THE CONTRAS' LITTLE LIST
Nairn, Allan
The Contras' Little List An aide to 'President Calero' talks about 'bad guys' slated for assassination BY ALLAN NAIRN As Congress once again takes up the issue of aid to the contras, new...
...Adams also acknowledged participating in discussions at Calero's Miami home regarding plans to assassinate rival contra leader Eden Pastora...
...The assassinations, says Terrell, were part of the Pegasus plan and were scheduled to be carried out on March 1, 1985...
...Louis, Missouri, is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who trained with the Pentagon's elite DELTA Force command unit and worked as an instructor for a Navy SEAL team...
...The mercenaries included Tom Posey, who headed Civilian Materiel Assistance, a private group which ostensibly supplied the contras with boots, medicine, and other forms of non-military aid...
...I'm pro-contra...
...If I get a million dollars, I don't care where it comes from," Adams says, "if I need that money for a war...
...Research for this article was funded, in part, by contributions in memory of The Progressive's late Senior Editor, Sidney Lens...
...The mission was cut short when the mercenaries' presence in Honduras was reported in the Memphis Commercial Appeal...
...He led me to believe that the White House knew about this...
...Owen's position as far as I knew was reporting the Southern Front to Adolfo and then reporting Adol-fo's activities to Washington...
...Calero confirms Adams's service, calling him "a good man and a gentleman," who is "very experienced and helped train our people in security measures...
...According to Terrell, the targets included foreign minister Miguel d'Escoto and Nora Astorga, now Nicaraguan ambassador to the United Nations...
...The contra 'Why don't the drug dealers return something back to fighting communism and come up with a couple million dollars, and we'll go down there and kick some Sandinista ass.' leaders organized a 1984 shipment from New Orleans of assassination weapons for the Pegasus team, including SSG set-trigger sniper rifles and PBC-3 military-issue night-vision devices...
...I'm so dedicated to Adolfo Calero that if you would show me film footage of Adolfo Calero participating in illegal activity I would swear the film had been doctored...
...On May 30, 1984, Pastora escaped mortal injury when a bomb exploded at a press conference he was holding in the isolated Nicaraguan border village of La Penca...
...I jumped up in one meeting," Adams recalls, "and said, 'Let me tell you people something...
...Calero confirms meeting frequently with Robert Owen, who kept him abreast of activities on the contras' Southern Front, but says he thought that Owen was acting strictly as an interested private citizen...
...When asked whether the force he and Adams led in Nicaragua in early 1985 actually carried out assassinations of lower-level officials in the countryside, Terrell said, "I can't comment on that one...
...Why don't the drug dealers return something back to fighting communism and come up with a couple million dollars, and we'll go down there and kick some Sandinista ass.'" Adams also recalls second-hand accounts of cocaine smuggling by a Cuban veteran of the CIA's Bay of Pigs invasion and by others active in the contras'Southern Front...
...If the CIA was not aware of the drug running, "then they weren't doing their job," says Adams...
...They were always at the house...
...During the Boland Amendment period, says Adams, Calero was visited repeatedly by Robert Owen, a consultant to Oliver North and the National Security Council and later a State Department contractor helping manage dispersal of humanitarian aid to the contras...
...A month later, Adams temporarily left Calero's staff to lead a Pegasus force including eight American mercenaries into the Mosquitia in Northern Nicaragua, he says...
...Speaking on the record in a two-hour interview, Adams said he helped maintain a list of Managua civilians—including members of the clergy as well as Sandi-nista politicians—who would be marked for assassination when FDN forces entered the Nicaraguan capital...
...Pastora was resisting pressure from the U.S...
...It's a loaded gun...
...The biggest "bad guy" for many contra leaders was Eden Pastora, who was targeted for assassination "because of his lack of cooperation," says Adams...
...Calero knew and approved of the scheme, he said...
...The Agency, however, did bail him out in the summer of 1985 when he was arrested in San Jose, Costa Rica, for carrying an Uzi submachine gun while providing security for a meeting in a shopping-center parking lot between Calero and an unidentified American...
...Adams says he learned about "house-clearing" while training with the DELTA Force in 1983...
...He's beyond reproach...
...He told me that the right people knew what we were doing...
...In a series of meetings at the residence of Adolfo Calero, Posey proposed an American-led incursion into Nicaragua called Operation Pegasus, Adams recalls...
...Still a contra supporter, Adams remains intensely loyal to Calero and his cause, referring to the FDN leader as "President Calero...
...Adams says the CIA agents worked on a daily basis with Oscar Montes, the FDN finance director who handled all incoming money and disbursed cash to commanders going into the field...
...His service was interrupted between January and March of 1985, when he led a team of American mercenaries and a Pentagon intelligence agent on a two-month combat mission inside Nicaragua called Operation Pegasus...
...I was told the Company made a phone call...
...Adams has heard no mention of money being diverted from Iran, but he remembers Calero saying: "Look, even if the Americans pull their funds out, you think this war's going to stop...
...If the FDN would occupy the city, we would go in and pull these people out and exterminate them...
...The assassination list was prepared in January 1985, says Adams, and was to come into play when FDN forces reached Managua...
...Joseph Adams, thirty-six, of St...
...Terrell, who commanded the Pegasus force, says the assassination plan was first proposed in September 1984 by a former CIA man who said he was passing on "suggestions from Washington...
...Adams, a tournament marksman who goes by the nickname "Shooter," says he met Calero's family while working in Miami as a private detective and joined Calero's entourage in September 1984...
...Calero had continuous meetings with the CIA...
...The list came to me because I probably was the one who'd have to squeeze on some of these guys...
