Part 14: Dark Alliance..."Things are moving all arounds us" ..."That matter, if true, would be classified"

Dark Alliance...The CIA,The Contra's and The Crack Cocaine Explosion
By Gary Webb 
Part II

25 

"Things are moving 

all arounds us" 

I was swept into Ross's decade-long relationship with Danilo Blandón in late September 1995, two months into my investigation and six months after Ross's arrest. Quite unexpectedly, my tipster's allegations about the CIA, the Contras, and cocaine had led me to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, a bleak, windowless skyscraper where the former crack king was being held without bail until his trial. 

Entering the tiny interview room, Ross exuded an air of self-assurance and confidence. He appeared unfazed by his predicament, but by the time the interview was over, he had dropped the pretense. Blandón's betrayal had clearly left him hurt and bewildered. "I can't believe he done me like this," Ross commented as I packed up my tape recorder and notebooks. "Why'd he do it? You figure that out yet?" 

I told him what I'd culled from the court files about Blandón's arrest in May 1992—how he'd faced a mandatory life sentence and the prospect of having his wife behind bars as well, leaving their two young daughters orphaned. It was hard to blame someone for trying to squirm out of a jam like that, I said. Ross nodded. "So how much dope did they catch him with?" None, I said. But they had him on tape-talking to informants about cocaine deals, bragging about how many thousands of kilos he'd sold. Ross's reaction brought me up short. 

"That's it?" Ross asked incredulously. "They didn't find no dope on him? Then what would he roll over for? Think about it. You ain't gonna pull a life sentence just for talking to somebody about selling dope. That's bullshit. Somebody ain't tell you something." 

LAPD narcotics detective Ron Hodges, who had investigated Blandón in conjunction with the DEA in 1991–92, made a similar observation when I interviewed him a few weeks later. "What's hard to understand is when we actually did the investigation on him and it came to a conclusion, I think he was charged with what they consider a 'no-dope conspiracy'—which is like nothing. It's so minimal. It's like trying to do something when there is nothing there." Blandón's lawyer, Brad Brunon, pointed out that his client had no criminal record, and the DEA had nothing more than some loose talk with criminal informants. There was no evidence of actual drug dealing, Brunon argued. 

It made no sense. Why, then, had Blandón so readily agreed to become a government informant? And why had the Justice Department accorded him such a high degree of trust and faith? Blandón was an international criminal, a man who'd brazenly sold drugs and weapons to gang members for more than a decade. Yet here he was jetting in and out of the country at government expense, with no law enforcement supervision whatsoever—free to do as he pleased. Maybe Ricky Ross's suspicions were right, I thought. Perhaps Blandón had worked for the U.S. government before, just as Norwin Meneses had. If he had a track record, it would certainly explain his extraordinary treatment. 

I quickly got a taste of how protective the Justice Department was of the Nicaraguan. In October 1995 I received an unsolicited phone call from the big blond man I'd met in the bathroom at the San Francisco federal courthouse a few weeks earlier, Assistant U.S. Attorney David Hall, Rafael Cornejo's prosecutor. 

There were some people who wanted to talk to me, Hall said. My activity "has a number of people extremely worried because of an ongoing narcotics investigation that Blandón is working on for the government." Before I printed anything, I needed to know the situation. If I wasn't careful, "there is a distinct possibility that real harm, possibly death, would come to Mr. Blandón and that an investigation we have been working on for a couple of years would be compromised." The DEA wanted to know if some kind of an accommodation could be reached. 

Like what? I asked. 

Well, Hall said, it had been proposed that if I held off on the story for a couple of months, they might be able to arrange an exclusive interview with Blandón for me. 

I told him I didn't think my editors would agree to a delay, but if lives were in danger, I'd certainly be willing to hear them out. On October 19, 1995, I walked into a roomful of DEA agents in the National City regional office, squirreled away in an industrial complex south of San Diego. 

Two of the agents I recognized from court and reading their names in the court files: Blandón's handlers, the immaculately coiffed Chuck Jones and his worried-looking sidekick, Judy Gustafson. The other four I didn't know. The agent behind the desk, a tall man with an easy smile, got up and shook my hand warmly. Craig Chretien, he said, special agent in charge. 

"This is a little awkward for us," Chretien began. They knew generally the story I was working on, he said, and unfortunately I was getting into some rather sensitive areas. There were undercover operations—more than four of them— that I was in danger of exposing, putting agents and their families at risk. They couldn't give me any details, of course, but I needed to appreciate the seriousness of the situation. "What's your angle here?" Chretien asked. "Is it that the DEA sometimes hires scumbags to go after people?" 

"No. It's about Blandón and Norwin Meneses and the Contras," I said. "And their dealings with Ricky Ross." 

