The Truth About CIA Hit Teams, Black Ops & Covert Action | Ric Prado (throwback)
The Team House
Former CIA operations officer Ric Prado recounts his journey from a child refugee fleeing the Cuban revolution to a paramilitary specialist
Key takeaways
- Ric Prado escaped Cuba at age eight via the Catholic Church's Peter Pan Program to avoid communist persecution.
- His military service began as an Air Force Pararescueman (PJ) motivated by a 'debt of honor' to the United States.
Main topics
- Cuban Revolution and Exile
- Air Force Pararescue (PJ) training
Notable quotes
The ultimate price that a man can pay for the freedom of a child. Letting them go.
Conclusion
A profound look at how personal history and a sense of duty shaped a c
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) Hi, everyone. Welcome to the team house. This is episode 145, I believe. Yes, episode 145. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. I'm back after my little stay in quarantine last week, but JC and his boys didn't want me quite yet, so I'm back. And we are here. We're very happy to be here tonight with our guest, Rick Prado. He is the author of Black Ops, The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior. Started off kind of an interesting entry into the Central Intelligence Agency, coming from being an Air Force pararescueman, and then a paramilitary guy, and then rising to be the CTC Chief of Operations. So a very interesting career. I really enjoyed this book. And Rick, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for having me, guys. Absolutely, man. And I was wondering, you know, as we ask all of our guests about their origin story and kind of their upbringing and where they came from and you like several of the other guests we've had on the show are Cuban American. And that experience and that immigration experience, I think, had a really profound effect on you as a person, as a man. Could you tell us about that, about your family and how you came to America? Speaker 1 (1:15) Yeah, I'll be honored to. I was about seven or eight years old when the revolution was peaking. I lived in a town near the mountains where Che Guevara supposedly was operating in. And so at that age, I actually saw firefights right in front of my house. Literally one guy that was on the other side of the window and I was looking through the window to see what was going on. So I saw what war does very early on. Speaker 1 (1:44) What was really sobering for us was how quickly, once Castro took over, that socialist mass came off and it was full communism pretty much off the bat. Confiscation of properties, persecution of the opposition. I remember being barely nine years old, eight and a half years old, and being told that I had to go to the fields and tutor. farmers on how to read and write. And I'm eight years old, but I was in uniform. And in school, we were in uniform and they inculcated, if you hear any parents say anything bad about the revolution, you got to turn them in. So it was a very toxic environment that even for a nine-year-old, I could understand and feel that this was so different to what I grew up with. My father, who was always a very decisive man and my first hero, he made up his mind and says, we're leaving. Unfortunately, he couldn't get out. My mom couldn't get out. So I was able to get out through a program called Peter Pan Program. And the Peter Pan Program was sponsored by the Catholic Church. So and during the two years that it ran, they took they brought out 14000 plus kids whose parents could not come out. So in early April of 62, I came to the United States by myself. Ten days later, two weeks later, I was in a orphanage in Pueblo, Colorado, the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo, Colorado. And. Speaker 1 (3:26) That would excel in itself was also an experience. So, you know, and it's funny, guys, you know, a lot of people go, oh, my God, you were so little. You had to go through this so much. And I I'm amazed that I was not as shook as I. Should have been, perhaps. But I always remember more than anything else, and this is part of my impetus for things that I have done in life, is the courage of my parents to put an only child on an airplane to a country they've never been to and may not even be able to visit. Not for economic reasons. We were middle class in Cuba. But for freedom. My dad had that innate. passion for freedom and his only child was not going to grow up in a communist country. Speaker 4 (4:11) Yeah, that they loved you so much they were willing to roll the dice like that with their boy. Speaker 1 (4:17) Yeah, when our oldest son was 10, I asked my wife, I think, do you think that we would have the courage to do same? And we both agreed that, you know, you never know how you're going to react until you really do it. So it's a very tough decision. But at the same time, it was a hell of a lesson for me because. That's