Democratic Force of Nicaragua organization
also: Contra, Nicaraguan Democratic Force
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Contrasorganization · 8Nicaraguacountry · 7Sandinistasorganization · 7Enrique Bermudezperson · 7United Statescountry · 6Ronald Reaganperson · 5CIAintelligence service · 5El Salvadorcountry · 4Hondurascountry · 4Felix Rodriguezperson · 4Aristide Sanchezperson · 3Southern Air Transportorganization · 3Los Angelesplace · 3Legion of September 15organization · 3Norwin Menendezperson · 3Joseph Fernandezperson · 3Daniel Blantonperson · 2Guatemalacountry · 2Miamiplace · 2National Security Councilorganization · 2Rob Owensperson · 2Soviet Unioncountry · 2James Earl Rayperson · 2William Caseyperson · 2
Claims (29)
Jerry Atkins covered_up
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“Owen found no FDN weapons. The two CIA liaison men knew nothing of weapons and the Contra representatives simply shrugged in ignorance. Owen went to the CIA chief of base, Jerry Atkins, who refused to call the Honduran station chief and get…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 36:48
CIA funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented
“that the CIA moved to make its sponsorship of the FDN official. President Reagan was presented with a document known as the National Security's Decision Directive No. 17, which served as a blueprint for the United States government to overt…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 29:01
CIA funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“And they don't do anything about it. And then they act stupid when they have the Contra hearings like it's the first time they've heard any of it. The Contra hearings, like every other congressional committee, is a kabuki dance. 100%. From …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 32:02
Argentina funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“The Nicaraguans from Bermudez needing several hundred dollars for the rent of a safe house to a foot soldier on leave in the capital asking for a couple of bucks to go see a movie. It had to come from an Argentinian general. This is a quote…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 35:31
Joseph Fernandez supplied_arms_to
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“from the CIA that's not involved. Station Chief Joe Fernandez had been involved since March of 85. Fernandez now used his KL-45 to report the success of the L-100 deliveries to the Southern Front. Ambassador Tams knew that Fernandez had the…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 38:42
Joseph Fernandez funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“Some of this might be permitted by the 1985 Intelligence Authorization Act, which allowed cooperation with the Contras. But Fernandez went well beyond that to the point of basically supplying all the support to include weapons into the Cont…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 39:36
Ronald Reagan funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“The request in February of 86 was for $100 million, and it was supposed to be transferred from the Pentagon budget. Anybody wondering where all that missing money from the Pentagon went? Bill Casey personally participated, presiding over th…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 43:33
Oliver North laundered_money_for
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“Elliott Abrams. Taiwan did, however, donate millions of dollars. Isn't that nice of them? Oliver North dreamed up the scheme that brought fresh culpability into the White House. This was a diversion of the Contra's money from the Iran arms …”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 49:41
George Shultz funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“The original idea was to have George Shultz make the approach to the Sultan during a visit. Extensive conversations among Shultz and Topps' advisors on the Secretary's plane across the Pacific convinced him to speak with the U.S. Ambassador…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 53:10
James Earl Ray supplied_arms_to
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“and intervened several times when Dutton's people were locked out of the airfield. Still allowed Felix Rodriguez access to the encryption machines provided him a military car and advisory group identification. He also made him a deputy in n…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 58:59
James Earl Ray funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“and intervened several times when Dutton's people were locked out of the airfield. Still allowed Felix Rodriguez access to the encryption machines provided him a military car and advisory group identification. He also made him a deputy in n…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 58:59
Oliver North funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“This may have been what led North to put Lake Resources account number on the file card for Elliott Abrams for the Brunei caper. So court again raised the issue of intelligence support from the agency. So we're going to stop right there. Is…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 1:01:25
