LA PENCA PASTORA, THE PRESS AND THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000504880017-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 82
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 15, 2010
• Sequence Number: 17
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ILLEGIB
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To the victims of La Penca.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The investigation presented in this report was made
possible partly through financial support from The Committee
to Protect Journalists, The Newspaper Guild, The World Press
Freedom Committee, The Sunday Times of London, and the ico
Numerous people assisted in the investigation, some at
considerable personal risk. Because of continuing risk, it is
not possible to name many of them here.
Those who have helped and consented to have their names use,
are Carmen Araya Ortez, Richard Dyer, Roberto Cruz, and Edgar
Ulate.
Very special thanks goes to Carlos who risked his life and
to David who gave his life to get the story of La Penca
out. Without their extraordinary courage and sacrifices, the
truth might never have been known.
The editing and support of Tico Times editor Dery Dyer has
been invaluable.
The content of the book, opinions expressed and conclusions
drawn are solely the responsibility of the authors.
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JOURNALISTS INJURID & KILLED AT LA P=CA
(Listed in alphabetical order)
Tony Avirgan - U.S.- ABC NEWS -Shrapnel wounds. Burns. Manglec
hand. Evacuated to the U.S. Incapacitated two months.
William Cespedes - Costa Rica - Radio Relos/United Press
International - Shrapnel wounds. Permanent hearing
impairment. Permanent limitation in use of hand. Ongoint
emotional trauma. Incapacitated five months.
Roberto Cruz - Costa Rica - Xing Xua News Agency- Shrapnel
wounds. Severe burns. Lost eye. Leg amputated. Permanent-l:
disabled.
Joaquin Da Silva - Portugal - Portuguese TV - Shrapnel
wounds. Burns. In-
capacitated one month.
Edgar Fonseca Monge - Costa Rica - La Nacion - Shrapnel
wounds. Burns. Incapacitated two months.
Linda Frazier - U.S. - Tico Times - Died at site of blast.
Jose Rodolfo Ibarra Bogarin - Costa Rica - Channel 7 -
shrapnel wounds.
Severe burns. Permanent hearing impairment. Incapacitated two
months.
Gilberto Lopez - Brazil - French News Agency - Severe
burns. permanent limitation in use of hands. Returned to wtrk
after one week in hospital.
Arturo Masis - Costa Rica - Channel 7 - Not seriously injured
Reid Miller - U.S. - Associated Press - Sharapnel
wounds. Burns. Permanent hearing damage. Returned to work
after one week.
Susan Morgan - Britain - Newsweek - Shrapnel wounds. Severe
burns. Fractured hip. Fractured arm. Fractured
elbow. evacuated to the U.S. Incapacitated six
months. Permanent limitation in use of arm.
Nelson Murillo - Costa Rica - Channel 6 - Shrapnel wounds.
Fractur ed leg.Permanent hearing damage. Incapacitated
two months.
Fernando Prado - Bolivia - Swedish TV - Shrapnel wounds.
Burns. Incapacitated two months.
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Jorge Quito* Piedra - Costa Rica - Channel 6 - Died at site of
blast.
Miguel A. Sanchez Castro - Costa Rica - La Nacion - Shrapnel
wounds. Burns. Permanent hearing damage. Incapacitated two
months.
Evelio Sequeira - Costa Rica - Channel 6 - Died in hospital
one week after the blast.
Peter Torbiornsson - Sweden - Swedish TV - Shrapnel wounds.
Burns. Incapacitated one month.
Juan Carlos Ulate Mora - Costa Rica - La Republica -
Shrapnel wounds. Burns. Incapacitated two months.
Edgar Romano Ulate Cruz - Costa Rica - ABC News - Shapnel
wounds. Burns. Permanent hearing damage. Incapacitated three
months.
Carlos Vargas Genet - Costa Rica - La Republica - Shrapnel
wounds.Severe burns. Multiple fractures. Mangled leg. mangled
elbow. Fingers amputated. Permanently disabled.
Jose Antonio Venegas - Costa Rica - La Nacion - Permanent
hearing impairment. Incapacitated one month.
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SUMMARY OF THE INVESTIGATION
This report represents more than a year's work by ourselves
and a number of colleagues. From the day after a terrorist
bomb exploded during guerrilla leader Eden Pastora's press
conference at La Penca, Nicaragua on May 30, 1984, we have
worked to get to the bottom of this crime which killed and
crippled our colleagues, friends and family members.
The La Penca bombing would have been a mere footnote in the
sordid chronicle of the contras' war against the Nicaraguan
government, except for the fact that it involved, from almost
every angle, the press. This made it a chillingly unique
event.
In our investigation, we tried to find out:
1-The identity of the bomber.
2-Who hired him.
We have conducted personal or telephone interviews with over
100 people in Costa Rica, the United States, Panama, Honduras,
Nicaragua, Uruguay, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Spain, France and
Sweden and Norway. Our sources have included antiSandinista
rebel leaders (contras) both pro- and anti-Pastora; Costa
Rican government officials, security officers and Journalists;
former and present CIA agents, Cuban-Americans, and business-
men with ties to Miami; United States diplomats, Journalists
and political investigators; Panamanian Journalists and
politicians; Uruguayan leftists, politicians, Journalists and
police officials; Nicaraguan diplomats, Journalists and
government officials; and foreign Journalists and western
diplomats based in the region.
The investigation has been extremely difficult; hampered by
false leads, phony documents, diametrically opposing theories,
and informants who did not want to talk, or -- in the case of
some police and security officials -- wanted to be paid for
their information.
Despite this, we have reached the following conclusions:
1. Even though the bomber failed in his mission to kill
Pastora, the operation itself was highly professional, care-
fully planned over a long period, carried out by a skilled,
well-trained terrorist, and involved numerous accomplices,in-
cluding at least one woman.
2. The way the assassination attempt was planned, the
journalists present were: victims of the attack, the cover for
the assassin, and the prime suspects afterwards.
3. Certain Costa Rican officials knew beforehand about the
plot and afterwards worked to block the investigation. In
addition, certain security officials or ex-officials were
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involved in manufacturing false documents designed to blame
the bombing on the Sandinistas.
4. The U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica acted in a negligent man-
ner, even though American journalists or Journalists working
for the U.S. media were killed or maimed in the bombing.
5. Press reports in the days following the bombing carried
false and at times malicious stories implicating innocent
people and throwing off course any serious press investi-
gation into the attack. There is evidence that the press in
both Costa Rica and the U.S. was used as an instrument in a
well-organized coverup of the bombing.
6. The assassin was a right-wing Libyan whose comrades knew
him as Amac Galil. He was recruited in Chile for the La Penca
operation in early 1984.
7. Those who hired the assassin include the Central Intel-
ligence Agency (CIA), members of the MDN and-FDN -contra
organizations, and CubanAmericans in Miami.
Substantial evidence is presented here showing that
right-wing forces, including the CIA, were plotting to kill
Pastora. Vhile recognizing that the Sandinistas had reasons
for wanting to kill him and the capacity to do so, we have not
found any concrete evidence that they were responsible for La
Penca. Neither have other journalists, Costa Rican
investigators, or Pastora's wing of the Democratic
Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE).
8. The bombing was.a right-wing plot which was intended to
be blamed on the Sandinistas. Its aim was first to kill
Pastora who was considered by many of his opponents to be a
sort of closet communist, as well as the main obstacle to
contra unity and increased U.S. assistance. Second, it is
likely the bombing was intended to increase tensions between
Costa Rica and Nicaragua and thereby prepare the ground for
the build-up of an FDN army along Nicaragua's southern front
and the creation of a coordinated two-front war against the
Sandinistas. Third, by killing and maiming journalists, the
bombing would help turn the press and public opinion against
the Nicaraguan government.
9. The group which carried out the La Penca bombing is still
at large and intact. The group plans to carry out new
terrorist attacks in Honduras and Costa Rica. These attacks,
like La Penca, are planned so that blame will fall on the
Sandinistas and leftist organizations friendly to them.
10. Nearly a year and a half after the La Penca bombing, the
U.S. Embassy in San Jose was still actively blocking Costa
Rican Government efforts to investigate the crime.
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We hope that publication of this report will stimulate
further investigation and uncover more clues leading to the
capture and punishment of the La Penca killer and his
accomplices.
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On the eve of Eden Pastora's May 30th press conference, the
anti-Sandinista Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) was
suffering its most serious internal crisis.
The CIA had given the group a 30-day ultimatum to unite with
the Honduran-based Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN). In
addition, Pastora, as ARDE's Commander-in-chief and leader
of the Revolutionary Forces of Sandino (FRS) faction, was
being pressured by the CIA to create a proper military chain
of command (estado mayor) and to adhere to closer CIA super-
vision of his military actions. The CIA threatened to cut off
Pastora's funds permanently if ARDE and the FDN did not merge.
According to ARDE sources, as of April 1984, the CIA
had suspended its monthly financial allowance to ARDE, given a
green light to Costa Rican authorities to raid Pastorals
command headquarters and other clandestine ARDE installations
inside Costa Rica. The guerrilla leader was being told in no
uncertain terms that he had no choice but to accept an alliance
with the FDN.
Pastora, however, defied the CIA orders because, as he
stated publicly, the FDN high command contained "Somocistas"
(ex-officers from ousted Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza's
notorious National Guard). He said he would agree to unity
only if notorious Somocistas were removed from the FDN. In
addition, he knew that the CIA conditions would mean that he
would lose his single-handed control over ARDE military
operations.
In contrast, Alfonso Robelo, ARDE's chief political spokes-
man and leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic Movement (MDN)
faction, favored unity with the FDN. Robelo was ARDE's most
effective fund raiser and a key contact with the CIA. He is
also a first cousin of FDN political chief, Alfonso Callejas.
According to ARDE sources, under the CIA unity plan,
political power was to be shared by Robelo and Callejas, while
overall military command would go to one of the commanders of
the FDN.
The FDN supported unity. It came to view Pastora as the main
obstacle to a single, more effective organization which would
receive expanded CIA assistance. As the crisis deepened,
other ARDE leaders and members began to choose sides between
Robelo's and Pastora's factions. All six organizations compos-
ing the ARDE alliance became seriously divided over the unity
question.
ARDE has never recovered from this crisis, which was followed
by the La Penca bombing, a Sandinista military offensive
against Pastora's positions, and a mandate by the U.S. Con-
gress to cut off covert U.S. aid to the contras. When Congress
decided, in April 1985, to give $27,000,000 in humantarian aid
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to the contras, Pastora was excluded from receiving any of the
windfall.
ARDE had received money, supplies and training from the CIA
since before it launched its armed struggle in April, 1983. But
this assistance always came with strings attached. According
to ARDE sources, CIA employees coordinated the group's logis-
tics and military training, and maintained its small fleet of
planes which operated out of El Salvador. At several points
the CIA had clashed with Pastora, and had suspended assistance
for short periods.
In addition, these sources say, one of the conditions of
covert U.S. aid was that ARDE always deny it received such
aid, in part because the stated purpose of the U.S. assistance
to the contras had been to interdict the flow of arms from
Nicaragua to the Salvadoran guerrillas. Because ARDE fights
in the south, far from El Salvador, it could in no way claim
to be interdicting arms to the Salvadoran leftists.
Additionally, Pastora, who portrays himself as a "democrat"
and "true Sandinista" and solicits support from liberals in
Latin America and Europe, did not want to be publicly
identified with the CIA. It was only in the days just before
the bombing, when CIA pressure was at its peak, that Pastora
and his aides indirectly admitted that they had been receiving
covert U.S. assistance.
On May 22, for instance, Pastora, Jose Davila (leader of the
Christian Democratic wing of ARDE) and Donald Castillo (head
of ARDE's workers' organization) placed a half-page ad in
Costa Rica's leading daily paper La Nacion stating that "by
means of pressure, manipulation and false expectation",
FDN-ARDE unity was being forced on them by "dark forces". The
ad continued, "We categorically condemn the manipulation of
Pastora by interested sectors who try to make him look like an
obstacle to unity."
The next day, in an interview with Costa Rica's Radio
Monumental, Pastora was more explicit. He said, "There are
strong pressures by the CIA. And they have blocked all help to
us. For the last two months, we have not received a bullet or
a pair of boots, we have not received anything." In an
interview with Channel 6 TV, which ironically was being re-air-
ed just minutes before the bomb exploded, the ARDE Command-
er said that the CIA was putting great pressure on his organi-
zation to join with the FDN. "But," added, "The CIA will have
to kill me first."
Pastora's aides have since said in interviews that they felt
the commander's life was in danger and that that was one of
the reasons he had left his guerrilla camps along the San
Juan River the week before. He traveled first to Panama to
seek guarantees of continued assistance from Panama's military
chief Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. He then secretly went to San
Jose (he was.officially banned from entering Costa Rica) for
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meetings with ARDE's 27-member "Democratic Assembly", the
organization's top decision-making body.
In a series of heated meetings, a majority of the Assembly
voted for unity with the FDN. On two occasions, May 27 and 29,
Pastora and his followers walked out. After the second walkout,
his people decided to hold a press conference.
Pastora's aides say this was not the first time a conflict
with the CIA had precipitated an internal crisis and fears for
Pastora's life. According to one political adviser, "From the
moment we started our armed struggle, there were
contradictions. When the bomb went off, it was simply the
highest moment of contradictions within ARDE."
In September-October 1983, for instance, Pastora temporarily
quit ARDE, announcing that Alfonso Robelo was "a traitor" and
had "deceived" him. The denuciation came after Pastora
discovered that Robelo was secretly training his own military
commanders in Argentina and Honduras as part-of the CIA's plan
to create a proper military chain of command in ARDE. The
aim was to circumscribe Pastora's authority and professionalize
the guerrilla forces on the southern front.
In addition, the CIA suspended funding to Pastora at this
time, because the Commander was resisting unity with the
FDN. ARDE informants say that during this period there was a
growing feeling that Pastora was an stubborn obstacle both to
unity and to increased CIA assistance. One'-informant who
supported unity explained, "The feeling is that we'd be better
off having Pastora as a dead hero than a live troublemaker." He
said Pastora might well be killed by his contra opponents who
would place the blame on the Sandinistas.
The crisis was resolved this time after Pastora publicly
quit ARDE and then held talks with Robelo. Pastora later went
on a highly successful trip to the U.S. where he received a
great deal of media coverage and, ARDE sources say, managed to
patch things up with the CIA by agreeing to resume unity talks
with the FDN. But because of his continuing obduracy, these
talks never resulted in a unity plan being implemented.
What all this indicates is that, at the time of the
bombing, there was reason to believe that the FDN and the
MDN, as well as the CIA, might have wanted to eliminate
Pastora.
It is also important to note that rightist plots against
Pastora existed as far back as 19$2. According to testimony
given in Managua in December, 1982 by an Argentinean, Hector
Frances, who had worked for the CIA in Costa Rica, Pastora,
although he was on the CIA payroll, was already proving
troublesome because he would not align with the FDN.
Frances is reported as saying, "The idea came up in several
meetings we had (an idea not entirely without the inspiration
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of the Department of State) of the possible physical elimina-
tion of Pastora" in the same manner as was used to murder
ex-Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. Somoza was assassin-
ated in Paraguay by leftist Argentinean guerrillas support-
ed by the Sandinistas and apparently the plot against Pastora
was intended to appear to be the work of Sandinistas as well.
At the same time, it is widely known that the Sandin-
istas have long regarded Pastora as a formidable
opponent. Although militarily his forces have presented little
challenge to the Sandinistas, Pastora himself is one of the
few contra leaders with any popular following inside Nicaragua.
Furthermore, he has managed to gain some support in Latin
America and Europe, thus undercutting assistance to the
Nicaraguan Government and dividing the Socialist International
on the issue of Nicaragua.
There is evidence that prior to La Penca, the Sandinistas
had attempted to assassinate contra leaders operating out of:
Costa Rica. One incident, in February 1982, was an attempt on
the life of contra leader Fernando ("El Negro") Chamorro, head
of the tiny FARN group which operated out of Costa
Rica. Gunmen entered Chamorro's house outside San Jose, fired
shots and-wounded his son, whom they apparently mistook for
the rebel leader. The gunmen escaped and the son survived
the attack.
The second incident occurred when a bomb accidentally
exploded in a downtown San Jose parking lot in June, 1983. The
person carrying the bomb - Rodrigo Cuadra Clachar - was killed,
and a second man who was accompanying him was seriously wound-
ed. The injured man eventually was released by Costa Rican
authorities without any charges being brought against him.
Both men were Nicaraguan, and Cuadra was found to have'
worked for the Sandinistas and to have shortly before come to
Costa Rica with the supposed intention of joining ARDE.
ARDE officials say that even before Cuadra was killed, they
suspected that he was a Sandinista infiltrator. When the bomb
went off, the two were getting into their car to go to a
meeting with top ARDE officials.
Although no public statement was released on the parking lot
bombing, the local press, Costa Rican officials, U.S. Embassy
officials and the various contra factions all believe that it
was perpetrated by the Sandinistas. A top Costa Rican security
official warned Nicaraguan officials never to do such a thing
again in Costa Rican territory.! Costa Rican authorities say
they decided to quietly drop the incident rather than both
expose the presence of contras in the country and increase
tensions between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. But many found it
strange that the injured man was released without explanation
and no report was ever issued on the incident.
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A third so-called plot is even less clear. It involved the
arrest in September 1982 of a member of the Basque seperatist
organization ETA, Gregorio Jimenez, who was wanted in Spain
for several murders. He had apparently fled first to Nicaragua
and then to Costa Rica where he was working as a
carpenter. Costa Rican authorities accused Jimenez of being
part of a Sandinista-backed plot to gun down Pastora on a
curve in a road while he was driving north towards the bor-
der. Jimenez has never been brought to trial, and remains in
jail.
Costa Rican and U.S. officials frequently cite the case of
Jimenez as evidence of Sandinista and ETA subversion against
Costa Rica. From interviews, it is clear that Jimenez was
part of a Sandinista spy ring, composed of people from a
number of Spanish-speaking countries, which was collecting
information about ARDE. According to someone very familiar
with its operations, the ring was only engaged in intelligence
gathering and had no plans to kill Pastora or other ARDE
leaders.
However, Costa Rican security officials insist that Jimenez
was part of an assassination team.
Jimenez' arrest came at an awkward moment for Managua since
Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge was in Spain seeking
support from President Felipe Gonzalez' government and from
the Socialist International of which Gonzalez is a leading
member. Borge denied Nicaragua had given ETA guerrillas
military training or that the organization had a presence in
Nicaragua, although he admitted individual ETA members had
been in his country.
But the damage was done. Gonzalez has since become a quiet but
important supporter of Pastora's faction of ARDE.
In summary, prior to the La Penca bombing, there is evidence
that both the right and the left - the CIA and their contra
allies as well as the Sandinistas and their allies - had
plotted to kill Pastora.
THE BOMBING
In the days prior to the May 30 press conference, Pastora
had been clandestinely in San Jose attending ARDE meetings
about unity with the FDN. His FRS faction, as well as the
leadership from several other factions in the Alliance, reject-
ed unity and the ARDE commander had taken his people out of
the meetings.
Costa Rican security officials say Pastora approached them
for permission to hold a press conference in San Jose to
announce his plans to leave the armed struggle and form a new
political alliance with Nicaraguan opposition leaders Arturo
Cruz and Alfredo Cesar.
The officials say they rejected Pastora's request, since the
commander had been banned from the country under the
government's neutrality policy.
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Already, word had leaked out that Pastora was in town, and
a member of the Legislative Assembly had publicly denounced
his presence. This was proving embarrasing for President
Luis Alberto Monge who was touring western Europe to promote
Costa Rican neutrality and solicit economic aid.
Costa Rican officials therefore told Pastora that any press
conference would have to be held at one of his camps inside
Nicaragua, and ordered him to get out of the country immedi-
ately.
Pastora's aides tell the story slightly differently, insist-
ing that the idea to hold the press conference originated with
Costa Rican officials. They say that at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, May
29, Pastora received a call telling him to hold a press
conference the following day on the Nicaraguan side of the San
Juan River. Pastora and some of his associates now believe
that some of these officials were aware of the bomb plot.
That same night, first Col. Rodrigo Paniagua of the Minis-
try of Public Security and then Vice Minister Johnny Campos,
went to Pastora's headquarters in Escazu to order him to leave
the country and hold his press conference in Nicaraguan terri-
tory.
Soon afterwards, Orion Pastora, the Commander's cousin and
ARDE's chief press spokesman, began calling a select group of
local and foreign Journalists in San Jose to invite them
to a press conference the following day at one of Pastora's
riverside base camps.
At 3 a.m. Pastora left for the river in order to reach his
camp ahead of the journalists. Because of the haste with which
the press conference was called, ARDE's Security Chief, Julio
Bigote, was not informed nor was the military commander at La
Penca Jorge Geraro. Orion was put in charge of all the arrange-
ments.
