Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I had all the skin was burned off my face
Speaker 2: and my left hand was all the skin was burned
Speaker 2: off and the bones were sticking out.
Speaker 3: I mean, we kept saying, our interest is what's the
Speaker 3: identity of the bomber and who was the paymaster? That's
Speaker 3: what we want to track.
Speaker 1: Hey, Fiasco listeners, we are now halfway through our season
Speaker 1: on the Iran Contra Scandal, which feels like the perfect
Speaker 1: time to take a break from our regular episodes and
Speaker 1: share something a little different. It's a conversation with two reporters,
Speaker 1: Martha Honey and Tony Abergan, a husband and wife team
Speaker 1: covered the Contra War in Central America in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Martha and Tony were living in and reporting
Speaker 1: from Costa Rica. Costa Rica, which is located just south
Speaker 1: of Nicaragua, was a peaceful country that had abolished its
Speaker 1: army and was using the money on infrastructure and education.
Speaker 1: For Martha and Toni, it was an ideal place to
Speaker 1: raise their kids, but it was also a good place
Speaker 1: for a couple of reporters.
Speaker 2: Although Costa Rica was nice and peaceful, there were wars
Speaker 2: going on in Nicaragua and El Salvador and Guatemala and
Speaker 2: Costa Rica was not in those wars, but close enough
Speaker 2: that we could report on them.
Speaker 3: Except what we didn't realize at the time was that
Speaker 3: just about the time we relocated there, the CIA was
Speaker 3: also in the process of tripling the size of its
Speaker 3: operations in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: As you may remember from episode three, and it's okay
Speaker 1: if you don't, the Contras were not one unified army.
Speaker 1: There were several leaders in factions fighting against the Sandinista
Speaker 1: government in Nicaragua, and the war was being waged on
Speaker 1: two fronts, the north and the south. So far this season,
Speaker 1: you've been hearing mostly about the northern front, where the
Speaker 1: Nicaragua Democratic Force known as the FDN was operating out
Speaker 1: of Honduras. In Costa Rica, Martha and Tony were close
Speaker 1: to the southern front of the war. There, the Contras
Speaker 1: were led by a man named Eden Pastora. Pastora was
Speaker 1: a former Sandinista who had grown disillusioned and alienated from
Speaker 1: the leftist movement. The Contra forces under Pastora's command had
Speaker 1: a reputation for being less brutal than the FDN, as
Speaker 1: you'll hear in this interview, Martha and Tony's time in
Speaker 1: Costa Rica came to be defined by one incident, an
Speaker 1: assassination attempt against Eden Pastora. It happened during a press
Speaker 1: conference that Tony was covering for ABC News. A bomb
Speaker 1: killed four people and left Tony seriously injured. The incident
Speaker 1: turned out to be the beginning of an ordeal that
Speaker 1: would drag on for years, as Tony and Martha set
Speaker 1: out to figure out the bomber's identity and ended up
Speaker 1: as the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the number of
Speaker 1: Americans involved in Iran Contra. But before we get into
Speaker 1: all that, let's start with Martha and Tony talking about
Speaker 1: how hard it was to convince their editors that the
Speaker 1: Contras even had a presence in Costa Rica.
Speaker 3: The official story was that all of the infrastructure and
Speaker 3: the war against Nicaragua was out of Honduras the Northern Front,
Speaker 3: and we moved to Costa Rica, which became known as
Speaker 3: the Southern Front. And because Costa Rica had abolished its army,
Speaker 3: didn't have an army and was officially neutral, the Costa
Speaker 3: Rican government and the US government both denied that there
Speaker 3: was anything going on in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: When you arrived, could you see Contras around you or
Speaker 1: was it obvious that they were there.
