No Supporting Evidence, DEA Says : Senators Probing Reports of Contra Drug Smuggling

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is investigating reports that Nicaraguan rebels and their American supporters have helped smuggle cocaine into the United States, but Drug Enforcement Administration officials say their agents have found no evidence to support any of the charges.

Dozens of cocaine stories have followed the contras for several years, and various witnesses have alleged that the rebels financed their war with money from drug-smuggling operations or helped known cocaine tycoons ship drugs.

According to one account, some of the same planes that secretly carried guns to the contras also brought cocaine back into the United States.

None of the allegations have been confirmed or fully corroborated. But the accumulation of charges has been enough to prompt the Senate panel to hire a special counsel to organize a formal inquiry, to attract the attention of the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami and to compel the DEA to begin a new review of the issue.

“I believe that there is no question, based on things we have heard, that contras and the contra infrastructure have been involved in the cocaine trade and in bringing cocaine into Florida,” said Jack Blum, the Senate committee’s special counsel. “Were these operations a way for the contras to raise funds or were they free-lance operations? That’s a question I can’t resolve.”

The main force behind launching the probe was Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a liberal who has been one of the contras’ most relentless critics.

Justice Department officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have charged that Kerry’s investigation of the drug charges has interfered with their probes. Kerry’s aides, in turn, say privately that the department has failed to pursue evidence of contra misconduct because it fears damage to one of President Reagan’s most cherished foreign policy initiatives.

To win the approval of the rest of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry agreed that the inquest would cover the gamut of drug-smuggling issues in the Caribbean, including allegations that Nicaragua’s leftist regime has itself been involved in the cocaine trade.

It is also an issue with intensely political implications. If the investigations turn up a genuine link between the contras and cocaine, the Reagan Administration’s effort to win continued funding for the rebels could well be doomed. Not surprisingly, the Administration and the contras have heatedly denied any connection between the guerrillas and the drug trade.

‘Would Be Crazy to Try It’

“We have nothing to do with cocaine--nothing at all,” Adolfo Calero, the leader of the largest contra military organization, said in a recent interview. “We are against it. And we would be crazy to try it. It would be the end of our support in this country.”

The State Department has acknowledged that some contra associates have been involved in cocaine trafficking, but it insists that none of the rebel leaders or their organizations knowingly engaged in the drug trade.

“There has been no evidence that organizations associated with the major resistance umbrella group, the United Nicaraguan Opposition, have participated in or benefited from drug trafficking,” a State Department report concluded last year. It continued:

“Instead, the available evidence points to involvement with drug traffickers by a limited number of persons having various kinds of affiliations with or political sympathies for resistance groups.

“There are some 20,000 members of the several active armed groups in the Nicaraguan democratic resistance,” the report said. “In such a large cross section, it is inevitable that there will be some who have had drug connections.”

Warning From Shultz

The Administration’s concern about the allegations was enough, however, to prompt Secretary of State George P. Shultz to warn the contra leaders that the United States would cut off aid to any group that did not purge its membership of drug traffickers.

Last month, the DEA launched a new review of the drug allegations and reminded its field agents that the Administration does not want to be caught unaware by a new scandal.

“We watch this as closely as we watch anything in this agency, to make sure we’re not missing anything,” said Judith E. Bertini, a DEA intelligence specialist who is supervising the review. “Agents have been alerted to the importance of this.”

However, for all the charges and countercharges, the DEA says it has yet to find a credible drug case against the contra organizations.

“There could be drug traffickers providing money to the contras, but because they’re personally sympathetic, not because they’re in drugs to support a cause,” Bertini said. “To say they’re doing dope to support a cause--no.”

Moreover, federal officials say, the investigations have been complicated by increasing numbers of drug defendants who are asserting that they acted on behalf of the contras or the U.S. government, in hopes that the claim will tie up their prosecution.

