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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Norwin Meneses.md
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@ -3,204 +3,163 @@ title: Norwin Meneses
aliases:
- Norwin Meneses
- Norwin Meneses Cantarero
- Juan Norwin Meneses Cantarero
- Norvin Meneses
- Norwing Meneses
- Norbin Meneses
- El Rey de la Droga
- El Perico
- El Maestro
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-05
category: "Organized Crime"
tags:
- Person
- DrugTrafficker
- Nicaragua
- Contra
- CIADrugTrafficking
- DEAInformant
- SanFrancisco
- 1970s
- 1980s
- 1990s
- DarkAllianceInvestigation
summary: "Nicaraguan cocaine trafficker, born 1943, investigated for a decade by the DEA and FBI in San Francisco while used as a DEA informant in Costa Rica, indicted in 1989 and jailed in Nicaragua in 1991."
born: 1943-06-21
location: "Nicaragua"
relations:
- type: informant_for
with: "[[DEA]]"
start: 1986-07
end: 1990-08-16
role: "source of information from July 1986; registered informant 1987-1989 and May-August 1990"
fn: 13
- type: funded
with: "[[Contras]]"
role: "recruiter, arms supplier and benefactor"
fn: 2
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-09-22
category: "Organized Crime"
tags:
- KeyFigure
- Person
- DrugTrafficker
- Nicaragua
- Contra
- 1970s
- 1980s
- 1990s
- DarkAllianceInvestigation
summary: "Norwin Meneses Cantarero, known as 'El Rey de la Droga,' was Nicaragua's most prolific drug trafficker who simultaneously served as a DEA informant while running a cocaine distribution network spanning from Central America to California in support of the Contra movement."
born: 1943-06-21
location: "Nicaragua"
role: "source of information from July 1986; registered informant July 24, 1987 to December 23, 1989 and May 10 to August 16, 1990"
fn: 6
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Danilo Blandon]]"
start: 1982
role: "cocaine distribution, Los Angeles"
fn: 1
- type: relative_of
with: "[[Edmundo Meneses]]"
role: "brother, Nicaraguan National Guard officer and Managua police chief"
fn: 1
- type: prosecuted
with: "[[Eric Swenson]]"
reverse: true
start: 1989-02-08
role: "sealed San Francisco indictment, conspiracy to distribute cocaine"
fn: 19
- type: investigated
with: "[[Sandra Smith]]"
reverse: true
start: 1980-07
end: 1984-12
role: "DEA San Francisco"
fn: 1
- type: investigated
with: "[[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]"
reverse: true
start: 1986-09
end: 1991-11
role: "San Francisco historical conspiracy case and 1989 fugitive file"
fn: 19
---
Norwin Meneses Cantarero, known as "El Rey de la Droga" (The King of Drugs) and "El Perico," was the leader of the Meneses drug organization and, according to the journalist Gary Webb, the [[Cali Drug Cartel|Cali cartel]]'s representative in [[Nicaragua]]. A drug trafficker since the early 1970s, Meneses lived in the [[United States]] from 1979 until he left for Costa Rica after his nephew's arrest in November 1984,[^13] and worked for the [[Contras]] as a recruiter, arms supplier, and benefactor throughout the entire Contra war.[^2] The [[DEA]] office in Costa Rica used him as a source of information from July 1986 and registered him as an informant from July 24, 1987, to December 23, 1989, and again from May 10 to August 16, 1990.[^13]
Norwin Meneses Cantarero, born June 21, 1943, and known in Nicaragua as "El Rey de la Droga" and "El Perico," was a [[Nicaragua|Nicaraguan]] cocaine trafficker who moved between [[Managua]], the [[San Francisco]] Bay Area and [[Costa Rica]].[^1] From 1980 the [[DEA]] and the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] opened a series of cases on his family's organization, in which his nephews and associates were convicted and he was not; from July 1986 the DEA's Costa Rica office used him as a source and then as an informant while the FBI in San Francisco was assembling a case against him; a sealed federal indictment followed in 1989; and Nicaraguan police arrested him on November 3, 1991 with 764 kilograms of cocaine.[^1][^2] [[Gary Webb]] wrote that he was the [[Cali Drug Cartel|Cali cartel's]] representative in Nicaragua and a recruiter, arms supplier and benefactor of the [[Contras]]; the Justice Department's Inspector General found he gave the Contras little, dealt with all sides, and had no CIA connection.[^3][^1]
### Background and Family
### Family and early record
Meneses had close connections to the Cuban anti-Communist movement and to the pre-revolution Nicaraguan power structure. His brother, [[Edmundo Meneses]], was a former Nicaraguan ambassador to [[Guatemala]], former general in the [[Nicaraguan National Guard]], former chief of police in [[Managua]], and a probable [[Central Intelligence Agency]] asset. Edmundo Meneses was a graduate of the [[U.S. Army School of the Americas]] and was assassinated in Guatemala in 1978 by guerrillas shortly before Somoza's overthrow. Another brother, Brigadier General Fermin Meneses, commanded the Guardia garrison in the city of Masaya. "The whole [Meneses] family was anti-Sandinista to the death," the Nicaraguan newsmagazine El Semanario reported in 1996. "It is a hate that seems almost genetic, ancestral."[^3]
Meneses came from a family close to the [[Anastasio Somoza|Somoza]] government. The Justice Department's Inspector General recorded that one brother was reported to be Managua's police chief in the 1970s, another a general, and an uncle the top official of the Customs Service; his wife Paula Rosario Zeledon de Meneses and a child were legal residents of the [[United States]].[^1][^2] Webb identified the brother-police chief as [[Edmundo Meneses]], a graduate of the [[U.S. Army School of the Americas]], former ambassador to [[Guatemala]] and probable [[Central Intelligence Agency]] asset, who was assassinated in Guatemala in 1978, and a second brother, General Fermin Meneses, who commanded the National Guard garrison at Masaya; he quoted the Nicaraguan newsmagazine *El Semanario* in 1996 on the family's hatred of the Sandinistas.[^4] [[Roger Mayorga]], a former [[Sandinistas|Sandinista]] police investigator, told Webb that Meneses's first large deal began when a plane carrying Colombian marijuana made an emergency landing on a Somoza ranch and Edmundo, then police chief, released the pilots and plane but turned the marijuana over to his brother. Webb wrote that Meneses owned the Frisco Disco and VIP Club in Managua, drive-in brothels and a drug business, that a "highly reliable" FBI informant said he had once used a Nicaraguan Air Force plane for a cocaine shipment, and that he had worked as an undercover informer for Somoza's [[OSN|Office of National Security]], which former police chief Rene Vivas described to Webb.[^4] The FBI informant account also reached the Inspector General through the Los Angeles informant LA CI-1.[^5]
### Early Criminal Career
The oldest report on Meneses in Justice Department files is a 1968 request from the Nicaraguan police, relayed through the CIA, for San Francisco police records; the Nicaraguans suspected him in the killing of a money changer in Managua. His San Francisco record included convictions for shoplifting in 1963, misuse of slot machines in 1964 and statutory rape of a girl under eighteen in 1964. In 1976 the Customs inspector general in Managua told the FBI he was suspected of running a car-theft operation in California and New York, and he was reportedly arrested in Nicaragua and released. In 1979 the FBI's legal attaché in Mexico City proposed that he enter the FBI's "top thief" program and that an arrest warrant be sought "if for no other reason than to preclude him from entering the United States"; the San Francisco FBI replied that an assistant U.S. attorney had declined prosecution for the car thefts, that no warrant could be had, and that he had "sanctuary" in Nicaragua, where political connections let him evade prosecution.[^1] A DEA Costa Rica report of 1976 named him as source of supply for cocaine moved from Managua to San Francisco; the DEA received intelligence in 1978 that he might smuggle cocaine in cars or on airliners and placed a 365-day lookout on him that year; and in 1980 a New Orleans investigation named him as the Nicaraguan source.[^1] Webb gave 1974 as the year the DEA first heard he was a dealer.[^4]
Meneses had been selling [[Cocaine]] since before there were any cartels. His association with [[Colombia|Colombian]] drug lords began during the marijuana era of the early 1970s. According to [[Roger Mayorga]], a former [[Sandinistas|Sandinista]] intelligence officer who headed investigations for the Nicaraguan National Police narcotics unit, Meneses's first big deal occurred after an airplane full of marijuana made an emergency landing at a ranch owned by one of the Somozas. Colonel Edmundo Meneses, who commanded the Managua police, released the Colombian pilots and airplane but kept the marijuana, which was turned over to Norwin.