Earlier that day Orion had met with Swedish television
journalist Peter Torbiornsson on the porch of the Gran Hotel
Costa Rica. As the two men discussed Torbiornsson's request
to interview Eden Pastora, they were joined by "Per Anker
Hansen", who identified himself to Orion as a freelance Danish
photographer. Under the same pretext, "Hansen" had attached
himself to Torbiornsson several weeks earlier. Orion recalls
that "Hansen" said little but seemed to speak Spanish "like a
Latin."
The next morning, May 30, about two dozen journalists,
including "Hansen", showed up in the parking lot of the Irazu
Hotel on the outskirts of San Jose, where they had been told
that ARDE vehicles would be waiting to take them on the four
hour drive to Boca Tapada, the last hamlet reachable by road
on the Costa Rican side of the border.
There was a lot of confusion, first because there were not
enough vehicles for all the journalists who showed up, and
then, because Orion tried to prevent Tony Avirgan, who was
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working for ABC-TV and had riot been invited to the pier
conference, from going on the trip.
Orion and other top ARDE officials had been angered by
several recent ABC reports exposing ARDE's operations in
Costa Rica and CIA assistance to Pastore. These reports, along
with several in the New York Times, had precipitated a Costa
Rican raid on ARDE's San Jose command post, on the grounds
that it constituted a violation of Costa Rican neutrality.
(Ironically, ARDE officials have since said that they are con-
vinced that the raid was approved by the CIA as a way to
further weaken Pastora's position and force him to accept
unity with the FDN.)
As the argument persisted, Susan Morgan of Newsweek and
several other journalists intervened and finally convinced
Orion not to exclude Avirgan and his Costa Rican
sound-recordist, Edgar Ulate.
Late in the morning Linda Frazier, Tico Times reporter and
wife of AP correspondent Joe Frazier, called her office to say
that "everything got screwed up as usual, but we are just
about to get on our way." AP correspondent Reid Miller said
later that the trip was like a "Sunday picnic".
Even though ARDE officials had been hinting in interviews
and paid advertisements that Pastora's life was in danger, no
one inspected the journalists' equipment or examined their
credentials. %
Orion Pastora loaded twelve journalists into jeeps furnished
by ARDE, and the others piled into their own vehicles.
Avirgan drove his own jeep with passengers Ulate, Morgan,
AFP correspondent Gilberto Lopes and Xing-Xua Agency corres-
pondent Roberto Cruz. (Costa Rican press reports later refer-
red to this as the "carload of leftist journalists" and, in the
first days after the bombing, they were to become the prime
suspects.)
Frazier, Torbiornsson, Fernando Prado (Torbiornsson's
Bolivian cameraman), Portuguese journalist Joaquin da Silva,
and "Per Anker Hansen" rode in one of the ARDE vehicles.
"Hansen" said little, smoked the entire way, and appeared calm
and relaxed.
Although "Hansen" had offered to help Torbiornsson and
Prado move their camera equipment, he was of little use be-
cause he was completely occupied with carrying and guarding
the large aluminum case in which he kept his cameras and,
concealed on a shelf below, the bomb.
Torbiornsson later recalled, "It seemed like an awfully
bulky thing just for a few cameras and lenses."
At Boca Tapada, "Hansen" carefully wrapped the case in a
large plastic bag bought from the local store.
The sun was fading and clouds were covering the sky as the
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journalists boarded the large, outboard-powered canoes for the
two-hour ride to the guerrilla camp known as La Penca.
They arrived after sundown and began to scramble up the
muddy bank towards the elevated wooden shack where Eden Pastora
was waiting to greet them. Again, there was no security check.
Because of the darkness, Pastora had decided to hold the
formal press conference the next day, but the journalists
quickly gathered around him and began asking questions about
ARDE's internal problems and the possibility of unity with the
FDN.
"Hansen" placed the metal box containing the bomb on the
floor by a counter where Pastora, surrounded by journalists,
was standing. Then he snapped a few pictures and, muttering
loudly that his camera was malfunctioning, backed away from
the crowd.
The last videotape taken by Jorge Quiros, Costa Rican
cameraman for Channel 6 who would die from the explosion,
caught "Hansen" edging towards the door leading to the outer
stairway as the rest of the journalists moved closer to Pas-
tora.
As the impromptu press conference gathered momentum, Rosa
Alvarez, a guerrilla radio operator known as Rosita, moved
through the crowd with a cup of coffee for Commander Pastora.
In the process, she may have kicked over the bomb case.
At 7:20 p.m., the bomb exploded, killing Rosita instantly
and ripping huge holes in the ceiling and floor. Most of the
journalists and guerrillas in the room were wounded, some
fatally.
Quiros and Frazier died during the night. Evelio Sequeira,
also of Channel 6, died a week later. In addition, ARDE offi-
cials who were there say that five guerrillas, including Ro-
sita, died.
Alfonso Robelo later cited Rosita's presence at the press
conference as proof that the MDN, his wing of ARDE, could not
have been involved in the attack, since Rosita was a member of
MDN. This had been true at one time, but during the bitter
in-fighting which had preceded the press conference, Rosita
had switched and joined Pastora's FRS faction.
Following the explosion, which most witnesses recall as "a
huge bolt of blue light," there was a stunned silence, then
cries and moans of pain, and finally chaos as the victims
struggled in the darkness to determine their injuries, find
their colleagues and escape from the darkness and confusion.
In the chaos, an ARDE guerrilla began firing his sub
machinecun into the surrounding jungle.
Eden Pastora, his lieutenant Tito Chamorro and another
wounded guerrilla were quickly located and rushed from the
house, into the only available speedboat. ARDE officials
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ignored journalists' pleas that the most seriously wounded -
Frazier and Quiros - be evacuated in the same boat.
Orion Pastora, who had been in the back room of the house
when the blast occurred and was uninjured, later justified
their actions saying, "We thought it was a Sandinista ambush
and we had to make the object of the attack - Pastora -
disappear from the scene. We didn't know then who was behind
it."
Pastora and the other wounded guerrilla, accompanied by the
only doctor present, were taken to a nearby ARDE camp from
where aides hoped to evacuate them by air. However, ARDE's
helicopter malfunctioned and their light plane could not land
at night on the unlit jungle air strip.
So, after obtaining permission from the Costa Rican govern-
ment for Pastora to enter Costa Rica for "humanitarian rea-
sons", he and Tito Chamorro were brought by river to Puerto
Viejo and then by road to a San Jose hospita-1. They arrived
early the following morning, several hours after the last
journalists had reached the San Carlos hospital.
Just after the wounded ARDE leaders were evacuated, and
only 5 to 10 minutes after the explosion,'Orion Pastora said
he noticed "Hansen" "bumping around among some oil drums"
at the foot of the stairs. "Hansen" asked about his "friends"
Torbiornsson and Prado, but Orion replied he didn't know their
whereabouts.
A photo taken minutes later by La Nacion's Jose Venegas of
"Hansen" sprawled near the oil drums, with a pained, stunned
expression on his face was subsequently used around the world
to portray the horror of the event. It wasn't until days later
that anyone realized it was this "victim" who had planted the
bomb.
About 50 meters behind the house, ARDE investigators later
found a walkie-talkie which did not belong to ARDE, and which
was subsequently identified as the remote-control device
used to trigger the bomb. Orion Pastora said "Hansen" would
have had time to activate the device, then run and position
himself among the barrels.
One ARDE sentry said afterwards that, just before the
explosion, he had surprised "Hansen" in the bushes outside the
house. When challenged, "Hansen" said he was a journalist
and had come out to "take a leak."
When this guerrilla reached Boca Tapada several hours
later, he told a local reporter about the incident and gave a
description of "Hansen". The reporter says he immediately gave
this information to agents of the Organization of Judicial
Investigation (OIJ, the Costa Rican equivalent of the FBI),
but "they did not pay attention. If they had, they could
have detained him."
At approximately 8 p.m., ARDE radio reported the explosion,
saying that three had been killed and approximately 21
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wounded. The Costa Rican Red Cross and the San Carlos Hospital
in Ciudad Quesada went on alert, with the Red Cross mobilizing
12 units and 70 workers. The U.S. Embassy in San Jose and
Costa Rican government officials also were alerted.
Back at La Penca, the victims waited an hour before ARDE
personnel began to give them rudimentary first aid. Though
wounded himself, Jose Ibarra, Channel 7 reporter and a licens-
ed Red Cross volunteer, tried to help evacuate the others.
He later noted that the Red Cross had previously trained
some 21 ARDE fighters in first aid, but none seemed to be
present that night, and the only doctor had gone with Pastore.
Ibarra was hustled into the first canoe, which set off up
the river an hour after the blast. It carried other less
critically wounded people, including "Hansen", who had managed
to slip aboard in the chaos. The only seriously wounded person
evacuated in the first boat was Susan Morgan. Linda Frazier,
Carlos Vargas, Jorge Quiros, Evelio Sequeira, and Roberto
Cruz, the other most seriously injured journalists, were among
the last to be evacuated.
Eventually, another ARDE doctor arrived and gave some
assistance.. The last to leave waited four to five hours for
the boats to make the 4-hour round-trip to Boca Tapada, where
ambulances were waiting to carry them on the bumpy two and a
half hour ride to the San Carlos hospital.
One ambulance was at the riverbank when the first boat
arrived with four victims and "Hansen". Forty-five minutes
later, other ambulances arrived.
Rain and fog hampered the rescue effort, and a washed-out
bridge obliged the rescuers to carry the victims across a
small river to other waiting ambulances. The first victims and
"Hansen" arrived at the hospital around midnight.
Shortly after the blast, La Nacion reporter Edgar Fonseca
contacted his newspaper with his two-way radio, begging for
speedboats and helicopters to evacuate the wounded from La
Penca. La Nacion called Minister of Public Security Angel
Edmundo Solano, who had been alerted to the incident at 9
p.m.. The Tico Times called U.S. Consul Lynn Curtain at 8:40
p.m., but neither Costa Rican officials nor the U.S. Embassy
seriously attempted to arrange for helicopters.
The U.S. Embassy did not call Solano to offer help, nor did
Solano request help. U.S. Embassy officials had been pressuring
for months to have Solano removed from his job, and there
was considerable hostility between the Minister and the
American Ambassador. The U.S. Embassy's response to the
bombing was, essentially, to do nothing.
During the night, Minister Solano and Vice President Alber-
to Fait, who was in charge while President Monge was away,
each contacted top Nicaraguan government officials, since they
initially assumed that the Sandinistas were responsible.
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Nicaraguan officials categorically denied they were involv-
ed, pointing out that, had they wanted to, they would have
assassinated Pastora in a different manner, without killing
and injuring innocent journalists.
In the San Carlos hospital, "Hansen" was attended by doc-
tors who later said they could find no_wounds other than two
superficial straight cuts on his right arm. Apparently the cuts
were self-inflicted, because they do not appear in photos of
"Hansen" taken at La Penca.
"Hansen" sat calmly in a wheelchair just inside the emergen-
cy entrance, where he could see all the wounded being admit-
ted. Between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., he lay on a stretcher and
slept.
Nurses described him as very rude. He kept demanding to
know who was arriving at the hospital and to see the Red Cross
list of injured and dead. He repeatedly asked about Pastora.
He also demanded periodically to know if a woman had arriv-
ed to collect him. Twice during the night he was seen making
calls from a pay phone. He had a soft knapsack with him and
guarded it carefully, later leading to speculation that it
contained a weapon, documents, or other incriminating evidence.
"Hansen" refused to talk with La Republica Director Joaquin
Vargas, saying he didn't speak Spanish, but later that night
he gave a 10 minute interview in Spanish to a reporter from
a San Carlos station, Radio Cima. In the interview, he did not
describe any of the horror of the bombing aftermath, but
simply claimed that the blast had knocked him down the
stairs. He said he heard shots, and later took a boat. This
recording has become a prime piece of evidence in the attempt
to determine the bomber's true identity.
At 8:30 the next morning, "Hansen" and Peter Torbiornsson,
who was not seriously injured, checked out of the hospital and
took a taxi back to San Jose. During the drive, Torbiornsson
recalls that "Hansen" was silent, smoked constantly, and ap-
peared nervous for the first time.
They were dropped off at their downtown hotel, La Gran Via.
When Torbiornsson came down from his room some 20 minutes
later, he found "Hansen" checking out. "Hansen" told him
that he was "leaving for Miami." Hotel employees say "Hansen"
did not call a taxi, but simply walked outside, waited a few
minutes, and then disappeared. He was wearing blue jeans, a
dark shirt, light jacket and dark glasses, and carried a
medium-sized suitcase in his hand and a leather or canvas bag
over his shoulder. He has not been seen since.
Eden Pastora was admitted to San Jose's private Clinica
Biblica at about 8 a.m. and taken to the second floor, which
was cordoned off to the public.
While he was being treated for burns, shrapnel wounds and
broken ribs, officials from ARDE, the Costa Rican government
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and the Venezuelan government made preparations for Pastora to
be transferred to Caracas.
Meanwhile, President Monge, informed of the bombing some
three hours after it happened, immediately blamed it on Sandin-
ista infiltrators within ARDE. Pastore blamed the CIA. In
Washington, intelligence sources "leaked" to the press that
the bomb had been planted by the Basque seperatist organization
ETA, which reportedly has close ties to the Sandinistas.
While accusations began to fly, Costa Rica's Office of
Intelligence and Security (DIS) started investigating and the
Costa Rican Security Council met in a special session.
The OIJ waited two days to begin working on the case. The
borders were not closed for 48 hours.
i
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The La Penca bombing was a highly professional action,
carried out by a well-trained terrorist, supported by a
widespread network of strategically placed
accomplices. Following is what is known about the bomber and
his bomb:
The bomber was traveling on a Danish passport stolen in
December 1980 from the Copenhagen apartment of a 28-year-old
student. He also had a Danish driver's license, credit cards
and press credentials from a fictitious photo agency "Europe
7," all in the name of "Per Anker Hansen".
He lived in Panama under that name during much of 1982. Af-
ter the bombing, a Panamanian accountant told Panama's oppo-
sition newspaper, La Prensa, that he recognized "Hansen"'s
photograph and name, because he had been involved in a minor
traffic accident with him in 1982.
Panamanian and Costa Rican journalists determined that
"Hansen", during his stay in Panama, had claimed to be a
Danish photographer preparing a book on Panama. Journalists
and well-placed Panamanians said he was also rumored to have
been "a protege" of a top official in the Panamanian National
Guard (the army).
"Hansen" lived in the luxury, high-rise Las Vegas apart-
ments located near the university. The apartments were
described by one Panamanian journalist as "very mysterious" and
not open to everyone.
The receptionist at the apartments told us they rent to
diplomats, representatives of international organizations,
businessmen, and occasionally university professors. But, she
added, they are too expensive for most professors. It is
unlikely that a young photographer preparing a book could
afford such a rent unless he was wealthy or was being subsidiz-
The receptionist recalled that "Hansen" always paid his
rent promptly and in cash. She said he did not appear to have
any fixed routine, lived alone, had no friends, and was amiable
but a person of "very few words." She was initially very
helpful on the telephone. But later, in person, she said that
the authorities had told the apartment staff not to speak to
the press about "Hansen".
A Panamanian journalist said that if "Hansen" had not been
there with the knowledge and protection of some high official
of the National Guard, "the truth of what he was doing in
Panama would have risen to the surface by now." Instead, he
said, "The sources are closed and no one dares to speak.
It was a stream which could not be followed further."
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One influential Panamanian journalist who is extremely
close to National Guard chief Gen. Noriega assured us that he
would try immediately to find out "Hansen"'s true
identity. After asking us to wait in his outer office while he
made some calls, he told us brusquely to contact the press
spokesman for the military for an official statement. We had
the impression that he had been told by his superiors to
stay out of the case.
There is evidence that "Hansen" was in a number of coun-
tries in the months Just prior to La Penca. Swedish Jour-
nalist Peter Torbiornsson and his assistant Fernando Prado,
who were with "Hansen" for three weeks before the bombing,
recall that he said he lived in Paris with his wife and small
daughter. He told them he had left there two months earlier
and had gone to New York City, Miami, Mexico, and Honduras
before coming to Costa Rica.
He also mentioned that he had been in Panama and had an open,
return ticket to Miami.
Torbiornsson says he had the impression that "Hansen" had
been in Nicaragua before, "because he was familiar with things
there." But Prado's recollection is that, "Hansen" said he had
never been in Nicaragua and that he might be going there after
completing his work in Costa Rica. A Costa Rican investigator
says there is no evidence that "Hansen" was ever in Nicaragua,
although it was widely reported in the local press that he had
been there.
Costa Rican investigators say they have evidence that he
entered the country on October 1, 1983; that on November 4,
1983, he left Peru for Costa Rica; on February 29, 1984,
he entered Costa Rica from Panama by land; on March 2, he left
Costa Rica for Mexico; on March 3 he was in Honduras; and on
March 26, he entered Costa Rica from Honduras. On all of
these trips he was accompanied by a woman using a French
passport stolen in 1979 from a journalist named Patricia Anne
Boone Mariscot.
Not released to the press, however, are immigration records
contained in the OIJ file showing that "Hansen" was also in
Costa Rica in February and September, 1983 and "Boone" was in
the country in August 1979 and October 1980, in all these
instances using the stolen passports.
In addition, a photocopy of "Boone"'s passport in these
files show that she was in Panama in 1982 at the same time as
"Hansen" and that she was in Nicaragua in 1983 where she
obtained a multiple entry visa.' Although the pair traveled
frequently on the same flights beginning in October 1983,
Costa Rican investigators say "Hansen" and "Boone" never
appeared together at airports and did not sit together on
planes.
OIJ files also show that a Canadian named Patricia Boone
also traveled from Los Angeles to Costa Rica in March, 1984
and left in mid-April. However her passport number and nation-
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ality is different than that of the false "Boone" and she did
not travel with "Hansen". It therefore seems clear this was a
different person.
Of particular interest is the couple's lengthy trip to
Honduras, where the FDN is based.
"Hansen" hired cars in Tegucigalpa between March 9 and 26
from the Molinari Car Rental Agency. In an interview, the
agency's owner said he never saw "Hansen" with-a woman.
"Hansen" showed credit cards for security, but paid the
bill in cash, using local currency. The agency owner said he
found it strange that "Hansen" asked to change cars three
times, and speculated that "it seemed he had something to
hide."
In Tegucigalpa, "Hansen" and "Boone" were seen together
several times. A receptionist at the Hotel La Ronda, a favor-
ite meeting place for FDN and CIA officials t confirmed that
"Hansen" and a woman stayed there from March 3 to 5. According'
to the OIJ files they then checked into the Plaza Apartments
where they paid in advance through March 26.
However, they evidently traveled during much of that time
because, according to OIJ, they were registered at several
other hotels, including Hotel Terraza in San Pedro del Sur,
Hotel Paris in La Ceiba and another hotel in Trujillo. The OIJ
report does not say what the couple was doing in these places
which are all in northeastern Honduras.
The car agency owner recalled that "Hansen" said he was
going to San Pedro del Sur, Honduras' second largest city, but
that, curiously, he did not put sufficient mileage on the cars
to have reached there. It is possible the couple flew there,
but there is no indication of this in the OIJ files.
Torbiornsson and Prado recall "Hansen" saying he had been to an
American military base and some of the FDN camps in Honduras.
After the bombing, the Honduran government sent Costa
Rica's OIJ a photograph of "Boone" taken when she had entered
that country. OIJ described her on a wanted poster as tall, 34
years old, with an olive complexion, straight chestnut hair and
big dark eyes. A Costa Rican investigator says she is thought
to be younger, about 28 or 29. The OIJ poster may simply have
quoted the age which appeared on her stolen passport.
The couple is known to have stayed together in Costa Rica
at the Talamanca Hotel in downtown San Jose on February 23,
just after arriving from Panama, and on March 26, just after
arriving from Honduras. A receptionist recalls that they posed
as man and wife and did not speak to each other in Spanish. In
the hotel registry they both identified themselves as photo-
graphers and gave the same false home address in Paris.
In early May, "Hansen" checked in alone at the Gran Via
Hotel, a moderately-priced hotel in the center of San
Jose, where he teamed up with Torbiornsson and Prado. Prado
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says that when he arrived from Managua on May 9, "Hansen" had
already been at the hotel two days. Torbiornsson, who had come
to Costa Rica ahead of his young assistant, had been there a
week.
At this point "Boone" appears to vanish. There is no record
of her having been registered in any other hotel, and it seems
likely that she had a "safe house" somewhere in Costa Rica,
probably close to San Jose. Torbiornsson and Prado say they
never saw "Hansen" with any woman.
Pastora's aides say they have information from two differ-
ent people that "Hansen" was with a woman "who spoke Spanish
like a Latin" at the Gran Via Hotel on two separate occas-
ions. This, however, could have been someone other than
"Boone", since OIJ found evidence of a second female who
was seen with "Hansen".
