The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 22

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0:00 Hello SR-71, how are you today? I'm doing very well, Colonel. How about yourself? Oh my gosh. I take it you got some interesting stuff for us. I love them cars, by the way. Oh, it was beautiful. Oh, I'm glad you like them. Yeah, oh my gosh. So, this is crazy. Hey, hey, hey, hey. So they are.

0:34 I think we just got a delivery. Hey, hey, hey. There's Bridget. Let me get her up here and we're going to get started. So y'all are not going to want to miss our show tomorrow on Alpha Warriors. You're just not going to want to miss it. But I do want to spend a couple of minutes refreshing everyone's.

1:06 memory about someone so that when we do the show tomorrow, you will be able to put all the pieces together. We have talked about Elliot Abrams. We talked about him three different times in the material we've covered so far. He was the guy when they tried to stick Robert Owens into the State Department in that fake,

1:38 organization. The fake organization that was quote-unquote non-governmental humanitarian to hide the fact that the CIA was embedded in the State Department helping the Contras. That was one aspect of his role in the Iran-Contra. Also, he was involved in basically

2:08 Working with Oliver North. On the. On the. Weapons. Trafficking. With Iran. So. I just wanted to. Go over a couple of things. Because do you know where we find. Elliot Abrams. In 2019. We find him.

2:38 as a part of the Trump administration under Mike Pompeo as the special representative for Iran. We also found him as a special representative to Venezuela during the Trump administration's first term. And why is that important? Because that's when...

3:06 The CIA, either knowing or either Trump knew or he didn't know that we tried to coup Maduro and stick Guaido in Venezuela as the quote unquote recognized president. And what's interesting about that is this guy's got like a crap ton of baggage.

3:36 Number one, he was a Democrat up until Jimmy Carter, and he didn't like the fact that Jimmy Carter was using humanitarian aid to not aid all of the military dictators in South America. So that's evidently what he specializes in, is propping up dictatorships under the guise of anti-communists.

4:06 100% a neocon, was in the Council of Foreign Relations. And he was eventually found guilty of false testimony during the Iran-Contra scandal and was pardoned by none other than George H.W. Bush. Because, of course, he's intimately involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.

4:34 He was a member of PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, which outlined all of the Arab Spring stuff and basically just a coup factory guy. So it's crazy. You, of course, would not be at all surprised, given all of the stuff that we found, that he's a Harvard graduate and went to the London School of Economics.

5:02 Which, of course, he didn't go under an Oxford scholarship, but it's to the same place. And then he comes back and gets his law degree from Harvard as well. And there was an effort once he had established himself as a liar to even pull his law license, which, of course, never happened. That just happens to people that question elections.

5:31 actually support President Trump as opposed to this guy who was basically trying to undermine him. And you also find him intimately involved in quote unquote human rights initiatives, both in the State Department and other. But his idea of human rights is anything that's anti-communist is supporting human rights, even to the point where.

6:01 He was intimately involved in defending the death squad leader in El Salvador under the guise of human rights. He had a knock down, drag out fight with the actual human rights commission in his support of the El Salvadoran government that was sponsoring the death squads and went so far as to question.

6:30 The number of people dead in El Salvador in a particular city, say, and there's no way that many people were killed. Not only were that many people killed, there were actually more people killed in surrounding areas. All of that eventually became known after he tried defending it. So this guy is unbelievably corrupt.

6:58 And you have to ask yourself, how the hell did he end up in the Trump administration? How that happened? Because it's crazy. Now, obviously, Mike Pompeo played a huge role in his appointment to be the quote unquote special representative of Venezuela. But I mean, it's.

7:27 It's literally crazy. He also got involved in a thing called Vandenberg Coalition in 2021, which was named after an American politician and senator from Michigan by the name of Arthur Vandenberg.

7:58 As I understand it, there's Vandenberg Foundation and money that's associated with that. And the Vandenberg Foundation was instrumental to funding part of the creation of NATO, along with the Rockefeller Foundation, which we know was the initial funding source for Operation Gladio. So that everything about this guy.

8:25 just screams Operation Gladio. And he has been, oh, and he's a good friend of Marco Rubio's too, which will come out later. But what I just found about this guy is he was working, you know, we've been covering the Freedom House the last couple of shows on Alpha Warrior Show. And just to show you how all of this stuff blends in together.

8:56 He was instrumental in using the Freedom House and the Freedom House funding, along with the International Republican Institute, the Republican piece of the National Endowment for Democracy, in funding the unrest in Venezuela during the first Trump administration. So it's all one big happy family. And this guy seems to always be in the middle of the wrong side of everything.

9:25 I'm going to cover that in depth tomorrow on The Office Show. But I just texted Alpha, holy shit, you'll never believe that I found the Freedom House in Venezuela during the 2019 attempted coup by Mike Pompeo. So I surprised myself even as I shouldn't be surprised by any of this. But yet I still am every single time. All right. Having said all that.

9:54 Let's dig into today's topic under Dark Alliance. We're going to finish up with Chapter 24 and get most of the way through Chapter 25 today. And where we left off was Weekly and the Marcon Corporation kind of getting exposed.

10:19 And of course, at the heart of both of them is Ron Lister, the guy who keeps claiming that he works for the CIA. Lister and his attorney protested the DEA's attempt to toss the ex-cop back in prison and argued that Lister, meaning Lister, he's the ex-cop, argued that Lister had provided quite a bunch of help.

10:47 on the investigation of Blanton and Menendez, which, of course, there's been no investigation of Blanton and Menendez because they're off limits. If the feds couldn't bust the Nicaraguans, Lister's attorney said, that wasn't because of Ron Lister's not helping.

11:09 These reasons may have been more to do with national security and political decisions made by the Attorney General, the State Department, and the CIA. And of course, that's true. A decision not to prosecute individuals in order to avoid embarrassing high government officials for complicity in drug dealing should not be sufficient reason for this defendant not to be able to have the advantage of his plea bargain for cooperation.

11:37 In a letter to the federal judge, Rudy Brewster, who was handling the case, Lister warned him that the federal government had been playing games with the Blanton case for a long time. Quote, in 1986, the main players and myself came very close to indictment, but the government chose not to proceed because of matters of national security, unquote. That's what Lister wrote to the judge.

12:06 First granting Lister's motion for a hearing, Judge Brewster quietly changed his mind and ordered Lister to serve eight years in prison for drug trafficking. The Blanton investigation was taken away from Lister's handler, Emil Meza, and given to Assistant U.S. Attorney I.J. O'Neill, a man who is quick to inform people.

12:32 that he is a top secret clearance and an expert in handling national security cases. Coincidentally, O'Neill was the assistant U.S. attorney who for five years had, who five years ago had indicted former Green Beret Colonel James Gritz for misuse of a passport. They always use the same people.

13:00 Shortly after Grits and Scott Weakley returned from Burma singing songs of CIA involvement in heroin trafficking. So we're going to give him the same case. O'Neill would eventually become Blanton's biggest booster within the Justice Department. DEA agent Judy Gustafson said Lister dropped by her office shortly after his release from prison in 1996 to pick up some belongings. And once again.

13:30 started talking about his connections to the CIA. If the Justice Department thought the CIA would ever tell them anything about him, she asked. Lister laughingly told the agent he was headed out the door towards freedom. They were dreaming if they thought that they were going to squash him. For Ricky Ross, Operation Big Spender brought only glad tidings.

13:59 He became one of the federal government's star witness in the second round of corruption trials in 91, and his appearance on the witness stand was in some ways an historic occasion. It was the first time that the man who had helped touch off LA's crack explosion appeared to public to tell his own story. The federal prosecutor handling the case called

14:25 Ross, probably the most significant drug dealer ever to testify for the government. Freeway, Ricky, along with a host of other lesser drug dealers, appeared as government witness, opened up an inner world of the big crack dealing for the wide-eyed public to see for the first time. Ross bluntly told the jurors that by the end of the 1980s, he had sold thousands and thousands of kilos.

14:54 of cocaine in South Los Angeles, becoming a multimillionaire by the time he was 22. He told of the properties that he owned, the speedboat that he had docked at nearby Del Rey, his fleet of cars, his ski trips to Aspens, his 14 row seats at the Laker games. Another major LA crack dealer who testified for the government cooperated everything Ross said. Alexander Smith.

15:24 That's the other drug dealer. Smith said that they had created an economic empire, including a tire shop, apartment building investments, built hotels. And he mentioned that Ross, a convicted trafficker, had been described as the godfather of the rock cocaine trade in South Central.

15:53 But Smith, who was serving a life sentence without possibility of parole, made his federal handlers cringe when he launched into an impromptu lecture on the drug war. Peering intently at the jury from behind steel bars, firmly grasping the microphone, Smith accused the government officials of bringing the drugs into the United States. Yes, I mean President Bush, Smith said.

16:20 When he was in the CIA and now, the government is the only people that have the access to the equipment, but minorities are the ones going to jail for it. Such comments, combined with the Senate reduction and other favors Ross and his cohorts had been given by the government to secure their cooperation against the deputies, didn't sit well with the jurors.

16:46 who had difficulty accepting the testimony of drug dealers over the denials of the accused officers. Under cross-examination, Ross admitted that the Justice Department had agreed to cut his sentence in half and had permitted him to keep the remaining properties and money that was valued at $2 million. Outraged, the jurors acquitted most of the indicted officers and cited Ross's deal as the reason.

17:15 They really gave away the farm, one of the jurors said. The LAPD detective, who was the architect of the Freeway Ricky Task Force, Ross's nemesis, Steve Pollack, was one of those acquitted. He was later re-indicted on civil rights and income tax changes and pled guilty to violating Ollie Newell. That was Rick's...

17:46 civil rights by beating him up. In Bitterd, Pollack retired from the police force, complaining that he'd been sold out by his own department and persecuted by the government lawyers who'd crawled into bed with drug dealers. Though the Big Spender investigation was ultimately a flop for the Justice Department, Ross had lived up to his end on the bargain, and in February of 1992, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Emmerich

18:14 who would later gain notoriety as a member of the independent counsel Kenneth Starr's Whitewater prosecution. See, I told you, they just keep using the same people to hide all of their shit. Dutifully went to court and urged that the crack lord be given a break, praising his cooperation and said it was more than satisfactory. Emmerich said, quote,

18:45 Ross was on the stand for three or four days. He was cross-examined in excruciating detail about all imaginable subjects. Ross answered those questions without hesitation and, in my opinion, did so honestly and candidly, unquote. The sentence was trimmed from 10 years to 51 months, which made him eligible for release in a little over a year. Ross was sent to federal prison in Phoenix, Arizona, to serve the rest of his time.

19:15 Though he had successfully navigated the waters of the cocaine industry for nearly a decade, Blanton learned that he was unprepared for operating a normal business. His 24-location rent-a-car business, Alpha 2, suffered when a deal to rent thousands of cars to German sightseers in 1988 vaporized at the last minute.

