2 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, November 27, 1996 NATION/WORLD Ex-guerrillas deny CIA drug connection The Washington Post WASHINGTON - Former Nicaraguan contra leader Eden Pastora told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday that he accepted money and gifts from a friendly countryman with- Wit knowing the man was a cocaine dealer in the United States. But Pastora and the onetime leader of the main anti-Sandinista contra group, Adolfo Calero, repeatedly denied dur- ing a sometimes tumultuous hearing that the CIA had supported or con- doned drug trafficking to finance the war against the leftist government in Managua. Calero testified that he had met another Nicaraguan, Norwin Meneses, two or three times but "I had no idea he was engaged in drug trafficking." He also said that Meneses had given "not *one cent" to the contra cause. Meneses and Oscar Danilo Blandon were described in a series of articles last August in the San Jose Mercury News as being financiers of the CIA-run con- tfa army who were said to have raised niillions in the 1980s through drug sales in South-Central Los Angeles. Yesterday, both contra leaders denied they knew of any connection between the CIA and Blandon and Meneses. The hearing was repeatedly inter- rupted by hecklers, some of whom shouted "Coverup!" and called for the panel to hear witnesses who supported the main allegations of the Mercury News series. AtC one point, com- mittee Chair 1 have Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) asked kfowseU5 Rep. Maxine Waters (D- anything Calif.) many of so t whose African American con- stituents were in_ the hearing Ex-Nicaragua room, to join the committee's questioning. Pastora said he was unaware that Blandon trafficked in cocaine until he was "arrested in San Diego" in 1986. "I did not know before," Pastora said. Once known as guerrilla leader "Commander Zero," Pastora said that before he knew Blandon was a drug dealer, he had twice accepted $3,000 from him "toward the armed strug- gle." Then, Pastora said, when he was "in critical financial straits," Blandon gave him two used pickup trucks and free rental of a house in Costa Rica. He said he met Meneses briefly and only twice, once in 1979 before the anti-Sandinistas were formed and again in 1987 or 1988, after his activi- 10 ties as a contra lo of the leader ended. Pastora said he had "no notion" that Meneses ever supported the were involved in drug trafficking, as CIA officials charged publicly in 1984 when they cut off aid to the popular contra leaders. He accused the CIA of "trying to compromise us either direct- ly or indirectly with drug traffickers." Calero said he knew Blandon's par- ents as "nice people" in Nicaragua but did not know of Oscar Blandon until this year when he read newspapers sto- ries about him. He said he met Meneses twice in the mid-1980s as contra fund-raising din- ners in San Francisco. Calero said he was sure that Meneses provided "not one cent" to the contra cause and "had no idea that he was engaged in drug traffic." Specter said the committee yesterday in closed session had questioned Blandon, now a paid confidential infor- mant of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Blandon repeated what he has told a federal grand jury, that he sold his first drugs at the suggestion of Meneses in the early 1980s to raise funds for the contras but later found out the CIA was financing the rebel organi- zation. Thereafter, Blandon sold drugs for his own profit, Specter said. N A NA rEPORTa Astronauts delay Thanksgiving meal CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Columbia's astronauts already can taste that Thanksgiving dinner, but they'll have to wait until Friday before they get to eat the "room-temperature, stabilized" turkey. The five shuttle crew members won't have time tomorrow to linger over a holi- day meal. Tomorrow night, Thomas Jones and Tamara Jernigan will float outsid for a six-hour spacewalk to test station-building tools. "We'll be hitting the deck running that morning," Jones told NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, who called yesterday to congratulate the astronauts on their satellite work. "When we get back inside, believe me, we'll be hungry for that Thanksgiving turkey;' Jones said. "We've got some off-the-shelf, kind of supermarket, room- temperature, stabilized turkey dinners that we'll be digging into right after I get that helmet off." "You didn't make it sound too appetizing'" Goldin said, laughing. Replied Jones: "One has to make due with the resources at hand, sir." Also on board: cranberry sauce and pumpkin-colored cakes. After a week of releasing and retrieving satellites, the crew focused on scienO experiments yesterday and prepared for the two upcoming spacewalks. The