On Jul 9, 9:04=A0pm, Will the USA Ever have another Top Player who wins
top events <hoochee...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Jul 6, 2:21=A0am, Raymond <Bluerhy...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > One offends only those from whom one takes fields and houses in order
> > to give them tonewinhabitants =97 who are a very small part of that
> > state. And those whom he offends, since they remain dispersed and
> > poor, can never harm him, while all the others remain on the one hand
> > unhurt, and for this they should be quiet; on the other, they are
> > afraid to err from fear that what happened to the despoiled might
> > happen to them.
> > ---- Machiavelli and U.S. Politics
>
> > THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND GHWBUSH
>
> > Once again, we can perceive the workings of lie, hypocrisy, and half-
> > truth. The lie is that, when someone seizes the belongings of another,
> > the slate somehow is wiped clean and thenewproperty holder will be
> > secure in the newfound wealth. The truth is that seized property is
> > stolen property.
>
> > GeorgeBush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley &
> > Anton Chaitkin
>
> > CHAPTER VIII-b - THE BAY OF PIGS AND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
>
> > An =A0FBI do***ent identifying GeorgeBushas a CIA agent in November,
> > 1963 was first published by Joseph McBride in The Nation in July,
> > 1988, just beforeBushreceived the Republican nomination for
> > president.
>
> > "...JM/WAVE ...proliferated across [Florida] in preparation for the
> > Bay of Pigs invasion. A subculture of fronts, proprietaries,
> > suppliers, transfer agents, conduits, dummy cor****ations, blind drops,
> > detective agencies, law firms, electronic firms, shopping centers,
> > airlines, radio stations, the mob and the church and the banks: a
> > false and secret nervous system twitching to stimuli supplied by the
> > cortex in Clandestine Services in Langley. After defeat on the beach
> > in Cuba, JM/WAVE became a continuing and extended Miami Station, CIA's
> > largest in the continental United States. A large sign in front of the
> > [...] building complex reads: US GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS PROHIBIT
> > DISCUSSION OF THIS ORGANIZATION OR FACILITY.
>
> > Donald Freed, Death in Wa****ngton (West****t, Connecticut, 1980), p.
> > 141.
>
> > The review offered so far of GeorgeBush'sactivities during the late
> > 1950's and early 1960's is almost certainly incomplete in very
> > im****tant respects. There is good reason to believe thatBushwas
> > engaged in something more than just the oil business during those
> > years. Starting about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in the
> > spring of 1961, we have the first hints thatBush, in addition to
> > working for Zapata Offshore, may also have been a participant in
> > certain covert operations of the US intelligence community.
>
> > Such participation would certainly be coherent with George's role in
> > the PrescottBush, Skull and Bones, and Brown Brothers, Harriman
> > networks. During the twentieth century, the Skull and Bones/Harriman
> > circles have always maintained a sizable and often decisive presence
> > inside the intelligence organizations of the State Department, the
> > Treasury Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Office of
> > Strategic Services, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Indeed, the
> > Harriman and related Anglophile financier factions of Wall Street have
> > generally regarded those parts of the state apparatus dealing with
> > intelligence and covert operations as their own very special property,
> > property which had to be kept seeded with control networks in order to
> > be effectively steered from above. For GeorgeBushto interface with
> > the intelligence community while ostensibly engaged in his business
> > career would be coherent with that well-established pattern.
>
> > A body of leads has been assembled which suggests that GeorgeBushmay
> > have been associated with the CIA at some time before the autumn of
> > 1963. According to Joseph McBride of The Nation, "a source with close
> > connections to the intelligence community confirms thatBushstarted
> > working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a
> > cover for clandestine activities." 1 By the time of the Kennedy
> > assassination, we have an official FBI do***ent which refers to "Mr.
> > GeorgeBushof the Central Intelligence Agency," and despite official
> > disclaimers there is every reason to think that this is indeed the man
> > in the White House today. The mystery of GeorgeBushas a possible
> > covert operator hinges on four points, each one of which represents
> > one of the great political and espionage scandals of postwar American
> > history. These four cardinal points are:
>
> > 1. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, launched on April 16-17,
> > 1961, prepared with the assistance of the CIA's "Miami Station" (also
> > known under the code name JM/WAVE). After the failure of the
> > amphibious landings of Brigade 2506, Miami station, under the
> > leader****p of Theodore Shackley, became the focus for Operation
> > Mongoose, a series of covert operations directed against Castro, Cuba,
> > and possibly other targets.
>
> > 2. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on
> > November 22, 1963, and the coverup of those responsible for this
> > crime.
>
> > 3. The Watergate scandal, beginning with an April, 1971 visit to
> > Miami, Florida by E. Howard Hunt on the tenth anniversary of the Bay
> > of Pigs invasion to recruit operatives for the White House Special
> > Investigations Unit (the "Plumbers" and later Watergate burglars) from
> > among Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veterans.
>
> > 4. The Iran-contra affair, which became a public scandal during
> > October-November 1986, several of whose central figures, such as Felix
> > Rodriguez, were also veterans of the Bay of Pigs.
>
> > GeorgeBush'srole in both Watergate and the October surprise/Iran-
> > contra complex will be treated in detail at later points in thisbook.
> > Right now it is im****tant to see that thirty years of covert
> > operations, in many respects, form a single continuous whole. This is
> > especially true in regard to the dramatis personae. Georgie Anne Geyer
> > points to the obvious in a recentbook: "...an entirenewCuban cadre
> > now emerged from the Bay of Pigs. The names Howard Hunt, Bernard
> > Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and Eugenio Martinez would,
> > in the next quarter century, pop up, often decisively, over and over
> > again in the most dangerous American foreign policy crises. There were
> > Cubans flying missions for the CIA in the Congo and even for the
> > ****tuguese in Africa; Cubans were the burglars of Watergate; Cubans
> > played key roles in Nicaragua, in Irangate, in the American move into
> > the Persian Gulf." 2 Felix Rodriguez tells us that he was infiltrated
> > into Cuba with the other members of the "Grey Team" in conjunction
> > with the Bay of Pigs landings; this is the same man we will find
> > directing the contra supply effort in central American during the
> > 1980's, working under the direct supervision of Don Gregg and
GeorgeBus=
h. 3 Theodore Shackley, the JM/WAVE station chief, will later show
> > up inBush's1979-80 presidential campaign.
>
> > To a very large degree, such covert operations (and the great
> > political scandals attendant upon them) have drawn upon the same pool
> > of personnel. They are a significant extent the handiwork of the same
> > crowd. It is therefore revealing to extrapolate forward and backward
> > in time the individuals and groups of individuals who appear as the
> > cast of characters in one scandal and compare them with the cast of
> > characters for the other scandals, including the secondary ones that
> > have not been enumerated here. Howard Hunt, for example, shows up as a
> > confirmed part of the overthrow of the Guatemalan government of Jacopo
> > Arbenz in 1954, as an im****tant part of the chain of command in the
> > Bay of Pigs, as a person repeatedly accused of having been in Dallas
> > on the day Kennedy was shot, and as one of the central figures of
> > Watergate. (One wonders what secrets, after all, were contained in
> > Howard Hunt's safe, the contents of which were so conventiently "deep
> > sixed" by FBI Director Patrick Gray.)
