The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 11

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Transcript

0:00 Good morning, Bridget. Or afternoon. Good afternoon, Colonel. Hey. How are you? Good. Isn't that the most adorable puppy ever? Yeah. Aside from Maverick and Goose, of course. Yeah. Bridget adopted a stray dog. Just FYI. That's what she's talking about. Yeah, I can't help myself. Okay. Did you catch the redacted show?

0:38 I did not. I have been, ah, you know, it's, I swear to God, some, you know, like the moon, there must be a full moon coming or something. Cause, um, yesterday I got a washing machine. Now today I'm fixing the washing machine. Um, because it was draining water all over my floor. So I bet I was playing plumber right before this. Oh goodness. Yeah. Nothing major. Just a drain issue. And, and we got it rectified. Well, one more thing.

1:09 It's at the beginning of the show. So it was fun. Cool. I have to ask, how's Dwayne doing? Have you heard? Better. He is doing better. Just keep the prayers coming. For those of you who didn't get to join us yesterday, Dwayne Cates is having some medical issues. And so please keep him in your prayers. But he is better today. Great. That's awesome. Awesome news. Awesome. Awesome.

1:41 And I can't wait to watch the show. I'm going to watch the redacted show after this show. Okay. So we're going to go ahead and jump in. Remember that yesterday. Add SR at co-host, please. Who? SR71. He is also here. Thank you. Sure. Okay. So as you guys remember, we were in the middle of the gun running.

2:10 Which, of course, you know, takes us to Fast and Furious and many other things. They were running guns out of Rickenbacker under the tutelage of Epstein. This is not a one off. So just so that you guys know that this is something that they've done on a fairly regular basis. So anyway, we're in the middle of that.

2:36 And the star of this part of it is the guy by the name of Ronald Lister that had all of the hallmarks of being a CIA agent before at his introduction in the book. So we're in the middle of him selling to the same people that are basically running all of the crack cocaine in Los Angeles. OK, so the blood, the gun sold to the crack dealers.

3:06 Blanton explained, came from Ron Lister and his associate William Lee Downing through their security business in their high-class Laguna Beach location. Lister admitted to the CIA that he began acquiring weapons for Blanton between 1982 and 83, some of which Blanton claimed were going to my friends down south, meaning the Contras. Lister said that he sold Blanton

3:35 one or two guns a week, assorted handgun, semi-automatic Uzi machine pistols, a KG-99 T9 machine pistol, and semi-automatic AK-47s. He also admitted purchasing a small number of commercially available off-the-shelf night vision goggles for Blanton. Lister says that he does not know what Blanton did with them.

4:04 Blanton told the CIA inspectors that Lister had access to such a wide variety of weapons that in 1983 and 84, he arranged for him to give a sales presentation to the leadership of the Contras. Blanton recalls that in addition to the normal attendees, several top Contra leaders were in attendance, to include Idan Pastora, Aldolfo Chamorro, and Mariano Mountalgrey.

4:34 Blanton also says that Ivan Torres, one of the two twin Torreses, was present. Mariano Montalegra, a CIA-trained Contra pilot, was implicated in a scheme to haul drugs for the Contras, but never charged Ivan Torres. But he was never charged with that. Ivan Torres was a drug-dealing subordinate of Blanton's identified in DEA records.

5:06 Blanton said that the attendees showed no interest in Lister's offer and Blanton received the impression that the military arms the Contras was getting from the CIA direct was more than enough at the time. In a 1996 court case, Blanton was asked if he went to Lister's security company and bought weapons, quote unquote, off the rack. He said, no, he brought them to me. Where did he bring them to you? To my house.

5:37 what did you do call him up and order some oh no he'd just bring him over and show me what he had and I offered to be like a salesman you know I ordered them and sold them to Ricky and Ollie and all of the other people that were dealing drugs to me so he says was it like a brokerage thing he goes what and Blanton says um

6:04 So the person questioning says, sir, this business that you were in is not like selling paper to offices. He goes, excuse me. In those times, you can buy a gun and sell it to anybody. And then the guy questions him says, but you bought Uzis. And he said, yeah, those guns, they weren't stolen. So what's the problem?

6:29 The quote-unquote security business that provided Blanton the weapons was Monday M-U-N-D-Y Security Group Incorporated, which Lister incorporated in Laguna Beach in 1983. Lister and an attorney named Maurice Green, as well as another attorney, Gary Shapiro, and his...

6:57 fellow former reserve police officer Christopher Moore were the directors of the company. The business card found in a drug raid three years later identified Blanton as the vice president of the gun company. Moore said that Monday's security group's offices were enough to scare anyone. Director Maurice Green, he said,

7:26 was a self-proclaimed legal genius with a severe drug and alcohol problem. So he has lots of guns, too. He had a special wall constructed behind his desk that was hollow so that he could kick through the paneling and run out of the building in case he needed a hasty retreat. I walked by his office one day and he was sitting at his desk looking down the barrel of a gun, Moore said.

7:56 I went into Ron's office and said, hey, Ron, you know, Maurice is sitting at his desk playing with a gun. And Ron just laughed. He said, once director Gary Shapiro said the office was besieged by a mob of angry doctors who were screaming and yelling about how Maurice had screwed up with their money. Lister was so wary of Green that he secretly videotaped him.

8:22 Green was prosecuted and disbarred in 1987 for forging prescriptions to obtain narcotics. In 1992, he was sentenced to two years in prison for grand theft and practicing law without a license. Great guys. Aside from a few burglar alarm installations, Moore said the only other business that he knew Monday Security Group ever was involved in was to attempt to market a Lyser.

8:53 a laser sighting device for an AR-15 rifle. Lister's partner, Bill Downing, was a design gizmo, which he used tiny laser beams to put a small red dot on a target for killing people at night. According to a 1996 report from U.S. Customs, Monday's security group was licensed with the U.S. State Department in 1993.

9:23 to export U.S. munitions listed items to other countries. This firm received temporary export licenses to export laser components and spare parts to quote-unquote various countries. The customs report said, unfortunately, the database here at the State Department does not contain information on registration and license that old. Whoops, we can't find anything.

9:54 Blanton also did a brisk business in selling electronic equipment to cocaine dealers. He sold walkie-talkies to Ross and his crew, who used them to keep in touch during cocaine and money pickups. He also sold them police scanners, voice scramblers, cell phones, anti-eavesdropping equipment. I could sell to all of the people that was in the coke business, he said.

10:23 Ron Lister procured that equipment for Ricky. Blanton said Ross used to live in an apartment beside the freeway in San Pedro. It was an apartment by Florence, if I remember it correctly. So I get him a scanner, telephone security. When you put the thing on the telephone, you can get...

10:51 on another phone and talk to him and nobody can listen. Ross said his crew carried the police scanner in their cars when they were on deliveries so that they could eavesdrop on patrol cars in the neighborhood. They also used one at the counting house when there was large sums of money. During one 1987 raid, some of the equipment fell into the hands of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. The cops were impressed.