19:42 He had a contract to rent 3,000 cars, but he didn't have enough cars. So he went out and got credit from Chrysler and GM. And then when it went bust, basically, so did he. It was noted later that Alpha 2 Rent-A-Car had apparently been a doper's choice for wheels in sunny Miami. And Daniello had gotten to know some very heavy hitters in that scene.

20:14 Quote, I did a lot of favors to the Columbians in Miami for my rent-a-car business. They used to go. They don't have a credit card, so I would rent with a deposit of $500 cash, and they would rent a car. So I got a lot of connections in in those three years that I was running my business. They were my friends because of my business, unquote.

20:42 He continued to deal with his Colombian drug dealers under the guise of a rental car. He felt particularly close to Colombian Herberto Cardona because Cardona was supplying Danielle's Nicaraguan associates in South Central with cocaine. This guy used to go every week to my place, this Mr. Cardona. He used to go every week. He had a lot of business.

21:14 Cardona, whom Blanton called El Fuco, was one of Colombia's better-known cocaine kingpins. When the Colombian government agreed to extradite him and five other traffickers to the United States in late 1985, it was international news, held as a sign that Colombia and the U.S. government was actually attacking drugs.

21:42 There was one trafficker the Colombians refused to extradite, Juan Mata Ballesteros, the Honduran billionaire whose airline, Stetco, was flying supplies for the Contras. Instead of turning Mata over to the U.S., the Colombians deported him to Honduras because it did not extradite its citizens.

22:14 Humberto Cardona's extradition to the U.S. appears to have been equally painless. A mere three years later, according to Blanton, he was jetting around the world supplying South Central crack through Menendez's men Sandino and Morales. Blanton poured out his tale of financial woes, which he's done through this whole book, to the Colombian.

22:43 And the Colombian had a novel idea. Why not get back into the cocaine business? It was hotter than ever. Why? He just sold Blanton's friend in LA a ton of cocaine, literally 2,000 kilos. So if you want to go back, I can get some merchandise in LA and you don't have to worry about the money. Blanton put his rental car agency into bankruptcy and moved his family back to California, settling in San Diego.

23:13 in a house that was owned by his buddy, Sergio Herrera, the smooth Mexican millionaire. Herrera had become a well-known figure in San Diego business circles, owning profitable parking lots and car dealerships. Of course. Of course. He was on the board of the San Diego YMCA, had donated property.

23:45 to the Chamber of Commerce, you know, all the players that we found in all of these stories. He's supporting them all. The House looked over the busy San Diego Harbor and basically began functioning as a cocaine network. He was immediately reunited with Menendez.

24:17 started doing business with Jose Gonzalez in San Francisco, which was Menendez's contact there. He also said that, let's see, this is a quote, but I never, at that time, I never come to deal with them because Norwin didn't let me keep in touch with them. I was in touch with Gonzalez, who spoke with the people Omar,

24:53 Menendez and his uncle Menendez, they introduced me to Guillermo by phone for the first time. And all of the people, meaning Roger Menendez, Omar and Herrera Menendez, those two nephew guys that we talked about earlier on. So Norwin is, I mean, Blanton is saying that.

25:19 He didn't really know them, which is a lie because we've already learned he was at parties with them. Whether he dealt with them on drug business is a different story, but he knows the entire Menendez family. When Norwin was away in Central America, Blanton said his nephew, Herrera Morales, ran the family cocaine business in San Francisco. About two weeks after former CIA director George Bush.

25:47 had been sworn in as president, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco brought a secret indictment against Menendez, finally charging him with a few of the crimes he had committed back in the 80s. The two-count indictment accused him of conspiracy to import cocaine from 1994 to 90, or excuse me, 84 to 85, and possession of one kilo of cocaine in 1985.

26:13 During that period, he was having meetings with CIA agent Adolfo Calera, who was part of the Contra meetings that were happening back then with the FDN. He was also driving FDN officials around Los Angeles and holding FDN functions at the T-shirt factory that Blanton had been managing.

26:44 Federal magistrates signed an arrest warrant. Then, curiously, both the warrant and the indictment were sealed, literally locked away in vaults in a San Francisco federal courthouse, where they would remain sealed from public view for the next nine years. Menendez called the indictment a phony, suggesting it was filed to protect the U.S. government and its relationship with Menendez,

27:14 Totally true. He had been coddled and protected the entire time, and the indictment was part of it. Eric Swenson, the federal prosecutor who filed the case against Menendez, said the indictment was returned because the case against Menendez was so old that it was fast approaching the statute of limitations. If the indictment wasn't returned soon, it would never be used. Secondly, Swenson said,

27:42 It materialized that there was some information that he was back in the cocaine business. And then it was like, quote, all right, we'll indict his ass. And if he gets arrested and comes back to the country, we'll see if he wants to cooperate. You know, turn him into an informant so they don't ever have to prosecute him. That way they protect him. But what Swenson apparently didn't know is that Menendez was cooperating.

28:12 with the Costa Rican DEA, which is corrupt, and that he had been for the past two years, which makes these reports of Menendez's continued involvement in drug trafficking even more interesting. Surprisingly, in 1989, even after San Francisco's indictment and the arrest warrant was issued, Menendez continued to work as an informant for the DEA in Costa Rica.

28:39 and travel routinely to the United States on behalf of the DEA, and supposedly they didn't even know it. The Justice Department IG would later marvel that during this time, the FBI was apparently unaware of his activities. And I would put unaware in quotations. Records show DEA agents were regularly sending the drug Kingpin

29:07 on classified missions to San Francisco, Miami, L.A., Panama, and Colombia. You know, the entire drugs network. Yeah, he was running the entire network and supposedly no one knew. And they were paying him thousands of our dollars. The Costa Rican DEA office continued to protect him, mainly from the FBI, which was trying to arrest him on the San Francisco indictment. You know, the one that's sealed that most people don't know about.

29:39 In 1990, in response to an FBI request for help, the DEA Costa Rican attache, Ron Lard, described Menendez as a very valuable and currently active DEA source in Costa Rica. The San Francisco FBI reacted surprised. In February 1990, it demanded to know what the DEA had suddenly discovered Menendez.

30:09 amazing worth was what it actually was. Before and after the FBI had indicted him, the San Francisco FBI would not have pursued an indictment of Menendez if they'd been aware of Menendez's cooperation with a law enforcement agency. But again, that's kind of a misnomer because remember, if you looked into the one El Paso drug database that the guys down in

30:38 L.A. had looked in, all of the entries were there. Does the FBI not use that same database? Of course they do. The DEA basically was saying that, oh, that's our mistake. Norwin was no longer an active DEA informant. And once again, no one knew where he was as they're flying him around the world.

31:07 One FBI agent complained that he did not believe the DEA in Costa Rica or the Costa Rican authorities about the involvement of them with Menendez. As to what he was doing and why the DEA was so protective of him, the Justice Department IG report in 1998 provided a clue. Among Norwin's targets were some Nicaraguan government officials.

31:36 Norwin, it appears, was still fighting the Nicaraguan government and trying to implicate them in cocaine. Though combat between the Contras and Sandinistas all but ceased in March 1988 with a truce, the CIA continued a covert war to destabilize the Sandinista government throughout the rest of the decade. And it now appears that Norwin Menendez was part of it.

32:10 They were keeping Norwin Menendez around to destabilize Nicaragua so they didn't want to give him up and they were protecting him to continue a covert war to overthrow the government of Nicaragua and implicate it in the drug trafficking they were actually doing. In 1990, a Nicaraguan

32:35 public, wary of a decade of war and strife and tension with the U.S., voted the Sandinistas out of office. With the U.S. backing, Norwin's former business partner, Valetta Chamorro, was elected president. And the Chamorros has still, as recently as when I was just looking about USAID, like a year ago, their entire family, the Chamorros, are a CIA front.

33:04 They have been backed by the CIA the entire time and was part of the destabilization of Nicaraguan government the entire time the Sandinistas were in charge. She was immediately began bringing back all of the Somoza friends and relatives, giving back their companies and properties that the Sandinistas had confiscated.

33:36 like any CIA agent would. Menendez and his family moved back to their old mansion on the outskirts of Managua, and he began reclaiming all of his holdings valued at $12 million that had belonged to him and his assassinated brother, Edmundo. Norwin also began reconstructing his drug trafficking network inside of Nicaragua.

34:03 Even though the Sandinistas were no longer running the government, they still controlled the country's military and national police. If they caught him dealing cocaine, he would be at the mercy of his old enemies. To cover his bets, Norwin recruited a turncoat Sandinista intelligence officer, Enrique Miranda Jamie, to help him reestablish his smuggling pipeline through Nicaragua.

34:33 That would prove to be his undoing. A slippery character who was a lifelong Sandinista, Enrique Miranda, had been a paid CIA informant between 84 and 85, spying on his comrades and peeking into shipping crates to keep the agency apprised of all of the weapons that the Sandinistas were purchasing from outside sources.

35:00 He says that he was one of two CIA operatives working inside the Sandinista Ministry of Interior in a super secret dirty tricks unit called the Bureau of Special Operations, which was funded by the CIA. In addition to having extensive political connections, Miranda was an experienced smuggler himself. During the early years of the Contra War, Miranda said that he was responsible for arranging clandestine shipments of

35:31 Sandinista arms from Panama to revolutionary groups throughout Central America, and that he had helped the Sandinistas design a sting of secret arms caches in and around Managua, which basically amounted to CIA stay-behind units. They had stashed

35:53 arm caches. So when they finally melted what they had anticipated as being the overthrow of the Sandinista government with their contra forces, they had their stay behind caches of weapons already there. They had been hidden in concrete bunkers in hillsides and wooded areas. Sound familiar? Yes, it does. As a result,

36:22 Not only did he know most of the smuggling routes through the country, but had places to hide cocaine for the people who wanted to traffic it. In interviews with Nicaraguan police in 1991, Menendez corroborated many of the details of Miranda's past. He said Miranda, who is married to a cousin of Norwin's wife, Blanca, had been a friend of his for a decade.

36:51 And he confirmed that Miranda was the person who was sending guns to the El Salvadoran death squads. He also confirmed that Miranda sold himself to the CIA and provided the agency with intelligence on Sandinista leaders. The CIA refused to confirm this. In 1989, Menendez hired the former double agent.

37:20 to serve as his emissary to the Colombians, primarily the cartel of Bogota. Posing as Norwin's nephew, Miranda said he arranged drug shipments, plotted the routes, and handed the cash deliveries back and forth. While Menendez negotiated prices, put up the money to finance the arrangement,

37:49 arranged for the cocaine transportation from Nicaragua to the United States. Most of the cocaine they were shipping, Miranda said, was being sold in Los Angeles through Menendez's brother, Luis Enrique, who was later convicted in Nicaragua of drug trafficking. In San Francisco, Miranda said Norwin was dealing with his nephews, Galermo and Herrero.

