key players in the 1954 operation against Arbenz that we just covered because he was in Honduras, just as a refresher. His specialty was admiralt…”
▶ The Colonel’s CornerSafe for Democracy Part 10 (11) @ 16:57
Brigade 2506 carried_out_attack
Costa Rica host_asserted
“They were not heroes. They were assassins. They were terrorists. They were trained by the CIA to attack people all over the world, not just Cuba. If they had only been isolated to Cuba, that would be one thing. I wouldn't agree with it, but…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Transnational Anticommunism&Cold War Part 10 @ 47:02
United States trafficked
Costa Rica host_asserted
“or the ones done in Costa Rica where we were flying drugs out of and also launching attacks into Nicaragua, or in Panama, the Army School of Americas that Army colonels taught in and taught dictators how to torture their own people, do assa…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Haiti @ 9:44
Costa Rica funded
United States book_quoted
“Control that is exercised over Costa Rica and who claims to be a neutral country and everything we in Dark Alliance, Gary Webb's book found out that Costa Rica is where all of the DEA CIA assets were housed during the Iran Contra Contra ver…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Corporate Coup (Venezuela) Part 8 @ 4:27
United States targeted_for_regime_change
Costa Rica host_asserted
“that were appalled at what the U.S. was doing in Costa Rica and tried repeatedly to stop it. Not with a lot of success because the Costa Rican president was on the take, but there were a lot of legitimate patriots in Costa Rica that were ap…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 17 @ 1:07:41
CIA trafficked
Costa Rica host_asserted
“When they were doing the drugs, flying out of there, that's where the one aircraft that crashed and they found drugs on it actually launched from was Costa Rica. He was also the ambassador to Panama during the early 90s, again, while they'r…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Zaire-Congo 1975-1978 @ 19:40
Mentions (120)
▶ 0:50
We have North America, Central America, and South America as kind of the primary Americas that people normally refer to. And Central America generally is considered Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Belize…
▶ 1:22
understand that area. We're going to be covering basically El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama in depth. What's interesting, Costa Rica kind of plays a sideshow in many of the stories of their neighbors because the CIA o…
▶ 4:54
South of Guatemala and to the west, you have El Salvador. And to the east, you have Honduras. So kind of on the same latitude, you have Honduras and El Salvador kind of as neighbors with Guatemala to the north. Now, no part of El Salvador t…
▶ 5:46
That became very important when we were basically staging coups because we would go into harbors and mine the harbors. We would blockade the coastal area so that they couldn't get supplies. And that's basically one of the ways that we extor…
▶ 6:13
Again, in many cases, we left Costa Rica alone, but we did stage Gladio operations out of the northern border of Costa Rica into Nicaragua. We did the same when we did operations into Panama. So, and keep in mind that Panama, prior to us bu…
▶ 10:33
We're giving aid to Israel, and Israel's selling guns to the Contras and the Guatemalans and the Costa Ricans and the El Salvadorians and blah, blah, blah, to the point where they're actually setting up arms manufacturing plants in their co…
▶ 55:09
according to the man. So again, this is exactly the same pattern. So we want to take over Nicaragua. So we're going to take over Costa Rica. We're going to take over Guatemala. We're going to take over El Salvador. We're going to take over,…
▶ 2:01:27
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening to anybody out in the world. I love you, Colonel Townsend. Oh my gosh. You have given my father hope. He lives in Costa Rica, but his very close friends are in Managua, Nicaragua. And Ortega has…
▶ 2:01:55
And I just wanted to speak to Detu. Detu, te voy a hablar en español. Oye, nací en Costa Rica. Nací en Costa Rica. Nicaragua está en el mismo, mismo lugar que ustedes. Lo sé, lo sé. Está sobre, te los matan. Si los estudiantes te revelan, ¿…
▶ 2:03:12
My grandmother, I discovered, was Mexican. She was actually I just found out something that actually kind of jarred me. And I wanted to tell all of you guys I've been off for a week everywhere because I found out that my grandfather on my g…
▶ 2:05:04
