I Ran Drugs For B Secret Moves of the Contra War By Neal Matthews Illustrations by Matt Wuerker he DC-3 airplane, heavily guarded by uniformed Panamanian soldiers, sat on the far side of the jungle clearing at Penonome, 60 miles southwest of Panama City. Its cargo doors were wide open and chocked tight against the fuselage. The right engine idled slow and rough; the left engine was shut down for the loading operation. Soldiers “Go! Go!" yelled Perry, as he strapped himself into the radio operator’s seat. He slipped on the earphones and fine- tuned the radio to their assigned low-frequency band. Their radio signal would notify ground stations that the plane wasmn its way out and there was trouble. Wayne peered at the far end of the runway. Tosh was hypnotized by the sight of the wall of trees rushing toward them. The controls were still mush. Tosh guarded the in two Jeeps outfitted with .50-caliber machine guns guarded the plane fore . r , , . . . . ° the^ bird slowly crept past 60. Wayne easedToack on the and aft. One gunner trained his weapon on the loading crew; the other yoke’. “ It's going to be tight," he said calmly. cal was pointed at the cockpit and the unarmed American f l ig h t^ e w . ' 1 Jee Thte nose llftin£ when Tosh n6Vced one of the The pilot, Wayne Howard, stuck his head and left arm out the cockpit window and waved a small white flag. The soldier in the Jeep waved back and gave a thumbs-up. A line of cargo handlers hurriedly stacked white plastic sacks on pallets; others inside the plane slid the heavy pallets forward and secured them for the 680-mile flight to Costa Rica. It was early March, 1983, about 30 minutes to sunrise. Tosh Plumlee, the co-pilot, was about to begin his third cocaine flight in 12 days from Panama to the secret American airfield in Santa Elena, on the west coast of Costa Rica, just south of the Nicaraguan border. Tosh, a member of an all-civilian Black Crew (Black meaning top secret) of American military-intelligence operatives, had made several trips into Santa Elena in the past four years. Tosh was beginning to wonder why the Black Crew was suddenly in the dope business. After all, he was flying under authority of U.S. military intelligence, which answered to the National Security Agency, which, by extension, answered to the White House. NSC T H E fNTEKPWit The base was a major transshipment point for weapons being tunneled by the U.S. to El Salvador and later to the anti- Sandinista Nicaraguan Contra rebels. Tosh Plumlee (his real name) and Wayne Howard (a CIA-supplied identity) had worked together on these weapon runs, which originated in many parts of the U.S., including the Marine base at Twentynine Palms in the Southern California desert. They had even made secret flights into Nicaragua itself to drop weapons to Contra guerrilla units. But their last three hops between Panama and Santa Elena were drug runs, and Tosh was beginning to wonder why the Black Crew was suddenly in the dope business. After all, he reminded himself, he was flying under authority of U.S. military intelligence, which answered to the National Security Agency, which, by extension, answered to the White House. The flight this morning had been set in motion a few months earlier by the CIA station chief in Costa Rica and bore the Pentagon code name Royal Tiger. (“Royal” was the CIA designation for extremely sensitive espionage techniques or missions; fewer than 100 top-level military and intelligence chiefs had knowledge of these operations.) Royal Tiger was an airlift delivering military hardware to various Central American jungle airstrips, but this particular flight was different from the others. Tosh and Wayne were in the process of stealing 1200 kilos of high-grade Colombian cocaine from the Ochoa branch of the Medellin Cartel, which was operating through Panama with the aid of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. The American plane had landed 30 minutes before the Cartel’s drug-running plane was due; ties between the Cartel and the CIA's local operatives were so close that this kind of precise information was commonly available to the Black Crews. This same intelligence indicated that the Panamanian soldiers would expect the plane’s pilot to signal his identity by waving a white flag in his left hand. And although everything looked fine to the soldiers now, in reality Tosh and the other crewmen were trying to trick one faction of the drug Cartel into assuming another faction had ripped it off and perhaps cause internal dissension and feuding among the cocaine barons. Tosh felt uneasy sitting in the cockpit of the old, modified DC-3, but not because of the machine guns, which were routine. Rather, it was the sickening knowledge that if something went wrong, the operation would be revealed as a drug run gone sour, flown by an American crew and sanctioned by the U.S. government, which had played both ends against the middle and lost. From the right-hand co-pilot’s seat, Tosh watched the edge of the jungle clearing for any sign of a surprise attack from one of the rival drug factions that operated from this remote strip. Suddenly, a flock of birds sprang up from the trees and winged quickly away from the dirt road that cut through the thick jungle undergrowth. A car, a black sedan, sped down the rough road, churning a rooster tail of orange dust. The birds circled and returned to their perches as the car raced up the clearing toward the runway and the parked DC-3. One of the Panamanian soldiers stood up to watch the oncoming car. Wayne too had noticed it. He dropped the white flag and shouted back to the American crewmen in the cargo hold, "Button this bird up, and let’s get the hell out of here. Fast!” Tosh reached up and hit the start button and cranked the left engine. It belched twice, blowing thick blue smoke over the confused soldiers and their Jeeps. The cargo kickers, Dan and Perry, shoved the last pallet and two Colombian loaders out of the hold. A few bags of cocaine broke and spread their contents on the ground, the powder disappearing in the prop wash. The kickers secured the double-wide cargo doors, and the plane was rolling by the time the black sedan came to a sliding, broadside stop. Three men in civilian clothes jumped from the car and began firing bursts from their AK-47s. The rounds went wide and left of the lumbering bird. The plane was turning into the wind when the first of the tracer bullets from the ,50-cals buzzed past the cockpit window. Wayne glanced at Tosh and grinned. He lined up the plane’s wheels in the ruts of the d irt strip, and Tosh flipped the tail-wheel lock into position. Together they pushed forward on the throttles, and the engines began to scream. This is going to be close, Tosh thought. The slugs sliced deep into the side of the airplane, and everything went crazy. Bullets, ripping metal, and electrical sparks popped and arced around the cabin. The radio rack exploded, and fire engulfed the panel. gunner yank back a lever on the .50-cal and watched, in slow motion, the hot tracers inch their way toward the nose of the bird. He glanced toward the trees and was certain they weren’t going to make it. The slugs sliced deep into the side of the airplane, and everything went crazy. Bullets, ripping metal, and electrical sparks popped and arced around the cabin. The radio rack exploded, and fire engulfed the panel. Perry grabbed a fire extinguisher and emptied it on the burning wires. Three large holes were torn in the fuselage behind Tosh, and a bullet was embedded in the aluminum frame of Eddie’s seat. Tosh was amazed to look out and see the plane clear the trees by ten feet. He tapped on the fuel gauges, but the needles didn’t move, a good sign that the bullets hadn’t pierced the fuel tanks. They flew in silence for a while, then trimmed up, set power, and headed for Costa Rica. Three hours later, the Americans landed at Santa Elena and were met by two DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agents. Wayne and Tosh were de-briefed while another crew unloaded the cocaine. Nearby, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane was emptied of its shipment of weapons, and the drug cache was put aboard that aircraft. The Air Force plane then took off for Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami. A ground crew later would strip and cannibalize the shot-to- hell DC-3, a venerable bird that Black Crews had flown on hundreds of secret missions since the 1950s. Its remains would be carried out to Sea on a barge late at 6 Clinton St.—Spring 1990
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz