The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 3 by Gary Webb

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Transcript

0:00 Hello, everyone. Bridget, I sent you the co-host thing a couple of times. Did you not get it? SR, can you hear me? Bridget says I'm having trouble. Yes, I can, Colonel. I can hear you fine. Okay. Bridget said she's having technical difficulties. Let me throw it to her one more time. All right. Renee can hear us, too. All right. It just said that Bridget got the co-host. All right. Let me get us going live over here on Rumble, and we're going to start today.

0:40 Keep in mind today is Wednesday, so we will have a very abbreviated Q&A afterwards. Bridget says it keeps saying, talk to me, Bridget. She said she keeps getting an error. We can't talk. All right. Well, we're going to go ahead and go. I guess Bridget can listen. She's back in her listening mode today as she was yesterday. All right.

1:22 Gladio glasses cleaned and ready to go. Make your Sarge over on Rumble. All right, let's go. Okay. So this chapter is called We Were the First. And it starts out as the same day the world's cocaine experts were gathered in Lima, Peru, to discuss the approaching drug epidemic. July 5th, 1979, a man.

1:53 who would help spread it across Los Angeles, was touching down in LAX. It had been a rough couple of weeks for him. His name was Oscar Danilo Blanton Reyes. He was 27 years old and a refugee from the Nicaraguan Civil War. Not long before he got to LA, he had the entire world.

2:24 on a platter. His wife, Chapita, had been the rich daughter of one of the country's most prominent political families. He had just gotten his MBA. He had a really cushy government job. He owned a couple of businesses, one of which was an import-export business and a travel agency.

2:51 And that needs to spark all kinds of like alarm bells and everybody, anytime that someone owns an import export and a travel agency. In our experience in Gladio, that means they're part of the CIA network. Because remember in a gender press, that travel agency piece of this is very, very important in making travel arrangements for.

3:20 the movement of people covertly with false credentials of which a gentle press created. So that to me and the import export business, just as we saw in New Orleans and Miami and in Europe is how they move drugs and weapons and everything else to include humans through the travel agency around. So that should like flash like a neon light. Okay.

3:51 One of his firms had a lucrative contract to supply American food to the Nicaraguan National Guard. And the Nicaraguan National Guard is kind of a misnomer. It's basically the control mechanism for Samosa to control the entire country. They're thugs.

4:17 They are a national police force. You cannot think of them as being part of a military like we think about our National Guard. They are literally the jackboots that kept Somoza in power. So he basically is making money off of providing them food with.

4:44 contracts from the Nicaraguan government and with the U.S. So again, very important connections. Daniello and Chapita Blanton were plugged into every aspect of the power structure in the Somoza dictatorship. They were benevolent only to loyalists. They rewarded their friends. Somoza's family

5:12 owned nearly all of the country's biggest corporations, the National Airline, the Power Company, the biggest hotels, the biggest department stores, the cement factory, their version of the New York Times, you name it. It was hard to earn a living if you were not in the inside of Samosa's network. It was impossible to earn a living.

5:42 If he didn't like you, it was virtually impossible to live if he didn't like you. Most of the families who stayed loyal and pleased the dictator partook in the riches to be had. The Blantons had been blessed with Samosa's magic touch. Then the Sandinistas had come to town and they spoiled everything for this group of people.

6:11 As Danilo Blanton stepped off the jet from Miami into the vast terminal of LAX, he found himself jobless, broke, and homeless. Not technically homeless. He had already sent his kids, as we'll find out, and his wife to LA. She had family there. He came here with one hand in the front and one hand in the back, if you know what I mean.

6:43 according to one of his compatriots already here. He and his wife had grown up accepting as their birthright the elegant mansions, servants, vacation homes, and elite private schools. All of that was gone. He was very pissed off. Though Somoza's army had beaten them down time and again, the Sandinistas rose up from the earth in the summer of 1978 to begin an offensive.

7:12 That would flabbergast both Somoza and his American handlers in the CIA. By the spring of the following year, they had captured many of the smaller cities and were closing in on the capital. Somoza's supporters, who called themselves Somozaistas, were beside themselves. Who would have ever believed this was happening? Somoza, the self-described Latin from Manhattan.

7:40 That's what they referred to him as because he was backed by the money in New York City. Could have gotten his ass whipped and so quickly. It was mind boggling to them by a bunch of bearded radicals. More importantly, how could the Americans have allowed it to happen? The CIA contingent at the U.S. embassy had been assuring everyone that everything was fine. They had it all under control.

8:09 that the rebels weren't even a real threat. But what Samosa and apparently the CIA didn't realize was that the deal his family had struck with every U.S. administration from FDR, a blood pact to combat quote-unquote communism together, would be dissolved by a Georgia peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter. Because what did Jimmy Carter do?

8:38 fired all of the covert agents and cut off aid to anyone that was running death squads or, you know, like the National Guard killing everybody. So that's what happened in Nicaragua. Instead of covering up and downplaying the brutality of Somoza's National Guard as part of the administration had done, some of Carter's people went on a human rights crusade, you know, because they were against killing people.

9:14 That's a bad thing. Complaining publicly that the longtime dictator was too much of a dictator and that his National Guard was wantonly killing people, which in fact they were. In 1977, some of Congress had begun wondering why the U.S. continued to fund Somoza and the killing. Asked by Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee what harm would befall the U.S. interest,

9:44 if Congress had simply cut off the aid to Nicaragua. Under Secretary of State Lucy Benson replied, I cannot find a single thing. Somoza told his National Guard to ease up on the rough stuff. And miraculously, complaints immediately began to stop happening. Satisfied,

10:11 that the Carter administration had backed off, President Samosa is known to have instructed the National Guard on several occasions to eliminate abuses which led to many of the charges of their extra-legal killings and torture, particularly in the northern rural area where most of the Sandinistas were at. State Department official Sally Shelton proudly told Congress in 1978,

10:41 that northern rural areas was the stomping grounds of an especially efficient National Guard general by the name of Gustavo El Tigre Medina, who would later play an important role in Danielle Blanton's life. Medina was Somoza's top counterinsurgency advisor.

