Downed Plane Yields Bonanza : Coded Cards, Logs Trace Supply Flights for Contras

Documents recovered from an American-piloted transport plane shot down early this month in Nicaragua while delivering supplies to U.S.-backed rebels are filled with enough secret codes and exotic destinations to satisfy even readers of paperback thrillers.

On plastic-coated cards taken from the plane, listing radio frequencies and codes, guns were called apples, ammunition was referred to as oranges, explosives were pears. The downed C-123K airplane was code-named Toad 1. Pilots and crew members called themselves nicknames such as Buzzard, Horse and Dude. The U.S. government was designated Playboy, Washington was named Top Floor and El Salvador--home base for the flight--was New Look, apparently a reference to a spinoff from Penthouse magazine.

The Rambo-like jargon surrounded a mission that involved flying cargo planes into heavily guarded airstrips at such steamy destinations as Comayagua and Mocoron, Honduras; Key West, Fla., and Ilopango, El Salvador, and dropping supplies to the guerrillas, or contras, fighting the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

According to one mud-soaked card, a contra unit code-named Sofia was waiting on Oct. 5 for one such shipment. Smoke signals--five puffs in the form of the letter L--were to mark the spot where supplies were to be dropped.

But on Oct. 5, the only smoke that crew members on Toad 1 saw over southern Nicaragua was coming from the right wing of their own plane. Before the “apples” and “oranges” reached Sofia, a Sandinista soldier locked onto the plane with a Soviet-made surface-to-air missile and brought it down.

“Buzzard,” the pilot, died in the crash, as did two other members of the crew, and to the consternation of “Playboy,” an American survivor--Eugene Hasenfus, 45, of Marinette, Wis.--and documents from the plane fell into Sandinista hands.

The downing of the C-123K not only dealt the Reagan Administration a propaganda blow, but brought Managua its biggest known intelligence bonanza of the nearly five-year rebel war.

The cache, released in part to U.S. reporters here, is not only the stuff of spy novels, but the first blueprint of an extensive international lifeline from the United States to the jungles of Nicaragua.

Photocopies of pages from “Buzzard’s” flight log book and the radio code cards were furnished to reporters. Two small wire-bound note pads purported to be his original logs were briefly shown to reporters, who were not allowed to inspect them closely. Sandinista officials said all the documents were recovered from the downed aircraft or the crew members’ personal effects.

The radio cards clearly indicated, in typewritten form, the codes and what each stood for. It is unclear whether the cards were permanently installed in the plane or were carried by the crew members.

Until Thursday’s final passage of $100 million in new funding for the contras, the U.S. government had for two years been prohibited from providing the insurgents with direct military aid. But the documents recovered from the plane suggested that perhaps even without direct involvement by the CIA, an elaborate covert supply network was firmly in place early this year.

Airfields, Officials Listed

Among the recovered items bearing names and addresses are references to U.S. air bases, airfields of U.S. allies in Central America where American personnel routinely work, and the names of presumed U.S. citizens who participated in the program.

Sprinkled elsewhere are references to well-known U.S. officials in El Salvador; Col. James Steele, the head of U.S. military advisers there, and David Passage, until earlier this year the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador.

It is not clear whether the crews were actually in contact with “Top Floor”--Washington.

Such American connections hint at a wide U.S. government role in the operation. Hasenfus, now facing trial before a revolutionary court here, has told the press that he was working for CIA operatives in El Salvador. The Reagan Administration has denied involvement in the supply network.

Whatever the case, the documents provide a window on how often the contra supply system worked, where it operated and how it might proceed in the future.

In all, the logs document more than 70 Central American flights, many of which probably carried arms and supplies to the contras, just as the ill-fated Oct. 5 flight did.

The log book belonged to Wallace Blaine Sawyer, Jr., 41, from Magnolia, Ark., the pilot and a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, who died in the crash. A business card found in the crash gave Sawyer’s nickname as Buzz, and a list in the plane gave his radio code name as Buzzard.

