Nicaraguan National Police organization
also: Nicaraguan police, national police, Managua Police Department, Managua police
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Anastasio Somozaperson · 26Nicaraguacountry · 21Sandinistasorganization · 16Norwin Menendezperson · 14United Statescountry · 13Managuaplace · 12Roger Mayorgaperson · 7Enrique Bermudezperson · 7Edmundo Menendezperson · 7DEAintelligence service · 5U.S. Congressorganization · 5Colombiacountry · 4U.S. State Departmentorganization · 4Jimmy Carterperson · 3Legion of September 15organization · 3Guatemalacountry · 3Oscar Reyes Zelayaperson · 3Frank Virgilperson · 3CIAintelligence service · 3Rene Vivasperson · 3Contrasorganization · 2Washington, D.C.place · 2Sally Sheltonperson · 2U.S. Customs Departmentorganization · 2
Claims (14)
Enrique Bermudez member_of
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“revolutionaries blasted a rocket propelled grenade in a hail of m16 fire into samosa's mercedes-benz killing samosa and splattering pieces of him all over the inside of his german automobile another visit peleus made with happier results wa…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 35:29
Enrique Bermudez member_of
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“Bermudez had been the deputy commander of the infantry company Somoza sent to support the U.S.-led invasion of the Dominican Republic. So this is a coup that the CIA staged in the Dominican Republic. So he was a very known quantity to have …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 36:55
Nicaraguan National Police carried_out_attack
Menendez Drug Bust documented
“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…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 22 @ 1:10:17
Gustavo León de la Cruz headed
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“that northern rural areas was the stomping grounds of an especially efficient National Guard general by the name of Gustavo El Tigre Medina, who would later play an important role in Danielle Blanton's life. Medina was Somoza's top counteri…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 10:41
CIA funded
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“How does that help Americans? Unquote. The training programs have provided us. This is the response. The training programs have provided us with useful instruments for exercising political as well as professional influence over the National…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 14:11
Enrique Bermudez recruited
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“on the CIA's payroll. He began traveling widely, gauging the sentiment of the vanquished National Guardsmen, like basically trying to recruit them all back into their former role, many of which were hiding inside the United States. But also…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 40:26
Legion of September 15 member_of
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“Bermudez would move there and become their commander. They were actually a terrorist group. Made up mostly of former National Guard officers who had escaped from Nicaragua at the end of the war, the Legionnaires had a safe house in Guatemal…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 41:26
Gustavo Leòn Fierro member_of
Nicaraguan National Police host_asserted
“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 …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 4 @ 6:01
Edmundo Menendez member_of
Nicaraguan National Police host_asserted
“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'…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 4 @ 11:24
Nicaraguan National Police supplied_arms_to
Nicaragua documented
“the Somoza's National Guard. It had power over every part of your everyday life in Somoza's Nicaragua. Nicaragua is one of the few countries we are aware of in which all arms shipments that go into the country, whether they're sporting good…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 4 @ 13:55
Norwin Menendez trafficked
Nicaraguan National Police documented
“just as the dying inspector had claimed. In 1986, federal prosecutors in San Francisco debriefed Edmundo Menendez's son, Herrero, who informed them that during the Somoza regime, Norwin Menendez smuggled weapons, silencers, and video equipm…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 4 @ 24:17
Roger Mayorga member_of
Nicaraguan National Police host_asserted
“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.…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 4 @ 10:55
Oscar Danilo Blandón funded
Nicaraguan National Police host_asserted
“One of his firms had a lucrative contract to supply American food to the Nicaraguan National Guard. And the Nicaraguan National Guard is kind of a misnomer. It's basically the control mechanism for Samosa to control the entire country. They…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 3:51
Nicaraguan National Police installed
Anastasio Somoza host_asserted
“They are a national police force. You cannot think of them as being part of a military like we think about our National Guard. They are literally the jackboots that kept Somoza in power. So he basically is making money off of providing them…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 4:17
Mentions (64)
▶ 1:07:15
One September evening, Mrs. Menendez drove to a restaurant near her house called the Lobster Inn. A few minutes later, DEA agent Federico Varela arrived. Hot on the heels was Norwin Menendez. To the shock of the Nicaraguan police, Varel was…
▶ 1:09:47
and were trying to infiltrate the Nicaraguan National Police. Mayorga went to see his boss, Nicaraguan National Police Commander Rene Vivas, who shared his concerns. Checking with sources in Costa Rica, they learned that Menendez and Villar…
▶ 1:11:15
kind of bundled up to fit into these compartments underneath of blankets. In an abandoned military bunker, they found more kilos packed in air conditioners and television boxes that had the address of Menendez's auto hotel. In all, the Nica…
