QUERY RE ALLEGATION THAT NICARAGUAN REBELS WERE LINKED TO DRUG TRAFFICKING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B01390R000400580060-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 60
• Publication Date: January 13, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

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OLL 86-0013
6 January 1986
MEMORANDUM FOR: Chief, EPS
VIA: Chief, OLL/Liaison Division
FROM:
OLL/Liaison Division
SUBJECT: Newspaper Articles
1. Mr. Edward Levine, SSCI staffer, has requested
comments on the two attached newspaper articles. Regarding
the 27 December 1985 Washington Post article entitled
"Nicaragua Rebels Linked to Drug Trafficking." Mr. Levine
would like Agency comments on the charge that the contras are
receiving monies from drug trafficking.
2. Mr. Levine would like to know whether the comments
made in Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta article entitled
"Iran Trains Terrorists to Hijack, Kidnap" in the 6 January
1986 Washington Post are true.
3. Mr. Levine would like a quick response to the 6
January article. A reply would be appreciated by 9 January.
A reply on the 27 December article would be appreciated by 14
January.
Distribution:
Original - Addressee
1 - 0 Chrono
OLL Record
1 - OLL Chrono wo/att
STAT
STAT
STAT
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Nicaragua Rebels Linked to Drug Tratticki
U.S. Investigators Say Contras Help Transport Cocaine in Costa Rica
By Brian Barger and Robert Parry
Assod.,tcd Pro..
Nicaraguan rebels operating in northern
Costa Rica have engaged in cocaine traffick-
ing, in part to help finance their war against
Nicaragua's leftist government, according
to U.S. investigators and American volun-
teers who work with the rebels.
The smuggling operations included re-
fueling planes at clandestine airstrips and
helping transport cocaine to other Costa
Rican points for shipment to the United
States, U.S. law enforcement officials and
the volunteers said.
These sources, who refused to be iden-
tified by name, said the smuggling involves
individuals from the largest of the U.S.-
backed counterrevolutionary, or' contra,
groups, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force
(FDN) and the Revolutionary Democratic
Alliance (ARDE), as well as a splinter group
known as M3.
An M3 leader, Sebastian Gonzalez Men-
diola, was indicted in Costa Rica for cocaine
trafficking a year ago. No other contra lead-
ers have been charged.
A new national intelligence estimate, a
secret Central Intelligence Agency-pre-
pared analysis on narcotics trafficking, al-
leges that one of ARDE's top commanders
loyal to ARDE leader Eden Pastora used
cocaine profits this year to buy a $250,000
arms shipment and a, helicopter, according
to a U.S. government official in Washington.
Bosco Matamoros, the FDN spokesman
here, and Levy Sanchez, a Miami-based
spokesman for Pastore, denied that their
groups participated in drug smuggling.
[Matamoros said the charges were a
"dirty and repulsive insinuation against our
movement that impugns our integrity and
our morality."]
vice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and
Costa Rica's Public Security Ministry, as
well as rebels and Americans who work
with them. The sources, inside government
and out, spoke on,condition that they not be
identified by name.
Five American rebel supporters said they
were willing to talk about the drug smug-
gling because they feared the trafficking
would discredit the war effort.
The five-including four who trained
rebels in Costa Rican base camps-said
they discovered the contra smuggling in-
volvement early this year, after Cuban
airstrips in northern Costa Rica to transship
cocaine, but has not examined the political
affiliations of those involved. Dougherty
said the DEA focuses its Latin American
enforcement efforts on the cocaine-produc-
ing nations of South America, rather than
on countries, such as Costa Rica, that are
used in shipping the drugs to the United
States.
Earlier this year, President Reagan ac-
cused the leftist government of Nicaragua
of "exporting drugs to poison our youth"
after a Nicaraguan government employe,
Federico Vaughan, was indicted by a federal
grand jury in. Miami.
But Dougherty said DEA investigators
are not sure whether Sandinista leaders
were involved.
Rep. Samuel Gejdenson (D-Conn.), a
member of the House Foreign Affairs Com-
mittee, called on the administration last
week to investigate the allegations "with
the same vigor that they would devote to
charges of left-wing drug trafficking.
"After all, the victims of narcotics smug-
gling are not able to differentiate between
left-wing and right-wing cocaine," he said.
State Department deputy spokesman
Charles E. Redman *said the United States
"actively opposes drug trafficking" and that
the DEA is not conducting any investigation
of the charges.
"We are not aware of any evidence to
support those charges," Redman added.
The U.S.-backed rebels, fighting to over-
throw the Nicaraguan government, operate
from base camps in Honduras to Nicara-
gua's north and from Costa Rica, to its
south.
Contra leaders claim a combined force of
20,000 men, although some U.S. officials
say the actual number is much lower. The
Costa Rica-based rebel groups - are smaller
and more poorly financed than those in
" ... The victims of
narcotics smuggling are
not able to differentiate
between left-wing and
right-wing cocaine."
-Rep. Samuel Gejdenson
Americans were recruited to help the Hon-
duran-based FDN open a Costa Rican front.
These American rebel backers said two
Cuban Americans used armed rebel troops
to guard cocaine at clandestine airfields in
northern Costa Rica.
They identified the Cuban Americans as
members of the 2506 Brigade, an anti-Cas-
tro group that participated in the 1961 Bay
of Pigs attack on Cuba. Several also said
they supplied information about the smug-
gling to U.S. investigators.
