Norwin Meneses

Norwin Meneses Cantarero, born June 21, 1943, and known in Nicaragua as "El Rey de la Droga" and "El Perico," was a Nicaraguan cocaine trafficker who moved between Managua, the San Francisco Bay Area and Costa Rica.¹ From 1980 the DEA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened a series of cases on his family's organization, in which his nephews and associates were convicted and he was not; from July 1986 the DEA's Costa Rica office used him as a source and then as an informant while the FBI in San Francisco was assembling a case against him; a sealed federal indictment followed in 1989; and Nicaraguan police arrested him on November 3, 1991 with 764 kilograms of cocaine.¹² Gary Webb wrote that he was the Cali cartel's representative in Nicaragua and a recruiter, arms supplier and benefactor of the Contras; the Justice Department's Inspector General found he gave the Contras little, dealt with all sides, and had no CIA connection.¹³

Family and early record

Meneses came from a family close to the Somoza government. The Justice Department's Inspector General recorded that one brother was reported to be Managua's police chief in the 1970s, another a general, and an uncle the top official of the Customs Service; his wife Paula Rosario Zeledon de Meneses and a child were legal residents of the United States.¹² Webb identified the brother-police chief as Edmundo Meneses, a graduate of the U.S. Army School of the Americas, former ambassador to Guatemala and probable Central Intelligence Agency asset, who was assassinated in Guatemala in 1978, and a second brother, General Fermin Meneses, who commanded the National Guard garrison at Masaya; he quoted the Nicaraguan newsmagazine El Semanario in 1996 on the family's hatred of the Sandinistas.⁴ Roger Mayorga, a former Sandinista police investigator, told Webb that Meneses's first large deal began when a plane carrying Colombian marijuana made an emergency landing on a Somoza ranch and Edmundo, then police chief, released the pilots and plane but turned the marijuana over to his brother. Webb wrote that Meneses owned the Frisco Disco and VIP Club in Managua, drive-in brothels and a drug business, that a "highly reliable" FBI informant said he had once used a Nicaraguan Air Force plane for a cocaine shipment, and that he had worked as an undercover informer for Somoza's Office of National Security, which former police chief Rene Vivas described to Webb.⁴ The FBI informant account also reached the Inspector General through the Los Angeles informant LA CI-1.⁵

The oldest report on Meneses in Justice Department files is a 1968 request from the Nicaraguan police, relayed through the CIA, for San Francisco police records; the Nicaraguans suspected him in the killing of a money changer in Managua. His San Francisco record included convictions for shoplifting in 1963, misuse of slot machines in 1964 and statutory rape of a girl under eighteen in 1964. In 1976 the Customs inspector general in Managua told the FBI he was suspected of running a car-theft operation in California and New York, and he was reportedly arrested in Nicaragua and released. In 1979 the FBI's legal attaché in Mexico City proposed that he enter the FBI's "top thief" program and that an arrest warrant be sought "if for no other reason than to preclude him from entering the United States"; the San Francisco FBI replied that an assistant U.S. attorney had declined prosecution for the car thefts, that no warrant could be had, and that he had "sanctuary" in Nicaragua, where political connections let him evade prosecution.¹ A DEA Costa Rica report of 1976 named him as source of supply for cocaine moved from Managua to San Francisco; the DEA received intelligence in 1978 that he might smuggle cocaine in cars or on airliners and placed a 365-day lookout on him that year; and in 1980 a New Orleans investigation named him as the Nicaraguan source.¹ Webb gave 1974 as the year the DEA first heard he was a dealer.⁴

On June 2, 1977 the Customs chief inspector Oskar Reyes Zelaya, who had investigated Meneses's car-theft ring, was shot in an alley; Webb wrote that Reyes named Meneses before dying, that an investigation ordered by Edmundo cleared him, and that Rafael Cornejo and Jaime Meneses backed his alibi.⁴ In 1986 Meneses's nephew Jairo Meneses told federal prosecutors in San Francisco that Norwin smuggled weapons, silencers and video equipment into Nicaragua under Somoza, that Reyes discovered it, and that Norwin "then arranged for Reyes' assassination."¹