Speaker 3: Well, that was the interesting thing that when we would
Speaker 3: call our editors in particularly in Washington, and say we've
Speaker 3: seen this or that, and they say, oh, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it can't be. We're told by the State Department, we're
Speaker 3: told by the White House that there's nothing going on
Speaker 3: in Costa Rica. But there would be journalists from the
Speaker 3: local press who would go up to see to the
Speaker 3: Quandra camps, and they always had to say that they
Speaker 3: went deep inside Nicaragua. In fact, when we first a
Speaker 3: few months after we arrived, we were taken up to
Speaker 3: a contra camp. It was in Costa Rica, and so
Speaker 3: that was becoming better known. And there were reports of
Speaker 3: hospitals in private homes right in our neighborhood that were
Speaker 3: hospitals for wounded Contras that they were being brought down
Speaker 3: to San Jose for recuperation. Sometimes it would be exposed
Speaker 3: by neighbors or whatever and would make it into the
Speaker 3: local press. So it was just anybody who opened their
Speaker 3: eyes would see what was going on. And then we
Speaker 3: very quickly began to develop sources who told us much more.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was at that point the government of
Speaker 3: Costa Rica was really very much in collaboration with the US,
Speaker 3: and the deal was that they were getting enormous amounts
Speaker 3: of economic aid in return for the creation of the
Speaker 3: Southern fronting the presidents allowing the presence of it, and
Speaker 3: just to be.
Speaker 1: Clear, like this is eighty three eighty four, is there
Speaker 1: anything in the public realm about the US using Costa
Speaker 1: Rica as a base for contra activity.
Speaker 2: There was much more attention to what was going on
Speaker 2: in the north from Honduras because that was where the
Speaker 2: FDN and the main contra force was, and just about
Speaker 2: all the news was about that, and it was it
Speaker 2: was hard to convince our editors and people, especially Americans,
Speaker 2: It was a much harder sell trying to convince them
Speaker 2: that there was something important happening in the on the
Speaker 2: Southern Front, because it just wasn't it wasn't nearly as
Speaker 2: developed as what was going on in Honduras.
Speaker 1: But did you manage to file stories that got published out? Well?
Speaker 3: I think one of the early, you know, really big ones.
Speaker 3: Tony was filming for ABC Television and I was writing
Speaker 3: for the New York Times as a stringer, so it
Speaker 3: never had my byline was writing for them and we
Speaker 3: actually uncovered what was Eden Pastora's secret radio station that
Speaker 3: he always said was broadcasting from the hills of Nicaragua.
Speaker 3: In fact, it was broadcasting from the hills of San Jose.
Speaker 1: Tell our listeners real quick, who is so?
Speaker 3: Eden Pastora was the main contraur anti Sandinista leader on
Speaker 3: the Southern Front, and there were a number of different
Speaker 3: sort of small armies that were under his coalition, which
Speaker 3: was known as ARDI. And he officially denied he was
Speaker 3: getting CIA for a long For the first period of
Speaker 3: time that we were there, he denied that he was
Speaker 3: getting any CIA help. The fiction was that he was
Speaker 3: running his own.
Speaker 1: War and it was so important to him and others
Speaker 1: to conceal his location, not just for like military strategic reasons,
Speaker 1: because but because Coast Eco was officially not supposed to
Speaker 1: be there all.
Speaker 3: In the way, that was the condition under which he
Speaker 3: was allowed to operate there.
Speaker 1: And did that story sort of establish as fact that
Speaker 1: there was in fact a contra operation being run out
Speaker 1: of Custrica.
Speaker 3: Yes, it did, and there were other there were there
Speaker 3: were beginnings to be other reports. As I recall, there
Speaker 3: was an expose in Newsweek that had also talked about
Speaker 3: and there were you know, there were beginning to be reports,
Speaker 3: but this was one of the early sort of real
Speaker 3: you know, we sort of caught them.
Speaker 1: What do you think accounts for the difference between the
Speaker 1: character of the contras in the north and the seemingly gentler,
Speaker 1: less brutal contras are just driving in the south.
Speaker 2: In the north, I mean, these were you know, Somosa's
Speaker 2: National Guard, and they continued to commit atrocities. They would
Speaker 2: go into villages and just shoot everybody and things like that,
Speaker 2: and none of that was happening on the southern front.
Speaker 2: I mean, the people in the south were much different.
Speaker 2: They were peasants from southern Nicaragua who didn't like the
Speaker 2: heavy handed reforms being made by the Sandinistas. There were
Speaker 2: some people from the Atlantic coast who didn't like the
Speaker 2: imposition of a Spanish based culture. They were generally not Catholic.
