CIA Hiding Contra Role, Probers Say : Officials Find Evidence of Agency’s Illegal Supply Flights From Honduras

Federal investigators, armed with new evidence of a broad CIA role in illegally aiding the Nicaraguan contras , believe some agency officials are attempting to conceal the extent of their participation in Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s secret military airlifts to the rebels, several informed U.S. officials said this weekend.

The new evidence centers on Honduras, where congressional and FBI probes have established that at least one mid-level CIA officer regularly coordinated clandestine helicopter flights last year to supply the contras with arms and other material, the officials said.

At the time, the CIA was prohibited by law from providing or delivering such supplies to the rebels.

Second Nation Linked

Honduras becomes the second Central American nation, after Costa Rica, in which CIA employees have been tied to North’s weapons airlift. The discovery has strengthened investigators’ belief that senior CIA officials could not have been ignorant of such extensive aid to North and his private associates, as the agency has asserted.

The Honduras airlifts and the activity in Costa Rica are under investigation by House and Senate select panels on the Iran-contra scandal, by independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh and by CIA Inspector General Carroll L. Hauver.

“Another body is going to fall,” one source said of the Honduras probe.

“There has been an incremental process” in uncovering additional CIA officials’ roles, an official said. “We expect that one name will lead to another.”

In recent weeks, however, that process has been hampered by events involving actual and potential CIA witnesses to North’s Central American operations, several officials said. Those officials, including investigators and others knowledgeable about the CIA role in North’s network, refused to be identified.

Those officials said a key CIA witness in the probe, the former CIA Costa Rica station chief known as Tomas Castillo, has retracted earlier statements in which he linked his agency superiors to North’s arms pipeline.

His recantation apparently leaves investigators without firsthand testimony that any senior CIA official knew of or aided North’s arms airlifts other than former Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, who died May 5 of pneumonia.

The CIA has consistently maintained that Castillo was a renegade agent who acted alone and against CIA policy in joining North’s contra aid pipeline.

Discipline Withheld

Castillo’s change of story also comes at a time when the CIA has shelved, at least for now, the inspector general’s recommendation that the agency discipline him and more than a dozen other current and former CIA employees linked to the Iran-contra scandal, sources said.

Several other CIA figures in the Iran-contra affair, including some linked so far only to the secret arms shipments to Iran, have been told that disciplinary actions against them have been placed on hold or abandoned, sources said.

Officials were wary of asserting that Castillo’s retractions and the CIA’s own decision to delay sanctions against its employees are evidence of any organized effort to cover up the agency’s role in the scandal, an act that could border on obstruction of justice.

“It could be that a number of people have committed themselves to a story that is now unraveling, bit by bit, up the chain of command,” one source said. “The IG (inspector general) and the agency appear to be on top of the situation, but they do not know how far it goes.

“The question is whether . . . they are genuinely cleaning up,” the source said.

Other informed officials said this weekend, however, that they believe Castillo changed his story after being assured, explicitly or otherwise, that his job would be protected even if he accepts sole blame for his role in North’s airlift.

“Castillo is being told by the agency that, if things work out, as they expect they will, he’ll have a career,” one said. “The line is that Casey knew, and no one else did.”

“He has recanted,” the second official said. “He’s been prepared to take the hit.”

CIA Tells Cooperation

CIA spokeswoman Kathy Pherson, contacted Friday, said the CIA “is cooperating with executive and congressional investigations.

“We’ve provided a lot of documents, and lots of employees have been interviewed,” she said. “I don’t see how the agency can respond publicly. It’s the job of investigators to come up with a report, and we’ll have to await that.”

Because of the developments in tracing the CIA’s involvement in the secret airlifts, the inspector general has delayed completion of a planned report to President Reagan on the issue, sources said.

Sources close to the contra investigations say the agency has volunteered some evidence of internal wrongdoing in recent weeks but remain unconvinced that the CIA is committed to bringing out all the facts.

Hauver, prodded by the select congressional committees, produced some evidence of the CIA’s involvement in North’s Honduras operations, sources said. That evidence shows that at least one mid-level CIA officer directed illicit helicopter flights last year carrying supplies for the contras.

Several crewmen on the contras’ private airlift have said they frequently saw unmarked helicopters ferry cargo in and out of the contras’ main air base at Aguacate in eastern Honduras. The helicopters were piloted by Americans and appeared to take orders from a CIA officer code-named “Mick” who was permanently stationed at Aguacate, they said.

One former crewman, Iain Crawford of Fayetteville, N.C., said Mick allowed him to ride on a flight last May that carried more than 200 pounds of plastic explosives from Aguacate to a contra landing zone inside Nicaragua. He said Mick helped to unload the cargo, which contras picked up and carried into the jungle.

“We’d see helicopters come through (Aguacate) two or three times a week,” Crawford said. “They were definitely loaded with supplies, but it was difficult to tell what they were carrying. They’d come in from Palmerola (the main air base used by the CIA in central Honduras), refuel, and head south” toward the Nicaragua border.

‘Credible Witness’

One official said Crawford had proven to be “a highly credible witness” before investigators.

More than Costa Rica, the Honduras operation has become a focus of investigations into potential CIA ties to North’s arms pipeline, officials said. “People have confessed to helicopter flights,” said one source, “but it is likely to go well beyond that.”

At present, investigators have no firsthand evidence that Honduran CIA operations were explicitly approved by the agency’s higher-ups, one official said. “The question is whether they were approved in some other, tacit way.”

In discussions, U.S. officials and people close to the North airlift operations describe an informal reporting chain for the arms pipeline that led from Central America to North’s office and into middle levels of the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters.

Some of those agency officials’ names have turned up in potentially incriminating documents discovered by investigators. Until he recanted his testimony, however, Castillo was the only CIA participant to specifically identify agency officials in that chain.

Aid to North Admitted

Castillo at first denied any major role in North’s airlifts but has since admitted helping North to arrange shipments of arms and other supplies from Costa Rica to contra drop zones inside southern Nicaragua. His assistance included relaying weapons requests and airdrop instructions via a National Security Agency coding machine North had given him.

After the Tower Commission on the Iran-contra affair turned up new evidence of Castillo’s role last January, CIA officials reportedly planned to dismiss the former Costa Rica station chief, sources said.

Faced with dismissal, however, a “very bitter” Castillo told investigators early this year that several superiors knew of and at least tacitly approved his work for North.

Those he named reportedly include the head of the agency’s Latin American division; the head of its Central America Task Force, Alan D. Fiers, who used the code name “Cliff Grubbs;” Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, a CIA counterterrorism official, and Clair George, the deputy director of operations who is the agency’s top covert action official.

One well-placed official said agency veterans will seek to persuade incoming CIA director William H. Webster, if he is confirmed by the Senate, to go easy on Castillo and others tied to North, arguing that firings or strict punishment could create disgruntled renegade employees who would be security risks.

Whether such a tack would succeed is a matter of some debate.

“There wasn’t any indication that what (Castillo) had done was illegal, but it was against policy, and nobody tried to stop it,” an official said. “These guys all fell in line with it, because it was doing their careers good.”

One former CIA official said: “Dewey (Clarridge) and Alan Fiers can’t possibly skate out of this. They were deeply involved.” But he said, “A lot of people in between didn’t agree with what went on.”

Documents found in North’s office also suggest that Fiers often advised the contras and the Americans in their private aid network, congressional sources said. A U.S. official and a contra official also said Fiers was directly involved.

But they said Fiers appeared to have insulated himself from any direct role in supervising illicit operations; instead, he gave direction to North.

“Fiers made a decision to use Ollie as his go-between,” said a former aide to North. “Ollie recognized that he was going to end up the fall guy. He used to say: ‘In the end, this will all come down on my head.’ ”