San Francisco, 1980 to 1984

Immigration records show that on September 11, 1980 Meneses was refused admission at San Ysidro for lack of a visa, that his sister Mariel Baca petitioned on November 6, 1980 for an immigrant visa on the basis that he had last arrived without inspection, and that he was admitted on a B-1 visa in Miami on May 19, 1982, with an extension in San Francisco until November 30, 1983; he was turned back at San Ysidro on July 30, 1983 with a passport hidden on his person. The immigration service had no record that he applied for or received asylum or a work permit, and the Inspector General could not establish how he entered on other occasions; informants described false passports and green cards in other names. Webb wrote that he arrived in 1979 and applied for asylum; the Inspector General suggested the Mercury News series may have confused his case with Blandón's.²⁴

DEA agent Sandra Smith, who worked in the San Francisco office from 1974 until 1984, opened her first case on the organization in July 1980, when police searching the San Francisco house of his nephew Roger Meneses found twenty pounds of cocaine; the charges were dismissed because the search followed an illegal traffic stop. In September 1981 a Baldwin Park police tip led her to follow a Los Angeles dealer, Julio Bermudez, who flew to San Francisco, visited a house in Dale City that belonged to Carlos Cabezas and then the house of another nephew, Jairo Meneses; Los Angeles police seized $12,000, three pounds of cocaine and a ledger entry "11-11 90,000 to Jairo," and Bermudez said he had gotten the drugs from Norwin Meneses. A November 16, 1981 search of Jairo's house produced $9,000 and ledgers, and prosecution was declined by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Swenson because no drugs were found. Smith filed a November 1981 affidavit stating that the DEA "has developed information over the past several years that the Meneses Family has been involved in the smuggling and distribution of cocaine in the San Francisco Bay Area"; she said she wanted a task force and was refused, which she attributed to the low status of women at the agency and not to the CIA, and she shredded her personal notes when she left in December 1984 after offering them to a colleague who declined. Her supervisor Saverio Weidl said she never asked him to lead a task force.¹⁶ Webb wrote that Smith called the case "the only thing that I ever worked, in all the time I worked there, that I thought was really big."⁴ The San Jose paper's report that her investigation was halted for reasons "not clear" was examined by the Inspector General, who found no improper halt; he also noted that Smith's own surveillance report had recorded that Cabezas lived at the Dale City house, contrary to the newspaper.¹

The IRS opened a net-worth tax case in 1983 and closed it because it could establish income for only one year and Meneses could claim a cash hoard from Nicaragua. The San Francisco United States Attorney's Office had declined prosecution in the tax case that year because of weak or insufficient evidence, and the IRS concurred with that decision.⁷ DEA agent John Rotunno then ran two cases: undercover purchases from November 1983 to January 1984 led to nine arrests beginning in February 1984, including Roger Meneses, who received six years; and an informant's report that Norwin wanted him to run the San Francisco operation because he disapproved of Jairo's management led, on November 27, 1984, to the arrest of Jairo Meneses and Renato Pena after they delivered a kilogram to undercover officers. Jairo told Agent Thomas Ma that Norwin had supplied the cocaine and had been waiting at Jairo's house for the money, then fled to Costa Rica, and that the organization sold on consignment to ten to twelve buyers, one of them Danilo Blandon. Jairo and Pena pleaded guilty on June 10, 1985 and each received a year in a work-furlough facility. Ma opened a case on Norwin on January 23, 1985 and closed it in June 1986 because the informants' arrests made their information stale; he and Rotunno said no one pressured them.¹

