Deputy National Security Adviser Admiral John Poindexter, National Security Council staffer Col. Oliver North and others continued an illegal operation to fund the Contras, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal. At that point, members of the National Security Council staff continued covert operations forbidden to the CIA. Such operations were justified under the pretense that the 1984 Boland Amendment did not specify what constituted an 'agency involved in intelligence gathering' beyond that of the CIA or DOD. According to a memo by the Deputy Director of Intelligence, Nicaragua became a growing military force in the region. This was determined to be a growth too big for the apparent needs of the Nicaraguans. This led the government to suspect such growth. The concerns of Nicaragua growing as a communist hub in line with Cuba was growing stronger. The Deputy Director compared it to the struggle that metastasized in Vietnam. Drug allegations In 1984, U.S. officials began receiving reports of Contra rebels involving themselves in cocaine trafficking. Three CIA officials told journalists that they considered these reports "reliable". Former Panamanian deputy of health minister Dr. Hugo Spadafora, who had fought with the Contra army, outlined charges of cocaine trafficking to a prominent Panamanian official and was later found murdered. The charges linked the Contra trafficking to Sebastian Gonzalez Mendiola, who was charged with cocaine trafficking on November 26, 1984, in Costa Rica. October 28, the FBI found "345 kilos of cocaine" in South Florida with the intention of being sold, and the profit used "to finance a plot to assassinate Honduran President Roberto Suazo Córdova. The FBI arrested Honduran General José Bueso Rosa. Bueso was a key figure in the CIA dealing with the Contras and "efforts [were] made ... to deter him from disclosing details of these covert operations." Several years later, a Senate committee investigated the several Contra-connected corporations that had been used by the State Department to supply "humanitarian aid" to the region. The committee connected the crack-cocaine epidemic to the Contra-connected corporations and found that the drugs were distributed on the streets in Los Angeles. CIA participation, albeit indirect, was a result of a partnership with well-known drug trafficker Alan Hyde. Hyde had been known by the criminal syndicate world to be a large distributor and trafficker of cocaine. From 1987 to 1989, the CIA cooperated with Hyde and used his vast network of covert shipping lanes in the