Danilo Blandon

Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes, born July 29, 1951, in Managua, was a Nicaraguan exile and cocaine wholesaler in Los Angeles who supplied "Freeway" Ricky Ross and who, after his arrest in 1992, became the DEA's principal witness and paid informant against Ross.¹ He told a federal grand jury in 1994 that he began selling cocaine to raise money for the Contras; the Justice Department's Inspector General and the CIA's Inspector General each concluded that his contributions were small and found no Central Intelligence Agency relationship, while Gary Webb wrote in Dark Alliance that the proceeds of his Los Angeles sales went to the Contra war.²³⁴

Family and Nicaragua

Blandón attended college in Canada and Mexico, took a business degree, returned to Nicaragua in 1974 to work in his father's real estate business, earned a master's degree in business in Colombia in 1978, and then worked for the Nicaraguan government as a director of retail and wholesale markets.¹ Webb wrote that he was the second son of a landowning family close to the Somoza government: his father Julio Blandón owned the land under OPEN #3, a post-earthquake housing district that became Ciudad Sandino; his mother came from the Reyes family, and her father, Colonel Rigoberto Reyes, had been minister of war under the first Anastasio Somoza; and his wife Chepita belonged to the Murillo family, whose members had provided Managua's mayor and the president of the National Assembly. Webb added that the $27 million market program Blandón directed was financed jointly by Nicaragua and the United States, that it paid for his degree, and that he also ran an import-export company, a travel agency and a firm supplying food to the Nicaraguan National Guard. Webb quoted the economist Orlando Murillo, an uncle of Chepita's, on the source of the family fortune.⁵

The immigration service's records show that Blandón entered the United States on a business visa on June 17, 1979, and applied for asylum in Los Angeles on February 15, 1980. The Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service denied the request on January 25, 1983, and he filed a new application before an immigration judge on June 27, 1983; the judge granted it on August 19, 1985, finding a well-founded fear of persecution if he returned.¹ Webb wrote that Blandón put his wife and three-year-old daughter on a flight to Los Angeles on June 19, 1979, and followed through Miami with his brother Julio Jr.; Webb quoted Blandón's cousin Flor Reyes on how little he arrived with, and Orlando Murillo's statement that he paid the airfares and gave the couple $5,000. In Los Angeles Blandón sold used cars at Torres Used Cars in East Los Angeles, run by two Nicaraguan brothers, Jacinto and Edgar Torres, whom Webb described as later major cocaine traffickers.⁵

Contra supporters in Los Angeles, 1980 to 1983

Blandón told the Justice Department's Inspector General that in 1980 or 1981 he began attending informal meetings of about twenty opponents of the Sandinistas in Los Angeles, and that when Enrique Bermúdez visited the group it affiliated with the FDN.¹ He told the CIA's Inspector General that Bermúdez asked the group to adopt the FDN's colors and flag, and that the group held no position in the FDN leadership in Honduras.³ Webb wrote that Blandón said he formed the first organized Contra group in Los Angeles, that its five organizers raised money through car loans obtained on his credit and used to send a pickup truck to Honduras, and that he lost his credit when the payments went unmade.⁵ The group's driver, Carlos Rocha, described it to the Justice Department as APRONIC, the Association of Professional Nicaraguans, which approached the FDN in December 1981; he said its members were invited to FDN meetings but refused official titles, that a 1982 Los Angeles fundraiser lost money, that Blandón fronted about $900 for it and was repaid, that the group ceased to exist by early 1983, and that he knew of nothing else Blandón gave other than two trucks sent to Honduras, which Blandón later reported stolen and for which he collected insurance.² The FDN's San Francisco representative at the time, Tony Navarro, told the inspectors he met Blandón once and saw no evidence he gave the Contras money; Ivan Torres put Blandón's gifts at $800 at most and two station wagons.²

Blandón told the inspectors that in 1982 he flew with Norwin Meneses to Honduras on the way to Bolivia to buy cocaine, that they met Bermúdez, who said the Contras were short of money and that "the end justifies the means," and that on leaving the country he was stopped with $100,000 he was carrying for Meneses for the Bolivian purchase; a man he knew from the FDN told the Honduran police the money was for the Contras, and it was returned to him. He said he did not believe Bermúdez knew they were selling drugs, and he estimated that he gave the Contras about $40,000 in all, of which 70 to 80 percent came from drug sales.¹³ He said that in 1983, at a meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Bermúdez told Contra supporters that "the train is running," meaning, in Blandón's understanding, that the CIA was funding the war.²

