A CUBAN SCAR
Eleuthera is a small island located on the far eastern edge of the Commonwealth of Bahamas. Its land mass stretches about 110 miles in length, but averages barely more than a mile and a half in width. It is one of the several archipelagic states of the Bahamas, located approximately 50 miles from Nassau. Prior to 1973, when the Bahamas gained independence from Britain, the island was relatively prosperous as an agricultural economy, its principal export being pineapples. Following independence, the economy of Eleuthera evolved into one based almost entirely on tourism.
But the economic change didn’t occur overnight. In 1983, when Stuart Larson, along with his wife, Leigh Ann, and two children ages 12 and 14, visited the island for a vacation, there was only one seaside resort compound on the island, located in a beautiful cove alongside a beach of pink sand. The accommodations were pleasant, but the amenities were scarce, meaning, to the children, no television or phone service in the rooms.
There was no commercial air service to the island, so tourists arrived either by boat or private plane. Larson and family came by plane, a twin-engine Piper Seneca, designed to carry a pilot and 5 passengers. The trip had begun in Dallas, Texas, the Larson’s home, with stops along the way in Miami and Nassau. There was a nice landing strip located near a place called Rock Sound, but there was no fixed base operation there and no commercial services available for the aircraft or its passengers. Larson had pulled off the runway and parked his plane on the adjacent grass next to the only other plane on the site. Arrangements had been made in advance for transportation to the resort, but the plane had to be left on the side of the runway for the length of the Larson’s stay, 5 days, with no security or supervision.
Worried that the airplane would be subjected to vandalism or outright theft, Stuart made two or three trips out to the landing strip to check on the plane. On one such occasion, which was on the day before they were scheduled to depart the island, Stuart noticed two men near his plane who were in the process of leaving the area through some heavily wooded terrain. Resisting the urge to shout after the men, which might lead to a confrontation not to his liking, Stuart opted to do a thorough inspection of the plane.
When Stuart returned to the hotel, Leigh Ann and the children were just returning from a morning on the beach and spotted him entering the front door of the facility. Both children yelled after him and he was barely able to turn around before they grabbed him with sandy fingers and wet cover shirts. Once back in their unit, Stuart told Leigh Ann that there had been some vandalism on the plane – no serious damage, but it appeared someone had tried unsuccessfully to remove one of the navigation radios. The radio was still there, but one of the cables had been cut so that the equipment was rendered unserviceable. He told her it would be unwise to fly the plane without the nav radio, but that he thought he could fix it – or get it fixed – if he took it to the FBO (fixed base operator) they had visited in Nassau on their way to the island.
“As I see it, We can deal with this in either of two ways”, Stuart said. “We can all leave here shortly, fly to Nassau and spend the night in a hotel there so I can get the radio fixed tomorrow. Or, I can fly over early in the morning, get the radio repaired and come back to pick you guys up later.”
Leigh Ann was not keen on the idea of making a one-night stand in Nassau, but said she thought they should ask the kids for their preference. Both said they would rather stay on the island for one more night, with a caveat. They were both really tired of the food at the hotel restaurant, which was really the only practical place to eat. There were no restaurants anywhere close on the island. So, they agreed, if we can go somewhere to get a pizza for dinner, they would vote to stay.
It was finally decided that, Stuart would stay and figure out how to get them pizza for dinner and then make the trip to Nassau early the next day. Getting the pizza proved to be the hard part of the bargain. There were no rental car companies operating on the island; however, the hotel did make arrangements for a car to be delivered to the family. It turned out the car was the personal vehicle of an island resident who was pleased to rent out his car for the evening. Before turning the keys over to Stuart, the owner had to remove several personal items from the trunk and back seat. Then things got really interesting.
To find a small hamlet where pizzas could be had required traveling several miles down a jungle-like road with vegetation overgrowth brushing either side of the car. Fortunately, there was no other traffic on the road and they eventually made it to a clearing where they found a store which, among other services, would cook a meal to order for patrons, of which there seemed to be none other than the Larsons. So, pizzas were cooked, they tasted great and the treacherous journey back to the hotel in the dark yielded no misfortunes.
***
The following day, Stuart returned to the island from Nassau, picked up the family and flew to Miami, where Leigh Ann and the children caught a commercial flight back to Dallas. Stuart then flew from Miami to Tallahassee, Florida, where he would spend the night before continuing on to Texas. He had been flying that day for quite a few hours and felt it necessary to get some rest before undertaking the fairly long flight home. He got a motel room near the airport in Tallahassee and slept for a few hours before returning to the airport for an early start. He had filed a flight plan for the trip calling for a 5:30 am departure.