The agent in the bowling alley

Jairo Meneses's lawyer told the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility in June 1985 that Norwin had paid a DEA agent for information. Jairo said that in the summer of 1982 Norwin tried to hand the agent $5,000 in a bowling alley in Dale City and that he passed it on; Pena said he overheard the Meneses discuss it. The agent, and a confidential informant who said he had posed as a "crooked" agent to the Meneses, denied any payment; a DEA polygraph found Jairo deceptive and the FBI's July 1986 polygraphs found Jairo and Pena deceptive; the DEA cleared the agent on February 3, 1986. Meneses repeated the allegation to Gonzalez in February 1987, saying he paid the agent $5,000 "on numerous occasions." Pena told the Inspector General in 1997 that the agent warned Norwin weeks before the February 1983 Frogman arrests; he also told the Inspector General, which noted the conflict, that FBI agent Manuel Hinojosa had heard from him only of a paid San Francisco police officer. Webb wrote that Pena told the Justice Department of a DEA agent on Meneses's payroll who warned of the arrests of Julio Zavala and Cabezas.⁶⁸ A San Francisco economist given the pseudonym "David Morrison" told FBI agents on January 21, 1987 that a Customs officer had told him Meneses would have been arrested in 1983 or 1984 but for a warning from a corrupt DEA officer; Morrison told the Inspector General he had no first-hand information and that the Customs officer said no such thing.⁶

The Contras

The records agree that Meneses attended Contra meetings in San Francisco and gave some money; they disagree on how much and why. Meneses told the CIA's Inspector General that between 1983 and 1984 his main role was recruiting Nicaraguans for the FDN at the request of Enrique Bermúdez, that he sat on a fundraising committee without leading it, that he gave at most about $3,000 between 1982 and 1984, and that Bermúdez "was very strict and did not want anyone involved in drugs." He told the Justice Department he gave about $3,000 between 1982 and 1985 and denied that he or anyone sold drugs for the Contras.⁵⁹ Webb quoted Meneses as saying he became Bermúdez's "intelligence and security adviser in California," that Bermúdez was a friend since he was a lieutenant, that Edmundo had known Bermúdez since childhood, and that "nobody would join the Contra forces down there without my knowledge and approval." Webb cited Dennis Ainsworth, a San Francisco Contra supporter, telling the FBI in 1987 that Meneses and Bermúdez dealt arms and drugs, and later telling Webb that Meneses "was national. And he was totally protected."⁴

Adolfo Calero told the Inspector General he met Meneses at Contra social events in San Francisco, that Meneses never held an FDN position, that Bermúdez told him Meneses had visited the Contras' first Honduran camp and given the troops a crossbow, and that he would have remembered receiving $500. The Examiner reported on June 23, 1986 that Calero said he had met Meneses as many as four times.⁵ Edgar Chamorro told the Examiner that he and Frank Arana flew to San Francisco in October 1982 to name local FDN leaders, that Meneses stood in the back of the meeting, helped arrange a Los Angeles meeting the next day, and was "one of the main contacts in L.A."; Renato Pena, the self-styled FDN representative in northern California from late 1982 to mid-1984, told federal investigators in 1997 that he heard Meneses telephone Bermúdez in Honduras and relay requests for silencers, crossbows and military equipment.⁵¹⁰ The FDN representative who replaced Pena, Tony Navarro, said Meneses came to a couple of meetings, was never a member and, as far as he knew, gave nothing; the Contra supporter Carlos Rocha put Meneses's gifts at perhaps $5,000; "David Morrison" recalled hearing of a $40,000 donation in 1981 and that Meneses traded weapons for cocaine paste with the Sandinistas.⁵⁶ The Inspector General found Navarro, Rocha and LA CI-1 substantially credible and found no concrete evidence, "such as bank records or drug ledgers," that money from Blandón or Meneses reached the Contras; it concluded that Meneses's reputation preceded him in the exile community, so that people dealing with him "knew or should have known" his money was probably illicit.⁵ The Inspector General also reported that several people familiar with him said he "lacked any political allegiance and would deal with anyone who would provide cocaine at the lowest price," and that Jairo Meneses told prosecutors in 1986 he dealt with leaders of both the Contras and the Sandinistas, getting cocaine from Sandinista officials through Margarita Castana, a niece of the Sandinista commander Bayardo Arce.¹⁵