Speaker 2: They were Moravian or other Protestant groups. So the Sandinistas
Speaker 2: were trying to change their schools and change their culture,
Speaker 2: and they rebelled against that. And militarily they were not
Speaker 2: very competent. I mean, they didn't have a lot of
Speaker 2: military experience or very good military training. The arms they
Speaker 2: were getting from the US were like the dregs of
Speaker 2: the arms. They were, you know, the sort of the
Speaker 2: leftover stuff. And they would complain that even the uniforms
Speaker 2: they were getting, their camouflage uniforms were made for like
Speaker 2: six foot tall Americans, these enormous boots and the pants
Speaker 2: that dragged down on the ground, shirts that were reached
Speaker 2: their knees and stuff. So they were well equipped and
Speaker 2: well suited to really do any real.
Speaker 1: Fighting despite the aid coming from the US.
Speaker 3: Yes, there were periods of time when money was flowing
Speaker 3: and arms were supposed to be coming in, and still
Speaker 3: the Southern Front was always the step child. And one
Speaker 3: of the questions was was money being ripped off? And
Speaker 3: I think, you know, some of the work that we
Speaker 3: did in Miami and really looking deeper into the drug
Speaker 3: trafficking and so on, it was apparent that some of
Speaker 3: the Countra leaders were ripping off money and there was
Speaker 3: just no priority given to either training or equipping the
Speaker 3: sort of the cannon fodder on the Southern Front.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you just heard Martha reference drug trafficking. I
Speaker 1: get asked a lot about the drug angle of the
Speaker 1: Iran Contra story. Is it true that the Contras were
Speaker 1: smuggling cocaine into the US, is it true that American
Speaker 1: officials put a blind eye to it? According to Tony
Speaker 1: and Martha, the answers to these questions are gauzy and
Speaker 1: unsatisfying at best.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I think we know, I mean,
Speaker 3: we've learned looking at drug trafficking and in a number
Speaker 3: of parts of the world, is that it tends to
Speaker 3: thrive where they are covert operations. So I think that
Speaker 3: the operations out of Costa Rica on, you know, based
Speaker 3: out of the north, on these airstrips that were sort
Speaker 3: of a classic cover for moving drugs. It was at
Speaker 3: the time when first marijuana and then cocaine was coming
Speaker 3: in from Columbia and they needed sort of stop over
Speaker 3: places in Central America. A lot of the countries in
Speaker 3: Central America, Guatemalan so on, became bases for drugs stopping.
Speaker 3: But the Contra operations provided, you know, particular ability to
Speaker 3: move the drugs.
Speaker 2: The CIA had this problem that they had to move
Speaker 2: arms in through these very small airstrips carved out of
Speaker 2: the jungle, and they needed pilots willing to do that,
Speaker 2: and there was not too many pilots are willing to
Speaker 2: land on these very short landing and takeoff runway airstrips,
Speaker 2: and the only the most experienced people at doing that
Speaker 2: were drug pilots. So they ended up recruiting a bunch
Speaker 2: of these pilots. And these people had a background in drunks,
Speaker 2: so they were figuring, well, they're flying these planes down
Speaker 2: full of arms, unloading the arms and flying back empty,
Speaker 2: that's a wist. So they would fly back with drugs
Speaker 2: that started to come up from Colombia or other places
Speaker 2: and America, and they would five them back into the States,
Speaker 2: often with actually the cover of the CIA.
Speaker 1: So, just as a table setting question, what would have
Speaker 1: been in it for the US or the CIA to
Speaker 1: put a blind eye towards this or to encourage it.
Speaker 3: It's sort of lay what level are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Because there were the CIA operatives or contract employees in
Speaker 3: the field, the pilots, and these various other sort of
Speaker 3: lower level officials who were clearly profiting from it. The
Speaker 3: CIA operation the Southern Front needed this kind of pilots,
Speaker 3: and so they kind of turned at least they turned
Speaker 3: a blind eye. The central question that or one of
Speaker 3: the central questions we have never been able to fully
Speaker 3: resolve as how far up the line of command did
Speaker 3: profiting from the drug operations go. And I don't think
Speaker 3: we know that.