Oscar Danilo Blandón member_of
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“he would be in trouble if he went back home because at this point we had already started calling the Sandinistas communist. If Blanton's recollection is correct, his little Los Angeles group was one of the first flickerings of an organized …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 32:43
Luis Pellas de la Vega funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“began making the rounds of various exile groups in the United States and in Central America to see if anyone was interested in helping them fight. Peleus contacted his cousin in Paraguay. Paraguay. The ex-dictator promised to kick in a mill…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb @ 34:57
Norwin Menendez member_of
Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented
“with Blanton to deliver 100 kilos of cocaine to a major supplier of the L.A. Rock houses in exchange for almost $3 million. And these weren't your everyday run-of-the-mill drug dealers, the informant warned Auckland. They had connections. B…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 17 @ 9:23
Daniel Blanton member_of
Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented
“with Blanton to deliver 100 kilos of cocaine to a major supplier of the L.A. Rock houses in exchange for almost $3 million. And these weren't your everyday run-of-the-mill drug dealers, the informant warned Auckland. They had connections. B…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 17 @ 9:23
CIA funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“When the CIA got involved in early 1981, its first project was trying to unite all of the groups under one umbrella called the Contras. The bands were too small to be effective and too disorganized. They weren't communicating with each othe…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 17:24
CIA funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“So you see how this is all really murky. But the CIA didn't care. They just want the Sandinista government gone. And they want to use Nicaragua as a drug operation. The CIA eventually got its way after top CIA officials met with their allie…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 21:48
Honduras funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“So you see how this is all really murky. But the CIA didn't care. They just want the Sandinista government gone. And they want to use Nicaragua as a drug operation. The CIA eventually got its way after top CIA officials met with their allie…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 21:48
Enrique Bermudez founded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented
“Argentine military officer looking on. Bermudez signed a one paragraph document stating that the Legion and the barn would agree to constitute a single organization that was going to go by the name of Nicaraguan Democratic Forces. What a na…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 22:55
CIA funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented
“The Contras and wrote in 1991, quote, the American planners never seem to grasp the simple fact that the Nicaraguans hated the National Guard and would never support an insurgency directed by ex-guardsmen, unquote. So it's just crazy. The C…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 24:46
CIA funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua documented
“Edgar Chamorro in an affidavit filed in the World Court in The Hague in 1985. Chamorro, a former advertising executive and distant relative of the Farn-Chamorro brothers, said that the CIA paid for the meeting, rented the building, and draf…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 25:12
Aristide Sanchez member_of
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“His wife's uncle gave him $5,000 to travel to the United States. So Blanton is totally a liar. Like Bermudez, Aristide Sanchez went on the CIA's payroll and began reporting daily to his CIA overseers. Together, Bermudez and Sanchez would be…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 27:06
Adolfo Calero member_of
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“His wife's uncle gave him $5,000 to travel to the United States. So Blanton is totally a liar. Like Bermudez, Aristide Sanchez went on the CIA's payroll and began reporting daily to his CIA overseers. Together, Bermudez and Sanchez would be…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 27:06
Aristide Sanchez supplied_arms_to
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“thanks largely to the backing of the CIA. Sanchez became one of the Contra's top political and military strategists, plotting logistics, buying supplies, and delivering the weapons, wrote in the Miami Herald in 1993's obituary. Throughout t…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 28:09
