7
Langley, Virginia
Fall 1980
Walking up the steps of the Agency’s headquarters building, I felt six feet tall. Ever since my first encounter with espionage and World War II novels, I had dreamed of living the life of a spy. Those years of escapist reading as a kid fostered a vision of what spies do.
Would I be fitted for a tux? Taught the art of Sean Connery–esque seduction? My martinis shaken, not stirred? I didn’t know what to expect, but the preconceptions I entered the building with would soon enough be torn down by the reality of the job.
Fortunately, this was one of those rare times in life where the reality was better than the preconceptions.
When my family had nothing in those first years in Florida, I learned to savor every good moment that came along. My stride slowed, I looked up at the entrance to the headquarters building and tried to breathe an eternity into this moment. Now, here I was, a once-orphaned Cuban refugee from the streets of Miami about to join the storied Central Intelligence Agency.
When I reached the glass doors I paused, stretching a final second or two out of this moment. As I did, I saw through the glass the CIA’s famous seal embossed on the marble lobby floor in gray and white. In its center, above the star and shield, was the symbol of my adopted country, the eagle. He looked proud, resolute, and rugged as hell.
Don’t mess with us!
Into the lobby I went, but I skirted the seal, thinking it would be sacrilegious to walk on it. That became a ritual of mine for the next thirty years.
The lobby possessed a blend of grandeur and history that left me mesmerized. It felt dreamlike just to be there, among the columns, the busy suits hurrying this way and that, and of course the Memorial Wall to my right where chiseled into the marble were the words, “IN HONOR OF THOSE MEMBERS OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR COUNTRY.”
Below the words were five rows of stars, each one representing an officer lost. Flanking the stars was an American flag on the left, an Agency flag on the right.
Looking at it gave me chills. Most of those stars had no names attached below them. Men and women so devoted that they gave their lives for a country whose people would likely never learn their names or know their deeds. Quiet heroes, anonymous but remembered, silent to the end.
But not forgotten.
I checked in and announced who I was and who I was there to see. While I waited for my point of contact to come escort me, I noticed a statue on the left side of the lobby. I walked over to it.
Wild Bill Donovan.
He was a major childhood hero of mine, along with Teddy Roosevelt and Wyatt Earp. When he founded the OSS—the CIA’s World War II forerunner—he told President Roosevelt he’d fill the ranks with “calculatingly reckless men of disciplined daring … and that they would be trained for aggressive action.”
I promised myself that in the months and years ahead, I would measure up to the example of those pioneers.
My point of contact arrived, escorted me behind the stars to the badge office. I filled out some paperwork and was led to the Special Activities Division. There, I learned that they needed a Spanish-speaking paramilitary officer but had no one in-house who fit that bill. Then somebody remembered me, the “Cuban PJ” from the field training exercises over the previous summer. I’d made a good impression, and while at the time they’d told me they had no openings, they’d kept me in mind for when something came up.
Came up it did. I was led into a small conference room to be briefed on my new role.
Anastasio Somoza had long been considered one of the worst despots in Central America, ruling Nicaragua from 1967 until 1979. His regime had grown so corrupt and oppressive that the Carter administration withdrew its support and forced most of Somoza’s allies to follow suit. Since the early 1960s, a Soviet- and Cuban-backed communist insurgency had flourished in the Nicaraguan countryside. Following a massive earthquake that devastated much of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, as the insurgents were known, gained the upper hand. After Carter turned against him, Somoza was doomed. He fled the country in 1979 after looting its treasury. Allegedly, when the Sandinistas took power, they were left with less than $2 million with which to run the country.
Shortly before I arrived in Langley, a Sandinista hit squad assassinated Somoza while he was living in exile in Paraguay in what was called Operation Reptile.
The Sandinistas quickly consolidated their power through a Nazi-like pogrom and oppression of their own. The regime followed the same path Castro had—purging less ideologically committed allies, throwing opposition members into prisons, or killing them outright. The country was bankrupt, and people in the countryside were starving. Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega, the new pro-Soviet dictator of Nicaragua, had opened the door to communist influence. Economic and military aid from the Eastern Bloc was flowing into Central America via Cuba, and the Sandinistas began to stoke Marxist insurgencies in other nations, including El Salvador. Central America was fast approaching a tipping point.