On June 2, 1977 the Customs chief inspector Oskar Reyes Zelaya, who had investigated Meneses's car-theft ring, was shot in an alley; Webb wrote that Reyes named Meneses before dying, that an investigation ordered by Edmundo cleared him, and that Rafael Cornejo and Jaime Meneses backed his alibi.[^4] In 1986 Meneses's nephew Jairo Meneses told federal prosecutors in San Francisco that Norwin smuggled weapons, silencers and video equipment into Nicaragua under Somoza, that Reyes discovered it, and that Norwin "then arranged for Reyes' assassination."[^1]
Under Edmundo's protection, Managua became an open city for Norwin. By the late 1970s he owned discotheques (the Frisco Disco and the VIP Club), drive-in brothels with waterbeds and porno tapes, and a thriving drug business. A "highly reliable" [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] informant reported that Meneses used his influence within the [[Anastasio Somoza|Somoza]] regime to smuggle cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. and "had even used a Nicaraguan Air Force plane once for such a shipment." [[Rafael Cornejo]] described prerevolution visits to Managua where "you'd walk down the street with Mundo, and everyone would salute you."
### San Francisco, 1980 to 1984
In his teens and twenties, Meneses worked as an undercover informant for the [[OSN|Office of National Security (OSN)]], Somoza's secret police, infiltrating pro-Communist groups. Former Managua police chief Rene Vivas said Meneses sometimes posed as a news photographer, other times as the secretly disaffected son of a powerful Somocista family.
Immigration records show that on September 11, 1980 Meneses was refused admission at San Ysidro for lack of a visa, that his sister Mariel Baca petitioned on November 6, 1980 for an immigrant visa on the basis that he had last arrived without inspection, and that he was admitted on a B-1 visa in Miami on May 19, 1982, with an extension in San Francisco until November 30, 1983; he was turned back at San Ysidro on July 30, 1983 with a passport hidden on his person. The immigration service had no record that he applied for or received asylum or a work permit, and the Inspector General could not establish how he entered on other occasions; informants described false passports and green cards in other names. Webb wrote that he arrived in 1979 and applied for asylum; the Inspector General suggested the *Mercury News* series may have confused his case with Blandón's.[^2][^4]
### The Oskar Reyes Murder
DEA agent [[Sandra Smith]], who worked in the San Francisco office from 1974 until 1984, opened her first case on the organization in July 1980, when police searching the San Francisco house of his nephew Roger Meneses found twenty pounds of cocaine; the charges were dismissed because the search followed an illegal traffic stop. In September 1981 a Baldwin Park police tip led her to follow a Los Angeles dealer, Julio Bermudez, who flew to San Francisco, visited a house in Dale City that belonged to [[Carlos Cabezas]] and then the house of another nephew, Jairo Meneses; Los Angeles police seized $12,000, three pounds of cocaine and a ledger entry "11-11 90,000 to Jairo," and Bermudez said he had gotten the drugs from Norwin Meneses. A November 16, 1981 search of Jairo's house produced $9,000 and ledgers, and prosecution was declined by Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Eric Swenson]] because no drugs were found. Smith filed a November 1981 affidavit stating that the DEA "has developed information over the past several years that the Meneses Family has been involved in the smuggling and distribution of cocaine in the San Francisco Bay Area"; she said she wanted a task force and was refused, which she attributed to the low status of women at the agency and not to the CIA, and she shredded her personal notes when she left in December 1984 after offering them to a colleague who declined. Her supervisor Saverio Weidl said she never asked him to lead a task force.[^1][^6] Webb wrote that Smith called the case "the only thing that I ever worked, in all the time I worked there, that I thought was really big."[^4] The San Jose paper's report that her investigation was halted for reasons "not clear" was examined by the Inspector General, who found no improper halt; he also noted that Smith's own surveillance report had recorded that Cabezas lived at the Dale City house, contrary to the newspaper.[^1]
In spring 1977, Nicaraguan Customs chief inspector Oskar Reyes Zelaya investigated Meneses for running a massive car theft ring using the National Guard to "import" stolen American cars. Meneses attempted to frame Reyes with a fake rape accusation. On June 2, 1977, Reyes was lured to an alley and shot three times. As he lay dying, Reyes identified Meneses: "Pablo, protect me! This is Norwin! Norwin Meneses sent [someone] to kill me!"
The IRS opened a net-worth tax case in 1983 and closed it because it could establish income for only one year and Meneses could claim a cash hoard from Nicaragua. DEA agent John Rotunno then ran two cases: undercover purchases from November 1983 to January 1984 led to nine arrests beginning in February 1984, including Roger Meneses, who received six years; and an informant's report that Norwin wanted him to run the San Francisco operation because he disapproved of Jairo's management led, on November 27, 1984, to the arrest of Jairo Meneses and [[Renato Pena]] after they delivered a kilogram to undercover officers. Jairo told Agent Thomas Ma that Norwin had supplied the cocaine and had been waiting at Jairo's house for the money, then fled to Costa Rica, and that the organization sold on consignment to ten to twelve buyers, one of them [[Danilo Blandon]]. Jairo and Pena pleaded guilty on June 10, 1985 and each received a year in a work-furlough facility. Ma opened a case on Norwin on January 23, 1985 and closed it in June 1986 because the informants' arrests made their information stale; he and Rotunno said no one pressured them.[^1]
Norwin was arrested but cleared after a "rigorous and exhaustive" investigation ordered by brother Edmundo. In 1986, Edmundo's son Jairo Meneses informed federal prosecutors in [[San Francisco]] that "Norwin Meneses smuggled weapons, silencers, and video equipment into Nicaragua, which he exchanged for money or narcotics. The operation was discovered by Oscar Reyes. Norwin then arranged for Reyes' assassination."
### The agent in the bowling alley
### Entry into the United States
Jairo Meneses's lawyer told the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility in June 1985 that Norwin had paid a DEA agent for information. Jairo said that in the summer of 1982 Norwin tried to hand the agent $5,000 in a bowling alley in Dale City and that he passed it on; Pena said he overheard the Meneses discuss it. The agent, and a confidential informant who said he had posed as a "crooked" agent to the Meneses, denied any payment; a DEA polygraph found Jairo deceptive and the FBI's July 1986 polygraphs found Jairo and Pena deceptive; the DEA cleared the agent on February 3, 1986. Meneses repeated the allegation to Gonzalez in February 1987, saying he paid the agent $5,000 "on numerous occasions." Pena told the Inspector General in 1997 that the agent warned Norwin weeks before the February 1983 Frogman arrests; he also told the Inspector General, which noted the conflict, that FBI agent Manuel Hinojosa had heard from him only of a paid San Francisco police officer. Webb wrote that Pena told the Justice Department of a DEA agent on Meneses's payroll who warned of the arrests of [[Julio Zavala]] and Cabezas.[^6][^7] A San Francisco economist given the pseudonym "David Morrison" told FBI agents on January 21, 1987 that a Customs officer had told him Meneses would have been arrested in 1983 or 1984 but for a warning from a corrupt DEA officer; Morrison told the Inspector General he had no first-hand information and that the Customs officer said no such thing.[^6]
In 1979, the FBI office in [[Mexico City]] asked that Meneses be included in the Bureau's "top thief" program and requested an arrest warrant to prevent him from entering the United States. The [[U.S. Attorney's office]] in San Francisco, citing Meneses's "political connections" in Nicaragua, refused. Despite an extensive criminal record dating to the 1960s (statutory rape, shoplifting, misuse of slot machines in San Francisco in the early 1960s; suspected murder of a money changer in 1968), Meneses entered the United States freely in early 1980, applied for political asylum, and began buying property - a used car lot, commercial buildings, a travel agency, a restaurant, and two houses in [[Pacifica, California|Pacifica]]. He drove a gray Jaguar sedan registered in his own name.[^3]
### The Contras
Meneses told the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] he met with CIA agents shortly after the Sandinista takeover to teach them how to cross Nicaragua's borders undetected.[^3]
The records agree that Meneses attended Contra meetings in San Francisco and gave some money; they disagree on how much and why. Meneses told the CIA's Inspector General that between 1983 and 1984 his main role was recruiting Nicaraguans for the [[FDN]] at the request of [[Enrique Bermudez|Enrique Bermúdez]], that he sat on a fundraising committee without leading it, that he gave at most about $3,000 between 1982 and 1984, and that Bermúdez "was very strict and did not want anyone involved in drugs." He told the Justice Department he gave about $3,000 between 1982 and 1985 and denied that he or anyone sold drugs for the Contras.[^8][^5] Webb quoted Meneses as saying he became Bermúdez's "intelligence and security adviser in California," that Bermúdez was a friend since he was a lieutenant, that Edmundo had known Bermúdez since childhood, and that "nobody would join the Contra forces down there without my knowledge and approval." Webb cited [[Dennis Ainsworth]], a San Francisco Contra supporter, telling the FBI in 1987 that Meneses and Bermúdez dealt arms and drugs, and later telling Webb that Meneses "was national. And he was totally protected."[^4]
### DEA Investigations
[[Adolfo Calero]] told the Inspector General he met Meneses at Contra social events in San Francisco, that Meneses never held an FDN position, that Bermúdez told him Meneses had visited the Contras' first Honduran camp and given the troops a crossbow, and that he would have remembered receiving $500. The Examiner reported on June 23, 1986 that Calero said he had met Meneses as many as four times.[^5] [[Edgar Chamorro]] told the Examiner that he and [[Frank Arana]] flew to San Francisco in October 1982 to name local FDN leaders, that Meneses stood in the back of the meeting, helped arrange a Los Angeles meeting the next day, and was "one of the main contacts in L.A."; Renato Pena, the self-styled FDN representative in northern California from late 1982 to mid-1984, told federal investigators in 1997 that he heard Meneses telephone Bermúdez in Honduras and relay requests for silencers, crossbows and military equipment.[^9][^5] The FDN representative who replaced Pena, Tony Navarro, said Meneses came to a couple of meetings, was never a member and, as far as he knew, gave nothing; the Contra supporter Carlos Rocha put Meneses's gifts at perhaps $5,000; "David Morrison" recalled hearing of a $40,000 donation in 1981 and that Meneses traded weapons for cocaine paste with the Sandinistas.[^5][^6] The Inspector General found Navarro, Rocha and LA CI-1 substantially credible and found no concrete evidence, "such as bank records or drug ledgers," that money from Blandón or Meneses reached the Contras; it concluded that Meneses's reputation preceded him in the exile community, so that people dealing with him "knew or should have known" his money was probably illicit.[^5] The Inspector General also reported that several people familiar with him said he "lacked any political allegiance and would deal with anyone who would provide cocaine at the lowest price," and that Jairo Meneses told prosecutors in 1986 he dealt with leaders of both the Contras and the Sandinistas, getting cocaine from Sandinista officials through Margarita Castana, a niece of the Sandinista commander Bayardo Arce.[^1][^5]
The DEA first identified Meneses as a drug dealer in 1974. By December 1976 its office in [[Costa Rica]] had identified him as a cocaine "source of supply" based in Managua. The FBI learned in April 1978 that Norwin and his brother Ernesto "were smuggling 20 kilos of cocaine at a time into the United States." The DEA's "Operation Alligator" in [[New Orleans]] determined Meneses was a source of supply for cocaine smuggled into that city.
In April 1986 a DEA analyst interviewed an informant the Inspector General calls SR3, who had worked on the Meneses investigation for three years and was considered extremely reliable; SR3 said Meneses was trafficking both for himself and to raise money for the Contras, that some proceeds bought weapons in Colombia, and that Meneses boasted that "United States agents would assist him." SR3 had no first-hand knowledge beyond what Meneses told him.[^5] Pena told the DEA in the early 1980s that the CIA allowed the Contras to fly drugs into the United States; the Inspector General records he did not repeat it, and told the inspectors he made six to eight trips carrying $600,000 to nearly $1 million from San Francisco to a Colombian called "Carlos" in Los Angeles and returned with six to eight kilograms of cocaine each time, and that "Carlos" said "we are helping your cause with this drug thing."[^5] A CIA domestic station cable of October 22, 1982, relaying an INS informant, reported links between a religious organization and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups involving "an exchange in the US of narcotics for arms" and a planned meeting in Costa Rica; the November 3 follow-up named Pena as one of four FDN representatives; headquarters instructed the station on November 13 not to pursue it because of the involvement of United States persons and said on November 17 that the informant had probably been misinformed.[^5][^8]
In November 1981, DEA agent [[Sandra Smith]] filed an affidavit stating: "The Drug Enforcement Administration has developed information over the past several years that the Meneses Family has been involved in the smuggling and distribution of cocaine in the San Francisco Bay Area." Smith described the investigation as "the only thing that I ever worked, in all the time I worked there, that I thought was really big." Despite the scope of the operation, Smith said DEA management did not give her the time and assistance needed, and she quit the agency three years later.
Webb described Meneses's FDN role as public, with Contra functions at his homes, and cited Cornejo saying Meneses's "heart and soul was into the movement"; he also wrote that Meneses worked with [[Ronald Lister]] on weapons for El Salvador and the Contras, with Meneses telling investigators that "if I told you where we got them, governments would fall," and that he introduced Blandón through [[Donald Barrios]] and gave him the seminar on selling cocaine.[^9] Meneses told the Inspector General that he and Blandón grew up together and were related, that he knew nothing of Blandón's trafficking, and that Blandón "tended to exaggerate his importance."[^5][^8] He told Rosenfeld in 1986 that he had trafficked cocaine for about six months in 1982 and stopped because a relative became ill from it; the *Examiner* article ran two days before the House vote on the $100 million Contra aid package, Webb wrote, and drew no major newspaper's follow-up.[^5][^10]
### Contra Involvement
### The Frogman network
Meneses worked for the Contras throughout the war as a recruiter, arms supplier, and benefactor. He had close ties to FDN military commander [[Enrique Bermudez|Enrique Bermúdez]], reportedly trafficking in arms and cocaine together. Meneses said of Bermúdez: "I've known him since he was a lieutenant," adding that his brother Edmundo had been friends with Bermúdez since childhood. Meneses became Bermúdez's intelligence and security adviser in [[California]]; anyone recruited to fight for the Contras in [[Honduras]] had to pass his muster first. "It was an understanding between old friends. Nobody would join the Contra forces down there without my knowledge and approval."
Webb wrote that Meneses's Costa Rican pipeline ran through [[Horacio Pereira]] and [[Troilo Sanchez|Troilo Sánchez]], who supplied Peruvian cocaine hidden in woven baskets to Julio Zavala and Carlos Cabezas in San Francisco, with profits carried back to Costa Rica and Honduras.[^7] Cabezas told the Inspector General in 1997 that Meneses had no connection to the Zavala organization and was not affiliated with any Contra group; Troilo Sánchez said Pereira and Meneses had trafficked together since before Somoza fell; the FBI's November 8, 1982 teletype named Pereira "the major source of cocaine smuggling from Costa Rica to the United States."[^11][^12] The Senate's Kerry subcommittee reported that Pereira was convicted in Costa Rica in 1985 and sentenced to 12 years; the Justice Department's inspectors were told he was dead.[^13][^12]
[[Dennis Ainsworth]], a San Francisco Contra supporter, told the FBI in 1987 that Meneses and Bermúdez were dealing arms and drugs. Ainsworth later told [[Gary Webb]] that Meneses "ran one of the major distributions in the U.S.. It wasn't just [[Los Angeles|L.A.]]. He was national. And he was totally protected."[^3]
### Costa Rica
Meneses met with FDN political leader [[Adolfo Calero]] several times during the years he was selling drugs for the Contras. Calero confirmed that Meneses had traveled to Honduras to meet with Bermúdez and had brought him a crossbow as a gesture of esteem, though he denied the traffickers held official FDN positions. Former FDN director Edgar Chamorro acknowledged: "This man [Meneses] was connected with the Contras of Bermúdez, because of the military kind of brotherhood among the Somoza military - the brotherhood of military minds."[^3]
Jairo's account puts Meneses's flight to Costa Rica in late November 1984; an FBI report put his departure in 1985, when he sold his San Francisco properties; the Inspector General records that a 1984 DEA Costa Rica report already described him as living there and smuggling kilograms.[^1] CIA cables reported that on December 5, 1984 a station relayed allegations that Meneses, a trafficker called Tuto Munkel and Sebastian "Guachan" Gonzalez Mendieta were known as the "Nicaraguan Mafia, dealing in drugs, weapons smuggling and laundering of counterfeit money," and that Meneses owned a restaurant in which Gonzalez might have had an interest; a June 11, 1986 cable relayed that in August or September 1984 Meneses asked the Contra leader [[Fernando Chamorro|Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro]] to help "move drugs" to the United States; the CIA's inspectors found no record that it followed up.[^8][^14] An informant told the DEA that Meneses had political protection from Jose Marti Figueres, son of the former Costa Rican president, according to Webb, who also reported that the Costa Rican newspaper *La Nación* ran a series in December 1986 describing Meneses as a Contra financier hiding in the country.[^15][^16] A DEA cable of December 3, 1986 reported he had been identified as a major trafficker in the leading Costa Rican newspaper and was afraid of publicity or deportation.[^17]
Meneses associate Rafael Cornejo said he attended some of the parties Meneses hosted for the FDN at his homes in the San Francisco area. "You can say what you want about that man, but his heart and soul was into the movement, and that was his priority more than anything else," said Cornejo, whose father had been a sergeant in Somoza's National Guard. "It's kind of hard to be kicked out of your own country and that's what his passion was. He was straight-up pro-Somocista."[^5]
### DEA source and informant, 1986 to 1990
### Public Role with the FDN
In July 1986 Meneses went to the DEA's Costa Rica office and told agent [[Sandalio Gonzalez]] that he wanted to cooperate; Gonzalez's report listed three reasons: to clear a minor problem with the IRS, to end his drug trafficking, and to help President [[Ronald Reagan]]'s drug war and "total commitment to free his native land." Meneses named about twenty-one major traffickers, including Blandón, whom he called a Sandinista sympathizer distributing hundred-kilogram lots, and he refused to testify, to be seen near the embassy or to be a registered informant. Gonzalez treated him as a source of information and not an informant, which the DEA's manual defines differently and which kept him out of the DEA's informant database until 1987.[^17] Meneses told Webb he had helped the DEA in the case of the February 1985 murder of agent [[Kiki Camarena|Enrique "Kiki" Camarena]] and met the DEA attaché Robert J. Nieves in late 1985; Webb wrote that the claim could not be corroborated, though Gonzalez's report noted that Meneses "helped the DEA in the past."[^15]
As the Contra support organizations in San Francisco and Los Angeles grew more active, Meneses's role with the FDN became much more public. Former FDN director [[Edgar Chamorro]] told the San Francisco Examiner in 1986 that he and FDN director [[Frank Arana]] flew to San Francisco in October 1982 to select local leaders for the FDN's support committee there. Meneses attended the organizational meeting, standing quietly in the back of the auto body shop where the meeting was held. "He appeared like a fund-raiser, an organizer," Chamorro said. The next day, Chamorro said, Meneses helped set up a similar meeting in Los Angeles, providing refreshments beforehand and throwing a party afterward. "He was one of the main contacts in L.A.," Chamorro told Examiner reporter Seth Rosenfeld. "He was in charge of the organization of the L.A. meeting, the reception. He drove us to the place. He gave us the schedule for that day. He knew people, he was recommending names" for leadership positions.[^5]
On October 9, 1986 Gonzalez opened a DEA case on Blandón on Meneses's information. On December 21, 1986 Meneses and DEA CI-1, an experienced informant who claimed to have worked for the CIA years before in Europe and the Soviet Union, left Costa Rica for Los Angeles in a plan Gonzalez filed as "Operation Perico." They met Blandón and [[Ivan Torres]] on January 7 and 15, 1987, and DEA CI-1 recorded that the traffickers called Meneses "El Maestro" and treated him as retired from the business two or three years before. The Los Angeles DEA had agreed to the plan on December 23, after the departure; the DEA offices in Riverside and San Francisco and the FBI were not coordinated, and Aukland did not learn of it until January. Gonzalez's later reports quoted Torres on CIA tolerance of Contra trafficking and recorded that Pastora wished to enter cocaine trafficking to funnel money to the Contras and had asked Meneses to find a buyer for a DC-3 at Ilopango.[^17] Webb wrote that the informant was a CIA operative known as "Roberto," that the FBI in San Francisco issued warrants for both men and they fled, and that Meneses then said he would never return or testify; the Inspector General records DEA CI-1's claim of a warning from DEA agent Eddie Hill, which Hill denied, and found no FBI warrant in January 1987. The Mexican "Roberto" whom Troilo Sánchez said Meneses introduced to him in 1987 did not resemble the CIA contractor who used the alias Ivan Gómez.[^16][^17][^18]
[[Renato Pena|Renato Peña]] Cabrera, the FDN's San Francisco representative, told federal investigators in 1997 that he was present "on many occasions" when Meneses telephoned FDN commander Enrique Bermúdez in Honduras. "Meneses told Pena of Bermúdez's requests for such things as gun silencers (which Meneses obtained in Los Angeles), cross bows, and other military equipment for the Contras." Meneses sometimes personally delivered the supplies to the Contras; other times he had contacts in Miami and Los Angeles forward them to friendly Honduran authorities. Meneses would also bring back military information, bulletins, and communiques from Bermúdez that Peña would put into newsletters and distribute to the press and Contra sympathizers.[^5]
On January 29, 1987 the DEA's San Francisco office cabled that the FBI had "an indictable case against the CI" and asked whether an indictment "will result in national security problems with other agencies"; the Inspector General noted that the San Francisco FBI had source information that Meneses might have worked for the CIA and that the Iran-Contra independent counsel's inquiry was just beginning. On February 27, 1987 the San Francisco U.S. Attorney's Office wrote that, on assurances from Assistant U.S. Attorney Crossan Andersen in Los Angeles, it would defer prosecution because Meneses would "be required to plead guilty to a cocaine-related charge as part of his cooperation agreement"; no written agreement was found and Andersen and Swenson did not recall one, and the FBI placed its case in inactive status.[^17] Webb wrote that recently released Justice Department records show no such cooperation agreement existed.[^16] Meneses's conditions for returning, in June 1987, were anonymity, no testimony, contact only with named DEA personnel and restoration of resident status; headquarters refused on June 26 to guarantee that his identity would never come out in court, the Los Angeles case was declined on July 17, and Gonzalez nevertheless registered him as an informant on July 24, 1987, with a form that listed "no pending charges known at this time."[^17][^6]
In a 1996 interview with the CIA, Meneses said that "between 1983 and 1984, his primary role with the California sympathizers was to help recruit personnel for the movement." He was asked by Bermúdez to recruit Nicaraguans in exile and others who supported the Contra movement. He was a member of an FDN fund-raising committee but was not its head, and did not raise much cash but was "involved in 1985 in attempting to obtain material support, medical and general supplies" for the Contras. When asked where he got the money to pay for these war materials, Meneses gave a slight smile: "There was money available for these purchases."[^5]