38:20 The drugs were being smuggled into California through two different routes. One, Menendez had on his payroll a series of American pilots that had taken charge of Control Tower in the state of Texas. Miranda testified that Norwin's cargo planes based in Costa Rica had established flight plans to haul commercial goods into Texas.

38:48 Before they left, Miranda said, a space would be cleared in the cargo hold area enough to hide 300 kilos of cocaine. When overflying the route in the U.S., they would be airdropped and then they would land normally. At the abandoned airfield, according to Miranda, Menendez had

39:18 hundreds of kilos of cocaine hidden in underground bunkers. The kilos would be loaded aboard a cargo aircraft hidden amidst the commercial cargo. The planes would continue on into Texas. This operation would last approximately 15 or 20 minutes. The advantage is that here in Nicaragua, there's no radar system.

39:43 with the capacity to reach the airstrip, so they were unclear as to exactly where they were landing. The other method was equally inventive. Menendez would purchase automobiles in the U.S. through dealerships, import them, fill their frames and hollow spaces with cocaine, and weld them shut. Then the cars were loaded aboard auto transporters.

40:10 and driven across the border in Texas or California. For the amounts that were coming in, you almost needed flatbed trailers, one observer said. Blanton said that his first job, once he got back into California drug market, was serving as a broker for Norwin's nephew, Herrero.

40:34 San Francisco. He collected cocaine from hotel rooms all over the Bay Area and sold them to customers in Alabama, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Francisco. At least two of Blanton's biggest customers, Mike Smith in LA and Reggie Rash in Alabama, were black dealers who worked for Ricky Ross at one point. When Blanton had another well-timed series of lucky breaks,

41:02 Herrera was arrested and sent to jail. Jose Gonzalez moved back to Nicaragua, and the only experienced distributor left was Daniel Blanton. He took the job of doling out the cocaine to the other members of the Menendez's ring throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

41:25 Between 90 and 91, Blanton estimated he provided somewhere between 425 kilos of cocaine to Menendez's family in San Francisco, which amounted to about $8 million at wholesale prices. Blanton also began putting his L.A. connections back together, though he was reasonably sure the Torres brothers had ratted him out to the cops four years earlier.

41:52 and they knew he'd hired a hitman to kill him after he was convinced that one of them had been sleeping with his wife, the old friends let bygones be bygones and started buying and selling from each other. Rafael Correo recalled visiting the Torres brothers in North Hollywood with Blanton in 1990, where one of the Torres brothers offered to sell him a chrome-plated .45.

42:20 There was a fight on TV and Danielle and I went over there to watch it. I was staying at a hotel and that's when I first met the Torres brothers. And Blanton was working with them and under the belief that he was involved with narcotics with them at the time. Blanton said Correo was very picky about cocaine quality and deemed the kilos Blanton offered substandard.

42:50 Though Correo said that he never liked Blanton personally, he always seemed to have an agenda. He was always telling stories. Whether Blanton actually had any connections, one of the stories he told was that he had connections at the World Bank that helped him out.

43:13 Whether Blanton had any connection to the World Bank is unknown because undercover DEA tapes show that he was openly boasting about having received massive loans around the time from the Canadian government. And according to a DEA summary, he was being provided with lots of cash. Those discussions were secretly taped between 90 and 91 by DEA informant John Armadi.

43:46 He was a drug dealer who had been indicted in Nebraska in the early 80s for cocaine trafficking and had fled to Mexico. The Mexicans had booted him out and turned him over to the FBI, who, between the FBI and the DEA, had turned him into an informant, you know, like they do all of them. He was one of the first people Blanton contacted when he reentered Southern California's cocaine market.

44:13 apparently due to a long-standing friendship with Armani's ex-wife. In March of 1990, a week after the Sandinistas were voted out of office, Arman called the San Diego DEA agent Charles Jones and told him that Blanton is preparing to move back from Nicaragua and from Miami due to the favorable political climate at present. Blanton also reportedly had

44:43 a large amount of cash in Los Angeles that he was preparing to transfer to Nicaragua. Armin reported that Blanton owned property in Nicaragua and that he rented it to the government and was so tight with the new regime that he'd take him to an upcoming inauguration of Valletta Chamorro. Hey, I know all of the people from the government, Blanton boasted. They like...

45:15 They like you, see? Shit, they... Oh, he has a whole bunch of cuss words, basically saying that he knows everybody in the new government. Blanton wasn't just bragging, though. A DEA informant who had worked for Blanton informed federal agents in 91 that the drug dealer had extensive contacts with the new government and that he was able to deal cocaine on credit with the Cali cartel in Columbia.

45:43 In July 1990, Blanton flew back to Miami to deal with his rental car company and returned to L.A. a few days later. Armand met him at the airport where an expansive Blanton announced that he had just received $40 million for a loan to build homes in Nicaragua from the corrupt new government. On the drive to San Diego, Blanton killed time by filling

46:13 Armand in on his latest cocaine deals. His supplier, Cardona, was now in France and was looking to cross 2,000 kilos that he had stored in Guadalajara, Mexico. The Canadian associate was bringing in a load from Mexico through Houston. Some of his Japanese customers had had the bad luck of buying a boatload of cocaine in Colombia.

46:42 and then having it seized off the coast of Hawaii. Armin dropped Blanton off at the Nicaraguan Hilltop Home in San Diego. They had made plans to meet for dinner later that evening. Shortly before 7.30 p.m. on July 21, 1990, Armin arrived at a lobster restaurant near Blanton's house. He was wired.

47:11 He was accompanied by an undercover 8DEA agent, Judy Gustafson, who was posing as a money launderer interested in doing business with Blanton and his friend, Sergio Guerrera, who owned all the parking lots down there next to the border. Blanton rolled up 15 minutes later behind the wheel of a Mercedes with Guerrera at his side. The four made chit-chat.

47:41 While they were waiting, Guerrera asked the DEA agent if she'd ever snorted methamphetamines. And then Blanton motioned Armand outside so they could discuss things privately. If Armand was looking to sell, Blanton said, he had customers looking for 200 kilos. If he could get more, they'd buy that too.

48:05 Blanton informed him, these people have been working for me for over 10 years. I've sold them 2,000 to 4,000. I don't know, a lot. It ain't the Japanese guy that we're talking about, Armand asked him. The Japanese? You know him? No, you told me about him. No, no, it's not him. It's some black people. They control LA, the people that control LA. Armand said,

48:36 that he didn't like black people. Well, they pay cash. If they pay cash, you basically need to like them. So Armand says, well, that kind of scares me. No, don't worry. I don't do business with anyone, just the black people, Blanton assured him. The thing is with these people, you are making money every day and every week. They're all there. You don't have to be worried about nothing. They don't have to pay.

49:04 for warehouses, they just sell it immediately. Armin told Blanton he'd see what he could do and return to the table when Armin pressed the Nicaraguan for details on his new housing project. What were you doing? What was the deal? What are you building? Building some houses down in Nicaragua? Yeah, Nicaragua. I got a loan from the Canadian government for $40 million to build 5,000 houses.

49:36 Like mass housing? Like neighborhoods? He said, yeah, for poor people. You know, the government of Canada, they sometimes have, it's better for them for construction to give us 5,000 houses, a government loan for three years. You pay 3.5%. Then they get a United States company to, well, Blanton says, we'll be supervising it, not the U.S.

50:06 Blanton also mentioned that he was due to receive a million-dollar settlement from the U.S. government for some unspecified claim. Armand steered the conversation to Roger Sardino, the Menendez associate wanted by the DEA in conjunction with a giant Bolivian drug bust in Virginia in 1986. Blanton laughed and told the group how Sardino

50:34 had a plane full of cocaine flown into Nicaragua, but the plane belly flopped on a dirt field in a small town. The crash was swarmed by local peasants who carted away all the dope. The people, they found it and they were selling it at the market. Blanton chuckled. He said that when a horrified Sandino discovered the situation, he flew down from Miami and frantically tried to get all of the peasants to sell him back the cocaine.

51:05 Nicaraguan aviation records show that there was an airplane loaded with 1,000 pounds of cocaine that crash-landed near San Rafael on June 4, 1990. The pilot who was arrested was a captain in the Colombian Air Force. Again, Colombia.

51:26 For the next two years, the San Diego DEA would keep close eye on Blanton, recording his phone calls, tracking his movements, videotaping his meetings with informants, and negotiations to buy cocaine. They would hear him confess to many crimes and brag about having customers in New York, San Francisco, L.A., New Orleans, and other locations. But even after being informed that Blanton was back in South Central, once again selling massive amounts of cocaine to the leaders of Black Games,

51:55 The DEA did nothing. Blanton stated that one of the groups that he supplied cocaine to was a black gang member in Los Angeles that didn't care about the quality of cocaine because they were going to convert it to crack anyway. That was reported in a 1991 DEA report. On the tape of the conversation, Blanton and Arman can be heard commiserating about the decline in standards of the cocaine business.

52:23 A kilo of beautiful white flake meant nothing to these crack dealers. They don't care. The investigation of Blanton crept along at a snail's pace until July 1991, when Texas DEA agents finally nailed longtime fugitive Roger Sedino, who had been found in Plano, Texas, with 54 kilos of cocaine in his car. The feds took him to Dallas for a detention hearing.

52:53 and shipped him to Oklahoma City and indicted him within two weeks. The San Diego DEA had him working the phones, making tape recording calls to Blanton in an effort to set him up in a reverse sting. But Blanton's intel network was so good that during one of the conversations, Sandino suggested that they do a deal with a certain couple in Miami. Blanton's voice suddenly hardened.

53:21 Are they going to put you in jail? Dumb F, but quickly. That was what Blanton said. Are they working for the police? Yes, Blanton said. They are the ones who F'd Herrera. Sardina's suggestion apparently prompted Blanton to do a little checking up on his old friend. A few days later, Blanton called and asked Sardina to...

53:49 explained the circumstances behind his recent legal troubles in Oklahoma City. Sardino hurriedly made up a story about getting busted after an auto accident of no consequence. He insisted that everything was fine and encouraged Blanton to come to San Diego to complete a transaction. Blanton assured him that he'd be there, but never arrived. He also quit returning Sardino's calls. Four days later, on August 16, 1991, the DEA admitted,

54:19 Defeat that Blanton had once again beaten the Narcs at their own game. The investigation, a DEA report stated, had been compromised. But again, they already have all the evidence they need. They're just not doing anything with it. At first, I thought it was just a king sense of paranoia.

54:40 But now I believe that Blanton had been tipped off, said a federal prosecutor who worked on the case. He declined to say whom he suspected, but one of the agents assigned to Blanton's investigation was INS agent Robert Telles, T-E-L-L-E-Z. Intelligence information provided should be highly protected, Telles wrote in a memo in 91. This major cocaine trafficker may have had

55:09 a degree of influence from the CIA. That's what Tellez said. When DEA agent Jones drove out the next morning to collect Sandino from the hotel where they had him hold up, he found an empty room, just as he had done in Virginia five years earlier. Sandino had given the DEA the slip. Because, you know, you just leave criminals hanging around in hotels by themselves, not monitored.

