15.U.S. MILITARY TRAINING AT FORT BRAGG AND SCHOOL OF AMERICAS AT FT. BENNING, DRUG CARTELS, MENA, THE CONTRAS, AND OLIVER NORTH

COMMENTS FROM STREET TALK NETWORK ABOUT THIS POST-

1. Do your own research on the information provided and then come up with your own conclusions.

2. This article contains many names and other information that can be researched.

3. Trust your gut feeling on information provided as this post may contain slanted information.

4. Our U.S. Military trained some of the most evil people in the world who went back to their countries and committed atrocities against their own people.

A careful review shows that several genuine scandals and documented relationships have become intertwined with claims that remain unproven. The strongest conclusion is not that the United States deliberately “trained several cartels.” It is that the United States trained Latin American military personnel—sometimes in counternarcotics and counterinsurgency techniques—and some of those soldiers subsequently deserted, joined drug-trafficking organizations, or used their training to create extremely violent criminal forces.

1. Fort Bragg and Fort Benning were different training programs

The School of the Americas was not located at Fort Bragg. It began in the Panama Canal Zone in 1946 and moved to Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1984. In 2001 it was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, or WHINSEC.

Fort Bragg, North Carolina, meanwhile, was a major home of U.S. Army Special Forces. Mexican special-forces soldiers reportedly received instruction there from the 7th Special Forces Group.

A 1996 Government Accountability Office report said that more than 57,000 Latin American military personnel had attended the School of the Americas or its predecessors by that time. The school offered infantry, commando, intelligence, counterinsurgency, psychological-operations, and later counternarcotics instruction. Read the GAO’s School of the Americas report.

2. Los Zetas: the clearest cartel connection

Los Zetas is the one cartel for which the U.S.-training connection is substantial and repeatedly reported.

The organization grew out of Mexico’s Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE. These were elite Mexican soldiers originally trained to combat insurgents and drug traffickers. In the late 1990s, Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cárdenas Guillén recruited Arturo Guzmán Decena and other GAFE deserters to become his private enforcement force.

Former U.S. military official Craig Deare reported that some of the Mexican personnel who later formed Los Zetas had been trained by the U.S. Army’s 7th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg. Their reported instruction included:

• Map reading and navigation
• Military communications
• Light and heavy weapons
• Machine guns and automatic weapons
• Small-unit operations
• Counterinsurgency methods
• Counternarcotics operations

The important qualification is that these soldiers were trained while they were members of Mexico’s military—not while they were identified as cartel gunmen. They subsequently deserted and transferred their military skills to organized crime. Al Jazeera’s investigation of the Fort Bragg connection.

Reported School of the Americas graduates

At least two early Zetas members have repeatedly been identified as having attended courses at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in 1996:

• Efraín Teodoro Torres, “Z-14” — reportedly attended a counternarcotics course
  before deserting the Mexican Army and joining the Gulf Cartel’s Zetas
  force.
• Braulio Arellano Domínguez — reportedly received training at the School of
  the Americas before deserting and becoming an early Zetas member.

The documentary evidence does not establish that all original Zetas attended the School of the Americas. Reports sometimes confuse training provided at Fort Bragg, training at Fort Benning, and U.S. instruction delivered inside Mexico.

3. The Gulf Cartel

The Gulf Cartel was not itself “trained” at Fort Bragg or the School of the Americas. Its connection arose because Osiel Cárdenas recruited U.S.-trained Mexican soldiers.

Los Zetas initially functioned as the Gulf Cartel’s:

• Bodyguard unit
• Assassination squad
• Kidnapping force
• Territorial enforcement organization
• Military-training organization
• Protection and extortion arm

The arrangement gave the Gulf Cartel capabilities that ordinary criminal gunmen generally did not possess. Zetas members introduced military discipline, communications, coordinated ambushes, intelligence collection, and organized recruit training into Mexican cartel warfare.

Los Zetas eventually separated from the Gulf Cartel around 2010 and became an independent trafficking organization. The split produced an exceptionally violent war between the two organizations.

Thus, the accurate formulation is:

U.S.-trained Mexican military deserters formed Los Zetas, first as the Gulf Cartel’s armed wing and later as an independent cartel.

It is not accurate to say that the U.S. Army knowingly trained the Gulf Cartel.

4. The Kaibiles and the Guatemalan connection

The Kaibiles are Guatemala’s elite special-forces organization, not originally a drug cartel. Guatemalan military personnel received extensive U.S. assistance over many years, and many Guatemalan officers attended the School of the Americas.

Former Kaibiles later became valuable recruits for Los Zetas and other trafficking organizations because of their experience in jungle warfare, ambushes, interrogation, survival, and small-unit combat. U.S. intelligence reporting documented Los Zetas recruiting former Kaibiles to train cartel members.

