Records Suggest Bigger U.S. Role Helped Contras

Telephone records and other new information about a secret air supply network that dropped weapons to Nicaraguan rebels last month suggest that the Reagan Administration was more deeply involved in the operation than officials have acknowledged.

The telephone bills from a “safehouse” used by the network’s American manager in El Salvador, Felix Rodriguez, show several calls to the office of a White House official, Lt. Col. Oliver North, whose duties have included overseeing U.S. aid to the rebels, known as contras .

Embassy Radio

Rodriguez, a Cuban-American who was formerly in the CIA, was given a high-security pass to the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador and a two-way radio linked to the embassy communication system while he was running the airdrops, officials said.

And immediately after Nicaraguan troops shot down one of the contras’ American-crewed cargo planes Oct. 5, North took a secret, previously unscheduled trip to Central America to try to limit the damage to U.S. policy from the loss, a knowledgeable official said.

The new evidence, which has come to light since the crash of the C-123 turboprop, does not show conclusively that the Administration launched or directed the operation. But even some U.S. officials admit privately that the increasing information casts doubt on their public contention that the network was entirely a private affair.

The C-123 carried guns and ammunition as well as a crew of four, including three Americans and one Nicaraguan. The sole survivor of the crash, Eugene Hasenfus, is now on trial in Nicaragua for violating that country’s security laws.

Hasenfus has said that he believed--but did not specifically know--that he was working for the CIA. Like the other American crewmen, he was a former employee of Air America, a cargo airline owned by the CIA and used extensively for covert operations in Southeast Asia before it was disbanded a decade ago.

The CIA and the White House have strenuously denied that they employed the Americans involved in the network or that they played any other role in directing the operation beyond encouraging private citizens to help the contras. Congress prohibited any U.S. military aid to the rebels in 1984; although that ban was lifted last week, it was in force when the C-123 was shot down.

“There is no government connection with that at all,” President Reagan said a few days after the Sandinistas captured Hasenfus in southern Nicaragua.

But as evidence has mounted that the Administration knew about the supply network, and that senior officials apparently maintained contact with its leaders, the government’s denials have become less sweeping.

When asked whether North had talked on the telephone with Rodriguez or other members of the supply crew while they were in San Salvador, a spokesman for the National Security Council said: “To the best of his knowledge, Col. North has never received any telephone calls from the safehouses.”

Asked for an explanation of the Salvadoran telephone records, he said: “I don’t know what they mean. There’s no conclusion you can draw from them.”

But he said he could not immediately provide an answer to the question about whether North had any relationship with Rodriguez, or any information about North’s reported trip to Central America after the crash.

The telephone bills from the safehouses, first obtained by United Press International and Newsweek, show a series of telephone calls to North’s office in Washington from Sept. 10 through Sept. 17, including four calls on Sept. 11 alone.

The bills also show several calls to the suburban Virginia office of Richard Secord, a retired Air Force major general who, according to contras sources, helped set up the supply network. North introduced Secord to contras officials, the sources said.

A State Department official confirmed that Rodriguez had been given a pass to enter the tightly guarded U.S. Embassy in San Salvador and a two-way radio from the embassy’s communications ne1953984370anti-guerrilla operations.

“He was working for U.S. policy goals in El Salvador,” the official said. “We put him on the security (radio) net. And he needed the ID because he would naturally come into the embassy to consult with the ‘Mil Group,’ ” the U.S. military advisers’ team.

Rodriguez first went to El Salvador in early 1986 with a personal recommendation from Vice President George Bush to help the Salvadoran air force, and only later began to work on the contras’ supply system, knowledgeable officials said.

But as the contras’ supply master, he remained in close contact with U.S. officials in San Salvador, and on at least one occasion had lunch with U.S. Ambassador Edwin Corr, officials said.

Hasenfus has also told reporters that the chief of the military advisers, U.S. Army Col. James Steele, visited the supply team’s safehouse and asked its members to lower their public profile.

The one U.S. agency that has stayed farthest away from the private aid operation, officials said, has been the CIA. According to one account, the CIA station chief in San Salvador told associates that he was deliberately ignoring the supply network so that he could not be accused of running it.