This has nothing to do with the way my bloodline is, but I am very proud of being every kind of mix possible. Thank you. Sapphire, does your dad live in Costa Rica right now? Yes, he does. He loves it. And how is he listening to our...…
▶ 2:07:23
us up. And we've taken that on, we've taken it to heart, and we've spent a tremendous amount of time doing it. So thank you. Colonel, can I add one more thing? I wanted to give you guys good greetings from Costa Rica. The very first country…
▶ 9:44
or the ones done in Costa Rica where we were flying drugs out of and also launching attacks into Nicaragua, or in Panama, the Army School of Americas that Army colonels taught in and taught dictators how to torture their own people, do assa…
▶ 14:49
In Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, coffee planters slowly accumulated capital. They invested in banks and other commercial enterprises and went on to assert a civic and political power, although it eventually was cued, al…
▶ 1:01:19
and then Panama, and then into South America. That's why when you look at those countries, they became critical. Belize is kind of a sideshow off to the east, and El Salvador is basically a sideshow off to the west, which El Salvador kind o…
▶ 1:02:22
Honduras became critical because they were launching operations into Nicaragua, both from Costa Rica, but primarily Honduras. Go ahead, 71. Thank you, Colonel. Hopefully you all can hear me now. Yes, I can hear you. Good deal. Thank you, ev…
▶ 2:08:30
set up all of these terrorist training camps surrounding the entire country. They were in Costa Rica. They were in Guatemala. They were in El Salvador. They were in Honduras and just launched holy hell on these people that just wanted to fr…
▶ 11:43
As October 2009, a project overseen by the USAID, read that as CIA, sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican, and Peruvian young people to Cuba in hopes of ginning up rebellion. The travelers worked undercover, often posing as tourists, and traveled ar…
▶ 18:56
Really valuable intel you can get in a bar. You think? I've seen that over and over and over again. I just went through it with Gary Webb's book about the gathering of intelligence down in Costa Rica at the bar. Which one of Webb's books? T…
▶ 2:00:43
And then there's a whole bunch of Latin America banana growers and problems that they've had with them and Costa Rican pineapples, blah, blah, blah. So there's lots of really bad reports on them and things that they've been involved in that…
▶ 38:18
Sandinistas win the election in Nicaragua and basically begin kicking out United Fruit and everybody else. The entire thing falls apart, and that's Contras. So the Contras get housed over in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. They're flying …
▶ 57:45
in places like El Salvador, Honduras, and basically all over. We found them in Angola. We found them in the Congo. And they've just become paramilitary, being used for Operation Gladio, overthrows, and any other kind of paramilitary act.…
▶ 1:54:24
And I just did a piece today, a very long thread, about the Operation Phoenix program used in Central America between Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica against Nicaragua. I mean, they implemented it to a T. As a matter of fact, I've eve…
▶ 19:11
wanted it blamed on. And it was later revealed that it was actually the American military advisors that had been present at the time of the massacre and that it was the people that the U.S. was supporting that did the massacre. But he serve…
▶ 19:40
When they were doing the drugs, flying out of there, that's where the one aircraft that crashed and they found drugs on it actually launched from was Costa Rica. He was also the ambassador to Panama during the early 90s, again, while they'r…
▶ 0:59
So yesterday we left off with definitely confirming that Lister was involved in the CIA. So we're going to start from there. This is diving back into Costa Rica and their lack of any enforcement. The number of American agents stationed in C…
▶ 1:31
The reconnaissance aircraft spy satellites made routine overflight, photographing all of northern Nicaragua for the Contra War and monitoring Sandinista troop movements in rural airfields where the Contra is used for their supply flights. N…
▶ 3:23
That is how one of many indications that you know the CIA does not work for the American government. Costa Rican law enforcement officials said in interviews that the contingent of DEA agents working from the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica show…
▶ 3:49
A former prosecutor by the name of Jorge Chavarria, who investigated several such cases in the 1980s for their office of investigations, said he was convinced the DEA knew all about the Contras and drugs. All of these flights and pilots wer…