OIJ distributed a composite drawing of this second woman
based on descriptions given by several people. She is heavier
than "Boone", about 25 years old, with green or blue eyes, and
straight blond hair parted down the middle in what OIJ des-
cribes as "hippy" fashion. She may simply have been a casual
acquaintance and not another female accomplice.
The night of the bombing, after the assassin was brought to
the San Carlos hospital, he began asking nurses and other
attendants if his woman friend had come for him. Twice during
the night, he made calls from a public telephone outside the
hospital.
Costa Rican investigators say they have evidence that
"Boone", like "Hansen", disappeared the day after the bomb-
ing. But they have no record of her having left the country.
From early May until the bombing, Torbiornsson and Prado
provided the perfect cover for "Hansen". They were making a
long documentary on the conflict in Central America and needed
some more video of Pastora and ARDE operations along the San
Juan River to complete it.
"Hansen" pretended that he had just arrived in San Jose,
and that he had no contacts or friends in the country. He said
he had only recently become a photographer and needed help in
contacting the contras. Torbiornsson agreed to take him under
his wing, because he seemed "quite helpless."
"Hansen" told the Swedish television crew that he had just
come from Mexico, where he had lost all his luggage and had to
purchase new things. Everything,he had, including his backpack,
seemed to be from Mexico. If the dates of his travels are
complete, this indicates that he was outfitted in Mexico
during his brief visit there on March 2 and 3, en route between
Costa Rica and Honduras.
Torbiornsson says he engaged "Hansen" to help carry some of
his camera equipment, but that the arrangement was not very
satisfactory. He explains, "I wanted someone to help with
carrying things but then he had this big metal camera case. We
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talked about the box. We said it was not a good thing to carry
on the river, that it was much better to have something with
soft sides. He said he had to have his stuff in it. But that
seemed stupid to us."
Torbiornsson and Prado recall that the box contained Nikon,
Olympus and Polaroid cameras -- "normal things" -- and they
did not suspect it had a false bottom.
Both journalists found "Hansen" to be unprofessional as a
photographer. He did not take a camera with him, as photo-
graphers almost always do, when walking around or going to
interviews in the city. He also took his film to a local photo
studio for developing, unlike professional photographers, who
either develop their pictures themselves or send off the
unprocessed rolls to their agencies in order to assure good
quality. "He did not seem to be an aggressive photographer,"
Torbiornsson concluded.
"Hansen" told them he had had a number of jobs, including
working for more than a year in the archives of a photo or
news agency in London. He did not mention having a military
background, but he asked ARDE officials numerous questions
about military matters and seemed knowledgeable about weapons.
He claimed his father was a Danish doctor in Venezuela and
that he himself had grown up in both Venezuela and Europe. This
explained, he said, why he knew very little Danish and could
not, in conversation with Torbiornsson, recall the name of the
famous Danish beer "Carlsberg".
"Hansen" appeared to be very familiar with literature and
music from Argentina and Uruguay, and mused at one point that
the place he would most like to be was in Montevideo on the
beach at sunrise. The owner of a magazine shop in San Jose
recalls that "Hansen" sent postcards on three different
occasions to Uruguay and Chile.
When he first teamed up with the Swedish crew he did not
have a beard, but he began to grow one, and by the time they
went to the press conference, it was quite full.
Prado recalls that "Hansen"'s hair was a strange orange-
blond color but his beard seemed to grow in that color as
well, which made him conclude that it was natural. Orion
Pastora also said it occurred to him when he met "Hansen" that
his hair might be dyed.
Torbiornsson and Prado, as well as others, agree that
"Hansen" was approximately 1.85 meters tall.
Prado, who is 24, originally put "Hansen"'s age at about
40, but later said he could be younger. Torbiornsson, who at
42 seems more conscious of age, says he is certain "Hansen"
was in his late 20's or early to mid 30's. His stolen passport
showed him to-be 28.
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Neither Torbiornsson nor Prado ever saw "Hansen" with a
woman. He did not use drugs or, except for an occasional
martini, drink. He did not like video games or night life. He
chain-smoked Marlboros, liked smoking a pipe, and enjoyed good
food. Most days he had breakfast at one of the the outdoor
tables of the Gran Hotel on San Jose's most popular plaza. He
kept to himself and, Prado recalls, seemed to be in his room
at the hotel every night when he himself returned.
Prado says "Hansen" had a lot of money and many times
offered to pay for meals and other things. "Once I saw in his
wallet and he had thousands of U.S. dollars in it," he
states. Yet "Hansen" insisted on making his phone calls from
outside the hotel, noting that it was cheaper. Once he claimed
to have called his wife, and another time his photo agency.
Both journalists say "Hansen" was not interested in poli-
tics or the in the ins-and-outs of the contra movement, al-
though he did know the main actors. He never expressed strong
political preferences or opinions. Prado and Torbiornsson
often discussed the divisions within ARDE and what the FDN/CIA
might be up to, but "Hansen" appeared to,have little interest
in their talk. "He said he did not understand what was going
on and was only concerned with taking photos," Prado recalls.
The one time he seemed very interested in political events,
they say, was when he questioned them about the assassination
of ex-Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza.
Both men described him as cold, distant, not sociable and
difficult to talk with on a personal level. Prado says he was
smart, and made lots of jokes. Torbiornsson calls him "a
quiet, introspective man."
But he also had a short temper and became angry on several
occasions: when he thought he was being overcharged for the
rented car or when he felt he had to wait too long in a
restaurant.
He was very neat in dressing, and his hotel room was so
tidy that the Swedish film crew often worked from there. He
wore a wooden cross and two or three other chains around his
neck.
With the Swedish crew, "Hansen" traveled throughout May in
search of Pastora. On May 11 and 12, he and Torbiornsson
rented a Toyota station wagon in San Jose and drove to the
northern border village of Los Chiles, where there had been
rumors that the Sandinistas were planning to attack.
Nicaraguan officials claimed that Costa Rican Guardsmen and
contras were planning to stage an attack against the town and
then blame it on the Sandinistas in order to worsen relations
between Nicarpgua and Costa Rica. No attack from any quarter
ever materialized.
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Police officials in Cuidad Quesada are said to have infor-
mation that "Hansen" was there on three different occasions
before the bombing, once posing as an investor. A well-informed
journalist in the area said he was told by local authorities
that "Hansen" had gone to the "house of a man known to have
been a Somocista" where he "prepared the bomb." In this area of
northern Costa Rica there are farms and houses owned by
Nicaraguan ex-National Guardsmen. When we tried to confirm
this story with these same police sources, they denied having
such information.
From May 14 to 22, "Hansen", the Swedish film crew, and
several other journalists made a trip to a string of Pastora
camps along the San Juan River, including La Penca. The group
did not, however, succeed in finding Pastora. He had already
gone to Panama where he was giving interviews denouncing CIA
pressure on ARDE and hinting that his life was in danger.
A day or so after they returned to San Jose, Costa Rica's.
Radio Monumental carried an interview with Pastora recorded in
Panama.
Torbiornsson and "Hansen" went immediately to the radio
station to get a copy of the interview and to inquire how they
could reach the commander. They also made a number of calls
from "Hansen"'s hotel room to ARDE officials in an effort to
line up an interview with Pastora. %
Prado recalls that late one night several days later, he
returned to the hotel and found "Hansen" there. "He had just
seen an interview that Channel 6 did with Pastora in Panama
and was very concerned, very preoccupied that he would not be
able to meet Pastora. This was one of the few times I saw him
very worried."
Then, on the afternoon of May 29, Torbiornsson and "Hansen"
met Orion Pastora to request an interview with the ARDE com-
mander. Late that night they received a call from Orion telling
them a press conference was scheduled for the next day.
Torbiornsson and Prado say they had no suspicions about
"Hansen" and were shocked when he was identified as the prime
suspect in the bombing. Torbiornsson says he was more annoyed
than suspicious when "Hansen" obliged him to leave the San
Carlos hospital and return to San Jose. Torbiornsson explain-
ed, "I did not want to leave Fernando iPradot. But 'Hansen'
wanted to get away. We didn't talk in the car. His main inter-
est was himself. It did not occur to me that he was the bomb-
er. I was just irritated with him."
The Tico Times, shortly after the bombing, commented:
"Only a professional could have patiently plotted and
pulled off such a complex mission. Experts agree: this killer
was no hastily-hired thug, no lower-echelon hit
man. Cold-blooded enough to chat and joke with the people he
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would soon be mutilating, cool headed enough to give a radio
interview and gaze brazenly into a camera a few hours later,
'Hansen' is clearly no newcomer to terrorism."
B. "Hansen"'s Voice
The 10-minute radio interview "Hansen" gave at the hospital
after the bombing, coupled with close-up photos also taken at
the hospital and video tape taken of the terrorist on two
separate occasions, are the most concrete clues to "Hansen"'s
identity. Much effort has -gone into analyzing his voice in
the interview in order to determine his true nationality. The
linguists agree he is not a Spanish
voice on the
Torbiornsson and Prado say,
recording was definitely "Hansen"'s, it was NOT the way he
usually spoke Spanish.
Torbiornsson says, "I think he was Uruguayan or Argentina
from his way of speaking, especially when he was enthusias-
tic." He says the terrorist had the capacity to change his
accent the way a chameleon changes colors.
"When I heard 'Hansen' talk with Mexicans, he imitated their
accent, and when he was with Nicaraguans or other Hispanics,
he imitated their accents as well."
Prado also believed "Hansen" was faking an accent during
the hospital interview. "On the tape, he sounds like a Euro-
pean, but I think he was faking it. He always tried to fake
an accent. I usually talked with him in English, but my guess
is he is Latin American, either Uruguayan or Argentine."
Prado explains that the trio usually spoke English because
Torbiornsson wanted his young assistant to improve his facil-
ity. It may also be that "Hansen" tried to avoid speaking
Spanish at length because he feared he would give away his
true identity.
Prado also says "Hansen" spoke very little Danish, no
Swedish (which he and Torbiornsson frequently spoke to each
other), no German, a bit of Italian and some Greek. "Hansen"
said he spoke French as well, but Prado never heard him do so.
Several people who had informal interaction with "Hansen"
said they were surprised by how well the "Dane" spoke Span-
ish. The car rental agent in Honduras, the owner of a photo
shop in San Jose, and an employee in an electrical shop in
Ciudad Quesada all said that in their brief conversations with
"Hansen" they were impressed by the "perfect" and "flawless"
Spanish he spoke.
Copies of the Radio Cima interview were submitted to
linguists in North America, Latin America and Europe for
analysis.
Linguist Jim Harris of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology believes that "Hansen" is not a native Spanish
speaker, and that he learned the language when he was an
adult. According to Harris, he speaks "well, but not
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perfectly," although it is possible that he could be purposely
speaking in a flawed manner. He said "Hansen" is probably not
Basque, and that he might well be from the Middle East.
Phonetics specialists from the University of Costa Rica
concluded that "Hansen" could be of Germanic origin, perhaps
Danish, Swedish or Norwegian. They rule out the possibility
that he is native English, Dutch, German or Spanish speaking.
An Argentine linguistics expert contacted by the Committee
to Protect Journalists also concluded that "Hansen" was not a
native Spanish speaker, but that he had spent a lot of time in
Spanish speaking countries. His use of the word "automobiles"
for car indicates that he may have learned Spanish in
Argentina, Spain or Mexico. Also, he uses the word "barquito",
which is used only in Spain, for "little boat." He has no
vocabulary from Central America.
The linguist says that he talks precisely and simply, but
his language is that of an intellectual. His- pace is more
European than American.
His "rr" is too soft for a Spanish speaking German, but he
could be Scandinavian or Israeli. His "s" is not natural to a
native and he might have had a Havanna teacher because he
has a lot of inflection that he could have picked up there.
"Hansen", this linguist says, speaks with a rhythmical mode
that is not Spanish, but he has perfect cadence. Language for
him is not a problem. He never pauses to search for a word
using literal translation from his own language without any
hesitation.
When responding to the radio interviewer's question about
whether it was a bomb or grenade, "Hansen" becomes defensive
and says, "Really, I couldn't know" (La verdad no podria
saber). No native speaker would use the conditional to state
his innocence.
This linguist concluded that what the terrorist has tried
to conceal is not accent, but attitude. He has affected
humility. He is not nervous at all, but very restrained.
The OIJ sent a copy of the voice recording to Dr. Antonio
Quilis, Director of the Phonetic Laboratory in Madrid, who
concluded "Hansen" does not come from Spain, including the
Basque region. He says "Hansen" speaks Spanish very well and
must have learned it in a Spanish speaking area.
As with the voice recording, much effort has gone into
trying to analyze the type of bomb used at La Penca. Unfortun-
ately, "Hansen"'s bomb sheds even less light on who he is than
does his voice.
It was originally reported that the bomb was a Claymore
H-18 mine, typical of the kind used by ETA and similar to
the one which.exploded in a San Jose parking lot, killing the
carrier. It is believed the Sandinistas were responsible for
the parking lot bomb.
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However, further analysis showed the La Penca bomb to be a
different type.
According to an ARDE investigator, the parking lot bomb was
a massproduced Claymore mine which contains uniform pellets.
The La Penca bomb was made of a variety of metal pieces,
including nails and screws as well as pellets, which were
covered with a layer of penlight batteries. It was clearly
homemade or made to appear to be homemade.
Gustavo Castillo, head of the ON criminal lab, said it was
a directional bomb designed to be activated electronically by
a walkie-talkie. It contained two to four pounds of C-4, a
highly explosive plastic.
Clearly the bomb did not go off as intended, since Pastora
survived the explosion. It remains uncertain whether the case
was accidently knocked over by the guerrilla woman Rosita. Some
argue that it was not tipped over or misplaced and that Pastora
was saved by the human wall of Journalists who had crowded
around him Just as "Hansen" withdrew from the room.
In an interview in Miami, the former. head of the Dade
County, Florida bomb detection unit, Tom Brodie, said the La
Penca bomb did not bear the marks of any particular terrorist
group. "From the description I cannot say who did it. A
radio-controlled bomb is very common," he said.
Some of those interviewed say they believe the bomb may
have been homemade with the intention of concealing the profes-
sional nature of the assassination plot which was
well-financed, planned over a long period, and carefully
covered up afterwards.
As one of Pastora's aides mused, "The bomb itself and the
way it was set off were not very professional. But this could
have been done purposely to conceal the professional nature of
the operation. We feel it was not professionally done precisely
to conceal the professional nature of the operation. A
professional doing an unprofessional job. It's not normal."
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PRESS COVERAGE AND DISINFORMATION
In the days fallowing the bombing, the Costa Rican and
international press carried a host of conflicting, confusing
and at times inaccurate stories. The bomber was variously
identified as Basque, French, German, Scandinavian, Libyan,
Iranian, Palestinian, Israeli, or Uruguayan. The bombing was
blamed on the CIA, Sandinistas, Cuban communists, FDN, Baader
Meinhof, the Italian Red Army Faction or ETA -- and all these
groups promptly denied involvement.
The lack of concrete evidence, the flood of false leads,
and the constant stream of speculation and rumors caused
headaches for Costa Rican investigators and the press. As
Costa Rica's Public Security Minister Solano said two weeks
after the bombing, "Six different stories as to the identity
of the killer have crossed my desk, all depending on the
ideology of the person making the report."
The Costa Rican press suffered a tremendous loss with the
bombing, and this may partly explain the belligerent and often
sloppy reporting that followed the tragedy. Due to early
suspicions-that the bomb had been carried 'by a journalist, it
is understandable that local reporters would attempt to finger
some of the foreign journalists, particularly those they
did not know well.
In addition, the major Costa Rican media are all privately
owned, highly conservative, anti-communist and anti-Sandinis-
ta. They perceive Nicaragua as a real threat to Costa Rica,
and therefore automatically assumed that the Sandinistas or
their agents were responsible for the bombing.
The search for the terrorist was further complicated by
several false stories which appear to have been planted in the
press to divert the search in the crucial days immediately
after the bombing.
Reliable western intelligence sources, as well as Costa
Rican journalists, say that the U.S. Embassy in San Jose has
strong influence over the local media and that news stories are
frequently planted, as happens in many Third World countries.
U.S. Embassy officials, for their part, claim the Soviets and
Sandinistas plant stories in the local press, which is also
likely. However, the type of false or misleading stories which
appeared in the Costa Rican and U.S.
press after the bombing point to,the CIA.
On May 31, just hours after the bombing, the Associated
Press in Miami quoted Radio Havana as saying unconfirmed
reports indicated the bomb was planted by "a couple posing as
journalists." The AP story appeared at least five days before
it was known that "Hansen" was the bomber, and eight days
before it was known that he had a female accomplice.
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Although Radio Havana is monitored around-the-clock bytnews
agencies in Miami and elsewhere, no other agency appears
have reported this broadcast.
The AP employee in Miami who put out the story later said
he remembered making a transcript of the broadcast just hours
after the bombing, but he was unable to locate it in the
agency's files when we asked for a copy.
We asked Radio Havana for a of the
reference to
broadcast. They said they could
this report in their logs, and concluded that they never had
broadcast it.
We suspect the story was planted with AP in order to
indicate that the Cuban government had some inside knowledge
of the bombing. During our investigations in Miami,
U.S. Intelligence sources repeatedly told us that Cuba was
behind the bombing.
However, we have not found any other evidence linking
Havana t mitbasedsCubanstand contzasnwezedinvolvedhave evidence
that Mia
In the days prior to La Penca, a false report was circul-
Sandinistas. Anti-PastoratmembersCuba to
ated to accewithntheMiami
sign n an accord
of ARDE spread the same story in San Jose.
Pastora denied the reports in a May 23 interview with Costa
Rica's Radio Monumental. His former top political adviser,
beenHavana
madeoorpcontem,s
Carlos Cied,thwho had in at any suchhcontactsvisited
behalf, den
plated in May.
This story, circulated at a time when Pastora was facing a
CIA ultimatum for unity and ARDE was plagued by deep internal
divisions, served to discredit Pastora among his followers and
supporters.
Another story that may have been planted said that "Hansen"
fled to Miami on an Air Florida flight one day after the
bombing. "Hansen" announced to Tozbiornsson and hotel emplo-
yees as he was checking out that he was leaving for Miami, but
this was a deception. Air Florida employees, immigration
officials and others at the airport said repeatedly they had
no record theoafternoongafhis terdthezip-
tion leaving on
bombing.
The story began to die, but, was quickly revived in the
press when U.S. officials said the FBI had proof that "Hansen"
had passed through the Miami airport on May 31 and was about
to be apprehended. On June 6, for instance, a La Republica
headline read "Suspect Arrived in Miami on Air Florida Flight."
On June 8, La Republica reported that U.S. authorities had
"weakened" in their conviction that "Hansen" had gone to
Miami, and it was believed he was still in Costa Rica. Costa
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36
Rican officials were quoted as saying they, also, believed
"Hansen" was still in the country.
According to the OIJ records, the FBI in Miami did detain
and interview a Swedish economist Per rv Hansen who arrived
there from Managua on June 10. He was working for the
Nicaraguan government and was married to a Nicaraguan
woman. However, he was let go after questioning because he did
not fit the physical description of the bomber.
This is the only suspect the OIJ files state was interviewed
by the FBI in Miami. And, curiously, he entered Miami after
the press had begun quoting U.S. officials as saying "Hansen"
had probably not gone to Miami.
In an interview several weeks later, the FBI's press spokes-
man in Miami Joe Delcompo said, "We never verified if he did
come on Air Florida. There's no evidence that he came to
Miami." But earlier assurances by U.S. officials that "Hansen"
was definitely in Miami effectively stopped the search in
Costa Rica and apparently helped facilitate his escape from
the country by another route.
Yet another apparently false but widely circulated story
was that Costa Rican officials had evidence that "Hansen" was
in Nicaragua prior to the bombing. The local press cited
this to show that the bomber must have been working for the
Sandinistas. La Republica went so far as to say in a June 7
article that it was "completely sure" "Hansen" was in Managua
a month before the bombing, adding that "he has contacts in
Nicaragua who could be Cubans or ETA agents." Again this
was undoubtedly the Swedish Hansen who, according to the
OIJ records, drove from Managua to San Jose in April. However,
he traveled with his family, not with "Patricia Boone." A
simple check of the passport numbers and nationalities, as
well as the middle names, of the two "Hansen"'s would have
shown they were different people.
The OIJ and Immigration records clearly distinguish between
the two people and do not list Nicaragua as among the places
the false journalist is known to have been. These files do
show, however, that "Boone" was in Nicaragua in
1983. Curiously, this was never reported in the press.
In an interview several months after the bombing an OIJ
investigator said, "We have no information that he was in
Nicaragua." However in the days after the bombing the press
reports quoting unnamed "government sources" as revealing that
"Hansen" had been in Nicaragua helped fuel the theory that the
Sandinistas were responsible for the bombing.
