Word: hasenfus
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Dates: during 1986-1986
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...third American, Eugene Hasenfus, was captured, and said the air supply operation, which included dropping weapons and ammunition to Contra forces inside Nicaragua, was directed by two Cuban-Americans who worked for the CIA. The CIA, the Reagan administration and Southern Air have denied responsibility for the supply operation...
...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...
...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...