On February 3, 1994, Blandón testified before a federal grand jury in San Francisco in a case involving Meneses's nephew Roger Meneses. Asked how he progressed in the business, he said that in the beginning he sold "just because the Contra," that in 1983 "the Contra gets a lot of money from the United States," that "the people that was in charge, it was the CIA, so they didn't want to raise any money," and that he then started business by himself. The Inspector General, working from a transcript posted on the internet by the San Jose Mercury News, concluded that Blandón meant the CIA controlled the money going to the Contras and not that it knew of or approved his sales; Blandón told the inspectors the same, and said he used "Cheles," "U.S. Government" and "CIA" interchangeably.⁶ On the stand in San Diego in 1996, according to Webb, Blandón began a sentence about the Contra fundraising, "When we raise money for the Contra revolution, we received orders from the," then looked at the prosecutor and said "from another people"; Webb wrote that a court order barring CIA testimony prevented Ross's lawyer Alan Fenster from pursuing the answer.⁷

Los Angeles under Meneses

Blandón said he met Meneses in 1981 or 1982 when a friend asked him to collect Meneses from the Los Angeles airport; Meneses offered to give him cocaine and teach him to sell it and to send the profits to the Contras. Meneses fronted him two kilograms at $60,000 each, which he had trouble selling until Meneses supplied customers, and he began collecting drug money for Meneses in Los Angeles.¹³ Webb added that Meneses gave him a two-day seminar on assessing quality and concealing cocaine in vehicle door panels, that Donald Barrios introduced the two men, and that Blandón became Meneses's "administrator" in Los Angeles, keeping the books, collecting from customers and delivering cash to Meneses's Colombian suppliers.⁴ Meneses opened the Chicalina restaurant on Hoover Street, which Blandón helped oversee, and in August 1982 Blandón and Maritza Meneses founded JDM Artwork Inc., a silk-screen shop that Webb wrote became part of the Contra support network: Eden Pastora visited it in 1982 and it printed T-shirts with his likeness, former Pastora aide Karol Prado told Webb it was used to launder drug money, and a Puerto Rican former associate convicted of counterfeiting told Webb it printed counterfeit twenty-dollar bills that financed the FDN. The associate's claim is attributed to him; the CIA's cables recorded in December 1984 that Meneses was known for "laundering of counterfeit money."⁴³

A DEA debriefing report of March 1983 was the first mention of Blandón in DEA files; it named him as a member of a Miami-to-Los Angeles organization headed by Robert Arana. A January 1985 source told the DEA that Meneses had begun taking cocaine from Blandón's supplier in early 1983 and that Blandón owed Meneses $200,000. The Inspector General wrote that this information was treated as background intelligence and that the DEA conducted no investigation of Blandón before 1986.¹⁸ Webb wrote that the DEA opened a NADDIS file on him on May 24, 1983, and that his lawyer Bradley Brunon said in court in 1992 that he held some 300 DEA-6 reports on Blandón dating from about 1981 to May 1992; Webb wrote that in early 1984 an informant told the DEA Blandón was "the head" of his own distribution organization.⁹

Blandón's accounts of when he left Meneses changed over time. He told the grand jury in 1994, the CIA Inspector General in 1998 and the Justice Department that the break came in 1983, over money. The records place the two together later. A confidential informant told the DEA in August 1986 of a loose confederation between "the Blandon organization" in southern California and "the Meneses organization" in San Francisco, in which Blandón gave drugs to Meneses; Meneses's nephew Jairo Meneses told the DEA after his November 1984 arrest that Blandón was one of ten to twelve buyers who took cocaine from the Meneses organization on consignment; and the December 1990 DEA San Diego application, which does not mention the Contras, records that between 1982 and 1984 Blandón "operated directly under Menesis" and that in 1984 he "disassociated himself" and began working independently.¹¹⁰¹¹ Webb wrote that FBI and DEA files placed the two as associates as late as 1991, that an August 1986 DEA report called the Blandón group "the focal point for drug supply and money laundering for the others," and that Jacinto Torres told the FBI in 1992 that Meneses was Blandón's supplier in 1984.¹² At Ross's 1996 trial Blandón moved the date at which he stopped selling for the Contras from 1986 to 1984 to 1982, Webb wrote, and conceded on cross-examination that he did not know whether the Contras had received United States aid; the Inspector General records that after the trial he told the CIA that he had given nothing after 1983.⁷³