The story which most clearly appears to have been planted
was the report that the Basque separatist organization ETA was
behind the bombing. It first broke in the U.S. and was then
picked up and-elaborated upon by the Costa Rican press.
Less than 24 hours after the bombing, a number of news
organizations in Washington D.C. received calls from
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U.S. intelligence sources, including the State Department's
Office of Public Diplomacy, the Defense Department, and the
CIA "tipping" them that the bombing had been carried out by
ETA for the Sandinistas. Several U.S. Journalists later said
they suspected the story was not true and chose not to use it.
However, a number of major U.S.media including The Washina-
ton Times, Cable Network News (CNN), ABC-TV "Nightly News,"
"MacNeil/ Lehrer News Hour," and Interpress News Service (IPS)
did carry the story.
John McWethy, then ABC's Pentagon correspondent, says he
was given the story by reliable CIA and Pentagon sources,
while Robert Leiken of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and
Arturo Cruz, Jr., son of Nicaraguan opposition leader Arturo
Cruz, say they got it from "sources close to Pastora." In a
May 31 interview on the "MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour", Leiken
said, "What I've heard from Pastora's followers is...that they
feel it may have been the work of Basque terrorists of
ETA... associated with Tomas Borge jNicaragua's Minister of
Interior;."
Neither Leiken nor Cruz, Jr., whom IPS interviewed, men-
tioned in their statements to the press that Pastora and other
ARDE officials were accusing the CIA. An ARDS guerrilla
commander who was with Pastora in the hours after the bombing
said Pastora never mentioned ETA.
Both Leiken and Cruz, Jr. said that they and their ARDE
sources did not suspect the CIA or the FDN. When asked if
another faction of the contras might have a reason for killing
Pastora, Leiken said, "Pastora's people seem to feel that they
;other contrast wouldn't have any motive at this particular
point." This statement completely ignores the serious divis-
ions wracking ARDE at that time, as well as the May 30
expiration of the CIA's 30-day ultimatum for unity with the
FDN.
In a front page story on May 31, the New York Times de-
tailed the CIA's ultimatum to ARDE. Yet in a June 1 article,
Times' correspondent Steven Kinzer wrote, "In an interview
after the bombing, before being moved to San Jose, Mr. Pastora
said Nicaragua's Sandinista government was to blame for the
attack on him. They cannot get rid of me,' he said." Kinzer
admitted to a colleague later that he had not talked directly
with Pastora. Pastora's initial statements to the press blamed
only the CIA, not the Sandinistas.
On the first anniversary of the La Penca bombing, Pastora
said, "I never said it was the government of Nicaragua. I
would feel ashamed if I had said that."
Arturo Cruz, Jr., in statements carried May 31 by IPS in
English and Spanish, went so far as to say, "The perpetrator
of the bombing may have been a newswoman ;Linda Frazier; who
herself was blown up by the explosion." He said ARDE sources
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told him that Frazier "was very close to ETA and other leftist
groups."
This was both inaccurate and malicious. Frazier was a hard-
working, wellrespected journalist who was politically
conservative, and sympathetic to ARDE. While, for example,
most journalists were referring to ARDE guerrillas as "con-
tras", Frazier had begun to call them "revolutionaries" in her
articles in the Tico Times. She had also written several
stories very critical of the Nicaraguan government. Since top
leaders of ARDE were aware of Frazier's sympathies, it is
difficult to imagine who Cruz's "sources" were.
In a telephone interview, Cruz, Jr. claimed that IPS had
"messed up" in translating what he had said into Spanish. But
the only difference was that the Spanish version, carried
by the Costa Rican paper El Debate, inserted Frazier's name
while the English version simply referred to "the dead news-
woman". Cruz went on to admit, "I have no idea about the
bombing. iTomast Sorge always had close ties to ETA. I dislike
Gorge deeply myself, so I have a personal bias."
McVethy's June 1 report on ABC was far more detailed in its
implication of ETA, but also contained some serious
inaccuracies. He said in part:
"There is growing evidence that the Sandinistas have hired
international hit-men from a Basque terrorist group known as
ETA to have Pastora killed. September 8, 1983, Costa Rican
authorities arrest Gregorio Jimenez, a Basque terrorist ....He
is charged with intent to kill Pastora, and involvement in a
terrorist group
....January 10, 1984: France kicks out a half dozen known
Basque terrorists.
They end up in Panama under what amounts to house arrest,
later moving to Cuba, then to Nicaragua....
"Yesterday, well after the attempt to kill Pastora, U.S. in-
telligence sources say six Basques boarded a commercial flight
in Nicaragua and flew to Cuba. Analysts admit the evidence is
circumstantial, but say the type of explosive used -- Plastik
-- and the way it was used are strikingly similar to many
other assassination attempts in Central America, all linked to
Basque hit-men."
There have, in fact, been no confirmed Basque assassination
attempts or bombings in Central America. Several journalists
who have covered Spain and know ETA operations well immediate-
ly doubted this story precisely because ETA is not known to
operate outside Europe. The one' instance cited in the ABC
report -- the arrest in Costa Rica of the Basque named Jimenez
-- has never been proved because Costa Rica has not brought
him to trial.
There is considerable evidence that Jimenez was a member of a
spy ring, not an assassination team.
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It is true that six ETA men were moved from France, where
many Basque leftists have taken refuge, to Panama in January,
1984 as part of a French government program to resettle ex-ETA
members in other countries. While in Panama, they were kept
under close guard at a luxurious beachside hotel. Since it is
known that "Hansen" was in Costa Rica in October, 1983 and
was traveling in several countries after that, he could not
have been a member of this group.
Later these men were quietly moved from Panama to Cuba
after the Venezuelan and Mexican governments reneged on their
earlier pledges to accept them.
The official Cuban news agency Prensa Latina ridiculed the ABC
report and denied the Basques had ever left Cuba after arriving
there.
ABC followed up with a June 6 story stating that "Costa
Rican authorities" had identified the bomber as ETA member
Jose Miguel Lujua Gorostiola. Just the day before, the Costa
Rican paper La Prensa Libre ran a story saying that Costa
Rican authorities had discarded the possibility that ETA was
responsible for the attack.
Later the Lujua story was attributed to OIJ director Minor
Calvo, who was in Washington at the time. However, on June 29,
Calvo denied having been the source of the story, and said it
was "irresponsible to accuse ETA".
Contrary to a June 8 La Nacion story, Lujua was not one of
the six being held in Panama and his supposed connection with
those six was never explained.
Several days later, the Costa Rican press reported that
Lujua had been under house arrest in southern France since
January and was required to report to the police every day. On
June 9 La Republica said Costa Rican authorities had "discard-
ed yesterday" the theory that "Hansen" was Lujua, but that
they continued to believe "the extreme left" was responsible
for the bombing. ABC never corrected its June 1 and 6 stories.
One curious reference to Lujua appeared in the Costa Rican
press before the bombing. On March 14, 1984, both La Nacion
and La Republica carried stories saying that the local intelli-
gence agency DIS had warned of the possible presence in Costa
Rica of nine ETA members, including the six who had been held
in Panama. DIS cited information from the FBI, Interpol and
Spanish police.
Both papers listed the names of the nine, which were iden-
tical except for one. La Republica included Lujua, while La
Nacion had someone else. None of them ever turned up in Costa
Rica, and the story was dropped.
The story of Lujua's possible presence in the country may
have been planted before the bombing in order to prepare the
ground for subsequently blaming ETA and Lujua. According to a
senior DIS official at the time, "we had a special relationship
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with La Republica because they were helping us uncover parts
of the government infiltrated by communists." He said that a
DIS official had probably written the article for La Republica.
An indication that the CIA had a long range plan to use ETA
s-:,x --~-- for its own terrorist acts in Central America was
provided by Edgar Chamorro, former communications chief for
the FDN. Chamorro told us that in mid-1983, a CIA agent working
with the FDN in Honduras brought him a stack of posters showing
a hand holding a gun superimposed on a map of Central
America. The text said that ETA was planning terrorist activ-
ities in the region.
Chamorro says the CIA man asked him to distribute the
posters as widely as possible. Chamorro claims he refused
and instead threw them away because he didn't believe that ETA
posed a threat in Central America. He said when he first heard
that ETA was being blamed for La Penca, he recalled this
incident and suspected that the story was a7false version
planted by the CIA.
In interviews, Costa Rican investigators said they had no
evidence to link ETA to the bombing. A top OIJ official said,
"The story of ETA, the U.S. invented it. We did not receive
any official communication from U.S.
authorities about ETA. It came only through ABC, and the local
press reproduced it." An official with DIS said simply, "ETA
was launched in the street to cover the truth." A U.S.
embassy official confided that the ETA story was "put out as a
diversion."
Breaking just hours after the bombing, the ETA story had a
decided impact on the course of the local investigation. As
Pastora's former aide, Carlos Coronel, said, "ETA was a very
good organization to mislead you in the investigation of such
a cold, calculated act as the bombing." All the major
local press carried the ETA and Lujua stories, mainly citing
the ARC niece as the source. This halted any serious investi-
gation by the press into Pastora's accusations that it was the
CIA, or the suspicions of his aides that other contra factions
may have been involved.
Of the local press, only the Tico Times and the university
weekly Universidad treated the ETA story with either balance
or skepticism. In an excellent piece on June 15, Universidad
listed ten points why the ETA story appeared to be false, not-
ing that it "continues to be sustained despite a chain of
evidence to the contrary."
Besides diverting the investigation, the ETA story also
smeared the reputations of several of the foreign journalists
who had been at La Penca. On June 1, El Debate ran the IPS
story stating that Linda Frazier had carried the bomb and was
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connected with ETA. Tico Times publisher Richard Dyer
immediately protested and the story was not carried elsewhere.
On June 2, La Nacion ran both the ETA story quoting ABC and
another story on the same page stating that a journalist was
suspected of having brought the bomb to the press confer-
ence. Next to this story was a photo of Tony Avirgan standing
over the bomb blast hole. The visual implication of this
layout was that Avirgan was the bomber.
The next day, La Republica named Avirgan, Susan Morgan and
the Swedish TV crew (including "Hansen") as the main suspects.
The story was full of inaccuracies attributed to unidentified
"high authorized sources" and incorrectly stated that "Hansen"
was not invited to the press conference, but had managed to go
"thanks to Susan Morgan". The article also stated that
"Hansen", the Swedish crew, Avirgan and Morgan had known each
other "for some time" and went together to the border in a
rented Jeep. (In fact, Morgan and Avirgan had never seen
"Hansen" until that day and traveled with several other
journalists -- not "Hansen" or the Swedish crew -- in Avirgan's
jeep because ARDE was short of transport.)
The inaccurate press reports had a detrimental effect on
Avirgan, who, Costa Rican investigators say, was considered
the prime suspect in the first days after the bombing, and
therefore was prevented from leaving the country for medical
treatment. A medical-equipped Lear jet which ABC brought in
from the U.S. had to wait three days in San Jose before Avirgan
was permitted to board it and depart, once it was finally
determined that "Hansen", who had long since disappeared, was
the bomber.
In addition, DIS received anonymous telephone calls saying
that Avirgan was going to be killed. As a result, an armed DIS
guard was posted in his hospital room.
U.S. Ambassador Curtin Winsor, Jr. apparently fueled the
press accusations against Avirgan. At one point he commented
that "other diplomats, not myself of course, are saying that
Tony has ties to ETA." He also reportedly told local journal-
ists and ARDE officials that Avirgan was a communist - which
was taken seriously by at least some of those who heard it.
Both the Tico Times and Universidad gave factual accounts
which avoided naming people until there was considerable
evidence. A June 8 article in Universidad by Gilberto Lopes,
who had been at La Penca, states that the unfounded accusa-
tions against Avirgan and Morgan worked to intimidate jour-
nalists. He said, "I believe that the press has to investigate
and has to work with hypotheses, but it cannot accuse anyone
without any basis."
Even after the ETA story was discarded and Morgan and
Avirgan were cleared of suspicion, the local press continued
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to look for a Sandinista connection. On June 10, the morning
newspapers carried a Washington Times story quoting "high
U.S. officials" as implicating the Sandinistas. No details
followed.
On June 16, La Nacion quoted Costa Rican authorities as
saying that a Sandinista infiltrator into ARDE named "Rodri-
quez" had been seen with "Hansen". A highly reliable ARDE
source said the Rodriguez story was an old one which had been
pulled out from the files in an attempt to establish some
link between Managua and the bombing, and that there was no
evidence connecting Rodriguez with "Hansen".
After this, the local press began quoting ARDE officials as
saying that "either the extreme right or the extreme left"
could have been behind the bombing. This has remained as
the organization's official position, although in interviews
Pastora and his top aides say the balance of evidence points
to the CIA and elements among the contras.
In mid-June, a rightwing suspect emerged. The Costa Rican
dailies began to pick-up stories which were being widely
circulated in Europe, Nicaragua, Mexico and South America
stating that the bomber was an Uruguayan?named Hector Amodio
Perez. Uruguayan exiles in Sweden claimed to have recognized
him when they saw the photographs of "Hansen". The Costa Rican
press gave little credence to these reports because they were
first carried by the leftist Uruguayan exile news agency
Cono Sur Press and the Nicaraguan news agency ANN.
Alfonso Robelo told several Journalists shortly after this
that he had learned from "intelligence sources" in July that
Hector Amodio was the bomber but that he was killed by Libyan
hitmen in Brussels shortly after the bombing. Robelo argued
Libya was behind the bombing and Amodio Perez was simply a
mercenary for hire. A Latin American journalist was told a
similar story by G-2 Panamanian intelligence agents.
However the Tico Times and AP checked with Belgium police
who said they had no information of this. Since the Amodio
Perez theory received considerable publicity in western Eur-
ope, it seems certain the press there would have heard Ro-
belo's information had it been true. Rather it seems that
this "tip" from "intelligence sources" was part of the
cover-up.
From July 1984 until March 1985, there were virtually no
press reports about the La Penca investigation. Then, in
mid-March, Peter Torbiornsson, his daughter Helena and his
assistant, a Spanish photographer named Alfonso Aparicio, were
detained in Honduras on suspicion of involvement both in La
Penca and a March 9 bomb explosion at a Tegucigalpa nightclub
frequented by U.S. servicemen and Nicaraguan contras.
Immediately after the nightclub explosion in which two
Nicaraguans were injured, FDN's "September 15 Radio" announced
that "a Swedish journalist named 'Bert Ankier Hansen'" had
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placed the bomb. This unsubstantiated report was picked up by
various international media including UPI and the Spanish news
agency, ACAN-EFE.
Following the FDN's broadcast, Torbiornsson was arrested in
El Salvador on orders of the Honduran military. He was held
naked and blindfolded in a cell for two days before being
taken to Honduras where his daughter and assistant were then
detained.
The FDN radio then reported that "Per Anker Hansen" had
been arrested as well. Rumors and reports that the La Penca
bomber and his accomplices were responsible for the Tegucigal-
pa blast persisted even after a left wing Honduran group,
"Moranzanista Liberation Front" claimed responsibility for it.
In a barrage of confusing and conflicting reports reminis-
cent of those appearing after the Pastora bombing, the Costa
Rican and Honduran press accused Helena of being "Patricia
Boone," said the Honduran authorities had captured and then
released "Hansen", and charged that Torbiornsson had connec-
tions to ETA and other international terrorist movements.
President Luis Alberto Monge pledged to bring those respon-
sible for La Penca from Honduras to Costa Rica for trial. Cos-
ta Rican authorities sent investigators to Tegucigalpa to
interview Torbiornsson and the others. They later reported
that "Hansen" had not been arrested and that there was no
evidence to accuse Torbiornsson of involvement in the La Penca
bombing.
Through the intervention of the Honduran Human Rights
Commission, various international press organizations, and the
Swedish and Spanish Embassies, the trio was freed March
17. Honduran authorities indicated only that the three had
been held for "security reasons" until after U.S. Vice
President George Bush completed a brief visit to the country
on March 13. Sweden's Ambassador to Central America, Kristeer
Goranson said, "At no moment did I receive an explanation
of what occurred from the authorities of Honduras, although I
asked for it, because I wanted to know what had really happened
to my compatriot."
Following his release, Torbiornsson said, "I'm a journal-
ist, not a terrorist, but I'm in the middle of some kind of
Central American police conspiracy against me." He said that
the Salvadoran, Honduran and Costa Rican police agents all
interrogated him with the same questions, and that he is
considering pressing charges against them "so that they repair
the moral, physical and professional damage they have caused
me . "
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COSTA RICAN OFFICIALS AND THE COVER-UP
The investigation into the bombing was seriously hampered
because the attack took place in a remote no-man's land,
controlled by neither the Costa Rican nor Nicaraguan govern-
ments.
Costa Rican authorities say they could not visit the scene
of the crime, so they were dependent upon the evidence ARDE
cadres brought out. But, after the bombing, Pastora's movement
was in disarray and evidence was collected haphazardly and
unprofessionally by the guerrillas.
In addition, Costa Rican authorities, unfamiliar with
handling such complex cases, committed a series of errors. The
borders were not immediately closed, fingerprints were not
taken from "Hansen"'s hotel room, and many eyewitnesses and
top ARDE officials were interviewed only days later, or not at
all.
Most Costa Rican investigators, while genuinely concerned
with solving the crime, were strongly anti-communist and
automatically assumed that the attack was organized out of
Managua. Their ideological convictions made difficult a ser-
ious, open-minded investigation of the possibility that it was
a right-wing plot. They eagerly accepted, at least at first,
the false leads pointing to the Sandinistas and ETA.
In addition, in the weeks after the bombing, the two main
investigative organizations, DIS and OIJ, competed with each
other for control of the case. At times they concealed impor-
tant information from one another or released conflicting data
to the press.
DIS itself was seriously divided between those agents loyal
to its director, Carlos Monge, and those with close ties to
the U.S. Embassy, including a special CIA-trained and managed
team known as "The Babies". According to a top official in DIS
during this period, the organization "was not functioning and
was incapable of professionally investigating La Penca or
anything else."
In the wake of La Penca, the Ministry of Public Security,
of which DIS is a part, was reorganized, with the removal of
Minister Angel Edmundo Solano, DIS Director Carlos Monge, his
Deputy Rodolfo Jimenez, and Chief of Operations Rudolfo
Bolanos, plus a dozen or so DIS agents. The result has been a
shift to greater U.S. influence over Costa Rica's security and
intelligence apparatus.
Several weeks after the bombing, OIJ assumed major responsi-
bility for the case. Unlike DIS', OIJ had a criminal laboratory
in which it analyzed the evidence ARDE brought from La Penca.
It compiled extensive documents, which were not made public
but which we managed to obtain. The documents include inter-
views with ARDE officials and journalists who were at La Penca,
solicitations of information from numerous countries and
responses from several of these, records of "Hansen"'s
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movements in Honduras, Panama and Costa Rica and extensive
lists of all the evidence removed from La Penca.
However, a year after the bombing, OIJ Director Minor Calvo
admitted that these voluminous files had not produced any
concrete leads. He did say that 0IJ is investigating 120
people who were directly or indirectly connected with La Penca
and "Hansen". He added that the bomber "undoubtedly had local
contacts helping him before the incident."
We have evidence that some of these local contacts included
members of Costa Rica's security system. While much of the
bungling of the La Penca investigation can be explained by
interagency rivalries, a lack of professional competence, and
an ideological bias towards blaming the left, there is also,
as with the press coverage, evidence of a cover-up. We have
learned that some Costa Rican security officials had prior
knowledge of the assassination plot and that they and others
helped to circulate false leads afterwards. Further, we have
been told by top security officials that the investigation was
quietly halted because investigators found their access to
information blocked and received death threats against
themselves and their families.
Since the start of it's war against Nicaragua, ARDE's
operations have depended on the cooperation of strategically
placed individuals in the Costa Rican government, security
forces and private sector. Although many Costa Rican officials
try to uphold the country's official neutrality, some others,
for ideological or financial reasons, have facilitated the
use of the country as a rear base for the contra war against
the Sandinistas.
One DIS official, widely respected by others in the organi-
zation as hardworking and honest, probably reflected the
approach of many others. He explained, "When the contras
started up in Costa Rica I told my superiors that even though
I'm anticommunist, I won't play the contras' game because it
violates neutrality. But when the Sandinistas became entrenched
and were clearly Marxist-Leninist, I decided to close my eyes
to the contras' activities because I did not want to see
communism planted in the north."
Steven Carr, a North American soldier of fortune arrested
by Costa Rican authorites during a raid on contra camp in
April 1985, commented in a jailhouse interview that until
the day of his arrest, he and his fellow contras had received
"100% cooperation" from Costa Rican autorities at every
level. Carr said "neutrality exists only in San Jose, if
there."