When he arrived at the facility where his plane was parked, Stuart spotted a man standing on the right wing of the plane, apparently attempting to open the door to the cockpit. As Stuart approached the man, he called out to him, whereupon the man jumped down from the wing and headed straight for Stuart with what appeared to be a screwdriver in his hand. Stuart swung down hard on the hand holding the weapon, knocking it loose and sending it skidding across the concrete tarmac. However, this move caused Stuart to end up with his back turned slightly toward the stranger, who took the opportunity to shove Stuart to the ground. He landed near the front wheel of the aircraft, which had wooden chocks placed fore and aft the wheel. The two wooden wedges were joined by a small rope which Stuart grabbed as he turned to face his assailant. The man was now bending over him with his arm cocked to deliver a blow with his fist. Before he could do so, Stuart swung the wooden chocks upward, striking the man hard against the side of his head, knocking him to the ground. Stuart struggled to get to his feet, but the man recovered more quickly and began to run into the darkness toward the fence surrounding the airport. Rather than chase after him, Stuart decided to let him go and concentrate on a search for damage to his plane. It appeared the man had never made it inside the plane as both doors were still locked.
Now Stuart had to decide whether to report the incident to the police or airport authorities. He knew he should, but since it was obvious no one else was around who could have witnessed the incident and since he wasn’t really hurt, he decided to proceed with his plan to make a quick departure and get to Dallas as fast as possible. Before leaving, he made a quick search of the area, found the screwdriver the man had brandished and tossed it into the back of the plane. He also noticed a bit of blood on the wheel chocks, which he was able to scrape mostly clean with an oil cloth he kept in the plane.
***
Three days after his return to Dallas, Stuart received a telephone call at his office from someone claiming to be with the U.S. Treasury Department, asking if they could meet later in the day. When Stuart asked what the matter was concerning, the caller just reaffirmed he was with the Treasury Department and would prefer to discuss the matter in person. Stuart said, “OK, but I am a stock broker and would like to wait until the stock market closes before meeting.”
When the T-Man arrived later that afternoon, Stuart led him into a small office just off the firm’s trading floor, whereupon Agent Frederick Silver dutifully presented his identification, thus satisfying Stuart’s nagging concern about who he might meet.
“Let me begin”, Silver said, “by assuring you my visit has nothing to do with the Internal Revenue Service or your personal tax situation. I am hoping you might have been a witness to, or know something about, a killing that took place at the Tallahassee airport last Sunday evening near a place where your airplane had been parked. Did you see or hear anything unusual when you were there getting your plane ready to fly to Dallas?”
“No, absolutely nothing”, Stuart replied. “In fact, it was so early in the morning, there was no one around, not even the people running the FBO there.”
“Excuse me. FBO. What is that?”
“Sorry. It stands for Fixed Base Operation, a term used in the private aviation industry for a commercial facility providing goods and services to private pilots, their planes and their passengers. They sell Avgas and provide other goods and services similar to those of a gas service station for automobiles.”
“So, you didn’t buy any gas that morning?’
“No. I had the plane fueled when I arrived there the preceding day – or evening, I should say. I actually arrived there after dark.”
“What were you doing in Tallahassee?”
“My family and I had been on vacation in the Bahamas and I had flown from Eleuthera to Miami and then to Tallahassee and felt I needed to rest before making the 3 to 4 hour flight from Tallahassee to Dallas. My family flew from Miami to Dallas on a commercial flight. Can you now tell me about the killing you are inquiring about?”
“Well, since you didn’t see or hear anything unusual, I won’t waste a lot of your time, but a man was found dead next to the airport fence, reasonably close to the place where your plane was parked. He had been struck in the head by a blunt instrument, possibly wooden, and managed to move himself in an effort to escape, but lost consciousness and bled out.”
“May I ask why the Treasury Department is interested in such an incident?”
“Of course I can’t tell you much, but we believe the man was a member of a group engaged in a plot to kill President Reagan during his planned visit to Atlanta. We are aware of the existence of this group and suspect the deceased was at the Tallahassee airport to receive or recover some money or contraband being smuggled in from Cuba. That’s about all I can disclose at this point. Thank you for your time.”
“So, the group you are talking about are Cubans.”
“We believe so, at this time. Good day, sir.” But as the agent reached to open the door to leave, he turned and said,” Oh, by the way, was your plane searched by customs when you arrived in Miami from that island you mentioned?”
“As a matter of fact, it was. Quite thoroughly, I might add. All our luggage was removed and searched and two men went inside the plane where they remained for quite a while.”
“OK, good. Again, thanks for your time.”
***
The next morning, Stuart asked a young research analyst in his firm to do some research on a militant extremist group in Cuba that might be interested in assassinating President Reagan. After a few hours, the analyst came back, saying he thought he had what Stuart was looking for, but it involved a lot of documentation, mostly newspaper articles from the various wire services. Stuart told him to just give him a synopsis at that point and he would look at the documents later.
