Felix Rodriguez

Felix Ismael Rodriguez Mendigutia was born on May 31, 1941 in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, the son of a shopkeeper, and was educated at a Catholic high school in Havana and a private boys' school in Pennsylvania. His parents were in Mexico during the revolution and did not return to Cuba. He joined Brigade 2506, the Cuban exile force the Central Intelligence Agency trained in Guatemala.¹

Bay of Pigs and the Cuban operations

The CIA named Rodriguez leader of a five-man infiltration team. At the end of February 1961 the team left Key West in a 26-foot launch and landed at night east of Havana. Florida state representative Javier Souto, who was on the boat, said Rodriguez was assigned to the eastern city of Moron to prepare weapons and explosives for an uprising timed to the invasion. Rodriguez himself later said he had explosive charges primed against bridges on April 17, 1961, the day the Bay of Pigs landing began, and that the messages ordering the sabotage reached him only at midday, by which time the underground networks were being rolled up. He made his way back to Havana, took asylum in the Venezuelan embassy, and some months later was allowed to leave Cuba.¹

Jose Basulto, a Brigade veteran and friend, told the Los Angeles Times in 1986 that Rodriguez took part in at least six sabotage raids on Cuba and infiltration attempts after the invasion, some of them CIA-assisted. About 1963 Rodriguez and more than a hundred other Brigade veterans entered a special officer training program at Fort Benning, Georgia, and he became communications chief of a CIA-sponsored boat-raid group whose actions included the sinking of a Spanish freighter by mistake. The Times wrote that his career became hard to trace in the mid-1960s; Basulto said a cover story of army service concealed that Rodriguez was by then a full-time officer of the CIA's clandestine service.¹

Bolivia, 1967

In June or July 1967, after an interview in Miami at which he was a case officer for the CIA station there, Rodriguez was assigned to Bolivia with another Cuban exile, Gustavo Villoldo, to train intelligence teams for the Bolivian Army's 2nd Ranger Battalion. They left New York on July 30, 1967 on false re-entry permits. A CIA Inspector General memorandum of June 3, 1975, written after a two-day interview of the officer and prepared while Congress was investigating CIA assassination operations, records that the instructions included doing everything possible to keep Che Guevara alive if the Bolivians captured him.²

The same memorandum records that at La Higuera on October 9, 1967 the interviewee, as the highest-ranking "Bolivian officer" present, answered a field telephone call giving the code numbers 500, 600 and 700, which he understood to mean Guevara, execute, and preserve his life. He took the order as authentic and made no effort to have it confirmed, asked whether Guevara's life could be preserved, and was told it was not in the caller's power to reverse the order. He spoke with Guevara, who blanched on being told he would be executed, and he said the sergeant was ordered to fire below the head; the shots were heard at 1:20 p.m.² The National Security Archive, which published the memorandum in 1997 after the journalist David Corn found it in a declassified file marked with Rodriguez's name, summarized it as showing that Rodriguez transmitted the order to execute Guevara from the Bolivian high command to the soldiers, told them not to shoot Guevara in the face so the wounds would appear combat-related, personally informed Guevara he would be killed, and afterward took Guevara's Rolex watch.² The Los Angeles Times reported in 1986 that Rodriguez still wore Guevara's wristwatch, and that Jorge Mas Canosa of the Cuban American National Foundation called him "the greatest guerrilla of all time" for the capture.¹

Vietnam and retirement from the CIA

The Los Angeles Times reported that in the late 1960s Rodriguez went to Vietnam with the CIA's expanding operations, worked in the Mekong Delta, learned to fly helicopters on his own, was shot down twice, and fused most of his vertebrae in the last crash. It dated his retirement on full medical disability to about 1975 and listed among his Washington contacts Ted Shackley.¹ Donald Gregg stated that he supervised Rodriguez in South Vietnam, and the two kept in contact afterward.³ At a briefing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staff on October 10, 1986, Alan Fiers described Rodriguez as a twenty-year veteran of the Agency who retired in 1978, and disavowed all knowledge of what Rodriguez had done since leaving.⁴