One American rebel backer with close
ties to the Cuban-American smugglers said
that in one ongoing operation the cocaine is
unloaded from planes at rebel airstrips and
Cornelius J. Dougherty, spokesman for Honduras. taken to an Atlantic Coast port where it is
the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Associated Press reporters interviewed concealed on shrimp boats that are later
Three U.S. officials who monitor drug
traffic from Colombia through Central
America to the United States said they be-
gan receiving reports about contra involve-
ment in cocaine shipments in 1984, about
the time Congress cut off CIA funding to
the rebels. Each official said he considered
the reports "reliable."
Earlier this year, a Nicaraguan rebel
leader in Costa Rica told U.S. authorities
that his group was being paid $50,000 by
Colombian traffickers for help with a 100-
kilo cocaine shipment and that the money
would go "for the cause" of fighting the Ni-
caraguan government, one U.S. law en-
forcement official said.
The plan called for the rebels to guard a
clandestine airstrip where a cocaine-laden
plane from Colombia would land. The rebels
would then take the drugs "to a stash house
in San Jose," where they were to guard it
for three days until it was picked up, the
investigator said.
The rebel leader asked for $50,000 from
the U.S. Embassy in exchange for turning in
the Colombian smugglers. The deal was
rejected, the investigator said, adding that
the smuggling arrangement was later com-
pleted without arrests.
M3 leader Gonzalez, known as
"Guachan," was charged with cocaine traf-
ficking on Nov. 26, 1984, by Costa Rican
authorities in the northern town of Liberia.
The indictment describes Gonzalez as "el
maximo dirigente"-or top leader-of M3,
part of the ARDE political coalition. Instead
of facing the charge, Gonzalez fled to Pan-
ama.
A U.S. investigator said Dr. Hugo
Spadafora, a former Panamanian deputy
health minister who fought with the Ni-
caraguan rebels, met secretly with a senior
American law enforcement official in early
September and outlined allegations linking
contra drug trafficking and Gonzalez to a
prominent Panamanian official.
After announcing plans to publicize those
charges, Spadafora was seized on Sept. 13
by Panamanian soldiers as be crossed the
border by bus from Costa Rica, according to
eyewitnesses.
Spadafora's headless body was found in-
the DEA is aware that drug traffickers use officials from the DEA. the Customs Ser- unloaded in the Miami area. side Costa Rica in a mad bag a day later.
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r
JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN ATTA
Iran Trains Terrorists to Hijack, Kidnap
ran is training terrorists to hijack airliners and
kidnap hostages, with special vengeance toward
Americans. This underground warfare, directed
by the lraman foreign ministry, has accounted for
the deaths of at least 262 Americans since 1983.
Encouraged by the absence of an effective U.S.
response, the Iranians not only remain unrepentant
but have made Americans their principal targets.
U.S. intelligence has pinpointed two
hijacker-training centers in Iran: one near
Mehrabad airport outside Tehran, the other near
the holy city of Qom. We've seen secret satellite
photos, which show commercial airliners parked at
the training camps; they are used by the recruits as
"hands-on' instruction material in the methods of
hijacking modern airliners.
The training courses include familiarization with
the instruments, fuel consumption and other
feature- o` Boeing 727s and 747s, as well as Airbus
300s. Some of the planes are on loan from
Mehrabad airport during "down time" between
international flights.
Part of the training is in the psychology of
hijacking and hostage treatment. The Iranian
instructors teach a cynical mix of techniques that
alternate between brutality to Americans (to instill
fear in the captive passengers) and occasional small
kindnesses (to prevent any desperate resistance by
the hostages).
The Central Intelligence Agency has no clear
idea how many potential hijackers are taking the
Deadly training, but a Saudi Arabian intelligence
report, which the CIA considers credible, estimates
that 55 student terrorists studied hijacking in Iran
i
in late 1984 alone. They included Iranians, Iraqis,
Tunisians, Moroccans and Egyptians-and at least
one Saudi. The report identified the chief instructor
as a Palestinian guerrilla who had participated in
airliner hijackings.
At present, there are about half a dozen other
terrorist training camps in Iran. Several are
reserved for foreigners recruited by the Ayatollah
Khomeini's agents from among Moslem students
and workers throughout the Middle East, Asia,
Western Europe and even the United States.
Students at the camps get three months'
indoctrination in Moslem fundamentalist ideology
as well as in the nuts and bolts of terrorist
operations, including construction and placement of
sophisticated demolition devices.
The CIA has also received detailed reports of an
estimated 30 groups of female terrorists taking
similar training at segregated camps in Tehran,
Qom, Isfahan and Behechtieh. One alumna
reportedly effused to her fellow terrorists: "Our
Imam Khomeini has authorized us to participate in
the holy war against the atheist enemies of the
Islamic Republic. We are the kamikazes of Islam.
We will each die after killing a hundred
enemies-where in the world is not important."
The terrorists trained in Iran's 'boot camps"
share one trait: devotion to Khomeini, whose
scowling image glares at Iranians from every wall
poster and television set. The ayatollah refers to
the United States as "the Great Satan" and inspires
fellow fanatics with this weird call to arms: "All
Moslems must rise up and conquer their fear of
death so that they can conquer the whole world!"
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