As best as we can discern, Director Casey led Project Democracy. He used Oliver North as his field commander, juggling the pieces, carrying orders to the contras and the private benefactors. Casey separately called on Alan Fiers, whose CATF was handcuffed by the Boland Amendment, for intelligence and technical support. When diplomacy became necessary, North and Fiers could sway Elliott Abrams at the RIG. But both the contras and the benefactors had their own agendas, and the scheme was doomed from the start.

  In late 1984 North asked General Secord, partners with Iranian-American Albert Hakim, to help with arms too. Secord told Hakim the President of the United States wanted their aid. Hakim accepted after assurances they would earn standard profits, with markups of 20 to 30 percent. Energy Resources, one of their web of companies, then brokered the biggest deal, an $11.3 million FDN order for ten thousand rifles of Soviet design, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and other equipment. The company managed to get Guatemalan end-user certificates and in December 1984 began buying the arms in Portugal and Poland. Secord gave Calero the impression that weapons were being sold to him at cost.

  The best of Calero’s deals by far was with General Singlaub, who worked with Barbara Studley of GeoMilTech. Singlaub arranged the deal early and took a long time to put it together, but for his $5.3 million Calero received another ten thousand assault rifles, lots of ammunition, and some SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, possibly from North Korea. Where Secord’s prices were slightly less than another competitor’s, Singlaub’s were cheaper by almost half. Barbara Studley may have lost money on the transaction. When his shipment reached Honduras in July 1985, a local representative of the competition met the vessel. Claiming to act for the officer to whom the cargo was consigned, the competitor was able to see documents that showed how little Singlaub had paid for the arms. He then tried to get Singlaub to sell him weapons at those prices. When Singlaub refused, the man threatened to block future shipments.

  Infighting among arms dealers eventually sullied the White House itself, at a meeting among North, Secord, Singlaub, and Calero to discuss anti-aircraft weapons. Desperate to get SAMs, Bermudez had a Secord offer of $180,000 per set for British Blowpipes. Singlaub thought he could get the same missiles for $165,000, though he could not offer trainers. The deal went to Secord. When Singlaub complained, North conceded he had the better price, then went ahead to cut Singlaub out of future contra arms deals.

  Actions prohibited by the Boland Amendment became a prominent feature of the North-Calero relationship. An important instance occurred in November 1984 when the arrival of Soviet-made gunship helicopters posed a new threat to the FDN columns. Calero wanted to attack El Bluff, the Atlantic port where the gunships arrived and were assembled and initially based. He called North on a secure line on November 5, then met with the NSC aide. In addition to a political strategy for coalition with Alfonso Robelo and Arturo Cruz, Calero talked to North about “borrowing” a T-33 jet from the Honduran air force that could hit El Bluff. A single plane strike would have been too limited, and Honduran cooperation was also a factor. This plan was dropped.

  Ollie North asked McFarlane for permission to provide intelligence about El Bluff and went to the U.S. Southern Command (Gen. Paul F. Gorman) and the CIA’s national intelligence officer for Latin America (Robert Vickers) to get the data. He assembled it into a package that Robert Owen carried to Honduras. Then Vickers found himself cut off from clandestine service data on events in Nicaragua.

  In December a British paramilitary expert, David Walker, formerly commander of the Twenty-second Special Air Service regiment, met North and proposed a commando attack. North and Calero discussed the idea. Calero also consulted Singlaub about the concept, though not with specific details. A Walker associate entered Nicaragua to test the route but found such tight security around El Bluff that a raid seemed impossible. Calero abandoned the idea altogether. Although Walker received no immediate employment, he won a place on the team when Project Democracy expanded to include an airlift.

  In February 1985 North asked Rob Owen to carry intelligence, including maps, to Calero. Owen met Colonel North just outside the White House Situation Room. The two discovered that the CATF had sent maps displayed on poster board, not at all suitable to be carried by a secret courier. North called Alan Fiers with some choice words on CIA competence. Langley sent a man to Dulles airport with a reformatted packet that Owen took to Honduras.