55:39 He had fled to Nicaragua as a result of working with the DEA. The DEA refused to explain why it left unattended a federal fugitive who had just been captured after being on the run for five years. It was later said that he had a big wedding here a couple of years ago at a resort. The Nicaraguan government's former anti-Tsar

56:08 Anti-drug czar said in 1997, quote, if the DEA wanted Roger Sandino, he is very easy to find. They never asked us to arrest him. I can tell you that, unquote, because they didn't want him arrested. Just 10 days after Sandino's disappearance, the federal government was presented with yet another golden opportunity to arrest Blanton. Once again, though, it declined.

56:35 While on a trip to Tijuana on August 26, 1991, Blanton and Sergio Guerrera stopped at a checkpoint on the international border in the silver Mercedes. U.S. Customs Inspector Philip Lemon asked Guerrera if he had more than $10,000 on him. Lemon said, how much do you have? Guerrera said $100. Eyeing the $35,000 car and expensive clothing they were wearing,

57:06 He got suspicious. The Mercedes was a giant piggy bank. In the glove compartment, customs agent Douglas Montani discovered $2,700 in cash rolled up with a rubber band. The trunk produced $110,000 in bank money orders and $1,300 in cash in a black bag. Guerrero had $490 in his wallet.

57:32 and a second search of the trunk revealed another $2,000 in money orders. They were blank. Asked why he was driving around with a small fortune in his trunk, Guerrero babbled, quote, he does not have a safe and he uses his two Mercedes Benz as a safe for his valuables. In truth, the money wasn't Guerrero's. It was Blanton's. The money orders were on their way to Mexico for partial payment of cocaine.

58:02 That was later admitted by U.S. Attorney L.I.J. O'Neill, who handled the case. Blanton had sent three of his assistants out to snap up 339 money orders, O'Neill said, because he overloaded the delivery system with cocaine supplies and cash after dumping almost a million dollars on them in a few days. O'Neill said,

58:32 Blanton had been instructed to hold off on carrying any more cash to them. While a cursory check of the customs database would have revealed that Blanton was a known cocaine trafficker and Guerrero had no criminal record, it was Guerrero who was arrested and indicted by a federal grand jury on two felony counts. He also had his Mercedes seized. Blanton was questioned and released. By Christmas,

59:01 He would be three for three. In late December 1991, special LAPD strike force arrested him and two other men on charges of money laundering and conspiracy after they caught him with $14,000 and a small amount of cocaine in his pocket. Blanton had been leaving the apartment of his old friend, Raul Vega, the one-eyed Menendez flunky.

59:32 who we read about at the beginning of the story. In Vega's apartment, police found $350,000 in cash, a miraculous amount for a man who claimed to be a warehouse worker. Then the LAPD got a call from the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego asking that all charges be dropped. Federal agents were working on an investigation, the police were told, which would be ruined if Blanton was put in jail.

59:59 When the trafficker appeared for his arraignment, he was released without bail and charges were subsequently dropped. Once again, he walked out from an uncertain conviction. The federal prosecutors who made the decision said he intervened to protect the DEA's investigation of Blanton for a premature termination, which, again, there is no investigation because he's working with the DEA.

1:00:27 LAPD Sergeant Ron Hodges heard a similar story while working his own case against Blanton in 91. Hodges, a narcotic detective who was also working with the Torres brothers, was attempting to arrange a hand-to-hand sale with Blanton when he discovered DEA agents were following the Nicaraguan around. The DEA asked Hodges to cooperate with their investigation, so he shelved his case.

1:00:55 and relegated himself to helping the DEA tail Blanton, surveilling his meetings with the Torres brothers. I actually had a better case against him if it would have come about, Hodge said. I think they just let him run. In stark contrast to U.S. counterparts, Nicaraguan lawmen were on to Norwin Menendez from the moment they learned the drug lord was back in Managua. Rene Vivas

1:01:24 The chief of the Nicaraguan National Police said Commander Roger Mayorga, the head of the criminal investigation section, were well acquainted with Norwin and his family and the work that he had done for Somoza and the Contras. Mayorga, a short man with hard eyes, was the chief of the state security in Menendez's hometown.

1:01:51 Vivas was the earliest member of the Sandinista underground. He had known Norwin Menendez since he was a teenager. Through his attempts to infiltrate anti-Samosa groups, they were itching for a reason to arrest him. In November 1990, a white Volkswagen microbus was driving through Mexico on its way to Los Angeles when Mexican police pulled it over.

1:02:21 Inside were 42 kilos of cocaine and a Nicaraguan airline stewardess by the name of Ibis Hernandez, who had been one of the Sandinistas' fierce guerrilla fighters. She was something else, Vargas said. He was an ex-marine who fought with the Sandinistas and later became their ambassador to China.

1:02:52 She was part of a special guard running the revolution that attacked the National Guard building. They were the worst missions, suicidal ones, but she could fight. I think every man who met her fell in love with her. Certainly, Miranda had. At the time of her arrest, she and Miranda were lovers, and it was his microbus that she was driving. Roger Mayorga.

1:03:21 and the Mexican police told him about their arrest, which they said resulted from a DEA tip. Mayorga might want to look into it, they suggested, because he could have a drug ring operating in Managua. When Mayorga learned who owned the van and who was driving it, he was intrigued. He knew Ivis Hernandez, and she never struck him as a cocaine trafficker.

1:03:50 Miranda was a different story. Mayorga dropped by Ivis's house and asked her mother, who knew nothing about their arrest, if he could talk to Ivis. Her daughter, she said, was in Mexico receiving medical treatment at the suggestion of her boyfriend, Miranda. So I went to see him and challenged him, and I told him he was responsible for her arrest.

1:04:17 He was very nervous and denied everything. At that point, I decided to focus our investigation on him. Miranda unwittingly led the police to Frank Virgil, the former advertising man who allegedly dealt cocaine with Blanton in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. It was Menendez's partner in Costa Rican chicken restaurant. Mayorga learned that Virgil

1:04:46 had just formed a new company in Managua in partnership with the major Colombian drug trafficker, Hector Roman Caravalle. Mayorga saw from the incorporation paperwork of the company, called PZPSA, that it had been put together by a prominent Samosan lawyer, Adolfo Garcia Esquival.

1:05:17 He was a Nicaraguan assemblyman who had served as one of Norwin Menendez's lawyers. The records showed that Luis Henry Palas, the son of Somoza's closest political advisor, and Nicaraguan assemblyman Frank Duarte, another longtime Somoza supporter who had been involved in the quote-unquote anti-narcotics committee, that the company, according to its records,

1:05:47 You're not going to believe this. Plan to operate fishing boats to export seafood to Taiwan. Nothing screams drug trafficking like fishing boats, especially going to Taiwan. Miranda was also seen making trips to a hotel in the hills overlooking Managua, one of the strange breeds of small.

1:06:15 Nicaraguan hotels that allow patrons to drive their cars into shielded carports so they can't be seen walking into hotel rooms. Some hideaways are usually used for hookers and mistress. However, they had learned this particular one was used for drug trafficking as well, and it had once belonged to none other than General Edmundo Menendez, the dead brother.

1:06:44 of Norwin Menendez. The Chamorro government had recently returned it to Norwin Menendez. That's crazy. Mayorga surmised that Miranda was working for Menendez and Frank Virgil and that he suspected they were plotting to use the fishing company as a front for cocaine. In the summer of 91, he and his men began following Menendez and his wife.

1:07:15 One September evening, Mrs. Menendez drove to a restaurant near her house called the Lobster Inn. A few minutes later, DEA agent Federico Varela arrived. Hot on the heels was Norwin Menendez. To the shock of the Nicaraguan police, Varel was having dinner with Menendez and his wife. Their shock would be even greater had they known Menendez at the time was technically a fugitive from justice.

1:07:44 When his men excitedly returned from their stakeout with the news, Mayorga was dumbfounded. Viril was a senior agent with the USDA agent in Costa Rica. They had just met with Mayorga to discuss the idea of the DEA starting a formal cooperation relationship with the Sandinista police. So, just to be clear, Costa Rica had...

1:08:14 The DEA agents there had been running the whole cocaine trafficking, covering it all up, putting people under, you know, cooperation informant thing so they couldn't be arrested in the U.S. They're running, on behalf of the Colombian government, the cocaine. That DEA agent had just been to Nicaragua's new government, not realizing maybe that it was still the...

1:08:43 and was still being ran by Sandinistas, offering to do a partnership with them in Nicaragua while setting up another cocaine operation with Norwin Menendez in Nicaragua. And they would have been able to do that to shield Norwin Menendez and know everything that the Nicaraguan government knew about their new operation being conducted out of Nicaragua.

1:09:13 Just so that you can keep up with the story. So, he's very, very suspicious now.

1:09:47 and were trying to infiltrate the Nicaraguan National Police. Mayorga went to see his boss, Nicaraguan National Police Commander Rene Vivas, who shared his concerns. Checking with sources in Costa Rica, they learned that Menendez and Villarreal had been seen together in San Jose. They also definitely had something going on with the Americans. A lid of secrecy was clamped on the investigation.

1:10:17 No one else in government, especially not the DEA, would be informed about anything. Their agents were sworn to secrecy and was given little advance notice of any operation. The precautions paid off. On Sunday morning in early November 1991, Mayorga's men executed a series of simultaneous raids on Menendez's drug ring. At a small ranch 10 miles outside of Managua, they caught

1:10:46 Norwin's engineers in the act of welding cocaine filled PVC pipes into the frames of an auto transport trailer. A couple of Mercedes were already in the process of being altered to include 130 kilos of cocaine. In the bedroom of Miranda's mother's house, they found hundreds of hidden cocaine.

1:11:15 kind of bundled up to fit into these compartments underneath of blankets. In an abandoned military bunker, they found more kilos packed in air conditioners and television boxes that had the address of Menendez's auto hotel. In all, the Nicaraguan police seized 725 kilos of cocaine.

1:11:42 worth about $15 million wholesale. They also found Uzi machine guns, pistols, California license plates, Menendez, his brother, and Frank Virgil, and the engineer craftsman that Norwin had hired were all arrested.

1:12:02 The auto transport trailer Menendez's men were busy stuffing cocaine into had just been purchased for $125,000 in El Salvador from none other than former CIA pilot Marcos Aguardo. Aguardo, who had helped run the secret Contra airbase at Ilopango during the war, was not charged in connection with the case, and his involvement was never publicly revealed.

1:12:28 In an interview, he denied knowing how Menendez would be using the trailer, although Miranda said that he was present when Aguardo and Menendez discussed using it to traffic drugs. Menendez's drug bust was major news in Central America. It was the largest cocaine seizure in Nicaraguan history, and it prompted an uproar of the highly partisan Nicaraguan press.

1:12:58 Two prominent Nicaraguan politicians were seemingly implicated as well, although they were never charged. The story made several U.S. newspapers, and reporter Jonathan Marshall of the San Francisco Chronicle, who had just co-authored a book called Cocaine Politics, Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, wrote a detailed piece about Menendez and his relationship with the FDN, the Contras, and its leaders.

