In his new book "Point West: The Political History of the Guanacaste National Park Project," the former Minister of Environment and Energy under President Óscar Arias tells of Oliver North's airstrip in Guanacaste and the Arias administration's fight to turn it and the forest around it into a national park.
In Costa Rica's far northwest, I wanted to go kitesurfing, to find Oliver North's old Contra airstrip and to not get robbed. I ended up at least 1 for 3.
On Sunday, Oct. 5, 1986, a young Sandinista soldier named José Fernando Canales Alemán sighted a Fairchild C-123K cargo plane in Nicaraguan airspace near the Costa Rican border. He fired a Russian-made shoulder mounted SAM-7 surface-to-air missile and brought down the plane. One man survived. His name was Eugene Hasenfus, and his subsequent capture by Sandinista forces led to the unraveling of a complex web now called “The Iran-Contra Affair.”
Lawrence Walsh, the former U.S. prosecutor who spent seven years investigating officials in President Ronald Reagan's administration for their roles in the Iran-Contra scandal, has died. He was 102.