Copyright 1996 Stern Publishing, Inc.  
                                  LA Weekly
                                October 04, 1996
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 1691 words
HEADLINE: CONTRAS CROP UP IN L.A. COURTS
NAMES, SCHEMES OF CONTRA TRAFFICKERS FIRST SURFACED HERE
BYLINE: BY KEVIN UHRICH
 BODY:
 
Cocaine broker turned government informant Oscar Danilo Blandon Reyes is
fast becoming notorious, thanks largely to the San Jose Mercury News, which
named him the primary supplier of cocaine to crack wholesaler Ricky Donnell
"Freeway Rick" Ross.

It didn't have to take so long.

Blandon was placed at the center of a major coke-peddling operation -- and as
a key funder of the Nicaraguan contra rebels -- in federal court proceedings
back in 1990. He was busted by L.A. County Sheriff's deputies years before
that, only to be turned loose after federal officials intervened, the deputies
said later.

In fact, while much spadework has been conducted in Washington, D.C. (see
accompanying story), key elements of apparent CIA-contra drugs-for-cash
schemes have surfaced in court proceedings in Southern California. The ongoing
prosecution of Ricky Ross in San Diego, where much of the Mercury News
material surfaced, is just the latest example.

Perhaps the most startling story, because it was the most obvious, is
Blandon's. Glimmers of cocaine dealing in the Los Angeles area by Blandon
and his family to help finance the contra war first surfaced publicly in
connection with the 1990 prosecution of seven Los Angeles County Sheriff's
deputies who were convicted of skimming $1.4 million from confiscated drug
profits.

"The government knew about this at least six years ago," insists Los Angeles
attorney Harland Braun, who represented one of the deputies, twice-convicted
Daniel Garner, who today is serving time in an Oregon federal prison for a
variety of charges related to two separate drug-profit-skimming schemes.

Braun detailed the deputies' charge in a 1990 memo delivered to U.S. District
Judge Edward Rafeedie, in the hope it would engender sympathy from the judge.
Rafeedie was unimpressed, ordered Braun not to discuss the story, and placed
all documents relating to the allegation under seal.

What remains public is Braun's recollection, and a motion Braun filed to have
Rafeedie lift his gag order. As Braun tells the story now, in 1986, before
they came under suspicion by federal investigators, Garner and several other
Sheriff's narcotics detectives stumbled onto evidence of a CIA-contra drug
and money-laundering ring operating in Los Angeles that was directly linked to
Blandon and his Nicaraguan accomplices.

Braun explains that Garner and other deputies with the Majors II narcotics
team were preparing to serve a search warrant, but even as they arrived,
Garner says lawyers for the targets of the bust seemed to know what was about
to happen and called the Sheriff's Department to ask that any of the materials
seized be returned.

"When the officers entered one house, the suspect identified himself as a
CIA agent, gave the name of his CIA contact in Virginia and requested the
deputies confirm his status and leave the premises," according to the motion
asking Rafeedie to lift the gag order. The deputies didn't leave, but instead
allowed the suspect to call Virginia and confiscated everything in the house,
the document states.

In the search, deputies discovered films of military operations in Central
America, technical manuals, information on military hardware, and "numerous"
documents indicating that drug money was being used to purchase military
equipment in Central America, according to the court document.

"The officers also pieced together the fact that this suspect was working with
the Blandon family, which was importing narcotics from Central America into
the United States," according to the document.

Braun declined to name witnesses who could corroborate Garner's claims. That
information, Braun said, is contained in his original motion to allow alleged
CIA drug involvement to be entered into evidence. Also included in the
motion were 10 pages of documents seized during the raid, but never turned
over to federal agents, who later confiscated all the items taken from the
house that night, along with all official records of the operation.

Rafeedie was unimpressed with Braun's strategy.

"The judge went absolutely crazy," Braun recalled. "They Garner and the other
crooked deputies thought the government wouldn't come after them if we could
show that it was the government dealing the drugs," Braun said. The motion,
which included documents Braun said name CIA operatives in Iran and
specifically mention the contra-drug connection, infuriated the judge.

"He Rafeedie said I was just trying to get that information out to the public.
And he was absolutely right. I was trying to get it out to the public. I had
all this information six years ago, and it just died," he said. "Those
documents have been sitting down there in federal court since 1990."

