CONTRA-COCAINE -- JUSTICE DENIED

New evidence, contained in a Justice Department report, establishes
that the Reagan administration knew from almost the outset that
cocaine traffickers permeated the Nicaraguan contra army, yet did
little to expose or to stop the contra-connected criminals.

The report by the Justice Department's inspector general reveals
example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses
disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and
even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.

Ironically, Inspector General Michael Bromwich then joined a long
parade of government investigators who shied away from obvious
conclusions presented by the evidence. In his report's release on July
23, he stressed that "the Department of Justice's investigative
efforts [in the 1980s] were not affected by anyone's suspected ties to
the contras."

The next day, The Washington Post heralded the findings with the
headline, "Justice Dept. IG Rebuts CIA-Crack Allegations." [WP, July
24, 1998]

Still, a close reading of Bromwich's investigation shows that it
uncovered powerful new evidence revealing how consistently the Reagan
administration made the contras' image and need for money a priority
over stopping the smuggling of cocaine into the United States.

Bromwich's report focused on the West Coast contra-drug operations, in
response to Gary Webb's 1996 "Dark Alliance" series in the San Jose
Mercury News. But even from Bromwich's limited review, the evidence
indicates that the contras and their supporters ran several parallel
drug smuggling operations during the 1980s.

The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information
about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three
occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened
the contras.

The new report dates the first contra-drug links back to the start of
the war against Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government in the early
1980s. The record then documents Washington's tolerance of
drug-implicated contras and their allies through at least the middle
of the decade.

As late as 1989, U.S. agents were still frustrating contra-cocaine
investigations as they spirited drug-indicted contra backer John Hull
out of Costa Rica so he could avoid trial there on narcotics and other
charges. [See "John Hull's Great Escape."]

The Meneses Network

According to the report, one early contra-drug network centered around
longtime Nicaraguan drug smuggler Norwin Meneses, who was a focus of
Webb's series.

A confidential informant, identified only as "DEA CI-1," said that at
the start of the contra war, Meneses taught "American agents" how to
penetrate Nicaragua. The informant added that Meneses and his cohorts,
Oscar Danilo Blandon and Ivan Torres, also contributed drug profits to
the contras.

But DEA CI-1 said the trio distinguished between selling drugs for the
contras (which they denied) and donating money "to help some of their
contra friends and acquaintances, such as [contra leaders Eden]
Pastora and [Adolfo] Calero," (which they acknowledged). In Bromwich's
report, the informant's statement received multiple
corroboration.

Renato Pena, a money-and-drug courier for Meneses, said that in the
early 1980s, the CIA was allowing the contras to fly drugs into the
United States, sell them and keep the proceeds. Pena, who also was the
northern California representative for the CIA-backed FDN contra army,
said the drug trafficking was forced on the contras by the inadequate
CIA assistance provided in the war's early years. That money, ranging
from $19 million to $24 million annually, was "peanuts" and pushed the
contras into the arms of cocaine traffickers, said Pena.

Pena indicated that the sums transferred by Meneses to the contras
were large, far more than the thousands of dollars which some other
witnesses said they observed. Pena said that a Colombian contact known
as "Carlos" once told him that "We're helping your cause with this
drug thing. ... We are helping your organization a lot."

Meneses also had a military supply role. Pena said he was present when
Meneses called FDN commander Enrique Bermudez and took orders for
contra military equipment. According to Pena, Meneses stayed close to
Bermudez from 1981-82 through the middle of the decade, while Bermudez
was an important CIA asset leading the largest contra army, the FDN.

Pena asserted that Bermudez knew about the drug dealing -- and
Bermudez clearly had reason to know. Meneses had been a notorious drug
trafficker in Nicaragua prior to the Sandinista revolution in 1979.

But other witnesses were less certain about Bermudez's precise
knowledge. Meneses's cohort, Blandon, has claimed that Bermudez might
not have known the source of their money. However, Blandon described a
1982 meeting in Honduras during which Bermudez instructed Meneses to
raise money for the contra cause, with the advice that "the ends
justify the means."

In the new report, Bromwich finessed the question of Bermudez's
knowledge. "Meneses's reputation had preceded him in the small
Nicaraguan exile community and ... people who dealt with Meneses knew
or should have known that money coming from him was likely from an
illicit source," the inspector general wrote.