▶ 4:19
That's an actual quote from him. During a 1987 Senate subcommittee hearing, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts told DEA Director John Lawn that, quote, the head of the DEA office in Costa Rica was interviewed by this committee. And he told…
▶ 4:51
Lawn replied, no, sir, I am not. The DEA's position, said Lawn, and his aide, David Westrick, was that there was no credible evidence to support the allegations. The DEA officer in Costa Rica who was questioned by the carry committee, Rober…
▶ 5:20
throughout the entire time of the 1980s. Menendez's appearance in Costa Rica also coincided with the time when his drug network was rendered leaderless, accidentally disrupted by a Costa Rican police investigation. In May of 1984,…
▶ 5:46
Costa Rican Office of Investigations raided the San Jose home of Menendez's business partner, Trulio and Sanchez, whom they suspected as moving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine every month. According to newspaper reports, S…
▶ 6:14
One former Costa Rican contra official, Leonardo Zeledon Rodriguez, told UPI in 1986 that Sanchez was caught in Costa Rica with pillows full of cocaine. Trujillo is a brother-in-law of Adolfo Calero. Both Sanchez and his wife was arrested o…
▶ 8:16
that they had a major dealer in their midst. According to Costa Rican paper, the Office of Investigation Agents had no idea who Purina was the day he put in his unexpected guest appearance at Sanchez's house. Once they made his acquaintance…
▶ 8:45
They quickly learned that Pereira was one of the biggest narco traffickers to have operated in Costa Rica. The newspaper reported that the man behind nearly every major drug trafficking case in Costa Rica since 1981 with connections to Hond…
▶ 9:09
Costa Rican investigation agents listened in on phone calls. They were stunned to find themselves eavesdropping on Costa Rican Contra commanders who were discussing cocaine shipments, drug labs, weapons deliveries, and international politic…
▶ 10:39
Having recently fled Costa Rica after he and the FARN's logistics chief were caught with 600 grams of cocaine in a house in Costa Rica. Gonzalez was overheard calling Pereira from his hideout in Panama, where he had been living under the pr…
▶ 11:11
Gonzalez had worked for the CIA since 1983 as the Panamanian quartermaster for all Costa Rican Contra armies, supplying supplies and deliveries from Noriega's armed forces because they were using Noriega as a drop-off point to supply the Co…
▶ 11:40
to the Contras. According to a 1998 CIA report, Norwin Menendez was known to be involved in drug trafficking activities of Gonzalez. In a 1984 cable from the Costa Rican CIA station to Langley, Menendez said there was another trafficker, Tu…
▶ 12:12
this Sebastian Gonzalez Mendetta in Costa Rica. It was reported that Menendez owned a restaurant, because they all do, in which Gonzalez might have had a financial interest. According to the cable, Menendez, Gonzalez, and Munkle were all we…
▶ 13:38
But we rejected this because Norwin Menendez and Sanchez were involved in drugs. And we didn't want to be involved in drugs. So everybody knows they're involved in drugs. Largely on the strength of the wiretap, Pereira was convicted of drug…
▶ 14:06
The verdict was significant enough to attract the attention of CBS Evening News, which aired a brief report in June of 1986 on Pereira's trial and the undercover taps. The wiretap phones calls show that drug dealers have ties the highest le…
▶ 14:44
Perera never served a day of his sentence. He was released on bail and disappeared. Menendez said his friend was chopped into tiny bits in Guatemala a few years later when he became embroiled in a dispute over a drug debt. The Costa Rican g…
▶ 15:05
and Torrio Sanchez might have been expected to put a crimp in the cocaine trafficking in that small nation. After all, Costa Rica's biggest dealer, Pereira, was out of business. Gonzalez was on the run, and their supplier, Norwin Menendez, …
▶ 15:30
Quote, it was precisely in that period when the transshipment of weapons and drugs grew. A Costa Rican legislative commission reported that. Again, this growth can be traced to a drug ring involving the conference and the CIA.…
▶ 15:54
CIA records and declassified testimony of former CIA officials who oversaw the Contra program in Nicaragua confirm that the intelligence agency began receiving reports of drug trafficking from Edan Pastora's ARDE faction in late 1984. In a …
▶ 21:46