  On a larger scale, North formulated a military plan to bring the contras victory. This involved the FDN seizing part of Nicaragua, declaring a provisional government, then holding fast. Puerto Cabezas was a likely target. The contras’ Alamo-like stand would supposedly energize support for Reagan’s policy, enable a U.S. naval blockade, and force Managua to fold. Elliott Abrams’s RIG actually discussed this scheme, but the Pentagon and CIA both rejected it as nonsense. North nevertheless used the plan with prospective donors.

  North busily suggested things the contras could do with all the money after the big Saudi donations, and warned Calero of the money’s appearance. Owen carried another packet of intelligence to Calero in April while Ollie told McFarlane that Bermudez planned a big FDN offensive in June. The contras now claimed twelve thousand to fourteen thousand men in the field in eight regional commands (declassified U.S. cable traffic confirms only half this number). Despite the troops and the weapons bought by Calero, June was most notable for a shooting incident on the Costa Rican border. Nothing indicated an FDN offensive.

  Bermudez’s lack of results led to a council of war in July. A meeting at the Miami airport hotel involved Calero, Bermudez, General Secord, and Colonel North. Secord stated his opinion that without aircraft the contras “would be driven from the field and defeated in detail,” and he volunteered to create an airlift.

  Meanwhile, as quietly as North attempted to play his own role, the press picked up bits of the story and published accounts questioning Ollie’s activities. Some in Congress noted the reports and began raising their own questions. At the NSC, McFarlane received inquiries from Lee Hamilton of the House intelligence committee and Michael Barnes, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Latin America subcommittee. These inquiries scared the White House. In answer to Hamilton, Bud McFarlane sent a letter drafted by North which asserted a “deep personal conviction” that no one on the NSC staff had violated Boland.

  When the Barnes letter arrived, McFarlane and the president were at the Reagan Ranch. McFarlane later reviewed North’s file and found at least a half-dozen memoranda that raised legal questions on NSC staff participation. Among them were the El Bluff plans, the transfers of intelligence, an abortive North scheme to pirate a Nicaraguan merchant vessel, NSC staff pressure to get the State Department to secure a multiple-entry visa for Singlaub’s trips to Honduras, and more. Ollie managed to convince Bud that his activities were defensible. Again McFarlane signed a letter drafted by North, this one to Barnes, declaring “my actions, and those of my staff, have been in compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the law.” Then McFarlane resorted to trickery in the face of Barnes’s request for documents. McFarlane refused to surrender any papers or allow Barnes’s staff access, but he invited the congressman to review documents at the White House if he wished. McFarlane then scheduled Barnes for just twenty minutes and used much of that time for verbal assurances. The problem memoranda lay to one side, immersed in a deep stack of paper in case Barnes asked to look at documents, but he did not. North squeaked by this test.

  The Barnes letter also triggered an inquiry by the Intelligence Oversight Board, the legal watchdogs. Counsel Bretton G. Sciarone took charge. He had never practiced law and had passed the District of Columbia bar exam only to get the IOB job. He had no help save a secretary. This was his first opinion. Sciarone was handed the McFarlane assurance letters and had a five-minute conversation with North and a single forty-five-minute talk with NSC counsel Cdr. Paul Thompson. Thompson gave Sciarone documents to look at—but not to retain for study—and only to make notes. These excluded the problem memoranda. Based on this, Sciarone produced an opinion, routinely rubber-stamped by the IOB and issued on September 12, 1985. It found the NSC staff activity legal. At least twice, when Alan Fiers questioned NSC staff actions, Ollie North referred to the IOB opinion. Once North handed Fiers a copy, then took it back.

  Thereafter the problem memoranda were carefully shielded: North made a list of their file locations and kept it taped to his computer. Once it began to appear there would be a real investigation, North checked the papers out of the NSC central registry and altered them, having his secretary type up revised versions. Whatever was in the IOB opinion, Oliver North knew he had a legal problem. Meanwhile the opinion did just what North wanted. Fiers would not be the sole victim of his deception. Ollie exhibited the opinion, on plain paper without letterhead or date, whenever anyone questioned the legality of his actions.

