2 Airstrip on Pacific coast, just outside of Cabo San Lucas This is one of several airstrips on the drug route between Central America and the California desert and parts of Arizona. Between 1983 and 1986, Plumlee says, he made a dozen or so drug-ferrying trips up this corridor, starting in Panama and making stops at Santa Elena, Costa Rica; Puerto Escondido, in southern Mexico; and up througn Baja and Mexicali. His delivery points were all over the Southwest. Borrego Desert airstrips. A kickout place near Humboldt Mountain in Arizona. A strip near Buckskin Mountain, close to the Colorado River. And some abandoned mines beside Tunnel Peak, between Parker and Havasu City, Arizona. Plumlee says he delivered some 200 kilos to those mines during what he thought at first were undercover operations in association with the DEA. “We were documenting the loads and the routes and waiting for the big busts. But the busts never seemed to add up to the amount of cocaine we were bringing in.” Plumlee says that many of the men in the Black Crews he worked with felt extremely uneasy about the drug shipments, and occasionally there was talk of coming forward as a group to reveal publicly the extent of government- protected drug shipments. Their complaints to the DEA and CIA contacts often elicited disclaimers that "you’ve got to keep the big picture in mind” and “you might blow a major sting operation.” The FBI, CIA and DEA seemed to be spying on each other’s undercover deals, Plumlee believed, and they were beginning to bust each other's operatives. “Here Iam a dope runner, and this whole thing was turning into a drug operation. It seemed like we were fighting the wrong war all of a sudden. We should have been fighting the drug lords who we were in cahoots with.” 3 Apples, Oranges, Pears, Bananas, code 6 or 7; The Boss—Customer These are Black Crew code words used during the Contra resupply effort; the codes date back to the days when covert operations were being carried out in Cuba in the early 1960s. Apples were small arms and ammunition. Oranges were artillery, C-4 explosives, and primer code. Pears were electronics. Bananas were personnel. “The bananas were delivered” was a code used when, say, a government dignitary was deposited on the ground. Code 6 was the name of the flyway through Central Mexico, across the U.S. border at Piedras Negras, and on up to the Big Bend region of Texas. Code 7 stood for the air route up Baja, through San Felipe and Mexicali, then on to drop points in the Anza-Borrego Desert, Twentynine Palms, or the old Patton bombing range east of the Salton Sea. 4 Rafael Quintero, San Felipe, Mex. [phone number], Gacha, M. Colombo, Penonome, Panama, 1986 This map note contains a San Felipe phone number that Plumlee says was Quintero’s number at tne Delgado Ranch. Gacha is the big- **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.” time drug lord from Colombia, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a member of the Medellin Cartel and purportedly a billionaire. This note refers to a drug deal Quintero and Gacha did together in 1986 that Plumlee says “must have been related to the Contras since Iwas involved.” At the time, Plumlee knew the names only as the people he was to contact at the ranch. Gacha was gunned down by Colombian police last December. 5 12 degrees L, 84 degree Long., Bluefields NGA, River Escualito Bluefields is a port on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, one of three harbors mined by the CIA in 1984. Plumlee says that before 1982, he worked mainly on the ground as a militaryintelligence operative, verifying reconnaissance photographs taken by Nicaraguan, Panamanian and Honduran natives. This was part of the American effort to document the buildup of Cuban troops, listening posts and equipment in Nicaragua after the Sandinistas took over in 1979. "We were there in Bluefields lots of times trying to shoot pictures of Cuban missile technicians," Plumlee reports. Among the many rumors that the CIA was frantically trying to check out was the one about the impending construction of ballistic-missile silos on Nicaraguan soil. Plumlee says that his cover, should he have been caught in Nicaragua, was as an American tourist on vacation from his job working in Central America for a pipeline company, CCG American Services, a legitimate French company that had contracts to search there for oil and gas. Other people in that operation had cover as journalists. t& e w S t a r t s 8 Clinton St.—Spring 1990
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