In September 1987, on a visa waiver the DEA requested over State Department and CIA information that he was a narcotics kingpin, Meneses went with DEA CI-1 to Miami, where he met Blandón, and to San Francisco, where an FBI informant said he was telling associates he worked for the CIA; they returned in November and December 1987, producing a case against Aparicio Moreno. An INS stop in Miami in September 1988, when the DEA said it had not expected him, ended with his agreeing to leave. Gonzalez moved to Mexico City in January 1988 and agent James Rivera took over, working cases on cocaine from Panama through Costa Rica. Meneses traveled for the DEA to Miami, Los Angeles and Colombia in 1989, and the DEA deactivated him on December 23, 1989 because none of his cases "appears to have any chance of fruition." He was reactivated on May 10, 1990 after reporting that Blandón wanted help moving cocaine from Central America to Florida, paid $500, and closed on August 16, 1990. The DEA's payments totaled $7,377.50 in thirteen payments.[^6][^19][^2]
Among the Nicaraguan exile community, it was strongly suspected that Meneses was dealing cocaine for the Contras, and it was not unadmired. Somoza's former secretary, Juan C. Wong, who visited Meneses in San Francisco in 1983, said: "It's true, it was widely spread around that he was involved with drugs. And I don't doubt that they wanted to raise money for the FDN. That's only natural. They were doing their patriotic duty."[^5]
Meanwhile the San Francisco FBI's Donald Hale wrote to headquarters in January 1988 that "it became apparent to the FBI that Norwin Meneses was, and may still be, an informant of DEA" and "an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency," on the word of a source who said Meneses was bragging that this was why he was not prosecuted. On April 15, 1988 headquarters relayed the CIA general counsel's reply, dated March 31, 1988, that a search found no information that Meneses was ever employed by or an informant for the CIA and that the CIA had no objection to prosecution.[^19][^8] A grand jury in San Francisco indicted Meneses on February 8, 1989 on two counts, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, from a 1984 sale to an undercover agent in which he was the source, and possession with intent to distribute, from a 1985 informant's report; the indictment was sealed and a no-bail warrant issued. Swenson wrote that the reason was "upcoming Statute of Limitations problems," and told Agent Stephen Tse in 1991 that the case was "old and very weak." The warrant was entered in the FBI's NCIC database on April 12, 1989; the indictment was unsealed on August 4, 1997.[^19][^2] Rivera said he did not know of the warrant when he requested a visa for Meneses that year. On January 22, 1990 the DEA's country attaché Ron Lard told an FBI legal attaché that Meneses was "a very valuable and current active DEA source," though he had been deactivated the previous month; the San Francisco FBI replied on February 12 that it would not have sought the indictment had it known. No extradition request was ever made, and a treaty with Costa Rica did not cover drug offenses.[^19]
### Weapons Dealing and Arms Smuggling
### Nicaragua, 1990 to 1997
Meneses expanded beyond drug trafficking into weapons dealing through his partnership with [[Ronald Lister]]. [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]] told Justice Department interviewers that he and Meneses "entered into an informal partnership [with Lister] for the purpose of selling weapons abroad," specifically in [[El Salvador]]. Lister sold Blandón numerous machine pistols, which Blandón told him he was sending to the Contras. Meneses clarified: "We, in fact, did make arrangements to sell arms to the Contras, but the FDN couldn't collect sufficient funds in order to finalize the deal." Meneses, Blandón, and Lister then "traveled to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to make arrangements with local governments" for the donation of arms. Meneses added cryptically: "If I told you where we got them, governments would fall."[^5]
After the Sandinistas lost the 1990 election Meneses returned to Nicaragua, where, Webb wrote, he sought $12 million in confiscated holdings and recruited the former Sandinista intelligence officer [[Enrique Miranda]] to reopen his routes through concealed airstrips, including one near Rosita.[^20] In September 1991 a DEA informant told the Guatemala office he was driving a car loaded with cocaine from Managua to Houston for Meneses and Miranda, and DEA cases opened in Guatemala, Houston and Los Angeles; on September 23 Lard told the FBI that Meneses had contacted the DEA again, and agent Federico Villarreal met him two or three times in Managua, without a record of reactivation or payment.[^19] On November 3, 1991 the Nicaraguan National Police arrested Meneses, his half-brother Luis Enrique Meneses, Miranda, an engineer who concealed the cocaine, Carmelo Lacayo Briceño, and Carlos Francisco Merlo Bermúdez, seizing about 764 kilograms of cocaine and a kilogram of heroin being loaded into vehicles for the United States; a CIA station reported the arrest on November 4 and a DO update called him "the top Cali Cartel trafficker in Nicaragua."[^2][^8] Webb wrote that police chief Rene Vivas said Meneses told him "he had the backing of a higher power, a superpower" and was working for the United States to get Sandinista officials on drug charges, that Roger Mayorga complained that Villarreal had been meeting him secretly, and that the State Department pressed the Chamorro government to dismiss Vivas.[^20] Webb gave the seizure as 725 kilograms; the Inspector General and the CIA give 764. Villarreal told the Inspector General he did not send Meneses against the Sandinistas and that Meneses may have wanted to be able to say he was still working for the DEA.[^2]
An FBI informant told Justice Department inspectors that Meneses had spoken of obtaining night vision scopes from Lister in 1982, which the drug lord planned to sell to the Salvadoran government. Meneses intended to "use the proceeds from the night scopes to aid the Contras," the informant reported, but the deal fell through.[^5]
Meneses was convicted on August 16, 1992 and sentenced to 300 months; Miranda received 168 months. The term was later reduced to twelve and a half years, and the U.S. Embassy reported his release on November 14, 1997.[^2] Webb and the journalist [[Georg Hodel]] interviewed him at Tipitapa prison in January 1996, where Webb wrote the guards murmured "Señor"; Meneses told the Justice Department's inspectors in April 1997 that he had never dealt drugs, that the Sandinistas set him up and that he never cooperated with any United States agency, and told the CIA's inspectors he never dealt with the CIA.[^21][^1][^8]
Meneses's involvement in Contra gun running was confirmed in 1996 by the [[New York Times]], which quoted an unnamed Clinton administration official as saying that Meneses had "contacts with the Contras in Honduras in 1982 or 1983 and 1984, and that he was believed then to have had some involvement in arms smuggling as well as money laundering and drugs."[^5]
### Miranda and Ilopango
### Counterfeiting
Miranda testified at the 1991 trial that Meneses financed the Contras with cocaine and that the Salvadoran Air Force landed his shipments at a Texas base. Webb relayed more: that cocaine from Colombia reached Costa Rican strips including the farm of the CIA-linked [[John Hull]], that [[Marcos Aguado]] and Meneses supervised loading at [[Ilopango Airbase]] onto aircraft of the Salvadoran Air Force and of [[Southern Air Transport]], and that guns went south and drugs north.[^22] Miranda told the Inspector General that his knowledge was all from Meneses and Aguado; that he said he had witnessed a shipment in Texas and, pressed, said he had not; that he had been paid about $3,500 a month by the CIA for eight months in 1985 and was accused of being a double agent; and that he had never raised Contra trafficking when the DEA debriefed him in 1996. The Inspector General concluded his allegations "lack substantial force"; the CIA's inspectors said he could provide nothing to corroborate them. Miranda also said the Sandinistas asked him in 1981 to recruit Meneses for their drug operation and that Meneses declined, telling him he was already selling for the Contras with CIA support and that he stopped in September 1985.[^23][^8]
A former associate of Blandón, a Puerto Rican man convicted of counterfeiting U.S. currency, believed that Blandón and Meneses's silk-screen company JDM Artwork Inc. also printed fake twenty-dollar bills that provided operating cash for the FDN. The associate produced Polaroid photographs showing him at work in an office with FDN banners and slogans on the wall, and a picture of Blandón in the same office with a blue-and-white FDN flag visible. According to CIA cables filed in federal court, the CIA had information by 1984 that Norwin Meneses was involved in counterfeiting - both American dollars and Costa Rican colones. In a 1986 interview, Meneses said he allowed FDN members to use his wife's Los Angeles T-shirt factory as a meeting place.[^5]
### CIA records and the arrangement of the claims
Meneses was introduced to Danilo Blandón through [[Donald Barrios]], a wealthy former insurance broker from Managua living in [[Miami]] who was a relative of former Nicaraguan president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro. Meneses proposed that Blandón sell cocaine in Los Angeles to raise money for the Contras. After a trip to Honduras for a meeting with Bermúdez, where the Contra commander told them "the ends justify the means," Blandón agreed. Meneses gave Blandón a two-day seminar on drug dealing, showing him how to assess quality, transport cocaine in pickup truck door panels, and avoid common mistakes. Meneses provided Blandón with two kilos of cocaine (worth about $60,000 each) and customer contacts in Los Angeles.
