CRASH PUTS SHADOW WARRIOR IN SPOTLIGHT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130024-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 27, 2012
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: October 16, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130024-6
16 October 1986 L
m~W
ON
From Bay of Pigs to the Contras, Rodriguez Fights On
3
Y
Crash Puts Shadow Warrior in Spotlight
By DOYLE McMANUS and WILLIAM R. LONG, Times Staff Writers
explosive charges primed and in
place, ready to blow up Castro's
bridges; his agents were standing
by to cut telephone lines and
foment disorder.
The invasion began at dawn. But
not until midday did the saboteurs'
messages arrive-and by then, it
was too late: Castro's men were
already rolling up the underground
networks. "The roads were closed,
the houses were surrounded and
they were arresting thousands of
people," Rodriguez said later. "I
cried."
For 25 years since that day, Felix
Rodriguez has been fighting. to
avenge the CIA's failure, a secret
soldier in the shadow world of U.S.
clandestine operations. And no or-
dinary soldier: Rodriguez's exploits
are the stuff, in the words of one of
his comrades, "of a book-no, more
than just one book." -
Under one false name or,
another,
Rodriguez has landed secretly in
Cuba at least six times. He has
fought in Vietnam, the Congo and
El Salvador. In 1967, he helped
Bolivian troops capture Castro's
lieutenant, Ernesto (Che) Gueva-
ra, as he was spreading Marxist
revolution in South America; Ro-
driguez still wears Guevara's
wristwatch to prove it.
His odyssey has taken him to the
CIA's sprawling Virginia head-
quarters and even to the White
House office of Vice President
George Bush.
When a man called "Max Go-
mez" was named as the El Salva-
dor-based chief of a secret airborne
supply line for Nicaraguan rebels, '
it came as no surprise to veterans of
clandestine warfare that his real
name was Felix Rodriguez.
And today, Felix Rodriguez, the
anonymous hero of a hundred un-
known battles, is in the middle of a
highly public controversy over
America's role in Nicaragua.
WASHINGTON-It was April
17, 1961. Felix Rodriguez, a 19-
year-old Cuban exile, had been
secretly inside Fidel Castro's Cuba
for six weeks, waiting for a signal
from the CIA that the Bay of Pigs
invasion had begun. Rodriguez had
The Reagan Administration-
and his old comrades- in- arms-
say Rodriguez was acting as a
private citizen, with no direction or
pay from the U.S. government he
served for so long. But the evidence
has mounted that. while Rodriguez
left the CIA payroll years ago, he
remained solidly inside the shadow
world of clandestine operations-a
private soldier in a secret but
public cause.
When Congress cut off U.S.
money for the contras fighting to
overthrow the Cuban-inspired.
Nicaraguan regime, President
Reagan appealed to conservative
anti-Communists for help-and
Rodriguez was there. His story
explains much of how the Reagan
Administration could assemble a
private U.S. network to help the
contras continue their war despite
Congress' ban.
It also illuminates some of the
CIA's secret wars that have long
been little known, and a few opera-
tions that have never before been
revealed in detail.
"He's a patriot," said Bush, who
has acknowledged meeting Rodri-
guez three times. "I know what he
was doing in El Salvador, and I
strongly support it.... This man,
an expert in counterinsurgency,
was down there helping them put
down a Communist-led revolu-
tion."
"He's an authentic American
hero," says a former Green Beret
who worked with him in El Salva-
dor. "He doesn't do it for the
money. He just wants to get the
goddamn Communists out of Cen-
tral America."
Rodriguez has reportedly lain
low in Miami ever since he was
publicly identified as the chief of
the contras' supply operation by
Eugene Hasenfus, an American
crewman captured by Sandinista
troops after his C-123 cargo plane
was shot down inside Nicaragua.
He did not respond to several
requests for an interview.
But many of his friends and
comrades-in-arms did agree to
speak-some because they believe
it is time that he received some
credit for his exploits. others be-
cause they fear he may be made a
scapegoat in the furor over the
crash.
Felix Ismael Rodriguez Mendi-
gutia, now 45, was born May 31.
1941, the son of a middle-class
shopkeeper in the quiet colonial
town of Sancti Spiritus southeast of
Havana. He attended a Catholic
high school in Havana and a pri-
vate boys' school in Pennsylvania,
but before he could return to Cuba,
the leftist revolution'of Fidel Cas-
tro seized power. Rodriguez's par-
ents. who were in Mexico during
the revolution, never went home.
Like many young men front
conservative, anti-Communist
families, young Rodriguez joined
Brigade 2506, the Cuban exile or-
ganization armed by the CIA to
overthrow Castro. At the CIA's
secret training camp in Guatemala,
he excelled at intelligence, sabo-
tage, psychological operations,
weapons and explosives-and at
the age of 19, impressed his com-
rades as a single-minded warrior.
He was very motivated." re-
called Jose Basulto, a brigade vet-
eran and longtime friend, in an
interview in Miami. "He has always
been a very motivated individual."