“OK,” the young man said, “here goes. Fidel Castro ascended to power in Cuba in 1959 and remained so, more or less continuously, for many years thereafter and is still the government leader today. About a year ago, in March of 1982, President Ronald Reagan issued a written statement designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and censured Castro’s government for providing support to militant communist groups in Africa and Latin America, including Angola, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua. Cuba’s official response was that “acts by legitimate national liberation movements cannot be defined as terrorism.” With heavy economic sanctions against Cuba already in place at the time, the designation was largely a symbolic act. At least, that was the perspective of most Americans.
For many Cubans, already seething against America for the many economic and political sanctions imposed, the official designation from President Reagan was a back-of-the-hand slap challenge. For one particular militant group, it became a call to arms and not just in the figurative or metaphorical sense. There already existed, at the time, an extremist group interested in developing Cuba’s prominence in the world of nations. Their sense of national pride was constantly being subverted by the United State’s treatment of the island nation as a misbehaving child, rather than as an independent nation of importance. This group, which called itself “Verdaderos Nacionalistas” meaning “True Nationalists”, was not actually opposed to Castro’s rule; they just considered his government was not doing enough to promote Cuba as a strong nation worldwide. Castro had publicly denounced the group and its principles, so they mostly worked in secret, ever increasing their membership, not only in Cuba, but in small groups or cells working in the United States. As of the time of the Reagan designation, the group was not considered militant, even though they regularly engaged in military training and maneuvers.
The Reagan proclamation provided enough impetus for the group, known by most as the VN, to begin in earnest a policy for military action against the United States. They realized they could never match the military force of the US, but the strategy was to use limited military strikes at prominent targets in America. Such a program, they believed, would cause America to negotiate with the Cubans, since they had already exhausted just about every type of economic, political and diplomatic sanction possible. America, they believed, would be forced into the position of some form of military retaliation against Cuba, even though the Cuban government would deny any official action against the US and probably denounce the militant group as acting without national political authority.
So, the VN believed their guerilla warfare tactics would force an American reaction that would be favorable to their Nationalistic goals. The U.S. could, of course, respond militarily against the isolated and mobile forces, but this would involve the kind of military activity for which the US armed forces were not really suited. The CIA and other intelligence forces could be engaged to seek out and destroy these isolated groups, but their record in the military arena was not particularly stellar, historically. It was just this sort of indecisiveness that the VN hoped to create, ultimately leading to negotiations for improved relations with Cuba.
But how was the group to be armed and financed? They certainly couldn’t turn to their government or Cuba’s allies. In particular, Russia would not be interested in becoming involved in provoking America for such small stakes. The solutions for the VN included building a drug empire to produce financing, a program they had already begun before Reagan’s pronouncement but which had been ramped up incrementally in the past year. And they had resorted to systematic smuggling to arm their forces in America, an activity that had also been accelerated over the past year. It was difficult to smuggle arms, but not so hard to smuggle money, which could then be used to buy arms and munitions in the U.S., something that was not, sadly, difficult at all.
***
What Stuart did not know – could not have known – was that one of the favored practices the VN used to smuggle money into the U.S. was to hide cash on private planes and boats heading to America from islands other than Cuba. Particularly popular with the smugglers were those planes and boats carrying or occupied only by families on vacation, the least suspicious types entering the country from a vacation island. Once the plane or boat reached its final destination after clearing customs, VN operatives in the U.S. would recover the cash while the plane or boat was unattended. Stuart Parsons and his family in Eleuthera fit the smugglers’ profile perfectly.
Other circumstances of which Stuart was unaware included the details of the plot to assassinate President Reagan. The Secret Service officer had told him of the plot by a Cuban organization, presumably the VN, to kill Reagan on his visit to Atlanta, but he had been told nothing else. The plot details had not been made public on orders from the President. In fact, what the VN had planned was nothing like most assassination attempts, typically involving a lone shooter. What the VN intended was a military-style assault on the presidential party by a sizeable brigade of heavily armed soldiers, to be carried out in a public location in Atlanta. This assault would be the first in a planned series of attacks by the VN in furtherance of their policy of limited engagement warfare. The VN certainly envisioned the incurrence of some casualties, but it was a price they were willing to pay. And what better way to launch their program than to kill the man who had so wrongfully accused and publicly denounced all of Cuba. Once the mission had been accomplished, the attack group planned to quickly disperse and, by whatever means, disappear into the countryside out of Atlanta in all directions.
The VN, however, grossly underestimated the intelligence services and the strength of the U.S. Secret Service. President Reagan’s proclamation about the terrorist activities of Cuba was made over the strong objection of both the CIA and the Secret Service, who believed it would provoke retaliatory measures of some sort from the Cubans without really achieving any political or diplomatic value. Well, maybe Reagan would derive some political benefit, but not much. So, once the president had done it anyway, both services stepped up their surveillance and clandestine activities regarding possible Cuban reprisals. With the VN accelerating its recruitment, armament procurement, drug trafficking and smuggling programs, the natural result was an increase of information leaks flowing into the U.S. intelligence gatherers.
