Deep Cover, Shallow Graves

My name is William Robert (Tosh) Plumlee, but over the years and across many sensitive operations (as we call them) for the US military, CIA and other departments of the Federal government, I' ve been assigned many aliases. Some like William ' Buck' Pearson, Juan Cabrillo, John Rawlins and John James Rollins and James Plumley can be found in public records. Others remain unknown and are classified. And there are more assigned aliases that I no longer remember. I' ve spent most of my eighty-seven years as an undercover pilot and contract operative for the CIA and other state and Federal agencies, referenced in some circles as a "e; cut-out"e; on an open-ended contract for the CIA. In 1957, as a CIA "e; cut-out"e; - a contract pilot and operative for the CIA - I flew weapons to Fidel Castro' s July 26 Revolutionary Army, which was operating deep in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba. At the time, the rebels were using newly developed hit-and-run guerrilla warfare tactics against dictator Fulgencio Batista and his army. "e; Off the books"e; and without the approval of the US Senate and Congress and unknown to the American public, CIA special tactical teams were delivering medical supplies, small arms, and ammunition to Castro and his rebels from bases in Marathon Key, Central America and near Miami, Florida. Most of the weapons were "e; stolen"e; from U.S. National Guard armories in places like Denver, Colorado, Akron, Ohio, Dallas, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana. I first met Castro after the D18 Twin Beechcraft I was piloting ran out of fuel and landed in an alligator and snake-infested swamp in southwest Cuba, not far from his mountain hideout. After a few hours, I was rescued by a group of rebels led by the lovely and charming Vilma Espin (code name: Deborah), who I was fascinated by and who later became Raul Castro' s wife. She and others escorted me to their primitive camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains where later that evening a tall, bearded rebel leader named Fidel Castro handed me a cup of coffee and a hat to protect me from the sun. The rebels called me Zapata because I had lost my shoes in the swamp. Months later, while visiting Fidel' s brother Raul Castro in another rebel camp in Oriente Province, I was photographed by a Life magazine reporter along with Raul Castro, Che Guevara and Sergio Apabicia, who later joined the CIA and became my life-long friend. My face appeared in Life magazine again in January 1959 when I was photographed by Lee Hall riding on a captured Texas National Guard tank that drove the triumphant Castro rebels into Havana. (That' s me on the top left wearing a Texas National Guard wearing a Texas National Guard uniform.)