Word: gomez
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
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...
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...
Hasenfus said 24 to 26 "company people" assisted the program in El Salvador, including flight crews, maintenance crews and "two Cuban nationalized Americans who worked for the CIA." Hasenfus identified the Cuban-Americans as Max Gomez and Ramon Medina...