11:19 They've got equipment, police detection systems, sophisticated weapons, and better equipment than we do. Sobel and his team had raided Ross's Big Palace on wheels, a well-known, stocked, but curiously customer-free auto parts store that was one of the many front corporations that Ross ran. They also hid an apartment building of one of Ross's dealers. At the store,

11:50 We found handheld programmable 80 megahertz radios, which are better than the police radios. They are used in counter surveillance. In the apartment, they found several sophisticated firearms, including an Israeli .357 automatic pistol with a laser sighting device. Gosh.

12:23 That falls in line with everything else we found out. The search also found Teflon-coated bullets commonly referred to as cop killers. In the LA Police Department summary of searches at locations associated with Ricky Ross, Deputy Chief Glenn Levant said that numerous 9mm Uzis were seized along with AK-47 assault rifles, a fully automatic MAC-11 machine gun,

12:52 a fully automatic machine gun complete with silencer, and state-of-the-art handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Eventually, Ronald Lister's skills in procuring such high-tech munitions brought him to the attention of the FBI. On April 3, 1985, two FBI agents, Richard Smith and David Cook, came knocking on the door of Lister's home in Mission Viergo.

13:20 They had a grand jury subpoena to deliver and a statement to make. They hammered on who I might know in East Bloc countries. He confirmed to police in 1996 that he had been the subject of a grand jury investigation on his relationship with Soviet agents. Crazy, he said.

13:47 Lister went on to say that he had sold an FBI scrambler system to somebody overseas and the FBI had investigated only to find out that the equipment was declassified and available on the open market. You can see that they're trying to tie these people out there to the Soviets when, in fact, it's completely within the jurisdiction of the CIA. But FBI agent Smith.

14:16 remembered things a little differently. He told the police that he had received information that Lister was attempting to sell classified information to the Soviets. They had conducted an investigation and sting operation. He said Lister was attempting activities that were completely illegal. Lister's former chief, Neil Purcell, confirmed

14:44 that the FBI had Lister under investigation, but recalled the gear involved high-tech camera equipment. They came down to see me. They were absolutely convinced that he was selling things to the Russians and tried to get a background. After I listened to them, he said, pardon me for laughing, but he's taking you guys for a ride, believe me. And then they said, oh, but we've got pictures, including meetings in San Francisco and New York.

15:16 Purcell said that the FBI discovered that Lister was bullshitting, charging them four or five times what he paid for. The kind of thing that really is laughable about the entire thing. Former agent Smith claimed that Lister was never prosecuted because he turned out to be full of hot air, determined to be incapable of producing the equipment which he had attempted to sell.

15:45 Lister's lack of present capability to commit the crime made prosecution impractical. But Smith acknowledged that the assistant attorney general who handled the case, however, that his activities were serious enough for a grand jury. And so what it appears is that and I've read this in other when I was reading this part, I did a little bit of research on this. What it appears to me is that the CIA to cover their tracks.

16:14 had got him close to these alleged Russians to take pictures. So if someone noticed Lister, that they could say, oh, look, he's tied to the Russians as opposed to what he's actually doing for the CIA. If the L.A. detectives were skeptical of Lister's cloak and dagger work, they must have gotten quite a jolt.

16:40 When they called the FBI to ask for a copy of their old files on the Lister investigation, Special Agent Tim Bezek stated that the FBI reports and the transcripts of Lister's grand jury were protected by national security. See how that works? You can't see it because the CIA classified it. They got similar reactions when they checked on Lister's background with the Maywood Police Department.

17:12 and the Laguna Police Department, his two old employers. The personnel jacket for Ron Lister had been sealed, they reported. In Laguna Beach, they learned that the actual personnel file related to Ronald Lister didn't exist. All the information had been taken, and the only thing that was left was an empty folder. Yeah.

17:43 The FBI never turned over the documents and the L.A. detectives were unable to determine why the files, decades old investigations in dope dealing army merchant was overnight now a national security issue. A clue can be found in some documents seized during a 1986 narcotic raid on Lister's house.

18:07 One of the many curious items the police carried away that day was a 10-page handwritten document that detailed weapons and equipment deals by Lister. Lister admitted to the police that he had written the document in preparation for his grand jury appearance. The notes chronicled a list of meetings with a special customer who went by the name of Ivan. Ivan was uninterested in Lister's scramblers that he tried to sell him.

18:38 But he did have night vision equipment to offer. After jotting down a description of the April 1985 visit from CIA agents Smith and Cook, Lister wrote down a list of seven names. Lister said that he gave the above names to the FBI agents. The police detectives wrote in their 1996 report. He said the names came up in his business for some reason and he wanted to know.

19:09 He wanted to have the names in writing before he went to the grand jury. Lister said the people listed were only business people. The last two names on the list was Roberto de Abusan, which is the El Salvador guy in charge, and a guy that the CIA worked directly with, and Ray Prendez.

19:40 the former head of the Salvadoran Christian Democrat Party, which received significant CIA financial support. The detective didn't ask Lister, didn't ask why Lister would be doing business with CIA linked Salvadoran politicians. But in the most intriguing name on Lister's list was at the very top, Bill Nelson.

20:08 Lister said that Bill Nelson was an ASIS member, which he said stood for American Society of International Security. Lister said that Nelson was the security director for Fleur Corporation. It's F-L-E-U-R. William Earl Nelson was far more than that. But Lister didn't elaborate and the detectives didn't push him.

20:37 Had they done so, they might have gotten a better idea of why the FBI files had been classified 11 years before. Before becoming the lower corporation's vice president for security and administration, Bill Nelson had been the deputy CIA director of operations. That's like the head spook. That's like what Frank Wisner was.

21:05 He was in charge of all CIA covert operations from 1973 to 1976. The Falour spokeswoman initially denied to a journalist that Nelson had been affiliated with Falour until the journalist confronted her with documented evidence of his employment there. Only then did she admit it, saying that Nelson had worked there from 77 to 85.

21:34 A former CIA officer, John Vanderwerker, confirmed to the reporter that Nelson and Lister knew each other. Well, apparently when Lister was running the floor's headquarters in 1982 to 83, it was Bill Nelson with whom he was meeting. That was Ron's big CIA contact. As Lister's former office director, Chris Moore,

22:06 described him. They didn't get much bigger than Nelson, a protege of former CIA director William Colby. A native of New York, Nelson had been a CIA officer since the beginning in 1948. He served in a variety of covers, both embedded in the military as a military officer and pretending to be a State Department employee.

22:35 Mostly where? You know, around the Taiwan Far East area where they're running opium. Yeah, there. Japanese newspapers exposed him as a CIA after they learned he was asking travelers different questions about Russian things. As head of covert operations, Nelson oversaw the CIA's controversial coup in Chile.

23:07 which resulted in the overthrow and the assassination of Salvador Allende. Later, Nelson commanded Operation Feature, a covert plan to place friendly groups in power in Angola. Isn't that interesting? So he was involved in Angola as well.

23:31 He was named as a defendant in a civil suit filed by a widow of an American mercenary the CIA recruited to fight in Angola in 1976. The widow complained the CIA misled her husband about the hopelessness of his mission and then engaged in a smear campaign to distance itself from him when he turned up dead. And of course, the CIA had that case dismissed.

