C-123 shot down over southern Nicaragua on Oct. 5, 1986. The third American crewman, Eugene Hasenfus, parachuted safely into the jungle and proceeded to blow the cover off the Reagan Administration’s secret Contra war. The plane happened to be Barry Seal’s old Fat Lady, carrying a load of guns and ammunition to a band of Contras working inside Nicaragua. The U.S. government confirmed Plumlee's worst fears about its willingness to sacrifice covert operatives. The White House, the State Department, the CIA— everyone who had a hand in the supply network— stridently denied that Hasenfus or the dead crewmen had any connection at all to the government. Among the papers found aboard the plane was a business card from Robert Owen, Oliver North’s liaison with the Contras [and prior to that chief aide to then- Sen. Dan Quayle (R-IN)]. There were documents linking the plane to Southern Air Transport, the CIA’s airline of choice. Papers in the plane also contained addresses of safe houses in El Salvador, from which enterprising reporters discovered that telephone calls had been made to Richard Secord, the profiteering ex-Air Force general who was in charge of the secret arms-supply network. Hasenfus himself admitted that he had been working for the CIA, specifically for Felix Rodriguez. Hasenfus knew him by his nom de guerre, Max Gomez. Both of these names appear in various places on Plumlee’s map. Rodriguez, who had helped track down and assassinate Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, was one of many expatriate Cubans attracted to the Contra war, because they thought it was a harbinger of their return to a liberated Cuba. Rodriguez was recruited to be the main Contra supply coordinator in Central America by Donald Gregg, an ex-CIA official who was named as then-Vice President Bush’s National Security Adviser in 1982. Evidence surfaced during the various Iran-Contra investigations that. Rodriguez may have had almost daily contact with Bush’s office in 1986. But while the Hasenfus affair brought about the undoing of Secord and North and led directly to the revelation of secret arms shipments to Iran aboard Southern Air Transport planes, George Bush skated clean. Plumlee and Cooper go way back. They’d flown together in the 1950s and 1960s for the CIA-front airlines Air America and InterMountain Aviation in the Golden Triangle area, where Thailand, Burma and Laos converge. These flights were in support of the remnants of Chaing Kai-shek’s Chinese nationalist guerrillas, whom the CIA was still backing. Using American arms, they organized large-scale heroin production in Southeast Asia. Eventually, the CIA airplanes were directly involved in drug- running, according to eyewitnesses, investigative reporters, and even congressional investigators. The CIA-backed planes, with their civilian American crews, delivered arms to the guerrillas and then flew opium back out to Thailand. “Old Air America’ pilots who were flying in Central America started to get disgusted about all the drug-running," Plumlee remarks. "They’d say stuff like, ‘This is just like the Golden Triangle.’ They talked about the black goo in the cargo bays of C-46s." The map note refers to Lake Tahoe because that’s where Cooper's family lived. Plumlee says Four Aces Aviation in Palmdale was the airline where Cooper was to pick up his plane for this September, 1986 flying job. 8 C-19, U.S. OMC-235, Delta 3, Sqd 4 “Charlie one-niner was the group name, Delta 3, Squad 4 was the special U.S. Army team I worked with when we were making weapon drops into Nicaragua," Plumlee explains. “ Bill Cooper was flying with that same group, sometimes." OMC-235 was the acronym for Operational Methods Clandestine, a super-secret corps of active-duty military operatives controlled by the White House, Plumlee continues. With these map notations, he was jotting down names of military groups to jog his memory during his talks with Senator Hart’s office. Hart was especially interested in the fact that U.S. active-duty military personnel had been operating undercover in Nicaragua in the early 1980s. 9 Santa Elena (Somoza ranch), C-130, DC- 6B, New airfield being built, 10-4-83. Ochoa- Barry operation, staging area weapons (drugs) Plumlee says that Santa Elena, former Nicaraguan President Antonio Somoza's ranch in northwestern Costa Rica, had been used as a transshipment point by drug runners for years before the Contra war got underway in 1981. And this didn’t change after Oliver North, Richard Secord and their cohorts ordered the improvement of Santa Elena’s landing strip to make the ranch the major staging area to supply weapons and equipment to the Contras’ southern front. Small airstrips like Santa Elena were sprinkled throughout Costa Rica and Honduras. When the Contra war was in full swing, these strips were needed to provide refueling stops and drop-off points for guns and other supplies destined for guerrillas bivouacked nearby. "The drug people controlled the areas where the rebel army needed bases,” Plumlee explains. “The gun suppliers— first the CIA and later the private people who turned the war into a business— had to strike deals with the drug people in order to share these strips. You can’t stay sane and safe down there without being on good terms with the CAF— the Colombian Air Force. I’ve taxied right up with loads of guns, and on the other side of the field they’re loading up drugs at the same time.” The map note refers to Barry Seal and Luis Ochoa, the Colombian drug magnate, running cocaine into Santa Elena. The C- 130 and DC-6B notations refer to the reason the field was improved and the airstrip lengthened at the direction of Secord and North. “ Barry Seal had flown in the Fat Lady with weapons one time and got her stuck," Plumlee says. “That decided ’em to lengthen the airstrip.” Interestingly, during John Poindexter’s trial, in which he was convicted of conspiracy to destroy documents, obstruct investigations, and lie to Congress, the prosecutor introduced a memo from Oliver North to Poindexter corroborating that “ one of the planes of the Contra resupply Creative, Fresh Foods For Your Active Lifestyle. Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner Hours 9:00 am-9:30 pm "Best Vegetarian in PDX" — Pacific NW Magazine 1152 Clackamas Town Center 653-7941 operation got mired down in the mud at an airport in Costa Rica." Another reason Santa Elena was upgraded was that the other major staging area for the Contras' southern front, the ranch owned by American citizen John Hull, 150 kilometers eastsoutheast of Santa Elena, wasn’t big enough for the scale of the operation. Also, even though Hull worked closely with the CIA in helping to arm the Contras, the use of an American’s land in Costa Rica for an arms-shipment point was politically unacceptable to the Costa Rican government. “Oliver North said I was a great American. After a compliment like that, I would have done just about anything.” 10 PT Patrol, Santa Elena Three extremely fast “ stealth" boats were used to patrol the waters off Santa Elena and protect the secret airfield, Plumlee says. Karl Phaler, a San Diegan, had helped El Salvador modify several Boston Whalers into fast patrol boats in 1980 and 1981. Plumlee says the Black Crewmen always called the Santa Elena patrol, boats “Phaler boats.” In an interview, Phaler said he doesn’t know how the boats he helped build for El Salvador might have ended up off Costa Rica. “Maybe somebody else just used my design and the name stuck.” Blvd. National Inslilule for A U T O M O T I V E S E R V IC E E X C E L L E N C E HAWTHORNE AUTO CLINIC, INC. All ASE Certified technicians Complete car and light truck mechanical repair service 4307 SE Hawthorne Portland, Or. 97215 8-5:30 MON-FRI. 234-2119 10 Clinton St.—Spring 1990
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