THREE BACK IN U.S. AFTER ESCAPING JAIL AND FLEEING BRAZIL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100950002-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 22, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: December 27, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100950002-6
ARTICLEAtLIED
ON PAGE
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
27 December 1986
Three back in U.S.
after escaping jail
and fleeing Brazil
STAT
By Joan Mower
AssocdoW Prom
WASHINGTON - Three American merce-
naries who used hacksaw blades to escape
earlier this month from a Brazilian prison
where they had been held on gun-smug-
gling charges returned Thursday to the
United States. A fourth escapee did not
return immediately.
"If we hadn't had hope, we never would
have made it," said one of the mercenaries,
Timothy Carogd"e and three American
mer nir es escaped from the prison on
Dec. 1S.
Carmody said he now is turning his atten-
tion to freeing four colleagues still jailed in
Brasilia, Brazil.
The eight American mercenaries, all Viet-
nam veterans, were arrested March 14 in
Brazil aboard a Panamanian-registered tug
loaded with machine guns, grenades, inflat-
able rafts and other military hardware.
The seagoing vessel was loaded with
weapons in Argentina and was headed
across the Atlantic Ocean to the West Afri-
can nation of Ghana where, the men said,
they were planning to help overthrow the
government of President Jerry Rawlings.
Carmody said he believed the mission had
U.S. government backing - either from the
CIA or the National Security Council.
But the plan went awry when the ship's
captain refused to go through with the trip
and returned to Brazil, where the men were
arrested at a port town 20 miles east of Rio
de Janeiro.
They were charged and convicted of
smuggling arms into Brazil, but the convic-
tions were overturned by an appeals court
in October. The men remained in jail facing
extradition to Argentina on charges of vio-
lating export laws.
Carmody, 39, who was interviewed by
telephone from his home in San Francisco,
flew from La Paz, Bolivia, to Miami on
Thursday with two of the other escapees -
Sheldon Ainsworth of Virginia Beach, Va.,
and Steven Hedrick of St. Petersburg, Fla.
A fourth man - Fred Verduin of Sonoma,
Calif. - escaped with the others and is safe,
although he did not return to the United
States immediately, Carmody said.
Carmody said that he was paid $5,000 for
the mission and that the man who recruited
him lives in Texas.
The plan, Carmody said, was for the Amer-
icans to train a force of 100 Ghanaian reb-
els, apparently on board a freighter after
picking them up in the Ivory Coast, Ghana's
neighbor. An, invasion then would be
launched in rubber boats from the ship.
The CIA has denied any involvement in
tile operation, ana me State eMpartment
saia Ine men were operating as tree agenti,
Peter Martinez, a State e t spoaes-
man, said yesterday that he had no infor-
mation on the men.
Carmody said the four escapees used
hacksaw blades that had been smuggled
into the prison in boxes of powdered milk
sent by his wife, Melody.
They sawed through a metal grate above a
shower, and at 10:30 p.m. Dec. 15, they
shimmied down sheets tied together and
walked past several prison guards, he said.
Once at a main road, they hailed a taxi,
paying for it with money that had been
hidden inside a cigarette pack.
Those who stayed behind considered the
plan too risky, Carmody said.
He said the escape plan had been worked
out for months by his brother.
Brazilian television broadcast their pic-
tures every evening, Carmody said. "We
stayed in out-of-the-way places," he said,
adding that they got by with a road map and
a Portuguese phrase book.
After traveling by taxi and bush-plane for
a week, the men reached Corumba, a Brazil-
ian town about 700 miles southwest of Brasi-
lia. They crossed by border into Bolivia.
Those remaining in custody were Steven
Sosa, of Fayetteville, N.C.; Julio Rodriguez-
Larrazazal, also of Fayetteville; John Dee
Early of Florida, and Robert Edward Foti of
Scotia, N.Y. Early's home town was not
available.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/22 : CIA-RDP90-00552R000100950002-6