Together for the first time, logos for five of the Central Intelligence Agency's best-known proprietary airlines. Each was a private company owned and operated by the CIA for covert transportation of people and equipment all over the world. Pilots and crew flew into some of the most dangerous places in the world including Laos, Angola, Colombia, Vietnam, Tibet, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and many others. Civil Air Transport was a commercial airline purchased by the CIA in 1949 through one of their front companies which operated as a clandestine transport wing of the CIA for decades throughout Asia. CAT pilots smuggled weapons and people across international borders, and even participated in bombing runs in America's small proxy wars with the USSR throughout the Cold War period. CAT employees referred to the company as "the world's most shot-at airline". This was one of many commercial logos that Civil Air Transport used throughout its existence. Air America was a CIA-owned airline which played an integral role in the Secret War in Laos from 1962 through 1975. At its peak, Air America operated nearly one hundred fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft in and around Laos, South Vietnam, and Thailand, with around 300 pilots, crew members, and ground personnel in the region. Evergreen Airlines is another proprietary that has been linked to the CIA for years. Evergreen was a large international airline which grew significantly after purchasing the assets of Intermountain Aviation, another CIA proprietary which famously supported Operation COLDFEET to collect intelligence at an abandoned Soviet research facility in the Arctic Ocean. Evergreen flew the deposed Shah of Iran from Panama to Egypt in 1980 and supported missions in El Salvador and Nicaragua as well. Southern Air Transport flew missions all over the world, and is best known for the loss of one of its C-123 aircraft over Nicaragua in 1986. On a mission to supply the Contras with weapons and ammunition, the aircraft was shot down with the loss of three crewmembers. Only Eugene Hasenfus survived the crash, parachuting out of the cargo door. He was captured by Sandinista forces on the ground, which led to the exposure of the secret program now known as the Iran-Contra Affair. Tepper Aviation was a small company based in Crestview, FL which lost one of its L-100 Hercules aircraft in a crash in Angola in 1989. All seven crewmembers were killed when the aircraft clipped a tree during a nighttime landing attempt. Prior to that it is reported to have completed supply runs throughout Africa and elsewhere in the 1980s, continuing on through the 1990s. These stickers are each 4" wide and are manufactured by Overwatch Designs, a US veteran-owned small business.