Speaker 1: If you're curious to learn more on the drug smuggling
Speaker 1: aspect of Iran Contra, it's worth looking up the findings
Speaker 1: of a Senate subcommittee chaired by John Kerry that looked
Speaker 1: into the issue in nineteen eighty seven. In their official report,
Speaker 1: Kerry and his investigators concluded that there was no evidence
Speaker 1: that Contra leaders were personally involved in drug smuggling. However,
Speaker 1: there was substantial evidence of drug smuggling on the part
Speaker 1: of individual Contras, as well as Contra suppliers, Contra pilots,
Speaker 1: mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout
Speaker 1: the region. The report also found that US officials working
Speaker 1: in Central America failed to address the drug issue out
Speaker 1: of fear that doing so would jeopardize the war effort
Speaker 1: against the Sandinista government. We'll be right back. The drug
Speaker 1: trade was not the only murky story that Martha Honey
Speaker 1: and Tony Averrigan came across during their time in Central America.
Speaker 1: At one point, Tony and Martha got worried about a
Speaker 1: dramatic new development on the southern front of the Contra war.
Speaker 1: It involved Eden Pastora, the former Sandinista who is now
Speaker 1: the primary Contra leader in Costa Rica. Pastora was going
Speaker 1: to hold a press conference at one of his bases
Speaker 1: in the Nicaraguan jungle.
Speaker 3: We had developed some very good sources.
Speaker 1: Thiseteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: This is nineteen eighty four. This is May nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: But leading up to that we had developed it, particularly
Speaker 3: one intelligence officer within the Quantum movement who became a
Speaker 3: very important source. And we later learned that he was
Speaker 3: Costa Rican and he was actually had infiltrated to try
Speaker 3: to find out for a proral Costa Ricans what was
Speaker 3: going on inside. And so one of the things that
Speaker 3: Andras said was that the CIA was really putting pressure
Speaker 3: on Pastora to align the of in Front with the
Speaker 3: Northern Front, with the known as the FDN, Somosa's old
Speaker 3: National Guard in the Northern Front, and Pastor was under
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure. Pastor at that point had never
Speaker 3: said that he was getting CIA money, but.
Speaker 1: In the align, what does it mean that they wanted
Speaker 1: him to do so?
Speaker 3: They wanted they wanted for instance, Pastor to take all
Speaker 3: of his military orders out of Honduras.
Speaker 2: Rather, they were switching under the command of the FDN.
Speaker 3: So that he would no longer really be the general
Speaker 3: in the South, but he would be taking his orders
Speaker 3: from the North and basically from the CIA, that they
Speaker 3: would be directing it. And so one of the things
Speaker 3: that I was told a few days before the press
Speaker 3: conference was that the CIA had given Pastor an ultimatum,
Speaker 3: a thirty day ultimatum that was up May thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four, that he had to by then publicly say
Speaker 3: that he was aligning with the FDN in the North.
Speaker 3: And Pastor Or basically called the press conference to say
Speaker 3: publicly for the first time that he was getting CIA
Speaker 3: support and that he was announcing that he was breaking
Speaker 3: his ties with the CIA and going to basically run
Speaker 3: his own operation out of the South. So that was
Speaker 3: the purpose of the press conference, because wow.
Speaker 1: So this was no this was no routine press conference.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no. And because I knew this, I
Speaker 3: decided not to go to the press conference, and I
Speaker 3: wrote a story for the New York Times. There was
Speaker 3: a front page story the next day saying that the
Speaker 3: CIA put this thirty day ultimatum on Pastor. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that the bombing was going to happen.
Speaker 1: You said the CIA, yes, you were able to say
Speaker 1: that it was.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes. And so I stayed home and I.
Speaker 2: Was stringing them for ABC Television, and you know, I
Speaker 2: had to go there because we needed actually tape of
Speaker 2: Pastora saying it. So we had a Toyota jeep and
Speaker 2: we used that and a bunch of others to go
Speaker 2: up travel up to the north and then get into
Speaker 2: these small boats to go down to the San Juan
Speaker 2: River that separates Nicaraguay and Costa Rica and up to
Speaker 2: the place called Lopenka. But there was one person there
Speaker 2: who was not part of our regular group. He wasn't
Speaker 2: one of the Costa Rican journalists or the foreign journalists
Speaker 2: that were regularly doing these these trips up to the
Speaker 2: country camps. I went and talked to him and he
Speaker 2: said that he was a Danish photographer and was going
Speaker 2: to cover the press conference. And I mean, I wasn't
Speaker 2: so unusual. I didn't think that was anything alarming about that. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we got up to the country camp known as Lipenka
Speaker 2: just after sundown and it was just really a one
Speaker 2: room shack piled high. Inside, there were piles of rice
Speaker 2: bags that people were using the seats, and there were
Speaker 2: various contras with AK forty seven and sixteen's over their shoulders,
Speaker 2: milling around and like a high table in the center,
Speaker 2: and Pastora got behind that. So just as he began speaking,
Speaker 2: he motioned to a young woman who was part of
Speaker 2: his force, woman named Rosita, to bring him a cup
Speaker 2: of coffee. We found out later that the bomber, the
Speaker 2: person who came to the press conference with four pounds
Speaker 2: of Sea four plastic explosive in a Haliburton camera case,
Speaker 2: was this very the Danish journalist who I had said
Speaker 2: hello to early in the morning, and he put that
Speaker 2: down underneath the counter on which Pastora was leaning and talking,
Speaker 2: and then went outside and set it off by remote control.