11:10 He had a terrifying, hateful look, and it instilled fear in anyone in the room with him. The Sandinistas considered him responsible for the revolution's worst atrocities. The State Department reported that in 1978, as far as the human rights complaints coming out of Medina's theater was concerned,

11:38 It appeared that many of the allegations of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment during the course of the National Guard's operations against the Sandinistas were well-founded, but others were diluted. But when the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a branch of the Organization of American States, did its own inspection in 1978, the Latin American team observers

12:07 from other countries saw things in much more graphic terms than the Americans. They spoke to a mother who told of picking up the body parts in the dust to reassemble her five-year-old daughter after the daughter was hit by an air-to-ground missile. They talked with survivors of Operation Mop-Up, during which the National Guard went in after street battles and killed everyone they found.

12:37 that had not been killed by the bombing, especially where they thought Sandinistas were hiding. The shootings were numerous, and in some cases, children in their own home or in front of their homes were killed in the presence of their parents. They visited jails, reporting that all jails visited the prisoners.

13:09 had never seen a doctor except, see if this sounds familiar, when the doctor was called in to adjust the voltage of electricity during torture sessions. Sound familiar? It should. In the Northern Mountains, the team concluded that 338 peasants arrested between 1975 and 77 by the National Guard, 321.

13:41 of them were never seen again, they had been disappeared. Sounds very familiar. The missing peasant farmers were appropriated by members of the National Guard. When the State Department went to Congress for more money to support Somoza, one congressman was perplexed. Quote, what possible interest does the U.S. have in training the National Guard of Nicaragua, the lawmaker asked.

14:11 How does that help Americans? Unquote. The training programs have provided us. This is the response. The training programs have provided us with useful instruments for exercising political as well as professional influence over the National Guard. In other words, the diplomat was telling them that they control the National Guard and basically were responsible for everything the guard did.

14:39 The congressman said, I know. We have been doing that for the last 20 or 30 years. Between the National Guard, because the National Guard had such a tight lock on the country, it was considered invincible. And it might have been had the Carter administration backed up Somoza when the Sandinistas came knocking at the door. But Carter's people never really figured out what they wanted to do with Nicaragua.

15:12 except distance themselves from Somoza and his human rights abuses. When it became obvious to the Nicaraguan people that they would no longer live under Somoza rule, the American plan for dealing with the crisis boiled down to dump Somoza and salvage the National Guard. You know, the killers.

15:36 Apparently, the administration never realized that the Sandinistas and most other Nicaraguans hated the National Guard. And Somoza was basically the evil twin of the National Guard. You could not have one without the other. As Sandinista's attacks mounted, Washington let Somoza twist. Gradually, it dawned on Somoza's followers that the Americans weren't coming to the rescue.

16:06 By early June 1979, Managua's airport was jammed with people trying to get out. Hundreds of Nicaraguans struggled daily to leave. They couldn't find a flight. The situation here is, so hold on. On the Panama's radio, it was reported the situation here is such that a donkey with wings appeared. It would be besieged by travelers.

16:36 Departures from the country by land or by sea were impossible because of the dangers of raids. The Danilo Blanton managed to figure out how to get out because he was part of the group. Blanton's father, Julio, owned the land on which was built one of the most slummiest parts of Managua. It was referred to as Open No. 3.

17:10 It was a low-rent district that began life as emergency government housing after an earthquake in 1972. Conditions there were so bad that the neighborhood had 70,000 residents and was a constant source of new recruits for Sandinistas because they were basically treated like rats. It was called Via Misery. People there lived like...

17:41 Inner city people live in Los Angeles, one person said, despite the fact that they were one of the richest families in Nicaragua. The Blantons were social friends with Somoza and shared common business interests. Julio Blanton and Somoza were two of the biggest landowners in Managua. Blanton could trace his family relationship with the dictator back.

18:11 Several generations. Blanton's mother was from the Reyes family, which had an illustrious history in the Somoza regime. His grandfather was Colonel Reyes, former minister of war and the commander of the National Guard. Dinello's in-laws, the Morellas.

18:38 were stalwarts of the Somoza's Liberal Party. The Morellas had provided leadership for the National Assembly for generations. Orlando Morella's father had been the Assembly's president, and Chapita Blanton's father had been Managua's mayor. Very well connected. Like the Blantons, the Morella owned large tracts in Managua.

19:04 including the National Telecommunications Company's headquarters, along with cattle ranches and plantations all over the country. In some ways, Danilo Blanton had more to fear from the Sandinistas than other Samosan friends. He was part of Samosa's government, the director of wholesale markets, and ran a program designed to introduce

19:33 free market economies to Nicaraguan farmers. Blanton's job was to award grants for demonstration projects to create central distribution points for the country's agricultural riches, places where ranchers came to trade goods. The $27 million program, largely funded by us, Blanton said was jointly financed by Nicaraguan and the U.S. government.

20:03 It paid for his master's degree in business administration at the University of Columbia at Bogota. The National Guardsmen and Sandinista rebels were shooting each other in the streets. By June 11, things had gone so far, so far gone for Somoza that the rebels had set up a headquarters in the eastern part of the city. Shells from the National Guard's howitzers whizzed downtown Managua daily and exploded.

20:35 in what was Sandinista-held territory. Circling airplanes would drop 500-pound bombs or flaming gasoline barrels into the area. On the edge of the town, a National Guard tank had rolled up outside of one of the buildings and pumped round after round into the offices in what was the office for one of Somoza's severest critics.