23:57 Nelson's operation feature bore many similarities to the Contra project, particularly in terms of the CIA's proxy army receiving weapons. That could explain why Lister, who had admitted dealing with arms in Latin America, was meeting with Nelson. In both operations, arms and equipment for CIA secret armies were laundered through the armies of neighboring countries friendly to the U.S. in order to disguise their origins.

24:27 Preserve deniability for the CIA. In the Angolan conflict, the countries of Zaire, which was Congo after the CIA overthrew it, and South Africa were used. And remember, we talked about Angola and how the CIA was giving money to Israel to transfer weapons to South Africa and then traffic them into Angola.

24:57 This is what he's talking about. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador fronted arms shipments for the Contras. In both cases, the CIA turned to the People's Republic of China, meaning Taiwan, to supply additional weaponry and missiles to its chosen fighters. Weird that he didn't mention Israel because Israel was in the middle of all of that too. But I find it very interesting that he figured out Taiwan is too.

25:25 Evidence of Lister's involvement in sophisticated international arms transactions was found in the notes Lister made, naming Nelson and Salvadoran politicians. Lister had drawn a flowchart containing boxes labeled Swiss Bank, U.S. State Department, HK for Hong Kong, and X Country, and then Factory USA. When the L.A. Sheriff's...

25:57 at Lester's flowchart to the U.S. Customs for analysis in 1996, Customs said it appeared to be a diagram, diagramming a scheme to illegally divert American-made weapons to a third party using fraudulent end-user certification from another country to conceal the true identity of the weapons recipients. Well, of course it was.

26:27 These certificates are sworn declarations in which the government buying the weapons certifies that it really did order them. It is supposed to provide the U.S. government with some assurance that American-made weapons aren't ending up in the hands of terrorists. When Oliver North began supplying arms to the Contras after the CIA funding was cut off, he frequently used these false certificates.

26:57 from the Guatemalan and Honduran government to get weapons to the Contras. The Contras can't buy weapons on an international arms market. Only countries can buy weapons. Certain countries can't buy weapons if they're embargoed.

27:14 or they're having political instability, explained a CIA official who had ran the Contra program for several years. So what happens is an arms broker will get an intermediary country to issue false end-user certificates. There is generally some consideration involved and the end-user certificate is issued, but the arms are either not shipped to that country that issued the certificate,

27:43 Or it's a trans-shipment situation. That was precisely what the flowchart sees from Lister's house illustrated. According to U.S. customs expert who analyzed the document, were these transactions taking place today, Special Agent James McShane said, I would assume that there was to be a weapons diversion to either Iran or Taiwan.

28:14 Neither of which can get license for exported munitions. Why? Because they were both ran by a dictator. Just what the CIA former boss of covert operations, who by most accounts was an upright individual, could possibly have had to discuss with the admitted cocaine trafficker, drug addict, and gun runner like Donald Lister is hard to fathom. Not for us, because we know better. The exact nature of the relationship.

28:46 is likely to never be known, which of course we now know. In April 1995, he died of respiratory failure in a convalescent home at the age of 84. But it is conceivable that their connection had something to do, meaning the CIA and Lister, with the Contra and weapons.

29:11 At the same time that he was reportedly meeting with Nelson, Lister was also advising Contra on security matters and selling them arms. The other documents seized from Lister in 1986 raid lend support. According to the Justice Department, Lister's monthly calendar for 1985 contained frequent references to the Contras and at least one reference to DIA.

29:41 which was known to be involved in supplying military hardware to the Contras. Agents seized two long lists of weapons with names of pastries next to them, which Lister explained were code sheets that he and Planton used to discuss weapons over the phone. Well, if it's all legitimate, why do you have code names?

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 the Contras. It was January 1996 when Menendez had been locked up in the jail.

30:35 outside of Managua for five years, but he had none of the fluorescent tube look of someone who had spent all that time in prison. He was tanned. He was well-rested. According to, let's see, one of the prisons that had, it was a prison that had been used by the National Guard when they occupied Nicaragua.

31:10 And Menendez strolled freely through the grounds. The guards looked respectfully at their shoes when he walked by. His cell door was closed only when he wanted it closed. So just getting there was a reporter that went down there to interview him. And he said he's saying that he had a tremendous amount of difficulty getting in to see Menendez.

31:43 He said that it was protocol driven, arranging from an audience with the head jailer. And then you had to go through all kinds of screening processes that Menendez created, not the jailers. And it said none of it had to do with security concerns. The prison warden admitted that he had no say in anything dealing with Menendez. First.

32:12 Norwin's wives, like plural, had to approve. The attorneys needed to approve. And then, so the widow or the wives had to approve somebody visiting him. The wives' attorneys had to approve it. And then his personal attorneys, three of them, all had to sign off on it. The DEA and CIA also got involved.

32:44 The reporter was told, I'll be right up front with you, the DEA public affairs said, after reviewing Menendez's intelligence file in Washington, D.C. I've already talked to the CIA people because obviously there are some implications and some of the things that I have seen that he may have been or at least represented himself to be involved in.

33:09 And frankly, the CIA says, hey, you know, that's fine. If he wants to talk to a reporter, he can tell them whatever he wants. Their thinking was on it. We've been through this before, and they didn't think that they'd have anything to hide. Nor did the DEA. McVernie assured the reporter, though no one had suggested otherwise about either agency. The DEA was even willing to set up the interview.

33:36 I think I could probably represent to you that we might be able to facilitate any meeting you have with Menendez. I can represent that I can go out and try to facilitate an interview and that he ends up saying, who knows, I'm willing to let the chips fall where they may. But the DEA's help came with a price, a quid pro quo, the reporter said. In exchange, the DEA wanted the reporters to leave something out of their story.

34:05 Like Blanton's relationship with the DEA, the reporters arranged the interview themselves. Even after they had jumped through all of the hoops, Menendez gave nothing away for free. Every suggestion of criminal conduct that was alleged, he would deny. And then the reporter would present actual evidence, like a court hearing or something like that.

34:33 And then he would just smile and say, yeah, I did that. As the minutes stretched into hours, Menendez became relaxed and expansive, but he never let his guard down. Every so often, he would tell an obvious lie just to see if they were paying attention. He denied having any connections with the Contras, a falsehood he immediately retracted when confronted with a photo of him with one of the leaders, Adolfo Calero.

35:00 Or he would casually drop a bombshell, like mentioning Ronald Lister's name, to see how it resonated, doing his own sounding to test to know how much the journalists actually knew. He laughed heartily only once during the afternoon when he was reading an interview U.S. authorities had done with an old associate, the Torres brothers, who later became informants.

35:28 for a variety of police agencies. In May of 1992, the FBI, DEA, IRS, and the Los Angeles Police Department sat the Torreses down in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles and grilled them about Menendez and Danielle O'Blanton. Menendez was asked to read the Torreses' statement and point out areas he disagreed. His, excuse me, it was four pages.

36:00 He would not occasionally look angry sometimes. Holding the document open to the second page, he pointed to the second paragraph where it says, Torres estimated that between 1980 and 91, Blanton moved over 5,000 kilos of cocaine. It would be more accurate, this is Blanton's quote, it would be more accurate if you multiplied that by 10, Menendez said.