Gregg, Bush and El Salvador, 1983 to 1985

When Gregg became national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush in August 1982 he consciously cut ties with former CIA colleagues, with one exception he described as Rodriguez. In March 1983 Rodriguez left Gregg a proposal for helicopter anti-guerrilla operations in Central America; Gregg forwarded it with a favorable recommendation to Robert McFarlane, who sent it to Oliver North.³ North's schedule card and notebook show Rodriguez meeting North at 3:45 p.m. on December 21, 1984, with a note that he would see Gregg at 4:00 p.m.; William R. Bode, a former State Department official, said he had referred Rodriguez to North. Rodriguez also met Gregg that day and said he wanted to work with the Salvadoran Air Force.³

At North's April 11, 1989 trial North testified that Gregg introduced Rodriguez to him and that he spoke to Gregg before recruiting him; at his Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on May 12, 1989 Gregg denied both statements, and the Independent Counsel found no evidence contradicting Gregg's denials.³ Gregg took Rodriguez to Bush's Old Executive Office Building office on January 22, 1985. Rodriguez described the meeting as brief: he showed Bush his photograph album and they watched a television report on the Bush family. Gregg said he told Bush beforehand that Rodriguez, "a remarkable former agency employee," wanted to help in El Salvador and would be introduced to Assistant Secretary of State Tony Motley, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Nestor Sanchez.³

On January 31, 1985 a CIA field officer cabled that Pickering wanted help "in finding out who Felix Rodriguez is and what is behind his apparent mission to El Salvador," and reported that Pickering had been told NSC staff members Nestor Sanchez and Constantine Menges were sending him "to solve the insurgency problems." Headquarters answered on February 2 that Rodriguez's visit was "totally unrelated" to the CIA. Pickering asked General Paul Gorman of the Southern Command to evaluate him, and Gorman cabled on February 12 that Rodriguez "has been put into play by Ollie North, and, while well acquainted, does not have higher backing."³ Gorman spoke to North about Rodriguez on February 8, 1985 and met Rodriguez in Panama City on February 14; North's notes of February 19 record Gorman saying he had told Rodriguez to make the contras his priority. Rodriguez testified that his short-term priority was delivering night-drop security equipment bought with money from the contra leader Adolfo Calero.³ After meeting Pickering and Colonel James Steele, commander of the U.S. Military Group, on February 15, Rodriguez went to Washington and reported to Gregg on February 19.³ He relocated to Ilopango Airbase in mid-March 1985 and began flying helicopter missions with the Salvadoran Air Force the next month, after arranging with General Adolfo Blandon and General Juan Rafael Bustillo, the Air Force commander, on January 24 and 30 to stay at the base.³

In Dark Alliance Gary Webb wrote that Fiers testified Rodriguez was sent to El Salvador as part of a CIA reorganization after Fiers took over the Central American Task Force, to fill "a void"; Rodriguez described himself as a retired volunteer.⁵

Ilopango, 1985 and 1986

Walsh's chapter on Clair George records Rodriguez as based at Ilopango and coordinating North's weapons shipments while the humanitarian flights of the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office were routed through the same base, so that the two operations "became indistinguishable," using the same equipment and pilots and coordinated by Rodriguez.⁶

On September 10, 1985 North's notebook has an entry at 4:30 p.m., "Mtg w/ Jim Steele/Don Gregg," with notes about the arms dealer Mario Dellamico and Calero and Enrique Bermudez visiting Ilopango; Gregg and Steele both denied that the meeting took place, and the Independent Counsel noted that Steele failed a polygraph question on whether Gregg attended.³ On September 20, 1985 North wrote "Dear Felix" asking Rodriguez to help get contra resupply aircraft serviced at Ilopango, not to tell CIA field personnel or Dellamico, and to destroy the letter; a caller sent by "Mr. Green," later identified as Rafael Quintero, would contact him.³ North's October 1, 1985 notebook has the entry "Don Gregg: Maximo Gomez [Rodriguez] 27-31-59," a San Salvador telephone number that Robert Duemling, head of the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office, also noted in a meeting that day.³ Rodriguez testified that North told him not to mention his assistance to anyone on the "second floor," meaning the Vice President's office, and that he did not discuss contra resupply with Gregg until August 8, 1986; North denied giving that instruction.³

