Managua place
Explore in graph → Export claims (CSV) ↓
Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Nicaraguacountry · 17Norwin Menendezperson · 15Anastasio Somozaperson · 13Nicaraguan National Policeorganization · 12Sandinistasorganization · 11Enrique Miranda Jamieperson · 8Miamiplace · 7Roger Mayorgaperson · 6CIAintelligence service · 5George Hodelperson · 5Costa Ricacountry · 5United Statescountry · 4Contrasorganization · 4Colombiacountry · 4San Franciscocountry · 4Frank Virgilperson · 3Edmundo Menendezperson · 3Carlos Cabezasperson · 3Los Angelesplace · 3Sandinista Revolutionevent · 3DEAintelligence service · 2Enrique Bermudezperson · 2Rene Vivasperson · 2Orlando Morelloperson · 2
Claims (2)
Alianza Revolucionaria Democrática carried_out_attack
Managua documented
“Eden Pastora sponsored an air raid on Managua on September 8, 1983. Two planes bombed the airport, one flying so low it disintegrated in the blast of its own bombs. Two ARDE airmen were killed. Two U.S. senators, whom Bill Casey had encoura…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 44 (46) @ 53:31
Edmundo Menendez secretly_owned
Managua host_asserted
“Nicaraguan hotels that allow patrons to drive their cars into shielded carports so they can't be seen walking into hotel rooms. Some hideaways are usually used for hookers and mistress. However, they had learned this particular one was used…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 22 @ 1:06:15
Mentions (59)
▶ 1:05:25
The girlfriend said she thought he was in jail in Nicaragua. In the Chronicle clip I found noted that he'd been arrested in 91. Maybe, I hope, the Nicaraguans locked their drug lords up longer than we did. I was put in touch with a freelanc…
▶ 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 …
▶ 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 …
▶ 51:19
and money, according to a DEA report. Southern Air, of course, was owned by the CIA. Miranda testified that he met CIA pilot Aguardo for dinner at Menendez's mansion in Managua in 1991, where Aguardo regaled them with tales of flying for th…
▶ 1:04:12
the night before a crucial vote to provide aid to the Contras. See, we're just fighting the drug dealers. No, you are the drug dealers. That picture secretly taking at a military airfield outside of Managua shows Frederico Vaughn, a top aid…
▶ 1:06:41
Committee Chairman William Hugley of New Jersey told reporters that the subcommittee staff recently called Vaughn's number in Managua, Nicaragua, and spoke to a domestic employee who said the home belonged to the U.S. Embassy personnel. The…
▶ 36:23
was an influential Nicaraguan economist who had been appointed by President Somoza to be the central bank of Nicaragua, which basically functions as the Federal Reserve. The banker was also the official representative to two Swiss banks loc…
▶ 59:23
He had 12 aliases. He had houses all over the San Francisco Bay Area. He had a mansion in Managua. Mentioned in 32 DEA investigations, some as far back as 1974. A couple of classified files from 1976. Bringing cocaine in from Colombia, Cost…
▶ 9:45
Contra here in Miami, working in Miami since 1980. He confirmed that he got here just before the revolution and had acquaintances.…
▶ 16:07
It was an elegant restaurant and became a hangout for the Contras. They also conducted seminars in the back room. The Miami Herald lightheartedly described the cuisine as Contra cooking from ex-Samosa General Gustavo Medina. Another story n…
▶ 35:31
Sandinista arms from Panama to revolutionary groups throughout Central America, and that he had helped the Sandinistas design a sting of secret arms caches in and around Managua, which basically amounted to CIA stay-behind units. They had s…
▶ 1:00:55
and relegated himself to helping the DEA tail Blanton, surveilling his meetings with the Torres brothers. I actually had a better case against him if it would have come about, Hodge said. I think they just let him run. In stark contrast to …
▶ 1:03:21
and the Mexican police told him about their arrest, which they said resulted from a DEA tip. Mayorga might want to look into it, they suggested, because he could have a drug ring operating in Managua. When Mayorga learned who owned the van …
▶ 1:04:17
He was very nervous and denied everything. At that point, I decided to focus our investigation on him. Miranda unwittingly led the police to Frank Virgil, the former advertising man who allegedly dealt cocaine with Blanton in Los Angeles in…
▶ 1:04:46
had just formed a new company in Managua in partnership with the major Colombian drug trafficker, Hector Roman Caravalle. Mayorga saw from the incorporation paperwork of the company, called PZPSA, that it had been put together by a prominen…
▶ 1:05:47
You're not going to believe this. Plan to operate fishing boats to export seafood to Taiwan. Nothing screams drug trafficking like fishing boats, especially going to Taiwan. Miranda was also seen making trips to a hotel in the hills overloo…
▶ 1:10:17
No one else in government, especially not the DEA, would be informed about anything. Their agents were sworn to secrecy and was given little advance notice of any operation. The precautions paid off. On Sunday morning in early November 1991…