In April 1986 a DEA analyst interviewed an informant the Inspector General calls SR3, who had worked on the Meneses investigation for three years and was considered extremely reliable; SR3 said Meneses was trafficking both for himself and to raise money for the Contras, that some proceeds bought weapons in Colombia, and that Meneses boasted that "United States agents would assist him." SR3 had no first-hand knowledge beyond what Meneses told him.⁵ Pena told the DEA in the early 1980s that the CIA allowed the Contras to fly drugs into the United States; the Inspector General records he did not repeat it, and told the inspectors he made six to eight trips carrying $600,000 to nearly $1 million from San Francisco to a Colombian called "Carlos" in Los Angeles and returned with six to eight kilograms of cocaine each time, and that "Carlos" said "we are helping your cause with this drug thing."⁵ A CIA domestic station cable of October 22, 1982, relaying an INS informant, reported links between a religious organization and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups involving "an exchange in the US of narcotics for arms" and a planned meeting in Costa Rica; the November 3 follow-up named Pena as one of four FDN representatives; headquarters instructed the station on November 13 not to pursue it because of the involvement of United States persons and said on November 17 that the informant had probably been misinformed.⁵⁹

Webb described Meneses's FDN role as public, with Contra functions at his homes, and cited Cornejo saying Meneses's "heart and soul was into the movement"; he also wrote that Meneses worked with Ronald Lister on weapons for El Salvador and the Contras, with Meneses telling investigators that "if I told you where we got them, governments would fall," and that he introduced Blandón through Donald Barrios and gave him the seminar on selling cocaine.¹⁰ Meneses told the Inspector General that he and Blandón grew up together and were related, that he knew nothing of Blandón's trafficking, and that Blandón "tended to exaggerate his importance."⁵⁹ He told Rosenfeld in 1986 that he had trafficked cocaine for about six months in 1982 and stopped because a relative became ill from it; the Examiner article ran two days before the House vote on the $100 million Contra aid package, Webb wrote, and drew no major newspaper's follow-up.⁵¹¹

The Frogman network

Webb wrote that Meneses's Costa Rican pipeline ran through Horacio Pereira and Troilo Sánchez, who supplied Peruvian cocaine hidden in woven baskets to Julio Zavala and Carlos Cabezas in San Francisco, with profits carried back to Costa Rica and Honduras.⁸ Cabezas told the Inspector General in 1997 that Meneses had no connection to the Zavala organization and was not affiliated with any Contra group; Troilo Sánchez said Pereira and Meneses had trafficked together since before Somoza fell; the FBI's November 8, 1982 teletype named Pereira "the major source of cocaine smuggling from Costa Rica to the United States."¹²¹³ The Senate's Kerry subcommittee reported that Pereira was convicted in Costa Rica in 1985 and sentenced to 12 years; the Justice Department's inspectors were told he was dead.¹³¹⁴

Costa Rica

Jairo's account puts Meneses's flight to Costa Rica in late November 1984; an FBI report put his departure in 1985, when he sold his San Francisco properties; the Inspector General records that a 1984 DEA Costa Rica report already described him as living there and smuggling kilograms.¹ CIA cables reported that on December 5, 1984 a station relayed allegations that Meneses, a trafficker called Tuto Munkel and Sebastian "Guachan" Gonzalez Mendieta were known as the "Nicaraguan Mafia, dealing in drugs, weapons smuggling and laundering of counterfeit money," and that Meneses owned a restaurant in which Gonzalez might have had an interest; a June 11, 1986 cable relayed that in August or September 1984 Meneses asked the Contra leader Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro to help "move drugs" to the United States; the CIA's inspectors found no record that it followed up.⁹¹⁵ An informant told the DEA that Meneses had political protection from Jose Marti Figueres, son of the former Costa Rican president, according to Webb, who also reported that the Costa Rican newspaper La Nación ran a series in December 1986 describing Meneses as a Contra financier hiding in the country.¹⁶¹⁷ A DEA cable of December 3, 1986 reported he had been identified as a major trafficker in the leading Costa Rican newspaper and was afraid of publicity or deportation.¹⁸