In the months before La Penca as the divisions within ARDE
deepened, Costa Rican officials who collaborated with the
contras chose sides. Some aligned with Pastora, others with
Robelo, and still others with the FDN, the Miskito Indians, or
in some cases, the highest bidder. And some took their orders
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from the CIA, shifting their positions as Washington's line
towards Pastora turned from active support to active
opposition.
One of these was Col. Rodrigo Paniagua a former official of
the Ministry of Public Security who, according both to contra
sources and his superiors, is ideologically right-wing and
works closely with the CIA. He had been a key supporter of
Pastora's operations, but later became firmly aligned with
Robelo's faction. In addition, he was the main liaison between
some top Costa Rican officials and a group of anti-Castro Cuban
fighters helping the contras.
ARDE officials say they suspect that Paniagua may have had
prior knowledge of the bomb plot because he personally told
Pastora to leave Costa Rica on the night of May 29 and hold a
press conference on the river the next day. In doing so
Paniagua was not speaking on behalf of Minister Solano who had
fired him the month before for warning ARDE of a Costa Rican
raid on the contras' illegal command post outside San Jose.
Even after his dismissal, the Colonel did, however, continue
to work closely with the Public Security Ministry, particularly
with Fracisco Tacsan.
Another indication that some Costa Rican officials knew
"Hansen" and may have had knowledge of the plot is an anonymous
memo, written on DIS letterhead, which was circulated in
July, 1984, to a handful of journalists. It says that months
before the bombing "Hansen" had been arrested and released in
San Jose under questionable circumstances. According to a
security official who talked with the author of the memo, it
was written by someone in DIS who said he was disturbed by
what he viewed as a cover-up.
The memo states that in December, 1983, an unnamed Nicara-
guan and another man were detained in the city center by
Costa Rican authorities of the Crime Prevention Unit (UPD)
because they were overheard talking about "terrorism and
bombs." When asked to identify themselves, the memo says, the
second man claimed that he was a Cuban with an American
passport. He was carrying a 45-caliber pistol.
The memo says the two were taken in for questioning and the
one who claimed to be Cuban-American was found to be carrying
a tourist card and press identification in the name of "Per
Anker Hansen". "Hansen" also said he was living in the San
Jose suburb of Tibas, the memo says.
According to the memo, "Hansen" and the Nicaraguan were
released 15 minutes later, after their interrogators received
a mysterious phone call.
The memo is interesting because it links the Cuban team to
"Hansen". Journalists who looked into its authenticity vary in
their evaluations. Some concluded it is not genuine, while
others interviewed officials who said the incident did happen.
We talked with a Cuban, Felipe Vidal (alias Morgan) who
works with the contras and claims he and another Miami-based
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Cuban were actually the two people arrested. He said he was
carrying a pistol for which he had a valid license and that
the other man was living at the time in Tibas. Vidal says that
after being taken to UPD, he showed press identification in his
name, not that of "Per Anker Hansen". He denied he had any
identification in "Hansen"'s name. He said he and his companion
were released after a call came from Col. Luis Fernando Lamicq
of the Ministry of Public Security.
Considering our evidence, presented later, that Vidal was
involved in La Penca, we believe his companion may have been
"Hansen" or may have had identity papers in "Hansen"'s name.
Pastora himself believes that some Costa Rican officials
were involved in the bombing. On the first anniversary of La
Penca, he told a Costa Rican interviewer, "I believe ithe
bomber and his groupt used this government."
The most elaborate evidence pointing to an official cover-up
comes from an ex-DIS agent named Carlos Valverde. He gave us
lengthy testimony and written documents purporting to prove
that top Costa Rican security officials knew beforehand about
the bombing and did nothing to stop it.
He initially asked for payment, even before we had had a
chance to examine the documents. We refused, and finally
managed to obtain the documents after promising that we would
solicit a reward for him should his information lead to "Han-
sen"'s arrest.
Many of the documents in the packet are on DIS letterhead
and are signed by Valverde himself, using his code name "Ron-
ald Ruiz". One is signed by "Casper" which an ex-DIS official
says was the name put on a number of documents he handled at
DIS and which he had always suspected were written by Valverde.
The documents Valverde gave us concerning La Penca state
that the bombing was organized out of Managua, that the bomber
was the ETA member named Jose Miguel Lujua, and that the
two top DIS officials, Carlos Mange and Rodolfo Jimenez,
blocked the investigation because they are leftist
sympathizers of the Sandinistas. He elaborated upon this
hypothesis in several long interviews.
Valverde says he first learned of the plot when, in early
May, 1984, he stumbled by chance upon two Nicaraguans and a
non-Latin buying parts for the bomb in an electrical store in
David, Panama. He says his interest in the trio was sparked
when he overheard them saying that it should be easy to get
these things into Costa Rica and heard them discussing "getting
rid of the big fish of ARDE before the end of the month."
Valverde says his memos to Carlos Mange concerning his
findings were ignored, so he and a few other "dedicated" DIS
officials continued the investigation secretly on their own.
They discovered that the non-Latin entered Costa Rica from
Panama a few days afterwards using the name "Per Anker Hansen"
and that he checked into the Gran Via Hotel.
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On May 23, Valverde went to Nicaragua where, he says, he
contacted a Costa Rican spy in the town of Granada who had at
one time worked for Sandinista intelligence. This man
identified "Hansen" as the ETA terrorist Jose Miguel Lujua
(alias Luis Fernando Gonzalez), and gave the names of three
male accomplices who also lived in Nicaragua. Thus, Valverde
claims, before the bombing, he knew of the assassination plot
and the bomber's true identity.
Valverde says that he became increasingly nervous because
nothing was being done to stop "Hansen", so he decided to try
to reach ARDE officials by his own means. With the help of his
father and brother and a Costa Rican friend who knew the ARDE
leaders, he tried repeatedly to contact Orion Pastora, ARDE's
chief press officer. He says they left messages at four differ-
ent locations, but Orion never returned the calls.
Valverde told us that on the night of May 30, he was drink-
ing in a local bar when, over the radio, he heard of the bomb
explosion at La Penca. "My hair stood on end," he recalled. "I
put my head in my arms. Then I went running to my house to
call the office to see what was happening. From that moment
on, I did not sleep for many months. I was very nervous. I
felt I was responsable, although I knew I wasn't because I
have my superiors."
He said that after the bombing he began to work full time
to solve the La Penca crime, despite orders from top DIS
officials that the investigation be stopped. He says he learned
that the assassination plot was organized within Tomas Borge's
Ministry of Interior in Managua.
Valverde has since left DIS and is working In a private
detective firm.
Another person, a Nicaraguan ex-National Guardsman named
Carlos Bravo, who also works as a private detective in San
Jose, gave us and ARDE virtually the same story Valverde was
trying to sell. He did not mention Valverde and claimed that
he and his "group" had gathered all its "evidence" in Costa
Rica.
Bravo said some members of his group "are tied to the Costa
Rican government," and added, "What we have is extremely
confidential because the government is going to remain in
silence jabout La Penca,. Nothing will come out from either
DIS or OIJ." Bravo said he had, however, been authorized
to pass on this information to Pastora.
After much investigation, including interviews with Val-
verde's colleagues and superiors, we are convinced that his
story and documents, as well as the information from the
ex-Somocista, are false. Other'DIS officials noted, for in-
stance, that the memos are not written with the correct format
and do not bare official stamps or signatures of people receiv-
ing them. One contains a crudely altered date.
Most impottant,.the content of the memos is false. Even a
security official whom Valverde claimed knew of his
investigation and could testify to the authencity of these
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documents denied ever having seen them or having heard the
information.
One of the major problems with Valverde's story is that his
culprit, Lujua, was, according to French police, under house
arrest during nearly all of 1984, including May. Valverde's
response was that the French police were really holding some-
one else and that INTERPOL had given Costa Rican authorities a
memo stating this. He and the Nicaraguan detective both
promised to get us this document, but never did.
We have double-checked with Costa Rican officials, Spanish
and French diplomats and Journalists in France, all of whom
insist that Lujua was in France at the time of the bombing. OIJ
Director Calvo reiterated in a press conference a year after
La Penca that the Lujua story was totally without foundation,
both because the Spaniard was under arrest and because he did
not physically resemble the suspect.
But Valverde cannot be simply dismissed as another in a
series of people seeking to profit from La Penca by selling
false information. Rather, when his tale is examined, it helps
shed light on the connection between certain members the Costa
Rican security services, the bombing and the cover-up
afterwards.
Basically, there is evidence that Valverde knew, at least
in general terms, of the bombing plot beforehand, that he was
connected with parts of the Security Ministry which work
closely with the CIA, and that his story is part of false
information circulated about La Penca aimed at pinning the
crime on the Sandinistas and misleading serious investigators.
In analyzing the significance of Valverde's information we
had to evaluate the credibility of Valverde himself. Although
he portrays himself as a highly competent, professional secret
agent, most other security officials and his acquaintances
have a very different view. They describe him as an habitual
liar, "full of fantasies", an egotist, and perpetually in need
of money.
His nickname within DIS was "Fresh Lies" because he repeat-
edly told new, highly imaginative, but false stories aimed at
inflating his importance or concealing his lack of competence.
The "information" Valverde claims to have
stumbled upon while in David, Panama several weeks before the
bombing also appeared on the surface highly convincing. He gave
us, both detailed verbal descriptions of what he said he had
learned and three memos about the plot dated before the La
Penca bombing. He says he showed these memos to four of his
superiors.
However, the four superiors, including one to whom he was
personally close and "Juan Rodriguez"*, who appears to have
been his real boss, all say they never saw the memos or heard
Valverde's information of the assassination plot before La
Penca. It seems certain the memos were written after, not
before, the bombing and were never submitted through the usual
channels within DIS.
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In addition, the one person who could verify the informa-
tion from Panama is not capable of doing so. Valverde claimed
that he collaborated on the border with Major Brown of the
Rural Guard. We tried to contact Major Brown, only to find
that he had died in a motorcycle accident.
What is certain is that Valverde did know something about
the assassination plot several weeks before the bombing.
Valverde's father and brother say that, in mid-May, Valverde
came to them extremely distressed and told them that there was
going to be an assassination attempt against Pastora before
the end of the month, that it would take place at a meeting,
that "innocent people would be killed", and that he must warn
ARDE.
He, his father, and his brother all contacted a Costa Rican
friend who knew ARDE's leadership and asked that he urgently
assist Valverde in reaching Orion Pastora. However the ARDE
press chief did not answer their repeated calls and the bomb
went off before the warning message could be delivered. Ac-
cording to his family members and friends, Valverde was
extremely upset after the bombing and tended to blame himself
for it.
Although prior to the bombing there were rumors of plots
against Pastora, Valverde's information as conveyed to his
family and friend was more detailed and coincides with the
actual plot. We confronted Valverde with our belief that his
memos and information are false and asked him how he had
learned of the assassination plot. He refused to say and
simply stuck by his original story.
It seems likely that Valverde learned of the assassination
plot beforehand either from G-2 officials in Panama, with whom
he had good contact, or from within the Costa Rican Security
Ministry itself.
Since it is known that "Hansen" lived in Panama in 1982,
probably undergoing some kind of terrorist training, it is
very likely some G-2 officials knew his true identity, may
have known something beforehand about his mission to kill
Pastora, and helped in the cover-up. As explained later, the
bomber seems to have fled to Panama the day after the La Penca
attack.
After the bombing, for instance, Panamanian security offi-
cials told a Latin journalist that the bomber was the Uru-
guayan terrorist Hector Amodio Perez, but that he had been
killed by Libyan agents in Belgium in June or July. This
information was false but Pastora opponent Alfonso Robelo also
told it to several journalists. '
In analyzing the second possibility, that Valverde may have
learned of the assassination plot from someone within the
Costa Rican Security Ministry, it is important to understand
with whom he worked most closely. His career as a DIS agent
was shortlived. He returned from New Orleans, Louisiana in late
1983 and entered the DIS training program in early 1984.
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Almost as soon as he entered DIS he injured his neck and
went on indefinite sick leave. He continued to draw sick pay
month after month but never really worked as a full-time DIS
operative. He finally resigned from DIS around September 1984.
According to a number of DIS officials, Valverde was origin-
ally loyal to Carlos Monge, but he soon had a serious falling
out with his boss. Monge found Valverde to be an unreliable
agent. Valverde says he "discovered" Monge was a Communist and
a Sandinista agent.
DIS officials say Valverde was hired on the recommendation
of "Juan Rodriguez", who then continued to act as his
patron. In interviews, "Rodriguez" acknowledged that he was
close to Valverde and that he considered him a competent,
knowledgeable agent. He said he had seen a number of Valverde's
documents although, like others, he denied having seen, before
the bombing, any memos about an assassination plot.
"Rodriguez" said in an interview in early May 1985 that
there was reason to believe that "Hansen" was really the
ETA man Lujua. He cited information he said was gathered by
Valverde in Managua and elsewhere and said he had a copy of
one of the lengthy memos Valverde had also given to us. He
relayed this information as if it was a new lead and, astonish-
ingly, seemed unaware that the Lujua story had been discredited
and discarded by other investigators, including OIJ officials,
months before. In a second
interview in late May, 1985 "Rodriguez" backed off from what
he had said earlier and distanced himself from both Valverde
and the Lujua story.
In addition, he said he no longer believed that Lujua was
"Hansen"'s true identity because of physical differences
between the two men. Rather, he said, he had new information
that one of the other foreigners at the press conference was
also a phony journalist, had ties to the Sandinistas, and had
been an accomplice to "Hansen" in the bombing. He would not
reveal the name of this journalist other than to say he is no
longer in San Jose and that he is not the Portuguese Journalist
Jaoquin Da Silva.
This leaves only three possibilities: Susan Morgan, Peter
Torbiornsson and his assistant Fernando Prado.
Torbiornsson and Prado, both of whom are politically sympa-
thetic to the Sandinistas were, right after the bombing, under
suspicion because of their close relationship with "Hansen".
They were both cleared by Costa Rican investigators and allowed
to leave the country soon after they were well enough to trav-
el. Torbiornsson was again cleared of suspicion after he
was arrested and interrogated in Honduras in March 1985.
Morgan was suspected in the days immediately following La
Penca, largely because she was medically evacuated to the
U.S. before Costa Rican authorities had a chance to interrogate
her. However, she was dropped as a suspect soon afterwards.
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If Costa Rican Security is again investigating one of them
it appears to be, as with Lujua, a case of an old recycled
story put out once again with the intention of proving the
Sandinistas were behind the bombing.
Curiously, in an interview earlier that same day we spoke
to "Rodriguez", Valverde gave us virtually the same "new
information". He said, "I just got a communication from very
respected people of the national press saying that among the
foreign journalists there was a communist" who had ties to
Managua and was thought to have assisted "Hansen". He also
would not reveal the name of this latest suspect, other than
to say it was not Tony Avirgan.
What all this adds up to is that "Rodriguez", Valverde and
the Nicaraguan detective, Bravo all appear to be getting their
"leads" about La Penca from the same source. ARDE officials
say they now suspect the Nicaraguan is really with the FDN and
was sent to feed false information about La Penca to Pastora.
About this same time, another top Security Ministry offi-
cial told us and several journalists that he also had a new
lead. His information was that the bomber is a Swede who is
living and working in Managua. He provided a photocopy of a
Nicaraguan government document identifying the person as
"Per Arvid Hansen," the same person whom the FBI and OIJ had
investigated right after the bombing and discarded as a
suspect.
A simple check of the passport number, nationality and
photograph of the two Hansen's reveals that they are different
people. The only similarities are the names. The fact that the
Swedish Hansen is living in Nicaragua makes him valuable for
those intent on demostrating that the Sandinistas were
responsible for La Penca.
It is curious that DIS continues to circulate these "leads"
long after they have been dismissed by OIJ and other investi-
gators. We believe the persistence with which security offi-
cials have come up with these false stories goes beyond bureau-
cratic inefficiency and sloppiness. To us, it seems they are
being purposely put out, not with the intention of present-
ing watertight cases, but rather to serve as diversions, to
confuse and mislead.
In trying to understand the origin of these false stories,
it is important to understand Valverde's role within the
Security Ministry. Our best guess is that Valverde was tied,
through "Rodriguez", his mentor in Security, to the CIA.
Several government officials say "Rodriguez" is a key link
between Costa Rican and U.S. Embassy intelligence officials. In
addition, he was, according to others in the Ministry,
connected with the CIA-run unit called "The Babies".
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This team could, a number of security sources say, have
had a hand in fabricating Valverde's false documents and in
helping to circulate some of the false leads about La
Penca. While some security officials who know Valverde say he
is capable on his own of falsifying and circulating the
documents implicating the Sandinsitas, ETA and Carlos Monge,
others doubt his capacity.
One official described him as "a low level mercenary who
shines the shoes of others. He had to be part of a team,
because he does not have the ability to do all this on his
own." Since these phony documents were being circulated and
referred to by at least two other La Penca investigators, it
seems unlikely Valverde was solely responsible for their
creation.
DIS and Security officials say The Babies was a special
team of about 15 agents trained and advised by a U.S.
Embassy official known, naturally, as "Papi" ("Father") and
was headed by a Costa Rican DIS agent, Douglas Coblentz, who
had lived for many years in the U.S.
It was started in late 1982 with the aim of creating a
highly trained group to work on special projects. It operat-
ed out of clandestine houses rather than from DIS headquarters.
While it is described by "Rodriguez" as a "pure intelli-
gence gathering unit", those close to The Babies say the team
also became involved in "dirty tricks", including intimidating
people, clandestine searches of houses and offices, circul-
ating false rumors, and manufacturing phony documents and
reports. According to one of his superiors, Coblentz once
offered to manufacture false documents to be used to accuse a
North American journalist of being a Sandinista spy.
According to knowledgeable security sources, from the
outset, The Babies were involved in the power struggle within
the Security Ministry. At first they reported directly to DIS
Director Carlos Monge, but later began reporting to Francisco
Tacsan and Johnny Campos, Monge's superiors in the Ministry.
The U.S. Embassy did not trust Monge and, along with sec-
tions of the private sector and Costa Rican Libre, mounted
a campaign to discredit him.
Rumors spread that Monge was corrupt, involved in immoral
practices, unprofessional, and a Soviet or Sandinista
agent. Ministry officials say that during this period the
U.S. made it clear that the Security services and DIS in
particular, would not receive significant American assistance
until Monge and Minister Solano were removed. Solano supported
his DIS Director, but once the Minister himself was removed,
Monge was isolated. He resigned in late 1984.
Why the U.S. wanted him out is not clear. ARDE officials
say Monge was one of their most important supporters in the
government.
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Perhaps as the U.S. cooled to Pastora, it determined that
Monge could not be trusted to support the Robelo faction and
the entry of FDN into Costa Rica. In addition, Monge appar-
ently angered the U.S. because he would not fully cooperate
with certain U.S.-backed projects. Finally, it is possible
that U.S. Embassy hardliners believed their own propaganda -
that Carlos Monge was a communist.
The result of the change in leadership at DIS and the
Ministry of Public Security has been the expansion of U.S. aid
to DIS, including new cars, radios and other equipment. The
Babies no longer exist as a separate unit, but operate within
the DIS structure. As one DIS agent said, "now all DIS agents
are Babies."
After the bombing, the investigation by both DIS and OIJ
was virtually halted. This happened, not as Carlos Valverde
says, because there were communist agents within Security, but
because officials received death threats and found channels to
necessary information blocked.
Intelligence agents say they received a number of anonymous
phone threats in the days after the bombing warning that if
they did not call off the investigation, they and their
families would be killed. One official told us, "I could end
up like a dog in the street if I talk. I'm afraid for my
children. I don't want to take the risk of solving this case."
A former government minister recalled, "One afternoon I
received a call about the La Penca investigation from an
intelligence officer. He said he was being threatened gravely
by someone who said he was from the CIA. The caller had told
him to remember that he is a father and has a wife and
children."
One investigator admitted, "There was pressure that the
whole investigation be closed. Suddenly it was not possible to
get documents. Everything was paralyzed."
He and others said that information they solicited from
other countries, particularly Honduras and Panama, was never
fully provided. The U.S., despite early promises to send FBI
agents to assist Costa Rican authorities, did not do so, and
in various other ways dragged its feet.
Journalists had similar experiences. La Republica director
Joaquin Vargas asked through INTERPOL that officials in Cara-
cas provide information about a Uruguayan suspect known to be
in Venezuela. No answer came. Finally, Vargas contacted a
Venezuelan security officer who agreed to look into the matter.
Several weeks later, the officer called to say that Ven-
ezuelan authorities had begun to investigate, but called it
off because "they feared they would run into the boys with the
blue eyes."