Lister and the weapons

Ronald Lister, a former Laguna Beach police officer who ran a private security firm, became Blandón's partner in late 1981 or early 1982. Blandón told the Justice Department he, Meneses and Lister agreed informally to sell weapons abroad, and that the partners were to take their share in arms for the Contras; he also said he did not believe Lister's claims of CIA contacts. Lister told the CIA's inspectors that he met Blandón in late 1981 through a Beverly Hills business contact, that Blandón then introduced him to Meneses, that he and his employees bought 15 to 20 semiautomatic weapons and a few night-vision devices for Blandón in 1982 and 1983, and that talk of the Contras was "beer talk" because "the money always went back into our pockets."³⁴ Webb wrote that Lister's partner William Downing and the Mundy Security Group in Laguna Beach supplied the weapons, and that Blandón was the company's vice president.⁴

Blandón said Lister arranged a presentation of weapons to Contra leaders including Pastora and Adolfo Chamorro in 1983 or 1984; the attendees showed no interest, and Blandón concluded the CIA or another agency was already supplying the military arm.³ According to Webb, Blandón sold Ross a free silenced .22 pistol and then more than a hundred weapons, including Uzis and an AR-15, and electronics equipment, procured through Lister, for use in the cocaine business; Ross told the CIA's inspectors he bought handguns and automatic weapons from Blandón.⁹³

Ross

The Inspector General fixed the beginning of the Blandón-Ross relationship later than Webb did. Ivan Arguellas (Claudio Villavicencio) supplied Ross through Henry Corrales, who bought from Blandón; Villavicencio was shot in October 1983, Corrales tried to continue and then introduced Blandón to Ross and left the country, and the Inspector General concluded that direct sales began after October 1983 and probably in 1984, with the volume rising after Blandón acquired the Colombian supplier Aparicio Moreno in about 1985. Ross put his first kilogram from Blandón at $40,000 in 1984. Blandón testified at Ross's trial that he sold Ross 100 kilograms a month in 1984 and that by 1986 he was selling 100 kilograms a week to four or five customers; he told the inspectors that during 1985 and 1986 the weekly amounts to Ross ran from nothing to 50 kilograms. Ross estimated his own career total at 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms, and the Inspector General found that credible; a July 1990 recording of Blandón has him estimating that he sold 2,000 to 4,000 kilograms to black dealers. In 1991 testimony in an unrelated trial Ross did not name Blandón, and he later said he wanted to protect him.¹³

Webb placed the first direct sale in late 1982 or early 1983 and wrote that Corrales sold Ross 10 to 15 kilograms a week by then, that Ross reached 100 kilograms a week and sometimes 150, that Blandón arranged credit of 20 to 25 kilograms from his Colombian suppliers, that Ross counted cash with two or three machines running day and night, and that Blandón and the Torres Brothers sometimes shared $5.7 million a week.¹²⁹ Webb also wrote that Ross described Blandón as "almost like a godfather to me," that Ross knew nothing of the Contras and said "he's been working for the government the whole damn time," and that Blandón's rivals called him "Chanchin," the fat pig, after he grew heavy and reclusive in Rialto.⁹ Ross told the CIA's inspectors that he believed the CIA was involved with Blandón only because of Blandón's short prison term.³

Webb wrote that Blandón moved his family to a house in Rialto in 1984 or 1985, bought through Orlando Murillo with $175,000 withdrawn from a Panama account; that he opened the Nicamex restaurant and a used-car lot with the Mexican millionaire Sergio Guerra, whose family owned the Gateway parking lot at the border; and that he once hired a former Nicaraguan officer to kill one of the Torres brothers after Chepita told him of an affair, then called it off.⁹ The Torres brothers told LASD detective Jerry Guzzetta in 1986 that Blandón was dangerous because of "his access to information" about police activity.¹⁴