Rodriguez arranged the landing of a 707 from Europe carrying weapons to Ilopango in December 1985 after Quintero's call. He attended the December 30, 1985 meeting at Ilopango with North, Fiers, Ambassador Edwin Corr and Bustillo on NHAO logistics, and in January 1986 met Richard Gadd, the Secord associate who then advised him of arriving planes.³ Walsh's report recorded that after cash reached Ilopango the fuel-fund deposits were made by the Enterprise employees Luis Posada Carriles, using the alias Ramon Medina, and Rodriguez, and recorded by William Cooper.⁷ In early 1986 Fiers went to Ilopango, watched a Southern Air Transport C-130 being loaded with supplies for the contras, and went to Rodriguez's quarters, where he persuaded North to cancel the flight; a CIA call recorded on August 6, 1986 describes Rodriguez as "getting himself out of control," and says he and Bustillo had flown from Miami in a C-123K that did not belong to them.⁸ On April 11, 1986 Rodriguez assisted in the first lethal-resupply flight to the contras' southern front.³

Rodriguez's relations with the Secord network deteriorated through the spring and summer. He objected that aircraft were bought at a profit by people he linked to Edwin Wilson, Quintero and Thomas Clines, whose Libyan associations disturbed him, and told Ambassador Corr on April 24, 1986 he intended to leave. On May 1, 1986 he met Bush, Gregg, Colonel Samuel Watson and Nicholas Brady in the Vice President's office; by all accounts contra resupply was not discussed, but the scheduling memorandum prepared on April 16 gave the purpose as a briefing "on the status of the war in El Salvador and resupply of the Contras." Gregg's secretary Phyllis Byrne testified that Watson supplied the phrase; Watson denied it, and Gregg suggested it meant "resupply of the copters." Walsh's report recorded that two support staff contradicted Watson, who answered "I do not recall" repeatedly before the grand jury under immunity.³ On June 25, 1986 North and Robert Dutton, who had replaced Gadd, confronted Rodriguez in the Old Executive Office Building over open-line calls, and Rodriguez complained that Clines was selling $3.50 grenades for $9.00.³

August 1986

On July 29, 1986 Watson noted a whispered message from North at a White House meeting, "Max shut down pilots resupply." After Rodriguez flew from Miami to El Salvador in a C-123 loaded with spare parts, Quintero accused him of stealing it and North telephoned Gregg to say so. Rodriguez met Gregg and Watson at 9:30 a.m. on August 8, 1986. Gregg's handwritten notes from the meeting read, among other lines, "Using Ed Wilson group for supplies," "Felix used by Ollie to get Contra planes repaired at Ilopango," "'Mr. Green' = Rafael Quintero," "Felix knew him at Bay of Pigs," "Southern Air Transport said plane OK to go. Called Jim Steele," and "Bustillo angry, feels plane is a donation." Gregg asked North's deputy Robert Earl to join, and Earl's note attributes to Gregg "Tom Clines = snake!" Rodriguez said he told Gregg about North's involvement with the Wilson group, and testified that it could be worse than Watergate. Gregg said he understood only the "tip of the iceberg" and was not fully aware of Rodriguez's involvement until December 1986; the Office of the Vice President's December 15, 1986 chronology said the August 8 meeting was the first time Rodriguez discussed resupply with it, and Walsh's report recorded that Gregg's FBI interview of December 15 and his chronology omitted what Rodriguez said about North.³ Gregg called a meeting in his office on August 12, 1986 with Fiers, Corr, Earl, Steele, William Walker, Raymond Burghardt and Watson; Earl's notes record "Felix Rodriguez, compadres w/ Busti[ll]o" and "Felix claims working w/ VP blessing for CIA," and Corr's view that Rodriguez had to be "eased out w/ honor." Fiers said the meeting concerned whether the CIA would purchase the resupply operation's planes, and that he declined.³⁸