The main allegations:

--Guns for Cocaine: Two drug smugglers convicted in Miami insist that their cocaine shipments from Costa Rica were part of an operation to finance contra operations--and insist that they were helped by the CIA and the DEA. “It was guns down, cocaine back,” convicted pilot Gary Betzner told the Associated Press in Miami. “Absolutely not true,” the DEA’s Bertini said. The man who allegedly hired Betzner, Jorge Morales, threatened to reveal the details of the ring if he was not granted immunity from prosecution. But, when the government refused, Morales pleaded guilty without naming any names. “We want him to talk,” said Anna Bennett, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami. “We can’t prosecute a ‘they.’ We can’t indict people on the basis of an unsupported allegation.”

--The Pastora Connection: The State Department has said that an aide to contra chieftain Eden Pastora made a deal with a Colombian drug dealer under which contra pilots would fly cocaine in exchange for money and airplanes. In 1986, one of Pastora’s pilots, Gerardo Duran, was arrested in Costa Rica for allegedly flying cocaine into the United States.

Pastora acknowledged that his organization, the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE), received a C-47 cargo plane from the Colombian but said that he knew nothing of any drug deals and broke off the relationship after he learned that the man was involved in the cocaine trade. “There is no information to indicate that ARDE leaders or the organization itself were involved in narcotics trafficking,” the State Department said.

--The Barranquilla Shipments: Administration and congressional sources say a witness has told the FBI of watching as cocaine was loaded aboard a Southern Air Transport cargo plane in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1983, and of observing a similar operation in 1985. Other sources have said Southern Air provided aircraft for the contras’ cargo shipments, and flight records indicate that some of the same planes landed in Central America and Colombia.

Southern Air’s attorney, Robert M. Beckman, said the charge is false. “I have asked every investigative body, and each one has told us: Southern Air Transport is not a target of any investigation,” he said. A Justice Department official said the witness had taken a lie detector test, but the results were inconclusive.

--The Ilopango Ring: Congressional investigators say they have seen unconfirmed reports that some of the crewmen on the planes that carried guns from El Salvador’s Ilopango air base to the contras may have carried drugs back into the United States. But the DEA’s Bertini said her agency has “checked every which way” and has seen no evidence to back up the reports.

--The Avirgan Lawsuit: Two free-lance journalists in Costa Rica, Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, have charged in a lawsuit that the contras helped ship “thousands of kilograms of cocaine” from Colombia to Florida through a ranch in Costa Rica. The ranch’s American owner, John Hull, has acknowledged helping the contras but denied any connection with drug operations. Said Bertini: “There’s nothing (in the DEA’s files) to reflect that.”

--The Bermudez Allegation: Congressional investigators said the Justice Department has received an unconfirmed report from foreign officials that Enrique Bermudez, the contras’ top military commander, narrowly escaped arrest during a cocaine raid in Honduras. According to the alleged report, the Hondurans believed that Bermudez “had been actively trafficking in cocaine.” A contra spokesman denied the charge; the DEA said it knew nothing of it.

--The Frogman Case: Two Nicaraguan smugglers convicted in a 1983 San Francisco case in which skin divers were caught unloading cocaine from a freighter have said they used their drug profits to fund one of the smaller contra factions.

The contra group, known by its initials FARN, has acknowledged that one of the smugglers was raising money for the group but says it did not know that he was dealing in cocaine. The DEA’s Bertini said the agency is skeptical of the allegations. “There was no mention of any contra connection in 1983,” she said, “and now, three years later, when two defendants are sitting in jail, they bring it up.”

--The Pena-Cabrera Case: Renato Pena-Cabrera, a Nicaraguan smuggler arrested in San Francisco in 1984, has said he was a volunteer member of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, the largest contra group. The Democratic Force denies any connection. “We could find no evidence linking Pena-Cabrera with money flowing back (to Central America),” the DEA said.

Senate hearings on the drug charges are expected to begin next month, but it may take some time before they resolve any of the unanswered questions about the contras.

The investigation’s first target, in fact, will be a politically neutral one: the Bahamas, where the government of Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling has been accused of taking payoffs to allow smugglers to use its island airstrips.

“The question is not directed at the contras but at the way the drug enforcement system works,” Blum, the committee’s special counsel, said mildly. “Have real cops been interdicted as they tried to investigate? Have investigations been derailed by people asserting that national security is involved?”

But, he acknowledged, the contras are the main target. “Here’s what I want to know,” he said. “Did somebody decide that helping the contras was more important than keeping cocaine away from our teen-agers?”