▶ 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…
▶ 1:17:47
They're not in bed with the new non-Sandinista government. That the DEA was going to use Menendez to set those guys up that were from the former Sandinista regime to get them out of office. That's why Menendez was being so smug about it. He…
▶ 1:19:06
Miranda repaid it in kind. He started talking. He used Norwin's cooperation with the DEA to get Miranda to cooperate with us. Combining the information provided by Miranda, Valerio, and Menendez, the Nicaraguan police pieced together a pict…
▶ 1:20:03
He offered to provide the protection of the Sandinista military. Arcee admitted that Menendez had come to see him but denied he was making any drug deals. Menendez's lawyers, who tried unsuccessfully to force Arcee to testify, dug up eviden…
▶ 1:27:35
Almost single-handedly, an underpaid middle-aged Nicaraguan policeman had in 18 months done something that the entire U.S. government, with all of its bike satellites, international wiretapping, and an army of drug agents, had never been ab…
▶ 1:28:05
the Nicaraguan National Police Commander, Vivas. Roger Mayorga, who by then had begun looking into Danielle Blanton's relationship with Menendez's drug ring and its money laundering in Central America, was fired too. Menendez, meanwhile, wa…
▶ 3:51
One of his firms had a lucrative contract to supply American food to the Nicaraguan National Guard. And the Nicaraguan National Guard is kind of a misnomer. It's basically the control mechanism for Samosa to control the entire country. They…
▶ 4:17
They are a national police force. You cannot think of them as being part of a military like we think about our National Guard. They are literally the jackboots that kept Somoza in power. So he basically is making money off of providing them…
▶ 8:38
fired all of the covert agents and cut off aid to anyone that was running death squads or, you know, like the National Guard killing everybody. So that's what happened in Nicaragua. Instead of covering up and downplaying the brutality of So…
▶ 9:14
That's a bad thing. Complaining publicly that the longtime dictator was too much of a dictator and that his National Guard was wantonly killing people, which in fact they were. In 1977, some of Congress had begun wondering why the U.S. cont…
▶ 9:44
if Congress had simply cut off the aid to Nicaragua. Under Secretary of State Lucy Benson replied, I cannot find a single thing. Somoza told his National Guard to ease up on the rough stuff. And miraculously, complaints immediately began to…
▶ 10:11
that the Carter administration had backed off, President Samosa is known to have instructed the National Guard on several occasions to eliminate abuses which led to many of the charges of their extra-legal killings and torture, particularly…
▶ 10:41
that northern rural areas was the stomping grounds of an especially efficient National Guard general by the name of Gustavo El Tigre Medina, who would later play an important role in Danielle Blanton's life. Medina was Somoza's top counteri…
▶ 12:07
from other countries saw things in much more graphic terms than the Americans. They spoke to a mother who told of picking up the body parts in the dust to reassemble her five-year-old daughter after the daughter was hit by an air-to-ground …
▶ 13:09
had never seen a doctor except, see if this sounds familiar, when the doctor was called in to adjust the voltage of electricity during torture sessions. Sound familiar? It should. In the Northern Mountains, the team concluded that 338 peasa…
▶ 13:41
of them were never seen again, they had been disappeared. Sounds very familiar. The missing peasant farmers were appropriated by members of the National Guard. When the State Department went to Congress for more money to support Somoza, one…
▶ 14:11
How does that help Americans? Unquote. The training programs have provided us. This is the response. The training programs have provided us with useful instruments for exercising political as well as professional influence over the National…
▶ 14:39
The congressman said, I know. We have been doing that for the last 20 or 30 years. Between the National Guard, because the National Guard had such a tight lock on the country, it was considered invincible. And it might have been had the Car…
▶ 15:12
except distance themselves from Somoza and his human rights abuses. When it became obvious to the Nicaraguan people that they would no longer live under Somoza rule, the American plan for dealing with the crisis boiled down to dump Somoza a…
▶ 18:11
Several generations. Blanton's mother was from the Reyes family, which had an illustrious history in the Somoza regime. His grandfather was Colonel Reyes, former minister of war and the commander of the National Guard. Dinello's in-laws, th…
▶ 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…
▶ 31:10
They would talk about developments in Nicaragua. Blanton later told the CIA, other members of the group also opposed Somoza and the Sandinista regime. They simply came together to share common experiences and discuss their mutual desires to…
▶ 33:40
a violent brand of former National Guard men that were based in Guatemala. The Legion was a terrorist organization started by former Samosan bodyguards soon after Samosa's fall. It was to become the hard core at the center of the FDN after …
▶ 35:29
revolutionaries blasted a rocket propelled grenade in a hail of m16 fire into samosa's mercedes-benz killing samosa and splattering pieces of him all over the inside of his german automobile another visit peleus made with happier results wa…
▶ 36:02
Bermudez to see if Bermudez would be willing to lead the new resistance force that can be put together. He was a logical choice to be the Contra's military commander of all of the former officers of the National Guard. He probably had the b…
▶ 37:57
to the American military. The Americans thought so highly of him that he was one of the National Guard officers they recommended to head the National Guard during the final days of Somoza's reign. The State Department considered Bermudez a …
