Enrique Bermudez

Enrique Bermúdez Varela, known as "Comandante 380," was the military commander of the FDN, the largest Contra force, from its founding until his removal in February 1990, and was shot dead in a hotel parking lot in Managua on February 16, 1991.¹ The Central Intelligence Agency's Inspector General recorded two reports of drug trafficking involving him, neither of which said he took part; the Justice Department's Inspector General found no evidence contradicting the Contra leaders' denials that they knew drug money was coming to the movement; and Gary Webb, naming Norwin Meneses, wrote that Bermúdez was a close friend of Meneses who reportedly dealt arms and cocaine with him.¹²³

Career in the Guard

Bermúdez served in the Nicaraguan National Guard Corps of Engineers from 1952 to 1979 and studied at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, the Army Command and General Staff College and the Inter-American Defense College. He was Nicaragua's defense attaché in Washington from 1976 to 1979 and was, the CIA's Inspector General recorded, openly critical of the Somoza government and its general staff.¹ Webb wrote that Bermúdez was deputy commander of a Nicaraguan infantry company sent to support the 1965 United States intervention in the Dominican Republic, that he had been in the United States since 1975, and that American officials considered him one of six Guard officers to head the force in the regime's last days and a safe choice because he spent the war in Washington and could not be blamed for its abuses. Webb wrote that after Somoza fell he delivered Newsweek magazines for a living.⁴

The FDN

Webb wrote that Somoza's cousin Luis Pallais Debayle visited Bermúdez to gauge his interest in leading a resistance, that Major General Charles E. Boyd of the U.S. Air Force then invited him to the Pentagon and said he had a friend at the CIA who wished to speak to him, and that by mid-1980 Bermúdez had moved to Miami and was on the CIA payroll; an American official told the journalist Sam Dillon that "he fit the profile. He was malleable, controllable, docile."⁴ The CIA's Inspector General traced the organizational record: Bermúdez was identified in the first half of 1980 as "War Chief" of the Democratic Armed Force; in spring 1981 he was chief of the military arm of the Nicaraguan Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ADREN), the Legion of September 15; in September 1981 ADREN merged with the Nicaraguan Democratic Union to form the FDN. He was displaced as chief of staff in late 1982 and became "Political-Military Coordinator" of the directorate while remaining the de facto leader of the military organization; in February 1984 the FDN's command was reorganized with Adolfo Calero as commander in chief and Bermúdez as Chief of Military Affairs. He was ousted by the Army of the Nicaraguan Resistance's northern general staff in February 1990.¹

Webb wrote that in 1981 Bermúdez visited the Los Angeles group around Danilo Blandón, gave a pep talk and asked it to adopt the FDN's colors and flag; Blandón told the Justice Department the same.⁴⁵ Blandón also told the inspectors that in 1982 he and Meneses met Bermúdez in Honduras, where Bermúdez said that the Contras were short of money and "the end justifies the means," and that in 1983 Bermúdez told Contra supporters in the United States that the cause no longer needed their money because "the train is running."² Blandón said he did not believe Bermúdez knew they sold drugs and that Bermúdez never asked anyone to raise money that way.⁶ In the Los Angeles case, the informant LA CI-1 told the Justice Department that Meneses cultivated Bermúdez to use the relationship for his own shipments, that he had no information that Bermúdez was involved in drugs, and that Meneses "tried to position himself to help the Contra movement, but little came of his efforts."²

Meneses and the allegations

Meneses said he had known Bermúdez since Bermúdez was a lieutenant and that his brother Edmundo Meneses had been Bermúdez's friend since childhood; Webb quoted him that way and wrote that Meneses became Bermúdez's "intelligence and security adviser" in California.⁷ Dennis Ainsworth, a San Francisco Contra supporter, told the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1987 that he had learned Meneses and Bermúdez were dealing arms and drugs together.⁸ Renato Pena, the FDN's self-described representative in northern California, told the Justice Department he was present when Meneses telephoned Bermúdez in Honduras and heard Bermúdez ask for silencers (which Meneses obtained in Los Angeles), crossbows and other military equipment; Meneses would bring back bulletins and communiques from Bermúdez that Pena put in newsletters.² Meneses told the CIA's Inspector General that Bermúdez had asked him to recruit Nicaraguans and was "very strict and did not want anyone involved in drugs"; Calero told the Justice Department that Bermúdez told him Meneses had visited the Contras' first Honduran camp and given the troops a crossbow.⁶² Pena also said Bermúdez must have been a CIA agent because "all Latin American military attachés" were recruited by the agency, and that Meneses told him Bermúdez knew of the drug dealing; the Inspector General found that Pena "has said different things to different people at different times" and that the CIA connection he asserted rested on nothing but the chain of Meneses to Bermúdez to the CIA.² Meneses's former associate Enrique Miranda told the Justice Department that Meneses told him in 1981 that Calero and Bermúdez knew of his arrangement; the Inspector General found everything Miranda said was second-hand.⁹ Tony Navarro, the FDN's San Francisco representative from 1986, said he thought Bermúdez was "straight" but did not really know.²

What the CIA recorded

A September 1981 CIA cable to headquarters reported that Bermúdez had advised the ADREN leadership against smuggling drugs into the United States, but that the leadership had decided to do so to finance its operations and that an initial effort had been made in July 1981 when an ADREN member carried cocaine to Miami on a commercial flight. The Inspector General noted that Bermúdez was ADREN's military chief but that nothing indicated he was directly involved. The report went to the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command and ambassadors in Central America on September 14, 1981, and as an intelligence report titled "ADREN Operations to Smuggle Narcotics Into the U.S. to Finance Its Anti-Sandinista Activities" to the DEA, FBI, Customs Service, Treasury and intelligence community agencies on October 28, 1981. In February 1982 headquarters answered a name trace by stating that Bermúdez "is not associated with the 'renegade' 15th of September Legion members who are probably using their acquaintance with him as a means to gain some respectability"; the same cable described the Legion as engaged in criminal activities including drug smuggling.¹

In February 1988 a cable reported that a Nicaraguan exile had alleged at a Miami meeting, held to invite former National Guardsmen to return under a Sandinista amnesty, that Bermúdez, Calero, Aristides Sanchez and another person were all involved in drug smuggling. The exile offered no substantiation and was characterized by both a United States law enforcement source and the CIA as mentally unstable and, in the cable's words, as a swindler with a reputation as a drug dealer in Nicaragua; the CIA forwarded the report to the FBI on February 9, 1988. The Inspector General found no record that either allegation was reported to Congress.¹ Calero told the Justice Department's inspectors that he was never aware of drug trafficking by the Contras and that it was "preposterous" to suggest any United States official asked the FDN to engage in it.² The CIA's Central American Task Force chief Alan Fiers testified to the Iran-Contra committees on August 5, 1987 that drug trafficking by Contra forces "is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people"; he also said, "We knew that everybody around Pastora was involved in cocaine."¹⁰

Death

On February 16, 1991, the CIA's Inspector General recorded, Bermúdez was assassinated in Managua, and speculation was widespread that Sandinista supporters killed him.¹ Webb wrote that the slaying has never been solved; the Justice Department's report places the killing in Honduras, which is inconsistent with the CIA's account of Managua.³²