October 1986

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department began its case on Blandón in September 1986 from an informant developed by Bell police officer Jerry Guzzetta, who described Blandón as a peripheral supplier of the black cocaine market run by "Rick" and "Ollie." Deputy Thomas Gordon swore an affidavit on October 23, 1986, and Judge Glennette Blackwell signed fourteen warrants; thirteen locations were searched on October 27. The affidavit said an informant described Blandón as a Contra sympathizer and founder of the FDN and that "money and arms generated by this organization comes thru the sales of cocaine." Deputy Eufrasio Cortez later said that an incident in the affidavit, a scale hidden under a jacket at Guerra Auto Sales, never occurred and that Gordon made things up; Gordon was convicted of tax charges in 1990 in the "Big Spender" case, in which deputies were shown to have stolen money and drugs from suspects. Deputy John Hurtado admitted taking about $50,000 from a briefcase in Blandón's bedroom.⁸

The deputies found about one gram of cocaine, a folded ten-dollar bill with cocaine, and .3 grams in Blandón's house, and arrested Blandón and Chepita; the report attributed to him the statement "the cocaine is mine," which he denied. Among the papers seized were records of seven bank accounts, with deposits marked "U.S. Treasury/State" totaling about $9,000,000 and Cayman Islands deposits of about $883,000, and a note in Spanish signed "Leysla" that said "These are the bank statements of the suppliers of the Contra." Blandón told the inspectors his sister Leysla Balladares sent them because she thought he would find the Contra leaders' skimming of funds interesting; Balladares said they came from a friend, the physician Aureliano Rugama, killed in Honduras with the Contras. The Inspector General concluded the papers did not tie Blandón's drug dealing to the Contras; the Rolodex from his car lot listed a number for Eden Pastora in Costa Rica.⁶

At Lister's second house the deputies recorded him saying that his friends in Washington would not like the search and that he would call "Mr. Weekly of the CIA"; a document seized there mentioned a "DIA Sub contractor Scott Weekly." Lister later said he meant a call to his attorney. The DIA told the FBI that Weekly was not employed by or cleared through it.⁸ Blandón's attorney Bradley Brunon, according to a deputy's chronology and an FBI teletype of November 17, 1986, told the sheriff's department on October 27 that he thought the "CIA winked at this sort of thing"; Brunon told the inspectors he did not recall saying it and had no information that Blandón was involved with the CIA.⁸ A cable from a CIA station on October 30, 1986, titled "Three Persons Claiming CIA Affiliation," told headquarters that three individuals claiming CIA affiliation had been arrested by the sheriff's department and asked for traces; headquarters answered on October 31 that it had none on Lister or Blandón and had reports of December 1984 and March 1985 describing Meneses as the "Nicaraguan Mafia." The cable erred in saying Meneses and Lister were arrested. When the FBI asked the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency on December 11, 1986 whether Blandón, Lister, Meneses, Orlando Murillo, Aparicio Moreno and "Oklahoma Dick" were of operational interest, the CIA replied on December 17 with its Meneses traces and said it had none on the others.³⁸ The Inspector General found that Blandón learned of the surveillance beforehand, from Rocha, who told him the FBI had questioned him about Blandón in the summer, and from being followed, and that he cleaned his houses about a month before; it found no evidence that anyone tipped him.⁸

The federal agents copied the seized documents on October 31 and November 3, 1986, about 1,112 pages by a later count. The Inspector General recorded that the FBI, the Los Angeles United States Attorney's Office and the DEA each could not find their copies, that the sheriff's department released many originals to Blandón's and Lister's lawyers months later, and that the IRS retained a box of over 1,000 pages that it produced.⁸ The sheriff's department dropped the possession charges and transferred the case to federal authorities; Sergeant Ed Huffman's chronology states "No case filed to protect on going investigation & informants."⁸ Webb wrote that on December 10, 1986 Blandón was told no charges would be filed, that he wrote on a residency application "No complaint filed. They exonerated me 12-10-86," and that the immigration lawyer he hired, John M. Garrisi, was under indictment for immigration fraud and was later convicted and disbarred.¹⁵ Documents from Blandón's house were forwarded to the Iran-Contra independent counsel's office, which the Inspector General found did not investigate Blandón or use them.¹⁶