21:00 The CIA hastily revised the estimate of Somoza's staying power on June 12th, giving his government only a short time to survive. Somoza fired the Colombian general staff four days later. Many had fought the Sandinistas for decades, and most of them ran the Colombian embassy for asylum. Somoza went on the radio on June 19th to denounce the U.S. government.

21:32 for its ingratitude for all of the years of his service. I want the U.S. people to help me, just as I helped them for 30 years. We want the North Americans to return what we contributed during the Cold War. The CIA shortened Somoza's life expectancy once again. Now the agency estimated that he had little more than a week.

22:00 Danella Blanton decided that he had hung around long enough. He had a three-year-old and a pregnant wife. It was time that Blanton fell in with a Red Cross convoy on its way to the airport and put his wife and daughter on an airplane for Los Angeles directly. She had relatives there, but he didn't accompany them directly to LA. And this is a very important point.

22:31 Instead, he and his older brother went to Miami. What's in Miami? Like the largest CIA station in the whole United States? Yeah, that same place. He also had garnered a tourist visa from the embassy. How he managed to do that while others couldn't get out.

23:00 namely get four seats on jetliners bound for the United States, was never made clear because the U.S. government sealed those records. Years later, Blanton would claim that he couldn't get a ticket directly to Los Angeles for himself. He couldn't afford it. He claimed that he had sold a colored television.

23:30 for the $200 to buy the tickets, and he only had enough money to get himself to Miami. All bullshit. His wife's uncle, Orlando Morella, says he paid for the airline tickets and also gave the couple $5,000 when they left the country. His story just doesn't add up. Blanton had other reasons for choosing to spend a few weeks in Miami.

24:01 We know what those were. As he tells it, he stayed with a friend. He got a job washing cars. Anybody believe that? Until he could save enough money, even though he had $5,000, to get to Los Angeles. He rejoined his family in Los Angeles in early July. And by August, he had landed a job at a used car lot in East LA, in a heavily Hispanic part of town.

24:33 His employers were two huge Nicaraguan brothers by the name of Torres. Now, why is used car lots important? Because as we learned with the Awan brothers, used car lots provide the ability for people to come into town, drive around with no rental cars and no trace of them being there. And he just so happens to land at a used car lot.

25:03 So really, really weird. So Blanton has said that he knew one of the brothers, Edgar, from his days in college in Monterey, Mexico, where Edgar had been studying economics. Edgar's brother, I don't know how you say this, Jacinto, J-A-C-I-N-T-O, was a former U.S. Marine.

25:40 and served in Vietnam. That's very interesting. And the name of the company was called Torres Used Cars. It says that they only actually had 10 cars on the lot, Blanton said. And they were basically just kind of paying him to hang around, you know, and pretend like he's a salesman. But they weren't just selling cars. They were also cocaine traffickers. Again,

26:15 It helps to have cars that you don't own if you're going to traffic in drugs. The other dealers of cocaine in LA called them the trees because they were six foot six and built like a tree trunk. They lived with two sisters and the sisters were cousins of Pablo Escobar. You can't make this shit up.

26:53 Escobar and his Colombian pals, Jorge Oca, which we talked about in our last book, and Carlos Lader, were then firmly in control of the Miami cocaine market, having wrestled it from the Colombian Americans after a long-running cocaine war. And we talked about this in our last book. The Colombians...

27:18 The Cubans had been using the city as their base of operation for cocaine, and they had been distributed throughout the United States. But we know that Pablo Escobar specifically mounted the war in Miami to take over that network, which is how he got crosswise with the CIA.

27:42 For three years from 76 to 79, they fought the Cubans for supremacy in Miami. Probably another reason why Blanton went to Miami. And the two sides killed each other in droves. After the Colombians turned the city into a cocaine distribution hub, and it became the official port of call for cocaine dealers of every stripe, local banks began swelling in drug profits. Because remember,

28:13 The Federal Reserve in Miami and the one in L.A. had the largest amounts of cash of any of the Federal Reserve networks. Miami was convenient. The Colombians could blend in with the large Hispanic population and move through the city unnoticed. Escobar's associate, Carlos Lader,

28:36 Set up shop in the Bahamas, buying an island where drug planes flew in and out of Cuba and they could land and refuel and wait for the night to fly into the U.S. Lader's transportation system worked well and gave the Medellin cartel its first real toehold in America. Then he began getting entree into Los Angeles.

29:04 When Blanton was working for the Torres brothers, they had not yet begun dealing cocaine, although everybody else said they were. They didn't take them long. By 1982, they were two of the more significant drug dealers in Los Angeles. Blanton insists that he was not dealing drugs. Now, he's lied about everything else, so I'm sure he's telling the truth about that. He had plenty to keep him busy.

29:38 Chepita was getting bigger with their second child every day and he was struggling to pay bills. He started a new job with another car lot, Roca Used Cars, and was also hustling rental cars. According to his friend, Frank Vigil, Blanton was trying to start an army in his spare time. Blanton boasted, well, we were forming a group in L.A.

30:10 a group of our people, to go and fight the Sandinistas that we called the FDN. Basically, it stood for Nicaraguan Democratic Force. You know, because we call Democratic Force the coup that they wanted to orchestrate on the Sandinista government. We were in charge. We were five people in charge in LA. We were in charge of getting some money.

30:41 Blanton said his counter-revolutionary group, or revolutionary group now, came together soon after he arrived in Los Angeles. Not like he was there to do it. At first, it was just a group of Nicaraguan exiles who got together and talked about the Sandinistas and their exile dilemmas.

31:10 They would talk about developments in Nicaragua. Blanton later told the CIA, other members of the group also opposed Somoza and the Sandinista regime. They simply came together to share common experiences and discuss their mutual desires to see the Sandinista government out of Nicaragua. But they weren't anti-Somoza. Every one of them was part of the Somozan government. Some of them was actually in the National Guard.