Speaker 2: But this young woman handed him a cup of coffee,
Speaker 2: and as she did so, her foot hit the camera
Speaker 2: case knocked it on its side. So then when the
Speaker 2: glass went off, it went up and down and made
Speaker 2: a huge hole in the floor and blew the roof
Speaker 2: off the building. Finally I realized that everything was black,
Speaker 2: and there was this moaning and crying, and there was
Speaker 2: all this dust in the air and everything. Well, it
Speaker 2: killed three journalists in Rosita, and there were nearly twenty
Speaker 2: people injured, and some very people lost arms and legs
Speaker 2: and eyes. And I had all the skin was burned
Speaker 2: off my face, and I had a big cut on
Speaker 2: the side of my face, and then my left hand
Speaker 2: was all the skin was burned off and the bone
Speaker 2: were sticking out, and I had a big hole the
Speaker 2: size of a tennis boar a little bigger than that
Speaker 2: in my side. I didn't think I was going to die,
Speaker 2: but I thought if I did die, it was going
Speaker 2: to be because of this hole on my side. So
Speaker 2: I tore off my shirt and stuffed it into the hole.
Speaker 2: And then there was only one boat there, and the
Speaker 2: people who were released injured ran down to the boat
Speaker 2: and left the most injured behind. And I ended up
Speaker 2: being on the ground for nearly twelve hours before any
Speaker 2: the boat had to make a four hour round trip
Speaker 2: to go down to the nearest rural hospital from there.
Speaker 2: And well, Martha was there, and she can tell you
Speaker 2: about about what happened to that, and.
Speaker 3: So just backtracking a little, so I hadn't gone to
Speaker 3: the press conference because I already knew what Pestora was
Speaker 3: going to say. So. I wrote a story for the
Speaker 3: New York Times, filed it and was sitting at home
Speaker 3: with our daughter and the phone rang and it was
Speaker 3: another American journalist and I said, oh, I thought you
Speaker 3: were at the press conference. He said no, I overslept,
Speaker 3: I didn't go. But do you have the radio on?
Speaker 3: I said no. He said, well, I'm really sorry to
Speaker 3: tell you this, but there's been a bomb that's gone
Speaker 3: off at the press conference, and they're reporting that at
Speaker 3: least one American has been killed, and they haven't said
Speaker 3: who it is, and so I was kind of like,
Speaker 3: you know, my world fell apart, and I began calling
Speaker 3: everybody I could think of in the Contras, in the
Speaker 3: US embassy and the coast streaking government, and everybody said, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're hearing these reports. You know, some people have died,
Speaker 3: including an American, and we but we don't have any names.
Speaker 3: So of course I thought the worst, and eventually good
Speaker 3: Canadian friends of ours came over and the woman stayed
Speaker 3: with our kids and I went to the hospital in
Speaker 3: San Carlos where they were bringing in the people, and
Speaker 3: while I was standing there, I noticed that there was
Speaker 3: someone sitting outside in a hospital garb but sitting in
Speaker 3: a wheelchair with a beard, just sitting there very quietly
Speaker 3: outside the hospital. And at one point one of the
Speaker 3: nurses came over to me and said, are you the
Speaker 3: woman who has come to collect And she pointed to
Speaker 3: this guy and I said, who is that and she said, oh,
Speaker 3: he's a Danish journalist and he wasn't injured and he
Speaker 3: says that a woman's coming to collect him and he's
Speaker 3: waiting for her. And said, no, no, it's not me,
Speaker 3: and didn't think anything more of it. I remember when
Speaker 3: Tony finally arrived in the last ambulance. I was following
Speaker 3: Tony into the swinging doors and I remember glancing and
Speaker 3: seeing that the wheelchair was empty. This guy had been
Speaker 3: sitting in that we learned two days later was the bomber.