>
> > GeorgeBu****s demonstrably one of the most im****tant protagonists of
> > the Watergate scandal, and was the overall director of Iran-contra.
> > Since he appears especially in Iran-contra in close proximity to Bay
> > of Pigs holdovers, it is surely legitimate to wonder when his
> > association with those Bay of Pigs Cubans might have started.
>
> > 1959 was the year thatBushstarted operating out of his Zapata
> > Offshore headquarters in Houston; it was also the year that Fidel
> > Castro seized power in Cuba. Officially, as we have seen, George was
> > now a businessman whose work took him at times to Louisiana, where
> > Zapata had offshore drilling operations. George must have been a
> > frequent visitor toNewOrleans. Because of his family's estate on
> > Jupiter Island, he would also have been a frequent visitor to the Hobe
> > Sound area. And then, there were Zapata Offshore drilling operations
> > in the Florida Strait. On all of these activities, the official "red
> > Studebaker" biographical material and the Zapata Offshore annual
> > re****ts are extremely cryptic.
>
> > The Jupiter Island connection and father Prescott's Brown Brothers,
> > Harriman/Skull and Bones networks are doubtless the key. Jupiter
> > Island meant Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, C. Douglas Dillon and
> > other Anglophile financiers who had directed the US intelligence
> > community long before there had been a CIA at all. And, in the back
> > yard of the Jupiter Island Olympians, and under their direction, a
> > powerful covert operations base was now being assembled, in which
> > GeorgeBushwould have been present at the creation as a matter of
> > birthright.
>
> > During 1959-60, Allen Dulles and the Eisenhower Administration began
> > to assemble in south Florida the infrastructure for covert action
> > against Cuba. This was the JM/WAVE capability, later formally
> > constituted as the CIA Miami station. JM/WAVE was an operational
> > center for the Eisenhower regime's project of staging an invasion of
> > Cuba using a secret army of anti-Castro Cuban exiles organized, armed,
> > trained, trans****ted, and directed by the CIA. The Cubans, called
> > Brigade 2506, were trained in secret camps in Guatemala, and they had
> > air sup****t from B-26 bombers based in Nicaragua. This invasion was
> > crushed by Castro's defending forces in less than three days.
>
> > Before going along with the plan so eagerly ...
>
> > read more =BB
>
> =A0 What .. no HASSENFUSS ?? =A0The dude who was shot down in
> =A0 Central America ..He had names in his address book. One in
> =A0 particlar ..traced right to the Oval Office. =A0Cant recall the
dude'=
s
> =A0 name ..but was whisked away to be Ambassador to .. oh I
> =A0thin it was Bumf***k =A0some place.
"My name is Eugene Hasenfus. I come from Marinette, Wisconsin. I was
captured yesterday in southern Nicaragua." The press was not permitted
any questions that day, October 7, just a few minutes for photo ops.
After thus identifying himself, the first North American captured
alive, in the act of delivering arms to the contras, was led from the
room defeated and resigned.
Just before the press conference, a radio announcer, unable to hide
his enthusiasm, described the captured man as "tall, blond and strong,
just like one always imagined a pure gringo would be." That night,
Nicaraguans with access to a TV had the first fleeting chance to see
for themselves.
The next day, the entire front page of the newspaper Barricada was
filled with a potential candidate for best photo of the year: nineteen-
year-old Jos=E9 Fernando Canales, with his placid, unmistakably
indigenous features, hair a bit longer than regulation measured by
time spent in the jungle, and a rosary showing under his army ****rt,
is emerging from the brush, his rifle slung over one shoulder and a
slender cord draped slackly over the other. The far end of the cord is
tied around the hands of a large rumpled man with an ill-humored look.
Eugene Hasenfus is being led by a soldier nearly 25 years younger and
a foot shorter than he, the same one who had succeeded in shooting
down his plane two days earlier with a rocket launcher.
The image was matched by another on the back page, this one of a 17-
year-old, 79-pound Vietnamese militia member who had captured a
similarly stocky US pilot, W.H. Robinson, after his plane was downed
in her country on September 20, 1965.
With the capture of Eugene Hasenfus, a fast-moving new episode has
opened in the grinding war Nicaragua has been living through. A good
deal of information has begun to come out around the Hasenfus case,
explaining better than anything else could why this moment is so
serious. Given all that is being admitted, revealed and proven through
his case, env=EDo has decided to put it together in one place in these
pages.
"A little bug from the $100 million"
The counterrevolution=92s infiltration into the depths of Nicaraguan
territory, which has occurred frequently since 1983, could not take
place if these armed groups were to cease receiving airdrops of arms
and equipment. Periodically, the Defense Ministry announces the number
of violations of Nicaraguan air space detected by the Sandinista
army's radar. These constant supply flights are identified as coming
both from Honduran and Costa Rican territory.
In five years of war, Nicaragua's anti-air defense has succeeded in
shooting down two contra planes, three of their light aircraft and
eight helicopters. In one of the helicopters downed in 1983, two North
Americans were killed. They have since been identified as members of a
private assistance group for the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries.
On Sunday, October 5, 1986, one of these supply planes, a C-123K,
classified in air war argot as a "tactical trans****t plane," was
flying only 700 meters off the ground, trying to avoid Nicaraguan
radar. It was coming up from the Costa Rican border and had crossed
into Nicaragua over the department of R=EDo San Juan. In the previous
days, four other supply flights had been detected on this same route,
although on those occasions the planes that violated the Nicaraguan
skies were different ones.
In an area called El Tule, 30 kilometers north of the city of San
Carlos, Jos=E9 Fernando Canales and 17-year-old Byron Montiel, each
barely five months into their military service, had set up a ****table
CM2 land-air rocket, or "arrow," several days before. Jos=E9 Fernando
had repeatedly dreamed of getting one of those planes. It was
drizzling lightly in those jungles that US gold seekers had come to
know so well in the 19th century. A bit past noon they heard the
motors of the C-123K; Jos=E9 Fernando received the order to shoot. He
aimed, fired, and within seconds his dream came true. The plane
exploded in the air and fell to earth in pieces; only the tail section
remained intact.
Nicaraguans didn't learn the news of the crash until more than 24
hours later. On the afternoon of Monday, October 6, "The Voice of
Nicaragua" broke into its regular programming with a special bulletin
that a plane belonging to the counterrevolution had been hit by an
"arrow" and that "there were North Americans among the crew." The army
had been unable to get to the remains of the aircraft right away,
given the difficult terrain. When they did, they found 13,000 pounds
of weaponry: 50,000 AK-47 rifle cartridges, 60 collapsible AK-47s, a
similar number of RPG-7 grenade launchers and 150 pairs of jungle
boots.
The C-123K carried a crew of four. Pilot William Cooper: dead. Co-
pilot Wallace Blaine Sawyer: dead. Both North Americans. Radio
operator Freddy Vilches, a Nicaraguan member of the FDN trained in the
2nd Air Trans****t Division of the Honduran Army: also dead. Eugene
Hasenfus, in charge of releasing the cargo, had been able to see in
time that the rocket was going to hit and jumped from the plane with a
parachute given him by his brother before leaving the United States.
It saved his life.
"Give up, gringo, or we'll blow you to hell!" shouted Rafa=E9l Antonio
Acevedo, when he found Hasenfus on October 6, after combing the area
for the man he had seen jump from the plane. Hasenfus was in an
abandoned hut, lying in a hammock he had fa****oned from his parachute,
eating a squash. He was armed with a pistol and a pocketknife, but the
minute he heard 20-year-old Rafa=E9l Antonio, he threw them down and
gave himself up. A few days later Nicaragua=92s Defense Minister,
Humberto Ortega, decorated the three Sandinista soldiers with gold
medals.
Rafa=E9l Antonio recalled that "the gringo was nervous, completely
demoralized, frightened; he knew he was doing something wrong in
someone else's country." And Jos=E9 Fernando: "We=92re pleased because
this is the first little bug from the contras=92 $100 million that we=92ve
swatted down."
When the news first reached the United States, government officials
from Reagan on down refused to give it im****tance or even show
interest, eluding any responsibility in the flight of the downed
plane. This evasive attitude would only last a few days.
The Salvadoran Connection
Eugene Hasenfus was brought from southern Nicaraguan to Managua on
October 7 for questioning by Nicaraguan Security and Defense
officials. When he arrived at the Managua air****t, one soldier from
the Sandinista army approached, patted him gently on the shoulder and
said, laughing, "So what now, Rambo?" Even though the comment was in
colloquial Spanish, the point could not have been lost on Hasenfus. A
few days later President Daniel Ortega would add, "The Americans have
to remember that Superman doesn't exist."
In one of numerous ironies, Managua theatergoers had seen the US film
"Latino" only a month earlier. The film=92s moment of truth comes when a
US Green Beret, of Latin origin, is asked to go into Nicaragua without
his dog tags, and realizes he=92s risking his life for a country that
plans to abandon him to an inglorious end if he=92s killed or captured.
In the final scene he=92s led to a truck, hands tied with a cord, after
being captured in an attempt to blow up the grain silo of a farm
cooperative. Clenched in his fist are the dog tags he was instructed
to leave behind.
=46rom the very first moment, Hasenfus demonstrated a willingness to
collaborate, telling the Nicaraguan authorities through an interpreter
everything he knew about the flight, the plane and the weapons. And
there was a lot to tell. The C-123K was not only prepped to supply the
counterrevolutionaries with armaments but was also a gold mine of data
about the contra networks in the United States. Among ID cards,
letters, flight records, address books and other written matter,
dozens of do***ents were taken from the wreckage and made available to
journalists for photographing. From these do***ents, together with
Hasenfus' declarations, Nicaraguan government intelligence information
and revelations published by investigative journalists in the US, a
three dimensional picture has taken shape of the denunciations that
Nicaragua has been making in every possible forum for the past several
years.
Hasenfus carried various do***ents with him, among them an ID card
with the number 4422, which identified him as an "adviser" of the "USA
Group," valid between July 28, 1986 and January 28, 1987. The most
surprising aspect of the card is that it was issued in El Salvador,
signed by none other than General Juan Rafael Bustillo, head of the
Salvadoran Air Force, giving Hasenfus access to the most reserved
areas of the Ilopango military air base in San Salvador.
According to Hasenfus, the fated plane took off from Ilopango, crossed
the Pacific, entered Costa Rica from the northwest, then turned and
made its way up toward Nicaragua. During the flight the plane had to
re****t three times, once as it flew over Costa Rican territory. The
Costa Rican government said it knew absolutely nothing about this or
any similar flight.
Between July and October, when his work ended in a precipitous jump in
a parachute, Hasenfus had already participated in 10 supply flights
for the contras. In six of these, the route was the same as on October
5. The other four left from the El Aguacate base, in Honduras.*
Hasenfus personally knew about four other planes at Ilopango used for
contra airdrops: a Cessna-180, two Caribu DHC4 and a second C-123K.
Some US officials admitted during these first days that a total of 19
planes were dedicated to this task between El Salvador and
Honduras.**
_____________________________________
*This base was built by 400 US military engineers during the Ahuas
Tara II military maneuvers (June 1983 to March 1984), the largest US
maneuvers ever carried out in Latin America.
**On October 4, the eve of the shooting down of the C-123K, a plane
crashed at a military base near San Antonio, Texas, killing three
crewmembers. It was also carrying military supplies for the
counterrevolution.
These are large planes with significant cargo capacity; they aren=92t
easy to hide. For example, the C-123K has a 110-meter wingspan and can
carry 60 people. According to data in the records of the plane that
was shot down, it had dropped nearly 66 tons of armaments to the
contras. On October 5, it was "Franklin," head of the Jorge Salazar
task force, currently deep in central Zelaya province, who was waiting
for the rifles and ammunition to fall from the sky.*
____________________________
*This group was responsible for the ambush of a passenger bus in La
Gateada, Chontales, on October 14. The group opened fire
indiscriminately with rifles and machine guns, leaving two passengers
dead and 15 wounded; two others were kidnapped.
Since Reagan decided to enter into a secret and covert war against
Nicaragua in 1981, it has been publicly claimed on various occasions
that the "activities" of this war were aimed at impeding an alleged
flow of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador's FMLN. Photographic proof
was offered amounting to nothing more than confusing smudges in
unidentifiable locales; when asked why all their high-tech
intelligence mechanisms had not permitted interdiction of any
****pments, US Embassy officials moaned that these massive arms
****pments were trans****ted across the Gulf of Fonseca in dugout
canoes, and thus hard to detect and capture. This supposed arms flow
destined to destabilize the Salvadoran government rendered the
continuing US war against Nicaragua "legal." Although the
administration now offers other reasons, it has never ceased to argue
that Nicaragua is trying to ex****t subversion to its neighbors and
militarily destabilize them=97apparently in the belief that only it has
the right to do that. The Salvadoran government itself even tried,
unsuccessfully, to make this argument at the World Court hearings.