Norwin Menendez supplied_arms_to
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“And Norwin Menendez explained that when he was having to deliver weapons and supplies to the FDN, I dealt directly with Bermudez and occasionally his assistant, Sanchez. He was a good friend of mine, he said. By November of 81, the Contra p…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 28:39
Democratic Force of Nicaragua funded
Contras host_asserted
“A wing of the Contra movement headed by Calero and Blanton and Menendez used their drug profits to help fund the FDN, meaning the Contras. In January of 1985, Eden Pastora, another Contra leader, had met with Blanton in Miami in an effort t…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 17 @ 9:52
James Earl Ray supplied_arms_to
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“Colonel Steele agreed to put through a secure call to Vincent Shields, the Honduras' cheapest station. Ultimately, they had to scrub the airdrop and scramble to inform the affected Contra units. Another attempt took place on April 9th with …”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Part 47 (49) @ 37:43
Argentina funded
Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted
“Argentine military officer looking on. Bermudez signed a one paragraph document stating that the Legion and the barn would agree to constitute a single organization that was going to go by the name of Nicaraguan Democratic Forces. What a na…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 5 @ 22:55
Mentions (36)
▶ 9:23
with Blanton to deliver 100 kilos of cocaine to a major supplier of the L.A. Rock houses in exchange for almost $3 million. And these weren't your everyday run-of-the-mill drug dealers, the informant warned Auckland. They had connections. B…
▶ 9:52
A wing of the Contra movement headed by Calero and Blanton and Menendez used their drug profits to help fund the FDN, meaning the Contras. In January of 1985, Eden Pastora, another Contra leader, had met with Blanton in Miami in an effort t…
▶ 30:10
a group of our people, to go and fight the Sandinistas that we called the FDN. Basically, it stood for Nicaraguan Democratic Force. You know, because we call Democratic Force the coup that they wanted to orchestrate on the Sandinista govern…
▶ 32:43
he would be in trouble if he went back home because at this point we had already started calling the Sandinistas communist. If Blanton's recollection is correct, his little Los Angeles group was one of the first flickerings of an organized …
▶ 33:11
which became the biggest and most famous of the various Nicaraguan armies that would later be called the Contras. The FDN didn't officially come into existence until mid-1981, so if Blanton was raising money for Contra fighters as early as …
▶ 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 …
▶ 22:55
Argentine military officer looking on. Bermudez signed a one paragraph document stating that the Legion and the barn would agree to constitute a single organization that was going to go by the name of Nicaraguan Democratic Forces. What a na…
▶ 23:50
The Chamorro brothers boycotted the meeting rather than sit in the same room with Bermudez, which was fine with Bermudez because he didn't like them either. The Legion moved to Honduras and the FDN was officially created. The Farn were push…
▶ 24:21
By choosing to support Colonel Bermudez and the FDN over other contra factions, the CIA threw its lot in with the single most detested group of Nicaraguans they could have picked from. And that was even reported by former New York Times rep…
▶ 24:46
The Contras and wrote in 1991, quote, the American planners never seem to grasp the simple fact that the Nicaraguans hated the National Guard and would never support an insurgency directed by ex-guardsmen, unquote. So it's just crazy. The C…
▶ 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'…
▶ 28:09
thanks largely to the backing of the CIA. Sanchez became one of the Contra's top political and military strategists, plotting logistics, buying supplies, and delivering the weapons, wrote in the Miami Herald in 1993's obituary. Throughout t…
▶ 28:39
And Norwin Menendez explained that when he was having to deliver weapons and supplies to the FDN, I dealt directly with Bermudez and occasionally his assistant, Sanchez. He was a good friend of mine, he said. By November of 81, the Contra p…
▶ 29:01
that the CIA moved to make its sponsorship of the FDN official. President Reagan was presented with a document known as the National Security's Decision Directive No. 17, which served as a blueprint for the United States government to overt…
▶ 32:59
One order the Nicaraguans were repeatedly given was to vehemently deny any knowledge of CIA involvement. Bermudez played that role to the hilt, angrily brushing off any press suggestion that the U.S. government had a hand in the running of …
▶ 33:30
Former FDN director Edgar Chamorro claimed that the CIA advisors prepped them for their press conferences and told them to deny they had received any money from the U.S. government. It was particularly important that we deny having met with…