The agents looked at each other quickly out of the corners of their eyes, but at first said nothing. 

"That whole Central American thing," Chretien said dismissively. "I was down there. You heard all sorts of things. There was never any proof that the Contras were dealing drugs. If you're going to get involved in that, you'll never get to the truth. No one ever will." 

"I think that's been pretty well established," I said. "Your informant was one of the men who was doing it." 

Chretien gave Jones a sidelong glance and Jones came to life. "I can tell you that I have never, ever heard anything about Blandón being involved with that," he said firmly. "Not once. His only involvement with the Contras was that his father was a general or something down there." 

"And these two have practically lived with the man for two years now," Chretien added, pointing to Jones and Gustafson. "If it had happened they would know about it." 

I could not quite believe what I was hearing. What kind of scam was this? 

"Have you ever asked him about it?" I asked Jones. 

"I've already said more than I should." 

"Did you ever ask him about doing it with Norwin Meneses?" 

"You'd better go check your sources again," Jones snapped. 

"My source is Blandón," I said. "He testified to it under oath, before a grand jury. You're telling me you don't know about that?" 

Jones threw up his hands. "Oh, listen, he understands English pretty well, but sometimes he gets confused, and if you ask him a question the wrong way he'll say yes when he means no." 

I shook my head. "I've got the transcripts. These weren't yes or no questions. He gave very detailed responses."

Jones's face and forehead grew beet red and his voice rose. "You're telling me that he testified that he sold cocaine for the Contras in this country? He sold it in this country?" 

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. You want to see the transcripts? I've got them right here." 

"I cannot believe that those two U.S. attorneys up there, if they had him saying that before a grand jury, that they would ever, ever, ever put him on a witness stand!" Jones fumed. "They'd have to be insane! They'd have to be total idiots!" 

"They didn't put him on the witness stand," I reminded him. "They yanked him at the last minute." 

"That's because the judge ordered them to turn over all that unredacted material!" Jones blurted. "We're not going to. . ." He looked quickly at Chretien and clammed up. Just as I suspected. They knew all about this. The DEA had nixed Blandón's appearance because Rafael Cornejo's attorney had discovered the Contra connection and the government had been ordered to turn over the files. 

Chretien told me that it would be best for all concerned if I simply left out the fact that Blandón was now working for the DEA. "Your story can just go up to a certain point and stop, can't it? Is it really necessary to mention his current relationship with us? If it comes out that he is in any way connected to DEA, it could seriously compromise some extremely promising investigations." 

I said I thought it was important to the story, which prompted another angry outburst from Jones. "Even after what we just told you, you'd still go ahead and put it in the paper? Why? Why would you put a story in the paper that would stop us from keeping drugs out of this country? I don't know if you've got kids or not. . ." [What a lying POS,they were NOT keeping drugs out of the country,they WERE allowing them to enter DC]

"I've got three kids," I interrupted, "and I don't know what that has to do with anything." 

"So you'll screw up an investigation we've been working on for a long time, just so you can have a story? Is that it?" Jones demanded. "You think this story is more important than what we're doing for this country? How is that more important?" 

"I don't buy it," I replied. "You have to put Blandón on the witness stand at Ross's trial. So in five months everyone in the world is going to know he's a DEA informant. Hell, if they want to know now they can just go down to the courthouse and look it up, like I did. So that's one problem I'm having with all this. The other thing is, I think the American public has been lied to for ten years, and I think telling them the truth is a whole lot more important than this investigation of yours." 

Jones and I glared at each other, and Chretien stepped in. "I think we're getting off the topic here. Please understand, we're not telling you not to do your story. But your interest is in Meneses primarily and his association with the U.S. government and the Contras, correct?" 

That was one of my interests, I said. 

"Well, I think we can help him there, can't we?" Chretien asked, glancing around the room at the other agents. "Maybe if we got you that information, you could focus your story more on him and less on Blandón? And maybe you wouldn't have to mention some other things?" 

"That all depends," I said, "on what that other information is." 

Chretien smiled and stood up. "Okay, then! We're going to have to talk about this among ourselves. I'm not even sure what we have in mind is legal, but we'd at least like to explore it. Could we ask that you please not print anything until we've talked again? Can you give us a week or two?" 

I told him I'd wait for his call. When I returned to Sacramento, I phoned former DEA agent Celerino Castillo III, who had investigated allegations of Contra drug trafficking at Ilopango air base in El Salvador in the mid-1980s. I asked him if he'd ever heard of Craig Chretien. 

"Yeah, sure," Castillo said. "I know him. He was one of the people DEA sent to Guatemala to do the internal investigation of me." He said Chretien and another DEA official had ordered him to put the word "alleged" in his reports to Washington about Contra drug shipments from Ilopango. "They said, 'You cannot actually come out and say this shit is going on.' And I told them, 'I'm watching the fucking things fly out of here with my own eyes! Why would I have to say 'alleged'?" 