In March of 1984, Cesar and two other contra officials who had close ties to the CIA's ARDE logistics chief, Aldolfo Chamorro, and the Air Force commander, Marcos Awando, met with a major Colombian drug trafficker named George Morales at hi…
▶ 22:44
directly involved in the operations of Contra aircraft. Like Cesar, Acuando was another old friend of Menendez. He was also a close associate of CIA's man in northern Costa Rica, John Hall, who served as the agency's unofficial liaison for …
▶ 23:13
bought up all of that ranch land that installed airstrips in there and was a logistical hub, not only for the weapons trafficking, but for the drug trafficking as well in Costa Rica. Morales, the Colombian trafficker, had supplied a few shi…
▶ 12:11
and had sent armed shipments to the Contras, unquote. That lead wasn't pursued either. While Prosecutor Anderson and FBI agent Auckland were preparing their application for the organized task force, all hell broke loose down in Costa Rica. …
▶ 12:39
They found all kinds of evidence linking North, the White House, and the CIA to illegal Contra resupply activities. Ilopango was exposed and Norse operatives hastily abandoned their airplanes, their barracks, and their safe houses and fled …
▶ 13:09
In December of 1986, Costa Rica's biggest newspaper published an extensive series on Contra connections to drug trafficking there. And one installment focused squarely on Norwin Menendez, describing him as a Contra supporter financier who h…
▶ 13:37
drug agents. Of course, he wasn't hiding from the American drug agents. He was working with them. The story sent the DEA office at the U.S. Embassy into a tizzy. Their top secret informant had just been outed as a major Contra drug traffick…
▶ 14:00
If the Costa Rican government, which was becoming increasingly hostile to the Contras, started poking around, it wouldn't take long to discover that the drug kingpin's special relationship with the U.S. embassy would be exposed. Menendez's …
▶ 14:30
The newspaper, Gonzalez complained, had said Menendez was being investigated by the Costa Rican government and the publicity and the specter of deportation that Menendez was afraid of. He was considering going underground, Gonzalez warned, …
▶ 14:54
which is ridiculous because they already had all the information they were protecting him. On December 21st, without waiting for DEA approval, Menendez and his new partner, longtime CIA agent Roberto, left Costa Rica and flew to the U.S. Of…
▶ 15:46
But it appears there were other factors behind the DEA's sudden urge to insert Menendez and the CIA agent into Blanton's organization. That was to avoid the embarrassment of Menendez falling into the hands of Costa Rican police, and more im…
▶ 20:11
What is most strange about these meetings between contra traffickers and the CIA agent is the fact that FBI agent Doug Auckland, who was supposedly leading the investigation, was never told of them until afterwards. Under Auckland's nose, t…
▶ 22:38
that that was all after they knew they were gone. Other DEA offices also began wondering what the hell their Costa Rica comrades were up to. The San Francisco office cabled Costa Rica complaining that it had no idea who was being targeted b…
▶ 23:06
was sent to DEA headquarters in Washington, inquiring, quote, whether an indictment of Menendez by the San Francisco FBI will result in a national security problem with other agencies, unquote. In other words, mother may I. It must have cau…
▶ 28:51
If he was supposed to be working for the DEA, they wanted him back on the job. In March 1987, Tom Shretner called DEA agent Gonzalez in Costa Rica and told him to send Roberto back to California to infiltrate the Blanton organization again.…
▶ 29:14
Roberto wouldn't come to California without Menendez, and Menendez wouldn't come back as long as the FBI was looking for him. Gonzalez told Schretner that he was so exasperated with Menendez, he had already gotten rid of him as an informant…
▶ 29:43
for several more months. In May, federal prosecutor Crossan Anderson called Gonzalez in Costa Rica and told him to get Mr. CIA to California so he could answer questions. Gonzalez replied that he didn't think Roberto would come, but promise…
▶ 1:02:26
And it goes back to the part of this book in the earlier chapters that we were reading about how Barry Seale landed his plane throughout a bale of cocaine, took a picture in Nicaragua. And then everybody in the CIA controlled media ran with…
▶ 34:15
He says, the author says, in recent developments, the Chiquita Banana International Company, the successor to United Fruit, one of the best known U.S. monopolies, pleaded guilty in March of 2007 to providing $1.7 million in funding over sev…
▶ 9:33