  Bud McFarlane protected North from a congressional inquiry that would have halted the NSC contra program. No doubt this was a crucial moment in Project Democracy. Unchecked, the program moved ahead to creation of an airlift force, a unit that gave the White House all the attributes of a standard CIA paramilitary operation.

  Supply headaches hampered contra action at every level. The Sandinistas did what they could to make the problem worse. In January 1985 they deployed two thousand troops on the Nicaraguan side of the border salient which contained most of the contra camps. With the soldiers came long-range rockets that could strike the contra main base at Las Vegas from inside Nicaragua. Ambassador Negroponte asked for aerial reconnaissance, which led to a Reagan administration appeal to Congress to let the CIA share intelligence with the contras. Negroponte also warned that if Reagan failed to obtain new money for the rebels, Honduran support would diminish. Already two thousand of the seven thousand contras were permanently immobilized, as many as were in Nicaragua, and the rest were able to operate only as supplies materialized. This did not satisfy the Hondurans. One evening in early February, talking in the library at the embassy residence, the Honduran chief of staff told Negroponte that the contras were in a race against time, caught between U.S. politics and Sandinista power.

  For Colonel Bermudez and Aristedes Sanchez, chief of FDN logistics, supplying the camps in Honduras and moving stuff to columns in the field consumed their energies. They mostly bought food locally. Materiel for the columns in the field went into Nicaragua on the backs of men or mules. Men could not carry much, while mule trains could not be very long without impeding action, because the FDN had no secure rear area. This translated into patrols that could not stay out very long. Bermudez sent a few columns deep into Nicaragua to exert presence, but there rebel units typically made an ambush or two, set a few land mines, and trudged back to camp. The contra conflict remained a war of alarums and excursions, not a steady exertion of military pressure against an adversary. Congress had it on high authority, from Southern Command chief Gen. Paul Gorman, that the contras were incapable of overthrowing the Managua government.

  One possibility was to give the contras real teeth by extending their reach and complicating the Sandinista strategic situation. This meant an airlift to get supplies to the front, and also doing something about Costa Rica, where the rebellion had fallen apart.

  Until 1985 only the Miskito and ARDE operated from Costa Rica. By then both groups were quiescent. The Miskito, divided internally, felt they had been used by the FDN. ARDE had been crippled by the attempted assassination of Pastora plus charges that senior commanders were running drugs. The CIA and FDN both disliked Pastora. True, Alfonso Robelo joined UNO, but as chief of the ARDE political wing he had no troops. Without Pastora the followers drifted away. Any idea the FDN could step in and gain the allegiance of these rebels soon disappeared.

  Calero tried to reactivate the southern front. He arranged with a pro-contra American farmer, John Hull, to use his land. After Robelo and Arturo Cruz joined UNO there followed a protracted effort to woo the ARDE factions. Lack of equipment furnished ARDE’s excuse; an airlift could alleviate that problem. But Secord believed that to get useful loads to the southern front in his twin-engine aircraft would require an airfield in Costa Rica to recover planes after their missions or for emergency landings. The idea of a Costa Rican airfield came up within a month of the decision for the airlift.

  An airfield represented a new degree of involvement for the Costa Rican government. For the most part San Jose had been willing to wink at contra activities, making arrests or seizures in only the most egregious cases. Still, Costa Rica’s official position remained one of neutrality. Allowing land to be used for an airfield was a positive act, an act of commission.

  Ambassador Lewis Tambs was new to San Jose in the summer of 1985. Before leaving Washington, Tambs talked to Ollie North. Purporting to speak for the RIG, North gave Tambs the task of getting the southern front moving again. Elliott Abrams gave no such order, nor did Secretary Shultz in his written instructions, but Tambs evidently thought Colonel North’s order the real one. In San Jose Tambs met CIA station chief Joe Fernandez, who told him of the need for an airfield at “Point West.” Tambs told the Costa Ricans that an airfield benefited them—getting Fernando Chamorro’s troops into Nicaragua would reduce the contra problem in Costa Rica. San Jose agreed.