I told him of Chretien's remark that there was no proof the Contras were involved in drugs. He snorted. "Aw, bullshit. Of all people, he knows perfectly well what was going on. He was reading all my reports—looking for grammatical errors." 

After two weeks I'd heard nothing back, so I called the San Diego office and asked for Chretien. He no longer works in this office, I was told. He'd been transferred to Washington. 

The head of the International Division, Robert J. Nieves—Norwin Meneses old control agent—had unexpectedly resigned eight days after my meeting with Chretien, I discovered. Chretien had been picked to replace him. 

I never spoke to Chretien again, and I suspected that the meeting in San Diego had been set up to find out what I knew and where I was heading. My suspicions on that score were confirmed in early 1998 with the release of a CIA Inspector General's report, which referenced three CIA cables about me, titled "Possible Attempts to Link CIA to Narco traffickers," written within weeks of my meeting with the DEA agents in San Diego. 

"In November 1995, we were informed by DEA that a reporter has been inquiring about activities in Central America and any links with the Contras," a heavily censored December 4, 1995, cable from CIA headquarters in Langley stated. "DEA has been alerted that Meneses will undoubtedly claim that he was trafficking narcotics on behalf of CIA to generate money for the Contras. Query whether Station can clarify or amplify on the above information to better identify Meneses or confirm or refute any claims he may make. HQS trace on (FNU) Meneses reveal extensive entries." (Those extensive entries were not revealed in the declassified version of the CIA's 1998 IG report.) 

The DEA's public affairs office in Washington later attempted to work out a deal with me to set up an interview with Meneses if I would leave Blandón's DEA ties out of the story, but fortunately my colleague in Nicaragua, freelance journalist Georg Hodel, beat them to the punch. He'd found the massive files of Meneses 1992 court case in the Nicaraguan Supreme Court and had tracked the drug lord down to a prison outside of Managua. 

"The clerk says I am the first journalist ever to ask to see those files, can you imagine?" Hodel asked me. "All the stories written about this case, and not one of those reporters ever looked at the files. I have one of my journalism students, Leonor Delgado, going through and making us an index of all the pages. There are some peculiar things in there, I can tell you." 

My tipster had told me the truth about Blandón and Meneses, Georg reported. He'd cheeked it with former Contra commander Eden Pastora, former Contra lawyer Carlos Icaza, and others who knew both men. They were friends and business partners, and their families were very close to Somoza. They were considered to have been among the founders of the Contras. And, he said, Meneses chief aide, Enrique Miranda, had admitted at trial that Meneses sold cocaine for the Contras, flying it out of an air base in El Salvador into a military airfield in Texas. 

"In some of the newspaper stories I'm sending you, you will see that Meneses makes the same claim," Georg said. "It was part of his defense that the Sandinistas persecuted him because of his work for the Contras." 

I told him of my conversations with the DEA and suggested that we might want to get to Meneses quickly, before someone else did. He agreed and told me that there was another person we needed to talk to as well: Meneses chief accuser, Enrique Miranda. According to the files, Miranda was also still in jail, having been moved to a prison in the city of Granada after Meneses had allegedly hired someone to kill him. 

He'd already put in a request to the Nicaraguan Ministry of the Interior to arrange an interview, Georg said. "I think we can speak to both of them. How quickly can you come down?" 

"As soon as I clear it with my editors," I told him. "I'm not sure if they even know about this story yet. Dawn's been running interference for me with the other editors until I got this somewhat nailed down, but it seems pretty solid to me. We need to get to Meneses before the DEA does, so if you want to go ahead and set up the interviews, do it. I'll start the ball rolling here." 

But Georg ran into an inexplicable roadblock. The normally cooperative prison officials in Managua began dodging his calls, offering one excuse and one delay after another. He waited a week, then hopped in his creaky blue Mazda and drove to the prison where Miranda was being held, to see what the problem was. 

A nervous prison official informed him that Miranda was not available. Why not? Georg asked. Well, the official stammered, unfortunately, the prisoner had escaped. He'd been out on a weekend furlough, and he'd never come back. It was extremely out of character, Georg was assured, because Miranda had been a model inmate and had only a short time left in his sentence. 

Astounded, Georg drove to the police station to see how the manhunt for the notorious trafficker was coming along. The police looked at him blankly. Someone had escaped from prison? Who? When? Miranda had been gone for over a week, and the police had not been notified. Georg's discovery was frontpage news in all the Managua papers. Official investigations were launched. 