This is exactly what happened with Nicaragua. The U.S. surrounded Nicaragua with Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica and attacked from that ground into Nicaragua. So again, this is not something that's new. These subservient go…
▶ 1:03:38
Those weapons were being ferried out on aircraft down to Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, where all the death squads were, and they all need lots of guns, and they were bringing drugs back on the same aircraft. And then to find an entire …
▶ 3:28
made the most important statement of her diplomatic career on Twitter. Quote, in fulfillment of the diplomatic function assigned by President Juan Guaido and recognition by the Costa Rican government, we assume control of the administrative…
▶ 3:56
attaching an image of herself shooting a blue still gaze past the camera. Behind her, staffers were propped up uncomfortably beside a Venezuelan flag. So, just to clarify, in Costa Rica, which we know based on all of the past exploration of…
▶ 4:27
Control that is exercised over Costa Rica and who claims to be a neutral country and everything we in Dark Alliance, Gary Webb's book found out that Costa Rica is where all of the DEA CIA assets were housed during the Iran Contra Contra ver…
▶ 4:55
the operation in Central America. So they are by no means neutral and they are oftentimes used because of their neutrality as a staging point to run operations out of. So they step right up and announce that they're taking over the embassy …
▶ 5:59
She looked proud of her feet in the image she posted on Twitter. But as the day progressed, that feeling must have given way to humiliation. Within hours of the break-in, Costa Rican's foreign ministry declared the government in San Jose de…
▶ 6:27
of the performance that she posted. Having sufficiently outraged her host country through her unilateral takeover of the Venezuelan embassy, she was forced to cancel a press conference scheduled for later that afternoon, telling reporters s…
▶ 6:57
It was only her first day and she had already been summoned to the principal's office. Though Costa Rica was among a handful of U.S. allied governments that officially recognized Guaido as president of Venezuela, it had given representative…
▶ 7:53
Chavista governor who fled on corruption charges in Venezuela in 2009. So he was actually in Chavez's government and charged with corruption and fled the country. So he's now down in Costa Rica confiscating the Venezuelan embassy. The Minui…
▶ 9:32
So two criminals now. At the time of the elder Faria's prison break, a since-deleted article in the Venezuelan outlet El Nacional reported that the retired colonel had three children, including a daughter who had recently graduated as an ac…
▶ 10:03
as Costa Rican's government said her break-in at the embassy and subsequent tweet violated diplomatic norms of respect and trust in relations in international community. The episode provided the perfect metaphor for Guaido's entire shadow r…
▶ 10:34
That would soon change. The hostile takeover of the Venezuelan embassy in Costa Rica was just the opening act in an all-out assault on Maduro's government. In the days following that incident, U.S. authorities escorted Guaido's officials as…
▶ 46:47
That was overthrown in 1979, O'Neill said. Blanton had been partners with Jareo Menendez in 764 kilos of cocaine that had been seized in Nicaragua for 1991. O'Neill claimed, and he also owned hotels and casinos in Nicaragua with Menendez. H…
▶ 58:26
and Brian Barger of the AP. But they'd run into the same problems. Their stories were either trashed or ignored. There was also two reporters in Costa Rica, a New York Times stringer named Martha Honey and her husband, Tony Averin, an ABC c…
▶ 58:51
in a phony drug charge in Costa Rica, spied on in the States by the FBI and former CIA agents, smeared and financially ruined. I know Bob Perry is still here in Washington somewhere. He did the first stories and was one of the first who see…
▶ 59:20
Why in the world would you want to go back into this? I told him about my discoveries of Menendez and Blanton and the later's cocaine cells in Los Angeles. I wondered if he or anyone had ever reported this. Not that I'm aware of, Perry said…
▶ 7:43
proclaiming an end to the guard which had hunted the rebels mercilessly for more than a decade. Those National Guard officers who could escape poured across the border into El Salvador, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Some of them hid inside the …
▶ 7:36
In an interview with a Costa Rican paper in 1986, Menendez scoffed at his nephew's testimony. He said that his nephew had made it up. Norwin declared, because he refused to bail the boy out after he had gotten arrested, and this is a quote,…