Suddenly there is now clear proof, with no fuzzy edges, demonstrating
that the flow indeed exists, but in the opposite direction. And it is
not coming half a dozen rifles at a time in a tiny fi****ng boat or on
mule back through the mud to elude border guards. It is arriving
thousands of pounds at a time in huge planes, directed by a team of US
advisers, with the authorization of Jos=E9 Napole=F3n Duarte's Christian
Democratic government.
When Hasenfus' declarations became known in El Salvador,
representatives of that government, from Duarte on down, sidestepped
responsibility for what had happened. As in the United States, this
attitude did not last long. Duarte ended by saying that one of the
proofs that El Salvador is a free country is that its air****t is open
to anyone who wants to use it, without having to answer to the
government about the ends for which it is being employed. The
Nicaraguan government, which is taking Costa Rica and Honduras to the
World Court for lending its territory to a war already condemned as
illegal by the Court, is now considering doing the same with El
Salvador.
"My husband works for the CIA""
Eugene Hasenfus had told his wife Sally that if anything ever happened
to him she should go immediately to the highest level of the US
government. She did. Sally called the State Department the minute the
news was released about the downed plane and said: "My husband works
for the CIA."
=46rom the outset, her husband said the same, relating to Nicaraguan
authorities how he had come to be in charge of the air cargo for the
C-123K. Hasenfus said he had served in Southeast Asia for 13 years,
first in the Marines, then for a CIA company in Vietnam called Air
America. There he had acquired enough experience to be an expert in
air cargo, not to mention in free-fall parachute jumps. This lasted
until 1973. Between then and 1986, Hasenfus said he had worked in
construction.
In June of 1986 William Cooper, the pilot who died in the crash,
contacted Hasenfus from Miami to offer him work at a monthly salary of
$3,000 plus travel expenses, and a $750 bonus for every overflight of
Nicaragua. Hasenfus, who was in economic difficulties at the time,
arrived in San Salvador in June to begin work with Cooper, booking a
room at the Ramada Inn. At the time of his arrival, he said, the
company that contracted him, Cor****ate Air Service, had warehouses at
Ilopango in which 44.5 tons of weapons were stored. Cor****ate Air
Service, apparently a phantom front for Southern Air Trans****t, a
company owned outright by the CIA between 1960 and 1973 and reputedly
still used by the agency, has no phone listing and its name is not on
the building where it is supposedly located. According to The New York
Times, Hasenfus recently told family and friends that he was working
in Florida for Southern Air, in fact the registered owner of the plane
in question.
Hasenfus admitted knowing some 26 North Americans in El Salvador who
worked for Southern. A personal address book of co-pilot Sawyer
included a list of 34 surnames of North Americans working in El
Salvador who had something to do with supply flights to the contras.
Eighteen of these were affiliated with Southern, Cooper and Sawyer
among them. On the plane itself, data were found about its crews,
cargo, hours, routes, etc., for all supply flights between April and
October 1986.
Privatization is no excuse"
The scandals raised by the mining of the Nicaraguan ****ts in April
1984, an activity that the CIA acknowledged participation in, as well
as the contras' publication of a terrorist manual the following month,
also under CIA responsibility, motivated Congress to approve a law in
August that year prohibiting the CIA from continuing to sup****t the
contras except with intelligence or other information. What the
Hasenfus case has proven is that the CIA has been flagrantly violating
this legal prohibition, with the collaboration of the Salvadoran
military.
In an attempt to obviate this embarrassing situation, US government
officials insisted that these were not CIA operations, but rather
activities of private citizens who were voluntarily helping the
counterrevolutionaries through private organizations and with private
funds. This road does not lead to legal salvation either, however,
since, apart from the fact that they are not operating independently,
these "private" groups thus violate the US Neutrality Act, which
expressly prohibits US citizens from participating in military or
paramilitary actions against governments with which the US maintains
diplomatic relations.
Some Congress people noted and denounced these legal irregularities,
demanding an investigation to clarify the cir***stances surrounding
the plane downed in Nicaragua. The demand took on particular
significance, since only a few days later Congress would be faced with
the final op****tunity to approve or reject the $100 million for the
counterrevolutionaries in the military appropriations bill. Many
Nicaraguans, still trusting that remnants of honesty exist in
Congress, expected that the Hasenfus case could stop the handing over
of the $100 million. Democratic Senator John Kerry, in fact, prepared
a 13-page re****t based on information provided by 50 witnesses,
proving that there are bank accounts, pilots, planes, airfields and
military bases that have been shared by counterrevolutionaries, drug
traffickers and smugglers.
At that moment, when nothing could any longer be denied in the United
States, and indifference toward the case had no further merit, the
administration changed tack. The likes of Under Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams began to exalt these "private
citizens," who, according to him, "are keeping the freedom fighters
alive until Congress acts. They are heroes; we must feel proud of such
men, God bless them."
In his home in the United States, Hasenfus' father, overwhelmed by the
difficult situation in which his son found himself and by the
seriousness of what the remains of the plane were revealing, declared,
"It would have been better if Eugene had died. The dead don't talk."
Birds of a terrorist feather"
Hasenfus had been in El Salvador for three months carrying out his job
of calculating the arms cargo that could fit in each flight and the
precision in dropping each load, but he was not close to other North
Americans involved in the same work. He did his job under the direct
supervision of William Cooper, the one Hasenfus knew best.
William Cooper, a card-carrying member of the Grand Masonic Lodge of
Nevada, was more than a good Southern pilot. He was a functionary in
the confidence of the CIA. According to US information, Cooper had
made flights to extremely secret bases of the US Army. He had been a
Marine pilot during World War II, during which time he became a
specialist in C-123s. Just before his death he was in charge of buying
another C-123K for Southern for $250,000.
Hasenfus also gave other names, among which were two individuals of
Cuban origin who had positions above the personnel responsible for the
flights: Ram=F3n Medina and Max G=F3mez. The latter is the nom de guerre
of F=E9lix Rodr=EDguez, a Cuban-American linked to the CIA and to the
Cuban counterrevolution since the 1960s. He participated in the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and in 1967-68, during the period of the
guerrilla war of Ch=E9 Guevara in Bolivia, he collaborated in the US
counterinsurgency war in that country.
According to The New York Times, G=F3mez wore on his wrist the watch
that belonged to Ch=E9 Guevara and was one of his interrogators in
Higueras, before the revolutionary was killed. He was also one of the
first CIA agents to link up with the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries
when, at the time of the Malvinas war, the Argentine military advisers
abandoned this work entrusted to them by the US government and it was
turned over to the Salvadoran military. Together with Colonel
Bustillo, G=F3mez was responsible for coordinating the supply flights to
the contras. The administration is now trying to present him as a kind
of "hero" against the Salvadoran FMLN for being the designer of the
"helicopter war," part of the US counterinsurgency tactics in that
country.
