3. CIA DEEP-COVER AGENT: The Pegasus File by David G. Guyatt from Nexus Magazine

CIA DEEP-COVER AGENT

For the next 10 years or so, Tatum's covert activities were varied. For a while, he worked out of Homestead Air Force Base where he was NCIOC of the tower receiver sight and MARS station. This was the base which then-President Nixon used for his frequent visits to the Key Biscayne, Florida, "White House". Much of this period remains obscured behind a thick blanket of classification.
From there, he was stationed in northern Italy, tasked with visiting the border towns of Yugoslavia and Italy. Colby felt that as a young Air Force man, Tatum might be "approached" in these towns for "information". The idea was to make contact with foreign agents and covertly gather information about them and their operations. Later, he was tasked with infiltrating Yugoslavia in order to gather intelligence on potential successors to the then Yugoslavian President Tito.
Tatum was also sent to search for missing US POWs from Vietnam and elsewhere in South-East Asia.
By 1976, Tatum was operating out of Lamar, Colorado, in a communications facility called OLAB. His contact there was Don Holmes, president of Valley - a Savings & Loan bank.^2. Tatum acted as his courier, shuttling between Lamar and Springfield, Colorado, with transaction files. From there he was transferred to MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida.

Shortly before his MacDill posting, Tatum received a call from Colby telling him he was resigning his position as Director, Central Intelligence, and recommending Tatum should deactivate his clandestine CIA activities. Colby continued, saying that remaining active without Colby there to protect him might place him in personal "jeopardy", as he had powerful enemies in Washington. This warning referred to Nixon, Kissinger and Haig, and Tatum's role in and survival from "Operation Red Rock".
Tatum took good notice of the warning and became deactive. Later, in 1979, he requested and was granted entry into a USAF Reserve program. Leaving active military service he moved to Gunnison, Colorado, and took up a position with Bo Calloway, owner of the Crested Bute ski area. The appointment was arranged by Colby.
During 1980 he received a visit from two men who informed him he was being reactivated, but into the US Army instead of the Air Force. He was sent to the US Army Flight School for rotary- wing training at Fort Rucker. From there he was assigned to the 160th Aviation Battalion/Special Forces at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Shortly afterwards, the 160th combined with others to form Task Force 160.
It was in this unit that Tatum played a "spooky" role in the US invasion of Grenada. A photograph of him standing in front of his MD-500 Defender gunship on the beach-head in Grenada, appeared along with a feature story in the Louisville Courier-Journal. Tatum will only say of this episode that he "wasn't there", in the same sense that he "wasn't in Cambodia".
At that time he was attached to the US Army's 160th air wing at Fort Campbell. Not only was the Hughes helicopter then not in the Army's inventory, but the 160th didn't officially exist. Jim Malone, of the Louisville Courier-Journal, finds this extraordinary. He has documents showing the 160th was stationed at Fort Campbell, even though officials in the Pentagon continue to deny it - as they deny the wing's role in Grenada. Malone, in a telephone conversation with this writer, advised that the 160th is now stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina - home of the famous Special Forces, the Green Berets. Their mission is to fly "Delta teams" on covert assignments, Malone added.