Word: nicaragua
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...Grab your things, you're leaving." With those words, delivered briskly by a prison commander, American Mercenary Eugene Hasenfus learned that he was a free man. A few hours later, the baggy-eyed gunrunner savored his first taste of liberty since his plane was downed over Nicaragua on Oct. 5 while delivering weapons to contra rebels. Standing beside Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, he said, "Today has been a day of great surprises, a day I'll surely remember in my heart forever." By nightfall, Hasenfus was tucked away safely at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala City, and 24 hours after...
...mind. By playing Santa Claus, the Nicaraguan President plainly hoped to score points with the American public at a moment when President Reagan's own Yuletide fortunes were looking bleak. "This is our Christmas and New Year's message to the American people from the people of Nicaragua," said Ortega. "It is a message of peace, and couldn't be more concrete." Washington's response was Bah, humbug! "If the Sandinistas truly want to make a gesture," snorted State Department Spokesman Charles Redman, "it should be toward those in Nicaragua who oppose their oppressive policies...
...been carrying maps in his socks of military installations at the time of his arrest. The Nicaraguan government announced that, like Hasenfus, Hall would be tried before a revolutionary court. But where Hasenfus' mission had been clear from the moment of his arrest, Hall's purpose in Nicaragua remained murky. He was permitted brief visits with a U.S. embassy official and with Connecticut Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, who helped secure Hasenfus' release. Dodd reported that Hall "is in good health, he's being treated well." The portrait of Hall that began to emerge was of a troubled loner with...
...first earned him a silver medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics. The second was cultivated at home in Dayton, where his late father, Dave Hall, was mayor. Sam served one term in the Ohio legislature; his brother Tony is a liberal Congressman from Ohio who opposes Reagan's Nicaragua policy. According to Lawrence Hussman, an English professor who helped Sam chronicle his life story in an as-yet unpublished book, the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics was a turning point. "Sam feels very strongly about the Olympics as an institution," says Hussman...
After receiving military training in Israel in the late 1970s, Hall traveled to Lebanon, El Salvador, southern Africa and Nicaragua. Hall, however, does not view himself as a mercenary. "He calls himself a volunteer counterterrorist," says Hussman. "He would consider it an insult to take money for himself." There have been personal battles as well. Hall has spent time in the mental health unit of a hospital, fought a drug problem and been through three divorces. He has apparently been a lone operator since his expulsion from C.M.A...