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Dear Progressive Reader,

Eugene Hasenfus, the CIA contract employee who open the floodgates what what later became known as “the Iran-Contra Affair,” passed away ([link removed]) last week. As I wrote ([link removed]) in a 2014 article for the Tico Times in Costa Rica, “Hasenfus went to El Salvador to join the Contra resupply operation headed by General Richard Secord for a promised salary of $3,000 per month—a good deal more than he was making as a part-time construction worker in Wisconsin. His job was to kick the loads of cargo out the doors of the plane as it flew low over Contra-controlled areas inside Nicaragua. Hasenfus would later tell his Nicaraguan captors that he had flown more than ten such missions. On October 5, 1986, the C-123 cargo plane—called a ‘Provider’ by its manufacturer—left Ilopango Airbase in El Salvador loaded with seventy “Soviet-made AK-47 rifles and 100,000 rounds of ammunition, rocket
grenades, and other supplies,” according to aviation safety records. As the plane entered Nicaraguan airspace it dropped to an altitude of 2,500 feet near San Carlos, along the Río San Juan. At that moment, [a] young Sandinista [soldier] fired his shoulder-mounted missile, whose Russian name ‘Strela’ means ‘arrow,’ and the plane began to spiral toward a crash. Unlike his colleagues, Eugene Hasenfus had a parachute that he had borrowed from a brother who was a skydiver.”

The capture of Hasenfus led to the unravelling of a complex covert operation ([link removed])
to illegally arm the Contras using U.S. funds against the orders of Congress. As I continued, “Retired U.S. Major General John Singlaub, who was President Ronald Reagan’s administrative chief liaison to the secret Contra supply effort, in his 1991 autobiography Hazardous Duty, bemoans ‘Only a fool would dispatch such a plane on a clandestine airdrop during daylight. To make matters worse, Hasenfus and the three dead crewmen had been carrying their wallets with identity cards linking them to Southern Air Transport, a known CIA proprietary company. The final straw in this foul-up was the fact that the plane’s logbooks were on board, which also linked the operation back to the CIA.’ ”

The Iran-Contra investigation would ultimately charge ([link removed]) fourteen Reagan Administration officials. While several participants were prosecuted, only one, a CIA contractor, ever served any jail time. Hasenfus, on the other hand, lost all of his attempts in court to get compensation, as I wrote, “The cost of his legal defense was never paid by the government since officials were still trying to deny that he was their employee. The bank came close to foreclosing on his mortgage as he struggled to make ends meet. He unsuccessfully sued his employers, Southern Air Transport and Corporate Air Services, saying they had promised verbally to cover all of his legal fees, but the suit lost in district court, and again on appeal.”

This week on our website, Caitlin Scialla and Owen Jakel, two former interns at The Progressive, look at ([link removed]) the smokescreen of “narcoterrorism” being used for U.S. military operations in Latin America today; Kathy Kelly writes about ([link removed]) the conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank, even as the world’s attention remains focused on Donald Trump’s proposal for the restructuring of governance in Gaza; and Jesse Fairbanks, Kaelin Rapport, and Isha Weerasinghe of the Center for Law and Social Policy pen an op-ed ([link removed]) on the worrying new carceral system being built for people experiencing homelessness. Plus Lily Spanbauer, another former intern at The Progressive examines
([link removed]) the politics of the new Wicked films; and Jef Bryant of our Public Schools Advocate ([link removed]) project shines a light ([link removed]) on the quiet revolution taking place in some of the nation’s public schools.

On December 10 and 11, The Progressive, together with the South Central Federation of Labor, will be hosting the Midwest premiere of a new documentary film about the struggle of these workers for representation. The film, Baristas vs. Billionaires ([link removed]) , will screen at the Barrymore Theatre ([link removed]) in Madison, Wisconsin, at 7:00 p.m. on both days and will include a panel discussion on each night with several Starbucks union members and the film’s co-producer, Glenn Silber ([link removed]) (who also co-produced the award-winning film The War At Home ([link removed]) —which tells the story of Madison’s anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s). Our regular contributor John Nichols wrote about ([link removed]) the Starbucks workers
and the folks supporting their struggle in this week’s edition of Madison’s newspaper, The Capital Times.

Thanks to everyone who supported us this past week on Giving Tuesday! If you missed that day, you can still donate to support The Progressive at /progressive.org/?form=PGIVTU25>.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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