▶ 1:13:56
prison outside of Managua to personally take charge of Menendez's interrogation. He found the trafficker relaxed, almost smug. He said he wasn't worried about me because he had the backing of a much higher superpower, Vivas recalled. He sai…
▶ 1:15:49
Managua drug traffickers who were in the process of bringing 725 kilos of cocaine into his country. And why hadn't the Nicaraguan police been informed? Villarreal simply lied, denying that he had met with the drug kingpin, even though there…
▶ 1:21:01
a letter to deliver to the U.S. Embassy addressed to two American officials, asking them to intercede with the Chamorro government. The sources were unaware if the letter was answered. The DEA denies there was any such plan, but those denia…
▶ 1:24:06
Miranda also testified that I also took part in meetings with Norwin Menendez and Bermudez, discussed the possibility of using the army to send drug loads to the U.S. and Europe. But those plans were truncated by Bermudez's sudden death. An…
▶ 22:32
If I would leave Blanton's DEA ties out of the story. But unfortunately, my colleague in Nicaragua, George Hodel, beat them to the punch. He had found the massive files of Menendez's 1992 court case in the Nicaraguan Supreme Court and had t…
▶ 25:27
Had been running interference for Gary with the other editors until I got somewhat nailed down all of this information. But it seems pretty solid. We need to get to Menendez before the DEA does. So if you want to go ahead and set up intervi…
▶ 25:57
He waited a week, then hopped in his car and drove to the prison where Miranda was being held. A nervous prison official informed him that Miranda was not available. Why not, George asked. Well, the official stammered out, unfortunately, he…
▶ 26:57
George's discovery was front page news in all of Managua's papers. An official investigation was launched. He supposedly escaped the same day I made the interview request, George said. My sources tell me he's in Miami and they say the DEA i…
▶ 27:19
George's sources would later prove to have been well informed. Miranda was captured a little over a year later in December 1996 in Miami, where he was living with his wife. It emerged that he had gained entry with the help of a visa from th…
▶ 16:06
By early June 1979, Managua's airport was jammed with people trying to get out. Hundreds of Nicaraguans struggled daily to leave. They couldn't find a flight. The situation here is, so hold on. On the Panama's radio, it was reported the sit…
▶ 16:36
Departures from the country by land or by sea were impossible because of the dangers of raids. The Danilo Blanton managed to figure out how to get out because he was part of the group. Blanton's father, Julio, owned the land on which was bu…
▶ 17:41
Inner city people live in Los Angeles, one person said, despite the fact that they were one of the richest families in Nicaragua. The Blantons were social friends with Somoza and shared common business interests. Julio Blanton and Somoza we…
▶ 18:38
were stalwarts of the Somoza's Liberal Party. The Morellas had provided leadership for the National Assembly for generations. Orlando Morella's father had been the Assembly's president, and Chapita Blanton's father had been Managua's mayor.…
▶ 20:03
It paid for his master's degree in business administration at the University of Columbia at Bogota. The National Guardsmen and Sandinista rebels were shooting each other in the streets. By June 11, things had gone so far, so far gone for So…
▶ 20:35
in what was Sandinista-held territory. Circling airplanes would drop 500-pound bombs or flaming gasoline barrels into the area. On the edge of the town, a National Guard tank had rolled up outside of one of the buildings and pumped round af…
▶ 3:32
In the Contra Revolution organization, you know, the one Blanton's actually sending money down to that he's intimately involved in. And for some reason, he has no clue why this guy wants to talk to him because he's the guy that they're send…
▶ 6:01
El Tigre Medina, the counterinsurgency expert who'd ravaged the northern mountains routing out the Sandinistas. Medina was head of G4, the officer in charge of all supplies for the National Guard at the end of the war. He fled Managua with …
▶ 10:55
who also headed up investigations for the Nicaraguan National Police Narcotics Unit. Mayorga says the drug kingpin's association with the Colombians began after a plane full of marijuana made an emergency landing at a ranch owned by Somoza.…
▶ 11:24
In Samosa's Nicaragua, the Managua Police Department was a branch of the National Guard because, of course, they were. The National Guard officer who commanded the Managua police for many years was Colonel Edmundo Menendez Cantario, Norwin'…
▶ 12:56
Menendez commanded the National Guard garrison at another large city and a commercial and cultural center not far from Managua. The family's long ties to the National Guard and its history of basically being a death squad and terror organiz…
▶ 16:28
Those campaigns killed key members of the Sandinistas and crippled the guerrilla movement for years. Later, Somoza gave Mundo the National Guard Choices Plum control of the Managua police, a perch from which a man was so inclined, if he was…
