Kevin Drum covers the 10th anniversary of the San Jose Mercury News’ series on the CIA ignoring that many Contra leaders were cocaine traffickers. Never mind that many were a part of Somoza’s National Guard that routinely used rape and torture to intimidate opponents–oh, and murder too.
It’s not real surprising. The night after having a drunken dinner across from the Intercontinental Hotel (no we didn’t stay there–we were in a middle class neighborhood near the US embassy) one of the key Contra leaders, Colonel Enrique Bermudez was killed in the hotel’s parking lot.
The thing is that even La Prensa, run by the then President’s brother-in-law and anti-Sandinista Chamorro family, didn’t try and blame the Sandinista’s for the death. Everyone knew it was drug related and while it was big news, it wasn’t terribly surprising.