The 1987 OCDETF case and Operation Perico

Douglas Aukland, an FBI agent in Riverside whose first drug case this was, had opened a case on July 11, 1986 on information from an unsolicited informant, LA CI-1, who said Blandón and Meneses were founding members of the FDN and that in January 1985 Pastora had met Blandón in Miami seeking funds; LA CI-1 told the inspectors he meant that the funds were cocaine funds, that Blandón never claimed to sell for the Contras, and that he would have "laughed in Blandon's face" at the suggestion.¹² Assistant U.S. Attorney Crossan Andersen wrote the IRS on November 25, 1986 that the case "is a sensitive matter since it involves allegations of drug running in support of the CONTRA movement in Nicaragua and wholly unconfirmed allegations of CIA involvement." The Los Angeles Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force committee accepted it on January 21, 1987, naming Blandón, Lister, Meneses, Moreno, Murillo and "Oklahoma Dick" as targets.¹⁶

On January 7 and 15, 1987, Meneses and a DEA informant the Inspector General calls DEA CI-1 met Blandón and Ivan Torres in Los Angeles under a plan that the DEA's Costa Rica agent Sandalio Gonzalez filed as "Operation Perico." DEA CI-1 reported Torres saying that his brothers were distributing up to 1,000 kilograms of cocaine a month, that the CIA "looks the other way" while the Contras traffic outside the United States, and, in Gonzalez's later report, that CIA representatives "don't mind" and encourage trafficking as a source of income. Torres told the inspectors he had no CIA contacts and that the talk was a joke made to impress a man they suspected of being an informant; DEA CI-1 told the inspectors it was the FBI Torres said looked the other way. The same reporting recorded that Blandón's organization had supplied Pastora with weapons until about two years earlier and that Pastora lived in a Blandón house in Costa Rica; and that Blandón was keeping a low profile and had refused to rent them a car. Gonzalez told the inspectors that DEA CI-1 claimed to have worked for the CIA years earlier in Europe and the Soviet Union. Webb wrote that the informant was a CIA operative known as "Roberto" and that the DEA mounted the operation without telling Aukland; the Inspector General found Aukland learned of it only in January 1987 and was angry that he could not debrief Meneses.¹⁷¹⁸

The investigation never produced a purchase. Aukland's informants could not infiltrate the group, Blandón had become, in the FBI's phrase, "almost a recluse," and on July 17, 1987 Andersen declined prosecution "based upon the inability of investigative techniques to adequately prove criminal allegations." Aukland's closing memorandum of September 16, 1987 said the case "may have been viable with the assistance of DEA." The Inspector General found Aukland was the only full-time investigator, that the Meneses coordination failed, and that no one from the CIA contacted or pressured him.¹⁹ Susan Bryant-Deason, a Los Angeles assistant district attorney cross-designated to the federal office, told police in 1996, Webb wrote, that agents were frustrated at insufficient evidence; she told the inspectors that she recalled a box of neatly photocopied bank documents with references to the U.S. Treasury and being told they would go to a "special prosecutor" in Washington, and that the person she called at the U.S. Attorney's office was misidentified in a sheriff's report as an attorney who had died by suicide on December 27, 1986.¹⁶¹⁸

Miami, 1987 to 1990

Blandón moved to Miami in 1987. Webb wrote that he sold his Los Angeles car lot and restaurants, carried $1.6 million, handed his customers to Roger Sandino and Jose "Chinito" Gonzalez, and remained their middleman; that he invested in Mex-US Import and Export with the exiled Nicaraguan judge Jose Macario, Rene Gonzalez of Peat Marwick, Guerra and the Panamanian banker Jose Fernando Soto, bought Pupi's Children's Boutique for Chepita and an interest in La Parrilla, the restaurant of former National Guard general Gustavo Medina and Donald Barrios; and that his main business was Alpha II Rent-a-Car, with 24 locations.²⁰ On September 26, 1988 Blandón applied in Miami for permanent residence, disclosing the 1986 arrest and answering no when asked if he had trafficked in narcotics.²¹ Meneses, reactivated as a DEA informant, met Blandón in Miami in September 1987 and in May 1989, when Blandón said he was laundering money on a small scale and expected the business to grow; in Los Angeles, a target drew a gun on Meneses saying Blandón had called him a police informer.²²²³ In April 1990 Meneses told DEA agent James Rivera that Blandón had asked for his help moving "very large quantities of cocaine from Central America to Florida," and he was reactivated on May 10, 1990.²³

