Adolfo Calero

As a U.S.-educated Coca-Cola executive and Conservative Party leader in Nicaragua, Adolfo Calero, who died June 2 at 80, opposed the brutally corrupt right-wing dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. But after the 1979 overthrow of Somoza, Calero sensed the victorious Sandinistas were erecting what he called a "Soviet totalitarian regime." He fled to Florida, where the CIA made him the head of the armed rebel force that would be known as the contras. When Congress barred contra funding, it led to one of the great imbroglios of the Reagan Administration: the Iran-contra scandal, in which Calero's men got some $30 million via...

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