36:30 50,000 kilos? 55 tons of cocaine? He said, easily. Menendez's figures are impossible to verify, but he was Blanton's supplier for many years. No one is in a better position to know. The DEA estimated Blanton imported between 18,000 and 27,000 kilos between 82 and 90, amassing millions of dollars, and the Torres brothers later boasted about

37:01 their own estimates dramatically. According to a 1996 LA Sheriff's report, the two brothers told police they heard that Blanton sold 10,000 kilos of cocaine mostly to South Central Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area during a two-year span. At Ricky Ross's conversion rate, that's enough cocaine to make 30 million doses of crack.

37:30 Daniela Blanton was the biggest dealer in L.A. for about two years, the Torres brothers said. The U.S. officials were even more generous in their appraisal. Mr. Blanton is considered to be the largest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States. That's correct, according to U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neill. So, both men had reason to know.

37:58 O'Neill had been monitoring the activities of Blanton and his associates since the 1980s. The other guy by the name of Jones, Charles Jones, he was a DEA case agent, said they had been watching Blanton since the 90s. Becoming the biggest dealer in the biggest cocaine market in the Los Angeles area.

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 late 1984, Menendez quickly wound up his affairs in San Francisco, selling his gray Jaguar and his used car lot.

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 us to town, take us to clubs, get us some girls. I got a great picture of him while I was there. He's standing next to one of the cows and wearing a black baseball hat. Menendez was no stranger to Costa Rica.

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 them. He also had important friends in Costa Rica. Norwin received political protection from Jose Marte Figueres, the son of the former

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 of $6 million. He was also implicated in the 1970 financier scandal.

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 officials or to the American DEA agents. The DEA was first informed of Menendez's Costa Rican drug operations in February of 1984.

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 seized at the International Airport by the Costa Rican police. Costa Rican authorities knew him as one of the most important traffickers of drugs of the former.

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 true.

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 announced to the agents that he had come to enlist the Reagan administration's war on drug. He was going to enlist in it. DEA agent Gonzalez was on hand.

42:27 to faithfully record the official reasons behind his life-altering decision. His desire to clear up a minor problem he had with the IRS, his decision to terminate his involvement in drug trafficking, his desire to help the present administration fight against drugs, and his view of Ronald Reagan's total commitment to his free native land of Nicaragua. In other words, Ronald Reagan was going to take on their fight, so he's going to work with him.

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 CIA ventures that would later be exposed during the Iran-Contra scandal. The American ambassador, Louis Tams, T-A-M-B-S, was taking orders directly from Oliver.

43:26 The CIA's Contra station chief was Joseph Fernandez. He was so heavily involved in the illegal Contra operations that he would be fired and indicted eventually for his participation. But there were other reasons to doubt Agent Gonzalez's stirring account of Menendez's redemption. First, it was likely that the drug lord was already working with the DIA before they wrote the report.

43:56 because he was working with the entire government to include the CIA. In an interview, Menendez said that he had helped DEA gather intelligence on the February 1985 torture murder of DEA agent Enrique Amarino in Mexico.

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 of Costa Rica in April of 1985. That claim could not be corroborated, but Gonzalez's report does note that Menendez had helped the DEA in the past.

44:46 Menendez said that he also met with the DEA Costa Rican attache Robert Neves, N-I-E-V-E-S, in late 1985, again concerning the Camarena case. Menendez delivered Neves as desperate for information Norwin supposedly had on the crime, but he would never talk to anyone about it.

45:10 Not coincidentally, the issue of the Contras and drugs flared up again in 1991-92 in the criminal trials of Camarena's alleged killers. A longtime CIA operative in Mexico, Lawrence Victor Harrison, testified that the CIA had been collaborating with the Mexican intelligence and cartel bosses who was providing money, arms, and training.

45:38 for the Contras in exchange for CIA's protection of their drug enterprise. Both Harrison and his DEA overseer, Hector Rebelez, who headed an investigation into the murder, believe the agent was killed because his investigation into some protected marijuana plantations threatened to disturb or expose the Contra and CIA.

46:08 drug operations. Based on his investigation, which discovered the audio tapes his killer made during the torture sessions, Bareilles recommended that the federal grand jury be convened to examine the CIA's knowledge of the murder. Soon afterwards, Bareilles, one of the DEA's most decorated agents, was transferred to Washington and given a desk job and highly encouraged to retire. Exactly what services

46:38 Norwin Menendez was performing for the DEA during those years in Costa Rica is hard to know because few records exist. When the Justice Department, IG, checked the files in 1997, he found vague and sometimes wildly misleading accusations Menendez made against other traffickers, such as claiming that Daniello Blanton, who had helped Norwin start the

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 database until 1987. Costa Rican DEA office Gonzalez explained to Justice

47:30 by saying that the trafficker initially refused to sign a DEA informant registration. Gonzalez admitted that it was unusual, but allowed because Menendez's background and his potential. In truth, it was because Menendez was wanted by the FBI in San Francisco for trafficking. And the DEA would be putting them in the informant program would be problematic.

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 traffickers in all of Latin America became an exclusive off-the-books protected informant for a tiny DEA office in Costa Rica,

48:32 who had few known drug problems at the time. It was a very small office. During the time the Reagan administration was desperately seeking to replace the CIA money the Costa Rican Contras had lost, within the administration, there was no doubt that the resistance would be continued. In other words, the Contras. Oliver North wrote of these times in his memoir,

49:00 The only question was how. One idea North had in 1984 was to use drug money. At a top-level meeting with DEA officials in Washington, North shocked the room to silence.

49:15 by suggesting that $1.5 million in cocaine cash the DEA planned to seize from the Medellin cartel should be turned over to the Contras. The DEA says it declined North's suggestion. Subsequently, a White House leak blew the operation, and several DEA officials believe North was responsible for it. So you either help me, or I'm going to out you.

49:44 With the assistance of former securities lawyer and then CIA director William Casey, North created an elaborate network of offshore bank accounts to conceal the source of the money that was to sustain the Contras during the congressional cutoff. North wrote that Casey didn't want the Contras' unofficial funds coming from U.S. banks because of fears that Treasury agents would find it.

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 laundering operations, Mayorga said. He was a former Sandinista intelligence officer who had monitored Menendez. There was some circumstantial evidence to support this claim.

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 restaurant just happened to be right across the street from the U.S. Embassy. Isn't that convenient? Oh, and he had a casino.

51:16 Yeah, that too. His partner in one of them was FDN director Aristides Sanchez's brother, Troil, a former CIA pilot that was identified in 1982 as a supplier to Menendez's operation in San Francisco. He was one of the pilots flying the drugs in. One big happy family.

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 relationship with the CIA Costa Rica people. And DEA agent Gonzalez, in fact, kept the CIA.

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. Despite their great working relationship, DEA agents told of taking great pains to hide it.

52:45 from the Costa Rican police. Whatever it was the DEA and CIA was collaborating on so well together, one thing became crystal clear. It couldn't have had a thing to do with preventing contra drug trafficking. The information the CIA gave DEA was often too vague or general to be of use. The DEA agents complained to Justice IG

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 Salvador, they crushed him. Not a single DEA agent, let's see, despite all of the official rhetoric from the

53:41 Reagan administration about saying no and cracking down on crack, CIA officers who served in Central America in the 80s said they never felt any need to actually do anything about the drug trafficking. And it swirled all around them. Narcotics was just not on the radar at the time, one CIA guy said. A former CIA American station chief agreed, saying that drugs was not something we were looking for at all.

