Michael Echanis - Death

Death

On September 8, 1978, Major Echanis/Chuck Sanders/Nguyen "Bobby" van Nguyen and General Alegrett would die in a tragic aircraft accident. Michael Echanis and Nguyen "Bobby" Van Nguyen are buried at St. Johns Catholic Cemetery (a.k.a. Sunset Cemetery) in Ontario, Oregon. Bobby Nguyen, a highly decorated Vietnamese Airborne officer and MACV-SOG recon operator (Combat and Control North).

Jon Ronson, author of The Men Who Stare At Goats, cites associates of Echanis who contend the explosion in the aircraft was from Echanis' attempt to bomb a Sandanista camp with hand grenades by throwing them from an opened window in the plane and that the recovered aircraft showed evidence of a hand grenade going off inside the cockpit. Ronson quotes sources that Echanis was peripherally involved with the US Army's alleged First Earth Battalion and Echanis was credited being the soldier who succeeded in stopping a test-goat's heart with projected psychic energy. However, Ronson discredits this myth later in his book and assigns the alleged success of the experiment to martial artist Guy Savelli who is quoted extensively in The Men Who Stare At Goats.

Wanner said that when he heard of the team being killed, he was advised to go underground as no one in those early hours knew who was responsible or what else they might do. Wanner offered during one interview that notification of Echanis and the others being killed came from an official U.S. Government source and by phone. He took the warning seriously. Wanner would again disappear in southern California in the late 1990s. His fate is unknown to this day but those close to him offer it was not connected with the Mike Echanis/Nicaragua venture. Wanner had left the Hwa Rang Do community years before albeit under acrimonius circumstances as had many other notable HWD Black Belts. His former business partner, Bob Taylor, offers being in touch with Wanner as a result of their cooperation with SpyderCo Knives on a knife project.

Note: Retired Navy SEAL Joseph "Joe" Camp, also a member of Echanis' training team, would disappear in Managua in the spring of 1978. Camp, a Vietnam veteran of the SEAL Teams, is described as being the team's Military Intelligence instructor. His car was found abandoned on a Managua street one morning after he'd left the EEBI compound alone. A joint investigation of his disappearnce was conducted however his body has never been found and he is presumed dead. Master Chief Bob Nissley, a member of Echanis' senior advisor team, assisted in the unofficial investigation of Camp's disappearance by flying to Managua himself with a close friend of Camp's. They interviewed Echanis, Sanders and senior officers of the National Guard but learned little. ABC Evening News aired a 3:10 minute investigative report on October 28, 1981, covering in part Echanis' as well as Joe Camp's deaths (http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=68687). By September 8, 1978, three of the perhaps 10 contractors working for Somoza as well as Mike Echanis himself had died in Nicaragua.

Retired Ranger/Special Forces soldier Gary O'Neal knew Echanis in Vietnam. O'Neal was a member of Echanis' training team in Nicaragua. His biography, "American Hero" co-written with David Fisher, will be released in May 2013. O'Neal offers he led the body recovery effort in Lake Nicaragua where the plane crashed. O'Neal has often shared that Echanis' body showed wounds consistent with hand grenade shrapnel and it was the conclusion of the recovery team upon their inspection of the aircraft the ad hoc "bombing" effort was the cause of the aircraft being brought down. O'Neal has stated he specifically knows what occurred inside the aircraft that afternoon. This apparently based on a discussion with Echanis that morning about the purpose of the flight which angered O'Neal as he felt it (the flight) was both needless and reckless.

O'Neal and his wife, Paul Glasser, CW Edwards would be formally named by the U.S. Counsel in Managua to escort the bodies of the three Americans to the United States. The 5th Special Forces Group (A), which Chuck Sanders had served in, provided pall bearers and full military honors. The military pall bearers included MSG Vladimir Jakovenko, SSG James Lally, SFC Thomas Powell and SSG Roger Bascomb, were all from the A-Team Chuck Sanders served on while with the 5th SFG(A).

According to the Echanis Estate the U.S. State Department refused extend any assistance or help in the return of the bodies from Nicaragua. However the U.S. Embassy in Managua did, per reviewed official documents, ensure all three bodies were properly prepared and documented for return to the United States.