1:13:26 Marshall's story also questioned the seemingly inability of U.S. authorities to capture the drug kingpin, despite him having lived in the United States for years. The Chronicle buried the story deep inside the paper, and it was ignored by the rest of the American media, which was then consumed with a scandal over Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, using military planes for personal use.

1:13:56 prison outside of Managua to personally take charge of Menendez's interrogation. He found the trafficker relaxed, almost smug. He said he wasn't worried about me because he had the backing of a much higher superpower, Vivas recalled. He said he was working for the U.S. government to get Sandinista's officials on drug charges and that I was one of his targets. I told him not to fuck with me because I didn't believe him.

1:14:24 I thought he was just trying to impress me, but he insisted it was true. And I said I would find out myself. That the evening of the raids, Mayorga called the Costa Rican DEA office to inform Villarreal of the arrest. But since it was Sunday, no one was in. He stuck an arrest warrant report into the fax machine and sent it to the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica. Then, big surprise, I get to my office on Monday and Villarreal is there waiting for me.

1:14:55 He wants more information. I asked him what his special interest was in the case. After getting some evasive answers, Mayorga said he provided Villarreal with the basic facts and waited for the American to tell him about Menendez's relationship with the DEA. Nothing was said. Villarreal came back looking for more information. By then, we'd had a chance to analyze the phone book that we had found on Norwin.

1:15:21 When we arrested him and inside was the phone numbers to Ronald Lard, the DEA country attache in Costa Rica. I challenged Villarreal to explain this. He couldn't. When Mayorga told the DEA agent that his men had seen him during the Menendez meeting two weeks ago, Mayorga asked, was the DEA secretly meeting with Menendez?

1:15:49 Managua drug traffickers who were in the process of bringing 725 kilos of cocaine into his country. And why hadn't the Nicaraguan police been informed? Villarreal simply lied, denying that he had met with the drug kingpin, even though there were eyewitnesses. He told the Justice Department inspectors that he did not believe he knew the Nicaraguan police well enough to share the information. Actually, Mayorga only knew half of the story.

1:16:17 Villarreal had met with Menendez two or three times in Managua, not just once. Yet Villarreal claims he can't remember any of those discussions. In the end, Villarreal placated Mayorga by providing him with some intelligence reports of Menendez's criminal activity in the United States. It had been Menendez, Mayorga learned, who had tipped off the DEA to the trip Ivis Hernandez was taking with the cocaine in the microbus.

1:16:47 The cocaine Hernandez was taking north was not Norwin's, he said. It was Frank Vigil's. He theorized that Menendez ratted out the shipment to calm the DEA's concern that he was dealing on the side. Villarreal made, so he set her up, in other words. Villarreal made it clear to me that we did not, that they did not completely trust Menendez.

1:17:18 He made me understand that Menendez had been playing both sides, which may or may not be true, but it's crazy. So I want to make sure I didn't skip over this part too much. Menendez is telling the chief of narcotics in Nicaragua that the DEA was going to use Menendez. And remember, there's still adherence to the Sandinista government.

1:17:47 They're not in bed with the new non-Sandinista government. That the DEA was going to use Menendez to set those guys up that were from the former Sandinista regime to get them out of office. That's why Menendez was being so smug about it. He was going to be used. The DEA was going to infiltrate the police department.

1:18:15 with Menendez, and they were going to set up the police department and the national police as accomplices in drug trafficking to rid the new Nicaraguan government of the holdovers from the Sandinista government. That's crazy shit. So, armed with the information, Mayorga paid Miranda a visit.

1:18:41 He reminded him of his earlier denials regarding his girlfriend and Miranda admitted having abused his relationship with her. He then asked me why the police had stopped her. How did they find out? It was your boss, Mayorga said. Norwin, he told the DEA. And now your girlfriend is in jail in Mexico undergoing God knows what. How is that for loyalty?

1:19:06 Miranda repaid it in kind. He started talking. He used Norwin's cooperation with the DEA to get Miranda to cooperate with us. Combining the information provided by Miranda, Valerio, and Menendez, the Nicaraguan police pieced together a picture of what Menendez and the DEA had been working on. Menendez, they believed, had been sent to Nicaragua on a secret DEA agent to snare high-ranking Sandinista military officials in a drug sting.

1:19:36 The first person Menendez had approached was a commandant in the military, a guy by the name of Bernardo Arce Castano, a cousin of Menendez's wife and one of the most influential of the nine Sandinista leaders left. According to Menendez, Arce agreed to participate in a cocaine deal.

1:20:03 He offered to provide the protection of the Sandinista military. Arcee admitted that Menendez had come to see him but denied he was making any drug deals. Menendez's lawyers, who tried unsuccessfully to force Arcee to testify, dug up evidence to support their client's claim. According to affidavits they gathered from eyewitnesses, the Colombian airplane carrying 725 kilos of cocaine

1:20:30 had been met at the airstrip by a Sandinista Army truck, which was loaded with boxes from the airplane. Two Sandinista Army officers supervised the unloading. But when the Nicaraguan police arrested the DEA's sting man, Norwin Menendez, the operation was blown wide open and Menendez's American handlers left him to twist in the wind. According to two Nicaraguan prison officials, soon after his arrest, Menendez gave his wife,

1:21:01 a letter to deliver to the U.S. Embassy addressed to two American officials, asking them to intercede with the Chamorro government. The sources were unaware if the letter was answered. The DEA denies there was any such plan, but those denials are hard to believe in light of the cables released by the CIA's Inspector General in 1998.

1:21:23 Both the State Department and the Department of Defense, the CIA report revealed, were monitoring Menendez's movements at the time. Those reports included reference to a trip to Colombia by Menendez and Miranda in September 91 and to the group's loss of a Ford Escort loaded with cocaine in Houston in September 91. The CIA report said, why were these agencies

1:21:53 be so interested in Menendez, then it's not explained in the declassified version. But they knew everything about his every move. Had the sting worked, the resultant drug scandal would almost certainly have crippled the last vestiges of the Sandinista power in the new Nicaraguan government. Their control of the military and police would have been gone. President Violeta Chamorro

1:22:21 was being subjected to intense pressure to purge her government of all Sandinistas by government, by the U.S. government, particularly Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, whose staff had been intimately involved in the creation and funding of the Contra movement. Helms had been stalling a $50 million foreign aid bill for Nicaragua to purge the police and the military

1:22:50 of all remaining Sandinista supporters. In 1991, Menendez's operation, in all likelihood, was simply another version of the 1984 DEA-CIA sting involving trafficker Barry Seale, which the Reagan administration had used to accuse the Sandinistas of drug trafficking in the middle of the Contra-Aid vote.

1:23:16 Had Menendez been successful, the Sandinistas would have loudly been denounced as drug dealers by the Bush administration, which already had a history of invading Latin American countries ran by people they didn't like. At Norwin's trial in August 1992, Miranda took the stand against his former boss and bared all.

1:23:37 Explaining Norwin's relationship with the DEA, the Contras, the drug flights from El Salvador to Texas, the meetings with CIA pilot Aguardo and CIA agent Enrique Bermudez, the FDN's former military commander, meaning the Contras. Quote, Norwin even arranged a party in his residence for Bermudez celebrating his possible appointment as army chief of the new government, unquote.

1:24:06 Miranda also testified that I also took part in meetings with Norwin Menendez and Bermudez, discussed the possibility of using the army to send drug loads to the U.S. and Europe. But those plans were truncated by Bermudez's sudden death. And again, that's his brother. Bermudez had been murdered in a parking lot of a hotel in Managua in February 1991 by someone who shot him in the back of the head.

1:24:36 The slang was never solved. Menendez, of course, denied everything. The cocaine wasn't his. It belonged to a drug-dealing Sandinista guy. He claimed the Sandinistas had set him up and his brother on phony drug charges as revenge for their years of assistance of the FDN. I was an important part of the FDN since 1982, and the Sandinistas proclaimed themselves my mortal enemy.

1:25:07 He testified Menendez blamed the Sandinistas for planting fake stories about him in America and Costa Rican newspapers. Quote, I have never been arrested in the United States and any other part of the world. I've never been subject to a court trial. I've never been subpoenaed as a witness. I have been mentioned by some other people in some other cases, but that's because of the long arm of the Sandinistas. Unquote. The Nicaraguan judge.

1:25:36 were bothered by Menendez's lack of a criminal record, the court transcript showed. And they challenged Roger Mayorga on his public declaration that Menendez was a drug kingpin in Nicaragua and his country's representative of the Cali cartel. How do you explain the fact that Norwin Menendez, implicated since 1974 in drug trafficking, has never had an arrest warrant, which of course there is one?

1:26:06 It's sealed. And that he was never detained in the United States. Well, that question needs to be asked by the authorities of the U.S. because I'm limited to the information they will share with us. Explain then that after 22 years, you have not been asked on the part of anti-narcotics police in the U.S. to arrest Nicaraguan citizen Norwin Menez for drugs. If he had resided for all of that time in the U.S. and in Nicaragua.

1:26:38 He was very easy to find in the U.S. because of his residency card. With respect to his residence in the U.S., in the previous answer, I explained ignorance as to why the authorities in the U.S. would not stop him. With respect to Nicaragua, be clear that this Menendez had a year and a half in Nicaragua, and in a year and a half, he was captured for drug trafficking. Menendez was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in jail as a result of his cooperation.

1:27:08 Miranda was given a seven-year sentence. A few days after the trial, Nicaraguan prison authorities reported that Menendez had paid a deranged inmate $10,000 to knife Miranda in revenge for his damning testimony. Menendez denied it, but Miranda was quickly transferred to another prison. After a lifetime of crime and ruination of countless lives, Norman Menendez was finally behind bars.

1:27:35 Almost single-handedly, an underpaid middle-aged Nicaraguan policeman had in 18 months done something that the entire U.S. government, with all of its bike satellites, international wiretapping, and an army of drug agents, had never been able to do in 20 years. Three weeks after the verdicts came down, under pressure from the U.S. Department, State Department, and the White House, the Chamorro government fired.

1:28:05 the Nicaraguan National Police Commander, Vivas. Roger Mayorga, who by then had begun looking into Danielle Blanton's relationship with Menendez's drug ring and its money laundering in Central America, was fired too. Menendez, meanwhile, was released from prison in 1997, having only served six years of his 30-year sentence.

1:28:34 That same year, his and Blanton's suspected money launderer, Orlando Morello, was elected to the Nicaraguan National Assembly. And there you have it. The U.S. fucking government. You know, it's just insane to me. I don't mean to jump in, but it makes so much sense now.

1:29:07 It never seemed to make sense that we have all this technology, we have all this stuff, and we can't track down where these drugs are coming in at, you know, as you've always pointed out. You know, how they're making it across the border. Or even the police. The police would always talk about, you know, there's, okay, there's all these gangs in this neighborhood and this neighborhood and this neighborhood. And I'm like, if you know that, why aren't you arresting them? But this does make sense.