Webb wrote that Alpha II failed after a German tourist contract fell through and Chrysler withdrew a $1.5 million credit line, that the Colombian trafficker Humberto Cardona told him he had just sold 2,000 kilograms in Los Angeles, and that Blandón returned to cocaine, settled in a San Diego house owned by Guerra, reconnected with the Meneses family through Jose Gonzalez, and supplied about 425 kilograms, roughly $8.5 million at wholesale, to the Meneses family in 1990 and 1991.²⁴ The Inspector General found that Blandón returned to Los Angeles in 1990, sold up to 25 kilograms at a time to dealers connected with Ross, and moved to San Diego in 1991 after running up a debt to his suppliers.¹¹

San Diego, 1990 to 1992

The DEA in San Diego opened a case after learning that Blandón was trying to deal with John Arman, a trafficker cooperating with the agency; the case received task-force status in December 1990, and its application recorded that Blandón headed a criminal organization moving about 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms of cocaine a year from Colombia and Bolivia through the Bahamas, Costa Rica or Nicaragua, with Suarez family cocaine from Bolivia and Ochoa family cocaine from the Medellin Cartel. The application named Meneses, Sandino and Moreno as leaders and did not mention the Contras.¹¹ INS agent Robert Tellez wrote on February 15, 1991 that "this major cocaine traffickers [sic] may have had a degree of influence from the C.I.A.," which he later told the inspectors was an informant's rumor.¹¹ On August 26, 1991 Customs agents stopped Guerra's car at the border with $117,040 in cash and money orders in it and Blandón as passenger; only Guerra was charged, and the case was moved to Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale.¹¹ On December 9, 1991 Los Angeles police arrested Blandón with cash and a dollar bill holding white powder; the Los Angeles charges were dropped when the San Diego office asked, and the money was not returned.¹¹ Webb quoted LAPD sergeant Ron Hodges, "I think they just let him run."²⁴

A sealed indictment of May 5, 1992 charged Blandón, Chepita, Guerra, Armando Reyes, Mauricio Gonzales, Raul Vega and Eduardo Cardona with conspiring to distribute cocaine and with money laundering. O'Neale called it "a historic, no-dope conspiracy" whose lead defendant evaded every attempt to catch him with powder, including one in which he aborted a 125-kilogram deal hours before it closed after learning an informant had been arrested.¹¹ DEA agents arrested Blandón and Chepita on May 15, 1992 when Tellez asked him to collect his green card; both were held without bail. The NADDIS database then carried a January 1987 informant allegation that Blandón planned to have three informants killed and another informant's statement that he had "killed 3 persons"; DEA agent Chuck Jones said he had not seen it and would not have acted on an informant's unsupported word.¹¹

Plea, sentence and cooperation

Blandón pleaded guilty on October 13, 1992 to conspiracy to distribute cocaine, which carried up to life and a $4 million fine, a ten-year minimum, and a presumptive guideline sentence of life; the Ninth Circuit later described the plea as to 125 kilograms.¹¹²⁵ O'Neale first said Blandón would have to "give the government the moon and stars," then, as Blandón recorded calls from jail and met targets under escort of ten to twelve agents, moved to ask for less. Judge Rudi Brewster sentenced him on December 20, 1993 to 48 months and five years of supervised release on the government's substantial-assistance motion; on September 16, 1994 O'Neale moved under Rule 35(b) to reduce it to time served as of September 19, 1994, 28 and a half months, citing his testimony before the grand jury in the Northern District of California against "a significant well-established drug trafficking organization" and the wish of Jones and Tellez to "enlist Mr. Blandon as a full-time, paid, informant."¹¹ The Inspector General listed his cooperation: Guerra's guilty plea; the grand jury against Rafael Cornejo in San Francisco; a corrupt Customs inspector convicted; undercover introductions in other cases; and willingness to testify against a Bolivian cartel leader, who was convicted without him. Chepita's charges were dismissed in 1994 because the only evidence was uncorroborated informant testimony; Guerra received 30 months, Vega 18 months and Reyes probation.¹¹ Jones called Blandón "a dream informant" and the Inspector General concluded the leniency "was based on nothing other than its assessment of his cooperation," finding no evidence of CIA intervention.¹¹ He told a probation officer that his problems "stemmed from the Nicaraguan Contra Revolution," which the Inspector General judged an overstatement of his Contra commitment.¹¹ Webb quoted Brunon as saying the Contras' cocaine "was arriving in the United States literally by the planeload"; Brunon told the Inspector General that his statement to Webb outlined only a "possibility" drawn from public information and from deputies' rumors that he considered "apocryphal."²⁶⁸