The CIA named Rodriguez the
leader of a five-man infiltration
team whose mission was to help
prepare an internal uprising to
coincide with the invasion at the
Bay of Pigs. At the end of Febru-
ary. 1961, the saboteurs left Key
West on a 26-foot motor launch
and crossed the Florida Strait.
landing at night east of Havana.
Florida state Rep. Javier Souto,
who was on the same boat, said that
Rodriguez was assigned to the
eastern city of Moron, where his
specialties were to be weapons and
explosives for the uprising. But
when the invasion failed, the infil-
tration teams were left high and
dry. Rodriguez made his way back
to Havana and took political asy-
lum in the Venezuelan Embassy; a
few months later, he was granted
permission to leave the country.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130024-6
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130024-6
But Rodriguez's anti-Castro cru-
sade was far from over. Miami was
a hotbed of feverish, exile plotting
against Castro's regime.
Basulto, now a Miami- engineer,
said that Rodriguez participated in
at least six sabotage raids on Cuba
and attempts to infiltrate the is-'
land. some of them CIA-assisted.
In about 1963, Rodriguez, Basul-
to and more than 100 other Bay of
Pigs veterans joined a special U.S.
Army officer's training program at
Ft. Benning, Ga. A few officers
were selected for a new wave of
CIA-sponsored boat attacks
against Castro; among them was
Rodriguez, who became the
group's chief of communications.
One of the group's most notori-
ous actions was the sinking of a
Spanish freighter in the Caribbean
by mistake. No large-scale action
against Cuba was ever taken, how-
ever, and the CIA phased the
project out.
In the mid-1960s, the thread of
Rodriguez's career becomes diffi-
cult to trace. He apparently told
some friends that he had returned
to the army, but Basulto, his closest
friend. says that was a cover story;
Rodriguez was now a full-time
officer in the CIA's clandestine
service.
"He worked for years for the CIA
until he retired," Basulto said.
"And I know he retired, because I
have seen his retirement papers. I
think he has the highest decoration
the CIA gives."
In 1967 came the undisputed
high point of Rodriguez's career:
the capture of Ernesto (Che) Gue-
vara.
Guevara, an Argentine theorist
of revolution who was sent abroad
by Castro as his apostle of revolu-
tion, was in Bolivia trying to start a
rural guerrilla movement. A Boliv-
ian army ranger team, advised by
the CIA, caught up with` him in
October,1967.
His capture was sweet retribu-
tion for the Cuban-Americans, led
by Rodriguez, who were fighting
for the CIA-but the incident left
Rodriguez speaking of Guevara
with unexpected esteem.
"I would say that Felix is the
greatest guerrilla of all time, be-
cause he captured Che Guevara,"
said Jorge Mas Canosa, founder of
the Cuban American National
Foundation.
As a result of Guevara's capture,
Rodriguez was rumored to be No. 1
on the "hit list" of Castro's secret
intelligence service, the DGI.
In any case, in the late 19609, the
CIA was swiftly expanding its
operations in support of the war in
Vietnam, and characteristically,
Felix Rodriguez went along.
"He was in there for a long
time," a CIA veteran said. "He was
down in the (Mekong) Delta. He
was a self-taught helicopter pilot.
He did some very brave things."
"He was shot down twice by
enemy ground fire," Basulto re-
called. As a result of the last crash,
most of the vertebrae in Rodri-
guez's back were fused and he
reluctantly returned from the war.
In about 1975, he retired from the
CIA with full medical disability
pay.
But Rodriguez left the CIA with
a host of key contacts around the
world and in Washington, where
his friends included Theodore
Shackley, a former deputy director
of the agency, acid 1 anw oftw
now the oationd saw adviser
to Vice Preodaat Haab- a
former director at the CIA.
His war against comiaimtisin-
and against Fidel Castro-was still
not over.
Back home in Miami, Rodrigues
apparently returned to the Cuban
exile organizations with which he
had begun. And after leftist revolu-
tions sprang up in Nicaragua in
1979, and El Salvador in 1980. he
heard a call to duty again.
In about 1981, Basulto said, Ro-
driguez went to Honduras to help
the anti-Sandinista Nicaraguan ex-
iles there-the nucleus of the force
that would later become the con-
tras. This was even before the
Reagan Administration had adopt-
ed their cause, Basulto said. "There
was no CIA involved at that time."
The CIA moved into the fight at
the end of 1981, and again Rodri-
guez's traces disappeared. Ameri-
can agents raided Nicaragua's coast
by boat, ran air strikes into the
country and helped the contras
organize their army-but Rodri-
guez's friends, and contra sources,
insist that Felix was not among,
them.
Yet, when Congress cut off the
contras' funding in 1984, Rodrigues
almost instantly reappeared, or-
ganizing private help for the rebels
in Miami. "I met him then," said
Adolfo Calero, the leader of the
largest contra army. "To me, he's a
damn good man-a patriot, a
free-lancer for democracy."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/28: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504130024-6