THE CONTRA COCAINE TRAIN: The Pegasus File by David G. Guyatt from Nexus Magazine

THE CONTRA COCAINE TRAIN

During 1983, Colby established contact again, advising Tatum he would shortly be contacted by "a man called North". This, as Tatum was to discover later, was none other than Lt Col. Oliver North - the central architect of America's Nicaraguan Contra campaign. Besides fighting a covert war, North was also the link-man in much, much dirtier work.
The "Contragate" years teem with well-documented accounts of illicit wholesale gun-running and dope-smuggling. The exposé series published in Autumn 1996 by the San Jose Mercury-Post, entitled "The Dark Alliance", openly finger-points at the CIA and the Reagan administration for turning a blind eye to massive cocaine smuggling. Moreover, the series of articles claims that the explosion of "crack cocaine" in Los Angeles resulted entirely from the Contra leaders-cum-dope peddlers who made vast personal fortunes from their activities. Today, the official argument remains that the Contras were "freelancing" without the knowledge or consent of their CIA "handlers" or North's so-called "Enterprise". Despite these assertions, mountains of hard evidence point in a different direction. Included in this evidence is an entry from North's own diary which shows his knowledge of cocaine shipments.

In stark contrast to these denials, Tatum says that North's "Enterprise" not only set up the cocaine factories and "ran" the Colombian cartels, but was also responsible for masterminding the massive shipments of narcotics into the US. Significantly, he is not alone in making these accusations. A number of those involved in Col. North's operations have subsequently come forward and spilled the beans. Almost all of these "whistleblowers" have been hounded and imprisoned. Some have died, whilst others have fled. The whole Contra thing, Tatum states, was also being used by an extremely covert group called Pegasus.
During February 1985, Tatum was piloting "Dustoff" (Medevac) flights for the US Army's 3/498th Medical Company, stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. Two flight crews, including Tatum's, were transferred to Palmerola Air Base, Honduras. Each flight consisted of a pilot, copilot, medic and crew chief. Once familiarised, they assumed the Medevac mission for Joint Task Force Bravo. Previously, in 1984, Tatum infiltrated the 3/498th on the instructions of Lt Col. Oliver North who had established contact under the code-name "Jake" (North had "control" of the 160th air wing and was also deeply involved with the tactical planning of "black ops" missions in the Grenada invasion).
On 15 February 1985, during a flight to La Ceiba, Honduras, he was instructed to contact his local "handler", Major Felix Rodríguez - later to prove a major figure in the Iran-Contra investigation. Rodríguez informed Tatum that in addition to his Army "Medevac" duties he was to support covert "Pegasus" missions. These, he was told, would take priority over his other duties. He was also given his "chain of command": three individuals, any of whom could authorise Pegasus missions.
In addition to Oliver North and Felix Rodríguez, Tatum would henceforward take orders from Amiram Nir, a former Mossad agent and advisor to Vice President Bush. Aviation support for Pegasus missions operated out of Ilopango Air Base, Honduras (home of the CIA proprietary airline Corporate Air Services) plus numerous Contra camps located in the jungles and mountains along the Honduras-Nicaragua border.³  A common feature of all future Pegasus missions was the transport "of large white coolers in and out of the Contra camps".
On 26 February 1985, Tatum and his crew were instructed to fly two individuals to one of the larger Contra camps on the Honduran border. His flight log lists the names of the two individuals as Bill Cooper and Buzz Sawyer, both of whom worked for Corporate Air Services. Following a meeting between the CIA agents and Contra leaders, Tatum was given a sealed cooler, marked "Vaccine", weighing approximately 200 pounds, and instructed to deliver it to a USAF C-130 transport plane at La Mesa Airport, Honduras. Two crew members offloading the cooler accidentally dropped it, breaking the seal. Inside were over 100 bags of cocaine. Tatum resealed the cooler and later watched as it was transferred aboard the C-130, outward bound for Panama.
On his return to Palmerola Air Base, Honduras, Tatum phoned Col. North to advise him of his discovery. North replied that it was "a trophy of war" and that the "Sandinistas are manufacturing cocaine and selling it to fund the military". North closed the conversation by saying that "the cocaine was bound for the world courts as evidence" against the Sandinistas.
The whole incident struck Tatum as odd and reminded him strongly of earlier missions dating back to 1983-84 when he was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as a Special Operations pilot. Regularly he would trans-ship white coolers, marked as "Medical Supplies", to Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. On two occasions he carried similar coolers to Mena Airport, Arkansas. Deliveries of medical coolers to Little Rock AFB were picked up by Dr Dan Lasater - a close confidant of the then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.
By now, almost two years later, Tatum had decided to document his discovery to safeguard his "retirement". Thereafter, he documented all Pegasus flights on the reverse of his flight logs.
This was a difficult time for Tatum, since he had three balls to juggle at the same time. On the one hand he was flying classified active-duty missions for the US Army; on the other, he was flying CIA missions arranged through Mil. Group A (CIA), located at the embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; and thirdly, he was flying Pegasus missions under the control of William Colby, Oliver North and George Bush following his recruitment into Pegasus by Colby in 1986.
Tatum completed numerous missions during his rotation out of Honduras. Picking up and trans-shipping coolers containing cocaine was a regular event. Extraordinarily, this included infiltrating Nicaraguan airspace (Tatum says it was not difficult to infiltrate any country and that "foreign powers" would kill to know how it is done), and landing at Bluefields Air Base with deliveries for placement aboard civilian C-123s and C-130s.4 This mission was followed by a brief stint in Colombia, where he was assigned to assist the Drug Enforcement Administration's "War on Drugs", only to discover the DEA was heavily engaged in narcotics trafficking.