At stake was more than just one nation’s swing to the Soviets. American foreign policy for a century and a half had been predicated on the Monroe Doctrine, which aggressively sought to keep foreign influence out of the Western Hemisphere. The Soviets had found a foothold in our part of the globe through Cuba. Now they were exploiting another domino in Nicaragua. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras were in their crosshairs, too.
Here, in one of the darkest hours of the Cold War, the spread of communism through Central and South America became a dire threat to the security of the United States.
Castro’s Marxists had destroyed everything my family had built. America had given us the opportunity to rebuild and start our lives anew. Now, my adopted nation was giving me a chance to strike back at those who had upended and stolen my family’s lives. As I listened to the briefing, I saw in my mind’s eye the countless families whose hard work would be appropriated by the new Nicaraguan state, whose land would be stolen, whose factories and livelihoods would be robbed with official sanction. They were in for a repeat of what we Cubans had already endured.
In fact, it was already happening. Like Orwell’s Animal Farm, the revolution’s leaders simply became the new communist elite, living high on the backs of the peasants and workers while appropriating what little wealth remained in Nicaragua. The plunderer Somoza had simply been replaced by a plunderer with a different ideology.
Meanwhile, a few desperate men and women had fled across the northern border to Honduras, where they were living in dilapidated refugee camps. They’d seen their farms pillaged, their families destroyed. Others who had been part of Somoza’s military escaped to Honduras after they saw what happened to their defeated comrades: executions or imprisonment. They formed the core leadership of this ragtag force, which became known as the Contras.
They were willing to fight—not for the Somoza family but for their own families and communities. The problem: they had virtually no training, little support, few supplies, and virtually no weapons. In this condition, the Contras had no hope of beating the Soviet-backed regime.
The CIA was directed by incoming President Ronald Reagan to change that. But they had no native Spanish-speaking paramilitary officers down there. My job was to help provide training to this nascent insurgency. Medical. Military. Whatever I could teach them. “Get your ass to Honduras. Make them love you and trust you. Listen to your bosses. Do what they say. Get them into the fight.”
The years of reading I’d done paid off in that moment. I immediately thought, This is like being an OSS officer trying to train and supply the French resistance to the Germans during World War II. I understood what I would have to do.
The briefing was short and didn’t dwell on the details. When they finished giving me the thirty-thousand-foot overview of the situation, somebody added that I would be on my own. Expendable.
There was no time for me to go through any Agency training. I was to depart in a little over a week. In the interim, I was ordered to check into a local hotel and deal with some admin crap that is never written about in the spy novels: insurance, medical exams, setting up my credit union account, and a myriad of other paperwork.
As I prepared to deploy abroad, I was given my first alias: Alex. My true identity was tucked away. In return, I received identification, credit cards, passport, and other documents.
I failed my first test of fieldcraft just after getting my new identity. I checked into a new hotel in Virginia under my alias, but I signed the registration form “Ric Prado.” Just before handing it back to the clerk, I realized what I’d done, tore it up, and had to ask for another one. Fortunately, the clerk didn’t suspect anything. Nevertheless, it was a wake-up call for me. In this new life I suddenly had in front of me, such mistakes could get me killed. I would have to be more meticulous in the future.
A few days into the administrative process, it began to dawn on me how different my life would be from now on. My running days in Miami Springs were over. So was the comradery of the firehouse. Most important, I would be far from my little girl and my parents. I could not tell anybody what I was doing, or even where I was.
Before I left for Langley, I’d taken my dad aside and told him I’d been offered a civilian job in the military. I never mentioned the Agency, but he knew his son. He knew I wouldn’t leave the military reserves and the firehouse for a job as a bookkeeper for the Department of Defense. He knew I was running toward trouble, legal, but trouble, nonetheless. He also knew not to mention that fact to my mother.
