Major Gene Duncan a.k.a. Dois Gene “Chip” Tatum a.k.a. Pegaus
Part 1
Tatum remembered the white coolers he’d delivered the previous year to Little Rock Air Force Base and to Mena, Arkansas. He was always met by a man named Dan Lasater and his orders were if Lasater wasn’t already at the airport for Tatum to wait for him personally. (Lasater was a very close friend of Governor Bill Clinton, incidentally.)

In March of 1985, Tatum was told that two men would accompany him back to his base. During the flight, the two men talked through their headsets and were apparently unaware that Tatum could hear every bit of the conversation and talked business quite freely.

One of the men told the other that Arkansas could manufacture any kind of weapon and if they couldn’t manufacture it, they could damn sure get it. He told of training and arming guerrillas and being paid in cocaine. He said they basically paid $1200 for a kilo of cocaine, and in turn, moved it for anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000. He said the GOFUS demanded 10%, but he could really stretch his ten percent. When asked who GOFUS was, he laughed and replied that it was a pet name they’d given Governor Clinton and it meant “Governor of the United States” since that’s what Clinton thought he was.
The information contained here draw heavily from Chip Tatum’s own words and for complete details you should really check out “The Tatum Chronicles.” I have tried only to pick out things directly related to Seal and the CIA antics I have knowledge of. Tatum is a facinating man, that’s for sure.
Dois Gene Tatum began his government service in 1970 by volunteering for the United States Air Force during Vietnam. He was on of the first elite combat controllers (CCT) for the Air Force.

While stationed in Thailand, he was on a covert mission in Cambodia when his unit, Team Red Rock was captured by the North Vietnamese and held for 92 days. They were tortured and beaten, but not one of them talked. The “interrogations” most of the time ended in death. The only reason any of them survived was that they were found by a patrol of US Marines and rescued. Weak from the treatment of his captors, “Chip” Tatum immediately slipped into a coma for the next three weeks. When he awoke in a military hospital in the Philippines, he was debriefed within a couple of days. At this time he was told that President Nixon had classified the events Team Red Rock was involved in for a period of twenty-five years.

Due to the sensitive nature of the mission, Tatum was required to be “held close” for national security reasons. Finally it was decided that the CIA would assume responsibility for him. He was given the code name, Pegasus. Sent all over the world gathering data on the movement of POWs, Tatum soon realized nobody was even looking at the data he was collecting, the assignment was just something they could do with him to keep him busy and out of the mainstream. In 1978, Tatum retired from government service and went to live a quiet life in Colorado.
He talked of Barry Seal and quoted one of Seal’s favorite good-ole-boy sayings, “..and leave the driving to us.” He claimed Seal was the only one involved that he could trust and he respected Seal.

General Alverez asked Oliver North is Tatum could stay on and instruct his pilots and security team on the ability to sneak into airfields undetected under radar. Laughing North turned him down, stating that Tatum was a “national secret.” He also heard North tell Rodriquez that the two of them, the Governor or Arkansas, the Vice-President of the United States and Manuel Noriega were manufacturing cocaine.

In April, 1985 Tatum’s crew was to deliver six coolers marked medical supplies to San Lorenzo to meet a C-130 cargo airplane who was to deliver the coolers to El Salvador. At San Lorenzo, Tatum watched the pilot approach him and realized it was none other than Barry Seal, whom Tatum had become pretty good friends with. Seal handed Tatum a jar of olives that he’d earlier promised him during a meeting in Panema with Mike Harari (retired Mossad), Manuel Noriega and Oliver North.

Tatum and Seal went outside to talk privately and Tatum asked Seal to tell him the truth about the drugs and who was involved. Seal told him the Contras needed weapons to rebel against the Sandinistas. In the early 1980s, the CIA had approached the Contras promising support with weapons, training and money to run the rebellion.
In 1980, he was involuntarily reactivated to the US Army and sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Here he participated in numerous covert missions with the US Army Special Operations Unit, Task Force 160. In February, 1985 he was sent to Honduras with a medical evacuation unit and was told to see the Hospital Commissioner for further instructions. He had flown extensively in Central America as a Special Operations pilot, but was told by his handler, Oliver North, not to mention previous involvement in the area.

Besides the medevac duties, Tatum was to perform a covert group of missions while in Honduras. The Pegasus missions outranked the medevac missions. He answered to three people: Oliver North, Assistant National Security Advisor to the White House; Amiram Nir, former Israeli Intelligence Officer (Mossad), and Advisor to Vice-President Bush; and Felix Rodrequez, CIA handler.

His Pegasus missions took him to El Salvador, where the CIA-owned aviation company Corporate Air Services was based and to Contra camps in Honduras and Nicaragua. On every mission he moved large white coolers marked “medical supplies” in and out of Contra camps and into Arkansas. The coolers were always sealed. One mission was to fly two civilian pilots to a large Contra camp in Honduras, along the border to Nicaragua. The pilots were Bill Cooper and “Buzz” Sawyer. Mr. Cooper told him they worked for Corporate Air Services and were to meet with Contra leaders to coordinate various drops of guns and ammuntion.
The US, however, reneged and cut money for food and medical supplies and refused to supply the guerrillas with weapons as they’d promised. Finally, William Casey met with Adolpho Colero and decided the Contras could receive sorely needed weapons and money in exchange for cocaine. Casey appointed Oliver North to oversee the trades. In turn, North recruited (at heavy CIA prompting) Barry Seal to oversee delivery of these trades. Seal told Tatum that the US supplied the equipment for these “cocaine kitchens” and that this equipment had been flown out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky to the Contras.

Seal also told him to be wary of Oliver North because he had no honor and would “give up his mamma” if he had to. He proceded to name for Tatum the US officials, politicians and DEA agents involved in the trades. Written on the back of the flight plan, this became Barry Seal’s “Boss Hog” list.
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