Speaker 3: And he managed to get himself out on his own
Speaker 3: and then he disappeared.
Speaker 1: More with Martha Honey and Tony Averergan. After a quick
Speaker 1: break after the bombing at Eden Pastora's press conference, Tony
Speaker 1: Averergan had to be flown to an American hospital where
Speaker 1: he was treated by a world class hand specialist. After
Speaker 1: two months in the hospital, Tony recovered and kept his hand,
Speaker 1: but the episode would consume Martha and Tony's lives for
Speaker 1: years to come.
Speaker 3: I was contacted by the Committee to Protect Journalists in
Speaker 3: New York and they had put together, you know, very
Speaker 3: modest fun and they said, could you undertake an investigation
Speaker 3: and find out who was responsible? And I said, sure,
Speaker 3: you know, I thought it would be pretty easy, and
Speaker 3: so he thought it put it be easy. I thought,
Speaker 3: a couple you know, a couple of weeks, a couple
Speaker 3: of months, will you nail this down?
Speaker 1: And was it easy as you thought?
Speaker 3: No, No, it was a nightmare. It was and it
Speaker 3: still is. You know, we're not we don't. There's still
Speaker 3: unanswered questions. But we initially started out, you know, the investigation.
Speaker 3: So I went back to meet with this contrac guy
Speaker 3: in Costa Rica in San Jose and set up a
Speaker 3: meeting with Andras, the intelligence officer within Pastora's operation who
Speaker 3: was really reporting for the pro new Trility folks. And
Speaker 3: I said, okay, who did it? And he said, well,
Speaker 3: it was either the extreme right or the extreme left.
Speaker 3: I said, that's helpful. He said yeah, he said, but
Speaker 3: he said, but that started us on that path. And
Speaker 3: because of the thirty day ultimatum, we assumed that the
Speaker 3: CIA was responsible.
Speaker 1: The assumption would be that the CIA was trying to
Speaker 1: stop the press conference from happening or right.
Speaker 3: I think that our view was that we just wanted
Speaker 3: more information on We wanted a good investigation of the bombing,
Speaker 3: and clearly the US wasn't helping. In fact, the US
Speaker 3: had taken the one piece of the bomb that remained,
Speaker 3: which was the detonator, and someone from the Southern Command
Speaker 3: in Panama on American came to the Costa Ricans and said, oh,
Speaker 3: we'll examine that and figure out who made the bomb,
Speaker 3: and they took it away and it disappeared. No report
Speaker 3: was ever given. So systematic the US was trying to
Speaker 3: block a serious investigation. The Costa Ricans at that point,
Speaker 3: we're not doing a serious investigation. They did subsequently, and
Speaker 3: so we a year later we published our report on
Speaker 3: the Lapenka bombing, which we had just a rich array
Speaker 3: of sources who were reporting, you know, sort of confirming
Speaker 3: what our hypothesis was. And so we published this report
Speaker 3: a year after the bombing for the Committee to Protect
Speaker 3: Journalists and also published a Spanish edition in Costa Rica.
Speaker 1: Was your central allegation that the bomber, like the identity
Speaker 1: the bomber, it is what it is, But was your
Speaker 1: central allegation that he had ties to the US government
Speaker 1: and that he had been ordered to carry out the
Speaker 1: bombing by the Y.
Speaker 3: Yes, we were given the name from some of our
Speaker 3: sources in Miami and sources in Costa Rica who were
Speaker 3: mainly contra sources, and we knew that he wasn't the
Speaker 3: Danish journalist. I mean that was he was traveling on
Speaker 3: a stolen passport and so on, and that was all
Speaker 3: we had. So you know, for a long time, our
Speaker 3: leads all seemed to point to the CIA. We still
Speaker 3: did not know the real name of the bomber, and
Speaker 3: we had this other known the gear, but we assumed
Speaker 3: that wasn't a real name, and we didn't know his
Speaker 3: real identity, and we didn't know how where the bomb
Speaker 3: had been put together. We didn't know those details. Who's
Speaker 3: the paymaster. So we began talking about, okay, could we
Speaker 3: bring a lawsuit that would help to get more information
Speaker 3: through depositions, would be able to do a serious investigation.