31:39 You know, the terrorists that we trained unleashed in the United States. They had meetings every week. And in 1980 to 81, we had raised money for the Contras. When it began, he said, his group was not officially connected to anyone. And I've got some swampland to sell you if you believe that. You Americans have no idea what it's like to lose everything and be thrown out of your own country.

32:13 We also don't know what it's like to kill people to keep a corrupt government. Well, maybe some people do. At the end of 1979, Blanton applied for his political asylum in the United States, claiming that he would be killed by the Sandinistas if he returned. He listed his membership in an anti-communist organization as proof that

32:43 he would be in trouble if he went back home because at this point we had already started calling the Sandinistas communist. If Blanton's recollection is correct, his little Los Angeles group was one of the first flickerings of an organized resistance movement against the Sandinistas inside the United States. Acquaintances and former college classmates say Blanton sometimes brags that he was one of the earliest founders of the FDN.

33:11 which became the biggest and most famous of the various Nicaraguan armies that would later be called the Contras. The FDN didn't officially come into existence until mid-1981, so if Blanton was raising money for Contra fighters as early as he says in 79 and 80, he was doing it on behalf of a predecessor called the Legion of September 15th.

33:40 a violent brand of former National Guard men that were based in Guatemala. The Legion was a terrorist organization started by former Samosan bodyguards soon after Samosa's fall. It was to become the hard core at the center of the FDN after the CIA merged it.

34:08 into smaller resistant groups in August of 1981. Blanton's contra-fundraising efforts bore little fruit at first. At the beginning, we started to have some parties, you know, just to raise money, like in the park. We had rallies. Blanton also hawked copies of Samosa's bitter memoirs, Nicaraguan Betrayed.

34:36 and helped put out anti-Sandinistas newsletters printed by a shop owned by a sympathetic Nicaraguan. Blanton and his compatriots began their fundraising efforts in earnest in Los Angeles. Samosa's cousin, Luis Pallas de Bali,

34:57 began making the rounds of various exile groups in the United States and in Central America to see if anyone was interested in helping them fight. Peleus contacted his cousin in Paraguay. Paraguay. The ex-dictator promised to kick in a million dollars. It was a promise that he didn't keep. In September 1980, Argentine...

35:29 revolutionaries blasted a rocket propelled grenade in a hail of m16 fire into samosa's mercedes-benz killing samosa and splattering pieces of him all over the inside of his german automobile another visit peleus made with happier results was to former former national guard colonel enrique

36:02 Bermudez to see if Bermudez would be willing to lead the new resistance force that can be put together. He was a logical choice to be the Contra's military commander of all of the former officers of the National Guard. He probably had the best contacts in the U.S. military and intelligence community.

36:25 convincing the Americans to back him was going to be critical if the Contras were ever going to get off the ground. Bermudez was a leader who was very palatable to the Americans. He was a known quantity. He fit the profile, one U.S. official later said. He was malleable, controllable, and docile. What else did you want in a guy leading a revolution? In 1965,

36:55 Bermudez had been the deputy commander of the infantry company Somoza sent to support the U.S.-led invasion of the Dominican Republic. So this is a coup that the CIA staged in the Dominican Republic. So he was a very known quantity to have worked with the CIA for a very long time. It was another one of those favors that Somoza was screaming about when they left to rot.

37:28 Bermudez had been in the United States since 1975. Because, you know, that's where you put people that overthrow governments. You bring them home. First as a student attending courses on subversion and counterinsurgencies at the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C. And later as the Nicaraguan government's liaison.

37:57 to the American military. The Americans thought so highly of him that he was one of the National Guard officers they recommended to head the National Guard during the final days of Somoza's reign. The State Department considered Bermudez a safe choice. He had spent most of the Revolution in Washington, and the reasoning went that he couldn't be held responsible

38:28 for the National Guard's human rights violations, the tortures, the disappearance, and the bombings, except that he'd actually been part of all of that, to include overthrowing the Dominican Republic government. But we didn't know that, so they weren't going to tell us. So Mosa ended up picking someone else because he was pissed off at the Americans. Bermudez.

38:59 rode out the remainder of the Civil War from the safety of NBC Row in Washington, D.C. When the Samosas government collapsed, Bermudez began a new career, you guys are going to love this, as a truck driver for Newsweek. Like the CIA mouthpiece Newsweek? Yeah, that same one.

39:29 Soon after the uplifting visit from Samosa's cousin, Bermudez got a call from Major General Charles Boyd, a top Air Force official who visited Bermudez and invited him to the Pentagon just to kick some ideas around. Not like we're going to plan Iran-Contra. We're just going to chat.

39:57 After sounding out Bermudez on the idea of running a rebel force against the Sandinista government, Boyd told him that he had a friend at the CIA who was interested in speaking to him. In mid-1980, Bermudez had packed his family and his belongings and left Washington behind, moving into a rented house in Miami. Miami again. He was then...

40:26 on the CIA's payroll. He began traveling widely, gauging the sentiment of the vanquished National Guardsmen, like basically trying to recruit them all back into their former role, many of which were hiding inside the United States. But also some had went to other Central American countries, reporting back to his CIA handlers.

40:56 everyone that he could recruit. Those who wonder how Bermudez could afford to travel so much when he didn't have a job was basically told that he was living off the profits of his Washington house. You know, the one he got as a truck driver for Newsweek. According to Boyd, the CIA put Bermudez in touch with the Legion of September 15 in Guatemala and soon

41:26 Bermudez would move there and become their commander. They were actually a terrorist group. Made up mostly of former National Guard officers who had escaped from Nicaragua at the end of the war, the Legionnaires had a safe house in Guatemala City. Weirdly enough, that safe house called Detachment 101 was the exact farm

41:57 that was used as the CIA headquarters when they overthrew Guatemala in 1954. Isn't that weird? The exact same place. They're going to start training consuls there. Since there was no war for them to fight, the Legion kept in shape by hiring itself out to perform warlike deeds for others. They became an assassin squad.