Ram=F3n Medina is also a false name; his real identity is Luis Posada
Carriles. He is also a Cuban-American, and a dangerous terrorist.
On October 6, 1976=97almost ten years to the day before the shooting
down of the C-123K=97a Cubana plane exploded in the air upon takeoff
from Barbados, headed for Havana. The bomb explosion killed all 73
passengers and crew, among them a young fencing team that was
returning from a champion****p match held in Venezuela. There is a
museum in Havana in memory of the victims of that terrorist act. Those
physically responsible for placing the bomb on the plane were two
Venezuelans; Freddy Lugo and Hern=E1n Ricardo. The intellectual authors
were two Cuban counterrevolutionaries: Orlando Bosch=97who had been
involved a month earlier in the broad daylight car bombing in
Wa****ngton, D.C. that killed Orlando Letelier, a Cabinet member during
Chile's Allende government=97and Luis Posada Carriles.
The four were taken to a Venezuelan prison, but never tried or
sentenced, due to pressures from the Cuban counterrevolution. Luis
Posada had served eight years in prison at San Juan de los Morros,
Venezuela, in very comfortable conditions, when he mysteriously
escaped and left Venezuela at the end of 1985. It is now known that he
did so with a false Salvadoran pass****t. Hasenfus has identified
photos of Posada as Ram=F3n Medina, the man in charge of the papers of
North Americans who arrived in El Salvador and the connection between
the US Embassy and the group of "advisers." Luis Posada has had
plastic surgery and changed his name. In a special press conference in
Managua on October 15, Deputy Interior Minister Luis Carri=F3n repeated
several times, "I can assure you that Ram=F3n Medina is none other than
the terrorist Posada Carriles."
Posada Carriles=92 terrorist history is long. He was tied to the Cuban
counterrevolution since the sixties. The CIA trained him in
counterrevolutionary bases established in those years in Florida. He
recruited the men who made up Brigade 2506, which led the Bay of Pigs
invasion. Later, he was responsible for more than 70 infiltrations
into Cuba. He joined the US Army, carrying out activities under CIA
direction in Vietnam and in Somoza's Nicaragua. Between 1968 and 1973,
he also worked in counterinsurgency projects of the Venezuelan police,
always linked to the CIA. After escaping prison, he was interviewed a
few months ago by a Hollywood TV channel, his appearance already
transformed. On that occasion, he stated that he worked in Central
America.
Public complicity in the =93private" network
According to the clues being discovered in Nicaragua and the United
States, Max G=F3mez was recommended to the Salvadoran army by Donald
Gregg, personal adviser to Vice President George Bush, who surely knew
him and valued his capacities from his time as CIA director (1976 to
1977). US newspapers say that G=F3mez kept Bush directly informed about
the supply of the contras from Salvadoran territory. Three flights
were made a week after G=F3mez=92s arrival to El Salvador in early 1985.
With all this information, the key lines of the famous "private
network" are being reconstructed. It is not very private when the Vice
President, his personal adviser, his son Jeb Bush, and ex-Lieutenant
Colonel Oliver North, currently Reagan=92s National Security Council
adviser, are all implicated in it. The "private network" has ended up
being what, in fact, everyone already knew it was: a smokescreen to
cloud the official involvement that the United States has had for
years in a war that is increasingly open, though still "undeclared."
This network, of which Hasenfus is only a small piece, was the
invention of CIA director William Casey, when the restrictions were
imposed on his agency's actions in Nicaragua in 1984. Within a very
short time some 20 "private" groups emerged which established
connections with the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala
and Costa Rica and with anti=ADcommunist affinity groups in Colombia,
Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, South Korea, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia.
Investigations in the US revealed, for example, that Saudi money was
used to buy the downed C-123K.
Another small but significant official complicity is that the plane
into which Comandante Tom=E1s Borge's men were supposedly loading
cocaine, according to photographic proof offered by the State
Department in 1984, was the very one that is today strewn through the
jungle in southern Nicaragua.
Finally, when the crossword puzzle had most of its key words already
filled in, Salvador military spokesman Mauricio Salvador Hern=E1ndez
declared to The New York Times that "Bush does indeed have something
to do with the supply of armaments to the Nicaraguan
counterrevolutionaries, but he tried to wash his hands of this
business and throw the problem in our laps."
I=92m not a freedom fighter"
The US Embassy in Managua had some hard times during the early days of
the Hasenfus case, and did not emerge from them gracefully. On October
9, for instance, the Embassy refused to open its gates to receive the
coffins bearing the bodies of Cooper and Sawyer or the Foreign
Ministry representative who accompanied them, given the crush of
journalists and photographers around the gate. After 10 minutes,
Nicaragua's embassy police succeeded in ringing the two coffins, which
had been placed on the ground, and gently walked the journalists back
from the gate.
That evening the Embassy held a press conference from which it tried
to exclude all Nicaraguan journalists and Europeans with a Latin
appearance, giving in only when the US journalists protested. In its
communiqu=E9, the Embassy accused Nicaragua of "ghoulish behavior"
toward the two corpses for leaving them on the street when the gates
remained unopened. (The next day the bodies would be returned to the
US, lacking the honors befitting "heroes," in the luggage compartment
of an American plane.) Moreover, the United States accused the
Nicaraguans of violating international law, specifically Article 36 of
the Vienna Convention, which has to do with the right of a detained
person to see his or her consul. At that time, Hasenfus still had not
been able to speak sufficiently with the US consul, although he had
seen his wife in the consul's presence.
At the press conference, journalists raised such questions as: "Is the
United States at war with Nicaragua?" and "What about the violation of
all the articles of the World Court decision?" The Embassy
spokesperson responded to them saying only, "That is a different
issue."
On October 11, the Nicaraguan authorities gave permission to Mike
Wallace of CBS's "Sixty Minutes" to interview Hasenfus. For 20 minutes
millions of US television viewers were able to see Hasenfus speak with
complete spontaneity. The interview was im****tant because Hasenfus
until that time had had minimal contact with US government officials,
and had received no guidance from them.
Wallace: Nicaragua's Foreign Minister, Miguel D'Escoto, who was in New
York last week, told me that one of the first things you said when you
were captured was, 'Hell, this isn't my war.'*
_________________________
*Retranslated into English from the Spanish version of this "60
Minutes" program shown on Nicaraguan television
Hasenfus: Yes, that's what I said.
Wallace: What did that mean?
Hasenfus: I was contracted.... I'm an American. This is a Nicaraguan
war. I'm here working, not as a soldier. That's why it isn't my war. I
don't believe that this is an American war.
Wallace: What do you mean?
Hasenfus: What I mean is that these people here have their own war and
now I'm trapped in the middle of it. It was a very selfish mistake on
my part to get involved in it. A selfish error, for my family....
Wallace: Explain.
Hasenfus: Well, I'm here. That explains it all.
