EX-COMMANDO SPECULATES ON CIA AID TO CONTRAS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504550017-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: April 26, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

S1 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504550017-8
WASHINGTON POST
26 April 1987
Ex-Commando Speculates on CIA Aid to Contras
v
onduran Radio Base, Arms Airlift, Wounded Helicopter Pilot Described to Hill Probers
T By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
A former Army commando who
worked in the contras' private net-
work has told congressional inves-
tigators that a mystery plane pi-
loted by Americans ferried military
supplies to the Nicaraguan rebels
last spring from a base at Aguacate,
Honduras.
lain Crawford said another U.S.
crewman told him that the un-
marked DC6, loaded with ammu-
nition and supplies, was on a mis-
sion for the Central Intelligence
Agency. But he said he had no con-
clusive evidence of who controlled
it.
The U.S. government was pro-
hibited by Congress from providing
military assistance to the contras
from October 1984 to October
1986. A private network under the
direction of a since-ousted National
Security Council aide, Marine Lt.
Col. Oliver L. North, kept the pipe-
line going, but U.S. agencies insist
they were not directly involved.
Crawford said he had described
the plane to investigators informal-
ly, but was not questioned about it
when he gave a sworn deposition.
"It wasn't the contras' and it
wasn't ours,* Crawford said of the
private network. "But it was there.
So whose was it?"
Crawford also said that last May
13 he accompanied a man a tun
was a em p e aboard a 1W_
.helicopter that took food and v astic
explosives from the remote
Ajiacate base to a detac h~inent o
contras on the Rio Coco
Crawford, 30, now runs Force
Inc. of Fayetteville, N.C., which
sells such equipment as backpacks
and parachutes for air drops.
Crawford says he was hired to
work in Central America in January
1986 by the Vienna, Va.-based
companies of retired Lt. Col. Rich-
ard B. Gadd. From March through
June he lived and worked in El Sal-
vador and Honduras, rigging am-
munition boxes and supplies on pal-
lets and participating in more than
20 parachute drops. He was later
replaced by Eugene Hasenfus, who
was captured Oct. 5 when a C123
was shot down in Nicaragua, expos-
ing the private network.
At the uacate airstrip, Craw-
fordsaid he met two Americans
who he thinks were CIA employes.
Ie said they lived in a`fiifffo cot
to a havin two racks of radios, a
situation rd anda satellite roof
antemuit. "They tygr no part of our
ration," Crawford said.
In early May, he said, he saw a
damaged helicopter being brought
back from the direction of Nicara-
gua by a Chinook helicopter accom-
panied by heavily armed smaller
ones. One of the Americans told
him that the helicopter had been
badly shot up and that an "agency
pilot" had been severely wounded
by ground fire and nearly bled to
death.
On May 13, Crawford said, he
was bored and asked to ride on the
helicopter with one of the Ameri-
cans. The trip turned out to be no
milk run.
The pilot, he said, was strapped
into an armor-plated seat, wore a
bulletproof vest and had a flak vest
draped over his legs. The normal
destination-the contra base at
Bocay-had "gone hot" as a result
of enemy troops in the area, and the
explosives and supplies had to be
delivered to another point just in-
side Nicaragua, Crawford said.
The DC6 was based at Aguacate
throughout this period, he added.
Normally, Crawford said he was
told by other Americans there, its
pilots arrived at dusk aboard a twin-
engine Beechcraft and flew the sup-
ply plane to an unknown drop point,
returning before dawn and depart-
ing the same day.
However, during one such run,
Crawford was told, the plane was
damaged when an abortive drop of
improperly rigged ammunition
forced it into a near-catastrophic
dive.
On April 20, he said, he came
back to the United States with
Gadd, North and North's principal
private operative, retired Air Force
Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord. Craw-
ford described a drop inside Nica-
ragua en route using an L100 cargo
plane and a crew hired by Gadd.
Overall, Crawford said, the pri-
vate network seemed to him to be
wasteful, inefficient and badly or-
ganized. He said it was plagued by
inadequate communications and
parts. It was short of competent
radio operators, cargo planes were
sent out on dangerous missions
over Nicaragua with no backup gen-
erators, and personnel often were
paid late, he said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/02/09: CIA-RDP90-00965R000504550017-8