▶ 36:23
In fact, he was there on another purpose as well. The L-100 was supposed to take Contra weapons at Aquacate and fly them to El Salvador, from where the next night it would take its first airdrop into the southern front. Oliver North asked O…
▶ 36:48
Owen found no FDN weapons. The two CIA liaison men knew nothing of weapons and the Contra representatives simply shrugged in ignorance. Owen went to the CIA chief of base, Jerry Atkins, who refused to call the Honduran station chief and get…
▶ 37:43
Colonel Steele agreed to put through a secure call to Vincent Shields, the Honduras' cheapest station. Ultimately, they had to scrub the airdrop and scramble to inform the affected Contra units. Another attempt took place on April 9th with …
▶ 38:12
The plane could not find the Contras on the ground. Colonel Steele was frustrated. When Secord wanted to try again, Steele insisted no mission be flown unless radio contact could be made. Secord observed, this is asinine. No black ops ever …
▶ 39:10
like we're still pretending that the CIA works for the State Department. Ha ha! The other nodes on the net were Norse NSC office, Secord, GAD, Calero, Southern Air Transport, Rafael Quintero, and Felix Rodriguez. Fernandez subsequently prov…
▶ 39:36
Some of this might be permitted by the 1985 Intelligence Authorization Act, which allowed cooperation with the Contras. But Fernandez went well beyond that to the point of basically supplying all the support to include weapons into the Cont…
▶ 40:06
KL-43 message to North, in which he reported the L-100 drop, another drop for the indigenous people, and a dispatch of new Contra recruits forwarded with, quote, all remaining cached lethal material, unquote. You know, like they're setting …
▶ 40:38
My objective is creation of a 2,500-man force which can strike northwest and link up with cachets to form solid southern force. Likewise, envision formidable opposition on Atlantic coast resupplied at or by sea. You know, not like he's actu…
▶ 41:38
There, he told them that the British crew would make the flights into Nicaragua so that the American nationals couldn't be captured. Boy, I bet that made the British crew feel good. If anybody's going to get captured, it's not the Americans…
▶ 42:07
Secord thought he might get 10 launchers and 20 blowpipes from Chile, the DINA, if Rodriguez could get Salvadoran end-user certificates. Rodriguez turned to North. The White House staffer made appropriate gestures. Bermudez complained of th…
▶ 42:37
quote unquote, donated. The Contras had to take what they could get. Donated and were previous CIA aircraft. So who were they donated from? Oh, the CIA fronts. This conversation had fateful consequences for Rodriguez began thinking of the S…
▶ 43:07
to the unraveling. Ronald Reagan still had the vision of hanging by his thumbs outside the White House unless he could get aid to the Contras. The administration waited only as long as required by the existing legislation before going back …
▶ 46:04
The mass murder, that's Democrat. The message also commented favorably about those with whom the CIA had worked in Afghanistan and Angola. Those guys are all good too. As for the Contras, Reagan's message contained an astonishing assertion …
▶ 47:10
Reagan's message in the intensive lobbying proved inadequate. The House of Representatives rejected the $100 million CIA program, as it had every other proposal of lethal assistance since the harbor mining incident. But now the Sandinistas …
▶ 48:10
their little empire, the enterprise. Bill Casey took to the streets in an effort to build public support. In a Denver speech on July 30th, the CIA director said, we are only at the beginning of the struggle and we have to resist the old Ame…
▶ 49:41
Elliott Abrams. Taiwan did, however, donate millions of dollars. Isn't that nice of them? Oliver North dreamed up the scheme that brought fresh culpability into the White House. This was a diversion of the Contra's money from the Iran arms …
▶ 50:43
including Reagan, Bush, Casey, Schultz, Weinberger, James A. Baker, and Donald Reagan. For the NSC staff, North attended, along with the Central American Senior Director, Raymond Burghardt. Admiral Poindexter presented the situation as good…
▶ 57:07
The air crews sent mission reports to Dutton, who passed them to Secord and North, whom he saw as co-commanders of the operation. By June, Secord considered Rodriguez, the project's biggest enemy, a leak waiting to happen. When TV reporters…
▶ 30:20
who the CIA already controls. Funding at this early date was given to the Miami-based Nicaraguan Democratic Union, the UDN, which was led by Francisco Cardinal, who agreed to join the newly formed Nicaraguan Democratic Force, which was call…
▶ 31:52
With funding increases to over $60 million, the war heated up. Under 155 CIA operators and trainers, the FDN reached a strength of almost 10,000 people, terrorists. Those numbers are kind of argued back and forth, but it's approximately 10,…