Speaker 3: So we began calling. I mean, we had some lawyer
Speaker 3: friends in the States and they all said, this is
Speaker 3: a really difficult case. You're Americans. The journalists who went
Speaker 3: to the press conference left from Costa Rica. It happened
Speaker 3: in Nicaragua. You know, just jurisdiction is a huge issue.
Speaker 3: Plus you're up against it looks like the US government
Speaker 3: and national security issues and so on, and so it's
Speaker 3: going to be very, very hard, and we really couldn't
Speaker 3: find anyone who would take the case.
Speaker 1: In June of nineteen eighty six, the public interest lawyer
Speaker 1: Danny Shehan filed a sprawling lawsuit on Martha and Tony's behalf.
Speaker 1: The suit alleged a conspiracy involving an American farmer living
Speaker 1: in Costa Rica named John Hull, as well as a
Speaker 1: group of Cuban Americans who worked with him. Later, it
Speaker 1: was confirmed that Hull's ranch had been used as part
Speaker 1: of the American government's secret effort to aid the Contras.
Speaker 1: Shean's lawsuit also targeted multiple individuals who would later become
Speaker 1: implicated in the Iran Contra scandal. Among them was Major
Speaker 1: General Richard Seacoord, whose story you heard in episode four.
Speaker 1: Martha and Tony say the sheer scale of the lawsuit
Speaker 1: caught them off guard.
Speaker 3: We had just because we were so overwhelmed with things
Speaker 3: going on in Costa Rica. We hadn't paid a lot
Speaker 3: of attention to what he was putting together. We had
Speaker 3: no idea it was going to be twenty eight, twenty
Speaker 3: nine people and so on. I mean, we kept saying
Speaker 3: to him, our interest is what's the identity of the
Speaker 3: b and who was the paymaster? That's what we want
Speaker 3: to track. And suddenly it was this lawsuit with you know,
Speaker 3: all of these different people, a lot of names. We
Speaker 3: started to charging a broad conspiracy, with La Panka being
Speaker 3: you know, sort of one piece of it, but a
Speaker 3: much broader conspiracy going back both many years and involving
Speaker 3: just this fast network.
Speaker 2: As he never showed us anything before it was filed
Speaker 2: with the court. We never he kept us away from
Speaker 2: every court appearance he went himself, and he really kept
Speaker 2: us marginalized. But he kept saying, I have more information
Speaker 2: about the people you were interested in, and you know,
Speaker 2: but he never he never produced that information. And we
Speaker 2: started complaining about the nature of the was wuit. He
Speaker 2: kept saying, well, nobody cares about the bombing.
Speaker 1: He had to make it about the secret government that
Speaker 1: was running, right, and so they he named Richard Squel,
Speaker 1: Lord Robert Owen right, who was one of North's people.
Speaker 3: He did not name North, and they said why and
Speaker 3: he said, because he is the one person working for
Speaker 3: the government, and if we name someone working for the government,
Speaker 3: they'll throw it out of national security grounds, which is
Speaker 3: probably a correct legal decision, even though for us, you know,
Speaker 3: Hull and North were the centerpieces of what we were
Speaker 3: looking at.
Speaker 1: Then you knew North's name at this point or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you understood him to be the person who is
Speaker 1: directing the Southern Front?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did anything Did anything good come out of the lawsuit?
Speaker 1: In your mind? Did anything? Did any information shake loose
Speaker 1: as a result of Yes, at.
Speaker 3: The end of the day, you know, it did help
Speaker 3: to dismantle the Southern Front, the whole investigation that not
Speaker 3: only we began, but then other people began looking at
Speaker 3: Hull and the Cuban Americans and so on, and that
Speaker 3: definitely had a huge impact. And then the secret airstrip,
Speaker 3: the little Santa Lana airstrip in the Hasenthuss plane and
Speaker 3: so on.
Speaker 1: So all of that point came down a couple of
Speaker 1: months after the lawsuit was filed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so all of that began this whole process
Speaker 3: that eventually unraveled the Southern Front, or helped feed into
Speaker 3: this whole growing awareness of the Iran Contra scheme.
