prison in Venezuela in September 1985, Luis Posada Carriles went directly to El Salvador to work on the illicit Contra resupply operations being run by Lt. Col. Oliver North. Posada assumed the name 'Ramon Medina,' and worked as a deputy to another anti-Castro Cuban exile, Felix Rodriguez, who was in charge of a small airlift of arms and supplies to the contras in Southern Nicaragua. Rodriguez used the code name, Max Gomez. ...Posada and Rodriguez obtaining supplies for contra troops from a warehouse at Illopango airbase in San Salvador." Guatemala had been providing aid to the Resistance occurring in Nicaragua (freedom fighter), which the US had indirectly supported by delivering supplies to Guatemala as compensation. The Guatemalan Army requested supplies of varying priority in multiple categories. They required helicopters, spare parts for aircraft, training aircraft, communications equipment, logistical transport vehicles, light and medium weapons, ground force and aerial munitions, field hospital equipment, and tactical radars, among other requests. 1985 drug allegations In 1985, another Contra leader "told U.S. authorities that the group was being paid $50,000 by various Colombian traffickers for help with a 100-kilo cocaine shipment and that the money would go 'for the cause' of fighting the Nicaraguan government." A 1985 National Intelligence Estimate revealed cocaine trafficking links to a top commander working under Contra leader Edén Pastora. Pastora had complained about such charges as early as March 1985, claiming that "two 'political figures' in Washington told him last week that State Department and CIA personnel were spreading the rumor that he is linked to drug trafficking in order to isolate his movement." In June 1985, it was found that $1.5 million in DEA seized money was used to help fund the Contras. On December 20, 1985, the charges were laid out in an Associated Press article after an extensive investigation which included interviews with "officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Customs Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Costa Rica's Public Security Ministry, as well as rebels and Americans who work with them." Five American Contra supporters who worked with the rebels confirmed the charges, noting that "two Cuban-Americans used armed rebel troops to guard cocaine at clandestine airfields in northern Costa Rica. They identified the Cuban-Americans as members of the 2506 Brigade, an anti-Castro group that participated in the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba. Several also said they supplied information about the smuggling