Much of the Meneses information from DEA CI-1 and Pena was
corroborated by Meneses's nephew, Jairo. After his arrest in 1984,
Jairo Meneses told the Drug Enforcement Administration that he had
asked Pena to help transport drug money to the contras. Jairo Meneses
added that both Norwin Meneses and Blandon told him they were raising
money for the contras. Jairo Meneses added that his uncle dealt
directly with Bermudez.

Wicker Baskets

Running parallel to the Meneses's operation was another contra drug
network headed by Julio Zavala and Carlos Cabezas. Cabezas said he
joined this "contra cocaine" enterprise in December 1981 when he
traveled to Costa Rica for meetings with Zavala and two other drug
figures closely linked to the contra operations, Horacio Pereira and
Troilo Sanchez. Troilo Sanchez was the brother of Aristedes Sanchez,
one of the FDN's directors.

Cabezas said Horacio Pereira and Troilo Sanchez described themselves
as contra operatives who were raising money through drug sales.
According to the scheme, Cabezas said, cocaine from Peru was packed
into hollow reeds which were woven into tourist baskets and then
transported to Costa Rica or Honduras. From there, smugglers carried
the baskets to the United States. Cabezas claimed that Fernando
Sanchez, another of Troilo's brothers and the FDN representative in
Guatemala, assisted in the deliveries.

Once the baskets arrived in San Francisco, they went to Zavala for
sale of the cocaine, Cabezas said. But Zavala proved incompetent, and
by spring 1982, Pereira had turned to Cabezas to manage the drug
money. Cabezas estimated that between December 1981 and December 1982,
he made more than 20 trips to Central America as he carried between $1
million and $1.5 million to Pereira and Troilo Sanchez.

Cabezas said he personally witnessed some money paid to buy food for
contra troops and their families near Danli, Honduras. Cabezas claimed
that on two other occasions, he took $40,000 to $50,000 to Miami where
he gave the money to Aristedes Sanchez.

Another U.S. informant, designated "FBI Source 1," backed up much of
Cabezas's story. Source 1 said Cabezas and Zavala were helping the
contras with proceeds from two drug-trafficking operations, one
smuggling Colombian cocaine and the other shipping cocaine through
Honduras.

To secure the cocaine franchise, Cabezas and Zavala had to agree to
give 50 percent of their profits to the contras, said Source 1. He
added that revenues from the cocaine sales then were taken to Honduras
by Horacio Pereira and Fernando Sanchez to support the contras. The
source also asserted that some of the cocaine was smuggled into the
United States in the reeds of rattan chairs.

Seeking to discredit this batch of contra cocaine allegations,
Bromwich cited Source 1's reference to "rattan chairs" as a
contradiction to Cabezas's claim about cocaine in "wicker baskets."
Both rattan chairs and wicker baskets, however, use hollow reeds in
their construction.

Frogman Case

In 1983, the West Coast drug networks began to run afoul of the law.
Fifty drug traffickers, many Nicaraguan exiles, including Cabezas and
Zavala, were arrested in the so-called Frogman case, so named because
some smugglers were caught in wet suits carrying cocaine ashore near
San Francisco. But the DEA avoided giving attention to the
conspirators' political affiliations.

By summer 1984, however, the CIA had grown nervous that the Frogman
case might expose connections to the contras in Central America.
Contras in Costa Rica had claimed in a letter to the federal court
that $36,020 seized from drug defendant Zavala actually belonged to
them.

As word spread inside the Reagan administration, CIA headquarters
protested planned depositions of contra figures in Costa Rica.
Assistant U.S. attorney Mark Zanides said that in mid-1984, he was
approached by CIA counsel Lee Strickland. In an "opaque conversation,"
Zanides recalled, Strickland said the CIA would be "immensely
grateful" if the depositions were dropped -- and they were.

The trip to Costa Rica was cancelled, the money was returned to Zavala
and the government explained the move publicly as a simple budgetary
decision. But the secret of the CIA's intervention soon reached
Central America.

On Aug. 17, 1984, the CIA's station in Costa Rica messaged CIA
headquarters with news that the U.S. consul was saying that the trip
was "cancelled by 'the funny farm,'" which the consul meant as "a
reference to CIA."