54:10 We didn't see any of it, even though we were involved in all of it. Unless, of course, the wrong people were selling it. One CIA officer and several other agency analysts noted that with respect to Nicaragua, the U.S. policy focused on the Sandinista governments involved in narcotic trafficking, not the Contras. CIA Inspector General Fred Flitz wrote in 1998, the policymakers, one analyst asserts,

54:40 really wanted to kick it to the Sandinistas. All of Central American stations were seeking information that would leak Sandinistas to drug trafficking. Isn't this the exact same pattern we saw in Colombia? We're going to document all of the FARC drug trafficking and none of the Cali cartel. And then when we got pissed off at Pablo Escobar, we're going to document all of his shit because he ain't playing by our rules.

55:10 And nothing about the Cali cartel. Yes, that's exactly what they do over and over again. One Central American station chief remembered watching Langley's odd non-reaction to the first wave of contra drug trafficking reports, which he said came fairly early into his assignment. He quickly realized which side of the drug war the CIA was actually on. What the CIA did or didn't do about drugs has to be considered in context of William Casey.

55:40 His overriding political objective was to support the Contras at all costs, including American lives. Consequently, the CIA assigned a low priority of collecting intelligence concerning Contra's alleged narcotic trafficking. Agency's analysis had only a small number of reports on which to base their analysis, because they don't want you to make one. And they overly classified them, too.

56:10 CIA unspoken policy about the Contra drug dealers, the station chief concluded, was we are going to play with these guys. That was made very clear by Casey and Dewey Claridge. A good example of this policy in action was the arrangement Norwin Menendez reached with the DEA to help Reagan and his quote unquote war against drugs. Menendez's partner, Trujillo.

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, suspected he was moving cocaine. Well, if you're his fucking handler, how would you not know that? According to Rafael Corneo,

57:08 One of Menendez's Bay Area distributors, Gonzalez's hunch was correct. Norwin's business expanded terrifically while he was spying for the DEA because he wasn't spying. He was actually running the drugs. There was very big years in terms of the contraband, he said. That's why I have a hard time believing that he was working with them. They're all in on it.

57:35 The FBI, however, had no problem believing it, and their thinking tracked with Roger Mayorga's, the former Sandinistan intelligence officer. Menendez was being protected because he was working for the CIA. In a remarkable 1988 cable to FBI headquarters, San Francisco FBI agent Donald Hale wrote, quote, it became apparent to the FBI that Norwin Menendez was and may still be an informant of the DEA.

58:02 It was also believed by the FBI San Francisco station that Norwin Menendez was, and may still be, an informant for the CIA. He wasn't an informant. He was actually an action figure. The CIA, of course, denied everything, and Hale, who pursued Menendez for years, is now dead. The Justice Department says the agent based his belief on the fact that Menendez told

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 intelligence agent in Costa Rica. Yet all of those years he lived there, he was neither arrested

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 soon after he waltzed into the DEA agent's office in San Jose, he was paired with a veteran CIA operative,

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 others as Roberto, claimed to have worked for the CIA for many years in Europe and that the CIA had then turned him over to the DEA.

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 mentions this mysterious agent, even though he played a significant role in helping to keep Menendez out of the FBI clutches.

1:00:31 Later events would suggest that Menendez and Roberto were investigating, in air quotes, drug trafficking, were not investigating drug trafficking at all. They were participating in it. And the best evidence is that the first drug ring Menendez and his spooky associate were assigned to investigate was Danilo Blanton's roaring Los Angeles drug ring.

1:01:01 The DEA agent, Gonzalez, told the Justice Department that, quote, planned to use Menendez only to introduce other informants into Bland's organization, unquote, reportedly because he thought Menendez would be difficult to control. But now, but how reuniting Menendez with Dinello, his buddy, and then inserting a CIA agent into the mix as well.

1:01:31 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 around one particular province in a northern area that was infested with Contra camps.

1:01:59 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 Ricans, and citizens of other nationalities who had dedicated themselves to international drug trafficking, using Costa Rica as a bridge for refueling their aircraft.

1:02:28 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 gasoline provided to the pilots was used for refueling.

1:02:57 the drug planes. Evidence produced during a DEA investigation of Manuel Noriega revealed that his drug trafficking ring loaded up planes with cocaine in Colombia. The planes refueled in the Contra airstrips in northern Costa Rica before continuing to the United States, dumping their loads in Louisiana and Texas. Former Costa Rican government pilot Warner Lotz, L-O-T-Z, Otavia,

1:03:26 confirmed to the U.S. Subcommittee in 1988 that Noriega's pilots would fly up weapons for the Contras along with drugs, leaving the guns behind in Costa Rica before hitting two routes north, one through Mexico for the West Coast market and the other through the Bahamas for the East Coast cocaine buyers. The people who were flying in the weapons used and made contacts with certain people in Costa Rica to be able to use their airfields

1:03:55 as a jumping off point to carry drugs for them. This was all testified to. There was a charge, you know, by allowing the aircrafts to land to drop the weapons and to proceed with the drugs. They were paid in weapons. How is it possible that these drug planes could go in and out of airstrips without being detected and without creating a problem for Costa Rica? A Senate investigator asked him. Very simple. Costa Rica.

1:04:27 has got a very poor radar system. So there was no radar to detect him. Was it their danger that they'd be arrested on the ground? None, because it was previously arranged. All landings were arranged. They were supposed to be by the revolutionaries themselves, but they weren't. They were CIA. Were there any police or rule guard people in that region? The guy says, to be very clear with you, sir.

1:04:55 Our guard down there is barefooted and you're talking about 50 men to cover a large area. The Colonel Edwin Villales Rodriguez was convicted in 1988 of providing security for the drug and weapons flights. He allegedly told a friend that he was doing it for the CIA and was paid $20,000 to $30,000 per flight by the CIA.

1:05:26 We're going to stop right there. That's crazy. They had the whole network mapped out, that's for sure. Where did Bridget go? Oh, she must have dropped out. She must have had another water leak. Go ahead, SR. Yes, Colonel. Bridget dropped out because she's taking care of a clog in a drain. But she also did mention she had to get rid of a porn bot out of the space today, which is, I guess we're moving up in the world, Colonel.

1:06:06 Anyway, thank you all for attending and thank everybody that attends on Rumble as well. I'm sitting here listening to all of this and thinking through my head some of the stuff that I've come across. And you have these people that actually own a casino as well. And I'm wondering, wow, isn't it amazing they wouldn't even let President Trump buy an NFL team?

1:06:35 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 launder money using restaurants and gambling facilities. And so they want you to believe that a CIA guy went behind the ears.

1:07:04 trained to be a CIA agent, shows up in Costa Rica, and you're looking at a guy that everybody around him, his nephews have been arrested for drug trafficking. There's files on Blanton. So everybody in his orbit is involved in drugs. And let's just say you didn't know anything about Menendez. Nothing. He owns a restaurant. He owns a casino.