▶ 38:28
for the National Guard's human rights violations, the tortures, the disappearance, and the bombings, except that he'd actually been part of all of that, to include overthrowing the Dominican Republic government. But we didn't know that, so …
▶ 40:26
on the CIA's payroll. He began traveling widely, gauging the sentiment of the vanquished National Guardsmen, like basically trying to recruit them all back into their former role, many of which were hiding inside the United States. But also…
▶ 41:26
Bermudez would move there and become their commander. They were actually a terrorist group. Made up mostly of former National Guard officers who had escaped from Nicaragua at the end of the war, the Legionnaires had a safe house in Guatemal…
▶ 45:35
and made two contributions to the Nicaraguans, one for $40,000 and one for $80,000. Written underneath the amounts was the name and telephone number of Colonel Ricardo Lau, L-A-U, a former intelligence and security officer for the National …
▶ 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 …
▶ 6:53
And just so that you guys know, this is the typical front for CIAs, restaurants and investment companies. Not making any allegations, but that is a pattern. Other partners included former Colonel Ario Samariba, head of the G1 for the Guard.…
▶ 10:26
According to Nicaraguan police officials, Menendez's relationship with the drug lords of Colombia began during the marijuana era in the 70s. And the story they tell of his first big deal was illustrative of his way of doing business. A guy …
▶ 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'…
▶ 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'…
▶ 11:55
came to an understanding with the Colombians who own the aircraft. Mayorga said the pilots in the aircraft were allowed to leave, but the load of marijuana remained behind as quote-unquote evidence. Somehow the evidence got turned over to t…
▶ 12:27
in creating Menendez's criminal empire can't be overstated. The National Guard, which when one researches it, called one of the most totally corrupt military establishments in the world. And we trained them, by the way. It was permeated wit…
▶ 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…
▶ 13:25
was anti-Sandinista to the death. It is a hate that seems almost genetically ancestral. The National Guard wasn't just an army. It had its hands in everything. If the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, and the IRS, the Army, the Air Force, the Marines,…
▶ 13:55
the Somoza's National Guard. It had power over every part of your everyday life in Somoza's Nicaragua. Nicaragua is one of the few countries we are aware of in which all arms shipments that go into the country, whether they're sporting good…
▶ 14:26
when she testified in front of Congress in 1978. We have been shipping hunting equipment, for example. They are in effect purchased by the National Guard and then resold if they don't use it themselves. The stunned congressman said, say tha…
▶ 14:58
It is more of an accounting procedure, she told him. But everybody laughed. But the pervasive corruption of the National Guard was no laughing matter in Nicaragua to the Nicaraguans. Gambling, alcoholism, drugs, prostitution, and every vice…
▶ 15:27
Nicaraguan's Roman Catholic bishops complained in a letter to Somoza about this very thing. Quote, widespread corruption continues unchecked and public scandals further undermine the confidence in the morale of the people, unquote. To many,…
▶ 15:57
was closest to Edmundo. He was known as Mundo, for short, who was one of his favorite generals. In 1960, Mundo, who'd been trained in irregular warfare by the School of Americas in Panama, you know, that's probably why they call it a death …
▶ 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…
▶ 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…
▶ 16:59
When it came to making profit off of any vice, quote, you have to realize that you did a lot of things in your career in the National Guard and you progressed up through the ranks. So you might have been a lot of things, unquote, explained …
▶ 16:59
When it came to making profit off of any vice, quote, you have to realize that you did a lot of things in your career in the National Guard and you progressed up through the ranks. So you might have been a lot of things, unquote, explained …
▶ 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…
▶ 17:28
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…
▶ 18:31
down in Managua where he would spend weekends partying with the Menendez brothers. You'd walk down the street with Mundo and everyone would salute you. We went riding around in Jeeps, you know, guys with big guns everywhere around us. It wa…
▶ 19:30
spent much of his career with that organization and was one of its lead torturers. Former Managuan police chief, Rene Vaness, an early member of the Sandinista government, said Norwell Menendez infiltrated any group that the government want…
▶ 21:01
When Mundo and the National Guard as his protectors, Norwin appears to have literally gotten away with murder. In the spring of 1977, Norwin found himself under investigation by the chief inspector of the Customs Department. A particularly …
▶ 21:31
which was using the National Guard to import stolen American cars into Nicaragua and then selling them to various people in the Somoza government. Importing cars through the National Guard allowed the buyer to evade tariffs the Nicaraguan g…
▶ 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…
▶ 26:08
that it may have triggered his heart attack in July of 1977, after which he went off to the U.S. to recuperate. Edmundo soon left the police department and was promoted to brigadier general and retired from the National Guard. Somoza sent h…
▶ 26:08
that it may have triggered his heart attack in July of 1977, after which he went off to the U.S. to recuperate. Edmundo soon left the police department and was promoted to brigadier general and retired from the National Guard. Somoza sent h…