Like many Americans growing up during the 1960s, the Bay of Pigs invasion was for me simply another chapter in our country’s long struggle to stamp out communism. It all became personal for me in 1990 when I met Felix I. Rodriguez, a charismatic veteran of that doomed invasion and a central figure in the CIA’s covert wars in Central America.

I was a young attorney, representing Eugene Hasenfus, whose C-123 cargo plane was shot down over Nicaragua in 1986 as he and his crew were attempting to arm the Contra rebels fighting against the communist Sandinista regime. The injured Hasenfus was the only one to survive the crash. Captured by Sandinista soldiers, who lobbed taunts of “What now, Rambo?” at him, the bedraggled Hasenfus was paraded before the media at the end of a dog leash by Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega.

This was the beginning of the “Iran-Contra affair.”

 

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