1:07:34 and everybody in his orbit has something to do with drugs, would, again, six months into this, I would have said he's dirty as hell. And yet we're to believe that he stayed down there for years and years and years and years, and nobody in the DEA and nobody in the CIA went, ah, I think you're involved in drugs.

1:07:59 No, because they all knew and they were using his drug network to make money, just like we use the mafia to run the drugs and make money in the Golden Triangle. It's just a replication of the system that they've set up every single time. On that, I agree, Colonel. And one of the other things I look at concerning all of this, she can't tell me that.

1:08:31 Oliver North didn't know where this money was coming from. And you can't tell me he wasn't aware of the people involved to do it. No, he went down there and met with them. It just blows my mind. Somebody wearing a U.S. Marine uniform went down and set up a guns, drugs operation to fund basically

1:08:58 a revolution an overthrow of the sandinista government so it's my firm belief at this point that i don't know what part of the career that he was hired by the cia but from the time he pinned on 05 on that he was a cia operative so now that's strange because i was about to ask you the same i was about to ask you the question uh

1:09:35 We understand how generals get involved and what goes on. We understand how the DEA gets involved and what goes on. Now we're talking about colonels and I'm sitting here saying, now, wait a minute. How far down does this really go? Well, let me tell you how far down it goes. What has happened? And I know this for a fact. Let me just tell you this. So in the Air Force, we have a thing called the Office of Special Investigation. So it's OSI. And we would have.

1:10:05 people in process to our base. And I will give you the example of when I was in Italy. We had in one week, several people in process. And having done personnel and looked at people's records for a few years at that point, their records looked weird. So I just kind of made a note of the date on my calendar. As it turns out,

1:10:34 They had ran the OSI, had brought in some of their agents dressed up as enlisted people. And their personnel files, again, to an average person would have looked normal, but they were completely fake. Now, they were in the military and they had their real rank.

1:10:54 But they set up a separate personnel file, created a fictitious person. And these guys came in and ran an undercover operation and busted a bunch of people at our base. The same thing happened when I was at Chanute Air Force Base. I was not in personnel. I was in aircraft maintenance at the time when they busted all the cops in the squadron for drugs. So the ability to appear to be.

1:11:21 an officer, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, while you were 100% functioning as an agent of the CIA is perfectly not, I mean, it's unusual, but it's definitely happens.

1:11:41 How often it happens, I don't know. But that's the same with General Singleb, Paul Helliwell, when he was pretending to be a colonel when he was actually in the OSS and then later the CIA. It actually happens quite a bit in our research. So you have no idea when you're inside the military if you're actually talking to a legitimate military officer or somebody the CIA planted there.

1:12:12 Because they recruit them at some point, even if they came into the military normally. They're recruited at some point in their military career, or they're inserted. And they have the ability to insert them and make up a fictitious personnel file on them. So both of those are options. See, on that I agree, but somehow or another they did this.

1:12:39 Somewhere along the line, somebody has to say, oh, that's a prime candidate. So I would have to think that Colonel Oliver North was doing something shady well before any of this went down, if that makes any sense. Yeah, but maybe not even shady. So the CIA does psychological profiles on people. And those psychological profiles are what they use to recruit people.

1:13:09 And they're not necessarily illegality, but broken homes. They have an entire list for profiling people that they feel will function well for their nefarious things. So, yeah, they do. They have to target the person if it's somebody that's legitimately in the military and not somebody they inserted.

1:13:38 And they have profiles that they work to do that with, you know, knowing a foreign language, graduating from a particular school, belonging to certain organizations. They have a whole laundry list of them. Go ahead, Illini. Hey, Colonel. I was going to go back to the subject of casinos. I don't know if you guys want to keep it on this topic. No, keep going. All right.

1:14:05 You know, you raised Norwin Menendez's connection to casinos as well as a couple of other people's. It's interesting how there was this transition in the late 1960s in Las Vegas from the mafia running everything to Howard Hughes coming in and then to Sheldon Adelson coming in with the Sands Casino.

1:14:30 The interesting story with Hughes has been known for a long time. He had some connections to Watergate because I think McCord had a bunch of links to Intertel, Howard Hughes' own private investigative agency. And they would rotate people through – they would rotate CIA agents through there sometimes. But the interesting story was there's this guy.

1:14:58 who runs an account called Zingle. I think he's now Zingle's CEO, who went through Adnan Khashoggi's FBI FOIA documents. And apparently the Las Vegas FBI was investigating Adnan Khashoggi back in the early 70s. And later, Khashoggi would get involved with Iran-Contra, with Mossad.

1:15:27 all that stuff, for burning a honeypot operation out of Las Vegas Sands. Yeah. So there's this interesting Iran-Contra connection to all of this, too, where, I mean, this whole casino, I think there's probably more to it. I can't totally put my finger on it. I can name a couple of different instances of this transition from the mafia running Las Vegas.

1:16:01 to corporations running it, but still kind of engaging in unusual behavior. But there is a connection from Adnan Khashoggi from 1972 Las Vegas, where he's making phone calls to the Watergate Hotel. Probably unrelated, but...

1:16:27 You know, there there is this whole honeypot thing going on that then connects him later, you know, with Iran Contra. And then it's it's only one link from there or two links to get you to the Franklin scandal and Craig Spence. And you know that Howard Hughes, which I believe 100 percent was CIA, it employed Robert Mayhew.

1:16:58 He won 100 percent of CIA. Are you familiar with Robert Mayhew? The name rings a bell. I think he's connected somehow to the JFK assassination. But I don't quote me on that. I don't have his file right in front of me. Yeah. So just real quick, it says that he was a businessman and lawyer that worked both for the FBI and CIA. He headed up.

1:17:27 the Nevada operation for Howard Hughes, meaning all of his casinos. He just happened to graduate from Georgetown, which we know is a CIA recruiting place. It also says that he worked counterintelligence in Europe during World War II, you know, with Alan Dulles.

1:17:49 And it says that he created his own association under the guise of a private investigative firm in Washington, D.C., you know, where the CIA is. And he is linked to, let's see, under the CIA work, it says that he was summoned to then Vice President Richard Nixon's office in 1954.

1:18:19 to do some things with the National Security Council, which, of course, we know what they were doing in 1954 at the National Security Council. They were overthrowing Guatemala. It also says that he worked to interfere with an agreement with Onassis and the king of Saudi Arabia.

1:18:46 It says that Mayhew's investigation agency was supposedly the model for Mission Impossible TV series. It says that he was running the honeypot you're talking about because he was tasked when the King Hussein came from Jordan to set him up with female companionship.

1:19:18 It also says that he worked with mob boss Johnny Roselli. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Roselli would later get implicated in trying to assassinate Castro in the late 60s. And then he would get assassinated right before he was going to testify for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

1:19:43 He also says Roselli introduced Mayhew to Sam Giacomo and Santo Trapacani Jr. And of course, we know what they were involved in. They were involved in all of the opium coming in from Taiwan.

1:20:05 Yeah. So he's intimately involved in all of this. He also was involved in the money laundering in the Bahamas. And he had a house that he set up under the guise of it being associated with Howard Hughes in Arizona, where they were trafficking weapons out of. That came up in another book. So, yeah, very interesting.

