Continuing with Gary Webb's 'Dark Alliance...The CIA,The Contra's and The Crack Cocaine Explosion.

[....Ivan's whereabouts were no mystery to Danilo Blandón. He'd been observing Ivan's dealings with Ricky Ross for quite some time, seeing their sales expand, watching the venture become more and more profitable. He had to admit it; he was jealous. Despite all the work he'd been doing for Norwin Meneses personally—keeping the books, working for the Contras, helping Norwin's wife run the restaurant and the T-shirt company—the drug kingpin was still nagging him to move more cocaine. Every couple of months Blandón would drive all the way to Meneses house in Pacifica, a nine-hour trip, pick up another kilo or two, drive back to L.A., and then have to put up with Meneses flogging him to sell it.

Blandón had been hitting up other car salesmen he knew, helping other cocaine dealers through dry spells now and again, but he wasn't making any great strides. He estimated that he spent "about a year, year and a half, you know, with the same two, one or two keys."

But Ivan Arguelles, another Nicaraguan exile scuttling around L.A. with cocaine to sell, had found this kid in South Central, Ricky Ross, and they were really starting to move the powder. Blandón knew Ivan, who also used the name Claudio Villavicencio, because of their shared heritage and their new profession. He sold Ivan a little cocaine every once in a while. But Ivan had other sources of supply.

The Torres brothers—the two giants with the little car lot —also got into the cocaine business around this time, according to Blandón, who surmised that they were supplying Ricky Ross. "I supposed that maybe they start with Rick," Blandón said. "I know them so well, you know, they are Nicaraguan people. . .. When I saw them getting rich, getting money, so I saw that they start doing business with him."

If the Torres brothers were dealing with Ross, as Blandón claims, it is likely that they were doing so as Ivan's suppliers, because Ross said he never met the Torres's face-to-face until long after Ivan disappeared.

Blandón had no other sources. He was stuck with Norwin Meneses, who was squeezing him dry for the Contras, charging him $60,000 a kilo and taking nearly every penny he made. Norwin was holding him back, he believed. "I didn't have my own car," Blandón complained. "I have to rent cars, you know. I used to work with him [Meneses], you know, coming from San Francisco, going back, and I thought, 'Hey, what are you doing? You're not doing nothing, you know? You're not making no—no money.'"

That's why Ivan's deal with Ricky Ross looked so good to Blandón. This little kid was a mover, and he was getting bigger all the time. "I wished I could have known Ricky. . .because all the time I want to grow in the business," Blandón said. "He [Ivan] and his brother-in-law [Henry] was selling to Rick. So I wish I could [have known] him. . .. I knew how much they were selling."

Blandón got his wish. Ivan Arguelles caught a bullet in the spine that crippled him from the waist down. He was hospitalized for months and forced to quit the cocaine business while he recuperated. "He got shot by his wife," Blandón said. "He's paralyzed right now." A tough break for Ivan, but it was the break Danilo Blandón had been waiting for. Ivan's customers had fallen to his brother-in-law, Henry Corrales, a drug dealing amateur. "Henry was kind of a knucklehead," Ross recalled. "He was a nice guy who just wanted to party all the time. He didn't know what he was doing."

Blandón agreed. "When he [Ivan] got in the accident, it started Henry Corrales getting in [the business]," he said. "Henry was running the business because his brother-in law was in the hospital. And when the guy that got paralyzed get in the hospital, he lost that [cocaine] contact. And Henry didn't have any contact more than me when he took over."

continue...
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