  General Secord turned to an air force comrade, Col. Richard B. Gadd, to supervise site preparations at Point West, which received the code name “Plantation.” A Gadd company, Eagle Aviation Technology and Services received $100,000 for this work. Plantation possessed a 6,520-foot dirt strip, a barracks capable of housing perhaps thirty men, and an open-air shed. From the beginning there was a security breach just waiting to happen—the “secret” airstrip could be seen from the air by planes using the standard Pacific-side air approach to San Jose’s airport.

  A security breach did occur in the late fall. The instigator was Elliott Abrams on a visit to San Jose. Abrams sat with Tambs to listen as Joe Fernandez and two subordinates gave an hour-long briefing on Costa Rica activities. Not a word about Plantation. Abrams finally asked, “What about the airfield?” Both Abrams and Tambs saw the CIA station chief turn colors and thought he would have a coronary. Fernandez took Abrams aside, indicating his officers were not cleared to know about the airfield, and pointed out Plantation on a map.

  With Plantation under construction (completed in the spring of 1986), only longer-range aircraft like C-130s could be used on air missions. Here again Secord turned to Gadd, who once boasted, “Give me an account number and I’ll fly anything anywhere.” He had done just that, including moving Task Force 160 helicopters to Barbados for the Grenada invasion, and flying Delta team units on exercises and missions.

  The Reagan administration failed in a request for military aid for the contras, but it came back and won $27 million in “humanitarian” aid following an incredible series of gaffes by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra. When the State Department had to administer this aid, Colonel North sent their newly formed Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO) to Gadd for airlift services. As with Secord, he arranged these through Southern Air Transport, which made at least fourteen flights to the contras.

  Gadd played a primary role in setting up the private benefactor airlift. He found the planes. Gadd almost bought some aircraft from the Venezuelan air force before he found better ones, two Canadian versions of the C-7 Caribou, along with a C-123K from Summit Aviation, acquired in March 1986. The C-123 was another security breach—so endemic to this operation—the same one used in a U.S. intrigue to entrap the Sandinistas in drug trafficking a year earlier.

  To work the planes Gadd hired nine pilots, three loadmasters, and seven mechanics. The crews earned $3,000 a month. They had plenty of experience. The project manager—Secord called him chief pilot—William J. Cooper, had 25,000 hours in his flight logs and had been Air America’s top pilot helping Vang Pao in Laos. The deputy, John McRainey, another Laos vet, had 19,000 hours of his own. McRainey, looking for a new gig, had gone to Air America buddy James Rhyne, who now ran the CIA proprietary Aero Contractors, but found the layout not to his liking. When McRainey asked about other prospects, Rhyne told him about the Secord-Gadd business. McRainey learned that CIA knew of the project, but it was not theirs. Rhyne advised him to be careful.

  Other members were also Air America veterans. John Piowaty and Elmo Baker had flown in Vietnam. Baker had spent five years as an enemy prisoner. The youngest were Wallace B. “Buz” Sawyer and David Johnson, in their thirties. A British crew with David Walker, the former commando, as minimally capable loadmaster, and Iain Crawford for pilot, barely qualified on the C-123. Of the three American loadmasters, Eugene Hasenfus had flown with Cooper in Laos. All were nominally employed by a Quarryville, Pennsylvania, company called Corporate Air Services. The crews thought they worked for the CIA, as confirmed by Luis Posada Carriles during questioning by the FBI for the Iran-Contra special prosecutor. At the time McRainey thought they were the over-the-hill gang.

  Meanwhile Cuban exile and CIA contract officer Felix Rodriguez—he of the Che Guevara hunt—had been in Argentina and the Middle East after Vietnam. He retired with back problems in 1976, but El Salvador brought Felix back. He wanted to apply a bomber-helicopter attack method he had innovated in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. In December 1984–January 1985 Rodriguez made the rounds of Salvadoran and U.S. officials, including Don Gregg, friend and former CIA boss in Vietnam, who was now national security adviser to Vice President Bush. Felix met North. As part of his work for the Salvadorans, Felix held a commission in their air force and had free run of their base. North paid attention. That fall Ollie convinced him to add the task of liaison between the Salvadorans and the private benefactors. Working closely with Salvadoran air commander Gen. Rafael Bustillo, Rodriguez arranged for them to use Ilopango air base, soon code named Island.