When the VN soldiers began to gather in and around Atlanta, coming one-by-one or in small groups of two or three, the Secret Service teams were already there, along with CIA operatives and even National Guard troops. Swiftly and expertly, the VN members were identified, arrested and detained before a shot could be fired. The entire operation had been defused before it ever got off the ground. Those detained who were illegally in the U.S. were simply deported. The others were charged with various crimes, including conspiracy, unlawful possession of firearms and resisting arrest.
***
While Stuart would have been pleased to learn of these developments, he was completely unaware and continued to wonder and worry about what might happen to him as a result of the death of the man he had fought at the Tallahassee airport. Surely, he thought, an elementary investigation into the death would have found traces of blood from the victim leading back to the location where his plane was parked. This would undoubtedly lead to a thorough search of his plane where they most likely would find evidence of the vandalism to the plane. He knew that when he was questioned about the matter, he would have to tell the truth about the assault. Would he then be charged with murder? Manslaughter? Even if the police bought his story of self-defense, he could still be charged with some offense related to his failure to report the incident.
The Secret Service had no interest in pursuing the killer with a murder investigation. That was not within their jurisdiction. Once they had identified the victim as a member of the VN and then totally quelled the assassination attempt, they were happy to leave the murder investigation in the hands of local authorities which, in this case, meant the sheriff’s office of Leon County, Florida, the county in which Tallahassee is located. Upon learning that the victim was illegally in the country, was a member of the Verdaderos Nacionalistas and participated in a plot to kill the president, the sheriff did not exactly close the investigation file, but it was put on something approaching permanent hold. Had he known of these facts, Stuart would not have had to worry about a criminal prosecution.
But what about a reprisal from the Cuban militant group? Would they not be interested in pursuing the killer of one of their members? Knowing that their man had been killed while attempting to enter Stuart’s plane, wouldn’t they identify him as the prime suspect in the killing? However, the VN was completely embarrassed by the utter failure of their first ever military engagement. Not only did the botched assault destroy the morale of VN members, the activity prompted a formal demand from the U.S. to the government of Cuba — that basically being Castro — to pursue charges in Cuba against the VN and cause them to be disbanded. While Castro did not respond in the manner desired, he did further censure the group and demand they disband, failing which aggressive governmental measures of enforcement would be forthcoming. Castro’s strongest response, however, was to forbid the group from taking actions of any kind in the United States. Collectively, these measures caused the VN to lose power and influence to the point where they could no longer recruit effectively. They became, essentially, a toothless tiger in the military sense, redirecting their efforts instead to the drug trafficking business. The man who died at the Tallahassee airport became just another of the many casualties suffered in the embarrassing debacle of the group’s planned presidential assault. Surely, the leaders of the VN would believe the man was brought down by the U.S. Secret Service or the CIA with all contraband confiscated.
Stuart also worried about what he should do with the $3.5 million in cash now in his possession. In Eleuthera, when Stuart had come upon two men leaving the area where his plane was parked, he did, in fact, conduct a thorough inspection of his plane for possible vandalism. What he found was not damage to one of his navigation radios as he had reported to his wife. What he found was a patch on the inside fuselage of his plane behind the back passenger seats, an area where luggage and miscellaneous personal items were normally stored for flight. The patch was freshly sealed over and had he not come upon it when he did, Stuart might never have noticed it once the cover had dried. After the patch was removed, Stuart found a bag stuffed with U.S. currency which, he would later determine, amounted to roughly $3.5 million. He lifted the bag out and then made repairs to the opening, taking care to do a bad job of it. When customs officers examined the plane, the patchwork would surely be noticed and the opening searched. Finding nothing, the officers would question Stuart and he would be able to explain that a piece of luggage had penetrated the wall. Further, he would clarify that he had personally performed the patchwork, obviously not doing a very good job of it. In this manner, Stuart hoped there would be a record made by the customs officers about the breach in the fuselage wall, and that no contraband had been found.
When Stuart left his family on the island and flew to Nassau, he did not go for the purpose of repairing his nav radio, but to visit one of the many banks there and to open a safe deposit box for storing the cash he had found. It was still there. If things work out, Stuart thought, and I don’t get prosecuted or shot down by the VN, I’m going to develop a plan for extracting that money from Nassau. By placing it in a bank account somewhere in the Cayman Islands, he could access the cash in a cautious manner over time so as to avoid suspicion and not violate any money laundering laws. He didn’t really need the money right away, but it would be nice to know it was there, just in case – and to make the down payment — paying cash in full could attract unwanted attention — on the new airplane he had been eyeing.