The reason no State Department support was forthcoming had to do with the U.S. diplomatic efforts and policies at the time regarding Nicaragua and the quiet effort to see President Somoza abdicate in favor of a moderate government with the Nicaraguan National Guard still intact. Per then Ambassador Mauricio Solaun "The policy problem created for us by the contract between the American mercenaries and the Somoza military was the confusion that was generated that Americans were supporting the “repression of the people”, and that to be “neutral” the USG should force them to stop their activities. This the USG with its limited legal authority could not do. Therefore, the embassy implemented the option of making it absolutely clear that the American “soldiers of fortune” were in Nicaragua only as private citizens, did not represent our government, while advising them that they were taking personal risks in fulfilling their contract with General Somoza (Interview with Echanis historian Greg Walker and Ambassador Mauricio Solaun, November 14, 2012)."

Note: To provide balance, a few American female missionaries were accused by the Somoza government of participating in Sandanista activities, one was injured by the national Guard (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1821&dat=19840320&id=-0otAAAAIBAJ&sjid=np0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1512,2202705). We advised them that as American citizens they had certain rights and freedoms, but of the risks they were taking by participating in the violent local political process. (Ambassador Mauricio Solaun, November 14, 2012, with Greg Walker).

President Somoza ordered all necessary preparations and arrangements of the remains, to include embalming, and then directed a TACA Airlines aircraft to fly all three caskets to the United States. After an unexplained 72-hour delay in Fort Launderdale, Florida, where the plane initially landed, President Somoza again contracted with an air carrier to transport the caskets to Boise, Idaho.

Why President Somoza paid for all pre-funeral arrangements to include caskets as well as air transportation from Managua to Boise, Idaho, was answered by former U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua Mauricio Solaun in a November 2012 interview with Echanis historian Greg Walker. "I presume," offered Ambassador Solaun, "that the responsibility taken by Somoza to see that any dead mercenary be repatriated to the U.S. with dignity obeyed to the Hispanic sense of chivalry that he had toward his employees."

A source on scene at the time of the air crash offers the hand grenades had been primed and placed in glass jars so they would detonate upon impact / the glass breaking. It was determined, more than likely, one of the jars broke inside the aircraft with the predictable result. There was a report alleging an altimeter detonated bomb had at one time been placed on the Aero Commander 114A but the device failed to explode. This attempt is attributed to a Sandinista plan to kill Jose Ivan "Pepe" Alegrett Perez in his role at the head Intelligence officer for the National Guard. This during the failed FSLN "final offensive" in 1979. A US adviser in-country at the time, Skip Crane, offers later learning the individual responsible for placing the failed device was a Nicaraguan Air Force non-commissioned officer who was Alegrett's aircraft mechanic (Interview with Skip Crane, former Naval Attache to Managua 1977/1978, with Echanis historian Greg Walker, 2012). However there is no other proof of such a device being either placed or detonating on the aircraft and none assigned to the air crash on September 8, 1978.

It was known almost immediately in Managua upon word of the aircraft exploding that hand grenades onboard were involved. Again, according Crane, "They were apparently checking out known Sandinista positions in a built up area near Sapoa (in southern Nicaragua) when the crash occurred. The word we started getting almost immediately in Managua was there were hand grenades being thrown from the plane involved." That a fragmentation grenade had exploded inside the plane's cockpit and caused the crash was also known to Colonel Anastacio Portocarrero, who ordered the families of those killed to be notified (http://www.monimbo.us/files/La_EEBI.pdf).

The bodies of Echanis, Sanders and Bobby Ngyuen were initially taken to Managua's El Retiro Hospital where they were placed in the morgue (La EEBI y Michael Echanis, Monimbo, Edition 569, Oscar Mendieta). Here they were discovered and identified by then LT Mendieta. Mendieta contacted Colonel Somoza at EEBI who in turn contacted his father, the president, and the US Embassy. From the morgue the remains were moved to a staging area at the Managua International airport. U.S. eye-witness identification was made from two matching Hwa Rang Do tattoos on Echanis' inner forearms and another on his shoulder, according to retired Navy SEAL Skip Crane in a recent interview with Echanis historian Greg Walker. Crane was a close friend of Echanis' and was working at the U.S. Embassy in Managua as the Naval Attache at the time he helped properly identify the body..