DEA source and informant, 1986 to 1990

In July 1986 Meneses went to the DEA's Costa Rica office and told agent Sandalio Gonzalez that he wanted to cooperate; Gonzalez's report listed three reasons: to clear a minor problem with the IRS, to end his drug trafficking, and to help President Ronald Reagan's drug war and "total commitment to free his native land." Meneses named about twenty-one major traffickers, including Blandón, whom he called a Sandinista sympathizer distributing hundred-kilogram lots, and he refused to testify, to be seen near the embassy or to be a registered informant. Gonzalez treated him as a source of information and not an informant, which the DEA's manual defines differently and which kept him out of the DEA's informant database until 1987.¹⁸ Meneses told Webb he had helped the DEA in the case of the February 1985 murder of agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena and met the DEA attaché Robert J. Nieves in late 1985; Webb wrote that the claim could not be corroborated, though Gonzalez's report noted that Meneses "helped the DEA in the past."¹⁶

On October 9, 1986 Gonzalez opened a DEA case on Blandón on Meneses's information. On December 21, 1986 Meneses and DEA CI-1, an experienced informant who claimed to have worked for the CIA years before in Europe and the Soviet Union, left Costa Rica for Los Angeles in a plan Gonzalez filed as "Operation Perico." They met Blandón and Ivan Torres on January 7 and 15, 1987, and DEA CI-1 recorded that the traffickers called Meneses "El Maestro" and treated him as retired from the business two or three years before. The Los Angeles DEA had agreed to the plan on December 23, after the departure; the DEA offices in Riverside and San Francisco and the FBI were not coordinated, and Aukland did not learn of it until January. Gonzalez's later reports quoted Torres on CIA tolerance of Contra trafficking and recorded that Pastora wished to enter cocaine trafficking to funnel money to the Contras and had asked Meneses to find a buyer for a DC-3 at Ilopango.¹⁸ Webb wrote that the informant was a CIA operative known as "Roberto," that the FBI in San Francisco issued warrants for both men and they fled, and that Meneses then said he would never return or testify; the Inspector General records DEA CI-1's claim of a warning from DEA agent Eddie Hill, which Hill denied, and found no FBI warrant in January 1987. The Mexican "Roberto" whom Troilo Sánchez said Meneses introduced to him in 1987 did not resemble the CIA contractor who used the alias Ivan Gómez.¹⁷¹⁸¹⁹

On January 29, 1987 the DEA's San Francisco office cabled that the FBI 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 might have worked for the CIA and that the Iran-Contra independent counsel's inquiry was just beginning. On February 27, 1987 the San Francisco U.S. Attorney's Office wrote that, on assurances from Assistant U.S. Attorney Crossan Andersen in Los Angeles, it would defer prosecution because Meneses would "be required to plead guilty to a cocaine-related charge as part of his cooperation agreement"; no written agreement was found and Andersen and Swenson did not recall one, and the FBI placed its case in inactive status.¹⁸ Webb wrote that recently released Justice Department records show no such cooperation agreement existed.¹⁷ Meneses's conditions for returning, in June 1987, were anonymity, no testimony, contact only with named DEA personnel and restoration of resident status; headquarters refused on June 26 to guarantee that his identity would never come out in court, the Los Angeles case was declined on July 17, and Gonzalez nevertheless registered him as an informant on July 24, 1987, with a form that listed "no pending charges known at this time."⁶¹⁸

In September 1987, on a visa waiver the DEA requested over State Department and CIA information that he was a narcotics kingpin, Meneses went with DEA CI-1 to Miami, where he met Blandón, and to San Francisco, where an FBI informant said he was telling associates he worked for the CIA; they returned in November and December 1987, producing a case against Aparicio Moreno. An INS stop in Miami in September 1988, when the DEA said it had not expected him, ended with his agreeing to leave. Gonzalez moved to Mexico City in January 1988 and agent James Rivera took over, working cases on cocaine from Panama through Costa Rica. Meneses traveled for the DEA to Miami, Los Angeles and Colombia in 1989, and the DEA deactivated him on December 23, 1989 because none of his cases "appears to have any chance of fruition." He was reactivated on May 10, 1990 after reporting that Blandón wanted help moving cocaine from Central America to Florida, paid $500, and closed on August 16, 1990. The DEA's payments totaled $7,377.50 in thirteen payments.²⁶²⁰