The green card and the payments

In October 1994 Tellez arranged for Blandón to receive permanent resident status although his felony conviction made him ineligible, after the DEA and O'Neale asked him to obtain travel documents so Blandón could work abroad. Tellez told the immigration examiner, Loren Montgomery, that Blandón knew people with CIA and Contra contacts, which he said was to speed the application; Montgomery and his supervisor said Tellez never disclosed the conviction. Tellez kept the judgment out of the alien file. The Inspector General concluded Tellez deliberately withheld the conviction and acted out of laziness, with no evidence of a bribe or outside direction; the INS moved to rescind the status on December 12, 1996. O'Neale told Ross's lawyers in February 1996 that Blandón "retains the permanent resident status that he had before his May 1992 arrest," which was wrong because of Tellez's report.²¹ Between November 29, 1994 and October 17, 1996 Blandón received 41 DEA payments totaling more than $166,000, including $80,000 for a sensitive case abroad that led to a seizure of cocaine and vessels, $40,000 for the Ross case and $5,000 for another.²¹ The Ninth Circuit recorded that Tellez was demoted.²⁵

The Ross sting and trial

Beginning in October 1994, according to Webb, Blandón called and paged Ross, and Chepita pressed Ross to find buyers to cover a debt owed by Ross's associate Tony McDonald. On March 2, 1995, undercover agent Pedro Pena, with Blandón beside him, delivered a Chevrolet Blazer with 100 kilograms of cocaine to "Chico" Brown and Curtis James at Bonita Plaza Mall in exchange for about $170,000; Ross was arrested with them.²⁷²⁵ At Ross's March 1996 trial the court instructed the jury to accept Blandón's testimony "only with great caution," and the jury convicted Ross on March 19, 1996.²⁵ The Ninth Circuit held on June 21, 2004 that the government's failure to disclose how Tellez obtained Blandón's green card, which would have shown that Tellez violated the law, did not prejudice Ross's entrapment defense.²⁵

Law enforcement and Webb's reporting

Webb wrote that in October 1995 Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall warned him that publishing details about Blandón would endanger Blandón's life; that on October 19 DEA Special Agent in Charge Craig Chretien, Jones and Judy Gustafson asked him to omit Blandón's DEA ties; and that Jones denied knowing of Blandón's Contra history until Webb said he held grand jury transcripts. Webb recorded that the DEA's public affairs office later proposed an interview with Meneses in exchange. Webb reported that O'Neale called Blandón before a grand jury "the biggest Nicaraguan cocaine dealer in the United States"; the Inspector General wrote that it is not aware how Webb could have obtained a prosecutor's remarks before a grand jury, which are released only by court order.²⁸¹¹ In 1996 the CIA's Directorate of Operations told the court in the Ross case that it had located no relationship with Ross, Blandón, Meneses, Lister or Weekly, and the CIA Inspector General confirmed that statement from the records.³

Associates and other allegations

Webb listed Blandón's network as Chepita, Lister, Corrales, Guerra and the Colombian supplier Aparicio Moreno, whom Webb described as having reported ties to the FDN and the CIA and whom Blandón said Meneses introduced to him in 1985; the Inspector General records Blandón's statement that he and his associates thought a one-ton air delivery of Moreno's cocaine routed through Oklahoma "might be connected to the CIA because someone had placed a small FDN sticker somewhere on the airplane," which he called "just a rumor."²⁹³ Webb added that Blandón had a partnership with Jairo Meneses in the 764 kilograms seized in Nicaragua in 1991 and owned hotels and casinos there with the Meneses family; the Inspector General's report mentions neither the hotels nor the 425-kilogram figure.²⁹²⁴

Webb wrote that Blandón's electronics, procured by Lister, included walkie-talkies, pagers, police scanners, voice scramblers and anti-eavesdropping equipment; that during a 1987 raid on Ross associates Los Angeles County Sheriff's sergeant Robert Sobel complained that the dealers had "better equipment than we have"; that Blandón proposed to Ross that Ross set up a cocaine buy as an ambush, offering "you keep the dope"; and that Ross also bought police-raid warnings from him.⁹ Webb wrote that Meneses's later aide Enrique Miranda said Meneses's drug planes flew out of Ilopango Airbase in El Salvador, the hub Oliver North used for his Contra air force, where, according to Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, North's operatives worked "practically unfettered"; the Inspector General found Miranda's account second-hand and uncorroborated.²⁶³⁰³¹