Nicaragua Network

REPRINTED FROM THE NICARAGUA MONITOR OF SEPT.-OCT. 1996

Nicaragua Monitor
Sept.-Oct. 1996
CIA sent profits from crack epidemic to contras!
By Katherine Hoyt

Within the African American community, suspicions grew in the 1980s that the flood of cheap cocaine--which until then had been quite expensive and thus largely restricted to the rich and upper middle-class--and its appearance in the form of extra-potent crystals called "crack" could not be an accident. There must, it was felt, be some sort of conspiracy behind this sudden inundation and devastation of inner-city neighborhoods.

Now, a shocking series of articles by Gary Webb has appeared in the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News which shows that it was the U.S. government--namely the CIA--that was supplying the cheap cocaine in large amounts as a way to raise quick money for the counter-revolutionaries fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

In 1981, according to Webb's articles, Nicaraguan Juan Meneses (a known drug dealer since the 1970s) introduced Danilo Blandon (a rich Somocista with an MBA) to contra leader Enrique Bermudez who told him that "the end justified the means" and recruited him for the drug operation of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force or "Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense" (FDN). The FDN had been created that year by the CIA from several groups of anti-Sandinista exiles who were organizing to fight against the Sandinista government.

Mendez supplied Blandon with cheap cocaine which the CIA flew into the U.S. on its return flights from Central America.

To read more, click here.

The PDF is not easy to read but the original article was written in WordStar and the Monitor was laid out in Pagemaker, both programs that have died technological deaths in the 18 years since the article was published.

In December 1996, the Nicaragua Monitor published another article entitled "Sen. Spector Holds Contra-Cocaine Hearings: CIA and Justice Investigate Themselves." To read it, click here.