1:29:40 They know everything and they facilitate it and allow us to live in this chaos because they use the chaos to control us. They know every aspect of this. This book does a wonderful job of showing you how every freaking U.S. government entity is in on it.

1:30:16 Like you said, they can't do it without the DEA being in on it, without the ATF being in on it. It's not just one group, right? They're all in on it. And if you're a foreign government and you do anything to affect justice, they have such a long reach, they'll get your ass fired there.

1:30:46 Protecting Americans. Right. And that's where it really is kind of cool that Trump is putting out the National Guard to bust up a lot of these. And the ICE. I mean, he's using ICE to dismantle these gangs. I have to believe that is all connected. Well, I shouldn't say. I know that it is because look at how many children they found.

1:31:19 Look at how much, how many drug shipments they're stopping. That's not like by accident. They, it really, that they have done this. It is so encouraging that they, they are dismantling it right in front of our eyes. And it tells you that it could have always been dismantled. Amen. Exactly. And damn right. SR, go ahead.

1:31:53 Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for attending here on Spaces and Rumble. There are a few things that really struck me. One, I'll add to Bridget's concern here, especially with Jesse Helms, when you start talking about getting our congressional critters involved, but also the fact that I'm looking at this and I'm thinking about the number of kilos.

1:32:23 And how much is there. And just to store it. To put it in perspective. For us Americans. And our unit of measure. One kilo. Is a little over. Two one pound. Bags of flour. Just a little over that. And when you think about. How many hundreds of kilos. We're talking about. It just.

1:32:54 Blows my mind. Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. It's like the entire, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, y'all aren't going to believe this. Okay, so I just asked Grok real quick if Jesse Helms was ever involved in National Endowment for Democracy's International Republican Institute. And don't you know that he was?

1:33:28 And don't you know that he was the senior Republican senator chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during 1995 to 2001. He was intimately involved in advocating for increased funding of the IRI through congressional appropriations throughout his time in the Senate.

1:33:58 specifically in Latin America. He was also involved in the IRI's operation in Haiti, undermining President Aristide, which we cooed twice. His former aide, later Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, coordinated closely with IRI to train opposition leaders to Aristide.

1:34:30 Haiti, giving over $3 million via the IRI and USAID to overthrow the government of Haiti. So while he never served on its board, he was intimately involved in increasing their money for coups in the Senate. Not shocked, but shocked. Patterns, patterns, over and over and over. Un-fucking-believable.

1:35:10 All along. Go ahead. Hi, Colonel. It kind of the Helms working for greater CIA, you know, freedom in South America while masquerading as a, quote, conservative, unquote, kind of makes sense in the in another way, because, you know, in South America and.

1:35:43 Asia, there's kind of like a subunit of the U.S. corporate right wing as opposed to grassroots right wing that has been always kind of like, well, we do want to intervene in South America whenever we want, like the good old days of like, you know, 1890s and General Walker in the 1850s and do whatever the heck we want. But at the same time, we are worried about like the internationalist.

1:36:12 like East Coast CIA-sounding folks who want to mess more in Europe. So there's this division on the right wing between the Eurocentric, who are normally called corporate rightists, and the folks who still want to keep the U.S. ability to directly intervene, just kind of thuggish good old days in their view.

1:36:40 in South America, in Asia. And at the same time, sometimes they want some veneer of that, like in the OAS for South America, but they still want to be good old boys. And there's a division there between what is often, in my opinion, misleadingly called the Rockefeller rightists.

1:37:07 who are sometimes called liberals, but it's very deceptive because we all know what Nelson Rockefeller was really one of these South American cowboy types while pretending to be something very different. But anyway, so the short version of that confusion is there does seem to be a legitimate division between the South American slash Asia focused right versus the more Eurocentric right. So I'm going to suggest they just have areas of expertise and there's no division there at all.

1:37:37 It's a everybody's in on it. They just have their areas of expertise is divide and conquer. That's probably overlapping with that, too. But I also think that it does possibly relate to their different investment areas of expertise. You have Nelson Rockefeller, who specialized in South America, and you have David Rockefeller, who specialized in Europe. So even within the Middle East, our house.

1:38:08 They've had their areas of expertise. True to it. Yeah, I think it's divide and conquer, like conquer the whole world. We'll just all have our areas of expertise and act like we're, you know, promoting this or that when it's all of the above. At least that's my takeaway. SR, did you have something else you wanted to add?

1:38:40 Yes, Colonel. I did post some information about Jesse Helms and the pill, if anybody wants to go read it. It's quite extensive. Also, if you think about Jesse Helms and what was going on with him, I can't help but believe, given what we've currently got in Congress at the moment, it wouldn't surprise me when we get down to brass tacks.

1:39:10 I have reservations now that much more serious reservations about what's his name from from North Carolina. It'll come to me. The Warhawk. So Lindsey Graham. He's from South Carolina. Every time you turn around, that man is not only looking for money. He's from South. He's looking for. It's unbelievable. He's from South Carolina.

1:39:41 Not North Carolina. Sorry, Colonel. South Carolina. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. So you wouldn't find it all surprised in light of this entire conversation that Jesse Helms was very much opposed to anything that had to do with blacks. So he's part and parcel of advocating for this.

1:40:12 drug influx into primarily Black neighborhoods. And he was at his core a diehard racist in every respect. So you can see how this furthered his plan of destroying the Black family, the Black neighborhoods, and all of that stuff. And he was 100% on board with that. Disgusting.

1:40:48 I can't even put into words how vehemently evil that is. But it's 100 percent true. It is people that have positions of authority attacking Americans. It it just and specifically race related focused on them.

1:41:23 It's so vile, it's hard to put into words. You know, and I got to ask you a question, if you don't mind. In your opinion, is it that they are just consumed with power that everybody's just a number and they lose that connection to their humanity? Or do you think it's just pure evil or money? I mean, you know, again. Well, all of those are. Because you keep.

1:41:56 Yeah, I mean, because it seems like, and surely some of them are. You're talking about motivation and you can't understand their motivation. What you have to look at is their actions. He was a diehard racist and enabled the attack on primarily black Americans and blacks in Haiti.

1:42:27 And I think people who are evil that are promoted to positions of power use their power for evil. And that perfectly describes him. Right. Right. And, you know, I guess and there's some that just wear a mask and they don't wear it very well. You know, it's it's easy in hindsight to.

1:43:02 accumulate a body of their work to understand their evilness. It's very difficult because of the combination of the media and the power that comes with sitting in Congress to mask their evilness. But again, we have the benefit of hindsight.

1:43:32 Now, if you understand history and know that these evil people gravitate to positions of power to carry out their evil, that gives you the ammunition to notice the patterns that we're discovering and applying them to modern day people that are sitting in these positions of power. Because they didn't stop doing it. They're still doing it.

1:44:02 with the media complicity in it and the ability to apply these past patterns, it becomes much easier to spot them, which, again, is why we spend so much time researching history so that we can look at that across the board.

1:44:25 Modern day people like Pompeo, who falls into every single one of these, which we will soon discover when we move on to Venezuela, are the modern day Jesse Helms of the world in wrecking havoc. And once you're able to see how they operate, then you start applying these Gladio glasses to the current players. You're able to see them.

1:44:54 For what they truly are. In sharp clear techno vision. Absolutely. Yeah. So. Anyway. Go ahead SR. You talk about them gladio glasses. Yeah we put them on. And we take a look. And so far every time we put them on. Not once have we been proven wrong. No. That's what's disheartening. I.

1:45:33 I look at this and in a way I understand Bridget's question. I wish there was, it was a bug that's that somebody bit, you know, that we could eliminate, but it's not, it's much worse than that. And it just, Oh God. Thank you. Sure. And someone, one of you guys sent me a video of on the redacted.

1:46:00 show recently and I'm I apologize I'm not going to remember his name the former special ops guy that was used by Pompeo to insert a team to overthrow Maduro during Trump's first administration who's been arrested and they're basically trying to put him on trial

1:46:28 Because, of course, it's plausible liability. Everybody's, you know, saying, no, he wasn't acting on our behalf when, in fact, he was. Redacted had him on and he actually even mentioned to him, yeah, this is just like another Operation Gladio that you've been involved in. So, obviously, our efforts collectively.

1:46:55 of you guys taking our information and reposting it, and please do that daily, that people are getting the word out that this didn't stop. It is still going on. There are still people being prosecuted for doing what they believe, based on fake intelligence, is the right thing to do.

1:47:25 And it's affecting negatively affecting Americans every single day. Go ahead, Bridget. And I just wanted to I know you don't do any of this for recognition and you don't get enough recognition for since the very beginning and the outset of this journey. When we very first started, you made a decision, a conscious pledge, so to speak, on.

1:47:56 making sure that every single tiny detail that we had, that we were using, was accurate, verified, double-checked. And that's why all the things, all the information that the colonel is bringing to everyone is being verified and double-verified all around us, because at some point the truth will come out, or at least in this administration.

1:48:25 appears to be and so you guys are ahead of the ball game and when it happens you know exactly what it is when it happens but um like i said we lost a lot of people along the way because of that pledge that no matter race color creed religion or whatever we were going to report on exactly as it happened how it happened to the best of our ability and uh so anyway you guys know

1:48:55 None of this stuff. I just want to comment on what Bridget said. All of this stuff in the last three years was new to me. I didn't know any of this stuff. I didn't learn it in my military career. We came across some very sensational information. But if we couldn't verify it, we did not share it. And Bridget knows because she's been with me from the very beginning that.

1:49:24 We have had people inside of, and we used to have a big research team. It's down to Bridget and I now. But that wanted to focus on particular aspects, which basically took away from the Operation Gladio focus of our research.

1:49:55 stood very firm on we were not going to do that. I recently had someone who was one of the original people contact me, and I shared it with Bridget, that made the accusation that I had been led away from some explosive information.

1:50:23 or aspects of Operation Gladio, and that if I would just return to the original investigation that I was behind, or that I was pursuing, that it would fix everything. And I informed that person. I've never been led by anyone. I've never been censored by anyone. I've never had anyone

1:50:51 exert any influence on me that took me away from what my primary mission was in this research, which is exposing Operation Gladio. I literally just stumbled across Operation Gladio. It wasn't anything I was looking for. I couldn't believe it when I found it. Frankly, I still can't believe it, although I know it's very real.

1:51:18 There has been, unfortunately, people who wanted to protect a rice bowl as part of our research that took their cookies and left. Because I wasn't willing to censor the information that excluded whatever their petty little rice bowl was. Nor will I ever. You guys know I've been very clear.

1:51:47 about naming names, not just of religious institutions, but also of corporate entities that have been involved in Operation Gladio as a sponsor. And I'm not ever going to change that. That is, to me, part of the... You can't talk about Operation Gladio without talking about the companies that used it to their benefit.

