vault backup: 2026-09-22 19:06:17

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Norwin Meneses.md

@@ -4,8 +4,19 @@ aliases:
   - Norwin Meneses
   - Norwin Meneses Cantarero
   - El Rey de la Droga
+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: 2026-05-17
+updated: 2026-09-22
 category: "Key Figures"
 tags:
   - Person
@@ -20,7 +31,7 @@ summary: "Norwin Meneses Cantarero, known as 'El Rey de la Droga,' was Nicaragua
 born: 1943-06-21
 location: "Nicaragua"
 ---
-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 is believed to have been 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 to 1985 and worked for the [[Contras]] as a recruiter, arms supplier, and benefactor throughout the entire Contra war.[^2] He simultaneously worked as a [[DEA]] informant from 1985 to 1991.[^2]
+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 is believed to have been 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]
 
 ### Background and Family
 
@@ -28,7 +39,7 @@ Meneses had close connections to the Cuban anti-Communist movement and to the pr
 
 ### Early Criminal Career
 
-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.
+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.
 
 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."
 
@@ -42,7 +53,7 @@ Norwin was arrested but cleared after a "rigorous and exhaustive" investigation
 
 ### Entry into the United States
 
-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]
+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]
 
 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]
 
@@ -78,13 +89,13 @@ Meneses expanded beyond drug trafficking into weapons dealing through his partne
 
 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'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]
+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]
 
 ### Counterfeiting
 
 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]
 
-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.
+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.
 
 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.
 
@@ -98,7 +109,7 @@ Former Meneses aide Renato Peña told the Justice Department in 1997 that Menese
 
 ### 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. A 1998 CIA Inspector General's report confirmed that as early as 1984, the agency had information tying Meneses to a drug and arms network in Costa Rica in partnership with top Contra official [[Sebastian Gonzalez|Sebastian "Guachan" Gonzalez]]. 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]
+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]
 
@@ -110,11 +121,11 @@ At Tipitapa Prison, Meneses was shown a 1992 FBI report in which the [[Torres Br
 
 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 and jailed in Nicaragua in 1991 and sentenced to twelve years in prison. 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]
+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]
+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
 
@@ -122,13 +133,13 @@ In 1990, after the Sandinistas were voted out, Meneses moved back into his mansi
 
 ### 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 and sentenced to thirty years. He was released in 1997 after serving only six years. Three weeks after the verdicts, the U.S. State Department pressured the Chamorro government to fire Vivas; Mayorga was fired soon after.[^11]
+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]
+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]
+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
 
@@ -190,3 +201,5 @@ The DEA's public affairs office in Washington later attempted to arrange an inte
 [^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/