42:30 for the CIA to use all over the world. They did kidnapping, extortion, robbery. They engaged in the bombing of Nicaraguan civilian airliners. They hijacked aircraft. Nice guys. According to a June 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, the Legion commanders see themselves as being forced to stoop.

43:00 to criminal activity in order to feed and clothe them. I'm sure they were paid well. That the CIA would know the band of terrorists so well that it would know the thinking of its commanders is not a surprise. Much of the Legion's leadership had worked for the CIA during their previous life in Somoza's government as secret agents, rooting out dissidents in the government.

43:31 that opposed Somoza. They were also all advised by the CIA. One of the earliest published accounts of the Legion's existence notes that it was run by former members of Somoza's intelligence service that worked exclusively with the CIA. The men of the CIA and the men of the Legion were co-workers, and this mutual affection would come in handy.

44:05 well after the CIA took over the day-to-day operations of the Contras. Still, the CIA's matter-of-fact description of the League's criminal history is too kind. Its IG never mentioned the Legion's most horrific deed. In March of 1980, they assassinated Roman Catholic Archbishop from San Salvador.

44:35 Oscar Romero, who was shot through the head as he delivered mass. Romero had the bad luck to interest himself in his parishioners who had disappeared by the death squads the CIA trained in El Salvador. The archbishop had been warned several times to stay out of it.

45:09 He did not. Records seized from the Salvadoran politician suspected of orchestrating Romero's murder, Roberto de Asbozonan, it's spelled D apostrophe A U B U I S S O N, revealed that he had gone to Guatemala three days after Romero's murder.

45:35 and made two contributions to the Nicaraguans, one for $40,000 and one for $80,000. Written underneath the amounts was the name and telephone number of Colonel Ricardo Lau, L-A-U, a former intelligence and security officer for the National Guard who was running the Legion of September 15th prior to Bermuda's appointment as commander. Lau

46:03 who was never charged in connection with Romero's murder, would go on to become Enrique Bermudez's right-hand man in the Contra organization. The CIA had admitted that during 1981 and 82, it was receiving regular reports that Lau and seven other Legion commanders were involved in criminal activities. Coincidentally, that's what Danilo Blanton was doing.

46:33 for the Contras in Los Angeles. His little exile group was moving up in the world and had switched from cocktail parties and car theft and loan fraud. They had also become an official part of the CIA's new Contra army, the FDN. In 1981, CIA agent Enrique Bermudez, yes, they call him a CIA agent now, and Blanton's little group,

47:05 In L.A., he paid Blanton's group a visit. Bermudez came to a meeting of the group to give a pep talk and to ask the group to keep the idea of a free and democratic Nicaraguan alive. Not that they ever had one because they didn't. But, you know, that's what we're going to tell everybody in America to endear themselves to the Contra because they had actually supported a dictator called Somoza.

47:34 But we have to lie to everybody in order to take their money because they're never going to just openly fund a dictatorship again. And this was all revealed by the CIA. The colonel asked the group to adopt the colors and the flag of the FDN. And after that, the CIA inspector wrote, Blanton and the other members of the group called themselves FDN and used FDN colors and flags.

48:05 and letterhead. They also got an assignment, Blanton testified. It came, you know, that we had to provide some cars and get involved in another thing to get some money. By then, Blanton had been working in LA long enough to establish a credit history, so he applied for a car loan and he bought a truck and he shipped the truck to Nicaragua. So,

48:41 We were the first people, Blanton bragged, the first group that sent a pickup truck to the Contra Revolution in Honduras. In the spring of 1981, the Legion of September 15 moved its operation from Guatemala to its new headquarters in Honduras, where it would remain for the rest of the war. Blanton said the payments on the car they sent to the Contras

49:10 was going to be picked up by the quote unquote organization, that he didn't have to pay the payments. That's the end of the chapter. So we've set the tone for the transition of the downfall of the Somoza government, the rise of the Sandinista government, and the network.

49:40 that is going to be used in the United States to distribute cocaine to fund the Contras at the expense of the American people. But, oh, by the way, they're also using taxpayer dollars to buy weapons for them as well. So, again, we find ourselves funding terrorism. So, let me see if I can get Bridget working again.

50:17 SR-71, did you have anything you wanted to add? Thank you, Colonel. I want to thank everybody for being here on Spaces and Rumble today. The assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, doing a little bit of research on that, it turns out that because of his assassination, that pretty much galvanized

50:49 the people against what was going on. And all I could think about at this point in time, well, if that did that, I'm sort of likening that to what's happened with Charlie Kirk here. Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Bridget, try speaking now. Okay, can you hear me now? Yeah, I can. I'll just leave you a speaker. Apparently, I just am having some technical difficulties today.

51:22 this book really adds a lot of context and good things for pattern recognition, like the automobile, the used car automobile deal. And I mean, it's just everything, you know, again, we talk about it, it's being a big sketch and you're filling in the color and it's giving more detail and the detail adds context to future things and past things. And thank you for doing it.

51:53 Sure. I agree. You know, as soon as I started reading this book, it was amazing how many of the things that we've learned over all of these years start laying. And again, I just can't even imagine somebody like Gary Webb. Gary Webb doesn't know anything about what we know. He's digging through.

52:23 piles and piles and piles of information. He's talking to all of these people and documenting these things that sometimes probably he doesn't even realize the importance of the details that he's providing because he didn't have that pattern recognition necessarily. And it's quite amazing now that we've done all of this other research to read his work.

52:52 and see how he must have scared the hell out of everybody, all I can say. SR71, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. I can imagine Bridget taking one step at a time with a Verizon phone. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? But anyway, concerning the car rentals and what's going on, and I was thinking about that as well.

