Drug Lords Aided Contras, Ex-Kingpin Testifies

A former high-ranking official of the notorious Medellin drug cartel testified Monday that he and his associates contributed up to $10 million to the Nicaraguan Contras in the mid-1980s.

The witness, Carlos Lehder, suggested the purpose of the payment might have been to assure Contra protection of cocaine shipments bound for the United States through Costa Rica.

There was no suggestion that the payment had been solicited by the Ronald Reagan Administration, which had been seeking international support for the Contras at that time.

Lehder, the only Colombian drug kingpin being held in U.S. custody, has been testifying as a prosecution witness in the racketeering and drug-smuggling trial of Manuel A. Noriega, the deposed Panamanian dictator. His testimony about the cartel’s payment came under cross-examination by Frank Rubino, Noriega’s defense lawyer.

“To the best of my recollection, there was some contribution. It could be around $10 million, sir,” Lehder told Rubino. Lehder was not asked whether anyone had solicited the money or exactly why the cartel had provided it. Based on objections from prosecutors as to the relevance of the issue, U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler restricted that line of questioning.

The matter arose when Rubino asked Lehder about a tape-recorded jailhouse interview he had given to a free-lance journalist in March, 1990, two years after his federal court conviction on charges of drug-smuggling and operating a continuing criminal enterprise.

Rubino said Lehder had suggested that the cartel wanted to ship cocaine through a ranch in Costa Rica owned by U.S. expatriate John Hull, a longtime supporter of the Contras who allegedly had helped then-White House aide Oliver L. North expedite weapons and other supplies to the Contras.

Lehder said his information about Hull was “second-hand.”

“I recall some shipments going to Costa Rica, but I don’t know whether it involved that ranch,” he told the court.

As part of his defense strategy, Rubino has sought to inject the Contras into the case. He has said he will try to show that Noriega was a good friend and ally of the United States and tried to help the Reagan Administration defeat the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.