Tico Times publisher Richard Dyer found U.S. law enforce-
ment officials equally reluctant to help. He requested a
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meeting with a special FBI antiterrorist unit based in New
York to pass on some information and solicit assistance in the
investigation. After waiting months for an answer, he was
finally told by a secretary in the FBI office that he should
"contact the CIA office in San Jose." The Embassy refused to
facilitate this.
A high ranking security official said that several months
after La Penca, DIS wrote a report concluding that the CIA was
responsible for the bombing. He said he and other officials
saw the report, but it has never been made public. However,
other DIS memos implicating the Sandinistas have been either
officially released or leaked to the press.
Both DIS and OIJ officials say they have never closed their
files on La Penca. In interviews a year after the bombing,
both Security Minister Piza and the Ministry's third in command
Francisco Tacsan said the investigation is continuing. Tacsan
commented, "Before we were doing almost nothing but now we've
decided we want to do more because of some of the recent
press publicity."
The government's chief prosecutor Fernando Cruz said OIJ's
investigation has not stopped although "we have no more infor-
mation." He added, "I would not be surprised if the Sandinistas
were responsible but we have no concrete evidence linking them
to La Penca." OIJ Director Calvo told a press conference that
the investigation had run into a number of blind alleys.
Despite the obvious good intentions and efforts of a number
of Costa Rican investigators, the prospects for their solving
the case do not look good.Rather it seems that parts of the
Security Ministry, in particular, continue to be used to
disseminate false and confusing information as part of the
La Penca cover-up.
* Juan Rodriguez is a pseudonym for a high ranking functionary
in the Ministry of Public Security. Because of Costa Rican
laws, we are unable to use his real name here. However, his
correct identity and other data has been supplied to proper
law enforcement authorities.
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The behavior of U.S. Embassy officials was curiously cal-
lous, although not as incriminating as that of certain Costa
Rican officials. Basically, the response of the Embassy was
"hands off".
Tico Times Editor Dery Dyer, who was in close touch with
Embassy officials right after the bombing, concluded, "Never,
never, never has the U.S. Embassy been so incompetent. Every-
one agrees the Embassy fell on its face."
AP correspondent Reid Miller, who was injured at La Penca,
said, "I'm a professional newsman. I know the risks involved
and I don't expect the Embassy to lay out red carpets wherever
I go. But I just hope this is not indicative of how they treat
the average American."
Dery Dyer says that at 8:40 p.m., right after learning of
the attack, she alerted U.S. Consular officer Lynn Curtain who
asked for the names of the U.S. citizens known to have attended
the press conference and said he would "check through chan-
nels." His said his first information was that four were
dead, but that he had not yet obtained their identities.
Later, he called Dyer to say, "You can breathe a sigh of
relief because there are no Americans dead. That we know." At
that point, Tico Times correspondent Linda Frazier was dying
and the local radio stations were already reporting that one
woman journalist was critically injured.
Dyer also asked Curtain about sending U.S. helicopters to
rescue the victims. Curtain assured her, "We're on top of
it. We're doing everything we can." It is now clear the Embassy
did virtually nothing. He said later, he had passed on the
information to "my superiors, and then I followed orders."
His orders were, he said afterwards, "to monitor the situa-
tion, because we could not do anything else. It was in the
Costa Rican government's hands.
This is a sovereign country, and we can't just go barging in."
He also noted that the bombing occurred in a "volatile area".
Another Embassy official later told Dyer, "(Charge D'Affairs
George) Jones said that when he went to bed at 11 p.m., there
was no indication of any serious situation."
Given these glib, inaccurate assurances, it is hard to
imagine that any Embassy official even listened to local radio
reports. Soon after the blast, all the Costa Rican news sta-
tions were reporting grizzly details. At about 11 p.m., they
announced that a foreign woman journalist was apparently among
the dead. Since Linda Frazier (a US citizen) and Susan Morgan
(a British citizen working for a U.S. publication) were the
only women journalists known to be there, this should have
been of concern to the Embassy.
However, Embassy officials did not check with Costa Rican
officials or the Red Cross, to find out the condition of the
Americans or to offer help, such as the use of U.S. heli-
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copters, boats, vehicles, or the services of the Embassy
doctor.
Afterwards, Ambassador Winsor said it would have taken a
minimum of 24 hours to mobilize a helicopter from
Panama. However, the Embassy did not even look into this
possibility, or the possibility of getting a helicopter from
Honduras, which is closer.
ARDE had a landing strip inside Nicaragua just five minutes
from La Penca, and there are several clandestine rebel landing
strips on the Costa Rican side of the border. These were
undoubtedly well-known to the CIA agents working with ARDE.
The Embassy in San Jose did not call the U.S. Embassy in
Managua to discuss the possibility of requesting special
permission from Nicaragua to fly a humanitarian mission to the
blast scene.
No Embassy representative was sent to either the border or
to the San Carlos hospital to check on the condition of the
three U.S. Journalists and two others - Morgan and Edgar
Ulate - working for U.S. news organizations.
The Embassy did not even carefully keep track of
developements in order to provide accurate information to
relatives, friends and the press calling. the Embassy from
overseas.
In the days after the bombing, Embassy personel showed
indifference to the problems of the wounded Americans (al-
though Joe Frazier says they were helpful in getting Linda's
body out of Costa Rica). They only began to help Avirgan get
permission to leave for the U.S. for medical treatment after
Congressmen, ABC executives, relatives and friends in the
U.S. began to pressure the State Department, the Costa Rican
Embassy in Washington, and the U.S. Embassy in San Jose.
The Embassy did nothing to correct early false reports in
the local press claiming that Frazier was the bomber and that
Avirgan and Morgan were the prime suspects. Since the Embassy
routinely objects to press reports it feels are incorrect, it
could have requested the local press to refrain from making
accusations until there was firm evidence.
In contrast, the British Embassy immediately began acting
as a clearinghouse for messages between Morgan's family and
the hospital and arranged for an ambulance and a diplomat to go
to the San Carlos hospital to transport Morgan to San Jose.
The U.S. Embassy's response was particularly astonishing
because it was uncharacteristic. A routine function of any
embassy is to assist its citizens in trouble. According to Dery
Dyer, "Whenever there's a slight earthquake, auto crash, or
drug bust, the Embassy sends someone and offers its services."
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Embassy officials later claimed one reason they could not
have helped with La Penca, was because the bombing involved
contras, with whom they were not supposed to have any direct
contact.
But in November 1984, when Alfonso Robelo and his girl-
friend were wounded in a grenade attack in San Jose, two
U.S. Embassy security officers came to the scene immediately.
Both the attack on Robelo and La Penca were attempts to
kill contra leaders. Yet when U.S. citizehs and employees of
U.S. news organizations were killed or wounded, the Embassy
was nowhere to be found.
During the investigation following the bombing, U.S.'offic-
ials were decidedly unhelpful. Early on, Ambassador Vinsor
said that FBI agents were being flown in to help Costa Rica
with the investigation. But, according to both Embassy and
Costa Rican officials, no FBI agents ever came. Costa Rican
officials say they had almost no direct contact with the FBI
or other U.S. law enforcement or investigative agencies.
Costa Rican agents learned of the ETA story from the local
press. They received no direct communication on the matter
from U.S. officials, although it was intelligence officials
in Washington who had originated the story. This is a further
indication that the ETA story was intended solely to sidetrack
public opinion and the investigation.
A year after La Penca U.S. Embassy officials scoffed at the
idea that the CIA could have been involved or that U.S. author-
ities were negligent in not assisting more vigorously in the
investigation. "We're every bit as anxious to find him as you
are," an Embassy spokesman told the Tico Times. "I can assure
you that the investigation is still going on, and very
actively," he added.
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THE BOMBER: SUSPECTS
Since the bombing a parade of possible suspects has been
investigated. "Hansen" has proved to be incredibly
elusive. Even the many clues left behind - photographs, video
pictures and a voice recording - have yeilded little hard
evidence and many conflicting theories.
During the weeks immediately after the bombing, as Eden
Pastora lay in his hospital bed in Caracas,- he studied news
photos of "Per Anker Hansen" with a lingering feeling that he
had seen him somewhere before. Finally he told his aides, "I
think I know that man. He may be from the Somoza hit team."
Pastora was referring to a group of Argentinian leftists
who assassinated Anastasio Somoza, ex-dictator of Nicaragua
while he was living in exile in Paraguay.
The team, consisting of six men and three women, had report-
edly made its plans in Managua with the support of the Nicara-
guan Ministry of Defense.
From 1979 to 1980, Pastora was Nicaragua's Vice-Minister of
Defense and, according to ARDE officials, he knew the members
of the hit team.
There are certain similarities in style between the success-
ful attack against Somoza and the unsuccessful attack against
Pastora. Both were carried out by assassins posing as coup-
les. "Boone" and "Hansen" are reported to have been in Panama
and Peru, two of the countries where some of Somoza's killers
are known to have gone into hiding.
Both Torbiornsson and Prado report that one of the few
times "Hansen" became interested in political discussions was
when the Somoza assassination was mentioned. He asked them to
describe in detail everything they knew about it.
The possibility that "Hansen" had been a member of the
Somoza hit team cannot be totally discarded. Yet, the fact
that Somoza was killed by leftist terrorists does not fit with
the weight of the evidence that the Pastora bombing was organ-
ized by rightists. It could be that "Hansen" was simply a
mercenary, willing to be hired for any terrorist act.
However, as explained below, we now believe the bomber was
not from Argentina or elsewhere in South America, but was from
Libya.
Another possibility is that La Penca was purposely designed
to resemble the Somoza assassination.
According to the testimony of Hector Frances, an Argen-
tinian who had worked for the CIA in Costa Rica, there was
talk as early as 1982 of killing Pastora in a style similar to
the Somoza assassination so that it would appear that the
Sandinistas were responsible.
Soon after La Penca, the large leftist Uruguayan exile
community became convinced that the bombing was carried out by
one of their compatriots.
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On June 9, 10 days after La Penca, the Costa Rican news-
paper E1 Debate carried a short article on the front page,
datelined Stockholm, in which a Uruguayan exile identified
only as Bruno "X" claimed to recognize the photos
of
"Per
Anker Hansen" as a Uruguayan he had known in the
late
1960's.
Through contacts in Sweden, we were able to get telephone
numbers for Bruno Menghetti and his brother Ruben.
In a series of phone conversations, they identified "Hansen"
as Arturo Nestor Figari, whom they described as an ex-leftist
who had become a police informant and right-wing mercen-
ary. They gave us a telephone number for Figari's parents in
Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela, where, they said, his father is a
doctor. When we called, a person identifying himself as Arturo
Figari answered and we spoke with him in both English and
Spanish.
During June and July we had three phone conversations with
Figari (or someone who claimed to be him), in which he told us
that he had just arrived in Venezuela from Holland to visit
his parents after many years.
He claimed to have been in Caracas the day of the bombing and
to have been en route from Amsterdam before that. He also said
he had not been in Central America in over 10 years.
He was extremely worried about how we had gotten his tele-
phone number. His brother Ricardo called us from the
U.S., where he is in a seminary, to vow that his brother was
not involved. It was clear, however, that Ricardo had not seen
his brother in a number of years.
Figari seemed in many ways to fit "Hansen" - similar height,
age, profession, and a father who is a doctor in Venezuela-
. Several things he told us were puzzling. He said he was a
freelance photographer and had worked with a photo agency in
Paris called "Paris 7". This, according to Menghetti, is a
front for recruiting mercenaries for South Africa. The name is
curiously similar to that of "Hansen"'s phony agency "Europe
7".
Figari gave us an Amsterdam address for his flat and photo
studio. But when Associated Press reporters went there, they
found it was an empty lot. He also gave us and a Swedish
journalist somewhat different travel routes when describing
how he flew from Holland to Latin America.
However, he managed to convince both the Dutch Embassy in
Caracas (he has a Dutch passport) and New York Times corres-
pondent Alan Riding, who talked with Figari's mother, that he
had been in Caracas the day of the bombing. An ARDE official
who accompanied Pastora to Caracas said he asked the Venezuelan
police about Figari and was told he had been in the country.
We played a recording of Figari's voice to Fernando Prado
and he said it did not sound like "Hansen". We also sent
"Hansen's" radio interview and the Channel 6 video of him to
Menghetti. He and other Uruguayans in Sweden concluded that
"Hansen" and Figari sounded and looked somewhat different.
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An ARDE supporter who was in Caracas with Pastora and also
investigated Figari thinks his name may have been purposely
planted to throw off the search. "Why did all this attention go
to a Uruguayan citizen who had nothing to do with the bombing
but had a lot of similarities to the bomber? We may have been
the victims of disinformation", he stated.
Four days after Figari's name began circulating, the name
of another Uruguayan appeared in the press: Hector Amodio
Perez. Incredibly, this name came from a second group of
Uruguayans living in the port city of Malmo, Sweden, who
claimed to have no connection with Menghetti and his brother
in Stockholm.
The information was said to have originated with "Cono Sur
Press" in Montevideo, and it quoted a senior Uruguayan Army
officer as the source.
Based in Sweden, Cono Sur Press is operated by Uruguayan
political exiles associated with the Tupamaro guerrilla move-
ment. It has had correspondents scattered around Central and
South America as well as some clandestine contacts in Uruguay
during the period of the military dictatorship.
The Cono Sur article carried a Panama-dateline. Apparently,
the Cono Sur Press reporter in Panama, who was also the corres-
pondent for the Nicaraguan news agency ANN, had received
the story from Sweden and circulated it. The Costa Rican
newspapers did not print the original story, but did make
reference to it.
The story said in part:
"An ex-Tupamaro and member of the intelligence service of
the Uruguayan Army may be the false journalist who exploded a
bomb during a press conference given by Eden Pastora.
"The charge was made by a high official of the Uruguayan
Army, who identified the bomber as Hector Amodio Perez,
ex-Tupamaro and current member of the intelligence service of
the Uruguayan Armed Forces.
"The Uruguayan official, who did not want to be identified,
had several photos of Amodio Perez, taken in recent years,
that show an astonishing likeness to the suspect, the agency
Cono Sur Press reported from Montevideo."
This story was circulated widely in Europe, Mexico, Nicar-
agua, and South America, including Uruguay. On July 4, the
Spanish magazine Interviu carried a three-page article naming
Amodio Perez as the principal suspect. An article in the
Danish newspaper Berlinvsre on June 20 said:
"Amodio Perez was in the mid-60s a member of Uruguay's
urban guerrilla movement (Tupamaros) and had to go underground
in 1966. Since then his name has been mentioned in connection
with many of the urban guerrillas' most sensational actions...
"In June 1970 the police managed to capture him, but he
escaped. After he was arrested for a third time in June 1972,
he changed sides and worked closely with Uruguay's Armed
Forces.
I
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"Many are of the opinion that Amodio already worked for the
police in Uruguay, while he maintained contact with urban
guerrillas...
"Amodio Perez managed to become entirely integrated into
the Uruguayan intelligence services, and in the course of a
short time, he became a kind of key person in the Army's fight
against the Tupamaros...
"Amodio took part in various actions against his previous
'brothers in arms', and traveled several times to Buenos Aires
in order both to identify and seize Uruguayan political prison-
ers. According to the high-ranking officer who recognized
Amodio from the photograph of the suspect, Per Anker Hansen,
Amodio was recruited by the CIA shortly after he had worked in
Buenos Aires."
Dr. Federico Fasano Mertens, a prominent Uruguayan jour-
nalist exiled in Mexico, who knew Amodio personally and spent
hours interviewing him in prison in the early 1970s, said in a
June 27 interview in the Nicaraguan newspaper El Nuevo Diario:
"He undoubtedly is alive. Exiled Uruguayans personally saw
him in Madrid five years ago... There is an enormous similarity
between the photos of "Per Anker Hansen" and Amodio. The
protruding eyes, the thick eyebrows, the left eyebrow a little
smaller, the expression, the way he holds his cigarette...
"If besides the physical likeness, we look at the style of
the bombing, "Hansen" personally takes the bomb, he's present
at the press conference.... This coincides with the style
of the operations of the man I knew so well. Although I repeat
that I don't have the least bit of conclusive proof."
Alfonso Robelo and G-2 intelligence agents in Panama also
fingered Amodio Perez, but said that they had information he
had been killed in Brussels by Libyan hit men shortly after La
Penca. Brussels police deny having any information about
this.
We tried to determine whether or not Amodio Perez was the
bomber through interviews with Costa Rican investigators and
Uruguayan exiles in Costa Rica, telephone conversations with
Uruguayans in Nicaragua, Panama and Sweden, and visits to
Uruguay, Panama and Mexico.
Most of the Uruguayans we talked with insisted that there
is a strong resemblance between Amodio Perez and "Hansen".
Clearly, Uruguayans, particularly leftists, want "Hansen" to be
Amodio, the man who almost singlehandedly destroyed the
Tupamaro movement, sent many of his comrades to prison or
death, and then mysteriously escaped.
Costa Rican investigators told us that Amodio was their
prime suspect, but that they were awaiting more information
from Uruguay.
But as we investigated further, we found a number of
difficulties with the Amodio Perez theory. None of the
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Uruguayans who had known him has seen him in over a
decade. None could say with certainty that he was the man in
the voice recording and video of "Hansen." Several felt there
were some physical differences.
One Uruguayan exile noted that "Hansen's" speech was more
sophisticated and intellectual than that of Amodio who was a
typesetter with a working-class accent and vocabulary. In
addition, at the time of his disappearance, Amodio spoke no
English.
Another important discrepancy was in the age of the two
men. Amodio is now over 40 while "Hansen" appeared to be about
30 and was using the passport of a 28 year-old.
In Montevideo, we tracked down the journalist Cono Sur
Press cited as the source of the initial report. We asked
him to put us in touch with the army officer he had quoted and
to arrange interviews with leftists who had known Amodio
well. Although we spent hours waiting for meetings he said he
had arranged with his contacts, not one materialized. We came
to suspect that he, or perhaps Journalists with Cono Sur in
Sweden, had fabricated the army officer in order to give more
credibility to their story.
But in the course of our investigation, we learned of a
high-ranking Uruguayan police officer and one-time CIA
collaborator named Alejandro Otero who had been responsible
for the arrest and interrogation of Amodio Perez and other
Tupamaros in the early 1970's. Otero had later criticized
the excesses of CIA operations in Uruguay and as a result, he
had been sent to relatively unimportant postings. He is
considered by many Uruguayans to be a fairly honest officer and
was given a position as head of the police acedemy under the
civilian government which replaced the dictatorship.
After listening very carefully to the recording and studying
the photos, and evidence, he noted remarkable similarities
between "Hansen" and Amodio both in facial appearance and
in their style of operating. He said he could not be sure the
voice was the same, but that "Hansen" definitely seemed to
speak like someone from Uruguay or the Buenos Aires area of
Argentina. He also said he thought he recognized one of the
women pictured in the OIJ wanted poster.
When we asked what had become of Amodio following his
escape from the Uruguayan prison, he said, "I cannot say. I
must keep some professional secrets." He hinted, however, that
the CIA had helped get Amodio'out of the country. We heard
from other sources that Otero himself was involved in helping
Amodio escape.
Otero said he could neither confirm nor deny whether "Han-
sen" is Amodio.
However, when we asked about Amodio's height, he stood up and
indicated that he would have come only to his eyebrows. Otero
is 1.66 meters, tall which would put Amodio at 1.64 or 1.65
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meters. "Hansen", however, is about 1.85 meters. This physical
difference which is so difficult to modify,is, we believe, the
most important information indicating that "Hansen" is NOT
Amodio.
Otero said that, if "Hansen" was a terrorist, either of the
right or the left, who had lived in Uruguay or Argentina, he
was confident he could determine his identity. We therefore
gave him copies of all our material on "Hansen" and agreed to
call him a week after we returned to Costa Rica.
Before leaving Montevideo we met another person who had
known Amodio well, and who confirmed that Amodio was fairly
short. We also found in the archives of one of the major news-
papers, old full length photos of Amodio which revealed
important physical differences between him and "Hansen".
We located a lawyer in Montevideo who had known Amodio
Perez and claimed to have seen him in recent years. He said
that he has reliable information that Amodio had been in
Panama and has recently been living at a particular address in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The OIJ files also state that Amodio
was seen in Panama on May 29, 1984. Panamanian officials were
asked to verify this, but did not do so in the documents they
sent to OIJ.
After returning to Costa Rica we called Otero at a
prearranged time to find out the results of his investiga-
tion. He said, "I think this is a very good report that I
have done, with a team. The report includes some information
that for you is very important. But this information will
come signed by a whole team, and they ask for a quantity of
dollars. The information is exact, and positive for you all."
"So what do we do?" we asked.
"You should discuss it," Otero said. "They mentioned a
figure of twenty thousand dollars. I think the information
will be very, very valuable to you, so you should discuss it
and call me back."
We were totally unprepared for his request for money. In
Montevideo, Otero had offered to assist us without mentioning
any fee. Since, on principle, we never pay for any information
we receive, we were extremely leery of this request. We also
realized that it would be very easy to buy false information.