Speaker 1: Yes, you lost the lawsuit.
Speaker 3: We lost the lawsuit, Yes, but there was a lot
Speaker 3: of good information that was turned up which eventually led
Speaker 3: to what we believe is the truth that the bomber
Speaker 3: was actually working for the Sandinistas.
Speaker 1: The Sandinistas, despite all their suspicions about CIA involvement in
Speaker 1: Eden Pastora's attempted assassination, Martha and Tony concluded that it
Speaker 1: was most likely the Sandinistas who were responsible for me.
Speaker 1: The confusion around this incident underscores just how tangled and
Speaker 1: bewildering the Iran Contra story is as a whole. How
Speaker 1: many moving parts it involved, how many different fault lines
Speaker 1: and alliances there were. It was really convoluted. And I
Speaker 1: think that's also why the allegations of CIA complicity and
Speaker 1: Contra drug smuggling have never been fully fleshed out or
Speaker 1: definitively proven. The deeper you dive, the more reason you
Speaker 1: have to doubt every story you hear, and the harder
Speaker 1: it gets to pin anything down. Why do you think
Speaker 1: these allegations are so hard to well prove is one thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's obvious why they're hard to prove, But why
Speaker 1: are they hard to believe? Why is it hard for
Speaker 1: people to sort of accommodate the notion that the CIA
Speaker 1: might have a network of airstrips that are being used
Speaker 1: to run guns and drugs.
Speaker 2: You know, there's the shooting down of Hasumfusu's playing. That's
Speaker 2: a straightforward, simple story. Everybody can understand that, and a
Speaker 2: few paragraphs that the plane was carrying arms and you
Speaker 2: have evidence and it was shut down. The story of
Speaker 2: the supply of arms that are contra or the connections
Speaker 2: between the CIA and drug trafficking, it's much more, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't it just doesn't fit into a fast news story.
Speaker 2: It's just not an easy thing to explain. It takes
Speaker 2: a while to explain to see.
Speaker 3: I think it's something more than that. I think that
Speaker 3: the press did, over time and over a lot of
Speaker 3: objections from US officials and Costa Rican officials, did come
Speaker 3: to understand and accept that the Hull Branch was being
Speaker 3: used as the southern front for the Quantras, and that
Speaker 3: there were these Cuban Americans involved and so on, they
Speaker 3: were able to understand that and for a long period
Speaker 3: of time, and still today in Central America there was
Speaker 3: you know, there's been a strong feeling that it was
Speaker 3: the CIA that did it. In fact, the Costa Ricans
Speaker 3: under the next president launched an investigation which we had
Speaker 3: nothing to do with. But I think that the whole
Speaker 3: drug connection was very hard. We never had a drug
Speaker 3: plane that fell from the sky, you know, with Countras
Speaker 3: on it or CIA operatives on it. This is such
Speaker 3: a hard story to report, and oftentimes you don't have
Speaker 3: heard evidence, and so it's piecing together from stories, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's the kind of thing that can be discredited
Speaker 3: because there's so much money behind it and so much
Speaker 3: interest in keeping a lid on it. And so I
Speaker 3: think that that piece of it has not been fully
Speaker 3: either acknowledged or accepted because we didn't have the heart,
Speaker 3: you know, we just didn't never have the real hard evidence.
Speaker 1: That's it for our interview with Martha Honey and Tony Abragan.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this special bonus episode of Fiasco
Speaker 1: Iran Contra Coming up, episode five, in which members of
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration try to stem the fallout of Iran
Speaker 1: Contra going public.
Speaker 3: After Watergate, we all understood that the cover up could
Speaker 3: be worse than the crime itself.
Speaker 1: Fiasco is a production of Prolog Projects and it's distributed
Speaker 1: by Pushkin Industries. This episode was produced by Ula Culpa
Speaker 1: with editorial support from Andrew Parsons and me Leon Mayfock.
Speaker 1: Our music is by Nick Silvester. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Space for Relations, and our artwork is by Teddy
Speaker 1: Blanks at chips n y Audio, mixed by Rob Buyers,
Speaker 1: Michael Rayfield and Johnny Vince Evans. Special thanks to Luminary
Speaker 1: and thank you for listening. Binge the entire season of
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