THE FRIENDS OF TOMMY POSEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100320010-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 9, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: September 17, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R000100320010-4
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE NEWSWEEK
17 September 198
INTERNATIONAL
CENTRAL AMERICA
STAT
hers had been "bored by my talk of political
conditions. All they wanted to know was
what was happening in the hills and what
The Friends of Tommy kind of weapons we had." Call insisted
that CMA was not training FD N troops.
oP sey "Our campesinos are born guerrillas," he
I met one ofthem in the [National) Guard, wrote a letter to Gen. _Gustavo Alvarez
said. Evidently Parker and rPowell hthought
one at a gun store, one at a gun show... We Martinez, a hard-liner who commanded the they could teach somebody something.
had all been in Vietnam, and we wanted to Honduran armed forces at the time. "Wegot They were part of a six-man CMA "training
find out what we could do to stop the commu- the idea from the newspapers," said Posey. mission" that went to Honduras in late
nuts from taking over Central America one "He was the strongman." The letter was August. They were still there on Sept. 1,
countryatatime addressed to "Gen. Martinez, Honduran when small contra warplanes attacked a
-Tommy Posey, Decatur, Ala. Government, Honduras, Central Amer- military training school in north-central
ica." Alvarez replied encouragingly, and in Nicaragua. Calling the school a hotbed of
T hey are small-town, small-time guys January Posey and three associates flew to Cubans and Libyans, Reagan administra-
who love guns and camouflage suits Honduras with a loadofsupplies, as well asa tion officials said the raiders had killed four
and manly make-believe. They are Vietnam few rifles and pistols "for our own protec- Cuban military advisers. Nicaraguans de-
veterans who think that combat was a kick. tion." (Posey is a licensed firearms dealer.) nied it, saying the body count had tan to a
They never got over the loss of Indochina, Getting past Honduran Customs was no woman and three children. At the time,
and now, with middle age closing in, they problem; the Americans waved their letter Parker and Powell were based nearby at an
would like to take just one piece of
turf back from the communists. airstrip in Honduras called James.
They sent a team to Central Amer- } trap. According to Callejas, word
ica a while ago, and then, sud- Of came in that several FDN soldiers
denly, two of its members were 0 had been wounded across the bor-
dead, shot down in a helicopter VW tt . ? - ' der; the Americans, he said, took
over Nicaragua. The Marxist rul- off on a "mercy" mission and were
ers of Nicaragua charged that the killed. "They just wanted to help,"
tes, agents of the CIA. The initial 'CAA Macenaries'? Nicaragua'
s
evidence suggested instead that -, Sandinista regime said the Ameri-
they were nobody's hired guns, cans had been shot down during
that they had gone to Nicaragua on the air rand on the militAU school,
their own, for nothing more than an attack that it blamed on "CIA
the chance to fight communism- mercenaries." After quizzing the
and for the thrill of being back in CIA, Sen. Daniel Patrick Myni-
a
the
game. ban of New York vice ch irman
dead
The dmen were Dana Par- of the Senate Intelligence Com-
detective on were
ker, e
36, a
leave from mittee, said he had been assured
the police force in Huntsville, that the agencv was not involved.
ta.r..
Ala., and James Powell, 36, a But CMA had never made its
flight instructor from Memphis, work a secret; local newspaper
Tenn. They belonged to a coverage even
group Prompted a
cau-
gent
called Civilian-Military Assist- tionary visit from an FBI agent
ante (CMA), which claims 1,000 earlier this Year, according to Po-
members, mostly in northern Ala- sev. U.S. diplomats and military
bama and southern Tennessee. officers m El Salvador and Hon.
Parker had served in Vietnam with duras met wn CMA leaders. "I
the Green Berets; Powell had been 4,. m don't know for sure if any of 'em
an Army helicopter pilot in the Posey with arsenal- Not a `cake-and-ice-cream operation'
k~ -was IA, but Tegh is Amencans," Posey said referring
war. "He got shot down three
times over there," said Tommy Posey, a from the general and breezed on through. capital. -Surely the CIA knew-or ought to
CMA founder, "so he really knew what he They went almost directly to the U.S. Piave own-what CMA was up to and if
was doing." Embassy. "We showed the letter to an nothing else, the agency acquiesced. At the
Nonlethal Goods: What CMA was doing, American, he had abusiness suit on," Posey time, Congress was cutting off covert U.S.
apparently, was to organize whatever sup- recalled. "I said, 'Hey, Bud'-I called him ?aid to the inn r c Anil CMA was offering to
port it could for tip mmunists in Central Bud because he was younger than me-I take un~small part of the slack
America. The group collected money for said, 'We came here to check in'." Later, Posey insisted that the death of his two
medical supplies, uniforms and other non- according to Posey, Honduran officials put comrades would not stop the campaign to
lethal goods, and it signed up "trainers" who the team in touch with Honduras-based con- support the contras. "Good Lord willing,
could instruct the champions of democracy tras of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. we plan to keep on giving them supplies and
in the use of such equipment as helicopters.. An FDN official, Alfonso Callejas, encour- assistance," he said. "This right here will
After a visit to El Salvador last fall, CMA aged the group to undertake more missions help weed out the quitters. We want people
leaders decided that they could do more and, Posey said, later flew to Decatur to give for the cause, not people who think this is
good by concentrating on the U.S.-backed CMA'srecruiting campaign aboost. some kind of cake-and-ice-cream opera-
Nicaraguan rebels, or contras, who were Interviewed by NEWSWEEK in Miami, tion." Apparently it hadn't yet dawned on
fighting "the communists"on their own soil. Callejas said he had run into Posey while the the ever-young men of CMA that they were
At a news conference in Huntsville last CMA group was touring contra camps playing far out of their league.
week, Posey described how CMA made con- along the Honduran border. He confirmed
tact with the contras. Last November they the visit to Decatur. but he cat I C`M e rnn,?_ RUSSELL WATSON with KIM WILLENSON in Wash-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/09: CIA-RDP90-00806R00010032001 010 -4