In the next conversation a week later, we asked Otero if he
could give us concrete proof of the bomber's identity. He
answered, somewhat mysteriously, "You gave us the material, and
we have clear statements to make based on the material... .We
work on the basis of our own experience and knowledge." He
said his "team" had positively identified both the bomber and
his woman accomplice.
In subsequent conversations, Otero
said we could evaluate his information and would have to pay
only after we were satisfied it was correct.
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We made another trip to Uruguay, but although we talked
with Otero for hours, he refused to reveal the identities of
the bomber and his accomplice without being paid beforehand. He
reneged on his earlier promise to let us examine and verify
the information before considering payment. In addition, he
did not have us meet with any one else from his supposed group,
leading us to doubt if it really exists. Our relationship
ended at this impasse.
Before we parted, however, Otero did strongly imply that he
had discovered that the CIA was behind the bombing and warned
that it was extremely dangerous for us and him to continue
the investigation.
We continue to believe that Otero has important information
about the bomber and his accomplices and are appalled that he
should try to profit from it.
In addition to the named suspects, there have been various
supposed sightings of "Hansen" in Nicaragua, Mexico and Costa
RiCa.
In February, for instance, two Costa Rican businessmen
traveling by car through Nicaragua reported seeing someone
resembling "Hansen" at a hotel in San Juan del Sur on the
Pacific coast. However, a check of the hotel registry showed
no signature resembling "Hansen's". Hotel personnel could
not recall anyone fitting his description and the businessmen
themselves, when shown the video of the bomber, decided he was
not the man they had seen.
At about the same time, several local residents reported
seeing a person fitting "Hansen"s' description at a party in
Grenada, Nicaragua. However, when they were shown the photos
and listened to the voice recordings, they also said that
despite certain physical similarities, the man they saw was
not ""Hansen."
Several months after the bombing, La Republica Director
Jaoquin Vargas received information from a Mexican private
detective that "Hansen" was living at a well-guarded resort al-
legedly set aside by the Mexican government for international
terrorists. Vargas and others began investigating the
possibility of flying into the resort, kidnapping "Hansen" and
returning him to Costa Rica to stand trial. However the Mexican
detective never confirmed his information and it eventually
became apparent that the story had no basis.
In addition, there were several unconfirmed reports that
"Hansen" had been seen in Costa Rica well after the
bombing. One, for example, is that in September, 1984 a man
fitting "Hansen"'s description presented himself at the general
delivery window of the central post office. He asked if he
had any mail and showed a Danish passport in the last name of
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"Hansen". He was accompanied by a short, stocky woman carrying
a blue passport.
The post office employee at the window said there was no
mail for "Hansen", and when she began to look at him closely,
he quickly took back his passport and left. She called DIS,
but by the time agents arrived, the couple had disappeared.
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While both the right and the left had motives for wanting
to kill Pastora, our investigation has turned up solid evidence
that the La Penca bombing was carried out by a terrorist
group made up of right-wing Cuban exiles, North Americans, and
FDN members, some of whom have ties to the CIA.
By March 1985, we had begun to assemble various bits of
evidence pointing to this group.
We have evidence, for instance, that a group from the FDN
and Alfonso Robelo's MDN knew in advance of plans to eliminate
Pastora. In the months before La Penca, MDN/FDN members met in
Miami. A spy from Pastora's faction of ARDE made a secret tape
recording of the meeting. Our assessment is that the recording
is genuine, even though background noise and several people
talking at once make it difficult to distinguish between
voices.
An introduction by the ARDE Infiltrator says, "What you are
going to hear is a conversation with ;Josef Venceslao Mayorga,
Carlos Lacayo of MDN, Captain Hook, Rommel Castaneda, and
myself so that you have an idea of what's' happening in this
organization and with respect to Robelo."
The most interesting part of their lengthy conversation is
the following:
Voice: "I'm the military adviser of MDN."
Voice: "But what about ARDE?"
Voice: "How is ARDE going to turn out? And Eden?"
Voice: "Eden? ilaughterL We'll see what's going to happen."
Voice: "Forget about Eden."
Voice: "But there's going to come a time when everyone u-
nites."
Voice: "We're already in unity. We
are inside the convergence. We're the organizations which have
fundamental principles...."
Voice: "I'm going to make something clear. If Eden Pastora
leaves this movement one day, immediately I tell you, if
Pastora disappears from there, then there will be order and
discipline in the movement."
Voice: "And what about the people with Pastora?"
Voice: "The MDN will absorb them.
And then the disciplie begins. There are a lot of people. They
are all waiting to be killed in this stupid war Pastora is
making." '
Voice: "OK, but it looks like;eventually there's going to
be a healthy movement. junintelligiblee But Pastora is acting
crazy and we're going to wait for the day Pastora disappears
or is retired from the movement...."
Voice: "This is what the gringos said to the FDN:'What do
you want?' They gave them arms, money, all the shit. 'Eden,
what do you want?' 'This and that and greens idollarsL.'IThe
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gringos saide 'Go and fight.' And they stuck him in Costa
Rica. They're jARDEZ screwed. The FDN is inside ;Nicaragua.e"
Voice: "Yes, they the gringose are going to eliminate
Pastora now. They are going to put in just the military
people." (Throughout the conversation "military men" refers to
the FDN.)
Another indication of such plotting comes from a top Pastora
aide. He says that the day before the La Penca bombing, a
Nicaraguan woman called him from Houston, Texas to tell him
that she had learned from an FDN member who works there with
Nicaraguan refugees that there was an FDN plot to kill Pastora.
In addition, Peter Glibbery, a British anti-communist
adventurer who was among those arrested in April.1985 when
Costa Rican Rural Guardsmen raided an FDN camp on property
managed by John Hull, said that while in La Reforma jail, near
San Jose, he met a fellow prisoner who claimed to have been
part of a team sent from Honduras by the FDN to assasinate
Pastora.
The prisoner confided to Glibbery after hearing the former
British Army officer make some remarks about Pastora being a
closet socialist.
Glibbery said the prisoner's real name was Roger Lee Pallais
although Costa Rican authorities, who were holding him on
charges of shooting and wounding a police officer, thought his
name was Roger Lino Hernandez. He was a Nicaraguan of Chinese
decent and his father, Von Lee Wong had been Chief of
Investigations for Somoza's National Guard and is currently
working for the FDN in Miami.
Pallais said that he had been part of a five member FDN
team, including one woman, sent to Costa Rica from Honduras to
kill Pastora. He was vague about the date, but said it was
"about a year ago", which could have meant the team was in
Costa Rica before the La Penca bombing.
Pallais said he got into trouble when he had a falling out
with the female member of the group and she went to OIJ, not
to tell about the plot against Pastora, but to tip the
authorities that Pallais was armed and dangerous.
When police officers arrived to investigate, Pallais shot
one four times and was subsequently sentenced to eight years
in prison.
Although he was considered dangerous and was being held on
a serious charge, shortly after confiding in Glibbery, Pallais
managed to escape by running away when officers escorting him
back to prison after a court appearance left him in their car
unattended.
He subsequently called his fellow inmates through the
prison's pay telephone to boast of his escape and to ask them
to collect and send out to him the things he left
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behind. Glibbery says he learned that Pallais was, after his
escape, in contact with John Hull and his Cuban sidekick Felipe
Vidal.
It is not known if Pallais was connected with the La Penca
bombing or if he was involved in a parallel but independent
action intended to kill Pastora. Both plots were, however,
backed by elements within the FDN.
There are indications that certain ARDE advisers or
commanders may also have been involved in La Penca. However
our evidence is more circumstantial than concrete.
In the months prior to the bombing, several of Pastorals
colleagues and sympathizers began quietly to organize against
him. ARDE sources say that these people, who became aligned
with the FDN soon after the bombing, began, for instance,
talking to field commanders about preparation "for the day
when Pastora will not be around." They advocated that certain
ARDE commanders should break with Pastors and unite with the
FDN. As a result of this wooing, several of Pastora's command-
ers did leave and Join the FDN around the time of La Penca.
Some of these provocateurs had been previously considered
"ultraleftists" by their ARDE peers. They had been, for
instance, among those Pastora advisers advocating a strong
public stand against the CIA. Their behavior right after the
bombing and their subsequent switch to the FDN befuddled
their former comrades.
One of them was a key person in promoting the story that
ETA had carried out the bombing on behalf of the
Sandinistas. However, according to close associates and family
members, he and another aide to Pastora who helped woo away
the FRS commanders, were, in reality, on the CIA's payroll.
Besides these indications that anti-Pastora contras were
involved in the La Penca plot, we also accumulated substantial
evidence that ultrarightist Cubans had a hand in the
terrorist attack.
A tie to the Cuban exile community surfaced shortly after
La Penca, when a Cuban-American businessman in Miami told an
associate that his "group" was responsible for the bombing.
This Cuban, named Richard or Ricardo Martinez, has a seafood
import business that operates in Central and South America,
including Honduras and Costa Rica. But his associate says his
business is really a cover for his "mercenary" activities.
Martinez told our contact than he has worked on contract
for the CIA, is willing to be hired to do anything including
kill people, and is involved with the contras, but dislikes
Pastora. He is extremely right-wing and supporters militant
anti-Castro groups. He is very familiar with Costa Rica,
where, he boasted, he has "influence" with important people.
Our contact. explained that this businessman has "a big
group of Cubans and others - its my understanding that they
have non-Cubans in the group - and they do anything you
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want. He said he and his group have done work for the CIA. He
claimed this group did La Penca and he seemed to know a great
deal about it. He did not say whether or not they had been
hired by the CIA for this action. I don't think he'd do
anything for strictly political reasons. I don't think he'd do
it except for money."
Unfortunately our contact had lost the address of the Cuban
businessman. We tried through numerous channels in San Jose
and Miami to locate him, but without success. We found only one
person who admits to knowing him. This man is also a Cuban
businessman. He resides in Costa Rica, claims to others he
works for the CIA, and has been very active in helping the
group of Cuban fighters operating in the southern front. He
confirmed to us that Ricardo Martinez has been helping the
contras, but he refused to give us Martinez's address, saying
he was sure Martinez would not talk with journalists.
In addition, a Miami Cuban law enforcement officer who is
also involved with the contras, said that it was "common
knowledge" that Miami Cubans had organized the La Penca
bombing. He said the attack was justified because "Pastors is
a communist."
Another source, a Costa Rican businessman-cum-private
detective who does business in Miami, sells arms to the
contras, and is involved with Cubans, said he was told in
Miami that those behind the bombing were from the right-wing
Cuban terrorist organization "Alpha 66", the FDN and its
allies in Costa Rica, and the CIA.
He says his information came from three different people
who told him the story separately. He described all three as
"reliable", especially one who has been providing him with
accurate information for over ten years. We, in turn, have
used this businessman as a source in the past and have found
him to be highly knowledgeable.
The businessman said that he knew several months before the
bombing that there were plans under way to eliminate Pastora,
who was viewed by extreme elements in these groups as erratic,
a leftist - several referred to him as either a "Communist" or
a "Maoist" - and politically unreliable since he had vowed to
side with the Sandinistas should U.S. troops invade Nicaragua.
They also looked upon the ARDE commander as the main obstacle
to a united contra movement and expanded U.S. assistance.
This informant said that the bombing was planned "at the
highest levels" of Alpha 66, in conjunction with CIA agents. He
said, "Alpha sustains itself with CIA funds and drug traf-
ficking" and has been acting as'a funnel for aid to the
contras, particularly the FDN.
He said that the right-wing Cuban group maintained a "safe
house" in the San Jose working class suburb of Tibas, a fact
we confirmed through Cuban contra sources. He named several
Cubans in San Jose and Miami whom he claimed are part of the
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La Penca group. All, he says, work for the CIA. We have indepe-
ndent confirmation that one is currently with the Agency
and another formerly worked with the CIA.
The businessman explained he knew in advance there were
plans to kill Pastora but he did not know exactly how it would
happen. "Two months beforehand ;about MarchL, these people
this contacts in MiamiE had begun to refer to Pastora as only
a benchwarmer, saying it was time to replace him" he said. "Now
they talk openly about the La Penca operation as being their
action."
The informant explained that the plotters planned to make
Fernando "El Negro" Chamorro, leader of the small FARN organi-
zation which has had close ties to the FDN, commander of the
southern front. That is what happened. Soon after La Penca,
Alfonso Robelo's faction of ARDE announced it was forming an
alliance with the FDN and El Negro was named military com-
mander in the south.
Regarding the anti-Castro Cubans who work with the contras
out of Costa Rica, ARDE officials recall that a leader of this
group, Felipe Vidal, also known as "Morgan", had spoken in
both Miami and Costa Rica about the need to "liquidate"
Pastora. A Pastora lieutenant says he has information that
Vidal, who claimed to be proPastora, "originally came to Costa
Rica with the intention of killing Eden.
What he wanted to do was to be in the camp and wait for
him. One of the Cubans with him fled because he became afraid
he would be implicated, and he came and told me about this,
months before La Penca."
Another person, someone involved in ARDE's internal investi-
gation of the bombing, said Vidal "is the only person I know
of who mentioned the possibility of eliminating Pastora with a
bomb." This ARDE investigator, who has proved to be a highly
valuable source, said he believes the attack was carried out
by "some FDN and ARDE elements in alliance with Cubans"
connected with another terrorist organization "Omega 7."
From interviews in Costa Rica and Miami, it is clear there
is considerable overlap between Omega 7 and Alpha 66. Both
include a number of ex-Bay of Pigs fighters and ex-CIA hire-
lings. Alpha 66 is the older organization over which the CIA
has always had more control. It has ties with right-wing
paramilitary groups throughout Latin America including, in
Costa Rica, Movimiento Costa Rica Libre.
Omega 7 was started in the'l970s by some ex-Alpha
members. It is described as having a more adventurist concept
and as being more independent from the CIA.
Vidal and other Cuban exile volunteers working with the
contras in.Costa Rica, claim they are independent and have no
connections with any of the Miami-based anti-Castro organ-
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izations. They first came to Costa Rica in mid-1983, and were
introduced to ARDE by Col. Rodrigo Paniagua of the Ministry of
Public Security. ARDE officials say Paniagua personally
requested that the Cubans be integrated into ARDE guerrilla
ranks, but they were turned away by Pastora.
Then, in early 1984, Pastora relented and accepted the
Cubans as combat instructors on the condition that they iden-
tify themselves as Puerto Ricans.
According to several sources, the American farmers John
Hull and Bruce Jones helped convince Pastora to accept the
Cuban contingent. The number of Cubans working with the contras
has always remained small and there has been, with the
exception of Vidal, Rene Corbo and a few others, a constant
turnover. They have established an independent base of support
and lines of supply utilizing Cuban exile sympathizers in
Miami and San Jose.
Col. Paniagua continued to work closely with the Cuban
team, even after he left the Security Ministry. It was
Col. Paniagua who, ARDE officials say, visited Pastora outside
San Jose on the night of May 29 and insisted that he hold a
press conference the next day in Nicaraguan territory.
"If Paniagua was the one who asked for the press conference,
then the Cubans were involved in the bombing" commented former
member of the Cuban team, who returned to Miami nine months
before La Penca.
At the time of the bombing, the Cubans were at an ARDE camp
along the San Juan River, just a few minutes downstream by
boat from La Penca. After the bombing they, along with John
Hull, broke officially with Pastora's FRS faction of ARDE and
began working to organize an FDN front in the south.
An indication that the actions of the Cuban team and John
Hull are linked to those of the CIA is that as CIA pressure
for unity mounted in the weeks before La Penca, Hull and Jones
stopped supporting Pastora. According to ARDE sources, they
refused to let Pastora's planes land on Hull's airstrip and
withheld supplies from the FRS.
After the bombing and during the Sandinista offensive
against ARDE in June 1984, Hull and Jones are said to have
been involved in buying up rifles from fleeing ARDE guerril-
las. According to several Costa Rican and contra sources, the
weapons were stockpiled on Hull's farm for future use by Robelo
supporters and the FDN.
"The attitude of the CIA is to allow the Sandinistas to
wipe out the FRS from their midst. Precisely what the bombing
did not achieve." commented an ARDE official at the time. He
continued, "John Hull is a chess piece that breaks with Pastora
and gives support to Robelo's people. Everything indicates
that Hull plays the same role as the CIA." This ARDE investi-
gator said "the Cuban advisers in ARDE all have a curriculum
clearly tied to the CIA."
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There is considerable evidence to support this ARDE
official's claim. In July 1985, when Pastora had suspic-
ions that Vidal was involved in the La Penca bombing, he had
the Cuban detained during a visit to the Rio San
Juan. According to Pastora and several others present, when
Vidal was disarmed and had ARDE weapons pointed at him, he
began shouting "Don't shoot - I'm with the CIA."
Several former members of Vidal's group say they quit in
part because they discovered it was a CIA operation.
From interviews with some of the Cubans, other contras and
well-informed Costa Ricans, it is clear the Cubans receive
substantial cooperation both from right-wing organizations like
Movimiento Costa Rica Libre and from certain government
officials. A Pastora aide said, "We believe it's a CIA
team. Costa Ricans don't do anything to stop them. They get
their supplies and have their training camps here in Costa
Rica and no one says anything."
The Cubans did, however, run into some trouble in April
1985 when a Rural Guard unit raided a contra camp located on a
farm reportedly managed by John Hull. The raid was carried out
by Col. Rigoberto Badilla, a steadfast 'defender of Costa Rican
neutrality. To ensure its success, Badilla kept plans for the
raid secret from other Costa Rican security officials. He later
told journalists that he acted on orders from Home Affairs
Minister Enrique Obregon.
The raid hit a small, satellite camp used by the Cubans and
others they had recruited. None of the Cuban leaders were
there at the time, but Badilla did catch nine Nicaraguans,
two North Americans, two British citizens and one Frenchman.
In prison interviews, those arrested admitted that they
were part of a group of internationalists lead by the Cubans
and they said they were assisted locally by John Hull,
Col. Paniagua, Los Chiles Civil Guard Commander Col. Guillermo
Aponte and others. They said they were shocked by their arrest
because until then they believed they had the full cooperation
of Costa Rican guardsmen.
Two of the soldiers of fortune, Steven Carr and Peter
Glibbery, described their contra operation as CIA funded and
directed. They said that Hull introduced himself to them as
"the chief liaison for the FDN and the CIA." According to
them, Hull said that money for the operation was routed monthly
from a contact on the National Security Council in Washington
through his personal bank account in Florida.
Carr and Glibbery also said'that arms and military supplies
for the contras were shipped via charter cargo planes from the
U.S. to the Ilipango military airport outside San Salva-
dor. There they were stored in a special contra warehouse and
then loaded onto small planes and airdropped or delivered to
contra camps located on farms belonging to John Hull and others
in northern Costa Rica.
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John Hull's ties to both the contras and the CIA have been
widely reported. A number of people we interviewed, including
Costa Rican security and government officials, ex-CIA agents,
and top contra leaders who have worked directly with Hull,
said that John Hull is with the CIA.
Based on the above, we concluded that it was probable the
intellectual authors behind La Penca were anti-Pastora contras,
Cuban Americans in Miami and in Costa Rica, and a few North
Americans. We were not alone in reaching this conclusion.
A number of Pastora's top aides say that while they continue
to believe that the Sandinistas had a motive and the capacity
to do the bombing, the evidence turned up in their investiga-
tion points to a conspiracy involving FDN, MDN and Cuban
exiles, all of whom are tied to the CIA. An official involved
in ARDE's investigation told us, "For the Sandihistas it was
politically more convenient to have Pastora alive and causing
divisions. Four months before La Penca, the Sandinistas decided
that the death of Pastora was not an objective, that he
generated important conflicts."
A top Costa Rican security official said he has evidence
that Robelo's MDN, the FDN, elements of ARDE and some
Cuban-Americans were responsible for La Penca. He said Costa
Rican security officials have information about a series of
meetings in Miami prior to the bombing at which killing Pastora
was discussed. Another senior Costa Rican government official,
formerly involved in security matters, told us that a
confidential memorandum in the files of DIS concludes that the
CIA was responsible for La Penca.
Those Costa Rican journalists who have most carefully tried
to investigate La Penca say they began believing firmly that
the Sandinistas were responsible, but they have found the
weight of their evidence now points in the opposite direction.
Pastora himself said that he has been told by a western
European intelligence agency that the CIA was behind the
bombing.
Just as all of this was beginning to come together, we had
a breakthrough - a dissident member of the group that carried
out the La Penca bombing began to pass information to us.
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Friday, March 29, 1985. Pay day. Carlos, a young Costa
Rican carpenter, stopped in the Rendevous Bar in downtown San
Jose before catching the bus home. As he sat alone in the semi-
darkness, sipping a beer, three men entered and walked down
the narrow passageway towards him.