Meanwhile the San Francisco FBI's Donald Hale wrote to headquarters in January 1988 that "it became apparent to the FBI that Norwin Meneses was, and may still be, an informant of DEA" and "an informant for the Central Intelligence Agency," on the word of a source who said Meneses was bragging that this was why he was not prosecuted. On April 15, 1988 headquarters relayed the CIA general counsel's reply, dated March 31, 1988, that a search found no information that Meneses was ever employed by or an informant for the CIA and that the CIA had no objection to prosecution.⁹²⁰ A grand jury in San Francisco indicted Meneses on February 8, 1989 on two counts, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, from a 1984 sale to an undercover agent in which he was the source, and possession with intent to distribute, from a 1985 informant's report; the indictment was sealed and a no-bail warrant issued. Swenson wrote that the reason was "upcoming Statute of Limitations problems," and told Agent Stephen Tse in 1991 that the case was "old and very weak." The warrant was entered in the FBI's NCIC database on April 12, 1989; the indictment was unsealed on August 4, 1997.²²⁰ Rivera said he did not know of the warrant when he requested a visa for Meneses that year. On January 22, 1990 the DEA's country attaché Ron Lard told an FBI legal attaché that Meneses was "a very valuable and current active DEA source," though he had been deactivated the previous month; the San Francisco FBI replied on February 12 that it would not have sought the indictment had it known. No extradition request was ever made, and a treaty with Costa Rica did not cover drug offenses.²⁰

Nicaragua, 1990 to 1997

After the Sandinistas lost the 1990 election Meneses returned to Nicaragua, where, Webb wrote, he sought $12 million in confiscated holdings and recruited the former Sandinista intelligence officer Enrique Miranda to reopen his routes through concealed airstrips, including one near Rosita.²¹ In September 1991 a DEA informant told the Guatemala office he was driving a car loaded with cocaine from Managua to Houston for Meneses and Miranda, and DEA cases opened in Guatemala, Houston and Los Angeles; on September 23 Lard told the FBI that Meneses had contacted the DEA again, and agent Federico Villarreal met him two or three times in Managua, without a record of reactivation or payment.²⁰ On November 3, 1991 the Nicaraguan National Police arrested Meneses, his half-brother Luis Enrique Meneses, Miranda, an engineer who concealed the cocaine, Carmelo Lacayo Briceño, and Carlos Francisco Merlo Bermúdez, seizing about 764 kilograms of cocaine and a kilogram of heroin being loaded into vehicles for the United States; a CIA station reported the arrest on November 4 and a DO update called him "the top Cali Cartel trafficker in Nicaragua."²⁹ Webb wrote that police chief Rene Vivas said Meneses told him "he had the backing of a higher power, a superpower" and was working for the United States to get Sandinista officials on drug charges, that Roger Mayorga complained that Villarreal had been meeting him secretly, and that the State Department pressed the Chamorro government to dismiss Vivas.²¹ Webb gave the seizure as 725 kilograms; the Inspector General and the CIA give 764. Villarreal told the Inspector General he did not send Meneses against the Sandinistas and that Meneses may have wanted to be able to say he was still working for the DEA.²

Meneses was convicted on August 16, 1992 and sentenced to 300 months; Miranda received 168 months. The term was later reduced to twelve and a half years, and the U.S. Embassy reported his release on November 14, 1997.² Webb and the journalist Georg Hodel interviewed him at Tipitapa prison in January 1996, where Webb wrote the guards murmured "Señor"; Meneses told the Justice Department's inspectors in April 1997 that he had never dealt drugs, that the Sandinistas set him up and that he never cooperated with any United States agency, and told the CIA's inspectors he never dealt with the CIA.¹⁹²²

