Manuel Noriega Quotes

And so, at a December 1981 meeting, Contra leaders, whom Reagan referred to as the “moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers,” floated the idea that trafficking cocaine into California would provide enough profits to arm and train the anti-Sandinista guerrillas.108 With most of the network already established, the plan was rather straightforward: There were the Medellín and Cali cartels in Colombia; the airports and money laundering in Panama run by President Manuel Noriega; the well-known lack of radar detection that made landing strips in Costa Rica prime transport depots; and weapons and drug warehouses at Ilopango air base outside San Salvador. The problem had been U.S. law enforcement guarding key entry points into a lucrative market. But with the CIA and the National Security Council now ready to run interference and keep the FBI, the U.S. Customs Service,

Under Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s, the war on drugs intensified, fueled not just by domestic policy, but by foreign entanglements as well. The Reagan administration funneled money to right-wing paramilitaries in Central and South America, offering protection to cocaine traffickers like Nicaragua’s Manuel Noriega.

In 1989 an American invasion, Operation Just Cause, had ousted the government of President Manuel Noriega. ‘They got rid of Ali Baba but they forgot the forty thieves,’ ran a popular joke in Panama.

In fact, the CIA used BCCI for various illegal covert operations, including funding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (which would later morph into Al Qaeda), as well as the Contras in Nicaragua (which became part of the infamous Iran-Contra affair).510 BCCI also worked with Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, the Medellin Cartel, and a long list of shady characters.