Wallace: Yes, but you were making money, is that it?
Hasenfus: Yes, I was making money, that's true.
Wallace: Can I ask you how much, or shouldn't I go into that?
Hasenfus: I was making $3,000 a month.
Wallace: Right, that's how you came here to work. Doesn't that make
you a freedom fighter like those that Reagan talks about?
Hasenfus: No, I'm not a freedom fighter. I'm not one of those soldiers
of fortune or whatever. I was an individual who was asked if he wanted
to work. It was something you do, a way to make money, and that's what
we did.
Wallace: But I detect=97correct me if I'm wrong=97that what you are saying
is that the United States shouldn't be here trying to overthrow the
Sandinista government.
Hasenfus:That's my opinion and it is probably the opinion of many
other Americans.
Wallace: Yet, strangely, here you are helping the contras try to
overthrow the Sandinista government.
Hasenfus: Yes, I was here.
Wallace: Gene, what you are doing is trying to win over the
Sandinistas. I understand that. I would do the same. In other words, I
would say: 'I'm not against you boys, let me go.'
Hasenfus: No, I'm saying what I'm saying on my own. I believe that we
shouldn't be here. After the way they captured me, it could be said of
me that I am a mercenary. Since they captured me, every day these
people could be doing whatever they want to me, I believe with
justification. And they have treated me well.
Wallace: Do you consider yourself a prisoner of war?
Hasenfus: Yes I am.
Wallace: Do you think that the United States has an obligation to come
rescue you?
Hasenfus: No. I would like to say yes, but personally, I myself say
no. Of course being linked to the Company the way I was and knowing
what it was doing...
Wallace: The Company is the CIA?
Hasenfus: Yes, that=92s why I think I merit a little sup****t.
No red light for the $100 million"
The Hasenfus case became public at a critical time for the
administration's international policy, just after the news about the
failure of the summit meeting in Iceland and revelations about the
administration's manipulation of the mass media against Libya. The
administration reacted in several ways to these compromising events:
* First, it tried to ****ft responsibility to the "private network" of
ex-General John Singlaub, who denied any connection. Singlaub argued
that the downed plane had carried too much evidence and that the job
had been botched too badly to be associated with him. By the same
logic, he insisted that the CIA could not have had its hands in it.
* Secondly, it let responsibility come down upon the Salvadoran
government, which, after initial denials, had no other recourse except
to admit its connections.
* Finally, it tacitly accepted responsibility but avoided any
confessions of guilt or shame. Instead, the administration has tried
to stir up nationalistic feelings of pride. From this perspective, the
supply operations have suffered a slight blow, but are being turned
into a success, foreshadowing possibilities during the coming months
of a counterrevolution well supplied with new weapons and ready to
reopen the southern military front with new men and weapons.
A case like that of Hasenfus, potentially destabilizing for the
administration, or at least highly challenging to its Nicaragua
policy, should have had a greater impact. However, it didn=92t even put
a red light in the road of the final approval of the $100 million.
During the same period that the plane was shot down, 75 US war
veterans turned in the medals they had won in the Vietnam war and
other US wars, and the four veterans fasting on the Capitol steps were
ending 46 days of their fast to protest the war policy against
Nicaragua. These actions didn=92t manage to turn the light red either.
On October 16, Congress gave final ratification to the policy of
giving $100 million in arms to the counterrevolution and putting the
CIA in charge of the war. It was even more shocking that Senator Tom
Harkin's proposal to investigate the Hasenfus case was defeated 55 to
47, as if there was a desire to bury everything in silence.
The $100 million, now approved and already being disbursed to the
contras, constitute part of the largest military spending package in
US history. On October 18, two days after his victory, President
Reagan signed the bill into law, in obvious haste. Sixty million
dollars is being spent immediately for the purchase of ground-to-air
rockets, light artillery, remote control mines, etc, and the remaining
$40 million in February. The day after the signing, 500 Green Berets
from Georgia were dropped by parachute over Honduran territory near
the Nicaraguan border for training in "nighttime operations and in
survival in the mountains and marshes." Within a few days, 14,000
troops of the 82nd Airborne Division were involved in the largest
maneuvers ever carried out at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, simulating
an invasion of Nicaragua. "We hope that Daniel Ortega gets the
message," said one of the leaders of the maneuvers.
Despite the dramatic proof of illegality in the Hasenfus case and the
scandal itself, Congress voted once again for illegality and scandal,
passively resigned to a situation they themselves created by reopening
the doors to the CIA, approving the $100 million with the CIA's
conditions. The Hasenfus case showed that those doors were never
really closed by any law. The congressional amendments were flouted,
and now their proponents have no moral authority to criticize the CIA
for forcing open the doors before Congress opened them officially once
again.
The red light of =93international alert=94
On October 18, the President of Nicaragua called an urgent press
conference to declare an "international alert" and announce that
Nicaragua would be going to the UN Security Council to demand that the
US comply with the World Court verdict. On October 10, just five days
after the downing of the contra supply plane, the Nicaragua=92s foreign
minister, Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, holding some of the do***ents that had
been found in the plane, had made an unusual plea before the 41st
General Assembly:
=93President Reagan, Secretary Shultz: From the UN we urge you, wherever
you may be, in the name of the God in whom you claim to believe, in
whom my people and I truly believe, to stop the war, accept the World
Court verdict and put your foreign policy in line with the norms
established in the Charter. No matter how powerful you may be, don't
think you have certain prerogatives that God has never given to any
person or any nation. We hold you responsible=97and someday you will
have to give an accounting before the Lord=97for all the bloodshed and
suffering inflicted on so many innocent people by your insatiable
desire for domination. We hold you responsible beforehand for any evil
that may befall those who are fasting for peace, whom you have
senselessly ignored until now. There is no doubt that the United
States os a very rich and powerful nation that can turn its back on
all the courts on earth, but it is time now that you start fearing the
implacable justice of the God of peace and life. Believe me, Mr.
Reagan and Mr. Shultz, there is no way to avoid or to flout that
justice."
The UN Security Council met on October 21. Nicaragua invoked Article
94 of the UN Charter, which states that if one of the parties involved
does not comply with the World Court verdict the other can have
recourse to the Council. After listening to various statements by
Council members, the body moved to vote on a resolution urging the
United States to accept the World Court finding. Of the 15 members, 11
voted in favor, 3 abstained (France, England and Thailand), and the US
cast its veto. This is the fourth veto the United States has used
since l982 on Security Council resolutions questioning its Nicaragua
policy. But this time the veto is illegal since it goes against the
UN's own Charter. Nicaragua immediately called on the UN General
Assembly to take a position on the resolution, knowing that the United
States doesn=92t have veto power in the Assembly.*
________________________________
*On November 3 Nicaragua scored a major success when a significant
majority of the General Assembly adopted the resolution "urging" the
United States to comply "fully and immediately" with the World Court
decision. Ninety-four countries voted in favor, 47 abstained and only
3 voted against (United States, Israel and El Salvador). Among those
abstaining were Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras. It=92s the first
time in UN history that the Assembly has condemned a nation for not
respecting a sentence of the UN Court.)