"He supposedly escaped the same day I made my interview request," Georg reported. "My sources tell me he's in Miami and they say the DEA got him out of the country. Do you suppose they don't want us talking to him?" 
(Georg's sources would later prove to have been well-informed. Miranda was captured a little over a year later in December 1996 in Miami, where he was living with his wife. It emerged that he had gained entry with the help of a visa the U.S. embassy in Managua had issued him the day he'd "escaped." Though Miranda had been in the State Department's computers as a convicted drug trafficker in 1992 and was therefore ineligible for a visa, the State Department claimed two simultaneous computer failures that day resulted in him "erroneously" receiving one. The DEA also denied any involvement but admitted that Miranda was put on the DEA payroll as an informant "soon after he came to Miami" and was sent to Central and South American to work drug cases. The DEA never bothered to inform the Nicaraguan authorities it was harboring one of their fugitives.) 

But Georg had some good news as well. Meneses was willing to talk. George had cleared it through the drug kingpin's wives and lawyers and urged me to come to Nicaragua as soon as possible. We needed to move quickly and carefully, he warned, because there was something about this story that was beginning to give him the creeps. 

"I can't say what it is," he said nervously, "but things are moving all around us." 

In December I gathered up all my notes and files and wrote a four-page project memo for my editors, outlining the story as I saw it. I proposed to tell the tale of how the infant L.A. crack market had been fueled by tons of cocaine brought in by a Contra drug ring, which helped to spread a deadly new drug habit "through L.A. and from there to the hinterlands." 

"This series will show that the dumping of cocaine on L.A.'s street gangs was the back end of a covert effort to arm and equip the CIA's ragtag army of anti-Communist Contra guerrillas," I wrote. "While there has long been solid—if largely ignored—evidence of a CIA-Contra-cocaine connection, no one has ever asked the question: 'Where did all the cocaine go once it got here?' Now we know."

I met with Dawn and managing editor David Yarnold in San Jose, and we spent an hour discussing the progress of the investigation and the proposed series. Yarnold reread the project memo, shook his head, and grinned. 

"This is one hell of a story," he said. "How soon do you think you can finish it?" 

I told him I needed to go to Miami and Nicaragua to do some interviews with Meneses, some former Contras, and the Nicaraguan police. If that came off, we might he able to have the series ready by March 1996, in time for the Ross trial, which would give it a hard news angle. But, I said, I wanted to get some assurances right up front from both of them. 

Because the story had what I called a "high unbelievability factor," I wanted to use the Mercury's Web site, Mercury Center, to help document the series. I wanted us to put our evidence up on the Internet, so readers could see our documents and reports, read the grand jury transcripts, listen to the undercover DEA tapes, check our sources, and make up their own minds about the validity of the story. After seeing the government's reaction to the Contra-cocaine stories of the 1980s, I didn't want to be caught in the old officials say, there's no evidence trap. 

The technology now exists for journalists to share our evidence with the world, I told them, and if there was ever a story that needed to be solidly backed up, it was this one. Not only would it help out the story, I wrote in my memo, it would hopefully raise the standards of investigative reporting by forcing the press to play show and tell, rather than hiding behind faceless sources and whisperings from "senior administration officials." 

The editors enthusiastically agreed. It would be a good way to showcase the Mercury's cutting-edge Web site, they said, and it was good timing— management directives were coming out to incorporate the Web page into our print stories whenever possible. We were, after all, the newspaper of the Silicon Valley. This would be a chance to use the Internet in a way that had never been done before, they agreed. No problem. What else? 

The second point I made was something I was sure they were tired of hearing about. We're going to need space to tell this story, I told them, a lot more space than the paper usually devotes to its investigative projects. It was the one issue that drove me crazy about working for the Mercury News. 

After writing for the Plain Dealer for five years and having as much space as I'd wanted, I'd found the Mercury's mania for brevity almost unbearable. My forfeiture series, for example, had been held to two parts, and even those stories had been chopped up into bite-sized bits. I'd had other stories held for weeks and even months because I wouldn't give in to editors' demands to cut them in half. 

No one reads long stories, I was told. Our focus groups had shown that readers wanted our stories to be even shorter than they already were—" tighter and brighter" was the answer to dwindling readership. Details were boring. Readers didn't like having to turn pages to follow jumps. If you couldn't tell a daily story in twelve inches or less, then maybe it was too complicated to tell. For a time, we even had a rule: no stories could be longer than forty-eight inches. Period. And that was for Sundays. Daily stories had an absolute max of thirty-six inches. 

"We've got to lay out everything we know," I told Yarnold, "because people are going to come after us on this, and I don't ever want to be in a position where I have to say, 'Oh, yeah, we knew that, but we didn't have the space to put it in the paper.' And I don't think you want to be in that position either." 

You'll get as much space as you need, Yarnold assured me. Don't worry about it. Just go out and bring this thing home.