▶ 16:02
The CIA knows a lot of these crooks. I mean, the CIA knows. As it turned out, Swenson was right. A 1998 CIA inspector general report confirmed that as early as 1984, the agency had information tying Menendez to a drug and arms network in Co…
▶ 19:56
I have some 300 DEA reports regarding Mr. Blanton, and the reports relate to activities between approximately 1981 and May of 92. In early 1984, while Blanton's asylum application was under review at State Department, the DEA learned from a…
▶ 30:05
They also found a handwritten note bearing the names of several CIA operatives working with Edan Pastora's Contras in Costa Rica. The document seized from Lister in 1986 largely corroborated his account of his relationship with Blanton and …
▶ 38:25
in the United States in less than four years is no small testament to Blanton's sales and marketing skills. Actually, it had more to do with the need and Ricky Ross than Blanton. After the arrest of his nephew, Herrero and Rinalto Pina, in …
▶ 38:54
and his office building and moving his base of operations to Costa Rica. I went to Costa Rica to see him right after he moved, and I spent about six months on his ranch down there, John Lacombe said, who was a Bay Area friend. He would take…
▶ 39:26
Like Somoza, Blanton, and other wealthy Nicaraguans, Menendez had a home there since the Sandinista takeover. Menendez owned not one house, but several, and large ranches in northern Costa Rica near the war zone because the CIA was using th…
▶ 39:57
Costa Rican president. He was also an informant. The father was an informant for the DEA at some point. Jose Marte Figueres, the older brother of Costa Rica's current president, was accused in 1995 of swindling the Costa Rican state lottery…
▶ 40:29
of none other than Robert Vesco, who we've talked about many times. That was a scheme to nationalize the gasoline distributorships in Costa Rica. Who Norwin Menendez was and what he did for a living was no mystery to Costa Rican police offi…
▶ 41:02
when a confidential informant was debriefed at the U.S. Embassy in San Jose and reported that Menendez was in charge of a major trafficking ring. Six months later, DEA learned that a small cocaine shipment destined for Menendez had been sei…
▶ 41:31
Nicaraguan population that was currently in Costa Rica. A 1985 report stated he was one of the first economic supports for the Contras in Costa Rica. There are rumors that he works as an informant for DEA. It was more than a rumor. It was t…
▶ 41:57
and the DEA may have been the only U.S. government agency in Costa Rica to have availed itself to the drug kingpin services. To hear the DEA tell it, Menendez simply walked into the U.S. embassy in Costa Rica one day, unsolicited, and annou…
▶ 42:56
If Menendez wanted to help the Reagan administration, he'd come to the right place. The U.S. Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica was the nerve center for all of their covert operations in the Contra War. And these included a number of illegal C…
▶ 44:17
whose demise at the hands of Mexican traffickers made him a hero to narcotic agents. Menendez claims he provided information that helped U.S. authorities capture one of the Mexican drug lords involved, Rafael Quintero, at a mansion outside …
▶ 47:05
Contra office in California was a Sandinista sympathizer. Even more suspicious is the fact that DEA made no official record for at least a year that Menendez was one of their informants. The drug kingpin's name didn't show up in any DEA dat…
▶ 48:00
Another result of this unusual arrangement the IG observed was that other DEA offices could not get information on Menendez used by the DEA through the database. In other words, they hid it. One of the biggest and richest cocaine trafficker…
▶ 50:13
Chief of Criminal Investigations for the Nicaragua National Police, believes Menendez was actually working for the CIA in Nicaragua, using his role as a DEA informant as a cover. They used Menendez in Costa Rica basically for money launderi…
▶ 50:44
At the time, Norwin's brother, Jamie Sr., owned a large money-changing business in San Jose. Norwin also had a couple of legitimate business funds that were very useful in laundering cash. Number one on the list, a restaurant. And that rest…
▶ 51:45
The idea of a DEA-CIA swapping agents and providing cover for each other is not hard to believe. The agencies had adjoining offices in the U.S. Embassy in San Jose. DEA agents assigned to Costa Rica in the 80s told Justice of having a great…
▶ 52:15