On Aug. 22, CIA counsel Strickland wrote internally that "I believe
the station must be made aware of the potential for disaster. While
the [contra-drug] allegations might be entirely false, there are
sufficient factual details which would cause certain damage to our
image and program in Central America."

Two days later, CIA headquarters sent a cable to the Costa Rica
station acknowledging the CIA's role in derailing the depositions. "We
can only guess as to what other testimony may have been forthcoming,"
the cable explained.

Recalling those maneuvers, a retired CIA official, identified as "Ms.
Jones," told Bromwich's investigators that in 1984, the "burning
issue" in the Zavala case was the "explosive" potential for bad
publicity if the drug case implicated the contras. "What would make
better headlines?" she asked.

Though the evidence of CIA obstruction was clear, Bromwich only mildly
objected. He expressed "concern" that "the CIA considered the
potential press coverage of a contra-drug link to be sufficient reason
to attempt to influence the decision to return the money to Zavala."

The Morales Network

In fall 1984, CIA was finding other slithery problems when it turned
over contra rocks. On Oct. 25, 1984, CIA reported that Southern Front
contra leader Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro was discussing a cooperation
agreement with a major drug trafficker in Miami.

Under the deal, the FRS, a contra army run by Eden Pastora, would
provide "operational facilities," meaning airstrips, in Costa Rica and
Nicaragua. The FRS also would get documentation from the Costa Rican
government to "facilitate the transportation of narcotics."

The CIA, which had stormy relations with Pastora, did pass this
intelligence to the Justice Department. On Nov. 9, the CIA identified
the trafficker as Jorge Morales, a Colombian drug smuggler linked to
the Medellin cartel.

According to the CIA: "On Oct. 16, 1984, Morales reportedly turned
over to FRS two helicopters and a DC-3 aircraft. The agreement between
Morales and FRS also includes training for two FRS pilots in Miami,
who in addition to their FRS military duties, will fly narcotics from
Colombia to FRS-provided landing fields in Costa Rica and Nicaragua
and then on to the United States."

On Nov. 5, CIA reported FRS pilot Gerardo Duran was to make a flight
for Morales from Miami to the Bahamas. Later that month, the CIA
apparently learned Pastora was set to meet with Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro
and Roberto "Tito" Chamorro -- and Morales -- on Nov. 29 in Miami.

The CIA added that the "presence of Duran in Miami indicates that a
narcotics flight is scheduled and plans for the flight will probably
be made during the meetings between the FRS officers and Morales."

However, the CIA supplied the information on Dec. 5, a week after the
scheduled meeting. As Bromwich noted, if the tip was received by Nov.
28, "the CIA should have notified the DEA immediately [so authorities]
could have tried to coordinate the interception of that flight."

Whether the CIA was tardy or not, the DEA did not appear eager to
pursue contra drug leads anyway. DEA later complained that the CIA's
source inside the Morales operation "had not furnished actionable
information sufficient to predicate initiation of a criminal
investigation." An internal CIA cable explained that the source was
"frightened for his life and refused to cooperate with" the DEA.

Years later in prison, Morales agreed to cooperate with the DEA and
told how his contra-drug conduit had developed. He said he first
"associated with individuals alleged to have contra affiliations" in
June 1983. Then, members of the Medellin cartel met at Opa Locka
Airport in Florida with a contra group flown in by contra pilots
Marcos Aguado and Gerardo Duran. Morales said CIA-connected rancher
John Hull flew to Opa Locka with the group but did not participate in
the meeting.

The next year, in May 1984, Morales said he was contacted by Marta
Healy, ex-wife of Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro and the widow of a Morales
pilot. She wanted money, pilots and aircraft for the contras and, in
exchange, offered to help Morales with his then-pending drug
indictment. Morales said she promised intervention from her
"high-level CIA contacts, Octaviano Cesar and Popo Chamorro."

Subsequently, Morales said Cesar, another prominent contra with CIA
ties, made the request more specific: move weapons for the contras
through Hull's ranch in northern Costa Rica, give specialized training
to contra pilots and donate $100,000 to Chamorro's contra group.

Morales said he countered with an offer of money, a safehouse in
Miami, a boat, a helicopter, two airplanes and 10,000 gallons of fuel.
In return for that help, Cesar was to supply pilots for marijuana
smuggling and to "clear up" Morales's indictment.

