Nicaragua Captive : He’s Last of Private Army, Hall Declares

NEW YORK — Sam Nesley Hall, arrested 10 days ago on espionage charges in Nicaragua, says he is the sole remaining member of a private “American foreign legion” formed in 1984 after talks with U.S. military officials.

He spoke in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” program.

Hall, who is in a Sandinista prison in Managua, said he knows of no relationship between the group--called “Phoenix Battalion”--and the CIA or the National Security Council. Congress is investigating whether those agencies violated any laws in aiding U.S.-supported anti-Sandinista rebels.

At one time the battalion had 540 members, he said, but it was later disbanded and he is now the lone member.

Pentagon Meeting

“It was started by being invited to the Pentagon on the 28th of November” in 1984, he said.

Asked who invited him, he responded: “I can’t say that. That name I will give behind locked doors at a congressional hearing.”

Phoenix Battalion “was formed as an American foreign legion,” Hall said. “I was picked as an American to go overseas and was given some money, about $12,500 . . . by certain people, private industry.”

The battalion, he said, was designed to act as “an independent army where it was a counterterrorist, a paramilitary unit, where we would be based in different locales around the world.”

Hall asked “60 Minutes” to check his story with two Navy officers now retired, Capt. William Hamilton and Cmdr. Francis Fane. Both acknowledged having encouraged Hall to organize an American foreign force, “60 Minutes” reported.

Hall, who was arrested while he was sneaking around a Nicaraguan military air base with a map in his sock, said he had been told of “a big Soviet buildup” at the base.

“I came down here simply to look,” he said.

“My main concern was to find out what they’re doing new in construction. Now we’re talking fuel tanks, so on and so forth, what’s underneath covered buildings,” he said.

He said he was arrested on his second trip to the base, after getting inside by sharing a taxi with soldiers. After the soldiers got out, he said, “I was taking pictures out the back with a small, small camera. And they caught me with the camera.”

Broke Drug Habit

Hall, a former Olympic silver medalist and Ohio state representative, said he joined the Phoenix Battalion after shaking a drug habit when he decided to “finally start doing something for somebody else instead of myself.”

He trained as a commando in Israel and served as a counterterrorist in South Africa, Angola and El Salvador--and as commander of the contras’ Miskito Indian forces in Honduras, he said.