The CIA's Inspector General found that Meneses's name first appeared in agency files in 1983 and that its cables described him as the "kingpin of narcotics traffickers in Nicaragua prior to the fall of Somoza" and, in December 1984, as a Miami resident because of "unspecified drug related charges by the Costa Rican government"; that the agency answered the FBI's 1986 and 1988 inquiries and a September 3, 1987 State Department name trace with these reports and a denial of any relationship; and that on December 4, 1995, after the DEA warned that Meneses would claim to have trafficked for the CIA, headquarters asked a station about the "extensive entries" in its traces. The station replied it had nothing substantiating his Contra claims.[^8] The cable reads, in part, "DEA has been alerted that Meneses will undoubtedly claim that he was trafficking narcotics on behalf of CIA to generate money for the Contras."[^8] Webb wrote that Mayorga believed Meneses worked for the CIA in Costa Rica in money laundering through his brother Jaime's currency exchange and fronts including a restaurant across from the embassy, and that Cornejo said Meneses's business "expanded terrifically" while he was supposedly a DEA informant.[^15] The Inspector General reported that the FBI's San Francisco source and DEA agents heard Meneses claim CIA ties, that the CIA denied them every time it was asked, and that "some rumor and speculation" was "largely fueled by his own bragging."[^2]
According to Blandón, the Meneses organization moved 900 kilos of cocaine, almost a ton, into the United States in 1981, about $54 million worth at wholesale prices.
The San Francisco DEA agent accused in 1985 told the Inspector General that Meneses, whom he met in 1982, called himself "a revolutionary and not interested in drug trafficking," and said he had the "impression" Meneses was moving guns for the Contras; the agent asked the CIA in San Francisco, which denied any connection.[^6] DEA CI-1 told the inspectors that Meneses said in 1986 or 1987 that when the Contra revolution began he met "American agents" he assumed were with the CIA and showed them how to cross into and out of Nicaragua.[^5]
### Drug Operations
### Family
Meneses's nephew Rafael Cornejo was one of his distributors in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other key operatives included [[Horacio Pereira]], identified by the FBI as the source of cocaine for the [[Frogman Case|Frogman drug ring]] in San Francisco; [[Troilo Sanchez|Troilo Sánchez]], brother of FDN officials; Frank Vigil, a former Nicaraguan advertising executive; and [[Marcos Aguado]], a CIA-trained pilot and business associate. His right-hand man from 1989 to 1991 was [[Enrique Miranda]], a former Sandinistas intelligence officer and CIA asset.[^3]
The Meneses network's Costa Rican cocaine pipeline was run through Horacio Pereira and Troilo Sánchez, who supplied Peruvian cocaine to [[Julio Zavala]] and [[Carlos Cabezas]] in San Francisco. Cocaine was smuggled inside Peruvian woven baskets, with about a kilo hidden in wax-coated strings inside each basket's framework. Cabezas and other Contra mules, typically airline flight attendants, brought the baskets into the United States. Drug profits were then carried back to Costa Rica and Honduras, with Cabezas averaging $64,000 on each of his twenty trips.[^4]
Former Meneses aide Renato Peña told the Justice Department in 1997 that Meneses had a DEA agent on his payroll who warned him of the impending arrests of Julio Zavala and Carlos Cabezas weeks before the February 1983 raids.[^4]
### Investigation and Arrest
The potential exposure of Meneses in the spring of 1985 came at a devastating time for the Contras. Had he been indicted on federal cocaine trafficking charges - after all his meetings with FDN directors Adolfo Calero, Enrique Bermúdez, Edgar Chamorro, and Frank Arana - the resultant scandal would likely have wiped out what little congressional support remained. Meneses was in a position to expose the [[FDN]]'s long involvement with drug merchants and lead investigators to Danilo Blandón's operation in [[South Central Los Angeles]]. The CIA Inspector General's report of 1998 recorded a June 1986 cable stating that in August or September 1984 "Costa Rican drug trafficker Norvin [sic] Meneses sought the cooperation of 'El Negro' [Fernando Chamorro] to move drugs" to the United States, and found no record that the CIA followed it up; a separate cable of September 1984 alleged that the [[ARDE]] commander [[Sebastian Gonzalez|Sebastián "Wachan" González]] ran cocaine from Panama to Costa Rica.[^14] Former assistant U.S. attorney [[Eric Swenson]] confirmed that the Justice Department knew about Meneses's Contra activities because he had personally reported them.[^6]
Despite one of Meneses's top lieutenants having pleaded guilty to cocaine charges and publicly implicated him, the drug lord was not prosecuted in the spring of 1985. Allowing Meneses to take the witness stand was out of the question - he knew too much. The cozy relationship between the CIA and San Francisco's U.S. attorney [[Joseph Russoniello]] coincided with the decision not to charge Meneses.[^6]
### Volume Estimates
At Tipitapa Prison, Meneses was shown a 1992 FBI report in which the [[Torres Brothers]] estimated that between 1980 and 1991 Blandón moved over 5,000 kilograms of cocaine. Meneses laughed and said: "It would be more accurate if you multiplied that by ten." Fifty thousand kilos - fifty-five tons of cocaine - "Easily," he said. The DEA estimated Blandón imported between 18,000 and 27,000 kilos between 1982 and 1990. The Torres brothers later boosted their own estimates, telling police "they heard that Blandón sold 10,000 kilos of cocaine, mostly in South Central Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area" during a two-year span in the mid-1980s - enough for 30 million doses of crack. Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale asked Blandón's DEA case agent Charles Jones during a 1995 grand jury hearing: "Mr. Blandón was considered to be probably the largest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States, is that correct?" Jones replied: "I believe so, sir."[^7]
### Move to Costa Rica
After the arrests of his nephew Jairo and Renato Peña in late 1984, Meneses wound up his affairs in San Francisco, selling his gray Jaguar, used car lot, and Mission District office building, and moved to his beachfront ranch in Costa Rica. Meneses owned several houses and large ranches in northern Costa Rica near the war zone. The L.A. Times reported that "beginning in November 1982 Meneses was spending much of his time in Costa Rica and commuting back to San Francisco." An informant told the DEA that "Norwin receives political protection from Jose Marti Figueres, the son of former Costa Rican President Jose 'Pepe' Figueres."[^7]
Meneses was arrested in Nicaragua on November 3, 1991, sentenced in August 1992 to 300 months, a term later reduced to twelve years, and released on November 14, 1997.[^13] At Tipitapa Prison, the old Guardia prison where FDN founder [[Ricardo Lau]] once held court as warden and chief torturer, Meneses strolled freely through the grounds and the guards murmured "Señor" when he passed. His cell door was closed only when he wanted it that way. [[Georg Hodel]] and Gary Webb interviewed Meneses there in January 1996.[^1]
### Secret 1989 Indictment
About two weeks after former CIA director George Bush was sworn in as president, the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Francisco brought a secret indictment against Meneses, charging him with conspiracy to import cocaine between 1984 and 1985 and possession of one kilo in 1985. Both the warrant and indictment were locked away in courthouse vaults and sealed from public view for nine years. Meneses called the indictment "a phony," suggesting it was filed to protect the [[U.S. government]] in case its relationship with him was ever revealed. Prosecutor Eric Swenson said the case was filed because it was approaching the statute of limitations.[^11]
