(SANITIZED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100330007-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 5, 2012
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: December 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

S1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/05: Cl
WASHINGTON POST
27 December 1985
Nicaragua Rebels Linked to Drug Trafficking
U.S. Investigators Say Contras Help Transport Cocaine in Costa Rica
By Brian Barger and Robert Parry
A.waiatoi Prem
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.
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
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 he 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
secre entra Intelligence Agency-
pared analysis on narcotics raffi ?king al-
leges that one of ARDE's to 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 . . government official in Washington.
Bosco Matamoros, the FDN spokesman
here, and Levy Sanchez, a Miami-based
spokesman for Pastora, 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."J
Cornelius J. Dougherty, spokesman for
the Drug Enforcement Administration, said
the DEA is aware that drug traffickers use
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 ',muv-
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, c'perate
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
Honduras.
Associated Press reporters interviewed
officials from the DEA, the Custon is Ser-
" ? .. 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
taken to an Atlantic Coast port where it is
concealed on shrimp boats that are later
unloaded in the Miami area.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100330007-1