photo #2037920

My childhood with the CIAI remember being on a plane in South America over southern Colombia with Oliver North as the pilot and two photographers one with a top-of-the-line color shoulder mount TV camera of the late1980s and one ancient 8mm black and white hand crank no sound set up on a trip-pod. Stephen Shaffer of the CIA asked me if I wanted to go back down to the housing in Colombia where he left me on the flight with Pablo Escobar. I said yes just to visit I would like to go. He didn't tell me that he was taking me on the filming of the destruction that would be straight from the president an order of an airstrike on all South American cartel housing and production platforms to be carried out by Navy jets from an aircraft carrier off the coast of Peru. Oliver North was flying his army transport plane to film the destruction with Stephen Shaffer of the CIA. The military sent a well-known army photographer at the time and had filmed many famous videos for the military that most people have seen on TV at some time or another. He used an old black and white 8mm for the military archives that are usually very important videos for either the event or the people involved being important. Oliver North and Stephen Shaffer are a very big deal at least in the late 1980s. It was a privilege to be on the 8mm that film is part of US military history and I'm very proud to be on it walking across the shot from one side of the plane to the other as Oliver North would pull up for the Jets to come in and then noise dive straight down to get the best shot possible for the cameras. I didn't know what napalm look like when it exploded in real life but I got to say I regret asking Stephen Shaffer to show me he would order what kind of bomb to be dropped from the Jets and they were all equipped with the aircraft carrier stockpile of munitions in the 1980s and when they announced the list of available munitions I heard napalm and told Shaffer I would like to see it. I must apologize for being so stupid it was horrible because as the plane came in there were still people running out of the housing that had already been hit by a wave of two Jets just before I asked to see the napalm and as the next wave of Jets came in to drop their munitions the napalm hit as a full football field of fire straight up into the air it was furious and the people I saw running before it hits were thereafter no people on fire running nobody laying on fire they vanished in the bright fireball that light up the noonday sun it was intense. After that, we filmed in a few other countries in South America wiping all the cartel locations that the CIA had gathered except the ones in the major cities there were no populated areas hit. Stephen Shaffer of the CIA picked me up in his arms as I was crying and screamed at me that he would come and kill my entire family and friends if I told anyone about the airstrike and what went on in Arkansas and Oklahoma that day. The army photographer said he apologizes for the way Stephen Shaffer was treated me and said he thought I was a guest of the military and should have been treated as such. I was glad to find out later that Stephen Shaffer wanted me to stay quiet about it until a certain amount of time passed. I look back and wonder if I could have broken the story to the Media I did get an interview with Ronald Reagan before he left office but I asked why the people had to die in Arkansas and Oklahoma instead of a question about the airstrike. Once the administration caught on that Fred J Foster had purposely got me this chance to ask president Reagan a real question not agreed upon by the administration they quickly put a stop to the interview and denied comment. The pictures and videos of that day are still around and it was the closest I ever got to an answer.