However, the available evidence does not justify saying that the School of the Americas trained a “Kaibil cartel.” The more defensible chain is:

Military training → service in Guatemalan special forces → desertion or retirement → recruitment by Los Zetas or other trafficking groups.

A declassified intelligence document describes Los Zetas’ recruitment of former Kaibiles to train new members. Read the declassified reporting on Zetas and Kaibiles.

5. Other cartels often mistakenly placed on the “trained” list

The Medellín, Cali, Sinaloa, and Guadalajara cartels appear throughout the broader history, but I found no reliable evidence that these organizations, as organizations, were trained at Fort Bragg or the School of the Americas.

6. Barry Seal and Mena, Arkansas

Adler Berriman “Barry” Seal was a major cocaine smuggler associated with the Medellín Cartel. He later became an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Seal used the Mena Intermountain Municipal Airport in western Arkansas for aircraft storage, maintenance, modifications, and related operations. Investigators documented that Seal’s aircraft were serviced or modified there, including work intended to extend their range or cargo capacity.

The wording matters: the evidence that Seal operated from and conducted smuggling-related activity at Mena is much stronger than the claim that every reported cocaine load was physically flown into Mena.

Seal’s established history includes:

• Smuggling large cocaine shipments for Medellín
  Cartel figures
• Operating aircraft capable of long-distance
  clandestine flights
• Using Mena facilities for aircraft work
• Becoming a DEA informant after facing prosecution
• Conducting an undercover flight involving Pablo
  Escobar’s organization
• Using a CIA-installed camera to photograph
  cocaine being loaded in Nicaragua
• Flying the resulting load to Homestead Air Force
  Base in Florida as part of the undercover operation

Seal’s photographed Nicaragua operation was used by the Reagan administration to claim that Sandinista officials were connected to cocaine trafficking. His confirmed CIA assistance appears principally connected to this DEA undercover operation. Claims that the CIA directed his entire earlier smuggling career have not been conclusively established. Washington Post reporting on Seal and Mena.

Seal was murdered in Baton Rouge on February 19, 1986, by Colombian assassins while reporting to a court-ordered halfway house.

7. Don Henry and Kevin Ives—the “boys on the tracks”

On August 23, 1987, 16-year-old Don Henry and 17-year-old Kevin Ives were struck by a freight train near Alexander, Arkansas. The train crew saw them lying motionless across the tracks and attempted unsuccessfully to stop.

The original state medical examiner ruled that the boys had fallen asleep after smoking marijuana. Their families challenged that determination. Subsequent examination produced evidence suggesting they had been injured before the train struck them, and a grand jury classified their deaths as probable homicides.

Their deaths remain unsolved.

The alleged drug-drop connection

The theory advanced by family members, witnesses, authors, and documentaries is that the boys encountered an aerial drug drop and were murdered to prevent them from reporting what they had witnessed. Some versions connect that drop to a smuggling network related to Mena.

Nevertheless:

• No court has established that the boys witnessed
  a drug drop.
• No official investigation has conclusively
  connected their deaths to Barry Seal.
• Seal had been dead for approximately eighteen
  months when the boys were killed.
• Mena is roughly 120 miles west of the location
  where the boys died.
• The relevant alleged trafficking would therefore
  have involved a broader Arkansas network, not necessarily a plane flying
  directly from Mena that night.

The case contains genuine reasons for suspicion: the questionable initial medical ruling, evidence of injuries before impact, investigative failures, and later corruption convictions involving local prosecutor Dan Harmon. But those facts do not by themselves prove a CIA or Mena connection.

In 2018, a federal judge ordered agencies to review and release additional segregable information sought by Kevin Ives’s mother. KATV report on the Ives records litigation.

8. Freeway Ricky Ross and the CIA allegation

“Freeway” Ricky Donnell Ross built an enormous Los Angeles cocaine-distribution network during the 1980s. His critical supplier was Nicaraguan trafficker Oscar Danilo Blandón.

Blandón and Norwin Meneses were associated with Nicaraguan Contra political and fundraising circles. Blandón supplied Ross with inexpensive cocaine, which Ross converted into crack and distributed through a far-reaching dealer network.

Journalist Gary Webb’s 1996 Dark Alliance series argued that cocaine sold by Contra-connected traffickers helped finance Contra activities and fed Ross’s distribution organization.

The strongest supportable statement is:

Ross distributed cocaine supplied by a trafficker who had connections to the Contra movement; there is no proof that Ross was employed by, took orders from, or knowingly distributed drugs “for the CIA.”

Ross himself said he did not know about Blandón’s Contra connections during the central period of their drug business.

The Justice Department Inspector General found no evidence that Ross, Blandón, or Meneses was an employee or agent of the CIA. It also criticized broader claims that this single network created the nationwide crack epidemic. But the investigations did not erase the documented Contra-trafficker relationships or the government’s inadequate handling of some trafficking allegations. Justice Department Inspector General’s Contra–crack investigation.