Attempts to reach Rafeedie for comment this week were unsuccessful. Assistant
U.S. Attorney Jeff Eglash, the prosecutor in Garner's first corruption trial,
refused to comment on the government drug-running suspicions raised by Braun.
"I don't have any comment on that, and I don't have relevant information to
offer," Eglash said curtly.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Scheper said allegations of CIA-related drug
running for the contra cause also surfaced in a second set of fraud charges
filed against Garner in 1992. But Garner eventually pled guilty, and the case
never went to trial, she said. Scheper also declined to comment on Braun's
claims.

Some of the documents taken by the deputies list "various weaponry that was
being purchased and . . . diagram(s) the route of drug money out of the United
States, back into the United States purchasing weaponry for the contras," the
document states.

"The government," Braun said, "knew all about this six years ago. I can't get
any more explicit than that." But, he said, "isn't it coincidental that the
same type of information that came up six years ago, with sheriffs stealing
money, is now coming up again in San Diego?"

The year 1990 saw startling allegations of contra-CIA drug trafficking in
another federal trial in Los Angeles, this one stemming from the torture and
murder in Guadalajara, Mexico, of DEA agent Enrique Camarena.

Here again, the judge in the case was Edward Rafeedie.

As the story unfolded at trial, Camarena made the mistake of taking his
commission seriously, pressing his investigation into Mexican drug trafficking
even after learning that some of the nation's top law-enforcement officials
were involved. The problem was, Camarena was beginning to pressure smugglers
and police officials who had come to expect protection from the U.S. -- and
particularly the CIA -- in return for their help with the contra war,
according to testimony at the trial. When Camarena broke the rules, he was
kidnapped, tortured and murdered.

The key witness to this theory of the case was an elusive figure named
Lawrence Victor Harrison, a onetime Berkeley resident who moved to Mexico in
1971 and later began installing electronics equipment, including listening
devices, for drug lords and for the federal police in Guadalajara. Harrison
testified that one of the top traffickers suspected in the Camarena murder,
Felix Gallardo, had told him personally that his drug network was safe from
American law enforcement because he was supplying arms to the contras.

In one of his last jobs, he set up equipment to monitor DEA radio
transmissions in Guadalajara.

Judge Rafeedie later rejected Harrison's testimony as "based on hearsay,
gossip and speculation," and did not allow the jury to hear his testimony.

But in a story published in July 1990, the Washington Post quoted a "former
U.S. drug trafficker and gunrunner" turned government informant as confirming
that Harrison had worked closely with major narcotics traffickers in
Guadalajara.

"The CIA was obviously cultivating a very powerful and efficient
arms-transport network through the drug cartel, and they didn't want the DEA
screwing it up," Gregory Nicolaysen, one of the defense attorneys in the case,
told reporters at the time.

Like Judge Rafeedie, local law-enforcement officials quickly dismissed the
recent Mercury News allegations of compromised drug investigations. Though
LAPD Commander James McBride said of Ricky Ross, "We missed him and missed him
and missed him," he added, "We have no reason to believe Ricky's information
is accurate, or that the information from another source the Mercury News is
accurate." McBride said, "Ricky Ross is a first-class bullshitter. There's
probably a lot of things this guy can come up with to get himself out of
trouble."

But U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff in San Diego wasn't as confident as her
Los Angeles counterparts. Last week she ordered prosecutors in the Ross case
to provide proof that the CIA was not involved in drug trafficking. Ross
could be sentenced to life in prison.

Ross' Beverly Hills attorney, Alan Fenster, is doing all he can to follow
Huff's lead. This week he obtained a new affidavit to buttress the allegations
of CIA drug running, this from Bradley Earl Ayers, a former Army Ranger and
CIA operative who was later enlisted in undercover operations run by the
DEA.

Ayers says that after leaving government work in 1984, he conducted his own
independent investigation of Southern Air Transport and another airline, both
reputedly used by the CIA in contra-support roles. In a written statement
for the court, Ayers says he surreptitiously entered airplanes operated by the
two firms and found drugs, alternately cocaine and marijuana, on several
occasions.

Fenster says he plans to enter the Ayers statement in court, additional
evidence that his client was used by the CIA in pursuing its covert war.
Ricky Ross is "being royally screwed over by the government," he insists.
Ross, who was arrested in San Diego in a sting operation after serving four
years of a 10-year drug sentence in Ohio, was set up by the government, with
the help of Ross' former partner, Blandon, who had become a DEA informant.

Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J. O'Neale responds that Fenster is creating a
"smoke screen," a "red herring" to save his client from life in prison.

GRAPHIC: Photo: Proxy army: Contras in the field

   Credit: Kevin McKiernan