1:52:16 That they were using our tax dollars through the CIA, through USAID, through National Endowment for Democracy to overthrow countries so that these oligarchs could go in and exploit their resources. Well, their kids were not dying.

1:52:35 Our military people are the ones that died on foreign battlefields for them to enrich themselves. To me, that's at the very heart of Operation Gladio. So if you do not expose those people as you're researching Operation Gladio, you might as well not even be doing the research. You can't protect them. They're at the very heart of it.

1:52:59 They're the reason why it was even adopted as a tactic in NATO. So just understand that we're doing this because we care about our country and we want everyone to realize what's really been going on and why it's been going on. The truth was set you free. Yeah. We've all had our rice bowl beaten.

1:53:33 There is nobody that hasn't had an idol toppled. Jordan Goddrew, however you say his last name, that's the name of the guy that was arrested. It's spelled G-O-U-D-R-E-A-U that was recently on Redacted and was interviewed by Clayton. So I just wanted to put that out there.

1:54:04 So I would very much like to talk to him because I don't think he knows the extent to how deep this really is. But anyway, I still would like Kevin ship. Huh? Kevin ship. Kevin. Yeah. Yeah. All right. That's it for today. I'm going to go grab some dinner and.

1:54:40 We will be back tomorrow. Let me look at the calendar. Let's see. Yeah, tomorrow at four o'clock. And then we've got Alpha at 930 tomorrow. And we're going to be talking about Freedom House in Venezuela. And you guys, it's going to blow your mind because the Abrams guy is going to come up again. Go ahead, SR.

1:55:18 I do have one more thing, Colonel, on a happy note. I want to thank you for all the stuff you do. But I also want to tell Bridget, congrats on that 10-pointer. I know you've been stalking that sucker for a long time. So there you have it. Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Yes, sir. Oh, yeah. We're very proud of the gun girl with a bow. Oh.

1:55:45 And I did disclose, I had, okay, in full disclosure, I had told the colonel, and this is the ironic part, was, okay, I missed the first shot. And I couldn't believe I missed the first shot. And that he stayed there long enough for me to recock my bow and get a second shot. But we found the arrow, and it wasn't my fault. It was a bad arrow, and it had blown up when I launched it.

1:56:17 I'm taking full credit for this one. Good. Awesome. You should. All right, guys. Thanks for being here. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow.

Entities here

DEA37 Daniel Blanton27 Sandinistas27 United States26 Nicaragua25 Norwin Menendez25 Enrique Miranda Jamie22 Roger Mayorga20 Elliot Abrams18 Los Angeles15 Colombia14 Costa Rica13 Frank Virgil13 San Francisco12 Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross12 Jesse Helms12 John Armadi12 Managua11 Operation Gladio10 Roger Sardino9 Nicaraguan National Police9 San Diego8 Sergio Herrera8 Venezuela7 Mexico City7 Rene Vivas7 Violeta Chamorro7 Menendez Trial7 Miami7 Donald Trump6 U.S. State Department6 Texas6 Ibis Hernandez5 Mike Pompeo5 South America5 Menendez Drug Bust5 Ron Lister5 El Salvador5 International Republican Institute4 Herberto Cardona4

Claims made here

Elliot Abrams involved_in Iran-Contra affair host_asserted ▶ 1:38

“organization. The fake organization that was quote-unquote non-governmental humanitarian to hide the fact that the CIA was embedded in the State Department helping the Contras. That was one aspect of …”

Elliot Abrams worked_with Oliver North host_asserted ▶ 2:08

“Working with Oliver North. On the. On the. Weapons. Trafficking. With Iran. So. I just wanted to. Go over a couple of things. Because do you know where we find. Elliot Abrams. In 2019. We find him.…”

Elliot Abrams appointed Donald Trump documented ▶ 2:38

“as a part of the Trump administration under Mike Pompeo as the special representative for Iran. We also found him as a special representative to Venezuela during the Trump administration's first term.…”

Elliot Abrams pardoned George H.W. Bush documented ▶ 4:06

“100% a neocon, was in the Council of Foreign Relations. And he was eventually found guilty of false testimony during the Iran-Contra scandal and was pardoned by none other than George H.W. Bush. Becau…”

Elliot Abrams member_of Project for the New American Century documented ▶ 4:34

“He was a member of PNAC, the Project for a New American Century, which outlined all of the Arab Spring stuff and basically just a coup factory guy. So it's crazy. You, of course, would not be at all s…”

Elliot Abrams educated_at Harvard University documented ▶ 4:34

Elliot Abrams educated_at London School of Economics documented ▶ 4:34

Elliot Abrams defended El Salvador host_asserted ▶ 6:01

“He was intimately involved in defending the death squad leader in El Salvador under the guise of human rights. He had a knock down, drag out fight with the actual human rights commission in his suppor…”

Rockefeller Foundation funded Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 7:58

“As I understand it, there's Vandenberg Foundation and money that's associated with that. And the Vandenberg Foundation was instrumental to funding part of the creation of NATO, along with the Rockefel…”

Vandenberg Foundation funded NATO host_asserted ▶ 7:58

Elliot Abrams funded Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 8:56

“He was instrumental in using the Freedom House and the Freedom House funding, along with the International Republican Institute, the Republican piece of the National Endowment for Democracy, in fundin…”

Norwin Menendez owned Alpha 2 Rent-A-Car documented ▶ 19:15

“Though he had successfully navigated the waters of the cocaine industry for nearly a decade, Blanton learned that he was unprepared for operating a normal business. His 24-location rent-a-car business…”

Herberto Cardona supplied_arms_to Norwin Menendez documented ▶ 20:42

“He continued to deal with his Colombian drug dealers under the guise of a rental car. He felt particularly close to Colombian Herberto Cardona because Cardona was supplying Danielle's Nicaraguan assoc…”

Colombia extradited Herberto Cardona documented ▶ 21:14

“Cardona, whom Blanton called El Fuco, was one of Colombia's better-known cocaine kingpins. When the Colombian government agreed to extradite him and five other traffickers to the United States in late…”

Colombia deported Juan Mata Ballesteros documented ▶ 21:42

“There was one trafficker the Colombians refused to extradite, Juan Mata Ballesteros, the Honduran billionaire whose airline, Stetco, was flying supplies for the Contras. Instead of turning Mata over t…”

Norwin Menendez moved_to San Diego documented ▶ 22:43

“And the Colombian had a novel idea. Why not get back into the cocaine business? It was hotter than ever. Why? He just sold Blanton's friend in LA a ton of cocaine, literally 2,000 kilos. So if you wan…”

Sergio Herrera owned San Diego documented ▶ 23:13

“in a house that was owned by his buddy, Sergio Herrera, the smooth Mexican millionaire. Herrera had become a well-known figure in San Diego business circles, owning profitable parking lots and car dea…”

Norwin Menendez did_business_with José González documented ▶ 24:17

“started doing business with Jose Gonzalez in San Francisco, which was Menendez's contact there. He also said that, let's see, this is a quote, but I never, at that time, I never come to deal with them…”

Norwin Menendez indicted_by San Francisco documented ▶ 25:47

“had been sworn in as president, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco brought a secret indictment against Menendez, finally charging him with a few of the crimes he had committed back in the 80s…”

Norwin Menendez met_with Adolfo Calero documented ▶ 26:13

“During that period, he was having meetings with CIA agent Adolfo Calera, who was part of the Contra meetings that were happening back then with the FDN. He was also driving FDN officials around Los An…”

Violeta Chamorro elected_president_of Nicaragua documented ▶ 32:35

“public, wary of a decade of war and strife and tension with the U.S., voted the Sandinistas out of office. With the U.S. backing, Norwin's former business partner, Valetta Chamorro, was elected presid…”

Violeta Chamorro restored_properties_to Anastasio Somoza documented ▶ 33:04

“They have been backed by the CIA the entire time and was part of the destabilization of Nicaraguan government the entire time the Sandinistas were in charge. She was immediately began bringing back al…”

Norwin Menendez recruited Enrique Miranda Jamie documented ▶ 34:03

“Even though the Sandinistas were no longer running the government, they still controlled the country's military and national police. If they caught him dealing cocaine, he would be at the mercy of his…”

Enrique Miranda Jamie member_of Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 34:33

“That would prove to be his undoing. A slippery character who was a lifelong Sandinista, Enrique Miranda, had been a paid CIA informant between 84 and 85, spying on his comrades and peeking into shippi…”

CIA recruited Enrique Miranda Jamie host_asserted ▶ 34:33

CIA funded Bureau of Special Operations host_asserted ▶ 35:00

“He says that he was one of two CIA operatives working inside the Sandinista Ministry of Interior in a super secret dirty tricks unit called the Bureau of Special Operations, which was funded by the CI…”

Enrique Miranda Jamie member_of Bureau of Special Operations host_asserted ▶ 35:00

Enrique Miranda Jamie carried_out_attack Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 35:31

“Sandinista arms from Panama to revolutionary groups throughout Central America, and that he had helped the Sandinistas design a sting of secret arms caches in and around Managua, which basically amoun…”

Enrique Miranda Jamie spied_on Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 36:51

“And he confirmed that Miranda was the person who was sending guns to the El Salvadoran death squads. He also confirmed that Miranda sold himself to the CIA and provided the agency with intelligence on…”

Enrique Miranda Jamie supplied_arms_to El Salvadoran death squads host_asserted ▶ 36:51

Norwin Menendez recruited Enrique Miranda Jamie host_asserted ▶ 36:51

Enrique Miranda Jamie trafficked Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 37:20

“to serve as his emissary to the Colombians, primarily the cartel of Bogota. Posing as Norwin's nephew, Miranda said he arranged drug shipments, plotted the routes, and handed the cash deliveries back …”

Norwin Menendez financed_via Enrique Miranda Jamie host_asserted ▶ 37:20

Luis Enrique Menendez trafficked Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 37:49

“arranged for the cocaine transportation from Nicaragua to the United States. Most of the cocaine they were shipping, Miranda said, was being sold in Los Angeles through Menendez's brother, Luis Enriqu…”

Reggie Rash member_of Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted ▶ 40:34

“San Francisco. He collected cocaine from hotel rooms all over the Bay Area and sold them to customers in Alabama, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Francisco. At least two of Blanton's bigge…”

Mike Smith member_of Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross host_asserted ▶ 40:34

Daniel Blanton trafficked Reggie Rash host_asserted ▶ 40:34

Daniel Blanton trafficked Mike Smith host_asserted ▶ 40:34

Daniel Blanton trafficked Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 41:02

“Herrera was arrested and sent to jail. Jose Gonzalez moved back to Nicaragua, and the only experienced distributor left was Daniel Blanton. He took the job of doling out the cocaine to the other membe…”

Daniel Blanton trafficked Torres brothers host_asserted ▶ 42:20

“There was a fight on TV and Danielle and I went over there to watch it. I was staying at a hotel and that's when I first met the Torres brothers. And Blanton was working with them and under the belief…”