9. What the Kerry Committee actually found

Senator John Kerry’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations conducted the most important congressional investigation of Contra-drug relationships.

Its conclusions included:

• Individuals who supported the Contras
  participated in drug trafficking.
• Contra suppliers, pilots, supporters, and
  mercenaries were implicated.
• Companies connected to traffickers obtained U.S.
  government funds intended for Contra assistance.
• Federal agencies sometimes failed to treat
  Contra-related drug allegations with sufficient seriousness.
• The committee did not conclude that the entire
  Contra leadership collectively operated a drug cartel.
• It did not prove that the CIA created America’s
  crack epidemic.

Six companies identified as owned or operated by suspected or convicted traffickers and linked to the Contra supply network included SETCO, DIACSA, Vortex, Frigoríficos de Puntarenas, Ocean Hunter, and Hondu Carib. CIA Inspector General discussion of the Kerry findings.

The committee’s central finding was blunt: there was “substantial evidence” of drug smuggling by individual Contras and participants in the Contra-support network.

10. Iran-Contra and the drug connection

Iran-Contra involved two overlapping secret policies:

1. Reagan administration officials facilitated arms sales to Iran, despite an embargo and public policy against such dealings.

2. Some proceeds were diverted to support the Nicaraguan Contras while Congress had restricted or prohibited such assistance through the Boland Amendments.

The operational network involved Oliver North, National Security Adviser John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim, Contra leader Adolfo Calero, private donors, arms brokers, airlines, and Central American supply bases.

The drug connection did not consist of one proven master plan under which every cocaine shipment was ordered by the CIA. It arose because parts of the clandestine Contra supply system relied on:

• Private aircraft
• Remote airfields
• Pilots operating outside ordinary military
  controls
• Front companies
• Arms dealers
• Cash transactions
• Central American traffickers
• Individuals who simultaneously supported the
  Contras and moved cocaine

These conditions made the supply network highly vulnerable to narcotics trafficking.

11. Oliver North’s documented connections

Oliver North coordinated significant portions of the covert Contra-support operation from the National Security Council.

North’s notebooks contain entries demonstrating that drug allegations reached him. Among the most important are:

• July 12, 1985: North recorded Richard Secord telling him that “14 M” connected
  with financing arms in a Honduran warehouse “came from drugs.”
• August 9, 1985: North recorded information that a DC-6 used for Contra-supply
  flights from New Orleans was “probably being used for drug runs into U.S.”
• North received reports raising questions about
  people in the Contra movement or its support network.
• Investigators later disputed North’s claim that
  he reliably passed relevant drug information to the DEA.

The National Security Archive publishes reproductions and explanations of these notebook entries. See Oliver North’s July 12, 1985 notebook entry.

The proposed $1.5 million diversion

One particularly important episode involved Barry Seal’s undercover operation against the Medellín Cartel. DEA testimony indicated that North suggested using approximately $1.5 million in cartel money from the operation to support the Contras. DEA officials rejected the proposal.

The Kerry Committee concluded that senior policymakers were not immune to viewing drug money as a possible answer to the Contras’ funding problems. National Security Archive collection on North, Contra drugs, and the Kerry investigation.

This does not prove that North personally ordered cocaine imported into American cities. It does demonstrate:

• His awareness of serious trafficking allegations
  within the Contra-support environment
• His willingness to consider channeling cartel
  money to the Contras
• His central role in an operation that depended on
  secret aircraft, brokers, front companies, and private supply networks
• The administration’s overriding determination to
  keep the Contra war operating despite congressional restrictions

Final assessment

The documented story is serious without exaggeration:

• U.S.-trained Mexican commandos deserted and
  created Los Zetas.
• Los Zetas first served the Gulf Cartel and later
  became an independent cartel.
• Former Guatemalan Kaibiles were recruited into
  cartel operations.
• Barry Seal was a Medellín Cartel smuggler who
  used Mena for aviation-related operations and later worked undercover for
  the DEA.
• Contra suppliers, pilots, and supporters were
  involved in cocaine trafficking.
• Blandón, a Contra-connected trafficker, supplied
  Freeway Ricky Ross.
• Ross has not been proven to have worked for the
  CIA.
• Oliver North knew of trafficking allegations and
  proposed directing cartel money toward the Contras.
• Don Henry and Kevin Ives were probable homicide
  victims, but the alleged CIA/Mena drug-drop motive remains unproven.
• Official investigations did not prove that the
  CIA deliberately created the crack epidemic, but congressional and
  inspector-general records demonstrate troubling Contra-trafficker
  associations, inconsistent reporting practices, and failures to respond adequately
  to narcotics allegations.

The historical record therefore supports a network of documented overlaps, compromises, and ignored warnings—not the simpler claim that every cartel or cocaine shipment was directly commanded by the CIA.