Ten days after being hired by the CIA, I was booked onto a flight to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Since arriving in Florida from Cuba and one temporary duty assignment (TDY) to Panama for the Jungle Warfare Training Center, I had not been outside of the United States. It happened so quickly I had no time to go see my parents or to somehow find a way to say goodbye to my little girl. With one bag and one suitcase, I stepped onto my third international flight that would carry me to a new life.
I touched down in the Honduran capital expecting that somebody from the CIA crew would be waiting for me. I wandered through the terminal and recovered my suitcase. I didn’t see anyone. Was I expecting somebody to be standing there with a sign that read “Alex”? Probably not, but I thought for sure they’d have somebody there to meet me.
After a thorough trip through the terminal, it was clear I was on my own. As the other passengers departed, I found myself virtually alone. Honduras in 1981 was not a big travel destination. The terminal had one pay phone, but I had no number to call, so all I could do was hang around and wait. Eventually, the airport closed, and I was left there alone.
For three hours, I stood outside the terminal, leaning against its wall. I could not have stuck out more if I’d written I do not belong here on my forehead.
Finally, two guys from the “base” showed up. They led me to a sedan, and we set off into town.
Honduras was and sadly remains an impoverished nation. The capital was over four hundred years old, nestled between a series of hills. Over the centuries, it grew to include about a million people, but the urban planners failed to keep up with the swelling population. I thought I’d seen poverty before, but that first drive through Tegucigalpa opened my eyes to the desperation so many people face.
There was little sign of American influence here. Later, I would see fast-food restaurants like Burger King and McDonald’s in El Salvador and other places I visited throughout Central and South America. Honduras had nothing like that. There was a Holiday Inn downtown, but that was too obvious a place for the likes of me to stay. Instead, they drove me to a quiet place called the Hotel Alameda, located minutes away from our base. It was decent lodging and included a security wall and pool in an inner courtyard.
I checked in, got to my room, and my new friends told me, “We are also staying here; join us for dinner and drinks. You start work tomorrow.”
The next morning, I was brought to the operation’s safe house—basically a nondescript building with offices inside for us to work. There I was introduced to the team and my role in it. In these early days, there were only five CIA officers who interfaced directly with the Contras in Tegucigalpa; none were yet in the field. My job was to go into the ten camps that lay scattered along the Honduran-Nicaraguan border and help train and organize them while building trust. This would be a tall order. The camps were located in remote sections of the jungle or high mountains, only accessible via poorly developed roads, or by helicopters, which we did not initially have access to.
The Contras were divided internally between rival factions and leaders, as well as along ethnic grounds. On the east coast, the Miskito Indians were willing to fight against Ortega, but the other Contra groups mistrusted them because of their dreams of autonomy. The Miskito, in turn, mistrusted the “Spaniards,” whose leaders all came from the former Somoza regime. Eventually, there would also emerge a southern front, which was largely populated by disaffected former Sandinistas. Layered into this Byzantine drama was a group of Argentinian army officers, sent north to assist in developing the Contras into a viable fighting force. Though the U.S. was paying for their presence, so far, they had done little to earn their pay. Most caroused in the capital and played favorites with the Contra factions, which made unifying them even more difficult for us.
There was competition among the camps for the available supplies—what little there was to be had. The Honduran army provided some support, but the Contras lacked weapons, food, clothing—even shoes. Still, from the initial briefings, I knew that they did not lack in grit. Anyone willing to live shoeless in the jungle on near-starvation rations had to be motivated.
Supplies and training—that’s what they needed. Though I would be residing in the capital, most of my time would be spent in the camps, getting to know each faction, its leaders, and its needs. It would mean some of the most rugged and inhospitable terrain imaginable—and I would be doing it without any other American or Agency officer.
Over the course of the next few days, I was introduced to some of the Contra senior leadership and to our courageous Honduran counterparts in the capital as “Captain Alex.” Once I finished the meet and briefs, I was asked, “When will you be ready to go see the camps?”
“How about yesterday?”