...Adams remembers at least a dozen such meetings in 1984 and 1985 directly concerned with military activities: "I saw inventory sheets of what weapons were down there—what they were doing, troop movements, and some intelligence on the border...
...At the end of the two-month mission, one of the Americans, Paul Douglas Johnson of Alabama, an aide to Posey, told Adams that he was working for the Defense Intelligence Agency and had been sent in to participate in the fighting and monitoring of the group's activities...
...When I was with them the job of the CIA was basically orchestrating the FDN's maneuvers and serving as observers...
...Rob Owen was Adol-fo's contact," Adams says...
...Among the bad guys were a nun, some priests, politicians in Managua, "and of course Daniel Ortega," Adams recalls...
...But by the time we got to the police station, the chief invited us in for coffee, and I never even had to identify myself," he recalls...
...In December of 1984, Adams says he was approached in Miami by Tom Posey of Civilian Materiel Assistance...
...intelligence community...
...Calero dealt frequently with Israeli arms dealers, Adams says, adding that in the late summer of 1985, a freighter arrived in Honduras "from the Middle East" laden with weapons for the contra forces...
...law, specifically the Boland Amendment which barred U.S...
...Israeli dealers, according to Adams, were actively involved in supplying arms to the contras...
...He said Pegasus's goal was to be pumping smoke in Managua when the F-15s came over," Adams recounts...
...And Adams says he personally met with representatives from South Korea...
...Adams will not speak in detail regarding the group's operations—which he says included incursions into rural villages—but claims to have killed more than twenty Sandinista soldiers...
...Eight persons died and twenty-eight were injured in the blast, including American journalist Tony Avirgan, who together with his wife and colleague, Martha Honey, has filed suit in Federal court in Miami charging Calero, other contra leaders, and American supporters with planning the La Penca bombing...
...The evidence comes from an American mercenary who served as chief of security for Adolfo Calero, head of the Nicaraguan Democratic Front, the largest contra organization, and has been substantiated by another American mercenary's account to Senate investigators...
...They wanted me to train an elite urban team for house-clearing techniques...
...Adams says he was paid by the FDN and never worked for the CIA, though he says he maintains informal ties to the U.S...
...You people have supported all these drug traffickers for all these years...
...Adams says he and his security aides were hauled off by the metropolitan police...
...In December 1984, a group of contras and American mercenaries met at Calero's house to plan a second attack on Pastora, Adams says...
...We didn't need them and they kept their distance...
...They had no authority to deal with us in any way," he says...
...You've all got boats, guns, and stacks of drug money laying around Miami...
...Along with Posey was his aide Jack Terrell, who has since become a critic of the contras...
...The reason I had access to the list is because my specialty was close-in urban tactics," Adams explains...
...Adams says the list was prepared in consultation with the contra leadership, including FDN military commander Enrique Bermudez...
...He defends the assassination plans in particular, insisting that they were legal and proper—"just basic elementary combat...
...The average soldier in the FDN wouldn't know who these people were from anybody, whereas we would be able to profile them and know where they were working and living...
...I met with Owen several times with Adolfo...
...You simply go in and kill all the bad guys and get the good guys out...
...Adams says he was fully debriefed on his contra experiences by FBI agent Tim Turner of the Bureau's anti-terrorism unit in an interview in St...
...A group of Cuban-American financial backers, many of them long-time anti-Castro CIA operatives, gathered in Miami in January 1985 to hear contra leaders describe their plans...
...Several incidents that Adams relates appear to constitute violations of U.S...
...Calero denies any knowledge of the assassination list or plots to kill Pastora...
...Louis early last year...
...You'd consult with Enrique or whoever and they'd tell you who the bad guys were, they would tell you who had to go...
...Adams is proud of his own actions and those of his associates, and he hopes to rejoin the contras in combat some time in 1987...
...Central Intelligence Agency to unite with the FDN, which he accused of corruption and links to the National Guard of Anastasio So-moza...
...All I get out of you is a bunch of talk...
...Calero was told of the planning and indicated his support, Adams adds...
...As Calero's personal bodyguard, Adams says he accompanied the FDN leader to most of his appointments...
...Terrell has given a similar account to investigators for Senator John Kerry, who is looking into contra activities...
...project is one of national reconciliation, not assassination," he says...
...He said we were being watched continually, and it was important that we proved ourselves...
...During Adams's service to Calero, which spans the time of the Boland Amendment, the FDN leadership and the CIA "were very close," Adams says...
...One country Calero mentioned, says Adams, was "China...
...Government aid to the contras from October 1984 to October 1985, and the Neutrality Act, which prohibits U.S...
...Adams also speaks of the contras' involvement in illegal drug traffic, and he says the contras received aid from several countries...
...In DELTA, we were trained for hostage situations," says Adams...
...I'm not a liberal," Adams says...
...Adams was Calero's security chief and constant companion from the fall of 1984 to the spring of 1986...
...The plan was discussed in detail with Calero and Enrique Bermudez, Terrell says...
...The Contras' Little List An aide to 'President Calero' talks about 'bad guys' slated for assassination BY ALLAN NAIRN As Congress once again takes up the issue of aid to the contras, new evidence points to the involvement of the most senior contra leaders in widespread assassination plots, including a plan to assassinate Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega and rival contra leader Eden Pastora, as well as several members of the Nicaraguan clergy...
...I could tell you of countries giving us money that you wouldn't believe...
...Our Allan Nairn is a free-lance writer in New York City...
...Calero denies being in contact with the CIA during the Boland Amendment period...
...citizens on American soil from engaging in acts of war against a foreign power...
...It seemed like Rob was reporting to Adolfo on the Southern Front activities...
Vol. 51 • March 1987 • No. 3
