Shot Out of the Sky

By Michael S. Serrill

For the Sandinistas it was a moment of delicious, unexpected triumph. After years of charging that the White House was orchestrating a secret war to subvert their Marxist-oriented government, there on Nicaraguan TV screens was living proof of their allegations: a burly, rugged-looking, redheaded American named Eugene Hasenfus. The prisoner looked the part he played. Hasenfus, 45, a gung-ho patriot and soldier of fortune, had been captured after parachuting from a U.S. plane that was shot down by Nicaraguan soldiers while on a mission to deliver arms to contra rebels in southern Nicaragua. Three other men, two Americans and a Nicaraguan, were killed in the crash.

After two days of interrogation, during which he was threatened with 30 years' imprisonment, Hasenfus, his captors said, was ready to tell the "truth" about whom he was working for. Gloated Alejandro Bendana, a Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry official: "This is obviously a CIA operation with CIA operatives." Whether or not the accusations prove true, the Administration, which is already facing charges that it disseminated "disinformation" about Libyan terrorist activities, found itself confronted by another challenge to the credibility of its foreign policy.

In deliberate, wooden tones, Hasenfus told a press conference in Managua that he and 24 to 26 companions had worked in San Salvador for an organization called Corporate Air Services. The group, he said, had been supervised by "two naturalized Cuban Americans" named Max Gomez and Ramon Medina who "worked for the CIA." The pair, claimed Hasenfus, did most of the flight coordination, "oversaw all our housing projects, and also refueling and some fright plans."

After making a ten-minute statement, Hasenfus was abruptly led away without answering reporters' questions. Still, his dramatic story only increased the volume of official denials that the U.S. Government had any connection whatsoever with the downed supply plane--or with Hasenfus. But Hasenfus' allegations posed disturbing questions about the Administration's relationship with private organizations that have reportedly been funding supplies for the contra rebels since Congress cut off aid in 1984. In the absence of a satisfactory response from the Administration, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week said it would subpoena testimony from those involved, including, if necessary, officials in the White House. President Reagan declared that Hasenfus and his companions were volunteers in a noble cause. "Some years ago many of you spoke approvingly of something called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade," he told reporters, referring to the unit of American volunteers who fought against Franco's insurgents during the Spanish Civil War.

As evidence mounted that both the aircraft and its crew had long associations with the CIA, some Congressmen grew dubious about Administration professions of ignorance. Said Minnesota Republican David Durenberger, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: "I assume somebody in the United States Government knows something about this, and the sooner they speak up the better." Hasenfus' capture came only a week before final passage of $100 million in military and economic aid for the contras is slated by Congress.

The ill-fated flight began at Ilopango military base, on the outskirts of San Salvador. The camouflaged Viet Nam-era C-123K air transport, with Panamanian registration HPF821, lifted off late Sunday morning with four crewmen aboard, droned south over the Pacific Ocean, then headed east near the Costa Rican-Nicaraguan border. About 60 miles inland, the plane veered northeast toward the Nicaraguan garrison town of San Carlos. According to Nicaraguan accounts, as the craft dropped down to 2,500 ft. and prepared to discharge its cargo, a 19-year-old Sandinista soldier, Jose Fernando Corales Aleman, raised his shoulder-held, Soviet-made ground-to-air missile launcher and fired. The lumbering aircraft shuddered when the rocket found its target, then spiraled earthward, trailing smoke. While the soldiers cheered and slapped one an other on the back, a parachute popped open and a lone figure floated down behind some hills several miles away.

The army patrol that found the wreckage in the rain-soaked jungle also discovered a propaganda windfall. Not only was the craft loaded with black-market arms--70 Soviet-made AK-47 rifles, 100,000 rounds of ammunition, rocket grenades, boots and other supplies--but two of the three dead crew members found inside were Americans. The pair were later identified as William J. Cooper, 61, of Reno, and Wallace Elaine Sawyer Jr., 41, of Magnolia, Ark. A day later searchers cornered Hasenfus hiding in an abandoned shack. Though he was armed with a pistol and a knife, he offered no resistance, and was marched off to a Sandinista base camp. The following day he was helicoptered to Managua, where, unshaven and haggard, he made a brief statement to the press: "My name is Gene Hasenfus. I come from Marinette, Wis. I was captured yesterday in southern Nicaragua. Thank you." He was then whisked away to detention and interrogated at El Chipote prison. Captain Ricardo Wheelock, chief of army intelligence, proudly called Hasenfus the Nicaraguans' first U.S. "prisoner of war."

The shooting down of the plane touched off a round of recriminations between Washington and Managua. "We now have Americans dying in Mr. Reagan's dirty war," said the Foreign Ministry's Bendana. In Washington, Administration officials insisted that the arms drop was a "private" matter they knew nothing about. Said State Department Spokesman Charles Redman: "The U.S. Government had no connections with the flight, the plane, the crew or the cargo." Declared Kathy Pherson, spokeswoman for the CIA: "The guy doesn't work for us, and CIA is not involved. There are congressional restrictions on assistance to the contras, and we do not break those restrictions."

