Former Cartel Kingpin Says Drug Leaders Gave Contras $20 Million

A former kingpin of the Medellin drug cartel said Colombian drug lords donated about $20 million to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua.

Carlos Lehder Rivas, 40, made his remarks in a broadcast Thursday night of ABC’s PrimeTime Live, which interviewed him in the federal prison in Marion, Ill., where Lehder is serving a life sentence plus 135 years.

“We did give a great deal of money to the Contra cause . . . I gave. We put up the first time about $10 million to the Contras,” said Lehder, whose hands were shackled during the interview. “(In all) around $20 million in cash went to help the Contras.”

Adolfo Calero, a former director of the Nicaraguan Resistance, an umbrella group for the Contras, denied Lehder’s allegations.

“We never had one cent from them,” Calero said in a telephone interview from his Miami home. “We know where all our contributions came from.”

Lehder was convicted in May, 1988, after a 7 1/2-month trial in Jacksonville, Fla., on charges of cocaine smuggling and operating a continuing criminal enterprise. He and others were accused of smuggling some 3.3 tons of cocaine into the United States from Colombia from 1978 to 1980.

Lehder also accused John Hull, an American who directed supplies for the Contras from Costa Rica, of cocaine trafficking. Hull, who now lives in the United States, denied the allegations, the news program reported.

“I do know the situation for a fact that John Hull in Costa Rica . . . he was taking about 30 tons of cocaine into the United States a year,” Lehder said. “Now this is a kingpin.”

Hull, 70, faces charges in Costa Rica ranging from aiding the Nicaraguan Contras to involvement in a terrorist bombing. Costa Rican officials have said they plan to seek his extradition from the United States.

A Costa Rican government commission that investigated Contra activity there accused Hull of involvement in a network that “allowed Colombian and Panamanian drug traffickers to transport drugs to the United States in exchange for arms for the Contras.”

In March, friends of Hull held a news conference in Washington and read a statement from him denying the charges.