the ultimate price that a parent can pay for the freedom of a child. Right. Letting them go. Right. Speaker 3 (4:47) Did you have, you know, you were very young. Were you aware of what was going on? You know, when they were, when you were with this Catholic organization and they were bringing you to the States, did you have an overarching awareness of like what was going on? Speaker 1 (5:06) Yeah, you know, it's amazing. And I think that when you live a normal life, it's easier to forget the mundane stuff. But this was such a drastic change. So it's such a different period. You know, when we first moved up to Havana to try to get out of the country, as soon as we drove in, I saw three guys hanging from trees and telephone poles with signs around the necks that said, Contra Revolutionaries. Speaker 1 (5:35) You know, those things getting printed in your mind very, very early on. Now, it's funny because I remember clearly getting into the airport with my mom and dad, my mom crying. My dad, not too many years ago before he passed, told me that I told my mom, if you keep crying, I ain't going. And going through the glass that divided them from me. And that's the last thing I remember. I do not remember getting on the plane. I do not remember the flight to Miami. I do not remember where I sat. I only remember when I came through the doors is what my sight, you know, my memory comes back. And I saw the priest that was there with the sign for the four of us that there was three other kids, two girls and two guys. So I was very aware of it. And I think that these experiences in retrospect now were. God's way of forging my metal. So I would end up doing what I was supposed to put in this earth to do. Speaker 4 (6:34) And you did get reunited with your family. You grew up in Haleah outside Miami, right? Speaker 1 (6:40) Yeah, my parents came out a little over eight months later. I was one of the lucky ones. There were kids whose parents never came out or came out five, six years later. So I lucked out in two reasons. One, the orphanage was a little violent because, you know, you have five different cultures in there and all orphans and all, you know. But the treatment of the place was decent. There was no abuse that I knew of. And the main thing for me is they taught me English. That's all I did for those eight months was learn English from C-Spot Run books. And way before your time, guys. But the thing was, when I went back to Miami eight months later, I could at least help my parents catch a bus or do something like that. So Speaker 3 (7:26) it's amazing. Speaker 4 (7:28) Yeah. And then as you grew up and went to American high school and so forth, what was that path that initially took you into the United States Air Force? Speaker 1 (7:38) Well, you know, I grew a conscience in my senior year, just as I was about to graduate. I guess it was a maturity shift. And I realized how good I have it. You know, I live in this wonderful country. I have a wonderful family, stability. Nobody's trying to take my dad's business away. And my parents are the ones who paid the price for that admission. So I developed a debt of honor. I honestly believe that. I needed to show this country my gratitude for taking me and my family in and a lot of my other family, extended family in. So the turning point actually was kind of interesting. It was my first semester in college, and the hippies put out a sign that the following day they were going to take down the American flag in protest for Vietnam and burn it. And I said to myself, that ain't going to happen. So I called a couple of my buddies from high school and it was about 20 hippies. There was about four or five of us, maybe six. And it wasn't a fair fight. And at the end of it, that flag was still flying. And I will tell you, I can still remember the blue sky and that flag waving and me feeling for the first time really, really good about myself. Speaker 4 (8:58) And you didn't just join the Air Force either. You already must have had something in the back of your mind that you wanted to be an elite soldier. Speaker 1 (9:06) Well, you know, I've always been competitive. I started martial arts when I was 15. Had some great instructors that were former Marines and former this and that. But again, I think that God puts us where we're supposed to be. I chose pararescue because I was taking an oceanography class. I was going to be a marine science technician. And one of the guys in the class was a former PJ. And we ended up sitting together. We ended up talking. And eventually he told me all about pararescue. And I said, sign me up. So six months after, not even, about four months after that incident with the hippies, I joined the Air Force pararescue. Speaker 4 (9:50) And went through that pipeline and got qualified. And in the PJs, you had some sort of formative experiences, too. Well, I remember in your book, you talk about a plane crash that you responded to one time and for the first time really seeing kind of death on a large scale. Speaker 1 (10:06) Yeah, I had just literally just got my beret. And when the that I think it was flight L-1011 in Miami, 72 Christmas Eve or something like that, that the altimeter was screwed up and they thought they were X altitude and they literally plowed into the Everglades. And we were summoned. I was doing hundreds and some miles an hour to get back to base because I was at my parents' house. Speaker 1 (10:34) down at Homestead. And yeah, I didn't get to do much because by the time I got there, you know, the active, you know, the duty team was already on the ground. But we did get to pull some of the bodies out and it was pretty gruesome. And at the same time, some magical moments, you know, 90 some people, I believe it was that survived. So it was, again, part of part of that, that lessons in life that you that you see the fragility. and the endurance of the body. And Speaker 4 (11:05) then what was your first exposure to the Central Intelligence Agency? Speaker 1 (11:10) Well, you know, my reason for going into pararescue was I wanted to go to Vietnam. And my number for draft was astronomical. My parents were very happy because they were confident that I would never get called. And I show up and go, hey, I'm leaving in 30 days. So my goal was to go to Vietnam. And when I got out of, you know, when I finally got my beret and the follow-on training, it was already 1973, Vietnam was winding down. So in 74, I decided to stay in the reserves completely. And I applied to the agency the first time. They were not hiring. Those were really bad years for the agency and the military. Subsequently, around 79, I reapplied. And this time they asked me to come in as a contract medic. I was writing rescue with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue. And, you know, again, being a pararescueman, I was already an EMT, too. So there was an easy, easy, easy day for me to get into that. And so they needed a paramilitary medic to help their special activities division ground branch guys. And that was my first exposure to those guys. They got to know me. I obviously made a good impression on them. I did my best to carry my weight. And as luck would have it, in 1981, when Reagan took over and he decided to do something about the growing communist threat in Latin America, he declared a covert action program against the Sandinistas, who had declared themselves communist. And the agency did not have a native speaking, a native Spanish speaking guy with paramilitary background. So they tracked me down and. That was my backdooring into a staff job. Speaker 4 (13:06) And that was kind of like this moment for you where you were like, not only yes, but hell yes. Like they didn't really need to recruit you. You were already recruited. Speaker 1 (13:15) Yeah, I mean, it was a lifelong dream. And it's funny because I remember when the guy called me, he says, look, we have something for you. When do you think you could come in? I said, I only have one question. Is this full time or is this part time? I wasn't going to take any more part time. And they said, no, this is full time. And I said, I'm there. When do you want me here? He says, you don't want to know what it's about. I go. I'm there. Speaker 3 (13:38) I'll sweep the floors. I'll yeah, I'll do whatever. Exactly. Bring Speaker 1 (13:42) coffee to the boss. I just want to get in. Yeah. Speaker 4 (13:45) So, so what was that like now you're kind of getting brought into the belly of the beast without, you didn't have a lot of like formal training with the agency at this point either. Speaker 1 (13:56) Zero. I have my street smarts. I had my martial arts background. Your medical training for the Air Speaker 4 (14:05) Force? Speaker 1 (14:05) Yep, and my pararescue training, which was, you know, it's beyond just the techniques of stuff. It's, you know, learning your limits, which are not what you usually think, and being able to do things above and beyond. So that, you know, that steals you. You know, I was pretty confident going in, but I had no training. There was no time. I literally was in the headquarters area for less than two weeks before I went to Honduras. Wow. And so what was like... In alias. That's Alex, right? Yes, that's correct. Captain Alex, originally. So Speaker 4 (14:37) what was that like hitting the ground in Honduras and some of the people you worked for and the mission that you received at that point? Speaker 1 (14:45) Well, Speaker 4 (14:46) you Speaker 1 (14:46) know, again, I've lived a blessed life. I land in Honduras. There was only five of us when this program started. You know, five years later, there was probably 100 guys on the ground there. And my boss was Colonel Ray. He was legendary. He had jumped into Corregidor at the age of 17 or 18. Special Forces guy went to it was our guy in Laos during the Vietnam time. bigger than life guy, both physically and everything else. And he was just a wonderful boss. And he mentored me a lot. I mean, he was always very, very good about explaining what I needed to do. But at the same time, there was no time for micromanagement. I lived in those camps by myself. For the first 14 months of that program, I was the only American allowed to set foot in the Contra camps. Because again, This was a covert operation. And as the title of my book, Black Ops, says, indicates, that's when you're doing operations where the American hand has to be remained hidden. So I was there as a Honduran captain. Eventually, I got promoted to quote unquote major. Speaker 4 (15:54) With a requisite pay bump, of course. Speaker 1 (15:56) Of Speaker 4 (15:57) course, yeah. And I thought it was really interesting in the book, too. You talk about how. It was sort of like it started off as an Argentinian program, and then America sort of jumped on there. And you had to, as a young PM guy, had to balance America's objectives with this Argentinian force there that was really not up to snuff. Speaker 1 (16:20) Yeah, you know, the Argentines didn't do much for the cause, but they were the ones that were helping, bringing in some old, you know, Mauser rifles and stuff like that to give the Contras. And they're the ones that reached out to the CIA even before Reagan took over. It's just nothing was being done until Reagan took over. So they were there, but they were literally just a city presence. I remember only one time that one of those guys went to the camps with me and I stayed and he went back in the helicopter. So they were and these guys were not paramilitary guys. These guys were primarily a thuggy police force and that ruled, you know, you know, Argentina at the time. And they were not contributed. And yeah, I mean, my boss put me in charge of their finances just. really dig it into them because um that we knew that they were screwing with us and eventually they they uh they got kicked out and Speaker 4 (17:21) you said there's some sort of like uh institutionalized racism i guess in the sense that you had these uh the mosquito indians the indigenous people that you assessed could be a very effective fighting force but these guys were like now fuck them like we don't we don't even want to deal with them because they're inadequate or whatever. Speaker 1 (17:41) Yeah, it's again, the Argentines that were there were very prejudiced. The Nicaraguans a lot less because again, they're all Nicaraguans. They just happen to be, you know, although the mosquitoes do not consider themselves Nicaraguans, they want to be an autonomous nation, but they are natural hunter, trackers, fighters. The jungle for them was their terrain. And it was obvious to me from the very beginning that they had the fire in their belly. But for me, my job was to be equitable with all the camps that I had. And I had a real big fight with the one general that was there. And I remember clearly we're sitting across from each other at the Estado Mayor. And he said, well, you know, this is going to go here and there. And I said, sorry, General, that is not. A third of that is going to the Miskitos. And he started to say something. I said, sir, you know who I am speaking for. And that is the decision. that's the logistics, how it's going to be split up. And he literally had a pencil in his hand and he broke it. He was so angry. There wasn't much he could do about it because it was our money and we, we weren't going to put up with that crap. Speaker 3 (18:52) It's kind of reminiscent of like when we have the, like the former Vietnam guys on and the way like the Vietnamese treated the Montagnards and, you know, and the, you know, the other natives, you know, the indigenous around Speaker 4 (19:02) there. That's correct. Yeah. Good analogy. And. So in the meantime, you're going around these camps, you're trying to train these guys up, potentially prepare them for an offensive against the Sandinistas, doing some limited cross-border raids, setting in some cache site locations to maybe support that offensive. Kind of what was, I guess, the escalation, you could say, of kind of like trying to build up this capability that you've been charged with? Speaker 1 (19:32) Well, you know, the first time I went to the camps, I was slack-jawed. I mean, these poor guys and gals had nothing. Most of them were barefoot. They had old Mauser bolt-action rifles, a few rusty AKs captured from the Sandinistas, no medical facility. You know, food was almost nonexistent. So the first thing for us was, you know, logistics, getting the logistics in there to provide them with... medicine and food, regular food budgets, money, and then subsequently starting the training. And because I was the only guy allowed in the camps, I did all the training for these guys from patrolling to radio communications to headspace and timing on a .50 cal to the RPG-7, which I became pretty darn good with. After training, we had 10 camps, and I had to train them all. Speaker 1 (20:26) I lived in the camps for the three years that I was there, a little over three years. And Monday through Friday, I slept in a jungle hammock. Speaker 3 (20:34) Wow. Speaker 1 (20:35) And, you know, guys, not once did I wake up in the morning and say, what am I doing here? Right. Or, geez, I wish I wasn't here. You know, I had a wonderful career. I've had a wonderful life. But that period in my life was blessed. And at first, I didn't really understand why it felt so good. Because, again, I'm 30 years old. I'm still more testosterone than brains. And I realized that I was now being able to pay back for what they did to my parents. Because the same monster that had consumed Nicaragua, the Soviet Union. using Cubans as proxy and, you know, the Nicaragua and Sandinistas being proxies for the Salvadoran insurgencies. You know, I was now there helping these guys and gals cut off some of those tentacles from this monster. So it really felt good. And, you know, every night I would talk to the different guys in different campfires. And eventually I would always ask, you know, why are you here? And each one had a very pure reason. for being there. You know, they burned down my church. They raped my daughter. It wasn't geopolitics. It wasn't Marxism versus capitalism. It was the purest. I want my freedom back for me and my family. Speaker 3 (21:57) Right. It was freedom versus tyranny. Speaker 3 (22:00) Indeed. Yeah. Speaker 4 (22:02) And over time that they did go on the offense, as I recall reading, but it was difficult as a covert program to keep those kind of logistics lines fed and keep these guys supplied, right? Speaker 1 (22:16) Yeah, we did. They started doing some raids and ambushes and patrolling and some sniper work and that kind of stuff that I taught them. Speaker 1 (22:26) But again, the incursions were hit and run and come back or once they had certain little safe areas, but they were all within 10, 20 miles of the border. And that's pretty thick country out there. So we needed the more logistics and eventually that started developing, you know, the logistic capability of airdrops and helicopters to at least the camps and then buying them horses and mules and whatever it took to carry some of that stuff inside. Speaker 4 (22:54) Do you want to talk a little bit about eventually you kind of moved over to doing, I guess you could say, strategic level operations with some of these sabotage missions that you kind of coordinated with the Mosquitoes and some of the other players, some of the other Contras that were in this game. I thought that was a really interesting part of your book. Speaker 1 (23:13) Yeah, like I said, I was fascinated with the mosquitoes because for one thing, you know, with the regular Nicaraguans, there was no culture shock. You know, I spoke native Spanish. I know the customs. There's a few words that are different, but there was no culture shock. But with the mosquito, it was very different. This is a very different society with a different language. There's probably more mosquitoes that speak English than they speak Spanish. Speaker 1 (23:40) It's really a fascinating, fascinating bunch of folks. But what happened was the headquarters came in. Our headquarters came in and said, hey, guys, all these raids and ambushes are really good. And you guys are doing a great job with building this force up. But we need to get the Sandinistas' attention. We need them to understand that this is not a ragtag bunch of, you know, rebels just trying to overthrow them. We need to smack them. So during one of my trips to the to the Mosquitia, I have my hat with my scuba badge on. And one of the mosquitoes comes up to me and he goes, are you a diver? And I go, yeah, I'm a military diver. And he goes, well, the six of us are our lobster divers. And these guys were hard as woodpecker lips. I mean, you know, I kept that in mind. So that's when I came up with the idea of creating a team of we call them the barracudas of mosquito divers that could infiltrate Nicaragua and do damage. And the first place that that we chose on, you know, after talking to them about, you know, realities was Puerto Cabezas. Puerto Cabezas is the northernmost. northeast most port for Nicaragua. And that was the belly button where Cuba, or I should say the Soviet Union via Cuba, was bringing in all the paramilitary, you know, ammo and equipment and fuel and everything that they needed. So doing damage to that pier was a very high priority and it would send a message. The requirement went back to headquarters. It says, look, we got Prado says he's got some divers that he can train to military standards. I took the six, two washed out. And the other four were, like I said, just really dedicated to the cause. And headquarters is the one that came up with the actual device, for lack of a better word, based on 80 pounds of C4 that was placed under the pier. We went out there. And it was one of these beautiful missions where which are rare in our profession, where just about everything goes right. And our guys were able to blow it up. I was with them in the water when they when they first launched. I was there, you know, when they got back, we we went back to to Honduras. And two days later, for the first time in my life, I saw satellite overhead for the basis. And that was that was pretty thrilling. Speaker 4 (26:10) And then there was another operation where things, it was a bridge, I believe, you guys tried to take out. And that one kind of went a little disastrous. But you had some balls, I think, going in to kind of pull your boys out, right? That was an interesting one. Speaker 1 (26:25) Yeah, you know, when I speak to my brethren in pararescue, that's the mission that I always talk about. And I gave a talk down in Scuba School a couple of years ago in Key West for the combat swimmers exactly on that. Because... I did go in and got my guys out, but the reader's digest of the story is, you know, all of a sudden our success in Portugal basis motivated headquarters to say we need to do the same thing against Corinto. Now, Corinto is in the opposite side, on the west side, northwest side of the country, and it is the economic belly button. This is where all their goods that they would sell or goods that they would buy would transit. Speaker 1 (27:08) Port Corinto is actually like an island, for lack of better words, and it has a bridge that connects it to the mainland and to the main highway. So the idea that they had asked us to do was to topple the bridge, you know, four platter charges on the pylons on the same side, get them to buckle over with a weight, and, you know, it would take them at least a year or more to be able to repair that. So that would have been a hell of a blow. They asked me if my guys could do it. And I said, absolutely. That's easy day. But then there was a political curveball. And I've said this many, many times. You cannot run covert operations with politics, the optics of politics. And this was the well, you know, the mosquitoes did it in on the East Coast. We want this to be a mixed team. So the regular FDN guys can also feel like they're contributing. There was a little bit of jealousy about the mosquitoes scoring the very first left hook to the jaw to these guys. So what they insisted on was, since I had the divers, that the boat crew was going to be what the mosquito called the Spaniards, the Spanish-speaking Nicaraguans. And I told my boss, I said, boss, you know, this ain't going to fly. These guys do not trust each other. He went upstairs with it and they came back and said, no, we're doing it that way. And I sent my team in two boats, two divers each and two boat pilots each. And they made it into Corinto. When they got to Corinto, they noticed a lot more traffic than they had, that we had predicted. Marathon track. They had expected, yeah. So, you know, the tensions were high and the guys were jittery. And my divers said, look, you know, we're not going to get in the water because we know that you're going to leave us here. And, you know, you're talking eight guys on two boats. Everybody's got guns and explosives. So you don't want to get into a contest. And they decided to regroup and said, look, we'll abort and come back and do it another time. Well, unfortunately, we had given them these very high speed boats, but they were not seaworthy as far as reliability. So both boats developed engine problems coming back. The first boat conquered out and actually was able to get into the mangroves just outside of Corinto. And the second boat made it out to the Gulf of Fonseca, but still in Nicaraguan waters when the boat went kaput. And I've been up for at least 24 hours already with these guys. You know, we had secure comms. I'm following their tracks, you know, what they were doing. I knew they were coming back. And I went to my boss, Leon, who was the base chief. And I said, Leon, you know, I'm not leaving my guys behind. He says, I know that. What do you have in mind? So what I did was reverted to my pararescue training. I got my helicopter pilot, these young Honduran pilots in their early 20s. And I told them that we were going to go out to sea. Before we did, I made some field expedient stable rigs, six of them. So I could get my, you know, my four guys and myself out if that's what it took. And what we were going to do was I jumped in. Well, I was carrying water, gas, tools, spark plugs and all that kind of stuff. And two sticks of C4 because I wasn't going to let that boat, a high speed boat to the Sandinistas and the evidence because it was, you know, obviously, you know, something that was not native to the area. So I jumped into the water in what in pararescue back then we used to call them low and slow. It's 15 knots and 15 feet above the water. Well, my Honduran pilots, as good as they were, they were not water pilots. So the 15 foot rule did not apply here. So this was a high and slow. It was at least 35 feet when I jumped out of that damn thing. And, and it's, you know, I'm used to the shorter ride. I'm going like, oh my God. But no, it was, it was a good entry. And I, we were able to start the boat and the boat, it was spark plugs. It was spark plugs issue. They had all fouled up their, their systems where we're not up to par. We went back to base to the Island that we were at and that same boat, we refitted it. And now I went out with. Two of our boat captains, one was a Cuban Bay of Pigs, a veteran who was the senior captain. And the other one was an American from our from a maritime branch. And we needed to go back and get our second boat because our second boat had now spent, you know, 24 hours hiding in a mangrove just outside Corinto. And they were dead in the water. They could not get the boat to start. So we went out there and the seas got really rough. There were at least 12 foot seas beating the crap out of the out of the boat. We lost first, I think it was a UHF we lost first. There's an aircraft in the air supporting us. We had VHF and ICON radios. And the Sandinistas, obviously, because of the helicopter incident that morning and all the chatter going back and forth, they knew something was going on. So they were out there in force. And they started popping flares, you know, probably a mile or so away from us, but we didn't know that. We just seen flares coming up and like trying to light up the sky. And then they started doing recon by fire. They would take and put rounds down range. and see if anybody returned fire, and then they could gaggle on there. Well, I had an AR-15 and a Browning 9mm, so I was not exactly set for a firefight. Right. And so we were out there. We were able to triangulate where the boat was actually with the help of the aircraft and the communications, and we were able to triangulate where they were at, and we hightailed it back to the island. uh our base uh but our guys knew that we were getting him in the morning i promised them that and i mean i was beat to hell um the once the adrenaline wore off right um you know i've been up for probably close to 48 hours by then uh two adrenaline dumps once with the with a jump into the water and now i'll Speaker 3 (33:36) be Speaker 1 (33:36) spending hours out there bouncing around getting chased by sandinistas so I was smoked when I got back from that. But the next morning we went out in six piranha boats that went out there and got the guys back out. So the mission was was an abortion. But the rescue was what we're supposed to do for our folks. And I'm very proud to say it got me my first battle in the agency. Speaker 4 (34:02) That's amazing. And so you were down there for quite a while doing ops. Speaker 4 (34:08) I guess, did this whole thing come to the covert program down there, come to its conclusion with Eugene Hassan Foss parachuting out of an airplane into the jungle? You want to talk about that a little bit? Speaker 1 (34:21) Yeah. You know, the American hand became obvious after the first year and a half or so. That's when they, after that, I was able to have some help at the camps. They brought in some former SF Spanish-speaking guys. And so we had three of them, very good guys. And they were at different camps. But I would still go to the camps because I was the equities. I was the guy that they knew in the camps. So I still did my regular visit two camps a week kind of stuff. So the American hand was starting to show. And but the Hassan Fuss incident was much later. I mean, I was already gone. I left in 84. I went through spy school. And then lo and behold, I got sent to Costa Rica at the last minute. I was supposed to go to Salvador. My household goods were actually in Salvador already. And we were supposed to, I was just recently married. I had a, you know, my son was a couple of months old, the oldest son. And they asked for me by name in Costa Rica because they wanted me to run the Southern Front, which was in stark contrast to the way we ran things in Honduras side of the house because the Costa Ricans were actually hostile. to the Contras. They were afraid that the Sandinistas would retaliate if they supported the Contras. So they were literally hunting us down. And by us, I mean, me included. They wanted to see who was helping these guys. So now I'm running these programs, trying to, you know, recruiting people to get me, help me get people out through maritime means or air means. And at the same time, having a job at the embassy, coat and tie. Speaker 3 (35:59) right so Speaker 1 (36:00) it was uh more of a little the miniature french resistance kind of concept where you know car pickups and all this you