26 

"That matter, if true, 

would be classified" 

A few days before Ricky Ross's trial was scheduled to—begin, in March 1996, Jesse Katz of the Los Angeles Times called me at home, where I had holed up to sketch out the first drafts of the series. Though we worked for competing newspapers, Katz had been a helpful and encouraging source during the months I'd spent wending my way through the rise and fall of Ricky Ross's crack dealing career. 

That day, however, he prefaced our conversation with a warning: he was calling me as a reporter, not as a source. He was doing a story about Ross's upcoming trial, and he knew I was investigating Blandón's connections to the CIA and the Contras. He wanted to ask me about that. 

I was thunder-struck. I'd never told Katz anything of the sort, precisely for this reason. One of the most devious ways to avoid being scooped was to do a story on the other guy's story first. Though you normally got only a fraction of the tale, it took some of the sting out of getting beat, and some of the wind out of your competitor's sails. 

"You must think I'm stupid, Jesse. I'm not telling you anything." 

"Well, I already know it, and I'm going to put it in the paper. I'm just offering you a chance to comment," he said. "Look at it this way: as long as I'm going to write about it anyway, it's in your interest to make sure that what goes into the paper is accurate." 

I had to laugh. "I haven't heard that line in a long time,"I said. "Forget it. If you've got the information, print it. You don't need me to comment."

"Look. Alan Fenster filed a motion asking that the case be dismissed because the prosecutors were illegally withholding information from the defense. He filed an affidavit from a private investigator who said he'd spoken to you, and it says you have information that Blandón was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. So what I'm asking is: is it true?" 

I had been double-crossed. A private eye hired by Ross's lawyer had come by my house looking for information on Blandón, but I'd told him very little. He then pulled out a copy of a DEA report Fenster had gotten through discovery, which showed that Blandón clearly knew the cocaine he was selling to Ross was being turned into crack by the Crips and Bloods. It was an important bit of documentation for my story. 

He would give me this, he said, if I would simply show him something about Blandón that the government hadn't turned over, so the defense could honestly say there was information being hidden from them. I wouldn't be identified. They didn't need a copy. They just needed to know that such documents existed. 

From covering the case, I knew the federal attorneys had been withholding reams of evidence about Blandón's sordid background and his association with the Contras. If Fenster could catch them at it, I thought, maybe the court would order the Justice Department to make all the documents public, which would give me access to records I wanted to see. 

I thought it over and agreed to show the PI one of the FBI reports I'd gotten from the Iran-Contra files at the National Archives. The next thing I knew, Fenster had named me and exposed the Mercury's investigation in his motion, and now the L.A. Times was onto it. 

I should have known better. For weeks Ross and Fenster had been badgering me to publish the series before the trial started, figuring that the publicity might give the Justice Department second thoughts about pursuing the case. But after sitting down and roughing out an outline, I saw there was still too much I didn't know—too many unanswered questions. Dawn and I agreed that if Blandón, who was ignoring our interview requests, was going to testify, the story would benefit by waiting. 

Several days earlier I'd told Ross that we were holding the story. It would not run before his trial. Angry and desperate, he'd called Katz and told him what little he knew about my investigation, hoping to stampede the Times into rushing something into print so they could beat us to the punch. Fenster followed that up by filing the motion and affidavit, giving Katz a court document to hang his story on. But the Times still had nothing; it was all secondhand. That's why Katz was fishing for confirmation. I wasn't going to give him my story, I told him. "Well, I had to try," he said. "No hard feelings." 

Right after I hung up, Alan Fenster called. The Justice Department, he said, had just filed a motion to prevent him from questioning Blandón about the CIA. 

"Why? Have you gotten some information about that?" 

"No, but apparently they think I have," he said. "You should read this thing— it's amazing." 

The motion, written by Assistant U.S. Attorney L. J. O'Neale, was as bizarre as Fenster had claimed: "The United States believes that at least one defendant will attempt to assert to the effect that the informant in this case sold cocaine to raise money for the Nicaraguan Contras and that he did so in conjunction with, or for, the Central Intelligence Agency." 

O'Neale said the government was sure the information was false, but the motion made it clear that he wasn't sure at all. "This matter, if true, would be classified," O'Neale had written, "if false should not be allowed. The only purpose for asking questions in this regard would be as a clumsy attempt to bullyrag the United States into foregoing prosecution." 

If the CIA was involved in drug sales, it would be classified? That was a good one. The whole legal basis for O'Neale's motion was tangential; Fenster hadn't filed the required notice to alert the government that he might reveal classified information at trial. Therefore, O'Neale wanted a court order "prohibiting any defendant from making any reference in this case to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, or to any alleged activity of that Agency." 