### Nicaragua Return and Drug Network
In 1990, after the Sandinistas were voted out, Meneses moved back into his mansion on the outskirts of Managua and began reclaiming $12 million in holdings confiscated during the revolution. He recruited former Sandinista intelligence officer Enrique Miranda to reestablish his smuggling pipeline, using concealed airstrips and underground bunkers. Miranda testified that cocaine was smuggled via cargo planes making quick stops at a 2,600-meter airstrip near Rosita, and through automobiles with cocaine-filled PVC pipes welded into their frames. Rafael Cornejo recalled: "For the amounts that were coming in, you almost needed flatbed trucks."[^11]
### Arrest and Trial in Nicaragua
In November 1991, Nicaraguan police under Commander Rene Vivas and criminal investigations chief Roger Mayorga raided Meneses's drug ring, seizing 725 kilos of cocaine, the largest seizure in Nicaraguan history. Meneses was relaxed when Vivas interrogated him. "He said he wasn't worried about me because he had the backing of a higher power, a superpower," Vivas recalled. "He said he was working for the United States to get Sandinista officials on drug charges." DEA agent Federico Villarreal had been secretly meeting with Meneses in Managua. At trial, Miranda testified about drug flights from El Salvador and meetings with CIA pilot Marcos Aguado and FDN commander Enrique Bermúdez. Meneses was convicted on August 16, 1992, and sentenced to 300 months; the term was later reduced to twelve years, and he was released on November 14, 1997, six years after his arrest.[^13] In April 1997 he told the Justice Department's investigators in prison that he had "never been a drug dealer" and had been "set up" by the Sandinistas.[^13] Three weeks after the verdicts, the U.S. [[State Department]] pressured the Chamorro government to fire Vivas; Mayorga was fired soon after.[^11]
### DEA Informant in Costa Rica
According to the official account, Meneses walked into the U.S. Embassy in [[San Jose]], Costa Rica, in July 1986 and announced he wanted to help the Reagan Administration's war on drugs. DEA agent [[Sandalio Gonzalez]] recorded the official reasons: Meneses's desire to clear up an IRS problem, terminate his involvement in drug trafficking, and help the U.S. fight drugs. But there are reasons to doubt this account. Meneses said he had helped the DEA gather intelligence on the February 1985 torture-murder of DEA agent [[Kiki Camarena|Enrique "Kiki" Camarena]] in Mexico, and had met with DEA attaché Robert J. Nieves in late 1985 concerning the case - months before the official date he supposedly walked into the embassy.[^7]
The DEA made no official record that Meneses was an informant for at least a year. His name did not appear in the DEA's database until 1987. Gonzalez explained that Meneses "initially refused to sign DEA's informant registration," an unusual arrangement Gonzalez allowed "because of Meneses' background and potential to make cases." The result was that "other DEA offices could not get information on Meneses' use by the DEA through this database." The Justice Department's Inspector General found the accusations Meneses made against other traffickers were "vague and sometimes wildly misleading," including the claim that Blandón "was a Sandinista sympathizer."[^7] Meneses named about twenty-one major traffickers to Gonzalez, among them Blandón, "whom Meneses described as a Sandinista sympathizer who distributed hundred kilogram quantities of cocaine in the Los Angeles area." Because Meneses was not in the DEA database, the San Francisco office, which was building a case of its own, did not know of the arrangement; on January 29, 1987, it cabled headquarters that the FBI in San Francisco had "an indictable case against the CI" and asked whether an indictment "will result in national security problems with other agencies." The inspector general noted that the San Francisco FBI had source information that Meneses may have worked for the CIA and that the Iran-Contra independent counsel's inquiry was just beginning. In February 1987 the U.S. Attorney's office and the FBI in San Francisco agreed to defer prosecution of Meneses pending the Los Angeles investigation of Blandón's organization.[^13]
### 1986 Media Expose
In 1986, San Francisco Examiner reporter [[Seth Rosenfeld]] published a front-page story exposing Meneses's cocaine trafficking network and his involvement with the FDN in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Rosenfeld reported on Meneses's meetings with Enrique Bermúdez and Adolfo Calero, the FDN spokesman's cocaine conviction, and Meneses's donations at FDN fund-raisers. The story was considerably more damaging than the earlier Frogman case expose because it directly involved the CIA's primary army with a major trafficker. Yet it drew no response from the administration. The State Department's White Paper, which belittled every other Contra drug allegation, studiously avoided any mention of Meneses. The story appeared two days before the House was to vote on Reagan's $100 million Contra aid package; not a single major newspaper in the country touched it.[^9]
### CIA Connections
Former Sandinista intelligence officer Roger Mayorga, who monitored Meneses for years, believed Meneses was actually working for the CIA in Costa Rica, using his DEA informant role as cover. "They used Meneses in Costa Rica basically for money laundering operations," Mayorga said. Meneses's brother Jaime Sr. owned a large money-changing business in San Jose, and Norwin had legitimate fronts useful for laundering cash - a restaurant across the street from the U.S. Embassy, a gambling club, and a bean processing factory with Troilo Sánchez as partner. DEA agents told the Justice Department of "having an amicable relationship with the CIA Costa Rica Station personnel."[^7]
In a 1988 cable to FBI headquarters, San Francisco FBI agent Donald Hale wrote: "It became apparent to the FBI that Norwin Meneses was, and may still be, an informant of the DEA. It is also believed by the FBI, SF, that Norwin Meneses was, and may still be, an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency." The CIA denies it. Meneses was paired with a veteran CIA operative who arrived from Europe, whom Meneses introduced as "Roberto." The mysterious agent played a significant role in keeping Meneses out of the FBI's clutches.[^7]
Despite his drug dealing being well known to the CIA, the DEA, and the Costa Rican OIJ since 1984, Meneses was neither arrested nor expelled from Costa Rica during all the years he lived there. Rafael Cornejo said Meneses's business "expanded terrifically" while he was supposedly working for the DEA. "Those were very big years in terms of. . .well, the contraband. That's why I have a hard time believing Norwin was working with the feds."[^7]
Ainsworth described the government's disinterest in pursuing Meneses: "Nobody in [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]] wanted to look at this. Republican, Democrat, nobody. They wanted this story buried and anyone who looked any deeper into it got buried along with it."
### Family Network
The Meneses drug operation was a family enterprise. Nephews Guillermo Meneses, Jaime Meneses, and Jairo Meneses were all involved in cocaine trafficking in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jairo Meneses was the son of Edmundo Meneses and partnered with Danilo Blandón in hotels and casinos in Nicaragua.