The Hasenfus shootdown and the Vice President's office

Rodriguez was in Miami on October 5, 1986 when the Enterprise C-123K carrying Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua. He telephoned the Office of the Vice President that night; Watson's notes of October 6 record "C-123 = Ollie's." Gregg's immediate assumption, he testified, was that the plane belonged to the operation Rodriguez had described in August.³ On October 9, Hasenfus named "Max Gomez" and "Ramon Medina" as CIA employees who oversaw housing, transportation, refueling and flight plans, and on October 10 The San Francisco Examiner reported that Gomez had been placed at Ilopango by Gregg after being introduced to Bush. Bush's press office said no one on the Vice President's staff was directing an operation in Central America. On October 11 Bush said "I know Felix Gomez," acknowledged meeting him twice, in January 1985 and May 1986, and said they discussed only El Salvador.³

On October 10, 1986 Clair George and Fiers briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the committee memorandum records the statement that it "appeared possible that Gomez was an alias used by a former Agency contact," with identifying information to follow; later that day Fiers briefed House intelligence committee staff on Rodriguez, and the staff memorandum records that he explained it might appear Rodriguez was still working for the CIA because "they used a house." Abrams told the House intelligence committee on October 14 that Gregg had introduced Rodriguez to the Salvadorans in about 1984. Gregg sent the CIA buttons reading "Who is Max Gomez?" and "I'm Max Gomez."⁴⁹³ On October 13 Gregg cabled Corr that Rodriguez intended to keep a low profile in Miami and suggested Steele keep him informed, and on October 16 a note by Charles Hill, aide to Secretary of State George Shultz, recorded Abrams saying "A yr ago Pdx + Ollie told VP staff stop protecting FR as a friend."³ George was charged with falsely denying before Congress that he knew the true identity of Max Gomez.¹⁰ Kerry's staff had already written on October 14, 1986 that Max Gomez was "managing contra supply operations out of Ilopango having allegedly been placed there by NSC."¹¹

Ramon Milian Rodriguez

In a June 25, 1987 closed session of the Kerry subcommittee, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, a Medellin Cartel money launderer, testified that at a meeting arranged by the Miami private detective Raoul Diaz he offered Felix Rodriguez drug money for the contras and help entrapping the Sandinistas in a drug sting, in return for dropping charges against him, and that $10 million was provided through couriers. Felix Rodriguez strenuously denied this and said he reported the offer to the FBI and CIA, which took no action; Diaz refused a subpoena, and the subcommittee could not resolve the difference.¹²

Ilopango and cocaine

In Dark Alliance Webb wrote that Enrique Miranda, a former aide to Norwin Meneses, testified that Meneses's associate Marcos Aguado moved to Ilopango after North set up the resupply operation, worked as an aide to a Salvadoran air force commander and directed drug flights as far as Colombia, and that among the busiest pilots was Francisco Guirola Beeche, who had been caught with $5.9 million in cash at a Texas airport and received probation.⁵ The Posada connection recorded by the Independent Counsel is that Posada handled the pilots' expenses and housing, and after the shootdown cleaned out the houses, retrieved documents and terminated the leases.⁷

Investigations

The Independent Counsel investigated Gregg and Watson for false testimony about their knowledge of Rodriguez's role. Walsh's final report stated that despite unresolved conflicts between documents and testimony, the Independent Counsel could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt a criminal case against Gregg, and that Watson's immunized grand jury testimony in 1991 and 1992 did not advance the inquiry. The same report notes that Bush said in March 1987 Gregg had "forgotten" the August 8 meeting.³ Gregg was confirmed as ambassador to South Korea on September 12, 1989.³ Rodriguez later published Shadow Warrior (1989, with John Weisman), a source the Independent Counsel cited for his 1985 movements.³