With a supposed deal in place, Morales said he arranged for weapons to
be airlifted to Hull's ranch, with the first shipments in the summer
of 1984. Cesar and Chamorro also let Morales transport cocaine from
Hull's ranch to Colombians in Florida, Morales declared. Morales said
the flights continued into 1986, when he was arrested.

(Cesar and Chamorro have denied knowledge about Morales's drug
business.)

Founding Fathers

In the meantime, the CIA's contra war was running into other troubles.
Reports filtered back from Central America of contras killing
civilians, raping women and torturing captives. Yet, the contras
failed to occupy any Nicaraguan territory and the CIA mounted its own
operations to create the appearance of contra competence. When the CIA
mined Nicaragua's harbors in 1984, an international furor erupted and
Congress cut off all U.S. military support.

Still, President Reagan pushed ahead. He hailed the contras as "the
moral equals of our Founding Fathers," secretly sought out
third-country support and arranged for White House aide Oliver North
to funnel supplies to the contras. Reagan stepped up pressure, too, on
Congress to restore CIA aid.

On the public relations front, however, news kept slipping out about
contra misdeeds. In December 1985, Brian Barger and I wrote the first
story about contra drugs for The Associated Press. At the time, State
Department spokesman Charles Redman told other reporters that "we are
not aware of any evidence to support those charges."

The story, however, prompted an inquiry by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.
The DEA began asking informants about contra-drug connections. Soon,
more corroboration was pouring in, as reflected in Bromwich's report.

In 1986, DEA developed evidence against Gerardo Duran, a contra pilot
working with Morales. DEA reported that "intelligence information
received by the Costa Rica Country Office over the past several years
indicates that [Duran] has been involved in facilitating the
transshipment of hundred-kilogram quantities of cocaine from South
America to the United States through Costa Rica.

"Evidence gathered [by the Miami Field Division] shows that during the
month of January, 1986, [Duran] was in charge of a crew which loaded
over 400 kilos of cocaine into an aircraft in Costa Rica piloted by a
DEA [confidential informant]. This cocaine was flown to the Bahamas
and part of the load was subsequently smuggled into the United States."

The DEA, however, did not pursue the case very aggressively. It chose
not to indict Duran in Miami "because he is Costa Rican and cannot be
extradited from Costa Rica to the U.S." (Duran was arrested in Costa
Rica in 1987 and convicted in 1992.)

The DEA also heard more corroboration of the West Coast allegations
about Meneses and his contra links. One informant, "LA CI-1," told the
DEA that after the Sandinistas took power, Meneses hosted early
meetings of the contras and cultivated a relationship with Bermudez as
a way to re-establish the drug network that Meneses had lost with the
change in governments.

In April 1986, another "reliable" informant, designated "SR3," told
the DEA that Meneses was an FDN member who had trafficked in drugs
both for his own profit and to raise money for the contras.

SR3 himself had worked in the drug organization until Meneses fled to
Costa Rica in 1985. SR3 confirmed, too, that Pena was a major contra
fund-raiser in San Francisco and was responsible for sending drug
money to the contras.

According to SR3, Meneses used family members to smuggle drugs
proceeds from San Francisco through New Orleans and into Central
America for the contras. SR3 added that some of the money went to buy
weapons for the contras in Colombia.

(The contras did maintain a major logistical base in New Orleans,
which was the focus of corruption complaints by contra backers,
including allegations of drug smuggling. The base was run by Mario
Calero, the brother of FDN political chief Adolfo Calero.)

CIA Evidence

The DEA also learned about other cocaine pipelines that directly
implicated the CIA.

On March 20, 1986, DEA's Costa Rica office quoted a source as saying
that contra pilot Carlos Amador was planning a cocaine flight from
Costa Rica through El Salvador to Miami. The source said Amador
possibly was picking up the cocaine in Hangar No. 4 at Ilopango
Airport in El Salvador.

The cable requested that the DEA's Guatemala office, which covered El
Salvador, should "ask Salvadoran police to investigate Amador, and any
person(s) and/or companies associated with Hangar No. 4." The problem
for the CIA, however, was that it controlled Hangar No. 4. The CIA had
allocated space there to North's contra resupply effort.