second excursion by Jones and Jernigan is due to begin Saturday night. , - Eden Pastora contras and did not know he in contra leader dealt in drugs. Pastora said he had gotten the promise of two heli- copters from Cuban residents in Miami, but only after the aircraft were received "discovered (the donors) were drug traffickers." Asked about any CIA complicity in drug trafficking, Pastora said: "I have no knowledge of anything of the sort." Pastora denied any of his top aides };?:;; _0 OPEN-MINDED BIBLE STUDY all denominations welcome all faiths welcome all sexual orientations welcome all people welcome FRIDAYS 3:30-5:00 at Canterbury House Blue house past the Frieze Bldg. 721 E. Huron Attorney: Simpson will testify again SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Bringing to a close the most dramatic stage in the civil case yet, O.J. Simpson stepped down from the witness stand yesterday without any effort by his lawyer to undo the damage from two days of accusations from the other side. Defense attorney Robert Baker had been expected to throw Simpson a round of sympathetic questions. But in a surprise move criticized by some experts, Baker said he will call Simpson back to the stand during the defense portion of the wrongful-death lawsuit next month. As a result, the jurors headed home for a six-day Thanksgiving holiday car- rying a final image of Simpson denying yet again that he stabbed to death Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The trial resumes Tuesday. Telling his story for the first time in front of a jury, Simpson was battered for two days with evidence, insinua- tions and accusations, from blood in his Bronco and mansion to a lie-detector that allegedly showed him being "extremely deceptive." New drug to help Alzheimer's patient, WASHINGTON - Alzheimer's patients are getting a second drug that fights the memory-robbing symptoms of the fatal brain disease-- and may be taken by many more patients because it causes fewer side effects. The drug Aricept, created by Japan's Eisai Co., won Food and Drug Administration approval late Monday. Pfizer Inc., which will sell the d here, said it will be on pharmacT shelves in several weeks. Aricept "provides another choice" for patients who cannot take Cognex, the only other Alzheimer's medication sold, said Dr. Zhaven Khachaturian of the Alzheimer's Association's Reagan Research Institute. "In terms of being radically different, no it's not;' he said. "But it has less nui- sance." Newsletters Newsletters Newsletters Newsletters Big savings on newsletters for all clubs, businesses, and organizations. ;. ~D Travel . 00 S. UNIVERSTY., STE. 208 (A8VE MCDONALD$) 998-0200 httip /Iww w *cie e *o rK/iravel, him Netanyahu touts plan to expand Jewish settlements ELI, West Bank - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew deep into the interior of the West Bank yesterday with a defiant declaration of intent to expand Jewish settlement here. In talks with settlers, he rejected "the logic of an apartheid peace" in which Israel would have to curb its policy of further populating the occupied territories with Jewish families. In what residents called the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to Eli, an isolated Jewish pocket in the northern West Bank's densest Palestinian corri- dor, Netanyahu took note of growing Arab and international pressure to curb Israeli expansion in the land captured from Jordan in 1967. It is on that land that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority seeks to exercise the limited self-rule powers granted under his peace accord with Israel - and eventu- ally to set up a Palestinian state. - . Y. 5 Critics of the Jewish settlements, par- ticularly Palestinians and their friends in Arab countries, have charged that the set- tlements make more difficult, if ML impossible, a long-term peace settleme by closing off space to Palestinian ruli. Protesters unfazed by rainy weather BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - One day after a massive demonstration shut down this capital, the ranks of protest- ers denouncing the regime of Serbi President Slobodan Milosevic we?; thinned yesterday, hidden under a sea of umbrellas. But the mood in Belgrade's main Terazije Square appeared angrier. "No court has the right to take my vote;' said one protester, Petar Markovic, as he stood in the driving, cold rain. Serbia's Supreme Court rejected an appeal last night by the opposition coali- tion Zajedno to reinstate its landslide vic- tories in Nov. 17 municipal elections. - Compiledfrom Daily wire reports. W The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are- $85. Winter term (January through April) is $95, yearlong (September through April) is $165. 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