Fenster said there was a hearing on the government's motion scheduled for the next day; and I jumped on a plane to San Diego. I couldn't wait to hear the U.S. Justice Department stand up in court and say that information about CIA involvement in drug trafficking was classified. 

When I got there, I noticed that I was the only spectator in the courtroom. Good. I took a seat in the front row. 

Shortly before the hearing began, I heard the courtroom door open behind me. It was Jesse Katz, with a big smile on his face. The Times had flown him in from his office in Houston just to be here, he told me. 

I groaned silently. There goes the ball game. All the connections between Blandón, the Contras, the CIA, and Ricky Ross were going to come out in public, and the L.A. Times was going to beat me on my own goddamned story. Nine months worth of work down the crapper. I wanted to tear my hair out. 

From a side door, prosecutor L. J. O'Neale strutted in, carrying a boxload of records, followed by DEA agents Jones and Gustafson. O'Neale looked at me; he looked at Jesse Katz; and then he blanched. When federal judge Marilyn Huff called the courtroom to order, O'Neale immediately asked to approach the bench. 

He and Fenster huddled with the judge, whispering. Occasionally O'Neale would gesture to Katz and me. The huddle broke up, and Fenster walked back to the defense table, shaking his head. 

"I have reviewed the government's request that the court seal, uh, certain portions," Huff announced cryptically. "You may be heard at sidebar. Mr. O'Neale. And defense counsel." The lawyers again trooped up to the judge's bench and began an animated, whispered conversation.

Katz and I strained to catch bits and pieces. I heard "CIA" several times—" murders in Mexico"; "money from the U.S. government"; "Contras." 

O'Neale looked at us and turned back to the huddle. He warned defense attorney Juanita Brooks to lower her voice. "The reporters that Mr. Fenster has brought to court today are listening very carefully," he told her. 

As with most federal court proceedings, the conversation was recorded and I later obtained a copy of the tape. Brooks, in a low whisper, told the judge that she was very disturbed O'Neale had hidden from the defense the fact that "Blandón was a member of an organization responsible for numerous murders in Mexico." O'Neale denied it. While he admitted that Blandón had gotten into the drug business by selling cocaine for the Contras, he said there was "absolutely no connection between Blandón and the CIA." 

"He was never authorized to do that by a CIA agent?" Huff whispered. 

"Well, look," O'Neale hissed, "that's something I'm not even sure I can say 'Yes' or 'No' to because that comes within the realm of—look, I have no reason to believe he had any contact with the CIA and I would defy counsel to come up with any kind of credible information that he had a connection to the CIA. . ." 

Fenster, struggling to keep his voice low, whispered that the reason he didn't have any information was because the government had refused to turn over "pages and pages of records. . .that I know for a fact exist!" O'Neale denied there was anything significant in the files. 

Ten minutes turned into twenty minutes, and it dawned on us that the entire motion was going to be heard in whispers at the judge's bench. I'd never seen anything like it, and I'd covered many federal trials. Katz was beside himself. 

"They can't do this!" he insisted. "How can they do this, just because we're here?" I told him I didn't know and commiserated with him, but inside I was exulting. Thank God for this one instance of government secrecy. 

The next morning I ran down to the hotel lobby and grabbed a copy of the Times. Katz's story had run, focusing on the relationship between Ross and Blandón. Blandón, Katz wrote, had "taught [Ross] the trade" and oversaw his rise "through the ranks of the Los Angeles underworld, becoming the first crack dealing millionaire on South Central's streets." The story hinted at "new and surprising dimensions" involving Blandón and some alleged "ties to U.S. intelligence sources," but never said what they were. There was no mention of the Contras. Whew. 

When the trial got under way that day, once again I was the only reporter in the courtroom. Katz had apparently gone back to Houston, and no one from the Times had been assigned to cover the trial that the paper had previewed that very morning. 

Once again, Fenster demanded that the government turn over its records about Blandón, arguing that it was prejudicing Ross's chance to fairly cross examine his chief accuser. O'Neale calmly assured Fenster that he'd gotten everything the government felt he was entitled to know about Blandón—his prior arrest record and the fact that he'd been paid $40,000 for setting Ross up. What else could he possibly want? 

"I don't think my client's life should be up to the government to determine what he should be allowed to know about Blandón's credibility," Fenster told Huff indignantly. 

"The system we've set up has the government review all the information in its files to decide whether it complies with the law," Judge Huff replied blandly. "Mr. O'Neale, in good faith, has made that review." 

"So we're supposed to trust the government to tell us if the CIA was involved?" Fenster asked. "They say that there's nothing that exists. I don't know if they really know that. I mean, I don't know if they've checked with the CIA to determine if such matters exist." 