This month Nicaragua gained notable international legitimacy,
offsetting the US Congress' reassertion of contra legitimacy. In
addition, the Soviet Union made one of its most concrete and explicit
position statements concerning Nicaragua. Soviet Foreign Minister
Edward Shevardnadze, at the end of his official visit to Mexico on
October 5 (the same day the US plane was shot down over Nicaragua),
stated:
=93The reason for the attacks on Nicaragua, as in the case of Cuba, is
that the US administration has a kind of allergic reaction to
political processes that don=92t conform to what it thinks is proper.
All around the Soviet Union, as you know very well, are many countries
that have a socio-political system basically very different from ours.
An example is Turkey, which has more than a sufficient quantity of
weapons and which, furthermore, has them pointed directly against the
Soviet Union. The US presence can also be seen there in dozens of
bases with US Air Force planes for arms trans****t. Nevertheless, we
maintain balanced, =91good neighbor=92 relations with Turkey. We have
never tried to instigate, much less financed, a coup by the opposition
forces there.
=93Compare this with the US attitude toward Nicaragua. It is ridiculous
for the United States to try to justify that attitude by claiming a
mythical Soviet military presence in Nicaragua. I can declare with
full responsibility: there has not been nor is there now a Soviet
military presence in Nicaragua.=94
Three charges
While Nicaragua was making im****tant strides in the diplomatic
struggle to counteract the illegality of the US attitude, Eugene
Hasenfus was on trial in Managua.
The trial began on October 20 in the People's Anti-Somocista Tribunals
(TPAs). The TPAs were founded on April 11, 1983 and were structured
based on international agreements relating to war crimes. The purpose
was to expedite the handling of cases, given the emergency created by
the counterrevolutionary war. According to Decree 1233 which brought
them into being, the TPAs were created "to respond to the situation of
aggression imposed on the Nicaraguan people by the US government."
They are civilian tribunals, with civilian judges and criteria, made
up of a lawyer and two citizens. In these courts, the accused is
granted the same rights as in any other criminal court, except that an
appeal can be made only to the higher level within the same court.
The Hasenfus trial is taking place at a time when the
counterrevolutionary aggression is escalating.
An event happened on that very day that is strictly extra-judicial but
helps to understand the seriousness of the charges against the
accused. A Claymore mine destroyed a small civilian trans****t bus with
45 peasants aboard on its regular early-morning route from Pantasma to
Jinotega. Of the 45 people on the bus, 5 were killed and 34 injured.
Six of the injured had to have one or both legs amputated. Both a
small girl and an old man lost their two legs that day. At the opening
of the Hasenfus trial, Managua newspapers showed photos of the
mutilated bodies. The planes supplying the contras carry these and
other kinds of mines of different sizes in their cargo. The contras
then place the devices in the highways and roads of the Nicaraguan
countryside.
According to Nicaraguan law, Eugene Hasenfus, even though a foreigner,
can be tried by Nicaraguan courts because he committed the alleged
crimes in national territory. Hasenfus is charged with three crimes:
1) Violating the Law of Security and Public Order, sub-paragraphs (a)
and (b), by taking part in acts that seek to subject Nicaragua to
foreign domination or to work to the detriment of its sovereignty, and
by using weapons to attack the government of the nation;
2) Terrorism, a violation of Article 499 of the Penal Code, which
includes under terrorism the im****tation, manufacture, distribution
and illegal trans****t of weapons;
3) Illegal association to commit a crime, a violation of Article 493
of the Penal Code.
One of the biggest questions at the start of the trial was: who would
be the defense attorney? Griffin Bell, US attorney general during the
Carter administration, tried to offer his services, but according to
Nicaraguan law, attorneys must be registered with the Nicaraguan
Supreme Court. Griffin Bell has been going back and forth between the
US and Managua and has expressed his disgust at not being allowed to
confer with the accused. The law simply does not permit it. He is also
upset because he hasn=92t been able to meet with the President of
Nicaragua.
The US Embassy in Nicaragua finally selected as defense attorney
Enrique Sotelo Borgen, a member of the Conservative Party faction that
abstained from the 1984 elections and therefore is not in the National
Assembly. In his first press conference Sotelo got some chuckles from
US re****ters when he said that for him Hasenfus was just "a skilled
worker whose specialty is air freight."
The prosecutor in this trial is Nicaraguan Minister of Justice Rodrigo
Reyes, who has asked for the maximum penalty: 30 years in prison. In
Nicaragua, there has been no death penalty since the 1979 triumph. In
fact, on October 1, just four days before Hasenfus' plane was shot
down, the National Assembly=97which is continuing its daily discussion
of the articles of the Constitution=97gave majority approval to Article
23, ratifying abolition of the death penalty in Nicaragua.
During its case, the prosecution gave a historical synthesis of US
imperialist aggression in Nicaragua since last century. Sotelo focused
his defense argument on denying the competency of the TPAs to hear
this case=97because Hasenfus is not a "Somocista"=97and questioning its
legality and impartiality. Sotelo also denied the competency of the
prosecutor, rejected the description of Hasenfus as either a
"mercenary" or a "prisoner of war," rejected the prisoner's
confessions because they were made before military authorities and
called the whole trial "a legal laughing-stock which covers the
nation's courts with shame."
These arguments bore a resemblance to the initial approach taken up by
US government propaganda: to speak neither favorably nor badly of the
accused, but very disparagingly of the court that would try him.
Sotelo's arguments were rejected, and the trial continued.
In his rebuttal to the defense attorney, the minister of justice
presented arguments such as the following:
=93In the written accusation, the prosecution has never referred to
Hasenfus as a prisoner of war, as the defense maliciously claims,
because to do so would be to accept the thesis that the US has
officially declared war on Nicaragua; we have always indicated in our
written statements that the war Nicaragua is suffering is a war of
aggression and, as such, illegal and unjust.
=93We have also not accused Hasenfus of being a mercenary, precisely
because the crime of being a mercenary is not in our penal code.
However, that does not mean that there are no mercenaries. In fact, in
the additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions of 1977, we find it
expressly stated that mercenaries will not have combatant status and
that they will be tried as criminals.*
__________________________________
*In Resolution 40-25 of the UN General Assembly, November 29, 1985,
there is also reference to the crime of being a mercenary: the General
Assembly reaffirms that the practice of using mercenaries against
sovereign states and national liberation movements constitutes a
criminal act, and urges all governments to pass laws that declare the
recruiting, financing, training and trans****t of mercenaries on their
territory as punishable crimes. It further urges governments to pass
laws prohibiting their nationals from lending their services as
mercenaries.
