World

By John Greenwald.

A wry smile crossed Congressman Gerry Studd's face last week as he confronted Assistant Secretary of State Eliott Abrams, a chief spokesman for the Reagan Administration's Central American policies. Testifying on Capitol Hill, Abrams had just flatly denied any U.S. government ties to an American cargo plane that Sandinista troops had shot down in Nicaragua on Oct. 5. Unconvinced, the Massachusetts Democrat snapped, "If the U.S. government is not paying for this, who is, the A-Team?" Equally frustrated, Democrat Peter Kostmayer of Pennsylvania charged that a "great deal of information is being held back."

The angry tone of the congressional hearing underscored the deepening mystery surrounding the downed Fairchild C-123K transport, which was carrying tons of arms and supplies to the contra rebels for their simmering U.S.-backed war with the Marxist-oriented Sandinistas. The jungle plane crash cast tantalizing light over the shadowy world of U.S. gunrunners in Central America -- and raised serious questions about the extent and legality of U.S. involvement there.

Shortly after his capture by Sandinista troops, former U.S. Marine Eugene Hasenfus, 45, the sole survivor of the four-man crew, linked the ill-fated supply mission to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Moreover, a passel of memos, business cards and logbooks found aboard the aircraft produced a trail of American names and phone numbers from California to Washington. The evidence raised an outcry in the capital, and for good reason: any direct American involvement in the Nicaraguan war would violate a ban laid down by Congress in 1984.

The debate over the downed plane sharpened last week as speculation about the U.S. role intensified. In Washington, Vice President George Bush admitted that he had twice met Max Gomez, one of two Cuban Americans whom Hasenfus identified as CIA agents in charge of contra supply missions from El Salvador's Ilopango air base, from which the downed plane had flown. Bush called Gomez, whose real name is Felix Rodriguez, a "patriot" who was advising El Salvador in its war with Marxist guerrillas.

That brought angry denials from El Salvador's President Jose Napoleon Duarte and Military Commander General Adolfo Blandon. They were embarrassed by the public linkage of Ilopango, where U.S. military advisers are stationed, to the contra flights. Indeed, the spotlight on Ilopango's role as a base for supplying the contras, long an open secret in Central America, brought new problems for Duarte as he struggled with the impact of the Oct. 10 earthquake in the capital of San Salvador that left more than 600 dead and thousands homeless. Duarte last week received a promise of $50 million in U.S. disaster relief from visiting U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, who strove to downplay the contra problem. Shultz said the shot-down contra supply plane "was not part of the government's operation."

In Managua the Sandinistas announced they would try Hasenfus in a political tribunal scheduled to begin this week. Charged with violating laws guaranteeing order and public security, he could face 30 years in prison. The announcement was a rebuff to U.S. officials who have dismissed the Anti- Somocista People's Tribunals, as they are formally known, as kangaroo courts. According to the America's Watch Committee, a New York City-based human rights group, just one of the 559 defendants who came before the tribunals in 1985 was acquitted.

Hasenfus was allowed only one minute with his wife Sally last week, and eleven minutes with a consular officer from the U.S. embassy in Managua. When she returned home to Marinette, Wis., Sally Hasenfus said her husband looked "very, very stiff." Said she: "I told him, 'We're not going to give up, and we're going to get you out of here.' " In Atlanta former Attorney General Griffin Bell announced that he would fly to Managua to defend Hasenfus.

Amid the increasingly furious finger pointing and accusations last week, a picture began to emerge of the support network behind the Hasenfus flight and the well-organized program of contra supply missions. The downed C-123K was part of a fleet of aging cargo planes being used to ferry weapons and materiel to the contras mainly from Ilopango and Aguacate air base in Honduras. The contras reportedly bought the equipment and paid the crews in part with private funds and money borrowed from American and other banks, using as collateral a $100 million aid package that Congress released late last week as part of its omnibus 1987 spending bill.

The contras have also received funds from anti-Communist groups like the Council for World Freedom, headed by retired Army Major General John Singlaub. Singlaub, who has denied any involvement with the C-123K flight, met earlier this year with General Juan Rafael Bustillo, the Salvadoran air force chief who reportedly issued ID cards to U.S. gunrunners that gave them access to the Ilopango air base.

Major supply missions, which included deliveries of tons of arms and ammunition in addition to such items as boots and medicine, intensified in August. Speedy delivery was crucial. The end of the rainy season next month, together with the expected arrival of the first $40 million installment of U.S. aid, should increase the contras' ability to hit targets inside Nicaragua -- as well as their vulnerability to Sandinista attack. The guerrillas' preparedness would have suffered badly, say U.S. experts, if the contras had waited for final ratification of the U.S. aid. Moreover, contra leaders consider a few successful engagements essential to maintain continuing congressional commitment to the aid program. That meant getting guns and equipment to guerrillas in the field as quickly as possible.

Washington's role in the supply runs, legally forbidden until the aid bill became law, remained a matter of heated dispute. U.S. diplomats in Central America privately say that both the CIA and the State Department knew of the operations but were careful to avoid becoming directly involved. While Gomez had previous CIA ties, they said, he probably volunteered to aid the contras as a private operative.

Even so, experts testifying last week before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs were not convinced of Washington's innocence. Robert White, Ambassador to El Salvador under Jimmy Carter, charged that the "CIA bears primary responsibility for U.S. (supply) operations inside the Ilopango airport." White's claim was buttressed by a nine-month report conducted by the staff of Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Kerry, who released the study last week, said it "raises serious questions about whether the U.S. has abided by the law in its handling of the contras over the past three years. Until the questions are fully answered, we believe Congress should halt assistance to the contras."

That advice went unheeded. Meanwhile, Vice President Bush was busy extricating himself from suspicions that he knew of the supply missions. In January 1985 Bush, a former CIA director, was introduced to Gomez by Donald Gregg, the Vice President's national security adviser, who had served with Gomez in counterinsurgency operations in Viet Nam. Gomez paid a second visit to Bush last May to talk about the military situation in El Salvador. "He never discussed Nicaragua with the Vice President at all," a Bush spokesman said.

Bush was just one of the U.S. officials caught last week in the ever widening web of intrigue surrounding the downed plane. Two days after Edwin Corr, the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, denied knowing Gomez, a Corr aide said the two men had lunched together. Meanwhile, Philip Buechler, a director in the State Department's Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office whose card was carried on the C-123K flight by Pilot William Cooper, angrily denied any connection with the supply runs. Said he: "Maybe it's none of anybody's business. Whatever happened to the right of privacy, to basic freedom of association in this country?"

Indeed, distinctions between public and private acts were increasingly clouded last week in the wake of the downed aircraft. At week's end new documents from the plane linked Co-Pilot William Sawyer Jr. to flights to American military bases in the U.S., Central America and the Caribbean. The evidence suggested anew that the final mission of the C-123K was more than a purely private matter.

With reporting by John Borrell/San Salvador and Ricardo Chavira/Washington