COMBATANT HAD TALES TO TELL, LAWYER SAYS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303240001-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 28, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 17, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303240001-0
Combatant had tales
to tell, lawyer says
3y Thomas Palmer
to to
VAN NUYS, Calif. - Late in October, as Steven
aul Carr, an aspiring soldier of fortune, sat out a
Ix-month all term in Naples, Fla., for
a parole- viola-
tion, he was visited by a man who identified himself
as a representative of the CIA. The man asked Carr
to return to Central America and resume the battle
against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Carr told his attorney of the offer shortly before
being released from jail and leaving for California to
live with friends - and escape the pressure of being a
man who may have known too much.
The 27-year-old sometime carpenter died here ear-
ly last Saturday of an apparently self-administered
cocaine overdose. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he reported-
ly told a woman friend with whom he was staying. "I
paranoided out - I ate it all."
The offer to return to Central America - the last
thing Carr sought, having spent months in a Costa
Rican jail for allegedly involving himself in combat
operations against Sandinista troops across the bor-
der - was one of several reasons he may have had to
be fearful, attorney Gerry Berry said.
The attorne said he warned
Carr that fie shoo care u
cause of his knowled a of secret
military actions tnvo v nrt me -
cans In Central America
He was one of the only people
who could testify that money com-
ing from government, or private
sources, was used to buy guns in
violation of arms treaties," Berry
said in a telephone interview.
The office of Sen. John F. Kerry
had sought Carr as a congression-
al witness to suspected Illegal ac-
tivities in Central America, but
Kerry's requests for an investiga-
tion had been ignored by the Rea-
gan administration. No forum ex-
isted for Carr to tell his story - un-
t11 late November, when news of
the sale of US arms to Iran became
public, and subsequently the an-
nouncement of the potentially il-
legal diversion of profits to the
contra rebel effort in Nicaragua.
Not only had Carr told what he
knew to the Globe, from his San
Jose jail cell last spring. He had
also been interviewed by federal
investigators from Miami. And.
more recently, he appeared on the
CBS news magazine "West 57th
Street."
"With the contra deal and Rea-
gan, he'd become an overnight
sensation," said Los Angeles Po-
BOSTON S---F-- BOSTON GLOBE
17 December 1986
lice Detective Mel Arnold. chief of later said, and left soon after to re-
homicide for. the Van Nuys dtvt- turn to Florida.
sion, who is investigating Carr's Less than a year later. Carr re-
death. turned to Costa Rica, this time, he
Carr was a potential witness in said, aboard a private plane laden
a federal grand jury investigation with ammunition and weapons
in Miami into a March 1985 ship- for the contras. The military sup-
ment of arms from Florida to plies, barred by several US Laws
Costa Rica He wa
1
s
so e> oected from being secretly ahiDOed. had
to be called to testif Ina 523 '- --
l
Y mi
-
lion civil suit against 29 persons
alleged to be organizers of a pri-
vate network of aid to the contras.
Carr had expressed concern
about his safety, making sure
doors were locked at a stucco-and-
redwood apartment complex that
Is standard along the palm-frond-
ed streets of the San Fernando
Valley.
"Everybody knew that he did
some coke," said Arnold, but
friends were not particularly con-
cerned about him. Police do not
know where Carr spent Friday
evening, but Arnold was told by
Jacqueline Perry, the woman with
whom Carr was staying, that Carr
had come home at about 10 p.m.
that night and gone to his room.
Hours later. Arnold said, Perry
heard noises from the room. Carr
told her, "Watch me, I've been
drinking too much."
At about 3 a.m., the bearded,
long-haired Carr, dressed in un-
derwear and a robe, went outside
and fell into convulsions. He was
dead when paramedics arrived.
Believing it was a routine
death, police conducted only a cur-
sory examination of the premises.
While there is no evidence that it
was other than an accidental
overdose, Berry said yesterday, he
remains troubled by the fact that
Carr had told him of receiving
threats for having been so public
about his and others' roles as sol-
diers of fortune in Central Amer-
Ica.
There was no doubt that the
27-year-old Carr, who envied his
brother for being old enough to
hav
e served in Vietnam, loved
combat. As Carr recalled telling
one
ers
o
from persons in the Miami area
sympathetic to the contras. Carr
joined a group of about 20 contras,
Cuban-Americans and Western
soldiers of fortune who were
camped out in northern Costa
Rica, close to the Nicaraguan bor-
der.
In late April, less than two
months in the field. Carr and five
others were arrested for taking
part in a contra raid on a Sandin-
ista military encampment inside
Nicaragua,
raid In a letter
to his brother Edward a o
doa.- . Ca'~r* wrote' 'We hit them
retty good. A couple of times by
radio accounts one raid on La
Esparanza got us 70 killed In ac-
tion for them with only one
wounded for us.... Anyway, it
wasn't exactly what I expected it
to be. We lot busted and still
aren't sure the CIA didn't want it
so. ey may have set up, more
later when I get back out...
Carr spent nearly a year in La
Reforma prison on the outskirts of
San Jose, Costa Rica.
in an interview with the Globe
last spring, Carr said he had been
recruited to travel to Costa Rica
by Civilian Military Assistance,
an Alabama-based group that os-
tensibly provides nonmilitary aid
to the rebels.
The leader of the group, Thom-
as Posey, Yesterday repeated his
denials of that allegation and said
Carr was not a member, though
others arrested with him were.
"He met them out in the field," Po-
sey said, adding, "Nobody's ever
heard of any of the combat he was
talking about."
p
on who advised him to Carr never formally faced the
show more caution In the field, "i charges he was jailed for in Costa
kept telling him I was bullet- Rica. After being bailed for $1,000
proof." last spring, he made his way to its
The only battlefields that Carr southern border and crossed over
could find were In Central Amer- to Panama.
Ica. He made a brief visit to Costa
Rica in mid-1984, but was told by C1rt
one American supporter there
that he needed to learn Spanish
before he could join the contras. "i
took my course in the bars," Carr
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The person who caused Carr
the most distress was the man
for h _ A Although Carr refused
the offer to return to Central
America, Berry said, he had been
talking about becoming a merce-
nary on behalf of white segrega-
tionist forces in South Africa.
When the person offered to
make Cr an "operativIn
South Africa. Carr w s renew t
errV's warn l
1 said, Steven w, the CIA are le
who don t ant you aroun
M Q VOur hark
A CIA s kesman character
false
"That sounds too stupt
wo s.
Arnold concurred with the pre-
liminary coroner's conclusion
that it was drugs, not political in-
trigue, that caused Carr's death.
Asked about reports that Carr
had exhibited signs of fear recent-
ly, Arnold pointed to his nose,
making an Inhaling gesture, and
held his fingers in front of his lips,
as if to draw in on a cigarette.
"Toot will cause that," Arnold
said, referring to cocaine. ..Of
course, so will gunrunning for the
contras."
(Yvonne Daley, Globe corre-
spondent, contributed to this re-
port.)
s conten on o n
a CIA a en as o
_second sop Gear aiii
L
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/28: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303240001-0