53:19 We've also found out, and you've highlighted many times, that car rental operations and travel agencies and whatnot are also money laundering operations. So we're talking about some of the multifaceted areas here, how these people not only get their money, but how they get around. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's a great point. Thank you for making that point. Because they definitely have that in common, too. Lots and lots of money to launder. Anybody?

53:53 And don't forget to remind everybody about tomorrow. Special announcement. Because I got a really cool thing I'm going to send you. So we have a couple of things to talk about tomorrow. So tomorrow, our spaces is going to get pushed back probably to six o'clock. Because I will be on with Keith from the Blaze Network again on his private podcast at three o'clock.

54:24 I reposted that out earlier in case you guys didn't see it. We're going to compare Arctic Freeze that was just released by Chuck Grassley to PatCon and the stuff that we went over about PatCon. Because just as the Reader's Digest or bottom line up front, it's the same thing. And ironically...

54:52 I hope you guys saw the post where I outlined all of the same congressional members that are currently still in Congress when PATCON was conducted inside the United States and exposed. And one of the people is Chuck Grassley. So that's number one. And then at eight o'clock tomorrow, we are going to.

55:24 host a group of military people as speakers, former military, about the radicalization of our military. So you definitely don't want to miss that. That'll be at eight o'clock tomorrow night. Okay. So there's that. Renee, go ahead. Let me add you as a speaker. Go ahead, Renee.

55:54 Hi. Yeah, I was just going to mention that this chapter, what kept coming to my mind was California and the setup of with, you know, infiltrating Central Latin America. I kept thinking of the Phoenix program because it wasn't it like Antoine LeVay and.

56:18 I don't know if it was General Folger and stuff. A lot of those cats stationed up Northern California at the Presidio who were really into sick, twisted elements of training and stuff, individuals. And I mean, I know we have, what's his name? Dan Matrioni. What was his name? He was before them, right? He was before.

56:46 Because they were, wasn't Antoine LeVay and all those cats in, they were in Vietnam, right? Yeah. But the whole training of the torture and stuff, I keep thinking of that and connecting dots of the social engineering and the fractured mine hole operations in California to set up their whole system. Anyway, that's what I just wanted to share. That's what I was thinking a lot of.

57:14 of the social engineering and the terrorism and all that kind of stuff of the training of these people, whether it be in Nicaragua or weird psyops here in California, of how they can manipulate and train people to do such torture. You know, it's really creepy stuff.

57:43 It has to be a fractured soul or a fractured mind, traumatized mind that has done that, that teaches these tortures, right? Maybe. That's all. Well, I don't know if I agree with that in total. Because Dan Meterone, by the way, was kidnapped and murdered in 1970. So that is preceding what we're talking about here.

58:12 But the way they do it is the same thing that we're seeing happen here right now. They demonize people. They call them communists. They call them fascists. They call them Hitler. And they justify the torture to expose what they are told to be fascist, Hitler people.

58:41 to extract information under the guise of protecting the rest of the community against this insidious infection, cancer, that is spreading throughout the community. And that's why it is so important and why Charlie Kirk was such a threat, is he was demonstrating that people can actually view things differently and not hate each other.

59:10 And that's the antithesis to their agenda of labeling, demonizing and motivating radicalized people to attack other people. If you have people, you know, that's the same thing with the Rainbow Coalition in Chicago and why they murdered that guy, because he was reaching people of all colors.

59:39 and coalescing around a movement that we can all live together, that we can all talk, we all have basic humanity in common. We don't have to agree on all of the, you know, whether you're this religion or that religion, because religions of different denominations can live cohesively together.

1:00:06 And as soon as you do that across all of the lines, you negate their radicalization efforts. And so I understand about the fractured mind and using them as maybe the actual assassin, but that's not their 99% of their motivation. 99% of their effort is demonization of the target population.

1:00:34 in order to radicalize that 1% into taking action. Does that make sense? Because if you go back and you interview those people that were actually conducting the torture, and some of these books have articulated this, they honestly believed the leadership that they were protecting the populace from the next Hitler coming up.

1:01:08 I'm not saying that that's legitimate. I'm just telling you what they said. It's the same thing with our our military and our special forces. They are in a very close knit environment that has been told using CIA intelligence that this person's a terrorist. And we had a massive movement after 9-11.

1:01:38 That was gung-ho of killing jihadists. And that was before they ever got to the military because they felt like they were protecting the homeland. It is a natural male instinct to protect those around them. And they use that psychological profile to take people, turn them into a killing machine, and unleash them.

1:02:09 And those people are doing what they believe to be a noble cause of protecting the United States. But they have to rely on intelligence. And that intelligence is bullshit. It's at best 99% made up. And it targets whoever they want them to kill. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel.

1:02:40 To get that kind of mindset, I believe it was Kiwi Shelley who posted an article this morning about a test that was done by a teacher at school in history where the teacher had gone through the classroom and whispered in every child's ear either the word witch or non-witch or regular person.

1:03:16 Then after that, he came up and told the children, OK, I want you all to get in a group, all the witches in one group, all the others in the other group. But you can't have anyone in your group that is not a witch or not the normal group. And of course, all the children now are trying to figure out who's what, who's the witch and who isn't.

1:03:50 So they formed little groups for those they trusted. Other ones they shunned away, this, that, and the other. And then finally, after all was done, the teacher said they couldn't get together in one solid group. They were arguing amongst themselves and everything else. The teacher finally halted the experiment and said, OK, I want you all to know nobody in here is a witch.

1:04:22 So when we talk about the Salem witch trials, you're going to think about what's really happened. You've been fed something that you shouldn't have been fed and it has pitted you all against each other. And that to me is basically what's happening here and how you explain what's going on with people who are willing to torture and people who aren't. You sincerely believe.