After the first phase of the defense, Sotelo seemed to want to focus
on Hasenfus' economic need, destroying any link between his client's
activity and the CIA and avoiding the terrorist label for his client.
In his judgment, his client's crimes would be complicity in arms
trafficking, with the attenuating cir***stance that he did not know
what was in the cargo he was throwing out of the plane, and complicity
in the violation of another country=92s air space.
Griffin Bell was not the only former US Attorney General who came to
Managua to get a first-hand view of the trial. Also in town was Ramsey
Clark, who held the post during the Johnson administration.
After familiarizing himself with the facts of the case and with the
trial, Clark expressed his conclusions publicly in Managua:
* The trial complies with all the requirements of Nicaraguan law.
* As a political opponent of the government, defense attorney Sotelo
is politicizing the trial. (Clark said the US Embassy chose Sotelo
from a list of 12 names; it is known that Hasenfus' personal attorney
is very upset with Sotelo's defense style, which could be hurting his
client's chances.)
* The accused is being pressured by US government officials who have
seen him, in order to keep him from talking about certain details of
his activity.
Clark categorically stated that Hasenfus' crime "is the kind that
would merit the death penalty in the United Sttes. If he were a
mercenary doing something similar for the revolutionaries in El
Salvador, he'd be lucky if they didn't execute him immediately."
Hasenfus's wife Sally and brother William are present at the trial.
The Nicaraguan government has shown a high degree of flexibility,
permitting Embassy personnel and family members to be present during
conversations between Hasenfus and his attorney.
The case is hardly defensible. Griffin Bell himself, after coming on
strong at first, had to recognize that "after all, Hasenfus didn=92t
drop out of the sky but was shot down as a crew member on a plane full
of weapons." From that point, he began to appeal to the mercy of the
Sandinista government, since Hasenfus was unemployed and had three
children to feed. Griffin Bell is serving as Sotelo's adviser.
Hasenfus has recognized his guilt before the court, confirming all the
information he gave in the early questioning sessions. The only change
is that he has sought to distance himself from his first statements
about the links he pointed to between Cooper, the CIA and George Bush,
saying he heard Cooper saying things, but that he himself was not sure
of them. This is the present line of defense: extricate the CIA and
high administration officials from the whole business. This objective
is almost as difficult as proving Hasenfus' innocence.
The Hasenfus trial occupied the month of October in Nicaragua. It is
public and is followed avidly by both national and international
journalists and by the Nicaraguan people through the mass media. In
the present war of resistance, the downing of the plane, the capture
of Hasenfus and his trial form a symbol that gives certainty of
victory.
The Hasenfus case cuts across the current historical moment in
Nicaragua leaving a trail of evidence, proof and revelations. Now
there can be no doubt about the kind of war the Nicaraguan people are
facing: a US war against Nicaragua. The Reagan administration has no
more masks to put on or take off. It has become isolated, stubbornly
trying to legitimate an illegal war that it runs completely from
Wa****ngton. Thus isolated, it is at the same time facing the growing
alternative of greater involvement, in which many Coopers and Sawyers
could die and many Hasenfuses could be captured. These deaths and
captures are not yet legitimated in US public opinion, which is the
only battleground on which this unstoppable war can be brought to a
halt.
While preparations begin for CIA advisers to train contras in
"discreet" camps in the United States and gigantic joint US-Honduras
maneuvers are being announced for December, rumors are growing that
the administration's next step will be a unilateral break in
diplomatic relations with Nicaragua, which would permit it to continue
acting as illegally as it has been but with greater consistency. The
US government wants to drag its Central American allies into this
plan.
But Nicaragua is not isolated. This month it was chosen to be the 1987
site for the annual meeting of the World Interparliamentary Union,
which brings together 103 of the world's parliaments. This is an
im****tant expression of recognition for the legitimacy of Nicaragua's
National Assembly, which with its daily debate on the text of the new
Constitution continues to build the nation=92s new institutional
framework. In the Church-State arena, the second round of dialogue was
held this month and participants are beginning to study the concrete
points that would constitute part of a General Agreement to
permanently assure the legitimacy, respect and autonomy of each
institution relative to the other.
The aggression continues, and a proof of that is the intense fighting
going on this month, the heaviest this year, between the main body of
FDN troops, which is trying to penetrate into Nicaragua, and four
"irregular warfare battalions" of the Sandinista army. Although the
aggression goes on, the prospects of growing aggression are ever more
alarming and the US government is giving no sign whatever of changing
its war-making course, Nicaragua is not nervous. It is still a country
where incredible normalcy reigns. Resistance becomes more and more a
daily virtue of the people. There is serenity and security and there
are victories. There is the simple peace of being right. It is the
peace evident on the face of the Sandinista soldier as he brought
along US citizen Eugene Hasenfus, tied and under control.
"I=92m re****ting directly to Bush "
Eugene Hasenfus, an Air America veteran, survived the crash and told
his captors that he thought the CIA was behind the operation. He also
provided information that several Cuban-Americans running the
operation in El Salvador. This resulted in journalists being able to
identify Rafael Quintero, Luis Posada and Felix Rodriguez as the Cuban-
Americans mentioned by Hasenfus. It gradually emerged that Thomas
Clines, Oliver North, Edwin Wilson and Richard Secord were also
involved in this conspiracy to provide arms to the Contras.
This story brought George Bush into what became known as the Irangate.
Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a convicted financier for the Meddellin drug
cartel, talked about Rodriguez=92s role in the CIA involvement in the
drug trade: =93If Felix had come to me and said I=92m re****ting to=85
Olive=
r
North, I might have been more sceptical. I didn=92t know who Oliver
North was and I didn=92t know his background. But if you have a CIA, or
what you consider to be a CIA-man, coming to you saying, =91I want to
fight the war, we=92re out of funds, can you help us out? I=92m re****ting
directly to Bush on it,=92 I mean it=92s very real, very believable, have
you have a CIA guy re****ting to his old boss.=94
Bush was eventually forced to admit that along with Donald P. Gregg
he had met with Felix Rodriguez three times. However, he argued that
he had not discussed Nicaragua with him. He also defended Gregg=92s
decision to deny these meetings with Rodriguez had taken place.
According to Bush, Gregg had not lied, he merely =93forgot=94 about these
meetings. Bush=92s story eventually became that Gregg was working on his
own initiative and that he was unaware of his role in the Iran-Contra
affair.
A handwritten note from George Bush to Oliver North that thanked him
for his =93dedication and tireless work with the hostage thing with
Central America=94 also became public. When asked about this note, Bush
said =93he didn=92t recall why he sent it=94.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbushG.htm
http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3243
"Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep, And in his simple show
he harbors treason."
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part II (Suffolk at III, i)
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