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Affidavit: Cops knew of drug ring
Document sheds light on Contra-cocaine link
Published: Oct. 3, 1996
BY GARY WEBB
AND PAMELA KRAMER
Mercury News Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES -- During the early 1980s, federal and local [Other stories]
narcotics agents knew that a massive drug ring operated by
Nicaraguan Contra rebels was selling large amounts of Black
cocaine ''mainly to blacks living in the South-Central Los leaders call
Angeles area,'' according to a search-warrant affidavit for
obtained by the Mercury News. class-action
lawsuit
The Oct. 23, 1986, affidavit identifies former Nicaraguan Published:
government official Danilo Blandon as ''the Sept. 30,
highest-ranking member of this organization'' and 1996
describes a sprawling drug operation involving more than
100 Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers. Previously
published
The affidavit of Thomas Gordon, a former Los Angeles postscript
County sheriff's narcotics detective, is the first stories
independent corroboration that the Contra army -- the Last
Nicaraguan Democratic Force -- was dealing cocaine to updated:
gangs in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods. Known by its Oct. 3, 1996
Spanish initials, the FDN was an anti-communist commando
group formed and run by the CIA during the 1980s. Gary Webb
radio and TV
Gordon's sworn statement says that both the Drug appearances
Enforcement Administration and the FBI had informants Last
inside the Blandon drug ring for several years before updated:
sheriff's deputies raided it Oct. 27, 1986. Gordon's Oct. 2, 1996
affidavit is based on police interviews with those
informants and one of the DEA agents who was investigating The original
Blandon. series
Published:
Twice during the past year, Ron Spear, Los Angeles County Aug 18-20,
Sheriff's Department spokesman, told the Mercury News that 1996
his department had no records of the 1986 raids and
specifically denied having a copy of Gordon's [document link]
search-warrant affidavit -- even after two pages of it Warrant and
surfaced during the March 1996 cocaine trafficking trial affidavit to
of legendary Los Angeles ''crack'' cocaine dealer search
''Freeway'' Rick Ross. businesses
and
The Mercury News obtained the entire search warrant residences
affidavit this week. of Oscar
Danilo
Wednesday, Sheriff Sherman Block's office did not respond Blandon
to written questions about the raid, the warrant, records
of what was found and what happened to those records and [Photo link]
evidence. Photo of the
search
A recent Mercury News series revealed how Blandon's warrant
operation, which sold thousands of kilos of cocaine to
black Los Angeles drug dealers such as Ross, created the
first mass market for cocaine in the United States during
the early 1980s and helped fuel a crack explosion that is
still reverberating through black communities. Several
investigations into U.S. government knowledge of, and
possible involvement with, the Nicaraguan drug ring are
under way. Both the CIA and the Justice Department have
denied government involvement.
Call to CIA headquarters
But according to a legal motion filed in a 1990 case [document link]
involving a deputy who helped execute the search warrants, Motion
one of the suspects in the raid identified himself as a regarding
CIA agent and asked police to call CIA headquarters in government's
Virginia to confirm his identity. The motion, filed by Los request for
Angeles defense attorney Harland W. Braun on behalf of restraining
Deputy Daniel Garner, said the narcotics detectives order
allowed the man to make the call but then carted away
numerous documents purportedly linking the U.S. government [document link]
to cocaine trafficking and money-laundering efforts on Government's
behalf of the Contras. motion to
exclude
The motion said CIA agents appeared at the sheriff's evidence
department within 48 hours of the raid and removed the relating to
seized files from the evidence room. But Braun said the CIA and
detectives secretly copied 10 pages before the documents Contras
were spirited away. Braun attempted to introduce them in
the 1990 criminal trial to force the federal government to
back off the case. Braun was hit with a gag order, the
documents were put under seal and Garner was convicted of
corruption charges.
Internal sheriff's department records of the raid
''mysteriously disappeared'' around the same time the
seized files were taken, Braun's motion said. That claim
was buttressed in an interview this week by an officer
involved in the raid, and earlier by an attorney for one
of the defendants.
Ex-cop fingered
The officer, who would not allow himself to be identified,
said the alleged CIA agent was Ronald J. Lister, a former
Laguna Beach police detective who worked with Blandon in
the drug ring. The 1986 search-warrant affidavit
identifies Lister's home in Laguna Beach as one of the
places searched. It says Lister was involved in
transporting drug money to Miami and was Blandon's partner
in a security company. The company, according to a former
employee, was doing work at a Salvadoran military air base
in the early 1980s. Lister pleaded guilty to cocaine
trafficking in 1991.
A 1986 FBI report obtained from the National Archives last [document link]
year said Lister claimed his security business was ''CIA FBI Teletype
approved.'' regarding
conversation
Since at least 1983, Gordon's affidavit said, both Blandon with Roland
and Lister were under DEA investigation. Other court Lister's
records say Blandon turned up in DEA investigative files real estate
as early as 1981. Blandon now works for the DEA as an agent
undercover informant.
At Ross' trial in March, Blandon -- the Nicaraguan
government's director of wholesale markets under the
U.S.-supported dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza --
testified that he was one of the founders of the Los
Angeles branch of the FDN, and that he sold cocaine to
raise funds for that army.
Detective Gordon's 1986 search-warrant affidavit, which
was approved by Los Angeles Municipal Court Judge Glenette
Blackwell, mirrors much of Blandon's sworn testimony last
March.
''Informant #2 stated to your affiant that Blandon is a
'Contra' sympathizer and a founder of the ... (FDN), an
organization that assists the Contra movement with arms
and money,'' Gordon's affidavit states. ''The money and
arms generated by the organization come through sales of
cocaine. Informant #2 provided some 100 names of persons
involved with the distribution of cocaine. All of these
persons are either Nicaraguan and/or sympathizers to the
Contra movement.''
The affidavit names Lister; Blandon's father, Julio; his
wife, Chepita; banker Orlando Murillo; and another man as
''being directly involved with cocaine distribution.''
'Up to 20 kilos a week'
The affidavit also said Blandon was delivering ''up to 20
kilos a week'' to a Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Ivan
Arguellas ''who in turn sells mainly to blacks living in
the South-Central Los Angeles area.'' It said Blandon
''uses a beer bar at Central Avenue and Adams Street in
Los Angeles to distribute as much as 10 kilos of cocaine
per week.'' Arguellas was described as being ''confined to
a wheelchair as the result of being shot (in) a
drug-related incident.''
During an interview with the Mercury News last year,
former Los Angeles crack king Ross said one of his first
cocaine sources was ''a guy named Ivan, who was in a
wheelchair.''
Gordon, like six of the seven other narcotics detectives
who staged the Blandon raids, was later indicted on
federal corruption charges in the early 1990s. After two
trials, including one in which he defended himself, Gordon
was convicted of one count of tax evasion. He could not be
reached for comment.
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