There was plenty of reason to believe, however, that U.S. officials were dissembling. Cooper carried an identification card issued by Southern Air Transport, a Miami-based corporation once owned by the CIA and known still to have links to the agency. The firm denied involvement in the attempted arms delivery, although it admitted once employing Cooper as a pilot. Hasenfus and Sawyer held ID cards issued by the Salvadoran army that identified them as military advisers.

It seemed highly unlikely that the American adventurers could have obtained the help of El Salvador, the beneficiary this year of about $500 million in federal aid, without the knowledge and consent of U.S. officials. Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte formally denied that the plane had taken off from San Salvador. But it has long been an open secret that the Salvadoran air base at Ilopango is a major supply point for the contras.

Any doubt that the plane had CIA connections was dispelled by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which confirmed late in the week that the aircraft had been used in a sophisticated 1984 sting operation designed to show that Sandinista officials were involved in the international drug trade. Hidden cameras installed in the plane by the CIA filmed a Nicaraguan Interior Ministry official loading sacks of cocaine into the cargo hold. Last March, President Reagan showed a still photo of the sting operation to a nationwide TV audience during speech advocating resumption of U.S. military aid to the contras.

Administration officials tried to counter charges that the U.S. had sponsored the Hasenfus flight by suggesting that he and the crew had been working for retired Army Major General John K. Singlaub, 65, the controversial head of a Phoenix-based group called the World Anti-Communist League, which raises money to support anti-Communist insurgents around the world. A frequent visitor to El Salvador, Singlaub is said to have helped the contras buy arms, but he denies any connection to the downed plane or its unfortunate crew.

In his second press conference, Hasenfus said he was recruited to work in Central America last June by Cooper, the plane's pilot, whom U.S. intelligence sources describe as a veteran of CIA operations and the leader of the airborne contra-aid group in El Salvador. Hasenfus said he and Cooper had both flown missions in Southeast Asia for Air America, a CIA-owned carrier, during the Viet Nam era. Since June, Hasenfus claimed, he had flown on ten missions, four from Aguacate, a contra base in Honduras, and six from Ilopango. He said he was paid $3,000 a month to work as a "kicker," the crewman who pushes cargo bales out of flying airplanes. Logbooks and other documents found in the wreckage of the C-123K showed that it had dropped some 130,000 lbs. of military supplies into Nicaragua.

Administration officials insisted that Hasenfus was singing under duress. Said Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams: "I'm confident they are telling him, 'If you say the things we want to hear, you'll be out in no time. If you don't cooperate, you'll be in prison for 30 years.' I hope no one will believe anything Hasenfus says until he can speak freely." Hasenfus was permitted to meet briefly with his wife Sally Jean, who traveled to Nicaragua from Wisconsin. At week's end two coffins containing the bodies of Cooper and Sawyer were unceremoniously dumped outside the U.S. embassy by Nicaraguans just after an anti-American demonstration. Embassy staffers denounced the Sandinista action as "ghoulish." The bodies were later flown back to the U.S.

After last week's disclosures, even Reagan's fellow Republicans felt a sense of anger and betrayal. Said Durenberger: "I've had it up to here with Nicaragua and the way the Administration uses the CIA to run its paramilitary operations." He added, "I don't know how we can run a responsible operation down there when every Tom, Dick and Harry is trying to do their own part." Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said U.S. officials were looking the other way when arms deals skirted the edge of the law. Said he: "If Americans are led to go into Nicaragua, either directly or indirectly, either by a wink or shrug, or by somehow being given the idea they have tacit approval, then we have very real problems."

Congressional concern is tempered by the fact that both houses have passed legislation appropriating $100 million in aid to the contras, including $70 million in military assistance. The money will be administered by the CIA, as was contra aid between 1981 and 1984. All that remains now is final ratification. When that happens, as is expected this week, the aid package will become law.

Four opponents of aid to the contras, three of them Viet Nam veterans, made a last-ditch effort to scuttle the legislation by holding a hunger strike on the steps of the Capitol. Two of the strikers at week's end were on their 41st day of a water-only diet. The protesters are backed by polls showing that the public opposes aid to the contras, 2 to 1.

Last week 13 liberal Senators and 37 Representatives issued a statement noting the sacrifices of the hunger strikers and pointing out the "paradoxical" gap "between the public will and public policy on the question of aid to the contras." If in the near future the secret war with Managua proves as costly to the Reagan Administration's credibility as it did last week, such gestures may create enough of a clamor to force even the President and his hard-line advisers on Central America to pay heed. --By Michael S. Serrill. Reported by John Borrell/Managua and David Halevy/Washington

With reporting by John Borrell/Managua, David Halevy/Washington