1:04:53 That what you're doing is the right thing to do. Now, on another note, what I'd like to know, and I'm going to get off subject a little bit here. What is your impression of the pomp and circumstance that's going on right now with President Trump in the UK? Well, I have not done. There's a lot of people. I have not actually read their protocol manual.

1:05:23 There's people that are saying that it is normal to put the visiting head of state to inspect the troops. Other people go, no, no, that's not how it works. I don't know. So I think it's very interesting that President Trump walks into the mouth of the beast, though. The man shows no fear.

1:05:50 And I consider the UK the mouth of the beast. So kudos to him for going right at him and kind of forcing the people to see that where he's at and what he's doing. So kudos to him for doing it.

1:06:23 Anyway, if we don't have anything else, I'm going to go ahead and jump off here so I can get to dinner on time. I appreciate everybody being here as usual. And like I said, I've got the Alpha Warrior show tonight. Key show tomorrow night or tomorrow afternoon at three. And then we've got the round table with the military.

1:06:51 people and the radicalization of the military tomorrow night at eight o'clock. So come join in wherever you want to. And hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in the next edition of Dark Alliance at six o'clock tomorrow. I'm going to try. So there you have it. We got a full day today and a full day tomorrow. All right. Take care, everybody. What do you want to say, Bridget?

1:07:22 Oh, your energy is enviable. That's all I got to say. I don't know. I may have to have a glass of wine tomorrow night to get through that show. Just because it is so enraging to me what has happened with our military. It's going to be a very interesting show. I'm just going to say that. I may need a glass of wine. Well, I sent you a good.

1:07:53 I sent you a good, I think, you know how sometimes you just know when it's right. And I sent you a video and a pic. So I think you'll like them both. Yeah, yeah. Okay, great. I'll either get it out right before I go to dinner if I have time. Otherwise, I'll get it out right after I come back for dinner before the Alpha Warrior show. So you guys, please, please, please.

1:08:15 Share it so that we can get a good size audience tomorrow for all of our guests. I really, really appreciate it. And for some reason, I'm going to go ahead. It really is being squashed. Your reach is being squashed in a major way. So please quote, post, repost. Post it like it's on fire, like your life depends on it. Because that's the only way it'll get out. Yeah, it is really interesting to watch.

1:08:43 Bridget showed me how you can look at, there's no correlation. When you guys all go and post something, the reach, however they've got the algorithms go, it's like it breaks it. And then for two or three days, you'll get a normal engagement rate. And then no matter what you do, after a couple of days, it's right back to like nobody sees anything.

1:09:12 Um, so it's, it's a very interesting, um, time to be on the internet and on X. I'm just going to say that. Um, so anyway, I'm not complaining. I love you guys. I love the interaction. You guys are absolutely awesome. Um, I just, um, can't help but notice that. And it seems like every time I mention it, somebody will go, oh my gosh, um, X unfollowed you or whatever.

1:09:42 And I don't even know how that can happen. But I've looked at the, after we close the space, it'll show people that are speakers that came up to speak. And a lot of people that I know I followed, it shows that I unfollowed them. And I mean, it showed I unfollowed Stellar like a couple of weeks ago, which I've never unfollowed Stellar.

1:10:10 And so I know it can happen. It's just crazy. But anyway, thanks, you guys, for being here. I appreciate it. And thank everybody over on Rumble. Take care.

Entities here

Nicaraguan National Police25 Anastasio Somoza25 United States25 CIA23 Sandinistas19 Nicaragua18 Los Angeles17 Enrique Bermudez16 Miami11 Legion of September 1511 Oscar Danilo Blandón10 Contras8 Managua6 Óscar Romero5 Washington, D.C.5 Colombia5 Daniel Blanton5 Guatemala5 Pablo Escobar4 U.S. Congress4 Democratic Force of Nicaragua4 Chapita Blandón4 Jimmy Carter4 Carlos Lehder3 Cuba3 Gustavo León de la Cruz3 Iran-Contra affair3 Charles Boyd3 Orlando Morello3 Somoza family3 Blanton's friend3 U.S. State Department3 Blandón family3 Blanton's compatriots3 U.S. Embassy2 Charlie Kirk2 Julio Blandón2 Donald Trump2 Gary Webb2 1965 Dominican Republic Intervention2

Claims made here

Oscar Danilo Blandón funded Nicaraguan National Police host_asserted ▶ 3:51

“One of his firms had a lucrative contract to supply American food to the Nicaraguan National Guard. And the Nicaraguan National Guard is kind of a misnomer. It's basically the control mechanism for Sa…”

Nicaraguan National Police installed Anastasio Somoza host_asserted ▶ 4:17

“They are a national police force. You cannot think of them as being part of a military like we think about our National Guard. They are literally the jackboots that kept Somoza in power. So he basical…”

Oscar Danilo Blandón member_of Somoza family host_asserted ▶ 4:44

“contracts from the Nicaraguan government and with the U.S. So again, very important connections. Daniello and Chapita Blanton were plugged into every aspect of the power structure in the Somoza dictat…”

Jimmy Carter removed_from_power Anastasio Somoza host_asserted ▶ 8:09

“that the rebels weren't even a real threat. But what Samosa and apparently the CIA didn't realize was that the deal his family had struck with every U.S. administration from FDR, a blood pact to comba…”

Jimmy Carter funded Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 8:38

“fired all of the covert agents and cut off aid to anyone that was running death squads or, you know, like the National Guard killing everybody. So that's what happened in Nicaragua. Instead of coverin…”

Gustavo León de la Cruz headed Nicaraguan National Police documented ▶ 10:41

“that northern rural areas was the stomping grounds of an especially efficient National Guard general by the name of Gustavo El Tigre Medina, who would later play an important role in Danielle Blanton'…”

Gustavo León de la Cruz carried_out_attack Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 11:10