supplied with intelligence on armed smuggling by any of the Salvadoran people that were fighting back against the death squad regime. Because, of course, that's the one you want to keep track of. Not the death squads, the ones fighting back…
▶ 53:12
Indeed, neither of the two DEA country attaches in Costa Rica from 80 to 85 could recall any specific drug trafficking information passed to them by the CIA. And in the case of the one guy, if he was in the field and he found it, like in El…
▶ 56:37
Sanchez told CIA inspectors that while Menendez was living in Costa Rica, he was dealing drugs for the Contras, an activity that seemed starkly at odds with the main function of a DEA informant. Even Menendez's handler, Sandy Gonzalez, susp…
▶ 58:29
his friends that he worked for the CIA and was immune from prosecution. Whatever its source, Menendez obviously had some kind of protection while he was in Costa Rica. In 1984, his drug dealing was well known to the CIA and DEA and even the…
▶ 58:58
arrested or expelled. And there were lots of Nicaraguans, normal Nicaraguans, that lived there that was deported for other infractions, not nearly as significant as Menendez's. Perhaps the strongest indicator of his true function is that so…
▶ 59:28
who had just got there from Europe. Like Norwin, the CIA man was in Costa Rica posing as an informant for the DEA. Agent Gonzalez told Justice Department inspectors in 1997 that Menendez's CIA sidekick, whom the drug lord introduced to othe…
▶ 1:00:00
Why a CIA agent with a long background in Europe surfaced in Costa Rica to be teamed up with the largest drug smuggler is not addressed in any version of the Department of Defense's IG report. The declassified CIA IG report never even menti…
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would help keep the kingpin under control. How's that even possible? It's basically just inserting him back into his old job. Much of the information the DEA and CIA picked up from Menendez and the Contra dealings in Costa Rica centered aro…
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rural landing strips, and easily bribed government officials. According to a special Costa Rican legislative commission, during 1984 and 85, the area served as a headquarters for an organization made up of Panamanians, Colombians, Costa Ric…
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from Colombia. That drug ring, which was being ran with the help of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, worked closely with the Contras. Specifically, use was made of the same landing strips in Costa Rica areas with the Contras. The gasolin…
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So I'm wondering whether or not these folks are involved in some given point, too. Well, you know, what's funny is just a little bit. I mean, obviously, we've done a lot of research, but within the first six months, we figured out how they …
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I wish they had just like Smith and Jones names. In September 1985, they found everything but his head. The rest of him had been tied up in a U.S. mail sack and dumped under a bridge at the border of Costa Rica and Panama. His body bore evi…
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a brigade of jungle fighters. It was called the Brigada Internacional Simón Bolivar in support of Pastora's southern forces. After the Sandinistas became too oppressive for Pastora's liking, he joined the CIA and took over the command of th…
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moved to Costa Rica to take up arms with Pastora once again, this time against his old Marxist comrades. The Reagan administration's Contra PR machine couldn't have dreamed up a better freedom fighter than Spadafora. The DEA called him repo…
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which may be the reason the Times sidestepped the issue involved drugs in the CIA. When Noriega's goons hauled Spadafora off a bus at a Pandemanian border, he was on his way to Panama City, where he intended to publicly release information …
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I had agreed or made a plan with Mr. Watson to steal the drugs, Carlton said. Carlton suspected that the Costa Rican Contra leader, Sebastian Gonzalez, and his strange M3 Contra group had done Watson in, leading him into an ambush at an air…
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on whose ranch the theft supposedly had taken place. Hall ransomed the girl back unharmed and blamed it on the communists, i.e. the Sandinistas. After that, Carlton bolted Central America altogether and took refuge in Miami, the U.S. headqu…