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60 - PLACES/CITIES/Mexico City.md

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+---
+category: "City"
+tags:
+  - geography
+  - mexico
+  - contra-war
+summary: Mexico City was where the FBI requested that Norwin Meneses be placed on a watch list for drug trafficking in 1979, years before his Contra-connected operations were publicly exposed.
+---
+Mexico City was where the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] office requested in 1979 that [[Norwin Meneses]] be placed on the Bureau's "tightest watch list" for drug trafficking. The request, years before Meneses's Contra-connected operations were publicly exposed, demonstrated that federal law enforcement had long been aware of his activities.[^1]
+
+### Early Awareness
+
+The FBI's Mexico City office's request to monitor Meneses showed that the U.S. government knew about his drug trafficking well before he began selling [[cocaine]] in [[Los Angeles]] to fund the [[Contras]]. Despite this awareness, Meneses was never prosecuted and continued to operate freely in [[San Francisco]] and Los Angeles throughout the 1980s. The failure to act on the intelligence about Meneses, combined with his known role as a Contra political leader, raised questions about whether his connections to the U.S.-backed war protected him from law enforcement action.[^2]
+
+### Footnotes
+
+[^1]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 2.
+[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Ch. 2.