1:20:38 Yeah, you know, it's there's just a lot of connections flying back and forth here. But I think that, you know, the transition from mafia control to corporations moving into Las Vegas, late 60s, early 70s. I think that's an interesting period for for for people to look at where like I can run Franklin all the way to ground and like I can run, you know, certain parts of Iran Contra.

1:21:07 all the way to the ground. Or, you know, the IT&T scandal. But that would be another place to look for people who are either interested in the Rancontra connection with Adnan Khashoggi. And there's a guy who's already done some of the work on it with Khashoggi. What's his name? I think it was... I don't know his name, but he runs this company called Zingle, which...

1:21:38 I'll send you his handle on Twitter. I think it's X-I-N-G-L-E-C-E-O. X-I-N-V-L-E-C-E-O. All right. I'll find him. He's ex-military, just like you. I'll find him. Thank you. Yeah. Anybody doing work in this, I definitely want to follow. All right. Anybody else got anything?

1:22:10 If not, I'm going to jump off here and go eat dinner because I'm starving. Appreciate you guys being here again. We'll pick up tomorrow where we left off and get through this book. This book is crazy and adds so much flavor to all of the stuff that we already know. I just again, I'm fascinated with Gary Webb having done all of this.

1:22:40 And now, obviously, all of these years later, with all of our other information, I can't imagine being the guy that's breaking all these stories. It just is. And the pressure that the guy had to be under to do it. His bravery is second to none. I totally admire this guy. And that's the reason why I wanted to bring you this book.

1:23:08 at this particular time because it seems to tie all of these pieces together. And weirdly enough, having just finished that Columbia book, it makes all of this make a lot more sense. So thanks for being here. Appreciate it. You guys take care. I'll keep tabs on Bridget to make sure she doesn't get overwhelmed by her plumbing situation. And again, keep Duane Cates in your prayers, please. I appreciate that. Thanks for being here. Take care.

Entities here

CIA50 Costa Rica27 Norwin Menendez25 Contras25 Ron Lister25 William Earl Nelson13 FBI12 Daniel Blanton12 Sandalio Sandy Gonzalez10 United States9 Oliver North9 William Black9 Nicaragua7 H. Smith Richardson Sr.6 Torres Brothers5 Sandinistas5 Maurice Green5 Las Vegas5 Robert Maheu5 Iran-Contra affair5 Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross5 Los Angeles5 Colombia4 Mundy Security Group Incorporated4 Mexico4 Angola4 San José4 William Casey4 Christopher Moore4 Howard Hughes4 Murder of Enrique Amarino4 Ronald Reagan3 U.S. State Department3 Washington, D.C.3 Luna Beach3 Roberto Liberto3 Neil Purcell3 Manuel Noriega3 Adnan Khashoggi3 U.S. Customs Service3

Claims made here

Ron Lister supplied_arms_to William Black documented ▶ 3:06

“Blanton explained, came from Ron Lister and his associate William Lee Downing through their security business in their high-class Laguna Beach location. Lister admitted to the CIA that he began acquir…”

William Black supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 4:04

“Blanton told the CIA inspectors that Lister had access to such a wide variety of weapons that in 1983 and 84, he arranged for him to give a sales presentation to the leadership of the Contras. Blanton…”

CIA supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 4:04

Gary Shapiro member_of Mundy Security Group Incorporated documented ▶ 6:29

“The quote-unquote security business that provided Blanton the weapons was Monday M-U-N-D-Y Security Group Incorporated, which Lister incorporated in Laguna Beach in 1983. Lister and an attorney named …”

Christopher Moore member_of Mundy Security Group Incorporated documented ▶ 6:29

Ron Lister member_of Mundy Security Group Incorporated documented ▶ 6:29

Maurice Green member_of Mundy Security Group Incorporated documented ▶ 6:29

William Black member_of Mundy Security Group Incorporated documented ▶ 6:57

“fellow former reserve police officer Christopher Moore were the directors of the company. The business card found in a drug raid three years later identified Blanton as the vice president of the gun c…”

Maurice Green covered_up Mundy Security Group Incorporated documented ▶ 8:22

“Green was prosecuted and disbarred in 1987 for forging prescriptions to obtain narcotics. In 1992, he was sentenced to two years in prison for grand theft and practicing law without a license. Great g…”

Ron Lister supplied_arms_to Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross documented ▶ 10:23

“Ron Lister procured that equipment for Ricky. Blanton said Ross used to live in an apartment beside the freeway in San Pedro. It was an apartment by Florence, if I remember it correctly. So I get him …”

FBI spied_on Ron Lister documented ▶ 12:52

“a fully automatic machine gun complete with silencer, and state-of-the-art handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Eventually, Ronald Lister's skills in procuring such high-tech munitions brought him to the a…”

Ron Lister attempted_assassination_of FBI host_asserted ▶ 13:20

“They had a grand jury subpoena to deliver and a statement to make. They hammered on who I might know in East Bloc countries. He confirmed to police in 1996 that he had been the subject of a grand jury…”

Neil Purcell exposed Ron Lister documented ▶ 15:16

“Purcell said that the FBI discovered that Lister was bullshitting, charging them four or five times what he paid for. The kind of thing that really is laughable about the entire thing. Former agent Sm…”

FBI covered_up Ron Lister documented ▶ 16:40

“When they called the FBI to ask for a copy of their old files on the Lister investigation, Special Agent Tim Bezek stated that the FBI reports and the transcripts of Lister's grand jury were protected…”

Ron Lister supplied_arms_to William Earl Nelson documented ▶ 19:09

“He wanted to have the names in writing before he went to the grand jury. Lister said the people listed were only business people. The last two names on the list was Roberto de Abusan, which is the El …”

William Earl Nelson member_of Fleur Corporation documented ▶ 20:08

“Lister said that Bill Nelson was an ASIS member, which he said stood for American Society of International Security. Lister said that Nelson was the security director for Fleur Corporation. It's F-L-E…”

William Earl Nelson member_of CIA documented ▶ 20:37

“Had they done so, they might have gotten a better idea of why the FBI files had been classified 11 years before. Before becoming the lower corporation's vice president for security and administration,…”

William Earl Nelson overthrew Salvador Allende documented ▶ 22:35

“Mostly where? You know, around the Taiwan Far East area where they're running opium. Yeah, there. Japanese newspapers exposed him as a CIA after they learned he was asking travelers different question…”

William Earl Nelson headed Operation IA Feature documented ▶ 23:07

“which resulted in the overthrow and the assassination of Salvador Allende. Later, Nelson commanded Operation Feature, a covert plan to place friendly groups in power in Angola. Isn't that interesting?…”

South Africa supplied_arms_to Angola host_asserted ▶ 24:27

“Preserve deniability for the CIA. In the Angolan conflict, the countries of Zaire, which was Congo after the CIA overthrew it, and South Africa were used. And remember, we talked about Angola and how …”

Israel supplied_arms_to South Africa host_asserted ▶ 24:27

CIA supplied_arms_to Angola host_asserted ▶ 24:27

El Salvador supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 24:57

“This is what he's talking about. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador fronted arms shipments for the Contras. In both cases, the CIA turned to the People's Republic of China, meaning Taiwan, to supply…”

China supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 24:57

Guatemala supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 24:57

Honduras supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 24:57

Oliver North supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 26:27

“These certificates are sworn declarations in which the government buying the weapons certifies that it really did order them. It is supposed to provide the U.S. government with some assurance that Ame…”

Ron Lister supplied_arms_to Contras documented ▶ 29:11

“At the same time that he was reportedly meeting with Nelson, Lister was also advising Contra on security matters and selling them arms. The other documents seized from Lister in 1986 raid lend support…”

Norwin Menendez member_of National Guard (El Salvador) host_asserted ▶ 30:35

“outside of Managua for five years, but he had none of the fluorescent tube look of someone who had spent all that time in prison. He was tanned. He was well-rested. According to, let's see, one of the…”

Norwin Menendez supplied_arms_to Contras book_quoted ▶ 35:28

“for a variety of police agencies. In May of 1992, the FBI, DEA, IRS, and the Los Angeles Police Department sat the Torreses down in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles and grilled them about Men…”

Norwin Menendez funded Contras book_quoted ▶ 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…”

Norwin Menendez spied_on Enrique Amarino book_quoted ▶ 43:56

“because he was working with the entire government to include the CIA. In an interview, Menendez said that he had helped DEA gather intelligence on the February 1985 torture murder of DEA agent Enrique…”

Oliver North funded Contras book_quoted ▶ 49:15

“by suggesting that $1.5 million in cocaine cash the DEA planned to seize from the Medellin cartel should be turned over to the Contras. The DEA says it declined North's suggestion. Subsequently, a Whi…”

William Casey funded Contras book_quoted ▶ 49:44

“With the assistance of former securities lawyer and then CIA director William Casey, North created an elaborate network of offshore bank accounts to conceal the source of the money that was to sustain…”

Troil Sanchez supplied_arms_to Contras book_quoted ▶ 51:16

“Yeah, that too. His partner in one of them was FDN director Aristides Sanchez's brother, Troil, a former CIA pilot that was identified in 1982 as a supplier to Menendez's operation in San Francisco. H…”

Norwin Menendez spied_on Daniel Blanton book_quoted ▶ 1:01:01

“The DEA agent, Gonzalez, told the Justice Department that, quote, planned to use Menendez only to introduce other informants into Bland's organization, unquote, reportedly because he thought Menendez …”

Manuel Noriega supplied_arms_to Contras book_quoted ▶ 1:03:26

“confirmed to the U.S. Subcommittee in 1988 that Noriega's pilots would fly up weapons for the Contras along with drugs, leaving the guns behind in Costa Rica before hitting two routes north, one throu…”

Norwin Menendez laundered_money_for CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:06:35

“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 fi…”

Norwin Menendez trafficked CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:07:59

“No, because they all knew and they were using his drug network to make money, just like we use the mafia to run the drugs and make money in the Golden Triangle. It's just a replication of the system t…”

Oliver North supplied_arms_to Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 1:08:31

“Oliver North didn't know where this money was coming from. And you can't tell me he wasn't aware of the people involved to do it. No, he went down there and met with them. It just blows my mind. Someb…”

Oliver North recruited CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:08:58

“a revolution an overthrow of the sandinista government so it's my firm belief at this point that i don't know what part of the career that he was hired by the cia but from the time he pinned on 05 on …”

Paul Helliwell member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:11:41

“How often it happens, I don't know. But that's the same with General Singleb, Paul Helliwell, when he was pretending to be a colonel when he was actually in the OSS and then later the CIA. It actually…”

Intel front_for CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:14:30

“The interesting story with Hughes has been known for a long time. He had some connections to Watergate because I think McCord had a bunch of links to Intertel, Howard Hughes' own private investigative…”

Adnan Khashoggi member_of Iran-Contra affair host_asserted ▶ 1:14:58

“who runs an account called Zingle. I think he's now Zingle's CEO, who went through Adnan Khashoggi's FBI FOIA documents. And apparently the Las Vegas FBI was investigating Adnan Khashoggi back in the …”

Adnan Khashoggi member_of Mossad host_asserted ▶ 1:14:58

Howard Hughes front_for CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:16:27

“You know, there there is this whole honeypot thing going on that then connects him later, you know, with Iran Contra. And then it's it's only one link from there or two links to get you to the Frankli…”

Robert Maheu member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:16:58

“He won 100 percent of CIA. Are you familiar with Robert Mayhew? The name rings a bell. I think he's connected somehow to the JFK assassination. But I don't quote me on that. I don't have his file righ…”

Robert Maheu member_of Allen Dulles book_quoted ▶ 1:17:27

“the Nevada operation for Howard Hughes, meaning all of his casinos. He just happened to graduate from Georgetown, which we know is a CIA recruiting place. It also says that he worked counterintelligen…”

Robert Maheu headed Howard Hughes book_quoted ▶ 1:17:27

Robert Maheu member_of National Security Council book_quoted ▶ 1:17:49

“And it says that he created his own association under the guise of a private investigative firm in Washington, D.C., you know, where the CIA is. And he is linked to, let's see, under the CIA work, it …”

National Security Council overthrew 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état host_asserted ▶ 1:18:19

“to do some things with the National Security Council, which, of course, we know what they were doing in 1954 at the National Security Council. They were overthrowing Guatemala. It also says that he wo…”

Robert Maheu traded_network_to King Hussein of Jordan book_quoted ▶ 1:18:46

“It says that Mayhew's investigation agency was supposedly the model for Mission Impossible TV series. It says that he was running the honeypot you're talking about because he was tasked when the King …”

Johnny Roselli attempted_assassination_of Fidel Castro host_asserted ▶ 1:19:18

“It also says that he worked with mob boss Johnny Roselli. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Roselli would later get implicated in trying to assassinate Castro in the late 60s. And then he would get assassinat…”

Santo Trafficante Jr. trafficked Formosa host_asserted ▶ 1:19:43

“He also says Roselli introduced Mayhew to Sam Giacomo and Santo Trapacani Jr. And of course, we know what they were involved in. They were involved in all of the opium coming in from Taiwan.…”

Sam Giancana trafficked Formosa host_asserted ▶ 1:19:43

“He also says Roselli introduced Mayhew to Sam Giacomo and Santo Trapacani Jr. And of course, we know what they were involved in. They were involved in all of the opium coming in from Taiwan.…”

Johnny Roselli traded_network_to Santo Trafficante Jr. book_quoted ▶ 1:19:43

“He also says Roselli introduced Mayhew to Sam Giacomo and Santo Trapacani Jr. And of course, we know what they were involved in. They were involved in all of the opium coming in from Taiwan.…”

Johnny Roselli traded_network_to Sam Giancana book_quoted ▶ 1:19:43

“He also says Roselli introduced Mayhew to Sam Giacomo and Santo Trapacani Jr. And of course, we know what they were involved in. They were involved in all of the opium coming in from Taiwan.…”

Robert Maheu trafficked Arizona book_quoted ▶ 1:20:05

“Yeah. So he's intimately involved in all of this. He also was involved in the money laundering in the Bahamas. And he had a house that he set up under the guise of it being associated with Howard Hugh…”

Robert Maheu laundered_money_for Bahamas book_quoted ▶ 1:20:05