▶ 17:28
had in his military career. Then he retired, and they made him a diplomat. He's a mafia guy. Under Mundo's watchful eye, Managua became an open city for Brother Norwin, who by the late 1970s owned discotheques, VIP clubs, drive-in whorehous…
▶ 17:59
I'm the chief police and my brother's going to run all the vice. That's sweet. Norwin ran all of the rackets for the National Guard. And remember, his brother's the chief of police. San Francisco cocaine trafficker Rafael Cornejo, who had w…
▶ 21:51
According to press reports, Norwin first tried to get the annoying inspector off his tail by setting him up with an attractive woman in a Managua hotel in order to blackmail him. The woman, Pamela Castoni, then went to the police claiming t…
▶ 22:48
Whoever it was in the alley shot Reyes three times in the stomach and throat, but he didn't complete the job. Bleeding profusely, the inspector was taken to the emergency room at the hospital in Managua. As he lied wringing on a cot, the dy…
▶ 29:32
Menendez had homes in Florida and Alabama. He said, but he spent most of his time in neither of those homes, but in San Francisco, where all the cocaine was being distributed. He started buying up property there in 1978. After the Sandinist…
▶ 34:48
He'd been turning up in law enforcement files with some regularity for over 20 years. In 1968, he was suspected of murdering a money launderer in Managua and Nicaraguan authorities asked the CIA and FBI to search for him in San Francisco, w…
▶ 57:00
Frank Vigel is a Contra supporter who had worked as a public relations director for Menendez in one of his nightclubs in Managua. Though he admits being in Los Angeles in the 1980s, he denies traveling with Blanton. Blanton…
▶ 26:11
after Edmundo Menendez was assassinated. And we went over his assassination in the last chapter. Another Sanchez brother, Troilo, had been one of Norwin's friends and business partners in Managua. And yet another brother, Enrique, was partn…
▶ 27:37
Adolfo Calero, the former manager of Coca-Cola in Managua. He worked closely with Aristide Sanchez. Oliver North later called Sanchez the Calero's hatchet man. Though the FDN would change and merge with other groups over the years, Bermuda'…
▶ 42:26
In Pakistan slash city of London slash Luxembourg that grew to be the seventh largest corrupt bank in the world. Bank of America gave them their seed money to start. So weird that this guy started working at Bank of America. He also got pro…
▶ 43:00
He then took that opportunity to get a law degree. So he's an accountant. He's a pilot and a lawyer in Nicaragua. So he sets up a practice. But the very next year after he got his law license, the Sandinistas were on the outskirts of Managu…
▶ 43:29
He was happy to defend the Somoza government. Near the end of the war, when the guard was desperately striking out at every perceived enemy, Cabeza took part in the terror bombing of the city of Macea, something he didn't like talking about…
▶ 1:01:27
Troilo Sanchez had been a partner of Menendez in one of the Norwood's nightclub in Managua. So they'd known each other for a very long time and was good friends with Somoza. A pilot, Sanchez, said he flew for the CIA in the early 60s for th…
▶ 1:02:34
had also been a business partner of Menendez before the revolution. Menendez said that they owned cattle and ranches together and that they had known each other since they were children. Pereira had owned the gambling clubs in Managua under…
▶ 42:21
We need you to be part of our PR group. Sinico formed a small organization called United Support Against Communism in the Americas. He and his friends held local meetings to publicize the plight of the Contras. Sinico said he had never met …
▶ 40:58
Patrick Moynihan from New York. A year later, the leak of an estimate predicting on how long Managua could hold out brought anger to the administration that they were aiming to overthrow the Sandinistas. Congress went so far as to pass a pr…
▶ 42:25
At the Tegu safe house from which he ran the war, Ray Doty told the party that his project focused solely on the interdiction of arms traffic, but the wall map displayed Contra maneuvers far into Nicaragua, nowhere near El Salvador, which s…
▶ 49:16
Israeli aid was far greater in what would be called Operation Tripped Kettle. In 1983, Tel Aviv furnished $10 million worth of equipment captured in Lebanon from the PLO the previous year, supposedly. The La Jolla, California company called…
▶ 53:04
not the least of which was the main base, Aquacate. The Contra Air campaign did not amount to much harassment rather than real interdiction, because they're really just flying drugs and weapons. Managua was raided a few times, once with key…
▶ 53:31
Eden Pastora sponsored an air raid on Managua on September 8, 1983. Two planes bombed the airport, one flying so low it disintegrated in the blast of its own bombs. Two ARDE airmen were killed. Two U.S. senators, whom Bill Casey had encoura…
▶ 54:00
fell in the bombing. Democrat Gary Hart from Colorado and Republican William Cohen from Maine, their plane late were in the air en route to Managua as the attack happened. Had the airliner been on time, they would have been at the Managua a…