John Armadi spied_on Daniel Blanton documented ▶ 43:13

“Whether Blanton had any connection to the World Bank is unknown because undercover DEA tapes show that he was openly boasting about having received massive loans around the time from the Canadian gove…”

Daniel Blanton trafficked Cali Cartel host_asserted ▶ 45:15

“They like you, see? Shit, they... Oh, he has a whole bunch of cuss words, basically saying that he knows everybody in the new government. Blanton wasn't just bragging, though. A DEA informant who had …”

Daniel Blanton trafficked Sergio Herrera host_asserted ▶ 47:11

“He was accompanied by an undercover 8DEA agent, Judy Gustafson, who was posing as a money launderer interested in doing business with Blanton and his friend, Sergio Guerrera, who owned all the parking…”

Roger Sardino trafficked Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 50:06

“Blanton also mentioned that he was due to receive a million-dollar settlement from the U.S. government for some unspecified claim. Armand steered the conversation to Roger Sardino, the Menendez associ…”

Roger Sardino trafficked Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 50:34

“had a plane full of cocaine flown into Nicaragua, but the plane belly flopped on a dirt field in a small town. The crash was swarmed by local peasants who carted away all the dope. The people, they fo…”

DEA spied_on Daniel Blanton documented ▶ 51:26

“For the next two years, the San Diego DEA would keep close eye on Blanton, recording his phone calls, tracking his movements, videotaping his meetings with informants, and negotiations to buy cocaine.…”

Daniel Blanton trafficked Roger Sardino host_asserted ▶ 52:53

“and shipped him to Oklahoma City and indicted him within two weeks. The San Diego DEA had him working the phones, making tape recording calls to Blanton in an effort to set him up in a reverse sting. …”

Robert Telles spied_on Daniel Blanton host_asserted ▶ 54:40

“But now I believe that Blanton had been tipped off, said a federal prosecutor who worked on the case. He declined to say whom he suspected, but one of the agents assigned to Blanton's investigation wa…”

Roger Sardino removed_from_power DEA host_asserted ▶ 55:09

“a degree of influence from the CIA. That's what Tellez said. When DEA agent Jones drove out the next morning to collect Sandino from the hotel where they had him hold up, he found an empty room, just …”

Sergio Herrera trafficked Daniel Blanton documented ▶ 57:32

“and a second search of the trunk revealed another $2,000 in money orders. They were blank. Asked why he was driving around with a small fortune in his trunk, Guerrero babbled, quote, he does not have …”

Daniel Blanton trafficked Raul Vega host_asserted ▶ 59:01

“He would be three for three. In late December 1991, special LAPD strike force arrested him and two other men on charges of money laundering and conspiracy after they caught him with $14,000 and a smal…”

DEA spied_on Daniel Blanton host_asserted ▶ 1:00:27

“LAPD Sergeant Ron Hodges heard a similar story while working his own case against Blanton in 91. Hodges, a narcotic detective who was also working with the Torres brothers, was attempting to arrange a…”

Roger Mayorga spied_on Norwin Menendez host_asserted ▶ 1:01:24

“The chief of the Nicaraguan National Police said Commander Roger Mayorga, the head of the criminal investigation section, were well acquainted with Norwin and his family and the work that he had done …”

Ibis Hernandez member_of Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 1:02:21

“Inside were 42 kilos of cocaine and a Nicaraguan airline stewardess by the name of Ibis Hernandez, who had been one of the Sandinistas' fierce guerrilla fighters. She was something else, Vargas said. …”

Enrique Miranda Jamie trafficked Ibis Hernandez host_asserted ▶ 1:02:52

“She was part of a special guard running the revolution that attacked the National Guard building. They were the worst missions, suicidal ones, but she could fight. I think every man who met her fell i…”

Roger Mayorga spied_on Enrique Miranda Jamie host_asserted ▶ 1:03:50

“Miranda was a different story. Mayorga dropped by Ivis's house and asked her mother, who knew nothing about their arrest, if he could talk to Ivis. Her daughter, she said, was in Mexico receiving medi…”

Enrique Miranda Jamie trafficked Frank Virgil host_asserted ▶ 1:04:17

“He was very nervous and denied everything. At that point, I decided to focus our investigation on him. Miranda unwittingly led the police to Frank Virgil, the former advertising man who allegedly deal…”

Frank Virgil trafficked Daniel Blanton host_asserted ▶ 1:04:17

Adolfo Garcia Esquival founded PZPSA host_asserted ▶ 1:04:46

“had just formed a new company in Managua in partnership with the major Colombian drug trafficker, Hector Roman Caravalle. Mayorga saw from the incorporation paperwork of the company, called PZPSA, tha…”

Hector Roman Caravalle member_of PZPSA host_asserted ▶ 1:04:46

Frank Virgil member_of PZPSA host_asserted ▶ 1:04:46

Frank Duarte member_of PZPSA host_asserted ▶ 1:05:17

“He was a Nicaraguan assemblyman who had served as one of Norwin Menendez's lawyers. The records showed that Luis Henry Palas, the son of Somoza's closest political advisor, and Nicaraguan assemblyman …”

Luis Henry Palas member_of PZPSA host_asserted ▶ 1:05:17

Edmundo Menendez secretly_owned Managua host_asserted ▶ 1:06:15

“Nicaraguan hotels that allow patrons to drive their cars into shielded carports so they can't be seen walking into hotel rooms. Some hideaways are usually used for hookers and mistress. However, they …”

Nicaraguan National Police carried_out_attack Menendez Drug Bust documented ▶ 1:10:17

“No one else in government, especially not the DEA, would be informed about anything. Their agents were sworn to secrecy and was given little advance notice of any operation. The precautions paid off. …”

Marcos Aguardo supplied_arms_to Norwin Menendez documented ▶ 1:12:02

“The auto transport trailer Menendez's men were busy stuffing cocaine into had just been purchased for $125,000 in El Salvador from none other than former CIA pilot Marcos Aguardo. Aguardo, who had hel…”

Jonathan Marshall exposed Norwin Menendez documented ▶ 1:12:58

“Two prominent Nicaraguan politicians were seemingly implicated as well, although they were never charged. The story made several U.S. newspapers, and reporter Jonathan Marshall of the San Francisco Ch…”

Bernardo Arce Castano member_of Sandinistas documented ▶ 1:19:36

“The first person Menendez had approached was a commandant in the military, a guy by the name of Bernardo Arce Castano, a cousin of Menendez's wife and one of the most influential of the nine Sandinist…”

Norwin Menendez recruited Bernardo Arce Castano guest_asserted ▶ 1:19:36

Department of Defense spied_on Norwin Menendez documented ▶ 1:21:23

“Both the State Department and the Department of Defense, the CIA report revealed, were monitoring Menendez's movements at the time. Those reports included reference to a trip to Colombia by Menendez a…”

U.S. State Department spied_on Norwin Menendez documented ▶ 1:21:23

Jesse Helms targeted_for_regime_change Sandinistas documented ▶ 1:22:21

“was being subjected to intense pressure to purge her government of all Sandinistas by government, by the U.S. government, particularly Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, whose staff had been intim…”

DEA carried_out_attack 1984 DEA-CIA Sting host_asserted ▶ 1:22:50

“of all remaining Sandinista supporters. In 1991, Menendez's operation, in all likelihood, was simply another version of the 1984 DEA-CIA sting involving trafficker Barry Seale, which the Reagan admini…”

Enrique Bermudez member_of FDN documented ▶ 1:23:37

“Explaining Norwin's relationship with the DEA, the Contras, the drug flights from El Salvador to Texas, the meetings with CIA pilot Aguardo and CIA agent Enrique Bermudez, the FDN's former military co…”

Norwin Menendez recruited Enrique Bermudez guest_asserted ▶ 1:24:06

“Miranda also testified that I also took part in meetings with Norwin Menendez and Bermudez, discussed the possibility of using the army to send drug loads to the U.S. and Europe. But those plans were …”

Norwin Menendez member_of FDN guest_asserted ▶ 1:24:36

“The slang was never solved. Menendez, of course, denied everything. The cocaine wasn't his. It belonged to a drug-dealing Sandinista guy. He claimed the Sandinistas had set him up and his brother on p…”

Norwin Menendez paid Enrique Miranda Jamie documented ▶ 1:27:08

“Miranda was given a seven-year sentence. A few days after the trial, Nicaraguan prison authorities reported that Menendez had paid a deranged inmate $10,000 to knife Miranda in revenge for his damning…”

U.S. State Department removed_from_power Rene Vivas documented ▶ 1:27:35

“Almost single-handedly, an underpaid middle-aged Nicaraguan policeman had in 18 months done something that the entire U.S. government, with all of its bike satellites, international wiretapping, and a…”

Trump administration removed_from_power Rene Vivas documented ▶ 1:27:35

Trump administration removed_from_power Roger Mayorga documented ▶ 1:28:05

“the Nicaraguan National Police Commander, Vivas. Roger Mayorga, who by then had begun looking into Danielle Blanton's relationship with Menendez's drug ring and its money laundering in Central America…”

U.S. State Department removed_from_power Roger Mayorga documented ▶ 1:28:05

Jesse Helms funded International Republican Institute documented ▶ 1:33:28

“And don't you know that he was the senior Republican senator chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during 1995 to 2001. He was intimately involved in advocating for increased funding of the …”

Jesse Helms targeted_for_regime_change Haiti documented ▶ 1:33:58

“specifically in Latin America. He was also involved in the IRI's operation in Haiti, undermining President Aristide, which we cooed twice. His former aide, later Assistant Secretary of State for Weste…”

USAID funded International Republican Institute documented ▶ 1:34:30

“Haiti, giving over $3 million via the IRI and USAID to overthrow the government of Haiti. So while he never served on its board, he was intimately involved in increasing their money for coups in the S…”

Operation Gladio targeted_for_regime_change Venezuela host_asserted ▶ 1:44:25

“Modern day people like Pompeo, who falls into every single one of these, which we will soon discover when we move on to Venezuela, are the modern day Jesse Helms of the world in wrecking havoc. And on…”

Mike Pompeo ordered_assassination_of Nicolás Maduro host_asserted ▶ 1:46:00

“show recently and I'm I apologize I'm not going to remember his name the former special ops guy that was used by Pompeo to insert a team to overthrow Maduro during Trump's first administration who's b…”

Operation Gladio funded Attempted coup against Nicolás Maduro host_asserted ▶ 1:46:28

“Because, of course, it's plausible liability. Everybody's, you know, saying, no, he wasn't acting on our behalf when, in fact, he was. Redacted had him on and he actually even mentioned to him, yeah, …”

National Endowment for Democracy funded Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:52:16

“That they were using our tax dollars through the CIA, through USAID, through National Endowment for Democracy to overthrow countries so that these oligarchs could go in and exploit their resources. We…”

USAID funded Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:52:16

NATO funded Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 1:52:59

“They're the reason why it was even adopted as a tactic in NATO. So just understand that we're doing this because we care about our country and we want everyone to realize what's really been going on a…”