Gary Webb's 'Dark Alliance' continues with "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it"

[.....The potential exposure of Norwin Meneses couldn't have come at a more inopportune time for the Contras, or the CIA.

During the winter of 1984–85, the Contra forces were at their lowest ebb, both on the battlefield and in the battle for U.S. public opinion. For twelve months the Contras had staggered from one public relations disaster to another. There had been a major uproar in Congress in the spring of 1984, when it was revealed that the CIA cowboys running the Contra project had seeded Nicaraguan harbors with hundreds of small mines, which proceeded to indiscriminately blow holes in merchant ships from all over the world, including those from friendly nations. Shortly after that, a bomb went off at ARDE commander Eden Pastora jungle headquarters during a press conference, wounding Pastora, killing or injuring a score of ARDE officials and journalists, and throwing the Contra armies in Costa Rica into turmoil.

Later in the year, in the midst of Reagan's reelection campaign, an illustrated terrorism manual the CIA printed up for the boys in the field ended up in the newspapers, creating yet another public outcry and much congressional breast-beating.

The hardest blow came in October 1984. With the administration off balance and desperately hoping to avoid any more CIA-Contra controversies before the elections, the Democrat-controlled Congress succeeded in passing yet another Boland Amendment. Unlike the earlier ones, though, this had some teeth.

It prohibited the CIA, the Defense Department, or any other agency of the U.S. government from giving any money or aid to anyone for the support of the Contras. The money spigot had been officially turned off; the loopholes were sewn shut....]
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2019/06/part-6-dark-allianceteach-man-craft-and.html