Met With Contra Supply Head, Bush Says

Vice President George Bush said Saturday that he twice met Max Gomez, the Bay of Pigs veteran identified as the head of a secret air operation to supply weapons to anti-government rebels in Nicaragua, but he denied that Gomez was employed by the U.S. government.

“To my knowledge, I met with him twice, shook hands with him a third time,” Bush said, according to an Associated Press report from Charleston, S.C., where the vice president was campaigning for Republican candidates.

“To the best of my knowledge, this man is not working for the United States government,” Bush said. “His role was to help the government of El Salvador put down an insurrection, put down a Marxist-led revolution.”

The Times reported Saturday that Gomez has told associates that he reported to Bush about his activities. The report also said that Bush’s national security adviser, Donald P. Gregg, recommended Gomez for a job with the El Salvador military, which served as a cover for his role in supervising supply flights for the Nicaraguan rebels known as contras.

The contras’ supply flights originated at the Ilopango airfield, which is owned by the El Salvador air force but is also used by the U.S. government, and at another airfield in Honduras.

Bush said he would “deny unequivocally” that he was running the operation. However, the sources quoted by The Times did not say that Bush was running the operation, only that he had met Gomez and received reports from him.

Meanwhile, a rebel spokesman said the contras will continue to use clandestine flights to supply arms and other equipment to their front-line forces despite the crash of a plane last Sunday that killed two Americans and resulted in the capture of a third.

“We will continue supplying our forces by whatever means are called for,” said Bosco Matamoros, spokesman for the Nicaragua Democratic Forces, the largest contra organization. “The war cannot be suspended.”

A contra official said that a C-123 cargo plane--the sister of the craft that was shot down by the Nicaraguan army--arrived at the contras’ Aguacate base in Honduras on Saturday, ready to resume the flights.

Elliott Abrams, U.S. assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, said Eugene Hasenfus, the U.S. crewman who survived the crash of the C-123, probably believed he was working for the CIA although the agency actually had no connection with the network of private individuals and foreign governments aiding the rebels.

Hasenfus, now a captive of the Sandinista government, told a news conference in Managua that he was hired by the CIA and that the operation was run by Gomez, whom he identified as a CIA agent.

Abrams, the Administration’s chief Latin America strategist, said former CIA operatives were employed at all levels of the program established to keep uthe rebels fighting despite congressional restrictions on direct U.S. support.

Under current U.S. law, it would be illegal for the U.S. government to be involved in any way in providing supplies to the contras, although new legislation that would permit such aid is close to final passage.

Abrams, interviewed on Cable News Network and later by telephone by The Times, reiterated the Administration’s denials that the CIA or any other agency of the U.S. government was directly involved in the supply effort. But he said it was not surprising that the program’s managers sought to hire people with CIA backgrounds, because they had experience in covert operations.

“They came up with some people who were in Air America, which had connections with the CIA in Vietnam, and who were in Vietnam, and who were in the CIA,” he said. “You’ll find a close pattern of relationships here. You’ll find some old school ties. You will not find any current ties.”

Under those circumstances, Abrams said, it was “perfectly plausible” that Hasenfus--a former Air America employee who was a $3,000-a-month “cargo kicker” aboard a C-123 cargo flight--thought he was working for the CIA.

“When you get down to the level at which Mr. Hasenfus was working . . . I very much doubt whether he was exactly sure who was paying him,” Abrams said.

Gomez, who is also know as Felix Rodriguez, participated in the ill-fated CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Sources said Saturday that Gomez was employed by the CIA as recently as the 1970s.

Bush is a former CIA director, and Gregg is a retired executive of the intelligence agency.

The House Western Hemisphere subcommittee has scheduled hearings starting Wednesday on the ill-fated cargo flight in an effort to determine if the U.S. government was involved. The House Intelligence Committee also was considering an investigation.

Matamoros, in a telephone interview, said the contras must use airdrops to resupply their forces because the “front line” in Nicaragua is a 60-day march from rebel bases in Honduras and a 10-day march from bases in Costa Rica.

He insisted that the contras had received no help from the U.S. government, which would violate the law.

“Our relationship was with a private organization and not in any way linked to the United States government,” Matamoros said.

He said the cargo flights were conducted by Corporate Air Services, a firm that he said was owned by William J. Cooper, the pilot killed in the C-123 crash, and headquartered in Panama. Federal aviation records show that Corporate Air Services has the same Miami address as Southern Air Transport, a company previously owned by the CIA.

Matamoros said he did not know where the contras obtained the money to pay for the flights, but he said it was “farfetched” to suggest that it came from the U.S. government.