When the whirlwind of complex, overlapping covert operations that is labeled, perhaps misleadingly, ‘Iran-Contra’ was revealed, the revelations came in the aftermath of the doomed flight of Eugene Hasenfus in October of 1986. His plane—owned by the CIA proprietary airline Southern Air Transport, and previously owned by notorious, intelligence-linked drug smuggler Barry Seal—had been shot down over Nicaragua, leading to the discovery onboard of numerous arms, military gear, and documents tying the flight to American intelligence services. Hasenfus himself survived the crash, and after being captured, began to disclose aspects of the Contra support operations to the Sandinista government. Stateside, inquiries began to circulate: the Boland amendments, passed between 1982 and 1982, had blocked American government support for the Contras, and yet here was incontrovertible proof that exactly that was what was happening.
Yet while the Hasenfus shoot-down was the major catalyst for unveiling the operations, a spider-web of cracks had been slowly spreading for years. These cracks would allow a trickle of disclosures to pour through, which would later become a torrent (though ironically, major confirmation of many of these early allegations would come not through the official inquiry into Iran-Contra, but through the Kerry Commission’s investigation into narcotics and terrorism in the southern hemisphere). Case in point is the work of journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, who had experienced first hand the mysterious bombing assassination attempt on Contra leader—regarded as a ‘moderate’ by the more hardline Contra forces—Eden Pastora in 1984. In the aftermath, Avirgan and Honey launched an investigation into the bombing, which led them into the abyss of covert Contra support operations, the role of shadowy intelligence assets, and CIA-enabled drug trafficking.
Avirgan and Honey’s initial report, which sketched the outlines of the ‘Contra side’ of the Iran-Contra conspiracy, was published in October, 1985, almost exactly a year prior to Hasenfus’ ill-fated flight.
In May of 1986, still months prior to the crash, notorious Christic Institute attorney Daniel Sheehan, had linked up with Avirgan and Honey and filed a civil suit against figures in the US government concerning violations of the Neutrality Act through covert support for the Contras. Sheehan also was tapping into other streams of information that were beginning to trickle out—namely, a case that had been brewing for some time involving a Miami-based figure named Jesus Garcia. Garcia had been busted for possession of illegal firearms in December, 1985, and promptly revealed to Florida law enforcement a wild tale involving a paramilitary outfit called Civilian Materiel Assistance—later revealed to be a key component in the Contra support operations—having been contracted to assassinate the US ambassador to Costa Rica, Lewis Tambs, by representatives from Colombia’s Medellin cartel. Garica also supplied investigators with information on arms shipments to the Contras in Nicaragua. Sheehan was on the scene shortly after the arrest, garnering information from Garcia that was relevant to his case with Avirgan and Honey.