Two of the men told the third to sit at the bar, order a
beer, and wait. They will be back in a few minutes. Carlos
noted from their accents, they were all Nicaraguans.
As soon as the other two vanished into the busy city street,
the third, a short, dark skinned young man with
a smooth round face and straight black hair, turned to Carlos.
"You must help me," he whispered. "Hide me. I want to get
away. I don't want to be involved anymore in their things.
They are going to dynamite the U.S. Embassy and assassinate
high functionaries. Many
innocent people will die. I want to get out."
Startled, Carlos asked the young man what he was talking
about. For the next ten minutes, the Nicaraguan, who said his
name was David, rapidly poured out his story, all the time
watching the doorway for the return of his companions. He
trembled as he spoke, and was near tears. "I'm an
anti-Sandinista," he said, "but these people are much more
evil than the Sandinistas."
He said he is part of a right-wing terrorist ring operating
in Central America. The group is composed of anti-Sandinista
Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans, Cuban exiles and North Americans.
They form a sort of dirty tricks unit within the FDN. They
have ties with anti-Castro extremist groups such as Alpha 66,
Omega 7 and the 2506 Brigade. They also have ties to the
CIA.
David said they operate from safe houses and contra camps
in Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua and Miami. He
mentioned they are based in Costa Rica on a farm owned by John
Hull which is near the Nicaraguan border. There are Cubans and
a number of foreigners in the camp, he said.
The group has important connections, David says, and moves,
"in and out of Costa Rica like a dog from its own house."
David outlined the group's mission as three-fold: to
eliminate Eden Pastora and ARDE from the southern front so
that FDN can move in; to provoke conflict between Nicaragua and
its neighbors, Costa Rica and Honduras; and to provoke direct
U.S. military action against Nicaragua.
But they also traffick in cocaine, marijuana and arms,
David said bitterly. "They are making money off the blood of
my brothers and using our cause (the anti-Sandinsita
resistance) to get rich."
David said his group was responsible for La Penca and that
even though the assassination attempt failed, the group is
still in tact and planning a new series of terrorist attacks
in both
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Costa Rica and Honduras. "The same people who committed the
bombing against Pastora are the ones in charge," he told
Carlos. The targets include the U.S. Embassies in both
countries, U.S. personnel and several prominent contra leaders.
He said his companions had left the bar to case the U.S.
Embassy, a block long structure
located a hundred meters away.
The Sandinistas were to be blamed for these attacks, David
said. Many passers-by would die. Costa Rica would be outraged,
and the U.S. would then retaliate against Nicaragua.
Carlos, unfamiliar with the details of contra politics,
listened intently and tried to remember as much as possible of
David's rapid-fire monologue. Carlos asked why David did not
go to the Costa Rican authorities. David replied that he could
not because a number were involved and he didn't know who he
could trust.
The Nicaraguan again appealed for help. Carlos said he was
sorry, but he could not hide him, that he Jived in a row house
with three small kids. His wife ran a beauty parlor in the
front room. The neighbors and clients would quickly detect a
stranger in hiding.
The other two Nicaraguans reappeared in the doorway. David
and Carlos quickly agreed to try to meet again.
The trio left. Carlos followed
them out and watched as they walked around the corner in front
of the
Embassy. A large grey car without license plates stopped and
the
three got in.
Several days later he saw one of David's companions standing
with an attractive woman in the queue of people waiting for
visas outside the U.S. Consulate. He noticed them starring at
an electrical box located on the corner of the building and
then talking to an Embassy guard.
For several weeks Carlos mulled over what he has seen and
heard. It did not fit with the Costa Rica he knew - a country
without an army, which has declared itself neutral in external
conflicts, and which denies the contras operate from its soil.
Carlos believed in Costa Rica's pacific tradition and supported
the ruling Liberation Party. But he also felt concerned for
David whom he found convincing and likeable.
He talked to his mother. Her advice: "You heard nothing,
you saw nothing, you do nothing."
April 25, 1985. Costa Rican'Rural Guardsmen raided a FDN
camp located on a farm reportedly managed by John Hull. Nine
Nicaraguan contras and five foreign mercenaries - two
Americans, two Englishmen and a Frenchmen - were arrested.
Something clicked in Carlos' mind: David had mentioned this
camp.
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He contacted his neighbor who was the only North American
he knew, believing that she could warn the U.S. Embassy. At
the time, he did not know that she was in any way connected
with journalists.
In fact, she is our secretary. As soon as we heard the
information, we notified the U.S. Embassy. The chief of
security noted the information with scant comment.
At our request, Carlos again made contact with David. Over
the following weeks a pattern was set: David and Carlos met at
a series of prearranged spots - a park near the university, a
plaza or street corner in the city, a hotel, on the bus to
Alejuela - and Carlos tape recorded when possible, took notes,
or simply tried to remember the details he heard.
Each time we sent a list of specific questions with
Carlos. Immediately after each session, Carlos came to us
to be debriefed and receive more questions.
David was extremely nervous, warning repeatedly that his
group already suspected him and had threatened to kill both
him and his brother who was with the FDN inside Nicaragua if
they were caught passing information. He said he would not
risk meeting directly with the "gringo" journalists.
David described himself as "a traitor to a dirty cause" and
said he wanted to get his brother and himself out of the
group. But, he said, before doing so he wanted to help
"destroy" the group by giving us enough information to fully
expose its operation.
While parts of David's story sounded incredible, we have
been able to confirm much of it. The broad outline we already
had assembled of an FDN/Cuban/CIA terrorist ring fit with the
information he told us. What was new and most startling was
his information that this ring was not simply responsible for
the La Penca bombing, but was still in tact and planning new
terrorist actions. Because of this, we believe David's story
must be taken extremely seriously and be further investigated
by journalists and law enforcement officials.
The main points we learned from David are the following. In
brackets is a summary of the corroborating evidence we have
for each point.
-The bomber who posed as a Danish photojournalist named
"Per Anker Hansen" is, in reality, a Libyan who calls himself
Amac Galil. He was hired in Chile by two FDN officials and a
North American CIA agent who poses as journalist. David said
Galil is highly professional and, as a Libyan, was considered
ideal for the job. If he were killed, captured or otherwise
identified, it was reasonsed, it would be assumed he was
working for Col. Muamar Gaddafi.
(While no other source has named Galil and we know nothing
more about him, he appears plausible. Linguists who analyzed a
voice recording of the bomber universally concluded that he
is not a native Spanish speaker and several mentioned he could
be either Libyan and Israeli. After the bombing several of
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those implicated in the plot by David and other sources,
circulated the story taht the bomber was a Libyan working for
Gaddafi. Those who travelled with "Per Anker Hansen" in the
weeks prior to the bombing say he was very familiar with South
America. While he was in Costa Rica he is known to have sent
postcards to Chile.)
-The plot itself was worked out in both Miami and Honduras
in meetings between FDN officials, including its leader Adolfo
Calero, two Miami-based Cubans Felipe Vidal and Rene Corbo,
American farmer John Hull, and a Robinson Harley, a North
American who was identified to the group as being from the CIA.
(We have confirmed from immigration, hotel and car rental
agency records that the bomber, posing as "Per Anker Hansen",
was in Honduras in March prior to the attack. In addition he
told Journalists he travelled with that he had been in Miami
before coming to Costa Rica.
Further, with the exception of Robinson Harley, we have
considerable information about the other alleged
conspirators. Adolfo Calero's desire to get rid of Pastora so
that the FDN can open a front in soutehrn Nicaragua is well
known in contra circles. We have the diary of U.S. mercenary
Jack Torrell (alias Flacko) who worked for the FDN and who
writes of attending a meeting at Calero's house in Miami
where killing Pastora was discussed.
A top Costa Rican investigator said he received information
that the assassination of Pastora was discussed beforehand at
several contra meetings in Miami. In addition, ARDE officials
gave us a tape recording of a contra meeting held in Miami
prior to the bobing at which it was said that the FDN had
plans to move into Costa Rica and "the gringos" (the
implication is the CIA) intended to "eliminate" Pastora. One
day before the bombing a top ARDE official received a call from
the U.S. warning that the FDN was planning to kill Pastora.
John Hull is, by his own admission, an active supporter of
the contras.
Prior to the bombing he was aiding Pastora and since he has
quietly supported the FDN. According to top ARDE officials who
worked directly with Hull, several Costa Rican security
officials, and mercenaries, Hull works for the CIA and
coordinates FDN operations in Costa Rica.
Contra and Cuban sources say Hull was also responsible for
introducing Felipe Vidal and Rene Corbo into ARDE as military
trainers. The two, who had been connected with ultra-rightist
Cuban groups in Miami, arrived as "volunteers" in 1983 but
several contra and Cuban sources say their real mission was to
woe ARDE commanders over to the'FDN and perhaps to kill
Pastora. An ARDE intelligence official said that Vidal, an
explosive expert and reputed assassin, spoke about "the need
to eliminate Pastora with a bomb."
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-David said $50,000 was passed from the CIA through the FDN
for expenses in the bombing operation.
(Journalists Peter Torbiornsson and Fernando Prado who
traveled with the bomber in the weeks befroehand said that he
had "a wallet full of $100 bills" and spent money freely,
although he claimed to be working for an obscure Paris-based
photo agency.)
-David named several Costa Rican officials who he says
assisted in the plot, helped the bomber escape afterwards,
planted false stories in the press, and continue to cooperate
with the terrorist ring.
(We already had substantial information about these
officials, and the Costa Rican authorities with whom we shared
our information also had corroborating evidence. One of the
people named by David is Col. Rodrigo Paniagua who, government
and contra sources say, serves as the chief liaison between
Hull and the Cubans and security officials. ARDE officials say
they suspect Paniagua knew of the bombing because he personally
insisted that Pastora hold the ill-fated press conference.
David also named the Ministry of Security official whom we
referred to earlier as "Juan Rodrigues".? From interviews with
former and present Ministry officials we had learned that
"Rodrigues" was instrumental in circulating the false stories
and phony documents blaming ETA and the Sandinistas for the
bombing. These sources said he also works closely with the
CIA. According to David, this official was intimately involved
both in La Penca and in the plans for new terrorist actions.
-David said that Amac Galil and others in the terrorist
team have been living much of the time at the seaside apartment
of a Miami Cuban named Ramon Cecelio Palacio.
(We have been unable to locate Palacio in Miami but,
according a a businessman with close ties to the Miami Cuban
community, Palacio aids the FDN and works for the CIA.)
-David said that plots against Pastora have continued since
La Penca.
(Pastora aides say they have on several occasions received
information that the ARDE commander's life is in danger.
The diary of American mercenary who worked with the FDN in
Honduras describes, for instance, a December 1984 meeting in
the Miami home of FDN chief Adolfo Calero. They discuss a
plot which sounds remarkably similar to the unsuccessful La
Penca bombing which occurred six months earlier.
A diary entry reads:
"The 'termination' of Zero (Pastora) discussed with Adolpho
;sic.Z , Aristias, John Hull, Donald Lacy and a man not
identified but told ;he is withZ 'Company'. Many people
involved. Some look like Cubans, some Nicaraguans, some
Argentinean. A.C. ;Adolfo Calerot very upset with statements
made by Pastora. Says he too Sandinista. Must die. Big problem.
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"Asks me to put it together and not tell them how it will
be done, just do it. Will have complete cooperation of all
Costa Rican officials. Have several safe houses in C.R. under
control of John Hull and Bruce Jones. Seems Rob Owens in on
most of this ...Am told he is private consultant and liaison man
for U.S. (Company)....
"Must appear that Sandinsitas did it. Discussion on
capturing Zero and having men dress in captured uniforms.
Am told this must be very visible hit and people must believe
the Sandinistas did it. Am told to let Hull know when ready to
move ...A.C. open to anything.
He dewparate. Wants and needs southern front."
-David said the terrorist group planned to carry out a
series of new actions, including bombing the U.S.
embassies in both San Jose and Tegucigalpa, and killing some
Americans, among them the newly arrived U.S r Ambassador to
Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs.
David said that in San Jose the plans were to place the bomb
in an electrical box on a light pole outside the Embassy. In
this manner not many Embassy employees would die, but a number
of Costa Rican passers-by would be killed.or maimed.
David cautioned that while he is certain CIA agents were
involved in the Pastora bombing, he is not sure how intimately
they have been involved with the FDN in planning these new
terrorist schemes. He did, however, name Hull and several
other Americans as having a role in the latest plots.
(Incredible as this sounds, we do have some evidence indicating
there was such a plot. After he first met David, Carlos saw on
several occasions David's companions standing near and
apparently casing the U.S. Embassy in San Jose. He noted on
one occasion they appeared to be staring at an electrical box
and was later told by David that the plot involved planting
the bomb in this box.
British adventurer Glibbery recalled that on one occasion
John Hull ordered him not to take some claymore mines to
his contra camp "because we may need them for an embassy job
later on." Glibbery said he didn't ask for an
explanation. "I didn't want to know. Thats not my sort of
thing," he told us.
In addition, a Cuban in Miami who works with Vidal, Corbo,
Bruce Jones
and others linked to this terrorist group, says that he was
contacted last February by CMA leader Tom Posey who was by
then working closely with John Hull. Posey asked if this Cuban
would be willing to take part in a plot to bomb the
U.S. Embassy in San Jose and kill American citizens in both
Costa Rica and Honduras in order to provoke direct
U.S. military strikes against Nicaragua. Several months later
another American who claimed to be acting on orders from top
White House officials, again contacted this Cuban. The Cuban
says he refused to become involved because, although he is a
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patriot and a staunch anti-Communist, he did not like the idea
of murdering fellow Americans.
In late July David told us that preparations to bomb the
Embassies and killed Americans were nearly complete. In early
August Honduran police, using bomb sniffing dogs, discovered
two bombs in a Tegucigalpa hotel frequented by North Ameri-
cans. The discovery, which was witnessed by hotel employees
and reported in the press, was later covered up by the
authorities who denied any bomb had been found. We have no way
to prove it but it seems possible these bombs and the cover-up
were connected with the plot we were tracking.
David said that his group was waiting to begin its actions
until U.S. Ambassador Tambs arrived in Costa Rica and that he
had been targeted for assassination. This sounded incredible
but if true may, we believe, be tied to the group's involvement
in cocaine trafficking. Tambs had just been transferred from
Columbia where drug traffickers had pledged to kill his.
According to Costa Rican police officials, many of the
people named by David are invovled in moving cocaine from
Columbia to the U.S. through Costa Rica. Although David did
not say so, our speculation is taht Tambs was targeted because
this terrorist group was acting on behalf of drug smugglers
and the Ambassador's assassination could easily be blamed on
the Sandinistas.
Finally, for several months certain Costa Rican security
officials and the rightist paramilitary group Costa Rican
Libre had been saying that they had evidence Costa Rican
leftists and Sandinista agents were planning to bomb the
U.S. and other embassies in San Jose. A left-wing member of the
Legislative Assemby, Sergio Erick Ardon, said that security
officials raided his home and seized his files. When they
later showed him what they had taken, he says he was surprised
to find a drawing of the U.S. Embassy among the papers. He
concluded that his political party was being set up to be
blamed for some terrorist act.)
In addition to the evidence we had already gathered, the
events which occurred after we made contact with David
convinced us his story has some credibility.
On July 18 the Reagan administration sent a warning to
Nicargua that it had "intelligence data" indicating that the
Sandinistas were planning terrorist attacks against
U.S. personnel in Honduras. In a diplomatic note delivered to
Managua, the U.S. government warned that if such actions
occurred anywhere in Central America, Nicaragua would be held
responsible and there would be "serious consequences for the
perpetrators and for those who'assist them."
The day before Reagan's warning, David had sent word via
Carlos that Amac Galil and a hit team were due in Costa Rica
within a few days to begin their terrorist attacks. Soon after
other attacks would occur in Honduras.
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Horrified by what we knew and believing that these actions
had to be stopped, we contacted a government minister we knew
to be a strong supporter of neutrality and opponent of contra
activities within Costa Rica. He took our information extremley
seriously, said it fit with other information he had, and he
went to the President. He was told to work with several other
trusted officials in quietly carrying out a thorough
investigation and trying to arrest the hit team should they
enter the country.
As a result of this we began working closely with a Costa
Rican Rural Guard Major who commands an anti-terrorist
unit. This man told us he had, for many months, been tracking
and infiltrating the FDN and drug trafficking opoerations
centering around John Hull.
Then, several days later, as David and Carlos were parting
after a lengthy meeting, they were jumped by three men who
stuck guns at their throats. The attackers pushed them into a
green jeep, saying, "We caught you, we've cavght-the
informers."
Carlos and David were held at gunpoint on the floor of the
jeep and driven four hours until they reached what David
recongized as one of the contra camps located near Hull's ranch
house.
David whispered to Carlos that they were surely going to be
killed and had to try to escape. When the guard was not
looking, David kicked him hard in the crotch.
As they ran for cover among the trees outside, shots rang
out. All night and the following day and night, they ran and
walked over rough isolated terrain. They finally got a lift on
a banana truck heading for San Jose.
Late at night they were dropped off at the Sabana, a large
park on the edge of the city. David who had only col. 300 in
his pocket said he was going to find a cheap hotel near the
central market. He said he would try to call Carlos the next
day. After they parted, Carlos called us from a pay phone, and
around midnight Tony found him, near tears from exhaustion
and fright, and took him home.
Afterwards, Carlos and several members of the anti-ter-
rorist squad went to San Carlos and Carlos managed to identify
the location on Hull's farm where his kidnappers had taken
him and David.
We did not hear from David and so assumed he had carried
out his plan to leave Costa Rica and was finally free from the
comrades he no longer could stomach.
Then Costa Rican officials tdld us they had learned from an
informant they have on Hull's farm that David had been
recaptured, tortured, and killed and that the group was looking
for Carlos. ARDE officials, who knew David because had at one
time worked with Pastora, said they also had learned he had
been murdered.
In the coming days Carlos received anonymous phone calls
warning him not to talk, known contras and Cubans drove past
I
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his home, and, one night, five shots were fired at the house
from a passing car. We managed to tape record one of the
threatening phone calls and the Rural Guard Major said he
thought he recognized the voice as that of an assistant to
"Rodriguez" at the Ministry of Security.
We phoned this man and recorded his voice and then submitted
both recordings to the Linguistics Department of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The opinion of
experts there was that the two recordings could well be of the
same person.
During this period the antiterrorist squad staked out
several locations in San Jose where we had information Amac
Galil and his hit team would stay. The Major also led an
abortive raid on Hull's farm. No one from the terrorist group
was arrested and, it was assumed, they probably modified their
plans after David was captured.
Then one day the Major who heads the anti-terrorist squad,
the man who had been tracking Hull, the Cubans and the FDN,
suddenly and without warning, left Costa Rica for the United
States. The government minsiters to whom he was supposed to be
reporting were startled. They investigated and found that the
U.S. Embassy had issued the Major a special invitation to
attend a course at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning,
Georgia. Normal procedures had been by-passed, all the
paperwork had been completed in less than 24 hours, and he had
been whisked out of the country.
One of his superiors who investigated the case said he has
"no doubt" but that the Major was lured to the U.S. in order
to cripple the government's investigation of the FDN terror-
ist unit.
Realizing it was unlikely the terrorist or their accomplices
would be arrested, we made arrangements for Carlos and his
family to leave Costa Rica temporarily. Friends in a western
European country agreed to care for them.
On Sunday, August 18, Carlos and his family boarded a
plane, thus becoming Costa Rica's first political exiles.
We tried to keep Carlos' name out of the news. This was
done not so much for his safety, for his enemies knew his
identity, but rather for the tranquility of his family.
However, on Saturday August 31, La Republica carried a
headline at the top of page one declaring "New Leads About La
Penca." The story said that the Rural Guard had testimony from
someone named Carlos which said that the La Penca bomber was a
Libyan who had received help from certain Costa Rican officials
to flee to Managua after the bombing. The story was unsourced.
Of course, there was a strand of truth in the La Republica
story, but Carlos' testimony never said that the bomber fled
to Managua. The story, as it appeared, made Carlos' testimony
sound as though it implicated the Libyan and Nicaraguan
governments in the La Penca attack.
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Carlos remains, understandably, perplexed by how his chance
meeting in the bar and a defector's confessions could have
brought his and his family to this point. He has cried
privately over the loss of David whom he came to consider a
good friend and whom he tried his best - but ultimately unsuc-
cessfully - to help. And there is bitterness that Costa Rica,
which he also tried to help, could not either guarantee his
family's safety nor move effectively against the terrorist
band. He says wryly he has been through an intense political
education - and now wants only some tranquility and an
opportunity to again be a carpenter.
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Despite the efforts of David, Carlos and certain Costa
Rican officials, the La Penca terrorist group is still
such in tact. As such it represents a danger not only to
Pastore and those around his, but also to many innocent
civilians, as well as to efforts to bring peace and stabilit
to Central America.
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