The DEA cable was followed by a cable, dated April 23, 1986, from the
CIA station in Costa Rica to the station in El Salvador, asking about
Amador and the drug-trafficking allegations. Two days later, the CIA's
station in El Salvador urged that the DEA halt any inquiries about
Hangar No. 4.

The CIA cable stated that Amador had stopped flying for the contras in
early 1985, though he had worked for the FDN afterwards in Honduras.
While sharing the suspicions about Amador's drug trafficking, the
cable asserted that Amador only transported military supplies to
Hangar No. 4.

"Based on that information, [El Salvador] Station would appreciate
[Costa Rica] Station advising [DEA] not to make any inquiries to
anyone re: hangar no. 4 at Ilopango since only legitimate [CIA]
supported operations were conducted from this facility. FYI," the
cable continued. "Station air operations moved from hangar no. 4 into
hangar no. 5 which Station still occupies."

The CIA's request apparently did slow the investigation. But on June
10, 1986, the CIA's El Salvador station cabled the Costa Rica station
with news that a U.S. embassy officer in San Salvador had requested
more information about Amador.

"The embassy officer said that if Amador is connected to [the CIA],
[the DEA] will leave him alone, but if not they [the DEA] intend to go
after him," the cable read. A week later, CIA headquarters denied any
"association" with Amador. But the DEA's pursuit of drug-trafficking
in El Salvador would not prove easy.

Celerino Castillo was the DEA officer responsible for El Salvador. On
June 23, 1986, Castillo reported debriefing an informant known as
"STG6," who knew Amador and other alleged traffickers.

STG6 said Amador used Salvadoran military credentials to land at
Ilopango without the normal Customs search. STG6 added that Amador
smuggled arms to the contras and cocaine from El Salvador to Miami. By
fall, Castillo learned that a U.S. government agency, later identified
as the CIA, had "obtained a U.S. visa" for Amador.

While the DEA slowly pieced together the contra-drug puzzle, the
Reagan administration kept the lid on the new evidence and even
planted stories in major newspapers dismissing the contra-drug
allegations as fiction. By containing the contra-drug scandal in
mid-1986, President Reagan did win congressional approval for renewed
CIA contra funding, the $100 million annual amount that contra backers
had always claimed was needed to fund the war properly. [For details,
see The Consortium, July 23, 1998, or iF Magazine, July-August 1997.]

Drug-Sniffing Dogs

During this time period, the chief of the Salvadoran Air Force
responded to DEA's growing suspicions about Ilopango drug trafficking
by asking U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr to place drug-sniffing dogs at
the airfield. Corr rebuffed the request on the grounds that the
evidence did not justify the expense. But the allegations continued.

In 1986, DEA agent Castillo began looking into the mysterious
activities of a former U.S. military official, named Walter Grasheim,
who operated out of San Salvador. Informant STG6 had identified
Grasheim as "head of smuggling operations" at Ilopango.

"Grasheim owns and operates Hangar #4," alleged the informant who
worked at the airport. "Said hangar is utilized by international
cocaine and arms traffickers. Hangar #4 is also utilized by the Contra
Movement in El Salvador."

On Oct. 27, Castillo opened a file on Grasheim, as part of a larger
investigation of drug trafficking at hangars four and five. Castillo's
investigative report identified 13 other "documented narcotics
traffickers" who used the hangars.

The suspicions led to a search of Grasheim's house, which uncovered
plastic explosives, grenades, sniper equipment, silencers, anti-tank
rockets, automatic rifles and night-vision gear, but only small
amounts of marijuana. Grasheim denied any drug role and explained that
he had been hired by Salvadoran authorities as a military adviser.

On Oct. 30, Castillo briefed Corr, who knew Grasheim when he worked
with the embassy's Military Group. Officially, Corr "welcomed any
investigation on Grasheim but ... asked ... that the investigation be
conducted in a very discreet manner," Castillo reported.

Unknown to Castillo, however, Corr went behind the agent's back. The
ambassador sent a "back-channel" cable to the State Department asking
DEA headquarters to review Castillo's investigation. DEA headquarters
responded by judging the evidence inadequate and closing down the
Grasheim file only days after the inquiry had started.

