vault backup: 2026-10-09 22:00:52

20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PARAMILITARY/Sandinistas.md

@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ A five-person Provisional Government directorate took office in 1979: [[Violeta
 
 In the election of November 4, 1984, about 75 percent of registered voters went to the polls, the FSLN won 67 percent of the vote, the presidency and 61 of the 96 seats in the National Assembly. The Library of Congress study states that foreign observers generally reported the election to be fair, while opposition groups said Front domination of government organs, mass organizations and much of the media precluded a truly open election. Ortega was sworn in on January 10, 1985, the seventh anniversary of the assassination of the editor [[Pedro Joaquín Chamorro]]. The Front lost the 1990 elections, and a government headed by Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was installed in April 1990.[^1]
 
-Webb wrote that after taking power the Sandinistas imprisoned or executed captured National Guard officers, and that former officers who escaped into El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica became the founding cadre of the [[Contras]], reassembled by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] starting in 1980.[^4] Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited. The congressional Committees describe the Contras as three elements: former National Guardsmen and right-wing figures, anti-Somocistas who had supported the revolution but felt betrayed, and Nicaraguans who opposed the Sandinistas' increasingly anti-democratic regime; "initial support" came from another country, understood to be [[Argentina]], which organized and supplied paramilitary forces in early 1981.[^2]
+Webb wrote that after taking power the Sandinistas imprisoned or executed captured National Guard officers, and that former officers who escaped into El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica became the founding cadre of the [[Contras]], reassembled by the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] starting in 1980.[^4] The congressional Committees describe the Contras as three elements: former National Guardsmen and right-wing figures, anti-Somocistas who had supported the revolution but felt betrayed, and Nicaraguans who opposed the Sandinistas' increasingly anti-democratic regime; "initial support" came from another country, understood to be [[Argentina]], which organized and supplied paramilitary forces in early 1981.[^2]
 
 ### United States policy and the Contra war
 
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ On October 5, 1986 a C-123 cargo aircraft belonging to the Enterprise run by [[O
 
 The Kerry Committee found that the U.S. [[United States Department of State|State Department]], in an International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, noted "no evidence" of the use of Nicaragua to ship drugs to the United States "since the allegations made in 1984" in connection with the case of the [[DEA]] informant [[Barry Seal]]. Seal, working undercover after being caught smuggling drugs, flew to Nicaragua with cameras installed in his plane and obtained photographs of [[Federico Vaughn]], whom U.S. authorities identified as a Nicaraguan government official, and [[Pablo Escobar]] loading the plane with drugs; the committee found this material "became the central evidence thereafter used by U.S. officials citing Sandinista involvement in narcotics." After the operation was exposed Vaughn disappeared, and the [[House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime]] found that the telephone number Vaughn used in calls he received from Seal was controlled by the U.S. Embassy.[^3] The Kerry report also states that the Seal operation "directed at officials of the Sandinista government in Managua was prematurely announced publicly by U.S. government officials, shortly before a crucial Congressional vote on Contra aid, thereby jeopardizing an ongoing DEA investigation," and that DEA officials testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime on July 28, 1988 that in June 1985 North suggested that $1.5 million in drug money carried aboard Seal's plane be given to the Contras, which DEA rejected.[^3][^9]
 
-Webb wrote that the CIA informed the [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]] in April 1984 that "although uncorroborated reports indicating Nicaraguan involvement in the shipping of cocaine to the United States had been received, CIA was unable to confirm reports implicating high-level Sandinistas in drug trafficking," that [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] officials reached the same conclusion two years later, that Reagan displayed a photograph of Vaughn, "a top aide to one of the nine commandantes," loading an aircraft with drugs, and that the House Judiciary Committee investigation found Vaughn likely a U.S. double agent whose house had been "continuously rented" by the U.S. Embassy since 1981 and who was associated with [[Norwin Meneses]] and North. Webb also wrote that the former Sandinista intelligence officer [[Enrique Miranda]] became a CIA asset, DEA informant and right-hand man to Meneses from 1989 to 1991.[^4] Webb is the sole source for the passages so cited.
+Webb wrote that the CIA informed the [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]] in April 1984 that "although uncorroborated reports indicating Nicaraguan involvement in the shipping of cocaine to the United States had been received, CIA was unable to confirm reports implicating high-level Sandinistas in drug trafficking," that [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] officials reached the same conclusion two years later, that Reagan displayed a photograph of Vaughn, "a top aide to one of the nine commandantes," loading an aircraft with drugs, and that the House Judiciary Committee investigation found Vaughn likely a U.S. double agent whose house had been "continuously rented" by the U.S. Embassy since 1981 and who was associated with [[Norwin Meneses]] and North. Webb also wrote that the former Sandinista intelligence officer [[Enrique Miranda]] became a CIA asset, DEA informant and right-hand man to Meneses from 1989 to 1991.[^4]
 
 The Kerry Committee recorded two other approaches. In a closed session on June 25, 1987 the money launderer [[Ramon Milian Rodriguez]] testified that he had offered to help entrap the Sandinistas in a drug sting in return for dropping charges against him; [[Felix Rodriguez]] denied his version of a meeting in which Milian offered drug money to the Contras, and no action was taken by the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] or CIA. A Miami attorney who in 1985 met lawyers for the [[Medellin Cartel]] in [[Bogota]] and later its leaders in [[Medellin]] told the DEA in October 1986, and passed a polygraph on his account, that a Bogota lawyer for the Cartel said [[Jorge Ochoa]] "finances both Sandinista and anti-Sandinista forces in Nicaragua by setting up drug operations there"; the Cartel proposed to collect intelligence on guerrillas for six months to a year in return for amnesty, and the DEA and FBI broke off contact with the attorney.[^3]
 
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ The Kerry Committee recorded two other approaches. In a closed session on June 2
 [^1]: Merrill, Tim L., ed. *Nicaragua: A Country Study*, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress (December 1993; DTIC ADA288675), chs. 1 and 5, "The Rise of the FSLN," "Sandinista Guerrilla Movement, 1961-79," "Sandinista People's Army, 1979-90" and the account of the 1984 election. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA288675
 [^2]: Brinkley and Engelberg, eds., *Report of the Congressional Committees*, Part I, chs. 1 and 2, and "Iran-Contra Chronology." https://archive.org/details/reportofcongres00unit
 [^3]: U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), chapters on Nicaragua and Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama and the Cartel, and Panama (testimony of Blandon, Westrate, Milian Rodriguez and the "Miami Attorney"; DEA debriefs of October 21 and November 13, 1986; Jacobsen testimony, House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, July 28, 1988; Conclusions). https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
-[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, ch. 1, "A pretty secret kind of thing"; Glossary of Organizations and Locations; ch. 13, "The wrong kind of friends." Sole source for the passages so cited.
+[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, ch. 1, "A pretty secret kind of thing"; Glossary of Organizations and Locations; ch. 13, "The wrong kind of friends."
 [^5]: Walsh, Lawrence E. *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters*, vol. I (August 4, 1993), Part I, "The Reagan Administration's Contra Policy" and "The Funding Cut-Off." https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/part_i.htm
 [^6]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 1, "United States v. Robert C. McFarlane." https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
 [^7]: International Court of Justice, *Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America)*, Judgment of June 27, 1986 (merits), case overview and discontinuance order of September 26, 1991. https://www.icj-cij.org/case/70