Ledge Pocket: the Special Forces-CIA covert mission to train the Contras in Florida.

Special Forces provided the manpower. The CIA paid the bills.

A Green Beret assigned to the top secret “Ledge Pocket” program demonstrates the use of an anti-aircraft gun to the contras at Eglin Air Force Base. (Courtesy photo provided to The High Side.)

One sunny morning in April 1986, more than a dozen Special Forces soldiers clambered aboard an Air Force C-130 turboprop aircraft at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina.

The C-130 was – and remains – the workhorse of the Air Force’s transport fleet, a ubiquitous sight at military airfields since the Vietnam War and an aircraft that the SF soldiers were used to. But this aircraft was slightly different to virtually all other C-130s: The windows in the back of the plane, where the SF soldiers were riding, were all blacked out. As a result, none of the troops knew where they were flying; nor were they supposed to.

They did, however, know what their mission would be when they got there: They were to spend several months training Contra rebels from Nicaragua for their war against the leftist Sandinista regime that held power in that country.

The mission had begun a few weeks previously, when Col. John Waghelstein, commander of 7^th Special Forces Group, directed Maj. Remo Butler, who commanded C Company of the group’s 2^nd Battalion, to prepare a mobile training team that would instruct groups of 70 to 90 Contras in basic infantry tactics, combat medicine, intelligence tradecraft, and human rights, according to two former Green Berets assigned to the program. The operation was called Ledge Pocket.