Flights to Angola

His log book suggested that he not only flew supply runs for the rebels this year in Central America, but also flew dozens of other flights in planes belonging to Southern Air Transport to cities in Angola and Colombia, as well as to military airfields in the United States. Southern Air Transport, a Miami-based company, was once owned by the CIA, although the company now disavows any connection.

Sandinista army intelligence chief Ricardo Wheelock said Sawyer’s 1985 destinations included U.S. Air Force bases at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Robins Air Force Base in Georgia.

An entry in his log for Feb. 6, 1986, showed a flight to McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento.

The log showed Sawyer made his first appearance in Central America on a January, 1986, flight between Comayagua, Honduras, and San Jose, Costa Rica, piloting a C-130 Hercules transport.

Site of U.S. Facility

Comayagua is the site of Palmerola Air Force Base, a joint U.S.-Honduran facility that is the main military installation for the United States on Nicaragua’s north flank. The code letters to the airport in San Jose match those for Juan Santa Maria Airport, Costa Rica’s primary commercial airport.

In January, Sawyer flew a Hercules from Miami to Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador. According to Salvadoran and Nicaraguan rebel sources, Ilopango has been a contra way station since 1983.

Since February, a series of flights has taken Sawyer and his planes through Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica, with occasional trips to the United States.

He then made a series of runs between Ilopango and Aguacate in Honduras, a U.S.-built dirt airstrip that has been used as the main base for contra supply flights.

A March flight originated in Ilopango, the logs show, but no destination was given. The flight lasted about 90 minutes, enough time to make, among other things, a drop of supplies into Nicaragua.

Sawyer took trips to Rusrus, a base in eastern Honduras where Miskito Indians who are battling the Sandinistas have taken refuge, and to Mocoron, the main airfield in that part of the country.

On July 7, 1986, a log destination was given as DZ, presumably for drop zone.

Some Night Flights

Hasenfus, whose job was to shove parachute-equipped cargo from the planes, made his first appearance in the log on July 28, 1986. Two flights he reportedly took on that day began and ended in Aguacate, Honduras, with no other destination given. Each flight took more than three hours.

Some of the flights occurred at night, according to the log, including one trip out of Aguacate on July 31 that lasted almost four hours. There was no destination listed, and it was unclear whether the plane landed elsewhere.

The documents also suggested a role for Southern Air Transport in the operation, despite denials from company officials.

On Feb. 20, 1986, William Langton, the president of Southern Air, was listed aboard flights between Aguacate and Ilopango. In Sawyer’s log book, the five-flight itinerary ended in the nation of Belize. The plane’s listed registration can be traced to an aircraft leased by Southern Air.

Southern Air had employed Sawyer as a pilot in 1985. Southern Air officials said Friday that Sawyer did not work for them this year.

Destinations Disguised

The discovery of the detailed log book is surprising, given efforts by Sawyer and his colleagues to keep their activities hidden with coded radio messages and false names. All the participants used code names. Destinations were also disguised; for example, Comayagua was referred to as Fruit Stand.

Colorful verbal disguises also obscured the types of airplanes used: The two Canadian-built Caribou transport planes were called Eagle 1 and Falcon 2; the C-123K, Toad 1; a Maule short-runway landing and takeoff plane, was The Toy. The Hercules was called The Whale, a DC-6 was Fantastic 6 and a Boeing 707 jet was Fantastic 7.

Despite the windfall of information and the loss of the plane, Sandinista officials are not convinced that the incident will end the contra supply operations, although new shipments might be delayed.

“They (the contras) must evaluate our capabilities. They know now that our missiles work,” said military intelligence officer Wheelock. He is confident that the Sandinistas will shoot down more planes when the flights resume.

“We missed plenty of times,” Wheelock said. “Now we are infinitely more sure of ourselves.”