“He had a terrifying, hateful look, and it instilled fear in anyone in the room with him. The Sandinistas considered him responsible for the revolution's worst atrocities. The State Department reported…”

CIA funded Nicaraguan National Police documented ▶ 14:11

“How does that help Americans? Unquote. The training programs have provided us. This is the response. The training programs have provided us with useful instruments for exercising political as well as …”

Oscar Danilo Blandón funded Contras host_asserted ▶ 31:39

“You know, the terrorists that we trained unleashed in the United States. They had meetings every week. And in 1980 to 81, we had raised money for the Contras. When it began, he said, his group was not…”

Oscar Danilo Blandón member_of Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted ▶ 32:43

“he would be in trouble if he went back home because at this point we had already started calling the Sandinistas communist. If Blanton's recollection is correct, his little Los Angeles group was one o…”

CIA merged Legion of September 15 host_asserted ▶ 33:40

“a violent brand of former National Guard men that were based in Guatemala. The Legion was a terrorist organization started by former Samosan bodyguards soon after Samosa's fall. It was to become the h…”

Luis Pellas de la Vega funded Democratic Force of Nicaragua host_asserted ▶ 34:57

“began making the rounds of various exile groups in the United States and in Central America to see if anyone was interested in helping them fight. Peleus contacted his cousin in Paraguay. Paraguay. Th…”

Enrique Bermudez member_of Nicaraguan National Police documented ▶ 35:29

“revolutionaries blasted a rocket propelled grenade in a hail of m16 fire into samosa's mercedes-benz killing samosa and splattering pieces of him all over the inside of his german automobile another v…”

Enrique Bermudez appointed Contras documented ▶ 36:02

“Bermudez to see if Bermudez would be willing to lead the new resistance force that can be put together. He was a logical choice to be the Contra's military commander of all of the former officers of t…”

Enrique Bermudez member_of Nicaraguan National Police documented ▶ 36:55

“Bermudez had been the deputy commander of the infantry company Somoza sent to support the U.S.-led invasion of the Dominican Republic. So this is a coup that the CIA staged in the Dominican Republic. …”

CIA trained Enrique Bermudez documented ▶ 37:28

“Bermudez had been in the United States since 1975. Because, you know, that's where you put people that overthrow governments. You bring them home. First as a student attending courses on subversion an…”

United States appointed Enrique Bermudez documented ▶ 37:57

“to the American military. The Americans thought so highly of him that he was one of the National Guard officers they recommended to head the National Guard during the final days of Somoza's reign. The…”

Enrique Bermudez member_of Newsweek documented ▶ 38:59

“rode out the remainder of the Civil War from the safety of NBC Row in Washington, D.C. When the Samosas government collapsed, Bermudez began a new career, you guys are going to love this, as a truck d…”

Charles Boyd recruited Enrique Bermudez documented ▶ 39:29

“Soon after the uplifting visit from Samosa's cousin, Bermudez got a call from Major General Charles Boyd, a top Air Force official who visited Bermudez and invited him to the Pentagon just to kick som…”

Enrique Bermudez recruited Nicaraguan National Police documented ▶ 40:26

“on the CIA's payroll. He began traveling widely, gauging the sentiment of the vanquished National Guardsmen, like basically trying to recruit them all back into their former role, many of which were h…”

CIA funded Enrique Bermudez documented ▶ 40:26

CIA recruited Legion of September 15 documented ▶ 40:56

“everyone that he could recruit. Those who wonder how Bermudez could afford to travel so much when he didn't have a job was basically told that he was living off the profits of his Washington house. Yo…”

Legion of September 15 member_of Nicaraguan National Police documented ▶ 41:26

“Bermudez would move there and become their commander. They were actually a terrorist group. Made up mostly of former National Guard officers who had escaped from Nicaragua at the end of the war, the L…”

Legion of September 15 carried_out_attack Óscar Romero documented ▶ 44:05

“well after the CIA took over the day-to-day operations of the Contras. Still, the CIA's matter-of-fact description of the League's criminal history is too kind. Its IG never mentioned the Legion's mos…”

Roberto D'Aubuisson financed_via Legion of September 15 documented ▶ 45:09

“He did not. Records seized from the Salvadoran politician suspected of orchestrating Romero's murder, Roberto de Asbozonan, it's spelled D apostrophe A U B U I S S O N, revealed that he had gone to Gu…”

Ricardo Lau member_of Legion of September 15 documented ▶ 45:35

“and made two contributions to the Nicaraguans, one for $40,000 and one for $80,000. Written underneath the amounts was the name and telephone number of Colonel Ricardo Lau, L-A-U, a former intelligenc…”

Ricardo Lau member_of Contras documented ▶ 46:03

“who was never charged in connection with Romero's murder, would go on to become Enrique Bermudez's right-hand man in the Contra organization. The CIA had admitted that during 1981 and 82, it was recei…”

Enrique Bermudez recruited Daniel Blanton documented ▶ 47:05

“In L.A., he paid Blanton's group a visit. Bermudez came to a meeting of the group to give a pep talk and to ask the group to keep the idea of a free and democratic Nicaraguan alive. Not that they ever…”

Daniel Blanton member_of Fuerza Democrática Nacional documented ▶ 47:34

“But we have to lie to everybody in order to take their money because they're never going to just openly fund a dictatorship again. And this was all revealed by the CIA. The colonel asked the group to …”

Legion of September 15 member_of Honduras documented ▶ 48:41

“We were the first people, Blanton bragged, the first group that sent a pickup truck to the Contra Revolution in Honduras. In the spring of 1981, the Legion of September 15 moved its operation from Gua…”

CIA funded Contras documented ▶ 49:40

“that is going to be used in the United States to distribute cocaine to fund the Contras at the expense of the American people. But, oh, by the way, they're also using taxpayer dollars to buy weapons f…”