To my surprise, O'Neale admitted that he hadn't checked. Even though he'd personally assured the court several times that the government had no grounds to believe Blandón had any CIA ties, he'd never actually gotten around to asking the CIA. There was no need, he insisted: "One hopes that whatever the CIA does in the best interests of this country, that it will be concealed from view. And one hopes that if they do something that is in the worst interest or in violation of the laws of this country, that it will come to light. But, no, I haven't checked with the CIA. I've had no cause to check with the CIA."[wow,you cannot make this stuff up DC] 

Huff ignored O'Neale's stunning admission and told Fenster that he should trust her to do the right thing. Why, just that morning, she reminded him, she'd ordered prosecutors to turn over two pages from Sergeant Tom Gordon's longmissing search warrant application for the 1986 raid on Blandón's house. 

The rest of it, she'd decided, wasn't relevant. Huff denied Fenster's motions. 

There was one other matter the United States wanted to take up, if the court would be so kind, O'Neale said. Huff smiled pleasantly at him and told him to go ahead. 

Reaching into his briefcase, O'Neale yanked out a copy of the morning's L.A. Times and waved it over his head. It had come to his attention, he announced dramatically, that the defense lawyers were leaking confidential information to the press! Huff appeared shocked and looked angrily at the defense table. O'Neale noted that Katz's story contained a phrase from a Justice Department memo that explained Danilo Blandón's deal with the government. 

"I submit to the Court that our reasonable belief is that this document was obtained from one of those four!" O'Neale said, jabbing the offending newspaper in the direction of the four defense attorneys across the courtroom. "And there is no other explanation! It's not a filed document. It's not a public record document. . .but somehow, somewhere, that letter of February 15th was given to a journalist!" 

Huff gave the defense lawyers a hard stare. 

"I'm not saying that there's any criminal wrongdoing here," O'Neale added. "I'm saying that we have to be very careful in this case about pre-trial publicity. . .. Not only am I concerned about a fair trial, I am also concerned with the safety of the witness and the witness' family. There is a real safety issue here. . .. We have heard through reliable sources that there are threats of death against the witness, and we take those seriously and this is a serious business." 

O'Neale stroked his beard and looked reproachfully at the defense lawyers. 

"Without ascribing any wrongdoing to any counsel present, it is my opinion, and I state this only as an opinion, that Mr. Ross personally is attempting to manipulate the media, and may be attempting to affect the outcome of the trial through the media! As I say, I ascribe this to Mr. Ross personally, and I'm not sure that he is under any obligation—as are attorneys. However, I do again point out that this document comes, there were four copies sent out and here it is in the paper—it has to come from one of those four copies! I sure didn't give it to anybody!" 

The defense lawyers were shaking their heads and appeared to be chuckling. One of them, Federal Public Defender Maria Forde, slowly got to her feet. 

"Ms. Forde?" Huff said icily. 

"I find it personally offensive that Mr. O'Neale would take the position that someone had to leak this document to the press," Forde said slowly. "I think with a little review he would have been able to remember that this document became a part of the public record when it was filed as Exhibit A of Mr. Fenster's motion to dismiss because of egregious Brady violations. It is a document of public record." 

"Oh," Huff said quickly. "I see." 

She looked at O'Neale, who began babbling. "I'm sorry. In that case, Ms. Forde, uh, I will say Ms. Forde is correct, that there may be—uh, that I had forgotten that that was an exhibit and insofar as anyone took personal or otherwise offense, I do apologize for that." Before he sat down, though, he wanted to remind everyone that he was still concerned about the death threats—" wherever they came from." I laughed silently. What a clown. 

Blandón, wearing tinted aviator glasses and a dark suit, made his grand entry the next day, shielded by U.S. marshals. They led him to a row of chairs directly in front of me, and he sat down stiffly. After chasing him around California and Central America for nine months, seeing him now for the first time sitting only a foot away gave me a strange feeling. "Chanchin" in the flesh. I was sorry Georg wasn't here to see this. 

I leaned over the rail and tapped Blandón on the shoulder with one of my business cards. "I've been calling all over for you," I said. "I'm sure your mother-in-law is tired of hearing my voice." 

He turned and smiled. "I apologize." I told him I needed to talk to him. He shook his head. "I can't, because of all of this." 

"Okay then. How about after the trial?" 

"No. Personally, if it was up to me, I would say yes. But they won't let me," he said, nodding toward the prosecution table. 

"The prosecutor won't let you talk?" 

He shook his head. "DEA." 

"So you won't talk to me ever, is that it?" 

He nodded and shrugged. "Sorry. What can I do?" 

O'Neale called Blandón up to the stand and led him carefully through his testimony. He touched on the Contras, admitting that Meneses had recruited him to sell cocaine for them. He said he'd stopped selling Contra cocaine when he split from Meneses in 1983 and started keeping the money for himself. 