### Ilopango Drug Pipeline
Enrique Miranda, who became Meneses's emissary to the cartels of Colombia in the late 1980s, testified in a 1992 trial in Nicaragua that "Norwin was selling drugs and tunneled the benefits to the Contras with help of high-ranking military officials of the Salvadoran Army, especially with the help of the head of the Salvadoran Air Force and a Nicaraguan pilot named Marcos Aguado." Miranda said cocaine from Colombia arrived at Costa Rican airstrips including one on CIA operative [[John Hull]]'s farm, and was placed aboard Contra planes flown into [[Ilopango Airbase|Ilopango Air Force Base]]. There, Aguado and Meneses supervised loading the cocaine onto U.S.-bound aircraft owned by the Salvadoran Air Force and the Miami-based CIA contractor [[Southern Air Transport]]. Miranda said Meneses told him U.S. military hardware stockpiled at Ilopango was loaded onto Salvadoran transport planes and flown south, where guns were traded for cocaine and flown back.[^8]
A member of Meneses's drug ring described by the Justice Department as "a long track record of providing information" and "extremely reliable" was questioned in April 1986 by a DEA intelligence analyst as part of a secret DEA assessment of Contra drug smuggling. He confirmed Meneses was selling cocaine to raise money for the Contras and said "some of these proceeds were used to buy weapons for the Contras in Colombia." The informant said Meneses had recruited him to coordinate drug and weapons shipments from Colombia, and that "Meneses boasted that he traveled in and out of Nicaragua freely and that U.S. agents would assist him."[^8]
### La Nacion Expose and Operation Perico
In early December 1986, Costa Rica's biggest newspaper, La Nacion, published an extensive series on Contra connections to drug trafficking, with one installment focusing squarely on Meneses, describing him as a Contra supporter and financier holed up in Costa Rica under some type of protection, hiding from American drug agents. The story sent the DEA office at the U.S. Embassy into a panic. If the increasingly hostile Costa Rican government started poking around, it would not take long to discover the drug kingpin's special relationship with the U.S. Embassy.[^10]
On December 21, 1986, without waiting for DEA approval, Meneses and the CIA operative "Roberto" left Costa Rica for the United States on a mission code-named "Operation Perico," officially to penetrate Blandón's organization and gather intelligence. In early January 1987, Meneses and Roberto met with Blandón, FDN official [[Ivan Torres]], and others in Los Angeles. Roberto's debriefing reports captured damaging admissions: Torres claimed CIA representatives were aware of his drug activities and "don't mind," and said the CIA encouraged cocaine trafficking by Contras as a source of income. The reports also documented Torres's claim that his brothers Jacinto and Edgar were distributing up to 1,000 kilograms of cocaine monthly in L.A.[^10]
### Refusal to Return to the United States
The FBI's San Francisco office, upon learning of Meneses's DEA cooperation, issued arrest warrants for both Roberto and Meneses "because the FBI suspected them of conducting drug deals in San Francisco." They quickly fled back to Costa Rica. Meneses then declared he was done as an informant. As long as the FBI was trying to indict him, he would never go back to the United States and would never testify against anyone.[^10]
FBI agents [[Douglas Aukland]], Don Hale, and Gordon Gibler assembled evidence to indict Meneses for running a continuing criminal enterprise, carrying a possible life term. In February 1987 they presented the case to San Francisco U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, who rejected it within a week, citing a supposed "cooperation agreement" that Justice Department investigators later determined never existed.[^10]
### DEA Rehiring
After the OCDETF investigation was shelved in July 1987, Meneses "miraculously reappeared" and the DEA hired him back, issuing him visas that allowed him to travel in and out of the United States at will. At the height of the Iran-Contra scandal, the Justice Department had dropped a criminal investigation involving Contra cocaine sales in Los Angeles and clamped a lid of secrecy on the case that would not come off for another ten years.[^10]
### CIA Cables on Webb's Investigation
A CIA Inspector General's report released in early 1998 referenced three CIA cables about Gary Webb, titled "Possible Attempts to Link CIA to Narcotraffickers," written within weeks of Webb's October 1995 meeting with the DEA. A December 4, 1995, cable from CIA headquarters stated: "DEA has been alerted that Meneses will undoubtedly claim that he was trafficking narcotics on behalf of CIA to generate money for the Contras. Query whether Station can clarify or amplify on the above information to better identify Meneses or confirm or refute any claims he may make. HQS trace on (FNU) Meneses reveal extensive entries." Those extensive entries were not revealed in the declassified version of the CIA's report.[^12]
The DEA's public affairs office in Washington later attempted to arrange an interview with Meneses in exchange for Webb omitting Blandón's DEA ties from the story, but journalist Georg Hodel reached Meneses first, locating him in a Nicaraguan prison.[^12]
Webb listed the nephews Guillermo, Jaime and Jairo Meneses as Bay Area traffickers, Jairo as the son of Edmundo and Blandón's partner in Nicaraguan hotels and casinos; the Justice Department's inspectors could not locate Jairo and received an unconfirmed report that he was killed in Nicaragua in 1991 or 1992.[^15][^5] Webb described Rafael Cornejo as a Bay Area distributor for Meneses since the mid-1970s, convicted of tax evasion in 1985 and indicted for cocaine trafficking in 1992, against whom Blandón later cooperated.[^3][^24] Webb listed [[Marcos Aguado]] as a CIA-trained pilot and business associate; the CIA's Inspector General recorded that Miranda's allegations about Aguado could not be supported.[^15][^14]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know"
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Cast of Characters
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 3: "The brotherhood of military minds"
[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 5: "God, Fatherland and Freedom"
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty"
[^6]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 10: "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"
[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction"
[^8]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends"
[^9]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 15: "This thing is a tidal wave"
[^10]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter"
[^11]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 23: "He had the backing of a superpower"
[^12]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 25: "Things are moving all around us"
[^13]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General. *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions.* December 1997, chapters II and III and appendix E. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/
[^14]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General. *Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States,* Volume II: *The Contra Story,* October 8, 1998, section on the southern front. https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter III (Norwin Meneses), sections A-E, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch03p1.htm
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter III, sections J-N (the 1991 arrest in Nicaragua, status of the indictment, entries into the United States, conclusions), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch03p4.htm
[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Cast of Characters. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 3: "The brotherhood of military minds." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^5]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter IV, section B (OIG investigation regarding support of the Contras by Blandon and Meneses), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch04p2.htm
[^6]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter III, sections F-G ("David Morrison," alleged DEA corruption, DEA use of Meneses as an informant), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch03p2.htm
[^7]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 5: "God, Fatherland and Freedom." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^8]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, *Report of Investigation: Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States (96-0143-IG)*, Volume I: The California Story, January 29, 1998, Findings (Ross, Blandon, Meneses), https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine/findings1.html
[^9]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 6: "They were doing their patriotic duty." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^10]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 15: "This thing is a tidal wave." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^11]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter IX (Carlos Cabezas), sections A-E, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch09p1.htm
[^12]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter IX, sections F-G (assessment of Cabezas' allegations), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch09p2.htm
[^13]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy* (December 1988), pp. 59-60 (the San Francisco Frogman case, UDN-FARN and PCNE), https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^14]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, *Report of Investigation (96-0143-IG)*, Volume II: The Contra Story, October 8, 1998, section on Southern Front Contras, https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/south.html
[^15]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 11: "They were looking in the other direction." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^16]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 20: "It is a sensitive matter." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^17]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter II, section G (the 1987 Los Angeles OCDETF investigation), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p4.htm
[^18]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, *Report of Investigation (96-0143-IG)*, Volume I: The California Story, January 29, 1998, Findings (Northern California story, the Frogman Case), https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine/findings2.html
[^19]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter III, sections H-I (the 1989 indictment and post-indictment activities), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch03p3.htm
[^20]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 23: "He had the backing of a superpower." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^21]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Prologue: "It was like they didn't want to know." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^22]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends." Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^23]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter VII (Enrique Miranda-Jaime), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch07.htm
[^24]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter II, section K (the 1992 San Diego prosecution of Blandon), https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch02p6.htm