Miranda and Ilopango

Miranda testified at the 1991 trial that Meneses financed the Contras with cocaine and that the Salvadoran Air Force landed his shipments at a Texas base. Webb relayed more: that cocaine from Colombia reached Costa Rican strips including the farm of the CIA-linked John Hull, that Marcos Aguado and Meneses supervised loading at Ilopango Airbase onto aircraft of the Salvadoran Air Force and of Southern Air Transport, and that guns went south and drugs north.²³ Miranda told the Inspector General that his knowledge was all from Meneses and Aguado; that he said he had witnessed a shipment in Texas and, pressed, said he had not; that he had been paid about $3,500 a month by the CIA for eight months in 1985 and was accused of being a double agent; and that he had never raised Contra trafficking when the DEA debriefed him in 1996. The Inspector General concluded his allegations "lack substantial force"; the CIA's inspectors said he could provide nothing to corroborate them. Miranda also said the Sandinistas asked him in 1981 to recruit Meneses for their drug operation and that Meneses declined, telling him he was already selling for the Contras with CIA support and that he stopped in September 1985.⁹²⁴

The San Jose Mercury News reported on August 18, 1996 that at his 1991 trial Meneses testified that Aguado had sold him an auto transport trailer, which Meneses's men were stuffing with cocaine when Nicaraguan police arrived; Aguado was not charged, and the newspaper could not reach him. The newspaper also reported Meneses describing Aguado as one of his oldest friends, a Nicaraguan who worked for the Salvadoran air force high command.²⁵ Webb put the trailer's price at $125,000 and wrote that Aguado, interviewed, denied knowing how Meneses would use it.²⁶

CIA records and the arrangement of the claims

The CIA's Inspector General found that Meneses's name first appeared in agency files in 1983 and that its cables described him as the "kingpin of narcotics traffickers in Nicaragua prior to the fall of Somoza" and, in December 1984, as a Miami resident because of "unspecified drug related charges by the Costa Rican government"; that the agency answered the FBI's 1986 and 1988 inquiries and a September 3, 1987 State Department name trace with these reports and a denial of any relationship; and that on December 4, 1995, after the DEA warned that Meneses would claim to have trafficked for the CIA, headquarters asked a station about the "extensive entries" in its traces. The station replied it had nothing substantiating his Contra claims.⁹ The cable reads, in part, "DEA has been alerted that Meneses will undoubtedly claim that he was trafficking narcotics on behalf of CIA to generate money for the Contras."⁹ Webb wrote that Mayorga believed Meneses worked for the CIA in Costa Rica in money laundering through his brother Jaime's currency exchange and fronts including a restaurant across from the embassy, and that Cornejo said Meneses's business "expanded terrifically" while he was supposedly a DEA informant.¹⁶ The Inspector General reported that the FBI's San Francisco source and DEA agents heard Meneses claim CIA ties, that the CIA denied them every time it was asked, and that "some rumor and speculation" was "largely fueled by his own bragging."²

The San Francisco DEA agent accused in 1985 told the Inspector General that Meneses, whom he met in 1982, called himself "a revolutionary and not interested in drug trafficking," and said he had the "impression" Meneses was moving guns for the Contras; the agent asked the CIA in San Francisco, which denied any connection.⁶ DEA CI-1 told the inspectors that Meneses said in 1986 or 1987 that when the Contra revolution began he met "American agents" he assumed were with the CIA and showed them how to cross into and out of Nicaragua.⁵

Family

Webb listed the nephews Guillermo, Jaime and Jairo Meneses as Bay Area traffickers, Jairo as the son of Edmundo and Blandón's partner in Nicaraguan hotels and casinos; the Justice Department's inspectors could not locate Jairo and received an unconfirmed report that he was killed in Nicaragua in 1991 or 1992.⁵¹⁶ Webb described Rafael Cornejo as a Bay Area distributor for Meneses since the mid-1970s, convicted of tax evasion in 1985 and indicted for cocaine trafficking in 1992, against whom Blandón later cooperated.³²⁷ Webb listed Marcos Aguado as a CIA-trained pilot and business associate; the CIA's Inspector General recorded that Miranda's allegations about Aguado could not be supported.¹⁵¹⁶