That was odd, I thought, flipping through my notebook. When I'd interviewed O'Neale in November, the prosecutor had said that occurred in 1986. The day before the trial, I noticed, O'Neale had said in court that it happened in 1984. By the end of the day, though,Blandón would be insisting that he'd actually quit in 1982—long before he'd met Ross, he said. O'Neale kept going over and over that point. 

Then it dawned on me. They were trying to open a window, hoping to put a decent interval between the time Blandón was selling dope for the CIA's army and the time he started selling dope to the L.A. gangs. They were trying to break the chain linking the Contra's cocaine to the Crips and Bloods. 

There was one big problem with that tactic. It didn't jibe with all the other facts. Ross said he'd been dealing with Blandón and his minions since 1981. Second, there were government documents out there strongly suggesting that Blandón's testimony was false—records that said he was selling cocaine for Meneses and the Contras all the way through 1986. Of course, Fenster didn't have those records, since the government had refused to turn them over. (Additional records surfaced after the trial was over and Blandón eventually admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA Inspector General that his Contra contributions continued through 1985.)

During the noon break, Fenster approached me in the hallway outside the courtroom. "Can we have lunch?" he asked. We walked to the restaurant of the Doubletree Hotel at Horton Plaza, near the courthouse. Fenster sipped an iced tea and asked me what I thought about Blandón's testimony. 

"You got the Highlights for Children version of his cocaine dealings with the Contras," I said. 

"That's what I thought. How am I supposed to cross-examine this guy? I don't even know what to ask!" He laughed ruefully. "Isn't this just crazy? I mean, here I am, defending a man against a life sentence, and I've got to ask some reporter if the prosecution testimony is accurate. That's justice for you. You know more about the bastard than I do." 

"Not as much as I'd like, unfortunately. And he just told me he's never going to talk to me." 

A light came on. Wait a minute. What law said I needed to do my interview directly? The solution was right here in front of me. Blandón was up there on a witness stand, under oath, in front of a federal judge. He was a sitting duck. I'd never get a better shot at him than this. For that matter, I doubted he'd ever be seen in public again. It was now or never. 

"Tell you what," I said. "I need to make sure this is okay first, but what would you think about me giving you some questions to ask him?" 

"You read my mind," Fenster said, getting a notepad out of his briefcase. I excused myself and went to a pay phone. Miraculously, Dawn was at her desk, and I explained the situation. There was no other way, I told her. Could she see any possible harm in giving Fenster some questions about the Contras? "I think it's a great idea," she said. "I wish we could do all of our interviews under oath." 

When Fenster began his cross-examination the next day, he came right at Blandón, grilling him about his family's connections to the Somoza dictatorship. "There were certain families in Nicaragua that were part of the ruling cartel of Nicaragua, is that correct?" 

O'Neale turned and glared at me and then jumped to his feet. "Excuse me, I have an objection!" he shouted. "Relevance! Inflammatory language! What is the—the—relevance to—what the—" 

He was overruled, and Fenster pushed on, boring in on Blandón's unbelievable claim that he quit dealing cocaine for the Contras when the CIA came through with $19 million in aid. 

"Nineteen million dollars isn't even a drop in the bucket when you run that kind of operation, isn't that correct?" 

"I didn't. . .I didn't know we received the $19 million," Blandón confessed. "I cannot tell you." 

"Is it your testimony that you decided to keep the profits from the drug dealing because the Contra organization had enough money to fund their own war? Is that your testimony?" 

"No sir. Let me explain one thing. When we meet—when we raise money for the Contra revolution, we received orders from the—" He paused and looked at O'Neale. O'Neale stared at him. "From another people." Because of the order prohibiting CIA testimony, Fenster was unable to pursue that line of inquiry. 

He quizzed Blandón about his meetings in Honduras with CIA agent Enrique Bermudez, the FDN organization in Miami, and his connections to the Meneses family. The Nicaraguan looked helplessly at O'Neale, and several times the prosecutor leaped up to object, spluttering that Fenster's questions were irrelevant and prejudicial. Most of the time he was overruled. Blandón was like a deer caught in the headlights. Every so often DEA agent Jones would turn and give me the evil eye. 

He knew where this shit was coming from. So did O'Neale, who actually complained about it to the judge. They'd done their best to keep it bottled up, and it had spilled out anyway. I walked back to my hotel room that night ten feet off the ground. 

It was all out in the open now. The FDN had sold drugs to American citizens —mainly black Americans—and the CIA was on the hook for it: a CIA agent had given the goddamned order. I thought back to all the lies that had been told about the Contras' innocence. All the bullshit that had been piled on the reporters, cops, and congressional investigators who'd tried to do an honest job and bring light into the dark swamp where covert operators and criminals colluded. There was no denying it any more. 

Now I was ready to write.

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"A very difficult decision"