Suddenly, Castillo was under the embassy's watchful eye. In an
interview with Bromwich's investigators, Corr said Castillo resisted
the orders to drop the case and continued "to snoop around the airport
and make allegations." Corr warned Castillo that unless he had more
evidence, he should stop this "witch hunt."

Missing Briefing

The fall of 1986 brought more bad news for the contra operations. The
Iran-contra scandal broke wide open, after one of North's supply
planes was shot down inside Nicaragua and a Beirut magazine disclosed
secret U.S. arms sales to Iran, a project which generated profits that
North diverted into contra accounts.

Despite this evidence of other illicit contra fund-raising, the major
Iran-contra investigations steered clear of any comprehensive
examination of contra-drug trafficking.

According to an internal CIA memo, the agency's Central American Task
Force chief Alan Fiers told congressional intelligence committees that
the CIA would brief the DEA on the CIA's information about contra-drug
trafficking. But that meeting apparently never happened.

Bromwich's report stated that "neither the DEA nor the CIA [Office of
the Inspector General] could locate any record of any such
discussions. Alan Fiers refused to be interviewed by the [Justice
inspector general]. In response to our letter to him, he called us and
said in a short conversation that he recalled only one instance when
the CIA passed contra and narcotics-related information to the DEA" --
regarding Jorge Morales.

Sen. Kerry's investigation confronted similar stonewalls in 1987-88.
It also suffered from Republican hostility and the mockery of the
mainstream news outlets. But still Kerry determined that a number of
cocaine smuggling operations had meshed with the contra war. [For
details, see the Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, "Drugs,
Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy," Dec. 1988, or Cocaine Politics by
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall.]

In 1989, with the Iran-contra scandal provoking more congressional
restrictions on contra aid, the DEA soon got wind of more alleged
contra-cocaine shipments.

In an interview with Bromwich's investigators, DEA supervisor Thomas
deTriquet recalled that a reliable informant had passed on information
about drug dealers using contra pilots to transport cocaine through
Hangar No. 5, the one controlled by the CIA.

When Castillo and deTriquet went to Ilopango to investigate, however,
a CIA officer turned them away, the report said. The DEA agents then
went to the U.S. embassy where the CIA chief of station assured them
that there was no drug activity at Hangar No. 5.

Robert Stia, DEA country attache in Guatemala, complained to
headquarters that "DEA cannot develop the most important information,
that relating to those allegations and intelligence in regards to
Ilopango Air Force Base."

Stia also reported that in March 1989 a confidential source relayed
information from a Salvadoran Air Force officer that the Salvadoran
government and the CIA were running large shipments of cocaine through
air bases at La Union and San Miguel in El Salvador. The goal again
was to raise money for the contras, the source claimed.

Stia noted, too, that the U.S. Embassy objected to Castillo's
involvement because of his reputation for always "digging up things."
Stia said the deputy ambassador had put "stringent controls" on
handling Castillo's "country clearance" for entering El Salvador.
Castillo was soon hounded out of the DEA.

Summing up this recurring contra-drug defensiveness, Bromwich grasped
the obvious: "We have no doubt that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy were
not anxious for the DEA to pursue its investigation at the airport.
The DEA's [first] investigation of drug trafficking activities at
Ilopango was closed in 1986, perhaps with the intervention of the U.S.
Embassy.

"Moreover, as reflected in the CIA's cables in the Amador case, the
CIA requested that the DEA not investigate its operations at Ilopango,
and the CIA vouched that they were legitimate CIA-supported
operations. It is also clear that there was intelligence, although not
hard evidence, that some contra resupply pilots were trafficking in
drugs."

At the end of the 1980s, the contras still were failing militarily.
But the Sandinistas lost at the polls in 1990 and the war ended. Some
contra-connected drug traffickers, such as Norwin Meneses, returned to
Nicaragua where they reestablished their drug networks but finally got
caught. In prison, Meneses continued to profess his innocence.

Some witnesses, such as Jorge Morales, were deemed credible in later
DEA investigations of non-contra drug trafficking, though dismissed as
not credible when they implicated the contras. Morales's non-contra
DEA cooperation won him early release from prison. He returned to
Colombia, where he died in a car crash in 1991.

No official from the Reagan administration was ever held legally
accountable for contra-drug trafficking. Most Washington journalists
were content to file the contra-cocaine allegations away in the
category of baseless "conspiracy theories."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry