Corporate Air Services HPF821
San Carlos, Río San Juan, Nicaragua | |
Aircraft | |
---|---|
Aircraft type | Fairchild C-123K |
Operator | Corporate Air Services, owned by Southern Air Transport |
Registration | HPF821 (previously N4410F), ex-USAF 54-679 (c/n 20128) |
Flight origin | Ilopango International Airport, El Salvador |
Destination | Ilopango International Airport, El Salvador |
Passengers | 0 |
Crew | 4 |
Fatalities | 3 |
Injuries | 0 |
Survivors | 1 |
Corporate Air Services HPF821 was a transport aircraft delivering weapons via
Hasenfus was captured within 24 hours. He was convicted of terrorism-related charges, sentenced to 30 years in prison, and pardoned a month later to return to his family in Wisconsin; at the request of Senator
Background
HPF821 was operated by Corporate Air Services, a front for Southern Air Transport, the registered owner of the aircraft.[3] Some of the pilots and crew involved with the Contra supply flights, including Eugene Hasenfus, had been involved in the CIA's aerial supply activities during the Vietnam War, using Air America, Southern Air Transport, and other CIA proprietary airlines. Two Cuban-Americans involved in organising the flights were known to Hasenfus as "Max Gómez" (real name Félix Rodríguez) and "Ramón Medina" (real name Luis Posada Carriles).[3]
Incident
HPF821 departed from
Aftermath
Hasenfus was captured within 24 hours, and confessed to smuggling weapons.
Logbooks retrieved from the wreckage of the aircraft listed various flights with Southern Air Transport personnel.[6]
Hasenfus' capture while delivering weapons and supplies to the right-wing Contra rebels gave the world its first glimpse of the Iran Contra scandal starting to unravel. First the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, and White House – denied any connection to him. The reason was that the US Congress had voted in the "Boland Amendment" to outlaw US-assistance to the Contras – including prohibiting all "funds available to the CIA and the Department of Defense from being used in Nicaragua for military purposes."[7]
Cynthia Arnson, the director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, wrote in Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America 1976-1993: "Disclosure of the administration's deception in carrying out Nicaragua policy invited Congress to take drastic measures to restore equilibrium between the two branches, if only to reassert the primacy of law in a constitutional government."[8]
See also
- 1981 Armenia mid-air collision
- 1989 Jamba Hercules crash
References
- ^ a b c d Timothy Lange, Daily Kos, 27 December 2009, Blast from the Past. Gene Hasenfus: December 1986
- ^ Paul Goepfert, Chicago Tribune, 10 October 1986, Captive American Links Cia, Plane
- ^ a b c Envío, Hasenfus: Nothing But the Fact, No. 65, November 1986
- ^ Ranter, Harro. "ASN Aircraft accident Fairchild C-123K Provider HPF821 San Carlos". aviation-safety.net.
- ^ a b Kinzer, Stephen (December 18, 1986). "HASENFUS IS FREED BY NICARAGUANS AND HEADS HOME". The New York Times.
- ^ Greve, Frank (October 18, 1986). "Logbooks Tie Contras, Fla. Airline Plane's Wreckage Yielded Pilot's Files". The Philadelphia Inquirer.
- ^ "The exposure of Eugene Hasenfus". October 6, 2014.
- The Pennsylvania State University Press. p. 278.